#340: Paul Stamets — How Mushrooms Can Save You and (Perhaps) the World

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Check it out. Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers, people who are the best at what they do, to tease out the routines, the life lessons, the habits, the favorite books. Whatever it might be that you can hopefully apply and test in your own life. My guest today is Paul Stamets. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have requested

that I have Paul on the show. You can find him on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, Paul Stabets, S T A M E T S. He is an intellectual and industry leader in the habitat, medicinal use, and production of fungi. That's F U N G I fungi, some people say. And you might also think of mycelium. or mushrooms. Part of his mission is to deepen our understanding of and respect for the organisms that literally exist under every footstep taken on this path of life. This episode is Bonkers. Uh

the the implications, applications, medicinal uses are truly mind boggling. And we do get into some of my favorite subjects, including psychedelics and uh other aspects of bending reality. Here we go. Back to the bio. Paul is the author of six books, including Mycelium Running, subtitled How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.

Growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms and psilocybin mushrooms of the world. He has discovered and named numerous new species of psilocybin mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms or silucibee mushrooms, uh better known as magic mushrooms, and is the founder and own of fungi perfecti. makers of the host defense mushroom supplement line. And little known fact I have been using Host defense? uh products for a few years now after Same no srat.

said that one of them was her favorite purchase of less than a hundred dollars. in the last year or two, and that was in my last book, Tribe Mentors. So I do have some familiarity with his products. Paul has received numerous awards, including Invention Ambassador for the Americas for the advancements of science. the National Mycologist Award from the North American Mycological Association and the Gordon and Tina Wasson Award from the Mycological Society of America. His Instagram is awesome if you want to see some really, really, really weird fungi and him off in the woods all over the world doing weird things. And in uh very new and breaking news, we are actually holding the podcast waiting for this to happen. Paul is the author of a new study in Nature's Scientific Report, which details how mushroom extracts, specifically extracts from woodland polypore mushrooms, can greatly reduce viruses that contribute to bee colony collapse. This is a huge, huge, huge deal.

And uh we do get into the importance of bees and how without bees pretty much everything goes down the toilet, uh, including a lot of humanity. So I will include a link in the show notes, which you can always find at Tim.blog forward slash podcast for everyone who wants to check that out. And two other announcements. If you are interested in as I am, and I'm certainly committed uh to this to the tune of seven figures over the next year or two. to supporting psychedelic science and research. Uh please join me

And if you're interested in doing so at a higher amount, meaning over a hundred thousand dollars, please go to Tim.blog forward slash science. That's Tim.blog forward slash science. And if you want to support at uh lower dollar amounts, uh check out maps.org. And for anyone who's already filled out that form I will be reaching out soon. There's a lot of amazing stuff on the horizon that I hope you'll be involved with. And last but not least, the blog now contains transcripts of every podcast episode to date. People have been asking for this for a long, long time. I want to do it right. So now you can find transcripts to every episode of the podcast at Tim.blog forward slash Transcripts.

And that is a long intro. So without further ado, please enjoy This wide ranging conversation with Paul Stamets and if you can only listen to one part. Jump ahead about forty nine minutes.

Or so. Forty nine minutes and fifty seconds, I believe. But yeah, let's call forty nine minutes. to listen to his description of his first experience With Silocybee mushrooms or psilocybin containing mushrooms and the effect it had on his lifelong stutter. It is fucking nuts. So if you're gonna skip around, jump ahead forty nine minutes or so and listen to that story, it is really, really wild. So

They have it. Enjoy. I Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you Tim. Honored to be here.

I've had so many listeners request you on the show. I have wanted to have you on the show for so many years and finally when you made your Very comprehensive cameo in Michael Pollins most recent book that served as the reminder that I had to reach out somehow. So I'm very pleased that you're here. And I thought we could start with some definitions and pronunciation.

which uh are are very selfishly points of insecurity for me. So F U N G I How should we pronounce that? Well, that's an excellent question. Um, fungi, according to Oxford uh English Dictionary, with a J is the correct pronunciation. But Fungi Fun uh fungi or fungi. So fungi is what us mycologists use.

Uh though people from Spanish mycologists will use fungi, yeah, Italian mycologists will say fungi. Uh but uh English speakers uh the standard pronunciation is fungi with a ji. And then there are Two terms that I suspect may not be Totally synonymous. We have mushrooms.

And mycelium or mycelium? I don't know the correct pronunciation. Are mushrooms a subset of mycelium, one component part? Can you define Or distinguish those two for us, please? The mycelium is the underground network analogous to the roots of a tree. Uh, and the fruit bodies are the mushrooms. So they are produced as reproductive structures long after m many challenges on the path of growth.

uh in the wood in woods underground et cetera the mycelial networks are vast It's been called the proverbial tip of the of the iceberg. But just think of this as the The mycelium um navigates through a microbially hostile environment.

Literally there can be uh tens of millions of microbes per gram of soil And the mycelial these five fine filaments that look like cobwebs. Um are are running underground.

And this underground network Is being challenged by all sorts of microbes and as many people know that Um bacteria like to eat fungi, that's why mushrooms rot. Um, but the fungi are able to navigate with these mycelial networks only one cell wall thick, and they can be up to eight miles of mycelium per cubic inch. Now they only have one cell wall between uh

Their their internal s uh cells and the external environment. We have five or six skin layers that protect us from infection. The mycelium that basically has one cell layer And yet is able to

Overcome the challenges of miljans of microbes, many of which want to consume it. And it navigates to create the largest organism on this planet. It's a mycelial mat in eastern Oregon. Over twenty two hundred ekers in size. Now it's one cell wall thick. And yet it's the largest organism on this planet.

А несатимо тоді мінологіка по ми. And this vast underwhelm network uh that is so central to habitat and human and plant health. is something that we have really tapped into. So mushrooms come from mycelium.

The mycelium can grow literally for decades before a single mushroom The arms. Mushrooms are highly perishable. They're like fish and four or five days they mature and and then they rot, and then in doing so they sporulate. Just before they rotten they attract insects that are

Then help spread the spores. Much like you know, birds spread seeds. Um and the birds come the fruit, the fruit of the Tree like a peach. For instance, attracts

And sucks. And birds and then the peach pet or Seeds of an apple or another fruit. Uh or spread. So the fragrance of the mushrooms are beacons, fragrance beacons that emanate through the ecosystem

And these scent trails and entice animals. The come to these Vodaciously delicious free bodies. And then they s in the course of them Eating them, they spread the spores. But

The mycelium literally can B Exist. See not Not invisible. Invisible to us.

ridiculously stupid humans that are thundering giants upon these networks that are underneath their feet. But the mycelium really races behind us. And we're the Biggest walking catastrophe that I know on the planet, and as we walk, we break wood chips, we leave impressions.

Well the mycelium is sensitive to those impressions of our footsteps. And as we create new debris fields, the mycelium reaches up behind Our footsteps to gobble up. that newly uh uh made material in competition with other fungi and other organisms. And

Mycelium. If if we're looking at mycelium and Uh as one uh component of that or rather not the pr the product of that, I suppose. And please feel free to correct me if I if I screw things up by restating. Mushrooms people have had a a decent amount of exposure to, and they tend to associate it with, say, the produce aisle in a grocery store. And uh think of them perhaps as plants. Uh from a A genetic perspective or an evolutionary perspective.

How should people think about Mycelium. Mm-hmm. I love this question. Well you bring up a very good point. For for almost a hundred years now, the mycology departments were a subset of botany departments. They really should be in the zoology departments.

Uh we separated from fungi about six hundred and fifty million years ago. Six hundred and fifty million years ago, we had a common ancestor. In fact, there's a new super kingdom called a Paisla Kanta. That joins a fungi and animalia together. When uh basically the mycle networks um when um when They hit the land from the ocean.

Many people don't realize some of the m largest networks of mycelium in the world now have been discovered uh in the uh below the sediment layers of the ocean. There's vast mycelial networks throughout the entire ocean. There's lots of dead organic plant material that's falling down to the sediments, and the mycelium is involved in gobbling those up. But from a evolutionary point of view Six hundred and fifty million years ago, we chose the path of encirclating our nutrients basically in a cellular sac, a stomach. The mycelium uh digest nutrients externally.

It produces enzymes and acids and other compounds. That break down complex organic molecules and then absorbs those. uh through the cell walls. The entire My cell network Um is like a sponge.

It absorbs selectively those nutrients that it needs. And animals uh went sort of over ground. And we develop these digestive systems and I in a protective uh skin. uh enveloped structure or bodies.

Uh and then the mycelium continued on its course very happily, developing underground. So with the divergence of fungi and and an animals is extremely well documented. But an extraordinary article came out Just this past year.

Um and this article You know the The Uh the big bang was about thirteen point eight. billion years ago, the earth formed around four point five

billion Years ago Uh ne first Unicellular organisms uh were found to A few hundred milyen years later, but the first multi cellular organisms so far found.

The oldest one is two point four billion years ago. It was found in South African lava. Yeah, in the basalt. And it's two point four billion years old, the oldest representation so far in the fossil record of a multicellular organism. And these are mycilial networks.

So the mycelium Had its form. Лон бифо в харз. And moreover in Brazil hundred and fifty uh hundred and fifteen million years ago

This is before the the great extinction event that killed off the the uh dinosaurs. Um And at that time Mushrooms also had their form. So these mushrooms are really ancient organisms. They had developed their forms long before we had developed ours.

We are descendant from these fungal networks. Um they are progenitor uh ancestors. We are We are really descendants of fungi. This is why under the microscope so many of our cells look so similar to that of uh of fungi. And also why our best antibiotics that we have. coming from fungi are very good at preventing bacteria from growing.

But we have very, very few good antifungal antibiotics because of our close evolutionary history. That are not toxic or highly toxic to us, so antifungal drugs. Are extremely dangerous. Those who have immunosuppressants are well aware of this. Um and um when you defeat the immune system of the human body using immunos suppressants for uh organ transplants um and other

reasons in in medicine. You really um You're dancing with death because it's extremely damaging uh to Your immune system that can hold many of these infections at bay.

There's so many directions that I want to go with this. I'm gonna try to contain my uh A D and focus this in uh A direction towards Another type of utility

And relates to a problem that if I were to walk fifteen feet I could observe with my own eyes right now, and that is carpenter ants. And I was wondering. If you could talk about Your history with carpenter ants and the intersection.

With Mycelium. Yeah. Um This is a something very dear to my heart. So

Well, um let me I'm gonna I'm In a segue. Um because there could be listeners out there who have children, and I'm gonna tell their children to the story how vacuuming And helping your mother and your parents. Made me over a million dollars.

Um and it it ties into carpenter amps. So um I grew up in a so I'm I'm I need a Two minutes to set this up. We have all the time in the world. Okay. So I grew up in a small town in Ohio, Colombiana, Ohio. Uh very conservative town, about five thousand people. Um and I grew up in a fairly wealthy household. My family had steel mills and sawmills and

We were affluent. Um we had four hundred people in a town under our unemployment of a town of about five thousand. Um so the the Stamis Enterprise Company, unfortunately, because of After World War Two, we bombed, you know, we bombed Japan, we we bombed Germany, but they retooled, they rebuilt their factories. They had modern factories after the war. Um, in the United States we didn't do that. And so the machine tool industry really fell apart in the early nineteen sixties. Huge

Eкономіick downturn So I was the best experience of my life. was the fact that I grew up in a wealthy environment and then it was ten or eleven years of age, the entire financial empire collapsed. We lost everything.

And we laid off over four hundred people in the town. Were laid off? I'm going to school with these these kids and their parents, you know, or not very happy about what was happening. It was really uh devastating to to us and Am I

Parents separated and we lived in this big house. The electricity was cut off, the water was cut off. Um I remember eating cat food. I was just so hungry. Gave me tremendous sparks. Uh but uh But I my mom was really desperate. My brother John went on to Yale. My brother Bill was at Cornell. Um

And um this is, you know, towards the end of their college experiences and I was there home alone with my mother and my twin brother. And I just really had to step up the plate to help my mother as much as possible. I remember running a hose for my neighbors, about five hundred feet of hose. uh just to get two or three PSIs so we can trickle feed into the toilet so we can flush them. It was really

uh strange and the bewildering sort of um Kafka esque existence because We were shunned by the town. My mother went into religion, my dad went into alcohol. They both were self medicating in a sense. Oh, there's the those two uh avenues. Um but I got really good at helping my mom vacuum.

Um because she did help and we c didn't have, you know, the support team we had anymore, so I was always like tearing apart vacuum clean cleaners and borrowing parts and Trying to get get trying to help my mom any way I could. So I vacuum, vacuum, vacuumed. I got I'm really

still passionate about vacuuming. It's one of my I'm a really good house husband. I like washing dishes and vacuuming a lot. So how this works segue is in the carpenter answer is the is the following. So I grew up in a you know this An affluent environment I came out to Washington State, became a lager hippie for three years, you know, working in the woods.

then moved uh outside of Olympia, Washington. I went to the Evergreen College. And I try to start this little business and I Live house that uh doctor Andrew Wiles said is the worst house he's ever seen anyone live in in North America. Um that's one statement. It was a flat flat house built with military surplus materials, and I had twelve buckets catching water.

