#525: Giuliana Furci on the Wonders of Mycology, Wisdom from Jane Goodall, Favorite Books, and the World’s Largest Fungarium

Giuliana Furci on the Wonders of Mycology, Wisdom from Jane Goodall, Favorite Books, and the World’s Largest Fungarium | Brought to you by Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, and Mack Weldon http://mackweldon.com/timtim premium men’s basics. More on all three below. Giuliana Furci (@giulifungi https://www.instagram.com/giulifungi/?hl=en) is foundress and executive director of the Fungi Foundation https://ffungi.org/ (est. 2012), the world’s first nonprofit dedicated solely to fungi. She is a Harvard University associate, Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy, co-chair of the IUCN Fungal Conservation Committee, mother, author of several titles — including a series of field guides to Chilean fungi — and contributor to numerous publications on the environment, such as the first State of the World’s Fungi https://stateoftheworldsfungi.org/ report (Kew, 2018), Biodiversidad de Chile: Patrimonio y Desafíos http://bibliotecadigital.ciren.cl/handle/123456789/7014 (Ministry of the Environment, Chile, 2008) and the IBPA Award-winning book Fantastic Fungi https://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Fungi-Mushrooms-Consciousness-Planet/dp/1683837045/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Giuliana has worked for the fungi since 1999 and in the nonprofit sector for the last 17 years. She has held consulting positions in US philanthropic foundations as well as full-time positions in international marine conservation NGOs and Chilean environmental NGOs. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep http://eightsleep.com/Tim! Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. And now, my dear listeners—that’s you—can get $250 off the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim. Simply go to EightSleep.com/Tim http://eightsleep.com/Tim or use code TIM. * This episode is also brought to you by Mack Weldon http://mackweldon.com/TimTim! Mack Weldon http://mackweldon.com/TimTim is reinventing men’s basics. They believe in smart design, premium fabrics, and simple shopping. I’ve been focusing on their underwear and have been wearing their AIRKNITx 5-inch boxer briefs for a while now, and I absolutely love them. They are engineered to keep you dry, cool, and comfortable to the end of your workout (or workday). The fabric is soft, lightweight microfiber, which maximizes airflow and stretches in every direction. It’s breathable, moisture-wicking, and odor-fighting. To get 20% off your first order, visit MackWeldon.com/TimTim http://mackweldon.com/TimTim and enter promo code TIMTIM. 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• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

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• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:29Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:14Tim Ferriss?

  Mack Weldon, reinventing men's basics.

• 2:21Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:05Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:49Tim Ferriss?

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• 4:30Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 4:36Tim Ferriss?

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I'm thrilled to have our guest today, Giuliana Forci, on Instagram, @giulifungi. That's G-I-U-L-I-F-U-N-G-I. Giuliana is founder and executive director of the Fungi Foundation, established in 2012, the world's first nonprofit dedicated solely to fungi. She is a Harvard University associate, Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy, which is one of the best honorary titles I've ever heard in my life, co-chair of the IUCN Fungal Conservation Committee, mother, author of several titles, including a series of field guides to Chilean fungi,

• 5:35Tim Ferriss?

  and contributor to numerous publications on the environment, such as the first state of the world's fungi report, Biodiversidad de Chile, Patrimonio y Desafíos, and the IBPA award-winning book Fantastic Fungi. Giuliana has worked for the fungi since 1999 and in the nonprofit sector for the last 17 years. She has held consulting positions in US philanthropic foundations, as well as full-time positions in international marine conservation NGOs and Chilean environmental NGOs. You can find her on Instagram, @giulifungi. Again, that's spelled G-I-U-L-I, fungi, and

• 6:14Tim Ferriss?

  @fungifoundation. The website is ffungi.org. Giuliana, welcome to the show.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Thank you very much, Tim. It's an honor and a pleasure.

• 6:25Tim Ferriss?

  I thought we would start at the beginning, because you represent quite an international cocktail. You're born in the UK, of a Chilean mother and an Italian father. How does that all come together? How does that happen?

