The Magic of Mushrooms with Merlin Sheldrake

Merlin Sheldrake is a Mycologist and bestselling author researching fungi, mycorrhizal networks, ecology, and the interconnectedness of life Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, this is Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of the higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings? And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hot flashes, rage crying, forgetting words mid-senten. Yeah, we know. Menopause is a lot. Midi Health gets it. That's why Midi offers virtual healthcare specially tailored to women's needs. Built for women by women. Every symptom, every stage, every question. Visit joinmidi.com to get started today. That's join M I D I dot com. Individual results and coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage.

• 1:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  Become unstuck from the feathery glut, you pheasant-stuck gurnets. Welcome to the Blind by Podcast.

• 1:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've had a bit of a nightmare. I've had a bit of a nightmare of a fucking evening here. In the nine years of recording this podcast, I don't think I've come into any severe technical issues, but I did today. So I spent the entire day, it's now night time, I spent the whole day recording a podcast. And then I lost the file, which has never happened before because I'm incredibly careful with that type of thing. But in this situation, it was completely out of my hands. I record on a PC, a very, very good PC, specifically for audio for this job. And then this evening, Windows updated without me asking. Windows started to update. So I said, oh, fuck it.

• 2:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay, that's going to take 30 minutes because sometimes Windows does that shit. So it updated in the, in the middle of me, me being at the end of this week's podcast. Now that has happened twice before. I need to turn off automatic updates and it's usually fine. But this time, Windows fucking updated. And when I went to turn my PC back on, it wouldn't let me turn it back on. It went straight to what's called a BIOS screen, which said, your computer, your CPU is overheating. It's at 92 degrees, which is nuts because a CPU should be at about around 30 degrees. Now, the PC, it wasn't behaving like it was overheating.

• 2:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  It didn't feel hot, the fans weren't loud, but the warning was this PC is overheating. So I rang someone who knows about this type of thing, who repairs PCs. And he said, shut it down, don't turn it back on. And I'm like, I don't think it's overheating, even though it's saying it's overheating. It doesn't feel hot. He's like, it doesn't fucking matter. Do not turn that back on. But I've just spent the day recording the podcast. Can I at least get into the podcast file and export it? I'm going to lose that podcast. And he's like, if you turn it back on and it's telling you that the CPU is at 90 degrees, you might lose everything. That might be the last time you ever fucking turn it on.

• 3:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  Turn it off, bring that PC to a specialist. It's either actually overheating or it thinks it's overheating, but don't fuck with it. So I had to turn the PC off because that did happen before in 2017. I did have a PC just like explode and smoke came out the back. It would have been 2015. I lost a year and a half worth of songs back when I was a musician and I used to make about 150 pieces of music a year. Gone, gone. Sometimes, sometimes I'll wake up in the night and some of those songs from 2015 will arrive in my head, taunting me.

• 4:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Full compositions that I'll never hear again. And I learnt my fucking lesson then in 2015. I really learned my lesson. So I'm not turning that PC back on. I am not turning it back on until I bring it to someone who can look at it and tell me what's up with it. What am I recording on now? My old PC, thank fuck for not throwing shit out. My old PC that I replaced with the new one in 2024. When I was finished with it, I didn't throw it out. I didn't like take everything off the hard drive and then throw the tower out for exactly this moment. For exactly this moment. It's a piece of shit, but it works. Have it as a backup.

• 4:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's what I'm recording on right now. My old shitty backup PC, which to be honest, it's ready to go. That's a really full hot. You can't fucking hear it because I have a bunch of limiters, but it's an incredibly loud PC. That is, it's heating up my office. It's like having a heater. That's how shitty and old this PC is. So I've lost, I haven't lost it. I'm going to bring that PC to a repair person and I doubt I'm going to lose everything. But a day's work, a day's work is gone and I'm winging it, but I have my backup. I always have backups.

• 5:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  I found a brilliant conversation that I did with a mycologist and expert in mushrooms called Merlin Sheldrake.

• 5:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  I recorded this maybe 2024. I don't know why I didn't put it out.

• 5:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  I, it was the last gig. It was in London, the last gig of a tour in, I think, 2024. I must've just come back from that tour utterly burnt out from speaking to people and then just had to move on to the next thing. And I had this incredible interview sitting on a hard drive. So thank fuck. And it's an incredible chat. I spent the last hour listening to it. So I'm really, really glad to be putting this one out. It's so enjoyable. In fact, I'm not going to interrupt it halfway through. So I'm going to do, actually first I want to tell you about a gig. A gig that's real fucking last minute thing.

• 6:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  This gig will sell out in a half an hour, right? Because it's tiny. You're talking maybe 150 tickets. If you remember, I did this gig last year. It's on a tiny little weird island called Garnish Island down in West Cork. You can only get to this gig by boat. The island itself has a microclimate. It has a, a strange little Mediterranean climate because it's shielded from the Atlantic by the mountains. Just close to this island, if you go the wrong way in the boat, there's a giant rock in the Atlantic called Bull Rock. And in the mythology, in the Laur Gavalla era, and so this was written down in the 10th century.

• 7:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  This, this island is right beside the home of the god of the dead. There's a poem from the 10th century called Finnegan's Vigil, which speaks about this place, Teckjun, the house of the dead. It's the home of a god by the name of Don or Down, the dark one, who'd be like Hades. Hades who takes the dead across the river Styx, a bit like that. It's where, I don't want to say it's the hell of Irish mythology because we didn't have that. We had an otherworldly thing. So it's where the souls of the dead go. On this rock, there's a little arch and, and sometimes the sun sets behind it at certain times of the year.

• 8:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that's sun setting through that arch. When viewed from, from Ireland, it's, it's the god of the dead winking. So my gig is on a little island that's close to that. There used to be a big house on this island, a big colonial house. And I'd heard a story that my grandfather had burnt it down when he was in the IRA, but it turns out it was a different island. I got asked to do this at the last minute and I couldn't say no because it's, it's a little holiday for me. So on the 6th of September, I'd be doing a very intimate live podcast to 150 people on an island that you can only get to by boat in West Cork.

• 8:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd be doing the gig underneath the nest of Ireland's only nesting whitetail eagle. Lives on this island too. I'm going to be chatting to, this sounds mental. I'm only realising now, this sounds fucking insane.

• 9:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  Jesus, this is all, this is all real. This isn't like a poem. This sounds mad. All of this is true.

• 9:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  See, I'm all anxious over the computer thing. I'm all anxious about the computer thing and I haven't been critically analysing how utterly insane all the sentences I've just been saying are. But look, I'm doing a last minute gig on the 6th of September on an island that you can only get to by boat in West Cork, underneath the nest of Ireland's only nesting whitetail eagle on an island that has a microclimate in West Cork called Garnish Island. I'm going to be chatting with Sean Ronaine. Sean Ronaine, the autistic bar deck expert.

• 9:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  I fucking love my job. I love, I love that all of those sentences are real.

• 10:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I'm gonna be speaking to Sean Ronaine, the autistic bird expert. I've had Sean on the podcast a couple of times. We have wonderful crack. Won't, this is a real, this is a 10 foot Declan gig. See, normally what some cunt would do with this now is they'd go, here's a big mad fucking exclusive gig. Like, like a cruise or something. Here's a big mad exclusive gig and tickets are 300 quid. I'm not doing that at all. Tickets are normal price. I'm not even sure if I'm getting paid for this gig. I think I just said, put me up in a hotel and I'll be happy because I want to go down to, to West Cork. But anyway, the festival is called The Island Drift. Tickets for this thing are going to be available on Thursday morning. There's only like 150 tickets.

• 10:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Theislanddrift.com. It's a festival, so there's a bunch of other shit at it. Um, you can only get to the gig by boat, but it's like, it's not your own boat. You don't have to find a boat. There'd be a boat that'll take you to the gig. I'm a stupid cunt. Like I should be, I, the rules of capitalism are like capitalize on this exclusive thing there. Capitalize on that, the tiny gig on the island where there's only 150 tickets that sells out in 30 minutes. I don't want to be doing that shit. That Garnish Island, it's very special to me because

• 11:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's my dad, before he died, used to say to me when I was a kid, I'm gonna take you to Garnish Island someday. And he never got to do it. So it's a special place for me. And then on the way back, I go by Kilmeikle in West Cork and I visit the Kilmeikle Ambush Site, which is my grandad's IRA monument. So I might as well do a gig while I'm down there. So Thursday morning, get those tickets. If that's the type of crack, it is fucking lovely. It's absolutely gorgeous. If, it was pissing rain last year. But it's, the whole thing was covered. So you weren't getting wet and ah, it was just that wonderful Atlantic bastard rain.

• 12:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  And you can feel the, it's a microclimate. It's a microclimate on the island. There's plants that grow on that island that can't grow anywhere else in Ireland because it's a microclimate. So this island drift, is that the correct fucking name? I'm not editing anything that, hold on a second.

• 12:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  Theislanddrift.com. There you go. 6th of September, couple of weeks away. So anyway, before I do the, the Merlin Sheldrake chat, um, Patreon. This podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how,

• 12:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's how I'm able to, I'm gonna get this PC repaired tomorrow. I'm gonna get the PC repaired. And I don't have a big pain in the pit of my belly because I can afford to get it repaired. And if it's completely fucked, which I hope not, what I'm worried about is, is losing recordings. But I'm not worried about, I won't be able to afford a new PC if I need it. If I need a new PC, if that's where I'm at, all it is, is an inconvenience because support from the listeners, because of the Patreon, because of that, I'm able to purchase all my equipment, rent out my office and earn a living with this as my full-time job from the listener-funded podcast.

• 13:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  So all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month, that's it. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint? I mean, some of you are gonna come down to fucking West Cork on a boat. You don't have to do that. Just buy me a digital pint. Uh, once a month, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. And again, if you can't afford it, who gives a fuck? Absolutely fine. Listen to the podcast for free. Listen to the podcast for free as long as you want. Doesn't matter because someone else is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast. Doesn't matter whether you pay, whether you don't pay. Everyone gets the same experience. I get to earn a living. What more could you want?

