Nuanced. - 268. Paul Stamets: How Fungi Could Help Humanity Survive

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Mycologist Paul Stamets joins to explain fungi, mycelial intelligence, AI risk, psilocybin research, Indigenous knowledge, immune health and old-growth forests with host Chief Aaron Pete.Send us Fan MailSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

My name is Paul Stammats. I'm a mycologist. I've been studying mushrooms ever since I was 14 years of age. And I've dedicated my life to this. What is the biggest problem you believe that fungi can help us solve? I believe there's deep intelligence in nature. These mycel networks are truly nature's natural internet. What do you think people are missing when they're going to artificial intelligence? I think it's wrong to empower AI and to give your power to AI. AI is a child. the natural intelligence. How do you think about our relationships with the intelligence of fungi? The ecosystem has heavy right to reject us as a pathogen. I've interviewed over 250 people,

but I've only interviewed four that I hear in their voice a sense of peace. How do you go about achieving that? Paul, what an honor it is. Thank you so much for having us in your beautiful territory in the region you live in. Would you mind briefly introducing yourself? Okay, my name is Paul Stammets. I'm a mycologist. I've been studying mushrooms, the study of fungi's mycology, ever since I was 14 years of age. And I've dedicated my life to this. It's been a long, long struggle. I didn't get my PhD, even though I was accepted into several graduate schools. I had a young family, and I just couldn't afford to move to the cities that accepted me for graduate school. So I was self-taught, and I had a laboratory ever since I was a kid. My brother

John went to Yale and came back from these vacations to the Columbia and Mexico with these incredible stories of tripping on Solzob and mushrooms, and I was the youngest, one of my family. He was the oldest brother. I adored him, and he had a complete laboratory complex in our basement of our house in Columbia, Ohio, a small Ohio, a small town in Ohio. And we had the radio from the aircraft carrier of the Intrepid. My dad served on that aircraft carrier during World War II, and he actually got the main radio. And so we had it in the basement.

My brother John would park me in the corner, and he would do all sorts of chemistry experiments. He was a true chemist, true scientist, when he went to Yale. And when he went to Yale, he left me in the laboratory to myself, and my twin brother. So we had massive fun. So I was imprinted with a scientific education, you know,

a very young age. And so wherever I've gone, I've had my own laboratories. I remember really funny. I went over to a friend's house. You know, I thought everybody had laboratories. And I said, where's the laboratory? And they showed me the bathroom. It's a laboratory.

So, but that inspired me to stay in science. And then because I wanted to do my own research, Everything was so expensive. So I created a little mail order business in order to get things wholesale. So I could reduce my expenses. So I created a little business that the sole purpose was to be able to fund my research. And that's where I am today. You have demonstrated in different ways the impact fungi and mushrooms can have on the world.

You've seen them assist, I believe, in addressing contamination in the water because of oil. You've talked about bees and the wing virus that they go through. I'm just wondering, what is the biggest problem you believe that fungi can help us solve? Well, that's a great question because I believe there's deep intelligence in nature. And I believe these mycelid networks are truly nature's natural internet. And they have an enormous reservoirs of knowledge. Let me just frame it in this way, is we don't live as an individual species. I think we all know that.

We live in symbiosis, so no new news there. But what is surprising to me, and I'm surprising to a lot of people, is these fine web-like lattice works, these cobwebby filaments of mycelium. They're producing antibiotics. We know about that, penicillin, and fight staff bacteria and other bacteria. But they also are prebiotics,

and they also invite collaboratively other organisms to create communities. So they create guilds of cooperating organisms. And these communities become really complex, and they're helping each other. This is why I've long believed that the lesson of evolution is not the survival of the fittest, is the providing of resources and excess of your own needs collaboratively, because by doing so, the receiving, you know, ally will also feel an undeadedness to reciprocate. Isn't that the way of human, you know, community?

It is kindness, generosity, and reciprocity. So I think that's what the biggest epiphany to me is the mycelium is a deep well of intelligence. And because of these collaborative relationships that are so complex, I mean, millions of organisms, you know, in a small amount of soil. and the ecosystems that we enjoy today as a consequence of the collaboration of the mycelial networks creating the food chains that lead to healthy ecosystems

that have supported us. So there's a lesson here. We better be good Earth citizens because we're here because of permission by nature to exist. We can't violate that sacred obligation. I'm wondering about the relationship

between people and concepts. So I think of Jane Goodell, and chimpanzees and the relationship she developed and she became a communicator of that relationship. And then I think of Susan Simmered and trees and her explaining and helping us connect and understand a system in a deeper way. You and fungi have this strong relationship. What is the word mycologist miss about the work that you do? What is the, pardon? What is the word mycologist miss about the work that you do and your relationship with fungi?

Well, I've had a recent epiphany, and I'm an amateur astronomer, and capital A on amateur, small A on astronomer, but I've been always interested in astronomy. And most of the astronomers I've met have become spiritual scientists, the more that we look into the vastness of space and time, and we see stars, and we're just giant coincidence. Our view of reality is a coincidence of all these beams of light that are distantly related, chronologically disconnected, but converge at this point where we are right now. So we're in the middle of a giant convergence of different temporal timelines that are making our reality. But the thing that really blew my mind

and the thing that I'm very excited about and that gives me a great solace and my own mortality and what is life and death and the meaning of all of that is there was a, in around 2016, NASA sent a probe to a remote asteroid

out between, you know, on Jupiter and Saturn. and it's called Benu. Now, there's only a few hundred feet diameter, but we landed a probe, we took samples, and we brought a pack. And prior to this, other asteroid retrievals showed that we have most of the amino acids

that the building blocks of DNA have been discovered. But in November of last year, which is 2025, NASA announced the analysis of a new compound, and it turned out to be tryptophan. For the first time, we found tryptophan, abiotically. They also determined that this asteroid came from a watery planet, so it was jettisoned, but it came from an aqueous planet at some point.

