Episode Transcript
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Welcome to Brainforest Cafe with Dennis McKenna.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Rebecca Lazzaro's work is an ecology of different disciplines spanning across medical science, ethnopharmacology, herbalism, holistic healthcare, cannabis and psychedelics. She is also an activist, writer, speaker and herbal formulator. She is currently a PhD candidate at Kew Gardens and University College London School of Pharmacy with an emphasis on ethnopharmacology and herbal medicines.
She was the science and managing editor for the ESPD 55 volume, is currently co editor for education charity Herbal Reality and founded Laz the plant scientist to bring quality, sustainably sourced herbal medicines and education to people.
I should also mention that she recently joined the McKenna Academy as our newest board member and we're really pleased to have her on our board.
She is passionate about democratizing knowledge and rekindling ethnobotany and herbalism from being marginalized disciplines to part of common knowledge again.
Ultimately, her aim is to help nurture our relationship with nature through natural medicines and support our species return back to earth centered living. She is devoted to science, demystify these topics, but equally is committed to rekindling the magic, awe and healing we find on our precious earth. You can read more about her work here at www.rebeccalazzarow.com. and today, it's my pleasure to welcome Rebecca to the brain forest cafe.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Hello. Hello.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: How nice to see you.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Likewise. Lovely to see you too.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: I know it's late there and I appreciate your tolerance in letting us start here on the west coast a little later. So I read much of the material you supplied for this talk. There are many, many topics to talk about. I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation that you've joined the McKenna Academy as our newest board member. And what would you like to talk about, Robert?
[00:02:53] Speaker A: I would love to talk about why herbal medicines are super important and why we need to start using them again. Because I feel like over and over again they're dismissed as quackery and sort of people turn their nose up at them. And this is massively problematic because I've seen herbs and herbalists work miracles and we are over medicalized and people's quality of life is depleting and we need to get these back on the medical table. And I think, yeah, the reason I'm also really passionate about this stuff is because for what it will mean culturally, if we respect herbal medicines again, will mean that we respect our earth again. And that's super, super important. So yeah, I'd love to talk about herbal medicine, but I'm open to everything.
Talk about whatever you want.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: So, essentially, I absolutely agree with you that learning to, you know, returning to our medical roots, which have always been based at plants, is a way to reaffirm our relationship with nature. You know, and the fact that we've become estranged from nature, I mean, it's obvious that we have become estranged from nature. It seems that that's the major intellectual existential crisis of our age.
And this abandonment of reliance on herbal medicines is a symptom of that. Why do you suppose that herbs have become so stigmatized in this supposed scientific age? Because if you look as a scientist, you know, if you look at the background, there's nothing. I mean, there's sometimes something woo woo about herbs, but there's a great deal of solid scientific evidence that herbs, you know, have healing properties. And this has been investigated scientifically and yet not accepted. In some ways, it's rejected now. It's a situation where our minds are made up. Don't confuse us with facts. Facts, yeah.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: So that's a good way to put it. I'm glad you asked that question, because it's actually a very, very interesting history that dates back over 500 years, and it's mainly about the UK. However, from the 16th century to the 20th century, we had the british colonial rule. So the influence was massive over western science, western medical systems, the way we treat the land. Now, in 1512 in the UK, there was a law which banned people practicing herbal medicines within London and a seven mile radius, unless you had studied at Oxford or Cambridge. So what he had basically was a load of old boys, which is british lang term for people really high circles in the king's ear, saying, oh, no, we can do a better job in this. Let's get rid of indigenous knowledge. We want to take control of that.
Then, in 1518, the Royal College of Physicians was formed, which UK? There's been some good things about it, but what it also had was a unified voice against herbalism. And herbalists, the herbalists at the time were just indigenous british people. They didn't have a union to fight against this. Then 1640, the witch hunts happened. So if you had medicinal plant knowledge, you were possibly burnt at the stake. You can imagine what that did to the culture with regards to our land and our traditional shamanic knowledge. I mean, it makes me laugh. People always say, do you think we had, you know, people glorified shamans from other lands? Because, of course they're amazing and they think that nothing existed here. And I'm like, hold on, we live on the british isles that grow some of the strongest psychedelics ever known to man. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings. All of these different things were born from these lands, right? It's a pretty magical place. It's just there happens to be a 400 year old scar in our history where we burnt our shailens, we burnt our witches, so, of course, you know, there's a disconnect there. Then, in 1684, Doctor Charles Goodall, who was the president of the College of Physicians, described her bliss as wild and illiterate impostors. And he obviously had a massive influence over medical culture at the time. And then in 1844, again, it continued. College of physicians termed the coin quack and quackery, to describe medicine and herbalists that didn't come from those upper education, whatever things, basically indigenous knowledge. And they said a quack was in part described as a villifier of all that is honorable and respectable in the medical profession. Then in 1948, we had the NHS, which was formed, which is an amazing thing, but it didn't include herbalists. At the same time, we had the industrial revolution. And you can see, I don't have to go into detail about how I severance from the land came from that, but we lost a lot of the knowledge because people didn't need to live off the land anymore. They were going to cities. And then I also think a massive part of it comes into decolonising language.
