Reishi Bonsai with Sam Shoemaker

Alisa Nappa August 16, 2024

Today we sit down with the highly creative Sam Shoemaker to chat about Reishi Bonsai, mycelial boats, cultivating stinkhorns and so many other interesting projects he's up to. Get curious, tune in and shroom in.

TRANSCRIPT

Unknown Speaker 0:00 Alex, Unknown Speaker 0:11 welcome, welcome. You are listening to the mushroom revival podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dorr, and we are absolutely obsessed with the wonderful, wacky, mysterious world of mushrooms and fungi. We bring on guests and experts from all around the world to geek out with us and go down this mysterious rabbit hole to try to figure out what the heck is going on in this mushroom, fungal world. So today we have Sam Shoemaker to talk about Myco materials, mushroom art, Reishi Banzai, Unknown Speaker 0:42 fungal boats and aquatic vessels and much, much more. So Sam, how you doing? Doing? Well, it's nice to be here. Yeah. Big fan of the podcast, yeah, yeah. Big fan of your work. I'm obsessed with the Reishi Banzai and especially in beautiful pottery and vessels like that. I've been seeing your stuff for a while, so thanks for coming on for people who have never seen your art don't know much about you. What? What are you up to in this fungal world? Unknown Speaker 1:13 So I'm an artist based in Los Angeles, and I collaborate with living fungi. I cultivate a variety of mushrooms inside my sculptural work that are made of ceramic glass. I teach workshops on cultivation and producing Myco materials in my studio and at universities across southern California. I also use mycelium that I collect off the streets of Los Angeles to grow boats and big monolithic structures. And just as a contrarian, I spend a lot of time trying to cultivate mushrooms that don't get a lot of attention, stink horns, natives, inedible and poisonous fungi off menu, gourmets. Now that I'm not running a Unknown Speaker 1:54 urban farm, which is what my lab started as, I spend a lot of time kind of pursuing those passion projects and things that you know might not be able to show in a gallery or be sold at a market, just things that are curious to me, and all things that kind of feed my curiosity about mushrooms and fungi and how they live. So how did your journey originally begin? Were you first an artist that then got intro to fungi or flipped or both at the same time. Unknown Speaker 2:23 Yeah, I didn't grow up in an environment that was particularly outdoorsy. I was pretty sheltered suburban kid in Central Florida Unknown Speaker 2:32 where nobody was really hiking or camping, and I didn't really discover my love for fungi until I was an adult and had moved to Los Angeles for art school, Unknown Speaker 2:42 and I didn't go to school for science. I have two art degrees that leave me pretty unemployable, and that, I think, is really important to mention, that informs the relationship that I have with fungi, and the shape of the relationship that I have with fungi. I don't think it would be very forthcoming to come out here and cosplay as a scientist with a capital S, but my day, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, revolves around fungi. It has completely taken over my life. But this all started whenever I tell the origin story. I mentioned this talk that Phil Ross gave Cal Arts, where I was an undergraduate, and I actually didn't even tend to talk. Sometimes I tell people that I went to a talk by Phil Ross but I didn't even go. Someone in the studio had told me about this guy from San Francisco who was making these art installations out of mushrooms, and he had grown these bricks and materials that create these architectural structures. The mycelium was grown into these bricks, and the bricks could be broken up, and you can make tea with them. And that seemed very foreign to me at the time. Unknown Speaker 3:51 We, the public wasn't as curious about mushrooms. They don't have the sex appeal that they have now, Unknown Speaker 3:58 and I was fascinated with the idea of growing big, giant sculptures in my studio Unknown Speaker 4:04 out of trash, and I went to the library and tried to find all the books on growing materials with mycelium, and scoured the internet for any practical information on the subject, and found nothing. Unknown Speaker 4:18 And so it took a while to really get to where I am now. Phil and I have become very close and are collaborating on a few things now, sort of a mentor really kind of set the spark for all of this. Unknown Speaker 4:31 And just to kind of skip forward in 2024 there's still not a lot of resources for making materials with mycelium. You know, we don't have the radical mycology, or growing gourmet mushrooms and pulse stamina of this material world, which is something that I really want to work on, because I want to put this in the hands of as many students and artists who are in the same position as me when I was 19 and 2011 Unknown Speaker 4:55 but kind of getting there, I had a very you know, familiar path. Unknown Speaker 5:00 That many listeners of the show probably went through. I bought a copy of David auroras all that the rain promises to bring in more. I joined my local Los Angeles, Mycological Society, and Florence Nishita taught me how to identify wild mushrooms, and I started looking for edible mushrooms in Los Angeles. And it took me a while to realize that Los Angeles is a really difficult place to find. You know, beautiful gourmets and chanterelles and morels. So you know, my work is cut out for me cultivating mushrooms in a concrete basement. Unknown Speaker 5:31 And at some point, around 2015 I took a three day cultivation course with Peter McCoy. This is before he published his now famous radical mycology tome, which many of your listeners probably have now. But I learned a lot of the kind of information that I have about cultivation, initially, from him, so kind of brush shoulders with some of these grates in the mushroom world. And, Unknown Speaker 6:01 yeah, it took a while before all of that knowledge really found its way in the studio. Unknown Speaker 6:07 I think many people who go to art school and, you know, are handed all this art theory and, you know, kind of academic literature about creative process. I was a very constipated artist, you know, I kind of sitting in the studio like, oh, you know how object oriented ontology, and, you know, how does the work address patriarchy and destabilize gender, or, you know, all these big things that you want to, kind of your work to have meaning in the world and, and you want to convey these things to an audience. And it wasn't really until much later that I kind of realized the value of, Unknown Speaker 6:45 you know, pursuing the things that were very exciting to me, and how useful that would be, you know, how generous that would be for an audience, that all of those kind of big questions would kind of come together. But I really cut mushrooms out of the studio because I thought, no, that's something I enjoy. How could I have critical distance from that, you know, I have all these blinders and and if I bring if I make the thing that I enjoy work, then I might destroy it. I might not even enjoy it anymore. And all of that, you know, proved to be untrue when I started working with mushrooms in the studio. It was a lot of fun. And I'm think I never run out of things to do, and I'm really grateful for that. And I think mushrooms are really useful as an artist. I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but I something I want to kind of convey is that mushrooms are really useful tools for artists. They they're not just a source of inspiration, but they're actually, they're actually they produce materials, and we can over intellectualize what that means, and saving the planet and replacing plastic, but it's a very like, like clay, like plaster, Mycelium is a great tool to be working with in the studio. Unknown Speaker 7:52 So that's kind of Unknown Speaker 7:55 my spiel. There's a lot of things going on in the studio. To be a mushroom lovers, to be kind of curious in a lot of different places at the same time. Unknown Speaker 8:04 I think many of listeners of this podcast can understand that. Unknown Speaker 8:09 So your, your work is unbelievably beautiful, your Reishi bonsai sculptures and these, these pottery molds and what influenced you to make these pieces of art? Unknown Speaker 8:24 So I started with something that wasn't incredibly conceptually or scientifically ambitious. I just noticed that everyone was growing these Reishi and these poly pores out of these Myco bags. So anyone who's cultivated