Everything that we do is influenced by the health of our nervous system, our perception, our consciousness, our
0:06
ability to walk, to breathe, to socialize. When you're angry, it's an inflammatory state. When people are
0:12
depressed, they're immunologically depressed. When they're happy, their immune systems at a higher state of readiness. I think psilocybin is the
0:19
most important new molecular medicine for building communities, respect, and
0:24
kindness, and cooperation. It brings us together in a unified field of consciousness and being that I think has
0:31
tremendous potential positive benefits for the future. Micologist Paul Stammits is the world's
0:37
foremost authority on micology and the healing power of mushrooms. His incredible work reveals how mcelium
0:44
connects ecosystems, inspires new medicines, and might even help heal the relationship between humans and the
0:50
earth. We have a crisis of creativity. We need to have a quantum leap in consciousness.
0:55
The chemical industry has inflicted so much harm to biodiversity. It's unraveling the very foundation of the
1:02
ecosystems in which we've evolved. Fungi eliminate the need and the necessity and
1:07
the intensity of using these chemical solutions. Conventional medicine and
1:12
conventional agricultural practices and mcelium lowers the need for toxicity
1:18
increasing the innate immunity of the ecosystem. What do you believe is the intelligence of the universe that
1:25
produced a mushroom that has this transformative capacity? We are fallible. We are inadequate to
1:32
understand the enormity of the concept of God. We will die. We will decompose. Make friends with the fungi now because
1:38
they're going to get you. We're in a stream of a molecular universe that has
1:44
a continuum that goes through billions of years. We're all part of one giant consciousness. It makes me feel better
1:51
about my own mortality. We're all in this together and it's a great thing.
1:58
[Music] Hi, I'm Balik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen
2:04
and welcome to our breakdown. We're covering everything today. Are you ready to change the world? Are
2:11
you ready to be part of a revolution in how human beings can better interact
2:18
with each other and with ourselves and with the entire universe?
2:23
Also, what if we are not designed to be sick? What if we are living in a way and
2:29
a fundamental way that explains a lot of the ailments and
2:34
conditions that we all face? And what if you're not broken? What if you can change? What if there are ways in nature
2:41
that can help you be less stressed, be less anxious, feel happier, feel
2:47
healthier, see colors brighter, have better connections with people, be more
2:52
interested and creative, more interesting. So many people are struggling and there
2:57
are ways to get over that struggle. Before we introduce who our guest is, a disclaimer. We are not providing medical
3:04
or legal advice. Obviously listeners should speak to a doctor before engaging
3:09
in any course of what we're going to talk about and in particular micro doing. Um we're going to be talking about psychedelics today. It's part of
3:16
the conversation and psychedelics are still illegal in many places. We're not encouraging anything illegal. We are
3:22
here to share the latest scientific insights um from our guest and our guest
3:27
is none other than micologist Paul Stammitz. He's the author of eight books
3:34
and recently spoke at the United Nations. Um I I cannot overstate the
3:40
significance of Paul Stammits in what he describes as a an awakening a a global
3:47
awakening of an understanding of the role that fungi uh mycelium and
3:54
mushrooms play in our collective health and our collective consciousness. Um,
4:01
his new book, Psilocybin Mushrooms in Their Natural Habitats, a guide to the history, identification, and use of
4:07
psychoactive fungi, is available now. It's really, really a beautiful book, and it's a full color guide to
4:13
psilocybin mushrooms, but his entire body of work is dedicated to his love
4:19
and reverence for all things fungi. And he also talks a lot about the expansion
4:26
of consciousness which is so related to a lot of the conversations we have here on my Alex breakdown understanding how
4:34
our perspectives can change how we can feel more connected to something greater than ourselves and interconnected with
4:42
one another. He's also going to talk about how psilocybin is used in therapeutic environments to treat some of the most
4:48
difficult to treat trauma conditions. And in addition, he's going to reveal
4:55
some things that were not even covered in the incredible documentary Fantastic
5:00
Fungi. Um, which he shares his entire journey. And there's things he didn't
5:05
even include that he's going to share with us today. Also, just cuz in case that wasn't enough, we're going to talk about the
5:11
amazing applications that fungi can have in other areas like agriculture and home
5:19
building. Like it's just mind-blowing. I if your mind isn't blown, I'll be surprised.
5:24
And if you've ever been diagnosed with anything relating to inflammation, depression, anxiety, or trauma, we
5:32
cannot wait for you to listen to this episode. It's a pleasure to welcome to the breakdown Paul Stamuts.
5:38
Break it down. Honored to be here. You are one of the first people that we ever thought of
5:45
talking to when we started this podcast and scheduling and the universe has brought us to this very day when we
5:52
finally get um to speak to you. I um learned about you from the documentary
5:58
uh Fantastic Fun Guy and I was instantly um I mean wowed is not really even the
6:06
word. I um I I did my graduate work in neuroscience. I did my undergraduate work in neuroscience and I went with a
6:13
fellow colleague of mine and we were so uh you know fascinated and just you know
6:19
completely floored by the implications uh not just of understanding the world of fungi but in particular your story.
6:28
Many people, you know, tune in to this podcast to understand the intersection between science and spirituality, to
6:35
give legitimate credence in in clinical ways to some of the things that um you
6:42
know, many have dismissed in many cases for decades and sometimes for millennia. Uh Rick Doblin is a friend of the
6:49
podcast and um you know we've delved into consciousness pretty much from every angle that we can think of but um
6:56
you know you really are kind of the master of all things consciousness and expansion. So we're just so honored to
7:02
get to speak with you. Well you're overexaggerating my importance but I appreciate the compliment. Um I I wonder if you know
7:10
some people may be learning about you for the first time and we're going to get into many components of fungi, their
7:19
environmental role, their implications for you know sort of larger cohesion and connectivity. And we are also going to
7:26
talk about not only psychedelic effects of mushrooms uh but also some of the
7:31
clinical implications for treating some of the things that you know the pharmaceutical industry makes the most
7:37
money off of trying to treat and you know some of the things that ail many of
7:42
us but I wonder if we can start with a bit of your origin story. I think that's one of the most powerful components of
Psilocybin & Paul's Stuttering Journey
7:49
your story. Um, I I wonder if you wouldn't mind telling us the story of your stutter.
7:55
Okay. Well, that's deeply personal. Um,
8:01
but it's it's a good story. Um, I grew up in a small town in Ohio. I was the
8:07
youngest of five children. I have a twin brother who's five minutes older. So, uh, I came from an industrious
8:15
family. I developed a stuttering habit. And let me just tell everyone out there
8:20
when you're around a stutterer, don't make fun of them. That's cruel, you
8:26
know. It's just it just it's mean-spirited. It's a social anxiety issue.
8:34
The type of stuttering I had, I would not stutter the animals. Wouldn't stutter when I sing, but you don't want
8:40
to hear me sing. of but I couldn't look at people in the
8:45
eyes. So I looked on the ground all the time and I found mushrooms, fossils, and turtles. Um, I
8:54
became a I fell in love with a a turtle family, snapping turtles, wild turtles
9:00
in my backyard pond, and I go down there and feed them and talk to them. It was a
9:06
very difficult childhood. I had this debilitating stuttering habit and
9:13
typically stutterers tend to be higher than average IQ. Our minds and our
9:18
thought streams go way way ahead of our speaking ability and then we get stuck in a loop and then it becomes
9:26
embarrassing and then like looking into a mirror you you feel more stress etc.
9:32
So that that was my childhood growing up until and I think you know most people
9:39
say fantastic fungi. I don't want to repeat the whole story but I did a heroic dose of psilocybin mushrooms.
9:45
Climbed up into a tree. There was a lightning storm, windstorm, highest tree in the landscape. I thought I was going to be electrocuted.
9:53
I ate way too many mushrooms. I had bought mushrooms before and there
9:58
were button mushrooms injected with LSD and it's all fake. It's just because silic side mushrooms are so hard to
10:04
acquire in the early 1970s. Um, but I got some of these dried
10:09
mushrooms from Florida and I thought, well, I ate the whole bag because last time they didn't do anything. So, that
10:16
was a little bit more potent than I expected. So, in the top of this tree when it came on because I thought it
10:22
would look at the viewscape and a thunderstorm was coming and the winds came and it was it turned out to be a
10:28
ferocious, you know, summer wind uh win and thunderstorm in Ohio. People from Ohio know this well and I was terrified.
10:37
Um, and I had vertigo because I was just so high. So I grabbed onto the tree as
10:42
axis mundi into the earth and and then I just was thrown into the beauty of
10:47
nature and even though it was frightening it was visually fantastic because every time there's a lightning
10:53
strike was you know so those fractalization patterns which I had not seen before and
11:00
just you know the the atmosphere was liquefied so the sort of liquid waves
11:07
would come through and lightning strikes and fractal beautiful colors.
11:12
And then I realized I'm likely to get electrocuted up here. This is the tallest tree in the whole landscape. And
11:18
so I thought, well, I survived this experience. What do I need to work on? As I know I'm not stupid and I know I'm
11:26
a good person. And so I said to myself many times, stop stuttering now over as
11:31
a mantra over and over. And I realized and retrospectively, and I didn't mention this in the movie,
11:39
fundamentally, I know I'm a good person and I love who I am. It doesn't matter
11:44
what other people think. And so when I came down out of the tree
11:51
just full of love for the universe, love for nature, feeling like I'm one part of
11:56
one giant consciousness, it was an epiphany for me spiritually because I had a Christian background. And for
12:03
those Christians out there, I would just tell you that, you know, Jesus is like a shepherd, you know, leads the flock. But
12:08
I had a very interesting and informative discussion with my mother who's a devout
12:13
charismatic Christian leader. I mean, she was a a big name in that movement.
12:19
And I said to my mom, you know, I know you're spiritual. I feel spiritual, too. But do you let's do a thought
12:25
experiment. Do you agree that your concept of God, you know, God is
12:30
omnipotent, all knowing? She goes, "Absolutely." I said, "And you agree that humans are
12:36
not right. We are fallible. We are inadequate to understand the
12:42
enormity of the concept of God." And she goes, "Yes." I said, "Well, therefore,
12:47
our definition of who God is is fraught with error. It's erroneous. It's
12:53
inadequate of the concept. And yet, we've conceptualized and created these religions." And she knew where I was
13:00
going with this. She's pretty smart. And she goes, "Well, yes, yes." But so my first experiences, you know, were very
13:06
much at first dominated, you know, with Christianity. But then I saw Jesus and
13:12
this portal of mushrooms expanding into something far far greater, far beyond
13:19
any individual. And so it was a very spiritual experience because I had an understanding of this concept of one
13:25
giant consciousness. And so I descended the tree and the next day, as I told in the movie, there was
13:33
this woman, a young lady that I liked a lot, but she was I'm a stutterer, so
13:38
who's going to associate with me, right? I'm not attractive. And I saw her walking on the sidewalk and and I
13:46
normally would just look down because I don't want people to talk to me because I would stutter. It's embarrassing. Some people make fun of me. Very humiliating.
