The Blindboy Podcast - The Magic of Mushrooms with Merlin Sheldrake

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Merlin Sheldrake is a Mycologist and bestselling author researching fungi, mycorrhizal networks, ecology, and the interconnectedness of life Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Become unstuck from the feathery glut, you pheasant-struck gubernates. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. I've had a bit of a nightmare. I've had a bit of a nightmare of a fucking evening here. In the nine years of recording this podcast, I don't think I've come into any severe technical issues, but I did today. So I spent the entire day. It's now nighttime. I spent the whole day recording a podcast. and then I lost the file which has never happened before because I'm incredibly careful

with that type of thing but in this situation it was completely out of my hands I record on a PC of a very very good PC specifically for audio for this job and then this evening Windows updated

without me asking Windows started to update so I said oh fuck it okay that's going to take 30 minutes because sometimes Windows does that shit So it updated in the middle of me, me being at the end of this week's podcast. Now that has happened twice before. I need to turn off automatic updates.

And it's usually fine. But this time, Windows fucking updated. And when I went to turn my PC back on, it wouldn't let me turn it back on. It went straight to what's called a BIOS screen, which said your computer, your CPU is overheating. It's at 92 degrees, which is nuts because a CPU should be at around 30 degrees. Now the PC, it wasn't behaving like it was overheating, it didn't feel hot, the fans weren't loud, but the warning was this PC is overheating. So I rang someone who knows about this type of thing, who repairs PCs, and he said,

shut it down, don't turn it back on. And I'm like, I don't think it's overheating. even though it's saying it's overheating, it doesn't feel hot. He's like it doesn't fucking matter. Do not turn that back on. But I just spent the day recording the podcast. Can I at least get into the podcast file and export it? I'm going to lose that podcast.

And he's like, if you turn it back on and it's telling you that the CPU is at 90 degrees, you might lose everything. That might be the last time you ever fucking turn it on. Turn it off, bring that PC to a specialist. it's either actually overheating or it thinks it's overheating but don't fuck with it. So I'd turn the PC off because that did happen before. In 2017 I did have a PC just like explode and smoke come out the back. It would have been 2015.

I lost a year and a half worth of songs back when I was a musician and I used to make but 150 pieces of music a year. year, gone, gone. Sometimes, sometimes I'll wake up in the night and some of those songs from 2015 will arrive in my head taunting me. Full compositions that I'll never hear again. And I learnt my fucking lesson then in 2015. I really learned my lesson. So I'm not turning that PC back on. I am not turning it back on until I bring it to someone who can look at it and tell me what's up it. What am I recording on now? My old PC, thank fuck for not throwing shit out. My old PC, that I replaced with the new one in 2024, when I was finished with it, I didn't throw it out. I didn't

like take everything off the hard drive and then throw the tower out for exactly this moment, for exactly this moment. It's a piece of shit, but it works. Have it as a backup. So that's what I'm recording on right now. My old shitty backup PC, which to be honest, it's ready to go. That's a really full hot. You can't fucking hear it because I have a bunch of limitors, but it's an incredibly loud PC that is heating up my office.

It's like having a heater. That's how shitty and all this PC is. So I've lost. I haven't lost it. I'm gonna bring that PC to a repair person And I doubt I'm going to lose everything. But a day's work. A day's work is gone.

And I'm winging it. But I have my backup. I always have backups. I found a brilliant conversation that I did with a mycologist and expert in mushrooms called Marlin Sheldrake. I recorded this maybe 2024. I don't know why I didn't put it out. It was the last gig. It was in London, the last gig of a tour in I think 2024.

I must have just come back from that tour, utterly burnt out from speaking to people, and then just had to move on to the next thing. And I had this incredible interview sitting on a hard drive. So thank fuck. And it's an incredible chat. I spent the last hour listening to it. So I'm really, really glad to be putting this one out. It's so enjoyable, in fact.

I'm not going to interrupt it halfway through so I'm going to do actually first I want to tell you about a gig a gig that real fucking last minute thing this gig will sell out in a half an hour right because it's tiny

you're talking maybe 150 tickets if you remember I did this gig last year it's on a tiny little weird island called Garnish Island down in West Cork. You can only get to this gig by boat. The island itself has a microclimate.

It has a strange little Mediterranean climate because it's shielded from the Atlantic by the mountains. Just close to this island, if you go the wrong way in the boat, there's a giant rock in the Atlantic called Bull Rock.

And in the mythology, in the Lower Gavala Air, and so this was written down in the 10th century. This this island is right beside the home of the god of the dead there's a poem from the 10th century called Finnegan's Vigil

which speaks about this place Tech June The House of the Dead It's the home of a God by the name of Don or Down the Dark One who'd be like Hades

Hades who takes the dead across the river sticks a bit like that it's where I don't want to say it's the hell of Irish mythology because we didn't have that we had another worldly thing. So it's where the souls of the dead go. On this rock there's a little

arch and sometimes the sun sets behind it at certain times of the year and that's sun setting through that arch when viewed from Ireland it's the god of the dead winking. So my gig is on a little island that's close to that. There used to be a big house on this island, a big colonial house. And I'd heard a story that my grandfather had burnt it down when he was in the IRA, but it turns out it was a different island. I got asked to do this at the last minute and I couldn't say no because it's a little holiday for me. So on the 6th of September, I'll be doing a very intimate live podcast to 150 people. On an island that you can only get to by boat in West Cork,

I'd be doing the gig underneath the nest of Ireland's only nesting white-tailed eagle lives on this island too. I'm going to be chatting to this sounds mental. I'm only realising now. This sounds fucking insane. Jesus. This is all real. This isn't like a poem.

This sounds mad. All of this is true. See, I'm all anxious over the computer thing. I'm all anxious about the computer thing. And I haven't been critically analysing how utterly insane all the sentences I've just been saying are. But look, I'm doing a last-minute gig on the 6th September on an island that you can only get to by boat in West Cork

underneath the nest of Ireland's only nesting white-tailed eagle on an island that has a microclimate in West Cork called Garnish Island. I'm going to be chatting with Sean Ronane, the autistic bard expert. I fucking love my job. I love, I love that all of those sentences are real. So I'm going to be speaking

to Sean Ronane, the autistic bird expert. I've had Sean on the podcast a couple of times. We have wonderful crack. This is a real, this is a 10 foot deckling gig. See, normally what some cunt would do

with this now is they'd go, here's a big mad fucking exclusive gig. Like a cruise or something. Here's a big mad exclusive gig and tickets are. 300 quid. I'm not doing that at all. Tickets are normal price. I'm not even sure if I'm getting paid for this gig. I think I just said put me up in a hotel and I'll be happy because I want to go down to West Cork. But anyway, the festival is called the Island Drift. Tickets for this thing are

going to be available on Thursday morning. There's only like 150 tickets. The Islanddrift.com. It's a festival, so there's a bunch of other shit at it. You can only get to the gig. by boat but it's like it's not your own boat you don't have to find a boat there'd be a boat that'll take you to the gig I'm a stupid cunt like I should be I the rules of capitalism are like capitalize on this exclusive thing there capitalize on that the tiny gig on the island where there's only 150 tickets that sells out in 30 minutes I don't want to be doing that shit that Garnish Island it's very special to me because It's my dad before he died.

Used to say it to me when I was a kid. I'm going to take it to Garnish Island someday and he never got to do it. So it's a special place for me. And then on the way back, I go by Kilmichael in West Cork and I visit the Kilmichael Ambush site, which is my granddad's IRA monument. So I might as well do a gig while I'm down there. So Thursday morning get those tickets, if that's the type of crack.

It is fucking lovely. It's absolutely gorgeous if... It was pissing rain last year. But... It's... The whole thing was covered so you weren't getting wet and...

Ah, it was just that wonderful Atlantic bastard rain. And you can feel the... It's a microclimate. It's a microclimate on the island. There's plants that grow on that island that can't grow anywhere else in Ireland because it's a microclimate. So this island drift...

Is that the correct fucking name? I'm not editing anything. Hold on a second. The Islanddrift.com. There you go. 6th of September. A couple of weeks away. So anyway, before I do the Marlin Sheldrick chat,

Patreon, this podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how... It's how I'm able to... I'm going to get this PC repaired tomorrow. I'm going to get the PC repaired. And I don't have...

a big pain in the pit of my belly because I can afford to get it repaired. And if it's completely fucked, which I hope not, what I'm worried about is losing recordings, but I'm not worried about. I won't be able to afford a new PC if I need it. If I need a new PC, if that's where I'm at, all it is is an inconvenience because support from the listeners. Because of the Patreon, because of that,

I'm able to purchase all my equipment, rent out my office and earn a living with this as my full-time job from the listener-funded podcast. So all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee

once a month, that's it. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint? I mean, some of you're going to come down to fucking West Cork on a boat. You don't have to do that, just buy me a digital pint. Once a month,

Patreon.com, forward slash the blind by podcast. And again, if you can't afford it, who gives a fuck? Absolutely fine. listen to the podcast for free. Listen to the podcast for free as long as you want. Doesn't matter because someone else is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast. Doesn't matter whether you pay, whether you don't pay, everyone gets the same experience.