From the flat roof. Why need to build a flat roof in Washington State with army surplus materials is another question. But there's so many leaks that I just keep on putting up buckets. And then um One day I remember there's a storm and and the the house fell like two or three inches and my wife goes, My God, the house is falling. I said, Don't worry, dear, we don't have to fill the buckets as much because the water will run out faster. I was just trying to be able to be optimistic because I was afraid that she was gonna get up and leave me because the conditions were so bad. But Anyhow

I would be making my espresso in the morning. And um And I look over in the corner. And there's a pile of sawdust from carbon rats. And I see them running around.

And the carbon carbon rands are are more nocturnal than they are Uh you know, act of the daytime. And so I'd make my espresso every morning, I look over the the Paul Sadas, pull up the vacuum cleaner, vacuum it up. I did it the next day, and the next day, and the next day. I did this for hundreds of days, realizing the house is getting more

Less structurally sound. Uh w with a carpenter hands munching them. And so I well you know I gotta do something about this. So You know, I didn't want to use raid, I didn't want to use you know toxic insecticides, um, because

The war against nature. Uh, in my mind is a war against your own biology. And uh what's toxic to other organisms is likely toxic to you and this has been well founded. Now with lots of examples. So I wanted the environmental protection agency homepage

And I looked up A group of fungi that would attack Yeah. And then these are called entomopathic genet fungi. Now it's a mouthful. But entimum means uh insects, uh, pathogenic means of course causing disease.

Of insects. And this group Uh, the entomopathogenic uh uh fungi that was particularly of interest and supported by scientific literature And with the encouragement of the EPA with a group of fungi in the genus Metorisium. So meta and rhizum uh you know m uh lots of mycelium, lots of rhizomorphs.

And so I looked into this group of met uh meterhsium fungi non toxic to bees, non-toxic to to fish, non-toxic to humans. Um and I I got some of these fungi. And I started growing them up. Now I started studying this and I thought Well, this is really interesting. Why isn't this not available Everywhere.

Why isn't there Lowe's and Home Depot and Walmart why aren't they selling us? Well, for very good reason. The insects aren't stupid. Um when you see insects like carpenter constantly cleaning themselves They're trying to get the spores of the spungus off of them. is the most common fungus, according to some reports, in the soil, underneath your feet.

It is everywhere. It is a dance of of of dinner and death between insects and fungi. Many insects eat fungi? Many fungi eat insects. Uh the two of'em don't like to uh be at the dinner table at the same time. So

I ended up um getting this fungus and I studied it And the reason why it never came to market is for the spore repellency property. Now this is really important because These insects have realized that the scent of these spores meant that there's a disease. Threat.

to the colony. So the insects fastidiously clean themselves of these spores so when These big companies like Bayer and Dow and Singenta. tried to make bait stations using these spores. Even though in the laboratory they could dust the insects with the spores, and sure enough, five days later

They would kill the insects. Um the po made bait stations around people's houses. The insects won't go near those base stations because there's other spores. And so the spore repelency property Preventing these bait traps from going into market.

for preventing Uh, termites, fire ants, carpenter ants, uh, moisture ants, all sorts of uh ants and termites are infected by these these these the sporulating fungus meterhizum. So I I thought well I may have a laboratory, I've very large laboratories. We produce about fifty thousand kilos of mycelium. of the f of of many different

gourmet medicinal mushrooms uh per week. And my environments are class one hundred clean rooms. These are high tech clean room environments using HEPA filters, high efficiency, particularly air filters. Um and The last thing I want is a sporating mold in my laboratories.

So I got these cultures and I was shocked at how much spores they were. It reminds somebody of a penicillion mold, you know, growing on cheese. You want that flying around your laboratory because my oyster mushroom cultures Or my sheetaki cultures could can become contaminated. From airborne sports. So I

I culture this out really quickly, and so the window of exposure was very short and I set up all these precautions. And then I'm culturing these fungi and then they grow out as green molds. And then I saw this white Wedge. A V shaped wedge that was all white, that had no sporulation on it.

And I went, Wow. That's interesting. I look up in scientific literature and everybody said, Oh The culture is losing the ability to reproduce. Is we losing the ability to sporate It is senescing.

Avoid sectors This is what they're called these wedges or white sectors. Because That path of genetic of a path down that gene trail.

will end up meaning the culture will die. They partially got that right. But I was motivated by not having spores my laboratory, so I chased those white suckers. And then they grow out in about a week or two weeks. And uh on a standard size petri dish.

And then after about five or six, seven transfers That white wedge got bigger and bigger and bigger, and pretty soon no spirulation. And this is current day in your the th this experiment that you were running was is is done more recently, not when you were under the

the flat roof built by military surplus. Is that right? I'm just trying to place the the chronology. Okay, got it. So But I I had to go out in my laboratory to have enough mycelium to be able to to treat the carpenter amps. Gotcha. So I I finally grew it out. I grew it out on rice.

And I made a big deal. to my daughter um And I am so thankful to her for the reasons you're about to hear. Um and I made a big deal in the middle of summer saying we're gonna trick the carpenter outs. 'Cause every morning I'm sucking up all those buttons.

And so I asked her for her Barbie doll dish, which I still have. I'm gonna mount it in a frame. And I put like twenty five kernels of of white mycelium on rice of this meterhysium fungus without spores. Because they wouldn't go near the Rice of Hadspores.

And I laid it out at around eight thirty at night in a summer afternoon, or it's a summer evening. And I made a big deal of it. Uh and I got my daughter involved, you know, as a citizen scientist, young she was only oh my gosh, she was probably fourteen at the time. And so we then we went to bed. So thankfully

My daughter woke up at one o'c two o'clock in the morning. And she rather than going straight to the bathroom, she wanted to look at her Barbie doll dish. She went over there turned on the lights and swarming with carbon around. I go, Oh my gosh, you've got to be kidding. And uh and so she ran into our bedroom said, uh Dad, Dusty, wake up, you've got to see this. And you know, we didn't want to wake up as two o'clock in the morning, but she dragged us out of bed and we went over there and it was it just covered with carbonants. They're picking up the rice and they're going into the

into the recesses of the house disappearing. And like, oh my gosh, that was amazing because I had mice in the house. The mice could have eaten the rice and I would never have known. But we watched for a few minutes and they took away. All the myceliated rice.

So we fast forward I'm making my espresso. Every morning. Hundreds of times. I get the vacuum cleaner out. I go to that spot. There's no status.

The carpenter ants. We're gone. And I went, Oh my gosh. I just think I figured out a way to overcome the spore repelency property. So now this has been elaborated. We publish an article in the journal Sociobiology.

Proving this is effective against subterranean termites, for most termites. We've done experiments now with the US DA. uh and other uh teams Some of the biggest

Pesticide companies in the world. I'm I'd have to check my NDAs to see if they're still Covered or not, but Everyone listening. Can imagine who they are.

They tested this. It's effective against bed bugs, uh uh ants, termites, uh Thrips. Flies, mosquitoes. Um

You know, uh might's Фноменнол річ And so I ended up finding something that is a super attractant. And basically the opposite of the spore repellency property is the mycelial attractancy property. Two sides of the same coin.

The yin and yang of nature. It's kinda harmonious in that sense. I like that. And we found that if we diluted the mycelial extracts on rice without the spores This these conidial these preconidial pre spoilating sectors that I described. We have creating a super attractant so powerful. that when the extractant was diluted

Five hundred to one with water. Diluting the extract made it more potent in terms of attractin see. In one experiment, two drops of this put on on a pane of glass. And fire rants uh uh walked directly to that place. And then scratched at that place until they died.

Walking about a мітер. Creating a trail That other than uh uh fire ants would follow. So

So we have done this now with choice, they're called T tests. We've done this with um the T tests are even better. T test oftentimes is you know go left. Uh for the control go right for the treatment. But we end up doing of four and five choice experiments were There was only one

uh corridor or avenue that had the treatment and the other ones were all controls. So highly significant activity. And we found something that I can my dream is be able to s uh To attract a locust plug into a fifty five gallon drum. Um we can put these in foggers and you know, in Africa and just

create a massive uh huge a huge attractancy factor. The cool thing also is the attract and see is not lethal. Um so Um that that that comes later. the infectious state of the myceliumic grows And then it penetrates the uh the exoskeleton.

With a hyphal peg. It kinda anchors itself like s like a sticky little tongue. And then it dissolves the exoskeleton, the chitin, and then the hypopeg invades into the body of the insect. And then mummifies them. So these these are many people heard about these zombie fungi, this is what they are.

Uh some of them have a quarterceps representation. There's a little club fungi. In Costa Rica and elsewhere in the subtropics, the Um many of the answer. are well known for the leaf cutter ants.

Another answer known to They have to get infected with the spungus, they climb to top canopy. of of the trees and They lock their mantle bowl underneath a leaf and boing a mushroom. comes out of their head and their anus.

Uh and it sporulates in this way the fungus gets to sporate in pre air conditions high up in the canopy. So it causes uncontrolled behavior of climbing with these insects. So It's I am it's

So that was breakthrough. And the reason why and I end up uh license this to A group of investors and I got a million dollars and uh So I Like to tell my daughter.

Um she was very instrumental in this and um The the licensing Agreement. had some limits on it. They had to take it to market within five years or I pull back the licensing agreement. Um and they didn't take it to the market, so I pulled it back and everything's actually quite friendly.

Um But it's a little bit of a mystery why he did not make it to market. Um And I have a lot of conspiracy theories as to why it did not make it to market. Um I hesitate to mention those.

Um But I was given a chunk of change and I was smart enough to realize that They can't crush this, and that was a condition. This has to come to market, if it doesn't come to market, then I get the patent rights back and

Not been issued uh Nine patents on this. People can go to the US Patent homepage, look them up. The latest patent that I it was issued on this two years ago. is really phenomenal.

Because I have patents on anti viral properties of mycelium. And I had these patents on these entimopathogenic fungi. For all insects.

And all diseases vectored by insects. It doesn't get bigger than that. What are there any types and and um Uh th there are a number of different areas I wanna dig deeper. Are there are there any particular common viruses or particularly lethal viruses that

you've seen applications for using mycelium? In terms of resistance or defeating? Yeah, well there's there um there's a lot of examples of that. Um And so I published an article in a journal, a peer reviewed journal called Herbalgram. In June of two thousand and one.

Summarizing uh all the literature and that's been published on the on the anti viral properties of mushroom mycelium. is a whopping one page long. With like six references, there's virtually very, very little out there. Well that was in June of two thousand and one.

September eleventh, two thousand and one, you know, nine eleven occurred. Very quickly the greatest concern Uh for the US Defense Department and And biosecurity was uh weaponizable viruses, uh, pox viruses. you know, anthrax is a bacterium. The anthrax attacks occurred a few weeks later.

A group of researchers uh in the US Defense Department who were scavenging the literature saw my article. I said, Wow, there's some evidence here. They contacted me because I have a very large librar uh library. Now It may sound large. So people who don't have libraries have about eight hundred strains

of uh different species of mushrooms, c many of which collected from the old growth forest. Uh so some libraries have twenty thousand, you know, uh uh cultures, so I'm I'm small compared to them, but I'm private. I'm not not a big institution. And so they said, Well listen, you've you've published some interesting articles here, there's some evidence. Uh we have been this fund funded by Dick Cheney and George George Bush.

Ironically, I have a debt of gratitude to them with a BioShield Bio Defense program. It's called pr uh Project Bio Bio Defense. But then became known as the BioShield program. And So They uh

It listened My support. And then I began to send them cultures of Mushrooms boiled in hot water. uh ethanol extracts of the mushrooms, the mycelium that gave rise to the mushrooms.

Excera, et cetera. And so I ended up sending out uh sets of a hundred of these samples. I mean this for me this is a coup d'etat. I have government laboratories give me free research. You know, on my extracts. And so

We started sending this out. And uh Didn't hear from them for a while. And um And you realize they're really disorganized. It was a new program.

And I got a a colonel. I'd love that you mentioned his name. He worked out Fort Dietrich. You know, where they have smallpox and you know, it's a bio bioweapons um facility, biohazard. um f facility of the US government where they have the most pathogenic bacterial viruses and other disease organisms. And so I had a M D

Person who is my controller. The Federal Express one day You know, about two months later after I submitted the extracts. uh this big package of research reports on anti Pox properties, small pox properties of

Or extract. Well, I mean Going through it, no activity, no activity. I get the sample number seventy eight. High activity. Against pox viruses.

