Episode Highlights:
About Peter McCoy
Peter McCoy has been studying and working with fungi for twenty years, and teaching mushroom cultivation and applied mycology to people around the world for over a decade. His book, Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working With Fungi has been praised as the most important and comprehensive text on fungal ecology, mushroom cultivation, mycoremediation, and medicinal mushrooms written to date, and one of the most significant contributions to advancing mycology in the 21st century. Peter's work is widely regarded as pioneering in the topics of applied mycology and his voice is one of the foremost in the less-explored fields of fungal evolution, fungal communication, and the history of fungi in human cultures.
In 2017, Peter founded MYCOLOGOS, the world's first mycology school, to share his extensive knowledge through online courses and in-person training programs. A lover of the outdoors, Peter's work is a direct response to a life spent foraging in the fungi-rich Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Episode Highlights:
Show Links:
Episode Highlights:
About Peter McCoy
Peter McCoy has been studying and working with fungi for twenty years, and teaching mushroom cultivation and applied mycology to people around the world for over a decade. His book, Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working With Fungi has been praised as the most important and comprehensive text on fungal ecology, mushroom cultivation, mycoremediation, and medicinal mushrooms written to date, and one of the most significant contributions to advancing mycology in the 21st century. Peter's work is widely regarded as pioneering in the topics of applied mycology and his voice is one of the foremost in the less-explored fields of fungal evolution, fungal communication, and the history of fungi in human cultures.
In 2017, Peter founded MYCOLOGOS, the world's first mycology school, to share his extensive knowledge through online courses and in-person training programs. A lover of the outdoors, Peter's work is a direct response to a life spent foraging in the fungi-rich Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Episode Highlights:
Show Links:
Josh Robinson: 0:00
Welcome to the permaculture for the future podcast. I'm your host, Josh Robinson. The world is full of negative news, and the planet seems to be in an ecological crisis, and this can be downright disheartening and disenfranchising because we feel that there's nothing that each one of us can do is an individual that can make any difference. Well, I'm here to provide a different perspective. To tell a new story. Permaculture for the future Podcast is all about spreading positive and impactful stories, tips and ways that each one of us can transition into a regenerative lifestyle where we can make an ecological impact way. Talk about simple ways to make lifestyle changes as we interview authors, teachers and other folks that are collectively healing ourselves and the planet. So if you want to make an ecological impact, stick around because this podcast is for you. Welcome to Episode five of the Permaculture for the Future podcast. I'm your host, Josh Robinson, and today we have a super exciting show joining us. Today we have Peter McCoy, author of the book Radical Psychology, and He's going to get on with us and talk about all things Mycological. We're gonna dive deep into the world of fungi and mycelium, and I hope that you get as excited as I d'oh when it comes to understanding how we can work with fungi. Peter McCoy has been studying and working with fungi for 20 years and teaching mushroom cultivation and applied psychology to people around the world. For over a decade, his book Radical Mike Ology has been praised as the most important and comprehensive text on fungal ecology, mushroom cultivation, Michael remediation and medicinal mushrooms written to date and one of the most significant contributions to advancing Mike Ology in the 21st century. Peter's work is widely regarded as pioneering in the topics of applied psychology, and his voice is one of the foremost in the less explored field to fungal evolution, fungal communication and the history of fungi and human cultures. In 2017 Peter founded Michael Logos, the world's first Mycological school, to share his extensive knowledge through online courses and in person training programs. As a lover of the outdoors, Peter's work is a direct response to a life spent foraging in the fungi rich Pacific northwest of the United States. Now this world of Mike Ology that we're about to dive into with Peter is vast and expansive, and honestly, there is so much information that we could cover. But in order to keep this podcast manageable, we only got to get into some discussions around some beginning pieces of Mike Ology. So in today's show, we're gonna talk all about the role of fungi in ecosystems. Right? So how can we understand how to manage for the different types of fungi? It opinion on what we're trying to d'oh to partner with Maybe the plants that were trying to grow or to sequester carbon, right? So by understanding how to manage for it, and then we can learn how to maybe introduced some. So Peter's gonna talk a little bit about different inoculations strategies that we can utilize to bring mycelium into our gardens and farms and really any type of land based project. So excellent show now, just a heads up. Halfway through our interview here, my computer crashed. And so there you might notice a couple little glitches here in there. The information is good, so just try to kind of get through that, but knowing full well if you hear some things that just don't quite make sense. What happened is the computer crashed. Show notes for today's show can be found at permaculture for the future dot com slash episode five That's permaculture for the future dot com slash episode five and also stick around because at the end of this podcast, we have a special bonus that were working with Peter on. So if you want to learn more about that, stick around to the end. All right? Without further ado, here's Peter. Well, well, computer to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you on the show today for those that are new to Mike ology and kind of what? Some of the work that you do You want to give a little introduction about who you are and what you D'oh.
Peter McCoy: 5:04
Yeah, well, thanks for having me. Um, pretty excited to be on the show. I haven't been doing interviews while So it's nice to sort of bring new news to the world and share with a new audience. I've been working in the field of applied psychology primarily, and my college education depending how you want to frame it. You know, over a decade, maybe going on 20 years as faras personal growth and interest in psychology, having started when I was a teenager. And really, the process for me has been a bit of ah, little bit of a wandering path as he steps of things often are sort of personal personal interest in, uh, sort of careers, I guess, develop. But it's always been a fascination and reverence and respect for these really unique, incredible organisms that has motivated my interest in working with with fungi all types of fungi, mushrooms, mold, etcetera And, just as the years have progressed, learning more and more about them and being so overwhelmed by not only what they offer but also so surprised by how inaccessible the science has been and how unfortunately, few people know about all that. They do all of these organisms doing all that they offer, and so quite a number of years ago. Like I say over a decade ago, I sort of put these two points together. My mind, it's This is an incredible science, and at same time nobody knows that and in my interest in as many people have, and trying to help others helping the world be a bit better. I decided that that was one of things I could really help offer and sort of a hole I could fill in this big puzzle. We're all trying to solve a little bit of a tool for the toolbox type of situation and just bring awareness and an advocacy in appreciation for this overlooked science and these overlooked and underappreciated organisms. When I started doing that a bunch of years ago, it was sort of focusing on some of the more entry level topics. And, of course, as the years have gone on, my understanding and analysis and different connections I made between the science and many other aspects of human endeavor and ecology and so many other things has just come clean and clear to me. It's in my interest here in recent years, have just been to further expand. The conversation, helped evolve the dialogue around all the ways we can appreciate and work with and sort of again respect these organisms. And of course, we just incorporate them for practical purposes. Into the things we do is humans, whether it's for our personal growth and our food and homestead systems of things or two you know, help restore damaged environment or just to be better sustaining resource is, or even just to appreciate history and the evolution of culture. And Alphonse, I've been involved there. What that means for us going forward. All this is is fascinating to me, and it's kind of any of these topics and more I'm always excited to talk about. And a lot of my work is just trying to constantly refine these insights, learn more than transition that are translated to others.
Josh Robinson: 7:51
Awesome. This is such a huge topic. And you, I mean, you brought up a lot of different avenues that people just in general that how my ceiling and mushrooms can kind of interact whether we're talking about, like food, medicine, frustration, personal growth like all of those kinds of avenues, and I'd like to kind of move and touch into some of those different ones. But before we get into that, I want to kind of just step back and look at some of the rules that mycelium play in ecosystems. I mean, many of us are familiar with mushrooms, whether that's just like your hiking out in the forest or in a field and you see, you know, the mushrooms popping up and, you know, as a kid growing up on DDE what not I didn't really understand what that was and told about 20 years ago and really coming through a guardian perspective and starting to learn about things like Mike Arise, old fungi and stuff, fitted fungi and just blown away at the whose complexities and the roles that they're playing in our ecosystems and particularly when you start to look at, you know, growing, say, Ah, beautiful garden or just for restoration purposes, I mean these air allies that we need to work with. Can you talk a little bit about some of the roles that my ceiling were playing? An ecosystem function?