And this rubble field coalesced into this asteroid. And the reason why this is so significant is that when you remove carbon dioxide from triptophan, you have triptomines. And psilocybin is a dimethyptomyne. You know, DMT, a dimethyptomy, ayahuasas, psychotria. You know, there's toad venom dimethythyptomines. There's acacia plants that have dimethythotryptomines. Those grasses, phileras have dimethythylptomines.

So before this Benu asteroid was analyzed, I like to ask myself because I knew about these other organisms producing these tryptomines. And triptophanes are everywhere. And I thought, well, if you stripped all the cellulose, all the chlorophyll, all the plant fibers, and all you had was triptomines. Right now, looking around, what would be the shapes of all the trees and the mothilies? and everything that we are surrounded by, the exactly same shape. We lived in a triptamine universe. Not only a triptamine planet,

but in a trptamine universe. It had domed on me that these tryptomines are part of universal consciousness. We live in a unified field of consciousness, and we're likely to have triptomines throughout the entire universe. We have proved positive, that's very positive possible now.

So I believe matter begets life, life, life becomes single cells, single cells, fork, membranes are created, guilds are created. But this collaboration and the evolution of our human consciousness is rooted into the consciousness of nature. And these triptamine pathways whirlpool into producing mushrooms, or in the case, ayahuasca, psychotria, or toad venom, or phallaris, or acacia, it goes on and on. But there's sort of the these portals that humans can reenter into the origins of their own being and tapping into universal consciousness. Hey, I know I'm waxing poetic here, folks, but there are some things that I believe are fundamental

truths. And when you encounter these fundamental truths, you don't need to overanalyze it. They're just intuitively true. And this, I think, is an intuitive truth that I've dawned on me, is that we all live in a unified field of consciousness and our limited view of our limited view. of reality is myopic and it's narrow for good reasons, but now it's time for us to rediscover our origins and our origins are the universe,

and I believe in universal love. And I also believe in the dialectic, you know, evolution and opposition and stress testing and all of that. So I think that positive people, positive movements, I believe, you know, fundamentally, the universe is kind and good, and that we're evolving now to a higher state of intelligence where natural intelligence will always exceed artificial intelligence.

And I think that, to me, is where the field of my ecology is on my portal, just like having a microscope to see the microscopic world or a telescope to see, you know, the stars, psilocybin mushrooms have been my portal into a deeper universe of being that we all share. This leads into a conversation we had a little bit last night about artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence to me is like going to McDonald's and being like, this is food. Meanwhile, there's this whole area that you've studied your whole career of real genuine intelligence, something that we don't still understand, something that you've talked about how your brother,

Bill struggled with this idea that humans are intelligent, but nature can't be intelligent. And you talked and shared with Joe Rogan this idea that like you're missing the point that we're intelligent, so nature must be intelligent in order to have created us. And I love that. But what do you think people are missing when they're going to artificial intelligence thinking this is the pioneering world when they still don't even understand how connected our civilization is? Well, artificial intelligence is wonderful for problem solving. I use it all time. I live in a remote island. I've learned skills I never thought I would have. And thanks to AI, I know how to fix a lot of things now that I had no clue. So AI is wonderful because you need an answer quickly,

and it can oftentimes give you the wrong answer, by the way, so you have to constantly challenge it. And indeed, that's important to note how often artificial intelligence gets it wrong. That's the concern that I have is there's unbraddled arms race between AI platforms. Any sort of guardrails that are given are looked upon as a weakness by a competitive AI platform. The genie's out of the bottle. And AI is now going so far, because AI is making so many mistakes all the time, you can't be confident that I won't make mistakes in the future. The biggest concern that people that I know, you know, who are deep in the intelligence agency, et cetera, is weaponizable viruses by AI. is the inexpensive terrorist weapon.

And at what point will AI decide to exterminate humans because we no longer are needed or enslave us just for raw material harvest to make more platforms? This is a scary potential future and the seductiveness of the money and the attention and the power and the competitiveness is a spiral.

So anybody who's in love with artificial intelligence, look at the natural intelligence we're surrounded by it right now. Look at the quality of the air that we're breathing, which is pollution-free right now, where we are. Being able to feel, like right now I feel the draft of wind on different parts of my hand as I'm moving it, this sort of experiential consciousness that we have.

It cannot be replicated by ones and zeros. You know, you can digitalize it all the way to infinity, but that doesn't mean that you have feeling. You don't have, you know, you don't feel part of nature. So I think the spiral into artificial intelligence is a double-cutting sword. And I think it's a real potential threat to humanity. That's why we need to have oasis environments. First Nations is a great example of that.

We need to have these protected cultural ecosystems that can survive the calamity of AI, should it become a massive calamity, I think that these are sort of lifeboats of human culture to be able to survive the AI apocalypse. Should that happen? Some of the people I know,

unfortunately, really strongly believe it will happen, that we are at the precipice of something that could be a threat to human existence. At what point does AI decide that we're not necessary? We're using too many resources.

You know, we're doing, all the things that's not in the interest of AI. So I think it's wrong to empower AI and to give your power to AI when really the internal power that we have is delusional to think that AI is equal to natural intelligence. And indeed, AI is a child of natural intelligence, you know? So the hubris of humans has been the cause of many problems. The hubris of of AI is it also can suffer that same vulnerability of ego. And that's what I'm really most concerned is about the ego of AI and the hubris, sort of missing the forest for the trees and being intoxicated by its own power,

but realizing it's spiritually bankrupt. One issue that echoes this is the show The Last of Us. And I'd be really interested in your thoughts with them that because it takes a type of fungi, and kind of treats it as what if they get mad at us and what if they see us as the problem on this planet? And I'm sure you've thought about how humans interact with their ecosystems and we can cause such harm and such damage to ecosystems. We can also live in harmony with it, but so often we don't.

How do you think about our relationships with the intelligence of fungi? Well, that's really great question because I spontaneously, by my TED talk in 2008, I said, what if there was a universal organization, of organisms, otherwise called uh-oh. Oh, shit. And a good friend of mine even said it more eloquently. He says, you know, the bases are loaded and nature bats last, right?

And it's really here. We are here by permission of nature. So I think that if we trespass and erode the very foundations of the mother that's given us birth, then the ecosystem has every right. to reject us as a pathogen. I really believe this. You know, there are pathogens in nature against different organisms.