Example eighty one, high activity. Sample eighty eight, high activity. Wow. I mean there's like you know, you're looking at uh not effective and no results in the first seventy seven pages, you know, is pretty disappointing. Then

Bam. I got really excited, so I called my I called up uh uh my my colonel, uh Fort Dietrich, and And I said, These results are amazing, it's exciting. And he goes, What results? I go, the results said Federal Express just delivered to me. He goes, You're not supposed to get those, I am. I said, Well I'll make a photopy and I'll send them to you. He didn't appreciate the humor, but It was a very, very bizarre time.

And some very, very strange things uh occurred. Um But We ended up finding that those three Highly active

Results came from an old growth mushroom called a Garacon. Now, Garrakon is the longest living mushroom in the world. Number one or number two, some debate about that. grows exclusively in the old growth forests, Northern California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia. A few sky islands in Europe and the and um the Alpslovenia. Uh

Um in Austria. On large trees. But it it is a indicator species of an old growth forest. And Those three anti

Pac's results came from three different Separate strains of a Garrakon that I had isolated um from my many adventures in the old growth forest. So wow. This is got it.

People are very excited. Now I I'd love to be taken to the mat. I'm reference driven. Okay, so anybody out there sceptical of this? You can do two things. You can Google my name, Stamets, National Public Radio, and PR.

Um and Pox. Um and you'll see A vetted press release interview on National Public Radio with me. The former uh Uh deputy director of the FDA and the head of the uh w one of the research divisions of BioShield Bio Defense Program.

Doctor Jack Secret from Southern Research uh University. So and then So Because I'm in competition with pharma. And I'm a lone researcher of a little company.

And um I thought well my I checked into this and I already had this entimopathogenic fungi patents that We're just you know Tremendous achievements because the entire pesticide industry missed all that. Um so I thought well if this is novel, I should protect myself, so I filed a patent on it.

On a Garrakon against Viruses. Uh particularly. Pox viruses, um, flu viruses, herpes. These are all the other results that we received.

These extracts were highly active against multiple viruses, not just not viruses. Both What uh what what were the applications? This is Tim where I have to draw the line. Um Because these are in vitro uh in in vitro tests with human cells.

And taking through three different Uh uh testing protocols to the point where the next test is in a in v uh in vivo model of with an animal. So this is the best uh pharmaceutical uh drug discovery that you can go through.

Before you get it get a go to a living host. These are living human cells. In in vitro, um not in vivo. In vivo means it's the it's the it's the you know um A small mammal like an uh

Uh a a mouse, you know, a rat, you know, a monkey or or or it goes into human clinical studies. So these are vitro tests. And to be Even though we have identified now the molecules That are active against smallpox.

We worked with the University of Mississippi school of pharmacy. Under Doctor Simir Ross. We did combile guided fractionation over many years. And we have identified two new Anti

Pox molecules More potent than Cyndophavir. Which is the preeminent uh comparative uh anti viral drug control. With less toxicity and more efficacy than Sadoffer.

But That being said There's clearly an upregulation of the immune system. And so Uh what is the contribution of these molecules versus upregulating of the immune system? Is a combination of both? Is there synergism?

There's multiple molecules being engaged, multiple immune pathways. This is where You can get lost you cannot see the forest for the trees. If you end up Focusing so much on the mechanisms of action and don't see the result.

If you were uh Infected with one of these bars is You really don't care about the mechanism of action, you just wanna know whether you're gonna overcome the virus or not. So We have

Found the antipox Molecules. We have not yet found the anti flu or the anti herpes molecules today. And I have another really good example.

Um It's specific to your original question. The mycelium Being active against viruses. Can I pause for one quick second? Oh my God.

I don't have to make up these stories. I don't have to make up any stories. They're too good to be uh true h as they are, but this is what happened. I was in Canada. I'm speaking to you right now from Cortez Island, British Columbia. I was up here on Cortez Island. And one of my employees called up and said Paul, there's a helicopter buzzing around the laboratories. I go, No big deal. Helicopters fly over all the time. And he goes,

No. It's really low. And I go, How low? And he goes, Listen he puts a cell phone up the to the I can go chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp I go, wow. I go, what are the numbers on the tail?

He goes, There are no numbers as a Blackhawk military helicopter that's right on top of the laboratories. I go, Oh my God, you're kidding. I go And this is right after we got the pox results, right after I talked to the colonel, you know, like two weeks later, or a week later. And I said, Okay, listen. Shut down the business. I know I I knew immediately, you know, the government's gonna screw up here.

And they're gonna they're an abundance of caution, they're gonna end up overstepping their bounds. And I said, This is crazy. I've already been vetted. I've already been permitted. I've already in dialogue with these people. Uh and they they're trying to spook me? I mean, what's going on here? So I shut down the business. At the time I only had Ten employees, now I have a hundred. Um and I said

So shut down the business, give the cultures of Agaricon. So several of the employees I never want to know who who has them. You know, let's decentralized ourselves as a target right now. And so I shut down the business, all the employees left, you know, and the helicopter's still buzzing around. And so the next day I called up pretty pissed off.

To the Colonel saying What is going Mm. You know? And he you know got really nervous now he's got two b black eyes, right? They deliver the wrong results to the the right results to the wrong person.

And now that one you know they go oh the government, you know, one hand doesn't talk to the other and they got over exuberant and You know, and you know, if if terrorists got this technology that could immunize themselves and they're creating a ter and it's like Whatever, you know, so Anyhow, it was funny because we when I was going to the airports, I got five stars on every single airline ticket

I didn't joke to my wife, here we go again, I'm gonna get stopped and search, you know. And then after this then All those those five stars got taken away and I streamed through security with no problem. But I was obviously suddenly on their radar. Because I'm I'm non conventional. Um, but the fact that I'm here today actually makes me more of a patriotic American.

Than I was before. So Anyhow, so this is so I found these patents uh uh a patent on on a Garacon versus these viruses. Found it in two thousand and four. You can look this up. Go to the US patent home page. You'll see my filing days.

I filed this patent in two thousand and four, two thousand nine eleven was two thousand and one. So I had to write the patent, get more research results. We got lots and lots of positive results from the BioShield program. I think they they s I l I talked to one of the researchers last year and he goes, Do you know that we analyzed two thousand three hundred and ninety two of your samples? And I'm going I'm so glad I didn't have to pay for that. Um But we got about forty

Excellent hits uh from my eight hundred or so cultures. Um Yeah, that were surprising, um, which has led into I think A paradigm shifting solution. that for many of the problems that we face today.

But I file this patent in two thousand and four. Two thousand and six is not even on the patent application homepage. Now anybody out there who didn't know about patents, Usually six months to a year the patent application shows up At the USPTO.gov. Вебсайт ус патent і траймарка офіс. Don

Uh Gov website. And it didn't show up. It's over two years. So I call my patent attorney going, You know, what is going on here? He gets a hold of the patent office and the Department of Defense

Took the patent. out of the patent office because of national security. I think you're kidding. That's kind of a Pat on my back. I was like, wow, really? You think that's that important?

Um but I said that's not right. So we did an intergovernment agency trace and a request. And the DOD finally released a patent. to go back into the Q. And so Ten years after I submitted a patent application.

No, folks, uh usually two to three Euros you get a ruling. Ten years after the Iceman of the patent it was approved. That's a long way. That's a long way. The good news is it's approved in two thousand and fourteen, so I've got seventeen years. And the whole thing about patents, I mean, we would not be talking today if there weren't patents.

People think of you know patents become open source after seventeen years. The idea is to reward the inventor. To incentivise uh things to come to market. Because a patent that is not practiced is not Useful or beneficial to society. You know, within that seventeen years or outside the seventeen years.

It has to be brought to market, there has to be a commercial incentive. Patents are awarded for three reasons. One. No prior art. No evidence in the scientific or popular literature of anyone saying having the same idea.

Two? An obviousness. You want experts saying Paul Stannis or Full of BS. This will never work.

And so I have a message to all my critics out there. I want to say thank you. You have helped me so much in ways that you did not intend But I'm really happy that some people come out and they say And and the third is usefulness. So that's the the th three things. No prior art Contrary to conventional wisdom. You know, and and usefulness. And so

You know, obviously that fits all three of those categories. So No, then The The Pox molecules are I have not patent uh patented, they're open source. Hopefully we'll never have a smallpox um epidemic or pandemic again. And I think that's obviously

Uh another follow up question. that uh out of self interest, I'd love to ask related to the carpenter ants. So For people who are eager to

Try to address something with carpenter and specifically. current recommendations that you would have, number one, and then talking about conventional or contrary to conventional wisdom, I think at this point people are wondering how did this guy become so obsessed with this stuff. Uh so I do want to roll back the clock. And talk about among other things

Your stutter. But first I have to know Is there anything you would recommend? Is it related to carpenter ants or is it a waiting game? Uh Well the the test of a patent is that it's reproducible.

Um the EPA and the USDA now are allowing this fungus in food handling facilities, the first fungus ever to be allowed. For controlling insects in food handling facilities, and is that safe? The safety the safety documents supplied supplied by the EPA are now uh open source and in public domain. So the companies that did all the research proving that this fungus was not dangerous. Uh now I've released all our commercial interest in it.

The strain of metaricium called F fifty two is a public domain strain. Um So what I'm saying is You're not legal. for you to go out and use this and commercialize it without EPA registration

Uh, but that test on the patent is reproducible. And so all the methods for doing this is published. And um And I'm I just submitted my entire portfolio with all my research, you know, um all um

eight or nine patents. All the documentation of all These companies that have done the research, you know, in themselves. Um And I've submitted to a very, very well known company that has an extremely potent

Uh and such a side that many people know that use it on the market And it's The word I got back is why would we want to disrupt A proven Profit wheel.

It's something that Because my aunts did not uh reinvade. For ten years. Because after the ants were killed, the carpenter ants, they sporulated So the spore repelensy property

Prevent of future invasions. That's not a very good economic model. When you can treat a house once And they don't come back. A far better economic

uh business plan is having consumer buying it every month in spring. Toxic. Chemicals that kill the workers, but don't kill the queen. is the mycelium is taken back into the nest. Like a Trojan horse.

is presented to the Queen. who then spread it to the brood. And they're all living in this honey this sort of My filiated uh um Um

Um A palace. Uh and then before they realize it. Woo

It sporulates and it kills the queen. If you can kill the queen, you can control call the colony. after it spoilates the spore repelency property prevents other work uh uh carbon arms from coming into your house. So it is a it's a ten year solution. For about twenty five cents. Um that's what it costs to produce. Of course the packaging and all that stuff. You'd

is incredibly is very inexpensive to produce. And it can be produced in huge quantities. So it did not make it to market. And I've I'm I'm exasperated.

Um I have one really great story on this that This woman named Chris. Uh, that works for a company that has three letters in their name? He was uh she was given the mandate because the their stockholders were really upset.

Because the reputation of this company c causing Toxic spills. Yeah. harmed thousands of people. And they wanted so there'd grow green movement. Can you find green solutions? She was given the mandate to find a green

solution to replace toxic insecticides. She's given a budget. She found me? We dialog for months. I gave her samples. She set up experiments.

Two of the researchers were so excited they called me up at home. And both of them said, I'm not supposed to be telling you this, but this is the most exciting thing we've ever seen in our life. You know, as as uh as as entomologists. And fighting these problems. She went to the board of directors prior the prior to going we we

Connected Went over the data together, messaging, you know, how to create, you know, the most clear Communication to the board of directors, all men. And she was a steeler magnol magnolia. I've never met her in person. I wanted to hire her immediately. She bring these these these meetings just so professionally.

And she was really excited and she w goes in and The next day in the afternoon I'm waiting for her call and she calls And The person on the phone is so angry. I'm going, Who is this?

And I go, This is Chris. Sho, I'm so angry, I can't s straight. I go, I mean she's totally composed before and she's lost her composure. I go Chris, what happened? She goes, I went in there, I made my presentation.

All men. They looked at me steely eyed. And she said this is the best You gave me this mandate, I found something, this is a game changer. It can it can we can come with a ecologically rational and sustainable solution.

Based on nature. Yeah. Um And they looked at her in a dour face. And then the chairman Of the company looked at her and said, Chris

Your budget never was in research. It was an advertising. Very much similar to B P. Remember Beyond Petroleum? How much of uh BP's budget actually is an alternative fuels versus how much is in oil.

Now how much of their advertising budget is an alternative fuels as opposed So oil. I mean clearly, it's it's called greenwashing. And um and so so that that was and I just

So that that happened like seven or eight years ago. And then this past month I just had the same thing happen again. It's a disruptive technology. It rocks the apple cart and many of these insecticides are coming from the petroleum industry. As byproducts from their waste material. Disruptive and

Something challenging to the status quo and and contrary to most conventional wisdom. But that requires Going way, way back. And talking a bit.

about uh perhaps your childhood, which you described in part already But when did you develop A stutter. And Why don't you still have a stutter?

Uh but I started stuttering when really when I was um About five years old. I mean, I started from the time that I could talk. Um My family was Dysfunct dysfunctional.

