[00:00:13] Intro: Welcome to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna.

Michael Coe is ethnobiologist and applied ecologist with a PhD in evolution, ecology and Conservation biology. As an assistant professor at Tarleton State University, his teaching and research focuses on the relationships between humans, ecosystems and traditional knowledge systems.

Passionate about biodiversity and the sustainable management of natural resources, Michael brings a dynamic interdisciplinary perspective, helping to integrate contemporary ethnobiology and ecology within traditional ecological practices to inform sustainable use strategies, conservation priorities and global medicine security.

Michael is the principal investigator for the colab, where they are conducting hypothesis driven research in ethnobiology and harvest impact assessment on medicinal plants that serve as a primary source of healthcare for over 80% of the world’s indigenous population.

Michael is also the director for research and education for the Pacha Nishi Project, a Shipibo Konibo led effort in the Peruvian Amazon basin, seeking to restore 20 hectares of degraded land in an agroforestry setting with a primary goal to inform sustainable ayahuasca production in one of the areas as locally sourced, sustainably grown medicine.

The conversation we’re having today complements and expands on my earlier discussions with Michael, featured in the Brainforest Café in January in episode 51. So, Michael, welcome back to the Brainforest Café.

[00:02:17] Michael Coe: Hi, Dennis. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:20] Dennis McKenna: Always, always happy to talk to you.

[00:02:23] Michael Coe: Always happy to talk to you.

[00:02:25] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. So what didn’t we cover last time that you want to be sure we cover this time?

[00:02:32] Michael Coe: Well, I think in this particular instance it’s more of a personal endeavor and I recognizing yourself, Dennis, I mean, you’re a legend in the field. I mean, my back of the envelope calculation estimates that you’ve actually been working in the psychedelic space, you know, studying ayahuasca and other visionary plants for 54 years.

And you’ve authored over 50 publications, you know, including those in academic journals, many books. You know, you’ve. You’ve extensively contributed to our understanding of the botany and the chemistry and the pharmacology of ayahuasca in the context of its therapeutic uses and the need for more scientific investigations and clinical investigations. You know, your work has taken you to exotic places like, you know, the Amazon Basin and the National Institute of Mental Health at Stanford University and I’m sure many other exotic places of the world. You’re a founding member of the Hefter Institute, a key organizer of the WASCA project, which was foundational this biomedical study in the early 90s.

You know, uncovering the therapeutic potential of Hoasca and its cognitive effects among members of the UDV.

And you’ve been a principal investigator for the Stanley Medical Research Institute on a project looking at Amazonian medicines for treating schizophrenia and other mental disorders.

And you were a director of pharmacology at Shaman Pharmaceuticals, a researcher in Pharmacognosy Pharmaceutical, a Veda corporation, a senior researcher. And you’ve opened the doors for so many young people, including myself, as a mentor.

And so humbly, you know, in the midst of all your incredible achievements, have helped others and paved the way for others to gain so much in this field. And to my mind, even as the founder of the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, this living legacy of what you brought into this world that continues to this day, I mean, you deserve your flowers and definitely to be recognized as one of the goats, one of the greatest of all time in this field.

And, you know, it’s. It’s one of those things where I feel ever important as we advance in time, you know, as we advance in time and age and to really learn from our elders and to see what knowledge, you know, it can be, can be for the greater benefit of everyone, because it’s far off. And even in this instance where we’re welcome on your podcast as guests to learn about individuals, very rarely are we able to learn about you and your life’s achievements.

[00:05:20] Dennis McKenna: Gosh, Michael, you’ve given me a pretty good bio sketch there. That’s a pretty good wrap up. I think it’s a little bit exaggerated. I don’t think of myself that way, you know, but. But I’m glad you do and other people do.

My first impulse is to say, oh, shucks, I didn’t really do all that.

I mean, I did all that, but in a lot of ways, what’s different about me, that’s a key difference, is in some ways, my day is done.

I am basically retired.

I do the Brainforest Café, I do the McKenna Academy.

But Field biology is a young man’s game, and I’m not young anymore. And it’s hard for me to go to the field now. I mean, I can do it.

I don’t have any reason to really, other than to just sort of enjoy the cultural context. But I. I don’t have any research going as such, but I prefer to.

What the McKenna Academy is all about is really education and encouraging people like you who do have research going.

And you’re the younger generation, you’re the young buck and you are doing this work and you’re doing an amazing job and you need support for it.

