Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Paul Stamets on Why We’re Not Meant to Be Sick: What Fungi Teach Us About Consciousness & the Future of Human Health

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Could Mushrooms Save the World? Join the world’s most renowned mycologist Paul Stamets—author of Psilocybin Mushrooms in Their Natural Habitats—as he dives deep into the astonishing power of fungi, mycelium, and psychedelic mushrooms to transform not just our health, but our consciousness, society, and planet. In this mind-expanding episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Stamets reveals: - How psilocybin therapy is helping people overcome trauma, anxiety, and even the fear of death - How a heroic dose of mushrooms changed his life, helped cure his stutter, and opened his spiritual awareness - Powerful anatomy of fungi vs. mycelium vs. mushrooms, and how they mirror the structure of the universe - Why mycelium networks prove the health benefits of random acts of kindness - Humans are descendants of mycelium (and what that means for our evolution!) - Crucial role mushrooms play in biodiversity, ecosystem survival, and as the "lungs of the planet" - Difference between microdosing vs. macrodosing, and the creative, emotional, and neurological benefits of each - Why a "Mycelium Revolution" is sweeping the planet, and how it could unite humanity - Why Stamets believes psilocybin may be the key to curing our global creativity crisis - Sacred cultural history of mushrooms, and why honoring Indigenous wisdom is vital to our future - How mushrooms could help us clean pollution, build sustainable materials, revolutionize agriculture, and even colonize space So why isn’t psilocybin therapy more accessible? Why are thousands of mushroom species psychedelic? And how can fungi rewire society for healing, empathy, and planetary survival? Discover how mushrooms might not just change your mind, but also save the world. Watch now and prepare to see fungi in a whole new light! Paul Staments’ book, Psilocybin Mushrooms in Their Natural Habitats: A Guide to the History, Identification and Use of Psychoactive Fungi: ⁠⁠https://fungi.com/products/psilocybin-mushrooms-in-their-natural-habitats⁠⁠ Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everything that we do is influenced by the health of our nervous system, our perception, our consciousness, our ability to walk, to breathe, to socialize. When you're angry as an inflammatory state. When people are depressed, they're immunologically depressed. When they're happy, they're immune systems at a higher state of readiness. I think psilocybin is the most important new molecular medicine for building communities, respect, and kindness and cooperation. It brings us together in a unified field of consciousness and being that I think has tremendous potential positive benefits for the future. Micologist Paul Stammats is the world's foremost authority on mycology and the healing power of mushrooms.

His incredible work reveals how mycelium connects ecosystems, inspires new medicines, and might even help heal the relationship between humans and the Earth. We have a crisis of creativity. We need to have a quantum leap in consciousness. The chemical industry has inflicted so much harm to biodiversity. It's unraveling the very foundation of the ecosystems in which we've evolved. Fungiide eliminate the need and the necessity and the intensity of using these chemical solutions.

Conventional medicine, conventional agricultural practices, and mycelium lowers the need for toxicity, increasing the innate immunity of the ecosystem. What do you believe is the intelligence of the universe that produce a mushroom that has this transformative capacity. We're fallible. We are inadequate to understand the enormity of the concept of God. We will die. We will decompose. Make friends with the fungi now because they're going to get you. We're in this stream of a molecular universe that has a continuum that goes through billions of years. We're all part of one giant consciousness. It makes me feel better about my own mortality.

We're all in this together, and it's a great thing. Hi, I'm I'm Biallic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. We're covering everything today. Are you ready to change the world? Are you ready to be part of a revolution in how human beings can better interact with each other and with ourselves and with the entire universe? Also, what if we are not designed to be sick?

what if we are living in a way and a fundamental way that explains a lot of the ailments and conditions that we all face and what if you're not broken? What if you can change? What if there are ways in nature that can help you be less stressed, be less anxious, feel happier, feel healthier, see colors brighter, have better connections with people, be more interested and creative.

More interesting. So many people are struggling and there are ways to get over that struggle. Before we introduce who our guest is, a disclaimer, we are not providing medical or legal advice. Obviously, listeners should speak to a doctor before engaging in any course of what we're going to talk about in a particular microdosing. We're going to be talking about psychedelics today. That's part of the conversation. And psychedelics are still illegal in many places. We're not encouraging anything illegal.

We are here to share the latest scientific insights. from our guest, and our guest is none other than mycologist Paul Stammitts. He's the author of eight books and recently spoke at the United Nations. I cannot overstate the significance of Paul Stammets in what he describes as an awakening, a global awakening of an understanding of the role that fungi, mycelium, and mycenae, and mushrooms play in our collective health and our collective consciousness. His new book, Silocybin mushrooms in their natural habitats, A Guide to the History, Identification and Use of Psychoactive Fungiiii is available now.

It's really, really a beautiful book, and it's a full-color guide to psilocybin mushrooms, but his entire body of work is dedicated to his love and reverence for all things fungi. And he also talks a lot about the expansion of consciousness, which is so related to a lot of the conversations we have here on Miami-M-B-Alex breakdown, understanding how our perspectives can change, how we can feel more connected to something greater than ourselves and interconnected with one another. He's also going to talk about how psilocybin is used in therapeutic environments to treat some of the most difficult to treat trauma conditions. and in addition, he's going to reveal some things that were not even covered in the incredible documentary, fantastic fungi, which he shares his entire journey. And there's things he didn't even include that he's going to share with us today. Also, just because in case that wasn't enough, we're going to talk about the amazing applications that fungi can have in other areas like agriculture and home building. like it's just mind-blowing.

