One of the best parts about 2024's mushroom festival jaunt was running into Max of @wumbogenetics at the @farwestfungievents and the @okmushroomfestival ... Max is on a mission from fungi, dedicated to perpetually developing a suite of myco-products, refining a variety of lab processes and protocols as well building connections in the cultivation community. The hustle it takes to get into any specialization of the fungi industry is an intense one and Max is carving a multitude of pathways in directions directly connected to his curiosities; from myco-papers to vegan Japanese mushroom dishes and every microscopy angle accessible, Wumbo Genetics is keeping it fresh and exciting. Check him out and follow his work HERE!

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The last thing I thought we'd be involved in when I first started cultivated mushrooms was sending phenotypes to space! If I step back and assess how we got here it absolutely blows my mind. Many mushrooms farmers, many entrepreneurs in general, have a solid sense of imposter syndrome...but here we are, It's 2024 and we are awaiting the arrival of three commercial mushroom phenotypes after a trip to the extraterrestrial space above our mighty green planet. For a couple of months now these phenotypes have hitched a ride on the ISS up there in the void and soon they return for laboratory investigation. Dr. Sara Webb is the amazing astrophysicist who got this project rolling by working with students to define and get a project off the ground, literally, and into space. While many questions still remain as to what will be discovered by bringing these organisms into and out of orbit, there is hope that fungi can be used in many different facets of space exploration, from food to building materials and everywhere in between. For all the footage from this project and conversation head on over to MycoWizards.com and check out all the great work Sara is up to at sarawebbscience.com

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Clint Jurek of Flying Saucer Farms has cultivated, conquered, fulfilled the desire and is on his way out of the mycological world! It’s always a challenge to accurately describe just how wild and intense the rampant growth rate of decentralized mushroom cultivators in the US has been. From 2008 until today the number of “commercial cultivators” within the US has grown by 5000% or more. Flying Saucer Farms was right there in the middle of this explosion, spurred on by much more than an Amadou Hat and a Ted Talk. This growth has happened before in the US and world at large, but so much has changed since the last myco-boom. Its pathway into the future is now based 100% on the lightning speed sharing of information and concepts. Clint is a philosophical polymath dedicated to teasing through external ideas, theologies and communication systems as well as sorting through the internal concepts and conflicts, drives and motivations of his own being. For Clint the mushroom cultivators lab, incubation space and grow room is a whole or complex of temples/longhouses/pagoda’s/sanctuaries for the mycologist to work out a myriad of ideas. We amateur mycologists are a sort of archetype and the systems for cultivation are of our own design. We live and work in these systems like mycelium in a substrate. At a point of growth, expansion means introducing a plethora of external forces that can commonly be representative of the open doored church on the corner. Contamination will always make its way through a pinhole. For some, this is the end of the line, what lies beyond, in terms of literal growth, is no longer interesting or connected to the initial desire for exploration and construction of the temple of mycelium. As Clint moves on and hands off his creation, the passing of the torch begins and a rewiring of internal drives take-hold. What happens next for Clint will always have a portion of its origins in the metabolism of fungi! 

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It’s easy to get pulled into the groundswell of hyper fixated myco-nerds at a mushroom festival. At some point after this conversation you are about to hear, Will Lockmiller of Sno Valley Mushrooms, Roger Rabbit and Robert Rogers, collected myself and Danielle Stevenson to go join Will and his partner for dinner at an obscure and hidden gem of an Olympic Peninsula Mexican Restaurant. Will and myself went down all of the mycological avenues and industry gossip like wolves in a rabbit den until we looked up to see everyone else a little more quiet than us. RR speaks up, “Jesus, are these two still talking about mushrooms?!” This reality rings true for a lot of us in the cultivation scene when we get together with one another. RRs statement and Robert Rogers’ smile broke up the one track hive mind and we began talking about secret research projects, art and life. I will always be grateful for this meeting of the minds in a secret little mini mall oasis of a Mexican Restaurant as far north as one can get in the OP of Washington State. There is so much to say about Will’s achievements with Sno Valley but we will let the full conversation tell the tale! 

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Lentinus Tigrinus AKA the "Tiger Sawgill" mushroom is something that has fascinated a handful of mycologists for a long stretch of time. From a fungal evolutionary standpoint, it is a mushroom with a long stretch of phylogenetic-flux. The current fruitbodies develop as a rather straight forward "agaricoid" form while simultaneously exhibiting a "secotioid" morphology within the same phenotypes. If you look back far enough into Lentinus' ever evolving phylogeny you'll find Lentinus Tigrinus is a polypore relative thanks to the postdoc work of Dr. Alexander Bradshaw...This past summer I was asked to talk at Northspore's "Mycology Outside" event and the first person I was introduced to was Thomas Roehl of Cark University. We immediately began chatting about the "Buller Phenomenon" and Thomas filled me in briefly on what his presentation would be about: Lentinus Tigrinus. While we go into a bunch of components of his talk in this episode you can get the pretty complete download on it Here ... Thomas, working along side Alxander Bradshawn and David Hibbett, who was one of the first mycologists at Clark to really dig into the Tiger Sawgill, have uncovered some amazing details about this fascinating mushroom. Thomas' past mycological projects and devotion to fruiting Lentinus Tigrinus in controlled environments, capturing amazing timelapses of both the mushrooms morphologies, brings this genus and species full circle for the cultivators out there!

