In this episode of Onaya’s In & Through podcast, host Dr Simon Ruffell is joined by Dr Ido Hartogsohn, Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program for Science, Technology, and Society at Bar-Ilan University, and one of the leading contemporary thinkers on psychedelic set and setting.
Dr Ido Hartogsohn’s research explores how context (the intricate confluence of psychological, social, cultural, and technological forces) profoundly shapes psychedelic experience. Together, Simon and Ido trace the historical development of the concepts of set and setting, from their mid-20th-century origins through to their place in today’s therapeutic renaissance, and consider how different eras have framed psychedelics: from 1950s ideas of optimization and performance to the contemporary focus on trauma and mental health.
They also explore the idea of “collective set and setting”: The broader cultural narratives, media environments, and shared expectations that shape individual experience, and how intention itself is never purely personal but always formed in relation to the worlds we inhabit. Drawing on his background in Science and Technology Studies and media ecology, Dr Ido Hartoghsohn offers parallels between digital media environments and psychedelic environments, and how both can be understood as mind-shaping technologies.
Dr Ido Hartoghsohn is the author of Technomysticism: Consciousness in the Technological Age (2009), American Trip (MIT Press, 2020), and Mind Changing: Notes from the Psychedelic Renaissance (2025), and writes widely for both Israeli and international media, including Haaretz and The New York Times, on psychedelics, technology, and culture.
This is a conversation about maturity in psychedelic culture, the responsibilities of researchers and practitioners, and what it might mean to take seriously the subtle architectures that shape both individual and collective experience.
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What is In & Through: The Onaya Podcast?
In times of political, ecological and psychospiritual crisis — the only way out is In & Through.
Join Onaya as we welcome some of the most interesting people we know, to discuss eclectic topics from psychedelic medicine and Indigenous ways of knowing, to spirit entities, the meaning of dreams, and singing to the plants.
Your main host is our founder Dr Simon Ruffell, a psychiatrist and research psychologist with a PhD in Amazonian ayahuasca and a student of Shipibo curanderismo.
Onaya is dedicated to bridging the gap between traditional indigenous knowledge and modern science, including a not-for-profit research arm that studies ayahuasca and other Amazonian plant medicine practices.
We offer one-to-one support, consultancy and accredited courses that combine shamanism and biomedical science to facilitate holistic individual and collective healing.
For more information, please visit https://www.onaya.io/ or join our mailing list.
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Co-producers: Robbie Redway and Caspar Montgomery
Music: United Freedom Collective