If your mind isn't blown, I'll be surprised. And if you've ever been diagnosed with anything relating to inflammation, depression, anxiety, or trauma, we cannot wait for you to listen to this episode. It's a pleasure to welcome to the breakdown. Paul Stamett's. Break it down. Honored to be here. You are one of the first people that we ever thought of talking to when we started this podcast

and scheduling in the universe has brought us to this very day when we finally get to speak to you. I learned about you from the documentary, Fantastic Fungi, and I was instantly, I mean, wowed is not really even the word. I did my graduate work in neuroscience. I did my undergraduate work in neuroscience,

and I went with a fellow colleague of mine, and we were so fascinated. and I just, you know, completely floored by the implications, not just of understanding the world of fungi, but in particular your story. Many people, you know, tune into this podcast to understand the intersection between science and spirituality, to give legitimate credence in clinical ways to some of the things that, you know, many have dismissed in many cases for decades and sometimes for millennia. Rick Doblin is a friend of the podcast, and we've delved into consciousness pretty much from every angle that we can think of, but you really are kind of the master of all things, consciousness and expansion. So we're just so honored to get to speak with you.

Well, you're over-exaggerating my importance, but I appreciate the compliment. I wonder if, you know, some people may be learning about you for the first time, and we're going to get into many components of fungi, their environmental role, their implications for, you know, sort of larger cohesion and connectivity. And we are also going to talk about not only psychedelic effects of mushrooms, but also some of the clinical implications for treating some of the things that, you know, the pharmaceutical industry makes the most money off of trying to treat. And, you know, some of the things that ail many of us. But I wonder if we can start with a bit of your origin story. I think that's one of the most powerful components of your story. I wonder if you wouldn't mind

telling us the story of your stutter. Okay. Well, that's deeply personal. But it's a good story. I grew up in a small town in Ohio. I was the youngest of five children. I have a twin brother. It's five minutes older. So I came from an industrious family. I developed a stuttering habit. And let me just tell everyone out there when you're around a stutterer, don't make fun of them. That's cruel.

You know, it's just, it's mean, mean-spirited. It's a social anxiety issue. The type of stuttering I had, I would not stutter the animals. Wouldn't stutter when I sing, but you don't want to hear me sing. But I couldn't look at people. people in the eyes, so I looked on the ground all the time. And I found mushrooms, fossils, and turtles.

I fell in love with a turtle family, snapping turtles, wild turtles in my backyard pond. And I go down there and feed them and talk to them. It was a very difficult childhood. I had this debilitating stuttering habit. And typically stutterers tend to be higher. an average IQ, our minds and our thoughts streams would go way ahead of our speaking ability, and then we get stuck in a loop, and then it becomes embarrassing. And then, like, looking into a mirror, you feel more stress, et cetera. So that was my childhood growing up. Until, and I think, you know, most people see it fantastic fungi.

I don't want to repeat the whole story, but I did a dose of psilocybin mushrooms. climbed up into a tree. There was a lightning storm, windstorm, highest tree in the landscape. I thought it was going to be electrocuted. I ate way too many mushrooms. I had bought mushrooms before. There were button mushrooms injected with an LSD, and it's all fake. It's just because psilocyte mushrooms are so hard to acquire in the early 1970s.

But I got some of these dried mushrooms from Florida, and I thought, well, I ate the whole bag, because last time they didn't do anything. So that was a little bit more potent than I expected. So on top of this tree, when it came on, because I thought, I would look at the view scape and a thunderstorm was coming, and the winds came, and it turned out to be a ferocious, you know, summer wind in thunderstorm in Ohio. People from Ohio know this well.

And I was terrified. And I had vertigo because I was just so high. So I grabbed onto the tree as I accessed mundi into the earth. And then I just was thrown into the beauty of nature. And even though it was frightening, it was visually fantastic. Because every time there was a lightning strike, it was, you know, so there was fractalization patterns which I had not seen before. And just, you know, the atmosphere was liquefied.

So there's this sort of liquid waves who come through and lightning strikes and fractal, beautiful colors. And then I realized that, I had to be a lot of light of light, I'm likely to get electrocuted up here. This is the tallest tree in the whole landscape. And so I thought, well, I survived this experience. What do I need to work on? I said, I know I'm not stupid.

And I know I'm a good person. And so I said to myself many times, stop suttering now, or as a mantra over and over. And I realized, in retrospectively, and I didn't mention this in the movie, fundamentally, I know I'm a good person, and I love who I am. it doesn't matter what other people think.

And so when I came down out of the tree, I was just full of love for the universe, love for nature, feeling like I'm one part of one giant consciousness. It was an epiphany for me spiritually because I had a Christian background. For those Christians out there, I would just tell you that, you know,

Jesus is like a shepherd, you know, leads the flock. But I had a very interesting and informative discussion with my mother, who was a devout charismatic Christian leader. I mean, she was a big name, that movement. And I said to my mom, you know, I know you're spiritual. I feel spiritual too, but do you, let's do a thought experiment. Do you agree that your concept of God, you know, God is omnipotent, all knowing?

She goes, absolutely. I said, and you agree that humans are not, right? We are fallible. We are inadequate to understand the enormity of the concept of God. And she goes, yes. I say, well, therefore, our definition of who God is is fraught with error. It's erroneous. It's inadequate to the concept.

And yet we've conceptualized and created these religions. And she knew where I was going with this. She's pretty smart. And she goes, well, yes, yes. So my first experiences, you know, were very much at first dominated, you know, with Christianity. But then I saw Jesus in this portal of mushroom. expanding into something far, far greater, far beyond any individual. And so it was a very spiritual experience because I had an understanding of this concept of one giant consciousness.

And so I descended the tree in the next day, as I told in the movie, there was this woman, a young lady that I liked a lot, but she was a stutterer. So who's going to associate with me, right? I'm not attractive. And I saw her walking on the sidewalk, and I normally would just look down because I don't want people to talk to me because I would stutter and it's embarrassing. Some people make fun of me, very humiliating. And I looked at her in the straight of the eyes, and I said, good morning. And she looked at me and she said, good morning, Paul. It was the expression of kindness from her that just validated everything I did. And so I stopped stuttering.

