[00:00:13] Speaker A: Welcome to Brainforest Cafe with Dennis McKenna.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Deborah Perry Schneider, known to her friends as Tango, is the co owner and publisher of Synergetic Press Limited and has published over 40 books in global ecology, regenerative agriculture, ethnobotany, psychedelic social justice since establishing it in 1984. In 1986, she was on the team that designed and built a large scale closed ecological system known as biosphere two, developing the publications and educational programs for the complex.
250,000 visitors a year came to see the facility in the early nineties. In 1990, she started the Biosphere Press, an imprint of the Biosphere two project, producing a dozen books and classroom curriculum for children on biospheres and biomes. She helped launch the first peer reviewed journal, enclosed ecological systems, life support, and biosphere science.
While at biosphere two, Deborah met Richard Evans Schultes, the grandfather of contemporary ethnobotany. He introduced her to the notion that plant wisdom was disappearing as the people who possessed that knowledge grew old and passed without the ability to pass on their wisdom.
She went on to publish his two books of photographs he made documenting people's use of plant medicine in the northwest, Columbia and Amazonia.
Deborah is currently a director and VP of the US nonprofit the Institute of Ecotechnics, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At Synergia Ranch, the institute owns the RV Heraclitus, an 84 foot ferro concrete chinese jump design which sailed 270,000 miles around planet ocean with two years up the Amazon on an ethnobotanical expedition inspired by Schultes between 1980 and 1982. Deborah currently lives at Synergia Ranch Organic Farm and Retreat center, where she lives, contributes to the farm operations when she came and continues publishing books.
So Deborah, welcome to the brain Forest Cafe.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Thank you. Dennis, thank you so much for having me on the brain forest cafe.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: It's great to see you. I'm very excited about this because we have so much to talk about, you know, give me a. I mean, in some ways we have a history that goes back. I knew about the Institute for Ecotechnics and the Heraclitus even before you joined the whole enterprise because I was on that ethnobotanical expedition up the Amazon, one of the first with Wade Davis in 1981. And I was a graduate student then and we were working out of Aquitos and the, the institute of the Heraclitus came to Iquitos and met with us. And way Davis had been designated the chief scientific officer of the expedition and that's, I'd met him before, but that was the first time I actually got to know him and spent some time with him in the field. And, you know, like all these expeditions, it had, nothing ever goes perfectly as planned, but it was actually very successful, even though the Heraclitus had rammed into a barge or been rammed by a barge on the way up the river. So it was in dry dock. But we were using another boat that the Heraclitus had and a couple that we rented at the dock in Iquitos. And we did a very successful expedition.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: It was an amazing, unique expedition that you did, too.
As I came to hear the story, learn more about the story, largely because I managed the archive for the institute, and I have all of the papers and photographs and film footage from those years when everything was documented. But there was nobody else doing anything like that. I mean, there was no ship like that out there doing anything. So it was a unique opportunity that Schultz saw for his students. And he said, ah, you know, go, go. You know, the chances of people going out and having a research platform in the Amazon in those days was pretty difficult. So I came to know Ud decades later. Actually, I just heard rumors about Dennis McKenna and Wade Davis, these characters. I also came into the Institute of Ecotech makes first conference was 1981. So we were both right around the same time. I guess that that makes us contemporaries, Dennis.
But the commission, the commitment to ethnobotany in developing the field of ethnobotany came very, very through, very strong during the eighties as a result of that expedition. And the ethnobotanical collections that you made three full sets that came to various different research institutions as a result of that. And I embraced what was clearly what motivated the institute to take the Heraclitus up the Amazon for two years. Was that disappearing lower of the Amazon on, nobody was talking about it. Schultz was very much ahead of the game and so wonderful the students that he educated in this field.