mushrooms is going to be familiar with these polypropylene bags that we use with filter patches, and they kind of create this nice in vitro environment, atmosphere for the mushroom to gestate, and then eventually cut the bags open and the oysters come out. And I thought, well, that's fine, but as an artist, I'm familiar with other materials that can be put in the sterilizer and not melt, that can protect the life of this mushroom, that can be the sort of facsimile of the, you know, bark of a log that protects a mushroom in the wild. And ceramic, you know, it's not we use clay pots and terra cotta to, you know, keep our house plants happy at home. Why aren't we using that with fungi and with this crowd too? I'm amazed that, you know, more people aren't doing that, because we all hate single use plastic. I mean, it's the reality of a lot of the work that I do. And I thought, hey, this is a more of a kind of hippie alternative to, Unknown Speaker 9:40 you know, this process, and I could probably make a pretty interesting little playground for my mushrooms to grow in, and they'll probably have different, you know, engagements and growth patterns, you know, depending on how I make the sculpture, which proved to be true, just given the shape of the opening or where I put the openings for these mushrooms to emerge, can really, you know, determine a lot of what. Unknown Speaker 10:00 Mushroom may or may not do, and I don't have a lot of control of what the mushroom does, which is why I keep doing this work, because it's a very unpredictable process. I don't try to control the mushroom. I do everything that I can to create an environment where it can thrive and, you know, live out its healthy biological life cycle. And then those works are preserved. They're dried. These dense polypores, most of them belonging to the Ganoderma genus, have wood like properties. When dried, you can cover them in a shellac, and sometimes you can just leave them alone, and they can last, you know, probably, you know, long after I'm I'm dead, we have examples that are over 100 years old, collected from all over the world in a climate controlled environment. And like wood, if I throw it in the compost pile, eventually it will break down. But yeah, that was, that was, that was it. That was, I want to grow mushrooms in my art. And I remember at one point during a critique in grad school, someone said, Well, how are these more than just Chia pets? As if that would be, you know, degrade what I'm doing. And to that, I say, you know, there really isn't that much different. I, I think I love looking at the mushrooms. I love this encounter with the mushroom. And Unknown Speaker 11:12 if it's a chia pet, that's great. I don't need to over intellectualize that. I i love the Unknown Speaker 11:18 the quote from one of my favorite artists, Mike Kelly, who says, I want the work to provide some meaningful engagement for my laziest and most obsessive audience members. So you know, the people who want to go deep with the mycology or some of the conceptual things, hopefully I can offer something there. But if you just come in and like, Whoa, that's a mushroom, oh my gosh. I didn't know that was even possible. Like, that's that's great too. It's a chia pet. I don't really use the word bonsai, and it's like such a specific history, I could get in trouble for that I haven't studied. That. I haven't studied bonsai. I mean, bonsai are this highly crafted thing that is a part of Japanese history, and that's not really my, my history or my culture. And so, you know, I see how people get there, but, but, yeah, I just, I just call them vessels. If somebody calls them bonsai, not offended. It's just not really the term that I use, Unknown Speaker 12:02 yeah, and it's interesting, a lot of people don't know. Banzai originated in China, and Japan actually adopted it and became very popular in Japanese culture using bonsai. And definitely, Unknown Speaker 12:18 yeah, I'm curious, when I went to China, I saw a ton of Reishi Banzai, both words originating from Japan, both Banzai and Reishi. But Unknown Speaker 12:30 I don't know what the the correct term terminology in China would be, Unknown Speaker 12:37 Ling, Shi sculptures, not I really know. But Unknown Speaker 12:40 I think I read or heard someone when I was visiting saying that it's pretty common for people to put these sculptures in the front of their house when you first walk into the door. And it's kind of like Unknown Speaker 12:54 a symbol of prosperity to have this Ling Qi sculpture in this beautiful pottery at the front of your home. And, Unknown Speaker 13:05 yeah, I mean, there's Ganoderma. Is such a beautiful species because it it, it can grow in many different colors and shapes and sizes and and, Unknown Speaker 13:17 you know, from antler like to conch, and you can manipulate it to do any, anything that you want, and and you're right it once it kind of dries out, like it stays that way, pretty much for life. Unknown Speaker 13:31 And I got to go into a Reishi Museum in China, and they had Reishi specimens that were, like, 1000s of years old behind glass. And it was crazy, you know, you It's you can't really do that with most mushrooms. They just rot away really quickly. So Ganoderma is really special in that way, Unknown Speaker 13:51 to kind of preserve your art for pretty much, for for life, for 1000s of years. So Unknown Speaker 13:59 have you? Have you looked into any Reishi Banzai art in China and Japan and been influenced in in any way from from that art, I wasn't aware of most of this art that you're talking about when I got started, and have since, you know, encountered a lot of that online. I haven't had the opportunity to go to China and Japan and see this work in person. I'd love to, I mean, these big, you know, the rat the shape of a rad and and grafting Unknown Speaker 14:33 reishi, really, if anyone's listening this like, you can, you can take, as long as it's the, you know, of the same strain a mushroom. You can, you can take two antlers and graft them to each other, and kind of do similar work that you would with other plants. And you can, you can use the Para film to bind them. You can, you can take an antler and stick it into another block of the same strain, and it will continue to grow. Sometimes, if you create the right conditions, some of them are more. Unknown Speaker 15:00 Brilliant than others. But yeah, you can do all kinds of fun stuff with it. So yeah. I mean, that shows how little I know about bonsai I did and not know that it was from China. I would be interested in reading more about that. But yeah, I Unknown Speaker 15:17 was not aware of that in the beginning. Unknown Speaker 15:20 I mean, most of the examples I know are getting highly controlled, you know, master craftsmen and cultivators. I sort of create an environment where I let the mushroom just kind of have a big personality. I don't graft or really do any of that. I think, just my particular goals for this so to create an object that has a relationship to the mushroom. I mean, you can grow a really cool mushroom, and we can call that art. I'm really interested in kind of my relationship, and maybe where my creative work would be in conversation with those really cool mushrooms. You know, you can make a interesting piece of pottery, or you can grow the mushroom, but to have them together and the tension and then, you know, sometimes the sculpture is maybe being too loud or taking up too much space, or or the mushroom is carrying all the weight. And so I try to kind of find that place where there's that tension, and maybe the poetry is located somewhere in there. But, yeah, they all are just, they have these big personalities. I love working with the Ganoderma, you know, I It's sort of a debate of which, which Ganoderma can be called Reishi. But, you know, some of them that are kind of found in Los Angeles, and they're, they're Ganoderma all over the world, Unknown Speaker 16:31 some that are not even belonging to the Ganoderma genus, but they all have these big personalities, and they throw tantrums. You know, it's like having a family member pet, you know, I spend a lot of time with them and and things. There's, there's knowledge in my head that I haven't even written down, that just comes from a daily practice of going in there and figuring out what the mushroom responds to, what it likes, what it doesn't like, and just trying not to interfere with that process as much as possible. The thing that I've made is almost like this very simple playground and, and I don't know maybe which orifice the mushroom will come out of. And, you know, when