Speaker 1:

Where are the normal folks like me. I just don't know where they're at. I know I tried to look at them but hey, I just can't find them. All I can say is [inaudible 00:00:24].

Narrator:

It's an exaggeration to say that Venice Beach has a refugee problem, but large numbers of refugees from the '60s have washed up here like so much driftwood.

Speaker 3:

Hey let me have a volunteer.

Narrator:

Attracted by the singular splendours of Los Angeles.

Speaker 3:

The name of the show is called Learning to Trust the White Man.

Narrator:

Here is the quirk, glitzy, hallucinogenic quality of a town whose manic energy is harnessed for the production of dreams.

Speaker 1:

I got 'em all over. Every head. Both heads. Stay outta jail.

Narrator:

What better place for the wizard of the psychedelic era to make his home? High above the fray in Beverly Hills, the '60s maddest scientist, Dr Timothy Leary, who Richard Nixon once called the most dangerous man in the world, is preparing to take his last trip.

Timothy Leary:

No, no. Forward. Join us. Get your wheelchair and join us.

Speaker 6:

I'm going to.

Timothy Leary:

Well, yeah.

Narrator:

From all corners of the world, pilgrims are coming to bid him farewell.

Speaker 6:

I listen to you very carefully.

Narrator:

What did he say?

Speaker 7:

He says,  he listens to you very carefully.

Speaker 8:

He listens to you very carefully.

Timothy Leary:

Why?

Speaker 6:

Because you make sense.

Timothy Leary:

He must know something I don't know.

Speaker 6:

Because you make sense.

Timothy Leary:

You make sense.

Speaker 7:

This is a present from Cameron and me.

Timothy Leary:

Oh. Thank you.

Speaker 7:

It's a very wonderful video, without any words.

Timothy Leary:

This is wonderful.

Narrator:

They come to make offerings to the high priest, and then they hang out in his living room.

Dean C:

Bodies would be coming out of the frame down this way probably, and their heads would be coming. Some would be sitting, reclining, lying. Kind of in a mass of larvae humans.

Timothy Leary:

I don't think I will be able to see him, because I'm very sick you know. Tell him could call and we can talk on the phone and maybe go on from there.

Narrator:

The phone rings constantly with requests for meetings. The word is out that Timothy Leary is dying, and America is about to lose one of the icons of its pop culture.

Timothy Leary:

Wait. First you have to shake it.

Narrator:

And he's got new accolades from a generation that missed out on the '60s.

Trudy Truelove:

It's a little crazy.

Narrator:

Trudy Truelove is the good doctor's personal assistant.

Trudy Truelove:

He does. He likes to have a lot of energy, a lot of different kinds of energy. Different people around him. Also, it's sort of like a salon in the sense that people come in and they discuss things. You know, writers and artists and film makers.

Dean C:

It's a playful scenario, as much as a real scenario. A play on reality. That is the grim reaper kind of thing about it.

Narrator:

Here you'll find the young photographers and artists who helped revamped Leary's image.

Camilla Grace:

Timothy is immortal in a lot of our hearts. I could say myself, I was just drawn to a lot of what was created in the '60s and the '70s.

Chris Graves:

He's always been a proponent of change, and an advocate of the youth.

Speaker 13:

One of his main skills is riding the waves of social change, and he's right on the front of everything.

Narrator:

The 75-year-old doctor is intent on riding that wave to the end. That's not so surprising when you realise he transformed himself 35 years ago, from a middle aged psychologist, into a cultural revolutionary. By promoting the wide spread use of hallucinogenic drugs.

Timothy Leary:

Throughout human history, men who have stumbled on a new form of energy have always been in trouble for one generation. The second generation comes along and accepts it and uses it. Now, they're aware of my pioneer [inaudible 00:04:57].

Narrator:

That new form of energy, LSD, was discovered by accident in 1948, by Professor Albert Hoffman, at the Swiss Sandos laboratories. It gradually made its way into the intellectual and artistic communities in major US cities via sympathetic psychologists like Doctor John Beresford.

