YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Plotkin

lines on the record: 82
first: 2020-09-30
most recent: 2020-09-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“To enlighten us with their wisdom, or guys like you or me who've been known to the rainforest to learn from them, or people that have feet in different worlds, or people that are just open to hearing other realities, other modalities willing to try medicines or chanting or frog slime when Western medicine wasn't able to do the trick. So whether it is Black Lives Matter, whether it is about saving the rainforest, all of these cries should feed productively into a more positive place for all of us, because conservation is not just about saving the rainforest. Conservation is not just about saving the Indians. Conservation is about saving ourselves as well.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alliances and coming up with a new way of doing things, a new way of living our lives, a new way of stewarding nature, and it takes boundary walkers, whether it's the shamans who come out of the rainforest.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Said, well, that doesn't match the acronym. I said, is Amazon conservation team? You want a mission statement? I got a mission statement. The point is we're about accomplishing the goals, partnering with Indigenous peoples to protect their culture and their forest. And the challenge has never been greater in the age of COVID-19. The point being that Western medicine doesn't have all the answers. We don't have a cure for COVID-19. We don't have a cure for coronavirus. Neither do they. But what we're able to do is bring to bear Western knowledge and abilities and sanitation and technology like to the new dashboard to keep track of this and try and devise the means to keep it at bay as much as possible. The future of conservation, the future of the rainforest, the future of Indigenous peoples, in my opinion, isn't about the microchip versus the medicine man. It's both of them working together. It's about building bridges and building”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Recently I was talking to a fellow trying to get some support for fighting COVID-19 amongst the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon. And he said, ACT, what does it stand for? And I said, get shit done.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I am going to chant and I'm going to remove those bad emotions. Because it'll just come back. So he did the chanting, he did the massage, I drank the potion, and he said now, here's the problem. Would Western medicine doesn't understand is when you have a bad injury, things will come back and attack that space. So some people, you know, when they're nervous, they get stomach aches or they get pimples or they can't sleep. He says, what I need to do is put a shamanic patch over where the wound was. There's no more wound. I've healed it. But I'm going to put a patch so it never comes back. So when you have stress or when you're injured, it doesn't start hurting again. That was about 13 years ago. I'm still fine. That's an explanation and approach to healing, which I've never heard from any physician. And frankly, I've never heard from any other shaman. But you know what? My arm doesn't hurt.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I do have a story, and I have a concluding note which you can feel free to edit in somewhere. I used to play a lot of racquetball, and I injured my arm quite badly, my forearm, and for some reason the muscles of your forearm don't have a lot of venation. They don't heal well on their own if you injure them a certain way. And I went to the doctor, I went to the Masu, same story, as I mentioned earlier with my foot. It just didn't get better. And I went to the shaman and he looked at it and he said, hmm, this is going to take some time. I spent a month there. I mean, I was doing other things. But the first thing he did was give me plants as a topical. He rubbed them on, a lot of massage, gave me a drink, so it was internal as well. And then he said, okay, here's the problem. You have a bad relationship buried in that muscle. That's why your doctors can't heal it and I can.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Northwest Amazon. Now, on the one hand, that's a pretty impressive number. On the other hand, it's pretty pathetic compared to the size and scope of the problem and the challenge. So we need more help. We need more support to do more of this and partner with other organizations that can do more along the same lines. So we know there's a problem. We know it's getting worse. I've lost two tribal leaders in the Amazon in the last month who were spectacular people that, you know, there's no replacement for. And remember that the way that these diseases strike is they first and foremost hit the elderly. Well, the elderly are the libraries. The elderly are the ones that have all the knowledge in their heads. And secondarily, they hit the little ones, not necessarily coronavirus, but some of the other things that sweep through. So you're losing the elderly and you're using the little ones, which means you're losing the library and you're losing the next generation.