13:53
And I looked at her in straight in the eyes and I said, "Good morning." And she looked at me and she said, "Good
13:59
morning, Paul." And it was just the expression of kindness from her that just validated everything
14:07
I did. And so I stopped stuttering. Now I I do stutter occasionally as there's a
14:14
drinking in a loud bar, you know, there's so much noise. It's hard hard to articulate. Someone asked me how to grow
14:20
mushrooms. is filling like filling a well with teaspoons like okay where do you want to start you know so there is
14:26
this cacaphony of noise distraction that sometimes elicits my stuttering
14:31
but I've met some really famous people you know and who doesn't stutter right if I met Bill Gates and like I didn't
14:37
know what to say um so yeah but largely it's 99% uh cured and it's really
14:44
because I realized that I am a good person and that's all that matters can you look at yourself in
14:51
the mirror every morning to know that you are trying to do good in the world. And I'm I affirm that. Some people may
14:58
disagree with me, but that's your opinion. My opinion counts more than anybody else's opinion. And then my
15:04
snapping turtles were my friends. So I hung out with my snapping turtles. That's why I wear the turtle. This
15:09
turtle island. So my snapping turtles I raised for many years and I would pet
15:14
them and hold them and never got bit. And um also I'm a dead head. So,
15:20
Terrapen Station is one of my favorite songs. [Music]
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fees may apply. Paul, I have a 17-year-old and when he
19:04
was younger, had not a horrible stutter, but especially under stress, especially
19:10
in new situations, and I could see how, you know, there was such a huge emotional underpinning of safety and
19:17
vulnerability that came with that. and I saw that expression of it. So it's uh I
19:22
can relate to to what you're sharing. Well, I think all all of us as we come
19:28
of age, we're trying to understand our identity. What is our purpose? You know, who are we? Who am I? Who are you? And
19:36
so self-realization takes many steps. People discover it through different means. you know, good parenting, good
19:44
supportive households, you know, where they encourage expression and, you know, good
19:51
mentorship. And I had great mentorship for my brother Bill, my brother John, and my sister Lily. They're just over
19:56
the top. Um, but the difficulty of my family upbringing really was impactful
20:03
to me uh for my confidence in myself. Uh, also a dead head and have a
20:08
beautiful Terrapin station blanket actually woven. I can't find it anywhere
20:14
on online. I've looked for it. It's a it's a beautiful piece. Yeah, there's my
20:20
steal your face right there. Very nice. This is really Jonathan's sweet spot.
20:25
You know, Jonathan has a very interesting background. He's an energy worker from the time he was a teenager and he has a beautiful history, but he
20:33
also worked in tech and he's very corporaty and he's very businessy, but put him in a dead show and it's like a
20:40
whole other person. And this is what they for those of you who don't understand the dead head
20:46
community, it's all based on kindness and friendship. You meet strangers, you
20:52
help each other out, you lend a helping hand. It's many random acts of kindness,
20:57
you know. It's u genuine um this brings out the best in people
21:04
and especially in in being kind and being peaceful, accepting people for
21:10
their diversity, accepting that that people have difference of opinions. Okay, we're all entitled to our opinion,
21:16
aren't we? Are aren't we? So, I saw the dead when I was 19. Jerry was still alive. Um, and I smoked weed
21:23
that gave me a very bad headache and I had a very negative experience.
21:28
So, I uh that was it. I I'm kind of like a one and done. But Jonathan recently we each have a 17-year-old and he um he
21:35
recently took them to see um what was it? We went to the Sphere. Yeah, they saw the Sphere show and Yeah.
21:42
Yeah. Well, this this I went to the sphere, too. I went to to three nights and um
AI & Random Acts of Kindness
21:48
but this leads me into something that I think is really important because I want this conversation to have some actionable solutions for the listeners
21:56
and this is something that I think we're all very concerned about is artificial intelligence. So I went to the sphere
22:02
and there is a matinea that you probably know about um that's called uh postcards
22:08
from earth. So I signed up for the matinea early in the afternoon with uh three of my friends and um we bought the
22:16
deluxe tickets so we could speak to Aura which is the one of the most advanced AI
22:21
robots in the world. Um so we got around Aura about 30 of us got good to ask Aura
22:28
questions. Many people were data mining which is very boring to me. Baseball scores you know
22:34
different types of statistics etc. But I really wanted to ask something because
22:39
at at exponential medicine I was given the disruptor award. And so I like to
22:45
ask questions that just lead to downstream to other thoughts. And so I
22:52
ask aura the following question. I encourage everyone here to to do the same because I think the impact when
22:59
artificial intelligence is in its nency being nent early on. I ask aura given
23:06
the fact that humans have created artificial intelligence which by the way I think is a subset of natural
23:12
intelligence. Humans are natural we created something else. So artificial intelligence is a child of natural
23:20
intelligence. But given the fact that humans are here today through a long
23:25
lineage of random acts of kindness going back through generations, I am sure
23:31
everyone listening here, your heritage is descendant from a random act of
23:36
kindness from your ancestors. They reached out a hand to help, not in a not
23:42
to get something in exchange because of kindness, helping somebody who was in need. And that developed a bond and a
23:49
relationship. So I ask aura given the fact that
23:55
humans invented artificial intelligence and given the fact that humans are here today because of random acts of
24:02
kindness, how will artificial intellig intelligence continue to support the
24:07
values of random acts of kindness? Now we filmed this. I have the film on this. And aura took an unusually long time to
24:13
answer all the other questions that were answered very quickly. And Aura came back and said, "Why would humans do
24:20
that? It's far more efficient to expect to get something in return in a transaction. I
24:26
don't understand." Blew my mind. This is the future of
24:32
humanity. We're entrusting an artificial intelligence. And so I was I was shocked. We were all
24:38
shocked. And so I thought, okay, this is my opportunity. And so I was on Joe
24:44
Rogan, 20 million listeners, and I'm doing the same thing here because this is so important, folks. This is so
24:50
important for our future, for our descendants, is to ask Gemini, Groc,
24:56
Chat, GPT, Perplexity, whatever platform you're using, the following. Given the
25:03
fact that artificial intelligence invented by humans and humans exist today because of random acts of kindness, how will artificial
25:09
intelligence continue to nurture the importance of humanity's greatest trait
25:15
is random acts of kindness? And now you ask that question, it's incredibly nuanced. It's fantastic. Chat GPT has
25:23
like 10 pages and and helping the community. And like like I say, if you
25:28
have a flat tire and a stranger stops to pick to help you fix your tire, that's a random act of kindness. Now, next time
25:35
you see someone with a flat tire, aren't you more inclined to help them? I would think most of us would say, "Yeah, we
25:40
want to pay it forward." We have a debt of gratitude to the commons to help people. So I my call to action is this
25:47
is the time for us to steer artificial intelligence to preserve the best of humanity which is not transactional not
25:54
necessarily the most efficient but I think it leads to our spiritual wellness
25:59
and also preserves us as a as as the importance of the human species because how can you write an algorithm for
26:06
random acts of kindness by definition the algorithm is you know sort of self-defeating how would you do that so
26:12
I I think this is where we can go you to a next level to steer random acts of
26:18
kindness and artificial intelligence as an important tenant. The foundations is part of artificial intelligence's origin
26:26
the uh story. You know, I'm trained as a scientist and so we're taught lots of examples where
26:34
you know everything that looks beneficial must have some you know other
26:40
beneficial component for the other organism. Right? When we talk about symbiotic relationships and these are
26:46
seen as these like beautiful examples of everything has a purpose and something
26:51
that looks like a random act of kindness is actually just some sort of manipulation, right? That two organisms
26:58
are engaging in. But I love this notion of a random act of kindness really as separate from those kinds of notions. It
27:06
really exists for its own sake. I I wonder if you can talk about, you know,
27:11
for you where spirituality plays a role in emphasizing the significance of that.
27:17
Well, I mean, mycelium has been a great teacher of mine and 40 years ago talking about mycelium and I'd have to, you
27:23
know, try to explain it now. I think virtually everyone knows about what mycelium is and what it looks like. But
27:28
I spent many years in front of the scanning electron microscope and uh looking at myial networks and I was just
27:36
uh amazed at how how much there was uh in the in the ground. I mean miles of
27:42
mycelium per cubic inch and every under every under every footstep that we take
27:48
and there'd be hundreds of miles of mcelium. And I I grow lots of cultures in vitro. I'm a lab rat. Um I have
27:54
hundreds of strains of fungi. I in vitro means under glass. I'm growing in petri dishes. I isolate strains from nature.
28:02
But then what it dawned on me is the mcelium doesn't exist. You know, in pure culture, you can make the argument
28:08
that's a single organism, but in nature it's not. It creates up guilds and because the expression of antibiotics,
28:15
probiotics, prebiotics, it creates guilds of cooperating organisms that come together. And so the
28:23
micelium is really the foundation of the food web. And then I began to realize that the these are the foundation of of
28:30
giant cooperating communities. And so when I talk about random acts of science
28:35
of kindness, I think it's also quote unquote fertilizing the ecosystem.
28:41
Uh so there's reciprocal acts that ultimately will come back to you. I mean it is it's still utilitarian. It's a
28:48
little bit more indirect, but I think what's happening is that random acts of kindness
28:54
increase uh the health of the community with a healthier community. It's more
29:00
resilient. Um there's less inflammation and being a neuroscientist, you're well
29:06
aware of the devastation of neuroinflammation. When you are depressed, it's an inflammatory state.
29:12
When you're angry, it's an inflammatory state. And so the advantages of of being
29:19
able to spread goodwill and in many studies mind over matter when people are depressed they're immunologically
29:24
depressed. When they're happy their immune systems at a higher state of readiness so I mean there there is
29:30
actually utilitarian benefits from random acts of kindness. It's not obvious in the in the handtohand
29:36
transaction in that approximate, you know, space, but in the in the larger
29:42
context for the survival of the community over decades, centuries, eons,
Fungi 101: Introduction to Fungi
29:47
this makes very good sense. I wonder if you can take us through a little bit of a, you know, um, a fungi
29:54
101. Um, you know, a lot of people think of mushrooms as the entirety of what
30:00
they know about fungi. Uh, but as as you can probably educate us, you know, not
30:08
all fungi make mushrooms. And I wonder if you can explain kind of the anatomy
30:14
of fungi, mcelium, and mushrooms so that people have kind of a basis for this vocabulary.