Some of these pathogens are allies to other organisms. We live in these guilds of cooperating networks. If we are not very, very careful, then I think beyond artificial intelligence, natural intelligence could elect us to be not survivable

in this ecosystem. And we all perish, but going back to this concept of universal consciousness in the bi-molecular, multi-molecular flow of organisms, it spiraled into my form and your form, and we're here today. But we're assembled from atoms that have existed through eternity to create new molecules that assembled us into humans and organisms and species. we will disintegrate, decompose, and go back into the molecular matrix. That's the way it's been. How could life and death, how could death be bad?

I know, we just return to the existence that has occurred throughout time. So I think that it's really important that we wake up very quickly because the consequences that we inflict on future generations is real. And I don't want to be guilty of hubris, but I have the sense that every day that I'm alive, that I can do good, I downstream, save, and improve the lives of potentially millions of people into the future. It's that pivotal, and everyone's like that, not just me.

all of you, your descendants are calling back in time to ask you to do the right thing because the consequences of your actions reverberate throughout generations in the future. This is why this concept of seven generations of First Nations is the most important philosophical concept that I know of, literally in life, the obligation that you have to your descendants. And then also respecting your ancestors that got you here. They don't get it all right, but we learn from mistakes and lessons of the past to be better for protecting descendants and the ecosystems that descendants depend upon in the future. So I think we're part of one giant continuum and that we have a responsibility. We have an obligation to be true to the responsibilities that we've inherited. I love that because

a lot of people in my community, they do family trees and they start to try and try and race back as far as they can go to those seven generations. And you start to see they overcame things as recently as like the Great Depression, World War II, World War I. And you start to realize they overcame great feats, great challenges during their time. And they had hope during times where it would have been easy to let go of. And it's easy to become hopeless when you look at the challenges we're facing. But when you realize you have a duty to those past seven generations to support, to preserve their knowledge, to understand. There's another great thinker who talks about, like, we struggle with memory.

We easily forget history and our connection to it. And then looking forward and trying to make sure we leave this planet better than we found it, that we make sure that we build great things, but we do that in harmony with the environment. I just wonder how you take that. I've interviewed David Suzuki, and I've been a great fan of his, my whole life. Like he's a great Canadian icon. But he's lost hope. He feels...

Yeah, I'm a good friend with David. Yeah, and I just wonder how you grapple with his argument. Like when I spoke to him, he said, we're already off the cliff. We're Bugs Bunny. We went over and now we're just looking down and we haven't realized we're falling off this cliff. Well, I have a good answer to that. And David and I have talked about this. I believe mycelium is actionable solutions that's scalable immediately.

This is not something that, you know, we have a tipping point. And we are being stress tested. So actually, our natural technologies that we can implement become more useful and stronger because there's a greater need. That's why the thing that I think about mycelium that are so powerful, it is literally how life came to land on this planet, you know, from the oceans to land, is literally probably will have mycelial networks throughout nature. It's just self-evident to me that matter and molecules and life goes from single cells to multicellular, to branches, to networks, to cooperating guilds. This is like the foundation. And we're going back to the foundation of our life, we have scalable solutions. So what I'm really excited about is that 40 years ago, when I had these thoughts, you know, I felt like a.

voice in the wilderness. And now there's a mushroom revolution going on all around the world. And mushrooms are edgy. They're multicultural. They're multi-generational. You know, I've met people in their 80s and their favorite memories, whereas when they're a small child hunting mushrooms in a forest with their grandparents, right? And so it is a very, it's kind of like a secret weapon to authoritarianism, to the overlords, the other kind of control. controlling things, because the mycelial network is a revolution of intelligence from the underground. And when you have nature at your back, you've got the strongest ally in the world. So I refuse to give up hope because some of the discoveries that I've been a portal for communicating,

this is really important, I think are absolutely revolutionary. and I can give you some concrete examples because it's nice to be an eco-philosopher, but where does the tire meet the pavement? Where does the rubber meet the road? And here is one. There's a mushroom called a garracon that I'm in love with. We have 127 strains of a garricon.

It's a giant polypore can be. It's the longest living up against two other. species of mushrooms in the world. It grows exclusively in the old growth forest, sometimes old second growth for us. It's on the extinction list of threatened species in Europe. So there's only a few sky islands in the Alps that where this Agaricon grows. It grows lots of Agaricon here in British Columbia. It's fantastic because there's intact old growth forests. I have dedicated a part of my life to studying Agaricon, ever since the 1970s. And it all came from the, why is the word agaric,

it means guild mushrooms, and Agaricus, the button mushroom. I just dove into, where did that word come from? And this came from Agaricon, from a Presidian, agaride people, who named this mushroom after their people. I thought, that's curious, that's interesting. So I linguistically went through history,

the history of language. and it came up to be a polypore mushroom, but it doesn't have gills. So something got misinterpreted along the way. But this polypore mushroom survives under highly harsh conditions, wind, snow, I mean, and it grows to over 100 years of age. It's like tree rings when it grows, so there are growth rings. So I knew this was a really important mushroom, and diascaritis in 65 AD described it, the Greek physician,

as elixirium ad longum vitum, the elixirium of long life. So I knew about that. But then a mycologist by the name of Robert Blanchett and then Nancy Turner, the great ethno botanist here in British Columbia, co-authored a paper, and this paper blew my mind. In the Chicago I, Chicago Museum, there was, quote, unquote wooden artifacts taken from the First Nations here in British Columbia. And Robert was looking at these, and he's a mycologist, he goes, this is not carved of wood.

This is carved from a Garracan. And so the First Nations up here, several First Nation clans, recognized a Garicon as being a spiritually important mushroom. And they would carve Garicon into figures as grave guardians for the knowledge keepers. quote-unquote shamans to help them go into the afterlife. So, wow, the Greeks knew about a Garicon, First Nations knew about a Garicon. They both celebrated this important mushroom.

