The Iboga Leadership Summit Podcast

Quentin reflects on how his early fascination with reptiles, forests, and living systems shaped his understanding of cultivation as a dialogue rather than a domination. He explains why many industrial agricultural models fail: they prioritize yield, uniformity, and speed at the expense of resilience, diversity, and ecological balance.

Together with Raphael Nicolle, the conversation explores how true genetic work requires patience, deep observation, and respect for time scales that exceed human timelines. Quentin shares why landrace preservation is not nostalgia, but a critical response to genetic erosion driven by globalized markets.

The discussion also draws strong parallels between plant cultivation and traditional spiritual systems: both require lineage, transmission, and responsibility. Just as Bwiti cannot be reduced to a technique or product, living plants cannot be reduced to isolated molecules or traits without losing something essential.

“When you reduce a plant to a molecule, you stop working with life. You start working against it.”

At the Iboga Leadership Summit, Quentin Di Costanzo will bring a rare, grounded voice on cultivation, biodiversity, and ethics. His contribution will focus on how to protect living genetic heritage while navigating scientific research, modern agriculture, and global demand — without repeating extractive patterns that have already damaged countless plant lineages.

The Iboga Leadership Summit is hosted by Moughenda and the Bwiti community in Gabon, for physicians, pharmacists and providers, neuroscience researchers, farmers and agricultural technicians, students and community leaders, lawyers, policymakers and environmentalists — and everybody called to Bwiti, Ibogaine and Iboga.

21–24 June, Libreville, Gabon
Details and tickets:
www.ibogaleadershipsummit.com

This interview with entheogenic entrepreneur and philanthropist Simeon Schnapper celebrates the “apparent oxymoron” of introducing the wonder and awe of Bwiti and, more broadly, Indigenous sacred plant medicine traditions into a medical context.

Simeon is the founding partner of JLS, a pioneering plant medicine venture fund, and is widely recognised as the first psychedelic venture capitalist. In conversation with Ros Stone from the Iboga Leadership Summit team, he explores how business and entrepreneurship can holistically be put into conversation with plant medicine. He shares the ethos of the JLS Fund, an early-stage venture fund focused on brain health, mental health, and neurodegenerative disease, guided as much by impact as by returns, and by the question: “What impact did you make to lives, and souls, and healing?”

This conversation also discusses the complexities of defining “addiction,” and the interpolation of various ideas of what “recovery” can look like in relation to plant medicine, leading to reflections on the central role Bwiti ethics needs to play in all aspects of the potential medicalisation of Iboga and Ibogaine, and the need for genuine cross-pollination between Indigenous wisdom and clinical, psychiatric, and neurological perspectives.

Simeon is already witnessing growing alignment between ancestral knowledge and biomedical research, and expresses cautious yet infectious optimism for the relational future of humanity (though not entirely extending to the potential impacts of AI). He also underscores the importance of engaging Bwiti intelligence and genuine reciprocity early in pharmaceutical and therapeutic development, “not as a moral tax,” but as deep intelligence that could de-risk drug development if engaged from the beginning rather than as a neocolonial afterthought.

At the Iboga Leadership Summit in June, Simeon looks forward to exploring whether clinical acknowledgement of traditional Bwiti practices as the original protocols for working with Iboga and Ibogaine could be a key next part of science’s journey towards respectful collaboration.

The Iboga Leadership Summit is hosted by Moughenda and the Bwiti community in Gabon, for physicians, pharmacists and providers, neuroscience researchers, farmers and agricultural technicians, students and community leaders, lawyers, policymakers, and environmentalists. And everybody called to Bwiti, Ibogaine, and Iboga.

On 21-24 June, in Libreville, Gabon.
Details and tickets:
www.ibogaleadershipsummit.com

A deep, unfiltered conversation with master cultivator Quentin Di Costanzo on genetics, living systems, and why working with plants demands humility, responsibility, and long-term vision rather than extraction and scale.

Quentin Di Costanzo is a master cultivator and internationally recognized expert in cannabis genetics, with more than 15 years of experience across pharmaceutical, medical, and recreational contexts. He is the founder of Aficionado French Connection and a partner of Aficionado Humboldt, having led cultivation and genetic research projects in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Turkey, and Portugal.

Formally trained in horticulture with a specialization in tissue culture and plant breeding, Quentin combines scientific rigor with a deep respect for ancestral and land-based knowledge. His work has taken him to remote regions of Africa, the Himalayas, and South America, where he has studied, collected, and helped preserve rare landrace genetics under ethical conservation frameworks.

Key topics in this episode:
- Growing up with plants, animals, and ecosystems as teachers
- Cultivation as a lifelong path rather than an industrial process
- The limits of modern agriculture and genetic optimization
- Living genetics, landraces, and biodiversity preservation
- The difference between controlling plants and collaborating with them
- Ethics, responsibility, and long-term stewardship in plant medicine
- Parallels between plant intelligence, traditional knowledge, and Bwiti principles

Quentin reflects on how his early fascination with reptiles, forests, and living systems shaped his understanding of cultivation as a dialogue rather than a domination. He explains why many industrial agricultural models fail: they prioritize yield, uniformity, and speed at the expense of resilience, diversity, and ecological balance.