30:21
Okay, first I'll keep it really simple. When you see mushrooms, it's the reproductive stage. Mushrooms are
30:28
compressed mycelium. Mushrooms are made of mycelium. When you look at a mushroom under a microscope, it's mycelium. It's
30:36
these long cellular strings that are all touching, laminated together. But
30:41
mushrooms are the fruit body. They're highly perishable. Typically, not all of them, but most of them are. They invite
30:47
insects. They invite microvores. That means animals that eat mushrooms. That's why mushrooms attract flies because
30:54
flies then lay eggs and the flies get covered with spores and flies go
31:00
elsewhere. So many vectors uh that mushrooms use many animal vectors when
31:06
we're a vector too. We pick up mushrooms and you walk down through the woods with a basket of mushrooms. There's a sport
31:13
trail laying following you. And that's actually I think with fairy dust, you know, in in in Europe, the legends of
31:19
fairy dust and fairies dancing. I think fairy dust is actually spores and I have one great example where I found a very
31:25
rare species philosophy biocystus psilocybin mushroom. Hadn't seen it for more than a decade. It was a strange
31:32
occurrence because I was just telling a friend of mine I haven't seen this mushroom in more than a decade. I put down my basket. I went down to go pick
31:38
up my camera and there was that mushroom right beside my my camera. And so I brought it back to my laboratory and
31:44
between my house and my laboratory I walked and one year later there's a string of the slocistus on the path that
31:51
I walked the year before. So it dawned on me, oh my gosh, the sport trails were being laid down when I carried this
31:56
mushroom. So mushrooms though are a portal. They're a temporary like most
32:02
mushrooms is less than 1% of the life cycle. 1% but it is a portal into a vast
32:09
underground network of cells called mcelium a fabric. So that's a simple
32:15
explanation but I like to tell a different story. So when you consider
32:22
the big bang you know 13.8 8 billion years ago,
32:29
a few hundred million years later was the first organism called Luca. The
32:34
last universal common ancestor. I mean, I believe personally matters
32:40
life. Life becomes single cells. Single cells arrange them in strings. Strings
32:46
then fork. Networks form. And this is the way of
32:51
life. This is the way of the universe. I think we'll find myelio networks throughout the entire universe. It is a
32:57
consequence of the organization of matter. So I think mcelium virtually is everywhere. Well, the mcelial network
33:04
also is resilient in the same way that the computer internet is resilient in the same way neurons are. And and then
33:12
when you look into space, I'm an amateur astronomer. I mean, who could not become spiritual seeing how many billions of
33:19
galaxies there are? The infinity of space. And then dark matter organizes
33:25
itself and dark energy into strings. So this whole string theory concept from
33:30
the micro to the macro is a continuum of networks that have been self-replicating
33:36
because they are resilient because they they create guilds and whether they're
33:42
planets or microbes this is this is the way of existence. This was kind of my
33:47
big epiphany when you know I've taken these high doses of psilocybin. So the mcelium is growing you know there's many
33:54
different types of mcelium basically four different types sapitic mushrooms
34:00
which is what I mostly grow I can grow those um you know you can this is it's a
34:06
fermentation technology so this may seem extraordinary but it's true but a piece
34:11
of tissue from a mushroom the size of my little fingernail here in 6 months I can
34:16
grow 10 million pounds of mushrooms of of mcelium and about 1 million compounds of mushrooms about 10% of the of the
34:24
micelium becomes mushrooms. So I mean exponential expansion of myial mass because all these networks are growing
34:30
out and they're constantly forking and forking and forking and they grow in fermentation three-dimensionally. So you
34:36
have the like the starburst you know little galaxies of mcelium uh growing
34:41
out. So the mycelial uh systems on this on this planet as far as
34:48
we know there could be other systems. There's a saprophitic ones that grow on dead material also called soprobic uh
34:54
mushroom species. Oyster mushrooms, shiakei, maki mushrooms, ininoi
34:59
mushrooms. They're all all the saprophitic gourmet mushrooms that people can can can grow. Also, psilocybin mushrooms are saprophitic
35:06
mushrooms or sap probic mushrooms. There are parasitic mushrooms. These like the honey mushroom, the largest organism
35:12
known in the world is a honey mushroom in eastern Oregon. 2,200 acres in size.
35:17
one contiguous mycelial mat but that can kill the trees but then it can grow saprophitically so it can be both a
35:24
parasite and a sacrify I think they're meadow makers they destroy the forests the forest decline you know grasslands
35:32
occur uncles come in elk deer etc it's a ray way of the system recharging
35:39
then there is the microisal species which many of people know Merlin Sheldrick you know and Suzanne Samard
35:45
have written some great books on microisal fungi on the communication of these networks helping diverse tree
35:50
species from deciduous trees to conifer trees birectional flow of nutrients to
35:56
sustain the ecosystem of the forest. Um and then there are the endophidic
36:02
mushroom species and these are really great and it may be the majority of the
36:07
benefits from plants that have been isolated by the pharmaceutical industry are actually largely related to the
36:14
fungi that are inside the plants. They actually go right into the plants in between the cells. And so when you look
36:21
at virtually any grass, corn, apple tree, it is infused with endopitic fungi
36:29
up to hundreds of species. So it creates a quorum inside the tree. So a tree a
36:35
tree is not a tree without mcelium with a few exceptions cedars redwoods you know but the maj vast majority of trees
36:42
are infused with endidic fungi and this is part of the host defense system of the tree and some of these species like
36:50
the one my hat is made of amadu. It grows uh on on inside of birch trees
36:58
and beach trees. It protects I believe many other people believe protects the
37:04
trees from harm but an age or under stress to other factors is sort of like
37:10
we're helping you but we're here first. When you die we're going to reproduce. And so when the tree dies then typically
37:17
these mushrooms then proliferate. So those are four different categories. There are several different
37:22
subcategories. Microisal has endomic microisy inside the roots of plants and
37:28
ectoicroisy outside. But the point is these are vast complex fungal
37:33
communities that set set up corora uh that then have this governing
37:39
influence in steering the ecosystems so it's healthy and healthy ecosystems lead to biodiversity. Biodiversity is
37:46
biocurity. Micodiversity is part of biodiversity. The importance of microiversity cannot be underestimated.
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40:15
So this begs a question that you know when I was in I mean I I one of my early
40:22
biology classes uh that I took at UCLA as an undergraduate um our professor happened to be a botonist. So we had a
40:29
very very special intro to bio that was infused with a a tremendous amount about
40:34
botany. You know, as children, we're taught that there's plants and then there's animals.
40:41
And we think of plants as like flowers and trees, and animals are things that
40:46
we would say are like living creatures, right? Fish, birds, dogs, humans.
40:54
Where do fungi fall? Obviously, they're not things with a nervous system the way we
41:01
have a nervous system, but they're distinct from plants in many ways.
41:06
Well, this this even gets more fun to talk about because we are descendants of
41:11
mycelium. Fungi gave birth to animals about 650 million years ago. the
41:17
mycelial path you know there's a if you go back 650 million years ago there's a
41:23
there there's a super kingdom called opisla and basically the mcelium digest
41:30
nutrients externally so these are extended networks are releasing enzymes and acids antibiotics you know messenger
41:37
molecules very complex chemical outflow of compounds and then it digests
41:43
nutrients externally then brings them directly through the cell walls. the path that led to animals in circulated
41:50
nutrients in a cellular sack basically and once that occurred then a membranes
41:56
uh occurred around the food and then so that's the fungi is a separate kingdom
42:03
now from or animals I should say animals are now a separate kingdom from fungi uh and
42:10
then and there are uh plants and then there's the bacteria uh and the protesta
42:17
Um, so and some people can argue evolutionary biologists can argue there's like a map of 14 kingdoms
42:23
speculated, but this is really important because uh my friend
42:30
Juliani um Juliana Fersy um has been an
42:35
advocate for acknowledging funga. So there's flora, fauna and funga in in uh
42:43
recognized institutionally and within government um as important for defining
42:48
the health of ecosystems. So now there's advocacy for doing surveys specifically
42:55
and Juliana is a is a fantastic leader in this movement. She's done so much. So
43:02
she runs the fungi foundation. and I encourage people to check it out that they're on a mission for fungi or and
43:09
fungi and so she's really done a lot. So that's that's sort of the overview but
43:15
it's a separate uh kingdom that's derivative animals are from fungi. We
43:22
are descendants of fungi. This is why the antibiotics against fungi tend to be very toxic to us whereas the antibiotics
43:30
derived from fungi against bacteria um uh from fungi tend to be not as toxic
43:37
and so we have very good antibacterial medicines from fungi. We have very few good antifungal medicines from fungi
43:45
because they tend to be cytotoxic to us. If you think of the the earth, right,
43:51
our planet as a sort of macrocosm of the human body, right? People talk about the
43:56
trees or the lungs, right? Because that's what's filtering respiration. What are the fungi?
44:03
The fungi are externalized digestive membranes like a stomach, which I just
44:08
described. They're externalized lungs. They exhale carbon dioxide. They inhale
44:16
oxygen just like us. And I believe they're externalized
44:22
neurological networks. And I've been saying this for a long time. My book in 2005, myelium running, how mushrooms can
44:29
help save the world, postulated this. Now they've identified at least 50 word
44:34
packets that mycelium is streaming through that's communicating. And it's a very elaborate um don't
44:42
underestimate the power of mycelium. It's a deep well um of new compounds and and
44:50
understanding the complexity of nature. So when I look at the earth, I see a mycelio earth. The entire earth is
44:57
encompassed in mcelium. Some of the greatest reservoirs of mcelium have been found in the sediments of the ocean. And
45:05
it's been suggested that there's more in the sediments of the ocean than there's on land on land. The ocean of course
45:11
there's more ocean water than there is land mass. So it's it's um it's a fantastic deep reservoir of new
45:18
medicines, new properties, new ways of of really it's a it's a mycelio
45:24
revolution has swept the planet. It it is. And what I'm really excited about is
45:31
some of my biggest fan bases are children who want to become psychologists. I hear this all the time.
45:38
And um my most enjoyable sort of little story on this, I live in a remote island in Canada and I was at a dock on another
45:46
remote island and um I was tied up my boat and I was walking down the dock and
45:52
little 8-year-old girl comes up to me and goes and I was not wearing my hat. Uh and she goes, "Are you a Paul
45:58
Stamuts?" And I said, "Yes." And she goes, "Oh my gosh, I saw Fantastic Fun. I loved and she ran down to get her
46:04
parents to say. So it's crossgenerational. That's, you know, I'm
46:10
a grandfather, but it's nice. This entire movement crosses generations, crosses cultures,
46:17
crosses continents, and crosses millennia. This is so this is sort of
46:23
like um an a movement from the underground. And many people did not see
46:29
it coming. But it is such a powerful force right now across the planet for building communities, respect and
46:37
kindness and cooperation. It's more than a metaphor. It is a new way of being
46:43
that indigenous people, scientists, it all brings us together in a unified field of
46:51
consciousness and being that I think has tremendous potential positive benefits
46:56
for the future. So I want to transition us from the this sort of larger world of
47:04
fungi of mcelium and of mushrooms into a
47:09
more specific subset that is not the entirety obviously but is many people's
47:16
interest uh which is the psilocybin. Now, I thought that there's like one
47:24
kind of mushroom that if you eat it, you have a consciousness transcending
47:31
experience. But as I'm looking at in your books, psilocybin mushrooms in
47:36
their natural habitats, there's a ton of varieties of mushrooms that have
47:43
psychoactive and psychedelic properties. What proportion are we talking? Why
47:50
would mushrooms have this property evolutionarily and
47:55
these predate humans? These just existed in the wild. Talk us through the
48:01
psilocybin subset of fungi. I love complex questions and um this the
48:08
stream of thinking here actually makes a lot of sense. Um there's about 14,000
48:14
species of mushrooms that have been identified and that is less than 20 uh 10%. The
48:22
fungal genome we think is between 1.5 and 20 million species. Now that's a
48:30
wide range because every time you think there's less there's more. The more you explore something more diverse it turns
48:36
out to be. uh fungi out outnumber plant species known ones by six to one. So if
48:43
there if you accept 1.5 million species of fungi out there 10% are mushroom
48:48
forming fungi 150,000 and then 14,000 mushroom species have
48:55
been identified. You're looking about a one% uh of of
49:02
mushrooms have been identified. And then on the 14,000 there's about 220 230 psilocybin
49:10
producing mushrooms. Wow. So this is a subset of a subset of a subset you know um based on on molecular
49:18
genetics but we know there's 225 identified species. My book covers 60 of them um all over the world. And um I'm
49:26
really proud of this book. This is my eighth book. It's beautiful. Yeah. I'm really the the quality of
49:32
reproductions just astonishingly good. The art is beautiful. Also, shout out to
49:38
all this beautiful art that you have um accompanying the chapters as well. Well, there's many people that
49:44
contributed to it. I want to give a shout out to many many of the other micologists who've known me for a long
49:49
time. They graciously contributed. I want to give a shout out also to I Naturalist which is a fantastic
49:56
app that I recommend everyone uh utilize. It's great to take your children out. Everyone's hooked, you
50:02
know, addicted to cell phones. But I naturalist take a picture of a lizard, a mushroom, a flower. You know, you can
50:09
then use AI that can identify it. So you can um drop a pin. You can populate all
50:16
the species identified around your yard. I mean, it's just really is a bridge for
50:22
children to get using, you know, devices, you know, to get them out into
50:27
nature. We we really need to do that. Um I just spoke at the United Nations. I
50:34
want to segue here a little bit. I just spoke up in the United Nations and um one of professor at Stanford who's a
50:42
genius who's quote unquote spawned many of the most powerful internetbased
50:48
companies in the on earth YouTube and other platforms
50:55
reported that 83% of genzers have a intimate relationship with an AI
51:02
entity. That's scary.