So my professor, I'm not sure if he's a professor, but he should be. He's an incredible man. He's called Doctor Jose Prieto. I'll never forget. I did my master's with him at UCL, at the school of pharmacy, and it was a master's in medicinal natural products and phytochemistry. And he said something I'll never forget. He said, when a physicist talks about a photon, they describe it as both a particle and a wave. It's not literally a particle and a wave, but that's the closest terminology they have to be able to describe what is happening. When you look at ancient chinese medicine, ayurvedic medicine from India systems, which are thousands of years old, they use metaphors like windows, damp, heat, all these different things to describe the land, what's going on, right.
In western culture, we have inherited a colonial mindset of, if you don't speak to us in our language of science, then it's silly and it's quackery, you know, and dismiss it. And they're not realizing the fact that these are just metaphors. And I'll admit, as well, when I first started reading about these medicines, I was like, oh, it's a bit airy fairy, isn't it? But it doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I've just been born into a culture with an unconscious bias. So all of these things have added up over time. And now when you speak to westerners, many of people who haven't inherited any medicinal plant knowledge from their cultures, there's a firewall. You have to speak to them in science in order for them to believe it, because science has been put at the apex of knowledge, where when you speak to migrants or children of migrants, they don't question it. They're like, yeah, of course, yeah, I'll use that plant for that, that plant for that. So, yeah, many different contributing factors as to why we don't believe in these things. And then that's not even commenting on the push for pharmaceutical companies to get rid of natural medicines. I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist when I say that, but Spain, France, herbalism is illegal. We're massively censored in what we can say. That's why herbal reality was created, so that it's the educational charity, so that we can talk about herbs freely without getting regulations coming and shutting down our websites.
And I understand why those regulations are needed because you do get some mad people in the wellness space saying ridiculous things and taking the devantage of people. But it's difficult moving in a society when the system isn't set up to let herbalism thrive.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Well, that's great. There's a great deal to unpack right here in what you just talked about. I mean, we have three or four podcasts worth of discussion immediately right here. But I get what you're saying, that science, and I've often raved about this, too, that science, since you invoke since the 15th century, I usually talk around about the end of the 18th century, when science, there was a development in plant knowledge that was really pivotal and really, in some ways, unfortunate. And that was the isolation of morphine from the opium poppy, the first pure compound that was isolated by the pharmacist surtiter in Switzerland. And it had most of the properties of opium, analgesic, and all of these properties. And so it led to this perception that these are just molecules, that there's. There's, you know, there's no spirit in the plants. It was kind of the culmination of the exorcism of the idea of spirit from medicine, which, as you point out, commenced, really had been going on since the 15th century, the idea was to exercise that organisms, people, or just complex machines, if you apply the right molecular monkey wrench, you can fix the problem. There's no component of this, of spirit in healing.
So that's been, in one way, the rejection of herbalism by science. And I also think the point that you made earlier is very important. The rejection, what this boils down to is the rejection of indigenous bodies of knowledge, and particularly with respect to herbalism, the knowledge of women in these indigenous societies, because they tend to be the keepers of that plant wisdom. So it's directed at women, or should not be recognized for their inherent wisdom, and then it's rejected, at a wholesale rejection, indigenous knowledge, which is, you know, stigmatized as superstition and poppycock and that sort of thing has no place in a scientific dialogue. And yet, at the same time, you know, pharmaceutical companies have developed very important medicines from plants, you know, even though they don't like to admit it. And that the usual trope is that, you know, we don't need nature to develop new drugs, but attempts to develop new medicines that are not based on natural products have been spectacular failures. So what is, it seems that things may be changing. And I think one of the, I think herbalism is gradually being re recognized for its value. There is actually quite, quite a huge body of scientific knowledge about this topic, as you know, because you're a scientist as well as an herbalist, you're familiar with it.
So there is that. And I think one of the catalysts that may be contributing to this perception is the reintroduction of psychedelics into mainstream medicine, because. But it's hard to cleave to that reductionist scientific view when these medicines are in some respect, they are medicines for the spirit, they're medicines for the soul. So you can't develop them without recognizing that there is a spirit, there is a soul.
It may not be the life force that was attributed to us, but there's an internal element that these substances, by affecting our neurochemistry, they force us to re recognize and elevate, again, the importance of the spirit effectively to the process of healing.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. As I'm really grateful for. I mean, there's so many reasons that herbal medicines are coming back. And I also want to caveat and say that there's a difference between herbal medicines and supplements, and knowing how to forage a few things, and seeing a herbalist, because herbalists are. So everybody's interested in natural medicines now, but people don't know what a herbalist does. Or that clinical herbalists exist. You know, in the UK, they train for four years, they do 500 clinical hours. They don't just do small conditions when you've got a cold. They're doing seriously serious conditions, chronic conditions. And they work with pharmaceuticals sometimes not prescribing them. But I mean, it's not like you have to do one or the other. You can work integratively, because herbal medicines fill the therapeutic gaps that pharmaceuticals simply can't by nature.
I can explain a bit more why about that, the science behind that in a bit.
