0:01

There's a common perception that democracy ends

0:03

with a battle. Soldiers in the streets,

0:05

a coup d'etat, the fall of a

0:07

government. But we know that democracy

0:10

can be lost one little step at

0:12

a time. We've reported on it and

0:14

lived through it. And when we

0:16

look at America today, right now, we

0:18

see a place where the slide to autocracy has

0:21

already begun. It's not some distant future,

0:23

it's the present. I'm Anne

0:25

Applebaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. I'm

0:28

Peter Pomerance, a senior fellow at

0:30

the SNF Agora Institute at Johns

0:32

Hopkins University. We're the hosts

0:34

of a new podcast from The Atlantic,

0:36

Autocracy in America. Subscribe to the

0:38

show wherever you get your podcasts. This

0:48

is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hannah Rosen. Today,

0:51

we have the third and final

0:53

episode in our series exploring psychotropic

0:56

meds and the cultural stories

0:58

surrounding them. In

1:00

those early, uncertain days of the pandemic, the

1:02

government made a decision, a decision

1:05

that's proving very hard to walk back,

1:07

and that transformed how we access these drugs,

1:10

how doctors prescribe them, and how we stay

1:12

on them. This

1:14

week, a story about ketamine and

1:17

about the fallout of that decision. Reporter

1:20

Ethan Brooks will take it from here. Okay,

1:22

I'm going to start with a doctor. His

1:25

name is Scott Smith, and his story starts

1:27

back before the pandemic. Smith

1:29

is working in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

1:31

as a family doctor. So sick kids,

1:33

high blood pressure, all sorts of things.

1:37

One day he's driving to work, listening to

1:39

the radio, and NPR is airing a story

1:41

about ketamine as a treatment for depression.

1:44

And as I was driving to work and I

1:46

heard them talking about that, I said out loud,

1:49

that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.

1:52

Ketamine would never help anybody for depression.

1:55

I was out loud. Yeah, to myself

1:57

as I was driving because it just

1:59

was ludicrous. This felt

2:01

ludicrous because for Smith, it's just

2:03

not what ketamine was for. For

2:06

him, it was an anesthetic, something you might

2:08

give to a kid who needs stitches on their tongue,

2:10

get them to stop squirming. The

2:12

way it functioned as he understood it was to

2:14

separate the mind from the body. For

2:17

other people, ketamine is a party drug, going

2:19

by names like K, Special K, and according

2:22

to the DEA, super acid. I

2:25

haven't heard that one before. But

2:27

recently, ketamine's new gig is as a depression

2:29

treatment, and a promising one. Promising

2:32

because it works fast, which is a useful

2:35

feature for people who are suicidally depressed, and

2:37

it works well for patients for whom other

2:39

depression treatments don't work. Ketamine

2:42

for depression is often prescribed off-label, and

2:45

in 2019, the FDA approved an on-label

2:48

treatment called Spravato, which is a nasal spray.

2:51

It's the first genuinely new FDA-approved

2:53

depression treatment in 50 years. After

2:58

Scott Smith heard that story on the radio, he

3:00

says his patients started asking him about ketamine,

3:03

and he found research suggesting that low-dose

3:05

ketamine could be an effective treatment. And

3:08

for Smith, that was enough. He

3:11

was sold. I asked myself,

3:13

wait a minute, why has nobody told

3:15

me about how powerful this treatment is?

