Fantastic Fungi (2019) - full transcript

There's a feeling,

the pulse of eternal knowledge.

When you sense the oneness,

you are with us.

We brought life to Earth.

You can't see us, but we
flourish all around you.

Everywhere, in everything,

and even inside you,

whether you believe in us or not.

From your first breath, to your last.

In darkness, and in the light.



We are the oldest, and youngest.

We are the largest, and smallest.

We are the wisdom of a billion years.

We are creation.

We are resurrection,
condemnation, and regeneration.

We are mushrooms.

- Mushrooms are very clandestine

and very much the trickster.

So, they're hiding from you all the time.

We're in Agarikon territory now,

there's some big living stags up here.

It's always interesting and exhilarating

to be in the old growth forest,

but not always rewarding in
accomplishing our mission



to find a new Agarikon strain.

But nevertheless, it
beats being in the office.

Fungi are the grand molecular
decomposers of nature.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, they break down wood.

And here I'm laying in the forest,

haven't peeked yet, but
here's a piece of wood

laying down on the ground.

If I were laying down on
the ground, and I died,

fungi would leap up to recycle me

and that's the way of nature.

Mushrooms represent rebirth,
rejuvenation, regeneration.

Fungi generate soil that gives life.

The task that we face today

is to understand the language of nature.

My mission is to discover the language

of nature of the fungal networks

that communicate with the ecosystem.

And I believe nature is intelligent.

The fact that we lack the language skills

to communicate with nature does not impugn

the concept that nature's intelligent.

It speaks to our inadequacy
for communication.

If we don't get our act together

and come in commonality and understanding

with the organisms that sustain us today,

not only will we destroy those organisms,

but we will destroy ourselves.

- Mushroom, it's not like a vegetable

and it's not like a animal,
but it's somewhere in between.

The fungus is it's own
kingdom all together.

There's over 1.5 million species.

That's six times more than plants.

Of all those species of fungi,

about 20,000 produce mushrooms,

and mushrooms come in
an incredible diversity

of shapes and sizes and
colors and lifestyles.

There are even bioluminescent mushrooms.

A lot of people are afraid of mushrooms.

People associate mushrooms and fungi,

you know, mold, with death
and decay, which makes sense.

You know, there's a lot of
fear because of fungi's role

in the cycle of life.

They decompose dead and dying organisms

and move all those nutrients
back into the cycle.

They kind of are at the very end of stuff,

but they're also at the beginning.

- Once you start working with
mushrooms, you get drawn in.

A really important difference
between plants and fungi

is that plants have
evolved to catch your eye.

When a tomato gets red it is saying,

hey, I'm ready, come get me.

The mushrooms don't give a shit.

They're doing their own thing
and a lot of them are hiding.

Every time you pick up a mushroom,

you are faced with the omnivore's dilemma.

Do I know enough to eat this?

Should I eat this?

Will this kill me?

- And that's one of the reason why people

are freaked out about
mushrooms, because, yeah,

there are ones that can kill you.

There are some that
will take out your liver

or your kidneys, but to be
honest with you there's berries

in the woods that can kill you, too.

So it's, it's really a matter
of knowing your mushrooms.

There's a huge subculture of mycofiles,

of people who are
fascinated with mushrooms.

They hunt mushrooms together

and they eat mushrooms together,

and they are sort of
bloated pleasure seekers

with a scientific bent.

You know, really my kind of crowd.

Is that tricholoma?

Grifola frondosa.

This is Cortinarius.

Agaricus bisporus.

- That's a Cladonia lichen.

- So I started attending
these festivals and forays

and learning more and more.

It changed the way I saw everything.

Mushrooms actually were
the window by which

I came to understand
nature in a deeper way.

- If we didn't have Fungi,

we would get this build up of plant matter

that would choke the Earth.

I mean they really are the key.

They break down plant
life and make it usable

for new plant life and for animal life.

- They are the digestive
tracks of the forest.

One of the lifestyles of
fungi is the decomposers

called saprobres, or rotters, if you want.

The yeasts and molds used in making beer

and wine and cheese are all saprobes.

That's actually a penicillin mold

in Gorgonzola and Roquefort.

Bourbon is fungi fermented corn.

But this ability to break
things down is a talent,

if you will, that can be
harnessed to help us deal

with some of our problems like pollution.

These rotters, they can break
down anything that's natural.

That's what they have evolved to do,

anything that's hydrocarbon based.

So that includes stuff like oil spills.

Pollutant problems.

That's kind of the truth of it.

- I was a part of this experiment.

There were four piles
saturated with diesel

and other petroleum waste.

One was a control pile, one
pile was treated with enzymes,

one pile, treated with
bacteria and our pile

we inoculated with mushroom spores.

The fungi absorbs the oil.

The fungi is producing
enzymes for oxidases

that break carbon hydrogen bonds.

These are the same bonds

that hold hydrogen carbons together,

so the fungi becomes
saturated with the oil.

And then, when we
returned six weeks later,

all the tarps were removed,

all the other piles were
dead dark and stinky.

We come back to our pile and it's covered

with hundreds of pounds
of oyster mushrooms.

Some of these mushrooms
are very happy mushrooms,

they're very large.

They're showing how much
nutrition that they could obtain,

but something else happened
which is an epiphany in my life.

They sporulated, the
spores attract insects,

birds then came, bringing
in seeds and our pile

became an oasis of life.

- Mushrooms are the
fruiting bodies of fungi,

so the mushroom is like the apple.

The bulk of the organism
is growing underground

and it's composed of these long threads.

These threads grow one cell at a time

and then they branch and re-branch,

growing in every direction they can,

even three dimensionally.

And that mass of threads
is called a mycelium.

A stick falls onto the ground,

you pull it up and there's mycelium.

It is virtually everywhere.

- A mycelium has more
networks than our brain

has neural pathways, and
works in much the same way,

with electrolytes, electrical pulses.

They're the most common species on Earth,

they're everywhere.

- Just to give you an
idea of how much fungi

are in the forest, as
you're walking through,

there's about 300 miles of fungi,

under every footstep that you take

and that's all over the world.

