Giuliana Furci on the Wonders of Mycology, Wisdom from Jane Goodall, And More | The Tim Ferriss Show | Transcription

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Introduction

Intro (00:00)

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Juliana Furtis: Her Journey And Introduction To Mycology

Eight Sleep (02:17)

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Eight Sleep (01:47:03)

a simple device called the pod pro cover by eight sleep it's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature it pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced but most user friendly solution on the market I pulled all of you guys on social media about best tools for sleep enhancing sleep and eight sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite when people were just raving fans so I used it and here we are add the pod pro cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit it also splits your bed in half so your partner can choose a totally different temperature my girlfriend runs hot all the time she doesn't need cooling she loves the heat and we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side which is exactly what we're doing now for me and for many people the result eight sleep users fall asleep up to 32 faster reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40 percent and get all restful sleep overall I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways it's the total solution for enhanced recovery so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed and now my dear listeners that's you guys you can get 250 dollars off of the pod pro cover that's a lot simply go to eight sleep calm slash Tim or use code Tim that's eight all spell that eight sleep calm slash Tim or use coupon code Tim T I M eight sleep calm slash Tim for 250 dollars off your pod pro cover this episode is brought to you by mac weldin back weldin is reinventing men's basics they believe in smart design premium fabrics and simple shopping I've been

Introducing Juliana Furtis (04:28)

Can I also do a personal question? Now what is it? I'm from Pentime. What if I could be out of the way? I'm a cybernetic organism living to show what metal entos go around. Me too. That was so cool. Hello boys and girls ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. I'm thrilled to have our guest today. Julianna Forci on Instagram @JulieFungi. That's G-I-U-L-I-F-U-N-G-I. Julianna is founder and executive director of the Fungi Foundation established in 2012. The world's first non-profit dedicated solely to Fungi. She is a Harvard University associate, Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy, which is one of the best honorary titles I've ever heard in my life. Co-chair of the IUCN Fungal Conservation Committee, mother author of several titles including a series of field guides to Chilean fungi and contributor to numerous publications on the environment such as the first state of the world's fungi report, Biode varcedad de Chile, Patremonio a desafios, and the IBPA award-winning book Fantastic Fungi. Julianna has worked for the fungi since 1999 and in the non-profit sector for the last 17 years. She has held consulting positions in US philanthropic foundations as well as full-time positions in international marine conservation NGOs and Chilean environmental NGOs you can find her on Instagram @JulieFungi again that spelled G-I-U-L-I fungi and @Fungi Foundation the website is ffungi.org. Julianna welcome to the show. Thank you very much Tim it's an honor and a pleasure. I thought we would start at the beginning because you represent quite an international cocktail.

How international cocktail motherhood exile shape Juliana (06:27)

You're born in the UK of a Chilean mother and an Italian father. How does that all come together? How does that happen? Well the short and unsweet answer to that is that dictatorship and exile leads to that. So my mother was a victim of the coup in 1973 year in Chile. She was a political prisoner for a year, incarcerated and tortured and then made to leave and she left Chile, arrived in Italy where she met my father and then moved to London with a scholarship to study a master's degree. So I am a product of exile. Wow I have many follow-up questions so we're going to work in reverse order.

No choice of destination (07:16)

What did your mother study for her masters? My mother is a geographer and an economist so she has always studied things that have to do with decentralization. Why was she persecuted under the regime after the coup in Chile? Because first of all she thought differently and that's one of the biggest sins in these regimes. She was a student and she from a very young age was active in politics in student fora and really in just creating discussion. When she fled or when she left how did she choose where to go? No there's no choice. She was incarcerated for 365 days and then given two weeks to leave. So that all boils down to where you can get to and she jumped over to Argentina jumped over the end. She didn't jump or she flew over to Argentina but Argentina was also under really unstable political regimes, various dictatorships and from there she was able to travel to Italy where she stayed for two years and then to England.

Welcoming countries (08:27)

So really there's no choosing. Now did Italy come out of a contact in Argentina? I'm just wondering why Italy specifically that country. I know that in places like Buenos Aires of course you have a very long history of emigration from Italy, from Spain, from Germany. Is that how the country Italy itself as a destination came up? No it wasn't through Argentina it was because her mother, my grandmother and aunt had already left Chile and had established in Italy. The reason is Italy was open to receiving refugees. Italy had a policy of welcoming people who were fleeing the regime here and so did other countries like Sweden and other places around the world. So it's more to do with how Italy was open to receiving people. How did in this may not seem germane too much of what we'll explore later but it is germane because it relates to how you became who you are. How did your parents meet? My father was a student in Rome. I come from a very small village in Calabria, my father's family. My grandparents didn't know how to read or write. They were cantadini. So producers of olive oil, wine, salami subsistence living and my father left his village and went to study by day and work by night and was studying when the Italian Communist Party and Socialist Party were welcoming all these Chilean refugees. He met my mother during a welcome party for Chilean refugees and they fell in love.

Growing up in Chile, ecology, and aquaculture before mycology (10:31)

That was it. That was it. In your life, you were born in the UK. How did you end up being born in the UK? Because my mother was offered this scholarship to study in London. She left with my father and that's where the magic happened in council housing in north London. For you then, just geographically because of course you're back in Chile now. No, I'm not back, Tim. Sorry, we have to say this. My mother came back but I didn't come back here. I was born and I came. So we're another generation of uprooted people. I didn't come back. How did you end up then where you are now? I was born in England and grew up in England and when my mother came back, I came with her. But I never left Chile to come back here. I was born outside during her exile. That's right. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. So there's an untold story there of many of the offspring children of refugees and exiles who also have their life truncated in some paths because their parents can return to their homeland and you come with them because who are you to stop them from coming back to where they never chose to leave from? How old were you when you returned to but traveled to Chile? Almost 15. What was that like going from the UK to Chile because I'm no cosmopolitan kind of sort of all cultures but I happen to have been to both countries. They're not identical. They are definitely not identical. It was a challenge but I was always very conscious that I was in no place to be an impediment for my mother to come back to the country she'd never chose to leave. So I came in total humble respect of making her return smooth. And was it smooth? It wasn't smooth. It was very difficult. She came back to a country she didn't recognize. She came back to parents that were old and in the case of my grandfather, Ille. And she came back to a country that was disjunct, a country that was looking for this sort of neo-capitalist development way of doing politics and commerce but not quite getting there. So it was hard. And did you then study in Chile or did you study and do your undergraduate and so on elsewhere? I stayed in school here with very difficult stories. So my mother had never told me that there were people who liked the dictator. So I got to school here and people would ask me, you know, where are you from? I'm from London and why were you there? Well, my mum was a refugee. And I remember a classmate saying, oh, your mother was a terrorist, you know. She should have been killed and having a go at me in the classroom. And I remember running back home and saying to my mother, how did you not warn me that there were people who liked him? You know, I had never, ever in my life encountered people who liked the dictator. So that was challenging. I stuck in school and then I went at the end of my schooling and it was time to choose undergraduate studies. All I knew is that I wanted to give back. In some way, I wanted to give back. And at first I thought that it was through humans and I went to university to study social working. And about a year into that, I was really, really clear that it wasn't humans. Humans weren't my thing. And so I then realized that it was nature. It had to do with giving back in some sort of way. And I thought, okay, let's get humans into green spaces, right? So I tried a second career and undergraduate career at landscaping and ecology. And it was still so many humans. It was like planning with parts in perfect areas. There were a lot of homo sapiens involved. And I was like, no, this isn't it. And finally, I said, okay, I'm just going to try plants in the water. There will be no humans there underwater. And I studied aquaculture. And that's where I finished my undergraduate studies in southern Chile, in northern Patagonia. I went to a university in a city where I knew nobody. And it was, I managed to finish it. And it was on that journey that I got to where I am now. So how do you hop? Well, let me ask first, is aquaculture a vibrant and widespread endeavor in Chile? Because I have very little familiarity. I know, for instance, in New Zealand, it's a huge focal point. But in Chile, I would imagine with the coastline, perhaps that's also the case. Unfortunately, Chile is a country that has housed open-knit pen salmon farming in its waters. So for your audience, and our audience today, to understand aquaculture is basically the cultivation of aquatic resources, aquatic species. So could be algae, can be shellfish, the mollusks, or fish, finfish. And Chile is one of the largest producers of farmed salmon in the world. Salmon aren't native to the southern hemisphere. And therefore, the aquaculture industry of salmon in Chile come with tremendous environmental and social impact. But it means also that there is a vibrant aquaculture industry. And so there were university careers. And I studied aquaculture and got into algae, seaweed farming. And that was really what I did my thesis on and what I graduated doing. And ended up curiously working in NGO against the salmon farming industry and its negative impacts. Not against the labor opportunities, but against their environmental practices. You know, I should really know this by now. So I'm going, usually I blame it on my audience. And I say for those of my audience who may not know, could you define NGO? I've long thought that I've understood NGO means, but perhaps just to confirm that. Could you define what an NGO is? NGO is the acronym for a non- environmental organization. So a non-profit, it's an organization that represents civil society. And that has a place at tables recognized as where people organize and find a voice that represents them. So could you give me an example? Or maybe they're one and the same? Is it fair to say that not all non-profits are NGOs, but all NGOs are non-profits? Or are there for-profit NGOs? No, there's never a for-profit NGO. NGOs, we measure our success, not in revenue of money in the bank, but of durable change. That's our measure of success, the change we can make. So where did you go or how did you go from aquaculture to fungi? How does that happen?

