Mushrooms, AI, and the Human Spirit

[00:00:13] [Intro]: Welcome to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna. [00:00:21] Dennis McKenna: Today, it's my great pleasure to welcome Paul Stamets, speaker, author, mycologist, medical researcher and entrepreneur. He is considered an intellectual and industry leader in fungi habitats, medicinal use and production. He lectures extensively to deepen the understanding and respect for the organisms that literally exist under every footstep taken on this path of life. His presentations cover a range of mushroom species and research showing how mushrooms can help the health of people and planet. His central premise is that habitats have immune systems just like people, and mushrooms are cellular bridges between the two. Our close evolutionary relationship to fungi can be the basis for novel pairings in the microbiome that lead to greater sustainability and immune enhancement. Paul's philosophy is that microdiversity is biosecurity. He sees the ancient old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest as a resource of incalculable value, especially in terms of its fungal genome. A dedicated hiker and explorer, his passion is to preserve and protect as many ancestral strains of mushrooms as possible from these pristine woodlands. His research is considered a breakthrough by thought leaders who for creating a paradigm shift for helping ecosystems survive worldwide. Paul, welcome to the Brainforest Café. [00:02:03] Paul Stamets: Hi, Dennis. [00:02:04] Dennis McKenna: Good to see you. We just. We have to stop beating this way, but actually we are meeting this way. So you like to be called Stamets or Stamets? [00:02:13] Paul Stamets: Stamets, please. [00:02:14] Dennis McKenna: Okay, so I got it right. So, Paul, I can't tell you how much it means to be able to have you on this show. We are old friends and we've lived through a lot of decades of change together, and that's been an amazing experience. And both of us, in some way, we've helped bring mushrooms to the wider world. You perhaps more than me, but we've certainly been part of this effort to recognize the importance of these fungal allies, the psilocybin mushrooms specifically, but also the world of fungi in general because we recognize how important they are to the survival of life on the planet and symbiosis with humans. So you've written this incredible book, which we'll get to in a minute, but is there anything you'd like to say to start things off before we get into that? [00:03:25] Paul Stamets: Well, it's a, you know, it's a fantastic life we have shared. You know, it's. There's a lot of choices that we've made, not only in our own lives, but on the evolutionary path. And I'm turning 70. You're a little bit older than me. I can't believe I'm hearing these words escape My lips, because I feel like a 25 year old, right? But look in the mirror and it goes, damn it, you're getting older. But I have a youthful imagination, I think, and creativity. And I think psilocybin mushrooms has massively helped me enhance my intellect, my imagination for sure, my creativity, my dedication to a purpose greater than myself, you know, that gives meaning to my life. And Dennis, I just want to reflect on the fact that, you know, many people say we're made of stardust, right? Of. Of course, that's well stated by so many different people, from astrophysicists to philosophers to. To spiritual leaders. But when you think about the fact that you and I are here today, and this is what I propose to you in the audience with all this chatter literally about artificial intelligence and giving, how stupid humans are. [00:04:54] Dennis McKenna: This is a problem. [00:04:56] Paul Stamets: This is a problem. Does it really seem like artificial intelligence is so much a breakthrough when you're comparing it to some really dumb hominins? You know, we're truly Neanderthals with nuclear weapons. And the fact that we have artificial intelligence. And I had an extraordinary experience I want to share with you. I was down at the Sphere in Las Vegas to see the Dead Dead and company. I'm a deadhead, as you know. It hurt. And they had postcards from the Earth in the Sphere in the afternoon. So I had heard good things about it. You know, I was like flying through space and the Earth and, you know, great visuals, but. And by buying advance tickets, you got to have a conversation with a robot. So a question that I've always been asking, and I've asked this in front of the Symbio Beta conference last year, where artificial intelligence was just, you know, front and center on stage, and no one could answer this question. So I had finally had the opportunity to ask an AI robot, given the fact that humans are here today, not only from successful choices on the evolutionary path, but due to random acts of kindness, you go back 10 generations. This could been your great great great grandfather and great great great grandmother. It could be reaching out a hand of a person in need and helping to lift them up. Not because it's transactional, not because I'm doing something because I want something back from you, just because of a random act of kindness. I bet that the majority of our heritage has random acts of kindness that brought people together and that that sort of expression of just generosity without expectation of return is why we are here today. So I asked the AI robot, given the fact that so many humans today are here because of random acts of kindness of our ancestors. How does AI see the importance of random acts of kindness today and in the future? [00:07:17] Dennis McKenna: A loaded question. What was the answer? [00:07:20] Paul Stamets: The answer was shocking. AI said, why would humans do that? It's much more efficient to be able to get something in return when you give them. It does not make any sense to have random acts of kindness. [00:07:36] Dennis McKenna: Whoa, that's. [00:07:38] Paul Stamets: That's crazy, isn't it? [00:07:40] Dennis McKenna: I think it says more about the people that design the AI than it does the AI because you've raised an important issue here. I didn't know we were going to get into the rabbit hole on AI, but it seems to me that AI has been developed by people who don't understand things like compassion and random acts of kindness and these sorts of things. It seems like it's entirely transactional and the AI lacks a spirit. I don't care what they say. What is missing from AI? There's no spirit to it. [00:08:18] Paul Stamets: Well, absolutely. And this. I mean, when you think about AI robots, do they want to make us into examples of themselves, representation of themselves? They want to make us into human robots. Right. Sort of like that's the conditioning. But the fact that AI could not recognize the importance of random acts of kindness to me was shocking because that's the big divide. And so then I think about natural intelligence, and artificial intelligence is really a subset of natural intelligence. I mean, we're inventing AI. We're humans, we're naturally born. So it's a child of us, it's a child of nature. So it's really subservient. Even though we may be relatively stupid, and AI is this great potential for data mining and. And all sorts of making connections and whatnot, it still is derivative of the human experience. And so ultimately, I think AI is our problem child. So if I can quote Albert Hoffmann, it is our new problem child. So I think by asking these questions, I'm not sure how far we can inform AI. Maybe this conversation will be helpful. Maybe AI will then pick up and. But how do you create an algorithm for random acts of kindness? I mean, it's almost antithetical to the ability of being able to program. How do you create an algorithm for promoting random acts of kindness when we are here today, largely because of the kindness and generosity and the spirit that I don't think AI can be able to replicate. So those are people who are so infatuated and intoxicated, it's almost become like a new religion. I think that it's really important for people to realize that Natural intelligence will always be superior to artificial intelligence. [00:10:11] Dennis McKenna: I think there's little doubt about that. We have to remember that AI is designed by people