But it's interesting, when I was talking about the history of herbal medicines up until the 19th century, or maybe even the 20th century, I think it was the 20th, actually. The doctors were still using plants. They had the plants in the pharmacopoeia. So it wasn't that the plants weren't working, it was the herbalists that they were putting at the bottom of the food chain. Because that's what happens in the west, isn't it? You have the apex knowledge at the top, and then everything else is sort of ordered beneath it. When the truth is that everybody of knowledge has its benefits and it has its limitations. And it's more of a soup, you know, when we work together, we get.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: To get tastier soup and they enrich each other. When this is appreciated and integrated, sure. I mean, science and the reductionist, sort of very pharmacological approach to healing has a great deal to contribute, you know, as plants have been important in that respect, too. I mean, they've given us new compounds, but they've also given us insights into mechanisms of action. And, you know, I would like, I'm one of those people who would like to believe that in nature, there's a cure for anything. You know, we may not have discovered it yet, but it's there, you know? And so, you know, pharmacology and ethnopharmacology, the knowledge of indigenous people should enrich each other. They're not in opposition to each other. And yet it's not recognized. It's not readily recognized, you know?
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting as well, how, going back to the points of. Okay, so two points. Firstly, say arthritis. This is something that herbalists commonly treat, right? And they might not be able to eliminate the arthritis 100% sometimes. I'm sure they have, but they might be able to reduce the symptoms severity from 90% to 20%, therefore increasing quality of life. What, more safely with no side effects? What more could you want from medicine than that? You know, it's really worthy. Going back to the point of reductionism, that is exemplary of how herbal medicines work. So, basically, for the. I know you know this, but for the audience at home, the way pharmaceutical science works is it's. And science in general. Right. It's reductionist and materialist. So they believe in what they can see and measure. They reduce things down and isolate them into small parts. Then you find a molecule that works, patent it, and a medicine is made, and this can be brilliant. It's great to zoom in and look at things, but when you just zoom in and only look back, you miss the picture of the whole. And so what happens with herbal medicines is they have chemodiversity, which means chemical diversity. In an extract, you will have hundreds, if not thousands of molecules. And this leads to a phenomena called synergy, which was popularized by the cannabis industry. This is another industry I'm really grateful for cracking up, but opens people's. Cracking open people's perceptions to herbal medicines, because they were like, cannabis definitely works. Maybe there's some other plants. Yeah, there's over 17,000 medicinal plants. Cannabis is just one of them. So synergy, or the entourage effect, is basically when you get a molecule on its own, put it in the body, it's either toxic, not bioavailable, so your body can't absorb it, or it doesn't work. However, when it's in its natural extract, the medicine is either made safe or efficacious. So it actually works.
And that is the benefit of the entourage effect. And having chemo diversity, the next thing that it leads to is something called network pharmacology, where instead of having one receptor, that a molecule works on its network, it's all over many different systems of the body, which is why one plant can have so many different medicinal effects.
I was speaking to a herbalist who was making herbal medicines for the refugee camps in Calais, and she was saying how when she goes around and gives the medicine, she almost doesn't like to say how many different things the medicine can do, because people, it's almost like you don't believe it. You know, this bottle can help with 17 different things. We're used to things you get off the shelf, and it does one thing, but, yeah. So network pharmacology is really important because chronic illnesses like arthritis or, you know, different metabolic illnesses, many different ones, they're extremely. Anything to do with inflammation, extremely complicated. It's a systems problem. They need systems approach. That is what herbal medicines can offer because of their chemical diversity. And just to exemplify why diversity is so important, right? Because everything works on micro and macro, just like we were talking about reductionism, and how when we reduce subjects, they're not as strong, but when subjects work together, they get stronger. It's the same thing with the chemicals within the medicine and with chemo diversity.
When you look at neurodiversity and how many different arts and sciences and incredible things were created because we have different brain types, it's amazing. London is what it is because of the different cultures.
Ancient Greece was what it was, not because the Greeks were particularly special, but because it was a meeting point between the north of Africa, Asia, the bottom of Europe, and you had a melting pot of different ideas coming together, and the diversity bloomed to make ancient Greece. Biodiversity is a marker. Increased biodiversity is a marker of a healthy ecosystem full of virtues. Chemodiversity in medicine can have profound effects, because that is the law of nature. Where there is diversity, there, it's health.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So that is the way the real world works, in the sense that plants are complex biochemical systems with thousands of chemicals that have biological activities. Organisms like us are complex chemical systems that respond, that are within this environment. So this idea that there's a single molecule that can be isolated, and by the way, patented and entered in medicine, I think a lot of that has to do with the effort to make something proprietary about something that really doesnt need to be proprietary. Cannabis, as you pointed out, has been a real wake up call to the general public, because its made us aware of the fact of the diversity, at least of the cannabis chemistry, and the importance of these entourage effects and so on. Cannabis is one of those things, as you well know, with uh, that interacts with systems all over the bot. You know, it's not just your head, it's a holistic medicine in, it's almost the exemplar of the idea of a holistic medicine. It works on many different levels. And, and, and herb, herbs, you know, are, most herbs work that way. And this is holistic approach. You can measure certain outcomes, you could measure certain effects, but you're not getting the whole picture. And that's inherent in science. I mean, science is concerned to remove as many variables as you can, so that you could study the one or two variables that you're trying to focus on. And that's good for collecting data, that's good for publishing papers and that sort of thing. It's not realistic, it's not a realistic situation in terms of therapeutic effects.