How an undergrad assignment in fox poop introduced me to fungi (18:26)

Oh, it's a funny one, Tim. So I was in university and I remember one morning walking along the corridors and there was a poster stuck on the corridor that said, "Volunteers needed to look for Fox poop in forests." And I was like, "Oh, that sounds amazing. Fox poop. I really love scat and poop." And we can get into that afterwards. So much grows out of it. And so, of course, by volunteering, and of course, I was the only one who volunteered and I ended up getting the volunteer position. And traveling with my professor Jaime Jimenez, who studies foxes and other animals. It's a great name also. Yeah. We traveled to Chiloy Island in southern Chile. And what we had to do was we had to put these big cages out to capture non-violently, but to capture and trap the foxes. We would put radio transmitter colors on them and then we would free them and walk around the forest collecting poop and also with a huge antenna trying to find a signal to triangulate their position using radio telemetry. So this is really old school technology. Today, you would just put like a GPS chip on them, you know, on a color. But this was, you know, 20-something years ago, and we're walking around bushwhacking with a huge antenna and trying to get some sound in to see where their position is. And at the same time picking up all the poop we could find. And then I would go back to the laboratory and dry the poop and then sort of open it up and see what they had eaten. That was my job. But it was on that trip that I was walking along a path with this antenna and I saw a huge mushroom on a tree trunk and I wanted to know who it was. And there were no books on Chilean fungi and it was a lightning bolt. It was like, I'm going to do this. And something happened that I have never been able to stop even if I've tried. But I got home and online shopping had just begun and Barnes and Noble had the opportunity to ship books to the US. And then I'd have somebody, you know, ship them to Chile and then Amazon was a thing too. And I bought every book I could find on fungi. Of course, Paul Stamets' books were the first ones I found. And I would devour everything I could read. It was that one mushroom who I wanted to know that the trick at all. I love that you use who with the fungi. I really, really like that. And I must ask because I just need to know it'll bother me if I don't. What was the objective of the research with the Fox, SCAT and radio telemetry? We were measuring how the foxes were being displaced due to logging of native forest. So as the forest was being lost, habitats destroyed, where were the foxes going? And they were going uphill up the mountain trying to get into more and more remote places. But then, you know, you get to the tree line and there's not much more food for them. So we wanted to know what they were eating as they were moving. And there were a lot of rodents they were eating and a lot of really beautiful beetle exoskeletons. You find rainbows in Fox, SCAT. I have to say that. Sounds like an art opportunity for some aspiring graphic artist out there. And as you tell the story of seeing this mushroom on the tree trunk, being unable to find a book that covers the describes or catalogs to lay in fungi, for me, that begs the question, in general, why does it seem that mushrooms and fungi have been so understudied? There are two main reasons. And the first one is because fungi have always been associated to the pagan, to paganism.

Reasons why mushrooms have been understudied (22:39)

They're organisms that are associated with rot, with decomposition. They often have textures and odors that aren't pleasant to all. They grow associated to humid and sometimes dark places. So that's one reason. And of course, they're fantastical properties that alter states of consciousness, which for the Catholic Church was something very scary and very dangerous. And on the other hand, they were thought to be plants and they were thought to be inferior plants, which is even worse. They were treated as this group of organisms with moss and with ferns that were just very mindily important with respect to vascular plants that form trees and beautiful flowers. And so they were discarded. So you mentioned Paul. Paul is a huge fan of yours as we both know. You have certainly from that first encounter with that mushroom on the tree learned a lot. And I'd love to hear within Chile what you found that strikes you as unique or interesting with respect to mycology. There are two ways to answer this question. First of all, my journey is forged on the absence of opportunity in Chile. So when I discovered fungi and discovered that I couldn't really find much more about them, there was nowhere to study here in Chile, nowhere at all. I had a choice. My choice was I could leave Chile and I could go back to England. I could study mycology. I could become a researcher, really, really enrich my knowledge, or I could use my life's effort to make sure that nobody else would ever be faced with that decision again and use my life's effort so that nobody would ever, ever have to feel they had to leave their country if they loved mycology. And that was my choice. And that's where I found I could give back. So really what started me about Chile, first of all, was the absence of opportunity and the opportunity to create opportunity. And in terms of the fungal diversity of Chile, everything is fantastic. Every encounter is sublime, the colors, the textures, the possibility to walk in a forest in fall and in an hour encounter over hundreds different species, different sizes, different contextures, textures, smells, different functions, and ultimately this opportunity to coincide with these most amazing organisms in the world. Have you discovered any new species of fungi? Yes, I have. I've had the honor and pleasure of coinciding for the first time as a human with the fungus. I've named two formally. One is a very special fungus called amanita galactica. It's an amanita that grows in mixed monkey puzzle trees with Southern Beach, so arogadia with another fagus. And it's a very, very old species, Tim. It's an elder species. It's a species that was around when the supercontinent Gondwana existed, when the continent still hadn't drifted apart. So we know that it's a species that originates when that huge landmass that created the Southern Hemisphere was still stuck together. How do you know that in the sense that unlike say stuff like you could take a snuff tray in Atakama and do carbon dating? But with fungi, that is not the tool that you would use. Is it looking at, this is a term I only recently learned, the phylogeny and somehow mapping it to the span of humankind. I would just love to know how humans have confidence that that is the case. We've convened as humans that we organize life based on common ancestry. So we know, for example, that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants because we have a more recent ancestor. And curiously, this is a small parenthesis to what we're talking about. But that common ancestor between fungi and animals are the opistokonts. So it's a cell that has a posterior flagellum, namely a sperm, for example. A sperm cell is an opistokont. Now there are some fungi that have that same type of cell. There's one cell with a posterior flagellum. So that's how we know that we're more closely related because both fungi and animals have that type of cell that's ficus per. Now with Amanita Galactica, we know how old she is or he is because the most recent common ancestor that we have discovered is extremely old. So we build relationships and timing of these relationships based on common ancestry and the closest relation. What was the term you used for the supercontinent? Gondwana. Gondwana. Is that the same as Pangaea or is Pangaea?