You face the same challenges that all academics face is they need to get everyone else doing good things, but they need to get support for their work and they need to connect with people that will really appreciate it.

And that’s just the first step. You have to help explain to people what they’re doing and then you have to make them want to support it, you know?

[00:07:26] Michael Coe: Absolutely.

[00:07:27] Dennis McKenna: There are many deep-pocketed people out there who want to support good things.

There are many worthy projects too, you know.

[00:07:36] Michael Coe: Absolutely.

[00:07:36] Dennis McKenna: So.

So, you know, your project is one of many, but yours is, in my opinion, one of the best projects to be invested in because it ticks all the boxes, you know, for, for people that are concerned about the Amazon and sustainability, Preservation of indigenous knowledge, preservation of the species that support the indigenous knowledge of the habitats where these people live. As we know, Michael, this is a multifactorial thing. Many, many things impinge on it. And your project Pacha Nishi and the other things you’re working on, but your project recognizes all that and recognizes the multiple facets of this different thing.

And you’re doing a very good job bringing this knowledge and bringing this to the world and you’re making a difference.

[00:08:39] Michael Coe: Well, I feel very honored to be in this position, Dennis. And yes, I am doing everything I can because I believe in the work that we’re doing, but very passionate with all my heart. I recognize the potential we have to actually inspire change and inspire people to learn more about how they can get involved and how they can help support us.

At the same time, Dennis, people like myself, you refer to the younger generation and those of us that are in this field.

Some of us wouldn’t be who we were today if it wasn’t for the elders like yourself know, laying the foundation, you know, in the early days and making pivotal discoveries and even working during times when it wasn’t as popular to do so or even well supported, you know. You know, funding was very limited for numerous years when prohibitions on research prevailed and it was very difficult to get licenses to study, you know, shamanic medicines and even in a therapeutic context. So, you know, you know, it really takes the foundational work of yourself and so many others to really allow people like myself to even have the space to be able to do that, you know, today. And even for yourself, coming on as a mentor, even when I was an undergraduate student, you know, barely knowing much about plants, and you were so enthusiastic and so warm and, you know, gracious with your time and support. It’s just, it so means a lot, you know, and there’s so Much that I feel that, you know, we should be honoring in yourself as well. And I think to myself, you know, if you don’t mind, I have a couple of questions to ask you. And the first really being, it’s like with your entire lifetime that you’ve dedicated to research and visionary plants and the scientific connection to nature, like, you know, what do you feel, you know, is the most enriching or rewarding or valuable experiences that you’ve had in and gained as a result of your lifetime of work?

[00:10:45] Dennis McKenna: Well, I just think it’s, you know, in the course of doing this work, especially with visionary plants, one has an opportunity to sample many of these things. I mean, it’s kind of part of a job. You know, you’re doing astropharmacology. And I’ll tell you, in my naive days after I discovered the ethnopharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs, that landmark publication that was published in 1967 by the National Institute of Mental Health, some way or another, I don’t know how exactly it happened, but that book fell into my hands at the age of 18 and it made me realize that, that ethnopharmacology is a real thing and there are real scientists out there doing this kind of work, this kind of very interdisciplinary work. And the book was an inspiration for me.

And in my 18 year old brain I was thinking I could make a career about this. Wait, I could get paid to get stoned. Imagine that.

But there was much more to it than that. I mean, that was the thing that attracted me. And the fact that this book was out there, that was really an inspiration.

Because you talk about standing on the shoulders of giants.

I am a very tiny giant compared to people like Richard Schultes, who was very instrumental in organizing that conference. And he is the God that people of my generation looked up to. And it’s like, oh, we want to be like Schultes. We want to honor Schultes. And then, you know, and then we come along. We’re not giants yet, you know, but we’re, we’re.

I mean, he was an inspiration to everybody. Everybody wanted to. And if you look at his career, I mean, yeah, you know, people have this view of people like Schultes who are ethnobiologists, who are in the field, like they’re this swashbuckling Indiana Jones kind of person, chopping their way through the jungle with a machete and riding these canoes and all of which they did, but they were, they didn’t think of themselves. As heroes or even particularly adventurers, they were just, this is a job, you know, you got to go where the plants are, you know, and you have to go where the people are that know about the plants. And they did.

I think Schultes, for all that, he was such an admirable figure in this field. I don’t think he thought of himself. He was. Was not an egotistical person. He was just, oh, I’m a botanist. This is my job. I collect plants, I collect information.