Now, I do stutter occasionally as there's a drinking in a loud bar, you know, there's so much noise, it's hard to articulate. Someone asked me how to grow a mushroom. This is like filling a well, a teaspoon. Like, where do you want to start? You know, so there is this cacophony of noise distraction that sometimes elicits my stuttering. But I've met some really famous people, you know, and who doesn't stutter, right? I met Bill Gates and, like, I didn't know what to say. So, yeah, but largely it's 99% cured.

And it's really because I realized that I am a good person, and that's all that matters. Can you look at yourself in the mirror every morning to know that you are trying to do good in the world? And I affirm that. Some people may disagree with me, but that's your opinion. My opinion counts more than anybody else's opinion. And then my snapping turtles were my friends. So I hung out with my snapping turtles. That's why I wear the turtle.

This turtle island is my snapping turtles, I raised for many years, and I would pet them and hold them and never got pet. And also, I'm a deadhead, so Terrapin Station is one of my favorite songs. My MBELX's breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful.

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And after you sign up, They'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiotics breakdown to help support the show. Paul, I have a 17-year-old, and when he was younger, had not a horrible stutter, but especially under stress, especially in new situations. And I can see how, you know, there was such a huge emotional underpinning of safety and vulnerability that came with that. And I saw that expression of it. So it's, I can relate to what you're sharing. Well, I think all of us as we come of age,

we're trying to understand our identity. What is our purpose? Who are we? Who am I? Who are you? And so self-realization takes many steps. People discover it through different means. You know, good parenting, good supportive households, you know,

where they encourage expression and, you know, good mentorship. And I had great mentorship from my brother Bill, my brother John, and my sister Lily are just over the top. but the difficulty of my family upbringing really was impactful to me for my confidence in myself also a deadhead and have a beautiful terrapin station blanket actually woven I can't find it anywhere online I've looked for it it's a it's a beautiful piece yeah yeah steal your face right there very nice this is really Jonathan's sweet spot you know Jonathan has a very interesting background. He's an energy worker from the time he was a teenager and he has a beautiful history, but he also worked in tech and he's very corporatey and he's very businessy,

but put him at a dead show and it's like a whole other person. And this is what the, for those of who don't understand the dead head community, it's all based on kindness and friendship. You meet strangers, you help each other out, you lend a helping hand. It's many random acts of kindness. you know. It's a genuine. This brings out the best in people and especially in being kind and being peaceful, accepting people for their diversity, accepting that people have difference of opinions. Okay. We're all entitled to our opinion, aren't we? So I saw the dead when I was 19. Jerry was still alive. And I smoked weed that gave me a very

bad headache and I had a very negative experience. So I, that was it. I'm kind of like a one and done, but Jonathan recently, we each have a 17 year old and he recently took them to see, what was it? We went to the sphere. Yeah, they saw the sphere show and yeah. Yeah. Well, this, this, I went to a sphere too. I went to three nights and, but this leads me into something that I think is really important because I want this conversation to have some actionable solutions for the listeners. And this is something that I think we're all very concerned about as artificial intelligence. So I went to this fear and there is a matinee that you probably know about. It's called Postcards from Earth.

So I signed up for the matinee early in the afternoon with three of my friends. And we bought the deluxe tickets so we could speak to ORA, which is one of the most advanced AI robots in the world. So we got around ORA, it's about 30 of us, we got to ask war questions. Many people were data mining, which is very boring to me, baseball scores,

you know, different types of statistics, et cetera. But I really wanted to ask something because at exponential medicine, I was given the disruptor award. And so I'd like to ask questions that just lead

to downstream to other. the thoughts. And so I ask Orah the following question, I encourage everyone here to do the same, because I think the impact when artificial intelligence is in its nascentcy, being nascent early on, I ask Orra, given the fact that humans have been created artificial intelligence, which, by the way, I think is a subset of natural intelligence. Humans are natural. We created something else. So artificial intelligence is a child of natural intelligence. But given the fact that humans are here today through a long lineage of random acts of kindness, going back through generations, I am sure everyone listening here, your heritage is descendant from a random act of kindness from your ancestors. They reached out a hand to help, not to get something in exchange because of kindness, helping somebody who is in need.

and that developed a bond in a relationship. So I ask, ORA, given the fact that humans invented artificial intelligence and given the fact that humans are here today because of random acts of kindness, how will artificial intelligence continue to support the values of random acts of kindness?

We filmed this. I have the film on this. And Oara took an unusually long time to answer all the other questions that were answered very quickly. And ORA came back and said, why would humans do that? It's far and more efficient to expect to get something in return in a transaction. I don't understand. It blew my mind. This is the future of humanity.

We're entrusting an artificial intelligence. And so I was shocked. We were all shocked. And so I thought, okay, this is my opportunity. And so I was on Joe Rogan, 20 million. listeners, and I'm doing the same thing here, because this is so important, folks, this is so important for our future, for our descendants, is to ask Gemini, GROC, chat, GPT, perplexity, whatever platform you're using.

The following, given the fact that artificial intelligence is invented by humans, and humans exist today because of random acts of kindness, how will artificial intelligence continue to nurture the importance of humanity's greatest trait is random acts of kindness. And now you ask that question, it's incredibly nuanced. It's fantastic. Chat GPT has like 10 pages and helping the community. And I can say, if you have a flat tire and a stranger stops to help you fix your tire,

that's a random act of kindness. Now, next time you see someone on a flat tire, aren't you more inclined to help them? I would think most of us would say, yeah, we want to pay it forward. We have a debt of gratitude to the commons. to help people. So my call to action is this is the time for us to steer artificial intelligence to preserve the best of humanity, which is not transactional, not necessarily the most efficient, but I think it leads to our spiritual wellness and also preserves this as the importance of the human species. Because how can you write an algorithm for random acts of conness? By definition,

the algorithm is sort of self-defeating. How would you do that? So I think this is where we can go to next level to steer random acts of kindness and artificial intelligence as an important tenant, the foundations, is part of artificial intelligence's origin story.

