Fungi Day: Fantastic Fungi Field Trip

Coast's good afternoon to those on the East Coast and good evening to those joining us from around the world and wherever you are welcome to fungi day I'm Steven OPCON an executive producer of fantastic fungi and together with my partner Marci nahele founder of reconsider which creates films and experiences to help us play with what it means to be human and part of being human is recognizing we are part of nature and that of course includes fungi we have an extraordinary array of panels throughout the day today I urge you to tune in for all of them on am i I'm especially excited to begin with this one I also know that wherever you are your life has been changed in some way by the coronavirus students are doing school online and often physically separated from friends and family parents are either home or in many cases out helping in health care or any of the essential jobs that keep us safe Confed teachers are being asked to reinvent the classroom and teach in a whole new way we honor you all and appreciate the ingenuity and hard work of so many people now while the title of this panel says something about education I was thinking this morning that we could have called it something like a magical mystery tour or the magic beneath us and I think you'll see why we envision this not as a classroom lesson but as a really cool field trip whether you're watching on Instagram Facebook YouTube live fantastic fungi calm website or anywhere else please let us know your questions send them in we'll be fielding questions from all over the world and when you send us the questions I have one request please let us know where you're writing from and if you're a student what grade you're in we have some great film clips and conversation ahead and I am thrilled to be joined by our panel which includes fabulous mycologists and human beings Paul Stamets Juliana fer Chi and William Padilla Brown and the visionary director of fungi Lois Schwartzberg but before we get to our panelists let's start with a very special and honored guests for this next hour and for the whole day head Justin if we can have the first clip [Music] [Music] there's a feeling the pulse of eternal knowledge when you sense the oneness [Music] you are with us we brought life to earth [Music] you can't see us but we flourish all around you everywhere in everything and even inside you whether you believe in us or not from your first breath to your last in darkness and in the light we are the oldest and youngest we are the largest and smallest we are the wisdom of a billion years we are creation we are resurrection condemnation and regeneration we mushrooms mushrooms love to be roasted just do it this way new people ask me all the time how I got into mushrooms and I got into them through food if the French knew about these little candy cat mushrooms they'd be gone there'd be no more left for us I didn't know that they weren't plants these days you'll hear them described as a superfood the protein in these mushrooms is really high-grade I mean it's like a steak mushroom it's not like a vegetable and it's not like a animal but it's somewhere in between the fungus is its own Kingdom all together [Music] there's over 1.5 million species that's six times more than plants of all those species of fungi about twenty thousand produce mushrooms and mushrooms come in an incredible diversity of shapes and sizes and colors and lifestyles there are even bioluminescent mushrooms a lot of people are afraid of mushrooms they're creepy [Music] people associate mushrooms and fungi in a mold with death and decay which makes sense you know there's a lot of fear because of fungi role in the cycle of life they decomposed dead and dying organisms and move all those nutrients back into the cycle they kind of are at the very end of stuff but they're also at the beginning you as we work through the technical difficulties of of meeting with each other of staying connected and we appreciate your patience and we appreciate your interest and we appreciate you being part of this amazing journey of this film and and of nature and all of it you know I am sure that being both a scientists and waiting for things to to show themselves whether you're walking through the woods is mycologist or whether you're doing time-lapse is a filmmaker and and waiting for everything to sort of align to work to bring your vision forward the probably the biggest thing you learn and the biggest skill you need is patience so we have been playing with the notion of patience this morning and we are glad to be back with you Louie you took 13 years to finish this film and it struck me this morning that that is the same amount of time it takes for someone to go from kindergarten through high school graduation I'm gonna ask you you can share the most important thing that you've learned about or from mushrooms well I think the mushrooms have definitely taken me on a beautiful journey 13 years to make the movie I think that it started with wonder and awe to be able to make the invisible visible by showing time-lapse mushrooms popping out of the ground and seeing the beautiful dance of life that they share with us I feel that the giant takeaway for me was learning that mushrooms are like the Apple to the tree it's the fruit of the mycelium Network this incredible underground network that is the largest organism on the planet that is a like the internet a communication network that enables trees and plants to share nutrients to communicate with each other to warn each other about attacks and disease and the fact that you have this shared economy under the ground that enables ecosystems to flourish without greed it's such a beautiful model for how we can live our lives so if I'm here at graduation day talking to the audience I would say go out and live your life like the mycelium network connection relationships nurturing that is what makes the world go around that is beautiful and and before we give you your diploma I was thinking about one other gift that you've given to the world and and that is gratitude and for those of you who haven't seen it Louie did an amazing short film called gratitude and if you just google him you could also find it on the website at fantastic fungi calm in the mushroom but if you google Louis Schwartzberg and gratitude you will see one of the most beautiful heartfelt short films about gratitude so I encourage you to do that and really appreciate you putting that out there in the world Louie and you know you talked about Wonder and awe and I think that that most great documentary films and most great experiences in life probably start with that notion of Wonder and awe and they also start with curiosity and your films are not just about the curiosity of nature but also the curiosity of people within the