I get to earn a living. What more could you want? Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. It also keeps this independent. Great way to fuck up. piece of art that comes from a position of curiosity and authenticity and passion. Great way to fuck that up is for advertisers to come in and start setting the rules of what you talk about and when you post and how you post and what your podcast is about and the content. Fuck that. That's not what we're doing here. This is about curiosity and failure.

What a failure this week. What a huge failure. PC went to shit and I lost a day's work. I'm still putting out a podcast because that's what happens on a Wednesday. I'm still putting out a podcast. And instead of allowing that failure, Jesus, I could be devastated by that. I could go, oh my God, a day's work gone.

Well, I'm putting out nothing. I'm defeated. Fuck that. How do I respond to that failure? I respond to that failure by putting out something else and whipping out the old computer. And fuck it, here we are. Right, upcoming gigs.

There's that one there in September that have just announced. Tickets on sale Thursday, 6th of September. Garnish Island, the island drift. Then UK tour. England, Scotland and Wales. I shouldn't be saying the fucking UK. Because it's not a United Kingdom. England, Scotland and Wales.

October. Kicking it off. Brighton on the 18th of October. Cardiff. There at the New Theatre, Cardiff. That Cardiff gig. You'll need to get tickets for that. You'll need to get tickets for that one.

Or you'll be disappointed. Then on to Coventry, the Warwick Arts Centre. Bristol, Beacon Hall. Guildford G-Live. London sold out, 26th of October. Glasgow, as good as sold out. And then Gateshead, Gateshead nearly sold out. Finally Nottingham.

And the... What is that? The 11th? I'm shit at reading dates, right? It's either the... I think Nottingham is the first November. I don't know, I can't read fucking dates. Nottingham is the day after Halloween.

So that looks like November to me. I don't know. While I'm over in England, Scotland and Wales as well, I have a play on in the Abbey Theatre called Animals, which is on from September to October, but I won't be in the country when that's happening. Then Australia and New Zealand, they're in fucking... April 27 is it?

that's nearly sold out I don't have the dates here sure fuck it you'll figure it out be on my website at the blind by podcast.com. I'm in part Auckland for fuck sake, come on up

let me just get these dates I don't have the dates right it's April 2027 right have I got him here I do beginning on the 9th of April Auckland the Auckland town hall

nearly sold out then Melbourne and the 11th as good as sold out that one's going the Palais Theatre in Melbourne that's actually the biggest gig in terms of amount of people

Brisbane Powerhouse sold out Brisbane sold out there's three tickets that's what's there in front of me so if three people in Brisbane want to come to that gig

there's three tickets left for that and then Sydney Opera House biggest gig in my career 22nd of April 2027. Getting there, very nearly sold out, is that about 90% right?

Any of those gigs, especially the England, Scotland and Wales. Give me a shout on Instagram and recommend some interesting local guests for me, please. And any of the places that I've listed out. Okay, Ocarina Pause. Bit of capitalism. A couple of adverts.

Here we go. I'm not even explaining what the Ocarina Pause is because this piece that I'm using to record this podcast on is very, it's old and hot and angry and I'm actually concerned that that's going to shit the bed very soon. So I'm just rattling through this. So on to the chat with Marlon Sheldrick. Marlon is a mycologist. He is an expert in mushrooms and fungi and incredibly fascinating person, a lovely fella. He released a book in 2020 called Entangled Life. Bestseller all over the world.

The chat that we had, we had such an amazing fucking chat and I met his brother, his brother Cosmo too, is an incredible musician. They were both backstage with me. At the start of the interview, Marlon was kind of quiet and afterwards during the interview, he said to me, and this has only happened with a couple of guests where, so I didn't know, he's a 10 foot Declan. he was listening to lots and lots of this podcast and I didn't know that at all. And it's only happened a couple of times. But sometimes I'll bring a guest out on stage. And they'll have spent so much time, like listening to my fucking voice, listening to the podcasts, that when they're out on stage with me and I'm beside them,

and then they're hearing my voice that they've pumped into their head for hours and hours and hours, it freaks them out a little bit. It's like this is really strange. This voice, I know this voice from listening to this podcast, but now I'm speaking to this voice and I don't know what to do

because I'm not used to having a conversation with this voice that I know so well, but now I'm supposed to talk as well. So that happened with Marlin at the start and then it happened with another guest before. I won't say who it was. But it was a difficult podcast.

lovely, not Marlin now, a different fella about six years ago. He was a musician and he'd been listening to me all the time too. And when I got him up on stage, he just said fuck all. He just sat back with his arms folded going, Blind Boy is talking. I'm just going to listen to Blindby's talking. And I'm like, here, we're supposed to be having a fucking chat. It was Mick Flannery. Lovely fella.

Absolutely fucking lovely fella. I had Mick Flannery on years ago. And at the interval, he's like, fuck it, man. I just realized I'm saying nothing up on stage. I'm just sitting back listening to you because I'm used to listening to your fucking podcast and I'm like, yeah, we better have a chat, man. There's an audience here. But anyway,

and also, Marilyn, if you are listening, I fucking adored this chat, which I think it was 2024. It was definitely in London. It was the last gig of a tour that I'd done. Marlon, if you're listening to me, I would love to speak to you again because the one thing

listening back to this podcast, I have so many more fucking questions and I don't have a contact for you and I don't think you're on social media. So Marilyn, if you're listening to me, reach out to me in some way because I'd love to chat to you again. Right, so this is the chat with Marilyn Sheldrake

about fungus and mushrooms and all that crack. And I'm not going to interrupt it. I'm just going to play it through to the end. Dog bless. Oh, my pork unto the guest. I'm going to be speaking to someone who's an expert in mushrooms. This is a very, very fascinating person

who I've been wanting to speak to for a long time. Can you please come out, Marlon Sheldrick? What's the crack, Marlon? You're fairly serious about mushrooms, yeah? Well, I try my best to be plausible. It's an area, right, that I've been procrastinating because I'm aware that it's so fucking fascinating and I want to just set aside time for it. Like, what is it that draw you to fungus in the first place?

There are so many reasons. One is compost. I would carry bags and buckets of orange peel and banana skins out when I was little as when my jobs at home and put them on the compost heap. and then I would help my dad shovel what had now become soil several months later onto the flower beds and I got amazed and confused that these things could transform from one state into another without us being able to see the creatures doing the transforming

and it turned out when I asked that there was fungi that played a big role in that so I became intrigued because they seemed to have so much power but they were organisms that had so much power but they weren't big They weren't like, when I was little, I thought that powerful organisms would be big and noticeable and loud, but these were invisible and not big and they weren't loud. And yet they seemed to be able to do a superpower. So that was one of the reasons I got interested in fungi. And a big thing about, like, they're decomposers.

Does the fungus decompose or does it assist other organisms in decomposing? I think the compose, I like the composed. the way that this scientific technical term has composing it, because it's actually quite, if you take that as a musical metaphor, you know, the fungi are key decomposes, but they do it alongside lots of other organisms. So there's loads and loads of fungi doing this in different ways. Some of them can do wood, some of them can do other kinds of compounds. They're like metabolic wizards. They've got all these enzymatic keys, these chemical superpowers that can, but some of them can do this bit, some of them can do that bit. And then sometimes it's a

bacteria, they need the bacteria to be able to do any of that at all. So it's kind of like this orchestra or band or like waves of different musicians composing, decomposing, altogether. It's wild. And just, so let's just take, like, I know that Shatake mushrooms, right? They grow on like the rotting trunk of a tree and then you get this fruiting body that you can eat. What's it making out of wood? Do you know what I mean? Like, Is the Shatake mushroom using wood as fuel and then turning into something? And then what's that called? Yeah.

That's like a question that two-year-old would ask, but fuck it. No, it's pretty good. It's, yeah, so it's getting the wood, and it's taking the, it's disassembling the wood, and then it's reassembling those disassembled bits of wood into itself. And so it's made of the same stuff as the wood was, but in a new order. and new configuration. So it's decomposing the wood. What's wood made of?