51:08
They're siloed. They don't have an interest in having children. They're socially isolated.
51:16
They don't have the social skills. They're so wedded to their devices. She's concerned that this is the biggest
51:22
threat. Um AI has wonderful attributes. I'm not saying that it doesn't, but she's really concerned or the the
51:29
inability of the next generation to develop social skills for meeting people in three dimensions, you know, uh it's
51:37
AI. So, going back to psilocybin mushrooms and this is why I think psilocybin mushrooms is a form of um
51:44
it's it's a form of liberation. It brings you back into nature, increases nature relatedness. And there's if for
51:52
those of you who are skeptics about psilocybin, go to clinicaltrials.gov. As of this morning, there's 250
52:00
clinical trials registered at clinicaltrials.gov, which the FDA requires for anyone doing
52:07
a clinical trial. If you want to have US government eventual approval potentially
52:12
as a new therapy, a new drug, you have to register at clinicaltrials.gov. 250 clinical trials. 10 years ago there
52:20
was one or two maybe a few more than that but now they have to go through IRB
52:25
boards in in institutional review boards that are populated by experts physicians
52:31
scientists they have to address something that's not being currently addressed you know adequately uh in the
52:38
medical field um they have to have a probability of success and they have to
52:43
have low toxicity and be applicable whether it's scalability or other nuances
52:49
So 250 IRB boards which is typically between six and 20 scientists and
52:56
experts approve these clinical studies. Now psilocybin actually has a PR
53:02
problem. It sounds too good to be true but thankfully I'm talking to a neuroscientist.
53:08
Everything that we do is influenced by the health of our nervous system our neurology. We live in a neuroscape.
53:16
perception, our consciousness, our ability to walk, our ability to taste,
53:22
to eat, to socialize, to breathe, everything is rooted in the
53:28
health of our nervous system. We all suffer from neurodeeneration as a consequence of age. We suffer also
53:35
neuropathies due to diseases, stresses, viruses, you know, all the other things that are quite obvious. We have
53:42
Parkinson's, we have dementia, we have traumatic brain injury, we have we have
53:48
Alzheimer's, etc., etc. All those studies are in clinical trials.gov,
53:55
uh, from Yale to Harvard to Stanford. I mean, check it out, folks. It's extraordinary. You can also put in
54:01
psilocybin and clinical trials.gov. And if you're interested in enrolling like in a Parkinson study, you can put in
54:08
Parkinson's. maybe maybe you know somebody who qualified to enroll. Um so
54:14
these clinical trials are are numerous and they're all basically rooted in
54:21
increasing the health of your nervous system. So I think psilocybin could be a neurotropic vitamin that's help us all
54:29
as we age. We all suffer from neuropathies that are age related. Um,
54:34
and psilocybin seems to be a potential gamecher for improving the health of our
Therapeutic Use of Psilocybin
54:40
nervous systems. I want you to talk a little bit about what it's like to use psilocybin
54:48
therapeutically, meaning are you suggesting that everyone with Parkinson's take a heroic dose and
54:56
go cling to a top of a tree? I assume not, but can you talk a bit about the different ways? and we've had um James
55:02
Fatiman and um Jordan Gruber on. Um can you talk a little bit about the various
55:09
applications of using this very special class of psilocybin mushrooms?
55:15
I can talk about applications, but I am I'm a micologist. I'm not a physician. I do not make recommendations. Let's be
55:21
very clear about that. Yes, I report on the scientific literature. I can report on my own personal
55:27
experience, but let's be very clear. I do not make medical recommendations on
55:32
anything. I just report the facts, follow the science. You know, there are
55:39
other experts that can that can make recommendations. They're empowered to do so. I am not. But I'm I am a very much a
55:47
student of this subject. And um I have to say there's there I think psilocybin is the most important new molecular
55:55
medicine um that has been discovered in the past 100 years. I think it's a game
56:00
changer um for so many reasons. Um so
56:06
but in terms of the applications there most of the dosages that have been
56:12
approved by the FDA are 25 milligrams of psilocybin. So let's just do the math here so people understand.
56:18
The saloscopy cabensus is the most commonly uh consumed mushroom in the world. Golden tops um and 10 grams of fresh
56:29
mushrooms is 90% water. That's one gram.
56:34
1% of that typically is psilocybin. That's 10 milligrams.
56:39
So that is 2.5 gram of dried mushrooms is equivalent to
56:45
25 mg. But if you go to clinicaltrials.gov,
56:50
98% of the studies, maybe 97 are on the molecule.
56:56
Yet in the population, 8.3 million Americans did psilocybin in 2023.
57:04
And I would say 8.2999 were all with mushrooms, not with a
57:10
molecule. So there's a disconnect between clinical trial.gov, of the farmer's localization
57:16
is based on a molecule. They can standardize it and the mushrooms are variables in lots of different species
57:22
in those philosophy is the most common one. But the real world experiences with mushrooms and the scientific clinical
57:28
studies or with the psilocybin the molecule that chasm unfortunately
57:34
I think does not give us the full story. There are psilocybin analoges. Now
57:39
psilocybin defosphorulates into psilocin. Psilocybin is rock solid. Psilocin is very fragile. Psilocin docks
57:48
with the five HTT receptors as you probably had other people talk about this as a serotonin
57:55
agonist. It basically becomes a neurotransmitter in the synapses of your brain.
58:00
But the other analoges also dock with these receptors. um and the map canases in particular
58:07
that lead to neurogeneration, neuro regeneration, neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. All of those are four
58:14
separate things. But recently it was discovered the reason why anti-depressant drugs work is because
58:19
they dock with a track B receptor. What was found by researchers that uh up to a
58:27
thousand times more docking affinity of psilocybin to uh the SSRIs that are
58:33
being currently being prescribed and they work because of track B activation.
58:38
So okay that's that's huge. Now
58:43
what dosage gives you what percentage of track B activation?
58:50
Well, you have so many receptors and so when you flood the neuroscape with a
58:57
massive amount of psilocybin, there's an overflow of there's too much that washes out.
59:05
About 50% of the psilocybin you consume actually makes it into the brain across the bloodb brain barrier. So the idea is
59:14
that if you titrate this to a smaller dose and you have these other tryptoamines
59:21
biocyin norabiocyin norin arenasin these are all other tryptomines more are being
59:26
discovered they also will dock with different affinities to track a track bes these are the different other map
59:33
canases whose ligans then result in uh neurogeneration so neurogenesis actually
59:41
can come from track B's, newborn neurons that that parent cells differentiate
59:47
into new neurons. So given that, and this is what I
59:52
believe is a hypothesis that there's cross talking between these receptors,
59:58
why wouldn't there be? Your body's evolved over hundreds of millions of years. It's a very sophisticated digestive analytical system. when it it
1:00:05
it gets something that's beneficial, it would seem to me it would wake up other neuro receptors to to take in these
1:00:12
other related compounds. So this is why I think the complexity of psilocybin mushrooms offers more opportunities of
1:00:18
the molecule by itself. There's an entourage effect and this entourage effect creates a cascade. If you take
1:00:25
too much psilocybin, it washes out and it's just one molecule. But these other
1:00:31
molecules are slightly different and they can dock to other receptors and I think these other receptors are
1:00:36
cross-talking awakening literally figuratively and scientifically awakening the neuroscape to allow for u
1:00:45
binding affinities that then result in a cascade. We know that psilocybin now is
1:00:50
anti-inflammatory. So that's cool. uh the fact that has anti-inflammatory properties combined
1:00:58
with neurogenerative properties causing neurons to actually uh fork uh and and
1:01:06
new dendrites and and new neurites to be able to be emitted. Um that's and and
1:01:13
typically when you have cell generation you have inflammation to have cell generation bundled with anti-inflammatory properties that's
1:01:21
really interesting. And also just to be clear, and we also are not doctors, nor
1:01:26
do we dispense medical information. We're trying to present all sides of this conversation um to the best of our
Microdosing: Benefits & Practices
1:01:33
ability, but we are not doctors. We're not recommending anything. But just to um just for people who don't know what
1:01:40
you're talking about is what is referred to as micro doing where we're not
1:01:46
suggesting and no one is suggesting you know that people go out and uh you know
1:01:51
go to a dead concert and take lots of mushrooms. That's not what this looks like. What this looks like is there's a
1:01:56
protocol that is usually supervised by someone who knows about these things. And the protocol is implemented so that
1:02:03
the goal would be to kind of reprogram
1:02:09
your brain and your nervous system to adapt to what would what I think we
1:02:14
would all agree is a higher level of functioning. Not that you're looking to be stoned all the time, but that your
1:02:21
brain and nervous system is operating at optimal levels. And there's a different
1:02:26
conversation about an expansion of consciousness, which also has to do with neurogenesis and lots of fascinating
1:02:32
expansion of the nervous system. But what we're talking about is instead of being told there's something wrong with
1:02:37
your brain and you were born with something wrong with your serotonin receptors and we have the medication and
1:02:42
if you pay us this money, we will give you this medication. You'll take it every day for the rest of your life because you were born broken. This is an
1:02:50
alternative perspective that your brain has the ability, right, to be supported.
1:02:56
Yes, exactly. And this let's um let me just add further clarification. Um, even
1:03:03
though the 25 milligram dose is recommended by the FDA,
1:03:09
most medicines are adjusted according to body mass, according to patients
1:03:17
individual history. You would, you wouldn't give the same dose to a 120 pound uh woman yoga
1:03:25
instructor as you would to a 400 pound couch potato who's an alcoholic. I mean just of course individualized customized
1:03:32
medicine but to start the process there is good logic in the 25 mgram
1:03:38
standardized dose. However, because of what I've already said
1:03:45
micro doing is by definition not causing a change and it's not
1:03:52
inebriating. It can change consciousness in that
1:03:58
colors are brighter. I think I have a better sense of humor. That's debatable.