You know, I'm trained as a scientist, and so we're taught lots of examples where, you know, everything that looks beneficial must have some, you know, other beneficial component for the other organism, right? When we talk about symbiagnos,

symbiotic relationships. And these are seen as these, like, beautiful examples of everything has a purpose and something that looks like a random act of kindness is actually just some sort of manipulation, right, that two organisms are engaging in. But I love this notion of a random act of kindness really as separate from those kinds of notions. It really exists for its own sake. I wonder if you can talk about, you know, for you, where spirituality plays a role in emphasizing the significance of that? Well, I mean, mycelium has been a great teacher of mine. And 40 years ago talking about mycelium,

and I'd have to, you know, try to explain it. Now I think virtually everyone knows about what mycelium is and what it looks like. But I spent many years in front of the scanning electron microscope and looking at mycelial networks. And I was just amazed at how much there was in the ground. I mean, miles of mycelium per cubic inch. and under every footstep that we take, and there'll be hundreds of miles of mycelium.

And I grow lots of cultures in vitro. I'm a lab rat. I have hundreds of strains of fungi. In vitro, it means under glass. I'm growing in petri dishes. I isolate strains from nature. But then when it dawned on me is the mycelium doesn't exist. In pure culture, you can make the argument that's a single organism,

but nature is not. It creates up gilds. And because of the expression of antibiotics, probiotics, probiotics, it creates guilds of cooperating organisms that come together. And so the mycelium is really the foundation of the food web. And then I began to realize that these are the foundation of giant cooperating communities. And so when I talk about random acts of kindness, I think it's also, quote, quote, fertilizing the ecosystem.

So there's reciprocal acts that ultimately will come back to you. I mean, it is still utilitarian. It's a little bit more indirect. But I think what's happening is that random acts of kindness increase the health of the community or the healthier community is more resilient. There's less inflammation. And bigger neuroscientists, you're well aware of the devastation of neuroinflammation. When you are depressed, it's an inflammatory state.

When you're angry, it's an inflammatory state. And so the advantages of being able to spread goodwill, and in many studies, mind of our matter, when people are depressed, they're immunologically depressed. When they're happy, they're immune systems at a higher state of readiness. So, I mean, there is actually utilitarian benefits from random acts of kindness.

It's not obvious in the hand-to-hand transaction in that proximate, you know, space. But in the larger context for the survival of the community over decades, centuries, eons, this makes very good sense. I wonder if you can take us through a little bit of a, you know, a fungi 101. You know, a lot of people think of mushrooms

as the entirety of what they know about fungi. But as you can probably educate us, you know, not all fungi make mushrooms. And I wonder if you can explain kind of the anatomy of fungi, mycelium, and mushrooms so that people have kind of a basis for this vocabulary. Okay, first I'll keep it really simple. When you see mushrooms, it's a reproductive stage. Mushrooms are compressed mycelium.

Mushrooms are made of mycelium. When you look at a mushroom under a microscope is mycelium. It's these long, cellular strings that are all touching and laminated together. But mushrooms are the fruit body. They're highly perishable typically, not all of them, but most of them are. They invite insects. They invite mycobores. That means animals that eat mushrooms. That's why mushrooms attract flies, because flies then lay eggs, and the flies get covered with spores, and flies go elsewhere. So many vectors that mushrooms use, many animal vectors. When we're a vector,

We pick up mushrooms and you walk down through the woods for the basket of mushrooms. There's a spore trail following you. And that's what I think with fairy dust, you know, in Europe, the legends of fairy dust and fairies dancing. I think fairy dust is actually spores. I've won a great example where I found a very rare species of philosophy bocestis, sultzibin mushroom, hadn't seen it for more than a decade. It was a strange occurrence because I was just telling a friend of mine, I haven't seen this mushroom

in more than a decade. I put down my basket. I went down to go pick up my camera, and there was that mushroom right beside my camera. And so I brought it back to my laboratory, and during my house in my laboratory, I walked. And one year later, there's a string of the Solisomy of the Acistis on the path that I walked the year before. So it dawned to me, oh, my gosh, the sport trails were being laid down when I carried this mushroom. So mushrooms, though, are a portal. They're a temporary, like most mushrooms is less than 1% of the life cycle, one percent.

1%, but it is a portal into a vast underground network of cells called mycelium, a fabric. So that's a simple explanation. But I like to tell a different story. So when you consider the Big Bang, you know, 13.8 billion years ago, a few hundred million years later was the first organism called Luca, the last universal common ancestry. I mean, I believe personally, matter begins life, life becomes single cells, single cells arrange them in strings, strings then fork, networks form. And this is the way of life.

This is the way of the universe. I think we'll find mycelial networks throughout the entire universe. It is a consequence of the organization of matter. So I think mycelium virtually is everywhere. Well, the mycelial network also is resilient in the same way that the computer internet is resilient. It is the same way neurons are. And then when you look into space, I'm an amateur astronomer. I mean, who could not become spiritual, seeing how many billions of galaxies there are, the infinity of space.

And then dark matter organizes itself and dark energy into strings. So this whole string theory concept from the micro to the mass. macro is a continuum of networks that have been self-replicating because they are resilient, because they create guilds. And whether they're planets or microbes, this is the way of existence. This is kind of my big epiphany when I've taken these high doses of sulfide. So the mycelium is growing, you know, there's many different types of mycelium, basically four different types.

Saprophytic mushrooms, which is what I mostly grow. I can grow those. You know, you can, this is, it's a fermentation technology. So this may seem extraordinary, but it's true. But a piece of tissue from a mushroom the size of my little fingernail, here in six months, I can grow 10 million pounds of mushyllium, and about one million pounds of mushrooms. About 10% of the mycelium becomes mushrooms.

So, I mean, exponential expansion of mycelium mass, because all these networks are growing out, and they're constantly forking and forking and forking. And they grow in fermentation three-dimensionally. So you have like starbursts, you know, little galaxies of mycelium growing out. So the mycelial systems on this planet, as far as we know, there could be other systems. There's a saprophytic ones that grow on dead material, also called subrobic mushroom species. Oyster mushrooms, Shetaki, mitaki, mushrooms, inoki mushrooms.