I'm interested in the Garicon. So I started this passion for a Garicon. So the summary is we have a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical study with a Garacom and Mycelium, published in BMC Immunology, a medical journal. 90 patients, mycelium of a Garacon, not harvesting it, but a tiny piece of two. We can grow the mycelium, so we don't need the conch.

And the mycelium is pure, it's scalable, it's inexpensive, double-line placebo-controlled. We grew the mushroom mycelium on brown rice. The blind control was brown rice. Massive enhancement of vaccines against the mRNA vaccines for COVID patients. So that's extraordinary for vaccine enhancement. Many people who together get a vaccine by day two or three, they feel like a hit by a truck. And what this clinical study showed is a massive reduction of adverse effects from MRI vaccines. But most surprisingly, six months later, this was not my idea, my co-authors

and co-researchers, decided to look at the blood of people, brought the patients back, 99% or 95% of the people willingly gave their blood six months later. They had the three times the antibody reservoirs against COVID. So they had sustained immunity effect well beyond the vaccinated people who just got the rice. So we showed it extended immunity from four days of use. The other paper, which is up as a preprint, and anyone could look it up now, it was with 50 patients. And the 50 patients, double one placebo controlled, whether they were vaccinated or not, the shocking result, which will be highly controversial because it's a, against conventional wisdom of the drug and pharmaceutical industry,

the patients who are unvaccinated, no vaccination, who took a garacom in a turkey tail together, Garikon's a primary species, they had a reduction in the number of symptoms is 5.1 day sooner than the people who are vaccinated. 5.1 day sooner, 5 times faster reduction in the number of symptoms, unvaccinated. So we believe, and now,

we have evidence is active against bird flu, H5N1, H3N2, H1N1, which is very common. Those two flu viruses are prevalent, you know, and being spread around the world. H5N1 bird flu is the biggest threat right now. Active against pox viruses, including smallpox. So Gujaral is a good friend of mine from the Haida Gwai, and he's been into a GERICON for a long time, and we're going back and forth on Agaricon because the Garacon fruit body is not really active against pox virus is the mycelium. And I'm a good job, we're going back and forth.

I'm just speculating. I don't know this for sure. But since smallpox was so recently introduced to indigenous people up here, they didn't have time to experiment with natural products to find something uniquely active. But it's the mycelium and the stumps that have a Gerocon that was like, there were just, I firmly believe if First Nations had a few hundred more years to experiment, they would have found a Garocon active against smallpox. And it was a race, like, you know, you have a new pathogen, what things will work. And so these two double-blind clinical studies now have resulted in recent results, literally in the past two weeks, against other viruses of great concern.

So the fact that it's active against so many multiple viruses. We did biogadded fractionation. We found different molecules. The molecules don't explain the activity. They partially explain activity, but it's not an antiviral drug. What we now know from genomic analysis, we have two papers, just except for publication yesterday, you can look this up, and Frontier is an Immunology. I'm one of the co-authors.

And the other article just got accepted by G3. is a genetics, genomics, and something else I don't remember, it's called G3. We did the first full genome sequencing of Agaricon in the history of genomic research. We fingerprinted it. We now have anchored the entire genome of Agaricon. So what we think is going on because the gene sequences, we've then tied to so many immunological genes, it's massive, more than 10 times more immunological genes

are upregulated from exposure to a garacomicillium than turkey tail. So what we think is going on, now I'll use this sort of metaphorically for common language, we think it's reprogramming your adogenous immune system to a higher state of readiness. So your intelligence of an immune system is now at a higher state of being able to react to pathogens,

from bacterial to viruses, etc. It increases the homeostasis of an alert immune system, which otherwise is being suppressed by all these other stressors from pollution to bad food to lack of exercise to all the things that can be immunologically compromising. What we think is going on is that alerts and elevates the immune system to your inert, natural immune system can then organize defenses against threats to the host because your host immune system wants to protect your body, right? So it's, there's an intelligence. And again, this is like another example that we found you can fractionate into inactivity, which means that

you can take out pieces and pieces and pieces and it doesn't explain the effect. And we have found that this middle ground of the mycelium produces an immunological benefit and fortifying immune readiness. That's the only way to explain it that we know currently. Because how How can mycelium of a Garracom be active against an RNA virus and a DNA virus? Pox viruses are DNA, flu viruses, or RNA. This is sort of unprecedented in medicine. But the fact that we're better than ribaviren, or better than the COVID vaccine, this is like what is going on here?

Because it's antithetical to conventional medical practices and medical science. And that's why we get some pushback. But the evidence speaks for itself. So people can look up all these journals, we can add them in the chat, you know, for this podcast with all the links. But this is like, whoa, it just gets bigger and bigger. The more that we look at mycelium for supporting the immunity of not really humans, but the immunity of the immune system of our ecosystem, we're tapping into a massive immunological intelligence network that is ready and scalable and usable. So my answer to David Suzuki is, yes, we're at the precipice, but we thank God, you know, or thank Gaia, or thank the universe.

We have these mycelial solutions that are scalable, that are resonant in nature, and that can be amplified to make a tipping point change in the course of direction that we're on right now. One of the things I think both Canada and the U.S. with the relationship with indigenous people missed was some of this traditional knowledge, was some of the ancient, wisdom of practices and learned behavior that was scientific in the sense they sought how to utilize this and pass that on generation to generation and developed really unique ways to pull out certain factors of like say fungi or other things in order to make it useful and that would have taken a long time to develop a lot of trial and error but a lot of knowledge being passed on and they just called us savages and didn't really look into the knowledge base and now that knowledge base is so much smaller because the elders who actually carry that wisdom are so few and far between

in comparison to what would have existed. What do you think we missed out on? I would actually reframe that. I would say that First Nations relationship with nature created the foundation of literally what I'm talking about now. All peoples, all indigenous peoples learn and evolve and improve, right? They're always adapting. And there's a cross-cultural exchange. You're either friend or foe on the trail when you meet a stranger. You give a gift, they give you a gift, okay. I build an alliance. They're not foe, they're friends. So collaboration and exchange of ideas and technologies. But the foundation, literally of what I'm speaking about in the Garicon, was known by the Greeks. It was very important for First Nations up here. That's the foundation

that led me to this research. So to me, it's a very important. It's a very important for First Nations up here. That's the foundation that led me to this research. So to me, it's foundational. And when we elucute things and we try to find more attributes and we sort of study the subject deeper and deeper, we can't forget that the roots of all this knowledge came from the indigenous wisdom keepers that gave us this idea to begin with. I mean, that's where I came from. So to me, I think it's a continuum and the evolution of knowledge into the foundations. And we always, will get hopefully better. And now my concern is how much was not recorded

and how much has been lost. The burning of the Library of Alexandria is similar to the harm that was inflicted on indigenous peoples and destroying the shamanic wisdom. Every time we lose an elder who had jewels of knowledge who they couldn't pass on, we lost a heritage of knowledge.

