The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.44: Peter McCoy on Radical Mycology

Episode Date: April 2, 2015

Peter McCoy, mycologist and co-founder of radicalmycology, joins me for this episode to talk about the vital importance of fungi in our natural and farmed ecosystems, why fungi literacy is so low, and how we might change that. 

and we need to like really branch out the dialogue we need to get rid of all these taboos and all these the fringe element that people have supported for so long with mycology man i like being on the fringe too but it doesn't support the elevation of the dialogue that's peter mccoy co-founder of a website called radicalmycology.com and he recently visited the podcast to explain how we could all benefit from paying a little more attention to fungi, since they're, you know, basically the unsung ecological heroes of the natural world. My conversation with Peter coming up. But first, one more piece of advice from my friend Yusuf. It's the Ruminant Podcast, a show that wonders what good farming looks like.

Have you been to the ruminant.ca lately? If not, please take a look. There's plenty of stuff of interest to farmers and gardeners there. Okay, let's go. So in March and April on my farm, we get a lot of wind. And I don't know if you can hear it howling in the background as I record this but it is blowing today and it stresses me out to no end I mean without any of the stuff on the farm that can be damaged by the wind I just find it stressful I'm just a guy that gets really anxious when the wind is blowing but add to it all the stuff that can be damaged and I just like most of the time I

either want to hide under a big pile of coats or just leave the farm. I'd rather the damage take place without me being here but anyway what has me distracted as I'm recording this today is I have a do-it-yourself type hoop house that I use. It's a model that I'm going to be sharing on the ruminant in the coming days because I've taken a bunch of pictures of the hoop house that I recently built but it's basically you know one of those narrow it's only 12 foot wide it's about seven foot tall and I can I can take I can put up and take down this thing you know in this certainly in the space of a day but the wind has been blowing the crap out of it all all day and

it's been a reminder of some of the shortcuts I took in terms of the length of rebar I used to stake the thing out. I went with two foot pieces and I should have gone with three and it's another example of how too often I end up spending a dollar to save a nickel. Anyway, I'm a little distracted right now but I really think you're going to like this conversation coming up with Peter McCoy. The guy is just so articulate about, and passionate about, about, about fungi, about mycology. And I met him down at Permaculture Voices too and was thrilled when he agreed to come on. I regret to inform you all now that my brand new fancy digital recorder that I purchased a few weeks ago failed me, I suppose, or I failed myself when I recorded Peter. Our conversation was meant to end with some time devoted to mycology on the farm,

cultivating mushrooms on the farm, as well as the role of mycorrhizal fungi and how we can do our best to encourage mycorrhizal fungi development in our beds, in our soil. to encourage mycorrhizal fungi development in our beds, in our soil. Unfortunately, I did not realize that my recorder was just about out of space when I started recording Peter. So I missed the last 20 minutes of our conversation when we were talking about farming. It's a great conversation that I did get, but it's just missing that kind of crucial farming piece. But I don't think you folks are going to mind.

I think Peter might. I'm a uh embarrassed or sheepish to tell him uh you know you ask someone for their time and then screw it up you feel um pretty stupid uh and i wish i could say it's the first time but i actually uh for one of my former episodes with uh rochelle eisen and hyda hermery i don't know i can't recall if i mentioned it in the episode, but I actually recorded an hour long conversation with not one, but two women who were very busy and, uh, realized at the end, I'd forgotten to record, uh, their, their feed. So, um, that was an awkward conversation, but they were great about it. And they, uh, they came back on the phone and we re-recorded the conversation. I don't know if I'll get to that with Peter. Peter, if you're listening to this, I am

really sorry that I wasted your last 20 or 30 minutes. And of course, you'll hear from me privately with the same apology. Anyway, the conversation with Peter in just a minute. But first, I have another piece of advice from Yusuf. Yusuf was on the show last week sharing some advice for farmers and gardeners. And when I recorded him the first time, he had actually recorded another tip that he has for people doing similar farming to him. So here we go. So my name is Yusuf Darwitch and I'm from Michigan. Right now I'm farming at the GVSU Sustainable Agriculture Project, which is a student farm near Grand Rapids.