It's made of lots of different compounds arranged into long strings. So long strings of molecules made of carbon, made of hydrogen, made of oxygen. But they're strung together like braided rope. And wood's really special because it's got this compound called lignin in it. And lignin is really difficult to decompose. It's like when plants were on land and they were trying to go tall, they have to support themselves. But everyone wants to eat them.

So the more strong and robust and inedible they can make themselves, the better. So they invented lignin. So they invented lignin, which was really hard to break down. Really? Is that where trees are, like, you can't just go up and eat a tree? Exactly right. I did. This is going to sound nuts.

But I once received a phone call from Robbie Williams while staring at a horse, stripping a tree bear of its bark. And it made me... I know, I'm not even going to expand on that. I'm just going to leave it. That happened. No, it made me think about life, actually, because... So Robbie Williams had gotten my number

because I'd been saying things about him on Twitter. That's it. It's not like, oh, he's name dropping here. No, I got in trouble for saying shit about Robbie Williams on Twitter. But, like, he rang me from Los Angeles, and I was just going, oh, my God, it's Robbie Williams. But then it was ruined by this... horse. Like out the back window, the horse was over there eating the bark off a tree. And I couldn't focus on what Robbie Williams was saying. I couldn't really focus on, I'm getting a phone cut from

Robbie Williams, because I'm thinking about, the fuck's that horse doing? Because I know that trees aren't edible, like, and that horse is having a good old time with that bark. And I'm just saying, Marilyn, it made me think about what you were just saying there. It made me think about how, you're not supposed to eat trees. They're not great at being eaten, but mushrooms are already at eating trees, aren't they? They're great at eating trees, yeah. And the horse might have been eating it for medicinal. There might have been some

medicinal property, yes. Yeah, there might have been some, you know, because we have Willow bark, which gives us aspirin, and that's, so we don't really, that's not going to be a good food for us, but it's going to be a good medicine for us, and that's why it's become aspirin, and now you get it in pills, so you don't have to eat the Willow bar. I was in someone's garden once with a load of fucking

wasps who were acting queer. Seriously? the wasps were on the ground like this, and they were stinging people's feet, and it turned out they'd been eating aphids on the willow tree, and something in the willow bark was making the wasps docile. That sounds about right, doesn't it? Sadly.

I could have been the fellas, I could have called around to my friend's house, and his dad was just a lunatic. It was making was dosps dozy with some spray, so I don't know. but like, I'm trying to get an ecosystem here, right? So the tree, there's a fair bit of carbon going on in the tree. And you're saying that the Shataki mushroom, there's still carbon, but it's changing the way the carbon is. But then the tree, doesn't the tree get the carbon out of the air?

Yes, the tree's eating light and carbon dioxide, and then it's turning that... I love that. And then it's turning that carbon dioxide in the air, together with the light into sugars and fats. And those sugars and fats are making the body of the tree, its leaves, its shoots, its trunk, its bark, and then it's roots.

And then it's also using that carbon to feed fungi that grow in and around its roots, pumping this carbon down into the soil, and those fungi are helping the tree to feed itself with nutrients from the soil like nitrogen and phosphorus. So there's a whole wild trading economy of carbon going on, starting with trees' fundamental superpower, which is eating light. And then that carbon in the body of the tree, when the tree is dead,

is the carbon that the shataki is going to use to break it down and reassemble it and turn it into the body of the shataki. What happens when the shataki dies? Well, it depends how it dies. If you've using the shataki, then you're going to take the carbon in the shataki, and it's going to become you. And there's no way, Your thing is, you're a myconologist, but like, you're describing an ecosystem there.

Like, at any point does someone say to you, stay in your lane, Merlin. Do you know what I mean? Like, a sense of, you're Mr. Mushroom, man, but you clearly know a thing or two about trees as well. But, like, I'm just thinking, with academia, it's like, does someone come in and say, wished up there about the trees, Merlin. There's someone over here for trees. But how can you do that when everything you're speaking

about is an ecosystem? That's such an important question. And one of the reasons why I'm drawn to studying fungi is because they're inherently connected organisms. They live at these networks. They are always forming relationships, wild relationships with all these different organisms.

So inventive, improvisational. So you can't study fungi for long without bumping into a wild cast of characters that you need to understand to understand the life of the fungus. So they allow you to step into that more interconnected view because that is what they do and that is how they are and it's harder to disguise that than it is, say, if you're studying an organism that doesn't just behave like a network. But yeah, one of the reasons why these relationships were less studied by modern biology

for long, long time was because these disciplinary specializations made it so that if you're the bacteria person in this building on this street in this university and there's the plant people in this building on this street at the university and to study the relationships between bacteria and plants you had to make a daring leap across the street like between these departments and someone's going to get upset and what that meant is that the world was studied as parts as organisms as these different divided creatures and less about their relationships and so so you've really put your finger on something which is because what I want to touch on there is

I'm guessing that kind of starts to begin around the Enlightenment. Would that be correct? Well this was more like when science was professionalizing in the 19th century. Also after the Enlightenment. Because did you ever hear of a fella called John Scotus Eriduna? Oh, he's an interesting cunt.

He was an Irish monk and philosopher from the 8th century who is seen as he basically figured out ecology in the eighth century except he didn't call it nature he called it God but he dedicated his life

to basically trying to understand what reality was but he was like everything has an interconnectedness but he didn't he went it's God it's God it's God but if you just take out the God

it's this dude had it it's like you can't be talking about trees without talking about the animal forget about it. Everything is part of this one ecosystem, and it's systemic. Do you think was harm done when science started becoming compartmentalized? And is there more of an attempt now to become holistic? Definitely harm is done.

I mean, quite literally harm is done to it, like if you're chopping up, a vivisection used to be normal, right? Like chopping up living animals. And to chop into pieces, you're chopping. You know, there is a violence of a blade in that, and so literal harm is done. Sometimes it's a dead creature you're chopping up, or you know, but it's on that level that there can be harm. But there's harm done as well, because when we chop the world into little parts, we forget that all of these parts that we've identified, they need all of these other bits to survive. So it leads us into versions of, let's say, we design societies, we design models of reality.

that factor out some of the most important things that we need to survive. And we end up in places like we are today, when we have polluted waters, polluted air, all sorts of violences that stem from an individualism, an illusion of autonomy that creates cascading levels of problems. So yes, I think scientists are trying to put those pieces back together again. But in doing so, when coming up with this ecological worldview and a symbiotic way of life, what we're doing is we're not, modern scientists are not discovering this. remembering something that humans have always known, like your guy.

And like so many, like most humans, and human societies and traditional knowledge systems have known that everything is connected because it's obvious when you spend time outside. But the thing is, what I find is, that's very threatening to capitalism. And what I mean by that is, is like you're speaking there from an ecological point of view.

Like, we're polluting rivers, we're polluting this, and not looking at how that, has a knock-on effect to everything. But even you can take that compartmentalization, that attitude, and even something like the mental health crisis, people will go, there's a mental health crisis,

but then not join that with, there's a poverty crisis as well, there's a housing crisis, as if these things are separate, you know what I mean? But I was speaking to a dude in Australia, his name was Dr. Paul Litniewski. And Paul Litnitsky is a neuroscientist

who was given the license in Australia to do clinical trials with psilocybin, LSD and MDMA and he did years and years of research and what he found was when he was using whether it be psilocybin or MDMA to help people he couldn't put it into a pill

pharmaceutical companies wanted the pill and he's like no this is one component of it The LSD or whatever is present, but we have to have therapy, we have to have this entire suite. There might be music involved. I'm sorry, but I can't put this into a pill. And then it becomes very threatening to a business model, because that's difficult to make a business model around. They want to have something. No, I want to sell packets to this.

We can't do it. That's not the research, you know? I'd like you to have a pint and a piss. and then myself and Marlin will be back out in about 10 or 15 minutes dog bless I said I wasn't going to do a fucking interval but I forgot that there was a natural interval in the middle of the interview so it'd be weird to just put that bit in

and then just immediately go to the second half so this is just a bit of a pointless pause in the middle I suppose before I get back to chatting to Marlin I'm currently I'm editing I'm editing some of the script for that play

that's going to be in the Abbey Theatre in October there's not much I can say to you about it yet and what else have I been doing been making industrial techno music in the evenings really aggressive stuff and

I don't know I want to do something I want to fucking I have these contact microphones and I want to sample Terry Wogan's head the Terry Wogan's head the Terry Ogan statue inside in Limerick.