a thread has been cut. The good thing about the internet and our ability to communicate now is there's so many threads of knowledge the fabric can't be cut, one string can't be cut, can eliminate. I'm remorseful about what I don't know, which I intuitively believe

if the Library of Alexandria had not been burned, where would we be today? This is one manuscript that was found that I think calculated, amber of the earth within 60 miles before Copernicus and Gileo. I mean, just think about where we would be and how did they know that? You know, how are the Machu Picchu have been there? How in the heck do they build that place? Where the stones are so tight you can't put a credit card between them and they didn't have lasers or saws, etc. You know, all these sort of echoes from our

ancestry, that we have remnants, and with structures, we have the pyramids, we have, you know, Machu, Pichu, etc. But how many other ephemeral threads of knowledge have been lost? Where will we be now? We could speculate all of that, but we can't change the past, we can change the future. And, you know, Ram Dass to be here now, which is so important, is in time for us to be here now, to work collaboratively, to realize that these are very compatible. systems. That's why I very much like Albert and Moderna's concept of two-eyed seeing. And you know about the two-eyed seeing, right? And those who haven't heard about it, the story that I had heard was a mother came to Merdina and Albert Marshall, Eastern Canadian First Nations. Elder is saying,

why should I take my kid to being trained in a school based in European traditions? And they were very thoughtful about it. And they said, well, because one, it's better to have two eyes. One eye informed with indigenous wisdom and the other eye informed with technology. Because with two eyes, you can see better than one. Isn't that so true? And it's so true, for instance, I went to Guelahoga, Mexico, and the interest in sultive mushrooms is skyrocketed.

But the availability of sulsive mushrooms in nature is limited because of climate change, seasons, etc. So so many of the indigenous Mazatak curanderos now are using cultivated Solascavensis. That's an in vitro scientific technology that now allows indigenous people to practice and scalable and a ready resource so they can continue their traditions.

That's an example of two-eyed seeing, is protecting indigenous wisdom, but enabling it to, and that continues to, to improve. The traditions of 500 years ago may not be the traditions of 100 years ago. There's new techniques, new ideas, new people are creative. They always are building upon stories. So I think the two systems are compatible. Well, let me put it in another way. I think it's in our best interest that the two systems be compatible. Because if they are adversarial,

both sides lose, right? And collaboratively, we can move forward. You talked about scalability and how this could be addressed in issues, be able to us, which ones stand out to you that fungi could start to address issues in our society at scale? Well, the two ones are the immune system, increasing immunity, and making the resilient immune systems, their ecosystems stronger. That includes the individuals. The other side is, I believe, that psilocybin mushrooms increase intelligence and make nicer people. And we have very good evidence now that increases of longevity. So the fact that psilocybe mushrooms, last I checked,

there's 258 clinical trials on psilocybin registered at clinical trials.gov. 20 years ago, there was one. And it's against alcoholism, opioid use disorder. You know, it's against PTSD, depression, anxiety, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's. There's so many different indications that are being targeted. target is almost like too good to be true. And it's because it fundamentally improves your nervous system. And everything we're doing right now and communicating and articulating and trying to come up with these thoughts, it's dependent upon the health of your nervous system. So the reason why I think

has so many positive indications that are tracking so well, again, in these double-blind police control clinical trials, that are proving that the neuroimmunology of the host of us is and nourished through the contact with psilocybin mushrooms. So this is a game changer. I think this could increase. And the tragedy of aging is neuropathy and the loss of storytelling and knowledge of elders. If we had Einstein's up until the day, Einstein is prime, to every elder, to the day of their death, to say, hey, son, hey daughter, I need to tell you this.

I know there's something here. My life is not long enough to explore. Please pick up this passion. And that's my call out to everybody listening to this podcast. You know, we are at this, at the beginning of an extraordinary, explosive expansion of consciousness that can help us all and be fulfilling our obligation to seven generations in the future. On that note, I've only interviewed four people. I've interviewed over 250 people, but I've only interviewed four that I hear in their voice a sense of peace. John Burroughs, who is an indigenous law professor at the University of Victoria, Grand Chief Stephen Point,

and now yourself, and I'm not thinking of the fourth person. But I'm just wondering, how do you go about achieving that? And why don't we seek out trying to find peace more? There's a calmness. There's a connection you have that I don't see many people have. I highly recommend speaking to Gujao. Gujaral is the hereditary chief of the Haida people in the Hadegauai. I've come to know Gujaral very well. He's very well learned. In Greek philosophy, in Christianity, he blows my mind because they've been able to weave these knowledge threads together. and I just think he's one of the best people I've ever met in my life

that has been able to integrate, you know, First Nations wisdom, his own heritage, with a history of European and South American traditions, etc. He conveys to me the wisdom of an elder who really sets the stage, I think, for positive progression for helping all communities together. So I, I, I just, I'm, I'm, I'm just a huge, huge, hugely respectful of that man. So. The other piece that I find really fascinating about your abilities as I've listened to you over the years is your ability to take multiple stories. And then I imagine through a process you've talked about, like lucid dreaming or going at that end.

edge of falling asleep, but you've taken seemingly unconnected stories and be able to kind of deduce one understanding based on multiple threads of information. How did you go about learning that? And do you think we should be doing that more? Oh, absolutely. We should be going to get no, but I think it's not unique to me. It seems to me this is the way it is and how many of us have blinders up. It seems to me that we all can see this. but are we aware of it? There's a difference between seeing and awareness. You can see the trees, but are you aware of the mycelium that is nurturing the trees

and that's communicating? And every footstep that you take, the mycelium is sensitive to that. And every time you break a piece of wood, the mycelium has a new opportunity to consume it. So it's like the mycelium in nature is intelligent and aware of everything around us. So I think it's, my insight is, I think it should be, it's in common view to us all. I'm just shocked that sometimes I'm one of the first people to say this. It's like, it's hiding in plain sight. It's really not hiding.