3:18

And why isn't this being used? So

3:21

Scott Smith, when he learned all this, felt, in

3:23

a way, offended, like that we

3:25

had been sitting on this drug for so many

3:27

years, but so many people, including people really close

3:29

to him, had been struggling with

3:32

severe depression, and that ketamine wasn't an option

3:34

that was available to them. It

3:36

was in my face that this was

3:38

real, and I couldn't deny

3:41

it. I couldn't deny it. To

3:43

deny it to me would be being

3:46

a bad doctor. This

3:49

situation had been presented to me by

3:51

the universe. My

3:53

best friend killed himself. There

3:56

was no way I was going to let

3:58

this pass by. Have

4:00

you felt that before? Like, is this the first time

4:03

that that's happened? That

4:05

was the first time it overwhelmed me. Smith

4:10

wanted to get ketamine to as many patients as he could

4:13

who needed it. So he made a bold

4:15

decision. He starts his own

4:17

practice, one that serves both ketamine

4:19

patients and his normal family practice

4:21

patients. He rents an

4:23

office with two completely separate waiting rooms. So

4:25

you could be sitting in one waiting room

4:28

and totally unaware that the other exists. The

4:31

sign on the door to the first waiting room

4:33

said Smith Family MD. The sign

4:35

on the door to the other waiting room

4:37

said ketamine treatment services. Scott

4:40

Smith was behind both doors. The

4:44

practice did well. Patients filled

4:46

up both waiting rooms, and maybe Smith

4:48

would have liked to treat more patients, but it was

4:50

a brick and mortar office, so that was that. And

4:54

then the pandemic came, and everything

4:56

changed. Okay,

5:04

so it's March 20th, 2020. To

5:07

set the scene, this is nine days

5:09

after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19

5:11

a pandemic. It's the same

5:13

day Governor Cuomo issued a stay-at-home order for all

5:15

New Yorkers. United announced it would

5:17

cut down international flights by 95 percent. And

5:21

the DEA made an announcement. Given

5:24

the circumstances, doctors no

5:27

longer had to see patients in person at

5:29

all to prescribe controlled substances. And

5:32

this decision, I'd like to submit, is

5:35

among the most enduring and consequential

5:37

policy decisions of the pandemic. Before

5:41

this change, with few exceptions,

5:43

if you wanted a controlled

5:45

substance— amphetamine, suboxone, ketamine, Xanax,

5:47

testosterone—you needed, at some point,

5:49

to see a doctor in

5:51

person. After

5:53

the March 2020 change, that in-person

5:55

barrier was gone. It

5:58

became easier to get prescribed, easier

6:00

to stay prescribed. And this,

6:03

especially in a pandemic, saved lives.

6:06

But something else happened too. The

6:09

way we access and maintain medications

6:11

underwent a fundamental shift. The

6:14

new policy brought us into a new era when

6:16

we're patients have a lot more power, power

6:19

to diagnose and treat ourselves without

6:21

leaving the room. From

6:23

2020 to 2022, one study found a tenfold increase until

6:28

health visits. Americans,

6:30

as we've discussed, started taking a

6:32

lot more psychiatric medications and

6:35

the worlds of venture capital and startups saw

6:37

an opportunity. Psychiatry

6:39

at a scale that would have been impossible before. The

6:42

money poured in and before long, the

6:45

environment resulting from this confluence of demand,

6:47

policy and money had a name. I'll

6:50

just read a few recent headlines here. New

6:53

mental health clinics are a Wild West. Adult

6:55

ADHD is the Wild West of psychiatry.

6:58

The Wild West of online testosterone prescribing.

7:00

The Wild West of off-brand ozempik. The

7:03

Wild West of ketamine treatment. You

7:05

get it. A Wild West. A

7:08

new world of access and autonomy for

7:10

patients and for doctors. So

7:16

Scott Smith, half family medicine

7:18

doctor, half ketamine doctor, sees

7:20

these changes and decides to go west.

7:24

I went all in. I

7:26

went all in. I

7:29

became licensed in 48 states. Smith

7:32

closes the office with two waiting rooms and

7:34

builds a new practice from the ground up.

7:37

Now he would only provide ketamine treatment, mostly

7:39

in the form of off-label, low-dose

7:42

ketamine lozenges. In this

7:44

practice, every single patient's being treated

7:46

with the same medicine. The

7:49

treatment protocol that we're giving these patients

7:51

is the same for

7:53

every single patient. It's

7:55

like a Baskin Robbins store that

7:58

only serves vanilla ice cream. How

8:01

fast would a Starbucks run that only

8:03

sold coffee with cream and sugar? That's

8:06

it. I started pointing out

8:08

to Smith that comparing ketamine, a Schedule

8:10

3 controlled substance, to ice cream or

8:12

to coffee with cream and sugar might

8:15

give the wrong impression. And

8:17

as he clarified his vision, I realized it wasn't

8:19

drugs as candy that he was really going for

8:21

or treatment as fast food. What

8:23

he had in mind was all the things fast food

8:25

restaurants do well. Efficiency.

8:28

Specialization. And in

8:30

a country where someone dies by suicide every 11 minutes,

8:33

maybe fast food style efficiency applied to

8:35

a fast acting depression treatment isn't

8:38

so bad. In

8:45

Smith's practice, the problem could

8:47

be PTSD, anxiety, depression. The

8:50

solution would be ketamine, ketamine, ketamine.

