The Depths of Ayahuasca: 500+ Sessions — Dennis McKenna

1. 0:00 – 4:44

   Intro

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      This episode is brought to you by Tonal, T-O-N-A-L. Get ready for the smartest home gym you've ever seen. That's a Men's Health headline about Tonal, folks, and that gives you the gist. If you're wondering about the smart part, Tonal's homepage also features a quote from The New York Times. Quote, "The machine knew my strength better than I did," end quote. More on that in just a minute. By eliminating traditional metal weights, Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance in a device smaller than a flat-screen TV. Tonal mounts on your wall with no floor space required. I've had a Tonal unit now for six to 12 months, which I got after a number of very close friends recommended Tonal, and it allows me to do things I would normally need a much larger gym for, like cable chop and lift or rotational exercises, things I wrote about in The 4-Hour Body, and it allows me to do these things that are nearly impossible otherwise, like eccentric loading, which I'll mention later. 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2. 4:44 – 6:57

   Show kick-off and Dennis McKenna’s background in ethnopharmacology

   1. TFTim Ferriss4:44

      Optimal minimal [upbeat music] At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.

   2. TFTim Ferriss5:09

      Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, and I want to skip my long usual preamble because we are going to run out of time before we run out of material. With today's guest, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time, many, many years, in fact. Dennis McKenna. You can find him on Twitter @dennismckenna4, and we'll provide many other links. Dennis's research is focused on the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology. He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, and we will define a lot of terms in this episode, so don't worry about getting lost in the weeds too quickly. His doctoral research at the University of British Columbia focused on the ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca and ukuye, and we'll double-check the pronunciation, two tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, which does exceptional work, and was a key organizer and participant in the Hoasca Project, that's H-O-A-S-C-A Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca. He's the younger brother of Terence McKenna. From 2000 to 2017, he taught courses on ethnopharmacology as well as Plants in Human Affairs at the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. In 2019, in collaboration with colleagues, he incorporated a new nonprofit, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, which we will discuss. In the spring of 2019, he emigrated to Canada with his wife, Sheila, and now resides in Abbotsford, British Columbia. You can find him on all the socials, Instagram @dennismckenna, Twitter @dennismckenna4, Facebook @dennisjohn, J-O-N, McKenna, and also McKenna Academy, that's M-C-K-E-N-N-A Academy on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Twitter. Dennis, welcome to the show.

   3. DMDennis McKenna6:55

      Thank you, Tim. It's a pleasure to be here.

3. 6:57 – 12:02

   First meeting with Richard Evans Schultes and why he mattered

   1. TFTim Ferriss6:57

      I thought I would, I would start with a bit of history and pull in some colorful characters while we're at it. Could you please describe your first meeting with Richard Evans Schultes? And that can kind of segue into who Schultes was. But I really enjoyed this story [laughs]

   2. DMDennis McKenna7:18

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss7:18

      in, in your book, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, which we will talk about. I've, I printed out my Amazon Kindle highlights. I have 189 highlights from that book. We're not gonna go through them all. But let's start with your meeting with Schultes, if you wouldn't mind.

   4. DMDennis McKenna7:33

      Schultes was a professor of, at Harvard. He's been called the father of ethnobotany. He certainly was not, because ethnobotany as a discipline existed before there was Schultes. But he was one of the more high-profile people. He was the director of the Botanical Museum at Harvard University for many years. And he is-- he made many contributions to Amazonian botany, but the one he's most notorious for and most well-known for is he was probably the world's expert on s- what we used to call hallucinogenic plants, psychedelic plants used in different parts of the world. But that was what made him so famous. And like many people, I envisioned a career in ethnopharmacology for myself, which is something that I sort of realized was possible when I was 18. We can go back to this. This is earlier than Schultes, when I got my hands on this amazing book called The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. But I digress. We can return to that. So Schultes was a figure of, just a towering figure in this field, like Einstein in physics or of that stature. And many, many people with a passion about psychedelic plants and indigenous, uh, use of these things, you know, looked up to Schultes and wanted to work with him. And I was one of those. And in 1974, I was living in Berkeley with my brother, or close by my brother who was living there, and I determined to go see the great man, you know-

   5. TFTim Ferriss9:26

      [laughs]

   6. DMDennis McKenna9:27

      ... to make a pilgrimage, essentially, to Schultes. And in those days, there was a deal. You could buy a bus ticket, $60 for 60 days, and you could get as far as you could go as long as you kept it within 60 days. So I made this pilgrimage to Harvard, to Cambridge. And, uh-

   7. TFTim Ferriss9:49

      And where was your starting point?

   8. DMDennis McKenna9:51

      Well, I started at Berkeley, and I went first down to Louisiana, Hammond, Louisiana, and visited some friends of mine who owned a leather shop, a hippie leather shop, a wonderful bunch of people running a leather shop in this totally redneck town. Why did I go see them? Well, I went to see them because they lived out in the country where there were pastures and cattle.

   9. TFTim Ferriss10:16

      [laughs]

   10. DMDennis McKenna10:18

       And I went there basically to hunt for mushrooms. And, you know, and, and my idea in my... This is 1974, and my idea was, well, you know, I'll get a bunch of mushrooms and dry them, take them back to California and sell them. Well, it was like the worst season for mushrooms in like five years that they'd lived there. So I went down there, and I did find some mushrooms, but just a few. Plenty for my own needs, but I didn't have grocery bags of them or anything like that. That was the first place I went, was Hammond, Louisiana. And then I just got on the old bus and continued on. I stopped and saw, interestingly, this anthropologist in Maryland who had studied the Yanomami, one of the Amazonian tribes that uses these psychedelic snuffs. And he was a linguist. He was probably one of the few people in the world that actually spoke Yanomami. He had some interesting samples that he'd collected. I went there basically to pick up those samples and hang on with him. And then I continued up to Boston. And I had an old girlfriend who happened to live in Boston, so, uh, and we were still on good terms. So, so I went there. I had a place to stay. And then I went... I mean, I, I saw Schultes before I saw the girlfriend. I, I basically got off the bus and went immediately to the Botanical Museum. It was an incredible experience for me because I was, like, in total awe of this man. I mean, it was like a, it was like an audience with the Pope or something, you know?

   11. TFTim Ferriss12:02

       [laughs]

4. 12:02 – 15:24

   Career guidance from Schultes: chemistry, taxonomy, and the Harvard rejection

   1. DMDennis McKenna12:02

      But he wasn't Pope-like at all. He was just a very kindly- Down-to-earth, ordinary person, and he welcomed me and took me to lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club. And, and we talked about what I could work on, and, "What would you like to do?" was the way the conversation started out. So because Terence and I had been to Colombia in 1971, and one of the things we were looking for was this oo-koo-he, this orally active virola preparation, which eventually ended up being one of the foci of my doctoral work. But that was 10 years in the future. But I was interested in virola, I was interested in those snuffs, and he said, "Well, you could go to the Amazon and study virola and sort out the chemistry of it." So he said, "That would be a possibility. I totally, you know, appreciate that, endorse that." He said, "Well, there are two things you need to do before you do that." And I had my degree. I got my undergraduate degree in 1973. But he said, "You need more chemistry, and you need to take more organic chemistry, and you need to take more taxonomy," you know, which you know is plant classification, the classic approach to plant classification. So I said, "Yes, sir. Absolutely." And [laughs] you know, I got the message. I got back on the bus, I went back to Berkeley, and I moved back to Colorado, where I'm from. Even though I had my bachelor's degree, I just enrolled in a couple of courses of advanced organic chemistry. And the taxonomy specialty I chose to look in was grass systematics, which was like torture.

   2. TFTim Ferriss13:51

      [laughs]

   3. DMDennis McKenna13:52

      Grass systematic classification is the most arcane, difficult thing you could do. I must have had something about wanting to punish myself. But I studied grass systematics and organic chemistry. And a interesting, unexpected delight in this was the, the person that was the chemistry teacher of this organic chemistry course, a man named Frank Sturmanz. Turns out he was quite a well-known alkaloid chemist. He used to illustrate his lectures with, well, "So here's LSD. Here's how you make LSD. Here's how the fungus makes LSD." And he was a, a brilliant guy and another mentor. And he said, "Well, don't go work for Schultes. Go work for Norman Farnsworth in Chicago." And I said, "No, no, you don't understand. Schultes is God." [laughs] You know? And so Schultes encouraged me to apply, and I was getting these courses that he thought I really needed to have on my transcripts. And I applied, and I didn't get in. You know, I did not get accepted into Harvard, which was kind of a crushing blow, but not unexpected. It was a blessing in disguise in some ways, because while all this was going on, I was living in Fort Collins, Colorado, going to Colorado State. My friend, Larry Beasley, was an old friend from high school, and he was a

5. 15:24 – 22:51

   Mushroom cultivation, shifting research focus, and the road to UBC

   1. DMDennis McKenna15:24

      horticulturalist. And as it turned out, he was running the greenhouse at Colorado State University when I moved there. So I had access to the greenhouse and brought in some ayahuasca cuttings that we had from California, and also I had access to a sterile culture lab. They were doing tissue culture there, which can also be adapted to doing fungal culture. And I was messing around with ways to try to figure out how to grow the psilocybe cubensis. And I had access to a university lab to do this work in, which was amazing. And we tried a few things and actually succeeded in growing mushrooms out of these mason jars on sterilized substrates. You're probably familiar with the book, Psilocybin Mushroom Grower's Guide, which Terry and I published under pseudonyms.