    

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We have spent an incredible amount of time thus far tearing into our infamously high yielding commercial dikaryons to develop a gourmet monokaryon culture bank here at Cap N Stem. The goal at the end of the day is to understand these monokaryons on a deeper level and to develop new breeding programs. Last week we launched our expansive episode on the process of mechanical dedi-kary-ot-ization over at mycowizards.com and this week we figured we would release an entire conversation on the topic between Sir Gregor Jones and Erik Lomen to bridge the gap between the audiophiles and the die hard MycoWizards Deep-Dive subscribers and community members. A big thanks must go out to @protoplastpurveyor for simplifying the mechanical dedi process. Keep getting weird with fungi ya'll! See ya next week for "Cloning A Wild" only available at MycoWizards.com 

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It took over a decade but I finally got the chance to sit down with Eliah Thanhauser of North Spore and discuss our long and interwoven histories in the Maine mushroom industry. North Spore has excelled in so many things through their explosive growth in the myco-sphere. Co-evolving alongside of them has been an amazing ride full of insight and challenges and tales for days! While Eliah and I just scratch the surface on a variety of topics, we had an audience to keep in mind as we sat among the most amazing fungal-fanatics at this years Mycology Outside, an annual event North Spore hosts at the Ecology School is southern Maine. Eliah has a heart of gold and the genuine curiosity and kindness that lights up a room and keeps this industry growing in the right direction. Persisting and expanding in the retail environment of the still burgeoning "Mush-Boom" is fraught will insane challenges but the dedication to continually educate the consumer remains at the forefront of the three founder's minds eye. Jon, Matt and Eliah are a rare breed of co-owners who have been sticking it out through thick and thin to see how far they can expand into the fungal feeding frenzy. While Jon and Matt were in the audience and pop in with comments from time to time, keep an ear out for their individual MycoWizard's episodes in the months to come! (That's right fella's, I'm coming for ya, mic's in hand!)

You can find more info out on North Spore by visiting
www.northspore.com

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Become A MycoWizard today at www.mycowizards.com!

Shane Schoolman and Michael Heim are going wild in the game of mushroom-extracts. Dual Extraction What???? Soxhlet Who???? They had me at Cordy-Crystals and Gnar-Tar, never-mind their in depth exploration of ultrasonically extracted myco-molecules suspended in cavitation bubbles. A few weeks after recording this weeks MycoWizards episode I hobbled into Cap N Stem's HQ groggy, redeyed and destined for the endless drip of black coffee, but much to my surprise a nice array of alcohol and glycerin based MyCoLove extracts were sitting on a rolling rack in front of me, along with a second box for the "Shulgin-ites", blue dropper bottles decked with a dash of masking tape and labeled "CM Gnar-Tar", "HE Gnar-Tar", GL Gnar-Tar, ETC...In a flash, our conversation came back to me and with almost automatic action I slugged down a syringe full of the goopy brown CM Gnar-Tar...within 3 minutes we had lift off...what kind of insanity have these wild MycoWizards of Colorado origin created? If you're unsure of the mystical medicinal mushroom extracts out there, look no further than these super saturated dropper bottles packed with flavorful rocket-fuel, as they hold the power to break the skeptics spell. All in all this episode is about much more than just some extracts, it's about actually farming the mushrooms used in the extracts. MyCoLove Farm is a small collective of wildly intelligent folks dedicated to their craft with a history that's worth reading about and paying attention to!

You can find more info out on MyCoLove by visiting
https://www.mycolove.farm/

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The age old tale, or so it seems in these fast moving times seems to be Mycelium vs. Fruitbodies ... but what if you simple added both into your products, built out and followed through with scientific studies for publication and actually collected data after proceeding to test, test and test again. Steve and Sam of OM Mushrooms have been doing just that and growing fast into the myco-obsessed market over the last 5 years. But their stories didn't begin just half a decade ago. Steve Farrar and Sam Andrasko (aka: Lipa of The Shroomery) sat down with us at their last location prior to their big expansion in Carlsbad California to talk everything from their early days cultivating to the modern myco-debacles. In a world now briming with big players, nutraceuticals have exploded onto the market but OM's inception was perfectly timed and primed for the very start of the pandemic. 2020 caused many things to happen all at once, but one of the unexpected occurrences was the sudden awareness, concern and some might even say obsession with healthy living through super foods and supplements.  Mushrooms are getting their long overdue limelight in the west and OM is seeing a direct beneficial impact from such a monumental shift in the western ways of eating for a better life! 

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Round about two years ago the entire Cap N’ Stem crew hosted a massive bonfire at our newly acquired property in Lewiston. Many joined in the insanity, many bailed, motorcycles broke down, did burnouts or wrecked into dark Maine gullies, but the fire raged on and the partying continued through to the next morning! One of the most mysterious characters to show, arrived in a feathered bowler hat with a grin soaked in mycological-stoke…you know the kind of smile, paired with those slightly sunken in eyes that say, “I’ve been up for 5 days straight knocking in front of the flow-hood and I still managed to make it to the bonfire!” Gabe DeCicco of Traveling Cap is one driven dude. He has been bitten hard by the cultivation bug and is currently dead set on building out his operation. Give Gabe a follow and support this radical dudes undertaking as he floods the streets of Beantown and beyond with his gourmet delights! 

You can find more info out on Traveling Cap at https://www.travelingcapmushrooms.com/

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