And as you and I talk about, oh, why are there more ethnobotanists out there, institutions for the study of plants and how we use plants. So our joint mission now is really.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: To help cultivate that and this problem continues. Ethnobiology, ethnobotany programs are being discontinued academic institutions when they should be expand, expanding. I mean, the University of Hawaii, where one of my best, where I attended, got my masters in the seventies, and then one of my best students, Michael Koh, got his PhD there, and he's now affiliated with the academy, but they terminated the ethnobotany program as soon as he got his PhD. So it's a horrible thing that this is happening and we have to raise awareness because not just the disappearance of biodiversity and the habitats, but it's the knowledge. The knowledge is disappearing and this is what needs to be preserved.
The Heraclitus and that whole Odyssey, the Heraclitus had quite a history before they ever came to the Amazon. The amazing thing to me is it's been till recently, till the last few years. It was on the ocean since 1973, more or less. Continue.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: 35 years. Yeah, 35 years. 270,000 nautical miles.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: And now it's in dry dock. You're on the far side of doing the renovation. It's got a new hull and I don't know how the fundraising is coming for that. I hope it's going well.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: We're getting there. We're getting there.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: That is an incredible story in itself.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: This is the famous Heraclitus that we're talking about. There's a picture of it right behind me.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yes, yes, exactly.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Ferrocement, you might ask, why is it one of the few handful of large ferrocement boats running around the ocean? Because safety is a very safe material. Also, when you get rammed by a log floating in the Amazon river, it doesn't crack the entire ship in half. It just makes a hole and then you can repair it with underwater epoxy.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really. I mean, you know, when I first came to, when I was doing my work in 1981, and we met up with the Heraclitus and the crew there, I'll tell you honestly, I thought you guys were nuts. You know, I mean, you are not affiliated with the time. But I thought, you know, these people do not know what they're doing, you know, and it took me a while to. It took me some years, actually, to understand.
In some ways, that was the point.
The Heraclitus people and the Institute for Ecotechnics was inspired, you know, and the whole thing, which I took a while to understand, this is about citizen science.
This was about people totally committed to helping the planet and doing what they can, bringing science, art, performance art, inspiration and all of this together.
And the wonderful thing about it is they didn't know what they were doing and that didn't stop them. They just keep doing it. And they did some amazing things. And it took me a long time to understand, really, what a visionary John Allen was, because it all kind of came from him. In some ways, this was his idea. And the Heraclitus is just one of those stories. And we're putting the links to the Heraclitus story and all the other links you shared with me that will be on the podcast. So I urge people to learn about it because it's really an inspiring story.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: You bring up a really point about today's, I think the tape, today's challenge for young people and is the lack of confidence in their ability to do exactly back in the days, granted, the conditions were far more favorable for people to go out there and experiment with their lives.
The idea that you have to be an expert or trained somehow to start something stops a lot of things from ever starting. So the idea of learning by doing was fundamental to these projects, which were demonstration projects. And so you have to start somewhere. I mean, that doesn't mean that people were actually set out to apprentice to masters and to skilled people, like skilled engine navigational captains, and to apprentice and to learn from masters, very much the apprentice system in terms of learning. So it wasn't that you just go out there and do something without any education whatsoever. You have to figure out, you have to talk to people that know, you have to learn how to do these things.