natural world and you know really cool people and rather than me introduce Paul Stamets I thought that we could use a short clip from the film to do this so Justin if you could play our next clip mushrooms are very clandestine and very much the trickster so they're hiding from you all time we're in a gerakan territory now is some big living snags up here it's always interesting and exhilarating to be in the old-growth forest but not always rewarding and accomplishing our mission to find a new Agera constraint but nevertheless it beats being in the office [Music] funds er the gram molecular decomposes of nature and what does that mean well they break down wood and here I'm laying in the forest haven't peaked yet but here's a piece of wood laying down on the ground I was laying down the ground and I died fungi will cut leap up to recycle me well that's the way of nature [Music] mushrooms represent rebirth rejuvenation regeneration fungi generate soil that gives life the [Music] task that we face today is to understand the language of nature my mission is to discover the language of nature of the fungal networks that communicate with the ecosystem and I believe nature is intelligent [Music] the fact that we lack the language skills to communicate with nature does not impugn the concept that nature is intelligent it speaks to our inadequacy or communication Paul welcome and thank you so much for for joining us today for inspiring so many people for all the work that you do in the world for so many people and also on behalf of the mushrooms you are one of the most curious passionate people I've ever met and you've dedicated your life to mushrooms how did you get so excited about them and why are they so important to us I grew up in this very scientific family we had a large laboratory the basement and my brother my family and so because mushrooms are so ephemeral and because of the fear of mushrooms they become the forbidden fruit and my parents had warned me don't pick or touch wild mushrooms they could kill you and so I was attracted to that which was forbidden that's been sort of my life story and but this you know animals and plants are there in the view scape for months a year so you have a familiarity factor but some that comes up and disappears in four or five days they can heal you kill kill you feed you or send you on the spiritual journey something that which is so powerful but so ephemeral well there's a very limited number of people in any community that know the differences between those so they were the clarion call cognizant a the the the mycologist so I'm just one voice of monks many voices here that we're the voice of mycelium and the mushrooms and this has been for thousands and thousands of years and our Mesoamerican brothers and sisters you know celebrated mushrooms through these mushroom stands is their replicate that would invoke rain it is thought and it could be like the family coat of arms but all across all cultures is this reverence for the forest and for the mushrooms in the forest and indeed now we know that these vast invisible membranes mess invisible until you pick up a log or or you dig into the soil but we walk upon these membranes that are so vast and dense and and they are so intricately intertwined and now we know that they the foundation of the food web they create soils they generate the micro biomes the complex communities and guilds that give rise to ecosystems and so now I've learned that they're far more important than just helping my twin brother with pet balls but I was attracted to that enigma of them coming up and disappearing and then began a scientific family I thought this is very eclectic knowledge it's really interesting that that you know these sort of small encounters can be the windows or the portals into doing a deep dive and learning so much more about something when you're curious and you talk so beautifully about the intelligence of nature and the language of nature but and we're going to get into that but before we do I have a question for for all of you mycologists Paul you talked about about the mushrooms being forbidden and what I immediately came to was a question that has come in from from several people around the world and and I think Juliana you had an answer to this question but what is that crazy-looking mushroom that opens up like a crab or something that looks like a zombie mushroom that is ready to suck your brains out if you get too close what is that thing what is it well it's a fungus called clitoris artery it's a fungus that's more related to button mushrooms than to morels more related to conks than to truffles and it's it's one of the most evolutionary evolutionary intelligent species of fungi in my opinion what these groups of fungi called stink horns do is produce a spore mass so that sort of greenish olive colored goo that you see in the middle of you know that the Charis clappers and raised coming out is a spore mass that smells like rotten meat to attract flies to get covered in spores and propagate those spores so this is an incredible fungus that tricks flies into thinking there's rotten meat so that they can reproduce sexually so beautiful if I can interject this is the proverbial tip of the iceberg is how fungi attract animals they seduce animals in so many clever ways and that's just one of many examples hmm yeah it's fascinating I mean it's it's a I mean it is amazing to think about the intelligence of the natural world and how those mushrooms have adapted to do all of those things to to expand their own species and and a part of our ecosystem and it's not only cool to see all the varieties of mushrooms but to understand their intelligence and their importance in nature and one thing that you talk about Paul was you know of course we see the mushrooms right the fruiting bodies but underneath them is the largest part of the organisms the mycelium so I want to invite us all to go deeper into the story let's do some below ground reporting and Justin if we can play the mother tree and stick falls onto the ground I pull up and there's my ceiling it is virtually everywhere a mycelium has more networks than our brain has neural pathways and works in much the same way with electrolytes electrical pulses they're the most common species on earth they're everywhere just to give you an idea of how much fungi are in the forest as you're walking there's about 300 miles of fungi under every footstep that you take and that's all over the world [Music] and they formed these massive links it's like a big web just growing through the forest [Music] mycelium that can grow out even just this big can have trillions literally trillions of n branches almost everyone knows about the computer internet the mycelium shares the same network design [Music] trees are communicating using the mycelium