Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #262 Alex Dorr w/ Mushroom Revival

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

It’s been awhile since we’ve talked mushrooms, of any variety, and Alex is just the soul to jump back in with. He is with the company Mushroom Revival formulating and selling top shelf medicinal/dietary mushroom products. We dive into his background and his approach to all sorts of fungi. His passion comes through for sure so enjoy y’all! Connect with Alex:   Website: www.mushroomrevival.com  Instagram: @mushroomrevival  Facebook: Mushroom Revival  Podcast: Mushroom Revival Podcast  YouTube: Mushroom Revival  Show Notes:   KKP #254 with Michael Brandt Spotify Apple Kilindi Iyi - High Dose Mushroom Journeys, Spirituality & Beyond  Sponsors:   HVMN - Ketone IQ This is legit jetfuel for your brain. Whether you’re fat adapted or not, this will work. Get 10% off by heading to https://hvmn.com and use code “KKP” at checkout. The next 100 people to use the code get 20% off! Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Bioptimizers - Masszymes Gut health is paramount and these guys have a bunch of goodies thrown in if you head over to masszymes.com/kingsbufree  Force of Nature The homies at Roam Ranch are on board yall! Get over to https://forceofnature.com  for their incredible regeneratively raised bison and beef. Try all their newest products and enjoy. Punch in “KKP” at checkout for $15 off your first order, if you happen to see their products in the “wild”, just pick them up at the market and support responsible agriculture.   To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle:   Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service Academy  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com  Zion Node: https://getzion.com/ > Enter PubKey  >PubKey: YXykqSCaSTZNMy2pZI2o6RNIN0YDtHgvarhy18dFOU25_asVcBSiu691v4zM6bkLDHtzQB2PJC4AJA7BF19HVWUi7fmQ   Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome back, everybody. I'm actually welcoming myself back. Welcoming, welcoming, welcoming. Welcoming myself back from Arcadia, which was ridiculously good. It was so good. Like, exceeded all expectations. I think pretty much all of us had.

We had so many twists and turns getting there from the change from Wyoming to Vegas. And we had a lot of new faces. This is our first event where we allowed friends and family and people that had been in the mix before and gone through our screening process and gone through a lot of the deep dive work into breath work and different things that we offer at the summit. They were allowed to invite three friends. And they didn't have the same screening process, but we just trusted that. And everyone was fucking awesome. The speakers who have been a fan of for years from Charles Eisenstein to Dr. Zach Bush to Matthias DiStefano from Gaia's initiation and other works and so many more.

Robert Edward Grant, which just came on Aubrey's podcast, is phenomenal. I'm listening to these guys, and I'm like, this is the best version of them I've ever heard or seen. And perhaps one of the coolest things was we stayed in this giant house in Vegas, a big-ass Airbnb. And right when I went in, I was like, damn, this is 11 bedrooms? That doesn't make sense.

Like, two houses are connected right now. And I was thinking back to when I was on The Ultimate Fighter Season 8, and I remembered that they had to postpone our production start date because they hadn't finished the house. And somebody told me that they, the UFC would purchase houses, custom build them,

and use them just for the show, and then Airbnb it afterwards. So I had that in the back of my head, and I was like, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I saw there's a poster on the wall, a canvas that has four different UFC fight gloves. And I was like, oh, fight fans. Then I looked across the room, and I saw this weird octagon art. And I was like, this is for sure a fight house. And I went in the other room and there's a UFC pool table. So it brought a lot of memories back. I think a lot of people had had a different history when they were in Vegas prior, myself included. And to set that container with the speakers we had, the incredible musicians, Dirtwire was insane. Many musicians I hadn't heard of before that were just phenomenal.

And of course, I spoke with Chad Johnson on regenerative agriculture. There's a great podcast that I did with him. He'll be back on here pretty soon, I imagine. To continue to dream into what we're doing with our farm. But yeah, the usual folks, Caitlin, Godsey, all crushed it. But the extras that we brought in were just nothing short of exceptional. Emily Fletcher. I just love her. She's so good. Got to meditate with Emily. And anyways, we all stayed under one roof at this giant Ultimate Fighter house. And that was the coolest thing.

That was like the in-between time, you know, when we were just sitting down, not working, dead tired from staying up all night. And we just drop into these awesome and amazing conversations on God. And it was really, really cool just to shoot the shit with all these experts. And yeah, it would have been nice to record it. I wish I was a fly on the wall for every conversation. But that would have required a hell of a production team doing that. Anywho, I'm digressing because I'm still dead tired.

I just got back in from Vegas yesterday. And even though I slept well, it's going to take me a minute here to get my bearings back. But this podcast I have been looking forward to. I heard Alex Dorr first on Sky King's podcast. Maybe if you guys listen to Sky King, he works with Aubrey and I on our sponsors and does a phenomenal job finding people that we love and want to work with. And Sky's got a great podcast where he's taking a deep dive into what's happening in China and all sorts of really cool world events. And he has a very balanced and awesome approach to the stuff that he covers. But he was telling me, he's like, hey man, I got this guy named Alex Dorr, who is the mushroom expert of all mushroom experts.

And I was like, Stamets level? And he's like, Stamets level. And I was like, all right. Tarot level? Because Tarot has been on the podcast, the CEO of Four Sigmatic. He's like, Tarot level. And I was like, all right, dude. All right, throw him my way. And I was blown away. It was funny because we started this podcast and he asked me where I was. And I was like, I'm in Southeast Austin. He's like, oh, I'm in Austin too. And I was like, motherfucker, why did we not do this face-to-face? But it just shows how busy I was before this Arcadia event. No chance to communicate prior to the podcast,

no chance to get it dialed in. Like, oh shit, you're local, let's do it. So I'm confident that I'll be running this back with Alex in a year or two to really rehash everything that he's figured out in the mushroom game. He's not just a fan and an expert on psilocybin, which is a topic of conversation we dive into, but he's also an expert on all mushrooms and really can take a deep dive into some of the medicinal properties of some of these amazing fungi. So it's been a minute since I've done one on mushrooms. And if you're not into psychedelics, don't worry. We dive into all things

legal, growing your own, all sorts of good stuff, how it's used with the bees these days, thanks to Stamets' work and much, much more. Leave us a five-star review with one or two ways the show has helped you change your life. Specifics, please. Either a book I mentioned or a topic of conversation one of the guests had. Anything that helps shift you and change the way you live. Because that's ultimately what integration is. It doesn't matter if you're going to the Amazon for ayahuasca or if you're just listening to a podcast.