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“doing, which is Indigenous Park Rangers who control the borders and keep the outsiders out because that's how the disease gets in. Number two, educational materials in the tribal language. Don't send in a poster in Spanish or Portuguese and think, okay, they got it. Also, the educational material has to be aimed at a culturally appropriate way. These are tribal people. They eat out of the same pot. In the age of coronavirus, you don't eat out of the same pot. Sometimes it's just sending in soap. They can make soap from some local plants, but not to the degree that they need it now. I mean, I'm washing my hands 20 times a day, as we all should be. So we not only recognize the problem, but we have programs in place to deal with it. We have gotten over two tons of supplies, medical and sanitary supplies, into the hands of the indigenous peoples.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what you're saying I hear two questions, Tim. One is how should people give back that are benefiting from this healing in these plants and these fungi? That's one thing. And our organization is very active in supporting the shamanic cultures, the Northwest Amazon, which is where ayahuasca and the use of ayahuasca originated. I'm sorry to my Brazilian friends who think it all came from Rio and Sao Paulo. No, originally it came from the northwest Amazon. In terms of helping Indigenous peoples in the Amazon, they're getting hammered by this virus. And it's particularly challenging in the sense that it's not like we've got the cure for this. And if we just had enough money, we'd give it to them. I wish it was that simple. It's not. We don't have the cure for it. We don't have the cure for it. For them, we don't have the cure for it for us. But there are positive steps that can and should be taken. And if you look at our website, amazon team.org, you can see some of the things that we've”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I find it highly ironic that all these people are talking about the vine of life don't look where the stuff's coming from. I've had shamans complaining me. They see plane loads of this stuff flying out of the Northwest Amazon. They never got anything for it. There was no replanting. They didn't know where it went. It was a sacrilege to them. So I would like to think that everybody should be thinking about giving back whenever they benefit from something. And I'm not just talking about hallucinogens. But there seems to be a lot or very little interest in supporting these forests, very little interest in supporting the shamans other than, okay, this guy gave me the brood a drink, so I got a slip him a few bucks. It's just kind of a disconnect that it's all about healing, but they're not thinking about who they need to heal as reciprocity for getting some of the healing. You know what I'm saying?”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I hadn't thought of that, but I think that makes very good sense. And the tribes that I've spent time with that do a lot of ayahuasca, for example, and Yopo, it's primarily for hunting, hunting visions, hunting magic, good luck in the hunt, seeing where the animals are going to be. But as I said, the Anamami were still doing some war, very limited amount. And that was primarily the men. And the men were the ones doing all the opal, at least that I saw.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, in my experience, the tribes that I spend considerable time with that are very much into hallucinage on a regular basis or in the Northwest Amazon. And most of the tribes I work with don't use hallucinogens in the Shingu and the Southeast Amazon in Brazil. The trios up on the Suriname Brazil border, the Wayanas on the Suriname French Guiana border, the YYs on the Suriname Guyana border. So I can't give you a straight answer there, Tim. It doesn't break down very easily. And most of the groups that I've worked with warfare is definitely a thing of the past, except for some of the Anamami when I worked there 20 years ago, spent time there 20 years ago. There was still warfare amongst the different villages, but I think that's gone by the wayside since then.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have very little spare time compared to the men. It's obviously a sweeping generalization. But sometimes a woman will feel a call to heal. And that is what she'll do. And she'll be the equivalent of any male shaman or sometimes even better. But they tend to be outliers rather than, oh yeah, there's a bunch of tribes that I know where the primary shamans are women. So I would have to say in my experience no, but you know, the Amazon's a big place and there's lots of tribes. So you may find different answers from other ethnobotanists.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interesting question difficult to answer. You hit the two highlights, the famous female shamans of the Neotropics are the Masatex in southern Mexico and the Shapibo in the Amazon. Now, every tribe that I've worked with, and I've worked with a number of them, has female healers and sometimes female shamans. They sometimes make that distinction. They're the ones that tend to focus on female ailments, menstrual problems, for example, childbirth problems or kids' things. There are on occasion female shamans that have met, but they're few and far between. I've had many discussions with shamans around the fire at night about why that's the case. And they said women work too hard to have the time to practice medicine. They do all the work around here, right? They raise the kids, they tend the gardens, they do all the cooking. It is a very demanding profession. And it's not something you can do in your spare time. And tribal societies, women tend to.