Paul Stamets on the Magic of Mushrooms

any type of drug. One of the most popular episodes the Psychoactive to date has been the one where I invited my friend Julie Holland to service my co host and answer questions with me from you the audience. So we're going to record another one of those episodes, and we need your questions. Leave us a voicemail with a question as detailed us Bob Stable at one eight three three seven seven nine sixty, or you can record a voice memo and send it to Psychoactive at protozoa dot com.

I'm sure it's going to be a great second go with this. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's guest is somebody who's actually pretty famous, not just in a small world, but becoming increasingly so. His name is Paul Stammits, and he is really the guru, the maestro of mushrooms, and not just psilocybin psychedelic mushrooms, but mushrooms written large. I mean, he's an all Three's in a lot of books about growing mushrooms, about how mushrooms can help save the world.

He's a researcher, he's an inventor. He holds a lot of patents and has a lot more, you know, currently under consideration. Michael Pollen in his book Changing Your Mind, you know, compares Paul to some of the great amateur naturalists like Darwin, and he's somebody that I've known a little bit over the year. So, Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to come on Psychoactive with me. Well,

pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Brother. Yeah, well, listen, I remember the first times you and I crossed paths must have been late nineties, early two thousands, and it was that at that annual mushroom conference until your ride and I just remember blowing being blown away because you gave these three speeches, one on mushrooms and the environment, one on mushrooms and medicine, and one on mushrooms and the mind, and each one was more extraordinary than the other.

But let me back up here and just ask the first question, how did it come about? How did you and mushrooms get married in this way? Obviously many many decades ago? What's the story one of my older brother John, he was the eldest brother, and he went to Yale and uh doing one of his vacations, he went down to Mexico and Colombia and collected philosophy cubensus, which is

the most common and popular even today. Paul side mushroom growing on cow patties in the subtropics circumpolar all over the world, in the subtropics, by the way, And he came back to these amazing stories of tripping on paulocybin. And I was just fourteen years of age or so, you know. I was fascinated because I adored my older brother and he had these crazy adventures also very secretly told to me out of the ear shot or ear range of my parents. And it was just such an exciting,

you know, adventure stories he had. And little did I know how powerful that these mushrooms would really become in my life. Now, mushrooms had become the zeitgeist of our time. It says sort of worldwide revolutions coming up from the underground, and it's unifying across cultures and continents. Yeah. I remember reading that that you had grown up in a sort

of traditional Christian or maybe evangelical background. I mean, was that something you rebelled against before you even got into this mushroom thing, or were the ways in which you were influenced by that in ways you think may have shaped you're thinking, either reactively or synergistically. Well, thank you for that question. No one's really asked me that. In the same way, I was actually kind of turned on

with the aspect of older states of consciousness. And so when I see these charismatic Christians go into these trances and speaking in tongues and doing this frankly weird asked stuff, I took a more of an academic point of view. I thought, well, this is they're actually altering their consciousness, just like with psil cybin. But that sort of flight, uh, into an older states of consciousness was really interesting to me.

You're just a year or two older than me, but I think we also both kind of came of age.

You know, there are twenties in the in the mid to late seventies, which was, you know, a kind of brief period of live and let live between the kind of Nixon versus political radicalism of the sixties and early seventies and then the Reagan generation and you know, and prepping for this interview, I read some things that I didn't know, which is, you know when you go to Evergreen State College, is that you know and and that you start organizing these conferences about mushrooms and such and

inviting this remarkable group of people. I mean, you're only what twenty around that time, right, and you're bringing in a kind of who's who some of the leading figures what in both my college and psychedelics. Yeah, it was, like I mentioned, I was a logger hippie for about three years, and then three guys in my crew got killed and I decided to go back to college, or go to college. I went to Kenyon College for a year, and then I took off into the woods for a

period of time, and but I was writing my first book. Um, so I lost to be much of them, our allies. I started it when I was eighteen nineteen years of age, and I spent a huge amount of time at the University of Washington Library in the basement the Science library, looking up the works of shalts And and Wasson and other great you know researchers. Most of the books, as you probably remember, we're razored out. You go to the library, you check out a book on psycho had a chapter

on psychedelics. The whole chapter has been razored out. When I was knowing my research, you know, coming down the University of Washington, there are new rous species in the Northwest that have been reported, uh growing naturally in the fields, like liberty caps Silosopy Simon lazziata, and wood chips Alosto be sin Essen's Bay assistant center fair blossa. These are all species names of mushrooms grown wood chips, and so

