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Plants of the Gods: S4E6. Part 1 — Ayahuasca and Tobacco Shamanism: an Interview with Ethnobotanist Dr. Glenn Shepard

Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast

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The Mother of Tobacco

Jeremy Narvie's new book on tobacco in ayahuasca has this great story where one of the tribes in Peru calls the tobacco hornworm, this caterpillar, the mother of tobacco. It is able to secrete the nicotine and then exhale nicotine to keep predatory spiders away. You know, that reminds me of some research I was doing with Lewis Daly, who's a recent PhD in ethnobotany out of Cambridge. He was working on plants in Guyana used by the Makushi, the Carib speaking Makushi people. And they're used all throughout the Guyanas as charm plants, sort of magical plants. They give shamans powers, healing powers and also killing

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