PODCAST
Listen to all our interviews, talks, and more, to do a deep dive on Bwiti and Iboga ahead of our summit.
The Iboga Leadership Summit, taking place in Gabon from 21–24 June, brings together dedicated voices around Iboga and Ibogaine. Bridging living Bwiti culture, advancing scientific progress, and time-honoured traditions, the summit offers a unique space for listening and learning. This podcast features reflections from speakers and conversations with guests who will speak at the summit, sharing perspectives that shape the gathering’s dialogue and vision.
In the seventh episode of the Iboga Leadership Summit Podcast, Tobias “Edzing Nzame” Erny shares details of his most recent research into Iboga/ine as a treatment for Parkinson’s Disease with summit co-organiser Ryan “Ghenigho” Rich.
The latest paper, celebrated in this episode, is part of an ongoing study in which participants are microdosing to manage the condition, sometimes with miraculously effective symptom reduction.
Tobias Erny began his career in the chemical-pharmaceutical industry of Basel, Switzerland, before his first encounter with Ibogaine in 2006 interrupted an addiction and opened a door to the spiritual, healing potentialities of Iboga/ine and lit up his pathway towards ethical, respectful clinical research of the Ibogaine molecule within the wider context of Bwiti and Iboga.
In 2008, Tobias began working with the traditional plant medicine Iboga and went on to become initiated into the Dissoumba-Fang tradition of Bwiti, regularly returning to Gabon to deepen his understanding. Alongside the team at Nachtschattenverlag (publisher of Albert Hofmann and Stanislav Grof in the German-speaking world), he published the German standard reference on Iboga, organized conferences, and lectured at universities across Europe.
As Co-Director of the Global Iboga Therapy Alliance (GITA), a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about Iboga and its alkaloids through sustainability initiatives, scientific research, education, and knowledge transfer, Tobias sits at the centre of the global conversation around this medicine.
Tobias describes the difference between Ibogaine and Iboga as the difference between exploring your own psychological bubble, and something outside of it arriving to guide you through yourself.
Ryan and Tobias move between the nuances of conceptualistions of Iboga as a “hyperdimensional ally,” and a “teacher who gives homework and won’t offer the next level of teaching until you’ve implemented the last.”
The conversation holistically draws together spiritual and clinical perspectives, especially in its exploration of whole-plant Iboga, plant-derived Ibogaine and synthetic Ibogaine. Tobias shares details about the largely unmapped world of Iboga’s 30 to 50 alkaloids and why he believes the healthiest future of all varieties of Iboga-related medicine depends on treating the experience not as a pharmacological intervention but as a spiritual awakening that can reconnect us to nature and ourselves.
“The honest wish to change is rewarded by the spirit.”
At the Iboga Leadership Summit, Tobias Erny will bring the rare perspective of a scientist, a provider, and an initiate. His contribution will focus on microdosing, Parkinson’s research, and how Western medicine might begin to engage more effectively with the Bwiti tradition in researching its sacrament.
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