I started. Then I joined the taxonomic group that which is called the Pacific Northwest Key Council, which we wrote Taxonomic keys, binary decision trees, identifying species by characteristics whether they have you know, brown spores or white spores, etcetera, etcetera. You go down this sentry and so we I wrote. I focused on this selcybin mushroom family h it's called the Storferia. It's a family of Hyphenleomma or knee Metaloma, Stroferia,

and Philosopy. These are satellite genera within the family. I say that because Storferia cubensis earl was first discovered in Cuba, it was called a stor Feria, and then it got moved over to the ginas Pelosopy where it is now. So in the course of my research, realizing that these mushrooms grow grew in the Pacific Northwest, but the my collegists there were largely unaware. Dr Daniel Stunts in the University of Washington, a great mycologist, told me, rarely ever

saw these until the hippie showed up. And the hippies basically as wood chips landscaping around buildings. And when the wood ship landscaping industry, you know, was born out of the logging industry, that they had all these chips and they use them for landscaping and mulching. Then the psilocybin ushoms are showing up around campuses, so appropriate that these young eager minds will be walking the campus and having sulcide mushrooms coming up by the thousands, you know, right

right beside their walkaway. So I think that really spurred, you know, and I think the argument can be made it spurred the invention of the computer internet generation. You know, so many of the psychokouts of the seventies went on to give create some of the biggest internet based companies that we know all today. It's a great photograph of the founders of Microsoft. I encourage everyone to look it up. Bill Gates is only the straight looking dude in that photograph.

Every one of them are long hairs, right. So, but you're almost describe when you talk about these students showing up. I mean, it's almost like you're describing this relationship between mushrooms and humans, almost like between dogs and humans. Right that that there was something about about, you know, the way like dogs. I guess that survived. They say is because they developed a special relationship with humans in a way that many other wild creatures did not. And it

sounds like this an element of mushrooms. I mean, they were going to be there before after during us no matter, no matter us no. But they very good point that there there there's a success for survival has been amplified but by by hitchhiking and engaging humans. It goes back to Michael Paulin's book, one of his books, The Botany

of desire Um. But yeah, it's very interesting. The paulocybin mushrooms, which massively expand consciousness, are co occurring on a time critical and the evolution of humans as they're having a negative impact on the ecosystem that's given humans and other organisms health and birth. So I do think there is an element there of causality. And moreover, you know, you can say this is deterministic or coincidental. In the long run,

it doesn't matter. The net effect is people who do psyched alex are more pro environmental after the experience, They're less prone to violence, they have a better sense of community, of forgiveness. Psilocybin makes kinder, more responsible, more law abiding people. And well, just to be clear and just to simplify, a lot of this is for me in the audience. I mean, is there a clear distinction between the the psychoactive, the psilocybic mushrooms and the non psychoactive or is it

kind of a line spectrum of psychoactivity. That's a really good and complicated question that I don't have a release straightforward to answer, but I can give some partial answers. Every mushroom species is a unique pharmaceutical factory as a composite of literally thousands, in some cases hundreds of unique molecules not found elsewhere. Think about each one of them is a pharmaceutical factory as a whole slew of compounds

beneficial to human health, negative to human health. Some of the compounds that are negative to human health can be beneficial to ecological health. So you know, we have a very biopic, human centric view of what is good and what is bad. There is also plocybin analogs which are totally legal, and that's what a big part of our research is on is they are called the pulocybin analogs.

There's nor silason, nor baiosystem and biosystem. These are legal trip to means that are also are being co produced inside the natural form of pulocybin mushrooms that also have a thousand year plussed history of use. They're fully legal, and so that's an area that we also have found

extraordinary activity and increasing neurogeneration. So Paul, you know, reading that chapter about you and Michael Pollen's book, and he describes you as an autodidact, and you can sort of feel this combination of his skeptic schism and then you overcoming his skepticism, and you know him describing you as this sort of great amateur naturalist in the tradition of Darwin or and others. Uh. In what ways do you think that has been more of an advantage or disadvantage

for your during your journey? Well, let's get to the deep psychology um of course. And it's a chip on my shoulder because my profession is mycology. I am a professional mycologist. My income is from mycology. I will have soon four papers published in Nature. It's the most prestigious, if not the one, or if not the most prestigious journals either in journal in the world. For people to describe me as an amateur, I mean, do you have to have a PhD in order to be a professional.