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Well, the short and unsweet answer to that is that dictatorship and exile leads to that. So my mother was a victim of the coup in nineteen seventy-three here in Chile. She was a political prisoner for a year, incarcerated and tortured, and then made to leave. And she left Chile, arrived in Italy, where she met my father, and then moved to London with a scholarship to study a master's degree. So I am a product of exile.

• 7:14Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 7:16Tim Ferriss?

  I have many follow-up questions. So we're going to work in reverse order. What did your mother study for her masters?

• 7:23Speaker 03

  My mother is a geographer and an economist. So she has always studied things that have to do with decentralization.

• 7:32Tim Ferriss?

  Why was she persecuted under the regime after the coup in Chile?

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Because, first of all, she thought differently, and that's one of the biggest sins in these regimes. She was a student, and she, from a very young age, was active in politics, in student fora, and really in just creating discussion.

• 7:59Tim Ferriss?

  When she fled or when she left, how did she choose where to go?

• 8:04Speaker 03

  There's no choice. She was incarcerated for three hundred and sixty-five days and then given two weeks to leave. So that all boils down to where you can get to. And she jumped over to Argentina, jumped over the Andes, she didn't jump, but she flew over to Argentina. But Argentina was also under really unstable political regimes, various dictatorships. And from there, she was able to travel to Italy, where she stayed for two years, and then to England. So really, there's no choosing.

• 8:39Tim Ferriss?

  Now, did Italy come out of a contact in Argentina? I'm just wondering why Italy specifically, that country. I know that in places like Buenos Aires, of course, you have a very long history of immigration from Italy, from Spain, from Germany. Is that how the country, Italy itself, as a destination, came up?

• 9:03Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't through Argentina. It was because her mother, my grandmother and aunt, had already left Chile and had established in Italy. The reason is Italy was open to receiving refugees. Italy had a policy of welcoming people who were fleeing the regime here. And so did other countries like Sweden, you know, and other places around the world. So it's more to do with how Italy was open to receiving people.

• 9:36Tim Ferriss?

  How did, and this may not seem germane to

• 9:41Tim Ferriss?

  much of what we'll explore later, but it is germane because it relates to how you became who you are. How did your parents meet?

• 9:49Speaker 03

  My father was a student in Rome. I come from a very small village in Calabria, my father's family. My grandparents didn't know how to read or write. They were contadini, so producers of olive oil, wine, salami, subsistence living. And my father left his village and went to study by day and work by night. And was studying when, you know, the Italian Communist Party and Socialist Party were welcoming all these Chilean refugees. And he met my mother during a welcome party for Chilean refugees. And they fell in love, yeah?

• 10:34Tim Ferriss?

  And that was it?

• 10:35Speaker 03

  And that was it.

• 10:37Tim Ferriss?

  In your life, you were born in the UK. How did you end up being born in the UK?

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Because my mother was offered this scholarship to study in London. She left with my father and that's where the magic happened. In council housing in North London.

• 10:58Tim Ferriss?

  And for you then, just geographically, because of course you're back in Chile now.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  No, I'm not back, Tim. Sorry, we have to say this. So my mother came back, but I didn't come back here. I was born and I came. So we're another generation of uprooted people. I didn't come back.

• 11:18Tim Ferriss?

  How did you end up then where you are now?

• 11:21Speaker 03

  I was born in England.

• 11:23Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  And grew up in England. And when my mother came back, I came with her. But I never left Chile to come back here. I was born outside during her exile.

• 11:35Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. Fair enough. Fair enough.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. So there's an untold story there of many of the offspring, children of refugees and exiles, who also have their life truncated in some parts because their parents can return to their homeland. And you come with them because who are you to stop them from, you know, coming back to where they never chose to leave from?

• 11:59Tim Ferriss?

  How old were you when you returned to, but traveled to Chile?

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Almost fifteen.

• 12:06Tim Ferriss?