And I've been told that sometimes the type of stuttering that I have is a Is related to A defect. Yeah, a neurological

Development in the seventh and eighth month. That's one possible reason. But the type of stuttering I have, anyone seen the King speech? I had that and worse. So I

You know, it's Куна спі. And I'd find alternative pathways to trick my brain with a prepositional or adverbial phrase. 'Cause your brain gets further ahead than your mouth. Can articulate.

Yeah then You become self conscious. And the the type of stutterer that I am is most stutterers We don't stutter when we sing. We don't stutter

If I start speaking in a British accent, uh or you create an accent. And you don't stutter when you talk to animals. So it's a very interesting It's a something that's triggered By social contact.

And so it was very difficult for me to Date ladies, they wanted the superjocks, the self assured Man And I was a stutterer. And so I s always stared at the ground and I found fossils, I found mushrooms. Um

But it's very difficult for me. Now I grew up in a small town in Ohio. And my dad was a officer on the aircraft carrier the Intrepid. And so during World War Two. So After World War Two, he got the intrepid aircraft carrier radio.

And it was in our basement. And so my brother John, he was very interested in chemistry. uh he created a huge Yeah. Huge like three racks of chemicals.

You know, in the basement and his laboratory He had Bunsen burners, all sorts of experiments going all the time. Yeah. But he never let me quote unquote play in the laboratory. I could play on the radio and I could watch him. But he's my older brother, I was the youngest one in my family, so And so John went on to Yale, my brother Bill went on to Cornell.

And they left. And it left me in this laboratory. So I my dream was always to have a laboratory You know, and l living in the country and that's kind of what I'm doing now. But John when he came back from Yale. Came back with a book called Altered States of Consciousness by Charles Tart.

And it was an anthology of research articles on changing your consciousness. Of them either drugs or from uh spinning or from dreams. You diff ex in one of the early books from University of California, Davis.

So John lent me this book. And I said, Johnny I'd rather like to see it, but he says well, I'm on break for two weeks, but I need the book because part of our class. So I got this book, and I'm just devouring this book. You know, and

And John was my hero. He was my mentor and John went to Mexico and Columbia, came back with incredible stories of magic mushrooms and consuming them. You know, I just I adored him and of course I wanted to do the same, then he gave me this book and So I'm really getting excited about this, but My best friend, Ryan Snyder.

Wanted Also To read this book. And so Ryan goes, Can I borrow your book? Oh, your brother's book. I go, sure, you can borrow it, but I need it back.

And so give it back to me in two or three days. So Several days passed and I asked Brian about the book and he hemmed and hawed and a week later, Where's the book? And He wouldn't respond, sort of looking me in the eye. So I go, Where's my book? And where'm my brother's book and though? Then two weeks and my other John's now pressuring me, Paul, I need that textbook, you know, as part of the class.

So I finally got got uh got uh hold of Ryan and I said, Where is my brother's book? And my Ryan said Uh I can't give it back to you. I said, Why?

So my dad found it and Burned it. Mm.

I said your dad Burned my brother's What? What?

He goes, Yeah, it was considered to be counterculture and threatening, you know, to our family You know, structure and all I go I could not believe it. No. I was so upset and I was so apologetic to my brother who did not take it well. You know, like last time gonna trust you, um

Type of scene. So I I was really bad and so So But I thought to myself, you know. If this was so disturbing

To this alpha male You know, conservative you know, neocon like personality, then I think I found a subject I want to explore more. So that got me into into magic mushrooms and um from my experience and also uh tremendous amount of guilt for my brother trusting me with his textbook and I couldn't return it to him.

So John was really interested in the subject. He inspired me. And then John went on to ch chemistry, then neurophysiology, University of Washington uh medical school. On full scholarship and

I was left in the laboratory and so I started experimenting with You know, marijuana. I remember when the DEA came to the Columbia, Ohio, th they had a whole display of drugs and a whole bunch of me and my friends just went there to look at'em. Wow, look at that one. How how old were you at the time? Oh, 14, 15 years of age. I mean drugs on display. Drugs you've heard about you've never seen. Look how small that LC is. That's incredible. So

I still had this really bad stuttering habit and it was really socially Debilitating. um on multiple levels and So I And the

And I was in Ohio and I And the Buying a bag of magic mushrooms. was not really into the drug scene, so I don't really know how much things should cost, you know? So I'm For twenty bucks I bought a bag.

And I just I knew sat and setting was really important, but I had no guide, and nobody else in my little circle was into it. And So there was a really great walk that I would like to walk in the woods up on the hills and beautiful rolling hills of Ohio, northern Ohio, and And I Thought okay, set and setting's important. So I took the bag and And um

I thought that would be one dose. It was not one of those, folks. I probably ate about twenty grams. Oh my God. Yeah, Slossomy Cubensis now. In in defense of this, I need to make it clear these were not grown, these were harvested.

And so they were exposed to the sun, so they may have been only equivalent to like ten grams of cabensas for People who are listening five grams of slosy commences is the hero's journey, you know, you're full blown You're into starscape, you're you know, changing dimensions, you're fractal patterns, the air becomes a sea of mathematical formulas and your mind has opened up, your heart's opened up, your

Fe one with the universe. That's a that's the hero's journey. That's five grams. You know, you really don't get that until Going over three grams, she started getting into it, but so ten to twenty grams is is the superhero's g journey. I've never eaten these before. So I walked I was walking into this place about an hour walk, I started consuming them and drinking water'cause they were dried. And then um

I sa. That I love climbing. And his tree had its limbs, so it was a perfect climbing tree, and at the very top of a hill. So I So that's a great place. I mean set and setting, uh getting a good view, that's what I need. And

I could feel the mushrooms coming on. I as I climbed up the tree, you know, uh stem uh branch by branch, I got higher and higher, so it was kind of a Let's see Ascending euphoria. You know the kind of

Very cool. And I got to the top of the tree and Beautiful landscape and I'm up there and just the mushrooms are coming on and getting higher and higher and And I just realize why I'm

really getting high here and it's a little it's dizzying, so I'm holding on to the tree. And on the horizon of this Yeah. Like. Bank'em.

Boiling. Dark, angry clouds. It was a summer storm coming in, and Ohio. When you see the summer storms are hurt terrifying. I mean there are the lightning bolts coming down and thunder and lightning. It was off in the distance, but it was coming down me really quickly.

And I'm getting higher and higher as the thunderstorm, lightning storm is getting closer and closer I'm getting vertical. And I go, Oh my God, I you know, I can't get off the tree, I don't wanna fall. So I held on the tree for dear life and it became my Axis Mundi. So my axe is right into the earth. This amazing experience. I mean just

Бютифуєс. But also the threat of lightning coming closer and closer, and every lightning strike it would hit and be fractal patterns would just emanate out from every lightning strike and z synesthesia occurred, you know, where there, you know, uh sound and and and And visions were merging together and And um sounds had visions and visions had sounds and

It was just an incredibly Complex By Herman Hassa. Uh also called uh Madison, it's a rather aerialite, he got the Nobel Prize for it in nineteen fifty five.

Um but that that was a a deep Dive into into uh inner space exploration. But I felt like I was p part of the glass bead game. And I there I was, I was ascending into this higher state of consciousness and then I realized, Oh my God.

I'm an A. I Point. In miles. doing a lightning storm.

This is not a good place to be. And um and then I was up there, I was terrified, and the lightning storm came closer and closer and I had these empathogenic, you know, just empathy for the universe one Everything is fine. If I die here today, my life is complete. Now I understand I'm part of the fabric. Of all the matter that's around me, I'm one

With everything. I'm made of star dust. Everything's made of star dust. This is a continuum of nature. Death is natural, birth is natural, transitions are Or just the way of way of existence. And then

The lighting storm and the wind came up and washed with with warm rain and It was just terrifying a lightning storm and I I'm up there and I'm thinking, Oh, I'm gonna die. But if I don't die, Paul. What are you gonna learn from this experience? Challenge yourself right now. This isn't all great and wonderful.

Well let's get down to Bros Talks. What's your biggest issues? You're not gonna die. What's your biggest issue? I'm I stuttering. I'm having this dialogue with myself.

I I just can't overcome the stuttering habit. You know, I'm not stupid. I went to for people To understand how bad it was I was interviewed for special education. Because of my stuttering.

Because I couldn't read in class. And so when it was my turn to read I They would pass on me because no one had the patience. To hear a stutterer, and please don't finish a stutterer sentence. Look at them, smile, and engage.

Help them finish their sentence. Don't finish it for them. That robs them of the opportunity Of overcoming This spec deficit.

Um So I scored high in my tests, so I didn't get it put into special education, but it was a pretty demoralizing to realize I'm gonna go in So the special education class.

Um but I didn't. So I Stuttering is my issue. And so I started saying to myself, Paul Stop stuttering now. You can do this, you're not stupid.

And you come from a very smart family. You have You know And So I said stop stuttering now over and over and over again, hundreds, if not thousands, of times. And the storm

Washed over me. I felt like I achieved a state of Godhead. I felt enlightened. I come from a Christian background so I had this empath uh empathy with Jesus, you know, and now you understand why Jesus went in the wilderness.

Now I understand why Jesus, you know, said don't go into churches, go in the nature. Whatever, you know, that's my cultural background. But I saw I I connected on that level. And I realized oh my gosh, this is something I can overcome. So I came out of the tree

Obviously did not get Electrocuting. And I w went back home. And then the next morning Is this girl that I greatly admire? And she was super sweet and nice to me.

And I really Love her to this day because of her kindness. Um and and I didn't want to talk to her because every time I I You know, and then you get these half breaths going on and then you can't get out of this loop.

And um she's coming uh along the sidewalk and the morning and she looks at me and she's so sweet says good morning Paul, how are you? And I cast my eyes up. From the sidewalk. And I looked at her and I said

I'm doing fine. Thank you for asking. And I stopped stuttering. Just like that. Now

I do have I've had about four or five relapses. You know, um If it's a lot of noise and I've been drinking How do you grow mushrooms? It's like filling a well with a teaspoon. It's like where do I begin? You know?

So Or if I'm meeting somebody super famous or something like that, you know, because but that's natural. You know, people get stage fright. Um when they're a You know, so But it's It's something that I think is really important because

There's one other aspect that's related to hearing that I want to mention and I have a really good friend It is passed on now named Bill Webb. He's lived in

Big Sur California. And I was nineteen years old when I wrote my first book, Silosophy. Mushrooms and their allies. I was self trained, I got involved University of Washington.

Doctor Daniel Stunt's part of a taxonomic key council. And I adopted The taxonomy of cell cybrooms as my speciality. Yeah, that time there's very little literature on it. Most of the books and libraries had been razored The pages have been razored out.

Doctor Stuntz had a intact library so I could study with them, I became a taxonomist. I wrote taxonomic keys. Starting when I was nineteen or twenty, and that became the core of my book. So I'm I have this manuscript.

And I go to Montana Books in Seattle to pitch the book. And the Montana books was releasing some some uh gay friendly literature and they were on the cutting edge and I was recommended That I see them and so I made an appointment, I go up to Seattle. Yeah, meeting meeting the head of Montana Books.

He goes, you know, this is not our Market As a you know, interesting subject. Really what you need is a book agent. He goes the best book agent I know is Bill Webb and I haven't seen him in two years.

And at the sounds of those words. A little bell jingles. On the front door of Montana Books in Walks Bill Webb. And the publisher's one. No way. So Bill and I became tight friends.

Invited me down to Big Sur. He was a friend uh of uh Of uh Henry Miller. Um and um And with a just a really

fantastic individual. He became a father figure to me at a really critical time in my life. And so Bill and I Did journeys together? Yeah, sacred journeys. With a Obi Wan Kenobi, you realise I'm you know, nineteen, twenty years ol of age, I'm with a

Seventy five year old, you know, who He was a friend of Ansel Adams. He had Ansel Adams library of of all of of many of his imprints. And working with his wife and curating them. I mean really cultured, intellectually interesting guy. Beautiful place. And so Bill and I tripped several times and

It was a wonderful experience for me. No brings Tears to my eyes just talking about Bill and So Bill he died about Fifteen years ago.

And Bill, um Three or four months before he dies. And he goes, Paul, I have to tell you something so important. I'm Bills, I haven't heard from you in years. How's it going? goes, Well, frankly

Life sucks. I've lost Losing my sight, I'm losing my hearing. I can't hear the waves of the sequels now. I live above the The clips of big surveys except for this damn hearing aid. Which is always malfunctioning.

He said, I hate it, but I've gotta tell you something that's so important that you know. I go, Okay, Bill And I said, What is it? And Bill goes, No, I really want you to listen, Paul. This is important. I go Bill, I I understand And then he kinda kept on emphasizing it. And so finally I got frustrated and said, Bill, I got the message. Okay. I know what you're gonna tell me is important. Because I want to make sure that you tell other people

Will you promise me? And I go. I promise you. I said, Paul, I think I found something medically very important about Salzymen. I go, what? He said, Why on the hero's journey?