Yusef, I understand that at the student farm that you've been participating in, doing different types of management, you've had to oversee student volunteers on the farm, is that right? Sure. Volunteers are a great asset, but they're also very tricky to manage, especially in a school setting. And when you're dealing with agriculture and a temperate climate, there's usually a big influx of volunteers in the spring and the fall. And in the summer, where a lot of the tasks really need to be done, there's not so many. So getting the best use out of the volunteers is a big challenge. But at the same time, you don't want volunteers just to be labor. Like if someone's going to come out to your farm, you want to make that an educational experience for them. You want to make it something that's worthwhile. So the strategy that I usually do is I'll get a simple activity, maybe something like weeding, but I'll do it right

next to the person. And maybe for the first hour they're there, like get a feel for their skill level and what their interests are and, you know, answer any questions they have about the operation. And then we can move on to more complicated tasks, like maybe doing some transplanting. And then we can move on to more complicated tasks, like maybe doing some transplanting. And I think it's also pretty important to ask the volunteer what they're interested in doing and what improvements they might have ideas for. Even if they don't have experience, some of the things they bring up, because they don't have that experience, is really useful because it gives you a whole other perspective. They see your farm and your systems like like with fresh eyes, I guess. Exactly. So if you're a

die-hard like market gardener, you know, you might see it through a certain lens or if you're very into permaculture, you might see it through another lens. So anytime you can get another perspective, I think it's very valuable. Right. And when you do have your big flux of volunteers, it's very useful to know ahead of time so you can plan. So you don't have four shovels for 20 people. Nothing worse than squandered free help. Right, right. So for us, that's a bit of an issue because we have this open volunteer hour. You never know what you're going to get. Right.

So it could be three people. It could be 25 people. So sometimes you are just running around. But try and consciously pair together experienced people with inexperienced people. Then they could build off each other. it takes less of your time overall then yeah yeah cool thanks you so sure thing so i'm still not getting any calls to the skype number that's the number i've set up where you can call in and leave a message with some kind of advice or a tip that you have for other listeners to the podcast and that that's okay. I kind of expected this,

but I'm going to try something different. I'm trying to try and be a little more focused. So do you raise livestock? Do you have any kind of tip regarding fencing? Something cool you do with a fence latch or the way you move your fencing if it's for rotational grazing or for your permanent fencing, anything like that

that you think you'd like to share with the rest of us, I'd love to hear it. Call 310-734-8426. That's 310-734-8426 and leave a voicemail. Okay, and now for you crop growers. Do you have a wash station where you process your vegetables? Is there some way you're laying out your washing station that's kind of cool? Something you're doing that is, or something you've tried that ended up being more efficient? Give me a call. 310-734-8426. And tell me about it so that then we can tell everybody about it. I hope you'll consider phoning. we can tell everybody about it.

I hope you'll consider phoning. Or for that matter, any of you with any kinds of tips that you think could be of interest to farmers and gardeners. Give it a call. 310-734-8426. Here's my conversation with Peter McCoy. Peter McCoy, thanks a lot for joining me on the Ruminant Podcast. The road isn't the worst under the road I've ever heard of. site, radicalmycology.com. Do I have that right? Yeah. Yeah. So I was, I was at your website and the first thing I want to say is you and your, I guess your, your writing partners immediately endeared yourselves to me when, when I saw the start here link at the top of the page.

I love a no nonsense type approach to a website and you know, it just, it kind of screams out like, look, this is some serious shit. You don't want to get lost. We're going to take you through it and we don't want to waste your time. So click here and we'll get you started. And for a newbie like me, that was awesome. So anyway, I love your site. I'm really glad that I know it exists now. Thank you.

Yeah, we try really hard in everything that we do with teaching mycology to make it as easy to learn as possible. I myself and everybody I work with intimately are all self-taught because mycology as a science is historically and still today is very, very hard to study either in school or outside of it, especially outside of it. And so what we try to do is to sort of not dumb it down, but to simplify or make it, to translate it, I guess, to make it more accessible because it is such a huge field. It's a whole field of science. And there's so much to it, and all of it is fascinating to me.

And so in every way that we try to teach it is kind of this step-by-step, sort of holding the hand or at least guiding, guiding through the different layers and getting deeper and deeper as we go. And part of the website tries to do that. So thank you for the compliments. Oh, listen, listen, I, I want to say, I want to say a couple more. I just, I think there are too many sub communities or subcultures that whether they know it or not, or mean to, or not, they're, they're a little bit intimidating to newbies and your site doesn't do that at all. It's extremely

welcoming. And yet, um, while being so packed with information, it's, it's, it's welcoming and it's also not condescending in any way to newcomers. So anyway, I think you guys have nailed that part really clearly. That's, um, intentional. So that's really cool. Um, but anyway, if we can, if we can actually get into this stuff, I thought I would start. So when you click the start here link at the top in the top menu, it takes you to a page called what is radical mycology. And so I thought I would start there. I'm going to quote a couple different quotes from the page and I'll just get you to comment and we'll go. So here we go. There are two quotes that really