How you integrate the things you learn is by embodying them, by trying them on for size and actually changing your day to day. So let us, let us know one of those in the comments and be sure to support our sponsors. Share this with friends, but support our sponsors. They make this show possible. A while back I had on one of the co-founders from HVMN, they make a product called ketone IQ and that's found at ketone-iq.com.

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there's some science that shows when you're in ketosis or when you're fasting, your body shifts into creating more GABA from the microbiome experts I've had on the show purport that there's some science that shows when you're in ketosis or when you're fasting, your body shifts into creating more GABA from the microbiome, which is the calming neurotransmitter master, than glutamate, which is the excitatory part of the nervous system. So that makes sense. That adds up. This can be used for endurance training, marathons, 5Ks, even a one mile, or it can be used for lifting weights. It's going to give you energy.

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Yeah. I mean, now everyone's moving to Austin now, so it's not that weird. That's true. You have to assume nowadays. That is true. Yeah, I was running from another podcast I just did with Chris from Alive Water. I with uh chris from alive water was introduced to me from luke story luke story another california refugee that made his way out

here after uh i had been out here and his many trips to come visit me and aubrey and obviously you know i think when rogan moved here the rest of the world decided to as well so but damn well i gotta meet you i mean i think that's a must. Just listening to your podcast with Sky King, who's a mutual friend and a homie that I was like, yeah, this is, this is a guy I want to know. And this guy I want to run on the podcast for sure. That was a super fun conversation. And yeah, I love Sky. We just recently bumped into each other and yeah,

creating a soul fam here in Austin. Yeah. He's, he's, I love the way he thinks. You know, like even listening to him talk about his time in jiu-jitsu. You know, we worked together on it for a long time. And he kind of dabbled here and there, but never really took it seriously. And then seeing him now, I mean, every time I take my son into 10th Planet, he's always there gearing up for the evening class and, you know, putting his game face on and getting it going.

So I love the way he thinks and I love everything that he's into right now. Tell us a bit about you. What was life like growing up for you? Talk about your time in school and what you studied and how you really started to come to know mushrooms in the way that you know them. Yeah, I've kind of always been a rebel since I was a young kid, like always been interested in counterculture movements, whatever it may be, just whatever everybody else was not into. That's where I found, you know, my, my jam and my beat. Um, and so, you know, I've, I've always, I think it really hit me. I took a family trip to Ecuador when I was a young kid. And some of the happiest days of my life are in the Amazon rainforest. And I remember, you know, being in the middle of the Amazon and just so much biodiversity around me and just being so excited and from the core of my soul, just like, this is it. I've never been surrounded by so much life before. And just looking up at the stars, never seeing so many stars in my life,

unbelievable. But then what kind of jolted me back to reality was the sound of saws in the background and realizing that people were cutting down the most biodiverse region on the planet. And that kind of stuck with me as a young kid. And, um, you know, it, it, I went back to Ecuador, I don't know how many years later, but, you know, saw this again, this happening. And I was actually spending like three, four months there studying biodiversity and different ecosystems and finding so many mushrooms. I mean, they're unbelievable. And I was into them at that point, but it didn't fully take me over the edge. And it wasn't until I was in Yasuni National Park, which is one of the most, if not the most biodiverse regions on the planet per square foot that I saw people with an oil company just

drilling for oil and leaving these unlined pits of oil and messing with the indigenous communities there and just really damaging the ecosystems. And at the same time, I was just happening to read papers about how mushrooms can clean up toxic waste in the environment, clean up oil spills. And so that's what I got my degree in college. And I just knew that I needed to figure out how fungi could be used as a tool to kind of help a lot of our major problems.

And that was the starting point. And now I'm just interested in every single facet of how fungi weave into not only us as a human species, but just in general. They're really the main recyclers. I mean, they hold life on their back and they're kind of the bridge between life and death. But they're so humble. They're really underneath the soil. They don't take a lot of credit. And they're really doing the most. And that many people are talking about them.

Yeah, they're kind of like the underappreciated superheroes out there doing amazing work. And so it's cool to be at the forefront of something that's just picking up here in the States. It's something that in other countries, like if you were born in Japan or China or Eastern Europe, I mean, probably your grandparents were hyped up about mushrooms. But here in the United States, not a lot of people are talking about them. We just had the Netflix States, not a lot of people are talking about them. We just had the Netflix documentary, Fantastic Fungi, come out, which is awesome. More people in health and wellness circles are starting to talk about it, but it's really like a baby. And so it's exciting to get more and more people get excited about it and appreciating them.

Yeah, hell yeah. What were some of your big influences in driving towards that? Was it with experiences with psilocybin or just seeing the wide variety that was there before you? Or was it people like Paul Stamets or Terrence McKenna that started having you look a little deeper? It's funny because they were one of the first terrestrial organisms on the planet. They've been around, fungi have been documented to be around 1 billion years old and on planet Earth, on the land for 810 million years old. And so for me, the first was psilocybin. And I had a crazy heroic dose, my first dose.

Someone handed me a solo cup, a red solo cup full of dried magic mushrooms. And it ended up being around like 30 grams. And I had no idea what a dose was at the time. So I ate it all on the spot. I was like, all right, let's strap it in for a good experience. And it blew me the fuck away. It was the craziest experience I've ever had. And I just got these downloads about what mycorrhizal fungi what was going on and all these crazy downloads only to find out later, like reading in textbooks, I was like, this is what I saw that first trip.