And they form these massive links,

it's like a big web just
growing through the forest.

- Mycelium that can grow
out even just this big

can have trillions, literally
trillions of end branchings.

Almost everyone knows about
the computer Internet.

The mycelium shares the
same network design.

Trees are communicating

using the mycelium as pathways.

They are connecting one tree to another.

They're using the mycelium,
too, to feed one another,

in other words one tree can swap nutrients

with another tree using
mycelium as the passage way.

- So we often think of kin recognition

as an animal behavior.

Humans, you know, we love our babies,

we know it's our baby

and we're gonna look after that baby.

Well, we never thought
that plants could do that,

but we're finding in
our research that plants

can recognize their own kin.

So these mother trees recognize their kin

through their mycorrhizal networks.

The mother tree and the baby
seedlings are sending signals,

talking to each other.

When they're connected together and carbon

is moving between plants,

the trees are supporting the weaker ones.

If she knows that there's pests around

and that she's under danger,

she will increase her
competitive environment

towards her own babies so that
they regenerate further away.

It's a magical thing,
and this could not happen

without the fungi.

- I'm not the super-idealist tree hugger.

I do hug trees occasionally.

I do confess to that, but I was a logger.

I cut the woods.

- Damn, we got a two for one on that one!

Cutting down these trees and
we're going to let them rot!

But we're letting them rot with a purpose.

We're letting them rot
with shiitake mushrooms,

which are delicious and medicinal.

Yes!

- September '74, Paul was working
as a logger in Darrington.

I went up to visit him one weekend

and we were out walking in the woods

and I start showing him
all these mushrooms.

You know, he said, "What are those?"

And I said, "Looking at
mushrooms, for the first time."

We came around the corner

and there's this purple mushroom,

I'd never seen one like that before,

and it was just like a huge epiphany.

Like, woo woo woo woo woo, you know?

And that's where it began,
he just never stopped.

- These are old red bell hood polypores.

Elegant Polyporus.

It's got a free stem.

This is a delicious
shrimp russula mushroom.

Edible in choice.

It grows here in the old-growth forest.

- It's rare in science you
have such powerful amateurs.

The meaning of the word
amateur is a lover.

And, he loves his mushrooms.

And he's proven that amateurs can do

really credible, important research.

And that used to be the
case, the 19th century,

obviously, you know, was full
of great amateur naturalists,

Darwin being one of them.

- He's handed over to this
universal consciousness.

That's where genius comes from.

Every magnificent thing that
humans have ever achieved

comes from that place.

- I grew up in a small town
called Columbiana, Ohio.

Very conservative, very religious.

And my brother John went to Yale,

and my brother Bill went to Cornell,

so we were an academic family.

But I had a severe stuttering
habit that greatly interfered

with my ability to express myself.

I went through six
years of speech therapy.

I could not speak a single sentence

without stuttering profusely.

And nothing in speech
therapy could help me.

I couldn't look at people in
their eyes, so all my life,

I stared at the ground.

Anybody came up to me,
I'd stare at the ground.

I found fossils and mushrooms.

We are all of the stars.

My kingdom was borne from the heavens

four and a half billion years ago.

We are the pioneers.

We climbed out of the sea
to create the fertile soil

and set the stage for all of life.

- In South Africa in the sediments of lava

they have found fungus like organisms,

mycelium fossils in the lava.

2.4 billion years old.

This is the oldest record

of a multicellular organism on Earth.

This year, another fossil was found

in the sediments of Brazil,

it's 113 million years old,

and it's a perfectly shaped mushroom.

We divided from Fungi about
650 million years ago.

One branch led to Fungi, the
other branch led to animals.

We chose a path of
encirculating our nutrients

in a cellular sack, our stomach.

The mycelium remained underground,

externally digesting its nutrients.

- Biodiversity surged

until we had these great
cataclysmic extinction events,

when the asteroids
impacted the Earth, kebam,

enormous amounts of debris was jettisoned

into the atmosphere.

Sunlight was cut off.

Plants die, animals die.

And Fungi inherited the Earth.

From those great extinction
events there's one lesson,

those organisms that
paired with fungi survived.

We are more closely related to fungi

than we are to any other kingdom.

What this means is that we
are descendants of mycelium.

Mycelium is the mother of us all.

Living creatures like fungi

are intelligent in the
sense that they respond

to their environment,

they seek out food and
they defend themselves,

they solve problems,
and that's intelligence.

- A mycelium can
theoretically live forever

as long as it has food to grow into

which is why the oldest and largest

organism on earth is a fungus.

It lives on top of a mountain on Oregon.

It's like thousands of acres

and it's thousands of years old.

The mushroom is the organ
of sexual reproduction,

for the spore of the fungus.

Fungi don't have seeds, they have spores.

The spores are extremely tiny, little,

lightweight gene carrying systems.

When they land on something they can eat,

they break down the food that they're on,

and then reabsorb the nutrients,

because you need to move on and find

another place where there's food.

The mushroom releases zillions of spores

into the atmosphere.

There's so many spore, I
mean, you take one breath,

you just breathed in 10 fungal spore.

So they are everywhere.

We evolved with them.

- When you see what mushrooms do,

it's kind of spooky in
the most wonderful way,

I mean they correct everything on Earth.

They support life.

They convert life.

They carry life.

They're remarkable beings.

If humans become extinct,

what's the next species that
will take over the Earth?

Maybe mycelium already
are the dominant species,

not just because they're the most common

species on Earth, they're everywhere.

I mean, you look at humans.

There's seven billion of us

but we're just one little creature

wandering around incredibly vulnerable

and don't survive easily
if we're assaulted.

Hurricane Harvey
has started to make landfall

here on the Texas coast.

More than 30,000 people are without power

And things are only expected to get worst.

- Granted we've always had the worst storm

in about a century, and it
is struggling to understand

the new normal of months
ahead without basic services.

Climate change is
one of the biggest threats

to our present our world,
to the future of our planet.

- C02 is our biggest greenhouse gas.

