The Mushroom Hour Podcast

Today on Mushroom Hour we are excited to chat with internationally renowned wild foods expert, wilderness skills teacher and founder of “Rural Courses”, Michael White. Michael caught the foraging bug young and early experiences of loading sheep feed buckets full of field fungi and eating them piled high on buttered toast, sentenced Michal to a life dedicated to the hunt! Foraging for plants and fungi rubbed shoulders with hunting, fishing, and farming to the extent that eating from the land became his norm and to buy from the shops an uneasy extravagance. Four years in London studying classical singing was enough to confirm that city life, or that of an opera singer was not for him and on graduating he flung himself into almost total self-sufficiency.  Skills learned in childhood became essential tools for putting food on the table and driven by necessity, his foraging abilities improved rapidly. In his early 20’s Michael began teaching foraging and self-sufficiency skills. This side of life has grown into a new passion, taking him into cities, other countries, schools, but mostly the forest, to inspire and educate thousands of people about the awesome word of fungi, foraging and life on the land. Currently life is very full for Michael raising three children, teaching, expanding his understanding about medicinal mushrooms and living off the land. His greatest pleasure is to share knowledge and a love of the natural world with his son and two daughters and the fantastic people he meets through courses and workshops.   

TOPICS COVERED:      

• Kent’s Wild Food Landscape   
• The Decision to Start Educating Others in the Wild    
• Life in the Wilds Takes Work!   
• Reclaiming Power through Rewilding   
• Foraging as a State of Mind   
• Diverging from Modernity    
• How do Foraging and Wildcraft Practices Change Social Cohesion?    
• Educating Children about Nature   
• Culinary Inspiration from Foraged Fare   
• Medicinal Properties of Plants & Fungi    
• Wild Beer, Wine and Spirits   
• Hunting and Working with Game    
• Starting the Path to Self-Sufficiency    
• Dangers of Our Experimental, Digital World   

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Rural Courses Website: https://www.ruralcourses.co.uk/    
• Michael White IG: https://www.instagram.com/rural_courses/   
• Macrolepiota procera (AKA Parasol Mushroom): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrolepiota_procera    
• First-Nature (Plant and Fungi ID): https://www.first-nature.com/    
• Family Phallacaea (AKA Stinkhorns): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallaceae

Today on the Mushroom Hour Podcast we are honored to be joined by Piotr Zieba, professor’s assistant at the University of Agriculture in Krakow, Poland. Piotr works with gourmet and medical mushrooms and his journey started on Faculty of Biotechnology and Horticulture. During his bioengineering studies he found out that nobody was doing research on mushrooms. So, Piotr took matters into his own hands and organized a Student Science program to start to cultivating mushrooms. At this point in his career, Piotr has completed a master thesis about oyster mushrooms, coauthored 11 scientific papers and is now finishing PhD studies. His work focuses on different properties of mycelium from in vitro culture and fruiting bodies, but also focuses on supplementation of mushroom substrate with novel bio-materials. Working on a multidisciplinary science team, Piotr is currently pursuing all kinds of exciting work on mushrooms from attempting to cultivate wild mushrooms, using nontypical agriculture and food waste in mushroom cultivation and using waste mushroom substrate as fertilizer. His passion for mycology is palpable, and along with a great team of professors, doctors and students he is working to learn everything he can for the glory of mushrooms.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• Childhood in Nature Picking Mushrooms   
• University of Agriculture Krakow   
• Visions of a Mushroom Cultivating Future in Poland   
• Experiments with Substrate   
• Nutritional Profiles of Mushrooms Grown on Different Substrates   
• Contamination Learning Curve   
• Mycelium vs Fruiting Body Nutritional Compounds   
• Mapping Nutrition Profiles with Differing Growth Parameters   
• Isolating and Cultivating Wild Fungi   
• Impact of Piotr’s Research on his University   
• Advice for Mushroom Cultivators   
• Downstream Applications of Spent Mushroom Substrate   
• Future Cultivation Tech – Ozone Sterilization   

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Poland Fungi IG: https://www.instagram.com/polandfungi/   
• Piotr Zieba Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zieba-Piotr   
• University of Agriculture in Krakow: https://en.urk.edu.pl/   
• Marasmius alliaceus (Fungus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycetinis_alliaceus   
• Pleurotus ostreatus (Fungus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurotus_ostreatus