And I was on pharmaceuticals at the time for depression and anxiety. And that trip alone helped me get over. I was smoking like two packs a day of cigarettes, completely stopped smoking cigarettes. I was drinking a lot, stopped drinking, changed my friend groups, flushed my meds down the toilet. I totally got into yoga, got into working out, all these different things. And so that was the starting point of like, oh, okay, it's one thing to read it in a book and it's another to experience it firsthand um and so a lot of my learning of of mushrooms and fungi come from just experiencing them from eating them but also just being with them in the forest you know you you can learn a

lot uh by just observing yeah no doubt it's it's funny one of the reasons why i was like a full fuck yeah about having you on because i was like you, we've had we've had a tarot from Four Sigmatic on and some in a couple, maybe maybe a very small two or three mushroom experts on the show before. But it was hearing that you had had a 30 gram dose. And I was like, oh, shit. I mean, there's like stamets on his first journey and maybe a handful of Kalindi IE supporters that have ventured into that deep a territory I've only done it once um but it was with penis envy and I ground them up and and uh I just mixed them with water because I fasted the whole day too beforehand so 24 hour fast took them in the evening um you know McKenenna style, cold, dark room music. And, you know, there's people like the uninitiated, they've never done any plant medicines, have no the fuck, no idea what we're talking about.

Then there are people who have done, you know, a gram, maybe even up to a heroic dose of five grams. They still don't know what the fuck we're talking about. Like it's, I remember my dad asked me he's like there must be a point of diminishing returns you know like we're at a certain point your brain can't handle anymore and it just stops being more beneficial and i was like if that point exists it's not at 30 grams it's probably way higher than that and that's what kalindi was proposing in his work and i'll link to i'll have jose link to uh one of his famous talks on on

youtube he passed out before or passed away rather before coming on the podcast but um he really gave me permission you know like here was a guy who was grounded and you know more grounded than most people i meet in ayahuasca circles talking about the benefits of going to 20 to 30 grams of psilocybin or one whack when you've already done the healing you know all these other great tools and the you know the reliving of painful memories and working through trauma super important in the past but once you reach a certain reach a certain point in your path you could be ready for more and and the sky's the limit on that he's like what makes psilocyocybin special is that there is no rate

limiting factor. You know, you could drink ayahuasca until you die. You could do a boga until you die. You know, there are certain parameters where it's going to squeeze you and wring you out and you might die of dehydration from shitting and puking too much. Psilocybin doesn't have that. And it will take you orders of magnitude deeper. And I just finished reading the DMT Dialogmt dialogues which is a fantastic book on dmt featuring graham hancock rupert sheldrake um dennis mckenna and a ton of the great guys the researchers you know who have really had their their hands in that and one of the things that rick strassman was proposing was trying to figure out a way to extend the dmt

window like can we go into that experience conscious enough to interact with other beings and intelligences and then return home with real world data that's going to help us on planet Earth right now? And I love that as a mission, right? But then after doing the 30 grams, I was like, you don't need to extend DMT. You just need 30 grams of mushrooms. That is five hours of DMT. And there's nothing short of

that. I've never experienced beings on DMT other than the felt presence of them. I've never interacted with them. 30 grams of mushrooms, I was eyes wide open looking at aliens in my fucking living room. Like, wow, what the fuck is happening right now? It's a different level. The molecule itself, psilocybin or psilocin, which it gets broken down to is not too far off from the molecule of DMT or serotonin. I mean, it's just one do-hing-ee off, which is a big do-hing-ee, but it's really like, I've heard the theory that psilocybin just is the same as DMT in the body. And I find that I go to similar places with both DMT-IA and mushrooms.

And it's all kind of the same trip. And they're all tools to come home, in a sense. And I love Kalindi, and he was one of my, my first mentors and an amazing human being slash alien. But, um, there's also the thought process that you don't need more. Right. And, and there's this kind of hamster wheel that a lot of people go on is like, I need more, I need more, I need more. And it's like, like, I don't know if you do. And sometimes you actually need less. And it's funny, I was just in Peru a week or two ago and I was with one of my dear friends and he brought on one of his high school friends and he was joking with the maestro. He was just like,

oh yeah, two cups for me and him. And like two cups is a large amount, especially for the brew that he makes. A starter amount is like half a cup. And so, you know, a full cup is like a heroic dose. Like you're going to have a, you're going to be blasted off. Two cups is like, you're crazy. Like that, you're going to be obliterated. So, you know, he said it as a joke and then the maestro just kind of giggled.

And he's just like, uh-oh. And then the night came, and he's pouring the cups, and they both asked for a quarter cup. And they were like, no, no, no, we were just joking. Please give us a quarter cup, which is half the starter dose. Quarter cup is not that much. And all the maestro did, he just gave you this devilish grin and he's just giggling as he's pouring. And the whole room knew, they both

drank the quarter cup and they just got blasted. They got obliterated. They were throwing their guts out the whole night. They were like, I just had three visions that I died in a single night, this whole thing. And the whole time, the mice were just laughing. And the message was like, it's not about the dose, right? I've had extremely powerful cathartic experiences on a microdose or even without mushrooms, but just interacting with the spirit or the energy of whatever plant medicine it is, for a lot of people, they're so constrained and they have so much weather. I've heard so many stories of people that are war veterans and they have so much just, their nervous system is so shot that they need, like they need 30 grams as like a microdose.

Like honestly, like they're, they need so much stimulation to get over that hump. And other people I've, I've seen people have a crazy trip on like a 0.01 gram mushroom dose. And it's like that it's wild. Like some people are more sensitive to others. And honestly, like, you know, sometimes for some people, the more they take, the more sensitive they get. And they're able to get into that space more easily. Like they don't need as much to get into that space. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. That's certainly been the case for me.