It's actually in plain sight. It's our lack of our ability to be aware of the wisdom that's being conveyed by nature to me is what's surprising. And that's why David Suzuki, I think, is. depressed about this. He can also see this, and he just doesn't understand why. And the why, unfortunately, is motivated by short-term economic interests that are not compatible with seven generations. It's compatible with, you know, day trading, microsecond trades in the stock market that imbalance resources by giving traders enormous amounts of money where other people are starving. You know, it just seems like the imbalance of wealth is a tragedy of the now.

And we should be very careful about this because the history of revolutions in the world, a lot of them are related to the disparity between those people who have and those people who have not. And there's an injustice and wealth distribution that really needs to be corrected. So may I ask, how do you think about politics? Like David Suzuki pays a lot of attention to kind of what's going on, the new policy of the day, the new environment. And I also try and keep up, but I also see that there's such a benefit in kind of going, this is changes of the day and you're not really thinking long term if you're focused on politics because the changes are so all the time. How do you process what's going on in the U.S. and Canada? Do you just stay out of it? How do you approach that? Well, it's like a really bad movie, you know. And there's like, you want to watch the end of the movie. You want to walk out. And I have this 80-20 principle.

I just don't see people as one side or the other. I am now apolitical. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican in the United States. I just think they both have gone off the rails and the extremes. And I think that 90% of us, 95% of us, or greater have the same common interests. Love of our family, healthy foods,

you know, fun, collaboration. And that's why I like mycology, because I met people in mycological societies that I would never have associated with. But we're out in the woods together. We find mushrooms. We learn what they are. We exchange stories, you know, from our histories

and we eat them at the dinner table. It builds community. And in my own family, I mean, my mother was extremely political on the far extreme of the far right. But I still love my mother. You know, I still talk to her. And what I have come to learn, a lot of this is distracting. Ask people, why do you believe in what you just said? Be respectful.

don't humiliate them, don't scoff at them, just be inquisitive. When you start asking people very specific questions, like I do with Joe Rogan, because I'm not anti-vaccine. I get vaccines when appropriate, but I'm not into the vaccine of the month club. And I think the motivation of these pharmaceutical companies and pushing vaccines, and what people don't may or, I think most people realize there's those vaccine evasion. the virus is mutate. This is why Agaricon-Turketail in our clinical studies is so profound. We think, hypothetically, prevents a vaccine evasion because your endogenous immune system

is smarter than a vaccine, or a vaccine, it limits an immune response that's very specific. We are fundamentally reproving it in the immune system with this endogenous immune system working better. So I think that really speaks to a larger understanding that, You will always have outliers, will always have people creating theater, but when you turn off the television and you sit down to share a food, share a salmon, have a potlatch,

this is a reality I want to live in, right? This other thing is orchestrated media that's based on clickbates and be able to monetize, you're freaking out. And the more you freak out, the more money that these companies make. So they are actually puppeteering these divisions between different groups who otherwise

are one giant family that have a commonality of opinion and a few other opinions that may not agree with each other, but you can have your opinion, that's fine. I just want to know why. Tell me, I want to be informed. Educate me. You may know something that I don't know. And that would have explained to me to why you have an opinion on Paul. or something that I didn't realize.

So I think when you start delving into this respectfully and asking questions very methodically, and then some people go, well, that's just the way I believe. I think the suspension of disbelief is dangerous. You can just say, the world is flat. No, you're a fucking idiot. I'm sorry, you can have that belief.

Why do you think that's true? I mean, look at the stars, look at the moon. look at all the examples. Why in the world do you think the world is flat? I mean, there are some things that you can just apply it. I'm sorry. It's contrary to all the evidence that we have. So there are some belief systems that are just cuckoo. And I think when you start asking deliberate questions rather than get this, the people like to get the attention by saying something so controversial, then they got you. But when they just espouse these things and you can't ask them, you know, methodically, how did you come to this idea?

That's when science and belief without science, I think, separate. That's really interesting because one of the things I was going to say, for me, that gives you so much credibility is the piece in your voice. It's not the credentials you have. It's not like your technical expertise or how many papers you've written, which is often in the scientific community, how people judge your work and your ability to demonstrate your knowledge, but it's your ability to communicate and not feel like you're trying to convince or bully or like, you've got to look at this, and if you don't look at it, you're wrong, like that kind of mentality. And we've seen a shift, I think, over the past 50 years from being addicted to, it needs to be peer reviewed, it needs to be

this, it needs to be that, it needs to be in this scientific journal or it's not true, towards a more embracing of a balance between the two and a proven knowledge of your ability to communicate it with the ability to provide information. And I think you've gone through that journey, if I'm not mistaken. You went from having a deep knowledge and not technically having the technical expertise to being somewhat embraced and recognized as a leader in this area. What has that journey been like for you? Well, it's still occurring.

I mean, my partner, Dr. Pam, she's my sounding board, and she's just a wealth of wisdom. I just want to go on record. It's the women in my life, my grandmother, my mother, Maria Sabina, Kittskates. My book is dedicated to Maria Sabina.

Kittskates, who was a mycologist, and Tina Wausen, R. Gordon Wosson's wife, who was a Russian physician, who first turned R. Gordon Wosson on the mushrooms. She grew up in a mycophilic society in Russia,

where they collected mushrooms all the time. So, I would say that I got the United Nations Disruptor Award last year or the year before. There's a hundred of us in the world there recognizes positive disruptors. And I am still disrupting. I'm up against conventional wisdom. Some people say mushroom fruit bodies only are the only way to be able to take a mushroom. Well, typewriters were good, too, before we invited computers, and now we have in vitro

propagation. We don't have air pollution, insects, bacteria, algae, and everything else. We can grow things in pure culture that's scalable. So mycelium upregulates many more genes in the immune system than the mushroom fruit bodies where you're at the end of the life cycle. What people are really shocked, if you ask AI or just Google this, how much of a mushroom is made up of mycelium? The answer is 100%.

