old is new again whether it's ayahuasca or snake root there is a place in the modern world whether it's kolkata or whether it's istanbul or whether it's washington where i live for these ancient traditions in these ancient plants and fungi to help us live a better life yeah um you know i'd love to know about your studies about india as well but i mean we have to address the ayahuasca conversation first because that's the aspect of plant medicine that indians relate to the most that's what we've heard of the most especially online so sir i'd love for you to explain what ayahuasca is what an experience with ayahuasca is like and what it does to the mind even on a biological level you know not just what it does on the surface and how it changes you as a person i'd love to know whatever you have to share with the world about it well that's another difficult question i emphasize that i'm an ethnobotanist i'm not a brain chemist or a physician or


i'm not a brain chemist or a physician or a shaman but ayahuasca is what's known as the vine of the soul it was long known to be used by shaman's traditional healers in the northwest amazon now from israel to istanbul to india there are ayahuasca ceremonies happening all the time traditionally ayahuasca is a liana that is a woody vine that was used by healers in the rain forest mixed with yet another plant typically what is known as chakruna which potentially it's a very complex chemical reaction and my question to you in your audience is how could indigenous peoples regarded by western scientists myself in the ancient past as primitive peoples find the two plants out of the 40 000 in the rain forest and that needed to be mixed together to generate these cosmic effects very impressive bit of botanical and medical genius what shamans tell me is the problem with us as we grow older is things stick in our mind in other words when you're seven years old and you


in other words when you're seven years old and you fall down and you hurt your knee your knee gets better and it stops hurting when you're 47 or 57 or 67 you fall down and you hurt your knee and your knee gets better but it's still hurting and the doctor can't find anything wrong and the shaman says it's because your mind is stuck because you're stressed and your mind's not letting go of that pain and what ayahuasca and other mind altering substance can do is show you that you should not hang on to that pain that you should not punish yourself for stress and you should let it go and that is why i think there's such a bright future excuse me for ayahuasca and other mind altering substances used the right way because ayahuasca can heal and ayahuasca can hurt this wonderful book on this by michael pollan p-o-l-l-a-n called changing your mind and he points out that the people that often go in search of ayahuasca or other


that often go in search of ayahuasca or other mind-altering substances are people that have emotional issues or people that are emotionally fragile and these are the people that can come apart you know if they don't have the proper guidance so it it's one thing to drink a beer and and and relax it's another thing to think i'll go in the jungle where i don't even speak i don't speak to tribal language or even spanish or portuguese and i'll put myself in the hands of people i really don't know and and really don't know if i can trust and pay them a lot of money and and think i'm going to get better and in some cases they get worse in some cases they die very few but it does happen the point being that these are tools and like any tools they need to be used careful and they need to be used under the supervision of people who know how to use them can teach you how to use them and can make sure you don't


how to use them and can make sure you don't get in trouble make sure that if you if you if you face uh the darkness in your life and we all have darkness in our life that you can be pulled back from the edge and you don't just fall into the pit oh uh appreciate you sharing all this uh and also i mean i'd love for you to kind of suggest a way for people to find a legitimate you know shaman or a legitimate technique to do ayahuasca because i know that a lot of people go out searching for real ayahuasca and what the internet says is that a lot of people are scammed into other substances so what's the best way of you know finding a true ayahuasca experience you know runway there's an ancient latin phrase let the buyer beware in other words uh and and this is true right at home if you're dealing with physicians uh in in new delhi you want to find a good one there's bad physicians there's people that will


good one there's bad physicians there's people that will recommend surgery that you don't need because you know they're greedy so i don't want to make it seem like oh there's all these bad shamings you have to watch out for you have to watch out for anybody you're putting your your future your destiny your health in the hands of of course it's more difficult when you're talking about going into the rain forest and you know i mean the great thing about our culture is you know if a guy says he's an md if a gal says she's an md either she or he went to medical school they didn't you or i can't hang up a sign saying md come here you know pay me lots of money and i'll make you better we don't have that with ayahuasca and it's it's a problem you know there there's real shamans and there's rent to shamans and it's a difficult time there's so much money right now in this and mixing money mind altered states uh


in this and mixing money mind altered states uh power sex sometimes it's a it's a combustible mix and so i wish i'd say if you just did this and you just went to this website and if you just went to here in peru you can't go wrong it's not that easy so like charles dickens said it's the best of times and it's the worst of times um um until i heard your tim ferriss podcast i didn't know that it's pronounced shame and i always thought it's shaman both are correct both are correct tomato tomato ah okay uh okay so uh what is a shaman like you know for someone who's hearing the word for the first time how would you define it a shaman is very simply a medicine man or medicine woman who is the tribal physician but she or he is much more than that because they're not only the healer they're the keeper of the legends the keeper of stories the keeper of history the cycle pump the person who conveys


of history the cycle pump the person who conveys souls to the underworld the person who reads the weather the person who tells you when to predict the crops the person who fends off bad spells now i want to emphasize that not all shamans do all these things but that's sort of the generic term and what it means it actually comes from a word from siberia which is regarded by many as the cradle of shamanism and it means he who knows so it's it's a knowledge keeper and and here's what's interesting uh from a cultural uh sense the shaman uh is not the leader of the tribe typically in the amazon there's some exceptions you have the shaman and you have the chief the chief is the political head the shaman is the religious head so we like to talk in the states about how we invented the separation of church and states not true this was the case in native american societies and probably in other tribal societies around the world but the shaman is not


societies around the world but the shaman is not a political leader typically uh she or he is the is the lead healer and you always need a shaman to do an ayahuasca ceremony or to do a ceremony with any of these plant medicine [Music] you know experiences like do you always need a shaman around you know ranveer i have the advantage of being an ethnobotanist so i have the honor and privilege of working with some of the greatest and most powerful shamans so i don't want to be a shamanic snob here and say you know i i have the best shaymins and you don't there's so much demand now there's not really enough shamans to go around and what we're seeing is the training of a whole cadre of professional guides because psilocybin which comes from the magic mushroom which was discovered scientifically discovered by my mentor schultes you you have guides who will take you on psilocybin sessions they're finding incredible success in treating ptsd


sessions they're finding incredible success in treating ptsd and america has been involved in so many wars for the last uh 10 years that's a terrible problem here in the states depression schizophrenia obesity obsessive-compulsive disorder end-of-life anxiety for terminal cancer patients so all of these things which western medicine long regarded as incurable shamans or curing now i want to emphasize it's not all cases are cured not uh hallucinogens don't always work but you know i'll take 60 success rate over nothing so it's yet another tool look the the medicine office of the future the doctor's office of the future if we get it right is going to be a western physician an ayurvedic physician a shaman a masseuse nutritional therapy pet therapy all these things because no system of medicine not ayurvedic medicine not shamanic medicine has all the answers if they do we would be having this conversation but how can you question uh the the fact that some of these systems these all of these systems do something well


these systems these all of these systems do something well or why would you be practicing ayurveda for four thousand years right or why would indians be practicing uh shamanic medicine the amazon if it didn't work of course it works can it do everything no but neither can the most modern 21st century uh technological medicine as we practice it here in this country yeah um i mean my personal opinion is that the future of medicine will be a combination of all of it but you've always got your traditionalist you know people who think that okay what i've studied in my textbooks that's what matters that's what it is and i get that school of thought as well i just feel like some people are born with a scientific predicament they have to see proof before believing something they believe i think theory and experimentation research over someone else's experiences but i feel the world is slowly moving in that other direction where experiences will be combined for the best possible solution agreed and this goes back to your


possible solution agreed and this goes back to your earlier question is why did people turn away from ancient medicine as tech medicine came to the fore and the answer is because i couldn't explain it i'm a scientist i can't understand how ayurvedic medicine works i'm a scientist i don't understand how chinese medicine and acupuncture works but sometimes i use it and you know what's frustrating for me is people say well this shamanic medicine you know i don't understand it so i won't use it okay that's your choice but shamans can sometimes cure things that that doctors cannot and when people say well i don't use shamanic medicine because i don't understand that i ask them if they understand how their car works or how their iphone works and of course the answer is no so you know there has to be in some sense at least in some part trust and some sense a willing uh suspension of disbelief now i've been told or i've been asked or both does shamanic medicine


i've been asked or both does shamanic medicine work as a placebo effect in other words there's nothing to it but you believe in it's what works and the answer is there's an element of the placebo effect in every system of healing for example if you go into a pharmacy and then your major city in the world you have a pharmacist wearing a white coat why does a pharmacist wear a white coat in the old days they made up the medicines but they don't make up anything they just put pills in jars however you see why you think clean hygiene i'm getting better okay so there's there's a performative element in all systems of medicine shamanic medicine in my opinion is built on two pillars one is the chemicals which is primarily what's in the plants but they also use fungi and in some cases we know they use insects in some cases we know they use frogs these are powerful chemicals the second is the invisible the spiritual the placebo effect whatever you want