I think the nuance of language here begins to fall apart, and it's it's used oftentimes, it's weaponized to cut me down. Hey, I'm a warrior. I can take it. But I have to release this challenge people. If my profession is my cology I published in professional scientific journals. What part of

my work is not professional? When I waxed poetic about the evolution of of the computer, Internet and in dark matter, Sure that's speculative, but it's amazing that people want to put you in a box to put you down, rather than saying that these words don't really apply in the conventional sense that you're using them. So imagine that place less of a roll now. I mean, if you had landed up getting a PhD along the way, it might have helped you get the message out there in your

earlier years, but probably is irrelevant. Now listen, I'll tell you something. I am so glad that I've been an outlier. I'm so glad I met with John dore And and his financial group, with Bill Gates, with Jeff Bezos. I was too freaking weird for them. I was too out there. I am so glad. I am so glad I was not a person that they wanted to invest in because I was too far out there. As a result, I'm

totally independent. I would tell anyone out there who are sensitive to criticism, thank your critics, because they would just make you stronger. Well, for young people, I mean when when young people wanted to get in his field, you encourage them to get a PhD. And you know, the study of but my college year may see helmet definitely make much of a difference one way or the other. Well, I mean Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, uh, you know,

and started started Microsoft. I mean there's many, many examples of people who have done that. Hey, the academic institutions have resources, folks at bottom line, So yes, go through a university, to go to a college, go to the academic institutions who have the resources to be able to help you. Now, in the days of Internet, and especially in the days of COVID, you know, we have the

world encyclopedias at our fingertips. So if you're concerned about tenure and getting a job at a university and fitting into that box, then yeah, the credentials are are very helpful and indeed necessary because you'll be out competed with somebody who's more credential than yourself. You aren't credentials. But are these labels really necessary? I mean, if if the labels are gonna prevent you from your innovation, then I

think you have another problem that should be addressed. But I would say follow the traditional path as far as it you can make use of it for your own personal advancement and benefit. But strategically, at some point you

might want to chart your own course. We'll be talking more after we hear this add Well, I see you at this pivotal intersection right between the broader field of mycology, which has a lot about mushrooms that has nothing to do with psychedelics, and then you're a fundamental figure in the broader psychedelics area because the psilocybin mushrooms. But are there many prominent figures in the study of mycology who either don't try or just not interested in the psychoactive

elements of mushrooms. That was the vast majority. I remember going to my first North American Mycological Association for a nineteen I think seventy four seventy five. I had long hair and long beard, and I was treated like a leper. When I'd walk into a crowd, people would just walk and keep a distance from me because they when they want to be associated with me, because I was obviously interested in paulocybin mushrooms. Thankfully, Daniel Stunts, the professor at

the University of Washington to me under his wing. And then I met Alexander Smith, who was thought to be the father of American mycology by many experts, and they both said, Okay, this this guy's got a sparkle in his eye. He's really really interested in the subject. And so I captured their attention and got their support. So

I'm very thankful for that. But by the field of mycology, if you were associated with paulocybin mushrooms, you were excommunicated from not only the inner circle, but the medium circle. It is only on the outer periphery. But to this I imagine is evolved quite substantially. I mean, are there still in the field study of mycology significant figures. He showed no interest or hostility towards the psychoactive elements of

their field. You know, I've had a big influence because of my Ted talk and you know the movie Fantastic Fungi. You know, I've been on you know, I've been on stage a lot of medical conferences, as you know, most of the time the medical conference, as I've been talking about medicinal mushrooms, not paul cybin. But even at my Ted talks on a six million views or something. They

warned me not to talk about sulcibe mushrooms. So my talk six six ways mushroom can help say of the world, there's no mention of my subject that I really wanted to talk about, right right, I mean it. This seem like the f d A is getting more open, for example,

on the research on psilocybin mushrooms. So do you have patents going in that area, because you know, a lot of a lot of the criticism running the patents in this area has been of companies seeking patents for things which has already common knowledge, as opposed to really making a major new contribution. Yeah, I have about ten patents PI entering through the patent office. I discovered that if

