Can Tech Get Rid of Bad Trips? In this episode of, we talk about some of the latest drug trends and all the ways drugs are changing as they continue to be intertwined with tech. Whether it's teenagers reviving the Benadryl TikTok challenge or people signing up for an out-of-body experience program previously used by the CIA, some of us are chasing unconventional trips--bad trips, essentially. But these trends are happening at a time when AI companies are also looking to create a "cleaner" trip for users, and others are using AI chatbots to therapeutically guide their psychedelic trips. Host Michael Calore sits down with staff writer Boone Ashworth and senior editor Manisha Krishnan to discuss these trends--and the promises and limitations of relying on tech to avoid bad trips. Young People Are Tripping on Benadryl--and It's Always a Bad Time The CIA Used This Psychic Meditation Program. It's Never Been More Popular Please help us improve by filling out our listener survey . Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . Hey, Mike, how are you? This is your first appearance on, is it not? It's really nice to be back in the studio.

Two years ago, I decided to do nothing. As a neuroscientist, I was already familiar with the evidence that mindfulness meditation, or attending to the present moment, is beneficial for stress and anxiety. So I had been meditating regularly for about a half a year, looking to enhance my practice. And although I didn't know it yet, there were already scientific studies showing that the more extreme form of "doing nothing" that I was now interested in--floating in a sensory reduction tank--could significantly reduce stress, blood pressure, and cortisol levels. And so it was my plan, in the first week of March 2020, on what would become the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, to enter a commercial float studio in West Los Angeles, called Float Lab.

Thomas Metzinger had his first out-of-body experience when he was nineteen. He was on a ten-week meditation retreat in the Westerwald, a mountainous area near his home, in Frankfurt. After a long day of yoga and meditation, he had a slice of cake and fell asleep. Then he awoke, feeling an itch on his back. He tried to scratch it, but couldn't--his arm seemed paralyzed.

It starts without warning--or rather, the warnings are there, but your ability to detect them exists only in hindsight. First you're sitting in the car with your son, then he tells you: "I cannot find my old self again." You think, well, teenagers say dramatic stuff like this all the time. Then he's refusing to do his homework, he's writing suicidal messages on the wall in black magic marker, he's trying to cut himself with a razor blade. You sit down with him; you two have a long talk. A week later, he runs home from a nighttime gathering at his friend's apartment, he's bursting through the front door, shouting about how his friends are trying to kill him. He spends the night crouching in his mother's old room, clutching a stuffed animal to his chest. He's 17 years old at this point, and you are his father, Dick Russell, a traveler, a former staff reporter for Sports Illustrated, but a father first and foremost.

Robot" is never far from the pulse of current events. A couple of weeks ago, the dystopian computer hacker drama was in mid-shoot at an FBI field office when news broke that bureau Director James Comey had been fired. "One of the lines of dialogue is referencing Comey," Sam Esmail, the show's creator, recalled. "That was a little surreal and kind of an out-of-body experience." Esmail might as easily be describing the USA Network series, whose dark and downbeat second season unfolded much within the imagination of its mentally unstable antihero, Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), as he fought to free himself from his manipulative alter-ego, Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). By season's end, fsociety -- the underground hacktivist group led by the sidelined Elliot -- was shattered, and a deadly, explosive plot hatched by Mr. Robot and the Dark Army, a cryptic Chinese organization, was about to go off. Elliot himself lay bleeding, shot by a character he believed to be a delusional figment. The show's license to be uncanny is endorsed by the headlines, argues its star. "As ridiculous as this sounds, I feel that I'm reading my scripts as if I could be reading the L.A. Times tomorrow," said Malek, speaking by phone during a lunch break from a location shoot on New York City's Broadway. "I would approach Sam and say, 'Do you really believe that this is possible?'

It starts without warning--or rather, the warnings are there, but your ability to detect them exists only in hindsight. First you're sitting in the car with your son, then he tells you: "I cannot find my old self again." You think, well, teenagers say dramatic stuff like this all the time. Then he's refusing to do his homework, he's writing suicidal messages on the wall in black magic marker, he's trying to cut himself with a razor blade. You sit down with him; you two have a long talk. A week later, he runs home from a nighttime gathering at his friend's apartment, he's bursting through the front door, shouting about how his friends are trying to kill him. He spends the night crouching in his mother's old room, clutching a stuffed animal to his chest. He's 17 years old at this point, and you are his father, Dick Russell, a traveler, a former staff reporter for Sports Illustrated, but a father first and foremost.