Together with Raphael Nicolle, the conversation explores how true genetic work requires patience, deep observation, and respect for time scales that exceed human timelines. Quentin shares why landrace preservation is not nostalgia, but a critical response to genetic erosion driven by globalized markets.

The discussion also draws strong parallels between plant cultivation and traditional spiritual systems: both require lineage, transmission, and responsibility. Just as Bwiti cannot be reduced to a technique or product, living plants cannot be reduced to isolated molecules or traits without losing something essential.

“When you reduce a plant to a molecule, you stop working with life. You start working against it.”

At the Iboga Leadership Summit, Quentin Di Costanzo will bring a rare, grounded voice on cultivation, biodiversity, and ethics. His contribution will focus on how to protect living genetic heritage while navigating scientific research, modern agriculture, and global demand — without repeating extractive patterns that have already damaged countless plant lineages.

The Iboga Leadership Summit is hosted by Moughenda and the Bwiti community in Gabon, for physicians, pharmacists and providers, neuroscience researchers, farmers and agricultural technicians, students and community leaders, lawyers, policymakers and environmentalists — and everybody called to Bwiti, Ibogaine and Iboga.

21–24 June, Libreville, Gabon
Details and tickets:
www.ibogaleadershipsummit.com

In the fourth episode of the Iboga Leadership Summit podcast, harm reduction advocate Susan Ousterman offers insights into what speaking truth to power is like in a reality where it’s easier to access illicit substances than mental health care.

Susan is the Executive Director of the Vilomah Foundation. Vilomah: A Sanskrit word meaning “out of natural order,” which relates to the experience of losing a child, or another loved one, in a tragic, unexpected, or premature way.

After losing her son, Tyler, in 2020, Susan made a list of the issues that haunted her most; all the systemic intersections that had failed to save him. She wanted to address each one to prevent these tragedies from happening to others. The Vilomah Foundation has formed resultantly over the last five years and includes policing personnel, harm reduction advocates, grief educators, and Iboga/ine treatment providers.

In this conversation, Susan tells Ros Stone from the Iboga Leadership Summit team about how the nature of advocacy work changes when it’s done from a wellspring of love and grief; we explore working definitions of “addiction” within a policy landscape sculpted by social stigmas and racial prejudices, and how “hierarchies” of stigmatisation can affect treatment choices and availability.

We also discuss the Vilomah Foundation’s commitment to the North Star Ethics Pledge, and the need for the Global North to avoid repeating “what we’ve done to tobacco, cannabis, and opium” in relation to Iboga and Ibogaine. This includes resisting the treatment of Ibogaine as just another commodity or molecule, and instead recognising its interrelation with Iboga and its cultural lineage, protecting its sustainability, and ensuring that the communities who steward it are neither erased nor exploited.

Susan Ousterman will be joining the Iboga Leadership Summit, where she’s keen to understand “what responsible reciprocity really looks like.”

The Iboga Leadership Summit is hosted by Moughenda and the Bwiti community in Gabon, for physicians, pharmacists and providers, neuroscience researchers, farmers and agricultural technicians, students and community leaders, lawyers, policymakers and environmentalists. And everybody called to Bwiti, Ibogaine and Iboga.

On 21-24 June, in Libreville, Gabon

Details and tickets:
www.ibogaleadershipsummit.com

In this episode of the Iboga Leadership Summit Podcast, Spencer “Missambo” Burton speaks with Ryan “Ghenigho” Rich of the Iboga Leadership Summit team about his personal journey from Ibogaine treatment for opiate addiction to becoming a provider grounded in traditional Bwiti lineage and founding the Boga Rebirth Church in the United States.

Born with cystic fibrosis and introduced to opiates through medical treatment at a young age, Spencer reflects on how addiction emerged alongside chronic illness and repeated hospitalisations. He shares his decision to seek Ibogaine treatment twelve years ago, the questions it left him with, and how those questions ultimately led him to the roots of the medicine in Iboga and the Bwiti tradition.

Spencer and Ryan discuss the significance of lineage, direct transmission, and traditional ceremony in supporting genuine healing, as well as the challenges and responsibilities involved in translating Bwiti practices into Western cultural and legal frameworks without diluting their integrity. He reflects on apprenticeship, training in Gabon, and a pivotal moment during his initiation process that reshaped his understanding of self-responsibility and healing.

This conversation explores the differences between Western medical models and indigenous approaches to health and spiritual growth; the role of language, directness, and cultural values in facilitation; and the importance of readiness, ethical frameworks, and integration in psychedelic work. Spencer also shares his vision for the Missoko Bwiti Alliance and the need to honour lineage while allowing tradition to grow and adapt.
Spencer and Ryan will be continuing this conversation on Spencer’s podcast, “Get to the Root.”

Spencer Burton will be speaking at the Iboga Leadership Summit (21–24 June 2026), hosted by tenth-generation Missoko Bwiti shaman Patrick Moughenda Mikala Nzamba, in collaboration with the Bwiti community and the Government of the Republic of Gabon.

The Iboga Leadership Summit brings together physicians, pharmacists and providers, neuroscience researchers, farmers and agricultural technicians, students and community leaders, lawyers, policymakers, environmentalists, and all those called to Bwiti, Iboga, and Ibogaine.

21–24 June 2026
Libreville, Gabon

Details and tickets:
www.ibogaleadershipsummit.com