you had niacin two psilocybin and it would enhance activity. Now, let let's roll back the clock on this and either you probably remember this in the seventies, it was widely thought that if you had a bad dose in LSD or saulcybin, you take a high dose of niacin and you bring you down. In fact, I've recorded maybe ten in conferences when I asked people raise their hand. The senior psychonauts knew about this, and every conference several dozen people raise their hand to I filmed this because its

contrary to conventional wisdom. Ironically, Johns Hopkins and many of these other clinical studies they choose nyasin as the act of pacebo because in about twelve to twenty minutes you start getting hot flushes. So an act of pacebo means well the expectancy of the patient they'll feel something. So this is as opposed to be a neutral pacebo versus saul cibin, where you feel is something in in you know,

twelve to twenty minutes, you have lift off. So if it's that time parameter of an act of pacebo, ironically they got out exactly wrong. I proposed this and came up within two thousand and fifteen. I presented at the MAPS conference where I think you spoke at San Francisco two thousand and sixteen, and I proposed that combining niacin, pul cibin, mushrooms, and Lion's name would have a synergistic effect that is way beyond the compounded effect of the

three components. Now, I added niacin as an adversive for micro dosing, and the idea is if you've got, you know, one gram of slow speak ebensus at one one is about ten milligrams and sulcabin so you have lift off with about one gram. A tenth of a gram is substance aium. That's the definition of a micro doce. You cannot feel it. So the common micro docing protocols are about tenth of a gram of slaw speak ebensus. You

feel no effect. And then I thought, well, if you're gona do micro dosing over the counter and you had a bottle of a hundred pills, wow, there's a lot of trips there are people would just take ten capsules. So by adding niacin it would be like an adversive like ant abuse for alcoholics. And because we take niasin for those you haven't done it. Go out and this

is perfectly safe. Take a hundred milligrams of nias and nicotinic acid the flushing form by the way, and you'll start itching, you'll get red, you'll your I started itching weirdly in the bottom of my feet, in the back of my neck, and you get beat red, and it's very very unpleasant experience. You won't want to take that much again. So I thought, well, by adding nice, and it would be an adversive that I'll prevent abuse and

because as a vaso dilator, that's why it works. And I thought, also you can excite the endpoints of the periful nervous system, because that's where it happens when you start itching, your end points of your nerves are excited and their sense of So I thought vaso dilation adversive.

Exciting the endpoints of the periful nervous system. This could make the beneficial effects of Saul Sabin and Lion's main mushroom get to the end points of the perfil nervousm because perifel neuropathy oftentimes presents itself to the deadening of the fingertips and toes. So that was my whole idea. This is a novel idea, of folks. There's no prior art on this. This this is a true test of patent ability and why it should be and it will be awarded as a pattern. I came up with a

novel idea. I saw the mention this right because you were just co author of a paper in Nature right about microdocing, and I wonder if you could just explain, you know, what you found there, because I think it was the biggest study so far of microdocing, right. Yeah, I'm really really proud of our team. You know, it's been a team effort and we co design an app that's available on iOS Apple devices, soon to be available on droids. It's that micronose dot me has gone through

the ethics review boards at University of British Columbia. All your data is protected, it's anonymized. We found the cellular mechanism that we believe translates into the psychomotor demonstration that micro dosing with a stack of nias and online's made as a dramatic effect on neurological performance. I mean, this

whole thing is like, it's a beautiful, beautiful discovery. I'm just so honored to be the shepherd of this of this knowledge because I think it will be a paradigm break root medicine and other researchers can walk through this door and it just shows a combination of a natural product and a pure In this case, we're using pure silicon.

We can legally get sulsan one milligram without a d A license, and so silicon is the other ingredient in psilocybin mushrooms at silocybin and soulicin both co occur and pulocybin mushrooms. Sulcybin is a pro drug the silicon and de posterolates and silicon crosses the blood brain barrier. Psilocybin does not. But we got for this first paper we published in November eight we had over eight thousand people.