I talked with East Forest, who's awesome. That's who I actually, I listened to his Music for Mushrooms album on the 30 grams. So we had an interesting podcast after that experience, breaking it down. And he said the same thing. He's like, everyone's neurochemistry is different. One gram for me is not one gram for you. Just like there's no one right size food, there's no one right amount of food for for each person our microbiomes are different how we're breaking this down it's not like you're injecting psilocin our digestive systems are at work here and they factor into that and um you know to his point i've had a buddy who lost his fucking marbles on a gram like could not sit still could not keep quiet for for six hours he was was howling, walking around on all fours,

just fucking obliterated whatever noble silence the ceremony was supposed to have and ended up being a pretty amazing experience and one that we never hoped to do again. But that was all the proof that I needed. And at the same time, there's nothing quite like 30 grams other than 30 grams, you know? So like having had that experience, I feel that the bridgeway, the light bridge, you know, the Thor's rainbow road to Asgard is wide open for me. And on any dose I can get there now because I've had the 30 gram experience. So I feel like a little

goes a very long way for me now with any medicine because I've opened that doorway up so big in the past. And I think that's, that's another benefit to having gone there. Drop kicked it down. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I, I feel the same way. Like, and a big part of my intention now with just living my life is, is, you know is similar to what you're saying. Can we extend the DMT trip? And a cosmic joke is we are in the DMT trip. The trip is our life. I mean, this is the greatest trip ever.

Just living life is the most psychedelic thing in the universe. We don't need substances to have a psychedelic experience. Just being in this human body is the most radical thing ever. And like, how are you going to integrate it? You know, there's so many people in this space that are constantly searching for trip to trip, festival to festival, experience to experience, you know, life hack to life hack. And it's like, can you be a good person? Can you have that 30 gram trip and then come back to your day-to-day life and integrate the lessons that you were taught? Or are you going to keep jumping from

trip to trip and you're chasing that high kind of catching, you're chasing that high, you know? Um, but you never get it because it's, it's like, you know, and this is my lesson for me and everyone's different, but you know, it's like, yeah, this, this is it. There's, there's nothing to chase. There's no there to get, you know, it's, it's all here. It's all every single, every single moment of your life is the ceremony. Right. And, and chasing the fireworks or the, the DMT visions or the, the fractals. It's like, that's, that's great. I mean, they're cool to look at, but, but like just being a good person in your day-to-day life, that, oh, that's cathartic as fuck.

That's it. That's all you got to do. And just be here now. And that's the journey. That's the ceremony. And that's the 30-gram trip. Can you be in your human body day-to-day, moment-to-moment? That's such a massive one.

And that's actually something ceremony taught me. I was very fortunate to have a black belt in his own ranks as a massive one. And that's actually something ceremony taught me. Like I was very fortunate to have a, you know, a black belt in his own ranks as a medicine man was my boxing coach. And so he really started prepping me with sweat lodges, Native American sweat lodges and Tammuz skulls from Central America. And then eventually with plant medicines. But he showed me respect and reverence. He taught me about intention.

He taught me about surrender. He prepped me in a way that held a safe and sacred container. And that really extended into all my experiences going forward. I had his tutelage to take with me in every journey, even, even now that he's passed five years ago, he's still with me in every journey, you know, but I think about that. There was a time in my life where if shit hit the fan or if there were big decisions to be made or if it just felt like I was in a crunch, I would need to know when the next ceremony was so I could have the big questions answered. You know, like when will there be reprieve? Oh, well, I'm going to Sultara or I have this coming up. Okay, then I can iron out the big stuff and get my life sorted.

You know, but after enough of those, you do realize life is the ceremony. This whole thing we're in is a fucking psychedelic journey. And if I can take the same respect and reverence I have in the final four weeks before ayahuasca, if I can take that daily on what I put in my body, how I treat myself, what media do I consume, who do I hang out with, and where does my North Star lining me towards in terms of what I'm tracking and what I'm trying to create in my life? And at the end of the day, have you seen, um, uh, anything or everything everywhere all the time?

So good. Such a good movie. I just watched it for a second time last night. Like the end of that, you know, like spoiler alert, but the end of that, you know, with, with the, again, it's the, the, the be kind, like when you don't know what the fuck's going on, be kind. When you're confused, be kind. Like that, that piece is such an important piece because we're always going to find ourselves at a crossroad of the old world dying, the new world being born, you know, like we're in a great state of transition right now on a global level. And in many ways it is a global initiation. And at the same time, it's how we show up. Not much beyond that, that will determine

what shapes the world going forward. I've had this experience multiple times pre-plant ceremony, right? And as humans, we all get stuck in this trip of like, I will be happy when, you know, it constantly that, that hamster, hamster wheel of like, when this happens, then I could do this or, you know, and, and we constantly are chasing the next thing. And so, and I do it constantly, you know, and, but some of the coolest lessons that I've had, like pre plant medicine journey, it just happened to me a couple weeks ago as well. The entire week of just, I'm writing my intentions and just get this clarity of like, okay,, I'm prepping for this big night. These are the questions that I've been holding on for the last two years. Like I've been struggling, all this stuff. And it's like, here's the answer in like one sentence.

And it's like, that's it? And then I'm like looking at my notebook and I'm like, I just answered all my intentions, all my questions. It just, and I was like, okay, what about this big ceremony that I've been hyping myself up for? What's going to happen then? And the ceremony is quiet.