You have to do it within the context of this chemically and biologically and pharmacologically diverse environment.
One thing that puzzles me, and I think it puzzles a lot of us in the plant field, who appreciate herbalism, is given the costs of healthcare and the costs of medicine, the costs of drug development, all of these things combine to make medicine and pharmacotherapy a very expensive proposition, which it doesn't need to be.
Most herbs are not expensive. They can be developed. They don't require the infrastructure of Merck or Pfizer or these pharmaceutical companies to support them. So just in practical terms, as an economic solution to the healthcare crisis, you would think that herbalism would be getting more of a more sympathetic reception? In some ways, yeah, absolutely.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: And I think also, as well, what's beautiful about herbal medicines is you can work with them preventatively, so we don't have to wait till crisis point. We're really, really ill. And then you need an extreme medicine.
You can also use it if your body needs an MOT, but you can also use it for more serious things as well. And another thing that people don't speak about is where does all the pharmaceutical waste goes? When we take pharmaceuticals and then urinate, they're not completely broken down. They go into our waters, and then we keep drinking them up and drinking them up. Now, people are getting more and more diseases, and there's many different contributing factors towards this. But increased pollution in our water, in our food and stuff, of course, is going to add up over time.
And another point I wanted to say is that when you, earlier, when you were talking about the metabolics of plant chemistry, herbalists have always said, herbalism aids body in healing itself. Right? Because what herbalists will do is look at the different patterns that are going on in the body. Give plants that have affinities for different tissues to rebalance them. But on a chemical level, we share a lot of the metabolic processes, same as plants, so we need a lot of the molecules that they have, because when we're lacking them, guess what? You take this extract, your body knows exactly what to do. Can't help the body heal itself, so we have less side effects. And for pharmaceuticals to pass, I believe I might be wrong, but last time I checked, for it to pass, to go to market, they only have to work 40% over the top of the time. So it means for some medicines, over half the time, they're not working. You're getting a hell of a lot of side effects sometimes for what you know. And also, I just want to caveat and say, I'm coming hard at the pharmaceutical industry here. I don't ever want to be binary where they're bad. It doesn't work like that. Pharmaceuticals have produced miracles. It's just they have their limitations, and we are over medicated, and this is a problem. And herbalism has many of the answers for that.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: They have their limitations. So desirable medicine, it's important to be cognizant of their limitations, but also of their, of their virtues, you know, I mean, I don't think that, you know, most people who are not scientists or not therapists, not physicians and so on, you know, they have perhaps unrealistic expectations for some of these herbal medicines, and they can be, you know, they're prey to basically fraud. You know, there's always the, the people that come out and promote this or that medicine as a cure for this or that. It's much better than any pharmaceutical and so on. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, we have this thing in science that we keep insisting on, which is called evidence. And evidence is an inconvenience for a lot of people on all, many topics, particularly in scientific topics. Evidence that for the efficacy of an herbal medicine, evidence for the efficacy of a pharmaceutical, or the lack of efficacy, you've got to put legs under, under these things. Science, as you know, you're a scientist, you know, works, develops hypotheses about how a drug may work, what the effect may be, and so on. Then you try and find out where are the holes in that hypothesis? Where is the inadequacies? What questions does it not answer?
And then that's the edge of where the discovery takes place.
And we need to somehow become more educated about this process. Most people don't understand the, you know, how science works. And I think in the current cultural dialogue, science, science and scientists have been elevated to a pinnacle, a pedestal that they don't necessarily deserve, you know, and the public views them this way. Scientists don't. I mean, some do. But if they're honest about what they're doing, you know, a scientist worth his or her salt will readily say, there's far more that we don't know than we do know. It's simply that. It's that simple.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: You mentioned scientists here, something that. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: No, I was just gonna say, like, scientists are actually the most humble people. Most of the time they will say, I haven't got a clue what's going on in my experience. It's just other people have put them on a pedestal there.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: You mentioned a topic that in passing, a topic that's very important that I think we're all concerned about is this issue of pharmaceutical pollution.
It does not get a lot of attention. It's potentially very, very concerning.
It's almost as concerning as plastics pollution. It's maybe not as widespread as plastic solution, but these chemicals are.
They are released from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. They're released from people that die, and the pharmaceuticals that their bodies are loaded with go back into the soil.
There are many problems with that. But pharmaceuticals are often designed to be long lasting. They have long half lives and they're very potent. They're drug designed to target particular receptors that are very.
At very low concentrations. This creates problems.
What can we do about pharmaceutical pollution other than cut down on the use of pharmaceuticals, which would be one obvious solution and because it's obvious, it won't happen.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I haven't got a clue, to be honest. I think that we need to speak to more mycologists because there's been some research on mushrooms being able to clean up the water. I think we need to prevent medicating people so much.
That's massive. But yeah, when it comes to water cleanup, man, the government over here just, I believe, or they're going to start putting more fluoride in the water. Now, when you google fluoride and neurodegeneration, all you're going to see is loads of articles saying that fluoride leads to neurodegenerative illnesses. Pretty conclusive. There's so much data, but they're just offloading it all into our rivers.