You got to start, you know, you.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Learn by doing, and it's very hands on. You learn so much more than you do sitting in a classroom. I mean, I was, you know, like a lot of my colleagues, I got my PhD. I spent, spent time in the classroom, but the real learning went on in the field. And you can go to the field. And I continue to urge people, whether you go academic or go freelance or whatever, spend time in the field, go out, talk to people who are not like you talk to people who live in these high biodiversity environments, see how their lives are and what their interactions with nature are. And you cant beat observation, and you cant beat doing John Allen, you know, and I don't want to give him all the credit, although he deserves a lot of it, but John Allen attracted a wonderful bunch of inspired people who got it, you know, who got what. His vision was very holistic, no real separation between art and science, you know, performance, and it's all part of a mix. And he, he had that global, you.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Used the word holistic because that's really where it was going towards, because Bucky Fuller was fancy. The end of education was with the beginning of specialization, and when the educational institutions started to just really try to specialize in different fields. And so that was, it was fair, good enough. People were going in that direction, but then we lost the generalist, and then people suddenly have no common sense or practical knowledge about things. So how do we find a balance in that and the idea of being more holistic thinking? In this late sixties, seventies, there was a big move. There was a complex ecological, complex ecological systems line of work that had started. The Odums were teaching whole systems economics of ecology, and it was starting to break out of the reductionist science approach to the study of naturalist systems, which are multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary. I have to say, ethnobody is one of the most interdisciplinary subjects for a specific subject that feel that there is. So the idea of being both, you have to. Classrooms are great, study is great. That feeds your intellectual mind, your intellectual being, but it's all intellectual unless you put your moving center into going out and doing something with your hands, and then you want to have something for your heart. So the idea that we are complex bees, but that we have different modalities, that we need to balance them, not just become an intellectual person without any practical real. So the idea was definitely go out and to try to get experience that would make a person become more balanced in their day to day life, as well as doing something constructive for the planet. So there was the cosmos and thinking about planetary systems and planetary stewardship, but there was also the individual and how to work on oneself to become a better steward of the biosphere.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Ultimately, right, and then ultimately.
Well, not ultimately, but shortly after you joined the Institute for Ecotechnics, you undertook this huge biosphere two project. Again, another project.
You didn't let the fact that you can never do this stop you. You guys went out and did it, you know, and it attracted a lot of admiration from the scientific community. It attracted a lot of criticism.
You know, it was a mixed bag. It was not perfect by any means, but you learned so much, and you.
The whole vision was really so much beyond what's even been done now. I mean, I remember talking to a person on the Heraclitus who passed away some years ago, but Robin Treadwell was her name, and she said, this is the rehearsal for the Mars project. And I was like, what? You're going to Mars? You people are crazier than I thought you were. But the interesting thing is now NASA and other groups have tried these trial runs where people live in these isolated environments, and they lock themselves up for a year or so, and they see how they can get along. They pretend like they're on Mars. Well, biosphere two was so much more advanced than anything like that, and that was 20 years ago.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: 30. 30 years ago, Dennis.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: 30 years ago.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a mystery of history.
So, yeah, there was a lot of pushback from, I call it the oil Garchy, because that was who was running around making decisions about the future fate of our planet. That now we know that 30 years later, they decided that they didn't care that unchecked fossil fuel emissions going into the atmosphere would cause irreparable, irreversible damage on the atmosphere, so that they knew then we were studying elevated parts. Elevated. We were studying all the elements of the atmosphere measuring inside biosphere two, a thousand different sensors. We were studying in parts per billion the atmospheric interactions between oxygen, CO2 and all the various parts of the atmosphere. So we had a really fine, incredible laboratory for global ecology. And it turns out that there were invested interests that didn't want people to actually know all that because we were studied elevated CO2. Back then, I think it was 280 or something, parts per million in the earth's atmosphere. CO2, now it's over 400, maybe it's a 500 now.
So in the last 30 years, we've had the most accelerated growth, and we were obviously ahead of our time. Johnny is a visionary, and so we bumped up against the forces that were somewhat, I would say perhaps threatened by this private research into studying everything and how it goes. There is one of the things that we were learning in just the two years we had it running. Two and a half years that we had it running. There is no way. There's no way inside of a closed system. It was a test of the Vernadsky theory of the biosphere.
Is there a life support system on the planet that is coevolutionaries and self sustaining? And yes, in fact there is.
And then also it was a model of the earth's biosphere, which had a technosphere designed. So the idea of a technosphere comes from the russian work. We worked very closely with the Russians, and Walaksky was a ukrainian born russian scientist that founded five major research institutions, venerated in the east, like Darwin is here to us in the west. Renasky was the first scientist to write about the theory of a biosphere. So we were testing that. And so we included in the design a technosphere, because obviously the earth has a non natural system that is now pretty much all the way around the planet, and we called it the technosphere. So that interaction between how can you design a technosphere that is in support of a biosphere was the bottom line. So we were starting to get the idea of natural capital. What is the value of natural ecosystem services and things like that? Into design. And that was hitherto on.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah, institutional science is always uncomfortable by people who are not part of that structure and who push the envelope.