This has happened to me so many times where it's like all my questions are answered before the ceremony. And once I get there, it's just silent. And it's like, yeah yeah just live your life now you don't need to take anything you can tune in you have all the answers stop waiting for that moment in the future

to get XYZ done or you can be happy now you can answer your questions now and yeah it's a easier said than done. Uh, but, but it, yeah, it, it feels kind of, kind of silly to, uh, to have that experience. And then, you know, um, yeah, it can be a trap to,

you know, you can, you can prevent yourself from doing the healing unless you're in a ceremonial lodge. You know, you, you prevent yourself from, from, you know, instilling good habits or really doing the work unless you're on a retreat or unless you're taking plant medicine or unless you're X, Y, Z, whatever it is. And it's like, you don't necessarily need that. You know, some people need that kick through the door to help them, you don't necessarily need that. Some people need that kick through the door to help them get through that hump. But if you become reliant on it as a crutch, then can you be a good person

and can you do the work in your everyday life? And that's, I think, the most potent medicine right there. And I'm still learning it every day. And it's a hard one, but it's juicy. It's like, yeah, it's a juicy one. I think mushrooms are a really good teacher of that because they're constantly doing the work in the background. And with trees and with all the plants, I mean, they're really in your face. Huge trees in the forest and plants make these beautiful flowers and they're just like these delicious fruits and

they're like right in your face and big and bright. Mushrooms are just like kind of in the shadows and they're small, they're underneath the soil and they're constantly doing the work in the shadows and they're not getting a lot of credit. And so that's kind of a good lesson for me and why I appreciate Mushroom so much is that they're just humble stewards. They're doing the work and what needs to be done and not being so show-offy about it, which is a good lesson for everyone, I think. Yeah, it brings up a bunch of stuff for me. One, just in thinking of the humbleness of the mushroom, we have a little garden in our backyard and we've started a farm. I don't know if Sky mentioned it, but we have a farm out in Lockhart that we've been working full steam on the

regenerative side. We're growing some mushrooms from, from wood chips and things like that. You know, some of the edibles legal kind and, and really just trying to branch, like, what is that web? How big can we make the internal web of the fungi grow? And how big can we get that sponge to drop? So that just becomes a water storing house, you you know across the whole 118 acres and um lots of good stuff come in there but um the plants like they're such a draw you know like uh mark gaffney talks about us living in a cosmo erotic universe where everything is circling around this

attractive force of eros and eros is is a present in all things when we tune into that frequency of like oh shit like i like you, I want you. And that's what plants are doing through scent, through color, through look. We put in a banana tree, an ice cream banana tree last year. Just fucking took off. Like we got it protected from the wind and a bunch of good stuff around it, a bunch of good organic soil amendments in there. And she sprouted like eight pups that are

all huge and she's flowering a year early right now and the flowers are like nothing you've ever seen this one giant hammer drops out of the top of that thing and each little petal that props up shoots out six bananas that have flowers and and pistils on the end of them six bananas and then another another leaf pops up six more with flowers and then another one and there's the end of them, six bananas. And then another, another leaf pops up six more with flowers and then another one. And there's so many of them. It's like, holy shit, this is one plant. And that's all it'll produce. After that, it's dead. You cut it down and the next ones go and the next ones go. But, um, that, that level of attraction that is there and, and yet mushrooms still have a way of attracting us to them, you know, through learning what is

something we can eat, how do I enhance the flavor of this cuisine, and then all the science that's come out recently, not only on the benefits of various mushroom strains for our own bodies, from turkey tail to lion's mane to chaga and reishi, but also in what can this do for the environment. So I'd love for you to branch into researching outside of psilocybin. What are some of your favorite mushrooms for human health and what are some of your favorite mushrooms for the environment? Definitely. Yeah, I think for maybe there's people that don't really know exactly even what a mushroom is. And a lot of people, their only kind of experience with mushrooms is the

grocery store kind, right? Or maybe in a salad bar, they've seen button mushrooms. And so, you can think of a mushroom like an apple on an apple tree or a banana on a banana tree. It's really the fruit, right? And it stores the seeds or in this case, the spores. But the rest of the organism is underground a lot of times or in of the mushroom. And from the mushroom, it has spores. The spores grow into mycelium and the life cycle continues. So a lot of mushrooms have functional benefits for humans. And they're really resilient. And because they've survived for hundreds of millions of years in some of the most extreme environments on the planet, they produced really crazy compounds to help them survive and adapt. And some of those compounds are just very beneficial for us. On a functional scale,

what makes all functional mushrooms legal, not psilocybin, functional for our health and wellness, is that they have this class of compounds called 1,3,1,6-beta-glucans. And they're well-studied. There's over hundreds and hundreds of different studies that show that they're incredibly supportive for our immune systems. They're also classified as adaptogens. So adaptogens are herbs or plants or mushrooms that help our bodies adapt to occasional stress and fatigue, which I, for one, can use more of. And I'm sure most people on the planet can. We live in a crazy world.

And so having some allies to just be behind us, giving us a back rub and hyping us up is really good. And so each mushroom has their own kind of superpower, but those are two tools that every single functional mushroom carries. But probably some of the most famous would be one reishi, Ganoderma lingxue or Ganoderma lucidum. And reishi is the number one herb in traditional Chinese herbalism. It's known mostly for supporting a sense of calm. It's famous for its bitter taste. And those are from the triterpenes, the ganoduric acids inside. And these bitter compounds help our body's natural inflammatory response post-workout,

post-jiu-jitsu or something like that and help our body come to homeostasis. And so really good to take before bed and just kind of drift into that dream world and recharge to be revived the next day. Really great for supporting lung health, liver health, and overall immune support and overall health and wellness and homeostasis. The second, probably most famous mushroom would be cordyceps. Cordyceps militaris is a super cool mushroom that is used a lot for energy. It has two main compounds, cordycepin and adenosine, which work in our natural ATP process. Adenosine triphosphate, food for the mitochondria,

powerhouse of the cell, flashback to high school biology. But it's a super cool looking mushroom. And if you see them, they look like Cheetos. And with Mushroom Revival, my company, we actually built the largest and the first and only certified organic cordyceps militaris mushroom farm in the Americas. And we're growing them in mason jars. We're growing them in big plastic bins on rice. In the wild, they grow on moth larva. And they're an entomopathogenic fungi, which means that they attack insects. And you might have seen some of these type of fungi in like, you know, Planet

Earth documentaries taking over ants, or, you know, taking over some insects and sprouting out of their heads. This is in that class of different fungi. but if you're looking to grow it on a commercial scale, you won't use insects. You'll grow it totally vegan on a rice substrate. And so that's cordyceps. A lot of athletes use it. Great for supporting lung health, endurance, stamina, energy, and without the jitters or crash. So it's a great alternative to coffee if you're looking for a crash-free energy source. It's a great stack with coffee too. Like if you're in separate pathways, if you're into coffee and caffeine, like cordyceps with that is an absolute mainstay in my pre-workout. Exactly. Yeah. It's good to pair adaptogens with

coffee because, you know because you want to prevent the crash as much as possible and help your adrenal system, not just obliterate it. And Lion's Mane is another one, the brain mushroom that you were talking about before. And it has various compounds like haricinones that are great for nerve growth factor in the brain, helping cognitive function, memory, all around brain health and nervous system health. And so those three are probably the most famous, but there's dozens and dozens of functional mushrooms out there, if not hundreds. And it's a really exciting time here in the US because we're starting to see them be put in pretty much everything possible and all over the shelves of all stores. So it's really, we're in the shroom boom, as a lot of people like to call it.