8:53

I was taking care of about a thousand

8:55

patients in a pool. And

8:57

at the peak, it was around 1,500 patients. The

9:04

more I talked to Smith, and for reasons that will

9:06

become clear a bit later, I

9:08

wanted to know who were Smith's 1,500 patients. I

9:12

also wondered if his patients might be more into the

9:14

super acid side of ketamine, the

9:16

party drug side, than the depression treatment. After

9:20

all, ketamine can be dangerous. There's

9:22

an FDA warning that includes stuff like

9:25

urinary tract and bladder problems. But also

9:28

respiratory depression. The autopsy

9:30

for Matthew Perry, Play Chandler Bing and Friends,

9:34

determined that he had died from the acute effects

9:36

of ketamine. I

9:39

started calling Smith's patients just a few months

9:41

after Perry's death. And I want

9:43

to introduce you to just two here. Good afternoon.

9:46

Willow, a nurse in Tennessee. I'm

9:48

going to use a nickname to protect her privacy. Hi, this is

9:50

Johanna. And Johanna

9:53

Haney, a writer in Boston. And

9:56

I want to tell their stories because they help explain the

9:58

profound positives that came with this 2020. 20

10:00

rule change. And also the risks inherent

10:02

in that new wild west. Nobody

10:05

starts with ketamine treatment. You know what I mean?

10:07

It's just like, this is

10:09

sort of like the last stop. Like if

10:11

I wasn't gonna get relief, I just wanted

10:13

it to be over and done. And if

10:16

you think about like being on an airplane and you're like

10:19

just so restless and all you

10:21

want is to be at this

10:23

final destination and you

10:25

know, you're uncomfortable and you're bored and you're

10:28

just like, you know that feeling you, that

10:30

you got on a plane? It's that's how

10:32

my life felt to me. Johanna

10:34

had been struggling with depression for years. I

10:37

tried all the usual depression treatments, SSRIs,

10:39

anti-anxiety meds, anti-psychotics,

10:42

some of which would work for a while until

10:44

they didn't. There was one

10:46

that did work well for her. But

10:49

it was affecting the muscles in

10:51

my mouth. So as

10:53

time wore on, you

10:57

couldn't understand my speech anymore, which

11:00

was kind of a big problem.

11:04

Willow, the nurse, struggled with the

11:06

usual depression meds too. I

11:08

tried Prozac, I tried Paxil,

11:11

I tried well

11:14

Butrin and nothing

11:16

was working. I no longer

11:18

went to church. I

11:20

couldn't seem to even answer phone calls

11:23

from my friends. I would

11:25

just lay in bed. I

11:28

could even make myself brush my teeth. Like

11:30

I've had plenty of dental work done since

11:32

to try to reverse some of the damage.

11:36

There was no sort of

11:38

existence other than me just

11:40

fighting against taking my own

11:42

life. Had you experienced

11:44

anything like that before? I

11:47

haven't. Nothing was working

11:49

for Willow until one day she

11:51

found some research on ketamine. At

11:54

that point, I felt like what do I have to

11:56

lose? It couldn't get worse than

11:58

what it was. Johanna

12:02

and Willow liked Dr. Smith. Johanna,

12:04

through her screen, found him to

12:06

be warm and attentive. Smith

12:08

prescribed them lozenges to be dissolved in their

12:10

mouths. The lozenges were supposed

12:13

to taste like cherry or raspberry, but

12:15

mostly they tasted bitter, waxy. What

12:18

the patients hoped for wasn't a cure. That

12:20

didn't seem realistic. What they

12:23

hoped for was a separation, from

12:25

the needling idea that it might be better to not

12:27

be alive. And

12:29

there were all sorts of separations that needed to be

12:31

delicately managed. Depression separated

12:34

them from the things and people they loved in life. The

12:37

ketamine separated their minds from their bodies,

12:39

sometimes so much that it was scary, sometimes

12:42

so little that they felt nothing. But

12:45

the only separation that mattered was between two parts

12:47

of their minds, one that

12:49

sought normalcy and one that sought nothingness.

12:57

But then the first few doses, there

12:59

was a drastic difference. It

13:02

wasn't like I was able to leave my house or

13:05

I was even able to clean or do

13:07

things such as that yet. But

13:10

I would actually get in the bathtub.