as pathways they're connecting one tree to another they're using the mycelium to to feed one another in other words one tree can swap nutrients with another tree using mycelium as the path [Music] so we often think of kin recognition as an animal behavior humans you know we love our babies we know it's our baby and we're gonna look after that baby well we never thought that plants could do that but we're finding in our research that plants can recognize their own kin so these mother trees recognize their kin through their mycorrhizal networks the mother tree and the baby seedlings are sending signals talking to each other [Music] when they're connected together in carbon is moving between plants the trees are supporting the weaker ones if she knows that there's past's around that she's under danger she will increase her competitive environment towards her own babies so that they regenerate further away it's a magical thing and this could not happen without the fungi I mean today as they said not just by Paul Stamets and Louie but by two other brilliant mycologists you just met Giuliana fer Qi who is with us from Patagonia Chile and there right yeah and and Paul you're with us from British Columbia up in Canada Colombia and Louie you are in California on the west coast of the United States in the rugged Hollywood Hills there you go and William where are you joining us from Pennsylvania Central Pennsylvania my capital area here is great nice thank you thanks for being with us you are one of the most exciting engaging young mycologists in the field I love seeing you in this film you're an educator you're a grower you're I think you're a Pied Piper to two young students and turning them on to the world of mushrooms and all this possible and I know you're also a musician and rapper and and I've heard you speak about being a citizen scientists you know yeah can you talk a little bit about what that means to you and can you share how you found your way into mushrooms and why you find them so fascinating yeah hundred percent citizen science is really interesting to me especially coming from a non academic background and being surrounded by a lot of communities that don't have the resources and education to enter into academia I find citizen science to be really important to get people engaged but also a lot of what I've seen especially from citizen scientists in the field of my ecology and molecular biology and algae and all these different biological sciences is individuals that practice the scientific method without having the academic background of going to college oftentimes don't do things the traditional way which leads to different results that you wouldn't see in academia and also I see a lot of citizen scientists come with a different mindset and a little bit the unconventional approach just really provides a lot of different different outcomes so that's what citizen science means to me and I think it's really exciting too for like people of my generation growing up watching shows like Dexter's Lab to be able to like have a laboratory in their home and it really brings the future to now a lot of people think that like a lot of these things are just unattainable but anybody can be practicing these scientist science and doing these things from home which really brings the future to now and as far as getting into mushrooms I mean I didn't really have any background like this kind of stuff I was a city kid I just play video games and my parents never really took me on hikes or went outside so finding mushrooms to me was like a spiritual journey and they got me really going outside a lot of it was really out of necessity I like I said like I mentioned that didn't have an academic background so I didn't have as much access to resources it was really hard for me to get a good job and all this kind of thing and I had a family really young that I had to support so it really came out of necessity I needed to grow food I needed to be able to have more access to resources and in growing food I saw mushrooms and in foraging for food I got outside and I started seeing mushrooms and there wasn't really anybody in my area that could teach me about it so I just decided to become that person and found some really interesting mushrooms like these cordyceps along the way I love that so tell us about cordyceps cordyceps are an intimal pathogenic fungi and does that mean yeah and to Mose like insects and pathogen kind of means like it detects the insect kind of but it I found them to be not so pathogenic in the sense that I you don't often see them taking over whole populations of insects they really kind of live inside of the insects and to take to take control of their muscular structure whenever they're ready to produce a mushroom and and go out and pop out mushrooms and they really more so act like a biological control so these insects don't over populate general areas and they produce a little mushroom out of the insect and a lot of these courses Russians have a lot of medicinal value that we've been looking into so so I wasn't that far off when I talked about zombie mushrooms huh not at all thanks for that Julianne you you get you're amazing woman you've dedicated your life to the mycelial Kingdom in your work down in Chile can you yeah there I've two questions for you if you could share a little bit about why mushrooms are so important in our ecosystem and also when we watched that last clip suzanne samara talked about michael Raizel networks and can you explain to us what those are okay well first of all without fungi without mushrooms there is no ecosystem so it's is that straightforward fungi are the organisms that connect plants to animals to bacteria - you know protozoa and they're the real connectors that form an ecosystem without fungi not not many components living organisms over first for example interact fungi form associations collaborative associations to allow life of plants and animals for example and they also recycle compounds after those organisms have you know gone through a whole life cycle so fungi really are the firmament of nature and what am i coral networks well fungi can be more or less you know divided into these two big groups so the microscopic fungi those that decompose material that have been produced by plants and animals and then these fungi that associate and form symbiosis with plants and animals to allow life on Earth as we know it as we see it and mycorrhizae are the connection between fungi and the roots of plants that allow plants to live on earth so outside of an aquatic system so when life evolved from an aquatic ecosystem to a terrestrial ecosystem plants did that because fungi associated with them and allow plants not only to expand the area from which types of water but also they allow plants to synthesize the nutrients in