And what's amazing about this easan is that we recruited this group on micro dose dot me, so we had a really good balanced data set to compare. Now this is open, open label. You know, people are getting sulcibe mushrooms illegally on the black market variability and dose variability and potency. So the key outcome though you found in this first paper was that micro docing looks to be associated with lower levels of anxiety and depression. Was that

the key finding. That's the key finding, but a legitimate argument is that could be association people who are the motivations which we get into why are people micro docing their micro docing to resolve their depression. They're they're micro doocing to be more creative, to be more present. That was an interesting metric as well. So the motivations and the democraphics was the first paper. It was not a cause and effect paper, so we never even said anything

about that. Some people jumped into conclusions that it was. But our second paper, we submitted a day after our first paper was accepted. That paper found something that's totally bizarrely interesting, that is crazy and its implications. And basically it says micro dosing is again associated because not at the CBO double wine controlled study is associated with reduction and depression, significant reduction and depression, an increase in psycho

motor response. Okay, what is a psychomotor response? See depression subjective? And I like to say, and I think it's legit if you're micro dosing for depression and you're best friends of micro docing for depression and their friends are micro dosing for depression, I'm micro dosing, you're micro docing, we're all micro docing together. We're in a community. Expectancy, right, that comes into play. But what Dr Pam and I focused in on is what is something that's not subjective?

What is something that is outside of subjectivity that cannot be related to expectancy effect or if you want to use word of placebo. And as I mentioned forty percent of the individuals. The second papers twelve thousand people, and it turns out there's something called the tap test. This is an alternating finger tests. Many of you have had this, or you know of your friends who are family who have Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. The traumatic brain injury is how quickly

can tap your fingers alternating ly in ten seconds? But this is a validated tests for parkinson Alzheimer's cognitive decline. And note to self, we're all getting older, we all have cognitive decline, we all lose psychomotor skills. So in our second paper, as it turns out, with a stack of those people reporting using the stack of lions main niacin and psilocybin micro dosing on the average of three times a week, average of one tenth or one third of a gram of paul cyban, there is a massive

increase in the tap test over thirty days. The tap test metrics go from about forty three approximately taps in ten seconds to seventy three in thirty days. That's not subjective, folks. So we found massive increase in the tap test in thirty days. And the age group of over the age of fifty five that's what we really saw the signal. It shows synergy and this is why I've hit the freaking home run, folks I. I could not be happier.

There's also a lot of evidence of animals using and even getting high off the psilocypic mushrooms, right, Yeah, there's a lot of examples the ingestion of mushrooms by animals, from insects to two bearers, to people, two dogs, to cats, to birds. I mean as part of the food chain, folks. Um. And you know, there's twenty three including humans primates that are known to ingest mushrooms and they know the differences

between poisonous and edible ones. That speaks to a long ancestral knowledge of the fact that mushrooms are good as a nutrition or part of our food, going back millions of years, with so many different species documented ingesting mushrooms of as a food, and invariably they would also encounter the pelocybin mushrooms, and some of these sulciban mushrooms, especially in the subtropics and the tropics, are uncommonly common, all of which kind of leads us to the Stone Day

hypothesis of Terence McKenna and I guess some of his predecessors that I think you've been a clause. I believer in right that the role of pilocytic mushrooms in human evolution. You know that Terrence and Dennis mccanna came up with us, and I was on the other side of defense making

fun of him that was a great stoner conversation. But listen, with our cellular data that we have right now, we can see that soul cybin and sulocybin analogs that I just mentioned activate nerve growth receptors and code for the regeneration and the origination of new neurons is happening. Folks. This is about a problem that I find so warious

about this orthodox scientific community. They stand on their high chair and they throw spears, but they are not forgiving for those who are visionaries, who speculate, and that's imagination. Speculation has led to the greatest innovations in the history of science. Let's take a break here and go to

an ad well. I remember a few years ago I read this wonderful novel by Richard powers Boll The Overstory when the Poetzer Prize, and it was about basically almost looking at the world through the eyes of trees in a way, and you know, I mean, and it talked about these elements of the networks and communications in almost community. It's not familial existence among trees. And ibviously massilia mushrooms

fungi played this big role in this. And then I've heard you make these analogies between the plant life and the fungi life, and the networks and the communication and also when we think about the networks of the Internet and other types of neural networks, and I wonder if you could just you know, expand on that is the sense in which the future, you're the metaverse, and things are learning anything from studying the fung gui. I mean, you talk about some of the Silicon Valley innovators and

entrepreneurs and pioneers. But is there some interplay between these worlds. Well, there are a few universal truths in nature, and I think one of them is networks are self perpetuating. Uh, They're agile, responding to ever changing in circumstances, you know, at the tips of the mycelium. And we actually checked this mathematically because I've said this in the movie Fantastic Fungi that the breadth of my arms outstretched could have trillions of a cross branchings and and tips. You know,

