In this segment of the interview, Jamie Wheal challenges the popular "stoned ape" hypothesis that psychedelic mushrooms sparked human intelligence, proposing instead that sex was the primary driver of our species' cognitive evolution. He references Jared Diamond’s work on the evolutionary impact of sexuality, highlighting how human sexual traits—such as permanent breast development, pronounced hips, and unusually large penile size—serve as powerful signals of health and fitness, far beyond typical animal reproductive strategies. Wheal outlines the extensive neurochemical cascade triggered by prolonged sexual activity (oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, vasopressin, prolactin, anandamide, etc.) and argues that this sustained hormonal environment could have repeatedly reshaped hominid brain circuitry, fostering higher consciousness. He also draws parallels to modern consciousness‑altering tools like MDMA, noting that for any practice to shift consciousness it must be widely accessible, positively reinforcing, and capable of producing profound brain states—criteria that sex fulfills far more consistently than rare psychedelics. Throughout, the conversation blends evolutionary theory, neurobiology, and cultural references to make a case that sexuality, not psychedelics, is the cornerstone of human cognitive development.
Chapters
Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance.
We've all heard probably the stoned ape hypothesis that, oh, we ate mushrooms or some other plant psychedelic, and it made us smart a long time ago. And I've actually had Terrence McKenna's brother, Dennis McKenna, on the show. That's Terrence McKenna's theory. And you're saying, no, no, no, it wasn't mushrooms that made us smart. It was sex. How does that work?
Yeah, well, I mean, funnily enough, I mean, for starters, right? I mean, that was food of the gods. That was. Terrence put that out in the kind of mid-90s, and it was always like a definitely tenuous kind of stony, late night theory. Right. And it sort of.
I read it underneath, like those velvet paintings with black lights.
It was awesome. Yeah. And so, you know, intriguing, super cool, impossible. But yeah, maybe, right? Just. No, never could be more than a maybe. And then I started really thinking it through and then just did some research. And funnily enough, like, Jared diamond, like the, the guns, Germs and steel, Pulitzer winner, actually wrote a book called why Sex is Fun. And he was one of the threads into this story, like, what is the evolutionary impact of sexuality on human consciousness? And because one of the things, I mean, I always thought back to like the Blue Lagoon, like that Brooke Shields movie from back in the day. And it was just like, you know, that story was the two shipwrecked kids and then they grow up and then they, you know, fall in love and they get busy and then they have a baby and then they kind of get kicked out of the garden and, you know, you know, the normal puritanical subplot, but that idea of, like, hey, hominids, primates, all animals, you know, for millions of years with no instruction manual, figured out how to get it on. And it's not the most obvious thing. And so you realize, you realize, holy smokes, that, you know, ergo, that must mean a metric shit ton of neurochemical and hormonal and behavioral incentives to figure this out. And so that was the original inquiry. And Jared diamond makes a fascinating case. He's like, look, when we think of the evolution of human consciousness, most of the time people think about walking upright. They think about tool, tool making fire and language. And his idea was like. He's like, actually, you have to consider sexuality because we have an incredibly anthropocentric view of human sex. We just take what we do as normative. And what the rest of the animal kingdom does is weird and strange. And we watch that on the Discovery Channel or with a David Attenborough voiceover. And he's like, right? And he's like, actually, it's the other way around. We are freaks, not just compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, but even compared to our primate cousins. We are so unusual in women having full breasts even when they're not lactating. Like, that's weird. That's extra muscle mass. It impedes movement, fleeing, hunting, all sorts of things, but we have it. Women have shapely hips and additional fat storage. Men have, you know, something like four to six times the additional penis length of any other primates and apes. You know, gorillas who are 500 pounds that could bench press a house, have a one and a half inch willy, you know, and, and his idea was, it's a signaling display. It's a mating display to say, I am so healthy and, and, and happy that I can pack ounces of protoplasm uselessly onto my penis. Frequent female orgasm, all of these things. You know, copulation outside of estrus or fertility, like for animals. It's not like when Hobbes said that, you know, life is nasty, brutish and short. It's an equally good descriptor of sex in the animal kingdom. You know, it's generally speaking, they ignore it until they're briefly consumed by it. Right? And you know, even something, then it goes away. And then it goes away. But we are sexually and erotically oriented almost all the time. And so the thesis there is like, well, and, you know, and this loops all the way to Rick Doblin and the maps and MDMA studies, right?
He's been on the show too, right?
Which is holy moly. Like, if you were to introduce a practice, substance or behavior to radically shift hominid consciousness, it would need to be widely available and distributed. It would need to be positively reinforcing, and it would need to potently create the conditions you're searching for. And, you know, mushrooms grow lots of places, but not all places. You know, in this. Yes, there's migration, there's all these things, but, you know, it's kind of, kind of dodgy to hang your entire hat on that one alone. And you realize that prolonged partnership, coupling, extended sexuality that results in brain change, that results in the cascade of neurochemistry, including prolactin, vasopressin, serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine, anandamide, kind of the, like, all the big swingers for people, peak state experiences all arise during. During sex, coitus and orgasm. So you're like Holy moly. Like that is seems like a very strong candidate for for persistent and shifted brain state and and cognitive change over time. Sa.