jumped out at me when I read them. So here's the first. As a concept, radical mycology is based on the belief that the highly resilient life cycles of fungi and their interactions in nature serve as powerful learning tools for how humans can best relate to each other and steward the world they live in, end quote. And then the other is issues such as food shortages, water purity, soil fertility, pollution reduction and democratic organization can all be addressed and informed through directed work with fungi. Peter, those are bold statements. It's true, but it's they're not exaggerations, in my opinion, and also with the other people I work with, we don't think that those are exaggerations in my opinion and and also with the uh the other people i work with we don't think that those are exaggerations um it's really one of these things where uh unfortunately well i guess i'll take a step back and really actually put some of our work in a bit more of a context for

the listener where we started as a as this volunteer project years ago was all of us were excited and knowledgeable in mycology. I myself have been studying it for 15 years since I was a teenager and got really excited about eight years ago when I learned about the whole concepts of what is called micro-remediation, where how fungi can break down pollution and clean up environments and help restore damaged environments and things. And where we, what we tried to promote initially was that, and that whole concept and that people should learn about this, this, you know, that fungi can do this and that we should all be doing this more because they're so powerful and have these incredible abilities. But then we realized that you can't do remediation or talk about it until people understand cultivation.

And it's really hard to even understand how to cultivate fungi if you can't do remediation or talk about it until people understand cultivation. And it's really hard to even understand how to cultivate fungi if you don't understand their biology and ecology. So we've taken all these steps back in our work to really now we try to educate on all these different aspects of mycology just to bring people up to speed and to raise the bar of conversation. And once I think through personal experience, but also through working and teaching many people over the years, I see that as soon as the concepts of fungal biology and their ecology especially are understood and what they do in nature, how they live, how they grow, and then beyond that,

these applications of cultivating them and working with them, these statements that we've, that we put on the website are not exaggerations. I think they naturally come out of this understanding of what fungi are and what they do in the world. But again, it's this unfortunate knowledge gap that exists where most people just don't know anything about fungi. Mycology is completely absent from our education system. So these sort of statements that I make, they sound bold, they sound extreme, they sound lofty, especially if you don't obviously know where I'm coming from with that

or where those foundations lay so I mean I can lay them out and kind of back them up but just so that's a caveat you know I just kind of want to always like to point that out to folks and just recognize not as a condescending way like you said just that is the state of the world we live in most of us are sort of fungal illiterate

micro illiterate if you will and we try to make a more micro literate society through our education and I can see, I can see why you want to lay that foundation and kind of clear that up right away. Cause like I'm a complete newbie and honestly, before PV2, I mean, I'm almost embarrassed to say this now, but I saw Paul Stamets speak at PV2. I didn't even know, I mean, I guess I knew the name Paul Stamets, but I didn't really know who he was. And before I saw him speak and he, you know, it was an hour long presentation, maybe even 90 minutes. Um, I would have looked at those statements that I just quoted as, I would have been really skeptical about them, but now I'm kind of like, holy shit, there's just

this whole, there's this whole set of organisms and role in ecology that I was I have been completely unaware of and illiterate about so so um I kind of get that you know yeah and it's just it is one of those things that just needs to be stated as a matter of fact and there's no judgment attached to it but let's recognize that's where we're at and move on and how can we again raise the bar of conversation you know especially in regards to to the format of your podcast and talking about agriculture and farming and things like this and related topics? Fungi are an incredibly important aspect of all ecology, all life cycles, all nutrient cycles. And to not integrate them into our designs is just, we're missing an incredibly large piece of the puzzle. So, but going back to the statements you quoted, just to respond to that, you know, the concept of fungi impacting or influencing our human interactions in the world,

you know, there's multiple layers to that when we think about learning from the resilient life cycles of fungi as we stay there. Well, on one hand, you know, also as sort of a layer to this, this metaphoric application of, of fungal understanding is that literally we are as humans and animals more closer related to fungi than any other major tree or kingdom on, on the tree of life. We're closer related to fungi than plants. And then of course, bacteria and other things. So, so there's a relationship there physically, physiologically, biologically. But if you take that to sort of a higher level of thinking and just looking at how fungi have adapted to their world and their environment, how they survive, again, that comes through this sort of deeper understanding of their biology and ecological niches. But what comes out of

understanding that and all those fascinating details is that fungi, as we say, are very, very resilient. I mean, they've basically adapted to almost every niche and pocket around the world, just like other microbes. The micro and macro fungi, macro meaning like the fungi that produce mushrooms, we find them in all different climates, all different extreme temperatures, growing off of all kinds of materials. I mean, fungi are responsible for 90% of all decomposition on the planet. The bacteria and other microbes kind of fill in the rest of it. Fungi, they make incredible use of all resources, but they generate life out of that process. It's not decomposition, it's recomposition. They're turning what we consider dead things into new life, just like we consume dead things and that fuels our bodies and, you know, turns it into new life when we die and something else, probably a fungus is going to eat us. So this is how the world works. But fungi are incredibly, you know, we use that term, of course, resilient. It's such a great word because fungi, they can adapt so well that,

you know, without getting into the details, the way that they produce their spores, the way that they produce their spores, the way that they evolved through their generation gaps, is incredibly more complex and evolved. And again, resilient. It's highly efficient compared to how animals evolve. Maybe it's comparable with bacteria. Of course, there's a big difference there. But fungi can just rapidly evolve to whole new climates, whole new foods. As a cultivator, we can develop strains.