Today on the Mushroom Hour Podcast we are blessed to speak with Manoj Doss. Manoj is a cognitive neuropsychopharmacologist at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University. His research is at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychopharmacology with focuses on episodic memory and hallucinogenic drugs. Manoj utilizes complex cognitive paradigms, brain imaging, and computational modelling to explore what makes psychedelics unique compared to other classes of psychoactive drugs, both in terms of basic drug effects and mechanisms for treating clinical populations. Although Manoj is optimistic that psychedelics will soon have a place in psychiatry, he remains cautious of exaggerated claims and negligence to potential downsides, something he terms 'psychedelic myopia’.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• Cognitive Neuroscience & Neuropsychopharmacology   
• Psychedelic Neuroscience   
• Types of Memory - Episodic, Semantic, Procedural   
• Parts of the Brain - Hippocampus, Neocortex   
• Recollection vs Familiarity   
• Psychedelics Impacting Memory through Familiarity   
• Is Memory Stored in Parts of the Body Other than the Brain?   
• How Do We Make False Memories?   
• Debunking the “Default Mode Network” Narrative   
• Psychedelic Science and Incorporating Existing Scientific Disciplines   
• Showing Psychedelics are Actually Useful in Treating Any Disorders   
• Commentary on Structuring Psychedelic Research   
• Future of Psychedelic Therapy as Adjunct to Existing Therapies?   
• Tempering Conclusions and Expectations from Psychedelic Research   

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Manoj Doss Twitter: https://twitter.com/ManojDoss   
• Manoj Doss Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Manoj-Doss   
• Manoj Doss @ Johns Hopkins: https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/doss   
• John O'Keefe Nobel Prize work on Hippocampal place cells: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04913-9   
• Doss et al paper on reward dynamics: http://dml.ucdavis.edu/uploads/6/1/9/7/61974117/gruber_ritchey_wang_doss_ranganath_2016.pdf   
• Default Mode Network Hypothesis: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00020/full   
• PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story by Alexander Shulgin: https://www.amazon.com/Pihkal-Chemical-Story-Alexander-Shulgin/dp/0963009605   
• Janice Chen paper on shared experience: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=mOwF8UEAAAAJ&citation_for_view=mOwF8UEAAAAJ:M05iB0D1s5AC   
• Marc Berman paper on benefits of interacting with nature: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02225.x   

Today on the Mushroom Hour Podcast we are honored to be joined by Geoff Williams PhD, International Sentinel Network Coordinator for the US Forest Service. Geoff studies the social dimensions and microbial ecology of host range expansions and geographic range expansions of forest trees, their fungal pathogens, and their insect herbivores. Geoff just moved to Oregon from West Lafayette, Indiana where he studied the role of the microbiome in Thousand Cankers Disease of Eastern black walnut in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University. Prior to that he has worked and lived in Idaho, Arizona, Mexico, and Chicago, originally hailing Ann Arbor, Michigan. In his current position he is gathering information on forest insects and pathogens across the world. The ultimate goal is to build networks of cooperation and information exchange with international collaborators to help protect native forest tree species in the US and all over the world from the next highly destructive or devastating insect or fungal pathogen that could be introduced through trade and travel. The opinions expressed by Geoff in our show to do not represent policy stances of the US government.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• A Winding Path towards Forest Pathology   
• Fungal Phytopathogens   
• Community Assembly in Forest Ecosystems   
• Novel Pathogenic Interactions in the Age of the Anthropocene   
• Proactive Approach to Managing Forest Pathogens   
• Complex Social Impacts of Forest Pathogens    
• Interconnectedness of Forest Ecosystems Across Continents    
• Global Forest Health Crisis   
• Interplay of International Trade Agreements & Natural Resource Protections   
• Sentinel Tree Network   
• Urban Forest Management   
• “Invasive Species” & Invasion Biology Framework   
• Invasive Species vs Invasive Populations   
• Citizen Scientist Role in Monitoring Forest Pathogens   

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Geoffrey Williams Website: https://geoffreymwilliams.weebly.com/   
• Thousand Cankers Disease: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/planthealth/plant-pest-and-disease-programs/pests-and-diseases/thousand-cankers-disease/thousand-cankers-disease   
• Geosmithia morbida (fungal pathogen): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmithia_morbida   
• Juglans nigra (Eastern Black Walnut): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans_nigra   
• Laurel Wilt Disease: https://www.fdacs.gov/Agriculture-Industry/Pests-and-Diseases/Plant-Pests-and-Diseases/Laurel-Wilt-Disease   
• Sentinel Trees: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10340-018-1041-6   
• Cortinarius violaceus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortinarius_violaceus

Today on Mushroom Hour we are joined by the fungal trifecta behind Umbo Medicinal Mushrooms – Rashad Evans, Jake Plummer and Del Jolly. 