13:12

I actually was able to

13:14

hold my concentration for a little bit

13:16

because I was just having constant anxiety

13:19

attacks. I started doing

13:23

the dishes, which is something that I

13:26

really couldn't do before. So

13:28

I still felt like garbage, but

13:30

I could do the dishes. Within

13:33

a month, I was out my house checking my

13:36

mailbox. And

13:38

about two or three months

13:40

later, my kids felt like they had their

13:42

mom back. I got a

13:44

promotion at work within about six months.

13:48

And almost a year later, I was

13:50

thinking, well, I'll go back for my next degree.

13:53

So it made all the

13:55

difference in my life. Here

14:05

were two patients, Willow and Johanna,

14:07

finally finding treatment that worked. Treatment

14:10

that would otherwise be too far away or too

14:12

expensive. They were patients

14:14

reaping the full benefit of ketamine's

14:16

so-called wild west. When

14:20

we come back, the costs. The

14:43

best journalism does more than just give you

14:46

information. It sets you up to learn,

14:48

to think critically, seek out the

14:50

truth with an open mind. This

14:53

is what The Atlantic does. It

14:55

teaches you to question yourself, seek

14:57

out new perspectives, separate fact from

14:59

fiction. Now in

15:02

this back to school season for a

15:04

limited time, you can get $20 off

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when you give someone an Atlantic gift

15:08

subscription. Start them off on

15:10

a lifetime of good learning at

15:13

theatlantic.com slash

15:15

learning. Okay,

15:25

so before we get back to Willow and Johanna and

15:27

Dr. Smith, I want to move forward in time

15:29

a bit. Around three years after the

15:31

2020 change that opened up

15:33

remote prescribing for controlled substances. In

15:37

the three years since the prescribing rules changed, the

15:39

world changed. There was a

15:42

nationwide Adderall shortage, driven in part by

15:44

a flood of new telehealth patients. And

15:46

Scott Smith wasn't the only one with the idea

15:48

to make a national online ketamine practice. Startups

15:51

with names like Joyous and Mindbloom have

15:53

served thousands of patients. And

15:57

the DEA, looking at all this change,

15:59

thought, okay. maybe things have gotten a little

16:01

out of hand. So in February, 2023, they

16:03

proposed a new set of rules, not

16:07

to go back to exactly how things were before

16:09

the pandemic, but a rule that

16:11

would force most patients to see doctors at

16:13

some point in person. So

16:17

in February, 2023, those

16:19

rules went online for public comment. A

16:23

month passed. And in that time, the

16:26

DEA received more than 38,000 comments, a

16:29

record number. I've

16:32

read thousands of those comments, downloaded them

16:34

into one huge spreadsheet. And

16:36

if you read them together, it's kind of

16:38

an extraordinary document. Story

16:40

after story about how this new

16:42

access and new autonomy changed people's

16:44

lives. The comments

16:46

are from patients, doctors, and pharmacists, trans

16:49

people who need testosterone, Marines

16:51

who need testosterone, polio survivors,

16:54

palliative care patients, teenagers, and

16:56

octogenarians. They talk about

16:58

how virtual access to these drugs is a matter of

17:01

life or death. Some

17:03

wrote long stories, others writing about

17:05

the new more restrictive rules were more

17:07

direct, like, quote, this

17:09

is a horrible idea. There

17:13

are so many comments, it's almost easier to get a real picture

17:15

of it through the search bar. The

17:17

phrase saved my life appears 444 times. All

17:23

in all, a coalition of suffering people come

17:25

to deliver one message. That

17:27

Wild West suits us just fine.

17:30

We didn't choose it then, but we're choosing it now.

17:33

We want to stay in that Wild West come

17:35

what may. The

17:41

DEA listened. On May 9th, 2023, a

17:44

couple months after they proposed those new rules, the

17:47

DEA said, nevermind. We'll

17:49

keep the 2020 emergency rules in place, and

17:51

we'll try again a bit later. And

17:54

until then, it's the Wild West for

17:56

better or for worse. On

18:04

May 9th, 2023, the same day the DEA

18:06

announced it would back off on its new

18:08

rule, Willow, the nurse, got

18:11

an email from Dr. Smith. Do

18:13

you remember where you were and what you were feeling

18:15

at that time? Yes,

18:17

I do. I had just seen him

18:20

the day before. And

18:23

so I couldn't believe it.