   2. TFTim Ferriss16:23

      One of your great-

   3. DMDennis McKenna16:24

      Yeah

   4. TFTim Ferriss16:24

      ... contributions to humankind.

   5. DMDennis McKenna16:27

      Maybe the most significant contribution. But that was the method that we developed there. And in the process of growing the mushrooms and then sampling the mushrooms and, and just getting excited about being able to grow mushrooms, I thought, "Wow. Well, maybe I'll change my focus from virola to psilocybin mushrooms." And I wrote to Schultes about this, and I said, "What would you think of that?" And he wrote back a rather kind of stuffy letter.

   6. TFTim Ferriss16:58

      [laughs]

   7. DMDennis McKenna16:59

      You know, saying, "Well, I... My specialty is higher plants, and I think if you want to work on fungi, you should talk to Dr. Alexander H. Smith at the University of Michigan." But basically saying, I mean, the subtext was, "You're a traitor." [laughs] You know.

   8. TFTim Ferriss17:17

      How dare you.

   9. DMDennis McKenna17:19

      Yeah. Not really. I mean, he was-

   10. TFTim Ferriss17:21

       I'm kidding

   11. DMDennis McKenna17:21

       ... uh, there, there were subsequent encounters. But he, he basically said, "If you want to study Amazonian plants, I'm all in. I'd, I'd be happy to have you." And as it turned out, I didn't get accepted, so that opportunity was taken away. But the unexpected benefit of this was that some years later... Well, this was '74. So after that, I did my master's at the University of Hawaii, not studying psychoactive plants. My plot to study psychoactive plants there was undermined. But I ended up applying to the University of British Columbia, and I started there in 1979. And my supervisor there was a man named Neil Towers, also a Kind of a giant in this field, not as gigantic as Schultes, but very much known in the world of phytochemistry and ethnobotany and so on. And he was quite open to me working on mushrooms. I actually started out in his program because he had come to Hawaii while I was a graduate student there, and my supervisor in Hawaii was another one of these incredible mentors that I've been blessed with throughout my academic career, Sandy Siegel. And Dr. Siegel, whenever anybody came to visit, a visiting professor or dignitary, he would always invite the graduate students up to his house, and we'd sit around and have pizza and beer, and shoot the breeze with the, whatever luminary was in town. And Dr. Towers was one of the luminaries. In the process of having this conversation, he said, "Well, I've got this, uh, young master's student working on the psilocybe, working on the enzyme that converts psilocybin to psilocin, a phosphatase. And she's not getting very far with it, but it's a very interesting project. And wish there was somebody to kind of continue that work, you know." And I practically spit my beer out, and I said, "Hmm, well, Dr. Towers, I've had some interest in this, and what do you think about letting me do it? And, you know, what do you think about taking me on?" And he said, "Well, yeah, if you're interested, that's a possibility." So we started corresponding, and I was, like, midway through my master's thesis in Hawaii at that point, and we started corresponding, and I got accepted. And I got, with Dr. Towers' support, I actually got a four-year graduate fellowship, and I started working on psilocybe and, and the idea, and I had developed a technique for growing them.

   12. TFTim Ferriss20:15

       Dennis, may I pause for just one second?

   13. DMDennis McKenna20:17

       Certainly. I-I-

   14. TFTim Ferriss20:18

       No, no

   15. DMDennis McKenna20:18

       ... getting off on many tangents. I'm sorry. [laughs]

   16. TFTim Ferriss20:20

       Oh, no, I love all the tangents. That is actually kind of the... If there's any theme to this show, it is, it is embracing tangents. But I want to just mention a few things-

   17. DMDennis McKenna20:29

       Sure

   18. TFTim Ferriss20:29

       ... and, uh, ask a couple of questions. But I want you to bookmark that so we're-

   19. DMDennis McKenna20:33

       Sure

   20. TFTim Ferriss20:33

       ... uh, we're, we're in Canada, or headed to Canada at that point. But I just want to mention a few things. So is it true that when you first met Schultes, when you walked in, he was effectively hugging an air conditioner? And the reason I ask is that if you look at photographs of Schultes in his prime, it very much evokes an Indiana Jones, minus the tomb raiding, of course-

   21. DMDennis McKenna20:59

       Mm-hmm

   22. TFTim Ferriss20:59

       ... resilience and durability. I mean, you see him in native dress, you see him-

   23. DMDennis McKenna21:04

       Right

   24. TFTim Ferriss21:04

       ... really fully engaged as a, not just an observer, but as a participant. He spent more than a decade, as, as I understand it, sort of scouting-

   25. DMDennis McKenna21:12

       About 15 years continuous

   26. TFTim Ferriss21:13

       ... 15 years in the Amazon. And this is not-

   27. DMDennis McKenna21:15

       Mm, mm-hmm

   28. TFTim Ferriss21:15

       ... flying first class [laughs] -

   29. DMDennis McKenna21:18

       No. No

   30. TFTim Ferriss21:19

       ... to, to the Amazon. [laughs]
6. 22:51 – 30:58

   Science, early influences, and defining ethnopharmacology

   1. TFTim Ferriss22:51

      I love it. I absolutely love it. Let me, let me also pick up on a couple of other points and ask just a couple of definitions for people listening, which we'll get to in a minute. But I would like to read a few things from The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, if you're willing to bear with me, because-

   2. DMDennis McKenna23:07

      Sure

   3. TFTim Ferriss23:07

      ... I think it will hopefully help tie some things together in the minds of those who are not familiar with your background and your work. So Sanford Siegel, who you mentioned.

   4. DMDennis McKenna23:18

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TFTim Ferriss23:18

      So his research interests, among many other things, included exobiology. But I want to read just a paragraph about him from your book, and then three sections that I pulled out about science. It's gonna take me a minute, but if you could bear with me.

   6. DMDennis McKenna23:32

      Sure.

   7. TFTim Ferriss23:33

      So, so this is from the book. And on Sanford Siegel, this is where the excerpt begins. Quote, "In his NASA-funded work, he was extremely creative in his thinking about stress physiology in extreme environments. For example, he wondered what would happen if he tried to grow a cactus underwater. Turns out it grows fine as long as you bubble oxygen and carbon dioxide through the water. How well does a tarantula survive under a radiation flux similar to that at a Martian surface? It survives just fine for months. Can you germinate onion seedlings in liquid ammonia as a substitute for water? Yes, ammonia can substitute for water in many biological processes. He had a genius for thinking up these incredibly creative, exciting, and simple experiments, and yet they all had a rationale and a reason behind them. He was an out-of-the-box thinker." And then I'm gonna jump to what you said separately in the book about science. Quote, "I knew scientific thought had its limits, but before we could reject science, the most powerful set of intellectual tools ever developed by the human mind, we first had to learn how to do science. Then, if we still wanted to reject it, we could do so as scientists with full knowledge of what it was we were rejecting." I think these are, these are really, really important to tie together because you have such broad exposure, and as I understand it, there were many influences early on, two of which were, I believe it was The Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda.

   8. DMDennis McKenna24:48

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss24:48

      Even though subsequently a lot of people-

   10. DMDennis McKenna24:50

       Mm-hmm

   11. TFTim Ferriss24:50

       ... and you're aware of this, came to conclude that a lot of that, if not most of it, was fictionalized. And a book that I have about 20 feet from here, which is the first edition of something you already mentioned, The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, ESPD.

   12. DMDennis McKenna25:07

       Right.

   13. TFTim Ferriss25:07

       And that was from 1967. I have the updated... I shouldn't say updated, but a second volume from 2017, which you organized, which was a 50th anniversary.

   14. DMDennis McKenna25:17

       Right.

   15. TFTim Ferriss25:18

       Could, could you speak to perhaps the, the appeal of science? Because what I've noticed in the, let's call it the psychedelic ecosystem, is that you have purists in many different silos, if that makes sense.

   16. DMDennis McKenna25:34

       Mm-hmm.

   17. TFTim Ferriss25:35

       And part of the reason I, I've been so excited to spend time with you is because you have been a, a boundary walker of sorts across these different silos. What is it that drew you most to science and the scientific method, in addition to some of the facets perhaps represented by Castaneda's work in some respect?

   18. DMDennis McKenna25:59

       I think the 1967, 1968 were, like, pivotal years for me in terms of my discovery of my professional direction and my professional interests, as well as being psychedelics. These are also very personal things. But that year, 1968 is the year that these two books came across my desk. The Teachings of Don Juan, the first edition that my brother gave me for my 18th birthday, and then The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, which I am not even sure, I don't even remember where I originally got the first edition, but that had come across my radar a few months earlier. And these two books were very important for me in terms of framing my interests. It made me aware that there was this ethnographic background or these traditional backgrounds, even though we probably most people agree that Castaneda made a lot of this stuff up. Didn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. It made it clear that there was a body of traditional knowledge around the use of these things. Whether what he described was accurate or not didn't matter. That was one page, one side of the frame. And then The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs made me aware that a lot of this was about chemistry and plants and pharmacology and molecules and, and, you know, a more hard science, biologically oriented aspect to it. So these two things seemed to fit together very well, and I thought ethnopharmacology is a real thing, you know. At least to the extent that this book exists, it's a real thing.