invisible the spiritual the placebo effect whatever you want to call it and hey i'm totally in favor of that stuff i'd much rather be treated by the placebo effect than by a surgeon if the placebo effect is going to work however if you have a burst appendix you don't want the placebo effect you want a surgeon so this is why i say to people who come up to me and say oh ethnobotany cool i'd never go to a doctor i'd say well then you're probably going to die at some point okay because if you're you're in an automobile accident you don't want to go to a nutrition therapist right you don't want to go to an acupuncturist you want a trauma surgeon so it shouldn't be this like well it's all about western medicine or it's all about eastern medicine those are very simplistic views which limit your therapeutic possibilities especially in the age of mental health issues the one we're living in right now so mental health issues are paramount in


in right now so mental health issues are paramount in the study of the shamanic world because this is what western medicine does not seem to be as effective at treating in many cases not all of them excuse me as shamans shamans use hallucinogens mind-altering substances psilocybin and magic mushrooms the alkaloids in ayahuasca as biological scalpels these plants and fungi allow shamans to diagnose analyze treat and sometimes cure mental ailments that western medicine cannot cure once again shamans connect your all mental ailments but i think you know western medicine is pretty uh ineffective in treating many cases of mental ailments certainly not all of them but you know why are there so many people with mental issues walking around if you go to a doctor in my country here in the u.s and say i can't sleep she or he will give you valium okay very addictive drug not a cure and if you say i'm stressed out you know maybe they give you tranquilizers again not a


know maybe they give you tranquilizers again not a cure okay so stress is something that affects all of us everywhere particularly living in an urbanized setting whether you're stuck in traffic or or whether you're you're worrying about your payroll or whatever or you're living in the age of covert of course we're all stressed out we don't know what the future holds and how are you dealing with the stress well some of it could be dance some of it could be meditation some of it could be yoga none of these are western medicine okay so when i asked one of the shamans in the amazon i said so what do you see is the problem with with with foreigners with mostly americans he said it's worrying about worry in other words stress that's who comes to me you know if you have an infection that can be treated you go to the doctor and you don't go to the amazon but if you're stressed out about something and the doctor can't fix it she sends you to


the doctor can't fix it she sends you to the amazon where some of the times the shamans can fix it um i loved what you said about worrying about worry again i've grown up in urban india i've got exposure to the rest of india as well i feel with two countries in one okay so your urban india is very similar to you know europe or usa in terms of mindsets of the people we're very westernized and i see most of urban india also suffering from the same problem they worry about worry uh you know they're looking for something to get riled up about often they're looking for something to lash out at other people about and i see that all over the world pretty much i don't really see that in the interiors of the country and i primarily believe that it's because of this ancient culture of traditional medicine traditional thoughts traditions uh you know yoga for that matter there there is your spiritualism that's more alive in that part of the world so um


more alive in that part of the world so um that's that's just how i look at it so then because you've studied healing you've studied medicine this much i'd love to hear your perspective on india as a scientist you're someone who studies all these things so what's your take on what i just said you know i see this everywhere i work in in capital cities urban environments people are stressed out uh people are just there there's not enough space they're not connecting with nature uh they're worried and much of the worry is it's over wrought you know there there was a best-selling book don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff well it's not all small stuff but most of it's small stuff but you're still worried about it it's in your face and the fact that we're all so tied into tech you know oh i got a message oh i got a call this drives part of it too so this goes back to my point i made earlier ranveer that


back to my point i made earlier ranveer that technology is a double-edged sword which is it can help and it can hurt and when i see us all stressed out in urban environments around the world and i see the world increasingly urbanized i think we desperately need to find ways to deal with this and i'd find i'd prefer lifestyle changes that ward this off rather than waiting until we get sick and i see this much more in in in tribal societies that there's things they do and they say and and they take so they don't get stressed out right preventative medicine we call it here we put a fancy western name on it but the fact is what can you do to ward off stress whether it's not watching the news 24 7 whether it's not checking your iphone every five minutes uh whether it's meditating and then if you do get stressed what do you do you know do you take ayahuasca do you meditate do you do yoga whatever but these are things which western medicine


do yoga whatever but these are things which western medicine is just not really adept at helping people deal with and i think our our search for spirituality our search for healing our interest in plants like ayahuasca and these others is driven in some ways just because people naturally like to explore and discover people naturally are interested in altered states this is why children spin around in circles to get dizzy till they fall down it's that interest in altered states but also it's it's part of the healing process it's part of the well-being process that we really lack in this industrialized world we inhabit so you mentioned the tribals and their lifestyles and you said that there's some things that they do that benefits their head could you elaborate a little bit on that sure i mean this is one of those things where people are looking for some incredible answer to the secret of life but you know it already it's like the wizard of oz you know she went to oz to find the answer and found


she went to oz to find the answer and found out there's no place like home what do they do they do they get exercise okay they're outdoors all the time they sweat in the u.s nobody sweats okay we we go to the gym and we're in an air-conditioned building nobody sweats and sweating is getting some of that toxin out of your body you know they drink lots of water again there's nothing sexy or shamanic or secret about it they spend a lot of time with their family you know they don't waste a lot of time doing stupid excuse me stupid stuff that uh that induces stress and and we all know this this is not a secret you have to go to the amazon to find out but when i watch these people and when they live long and well until they get hooked on a western diet and they start eating lots of salt and lots of fat and they stop exercising they start putting on weight and then they're right where we are so what i


and then they're right where we are so what i always tell my tribal colleagues learn from us what we've done right what we've done wrong okay take the best adapt it to your standards and your way of living but understand what the worst is and and make sure you don't suffer it we have poverty you don't okay we have overcrowding you don't poor people in the in the cities have bad water you don't so don't think that if you move to the city you can have a better life because you move to the city you're going to be living in the slum uh and and and chances are there's not a better life that's going to wait you certainly in the short term and and this is a revelation because many of the tribals that i work with were first contacted by missionaries fundamentalist missionaries you told them you want to be a white man you know you want to put on pants and worship jesus and you're going to live happily ever after you


and you're going to live happily ever after you know what that doesn't work in in most cases when i see indigenous peoples living in in cities like rio de janeiro they're living in the favelas and the slums around the city they don't have economic opportunities that we educated people have around the world so yes i need more education but there isn't that much great education available to them and i'm talking about south america i'm not talking about india here so this idea that the sooner you become like offs the better off you'll be when we don't have all the answers we have to turn to them for some of the answers so this gets back to this approach let's learn from each other let's work together you have some things in your medicine better than ours and vice versa how do we put it together in a way which benefits all of us hmm um in terms of a mindset so because you spent so much time with indigenous people could you highlight some aspects of


with indigenous people could you highlight some aspects of their mindset which really benefit them uh or you know that could be an edge for them in the modern world like other than the stuff you mentioned about lifestyle is there some kind of thought processes in their belief system or whatever that benefits them according to you well here is something that i i work with them on and and and that's not their mindset it's it's helping them realize the value of their culture and what they know because when contact from the outside particularly from missionaries is teaching that everything they know is wrong of course they throw away their medicine then they go to the city and they end up in the night watchman in a milk factory because there's no job and they don't speak the national language well and then now we have guys who are shamans apprentices through our program at the amazon conservation team who become shamans and they go to town with medicines okay all of a sudden they have money in their pockets so


a sudden they have money in their pockets so they can shop for for books for their kids and and things that they can't make themselves you know fish hooks and salt and shotguns and things like that so the idea is that hold on to your culture to some degree understand what you want to keep and maintain and improve and understand what you may want to throw away and that's a real important realization because now all of a sudden we have shamanic healers available to us that we might not have had if we taught them throw away that stuff that's old-fashioned and that's bad goes back to your your question about uh you know what what's the value and and why do people turn away from the old stuff now that we're turning towards it so we want to make sure they don't throw that stuff out in the meantime but they have to understand the value of that in the modern world the mindset is very short-term thinking they're not worried about their 401k they're not worried


not worried about their 401k they're not worried about their pension they're not worried about retirement because everybody lives with their family from the time they're born until the time they're died well that's not always practical uh in the modern world but you know trying to force them into the western paradigm of no you you got to move in the city move away from your parents live in a crowded apartment house and you're going to be better and then they have the same mental ailments that we do that's a mistake we're making so i always say to my tribal colleagues this is your car you're driving it i'm willing to ride shotgun i'm willing to sit next to you with a map and make some recommendations but ultimately it's your destiny and you have to decide my job our job at the amazon conservation team where i work your job as somebody interested in this is helping people whether tribals in india whether it's tribals in the amazon or siberia help them


