Brainforest Café

By SpectreVision RadioSociety & Culture Science Philosophy Natural Sciences

Brainforest Café episodes

November 02 What Every Shamanic Healing Tradition Has in Common
Anthropologist Michael Winkelman, PhD, joins Dr. Dennis McKenna on the Brainforest Café to compare shamanic and psychedelic healing practices across Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and North America. Winkelman spent forty years researching shamanism, psychedelics, and altered states, and his new edited volume gathers case studies of mushroom, peyote, San Pedro, morning glory, and ayahuasca traditions under a single framework. What emerges is a pattern too consistent to be coincidence: fasting, sexual abstinence, restricted diet, an overnight ceremony, family and community present, songs at the center, and a long integration period built around dreams and behavior change. His argument is that these are not cultural decorations around the chemistry. They are the vessel the chemistry requires, and modern clinical research has quietly discarded most of them.
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Michael Winkelman is an ASU anthropologist and leading scholar of shamanism and psychedelics, with 40 years of cross-cultural research and editor of the Handbook of Entheogenic Healing (2025).

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1 hr 25 min
October 19The Medicine Modern Science Forgot
In this episode of the Brainforest Café, Dr. Dennis McKenna sits down with Kat Maier, a registered herbalist and physician's assistant who has practiced for more than forty years and wrote the award-winning book Energetic Herbalism. Together they explore what modern medicine loses when it separates the body from spirit: how energetic traditions read the body as a living landscape (hot or cold, damp or dry, tense or relaxed), why context can matter as much as chemistry, and where the psychedelic renaissance fits into a much older understanding of plants as medicine for the soul. It is a warm, rigorous conversation about healing, reciprocity, and our estrangement from nature.
In this conversation:
Why Kat calls herself a "recovering scientist," and why she refuses to choose between biomedicine and the sacred

What energetic herbalism actually means, and how to read your own internal landscape

Why Echinacea "failed" a famous clinical trial, and how it was being used wrong

The drop of Black Cohosh that felt like a DMT journey, and what it reveals about context and healing

Drop doses, regional herbalism, and healing at the pace of tissue, not the pace of a pill

The Herbal Mutual Aid Directory, bringing plant medicine to communities after floods, fires, and storms
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Kat Maier, RH (AHG).PA has been a practicing herbalist for over forty
years. She is the founder and director of Sacred Plant Traditions, LLC
in Charlottesville, VA. She served as President of the Board of United
Plant Savers and received their first Medicinal Plant Conservation
Award. As a clinical herbalist she has taught at medical schools,
Naturopathic symposiums and internationally at herbal conferences.
As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, coupled with her training as
a Physician’s Assistant, she weaves the language of biomedicine with
traditional energetic systems and wisdom. Kat served on the Admissions
Committee for American Herbalist Guild (AHG) for professional membership
for over ten years She is the founder of Botanica Mobile Clinic, which
offers support to mental health and at-risk community members at no
cost. Kat is the co-author of Bush Medicine of San Salvador Island,
Bahamas, and the author of Energetic Herbalism: A Guide to Sacred Plant
Traditions, Integrating Elements of Vitalism, Ayurveda, and Chinese
Medicine. This book won the 2022 Gold Medal Nautilus Award.

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1 hr 5 min
October 05 The Mushroom That Makes You See "Little People"
For nearly a century, reports of a mysterious psychoactive bolete have puzzled ethnomycologists and anthropologists alike. From the 1930s reports of "mushroom madness" in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, which drew the curiosity of R. Gordon Wasson, Roger Heim, and Albert Hofmann, to modern Yunnan, China, where accidental poisonings from undercooked culinary mushrooms cause people to reliably see visions of tiny, colorfully dressed "little people."
In this episode of The Brainforest Café, Dennis McKenna sits down with mycologist and PhD candidate Colin Domnauer (University of Utah) to discuss how modern genomics, natural product chemistry, and fieldwork cracked this long-standing mystery.
Colin shares his journey traveling to the markets and forests of Southwest China and the Philippines, using DNA sequencing to identify the primary species responsible (Lanmaoa asiatica), conducting groundbreaking rodent bioassays, and exploring what these non-psilocybin compounds could reveal about the neurobiology of perception and the cross-cultural phenomenon of Lilliputian hallucinations.
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Colin is a Bay Area California native whose research focuses on unravelling the ethnomycological mystery of psychoactive bolete mushrooms. With a lifelong interest and undergraduate degree in astronomy before changing his studies to the ethnobiology of psychoactive substances, Colin has always felt attracted to explore the mind-bending wonders of nature. In his free time, he enjoys engaging in just about any outdoor activity with friends, most of all foraging for mushrooms.