Gondwana vs. Pangea (28:51)

No, they're not the same. So Pangaea was one big supercontinent that first split into two. Laureia that then divided to form the Northern Hemisphere and Gondwana that then divided to form the Southern Hemisphere. I say thank you. Yeah. Learning so much. I'm learning so much and I'm going to dig further. So with say Amanita Galactica, you mentioned he or she. Now is that just a personal preference as to which pronoun you choose or are fungi gendered? I don't know. They are not gendered but they're not it's either. They're not objects. So if we're talking about an animal, we wouldn't really call it an it. We're talking about plants. We wouldn't either. I honestly cannot and I'm very uncomfortable with objectifying any species of living organism. I just can't call them it really. Of course, this is a very sensitive subject in a lot of places now but in English, this is where we fail in a sense because we have to choose a pronoun.

Naming a new species of mushroom (30:09)

We could use they of course but then you have something like Chinese where it's like the pronunciation at least. The writing is different but you have ta ta ta. It's the same pronoun regardless of who or what you're talking about effectively. So it's a lot easier to navigate. How did you choose the name and also I'm not familiar with many Amanita. I'm only familiar with Amanita Muscaria and pretty much everyone is familiar visually with that because it is the most commonly depicted red cap with white dots. What does Amanita Galactica look like and how did you name it? So Amanita Galactica is a little smaller than Amanita Muscaria which is the Flyer Garak and some people know it as the Smurf mushroom. The Santa Claus mushroom. And the Muscaria. Amanita Galactica has a black cap with white scales and I can let you in on a funny story. People think that it's really romantic to find a new species. I was actually in the car driving and of course you know one's eye is pretty used to catching that fungal fuzz. You know there's something there's a vibe in fungi that's different from soil it's different from plants. That visual vibe came through and I stopped the car it was snowing it was freezing cold and I saw this black mushroom cap with white dots and it was like looking into a starry night and I immediately said this is Amanita Galactica. It was instant it was looking into the galaxy and I was in the car with two other people and nobody would get out because it was snowing and raining and literally freezing and I was like oh I'm getting out of course I'm getting out and I spent quite a while with the mushrooms there and had the sense that it was something new. It was in an old habitat and a very pristine habitat and so yeah it was called Amanita Galactica and then the journey begins of finding out somebody else has ever coincided and that's a long journey you know you have to look at records of people finding Amanita's and if they did what were those Amanita you know what they looked like microscopically you know what was their DNA and over time it became evident that it was a species nobody had ever coincided with before. So what is the protocol I'm just imagining you're in winter clothing you're driving along you hop out your friends are like oh god how long is this going to take freezing our asses off and I've been to Portillo and some places in Chile and it gets cold and do you pluck the mushroom the fruiting body and then go back to the lab and I'm not sure if it would be spore prints or what the current process is how do you go about determining if it is a new species.

What is the process of defining a new species? (33:04)

So the first thing to do I have a particular method which is I like to spend time with every species I encounter so I get to their level so I'm one of those you know people who lie on the floor and I will lie down I will first you have to feel Tim because if you're going to describe you have to feel so there's a lot of looking without touching there's a lot of smelling without touching observing the surroundings who is it growing with what trees are close because fungi are specific to their substrate they never grow and live separate from a symbiont so what trees are around are there more and then clearing begins clearing around the mushroom observing what happens if I touch it does it change does it change in color does it stain does it break there's a lot of that there's a lot of very detailed feeling with the senses of touch of seeing of smelling observing if you know animals come out of it or don't and we don't pluck them we will when you're doing scientific collecting you will try to pop it out making sure that nothing remains in the soil so you will dig a bit with your fingers and you will make sure you get to the bottom of this sporum of this macroscopic body and pick it up observing every single step because there are some mushrooms that you touch and they change color that you touch and you lose a texture that you pick up and it breaks and whether it's hollow whether it's stuffed whether it's solid really important features whether when you pick it up and it starts going dry it changes color is a really important feature everything is important so there's a lot of sensuality in that first encounter and then you carefully wrap it in something that doesn't scratch it or sometimes you can just hold it in a basket making a little bed and we go back to if you're lucky you're in a place with electricity I am a field my college is that explores pristine areas of the world so sometimes it's just going back to camp we go back and another process of observation begins but now opening that mushroom up cutting it again what's inside is it solid inside did it change does it smell it's really a sensual process and after you write down all these notes you take photographs with size references you proceed to dry it now you have to dry it in a very specific way in which DNA isn't degraded now we can't cook them 80 90 percent of a mushroom is water so it's a process that's really important otherwise it will rot and if you have electricity you'll use a food dehydrator now traditionally because I explore pristine places for fungi and there's no electricity the drying part is the biggest challenge and believe it or not nobody has invented a really efficient field dehydrator yet so I put them in my sleeping bag and I normally share a tent with my fungi my collected fungi and use body heat to dry them or silica gel and then once they're stored dry you look at the microscope for microscopic features and you extract DNA for sequencing now before it used to be the microscopic features that would determine the relationships between species today we know that those microscopic characteristics aren't enough to determine relatedness and we use DNA so based on those DNA sequences and databases that exist of all these sequences you know whether it's been discovered or not and then you proceed to describe I see so you

Athletic Greens (38:05)

have the equivalent of like an interpol DNA database for fungi just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show this episode is brought to you by athletic greens I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement the answer is invariably athletic greens I view it as all in one nutritional insurance I recommended it in fact in the four-hour body this is more than 10 years ago and I did not get paid to do so with approximately 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients you be very hard-pressed to find a more nutrient dense and comprehensive formula on the market it has multivitamins multimineral greens complex probiotics and prebiotics for gut health and immunity formula digestive enzymes adaptogens and much more I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases if I miss anything I'm not aware of of course I focus on nutrient dense meals to begin with that's the basis but athletic greens makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available from travel packets I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around right now athletic greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase many of us are deficient in vitamin D I found that true for myself which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure so adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support support your immunity gut health and energy by visiting athletic greens dot com slash Tim you'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription again that's athletic greens dot com slash Tim are you drinking matte? yes I am so jealous now do you call that straw okay for people who can't see the visual you're holding a gourd it has I don't know if it's if it's covered in carved leather no it's pumpkin carved from in Calabaza with with with some ornamentation on the outside has it has a metal top so it looks kind of like a baseball that has the very top cut off and then it's hollowed out you have yerba matte in there which looks kind of like chopped spinach to the untrained eye which you then what is the