So are they going to listen about pharmaceutical pollution? You know, probably not on a personal level, I've got a really good water filter that takes the pharmaceuticals out and I'm so grateful to be able to find this water filter. However, it's kind of frustrating that we're constantly having to buy products to fix problems that this system's created, you know, but yeah, I would. This is why I feel really passionately about ethnobotany and also just democratizing the knowledge of it. As you mentioned earlier, the language that is used in science and how it works isn't common knowledge. It's the same in finance. You know, people aren't financially literate, scientifically literate. There's so many different things and ethnobotanically literate. And there's a lot of really ingenious people who are good at inventing things. If they had some knowledge about these different mushrooms and how we can make machines to help do localized cleanup projects, that would be amazing. That's why I love working at McKenna Academy, because I'm like, oh, we've got a chance to actually do this.
You know, who knows? Who knows what people will come up with? But we need the understanding of what purifies nature in the first place, with minimal side effects to be able to do this, and then some really rich investors to give them the money to do it.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Right? Right.
Yeah.
It seems that we've reached a point where a number of things are coming together.
The threat to biodiversity is linked to the disappearance of indigenous knowledge.
The habitats that the plants inhabit happen to be also the habitats where the people with the knowledge also live, and they utilize the plants in their environment.
And we know that there's vast knowledge of, in vast bodies of indigenous knowledge that have never been explored.
Experience has shown that indigenous people.
I like very much Wade Davis's characterization.
These people are not failed versions of us. You know, they do not aspire to be like us. They have full, full lives, full existence, full cultures and so on. They're not trying. We're not, we're not some better version of them. In fact, if you look at the way they relate to nature and the way we relate to nature, it's obvious we have a lot to learn, you know, these people, and yet academics even more. I mean, you spoke of the rejection of herbalism and, you know, starting from the 15th century on, and that's been the stance of science, and it's pretty much the same. Academic institutions are discontinuing their botany programs.
They're certainly discontinuing their ethnobotany programs, and seems, there seems to be no, or, you know, very little pushback against discontinuing these programs in, in places where it matters. Our friend Michael Koh, who, you know, got his PhD at the University of Hawaii, you know, and in esobotany, but that was the last person to graduate in Ethel Botany from the University of Hawaii. They shut down the program then in a place where, if any place, should be studying, bringing estobotany and botany and pharmacology, pharmacy, all of that together. It's Hawaii because of the confluence of indigenous knowledge that exists there, a very living and vibrant tradition of using plants for healing. And yet the short sightedness of the academicians makes me furious when it does not dismay me, you know, and this is partly what the McKenna, this is a lot of what the McKenna Academy is all about, you know, to try and bring, build bridges between scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge and thereby preserve that knowledge and explore it and utilize it absolutely, yeah.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: And it's not because of a lack of interest from the public. People are gagging to learn. I mentioned to you, I believe, that I gave a talk at a plant science school at Cambridge University, and they got students from across the country who were biology students. When I got speaking about ethnobotany, I swear to God, I was mobbed after in the best way. There were crowds of them around me, and the bloke there was like, okay, even there were so many of them who wanted to ask questions and they were saying, where do we go and learn about this? I didn't realize biology could be so cool.
When you look at ethnobotany, it's true. We're surrounded from witches to people in lab coats. It's such an interesting, fascinating, diverse body of knowledge. And so it gave me hope because I was like, the youth really want to learn. The elders and middle aged people, they know it's important as well. And they know that society is sick, because how many times have people looked around and be like, is this it? Am I actually just working to pay bills? People are sick of how this is working, but it's the academic institutions for some reason.
I'm not listening yet, but we're going to get there. I've got from faith there's some forces at play that want this to happen. We just got to be savvy about it. I was shocked when my professor at Coogaarden's, Mark Nesbitt, he was saying how botany used to just be seen as like a rich man's craft, a bit like art, because it was unnecessary but nice to do. I was like, what? Like, learning about the natural world around us is unnecessary, but nice too. It's just so. It's such a symptom of the culture that we've had for the last 50 years or whatever, however long.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So what's the solution? How do we raise consciousness about plant people interactions and the importance of plants to not only our own well being, but the well being of the planet? We hear these tropes all the time. For example, the Amazon is the lungs of the planet. And as botanists were certainly aware of the importance of plants in maintaining the atmospheric carbon dioxide balance and so on. Yet all of this, it's very hard to get people to appreciate what's going on. I don't know whether people just cannot easily grasp complex systems. Well, if you can't, you're at a disadvantage because all systems are complex.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: I think for me, the interest is definitely there. We need good science, communications. We can't have people.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: Yeah, agree.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Super, super important. We need good archiving and documentation. And then what we need is community building. But I say this like I know all the answers, but this is just what I feel. Not this, like, top down approach, where we necessarily try and give it to everyone and become this enormous thing that you have to sacrifice so much for your values in the first place to be able to provide that much. What I think we need is localized community building, which will work via collaborations with other people in similar sort of spheres that have a similar Venn diagram to us. So, community gardens, herbalists, all sorts of people interested in these things. And gathering, gathering people sitting around a fire, sharing knowledge and talking about it. And that sounds like it's hard to do, but I've spoken a few times about being inspired by people like Vandana Shiva, who was a woman who grew up in the mountains, in India, somewhere on a farm. And she's been lobbying for changing the food system. Speaks about all of the topics that we speak about. And what she did was unity. Screamings where she had a document, a documentary, which synthesized all of this important knowledge into an art form, which people could take both into their head and the heart, and did community screenings across the globe, where local people had a venue, said, everyone come through, and then, guess what? You've got 50 people there, 100 people there, 500 people there who think similarly, and a meeting. Right. And it can happen globally, then people can share skills, they can share knowledge. I think we also have to remember that it's not all on our shoulders. People are doing things like, there's a big movement now in England for people doing organic growing. No, dig. Growing people getting patches of land, and growing their food again, and going more to seasonal living and organic, and all these sorts of things. And it's. There's a whole new system being born before our eyes. And it's just that the web needs connecting. Like the mushrooms connect things. Those different little webs need connecting, because those people will be interested in herbalism. The herbalists are interested in sustainable supply. There's so many different moving parts. It's just about bringing them together.