John Beresford:

You can't explain the shift from the '50s mentality to the '60s mentality in any other way, but the introduction of LSD into the social scene.

Narrator:

Fortified by nitro oxide, sucked from huge balloons, Doctor Leary softened us up for the interview he was about to do.

Timothy Leary:

This is a balloon from Japan.

Narrator:

Yeah.

Timothy Leary:

And once again, the Japanese are ahead of us on the hardware. Why can't America, [inaudible 00:05:48], produce a balloon the compares to that?

Narrator:

First he plucked from the wall, his acid test diploma for efforts on behalf of LSD. A test he passed with flying colours.

Trudy Truelove:

While you wait.

Timothy Leary:

Oh yeah. Thanks.

Speaker 15:

I'll leave the cigarettes here too.

Timothy Leary:

Look at that.

Trudy Truelove:

This person, Doctor Timothy Leary has fully earned this acid test diploma.

Timothy Leary:

Hurray. Diploma.

Narrator:

Then he launched into reminiscences of his first experiments with psychedelic drugs.

Timothy Leary:

A hundred million miles an hour is the rpms, revelations per minute. Kind of standard, classic, psychedelic experience. Jumbo and overload, acceleration of everything. All the file cards of your mind fluttering around. It's standard.

Richard Alfred:

The most dramatic moment in that session was when I had lost my social identities and they've all fallen away, and I said, "Well, at least I have my body." Then I looked down and there was the couch and there was no body on it, and my eyes were open now. As a psychologist I would say, interesting hallucination, but it rings hollow when that's happening with your eyes open and there's no body. That's when the breakthrough came.

Narrator:

Doctor Richard Alfred was Leary's partner in the first LSD experiments at Harvard University in the early 1960's.

Richard Alfred:

The university was a temple to the rational mind. I had been hired as a high priest of that temple, or as a priest. It was clear that what we were doing was overriding the analytic intellectual mind. That was heresy, basically.

Timothy Leary:

Psychology would now have to expand to include these incredible experiences.

Narrator:

Psychologists were naturally drawn to experiment with a drug that profoundly altered perceptions.

Speaker 17:

It'll pass if you don't focus on it. You go right through it.

Speaker 18:

[inaudible 00:07:51].

Speaker 17:

That's right.

Narrator:

But at Harvard, things started to get out of control. Hundreds of students competed to try the new drug that was being handed out by the nutty professor. The english writer Aldus Huxley, another devotee of hallucinogens, warned Leary to be more cautious.

Timothy Leary:

He said, "Listen, you're not gonna get away with it. I suspect you got to keep behind the Harvard thing, because if they find out what you're up to, they're gonna come after you."

John Beresford:

He knew exactly what was going to happen. He knew he was going to bring down the wrath of the ages upon him.

Narrator:

Finally sacked from Harvard, Leary become even more radical. He moved his whole operation to the Millbrook mansion in upstate New York, and began to preach that LSD was the answer to the ills of America.

Timothy Leary:

Our aim, like the aims of any religious group just beginning, is to transform American society. I'm sure many of your viewers know America today is an insane asylum.

Narrator:

At Millbrook children as young as nine were given the drug.

Speaker 19:

It's an all together new thing. To actually have a religious experience and it can be even more than reading the Bible six times.

Timothy Leary:

The kids who take LSD aren't gonna fight your wars, middle class, middle aged, whiskey drinking generals. They're not going to join your corporations, middle class, middle aged, whiskey drinking corporation presidents.

Narrator:

This was the Timothy Leary, the high priest of LSD, who enraged straight America, While claiming to speak for its children.

Timothy Leary:

They don't need the good lines in the show. Turn on, tune in, drive by.

Narrator:

It wasn't long before the authorities struck back.

Speaker 20:

Now, more with the G man. G Gordon Liddy.

Gordon Liddy:

And we're back here on Radio PDC. The G Gordon Liddy Show.