Juliana'S Interests, Discoveries, And Relationships

A diversion on nomenclature and friends deep in the jungle of Argentina. (39:52)

word in english steep sebar right sebar and then you have the straw do you call that a bon bia bon bija bon bia yes bon bia yeah so you stick a straw into this and the straw has holes in it's a metal straw so the straw does the filtering that really brings back the memories I used to live in Argentina so I drank matte almost every day whether it was grus de malto rosa Monte kombalo sibadar oh wow you missed an Argentina Tim I did don't hold it against me I won't I won't but I'm really curious as to why I was spending time in Panama in 2005 I think it was 2005 might have been 2004 and I became friends with someone who is half Panamanian and half Argentine in Panama City and his family had been there a very long time living in Panama and he had spent a lot of time in Argentina and I had no plans for my next step I was letting the wind carry me at the time and he said you need to visit Argentina I said why do I need to visit Argentina and he said they have the best wine in the world best steak in the world the most beautiful women in the world and you can live for pennies on the dollar and I said well that's a pretty good that's a pretty good pitch and went to Argentina planning to be there for four weeks and I was just dying one day in the middle of summer it was so humid and I was walking down this pedestrian walkway called the Avenida Florida which is a Pertanal and I'm walking down this pedestrian walkway which is like an arcade and like the Santa Monica promenade for people who have ever been to that walking down and there was a tango shop blaring music but I could feel the air conditioning coming out of the tango shop and so I walked in and I'm just loitering I'm waiting for a friend to get out of a class a Spanish class and ultimately the woman who is working there this chain smoking older woman was very upset or she wasn't upset she was annoyed that I was clearly not going to buy anything and she was like hey Pee-beee Pee-beee is like kid you know she said if you're going to sit here you might as well buy a ticket to a tango class upstairs and so I did for 10 I think it was 10 pesos and I became obsessed with tango and I danced and stayed there for nine months. Tango that's incredible yeah I ended up competing and doing all this stuff. Oh wow yeah so I have so it's great it's great so I haven't I haven't danced Tango in probably 10 plus years but that is what took me to Argentina and I drank mate all the time that's amazing and I actually had something called Maté Léo from Brazil yeah this morning which I had the instantized Maté but I was thinking to myself this morning I'm like this just isn't the same the instant mate is not the same.

Julian and Yerba Mate (43:33)

No I have to send you a maté I'm going to the US next month so I'm gonna take the maté gourd I'm gonna take I promise here no it's I gifted Pablo Paul yeah I'm just one too I wonder if he uses it I have to get back to that one if he doesn't he could just mail me his I love maté people people ask me all the time we're getting off topic here but you know what is your favorite smart drug and I the brains are very sensitive instruments so I don't I try not to bludgeon it too often but for me yerba maté is absolutely my favorite stimulant and you know the Argentines will say that there's maté now which is different from cafe now I don't think that's true but my understanding is that maté has not just caffeine but also Theo Bromine as found in dark chocolate and theophane as found in green tea so you get the pharmacokinetics of it are very very interesting in the sense that you don't just get this one peak and then tail you get seemingly at least three peaks and tails which for me allows me to write for several hours whereas in contrast drinking a cup of coffee and I love coffee but I will I'm a fast metabolizer and I will have this very rapid peak within maybe 20 25 minutes and then I'll feel tired and I think it's worth mentioning that there is also an amazing ritual around drinking maté yes obliges you to share your maté and really creates kinship brotherhood, sisterhoods it's important to our cultures yeah but also also side note at least in Argentina at the time there was a line you could ask someone if they wanted to you know tomorrow maté or is maté like I'm forgetting is it masculine or feminine so you could ask if somebody asked you if they wanted to you know to take a maté in their apartment that was like hey come upstairs for a drink kind of thing yeah so yeah it's a very deep culture of maté with the gauchos and everything I mean it's and it's different in you go to Argentina if you go to Uruguay it's slightly different the gourds and the gourds the gourds are different too so I'm drinking this is a Uruguayan maté that has a wide mouth yeah wow brings back the memories really brings back there so you mentioned I think two species was a two species what is the other so the second species is called quaternarius chlorosplendidus chloro is green and splendidus is splendid it's a beautiful green mushroom that has a great story to it I have not only found new species to science but I found some new species to keelie and there is a way of finding them that's quite amusing to many and this is how I found quaternarius chlorosplendidus and of course you know you're in the forest you're hiking with you know my colleges and you have to go have a pee of course with nature calls and you go behind a tree and there you go you're there you know you're like oh look there's a green mushroom and oh what it's new to science and so I found quaternarius chlorosplendidus while taking the pea break in the forest with my colleges from keu gardens Tula Niskinin so I'm like Tula wait for me I'll be right back and then I'm going back I'm like Tula look this is a green mushroom it's like but where did you find it I was having a peevea in the tree and it was there so do you have colleagues who have spent like decades going on the expeditions to find new species and they're like god damn it Julian what what next she's going to go to find a sandwich and look behind you know the hot dog vendor and find a new species I can imagine yeah or maybe you're just a good luck charm they they keep with them it's the money you're drinking up money you have to stop you have to stop and pee and it definitely sharpens your visual senses where is cue gardens that's kiw yeah kiw cue gardens it's a royal botanic garden in England in Richmond and it houses the world's largest fungerium the largest collection of dried fungi in the world and it has the largest collection of hollow types which are the actual physical dried mushroom from which a species was described so amanita galactica has a holotype which is the exact mushroom I got out the car to to feel when I first encountered and to collect and so cue is very important in mycology hollow type like h-o-l-o like wholeness wholeness yeah like holistic holotropic holotype you can split a holotype to form an isotype okay which is part of that holotype so the the isotype would be like taking an arm or leg off of a human is it is it yeah it's like taking this brings us to something really interesting and and it's the fact that the mushroom isn't the entire fungus right now we're all talking a lot about mycelium lately right and so mycelium would be like the body if we do a parallel with a tree the mycelium is the tree and the mushroom is like the apple of the apple tree right so when we see mushrooms on the first floor we may be seeing 20 mushrooms spread out but they may be from one same individual one mycelium so it might be like seeing 20 apples it comes from one tree the problem is we don't we never see the tree so if we walk into a forest and it's full of amanita muscadia now this red mushroom with white dots we have no way of knowing how many individuals are there right it might be one individual and that's why we know that the largest living organism on earth is a fungus is the humongous fungus that's in Oregon it's one mycelium one genetic body that covers 900 acres and produces thousands of mushrooms every year right but it's one mycelium that's also true I want to say I don't know if the location is Colorado

The largest living organism on earth (50:30)

but for certain aspen groves I want to say are also one gigantic biomass yes that's so it's so incredible to try to wrap your head around yeah question for you as we think about or just hold as a bookmark this description of the mushrooms being the apples on the tree the fruiting bodies because so so various animals are attracted to fruits they eat these fruits they spread the seeds they help propagate the lives of these these species right so we are symbionts in that way how would you explain why mushrooms as fruiting bodies the equivalent of apples might have hallucinogenic properties since if we look at say serotonin it's a very old neurotransmitter and the serotonin receptors are very old and so you'd certainly many animals if not all I don't know above my pay grade but would would experience some of these hallucinogenic effects like the reindeer in Lapland who eat amanita and so on how do you explain that is it well I'm not even in a hazard to guess I would just love to know because there are people who have hypothesized or speculated that the hallucinogenic effects of some plants are a basically an insecticide or pesticide but that that seems to contradict the purpose of a fruiting body putting aside or maybe not putting aside also there are many many fungi that are extremely toxic if ingested but how should one think about the analogy of the apple and the mushroom and factor in the fact that you have hallucinogenic mushrooms you have poisonous mushrooms and so on one thing that we're learning and at the fungi foundation we are participating in a phylogenomic study of the genus thielosophy with the Natural History Museum of Utah and what we're learning so we're not looking at the hallucinogenic compounds and the chemistry of the fungi in detail we're looking at the whole genus so if we're if we look at the genus thielosophy we are discovering because this is all very new research we are discovering that it's very old that it precedes humanity that it originates most probably in Africa over 25 million years ago and that it has radiated across the world because of animal vectors because plants have moved as well now the relationship of a species with a compound isn't necessarily direct there is thielosophy in species that aren't sorry there is