I was you know, took out my hearing aid. I'm lying, you know, in full bliss, one with the universe. You know, he's like eighty years age or eighty two years of age when he's doing this. by himself. And no I can hear the seagulls, I can hear the waves.

I know, Oh my gosh, I can hear everything. And he reached for his hearing aid, he didn't have it in. He goes. Oh my gosh, I can hear. And then he heard this

Click click click click. Top pop. He looked around going that's That's weird, doesn't it? Unusual sound and Click click click click click.

Top. Click click and and he goes he couldn't figure out what it was. He looked around, he looked around, and finally he saw what it was. There are ants walking on the deck. He was hearing their footsteps.

That is wild. Now this is where even I and I'm a liberal kind of guy I'm going wait a second You know. Tell me that again, you know. And that's why Bill set me up by saying you have to tell other people this.

So I've been work working with you with Roland Griffith at Johns Johns Hopkins uh uh university, the clinical studies on Sul Side and et cetera. And I am really emphasize this to the many of the researchers They could easily do a test. You know, why these patients are in session.

Uh to Test their hearing. To see if they have increased sensitivity. Increased range, tonal ranges. It's a very easy metric.

But I think what happened with me on the tree in the lightning storm. I created a new neurological pathway. of articulating my thoughts. and overcoming the so shelf

The social phobia is a trigger. It's definitely an environmental trigger. And then we get locked into these loops. They're really, really strange. Another good thing.

to tell a stutterer. Is Can you demonstrate different ways of stuttering? They'll do it. You want me to start her?

Different ways of starting? I'll give you three different ways of stuttering. And it is so it's really weird to So does that act as a pattern interrupt that helps them to overcome at least temporarily the stuttering? Or is it just uh useful for a non stutterer to hear different ways of stuttering?

Hm. I didn't thought of that. Nice. I'm not sure how to answer that. But I do think that

Он се нерологікал патва из стаблиш. You can capitalize on them. by re remembering them. This is the thing that John Hopkins University some of the most surprising results is fourteen months after these experiences.

Many of the patients said it was the most important spiritual experience of our lives. Fourteen months afterwards, not only did they have demonstratable Benefits. Being nicer people. Being a better parent, a better husband.

socially more well adapted. But the fact that they re remembered the experience We Enforced. Those benefits that they experience directly after the experience.

So A lot of people m people who are listening may not understand these are not mu uh drugs of abuse. You eat these mushrooms one day and the next day you're like, No way. I'm not going to hear those things. You look at them and you've got the repelency property, right? The soul simon repellency property, like I'm not touching those for months. But boy, that was a great experience. You know, so these are not substances of abuse. But there are shockingly Powerful.

To the point that You're not ready for the humanist journey for a long time. So these are not drugs of abuse by any stretch of the imagination. they really should be recogized as a therapeutic drug. Definitely. Uh and uh this this

In many ways relates to your Well, it it relates to a few of your previous stories. very well in so much as a Solocyden is very challenging as a Medical model.

in in several respects, one of which is that it does not require, say, daily or weekly administration. And it is Economically Difficult. to create a for profit model unless you are monetizing the therapy and

Uh not uh uh in the the sort of one and done or three times and done aspect of it actually makes it very challenging to commercialize and make widespread unless you're relating on uh or relying on donations, excuse me. Uh I would love to hear your thoughts just to expand on this a little bit. Does do you think

say psilocybin or another that I know very little about but wanted to discuss with you, but I I we we can talk about both or either. Say lion's mane. Are there I In this case should I say mushrooms or should I say Mycelium or mycilla. What would be the right way to what would be the right term to use here? Yeah.

Up sorry. Mushrooms are what people know, but mycelium is emerging. Tremendously important reservoir. of many bioactive uh molecules that are supersede the benefit of mushrooms. Twenty five and whole genome sequencing of uh Rishi mushrooms uh uh in the genus Uh, Genoderma.

Um uh these uh the common Lingza, Lingchi, Lingchir, uh Rishi, Menontaki, the ten thousand year mushroom, the mushroom of immortality, these are all common names out of Asia. Um the there twenty five percent more genes are active and expressed in the mycilial form. than it is in the fruit body form. the the food body is a mushroom form at the end of its life cycle.

So uh much of our research uh found going side by side comparisons of mushrooms which are protein rich Uh they're beta glucane rich, they have lots of carbohydrates and polysaccharides. They're nutritionally dense. But the mycelium is is articulating constantly a bioshield defense.

And uh from exposure when the mushrooms form Good luck to any bacterium that's gonna rot it. It's gonna it's gonna spoil it in four or five days and then gives themselves up anyhow. Moreover, I think that the sequence of bacteria that rots mushrooms is absolutely instrumentally important for the evolution of the ecosystem to give rise to the trees that create the debris fields that feed the mycelium. So these are d deterministic microbiomes. And the microbiome, the the fungal biome is determining the microbiome.

Because many of the bacteria are adversarial, some are commensal, some are actually mutualistically beneficial. So the mycelium Is this articulation of this network? That because of epigenesis, the ability to respond to environmental stimuli. and upregate and express new gene expressions, it is a fertile ground for

Uh learning For being able to articulate uh responses to new challenges in the environment. The mushroom fruit body is at the end of a s uh thing but You know, people

Атракте до мушрумс, а не фір на. Typically nature that which is ephemeral. Now we're around trees and around dogs and and animals and plants for Weeks, months, years. So the familiarity factor of constant exposure day to day

gives us some confidence and Oh, that animal's not gonna attack me, or that plant is one that my answers have been using and And we understand it. But mushrooms that come up and disappear in four or five days, some can feed you Some can kill you.

Some can heal you, some can send you on a psychoactive journey. That which is so powerful that so ephemeral is naturally To be afraid of them. So we have about Two hundred species of mushrooms that are edible medicinal. I don't know the difference between edible and medicinal anymore.

All edible mushrooms have medicinal properties. But the mycelium Expresses a lot more these compounds and with lion's mane. There's a group of uh Aranacines.

Now the lion's main mushroom is called Herisium. That's the Latin binomial. Paul, I don't want to interrupt, but I just want to pause for one second to plant a seed and we can come back to it, or spore and come back to it later, which is potential applications to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. But I don't want to interrupt, I just want to plant that seed so that I don't forget it myself. So please continue. So the airnacines are some of the strongest nerve growth factors ever discovered by science. NGF factors are called Nerco Factors.

And they regenerate myelin. On the axons of nerves. So now Lion's main is perfectly legal. Um it it has a long history of use, multi thousands of years uh history of use. It looked like a uh a casket, it looked like pom poms that cheerleaders use. Yes, white cascading crystals, uh uh uh descending uh um uh teeth.

Um And it's a Uh beautifully Beautiful mushroom. It tastes like shrimp or lobster when you add butter to it, when you cook it. But

The compounds that are most neural Generative. are in from the mycelium. Not for the mushrooms. And so the Aranacines are from the mycelium, hericenones are another group of Nurofactors. They're from the mushrooms.

But the aridacing is by far much more neuregenerative. There's been several clinical studies that have come out on mild cognitive dysfunction. out of Japan. Um and they are very promising as an as a It's the first smart mushroom. Well, so side mushrooms may be the first smart mushroom in my mind, but

But but lion's main mushrooms is one mushroom that I take it on a daily basis. My mother takes it on a daily basis. She's almost ninety three years of age in a few days. Uh she's smart as a whip. She beat my two brothers in Scrabble uh not too long ago. Which was a lot of fun. I went, Really? Yeah, I tell my brother, Y Mom beat you in Scrabble, you know? My twin brother goes, Whoa you know, she got lucky. And I thought that was a clean then because my brother was very defensive, but

But nevertheless, my my the lion's made mushrooms I think are Extremely Helpful. Uh to

For ret neuropathies. And I think Stocking them with sulcyben is something I'm really keen on. is doing Microdosing of salsium

Stocked with lion's mane. Now Lions Maine in and of itself we know has neuro regenerative properties. is a big subject of research. If you go to PubMed Or Google Scholar Alerts, you know, put in lion's mane and neural regeneration.

Or N N G F factors and You'll you'll there's several dozen peer reviewed articles extensively exploring uh The regeneration of uh myelin, which is the conductive sheath on the axons of nerves and

Those who I guess Alzheimer's for instance have um amyloid plaque formation that interrupts and de erodes the myelin sheath. Prevents neurotransmission. And so Lions mane mushrooms have been demonstrated uh behaviorally in people

With uh cognitive tests. But also um to uh dissection Of mice. Uh prior

So using lion's mane they would inject these mice with a polypeptide that induces amyloid plaque formation. It's a very, very potent toxin. That's neuro neurotoxic. But mimics that of the what happens to the nervous system with Alzheimer's patients because amyloid pack formation can be

Yeah, can form. their behavior changes, they lose the ability of Navigating through mazes. They lose the novelty, inquisitiveness factor factor. The short term memory is basically erased.

Um or much of it. And then when they found lion's mane mushrooms And they dissected those mice and sure enough they saw that the M1 flat formation was there. And then there's fully uh uh uh diseased mice When they would then feed them lion screen mushrooms for twenty three days.

They regain the ability of navigating through maze, they re engage inquisitiveness. It's called the novelty uh response, the novelty experiment. Um and then upon dissecting those knives uh and the resections of the tissue They could see uh that the amyloid plaque had largely resolved remyelination had occurred. And so you you bundle that with you know you've got behavior as well as physical evidence.

Yeah, regeneration of myelin. So lions made mushrooms are just a very, very fascinating Mushroom. I Think about Einstein and and his last days. I think about some of my mentors in my Cology. And their very last days we are losing encyclopedic knowledge.

These are mental giants. that have so much to give to the next generation as part of our national heritage our intellectual nacho heritage And to lose these these geniuses В Олдис Експірінс, Олдис ноли.

Uh All the sense of being. And contacts. to lose them at uh the end of the their life is us losing a library that just

There's the library books that fall into pieces in your hands and And I think it's so important for And our culture is to preserve that knowledge. And I think Lions Main Mushrooms is a huge one. The the slow descent into sort of cognitive malfunction, uh is is what I would cite.

When People ask me what I'm afraid of. I mean that that is it. I mean being trapped in your body without the cognitive capabilities that you would want or need to not just function but thrive. And uh I completely agree with you. Uh this is something I've been fixated on for quite some time. If you were to

Uh If you were to design a study involving the microdosing, micro administration of psilocybin under proper supervision and Uh What might do you have any idea what that might look like? What the protocol might look like? It's a very timely question. Uh because in two hours from now I have a group of uh

Um Uh financial people uh that are key uh in supporting the current selling. Research John Topkins and elsewhere. Uh they're arriving here uh specifically and staying with me for three days to talk about exactly this. I had an idea.

And I'm gonna probably open source this. I sometimes I file patents, uh I call them blocking patents. I file a patent that I think should be open source in order so other people can't get a patent on it. And this might be in that category. Um It's it's this whole patent landscape I'm I'm I I see both sides of the arguments of open sourcing and then also keeping things closed source.

But I pa found a patent on neurogenesis, you can look it up. Uh stacking lion's mane, soulcybin, and niacin, nicotinic acid. Now Uh I spoke before of what is patentable. It is no prior art.

It speaks against conventional wisdom. So and when I gave a talk at maps Um uh recently I Ask the audience about eight hundred people, how many people remember during the nineteen seventies and eighties?

It was well known, especially on the West Coast, that if you want to come down from a bad trip on Sol Cybin or LSD. You could take a bunch of niacin. You'll get a hot flush, and people who don't know what me to take. Like five hundred milligrams of niacin, you get red. And you get tingly all over your skin.

You got this nice and flush. And uh about Fifty people raised their hand. I actually recorded that. I needed that for my patentability. Because that was common knowledge that niacin counteracted the effects of sulfide. I think not.

Number one. There's no evidence that that's true. But it was common knowledge. Number two. Because it excites

The nerve endings and neuropathies oftentimes occur Then the deadening of the nerves at the fingertips and the toes. It struck me that if I can excite the nerve endings. Perhaps I could drive these lion main lion's main Aranaces And the soulcybin

to the endpoints of the nervous systems if the vascular system still intact to deliver these compounds to create neurogenesis uh and prevent neuropathy. uh at the endpoints of the nervous system. So I filed a patent a stacking niacin.

So Ivan. And Lion's Main. The silcy uh uh dosage is about one twentieth of a gram. Now that is below the threshold of what people would experience any change in consciousness. So I know lots of people who would not dare take a sole size mushroom.

The idea of taking one twentieth below threshold dose. that would create neurogenesis and perhaps make them cognitively more astute. And make them a better person? You know, socially and intellectually.

I know a lot of people were interested in that. And plus it's kinda groovy, it's kinda sexy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm microdosing, you know? Micro dosing is extremely popular right now, as you probably are well aware. Definitely. But that's something that I that we would like to see a clinical study. The clinical stuff we already know for the any clinicians out there you have too many variables in your in your

clinical study and I agree. So We were looking at sole salmon alone. So Lions Man Alone still having a stock with uh uh with Lionsman. Oh the the niacin will have to come um later.

