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Friday, February 2, 2018

Zach Leary on Timothy Leary's final days


Zach Leary

At Mondo 2000, R.U. Sirius interviews Zach Leary about Timothy Leary's final years, as Tim was dying of cancer.

Funny, interesting and sad. There's a lot about Leary's inspirational qualities, and also about the more difficult aspects of Leary's personality. "I’m glad the whole 'designer dying' idea of his found such strong footing and uncovered so many important topics for our culture, but I do wish there was a more sensitive way to offset the public celebration with some compassion for those close to him. Immediately after he died, my life fell apart very quickly — when that happens it’s no ones fault, but I was by no means prepared for life without him," Zach Leary said.

Zach Leary seems like an interesting person in his own right. He is a podcast host and I plan to try some of them. He's on Twitter. 

3 comments:

michael said...

Listen to ep. 75 of Zach's podcast: Prof. James Penner, who wrote the best Leary book I've read in 10 years, _Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years_, talks to Zach about Tim and there's something almost mythic in hearing a scholar talk about parts of YOUR DAD'S LIFE that you weren't all that clear about. Wow.

http://zachleary.com/2017/01/20/iah-episode-75-james-penner-phd/

To reiterate: the Penner-edited book of Leary's scholarly writings during and immediately after the Great Harvard Drug Scandal, _Timothy Leary: The Harvard Days_, is really cool.

Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson) said...

Thanks for the tip -- I will listen to it. I did listen to the podcast featuring R.U. Sirius, which I thought was pretty good.

Eric Wagner said...

Michael, thanks for the recommendation. I have decided to finally read Tristram Shandy, which I got for Christmas. I then plan to return to the world of Joyce. You do make the Leary book sound interesting.