It's kind of like breeding plants, but actually very different and much more rapid because the generation gaps are shorter. We can adapt fungi to all kinds of food sources, whether it's an agricultural waste stream or chemical because fungi can just naturally adapt. It's not like we're stressing them. They can be developed to enjoy these foods and to thrive off of them. And so that's an incredible aspect of fungi. So as we as humans, I mean, just seeing that, that these, for the fungi, it's all about adaption and working with what you got and not being limited by barriers in so many ways that

we grow them and we witness them in nature. I think there's a lot to learn from that from just sort of a philosophical standpoint. But then even beyond that, a big part of how fungi interact with nature is they're incredibly connected. There's types of fungi that connect the root systems of dozens of species together. Hundreds of plants, say, could be connected in a healthy, intact fungal network in an intact ecosystem, and the fungi channel nutrients through these plants, and they actually steward and maintain the whole ecosystem. You know, that's like a real quick snapshot of one of these incredible niches that fungi fill, but what are they doing if we take a step back? We see that they're, you know, on one hand, they're kind of looking out for themselves and stewarding their environment so that they and

their progeny can survive, but also they're actually stewarding the environment. They're taking care of the other organisms because everything is interconnected in an ecosystem, and the fungi are that connecting bridge that maintains that health. And so, you know, again, we as humans, seen as stewards on this planet, or we consider ourselves that we need to recognize not just what we can do to benefit ourselves, but how can we, you know, maintain the whole ecologies that were embedded within, how can we support the health of all the organisms that we work with and are surrounded by. And that's just a direct translation from seeing how the fungi do that,

you know, metaphorically and literally. And then going back to the other, and then lastly, the other quote, you know, just summarizing that, food shortages, as I mentioned, fungi can be grown off of all kinds of ag waste. I mean, everywhere you go, there's some sort of waste stream. Food and medicine in the form of mushrooms can be grown off of these things, significantly addressing what are perceived to be food shortages. Fungi can clean up water to some degree. They can definitely filter microbes is a big part of that. They build topsoil and they increase soil health in so many ways. The soil dwelling fungi do an incredible amount for

soil fertility. And again, with the pollution reduction that kind of ties into the other things of especially taking waste streams and turning them to food medicine. And lastly, the democratic organization is sort of this metaphoric layer we lay on. But again, building off of just understanding and appreciating the fungal ecology of their connectedness and also their horizontal decentralized distribution of resources and information through their networks in whole ecologies is a very resilient and self-sustaining system and a very efficient system. And I think that that's, you know, how a true democracy should be formed,

where everybody has an equal vote and resources get channeled where they should be placed to be most efficient. So almost, if I understand you, like fungi in that latter case of democratic organization, fungi as metaphor? Yes, yeah. That's a big part of how we sort of take ourselves a little less seriously, if you will, than mycology historically has been so narrowly focused on pure science, right? It's all about the hard nitty gritty. And I myself am an artist. Other people in the collective, other people I work with, we like to think abstractly and just appreciate these interesting things. Like what are the lessons that we can learn from fungi? I mean it's philosophical if you want to call it that, metaphoric. But I think it's an interesting point for conversation.

And it's actually in a lot of the way that we organize ourselves and the way that we design events that we've hosted, we're very transparent. And I don't feel ashamed or silly to say that we design the way that we model our events based on how fungi grow. And it's a great learning tool and actually a very effective system for thinking about. It's like a systems theory approach, you know, seeing connections and how there's cycles inside of cycles and the fungi reflect that. I don't think it's silly at all. Now you, you just said a lot in the last few minutes and I just want to, I want to return to a few things you mentioned before we move on. So first of all, I mean, one sense I get, okay, as a, as a, as a newbie to the, to the topic, I think I probably like a lot of people in, in just writing off fungi, you know, in a general way as like, you know, just one of many lower life forms. But I just get the sense talking to you that they're not lower life forms.