Psilocybin and other genera. (54:02)

psilocybin in species that aren't psilosophy there is psilocybin in general like i-nociby, gymnopulus and others so the relationship of how a species is or anagenus is propagated even if it houses these compounds doesn't tell the story by itself so these compounds are found in other genera as well that have the same mechanism of propagation so it's not that simple to talk just about you know that one genus housing the species we know that some of these hallucinogenic compounds are related to reactions that have nothing to do with propagation there's no evidence of a direct relationship to inhibit ingestion from an animal animals eat psilosophy containing psilocybin and propagate them and it doesn't seem to be something that deters them do you think it's something that attracts them i mean there are certain animals do seem to i mean they seem to almost champions are really attracted to yeah yeah yeah for sure for sure just for so we can cover our bases here with sort of taxonomy 101 since this is not an area i know much about but you mentioned genera can you just walk us through the basics of what that stack looks like please so humans have convened to name

How genera and species are classified. (55:41)

species in a binomial system so two names and this was coined by Linnaeus by Carl Linnaeus and we still use that system in which we call a species with a first name which is the genus and a second name which is the specific name so the genus psilosophy and the species psilosophy cubensis for example and that binomial those two names compose the way we talk about all species on earth and we can go back up that system it's the taxonomical system and that's how we get to a kingdom so we talk about kingdom of the fungi kingdom of animals kingdom of plants and we break that down based on shared characteristics and finally ultimately get to the species name composed of genera and species what is between kingdom and then species well let's talk about fungi so because we have kingdom of the fungi then we have phyla phyla in the case of plants we talk about division not phyla but animals in fungi talk about phyla then class order family genus species I need to brush up it's a language it's a language matters but it's a language in itself and it's a language that not everybody should have to speak because it's a language that you can learn now when you talk about the world's largest fungerium, the cue gardens and you mentioned the holotype if i'm remembering correctly is a holotype different from what is the term it just shot out of my head hold on one second is is a holotype the same as a voucher specimen for plants or is it different a holotype is the first voucher it's the voucher from which the species was described it's the physical specimen that was the first to give the name to a species I see it's the for the first field sample it's the first one it's the one that was used to give the name and then you can voucher many more of the species and deposit them in a fungerium so for example i'm curator of the ffcl fungerium we house over 2000 specimens vouchers but we only have i think three holotypes let's talk about jane goodall she's a friend and supporter of yours and she's also been on the podcast tremendous woman of course incredible human being how did she come into your life oh jane goodall visited chealy and i was invited to a dinner a small dinner that

Juli's friendship with Jane Goodall. (58:34)

was held to welcome her and i took her my books as a gift i think it was actually only one book i had published at that moment and i greeted her listening to her in awe of this tremendous force of nature and when i gave her the books she she said you know this incredible you know the fungi you're absolutely right we they're different from plants and animals and and i'm trying to make a point of acknowledging them as who they are and it was it was a very simple conversation but the next day i went to one of her talks again and she came up to me and she said juliana you know you know you know you are with fungi where i once was with the chimps don't stop she said don't stop i'll never forget her words you know this feeling of being a voice for the voiceless she was at the beginning of her career a voice for chimpanzees when nobody was talking for them or about them and what she had seen from from that first encounter with me to the next day where we met again she had found out that i was working to voice for fungal justice you know justice for the fungi and she acknowledged that and that was the first encounter and about a month later i received a handwritten letter from jane to my home in the post that said how much she had you know loved meeting me how much she had been thinking about it and for me to please excuse her because she had just written a book and she hadn't been in time to deliberately include the fungi so it's still only referred to plants and animals and that she was sorry and that she would make sure in her next book to acknowledge the fungi of course i have that it's a very well yeah that was my story with her and then and then over time because of her support and her encouragement to not stop on my mission there was something very acute in that bonding and that looking at each other you know we're both field scientists both mothers and being a mother field scientist takes some extra energy let's put it that way you know in her case she had put her son you know in a cage to protect him from harm i've had to leave my son you know for a long time to go on expeditions and and and it takes that a higher understanding of your determination and we we saw that in each other she saw it in me and she acknowledged that and so she's been fundamental and from then on has supported with reviews for for books i've published afterwards and with endorsing the proposal to include fungi in language and in conservation frameworks she's amazing she is amazing and and i am going to ask you in a moment about the Chilean constitution which is going to seem like a non-sequitur to people who don't know what i'm talking about we'll we'll get there before we do get there i've only met jane via zoom or via teleconference and she has a uniquely powerful presence even on a screen what is it like can you describe what it is like to spend time with her or to meet her in person okay so i'm a Italian right so she's like she's like a mother she's like a mother she she is sensorial she hugs you she will touch you she will greet you and because i'm also british it's uncharacteristic of brits she's very physical which is amazing and she's very easy to reach i think what jane has that is of course something to admire and something i strive to achieve is really really leaving yourself out of the picture and focusing on what your mission is for these organisms that you dedicate your life to so how did you get fungi recognized in the Chilean constitution and why is that meaningful why is that a mission worth dedicating yourself to they're recognized in a constitutional law so it's not the actual text of the constitution it's the law that is called the general law for the basis of the environment so it's

Carolina'S Advocacy And Understanding Of Fungi

How Carolina has worked to legally protect fungi. (01:03:21)