the soil because plants can't do that alone without fungi no tree would live in any forest in the world so Monica Rosie are the essential stepping stone for terrestrial ecosystems anywhere in the planet is that straightforward I can't hear you though Stephen it's it's beautiful what you're saying and as you were talking I was thinking that not only did the trees need the the micro systems right to sustain themselves as you said without the mycelium without those networks we wouldn't have the trees and and then there's the next piece which is without the trees that are that are absorbing the carbon dioxide and emitting the oxygen we wouldn't be here well um it's it's been thought for many years that it's the trees that are that are sequest sequestering the carbon but what we know now is that it's in the microcell Association that the carbon is being trapped so I dare say that trees are the photosynthetic symbian of fungi and it's not the other way around that is the perfect segue to our next clip which I'm going to ask Justin to play and I want to talk to to the panel about the importance of mushrooms in in our in our work against climate change so Justin if you can play this next clip [Music] when you see what mushrooms do it's kind of spooky in the most wonderful way I mean they correct everything on us they support life they convert life they carry life they're remarkable beings if humans become extinct what's the next species that will take over the earth maybe mycelium already are the dominant species not just because they're the most common species on earth they're everywhere I mean look at humans are seven billion of us but we're just one little creature were wandering around incredibly vulnerable and don't survive easily if we're assaulted hurricane Harvey has started to make landfall here on the Texas coast more than 30,000 people are without power and things are only expected to get worse Loretta breakaways had the worst storm in about a century and to understand the new normal of months ahead without basic services climate change is one of the biggest threats to our present world's to the future of our planet [Music] co2 is our biggest greenhouse gas as plants photosynthesize they literally inhale co2 while exhaling oxygen co2 is what plants photosynthesize and they take that carbon and they put it in different places they put it in their leaves and their trunks but they put 70% of it we're finding below ground [Music] and the root systems trade that carbon for nutrients the carbon ends up in the fungal cell walls where it's stored this fuels the microbial community and all the other parts of the food web like the mites and nematodes and they start cycling nutrients through that eating process so the funds are really important is stabilizing carbon in soils once the carb is stable it can stay there stored for thousands of years we know for example that carbon can move from plant to plant and it even though the distribution of carbon in that system they're working really hard if we maintain the plants the forest and the natural fungal community we've got a natural engine that's de storing co2 below ground so it's essential you know it's there for us right it's right in front of us we do more than make mushrooms we have the ability to do so much more than just break down matter like the fruit of our labor most of you have only scratched the surface of our usefulness we are the changers you I'll come back once again and you know that clip ended with the this notion of changers and speaking of changers all across the world young people have been the ones leading the way in demanding that we wake up we pay attention to climate change and we take responsibility for our choices and there have been a number of questions that have come in in regards to the environment and the importance of of mushrooms and Julianna you have done something extraordinary in Chile which is to get people when they're considering projects and the impact on the environment to look not only at the floor and the font of the plants and the animals but also the fungi can you talk about that yeah sure this is um absolutely fundamental we have a an essential flaw in legislation everywhere in the world and in the use of language in schools all over the world where we only refer to macroscopic life's life or you know life forms as flora and fauna and it's incorrect there are three large macroscopic life forms there are flora there's fauna and there's the fungi so that's the diversity of fungi on the planet we will never be able to protect biological diversity and all the ecosystem services that biodiversity provides if we don't start including the protection of fungi as well as plants and animals so in Chile what we did was that we seized the opportunity where to make a legislative change when we realized that there was a missing link I mean an absolute missing link in every public policy both national and international to conserve and preserve nature on earth and biodiversity when this happened in Chile the fungi foundation which is the first NGO dedicated solely to fungi on planet we decided to go forward with a strategy targeting decision-makers so senators deputies ministers and all the people that assess them not that necessary that that help them to make decisions and we started using the amazing features that front I have we proved that considering fungi and legislation wasn't more expensive than considering plants and animals we made the case that if Chile or any country adopts a proactive approach to fungal conservation you will be complying with recommendations by the United Nations by IUCN and finally after two years of going to Congress every Wednesday for two years we managed to get fungi incorporated in the environment Lauren Chile at the highest religious legislative level so it's a constitutional law and that basically triggered having fungi included in that law triggered regulatory change what does that mean every impact assessment has to include fungi in Chile so you can't build a road or a dam or a housing project without making sure that you are not endangering any species of fungi plant or animal and it also triggered regulation for a national inventory of species so until 2014 apparently no fungus lived in Chile and until that legislation was put in place and now we're seeing that not only the many fungi live in Chile but some of them are threatened and some of them are endangered and in the eyes of policy if nothing is under threat there's nothing to protect so it's super important to start looking at the conservation status of fungi everywhere and start getting legislation wherever it says flora and flora and fauna for it to say flora fauna and fungi is 3x not to so this is something very practical very concrete that young people and all of us who care about