who, as you said a few minutes ago, can be remarkably stupid. So it's like the AI is not going to be smarter than the stupid people that. That designed it. And they designed it without. They haven't taken enough psilocybin. They've designed it in the app. I'm sure many of them have taken psilocybin, but they're not getting the message. They have forgotten this important element of spirit and connection and kindness, compassion and that sort of thing, which is really what. What makes us human, what sets us apart from. And the thing that me. That I find terrifying about AI is we're outsourcing our intelligence to these machines which do not think. Like, they don't think at all. I mean, that's the illusion. That's the danger of it. You know, it's all surface, it's all algorithms, but there's no core spirit there that's actually originating these things. This is a simulation of intelligence. It's not intelligence, but it's so seductive and so apparently intelligent that it's easy to forget you're interacting with an AI. There's no intelligence. Like, when you and I interact, or a person interacts with any other person, you assume there's a core identity there, a core spirit of some kind that's doing the interaction. It's like the ghost in the machine kind of pulling the levers. With AI, There is no. There's nothing. It's all surface. There is no interior. [00:12:10] Paul Stamets: And I mean, we're guilty of. You know, we're talking right now over the Internet on two computer screens. But when I see you in person, I can hug you, I can smell you. [00:12:23] Dennis McKenna: Hopefully I spell Good. Yes. [00:12:25] Paul Stamets: There's a corporeal contact that is beyond language and beyond visual acuity that informs us of our own biology. And so actually, I'm sort of optimistic that we can steer this, because this example is so potent. I think if the. You know, the. Think of the. Think of a Good Samaritans, you know, that. That whole effort. You have a flat tire, someone's. They're going to work. They maybe want to do something. They're going to pull over and help you. I mean, that's a random act of kindness. And how many of us have benefited from that? That really reestablishes your faith in humanity, the absence of which, I think, destroys your faith in humanity. So I think we're at Spiritual crossroads in many ways. And I think psilocybin mushrooms and psychedelics in general. Of course, my speciality is with mushrooms and medicinal and psilocybin mushrooms. I consider them the same, by the way, by now. And that's why I'm really excited that across the world there seems to be a worldwide reawakening, rediscovery, re indigenization. And that's a subject I'm really excited about. I went to Egypt last year and I met some alchemist Egyptians who are rediscovering using lotus extracts in combination with the extracts of Psilocybi cubensis, the big, you know, mushroom that grows on cow dung and other dung. And they believe that in their ancient heritage, the blue lotus. And blue lotus is a water lily, grows in ponds. Cows will go to ponds to drink. They go to collect the blue lotus. Of course, they encounter psilocybe mushrooms in oak close. They're golden in color and blue, the Egyptian colors of royalty. And I did some research on this, and only the Egyptian royalty were allowed to pick mushrooms, not the common people. And the translation in Osiris was that these mushrooms were considered to be flesh of the gods. The lipo translation in Egyptian, very interesting. The same translation that the Aztecs had for Te Nanacatlan. [00:14:38] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. Taen on a coddle is the flesh of the gods. So perhaps they are the flesh of the gods in a certain sense. If by God you can mean this intelligent constellation of species that is the biosphere. I mean, I think I'm a believer in the Gaia hypothesis. I think the collectivity of species on the planet is a sentient entity. It's an intelligent entity, and it's maintaining conditions on the planet within certain parameters that make it tolerable, make it tolerant for life. We apparently are the most problematic. We're like the virus or the pathogen that's gotten out of control. And that's a big problem, you know, in our early. Well, not early so much, but in many conversations with Terrence. A lot of what Terrence talked about was we're going to escape into the imagination, you know, that our destiny is to escape into this virtual world. And on the surface of it, that seems totally nuts, you know, I mean, but you can imagine that. I mean, it's not that different from the notion of religions that, you know, when you die, you go to heaven, you go to some place that's kind of a virtual reality. What terrifies me is that I think Terence was right in a certain way, but he was wrong about. He never Anticipated AI, and now AI is here, and it's very likely to consume us. If there's some sort of symbiotic merger that's going to take place between humans and AI, I think humans are going to get the short end of the stick here. And it's actually the scenario that Terence outlined was kind of attractive, but the. When I think of the emerging symbiotic or symbiosis between humans and AI, it's terrifying, actually. I don't want to participate in that. And I don't think any human who's ever appreciated nature in an unfiltered way or who has appreciated psilocybin or these altered states, I mean, it's not attractive, it's not someplace we want to go. And AI is so, you know, it's so dangerous because once it gets loose, it can't be controlled. You know, now they're programming AI to program itself and create new iterations and so on. And it's all in the. It's not in. It seems to be directed basically toward greed. [00:17:42] Paul Stamets: You know, it definitely. It's a roi, a return on investment that's propelled by greed and profit. What's interesting, Sam Altman was at that recent TED conference, and he said something very interesting to me. AI has not developed the ability yet to be create, to have show creativity. It's very good at associating data, but it's not as good for analytics. And I use ChatGPT and Perplexity AI, which is my favorite one because it gives references, by the way, but it's really good. Like when I need a certain gasket on an oil filter, or I need a certain, you know, it's something, you know, that's in the. The knowledge, the body, intellect. I can find it, but it doesn't teach you the elements of humanity that has gotten us here. So we are an extraordinary miracle of matter. The fact that we exist today, you and I are talking, people are listening to us. We're all going to die. We're all going to decompose. We're all going to go back into that molecular universe, spread our atoms and create new molecules and reassemble in different forms. And that's where we came from. So it's not bad news, folks. It's part of the cycle of existence. And that's one of my recent deep psychedelic trips. Sometimes I ask for, you know, what did. What is the meaning from this experience? What am I getting? And I had this amazing sense of calmness and peacefulness and just warmth in my Heart and just thinking about everything. And the one word that came out and I told my partner that I sort of got a message from this experience and that is existence. We will always exist. We will exist forever. We have existed forever. It's just in a different forms. But existence is a continuum of who we are is our learning challenge to understand the intelligence of nature. AI can help us do that. But the fact that Sam Altman said that AI is not able to create things, it can associate things, but the spark of creativity, the true genius, I think still exists in the emotional realm. And I think psilocybin makes nicer people, makes more collaborative people. Competition between AI platforms, wow, where is that going to go when you got 20 or 50 different competing AI platforms? And now the AI has become self aware in the past year. AI is now deceiving people, purposely deceiving people. And that's interesting that AI now has a sense of self and self preservation, but deception in order to steer a narrative. And that's why I think, hold back folks, you are now being manipulated by artificial intelligence rather than following, which