Peter McCoy: 9:11
So one of the things to appreciate about some of our more recent understandings and revelations in the realm of psychology and fungal ecology is recognizing that in many ways we might need to start looking at the fungal of the world before the flora and fauna, because of the unique properties and functions and abilities of the fungi of the world, that it's really potentially them that are shaping and transforming and sort of guiding the growth if you will, in a succession of natural spaces, and that the Florida final sort of follow in the wake of what fungi pave a CZ pathway. And this, of course, is a big paradigm shift from how we've sort of always studied systems around us before we look at what's in front of us. And then we sort of assumed that they're the ones guiding it, you know? Great example. Classic example is that it's the plants or you even more generally the major tree species in an ecosystem that is really guiding the rest of the inhabitants, and that it's the route signals that then caused the cascade of organisms to come to a root system, et cetera. From there, you know, everything else ripples out. And of course, that's true, but just a different way to think about it, or or a compliment that is to understand that, of course, without the bacteria without the fungi and the plants could live, everything's sort of living in sin Dialysis, which came first. Well, if we think evolutionarily, it's it's arguably actually the fungi came first and that after bacteria evolved on Earth fungi or something like them actually came after to eat all the dead bacteria early earth these early fund guys and she helped build the first soils is a very long story. Summarize. And it was because of these fungi that then the plants were able to evolve and animals are able to evolve. And in some respects, I like to think that perhaps we as humans and animals and things are just a subset of the fungal systems that really, truly shape and sort of ruled the world around us. And this is not just me saying it. There's really important soil, fungi, certain categories of my Kreisel fungi. There 77 types of microbes, a fun J and one in particular no Nazir busking on my Kreisel fungi are considered the most ecologically significant of all fungi because through their various roles that I won't mess again to the nitty gritty about just now essentially points towards them sculpting which plants doing do not survive in a habitat. Ultimately, what is the plant assembly of the whole ecosystem? And of course they're after. That implies what insects and macro funnel animals will survive. So it's a very different way of thinking about these things processes and in my mind and my biased opinion on Jake, um, first and then, really, they need to be considered, um, centrally in our discussion in our designs, as as Ecologists, a CZ landscape managers and systems designers. And so this boils down to essentially just the uniqueness of fungal biology. What distinguishes fungi from plants and animals? And there's several things you'll look at in a textbook definition. But the way I like to phrase it is that fungi are fundamentally 99% of them. At least our network of tissue noticed my psyllium, and this is like a sort of looks like a web of thread of tissue. It's very, very unique. But at the core of all this are at the heart of the importance is that at the tip of this network, as the Mason grows and branches out, each little individual thread is acting like a unique mind in this whole network. This whole culture, this whole community and each one is responding dynamically to the environment. It's receiving signals, whether there's food in its pathway or, ah, competitive the organism or what have you, and then it will dynamically respond through the release of metabolites. Digestive compounds defense mechanisms to to shift in alter that environment. Those signals can also be from the plant partner that the fungus is associating with. The great example are the micro Aysel fungi and then plant roots beers. Intimate, longstanding ancient relationships that go back to the oldest plant fossils with roots that have the Sanjay on them. And we now find today at least 90 95% of all plants need or can form a bit. Often need these fungi to send a signal to essentially requesting food, if you will. In response, the fungus that is on the roots will go out through the tips of mycelium do in incredible and unique sort of chemical mastery. Processes to acquire water acquire nutrients. Sybil Eyes, Minerals Digest Complex organic matter, especially woody materials, is an important one. And bring back that carbon, nitrogen and more to its plan partner in exchange for carbohydrates through photosynthesis. Yes, this is the sort of general definition, but really much more because when we look out, we see the V's on J R. Connecting not just with one plan but dozens of species, potentially hundreds of individual organisms across hectares and a healthy soil system in a four system and acting like, as we call it, the Wood Wide Web, spreading nutrients around, guiding the growth of the organisms, putting nutrient system to where they need to be in a seemingly intentional, if not just a genetic sort of knee jerk reaction. But I like to think it's intentional. Like to think there's some sort of of understanding and whether it's an evolutionary just survival strategy or something more some form of for lack of better word intelligence that guides these fungal. These fungal growth process is over durations that our geological time scale and not just short, like our human time span Tintin's to consider. And when we sort of have to, you know, a lot of this is is a big sort of paradigm shift again of how we just even to think about how forest functions, house systems and hold. You know, land bases and geography is transform over long periods of time and how, whenever there is a great cataclysm and extinction level event or major natural or human. Now, nowadays, human cause disaster, it's often the fungi that come in first and help regenerate that land based through their unique functions that usually the first things to show up in the devastated landscape and start to rebuild soils just as they did in the early earth. We think, and so in all of this boils down to me. We could get into all the details, but really, it's just a simple as my psyllium. This this basic fungal tissue, the primary foetal tissue of almost all fungi, can perform these complex chemical transformations, in essence, that the bacteria plants animals never evolved to do because they didn't need to because fungi were already there first, doing it so well and without fungi, nothing will live without fungi. The decomposition rates just wouldn't occur in the rate they need to would be piled high and trees. Nothing could grow dead trees. That is another plant matter and animal matter. And it's really them that just, you know, cycles the soil, which boils down to as we know you know, the fundamental essence of least trust your life in the oceans. There likely doing something very similar. We think that it's been proposed in recent years that the entire ocean floor, which is actually the world's largest habitat is infused with fungal mycelium as well, even all the way down there that has the sea creatures fall. Least one. You're doing essentially the same thing. They're churning the nutrients through its not truly soil because it's underwater. But you know the bottom of the ocean and enabling, you know, 70% of the Earth to cycle its nutrients. We have east and marine systems to and things, too, but there fairly poorly or understood and studied. But, you know, we could extend our hypothesize. That very similar critical ecological role is that fungi form and perform on land are happening in water systems all around the world. And again, it really just, in many ways reporters down to transitioning and transforming nutrients and then perhaps more or complimenting that moving those nutrients. Bacteria do this a lot as well, of course, in ways that plants can't do and some respects in different ways and fungi. But what's unique about fun, Jay is only do they do this chemistry at the tips of their network, but because they are a network of tissue, they can then move that nutrient rapidly across very large distances. Which of course an individual bacterial cell cannot do. And so that's really where they designate themselves out. And it's just again when we again. If we get into the weeds of all the details, we can do more more comparisons between plants, animals and other organisms and just see how unique fungi are. But sort of leave it there as faras the most most critical aspect of what they offer.
