Thomas Wide: "The Psychedelic Silk Road"

In the mid-1960s, a new overland route emerged between Europe and Asia — a transmogrified version of the ancient Silk Roads. This “Psychedelic Silk Road” drew thousands of young travellers eastward, many inspired by the mind-expanding revelations of LSD and its seeming connections to the insights of Asian spiritual traditions.

Enabled by the geopolitics of the Cold War, powered by new technologies of travel, and fueled by a cultural revolution amongst young people, the Psychedelic Silk Road became a central conduit for exchange between Asia and the West.

This talk tells the story of this exchange and its impact on many dimensions of global culture today - from food to fashion to music to drugs to the multi-billion dollar wellness industry today. It is a story of globalization, of the intertwining of orientalism and capitalism, and the remaking of global culture over the past fifty years.

Thomas Wide is a historian and curator based in London. He lived in Afghanistan for several years where he ran the cultural heritage organisation, Turquoise Mountain. He received his D.Phil from Balliol College, Oxford in 2014 and has worked as a curator at the Smithsonian Institution and the V&A Museum. His first book “The Trail” will be published by Penguin in 2026.

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