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Also, a Republican. So, this whole idea that, well, if you like trees or you like hunting or you like wildlife, you should be a Democrat or Republicans don't believe in this. Everybody gets sick. Everybody wants clean. Everybody wants clean water. So this is one thing where they shouldn't be any political discord. There should be broad agreement. And clearly we need to work together, Democrats, Republicans, independents, people elsewhere, even in dictatorships, you know, for the common good. I went to the Rio conference in 1992. It was the greatest gathering of world leaders ever. George Bush Sr. was there, Fidel Castro was there. And this was probably the greatest occasion in the history of the world where everybody put aside their politics and said, we want a better world, not for ourselves so much as for our kids and our grandkids. That's the attitude we need to have.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I almost burst into tears. I mean, how sincere is that? But the point here is that a long-term relationship allows you to work with people, whether it's a shaman in the Amazon or whether it's somebody on Capitol Hill or somebody you grew up with based on a level of trust and friendship and knowledge that you simply can't do in a hurry. And we're rushing everywhere, less so these days. You just cannot create the connections to get things done. And if we need system change, which the Skull Foundation, which is one of the supporters of our work, founded by Jeff Skull, who says we need system change, means that we can't just tinker around the edges. And what a lot of people don't realize, if you look at the history of environmentalism, particularly in this country, it was founded by Republicans. The first great environmentalist was Teddy Roosevelt, and the second greatest environmentalist in terms of presidents was Richard Nixon.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was invited to a conference of indigenous leaders, mostly shamans, I was the only white guy there. It took me four days to get there. That in itself is a long story, which I'll spare you this time. But when I got there, I met an old friend who was the one who invited me, who was a tribal leader. And while we're talking, his brother walked up and he said, remember me? And I said, yeah. He says, I haven't seen you in 32 years. You were my father's friend. Walk five days to be here. Can I give you a hug I mean, I almost burst into tears.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But overpopulation is driving deforestation of the rainforest and deforestation of the rainforest, destruction of the rainforest is pouring carbon into the atmosphere, and it's a number two cause of climate change, the number two driver of climate change after fossil fuels. So the idea that, oh, well, let's just solve COVID-19 and then we can worry about wildlife, and then we can worry about poverty, and then we can worry about pre-native next pandemic. No, we need to do all those things now.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somebody who's been working the Amazon for a long time, I'm often asked well, when I look at the Amazon rainforest, is the glass half full or half empty? And my response is always the same. Any glass that's half full is half empty. So as terrible as things are with COVID-19, as you said, it could be worse. I wouldn't say that's a silver lining, but I would say, like you said, Tim, that it is a wake-up call. And when you look at some of these terrible hemorrhagic fevers, they're even scarier. But that's not to belittle this virus, which is killing our species right, left, and center. So the focus needs to be on dealing with this pandemic, but the focus at the same time needs to be on preventing the next pandemic. When I started working in the rainforest in the 70s, many people said to me, like, well, rainforest, who cares about that? We have to worry about zero population growth. Now people say to me, well, the rainforest, who cares about that? We need to worry about climate change.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Much more in favor of building bridges and creating alliances than pointing fingers and saying, you know, this person's at fault, these are the bad guys, I'm the good guy. That seldom works. That just goes against human nature. By the same token, the idea The wildlife trade is the biggest illegal market, with the sole exception of narcotics and munitions. So we're not talking about a couple of guys doing bad things on the side in the back of a market somewhere in the tropics. We're talking about a lot of power and a lot of money. But if we don't tackle it, the next pandemic is going to be right behind it. This is not a one-off. There's nobody who understands epidemiology or the wildlife trade thinks, okay, once we get past this, we're in the clear. Nobody.