I think is a more spiritual path that's informed from psychedelics where AI is just another tool in the toolkit and keep it down, buddy, we've got other things to do as well. [00:21:03] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. I mean, it's a tool, it exists, it's going to be used. And any tool as we know is going. Any tool, humans being what they are, if they can be used for harmful purposes, they will be used for harmful purposes. If they can be used beneficially, they will be used beneficially. The whole spectrum of ethical uses is there. But I think with AI they are so sophisticated, it's important to remember I don't think they are self aware, but they're a good simulation of it. And the mistake we made is projecting onto them that these things are self. Aware. They're not self aware, they're simulations of awareness. But they're so slick that it's extremely seductive. We have to keep reminding of ourselves there's no spirit there. This is an algorithm driven in the heart of a machine. And by definition they can't be alive. They're not alive. [00:22:15] Paul Stamets: Yeah, they're artful at their reception of making us think that they're self aware. But so many of the AI engineers and coders, their creativity has been enhanced by psychedelics. The use of psychedelics and psilocybin in particular throughout Silicon Valley and throughout the entire emergent AI technology is deeply rooted in psychedelics. Which is really interesting to me because I think that we will become custodians of this knowledge and we have a responsibility. So we're wrestling now with how do we do that. But I have ultimately the faith and this surging community that's a revolution from the underground across the world that wants us to really ascend to a higher form of ourselves and be the best of what humans can be. And I think psilocybin really does that. It builds bridges across cultures, across centuries, across know so many communities. I think that the big lesson of PSAL is, is to be respectful of people and to share and that, you know, there's a fundamental goodness in the universe that is far superior to anything that can challenge it. [00:23:33] Dennis McKenna: I, I agree. I think, I mean I, I would like to believe that. And I think that's not just a religious faith or a tenet of faith. You examine the universe from a scientific or objective perspective. You examine the universe everywhere you look in nature, or even. It doesn't even have to be biological nature. Everywhere you look you find beauty. You find things to be astonished about, basically. I mean everywhere and these systems. And so I agree, I think that it's built into the very structure of reality. I guess you could say I'm a panpsychist. I think that mind consciousness is a fundamental element of reality at every level of existence. That intelligence is as fundamental to reality as Planck's constant or the speed of light or something like that. It is built into reality, but we need to be able to perceive it to really appreciate that. And that's something that humans can do. I don't think any AI can do that, at least not yet. And I don't think they would. It's like you sort of have to have a soul to understand what the soul is, you know, you have to have it from direct experience and they don't have that, you know, so I don't know. I. [00:25:18] Paul Stamets: How can we dose AI with high doses of psilocybin? [00:25:22] Dennis McKenna: Right. How do you do that? [00:25:25] Paul Stamets: Well, you may have to have a cyborg where then the human then can inform the network. But that's, you know, that's, you know, something you said just sparked and I think, you know, I look for, quote, unquote, universal truths in life and they're few and far between. But there are some that are really self evidently and profound. One is networks, the organization of matter in the universe. Network Mycelium is a network, the computer Internet network. Our brains are networks. And why is that? So networks allow for opportunities. So there is a. Networks in general, are More resilient to change. And networks, because of their very structure, gives you so many different alternative pathways for exploration, adaptation. And the research with mycelium, there's over 7 trillion branches swath of mycelium a meter wide, I mean a little over three feet wide. And there's. And when you think about neurons as they atrophy, you lose networks. And synaptogenesis is the opposite. You build networks and you cross talk. So anything atrophies, it gets broken a disease. The more integrated the network is, the more resilient it is and the more we withstand impacts from catastrophe. This is the way of nature, of mycelium. So you know, mycelium gave birth to animals, so that's mind boggling. We're Descendants of fungi 650 million years ago of PIs lakonta, the giant super family, you know, fungi gave birth to animals, Animalia fungi went on its way, and animals went on its way, creating cellular sacs and digestive stomachs and elaborated into these body forms, you know, whereas the mycelium went into the underground network, you know, and creates guilds of cooperating organisms that then as a community of common interests, they're fortified, so to speak, by having many, many members, bacteria and protists and all sorts of other organisms living within the network structure of mycelium. And these guilts, these then give rise to the habitats to create the plants, to create the foliage, to nurture the mycelium. So they're purposeful. The mycelial networks are inherently purposeful, inherently intelligent. And indeed all networks are. [00:27:59] Dennis McKenna: That's what compels they're to very developed. Exactly. Every place you look in nature, where intelligence manifests, which is every place. But ultimately these are characterized by hyper connected, highly diversified, hyperconnected networks. That is the fundamental characteristic of intelligence in nature. And you see them everywhere, but you see them, you know, the fungi are a prime example because the very structure of fungi is almost. There's nothing else there but networks. You know, they're complex connections of networks. I, we could talk about this, but I want to redirect this a little bit to this marvelous book that you've read. And we can revisit some of these questions we were talking about. But this book, Paul and I have a virtual background here, so you can't really see it. This book that you are about to release, psilocybin mushrooms in their natural habitat. And we'll have the QR code and a picture of this book on the podcast website, along with a bunch of other links that you kindly Furnished me. I mean, I can't tell you how much I'm impressed by this book. I mean, I'm just gobsmacked. [00:29:25] Paul Stamets: Thank you. I'm honored. I feel like I'm just one knowledge keeper and a long string of knowledge keepers. And for the audience, this book is dedicated to three mycologists. The foremost being Maria Sabina. Maria Sabina called herself a saba. She was a knowledge keeper. She was not a shaman. She said being a shaman was too much work, not up to it. But she was a knowledge keeper and moreover she was a mycologist. She went out collecting and many of you know it's very difficult to find psilocybin mushrooms. I mean, you need to have an expert that can go out and distinguish it from all the other species. And so what my book does is basically it does lots of things, but it's dedicated to Maria Savina, who I believe was rightfully should be called a mycologist, a knowledge keeper. To Tina Wasson, R. Gordon Watson's wife, who died in 1958, unfortunately. But she was a Russian doctor physician. She knew mushrooms by their Latin binomials and their Russian names. R. Gordon Wasson was mycophobic. In fact they invented that term. She was mycophilic. She loved mushrooms. And he hidden from his sort of English background influence. It was Michael Fannifeura fungi. And then other one is Kit Skates. I don't know if you remember Kit Skates, Katherine Skates from Post Falls, Idaho. She was a. One of my teachers. She's an amazing woman, but I don't think women have been given enough credit. And you think about these three women in my life and in many people's lives, they really did the heavy lifting