And it's really exciting. But they're not only helpful for cleaning up toxic waste in the environment from oil spills, heavy metals, radioactive isotopes, you name it. They can really help us remediate toxic waste. But on the front end of the problem, they also can solve a lot of those issues from even beginning, from making new styrofoam alternatives to new plastics, to new leather, really replacing a lot of the toxic materials before they even start to be built in the first place.

Yeah, that's something I think I saw Stamets do a video on six ways mushrooms will save the earth. And he spoke about that and I was like, wow, that's insane. You can make plasticware for mushrooms and, and seats and things like that. That was pretty mind blowing. One of the things that caught my attention was the study he did on the, on the oil spills. I think it was the oyster mushroom that they used. And, um, you know, he had three,

three tubes of trash that was above ground and they covered it in tarps, one of which had no treatment, one of which had the oil spill, and another one that had the oil spill with the oyster mushrooms. They could really compare the three, but it was mind-blowing to see how, over time, the oyster mushrooms that normally grow white would turn black, and they'd keep growing up this oil and eating it consuming it and by the time they'd finished their life cycle they were completely white again and massive healthy gorgeous oyster mushrooms which he says you can eat you know like yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't be my first option but but um you know at that point they've uh under under what he's purporting he's saying they're, they've actually used up completely all of the, the oil that's been spilled there. That's how they returned to that fresh white state. Uh, may, may or may not know if it goes that far. Yeah. By EPA standards, it wasn't a successful cleanup, but it was a good, I think it's good to inspire people in what can happen.

And, you know, he's a great educator in, you know, getting people pumped up about mycology, which is, you know, unbelievable. There's so many mycologists in the space that are incredible scientists and doing amazing work, but they don't know how to hype the space up. You know, they're stuck in a laboratory doing amazing life-changing work and do not know how to market themselves. And I think, you know, Paul, which is great. I mean, he's one of the main kind of cheerleaders for this space of like getting people hyped up about it and making Mushroom sexy and making people like super excited that, hey, this is a possibility.

And, you know, doing a lot of these, you know, pilot scale projects and, you know, recording them and getting on the stage and making people really excited, which is so needed for this emerging space is people that are influencing it and getting people hyped. Yeah. I mean, it's something that we can learn as any science or any life-changing thing is how do we take it from the research paper into reality? How do we get funding and how do we get people really excited about it? And it's interesting seeing this new wave of TikTok

and this younger generation is that they can really push movements really fast through the internet and through, you know, getting people hyped. And, uh, yeah, I'm excited to see how, you know, various issues from, you know, environmental problems to even mushrooms paired with the excitement of social media, like what that would do for some movements that are, are really exciting. It was really hard back in the day, if you were an artist or you're a researcher to, to get your work out there. And now it's just with the power of the internet, it's so easy

to make a viral video and, you know, uh, to have it spread almost like the mycelium of mushrooms. So, uh, we'll, we'll see what happens. Good and bad, good and bad. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What have you thought with Stamets' work on the bees, with using different funguses to help prevent colony collapse and combat some of the modern destruction going on in the world? What do you think? Yeah, we actually brought the researchers on.

That was done, I believe they're at Oregon. And so Paul just supplied the extracts, but it was, I believe their PhD work at Oregon State. And I'm drawing a blank on their name, so apologies. But yeah, they're two researchers and they're amazing. The results right now are kind of up in the air. And so there's a long way to go and there's so many problems with colony collapse in which there's their varroa mites,, there's so many incredible, uh, projects out there right now using entomopathogenic fungi to attack the varroa mites, the cordyceps that I was talking about before,

uh, to just target the varroa mites from even entering the brood. The other aspect was, you know, um, using fungal extracts and, you know, their results, I was talking to them and they said, yeah, it might not even be the mushrooms or the fungi. It might just be all the minerals and we could just use nettles or use some other things. And this is something that I have to keep checking myself as someone who's super hyped about mushrooms and fungi

is like, and I used to keep checking myself as someone who's super hyped about mushrooms and fungi. And I used to go into this trip of like, mushrooms are going to save the world, which is amazing, but it's not the only thing out there. And there's a lot of amazing things. And this is what happens with any ecosystem is it works in symbiosis with many, many things out there. And so we have to look at, I can't be in a rabbit hole of thinking like mushrooms are going to do everything. They're going to do amazing things, but it's not the only solution. And we have to work in symbiosis with so many things out there. But yeah but yeah, yeah. Colony collapse is a huge issue and fingers crossed that we, we figure it out before, before it happens. No, we're going to no doubt. I mean, I've got, we've got, we,

we brought in, um, three hives from two different strains of honeybee at our farm just to have variety, you know, cause we wanted to make sure if one one goes down we don't lose them both in a perfect scenario we don't lose any but um yeah we're just starting to get into that what is the the best practices with beekeeping we had an expert come out who's local to southern texas and uh great guy and he was teaching us a lot and one of the things that they've been using is a probiotic that also contains Saccharomyces, right? Saccharomyces, when I was at Onnit, I was in one of the Onnit, the mushroom tech, which was our immune supporting one. And it's also in one of the strains of Saccharomyces is included in Biome. And I've had both those guys, Dr. Afif Ghanoum and Dr. Mahmoud Ghanoum

