Richard Schweid
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How did the host and Richard first meet and become friends?
Radio Mano, Papachango.
Hey yo, how's it going out there? Uh this episode is with a very good friend of mine, Richard Schwide. He's been on the podcast before uh a couple of times at least. Uh I've known Richard for I don't know how long I've known Richard. A long time. Uh we met in Barcelona back in the day. Back in our our spicy ewes not really. I was an adult. Richard's a bit older than me, so he was a he was a full grown man at the time. Anyway, we uh we used to play poker together. Uh we we've hung out a lot over the years. Uh I love him dearly. He's a He's a true friend. He's he's a true intellectual. He Although when I say he's an intellectual, he's like a Studs Turkle intellectual, if you know who Studs Turkle was. He's uh he's a man of the people.
He combines deep intelligence with adventurousness. Uh like well before he was a uh uh established author, he was um He was he was curious and I mean that like Richard uses the word curious in its original sense to mean unusual and strange. And I'm sure he was that, but he's also just a very He's got a ravenous intelligence. He's he's um motivated more by his curiosity than anything else, I think. He's written books about The first time I came across his work, I it was well before I met him, I was reading a book by uh Andrew Weill. And it's called uh The marriage of the sun and the moon. Great book. And um each chapter is about an altered state of consciousness. So there's a chapter on uh, you know, coca leaves and uh uh ayahuasca and
think magic mushrooms, but then there's i like v you know, hypnosis and uh vomiting. It like I learned that there are religions that sort of use vomiting to in in trigger altered states of consciousness. Anyway, it's a ri that's a really interesting book, but one of the chapters is about Chili peppers and how Eating chili peppers can induce altered states of consciousness. And when you think about it, chili peppers are really Strange, right? It is Like they cause pain, but they're not damaging tissues. Uh someone I was talking to someone about this the other night and he told me that Chili peppers, activate the heat um receptors in the nervous system. So you actually do have the sensation of burning, although there's absolutely no temperature change going on.
So very interesting, like almost hypnotic kind of Um you know, experience there. Uh anyway, Andrew Weill in that book, he cites a book about chili peppers by this guy, Richard Schwide. And at the time I I tracked down the book and read it and thought, Well, that's an interesting book. What a interesting guy. He writes a book about chili peppers. Anyway, then I I met Richard and got to know him and put two and two together and realized he was that guy who wrote the book I read years earlier. Um And then he went on to write books about Cockroaches. And eels and Uh How cultures around the world conceptualize death and and the afterlife. Uh He wrote a book about home health care workers in the United States. Uh, just amazing breadth of curiosity and
And knowledge which And his books are all really fun to read because he embeds himself. He doesn't just, you know, go to the library or or consult the internet and come up with a bunch of facts and jam them together and call it a book, which is what I do. Uh he goes and like in this last book it's uh that we're talking about today, it's called Life on the Octopus Farm. He goes and gets a job unpaid, volunteers on an octopus farm and he gets to know the people working there and and why they're doing it and what their town is like and meets their families and um just completely immerses himself in the thing that he's writing about. He's reporting. He's he's a reporter. Uh. You know, but he's not working for a newspaper.
I think he has. In the past he edited a magazine in in Barcelona that um I don't know if it still exists, the Barcelona Metropolitan that I read back in the day. Um but he's a true reporter in the sense that he goes there. He And then he reports on the sights and the sounds and the sensations and the personalities and the conflicts and the weather and the the sunsets and the whole experience of of being.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did the host and Richard first meet and become friends?
0:00–9:15
2
What sparked Richard’s curiosity and led him to write about chili peppers?
9:15–18:54
3
How did Richard’s research on octopus farms begin and what was his on‑site experience?
18:54–26:57
4
What makes octopuses so intelligent and what does the book reveal about their minds?
26:57–35:52
5
Why is octopus farming controversial and what ethical arguments are presented?
35:52–44:16
6
How have cultural views of octopuses changed from fearsome monsters to cute icons?
44:16–51:59
7
What surprising discoveries did Richard make while writing the octopus book?
51:59–1:01:53
8
What projects might Richard explore next and how does he choose new topics?
1:01:53–1:11:37