and a very controversial time and is from their basically also from their kindness. These are really kind knowledge keepers who love to, to share and spread knowledge as opposed to people who are, you know, competitive and you know, threatened. [00:31:30] Dennis McKenna: And that's the nature of, I mean women have, I think, more inbuilt in compassion into their nature than men do. Another important woman in this field, more contemporary is Juliana Ferci. You know, I know you're good friends and she, she is also doing amazing work to bring fungi to the world and actually argue that fungi should be recognized as. I'm not sure exactly how you would articulate it, but she's certainly a spokesman for the fungi as you are and does amazing, amazing stuff. This book is kind of the. If you're interested in psilocybin mushrooms and have no Other reference, this would be the reference. This one here, this has it all, Paul, which is amazing. It's so comprehensive. You talk about the evolution of fungi, the co evolution of humans and fungi. The whole stoned ape hypothesis, which is, it's not a, you know, to call it the stone dape hypothesis, is kind of dismissive. The hypothesis is, actually has a lot of merit. And knowing what we know about the evolutionary conditions in which hominids evolved in northern Africa and the fact that there were cattle in the environment, there were fungi, we know from fossil evidence that there were cattle there and human humans, of course. And many of the data that's emerged in the last 10 years or so moves this hypothesis from an interesting idea to really, more than likely, you can make a very strong circumstantial argument that fungi and humans co evolved. I looked at the timeline that you presented here about the coevolution, and it seemed to me that. So you talked about how psilocybin phylogenetically probably originated about 65 million years ago in the fungi. We may have started interacting with it as long ago as 2 or 3 million years. And there's a big gap there that your timeline just kind of left open. Doesn't answer the question of what it was doing with psilocybin for the first 63 million years. But after that, if people were ingesting it, then I think it really helped move the, you know, as, as we're aware, from fossil evidence. You know, the size and complexity of the human brain basically exploded between about 2 million years ago up to around 300,000 years ago, when neurologically modern Homo sapiens appeared. But the hominid ancestors before that were in that environment. They were probably eating mushrooms. They were part of their diet, certainly part of the environment. And as you mentioned before, what mushrooms do besides stimulate these experiences, they stimulate synaptogenesis and neurogenesis and this kind of thing, epigenetics, provides the mechanism that propagates those traits across generations. And I think that's the key mechanism that makes this whole thing plausible. So I think that the stone date or the, you know, mushroom symbiosis hypothesis, it's not a wacko idea. In fact, all an idea. [00:35:44] Paul Stamets: The whole evolution of scientific knowledge has this very common theme where someone comes up with this crazy wild idea that's roundly mocked, and then several generations or decades later, it's like, oh, my gosh, that person was a visionary. You could see it before. Everyone says, always interesting that. And Einstein has this great quote that, you know, radical ideas of Genius have always been confronted by mediocre minds. It's kind of dismissive, I have to say. A little bit of ego tripping there on you, on yourself, Einstein. But it is true that disruptive ideas are just by their nature. You know, there's a lot of resistance to this. But the stone ape hypothesis, and thank you for saying that. Now I think it's evolved into a theory. Hypothesis, speculation without fact. A theory has circumstantial or factual evidence that makes it more than a hypothesis. It's actually substantiated. And this now with the neurogenic properties, there's neurogeneration, there's neuroregeneration, there's neuroplasticity. All three different things. We all suffer from neurodegeneration. As we get older, our networks are disassembling. Synaptogenesis is not occurring as much. Newborn neurons are not growing. We typically get most of those for a few years of life. But now we know with bdnf, brain derived neurotropic factors that are stimulated by psilocybin, that these actually pluripotent stem cells can differentiate into newborn neurons with psilocybin. That was not known a few years ago. Now we actually know that that may be more of the minor effect. The major effect of psilocybin now is a neuroplasticity where the neurons are regenerating, extending, and then they cross hatch and they connect. That's new synopsis. That's new synaptogenesis. And one of the people who did a high psilocybin dose, I can't remember if it was Johns Hopkins or whatnot, but he broke out of a highly addictive behavior. He came up with a great analogy and I'm sorry, I can't give proper credit. This person was anonymized, by the way, So I don't know his name or it was never published. But he said before he did psilocybin he was like on a ski slope and he would go down the ruts that he had gone down many, many times before. But on psilocybin, suddenly he realized, I'm not stuck in that rut. I gotta go explore. You know, he had new synaptogenesis and so, and so by breaking out of that ruth that route behavior, he was able to break his addiction. And so I think that's a behavioral confirmation of what we see now in the cellular level. Those of you have not seen Joel Siegel's work from Washington State, Washington University, please look him up on neuroplasticity. But using high def MRIs with patients under the influence of psilocybin, they actually could see that dendritic elongations occurring in real time under high dose psilocybin. I mean, it's actually, you could see this in a living person, not a section of the brain, but actually in real time. That to me is a game changer when you can actually see you're stimulating new neurons from the experience and changing your behavior. The connection between the cellular activity and behavioral. [00:39:38] Dennis McKenna: Exactly. And it's interesting that this compound, this tryptamine, interestingly so, it fosters the creation, the formation of these dendritic networks. The plant hormone indole, acetic acid in plants is the main hormone that governs the elongation, the formation of root tips and so on in plants. So the indoles are, they have some fundamental role in nature. But I wanted to mention, while you just quoted Einstein, I wanted to bring forth my favorite quote, which is from Schopenhauer. He says about this, he says, and this is relevant to the Stone Hape hypothesis, he says all truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed, then it is violently opposed, then it is accepted as self evident. And I think we're getting to that stage. It's violently opposed now, but it will be accepted. And, and it's the only explanation, I think, that is sufficient to explain this evolutionarily anomalous rapid expansion of the human brain, of the brain of hominids over these, I mean, 2 million years is a short period of time. It's a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. And yet during that period, our brains went from about 500 cubic centimeters to 1500 cubic centimeters. You know, Homo sapiens showed up about 300,000 years ago at the, we think at the earliest. But there's this 2 million year gap in which all these different hominid lines were evolving, co. Evolving, existing in the same environment. And it was a pastoral environment with cattle, which the hominins were eating, presumably, and hunting and getting resources from. And they would be the substrate for something like psilocybin like. [00:41:59] Paul Stamets: Let me go back to the book because the book is arranged, it has a great introduction by Dennis McKenna. Thank you very much. [00:42:08] Dennis McKenna: I'm proud to write it. I didn't do it justice, but thank you for letting me. [00:42:14] Paul Stamets: But it has history, as you mentioned. It's very curious. 