I'm sculpting it, I'm thinking about responding to previous growth cycles and like, oh, you know, it can't have the mushroom too exposed. Or if you make the opening too small, it'll suffocate itself. So, you know that, in a way, the the sculptures allow me to sort of deepen that dialog and that relationship and and kind of my understanding of of these things. Unknown Speaker 17:31 Yeah, I think one of the most mind blowing things is seeing Ganoderma grow out of a filter micron patch. It's like, how do you That's insane. I mean, it's mind blowing that the mycelium can Unknown Speaker 17:46 go through a micron filter patch, which is incredibly small, and be able to fruit a mushroom out of that patch. Unknown Speaker 17:55 But I am curious. You know, I see all these beautiful pieces of pottery. Are you a potter as well? Or do you Unknown Speaker 18:04 work with other potters that give you these pieces of art and then you grow the sculptures out of them? Or what does that process look like? Unknown Speaker 18:15 So I am relatively new to pottery. The ceramics really had a big comeback in the art world. That was sort of a craft material that the contemporary art world would sort of thumb its nose at, and kind of, you know, you kind of kind of be stuck up about, but there's been a resurgence and kind of craft and, and it's, it's history and its value, which is wonderful. There's even some people like, there's too much ceramics. There's just too much. And I was sort of late to that. You know, mushrooms brought me to that conversation, but I still have a lot to learn about ceramics. I use slab building techniques, so I do make all of them in the studio myself, where I kind of assemble these slabs. Unknown Speaker 18:57 But I am by no means like a bastard Unknown Speaker 19:01 Potter. You know, this is, this was a way to cultivate my mushroom. And every year I learn a little bit more about pottery, and it's a lot of fun, which is great about potteries. You really can, you know, there's, there's things. You can read recipes of a chemical composition of different glazes. You can mix yourself, and it can get very sciencey. But, you know, children can also work with pottery. You can it's very immediate. It's very intuitive that the ceramics will sort of teach you what works and what doesn't work. And if you mess it up, it'll crack. And, you know, do all the things that you're usually trying to avoid, depending on what kind of artist you are. And so when you when you go about species selection of Ganoderma, or even, you know, specific cultivars in the same species. How, how do you go about that process of picking a specific species of Ganoderma or cultivar within a species? Is it, you know, hey, I got this, this white glazed pot, and, you know, a black Reishi would be an awesome Contra. Unknown Speaker 20:00 Asked for that. Or, you know, I got a yellow pod. And so I want a bright, you know, Red Reishi, or a yellow or something like that. Or, you know, is it based on genetics and, like, certain species or cultivars, or just better at antlers or better at conking, and so you're like, oh, I want to do this one for this specific piece, or more trial and error. You just kind of pick at random to see what it does. Or, yeah, what's your creative process for species and cultivar choosing? Yeah, I think the spirit of the process is very fluid. It's maybe what I'm working with, what I have maybe want to return to. I try not to over define a composition. If I have too much of a outcome set for myself, I tend to pull back and try to switch something up. I sort of subscribe to the Brian Eno School of you know, many creative decisions are mostly arbitrary, and this sort of process and the journey is maybe much more important. But I have a lot of just mushrooms in my library, and like a lot of cultivators and mushroom enthusiasts, if you go through each slant in my collection and go, like, what are you gonna use that for? I'm like, I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet. And so there's mushrooms that might still haven't made it into a sculpture because I haven't learned enough about them. And then some of the sculptures don't work out. So I, I hollow them out, I put them in the steamer, and I, you know, sterilize them, and then I try them again with a different species of this, this black Reishi did not like that sculpture. So, you know, there is a conversation with the mushrooms. But I try not to Unknown Speaker 21:42 set too much of a agenda. You know, it's almost a kind of what's right in front of me. I think that that's not to say that there's no meaning to that, but I think the kind of spirit of the process is very important and most alive when I'm I'm just kind of working off of the cuff that I trust my intuition in a big way. Unknown Speaker 22:02 And do you go out and and get new strains in the wild, if they're growing around LA, or get people ship you cultures like, do you Unknown Speaker 22:13 work with like Ryan Paul gates, I know he does a lot of great work with Ganoderma Unknown Speaker 22:20 species and strains and yeah. How do you go about picking those specific cultivars and strains or species? Yeah. So if any of your listeners aren't familiar with Ryan Paul Gates's work, you should absolutely follow him. Terrestrial fungi, one of the most talented cordycep and Ganoderma breeders Unknown Speaker 22:39 in the country, and, you know, in the world, you know the map, the work that he does is not easy to replicate. He is does some very, very advanced work. And a lot of the mushrooms that are really popular with growers right now, like Ganoderma multipliam, I think he it's fair for him to take a lot of credit for that. A lot of the Cordyceps do go back to right Paul gates, and you cannot give that guy too much credit. He he's really incredible. And my, a lot of my work would not be possible without him. So, yeah, really, really, sorry. 99.9% Unknown Speaker 23:14 of the the Unknown Speaker 23:16 the strains that we're using, or the cultivars for the Cordyceps militaris Farm, 100% Ryan Paul gates, he Yeah, incredible work. He deserves showers of respect and admiration. I mean, he's Yeah, doing, doing incredible work. He's humble. He's Yeah, so everyone definitely buy from him. He's, he's awesome, if you're in in either the Cordyceps or, again, a different world, he's, he's great, for sure, Unknown Speaker 23:42 yeah, it's you can get great results from, you know, if you find a bracket mushroom, a poly pore, especially Ganoderma, that are are really generally pretty vigorous and adaptable, you can bring it to the lab and might be able to get similar results. But the sort of careful, very controlled breeding protocols that he has that, you know, nobody is really working at his level that I'm aware of in the United States, is just, yeah, we love you, Ryan. We get it's just incredible. I mean, they will never pay you enough for your work. No one, no one has the payroll to pay that man for what he's worth. So, yeah, huge. And that's a big part of it. It's I learned so much from people who are so much smarter than me and have been in this field for so long, Phil and people who are willing to trade cultures. And that's really taught me. Unknown Speaker 24:34 I don't know if I would be as motivated to be as you know, generous with what I'm doing. I always feel that I can be more generous and trying to contribute back in some way. Because it's, it's people like Ryan, it's Roger Rabbit, you know, Mark, Mark Keith, who, you know, decided, hey, you know, the best way to be a part of the space is to try a lot of new things and then tell everybody what worked and what didn't work. And I love that. And I think as. Unknown Speaker 25:00 As the mushroom world, you know, at times, starts to feel more corporate, I think we have to maintain that. So I sort of have my goals of how I can be meaningful. And you know, that doesn't mean that everything that I learned is, you know, always shouting for the root top. Sometimes things need to develop, and I need the right support to get that in the hands of people properly. But, um, yeah. I think this is Unknown Speaker 25:24 collaborative in many ways. I Unknown Speaker 25:28 have learned a lot. Daniel Stevenson, who consulted a lot of my early cultivation work. Really incredible. Mycore mediation scientist. So yeah, it's, it's wonderful. I do collect mushrooms. This is I've done a brown about way to answer your initial question, which is, do I collect mushrooms for the wild? I do, and I'm trying to do more of that. Now, there's a lot of really unique fungi in Southern California. We don't really think of Southern California