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3:56

Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs.

3:58

This is Tim and welcome to another episode

4:01

of the Tim Farris show where it is my job

4:03

to interview world class performers.

4:05

In other words, people who are extremely

4:07

good at what they do, perhaps the best at what

4:09

they do in many different disciplines. To

4:12

tease out the mental models, lessons

4:14

learned, and so on that you can apply to your

4:16

own lives. My guest today, I've wanted

4:18

to have on for very long time, Wade Davis.

4:21

Wade is Professor of Anthropologie and

4:23

the BC leadership chair in cultures

4:26

and ecosystems at risk at the University

4:28

of British Columbia. Between two thousand

4:30

and twenty thirteen, he served

4:32

as explorer in residence at the National

4:35

Geographic Society, named by the

4:37

NGS as one of the explorers for the millennium,

4:39

he has been described as a, quote,

4:42

rare combination of scientist scholar,

4:44

poet, and passionate defender of

4:46

all of life's diverse An ethnographer, writer,

4:49

photographer, and filmmaker, Davis Holt's degree

4:51

is an Anthropologie in Biology, and a PhD

4:53

in ethnobody, all from Harvard University.

4:56

Most slee through the Harvard Mechanical Museum.

4:58

He spent more than three years in the Amazon

5:00

and Andes as plant explorer living

5:02

among fifteen indigenous groups while making

5:05

some six thousand botanical collections.

5:07

His work later took him to Haiti to investigate

5:10

folk preparations implicated in the creation

5:12

of zombies. I'm not making that up. It

5:14

is a fascinating story and that was

5:16

an assignment that led to his Rites, the serpent

5:18

and the rainbow, published nineteen eighty six,

5:20

an international bestseller later released

5:23

by Universal as a motion picture. In

5:25

recent years, his work has taken him to East

5:27

Africa, borneo, Nepal, Peru,

5:29

Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin Togo,

5:32

New Guinea, Australia, Columbia, Bonnoatu,

5:34

Mongolia, and the high Arctic of

5:36

Nunavut and Greenland. I hope

5:38

I am pronouncing those correctly. Davis

5:41

is the author of three hundred and seventy five

5:43

or so scientific and popular articles and

5:45

twenty three books, including one Rites,

5:47

the wayfinders, into the silence, and

5:50

Magdalena. His photographs have been

5:52

widely exhibited and have appeared in thirty seven

5:54

books and a hundred and thirty magazines, including

5:56

National Geographic time, geo,

5:59

people, men's journal, and outside. I could go

6:01

on and on. His bio is incredible.

6:03

I encourage you to check out his full bio at

6:05

davis wade dot com. You can find

6:07

him on Instagram at wade davis

6:10

official. He has more than forty film

6:12

credits. He has honorary

6:15

membership status in the explorers club

6:18

and it goes on and on. The man

6:20

is truly incredible and

6:22

I really enjoyed conversation. So without further

6:24

ado, please enjoy a very wide range

6:26

of conversation with none other

6:28

than Wade Davis. Wait,

6:34

welcome to the show. It is an honor.

6:37

To have you, I've been meaning to reach out for a

6:39

very long time, and I appreciate

6:41

you carving out the time in your schedule. Well,

6:44

thanks very much, Tim. It's great to be with you. And

6:47

I suppose I should just say

6:49

as a bit of context, the catalyst

6:52

for reaching out was not one of your

6:54

many Ted talks, although I've listened to many. It was

6:56

not one Rites, although I'm familiar with that as

6:58

well. It was actually being gifted the

7:01

way finders by a friend of mine.

7:03

And I suppose just

7:05

as a way of setting the stage, if

7:07

you wouldn't mind, could you explain the basic

7:10

intent of that book and the lectures

7:12

that preceded it. And I'm curious since

7:15

it was published some time

7:17

ago, if there is one

7:19

story that you wish people would

7:21

become familiar with or a chapter that

7:23

you wish you could compel

7:26

many, many people to read at this

7:28

point in time. Howard Bauchner: Yeah. Well, that's a

7:30

wonderful beginning, Tim.

7:32

The wayfinders was a book

7:34

put together in a really wonderful

7:36

tradition in Canada called the CBC Massey

7:39

lectures. And it's a fantastic event

7:41

where once each year, they pick, but

7:43

they call it public intellectual. And

7:46

you're asked to give five different talks in

7:48

five different cities before live audiences.

7:51

Those talks are recorded for

7:53

broadcast on radio three times

7:55

during the coming year, and

7:57

then election themselves are wrapped up

7:59

into a book. And it's kind of an interesting thing

8:01

because as opposed to most public

8:03

speaking, you've got a lot of things going on.

8:05

You're recording for live

8:08

radio, you've got a live audience,

8:10

and you're also essentially delivering

8:13

the lecture that's already been published and often

8:15

is in the lap of the audience. If

8:17

they've bought the book. But it's a great tradition.

8:19

You know, Martin Luther King gave them I

8:21

was the first anthropologist since Claude

8:23

Lenny Strobes. And the wayfinders

8:26

has a very conversational style.

8:28

And I think that's one reason it's

8:30

been quite successful. And particularly

8:32

for college students, The basis

8:35

of the book was really the mission that I

8:37

had at the National Geographic. You

8:39

know, I was very fortunate to

8:41

be recruited as the first class

8:43

of what the geographic was calling

8:45

their explorers and residents, which is

8:47

kind of an odd term because none

8:49

of us were ever in residents. They

8:51

wanted to demonstrate, personify, that

8:54

they didn't just report science.

8:56

They generated science. And so that

8:58

they recruited seven individuals. Jane

9:00

Goodall, Bob Ballard, who found

9:03

the Titanic, Sylvia, the Earl, the Great Oceanographer,

9:05

a host of incredible characters, Yuan

9:08

Reinhart, who the high altitude archaeologist

9:10

who found the ice made in their perfectly preserved

9:13

ink and mummy on Huliyako, they

9:15

recruited me as a cultural anthropologist,

9:18

and it was very much part of a conservation

9:21

mission. In the second hundred years, having

9:23

told you about the world, now the geographic

9:25

was gonna help you save the world. And

9:28

my mission, as defined in my

9:30

contract, was to change the

9:32

way the world viewed and valued culture in

9:34

a decade. And the way

9:36

to do that was not through politics

9:38

or polemics, but through storytelling because

9:41

you know, storytellers, as you well know, Tim,

9:43

changed the world. And

9:45

what we were trying to share

9:47

with the public was kind of the fundamental

9:50

revelation of anthropology, the idea

9:52

that the other peoples of the world aren't

9:54

failed attempts of being you. You know, they're

9:56

not failed attempts of being modern. Every

9:59

culture is a unique answer to a

10:01

fundamental question. What does it mean

10:03

to be human and alive? And when the peoples

10:05

of the world answer that, They do so in

10:07

the seven thousand different voices of

10:09

humanity. And all

10:12

those answers kind of collectively become

10:14

our human repertoire. And so

10:16

we also wanted to draw

10:18

people's attention to the kind of haunting

10:20

fact that of those seven thousand

10:23

languages spoke in the day you

10:25

Tim and I were born by

10:27

absolute academic consensus, half

10:30

are not being taught to children, which

10:32

means they're moribund on the

10:34

brink of extinction, if not

10:36

exhaustion. And that

10:38

means in effect that we're living through an era

10:40

where half of humanity's intellectual social

10:43

spiritually, even ecological knowledge

10:45

is at risk. And at the same

10:47

time, this is the amazing thing. We're

10:50

living through an era where genetic have

10:52

finally proven it to be true, what

10:55

philosophers and poets have always

10:57

dreamt to be true, that we really are all

10:59

brothers and sisters, and I I don't mean

11:01

that in the spirit of hippy ethnography. I

11:04

mean, that studies of the human

11:06

genome have shown without doubt

11:08

that the genetic endowment of humanity

11:11

is a continuum, race is

11:13

a total fiction. We're all cuts

11:15

in the same genetic cloth were all

11:17

descendants of Africa, including

11:19

those of us who walked out of the ancient continent

11:21

sixty five thousand years ago. But here's

11:23

the astonishing thing. If

11:26

we're cut from the same genetic cloth,

11:28

by definition we share the same genius, and

11:30

how that genius is expressed is

11:32

simply amount of choice and cultural

11:35

adaptation. So there is no

11:37

hierarchy in culture. That old Victorian

11:40

idea that, you know, we went from the savage

11:42

to the barbarian to the civilized to the round

11:44

of London that Victorian societies,

11:47

you know, sat at the apex of a pyramid

11:49

that went down to the so called primers of the world.

11:51

Absolutely ridiculed by modern science

11:53

shown to be an artifact of the nineteenth

11:56

century irrelevant to our lives today

11:58

and is distant from those lives

12:01

was the idea of clergymen in that era

12:03

who believed the earth was only six thousand years

12:05

old. So then the question

12:07

is, how do you share this? How do

12:10

you reveal this kind of wondrous

12:12

thing about culture to the world?

12:15

You know, you you have to show, you can't

12:17

tell, polemics are never persuasive.

12:20

So the reason that book, the

12:22

way founders, it tells the story

12:25

of the expeditions that we did

12:27

to share this message across the

12:29

world. And so we

12:31

deliberately and it wasn't easy.

12:33

We we didn't wanna simply go out as so many

12:36

ethnographic filmmakers tend

12:38

to do celebrating the exoticism

12:41

the other. We really wanted to go

12:43

to places where the beliefs

12:45

practices revealed this

12:48

extraordinary universal truth. And I

12:50

think you asked which was the most extraordinary

12:53

of

12:53

all, and it would have to be the Polynesian

12:55

wayfinders.

12:56

Yeah. That blew my mind. The type

12:58

story is a book. I mean, this is just

13:00

an amazing thing if you think about it.

13:03

Even today, members of

13:05

the Polynesian Voyage in society can

13:08

name two hundred fifty stars in the night

13:10

sky. They they can sense the presence

13:12

of distant tolls of islands

13:15

beyond the visible horizon just by

13:17

watching the reverberation of

13:19

waves across the hull of

13:21

their sacred canoe, the Hokalea, this great

13:23

vessel that is a symbol of this polynesian

13:26

renaissance. In the darkness, in

13:28

the hull, they can distinguish

13:30

as many as five different sea swells.

13:33

Again, moving through the water, distinguishing

13:35

those who caused by local weather

13:38

disturbances from those that pulsate across

13:40

the ocean and can be followed with ease

13:42

with which terrestrial Explorer

13:45

would follow a river to the sea. And each

13:47

of these chapters in that book, Tim, the

13:49

subjects also became films, of course,

13:51

that we did for the Geographic. I kind of

13:53

tried to find it, not a punch line, but

13:55

I kind of line it would sum it all up.

13:57

And so with polynesia, it was

13:59

very simple if you took all of the genius

14:02

that allowed us to put a man on the moon

14:05

and applied it to an understanding of the ocean

14:07

what you would get as Polynesia.

14:10

I found it so striking, and I may be using

14:12

the wrong terms, but that the captain

14:14

and navigator were too entirely distinct.

14:17

Toll functions. Totally. And that's a great example

14:19

to me of perhaps

14:22

just a fundamentally different

14:25

way of viewing seafaring when

14:27

you come from a western

14:29

lens. And I really enjoyed

14:31

that

14:31

book. I encourage everybody to pick it up. And

14:34

if it's okay with you, I would love to actually segue

14:37

to another culture,

14:39

another group. Yeah. But Tim I

14:41

leave Paul Neusia, let me just add one thing

14:43

that just to clarify things for your listeners.

14:45

The amazing thing about this tradition was

14:48

it was based on dead reckoning. Which

14:50

means that you only know where you are

14:52

by remembering how you got there.

14:54

And it was impossibility of doing

14:56

that that kept most European transports

14:59

hugging the shores of continents until

15:01

the British solved the problem of longitude

15:03

with the invention of the chronometer. But

15:05

we know that ten centuries

15:08

before Christ, from an ancient civilization

15:10

called Lapita, the ancient

15:13

ancestors of the Polynesians set sail

15:15

to the rising sun. And

15:17

this idea of dead reckoning means

15:19

and back to your navigator why

15:22

he's not running the ship because

15:24

he he or she must sit monk like

15:26

on the back of the vessel. Remembering

15:29

every shift of the wind, every

15:31

tack, every sign of the sun, the

15:33

moon, the stars, the birds, the salinity

15:35

in the water, every one of

15:37

these empirical observation and

15:40

the order of their acquisition. And

15:42

if that memory chain is

15:45

broken, the voyage can end a disaster.