I want to stick a contact microphone to his bronze fucking head and get a few sounds out of it or the he holds a microphone that looks like a teenager's penis I always say

and I want to stick a microphone to that and get some sounds out of it and make industrial techno out of that. I had I'd wanted to stick contact microphones to the trees in the bird shit district to record the sounds of the starlings but

unfortunately Limerick City Councils in interventions have worked they cut the trees in the Bardshit district like really cut them down by about 80% and it worked it

only a small amount of the Starlings have actually returned which I'm not happy with that okay fair enough the Bard shit there's still barred shit there there's still barred shit but the whole street is not It's no longer defined by bard shit.

People aren't slipping. The stench of bard shit isn't overwhelming. Nobody is slipping on the bard shit. And, okay, fair play Limerick City Council. You got what you wanted. But where are the Starlings gone? That's that I want to know. And the flock has reduced by about 80%.

They cut the trees by 80%. And the flock has reduced by 80%. by 80% so there's 20% of hardcore fucking starlings are like fuck this I'm coming back I don't give a shit if the trees are small I'm coming back to this place and I'm doing my shits but the vast majority of the starlings there's somewhere else and I hope they're happy I hope they found a habitat that works for them across the river maybe over in Westfields but there's plenty of fucking trees but there isn't a sufficient volume of starlings in the trees for me to be able to record the vibrations of their song in the trunk.

So I have to find alternative. The best thing is the statue of Terry Wogan, which is just at the end of that street. So I'm going to stick a microphone to his head and see if I can make industrial techno out of it. Utterly pointless interval there. Well, not pointless, it's just to make it sound natural. Right, let's get back now to the chat with what. Marlon Sheldrick. Oh, one other point.

In the second half of this podcast, we speak. This was 2024, I believe. So we speak at length about, about Mancon, Megan, who since then, unfortunately, Mancon died last year in October. He was a good friend of mine. And I'm still not fucking over it. Jesus Christ.

He's just in my phone as a name that I can't text anymore when a question comes into my head. you know, and there's so much. I want to ask him still. There's so much. There's so many questions. Then the only person who knows the fucking answer is Mankan. In a perfect world, if he was still around,

that gig that I'm doing down in Garnish Island, it'd be myself, Mankan and Sean Ronane and Mankan to be able to tell me all that shit I mentioned at the start about the Bull Rock Chok Chok Doon. I mean, I'm not even pronouncing it correctly. had, Mancon would know the proper pronunciation and he'd tell me all about

the stories about that rock. I mean, all I can do is consult the mythology but Mancon could fucking read it, he could read it in Irish. He knew the crack. So rest in peace, Mancon. People are still thinking about you and talking about you. Um,

we were drinking Spanish piss backstage. I had a cruise campo and you had him. Actually no, Maretti is a Italian piss, isn't it? I moved on to your Spanish piss afterwards. Did you like the Spanish piss? It was more pissy for sure. I'm a fan of piss, lads.

I don't want these IPAs or anything like that or any of this. Yeah, I want beer that tastes like fizzy water with rusty nails inside in it. That's what I want. I'm being bothered by a fly up here on stage. One of my greatest fears, Marilyn, is. What had happened once is if a wasp gets into my fucking bag, you know. Yeah, no, it happened once at a festival. It's not so much of a threat here in a room like this where we're indoors.

Like there's a fly, but I'm not worried about the fly, but if I'm at a fucking festival and it's outdoors and then you're drinking beer or cider, like a September, wasps get ferociously interested in my lip and again, yeah, they do because it's a plastic bag so the sugar deposits on it, you see, I can't like lick it off so then I've got this fucking all I'm, so it was about 2017 and I was at a festival and I'm up on stage doing a talk

and then there's two wasps and one of them's ferociously interested in my lip and I'm trying to do the chatting zipping around and everything and then eventually he gets in my bag and I start boxing myself into the face and like I didn't explain it to anyone

like you can't see the wasp lads so it's like I just went to a blind boy podcast there what was it like it was grand and he started fucking boxing himself into the face I started kicking the shit out of myself up on stage but I wasn't I was kidding a wasp

so it stung you? No, it didn't sting me. I got it first. But come here, what's the crack with magic mushrooms? You're going to have to be, um... You're going to have to be more specific than that, but... At Jesus, like, why... Why are they doing that? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's not just...

The thing is, right? I enjoy a bit of cannabis, right? It's great, it's great, but it doesn't like make me smell God's underarm. There's something going on with psilocybin that's, there's a spiritual element to it, and people who do it feel like something has been revealed. And more than, like, there's lots of drugs that grow in the ground, but more than any, that's the one where proponents say, no, this is, there's something going on here, connected with the human brain, and this isn't just a fruiting body.

This here, there's something religious going on here. This is part of being human and understanding who we are and why. That's what people say. What's the crack with that? Well, people do say that, don't they? And I was talking to this friend, and he's been living in the Priscilla Hills, in Wales, which is where the blue stone for Stonehenge come from. And he says that, no, in Liberty Caps season, he's walking around there,

and there's just so many liberty caps on the ground. They're like carpeting the ground, waving in the sunset. He said he was walking there in the sunset, and they were waving in the sunset. And there's all these cats from the village doing, they're collecting liberty caps for a different reason. Someone's there, he said,

what are you collecting them for? He said, what I give them to my mother? Because she's got this problem with dementia, and it just makes her feel better. And someone's like, well, I do this, and they do this. And these are not people prescribing it for things that have gone through identical studies. You see, they're just people in the village

using it in the... everyone's different way for different reasons. And then he was talking about like, well, obviously everyone's always done this. And I said, well, there's a really little record of everyone always doing this, like King of British Isles all this time. But it's funny when you think of it, that there isn't because if you think about how much work it takes to make a pint of beer, like you've got to have fields, you've got to make the field, you've got to farm the wheat, you've got to have the barley, you've got to have the hops. It's so much work.

You've got the people to do it. You've got the barrels to store it. Then you've got to have the tankards to serve it in. With the mushroom, you can just eat it straight from the ground. You don't even have to involve your hands if you want to graze it. You just straight. There was a fella in Limerick who, people used to get him on the golf course, you know,

and your man used to acquire a beard of mud from just going down onto his knees and eating him first. But go on, continue. So, yeah, so there they are. They grow all over the place. They are, they influence your feelings and the way you think and feel and imagine in all sorts of profound ways that sometimes can really help people.

And that's what these new studies are interesting for. It's like, look, actually, there are some situations where people are really helped by doses of psilocybin. And sometimes they aren't. They're definitely not always helped. It's not good for everyone. But in some cases, they really are. And so it's interesting for modern medicine to approach this,

because so much of, like, if you live in a mechanistic paradigm, if you live in a worldview in which living organisms are thought of as machines and are made of the parts that interact together, just like the parts interact in a car or any other machine that we have, then it's really good for things like surgery, hip replacements, knee replacements. These are miracles of modern medicine because you're doing, like, hinges and joints and stuff like that. But when it comes to problems of the mind, the machine metaphor doesn't get you very far.

So enter psilocybin and other psychedelics, and it turns out, And modern medicine is like, oh, well, look, actually it turns out that many, many parts of the world, humans have been using this kind of thing for a very, very long time. Maybe it's helpful. Maybe it's helpful just like the traditional societies who's been using there for such a long time, just like they say it's helpful. So in some sense, modern science is catching up with these traditional knowledge systems and knowledge holders who have been using psychedelics to address issues of being a human, with a human mind, a human soul, a human set of feelings, a human way of, all the kind of problems we've run into, you know, with our human minds and human souls. This mushroom internet, the wood wide web, like, is that click base? Is it real? What's the crack? Some of it's a bit clickbait for sure. I don't like the word. The woodwide web metaphor for me is helpful because it gets us into a,

immediately it gets us into a story of connection. It's like, okay, they're all connected together. And just, just can you explain briefly to people what the wood wide web? is. So the clickbait story is that trees are communicating and sharing resources with each other underground, linked together by fungal networks. And so it's a kind of utopic, well, it can sometimes be utopic, but it's not always utopic, but trees are sharing resources with each other and talking to each other underground because they're linked by fungi. Now, it's more complex than that because in that version, the fungi are kind of passive cables, you know, like they're just the cables connecting the trees. And of course I would say this because the fungus boy would

obviously say that the fungi are doing more than that. But it is true that they are organisms with their own evolutionary histories and life of their own and their own agenda biologically, evolutionarily. And so that version of the story kind of brushes over the fact that you have these fungi, which are wild artists of their environment, their problem solves of their environment. But the other problem with the wood web web clickbait version like I just did is that it's not always a sweet situation. They're sometimes being connected to another plant by a shared fungal network doesn't get you as far. It doesn't get you very far. You do better if you're not connected to that shared network. It just depends where you are, what fungus it is, what other plants you live with,

what soils are like, what's the ecosystem. So it's more complex than it's been made out to be. but it is definitely true that fungi are, they are, well, you know, in the fungus nerd camp, then people are like, the plants are just like the snorkels for these fungi. Like these forests are what happened when these fungi got smart enough to grow trees. And so you end up in a situation where you think about the above groundwork is an expression of the interest of these organisms below the ground. But it also works the other way around too. It's like trees are feeding these fungal organisms and communities.

and they are all relating to each other in fierce and complex ways. So I think the best way around it is to think about these networks as complex amplifiers of interactions. What's the relationship between, I have a buddy, right, Mankan and... I was just in Ireland talking with Mankan. With Mankan, yeah. With Mankan. So Mankan, he's trying to rewild forests. So forests are disappearing, as you know, as you can tell.

and this business of, well, if they're disappearing, let's plant a new forest. And Mankan is involved in an organisation where they're trying to grow forests that are effectively ancient Irish forests. And something he said to me was fascinating. He can't just get the seeds of an oak tree and grow an oak forest. He needs to try and find literal ancient forests so that he can get the fungus from the soil as well. that there's no point it's not about trees, it's the fungus from the soil.