as a place with, like, a rich fungi, but you know, the terminus botulina that I've been able to grow in the lab. I don't think anyone has ever cultivated that before. Or the gymnopolis venturecosis, a mushroom not the gymnopolis that can get you high, doesn't contain psychoactive compound, but a really beautiful jumbo gym the coolest common name any mushroom you know that's working with. Mushrooms like that are just that's all very exciting to me. Unknown Speaker 26:22 Some of those don't end up in the sculptures, because, as we know about, fungi, most of them decompose and shrivel, and galleries tend to be maybe less interested. And, you know, putting these more ephemeral works in the gallery, I think there's a space for that, but, yeah, it's sort of a balance. So there's the things that get shown in the galleries, and then a million projects in the studio that never see the light of day or just won't really, you know, exist as a discrete sculpture. And I will acknowledge that some people who on the sculpture of like, the longevity of sculptures, they last. I mean, these, these sculptures, like you said, they we have some that are over 1000 years old if they're maintaining the right conditions and properly cared for. Unknown Speaker 27:03 But, you know, there's some people who feel that the spirit of fungi, that it should always decompose. How dare you make a sculpture that would would last? And that's almost so prescriptive that, you know, like the contrarian streak of me again, like, Well, I'm gonna make a mushroom that will last this immortal thing. And I like objects. I'm interested in the formal languages. They're beautiful objects. I love to spend time with them. I also love the ones that decompose. Unknown Speaker 27:29 And, you know, I want the art practice to maybe reflect all of those things, because they really interest me. But I would love to do more trips. I'd love to go. You know, there's there's genetics in China and places that have been cultivating these mushrooms for much longer than me and my friends here in the United States. And you know, some of those genetics are unavailable to me, not just because I don't live in China, but you know, people are protective of their work. So, you know, there's no shortage of projects I have more than a lifetime of things I want to try and every year that list gets longer and longer and longer. So, so yeah, but there's a lot in Southern California, even if I'm just working here, there's a lot to work with blue. It's all kinds of things. Like, end up on the table at the LA Mycological Society. And I asked Rudy Diaz, Hey, can I, can I take this back to the lab? And like, Oh yeah, sure. I got some plates for you. Unknown Speaker 28:22 Two, two follow ups. I was very privileged and blessed to meet Roger Rabbit for the first time last year at a mushroom Fest in Washington. Honestly, one of the funniest human beings I've ever met in my entire life. Like my my belly hurt so much from just laughing non stop, like He's genuinely What, like he should be a stand up comedian, but he, he was my first influence that got me into into growing mushrooms. Roger Rabbit, watching his like DVD set from way back in the day. Like he, yeah, he, he was definitely one of the OG influencers for mushroom cultivation. Unknown Speaker 29:03 And then I had just, you know, when you're talking about laughing gyms and ginopulous and preserving certain mushrooms, or mushrooms degrading really rapidly, I had a thought, and I don't know if you've tried it or thought about it ever, but Unknown Speaker 29:16 growing either a bioluminescent mushroom or bio is it bio fluorescent? Is that the right term mushroom in a in a mold, and maybe potentially putting it in a like a glaze to preserve it, like, would it continue to Luminesce or fluoresce if you kind of preserved it in, like a lacquer, or something like that? Unknown Speaker 29:39 Yeah, the penella stycus is the sort of go to for people who want to cultivate bioluminescent fungi. And the wonderful thing with pinellasticus is it has bioluminescent mycelium, which most the I've tried to grow on, the lotus, Jack O' Lantern mushrooms for over five years. Unknown Speaker 30:00 Just, you know, I'll report back on that one. I actually have something to show for my work, a mushroom that does not want to fruit, but you will see no bioluminescence in my lab when I have those around. Because, you know, until I can get the fruit bodies, they do not Biola mess, but penelopeticus. And there's examples of people growing penelopeticus and the mycelium, or just even in a jar, it will, you know, it's very faint. You have to be in a completely dark environment where your eyes adjust for 15 minutes, but it will glow, and it will glow for over a year. Just really great there. I think there's a lot of bioluminescent mushrooms that people have not attempted to grow, but, you know, once the mushroom, you know, goes inert, like a lot of my sculptures, I that it's that, Unknown Speaker 30:41 you know, it's exhausting this sort of energy from its metabolic process to produce that light. You know, once you dry it, none of that is going to happen. Unfortunately, I would love to have a mushroom that glows infinitely or for many years, but Unknown Speaker 30:56 with the technology that's available to me and just to, I don't know if this is interesting podcast banter, but were you at the Olympic Peninsula fungi fest where you met Roger Rabbit? Or is that a different one? I think that's what it was called. Yeah. Oh, okay, I was there, yeah, Unknown Speaker 31:14 with Eric and yeah from km mushrooms. No way. Yeah. Must have missed each other. Well, what was so I and just, I think it's, you know, I can't talk about Roger Rabbit too much. I love him, and I just want to echo what you're saying too. Is, how cool is it that somebody who is so influential? I mean, everybody ripped that guy off every he made the tape the let's grow mushroom, which is the funniest tape you should all watch that nobody paid for it. You know, that guy put his life savings into making that tape, and everybody ripped him off. And he has every reason the world. Everybody went and start companies because this guy and he has every reason to be bitter about everybody, you know, kind of taking credit for all of his hard work. And he's he's lovely, he's just so he was genuinely curious about what other people are doing. Again, so funny. And sometimes you meet your heroes, especially the kind of older ones, and they're, they're not that way. They're really any age, yeah, any age, yeah. And I think that's remark. I think that should be noted. I think we all can take use from that of just that's a really awesome kind of philosophy in life, to just be, you know, he is a lifelong love of mushrooms. He's like a little kid. He's like somebody in their first year of growing mushrooms, he did not carry himself the expert to give everyone the answers. You mean, he's looking at the material of making like, Oh, how did you, how did you do that? Have you tried that? Oh, no, I didn't know that worked. Like, I'm like, how Roger Rabbit is, you know, asking me about how I do my work. You know, he's an OG wild, yeah? Love him. Well, well, talking about other weird species of mushrooms, what has been kind of the weirdest species, or, or, or the most challenging mushrooms to grow in your work? Yeah? So for a while I was farming gourmet mushrooms. You know the usual suspects, your speckled chestnuts, your foliotas, you're at your Pia pinos, the oysters, the we know the drill, lions. Man would go to the farmers market, and I would have the Pinellas, tiptoes, the bioluminescent mushroom, and all these weirder mushrooms on the sidelines. And my friends who are running bigger farms, when they visited, they'd say, Oh, wow, it's so cool. You get to do you still are making time for that? You know, I wish we had time to play around with penel strip to kiss. And they're like, oh, you know, Unknown Speaker 33:32 those kind of conversations felt like reminders that that is like an asset of being kind of a small operation. I have a very inefficient operation, I do everything myself, so I started to kind of see how much time I could spend just working on those things that won't make me money or or produce gallery exhibitions. So, you know, there's a long list. Sometimes when I give presentations, I have a list of all the mushrooms that I've unsuccessfully attempted to cultivate that year, and and one that, you know, I mentioned, the on the lotus, I jack o lanterns. Trad Cotter has done it. It's not, I wouldn't be the first, but I just have a hard time creating the conditions