15:48

And all of this has to be done

15:50

by an individual who lives in

15:52

a civilization that lacks the

15:54

written word. So all

15:56

of this has to be placed

15:59

in memory over a three and

16:01

four week

16:02

voyage. Think about that. Tell me that.

16:05

Is not a form of genius.

16:07

Not just a form of genius, but a form of

16:09

endurance almost beyond belief. How

16:11

many hours of sleep on average over

16:13

the voyage per day or per night would that

16:15

navigator get?

16:17

It's a great question because they

16:19

kind of can't map in a way

16:22

but they can't really do much more than

16:24

just cat mapping. You know, it's

16:26

funny this idea of sleep. You

16:28

know, we have this we're so

16:30

wired to the clock that we feel

16:32

that we somehow done something filthy

16:35

or nasty if we cannot be four hours

16:37

or, you know, but many societies around

16:39

there, you know, I spent a lot of time arctic. And

16:41

one of the things that's fascinating is that

16:43

winter is a time for sleep, you

16:45

know, the air of perpetual darkness. And

16:48

summer, the light is luminous. All

16:50

day

16:51

long. And kind of it's not

16:53

even appropriate to sleep. You kinda,

16:55

you know, can't nap with your dogs,

16:57

but there's just too much to be done.

17:01

Let's shift just a bit or

17:03

maybe entirely to the Kogi

17:05

peoples of Northern Columbia. You

17:07

are deeply deeply

17:10

familiar and intimate with

17:12

Columbia and its people. I

17:14

had the opportunity through a mutual acquaintance,

17:17

doctor Mark Plarkin, to meet

17:19

a mama and a small

17:21

group of kuggies, but it was

17:23

a very cursory experience

17:26

and they were very select

17:28

with their words in communication. Could

17:30

you describe the Kogi people

17:33

of Northern Columbia and perhaps just

17:35

paint a picture? For

17:37

people of what that culture and what

17:39

those peoples look like because

17:41

I find them to stand out

17:44

at least for me amongst

17:46

the cultures have been exposed to in a number

17:48

of ways. Yeah. It's

17:50

truly remarkable. They live

17:52

in the Sierra Nevada Santa Martha,

17:54

the highest coastal mountain range on

17:56

Earth that soars out of the Caribbean

17:58

coastal plain to about twenty

18:00

thousand feet. There are four indigenous

18:03

groups. The Koga you mentioned, the

18:05

Wewa, the Ottowakos and the Kanquana.

18:08

The Kanquana in the nineteenth century

18:10

kind of got a filgent

18:13

deal with the greater

18:15

Columbian society and endured

18:17

great deal of assimilation and they're kind of struggling

18:20

to get back to their tradition ways. But

18:22

the other three societies remain absolutely

18:25

extraordinary. And in a blood stained

18:27

continent, you can almost say they were never

18:30

conquered by the Spanish fully. They

18:32

are descendants of an ancient civilization called

18:35

Tyrona, which suffered immensely

18:37

in the first decades of the Spanish

18:39

conquest, and the survivors fled

18:42

into this mountain mass sea where they lived

18:44

almost in total isolation, very

18:47

little reference to them in the clinical documents.

18:50

For two hundred, it's not three hundred years. And

18:52

it's almost as if they had suffered

18:54

so much that they

18:56

made a kind of collect devout never

18:59

to screw up again. And I think that accounts

19:01

for their intense religiosity. Many

19:03

people call them the tibetans of

19:05

South America, but they live to

19:08

this day inspired by

19:10

a ritual priesthood, the mongols,

19:12

the sun priest, and the training

19:14

for the priesthood is extraordinary It

19:17

was first reported in nineteen forties

19:19

by Raquel Dommotov that the Rites

19:21

were taken away from their families at

19:24

the age of two and three. And then

19:26

sequestered in a shadowy world of darkness

19:28

for eighteen years during

19:30

which time they absorbed the

19:32

religious beliefs of their society,

19:34

and it's their sincere conviction that

19:37

those beliefs, those rituals, those

19:39

prayers, literally maintain

19:41

the cosmic we might say the ecological

19:44

balance of the world. And according to Rykul,

19:47

after eighteen years in which the world

19:49

only existed as an abstraction, The

19:52

young acolyte was taken out and

19:54

taken on a journey. And for the

19:56

first time in his life, at the age of

19:58

eighteen or nineteen, He saw the

20:00

horizon. He saw the mountains.

20:03

He saw the sun. And suddenly

20:05

the priest who has trained them all these years

20:08

says, you know, Rites

20:10

that beautiful as I've promised you.

20:12

It's yours to protect. Now, this

20:14

was almost a fable with an

20:16

Anthropologie because Mikkel

20:18

never saw the rich role. He never

20:20

went on one of those pilgrimages to the heart

20:22

of the world. Then an amazing

20:24

thing happened. I first lived

20:26

with the Atawakos when I was allowed of

20:29

nineteen and twenty. In fact, when

20:31

you mentioned, you know, it's amazing.

20:33

I've now been close with them for almost

20:35

fifty years. They, in fact, the Otter

20:37

Wako's call me their mama Occidental. And

20:40

so I I was once with President Santos,

20:43

the Nobel laureate, the first

20:45

time he ever visited Namassimake and

20:47

the mamas had asked me to be there to welcome

20:50

him. And I hitched a ride in

20:52

the presidential plane, and and when we got

20:54

to the community, there was a kind of formal

20:56

ceremony in which the president introduced

20:58

his Invitados, you know, his ministers,

21:01

and so on. He got around to me and he couldn't have

21:03

been more generous with his praise and his kind

21:05

words, but he was interrupted by one of the mommos

21:07

who said, you don't have to tell us about that guy.

21:10

He's our ambassador in North America. I

21:13

have a very wonderful relationship to

21:15

them, but here's what was extraordinary. One

21:18

wintry day in Washington The

21:21

Colombian ambassador, then Carolina

21:23

Bartko, a good friend of mine, turned

21:25

up at my office at the geographic with

21:28

a political leader, Danilo Villafania,

21:30

and three mammals, one from each of

21:32

the three cultures we were,

21:34

kogi, and Arabako. And

21:38

they were there because

21:40

the BBC had made a film and

21:43

the Adawakos felt they hadn't had

21:45

their say and they wanted to make their own film.

21:47

So they come to me. And as

21:50

I'm looking at this guy Danilo, he

21:52

looks so much like an old friend of mine, so I pulled

21:54

out book of mine, one Rites, which happened

21:56

to have a photograph in the front of

21:59

space of one of the chapters. I showed

22:01

and that was Daniel's father,

22:03

Adalero, who was murdered

22:06

by the paramilitaries. And

22:08

I said that Danilo, know, son, you

22:10

don't remember, but when you're a little infant,

22:12

I carried you in my back for weeks, stepping

22:15

down the mountains with your father, and

22:17

he was so touched by that. And

22:19

the connection was so strong that

22:21

he invited us to do what I thought

22:23

was the impossible to actually

22:25

go along on a journey to the heart of the

22:27

world and make a film about

22:30

this idea and the pilgrimage.

22:32

And the idea is very simple. You

22:35

as you come out of the sacred temple and

22:37

what we discovered is They don't

22:39

stay eighteen years in the darkness, but eighteen

22:42

years in seclusion around the

22:44

temple and a ritual diet not seen

22:46

women, And then they do go

22:48

from the temple to

22:50

the ice and from the ice back to

22:52

the sea and from the sea back to the temple,

22:54

completing this sort of sacred devotional

22:57

pilgrimage of the divine. And

23:00

we made that film. Unfortunately, at

23:02

the very penultimate stage of the pilgrimage,

23:05

we were kind of ambushed by the

23:07

fog, and we had to escape and

23:09

turn our cameras over to

23:11

one of the Weibo lads that we had trained

23:14

in cinematography. And with incredible

23:16

skill. He finished those segments of

23:18

the film, so we actually had the entire

23:20

pilgrimage documented. But

23:22

I think there's a bigger point about

23:25

the elder brothers, as I call themselves.

23:27

They dismiss all of us who have ruined the world

23:30

as the younger brothers. And these

23:32

are societies that do

23:35

not view the world through an

23:37

extractive paradigm. You know, they do

23:39

not think that the world is just a kind

23:41

of stage set upon which only

23:43

the human drama unfolds.

23:46

You know, they don't buy into the

23:48

old Descartes an idea that all that

23:50

exists his mind and matter and that

23:52

only things that can be measured can exist.

23:54

That whole kind of idea that we

23:56

develop in the European

23:59

tradition that has now become so dominant,

24:01

so powerful, so ubiquitous, but

24:03

it is not the norm. It is highly

24:05

anomalous. Most societies interact

24:08

with the national world through the kind

24:10

of metaphor of reciprocity. Some

24:12

idea that the earth gives its bounty

24:14

to us we owe our fidelity

24:17

to the earth. And that's very much

24:19

how the mammals see

24:22

their role. As representatives

24:25

of the natural order of things. It's funny

24:27

when I was first asked by them

24:29

to go and be there when president

24:31

Santos arrived, one

24:33

of my close friends, a man called Mama

24:36

Camuto, said to me something very profound.

24:38

He said, you know, peace won't matter. And

24:41

this is after fifty years of Columbia's

24:43

horrific war. Peace won't

24:45

matter if it's only an excuse for the three

24:47

sides to come together to maintain

24:49

a war against nature. It's time for us

24:51

to make peace with the entire natural

24:54

world. And as we flew up to Vayudupar,

24:57

on the presidential jet from Bogotá,

24:59

all of the president's aids were peppering

25:01

him with statistics for his speech.

25:04

In the community that was gonna be broadcast internationally.

25:07

And I kinda sheepishly put up my hand

25:09

and I I said in Spanish, you know, president

25:12

Santos for the numbness, you know, statistics

25:14

don't matter a rat's ass, you know.

25:17

What they care about is what's in your heart.

25:19

And then I told him what Mummel Camuto had

25:21

said, and and president Santos is an incredibly

25:23

wonderful man, incorporated that,

25:25

made that the kind of the the theme of his

25:28

speech

25:28

yet. Went out that day of the world.

25:30

I was very struck

25:33

by and and I don't wanna spend

25:35

too much time on this, but I'll just say, struck

25:37

by how central

25:40

Pagamientos offerings and

25:42

payments seem to be to,

25:44

certainly, the mumbles, but broadly speaking,

25:46

the Kogi. And

25:48

I appreciate all the context that you just

25:50

provided. would also love you

25:53

and we could spend five hours just discussing

25:55

what I'm about to bring up. But I

25:57

also would love to ask

25:59

you about cocoa. So many people are

26:01

familiar with cocoa as a leaf that is chewed or

26:03

something that is turned into cocaine. But

26:06

could you talk a bit about

26:09

Mombes? This is a word and something

26:11

that has come up in

26:13

my radius a number of Rites.

26:16

But what is Mambé? Where is it

26:18

used? How is it prepared?

26:20

COCA is a generic term

26:23

for two different cultivated species

26:25

and four different varieties. That

26:28

have been exploited by people in

26:30

South Ferriss, perhaps as

26:32

long as eight thousand years, certainly five

26:34

thousand years. And I should say that coke into

26:36

cocaine, what potatoes are

26:38

to vodka. And the

26:41

two main types of cocoa,

26:43

one is called Colombian.

26:46

That's Earth Rites Nova Grande Tensey.

26:48

And the other is a classic cocha of

26:50

the southern Andes of Cusco and

26:53

La Paz. That is erythropfen cocoa.

26:56

Now in pre Columbian Rites, a

26:58

variety of that was taken down the Amazon

27:01

into the jungles of the northwest Amazon.

27:04

And this variety, which

27:07

is known as erythropodu, is

27:11

cultivated vegetatively, not

27:13

from seed. It also has half

27:15

the alkali concentration. And

27:17

so in very interesting way, the peoples

27:20

of the Anaconda, in all these extraordinary

27:22

societies by the sound of Macouna, to

27:25

kno kubeo, I

27:27

mean, there's scores of these extraordinary cultures.

27:31

They've learned to take the leads roast

27:34

them over a clay griddle.

27:37

And then rather than taking the leaf

27:39

orally and mixing some kind of alkaline

27:42

with it, baking soda or limestone

27:44

or ashes of certain plants, as you'll see,

27:47

in the mountains of southern Peru,

27:50

they add the ash of the leaves

27:52

of a tree known as Yarumo. And

27:54

then they pound the tube together

27:56

until you get very fine powder, which

27:58

becomes even more fine

28:00

when sifted through palm fibers.