And he just did those things.

And I tried to emulate that in a certain way. And a lot of us do. And now you’re doing it rather than try to become famous or make a self take care of itself. As long as you just do good work and keep your head down and your nose to the grindstone, and this is what you’re doing. So you are an exemplar in my mind of this new generation.

[00:14:35] Michael Coe: Thank you, Dennis.

[00:14:39] Dennis McKenna: You trace your lineage back to. To me, and then from that to Schultes and to other people. And we’re all standing on the shoulders of giants in a certain way.

[00:14:50] Michael Coe: Absolutely.

[00:14:51] Dennis McKenna: And that’s how we learn.

In my mind, the work I did in my graduate student days in the 80s, mostly in the 80s, some of the 90s, it was good, but it’s not, you know, I mean, it’s been done, it’s published.

So it’s not an evolving thing particularly. And it’s different. It’s different than what you’re doing. Yeah.

[00:15:18] Michael Coe: And I appreciate that, you know, but one could argue that it is a continual evolution. The work, the lifetime of work that Dennis McCann has achieved has allowed so many others to continue that work, you know, to continue the work in the chemistry and pharmacology on these plants. I mean, there’s still people today doing clinical trials and learning about the effects of these medicines today.

And they wouldn’t have that foundation if it wasn’t for people like yourself.

[00:15:45] Dennis McKenna: You know, the work that you did.

[00:15:46] Michael Coe: With Neil Towers and many others, your mentors as well. I mean, it’s a continuation. And science builds on itself. You know, presumably we actually learn something, and then we keep building from there. So it’s, you know, we have needed your work, we have needed your work, and we are celebrating your work because it has been ever important for us to be able to do what we are today.

And I suppose another question really comes to mind when I think about you and someone that has not only from an academic perspective, studied what we know today that’s been published in the journals. But you had many personal experiences with these medicines, and particularly ayahuasca.

And so I’m curious, what are some of the greatest lessons or messages that you’ve received from. From the plants, from your own personal experience that you’re willing to share with the world in the sense that you know what you’ve been able to apply to your life that’s enabled you to grow as a human being?

[00:16:54] Dennis McKenna: Well, people have asked me this a lot, you know, and there’s no fixed answers. But I would say a couple of things. One is maybe two things that I could put out there. One of them is a message I got directly from Ayahuasca when I had a very profound experience with experiencing photosynthesis from the molecular level, which I’ve thought, which I’ve written about. And it was truly an amazing visual experience of this. It was like being inside the plant and going through the process, process of photosynthesis. And of course, it helps if you understand those steps in photosynthesis, which I did. I have basic botany and so forth.

But the big message that came through that experience for me was from Ayahuasca said, remember, you monkeys only think you’re running this show.

And that’s profound. That was the message that they actually, you monkeys are not running the show. Actually, what’s running the show is the plants and the fungi that they partner with.

These are the processes that are sustaining life on Earth.

And it’s very easy to forget that or overlook that, but that’s what I mean by running the show.

And then on a personal level, people say, what have you learned from Ayahuasca?

What I have learned repeatedly, many times, is it reminds you. It says, remember how little you know.

You would think that would be depressing in a certain way, because we do. We know a very small slice of this thing called reality. You know, I think it’s important for scientists to be humble and acknowledge the limitations of their knowledge, because science is a very powerful way to ask questions systematically of nature and get answers back that you could more or less verify that they make sense. Science is like a very structured way of asking questions about nature to get meaningful answers back. Right?

And I think, particularly in modern science, taking place in corporations and even academic institutions and so forth, there’s a temptation to arrogance. You know, arrogance has no place in a scientist. I think humility has a place in science. The best scientists recognize the limitations of their knowledge, and as a result, they’re open. You know, the best thing to bring to science is kind of a Childlike wonder, curiosity, because, you know, the world is marvelous beyond our comprehension, and there’s so much to know. And that is a joyous thing, you know, we’ll probably never get it figured out.

[00:20:14] Michael Coe: And that’s part of the mission.

[00:20:16] Dennis McKenna: I don’t think that’s the point, you know.

[00:20:18] Michael Coe: Yeah, exactly.

[00:20:19] Dennis McKenna: Is to expand our understanding to the limit that we’re capable of. Of. And, you know, science is. Is. Is a good vehicle for that.

So people say, what have you learned from Ayahuasca? Ayahuasca keeps reminding me all the time, Sid.