where an ompha Lotus wants to fruit, and the controlled environment that I create, and you don't know, it's, you know, the mushrooms with something like on the Lotus. There are not a lot of studies. You mean, who? Who you might find some studies on the lotus, but not many people have, you know, spent the millions of dollars that has been spent into trying to grow. My talk here this desirable gourmet, or a mushroom that gets you high. So you're kind of like trying to solve this riddle. You're observing the mushroom in the wild and trying to figure out what it likes. A lot of times it's very easy to grow the mycelium of a sapotrophic mushroom in, you know, conventional hardwood substrate, supplemented substrate on straw or CVG, some of the things that people on this podcast or people who have cultivated this mushroom are going to be familiar with, and you kind of try everything, and this. Unknown Speaker 35:00 And sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. But on that list of like obsessions that I've had for more than six or seven years now, stink horns, I really you know, stink horns are so cultivated, cultivated in China. Unknown Speaker 35:17 Trad Cotter is also somebody who has successfully cultivated stink horns, but there's a lot of different stink horns, and a lot of that cultivation science and literature hasn't made its way in the United States, and that's just always interest me. So the you know, the most Unknown Speaker 35:35 popular and famous of these stink horns that is consumed as a gourmet is the phallus induced the bamboo stink horn the Veiled lady. Anybody who's watched any of those mushroom documentaries or or YouTube series will know the time lapse of that psychedelic skirt coming out of the phallic mushroom. Some of them are that don't have those skirt look even more phallic. They look like a wet phallus, you know, merging out of the ground when I, like, show high school kids, you know, these, oh yeah, yeah, like, Unknown Speaker 36:09 and it was just for obvious reasons. I mean, it's kind of punk to grow these mushrooms. Some of them you can eat, Unknown Speaker 36:15 surprisingly, the phallus induced is a very mild mushroom that's used in hot pot and and kind of a nice gourmet but considering how incredibly smelly it is when you encounter it in the wild, you would never think that this mushroom is so wild you find them freeze dries at most markets. If you find Yeah, have like, a Korean or Chinese market in your hometown, you might find it on the shelf, but they they cultivate them on bamboo cuttings, Unknown Speaker 36:42 but they're primarily grown outdoors. It's not impossible to grow them inside, but the cultivation processes, it's like Cordyceps. It's, it's really freaky. It's not, you know, pouring grain spawn into a block of of pasteurized oak sawdust. Well, part of it might be, you sort of make these beds and the conditions have to be right. And you know, some of the success in China is because they a have the genetics and have a climate that is conducive to these mushrooms growing outside. But that would just be if I could figure that out and share that with all of my friends here in the United States. That would be so fun. Unfortunately, the Unknown Speaker 37:22 stink horns that I've tried to work with that I've found that stink horns and s very quickly, like Cordyceps, they don't sit in the fridge in your culture bank for years and years, they sort of fade away. And so that's a long I could talk about stink horns for hours. There's, there's many other culprits. Playing with resinous polypo right now. Tiger saw Gill. Unknown Speaker 37:46 What are some of the oh and beef steak poly pour is a big one. Unknown Speaker 37:50 And, you know, there's this guy, Jacob. And Unknown Speaker 37:55 yeah, so nice. Yeah. I met him years ago. Quick, quick side story. When we were just starting up the Cordyceps farm in Massachusetts, he drove all the way from New Jersey to volunteer for a day, and he did it twice, and he came with his wife and his kid and volunteered from like early morning till like 10pm Unknown Speaker 38:20 and you know, I'm like, Hey, dude, let me pay you. You've been working all day. You've been helping. Let me give you free product. And he's like, no, no, no, no. Like, just, just the knowledge is, is, is valuable. And, Unknown Speaker 38:32 uh, it's like 10pm I'm like, I'm like, please stay for dinner, you know? And then I had an extra room. And I'm like, Dude, it's like 10pm like, you know, he's like, I'm gonna drive back. I'm like, to New Jersey. Like, that's like, five, six hour drive. Like, there's no way you gotta sleep over. And he's like, no, no, it's no big deal. I kind of like, driving and like, I'm like, dude, like, and he came back and he did it again, and he's just, like, incredibly humble, super sweet. So, yeah, I haven't talked to him or seen him in many, many years, but I briefly saw that he was pioneering the beef steak cultivation, and that's super cool. Also really delicious mushroom as well. I've seen some people make some like sashimi, beef steak dishes that look insane. They look really delicious. They look awesome. Yeah, I've seen some ceviche. It's kind of fun. Oh yeah, there's a person, Myco off online, who also works with Jacob. There's like three people that I talk with. It's a brown rot mushroom, which means that it doesn't break down. When we talk about white rot mushrooms or oysters, they break down the cellulose and the lignin. Brown rot mushrooms are kind of weird and not really very well understood by cultivators. So they are slower, they're fussier, they're more prone to contamination. They have kind of freaky, weird needs. And, you know, with all of this, you know, why? Why was Jacob growing the steak poly four? Why Am I growing it? You know, I could grow oyster. Unknown Speaker 40:00 With so much more bioefficiency and consistency, but it's just fascinating. I mean, this mushroom that tastes like a lemon and bleeds like a strawberry. I mean, why wouldn't you want to grow that? It's incredibly impractical, though. You know, we're so self sabotaging creatures in this world, and so you know that that's just kind of a fun one. But, um, you know, and you meet these characters. I'll go back to the stink horns that I developed this relationship with. This man in Russia. He posted on the shroomery about phallus induced, Unknown Speaker 40:30 maybe, you know, as a nine year old post, nobody had responded to it. And I was like, hey, you know, I'm just trying to reach out to anybody who is also, you know, got their head in this. And this man in Russia was like, Oh, that's interesting. He wanted to know about my sculptures. We became pen pals. At some point, he started sending me plates from Russia. And I didn't have a backyard at the time. I didn't really have any success, and I as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, I have not been able to reach him, and I don't know what that might mean, but the like literal, global political situation, has influenced a very important relationship that I have with another passionate and he was growing. I should mention too, that a lot of people are interested in the stink horns. They're they're focused on curing various sexual dysfunctions, arctile dysfunction. Unknown Speaker 41:20 You know, you can kind of get in the weeds with that literature. I'm more interested in the kind of esthetics and just the kind of poetry of this mushroom, I don't claim to cure anyone's erectile dysfunction or or, Unknown Speaker 41:32 you know, problems in the bedroom. But hey, maybe, you know, there's a lot. I mean, he made a whole business out of it. He really claimed that, you know, that's what he was doing. Grew these big, massive, I mean, you never seen, you know, like, more than a foot wide with these skirts. So just massive. Wow. Net of stink horn. So, you know, tracking the Gen X down is tough. I appreciate Jacob for, you know, really advancing the culture library for pistolina And hey, United States, if anyone's listening to this, let's, let's let's do stink horns. Reach out to me. I'm easy to find. Yeah, for i This definitely doesn't count. But my closest to cultivating Stinkhorn was just taking an egg and then taking a mason jar and filling the turning it upside down, filling the cap with soil, just placing the egg in there, and then, you know, twisting the the mason jar on and it grew in like, 2448 hours, just like, popped up and I had it in my kitchen, and I had, you know, three roommates at the time, and they, like, pulled me aside for like, a little house meeting, and they're like, Hey, I don't know what this jar