As plants photosynthesize,

they literally inhale CO2
while exhaling oxygen.

CO2 is what plants photosynthesize

and they take that carbon

and they put it in different places,

they put it in their
leaves, in their trunks,

but they put 70 % of it, we
are finding, below ground.

And the root systems trade
that carbon for nutrients.

That carbon ends up in
the fungal cell walls

where it's stored.

This fuels the microbial community

and all the other parts of the food web,

like the mites and the nametodes,

and they start cycling nutrients

through that eating process.

So the fungi are really important

in stabilizing carbon in soils.

Once the carbon is stable

it can stay there stored
for thousands of years.

We know for example that carbon

can move from plant to plant

and it evens out the distribution
of carbon in that system.

They're working really hard.

If we maintain the plants, the forest,

and the natural fungal community,

we've got a natural engine

that's storing carbon below ground.

So, it's essential.

You know, it's there for us, right?

It's right in front of us.

We do more
than make mushrooms.

We have the ability to do so much more

than just break down matter.

Like the fruit of our labor,

most of you have only scratched

the surface of our usefulness.

We are the changers.

- I was 14 or 15 years of age, I believe,

when my brother, John, gave me a book

called "Altered States of Consciousness".

And within that book,
Andy Weil was referenced

on expanding consciousness,
and I got really excited.

I was going to charismatic
christian revival meetings

and seeing people being saved,

but it kind of was cool
from my perspective

that they were achieving

this altered states of consciousness.

So I thought that was part
of all of the same idea here.

I really owe credit to Andrew Weil.

- I think he read one of my early books

in which I wrote about mushroom hunting,

and psychodelic mushrooms

and made some reference to
medicinal mushrooms as well.

- It was like a turning point, you know,

like, I certainly was awakened.

Other people were thinking
about expanding consciousness.

And so I gave this book to
my friend, Ryan Schneider.

So, Ryan took it home,
and a few days later,

I said, "Ryan, where is my book?"

He told me his dad had burned it.

I said, "He burned my book?"

Rather than giving it back
to me or calling my parents,

he actually took the
initiative to burn this book.

I owe Ryan Schneider's father
a deep debt of gratitude,

because that single act
galvanized my interest.

Saying, "If this is so
powerful to cause a person

"to do such a bizarre act,

"then I should examine what
this subject is all about."

- Human existence on this Earth

goes back an extraordinary
long period of time,

most of which we have no
identifiable information.

It's entirely plausible,

given that the indigenous
people all around the world

know intimately all the plant life,

and will know the different
combination of plant life,

that our prehistoric ancestors,

they had come across the plants
that do alter consciousness.

- In about two million years,

the human cortex tripled in size,

and the brain exploded

over a ridiculously short
span of evolutionary time.

Two million years is nothing
when it comes to evolution.

What triggered that?

In the late
1970s, Terrence McKenna

and his brother Dennis McKenna

were the first that proposed
the Stoned Ape hypothesis.

It is known now that 22 primates,

23 including us, consume mushrooms.

And the idea is our ancestors,

they came out of the trees
and went across the Savannah,

would be tracking
animals that are pooping.

Well, in the sub tropics,

the most common mushroom
coming out of those cow patties

is psilocybe cubensis dung,
a potent magic mushroom.

One thing that mushrooms

and other psychedelics do reliably

is they induce synesthesia.

Synesthesia is the perception

of one sensory modality in another.

Hearing colors for
example, or seeing music.

You have these profound experiences

and you have to put
yourself in their place

and imagine what the impact

of such an experience must
have been on an early hominid.

These magic mushrooms open up

the flood gates of
information you receive.

Basically, you can think
of it as a contact fluid

between synapses within the brain.

Wow, what a competitive advantage.

Especially if you're
working with the geometry

of weapons or having to
put together something

that will give you a
better chance of survival.

The fact that this happened
not once, not twice,

but millions and millions of
times over millions of years,

is a very plausible explanation

for the tripling of the
brain two million years ago.

- It's not so simple to say

that they ate psilocybin mushrooms

and suddenly the brain mutated.

I think it's more complex than that.

But I think it was a factor.

It was like a software to program

this neurologically modern hardware,

to think, to have
cognition, to have language,

because language is
essentially synesthesia.

Language is just association

with inherently meaningless sound,

except that it's associated
with a complex of meaning.

A great deal of the brain's
real estate, you might say,

is devoted to the generation

and/or the comprehension of language.

Those neural structures are
not found in our ancestors.

That's a human trait,

to have so much physiology devoted

to generating and understanding language.

And that's a reflection
of evolutionary events

that made us what we are.

- I couldn't get these
mushrooms for the longest time.

When I was in Ohio I actually purchased

a bag of magic mushrooms.

But I had no guide, I
had no recommendations

for how much to consume.

So I had a bag about this big,

so I thought well that's
probably one dose,

so I consumed the bag.

Now for those of you who don't know,

this is like 10 times more

than you probably need to consume.

It was a warm summer day,

and there was a beautiful
big, big tree, an oak tree.

And then I noticed black
clouds on the horizon

and I realized there was a storm coming,

and I thought, "This is great,

"I will have this great
visual of the storm coming."

And I thought, "Well, I am going to climb

"to the top of the tree."

So I'm starting to feel the effects.

I am getting waves where the air

becomes a liquid. And woosh,

you have this distortion field

go through the visual landscape.

I've never seen that before.

I went, "Oh wow, this is what
they were talking about."

And I see the boiling
clouds are coming closer,

but they're looking angry now.

And then the lightning strikes would go.

And then all these geometrical fractals

would emanate out of
the lightning strikes.

And pretty soon I had
these overlying mosaics

of mathematical patterns
and geometric figures

of multiple colors that are swimming

in this field of vision

that these waves were flying through.

I've never in my life seen
anything like that before.

The winds increasing,
then the rains would come

and I became extremely scared.

And then also I realized
I am at the top of a hill,

during a lightning storm,
in the tallest tree,

not the best place to be

when you're gonna choose
a spiritual experience.

And so, I held on to
the tree for dear life.