Either remember how little you know, or less kindly, it says, you don’t owe shit.

Don’t forget that.

[00:20:45] Michael Coe: That’s right. That’s beautiful.

That’s right.

Beautiful messages. Beautiful messages, Dennis.

[00:20:52] Dennis McKenna: And.

[00:20:52] Michael Coe: And to follow that up, you know.

You know, for many people that have been in this space, particularly working with ayahuasca for a prolonged period of time, you know, as much as there have been beautiful messages that we can receive, that. That can, you know, potentially be used to enhance our lives and our understanding, sometimes there can be many challenges along the way, you know, and so. So I’m curious, you know, what are. What are some of your greatest challenges that you faced, you know, working with this medicine, you know, and part one part of the question, and the second part is, what are some of the greatest challenges you’ve had working in that academic space with the medicines as well?

[00:21:34] Dennis McKenna: Well, you know, I don’t really think of them as challenges. I mean, I think I’ve been very lucky in terms of the breaks I’ve had in my academic career.

Not necessarily that I had everything mapped out, but at certain junctures in my career, I made choices about my direction, and they turned out to be no more than lucky guesses. But they were lucky guesses. I mean, for example, I don’t want to certainly would not say anything critical of Schulte’s work, but for a long time, like so many ethnobotanists, I wanted to work with Schultes. You know, I wanted to be his graduate student. And I made a pilgrimage to Harvard in 1974, thinking about getting into graduate school.

And I went out to visit him. And, you know, he was extremely kind and very receptive and encouraged me to do this, but there’s time. But he said, you have to go back.

I suggest. I advise you to go back to get more organic chemistry and get more plant taxonomy. I’d already got my undergraduate, my BS or whatever it was.

And he said, get that and you’ll be a much better prospect for the admissions committee.

So I did go back and get those courses, but. But then one thing and another happened. For one thing, I learned to grow mushrooms during this same period, you know, so I was all excited about mushrooms and I wrote to Schultes and I said, oh, I don’t want to work on Varola, I want to work on mushrooms.

And he went back and he was not encouraging. He said, well, if you want to work on mushrooms, he said, you know, I suggest you study with Dr. Alexander H. Smith at the University of Michigan. He’s top mycologist in the world. And it was kind of like, I was kind of crushed, you know, because here was Schultes, you know, gently but verbally rejecting it and said, you know, you can’t come here and study mushrooms. So I was a little disappointed by that. But as it turned out, it’s one of these things kind of like making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. So as it turns out, I ended up working for Neil Towers at ubc.

That was what I ended up doing my doctoral work with.

And although he was not the well known person that Schultes was, he was much more interdisciplinary. And because of him, because I made that choice, I ended up in his lab. So I got the biochemistry, the pharmacology, the natural products background, that whole thing. That would not have happened had I gone to work for Schultes.

It would have been plant classification, plant collection, and I would have been a taxonomist and specialist in varroas, and that would have been fine, but it wouldn’t have been quite as deep as these other things.

Working in Neil’s lab gave me a chance to tie all these other disciplines together, not least of which was I could continue my work with mushrooms. I mean, he was very interested in mushrooms, and I was able to work with them. For the first year that I was at ubc, we were going to look into enzymatic regulation, the genetic regulation of the enzymes that are involved in psilocybin biosynthesis and do all this genetic stuff and formal genetics, molecular biology as well as chemistry. So I worked on that for the first year at ubc.

And a nice side effect all of this was, with permission of the Canadian government, everything licensed and permitted. But a nice side effect of that was that I had growth chambers full of mushrooms. Yeah. The basement of the biology building.

[00:26:03] Michael Coe: Wow.

[00:26:04] Dennis McKenna: You know, that was. That was incredible.

[00:26:07] Michael Coe: Was this right around the time that you, you anonymously authored the Magic Mushrooms.

[00:26:12] Dennis McKenna: Grower Guide with this Was this was during that time. Yeah, well, actually the grower’s guide was out by that time. We published that in 1976.

But I tell you what the connection was that when Schultes advised me to go back and get these other courses, I ended up at Colorado State University, which was not what I graduated. I graduated from Colorado University, but I went to CSU to get these other courses, these add on courses.

As it turned out, my best friend from high school was the manager of the botany greenhouse.