Rashad Evans is a former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion who intimately understands the connection between mind and body, and the importance of having both in sync. He credits mushrooms for that one-two punch of focus + energy in training and competition, and then easing the transition from fighter to daily life. Rashad is passionate about transforming sports nutrition and transforming access to education so that others can have the same opportunities that he did.   

Jake Plummer is a Pro-Bowl NFL Quarterback who spent 10 years in the league earning a reputation as a natural leader. He inspired his teammates to believe in themselves and in each other – personal excellence for the sake of the team. This ethos is what drew him to natural medicine, eager to learn what mushrooms can do for each of us individually and how we can pool that collective power to help make a better world for all.   

Focused on shifting the cultural narrative, Del Jolly worked as part of Decriminalize Denver and Charlotte’s Web CBD before co-founding Unlimited Sciences, a psychedelic research nonprofit partnered with the likes of Johns Hopkins University. He believes functional mushrooms have just as much, if not more, potential than psychedelics and is committed to exploring and unearthing everything he can.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• UFC, NFL and Medicinal Activism - All Roads Lead to Mushrooms   
• Introduction to Queendom Fungi     
• Athletes and Functional Mushrooms   
• Preaching the Mushroom Gospel to NFL and UFC athletes   
• Functional Mushrooms More Impactful than Psychedelics?!   
• Role of Psychedelic Mushrooms in Team Sports   
• Sparring & Microdosing   
• Fungally-Expanded Perspectives on Achievement and Dominance   
• We are all Actors   
• Mushrooms & Masculinity   
• Rites of Passage   
• Formation of UMBO & Entering a Limitless Future   
• The Power of Intention   
• Making Medicine Accessible to All   

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Umbo Website: https://getumbo.com/   
• Umbo Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getumbo/   
• Unlimited Sciences Website: https://unlimitedsciences.org/   
• MycoLove Farm Website: https://www.mycolove.farm/   

Today on Mushroom Hour we are joined by mycological ally, cultivator and community creator Olga Tzogas of Smugtown Mushrooms. Her journey with Fungi and plants started over 15 years ago. She began working with these allies when foraging in both urban & more wild settings as she learned to identify species for food and medicine. Olga, alongside her community, established Smugtown Mushrooms to satiate their need for mushrooms & growing supplies, workshops, events & community-based science where they are based on traditional Haudenosaunee land, in the so-called city of Rochester NY. While learning more & embracing the never-ending, unlocked potential mushrooms & fungi have to help heal both people, planet & soul. Olga teaches workshops throughout the continent about wild mushroom identification, medicinal mushrooms, biology, and mushroom cultivation. She was a core organizer for the 2016 Radical Mycology Convergence and the MycoSymbiotics Festival from 2015-17. In 2018, Olga help co-create the New Moon Mycology Summit, a justice-focused, mycology centered event, linking many disciplines extending throughout the living world.  Olga is a member of the Rochester Area Mycological Association, CPAMC, WPAMC & the West Virginia Mushroom club. Annually, Olga guides small groups immersing in land based and traditional knowledge of Northern Greece, highlighting the fungi and plants there.  I’m excited to learn from a legend in mycology who seems to bring the teachings of fungi into every aspect of her life.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• Lifelong Love of Mushrooms   
• Forests and Mushrooms in Greece   
• Hosting Forage Trips in Greece   
• Mycology Reaching Across Disciplines & Cultural Barriers   
• Story of Smugtown   
• Grappling with Oligarchy   
• Are We Allowed to Just Exist?   
• Are Currencies, Corporations and Governments the Answer?   
• Starving for Natural Connection    
• Mushrooms Remediating Social Ecologies      
• Evolution of Mycological Community   
• Solutions Inspired by Mushrooms   
• Smugtown Shifting Focus to Community Building   
• Building Networks of Solidarity and Support    