'Cause it's just you and you need Enough корц, анов пиво. Enrolled in the clinical study in order to have Oh sc

statistical significance almost under there. Um Uh so that's that that's what we're looking at is looking at uh stacking this and And we maybe do this clinical study in Canada.

Right now the FDA is very favorable. Uh to these clinical studies. I had a a report from somebody met with the FDA regulators and their scientists and they said They have never seen a drug

That was so Non toxic. So effective. Um one Treatment.

in the history of their looking at approving New drugs. Uh and They were like So the FDA scientists

are quite focused on this. It's something we all Yeah, the difference between a medicine and a toxin is dose. I wouldn't call it sulfide a toxin. Well, there's maybe one w uh funny example that just came out in the literature of that, but um

I wouldn't call it necessarily a toxin, but having a Sub threshold dose, I think makes a Yeah. Is it really valid approach because um

And you probably shouldn't take these every day because you'd normalize the receptors. Yeah, and so washing the s the receptors and having them recalibrate themselves is probably a good thing to do. So pulse therapy Three to four days on, three to four days off. Is um Probably a better approach than

Taking them every day. Mm-hmm. Th the the jury's out on that. I'm a lot of different opinions of it of it, so It's it's endlessly fascinating though. And uh you are right on the on the money, so to speak, or lack of money given how effective they are in limited number of sessions at uh the combination which is certainly has been studied and is being studied of efficacy and

low toxicity. And as you mentioned earlier, if a rat if you put and Michael Pollin and I have chatted about this a little bit in his his podcast, but if you were to administer Say uh To a rat in a box. cocaine or heroin and they ca they have to choose between those drugs or food, they will consume these types of opiates or stimulants until they die to the absence of food. Whereas with, say LSD, uh I would also assume psilocybin, they they take one dose and that's the last time they touch that particular metal and uh

This is uh I I don't want to take us too far afield and and focus on this exclusively, but uh I I really appreciate you having spent so much time thinking about how these naturions who have coexisted and been ingested by humans for thousands of years.

uh epidemic scale problems that we're experiencing. And Uh I I wanted to uh ask we are gonna talk about some of the applications of mushrooms outside

But I would just love to read a description of you and then it it relates to something we we were chatting about a little bit before we started recording. And talk about The

The decisions that made Paul Stametz Paul Stamets because there are so many mycologists out there. Uh I I certainly don't know the exact number, but you are, if not the best known, certainly one of the best known. And the description is from uh Mother Jones. It says uh Uh Pawitz is a modern example of the amateur scientist from the 17th and 18th century who made a wonderful who made wonderful contributions with only their native curiosity and keen sense of observation. You can certainly comment on that if you don't feel like it's accurate, but

What what are the Decisions. You made if any come to mind, or habits you've cultivated That have allowed you

helped you to arrive where you are. I mean you uh have made many discoveries you Uh You've excelled in multiple fields. Why is that?

who you are in this current moment. And you can start anywhere. I don't wanna be one of the people who asks you how do you grow mushrooms at a cocktail party. I have been uh exposed to a circle of kindness. And I believe in karma. I was a Child who had a lot of problems.

And I want a big debt of gratitude to my professor, Doctor Michael Bug. He never humiliated me. You know, at the Evergreen State College, I'd make some dumb statements. He was entertained by them. But it entertained by them in a humorous way that engaged me to explore. You know

Um you know, and dive more deeply into the subject matter, but I was never humiliated. Um and as circle of kindness, and I really believe in karma. Um, because this has been this has been a huge thing in my life. Is the fact that

Um I believe evolution is an extension of gratitude. And sharing. And it's not this necessarily this This um

Neo Darwinian uh concept of competition at first The food wins. It's a collaboration of people who are allied together with common interests. And we need to shepherd all of ourselves from our weaknesses to become stronger.

Um well very few uh lots of people know this, but very few different schools of people know this. I got into the martial arts when I was fourteen. I have two black belts uh at schools for thirty, forty years. Um I have long haired hippie. Really nice person. And I

Um kinda turned into a different individual. I've been in thousands of fights. Um I started to Aspen Academy of Martial Arts. I first got into Gojuru, Sh uh Shotokan, Shitoru, got my first black belt in Taekwondo, and then began a black belt in Huang Bo. Which is by far one of the most sophisticated styles in the world, similar to Hapkito and And uh some other styles cooksoul.

But That I had one experience that I think is emblematic of this. Is a I was an early young black belt in Taekwondo and

A big biker came in, he was just seething with anger and wired on amphetamines and And um and he wants to fight a black belt. Yeah, just a biker dude and just Pissed off at the world. And he came in and and number the the head instructor does not fight

in a challenge like this, they have too much to lose, uh, you know, if they screw up, you know, they lose space in front of their students. So Yeah, anyhow. My my the head instructor Jean said, Paul, I got another one. Okay. And so this Michael came in and And then and say, I'll let you fight one of my black belts. It's fine. So Paul, come over here. And so

I came over there and was really polite and you know, ex my hand, shook my hand, he wouldn't shake my hand, he just was all pissed and vinegar and wanted to fight me and I said, Well we have a few rules, take off your shoes, you know, um and And then we got on the map, and this guy just attacked me ferociously. I mean it was no no sort of like the boxers, you know, there was a little bit of like okay, let's do it you know, we have a little com a um compassion for each other, you know, the a little sympathical. Or another fellow warrior? No, this guy was like out to hurt me.

Sorry block, block, block, block, block this guy's just you know just swinging and kicking and he can't kick well. Number one. But he's just like overly aggressive and And you know, after a while, you know, you can block ten or twenty times, but you know, you're starting getting hurt, right? You know, the these are these guys just ferociously trying to hurt me and So I looked over at the my head instructor and he nodded his head and said, Okay, Paul, time to take him out.

Did the three or four punches, you know, um sucker punched them, did a jumping hook kick. Bam, hit him in the temple. Bam, that he went down. On the ground, you know, semi conscious. And then I'm hovering over and I

Put my Hand onto his trachea. I put my middle finger into the inside of his eyeball and that way I could pop his eyeball and pull at his trachea at the same time. На мое концерт. And also in their face.

You know, so the when you lock your finger into the eyeball and ready to take out the eyeball, people want to give up really fast. He was terrified. He had the look of like Oh my God, I'm gonna lose my eyeball and this guy's a gotta you know, he didn't he was just waking up from being stunned from this kick. You know, and I got him like that and I knew I had okay, this is it. You know, I can take him out right now. This is the end of his life, you know, end of his you know Basically he's done.

And then I go. I released I said, you know. You actually did really well. And I extended my hand in friendship.

He's laying on the mat. Yeah. Big burly biker guy started crying. Because I was nice to him. I took him down.

But I wasn't glorifying in my win. I was extending my hand in friendship. Changed his life. When I left the school he was a brown belt. He became this big teddy bear.

shepherding all these little I told listen, the girl here, she's got a yellow belt, you've got a white belt, you bow to her. That's the way it works here. It's based on your experience and respect. Totally changed his life. So

So that's the story of my life is that You know, the extension of and I think so and mushrooms make people nicer people. I just really believe that. There are Is this understanding Yeah.

Your life is not just your life. Your life is in the context of nature. And how are we going to inspire And Lead

And promote. The forces of good and generosity And mutualism. And how are we gonna get away from the people who want to tear it all down? My my work with bees, I think, is is the is the cost celebrate.

And we're definitely gonna dig into that. Uh I I absolutely want to explore it. I was just gonna echo what you said. uh about the power of kindness. A friend of mine, very good friend of mine, was just telling me recently, who perhaps not surprisingly has a lot of psychonotic experience uh some mileage with uh certain mushrooms that we've been discussing. And also for anyone who doesn't know what MAPS is, it's the multidisciplinary association of psychedelic studies. They're also uh focused very heavily on phase three trials for MDMA in the treatment of uh PTSD. uh which is is fascinating and I encourage people to take a look at that at at maps.org. But what my friend said to me is not too long ago, several weeks ago He went into

A coffee shop. Uh and it was some Dunkin' Donuts or something like that in an airport. And this woman said, Thank you at the end of the transaction and he looked at her in the eyes and he said, No, thank you and he was just kinda being a joker and he's a charming guy, but it w he meant it very sincerely and she just broke down crying. similar experience. Like she had not had it didn't seem anyone express kindness to her in God knows how long. I mean weeks, months, who knows? And

It j it just was such a stark reminder, just like your story. About the power of those little acts, those tiny little micro decisions that we all make thousands of times a day. And that's what you know, I have a business, um you know Uh um but anybody who's ordered from our business. I I own the business, so I run it and I uh several years ago I got these little stickers that say you are beautiful.

And every time someone orders from our business And their order are two You are beautiful stickers. And I've had so many people write saying they were just a horrible day. A physician just wrote to me recently. He had said, Oh my God, I I cannot believe this little messaging. I send two because then they can pass one forward.

So every order and every box there are two your beautiful stickers. And so many people have written saying that's what they needed to see. That changed their entire day. Again, extension of gratitude and affirmation. You know, and we are all

on this planet together. We live to live in this time and space. Tim, you're gonna die. I'm gonna die. Everybody listening to this podcast is gonna die. But we re we enter into the fabric of nature from which we sprung. And I think that fabric in nature is based on the extension of goodness. I just know it empirically.

And all the noise we have around politics and everything else is just so narrowly focused. in the context of the greater being. I think that we're on on the verge where science and spirituality are converging. And now we're understanding nature and the extent of the cosmos, uh The hundreds of them.

Billions of galaxies? I mean, just um I always wanted to be a an astomycologist. I kinda am now in some sense, but I've always wanted to you know, I think we'll find fungal networks throughout nature. throughout the universe on multiple planets.

Multicellular organisms will form as networks Networks will give rise to animals. And I think that the we're a descendant of this network based paradigm. that's represented not only in

Mycelium and the neurons, the computer internet, the organization of dark matter. This is a continuation On different orders of magnitude of the way of being We are in all involved in this network of being.

And this is just one of our strands in that network that we're living today. And I I I want to get to B's and I'm gonna get to it. By way of Laying out some illustrations.

of these These webs, these strands of interconnectedness. And this is From Discover magazine. From a few years back. And

I'm just gonna quote here. It'll take Yeah. And then I want to talk About bees specifically. Uh

It starts with this, and this is a very incomplete list, of course, but Stam is researching a wide variety of ways in which fungi could help solve human problems. Here is a partial list. One, environmental cleanup. Mushrooms could be used to break down petrochemicals or absorb radiation from contaminated soil and water. Two, wastewater filtration. Mushroom mycilla could cleanse runoff from storm drams, farms, or log logging roads. They could be used to filter out the nitrates, endocrine disruptors, and pharmaceutical residues that disrupt ecosystems and damage human health. Three, pesticides, fungal bug killers, which we discussed, could be used to target troublesome species while remaining non-toxic to other. four medicines, which we've we've discussed. could provide new antibiotic, antiviral and immune boosting compounds and even chemotherapies.

Five forestry planting symbiotic mushroom species could speed reforestation and clear cut woodlands. Six agriculture, adding ooh, this is the word that I can never pronounce. Adding M Y C O R R I uh H I Z A L. How do how do we say that? Michael Rizal. Michael Rizal, thank you. Adding mycorrhizal fungi to soil could improve crop yields without the need for toxic chemical fertilizers. Seven famine relief. Mushrooms could be grown rapidly in refugee camps and disaster zones using just wood chips or salt water soaked straw. eight biofuels growing mushrooms for biodiesel could require far less soil and other resources than commonly cultivated fuel crops. Nine, which uh segues to what we were just chatting about, space travel because of their usefulness in soil creation and the tolerance of many species for radiation. Mushrooms could be grown by interstellar voyagers and used to terraform other worlds. So I'm going to pause here for one second just to let people soak in that. And then second, I in both preparation for this conversation, but also over the last two years

Reading. various descriptions of what has been called the the woodwide web, I think is what they call it. The you know the mycelium and how they facilitate communication between trees and other organisms, it's really mind bending stuff. I mean it's it's It's the type of narrative and description and discovery that if described, I'm just making this up perhaps, but like fifty years ago would have been thought science fiction.

And Uh I would love for you to describe Uh y what you have done in the world of bees Uh, but I just find this so not only staggeringly fascinating and mu much of it counterintuitive.

But important. Uh So That's my that's my soapbox for the moment. But in any case, would would love you to take that wherever you'd like. Okay, well I would recommend that people uh read my book, Mycelium Running, How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. It covers into these uh subjects uh very, very deeply. Um And then the book is used now as a introductory mycology book at many universities.

Um I I I typically don't uh promote uh a product from stage. See, there's no lectures out there you can find this, but I do want to draw people's attention to fungi.com. F U N G I dot com. There's an amazing letter from a Syrian refugee.