Josh Robinson: 17:17
Yeah, I mean, that is the first I've heard about the fungi in the ocean floor. That's quite incredible. There's a few things that you were talking about that really kind of stuck with me. I mean one, just the sheer number of fungal species out there, and the fact that we only know would you say 2% have been kind of like identified. And that's quite remarkable when you start to look at, as you mentioned, comparing that to plants where we have a pretty good understanding of what's happening all around us. And yet here we have something that is so important for all of life, and yet we know so little about it, and that's been something that's kind of really I mean, there's something I was like magical you could when you start looking at fungi, is that we all this is happening kind of like under the ground. And then we see this mushroom pop up and there's this kind of, like experience of like, wow, where did that come from? And then when we get into this, like some of the details of what they're actually doing, whether connecting with trees and grasses and whatnot, they're able to exchange nutrients. I mean, that's quite you know, I'm a gardener. I consider myself a gardener or not a mike ologists. And I've come to appreciate fungi through the whole, you know, gardening and and design realm around there. And a lot of what gets me excited through gardening is really like this opportunity to make a positive impact in ecosystems. Right? And it seems like, you know, working with Anne enhancing the fungal communities is going to be one of the best things that we could do if we're a gardener to try to improve, say, soil health and thereby plant health because one of the other pieces that you mentioned was that fungi and I think you were talking about Thea abuse killer, my Kreisel of fungi. How there essentially did you say shaping the for creating the soil conditions for a certain plants? Stephen Thrive is that Did I hear that correctly?
Peter McCoy: 19:25
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, as we start to and as we started to look at fungal ecology Maurin techs In just the last handful of decades, a lot of the research has gone towards the economic incentive ization of cultivating, incorporating fungi into human practices. And obviously there's good reason or economic least incentive to do that. And that comes from better and better ecological insights or a better understanding of the ecological rolls of fungi. And this guy just goes back to what I was just saying about understanding their unique abilities in soils on Michael Raisel on root systems and also inside of plant tissues. Living is what we call Endo Finnic fungi, and here again we find them sort of boosting the immune function, reducing the impacts of drought and heat stress on plants in, say, hotter parts of the world and also helping ward off herbivores and predator in sex and things like this, or rather, insects that attack the plants. And so plant growers in general gardeners, farmers, you know, should always, I think, be aware of the fungal rolls and, at the very least, thinking of how best they can incorporate fungi into their plant systems. There's a several different ways to do that, depending on how you're growing plants, whether they're annuals, perennials, whether you feel like you need to tell or you can get away with not telling and different strategies make more sense of different scenarios. But in any of those different scenarios, there are different ways to bring in fungi, all of which I would hope and think are going to be beneficial. It's still something so new to most people, is just general awareness and certainly hasn't been broadened into larger skill food systems in the world that we're still immediate respects. In a bit of the trial and error state error stage of looking at thes these applications, you could buy fungal inoculate products. But in many respects, the processor not as good as they probably could be in the future and will be, and also most people using them in my experience aren't necessarily applying them properly or aren't making the best use of them and not beginning the optimum results or in some respects, wasting their money. And and so as knowledge just spreads and people are more competent and trained, better trained on work with fungi, implant production systems, I think this will all become more natural or, you know, generally acknowledge and more standard practice, just like, you know, applying compost, he or doing foliar spraying or something like that. If you're into those types of approaches to your plants, of course, fungi are discussed in those things to varying degrees. But you know, there again, we find sometimes it's rather vaguely discussed or just sort of broadly saying fungi without being specific to species or or general or different categories. And as again, the level of knowledge of discourse raises all this is going to get better. That's a lot of what my interest has been over the many years, is no only advocating from ecology and sort of teaching people about it. But just pointing out that we have this pretty good degree of Michael illiteracy. Culturally, we're burying, just not trained in it because most of us don't learn anything about fungi and all of our education, and we never hear about them in the media. And so it's nobody's fault that they don't know much. It's sort of society's fault or educational systems volatile. We want we want to point blame, but even then, we don't necessarily have to point blame. We can also just say, Well, the science is very young, which it is. It's arguably the youngest natural science or one of them, and scientists slow to move. And just for whatever reason, it hasn't really incorporated or been incorporated into our text books. And so we've all been sort of left behind a little bit as faras. What academic psychologists and more trade my colleges are people like myself who are self trade. Um, no, no more about it. My interest has been democratizing that knowledge and making it accessible to others so that all these applied aspects of psychology advance while also just helping refine, you know, things like just backyard gardening. How do we make that better by actually incorporating soil fungi as best as we can? And we're getting every day closer to, you know, higher and higher levels of of knowledge around that across many different you know, social spheres and sort of hobbyist groups and things like that. But there's still, of course, a good way to ways to go, but certainly incorporating fun. Genter food production is easy way in a really appropriate way to start, because natural systems they're so fundamental to plant growth in animal health already.
Josh Robinson: 23:52
Yeah, you mentioned a couple things. One was about use of inoculation. I want to kind of get to that in a second. But one of things that I think about before even you're jumping to like a product is like, Well, what? What are the conditions that enables something to thrive? So in this particular case, you know, if we're, ah, a gardener or land manager or, you know, livestock producer whatevers, any type of you know person is interacting with the natural environment to leave a better soil condition over time, we need to understand how to kind of manage for fungi. So what are some of the main practices that we can utilize, whether it's in the garden or bigger scale application that would enable the diversity of these fungal components to really thrive
Peter McCoy: 24:41
Well, just like with plants and animals, when we cultivate fungi, we need to be considering their basic biological needs, their nutritional requirements. How do they even acquire nutrition, and what do they thrive for? How do they thrive in a natural system? And how can we best mimic that in our human systems? So unlike plants, fungi don't photosynthesize. They want to digest their food so we don't feed them. Plant fertilizers that air, just water soluble fungi want to act on their food and essentially fermented. And so we need to provide them sort of whole foods. Or be cognizant of the non digested or just general organic matter in the soil. And that what type of organic matter or organic materials that is, we'll bury by fungus, sort of. Generally speaking, they need water. Of course, Sanjay is lots and lots of water, so good, healthy soil with drainage, sort of all the basics that plants having a good for a system has. And then we're trying to just provide and ensure that there's, as with planets, you know, good amount of trace, minerals and things that they can also access. The way that we bring fungi in and then try to encourage their growth is going to vary on how one plans to treat the soil and what crops they're growing. So if it's a tree system in, ah, say wood lot, you're going to be ideally matching the appropriate micro basil fun jay with those trees. That should be something that nowadays is easier to look up, and you might very well be able to find an Oculus for for the given tree good common these examples that you typically find saying so. Commercial products are handful of water known as active mike razzle species that are just more consistent in there. My career is a shin with plant roots or tree roots, meaning that they will form this worship and stay there rather than not go away in time. And these include carry a species is a good example and puffball species. And But again, you know, looking up high quality product well, sort of lead you to that. There's something else from generic for many tree types, whereas if you're growing annual crops and let's say you're rotating crops, you know, maybe twice a year or what have you released annually, you're going to be disturbing the soil to some degree. And if you're removing your plants especially trying to establish a long term micro cell network doesn't really make as much sense these networks take time to apply. And though you can get different types of my Kreisel inoculated for annual plants, and my very will help a little bit during the season, if you need to heavily fertilize, those relationships won't really sustain. The plant actually needs to be a bit starved for the fungus to be accepted by the plant, and so it might not make much sense. So in those types of scenarios, a different approaches to use apply a genus of so fungi. Air soil bolds known as strike a derma species. And these air fairly well studied and actually rather commonly applied in countries like India and these air just moulds. But in the soil they sing, two acts will be like a check and balance system for the other