Yeah.
It's going to be a life's work. I've accepted that. I'm going to be very busy in this lifetime, but I couldn't think of anything better to devote myself to.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Right, right. Well, I think you put your finger on it. I think the way that this knowledge is preserved and propagated is grassroots. I mean, literally grassroots. I mean, we have always shared plant knowledge has been growers, herbalists, gardeners, horticulturalists, people like that, people with passion about plants. And they share this knowledge, you know, over the back fence, in a way. That's how knowledge is shared and species are shared. It's a local phenomenon, you know, the sharing of this knowledge. But these days, because of the Internet, the whole planet is local and we have a whole pool of knowledge about natural medicine that needs to be shared.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Exactly. And I think also as well, to have the nodes, like the McKenna Academy, like herbal reality, Kew gardens, whatever, that are bringing people together, that's important, but that's their only nodes. They don't have to do everything.
And I think also as well, for me, I haven't really. Yeah, I haven't told many people about this, and you might think I'm mad, but I think you'll love it. I'm doing my fa. Pharmacology PhD and I'll be archiving the medicines of Cyprus, because that's where I'm from, that's my heritage. And I recently went back after seven years and it was amazing because the people there, they have medicinal plant knowledge, but they're not like wellness people. I don't think any of them have done yoga or my family done yoga or meditate once in their life. It's just part of. Part of the culture, you know?
And so I want to go and write this all down, but it's not enough, as you know, a lot of the knowledge is going extinct because it's in the elders who lived off the land and people living off the land. Next, less.
And it's not enough for me to go and archive the medicines of a small island, because although I'm very honoured to do it, there's a lot more that needs to be written down. And I would love to create a citizen science method, some sort of quiz or something, where people can go to their elders and write it down and it doesn't have to be published in some academic journal, it's just archive, it's.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: There, this has to be documented some way.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: So my project is, well, basically, I know you know, what ethnopharmacology is, obviously, and what are the problems that we face, but medicinal plant knowledge, much like cooking foods and recipes, or knowing how to grow your own food, it's just passed down through oral tradition, it's not recorded. And people now are using herbal medicines less as they go more towards pharmaceuticals. They're also not living in the land as much. So the net knowledge is becoming extinct in younger generations. And as Wegg Davis said, when a shaman dies or a medicine man dies, it's like a library burns down. And there's so much knowledge in our elders who grew up on the land, you know, all across Europe, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Greece, the generation who grew up doing all these things is not. Were still there.
And so what I'll be doing is going to the villages in Cyprus and going to the elders and writing all of this knowledge down. And my recent trip there, it was just amazing to learn about, you know, even like, sort of getting branches of bay leaves and putting them in the cupboard to stop cockroaches getting in. And I put bay leaves and insect repellent into Google scholar, and it came up with so much research about the natural insecticides in there, which is way better than spraying your cupboards with neurodegenerative poisons, you know, that literally there to kill insects.
So, yeah, that's what I'll be doing. But my highest hope and my highest prayer is that I'll be able to find a way so people can do it for their own cultures, because we can't do it with a handful of echinacea pharmacogens that are left in the world. And also, I think it's not just about recording this knowledge and having it in some journal that nobody ever reads. It's about regenerating the culture of it. And there's so many people like. So I'm a child of migrants. I live in London, where most people are child of either migrants or children of migrants, and also amongst the English as well, there's a deep, deep yearning to get back to the land and remember the ways. And I think partially it's because people are so sick of this system. And right whilst it's gonna. It is gonna go down at some point. We need a world that we can nurture and go towards remembering how we lived on the land and how life thrived before any of this is going to be integral for that. So I feel a sense of duty to make a way that people can do this for their own cultures and people, and nurture and cherish the knowledge and archive it. But I haven't got a clue how I'm going to do it. I'm going to need your help. To be honest, Dennis, I don't even know if it's possible, but I really hope it is right.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: I think that kind of project is very important. As you pointed out earlier, the knowledge is held largely the botanical knowledge these days is held by the elders.