And I want people we obscured his face because we don't want him to be targeted by Assad Assad's assassins. uh but he has brought in mushroom cultivation into the refugee camps using recyclable uh materials from the cardboard and all the paper. And he literally you have to read the letter to it just brings tears to your eyes. He's over a thousand people now. Engaged in growing mushrooms, oyster mushrooms in refugee camps and then uh from the Syrian crisis.

That are helping people. uh feed themselves. And um And um think about all those uh thousand people now understanding how to grow mushrooms, what the downstream effect will be with their children. Uh when they get out of those camps they'll have skill sets that I can really expand this in in a huge way.

Um I believe that the mycelium is the uh foundation of the food web. It is essential for food biosecurity.

I mentioned that the mycelium creates the microbiomes. We've done next gen sequencing. We've been able to prove this. I've not published it, but people can see my talks on it. Showing that different mycelial mats uh the control and um uh destined populations of bacteria that are uniquely specific to the mycelium uh that is growing uh in in

Uh wood chips are in straw? So they actually articulate the populations of bacteria. uh downstream from the micellal networks. But this is kind of Segue. So we talk about the the anti viral stuff, you know, with the BioShield Bio Defense Program and nine eleven.

Well, and I had this entimopathogenic fungi uh patents and working um against you know uh termites and carbon rants and And uh bed bugs and mice. And so a good friend of mine, Louis Schwartzberg. He actually has finished a movie called Fantastic Fungi. It's coming out in the next few months. We've been making it for over ten years.

Um with l uh Lynn Lear uh Lyn Lear uh Norman Lear um And the isn't there that group? And uh the I just saw the the final cut um a few days ago. It is Quite good. I'm really happy where where it's going, but it talks about the Wood Wide Web. And Susan Samard is a British Columbia

mycologist and I'm a total fan of her work and uh big kudos to her because She and I are two Ps in the pod. She was doing her work parallel to my doing mine and And we end up you know, really in the in the in the the same uh intellectual ecosystem, so to speak. Um But

So when Louis was doing a movie, he was on looking at butterflies and then he got into bees and Cornley collapsed and Croniclapse is really uh chroniclapse disorder is a euphemism created by the media. But it does speak to a very serious issue. Um and Oklahoma last year seventy four percent. of the beehives died.

Now think of it. If you were uh having uh cattle or sheep at your ranch and you lost seventy five percent of your sheep or cattle? That is devastating. What's also devastating to beekeepers.

Um, thirty five percent or more of our food is directly dependent upon depollination, seventy percent is indirect. Many people don't realize that most of our dairy products are dependent upon bee pollination because alfalfa and hay It depended upon bees, all the almonds. That you consume every one Almond that you consume was visited by a bee.

On that flower. And so the almond industry specifically needs Honey bees in particular. And so when Louis came to me and said, Paul, there's a there's a huge problem with colony collapse and bees are dying. What can you do about it?

Well I Had a series of events. Um, and these events when you string them together led to me in a to an epiphany, and that I am a controversial mycologist. I have been trained academically in my college as a undergraduate student.

But I married a woman eleven years older than me. Who had three kids Twelve, fourteen, and six tін. When I was twenty two. I couldn't afford to move my kids to other cities to go to graduate school. I got accepted into several graduate schools, but I couldn't afford to move. So I started this little mail water business and packed thirty thousand boxes.

Before I had a single employee, now I have over a hundred employees. So it's a real testimonial to stamina. And good luck. And also the extension of generosity by Some very kind people who came to my rescue a few times over my life. But

In the course Uh looking uh At the situation with B's I started looking at it and there's there's many co factors. Now Health or disease.

In my mind is a series of coefficient variables Factors which are strung together at the end of the equation means health or disease. So there's not A single

Cause for colony collapse. It's a a perfect storm of unfortunately bad things that been happening to the bees. Habitat loss one Neonicotinoids, we already know they've been banned in Europe. Ironically, from a study that Bair and Sengentis sponsored.

Thinking that neo Nicks would not be toxic and they found out they were toxic and so they were banned in Europe. Last month. Neonics are still used in the United States and Canada? Um These there's so many seventy percent of the food is thought to be

Uh absolutely critically dependent upon bee pollination services. you know, um two arms uh length away from direct bee pollination contact. So bees are are dying'cause of a confluence of variables, lack of hob habitat, neonics, pesticide exposure. Factory farming it's not natural for bees to put on trucks and travel th

A thousand miles to the almond orchards of California. They all are concentrated, they spread diseases amongst themselves. Uh and then they disperse. And so that's a great great uh scenario for diseases to be spread. But the by far the the biggest one that's been identified in the scientific literature is the Varroa mite. And the Varoma Mite was introduced in nineteen eighty seven.

It came from Asia. Varroa destructor. This is Latin binom the binomi the binomial. It injects a whole slew of viruses into the bees. And these uh these now all bees in the world

Have these viruses Working with the USDA Doctor J Evans. And uh he was a USD Averologist, who's widely published and a senior scientist. at the US DA Has not seen a virus free bee more than ten years.

What's happened now is a virus is being spread by the varroa mite and the varroa mite was controlled by a mitocide. That was used to control ticks on cattle called Ametraves. Now ametrize is not legal to use by beekeepers, but they use it. They were soaking their B's with this ametrize this Toxic

You know, check. Might aside And they're drenching it twice per year to control the mites. And now they're up to eight times per year within ten years. The mites have developed a resistance.

The mites are like having a pancake on your back. They attach themselves, they're extremely hard to dislodge. And now twenty seven viruses have been identified being vectored by mice. What's the big surprise is all the wild bees now have these viruses. And eighty percent of the pollination services

That we benefit from From Bees pollinating are actually coming from wild bees. not the honey bee, which is apus malephera. Which is a they produces huge colony, so

The wild bees are oftentimes called solitary bees, or very small. Groups of a dozen bees or two dozen bees are ground dwellers. Um And those bees provide over eighty percent of the services that are benefiting Uh agriculture.

So the honeybees The man we have about two million um hives in the United States. The average loss right now is over fifty percent. Nationally, a few hot spots.

But those hotspots then emanate out and epidemics become pandemics. And so now we have evolved into a viral pandemic. uh of these viruses spreading throughout the world. And it was just discovered in the past two year, three years. That these bees are infected with these viruses when they visit a flower.

And they get the pollen on them. They also spread the viruses to the pollen they leave. And so when the wild bees come, they become infected. So this is a direct threat to worldwide food biosecurity. The loss of these

is such an important issue and interestingly is the number one bridge issue between liberals and conservatives. So I like to tell people you go Thanksgiving dinner, you don't want to talk about Hillary or Trump Talk the importance of bees. Is the number one issue that brings liberals and conservatives together because everyone recognizes the importance of B as it is uh For food bi security.

So My friend Louis came to me And I started studying this subject. And I had Five experiences in a row.

That led to me to an epiphany. Yeah, no matter what my critics say, and I you know, I've been wrong sometimes. I'm not right all the time, so I accept that. But I push the envelope because I don't have to worry about tenure. I'm self employed. I can risk to be wrong.

But the more I speculate the more I test the more I do research. You know, that's what it takes. It takes efforts. To see if something will work.

And so I've failed a lot of times and the failure is the price of tuition I've paid to learn a new lesson. All that being said. This is what happened. Nintendo eighty four I had the garden giant mushroom going in my garden.

It's a wood chip mushroom. It goes in wood chips, produces mushrooms up to five pounds per specimen. People can look it up. Um and I had these wood chips permeated with mycelium, and I had two beehives. And one day in July I come out and I see the bees. W all over my wood chips.

I look really closely They're moving the wood chips to the side. It's like you pushing a semi truck to the side, some of these widches are really big. To expose the mycelium. I looked very carefully, and from dawn to dusk for forty days.

There's a continuous convoy of bees to my wood chips. Of a garden giant. Mycelium in my garden. Travelling about

eight hundred to a thousand feet. And so I I Went out there, I photographed that thing. God, I found the photographs. There were codochrome sixty four slides. Sweltering heat, you know, two years ago I found him up in the attic. But I published this in Harold Swift magazine, nineteen eighty eight.

I published this in nineteen ninety four in Growing Gourmet Medicial Martians, one of my books. And I speculated, oh the bees are going after the sugar rich exudates. 'Cause the mycelium is producing these polysaccharides that are sweet. And they're fragrant. And maybe that's why the bees are going there.

Okay, that's that's one I'm gonna give you a micro factorial equation. So that's the first micro factor. Factor number one. Pol sees, bees attracted the wood chips. In his garden.

Forgot about it. Microfactor number two. All gets involved with the BioShield program. Discovers that polypor mushrooms have anti viral properties.

And Many patents have issued now. I have more patents on this, people can look them up. Um and so that was another Experience I had Uh, number three, my getting rid of the carpenter in my house using entimopathogenic fungus, relating that

Insects are vectors. of disease. And then moving forward I'm Looking at the research articles

and and plus Uh it's an open source uh online journal, scientist. There's an and the cover of the plus. was a big article And the discovery that

See, when calling collapse happens, most people don't know this. Is that you go out your beehives on Monday, everything is fine. You go out there on Thursday and they're all gone. Done. It's not like there's a whole bunch of dead bees laying in front of the beehive.

They're gone. They fly away. It turns out that the bees are there's a deform wing virus, which is the number one virus of concern That's been identified by researchers almost

A dozen papers have been published in the past three years. Identifying the D worm deform wing virus as the virus That is the most debilitating to the bees. It not only reduces the ten strength of their wings, but they're deformed, they can't Fly at all.

We see bees on a flower, it's the last Days of their life. These used to go out they get pollen for nine days. And now they're going out for four days. So they can't bring enough pollen back to the hive?

So The newly hash bees, which are nurse bees, are prematurely recruited. to go out to get pollen because the colony is stressed. And then the brood has mites on them and the

bees can't attend to the brood, so they abandon the babies And the mites then freely go around injecting These viruses And to the bees. And so at some point it comes to a tipping point.

And then the bees leave the hive and they don't come back. So imagine if you're again a a cattle rancher or sheep rancher, you're losing more than fifty percent of your it's the it's psychologically damaging. As well as economically damaging. And people just give up. So

I had these experiences, and then I saw in this journal That the when they looked at the honey and the abandoned pe beehives It lacked a certain chemical. Called P cumeric acid. P chimeric acid.

is the chemical trigger that governs the detoxification pathway in bees. It's called the Cytochrome P four fifty pathway. All animals use it. We have it mostly in our liver. That's how we break down toxins. Without P cumeric acid, they found these bees, hundreds of pounds of honey.

No bees in a beehive. It lacks this essential Nutrient. Acid. I'm not a chemist.

But I'd seen Piqu Mark Asset before. 'Cause in the research I've done, I look at what's called the deliquation of wood, how fungi gobble up wood. And break it down. And I recognize peculiar acid as a chemical constituent. That was present.

uh in breaking down wood. That's why you see myceliated wood smells fragrant and odiferous. There's a lot uh uh outcasting of fl uh microflavonoids. uh phenol phenolic compounds that are going into and that's why after a rain in in the in the woods, the wood steel smells so good, that's the outcasting of mycelium. All these scent trails are being created to entice us and insects and other animals to follow scent trails a

And part of the outcasting of the mycelium. Okay, I had all those four experiences. And then I go to sleep. And I have a waking dream.

His waking dream hit me like a lightning bolt. So oh my God. I woke up I think I said I think I know how to save the bees. And so I first called a very good friend of mine, Lee Stein. I said listen, I had this waking dream. I

Just And this it shook me to the court. He said stop everything you're doing, focus on this. This is too important. So call the University of California Davis. It's never a good idea.

To start a conversation with another scientist that you've not not met. With the words I had a dream that conversation went nowhere. It's like crazy person, goodbye. So I called up Washington State University. I was at Ted, I think I had the Ted that you spoke at. And I was at TED and I went out and I was given Steve Shepherd's name from Washington University. He's a chair of entomology in Pullman, Washington.

Yeah, Washington State University's Agricultural Science College. And I said, Listen, Steve, please just give me a half an hour. It's gonna sound like crazy to you at first, but let me Talk to you about this. Ba fifteen minutes then he said stop go nowhere else. We want to work with you.

So the end result of this Is we tested this on five hundred and thirty two beehives in southern California two years ago. We've done seven tests now. And outdoor beehives. We have found something, I think, that is extraordinary breakthrough.

With our mycelial extracts of these polypore mushrooms, these these wood conks that look like Um they're called home. Um Ho hoofd shaped mushrooms that grow on trees. Everyone's seen them. Um with the mycelium

That's extracted. And water and ethanol, the very same extracts that we use in the BioShield Bio Defense Program We gave it to the bees. And we've submitted an article to a renowned scientific journal. And from one

Dose At one percent. Now all beekeepers feed sugar water. To their bees. Is fifty percent sugar, fifty without water? So one milliliter per hundred

You know, one unit per hundred, one percent. We give it to the bees. And then seven to twelve days later То з варис а редуз бай тазенс в таймс. In the article that we submitted, we reduced the lake Sinai virus by more than forty five thousand times.