18:26

The email informed Smith's patients, all

18:28

of them, that his practice would

18:30

shut down immediately. I

18:32

panicked. I

18:35

didn't want to go back to where I

18:37

had been before. I

18:39

realized I needed to use my

18:42

brain while it was still functioning

18:44

okay and hurry up and

18:47

find help. Like a ticking

18:49

clock, sort of. There's a countdown. It

18:52

was. And it was very

18:54

scary. I didn't want to

18:56

become suicidal again. I don't want my kids to

18:58

lose their mom. I enjoy helping

19:00

people with my job. I didn't want

19:02

to slowly just kind of disappear into

19:04

nothing. Well,

19:07

on May 9th, I got done seeing

19:09

patients in the morning. I

19:11

was in my office doing paperwork. And

19:14

there was a banging on my front door.

19:16

Like somebody was just going to knock my

19:18

front door down. So I

19:20

went down there and it was

19:24

two big male DE

19:26

agents with guns on their hip.

19:29

And they said, can we come in? I

19:32

said, why? The agents were there

19:34

with an order. The order says

19:36

that over about a four-year period, Smith issued

19:39

around 2,224 prescriptions for

19:42

controlled substances in states where he was either

19:44

not licensed or failed to

19:46

consult state drug monitoring programs. It

19:49

ordered him to stop prescribing ketamine or any

19:51

other controlled substance for that matter. It

19:53

just felt like the end of the world. It just felt like the

19:55

end of the world. I felt

19:57

like, am I crazy? Am

20:00

I a bad doctor? Did

20:03

I really do everybody wrong? And

20:08

then for a long period of time, I would

20:10

just fluctuate back and forth between that. With

20:16

regard to the state drug monitoring programs, Smith

20:19

maintains he did everything correctly. As

20:22

for the illegal out-of-state prescriptions, he

20:24

says all these patients either traveled to visit him

20:27

in person or traveled to a state where he

20:29

was licensed to consult with him via telemedicine. And

20:33

around the same time, Smith's practice shut down. That

20:36

same story of sudden loss of treatment

20:38

was happening around the country. Ketamine

20:41

Wellness Centers, a brick and mortar chain, shut down

20:43

in March 2023 due to funding issues. Patients,

20:47

some of them suicidally depressed, lost

20:49

access to treatment immediately. Babylon

20:52

Health, a telehealth startup once valued at $4.2 billion,

20:55

was sold off for scraps. And

20:58

Cerebral, another multi-billion dollar startup trading

21:01

depression, insomnia, and ADHD, came

21:04

under investigation by the Department of Justice

21:06

for violating the Controlled Substances Act. Patients

21:10

were forced to find new providers. Whatever

21:13

the cause, the results for

21:15

patients was the same. Instability

21:18

and a lot of very tough decisions. I

21:22

mean, I have legitimately and recently thought,

21:24

I'm just going to go back on

21:26

that one drug that worked for me.

21:29

For Johanna, that was the antipsychotic medication

21:32

that worked for her depression but interfered

21:34

with her ability to speak. Honestly,

21:36

I'm like, would I rather feel good or

21:40

be able to talk? That's sort

21:42

of where my mind is. I

21:45

may rather just take that

21:47

and let my mouth

21:49

muscles do what

21:51

they're going to do. And just so

21:55

I'm not going to be able to talk anymore. I'll

21:59

write things down. It sounds

22:01

like it feels kind of clear to you that

22:03

it would be worthwhile if you had to, to

22:05

like kind of go back to having problems

22:07

with speaking or not being able to speak in order to feel

22:10

okay. I think for

22:12

sure, yeah. Willow,

22:15

after Smith shut down, struggled to find

22:17

another provider. So

22:19

when Smith stopped, she stopped. Life

22:21

got harder again. But a

22:23

few months later, she found another doctor online

22:26

and started back on ketamine again. I

22:30

forget what month I'm on. I'm slowly

22:32

kind of coming back up. I don't

22:34

need a large dose.