the highest legislative level and really there's an MO there's a modus operandi on how to work for policy change i learned that way of working while working in i worked in oceana chilien office of the us organization oceana and i worked in a chilien foundation called the ram foundation and i was working around issues related to the negative environmental impacts of salmon farming and so i learned a way of getting environmental issues recognized in regulation and legislation and in 2010 there was an opening to modify the chilien law and when a law is open to comment anything can happen and that's why legislators are so reticent to even you know modifying a small word in in legislation or regulation because it opens the opportunity for a lot more to change and when that happened in 2010 i started driving the issue that fungi needed to be recognized on paras plants and animals and so that really we cannot talk about an ecosystem if we don't acknowledge the fungi a lot of international agencies had been pushing the world to adopt an eco systemic view of nature now what is an ecosystem view of nature it basically is the fact that nothing is independent from another that everything is connected the organisms that connect everything are the fungi if we look at a forest it's like you know the plants the animals they don't connect unless the fungi are there the fungi are like the egg in a cake if you're going to make a cake and you have flour and you have sugar and you have butter if you don't put egg in it those ingredients don't stick together and you can't make cake right and the fungi are that like that egg if they're not in the mix all these ingredients and components don't stick together so we went forward to congress with a group of NGOs and made the case using fungi's astonishing attributes and charismatic data and said Chile has been is a country that has a poor environmental performance there's international recommendation from different agencies to adopt an eco systemic view of nature the only way to do that is to recognize the fungi we're a country that houses the first NGO on earth the first non-profit on earth that works for the fungi so there was somebody pushing with the know-how of the environmental sector and after two years two years Tim of talking to senators talking to members of parliament producing briefs that really made the case of why this was important how it would be done Chile became the first country in the world to recognize fungi in its law and then its regulations so honestly the country has an eco systemic view of nature it doesn't look at plants and animals as separate from each other it considers the organisms that unites it more what are your hopes for the implications or consequences of that where do you hope it to go might be a better way to put it i'm happy to see that it's going towards global recognition of fungi in policy on an international level today i am very proud to say that large conservation bodies have adopted mycologically inclusive language in how they communicate nature so rewild the organization that was co-founded by Leo DiCaprio in a rebranded had from global wildlife conservation has adopted the use of fungi in its language acknowledgement of fungi in its language the iucn the international union for the conservation of nature is talking about plants animals and fungi and flora fauna and fungi they are acknowledging the existence of the kingdom of the fungi in policy and regulations and legislation recommendations and so my hope is that we leave the obsolete term of fauna and flora behind that we start talking about fauna flora and fungi fungi is the word that the limits fungal diversity of a given place that we stop talking about animals and plants as macroscopic life on earth only that we talk about animals fungi and plants because language creates reality and if we are still constantly discarding their existence through language or not acknowledging their existence and their own in language we will never be able to create funding streams for their research we will never be able to create policy for their inclusion in education we will never be able to really create the pipelines and the systems by which the nature-based solutions that fungi hold can be brought to light my hope for the future is that in at least my lifetime's effort people will acknowledge in language their importance and their existence and that they will be considered in policy for education and conservation everywhere it's so important to underscore what you said about language creating reality and if you want to affect change in policy regulation the language that is used is so important and it labels we use to determine what we see and don't see i can't

Fungi's relation to animals and humans versus plants. (01:09:54)

remember i think it was either vittgenstein or gouta who said the limits of my language are the limits of my world and yes i think that's very very very true let me ask you if we step back for a second to come back to an earlier comment if fungi and animals have this common ancestor this kind of fork in the road that might be represented by this posterior flagellum and so on what are the if there are any implications of that or if we think about fungi being closer to animals or humans than to plants if that's a defensible statement what does that mean does it mean more than just the sort of academic understanding or agreement that there is this common ancestor what does that represent or mean to you i mean for people listening i would imagine that's kind of a question that comes to mind it means a lot first of all it's a fact we are more closely related to fungi than fungi are to plants so fungi really are more closely related to animals it's hugely important because if we look at for example i'm going to use an example penicillin penicillin is an antibiotic that has changed the fate of humanity because let's convene that before the first world war you could have died from an infection from a paper cut and it's thanks to penicillin and these antibiotics especially penicillin that we can cure infection now penicillin is a an antibiotic produced by fungi to protect themselves from bacteria now the fact that we're so closely related to fungi implies that it works for us too that's wild i've never heard anyone put it that way it works for us too we have the sensitivity to be able to use it because we defend ourselves from infection

Why Carolina says that 'fungi work for us' as humans. (01:12:09)

the same way that fungi do and it's because we're related wow that's a huge implication and that's probably the best way the most graphic way to say it so if we were to make a list of reasons or give a few reasons why it's important to protect fungi i would love to hear your take i mean one that comes to mind which you alluded to earlier with a comment about touching the mushroom or picking up the mushroom and seeing if any animals come out so you could have worms insects come out of a mushroom in which case if you lose a species this is your wording so i don't want to make make make any claim to this wording but if you lose a species you're not just losing individual you're losing an ecosystem right so there's that there is the fact that given our sort of shared origins or biological overlap something like penicillin and future discoveries could be made that could have enormous medical or therapeutic implications for humans what are some other reasons why it is important to pay attention to this and part of the reason i bring it up is that with deforestation or replacement of

Why we need fungi and what will happen if we lose them. (01:13:22)

biodiverse forests with say pine farms and things of this type you can dramatically reduce dramatically dramatically reduce whatever it is you know 50 100 fold reduce the biodiversity of fungi in a given area why is it important to preserve fungi to really pay attention to this what are some other reasons plants can't live out of water without fungi that live on or in their roots so we can go as essential as the fact that without the fungi life on earth wouldn't be as we know it plants trees are incapable of living in soil without their symbiotic fungi they can't synthesize the nutrients of the soil by themselves herbivores can't break down the cellulose cell wall of the grass they eat or the plants they eat without the fungi in their gut that do it for them so we know that energy is not lost energy is transformed the organisms that transform energy and nature are the decomposers the fungi the bacteria without the fungi nothing would decompose nothing would regenerate because nothing would degenerate and so fungi are essential to life on earth as we know it in terms of symbiosis helping plants and animals live and in terms of decomposing which is really the start of the life cycle depending on i mean it's arguable here you know depending on where you stand in a cycle is where that cycle begins for my colleges the cycle begins when things start to rot the death of a life form isn't the end of life it's the beginning of other life forms and that's what fungi teach you that the process of decomposition and rotting is the start of a cycle and it's start of the creation of the conditions for life to compose so ultimately without the fungi plants couldn't live out of water nothing would decompose animals wouldn't be able to nourish themselves from plants and in terms of humanity nothing would ferment and therefore we wouldn't be able to preserve anything and so many fundamental food and medicine functions wouldn't be available without fungi fungi are essential to life as we know it we cannot live without them there is no life without them on earth so why don't you tell us more about the fungi foundation what is the charter the objective or the mission or all the above of the fungi foundation oh the fungi foundation is the micro logical platform that

The Fungi Foundation vision, mission, and education objectives. (01:16:43)

i founded to ensure that anybody who wants to know more about fungi wants to work for the fungi has a place to go to and find an answer which is what i didn't have when i started it's an organization that was born in Chile founded here in Chile that has had important policy success that has now opened in the u.s. we are a global organization we're 501c3 in the United States of America we are an organization that enables people to understand the wonder and the awe of kingdom of the fungi and we are extremely ambitious in what we want to achieve as durable change we have five overarching programs one is the expeditions program in which we go to places where nobody's ever been before to see what fungi there are the last wild places on earth those habitats you were talking about that are being destroyed at rates that we've never seen before on earth because fungi have so many of these nature-based solutions like medicine food textiles we want to document those species before they're lost forever and tied to that we have a conservation program that takes action for them not to be lost forever so we work in the proposal of public policy for their protection we work to assess their threat of extinction through red listing what is red listing red listing is estimating the probability of extinction of a fungus or species so not only animals and plants can go extinct fungi can too and the process of red listing determines how close or how far we are to extinction for a species so through the tool of red listing we can make the case of policies and management plans to protect those species in those last wild places we also have an elders program which is it's a line of work that is very dear to me as as is expeditions and what we've taken on is to map every known ancestral and traditional use of fungi by humanity and that map is very well advanced we have collected both published information and oral history from different parts of the world that talk of how humanity has culturally co-evolved with fungi to weave baskets to make sunblock to dye fibers to be used as symbols of power to treat infertility to treat wounds and so that program really is a reservoir it's like the Noah's Ark of fungal solutions for the world and it's a huge responsibility we have it's never been done before and last but not least I would say our work in education we believe that in schools around the world children should be taught as much about fungi as they are taught about plants and animals and to do that fungi have to be included in school curriculum we have developed a curriculum and we have co-created part of that curriculum with fantastic fungi and I'm happy to say that the fungi foundation will be implementing a school curriculum paired to US standards will be implementing in the US and in other parts of the world so that children can learn about fungi in school now that's a huge task but if you think about it Tim 50 years ago when people studied in school and they studied the cell nobody knew that the cell had a mitochondria a mitochondria which is this you know structure inside a cell that has its own DNA it has its own information you know my mother didn't study the cell with the mitochondria today you wouldn't think about teaching the cell without teaching about a mitochondria my hope is that in 30 years 40 years you would never dare teach about nature without fungi having their own explicit modules and curriculum so we're building that so those are some of the things we're doing the organization is blessed to have Paul Stamets on its board to have Natalie Kelly on its board Joanna Foster who is a winemaker in Argentina in other places with amazing natural wines and Antonio Basilalupo and Josemingo who are founding members so we're a pioneering organization and we've been faced with the challenge of bringing justice to fungi through formal inclusion and everything I've mentioned but at the same time of being trailblazers and trying to find a way for this to happen for the fungi and people