• 14:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. It also keeps this independent. Great way to fuck up. Any piece of art that comes from a position of curiosity and authenticity and passion. Great way to fuck that up is for advertisers to come in and start setting the rules of what you talk about and when you post and how you post and what your podcast is about and the content. Fuck that. That's not what we're doing here. This is about curiosity and failure. What a failure this week. What a huge failure. PC went to shit and I lost a day's work. I'm still putting out a podcast because that's what happens on a Wednesday.

• 15:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm still putting out a podcast and instead of allowing that failure, Jesus, I could be devastated by that. I could go, oh my God, a day's work gone. Well, I'm putting out nothing. I'm defeated. Fuck that. How do I respond to that failure? I respond to that failure by putting out something else and whipping out the old computer. And fuck it, here we are. Right, upcoming gigs. There's that one there in September that I've just announced. Tickets on sale Thursday, 6th of September, Garnish Island, The Island Drift. Then UK tour, England, Scotland and Wales. I shouldn't be saying the fucking UK because it's not a United Kingdom.

• 15:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  England, Scotland and Wales, October, kicking it off. Brighton on the 18th of October. Cardiff, they are at the New Theatre, Cardiff. That Cardiff gig, you'll need to get tickets for that. You'll need to get tickets for that one, uh, or you'll be disappointed. Then on to Coventry, the Warwick Arts Centre. Bristol, Beacon Hall, Guildford, G Live, London, sold out, 26th of October. Glasgow, as good as sold out. And then Gateshead, Gateshead nearly sold out. Finally Nottingham and the, the far, what is that? The 11th?

• 16:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm shit at reading dates, right? It's either the, I think Nottingham is the first of November. I don't know. I can't read fucking dates. Nottingham is the day after Halloween. So that looks like November to me. I don't know. While I'm over in England, Scotland and Wales as well, I have a play on in the Abbey Theatre called Animals, which is on from September to October, but I won't be in the country when that's happening. Then Australia and New Zealand, they're in fucking April 27th, is it? That's nearly sold out. I don't have the dates here. Sure, fuck it. You'll figure it out. Be on my website, theblindbypodcast.ie. I'm in part Auckland.

• 17:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Ah, for fuck's sake, hold on. Let me just get these dates. I don't have the dates, right? It's April 2027, right? Have I got them here? I do.

• 17:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Beginning on the 9th of April, Auckland, the Auckland Town Hall, nearly sold out. Then Melbourne on the 11th, as good as sold out. That one's going, the Palais Theatre in Melbourne. That's actually the biggest gig in terms of amount of people. Brisbane, powerhouse, sold out. Brisbane sold out. There's three tickets. That's what's there in front of me. So there's, if three people in Brisbane want to come to that gig, there's three tickets left for that. And then Sydney Opera House, biggest gig in my career, 22nd of April, 2027. Getting there, very nearly sold out. Is that a boat? 90%, right?

• 17:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Any of those gigs, especially the England, Scotland and Wales, give me a shout on Instagram and recommend some interesting local guests for me, please, and any of the, the places that I've listed out. Okay, Ocarina, pause. Bit of capitalism, couple of adverts. Here we go.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Do you snore? Did somebody hand you a CPAP and did you quietly stop using it? The mask that never quite seals, the hose tugging at you every time you roll over? A machine sitting abandoned in a closet? Excite OSA works a different way. It treats a root cause instead of managing the noise. And you use it while you're awake, 20 minutes a day, while the coffee brews, while you set your fantasy lineup. An FDA cleared prescription device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Then you go to bed like a person, nothing strapped on, nothing plugged in.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  In clinical studies, 90% of patients saw a reduction in snoring. No sleep study required. Prescribed online, shipped to your door. Excite OSA at springsleep.com/sleep20. Code sleep 20 for 20% off. Excite OSA is an FDA cleared prescription only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Not for everyone. Individual results vary. Risks and benefits at springsleep.com.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  This is Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad. Opill is the first over the counter daily birth control pill available in the US. Let's be real, getting a birth control prescription is not always easy and it's so much admin. In fact, about a third of women face barriers to access prescription birth control. Between scheduling appointments, missing work, class or just trying to exist, it's a lot. But now Opill is putting birth control in our control. Opill is a daily birth control that's FDA approved, full prescription strength and estrogen free and 98% effective when used as directed. Grab it online or at most major retailers, no prescription or doctor's appointment needed. So if you're thinking about birth control, check out Opill to see if it's right for you.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  Use code Giggly for 25% off your first month of Opill at O P I L L dot com. That's code Giggly at O P I L L dot com. Birth control in your control. We love to see it.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet, many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep

• 21:08Speaker 05

  theirs. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market. There are two types of business owners, those who are busy and those who want to be busy. Toast is designed for both, with tools to keep you humming and help turn grind into growth. That's how you turn busy into business. Toast, built for busy.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Some days, getting the work done isn't the problem. Staying locked in is. Alpha Brain is on its daily nootropic formula for cognitive support, designed to support memory, focus, attention, and mental clarity. Its formula with science-driven ingredients include theanine and huperzine A to support focus and memory, and it's caffeine-free. So when you're deep in the work, Alpha Brain helps support enhanced productivity and tune out distractions. Get focused on what matters. Shop Alpha Brain now at ONNIT.com.

• 22:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm not even explaining what the Ocarina Poise is because this PC that I'm using to record this podcast on is very, it's old and hot and angry, and I'm actually concerned that that's gonna shit the bed very soon. So I'm just rattling through this. So on to the chat with Merlin Sheldrake. Marlon is a mycologist. He is an expert in mushrooms and fungi, an incredibly fascinating person, a lovely fella. He released a book in 2020 called Entangled Life, bestseller all over the world. The chat that we had, we had such an amazing fucking chat. And I met his brother, his brother Cosmo too, is an incredible musician.

• 23:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  They were both backstage with me. At the start of the interview, Marlon was kind of quiet. And afterwards, during the interval, he said to me, and this has only happened with a couple of guests, where, so I didn't know, he was, he's a 10-foot Declan. He was listening to lots and lots of this podcast, and I didn't know that at all. And it's only happened a couple of times. But sometimes, I'd bring a guest out on stage, and they'll have spent so much time, like, listening to my fucking voice, listening to the podcasts, that when they're out on stage with me, and I'm beside them, and then they're hearing

• 24:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  my voice that they've pumped into their head for hours and hours and hours, it freaks them out a little bit. It's like, this is really strange. This voice, I know this voice from listening to this podcast, but now I'm speaking to this voice, and I don't know what to do, because I'm not used to having a conversation with this voice that I know so well, but now I'm supposed to talk as well. So that happened with, with Marlon at the start. And then it happened with another guest before, I won't say who it was. But it was a difficult podcast, lovely, not Marlon now, a different fella about six years ago. He was a musician, and he'd been listening to me all the time too. And when

• 25:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  I got him up on stage, he just said, fuck all. He just, he just sat back with his arms folded, going, blind boy's talking, I'm just gonna listen to blind boy. And I'm like, here, we're supposed to be having a fucking chat. It was Mick Flannery. Lovely fella, absolutely fucking lovely fella. But I had Mick Flannery on years ago. And, and at the interval, he's like, fuck it, man. I just realized, I'm saying nothing up on stage. I'm just sitting back listening to you, because I'm used to listening to your fucking podcast. And I'm like, yeah, we better have a chat, man. There's an audience here. But anyway, and also, Marlon, if you are listening, I fucking adored this chat, which I think, I think it was 2024. It was definitely in London. It was the last gig of a tour that

• 25:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd done. Marlon, if you're listening to me, I would love to speak to you again, because the one thing, listening back to this podcast, I have so many more fucking questions. And I don't have a contact for you, and I don't think you're on social media. So, Marlon, if you're listening to me, reach out to me in some way, because I'd love to chat to you again. Right, so this is the chat with Merlin Sheldrake about fungus and mushrooms and all that crack. And I'm not gonna interrupt it, I'm just gonna play it through to the end. Dog bless.

• 26:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, oh, my poor, onto the guest. Um, I'm gonna be speaking to someone who's an expert in mushrooms.

• 26:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  This is a very, very fascinating person who I've been wanting to speak to for a long time. Can you please come out, Merlin Sheldrake?

• 26:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  What's the crack, Marlon? You're fairly serious about mushrooms, yeah?

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Well, I try my best to be plausible.

• 27:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's an area, right, that I've been procrastinating, because I'm aware that it's so fucking fascinating, and I want to just set aside time for it. Like, what is it that drew you to fungus in the first place?

• 27:25Speaker 00

  There are so many reasons. One is compost. I was, I'd carry bags of, and buckets of orange peel and banana skins out when I was little, it was one of my jobs at home, and put them on the compost heap. And then I would help my dad shovel what had now become soil, several months later, onto the flower beds. And I got amazed and confused that these things could transform from one state into another, without us being able to see the creatures doing the transforming. And it turned out, when I asked, that there was fungi that played a big role in that. So I became intrigued, because they seemed to have so much power, but they were organisms that had so much power, but they weren't big. They weren't like, when I was little, I thought that powerful organisms would be

• 28:08Speaker 00

  big and noticeable and loud. But these were invisible and not big, and they weren't loud. And yet, they seemed to be able to do a superpower. So that was one of the reasons I got interested in fungi.

• 28:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  And a big thing about, like, they're decomposers. Are, do, does the fungus decompose, or does it assist other organisms in decomposing?

• 28:34Speaker 00

  I think the compose, I like the way that this scientific, technical term has compose in it, because it's actually quite, if you take that as a musical metaphor, you know, the fungi are key decomposers, but they do it alongside lots of other organisms. So there's loads and loads of fungi doing this in different ways. Some of them can do wood, some of them can do other kinds of compounds. They're like, they're like metabolic wizards. They've got all these enzymatic keys, these chemical superpowers that can, but some of them can do this bit, some of them can do that bit. And then sometimes the bacteria can, they need the bacteria to be able to do any of that at all. So it's kind of like this orchestra, or band, or like waves of different musicians composing, decomposing all together. It's, it's wild.