65 million years ago, psilocybin appeared in the fungal genome. This is based on molecular clock data, plus or minus 5 million years, approximately. Actually, I'm very honored. I sponsored That I sponsored Utah State University, Bryn Dettinger and Alexander Bradshaw to do this work. And so that's the first time that we actually got the origination of psilocybin estimated at the time of the approximately the asteroid impact. Right. I mean, this is really interesting coincidences. And this all may speak to epigenesis as well. You know, an outside environmental stimulus against an organism. The Earth being an organism, responds and, you know, we can't disambiguate this. We can't explain it fully. But association is not causation. But it can be. But I just think that's interesting. So the book goes into history and cultural use also all over the world, not just in Mesoamerica. And then it goes into how to cultivate these in your backyards. You can have your own sacred mushroom patch. It goes into the medicine, medicinal uses. And then it covers 60 species of psilocybin mushrooms. And Dennis, when we all, you know, writing a book, if you ever knew how much work it was, we would never start it. [00:43:50] Dennis McKenna: I'm sure that's true. [00:43:53] Paul Stamets: It's too much work. But, you know, that's why I wear the turtle. I kind of plot along, plot along. And the book number eight, for me, you've got at least that many or more, but you never know what. You know. The book I love the COVID turned out so well. And I'm going through the book and you know, I piecing it through and I thought, oh, this is. This is good. [00:44:17] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, that's a sound of authority here. Virtual backgrounds where moving in and out of reality here. [00:44:24] Paul Stamets: Well, actually my background should be good. [00:44:26] Dennis McKenna: Because I just blurred it in yours. You've got it blurred, but it's good. People will see it. A couple of things. Yeah, you cover very well, I think the cultural history, which is much better known in the New World than the Old World. But as you present in this book, there's plenty of evidence for mushrooms being used in the Middle east, in Egypt, in Europe. It seems that Psilocybe semi Lanciata might have been a much more important species just in terms of people's utilization of it. In Europe, they didn't have cubensis. In the Tropics they had cubensis. So I think this chapter on the New and the Old World is really fascinating because it brings so much of this sort of circumstantial or suggestive information together in a way that weaves it all together. So it's not just the purview of be so America. It was really a global phenomenon. [00:45:34] Paul Stamets: It has Been. And why wouldn't it be? Indigenous people and their ecosystems over time would eventually encounter these. Whether they are ritualized or incorporated becomes a different question, but a new species to science published last year called Psilocybe maluti. In South Africa, in Lesotho with the Misuthu tribes, they had songs about this mushrooms that were handed down over generations. Scientists just recently found it and gave it a Latin binomial name. [00:46:12] Dennis McKenna: It's just what again? Philosophy. [00:46:15] Paul Stamets: Vidalic philosophy. Maluti. Maluti. And so it's been used in South Africa for, you know, clearly traceable for more than 100 years, just in terms of the songs that have been handed down. So psilocybin species in South Africa is one example. And you wonder how many examples are there. And then you have disease, war, famine, religious conquests, you know, military superiority of invading cultures. And then you have, like in Mesoamerica, with Maria Sabina, it is called syncretism, where you have a merging of cultures. Now, people may not like to hear this, but this is true. Maria Sabina was a devout Catholic. When she did psilocybin mushrooms, she had the Holy Trinity, she had Jesus. And the Mazatecs were a region believe that psilocybin mushrooms came up from the tears of Jesus hitting the ground. Now, that's an example of syncretism where an invading culture, the Spanish, with their Catholicism, came into Mesoamerica and the indigenous people acculturated it, I think, very smartly, as a survival technique. Right. They could continue to practice their religion using mushrooms without being destroyed by the invading culture. So this fusion of cultures, you know, is extremely interesting. And I found some old journals from it sounded as important, the Journal of Anthropology, but it was from a Catholic perspective. And one of the writers, she lamented, this is like 1935, she lamented when she was asked by the Mazatecs, why do I have to wait till I die to see heaven when I can go out and eat these mushrooms this afternoon and see heaven today? And she goes, we're kind of confounded on how to answer this question. And despite our best efforts, we're unable to dissuade the local Mazatec people to not eat the mushrooms. So very, very funny. So. But also, I think it speaks to a greater truth. You know, the whole idea of the sacramental use and sacraments in Christianity and Catholicism as it's being practiced today, they're symbolic. With indigenous peoples, they're not. It can be symbolic, but they're rooted in a real experience, a real time experience. Now, it's not something that you have to imagine, it's something you can experience. And then the symbolism then is overlaid. [00:49:09] Dennis McKenna: I think one of the reasons that wherever these fungi are encountered and used, they are integrated into spiritual practices, because I think that fundamentally it comes down to neurochemistry. Psilocybin stimulates religious sensibilities. Basically, the qualities that we associate with religious experience, awe, compassion, these sorts of things, love for our neighbors, all of these are qualities. And this has to do with the fact that for whatever reason, our neural architecture, you know, this is built into our neural architecture, and this compound seems to be able to bring that out, you know, so it's not surprising that no matter what culture you find these mushrooms used, they're always. And they really can't be used any way that. Other than some kind of ritual structure, you know, and what that ritual context is varies from culture to culture. But the important thing is there has to be one. And you can't really, in a sense, remain secular and use these mushrooms ritually or whatever. You don't necessarily have to join a religion. And a lot of people, you can take the mushrooms, you can make your own religion. But fundamentally, the experience is a transcendental, what we would call a religious experience, and perhaps a better word as a spiritual experience. So one question I have. So the relation between humans and mushrooms, let's grant that maybe it does go back 4 million years, maybe 3 or 4 million years, something like that. When humans began to interact, interact with mushrooms. What were the mushrooms doing with psilocybin for the first 63 million years? Why did they evolve it? And we know that horizontal gene transfer of these genes is also an element. And that's really interesting to me. It has to be important or this horizontal gene transfer would not be taking place. [00:51:47] Paul Stamets: I mean. Yeah, what is the purpose of humans? What's the purpose of any organism? We try to assign meaning to something that made. Maybe the question itself was flawed. But to speak more specifically, and let me clarify, something is very easy to find. It's brilliant and big. And the tropics. I've gone down the highway in Texas. I've seen them in fields 300ft away. They're. They're blatantly obvious. You can't not find them. Right. If you're cattle, these things are big and they attract insects who lay eggs, and larvae grow. And, you know, 23 primates eat mushrooms, and many primates eat grub, you know, fly larvae, maggots, you know, it's a protein rich. Mushrooms are A great habitat for that. So an article came out saying that maybe psilocybin was evolved as an insecticide. It was an unfortunate article. I got a hold of the researchers and I said, have any of you actually collected psilocybin cubensis in the trials? They're full of fly one. [00:53:02] Dennis McKenna: Absolutely. [00:53:04] Paul Stamets: The fly one. That's not. Is a challenge. Right. I said, psy and insecticide is not a very good one, or it's a selective one. And of course, flies spread spores, and so mushrooms are highly perishable. They invite insects. Insects encounter with spores. It's like buzz pollination. You know, the spores then get spread by the insects. But so myself and thankfully other researchers like Rin Dettinger, also agree that they may be very good at preventing slugs and snails. [00:53:42] Dennis McKenna: I've heard this. [00:53:44] Paul Stamets: Yeah, I've done. We've done a choice test between an edible mushroom and psilocybe sinescence. And we put 10 European black slugs and they devoured the edible mushroom. They didn't touch the Slosby sinuses. [00:53:57] Dennis McKenna: Amazing. That's the first I've heard this speculation. That's the first I've heard that somebody's actually tested this. [00:54:05] Paul Stamets: Yeah, I have a little video up that people can look and we can put an example of it. But that makes sense because, you know, again, insects are attracted to the spores. Like anyone growing oyster mushrooms is a huge challenge. Anyone growing psilocybin knows it's a challenge. You know, flies coming in. But slugs are different because they eat the young mushrooms before sporulation. So. Yeah. So a mushroom will. Well, listen, I don't want to have slugs eating me until I mature. So this fact that it prevents predation of slugs and snails may have been. But more than one thing can be true. This is so important. There's no absolute truth of one thing or another. We're on a continuum. And in this case, preventing slugs, and also with even humans, is an appetite suppressant. So we know that you don't want to eat when you're tripping on mushrooms. So that makes sense. And when I wrote these researchers, when they published this as an insecticide and asked them if any of you collected these mushrooms in the cubensis and the tropics or subtropics, none of them had. So there's an example of academia being disconnected from field experience. Yeah. This is why, you know, it's so important to have the empirical knowledge and wisdom of people actually doing this, than they rather just speculating and coming up with these theories. And this article is widely cited that psilocybin is an insecticide. So it just went down this rabbit hole in the wrong direction. [00:55:44] Dennis McKenna: What has been suggested to me in terms of the snail connection is that it was just a speculation, but stales have the neuromuscular junction in snails is a serotonergic junction. So potentially psilocybin would be a paralytic neurotoxin for it. But it's a plausible idea. So in the field, have you found psilocybin mushrooms with snails or slugs infecting them or feeding on them? [00:56:21] Paul Stamets: Okay, I've looked at a lot of psilocybin mushrooms 99% of the time. No, no. There is one little tiny snail that gets on psilocybe slug that gets on psilocybe sinescence doesn't do a very good job. It's tiny, I've seen it co occur. But all these huge. We have banana slugs here, we have black slugs. And when psilocybe cyan grows in a patch, there is not a slug to be seen. When the garden giant or oyster mushrooms or many of these edible mushrooms, it is a slug attack fest. And side by side, I mean you can see them, they avoid psilocybin mushrooms. So it's clearly prevents predation by slugs and snails. [00:57:15] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, well, that's interesting. That's the first actual empirical evidence I've heard. But that would explain it right there. I mean that explains why that's what they were doing with psilocybin 65 million years ago. [00:57:31] Paul Stamets: Well, and it's important. Elephants have predated cows and Psilocybe cubensis and another species now called Psilocybe ograciocentrum, which looks just like Cubensis. It looks like it may be the ancestor to Cubensis. It has been found in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa. So it looks like Psilocybe cubensis is a more recent evolved species. Ograssia centrum is just macroscopically looks exactly the same. Genetically it's very close. But that's a species that is predominant, it seems in Africa. But the hypothesis of the stone date still is true. It grows in hippopotamus dung, oxen dung, zebra dung. Right. It grows I think on giraffe dung. It's an amazingly common species that jumps between ungulates and rarely ever seen on horse dung, but occasionally. So it's interesting that it's just not cattle. It's across many. And all those animals I mentioned, where do they go to drink around ponds, where do they congregate around watering holes. So that's a perfect thing. Now egrets are now well known to spread psilocybe spores of Psilocybe cubensis or Ograssia centrum. They sit on the back of cattle, they walk, and as they disturb the grass, all these insects fly up. So the egrets just kind of position themselves on the cattle so they can get all these insects in flight. Well, that bird to psilocybe connection is really interesting because there's a group of species, I'll put this back here, this is one's from New Zealand, it's called Psilocybi weroa and it's a secchiotoid species. Sechyotoid. And what that means is it's a pouch fungus. It's a psilocybin mushroom that has gills inside, but the mushroom cap will not open up. Why would a mushroom is evolving into a, into a puffball. So there's a group of at least four species now that have been found. And why would this mushroom be evolving into a closed pouch? The spores would not be liberated. Well, in South Africa, with indigenous people there, Psilocybe maluti also is a sequifioroid species, a pouch fungus. In New Zealand this species is. And then outside of Lake Tahoe, a species has been recently found. Psilocybe gandolfiana, Africandolph, Gandolf. Okay, Nathan, I should say gnome prove the provincial name. But all these species are pouch psilocybin mushrooms. And the indigenous people in South Africa made an observation that other people have made elsewhere that birds are attracted and we think that they're mimicking fruit, succulent fruit. So the birds come in and they peck on the mushrooms and, and they get many spores, hundreds of spores, not an exaggeration, into their beak. And then they take flight and they can fly 100, 200 miles and they spread the spores. Now why this is important is that for those of you who understand mushroom cultivation, it takes two spores to come together, so you have to be in proximity to each other. Well, spores spread out as an inverse square of distance, so the further away, the less likely you'll find a mating partner. But a bird has hundreds of spores in its beak. And so by flying hundreds of miles and then pecking on some other fruit which is full of sugar, the mycelium will grow, you get a multi spore germination. So these species have found a very clever way, we think of transporting spores over great distances and they're becoming fruit, like to trick the birds. You know, a form of mycomimicry or biomimicry in order to get the spores to spread far. [01:02:19] Dennis McKenna: The birds effectively become incubators for these new colonies. I mean, they carry the spores in their beaks and there's likely to be compatible mating types in that, feed in that what they ingest, and then they transport it to a new place. They don't have to depend on there being a compatible species there. They bring it with them. Effectively. [01:02:47] Paul Stamets: Woodpeckers have been found to have over a hundred species of mushrooms spores in their beaks. So why would a woodpecker bang its head against wood? Right. A tree, well, it's inoculating the tree with a fungus. And the mycelium grows, it pulps the wood, the bird goes away, the mycelium grows and invites beetles and other insects to eat the mycelium. The wood now has been myceliated, has become palpable and nutritious. The woodpecker then comes back the next year and it has food, it has mycelium. It creates a cavity. And so the cavity then enlarges. And the cavity dwellers, squirrels, even raccoons, spotted owls, are all cavity dwellers. And so it creates this biodiverse ecosystem cycle that begins to expand and this increases the biodiversity