Because he was the manager of the botany greenhouse, I had access to the lab there, the tissue culture lab and all that. So I had all the tools to figure out how to grow the mushrooms. That’s where the discovery was made, was actually in the tissue culture lab of the botany greenhouse at csu. That’s where I did the proved the method for growing mushrooms.

So that’s another example of these. Life comes up with these surprises.

And I made that discovery. Nothing official about it. This was my hobby. I was just mucking around in the lab. I was there to take courses, but. But my friend ran the greenhouse and so I had, I had access to it. And I’ve had those kind of breaks over and over again. Like not anything I planned, just luck breaks in a certain way, you know.

For another example is when I, when I ended up when I finished my PhD. Well, just to complete the story. So I worked on those, on the mushroom project in Neil’s lab for about the first year.

And I was failing my courses. These were later courses. I had a really bad bicycle accident the first semester I was at ubc and I fell down on my courses and I was taking, you know, tough courses, advanced organic chemistry and fungal genetics and all this.

And at the end of that semester, I was feeling really depressed, you know, and I was really feeling like maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe I do this, you know, I’m not, I’m not a very good biochemist. I’m not really interested in fungal genetics, nor do I understand it.

And I was really down. And Neil, talk about mentors. Here’s an example. He could see this, he could see that I was depressed and that I was flailing in a certain way. And so he called me into his lab one day and said, or his office. And he said, well, I have some extra money in the grant this year. Maybe you’d like to go to Peru.

Wow. And I basically said on the spot. I said, my bags are packed, when do we leave?

And I shifted my work from mushrooms to ayahuasca at that point, I made that choice, and then that was fine. Then I went to Peru, did the field work, and engaged in that work for the next three years.

So again, it’s one of these things, Michael.

But it almost seems fated. You know, I feel a lot of the choices I’ve made have been.

Have been obvious. They’ve been opportunities that been sort of laid in front of me and all I had to do was take them. I think you’ve had similar experiences.

[00:30:07] Michael Coe: Absolutely right.

Absolutely. You know, in some cases, I look back at my life and I can’t even believe, you know, what. What has been accomplished. It seems like I’ve lived multiple lifetimes and even just the short lifetime that I’ve had thus far.

And I’m. I’m surprised, you know, I’m surprised at what is. What has happened. At the same time, you know, for myself, I try to keep an open mind and listen and listen and pay attention, you know, as opportunities come to present themselves. And the work that I do has the possibility to help others. You know, I listen as much as possible, and for some reason it kind of guides me in this direction of doing the work that I’m doing and being able to befriend wonderful people like yourself.

And, you know, and it inspires me. It inspires me to keep learning and to keep asking questions and as you mentioned, keep this, you know, wondrous curiosity about the world, about, you know, the relationship we have with plants and those of us that also connect in these. In these sacred spaces through visionary plants, you know, the mystery surrounding that whole experience, you know, and the life and death and everything in between. So it’s been a magical experience, to say the least. I wouldn’t have ever predicted any of it, but I’m so grateful it happened.

[00:31:33] Dennis McKenna: Well, I am too. I mean, and it’s a good illustration of the importance of mentorship, you know, I mean, I’ve been very blessed to have mentors like Neil Towers, you know, and like my supervisor in Hawaii, even though I was not working on psychedelics or anything remotely to it, but he was such a incredible polymath and just interested in everything and such an out of the box thinker that it was very exciting to work with Sandy Siegel in the botany department. And just these two gentlemen were really mentors to me. And that means a lot.

And the same thing you and I really got associated when you were an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, you know, and I, I think you took a couple of my courses and that kind of motivated you and you ended up going to Hawaii to do your. Your master’s and eventually your PhD. And just by coincidence. Except, of course, there really aren’t any coincidences. But. But just by coincidence, that’s where I got my master’s in 1979, before I went to UBC to study with Neil. So it’s kind of when you were an undergraduate, Michael. I thought, well, this kid’s very bright. I thought of you as a kid.

This kid’s bright. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing. That’s okay. He’s got real potential here. So I wanted to be a mentor to you, and I did. And then you went to Hawaii, and you kind of took off on your own, and it’s like.

It’s this weird reversal, you know, now you’re the guy I look up to and buyer, and I really do. Michael, I’m not flattered.

You.

So you’re. You’re my mentor now.

[00:33:36] Michael Coe: Well, that’s a beautiful thing. We can. We can help each other learn and, you know, and.

[00:33:41] Dennis McKenna: And I.