The books and authors that have inspired Giuliana. (01:22:44)

can learn more at f fungi org is that right yes all right wonderful and we will mention that again I will mention that again and we will also include it in the show notes what other sources of inspiration and knowledge have greatly influenced you let's start with books are there any any particular books that have greatly influenced you with respect to mushrooms mycology fungi nature and are there any books that you would most recommend to others perhaps they're the same perhaps they're different books that have greatly inspired me recently is Merlin Sheldratt's book entangled life I love it read it several times entangled life is a must read if I look back there are different titles of Chilean authors that have really inspired me Luis Sibulbida is written some some amazing books that short stories but that really talk about the complexity of life and the simplicity also with which you can face complexity I love that yeah I have drawn inspiration from authors like Luis Sibulbida who even if you read deep into complex authors like you know Milan Condera or you know others you can always from these huge complexities find simplicity and that's been I think what has inspired me from everything I read is finding simplicity from complexities I would say that authors like Gabriela Mistral have been important Galiano, Guarrogaliano an important also very important author so a lot of Latin American books really into that I just pulled up Luis Sibulbida and it seems like quite a bit of his work has also been translated and in addition to Spanish he speaks English French and Italian or spoke I should say passed away in 2020 and in the in the late 80s he conquered the literary scene this is from Wikipedia I'm impressed with the wording with his first novel the old man who read love novels so very well known and I would definitely recommend one of his titles which I will translate directly from the Spanish but it's the story of a seagull and of the cat that taught it to fly yeah there it is I highly recommend that book it's very short and then another one of his titles that is extraordinary is the world of the end of the world and it talks about the southern column but it really there is a lot of beauty and a lot of life learning in his novels that can take complexities and and show you sometimes how simple something complex can be the world at the end of the world that's from 1989 mondo del findel mundo sounds so good in Spanish and then the story of a seagull and the cat who taught her to fly in 1996 that's a fantastic book which seems like it was originally published in Portuguese I'm not gonna not gonna hazard to try to pronounce that I'll get 40% of it right yeah in your own life or looking forward it could be related to your mission it could be in

Complexity, Festivals, And Further Learning About Fungi

Embracing complexity. (01:26:13)

life in general can you think of any examples of facing complexity with simplicity or finding the elegant or simple way to look at or contend with something that appears complex absolutely I mean positioning yourself you know as a 19 year old 20 year old faced with an overwhelming fungal passion fungal duty an inelutable responsibility towards the kingdom of the fungi in a world where they are associated to rot to death to paganism founding you know the world's first NGO in a world where absolutely no funding existed at all and still hardly exists for anything fungal in terms of policy now we're talking about before the film fantastic fungi before psilosophy was recognized as medicine in the western world that is the most complex scenario I've ever been faced with and in that huge complexity and adversity I found the simplicity of belief in yourself first thing I mean it couldn't be that this thing that just wouldn't stop and would only grow inside me in this vision that I could see possible it couldn't be that it didn't exist and so as complex and as as adverse as the environment was the simple looking inside and giving yourself permission to try and to do it has been the most fundamental thing and it still is that way we are still you know when you talk to people and you say you know I work for mushrooms and I work looking for mushrooms protecting mushrooms making sure that everybody knows about mushrooms most people look at you think you know what are you doing you know why why would you do that I mean how can you live like that well how can you feed your son from doing that you know and the answer is inside and the answer is in hard work so that's what I've learned from complexity simplicity of looking in I certainly hope you're right that in maybe not 30 maybe 20 maybe 10 years that people will look back and the answer will be very obvious as to why you would dedicate yourself to fungi in the same way that if someone were to say today I dedicate myself to plants in x-y and z capacity or I dedicate myself to preservation and conservation of animals in x-y and z capacity they would not have that surprised response yeah and if you look at the importance of fungi mycelium mushrooms as not just the egg in the cake I think as you put it the connective tissue that binds plants and animals together but also as close cousins of ours from which so many discoveries are waiting to be found or within which so many discoveries are waiting to be found I think it's it's a real imperative to to study but you can only study that which you preserve in a sense and it's incredibly important it's incredibly important I think also Tim in this hyper connected world I have learned and I'm very grateful to be of a generation that wasn't as hyper connected in our teens I have learned that it's important to be more with yourself than with others all day I mean I see people today constantly looking at what others are doing and constantly looking and trying to reflect themselves in in what others choose to share and how important it is when you believe in something when you have an idea to take the time with yourself to develop it to investigate what you're thinking about we all can make a contribution if we give ourselves the time and space to develop our contribution and not be constantly looking for everybody else's contribution in a way so this hyper connectivity I think is not helping us to be able to take on these paths of in-depth you know study results on always immediate now it takes a long time and it's okay for it to take a long time you don't present an idea and then the next they have a result if it takes a long time it takes hard work and you can't do that if you're constantly looking at everybody else's life yeah I agree if I can't remember the attribution but if if music is the space between the notes and some respects you know thinking and discovery or the spaces between the interactions sometimes yeah and if the density is such that you're saturated with communication saturated with stimulation there just isn't the space for that germination yeah and I'm gonna make an awkward segue but I have to ask you before we go because I've heard so much about the Telluride Mushroom Festival and I've never been I have friends who have spent lots of time in Telluride and love Telluride quite in and of itself I've also never been to Telluride and you will be going there very soon I think in mid-August or mid to