28:03

A consistency of tuck. And

28:05

with mambi then you take the

28:07

actual cuca with

28:09

a bone like this. This is a nondi

28:12

bone right here and you put the

28:14

wad onto your mouth and you

28:16

let the saliva kind of

28:18

soften it and you don't really

28:20

talk or breathe or the whole works will just

28:23

explode as a green cloud.

28:25

And as it's moist, you then lift it up

28:27

as a quid. And the advantage, of course, is

28:29

that by taking cocoa

28:31

in this way, you absorb the

28:33

entire plant and thus all the nutrients.

28:36

I mean, one of the before I just finish

28:38

that, then the other coke of the coke of

28:40

the cokey that we talked about

28:43

That is Erithroxim, Novakran Attensey,

28:45

riding Novakran Attensey, this is Cook of Columbia,

28:47

and that Cook who was taken down the

28:50

coast to Triheo in the

28:52

northern desert of Peru and

28:54

that became the preferred

28:56

coke of the Inca. It's got a little wintergreen

28:58

oil in it. It's erythropylene overground

29:01

intensity variety, true density. And

29:03

that, of course, was a preferred cocoa that

29:06

to this day, Coca Cola imports each

29:08

year by the time allowing their

29:10

beverage to really be the real thing.

29:13

The fascinating story, Tim, is

29:15

that I worked with Tim Plowman,

29:17

a protege of my professor Schulte's

29:19

Mark's professor in the seventies.

29:22

And we were charged to work out the

29:24

botany, the ethnobody, the

29:26

ethnography of COCA, And

29:28

at that time, we thought that

29:30

the Coke of Columbia for

29:32

classic botanical reasons was

29:35

derived from the Coke of Pru

29:37

but Now that we have DNA, we

29:39

see a greater story. It turns out

29:42

that these two sacred plants used

29:44

for eight thousand years Revered

29:46

as the divineief of immortality by

29:49

every culture in the Andes, all

29:51

come from the same wild ancestor.

29:54

A species known as erythropoies, which

29:58

grows along the eastern flanks of the

30:00

Andes. Now that may seem like arcane botany

30:03

talk to many of our listeners, but

30:05

it's actually a miracle because

30:07

to have two revered plants

30:10

independently domesticated through

30:13

a process of artificial selection thousands

30:16

of miles apart and yet

30:18

each deemed to be sacred essence

30:20

of the divine is unheard of,

30:23

no precedent in all of the history

30:25

of Botney and of human cultures.

30:27

And so this is the the richness

30:29

of COCA. Now the extraordinary thing

30:32

is that the efforts to eradicate

30:35

cocoa fields began

30:38

fifty years before there was a cocaine problem.

30:40

In the nineteen twenties, Physicians

30:43

and Lima in particular looked

30:46

up into the Andes, and their concern for the

30:48

well-being of Andean people was matched in its

30:50

intensity only by the ignorance of Andean

30:52

life. And when they saw literacy,

30:54

poor sanitation, one

30:57

social pathology after the other,

30:59

they had to find a cause. And because issues

31:01

of economics, a land

31:03

distribution in equity came

31:06

too close to challenging the bourgeois foundations

31:09

of their lives in Lima, they had

31:11

to find the evil source and the source

31:13

was Koka. And they blame

31:15

Koka for every ill in the

31:17

Andes and through all those years.

31:20

These doctors and physicians and nutritionists

31:23

never did the obvious. A nutritional

31:26

study to show just what

31:28

this plant actually had in it. And when we

31:30

finally did that in the mid nineteen

31:32

seventies, Andrew Wild Chimp plume

31:34

and Jim Duke at the USDA, we

31:36

discovered, horrified our backers

31:39

of the DEA and the US

31:41

government because it turns out that COCA has

31:43

a tiny amount of cocaine in it,

31:45

absorbed benignly as a mild

31:48

stimulant by the mucous membrane of the mouth,

31:50

absolutely without harm,

31:53

the plant also has more

31:56

calcium than any plant ever

31:58

studied, perfect for a traditional diet

32:00

without a dairy product, It also

32:02

is chock full of vitamins. It even has

32:04

enzymes that enhance the body's ability

32:07

to digest carbohydrate at high elevation

32:09

making it perfect for the potato

32:11

based diet. So in one simple nutritional

32:14

study that could have been done at any time,

32:17

we put into stark profile these

32:19

curious efforts that are underway to

32:22

this day to destroy the

32:24

traditional fields. And we showed that this was a

32:26

plant that have been used with no evidence

32:28

of toxicity, little on addiction, for

32:31

at least five thousand years.

32:33

And so one of our big efforts today is

32:35

to decouple cocoa from

32:38

cocaine and create a nutraceutical market

32:41

for the plant that will give legal

32:44

market for the hundred and fifty thousand families

32:46

in Columbia alone that depend

32:48

on cultivating cocoa for

32:51

their survival and also

32:53

through taxes may just give Colombia the

32:56

revenue necessary to pay

32:58

the cost of peace having

33:00

drained its treasury for fifty years

33:03

to pay the cost of a war only

33:05

made possible by the sordid

33:07

profits of prohibition.

33:12

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and

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free. Terms and conditions apply. So

34:18

we may come back to COCA. And as

34:20

you're discussing the nutritional profile,

34:22

it makes me also think of the role that

34:25

coffee serves in some populations

34:27

in the world. But I would love to

34:30

go to some well trodden ground

34:32

and this is out of personal curiosity

34:34

and also because I think that many

34:36

people want to hear more of

34:39

background here. And then we're

34:41

going to probably come to discuss

34:43

a number of mentors of yours. But

34:45

I would love to hear you expand

34:48

on TTX

34:50

and datura's pneumonia, if I'm pronouncing

34:53

that and And -- Yeah.

34:55

-- how you came across these two in

34:57

combination? Because

34:58

Datura, I think Datura's germanium,

35:01

also known as Jimson Weed, if I'm not

35:03

getting that

35:04

Yeah. Correct. Grows right in my

35:06

driveway in Texas. It's

35:08

found in all sorts of places. TTX a little

35:11

less so. Yeah. But could you

35:13

just provide the background on where you

35:15

came across these two? Yeah.

35:17

This is an incredible story, a kind

35:19

of assignment of a lifetime that would

35:21

completely change my

35:23

trajectory. You

35:24

know, I had done a lot of work

35:26

in the Amazon three years,

35:28

in fact, through the Andes in the Amazon, And

35:31

I'd studied Anthropologie, but I never

35:33

really understood the real

35:35

message of Anthropologie until I went to Haiti.

35:37

I'll explain that in in a moment. But what

35:39

happened? Is that a

35:41

very well known psychopharmacologist by

35:44

the name of Nathan Klein, psychopharmacology

35:46

being the study of the action of drugs

35:48

on the brain have been going to Haiti

35:51

for many years. The psychiatric institute

35:53

board's name, he had set it up,

35:56

and a close colleague of his at McGill

35:58

University, Heinz Lehmann, had

36:00

a former student, Lamar Duignan, who

36:02

is now the director of that psychiatric institute.

36:06

And Dion was fascinated by

36:08

the Haitian zombie phenomena. And, of

36:10

course, by folkloric belief,

36:12

the zombie is a living dead. It's an individual

36:15

who has had their soul, stolen

36:17

by sorcery, kind of propelled

36:19

into perpetual state of purgatory, said

36:22

to be associated with enslavement. And

36:25

this was sort of something very much from the realm

36:27

of the phantasmagoric. But

36:29

De Jong had been paying attention and investigating

36:32

every case that came his way And

36:34

finally, he discovered this remarkable story

36:38

of a man called Clarius Narcis,

36:40

who in the early nineteen sixties had

36:43

been misdiagnosed dead or even

36:45

diagnosed dead by two

36:47

physicians, both American trained and

36:49

one in American, in the Albert

36:51

Schweitzer hospital in Central Haiti,

36:54

an American directed institution that keeps

36:56

impeccable records. And this

36:58

man claiming to be in our see. Slater

37:00

walked into his village in about

37:02

nineteen eighty eighty one claiming to

37:04

be the long lost brother. The

37:06

family members had no doubt but

37:08

they immediately told him to get lost and he had

37:10

to escape to the police station for his own

37:13

safety. And when DuPont looked

37:15

into this, He was able to secure

37:18

death certificates of Scotland Yard

37:20

with their forensic expertise, the

37:22

fingerprints that belonging to the sister

37:25

of the deceased there were

37:27

a score of lines of evidence that

37:30

suggested that this man clearly had been

37:32

misdiagnosed dead and somehow turned

37:34

up in the realm of living. And in fact, do you all

37:36

went to the family members and put together

37:38

a questionnaire of intimate

37:41

information of the family background

37:44

all of which this man answered correctly.

37:46

So the bottom line is that Duon

37:49

and Lehman and doctor

37:51

Klein went public saying they

37:53

felt they had found it for zombie. Now

37:55

that drew their attention to

37:58

reports of a full poison that

38:01

was said to bring on a state of parent as so

38:03

profound it could fool a physician. Now, this

38:05

poison wasn't just mentioned in traveler's

38:07

accounts and missionary memoirs

38:09

and in ethnographic reports, it

38:12

was specifically mentioned in the penal

38:14

code of the country. But Duon

38:16

had not been able to find poised,

38:18

and he hadn't secured a formula of it.

38:20

And this was key to the whole

38:22

question of the Haitian zombie. It was either

38:25

something for the realm of fantasy or

38:27

if it was real, there had to be natural product.

38:30

And if that product existed, that

38:32

could make someone appear to be dead, such

38:34

that they could come back into the realm

38:36

of living on damage that

38:38

had huge potential medical

38:41

applications as clients saw it.

38:43

So they came to Harvard. Schulte's said

38:46

he was too old to go, but he said

38:48

he knew someone who could do the job, and

38:50

that's how I was hired to go down to Haiti.

38:53

To secure this poison. Now remember,

38:55

I I wasn't looking for

38:58

a poison that could kill people. Lots of

39:00

things can do that. I was looking

39:02

for something much more rare, which

39:04

was a poison that could bring some to the state

39:06

of apparent death so profound, it could

39:09

fool a physician, and yet the victim

39:11

could survive. And so

39:13

I did what one does. I contacted a

39:16

sorcerer was

39:19

he had been described by the BBC as

39:21

the incarnation of evil. He was nothing

39:24

of the sort. He he had core house and

39:26

a bunch of Dominican women. And he

39:28

had been a junior member that talked on Maku,

39:30

but I was able to establish through

39:32

a little bit of kind of theatrics a

39:35

good relationship with him. What was

39:37

the group that you mentioned? I'm not familiar with it.

39:39

junior member of what group? The Tom Tomakoun.

39:42

The Tantan Mokut. Tantan in

39:44

Creole means uncle. Nakut means shoulder

39:46

bag. This was a nickname for

39:48

the volunteers of for the national security.

39:51

The militia that was set up by Francois

39:53

Duvalier in the wake of his presidential

39:57

election in nineteen fifty seven, and this is

39:59

a pivotal part of the story because

40:01

Duvalier was the first president in a

40:03

hundred years to say that Voodoo was legitimate

40:05

religion. He had Voodoo temples

40:08

in the presidential palace. He wore

40:10

the costume of Baronsamadi, the

40:12

guarding of the dead of the graveyard.

40:15

He played voodoo like charm,

40:17

and he used the secret

40:19

societies as his base of power.

40:21

And from them, as my research would

40:24

discover, he created this notorious

40:27

force, Makuten. It

40:29

means that if you misbehave, they

40:31

will come and take you away in their shoulder

40:33

bag. And so I went

40:35

out with Marcel after

40:38

this kind of bit of theater that we did

40:40

to kinda I was kinda funny. I'll tell

40:42

you about it so much. I wanna hear

40:43

about the theater. Yeah. How do you develop repoor.

40:45

I went to him, you know, and with a

40:47

good friend of mine Max Boulevard, who's when

40:50

he died, was sort of heralded as a pope

40:52

of voodoo, an amazing kind of conduit.

40:54

For the outside world to understand voodoo.

40:57

And again, I should say right off the top,

40:59

Tim, that we have this idea of voodoo

41:01

from the movies that couldn't be more

41:04

wrong. And we should think for a moment if we

41:06

were asked to name the great religions

41:08

of the world, what continent would we leave

41:10

out, sub Saharan Africa, And

41:12

of course, voodoo is not a black magic

41:14

cult. It's a fun word from du Homme

41:16

or Benin that means spirit or God.