   19. TFTim Ferriss27:53

       And could you define ethnopharmacology?

   20. DMDennis McKenna27:56

       Ethnopharmacology, there's various definitions of it. The one I like is kind of tortured.

   21. TFTim Ferriss28:03

       [laughs]

   22. DMDennis McKenna28:03

       It's kind of long, but, but I'll explain why I like it. So ethnopharmacology is the interdisciplinary, by definition interdisciplinary, scientific investigation of biologically active substances used or observed by humans in traditional societies. And the reason it's so tortured is it's not always about plants. It's not always about medicinal plants. It's not always about things that humans ingest. For example, arrow poisons. Totally legitimate kind of subject for ethnopharmacology. And then traditional societies kind of limits the scope. We're talking about not... I mean, in some sense, all of pharmacology is ethnopharmacology because it's people doing it, you know. But we're talking about traditional knowledge, indigenous knowledge, and that sort of thing. That's the formal definition of ethnopharmacology that I like.

   23. TFTim Ferriss29:05

       And I think it's also worth highlighting for folks, and you would have, I'm sure, dozens or hundreds of examples, how many commonly used compounds or drugs have come out of, in some form, ethnopharmacology, whether it be aspirin or you mentioned dart poisons, that, you know, curare leading then into anesthesia.

   24. DMDennis McKenna29:30

       Mm-hmm.

   25. TFTim Ferriss29:31

       And the list just goes on and on and on. There are so many things that we take for granted-

   26. DMDennis McKenna29:36

       Right

   27. TFTim Ferriss29:36

       ... that have their origins in these places.

   28. DMDennis McKenna29:39

       The whole spectrum really of when you're talking about natural products, especially for things like CNS active natural products and so on, they come out of a cultural context. We know about these things because they have a cultural context, and if you look at even just herbal medicines, herbal remedies, every one of these things that you can buy in the, in the drugstore or the health food store has a story behind it, has a cultural backstory. And then entrepreneurial forces and commercial forces take that and develop products out of it. For example, kava kava is a good example Of that. I mean, it's now a supplement and you can buy it in health food stores. It's a very useful muscle relaxant and sort of tranquilizer. But it comes out of the context of Polynesian traditional medicine. Many, many things are that way. So there's always a cultural backstory. That's what I like about ethnopharmacology. It ties those kinds of things together with the nuts and bolts side of it. What are the active ingredients? What's the chemistry? What's the pharmacology? So on.

7. 30:58 – 39:48

   Ayahuasca pharmacology beyond “DMT + MAOI”: harmine and tetrahydroharmine

   1. TFTim Ferriss30:58

      If you don't mind, I know this is a bit stochastic, but I would love to jump into this volume, the 50th anniversary volume of The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. And just as background, and please correct me if I get any of this wrong, but the, the 1967 gathering was subsidized by the US government. I think it was the... Was it the NIMH?

   2. DMDennis McKenna31:20

      NIMH, that's right. National Institute of Mental Health.

   3. TFTim Ferriss31:23

      And so you had this gathering of titans of sorts to discuss exactly as the title would imply, The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, after which a volume was produced, printed, and sold by the US government-

   4. DMDennis McKenna31:37

      Mm-hmm

   5. TFTim Ferriss31:37

      ... which included the findings. And suffice to say, shortly thereafter, you have the Nixon administration, the Controlled Substances Act, and game over. [chuckles]

   6. DMDennis McKenna31:47

      Right.

   7. TFTim Ferriss31:48

      And then you organized this 50th anniversary. And just to give people an idea of the contents, and also I want to tell people, if you are interested in the science, this is published by Synergetic Press. You can find it on the Synergetic Press website as well as on Amazon. This is a beautifully produced double volume where you have the original 1967 and then the 2017 edition. The contents are just fascinating. And one of them that I'd love to dig into, and it doesn't necessarily have to-- our discussion doesn't have to be reflective exclusively of the content in this, Broad-Spectrum Roles of Harmine in Ayahuasca by Dale Millard. Could you speak to some of the more recent findings related to ayahuasca, which could include this discussion of harmine? But I think a lot of folks have assumed that ayahuasca as this psychedelic brew principally containing Banisteriopsis caapi, this vine, and a plant source containing DMT like chacruna or-

   8. DMDennis McKenna32:49

      Mm-hmm

   9. TFTim Ferriss32:49

      ... other Psychotria viridis, that the, the vine really just serves to render the DMT orally absorbable or active. But it seems like there's a lot more to the story.

   10. DMDennis McKenna33:02

       It does do that. It, it-

   11. TFTim Ferriss33:04

       Yeah

   12. DMDennis McKenna33:04

       ... it does do that. It's the MAO inhibitor, monoamine oxidase inhibitor, that renders the, the DMT-containing admixture plants active. Because DMT itself, as you know, is not orally active if you just take it pure or if you make a tea of chacruna, one of these, and then drink it by itself. Nothing's going to happen unless you have an MAO inhibitor on board. But it turns out the alkaloids of Banisteriopsis, these beta-carbolines, are much more than just MAO inhibitors. For example, one of the primary alkaloids in, in ayahuasca is harmine. And harmine is a strong MAO inhibitor, but it also stimulates neurogenesis, which is nerve growth. And these are recent findings. Another constituent in ayahuasca is a related alkaloid called tetrahydroharmine, which is an MAO inhibitor, but also a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. So it has like SSRI-type activity and also some other unexpected things. For one thing, and this was, came out of our Huasca study in Brazil, it has long-term effects on the levels of the serotonin transporters in the brain. The, the serotonin transporters are the presynaptic molecules that take serotonin back up out of the synapse and recycles it and re-releases it. Well, like SSRIs, tetrahydroharmine inhibits that, but it also causes a long-term elevation in the levels of these serotonin transporters. And that was a unique finding. We didn't know what to expect, but that came out of the study, and it was kind of surprising. But then when we found this effect, you know, and this is all done, this is all in vitro. We took tissue samples, uh, platelet samples, and so on, and this was all done in the lab. But we found this persistent elevating effect on the serotonin transporters. We thought, "What does that mean?" It wasn't really clear. We were asking a naive question. Is there anything biochemical that makes regular ayahuasca drinkers different biochemically than normal people or other people? And this was one clear difference. We didn't really know what it meant. But then we looked into the literature and we found out there were a number of pathologies that were associated with abnormal deficits in the serotonin transporters. For example, various kinds of alcoholism, addiction, suicidality, even homicidal behavior, various kinds of behavioral pathologies, which happened to be the very pathologies that many of the people in our UDV study were saying ayahuasca had saved them, usually from alcoholism. That was usually their problem. And if they stayed in the church, in the supportive context, and drank ayahuasca regularly, then they stayed on track. And many, they were on track. These were very behaviorally, psychologically functional people, not sick. If they were sick, they were cured, and they attributed it to ayahuasca. And then in our in vitro studies, in a couple of- bioassays, we found that it was really tetrahydroharmine that was having this effect, and the course of action was over about two weeks. And my friend, Jace Callaway, who was one of the investigators on this and figured out how to do it, he had access to brain imaging technology at his laboratory in, in Finland. He was, uh, doing post-docs in, in Finland. So he tried taking tetrahydroharmine himself and imaging himself and showed, well, sure enough, it did raise the levels of these serotonin transporters on about a two-week cycle. And then if you stop taking it, it, it went back down to baseline.

   13. TFTim Ferriss37:19

       So does that mean on the two-week cycle that after one administration, the levels remained elevated for two weeks or that it required two weeks of administration to elevate?

   14. DMDennis McKenna37:28

       It required about two weeks of continuous administration-

   15. TFTim Ferriss37:32

       Hmm

   16. DMDennis McKenna37:32

       ... to bring it to that level. And that's kind of... That was the cycle that the UDV, customarily they took it every couple of weeks, not that they knew about this effect-

   17. TFTim Ferriss37:43

       Right

   18. DMDennis McKenna37:43

       ... but that was just their practice, you know.

   19. TFTim Ferriss37:45

       Well, I guess they knew about, in a sense, they indirectly knew about the effect, but not the mechanism, right? Is that-

   20. DMDennis McKenna37:50

       That's right.

   21. TFTim Ferriss37:50

       And, uh-

   22. DMDennis McKenna37:52

       That's, that's right

   23. TFTim Ferriss37:52

       ... and for, for people who don't know UDV, I'm probably gonna mispronounce it, but that's the União do Vegetal, something like that, one of the syncretic churches founded in Brazil.