But this is the way that knowledge advances. It advances by the efforts of people who dont know enough, to know that they dont know enough. Thats the important thing. That doesnt stop them. They just press ahead. And thats what I have came to admire about the Institute of Ecotechnics and the biosphere program and the whole thing.
You werent looking for grants. You werent looking for recognition, necessarily scientifically.
You were in the pure pursuit of knowledge, which is applied research.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Actually, we were developing technologies like air trons that were spin off technologies from what we developed, building biosphere two, how to make a closed ecological system. So we thought there was a huge market for little laboratory biospheres, for all of these chemical companies that want to do experiments without polluting the atmosphere. They could do it in a closed ecological system. You could see what the effect is on nature in a small system, instead of just, you know, trying it in your backyard. And. And we had air purification systems that were called soil bed reactors that we were designing for use in underground parking garages and things like that, where you would push that, you'd have air fans, because that was in the biosphere two design, because it was such a small system. If there was any toxic buildups like you get in garages and parking lots, you know, you just can't breathe the air. So how do you clean that? And then also, people used to be able to smoke in their offices and things in those years. So we had, we had one in my chain smoking partner's office next door to me. And it was just a plant in a thing with an air fan pushing through the air. I swear, it just cleaned up the air, like, within a week in that whole office system. So we were building technologies like that, and that was how we expected to get the return on investment. So it was a private investment company, and applied research was the mandate. That was confused very much by these scientists and the media through thinking that we were all pure research scientists, pure scientists. And that's what kept saying we didn't have a control. And so therefore, it wasn't science. But all of that was ridiculous.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. They didn't really understand what you were doing, but effectively, you did it. I mean, the things that you did in biosphere, you know, you were not only investigating the whole.
The impact of the.
Of being in this closed environment on the biospherians or whatever, you call them the actual people in the thing. There was the whole psychological aspect. And its interesting to me that whats emerging now with these other closed environment experiments is the chief problem with planetary colonization or going to Mars is people are not equipped for this. People can't spend time in these environments in that kind of isolation. And, you know, and you discovered that some of that too. I mean, it was hard, actually.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: We had some solutions to that after the first experiment. It was having diversity in the cultures, having a. And John's work after biosphere two was really in the ethnosphere and studying of the cultures around the planet. And he, you know, because we had not a very culturally diverse crew that just, they ate. Then the next crew, when we put in the second mission, we did, we diversified the cultures. And there's something that happens to the sensibility of the group when they're having to communicate with members of other cultures. So that was one of the key indications that they found.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: One of the key things, as well as you're simulating parts of the major components of the planetary biosphere, which these other experiments haven't even attempted to do that. But you had these desert and alpine and tropical biomes. And you were trying to understand how it all worked together.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a very difficult situation with NASA because they had such a resistance to the life systems. They were embedded in hydroponics and we were soil based agriculture.
But there's a bit of a hybrid thing for space travel that I think is changing somewhat. There was actually, at the time, there was something called the Mars underground. And yeah, we were definitely working on Mars bases and human exploration of space and trying to make contracts with.
There was no private space interest. Space Biospheres Ventures was the name of our company. And it was probably the first private space venture. Two of the biospherians went off to start their doing the space tourism stuff in Florida. Yeah, no, we had Mars on our radar very much front and center. And it's interesting to see the Challenger shuttle, the shuttle documentary now coming out 30 years later, looking back, because that really did impact the enthusiasm for biosphere two. We had the young astronauts, organizations and things like that. And a lot of that got impacted badly for that decade.
The idea of how to go out into space and to explore without having a means, a life support system with you that included some of the things that humanity has grown accustomed to, like having tomatoes or happy, you know, culture and things like that. It was, that was something that spacefristors ventures was. Was very much making sure that it was a whole package. And not just, you know, right. Not the snack lunch.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: A lot of this pioneering work has now been reflected in some of the work of another one of the major friends of the McKenna Academy, doctor Bruce Dahmer, whos an exobiologist and has designed orbiting biospheres for NASA, effectively capturing asteroids and turning them into little greenhouses.