They're in many ways superior life forms. Is that fair to say? Well, I mean, my personal approach is, you know, everything has value and everything has its place and nature doesn't make mistakes. Bacteria fill incredibly important roles in life that nothing else can replace. Everything has a function and the fungi have incredible functions that we just normally never hear about so we don't think about it. It's easy to write off because you've never been told that it's important. I'm telling you now that it's really important. But also, what's great about fungi, I'm not drawn to microbiology or studying bacteria,

it's just not my inclination. But what keeps me really excited about mycology is that not only are fungi important and we can talk about the ecological role, but it's also they're really fascinating. And it's just like for myself and everybody i teach and i work with and people that teach me you know as you learn new details it's always just you're blown away by all these incredibly strange and interesting and very unique things that fungi do are they more evolved are they more special than other things i mean that's that's a qualitative or uh you know it's a very uh it's like a bias that i don't want to place on other organisms, right? But what I can say is that fungi are incredibly important,

just like all things are, and that their importance is incredibly unique and should be fully appreciated and not just written off because there's so much to it. And very early in our conversation, you mentioned that mammals, I guess, have more similarities with fungi than certainly other, like you mentioned, plants or the plant kingdom or the microbial kingdom. Can you explain that a bit? In what sense are we more similar to fungi? What comparisons can you draw well genetically um you know if you look at the evolutionary evolutionary model of organisms um we branched off the animal kingdom branched off

well you know i forget the exact dates you have to forgive me but somewhere i think around seven or eight hundred million years ago there was a split where uh one branch of evolution went one direction plants went another so that was a split there and then roughly somewhere around i think 450 million years ago if i'm not if i'm not mistaken somewhere around there um plants are excuse me animals broke off from fungi so there was a split so basically we there is you know there's these divisions in evolution as new species branch out. And so we split from fungi more recently than the plants, and same with the fungi. So we're more closely related to each other in that genetic sense.

This split is more recent. Yeah, and so there's that end of it. But then physiologically, we do share a lot of similar characteristics. But then physiologically, we do share a lot of similar characteristics. So fungi and animals, of course, well, fungi breathe in O2 and expel CO2. Fungi don't photosynthesize. They have to get all their food externally. They have to search for their food.

They require water. They require the basic needs of life. They need warmth, most of them, especially the ones that we cultivate by and large. They also need a dynamic environment. They need actually a dynamic ecosystem around that. So this is an interesting concept. I mean, just like plants to some degree, too. Plants need a healthy soil to grow the best.

We need a healthy gut flora to consume our nutrients the best. The fungi need healthy, they need microbial interaction to actually stay healthy and active themselves, which isn't a direct need but sort of a secondary need I guess. But also when you cultivate them, it's sort of this intangible thing that's hard to describe if you will, but when you cultivate them, it is's sort of this intangible thing it's hard to describe if you will but when you cultivate them it is in some sense feeling it feels like you're you're caring for a pet is the best way you can describe it they have a lot of needs they need they need attention they need caring i mean just like plants but fungi animals more frequently because they grow more rapidly than plants so you you have to be paying attention to them and there's this aspect when for myself and a lot of cultivators where you you know you feel you feel i don't know for lack of better word affection what's that affection

well i mean affection i don't know depends on the person but i was going to say more connected or that you're responsible for these things in a way that for myself i mean i have some house plants and i water them i take care of them but it's they don't they seem to be more independent and for the fungi it's more like there is this relationship because you're constantly working and I water them and take care of them, but they seem to be more independent. For the fungi, it's more like there is this relationship because you're constantly working with them and moving them and feeding them, and they eat things. They're like an animal. You have to feed them food. With plants, you give them fertilizer, but for people that haven't cultivated fungi, it is a bit different. So yeah, and then there gets into this whole concept of fungal intelligence,

and I think you were sort of asking this in the last question about are they better than other microbes. There is definitely this incredibly perplexing aspect of fungal biology and ecology that definitely approaches something that should be considered intelligence. I mean, I think all life is intelligent, really. And there's something, you know, everything has learned how to survive and does what it needs to do to survive. And it depends on what you mean by the word intelligence. But fungi adapt to their environment directly, immediately. They have an incredible array of defense mechanisms and response mechanisms. They can switch on and off different enzymes through epigenetic influences to eat whatever food is placed before them and then turn off those enzymes when they no longer need them if they're no longer eating that food. So they're very smart and self-preserving that way. So they don't waste metabolic energy. And there's different types of fungi and slime molds, which aren't a true fungi, but that have navigated mazes, things like that. There's very interesting systems where it's, you know, is the network communicating? Is there a

brain? No, there's not a brain that we think about it, but the nuclei within the fungi can actually travel through the whole fungal tissue network. For the listener who isn't familiar, fungi grow as a network underground, and it can actually move its nuclei throughout this whole giant web and it seems that through this this migration of nuclei that's how the the system basically communicates with itself and sends information and channels basically tells itself hey there's food over here and then you'll it'll grow towards that food the whole system will move and grow in that way, just like colonies of bacteria will sort of flock and do these interesting or flocks of birds will take this rapid turn that we can't really explain. Fungi do something sort of similar in the way that they seem to communicate through their nuclear migration.