Can you explain that? Yes, so this is maybe where we back up a tiny bit because, so these fungi, they're called mycorrhizal fungi. This is what I study when I'm in my research roles. And myco means fungus, rhizor means root, and mycorrhizal fungi are the fungi that live in and around plant roots. And they're the ones that we were talking about earlier where the plants doing the eating of the light, getting the carbon, pushing it down. body, it enters the roots, it trades it with the fungus. And the fungus, the microrevisal fungus, is brilliant, chemically ingenious network forming, navigating the wild labyrinths of the soil, and can forage for nutrients that the plant needs, like nitrogen and phosphorus and other things.

And so the plant... Is that what it does? Yes, it's doing chemical... It forages for nitrogen in this aisle. At the end, that's exactly why plants... The plants are feeding these fungi. because the fungi have a role to play for the plants. And so they've got a trading relationship. Wow. But anyway, all plants depend on this. It's a really big deal. It's like these fungi ecosystem engineers

that they make soil, they hold soil together, they're all this stuff. But what's really fun from back in the day, 400 million years ago, 500 million years ago, is that they're ancestors of land plants, which would have been fresh water algae, floating around in lakes and rivers, they wouldn't have made it onto land unless they partnered with the ancestors of these fungi. So these fungi behaved as the roots of these proto plants

before they invented their own roots. So it's a really, really old relationship and it's the whole story of life on land is made possible by this relationship, which is a constant negotiation between these plants and these fungi. So when Man Khan's talking about these planting these trees in the soil, it's like if you plant the tree and the tree doesn't have its fungal parners, these fungal pardiners are a very, very important part of the tree.

What we call the plant involves fungi too. So let's just say for the crack, I was to plant an oak seed in a forest, right? And I didn't do this transplant of mycelium. Is that the correct word? Yeah. Would it just arrive at nowhere? Would it find the oak tree?

If you're planting the oak seed in the forest, there would always be mycelium there because there's all the trees there, right? So you already have a soil, a living soil there. But why does... So what Mankan found was... And I thought this was amazing. So like Ireland used to be a fucking rainforest

and it's gone. Through years and years of humans, it's gone. And Mankon said the best place to find ancient rainforest. was in the hedgerows between roads that these places no one fucked with them for years because they were just so boring

and see it because it's just like who gets a fuck about a ditch everything interesting happens around the ditch you know what I mean but these ditches they could be thousands of years old so you go in there and it's like that's a tiny little bit of virus a tiny bit I'm going to take that and make a big one why does it need to be that ancient

mycelium what why that if you were going to try and take a field which has been plowed over, it's been doused with nitrates and phosphates and fungicides and herbicides and pesticides and basically treated like shit for many, many, many years. And you want to get this tree to start growing there. You want to make the tree feel at home. And the tree's not going to feel at home in that field because that tree, their field has been treated in all of those ways. So you take a bit of home for that tree from somewhere else and you put it in the ground, say a spoonful of soil from...

His organization is called Home Tree. Oh, I didn't know that, but that means total sense. Because that's what's going on. Like the fungus is, if you planted the oak tree in this blasted field, then over time, like, these fungi will arrive, but it will just get sped up quite a lot if you take the... How are they getting there? They blow in the wind, they get, you know, they can move there by, like, when rain happens, water's moving slowly over the surface of the soil, but mainly in the air and with wind current.

So I know that we have invasive plants. Do we have invasive fungus? Definitely, yeah. And lots of the time when people, the reason why I like Mancan's approach here is because he's saying, look, we need to have these particular communities of fungi that grow here. Whereas in some people, lots of people do this, you go to a garden center and it's persuasive. It's like, look, buy this mycorrhizal fungal like grow and you put it in your soil. miracles will happen. And lots of the time, they're completely irrelevant micro-rots. It's like going to a garden centre and buying a bag that says seeds or something like that. Most gardeners wouldn't do that. They want to know what seeds from where.

And so, it's a bit like that. So, yeah, so there's lots of invasive, well, not inva- mean, people are introducing fungal species all the time to different parts of the world, and sometimes because they're trying to and sometimes by accident. Do you want to hear my Japanese knotweed theory? Are you into Japanese knotweed? Well, I mean, when I was little, it was fun to be assigned a task of rooting it out. So Japanese notweed is, do you know about Japanese notweed? It's a cunt of a thing.

Like some people, if they have it on their property, it's difficult to get house insurance because it's so resilient. I call Japanese notweed patchers footprints. And I'll tell you why. So Japanese knotweed, now you can call bullshit because you're qualified in this stuff. Japanese knotweed, it comes from volcanic soils in volcano.

That's where it's indigenous. And these volcanic soils, they've got a lot of heavy metals in them because it's a fucking volcano. So it's got, Japanese knotweed has a very high tolerance for like lead, zinc, mercury, and it will grow in these soils.

If you look at where Japanese knotweed, flourishes. It's everywhere that Thatcher and Reagan shut down. Seriously, the fucking London Olympics there in 2012 was this. That was all Brownfield area and the east of London. Places that used to be, we'd have gas works, factories, there was oil refineries there. Thatcher shut all that shit down. You were left with Brownfield. And then Japanese knotweed started to flourish because it thought it was a volcano. The toxic metals in the soil, Japanese not wheat, was like, fucking great. Yeah.

So I call it Patras Footprints. And you go to America, everywhere that used to be an industrial center where people had jobs, that Reagan went in and said, fuck that, no more unions, nothing. Pittsburgh, the fucking Rust Belt, Japanese knotweed, Japanese not wheat going, oh, it's a volcano. Why is there so much mercury in this soil? what do you think of that? Well, I like it because it can turn this plan, which is so often,

I like it as a hot take because it can turn this plan, which is so often daughter versus just like an unmitigated mess with no possible value, no possible way that we could, no silver lining to that story. And it's never really that simple, is it? And so I like this version of this take on it because if that's the case, if they're growing the heavy metal source, they might be taking up the heavy metals.

And so removing that. Some people are saying. So maybe they're really. accumulating heavy metals and when we pull out the Japanese knotweed we're taking the heavy metals out of the soil and what we're really doing is the Japanese knotweed is taking it out the soil and then we're just putting on that Japanese knotweed in one place somewhere else where it's safer to have so I like it because it makes the Japanese not witting to not just a straightforward villain from elsewhere yeah it's it's growing places where nothing else can grow because of heavy

metal poisoning and thriving in it and the other thing as well and as well apparently it's very tasty. Like in Japan where it grows, in Japan it's not, it doesn't grow crazily because it has its own pests and pathogens and probably fungus that kills it, which is not here. They eat it because it tastes like

rhubarb, so they love it over there. But the thing that you were saying there about, what if Japanese knotweed is actually good because it might clean a soil of these toxins, isn't there a fuckload of fungus that does that? Isn't there a fungus that can eat

plastic. Tell us about the fungus that we're all a bit scared of climate change here, I think. It's not grace. I've read ClickBase that there's a possibility that there's certain fungus that cleans things up. It might be worse than the wasp in your bag. You know, you have the fungus is eating your bag and then there'll be no bag. There's a bag-eaten fungus? I don't know. I don't I mean, I just want to think of a worst-case scenario, a clickbait for Blind Boy, would be like, me getting it, my bag's getting infected by a plastic-eaten fungus. If that ever happens, it means that my social anxiety is back, then I'm lying. Is that real? Is there a plastic-eaten fungus?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some plastics. My friend did this thing, so he was trying to, so there's lots of different types of plastic, and there's lots of different types of fungus. But my friend was interested in this, he had some, he had some cigarette butter, so it's a sudden kind of plastic. And there was an oyster mushroom. He was growing this oyster mushroom on these cigarette butts. And if you give the oyster mushroom, like 80% grain,

which it normally eats, and then 20% cigarette butts, over time it starts eating the cigarette butts and getting to getting used to them and starting to be able to break them down. And then you gradually phase out the grain. So in the end, they're just eating cigarette butts. But these are all clean cigarette butts. Then he was like, okay, what about the dirty?