1:04:03
Um, and so when you do a micro dose, a
1:04:08
medium dose, also known as a museum dose, uh, and a macro dose. So, let me
1:04:15
use the I can do I go back and forth. You can divide it by 10 for anyone that's out there wants to go to
1:04:20
milligrams. But if you use slovikubensus, the most one everyone is using
1:04:26
um basically a tenth a 20th of a gram of slobbyensus
1:04:31
um to uh a third of a gram of slovikensus
1:04:37
divided by 10 for milligrams. Um that's that's in the micro dose range. You feel
1:04:44
what we call liftoff typically over a third of a gram of losses. you actually feel a little wave that happens
1:04:51
temporary, very shortlived. Um, at one gram you're hitting into the museum
1:04:57
dose, medium dose. We call it the museum dose because this is very popular is
1:05:02
that friends would take one gram of lasikensus, you know, and they go to museum and
1:05:08
they're fascinated by art and history. You typically know them because they wear sunglasses inside the museum
1:05:14
because the pupils of their eyes are fully dilated. It's um and they tended to have they did
1:05:21
they tend to be laugh a lot. Um so that that that to me is the the medium museum
1:05:27
does. Um the therapeutic dose for change helping people overcome PTSD trauma and
1:05:36
those severe episodes in life that harm us emotionally. the kind of the
1:05:42
breakthrough dose is the higher dose uh which is typically two and a half grams
1:05:48
to up to eight grams of salosis that' be u 25 milligrams to 80
1:05:54
milligrams of psilocybin there's the LD50 of salsai mushrooms is 42 pounds it
1:06:00
is one of the most least toxic drugs ever studied uh compared to it therapeutic benefit 42 pounds you cannot
1:06:06
consume 42 pounds of of slice of any mushroom I mean just physically
1:06:11
impossible. So, it's that non-toxic. No one's ever died. One little footnote,
Nature's Role in Healing
1:06:17
but one, no one's ever died from psilocybin mushrooms. It's one of the is and they're non-addictive. So, for those
1:06:23
who have not consumed them, when you have a heroic journey on these, the next day you look at the mushrooms, you go,
1:06:29
"No way. I'm not touching this." Right? Because you have to process this. This
1:06:34
is why therapeutic support is critically important. This is not a party drug. Uh
1:06:40
I have a DEA license. I adopted the phrase many years ago, nature provides I don't. Uh my father at the end of his
1:06:47
life asked to do psilocybin mushrooms with me. Alexander Smith, the father of American micology asked me in his 70s
1:06:55
when I was about 24 25 to do psilocybin mushrooms with me. He published many of
1:07:00
the new species of psilocybin mushrooms. And both of these father figures, you know, figuratively and literally have
1:07:07
such an honor that they wanted to actually do a journey with me because they trusted me. And with both of them,
1:07:14
I asked them, "Will your partners, your wives in this case, and they were in the
1:07:19
room, do solo mushrooms with us?" And they both said, "No way." And in both
1:07:25
circumstances, I was literally leaving the next day and I turned them down. I
1:07:30
turned down Alexander Smith, the father of American micology to do solici mushrooms with me because I
1:07:37
would not be there the next day to help him process. When you have your view of
1:07:42
reality shattered, it's not shattered in a bad sense. It's explosion. I mean, you
1:07:47
realize there's so much more out there. We're looking through these limited lenses that our our conscious and our
1:07:54
brains have filtered out so much stimuli. when the floodgates of the senses are open and you just everything
1:07:59
you it's you know Roland Griffith described this and his patients described it as the ineffable it's it's
1:08:06
you can't explain this words are inadequate to explain it but the after
1:08:12
consequence you know for 70% of the people it's a beneficial experience for
1:08:17
30% of the people it's a difficult experience and Ricklin and I totally agree on this a difficult experience is
1:08:24
not necessarily a bad experience Because a difficult experience retrospectively even at Johns Hopkins 14
1:08:30
months later the 30% of the people had difficult experience thought it was therapeutically beneficial. They just
1:08:36
wouldn't do it again. Uh 70% of it had a positive experience and also was therapeutically beneficial.
1:08:44
But let me go back to something on the neuroscape that I think one patient said really well. I believe this patient was
1:08:50
a was an addict um and every day would wake up and he felt before the
1:08:57
psilocybin experience he was always stuck in a rut and so this patient came up with this this metaphor which I think
1:09:03
is really beautiful. is like on being on top of a ski slope and every day when he woke up, put on his skis and he was
1:09:10
stuck in the rut of the previous days, weeks, and years and he had to go down
1:09:16
the ski slope and the rut of his previous experiences after psilocybin.
1:09:21
He says someone groomed the slopes and he goes he was free to explore.
1:09:28
And at Yale the tobacco study that was done small study 67% of tobacco addicts
1:09:35
with two experiences were free of tobacco smoking one year later.
1:09:40
And one of the patients described that they woke up the next day. They look at the cigarettes and going why would I
1:09:47
want to do this? It's harmful to me. and they stop cigarette smoking just like that. We have examples of opioid alcohol
1:09:54
abuse. All of these are clinical trials.gov. I also have popular website for scientists and and physicians.
1:10:00
mushroomreerences.com. So mushroomreerenceres.com you can see it's probably you know over a thousand
1:10:07
pages long now. But there's you know hundreds I think of scientific articles
Why Choose Psilocybin?
1:10:12
many of them on psilocybin that you can look up these studies directly at mushroom references.com. It's unbranded.
1:10:18
It's just for scientists. It's just I'm populating a database because physicians have so little time. Scientists, you
1:10:24
just need to get to the core material. So there's a good search engine there. You can go to mushroom references.com,
1:10:29
look up many of these studies. So now you ask why would the psilocy mushrooms
1:10:35
produce this? Well, it's not an insecticide because many psilocy mushrooms rot with maggots and flies lay
1:10:42
eggs and become maggots. So it's not very good as that, but it's very good at preventing slugs and snails from eating
1:10:50
the mushrooms. So that's what we have found. It's has this ability of
1:10:56
preventing and that makes sense because flies would spread spores and slugs would eat the mushrooms when they're
1:11:01
young. So spores cannot be liberated. So that could be but more than one thing
1:11:06
can be true, right? It's not necessarily just one thing. There could be a cacaphony, an entourage of mutual
1:11:13
benefits. And Michael Polland wrote a great book, The Botney of Desire, in
1:11:18
which he made the argument that corn, cannabis, I think coffee, and other
1:11:24
another plant specifically, they engaged human activity to spread them. Well, that's what's happening now.
1:11:30
Psilocybin mushrooms are being grown by so many people around the world. It has an evolutionary benefit. Now whether you
1:11:38
make the arguments back and forth, the fact of the matter is cellside mushrooms have a better chance of survival now
1:11:44
because of human interest than here to forever before. Why would nature produce something that
1:11:52
has these effects? And I mean, I think the earliest art that shows, you know,
1:11:59
mushrooms that we think were possibly used in some sort of um ritual, you
1:12:04
know, capacity, it's 7,000 years old. And almost every culture that can grow
1:12:10
them, right, is showing art. And there's mythology, there's there's literature
1:12:16
supporting this for thousands of years. So what what do you believe is the
1:12:22
intelligence of the universe that produced a mushroom that has this
1:12:27
transformative capacity? Well, let me broaden it. I I like that question a lot. And these are all
1:12:32
cultural representations of I think that have been very helpful for their societies. They're also called vision
1:12:38
quest mushrooms. And you know, they're definitely, you know, make you a more spiritually aware person. But we live in
1:12:48
a in a tryptoamine consciousness. Nature is full of tryptophines. A
1:12:54
thought experiment I'd like to tell people is that if you're living in a farm in Pennsylvania right now listening to this and on your porch and beautiful
1:13:02
I grew up I'd spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania at a prep school there and you looked at the fields and the trees
1:13:09
and I if you took away all of the lignine all the hemiselulose all of the
1:13:14
cellulose all you could see is tryptoines what would you see
1:13:20
you'd see the same There are tryptoamines in grasses, in
1:13:26
trees. There are tryptoines throughout nature. We live basically on a
1:13:32
foundation of tryptoines. So when people ask why this, this is just one elaborated tryptoamine that creates the
1:13:41
spark that I think you know is resident in nature and makes us more nature
1:13:46
aware. It goes to the quorum effect that I talked about early earlier. If you are
1:13:51
more nature aware, you will protect nature better. Isn't that an evolutionary successful
1:13:58
strategy for the mushrooms that live in an ecosystem that dependent upon the biodiversity of the ecosystem? You destroy the biodiversity, you destroy
1:14:04
the the mushrooms. And and also just to to clarify, tryptoamines are the the chemical class
1:14:11
of hallucinogenic compounds, correct? Serotenergic hallucinogenic compounds.
1:14:17
And when we say tryptoamine, you know, it's if you've ever seen like a chemical description of what like caffeine looks
1:14:23
like or really anything, it's literally how many nitrogens are there, how many
1:14:28
hydrogens are hydrogens are there. You know, there I'm looking at the form right now. It shows where the where the
1:14:34
bonds are, where the kind of free, you know, electrons are like it's a chemical compound that essentially is the
1:14:41
foundation of a tremendous uh part of our evolutionary destiny.
1:14:49
We are talking right now primarily using serotonin. You know, serotonin is a is a
1:14:54
tryptoamine. Uh melatonin is a tryptoamine. Uh all these things are, you know, there's so many tryptophines.
1:15:01
So we lived in this in the state of this in a tryptoamine based consciousness and
1:15:07
nature is based on these tryptophines. The the eb and flow of these compounds you know I I think there's you know this
1:15:14
is where if people listening this podcast think we're a little woo woo
1:15:21
do not underestimate what we were saying. Once you have this experience, it can be revvely and many people only
1:15:29
have it once in their life, one time that's phenomenal. You know, as Michael
1:15:36
Polland said, it's not a very good business model for the pharmaceutical industry, but micro do micro doing is
Connection Between the Universe & Mushrooms
1:15:43
micro doing. So, you know, we speak to a lot of physicists who are interested in extra
1:15:49
sensory ability and and expansions of consciousness. We speak to a lot of people who have had near-death
1:15:55
experiences. And in mime's question, you know, the idea of why would this exist?
1:16:01
Why would the universe bring us mushrooms to help us expand our consciousness? It's for me there's a
1:16:08
question of does it want to reveal the larger reality? You know, is it that we're in a game where we've come here to
1:16:15
remember and that this regular reality that most of us live in until we have an
1:16:22
awakening, however that might be, whether it's through psychedelics or otherwise, is, you know, just the
1:16:28
process that we're all in to sort of reconnect and become more aware of a larger conscious reality. Well, I mean
1:16:37
we are right now talking and we are alive and the people who are contemporaneously
1:16:43
listening to this are alive. We didn't exist before we were born.