is. Unknown Speaker 42:37 Like, yeah, we're a little concerned. And I'm like, Oh yeah, it's just a, it's just a phallic looking mushroom. And they're like, Yeah, I don't know if that helped, Unknown Speaker 42:45 yeah, yeah. It's, it's a really cool like, if you find stink horn eggs, it is a cool like, especially if you have, like, kids or something. It's almost like those little pills that you drop in water and they make, like a dinosaur or something like the that how quickly it grows is, is pretty cool, but yeah, that they're, they're fun. Mushrooms, for sure, you could do it with amanitas too, a little wet paper towel into oil, like you find a stink corn, it might be close to an egg. Yeah, it's so fun. But yeah, the you cannot describe that smell, I mean, keeled over, gagging, just getting that smell out of my lab was so bad, I just fruited some clathlis, clathrous rubber, these kind of geodesic dome looking oranges that are found here in LA, but super. I mean, it's not completely put a camera in front of it, and the mushroom has already done all the work for you. But, yeah, man, cultivating those from a feature dish would be, I can't really tell you why that is exciting to me, but I would love to figure it out. And the more that I go into it, the more I learn about these mushrooms. Yeah, those are some of I gotta I could go on we I don't want to take up all the time just talking about the weirdo projects, but that's the stuff that excites me, not the ones that get you high, not the ones I get you eat, the ones I like show me your weird, stinky mushrooms that you can't eat. Like, that is what gets me going. Well, other weird products or projects. I just saw that you made a Myco boat, Unknown Speaker 44:12 canoe looking aquatic vessel. So, yeah, tell me about your work with Unknown Speaker 44:18 Aquatic fungi. Unknown Speaker 44:21 Yeah. Yeah. So we're using this term called aquaphone. That's a term that Phil Ross coined. So since that art talk that Phil gave in 2011 Unknown Speaker 44:32 maybe some of you will know that Phil went on to co found Unknown Speaker 44:38 with Sophia, that Myco works, the largest Myco material production facility in the world. They're making the world's best mushroom leather and making, I think they just announced that they're making mushroom leather for Cadillacs now and Hermes bags, really high end stuff. I mean, massive, massive facility. Phil has also recently started. Unknown Speaker 45:00 Started a applied mycology Lab at Stanford called Open Fung, which everybody should check out. Really great work. But, yeah, we are working. We're making working with some surfers, maybe a project I'm not really ready to talk about yet, but, you know, the surfboards are definitely the first thing that people ask me about when I mentioned mycelium and water. But, yeah, maybe, maybe back up a little bit for those who are not familiar with materials that are made from mycelium, the way that this works is you you can propagate mushroom mycelium. You can think of this as just this, you know, incredible binder. You can take an agricultural waste product, hemp or a more conventional growing medium, like sawdust that would be used by mushroom farmer, and you could put it into a mold, and the mycelium will grow out, and then you dry it. Unknown Speaker 45:57 You could buy kits for this. Online Ecovative sells kits for this, and Unknown Speaker 46:02 you can dry it. You could many people put in the oven, but just leaving it out in the sun or in front of a fan will also do you make the material completely inert so the mushroom is no longer alive. Oh, that seems a bit sad. Well, you're probably sitting on a wood chair or in front of a wood table at this moment, so that's a dead tree, but so you kill the mushroom, the mushroom is no longer growing, and this really kind of simple process that is really versatile can make a lot of, you know, be used for a lot of functional applications. You can packaging architectural materials, and then for a lot of my focus now the ocean and making sort of crafts or Unknown Speaker 46:43 vessels that you could paddle in boats, and a lot of that hasn't been explored yet, so I am just seeing how far I can push it. And this year, I made a 15 foot boat. I Unknown Speaker 46:57 not the first to build a boat at a mushroom mycelium. Katie Ayers in Nebraska did this wonderful project. I think around 2017 Unknown Speaker 47:06 grew a similar reishi mushroom. And I saw how Katie was doing it, I thought, hey, I'm doing things a little bit differently in my studio. Why don't I try the way that I'm doing it to make, oh, and there isn't a lot of water in Los Angeles, so you know, where would I use this boat? Well, I'd have to use it out in the ocean so that, you know, determined, yeah, I need a longer vessel that can, you know, take me through the waves. And hey, if I'm going to make a boat, I might as well make a set a goal for myself. Where am I going to take my boat? I can just do a photo op. But wouldn't it be cool if I use this mushroom to do a journey, which is where I've set the very lofty goal of eventually making a boat that I can cross the Catalina channel. So for those who don't know, off the coast of Los Angeles, about 20 miles off the coast, is this island, Catalina Island, you could take a ferry there. There's a lot of kind of touristy stuff you can do there in a community that lives there. There's buffalo that roam the island. Unknown Speaker 47:59 But yeah, Unknown Speaker 48:02 it's, there's all this lore about the Buffalo, and they're not, I mean, this should be buffalo. Unknown Speaker 48:08 No, they, they are not native there. They filmed Westerns on Catalina Island, and they Unknown Speaker 48:13 still consider that, hey, what are we gonna do with the Buffalo? And we're done, like, I just let them live there, and the buffalo lived on the island. There are colleges to take issue with that, but you know, what are we going to do with them? You know, it's not very palatable to just kill them off or but that's, that's for another time. But, yeah, Catalina Island. So I thought, hey, you know, I see all these people doing these projects, but I really think we have to show our proof of work. You can do a photo op with a lot of things. You can make a something that looks like a surfboard, and take pictures on the beach. And, hey, that's pretty cool, but I want to see you surfing on it. And were you able to surf on it without using a bunch of epoxy? Is it truly biodegradable? You know, how close can you get to just using mushroom technology to kind of solve these problems? And, Unknown Speaker 48:59 you know, it's, it's it's challenging. It's challenging. These materials don't disintegrate in the water. It's not like a notebook that just swells up and falls apart. These materials are very hydrophobic. Putting a boat in the water for a day is actually not a huge problem. It doesn't take on that much water, especially when you use a substrate like hemp, Unknown Speaker 49:23 but, Unknown Speaker 49:25 you know, you there's a lot of conversations with maybe how we reinforce them. I'm using beeswax right now, so I'm using a very simple process. The work I'm doing is neither difficult nor easy, Unknown Speaker 49:37 you know, like baking or running a CNC machine. It's just You gotta strategize. You gotta have the right tools. And I made a two part mold. I made this prototype. I applied for a lot of grants, and I think a lot of people reading my grant applications thought, oh, giant mushroom boat that you're gonna row across the ocean. Yeah, that, yeah. I'm not writing you a giant check for that. So I've had to sort of prove that this is even possible. You know, not only having people. Unknown Speaker 50:00 Most people not heard of mushroom materials, but they have not even considered or encountered something like a mushroom boat. So hey, I made this 15 foot boat. I made it pretty scrappy. There's definitely room for improvement. I was able to paddle around, even if this version is capable of crossing the Channel. My cousin thinks that it is. I would still want to make a more ambitious, elegant craft that can cross the channel. I think that's just a great story. You know? I just imagine that there's probably somebody out there who, like me and 2011 at 19, hearing about Phil Ross's installation is like, Wow. I didn't even know mushrooms are capable of that. And I really think that's the moment we're in, is to just explore ideas. I think that's really, really meaningful. And this promise that, you know, mushrooms are going to swoop in and be this viable and sustainable solution to all plastic on the planet, and