The deformed wing virus more than eight hundred times. With one dose And it doubles the lifespan of bees. Think of the implications of this. This means

That I think I have a window now in understanding something fundamental to the foundation of nature. The mycelium not only controls the microbiomes and are deterministic in the downstream evolution of ecosystems. But they also control the immunological health of the animal inhabitants. Because the very same extracts that reduce viruses that harm

Thirds. Bird flu, H five N one, H three. H one and N one in pegs. That harm. Mm.

People. Pox viruses, herpes viruses. Pigs. People

Peace. This speaks to something I think that is. very deeply profound. And understanding Yeah.

Within nature these mice little networks are everywhere. Every tree is infused with mycelium, every vegetable you eat Is infused with fungi. This is part of the m mutualistic relationship. that we have with these fungi that increases the host defense and resistance against disease.

There's a plurality of uh fungi And such diverse populations that create a matrix of defense. We have found that these individual species now we've tested five different polypore mushrooms. They're all active to different different degrees. What we have not reported in the scientific article that we submitted.

Is that we have one result that's over A hundred million Times reduction of these viruses with one treatment? Many of these viruses herpes viruses are known as oncoviruses that cause cancer. Uh lots of them cause inflammation that destabilizes the immune system.

This is something I think is so critically important. Everyone's talking about bad news and we are in the six X, the sixth great extinction. No one on the on life on this planet. We have eight point three million species we're losing losing more than thirty thousand a year. Do the math in a hundred years that's more than a third of the biodiversity.

is unraveling all around us. What can we do? This is actionable ecological solutions. It's paradigm shifting. Scalable.

Ecologically rational, economically sustainable. Again, all these fungi grow in every forest of the world. And we all grew up with Winnie the Pooh. And everybody missed this. Now I've been issued now ten patents.

The United States, Canada Australia, New Zealand. In Eurasia. When I first got the first patent award For five seconds I was excited.

Literally. And then it became h horribly demoralized. I said you've gotta be kidding. There's no prior art. No one they did the the patent office is the most m have massive search engines in every language Chinese, French, Japanese, English, German.

And there's not a single mention. Anywhere. out there. That bees benefit from mycelium immunologically. Yeah, w let alone

Reducing the viruses uh that are being vectored by mice. The fact that I'm the one to discover this. Is horribly depressing. It means that we're we're truly Neanderthals with nuclear weapons. And people talk about

Climate change and how Biodiversity is a bunch of liberal scientists. Are you Freaking kidding? This is so fundamental to who we are and where we've come from.

So I've open sourced it to all the developing uh countries with the left but you know, Europe and and Eurasia. I'm um not not Asia, not South America, not Mexico, not Africa. You know, in order for a solution to be Effective it's gotta be practice. In order for it to be practiced, it's gotta be commercially successful.

In order for it to be commercially successful, it's gotta go to market with some protection of your idea. But the fact that I'm That These patents are issuing As um

And I'm I'm I've made mistakes and there's my colleges out there whose eyes roll. But I'm very happy to have received several rewards one of which from the Mycological Society of America for bringing more students into the field of mycology than anyone in history.

So They're kind of schizophrenic about me because I'm a psychedelic researcher, not trained, and you gotta bring in all these students into their classrooms and want to save the world. And they said, Paul, you created a create a huge problem. We want to study yeast and these foods want to save the world. What do we do? So um But

So I think this is something that Ачно солюціон. And I think I can make the argument, and this is very provocative. But I can make the argument. That natural products

Can be more powerful than pharmaceuticals. With a greater bio shield of defense. With less toxicity. And more utility. In a sustainable way.

And that I think is paradigm shifting. I hope you're right. I I hope you're right and I look forward to uh learning more about this as the discussion opens.

Is there anything for people listening who are are not mycologists nor future mycologists who want to help in some fashion, meaning they want to make personal decisions, maybe think of policy changes or Types of support. uh that would enable them to be

part of an environmental And uh systemic. solution rather than simply compounding the existing problems. Are there new behaviors, things they can do, anything that you would suggest to people who are listening? Absolutely. The simplest thing that people can do is let wood rot.

Give up this idea of a a Lisabethan yard that's highly manicured and managed Nature likes Factal faces. A factualization of nature at different orders of magnitude It gives all these niches to microorganisms and microbiome biodiversity.

That's critical for sustainability. So Well then Letting hauling the wood off. Having a rotting a lot let ro logs rot.

In your in your garden. In your yard. Mushrooms will come up. That'll help feed the bees. That'll help. Build these f fractally intensive

uh environments that are really important for biodiversity. That's one. Uh we have a campaign for supporting Washington State uh University. W S U Uh dot

B uh Bs dot WSU dot EDU. We've raised over three million dollars. And now uh for B research. Uh at WSU. We have just begun to explore The role of these polypor mushrooms.

Uh there's hundreds of them to test. Uh we've hit the home runs on our very first ones. We're extremely lucky. But the fact that You know, this is It speaks to we can reduce these viruses forty five thousand to one with one treatment.

I mean what Anti viral drug will do that. You know, um That is a complex soup of constituents. There you know, the contrast is

This is surprising. So supporting uh um Uh B Company uh um be nonprofits. Joining a a Mushroom Society, the is the

North American Mycological Association Well it's a parent organization for Called Nama? And their website is Namico.org, N A M Y C O R G They have a listing of all the local mycrological societies

You know, in pe in Canada, United States, and Mexico? Um that's one. Uh joining your B um get involved in supporting Frankly, uh farmers And developing Biodiverse landscapes.

And The march to monoculture and the march to the industrialization of agulture. is sacrificing The very Uh biodiverse networks.

that have evolved. To help plants grow. When you add lots of fertilizers and a successized, you defeat The natural systems of the mycelium That has engaged and helped plants for hundreds of miljuns of years.

When you have mycelium helping plants, you do not need external uh inputs as much as as fertilizers, et cetera. And I think there are ecologically rational solutions to many. of the problems that we face today. But it's really speaks to the concept of seven generations.

And first people's really Have this So much As a pillar So they're understanding and dealing with nature.

We should give up this idea of making money in the short term, and we should embrace the idea. of creating sustainability in the long term. True conservatives Що би консерва начора рису? And thinking about downstream generations.

Right now we are hungry. Greedy people. who whose morals have been hijacked. Um, for whatever reason. And I think that

Yes. this nature loving movement. With all of its Strange. You know, characterizations.

Yeah, it really is based on something that's fundamentally good for the commons. Well and it makes me think of what you said at the very beginning or certainly in the earlier portions of this conversation, which is the war against nature is a war against your own biology. And ultimately what is best for what you're discussing is also best for us, which means it's best for me, it's best for you, it's best for each person listening to this. And certainly if you're thinking out multiple generations These problems can be

Solved in a Very pragmatic. uh holistic fashion or they can be compounded to the point where they become Uh Exponentially more difficult.

to unwind and to solve for. Uh So it's in in the field of mycology. I'm just wanna say in the field of mycology I've no other science that is underfunded Underappreciated. And yet has such an enormous elasticity of benefits. And if I was a Bill Gates or a Jeff Bezos, you know, I've met these people. It's just not part of my DNA to pitch.

And I look at them going. I could do so much benefit for hundreds of millions of people. But I can't even begin to talk about this. Because I don't want to pitch. But thankfully

My company is Swaring. And um I have a great group uh community of individuals who are Who believe in this, who see the results And um Michael Poland's book and

Fantastic fungi and You know, you're You're in support, et cetera. Help spreads this message, but You know, I'm sixty three years of age. And I'm gonna die with a smile on my face because it's the heritage that we leave

Not not the material possessions that we own during a short lifetime. We all need to create legacies. There were our names will be heralded in the future as a person Who cared more about other people than they cared about themselves. That is truly

A Christian, a Buddhist Uh is then um like attitude. And I Think that um It's time for people to take action.

We need a revolution. It is time. It is time for people to take action. Uh could not agree more. Uh and you've given a number of recommendations that I will link to in the show notes, as usual. So everyone listening Everything we've discussed. All the links to everything uh certainly that I can track down and that my team can track down will be in the show notes at Tim.blog forward slash podcast for this episode. And

Paul You've been very generous with your time. People can find you at fungi.com, fungi.net, hostdefense.com Uh and On social media, on Instagram. You're Paul Stametz.

Facebook, Paul Stamets, YouTube, Paul Stametz. Is there a A for people who want to know where to go for what is there one Uh best place for certain things, uh a certain best place to say hello if people want to reach out to you somehow. Oh that's complicated, like you, Tim, you know, because uh we get so many uh people wanting to contact us. But but for the I'm I wanna feed some of the researchers out there and people who want to get into some of the the detailed uh research articles. We have a website that we populate called mushroom resource uh mushroom references dot com. Mushroom references dot com. I several hundred

peer reviewed uh articles um that we link to with abstracts that talk about uh some most recent research of the Uh from mycelium. Um and some deep dive many physicians Are unfamiliar.

And because the public expects that there to be experts about everything on health. They're actually Quite ignorant. And so I found this has been a challenge is why I speak to a lot of uh uh acad a lot of academic conferences.

Uh a lot of medical conferences. Із за деспорт не батьенис то гід он бор. And be familiarized with some of the latest research. So um But otherwise, you know, fungi dot com is a hub and we have a resource section.

uh at the and on that website that links to many other Non profits, lots of other resources. uh including uh Cornell University that's a particularly a good one. Um there is uh Michael Web

Which is extremely good. MYK Uh O uh W E B Michael Webb's a really good one. And um so there's a lot of mycologists out there that

are genuinely really, really good people. Um But they have I've in a sense have tasked them with expectations Greater than some of which they can deliver. I apologize for that, but time is short. It's every it's so important that everybody gets aboard the starship and

And try to do good. Well, I uh thank you so much for your time um today, Paul. This has been really fun for me and I I'm sure for for many, many people who are listening. Is there anything else that you would like to share or recommend before we wrap up at least this this first conversation on the podcast? Um If you see somebody being abused

Or somebody being shamed? Step up. Extend the hand of generosity. And show people a better way of acting. Here, here.

That is. An excellent way to wrap up. And uh once again, Paul A real pleasure to spend this time with you. I have pages and pages and pages of notes of follow ups for myself and for my family and uh also the many different avenues that I want to explore. And uh to everyone listening. Find the show notes at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, keep experimenting. And uh

express some kindness, it is time to take action. So get off of the earphones, get off of the earbuds, get off of the uh pages in those books that you might consume one after the other, and actually tap em take a meaningful step forward uh with with somehow bending the reality around you uh in a positive direction. And until next time. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up.

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500-500 on your telephone to get started today. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Peloton, which I've been using probably for about a year now. Peloton is a cutting edge indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You can also do on demand, which is what I do, we'll come back to that. So you don't have to worry about fitting classes into a busy schedule or making it to a studio or gym with a hectic or unpredictable commute. I for instance have a Peloton bike right in my master bedroom at home. And it's one of the first things I do many mornings. I wake up, I meditate for a bit, then I knock out a short 20 minute ride in my undies, hard to do that at the gym, take a shower, and I'm in higher gear for the rest of the day. It's really convenient and has become something that I look forward to. So you have a lot of options.

For one, if you like, you can ride live with thousands of other riders across the country on an interactive leaderboard to keep you motivated. There are also up to 14 new classes added every day with more than 8,000 classes on demand. and you can pick based on length, 45 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever, music, hip hop, rock and roll, or say low impact versus high intensity or interval. You can pick the class structure and style that works for you. And in my case I quite like Matt Wilpers and I tend to do on demand and listen to a lot of and watch many of the same classes over and over, but I'm kind of promiscuous and also enjoy classes from a lot of the other instructors. They have Peloton an amazing roster of incredible instructors in New York City with a whole range of styles and personalities, so you can find what you're in the mood for. You also get real-time metrics that you can use to track your performance over time And that will help.

I would say catalyze you to beat your personal best. Now that all sounds good, right? Gamification, yada yada yada. I didn't think that it would work for me or in any way incentivize me, but they really 100% hit the nail on the head. I was very, very impressed. With how motivating it was. and it worked tremendously to keep me pushing. uh which quite honestly takes a fair amount. I can get quite lazy, particularly with anything that edges on endurance, which is kind of more than five reps of anything for me. So

Check it out. Discover this cutting edge indoor cycling bike that brings the studio experience right to your home. Peloton is offering listeners to this podcast a limited time offer. Go to onepeloton.com. That's O-N-E. Peloton, P-E-L-O-T-O-N. And enter the code TIM, all caps. at checkout and get$100 off of accessories with your Polyton bike purchase. So get a great workout at home, anytime you want, check it out, go to onepeloton.com and use the code TIM to get started.

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