And that tree was my pillar
back into the core of the Earth.

And I felt secure as long
as I held on to the tree.

Lightning strikes all
around, thunder claps.

You know, one second
between a lightning strike

and a thunder clap,

you knew it was coming closer and closer.

I was terrified that I wouldn't survive.

And through this terrorific experience,

terrifying and terrific at the same time,

I am up in this tree and I'm saying,

"What should I focus on?"

And I said, "Well, Stamet's,
you know, you're not stupid,

"but you stutter all the time."

And so I thought, "I
need to stop stuttering."

And so I said to myself, "Stop stuttering.

"Stop stuttering now."

A little inner voice in
my head, "Can you hear me?

"Stop stuttering now."

And then I started saying
that, "Stop stuttering now."

"Stop stuttering now."

Hundreds, hundreds,
hundreds, thousands of times.

After the storm had passed,
I came down from the tree,

drenched, soaked to the bone,

you know, in love with life, with nature,

in love with that tree.

That tree was so important to me.

And I went home and I went
to bed, I didn't see anybody.

And the next morning I woke up

and there was a really attractive
lady that I liked a lot,

but I could never stare at her in the eyes

because I was afraid to
stutter and embarrass myself.

So better to avoid social
contact than have social contact,

even though I was really attracted to her.

And she liked me, but I was,

didn't know what to do with
it, with that attention.

And so she was walking past me

and she looked at me and she
said, "Good morning, Paul."

And for the first time,

I looked her straight
in the eye and I said,

"Good Morning, how are you?"

And I stopped stuttering in one session.

♪ The old scrounge rapping hard ♪

This is the newest thing my
employees are listening to.

So my employees are the
best source of new music.

We love loud music for the
mushrooms in the laboratories.

It causes everyone to be synchronized.

We have a lot of nonverbal
communication in laboratories.

You know, when we talk,
your mouth spreads bacteria.

So we try to minimize talking.

So a lot of it is done
by gestures and knowing.

So why not have loud music?

My dad was a businessman.

I swore I'd never become one,

but I wanted to be independent

so I created a little mail order business

in order to supply myself and other people

who had like interests in mushrooms.

When we started the business,

it was extremely difficult back then,

and we didn't have the resources.

We were putting little advertisements

in Organic Gardening Magazine,

back when there was only
three television stations.

I invented this business

so I could buy equipment
for my laboratory wholesale.

Amazing to me, we have
nearly 100 employees,

and thousands of media outlets.

These mushrooms were so powerful to me

that I realized that I
wanted to study them.

This mushroom is known reishi or lingzhi,

the mushroom of immortality.

And it's one of the most
amazing and interesting

mushrooms that we've ever grown.

This mushroom helps the immunity

of not only people but bees.

Up this hill here we have a
quarter section of property,

160 acres, and we have a
large micrological experiment.

We planted 33,000 trees,
half with mycorrhizal fungi

tapped to the roots, half without.

And this is year nine.

So we are putting into
an Excel spreadsheet

or have put in 1,000 trees
to compare the treatments.

I came into from
licensing one of my patents.

And so when the political
climates in the United States

changed to be adverse
to environmentalists,

we bought land in Canada.

- I think the fact that he didn't come up

on a conventional academic pathway

is part of the reason he's as willing

to really explore ideas that
are not on anyone else's radar.

- I'm really honored that I discovered

a few things that no one
else had yet discovered

so I have now five patents
on entomopathogenic fungi.

These are fungi that infect insects

and, in particular, termites.

The biggest problem in
the commercialization

of bio-pesticides from fungi

has been the spore repellency property.

The insects avoid the
spores of these fungi.

In fact, so concerned are termites

that if a worker goes out
and encounters this fungus,

when the worker returns back to the nest,

guards, they'll capture that worker

that's infected with these spores,

take the worker to a graveyard

and they cut off the worker's head

and then the two guards commit suicide.

They're trying to protect the queen

and the nest and colony from infection.

And I discovered
something that no one else

had ever reported in the
scientific literature.

I found a biological switch
that delayed sporulation,

and then the insects were not repelled,

but they were super-attracted.

Which means one finds the fungus
now and the others follow,

and it ends up being a Trojan Horse.

The same fungi now are
taken past the guards,

given to the queen,

the queen feeds it to the brood,

the whole colony becomes like mummified

with this mycelium and whoosh,

the whole colony is infected and dies.

And then the spore repellency properties

protects your house from
subsequent invasions.

This is a huge discovery.

And then I tried it with carpenter ants,

with fire ants, fungus
gnats and then mosquitoes.

Now we're working with bed bugs

and we've had successes across the board.

The entire ecosystem
is infused with fungi.

So I see these deep reservoirs
of the ecology all around us.

In a world of invention,

the answer to our greatest problems

may be hiding right under our feet.

- There are mushrooms that have been used

in Western medicine.

Penicillin for example is a
really effective antibiotic.

Before it was synthesized,
during the Civil War,

when a solider would get wounded,

they would slap a piece of moldy bread

on his wound to benefit from
those antibiotic properties.

You know, so he wouldn't get an infection.

Alexander Fleming
discovered Penicillin in 1927.

The problem was that they
couldn't find strains

that could be commercialized,

that could produce enough of it

in a commercially economic fashion.

We fast forward and in
1942 a group of researchers

in Chicago went shopping.

And a lab assistant found a cantaloupe

that was rotting with a
beautiful golden mold,

and from that strain

we got the first hyper
producing strain of penicillium.

Penicillin literally
saved tens of thousands

of soldiers lives.

The Brits had this but the Germans

and the Japanese did not.

It has been suggested that the discovery

of this hyper-producing
strain of penicillin

was a significant influence
in winning World War II.

Alexander Fleming then received
the Nobel Prize in 1945

in recognition of the huge impact

that penicillin had on human health.

Here's how medicinal mushrooms

are thought to work.

A fungus will produce
all kinds of enzymes,

it's like a chemical warfare,

in order to fight off
competition for food,

like, other microbes, other
fungi, bacteria, virus.

That's what makes antibiotics work.