the environment can do to protect the environment and to work again against climate change and it's not just the carbon sequestration as you said it's also the biodiversity and Paul you speak so powerfully and so beautifully also about you know myko diversity being biodiversity and there's a there's a moment in the film where you talk about that but can you also share your thoughts about that importance of the micro diversity thank you because are so pervasive and resident in the ground there that want to consume it and also they enlist support with organisms to create guilds or communities that can protect mutually each other what that means is that the up regulate gene sequences that can actually prevent bacteria for instance or protozoa so there are antimicrobial agents coming from fungi the obvious big one is penicillin from penicillin Christ John Alexander Fleming got the Nobel Prize for that but even though I've Nobel Prize for it it was until they found a moldy cantaloupe a researcher a lab assistant this lady went to the market in Chicago and and got a lowly cantaloupe and it was that strain within a species that was a hyper producer and that then allowed to the commercialization of penicillin that saved millions of lives and is one of the greatest medical breakthroughs in history that speaks to my Co diversity the importance of diverse strange within speech like you have to our diverse strains of tomatoes or corn is the biodiversity complexity that give this opportunity to harvest the skill sets that interface with our interests today so we have somewhat of an egocentric viewpoint about us being so important the harvest nature's support us I think we really need to reframe that and look about investing into natural systems for the benefit of the overall community it's the plurality and biodiversity of the ecosystem they give us in a armamentarium a repertoire of Defense's that we can apply against diseases and support our feed networks and interesting characters I conducted mycorrhizal fungi as many people don't know this but doctors as Raziel first published this is when saprophytic fungi grow across straw or wood 25% of cellulose becomes water that's why there's big big puddles around compost piles so the mycelium creates its own water and that water then benefits all these other members and the Guild's that the mycelium is setting up to create the habitat that gives rise to the foliage to give rise of trees to creates the debris fields to feed the mycelium so these are deterministic in the evolutionary sequence of habitats so they're profound in their implications and we're just discovering these skill sets it's it's really an amazing opportunity to know there's a library of knowledge under every footstep that you take that we haven't yet even explored that is really amazing and I love the imagery in the film Louie where Suzanne is walking through the forest and we see exactly what Paul is saying which is everything that's alive beneath each step that we take you know a question that came in from Elliot who's a 3rd grader and Virginia may be her sister or somebody's in the same same household who's a kindergartner and the question they have for any of you is why our mushrooms different colors yeah well I just want to dive in and not as a mycologist but as someone who's observed nature he said you know I believe that beauty is nature's tool for survival because it will seduce pollinators in order to you know help them reproduce and one of the ways obviously is color to be sexy to be attractive to have a certain wavelength of energy that says come get me I'm ready to be fertilized and so I'm fascinated by that I think it's a secret language it's a code for DNA to move forward and for evolution to continue why is a mascara bright red it's it's you know it's a poisonous mushroom it doesn't normally kill people kills the excessive amount but so you know there's there's we always humans are guilty about trying to find explanation and every event in nature we should give up the concept that sometimes these phenotypes this expressions are may just have nothing to do with their utility better they a consequence of other genetic expressions that are useful for the mushrooms but I would love to understand better why is Emily miscarry a bright red and why are coca-cola cans bright red because at 65 miles an hour I put on the brakes and oftentimes I love also Paula brings us full circle actually to that first clip where you talk about that our inability to understand the language of nature isn't isn't nature's fault it's our shortcomings in our ability to understand the complexity of why certain evolutionary things in the habit so this is a panel that loves mushrooms and hopefully an audience that loves mushrooms and I can tell that we have we do have a lot of mushroom lovers around the world who are joining us right now and sending in their questions and if you have more questions you can send them in through Facebook live YouTube live or one of our other platforms and maybe we can take just a minute and rather than talk about mushrooms just simply enjoy them and observe them but before we do that let's do a little behind the scenes here Louie there are lots of questions about mushrooms and there are also lots of questions about how do you do your magic how did you capture these things opening and closing and growing and dying and being born can you maybe would you be willing to give us a sneak peek into the world of time-lapse and how you capture what you do yeah that would be great I'm gonna take you guys on a little journey into my studio where we can see currently think I'm shooting a rose and some lupins that are growing wild in the rugged hills of Hollywood just good timing we're coming in just as we're shooting a frame and then we're actually shooting 3d or stereo a left eye and a right eye so and then the grow lights come on to keep the plants happy which is really cool so this is all happening automatically and for students to understand there's 24 frames per second and when you watch a movie 24 frames go by in a second that creates the illusion of motion I'm shooting one frame typically one frame every 5 or 10 minutes which means we end up with perhaps two or three seconds of film per day which means in the course of four decades I've squeezed 40 years into about 16 hours of film so clearly it takes a lot of patience to do that but also you don't have to be a scientist to be involved with you know mushrooms and and biology and botany artists have an ability to share information wonder their art to help scientists be inspired and to show them things that the human eye can't see and it's you don't have to have a white lab coat to be a scientist Paul wears jeans and a black t-shirt all the time and you don't have to be in a lab the greatest lab