• 29:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And just, so let's just take, like, I know that shiitake mushrooms, right? They grow on like the rotting trunk of a tree, and then you get this fruiting body that you can eat. What's it making out of wood? Do you know what I mean? Like, is, is the shiitake mushroom using wood as fuel, and then turning into something? And then what's that called?

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's like a question a two-year-old would ask, but fuck it.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  No, it's really good. It's, um, yeah, so it's getting the wood, and it's taking the, it's disassembling the wood, and then it's reassembling those disassembled bits of wood. Into itself. And so it's made of the same stuff as the wood was, but in a new order, a new configuration. So it's decomposing the wood, but.

• 30:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  What's wood made of then?

• 30:09Speaker 00

  It's made of lots of different comical compounds arranged into long strings. So long strings of molecules made of carbon, made of hydrogen, made of oxygen, but they're they're strung together like like braided rope. And wood's really special because it's got this compound called lignin in it. And lignin is really difficult to decompose. It's like when plants were on land and they were trying to grow tall, they have to support themselves. But everyone wants to eat them. So the more strong and robust and inedible they can make themselves, the better. So he invented.

• 30:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  The trees.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  So he invented lignin, which was really hard to break down.

• 30:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Really? Is that why trees are like, you you can't just go up and eat a tree?

• 30:54Speaker 00

  That's exactly why.

• 30:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  I did. This is gonna sound nuts, but I once received a phone call from Robbie Williams while staring at a horse dripping a tree bare of its bark. And it made me, I know, I'm not even gonna expand on that. I'm just gonna leave it. That happened. You know, it made me think about life, actually, because so Robbie Williams had gotten my number because I'd been saying things about him on Twitter. That's it. It's not like, oh, he's name dropping here. No, I got in trouble for saying shit about Robbie Williams on Twitter. But like, he rang me from Los Angeles and I was just going, oh, my God, it's Robbie Williams. But then it was ruined by this horse. Like, out the back window, the horse was over there eating the bark off a tree. And I couldn't focus on what Robbie

• 31:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Williams was saying. I couldn't really focus on, I'm getting a phone call from Robbie Williams, because I'm thinking about, the fuck's that horse doing? Because I know that trees aren't edible, like, and that horse is having a good old time with that bark.

• 31:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm just saying, Merlin, it made me think about what you were just saying there. It made me think about how you're not supposed to eat trees. They're not great at being eaten. But mushrooms are all right at eating trees, aren't they?

• 32:07Speaker 00

  They're great at eating trees, yeah. And and the horse might have been eating it from medicinal, there might have been some medicinal.

• 32:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, here we go.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, there might have been some, you know, because we have willow bark, which gives us aspirin. And that's so we don't really, that's not gonna be a good food for us. But it's gonna be a good medicine for us. And that's why it's become aspirin. And now you get it in pills, so you don't have to eat the willow bark.

• 32:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was in someone's garden once with a load of fucking wasps who were acting queer. Seriously, the wasps were on the ground like this, and they were stinging people's feet. And it turned out they'd been eating aphids on the willow tree. And something in the willow bark was making the wasps docile. That sounds about right, doesn't it?

• 32:48Speaker 00

  It's idly.

• 32:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, it could have been the fellas, I could have called her on to my friend's house. And like, his dad was just a lunatic. It was making wasps dozy with some spray. So I don't know. But like, I'm trying to get at ecosystems here, right? So the tree, there's a fair bit of carbon going on in the tree. And you're saying that the shiitake mushroom, it's still, there's still carbon, but it's changing the way the carbon is. But then the tree, doesn't the tree get the carbon out of the air?

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the tree's eating light and carbon dioxide, and then it's turning that.

• 33:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  I love that.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  And then it's turning that carbon dioxide in the air, together with the light, into sugars and fats. And those sugars and fats are making the body of the tree, its leaves, its shoots, its trunk, its bark, and then its roots. And then it's also using that carbon to feed fungi that grow in and around its roots, pumping this carbon down into the soil. And those fungi are helping the tree to feed itself with nutrients from the soil, like nitrogen and phosphorus. So there's a whole wild trading economy of carbon going on, starting with trees' fundamental superpower, which is eating light. And and then that carbon in the body of the tree, when the tree is dead, is the carbon that

• 34:10Speaker 00

  the shiitake is going to use to break it down, reassemble it, and turn it into the body of the shiitake.

• 34:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  What happens when the shiitake dies?

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Well, it depends how it dies. Like, if you've eaten the shiitake, then you're gonna take the carbon in the shiitake and it's gonna become you.

• 34:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  And there's no way for you. Your thing is, you're a mycologist. But like, you're describing an ecosystem there. Like, at any point, does someone say to you, stay in your lane, Merlin? Do you know what I mean? Like, a sense of, you're Mr. Mushroom Man, but you clearly know a thing or two about trees as well. But like, I'm just thinking, with academia, like, it's like, does someone come in and say, wish don't care about the trees, Merlin, there's someone over here for trees. But how can you do that when everything you're speaking about is an ecosystem?

• 35:09Speaker 00

  That's such a, that's such an important question, you know. And one of the reasons why I'm drawn to studying fungi is because you, they're inherently connective organisms. They live in these networks. They are always forming relationships, wild relationships with all these different organisms, so inventive, improvisational. So you can't study fungi for long without bumping into a wild cast of characters that you need to understand to understand the life of the fungus. So they allow you to step into that more interconnected view, because that is what they do, and that is how they are. And it's harder to disguise that than it is, say, if you're studying an organism that doesn't just behave like a network. But yeah, one of the reasons why these relationships were less studied by

• 35:52Speaker 00

  modern biology for a long, long time was because these disciplinary specializations made it so that, yeah, like, if you're the bacteria person in this building, on this street, in this university, and there's a plant people in this building, on this street at the university, and to study the relationships between bacteria and plants, you had to make a daring leap across the street, like, between these departments. And someone's gonna get upset. And what that meant is that the world was studied as parts, as organisms, as as these different divided creatures, and less about their relationships. And so you've really put your finger on something which is.

• 36:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because what I want to touch on there is, I'm guessing that kind of started to begin around the Enlightenment. Would that be correct?

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Well, this was more like in the, when science was professionalizing in the 19th century.

• 36:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Also after the Enlightenment.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because, did you ever hear of a fellow called John Scottus Eraduna? Oh, he's an interesting cunt. He was, he was an Irish monk and philosopher from the 8th century, who is seen as, he basically figured out ecology in the 8th century, except he didn't call it nature, he called it God. But he dedicated his life to basically trying to understand what reality was. But he was like, everything has an interconnectedness. But he didn't, he went, it's God, it's God, it's God. But if you just take out the God, it's this dude had it. It's like, you can't be talking about trees without talking about

• 37:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  the animal. Forget about it. There's, everything is part of this one ecosystem, and it's systemic. Do you think, was harm done when science started becoming compartmentalized? And is there more of an attempt now to become holistic?

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Definitely harm was done. I mean, quite literally, harm is done to, like, if you're chopping up an, vivisection needs to be normal, right? Like, chopping up living animals. And you're, to chop into pieces, you're chopping. You know, there is, there is the violence of a blade in that. And so literal harm is done. Sometimes it's a dead creature you're chopping up, or you're, you know, but it's, it's, it's on that level, that there can be harm. But there's harm done as well, because when we chop the world into little parts, we forget that all of these parts that we've identified, they need all of these other bits to survive. So it leads us into versions of, let's say, we design societies, we design models of reality, that factor out some of the most important

• 38:25Speaker 00

  things that we need to survive. And we end up in places like we are today, when we have polluted waters. Polluted air, all sorts of violences that stem from an individualism, an illusion of autonomy that creates cascading levels of problems. So, yes, I think science is trying to put those pieces back together again. But in doing so, when coming up with this ecological worldview and a symbiotic way of life, what we're doing is, we're not, modern scientists are not discovering this, they're remembering something that humans have always known, like, like your guy. And like so many, like, most humans and human societies and traditional knowledge systems have known that everything is connected because it's obvious when you spend time outside.

• 39:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  But the thing is, what I find is, that's very threatening to capitalism. And, and what I mean by that is, is, like, you're speaking there from, from an ecological point of view, like, we're polluting rivers, we're polluting this, and not looking at how that has a knock-on effect to everything. But even, you can take that compartmentalisation, that, that, that attitude, and even something like the mental health crisis, people will go, there's a mental health crisis, but then not join that with, there's a poverty crisis as well, there's a housing crisis, as if these things are separate, do you know what I mean? But I was speaking to a dude in Australia, his name was Dr Paul Litnitsky, and Paul Litnitsky

• 39:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  is a neuroscientist who, who was given the licence in Australia to do clinical trials with psilocybin, LSD and MDMA. And he did years and years of research, and what he found was, when he was using, like, whether it be psilocybin or MDMA to help people, he couldn't put it into a pill. Pharmaceutical companies wanted the pill, and he's like, no, this is one component of it. The LSD or whatever is present, but we have to have therapy, we have to have this entire suite, there might be music involved, I'm sorry, but I can't put this into a pill.