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, as I recall, you have extensive experience in East Asian studies and martial arts and things like that, so maybe you have a better understanding of the mindset than I do, but we're all paying a price here. The Chinese, the Americans, the Canadians, the Amazonian indigenous peoples, I would hope that we as a species can sit down and say let's have some guidelines here. You know, there's a lot of people calling for an end-of-the-wildlife trade. In an ideal world, maybe that would be possible if we don't live in an ideal world. Let's control it. Let's have less cruelty. Let's have less conditions that lead to diseases jumping out of these species, whether they're bats or pangolins or armadillos. And I know from other biologists, there are as many viruses in the bats of the Amazon as there are in Southeast Asia. So it's not just like, okay, if we shut down the wet market in Muhan, we're cool. Okay.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm sure they take no joy in that. But this whole attitude towards monetizing everything towards short-term thinking is destroying the planet on which we live, is fouling the nest in which we live. So this attitude, oh well foreign aid is a waste of money, and third world people deserve what they get. Really? How much money have we spent in the US now on coronavirus? And as I said, there's no end in sight. So I really don't like to hear this phrase of what's the silver lining in this pandemic? There's no silver lining. It's terrible, but there may be some lessons learned. And one of those lessons is got to be abusing wildlife is a real bad idea, bad ethically, bad spiritually, but obviously, perhaps worst of all, bad epidemiologically.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell us we're going to pay a price for abusing nature. We're paying that price. Some of the most extraordinary people I've ever met are the Kogis. The Kogis live in northern Colombia, the Sierra Nevada. It's not in the Amazon. But they've been called the Dalai Lamas of South America. They're the most traditional people. They don't wear shoes. They don't have wristwatches. They don't have cell phones for the most part. And they have been saying, and they told me this in February, Tim, they told me this in February and March. If we don't stop abusing nature, we're going to pay a terrible price. Well, guess what? They were right.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did an editorial recently for the Los Angeles Review of Books. It's on my personal website, markplotkin.com, in which I point out that the pandemic was caused by abuse of nature. And by that, the concrete example of that is it came out of a bat that was crammed together in some fetid cage in Wuhan, China, and we don't know exactly how it jumped to the human species, whether it went to a pangolin and then to a human. That part's a little unclear. But it's clearer that this terrible virus originated in the bat. And our attitude towards abusing these animals, cruelty to animals, is causing real harm. I mean, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths, trillions of dollars already, and no end in sight. So when Indigenous peoples, whether they're pygmies in West Africa or Indigenous peoples in the Amazon,”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got together with my colleagues and said, let's create a project on sustainable development of honey. We'll show you guys how to build hives. We'll have the aquarios as our technical experts to talk about what produces the best honey, what's the stainless bees we should be working with. And we're now producing honey. Not a single tree is cut down. And they're making money and they have more honey than ever. And it's one of those win-win situations. They're never going to get rich from this. But when they go to town, they've got honey in their pocket, which essentially means money in their pocket. It's something they can sell without having to, you know, cut down a mahogany tree or sell off the lands to gold miners or anything like that.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Slums, the body of the favela, and they're much worse off. So a little money on a very steady basis based on non-destructive aspects of the ecosystem to me is the way to go. And I'll give you an example of that. There's a tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Aquarios. They were essentially dragged out of the forest right before I started my work in the 70s and 80s in the Northeast Amazon. But the other Indians regard them as almost legendary in terms of their ability to hunt, in terms of their knowledge of the forest. And I was told they had 35 words for honey. I have to report that was an exaggeration. There's only 34. I wrote them all down.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that what people failed, there's two failures in this idea of sustainable development. One is that we have to find X, whether it's the cure for cancer or an ecotourism lodge or non-timber forest products, and they can live happily ever after. And anybody who has a pension or has stocks knows that you don't put all your money on one horse, even at the racetrack, right? So what we need is a diverse portfolio, as we would call it, where they're making some money from ecotourism and they're making some money from handicrafts and they're making some money from running a shamanic clinic and so on and so forth. That's the way to really help these people. The other fallacy is that we just got to get them a lot of money as much as possible, as soon as possible they'll be better off. I've seen this time and time again where these guys make enough money to move to the city and actually they don't live in the nice part of the city. They live in the city.