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Smugtown Mushrooms Website: https://www.smugtownmushrooms.com/   
• Smugtown Mushrooms IG: https://www.instagram.com/smugtownmushrooms/   
• Smugtown Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smugtownmushrooms/   
• New Moon Mycology Summit: https://www.facebook.com/newmoonmycologysummit   
• 2021 Indigenous Peoples Day Event in DC: https://consortiumnews.com/2021/10/12/native-american-protesters-hit-by-sonic-weapons-in-dc/   

Today on Mushroom Hour we are excited to chat with internationally renowned wild foods expert, author, and public speaker Miles Irving. Miles has worked with some of the world's best chefs and has been a pioneer in the Wild Food Renaissance. In 2009, he authored The Forager Handbook, hailed by many as the 'foraging bible'. Through communicating with people around the world and delving deep into the environmental - and emotional - issues facing us, he has sought to bring together traditional ecological knowledge and those hungry for land-based connection, community, and culture. Reconnecting with the life-giving wild land which has long sustained us is key. There is not only a way forward but a wildly different way of looking at the world.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• Exploring Nature with Father & Grandfather   
• Connection with Nature Starts with 1 Species   
• Become a Recovering Weirdo   
• Activating Powers of Observation & Pattern Recognition   
• The Forager Handbook   
• Pulling Down the Neoliberal Regime   
• Greenwashing   
• Guiding a Lost Society Back to Nature   
• Going Deeper into Ecology through Wild Foods   
• Traditional Ecological Knowledge   
• Common Edible Plants   
• Nettle and The Umami Equation   
• Working with Acorn Flour   
• Porcini’s GABA-induced Happiness?   

EPISODE RESOURCES:    

• World Wild Website: https://www.worldwild.org.uk/   
• Goldcrest (bird species): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldcrest   
• Mark Lewis (inspiration): https://prn.live/its-all-about-food-mark-lewis-chmachyakyakya-8000-year-crops-07-26-16/   
• Chamaenerion angustifolium (AKA Fireweed): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamaenerion_angustifolium   
• Braiding Sweetgrass: https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass   
• The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-wild-wisdom-of-weeds/   
• Tending the Wild: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild   
• Dark Emu: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21401526-dark-emu   
• Boletus edulis (AKA Porcini): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boletus_edulis

Today we are honored by the presence of the legendary Dr. Dennis McKenna. Dr. McKenna has conducted research in ethnopharmacology for over 40 years.  He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, and was a key investigator on the Hoasca Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca.  He is the younger brother of Terence McKenna.  From 2000 to 2017, he taught courses on Ethnopharmacology and Plants in Human affairs as an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. In 2018, Dr. McKenna conceived the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy to explore modern and traditional practices, ideas and technologies that foster the understanding of nature, consciousness, the cosmos and their interweavings with humanity. The Academy’s mission is to be a catalyst for the transformation of global consciousness, through educational experiences that interweave our collective intelligence, science, and ancestral wisdom.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss   
• The Experiment at La Chorrera   
• Ethnopharmacology   
• Tryptophan, Tryptamines & 5HT2A Receptors
• Psychedelic Biochemistry   
• Messenger Molecules & Signal Transduction   
• Psychedelic Communications
• Neural Gating & The Reality Hallucination   
• Future of Psychedelics in Modern, Western Culture   
• Psychedelics Sourced from South America – Short-Term Extraction, Long-Term Symbiosis?   
• Nature Wave Zero   
• Humans as an Endangered Species   
• Undiscovered Psychedelic Compounds   
• The McKenna Academy   

EPISODE RESOURCES   

• McKenna Academy: https://mckenna.academy/   
• McKenna Academy IG: https://www.instagram.com/mckenna.academy/   
• "The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss": https://www.amazon.com/Brotherhood-Screaming-Abyss-Terence-McKenna/dp/0878396365   
• "Botanical Medicines: The Desk Reference for Major Herbal Supplements": https://typeset.io/papers/botanical-medicines-the-desk-reference-for-major-herbal-2df0ifn7xz   
• 5-HT2A Receptors: https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/5-HT2A_receptor   
• ESPD55 Website: https://espd55.com/   
• Stephen Harrod Buhner: https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/books/   
• Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide: https://www.amazon.com/Psilocybin-Mushroom-Growers-Handbook-Enthusiasts-ebook/dp/B00BOE16V8   