• 40:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then it becomes very threatening to a business model, because that's difficult to make a business model around. They wanna have something, no, I wanna sell packets of this, we can't do it, that's not the research, you know? I'd like you to have a pint and a piss, and then myself and Marlin will be back out in about 10 or 15 minutes. Dog bless. Now, I said I wasn't gonna do a fucking interval, but I forgot that there was a natural interval in the middle of the interview, so, so it'd be weird to just put that bit in and, and then just immediately go to the second half. So, this is just a bit of a pointless pause in the middle, I suppose, before I get back

• 41:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  to chatting to Marlin. I'm currently, I'm editing, I'm editing some of the script for that play that's gonna be in the Abbey Theatre in, in October. There's not much I can say to you about it yet, and what else have I been doing? Been making industrial techno music in the evenings, really aggressive stuff, and, I don't know, I wanna do some, I wanna fucking, I have these contact microphones and I wanna sample Terry Wogan's head, the Terry Wogan statue inside in Limerick. I wanna stick a contact microphone to his bronze fucking head and get a few sounds

• 41:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  out of it, or the, he holds a microphone that looks like a teenager's penis, I always say, and I wanna stick a microphone to that and get some sounds out of it, and make industrial techno out of that. I, I had, I'd wanted to stick contact microphones to the trees in the bird shit district to record the sounds of the, the starlings, but unfortunately, Limerick City Council's interventions have worked. They, they cut the trees in the bird shit district, like, really cut them down by about 80%, and it worked. It's only a small amount of the starlings have actually returned, which, I'm not happy with that.

• 42:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay, fair enough, the bird shit, there's still bird shit there, there's still bird shit, but the whole street is not, it's no longer defined by bird shit. People aren't slipping, the stench of bird shit isn't overwhelming, nobody is slipping on the bird shit, and, okay, fair play, Limerick City Council, you got what you wanted, but where are the starlings gone? That's what I wanna know, where? And, and the flock has reduced by about 80%. They cut the trees by 80%, and the flock has reduced by 80%, so there's 20% of hardcore fucking starlings are like, fuck this, I'm coming back, I don't give a shit if the trees

• 43:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  are small, I'm coming back to this place and I'm doing my shits, but the vast majority of the starlings, they're somewhere else. And I hope they're happy, I hope they've found a habitat that works for them, across the river maybe, over in Westfields, but there's plenty of fucking trees, but I, there isn't a sufficient volume of starlings in the trees for me to be able to record the vibrations of their song in the trunk, so I have to find alternative. The best thing is, is the, the statue of Terry Wogan, which is just at the end of that street, so I'm gonna stick a microphone to his head and see if I can make industrial techno out of it.

• 44:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  Utterly pointless interval there, well, not pointless, it's just to make it sound natural. Right, let's get back now to the chat with Marlin Shadrick. Oh, one other point, in the second half of this podcast, we speak, this was 2024, I believe, so we, we speak at length about, about Mancon Megan, who since then, unfortunately, Mancon died last year in October, he was a good friend of mine, and I'm still not fucking over it, Jesus Christ. He's just in my phone as a, as a name that I can't text anymore when, when a question comes into my head, you know, and there's so much, I wanna ask him still, there's so

• 44:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  much, there's so many questions, then the only person who knows the fucking answer is Mancon. In, in a perfect world, if he was still around, that gig that I'm doing down in Garnish Island, it'd be myself, Mancon, and Sean Ronaine, and Mancon would be able to tell me all that shit I mentioned at the start, about the bull rock, chock, chock done, I mean, I'm not even pronouncing it correctly, Mancon would know the proper pronunciation, and he'd tell me all about the stories about that rock. I mean, all I can do is consult the mythology, but Mancon could fucking read it, he could read it in, in Irish, he knew the crack.

• 45:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  So, rest in peace, Mancon, people are still thinking about you and talking about you. We were drinking Spanish piss backstage. I had a Cruz Campo, and you had a, actually no, Moretti is Italian piss, isn't it?

• 45:48Speaker 00

  But I moved on to your Spanish piss afterwards.

• 45:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Did you like the Spanish piss?

• 45:52Speaker 00

  It was more pissy, for sure.

• 45:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Mm-mm. I'm a fan of piss, lads, I don't want these IPAs or anything like that, or any of this. Yeah, I, I want beer that tastes like fizzy, fizzy water with, with rusty nails inside in it, that's what I want. I'm being bothered by a fly up here on stage. One of my greatest fears, Marlin, is, well, it happened once, is, if a wasp gets into my fucking bag, you know? Yeah, no, it, it happened once at a festival, it's, it's not so much of a threat here in a room like this where we're indoors, like, there's a fly, but I'm not worried

• 46:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  about the fly, but if I'm at a fucking festival, and it's outdoors, and then you're drinking beer or cider, like, September, wasps get ferociously interested in my lip, and again, yeah, they do, because it's a plastic bag, so the sugar deposits on it, you see, it's not, I can't, like, lick it off, so then I've got this fucking, oh, I'm, I, so, it was about 2017, and I was at a festival, and I'm up on stage doing a talk, and then there's two wasps, and one of them is ferociously interested in my lip, and I'm trying to do the chatting, zipping around and everything, and then eventually, he gets in my bag, and

• 47:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  I start boxing myself into the face. And, like, I didn't explain it to anyone, like, you can't see the wasp, lads, so it's like, I just went to a blind boy podcast there, what was it like? It was grand, and he started fucking boxing himself into the face, I started kicking the shit out of myself up on stage, but I wasn't, I was kidding a wasp.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  So, it stung you?

• 47:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, it didn't sting me, I got it first. But come here, what's the crack with magic mushrooms?

• 48:03Speaker 00

  You're gonna have to be, um, you're gonna have to be more specific than that.

• 48:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um.

• 48:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Ah, Jesus, like, wha- wha- why?

• 48:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Why are they doing that? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's, it's, it's not just... The thing is, right?

• 48:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  I, I enjoy a bit of cannabis, right?

• 48:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's great, it's great, but it doesn't, like, make me smell God's underarm. There's something going on with, with psilocybin that's, there's a spiritual element to it, and people who do it feel like something has been revealed, and, and more than, like, there's lots of drugs that grow in the ground, but more than any, that's the one where proponents say, "No, this is, there's something going on here, connected with the human brain, and this isn't just a fruiting body. This here, there's something religious going on here. This, this is part of being human and understanding who we are and why." That's what people say. What's the crack with that?

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Well, people do say that, don't they? And, and, um, well, I was talking to this friend, and he's been living in the Priscilly Hills in Wales, which is where the bluestones for Stonehenge come from. And he says that, no, in, in Liberty Cat season, he's walking around there, and there's just so many Liberty Cats on the ground, like carpeting the ground, waving in the, in the sunset. And he said he was walking there in the sunset, and they were waving in the sunset. And there's all these cats from the village doing, like, collecting Liberty Cats for different reasons. Someone's there, he said, "What are you collecting them for?" He said, "Well, I give them to my mother because she's got this problem with dementia, and it just makes her, um, feel better." You know, and someone's like, "Well, I do this, and I do this." And these are not people prescribing it for things that have gone through clinical studies. These are just people, you know, people in the village using it in everyone's different way, for different reasons.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  And, um, and then he was talking about, like, well, obviously everyone's always done this. And I said, "Well, there's so little record of everyone always doing this, like, in the British Isles all this time." But it's funny when you think of it that there isn't, because if you think about how much work it takes to make a pint of beer, like, you've gotta have fields. You've gotta make the field, you've gotta farm the wheat, you've got to have the barley, you've got to have the hops, it's so much work. You've got to have the people to do it, you've got to have the barrels to store it, then you've got to have the tankards to serve it in. With the mushroom, you can just eat it straight from the ground. Like, you don't even have to involve your hands if you want to graze it. You just straight, like...

• 50:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  There was a fella in Limerick who...

• 50:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  People used to get him on the golf course, you know? And your man used to acquire a beard of mud from just going down onto his knees and eating them first. But go on, continue.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  So, so, yeah, so, like, there, there they are, they grow all over the place. They, they are a, um, they influence your feelings and, um, the way you think and feel and imagine in, in all sorts of profound ways that sometimes can really help people. And, um, and that's what these new studies are, are interesting for. It's like, look, actually, there are some situations where people are really helped by these, um, by doses of psilocybin. And sometimes they aren't, like, they're definitely not always helped. You know, it's not good for everyone, but in some cases, they really are. And, um, and so it's interesting for modern medicine to, to approach this, because so much of, like, if you live in a mechanistic paradigm, if you live in a worldview in which living organisms are thought of as machines

• 51:33Speaker 00

  and are made of the parts that interact together, just like the, um, parts interact in a car or any other machine that we have, um, then it's really good for things like surgery, hip replacements, knee replacements, you know, these are miracles of modern medicine because you're doing, like, hinges and joints and stuff like that. But when it comes to problems of the mind...

• 51:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  The machine metaphor doesn't get you very far. So, enter psilocybin and other psychedelics, and it turns out, and modern medicine's like, "Oh, well, look, actually, it turns out that many, many parts of the world, humans who've been using this kind of thing for a very, very long time, um, maybe it's helpful, maybe it's helpful, just like the, the traditional societies who've been using them for such a long time, just like they say it's helpful." So in some sense, modern science is catching up with these, um, traditional knowledge systems and knowledge holders who, who have been using psychedelics to address issues of, uh, being a human, with a human mind, a human soul, a human set of feelings, a human way of, all the kind of problems we run into, you know, with our, with our human minds and human souls.

• 52:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  This mushroom internet, the wood wide web, like, is that clickbait? Is it real? What's the crack?

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Some of it's a bit clickbait, for sure. Um, I don't like the, well, the wood wide web metaphor, for me, is helpful because it gets us into a, um, immediately it gets us into a story of connection. It's like, okay, they're all connected together, so that...

• 52:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  And, and just, just can you explain briefly to people what the wood wide web is?

• 52:57Speaker 00

  So the clickbait story is that trees are communicating and sharing resources with each other underground, linked together by fungal networks. And so it's a kind of utopic, um, well, it can sometimes be utopic, but it's not always utopic. But it's, trees are sharing resources with each other and talking to each other underground because they're linked by fungi. Now, it's more complex than that, because in that version, the fungi are kind of passive cables, you know, like, they're just the cables connecting the trees. And of course, I would say this, because, you know, Fungus Boy would obviously say that the fungi are doing more than that. But it is true that they are organisms with their own evolutionary histories and a life of their own and their own agenda biologically, evolutionarily.