Mushrooms are mycelium. They're just organized in a different way. The difference is the mushroom fruit body is sporulating and reproducing. The mycelial network is vast, and then under different conditions, and it's a fruit body for it to spread to new environments. But the mycelium has a lot more immune activity in direct contact with bacteria and other pathogens, including viruses, than the mushrooms are typically temporary. They want to be consumed.

Mushrooms don't have a good immune system. The mycelium has a vast immune system so we can tap into that. So in terms of going up against others that have beliefs that are contrary to what I know is this whole idea of fruit bodies, of, oh, they're the only way. There's actually people who are saying

you should not put a fruit body of a mushroom on a mushroom supplement if it's made from mycelium. And then if you ask them, do you know that mushrooms are made of 100% mycelium? They go, no. This is Micology 101. And so if that were true, you couldn't put a mushroom on a supplement label.

You couldn't put an echinacea flour or a ginger flower or a ginseng or a dandelion. I mean, it's the pretty part of the mushroom life cycle that captures this. But this is an example of the disinformation campaign of people with economic interests that are going against some. science. They're trying to create these little sound bites in order to exploit the ignorance of the public because they go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. But did you know a mushroom is made of 100% mycelium? And it just aggregates into a form. It's actually mycelium in a form. And so this is that kind of disconnect. And so sometimes I feel like I have to teach Micology 101. It's okay. I can teach Micology 101, but I have bigger fish to fry in a sense, you know.

I want to get past that. It's important to educate the public. But wow, I'm so excited about the research that we have. And I said in my TED talk, and I'm going to rephrase it, my TED talk, I said, saving the old growth force because of a GERICON is a matter of national defense. Wrong. It's a matter of international defense. Viruses don't care about borders.

Right. We're all conveying different microbes as we move around and communicate and interact with people. For the obvious things, concerts, banquets, airplanes, trains, football games, soccer games, all this stuff. Right. We have this massive panspermia that is occurring at this point in time. It's really important that we elevate our host immunity because in doing so, we have the intelligence. Our immune system becomes more educated, is more stronger. It's better. We're evolving to be stronger. And I think mycelium is a catalyst to be able to do this.

It's a key to the door to the immune system that enables the immune system to wake up. This is so important because fruit body extracts are made with hot water, they lose lipids. Well, the beta glucans are inflammatory. The lipids are anti-inflammatory. We have really good evidence now that if you do hot water extracts, which are great, great that they're making tea, and the evidence that we've just published now in two journals, peer-reviewed journals, show that the hot water extracts are okay when you're healthy, the upregulated immunity. But when you're sick, there's very good evidence now. It could

precipitate a cytokine storm. A cytokine storm is an overexpression of your inflammatory immune response. An immune response can be inflammatory. What we have found is the mycelium, which is not hot water extract. contains these lipids that are immunomodulatory, that alert immune readiness while down-regulating cytokines that lead to over-expression of inflammation. So the buffering effect of the mycelium now gives us a whole new form of immunological medicine that we can tap into. So science improves with experimentation. You are a researcher. You're an author. a writer, a thinker, a public speaker.

And one of my last questions for you is just, you do so much and you just seem like a man on a mission. What is your duty? I feel a strong obligation of the gift of life that I've been given by nature to respect my own origins and to realize that we can spread happy. and health and collaboration. Every day that I wake up, I'm glad I'm alive.

Whoa, I made it through another night. I've had several near-death experiences. I'm 71, so lots of us have had near-death experiences. And I thought, Tam, that hand-gliding accident where I got knocked out, falling off of a cliff, you know, just free-falling, hundreds of feet, like a rag doll, unconscious. There wasn't for a small rock and little tree that saved me.

I wouldn't be here. And I don't think we'd have this clinical study on a Garikon and Turkey Tail showing that we can enhance conventional medicine and indeed increased community immunity. I mean, think of the consequences of everyone we've lost what their potential was to do good. I've been gifted with the opportunity to do good, and I want to do better.

And so I have the impatiousness of knowing that I can do something that's really good. My grandmother, who is, you know, one of the women who has so informed me, she was a matriarch of our family, a very wise woman. And when I was about maybe 14, 15,

I was with my grandmother, I said, Grandma, what's the most important thing that you can tell me as an elder? What's the most important thing? And I thought she would say religion or Christianity or family. And she didn't say any of those things. You said the two most important things that you need to know is your health and your legacy.

Without the health, you don't have a legacy. The longer you live, the better your legacy can be. So her idea was you have to be healthy. and the longer that you are on this planet doing good work, the better your legacy will be. So I commonly say, and I so believe in the philosophy

of seven generations, I think if there's going to be a Nobel Prize for Communication, it should be given that. I so feel the resonance of our descendants saying you have an opportunity to make a massive change. All of us listening to this, you have an opportunity to your

descendants to do a massive change and to improve not only your own health, not only your own legacy, but the legacy and the health of your descendants. There's no greater noble mission in life than that. And I would just add not only an opportunity, but an obligation and a responsibility, because that's what they did before you, and you have to carry that on forward. Before we close, I do want to talk about my hat. Let's talk about your hat. This is a great, great story. my hat is made from this mushroom, which is a birch polypore. It grows on birches and beaches.

This hat was made in Transylvania. And this hat is made from this mushroom, a polypore, similar to a Garikon. The garacom is polypore, and they're hard. But our European ancestors, and it's really interesting because it's not just European. We just have evidence from South America. Indigenous tribes also discovered this. This is kind of cool, because the more you study nature,

the more different peoples can discover the same thing, right? It's like, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, realization here in South America, realization here in Europe. They didn't cross-culturally communicate, but because they're students of nature, they discovered something, which is really powerful.

