John Horgan is a renowned science journalist and author of several books including Rational Mysticism, The Undiscovered Mind, The End of Science, The End of War, and most recently Mind-Body problems which is available for free online at mindbodyproblems.com. He also has a podcast by the same name on meaningoflife.tv.  He is the recipient of the Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers and two Science Journalism Awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  John is currently the Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. He also writes the “Cross-check” blog for Scientific American.  In today’s conversation we talk about whether science can discover objective truths when it comes to issues of human nature like consciousness and free will, the compatibility of science and mysticism as well as the role psychedelics have played in John’s thinking and his thoughts on meditation.