# Would You Take Mushrooms To See God? + Rabbi Zac Kamenetz Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/saved-by-the-city-3629845/would-you-take-mushrooms-to-see-god-rabbi-zac-kamenetz Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/saved-by-the-city-3629845/would-you-take-mushrooms-to-see-god-rabbi-zac-kamenetz.md Podcast: [Saved by the City](https://stenobird.com/podcast/saved-by-the-city-3629845) Published: 2025-10-16T11:30:00+00:00 Episode link: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/op3.dev/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/CCELI6626926710.mp3?updated=1760572194 Audio file: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/op3.dev/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/CCELI6626926710.mp3?updated=1760572194 Processing state: processed JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/saved-by-the-city-3629845/episodes/would-you-take-mushrooms-to-see-god-rabbi-zac-kamenetz Duration seconds: 3017 ## Resource Are you there God? It's me, Mushrooms ... Katelyn and Roxy are what researchers would call "psychedelically naïve." As in, we've never gone on a hallucinogenic trip before. But we're not necessarily psychedelically negative -- we're fascinated by how many people are using psychedelics for spiritual purposes. So when a new study released this summer from Johns Hopkins and NYU on the effects of psilocybin — as in magic mushrooms — on clergy, we knew we had to do an episode on it. We're guided through this episode by RNS reporter Kathryn Post, who has been talking with the clergy participants of the study for years about their experiences. And, as she notes in her reporting, those experiences were overwhelmingly positive — 96% of the 24 participants retroactively rated one of their psilocybin experiences among the top five most spiritually significant of their lives. We're also joined by one of the clergy participants, Rabbi Zac Kamenetz, who in the years since the study has gone on to found his own organization to support "Jewish psychedelic explorers" around the world. GUESTS Kathryn Post is a Pittsburgh-based reporter for RNS covering topics such as Gen Z spirituality, pop culture and abuse in religious contexts. Zac Kamenetz is a rabbi, community educator, artist and aspiring psychedelic chaplain. He is the founder and CEO of Shefa, which works to create spaces for healing and self-discovery in community by integrating Jewish wisdom with psychedelic practices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/saved-by-the-city-3629845/episodes/would-you-take-mushrooms-to-see-god-rabbi-zac-kamenetz/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/saved-by-the-city-3629845/would-you-take-mushrooms-to-see-god-rabbi-zac-kamenetz.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.