they're multinuclea. At the tips, there's multi many nuclei and there they're testing and coding and they're responding. And if there's a new genomic expression from epigenesis, the stimulus of an environmental stimulus on the genome of the organism, and it codes for a new protein that allows you to have more food or more protection or more survival advantage. What happens Those genes then get replicated and moreover, the network becomes informed of this success, and so there's a

memory then going forward. And so these networks not only vaccinate themselves, but there are massive repositories of knowledge. So networks, I think, by their very structure are evolutionary successful. And the invention of the computer internet, I think of the repetition of a previously proven evolutionary successful model. We see it with mycelium, we see it with neurons. And I'm an amateur astronomer, so I see it in organization of dark matter. You know, I think these are echoes on

different orders of magnitude of the same structure. So I just think I waxed poetic in my thinking, because when you trip on sul side mushrooms, as you well know, you have this feeling of being in the context of some giant consciousness. You're You're no longer just a corporeal envelope of inside of a human shell. You're part of this giant expanse of universal being of existence. And I think this has increasing scientific credibility. I think nature is conscious.

I think everything in nature is conscious. We are not as conscious as the consciousness that surrounds us. And I think this is what these psychedelics do. And they open up your imagination to think boldly and I will say brilliantly in many cases. And also people can go out way out there. I'm not saying that they can't, but uh, you know, you like Andy Wile and some others, you know, interesting act with the broader issues of health and wellness

and in this case mushrooms in medicine. But there's a way in which you also a key figure in the intersection with the environment. And I mean, so let me just ask you about bees and mushrooms, so just elaborate. We are Neanderthals of nuclear weapons, is how I look at this, because I was a beekeeper and a mushroom growert at the then intersection of those two scientific disciplines. There's a tremendous die off of bees around the world right now, and so I use my cilium to up

regulate the immune system of bees. We published in Nature, I'm the primary author and Nature Scientific Reports. Ethan, You'll love this as in the ninety nine point ninth percentile of all articles ever published in the Nature publication ecosystem, including Nature of Medicine, and only about seven percent of the articles get accepted they are submitted to Nature, and

I'm in the top point one percent. So the basically in Nature and our article one treatment with a ratime much from mycelium extract is the mycelium folks reduced viruses that harmbes by forty five thousand times with one treatment and their sugar water at a one percent concentration. That's that's one drop per hundred drops of sugar water. Sugar water so phenomenal. So it was stated to me by the Cornell University J Evans, who's also a co author in our paper, and ten years he's not seen a

virus freeb. The veroa might have spread these viruses now and they's called a worldwide pandemic and world be pollination services are in jeopardy. So this is something I think as a paradigm solution. We've been working with the FDA and the U. S d A for two years because we are not allowed to commercialize us. Now, think of this, folks.

You've got a solution that could say bio diversity, but government regulations prevent you because bees, honey bees are considered to be my her livestock and because their minor live stock, the food they are allowed to consume and the allowed to buy for your commercial bees is regulated by the government. You can feed your family and your children more foods

than you're allowed to feed to livestock. So we've been trying now for a year and a half going on two years to get an exemption and a pathway forward with the f d A. But after then continuous dialogue back and forth, they begin to soften up and they really see your well intended, You've got something that could be a benefit. So so the FDA actually has given us a road map now for approval and then we

hope to be able to have this made available now. Again, patents are blueprints anyone who's a mushroom cultivator, who knows how to do in virtual propagation like I do. You can take my patent, you can grow up your own mysilium, you can do an extract, you can feed your own bees. It's just you cannot commercialize it. Googled you with Google News just before this conversation here, and when you put Paul Stamitz in there, what pops up more often than you?

Paul Stamitz is the character in the Star Trek TV show that's named after you, right, an astro my collogist named Paul Stamits. But then I see you have this relationship with NASA and you have these I think a grant or something that's looking at asteroids and mushrooms. I mean, what's that about. I live in this remote island right now, you know, the quarantine safe in the can British Columbia, and I built my house in the shape and Star

Truck Enterprise. So they called me up and I'm like, you know, I'm sitting on the Star duck of my cabin that was built as a tribute to Star Truck Enterprise, and you're calling me up, you know, to ask him about this we're supposed to right the next Star Truck series. We're searching for ideas. We saw your Ted talk, Do you have any ideas? And I said, oh my god, as a turn on your tape recorder and that, and

then we spent two hours and a half. The two hours, but I said at the end, I've always wanted to be the first astro mycologists. They said, what what would you say as an astromycologist? And they go, we can use that, We can use that. What's the thing with NASA though, I mean there's some some grant proposal or pat thing about asteroids and mushrooms. Yeah, it's a small grant, it's only eight dollars. Is basically a proof of concept.