in the world is outdoors but in order to film the time-lapse I can't leave a camera outside for a week I have very variables like wind and the light goes from light to dark and there's bugs and there's people that might steal the camera so we shoot it in a controlled environment in order to give you the benefit of saying hey stare at this mushroom for five days and watch it grow what could that experience be like it's like having a microscope in order to look at things that you can't see or a telescope to look at Jupiter time-lapse enables me to give you a window into their world so you can be a mushroom and enjoy life from their point of view that is beautiful Louie thanks for sharing that and and I know that we've got people somebody who just waved hello to the panel from Palestine and says thank you so much for for everything that you're doing and we've got people coming in from all over the world so you know we have a treat for you here here's a one-minute montage that you put together Louis and I invite everybody at home and on the panel it's one minute to just sit back to relax and to let these images wash over you and Justin if you could play a mushroom waltz [Music] welcome back everybody you know as the as the the one minute mushroom waltz was playing Giuliani you said something which was really profound and made me think about how extraordinary this panel is and how perfect it is because Louis you also built on this idea and talking about artists and you don't need a lab coat but we have four panelists here who were motivated by curiosity by passion and took non-traditional routes to learn everything they possibly could and have brought so much into the world and if there's one thing to leave our students with and all of us with today it's that notion that you don't have to be a PhD scientist to care about the environment to learn what you can learn to explore the world of fungi and mycelium and we've created a few prompts for everyone at home for students for parents for teachers to think about and play with and share and I'm going to put them up in just a moment and we'd love for you to take a look at them you can also access them on our website at fantastic fungi comm slash education we'll put that up and we'd love you to send anything that comes out of these prompts for you so we can share the most inspiring with the world you can email them to us you can share them on Facebook to Instagram or Twitter accounts with with the hashtags that you'll see but before before we do that I want to turns out even okay I just want just really quickly I forgot to mention there the students I mean the people on this panel have all contributed to this book and it's a great resource for young people to be able to read and do a deeper dive it's got William Paul Julian all contributing and you can get the book with a discount code on our website fantastic fungi calm thanks for that Louie and I want to turn back to my colleges for a moment sorry just I don't very shortly that what you were saying is so important that you don't have to have a PhD to study my ecology but it's incredible that from a non-traditional approach you can contribute like for example like Paul has the fun by publishing in journals like Nature to improve scientific knowledge so not coming from an academic background doesn't mean that you can't feed and support an academic system and an academic environment so all of us from our non-traditional parts to my ecology have been contributing to traditional parts of my ecology at the highest level and I think and congratulations Paul on that I mean not anybody can publish in in those journals and make such a huge contribution without having taken that traditional route absolutely and and and William I think about you you are you are writing or just finished the first book on cordyceps right um I published the first publicly available literature on cordyceps cultivation in 2017 and I just finished the second volume which will be going into print next week or the week after so I mean I've definitely learned a lot and since 2017 when I released that we've seen giant leap in people that are cultivating cordyceps fruiting bodies and in in mycelium and we've seen a incredible leap in the genetics that we have available now over the past year we have a lot of people like myself that are breeding cordyceps for commercial fruiting potentials and hopefully getting more access to analytical laboratories so we can test our our selectively bred strange for levels of beneficial compounds that they're producing so it's been really interesting to just ride that wave coming from a place where people told me I couldn't do that whenever I whenever I first had the wild cordyceps everybody said you can't grow cordyceps fruiting bodies nobody only people know how to do that in China and they're not going to share it with you but that even that inspired me to do it even more and it's been really interesting to ride that wave see what's coming minute that's beautiful thanks for that Justin I'm gonna ask you to put up the first slide if you could and we've covered a lot of ground and I just want to share a couple of these prompts with you in the audience to think about and you can respond to them through writing through essays through music through poems through drawings whatever inspires you and you can share them again on on any of our social media sites and also on fantastic fungi dot-com slash education and there are four questions the first time lapse in macro cinematography are used in making fantastic fungi and Louie you use these techniques to allow us to see beyond normal time and scale the question is to the audience is what would you like to explore using these kinds of techniques the second question Paul you talk about the intelligence of nature and the language of nature and would like to ask students of all ages what does that mean to you and where do you see this expressed in nature how do you understand the intelligence and language of nature and Justin if I can ask you to go to the second slide for the last two prompts for the day Suzanne Simard in that sequence of the mother tree shows us how trees communicate and protect their young and share their resources through the mycelium that surrounds them and also how they help in preventing climate change Juliana talk so beautifully about carbon sequestration and and the importance of biodiversity the question to the audience is can you create an essay a poem a picture a film a song or anything else that expresses how you think about mushrooms nature and the earth on what is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day tomorrow and lastly on our website on fantastic fungi calm slash education you can find the mushroom walls that we all enjoyed find a quiet place to rewatch it maybe once maybe a