on the podcast a couple of times now. Yeah, they're great. They're phenomenal people. And they talked a bit about how the Saccharomyces have the ability to break down biofilm in parasites and candida within our gut, which allows probiotics to do a better job of policing them and keeping the right relation and balance within the gut for the human microbiome. But what this beekeeper was stating was it's very similar. You're healing the gut of the bee and in healing the gut of the bee, that allows them to be healthier and more robust and have a stronger immune system when it comes to taking on some of the other challenges. So I found that to be

super interesting. Yeah, I'm just pulling up the names of the two researchers. So Jennifer Hahn and Nick Nager. So I didn't want to pass that up before. I didn't want to forget their names entirely. Credit where credit is due. I like that. But yeah, the work of the microbiome is so important. We're starting to understand so much about our bacteria in our gut, how it's 70% of our immune system, 90% of our serotonin production is produced in our gut. And most of our emotional support is really our gut health. And as we're learning more, it's like, okay, a lot of that is also fungi as well. And I like to think of ourselves as kind of a public transport system for

microorganisms. I mean, we're over 90% other organisms and we're just carrying them around. And every time we eat, we have to remember, it's like we're not only feeding ourselves and our bodies, but we're feeding billions of other microorganisms. And it's really like, who's telling our body it's time to feed right now? The more you think about it, and this is a good analogy for looking out into nature, the next time you see a tree, like that banana tree, it's like, it's not just that banana tree. There's hundreds of different fungi inside the cell walls of the plant and attached to the roots, really influencing that tree. And it is trading nutrients. It is sending different messages to other plants around it. And it's almost like that's a puppet for these microorganisms like ourselves.

And the more that we're diving into this research, we're learning that pretty much everything is kind of a glove for microorganisms. And we're just kind of, it's the illusion that we're, you know, I'm my own individual human being. And it's like, you're really not. Like you're a complex system of billions of different organisms all coming together. And you're just the outer projection.

Yeah, we're each our own universe in that respect, for sure. Where do you see mushrooms taking us next? Studying this on a human health side as well as on an ecological side of things, how do you see us stepping into right relation and beginning to learn, maybe just rekindle some of the ancestral wisdom that was once lost? But where do you see mushrooms heading in the future? We're at a time where there are so many issues in our world, and there's never been a time in history where there hasn't.

I don't want to make it seem like we're about to be on the apocalypse and it's never been this way before. Out of the whole span of all human history, this might be one of the best in terms of a lot of our issues, but yeah, from bee colony collapse to even ticks carrying Lyme disease, to mosquitoes carrying malaria, to our plastic issue, so many issues in our world can be solved with fungi. And so I think that's really exciting to really dive in and form this right relationship with mushrooms. There's this statistic, I don't know how true it is, but that out of all humans that have ever existed, lived and died, about 50% have died of malaria. And there's research in Burkina Faso from Dr. Brian Lovett, and he's

doing this amazing research of using fungi. And there's two different scenarios that are either killing the mosquito carrying malaria and is 99.9% effective or curing the malaria in the mosquito, in the gut of the mosquito. And so it's not even killing the mosquito, it's actually curing the malaria inside of it. And so that's just one. It's like if we can save hundreds of millions of people's lives with just that alone, I mean, that's a huge step forward.

One of the most exciting projects that I'm seeing right now is just legalization around psilocybin. I think it's one of the most universal plant medicines or fungal medicines that I could think of is psilocybin. If you look at pretty much every single culture ever to exist, they've had a relationship with magic mushrooms. From the dawn of time, I mean, there's a theory by Terrence and Dennis McKenna that our human evolution evolved with psilocybin. I mean, there's so many mental health issues that can be addressed from PTSD to depression, anxiety, with using psilocybin that I think, especially coming out of COVID,

I've had a, I've for one had a rough two years and they've helped me dramatically. I can't even imagine for people that don't have access to these tools or don't really know that these tools exist, how cathartic this experience can be for them, you know? And it's not like a magic pill that will instantly solve your issues, but you know, you have to do the work in real life to integrate those things, but they can be extremely cathartic for people to really get in right relationship with their mind, body, spirit. And I think that's the root of most issues in our world is people having a disconnect with their mind, body, spirit, right? And they're not at ease. They're in dis-ease, disharmony, right? And so they're more likely to cause injury on another human being or to cause pollution in the planet because they see themselves as separate from the planet.

And I think that for one, I want more people to eat magic mushrooms. Yeah, fuck yeah. Well, I think in that connection piece on the mind, body, spirit, that's in our earlier, in the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about the bigger dose

and building that bridge. The bridge is back to yourself. You know, the bridge is to the high self, the soul, whatever you want to call that. And that is where our intuition is located. You know, it's like, if there's a space for it, it's going to be in that connection to our high self. And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about the tools and the plant medicine category is that they have a, you know, they will connect us to higher understandings in the ceremony at very least and over time one can draw back and say oh shit this is here right now you know as you're writing out your questions pre-ceremony and the answers come to you and you know like there's a gnosis around what's what you're writing down is the answer, and it's very direct, straight, and to the point,

it leaves little doubt in my mind when you reach that point. You're like, oh, shit, all right, I'm already tapped in. Maybe the medicine is already working, or maybe that medicine is already there, as I have built that connection and now I can access that point. I think that's a big piece for us to grapple with and understand is that we can come to a point of remembering our inner divinity and having an access point to that higher levels of knowledge and wisdom and access that with or without medicine, you know, but certainly in the entry

level beginning stages of that, it has been a very useful ally in my mind and many friends of mine to be able to find access to that point in the first place. And really, maybe at the end of all of this, we don't quote-unquote solve these issues. And maybe in three months from now, an asteroid hits the planet and we all get wiped out. That's a possibility. But I think one thing for me is that psilocybin helps me view the world and just, it makes it a little more magical, you know, and when life is getting a little bleak and I'm getting in these routines of, you know, I'm doing the same thing every day and it's just kind of wearing me down and I'm staring at a computer screen and things are just, I'm watching too much of the news and seeing all these negative things and life just turns a little gray, you know, and,