we're going to build solve the housing crisis with mushroom building materials. We just don't have that amount of research yet. More things need to be tried, more things need to be learned. And that isn't something that should be depressing. That's a huge opportunity. This is not a field of specialists. It's a lot of people with kind of weird art backgrounds that want to see something in the world, and they're trying it, and if I can figure it out, other people can, and can do much more advanced work than I'm doing. So the boat is just one of the ways that I'm telling that story right now. It's great. It's reached a lot of people, and I'm kind of putting a campaign together to kind of make that next vessel, but this one will involve machine parts and, you know, much more ambitious carved mold. I used a used Craigslist boat to make a two part mold with my surfer cousin. And, you know, it was great. It was a little scrappy, but there are things I wasn't able to do with this. There are also limitations to working with mycelium and building a big, monolithic structure like this. I get a lot of people, you know, I'm not bitter about it, but people send me these long emails unsolicited advice. Who just, you know, I'm sorry, but you've never worked with the mushrooms at the scale, you don't know that it shrinks, that there's certain materials you can't use. And, Unknown Speaker 52:06 you know, I'm just glad people are engaged. But you know, it's, it's typical. It's, it's very impractical to build a giant boat out of a mushroom. It's, I'm not trying to revolutionize the boating industry. I'm not trying to sell anyone idea. I'm just trying to think because artistic research isn't even possible. And, hey, if it's possible, how much further can we take it? And maybe we'll get to a plant where, like, Hey, this is how we're making surfboards. Now we don't need the styrofoam anymore, but as it stands, this is highly speculative. And, you know, I'm just amazed when it can even exist. Unknown Speaker 52:39 Yeah, you got to get a photo Unknown Speaker 52:45 op. Yeah, I got a ways to go, and I'll be safe when I do this passage. I should also mention, like, this is not a daredevil, jackass stunt. I'm going to, you know, have a boat. Follow me. You know, this is a story of the material and what it's capable of, and not me doing some, you know, extreme sports Daredevil like life threatening. You know thing, I'm certainly not a good candidate to, you know, be doing that out on the water, so we'll be very safe. And I'm not. I promised my wife I wouldn't take any risk that I don't need to take when the day comes for me to actually cross that channel. Okay, yeah, I was imagining you would be shot out of a cannon, parachute into the boat. Unknown Speaker 53:30 So we'll cross that out. We'll do that another time. Yeah, take two. Take two. Unknown Speaker 53:36 You're up to so many different projects, and, you know, different ideas. I'm curious how you would answer this question. But if you had unlimited resources, equipment, Team permits, etc, what would you do and why? Unknown Speaker 53:54 I would love to Unknown Speaker 54:01 compile more research. I'd love to see more research compiled and made available to as many people as possible. Unfortunately, Unknown Speaker 54:11 in this country, so much innovation happens in the private sector, and if you want people to fund your big ideas for replacing plastic and building new architectural materials with cutting edge technology. Unknown Speaker 54:25 Those people are not going to let you go on podcasts and tell everybody how you did it. It's proprietary information. I can't fault them for that, you know. And there's a reason that these companies want to do this and have a meaningful impact using mushrooms, but that alternative is really needed right now, and so I want as much research available for people who are students, who are artists, people who are listening to this podcast. I think that's really needed right now, and just more research. I think we need to get the narrative straight on this. I think people need to kind of ease up on their Myco utopianism. Unknown Speaker 55:00 Um, kind of a term that my friend Andrew cannon uses that this, this kind of mushrooms are going to solve the climate change overnight. Kind of narrative ethos is is really not a sustainable way forward. Unknown Speaker 55:14 And I think the best thing that we can do right now is just learn as much as possible to try things. And so I would love to see funding for you know what Phil is doing with genomics. You know, for Phil's big question at Stanford is, What is even happening in the Reishi? They are trying to do the first full DNA sequence of a Reishi. We don't even really know what's happening in these mushrooms, I mean, and we're using them, and we're expecting to, you know, do all these architectural applications when we don't even understand the mushroom itself. And that's an exciting you know, the people who I think stick around Unknown Speaker 55:54 are the people who realize that this is not, you know, an easy way to make a quick buck while mushrooms are very marketable. Unknown Speaker 56:01 Very few people really get rich doing this, and the people that stick around and pursue big ideas are the ones who just want to kind of see what they can learn. Unknown Speaker 56:15 And it's it's very difficult work, it's sensitive. It requires a lot of coordination with people, different skill sets with different industries, and, Unknown Speaker 56:25 yeah, I just, I just think emphasis on the research, Unknown Speaker 56:30 that's where I want to see more, and that, that open source mentality is so important. You know, it was a, it was a big realization that Unknown Speaker 56:41 is counterintuitive for some, but extremely intuitive for others. And I would like that mentality to be more invasive, because, yeah, like when we were growing Cordyceps, we spent 10s of 1000s of dollars and 1000s of hours developing all these new things that, you know, we had a couple of business people being like, oh, yeah, I should, you should, like, patent Unknown Speaker 57:08 that, and because you spend all this money and time on it, and so, like, why would you just release it for free? Or, like, at least charge for it, you know, like, you know, making, make a class and charge a fee for it. And I was like, You know what? Like, no, like, we're just gonna record it in a YouTube video and just release it and, and it's cool. Like, these Reddit pages, like, you know, you were talking a lot about, or like people like Roger Rabbit, or, Unknown Speaker 57:37 you know, these Facebook groups that people just like sharing what they're doing helps advance the field a lot faster. And Unknown Speaker 57:47 yeah, if everyone just put in time and money and just shared what they're doing and what works and what doesn't, as as an entire human species, would advance a lot quicker. You know, same, same. Now, like, if anyone asks, like, how we make mushroom extracts or whatever? Like, I'm pretty, pretty transparent of of our technique. And I'm like, yeah, if we can, if you do something that can make our process better, like, let me know if you improve on it. Like, yeah, let's collaborate, because it makes everything better, right? Like, if you crack the code on Stinkhorn, like, let's just keep, keep sharing. Because, like, as a whole, we know nothing about fungi, you know? And so it's, it's up to everyone to share. That mentality is very counterintuitive for a lot of people. Unknown Speaker 58:40 But seriously, it does, it does help everyone, you know, Unknown Speaker 58:45 what's, what's the phrase, it's like, Unknown Speaker 58:48 rising, rising tides carry all ships, or something like that. Unknown Speaker 58:53 But it, yeah, some, some, some quote like that. But Unknown Speaker 58:59 we need people to also figure out how to scale these industries too, you know, I think I sometimes find myself being like, Oh, the corporations. But if people want to compete with, you know, plastic and Styrofoam, which, you know, our industry and capitalist kind of economy is so addicted to, you have to build enormous industries. You know, we can talk about this for, you know, decades at the mushroom festivals, but somebody has to kind of take the helm. They kind of figure that out too. I don't think that's not going to be me, but, you know, it's support and meaning and pursuing this. And the system that we live in takes many different forms. I'm kind of more on the artistic workshop. You know, we're talking with other mycologists. We're trying new things, and a lot of the things that we do are not