   24. DMDennis McKenna38:01

       That's right. Yeah, I should have explained that. One of the syncretic churches, the group that invited us in to do this biomedical study in the early '90s. That was one of the chief findings. [dynamic music]

   25. TFTim Ferriss38:17

       Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best-performing days after the 2008 crisis, you would have missed out on 50%, five zero percent of your returns? Don't miss out on the best days in the market. Stay invested in a long-term automated investment portfolio. Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as robo-advising, and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. Wealthfront can help you diversify your portfolio, minimize fees, and lower your taxes. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Wealthfront's software constantly monitors your portfolio day in and day out, so you don't have to. They look for opportunities to rebalance and tax loss harvest to lower the amount of taxes you pay on your investment gains. Their newest service is called Autopilot, and it can monitor any checking account for excess cash to move into savings or an investment account. They've really thought of a ton. They've checked a lot of boxes. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to wealthfront.com/tim and open a Wealthfront investment account today, and you'll get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. That's wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term, and you can get started today at wealthfront.com/tim. [dynamic music] Does

8. 39:48 – 44:15

   UDV context: sacrament framing, secrecy around formulations, and political motivations

   1. TFTim Ferriss39:48

      the UDV differentiate between different types of brews for different purposes? My understanding is that these, some of the daimistas or some of the members or perhaps groups within Santo Daime, another one of these syncretic churches, do have different, I don't want to say admixtures, but concentrations of different things and different brews for different purposes. D- are you aware of, of that existing in, within the UDV?

   2. DMDennis McKenna40:17

      Yes. Yes, the UDV does have that. They do have different formulations and so on, and they don't talk about them.

   3. TFTim Ferriss40:26

      Yeah.

   4. DMDennis McKenna40:27

      I mean, we were not able to get any information out of them about that other than the fact that, yes, we do have these different formulations. I mean, we came up against a couple of interesting things about when we were dealing with the UDV, which was that they were very concerned that ayahuasca or ayahuasca, as they called it, be viewed as a sacrament-

   5. TFTim Ferriss40:55

      Right

   6. DMDennis McKenna40:55

      ... not as a medicine, you know. And so if you wanted to-

   7. TFTim Ferriss40:58

      Much less as a drug, right? That would be a big problem.

   8. DMDennis McKenna41:00

      Much less a drug. They didn't like the idea that you would study it as a drug. They were totally open to doing this biomedical study. But as far as going the next step and looking into mechanisms and, and that sort of thing, they were kind of conflicted about that. They could see the value of it, but then they didn't like the idea of godless science delving into their central mystery sacrament, you know. And I could understand that, but as a result of that, we, we lost some opportunities to do some interesting things.

   9. TFTim Ferriss41:36

      Totally. I wonder if that would be different now because my understanding, I think I got this from the book, is that, or maybe it was from different reading that I did of yours, that part of the reason for their cooperation was politically sort of legally motivated in the sense that they wanted the local/national government and potential policymakers to view this as beneficial. And so they were-

   10. DMDennis McKenna42:03

       Yes

   11. TFTim Ferriss42:03

       ... open to showing the benefits, but they didn't want reductionist science to, as you put it, remove the mystery by explaining some secular mechanism of action.

   12. DMDennis McKenna42:14

       Yeah. There was definitely a political aspect to this. That this is a big reason why they wanted this work to be done by outside investigators who presumably would, you know, if, if, if it was just UDV and there were scientists in the, in the UDV, it was a middle to upper class demographic segments, but they wanted people from the outside to be the chief investigators to avoid the perception that the work would be biased. And that's one reason I got invited and Charlie Grob Was the chief principal investigator. I invited him to do that, and he became that. So they wanted this regulatory agency called CONFIN, kind of a combination of the DEA and the FDA. They wanted to present data to CONFIN that showed that this was not a public health menace or danger, and also that it was beneficial or potentially beneficial. So there was definitely a, a political sub-agenda here. But as it turned out, I mean, we just did the science, and the science supported that it was beneficial. Almost all of our subjects had joined the UDV in a state of life crisis, and they felt like the medicine, the tea, as they called it, and the very supportive context of the UDV, they said that's equally necessary, but they felt like that was a vessel for redemption, essentially, and turning their lives around. And it's a complex thing. It's a complicated matter.

   13. TFTim Ferriss44:01

       Uh, I'm endlessly fascinated by the, uh, the syncretic churches that use ayahuasca as a sacrament. As I think, there's so much that could be learned when you have these relatively large groups consuming twice per month.

   14. DMDennis McKenna44:12

       Mm-hmm.

   15. TFTim Ferriss44:12

       I mean, it's just an incredible opportunity.

   16. DMDennis McKenna44:15

       Mm-hmm.

9. 44:15 – 48:06

   Many “ayahuasca”s: admixture diversity, dietas, and the McKenna Academy’s research goals

   1. TFTim Ferriss44:15

      Question for you around ayahuasca, because, uh, I think in the... We've already alluded to this, but in the minds of some, ayahuasca is one thing, right? It's like a, it's like an old fashioned that is always made the same way. But there are-

   2. DMDennis McKenna44:30

      Right

   3. TFTim Ferriss44:30

      ... many different cocktails that could be called ayahuasca. And in The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, you talk very briefly about, and I'm not sure if you called this in the book, but chakrun panga, which is also, I think it's a Diplopterys cabrerana. Is that how that's pronounced?

   4. DMDennis McKenna44:47

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TFTim Ferriss44:47

      I'm probably getting-

   6. DMDennis McKenna44:47

      Diplopterys.

   7. TFTim Ferriss44:48

      Diplopterys. Ah.

   8. DMDennis McKenna44:49

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss44:49

      So many words I only read. I never hear them said.

   10. DMDennis McKenna44:51

       Close enough. Close enough. [laughs]

   11. TFTim Ferriss44:54

       [laughs] Which by some, like the, the awajun, is called yagé, and it's a different plant from the chakrun. Did, did you ever have the opportunity to consume ayahuasca with the chakrun panga?

   12. DMDennis McKenna45:07

       Yes. Yes. Yeah.

   13. TFTim Ferriss45:08

       E- experientially, did you find it to be different?

   14. DMDennis McKenna45:11

       Well, I only consumed it a few times. I found it to be, uh, shorter acting and, you know, in terms of the visionary stage of the experience, and also more intense. So there's something pharmacokinetically going on there with the absorption of it. But people are mistaken if they think ayahuasca is one thing. Ayahuasca is a very complex, in the cultural context, it's a very complex thing. There are many varieties of ayahuasca, the vine. There are then all these admixture plants, some of which contain DMT and varieties of those, and then a whole pharmacopoeia of other admixture plants that are more or less associated with ayahuasca. They're part of the dietas, which is a common practice in the Amazon. You learn about the properties of other medicinal plants by taking them, and then you take ayahuasca, either in combination or after you take them, and you learn about their properties from the visions that ayahuasca gives you about their... So ayahuasca is like the pipeline to plant wisdom in a certain way, to tap into this, I don't know what you might call it, Gaian mind that's represented by these many admixture plants. So there's a whole lot of work left to be done with ayahuasca and looking into more depth than we were able to look at at that time. That's one of the projects that we're trying to get off the ground with the McKenna Academy. We want to do a very extensive phytochemical and ethnobotanical survey of, of different ayahuasca brews, document their preparation, document the plants that go into them, and then follow that up with bioassays and, and just get a better handle on the varieties of these different brews and their uses. Why would we care? Why do we wanna do this? Well, it's gathering knowledge. It's gathering information. But the potential practical outcome of this is that you can formulate brews that might be specific for different types of disorders. You know, maybe some work better for addiction, some work better for trauma, some work better for depression or that sort of thing. All of this is kind of supported by the folk knowledge, but there's been nothing like a controlled study of any of this. It's very hard to get funding to study ayahuasca in a clinical setting because it's not a pure compound. It doesn't lend itself to the same kind of double-blind placebo controlled protocols that you can use with something like psilocybin. It's complicated.

10. 48:06 – 54:24

    Brugmansia/Datura risks: delirium, scopolamine, and “brujería” warnings

    1. TFTim Ferriss48:06

       It is very, very, very... Seems very complex. Uh, I'd love to ask you about one particular plant, which... Well, it's hard to tell them apart sometimes because it depends on the, [chuckles] the orientation. Uh, you know, it could be Datura metel or could be Brugmansia. I wanna ask you about Brugmansia, uh, also called Floryponde or Toé. Do you think there's a place for that? It scares the hell out of me, and I know it's, um, sometimes used, but what, what is your position, if any, on, on Brugmansia?

    2. DMDennis McKenna48:38

       Well, first of all, you're right to be scared. [laughs] You know, this is a very dangerous plant. It is not only toxic, but it produces a kind of delirium. It's not a psychedelic I sometimes say in my lectures, it's a true hallucinogen, but not psychedelic. By that I mean, psychedelics, you see hallucinations sometimes behind the eyes or whatever. You usually know that these things are hallucinations. With Brugmansia, which used to be called... The genus is very close to Datura. In fact, they used to be classified as Datura. But Datura, the experiences that you have, you see hallucinations, and you cannot tell if they're real or not. And so it, in that sense, it's a true hallucinogen, but it's not psychedelic. And it is-- it's produces a state of profound disorientation and delirium, essentially. So it's used very badly. It's used as a date rape drug and things like that in Brazil and Colombia, and it's often associated with brujería in the ayahuasca tradition. In other words, black magic, sorcery. And if you take a brew of ayahuasca that contains Datura or Brugmansia, you can tell because it causes this dry mouth sensation, which is typical of these anticholinergics like, like Datura.