41:19

It's this the distillation of very profound

41:21

religious ideas that came over

41:23

during the era of slavery and

41:25

then became transformed within

41:27

the soil of a new world. That's why

41:29

you have Hulu in the American South, Pumina,

41:32

Mikandumblay, in Brazil, Austria

41:35

and Jamaica and so on Santa Maria, in

41:37

the d r and of course voodoo in

41:40

Haiti. And voodoo took a particularly

41:42

strong form in Haiti because

41:45

as opposed to the other countries I

41:47

mentioned, Haiti was an independent

41:49

black country, the only one in the world

41:51

for a century, gained its independence

41:54

in eighteen o four, and

41:56

at that time much of its population,

41:59

the slaves, had literally been born in

42:01

Africa. So in many ways, you can

42:03

almost argue that Haiti is more

42:05

Africa than Africa itself at

42:07

this point. But at any rate,

42:09

I saw Marcell, and he made me

42:11

the powder, but I knew the way he made it

42:13

the ingredients that it was kind

42:15

of bogus. And so I instead of

42:18

telling him that, I doubled what I had

42:20

promised to pay him. And as I left

42:22

the on four of the temple, I

42:24

mentioned I was gonna try it on an enemy I

42:26

had in the capital. I'd let him know how

42:28

it worked. And then

42:30

with a deliberate piece of theater, Maxwell

42:33

Warren High stormed back a week later

42:35

and screamed and yelling at him that we had nearly

42:37

gotten killed at powder was worthless,

42:40

so he couldn't do thing. And of course, he then

42:42

got furious, and he went into the inner sanctum

42:44

of the temple and came out with a bottle, a little

42:46

vial And he said, if you don't in

42:48

Creel, he said, if you don't think I know how to make poison,

42:51

drink this, you won't walk out of here alive.

42:53

And then all the Dominican girls started

42:55

going, well, What? Drink. Drink. Drink.

42:58

And it was kind of a bit tense. And so

43:00

I said to Marcel, look man, it's not that you don't

43:02

know how to make good poison. I came all this week

43:04

because I know you can. I'm just saying what

43:06

you made me as garbage. And if you

43:08

give me garbage, you'll never see me again. But

43:10

if you give me the real thing, you might make a lot

43:12

of money from us. And then I walked out.

43:14

And I went back the next day and the proper ingredients

43:17

were drying on the clothes line. And then we

43:19

went into the inner sanctum of the temple and

43:21

he took a bottle of raw alcohol

43:23

with human remains in it and all kinds

43:26

of animals and gore of one sort of

43:28

the other. And he handed it to me, and I

43:30

took a big drink and handed it right

43:32

back to him, and he laughed. And I think it was

43:34

the first time of many times

43:36

that a Christian would say to me,

43:40

what kind of white are you anyway? And

43:42

so it was the beginning of my relationship.

43:44

Were you not worried about drinking that? No. It

43:46

was the expectation of the ingredients.

43:49

Well, it was just a ritual vessel of

43:51

magical things. He's a sorcerer, a

43:53

negative priest. And, you know, it's

43:55

all been pickled in sugarcane alcohol.

43:58

It's part of it is it's not like macho.

44:00

It's sort of saying actually a more subtle,

44:02

more poetic, more beautiful thing. You know, Tim, how

44:04

how do you break down the barrier between

44:06

yourself and the people with whom you find

44:09

yourself living as a guest and it's never

44:11

bravado or macho. It's actually

44:13

always love and empathy and

44:15

letting people know that you believe they're

44:17

somebody. And it seems so simple,

44:20

but you'd be astonished how many people

44:22

I encountered, particularly in Haiti,

44:25

including doctor Klein,

44:27

who had no way whatsoever

44:30

of hanging out with those folks,

44:32

just couldn't do it. And that's what

44:34

I've been doing all my life. But the

44:36

important thing is from the Asian

44:38

point of view, the poison is

44:40

not what makes a zombie. And that's

44:43

really important. And that explains how I

44:45

got the formula so quickly,

44:47

but the funny part of this story is

44:49

that it was Easter Sunday when

44:52

I returned to the United States through

44:54

JFK Airport, and I had

44:56

this suitcase made of surplus

44:58

seven up ten cans that

45:00

was filled to the gennels with human

45:02

bones, all the ingredients. In

45:04

various forms, I had a live booth

45:07

of marinist toad in my backpack, the biggest

45:09

towed in the world, ten inches across, and

45:11

I had no permits. Customs dream.

45:14

Yeah. Yeah. So I you couldn't do this

45:16

post nine eleven, but I went up to this customs

45:19

agent. And I just well, let's just

45:21

see what he says. So I opened up this thing, so

45:23

only he could see it. And he

45:25

slammed it shut him, and I'm not

45:27

gonna give you exactly what he said

45:29

because there are children listening to your

45:31

pod

45:32

cass. Oh,

45:32

no. No. This doesn't need to be family friendly.

45:34

What did he say? Gigadoles. He

45:36

literally said in New York accent,

45:39

look. Rites Easter

45:41

fucking Sunday. I didn't even

45:43

wanna fucking work today. I don't know who

45:46

the fuck you are just get the fuck

45:48

out of here. And

45:50

that's how the zombie poison came into America.

45:53

Thank God for Easter Sunday and that guy.

45:55

But then here's where we get to your TTX.

45:57

I I analyzed the plants, took the

46:00

reptiles, the herpetologists, and all the

46:02

various creatures to the various specialists,

46:04

and I finally got around to the fish. And

46:06

I went to see the ixiologists in

46:09

the basement of the museum of comparative

46:11

zoology, And this was like out

46:13

of a movie. And I say to this wonderful

46:16

character, did you find anything in

46:18

those fish? And he had his head inside a

46:20

white shark. And as he

46:22

heard me, he bounced his head against

46:24

the teeth, plow his head out

46:26

and said I thought you were the poison people.

46:28

Because our museum was the world center for

46:30

the study of medicinal and toxic plants

46:32

and hallucinogen. And then he

46:34

goes to the shelf and he doesn't pull out the

46:37

journal of ideology he pulls

46:39

out a pocketbook, dying store,

46:41

novel, and it turns out to be

46:44

written by Ian Fleming. And it was

46:46

either from Russia with love or from doctor No.

46:48

And at the end of one of those two books,

46:50

double o seven gets kicked in the shins by

46:52

the bad guy and dies. And

46:54

he comes back to life in the next book

46:56

because he's been kicked the poison to

46:59

try to toxin. And that is

47:01

what blew open the zombie stevia.

47:03

Stevia X. To try to talk soon. Right.

47:05

Mhmm. Because to try to talk

47:07

soon is a big molecule that

47:09

selectively blocks sodium channels

47:11

and brings on peripheral paralysis dramatically

47:15

low metabolic rates and consciousness

47:17

is retained until death. And when

47:19

you looked at the symptoms of Nazis, they

47:22

matched perfectly the symptoms of

47:24

victims of 652 and fish poisoning

47:27

In Japan, the 652 is culinary

47:29

delicacy. The chef must eliminate

47:32

most of the TTX, but not all

47:35

because he wants to connoisseur to enjoy the pleasant

47:37

after effects of a mild intoxication. But

47:40

because some people screw up, Rites

47:42

of people have died. And there was a whole literature

47:45

in Japan. And in public

47:47

in newspapers, case after

47:50

case after case of people nailed

47:52

into their coffins by mistake. So

47:55

this changed everything. This suggested, without

47:58

doubt, that the sorcerers in

48:00

Haiti had found in their environment

48:02

and natural product that not only

48:05

could make someone appear to be dead,

48:07

but had done so many times in

48:09

the past. So then you had to ask what

48:12

really is a zombie, who's controlling

48:14

the process, And the end, I

48:16

was able to become the first

48:18

person from outside of Haiti

48:20

ever to be initiated into the Briesenkoshanpuel,

48:23

the Syrian Society. He's produced the

48:26

PantOMA Coot and I was able

48:28

to at least suggest that soundification

48:31

was a form of ultimate social sanction

48:33

in which the individual lost their personal

48:36

autonomy and their physical freedom

48:38

and became kind of cast into

48:41

a state of purgatory that was in a sense worse

48:43

than death. So just before

48:45

we leave zombies, the whole

48:47

purpose of this was let's

48:49

define the drugs used to make zombies

48:52

because no drug can make a social

48:54

phenomena, but rather to

48:57

Take a phenomenon that had been used in an explicitly

48:59

racist way to denigrate an

49:01

entire culture in its religion and

49:04

to try to make sense out of sensation.

49:06

And so if the scientists sent me

49:08

the Haiti to find the chemicals

49:11

used to make zombies, I found

49:13

myself instead studying the psychological,

49:16

social, historical, political dimensions

49:19

of a chemical possibility. And that's

49:22

what made the research so

49:24

exciting. You know, the pursuit of

49:26

that little preparation opened

49:29

up these historic and ethnographic

49:31

vistas that no one had seen

49:33

before. I have

49:35

two questions related to this, and I'm

49:37

sure we could have dozens more, but there are so many

49:39

other things I'd love to chat about two follow-up questions.

49:42

first is what role, if

49:44

any, does the Datura play

49:46

in this entire process And

49:49

there are documented deaths every year in the United

49:51

States at least related to people who attempt

49:53

to DIY some type of trip

49:56

from Datura. So the role of

49:58

Datura, if any. And then secondly and

50:00

this is based on a somewhat fragmented recollection

50:03

of watching some type of news program that

50:05

was reportedly covering this

50:08

social phenomenon of

50:11

zombification. And my impression

50:14

from that was that some people remain in

50:17

servitude for other people

50:19

as zombies for an extended period of

50:21

time. And I'm wondering if there is

50:24

what are the primary contributing factors

50:26

to a situation like

50:27

that? You know, one of the things you always

50:29

have to do in this kind of research is separate

50:31

we might call the emics and the edics, which are unnecessarily

50:34

technical terms and answer apology. The

50:36

view from within, the view from without, you

50:38

know, like, why don't the people in India

50:40

eat crowded by

50:43

the scriptures, but also they

50:45

need the oxen to work the fields. You know, those

50:47

would be the two points of view. And First,

50:50

let me answer your question about Datura.

50:52

Datura is in the Solenaceae, the potato

50:55

family, the family of choice of black musicians

50:57

around the world. The tree debtors,

50:59

the Burgmansias, in South America,

51:02

are known as the Jaguar's Intoxican,

51:05

the tree of the evil eagle. And

51:08

these plants have in

51:10

them powerful troponin alkyloids,

51:13

scopolamine and atropine in particular,

51:15

that induce a state of psychotic delirium

51:18

with visions of hellfire, a burning

51:20

thirst, amnesia, a

51:23

sensation of flight. These

51:25

are incredibly dangerous and

51:27

horrific plants that the shaman

51:30

and the Andes take only if

51:32

everything else fails, almost with the

51:34

idea that just in touching the realm

51:36

of madness, they might achieve illumination.

51:40

And what's interesting and and going back

51:42

to the victims of teotrotoxinification in

51:45

Japan, if you eat 652 and

51:47

you get poisoned and you're put into

51:49

your coffin and you're lucky enough to

51:52

be rescued. You come out of

51:54

the coffin and you say, oh, that's terrible. What

51:56

a mistake? I'll never eat 652 again. But

51:58

that's the end of it. Right? But remember,

52:01

the Hazen doesn't sit around

52:03

questioning whether zombies exist.

52:06

Here she knows in the fiber of their being

52:09

that they do, and here

52:11

she knows why a zombie is

52:13

made, a form of punishment. Within

52:16

the traditional culture. And

52:19

so we don't know

52:22

exactly what might or might not occur.

52:24

We know that tatrade talks and reaches

52:26

a crisis in about six hours.