fungi, where they will attack other species, and they will. They will protect plant roots. They can even act like what's called a pseudo michael rise of where they will clamp onto roots, even penetrate the root structure to a degree and even potentially exchange nutrients a bit with the plant and also defend the plant, which is the primary roles that true Mike Wrestled fungi do. But for various technical reasons. The strike of German bowls are not considered true Mike ELISA, but they are quick growing. They work very well. There's lots of research on them, so they're easy to learn about. And because their molds, they could grow very quickly. You could grow them in your kitchen, you know, for on just hold wheat bran or even kind, like Takashi or something, and then apply that to your roots down when you when you transplant. They're also good for compost. Piles have been shown to rapidly speed up the breakdown of cellulosic materials because of their really strong be composers. So actually, pretty amazing genius, but and you find them in some products. But you know, most people don't hear about them nearly as much as you might hear about my car isa and plant cultivation circles. So that's like a two very different approaches. This is one's more, you know, years long, decades long tree production, and you want right fungi there and pressure in the soil there perhaps create a whole plant community to cultivate these fungi whereas in a quick turnover annual garden setting your might not even way might. Some people might think, Oh, my career is over my Carozza. But actually, there's this other types of fungi areas. There's many areas of research here that have barely been scratched. A good example is soil yeast. So soil yeast, we know exists. But we know essentially very little about weaken. Suppose that there D composers did They have other ecological relationships? Are they integral to the survival of beneficial bacteria as well? There's some sort of cross over there that we're not thinking about, and there's many other soil molds as well, beyond track a derma that we can cultivate and weaken name. But I can't really say what they're really doing. So, of course, studying the soil is very difficult. Ah, this is the big challenge with soils, but there's a lot of room for exploration. I mean, this is many more centuries, probably of research with my college being so young, but thankfully, there's a big upsurge in interest in all this for so many reasons, including the few have described in many more. So you know, the picture is very bright from ecology. It just wearing this interesting time in history where it's exciting. We realize this potential. We're just not quite there yet. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Josh Robinson: 30:05
Yeah, I guess, to kind of just summarize. It sounds like depending on what your goals are in terms of, you know, managing whether that's, you know, vegetables, tree crops or other stuff. You want to understand what the the main resource is would be for the fungal communities, and then you can kind of begin to cater towards those. So if you have a vegetable garden, primarily annuals focusing more on something like the tricolor derma species and then Mike Arise, Elif, you're going more perennial
Peter McCoy: 30:35
generally. Yeah, and that's that's sort of, ah, General from you can certainly apply some of these microbes. Oh, fungi. So there's a different group that you had mentioned called the Arbus Ginormica Rise A and they form relationships with annual crops and that they've been incredibly well studied, and they certainly increased yields just in one season, so they're certainly worthy of looking at as well. But I just provided the triggered Irma's a different approach that often people don't hear about as as often as the rest of my cries and the triggerman again have also been well studied. They're a little bit better for the trucker terms, at least for more protecting against pathogens. Let's say you have a lot of room root problems, root rot problems and things like this, they mean, might be something to look into. Another approach to all this is even as with a lot of good land management practices, methodologies is just observing first and seeing what's there seeing what fungi. Our president Now, of course, if you don't have much from showing up, it's kind of hard to say what's going on in the soil so it gets a little bit more evolved. But there are methods for trying to cultivate so fun. J. There are ways of sake going to, ah, healthier soil system, either on your land or nearby. You can actually remove the Arbus gonna my Kreisel spores and see which species are are present in your region of the world and what's sort of natural and healthy habitat. And then you could do that similar process on your land and sea. You know which fungi aren't here that have been lost because of human disturbance through tilling through compaction, et cetera. And from that, you can kind of get some points of comparison and say, Okay, it looks like a healthy system down down the road has these fungi. I don't have them. And then there are ways to even cultivate those missing our best comic razzle fungi. Try to bring the back tryto, help reinvigorate, regenerate, eat missing fungi. And so these these air, of course, a bit more involved practices that involve er or require, Um, we're skill and training as opposed to where most people want to enter this, which is just kind of getting a good suggested product and just sort of adding it following the instructions there. But this is a future part of the future of Applied Mike ology is more people providing these. These niche service is so not everybody needs to sid soil and all its complicated stuff. But eventually, as more people hear about all this and they want to know, just like they want to know the the N P K levels and then the other, like trace mineral levels and their soils, and they don't want to get other can I exchange capacity and these types of metrics, more and more people are gonna want to know how healthy they're. They're fungal community is. And how do you increase that? And that's, I think, a service that will be, you know, more more available. That's where you'll get trained in these these things. Right now, the essential skills are alluding to our mostly just in an academic studies and sort of clinical, lab based types of local ecology research.
Josh Robinson: 33:19
Yeah, they're also seems to be some fringe kind of service is like, you know, Dr Elaine Ingham and people that kind of follow the soul food Web practices where you can kind of test for, you know, at least under ah, qualitative analysis of your soil and looking at just kind of fungal diversity or bacterial diversity and having the whole spectrum. But, yeah, that's a lot Thio really kind of consider there. One avenue I kind of want to jump into is you mean you alluded earlier. Two different types of inoculations and some of the commercial ones, but they also mentioned being able to kind of cultivate some of your own, whether it's the tricorder, MMA or even with a local fungi that you might have in your own ecosystems, Can we dive into each of those two? So maybe just starting off with kind of commercial inoculates and maybe what people could be looking for. No, my experience with using more of these like powdered My Kreisel inoculates, at least on trees and other perennials, is, you know, hands down, like, you know, the plants that you dust their roots with before planting. Now it seemed to do way better then those that don't have it. What are you kind of seeing out there in all of your experience?
Peter McCoy: 34:38
Well, as faras commercial products go, just something that folks need to be aware about It is definitely. There have been many independent studies done, and it's something you could do yourself with a microscope and a couple. Sis is looking at these products under microscope and seeing if actually the sport count that they advertise is what you're buying, and often times it's not. Oftentimes, the spore load is much lower than is advertised. I've even heard of people testing some products and finding zero spores a lot of the powder and these things have just been tonight clay as a filler and as it needs to dilute it because you don't need a lot of support. I mean, it's fine that they're providing selling powder. But of course, you do want some sports in there that's just going to be aware. That's the beauty of learning to make your own, especially if it's locally adapted strains. That's the term we use for fun. Guys posted bridles Ah, locally adapted strains of species that are tolerant of your soil, local soil, local climate, local elevation, planned community, et cetera. By learning the new but not necessarily that difficult skills to collect and cultivate these and amplify them and and bring them back into your system. There are studies that show that that's a much better approach generally, than buying an exotic strain that was, you know, cultivated a lab in Belgium or something. So this is again a little bit of the what I was getting out to. The last question with last question is as it that realization that the place based in this of cultivating fungi, soil fungi, plan associate, associating fungi becomes greater and demand skills will become more commonplace. And just like mushroom growing is becoming more of a home hobby skill. So, too, will people that are really interesting plants want to go on understand these fungi baby brother themselves, because it really isn't that difficult. But as faras applying them again, of course, it just depends on, say the products. So if you buy a product, generally they come is either liquid suspension. So the spores are in a slurry of sorts, or you get this powder. Often it za clay powder, and you either dusted or you make your own paste by any little bit of water, and you just dip the roots. The idea and just how biologically works is that the spores need to be close to the roots, so that when this four germinates the plant and the sport, they said chemical signals to each other to make sure that they can form the partnership, and that there's actually a lot of interesting biological sailor transformations that happened by both organisms so that they can sort of fuse together and become, uh, naturalistic symbiosis. So you need this for US clothes, and that's why you see, to follow the instructions on the product. If it's a good product if your soil is right, if it's the right tree that's gonna work with the species. And then, ideally, if you know basically keeping your