    3. TFTim Ferriss50:18

       Is that the sc- like the scopolamine and so on?

    4. DMDennis McKenna50:20

       Exactly.

    5. TFTim Ferriss50:21

       Yeah.

    6. DMDennis McKenna50:21

       It's, it's scopolamine. So you can tell. And if you're taking ayahuasca that's got toe, is the traditional word for, for these things. Toe, T-O-E, accent. That's a good sign that you're dealing with a brujo, and that's a good sign that you should get the hell out of there.

    7. TFTim Ferriss50:39

       [laughs]

    8. DMDennis McKenna50:40

       You know?

    9. TFTim Ferriss50:41

       Yeah.

    10. DMDennis McKenna50:41

        Because they do not have your best interests at heart and, or unlikely to. That said, uh, you have to acknowledge that it has a place in, in this whole ayahuasca complex, and there may be people that can, practitioners that can use it beneficially. But my own experiences with Datura, which you've probably read about in the book-

    11. TFTim Ferriss51:06

        Yeah

    12. DMDennis McKenna51:07

        ... you know, that scared me away. I mean, I had-

    13. TFTim Ferriss51:09

        Horrifying. Yeah

    14. DMDennis McKenna51:10

        ... no idea what I was getting into. And I was-- we were very lucky. We could have killed ourselves. [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss51:17

        Yeah, there are documented fata- lots of documented fatalities with both of those. Uh-

    16. DMDennis McKenna51:22

        Yeah

    17. TFTim Ferriss51:22

        ... y- and I, I think it's, uh... you know, I wanted to mention to bring that up just because there are risks associated with a lot of these things.

    18. DMDennis McKenna51:32

        Yeah.

    19. TFTim Ferriss51:32

        Documented fatalities with tobacco over ingestion, tobacco juice in the Amazon.

    20. DMDennis McKenna51:38

        Mm-hmm.

    21. TFTim Ferriss51:38

        Uh, you have to be really, really careful. And, you know, I wanna come back to a second to this kind of hired gun aspect, I think as you put it [laughs] uh, in the book, in the world of vegetalismo and in this, let's just call it the medicine world in South America. It, it's not the case that everyone is focused. It's actually rarely the case that [laughs] practitioners are exclusively focused on how we perhaps view these medicines in North America for healing, for the contending with and processing of trauma. The cosmovision and the use case is much, much broader. And I just wanna mention one more thing, which is even if you don't believe in black magic or anything like that, you can believe in manipulation. And the Brugmansia, like you mentioned, in Colombia as one example and elsewhere, although I think that people are kind of hip to this and law enforcement is hip to it, so perhaps the use has declined. But it was very common that crime syndicates would take the Brugmansia, extract or somehow purify the scopolamine, then they would have prostitutes or other people blow the powder into the faces of victims.

    22. DMDennis McKenna52:57

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    23. TFTim Ferriss52:57

        And this is, this is the crazy part, uh, just that I wanna highlight for folks, that after which sometimes these victims would be brought to their own home. They would help the perpetrators load everything in their house into a loading van, and they would appear totally normal to, say, the doorman and so on.

    24. DMDennis McKenna53:16

        Mm-hmm.

    25. TFTim Ferriss53:17

        And twelve hours later have no recollection of what they did.

    26. DMDennis McKenna53:21

        Right.

    27. TFTim Ferriss53:21

        I mean, it's, it's wild. I mean, it brings up kind of these visions of The Serpent and the Rainbow. Like, these are... the-- it's, it's, it's crazy to think about.

    28. DMDennis McKenna53:29

        It, it is. They appear totally normal, except that they're helping load all the furniture into the elevator at 3:00 in the morning, [laughs] you know-

    29. TFTim Ferriss53:38

        Yeah. Yeah, yeah

    30. DMDennis McKenna53:39

        ... to be... Yeah. Uh, I think it was vice.com that ran this-
11. 54:24 – 58:14

    Ayahuasca tourism’s mixed impacts: ceremony changes, inequality, and over-harvesting

    1. TFTim Ferriss54:24

       It really is so fascinating and simultaneously sometimes terrifying to go really deep into the rabbit hole with this. Could you speak to traditional use of plant medicine and ayahuasca? And, you know, I'm hearkening back to the mention of the sort of non-inherent good nature of practitioners or ayahuasca, doesn't... the non-inherently bad nature, sort of this neutral [laughs] available for hire aspect in some instances that I think a lot of people are not aware of. Could you sort of speak to, to that a bit?

    2. DMDennis McKenna54:59

       There are brujos, there are people who don't really have your best interests at heart, and there are other people, other practitioners who really are amazing healers.

    3. TFTim Ferriss55:11

       For sure.

    4. DMDennis McKenna55:11

       And they can help a great deal of people. But the thing is that the context of traditional use has changed due to outside cultural influences. Because like anything else, the people want to give the extranjeros, the ayahuasca tourists or whatever, they want to give them their money's worth. And so the nature of the ceremonies changes, has changed in response to this. I mean, back in the day before there was anything like it, when ayahuasca usage was still kind of a, a tribal-based tradition, there wasn't all this outside influence, it was the shaman who took ayahuasca, not the people. Rarely would the ayahuasca be given to a person that came to the ceremony unless there was some specific illness or something they wanted specifically to be treated. But it was the ayahuasquero who had the visions that downloaded the information about the plants and other kinds of practices they might engage in to help people with healing. Well, that's all changed. The outside influence of the global culture. I mean, people are not gonna go to South America and spend all this money to sit and watch somebody take ayahuasca. [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss56:35

       [laughs]

    6. DMDennis McKenna56:35

       You know? They are there to have the experience, and that's okay. I think it's just fascinating what we're seeing go on now with the ayahuasca tourism thing. It's definitely a complex thing. It's not necessarily a completely bad thing or a completely good thing. It's, it's a mixed bag because many people are helped by this, and all the tourists coming down, they bring economic benefits to these communities, but then those are not equitably distributed. You get a situation where the local ayahuasquero, who used to be just some guy or some gal that was a person in the village who kind of did this work on the side, and they had their own livelihood, farming, fishing or whatever. Well, now these people are kind of superstars, and they get a lot of income. It generates a lot of jealousy within the community where that can happen.

    7. TFTim Ferriss57:33

       They also get priced out of the local market, right?

    8. DMDennis McKenna57:36

       They get priced-- Exactly. They get priced out of the local market. There is, uh, pressure on the resource base. Uh, ayahuasca and the admixture plants are being over-harvested, and there's not enough effort being made to really make sure the sources are sustainable. But that's changing. The market is adjusting to this. But these, these changes take place over-- they take years. And there are some very hopeful trends now. People are becoming more aware of some of the issues with over-harvesting and so on.

12. 58:14 – 1:08:14

    Why 500+ sessions: ongoing learning, “reset vs maintenance,” and beta-carboline hypotheses

    1. TFTim Ferriss58:14

       Let me pull another paragraph here, and then, uh, I wanna ask you a question about some of your personal experiences. And this is related to the science that was brought up earlier.

    2. DMDennis McKenna58:25

       Sure.

    3. TFTim Ferriss58:25

       "There are many things in heaven and earth that are beyond the ken of science and may remain so forever. Anyone who has taken psychedelics seriously or has had other transcendent experiences is likely to share that conclusion. At the same time, science remains the most effective method for asking questions of nature and getting back answers that can be tested and validated." So you, you fascinate me s- on so many different levels. And I've actually read much more of your writing than I have read the writing of your brother. And part of the Venn diagram that makes you such a subject of interest [chuckles] to me-

    4. DMDennis McKenna58:58

       [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss58:58

       ... is the, the scientific, let's call it the esoteric, and then the personal. And I've heard in other interviews you talk about, when prompted, you don't just volunteer this, but when people ask about the number of sessions you have done with, let's say, ayahuasca, it seems to number, even though you don't keep track, in the five hundred plus-

    6. DMDennis McKenna59:23

       I'd say so

    7. TFTim Ferriss59:23

       ... range.

    8. DMDennis McKenna59:24

       Yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss59:24

       Something in that range. And as far as I know, you're not a member of one of the syncretic churches-

    10. DMDennis McKenna59:31

        Nope

    11. TFTim Ferriss59:32

        ... uh, where people would drink twice a month. So people can do the math. If someone does that for decades, it adds up.

    12. DMDennis McKenna59:37

        Yeah.

    13. TFTim Ferriss59:37

        I would love for you to speak to, because many people will hear that and they'll say, "Well, wait a second. You do it once, it changes your life, and then you're kind of done. Why on earth would you ever do it so many times?" And I would just love to hear you speak to that.