Today on Mushroom Hour we have the privilege of interviewing Professor Jonathan Schilling from the University of Minnesota. Jonathan has been on the faculty at the University of Minnesota since 2006, and is currently a professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology in the College of Biological Sciences. In addition to teaching and researching all things fungal, he is the Director at the Itasca Biological Station & Laboratories in northwestern Minnesota. This field station for science is tucked into thirty-two thousand acres of old growth boreal forests within the second oldest State Park in the United States. The station also sits next to a lake, Lake Itasca, which is known as the headwaters of the Mississippi River. He assumed that position in 2018. Adding these duties to his job was, in his words, "a reflection of my deep connection and commitment to nature that was forged in the mountains of West Virginia as a kid, along the entirety of the Appalachian Trail as a young adult, and among family and friends in a Saint Paul neighborhood who have shown how important community is to conservation.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• Drawn into the Boreal Forest   
• Role of Fungi in Forest Acid Deposition   
• Basics of Wood-Rotting Saprobic Fungi   
• White Rot, Brown Rot & Soft Rot Fungi   
• Historical Contingency and Succession in Wood Rot   
• Fungi in the Carbon Cycle   
• Jonathan’s Lignin Uncertainty   
• Patterns in Distributions of Wood Rot Fungi   
• Pre-White Rot Fungi Coal Formation Hypothesis   
• Wood Rot 2 Step - Fungi Throwing Dynamite & Avoiding the Blowback   
• Itasca Research Station   
• Community Science & Assembling the A Team   
• Advice for Pursuing Studies in Mycology    
• Decomposition Builds Character   

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Jonathan Schilling Academic Page: https://cbs.umn.edu/contacts/jonathan-schilling   
• Itasca Biological Research Station: https://cbs.umn.edu/itasca   
• PLOS ONE Research Article: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0120679   
• Frontiers of Microbiology Research Article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.01646/full   
• Fomitopsis pinicola (fungus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomitopsis_pinicola   
• Fomitopsis betulina (fungus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomitopsis_betulina   

Today on Mushroom Hour we have the opportunity to speak with Maurizio Montalti. Maurizio Montalti is a designer, researcher, educator and entrepreneur. Working at the junction of design and biotech, he is one of the early pioneers committed to the study and development of wide-ranging mycelium-based technologies and products. Maurizio is Chief Mycelium Officer, Chairman, and co-Founder of SQIM, the (bio)technology company developing innovative processes and products by unravelling the potential of mycelium as key biofabrication agent and technology, for application and use across different industries, as fundamentally rooted in the valorisation of residual materials’ streams by means of microbial fermentation. As (bio-)technological holding, today SQIM serves its two verticals/brands: MOGU (biomaterials/products dedicated to interior design and architecture) and EPHEA (biomaterials/products dedicated to fashion, automotive, etc.). Maurizio’s work has been honoured with multiple awards, widely featured in the global media, and exhibited worldwide in prestigious musea, galleries, and institutions, including Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Design Museum (London), Triennale (Milano), MAXXI (Rome), and MAK- Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna), among others.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• Into the Spiraling Vortex of Mycelium   
• From Degradation of Waste to Regenerative Materials   
• Mogu Acoustic Collection   
• Selecting Fungal Species & Strains as Materials   
• Standardizing Unpredictable Myco-Materials   
• Can Organisms Retain Agency when Enlisted to Human Scientific and Economic Endeavour?   
• Wild Genetic Variation within Fungal Species   
• Fungal Strains SQIM Collaborates With   
• Becoming Fluent in the Language of Fungi    
• Living Buildings & Autonomous Biowelding   
• “Ephea” Leather and Fabric Product Lines   
• Scaling SQIM & Modular Mycelium Production   
• Circular Production Processes, Seeing Waste as a Resource   
• Fungi in Space   

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• SQIM Website: https://www.sqim.bio/   
• Mogu Website: https://mogu.bio/   
• Mogu IG: https://www.instagram.com/mogumycelium/   
• Fungal Architecture Project: https://www.fungar.eu/   
• Officina Corpuscoli: https://www.corpuscoli.com/   
• Schizophyllum commune (AKA Split Gill Mushroom): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophyllum_commune   
• "Braiding Sweetgrass": https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass   
• "Designs for the Pluroverse": https://www.dukeupress.edu/designs-for-the-pluriverse   
• "Mushroom at the End of the World": https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691220550/the-mushroom-at-the-end-of-the-world