few times and share any creative project that is inspired by this short film so those are some of the things ways that you can do a deeper dive into this work and we talked about mycelial networks covering the earth and all of us today are now part of the mycelial network of fantastic fungi we'd love to hear more about your interest in mushrooms your responses to the prompts that I shared and all of it will help us it'll help us inform the experiences in the curriculum that we're building for release of an educational initiative this fall because when you guys are back into your classrooms we want to be there with you with the film with all kinds of exercises and ideas we want to take you out into the forest to forage as well and to identify what mushrooms are near to your schools and your homes and we even want you to be growing mushrooms in the classroom to have grow kits and to explore the ways in which we can all interact with this amazing fungal Kingdom and before we wrap up I want to share one more clip we began with the voice of the mushroom and it's time to come back to it we're gonna play this clip and then we are going to come back to our panel in just a few minutes for a final wrap-up so Justin if you can play our last clip and we will be back with you in just a few minutes Paul was wonderful in bringing us information about all these aspects of mushrooms and that had inspired all these young people now we have people like trad Cotter carrying on the great work that Paul started talking about biopesticides talking about the ways you could detoxify oil all of these amazing things were started because people like Paul brought that to the culture at large and young people now have taken up the closet er really expanding our insights into what the world of mushrooms can do for us Paul Stamets book my son I'm running got my mind sort of in a whirl that was when I first discovered that there was much more to mushrooms than just food if you would have seen me when I dropped out of high school I was just making rap music I knew very little about the natural world I've never even went on a hike until I was 18 but finding all Stamets TED talk video was one of the biggest inspirations that pushed me to the wonderful world of my ecology my first mushroom book was the mushroom cultivator by Paul Stamets I'll be eternally thankful to him for showing me that it's okay to be mushroom mad we really don't even know most fungi we're discovering new species on a daily basis and you don't have to go to exotic locations to discover them anybody can add to the science from identifying any species to developing a new micro mediation protocol there's a great need for more people to study fungi and there's lots of opportunities it's amazing what we don't know about mushroom they really are a frontier of knowledge they probably can help us solve all sorts of problems if we look a little deeper anyone anyone can help by going and walking in the woods and contributing to my ecology you may have found a species that has never been found we need these mushrooms we work together as a community to solve problems we could be the community that heals the planet it's been estimated two-thirds of our food supply is be pollinated dependent unfortunately we're losing bees across the world on dramatic die-off that is very dangerous for the biosecurity of this planet so I started exploring ways to help save the bees and I noticed in the summer time there's a continuous convoy of bees going to my beehives to my mycelium but then it dawned on me but maybe the bees are benefiting from the mice ileal extracts because they have antiviral properties and so I cultured the most aggressive strains and then submitted them we started testing the effects of these extracts and helping bees survive some of these fungal extracts are really good at reducing viral levels in the bee so here we have a fungus as helping fight viruses in an insect we're using mushrooms to create an entirely new class of materials which are totally compostable at the end of their lives the researchers found that when they heated a portobello mushroom skin for roughly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit it became a lattice of carbon nano ribbon that could be used in battery design because it allows a good amount of surface area for storing energy you can filter water you can create medicinal compounds almost on demand we work in Haiti that and they look at you like I had superpowers well I told them I said you you were about to have superpowers - coming from the background of not having any training getting myself into the lab was very empowering I felt like a superhero I feel like I could do anything you're officially a mushroom farmer sporulating orgasm I see my species as part of a larger a whole rather than being at the top of the pyramid being one of the organisms with inside the circle and the circle is made up of mycelium holding us all together [Music] we've always thought of plants of these inert objects these things that don't actually interact with each other build things and what my work is showing in other people's work as well it's saying actually they need each other they meet each other to grow in a community so that they can start sharing the load you do this I'll do that and together we can make a beautiful resilient community they have incredible capacity to make things change very very quickly so if we can work with them if we get it you know as humans get it we can change this thing really fast so I am super hopeful we just got to get busy and and help nature do its thing evolution never stops there's not one point that it happens and it doesn't happen again it's continuously happening a core concept of evolution is that through natural selection the strongest and the fittest survive but moreover communities survive better than individuals communities that we lie upon cooperation and I think that's the power of goodness evolution is based on a concept of mutual benefit and the extension of generosity when we see us we understand it and when we understand it we care about it and when we care about it we'll do something to help say about we need to have a paradigm shift in our consciousness what will it take to achieve that [Music] are not an individual we are a vast network of molecules and energies and wavelengths the interconnectedness of being is who we are [Music] this world of ours is always changing not for the better or for the worse but for life [Music] the storms come and the water rises if fire scorches the land or darkness descends we will be here working as we always have extending the network building community restoring balance one connection at a time eight years or a hundred million [Music] we'll still be here on this magical mystery tour about the magic beneath us