[00:33:42] Michael Coe: And I’m so grateful. Like, I have a handful of very influential people that have had a tremendous impact in my life, you know, and I include you in that. In that group of people, Dennis. You know, it’s wonderful to hear your stories and to hear your journey, and of course, you know, we can all read about them, but you’re still here. You’re still alive. You’re still thriving, and. Well, and it should be celebrated. You know, your knowledge that you have is incredibly invaluable to the world. And even though you may not be publishing papers and gallivanting across the Amazon basin, you certainly have a tremendous wisdom about you, Dennis, and everyone that knows you well would agree.

And so it’s just an honor to share time with you and to share this connection and to explore these questions.

So I have one final question for you, Dennis. I want to honor your time, but I’m thinking, you know, I have plenty of time.

[00:34:45] Dennis McKenna: I’m retired.

[00:34:46] Michael Coe: Well, thank you.

[00:34:46] Dennis McKenna: Thank you.

[00:34:47] Michael Coe: Well, I’m thinking, you know, with. With everything you’ve experienced, you know, with mushrooms, with ayahuasca, you know, with your. With your, you know, scientific journey of. Of discovering, you know, many of these medicines, you know, what would be your greatest words of wisdom to young people, even younger than myself, but people that, you know, have watched the Brainforest Caf. Become aware of your work or become aware of the work of the McKenna Academy, what would be your greatest words of advice to people that look up to you? Or even that are seeking to help make a change or inspire change.

[00:35:31] Dennis McKenna: Well, these are all kind of tough questions to answer, really, and yet easy questions. I mean, I guess.

I guess if I had to put it into a few words, I would say, stay open, stay curious. Because curiosity is what drives discovery, and curiosity requires a certain childlike curiosity. I think the best scientists, not necessarily including myself, but the scientists I’ve admired over the years, have this childlike curiosity, and they ask these seemingly sometimes ridiculous or silly questions, and then they investigate it and they make discoveries. I think Sandy Siegel was a good example of that for me. He was such an out of the box thinker. I mean, he had grants from NASA to study extraterrestrial life.

Whoa. Well, there was no subject. We don’t have any extraterrestrial life. So what he did was he simulated alien environments, and then he put Earth organisms into those environments and said, how do they get along? I mean, that was another aspect of what he did, was stress physiology. So he does these completely silly questions and get amazing answers. Like, for example, can a cactus thrive underwater?

Turns out it can.

All you do is bubble carbon dioxide and it does fine. Or simulate the radiation flux of the Martian surface inside a terrarium, put a tarantula in there. How long does it live?

Wow. Not influenced at all. It thrives.

It’s not even affected.

Just these crazy questions and related to, ultimately, extraterrestrial life, related to extreme conditions. And it’s not that.

I mean, these were simple questions that turned out to have really surprising answers. And that was always what I admired at him. You never know when a silly, effectively amusing about something is going to result in an experiment that yields some really surprising answers.

So Sandy was a mentor for me in that sense, and a role model. He didn’t really pay attention to whether his questions made sense to his colleagues.

It was this curiosity and this ability to approach these things in a very novel way that led to discoveries. And so I admired that in him very much.

So stay curious, stay open. Don’t be afraid of asking seemingly silly questions. That’s one thing. And the other thing, again, is to remain humble. Always remind yourself that you don’t have it all figured out. In fact, you have very little figured out. And that’s true of everyone.

That’s right. The limitations of your knowledge is a motivation to learn more.

And there’s an infinite amount to learn based on compared to what we think we know. And what we think we know is always open to being overturned. That is the nature of science.

[00:39:20] Michael Coe: Absolutely.

[00:39:21] Dennis McKenna: And I guess the third thing that I would tell people, young people particularly, is don’t worry about career. Don’t worry about your institution. Don’t worry about all those kinds of things that people worry, people think are important as they advance their career. Discover what puts fire in your belly and just go for it, you know, and all the rest will sort itself out. And that’s been my experience, and I think it’s been your experience. You know, you just studied what you’re interested in because you’re interested in it, and the world has responded positively. You’ve gotten breaks. You’ve gotten, you know, your graduate work, and now you’re a tenure track professor at this university, and you’re well on your way. And I was sort of the same way. I was very lucky to work with mentors in this area with controlled substances.

I mean, I was lucky in that I didn’t have to worry about that. They did all the paperwork. You know, I didn’t have to apply for permission because they had permission.