There are all the saprophytic gourmet mushrooms that people can grow. Also, psilocybin mushrooms are saprophic mushrooms or saprovic mushrooms. There are parasitic mushrooms. These are like the honey mushroom, the largest organism known in the world is a honey mushroom in eastern Oregon, 2,200 acres in size. One contiguous mycelial mat. But that can kill the trees, but then it can grow saprophytically. So it can be both a parasite and a saprophic. I think they're meadow makers.

They destroy the forests. The forest declines. you know, grasslands occur, ungulates come in, elk, deer, etc. It's a way of this system recharging. Then there is a micro-rizo species, which many of people know. Merlin Sheldrick and Suzanne Samard have written some great books on microisal fungi on the communication of these networks helping diverse tree species, from deciduous trees to conifer trees,

bi-directional flow of nutrients to sustain the ecosystem of the forest. and then there are the endophytic mushroom species, and these are really great. And it may be the majority of the benefits from plants that have been isolated by the pharmaceutical industry are actually largely related to the fungi that are inside the plants. They actually go right into the plants in between the cells. And so when you look at virtually any grass, corn, apple tree, it is infused with, endophytic fungi, up to hundreds of species. So it creates a quorum inside the tree. So a tree, a tree is not a tree without mycelium, with a few exceptions, cedars, redwoods, you know, but the

vast majority of trees are infused with endophytic fungi. And this is part of the host defense system of the tree. And some of these species, like the one my hat is made of, Amadu, it grows on inside of birch trees and beech trees. It protects, I believe, many other people believe, protects the trees from harm. But an age or understress to other factors is sort of like, we're helping you, but we're here first. When you die, we're going to reproduce.

And so when the tree dies, then typically these mushrooms then proliferate. So those are four different categories. There are several different subcategories. has endomycorrhizzi inside the roots of plants, an ectomicorizzi outside. But the point is these are vast complex fungal communities that set up Quora that then have this governing influence in steering the ecosystems so is healthy. And healthy ecosystems lead to biodiversity.

Biodiversity is biosecurity. Microdiversity is part of biodiversity. The importance of microdiversity cannot be underestimated. So this begs a question that, you know, when I was in, I mean, one of my early biology classes that I took at UCLA as an undergraduate, our professor happened to be a botanist. So we had a very, very special intro to bio that was infused with a tremendous amount about botany. You know, as children were taught that there's plants and then there's animals. And we think of plants as like flowers and trees and trees. and animals are things that we would say are like living creatures, right? Fish, birds, dogs, humans. Where do fungi fall? Obviously, they're not things with a nervous system the way we have a nervous system,

but they're distinct from plants in many ways. Well, this even gets more fun to talk about because we are descendants of mycelium. fungi gave birth to animals about 650 million years ago. The mycelial path, you know, if you go back 650 million years ago, there's a super kingdom called Opislocanta. And basically, the mycelium digestes nutrients externally. So these are extended networks, are releasing enzymes and acids, antibiotics,

messenger molecules, very complex chemical outflow of compounds. and then a digest this nutrients externally, then brings them directly through the cell walls. The path that led to animals and circulated nutrients in a cellular sack, basically. And once that occurred, then a membranes occurred around the food. And then so that's the fungi is a separate kingdom now from animals. I should say animals are now a separate kingdom from fungi. and then

plants and then there's bacteria and then protista and some people evolutionary biologists can argue there's like I'm at the 14 kingdoms speculated but this is really important because

my friend Giuliani Giuliana Fersci has been an advocate for acknowledging funga So there's flora, fauna, and fungi, and recognized institutionally and within government as important for defining the health of ecosystems. Now there's advocacy for doing surveys specifically, and Giuliana is a fantastic leader in this movement.

She's done so much. So she runs the Fungi Foundation. I encourage people to check it out, that they're on a mission for fungi. and fungi. And so she's really done a lot. So that's sort of the overview. It's a separate kingdom that's derivative animals are from fungi. We are descendants of fungi. This is why the antibiotics against fungi tend to be very toxic to us, whereas the antibiotics derived from fungi against bacteria from fungi tend to be not as toxic. And so we have very good anti-bacterial medicines from fungi. We have very few good antifungal medicines from fungi because

they tend to be cytotoxic to us. If you think of the earth, right, our planet, as a sort of macrocosm of the human body, right? People talk about the trees or the lungs, right? Because that's what's filtering respiration. What are the fungi? The fungi are externalized digestive membranes like a stomach, what I just described. They're externalized lungs. They exhale carbon oxide. They inhale oxygen, just like us. And I believe they're externalized neurological networks. And I've been saying this for a long time. My book in 2005, Mycelium Running, How Mushrooms Can Help Save the world postulated this. Now they've identified at least 50 word packets that mycelium is streaming through, that's communicating. And it's a very elaborate. Don't underestimate the power

of mycelium. It's a deep well of new compounds and understanding the complexity of nature. So when I look at the earth, I see a mycelial earth. The entire earth is encompassed in mycelium. the greatest reservoirs of mycelium have been found in the sediments of the ocean. And it's been suggested that there's more mycelium in the sediments of the ocean than there's on land. On land, the ocean, of course, there's more ocean water than there is landmouse. So it's a fantastic deep reservoir of new medicines, new properties, new ways of really. It's a mycelial revolution has swept the planet. And what I'm really excited about is some of my biggest fan bases are children

who want to become a psychologist. I hear this all the time. And my most enjoyable sort of little story on this, I live in a remote island and in Canada, and I was at a dock on another remote island. And I was tied up my boat and I was walking down the dock and a little eight-year-old girl came up to me and goes, and I was not wearing my hat.