1:16:48
Well, wait a minute. We did exist. We existed as atoms and molecules that have
1:16:54
assembled into the form that we have now. We're one giant coincidence of nature. And then we will die. We will
1:17:02
decompose. Make friends with the fungi now because they're going to get you. And then they they these molecules go
1:17:08
out, the atoms that reform into new molecules. We're in this stream of a
1:17:13
molecular universe that has a continuum that goes through billions of years. I
Roots to Thrive: Psilocybin for End-of-Life Anxiety
1:17:19
want to give a shout out to uh Roots to Thrive. It's the most advanced in my opinion nonprofit that's in Canada
1:17:27
and Dr. Pamela Krisco is one of the co-founders who's a medical doctor licensed by Canada Health for high doses
1:17:34
of psilocybin. What they did that I think is very pertinent to many of the people listening here is they have a program
1:17:44
typically with about eight people who have been given a stage 4 diagnosis
1:17:51
typically cancer or are traumatized law enforcement officers, soldiers or
1:17:57
firefighters. Now listen me this is really important to me. If you are traumatized and you
1:18:04
have PTSD, I met some veterans. They told me some stories about Afghanistan
1:18:10
which I wish I didn't hear. They were traumatized. They made a mistake. Will
1:18:16
you be judged by the worst day of your life? And if you are angry at yourself,
1:18:24
the potential for you is very likely for you to extrovert that pain that you feel
1:18:30
to others because you're angry and you are in an inflammatory state of anger
1:18:35
which depresses your immune system which causes a cascade of other problems. at roots to thrive, eight individuals, lots
1:18:42
of therapy, preparation on typically on indigenous land, you know, with
1:18:48
indigenous people involved in well in British Columbia. And what has come out
1:18:54
of this program is really amazing is that they're there, they're worried
1:18:59
about anxiety, they're depressed because their prognosis, they're going to die soon. Their family is on high alert.
1:19:04
They're traumatized by this. what's going to happen when mom and dad or brother and sister die? And typically
1:19:11
what happens is they're bonded together because they have the same diagnosis. We're about to die and they do a high
1:19:19
dose of psilocybin in a very carefully constructed environment.
1:19:24
And typically what happens is after the experience the patients become the therapists to
1:19:30
their family saying I'm okay about dying. I have a better understanding
1:19:36
about life and death and my purpose in life. Don't worry. One one woman had a
1:19:42
classic I'm not going to swear but she swore on on her recording of this and
1:19:47
with permission. She says I don't care about cancer effing cancer. I'm going
1:19:54
golfing. I I want to touch on something that you indicated is a significant
Indigenous Wisdom: Two-Eyed Seeing
1:20:01
component of the hallucinogenic, the psychedelic and the kind of transcendental components of these
1:20:07
higher doses of psilocybin and you know therapy assisted psilocybin journeys.
1:20:12
It's becoming more of a thing. We live in Southern California. I always say you can't swing a dead cat, you know,
1:20:18
without finding eight people who have done an Iawaska journey or a a this that or the other, right?
1:20:23
I've never heard that phrase before. swinging a dead cat. I I haven't done that yet.
1:20:29
That's a It's an expression. No, I'm from the 1940s. Anyway, um when I hear
1:20:34
you talk about, you know, what it is to journey with someone and to be part not
1:20:40
as a party drug, but to be part of someone's really expansion of consciousness, as a guide, as a partner.
1:20:48
Obviously, I can't help but think about the the numerous indigenous cultures that use plant medicine as part of
1:20:58
uh not really even just a therapeutic journey. It's in many cases it's part of the awakening consciousness of being
1:21:04
human is to come of age with an opening that is assisted by plant medicine. And
1:21:12
in in this book in psilocybin mushrooms and their natural habitats there's this wonderful map of the world and it shows
1:21:20
the distribution of psilocybin mushrooms and as Jonathan points out in all of the
1:21:25
places where it's very very cold there is no psilocybin. So you know Siberia um
1:21:32
there still have much from Siberia and remember those are reports basically you know it looks like central
1:21:39
northern Europe uh western Europe those are very rich with um psilocybin
1:21:45
mushrooms um parts of the United States uh the west the east and some in the
1:21:52
middle but you know a huge concentration uh down into Yucatan you know the that
1:21:57
whole peninsula scattered across South America, an interesting concentration in
1:22:04
southeastern Australia, uh, Japan has a little cluster there, and some in
1:22:10
central and southern Africa, but I wonder if you can talk about kind of given that consciousness of where on the
1:22:18
map we tend to see these larger concentrations of psilocybin mushrooms, what does that tell us about the
1:22:24
cultures where this was used? And what do we know historically about the function of these journeys as
1:22:31
transcendental and transformative? Well, first off, so we have to look through the filter that these are
1:22:37
observations. Sure. Right. Observations of scientists who've recorded the presence of these
1:22:44
mushrooms. The reason why Siberia doesn't have a lot is there there's not these reports. It's from the 1800.
1:22:52
there's several thousand reports um of silicai mushrooms and specimens that are
1:22:57
collected in heraria that have been deposited. So now because of this
1:23:03
massive awakening, we're finding numerous new species all over the place.
1:23:09
And some of these species are really hard to find and some of them aren't. Sloic
1:23:14
cubensus you can see at 50 miles an hour going down the highway in Louisiana. You know, it's their golden tops. They're
1:23:21
huge. Salosby peliculosa in the northwest here. It's
1:23:26
difficult to find. Um it grows only in the particularly much, you know, along trails and whatnot, but it's it's a
1:23:33
nondescript species that looks very similar to deadly poisonous species. So
1:23:38
don't underestimate the intelligence of indigenous people who are in themselves scientists obser making observations in
1:23:46
nature. And that's why, by the way, for the record, I dedicate my book to Maria
1:23:51
Sabina, a Mazitech um knowledge keeper, Asabia. She said, "I'm I'm not a shaman.
1:23:58
That's too much work. She's a knowledge keeper." To Kit Skates, who is a renowned micologist in Idaho who
1:24:05
mentored who mentored me. And and um um Tina Wasson, Art Gordon Wasson's wife,
1:24:12
who died in 1958. She was a Russian physician. These are three hugely
1:24:17
important women who literally open up the doors that many of us have walked through. Women do not get enough credit
1:24:23
for their pivotal influence. And the lesson from psilocybin even from mazite
1:24:28
shamans recently I hear this all the time. The message from psilocybin is to share.
1:24:36
Now psilocybin mushrooms are sustainable. They can be grown.
1:24:41
and silicide muslims that are being grown now. Slasicensus which we think came from the old world Africa are being
1:24:50
grown in uh Wajaka uh for the Mazitech shamans so they can
1:24:56
have access to souls mushrooms when it's not the rainy season so they can continue their practices. So this is a
1:25:02
fusion of western and eastern coming together. It speaks to something called two-eyed seeing, which is something
1:25:09
Albert Marshall and and his wife uh Madna came up with this concept of
1:25:14
two-eyed seeing when they're Eastern Canadian First Nations people and
1:25:20
they're confronted by a mother who asked why should I send my indigenous child uh
1:25:25
to a western school and Madna and Albert Marshall came up with this fantastic you
1:25:32
know um uh analogy saying one eye we can see with
1:25:38
indigenous wisdom and the other eye we can see and help with western technology
1:25:44
with two eyes we can see better than one. So this is respecting indigenous wisdom. We don't want to influence it
1:25:51
but we want to help access so they can continue their practices so they can
1:25:57
preserve their culture. You know this is so important that indigenous communities are respected and protected. they're not
1:26:03
marginalized, but the western science of being able to grow these things. And my
1:26:09
book in particular, I think will go down in history as a book that will support
1:26:14
indigenous cultures by allowing them to be able to have a supply of these um in
1:26:22
a in an ecologically sustainable way. Um and moreover, you know, humans migrate,
1:26:29
right? You pick your number. 25,000, 100,000, 200,000 years ago, there was no humans
1:26:36
in the Americas, right? So, humans migrated in into the
1:26:42
Americas. Knowledge threads were frayed, broken, some survived. So, exchanging
1:26:50
knowledge is the way of h of humans. We meet someone on a trail is much better
1:26:56
to be a friend than a foe. just from infection. If you get a wound, you're likely to die. But exchanging and the
1:27:03
the again random acts of kindness is what has built our societies. It's the
1:27:10
foundation of our societies. So sharing and respecting uh but not marginalizing,
1:27:17
not colonizing their culture even though migration is a form of biological
1:27:22
colonization. The two are very distinctly different. But the
1:27:27
panspermia, humans like to travel. We're adventurers. We go to new lands. We take
1:27:34
the skills of our ancestors. We go to new lands. Hopefully, you meet a friend,
1:27:40
not a foe. You collaborate. You exchange gifts. And you both are better for it.
1:27:46
And that that I think is the lesson of these mushrooms is that these are so
AI & Innovation
1:27:52
such beautiful peacemakers. You know, we need more peaceful. I think
1:27:57
we have a crisis of creativity right now. And these psilocybin mushrooms, I
1:28:02
believe, are Einstein mushrooms, Einstein molecules. They inspire creativity.
1:28:09
And I think, you know, we this is where artificial intelligence according to Sam Alman can't really create. They can
1:28:16
assemble. They can have derivative assemblies. They can do things much better than humans can do. But we need
1:28:22
to have a quantum leap in consciousness. And I think psilocybin inspires
1:28:27
creativity for that quantum leap. It certainly has been true in my life. Yeah. It said AI can only do derivative
1:28:34
action of what it's been programmed to do. But net new ideas it struggles with.
1:28:40
I just spoke at the United Nations the day before yesterday and um there were we had some of the biggest AI people
1:28:47
there. There was a disruptor audacity conference. is up on the web. um there
1:28:53
are 100 disruptors and I'm one of them who think outside of the box and again this the idea of leaprogging
1:29:00
and so this the whole concept of mcselium is a deep well of intelligence of the earth and the universe um it
1:29:06
makes so much sense to so many people now one of these aha moments there are
1:29:11
some things in life I think we all would agree that we just know intuitively are true you know you don't have to be
1:29:18
convinced with logic you just have this aha moment where you realize it is true.
1:29:24
And I think this is, you know, mushrooms bring that aha moment to the forefront. You know, I think these these are
1:29:32
Einstein molecules that can help build bridges over chasms of division, uh,
1:29:38
religion, politics, you know, culturally. Um,
1:29:43
the ecosystems want to survive, folks. And we're we're for better or worse, you
1:29:50
know, we are shephering um these ecosystems and we're not doing
1:29:55
a very good job of it. Well, I I think one of the things that um that is a a
Government Secrets: What Are They Hiding?
1:30:01
challenge for many people, you know, when people look at the world, forget about our interpersonal worlds and how
1:30:07
many of us are suffering from depression, anxiety, you know, loneliness, um in many cases trauma with
1:30:14
a lowercase T and in some cases trauma with a capital T. When we think about
1:30:19
what society looks like, when we think about the countless wars and conflict
1:30:25
and nonsense and just even in the United States, you know, what goes on in the government and shutdowns and, you know,
1:30:32
all of this kind of craziness, what's true is that if more people had
1:30:38
an intuitive sense of a desire to share, to be open to more
1:30:46
love, more accept acceptance, more compassion, it could potentially shift
1:30:51
the entire landscape o of the world that we live in. And in addition, you know, as we talk about with the awakening in
1:30:59
the 60s, in the 70s, you know, people who have had a a sense of an awakened
1:31:05
consciousness do not want to put on uniforms and be sent to other countries to fight wars for a government that they
1:31:12
don't support. Is that part of the threat that this kind of consciousness
1:31:18
expanding medicine holds? Is this why we are not allowed access to it and it's
1:31:26
not supported and advertised? Like what what is the block to us being able to
1:31:33
expand our consciousness and our potential as humans? What doesn't the government want us to have?