Chemicals that are produced by fungus,

like the one that penicillin is made from,

the fungus produces it

to kill bacteria that are competition.

And, when we take penicillin,
it kills our bacteria.

There's a long
tradition of using mushrooms

as medicines in East
Asia, especially in Korea,

China and Japan.

They appear to be able
to enhance and protect

the body's innate defensive mechanisms.

The uses for them filled niches for which

we really don't have anything
in Western pharmacology.

In Western medicine, all of our effort

is on identifying agents of
disease and eliminating them.

That has its place but
we do almost nothing

about supporting the good.

Shamans would treat patients

and the diseases were thought to be

elements of the spirit world.

Well, physicians today treat infections

and their spirits are bacteria

that are pathogenic, or are viruses.

So whether the shamans called them spirits

or whether the scientists
called them microbes,

with the invention of microscopes,

we get to see the microscopic
universe and landscape

that we thunder upon with every footstep.

The fact that these fungal networks

are seemingly invisible

but then represent themselves in a big,

flourishing mushroom in
a matter of a few days,

give us a window into
the invisible landscape

underneath our feet.

Fungal networks have defended themselves

against vectors of disease
for millions of years.

Viral pandemics occur periodically.

Between 1347 and 1353, one third

of the European population
died from the Black Plague.

The great flu pandemic of 1918,

2 % of the world population died.

Millions upon millions of people.

I think everyone is aware

of the threat potentially
of bio-terrorism.

But few people may know that Europeans

were actively involved,
consciously or unconsciously,

in bio-terrorism against
indigenous peoples

especially in The New
World, in Meso-America.

They brought in diseases.

And when you are extremely sick,

you can't fight off an invader.

It's an irony of history
that now the U.S. government

is interested in protecting
people from viral pandemics.

Paul Stamets cultured
numerous strains in his lab

in prepared natural extracts.

He then submitted samples
to the Defense Department's

Bioshield Program for testing.

- And Ironically, I owe a debt
of gratitude to Dick Cheney,

and George W. Bush.

- It is vital that our nation discuss

and address the threat
of pandemic flu now.

- Their funding of that research led

to some very novel discoveries

which we're still elaborating today.

What we know about these mycelial networks

is they're learning membranes.

They are self-learning and
network-based organisms

that can share and store knowledge.

The mycelium is vaccinating itself

against pathogens in the ecosystem.

We can capitalize on this,

because many of the
same bacterial pathogens

that infect fungi also can infect animals.

We found novel molecules, highly
active against pox viruses,

novel molecules highly active against HPV,

the human papilloma virus.

Many scientists are trying to come up

with the next antibiotic,
the next penicillin.

But we have barely tapped
into the fungal genome,

especially of the mushroom growing fungi.

Think of it, our old growth forest

that contain these ancient
fungi are deep reservoirs

of potential compounds that
can fight pandemic viruses.

We should save the old growth forests

as a matter of national defense.

- I recommend mushrooms
and mushroom products

frequently to patients
and I teach other doctors

about their uses.

Mushrooms have molecules not
found elsewhere in nature.

There's some that have
totally unusual properties

like Lion's Mane mushroom.

The Lion's Mane
mushroom is a globular

cascading icicle formed mushroom,

tastes like lobster or
shrimp when you cook it.

But a researcher in Japan
by the name of Kawagishi

discovered it around 1993.

And I don't have the foggiest
idea how he discovered this,

but he discovered that this mushroom

stimulates nerves to re-grow.

And he postulated it could be

an effective treatment
against Alzheimer's.

- Since we don't have
anything for Alzheimer's

and since this is non-toxic,
we should test it.

Mushrooms are completely unusual organisms

and they're ignored by so many people

and yet they're a vital interface
between all forms of life.

- At the University of Southern Florida,

a very interesting study came out.

Mice were trained to have a
conditioned fear response,

and so when there's a sound
that is associated with pain,

later on when they heard the
sound they cowered in fear.

But they treated the mice with psilocybin,

the compound in magic mushrooms,

the mice disassociated that link.

The mice overcame that
fear condition response.

- We started with very low doses

to as high a dose as one
milligram per kilogram.

Now what was interesting,

if you look at double labeled cells,

in other words the birth of new neurons,

we saw an increase in neurogenesis.

- Neurogenesis literally
means neuro for nerves,

and genesis, rebirth or beginning of.

The re-growing of neurons.

They were not using the
same neurological pathways

they have in the past.

This is really exciting
because it means that

the brain has a plasticity about it,

it's able to heal, it's able to grow,

it just needs the right compounds

to help it develop new
neurological pathways.

We're all getting older,

we'll all suffer some degree of dementia.

What compounds can we take

that enhances and preserves neurogenesis?

I know many many people who would not dare

take a psilocybin mushroom trip.

But the concept of them
taking 1/50th of a dose,

something like that,

and it causes neurogenesis and
it might make them smarter,

or in a better mood or happier?

That's a whole different subject.

We are on a never
ending search for partners.

Life affirming relationships.

Or, at the very least,

nourishment for the
next leg of our journey.

We have flourished side
by side with your species,

symbiotically, for centuries.

- Many shamanic cultures
relied on mushrooms

for their transcendental experiences.

This is pre-religion, all over the world.

It was all about the
individual's connection

to the spiritual world

or the mystery that is
our context for living.

- These are ancient artifacts
from the Mayan culture.

These are called mushroom stones.

This may be the largest collection

of mushroom stones in the world.

The Mayan culture was very mycophilic,

and they revered mushroom
stones for divination,

for spirituality, also
to be able to predict

incoming armies and how to
strategize against them.

A great ethnomycologist by
the name of R. Gordon Wasson

came up with the phrase mycophilia,

the love of mushrooms
that the Mayans shared.

Mycophobia was, classically,

the English who had a fear of mushrooms,

because they were enigmatic.

You know, these mushrooms
can get you high,

they can heal you, they can can
feed you, they can kill you.

And so, that which is so
powerful is naturally feared.

- Wasson was an amateur mycologist,

a person who studies mushrooms,

and was invited to
participate in a ceremony

by a curandera; Maria Sabina in 1955.