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reel from a TRESAP in Peru and has made a lot of progress in putting money back into these communities. So I wish I had a great success story to tell you about some tribe that made a billion dollars The answers aren't completely in, but these were two successful examples that really bear looking into further.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Traditionally, a good question for my colleague Paul Cox, who's a fellow ethnobotanist trained at Harvard around the same time I was, and he was making great progress with some compounds from American Samoa antivirals, where the deal he cut, which is the way it should be done, where they would make a keystone payment. In other words, let me take this plant, and if it cures AIDS, I'll be back in 17 years with a billion dollars. You know, it's a crapshoot. It's a long shot for any plant or animal product or fungal product to make it to the market for a variety of reasons. But he said, okay, if you want to study this in the lab, you have to pay these people X. And then if it passes phase one, which it did, then you have to pay them Y. And then if it passes phase two, you have to pay them Z. And then if it gets to market, they get a piece of the action. Another colleague of mine, Stephen King at Jaguar Health, has been developing a new antidiro.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So if a shaman in a red breech clause says it's a male aphrodisiac, the guy in the white coat says it's impossible. A guy in a white coat stumbles across it, you know, it's billions of dollars and maybe a Nobel Prize.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Escaped slaves were brought to the Northeast Amazon in the 1700s. They got off the slave ships, looked around and said, this is equatorial rainforest. I'll see you white boys later and took off in the internet. And you go in their villages, and it looks like the set of roots. It looks like, you know, 17th century West Africa. And they showed me a plan that they said was a male aphrodisiac. Different species, different genus, different family, except these guys were selling it in town. So I didn't even call the medical school because I didn't want to have the same conversation. A few years later, some physicians got, I think it was the dosage wrong on a blood pressure medicine, and all of a sudden all these guys in the old folks' home are popping woody's. A male aphrodisiac.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I found this thing and they say it's a male aphrodis. And he said, did you try it? I said, look, I'm 27. Wouldn't be able to tell if it worked or not. So he said, well, understand there's no such thing as a male aphrodisiac. And I said, what do you mean? He says, well, it's physiologically impossible. And I said, well, I mean, what about Spanish fly? He said, it's an urban legend. It doesn't work. There is no such thing as a male aphrodisiac. Okay, fine. A year later, I was working with the Wyanna people to the east on the Suriname-French Guiana border, and they showed me this other plant. They said it's a male aphrodisiac. And three shamans said it's a male aphrodisiac. It wasn't even the same family. Okay, once again, you know, something's just one species over and the same genus, probably the same compounds. Completely different plant, completely different family. And so I got back to Harvard and I called the medical school and the guy says, oh, you're the guy who called last year. I told you there's no such thing, no such thing, no such thing. A year later, I was working with a maroons. The Maroons are Afro-Amazonians. They are the descendants of”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was working with the trio's first trip, I think it was 1982, and they kept showing me this one plant and they say, that's a malophrodisiac. That's a malophrodisiac. That's a malophrodisiac. Now, you have to understand that shaman's knowledge is individualistic in that even within the same tribe, even within the same village, very seldom do you have a shaman who will say, I use this plant for this and I use this dosage and I prepare it this way and so on and so forth. It's not a perfect match. Okay, it's like our own medicine, it's art and science. If you go to three doctors with one ailment, very seldom do you get the exact same recommendation in my experience. So I came back, but they kept saying this is my male every mail. So I got back to my office at a Harvard. I was working in the museum for and with Shultes at the time. And he said, well, call the medical school, see what they say. So I got this guy on the phone at the medical school calling here from the Harvard Botanical Museum. And I said,”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, I've been criticized for not publishing this information in the technical literature, but I have no interest in it. It's their secret. I'm not going to reveal the secret that's sold to me in confidence so I can get tenure. You know, I run a not-for-profit. I don't face that challenge, but I wouldn't do it anyhow. And so the knowledge is first and foremost for them. And if they want to commercialize it or sell it somehow, good for them. I mean, I'll give them advice, but I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it for them. I'm not going to take what I know. And I know a lot and make money commercially. I run a not-for-profit. Profit is not my prime motivating factor in life.