Brainforest Café

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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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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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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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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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