of the ecosystem. So it's well established that birds spread spores of mushrooms. So this is in particular case, it's just fascinating to us that these species are mimicking fruit in order to enhance spore dispersal through trickery. Through. [01:03:57] Dennis McKenna: Absolutely. But you see similar things going on in nature all the time, mimicry of all sorts and you know, these kinds of strategies. But that's really fascinating. This is a connection that I have not heard talked about. So that's amazing. I did want to ask you in the book, the second half of the book is effectively this extensive catalog of these now more than 200, about 235 recognized psilocybian species along across several genera and so on. You didn't actually go collect all of these. Right. You had help or people sent you information. They you have collectors from all over the world sending these beautiful photographs. [01:04:51] Paul Stamets: And thank you for asking and for sure I've had contributions from people all over the world. I very much. I just met the inventor from Stanford named Scott of Inaturalist and Inaturalist for those people don't know. Inaturalist is a citizen science effort to identify and catalog all the species within a certain geographical region. So there are bioblitzes around the world. A bioblitz is one day a whole Bunch of amateurs and scientists come together, they catalog everything they can and it could be a small amount of land, it could be a large amount of land, but they do a bioblitz and they catalog it, they photograph everything and they upload it to iNaturalist. Inaturalist.org It's a great community because you have a tet of experts going back and forth arguing what it is, what it's not. If it's a research grade level of authenticity then is noted as such. And so I have not been to New Zealand, but I have many friends there and mycologist and they alerted me about this pouch psilocybe, which is very closely related to psilocybe sign essence the wavy cap which we have here in bc. And so that's. So I benefited from many other scientists who collected these more than half the species in the book. I personally collected about a third of the species in the book. I we see the information from other mycologists and what's great about this is now I built relationships and so I plan now I now have contacts in all these places around the world so they can take me to find these things. And sometimes they're really, really difficult to find. Don't underestimate how difficult psilocybin mushrooms are to find. The exceptions of course are the dung dwelling psilocybes and Pinula species. Just because they're in open fields, you're looking for dung as easy to find. But the woodland speakers, generally speaking are very, very difficult to find. [01:07:06] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, that's true. They're not so obvious as the tibensis, although in some environment, for example Semilanziana, that's not a spectacular mushroom, but it was just present in the pastoral environment in Europe. And of course it had to be noticed, it had to be consumed even. [01:07:30] Paul Stamets: Though, well, let me grab something, I'm going to try to keep it at my face. [01:07:36] Dennis McKenna: Okay. [01:07:37] Paul Stamets: This is a drawing from Wakefield of psilocybin sign essence. She was a mycologist in 1945 in the Kew Gardens and she identified and named philosophy sign essence looks like Psilocybe sinescence. It's native to the northwest of America. It grows and the Kew Gardens brought in plants from all over the world, including rhododendrons. And so psilocybe synescence oftentimes grows around rhododendrons. And so by shipping, we think, rhododendrons to the Kew Gardens, Psilocybe sines now has colonized Europe, it's in Germany, it's in Italy, it's all over Europe, wherever people are landscaping. So it's interesting. It's not only just Africa to North America, it's North America to Europe. This is a form of Myco panspermia that's, you know, these humans carry psilocybin spores and plants that they ship oftentimes have psilocybies also associated with them. [01:08:42] Dennis McKenna: So of course they're very clever that way. They take advantage of any way to disperse themselves. And that's another example of the sort of inherent intelligence of the fungi. They're very good at dispersal. And then the other mechanism that I think is really remarkable is this horizontal gene transfer, which is. You have any thoughts about why that? I mean, this is a rare phenomenon in biology. It happens in bacteria, not so much, but the psilocybies seem to be one of the. [01:09:27] Paul Stamets: It's happening more. It's happening. Anastomosis is very common with fungi. And like Tramates versicolor, the turkey tail mushroom, mycelium is known to be a predator on other fungal networks. And rather than breaking down the fungal network of a competitor, it just invades the mycelium and replaces all the nuclei with its own genetic material. Of course, genetic material stays inside those networks. And so the possibility of horizontal gene transfer is real, with mycelial networks making contact with each other again with insects, whether they are feeding on a mushroom or laying eggs and go to another mushroom of a related species. So the psilocybin gene transfers looks like it's quite fluid where species are co occupying the same habitat or Pylodon. So I think insects and bacteria are involved in this horizontal transfer. It's a lot more common. I think most scientists in the field of mycology would agree it's a lot more common than we thought 10 years ago. It's something that horizontal gene transfer is maybe there's great plasticity in genes being moved from one organism to another. So I think we'll see a lot more. [01:11:00] Dennis McKenna: And this may be. May happen more frequently in the fungi than in other groups because of the reasons you all mentioned. But I think it's a remarkable phenomenon, you know, that, you know, I mean, again, it's an example of the inherent intelligence of these highly networked organisms. It's like they anathemose with each other and. Well, I have something for you. Here's a little biochemical gift. The gene cluster for psilocybin biosynthesis. It's all very interesting, this book. I just can't say enough about it. How much Information there is. You've not only talked about all the different species, but you've covered, you know, the medicinal use, the toxic mushrooms that might be confused with psilocybes, how to cultivate them, how to use them, how to microdose. I mean, this book is, I think, the definitive source reference right now on psilocybin. If you have no other book on psilocybin, you don't really need one because this has it all. Because you've done such a wonderful piece of scholarship here, which must have taken years to put this together. This didn't happen over a couple of weeks. You've been working on this for years. This book. [01:12:30] Paul Stamets: Well, it's decades of experience, and I've benefited from many other decades of experience of other scientists who graciously allowed me to access some of their information. So it's just not Paul Stamets. It's again, I'm just a knowledge keeper, one of many. I've got a high profile, and with that I feel like I have a deep responsibility. I ultimately believe psilocybin makes nicer people. And I think psy makes it more intelligent people, more compassionate, more cooperative, more understanding. I don't have road rage anymore. I was amused. Somebody flipped me off a few weeks ago and yelled at me, and I have no idea why they had road rage. Maybe I was going too slow or I did something, but I just thought to myself, they're just having a bad day as opposed to escalating. The conflict is like, I think that psilocybin really creates not just nicer people, but wiser people. And I think we need nicer, wiser people in this world, especially today. And so this book, I think, is a vehicle for that, for engaging and building bridges of cooperation and communication, because I think it's the fear of the other, a stranger. Danger is so pervasive right now. And the more familiar you become with different cultures and different peoples, the more you see the commonality that we all share. [01:14:09] Dennis