The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

This book by Tom Wolfe was genuinely recommended once in the episodes we index, on Joe Rogan. The people who vouched for it on air: Peter Thiel. It comes up in conversations about consciousness, psychedelics. Every quote below is verbatim, attributed, and linked to the exact second it was said. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

One of the most essential works on the 1960s counterculture, Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Test is the seminal work on the hippie culture, a report on what it was like to follow along with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they launched out on the "Transcontinental Bus Tour" from the West Coast to New York, all the while introducing acid (then legal) to hundreds of like-minded folks, staging impromptu jam sessions, dodging the Feds, and meeting some of the most revolutionary figures of the day.

• “I still think his greatest novel was uh um the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test which is sort of this history of the LSD counterculture movement”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “I still think his greatest novel was”
  Peter Thiel · The Joe Rogan Experience · Aug 202401:41:33

  Said during "Joe Rogan Experience #2190 - Peter Thiel". The episode features Peter Thiel: Billionaire investor and entrepreneur, PayPal co-founder, Palantir and Founders Fund founder, contrarian tech thinker. Peter Thiel and Joe Rogan range over tech stagnation, AI passing the Turing test, nuclear power, conspiracies, and collapsing birth rates.