00:00They say that the 1970s are the decade that style forgot.
00:03The reason, of course, is that they had many bad fashion ideas, big bell-bottoms, leisure suits.
00:08But occasionally, in spite of the badness of those ideas, they occasionally make a comeback.
00:13Not unlike certain scientific ideas.
00:16One of those is what we're discussing right now.
00:19It's from 1970 by a researcher named John Allegro.
00:22The question he posed was, is Jesus a psychedelic mushroom?
00:25The answer, of course, is no, but the story is interesting.
00:30You see, he posited that because of certain linguistic connections in the Sumerian language,
00:37that in fact the references in the Bible to the things that Jesus did were in fact
00:41hidden descriptions of psychedelic mushrooms and the experiences that people have when taking them.
00:47Well, it turns out later scholars realized John Allegro didn't know Sumerian that well,
00:53and he might have invented a lot of these details.
00:55But it brings up an interesting point that's worth considering.
00:57In modern research, we now know that the parietal lobe of the brain acts very similarly
01:05when it's stimulated with psychedelic mushrooms and when it's involved in meditation or prayer.
01:10So, while the premise may be absurd, the underlying evidence is actually pretty interesting.
01:16We'll see you in a minute.
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