The Telluride Mushroom Festival: why go, and who shows up? (01:31:43)

late August August 19th something like that yes I will be giving a keynote in our on August 19th yeah can you describe the Telluride Mushroom Festival what it is why it's interesting and also what you will be presenting on what you'll be doing your keynote about Telluride Mushroom Festival is a must Tim you have to go to the Telluride Mushroom Festival it is a safe place to express fungal love and adoration that's one thing I have to say it's the oldest festival in the US dedicated to fungi it's in its 41st edition it was founded by four extraordinary men Paul Stamets Andy Whale Emmanuel Solsburg and Gary Linkoff now this festival was the first place in the US where people could get together and talk about psychedelics and enthogens and it has had some of the world's most renowned mycologists talking about the science of these species it has the world's most renowned psychiatrist talking about the psychedelic renaissance and even before the renaissance let's face it you know it's been a house to talk about to research to think about and to celebrate psychedelic mushrooms and anything mushroom in general I have had the honor of participating for about six years now so a very small portion of its existence and my first feeling there was there are more of us that was the first thing I'm not the only one you know I found my tribe there and for the last five years I've had the honor of moderating the final panel with important people talking and thinking about fungi and psychedelic fungi like Dennis McKenna, Dave Nichols and many others where we can sit down and have a candid conversation and talk about things nobody really wants to talk about in a scientific paper and that maybe they won't say in a press in the press so it's a very safe and candid space to talk and to ask about psychedelics and really anything fungal there's a lot of you know cooking with fungi a lot of foraging information about foraging there's a lot of practical you know workshops on how to cultivate or decompose you know toxic substances with fungi so it's an extraordinary space this year Paul Stamets will also be going and giving a keynote so it's a great year just saying and my keynote will be on our global policy work for conservation frameworks so the fungi foundation is known for making change political change in Chile but we have now taken that to the world and we have had some important international policy wins that I will be presenting and showing at the festival that is very exciting congratulations thank you just a few more questions Dame of the Order of the Star I did not look this up deliberately saw him to ask you about it that is the coolest title I think I've ever heard in my life what is what does it mean to be a a Dame of the Order of the Star okay so the Order of the Star first of

Order of the Star, the Fungi Foundation, a surprise donation, and more. (01:35:32)

all isn't you know I was how how do I say I was honored with the title of being Dame of Italy and there are different orders of Damehood so the Order of the Star is a house of celebrated Italian citizens that weren't born on Italian soil so if I were born on Italian soil I wouldn't be part of the Order of the Star so the Order of the Star is exclusive to Italians who have made a contribution to the country from somewhere else and I was named Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy because of my work in my ecology and for the fungi and I really I'm so sad that business cards are no longer really a thing because if you print new business cards if that ever happens maybe there's still a thing in some places I really hope that that is somewhere on that business card it is just spectacular Julianna Julianna Furti Furti with the Trill yeah if you are C.I. I am so impressed by you and the work that you do and I would like to heavily encourage people to go to f fungi.org and I would like to also contribute to your work in a small way I'd like to donate $50,000 from my foundation to your foundation to the fungi foundation and I would like to encourage other people to take a look at the work take a close look at the work that you do and consider supporting it I think what you're doing is very important and I'll say the website one more time because I would really encourage people to take a look you've been very dedicated you've taken the true and the hard path you've made a lot of sacrifices I know it hasn't been easy you've been incredibly strong and like you said you've had wins and the fungi foundation is pursuing an important mission so I'm very excited to support with my own foundation and I encourage people to take a look and consider doing the same thank you very much Tim thank you very much on behalf of the team and the board that's emotion coming through the microphone which isn't thank you very much we've never had support like that before thank you very very much it's been a hope to make you proud and we will make durable change for the fungi and someday we'll have to share some mata together and if hopefully and tell you right it's right that's right so if I make it to tell you right and I also would encourage people to check out the festival and to to hear your keynote in person I've heard tremendous things about the festival I mean tremendous 10 out of 10 recommendations from multiple people I deeply respect and also multiple friends who know me really well so it's really just a matter of time before I get there myself I have to say that this year for those listening Paul Stamets is also known as Pablo so Pablo doesn't go every year he doesn't go every year he's going this year and it's going to be an extraordinary festival he is going to be giving a keynote as well and I encourage you to consider popping in it's not very long it's a few days and the community that exists there is extraordinary and the opportunity to talk to people who are trailblazing thinking and debating and creation around access to use of psychedelic medicine through access to cultivating your own foods and medicines through access to foraging and access to talking to people who are dedicating their lives to bringing justice to the fungi I highly recommend it no year is better than this year all right well I'm gonna have to take a close look at my calendar in that case and Julian is there anything else you would like to say any contact you? That was offside I'm just calling myself down thank you very much you know we're not used to any help so thank you I'm just saying give me a moment I can't continue as nothing's happened take a minute no problem thank you so much I've only been you know ten years trying to try to do whatever you know our work is thank you I don't there's nothing to say right I don't want to explain anything I just want to say thank you and I wish I could give you a hug and give you some I wouldn't give you this matter la vato I'd make you a new oh god oh god can I just add also when I received your email saying that you had seen some of the some of the videos I was like oh yeah I wonder what he's seen and then I actually misleadingly thought oh let me think of what's been done in English and now I know that you might have seen what was in Spanish so not even where I was like oh no what is he saying but well I was impressed and not turned away I was not discouraged in anyway and I'm so happy that we were able to connect and to do this and have really learned so much I have tons of notes tons of things to follow up on I'm going to check out Luis de Poulamila okay so your question your question no my question is not a mandatory question it's just it's very simple is there anything else you would like to say before we wrap up any request of the audience any thing you'd like to share anything at all really before we close this conversation I would really like to invite people to think about how important it is to let things rot and that

Parting thoughts. (01:42:20)

it's really not about rock and roll anymore it's about rotten mold and we have to let things rot you know rotten mold baby all the time if we don't let things rot then cycles don't start don't flow we can't fix carbon we can't decompose to be able to recompose we can't degenerate to be able to regenerate I would really like to invite people to think about how even the most glorious moment of an old tree's life is when that tree falls to the ground and starts decomposing and turns back into soil let's not be afraid about decomposition and there's a lot of hype around regeneration and that can't happen if things don't rot gotta let it rot gotta let it rot let it rot and and I'm gonna cheat and ask one more question we give a few or you give a few book recommendations entangled life and and other novels and so on yeah if someone wanted to take their first steps into learning more about fungi yeah about could be mushrooms I mean pick your term are there one or two books that you might suggest people take a look at I suggest the film and then a book so watch fantastic fungi and then read entangled life and another maybe another fun really fun way is to read the triumph of the fungi by Nicholas P. Money now Nick Money has several books about fungi there's a book called The Rise of the Yeast as well and it's about the story of how yeast is shaped humanity so Nicholas P. Money is a must read to learn in a lighter way in a less scientific way but in a really well-informed and referenced and real way about how how fungi have shaped the planet beautiful and may they continue to travel and shape the planet and hopefully with our help and in part vis-a-vis

Where to learn more about fungi. (01:44:49)

the fungi foundation and people can find the fungi foundation at f fungi org you can find Juliana forchi I love just I'm trying to get it right at Julie fungi g i u l i f u n g i also at fungi foundation on instagram and we will include links to everything we discussed in addition to all of that at tim.blog/podcast and what a tremendous pleasure and hope to see you in person meet you in person very soon indeed thank you for taking the time thank you very much and thank you very much for the space absolutely my pleasure and to everyone listening let things rot learn more about fungi your close cousins and until next time thank you for tuning in hey guys this is Tim again just a few more things before you take off number one this is five bullet Friday do you want to get a short email from me would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little more soul of fun before the weekend and five bullet fridays a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week that could

Bullet Friday (01:46:00)

include favorite new albums that I've discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends for instance and it's very short it's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend so if you want to receive that check it out just go to four hour work week dot com that's four hour work week dot com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one and if you sign up I hope you enjoy it this episode is brought to you by eight sleep my god am I in love with eight sleep good sleep is the ultimate game changer more than 30 percent of american struggles sleep and I'm a member of that sad group temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep and heat has always been my nemesis I've suffered for decades tossing and turning throwing blankets off putting them back on and repeating ad nauseous but now I am falling asleep in record time faster than ever why because I'm using

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Eight Sleep (02:17)

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Eight Sleep (01:47:03)

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