He took these mushrooms and
had a psychedelic experience.

- And when R. Gordon Wasson came out

with his research that was published

in Life Magazine in 1957,

that was basically a field
guide to psilocybin mushrooms

delivered to tens of millions of Americans

on their doorstep during
the peak of the Cold War.

This, then, was quickly
noticed by academics at Harvard

and other Ivy League schools
and then the cognoscente,

including Timothy Leary,

Ram Dass and Dr. Andrew Weil.

- Why do mushrooms produce molecules

that fit receptors in
the human brain and body?

What does that say?

What does that mean?

I mean, does that mean that we're supposed

to be using these things?

- Psychedelics during the '50s and '60s

were the cutting edge
of psychiatric research.

There were remarkable studies

with very, very promising findings.

- Psychedelics became part of research

and psychiatry for 30 years,

and there were several very
interesting indications

that they were researched.

The best data was actually for alcoholism.

- We found that having
a mystical experience

during the course of one session

was the strongest predictor
of positive outcome

meaning maintaining sobriety

over the long follow-up period.

It was very impressive.

- Some of these drugs, you know,

they had escaped the
lab as the phrase goes.

Millions of people were using them

and you have to realize

that this was a radical
force unleashed on the West.

The kids who take psychedelics

aren't gonna fight your wars.

They're not going to
join your corporations.

They won't buy it.

- A lot was going on back in the '60s.

It was a time of rapid cultural change.

There was irrational fears

about too much cultural change too fast.

President Nixon called Timothy Leary

the most dangerous man in America.

- We must wage what I have called

total war against public enemy number one

in the United States, the
problem of dangerous drugs.

♪ It ain't me, it ain't me ♪

- When everyone says shrooms to me,

it invokes this whole idea
to use psilocybin mushrooms

as a party drug.

They are so much more important
than just getting high.

♪ It ain't me, it ain't me ♪

- The movement to marginalize

the major psychedelics
is incredibly complex.

And it plugged into a
counterculture movement,

an anti-war movement, an
anti-establishment movement.

But there were many, many
forces that were at play.

- Somehow the fuse blew,
and one of the victims was

the medical research with psychedelics.

There's a very irrational
and anti-scientific climate

that was fueled even in
government pamphlets,

really had distorted information

that was not scientifically accurate.

- Get away, just get away.

- It's a bad trip, instant insanity.

The research
came to a halt in 1970,

the war was declared on drugs,

the Controlled Substances Act was passed,

and the research essentially was erased

from being taught in psychiatry.

- I think I may have
the dubious distinction

of being the last to give
psilocybin to a cancer patient

at the Maryland Psychiatric
Research Center.

And then the research
became completely dormant.

In our evolution as a species

we're at a point of coming to terms

with a major paradigm change.

A change in how we view
what we call reality.

And that always evokes tension and fears.

The culture wants to cling to
the old view of the universe.

- You realize that you've
been limited all this time

with your perspective of reality.

Had reality been known
to you at this level,

early on, how much more
evolved would we be as beings?

A lot of people would be afraid of that.

This is very dangerous territory.

People wanna give up their responsibility

of being able to understand,

and because they can't
understand, then they have faith.

And they put their faith in other people

who say they can understand.

And I think that's a situation

that's ripe for a predatory relationship.

- Anyone who's had one
of those experiences,

in a country where it's
not legal to have them,

is stuck in this position

where something really
precious and really giving,

a great gift to you,

is not understood by the culture at large

and furthermore puts you or other people,

or and other people,
at risk of prosecution.

And one response to that is to get angry

and to want to fight that.

And another response to it is to say

we just got to explain to
people what's going on here.

And when people understand it

then there will be
accommodation and respect.

There are a number of elders
living in the Bay Area

who've devoted some part of their career

in psychology or religious studies

who ended up being invited

to a small invitational
conference at Esalen

called the Pacific Symposium
on Psychedelic Drugs.

As we went around the
room making introductions,

most of the people who were clinicians

were excitedly talking about

what kind of clinical trial they would run

if they could use one of these substances

to treat PTSD or to treat depression.

- We wrote the best design we could,

we submitted it to the
FDA, and they approved it.

This is 1999.

And it reactivated psychedelic research

after basically a 22-year
dormancy in the United States.

- It's like a Rip Van Winkle effect.

You know, it's waking up 20 years later.

The methodologies, the
questions that we can ask,

on so many different levels.

- I have been diagnosed
with prostate cancer.

My diagnosis was so bad that,

they weren't giving me
any chance whatsoever.

- My diagnosis was kidney cancer.

Finding out that you may wanna get

your affairs in order.

- I first found out about this study

when my oncologist gave me a pamphlet.

He said here's something that
might be able to help you

with the anxiety.

And I was accepted into the study.

- The most important thing is to remember

that you're always safe.

And our recommendation is that whatever

is coming up that you allow it,

that you don't have to like
it, but you say, "Okay,"

rather than trying to run away from it.

Once a volunteer is enrolled in the study,

they're with us for the preparation,

the psilocybin sessions

and the integration follow-ups after.

I have been a guide for
around 350 psilocybin sessions

and then about 1,000 of the preparatory

and integration meetings.

- All right.
- Okay.

Now get your head up.

It's really just about experiencing

what comes up as the
psilocybin takes effect.

- In the intense part of this journey,

this world and things that
matter to most people:

family and all that, that wasn't even

what it was about.

They say anything mystical
can't be explained.

It's something like that.

It's a feeling of such immense power

that you can't even imagine.

I've never felt anything like it before.

It was about being in a
place of infinite space

and just being there.

- There's a experience of positive mood,

sometimes openheartedness, love.

Transcendence of time and space,

and then finally it's
thought to be ineffable.

People say, "I can't
describe that experience."

- In my mind I said, "Okay, hold it,

"if I give myself over to you,

"can you promise me that
I will be in at least

"as strong a shape as
when I entered this room?"

And I felt a voice that I needed to heed.

"Do you think I would
disrespect my own handiwork?"