Much of his inspiration comes from the biosphere two project. And I think, you know, anyway, I don't want to get off too far into what he's doing, but he's another visionary. He's another person that we're very happy to have on our team, basically. And we did a recent podcast with him. But I want to shift a little bit and talk about the synergetic press and because you've done all these things, but then the pseudogenic press, which you started, basically, you were in London, you started that. And that's been a huge catalyst, I think, for consciousness change and consciousness advance. You've kind of staked out. Well, the two major areas, I guess, correct me if I'm wrong, are psychedelics on the one hand, and then what you termed biospherics. You know, the whole environmental aspect of some of the publications that have come out of synergetic breasts are extensive, are significant, and if I can blow my own horn a little bit, you published the proceedings for the ethnopharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs 50th nursery, which is right behind you. So that is, we'll be very happy.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: To feature since it is such an amazing collaborative venture, this historical publication.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: It was indeed. We pub. You published the 1967 Proceedings and you published the 2017 Proceedings in that beautiful double volume book. And people can still order that off synergetic website.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: They can.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs was the most significant conference on this topic that had ever been held, when it was held in 1967, but it was a closed conference and we wanted to have an open conference, and we did, thanks in part to the help of, you know, your colleagues at the October Gallery in the UK. They hosted our conference team. And then of course, when I approached you about publish the proceedings, you were like, hell yes, bring it on.
And we had an interesting job, you know, and I, and then we have the ESPD 55 conference proceedings, which are somewhere in the pipeline. I don't know when it will be published, but it will be published from the 2022 conference.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Another significant historical, I call them a knowledge base.
These are knowledge bases.
And that's what I've been really dedicated to when somebody comes along with something like this.
Lucas Eduardo Luna came with me in 2000 with the Ayahuasca reader, for example. It was the most comprehensive collection of writings on ayahuasca at a time when there was nothing. And so, yeah, so somehow I have to figure out how to publish this book. And that was a no brainer because of our long term relationship and connection and everything, I had to be involved in this, and I was really grateful that you let me come to the conference, of course, because that's when you find out exactly what's, what's being said and have the vision for how it can come together. And it's really a community effort, that publication, and it's making science accessible to people that might not otherwise ever have access to this material. So that was the other innovation, I think, in bringing this book out and having such a popular readership as well for these scientific proceedings.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Right. And synergetics, I understand, has formed, you have either acquired or formed a partnership with Transform Press, which is we do.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Co publish with Transform press, co publishing, ally with organized groups, and partner with like minded individuals and wendy and transformed press. They just fit right in. And being a small independent presses, we are a rare breed, and survival is in getting economies of scale. We did in 2019, 2020 reach out to both transform press, and we had conversations that it was a good time to combine our forces and be able to offer to them full trade, publishing, distribution and production services and things like that. So that's been a wonderful relationship. We also did similar with maps, and they're a strong line of publications that they did starting back, actually around when we started, 84, 85, they brought out a series of books and helped and sponsored a series of publications on psychedelic medicine where there was a void of information and knowledge about. And then we were able to bring that all in and get that global distribution to those works. And then we have some other, we have an environmental press we're looking at right now that is also very well aligned. So we are working and getting these building blocks of collaborative ventures to keep the independent press going. It is a challenge to do that with so much competition, but things like this, these kinds of podcasts, and our ability to get the word out and reach a popular press with our very specialized. Some people might call them niche, but we feel that for many years we were creating the market for these books on ecological thinking, total systems thinking. But we feel now that there is a new demand for these kinds of do it yourself how to like the regenerative landscaper book we just published, you know, that's selling very well. The psychedelic medicine books have been, you know, a very strong, the strong industry that we experienced this renaissance in psychedelic medicine that happened. Now we're looking for a renaissance in reading from the younger generation. That's what, that's the age I'm looking to cultivate.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: That's very necessary.