Narrator:

G Gordon Liddy, the Watergate burglar, has become one of America's most popular talk radio stars. By a simple twist of fate, he was also the prosecutor who led the first drug raids on Millbrook. As it turns out, he and Leary became friends after they both spent time behind bars.

Gordon Liddy:

When he learned that he was terminally ill, one of the first things he did was to telephone me with the news. He called all his friends. He said that it was an adventure for him, and he intended to make the most of it.

Narrator:

Oddly though, Gordon Liddy was the man who began the persecution of Timothy Leary.

Rosemary:

He wasn't the Gordon Liddy at that time. He was another suit with sunglasses on. Black shoes, trumping up the stairs.

Narrator:

Things went downhill fast as the '60s drew to a close. Twice arrested on marijuana charges, Leary was finally sentenced to 10 years in jail. He had a brief renaissance when he broke out with the help of the Wither Underground, and his wife Rosemary.

Rosemary:

He went hand over hand over a telephone wire across a fence, some distance, on a full moon night.

Richard Alfred:

I think the government was kind of upset. I think that there was a lot of delight on the part of the hippies and the underground movement.

Narrator:

The Learys went into exile in Algeria, with the leadership of the Black Panthers.

Timothy Leary:

My plans are to work with the Black Panther party for the overthrow of the American government.

You get caught up in a wave. You're surfing that wave.

Narrator:

In the end the wave washed straight over him. Leary was lured to Afghanistan where the CIA hijacked him to the U.S., and prison. It took him three long years to talk his way out. And when he did, he embraced the brave new world of technology.

Speaker 13:

Staying on top of where we are going as humanity, is how I think he stays fresh.

Chris Graves:

Throughout the '80s and the '90s he's been very very active and vocal advocate for computers.

Narrator:

At about midday the doctor's household slowly comes back to life, and back online. Camilla Grace lives in Timothy Leary's garage. She and her partners are building Doctor Leary's home site on the world wide web of the internet.

Camilla Grace:

Are we gonna network Tim's computer here pretty soon?

Speaker 23:

I don't think so. I think the idea was that we were gonna pull everything off of Tim's computer.

Narrator:

Since the early 1980s, Leary has been promoting cyber culture, and repackaging his old messages for the computer generation.

Timothy Leary:

Think for yourself. Question authority. Think with your friends. Create new realities.

Chris Graves:

That's another beautiful thing about the web and the internet, is there's no laws. It's very anarchistic.

Narrator:

Chris Graves is the web master. He's creating a virtual Timothy Leary.

Chris Graves:

The first thing they see is a picture of Tim. You click on the front door, he opens it, and he's standing there in the living room, and he says, "Hello, welcome to my home."

Narrator:

Meanwhile the mortal version of the good doctor is driving the project. At the same time though, he's been orchestrating his death. The final act of which has been pure black comedy.

Dean C:

This is the place where Tim, totally to his knowledge, is gonna have his taken off. You know?

Camilla Grace:

Well, this is where they begin the freezing process.

Dean C:

Who else would be able to laugh at this? You know?

Camilla Grace:

I know. Something to offend everybody.

Narrator:

Dean Chamberlain is working on, perhaps his final portrait of Timothy Leary. It's to be in front of the cryonic machine where Leary was planning to be dismembered at the moment of death.

Dean C:

It's a cryonic tank. It's the height of science fiction come to life. Tim, when he passes away, will be placed inside this tank with 300 pounds of ice scattered underneath him.

Camilla Grace:

At which point they attach a large pump to your chest to keep the oxygen circulation to the brain. Then they do a double bypass surgery.

Dean C:

When his body temperature goes down to a certain degree, and as far as I understand it they will take his head off and freeze it, and take it away.

Camilla Grace:

Well, he says it's the second stupidest thing you can do. The first one is being eaten by worms.

Narrator:

The Irish prankster may just be having his last joke on the world. But whether he rests in peace or in pieces, one thing is for sure. Doctor Leary's had one hell of a trip.

Richard Alfred:

I think Timothy has made his statement of this incarnation. I think it's fine for him to leave.

Timothy Leary:

Yes. Yes. Chaos. Yes.