Interesting things like this, you know, that sort of get beyond standard science. You know, science would take a step back and say this is, know territory that not willing to touch but this is definitely something to recognize when you start to learn their biology and ecology about fungi it's you can't really explain it so Peter also one I mean one other note I made in terms in what you said previously you know when we talk about ecology we talk about interrelationships among essentially unrelated organisms what seems so fascinating about fungi is they they seem to in my impression literally embody those interrelationships can you speak to that a little bit yeah I mean the I mentioned it earlier with

the the root connecting fungi these are called the mycorrhizal fungi, myco meaning fungus, rhiza meaning root. And these fungi literally connect to the roots of plants. They penetrate into the plant root cell structure and sometimes into the cell itself, beyond the cell wall, intimately connected to the plant on a one-to-one basis, if you will, in exchanging nutrients, the plant giving photosynthesized sugars to the plant on a one-to-one basis, if you will, in exchanging nutrients, the plant giving photosynthesized sugars to the fungus, the fungus channeling water and mineral

and other nutrients into the plant in a way that's much more efficient and covers much more surface area than the plant ever could because the fungal threads, the tissue is much smaller diameter than the root tips. So it's a very efficient system. Over 90% of plants in the world have this relationship. But what's fascinating is that a given plant, it's not just a one-on-one relationship with these fungi. A Douglas fir tree is an excellent example of the complexity of this dynamic where one Douglas fir tree

can have over 200 different fungal symbionts throughout its life. And it's not just one fungus doing its thing there. The soil ecology, as you are probably well aware, is so incredibly dynamic, we can't really study it truly. But there's heavy engagement, not with the fungus in the plant, but the other microbes and the bacteria are influencing the signaling and the relationships, and the fungi are giving the bacteria nutrients, and the bacteria are giving the fungi and the bacteria are influencing the signaling and the relationships, and the fungi are giving the bacteria nutrients, and the bacteria are giving the fungi and the plant nutrients.

So that's intimate right there at the mycorrhizosphere, at the root level. But then the fungi extend beyond, and they connect plants together. They connect different species of plants together. Dozens of different species of plants can be connected. And again, channeling root resources between them. Serving like this, you know, some people have paralleled it with the Internet. And actually the way that fungal systems are distributed in there, they grow as decentralized networks, very similar to how the Internet is digitally structured. And they not only connect the plants together, but what's interesting, if you go up into the plant,

then there's other fungi that live throughout the entire structure of the plant. These are called endophytic fungi that basically build a skeleton of the entire plant structure surrounded by plant cells. I mean, a plant is not what we think of it. A plant is, you know, largely made out of fungal tissue as well. That fungus is producing compounds to defend the plant, perhaps producing medicinal compounds, being directly affected by the fungus at the root level of the plant bringing in nutrients. And there's who knows what kind of chemical or other forms of communication are going on where it's rippling out through the whole system. So and then you get beyond that and some people like to elaborate, well then it's one fungal

network is touching another fungal network in a different ecosystem and they kind of chain link together around the world. It's a lofty idea that probably can never be proven but we see these systems, right? Systems theory idea where fungi really show how things are connected and it is cycles within cycles but all as you you scale out like that that old video powers of 10 if you've ever seen it you know it's the fungi are there at every level doing doing different things at greater and greater scales so okay i want to get back to um just back to the more general topic here um so first of all i the sense that the, let's talk about the word radical and radical

mycology. I get the sense that's not just a buzz term. It's meaningful to you. And I just want to know what is the difference between classical or traditional mycology and what you call radical mycology? Well, traditional mycology is largely focused on and still for the most part today still focuses on just hard hard science of mycology you know mycology being the the biology of fungi and that for the last hundred years since mycology started to develop as a true science has focused more on you know again just the biology how do fungi grow what is is their cellular process? What, what are these things, right? Then beyond that, what is their ecology? What are they doing in nature? Just trying to understand them on, on that sort of nitty gritty level. Um, but in more

recent years, you know, especially in the last couple of decades, the last 50 years or so, plus, um, cultivation has become a much bigger emphasis so of course mushrooms have been cultivated for hundreds of years in the west and thousands of years in the east but the as the biology and ecologies we got got better understood the cultivation has been refined so that's not really true um academic mycology studying cultivation but the science of academic mycology influences better cultivation so they kind of go hand in hand and you could say that that's sort of where it stopped then you get into medical mycology so fungal pathogens and human health you get into plant pathogens and fungal blights right for their