52:29

And if you survive that crisis,

52:31

you have no physiological damage

52:34

whatsoever. But of course, in

52:36

the case of the Haitian zombie,

52:38

whether the individual is symbolically put

52:40

into the ground, place

52:42

behind a a shade or hidden

52:45

from view, whatever. When

52:47

they come out of the teotrot intoxication,

52:50

they know what's happened to them

52:53

and they're in a state of incredible suggestibility

52:56

and fear and what

52:58

the Dactura may serve. It's

53:01

known as the concomitant, the zombies

53:03

cucumber. And I

53:05

was at least told by many informants

53:08

that at that point of disorientation, the

53:11

victim is given Daltura which

53:14

must be an extraordinary horrific

53:16

experience and one that would sort of

53:19

seal the psychological conviction

53:22

that he or she had in fact been

53:25

punished in this way. Now

53:27

when you mentioned the idea of

53:29

slavery, Well, there's no incentive

53:32

to create in Haiti a force of indentured

53:34

labor. But again, critically, given

53:37

the colonial history, slavery

53:40

implies a destiny almost worsen

53:42

life itself. And by the same token,

53:45

I mentioned earlier that they don't believe the

53:47

poison creates a zombie. What

53:49

a zombie is is to make a

53:52

zombie, I have to capture Tim your

53:54

little good angel, your soul, the soul that

53:56

makes you tim Ferriss as opposed to

53:58

the soul that makes me way Davis, not

54:00

the soul that we both share, that

54:02

all sentient beings share, but the soul

54:04

that creates your personality. That's

54:07

why a zombie appears comatose,

54:09

saphir and Haiti is not of

54:11

zombies. It's of becoming a zombie.

54:14

So I once asked the voodoo priest, for example,

54:17

if if it was just matter of returning

54:19

the soul to the victim, could

54:21

that be done and the person made whole

54:24

and the man who I asked

54:26

that question was great emperor of the secret

54:28

society. He's secret been head of the Tonkomokut for

54:30

a fifth of country. I once asked her art if

54:32

during the revolution, he had ever killed

54:34

anybody. He said, I never killed any people, just

54:37

enemies. So So

54:39

I asked him, my aunt, you know, couldn't you just give the

54:41

soul back to the person? And he said, you

54:43

know, you could do that. But on the other hand,

54:46

if you were a woman, would you want an ex

54:48

zombie to ask you to dance. And

54:50

of course, what he was getting at is that a zombie

54:52

becomes a total pariah. Now remember

54:55

what I said about Narcis when he first

54:57

went back to his village. Nobody

54:59

doubted that it was the long lost

55:01

presumed to be dead brother, but did

55:03

they welcome him with open arms? No.

55:05

They told him, get the hell out of here.

55:08

He had died socially. He had died

55:10

spiritually. They wanted nothing to

55:12

do with him. And that really is

55:14

what a zombie is all

55:16

about. Thank you for that. And part of the reason

55:18

I was asking about the Datura is

55:21

I do have some familiarity with Boudamancia

55:23

and had some exposure to

55:25

the yahu and or the yahuenas who use it

55:28

pretty extensively for not

55:30

just dark purposes or power

55:32

purposes, but for for many different conditions.

55:34

But my understanding is

55:37

that also organized crime, I wanna

55:39

say in Colombia for a period of time, was using

55:42

bruggmansia seeds, which I think

55:44

they called Burundanga, they would pulverize and

55:47

say someone with a map would walk

55:49

up to a a mark and say,

55:51

could you tell me where this place is? Below the powder

55:54

into their face, at which point that person

55:56

would become highly suggestible and also

55:58

have developed amnesia.

56:00

So you could say take someone back to their own

56:02

apartment, ask them to help load their things into

56:05

a truck. They would have no recollection of this even

56:07

though they would be coherent interacting with security

56:09

guards. And for that reason,

56:11

I was wondering if perhaps the

56:13

Datura was used in a in a

56:15

similar fashion to increase

56:17

suggestibility. You're absolutely

56:19

right right on, Tim. The word

56:21

Datura, name of the genus, comes

56:24

from ancient India, bands of criminals

56:27

known as the

56:27

Daturas, who used it as a knockout

56:30

drug. Wow. I

56:31

did not know that. Wow. I was once in

56:33

Santa Westin with Colombian

56:37

this Australian kind of hippie guy.

56:39

This is back in the early seventies. He

56:41

spoke about how he ate a bunch of Tridatura

56:43

in his hotel and on the coast. And

56:46

ended up walking around the naked,

56:48

the Barranquilla, a public market

56:51

for five days before he was finally arrested.

56:53

And at our table, Tim, there was a wonderful

56:55

Colombian hippie girl who looked up at

56:57

me and said, I know that market. I wouldn't

57:00

even buy a mango there. But

57:03

but I'll tell you in my book Magdalena about

57:06

the the Great River of Columbia, there's

57:08

a story of my good friend, William Vargas.

57:11

Who was on his way to university. And

57:13

these stories like you recounted are

57:15

part of traveler's lore in

57:17

Columbia, but I had never met anyone

57:20

who'd actually endured this. And someone

57:22

on a bus offered him

57:24

a cake or cookie, which he ate. And

57:26

that was the last thing he remembered and he

57:28

came to four days later in

57:31

a kind of a psychic horror

57:33

having lost everything that he owned

57:36

and had this entire kind of psychological

57:39

state shattered. So these are very

57:41

powerful drugs indeed.

57:44

So I guess there are a few

57:45

lessons. Number one, don't take or accept

57:47

candy from strangers, everybody listening.

57:50

And they do not play around with

57:52

these plants and molecules. They are no

57:54

joke and can do a tremendous amount of

57:56

damage. So I would like to rewind the

57:58

clock a bit and You mentioned

58:00

Richard Evans Schulte's. I've had a number

58:03

of discussions about him on the podcast before,

58:05

so he may come up, but I would actually like to

58:07

invoke a different name which

58:09

is David Mabry Lewis if

58:11

I'm pronouncing that correctly. Could

58:13

you please describe who he

58:15

was and what you

58:18

learned from him or what lessons

58:20

he imparted

58:21

to. I was so incredibly

58:23

fortunate looking back I

58:25

was an undergraduate at Harvard. I got

58:27

my PhD at Harvard, but I

58:29

began as an anthropologist. And

58:32

David Mayberry Lewis was my

58:34

undergraduate tutor. He was

58:36

one of the great Americanists. He

58:39

had traveled into the heart

58:42

of Brazil in the nineteen fifties

58:44

to live amongst the Sherante.

58:47

And before that, the Sherante, who at the

58:49

time were said to be the most

58:52

feared indigenous groups

58:54

in Brazil. And he was

58:56

a great humanist. And while I was

58:58

with him, he created cultural

59:01

survival with his wife, Pia,

59:03

and he absolutely lived in

59:05

a way although he wasn't really a

59:08

Balazian because he was from the British

59:10

tradition of social anthropology, but

59:12

he absolutely believed that

59:15

activism was an integral

59:17

part of the anthropological endeavor.

59:20

You know, when you have languages, disappearing

59:24

when you have indigenous people suffering

59:27

the predations of the rubber

59:29

era. There's a moral obligation

59:32

to both tell their stories and

59:34

to work with them, I

59:36

think, as liaison conduit

59:39

to the world facilitating or

59:41

amplifying their voices, bringing their concerns

59:44

to the world, and that was something that I

59:46

had in the fiber of my DNA.

59:48

Because of my association with David.

59:51

I was also very fortunate as he mentioned

59:53

to fall into the orbit of

59:55

Professor Schultes, but Professor Schultes

59:58

was a man of action and deed

1:00:00

in eighteen years of studying with

1:00:02

him. I don't think I ever had an intellectual conversation.

1:00:05

He would say things to you like, there's one

1:00:07

river I'd like you to know, knowing

1:00:10

full well is the process of getting to that

1:00:12

Rites. Would involve experiences

1:00:14

guaranteed to assure you that if

1:00:16

you emerge out of the forest of that confidence

1:00:18

alive, you'd be a wiser and a more complete

1:00:21

human being. But Schulte's

1:00:23

was not a man of ideas. He was a

1:00:25

botanist. That's what he was, a plant

1:00:27

explorer. And I loved

1:00:29

botanical exploration largely

1:00:32

because it provided the conduit culture.

1:00:35

You know, if you wanna live with the Inuit in

1:00:37

the hierarchic, you better become a hunter

1:00:39

because that is a measure of a man. If

1:00:41

you want to engage the

1:00:44

priests in Haiti, you

1:00:46

have to serve the lua. You've got

1:00:48

to become part of the

1:00:51

circle of voodoo. Otherwise, what

1:00:53

are you doing? And of course, in

1:00:56

the Amazon, the plants become

1:00:58

the perfect conduit culture. You're

1:01:00

not turning up at some Malochen

1:01:02

saying I'm here to study your sex

1:01:04

life. If someone turned up at our door, stuff like

1:01:06

that, we call the police, but studying

1:01:08

the plants makes so much sense to those

1:01:10

for whom the plants are so important.

1:01:13

At the same time, most

1:01:15

ethnobotness of my generation were

1:01:18

notoriously uneducated when

1:01:20

it came to the nuances of anthropology

1:01:23

and ethnography. And I was

1:01:25

very very fortunate in

1:01:28

having in David, a mentor

1:01:30

who carried all the way through graduate school,

1:01:32

I taught more courses for

1:01:34

David than I did for Schultes.

1:01:37

And in fact, my ideas that

1:01:40

in the wake of all my botanical research,

1:01:42

I actually kind of discovered in

1:01:45

the wake of the Haiti work that what

1:01:47

I was really interested in was culture

1:01:49

as opposed to plants, you know. I

1:01:51

always still use plants to inform

1:01:53

much of my writing, but it was

1:01:55

the ethnocart of ethnobotni that

1:01:58

intrigued me. And in that sense, all

1:02:01

of my ideas that I have been exploring

1:02:04

through the thirteen years of the geographic, the

1:02:06

decade as a professor of anthropology, at

1:02:09

the University of British Columbia, everything

1:02:12

traces back to David. And I

1:02:14

on the subject of mentors, I think this is

1:02:16

so important for

1:02:18

young people listening to this

1:02:21

broadcast. You know, I grew up in

1:02:23

the simplest of middle class

1:02:26

homes. My father's spirit

1:02:28

in many ways has been broken in the war,

1:02:31

has had my mother in a different set

1:02:33

of circumstances. There was a lot

1:02:35

of love, but not a lot of activity, creativity.

1:02:39

And it was very clear to me that

1:02:41

I had to get out. And

1:02:43

I began a very young

1:02:45

age jumping off cliffs. And

1:02:47

as Terrence McKenna always said, the great

1:02:50

lesson of life is that when you do that,

1:02:52

you don't land on rock, you

1:02:54

land on a feather bed. The world exists to

1:02:56

lift you up, not beat you down. You

1:02:58

know, Jim Whitaker, the great climber,

1:03:01

good friend of mine, said that if you're

1:03:03

not living on the edge when young, you're taking up

1:03:05

too much space. But what I found

1:03:07

myself having to do, Tim,

1:03:09

was fleeing myself into the arms of

1:03:11

mentors. And those mentors could be

1:03:14

an old Gitsan elder who

1:03:16

recorded mythology with and

1:03:18

hunted with for forty years. It could be

1:03:20

an engineer who taught me how

1:03:23

to understand the

1:03:25

complexities of industrial logging

1:03:28

when I spent a year in the bush. I've always

1:03:30

believed that nothing is beneath you,

1:03:32

nothing is a waste of time unless you make

1:03:34

it so. You know, a cab driver

1:03:37

can have as much to teach you as professor

1:03:39

at university if you're open

1:03:41

to the possibility. And I always

1:03:44

found that if I just gave

1:03:46

myself fully to these mentors, like

1:03:49

shorties, like Dave, maybe Louis, like

1:03:51

doctor Klein. And many that I've

1:03:53

had the privilege to engage since

1:03:55

then, you know, I was able to

1:03:58

become the most important thing, which is

1:04:00

the architect of my own life. And this is what

1:04:02

I say to young people, you know, be

1:04:04

patient, never compromise, give

1:04:06

your destiny time to

1:04:09

find you. Bitterness always

1:04:11

comes to those who look back on a life

1:04:13

of choices imposed upon them from

1:04:15

the outside and you may not make

1:04:17

all the right decisions. But if you own those

1:04:19

decisions, they all become the right ones.

1:04:22

Because together, they become the

1:04:24

path of your own creation and

1:04:26

you become the architect of your

1:04:28

own life. And that is something so very

1:04:30

important. And in that spirit, Tim,

1:04:33

I try to do everything I

1:04:35

can to help young people. I answer

1:04:38

every email and I get as you do

1:04:40

thousands of emails from young people.

1:04:43

And very often, what they're

1:04:45

saying, they may have a specific question.

1:04:47

But what they're really saying It's

1:04:49

not just how can I be used? They

1:04:52

know they can't be me, but what they

1:04:54

really want to know is how

1:04:56

can I live a life of authenticity How

1:04:58

can I live a life where I'm not strapped

1:05:01

to a laptop at a desk in a cubicle?

