Mark Plotkin - Author & Ethnobotanist 4/24/15

Tara Sutphen will interview Mark Plotkin - Author & Ethnobotanist. Dr. Mark Plotkin, President of the non-profit Amazon Conservation Team (www.amazonteam.org), is partnering with indigenous people to conserve biodiversity, health, and culture in South American rainforests. Plotkin, a renowned ethnobotanist and accomplished author (Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, Medicine Quest) who was named one of Time Magazine's environmental "Heroes for the Planet," has spent parts of the past 30 years living and working with shamans or witch doctors of the Amazon region. Their knowledge of healing plants may hold the cure to some of today's most devastating diseases. "We've been practicing Western medicine essentially for 200 years," he says. "These people have been practicing their shamanic medicine for 50,000 years, so certainly there's something we can learn from them."