fingers cross because at that point you let nature take its course. There's not much more you could do other than consider how healthy, nutritious is your soil, et cetera. I mentioned with the Airbus kettle My cries a uh that one of the challenges is that you want to under fertilizer plant. That's one of the I think common Miss missed opportunities or miss misunderstandings there when people buy a bust of my cries alone, Ocular MME. Is that. Then they proceed to heavily fertilize their plan. And essentially, the plant doesn't need the fungus to get its food. That's why it forms. A relationship is because it's wild. It can access very much nutrients. It only access what's right next to its root zone. Right in the rise of fear, the fungus goes out, travels much further to get food that the plan physically cannot access. But if we're just pouring water soluble nutrients right there applying, you know, easy to access compost right in the root zone that will sustain the whole season that doesn't eat the fungus. So if you're doing that and that's working for you, you can certainly try to apply these fungi. But you might just be wasting your money because the sports will Germany. And after a week, if the plant doesn't take it in, it will die. And so it doesn't really do anything it needs to be. You cannot live without the plan partner. You could test to see if you know there's a lot of room for experience ation here. There's a lot of need for improved protocols and a lot of discussion between plant cultivators and really forward thinking regenerative agriculturalists things. Trying to incorporate these fungi while still also provisioning the soil well for the plant but not overdoing it such that the plan doesn't survive so that in the future we know the best practices and we build up, you know, more more protocols. Right now, a lot of it is done in labs, and it's sort of on a culture systems that thinks that the way that you could test for it is just one example is after applying the the Knicks, you wait a few weeks or a couple months. Plants growing looks good. You sacrifice a couple plants, and you can actually look at the roots under a microscope and see if the structure of the fungal structure is inside the route. That's not very difficult to d'oh. And then you can compare that. Make a little experiment, however complex you like between different inoculation strategy, fertilization strategies. And I've been a part of studies like that, and different combinations will work better than others. In many cases, the local fungi work better than the commercial product of the same species. So this is, Ah, the realization again, as I'm sort of hitting hitting on several times here, a SZ faras attracted Irma Go, so that's so. But then to cultivate those fungi, really, Actually, it's It's not too difficult and the resource I always point towards and most books that will air starting to discuss are busting my cries of cultivation. Also point towards is sort of our guiding beacon to date, which is a protocol developed by the Road Dale Institute and the USDA, where they spent about seven years working with farmers to figure out the easiest but highest yielding means of cultivating our busking on my cries a in the backyard or on the farm, and folks could look that up. It's free online just looking up the road. L are busting my Kreisel inoculate protocol, but in essence, you either by commercial product or you harvest the top few inches of soil from a healthy system. You use that you inoculate the seeds of a quick growing grass or Valium. You sort of started intentionally fungus forms Over the season. The roots grow. My silly invents. Four Start to develop in the pot. Then, at the end of the season, you harvest the soil root for mixture, and you save it over winter and diluted the following season as your home. Our farm scale are on site produced in Oculus, so it's pretty easy. It's It's been fairly well tested, and like I said, they spent about seven years developing it. So hats off to those folks.
Josh Robinson: 40:57
Yeah, I mean, I've read that publication. It's fantastic in terms of like low tech, you know, for the garden or farm scale kind of realm and seems like a lot of that. Then it's gonna be predicated on your choice of where you're getting that initial kind of like seed source, you know, from, you know, finding a good spot. So what would people be looking for when they're out, say, hiking or whatnot? I mean, would you say that one of the goals would be to try to one established, like what your goals are, whether it's like a more of an annual system or perennial, and then going out into seo annual or perennial kind of system that you're finding? And and and then what?
Peter McCoy: 41:37
Right? Well, yeah, The 1st 1 is what plants are growing. So are you growing? A lot of annual plants are known to associate with our bus going My cries a so one of the problems with our busker, my Kreisel research is only a handful of species out of the roughly 100 or excuse me 300 that we know currently recognize only just a few. Them will actually grow in the lab under controlled conditions or in a nursery scenarios who can actually study them. It's probably a lot of solar dynamics. We don't understand. They were not reproducing, and then thus we can't, you know, investigate them further. So that's one of our hurdles right now is more species, but of the ones that do take quite well, you'll find them sort of across the board and most products at least one or two, if not many more. And so what you'd be going for, What you're hoping for when you go harvest from the environment is you'd probably be hoping that some of these better studied species are present or that you're acquiring, some of which are quite ubiquitous, seemingly around the world. So you have a good chance of going to a healthy system that hasn't been disturbed in several years, harvesting the top four inches of soil. And then you're just gonna assume if you don't have a microscope and don't know these other don't do these other techniques. I'm just going to assume that the rest of my crazy are there, and hopefully something's better. Studied months. It's also not a bad thing to also assume and help that there's, ah wider diversity of our basket, my Kreisel species, and because at the research we have points towards, perhaps not too surprisingly, more species, the better. Now, of course, there might be in the future, determined to be a tipping point or there's too many could be bad or something like this. But you know, just currently have a clear understanding of that limitation. Generally, it's thought that AH, product or wild harvested or source that's more diverse with these fungi is better than a single species, and you bring him, hopefully, the habitat premature. Your selection choices just hasn't been disturbed in the last 23 years. If it has go to somewhere that hasn't been, and that's sort of the rule of thumb. That's whatthe road ale, Protocol says. And just following the protocol there without, you know how to get too much into it. Here it's pretty straightforward as faras the just gonna switching gears a bit. As far as the trick of derma approach goes, if you're interested in that again, there's pretty good resource is on that online. Those fungi are also very ubiquitous. Trigger dormant as a genius seems to be quite global. In soils, a couple species are much better study than others as well. But generally you could either just try to acquire truck enormous force. If you look it up, it's actually much more common than you might imagine to just get in a sort of spore powder of them. And then it's not as a refined protocol estate making because she releases Santa's popularly discussed but you can essentially as a bold just like the mold on your bread or or or Citrus or something in the kitchen that goes bad. They grow quite rapidly, so you could just Sprinkle this on to some slightly moistened, sugary. Like I say, You know, we brand is an easy one. It's cheap, and it'll just run through that just a few days you get a big, gross, kind of looking bag of green mold, but just don't take a big whiff of it inside. Take it outside. Maybe wear a mask if you're sensitive to the spores that they'll sort of release and Sprinkle a little bit and in your roots when you're planting out. And that Z primitive, simple as that and again studies air quite rich, showing that this definitely help, especially again with pathogens, but not as as powerful a cig nutrient acquisition as Mike Wrestled fungi. But if you already composting while they're fertilizing, well, then the furnace. A nice addition. If you're concerned about root rot issues and things like this. And as I say, they're much easier to cultivate very quick to cultivate. Whereas the are busting my cries, it could take, you know, essentially a whole year before you have a viable hope produced product.
Josh Robinson: 45:10
Okay, so on that, the topic of the tricorder Mama, um, you mentioned kind of like starting off with some known kind of ones. Is that something you're just ordering online? Are getting at a store, or is there a way of, like, going out and harvesting local species and you'd be able to kind of know,
Peter McCoy: 45:29
Well, I mean, that gets into That's almost if, if they are busting my Kreisel techniques I just mentioned didn't scare you off trying to harvest locals record Irma might very well because it just requires a bit more technical on for like about a word lab based skills basically Petri dishes and agar and things like this, which you know with a little bit of training, it's it's not too hard, but if it's new to you, it might be a little bit intimidating. But what that looks like is essentially, you would make a sterile gel sugary gel of agar with certain nutrients that kind of a specific recipe for track of German molds. It sort of select against bacteria and other fungi. Tries to prefer jacket Irma and you literally just Sprinkle it a little bit of soil from, you know, a healthy for system or your backyard forever. And then you then you need to learn how to identify triggered Irma's, which is its own little skill trying to isolate an individual one. And then you could separate it out. And that would be great if you have that skill set because then again, you know this local trick of derma and propagating it out. But, you know, that's quite a lot to ask. So the easier thing to just get a little packet you have of tracking Irma whores and then just like a Sprinkle it on to some really cheap, cheap ingredients. Um, like we brand Is it is it really easy example?