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1 hr
September 21 The Brain Is a Field Computer, Not a Digital Chip
Dennis McKenna sits down with scholar, lawyer, and philosopher Tam Hunt (UC Santa Barbara’s META Lab) to dive deep into the mysteries of consciousness, psychedelics, and the existential crossroads of artificial intelligence.
Tam shares his unconventional journey, from growing up in a 1970s counterculture commune to transformative, high-dose LSD journeys in Waimea Canyon, and how these experiences led him to co-develop the General Resonance Theory (GRT) with Jonathan Schooler. Together, Dennis and Tam explore panpsychism, Whiteheadian process philosophy, the limits of reductionist neuroscience, plant intelligence, and whether future AI built on electromagnetic "field computing" could become conscious. They conclude with a candid discussion on AI safety, existential risk, the approaching 2030 Singularity, and why the principle of stewardship as love is essential for humanity's survival.

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1 hr 28 min
September 09 Why Ibogaine Triggers a 'Second Childhood' in the Brain - Part 2
Jonathan Dickinson, CEO and co-founder of Ambio Life Sciences and author of Ibogaine and the Bicameral Mind, returns to the Brainforest Café for part two of his conversation with Dr. Dennis McKenna. Where part one followed the personal journey, this one goes into the machinery: what ibogaine is actually doing to the mind and to the cell.
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Jonathan Dickinson, co-founder and CEO of Ambio Life Sciences and
founder of Terragnosis, joins Dr. Dennis McKenna on the Brainforest Café
for a conversation about ibogaine, iboga, and the Bwiti tradition of
Gabon.
A Mexico-licensed psychologist and former executive director of
the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance, Jonathan helped develop the
field's foundational safety guidelines and completed the first
Nagoya-compliant export of Tabernanthe iboga root. In part one of a
two-part conversation, he traces the path from harm reduction work in
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to initiation in Gabon, and explains why
ibogaine refuses to behave like a pharmaceutical. It does not reduce
symptoms. It opens a door, and the person has to walk through it.

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1 hr 16 min
September 07 Ibogaine and the Bicameral Mind - Part 1
Jonathan Dickinson, co-founder and CEO of Ambio Life Sciences and
founder of Terragnosis, joins Dr. Dennis McKenna on the Brainforest Café
for a conversation about ibogaine, iboga, and the Bwiti tradition of
Gabon.
- - -
Jonathan Dickinson, a Mexico-licensed psychologist and former executive director of the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance, Jonathan helped develop the field's foundational safety guidelines and completed the first
Nagoya-compliant export of Tabernanthe iboga root. In part one of a
two-part conversation, he traces the path from harm reduction work in
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to initiation in Gabon, and explains why
ibogaine refuses to behave like a pharmaceutical. It does not reduce
symptoms. It opens a door, and the person has to walk through it.

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1 hr 3 min
August 24 Inside Colombia’s Top Ayahuasca Retreat
What if the future of ayahuasca isn’t in the hype cycle, but in safety, tradition, and real transformation? In this conversation, Sam Believ and Dennis McKenna explore Colombia’s overlooked ayahuasca lineage, the importance of set and setting, and why plant medicine may hold a key to healing both people and culture.
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Sam Believ is the founder of LaWayra Ayahuasca Retreat and host of the Ayahuasca Podcast.
A former offshore engineer turned modern bridge-builder, Sam is dedicated to making traditional Amazonian medicine accessible, safe, and grounded for the modern world.
He build LaWayra - currently the biggest Ayahuasca retreat in Colombia, while raising 3 small kids all in 2 foreign languages and without any business background.
At LaWayra he has guided close to 3000 people through their Ayahuasca experience.