    14. DMDennis McKenna59:49

        Partly it's because of the context in which I have used ayahuasca and brought other people to South America to have these experiences. I've organized retreats and that sort of thing. So I'm one of those-- I'm guilty. If you want to point at the people that have fostered ayahuasca tourism, I've certainly contributed to that. I'm a little conflicted about it. So when I do these retreats, then I drink. People expect me to drink, and I do drink. The other reason is, I think every time you take it, maybe this is the more valid reason, every time that you take it, or most times that you take it, not every time you take ayahuasca is gonna be a peak experience. I mean, there's lots of times when it's disappointing and you just get sick and the brew is bad or whatever. But it has a lot to teach us. There's a lot to learn from ayahuasca. And even though you've taken it multiple times, you still keep getting new insights or new... I mean, the experience seems worthwhile, and so I keep taking it. Maybe I'm thick-skulled. Maybe I- Maybe other people have an easier way to assimilate the lesson and say, "Yeah, I got the message. Okay. I don't need to do this anymore." I've come close to that a couple of times, but I think Ram Dass was the, uh, well, famously said, or maybe it was Alan Watts, I'm not sure, who said, "Once you get the message, hang up the phone."

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:01:24

        Right.

    16. DMDennis McKenna1:01:24

        And I sort of think I disagree with that. I think, in other words, the message is not the same every time. There is no standard message, and this is a dynamic interaction with, with the plants that you're learning from. Indigenous people talk about plant teachers, and you can get into the weeds about whether that's a valid concept. Are they really intelligent? Are they not? The point is, it doesn't really matter whether the plants, the ayahuasca opens up some part of yourself that may present as something not the self, but that knows things, has information to transfer. It doesn't really matter. What I say is the information good. So every time you take it or when you take it, there's really a bottomless well of things to still be thought about and, and assimilated and so on. So I kind of don't believe in the hang up the phone approach. My approach would be, I guess, keep listening. Keep listening, because a lot of what you might hear will be stuff that you've heard before, but there may be new things that come along that make it worth it to stay engaged. And so that's how I relate to it. It's not a waste of time to keep listening.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:02:54

        And you've also noted that, and they're-- you're not the only person, uh, Luis Eduardo Luna and others have, have also noted that these habitual consumers of ayahuasca often seem to remain exceptionally sharp and lucid into older age.

    18. DMDennis McKenna1:03:12

        Mm-hmm.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:03:13

        And as I've thought about this and spoken with people who have a lot of experience like yourself, it seems like there are kind of different frames through which you can look at this experience. One is almost like the replacement of a malfunctioning hip. So you have a hip replacement, it's one and done.

    20. DMDennis McKenna1:03:30

        Mm-hmm.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:03:31

        Maybe you need it again ten years later, but that's-

    22. DMDennis McKenna1:03:33

        Mm-hmm

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:03:33

        ... that's it. That's the hang up the phone approach. And then there, there's this way of looking at it almost like going to the gym. There are all these use cases historically that seem to at least offer other use cases, like the use of ayahuasca for hunting, let's just say.

    24. DMDennis McKenna1:03:51

        Right.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:03:52

        And, you know, another one that kind of occurred to me as I talked to some of these folks who drink, you know, in South America, the, some, some people drink four, five, six times a week. And it's almost like you could, let's say, live in New York and go to Japan and study things in Japan in the hopes that you can bring it back to New York and apply it in your life in New York.

    26. DMDennis McKenna1:04:15

        Mm-hmm.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:04:15

        But you could also go to Japan and just get to know Japan [chuckles] and the culture-

    28. DMDennis McKenna1:04:19

        Mm-hmm

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:04:20

        ... and how to operate in that space. And I'd love to hear you speak to, outside of the groups that you bring down where, where you are expected to drink, how do you decide when to drink?

    30. DMDennis McKenna1:04:34

        Well, just usually the occasion presents itself. It's rare that I would come to one of these places and not drink or... Just when it seems appropriate is when I decide. And if I'm in a situation where ayahuasca is being drunk, then I would probably drink it. And I tend not to go after it outside of a ceremonial context. And even for a while, I would say, "Well, I don't even drink it in the States or Canada. I just confine it to South America when I'm down there." But then I can't really stick to that because there are opportunities here. And now I go to a place called, uh, Saltera in Costa Rica, which is one of the higher profile ayahuasca retreats. I'm, I'm an advisor to Saltera and I, I like the way they're doing it. I think they're very ethical about in their approach to all this. And, uh, so it's a matter of opportunity rather than anything else when it seems appropriate. But to your, what you alluded to before about how it can be... I- in some ways, ayahuasca and a lot of psychedelics can be a big reset, but then there is the maintenance part of it and the, the work we did with the UDV and the finding about the modulation of these serotonin transporters is really an eye-opener, because it, what that speaks to is that regular use of ayahuasca can actually repair some of these deficits. In fact, it may be the only drug or medicine that can do that. I think peak experiences can be major reset moments, and I think this is part of the therapeutic profile of a lot of psychedelics. They basically get you out of your default mode network. They get you out of your personal reference frame. They let you look at situations from a slight remove, and you have insights as to your existential situation, whatever it might be. Not all psychedelic experiences, not all ayahuasca experiences are necessarily these peak experiences, you know. And they don't have to be. They can be beneficial, and they can help you remember, maybe is a more accurate term, some of the insights you had from previous experiences. And then I think there's a physiological aspect, too, particularly with ayahuasca, like this modulation of the serotonin transporters and so on. And neurogenesis, you mentioned that a lot of practitioners, ayahuasceros seem to be unusually sharp and lucid even though they're maybe of advanced age. And I think that is a reflection of ayahuasca. I think that in general, I am kind of a skeptic about this whole microdosing fad. I have my doubts about it. But in the case of ayahuasca, I think microdosing might make sense, not for the hallucinogenic psychedelic effects, but for the things the beta-carbolines do for your nervous system. You think of them as kind of a nerve tonic, and keeping the serotonin transporter levels elevated is probably a, a very good thing, guarding against depression and that kind of stuff. So a- again, just like with the plants and the chemistry, there's lots to be learned about the pharmacology of ayahuasca, too.

13. 1:08:14 – 1:24:23

    La Chorrera aftermath and the real risk of destabilization: integration, set/setting, and intervention

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:08:14

       So, so I want to talk about the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. We're gonna spend a, a good amount of time on that. Before we get there, though, since we're talking about some of the possible benefits of, in this case, ayahuasca, I want-- I would love to discuss perhaps the other side of the coin. And I know that the experiment at La Chorrera does not relate to ayahuasca specifically, but I'd like to... And I know you've described this many, many times. We don't have to spend a ton of airtime on it. But the-- I'm gonna read a paragraph, actually two paragraphs, and then we can use that as a way of backing into it, if that's okay. Here's the prelude to the chapter that introduces the experiment at La Chorrera, which again, we don't have to spend too much time on, but just enough to kind of frame this. "In some respects," quote, "In some respects, everything in life before we arrived at La Chorrera was a prelude to the events that engulfed us there, and everything afterwards has been a reflection of them. Terence chronicled the events in True Hallucinations. Though his account may seem unlikely and bizarre, I believe it is largely accurate, even if interpretations vary as to what it all meant. I can't vouch for every detail, if only because," and this is the part that I'm just gonna highlight here, "I was lost in hyperspace for much of the time or overwhelmed by psychosis, again, depending on interpretation. Anyone with an interest in the facts," in quotation marks, "of our story, if the word even applies, should regard Terence's narrative as required reading." And then we flash forward to much later in the book. Quote, "Terence mentions that on March twentieth we all celebrated at one of Bogotá's finer restaurants, and that the others agreed I was 'totally back,' quote, unquote. They weren't aware that in my mind I was in telepathic communications with all the waiters and that our dishes were being wafted to the table by telekinesis. Rather than alarm them, I kept that to myself. But except for a few episodes like that, I was doing all right." Okay. There's, there's a lot to discuss here. I have personally experienced many upsides to psychedelic use, including ayahuasca. I've also been put into hyperspace, as you put it, on a few occasions or have become, say, destabilized [chuckles] -

    2. DMDennis McKenna1:10:25

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:10:25

       ... if we wanna be a little less charitable. And I, I have friends who have become destabilized af- dietas in some cases, using ayahuasca in other cases. In some cases from LSD, we don't have to go to South America for this.

    4. DMDennis McKenna1:10:38

       Right.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:10:38

       For weeks, months at a time. And I would love to just hear you perhaps expand a little bit on your personal experience and if you have had more experiences like this, so that people can be aware that this is kind of one of the cards in the deck.

    6. DMDennis McKenna1:10:53

       It is one of the cards in the deck, and people should be aware that this is a possibility, which is one reason why it's important to have a strong ritual environment, a strong ritual context, and a ayahuasquero, a practitioner that kind of knows what they're doing, 'cause they can keep you on track and gets you out into hyperspace and gets you back, and that's kind of the whole essence of shamanism. I have not, since La Chorrera, had experiences that have kept me three sheets to the wind, if you will, for weeks at a time. It was not particularly pleasant and, you know, I mean, at the time I was, I was not concerned about getting back. All those concepts had kind of evaporated [laughs] , you know?

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:11:49

       [laughs] Yeah.