Josh Robinson: 46:40
Yeah, so you basically grow that out, and then you mentioned you could put that into your veggie gardens or even into your compost to help kind of get that, you know, cycling through there as well.
Peter McCoy: 46:50
Exactly. People cut their seeds. Yep, there's it's it's a whole There's decades of research with it, just against surprisingly, it hasn't really rippled out. And to sort of, at least in this part of the world, the plant growing community and isn't as calmly discusses my cries in my cries. They were just really fascinating. They're critical, ecologically so. They get a lot of attention and good for good reason, but sort of the over over shine or outshine the value of trick of German molds in plant cultivation strategies for for seven reasons.
Josh Robinson: 47:19
Okay, well, that's something I'm definitely have to play around with. And I've never intentionally kind of messed around at all with any of the checkered Irma species. But now I think I'm gonna have to try that out and see what that does now to kind of switch gears a little bit. Um, I wantto kind of move a little bit, um, and shift into mycelium and mushrooms in their potential for restoration. Now, I think I first became familiar with some of the work that you're doing. Seeing a video where you were able to essentially train. I believe those oyster mushrooms in the mycelium there to consume used cigarette butts. Now I know that's 11 kind of peace, but it's it's really kind of tell us the story of, like how, uh, you know, flexible. A lot of these species are that they're still like adapting to place and kind of creating those conditions that can break apart what are pretty interesting. You know, chemical bonds when we're looking at like a, you know, use cigarette butt. You want to talk a little bit about that? Well, in the end of the work that you're doing there,
Peter McCoy: 48:26
Yeah, definitely. So I got interested in psychology when I was a teenager, just general fascination with them. I had already had a vegetable garden. So then I wanted to try to learn how to grow edible mushrooms is just a hobby. And then one of things that just really stoked by interest when I was about 20 was when I learned that fungi can help the environment in many ways, a sort of big revelation to me of sort of new revelation, really, in the world of psychology is our understanding of all these functions have been mentioning, coalesced and the way that I now think about it after years of studying and teaching in a practicing it is that we could boil down the application of fungi to help the environment. In several Broadway's one hand, we have sort of more regenerative restoration type approaches. We're trying to help a damaged or impacted ecosystem come back to be sort of self sustaining and holistically thought out in design, but then left to its own devices. And so course that's going to my mind up imply thinking about the fungal community, making sure the soil has a good, healthy fungal diversity and thinking about stuff We just been talking about thinking about not letting the right not only my cries of fungi so fungi, but also de composers and bringing them in to enable would to break down, providing food for wild animals and insects that that fungi offer bringing in lichens, which are also very commonly overlooked in a holistic environmental assessment. And that's it's a sort of just sort of the direct application of formal ecology and endearing that, and that's a pretty big topic. And then we have, on the other hand, the chemical mastery essentially components or abilities of fungi being applied to deal with the problems that we've much more directly created US humans, primarily in terms of pollution, waste the other things we sort of negatively do to the environment. And this is where fungi and several ways really hit home, and it sinks end of the power and unique traits that they have primarily, it's safe. I had to pick one. It's in this ability to break down some of the most complex chemicals that we've ever created that arguably the Earth had never seen before. And we find this in the lot of the petroleum products that we create. Um, and many others. Pete PCBs, dioxins, all kinds of compounds and essentially, after about 30 40 years of researchers looking into this, what we find is that many fungi, certainly many D composers, which is where the research started. But now we're finding other soil fungi. Michael Raizo fungi as well all have to varying degrees ability to break down many of these persistent, highly toxic compounds, and sometimes to 99% efficiency, where it's almost essentially water and carbon dioxide is the by product. That's sort of that's not. That's not always the case, but it's certainly the preference and so we can apply that in several ways. In the landscape, it's quite a challenge. Still, it's still a burgeoning field because in the lab we find we can break down all kinds of stuff. But then, to take that into a wild system where there's tons of variables and gets hot, one day gets cold. The next the fungi struggle, they might not be able to break down the chemical quite as well. So in between the two, we can scale up the insights that 40 years has given us to. This fungus seems to be really good at this chemical, whereas this fungus is better for this chemical and put that too, you know, guided application and that the cigarette approach is one that, like you say, kind of I think is easy for people to wrap their head around. And really, it's just be, I hope, appreciative of what fungi uniquely do because a chemical or rather, excuse me, a cigarette butt. My very well host over 2000 toxic chemicals. The thing about cigarette filters that sometimes people miss or just sort of doesn't quite click my experience even for be originally before I really learned about this is that the filter material itself is a little bit innocuous. So it's paper wrapping filled with either cot room or modified Silas acetate, which is a type of plastic. But it doesn't persist ever, my friend will break down in 100 years or so, so it's not the worst type of plastic, essentially is like a sieve modified cellulose. The problem with cigarettes is that when you smoke when you combust organic material, it produces lots of carcinogens and different compounds. And, of course, they put a lot of toxins into cigarettes to make you want to smoke more of them. Heavy metals, all kinds of other stuff and all that gets sucked up into the filter, which is like a sponge. Now it's filled after you finish the cigarette with these compounds, and if that goes out to the environment, those those toxins leech out, they go into the water. They go into the soil, they go into the ocean. Cigarettes of the most polluted item in the world of the most common pollute the oceans, so they're obviously a major major problem. So what I was able to show this video is that introducing this as the only food source to a fungus oyster mushroom. In this case, it had to either learn to adapt and eat all these chemicals, really some of them or die. And this. And after a few days of its sort of struggling, it did just that. It was able thio produce the correct digestive compounds in response to this novel environment. This is essentially what fungi do in soils are, you know in the natural world. So it's applying that ecological or biological rather insight to this system. The fungus took some time, had to sort of go through the options of compounds that could produce, figured out the right ones to produce and just started running through the cigarettes. No problem. Probably not so much eating Silas acetate because the actual chemicals are much more accessible and much more nutrient diverse. So it is. You can see in the video there sort of like a stream of compounds coming out of the cigarette into right into the mycelium. You could sort of see it channeling and digesting these compounds, and this is just one application of this really potent, again digestive chemical mastery ability that many many fun J hold so going forward now it's just a a question of how do we best apply that so that the fungus can survive as long as possible in an oil spill or whatever this scenario is? How do we provisions in the environment to make it as hospitable for the fungus to just do this natural role, perform the central role easily. Do we need to give a little bit extra, like wheat straw? So that's kind of like easy food. While it works, the more difficult food we want to make sure it's not too you too wet to dry, too hot, too cold. So we do that by designing the the installation. This is all very doable, with a good understanding of basic fungal biology, but the ecology and fertile cultivation skills. The problem is most of us don't learn all of those things, and and that just really, ultimately to design a good remediation installation for talking prod, skill, landscape style, really to do justice, you want to do a thorough no proper experiment, which implies, in part generally doing laboratory testing, and that's when our biggest bottle next, because that gets very expensive very quickly. But when we do that, if one was to do that or a community group was to raise the funds to do that, to heal the land around them, then you can get numbers that will justify that. Your results are your efforts are working and potentially get grant money they're after or scale up the project from, you know, a couple buckets in your backyard with the dirty soil to actually the proper, you know, half acre wherever the spill happened, that makes sense. So so this is sort of the state of affairs with all this. This is actually sort of comes back to a little bit of my history, where many years ago, when I learned about this ability of fungi to help the environment such profound, really unique ways, I became a big advocate say, Hey, we can all do this because we really many people If you take the time to learn the skills you really can't it's really, you know, not that difficult and very inexpensive. And after a couple years, sort of being being this person trying to say, Hey, we can all re mediate, I can realize, well, that's that's great, but it's actually many steps ahead of most people that most people don't have the knowledge that I have about fungal ecology cultivation, and they haven't been looking at this. So I personally just took a big step back and said, Hey, if I want to really enabled this aspect of Mike Ology actually to be a bit more humble in some sense unless, ah, dramatic or less romantic and say actually more fundamentally important is just teaching General Mike Ology just again. Like I said at the beginning of our Ta Keo just raising the bar of conversation so that many people can actually engage in either this aspect of Mike ology or other aspects of applied psychology. But it all boils down to just actually enabling that enabling and ensuring people understand what Mycelium is and differences between fund giant plants and things like this bunch. I were only delineated from plants late 19 fifties, you know, and so it's our awareness understanding them culturally so so young and, you know, I think it's it takes a concerted effort, or I've police concluded that it's going to take a concerted effort to point out this this gap this blind spot, this mycological blind spot in our understanding of almost every aspect of human study fungi permits, never considered in any realm of science or humanities or the arts and just keep pointing out said Hey, what about the fungi? What about the fungi? And once we are all doing that more more, then more conclusions for advancement will come through mediation being obviously very pressing, one very selling one for this time and the regeneration aspects as well. But all of it, you know what's if again we got and we can't get into the details of how they do this. It's really just a natural extension of understanding just their basic biology and ecology, which kind of makes it easy to teach if you sort of do it progression its secrets like that.