Can we take regularly which is basically the lunar or asteroid mineral dust, and can we then turn it into soil to grow plants for human habitation? With this NASA grant, we have a what's called a white paper that we produced and uh, two of my colleagues, you know, get credit for doing the heavy lifting on this. We designed the experiments together and then we found sure enough, it

looks like it's a great gateway. The implications of which means that once human beings are living on other plans it's or other extra tutorial spaces, that they will be able to create their own food on these things by using these fungi. Fungi basically munch rocks. Fungi eat rocks, liberate minerals, associate with algae, likens form micro rosal. Fungi pair with plants, so uh, they break down minerals and they send it to plants, and the plants reward the

massilium um with with nutrients. It's much easier to send seeds and spores so to Mars than it is to carry you know, two years of food or five years or ten years of food. So, yeah, you want to become sustainable. Remember you said what we've running into the phrase hemp will save the world, right, And there's an element you know where you're out there saying mushrooms, you know, massilian will save the world or help save the world.

I think it's true. I actually think it's true. The evidence that we have now it's just so vast and so deep that these massilian networks are the dominant interface organisms that are existent funget create soils. Folks without soil, you don't have life, so they are instrumental and there in the production of soil. Can this sort of thing be scaled up in a way which can address some of the major challenges of climate change? Well, let me

put it this way. I can take a piece of a tissue one tenth the size of your fingernail from a mushroom, let's say an oyster mushroom, and four to six months grow ten million pounds of mushrooms. That is

literally true. So when you look at the scalability of the fermentation in virtual technology, the ability of you being able to generate enough massilium to replace leather, to replace meat, to be able to help ecosystems breakdown toxins, to be able to grow enough soulocybin mushrooms to expand consciousness, and I think soul cyban it will lead to humans becoming a new species. We are not the Homo sapiens of the past several hundred thousand years. We better not be.

There's time for us to be evolved and have a quantum leap in the evolution of a human species. I think psilocybin mushrooms and the use of my cilium and all these applications that I have alluded to is a paradigm shifting microtechnology that can literally say billions of lies and ironically is just now being discovered. The conventional anti mycology mindset is being de selected out of the gene pool. Of course, there'll be a lot of starts and stops.

But there's a dozen companies now. I mean Mercedes just announced they have my cilium leather and their new concept vehicles. Um, there's many big alternative meat companies that have sward in their I p O. S UM and gathering a lot of investment money. Many of these companies will fail, a few will succeed, but that's the cost of entrepreneurialism to dare to be different and as you know, I have been talking about this for forty years, another loan voice

in the woods. There are to be imaginative. And is there a comparable fascination with this stuff in China as there is in the West. Yeah, China is very interesting. The long history of use of mushrooms in China as a immutant tonic is fantastic. It's extremely well established. The innovation that we're seeing now in a sense may have that is my selial roots in China. But by no means as one culture now dominate. The field of mycology is a worldwide movement. It's a pluralistic movement, and I

think that's wonderful. Paul, I almost forgot to ask you a question I asked me of the guests. So are you still consuming psilocybin with some frequency? Do you experiment among the different varieties peyote, mescal in, ayahuaska, d m T. I mean, is this still a part of your life in a significant way or is it more part of your younger years. I'm six, the six years of age. I was born in nine, and I will never be an apologist for my use to sell saban mushrooms. They're

core to my being and who I am. I I journey, as I say, or or trip at least once a year with a very large dose. I do it a very protected set and setting is very much core of who I am and my being. And um I think is showing medically supported evidence now that one of these events can be life changing, infrequently used, but long term benefits that put it outside the realm of the war

against drug narrative that was propaganda in the past. So absolutely believe in the benefits of these set and setting. You know, having the right person with you. Journeying by yourself is not advisable. Having a sitter, a doctor, a therapist, the therapeutic stunning. Of course, this is much better. But for the people coming into this scene novo, you know new I'm very concerned of them shopping around and trying to find it would be leader or a guide, and