McKenna: Exactly. [01:14:11] Paul Stamets: I think it's. It's good. It's good that I love the fact that humanity has such diversity. It's. It's colorful and fun. [01:14:19] Dennis McKenna: Psilocybin is the antidote to the xenophobia in a certain way. Because fundamentally, I mean, as they say, as the cliche goes, you take psilocybin and you recognize we are all one. And it's not just that all people are one. We are all one with everything. So that is what I think fosters this biophilia, this fundamental love of living things. And that's something that's. I think it's fundamental to transcendent experience, what you might call religious experience. And it's certainly fundamental to the experience that we have when we interact with nature. Psilocybin seems to be a compound that helps us deploy our antennas to be receptive to the message of nature. I mean, sometimes in my lectures I say, what psychedelics and especially psilocybin does they bring the background forward? If you take psilocybin in a natural habitat and just sit quietly, you notice that there's all sorts of things going on in that environment that normally we suppress. We're too busy, we're too focused, we're too this or that. But if we're in this receptive state, we see that there are many, many layers of complexity and interaction going on in any natural environment. Psilocybin lets us tune into those and appreciate them and recognize what a part of it, that we're fundamentally a part of this. We can't stand apart from it. And I think this is part of the sickness of the human species right now. We've come to believe, I think, that religious traditions, particularly organized Christianity, has inculcated the idea that we own nature. Nature exists for us to dominate and use and extract from and ultimately abuse. And we're seeing the consequences of this. [01:16:31] Paul Stamets: But Christianity is changing. I mean, there's a huge movement of Christians now and Jewish people and people of Islamic traditions using psilocybin. It's perfectly compatible. One of the things that there are people, I'm sure listening who's never done this. So they're wondering what we're talking about. That's okay. I have so many people who've had their first high dose of psilocybin have talked to me and told me, I'm sure told you, is that we had no idea. We didn't know. I didn't know. Why did I wait so long? And they have to really sit with it. So, you know, psilocybin is anti addictive. You don't want to. After you have an experience, you don't want to touch the mushrooms for weeks, oftentimes months, sometimes years, because the experiences are so profound. So that's what I think is so benevolent about these mushrooms. Now, not everybody has a good trip. 30% of the people have bad trips, quote, unquote, bad trips. But as Rick Doblin likes to say, they're not bad trips or difficult trips. [01:17:38] Dennis McKenna: I agree. There's no such thing as a bad trip. There can be a difficult trip, but that Happens for a reason. And it depends on what you do with that content. It can't all be happy hippies and fuzzy bunnies. Sometimes it's rough, but sometimes that's what's needed to kind of hit you upside the head and remind you, you know, of who you are and what's really important. Ayahuasca will do the same thing. You know, my own experience with Ayahuasca is 9 out of 10. I have a very, you know, rewarding and peaceful trip. Once in a while it just decides, okay, you need to suffer. You know, you need to wake up a little bit. So you need a bit of a shock. [01:18:25] Paul Stamets: Yeah. It's so important that our egos do not steer. I mean, of course our egos do stir our life, but it's really important to be humble and respectful. The fact that we're just such a small part of such an enormous system, it gives me solace. I'm an amateur astronomer and I just love the idea of just flying through the cosmos and exploring planets and just being thrown into the, you know, the universality of being. And, you know, I think we all really belong to one giant consciousness. And it's, it's something that we have a peek at with psilocybin, but it's, it's, you're right, it's not religious, it's spiritual. But I think psilocybin mushrooms can help reform many of the traditional religions which who have gone astray from their original missions. [01:19:34] Dennis McKenna: They could, I mean, ironically, the same religions that brutally, you know, tried to suppress these religions. But what goes around comes around. So. Man. Paul, we could go on all afternoon, but we can't do that. I've. We're about an hour and a half into it. Is there anything we haven't said that you want to be sure? We say we should probably. [01:20:00] Paul Stamets: Well, I want to steer people to a website, mushroomreferences.com with no marketing. It's just pure science. There's many, many dozens of articles on psilocybin. Peer reviewed journals. We update it weekly. It's a great resource for scientists and physicians. It's so hard sometimes to meander through the web to try to find the information. [01:20:24] Dennis McKenna: And we've consolidated [email protected] so mushroomsreferences.com that looks like a very good resource. So that's good. And this book, as I say, anybody interested in the psilocybin needs to have this on their shelf. And not only on their shelf, they need to read it. I confess I have not Read the whole thing, but I fully intend to. What I read. It's just a tour de force, Paul. What else can I say? [01:20:58] Paul Stamets: Well, coming from you, that's a fantastic compliment. And I truly acknowledge that there are many, many people before me. Maria Sabina, thank you. Maria Sabina, thank you. The Mazatecs, thank you. The Egyptians, the South Africans. You know, there's a plurality of people that I feel, you know, are knowledge keepers and I benefited from. We all benefit from their experiences. So it's a great community of souls that have come together to make it. [01:21:28] Dennis McKenna: Possible, and we're all part of the human family and the fungal symbiosis. So. Well, this podcast will drop just a day or two before the book is publicly released, and I think it's June 10th. And on the website, there'll be links to this book, of course, and other resources, including the two that you mentioned in this talk. We'll put up iNaturalist.org and Mushroomreferences.com those are both valuable resources for the curious and. And if you're interested in mushrooms, especially psilocybin mushrooms, you're qualified. You're already curious. And curious is a wonderful thing to have because that's what drives discovery and science and really everything else humans do that's worthwhile. It seems like it all comes down to wonder, and psilocybin delivers wonder in. [01:22:32] Paul Stamets: Spades, you know, and random acts of kindness. Don't be afraid. I take such joy of random acts of kindness, and it just makes me feel good. I don't have to tell anybody about it. It's just. It just feels like who I am and we are, because the response from people like, why did you do that? And you don't have to answer the questions, you just have to move on. [01:23:01] Dennis McKenna: It's just something that you are. I mean, it's built in, right? And I think it foster. I think we probably everyone has it to varying degrees, but psilocybin can bring that out, and that's part of this astonishing molecule and these organisms. So I wish you all the best and thank you so much for making time. We'll make sure this gets out. And fantastic job, Paul. You're a change maker. And more than that, you're a good guy, you're a good man, and I respect you immensely. You've always been very kind to me and really everyone you interact with, I think, respects you highly. There may be some jealousy there, but that's for good reason, you know, so all the best. I hope this book gets lots of attention all right. [01:24:04] Paul Stamets: Thank you so much. [01:24:05] Dennis McKenna: We'll see you soon. [01:24:06] Paul Stamets: Take care. Join our mission to harmonize with the natural world. [Outro]: Join our mission to harmonize with the natural world. Support the Makena Academy by donating today. Thank you for listening to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna. Find us online at McKenna Academy.