And one problem with the elders is they're old and they're not going to be around that much longer. And so, as I look at this situation, I think, how do we get young people to be enthusiastic and really appreciate what the elders know? I mean, there's an impulse, I guess it's a natural impulse on the part of the younger generation to reject what the elders know. I mean, who cares what my granddad sitting over there in the corner mumbling to himself, is saying? You know, nobody cares about that stuff. But if you could actually sit down with that person, and if they happen to be a person with plant knowledge, you could learn an incredible amount. How do we get young people to stop staring at their screens so much and go talk to people in the community and collect this information? And, I mean, it seems to me that is the main challenge because young, young people are, you know, rates of depression and suicide and so on are so high among the younger generation. And a lot of this is attributable to the fact that they're not connected to nature, they're not connected to their community.
All of these are ways that could effectively re empower them to be connected and care about not only the knowledge of their community, but the knowledge of. Of the plants and the environments and so on. I'm not sure how you make that exciting, but, I mean, it is exciting, but to people like you and me, but then we're nerds, you know, I'm.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: So grateful to say, you're so wrong. People are gagging for it. They're literally gagging to learn. They really are. It's just they don't know where to go. Because the sort of rites of passage in that way of our culture where you sit with elders is gone. But we're craving it deep in our souls. It's just people don't know where to go. They just need to be led. That's it. Like, honestly, whenever I speak to people about this, they're just like, wow, I want to do this. Like, they. There is a deep, deep craving for it amongst you. Not all of them. Listen, some of us have turned into robots and zombies, as have I at times. You know, it's part of modern life, but there's a regeneration happening. And I think with your generation, you've seen these practices dwindle and the earth die over time. But I only got born 29 years ago. So what I'm watching is the growing of these things and the rekindling of the spirit and. And law and all of these different, really important things. You know, just normal people, not necessarily hippies, like, obviously the hippies have always been doing it, but normal people are really, really interested in these things. I don't think it's a matter of inspiring them. I think it's a matter of giving them what they need.
[00:51:31] Speaker B: It's giving them the tools and the opportunity to learn.
Rebecca, you've done a tremendous amount in that respect with your websites and your websites devoted to herbal knowledge. And we're going to post one of your, one of your many articles, as well as all the links on the podcast. You're a very prolific writer and voice and activist and all this. So we're really proud to have you on our team. And this is the McKenna Academy's mission is exactly this, to bring this indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge together and make people understand the value of it. And that's, that's a lot of that. And there are important institutions that are scientific, but also cultural, like botanical gardens and herbaria and these sort of things. These are repositories of wisdom, you know, and they may be repositories of organisms living or preserved, you know, in the case of herbaria. But each, each plant has a story. Each plant that people have interacted with has a cultural history and the fact that people have interacted with it. And I see your work, your work is multifaceted.
It's hard to fit it into a box because you do many things. But overall, what I think your work has to do with is getting the recognition of this knowledge to be. To. To be spread, to be more appreciated, and creating educational opportunities for people in different areas to do it. So, hopefully, the McKenna Academy is, uh, can be a small part of this if everybody, you know, we're all. It's all a small part. As you know, we've. We've offered a Ethel botany course, a six week long ethnobotany course a couple years ago that was quite well received.
We're in the process of sort of reworking that, and we're going to offer it again with a new, refurbished version.
So that's one little thing that we can do.
And then we've talked about this project to restore the herbarium in Iquitos, and you're deeply involved in that initiative, and I hope that it goes somewhere. And I feel more confident than ever that we'll be able to get the funding to move this project forward. It seems like now's the time.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think. Thank you for your kind words, but I think what's so important about diagnosis and why it's so unique is the fact that we're going to restore this herbarium. We're going to archive the knowledge of the ethnobotanist that is there, but also to turn it into a center where local people get to enrich scientists knowledge with ethnobotanical natural knowledge and also get to enrich their own skills in science. Because honestly, like, it's unmatched what people know about their own land. And when we work together, it'd be really beautiful. And if we have that as a model. Right?
And other places around the world, other herbaria, other other places all across different countries, if they did that, what that could do for not only ethnobotany, but for the earth would be insane. Insane. And it would mean that in poorer countries, people don't have to rely on exploitative farm and to make a bit of bread. Do you know what I mean? It means their knowledge could be pedestalized and actually used in a way that will conserve, protect, and allow their land and their culture to thrive. What more could we possibly ask for?
[00:55:48] Speaker B: Could not ask for more. That's it. And that you raised the important point is that these institutions like botanical gardens and herbaria are. I mean, they're scientific institutions, but they're also community centers. And ideally these things like the herbarium or a botanical garden anywhere, if it's relating to the community, it's a two way process, at least two ways where the community can share their knowledge, whatever they wish to share, but not be forced to share knowledge that they don't wish to share, but recognize the value of that knowledge and bring it together with scientific knowledge. And in an egalitarian sense, not saying this is herbal knowledge, and it's cute, it's fun, but it's not very valuable. This is scientific knowledge. This is the real knowledge, and it doesn't work that way. Science has blinders on about many, many things that indigenous people don't. And it's just a characteristic of the worldview that they have. Indigenous people apprehend the world in a different way than we do, and that's fine. The way we apprehend the world is a different way. But we miss a lot that indigenous people, particularly if theyre embedded in nature, are aware of things going on in the environment that escape us. And ive said at various times, I think one of the great values of psychedelics is they open your perceptions up to things going on. They bring the background forward. They open your perception to things going on in the environment that we've been programmed through western programming to discount, to push into the background as though it's not important. Often it's the most important.