This is the voice from on high saying,

"Do you think I would
disrespect my child?"

And I felt so beautiful.

I felt like I have never felt before.

My sense of being loved, of being worthy,

of love, of being cared for,
of being important to someone.

It's huge.

- Keep going into it.

Doing beautiful.

- One third of individuals in this study

said it's the single most

spiritually significant
experience of their lives.

About 70 % say it's among the five

most personally meaningful
experiences of their lives.

And you say, well, what
does that mean, you know?

And initially, I thought,

I wonder if they don't
have pretty dull lives.

But no, people would say, you know,

"When my first born came into this world,

"I'll never forget that.

"And life has never been the same since."

Or, "My father passed away,
that was deeply moving to me,

"I'm different now in the world."

They say, you know,
"It's kind of like that."

- The most glorious part was that

it made me feel more comfortable
with living, you know?

Because you're not afraid of dying.

- Frankly, I'm just a
laboratory scientist,

and I wasn't prepared for that.

- From the memory of
the transcendental state

of consciousness, many
people report less anxiety,

less depression, less
preoccupation with pain,

closer interpersonal relationships.

And perhaps most impressive they claim

to be a loss of the fear of death.

- It recalibrates how they see death.

It's been amazing hearing them
talk about this idea of love.

Many of them spoke about how nature itself

is something like this
substance called love.

And having touched that,

they've recalibrated and shaped
how they die differently.

- The John Hopkins
psilocybin research team

has completed or has underway
a total of nine studies,

and it got the world's attention.

When we finally released the results

of our first experiment

in a peer reviewed scientific journal,

it was very gratifying to see

how the daily press responded to it.

- A little bit of health news for you.

A single dose of
psychedelic magic mushrooms

can make people with severe
anxiety and depression

feel better for months.

- It changes the way they view themselves,

other people in the world,
from a single experience,

not Prozac that you have to
keep taking day after day.

- These are not chronic drugs.

And that's where most of the research

and development in big pharma goes.

The treatments that are
being explored for psilocybin

involve one, two, maybe
three pills, that's it.

That's not a very good business model,

you can't make a lot of money that way.

- The core of this mystical experience is,

is a mystery, frankly.

It's the existential mystery

of what are we really doing here?

What's the meaning of all this?

And that is a very uplifting
kind of experience to have.

- As a whole, there's a sense

of being part of a larger network.

And somehow that's more real
after a mystical experience.

You feel that you really are connected

in some meaningful way with
every atom of the universe.

- From my perspective, this
core experience informs

all of the religious,
ethical, and moral traditions.

I mean, that is the core of
love thy neighbor as thyself.

If we don't get some of
these priorities straight

with respect to how we treat other people,

how we treat our environment,
we're gonna cease to exist.

I could see this as being critical

to the evolution of the species frankly.

You wouldn't go hiking
up the Himalayan mountains

without any preparation.

Well, this is a journey.

These are sacraments and medicines

that should be treated
with respect and caution.

Consider it to be like going
to your own personal church,

and you're going to sit
in awe of the universe.

- We have a new study,
which is quite remarkable.

It's working with religious leaders.

These are ordained clergy
of many traditions:

Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism.

Since these experiences are at the core

of the major religions,

why not bring in religious
leaders who spent their careers

studying this landscape
to have the experience?

- You guys hear that?

You didn't?
- Vibrating.

- Vibrating, phone call was coming in.

There she goes.

Message from mom.

Inbound message from mother.

I think I had the best of all mothers.

My mother was extremely kind.

So another mushroom
empowers the immune system

and this is Turkey Tails.

And Turkey Tail mushrooms have been used

for more than 1,000 years.

This hit home to me very
personally in June of 2009

when my 84-year-old mother
called me up and says,

"Paul, I have something very
serious to talk to you about."

She says, "My right breast is five times

"the size of my left.

"I have six swollen lymph
glands the size of walnuts,"

and her voice started shaking,

and I'm not ashamed to
admit that I started crying.

She had stage 4 breast cancer.

But then the doctor said, "You're too old

"to have radiation therapy,

"you can't have your breasts removed,

"but there's an interesting
study on Turkey Tail mushrooms

"at Bisteria Medical School.

"You might want to try taking those."

And my mother goes, "Well,
my son is supplying those."

So she was put on Taxol and
Herceptin, wonderful drugs,

and she started taking eight
Turkey Tail capsules a day,

four in the morning,
and four in the evening.

And that was in June of 2009.

And today my mother has
no detectable tumors.

And I'd like to bring my mother up.

- You have to live
through it to believe it.

- By the way, thank you
for giving birth to me,

I really appreciate that.

- You haven't thanked me lately?

- It has been reported in literature

that medicinal mushrooms like turkey tail

help chemotherapeutic agents work better.

And I think she's a
living example of that.

One can argue with me on the statistics,

but my mother is alive

and all the doctors that saw her

did not believe that she would survive.

- It is my great honor to
introduce Paul Stamets.

Keep going, bud.

- I brought a fungal friend of mine

from the old growth forest.

And I present to you

agarikon.

Agarikon was described in 65 AD

as Elixirium at longem vitum,

the Elixer of long life.

So I want to take you on a
magical mushroom mystery tour,

And I'm gonna push the
envelope here, folks.

Mycodiversity is biodiversity.

You will decompose, I'm gonna decompose.

We're all gonna die!

That's okay, because we will
enter into the mycoverse.

We will forever exist together

within the myco molecular matrix.

- When he talks the way he does,

he is channeling the mycelium.

And this is a marvelous thing.

- Brain neurons, mycelium,
the computer internet,

the organization of the universe,

all shares the same archetype.

I believe matter begets life,

life becomes single cells,

single cells form chains,
chains forms branches,

matrices form interlocking,

intersecting mosaics of mycelium,

and mycelium-like organisms ebb and flow

not only on this planet,

on other planets into the future.

Thank you very much.

- Paul was wonderful about
bringing us information

about all these aspects of mushrooms.

And then it inspired
all these young people.