then unfortunately making a bad decision. That's a discussion for another time perhaps. Yeah, And is there a part of you that feels a loyalty or allegiance to psilocybin relative to mescaline or d m T or LSD or other substances. Well, LSD is twelve hours. Psilocybin is four to four to six hours. That's one of the reasons why it's chose for clinical studies, folks. It fits into an eight hour work day for the physicians. But you personally, what about

you personally? You know, d m T is very very quick. It's a great elevator ride. I have enjoyed it in the past, but I don't get the message and maybe I'm dumb. Maybe I need to have a longer exposure. But in four to six hours, I can process a lot in fifteen minutes to twenty minutes. I mean, I'm holding onto my chair and going into into cyberspace, you know, and at a high acceleration. It's wonderful and you get

into the spaciousness and dissociative destruction of the ego. But I I don't get the time that I need to to love myself. And this is ultimately, I think the core of humanity is based on goodness, and I think Saul Cybin removes all these layers that complicate self love and understanding. If you can love yourself, then you can love others. And I think that's the root of violence. The root of depression is people not realizing that if you can come to terms to love yourself, then you

can love others because you know who you are. And the same thing that could be said of mescal in or ayahuasca. Though right, yeah, I have not done ayahuasca from the experiences that I've been told. Yes, the thing about sula side mushrooms are so cool is that's really not cultural appropriation. Hundred and sixteen species of sul side mushrooms are known around the world. They were used in Europe and Ireland in South America and North America. They

were used all over the world. It's not like peyote, which I actually very protective of the peyote hunt and the Pyote people, and that is an endangered species that shouldn't be made available in my opinion, to the masses because it is threatened and it is cultural appropriation because the peyote hunt is so specific to the peoples that that use them. On the other hand, pulcibe mushrooms like this one professor who I want mentioned her name, but she was very very adamant that this is a cultural

approchriation where it's stealing from the MAZA techs. And I said, you know, I know many people who have studied with the mass of text and I've been in correspondence with some of the MASSA tech people as well. They don't use lossopy commences. They use losopy zappa ta quorum, so there's no cultural appropriation and using pelosophy cabensus when the Masso texts have a history of disdaining solasopy cadences, they don't want to use it. They use the slossomy zappa

ta quorum, which is indigenous to their ecosystem. So it's a real different thing. And and this is why when people realize that people all over the world have been using sulcaban mushrooms and the fact that you Losinan mysteries went from fifteen hundred b c E. The five hundred a d. Two thousand years of use and Greek culture of a psychoactive substance. There's deep roots in Europe and

the use of psychoactive fungi for spiritual purposes. So the ubiquity of the common experience of soul Simon brings cultures altogether. Of course, the Maso texts have unique knowledge. Of course, the ancient Greeks have unique knowledge. We all have unique cultural perspectives. But we can contribute to the greater good by bringing our knowledge and our experiences together while at the same time protecting indigenous knowledge. Well, Paul, I mean,

this is fascinating, a wide ranging discussion. Listen. I think it's incredible obviously what you're doing for our listeners. Watch the documentary Fantastic Fungi on Netflix where Paul really features in that, and there's other documentaries about him as well. Or his website is Paul Damas dot com, or follow him on Facebook. Or Twitter or all these other sorts of things with Paul, you know, I I just think what you're you're really a revolutionary force in the world

and a revolutionary force for good. So thank you so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Well, thank you so much. And it's really it's not what we make in this lifetime is a legacy that we leave. It's important for all of us psychogonosty to create new doors that the next generation and can walk through. We need to pass off these keys to these new doors of knowledge. And that's one thing that I've come to greatly appreciate and respect is my destiny is to help others make greater

discoveries than that which I've made myself. So we're all part, We're all part of this one giant consciousness. Well, thank you very very much. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments, and ideas, then leave us a message at one eight three three seven seven

nine sixty. That's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Made. You can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoact. It is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman's produced by Noam Osband

and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio, and me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to a Brio s f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Babe. Next week I'll be talking with Anifa Nile Washington, the co founder of the Fireside Project, a Psychedelic Pierre support line, and we'll also be talking about the issue of black

people and psychedelics. We feel as we move into this next psychedelic space in history here, as we legalize and decriminalize, we have to you have risk reduction and support. Without risk reduction the decrim movement and legalization, it's maybe taking a step backward or moving itself into risky spaces, and so we also want to help to support people understand that you know, psychedelic uses happening. Subscribe to Cycleactive now, see it, don't miss it.