economic and economic importance and that's where a lot of biology is or mycology has really ended is just those direct relationships um that we can study on that level but in the last 10 say 15 years um the the the skills of cultivation have one become much more accessible for people especially with the available information provided through the internet that's really changed the world of mycology whereas before it was inaccessible it was very hard to study cultivation for the casual learner who didn't have any support and then beyond that as cultivation has become incredibly easier in the last decade with a lot of innovators coming through the internet especially a lot of just hobbyists coming up with a lot of great innovations. Now cultivation is so easy compared to where it was even 20 years ago that the head scratching of how do we grow these things is pretty much over with. Now we know how to grow them. What can we do with them? How can we work

with them? And this gets into these ideas of applied mycology. So it gets into the fungal pollution cleanup, the whole micro-remediation concept. It gets into integration with ecological design and micro-permiculture and many other things. And so this is where radical mycology sort of takes this and sort of evolved out of traditional mycology, where traditional mycology, if you go to study in schools where it's still pretty hard to find an upper degree program, you're mostly going to be focused in the lab work, in the biology, and maybe a little bit of the ecology, but still a lot of this biological stuff. And where we take it is pushing the extreme. You know, we feel like we're on the edge of the mycelial network, is actually literally

in the biology. This gets into one of our metaphors. In fungal biology, the leading edge of the culture of the fungal tissue is where it's most active. That's where it's most active. That's where it's doing all its digestion and interacting with its environment and learning and responding. And we feel like the aspects of mycology that we're most promoting are these new leading edge, cutting edge, radical new concepts in mycology that are based on and come out of all the hard work. And we honor all that hard work from the

history of traditional mycologists but we are you know trying to see how we can take this knowledge and apply it to our context and then beyond that where we don't shy away from is stating matter of factly that these skills in this whole knowledge of fungi is is incredibly important in our modern context where we are facing so many peak this and peak that, you know, we need to really change and radically shift the way that we interact with the world and with our resources, um, to be more sustainable, more regenerative, more resilient and fungi are incredibly missing piece of that discussion. Um, and that's where we come out with that word as well. So, okay. So another thing I wanted to ask you, like the list of

important functions, known functions of fungi is incredibly long. I mean, it's, it's, it's great food for humans and other animals. It's, it's, it, it plays a very important role in medicine. It, it, it is, has an incredibly important role in pollution and toxin abatement. It can be an insulation. It's important in farming. It can be used in fermentation. It has an incredibly important role in pollution and toxin abatement. It can be in insulation. It's important in farming. It can be used in fermentation. You can make dyes from fungi. It's very important in forest regeneration, all these crucial functions. And I mean, if people want to learn more about those specifically, there's just all kinds of great resources on your site, radicalmycology.com. But given all those important functions, Peter, why are fungi in general paid so little attention

in our culture and science and politics? Why is there so much illiteracy around fungi? Well, that is the $64,000 question. It's the one that I always bring up and it's the one that I think we all need to be asking. I think it's a big part of I'm a big advocate of higher education self-education systems permaculture

at the Permaculture Voices Conference I was really pleased to see Matt Powers and talking about his integration of permaculture into education popular education systems in public education systems and using some of the concepts there to to elevate our ways of thinking about the world and whole systems etc and and but how because I think and I talked to him a bit at the conference and I really appreciate his work is where because he knows intimately as a public school teacher that the curriculum is designed in ways that just don't make sense. As a teacher, whether or not you're a permaculture-based teacher like he is, I mean, other teachers he works with and other teachers I've met and I've read books that critique the schooling system.

thing where whoever is writing that curriculum at the state or federal level is making big mistakes and cutting out things that will actually help children and all these things to actually turn their brain on and to make them think about the world in ways that would probably be beneficial to the future. And I think fungal education is a big part of that. Whether or not it's intentional, of course, I can never say, but it is just this huge thing. For me, it's clear as day. When you learn about fungi, again, going back to the connectivity fungi clearly exemplify the

interdependence of life and I think when you teach a child that they can clearly see in the way that fungi grow you don't have it's not even abstract it's visible in their face that things are connected and fungi do this and that this is sort of a an archetype again, a metaphor of how all of life is. It's a great learning tool. And again, fascinating. Kids love learning about fungi. So why isn't it in there? I mean, I did this when I was in elementary school. We put a sunflower seed in a little plastic cup full of soil and we watched it sprout. I learned a little bit about plants. Why didn't I do something similar with a fungus and watch it grow? Well, maybe when I was a kid, cultivation wasn't at that level. And,

you know, obviously there was these hurdles today. That's not, that's not the problem. We can easily do these projects and, and I advocate for all teachers, for homeschoolers, educators to learn about fungi to some degree and teach people of all ages. I mean, whether or not you're, you're below 18, I mean, I'm still fascinated every day. And everybody I teach, I teach people cultivation from all backgrounds. You get this light in their eyes as soon as you turn them on. It's just this incredibly fascinating thing. You say, well, I haven't ever heard about this. So why is it missing?