So they use cigarette butts. And that's a whole different kind of challenge because you don't just have the plastic. You've got all of these things like these nasty things, poly aromatic hydrocarbons, all of these toxins. And so then he phased in the used cigarette butts into the clean cigarette butts. And over time, the fungus just got used to it and started to crack out with its chemical wizardry, all these ways to break it down. And so in the end, it was just living purely off used cigarette butts,

which is not what it would be able to do if you'd given it that challenge right from the start. But you let it get used to it and phased it all in in a certain way. And so that's one way this. That's like, I'm trying to get my head around this, right? Because like, is he training? Training is the wrong word, right? But what I'm thinking about is, do you know that famous monk who's the, not the inventor, but he's very important for genetics because he was growing beans?

Mendel, maybe. Yeah. So Mendel was growing beans in a monastery and he was like, oh, I can make them a certain. way and then we learned about genetics, right? What's going on with your body there in the mushroom? Like, I don't know enough about mushrooms. Like, what's happening? Like, how do, I don't even have words.

It is, because they're not pollinating each other. So, no, it's the same fungus. So it's more like these fungi are so adaptable. They can do some... It's more like training in a dog. No, it's more like the fungus has got, like, it's like, it's a jailer with these, like, big, like, chain of keys, and there's this door, it's going to

got to unlock and that door it's got to unlock is this chemical challenge it has to face. So it's just riffling through the keys, trying each one until it gets lucky. But how long has this mushroom been kept alive? Well, this whole process, I mean, it has to phase it in so that it had other things to eat while it was riffling through the keys, you know, because if you just give it back, it takes a little bit of time. This was a few weeks. What I'm trying to get my head around, right, is if this wasn't a mushroom and it was

peas, you'd have to do it through generations of pee. you'd have to go oh I can make this peas grow in fags but like you know if that was the challenge I'm going to grow peas in a pod

but they grow in soil that has loads of cigarettes in it and you'd have to try and try and try across generations until in six years' time you've got the cigarette resistant peas that's not happening here you're talking about one fucking mushroom

is learning things That's what I mean, yeah. That's fucking nuts. So when I say chemical wizards, this is one of the ways that they can be chemical wizards. Is that unique amongst, I don't want to say planks, but is it unique unique amongst things that grow out of stuff? Fungi are really good at it, which is why they're such prolific decomposers. You know, that's why fungi do what they do.

That's why, because that's their thing is, I'm about decomposing, so I'm going to figure out how decompose these fags. Exactly. Yeah. So riffle through the things, try what works, do they do this? This thing doesn't work. Try this thing does work. Okay, well, if we can do that,

then now it's a new challenge. Let's try this. This works. So I'm assuming that's not just your buddy in his flash. There has to be other science. But you know what I mean? Like, if that's profoundly interesting and possibly could change the course of history,

are there other people going, let's tackle some problems? So humans have been tackling problems with fungal metabolisms, with fungal wizardry for a very, very long time. for longer than we've been humans. Go way out of it. Give me so early examples.

Okay, so let's have the suggestions. Alcohol. We've got this problem. We've got a bucket full of sugary water. You've got a sugary water here. Sugar is our problem. We've got to remediate this sugar into booze. How are we going to do it? That seems like an impossible challenge for a human.

And indeed, it is an impossible challenge for a human. So what do we do? We get a yeast, which is a fungus. And this is what they do all the time. Yeast is a fungus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're remediating sugar into booze. for humans for a very long time.

And so we come up with all these different ways to create perfect environments for these yeast to remediate the sugar into booth. And that's the same story. We're outsourcing a metabolic process to a fungus because it's helpful. Oh, that's fucking mad. What about, like again,

I love this thing where you have indigenous knowledge and then science catches up. And one thing I heard a lot about recently is. So in Irish folk medicine, not just Irish, this was, a lot of places had this, we had things called poultices. So if someone had a wound, you would get some bread and dip it in milk and put it on. And my ma used to do this for me when I was a kid when I had a tiny little cot or whatever, because her ma did it as well. And when I was older, she said, I'm sorry, that was just bullshit. Do you know what I mean? It was like, I'm not taking it to the doctor. So I, I'm not taking it to the doctor.

like pretended that the bread was going to do something. But for years, I thought, okay, that's what poultice's are. And then I went looking into it. And some people say that when the bread went moldy, it's penicillin. So there are actually people were using antibiotics, but they didn't know that's what it was. Like, is penicillin mold? Is that your territory? No, it's not, but...

Is that not a fungus? It's a fungus. It's a fungus. It's totally a fungus. But it's, I mean, I don't... It's not my fungus. No, but like you're... But like you're... So, is a fungus who...

Oh, now we're getting somewhere. So a fungus that grows on bread, that's like, sorry, get fucked. You're into the trees and the soil. Is that the crack? Well, no, not really. It's... The mold cures you're talking about are amazing. Because when Fleming...

So Fleming's this prof and he's studying bacteria in a lab in London. And he comes back from holiday and he finds his... dishes. He's got these bacterial colonies growing. He's got this mold growing on his dirty dishes. And the mold is the penicillin mold, right, which is fighting off the bacteria. So he he clocks this from his dirty dishes. And then he's like, hang on a sec. Maybe this could be useful. And so they extract. There's a whole process that went into having these early penicillin drugs, which were able to fight bacterial infections in human bodies. And what had gone on there is a human to say, look, this fungus can fight.

these bacteria? Can we get that fungal solution and re-humane it in our body so that we can also fight this bacteria? And so we've just, we've just appropriated a fungal cure, right? And it turns out it cures us too. And that works really well and that's really amazing. But then it turns out that people have had these folk mold cures for a very, very, very long time, like a shocking long time. And actually it's all very close to the surface. There's this amazing research I was speaking to and he studied these folk mold cures. And then so many people would know, it's like, oh, yeah. Like, my mum used to keep a leather boot, like, above the raster in the kitchen.

And then whenever we had a problem, she'd scrape off this little mold from the side of the boot and put it in the thing and it would always make us better. And, like, there were so many, like, stories like this of that local mold doing the thing that was going to cure you. And so mold cures are really very, very old. And so penicin is sort of a modern mold cure. And again, is the penicillin, is that the penicillin? is it doing its little job as a decomposer there?

So penicillin mould is, it's eating, it's eating stuff. But you wouldn't call it like a decomposer in the same way that other. But it just happens to be able to produce this antibiotic that we need. What's its problem with bacteria? Same as yours, the same as mine. If you have a problem, if you've got an infection. Like when they were testing the first penicillin extracts, it wasn't clear, like if this was going to work.

So they had a policeman. The policeman had a scratch from a rose bush. And this had got infected. And this policeman was really bad. He was dying. And so they gave him the penicillin and he started getting better really fast. But it's a really sad story because he started getting really fast. And then they didn't have enough penicillin to keep giving him the penicillin.

And he actually relapsed and died. Oh my God. But from a rose scratch, you know, it was like, so we could all have that kind of problem routinely and all the time. And indeed people did. So this was a dramatic moment And then when it was Turned into a drug that could be Chotted out in scale

It was the Second World War And so most of it was going to the soldiers In the war But the people at home, doctors at home They'd heard about this Everyone heard about this But they couldn't get their hands on it So you have all these people back home

With their infections And the doctors saying, but we want some of that stuff But that stuff's all over there Treating the people who the government Have decided need it more And so what they started doing was making these kitchen sink penicillin, think they'd grow the mold, and then they'd make a paltis, and they slapped this mycelia mat onto the infected wounds, and let the fungus fight it out

right there on your body, rather than extract, like, all these different steps to extract the drug, put the mold on your skin and let it do the job right there. So that would be, that's a penicillin in poultice. I wanted to try this, and when I was writing my book, I was like, I want to see how this works. So I got some penicillin moulds and I was going to grow this and I was telling this to my parents. I said, look, I'm going to inflict two perfectly equal wounds on myself, one on one side of my body, one on the other. And then I'll put the penicillin and not the paltis on the other. And I'll see what happens. And my parents are like, Merlin, you can't do this. And they said, anyway, how would you have two perfectly equal wounds?