• 53:42Speaker 00

  And, um, and so that version of the story, like, kind of brushes over the fact that you have these fungi, which are, they're wild artists of their environment, they're problem solvers of their environment, so... Um, but the other problem with the wood wide web clickbait version, like I just did, is that it's not always a sweet situation. They're sometimes being connected to another plant by a shared fungal network. Doesn't get you as far, um, it doesn't get you very far. Like, you'd do better if you're not connected to that shared network. It just depends where you are, what fungus it is, what other plants you live with, what soils, like, what's the ecosystem? So it's more complex than, than it's been made out to be. But it is definitely true that fungi are, um, they are, well, you know,

• 54:23Speaker 00

  in the fungus, you know, camp, then people are like, the plants are just, like, the snorkels for these fungi, like, these forests are what happened when these fungi got smart enough to grow trees. And, um, and so you end up in a situation where you think about the above-ground work as an expression of the interest of these organisms below the ground. Um, but it also works the other way around, too. It's like trees are feeding these fungal organisms and communities, and, and they are all relating to each other in, in fierce and complex ways. So I think the best way around it is to think about these networks as complex amplifiers of interactions.

• 54:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  What, what's the, the relationship between, I have a buddy, right, Mankon, and...

• 55:04Speaker 00

  I was just in Ireland, Hank, talking about...

• 55:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  With Mankon, were you?

• 55:07Speaker 00

  With Mankon, yeah.

• 55:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Mankon, he's trying to rewild forests. So forests are disappearing, as you know, as you can tell. And this business of, well, if they're disappearing, let's plant a new forest. And Mankon is involved in an organization where they're trying to, trying to grow forests that are effectively ancient Irish forests. And something he said to me was fascinating. He can't just get the seeds of an oak tree and grow an oak forest. He needs to try and find literal ancient forests so that he can get the fungus from the soil as well. That there's no point, it's not about trees, it's the fungus from the soil. Can you explain that?

• 55:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, so this is maybe where we back up a tiny bit, because, um, so these fungi, they're called mycorrhizal fungi, this is what I study, um, when I'm, I'm in my research roles. And myco, myco means fungus, rhiza means root. And mycorrhizal fungi are the fungi that live in and around plant roots. And they, they're the ones that we were talking about earlier, where the plant's doing the eating of the light, getting the carbon, pushing it down its body, it enters the roots, it trades it with the fungus. And the fungus, the mycorrhizal fungus, is a brilliant, chemically ingenious network forming, navigating the wild labyrinths of the soil, and can forage for nutrients that the plant needs, like nitrogen and phosphorus and other things. And so the plant...

• 56:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that what it does?

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Yes, that's, it's doing, being chemical wizard...

• 56:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  It forages for nitrogen in the soil.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's exactly why plants, you know, the plants are feeding, feeding these fungi, because, um, the fungi have a role to play for the plant, and so they've got a trading relationship.

• 56:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wow.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  But anyway, all plants depend on this. It's a really big deal. It's like these fungi ecosystem engineers that they make soil, they hold soil together, they're kind of, all this stuff. But what's really fun from back in the day, four hundred million years ago, five hundred million years ago, is that their ancestors of land plants, which would have been freshwater algae floating around in lakes and rivers, they wouldn't have made it onto land unless they partnered with the ancestors of these fungi. So these fungi behaved as the roots of these proto-plants before they invented their own roots. So it's a really, really old relationship and it's, the whole story of life on land is made possible by this

• 57:39Speaker 00

  relationship, which is a constant negotiation between these plants and these fungi. So when Mankun's talking about these planting these trees in the soils, like if you plant the tree and the tree doesn't have its fungal partners, like these fungal partners are a very, very important part of the tree. What we call the plant involves fungi too.

• 58:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  So let's just say for the crack, I was to plant an oak seed in a forest, right? And I didn't do this transplant of mycelium. Is that the correct word?

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And would it just arrive out of nowhere? Would it find the oak tree?

• 58:18Speaker 00

  Well, if you're planting the oak seed in the forest, there would always be mycelium there because there's other trees there, right? So you already have a soil, a living soil there.

• 58:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  But why does, so what Mankun found was, and I thought this was amazing. So like Ireland used to be a fucking rainforest and it's gone through years and years of humans, it's gone. And Mankun said the best place to find ancient rainforest was in the hedgerows between roads, that these places, no one fucked with them for years because they were just so boring. And see, because it's just like, who gives a fuck about a ditch? Everything interesting happens around the ditch, you know what I mean? But these ditches, they could be thousands of years old. So you go in there and it's like, that's a tiny little bit of forest, a tiny bit. I'm gonna take that and make a big one. Why does it need to be that ancient mycelium? Why that?

• 59:09Speaker 00

  If you were gonna try and take a field which has been plowed over, it's been doused with nitrates and phosphates and fungicides and herbicides and pesticides and basically treated like shit for many, many, many years, and you wanna get this tree to start growing there, you wanna make the tree feel at home. And the tree's not gonna feel at home in that field because that tree, that field has been treated in all of those ways. So you take a bit of home for that tree from somewhere else and you put it in the ground so a spoonful of soil from there.

• 59:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  These organisations call home tree.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Oh, there we go. I didn't know that, but that makes total sense. Because that's what's going on. Like the fungus is, if you planted the oak tree in this blasted field, then over time, like these fungi will arrive, but it will just get sped up quite a lot if you take the-

• 1:00:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  How are they getting there?

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  They blow in the wind, they get, they can move there by, like when rain happens and water's moving slowly over the surface of the soil, but mainly in the air and with wind currents.

• 1:00:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I know that we have invasive plants. Do we have invasive fungus?

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  Definitely, yeah. And lots of the time when people, the reason why I like Mankun's approach here is because he's saying, look, we need to have these particular communities of fungi that grow here. Whereas in some people, lots of people do this, you go to a garden centre and it's persuasive. It's like, look, buy this mycorrhizal fungal like grow and you put it in your soil and miracles will happen. And lots of the time, it's, they're completely irrelevant mycorrhizal speak. It's like going to a garden centre and buying a bag that says seeds or something like that. You know, like most gardeners wouldn't do that. They wanna know what seeds, from where. And so, it's a bit like that. So, yeah, so there's lots of invasive, well, not invasive, I mean, people are introducing fungal species all the time to different parts of the world. And sometimes because they're trying to and sometimes by accident.

• 1:01:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you wanna hear my Japanese knotweed theory?

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Are you into Japanese knotweed?

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, when I was little, it was like, it was, it was fun to be assigned the task of rooting it out.

• 1:01:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Japanese knotweed is, do you know about Japanese knotweed? Yeah. It's a cunt of a thing. Like some people, if they have it on their property, it's difficult to get house insurance because it's so resilient. I call Japanese knotweed Thatcher's footprints. And I'll tell you why. So Japanese knotweed, now you can call bullshit because you're qualified in this stuff. Japanese knotweed, it comes from volcanic soils in volcano. That's where it's indigenous. And these volcanic soils, they've got a lot of heavy metals in them because it's a fucking volcano. So it's got, Japanese knotweed

• 1:02:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  has a very high tolerance for like lead, zinc, mercury, and it will grow in these soils. If you look at where Japanese knotweed flourishes, it's everywhere that Thatcher and Reagan shut down. Seriously, the fucking London Olympics there in 2012 was this. That was all brown, brownfield area on the east of London. Places that used to be where you'd have gas works, factories, there was oil refineries there. Thatcher shut all that shit down, you were left with brownfield. And then Japanese knotweed started to flourish because it thought it was a volcano. The toxic metals in the soil, Japanese knotweed was like fucking

• 1:02:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  great. Yeah. So I call it Thatcher's footprints. And you go to America, everywhere that used to be an industrial centre where people had jobs, that Reagan went in and said, fuck that, no more unions, nothing. Pittsburgh, the fucking Rust Belt, Japanese knotweed. Japanese knotweed going, oh, it's a volcano. Why is there so much mercury in this soil? What do you think of that?

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Well, I like it because it can turn this plant, which is so often, I like it as a hot take because it can turn this plant, which is so often thought of as just like an unmitigated pest with no possible, no possible value, no possible way that we could, no silver lining, you know, to that story. And it's never really that simple, is it? And so I like this version of this take on it because if that's the case, if they're growing the heavy metal soils, they might be taking up the heavy metals and so removing that-

• 1:03:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's what some people are saying.

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  So maybe they're accumulating heavy metals and when we pull out the Japanese knotweed, we're taking the heavy metals out of the soil. And what we're really doing is the Japanese knotweed is taking it out the soil and then we're just putting all that Japanese knotweed in one place somewhere else where it's safer to have. So I like it because it makes the, it makes the Japanese knotweed into not just a straightforward villain from elsewhere.

• 1:04:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's growing places where nothing else can grow because of heavy metal poisoning and thriving in it. And the other thing as well, and as well, apparently it's very tasty, like in Japan where it grows, like in Japan, it's not, it doesn't grow crazily because it has its own pests and pathogens and probably fungus that kills it, which is not here. They eat it because it tastes like rhubarb. So they love it over there. But the thing that you were saying there about what if Japanese knotweed is actually good because it might clean a soil of these toxins, isn't there a fuckload of fungus that does that? Isn't there fungus that can eat plastic? Like tell us about

• 1:04:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  the fungus that, we're all a bit scared of climate change here, I think. It's not great. I've read clickbait that there's a possibility that there's certain fungus that cleans things up.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it might, it might, it might be worse than the wasp in your, in your bag. You know, you have the fungus that's eating your bag and then there'll be no bag.

• 1:05:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's a bag eating fungus?

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  I don't know. I mean, just when I think of a worst case scenario, clickbait for Blind Boy would be like.

• 1:05:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Me getting, my bag's getting infected by a plastic eating fungus. If that ever happens, it means that my social anxiety is back and I'm lying.

• 1:05:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that real? Is there a plastic eating fungus?