I mean, I can't say, but what I can say is that it shouldn't be missing, that it needs to be added at all. Do you think that, and I'm generalizing here, but do you think that there's any kind of, it has anything to do with like a fear of fungus? I use that word, that synonym intentionally, but do you think it has anything to do with fear? Well, I mean, that's the easy answer, right? This whole fungophobia, but it's actually a very, not reflective of the true history. I mean, pretty much every culture around the world outside of, you know, Western Europe and even more like British, excuse me, the United Kingdom and North America, that's really where the cultures are the

most fungal illiterate, micro illiterate. Eastern Europe, you know, Germany, Scandinavia, let alone the whole Middle East, the East, North Africa, many countries in Africa, many cultures around the world, Central America, South America, to some degree, all these cultures have a relatively rich history with fungi. Some of them, it's incredibly rich. They're a huge part of the culture. There is no fear. There's never been a fear because it's always been a part of the way that they've lived their lives what's happened in the west is you can look into the history of it somewhere around 1850s there was editors and authors newspaper editors in the uk who literally just one day started writing editorials sort of demonizing fungi and just sort of saying they're associated with death and decay and they're these putrid excrescences and they're they're nasty and wet and they're only in the bogs and

marshes and any any uh british aristocrat you know would never touch a fungus and they sort of just created this taboo that really came out of nowhere and wasn't based on any real foundation other than this crafted argument. It's very strange. And then we've imported that into the West, or into North America, rather. And it's just continued, and nobody questions it. You know, I was taught as a kid, don't touch a mushroom. They're all going to kill you.

Don't even look at it. You know, don't even touch it, you know? It's just incredible. You're teaching your children to not even interact with nature. There's more plants in the world that will kill you than fungi. So it's, what is our understanding, you know? And it is, it just goes back to this information gap. And it's a self-perpetuating cycle that needs to be broken.

And that's what we try to do through radical mycology. And this is one of the ways that we sort of branch out from other, some of the other historically subcultural aspects of mycology. You know, I think a lot of, you know, for the last 40, 50 years, a lot of subculture amateur mycologists were interested in psychedelics and really emphasizing that whole aspect of fungi and over-emphasizing it, I think, and really pushing the, we're on the fringe, we're into psychedelics, and that's what mycology is about for the average person. And that's a big turnoff for most people that don't relate to that.

And what we, I mean, you know, we have an aspect, a page on our website that I wrote that is about psychoactive fungi. I'm not ashamed to admit that I support their use and I'm interested in them. I think they're very interesting. But there's a lot more to fungi than just that. And we need to like really branch out the dialogue. We need to get rid of all these taboos and all these the fringe element that people um have supported for so long with mycology man i like being on the fringe too but it doesn't support the elevation

of the dialogue this is one of the things i really appreciated about permaculture voices conference was that was a very transparent theme that we need to take permaculture out of the fringe, out of the subculture and make it professional. And, you know, I think mycology, whether or not you want to call it professional, what I've been saying for years is that we just need to shift this dialogue and be matter of fact about it. Say this is the state of the world we live in. We need better. We need we always need more solutions. We need a diversity of tactics. Fungi are great. Another tool in the toolbox. And just most people don't know about that tool that's it folks i apologize one more time for robbing you of some further great conversation with peter all about mycology on the farm so that's another episode down please go to theeroominant.ca.

Check it out. There's tons of photo-based posts with different ideas for your farm. There's a bunch of essays. You can read about why I don't like the word rock star as applied to farmers. You can read the satire I wrote about British Columbia's intention to completely shut out the word organic for non-organic producers. And all kinds of other blowhard opinions by yours truly. Last year I kept a journal, like a humorous journal, for the whole season on the farm and you should check that out too. I compiled the whole thing. It's at The Ruminant. It's got

a few different videos but one that's close to my heart is the duet that I conducted with Neil Diamond, which is dubbed over a video of our pet black widow, Clarice. You gotta go. Have a great week. Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching

And here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house Or some fancy car To keep my love going strong So we'll run right out Into the wilds and graces We'll keep close quarters With gentle faces

And live next door To the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be