The Influence of Indiana Jones on Tropical Research | 2min snip from The Tim Ferriss Show

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#469: Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ethnobotany, Real vs. Fake Shamans, Hallucinogens, and the Dalai Lamas of South America

The Tim Ferriss Show

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The Influence of Indiana Jones on Tropical Research

The debate over whether academic researchers are like Indiana Jones has been ongoing in the academic community./nThe portrayal of Indiana Jones and other characters in movies contributed to the positive perception of tropical research./nThe character of Indiana Jones incorporated elements of shamanism./nThere is a misconception that shamans in the Amazon are limited to using hallucinogens./nThere is a great diversity of indigenous cultures in the Amazon, with only a minority being ayahuasca drinkers or cocachurs.

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Speaker 1

cut and a Harvard tie. He looked like the straightest lace fellow in Harvard Square. And this is culturally the end of the 60s, beginning of the 70s. Yet when he talked and told his stories and showed his pictures, he was this wild man who went down to the jungle and did all these tribal dances and did all of these tribal drugs. And I thought, wow, you know, that great quote of Walt Whitman's that everybody cites about I hold multitudes. Well, there were Schulte's multitudes, the ultimate pillar of the establishment and the ultimate swashbuckling explorer, all in the same person. I

Speaker 2

have no idea if there is any connection here, but when I first discovered Schultes, it made me think there had to be some type of historical basis for Indiana Jones, minus the theft of artifacts. But the similarities are pretty striking. So aside from the physical appearance, I suppose.

Speaker 1

Well, this is always a big debate in the academic community where people say, you're Indiana Jones. No, you're not. No, I'm not Indiana Jones. Back and forth. Who is? Who isn't? Indiana Jones is a fictional character. Indiana Jones was a tomb robber, but Indiana Jones fired the imagination of many of us who've made a living out of tropical research. So the net effect was tremendously positive. But remember that elements of Schultes, which you're correct, were baked into the Indiana Jones archetype. Elements of Schultes were also baked into Sean Connery in the movie Medicine Man. So he wasn't just portrayed

Dr. Mark Plotkin (@DocMarkPlotkin) is an ethnobotanist who serves as president of the Amazon Conservation Team, which has partnered with 55 tribes to map and improve management and protection of 80 million acres of ancestral rainforests. Educated at Harvard, Yale, and Tufts, Plotkin has since spent much of the past four decades studying the shamans and healing plants of tropical America from Mexico to Argentina, although much of his work focuses on the rainforests of the northeast Amazon. He is best known to the general public as the author of the book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, one of the most popular books about the rainforest. His new book from Oxford Press is The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know.

His upcoming podcast series is titled Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens: Culture, Conservation, History and Healing, and it will be coming out in late October. More information will be available on Mark’s website.

Please enjoy!

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