tribals in the amazon or siberia help them make informed decisions not tell them what they should do or shouldn't do which has really been the history of contact uh from outsiders uh from the colonial world people coming in saying do it our way this is the right way what you know what you think what you speak what you eat what you worship is wrong um that that's been a disaster around the world yeah um you know when you read about the amazonian tribes you also read about how many uncontacted tribes there are tribes that haven't really they don't know anything about the outside world they don't know anything about facebook or youtube or twitter all these things like blushing um that are present in our life sir but i'd love for you to highlight some mysteries about the amazon you know that you only got to know after you spent time there and that kind of surprised you if you could highlight three or four of them you know i'd really be grateful well there really are uncontacted


really be grateful well there really are uncontacted tribes we at the amazon conservation team www.amazonteam.org that's a major focus and a priority for us i gave a ted talk on how to work with and and save the uncontacted tribes so that's available for anybody who wants it's easy to find it at ted.com and so what we find is that these people are incredibly knowledge knowledgeable about the forest what we find is they're not uncontacted because they don't know there's an outside where one of my best friends was an uncontacted indian uh the they were his tribe was drived out of the jungle dragged out of the jungle by fundamentalist missionaries in the 60s and 70s and i met him shortly after contact so it's great because over the decades we've been pals he's able to tell me what life was like in the bush what they knew so they were uncontacted they were isolated by their own choosing it wasn't they didn't know there's an outside world


wasn't they didn't know there's an outside world when the first planes came over the amazon in the 40s and 50s they began to realize there is an outside world and it was their choice to maintain isolation so this is an ignorance this is a choice this is a form of resistance now when they were brought into the village of the other indians uh the other indians were plant masters were stunned by the amount of knowledge these people had in other words they knew more they knew the most proof of that 35 words for honey wow okay 35 different species of honey producing bees and this is this is phenomenal so the idea that ethnobotanists like me have like well these people really know their plants it's not just the plants okay this is insects as well these are soils these are tree types these are pollination this is basic ecology so the idea that their genius is just about well they know a bunch of medicinal plants it's not true and when you live closer


plants it's not true and when you live closer to the land you know more about biology you have to your life depends on it you know 25 years ago the kogi peoples kogi in northern colombia this is outside the amazon came down from the mountains they lived on and said our glaciers are melting what the hell are you guys doing down there and everybody thought you know these ignorant people they don't even have last names know how to write well guess what that was the first report of climate change okay but we didn't listen and look where we are now so again time and time again we underestimate how much these people know this is not to indicate or imply or conclude that they know everything about everything they don't it's to point out that they know a lot of stuff that we don't know and we should listen and that has not been the case with uh western medicine with western researchers who basically came in you know like tarzan thinking i know the rain forest and i'm going


thinking i know the rain forest and i'm going to save it yeah i'll hire these guys a guide and then they find out these naked people who had no last names do a lot more than they did and we see that over and over and over again the ayahuasca example of the two plants of the 40 000 they were able to combine together and so i'll give you one example i was out collecting with a shaman and i knew the guy for years and we stopped and he stirred up an anthill with a stick and then applied the stick to the inside of his elbows and and and and i and the ants are biting him and and i said what are you doing he says well that's my arthritis and i said i asked if you used plants as insects and you told me no he said listen he said you're a plant guy and i don't mind teaching a few more plants but you don't know anything about insects i'm not going to waste my time and then


i'm not going to waste my time and then when i came home and did the research and found out there are polysaccharides in ant venom that have a positive effect the therapeutic effect on on arthritis so time and again the chemistry bears out what what these guys know and uh you know we just need to be a little bit more humble and we just need to be a little better listeners to figure out that yeah there's a lot they can teach us yeah uh we had a himalayan adventure on the show recently and he echoed a similar thought he said that below some of the snow in the himalayas you have these little plants growing which actually have a lot of medicinal properties and the locals in those areas know about these plants but the outside world pretty much doesn't and they say that these plants are smuggled and sent to china for chinese medicine uh but you know i mean the rest of the world has no idea about the magic that's hidden in the mountains or in the


magic that's hidden in the mountains or in the rainforest well the classic case from the himalayas right now is that of cordyceps cordyceps is a fungus which lives on the mountain slopes and it waits for insects to go past and attaches itself to the insects once it's done that it burns a hole in the insect exoskeleton and inserts itself inside takes over the insect body causing the insect to climb to the top of the tallest plant nearby and then kills the insect which splits open and allows the fungus to release his spores now this is a staple i believe of ayurvedic medicine certainly a staple of chinese medicine and now there's a huge demand for it i think the the greatest potential for natural medicines the unrealized potential is in the fungal kingdom and we're finding that that fungi can do everything but there's two problems one is over exploitation and our friend tim ferriss wrote a excellent blog post on how not


wrote a excellent blog post on how not to over exploit mind-altering plants and fungi and secondly climate change because things are on mountain slopes can they move up can they move down animals are better at this than plants and fungi so we have to worry about climate change from the therapeutic aspect in addition to all the other problems in terms of flooding and dams and everything else yeah um so around the time i'd done ayahuasca i think this was back in 2015 i read this book called the teachings of don juan by carlos castaneda have you heard of this book i know it well okay okay i'd love for you to expand a little bit on carlos castaneda and that book because it kind of scared me a little bit i remember when i read it but i'd love to hear your thoughts on it it was a very powerful and impactful book read by millions of people and opened their eyes to the value of shamanic cultures and healing healing plants and fungi however


cultures and healing healing plants and fungi however i'm convinced as are many other people that it was a fable that he wrote this in the ucla library where he was a grad student and not in the deserts of northern mexico in other words the deserts in northern mexico cannot grow mushrooms you don't find mushrooms you don't find hallucinogenic mushrooms in in northern mexico in the desert however what you do find is peyote so what people suspect is that don juan who was feeding him uh was feeding him magic mushrooms was actually a witchol h-u-i-c-h-o-l uh indigenous person and was giving him peyote which is common there so that i think he just got trapped by his success and had to write wilder and wilder stuff so the net impact of these books was positive in terms of opening people's eyes to the wonder of shamanic medicine indigenous knowledge except you just sort of said i put it together in the library from from other people's work


together in the library from from other people's work uh and he just got trapped by it made millions and millions and millions of dollars so you know if you look at the life story of famous wonderful people and there's often a dark side and this fellow was very famous and there's a lot of bottom that i read which really wasn't very wonderful but he definitely had a dark side yeah you can you can feel it when you read those books like the chapters towards the end are written like horror chapters but anyway that's that's just what means for people it's a wonderful read i do recommend it as a read but you have to understand it's a fable there's a book by j fikes f-i-k-e-s it really debunks a lot of the claims he made oh wow okay um so i mean this is the one part of the podcast i've been dying to conduct for a while i'd love for you to highlight what peyote is and what dathura is these


what peyote is and what dathura is these are two plants that people have heard about which are kind of in that same ayahuasca family at least that's how the world looks at it i don't know if they are uh but i mean the effects are also supposed to be therapeutic so if you could just take us through these two plants what's peyote and what's dathura okay peyote is a cactus very limited distribution it lives on the texas mexico border it was used by three traditional tribes the wichols the tarahamara and one other tribe and then as the plains indians the indigenous peoples of the american midwest became detribalized christianity was forced down their throat they discovered peyote and they adopted it as a sacrament this became what's known as the native american church where they have the legal right to access this peyote which ironically was not part of their tradition however it's created a demand for peyote and it's a slow growing cactus so in


and it's a slow growing cactus so in tim ferriss blog post on this he said really let's leave the peyote for the indigenous peoples and not think okay we're in the the psychonaut candy store and we are urban people around the world should just be able to eat and consume whatever we want whenever we want it that's a deleterious effect taken peyote very impactful here's what's interesting about peyote the active ingredient in peyote is mescaline masculine was isolated a long time ago aldrich huxley in the doors of perception who essentially invented the psychedelic renaissance did it by taking mescaline in other words the synthetic extract so nobody has to take peyote if you want to get the experience you can take mescaline this is part of this therapeutic regimen which is becoming more widespread here in the u.s now under the care of a shaman and taking the practice the cactus itself the effect can be a bit different but the basics are in the


be a bit different but the basics are in the masculine that's the most important active component so i would encourage people to steer away from peyote and if they're interested in it to pursue uh treatment with masculine but always under the care of a guide tatura is the most dangerous one that's full of what we call propane alkaloids and schulte told me the the the torahs are the ones i would never take myself they're just too dangerous i've taken them but always under the care of a shaman they often give you a sense of flight and if mixed with ayahuasca is that often is by some of the shamans in the colombian amazon and the northwest amazon it prolongs and enhances the effect of the ayahuasca you know shamans are like great chefs everybody's got their own recipe so when i say ayahuasca is the ayahuasca plant plus the chicruna plant well that's that's that's a generalization uh usually shamans real shamans will mix


generalization uh usually shamans real shamans will mix many other things in it depends on you know sort of what's their what's their brand like a great chef and what what are they treating you for they treating you for depression are they treating you for dysomnia are they treating you to enhance your immune system so this is where the beauty of the shaman comes in you know this is this is medicine and magic it shouldn't just be something off the shelf which is when i hear about people buying hallucinogens on the internet and taking them by themselves i i always recommend against it i i the downside is just too big but you know the best book on hallucinogens ever written is one called plants of the gods it was written and published in 1979 it's uh by my mentor schultes and hoffman and people interested in these mind-altering substances should know the name hoffman albert hoffman invented lsd he's the first one to extract and identify the psilocybin molecule from


to extract and identify the psilocybin molecule from peyote not peyote sorry the magic mushrooms so plants to the gods it talks about how these plants form the basis of our religion our culture and offer great potential as a therapeutic avenue a lot of stuff on the history of ancient india for example soma again from the vedas nobody's quite sure what soma was the magic drink of immortality while gordon wassen who was a friend of schulte's looked into it and concluded that soma was actually amanita muscaria the fly agaric medicine so that his conclusion to me was very convincing and i can go into this if you want but again you know as we look to the future we also have to look to the past um so i'd love for you to highlight uh the indian soma like whatever you know about it i mean this is the first time honestly that i'm hearing about this i've heard more about the south american stuff than the indian stuff so i'd love to


stuff than the indian stuff so i'd love to hear about it well soma is in the vedas i think it's a rig veda that talks about it as the drink of immortality well who doesn't want to drink the drink of immortality at least try it so it was a mystery because this is i think the rig vedas are 3 500 years ago and wasan was a banker he worked for j.p morgan in new york this is a very interesting story and he married a russian physician and she loved mushrooms americans are kind of taught that all mushrooms are toadstools and they're all poisonous and stay away from it there's this very famous incident on their honeymoon in upstate new york where she said oh look mushrooms let's eat some and he said oh no we'll die and that you had this very interesting dichotomy and she ate it and he didn't and she didn't die and he became intrigued with mushrooms so he was also interested in the ancient world


so he was also interested in the ancient world ancient mediterranean and knew that the emperor claudius in imperial rome was poisoned by his wife who gave him poison as mushrooms so he decided to conduct the ultimate cold case investigation and figure out what caused this murder uh 2000 years ago so he or she actually wrote robert graves who was a classic scholar and a poet was living on the island of mallorca and said we're trying to figure out what mushrooms uh kill claudius and so he sent her some references and then uh wasan then sent him an article by schulte's my mentor about the discovery of tiananmen nakata tio nala cattle is the now waddle word the aztec word for flesh of the gods schultes is the one who went to mexico and found the indigenous peoples in southern mexico eating magic mushrooms at the time nobody in this country knew they were magic mushrooms and so watson then decided again on


mushrooms and so watson then decided again on the cold case trail of figuring out these other great mysteries from the past and decided to investigate soma now nawasin was not a polymath you know he did didn't speak hindi he wasn't a chemist but he had a lot of money so he would hire the best people classic scholars linguists and stuff like that and did this uh in-depth investigation of soma what it was and the key to his find as i recall was that he knew that in the siberian cults around the flyer garrick mushroom the the amanita mushroom that the rich people in the village would would collect the mushroom or buy the mushroom and eat it and then when they would urinate it would be collected by the poor people because the alkaloid in amanita the hallucinogenic chemical is not denatured by the body and so they would then drink the urine uh and and and hallucinate and then the reindeer would come and drink


and then the reindeer would come and drink the urine so the it's been proposed this is the origin of santa claus because the flygarrick medicine has a red and white cap and so in lapland the sami peoples sami uh who were whose healing and shamanism was based on the amanita muscaria that the the shaman uh was dressed in in a red and white outfit would come down the chimney because there was so much snow he couldn't get in the front door and the reindeer would be waiting on the roof and that's the origin of the story of santa claus and that the reindeer are known to consume this uh mushroom uh that the reindeer would come after these ceremonies and drink the urine because they were hallucinating as well anyhow when when watson had the the vedas translated to my recollection there was a story about drinking the urine of the priests and that this was the clue because in in in most of these hallucinogens psilocybin


in in most of these hallucinogens psilocybin ayahuasca that the body denatures it and when it's excreted it's no longer hallucinogenic so this is why ethnobotany is endlessly fascinating ranveer it's not just the present it's looking toward the future but you know like that movie said it's back to the future because we're looking to the past as well to see what our ancestors can teach us at the same time so what's the future of ethnobotany um what do you think is going to happen in 50 years is it going in the right direction are there more dr mark plotkins like yourself were exploring the jungles you know these uh pieces of land really far away from civilization in the search for more knowledge or you know are you afraid well it's good news and bad news at the same time because the world is becoming more urban which in some ways takes the pressure off rural areas but the world is increasingly greedy and the world is increasingly overpopulated


greedy and the world is increasingly overpopulated which is placing pressure on all natural resources everywhere whether it's the indian ocean or whether it's the amazon more people needs more miles to feed we see an increasing realization around the world in india and the states and canada and europe in learning the old ways not just the ayahuascas or the somas but traditional treatments like massage and aromatherapy this isn't anything new this is the old ways at the same time we're destroying these cultures both intentionally through missionary activity or destroying their forests uh or the appeal of technology i mean who doesn't want a cell phone anybody who's ever played with a cell phone or an ipad wants one and what we're trying to do with the amazon conservation team amazonteam.org is to tell people you can be ashamed and have a cell phone okay you can be ashamed and have a computer and to introduce technology in a sensitive way where they can use their phone and their notebook to


where they can use their phone and their notebook to record grandma and grandpa and the stories of the old days what life was like before contact or why this this river has its name or what plants they use to treat viruses or infections or insomnia so that technology can be used for good because when you introduce technology in a sensitive way people start thinking well the outside world has all the answers why do i want to listen to grandma and grandpa and so the race is on the candle's being burned at both ends on the one hand we have an increasing realization of the value of nature and the value of shamanic wisdom on the other hand we're destroying shamans and nature faster than ever so i imagine the spot is going to be somewhere in the middle but what we really need to do is protect all wildlands everywhere when i see wildlands i mean the sea the ocean the lakes and rivers as well not just terrestrial and honor and protect indigenous cultures and document


and honor and protect indigenous cultures and document what they know um so it's not lost yeah i i'm kind of hopeful about the near future honestly i feel like uh generation z kids born after say 1995 uh they're in a slightly more you know uh conscious state of mind they live out their lives more consciously they kind of care about the environment so i'm kind of hopeful about the future at least i could speak for india uh but i believe you know that's the case all over the world uh so like some time back you also mentioned lsd and i think that that's one topic we haven't touched upon in this podcast of course i wish to do a hundred more podcasts with you speaking about all this stuff extracting all your knowledge and putting it out on the internet but maybe this one will kind of center it around the psychedelic nature of ethnobotany so you said that lsd was derived also from psilocybin i didn't know that i didn't know that lsd was


didn't know that i didn't know that lsd was kind of created using the chemical structure of something that exists within nature so i'd love for you to highlight that like i mean break down that concept and also if you could you know explain what the experience of lsd is like to someone who's never done it well let me give you my perspective on the history of lsd and it starts in medieval europe there's a fungus called ergot it's a mind-altering substance it's used a lot in obstetrics it's used still here in the states and probably in india to control postpartum hemorrhage it's also been used for hundreds of years to induce labor so these are very powerful alkaloids in this fungus it also was believed to be the basis of the salem witch trials where people in 1600 1700 new england were possessed and and claimed it was satan and the devil and people were actually hung for this and we believe it was hallucinations caused by the ergot fungus which


was hallucinations caused by the ergot fungus which had attacked their local crops it really likes uh rye rye but it can also attack uh wheat i believe so it has a long and interesting history there's books on this it this isn't a secret but uh wasan excuse me hoffman the great chemist was studying ergot and decided to make some synthetic versions of these ergot alkaloids to see what happened i mean if something's therapeutic and you make a different chemical related to it it could be more therapeutic it could be toxic you know it you're just not making up things from scratch you know this stuff works in the human body what happens if you tweak the molecule that's what he's doing and the the 25th version of these synthetics was so mind-altering which he discovered by essentially by mistake he called it lsd-25 that's the history of lsd as as i understand it here's the interesting part my colleague glenn shepherd a great ethnobotanist working in


glenn shepherd a great ethnobotanist working in the peruvian amazon found indigenous peoples using a sedge that is a grass-like plant as a safe and effective female contraceptive and the secret was it was infected by an ergot fungus and he found seven new ergot alkaloids so the point i'm making here near renvier is that every uh powerful plant or fungus or frog compound can not only have stuff that can cure us or harm us if we don't use it carefully it can inspire us to create new molecules that can have very different effects an lsd is it synthetic well yeah but it was based on a natural compound so i consider it semi-synthetic so again it's not the microchip versus the medicine man or woman it's it's it's the two of them working together and i'll give you another example a colleague of mine in 1969 found indigenous peoples on the prue brazil border using hallucinogenic frogs nobody knew they were hallucinating frogs in the amazon and


they were hallucinating frogs in the amazon and when i mentioned this to tribal colleagues friends of mine 3 000 miles to the east and the other end of the amazon they said oh we know and use that frog and we use that one too so they point at a completely different other frog that was also hallucinogenic so this gets to my point that and i've been working with these guys almost 40 years they're still showing me new things so that there's more stuff out there whether you're looking for antivirals or antibacterials or hallucinogenic products there's more stuff out there so can they can the experience of lsdb compared to the experience you get from ayahuasca or something like that because at least in india when we mention ayahuasca for people who haven't heard of it the immediate reaction is oh so it's like lsd but i don't think it is you know i to me these hallucinogens and theogens some people prefer to call them that release the god within they're all different


call them that release the god within they're all different now that it's becoming mainstreamed into western therapy people talk about set and setting in other words it depends how you're doing this and where you're doing this i would say set setting and shaman it also depends who's guiding you so the idea that peyote is this and mushrooms are that and lse is that that's not been my experience you know these things are all different it depends where you are whether you're in the amazon whether you're in your living room whether you're at a retreat on the on the seashore uh who's guiding you uh these can be very inspiring uh religious experience they can be very dark and frightening as well so i can't say that that lsd is like this and peyote is like that that's not been my experience been very different each and every time could you highlight some of the darkness that you just spoke about like what do you mean when you say or it could be dark experiences i'll tell you a


it could be dark experiences i'll tell you a story i've never told in an interview you're inspiring me i was diagnosed with cancer and i went to the doctor results were inconclusive went back to the doctor results were inconclusive went back to the doctor they lost the results and i said this is like torture so i called my colombian colleague and said i want to see the best oncologist and i want to see the best shaman okay so i went to bogota i saw the best oncologist she says these are false positives you don't have cancer it's because you work in the jungle that your immune system is producing too many white blood cells fighting off infections there's nothing wrong with you i then went to see the shaman i took the ayahuasca and i realized that i was in for a difficult experience i was surrounded by fire i looked at my palms and and and they were burning there were holes in my palms caused by the fire now this


in my palms caused by the fire now this is the stigmata okay this is a christian thing i'm jewish like what's going on here but it was burning me up and i was surrounded by fire and i looked in front of me and there was this terrible pit that i was sliding into and it was a burning pit there was fire all around and i had to fight like hell to keep from sliding into this pit okay this is i mean this is a nine hour experience that i i went through and survived and uh the shaman said okay you're fine you don't have cancer you know i took care of some uh problems but cancer wasn't one of them so i was later a year later doing uh an ayahuasca ceremony with a different shaman from a different tribe and understand that you know we at the amazon conservation team work with the ayahuasca tribe he's the original seven tribes that schulte's work with that brought ayahuasca to the world and he said


that brought ayahuasca to the world and he said oh yes well you're working with that shaman well he doesn't work so much with with with healing spirits he works with fire so i mean he didn't even break a smile or be freaked out i was like oh yeah that's how he works you know so uh the the point here being is when you say okay well is what's peyote like what's ayahuasca like i've never had an experience like that or since then with with fire or with the stigmata and i've done ayahuasca close to 90 times 90 ceremonies always with a traditional shaman you know an amazonian shaman so that's why it's difficult when you say oh what's it like shamans will say from ayahuasca you will get what you need under the guidance of of a type of an ayahuasca shaman and i think there's there's something to that i would agree a hundred percent i'm so deeply grateful that you shared that on the broadcaster um there's not


you shared that on the broadcaster um there's not many stories i haven't told more than once but that's one of them if if i may ask you one last question about ayahuasca and peyote before i let you go until the next podcast until the next part uh so the question is about mother ayahuasca and father peyote now this is a concept that the average person doesn't understand but if you ever get into the study of ayahuasca or peyote there's always talk of a spirit in terms of okay if i'm talking to dr plotkin here i can feel that i'm talking to another man therefore there is masculine energy with me in this chat room right in the same way that when you consume ayahuasca you feel a certain external maternal energy a feminine energy right now we have that in our culture in the form of the divine feminine the divine masculine shiva shakti all right is there a parallel and could you just elaborate a little bit on this masculine


just elaborate a little bit on this masculine energy and feminine energy in those plants look there's 400 tribes of indigenous peoples in the amazon and they're all different people say what are shamans like what do what do indigenous peoples want it's like there's 400 different peoples i mean how many different cultures are there in india so it would be like somebody say to me what what do indians want or what indians like well you know which ones right so this whole idea of the masculine and the feminine the yin and the ang this is this is an archetype that occurs throughout human cultures that the good and bad good and evil this sort of stuff so this idea that ayahuasca is always feminine and there's something that's masculine i don't see it i hear that from some people but i think that has to do with who they've chosen as the tribe they work with or who they've chosen as the shaman which they work with and it's it's part of the


they work with and it's it's part of the human condition that you do something and you think that's the way it is or you say well americans would never vote for donald trump you know well some of them did a lot of them did so this idea that you know ayahuasca it's always broken down into this binary thing and and you look at ayahuasca cultures remember you have the indigenous peoples who are traditional ayahuasca uses that's a northwest amazon now you have indigenous people throughout the amazon doing it now you have peasant peoples doing it now you have afro-amazonians afro-brazilians which you've created two ayahuasca churches sanctioned by the state uh so the idea that well ayahuasca this or ayahuascus and i don't see it and i respect people to say well i saw this or i think this or the shaman told me this good good good you know there's an old chain which is the right of your fist stops in front of my nose so if the way


stops in front of my nose so if the way you can process your ayahuasca trip or your opium trip or your hashi trip is to say i saw the two things i saw the light i saw the dark i saw the mail i saw the female i saw the good i saw the evil i get it i accept it you know it would be like me telling you no you're you don't understand ayahuasca and i do because i've done it more than you have and it's actually this that's not the way i think things should work it's just like all religions you know people should be able to believe what they want what they shouldn't be do is forced to accept christianity or judaism or islam or anything else you should have the freedom to choose and that should be respected by everybody and we see a lot of people leaving organized religion because i think that organized religion as practice in the west is not meeting their spiritual needs there's a great quote about


meeting their spiritual needs there's a great quote about the native american church about peyote by an anthropologist who said the white man goes into his church and talks about jesus the indian goes into his tip he takes peyote and talks to jesus so we have what was considered a crisis in the western world of people leaving organized religion i mean there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of churches in rome that are being shut down because nobody wants to go and i think that as we look into the roots of religion and see that these hallucinogenic substances may have played a role in in islam or hinduism or christianity or judaism we found marijuana leaves in a telerad near jerusalem so maybe the ancient jews maybe my ancestors were using marijuana as part of their ceremonies as well then maybe this is what's going to fill the churches and the mosques this element of being in touch with the divine now some people would see that as


with the divine now some people would see that as heresy i wouldn't force that on anybody but i'm here to predict it when you put these substances back into religion you create a syncretic religion where these mind-expanding substances are part of your practice you will see a return to spirituality you will see an appreciation of of of uh religion and people returning to organized religion in ways that i don't see happening without it dr plotkin thank you for being on the show i echo your thought in terms of um that thing you said about okay this might be the return of spirituality because that's what i felt in my own heart after doing ayahuasca just shifted my purpose shifted my thought process so i definitely agree with you the one book that keeps being brought up on this show often is a book called the autobiography of a yogi that book contains a chapter by uh i mean the chapter about this man called dr jc boss jagdish chandra bose who uh was a botanist


jagdish chandra bose who uh was a botanist and uh you remind me of him and that chapter in so many ways so that's the book i'd nudge you towards it's it's kind of a i won't call it a 101 on spirituality it's a pretty heavy book but there's a lot of concepts from that book which have a parallel with the kind of stuff you speak of and the kind of stuff that the shamanic culture speaks of so that's probably that's a classic book we all know that book autobiography that's certainly one of the i i think one of the most famous uh books to come out of india in a global sense so that's not restricted to your homeland i mean we've all read that i do want to encourage your listeners who want more information on what we've touched on to check out my podcast it's called plants of the gods it's on spotify uh apple podcast and and other outlets as well i also want to encourage people to check out our


i also want to encourage people to check out our website amazonteam.org that talks about the protection of uncontacted peoples and my new book the amazon but everybody needs to know which is published by oxford press and is a very inexpensive download uh with a chapter on ayahuasca so i know you'll buy it and then my first book tales for shaman's apprentice um which is right above my head here uh you see oh wow that is uh one of the most uh popular books ever written on amazonian ethnobotany and the search for shamanic secrets so i hope you enjoyed this as much as i did and uh i hope you'll have me back on the show and there's lots more of of uh stories to share and experiences and it's always nice to deal with the kindred soul so thank you rin fear one i'm just deeply grateful sir thank you this was much more for me than it was for the audiences uh just ask you my own questions and i appreciate the


ask you my own questions and i appreciate the answers that you gave i appreciate how open you were god bless you sir thank you so much thank you so much a pleasure look for the next time [Music]


welcome to a special solo episode of the runway show this one's about the new social media revolution called clubhouse clubhouse is a voice based app and that's why it's that close to my heart because i feel with our brand we're building in the world of voice because the runway shows now become a spotify exclusive podcast that means every episode of trs will be available on spotify 48 hours before the rest of the world gets to see it this one's just an easy breakdown of clubhouse it's not a branded video it's a genuine heart to heart about that app because i've been using it intensely and i think i figured a few things about it this one might help you social media hopefuls and social media fans enjoy the episode [Music] slightly alternative solo episode today we're reviewing clubhouse it's a new audio based app two years ago someone told me that audio is the future voice is the future and i was like cool let's do podcast but i never thought of the other applications of voice and


i never thought of the other applications of voice and oh my god i got onto clubhouse and i'm hooked this is not a sponsored video i'm also going to be talking about some bad aspects of clubhouse that i've come across brands will never let you do that let's talk about the hyper extreme good aspects i'm addicted to the app probably because i'm a conversationalist and that's what i'm noticing but the app is full of conversationalist people that enjoy conversation podcasts and youtube are always gonna be my bread and butter but clubhouse has taken up all the time that i used to spend watching movies watching shows and otd platforms watching series all my entertainment time now is spent on clubhouse because one we're locked up at home for two years two the way the app is built it feels very friendly the ui feels very friendly when you open up the app for the first time you're welcomed by your friends they've built these very cool features inside the app which give you


these very cool features inside the app which give you an experience of entering a room and your friends are coming to greet you considering the fact that kovate and the whole pandemic situation is a little unpredictable we don't know how the next two or three years are going to pan out according to epidemiologists people who study viruses no one knows what's going to happen what if the vaccines don't end up working as much as we thought what if then we're gonna be stuck at home and we're gonna have a severe need for social stimulation we're going to have to talk to people more often that's what clubhouse is doing it's satisfying a lot of people's social needs the pandemic has caused many relationships to break many friendships to break people are looking for freshness people are looking for networking two years at home means that we have to figure out how to network while we're sitting at home and you can't really network off of instagram anymore because instagram shows you the best


of instagram anymore because instagram shows you the best aspects of a person only clubhouse is a live conversation with another human being if someone has a slightly dark personality that's a little messed up you'll get to see that as well but we come to the bad aspects later the good aspects you'll find a conversation related to almost anything the people who'll do well on clubhouse there will be a fresh crop of influencers that will come up on clubhouse the people who do well will have to be good conversationalists they'll have to have knowledge or they'll have to have the ability to sustain conversation or they'll have to have the ability to entertain uh with something like instagram if you just have a lot of money you spend a lot of money on creating a really good looking photo really good looking video chances are you will do well case in point dan bilzerian but on clubhouse it's not about money it's not what you're on the outside you can't even reveal your face on the app you're not


even reveal your face on the app you're not talking through video it's just voice people are getting to know you people are getting to see your insecurities people are getting to see we are not confident people are going to see the things that you know my assumption was that there'd be no hate on this app because it seems like it's a totally merit-based app but apparently that's not true did a recent clubhouse room where we spoke about ayahuasca the same topic we've spoken about on this podcast but we got a parallel room where people are hating on us because we were promoting drug use we weren't saying do ayahuasca i was just sharing experiences but i guess that's the nature of the times we live in the nature of social media that we're using there is hate everywhere there is negativity everywhere uh but of all the social media platforms clubhouse does seem like it's the most positive and coming from a tech entrepreneurship side of things i'm sure that that's something that


side of things i'm sure that that's something that they wanted to incorporate within the app they wanted to make it a more positive experience so key good points one it's merit-based two it's very real gives you a real social situation feeling three extremely addictive because you can bounce between rooms as they call it different chat rooms very often so you know if you're five ten minutes to spare in a day and you don't know what to do rather than going and watching something on youtube going and watching a short show on netflix you can actually just spend some time in a clubhouse room do some conversation listen to some cool conversation and come out four if you find the right influencers and the right people the energies and the information rubs off on you i do feel it's a slightly like growth oriented platform if you look at some of the rooms what are the negatives of it the negatives firstly are that they exist a very different kind of hate on this platform you'll see a lot of


hate on this platform you'll see a lot of like-minded people kind of coagulating together there are echo chambers that means say you have a very strong political ideology you start following people with the exact same political ideology you'll get together and increase that feeling within your own mind recent episode of the joe rogan podcast spoke about mental immunity it's basically your brain's ability to process information and then change your own opinions based on external in information but if you keep only processing the same kind of information that's called going through an echo chamber your friends think the same way the clubhouse rooms you visit think the same way therefore you'll really believe that the things that you believe are 100 true and that's the only opinion out there that's the only opinion you believe in we see this a lot of people with really strong political opinions and that's okay it's the nature of the times that we live in but if you want to keep your mind bendable moldable you have to practice the


mind bendable moldable you have to practice the practice of mental immunity listening to the other side of things listening to everyone's perspectives and then forming an opinion i feel clubhouse is taking the human race unfortunately in the other direction that's just the nature of social media people with strong opinions do not want to process opinions which counter their own yeah mental immunity might go for a toss third i think certain women that have spoken to our finding aspects of it a little creepy if someone follows you in clubhouse basically say everyone's an influence on clubhouse anyone can follow anyone and if you leave room a and go to room b all your followers will get a notification saying oh pooja gupta left the room where we're talking about cosmetics and entered the room where we're talking about dating so all of puja gupta's follows the lento there a lot of women have had creepy experiences on clubhouse because it's a voice based platform so creeps are coming on board and kind of


platform so creeps are coming on board and kind of hitting on women in a really sleazy way uh in a really cheap way one hotkey feature of it is that this is also kind of becoming a platform where people are getting to know each other from a dating perspective but that's not a negative aspect it's not a positive aspect it's just an aspect i can't really think of other negative aspects of clubhouse other than these i will tell you my hope as a futurist someone who tries studying things about the future and tries predicting the future i also study social media in detail i do believe that clubhouse and club style platforms are the future of social media it is going to be heavily voice based because i've seen the power of voice now and lovers have experienced twitter spaces which are also fantastic but they have a slightly different energy the nature of twitter again is slightly older clubhouse is more gen z oriented that's another aspect of it gen z generally is way smarter than people my


gen z generally is way smarter than people my age because they had access to more information you'll see that the 16 17 year olds of today are way smarter than the 16 17 year olds of my time when i was 16 or 17 in 2009 and 2010 very different mindsets want to learn a lot have much more well-rounded perspectives have a lot of data about different kinds of subjects and because they've absorbed data all their life because they were born into the world of social media they've learned so much and now their learning ability is also really high so they're looking for chat rooms to learn and to stimulate the head gen z is fantastic and genji's gravitating towards clubhouse i feel for social media influencers kabul's is very crucial going forward and i'd probably like to end this particular bonus episode of the runway show by saying that we started at the runway show club on clubhouse where we'll be doing live podcast i'll try bringing on guests in the future so that you


try bringing on guests in the future so that you guys can get a chance to build out the runway show community and experience live podcast and probably even take part in some of the podcast we are bringing on fans as a part of the panel so say tomorrow we're talking to a ceo an army legend you'll also be able to have conversations with these people these high caliber folks watch out for clubhouse my final request to you guys is follow the rendez show on clubhouse and of course follow add beer by subscribe clubhouse join the runway show club on clubhouse and above all follow us on spotify as well episodes of the runway show available on spotify 48 hours before the rest of the world gets to witness those episodes guys spotify is the future clubhouse is the future and drs thanks to you guys and your love is at the center of it boom i hope you enjoyed today's episode hey guys i hope you liked this special short episode i'm contemplating going into this short


special short episode i'm contemplating going into this short episode realm when it comes to podcasting in general so please let me know what you thought tell us on our social media platforms share the podcast with your friends remember it's a spotify exclusive now so follow the renovation on spotify episodes out on spotify 48 hours before the rest of the world gets to witness them should short content be the future of this podcast let me know [Music]


is one of the greatest athletes that india's produced he's one of the greatest chess grandmasters that the world has ever seen everyone knows he's one of the fastest chess players of all time one of the most legendary chess players of all time but what is inside that mind how is he looking at life post chess how did he train his mind in order to become one of the greatest of all time all that and more on this episode of the nvi show i'll let you slip into it but first let me remind you that the runway show is now a spotify exclusive podcast that means all episodes will be available on spotify 48 hours before it's available for the rest of the world we have vishwanathan another nvision today i'm gonna let you enjoy the episode starting from now [Music] honor having you on the ranvir show thank you pleasure to be on it uh how's your lockdown been how's the last two years i mean one and a half years actually how's that


i mean one and a half years actually how's that been for you um initially it was when it started it was hard because i was stuck in germany and then all flights were cancelled for a bit more than two months but very quickly i realized that i was quite lucky in germany in um i was staying near a friend i had access to everything and they had not started locking down severely so it was no problem at all i was i considered myself quite fortunate then i got back and for a while i even enjoyed it in the sense that you know you're at home and you have free time and thing but i have to admit the last two months have been close to hell and you can see it almost mirrors what's happening in the country also last year uh we we thought we had dodged a bullet but this year it's hit us full force but anyway the last two months have been very difficult for all sorts of reasons and [Music] but you know we


of reasons and [Music] but you know we we're healthy and that's the main thing so i don't want to make a big deal but yes recently it's also hard to get much work done and cope and everything so you're struggling a bit harder you know when when you say that that scares me because like i mean i'm assuming and this is just an assumption that your pattern recognition ability is like next level because of the years of chess that you've played and you know the childhood kind of training you gave your own head i remember reading about you in a children's kind of collection of storybooks another story about you from your childhood where i think your main kind of skill when it came to chest was your speed like you were just a really fast chess player so i'd like to know what happens inside the brain of a really fast chess player like how do you realize that you're fast when you're a kid i i knew i was very fast uh because it's just it's


i was very fast uh because it's just it's not even that i could explain why something was uh felt it just felt like the right move if you asked me to show all the variations i might even have made mistakes but my guess was very good and i was also very impatient i didn't want to sit and think anymore i wanted to make the move so that part is true um and i but i also practiced a lot i would go to the club every monday evening thursday evening and the whole of sunday and just play chess the whole of sunday five minute games because contrary thing we we didn't have the patience the concentration to play long game so we'd play a 10 minute games that is five for each player person and then you the winner continues the loser gets up and gets in the queue this kind of stuff just to liven things up i mean everyone knows about what you've achieved my question for you is a slightly alternative question which is that how's your mental


slightly alternative question which is that how's your mental health throughout this process because i mean for you as an athlete your brain was your main muscle you know mental health is also part of that so did you have any ups and downs through your career when it came to self-confidence self-doubt all these aspects of life all the time uh it is a constant and in fact most chess games are not decided by good moves they decided by your state of mind the good or bad moves follow that [Music] so yes i wouldn't call it i mean mental health is probably too strong a statement but your mental state your condition is very important and your ability to find the state that suits you best and be able to bring it as often as you can that makes the difference in the long run but of course i've suffered from um every bit of self-doubt and christ you know emotional crisis that there is um it would be surprising if i didn't because that's built into the competition not only can you


because that's built into the competition not only can you get better but you're you have an opponent who's very good and he's working full time to bring out your negative side so that's also built into the game but [Music] yes i i would say that i have faced um the only thing is because i i love the game and uh i like playing um maybe i didn't feel it so much as a sacrifice what was necessary what's the best and worst aspect of the grand master life i think you get to travel a lot uh and you have no boss you could probably appreciate the the feeling that you know when i was a chess player when i finished my become and i decided okay i'm not going to study anymore finish it with that and then i became a full-time chess player i depended only on the goodwill of organizers if they invited me at tournament i could go and play and i i knew what i was aiming for which is the world title and i would


aiming for which is the world title and i would just do that and in fact i could live in my own world the rest of the world well of course you observe what's happening but you don't really feel a parker part of it because chess is the world you can escape into and that's nice the worst part is i think partly connected you you can you must make an effort to break out of the shell uh if you don't do that you pretty soon lose contact with every other people i think it's similar for most sports people uh but you know it's something you have to keep an eye out for and uh the other thing is it it's hard that everything depends on your mood your your sense of how life is going is all connected to the chess board and then you you need to put some energy into breaking that into finding other things that are equally important so when you say breaking out of the shell so you mean like getting out of your comfort zone to add new skills or something


of your comfort zone to add new skills or something like i didn't exact that is one thing of course but that is i am almost a just kill you have to expand your horizon within chess but i mean also that you have to realize that there's a bigger world beyond chess which happens around you otherwise you just think well i'm going from this tournament to that tournament and i'll meet this person and that person there and the chess world is pretty self-contained there are few people in every country and we can keep meeting each other and it's easy to lose touch with the broader world i think if you don't have a couple of good hobbies and you keep some close friendly some close friends and you're not close to your family members and so on then it's much harder but if you have all that then of course they they guide you they keep you normal and they also almost will show you what what else is happening in the world how do you how do you look back at your life


do you how do you look back at your life sir when you look back now like at the whole grand master title then being a child prodigy you know dedicating your life to a sport how do you look back at all of it now i'm very happy i i feel it was a very charmed life i got to know what i wanted to do and i got to be good at it which means that i didn't have to worry about my future and thing you know i i felt that if i do well in chess which i wanted to do anyway then i'd probably be fairly comfortable i would uh and i got to travel to meet a lot of people experience a lot of cultures to feel really a global traveler and make friends it's an unusual life because you don't have very close friends in your own city because you always you come by the time you become friends you vanish again but you have very close friends who are scattered all over the world it's a feeling of course more and


the world it's a feeling of course more and more people are able to relate to but 30 years ago there were not that many who could understand what i'm saying of course now uh communications has changed everything everybody has friends all over the world and it's very easy to understand but it's you're a little bit of a stranger everywhere i'm i was a little bit of a stranger in every tournament then i'd come home to chennai i was a little bit of a stranger here as well you know obviously i have my friends i can go out with them meet people but you still don't experience uh one place as you would if you live there full-time so so i once read this quote it said that everybody looks at themselves in a slightly weird way like you look at yourself and say man you're one weird person and it's always because of some weird action or some weird habit you have yourself which you tie that to for example i strongly feel like i have two personalities


example i strongly feel like i have two personalities inside me which uh speak up i have two different channels and when i'm speaking a different language like hindu english the personality fully switches and i'm very aware of this so that's my crazy i'd like to ask you what's your crazy like what's your weirdness um i have my manias and obsessions you know the the kind of weight you go to tournament the things you want before you travel the things you plan and so on and over time i have come to realize that normal a lot of people i consider normal let's put it that way i do not have the same thing especially so there was a period when i after i became after i finished my teens till i got married when i was traveling alone and then you know you're nobody's problem and then i got married and then my wife started traveling with me everywhere um and there is a bit of a culture shock uh there are not many professions where you're traveling with


there are not many professions where you're traveling with your wife everywhere and then you're forced to sort of confront each other all the time and over time i realized that there are many things that chess players do and behave that just don't seem normal to normal people like water you know in the middle of a conversation suddenly our heads will just go like this and we start thinking of some position and they're shut down what happened where did he go or something like that the other thing is um um i have succeeded quite well in hiding because most most people who talk to me from uh outside the world of chess and even many in within the world say you know you're so calm you you're so composed you're so well behaved how do you manage and i tell them if you believe that it's very good but i mean at home i mean when i get when i lose a game i have learned to just keep it inside till i can get to my room and then hit myself


i can get to my room and then hit myself but um [Music] again you could this is uh something you can call it an act but you know you you realize that publicly you can't show these things and you have to pretend but it's just an act and if you really have put a lot of intensity into your game that day there's no way you can come off it and say well it didn't it's just a game or that kind of thing it affects you too much but at least i have not completely gone bonkers in public so yeah that whole concept about there's three versions of everyone right there's one in public there's one with your loved ones and there's one when you're completely alone uh that's what they say that is a clever thing actually to say because even what you are with your family and preference there's an even more private life yourself which you and you it's an interesting thought yeah so how did your marriage help your sport and your career because i'm at that


help your sport and your career because i'm at that stage now i'm gonna turn 28 in like a week or so a couple of weeks and uh i'm just thinking a lot about marriage and i'm thinking about you know okay what's it gonna do for my mind and career so from someone for whom their mind is their weapon in their career i'd love to hear how what it did to your mind so um well like i said for four or five years i was with basically with myself all the time and um and marriage is it has its uh pleasant moments of course but it's also a lot of struggle because you know with someone all the time and it's one thing to be nice to someone for some time it's another thing to have to co-exist with them all the time and we were traveling together and within uh a year of our marriage she said look i'm coming with you everywhere i can do a lot of things better than you let me just uh start managing your uh things


you let me just uh start managing your uh things and so on and um we got into that kind of relationship and then um it's intense you're uh together everywhere which means that eventually you can't hide your uh you can't hide who you are anymore you i think it happens anyway but for us it happened faster but the other thing is it's quite annoying to be contradicted by someone uh if you're used to being by yourself then it's very hard to get used to being contradicted by someone much too often yeah let's be honest in marriage you will disagree on almost everything so right at the very beginning we would disagree on which part of the toothpaste to squeeze and from that too [Music] and i remember once she put something in the safe and she told me um the safe code is very easy for you to remember it's 2706. and i merely thought she's talking of chess ratings i said well it can't be 2706 because they're always rounded


well it can't be 2706 because they're always rounded off to 5 and 10. and she looked at me really shocked and she said it's our anniversary and you realize that uh again you know what came to my mind first uh but she was very very adjusting um many years later she would tell me all the things that she wanted to tell me but did not because she understood that the most important thing was that i could still play a decent game of chess and you know how sensitive i am i moved and you can't have a fight before a game and that kind of thing so [Music] in that sense she's been very supportive and the other thing is there's a reason why we all get married because having being forced to co-exist as another person increases your tolerance you uh you when you can't win every argument you're with yourself you win every argument but when someone else you can't win every argument it forces you to change and that's healthy also and it benefited my chest as well


healthy also and it benefited my chest as well because there were many clear psychological problems and uh mood swings and things like that i was prone to that was affecting me when someone constantly tells you don't do this over some years i managed to stabilize and that helped my so about five years after we got married i won my world title so that kind of thing wow you know that the next obvious question is going to be if you let your wife win at a chess match against you yes we did we didn't get that far because it would it would look fake but we she once offered me a draw after making quite a lot of good moves she made about 14 good moves and i thought well that's good enough i better bail out now i took my i offered her a draw she agreed and then she got me to sign it and that was that and then many years later with my son i had the same story again except i actually had to resign a few but anyway


i actually had to resign a few but anyway beautiful uh so like what does what does chess teach you about life you know i'm sure that you get learnings for life there's some kind of working that you put your brain through over that entire career so what has it changed you inside you as a man i think um no matter how much you study the game and i feel that i know less about the game now than i felt than when i was six years old because then it seemed many things seemed obvious to me but the more years you spend doing something the more you realize that a const every day something new you learn and then you realize how far behind you are the other thing is simply [Music] how unforgiving unforgiving the board is they say you you never play your opponent you're sorry you never play the board you actually play your opponent but the board itself is very unforgiving you you don't keep your concentration your attention your discipline everything till the very end


your attention your discipline everything till the very end the point will slip away again and again and again you'll be punished constantly till you correct yourself and that is its own discipline so just never to relax till the score sheet is signed as we say um and attached to the first point i mentioned that you it constantly surprises you the importance of learning new things all the time even when things are going well you you have to look at chess again with fresh eyes and say well i'm going to learn something new today i'm going to try this i'm going to try that learn this learn that and you'll always find some player who does something that you want to do he'll do it much better and he'll do it effortlessly and so irritating and then you sit there and you try very hard i mean what it's it's quite funny that what's easy for you is difficult for him and what's difficult for you is trivial for him and being able to look at other people and observe


and being able to look at other people and observe that and try to make a learning out of it is very healthy as well um you know could you name three of your opponents who you respected a lot and what were the exchanges in terms of learning of mindset i'm not just talking about the chess skill set i mean you can cover that as well so but what did you learn about mindsets three of your top opponents and their mindsets okay well generally my mindset is to um for my mindset i find it easier to add my um slightly cold-blooded people people who don't get affected i always found kappa very impressive because [Music] he had this ability to keep a smile even when you knew he didn't like something and this was even more impressive on the chess board where he somehow always managed to pretend that what happened to him was just fully deserved and that kind of thing but uh i felt it in a negative sense because quite often um he would try to take


sense because quite often um he would try to take advantage of uh things but in a longer term i realized it's his attitude to life he just doesn't concede any uh anything anywhere and it allowed him to be at the top for very very long i i like people who kick up a fuss and protest very quickly because my natural tendency is to walk to the to just say well if i avoid it it'll go away and i go to the i don't like to pick a fight and if possible i just avoid people i don't like but there are chess players you know like fisher or kasparov they they pick up a fight with someone and enjoy it and and a couple of times i tried to do it and i realized it doesn't work for me at all because when i pick a fight with someone i become uncomfortable and i don't enjoy it and then it affects my plane then i feel guilty and everything so i realized in the end you have to be yourself


realized in the end you have to be yourself but i like watching these um slightly unpleasant people but you know i wish i had a bit of that but so so what's life like now like what are you up to because i'm sure that you've gained like a massive skill set from your life in chess and i would like to know who wishes to work with you at this stage because i feel there's a lot you can add to different industries different fields so what's life like now you know nothing in my life and i'm 51 years old but nothing in my life has prepared me for what happened last year there are many situations which you face but then you think a little bit and well i encountered something similar when i was young and i learned then this and i can apply it this is crazy i've never seen the world shut down like this i've never seen uh never just been locked up in a room for so long and uh so this last year has been fun


long and uh so this last year has been fun it's not been fun but um you know i've had the time to pursue some hobbies catch up with some friends and so on but it still feels artificial it's still i would still go back in a heartbeat to how it used to be [Music] and well it's gotten tragic as well and i i can't say that i try to cope and but it's still the last month has been kind of overwhelming it means easy to say have another hobby do this do that keep yourself but i'm doing a lot of these suggestions but still it's very hard to be in a good mood for quite some time um but basically that's what i do i tried i've been trying to learn some things uh practice some things i also started a chess academy with westbridge where i trained some indian young top juniors and i work with them then i started uh teaching students on graphi and uh that's a very unusual experience because i've not done


that's a very unusual experience because i've not done something on that level but we have a fairly close-knit group of students and you talk to them and let them so i'm playing around a bit [Music] and besides i talk about my career i give talks for a lot of organizations amazing how much stuff you do on zoom now and what do you do before face to face but i think the way to see it is how much worse it would have been if i didn't have these things to do so i think it's very healthy to you know read up on your hobbies it's a thing and one nice thing is i've been able to spend a lot of time at home with my wife and son i think neither of them have seen me so much for so long so yeah i i completely feel you so family is something i have rediscovered as well the joys of family uh joys of spending time with your mom and your your dad your sister it's just it's something else man and


your sister it's just it's something else man and i feel like you know when you're an athlete like you are or when you're an entrepreneur or when you're just really ambitious in general you kind of get sucked into that vortex of ambition or vortex of leveling up and somewhere you stop deriving the joys of family from your family so that's that's the bright side that i'd probably like to highlight over the last one and a half years though it's been dark i feel families have been brought back together so you mentioned graphi and just generally you have seen this massive edtech boom in the country graphics at the forefront i also had a content creation course that i did as well on graphic and i love the experience of it you know teaching probably younger versions of yourself the skills that you kind of struggle to learn like education learning as a concept has become so kind of free-flowing like imagine yourself growing up you know in primary school needing to learn about chess but


in primary school needing to learn about chess but being trained by someone who's been a grandmaster that's what kids of today have access to so what difference do you see you know things like graphene making in the world today as compared to your time growing up well i think you hit the nail it's on the head it's basically first a very intimate setting so it's not a very large classroom i actually look at their games that they played and answer questions and they can address me and it feels like you're in a slightly larger room or in a small auditorium rather than in a stadium to give you and that's nice because then people feel comfortable and they open up with questions and uh still most learning in chess happens with practice just like with most things but you're able to you cannot say these are the things you must do and these are the things these are the ways in which you must do them but if you spend an hour talking and you share your experiences their and


hour talking and you share your experiences their and often they'll take away much more so it's got that [Music] comfortable feel that everyone feels intimate at the same time we're doing hard work on several positions so you know i try to try to teach it by a topic so i'll do something on the opening then the middle game then i'll take the concept to attack and highlight that and the concept of defense and then a little bit of end games and and like this is very structured uh about back and forth and what is it nice is also the students can also talk amongst themselves which is nice because many of them may have the same doubts so i i find it's a very enjoyable format and i'll be definitely repeating it in june again yeah i think the future of all kinds of education is edtech and generally when we're speaking for the future sir especially when you're talking about chess as a context i'd love to bring up artificial intelligence here um so i have


to bring up artificial intelligence here um so i have a friend nikhil kamat he's the founder of zeroda he's also played a lot of chess he's been a competitive chess player and he had told me that chess a lot of it boils down to good levels of pattern recognition you know like as strong as your pattern like pattern recognition is a skill you need to be better at chess so artificial intelligence kind of works in that same way and i know that early forms of artificial intelligence kind of use chess as their own litmus test can we develop a machine which is able to beat grand masters and i believe that google what was it called google alpha i can't remember the name of it for zero yeah alpha zero uh uh so i'd love for you actually to take the audience through what alpha zero was uh and also do grand masters and you know people from the world of chess work with people from the world of ai to develop systems okay that's it um you're right that first