And I was like, burn, a burn, a perfectly equal burn. Had it all worked out, I had the poultices growing. But in the end, they managed to the swathes not to. But the poultices, like, they were there. I tried taping them on my arm just to see if it would tape on. It's very neat. It's like a perfect fungal, mycelial, antibiotic-producing bandage right there. That's fucking brilliant stuff.

Isn't that just... There's something magical about this... I'm trying to understand... Like, we've all started to get very interested in this world recently, right? And the thing is, is that... There's something spiritual going on. But what I mean is that when we think of plants, they're like, okay, they're brilliant, we can agree upon that.

They're really cool. But when it comes... to this world of funguses and mycelium, our beliefs and attitudes about it, it's like it's about to tell us something magical about reality. There's something supernatural in our interest, if you know what I mean. Like, what's going on there? Yeah, well, people love to fear them as well.

And so there's fearing them, there's a kind of a terror of them, there's a suspicion of them, partly because they grow on dead things and they grow on big piles of shit. And some of them will kill you. Yeah, and some of them will make you have visions that you might not want or might not know how to control or might invite people to question certain dogmas and doctrines about society or civilization at that time. So they can do all sorts of things which are disruptive.

And for that reason, people have been surrounded with all of these fears, superstitions and neglected. a lot, you know? So they're a kingdom of life that's not had a kingdom's worth of attention, partly because they're weird and they associate with disgusting things and they do wildly mysterious things and

also because they live their lives out of our sight you know, they're buried in whatever they haven't to be eating. And they're kind of, it's hard to define them. Like I'm talking completely from a layperson point of view. They're like, they're a bit octopusy in a way. Do you know

like if I had to say what's the mushroom with the sea I'm sure there are mushrooms in the sea but I go, they remind me a bit of octopuses in the sense that there's something going on with octopuses it's like, what the fuck you? You know what I mean? But it's one of those things where it's like, if we found

out, oh, there's aliens all along and they're octopuses, I'd go, yeah, yeah, I'll have that. And mushrooms are a bit like that. It's a supernatural potential. And as well, when I think about him, right? I'm really

uncomfortable with the fruiting body ones. I'm all I'm all right with mushrooms, but not like I'm dust floating in the air. Like, I've, I'm a big fan of a cup of tea, right? And when I, now I only keep one cup, but when I was younger, you know when you're like fucking 15 and you have your, you're collecting your condoms and leaving your mugs underneath your bed.

And then you forget about that fucking mug. And you're tidy in your room and you reach underneath the bed and take out the mug and then, like that fucking wasn't great at all. That put me off the type of thing you're into. It didn't put me off mushrooms, but just it's so fucking weird. Like nothing else does that.

I just blew fucking powder, and then it's in my mouth and it's chalky. And I'm just like, I don't know what just happened. Is it going to kill me? Like, you've had that, yeah? So, like, that's going to put us all off this territory. That core experience is putting us all off. Convert me.

Like, what's going on there at my cup of tea? What's the blue shit? Why does it want to do it? It's mold. It's growing on your tea because it wants to eat your tea just like you want to eat your tea, and you weren't eating your tea, so it came and did it for you. And if you were trying to make cheese, if you were trying to make Koji, which is what you used to be. Kibucia.

Miso, kombucha. any number of delicious foods that you or so many delicious chocolate, coffee, these all involve fungal fermentations, not to mention booze, of course, and bread to make the bread rise. Like, if it was in any of those contexts, you would just, you wouldn't even question it. You'd just be scoffing it down, as you probably do every day. And like, I'm a big fan of kombucha recently. I refuse to make it because I've seen a thing called a scobie,

which I'm not ready for that, yes. What is it, though? It's a jellyfish with depression. What is it about the scobie? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the problem? It's fucking, what the fuck are you? It's a rubbery slime that you have to put into your tea

and then kombucha happens. And do you know, I tell you what the problem is, man. I'll tell you specifically. I've encountered a fair few of these cups of tea that I've left under my bed over the years. There's the dusty one. And then the worst of all, the worst of all is you leave the cup of tea there and then there's a slimy film. So it hasn't gone full dust yet.

A slimy film with mould on it and the film reminds me of rubber. I was kicked out of a cinema once for chewing condoms when I was 13 flavoured condoms again this is legit cinema into the vending machine flavored condoms 13 not fucking anyone what am I going to do watching Jim Carrey's The Mask at the back of the cinema

chewing flavored condoms security guard sees what's happening and kicked me out because it was so strange I wasn't hurting anyone. Like, I'm not antagonizing people. It's just undiagnosed autistic. Flavored condoms, let's have an old chew. Hmm, banana, that's nice.

And the security guard's just like, no, get out. Just leave. Get the fuck out. You're not even doing anything? Just get out. So, the chewing of the flavored condom happened around the same time that I was discovering the fucking...

That slimy, fucking... rubbery mould at the top so I had um I could I could I could feel the chewing the condom chewing as I'm looking at that film and that film reminds me of a scobie that I now have to voluntarily put into some tea to make some kombucha for my mental health um but is it kind of a scobie is that film at the top of the tea a bit of a scobie something like a scovie yeah I mean you could call it as scobie what is it what's that film at the top of my tea man? You know the one I'm talking about, the rubbery one,

and then you go like that. I want tea. And there's nothing in there. And I think that's just like a skin. Skin of what? Skin of the tea. The skin of the tea? That sounds like something

a hipster that's selling Dalston, doesn't it? They're selling the skin of the tea now. Everyone walking around Dalston, chewing it like a flavored condom. So you've got some. You've got some deep trauma about fungi, which is... Not trauma, it's just when we were speaking, when you asked me specifically my resistance to the scobie,

and I'm looking at it, and it's a slimy little disc. It took me back to my bedroom, it took me back to the exact same slimy disc on my cups of tea that were going mouldy, and then at the same time, I was chewing condoms in the cinema around that time, and the feeling of children, tune. I remember. Yeah, now I remember. This is like therapy. Except therapy for an autistic

person to shit like this. It's not like what did you're mad at you. It's the association between but yeah, um, when I saw the fucking rubbery film on the tea, I imagine what it would be like to bite it and then got the gawks. Like that's, and that stuck with me. And when I look at the scobie to make kombucha, I'm back there again. You know, the scuba, I mean, I tried eating a scurby once just to see what... Fuck! You didn't your fuck!

No, no, but I thought if I just slice it into little pieces and fry it like, you know, like in soy sauce and sesame oil. It might be like a really nice little scurby fritter. So I did the best and I thought it was shaping up all plausible and then put it in my mouth and I tried chewing it. I kept chewing and I kept chewing and it wouldn't go away. Wow! I was literally chewing, they felt very rubbery, and like, it was, it's presented as edible,

but it turned into this really rubbery thing. So what I did, I was talking to this friend that night, and as I looked, this must be edible from something, because, like, people are producing so much scobie when they're making all this kombucha. What could we do with it? So we're like, what if we made, like, dog treats? Like, dog, because dogs like to chew. Instead of a pig's ear.

Exactly. So then we, like, what would we call it? We would call it Scobie snacks. And then we're like, this is, I'm not joking. It was like 10.30 in the pub and we were really riding high on this idea. And so I went straight home. I was like, we got a trademark right away because, so otherwise someone else will come up with this thing and then we'll be out of this wheeze. And then, so I went back down and I got a trade market right away.

So I went on and I actually did. It was a bit few. I'm sure I did some of it wrong. You know, it's like quite convoluted like forms and stuff. And I had to pay 200 pounds to trade market. But that seemed like a deal because obviously we were. protecting this incredible wheeze and so no one else could do it. So did it, went to bed feeling very, very satisfied because we come up with the idea, we trademarked it and that's a good

day's work. And so then a few months went past and how the trademarking thing turns out to work. There's a review period where people, if they have a problem with your trademark, they can complain. And so then a few went, and just before the few months were up, I were talking, we're going to get away with this. Like no one's raised the squeak. We're going to be just fine. I got this letter from Warner Brothers. And it was really, really like a fissure's letter from Warner Brothers. And it says, we've got word that you're going to do this scobie snack thing. And while technically it's not anything to do with Scooby-Doo and Scooby Snacks,

and we do feel that you are riding on our coattails. And if you pursue this thing, we're going to take you to court. And so then I had to just put it out because I just thought there are other things to be doing. But we got that far about, you know, how do we make this thing that we could chew? And now I'm just putting it together with your slimy film. Kumpucha. Let's do it. You can have that.

This venue are a shower of cons, right? So when we, I actually get fined if I go over 10 o'clock. So I know. Anywhere else, they're like, go ahead, have fun. But tonight's because it's London. Fucking King Philip. What's his name? King Charlie'll come down. Pull out one of my pubes one by one.