So I was just free to go in the lab and work with these things, you know, and that. Another lucky break. You know, I think that both you and me, I mean, we both worked very hard in our field, and we can take a lot of credit for what we’ve done, but we can’t deny that we’ve had lucky breaks along the way.

[00:40:59] Michael Coe: Absolutely.

[00:41:00] Dennis McKenna: And there are other people that work just as hard, but they sometimes don’t get the breaks, you know.

[00:41:07] Michael Coe: Absolutely.

[00:41:08] Dennis McKenna: They end up with a supervisor who’s like a maniac. Or, you know, funding now. Funding is even more difficult to get now, especially.

[00:41:20] Michael Coe: Or the ego, like you say.

[00:41:22] Dennis McKenna: Or the ego and the ego. Yeah.

I mean, I know. You know, my postdocs were. Well, my graduate supervisors in Hawaii, Sandy Siegel and Neil Towers were both amazing people.

I did postdocs after that at NIH and Stanford, and my supervisors at those places were not the inspiration that Sandy and Neil were. They were very much caught up in the game of science, trying to advance their careers and this whole competition for grants and prestige and all that, which is okay. I mean, I can’t criticize them. That’s the game you have to play.

Somehow. I didn’t play that game.

You played your own.

I never got a faculty.

You’ve played it well enough that you actually have a tenure track position. I never got close to that. You know, I was always a postdoc or working for somebody else, but it was okay because I got to work on what I wanted to.

[00:42:38] Michael Coe: Absolutely. And what a tremendous Legacy you have to show for Dennis. I mean, truly, you know, you’re a living legacy.

[00:42:47] Dennis McKenna: You keep saying that, Michael. It’s embarrassing, frankly. Wow.

You know, I am not actively doing research, but the area that I’ve moved into is pretty much education.

That’s what the McKenna Academy is all about.

And for me, teaching has always been the pleasure of academics, you know, to teach bright young people, people like you.

Many other people I’ve had the privilege to teach, and they may not all go on to be scientists or whatever, but there’s so much wisdom in the younger people. And I just. It’s really gratifying to be able to work with these people and maybe make them aware of a few things they weren’t aware of before.

You know, just point the direction without actually trying to control where they’re going. Because that’s not my style, and that’s not that they have to find their own way. Some do and some don’t. But I think you’re one of the ones that has definitely found a direction, and I.

I hope you can sustain it. And I realize it’s tougher these days than it was when I was in your position.

[00:44:09] Michael Coe: You know, it’s true there’s a lot of challenges, you know, along the way, you know, in the current state of academia and, of course, the uncertainty of funding and. And some of the, you know, challenges in that area.

You know, at the same time, you know, the beautiful thing is being in this position and having the opportunity to communicate with elders like you and gain the wisdom of your life and what you’ve been through has been tremendous because, you know, I learned from you, I learned from other mentors that have been amazing and influential in my life, and it allows me to learn how to navigate some of these spaces, you know, the current ones that we’re in. So, you know, as I am reminded when you say, it’s like, remember how little you know. So I always listen to the elders and try to apply the knowledge and to the benefit of being able to move forward and carry with me the legacy of the shoulders of the people that I’ve stand on before me. And so I’m just so grateful for people like yourself, Dennis, and I know you’re incredibly humble, but, you know, myself and many of us around the world, we just.

[00:45:20] Dennis McKenna: We.

[00:45:21] Michael Coe: We love you and we thank you for everything.

[00:45:24] Dennis McKenna: Well, thank you, Michael. Thank you.

Yeah, I don’t accept compliments well, but I appreciate your expressions of respect. And it’s. It’s mutual.

It’s mutual. I mean, age doesn’t have so much to do with it. You know, you’re right at the top of your career, or.

Well, maybe not. I don’t want to say that your career may go up, but you’re in a position now to move all these things forward. And you’re doing that. You’re doing it in a very focused and beautiful way. I hope that the world notices and I hope that.

That all the institutions and people you have to please to get the funding for this, I hope they notice and provide it. Because you’re doing some of the best work in ethnobiology that’s going on in the field right now. And something that’s sort of come to light since. Well, hasn’t really come to light, but, you know, when I finished my work on ayahuasca, there was a certain point where you think, well, it pretty much got this ayahuasca thing figured out.

Not at all. We’ve barely scratched the surface.

[00:46:49] Michael Coe: Absolutely.

