The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

And those were the guys I really sort of wanted to be like.

And I remember getting a copy of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test at a garage sale in Lubbock for like 25 cents.

Oh, we probably read it at about exactly the same time.

I read it when I think I was 18.

James Shelby Downard.

I've been piecing together a book on Downard for the last year and a half.

I still have a long ways to go.

I've been juggling a number of other projects.

Also just released by Ferrell House is a book on Downer.

It just came out in the last few weeks, so it's a timely subject.

And that work, is that something of an autobiography by Downer?

And so Downard's had an ongoing interest in, or excuse me, Parfrey's had an ongoing interest in Downard over the years.

When I saw you pick that song, I'm like, I got an old school MC Proof with DJ Head Tape, the OG.

And even cooler... a signed electric Kool-Aid acid test.

You can see his autograph.

Rest in peace, Proof.

All of that, you know, came out of, uh, Kesey and his friends.

And so I read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and I re- I remember [laughs] I remember thinking, "How cool would it have been to just be a fly on the wall and be on that-

[laughs]

... bus and just be a part of that incredible trip?" You know? And then I must have talked about it enough times that I annoyed my friends, because in 2013, a friend of mine sent me, uh, a Kickstarter campaign.

... 10 years before, but no one was doing things like this.

There, there was nothing counterculture about the experience until Ken Kesey and, and his friends.

Um, and you know, the book, uh, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, is just a wonderful read for anyone who wants to know more about that scene and about that, you know, first trip because, um, I mean, it, it was really American history.

That's why, you know, the History Channel and Vice and everyone wanted to be a part of the 50th, um, you know, anniversary tour, and the Smithsonian wants the, you know, the, um, the, uh, um, bus because this was the beginning of this, of this entire side of our culture.

After reading Divine Rights Trip, I started looking for other books to help me understand that whole counterculture time frame.

I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.

and Robert Heinlein's 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land.

And there was a weird synchronicity that connected all of the books.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is all about Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters, and it mentions the word grok, which was a word created by Heinlein as his Martian character's ability to understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.

That's what the word grok he created meant.

All these years later, we now know that word as an AI assistant.