1:05:04

How can I find a way

1:05:06

to monetize the creativity

1:05:08

of my own life? You know, how can

1:05:11

I make myself and

1:05:13

the act of being alive my location?

1:05:16

Recognizing that any job one has

1:05:18

is just a a passing thing,

1:05:20

a kind of a filter through which to see

1:05:22

the world only for a time. And

1:05:25

the real challenge is to make the art of life

1:05:27

itself your vocation. And I

1:05:29

always answer those because, you know, if

1:05:31

you don't answer, it's not a neutral

1:05:34

gesture. It's a slap in the wrist.

1:05:36

They're reaching out to you. And all

1:05:38

you have to say is wonderful

1:05:40

idea, Charlie, Go for

1:05:43

it, your friend. And that takes

1:05:45

about as much time as to leading the message.

1:05:47

And I learned that from Schulte's, you know,

1:05:49

I'll tell you one wonderful story. The

1:05:52

most famous botanical collections of

1:05:54

Schultz's and Mark would certainly confirm

1:05:56

this were between nineteen fifty and nineteen

1:05:58

fifty three When free of the

1:06:01

rubber emergency, he was free

1:06:03

to collect medicinal plants. He described

1:06:06

the use of two thousand medicinal plants

1:06:08

previously unknown to science.

1:06:11

And with them on all those collections, this is

1:06:13

a man called Isidoro Cabrera. Now

1:06:15

when you do botney and you collect

1:06:17

plants, the senior bot in his name

1:06:19

goes first. So Tim Plowman and Wade

1:06:21

Davis. Plowman and Davis. And that's

1:06:24

how you do it on the specimens. It's kind

1:06:26

of formal thing. But

1:06:28

you never are said to put

1:06:30

an indigenous helper on the label

1:06:33

as if he's an equal to you. But

1:06:35

Schultes did. And he

1:06:37

met Isidore when Isidore's farm

1:06:40

had been burned in the war. His

1:06:42

parents had been murdered. He had

1:06:44

no food. He was absolutely nothing.

1:06:47

And he ended his life

1:06:50

full professor of botany with

1:06:52

multiple honorary degrees And

1:06:54

before he died, when I was Rites

1:06:56

the Book One River, I went to

1:06:58

see Isidoro in Kali.

1:07:02

And I said, Professor, I want you

1:07:04

to think really carefully. I

1:07:06

want you to remember the first moment

1:07:08

you met Professor Schulte's in

1:07:11

the forest, in the Macarena. What

1:07:14

was it like? What did he say? And he

1:07:16

looked at me very pensively, and

1:07:19

then he suddenly there

1:07:21

was a prickly in his eye and he

1:07:23

said, he looked at me

1:07:25

like I was somebody. Isn't

1:07:27

that beautiful, Tim? That is beautiful. And in

1:07:29

class riddled Columbia at that

1:07:31

time for a Harvard professor

1:07:34

to do that, and it made

1:07:36

that young man's life, pulled him out

1:07:38

of misery, gave him a career

1:07:40

and a great gift to

1:07:41

Colombia. What a story?

1:07:44

And I I want to come back to,

1:07:47

I suppose, frames and

1:07:49

lenses for a moment and also

1:07:52

Jim Whitaker. So for those who

1:07:54

don't know, the first American summit, Everest,

1:07:56

if my research is not lying to me,

1:07:59

And I'm looking at an excerpt

1:08:01

from alumni

1:08:03

stories on the Brentwood. BCCCA

1:08:07

website, and he comes up And

1:08:09

there's a line that I would like to

1:08:11

explore because think it's Maya

1:08:13

Angelou from pronouncing your name correctly, so that

1:08:15

courage is the a

1:08:18

mother virtue that unlocks all other

1:08:20

virtues because of the effectively emparaphrasing

1:08:22

here. But at the breaking point, you need courage

1:08:25

to enact or to enable those other

1:08:27

virtues. And there's a line here and

1:08:29

I don't know if it is gyms or yours,

1:08:31

but either way I would love for you to expand

1:08:33

on it. Pest optimism is an indulgence.

1:08:36

Orthodoxy is the enemy of invention to

1:08:38

spare an insult to the imagination. And

1:08:40

I I wanna bring this up because it

1:08:43

strikes me that a lot of people, not

1:08:45

just very young people, but many

1:08:47

people overall feel

1:08:49

a certain psycho emotional malaise

1:08:52

right now, a sense of overwhelm that

1:08:54

has led to pessimism

1:08:56

or nihilism. And so it seems

1:08:58

to me that optimism is the unlock

1:09:00

here. So could you elaborate on the pessimism

1:09:02

as an indulgence and so on in that line?

1:09:04

Yeah. That was actually my line, not

1:09:07

Jim's. You know, people are always

1:09:09

asking, we're always asking each other,

1:09:11

are you optimistic? And I and I kind of

1:09:13

feel like, how can you not be optimistic?

1:09:15

I mean, that's purpose of life itself.

1:09:17

And if you're a father, you absolutely

1:09:20

have an obligation to remain

1:09:22

hopeful And given

1:09:24

how many gifts we have, surely

1:09:27

pessimism does become something of

1:09:29

an indulgence you know, we're we're also

1:09:32

caught in the present these days, you know,

1:09:34

so little sense of history and we forget

1:09:37

how much we've achieved. But when you

1:09:39

think about it, Tim, in my

1:09:41

lifetime, women have gone from the

1:09:43

kitchen to the boardroom, people

1:09:45

of color from the woodshead to the Rites House,

1:09:47

gay people, men and women from the

1:09:49

closet to the altar when we

1:09:52

think of the environment, when I was

1:09:54

a young kid just getting people to stop

1:09:56

throwing garbage out of a car window was

1:09:58

a great environmental victory. Nobody

1:10:00

spoke about the biosphere. Biodiversity.

1:10:03

Now these are terms familiar

1:10:06

to school children. So what's

1:10:08

not to love about a world capable

1:10:11

of such social transformation,

1:10:13

such as scientific genius. You

1:10:16

know, just think about that

1:10:19

moment on Christmas Eve nineteen

1:10:21

sixty eight. When Apollo went

1:10:23

around the dark side of the moon and emerged

1:10:25

to see for the first time in human

1:10:27

history, not a sunrise or

1:10:29

a moon rise, but an earth Rites. And in that

1:10:32

incredible moment, we suddenly

1:10:34

saw the earth as it is, not

1:10:36

this infinite horizon, but

1:10:39

a fragile blue planet is

1:10:41

the astronauts famously reported

1:10:44

floating in the velvet void of space. And I think

1:10:46

everything has changed with that. You

1:10:48

know, like a flash of illumination. It

1:10:51

swept over the world. You know?

1:10:54

We never will think again

1:10:56

about the national world in the same way

1:10:58

we did before that. Vision. And

1:11:00

even today, as I mentioned earlier, I think,

1:11:03

you know, the the revelations of genetics

1:11:05

showing us indisputably that

1:11:08

race is a total fiction. Well,

1:11:10

that hasn't really

1:11:12

gotten into the zeitgeist yet as

1:11:14

the moonshot has, but it will.

1:11:17

And I think that we're living

1:11:19

through extraordinarily exciting

1:11:22

times and extraordinarily challenging

1:11:24

times. But as I say to all young people,

1:11:27

what generation has ever come

1:11:30

of age in a world at peace, a

1:11:32

world without troubles. You know, it's

1:11:34

it's very interesting. One of the ways

1:11:36

I Tim keep my optimism. You

1:11:39

know, my dad wasn't a religious man.

1:11:41

His spirit was broken in the war. I never

1:11:43

saw the inside of the church in his presence.

1:11:45

But he did believe in good and evil.

1:11:48

He used to say to me, there's good and evil in

1:11:50

the world, take your pick and get on with

1:11:52

it. And it was incredibly wise

1:11:54

because we have this sort of thing in the

1:11:56

Christian tradition, particularly, that

1:11:59

if we just wait long enough, goods gonna

1:12:01

triumph over evil and wall somehow, be

1:12:03

dissolved in the rapture will ink gonna

1:12:06

happen. And famously,

1:12:08

in the medieval times, if you

1:12:10

ask the obvious question, if God's all powerful,

1:12:13

why does he allow evil to exist? You

1:12:15

were burned at the state for heresy. Right?

1:12:17

But in the Indian tradition, and the vedic

1:12:19

tradition by contrast when Lord Christian

1:12:21

was asked that very question. If God's

1:12:23

all powerful, why does he allow

1:12:26

evil to exist in universe? Lord Christian

1:12:28

said to the disciple to

1:12:30

thicken the plot. In other words, good

1:12:32

and evil walk hand in hand.

1:12:34

You're never gonna lose one. You've gotta take

1:12:36

your side and the

1:12:38

purpose of life is not to

1:12:40

triumph over evil but keep

1:12:43

pushing the wheel of justice forward.

1:12:46

And when you realize that that is

1:12:48

the endpoint, you

1:12:50

then never expect to win.

1:12:52

And if you never expect to win, you're

1:12:55

not disappointed when you lose. And

1:12:57

because of that, you can keep fighting

1:12:59

with the same idealism,

1:13:01

the same energy when you're sixty

1:13:03

nine years old as I am today

1:13:06

that I had when I was twenty years old

1:13:08

in marching against the war in Vietnam.

1:13:11

Like to discuss rights of passage.

1:13:13

And specifically, we don't have to necessarily

1:13:16

focus on this, but this is something

1:13:19

that often ends up

1:13:21

on my radar of consciousness

1:13:23

because I have many males in my audience

1:13:25

and there seems to be a distinct lack. Of

1:13:28

Rites of passage for men in most

1:13:30

westernized societies or

1:13:32

many westernized societies. And I

1:13:34

would look for you to describe

1:13:37

a chapter in your life, and

1:13:39

I'm most certainly gonna butcher this pronunciation,

1:13:42

but spicy.

1:13:43

Did I get that right?

1:13:45

Yes, Pat Sisi. Redbird.

1:13:47

Mhmm. So could you explain what

1:13:49

what that is? Before I jump into

1:13:52

my, perhaps, a story, Rites

1:13:54

of passage exist all around

1:13:56

the world for very specific reason. It's

1:13:58

not a coincidence or

1:14:01

an accident that they involve pain.

1:14:03

You know, whether it's scarification, whether

1:14:06

it's the the severing of the fore skin,

1:14:08

whether it's the pain of ordeal, the

1:14:11

ingestion. I mean, for example, the Algonquin

1:14:13

speaking of Daltura, their initiation

1:14:16

Rites, was to put the young

1:14:18

lads in the long House, seal it shut

1:14:20

and make them eat Datura for

1:14:22

two weeks. So that they would forget

1:14:25

what it was to become boys, to learn what it was

1:14:27

to be meant. But the reason all these

1:14:29

ordeals that you know so much about, vision

1:14:31

quest, etcetera, have pain

1:14:34

is because the message has to be clear

1:14:37

This is the end. It's not about the

1:14:39

twiddling of thumbs. We are

1:14:41

passing on to you the

1:14:43

obligation of adulthood. You

1:14:45

now hold the destiny of our

1:14:47

people in your hands.

1:14:50

This is not trivial. You

1:14:52

best be prepared. And I think whether

1:14:55

Rites with women who go through

1:14:57

their own rituals, which are always

1:14:59

sort of timed to the first

1:15:01

men'sies or the first period

1:15:04

fertility transforming a girl

1:15:06

into a woman, a potential

1:15:08

mother, or it's a boy

1:15:12

proving his manhood. Now, this has

1:15:14

become rather frowned

1:15:17

upon in our kind of politically correct

1:15:19

world. But the truth is

1:15:21

young men, I've never known a young

1:15:24

lad who didn't want that

1:15:26

challenge. It's that idea

1:15:28

of proving oneself not

1:15:31

in a gratuitously

1:15:34

matcha way but literally

1:15:36

in a kind of organic way of grit

1:15:38

and courage and strength. And

1:15:41

I think that's why. I mean, for example,

1:15:44

I I've got very close friends in the navy

1:15:46

seals. And they all have

1:15:48

a kind of a calm confidence

1:15:50

because they've been on what Joseph Campbell

1:15:53

called the hero's journey. And

1:15:55

I think those of us like myself,

1:15:57

you know, brought up in a society that we did

1:15:59

not have obvious outlets

1:16:02

we created our own hero's journeys.

