Jeremy Narby, PhD is an anthropologist and best-selling author of The Cosmic Serpent as well as a co-author of Plant Teachers with indigenous elder Rafael Chanchari Pizuri. He became an early pioneer of ayahuasca research while living with the Ashaninca people of the Peruvian Amazon in the 1980s. He studied anthropology at Stanford University and now lives in Switzerland.

In Plant Teachers, Jeremy and Rafael co-explore indigenous and scientific perspectives on both ayahuasca and tobacco and their ceremonial and medicinal usage. In Plant Teachers, Jeremy and Rafael hold a cross-cultural dialogue that explores the similarities between ayahuasca and tobacco, the role of these plants in indigenous cultures, and the hidden truths they reveal about nature. Juxtaposing and synthesizing two worldviews, Plant Teachers invites readers on a wide-ranging journey through anthropology, botany, and biochemistry, while raising tantalizing questions about the relationship between science and other ways of knowing.