22:36

I really just need a smaller dose. And

22:40

also I don't need it as often anymore

22:42

because I want to take it as

22:45

infrequently and

22:48

at the lowest dose absolutely possible. Why

22:51

is that? It just kind of makes

22:53

me feel better because I'm scared. I'm

22:56

scared that it could be taken away again. And

22:59

what if I can't get my

23:01

medicine to function? I

23:04

never had that fear before of having

23:06

a life-saving medicine just be taken away

23:10

like that. So

23:12

just to make sure I understand correctly, you

23:14

could try to take it more consistently or

23:17

at a higher dose and maybe get back

23:19

to feeling normal and energetic and kind of

23:21

back to where you were at the best

23:23

of the Smith times. But at the moment,

23:25

are kind of not doing that intentionally as

23:27

to not become too reliant because of the

23:29

medications at risk. Is that right? Yes,

23:32

sir. I'm just really scared of it

23:35

being taken away again. And

23:38

what happens if I go back to how I

23:40

was? That's not a life. That's

23:43

not a life at all. I'm

23:45

scared of it. Trade-offs

23:49

are a part of medicine. Effects

23:51

and side effects comes with the territory. Even

23:54

Johanna's trade-off, her mood for her ability to

23:57

speak, that's part of the usual

23:59

equation. Just an extreme example. But

24:03

for Smith's patients, and others who've had to

24:05

navigate the chaos of this moment, it's

24:08

different. This

24:10

Wild West can keep patients from

24:12

sticking with treatments that work for

24:14

fear of them being taken away. A

24:17

Wild West not so much for its lawlessness

24:19

or its dangers, but for

24:21

its uncertainty. The

24:38

DEA has said that it will come back in the fall of 2024 with

24:40

new, final rules for how

24:42

we access controlled substances online. And

24:45

in some ways that feels like an opportunity, or maybe

24:48

just a moment. Not just

24:50

to reset policy, but to strip

24:52

away some of the stories, preconceptions,

24:54

shorthand that surround so many of

24:56

these drugs. The

24:58

policy part is probably easier. There

25:00

are a lot of people arguing for a special

25:02

registry of virtual prescribers, ones that

25:04

are known to be reputable, issuing proven

25:07

treatments. A system that would

25:09

protect patients from bad actors without

25:11

ending access to virtual-only care. But

25:15

resetting narrative, stripping away

25:17

stories built up over decades, that

25:19

is a more complicated proposition. Maybe

25:22

it starts by just acknowledging what we know and

25:24

don't know about how these drugs work in our

25:26

bodies. And when we start on a

25:29

drug, having a lengthy discussion about what

25:31

it might take to stop. That

25:34

at least is somewhere to begin. Brooks,

26:00

editing by Jocelyn Frank and Hannah Rosen. Original

26:03

music and engineering by Rob Smersiak, fact

26:05

checking by Sam Fentress, Claudina Bade is

26:08

the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and

26:10

Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. If

26:13

you're having thoughts of suicide, please reach

26:15

out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

26:17

at 988 or the Crisis

26:19

Text Line. For that, you

26:22

text TALK, T-A-L-K to 741741.

26:26

Radio

26:28

Atlantic will be back next week. I'm

26:53

Hannah Rosen, host of Radio Atlantic. And

26:56

I'm here in the studio today with reporter

26:58

Ethan Brooks to tell you about a special

27:00

series coming up in August. Ethan,

27:02

hi. Hey. So, do

27:04

you want to tell people what this is about? Sure.

27:07

It's a series of stories about drugs,

27:10

and specifically the prescription drugs that we

27:12

take for our brains. And

27:14

I wanted to look into this because we're

27:17

in this moment where we, Americans, are taking

27:19

a lot of psychiatric meds. One

27:21

expert I spoke to called the amount of

27:23

drugs we're taking truly world historical. Oh my

27:26

god. Rude. Yeah. Yeah.

27:29

So when I looked at why that number

27:31

is so high, I also noticed something else,

27:34

which is that a lot of the assumptions that

27:36

we have, a lot of the assumptions that I

27:38

have about these drugs, about where they

27:40

come from, how they work in our bodies, those

27:43

stories are only sometimes true. And

27:46

often they're kind of strange and

27:48

weird and interesting. And

27:50

so that's what this series is about. It's about the

27:52

drugs we take for our brains, the

27:54

stories we tell about them, and what happens when you

27:56

combine the two. The

27:59

name of the series is Scripps. We'll

28:01

be running it in the Radio Atlantic feed in August,

28:03

so keep an eye out for it.