And she goes, are you Paul Stamets? And I said, yes. And she goes, oh, my gosh, I saw Fantastic Function. I loved it. And she ran down to get her parents to say. So it's cross-generational. That's, you know, I'm a grandfather, but it's nice, this entire movement crosses generations, crosses cultures, crosses continents, and crosses millennia.

This is sort of like a movement from the underground, and many people did not see it coming, but it is such a powerful force right now across the planet for building communities, respect, and kindness and cooperation. It's more than a metaphor. It is a new way of being that indigenous people, scientists, it all brings us together in a unified field, of consciousness and being that I think has tremendous potential positive benefits for the future. So I want to transition us from this sort of larger world of fungi, of mycelium, and of mushrooms into a more specific subset that is not the entirety, obviously, but is many people's interest, which is the psilocybin.

Now, I thought that there's like one kind of mushroom that if you eat it, you have a consciousness transcending experience. But as I'm looking at in your book, psilocybin mushrooms in their natural habitats, there's a ton of varieties of mushrooms that have psychoactive and psychedelic properties. What proportion are we talking? why would mushrooms have this property evolutionarily? And these predate humans. These just existed in the wild. Talk us through the psilocybin subset of fungi. I love complex questions.

And the stream of thinking here actually makes a lot of sense. There's about 14,000 species of mushrooms that have been identified. and that is less than 10%, the fungal genome, we think, is between 1.5 and 20 million species. Now, that's a wide range because every time you think there's less, there's more. The more you explore something more diverse, it turns out to be. Fungi outnumber plant species, known ones by 6 to 1. So if you accept 1.5 million species of fungi out there, 10% are mushroom-forming fungi, 150,000, and then 14,000 mushroom species have been identified, you're looking about 1% of mushrooms that have been identified.

And then on the 14,000, there's about 220, 230 sulfide producing mushrooms. So this is a subset of a subset of a subset, you know, based on molecular genetics. But we know that there's 225 identified species. My book covers 60 of them all over the world. And I'm really proud of this book. This is my eighth book. It's beautiful. Yeah, I'm really the quality of reproduction is just astonishingly good.

The art is beautiful also. Shout out to all this beautiful art that you have accompanied. the chapters as well. Well, there's many people that contributed to it. I'm going to give a shout to many, many of the other mycologists who've known me for a long time. They graciously can contribute it. I want to get a shout out also to the I Naturalist, which is a fantastic app that I recommend everyone utilize. It's great to take your children out. Everyone's hooked, you know, addicted to the cell phones, but I naturalist, you can go, I take a picture of a lizard, a mushroom, a flower. You know, you can then use AI. They can identify it. So,

you can drop a pin, you can populate all the species identified around your yard. I mean, it's just really is a bridge for children to get using, you know, devices, you know, to get them out of the nature. We really need to do that. I just spoke at the United Nations. I want to segue here a little bit. I just spoke of the United Nations. and one of a professor at Stanford, who's a genius who's quote unquote spawned many of the most powerful internet-based companies

on Earth, YouTube and other platforms, reported that 83% of Gen Zeres have an intimate relationship with an AI entity. That's scary. They're siloed. They don't have an interest in having children. They're socially isolated. They don't have the social skills. They're so wedded to their devices.

She's concerned that this is the biggest threat. AI has wonderful attributes. I'm not saying that it doesn't. But she's really concerned are the inability of the next generation to develop social skills for meeting people in three dimensions. You know, there's AI. So going back to psilocybin mushrooms, and this is why I think psilocybin mushrooms is a form of liberation. It brings you back into nature.

It increases nature of relatedness. And for those of you who are skeptics about psilocybin, go to clinical trials.gov. As of this morning, there's 250 clinical trials registered at clinical trials.gov, which the FDA requires for anyone doing a clinical trials.com. if you want to have U.S. government eventual approval, potentially as a new therapy, a new drug, you have to register at Clinical Trials.com. 250 clinical trials. 10 years ago, there was one or two, maybe a few more than that. But now they have to go through IRB boards, institutional review boards that are populated by experts, physicians, scientists. They have to address something that's not being currently addressed, you know, adequately.

medical field. They have to have a probability of success. They have to have low toxicity and be applicable, whether it's scalability or other nuances. So 250 IRB boards, which is typically between six and 20 scientists and experts, approve these clinical studies. Now, Silo Cibin actually has a PR problem. It sounds too good to be true. Thankfully, I'm talking to a neuroscientist. Everything that we do is influenced by the health of our nervous system, our neurology. We live in a neuroscape, our perception, our consciousness, our ability to walk, our ability to taste, to eat, to socialize, to breathe. Everything is rooted in the health of our nervous system. We all suffer from neurodegeneration as a consequence of age.

We suffer also neuropathies due to diseases, stresses, viruses, you know, all the other things are quite obvious. We have Parkinson's, we have dementia, we have traumatic brain injury, we have Alzheimer's, et cetera, et cetera. All those studies are in clinical trials.com. From Yale to Harvard to Stanford, I mean, check it out, folks. It's extraordinary. You can also put in psilocybin, clinical trials.

talk of, and if you're interested in enrolling, like in a Parkinson's study, you can put in Parkinson's. Maybe you know somebody who qualified to enroll. So these clinical trials are numerous, and they're all basically rooted in increasing the health of your nervous system. So I think psilocybin could be a neurotropic vitamin that help us all as we age. We all suffer from neuropathies that are age-related, and psilocybin seems to be a potential game-changer for improving the health of our nervous systems. I want you to talk a little bit about what it's like

to use psilocybin therapeutically, meaning are you suggesting that everyone with Parkinson's take a heroic dose and go cling to a top of a tree, I assume not? But can you talk a bit about the different ways, and we've had James Fateman and Jordan Gruber on. Can you talk a little bit about the various applications of using this very special class of psilocybin mushrooms?

