Mike Gathers,
Podcast Host
Producer

I have had an unexplainable interest in Tim Leary since at least high school in the late 80s.  Somewhere in the late 90’s, that led me to deoxy.org (RIP) where Leary and RAW once shared a page.  Wilson’s entry as [1932-Forever], with that link leading me into a RAW rap on immortality that was just too much for me to even deal with at that time.  I didn’t like it.  I continued to explore deoxy.org rabbit holes of Lilly and Watts and especially McKenna while I slowly made my way into the world of Wilson.  Something about the Eight Circuit model resonated with me deeply, and reading Wilson liberated my belief systems, my third circuit in a way I found exhilarating, much the same way Wilson describes his experience of reading Nietzche.

From roughly 2001 to 2009 I invested a lot of energy into my RAW archive, currently hosted at RAWilsonFans.org and then in 2022 I played a leading role in producing Lion of Light for Hilaritas Press.  Over the years I’ve enjoyed discussions with RAW fans on alt.fan.rawilson, tribe.net, the MaybeLogic Academy, Tom Jackson’s RAWIllumination.net and sometimes even Facebook. Since we started the Hilaritas Press Podcast in 2021, I have enjoyed taking those discussions into the pod-sphere.

In real life I juggle a background in chemical engineering and Gestalt therapy with my passion for entrepreneurship.  I have a particular passion for re-envisioning the Leary-Wilson 8 Circuit Model based on Alli’s shock and anchor relationships, Jungian developmental frameworks, and current understanding of epigenetics, poly-vagal theory, and modern attachment and lateralized brain theories.

Click here for links for Mike

Zach West,
Podcast Guest Host

Zach West is a musician, music educator, and visual artist. He hails from Colorado, where he has been teaching and performing for the last couple of decades. With twenty-three years of experience as a music instructor under his belt, he focuses on music education as a source of wellness, and personal development. Mixing his love of music, and his obsession with Timothy Leary’s Eight Circuit Model, he has created an innovative music curriculum that guides Musical Humans towards interpersonal harmony and wellbeing.

Zach first stumbled on the Eight Circuit Model when a friend advised him to read a book called Prometheus Rising by some guy named Robert Anton Wilson. Following his Wilsonian initiation, he fell into the work of Antero Alli, which led to the honor of having his art published in Alli’s book The Eight Circuit Brain! He now teaches both individuals and groups of Musical Humans a method called The Musical Circuits. Through decades of experience, he has come to believe that Humans are inherently Musical. 

Click here for Zach’s website I2C2.

Eric Wagner,
Podcast Guest Host

Born in 1962 in Washington, D.C. to two former NSA computer programmers. Eric and his family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in November, 1967 C.E. In 1982 C.E. he began reading Robert Anton Wilson’s books, and in 1986 the two began corresponding. In the years since Eric began reading Wilson, he has traveled from Ingolstadt, Bavaria, to Aswan, Egypt, from Country Kerry, Ireland, to Honolulu, Hawaii, attempting to understand the ideas behind Wilson’s works. Eric has worked as a computer programmer, operator and microcoder, a musician, a poet, a technical writer, a dancer, a film historian and a teacher, etc.  He earned a B.A. in English from Arizona State University in 1985.  He earned an M.A. in Composition from California State University at San Bernardino in 2004.  His first book, An Insider’s Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, came out in 2005 C.E. In recent years he has begun a program of remedial reading, reading Ibn ‘Arabi, Proust, David Thomson, etc.

Richard Rasa,
Producer & Engineer

Richard Rasa, Hilaritas Press publisher, has a long history with audio production. The attached photo is Rasa at his first professional audio job, working as a board operator fresh out of college at NPR affiliate WFCR in Amherst, Massachusetts. Before college and this job, Rasa was a musician playing with the Jazz/Rock band Sweet Smoke, living and touring in Europe and recording for EMI records. Rasa’s current music is with the band Starseed. The group’s name was taken from Timothy Leary’s use of the term. Their music, and Rasa’s video editing can be seen on his YouTube channel. Rasa is currently doing all of the audio and video editing for Hilaritas Press podcasts.

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