You've been able to, with your alliance with the transformed press, you've been able to bring some material from Shulgin's notebooks and archives and his lectures that were, they're amazing, not available to people.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: That's just, I know. They're amazing. That is some of the most rewarding. I mean, all of the work that we do is very rewarding. But I mean, to be able to bring out to work with Wendy at Transform Press, this is Sasha Shulkin's courses that he gave at volume one and volume two, transcriptions from his 1987 course on the nature of drugs. And there's still one more volume to go. There's one more volume coming.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: You need to send me the second one, Deborah. You owe me that. But the first one, I mean, anyone that's familiar with, with Sashas work, can you imagine what its like to sit in a classroom, in a classroom thats taught by Sasha Shulgin?
What an incredible experience. And when you read these books, which are effectively transcripts of his lectures, you realize what a genius he was and what a wonderful soul he was.
So much feeling. I mean, this was a topic he was passionate about. And we sometimes talk about the spirit of plants and plant teachers and all that. Well, Sasser felt the same way about chemistry. He used to talk about the little drug souls of the molecules that he made.
It was just great that you're bringing. And then you did a major book about Albert Hoffman, who is another giant in the field, the mystic chemist. That book has not been recognized as much as it should. But it's a treasure. You know, that book's a treasure. Absolutely.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: We're working on increasing our profile so that more people can find out and discover these treasures. But we have to remember that there wasn't a big demand for these books until actually the business of drugs came out in 2020, I think it was.
And that was that first Netflix series that came out. It started to, you know, as things opened up and then, so the popular now is it has just simply skyrocketed the demand for these kinds of books. And it's wonderful to see them. And, you know, we went to the maps conference and it was just tremendous.
Amount of book sales and demand, people walking to the cash register with stacks of books, you know, 3ft tall, shoving them into the.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: More like that. We need to do more.
So I put a link to synergeticpress.com on the chat and it'll be on the podcast website. I really urge people to
[email protected] and browse the catalog.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: And you are an affiliate partner of ours. So anybody that follows that link will get a 20%, a coupon code that is also going to be put in there with that link that you'll get a 20% discount off on any books that you order. And 20% also will go back to the McKenna Academy. So you'll help support the McKenna Academy at the same time as get a nice discount on the books.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: So we need the money.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: Yes. So, and you know, there's some great books there and everybody, anybody can email me if they're having any problems. But, you know, we have been 40 years, this is 40 year anniversary of my being in having the synergetic process, really my career, a life, a life career. And it's just been a lifetime of adventures, really. I can't think of anything.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Last year's, last year's map conference was also sort of the coming out of the second edition of my other, my memoir, creating Abyss.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: We were very proud to have this book, and we're just very, very excited about the collaboration that we have with McKenna Academy. I adore you and half of your board who I know personally, and our good friends, and we will look forward to. We continue with this mission to make ethnobotany the cool discipline to be getting your degree and finding places where, you know, people can actually learn that. One of the things when we get the ship back in the water, Dennis, is we want to reactivate our hands on learning programs. And we'd love to have ethnobotanical training programs on the Heraclitus that perhaps could be developed in association with you or other organizations that do that kind of work. We'll be spending about two years in the Amazon area, in the Columbia area.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: We're completely down with that, Deborah. We're totally down with that. One of the things we've got going with the academy right now is we're going to start offering Ethel botany course online.
We've already got the material. Michael Coe created it so that virtual course could sink in very well with field courses.
I would love to do those on the hair.
That would be totally fantastic.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we just really like to do stuff, you know, so, I mean, it's, the ship is, we, the ship is close to back in the water, and then we're just going to be looking for stuff to do. So. And it's our biomic press, our ocean biome project, the institute's ocean Biome project. Without that, it's kind of hard to be called a planetary organization. We have a rainforest project. We have a city biome project.
This here at the ranch in New Mexico is our desert biome project.