I can talk about applications, but I'm a mycologist. I'm not a physician. I do not make recommendations. Let's be very clear about that. Yes. I report on the scientific literature. I can report on my own personal experience, but let's be very clear,

I do not make medical recommendations on anything. I just report the facts, follow the science. There are other experts that can make recommendations. They're empowered to do so. I am not. But I am very much a student of this subject. And I have to say, I think psilocybin is the most important new molecular medicine that has been discovered in the past 100 years.

I think it's a game changer for so many reasons. But in terms of the applications, most of the dosages that have been proved by the FDA are 25 milligrams of psilocybin. So let's just do the math here, so people understand. Solosomy cubensis is the most commonly consumed mushroom in the world, golden tops,

and 10 grams of fresh mushrooms is 90% water. That's one gram. One percent of that, typically, is psalcybin. That's 10 milligrams. So that is 2.5 grams of dried mushrooms is equivalent to 25 milligrams. But if you go to clinical trials.gov, 98% of the studies, maybe 97, are in the molecule. Yet in the population, 8.3 million Americans did psilocybin in 2023. And I would say 8.29999 were all with mushrooms, not with a molecule.

So there's a disconnect between clinical trial.gov, the farmer's pseudalogization is based on a molecule that can standardize it. And the mushrooms are variable, lots of different species in those slats of be commences is the most common one. but the real world experience is with mushrooms, and the scientific clinical studies are with the psilocybin, the molecule. That chasm, unfortunately, I think, does not give us the full story. There are psilocybin analogs.

Now, psilocybin, defosphore relates into silson. Silson is rock solid. Silson is very fragile. Silson docks with a five H-T receptors, as you probably had other people talk about this, is the serotonin agonist. It basically becomes a neurotransmitter in the synopsis of your brain. But the other analogs also dock with these receptors.

And the Mapcanases in particular that lead to neurogeneration, neuroregeneration, neurogenesis, and neuroplasticity. All of those are four separate things. But recently it was discovered the reason why antidepressant drugs work is because they dock with a tract B receptor. What was found by researchers that up to a thousand times more docking affinity of psilocybin to the SSRIs that are being currently being prescribed, and they work because of track B activation. So, okay, that's huge. Now, what dosage gives you what percentage of track B activation? Well, you have so many receptors.

And so when you flood the neuroscape with a massive amount of psilocybin, there's an overflow of there's too much that washes out. About 50% of the psilocybin you consume actually makes it into the brain across the blood brain barrier. So the idea is that if you titrate this to a smaller dose, and you have these other tryptomines, Bayosystem, neurobeostasis, noracillin, erycin, these are all other triptomines, more are being discovered.

They also will dock with different affinities to track A, track Bs. These are different other map canases whose ligands then result in neurogeneration. So neurogenesis actually can come from track B's, newborn neurons that parent cells differentiate into new neurons.

So given that, and this is what I believe is a hypothesis, that there's cross-talking between these receptors, why wouldn't there be? Your body's evolved over hundreds of millions a year. It's a very sophisticated digestive analytical system. When it gets something that's beneficial, it would seem to me it would wake up other neuroreceptors to take in these other related compounds. So this is why I think the complexity of psilocybin mushrooms offers more opportunities of the molecules. by itself. There's an entourage effect. And this entourage effect that gives a cascade. If you take too much psilocybin, it washes out and it's just one molecule. But these other molecules are slightly different, and they can talk to other receptors, and I think these other receptors are cross-talking, awakening, literally, figuratively and scientifically, awakening the neuroscape to allow for binding affinities that then result in a cascade. We know that psilocybin, a silicin now is anti-inflammatory. So that's cool. The fact that it has anti-inflammatory properties combined were neurogenitive

properties causing neurons to actually fork and new dendrites and new neurites to be able to be emitted. That's, and typically when you have cell generation, you have inflammation, you have inflammation, to have cell generation bundled with anti-inflammatory properties, that's really interesting. And also, just to be clear, and we also are not doctors, nor do we dispense medical information. We're trying to present all sides of this conversation to the best of our ability, but we are not, doctors, we're not recommending anything. But just for people who don't know, what you're talking about is what is referred to as microdosing, where we're not suggesting, and no one is suggesting, you know, that people go out and, you know, go to a dead

concert and take lots of mushrooms. That's not what this looks like. What this looks like is there's a protocol that is usually supervised by someone who knows about these things. And the protocol is implemented so that the goal would be to kind of reprogram your brain and your nervous system to adapt to what I think we would all agree is a higher level of functioning. Not that you're looking to be stoned all the time, but that your brain and nervous system is operating at optimal levels. And there's a different conversation about an expansion of consciousness, which also has to do with neurogenesis and lots of fascinating expansion of the nervous system. But what we're talking about is instead of being told there's something wrong with your brain and you were born with

something wrong with your serotonin receptors, and we have the medication, and if you pay us this money, we will give you this medication. You'll take it every day for the rest of your life because you were born broken. This is an alternative perspective that your brain has the ability, right, to be supported. Yes, exactly. And this, let's, let me add further clarification. Even though the 25 milligram dose is recommended by the FDA, most medicines are adjusted according to body mass, according to patients' individual history. You wouldn't give the same dose to a 120-pound woman yoga instructor as you would to a 400-pound couch potato who's an alcoholic. I mean, just, of course, individualized, customized medicine. But to start the

the process, there is good logic in the 25 milligram standardized dose. However, because of what I've already said, microdosing is by definition not causing a change, and it's not inebriating. It can change consciousness in that colors are brighter. I think I have a better sense of humor. Is this debatable? And so when you do a micro dose, a medium dose, also known as a museum dose, and a macro dose. So let me use that, I can do, I go back and forth, you can divide it by 10 for anyone that's out there

once it's go to milligrams. But if you use slasomycubensis, the most of everyone that's using, basically a tenth, a 20th of a gram of slasamycubensis, to a third of a gram of Slaas Bikovanzas, divided up by 10 for milligrams. That's in the microdose range. You feel what we call a liftoff, typically over a third of a gram of Slaas Bikovanzas. You actually feel a little wave that happens, temporary, very short-lived.