[00:46:50] Dennis McKenna: There’s decades of works and dozens of PhD worthy projects, lifetimes, that just look at ayahuasca and its admixture plants and the whole element from pharmacology to phytochemistry to agroforestry.

It’s a multidisciplinary kind of thing.

And there’s this is. This is kind of a paradox. You know, the more we learn about ayahuasca, the less we know as we.

[00:47:20] Michael Coe: Realize we know, or the more we.

[00:47:22] Dennis McKenna: Realize how little we know and how much. Absolutely. If you learned about it, you know. Absolutely. That’s quite interesting. And the work you’re doing exemplifies that. The work that our colleague David Rodriguez also, very much in the same sort of space that you are absolutely working with the Shipibo and he’s working with the Kofan, but it’s the same kind of thing that there is a whole body of indigenous knowledge here which is unexplored and threatened. That’s the thing. These are not going to be around forever unless some steps are taken. So it’s important to try to record what they know and slow it down if possible. Yeah.

[00:48:14] Michael Coe: Well, it’s an honor to play a part in this work, and I’m sure over time the right people will listen, the right people will support us. And I have no doubt that there’s lifetimes of work to do in this area, and I’m just honored to play the role that I’m playing, the very small role that I’m playing, but in hopes to help kind of push the ball forward, you know, so the next people beyond me will be able to continue on as well, you know, and this is how we do it.

[00:48:44] Dennis McKenna: A bigger role than you think, Merchal.

Thank you, Dennis. Thank you, Dennis. Seriously. Well, I’m honored people like you and Glenn Shepard.

[00:48:54] Michael Coe: Absolutely.

[00:48:59] Dennis McKenna: You’re both on the cutting edge, and you’re both out there. You’re in the field. You’re in the situation where you’re not armchair scientists. You’re out there with the indigenous people with the plants doing these things, and you have to get your hands dirty to do this kind of. And that’s.

That’s really important.

[00:49:19] Michael Coe: Well, it’s an honor.

[00:49:21] Dennis McKenna: I mean, whatever Schulte said, I think. I don’t know who said it, but he said someone was relating to me that he said, well, the world doesn’t need any more ethnobiologists. I can’t believe that he said that, but it’s not true. We need more ethnobiologists than ever. Yeah. You know, absolutely. So you’re.

You’re one of them, and you’re in a position. Thank you, Dennis. You are making a difference.

[00:49:48] Michael Coe: Thank you.

[00:49:49] Dennis McKenna: Doing what I can. Also to make a difference through the education of the academy now. And, you know, the academy is not me.

It’s got my name on it. You know, the team. You know, our team very well.

[00:50:05] Michael Coe: An incredible and wonderful team.

[00:50:07] Dennis McKenna: It wouldn’t be much, but. But it is that we’re. We’re.

You know, we’re.

We’re doing pretty good right now, so.

[00:50:18] Michael Coe: Absolutely. And it points to the fact that this is a collective effort. We’re all doing the work together. You know, people like myself, Everybody at the McKenna Academy. Glenn, you know, David, Rebecca, you know, some of the younger people in the field. Colin, who’s been doing some incredible work, you know, amazing. And is getting recognized now. I mean, it’s a beautiful time in history. It’s a beautiful time to be alive in this field. And it’s just so amazing and just, you know, a wonderful privilege to be able to talk with everybody and to see the work that they’re doing and to be a part of this global community of thinkers and people that are pushing the envelope and going beyond where we’ve been before.

So thank you.

[00:51:04] Dennis McKenna: To the degree that we could help with that, then that’s the mission of the McKenna Academy. And doing okay? I think so. All right, Michael, enough for the.

[00:51:18] Michael Coe: Thank you.

Thank you, Dennis.

[00:51:22] Dennis McKenna: Okay. Good to talk with you.

[00:51:24] Michael Coe: Good to talk with you, too.

[00:51:26] Dennis McKenna: Okay, keep me posted on the progress of your fundraising. And so on. And anytime you want to come on this platform, it’s open to you.

[00:51:36] Michael Coe: Thank you, Dennis. Thank you so much.

[00:51:38] Dennis McKenna: I’ll say goodbye and we’ll catch you downstream, I guess.

[00:51:45] Michael Coe: Cheers, buddy.

[00:51:46] Dennis McKenna: Okay. Bye. Bye.

[00:51:53] Outro: Join our mission to harmonize with the natural world.

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[00:52:13] Outro: Thank you for listening to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna. Find us online at mckenna.academy.