conducive to just raising a lot of capital quickly. But hey, you know, it's, it's, it's a lot of fun, it's a lot of fun. Unknown Speaker 59:57 I would like to. Unknown Speaker 1:00:00 Get some of the stuff published, kind of working on that. If somebody beats me to it, that's great too. Like I, you know, there's people who have more scientific authority to speak on these things, but there's so much information in my head that, you know, if I worked with the right people and had the right amount of support, I feel that I could explain most of the things that I've learned over 10 years and, you know, like a weekend, if I could just sit you down, I could give you all. It might take you much longer to get the skills to actually use all that information. But it's even talking with the experts. I'm amazed by Unknown Speaker 1:00:35 how much they really are just kind of shooting around in the dark and seeing what sticks, you know, like you email, Unknown Speaker 1:00:43 I don't have any NDAs in my to my name, so I'm kind of in unique position to share everything that I do, and I want to make the most used to that. And some people are not in that position, but yeah, it's, it's just, I can't convey of really how open the opportunity is now is we should be excited by the potential and not wait for some Silicon Valley company to go and solve all the problems. It's really in the hands of you. Yeah, I have heard people just a quick aside, but open source patents, I think if you are worried about I have heard people say they are worried about sharing information because they're worried about a big corporation coming in and patenting it and preventing Unknown Speaker 1:01:28 everybody else from that information. But a quick workaround is, is open source patent where you can share the information and you prevent Unknown Speaker 1:01:37 any corporation from from keeping that information from from other people, so anyone can use that information is totally public, just a quick aside, Unknown Speaker 1:01:47 but for people who are wanting to, you know, venture into the world of mushroom sculptures and Myco materials and aquatic vessels, and you know, all the things that you're doing and Growing weird mushrooms, I know you brought up Phil Ross and I know we've been talking about various people throughout the show, but Unknown Speaker 1:02:07 where can people begin if they want to start their mushroom art, Myco, material journey? Yeah, Unknown Speaker 1:02:15 I wish I had more resources to point people towards. You're welcome to follow me. I'm probably the most active on Instagram these days, and I teach workshops in LA Unknown Speaker 1:02:26 I'm at Sam case you maker on Instagram. My mushroom page is Myco. Myco farm, not a farm anymore, but I still have that handle kind of hear my rants about different, different things going on in the mushroom world, and then hopefully I'll have a a draft, a PDF or a book alongside this boat project, where I plan on, you know, in the next year or a few years, to get all of this information out into the world and accessible as possible. That doesn't mean I can do everything for free, but I do want other people make boats. I want somebody to take my idea and do it better. That would be not a threatening at all. I'm not trying to hold a record or anything. I just I just want to see how far we can do it. If people are doing it, I want to talk about it. I want to see more surfboards. So, yeah, follow me. I'll have my journey, and I'll be trying to put out as much out there as possible. I just think the most useful way is to just compile it all into one PDF. I can't respond to every email. Unfortunately, I think any mushroom grower knows how that is. There's just a lot of I love that people have questions, and I want to get them to where they want to be and be that person, because I do like talking about this stuff, but yeah, hopefully there will be another mushroom boat got a campaign coming. Unknown Speaker 1:03:47 And, Unknown Speaker 1:03:49 yeah, just hemp. Work with hemp, work with Ganoderma. Oh, oysters grow really aggressively. They're not going to be as useful for materials, believe me. Unknown Speaker 1:03:58 I just just those are the things I wish somebody had told me, right, if you want to build material, build materials, go with your Ganoderma. You'll probably have great results with the wild Ganoderma growing with you locally. Grab that nasty mushroom off the street. If it can grow on the street, it'll probably do pretty well in your lab Unknown Speaker 1:04:17 and play around. Hemp grows quickly. It doesn't, Unknown Speaker 1:04:22 you know, absorb as much water as sawdust, so it's just kind of easier to work with. It's airier, so you get a lot more aerial mycelium moving through it really, really quickly coming out of it. The skin is really important. So these are just kind of little practical things you can't build a block and see and see it, not like conventionally, most of the structural integrity is just going to be in that surface area that you can create around your mold. So you're really engineering molds. But yeah, Unknown Speaker 1:04:48 get out there. Say hi, I'm around. Unknown Speaker 1:04:53 And then hopefully more boat updates to come. If I don't die out on the water, I'll say I. Unknown Speaker 1:05:00 Got one thing that a new fear that was unlocked recently, as my friend Andrew cannon taught me about Unknown Speaker 1:05:06 yum, yum. Yellow that apparently there's, it's some of it is somewhat superstitious. In some of some people are like, No, there's science that backs this up. But sharks that are appear to be mostly color blind. They're drawn to high contrast surfaces, so surfers, and even in the Marines, they avoid using the color yellow, because apparently sharks mess with yellow any other color. So like surfers, if you use yellow, it's like kind of a statement, you know, referred to as yum, yum, yellow. And my boat happens to be pretty damn yellow, so yeah, so I'm not gonna do anything about that. If I, if I die at sea on a mushroom boat from a great white shark, that's a pretty honorable way to go. Not planning on that. I'm not fishing for it. But if it happens, I mean, yeah, that would be a pretty epic, uh, news line for sure, sure. Yum, yum, yum, yum. Yellow All right, well, dude, thanks thanks for coming on and geeking out about all the all the different projects that you're you're going after, and we'll probably run into each other at some mushroom festival and actually see each other next time. But yeah, thanks for coming on and and thank you also to all of our listeners for tuning in and shrooming into another episode of the mushroom revival podcast. Could not do it without you, wherever you're tuning in from, from around the world, and if you like the show and you want to support, we don't have a Patreon or any way that you can donate directly, but we do have a mother umbrella brand, mushroom revival that has a whole line of organic functional mushroom products, from powders to gummies, tinctures, capsules. And we have a special coupon code just for listeners of the podcast. And that coupon code is pod treat for a surprise discount code if you don't want to spend any money, totally fine. We have a giveaway going on where we pick a winner once a month, where you can win some mushroom goodies. We also have a bunch of free Unknown Speaker 1:07:08 resources on our site from a ton of different blog posts, free ebooks that you can download. Unknown Speaker 1:07:14 And also my newest book, The Little Book of mushrooms, is on there as well. If you'd rather get it in person. It's it's in a ton of bookstores all across the US, Unknown Speaker 1:07:25 including non bookstores, like Urban Outfitters. It's in there as well. And check it out. The art is really amazing. And Unknown Speaker 1:07:35 also, just spread the word. If you've learned something really cool in this episode, Unknown Speaker 1:07:40 tell a stranger on the street next time, drop a Myco fact and blow their mind and just get more people passionate about mushrooms and fungi. Unknown Speaker 1:07:50 And as always, thank you much love and may the spores be with you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Backed by world renowned mycologists100% Mushroom Fruiting Bodies3rd Party Lab Tested

Backed by world renowned mycologists100% Mushroom Fruiting Bodies3rd Party Lab Tested Backed by world renowned mycologists100% Mushroom Fruiting Bodies3rd Party Lab Tested Backed by world renowned mycologists100% Mushroom Fruiting Bodies3rd Party Lab Tested Backed by world renowned mycologists100% Mushroom Fruiting Bodies3rd Party Lab Tested