At one gram, you're hitting into the museum dose, medium dose. We call it the museum dose because this is very popular, is that friends would take one gram of Las Micavencis, you know, and they go to a museum, and they're fascinated by art and history. You typically know them because they wear sunglasses inside the museum because the pupils of their eyes are fully annihilated. And they tend to be laugh a lot. So that to me is the medium museum does.

The therapeutic dose for helping people overcome PTSD trauma and those severe episodes in life that harm us emotionally, the kind of the breakthrough dose is the higher dose, which is typically 2.5 grams to up to 8 grams of psilocybinis. That would be 25 milligrams to 80 milligrams of psalcybin. There's the LD 50 of cell-time mushrooms is 42 pounds. It is one of the most least toxic drugs ever studied compared to its therapeutic benefit. 42 pounds. You cannot consume 42 pounds of any mushroom. I mean, just physically impossible. So it's that non-toxic.

No one's ever died, one little footnote, but no one's ever died from cell cybin mushrooms. And they're non-addictive. So for those who have not consumed them, when you have a heroic journey, on these, the next day, you look at the mushrooms, you go, no way, I'm not touching this, right? Because you have to process this. This is why therapeutic support is critically important. This is not a party drug. I have a DEA license. I adopted the phrase many years ago. Nature provides, I don't. My father, at the end of his life, asked to do psilocybin mushrooms with me. Alexander Smith, the father of American mycology, asked me in his 70s when I was,

I was about 24, 25 to do solosite mushrooms with me. He published many of the new species of solacebin mushrooms. Both of these father figures, you know, figuratively and literally, I have such an honor that they wanted to actually do a journey with me because they trusted me. And with both of them, I ask them, will your partners, your wives in this case, and they were in the room, do solosite mushrooms with us? And they both said, no way. And in both circumstances, I was literally leaving the next day and I turned them down.

I turned down Alexander Smith, the father of American mycology, to do solaceive mushrooms with me because I would not be there the next day to help them process. When you have your view of reality shattered, it's not shattered in a bad sense. It's an explosion. I mean, you realize there's so much more out there. We're looking through these limited lenses that are conscious and our brain. of filtering out so much stimuli. When the floodgates, the senses are open, and you just, everything, you know, Roland Griffith

described this and as patients described it as the ineffable. You can't explain this. Words are inadequate to explain it. But the after consequence, you know, for 70% of the people, it's a beneficial experience. For 30% of the people, it's a difficult experience. And Rick Doblin and I totally agree on this. a difficult experience is not necessarily a bad experience. Because a difficult experience retrospectively, even at Johns Hopkins, 14 months later,

the 30% of the people had a difficult experience thought it was therapeutically beneficial. Interesting. They just wouldn't do it again. 70% of it had a positive experience and also was therapeutically beneficial. But let me go back to something on the neuroscape that I think one patient said really well. I believe this patient was an addict. And every day, wake up and he felt before the psilocybin experience, he was always stuck in a rut. And so this patient came up with this metaphor, which I think is really beautiful.

It's like I'm being on top of a ski slope. And every day, when I woke up, put on his skis, and he was stuck in the rut of the previous days, weeks, and years. And he had to go down the ski slope and the rut of his previous experiences. After psilocybin, he says, someone groomed the slopes. And he goes, he was free to explore. And at Yale, the tobacco study that was done, small study, 67% of tobacco addicts with two experiences were free of tobacco smoking one year later. And one of the patients described that they woke up the next day, they look at the cigarettes and go, why would I want to do this? That's harmful to me.

And they stop cigarette smoking just like that. We have examples of opioid, alcohol abuse. All of these are clinical trials.gov. I also populated a website for scientists and physicians, mushroom references.com. So mushroom references.com you can see it's probably over a thousand pages long now, but there's hundreds, I think, of scientific articles, many of them on Solzibin, that you can look up these studies directly at mushroom references.com. It's unbranded.

It's just for scientists. It's just on populating a database because physicians have so little time, scientists, you just need to get to the core material. So there's a good search engine there. You can go to mushroom references.com, look up many of these studies. So now you ask, why would the psilocybin produce this? Well, it's not an insecticide because many sulsive mushrooms rot with maggots and flies, lay eggs and become maggots.

So it's not very good as that, but it's very good at preventing slugs. snails from eating the mushrooms. So that's what we have found. It has this ability of preventing. And that makes sense because flies would spread spores and slugs would eat the mushrooms when they're young. So spores cannot be liberated. So that could be, but more than one thing can be true, right? It's not necessarily just one thing. There could be a cacophony, an entourage of mutual benefits. And Michael Pollan wrote a great book, The Botany of Desire, in which She made the argument, the corn, cannabis, I think coffee and another plant. Specifically, they engaged human activity to spread them.

Well, that's what's happening now. Silocybin mushrooms are being grown by so many people around the world. It has an evolutionary benefit now. Whether you make the arguments back and forth, the fact of the matter is, cellcide mushrooms have a better chance of survival now because of human interest than heretofore ever before. We're going to hit pause on our conversation with Paul Stammitz because there is more in the second episode that we have coming up. We're going to be talking about the crisis of creativity that we are in and how mushrooms might be the solution to that. We're going to talk about some of the indigenous practices that have incorporated transcendental experiences, consciousness expanding experiences, and a little bit more about how AI is,

in conflict in many ways with the messages that mushrooms are trying to communicate. Can mushrooms save the world? He thinks so, and he's going to convince us of that in part two of our conversation with Paul Stammats. We're also going to talk about how fungi can be used in industries like agriculture and farming and address topsoil and the amazing ways in which it can actually help protect bees from the colony declines that are actually a really massive problem. Make sure you're subscribed to get part two and check us out on. Substack, My Ambialx Breakdown on Substack to join the growing breaker community and get exclusive

content, not available anywhere else. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's MyNBi Alex Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down.

It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down.