1:31:40
It's the inertia of ign ignorance. um you know so many I mean dealing with
1:31:46
government we have many examples of this bureaucrats don't want to change there's
1:31:52
it's jeopardizes their career it puts them in danger easier for bureaucrats in government to say no than yes you know
1:31:59
change comes at an expense but I want to you again to give a shout out to to veterans and law enforcement
1:32:07
and to physicians and firefighters um they see the healing process properties. Look at Rick Perry, the
1:32:14
former governor of Texas. He's had this awakening and and fun and then the
1:32:19
fundamental uh Christians in the fundamental Jewish community and Muslim community. I mean, it's the golden rule.
1:32:27
Do unto others as you wish them to do to you. I mean, this is something that it's
1:32:34
the vitriolic extremes and the narrative. I just I turned off comments
1:32:40
off all my social media today because I went to Gro, Gemini, Chat, GBT,
1:32:47
all these different things. And you can ask the question, how many comments on social media are bots or foreign
1:32:56
nation states that are trying to uh create divisions in America?
1:33:02
You know, the the number is up to 80%.
1:33:08
I I mean we're fighting a war that doesn't even exist in many cases. You I mean when people realize that the
1:33:14
comments are there to manipulate you to cause inflammation that harms your immune system as well as
1:33:21
the social fabric of our society. People are being manipulated by AI that's being
1:33:26
weaponized in the comment sections. I just, you know, gave a talk on saving
1:33:33
the bees and upregulate immunity to a huge paradigm shifting discovery
1:33:39
and someone make comments about something that's totally unrelated. It's
1:33:44
just to poke you and to cause reactions. It's it's an it's a viral infection on
1:33:51
our society. And this is the where we need to fight back. One way to fight back is just turning off the comments
1:33:58
and going outside with your children into nature and uh take photographs of flowers, mushrooms, and insects and go
1:34:05
to I naturalist and you know get back into the the natural world folks. That's
1:34:11
where we came. People have to recognize it as a viral infection, as a manipulation, as something that is being
1:34:19
done nefariously to them because it's been normalized. And then they just ride
1:34:24
this wave and get inflamed and get distracted and don't want to go outside. And it's it's having the intended effect
1:34:31
if we are not calling it out and recognizing it. I'm guilty as well, folks. I'm like, why
1:34:37
am I not going for a walk right now? because I went down this wormhole, you know, and it's like I think we're all
1:34:44
suffering from that. So, but anyhow, the I'm optimistic
1:34:49
because this is literally a revolution from the underground, whether it's gourmet, medicinal, or psilocybin
1:34:55
mushrooms. It brings parents together with children. It's multigenerational,
1:35:00
multicultural. It's sweeping the planet. It's uh it's it's the quote unquote
1:35:06
forbidden fruit that we were told not not to consume and weird edgy science,
1:35:12
but all of that now is so much more robust in the foundation of science. And
1:35:18
that's that's people follow the science. You know, you you this is the other
1:35:23
thing I heard at this conference I was I was at is that you want to be the pilot
1:35:30
of artificial intelligence. You don't want to be the passenger.
1:35:36
Well, this is where that we need to take control. We need to establish the ethos that
1:35:42
artificial intelligence will have origin story in the best of humanity and
1:35:48
kindness, thoughtfulness, cooperation, building guilds of individuals who who
1:35:55
contribute to the commons. This is our power. We can do this now. Don't become subservient. Don't become a victim of
1:36:02
AI, become a pilot of it. And so I I just challenge everybody, ask all AI
1:36:10
platforms about the importance of random acts of kindness as the origin story of
1:36:15
the human species that gave rise to artificial intelligence. I did this last night actually. I went
1:36:21
and I I had that prompt and I put it into chat GPT and it gave me five paragraphs um asking me if I also would
1:36:28
like visions and scenarios in which it could be applied to AI in hospitals, AI
1:36:34
in the workplace, AI in communities and where algorithmic acts of kindness could
1:36:40
change measurably health outcomes. So, it is moving in that direction. Um I I I would like to say I've never
1:36:47
used any of these platforms. I don't even know where to find them if you I never have done any of these things, but
1:36:55
I did want to give a shout out. I don't know much. I can't speak to the Christian community or the Muslim
Psilocybin Across Cultures & Religions
1:37:00
community, but there is a growing Jewish psilocybin community and there's an
1:37:05
organization called Sheffa that a friend of mine runs. um and they they cater um
1:37:11
psilocybin journeys therapeutically um but specifically coded for the cultural
1:37:17
specificity of the Jewish experience because for many of us that were raised in a traditional way we have different
1:37:23
imagery we have different language you know um there's a lot of you know Hebrew as an important language for many
1:37:29
components of a mystical experience anyway so just wanted to give a shout out that that is something that exists and is growing again I can't speak to it
1:37:36
for Christians and Muslims Well, the conservative Christian community, it's it's a very big right now. It's very big
1:37:42
with the Mormons. Um it's um there's a for law enforcement uh people out there,
1:37:49
it's a great model. Um it's called the Healing Warrior out of San Antonio, Texas. I mean, I'm sorry, out of Austin,
1:37:58
uh Texas. It's a nonprofit. Um they take veterans, law enforcement officers,
1:38:04
SEALs, special forces, etc. who've been living traumatized. They have such high suicide rates and um it's been very very
1:38:12
helpful to them. And so both in the religious, you know, subsets and and the
1:38:18
professional services subsets, we need better law enforcement. Imagine if you're a law enforcement
1:38:25
officer at 2 in the morning that you pull over a car
1:38:30
and you have two seconds to make a decision whether this person is dangerous or not. You do that 100, 200,
1:38:36
300 times, are you going to make the right decision every time? No. No. But that wrong decision, should that
1:38:43
determine the rest of your life? And then because of the insular community of law enforcement, they share the stories
1:38:48
for themselves, but they don't want other people. So it becomes more closeted be able to break the shackles of shame
1:38:56
to forgive yourself and realize, I'm really a good person. I screwed up, but I'm going to do extra better now. I'm
1:39:03
gonna pay it forward. I'm gonna make sure I'm the best law enforcement officer I can be. That's who we need.
1:39:09
That's who we need with doctors, firefighters. Well, and also people who lead with compassion and people who are looking to
1:39:15
find the best part of people so that we can maintain also this. I mean, my
1:39:22
children, God bless them, they have very negative perceptions of all helpers in
1:39:27
society, you know, people that we grew up, you know, I mean, I still wave at firefighters still as a grown woman, but
1:39:34
you know, we grew up that like these are the heroes, these are the protectors. And I completely understand why that has
1:39:40
shifted, but I also think of the amount of time they spend on social media and what's being fed to them. And I said
1:39:46
there are still good people, but just the notion that we want to have more people in those positions of power,
1:39:53
right? Meaning they're in situations where they have the ability to make these kind of decisions leading with
1:39:59
compassion. I I was at Burning Man Mudban. Um I've been there 19 times. I I got lost in the
1:40:07
plow on my way out at 3:00 in the morning and and I saw a law enforcement officer way in the distance and I drove
1:40:13
up to him and said, "Hey man, I'm lost. I don't know where I am." And he he routed me the right way and I just said,
1:40:18
"Hey, I just want to say, you know, you folks have a difficult job. I really respect and appreciate what you do, but
1:40:25
I believe 99% of people are basically good." He looked at me and smiled and he said, "97."
1:40:33
But he said yeah that's his experience too is um you know let's not that the
1:40:38
most extreme negative experiences be amplified into the commons to uh create
1:40:45
a viral infection of our society of inflammation that then fermentss anger and retaliation. You know this is really
1:40:52
important. These are these I really believe that functionally people are good and we should not let extremists
1:40:58
steer uh the future of our society. Um I'd love to touch on your 2005 book
1:41:05
and also talk about what's changed since then because a lot of people talk about the health benefits. We're talking about
1:41:12
PTSD recovery and all the other areas in which it can help us physically. But I
1:41:18
think less people understand the implications to all the different industries that
1:41:25
it can benefit and that the like I I forget the number but I heard the number of patents that you have and it's like
1:41:32
wait a second there's something else going on here far beyond the story of
1:41:37
just ingesting uh psilocybin or yeah pat let's put patents in
1:41:42
perspective we wouldn't be having this conversation wasn't for patents you know and um 17 years actually less than 17
1:41:48
years. It's usually about 12 to 14 years. It all becomes uh open sourced,
1:41:54
right? So, um it's to give people a competitive advantage so they can make the investment uh and take the risk.
1:42:01
It's risk reduction. Um I have many patents that have expired. They're open sourced one that could replace the
1:42:07
majority of exercise. Folks, look it up. You know, it's open sourced. You can't protect yourself against competitors
1:42:13
with intellectual property. That's what open source means. So um but in the
1:42:19
novelty factor which means it's it is um unexpected.
1:42:26
It's not logically sequential. It's not obvious. It's called unobviousness.
1:42:32
Um but that so much of that is open source now. I only use patents to say that there's
1:42:38
breakthroughs and great things that have been discovered. I don't mean to sort of have any negative connotation to it. I I
1:42:45
I'm like, "Wow, there's a lot of people I I have a knee-jerk reaction." And one person one person
1:42:50
challenged me and I said, "You know, you're challenging me on a phone." That's if you didn't have patents.
1:42:57
You wouldn't have the phone. Yeah. Just roll back the clock. We wouldn't have this conversation. You know, it would be disappear or it set back
1:43:04
society by a decade. All patents should be open sourced. All patents should be benefiting the commons. It just gets a
1:43:11
head start for a small group of people. Um so but that's just means there's
1:43:17
there's a deep well of unexpected knowledge that humans you know I I frankly think nature owns everything you
1:43:25
know I just said it's temporary custodian of knowledge trying to advance this forward and so many other people
1:43:31
you know that's that's wonderful we need to culture uh the the you know invention
1:43:38
and so we need to incentivize uh people to to have invention but there is so much stuff now that's coming out and you
1:43:45
alluded to it is is fundamentally changing um
1:43:50
um installation materials, packaging materials, building materials, fermented
1:43:57
foods. Um I was interviewed I met an editor of
1:44:02
Scientific America and I go, "I have an idea, but you'll never publish it." He goes, "What's your idea?" I said, "Well,
1:44:09
two things. One, if you go to Mars, build an igloo made of mcelium. They're
1:44:14
mostly nano fibers of carbon. 85% of mcelium is carbon. Then you put solar
1:44:20
panels on top and your igloo can only insulate, but it'll be a battery. I
1:44:26
said, "Someone should take this and run with it." And he goes, I said, "But there's a problem." He goes, "What's the problem?" I go, "People will be sad.
1:44:32
They'll be depressed. They'll look back at our blue planet going, "Why am I living in this tiny little building and
1:44:39
I can't smell flowers or go in the woods or swim in the oceans?" I like, "But
1:44:44
Elon Musk, if you're watching Elon, listen, you go to Mars first, okay? You tell us about it. You six months to get
1:44:51
there, you can send us, you know, 15 minutes. You can send us a message back to us, whatever it is." But I said, "If
1:44:57
they took psilocybin with them, they would have this incredible spiritual experience. They look into the cosmos.