Now we have people like Trad Kotter

carrying on all the great
work that Paul started,

talking about bio-pesticides,

talking about the ways
you can detoxify oil.

All of these amazing things were started

because people like Paul brought that

to the culture at large.

And young people now
have taken up the cause

and are really expanding our insights

into what the world of
mushrooms can do for us.

- Hi, my name's Peter and I'm with

the Radical Mycology Project.

I recently trained a mushroom

to digest used cigarette filters.

- Paul Stamet's book "Mycelium Running",

got my mind sort of in a whirl.

That was when I first discovered

there was much more to
mushrooms than just food.

- If you would have seen
me when I dropped out

of high school, I was
just making rap music.

I knew very little
about the natural world,

I never even went on
a hike until I was 18.

But finding Paul Stamets' TED talk video

was one of the big
inspirations that pushed me

into the wonderful world of mycology.

- My first mushroom book was
"The Mushroom Cultivator"

by Paul Stamets.

- I will be eternally thankful to him

for showing me that it's
okay to be mushroom mad.

- We really don't even know most fungi.

We're discovering new
species on a daily basis

and you really don't have to go

to exotic locations to discover them.

- Anybody can add to the
science from identifying

a new species to developing a
new myco-remediation protocol.

There's a great
need for more people

to study fungi and there's
lots of opportunities.

It's amazing what
we don't know about mushrooms.

They really are a frontier of knowledge.

They probably can help us
solve all sorts of problems,

if we would look a little deeper.

- Anyone, anyone can help by
going and walking in the woods

and contributing to mycology.

You may have found a species
that has never been found.

We need these mushrooms.

We work together as a
community to solve problems.

We could be the community
that heals the planet.

- It's been estimated
two-thirds of our food supply

is bee-pollinated dependent.

Unfortunately we're losing bees

across the world in a dramatic die off

that is very dangerous for the
bio security of this planet.

So I started exploring
ways to help save the bees.

And I noticed in the summertime

there's a continuous convoy of bees

going from my beehives to mycelium.

But then it dawned on me,

maybe the bees were benefiting

from the mycelial extracts

because they have anti-viral properties.

And so I cultured the
most aggressive strains

and then submitted them.

We started testing the
effects of these extracts

in helping bees survive.

- Some of these fungal
extracts are really good

at reducing viral levels in the bee.

So here we have a fungus
that is helping fight viruses

in an insect.

- We're musing mushrooms to create

an entirely new class of materials

which are totally compostable
at the end of their lives.

- The researchers found
that when they heated

a portobello mushroom skin

to roughly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit,

it became a lattice of carbon nano ribbon

that could be used in battery design

because it allows a good amount

of surface area for storing energy.

- You can filter water, you
can create medicinal compounds

almost on demand.

We work in Haiti and they look at you

like I had superpowers.

Well, I tell them, I said,

"You're about to have superpowers too."

- Coming from the background of not having

any training and getting
myself into the lab,

was very empowering, I
felt like a superhero.

I felt like I could do anything.

You're officially a mushroom farmer.

- Spore Lady.
- Spore Lady and Sporegasm.

- I see my species as
part of a larger whole.

Rather than being at
the top of the pyramid,

being one of the organisms
with inside the circle.

And the circle is made up of mycelium

holding us all together.

- We've always thought of
plants as these inert objects,

these things that don't actually

interact with each other and build things.

And what my work is showing and
other people's work as well,

is saying, actually they need each other.

They need each other
to grow in a community

so that they can start sharing the load.

You do this, I'll do that,

and together we can make a
beautiful resilient community.

They have an incredible capacity

to make things change very, very quickly.

So if we can work with them,
if we get it, you know,

if humans get it, we can
change this thing really fast.

So I am super hopeful.

We've just got to get busy
and help nature do it's thing.

- Evolution never stops.

There's not one point it happens

and then it doesn't happen again.

It's continuously happening.

A core concept of evolution

is that through natural selection,

the strongest and the fittest survive.

But, moreover, communities
survive better than individuals.

Communities rely upon cooperation.

And I think that's the power of goodness.

Evolution is based on the
concept of mutual benefit

and the extension of generosity.

When we see
it, we understand it.

And when we understand
it, we care about it.

And when we care about it,
we'll do something to save it.

- We need to have a paradigm
shift in our consciousness.

What will it take to achieve that?

We are not an individual.

We are a vast network of molecules,

and energies and wavelengths.

The interconnectiveness
of being is who we are.

This world of
ours is always changing,

not for the better, or for the worse,

but for life.

If the storms come and the water rises,

if fire scorches the land
or darkness descends.

We will be here, working.

As we always have.

Extending the network, building community,

restoring balance.

One connection at a time.

It may take a million years,

or a hundred million.

But we will still be here.

♪ There's a whole wide
world right under our feet ♪

♪ Watched it grow so I
hate when you leave ♪

♪ Connected on one leaf to a tree ♪

♪ From the ground this magical thing ♪

♪ Breathe life ♪

♪ And break down ♪

♪ Breathe in ♪

♪ Break out ♪

♪ This water, this breath ♪

♪ Will be how we remember ♪

Lt. Paul Stamets.

- I became an astromycologist
because of awe.

Awe at the miracle of life.

- How did you feel seeing
a fictional character

on Star Trek that is
inspired by your science?

- I'm super honored.

I tuned in to Star Trek when
I was about 12 years old.

Spores, by nature, travel
through the cosmos.

When they germinate, some mushrooms form.

Some magic mushrooms to help
you bend time and space.

- Paul, if I were to visit you,

could we have some of
these magic mushrooms?

- Nature provides, I don't.

♪ Everywhere and everything ♪

♪ I am the reason you breathe in ♪

♪ Break down ♪

♪ So breathe in ♪

♪ And breathe out ♪

♪ Now this water, this breath ♪

♪ Will be how we remember ♪

♪ So let it all spread around ♪

♪ Let it all spread around ♪

♪ So let me bring you back to life again ♪

♪ Let me bring you back to life again ♪

♪ Let me bring you back to life again ♪

♪ Let me bring you back to life again ♪