    8. DMDennis McKenna1:11:49

       But after I did get back and actually did get more restabilized and truly back in my body and in ordinary reality, on reflection, I realized what a dangerous place this was to be in, and that potentially it could have gone the opposite way, where I never did reintegrate. One of the reasons that I was able to reintegrate, I think, was because, because of the circumstances at La Chorrera, the process had to play out. There were people in our group who said, "This is totally out of control. We need to get these people out of here into a psychiatric facility and under treatment." And Terence and I both completely resisted that because we understood what was going on. At least we thought we did. We were in communication with each other and it was like, "No, you just need to let this play out." And, and I think that was the right thing. I mean, it was a... You know, I have a, a lecture I give, a talk I give. Was it a psychotic break? Was it a shamanic initiation, or was it an alien encounter [chuckles] ? Probably all three in a certain way. But it was closer to a shamanic initiation in a cert-- Not that I call myself a shaman, I'm not. But it's, the shamanic initiation is where you get to explore these dimensions and then You get back out. You get back onto your mundane feet in 3D, in ordinary reality and whatever that is. I'm kind of wandering here, but I, uh, I think the point is because of the fact that it was able to play itself out from beginning to end, it was actually a very healing experience, rather than being disorganized and incoherent for the rest of my life. Maybe some people say I am, but [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:13:57

       [laughs]

    10. DMDennis McKenna1:13:57

        I don't think so. But it was actually a healing experience, and, and I came back from it stronger. And I feel like I am, even though I've continued to take psychedelics ever since on occasion, I've never gone to that place again, and I'm kind of grateful for that.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:14:18

        [laughs]

    12. DMDennis McKenna1:14:19

        You know? And I also feel that I'm basically a fairly stable person.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:14:24

        Let me ask a couple of follow-up questions, because w- there are a few things that struck me in the book in describing this, and, uh, people should pick up the book and, and read all of it, including this chronicle.

    14. DMDennis McKenna1:14:36

        Only the Kindle version is available, as you know. They're-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:14:39

        Which is perfect for me because then I can take-

    16. DMDennis McKenna1:14:42

        Yeah, hard copies are no more

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:14:43

        ... yeah, hard to come by. So I, I can take notes and then export my notes, which is my favorite thing in the world to do. [laughs]

    18. DMDennis McKenna1:14:50

        Right.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:14:50

        As, so I have, you know, I have my 189 highlights, and then I went through and I added three asterisks to the things I wanted to follow up on. That's a six-page document. So I'm, I'm fully nerded out when it comes to my digestion of this book. And, uh, please fill in the details or fact-check me on this, but one of the things that struck me, and this also seems to be a pattern across people who ... And I don't want to characterize your experience this way, but those people who might come unmoored and stay adrift for longer periods of time, is there was a real density of consumption of psilocybe mushrooms-

    20. DMDennis McKenna1:15:23

        Mm-hmm

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:15:23

        ... when you were there. And my understanding is you guys-

    22. DMDennis McKenna1:15:26

        Mm-hmm

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:15:26

        ... had very little in terms of food, maybe some, [laughs] some instant noodles and rice, and you had this just almost ridiculous abundance of mushrooms due to these Cebu cattle who were, who were [laughs] down there. And so you just, you started spicing up meals and [laughs] so on-

    24. DMDennis McKenna1:15:45

        Yeah, yeah

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:15:45

        ... throwing in psychedelic mushrooms. [laughs] Uh, so you had just a, not only a high-dose experience, and there's a lot more to it, of course, but you had a really high density of continuous consumption.

    26. DMDennis McKenna1:15:57

        Mm-hmm.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:15:57

        Is that accurate? Is that fair to say?

    28. DMDennis McKenna1:15:59

        Yes. Yes. Yes. And so we never really, in this process, we never really did give ourselves a chance to get back to baseline, as you will, and look at, well, what's, what's going on here now that we're unstoned? We were never unstoned. Most of what happened with the experiment at La Chorrera, when we actually performed the experiment at La Chorrera, was post-mushroom.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:16:24

        Mm.

    30. DMDennis McKenna1:16:24

        We weren't eating them anymore.
14. 1:24:23 – 1:45:13

    McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy: mission, projects, fundraising, and research ethics

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:24:23

       Well, let's talk about the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, because you bring so many different perspectives and lenses and also toolkits to bear on these discussions. I would just love to hear about this new nonprofit and why you started it.

    2. DMDennis McKenna1:24:44

       The new nonprofit, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, which is www.mckenna.academy. Academy is the suffix of, of the website. And I wanted to create a ... Originally, the idea that, was it that we would start this academy, and that we would have a physical place in South America where we could do retreats, which we had been doing all along, and then conferences and different types of educational activities to explore natural philosophy. And, and a lot of it was the ideas that would be a modern mystery school, modeled after Eleusis. Or not modeled after it, but in that spirit, a place where people could come together and share ideas and marvel at the cosmos and marvel at existence and do what natural philosophers do. Natural philosophy being the precursor of science, what science Used to be before it became so quantitative and reductionist. Natural philosophy is the root of science, and it differs from science in that it admits that there are other ways of knowing rather than the reductionist way of knowing. That's valuable, but that's not the whole trick. This is the, uh, limitation of science. Science can understand segments of reality, but small, in small pieces, but it doesn't fit the whole picture together too well. So the Academy is basically, I guess the modern analog would be something like Esalen, a place where ideas and brilliant minds can come together and create dialogues. And of course, COVID changed our business model radically because we couldn't do these conferences and so on, so we've had to pivot and go online, and that's what we're doing now, just trying to create a, an online presence and continue our work. It's partly educational, it's partly research. We've got a project going on down in Peru right now. We're making a documentary about the current state of traditional medicine in the Amazon around Iquitos. And, uh, a lot of it is about this botanist that I've worked with for 40 years there, who's the curator of the herbarium at the university in Iquitos. And he's one of these people about which it's said, when a medicine man dies, it's as though a library has burned down. Well, he's not a medicine man in the sense that he's not a healer, but he has tremendous knowledge of the Amazonian flora and the medicine properties of these plants, and he knows many, many healers in the community. So we're trying to document his knowledge because even though as a scientist, he doesn't write things down. So we're trying to, through videography, make a documentary about what he knows, and then hopefully that will attract funding. We have big plans for this project. We call it the Knowledge Preservation Project. The first aspect of it is to make a short, relatively short documentary about this gentleman whose name is Juan Ruiz, and then to develop over the long term, what we want to do is work with the herbarium there and digitize the herbarium and try to make it into a world-class resource for plant research of all kinds that would be centered at the university. So this is all described in our website, and that's probably our biggest project right now for which we're seeking support.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:28:43

       Support. And so people can find that at mckenna.academy. I encourage everybody to check it out.

    4. DMDennis McKenna1:28:47

       Yes.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:28:47

       There are five key departments. Tell me if this requires updating, but you have therapeutics, education, retreats, R&D, and media. Is that still an accurate reflection or has that been modified?

    6. DMDennis McKenna1:28:59

       That's an accurate reflection, but then some of those things are kind of dormant at the moment, like the retreats-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:29:06

       Due to COVID

    8. DMDennis McKenna1:29:07

       ... due to COVID. I mean, eventually we want to get back to that. Media obviously is an even bigger part of it because the internet is our teaching platform now. Therapeutics, again, not so much because they're usually associated with the retreats, but education for sure and R&D. This project that we're doing with this, with this gentleman at UNAP, the university there, is in the category of R&D.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:29:36

       And the McKenna Academy is, is a public charity. Is that right? That in the sense that it's tax-exempt as a 501 [c] [3] ?

    10. DMDennis McKenna1:29:44

        It is. It is. It's a 501 [c] [3] tax-exempt organization chartered in the United States, even though I don't live in the United States anymore. I live close enough. I live in Canada now. But the, uh, the academy is, uh, incorporated in California as a 501 [c] [3] .

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:30:03

        And who is involved with the academy besides yourself? Are there any particular people who are acting as, as advisors or research, uh, collaborators?

    12. DMDennis McKenna1:30:15

        Oh, definitely. Yeah. We have a number of people that are associated with it. The woman who is the executive director, Cristina Chaya, lives in Peru, and I've worked with her previously on organizing retreats. So she continues to work with me. We have very good people on our board. One gentleman with lots of experience in the financial industry. Another woman is a corporate lawyer. So we have that expertise. And then we have just a fantastic bunch of advisors, one of whom is Alexandre Tannous, who you know very well. And Wade Davis is an advisor. Paul Stamets is an advisor. So we have a number of high-profile people.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:31:06

        Yeah, you have a strong, strong roster.

    14. DMDennis McKenna1:31:08

        Yeah, definitely.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:31:09

        What types of projects would be on the shortlist of things that you would like to engage with and explore, assuming that you have the resources to do so?