yeah yeah first of all is an honor it's always great to be around such good people I definitely want the audience to know it doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter what your background is you can get out there and you can make a difference I honestly never thought that I would be in this position with all these amazing people and be able to be doing the work that I can do so definitely find something that you're interested in follow that passion follow that curiosity and you know propagating my silly and beautiful Julianna yeah I'd like to share with everybody viewing to take a minute just ask you all to take a minute and every time you look at a tree come to terms with the notion that you're not looking at one organism you're looking at a whole symbiosis that tree wouldn't be there without the fungi on or in its roots without the fungi inside its cells and its leaves so every single tree is a symbiotic it's a symbiotic organism every cow you see is a symbiotic organism cows and you know herbivores can't decompose the cellulose of the plants they eat without the fungi in their stomachs so every organism you see and even us every human we are all symbionts we are an ecosystem in ourselves and fungi play a fundamental role in each one of us so please appreciate the fungi help us all bring justice to the fungal Kingdom and remember it's 3/8 not 2 flora fauna and fungi beautiful and Louis well wandering on is the intersection between art and science and follow your passion for all you young people I mean we are on the eve of Earth Day you know 50 years ago the largest protest occurred on this planet and we have to ask ourselves a giant question why haven't we changed why haven't we shifted our behavior so the future is your you are the leaders and I want you to you know run with that you know mantle mission and and be the change you want to be thank you for that Paul I was at the first Earth Day in Washington DC is 14 or 15 years of age and what I really want people to expand their consciousness of their awareness of nature and I would encourage parents to take their children and if you don't have children go out on the walk in the woods and find that a log or a piece of wood has been on the ground for a few months and just tip it over look at the mycelium and bow down and smell the fragrance signature this outgassing from the mycelium the mycelium creates scent trails that permeate the forest and after rain what's that scent is the outcast fragrance is coming from mycelium also that indigenous people from North America from Africa from Europe I've long to recognize and observed how weather influences the abundance of mushrooms is now known that electricity lightning strikes it was a folkloric knowledge but now we know that actually lightning electricity stimulates mushrooms to form more recently which I find fascinating and I just found out from another mycologist dr. Daniel Royce who is a conservative mycologist from Pennsylvania actually first postulated this to one of his students and Dan came up with amazing observational speculation has now been verified is sound psyllium is so sensitive that it responds to sound experiment scientific experiments now have shown that low sound vibrations stimulate them I seem to grow you know what that means that means that drum circles tribal communities singing traces of nature the mycelium is literally listening and from their sound and from their ceremonies the mycelium is activated it feeds more nutrients to plants the ecosystems provide more fruit in their food it you know acknowledging nature and singing nature's praises and giving gratitude in ceremony nature and my Salim is listening and they will respond with gratitude as beautiful and for me just like the musty little networks and all of nature nothing is done in isolation Paul the words that you speak in the film toward the end of the film and the clip that we just saw will always stay with me the interconnectedness of being is who we are and as Louie knows making a film takes enormous collaboration of so many people and this is also true in creating experiences or events like today so thank you to so many people to you Louie to Paul Giuliano William for sharing your time and your your insights in your heart with us to the people at blueshift Keeton cristobol hydro studio area 23a Greta Rose agency justin and your crew today and in fighting through all of the technical issues that can arise but did not keep us from staying connected and thanks to the teams at both moving art and in reconsider and most of all to all of you for joining us here today we have a lot more planned for the day and in fact we'll be back with our next panel about shifting consciousness in just 25 minutes so we thank you for your patience we thank you for your passion for your connection and we wish you a great rest of the fungi day and days to come and we thank you so much for tuning in we've woken up to a new reality and I'm happy to be connected to all of you [Music] everything is connected what happens in China New York and Italy affects us all why do we have to suffer to recognize how connected we are we can empower and enhance our connection by living in harmony with nature connections all around us everywhere networks of underground shared economies were ecosystems flourish without greed mycelium that can grow out even just this big can have trillions literally trillions of n branchlets almost everyone knows about the computer internet the mycelium shares the same network design when they're connected together in carbon is moving between plants the trees are supporting the weaker ones if she knows that there's past's around a bit she's under danger she will increase her competitive environment towards her own babies so that they regenerate further away it's a magical thing we found novel molecules highly active against poxviruses novel molecules highly acted against HPV they have incredible capacity to make things change very very quickly so if we can work with them if we get it you know as humans get it we can change this thing really fast so I am super hopeful [Music] nothing lives alone in nature communities survive better than individuals let's use our connection to earth and to one another to preserve protect feed and grow [Music] we need to have a paradigm shift in our consciousness what will it take to achieve that we are not an individual we are a vast network the interconnectedness of being is who we are [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Moving Art

Views: 95,496

Keywords: William Padilla-Brown, Giuliana Furci, Paul Stamets, Louie Schwartzberg, Stephen Apkon, Fantastic Fungi, Fungi Day, Educational Forum, Fantastic Fungi Field Trip

Id: uSoMElnZsC8

Length: 72min 36sec (4356 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020