And we've worked in grasslands, and it's.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: It'S not confined to the ship. The ship is a big part of it. But you've got these different installations. You've got things going on in Puerto Rico and in Australia at the synergy ranch. I really urge people that want to get into this field from whatever angle to look at the links we have, learn about the Institute for Ecotechnics and look at the book catalog, and it's a volunteer kind of driven enterprise. And the target is young people who many people, especially in the younger generation, are wondering. The planet is facing so many challenges on so many fronts, and you feel paralyzed. What can we do? Everything's falling apart.
This is something specific people can do to try to work. That's right, Dennis, to try to understand it and make a difference. And you guys are catalysts for this.
I am so proud to be associated with you, synergetics and the institute and ecotech. I've learned a lot.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: You know, I just realized we have a rainforest project already, Dennis. We could be doing those ethnobotanical courses there now. I'm sure three t would jump at the chance of talking about that.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: So you meet in Puerto Rico?
[00:39:23] Speaker A: In Puerto Rico, yeah, we could do that. Yeah, I'll propose that idea. So. But we. So it's about right time, right place, right people, right ideas, and just not hesitating. If you get those people together and you have a clear task, just do it. You figure out what you need to learn to do it.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: And I take it on your, on your website, on either the institute website or the synergetics website, there's contact information. If people want to get involved in some ways, they can contact you. Certainly they're welcome to send an email to connect at Mckinnon Academy. But we don't have to stand in the middle of that.
I mean, we're partners.
So I wanted to ask you, the current situation with the restoration of the Heraclitus, I think your schedule has slipped a little bit. We did slip a little bit relaunch in 2024. That's probably not going to happen.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Yeah, we're very close. I think we'll be able to paint the ship. We're close to having the paint sourced and the funding to get it painted and sealed so that we can put it back in the water. The 84 foot hull has been completely rebuilt and beautifully filled with all the rebar of a frame, the mesh, wire mesh frame, which you saw, Dennis, when you were there in 20. When was Girona, 2018?
[00:41:05] Speaker B: 2018, at the World Ayahuasca conference.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Yeah, the World Ayahuasca conference. And then COVID threw us, set us back about almost four years because we had to stop construction. We were three quarters of the way finished with the hull, pouring the concrete, and we only had two more weeks left to go, and the entire construction crew had to leave. And it took us three years before we could get them back there to finish it. So it has been finished, and it's just an incredible floating artistic installation when we get it back in the water, and then we'll re outfit it and we do plan to take it across to Columbia. There may be a pit stop in Italy. We'll see. But the last stretch is in view, and that's the focus of our efforts this year to complete that and get that back in the water, because it was such a place for people to be able to come through to meet us and to see us and for our work, really, beyond and to be on the ocean. The idea is sea people to create a culture, to merge, to work with other and align with other ocean people that live on the ocean. There is a culture of sea people, and to, you know, really make that. That's various. Some individuals that want that to be their way of life. So it's. And it's an. It's the. It's the biome that is right now about to go past the boundaries. And, you know, we could be documenting the, you know, the demise of the largest biome on the planet or helping with solutions, helping to bring solutions to places where.
And also we want to be doing educational programs more virtual, because in the old days, there was no satellites up there where video cameras up leaks the Internet. That wasn't happening so much. But now we can communicate much more regularly and bring stories and to bring the stories of the sea and the stories of the ocean and the life.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: There'S to her plans anywhere on the planet. And yet it's still totally integrated with what you call the techno sphere. So, you know, the communication networks exist.
Yeah, so people can see if they visit the podcast website or if they visit any of the links that they'll find there. They can see this restoration project and how it's progressing and so on, and they can support it. People donate to support it.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: We are a nonprofit, and people can get tax deductible donations if they send us one through our website.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: Yeah, right, right. And a project like this, Aries works, it's always a shoestring proposition. I mean, you're doing a great deal with not enough money. That's the way nonprofits operate. That's certainly the way we operate. But support is appreciated, and the Heraclitus is just an incredible story. Any shit that's been doing this since 1973, that is a long time with the hiatus while it was getting repaired, but it's still out there.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: We are looking for expressions of interest from organizations and institutions that might take advantage of a research ship that would be going into these areas around, pretty much around the Caribbean and in the Amazon area over the next five years. So definitely get in touch.
