Turn on, tune in, drop out for NBC Radio's Talknet nighttime programming block of call-in advice shows. Another variation, "Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out", was the title of a 1993 single by the band 'Freak Power'—the name itself being a reference to the hippie culture. Turn on, tune in, drop out "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture-era phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966. In 1967 Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and phrased the famous words, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". It was also the title of his
Turn on, tune in, drop out experience, peace and many other issues. In a 1988 interview with Neil Strauss, Leary said the slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan during a lunch in New York City. Leary added that McLuhan "was very much interested in ideas and marketing, and he started singing something like, 'Psychedelics hit the spot / Five hundred micrograms, that's a lot,' to the tune of a Pepsi commercial of the time. Then he started going, 'Tune in, turn on, and drop out. The phrase was used by Leary in a speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in