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some plastics. My friend did this thing. So he was trying to... So there's lots of different types of plastic and there's lots of different types of fungus. And my friend was interested in this. He had some, he had cigarette butts. It's a certain kind of plastic. And there was oyster mushroom. He was growing this oyster mushroom on the cigarette butts. And if you give the oyster mushroom like eighty percent grain, which it normally eats, and then twenty percent cigarette butts, over time, it starts eating the cigarette butts and getting to getting used to them and starting to be able to break them down. And then you gradually phase out the grain. So in the end, they're just eating cigarette butts. But these are all clean cigarette butts. Then he was like, okay, what about the dirty, the used cigarette butts? And that's a whole different kind of challenge because you don't just have the plastic.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  You've got all of these things, like these nasty things, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, all of these toxins. And so then he phased in the used cigarette butts into the clean cigarette butts. And over time, the fungus just got used to it and started to crack out with its chemical wizardry, all these ways to break it down. And so in the end, it was just living purely off used cigarette butts, which is not what it would be able to do if you'd given it that challenge right from the start. But you let it get used to it and phased it all in in a certain way. And so that's one way that's...

• 1:06:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's like, I'm trying to get my head around this, right? Because like, is he training? Training is the wrong word, right? But what I'm thinking about is, do you know that famous monk who's the, not the inventor, but he's very important for genetics because he was growing beans?

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Mendel, maybe?

• 1:07:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah. So Mendel was growing beans in a monastery and he was like, oh, I can make them a certain way. And then we learned about genetics, right? What's going on with your buddy there in the mushroom? Like, I don't know enough about mushrooms. Like, what's happening? Like, how, I don't even have words. Is, because they're not pollinating each other.

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  So, no, it's the same fungus. So it's more like these fungi are so adaptable. They can do some...

• 1:07:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's more like training a dog?

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  No, it's more like the fungus has got like, it's like it's a jailer with this like big like chain of keys. And there's this door it's got to unlock. And that door it's got to unlock is this chemical challenge it has to face. So it's just riffling through the keys, trying each one until it gets lucky.

• 1:07:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  But how long has this mushroom been kept alive?

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  Well, this whole, I mean, it had to phase it in so that it had other things to eat while it was riffling through the keys, you know? Because if you just give it that, it takes a little bit of time. This was a few weeks.

• 1:08:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  What I'm trying to get my head around, right, is if this wasn't a mushroom and it was peas, you'd have to do it through generations of pea. You'd have to go, oh, I can make this peas grow in fags. But like, you know, if that was the challenge, I'm gonna grow peas in a pod, but they grow in soil that has loads of cigarettes in it. And you'd have to try and try and try across generations until in six years' time, you've got the cigarette resistant peas. That's not happening here. You're talking about one fucking mushroom is learning things.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  That's what I mean, yeah. So this is what...

• 1:08:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's fucking nuts.

• 1:08:43Speaker 00

  So when I say chemical wizards, this is what, one of the ways that they can be like chemical wizards.

• 1:08:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that unique amongst, I don't want to say planks, but is it unique amongst things that grow other stuff?

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  Fungi are really good at it, which is why they're such prolific decomposers, you know? That's why fungi do what they do.

• 1:09:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's why. Because that's their thing is, I'm about decomposing, so I'm gonna figure out how to decompose these fags.

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah. So riffle through the things, try what works, do this thing, doesn't work, try this thing, does work. Oh, okay. Well, if we can do that, then now it's a new challenge. Let's try this. This works, that doesn't work.

• 1:09:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I'm assuming that's not just your buddy in his flesh. There has to be other science. But you know what I mean? Like, if that's profoundly interesting and possibly could change the course of history, are there other people going, let's tackle some problems?

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  But so humans have been tackling problems with fungal metabolisms, with fungal wizardry for a very, very long time. For longer than we've been humans.

• 1:09:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go way out of it.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  Well, like when you got...

• 1:09:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Give me some early examples.

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  Okay, so let's have, let's just choose alcohol. So alcohol, we've got this problem. We've got a bucket full of sugary water. We've got sugary water here. And we want, sugar is our problem. We've got to remediate this sugar in taboos. How are we going to do it? Like, that seems like an impossible challenge for a human. And indeed, it is an impossible challenge for a human. So what do we do? We get a yeast, which is the fungus. And this is what they do all the time.

• 1:10:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeast is a fungus?

• 1:10:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're remediating sugar in taboos for humans for a very long time. And so we come up with all these different ways to create perfect environments for these yeasts to remediate the sugar in taboos. And that's the same story. We're outsourcing a metabolic process to a fungus because it's helpful.

• 1:10:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, that's fucking mad.

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what about, like, again, I love this thing where you have indigenous knowledge and then science catches up. And one thing I heard a lot about recently is, so in Irish folk medicine, not just Irish, this was, a lot of places had this. We had things called poultices. So if someone had a wound, you would get some bread and dip it in milk and put it on. And my ma used to do this for me when I was a kid, when I had a tiny little cut or whatever, because her ma did it as well. And when I was older, she said, I'm sorry, that was just bullshit.

• 1:11:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you know what I mean? It was like, I'm not taking you to the doctor. So I pretended that the bread was gonna do something. But for years, I thought, okay, that's what poultices are. And then I went looking into it. And some people say that when the bread went moldy, it's penicillin. So there actually, people were using antibiotics, but they didn't know that's what it was. Like, is penicillin mold, is that your territory?

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  No, it's not, but...

• 1:11:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that not a fungus?

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  It's a fungus. It's totally a fungus. But it's, I mean, I don't, it's not my fungus.

• 1:11:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, but like you're, but like you're, like... So is a fungus who, oh, now we're getting somewhere. So a fungus that grows on bread, that's like, sorry, get fucked. You're into the trees and the soil, is that the crack?

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  Well, no, not really. It's, it's, the mold cures you're talking about are amazing. Like, because when Fleming, so Fleming's this prof and he's studying bacteria in a lab in London. And he comes back from holiday and he finds his patchy dishes. He's got these bacterial colonies growing. He's got this mold growing on his dirty dishes. And the mold is the penicillin mold, right? Which is, which is fighting off the bacteria. So he...

• 1:12:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  He clocks this from his dirty dishes. And then he's like, hang on a sec, maybe this could be useful. And so they extract, there's a whole process that went into having these early penicillin drugs, which were able to fight bacterial infections in human bodies. And what had gone on there is the humans had said, look, this fungus can fight these bacteria. Can we get that fungal solution and rehome it in our body so that we can also fight this bacteria? And so we've just appropriated a fungal cure, right? And it turns out it cures us too. And that works really well. And that's really amazing. But then it turns out that people have had these folk mold cures for a very, very, very long time, like a shocking long time. And actually, it's all very close to the surface.

• 1:13:04Speaker 00

  There's this amazing researcher I was speaking to and he studied these folk mold cures. And then so many people would notice, like, oh, yeah, like, I, my mum used to keep a boot, leather boot, like above the roster in the kitchen. And then whenever we had a problem, she'd scrape off this little mold from the side of the boot and put it in the thing and it would always make us better. Like, there were so many like stories like this of that local mold doing the thing that was gonna kill you. And so mold cures are really very, very old. And so penicillin is just a modern mold cure.

• 1:13:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  And again, is the penicillin, is that the, is it doing its little job as a decomposer there?

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  So the penicillin mold is, it's, it's eating, it's eating stuff. But you wouldn't call it like a decomposer in the same way that other... But it's, but it just happens to be able to produce this antibiotic that we need.

• 1:13:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  What's its problem with bacteria?

• 1:13:57Speaker 00

  Same as yours, the same as mine. If you have a problem, if you've got an infection. Like, when they were, when they were testing the first penicillin extracts, it wasn't clear, like, if this was gonna work. So they had a policeman. The policeman had a scratch from a rose bush. And this had got infected. And this policeman had like, it was really bad. He was dying. And so they gave him the penicillin and he got, started getting better really fast. But it's a really sad story because he started getting really fast. And then they didn't have enough penicillin to keep giving him the penicillin. And he actually relapsed and died.

• 1:14:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  But from a rose scratch, you know? It's like, so we could all have that kind of problem routinely and all the time. And indeed, people did. So this was a dramatic moment. And then when it was turned into a drug that could be shot out like in scale, it was the Second World War. And so most of it was going to the soldiers in the war. But the people at home, doctors at home, they'd heard about this. Everyone heard about this, but they couldn't get their hands on it. So you have all these people back home with their infections and the doctors saying, but we want some of that stuff. But that stuff's all over there, treating the people who, the government decided need it more. And so what they started doing was making these kitchen sink penicillin, they'd grow the mold.

• 1:15:09Speaker 00

  And then they make a poultice. And they slap this mycelial mat onto the infected wounds and let the fungus fight it out right there on your body, rather than extract, and this, like, all of these different steps to extract the drug, like, put the mold on your skin and let it do the job right there. So that would be, that's a penicillin poultice. I wanted to try this. And when I was writing my book, I was like, I wanna see how this works. So I got some penicillin molds and I was gonna grow this. And I was telling this to my parents. I was like, look, I'm gonna inflict two perfectly equal wounds on myself. One on one side of my body and one on the other. And then I'll put the penicillin poultice on one of them and not the poultice on the other. And I'll see what happens. And my parents are like, Merlin, you can't do this.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  I was like, and they said, anyway, how would you have two perfectly equal wounds? And I was like, burn, a burn, a perfectly equal burn. Had it all worked out, I had the poultices growing. But in the end, they managed to persuade me not to. But, but the poultices, like, they were there. I tried taping them on my arm just to see if it would tape on. It's very neat. It's like, it's like a perfect fungal mycelial antibiotic producing bandage right there.

• 1:16:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's fucking brilliant stuff. And that is not just...

• 1:16:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's something magical about this. I'm trying to understand. Like, we've all started to get very interested in this world recently, right? And the thing is, is that... There's something spiritual going on. But what I mean is that when we think of plants, they're like, okay, they're brilliant. We can agree upon that. They're really cool. But when it comes to this world of funguses and mycelium, our beliefs and attitudes about it, it's like it's about to tell us something magical about reality. There's something supernatural in our interest, if you know what I mean.

