Pinchbeck has deep personal roots in the New York counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s. His father was an abstract painter, and his mother, Joyce Johnson, was a member of the BeatGeneration and dated Jack Kerouac as On the Road hit the bestseller lists in 1957 (chronicled in Johnson’s bestselling book, A Beat Memoir). Pinchbeck was a founder of the 1990s literary magazine Open City with fellow writers Thomas Beller and Robert Bingham. He has written for many publications, including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. In 1994, he was chosen by The New York Times Magazine as one of “Thirty Under Thirty” destined to change our culture.

In Breaking Open the Head, Pinchbeck explored shamanism via ceremonies with tribal groups such as the Bwiti of Gabon, who eat iboga, and the Secoya people in the Ecuadorean Amazon, who take ayahuasca in their ceremonies. He also attended the Burning Man festival in Nevada, and looked at use of psychedelic substances in a de-sacralized modern context. Through his direct experiences and research, and philosophically influenced by the work of anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner he became convinced that the shamanic and mystical view of reality had validity, and that the modern world had forfeited an understanding of intuitive aspects of being in its pursuit of rational materialism.

Drawing heavily upon contributions to the Breaking Open the Head websites forum, Pinchbeck's second book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, examines prophecy through personal and philosophical approaches, and offers the hypothesis that humanity is experiencing an accelerated process of global consciousness transformation, leading to a new realization of time and space during this period. In 2012, he also examines the psi or extra-sensory perception research of Dean Radin, the theories of Graham Hancock, his own encounters with crop circles, a visit to calendar reform advocate José Argüelles, and his direct reception of prophetic material: the voice of the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl, began speaking to him during a 2004 trip to the Amazon in Brazil. At the time, he was participating in a ceremony of the Santo Daime, a Brazilian religion that uses the psychedelic brew ayahuasca as its sacrament. Through its references to 2012 and the Maya calendar in the context of New Age beliefs, Pinchbeck's book has contributed to Mayanism. The book also details his acts of infidelity and his interest in polyamory.

Pinchbeck's feature articles have appeared in various periodicals. A founding editor of Open City, a literary journal, in March, 2007 he launched a new Internet-based magazine, Reality Sandwich, claiming to offer "a new paradigm for a planetary culture." He is the executive producer of PostModernTimes, a series of web videos presented on the iClips Network. and co-founder ofEvolver, a new social network. [1].

On December 14, 2006, Pinchbeck appeared on the television program The Colbert Report to discuss his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

Pinchbeck was featured in the 2006 film Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within, a documentary about rediscovering an enchanted cosmos in the modern world.

Pinchbeck was also featured in the film 2012: Science or Superstition, a documentary describing how much of what we're hearing is science and how much is superstition.

Furthermore he interviewed Alejandro Jodorowsky for the German/french art television Arte in a very personal discussion, spending a night together in France, continuing the interview in different locations like in a park and in a hotel.

Daniel Pinchbeck was interviewed by Tim Boucher for the website undergrowth.org. The interview is titled EVOLVER. To read click here->

Pinchbeck appears in the new feature-length documentary film Time for Change directed by Joao Amorim, to be released in April 2010.