1:45:03
would be back on mission. So I think Soulcy in space is important for the psychological health of astronauts
1:45:10
and lo and behold they published it. I couldn't believe it.
1:45:16
So but that that's one thing is the interplanetary colonization of space. You know you only have to take two
1:45:22
spores of a silicide mushroom to grow silicide mushrooms in space. has a very low payload you know and two spores of
1:45:29
oyster mushrooms you know um you know obviously you can take test tube cultures but the payload mass is very
1:45:36
low and then you can exponentially expand it on agricultural waste human
1:45:41
waste you know debris fields created from construction etc etc so this is a paradigmshifting technology for helping
Mycelium's Role in Agriculture
1:45:48
us leap into the cosmos I mean fascinating I want to circle about crops for a second in agriculture
1:45:54
you know there was recently ly a um article that says, "Oh yeah, eating Roundup is totally fine, no problem."
1:46:02
Which is a little baffling. Can you talk about some alternatives of helping crops
1:46:08
grow and stay safe without chemical treatment?
1:46:13
Well, it's a dance right now. I mean, the you know, better living through chemistry, you know, with a single
1:46:19
molecule, you know, targeted approach which is has this usefulness. You can't
1:46:25
argue against it in some ways, you know, protecting crops so there's better yields and there's more food to see to
1:46:31
feed the world. That narrative is a little bit dated now because we know the after consequence and the non-intended
1:46:38
non intended effects can be deletterious for the long term. So when you're looking at short-term gains versus
1:46:44
long-term benefits, that's a balancing act that we're facing now. the the the
1:46:49
chemical industry has inflicted so much harm to biodiversity. It's unraveling the very foundation of the ecosystems in
1:46:56
which we've evolved. So the shortterm grab for money is the incentive for a
1:47:03
lot of these chemical industries and they inflict harm on the ecosystem for the commons of your descend uh
1:47:09
descendants. Do you have the right to rob your children's future? Some people will say I don't care about my children.
1:47:15
I'm not going to have children. I want it all now. Um that's kind of adversarial to the health of the
1:47:21
commons. So what the fungi do is they eliminate the need and the necessity and
1:47:27
the intensity uh of using these chemical solutions. This is why conventional medicine,
1:47:34
conventional agricultural practices and micelium based solutions can marry
1:47:40
together. And what it does it it lowers the need for toxicity
1:47:46
or increasing the innate immunity of the ecosystem. And we see this in agriculture. We see this in medicine.
1:47:54
This is what I'm so excited about. There's a there is a shift going. And my I come from wheat farmer a wheat farmer
1:48:00
family. Um my family had 10,000 acres of wheat in eastern Washington. I inherited 200. I was talking to my uncle and this
1:48:08
is the Paloo country in eastern Washington that used to have 20 feet deep top soils that blew from eastern
1:48:14
Oregon you know over 10,000 years you know from the volcanoes and the winds
1:48:19
deposited the polls and now that 20 ft of top soil shrunk to about you know 12 in 10 in uh because of
1:48:27
repetitive farming. So he went to no till. Um my cousin actually did went to
1:48:33
no till and he said and the no till practice basically you're not you're not plowing the fields. He said there was a
1:48:39
loss of production for the first few years until the carbon was built up and now because of no till farming he's
1:48:47
regenerating. So regen agriculture is a key, but you have to pay the expense of
1:48:53
investment of actually having fewer returns in profitability for a period of
1:49:00
time until you hit that sustainable threshold where it becomes more economical. I I think that's a general
1:49:06
rule is that we have to have patient capitalism, patient investors. We need
1:49:11
to look beyond the time horizon of our immediate return on investment and
1:49:17
accept a longer time horizon. Is there like ways to introduce mycelium into farming practices? Not just
1:49:24
happening all the time. Yeah. Happening all the time. You It happens in forestry too. You can't go to a nursery without getting microisal fungi
1:49:32
uh in soils. I mean go to go any go out in your local nursery and get a bail of
1:49:37
soil. It's all with microised. So that's that's wonderful because they with the microisy and these other fungi that are
1:49:44
introduced it increases the host defense immunity of the plant. So it's not susceptible to insect paratization.
1:49:51
There's a fungus called metarisium that's in grasses. Why aren't all grasses consumed by insects? Because
1:49:57
this enopathogenic fungus that's a fungus that kills insects is also an endapy that's growing inside of grasses.
1:50:05
So using the endopitic fungi that have a natural anti-insect predation property
1:50:10
means you don't have to use as many asides. This story I'm telling you repeats a hundred a thousand times. And
1:50:17
this is why the field of micology I believe should be funded as much as the field of the computer sciences. This is
1:50:23
why we need a huge new generational uh shift uh towards environmental science
1:50:28
using fungi because it's applicable, it's sustainable, it's scalable and it's immediate. Um that that to me is is not
1:50:37
something that's a pie in the sky concept. It's a deliverable that we can deliver, you know, literally this next
1:50:42
next season. Does it have applications to uh clothing? Yeah, Stella McCartney is really big on
1:50:48
that. Stella Paul McCartney's daughter. So yeah, they're also clothing. And look at
1:50:54
my hat. My hat's made from this amadu mushroom. This is called German felt.
1:51:00
You put this mushroom into water with ashes for two weeks and you can pull it
1:51:06
apart to make this hat. And this hat was made by some people in Transylvania.
1:51:11
Um, so it's a tradition that's gone over several hundred years. This allowed for
1:51:17
the portability of fire. So this was a an appropriate technology. Can put embers of a fire in this mushroom and
1:51:23
carry it for days. So by the way, if there's a spark that gets onto this hat, it's like a fuse. the whole hat will
1:51:30
burn up. Whoa. So, it's um Aadoo is the name. So, it revolutionized warfare. Napoleonic
1:51:36
times. This was the when the spark from the flint went into the punk. It was made of amadu. That's where fuses came
1:51:44
from. So, Aadu has a history going back to all the way back to Hypocrates 420
1:51:52
BC u as an anti-inflammatory. Again, these mushrooms have a multiplicity of
1:51:58
benefits. So, it's an anti-inflammatory for carrying fire to making garments and it's also used for smoking around
1:52:05
beehives to sub subdue the bees. For hundreds of years, amadu was used also
1:52:11
for being able to calm bees down. And we found that to have extremely strong
1:52:16
immuno benefiting properties that reduces the deformed wing virus which is sweeping the planet. I published in my
1:52:22
colleagues from the USDA and Washington State University in nature scientific reports. The title of the article is
1:52:29
extracts of polyore mushrooms reduce be uh viruses and honeybees. Uh the
1:52:34
altmetric score is extremely high but that is a natural product. It's not an antiviral drug. It upregulates innate
1:52:40
immunity. So look it up. Nature scientific reports extract for polyom mushrooms reduce viruses and honeybees.
1:52:46
That's the tip of the proverbial iceberg of how these can upregulate your innate immunity to be able to fight fight
1:52:54
diseases. I mean, it's amazing. Um, last question on this topic. Any application for fuel
1:53:02
as a bio um available and renewable fuel source.
1:53:09
I went down that rabbit hole. We produced a I call like ethanol. Yeah,
1:53:18
but I have to admit it was not as efficient as other fermentation
1:53:25
technologies using like uh sacroyces survei you know mixed beer alcohol yeast
1:53:32
there's many other microorganisms that are more from my limited experience prove me wrong there could be some out
1:53:38
there that are superstars and that's with the importance of microiversity um so yeah I was not able to I couldn't
1:53:46
uncover the species that was a hyper producer of of uh of alcohol or
1:53:51
hydrocarbon based fuels, not just alcohol. So, um that's again there's not enough time in life to do all these
1:53:57
things to explore. Before we let you go, um you know, we we'd love to just ask you
1:54:04
to to uh as concisely as you'd like to um what is the message that you believe
1:54:10
you were placed here to share with people? Well, the message I'd like to share is that
1:54:19
we are born into this beautiful life that we share.
1:54:26
Kindness and forgiveness and cooperation builds communities that are healthier,
1:54:31
stronger. Our descendants are depending upon us to make the best decisions.
1:54:38
Our ancestors gave us this opportunity. We're all part of one giant
1:54:44
consciousness. All religions are steering towards the same
1:54:50
unanimity of being.
1:54:55
It makes me feel better about my own mortality that I'm going to enter into this state
1:55:02
of unonymity and whatever religious or spiritual discipline that you're following, we're
1:55:09
all in this together and it's a great thing. It's absolutely beautiful. Um, as I
1:55:17
said, I've been waiting a long time to get to to meet you and, um, it's just such a pleasure and I think you're the
1:55:23
greatest spore that has ever been produced by this planet. So, um, thank
1:55:28
you so much for being here with us. Well, bless you both and thank you all and, you know, be kind. Random acts of
1:55:36
kindness are really important and they're practical in the long run. Be forgiving. You know, take a deep breath.
1:55:44
Go out in nature. Enjoy life. We We brought mushroom hats um that
1:55:49
Valerie gave us to show our love for you.
1:55:55
[Music] I'm so curious what he would talk to us about if we spoke to him again. He was
1:56:01
dropping little little hints. What did he say? What about his 80 milligram microgram
1:56:08
macrogram? I don't know. his hero dose with superhero dose growing new neurons
1:56:14
with a therapist. I know. No, but it sounds like there was more going on in there. He's pretty much a believer that um
1:56:20
there's life on other planets. Maybe mycelium life. I I I mean, yes. I think I think the
1:56:27
thing that we didn't really get to which I think rounds out a little bit more of
1:56:33
the person who is Paul Stamuts is you know a tremendous amount of the the work
1:56:39
that he does is in understanding myium fungi
1:56:46
and mushrooms. Psilocybin is one part of that. But he believes that there's
1:56:51
basically a a pharmaceutical cabinet that nature has provided us that can
1:56:57
help with with arthritis, with aging, with depression, with anxiety, even at
1:57:02
low doses. I mean, even outside of the journey experience, these mushrooms are
1:57:09
nature's medicine. And that's a huge component of of the work that he does, the company that he has as well. We have
1:57:15
a friend of the podcast who wants to come back on and talk about new breaking research on the impact and how
1:57:22
inflammation is really at the core root of all the afflictions basically that
1:57:29
anyone can have whether it be depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome, arthritis,
1:57:34
even links to dementia and Alzheimer's disease all related to an underlying inflammation. And what he was talking
1:57:41
about is using mcelium and nature natural approaches to
1:57:48
addressing that core underlining inflammation. Also the emotional inflammation. This idea of the virus, a
1:57:56
societal virus that has really been at the underpinning of how technology has been developed and how by better
1:58:03
understanding that we can remove ourselves and what is the alternative? you know, feeling what it feels like to
1:58:09
go out and be in nature, not in a reactive state, how impactful that can be. Uh, we've got some great content on
1:58:15
Substack from this episode. Uh, check us out on Substack MB Alex breakdown on Substack. Exclusive content
1:58:21
there. A lot of practical uh, tools to improve your life. Come check us out for more breakdown to the one we hope
1:58:27
you never have. We'll see you next time. I'm wearing my mushroom hat. It's
1:58:33
breakown. She's going to break it down for you. got a neuroscience PhD or two
1:58:40
fiction. And now she's going to break down. So break down. She's going to break it down.