• 1:17:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, what's going on there?

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, people love to fear them as well, you know? Like, and so there's fearing them, there's a kind of a terror of them, there's a suspicion of them. And partly because they grow on dead things and they grow on big piles of shit.

• 1:17:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  And some of them will kill you.

• 1:17:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, and some of them will kill you. And some of them will make you have visions that you might not want or might not know how to control. Or might invite people to question certain dogmas and doctrines about society or civilization at that time. So they can do all sorts of things which are disruptive. And for that reason, people have, they've been surrounded with a kind of, with all of these fears, superstitions, and neglected a lot, you know? So they're a kingdom of life that's not had a kingdom's worth of attention, partly because they're weird and they associate with disgusting things and they do wildly mysterious things. And also because they live their lives out of our sight, you know? They're buried in whatever they happen to be eating.

• 1:18:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  And they're kind of, it's hard to define them. Like, I'm talking completely from a layperson's point of view. They're like, they're a bit octopussy in a way. Do you know what? Like, if I had to say, what's the mushroom of the sea? I'm sure there are mushrooms in the sea, but I'd go, they remind me a bit of octopuses. In the sense that there's something going on with octopuses. It's like, what the fuck you? You know what I mean? But it's one of those things where it's like, if we found out, oh, there's aliens all along and they're octopuses, I'd go, yeah, yeah, I'll have that. And mushrooms are a bit like that. It's a supernatural potential. And as well, when I think about them, right?

• 1:19:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm really uncomfortable with the fruiting body ones. I'm all right with mushrooms, but not like I'm dust floating in the air. Like, I'm a big fan of a cup of tea, right? And when I, now I only keep one cup, but when I was younger, you know, when you're like fucking 15 and you have your, you're collecting your condoms and leaving your mugs underneath your bed? And then you forget about that fucking mug and you're tidying your room and you reach underneath the bed and take out the mug and then, poof! Like, that fucking wasn't great at all. And that put me off the type of thing you're into.

• 1:19:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  It didn't put me off mushrooms, but just, it's so fucking weird. Like, nothing else does that. It just blew fucking powder and then it's in my mouth and it's chalky. And I'm just like, I don't know what just happened. Is it gonna kill me? Like, you've had that, yeah? Like, so like, that's gonna put us all off this territory. That core experience is putting us all off. Convert me. Like, what's going on there with my cup of tea? What's the blue shit? Why does it wanna do it?

• 1:20:22Speaker 00

  It's mold. It's growing on your tea because it wants to eat your tea, just like you want to eat your tea. And you weren't eating your tea, so it came and did it for you. And if you were trying to make cheese, if you were trying to make koji, or which is what you used to...

• 1:20:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Kombucha?

• 1:20:36Speaker 00

  Miso, kombucha, any number of delicious foods that, like, you were, or so many delicious, chocolate, coffee, these all involve fungal fermentations, not to mention booze, of course, and bread to make the bread rise. Like, if it was in any of those contexts, you would just, you wouldn't even question it. You'd just be scoffing it down, as you probably do every day.

• 1:20:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  And like, I'm a big fan of kombucha recently. I refuse to make it because I've seen a thing called a scoby, which I'm not ready for that yet.

• 1:21:10Speaker 00

  What is it, though? What is it to...

• 1:21:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a jellyfish with depression. What is it about the scoby?

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, what's the problem?

• 1:21:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's because it's fucking, what the fuck you? It's rubbery slime that you have to put into your tea and then kombucha happens. And, do you know, I tell you what the problem is, man. I tell you specifically. I've encountered a fair few of these cups of tea that I've left under my bed over the years. There's the dusty one. And then the worst of all, the worst of all is, you leave the cup of tea there and then there's a slimy film. So it hasn't gone full dust yet. A slimy film with mold on it.

• 1:22:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the film reminds me of rubber. I was kicked out of a cinema once for chewing condoms when I was 13. Flavored condoms, again. This is legit. Cinema, into the vending machine, flavored condoms, 13, not fucking anyone, what am I gonna do? Watching Jim Carrey's The Mask at the back of the cinema, chewing flavored condoms. Security guard sees what's happening and kicked me out because it was so strange. I wasn't hurting anyone. Like, I'm not antagonizing people. It's just, undiagnosed autistic, flavored condoms, let's have an old chew. Hmm, banana, that's nice.

• 1:22:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the security guard's just like, no, get out, just leave, get the fuck out. You're not even doing anything, just get out. So the chewing of the flavored condom happened around the same time that I was discovering the fucking, that slimy fucking rubbery mold at the top. So I had, I could feel the chewing, the condom chewing, as I'm looking at that film. And that film reminds me of a scoby that I now have to voluntarily put into some tea to make some kombucha for my mental health. But is it kind of a scoby? Is that film at the top of the tea a bit of a scoby?

• 1:23:32Speaker 00

  Something like a scoby, yeah. I mean, you could call it a scoby.

• 1:23:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  What is it? What's that film at the top of my tea, man? You know the one I'm talking about, the rubbery one? And then you go like that.

• 1:23:41Speaker 00

  I want tea.

• 1:23:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  And there's nothing in there.

• 1:23:43Speaker 00

  And I think that's just like the skin.

• 1:23:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Skin of what?

• 1:23:47Speaker 00

  Skin of the tea.

• 1:23:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  The skin of the tea? That sounds like something a hipster is selling in Dalmstoun, doesn't it? They're selling the skin of the tea now. Everyone walking around Dalmstoun chewing it like a flavored condom.

• 1:24:07Speaker 00

  So you've got some, you've got some deep trauma about fungi, which is why...

• 1:24:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not trauma, it's just, when we were speak, when you asked me specifically my resistance to the scoby and I'm looking at it and it's a slimy little disc. It took me back to my bedroom, it took me back to the exact same slimy disc on my cups of tea that were going mouldy. And then at the same time, I was chewing condoms in a cinema around that time. And the feeling of chewing, I remember, yeah, now I remember. This is like therapy. Except therapy for an autistic person is shit like this. It's not like what the German do to you, it's the association between, but yeah.

• 1:24:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I saw the fucking rubbery film on the tea, I imagined what it would be like to bite it and then got the gawks. Like, that's, and that stuck with me. And when I look at the scoby to make kombucha, I'm back there again.

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  You know, the scoby, I mean, I tried eating a scoby once just to see what...

• 1:25:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  Fuck off! You did your fuck!

• 1:25:18Speaker 00

  No, no, I thought, if I just slice it into little pieces and fry it, like, you know, like in soy sauce and sesame oil, it might be like a really nice little scoby fritter. So I did my best and I thought it was shaping up all plausible. And then put it in my mouth and I tried chewing it. I kept chewing and I kept chewing and it wouldn't go away. Like, I was literally chewing, it felt very rubbery and like, it was, it's presented as edible, but it turned into this really rubbery thing. So what I did, I was talking to this friend that night and I was like, look, this must be edible from something because like, it's, people are producing so much scoby when they're making all this kombucha. What could we do with it? So we're like, what if we made like dog treats? Like, dog, because dogs like to chew.

• 1:25:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  Instead of a pig's ear.

• 1:26:00Speaker 00

  Exactly. So then, so then we like, what would we call it? We would call it scoby snacks. And then we're like, this is, I'm not joking. We, it was, it was like 10:30 in the pub and we were really riding high on this idea. And so I went straight home. I was like, we've got to trademark it right away because, so otherwise someone else will come up with this, this thing and then we'll be out of this wheeze. And then, so I went back down and I was like, I've got to trademark it right away. So I went on and I actually did. It was a bit few, I'm sure I did some of it wrong, you know? It's like quite convoluted, like forms and stuff. And I had to pay £200 to trademark it, but that seemed like a deal. Because obviously we were protecting this incredible wheeze and so no one else could do it.

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  So did it, went to bed feeling very, very satisfied because we'd come up with the idea, we trademarked it and that's a good day's work. And so then, a few months went past and how the trademarking thing turns out to work, you have, there's a review period where people, if they have a problem with your trademark, they can complain. And so then a few went, and just before the few months were up, I was talking, we're gonna get away with this, like, no one's raised a squeak, we're gonna be just fine. I got this letter from Warner Brothers. And it was really, really like officious letter from Warner Brothers. And it says, we've got word that you're gonna do this scoby snack thing. And while technically it's not anything to do with Scooby Doo and Scooby Snacks, and we do feel that you are riding on our coattails.

• 1:27:27Speaker 00

  And if you pursue this thing, we're gonna take you to court. And so then the, I had to just put it out because I just thought there are other things to be doing. But we got that far about, you know, how do we make this thing that we could chew? And now I'm just putting it together with your slimy film.

• 1:27:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Kombucha!

• 1:27:50Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 1:27:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  You can have that.

• 1:27:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  This venue are a shout of cunts, right? So when we... I actually get fined if I go over 10 o'clock, so I know. Anywhere else, they're like, "Go ahead, have, have, have fun." But tonight, because it's London, fucking King Philip or, what's his name? King Charlie will come down, pull out one of my pubes, one by one. So we've got 10 minutes left, right? So I wanna ask some questions to the audience, or else they'll call the bailiff. I'm gonna get a photograph of these cunts as well to prove to my mother that you showed up. I have to do this every time, I'm serious, you have to get approval from my mother.

• 1:28:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  She's like, "You're not..." Everyone say hello, please. Thank you. That's my bit of approval tonight from my mother in her eighties. Hello, hello. Oh, fuck it, you, you, you went for it, alright, go on. Mr. Blind Boy. This better be fucking good, buddy, we've 10 minutes. Mate, it's gonna be quick, it's nothing to do with what's going on tonight. That's a beautiful accent. And, uh, basically, have you anything to say about the far-right in Ireland? They're, they're a shout of cunts, I, I'm gonna try and make it brief, right? Good man, make it brief, make it harsh. First off, uh, I think someone's behind this, right?