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1 hr 2 min
August 10 Ibogaine, Kintsugi & the Secret to True Healing
In this conversation, Patricia Eastman and Dennis McKenna explore the deeper meaning of psychedelic healing through the lens of ancestral wisdom, initiation, and nature-based practice. Patricia shares the story behind her book Seeding Consciousness and her vision for Hu Azores, a retreat center in Portugal designed as a healing space that integrates architecture, ritual, and circadian-aware design. The discussion moves beyond symptom treatment and into a bigger question: how psychedelics can support creativity, integration, and a more connected human experience.
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Patricia Eastman, Initiated is a Bwiti Traditional Practitioner for over 11 years and founder of the nonprofit Ancestral Heart, has curated transformative retreats with plant medicines worldwide as well as facilitated the psychospiritual program with ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT at Crossroads Treatment Center in Mexico. A renowned speaker, artist, and writer, Eastman has engaged with audiences at Stanford University, the World Economic Forum, and on Gaia TV's Psychedelica. Eastman is the author of Seeding Consciousness: Plant Medicine, Ancestral Wisdom, and Psychedelic Initiation.

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1 hr 14 min
July 27 Ayahuasca, Science, and Shamanism
In 2003, Carlos Tanner woke up in his car underwater, having blacked out behind the wheel and driven into a river. Deep in an opiate addiction, he went to the Amazon to save his own life. What he found there became his life's work.
In this episode of the Brainforest Café, Dennis McKenna sits down with Carlos, founder of the Ayahuasca Foundation in Iquitos, Peru, for a wide-ranging conversation on healing, tradition, and what happens when a sacred medicine goes global.
Carlos recounts his apprenticeship under the late curandero Don Juan Tangoa Paima, who first took him in, and how that path led him to build the Ayahuasca Foundation around one idea: to give the next person the map he never had. He and Dennis also trace a shared history back to their involvement in the documentary The Shaman and the Scientist.
At the heart of the conversation is a tension they both clearly feel. Both support plant medicine, yet don’t fully agree on where it should go. Dennis, who first brought the ayahuasca vine to Hawaii in 1976, is openly conflicted about his role in spreading it globally. Carlos presses the question: you can move the plant, but can you move what makes it heal?

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1 hr 4 min
July 13 Can Plants Replace Animals in Drug Testing?
In this episode of the Brainforest Café, Dennis McKenna sits down with medicinal chemist Matt Metcalf to explore a genuinely strange frontier: testing drugs in pea seedlings and the touch-sensitive Mimosa pudica instead of in mice. Along the way they circle the question that started it all, why the opium poppy spends so much energy making opioids at all, and what those molecules might be doing inside a plant that has no nerves.
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Matthew Metcalf is a neuroscientist with a background in the medicinal chemistry and pharmacology of opioids and cannabinoids as analgesic drugs. He is an assistant professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences University (MCPHS) School of Pharmacy - Worcester.
His current research focuses on the development of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs, sometimes called Non-Animal Models) drug tests to limit the use of animals used in drug testing.
His current work focuses on the use of living plants as the biological organisms to replace animal models used as drug tests.
Outside of his research he is passionate about auroras and timelapse photography.

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1 hr 10 min

About Brainforest Café

From the publisher's feed

In the Brainforest Café, Dennis McKenna discusses a wide range of topics related to philosophy, plant medicines, psychedelics and consciousness in nature. Guests are invited from diverse fields such as anthropology, neuroscience, and spirituality to explore various aspects of the human experience. Some of the topics that are covered in the Brainforest Café include the history and the role of plant medicines in traditional healing practices and the potential benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy for mental health. The Brainforest Café also explores the cultural, social, and political implications of psychedelic use.