[00:44:40] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And when you get it down to the Amazon, then we can start to do these programs that you're talking about. And if I'm still able to walk and talk by that time, I hope I will. I will come down and spend some time, and I'm sure he can get weighed back there. And we could have, you could have an incredible, like, traveling, ethnobotanical expedition, and we couldn't. We couldn't have courses.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: That's what we've been dreaming about for 30 years, Dennis.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Well, we probably don't have another 30 years, but let's make it happen in the next five years, you know, at least. So that would be. That'd be fantastic.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Well, we appreciate the alliance that we have, because that's. That's how these independent knows and cutting edge thinking thought leaders can get, like you say, break out of that. That mold. And your voice has been, you know, you have such a tremendous voice, and you reach a number of minds, and it's really important that we share these stories that we have today. I really appreciate you bringing them out because they will otherwise remain the hidden mystery of history. And it's just.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: Well, you have lots of people that love what you join. It's not just me, but I'm glad to be a part of it and to have played a role and continue to work with you.
Like I say, I'm totally on board. I've done a complete 180 from when we started out, and you're doing great work.
Is there anything that we have not discussed that you want to be sure we talk about before we close this out?
[00:46:33] Speaker A: Well, that's a very good question.
Well, I guess I would just say that I'm looking for how to really become trans media, like how to be able to lift the stories from the pages that we publish, the wisdom that is held there, and make them, and to transport them into ways that people, this next generation, will be able to be brought in to appreciate that knowledge and that experience so that it would meet, so that this will reach the next generation, that there is a next generation. And I feel like now there is a next generation that is actually asking the questions and looking for this knowledge. I mean, it's one thing to have stuff to give, but if there's nobody there asking for it. So I feel like there is a hunger that now can be fed.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Yeah, there is absolutely a hunger. And certainly books, the books that you're putting out, the thing is the younger generation, they're like, what's a book?
They're so digitally oriented. But one way to approach this, and you've already done that to a certain extent, and we're trying to do that too, is through these short documentaries. And you already have this really very interesting documentary. The Academy got a documentary out, biognosis documentary, and that's the first in what we hope will be a series. And I can think we've already got a person interested in making the second documentary, which would be focused on Koucha and the uses and benefits of coca, not as a drug, but as a medicine.
And then the third one, I'm getting this inspiration as I'm talking to you. The third one should be about the Institute for Ecotechnics and the Heraclitus in phase two or three of its life. That would make a fantastic documentary.
[00:48:42] Speaker A: Anyway, that's, that's a really good idea. And also there was a film, documentary that can mention the spaceship Earth film that came out about spaceship, the Aqua technics work. It is on, it's on Amazon and on Hulu, I believe it is a full on documentary, came out in 2020, really features the first half, a lot of great history about the Heraclitus, mostly our archival footage. And then it goes well into biosphere two, and it gives a really good insight into what that, that the mystery of that history was all about. So I agree with you. I think that the films telling the mini docs, telling the stories to help to inform and to capture the imagination and to bring those people to now we're doing everything in ebooks as well. In audiobooks is another major forum. So let's keep telling the stories, Dennis.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: Absolutely. That's how we do it. We're trying to tell the stories that'll resonate with people and document the knowledge of our planet, which still has a lot going forward, even though it's got challenges. So that's great. We'll make sure. I mean, beautiful thing about doing these podcasts is the podcast is one thing, but then there's all the supplementary material. And I hope that people will visit this podcast and take some time to browse through the links that are there and learn what's really going on. And, you know, if you're a person able to support any of these causes, it's money well spent. You know, you could feel good about that. So.
Yeah, so it's. It's been absolute pleasure talking to you, Deborah.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: Same, Dennis. We need to spend more time talking together.
[00:50:25] Speaker B: You bet. All right, I will say goodbye and we'll talk downstream.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: Have a great rest of your week and we'll talk again soon.
[00:50:35] Speaker B: Okay, thanks so much.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: Bye for now.
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