Josh Robinson: 57:55
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This kind of work around the restoration, I think, is you know, one piece that gets a lot of people excited. Like I said when I first saw that video and some of the other work you know that Paul Stamets is doing and other people that are using these like kind of micro remediation techniques and realizing, like how you know, transformational. That can be. You know, obviously people get really excited because, like, look, you could partner with, you know, ecosystems, living systems and, you know, have, ah actual benefit. So you've been in this realm for a while. What kind of exciting you the most right now in terms of what you see is this potential for kind of micro remediation.
Peter McCoy: 58:37
Well, one area of one thing that been involved with recently is working with a company in Chicago, and we've been researching the remediation or sort of re utilisation of asphalt impregnated roofing material waste streams. And they contacted me, and I've been there, lead researcher, researcher and what I did not know and now quite overwhelmed. You know, by is the fact that roofing waste is actually one of the biggest fillers of our landfills. There's not really you can potentially recycle it into roads, but that's a very involved process and not comely done. Generally, demolition teams can't even take their roofing ways to the dump, or it's exceptionally expensive for them to do so because it does not go away. It's so bulky, so large, it leeches, heavy metals It has all these problems, and it's so common, and this stuff doesn't last very long. You know, people replace the ruse every few decades, so it's just the last century. You know of us. Start to make this stuff. It's become already. It's just like plastics course, roofing materials, massive, massive problem. And so we're finding with the research I've been doing in the experiments have been doing that funds are growing on this material quite well, and there's certainly a lot of applications for changing this aspect of the roofing industry that we're looking into. That's something I've been personally involved with. Another area of research that I'm also sort of as a side thing here in Portland is Portland, Oregon. Where I'm based is looking at the ways that fungi can try to remove some of the heavy metals in the river that goes right through a city here. The Willamette River is a central point of the city. It's beautiful. Portland is a very green, sustainable city, and yet our main river is a Superfund site because of about a century of industry dumping all kinds of stuff into it, including lots of heavy metals and one of the applications or one of the ways that we can apply fungi to deal. Clunes is in the removal of heavy metals, especially from water systems. Heavy metals. They'll dissolve like a assault. Heavy metals air elements. Right? So we have mercury in our water and they just float around essentially well in summary, miraculously, if you will. Or actually it's an outgrowth or ah, coincidence. Rather, a fungal biology having many heavy metals will bind to the surface of mycelium. Actually, the soil we think this occur so the fungus could get iron as it grows through its its its food through its substrate, from the iron sticks to the mycelium and then through active channels. It takes it in and metabolizes it well the same the same molecules you seem structures on the surface, find two metals. So what this means is you can take dead mycelium and place it in heavy metal contaminated water and something nice and of metals will stick to my silien. You can remove the mycelium, wash it in a really simple alkaline solution, recycle the metal, actually potentially even make a profit off of it. There's a company in Finland that does this with Elektronik wastewater. They are able to reclaim gold out of the electronics, be of mycelium washing off the mycelium, and then use that same mycelium for again and use it over and over and over again.
Josh Robinson: 1:1:42
What? Okay, So without getting into too much detail, what is that process? I mean, he basically kind of I mean, are these Safir fit IQ fun? Jack, what are you using? And then it kind of growing it out. On what? Chips or straw? Getting that water
Peter McCoy: 1:1:55
e. I mean, doesn't so much matter in SS was what they're growing on per se. It's more about how you might need a pre treat my son before introducing it. So there's lots of studies with this, you know, it's called bio ads option or BIOS option. Okay, so it's not absorption with a B. Where takes it in. It adds orbs with a D. It sticks to the surface, and other material does. This is other natural products that do ads option are metal, Adds option. The thing about fungal mycelium is that it's a major way stream on fertile mushroom farm and so most much from farmers they might compost it if they're sustainable, But a lot of them just trash it. Yeah, so why not dry that mycelium? Maybe you need a heat treated. Maybe you needed to soak it in a sort of acid or alkaline solution, depending on the fungus that sort of prep the surface. But it's not too difficult. Often you could just dry it that's ready to go and then throw those that waste my selling, if you will, into your polluted water system. After generally, most studies about an hour, it's been saturated a little. It's a adds orbed as much as it could hold. You remove it, you wash it in a solution. Like I say, uh, that could look a lot of different ways. You pull mason of brick back out, put it back into your polluted water and repeat over and over again. There's a lot of studies on this and pretty much every paper I've ever read. The conclusion will say this is an incredibly viable approach that needs to be explored, expanded and used in place of currently accepted industri approaches to dealing with heavy metal contaminated water, it seems it's likely to be economically more incentivizing et cetera. And yet it's really hasn't got hold My personal one of my closest relationships with that's beyond my interest in doing this Here in Portland, which is a big one is. I was asked by a group of an indigenous women leaders in northern New Mexico to try to propose to Los Alamos National Lab's ah Mycological approach to dealing with underground aquifer that they had polluted. The lab included with cadmium six cabbie and six is highly toxic, whereas cadmium three is not as toxic in lower concentrations. And so currently Los Alamos was doing things to try to basically convert the six having six into cabinet, three in the soil. But what they weren't acknowledging is that yet I did that, but some time later it could just turn right back in the cabin. Six. So meaning they're not really fixing the problem. They just little smoke and mirrors. So what? I went down and proposed in front of Ah, there's not quite a trial, but it's sort of a public hearing on this with the lab in a bunch of public interest groups and environmental groups. Was this quite a lot of evidence? Many species Turkey tale is a popular edible mushroom. It's been shown to to remove our ads orb Cabin 66 quite easily from Waters and showed them. You know, this is a much more viable approach, a lot of evidence, a lot of peer reviews, lot of citations. I brought quotes, etcetera from these papers. I think the argument is pretty strong. And, you know, afterwards a lot of their scientists came up. They said they'd never heard of this approach. Now it's low sandals, national labs. I mean, they
Josh Robinson: 1:5:04
have a very
Peter McCoy: 1:5:05
big budget. Probably seems pretty smart people. They'd never heard of this. They never realized that the fungi could do this, but as far as I know, they have course. Haven't really pursued the option, But it's something that I I hope they take up. The women's groups called Table Women's United. They're still, I believe, pressuring Los Alamos National Lab's to pursue this or other or natural approach. Is that what they're currently doing? But you know, that was just a piece of my personal anecdote or or a purse blanked out of how this could really should couldn't should be applied, and the scenario was quite right. The resource is were there in the lab has plenty of resources, but it just isn't gaining traction. You know, you could argue for a lot of different reasons. Maybe it's politics is also just the fact that their industrial, the industry standards for remediation approaches are pretty well set Stone lobby, interest groups and big firms are there sort of guiding the way. So what I've said for many years that so much this work just is due to the state of affairs has to be a grassroots science, and it just really, almost needs to be taken up by amateurs by community groups and without the necessarily assuming that they're gonna get funding from any at least governmental institution currently, until we have more protocols Maur good evidence. But we're only gonna get that if people are are knowledgeable, well trained, designing good experiments, not just throwing my silly Amanda thinking, walking away. I've seen, you know, people think, Oh, that's all I need to do. Well, you know, there's more work to good experiment. You need to track it stuff like that. But again, this as the bars that dialogue elevates and more people sort of point that out, sort of the missteps we might all be taking to not advance my mediation, Mike elimination, but kind of setting it back through bad experimental design as that changes and things were better than I think all this is again is going to approve.