and it just, it gets a little bleaker, you know, working with mushrooms and, and not even magic mushrooms, but just going out in the woods and seeing these crazy organisms for me brings the sparkle back in life. And regardless of if it all works out in the end, that sparkle is something that I think, oh God, if everyone just had that, I mean, the world would just be a much more magical place, right? And part of that non-attachment

is I think one of the biggest lessons I've gotten from mushrooms is like, we're so scared of death in this society, especially in the United States, we're terrified of death. And mushrooms, fungi thrive on it, right? When a tree falls in the forest, when that banana tree falls, eventually, you eventually, fungi are just going to gobble that up and they're going to love it. And if we just drop nukes on each other and there's a World War III and the whole world is in this post-apocalyptic, super radioactive place, fungi will come and they'll thrive. And there's something beautiful in that. There's something beautiful when you leave an orange out and you forget to eat it or leave any food out, and it just gets covered in mold. It's like rewriting that thing in your brain that goes, ew. Rewriting that thing that's, oh, that's, that's bad, you know, or that's gone bad. It's like, no, that's gone. That's, that's gone to the fungi. You know,

there's no good and bad. It's just being okay with the cycles of life and death. And that's way easier said than done. Um, but I think that's one of the most beautiful lessons of, of mushrooms and fungi. And like, it's funny that, so the one night I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago with the, the two cups and, uh, you know, of, of Aya, the next morning my friend comes to me and, uh, he was like, oh yeah, I had this crazy dark experience of, of, uh, I just got lowered into the ground and I saw myself die and I could feel it. It was the scariest thing ever. And it was so dark and I was the worst. And I'm like, you know what?

I had that night, half of my body turned into a skeleton. And for me, it was like blissful. Like for me, I was like, wow, cool, I'm going to die someday. Amazing. And thanks for the reminder. And it was this blissful moment rather than this scary, this terrible thing like, oh, death is so dark and the worst thing ever for me.

One of the first times I was like, oh, cool, this human body is limited and I'm going to die someday. And I'm grateful for this present moment that I get to experience this experience. And like, thanks for the reminder. You know, we forget about death. I feel like as humans, especially in the United States, we block it out of our awareness. But for me, if you can change your perspective on it, it can make life a lot more magical, right?

If you realize that today could be your last day, right? And the next time you're around your family, that might be the last time you see them. And so just to cherish that, you know, and to cherish every single sight and smell around you and know that this is a gift and it's a limited one, you know, and it's part of the whole cycle, which it makes, it can make it more beautiful, you know, and it, it come overcoming that anxiety can be extremely cathartic. And I, you know, and this is, this is something that they're working with people that are on their deathbed with, with psilocybin, which I think is so huge is like, yeah, if,

if we don't have a structure in our society to talk about death and to be okay with it, you know, and to, to have these types of ceremonies okay with it, you know, and to have these types of ceremonies that can be, you know, to have these ego death experiences. If this is not common in our society, once we finally get to the actual deathbed and we have no practice of it, it can be scary as shit. I can't even imagine, you know, like it could be terrifying and you're, you're just like white knuckling it to the very end. I mean, and you just like, yeah, that sucks. You know, it's, it's so cathartic to, you know, to, to, to have that practice on a daily basis. And, you know, I'm, this is my medicine right now of what I'm going through. And it could be the smallest things of realizing that some of your friends of coming from that non-attachment is like, I love this person right now and can I love them with non-attachment? I love my dog, but next time they could run out the door and get hit by a car. And so every single aspect of your life, can you love it with non-attachment? And can you be okay

with it ending, so to speak? Because at some point, it is. And that ending is inevitable, and that ending is a new beginning. And I think fungi do such a beautiful job of showing us that, at least for me. They showed me that death can be beautiful and death is a new beginning. And they're decomposers, a lot of them, right? They're in the wood chips, like in your garden, and they're decomposing that wood, which used to be a tree, a living tree. And they're decomposing that into the soil, into that sponge.

And that's beautiful. Like compost for some people is like this smelly, disgusting thing, but it's soil at the end of the day, which turns into ice cream bananas and you can eat that shit. And that's fucking delicious and beautiful. And like that wouldn't happen without death and decay. And so I, you know, I, I hope, and I invite people to kind of sit with that more. Uh, and it's not something that us as humans, especially in the United States sit with is, is really decomposition and death. Um, and if, if we can sit in the,

and this is an invitation for myself as well, like we could sit more in this unattached blissful state with that uncomfortability, life can be a lot more cathartic. I love that, brother. Well, this is a great place to stop. Where can people find you online and stay in touch with you? And tell us a little bit about your company,

Mushroom Revival, before we head out. Yeah, so I have a functional mushroom company called Mushroom Revival. We also have a mushroom podcast. And so everything is on mushroomrevival.com. We have tinctures, capsules, powders, gummies, all with 10 different functional mushrooms included. We have QR codes,

fully transparent with our lab results. I mean, this is our bread and butter. What we love doing is making badass functional mushroom products for people and making people feel good. You know, reviving health with functional mushrooms and geeking out about them too. I mean, we have a whole team of bloggers writing amazing articles and we bring on some of the top experts from all around the world

to geek out with us on our podcast. And it's all in mushroomrevival.com and our podcast is on all streaming platforms. And I'm currently writing a book right now. This is my second book and I have a due date on July 25th that I'll hand everything in. I'm deep in the weeds writing right now

and it should be released early next year and I'm super excited about it. It'll be a good one just highlighting a bunch of different mushrooms and really good for beginners and experts alike. I hope everyone gets out

in the woods and explores mushrooms. Absolutely, brother. Well, it's been so good having you on. We'll definitely have to do it again after your book comes out. Hell yeah. Thanks for mushrooms. Absolutely, brother. Well, it's been so good having you on. We'll definitely have to do it again after your book comes out. Hell yeah. Thanks for having me on, brother. Thank you so much, brother.

Appreciate you.