Today on Mushroom Hour we have the privilege of interviewing Phil Ross of MycoWorks. A pioneer in cultivating living materials for art and design, Phil began using mycelium in the 1990s as a medium for sculpture. Almost three decades on, Phil and his team of artists are now complemented by engineers, biologists, production specialists and material scientists in bringing the first Fine Mycelium™ material, Reishi™, to the world. Anyone who sees his work or hears him speak, can’t help but have their mind set alight by a spark of inspiration. Phil is one of those unique individuals who can take something ancient, like fungi, and derive novel uses for it that not only shift how we see fungi, unlock new ideas and new fields of discovery, but really expand humanity’s entire “realm of the possible”. His lifetime of work with mycelium hints at the vast ocean of infinite opportunities that await humanity as we explore kingdom fungi.    

TOPICS COVERED:   

• Cooking as a Primer on the Practicum of Biotechnology  
• Push and Pull of Tropisms  
• Fungi as a Cypher to Understand Nature  
• From Forests to Graffiti - Learning to “Read” the Environment  
• Polypore Inspirations for Reishi™ Fine Mycelium Leather Products  
• Indigenous Use of Mycelium Leather  
• Medicinal Qualities of Reishi Mushrooms  
• Cultural Responses to the Gross and the Grotesque  
• Fashion as a Means of Communication  
• How MycoWorks Creates Reishi™ Fine Mycelium Leather  
• Mycelium Sheet Polymer & Leathercraft Learning Curves  
• Scaling Up to the Future of MycoWorks  
• The Transformation of Phil Ross  
• Future of Mycelium Materials   

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Mycoworks website: https://www.mycoworks.com/  
• Mycoworks IG: https://www.instagram.com/mycoworks/  
• Louis Pasteur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur  
• Claude Levi-Strauss "The Raw and the Cooked": https://www.amazon.com/Raw-Cooked-Mythologiques-Claude-L%C3%A9vi-Strauss/dp/0226474879  
• Rudy Rucker "Ware Tetralogy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy
• Carl Woese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Woese  
• Susan Oyama "Evolution's Eye": https://www.amazon.com/Evolutions-Eye-Systems-Biology-Culture-Cultural/dp/0822324725  
• Ganoderma lucidum (fungus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganoderma_lucidum   
• Lenzites betulina (fungus): https://www.mushroomexpert.com/lenzites_betulina.html