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In his language. He had two books in his language at that point The Bible presented by the missionaries and the Tareno Epi Panpiera the Trio Plant Medicine Handbook done by me in collaboration with the shamans. It's the power of the written word. I mean, you've written enough books, Tim. It's the power of the written word that you put it in front of somebody and it's written down. It carries much more weight than just a conversation or an interview or anything like that. That really revolutionized their thinking of the value of this stuff. So I said, look, I got you guys started, but ultimately it's not all about me. My first book, Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. It's kind of a trick title because I'm not the apprentice. They are. But in following me and me helping them kickstart this interest in their own traditions, they took it over, which is the way it should be.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will have your original wisdom to learn from. Well, the chief was a fundamentalist Christian. This was perfect. And we did so. So we started writing down lists of plants and what they're used for. And then the shamans would prepare for me. So I realized, okay, well, you're actually, you need the dosage. You need the preparation. It's not just A, they use species A for headaches. That doesn't really tell you much. I did this all with guides my age. I started this when I was 27. And after eight years, I very proudly handed the chief.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“it was a process. I went down there. Collect ethnobotanical information, Allah Shulti's, making lists and writing it down. And when they said, why do you want to do this? I said, well, you know, that Bible you read in church, I'm not a Christian, I'm a Jew. And if my ancestors hadn't written down their information, we wouldn't have the Bible to learn from today. So I want to work with your shamans to write down their knowledge. So 20 years from now, 200 years from now.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no, they're Indians. We'll spoil them if we give them technology. You know, they're part of the modern world. And with the exception of the 70 uncontacted tribes in the Amazon, everybody has a sense what's going on.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they decided to create maps of their Brazil nut trees because that is a sustainable resource. That was their idea. I didn't tell them to do it. One of the proudest moments in my career happened this week when I saw a picture of the same Indians in a clinic which we helped them set up, all of them wearing masks, and the shamans were creating what they call an immunostimulant beverage from local plants and giving it to all the villagers as part of the ways to keep the coronavirus at bay. So this shows the perfect marriage of ancient shamanic wisdom, which is the plants, and 21st century knowledge, which is the face masks, and that technology has been very important part of the equation. It's not this thing like, let's give them all our technology because it's cool and we want to show them that we're cool, nor is it this equally ridiculous idea of saying,”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, technology came in specifically to help them protect their land, to lay their claim to the traditional territory, and while you're at it, why don't you talk to Grandpa and find out all the names of the rivers and ask him why those rivers have those names? Was it a great battle? Was it the home of a sacred spirit? Stuff like that. So it was introduced specifically to protect land and culture. Now, yeah, I mean, did they play games and stuff like that? They do. But it was introduced in a serious and purposeful way. And they have taken it onto themselves to find new ways to use it. I'll give you an example. If you're a botanist, you know that Brazil nuts only live on the Amazon basis. That's what I was taught as a student at Harvard. But the trios in mapping their lands, which crosses the border between Brazil and Suriname, found 13 stands of Brazil nuts outside the Amazon basin because Guianas are the other side of the watershed.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Surprisingly easy. Twenty years ago, the chief of the Trio tribe, which is the major tribe in the Northeast Amazon, who was a friend of mine at the time, still is, said to me, we want to get title to our lands, and we need a map. That's what the government told us. You need a map. We didn't even know what a map was. They showed us. So we want the help of the Amazon Conservation team. And I said, you got it. And he said, so you'll make us a map. And I said, no. And he said, but you said you're going to help us. And I said, we will. And he said, so you'll make us a map. And I said, we won't. He said, I'm confused. I said, we will not make a map. We will teach you to make your own map, and we will provide the training and the technology to do so, which we did.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In or you can have an iPhone, right? You can do both. But if we're going to introduce technology, let's do it in a way which supports the perpetuation of the culture rather than replaces it. Because when you have the equivalent of, I call it tech bombing, where you have outsiders just come in and give these guys all sorts of trinkets. You know, iPads and iPhones, they're very seductive. But let's show them how they can use to document their traditions to record grandma and grandpa, not just the medicinal plants, the old songs, the legends and things like that, so it's never lost.