1:16:04

And for me, it was always

1:16:07

either through work or travel. You

1:16:09

mentioned Spats easy. Well, you know,

1:16:11

I was living Heidagwai

1:16:13

in Northwest British Columbia in the mid seventies,

1:16:16

and I was very much critical

1:16:18

of industrial clear cut logging,

1:16:21

but I felt that I best learned

1:16:23

something about it. So I lied about my

1:16:25

credentials and managed to hire

1:16:28

on as a logging forestry engineer

1:16:30

and one of the toughest logging camps in the West Coast

1:16:32

to British Columbia Rites stayed a year and

1:16:34

I learned everything about the business,

1:16:37

including the corruption. And it

1:16:39

was a fantastic experience because

1:16:41

I also learned that the Men

1:16:43

and women fighting off hunger with a

1:16:46

chainsaw were not my enemy. I

1:16:48

learned that in all of these conflicts, particularly

1:16:50

around resources, there are never any enemies

1:16:52

own these solutions. But I kind of escaped

1:16:55

that camp taking a job

1:16:57

as the first park ranger in what had just

1:16:59

been created. Canada's biggest,

1:17:02

brodless, wilderness park, and my job

1:17:04

description was deliciously vague,

1:17:06

wilderness assessment and public relations.

1:17:09

In two four month seasons, I saw

1:17:11

twelve people. There was no one to relate

1:17:13

publicly to. And these travels

1:17:15

to South Ferriss, or, you know, Even

1:17:18

in Haiti, you know, you have to

1:17:20

understand that during the course of that

1:17:22

research, it turns out I never knew

1:17:24

who was paying for it all. And I'll tell

1:17:27

you if you'd like a story of the night

1:17:29

I had to light myself on fire. Well,

1:17:32

I can't say no to that. So yes, please.

1:17:34

Well, remember I said I became very

1:17:36

close friends with Marcel Pier, and we were

1:17:38

like brothers by the end of the many years I

1:17:40

was there. And his wife was dying of

1:17:42

uterine cancer. He was so sad. He

1:17:44

came to me and I bought all his

1:17:46

blood for her and she still was dying

1:17:49

And I took him back to get a tap

1:17:51

tap. And for once, I was dressed like an

1:17:53

American tourist. What is a tap tap?

1:17:56

Oh, a tap tap is a local bus in Haiti.

1:17:58

And and I didn't have I went in my

1:18:00

little jeep and I didn't have my wallet or

1:18:02

any money. And I got a flat tire after

1:18:04

I dropped him off and I said to this guy at the side of

1:18:06

the road and stars manually. And I said,

1:18:09

can you fix my tire? He starts fixing my tire.

1:18:11

Then I said, Creel, miss

1:18:13

me, plugging COB, I've got no money. And then

1:18:15

he said, Kikaliti, don't say your and

1:18:17

he started hassling me. And I just

1:18:19

wasn't in the mood. I should have not done

1:18:21

this, but I took his hand and I gave

1:18:23

him the secret society handshake. And

1:18:26

then he blanched back, and he said

1:18:28

then he said again, what kind of white are you?

1:18:30

And then we had a big laugh, and he said,

1:18:32

oh, I gotta again, girl, like, this while.

1:18:34

We got a big thing happening. And I and I had broken

1:18:36

down by chance right by a Biesen gochampuel

1:18:39

secret society temple. So I went back that

1:18:41

night for the first time

1:18:43

unescorted by a powerful voodoo

1:18:46

priest. And the ceremony begins

1:18:48

like any ceremony with the invitation of leg

1:18:51

by the spirit of communication and

1:18:53

the dancers just voodoo dancers. But then

1:18:55

at midnight, you hear the fetch cash,

1:18:57

the whip crack, and the Khan's

1:18:59

trumpet, the symbol of the revolution

1:19:02

blow and then the order goes out soldiers

1:19:04

of the night same skin. And

1:19:07

everybody goes the hundreds of people

1:19:10

go into this temple and emerged

1:19:12

in these anonymous black and red robes.

1:19:15

And at that moment, six men

1:19:17

came and grabbed me and flung me

1:19:20

into a chamber and I rolled around in the dust

1:19:22

and I looked up and I was looking

1:19:24

at a table of emperors

1:19:27

of the Secret societies who wanted

1:19:29

to know how I knew what I knew.

1:19:31

And I shared with them

1:19:34

the iconography, passwords,

1:19:36

handshakes, but it was all

1:19:38

too much and too little at the same time.

1:19:41

And it was a very awkward moment. I had

1:19:43

to do something. I was there by myself.

1:19:46

And there's always a human skull with a candle

1:19:48

burning, with a bottle of raw

1:19:50

sugarcane alcohol, the base of the

1:19:52

potomicon. Which is used as a live bass

1:19:54

and not to drink. So I just thought

1:19:56

I'd better do something, so I very deliberately

1:19:58

went over, took the bottle, and poured

1:20:00

the alcohol over all over my body,

1:20:03

my back, my hair, everything, and

1:20:05

then very deliberately went to the candle and

1:20:07

lit myself on fire. And

1:20:09

as I flamed like a torch, remember

1:20:11

this isn't kerosene or diesel. It's just like doing

1:20:14

the same thing with lighter fluid. There wasn't any

1:20:16

danger except I'd lose my eyebrows. But

1:20:19

while I was still a living torch, I

1:20:21

went over and offered the Super Society handshake

1:20:23

again to each of the men. They'd love a

1:20:25

craft up laughing And after

1:20:27

that, I couldn't go by that crossroads without

1:20:30

getting slag down. Wads. Wads.

1:20:32

Siswah. Siswah. You know? And I became

1:20:35

very friendly with that temple, actually. Well,

1:20:37

okay. So hold on. I mean, that's a hell of

1:20:39

a party trick. So how did this

1:20:42

occur to you? And I guess

1:20:44

you just had knowledge that that

1:20:46

wouldn't pose any grave

1:20:47

danger. I certainly wouldn't. I mean, having your body

1:20:49

on fire seems dangerous. You

1:20:51

you must have lit your fingers on fire with letters

1:20:53

floating when you're a boy. I

1:20:55

I haven't.

1:20:55

I mean, maybe I should. I never never say

1:20:57

never say Canadian thing. know,

1:21:00

it's like, you know, there's these moments and

1:21:02

and I don't mean in any way, because

1:21:04

I I keep saying it's empathy and love.

1:21:06

It's not bravado. I remember

1:21:08

when I was fourteen, you know, my

1:21:10

mother was a modest but

1:21:12

determined Canadian woman and she worked

1:21:14

all year as a secretary raise

1:21:17

enough money let me join a group of kids,

1:21:19

a language teacher was taken to Columbia and

1:21:21

I was really lucky because I I was

1:21:24

billeted in the mountains and I

1:21:26

never saw the other Canadian lads and many

1:21:28

of them got what the Columbians called Mometis or

1:21:30

home sickness, and I felt like I just finally

1:21:33

found home. I got drunk for the first

1:21:35

time and kissed a girl, I was in heaven.

1:21:37

But there was this real bully in the valley. I

1:21:40

was fourteen, and he was seventeen or eighteen.

1:21:42

And he kinda terrorized. Even in the bag,

1:21:44

he terrorized all the kids. And one day

1:21:46

he challenged me to what they would

1:21:48

do is they put a cigarette. You put your

1:21:50

arm, forearms together, put a lit cigarette in

1:21:52

the middle, and the first one to drop their arm

1:21:55

is loser. He put

1:21:57

the cigarette on, and I said, you know, this is stupid.

1:21:59

It hurts. He didn't understand that

1:22:02

that cigarette could have burned through my arm

1:22:04

before I would drop my arm. And of

1:22:06

course, I didn't drop my arm and eventually

1:22:08

he had to drop his arm, and

1:22:11

that was kind of a gift for me to

1:22:13

him because he was never the same again.

1:22:16

After that, he was a different character.

1:22:18

He didn't have to do that anymore. And

1:22:20

to this day, I still have that huge scar

1:22:22

on my forearm. But, you know, I don't ever

1:22:24

regret having done that, you know.

1:22:27

And what is wonderful about

1:22:30

doing this kind of field work is

1:22:32

a dance of culture. You know, how do you find

1:22:34

the rhythm like dancing with

1:22:36

a woman for the first time, sometimes it works,

1:22:38

sometimes it doesn't. You know, I always

1:22:40

say to young students sitting off to the

1:22:42

field, you know, What you need to

1:22:44

do is just act like you would if invited

1:22:46

to someone's home at Thanksgiving. Be

1:22:49

polite, have good manners, self

1:22:51

deprecating humor, a willingness

1:22:54

to eat what's put in front of you and

1:22:56

sleep where you're asked to sleep. I mean, Tim's

1:22:58

food is power. It's amazing how

1:23:01

many people will so

1:23:04

crudely, refuse a

1:23:06

gift of food. You know, if you're

1:23:09

being given food almost anywhere

1:23:11

in the world, it means some child is probably

1:23:13

not eating that day. And

1:23:15

even if you know and there's been many times

1:23:18

when I've known because of the circumstances that

1:23:20

if I eat a plate offer

1:23:22

to me, without doubt, I'll contract

1:23:25

Giardia or amibec dysentery. I

1:23:27

always eat the food because you can always

1:23:30

treat the illness

1:23:31

you can never rekindle the trust that

1:23:33

you've shattered not just between you and the

1:23:35

person, but between that person

1:23:38

and the next outsider who will come --

1:23:40

Mhmm. -- along. I'd like to

1:23:43

jump back to Rites to

1:23:45

passage for second because I

1:23:47

do feel like young

1:23:50

males pay the price

1:23:52

for the void of no rights

1:23:54

of passage. And women too, but they

1:23:57

do have that adults as you pointed out,

1:23:59

right of passage whether it's formalized

1:24:01

in some type of societal context or

1:24:04

not. I'm curious how you have,

1:24:06

if at all, thought about rights of passage

1:24:08

for your own kids or how you might

1:24:10

suggest parents think about rights of

1:24:12

passage, primarily for males,

1:24:14

but could also apply to females. Well,

1:24:16

I, you know, I had two girls. And,

1:24:18

you know, when they each got their periods,

1:24:20

they came to

1:24:21

me, not to their mother. Why

1:24:23

is that do you think? You'd have to ask them, but

1:24:25

I mean, I had that kind of relationship with

1:24:27

them. I mean, what we've done, obviously,

1:24:29

with our daughters, we've

1:24:31

been able to take them all around

1:24:34

the world. And also, while

1:24:36

they grew up, we own a fishing

1:24:38

lodge, a very modest fishing lodge,

1:24:41

but very remote seven hours in the

1:24:43

nearest town, three days drive

1:24:45

north of Vancouver in Taltan

1:24:47

country. And so while it grew up,

1:24:50

and I was traveling a great deal for the

1:24:52

National Geographic, the two or three

1:24:54

months we had spent there every summer became

1:24:56

kind of the well the family drank from for

1:24:58

the rest of the year. And for those months,

1:25:01

they hung out with tall ten kids all the

1:25:03

time. And so they they have this

1:25:05

unbelievable kind of sense

1:25:07

of the world. My daughter speaks

1:25:10

Arabic, one of them. You know, another remember

1:25:13

our house in Washington in particular was

1:25:15

kind of a grand central station.

1:25:17

Everybody was free to crash there and

1:25:19

you never knew who was gonna turn up. I

1:25:22

I just had a friend call me who reminded

1:25:24

me of the day he woke up there and found

1:25:26

four Mongolians drinking vodka at six

1:25:28

AM in the kitchen. And one

1:25:30

time, we had novocalin up, but

1:25:32

this great friend of mine, a weaver from

1:25:35

really a national treasure from Cusco

1:25:37

staying in one guest room, and I'd forgotten

1:25:40

to tell my daughters that a friend

1:25:42

of mine from Mali, east of Mohammed, A

1:25:44

TorG. Massive guy was there for

1:25:47

the folklike festival. So they didn't

1:25:49

know he was staying there, and he comes up from the basement

1:25:51

guest room. In full ritual, Regalia,

1:25:54

like, looking like Lawrence of Arabia, this

1:25:57

guy is massive guy much

1:25:59

bigger than me. He comes into the kitchen,

1:26:01

spreads his arms across the kitchen. My girls

1:26:03

were eating rice krispies at the table,

1:26:06

and he just says And

1:26:09

they just look up at this incredible African

1:26:12

guy. Could you translate that, please?

1:26:14

Yeah. My children. I'm here.

1:26:17

They just looked up at him and they said, hello,

1:26:19

sir. How are you? You must be friend of my

1:26:22

father's. Can we get you some breakfast, please?