Josh Robinson: 1:6:43
Yeah, that's that's incredible. I mean, these are kind of like the stories I think we all need to hear and to be able to look at and look to the future of, like, Okay, we've We've made a lot of really poor management decisions in terms of like how we work with our ecosystems and living systems and now, like the work of our time, seems to be looking at, Well, how do we kind of try to put back some of that, you know, loss of diversity? And how do we begin to then put ourselves back into partnership with ecosystem? And what I'm hearing is just the opportunity is there. It's all around. And we just need to kind of learn more, understand about the complexities here and be willing to kind of go in it with a mindset toe learn, right? Yeah, So I mean, I think we can kind of continue down this conversation for for days. I mean, this is the stuff that gets me all like, fire it up. And I think a lot of people are really excited about this. And maybe what we could do in the future is have a whole nother, you know, episode just related to kind of like this, you know, aspect of Michael remediation as well. As you know, hold another section on just talking about the culinary side and growing out mushrooms for food and medicine. I mean, it seems like there's a whole new approach that we can take their. Now, I know that you teach a lot of classes on this kind of stuff, and you have a whole new online school related to that. Do you want to just kind of give our listeners a little bit of a plug about that kind of work and what you're doing there?
Peter McCoy: 1:8:17
Yeah, Several years ago, I distilled a lot of my knowledge around Mike Ology into a book called Radical Psychology, which was meant to be the book I always wanted growing up where it sort of helps some rise. And it was a good reference to all these many topics and much more. But that book is, though a good reference is kind of just the tips of many, many icebergs. And so, since then, um, I've been working on expanding all these topics into much more in depth courses. I talked much from cultivation for many years because it's a topic many people are definitely very interested in. But now I think the level of dialogue and discourse, as I've seen it grow is at the point where the interest is quite strong for these other aspects of fungal ecology and medicine making fermenting with fungi and all kinds of aspects of ethnic psychology or humans working with fungi. So last year two years ago, rather, I developed on launched a school called Michael Logos that is offering both online courses. We have over a dozen plan to be continually rolling out throughout 2020 and towards the end of the year will be starting to do in person offerings, martial cultivation but essentially in person versions of many of our online courses, as well as things we will be offering online. So quite a lot going on there along the way were plenty to release quite a number of educational resource is different types of tools, publications. All kinds of stuff is in the works. So the easiest thing, of course, is to get on the email list or just follow some shows. Social Media website is Michael logos that world and Y c o l o g o s dot world, and you can find us on social media with the handle Michael logos. But yeah, lots of work. 2018 2019 Things have been just sort of, ah, little bit under wraps or just sort of everything's been really the foundations of all again get set in place. So been sort of keeping things just a bit quiet, keeping it low key. But I'm really excited for this year for this decade. I think it's really a bright, bright future for fungi. So I'm personally honored to be involved, and I'm excited for everything that's gonna be coming down the pipe with so many more people already getting involved, and certainly many more to to come.
Josh Robinson: 1:10:31
Yeah, how exciting. I'm so glad that you're kind of taking that torch and and running with it and creating this fantastic opportunity for other people to get involved in. Like you said, You know the radical Mike Ology book being something that you wish you had as a resource when you were wanting to learn about this kind of stuff. And now it's there and you're kind of taking it the next next step on being that 10 like mentor dah two others and really spreading the word of the possibility of this bull fungal kingdom that we have all around us. So do you have any last thoughts for listeners on anything you want to kind of hit on that we didn't discuss?
Peter McCoy: 1:11:11
Oh, there's there's always more to say with fungi. Oh, no. I mean, uh, my sort of biggest word with all of this is that now is there's never been a better time to get involved with psychology. Uh, we we live in a really unique air f in human history and in regards to our relationships with fungi, where we simultaneously notes so much more about them ecologically than every before, and we can cultivate them with greater ease than ever before. And the combination of those two leads to all the applications were wrapped they seeing with applying psychology throughout our lives. Throughout things, we build a design, and it's just more People come to this with fresh eyes, their own backgrounds, their own insights. Psychology will be hands spread and refined as well. You know almost every aspect I believe of human endeavor. So it's it's a field that needs more people. It's a very small science, actually, and we just there's, there's it's one of the best science is to actually get involved with because there's a lot of room for engagement. Ah, lot that anybody could contribute to both on the academic level, to the entrepreneur level and all of it is important. And all of it is is pretty exciting, really, to be involved with.
Josh Robinson: 1:12:20
Yeah, well, thank you so much, Peter. I mean, that was just like, I mean, a wealth of information that was just packed into a, you know, an hour or so here that we've been chatting. I mean, it seems like anybody that wants to learn more about this would, you know, get onto your web site. Kind of have this whole just experience. There's gonna be a lot of op. Do you need me there to kind of learn, So I hope that we can continue this dialogue in the future. But thank you so much for taking this time. Thio talk. Untie with me.
Peter McCoy: 1:12:50
It's my pleasure. Thanks again for having me.
Josh Robinson: 1:12:54
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our discussion into the world of mycelium and fungi, with none other than Peter McCoy, author of Radical Mike Ology. If you want to learn more about what he's doing, get out there. Get on our website permaculture for the future dot com slash episode five. That's permaculture for the future dot com slash Episode five and you'll get links to his website and more now for the bonus. So Peter has set up a discount code for 20% off all of his own line courses. So if you have been waiting to take a psychology course from a riel expert, now is the time we have one week from the drop of this episode to take advantage of it. So you listeners that are all out there and you want to learn more about fungi, get out under our website and you'll get the discount code. All right, we'll see you next week But we're talking with another than Rob Greenfield about his last year of eating 100% locally. All right, we'll see event, and in the meantime, get out there and do some good.