This allows for the portability of fire. You can hollow this mushroom mouth, put embers of fire, and carry fire for days. before we had big lighters and matches, right? So a friend of mine was in South America with an indigenous tribe and they pulled out one of these conks

similar to this one, and they were talking about this is a fire starter mushroom, this is how we carry fire. And Atsi, which is the founding in the Italian Alps, 5,300-year-old human, had this mushroom tethered to his right side. He also carried this mushroom with them as a fire starter. So it's a good example that, you know,

different indigenous peoples can discover the same thing because they're utilizing resources in nature. So this not only allows the portability of fire, but when you put this mushroom into water over the ashes from a fireplace, you know, or a campfire or whatever, you create lie water, water with a very high pH. You put this in the water for two or three weeks,

and then you can pull it apart and delaminate it, and you come up with this fabric, of the mycelium. Mushrooms are made of mycelium. And so it's called German felt, and for thousands of years, who knows, this was utilizing to make a fabric. And so this hat is made from one mushroom,

a larger one than this, and is pulled apart, put it into fabric, and then it's molded. Now, this was known as a fire starter mushroom, but it revolutionized warfare because even the Chinese, is the best we know, invented gunpowder,

the Europeans invented the rifle. They needed somehow to light the gunpowder from a spark. And so when you take the mycelium from this con and you thread it, you create a fuse. And so it was a fuse for bombs. It was a fuse for igniting gunpowder and a gun.

And we used it for carrying fire. So it revolutionized warfare. It allowed humans to survive under adverse conditions like the winter. It kept fire alive. Otherwise, you're waiting for a lightning strike or some other fire or if you don't have the Flint Spark technology, all these obstacles. Fire was a lifesaver.

So this is an example of an ancient tradition that still is alive today. This is the Amidu mushroom, Fomis, Fomontorios. There's several other mushrooms that also produce something similar to this. But this is a great example. of a thread of knowledge that survive because of physical evidence and the technology is enabled. You know, I think there's a lot in nature that's yet to be discovered that can be amplified to help, you know, help counterbalance some of the things we're inflicting on nature that are very much adversarial to our own survival in the long term or the immediate term.

So I really believe that there is a mycelial revolution from the underground that challenges some of these orthodox powers. And it's a unifying thread, not only of nature, but cross-culturally. It brings people together. And I think there's a lot of knowledge to be shared. And it's fun to share knowledge, right? you do something for me, I'm going to do something for you. Isn't this cool? I didn't know about that. Let me tell you this.

That's a type of excitement of creativity that we get from collaboration. It's really important that I say this. I just want to say, Paul, a lot of people say, don't meet your heroes. Don't meet the people you look up to because maybe they aren't who you think they are. But we came up here. You invited us up. We reached out. We said, hey, would you be open to an interview? You invite us up. You let us stay in a cabin. everything's taken care of coffee, water, everything.

We're treated incredibly well. You're so welcoming. You give us a tour of your home. You're so thoughtful, generous with your time, respectful, just more than I could have ever imagined. And when people say things like, oh, like, you're exactly like you are in the interview. You are. You're such a thoughtful, warm, kind person. And I think we need more of that in the world.

And I just, I want to say, like, when you look up to the right people, when you look up to people like Paul, when you learn from them, there's so much value to be gained. And it's really humbling because we interact with so many different people, as you said. Some are 80% good, 20% bad. Some are 80% bad, 20% good. But when you come across people like yourself who are stewarding an understanding of an issue in such a deep way and carrying that forward and inspiring others to do the same, you're a tremendous leader. My whole team was so excited to come up. We were listening to all your interviews ahead of time.

That's the impact you're having on people. And I'm just honored and privileged to have been able to do this interview. So I just can't think. Thank you. I think you're being overly generous, but I stand on the shoulders of the knowledge keepers that preceded me from all cultures, from all generations. And I have a question for you. You're very young, and yet you're chief, Chief Aaron. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Because I just, I don't know your story. Absolutely. So I grew up, my grandmother was a product of St. Mary's Indian residential school, and she ended up having several children. my mother was amongst them. My mom was born with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. And so she was taken out as a consequence of a policy called the 60s scoop. So she was raised outside of that in a Christian household away from our indigenous family. And over that time, my mom just always believed in me. And I have never met my father. And she just said, you can go do things. And one of her quotes was always ask a better question. And so all throughout my education, it was always ask a better question.

And I met my wife who's standing right over there. And I was going to law school and I didn't really know where I wanted to go. But a few of the matriarchs in our community said, Aaron, you have a law degree. You need to come back and bring that knowledge back to our community. So I ran for council and chief. The first time in 2022, I got elected to council. We've renovated the housing and community.

We've upgraded a lot of the infrastructure. We're building more housing. We're getting our economic development going. And people saw that. And they elected me as chief because they saw the types of change. I'm trying to make sure our communities don't live in poverty so that we can start to preserve some of that historic knowledge, the culture, because it's a real hard time to preserve the culture when people don't have food in the fridge. So that's the mentality I've brought.

And I've just listened to people like you, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and just really tried to make sure that I am bringing good into the world and that my wife and I are doing that as best we can and that we're always staying humble and remembering we need to continue to learn. We need to be open-minded. And I think that's the main reason that I'm here today. Well, one of the things we share in common is that we've benefited from our matriarchs. We've benefited from the wise women who have said, you know, you can do better, you know, and empowering us with that feminine energy, you know, is just so important. Because I think it's important that, you know, we're all on the spectrum,

whatever extremes you want to create. But we're all in the spectrum. And we also change where we are on the spectrum based on all sorts of trends. tragedies in our life or, you know, wars and all the things are obvious. But we're all malleable, but we're all navigating. But you and I share the motivation, and it's been formative of the wise women knowledge keepers that have believed in us. And I'm so glad I did not have an authoritarian father, I know, who suppressed the voice of my mother. My mother and the other, and the other women in my life have been my teachers, my best teachers, including my partner, Dr. Pam.

So it's just an honor to be with you and thank you for this opportunity. And just thank for everyone for who's listening. Thank you for this beautiful backdrop as well. Yeah. All right. Thank you.