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The answer we stumbled across me and my indigenous colleagues was let's pass it down within the tribe. These are traditional secrets. It's not going to be published. It's not going to be marketed. It's up to them. But as long as the young people don't learn it, we're doomed. Well, through this program, we now have four shamans apprentice clinics in the Northeast Amazon. We have one of the first books ever written by the Indians for the Indians in their language, which documents all of their medicinal plant knowledge. We have them running clinics first and foremost for themselves and their own culture. Outsiders are coming to them for treatments. And it's a living, breathing, thriving tradition where when I went there, it was dying out. You had all these great chambers. They were like the last of the Mastodons that weren't going to reproduce. Well, now they're reproducing. And the point we made, the point I made time and time again was not like, okay, you can be ashamed.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“was the birth of the shamans apprentice program that we run out of here at the Amazon Conservation Team is that I quickly realized decades ago that I could never collect all the information, Shultes could never collect all the information. And a much better way to preserve it is within the cultures themselves. And the fact is that no matter how much a shaman will teach me, after decades and decades and decades of partnership, collaboration, friendship, love, they still teach even more secrets to their kids or their grandkids. And so”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The important thing here is, you know, I started out working at the World Wildlife Fund and we were all about save the elephants and save the pandas and save the whales. And that's great. But there's not much coming out of elephants, pandas, and whales in the medicinal realm. It's often the creepy crawlies, often the poisonous things like poisonous snakes, which led to the birth of ace inhibitors of billion-dollar drug industry on its own. And so it's sometimes a very good reason for saying we can't just protect the cute cuddly things that are appealing to us emotionally. Sometimes it's the nasty, mean, hairy, aggressive insects, scorpions, or other things like that that might have real potential.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was right. I didn't get rabies and die. But the reason that I was bleeding like a stuck pig is that vampire bats have anticoagulants in their saliva, much as leeches do. If you feed on blood for a living, you don't want it to clot. That means dinner's over. So this saliva, this compound is being looked at in the lab, and it's got a great trade name, Draculin. So the important thing here, Tim, is that?”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Please say more. This is recounted in my first book, Tales for Shaman's Apprentice, which talks about my 15-year search for medicinal plants in the Northeast Amazon. And I was on the Sur Number Brazil border on the Suriname side, packing my gear to hike across the border and into Brazil. And remember, Americans don't typically arrive in Brazil on foot. And I was in the camp and I had my lantern on. And I felt this terrible pain in my leg and I looked down and there was a bat attached to my leg biting me, slicing into my leg. And I mean, I was bleeding like a stuck pig. I yelled and my indigenous guide came running in, took a machete, and sliced it in half. And I just stood there bleeding all over the floor. And I said to him, oh my God. I said, am I going to get rabies and die? And he said, no. And then he said, what's rabies?”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm all in favor of plant medicines or fungal medicines, but the idea that they have all the answers and there's no downside is as ridiculous as saying if a doctor doesn't know it, nobody else can.”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I completely agree. In my new book, The Amazon, what everybody needs to know, I talk about ayahuasca, and I point out the obscure Liana that was dug up in a sense by Shultes in the 40s and 50s is now being taken from Israel to Istanbul. And you take it at your own risk. I get a lot of calls and emails from people saying, where should I go to take it? It's like, I'm a conservationist. I'm an ethnobotanist. Running an ecotourism operation for Psychonauts. So don't even ask me. But understand that there's risks. Like I said earlier, hallucinations are vegetal scalpels. And scalpels can heal you and scalpels can hurt you. They are the vegetal or fungal two-edge swords. So this idea, and I get this all the time, people say, oh, well, it's a plant, so I can't hurt me. Really? Ever hear a strychnine?”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How'd that work out, right? There are people that go and take ayahuasca once and they say, I got it. I'm done. I got what I needed. I'm never going to do it again. Or the shaman will tell them. Okay, This is how it has to be regarded. You need, you wouldn't go to a doctor that you heard about on the internet who didn't have an MD and wasn't certified. Why would you undergo something so profound and frankly so risky with just some fly-by-net operation?”
2020-09-30 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT