Brainforest Café

Inside Colombia’s Top Ayahuasca Retreat

What if the future of ayahuasca isn’t in the hype cycle, but in safety, tradition, and real transformation? In this conversation, Sam Believ and Dennis McKenna explore Co

Ibogaine, Kintsugi & the Secret to True Healing

In this conversation, Patricia Eastman and Dennis McKenna explore the deeper meaning of psychedelic healing through the lens of ancestral wisdom, initiation, and nature-b

Ayahuasca, Science, and Shamanism

In 2003, Carlos Tanner woke up in his car underwater, having blacked out behind the wheel and driven into a river. Deep in an opiate addiction, he went to the Amazon to s

Can Plants Replace Animals in Drug Testing?

In this episode of the Brainforest Café, Dennis McKenna sits down with medicinal chemist Matt Metcalf to explore a genuinely strange frontier: testing drugs in pea seedli

The Pharmacy Was Always the Pantry

Dennis McKenna sits down with his old friend Dr. Cedric Baker, an ethnopharmacologist and medical herbalist who studies the ethnobotany of food across more than thirty co

Can Yeast Save Endangered Psychedelics?

As the psychedelic renaissance surges, wild sources are collapsing under demand—peyote takes decades to grow, safrole extraction is destroying Southeast Asian forests,

Inside the Front Lines of Psychedelic Journalism

Dennis McKenna sits down with journalist Mattha Busby to discuss the evolving world of psychedelics, including ayahuasca, ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT, coca policy, drug reform, a

Terence McKenna, Psychedelics, and the Philosophy of Knowledge

In this rich and thought-provoking conversation, Dennis McKenna speaks with philosopher Mandi Astola about Terence McKenna, psychedelics, epistemology, shamanism, and the

Dark Fairy Tales, Museum of Curiosities & Spirit-Filled Expeditions

Join Dennis McKenna and Viktor Wynd for a fascinating conversation on dark fairy tales, strange museum curiosities, Papua New Guinea, storytelling, collecting, and the hi

Decoding the Divine: The Shared LSI Secret of the Greek Kykeon and Vedic Soma

Legal Disclaimer: The following content explores the chemistry and history of psychoactive plants for educational research. No Medical Claims: The Brainforest Café Podca

Herbalism, Citizen Science, and Ancestral Knowledge

Join Dennis McKenna in this insightful conversation with Rebecca Lazarou as they explore the urgent need to preserve ancestral medicinal plant knowledge, the role of ethn

Rewiring the Muse to Restore Creative Flow

In this episode of Brainforest Café, Dennis McKenna sits down with award-winning filmmaker Greg Hemmings to discuss the transformative power of storytelling and its abi

Books, Human Creativity and "humble", a Graphic Meditation Tool for Openness

Dennis McKenna and OpticMystic explore humble, a graphic meditation on openness, self-questioning, books, technology, AI, love, and the ongoing mystery of what it means t

Remarkable Amazonian plants that shape human consciousness

In this special crossover episode of Plants of the Gods and Brainforest Café, Dennis McKenna and Mark Plotkin explore sacred plant medicines, psychedelic science, and ind

Honoring Dennis McKenna’s Lifetime of Enduring Plant Wisdom, Mentorship, and Inspiration to the Next Generation

Ethnobiologist Michael Coe returns to Brainforest Café with a special mission: to turn the spotlight onto Dennis McKenna’s lifelong dedication to ayahuasca, visionary p

Psychedelics, Baltic Traditions & Rethinking Mental Health in Latvia

Discover Una Meistere’s journey from Soviet-era Latvia to becoming a bridge between indigenous plant medicines, psychedelic science, art, and Baltic traditions in this

Pacha Nishi Project, Ayahuasca Cultivation, and Amazonian Restoration

Michael Coe is an ethnobiologist and applied ecologist with a Ph.D. in Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation Biology. As an Assistant Professor at Tarleton State Universit

Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna was the stand‑up philosopher of the apocalypse. A cognitive libertarian. The anti‑guru who rejected authority—even his own. Twenty‑five years after his pa

It's Going to Get Weirder: The Terence McKenna Story

Sharon McKenna is the director and producer of the forthcoming feature documentary, “It’s Going to Get Weirder: The Terence McKenna Story.” Sharon  is a writer, film dir

From Conventional Medicine to Plant Dietas and Spiritual Growth

Nissan started his career as a medical doctor and began his work as a general practitioner in an urban community clinic system. He then specialized in ophthalmology and p