• 1:29:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  I do think either fucking MI5 or one of these cunts are behind it. I'm just wondering, Tommy Robinson, man, why do you love Ireland all of a sudden? What's going on? Um, I'm suspicious of who's driving it. The other thing that I fucking hate about the Irish far-right, aside from being massive racists, Irish nationalism is, is not racist. I mean, the thing is with a lot of other nationalisms. British nationalism is dodgy, because Britain colonized a lot of places. So the thing is with British nationalism, American nationalism, French nationalism, it, the core ethos is, "We are better and therefore we're entitled to conquer."

• 1:30:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Irish nationalism isn't that. Irish nationalism is, someone's trying to colonize us. Uh, "We are worth something, we have value," that's what Irish nationalism is. It's, it's not hateful, it's... It's not about saying that we're brilliant, it's just, "Someone's taken away our language and our culture and all of this, can we have it back, please?" And the Irish far-right, they're recontextualizing Irish nationalism, they're trying, they're trying to contextualize immigrants or, or people that are fleeing war and trying to say that they're invaders, to compare them with a colonial army from the past. And it's just really, really fucking offensive.

• 1:30:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, what I would say, though, and, and i-if we're to, to overcome this, be careful about who you call far-right and who you call fascist, right? Especially online. And what I mean by that is, it, it never works out, never works out. Start, if, if, if you hear someone saying something problematic, a good phrase to use is, "You are repeating far-right talking points." That's much more useful than flat-out labeling. Like, some people are fascists, but other people, someone's fucking mother, your uncle,

• 1:31:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  whatever, they are repeating far-right talking points because there's a lot of money behind disinformation, and it's working. So if you call that person "far-right," "fascist," you entrench them further and you lose them. So it's very simple, you're repeating far-right talking points there, what's going on? It's more useful, you know? Can I have another question? A bit of gender balance, please, gender balance, uh, yeah, sorry, buddy. It's like that for women all the time.

• 1:32:09Speaker 04

  Working. Thank you, Blind Boy, I just wanna say, I've been listening to you since the beginning and I was diagnosed...

• 1:32:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  That makes me sound very religious, go on.

• 1:32:21Speaker 04

  No, I'm with you. But, um, I've been listening, I, I got diagnosed a few months before you, and I just wanna say how open and self, and the self-exploration you do on mental health and autism just is such a, a benefit to you, I just wanna say how much I appreciate you and thank you so much for that.

• 1:32:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:32:38Speaker 04

  I do have a really quick question for Merlin as well.

• 1:32:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on.

• 1:32:41Speaker 04

  Merlin, Rupert Sheldrake, the super dude, there's your dad, I just wanna say, when you were growing up, the trilogues and Terence McKenna, there is a mushroom question here, were you around when that stuff was going on? And what do you think about, and I'm hoping that I'm remembering this right, but his idea that, like, a big part of human evolution was when, I don't know if it was 10,000 or 50,000 years ago, they took mushrooms and that's what gave us imagination and the ability to, like, plan and hunt and strategize and stuff like that?

• 1:33:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that your dad?

• 1:33:16Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, it was Terence who he was hanging out with, and Terence had, some people, some people go with the stoned ape theory.

• 1:33:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Speaker 00

  Um, and so basically, Terence said, like, "Look," 'cause he was really into taking mushrooms, big doses, and he was really into other people taking mushrooms as well, he thought this was, like, this was what was needed and it was really important. And so he had this idea, it was like, "Look, this affects our mind and imagination now." And so he said, "Well, look, I think humans became humans really back in the day because they ate these mushrooms, the mushrooms were growing there on the savanna, um, and the humans ate them, and then they, um, developed all of these properties of humanity that we now think of as properties of humanity." And, you know, it's, I mean, he said that, I mean, our brains grow bigger as well, and, um, so I, I've no doubt that, that humans using psychedelics, including mushrooms, um, have been a hugely important part in our, um, the way that our culture evolves,

• 1:34:10Speaker 00

  the way that we, um, relate to each other, the way that we conceive of new possibilities, the way that we reorganize and reorder our societies. I have no doubt about that, um, because that happens today, that happens in retina, recent history, we can see that, so I'm sure it has always happened in, in analogous ways. I think it's more complex when it comes to the biological side, I think there are other factors that could have helped our brains got big, like, for example, walking on two feet, so we have hands free to be able to do other things, like, um, there's also the cooking of food, you know, when we have fire and start a domestic fire, we can, um, start to cook food, which means we have to spend less time, um, collecting food. And so there are all of these other really important, um, developments that I think

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  have also played a part in human evolution, but, um, so I think Terence's version was maybe a little mushroom-heavy, even though, even though I think the mushrooms are, um, are very important.

• 1:35:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  We've got about three minutes left.

• 1:35:14Speaker 00

  Oh, really quickly.

• 1:35:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  What? Alright, go on.

• 1:35:18Speaker 00

  The Last of Us.

• 1:35:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh.

• 1:35:20Speaker 00

  Have you seen it?

• 1:35:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd say he has.

• 1:35:23Speaker 00

  Is it conceivable? And how long have we got left? By the way, quite rightly you went before me, I'm also bipolar, you're a massive inspiration.

• 1:35:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  God bless.

• 1:35:32Speaker 00

  God bless.

• 1:35:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  You get asked that a lot, I'd say.

• 1:35:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I had to, I had to write a op-ed in Time magazine, like, um, and it was called, "No, you don't have to be afraid of fungi." But the thing is, you do have to be afraid of some fungi, you've always had to be afraid of some fungi. There's, the rice blast fungus will kill the quantity of rice large enough to feed 60 million people every year. Like, right now in this country, another fungus is killing ash trees and transforming the landscape. Like, there's so many examples, lots of people right now are in hospital with a terrible fungal superbug, um, this, there are a very tiny minority, it is true, of fungi that, that cause us big problems. So in The Last of Us, like, they're like, so some fungi are, are a threat, but the fungi that they're talking about in The Last of Us, the ones that infect the insects and puppet

• 1:36:19Speaker 00

  their moves and do all that stuff, like, those are not really a threat for humans right now. Like, maybe over a very, very, very long time, they would work out how to jump to mammals and be able to do to us what they do to insects, but, um, but there are so many other problems that we should worry about first, that... So I think, you know.

• 1:36:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Something I wanna clarify before I get offstage, in terms of, uh, so many other problems we need to deal with, but when I said there about, "I think the Irish far-right are controlled by MI5," that's a sweeping hot take. And, but I would like, I don't wanna just leave it at that, here's what I mean when I say that, right? If you look at the evidence-based data, it's like 78% of far-right rhetoric in Ireland online, 78% of it is coming from outside Ireland, huge amount of it from America, huge amount of it from this country, and a lot of it coming from Russia, right?

• 1:37:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Here's the thing, a lot of the British far-right support the Irish far-right, and we have the Good Friday Agreement, right? And one of the things in the Good Friday Agreement, which is from the late 90s, like 97, I think it was, is, in the Good Friday Agreement, Ireland can have a referendum at some point, Ireland can decide, north and south, that we can have a referendum to decide on a united Ireland, and that's there in the Good Friday Agreement. But I don't think Britain wants that, that's not great for Britain to lose a big chunk.

• 1:38:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I reckon the reason that certain fascist elements in Britain and elements that have a lot of money, the capitalists in Britain, the reason that they are stoking the Irish far-right is that it divides the nationalist community in Ireland. So in the event of a referendum, it fucks it up. What they're trying to do is say, "Oh, the Irish and British, we're the exact same we are, we're one people, it's those Muslims you need to be afraid of." You get me? So that's what I'm getting at with that, and that's, I think the far-right is a bigger problem than, um, some of these scary funguses, like, right now, I think it's a bigger threat. Listen, we're gonna get fined if we go on any further.

• 1:38:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Man, I could've spoken to you all night long. I loved every minute of this. Merlin Sheldrake, lads, thank you, London, for coming along and having a wonderful night. God bless. Alright, that's, that's all we've got time for this week, in, in this week's utterly chaotic podcast.

• 1:39:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  That was a great chat. Thank you, Merlin Sheldrake. Thank you for saving the fucking week. Thank you for chatting with me two years ago and me being able to dip into it and go, do you know what? I lost a podcast today, but I can still put something good out. So thank you so much for that, Merlin. Now, hopefully, this fucking gigantic file is gonna export on my old computer that's wheezing like a geriatric swan. Alright, I'll catch you next week with a hot take. I was supposed to be gigging at Altogether Now

• 1:39:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  this weekend, but I'm having a birthday party for one of my little kids, and that's much, much, much more important than doing a gig. And thank you to the organizers of Altogether Now for asking me back, because I didn't think, if you remember last year, I did that gig in Waterford, I think it is. After I did the gig last year, I ended up researching the folklore around the country house where the festival takes place, Caromore Estate, and I ended up finding out about a generational curse that's on the land. And then afterwards, I realized, jeez, that's bad PR for that fucking festival, and they're giving me gigs.

• 1:40:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  So thank you so much for asking me back after I revealed the generational curse on the land. I was full sure that would get me not asked back to the festival, so thank you for that. And hopefully, I can do it next year. Alright, that's all I have time for. Rub a dog. Geniaphlect to an earthworm. Show your ankles to a heifer. Dog bless.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm Laura Adams, host of Money Girl, where I help my listeners make empowered choices. Women are increasingly driving household financial decisions, yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the choices ahead. When you're making choices for a future decades away, confidence matters. And confidence comes from knowing a promise will be kept. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. Pacific Life keeps its promises, so you can keep yours. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  Some days, getting the work done isn't the problem. Staying locked in is. Alpha Brain is on its daily nootropic formula for cognitive support, designed to support memory, focus, attention, and mental clarity. Its formula with science-driven ingredients include theanine and huperzine A to support focus and memory, and it's caffeine-free. So when you're deep in the work, Alpha Brain helps support enhanced productivity and tune out distractions. Get focused on what matters. Shop Alpha Brain now at ONNIT.com.