So we've got ten minutes left, right? So I want to ask some questions to the audience. Or else they'll call the bailiff. I'll only get a photograph of these cunts as well to prove to my mother that he showed up. I have to do this every time I'm serious. He had to get approval from my mother. She's like, you're not.

Everyone say hello, please. Thank you. That's my bit of her. approval tonight for my mother in her 80s. Hello, hello. Oh, fuck it. You went for it. All right, go on. Mr. Blindboy. This better be fucking good, buddy, with 10 minutes.

Mate, it's going to be quick. It's nothing to do with what's going on tonight. That's a beautiful accent. And basically, have you ever to say about the far right in Ireland? They're a shout of cunts. I'm going to try and make it brief, right? Make it brief. Make it harsh.

First off, I think... Someone's behind it, right? I do think either fucking MI5 or one of these cunts are behind it. I'm just wondering, Tommy Robinson, man, why do you love Ireland all of a sudden? What's going on? I'm suspicious of who's driving it.

The other thing that I fucking hate about the Irish far right, aside from being massive racists, Irish nationalism is not racist. I mean, the thing is with a lot of other nationalisms. British nationalism is dodgy. because Britain colonized a lot of places. So the thing is with British nationalism, American nationalism,

French nationalism, the core ethos is we are better and therefore we're entitled to conquer. Irish nationalism isn't that. Irish nationalism is someone's trying to colonise us. We are worth something.

We have value. That's what Irish nationalism is. It's not, hateful. It's not about saying that we're brilliant. It's just someone's taken away our language and our culture and all of this. Can we have it back, please? And the Irish far right, they're re-contextualizing Irish nationalism. They're trying to contextualize immigrants or people that are fleeing war and trying to say that they're invaders to compare them with a colonial army from the past and it's just really really fucking offensive um what i would say though and and if we're

to to overcome this be careful about who you call far right and who you call fascist right especially online and what i mean by that is it never works out never works out start if if you hear someone saying something problematic a good phrase to use is you are repeating far right right talking points. That's much more useful than flat-out labeling. Like, some people are fascists. But other people, someone's fucking mother, your uncle, whatever, they are repeating far-right talking points because there's a lot of money behind disinformation and it's working. So if you call that person far right, fascist, you entrenched them farther and you lose them. So it's very simple. You're repeating far right talking points there.

What's going on? It's more useful, you know. Can I have another question? A bit of gender balance, please. Gender balance. Yeah, sorry, buddy. It's like that for women all the time. Working.

Thank you. Blind boy. I just want to say I've been listening to you since the beginning. And I was diagnosed... That makes me sound very religious. Go on. No, I'm with you. But I've been listening...

I got diagnosed. few months before you and I just want to say how open and the self-exploitation you do on mental health and autism just is such a benefit you. I just want to say how much I appreciate you and thank you so much for that. Thank you so much. I do have a really quick question for Merlin as well. Go on. Merlin, Rupert Sheldrake, the super dude, there's your dad. I just want to say when you were growing up, the trilogues and Terence McKenna, there is a mushroom question here. Were you around when that stuff was going on? And what do you think? about, and I'm hoping that I'm remembering this right, but his idea that like a big part of human evolution was when, I don't know if it was 10,000 or 50,000 years ago, they took mushrooms and that's what gave us imagination and the ability to like plan and hunt and strategize and stuff like that. Is that your death? No, no, no, no. It was Terence who was hanging out with and Terrence had, some of people got a stoned ape theory. Yeah. And so basically Terrence said,

like, look, because he was really into taking mushrooms, big doses, and he was really into other people taking mushrooms as well. He thought this was like this was what was needed and it was really important. And so he had this idea. It was like, look, this affects our mind and imagination now. And so he said, well, look, I think humans became humans really back in the day because they ate these mushrooms. The mushrooms are growing now on the savannah and the humans ate them. And then they developed all of these properties of humanity that we now think of as properties of humanity. And, you know, he said that our brains grow bigger as well. And so I have no doubt that humans using psychedelics, including mushrooms, have been a hugely important part in the way that our culture evolves, the way that we relate to each other, the way that we conceive of new possibilities, the way that we reorganize and we order our societies.

I have no doubt about that because that happens today. That happens in retina, recent history. We can see that, so I'm sure it has always happened in analogous ways. I think it's more complex when it comes to the biological side. I think there are other factors that could have helped our brains got big. Like, for example, walking on two feet so we have hands free to be able to do other things. Like there's also the cooking of food. When we have fire and start the domesticate fire, we can start to cook food,

which means we have to spend less time collecting food. And so there are all of these other really important. important developments that I think have also played a part in human evolution. So I think Terence's version was maybe a little mushroom heavy, even though I think the mushrooms are very important. We've got about three minutes left. Really quickly. What? All right, go on.

The last of us. Have you seen it? I'd say he has. Is it conceivable? And how long have we got left? By the way, quite rightly you went before me. I'm also bipolar. You're a massive inspiration.

God bless. God bless. You get asked that al-a-a-a-lawite. Yeah, no, I had to write an op-ed in Time magazine. And it was called, no, you don't have to be afraid of fungi. But the thing is, you do have to be afraid of something funky. You've always had to be afraid of some funky. The rice blast fungus will kill the quantity of rice large enough to feed 60 million people every year.

Like, right now in this country, fungus is killing ash trees and transforming the landscape. Like there's so many examples that lots of people right now are in hospital with a terrible fungal superbug. There are a very tiny minority it is true of fungi that causes big problems. So in the last of us like they're like so some fungi are a threat but the fungi that they're talking about in the last of us the ones that in fact the insects and puppet their moves and do all that stuff like those are not really a threat for humans right now like maybe over a very very very long time

they would work out how to jump to mammals and be able to do to us what they do to insects. But there are so many other problems that we should worry about first. So I think... Something I want to clarify before they get off stage in terms of so many other problems we need to deal with. But when I said there about,

I think the Irish far right are controlled by M.5, that's a sweeping hot take. But I would like... I don't want to just leave it at that. Here's what I mean when I say that, right? If you look at the evidence-based data, it's like 78% of far-right rhetoric in Ireland online. 78% of it is coming from outside Ireland.

Huge amount of it from America, huge amount of it from this country, and a lot of it coming from Russia, right? Here's the thing. A lot of the British... far right support the Irish far right and we have the Good Friday Agreement right and one of the things in the Good Friday Agreement which from the late 90s like 97 I think it was is in the Good Friday Agreement Ireland can have a referendum at some point

Ireland can decide north and south that we can have a referendum to decide on a United Ireland and that's there in the Good Friday Agreement. But I don't think Britain wants that. That's not great for Britain to lose a big chunk. So I reckon the reason that certain fascist elements in Britain and elements that have a lot of money, the capitalists in Britain, the reason that they are stoking the Irish far right is that it divides the nationalist community in Ireland.

So in the event of a referendum, it fucks it up. What they're trying to do is, say, oh, the Irish and British, we're the exact same we are, we're one people. It's those Muslims you need to be afraid of. You get me? So that's what I'm getting at with that. And that's, I think the far right is a bigger problem than some of these scary funguses like right now. I think it's a bigger threat. Listen, we're going to get fined if we go on any further. Man, I could have spoken to you all night long. I loved every minute of this. Marlon Shelton Drake, lads.

Thank you London for coming along and having a wonderful night. Dog bless. All right, that's all we've got time for this week in this week's utterly chaotic podcast. That was a great chat. Thank you, Merlin Sheldrick. Thank you for saving the fucking week. Thank you for chatting with me two years ago

and me being able to dip into it and go, do you know what? I lost the podcast today. but I can still put something good out so thank you so much for that Marilyn now hopefully this fucking gigantic file is going to export

on my old computer that's wheezing like a geriatric swan all right I'll catch you next week with a hot take in the I was supposed to be I was supposed to be gigging at it all together now this weekend

but I'm having a birthday party for one of my little kids and that's much, much, much more important than doing a gig and thank you to the organisers of Altogether Now for asking me back because I didn't think if you'll remember last year

I did that gig in Waterford I think it is after I did the gig last year I ended up I ended up researching the folklore around the country house where the festival takes place Coromore Estate

and I ended up finding out about a generational curse that's on the land and then afterwards I realized geez that's bad PR for that fucking festival

and they're giving me gigs so thank you so much for asking me back after I revealed a generational curse on the land I was full sure that would get me not asked back to the festival

so thank you for that and hopefully I can do it next year all I have time for rub a dog Genia fleck to an earthworm, show your ankles to a heifer. Dog bless.