    16. DMDennis McKenna1:31:23

        Well, a couple of things are on the plate. So we've got this kind of long-term project, this knowledge preservation project, which we're beginning to brand it as BioGnosis, and that is... The focus right now is on the documentation part. But then the next phase, which will take much longer and cost a lot more money, is to Focus on the herbarium there, of which Juan Ruiz is the curator of this herbarium. So that's a long-term project that we wanna do. In the shorter term, we're working on developing an ethnobotany course in collaboration with the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica, and we're gonna be offering that course this fall. And one of the people that is working on that is a guy named Michael Coe, who is an ethnobotanist, and I was on his committee. He got his degree at the University of Hawaii, and he studied cultural keystone species in the Amazon around pucalpa, which is basically ayahuasca. He is going to be the main instructor in this course, which will be online. And then we're planning to do a virtual symposium, probably in August, on the Stoned Ape Theory.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:32:47

        [laughs] Indeed.

    18. DMDennis McKenna1:32:49

        And we're gonna do that because one of Terence's books, The Food of the Gods, is being reprinted again. I'm actually doing a online event with Michael Pollan and the publisher. We're doing a, essentially a podcast together, but then we're gonna do a one-day symposium on the Stoned Ape Theory and have some interesting speakers. I wrote a new forward for it, which I'll be happy to share with you. And we're gonna have this symposium because we're gonna revisit this whole idea, which actually, based on new discoveries, is more plausible than it was when Terence first proposed it. And that's what my forward is about, in part, is that we didn't know about the way that these psychedelics can create these hyper-connected neural architectures and neurogenesis and enhancing the connectivity in the neocortex and that sort of thing. And that was not known at the time Terence wrote the book. What was also not known was anything about epigenetics. And epigenetics provides an evolutionary mechanism by which these changes in neural architecture could be propagated through generations. And if you look at the environment that we now know from paleoclimatic data and that sort of thing, Northern Africa was a wet place couple of million years ago. And there was seasonal rainfall, there were cattle there, there were the ancestors of the modern cattle, and there were hominids. So the, the three variables in this environment did exist. What was the long-term impact of that? Well, you know, the, The Food of the Gods. It basically led to the origin of consciousness and the imagination.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:34:51

        Yeah. I read a draft of your intro, or maybe the final version, I don't know, but it's really a great exploration, review of more recent findings, but also a great exploration of language, images, imagination, consciousness, and then also-

    20. DMDennis McKenna1:35:09

        Mm-hmm

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:35:09

        ... the data to support this overlap of hominids with ungulates and coprophilic mushrooms [laughs] right?

    22. DMDennis McKenna1:35:17

        Right. [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:35:18

        It seems almost inevitable that our, our ancestors would have been munching on these and, uh, found them very, [laughs] very interesting and compelling on, on a lot of levels.

    24. DMDennis McKenna1:35:29

        Yeah, I think so. So, so yeah, I, I just think it's worth, uh, looking at this in the light of some new discoveries. I, I mean, you know, these things can never be proven, which actually makes them more fun because then you can make these wild claims and nobody can disprove them either [laughs] .

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:35:48

        [laughs]

    26. DMDennis McKenna1:35:48

        You know? So that's where we're at with that. But I think knowing what we know about neuroplasticity, was the word I was looking for, that psychedelics foster neuroplasticity. Epigenetics provides a mechanism for inheritance. And so I think that changes the speculation from plausible to maybe more than likely. [laughs]

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:36:12

        Yeah. This stuff is endlessly fascinating to me. And I wanna return for a second to the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy because you, you mentioned something that I just wanna underscore, and that is that to do these things, that is to further the Knowledge Preservation Project, Bionosis, the ethnobotany course, and many other things, you are currently looking for support. If you don't mind saying, if you can, is there a specific number that you have determined will allow you to pursue these projects with the, the resources required to really gain some degree of traction with, with them?

    28. DMDennis McKenna1:36:54

        Yes. I mean, we have, we have a rough idea. We're undertaking a capital campaign now, fundraising campaign. People should feel free to visit the website and donate if it grabs you, but we're looking to raise about six hundred thousand by the end of the year. And this is to support various projects like this. And then the herbarium digitization project, which is much more ambitious and much more expensive, and it's gonna stretch over a couple of years. What we're dealing with is essentially an herbarium, which is a gem, a scientific gem, but it's in a third-world developing country university, so there are a lot of deficiencies. For example, at this herbarium, there's like a hundred thousand specimens, but at least half of them aren't even mounted.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:37:51

        Hmm.

    30. DMDennis McKenna1:37:51

        So we want to get enough funds to Complete the herbarium essentially, and then link it into various online database resources for natural products, pharmacology, genomics, and so on. Just create an open access resource for anyone with an interest in Amazonian flora. You know, it doesn't have to be medicinal or psychedelic or whatever the interest. And that's probably gonna be a two to three-year project that'll cost somewhere north of a million dollars, but it will be well worthwhile. It's just, again, I'm a big believer in collections and collecting knowledge. That's the thing. Knowledge collections are important and, like, every plant that you can attach a piece of information to enhances the value of the plant, you know, and provides a reason not to drive it into extinction.
15. 1:45:13 – 2:02:46

    Closing: donations, advisors, science deepening mystery, and “remember how little you know”

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:45:13

       Well, Dennis, there are a million things that I can ask you. I, I didn't even get through 10% [laughs] of the-

    2. DMDennis McKenna1:45:19

       [laughs] Good

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:45:19

       ... questions that I-

    4. DMDennis McKenna1:45:20

       We'll have 10 more of these. [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:45:21

       Yeah. Yeah, so we have, we have space for many more conversations.

    6. DMDennis McKenna1:45:25

       Yeah.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:45:25

       Uh, I wanna say a f- a few things. One is that for those people listening who also want to sort of extend their exploration of these topics, I think Mark Plotkin has also done a lot of great work with the Amazon Conservation Team in his-

    8. DMDennis McKenna1:45:40

       Mm-hmm

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:45:40

       ... thinking about enabling and empowering those groups to sort of participate in, in prospecting and the preservation of, of knowledge. He's done a- all, he and his, and his wife and other people in the organization have done really great work. And I know you guys are friends and go back really, really-

    10. DMDennis McKenna1:45:59

        Oh, absolutely

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:45:59

        ... really, really far. And I also wanted to ask, so just to, just to confirm for people listening, donations to the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy are tax-deductible since they are donations-

    12. DMDennis McKenna1:46:10

        Yes

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:46:10

        ... to 501 [c] [3] . So I will-

    14. DMDennis McKenna1:46:12

        Yes

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:46:12

        ... the target of 600K, I will commit here to kicking that off with 50K of my own-

    16. DMDennis McKenna1:46:19

        My god

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:46:19

        ... USD. And I want to encourage people listening to consider doing the same. Because at 50K a pop, that would be 12 people. It could be done very easily. This is a early-stage bet, albeit in a nonprofit. So I, I don't expect, of course, I can't get any returns from this in a financial way. But I, I really view you as a pioneer who also has a high degree of biochemical and sort of ethnobotanical fluency, who can participate and reconcile and critically examine multiple spheres. And you have a history of producing really fascinating and, I think, important work, and I definitely encourage people to also grab The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. They're in a boxed set. If you just search Dennis McKenna on Amazon, it pops right up, and, uh, you can purchase it on Amazon Prime. It's a beautiful collection, and it will give you a taste of some of what Dennis has curated, and, uh, certainly you can find his writing everywhere else. But I will commit to 50K, and I encourage people to, uh, you know, this is not investment advice, it's a nonprofit. But I, I-

    18. DMDennis McKenna1:47:29

        Right

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:47:30

        ... I really view this as, as worthwhile. And you're coming into this also as someone who has proven a decades-long dedication to examining and studying various facets of psychedelics and beyond, not just limited to that, much like I think Schultes was also very, very well-versed in orchids and other things.

    20. DMDennis McKenna1:47:54

        He's one of the world's experts on orchids. That's right. Yeah.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:47:58

        Roland Griffiths, also a lot of people don't realize-

    22. DMDennis McKenna1:48:00

        Yeah

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:48:00

        ... even though he's known for his-

    24. DMDennis McKenna1:48:01

        Yeah

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:48:01

        ... psychedelic work with psilocybin at Hopkins, uh, one of the foremost experts in caffeine and caffeine metabolism. And so you, you have such a broad spectrum of expertise, I feel like this is worth supporting. So I commit to 50K, and I encourage people to take a close look.

    26. DMDennis McKenna1:48:19

        That's incredibly generous of you, Tim. Thank you. Thank you for that, and, and thank you for encouraging your listeners to contribute. If we get a few more donations in that range, we won't have to do a fundraising campaign [both laughing] because our goals will be pretty much met. And-

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:48:37

        Yeah

    28. DMDennis McKenna1:48:37

        ... we wanna be responsible stewards of these funds, you know? And in that regard, we're also open to people who, they may wanna support us financially, but we want more than just finances. We want advice. We want wise people. We're creating a, a, we call it the symbiotic circle, but a circle of advisors with connections to other supporters, but also ideas, like people like yourself, for example. I don't know if you're interested in being, joining our symbiotic circle, but, uh, you're certainly welcome to. And-

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:49:14

        Well, thank you. I like the sound, I like the sound of it. Symbiotic circle sounds like a good thing. [laughs]

    30. DMDennis McKenna1:49:18

        I'll, I'll send you information about all this stuff. I, I don't know how much time you have to go through all this stuff, but I'm gonna send you-

Episode duration: 2:02:57