1:26:24

I mean, utterly non plus, you know. So it's

1:26:26

you know, those the kind of initiation

1:26:28

Rites. I I think for boys

1:26:31

in the American context and culture,

1:26:33

it really is great

1:26:36

to find ways for

1:26:38

them to go away and do physical labor.

1:26:40

You know, this is why I think there should be youth conservation

1:26:43

corps in every state and National

1:26:45

Park, you know. There's nothing

1:26:47

better than for a fifteen year

1:26:49

old boy with all those hormonal spasms.

1:26:52

And all that pimply face to just be

1:26:54

forced to cut firewood all day.

1:26:57

And these kind of opportunities aren't

1:27:00

trivial. They create the character very

1:27:02

young. There's no reason whatsoever

1:27:05

that our government in the United States

1:27:07

shouldn't be able to mobilize resources

1:27:10

that would make available to every young

1:27:13

American boy and girl. The

1:27:15

opportunity to travel within

1:27:17

America, to know another face

1:27:19

of America, another section

1:27:21

of the country, Californians to

1:27:23

Iowa, Kansans to Miami

1:27:26

and so on, and give them work

1:27:28

to help make us a better country,

1:27:30

you know, whether it's picking up

1:27:32

plastic or carrying for

1:27:35

the elderly. Whatever it is, again,

1:27:38

giving young people a sense

1:27:40

that they're not the center of the universe. That

1:27:43

they live to help others, that we

1:27:45

do exist as a community, that

1:27:48

you have to be humble, and

1:27:50

just because you believe it doesn't mean it's

1:27:52

true and that the democratization of

1:27:55

opinion doesn't mean that your

1:27:57

opinion counts as much as

1:27:59

an elder who has lived through life.

1:28:02

That you can't even imagine. You know, there

1:28:04

are ways to make this possible, but

1:28:07

physical activity is the key.

1:28:09

I think, particularly for men, which

1:28:11

is why. Say what you will

1:28:14

about the military. You

1:28:16

know, it is done more good

1:28:18

for more young men in

1:28:20

its history, not that obviously

1:28:23

we would not criticize some of the

1:28:25

engagements. But you know what I'm

1:28:27

saying as an institution of

1:28:29

the nation that stands for

1:28:31

the nation. You know, young

1:28:33

people have to learn that

1:28:36

there's something bigger than themselves

1:28:38

that they need to be

1:28:41

loyal to. And that's not necessarily

1:28:44

a country. It's a concept. It's

1:28:46

the idea of community. It's

1:28:48

something we really noticed him

1:28:50

in Canada which is no perfect

1:28:52

place. But one

1:28:55

of the things that is so different in

1:28:57

Canada is that there is really a

1:28:59

sense of community. We

1:29:02

really are a social democracy. And

1:29:04

it creates for a different way of

1:29:06

life. I mean, one thing I I don't wanna belabor

1:29:08

this. But, you know, in America, universal

1:29:11

healthcare is seen as socialist medicine,

1:29:14

and healthcare in general is seen

1:29:17

as a uniquely medical

1:29:19

issue. Right? And that

1:29:21

is to miss the point completely universal

1:29:25

health care, which we have in Canada, has

1:29:27

nothing to do with medicine. It

1:29:29

has everything to do with

1:29:32

social solidarity. It has

1:29:34

everything to do with

1:29:36

every Canadian knowing

1:29:39

that they belong and knowing

1:29:41

that if their kid gets sick they will

1:29:43

get exactly, and I tell you it is exactly

1:29:45

the same care as any

1:29:47

other Canadian, including the Rites Yes,

1:29:51

I sometimes have to wait for medical

1:29:53

service in Canada, but everyone

1:29:56

does. But no one is left

1:29:58

behind. And that is one

1:30:00

of the reasons that we have

1:30:02

a less highly charged

1:30:05

society, you know, why

1:30:08

we seem to get along better.

1:30:10

I certainly agree

1:30:12

with that. And I also agree with the physical

1:30:16

labor component and the

1:30:18

importance of it for boys

1:30:21

and young men and men overall. But I think

1:30:23

especially in that hormonal title

1:30:26

waived period. Let's just call it from

1:30:28

whatever might be, you know, thirteen to

1:30:30

eighteen. And in

1:30:32

addition to the transcendence

1:30:35

of the self to a larger cause, say, in

1:30:37

a military context, it Rites me

1:30:39

that both the military and the physical exertion

1:30:41

of, say, having to shop wood all day. Serve

1:30:44

a similar purpose in

1:30:46

that of shared privation, which is

1:30:49

a term you hear in military context. And that

1:30:51

is a group of boys going through

1:30:53

some form of suffering together. And

1:30:55

it does seem to activate something

1:30:57

in the male psyche that is hard

1:30:59

to access otherwise.

1:31:02

One of my most memorable

1:31:04

experiences when I was twenty. I

1:31:06

was just come back from the Sierra

1:31:08

Nevada with the momos. And Tim

1:31:10

was going back to Harvard to get his

1:31:12

degree and I had a month off until he was gonna

1:31:15

return. And I ran into this crazy Englishman

1:31:17

who had walked the tip of South Ferriss, and

1:31:19

he was walking to Alaska, and he

1:31:21

was sending these dispatches to his

1:31:23

newspaper, the London Sunday observer.

1:31:26

And I'm not sure what he wrote because in

1:31:29

eighteen months of walking, he hadn't learned a

1:31:31

word of Spanish. But

1:31:34

anyway, he hired me to

1:31:36

guide him through the nadirion

1:31:37

gap, the only stretch of

1:31:39

his street address that had

1:31:41

no road. And he didn't

1:31:43

care that I knew nothing about the area.

1:31:45

That was great because he kinda cultivated misadventures

1:31:48

as fodder for his books.

1:31:51

And in the course of that journey,

1:31:53

we became it was incredible during

1:31:56

the rainy season walking and swamps up

1:31:58

to the neck for days at a time. At one

1:32:00

point, we got lost in the jungle

1:32:02

with three Huna Indians for twelve

1:32:04

days with no 652. I was down

1:32:07

to a hundred and forty six pounds at one

1:32:09

point. Sebastian was down to hundred

1:32:11

and twenty. We had to carry the other

1:32:13

Indian lad and at one point when

1:32:15

we were at the witch's end, I just said

1:32:17

we gotta go. And I took the gun,

1:32:19

and I walked up this trail, and I ran

1:32:21

right into a black jaguar. And, you

1:32:24

know, if you ever run into a jaguar, they've

1:32:26

got these yellow eyes. They don't look at you.

1:32:28

They look through you. They you feel like you've been

1:32:30

x-ray. I just looked at that incredibly

1:32:32

beautiful creature and then it leaped off the road

1:32:35

and I thought we had two weeks to

1:32:37

walk to get to rescue, but

1:32:39

we found our way to the end of the road that day.

1:32:42

And it was just like a miracle. And

1:32:44

at the end of this extraordinary

1:32:46

misadventure, I got off the

1:32:48

plane in Panama City. I

1:32:50

had flown out in this cramped

1:32:52

Sessna. The girl beside me had

1:32:54

puked on me. Her mother turned around to

1:32:56

sold the daughters, she puked on me.

1:32:58

I only had the rotten clothes in my back,

1:33:00

three dollars to my name, and one

1:33:03

bottle of beer, this engineer, had

1:33:05

given me. I arrived in Panama City

1:33:07

with nothing more than that and no

1:33:09

plans whatsoever, but I had never

1:33:11

felt more alive. I

1:33:13

had been on my own

1:33:15

hero's journey, and I had survived. And

1:33:18

that would be etched into

1:33:20

my character. You

1:33:21

know, if

1:33:22

I could do that, I could do anything. This

1:33:24

may seem well, it's not random

1:33:26

because you prompted it in a way. So black jaguars

1:33:29

are not common. As far as I know,

1:33:31

What did the Kuna Indians make of that black

1:33:33

jaguar? They didn't see

1:33:35

it. I was just way ahead of them. I'm just

1:33:37

wondering even if you told them if that carried

1:33:39

any special significance oh, they would see

1:33:41

that as oh, for sure. I mean, they're

1:33:43

they're nothing nothing is accidental

1:33:46

when it comes to that. You know, when you're with people

1:33:48

like the Bahasa san and Huna. You know, they

1:33:51

their most profound cultural insight one

1:33:53

might say is their conviction that plants and

1:33:55

animals are just people. In another dimension

1:33:57

of reality. So if you even you

1:33:59

know, their hunting myths become kind of land

1:34:02

management plan dictating how people

1:34:04

can live in the Ferriss, the the shaman

1:34:06

is he's not just a priest or a physician. He's kind

1:34:08

of like a nuclear engineer who goes

1:34:10

to the heart of the reactor to reprogram the world.

1:34:12

So there's a constant dialogue between

1:34:15

human beings and the national world, so no

1:34:17

event has a life of its own.

1:34:20

I do want to at some point and I'm saying this

1:34:22

to remind myself and maybe remind

1:34:24

you to remind me about getting

1:34:26

better at writing and teaching yourself to write

1:34:28

on multiple levels, we'll get to

1:34:30

that. But since you brought up the

1:34:33

people in

1:34:35

other dimensions effectively manifesting

1:34:38

as plants and animals. I'd like to discuss,

1:34:41

doesn't have to be brief. We have as much time as we want,

1:34:43

but the different origin

1:34:45

stories of

1:34:48

this brew called Ayahuasca, which

1:34:50

exists in many different generations used

1:34:53

by many many different travel

1:34:55

groups and cultures at this point and

1:34:57

churches also syncretic religions

1:34:59

at this point. But I'm wondering

1:35:01

how you would explain

1:35:04

the development of

1:35:07

this particular combination

1:35:09

of plants. And the reason I ask

1:35:11

is that I've heard many different

1:35:14

explanations for this. So one is just trial and

1:35:16

error over a very long period of time. Another

1:35:18

on the opposite end of the spectrum would be

1:35:21

the plants told us. And

1:35:26

I'm wondering how you would

1:35:29

Explain the arrival at this combination

1:35:31

of, say, vine and chuck a DMT

1:35:34

containing plant.

1:35:36

Well, first of all, you know, one thing you mentioned

1:35:38

about Ayahuasca or Yahay is

1:35:40

that the idea we often have of

1:35:42

it as we, you know, go down to a

1:35:44

keto soup calp the

1:35:47

healers of the shippeebo, you know,

1:35:49

as if it's sort of a quest for personal

1:35:51

liberation personal well-being. That's

1:35:55

always been there in the traditional

1:35:57

use of hallucinogens in South

1:35:59

Ferriss. You know, the the traditional syncretic

1:36:02

cult of the cactus of the four wins and the

1:36:04

Quirós who use San Pedro cactus

1:36:07

on the coast. And certainly, The

1:36:10

popularization of Ayahuasca began

1:36:13

with the Yahi letters between William

1:36:15

Burrows and Alan Ginsburg. And

1:36:18

it was Burrows who turned up in Bogotá,

1:36:20

goes to the Herbarian meets who

1:36:22

he calls dog Schindler, who is Schultes.

1:36:25

And Schultes, sends them off and

1:36:27

eventually Rites him by Alaska

1:36:29

in Macaua. And on that road

1:36:31

between Sibundoye and Macau in

1:36:33

the Apoquel to Mile, when I was

1:36:35

there in the nineteen seventies, there were already

1:36:38

individual healers sort of

1:36:40

working with the Gringo trade,

1:36:43

but also working with individual Compasinos.

1:36:46

And of course, in all of these healing

1:36:48

practices, the ideas that

1:36:51

the imbalance of the individual is

1:36:53

treated through the medicine

1:36:55

and whether the imbalance is caused

1:36:58

by bad health poor

1:37:00

finances, personal problems,

1:37:02

whatever. It's a balanced source

1:37:04

that one gets to. But I mentioned that

1:37:07

only to stress that it is completely a

1:37:09

different situation when you

1:37:11

get into the heart of the northwest Amazon

1:37:13

where presumably these plants

1:37:15

were originated, these preparations. So

1:37:18

for example, one of

1:37:20

the powerful themes

1:37:24

that is somewhat like what the kogi

1:37:26

do, this idea that human

1:37:28

beings aren't the problem where the solution,

1:37:30

because only through human imagination

1:37:33

can the one with the national world become manifest

1:37:35

that that we are the ones

1:37:37

who have to maintain the energetic

1:37:40

flows of the universe. We have this proactive

1:37:43

role to play. Well, in the northwest

1:37:45

Amazon, it's very much that way. I mean,

1:37:47

the the the main origin

1:37:50