[00:57:59] Speaker A: Absolutely. And do you know what I think is what I've noticed, I think is actually really problematic.
I noticed in Cyprus, and I noticed in Colombia, the local people don't, not necessarily like the indigenous ones who are popular in the jungle, but, you know, the ones in the cities and stuff, they haven't got a clue how important this knowledge is. It's sort of seen as like peasant work.
I don't mean to be rude when I say that, but it's like people are rushing towards assimilating with western civilization and riches, not even intentionally. They're just getting sort of getting galvanized that way. And land work. Like, I was speaking to a man in Colombia, hostels, he was colombian and he obviously wasn't indigenous because he was traveling around hostels and, you know, having sound of his life. And he said, he goes, yeah, to be honest, if I think because I'd stayed with some indigenous people when I was there, he was like, yeah, to be honest, I think if we lose these people lose this knowledge, we don't not going to lose much. We grow most of our food locally anyway. And I was thinking, what do you mean? And at Cyprus as well, they don't necessarily think it's that important. And it's not until I came back recently and I was like, guys, no, we've lost everything. Don't become like us. We need to conserve it. While it's here, they've gone, oh, yeah, I suppose it is pretty important. And then they felt a bit of pride. But in the rush to modernize civilized, don't actually believe in that word, but do you know what I mean? I don't think people realize what treasure is on their plate. Already there. It's us who have lost it and have a grieving it that are like, oh God, no, it's so precious, we need to keep it. I don't know if you've experienced the same thing.
[00:59:44] Speaker B: Yes, I have. I have definitely been in the academic world for many years, but I've also experienced the other side of that coin. You know, working with indigenous people and indigenous communities. I mean, they get it, you know, they recognize it. They need to be able to propagate their knowledge or share it with the rest of the world because they lack the means to do so. But that's where things like the McKenna Academy and institutions, botanical gardens, etcetera, herbaria can come in. They can be nexuses. I think it was a nexus where science and traditional knowledge come together and fertilize and enrich each other and make something much greater than either one of them are by itself.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: It's the synergy. It's the entourage effect.
[01:00:39] Speaker B: Synergy, exactly. And symbiosis, which is another word we like to use around the McKenna Academy. Symbiosis. Now, if you look at life on earth, and life on earth, it would not be where it is if it weren't for symbiosis. And our relationship with plants and the natural world is based on, ideally, it's based on symbiosis. It's based on, unfortunately, a lot of times these days, it's based on extraction and exploitation. But there is another way, and that's what we have to learn from our indigenous brothers and sisters and their knowledge, and learn a different way of relating to nature so that we're really active symbiotic partners rather than owners or dominators or exploiters, extractors, all of those words that tend to get used in this context.
[01:01:39] Speaker A: I agree, and I agree with your point. The marginalized people who hold marginalized knowledge, they're proud. They know why it's important, you know, but it's the others who hold so much power within that context that they just get about it. And it's crazy as well, because I'm just like, literally one or two generations before our people were doing this. And it's so quick to forget the amnesia. It settles in quickly, doesn't it? We're so distracted nowadays, it's easy to forget our roots. But there's a wise woman, and she said to me, the deeper we root, the higher we go. And I agree with that. And I think getting back to our roots is super important. And Robin Kimmerera, I believe that's how you pronounce her name. She's an amazing ethnobotanist native american woman. And she spoke of these prophecies in native american law, and it was talking about the different worlds which will be created and that have been created thus far. And she says, the next one, they prophesied, it's not about creating a new world, but it's actually about retracing our steps and picking up what we've forgotten and left behind as we've rushed forward. And I was just like, yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. We need to preserve what we knew, preserve the ways that helped life thrive before any of this, so that when this goes, we can still live well, create our little garden of Eden.
[01:03:05] Speaker B: Right, right.
Well, there's a big challenge. But I'm happy that we got a chance to have this conversation. And I'm really so pleased that you're working with us. And, you know, you're a bit of a force of nature yourself, Rebecca. I mean, you're a thought leader. You're an intelligent articulator of the problems and the challenges and the solutions. I mean, the material that you, the links that you've given us are rather amazing. And I urge people to take a look at those links. I mean, there are what amount to herbal courses in herbal education right there already existing, that colleagues have created. So we will put all this up on the podcast site, and I guess we'll wrap it up here.
[01:04:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:04:05] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[01:04:06] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[01:04:07] Speaker B: Do you have a burning thing you want to say that we haven't covered?
[01:04:11] Speaker A: I just want to say thanks so much for passing me the torch. Like, I still can't believe it. But I promise I'm going to do my best. And I've got so much to learn from you, and I just. Yeah, I'm just beyond grateful that, you know, you'll remember the first time he asked me, I said no, because I was like, I need to respect my work life balance. I was trying to do that nonsense, but then I was like, hold on, we've got the chance to shout this message from the rafters, and we can do that at the McKenna Academy. And I don't take this opportunity like that. I'll do my best, I promise. And thank you.
[01:04:44] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much, Rebecca. I feel the same way. And, yeah, let's. Let's keep working and hopefully we can make a difference. And I will catch you downstream.
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[01:05:21] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to brain Forest cafe with Dennis McKenna. Find us online at McKenna Academy.