  What was that like, going from the UK to Chile? Because I'm no cosmopolitan connoisseur of all cultures, but I happen to have been to both countries. They're not identical.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  They are definitely not identical. It was a challenge, but I was always very conscious that I was in no place to be an impediment for my mother to come back to the country she never chose to leave. So I came in total humble respect of making her return smooth.

• 12:40Tim Ferriss?

  And was it smooth?

• 12:41Speaker 03

  It wasn't smooth. It was very difficult. She came back to a country she didn't recognize. She came back to parents that were old, and in the case of my grandfather, ill. And she came back to a country that was disjunct, a country that was looking for this sort of neo-capitalist development way of doing politics and commerce, but not quite getting there. So it was hard.

• 13:10Tim Ferriss?

  And did you then study in Chile or did you study and do your undergraduate and so on elsewhere?

• 13:19Speaker 03

  I stayed in school here with very difficult stories. So my mother had never told me that.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  There were people who liked the dictator. So I got to school here and people would ask me, you know, where are you from? I'm from London and why were you there? Well, my mom was a refugee. And I remember a classmate saying, oh, your mother was a terrorist, you know? She should have been killed and and having a go at me in the classroom. And I remember running back home and saying to my mother, how did you not warn me that there were people who liked him? You know, I had never ever in my life encountered people who liked the dictator. So that was challenging. I I stuck in school and then I went at the end of my schooling. And it was time to choose undergraduate studies.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  All I knew is that I wanted to give back in some way. I wanted to give back. And at first I thought that it was through humans. And I I I went to university to study social working. And about a year into that, I was really, really clear that it wasn't humans. Humans weren't my thing. And so I then realized that it was nature. It had to do with giving back in some sort of way. And I thought, OK, let's get humans into green spaces, right? So I tried a second career and undergraduate career at landscaping and ecology. And it was still so many humans.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  It was like planning parks in urban areas. There were a lot of Homo sapiens involved. And I was like, no, this isn't it. And finally, I said, OK, I'm just going to try plants in the water. Like, there will be no humans there underwater. And I studied aquaculture. And that's where I finished my undergraduate studies in southern Chile and northern Patagonia. I went to a university in a city where I knew nobody. And it was I managed to finish it. And it was on that journey that I got to where I am now.

• 15:30Tim Ferriss?

  So how do you hop? Well, let me ask first, is aquaculture? A vibrant and widespread endeavor in Chile. Because I have very little familiarity. I know, for instance, in New Zealand, it's a huge focal point. But in Chile, I would imagine with the coastline, perhaps that's also the case.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, Chile is a country that has housed open net pen salmon farming in its waters. So for your audience and our audience today to understand, aquaculture is basically the cultivation of aquatic resources, aquatic species. So it could be algae, can be shellfish, mollusks, or fish, finfish. And Chile is one of the largest producers of farmed salmon in the world. Salmon aren't native to the Southern Hemisphere, and therefore, the aquaculture industry of salmon in Chile come with tremendous environmental and social impact.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  But it means also that there is a vibrant aquaculture industry. And so there were university careers. And I studied aquaculture and got into algae seaweed farming. And that was really what I did my thesis on and what I graduated doing. And ended up curiously working in NGOs against the salmon farming industry and its negative impacts, not against the labor opportunities, but against their environmental practices.

• 17:08Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I should really know this by now. So I'm going, usually I blame it on my audience and I say, for those of my audience who may not know, could you define NGO? I've, I've long thought that I've understood what NGO means, but perhaps just to confirm that, could you, could you define what an NGO is?

• 17:27Speaker 03

  NGO is the acronym for a non-.

• 17:31Tim Ferriss?

  Organization.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  So a nonprofit, it's an organization that represents civil society and that has a place at tables recognized as where people organize and find a.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  Voice that represents them.

• 17:51Tim Ferriss?

  So could you give me an example, or maybe they're one in the same. Is it fair to say that not all nonprofits are NGOs, but all NGOs are nonprofits? Or are there for-profit NGOs?

• 18:03Speaker 03

  No, there is never a for-profit NGO. NGOs, we measure our success not in revenue of money in the bank, but of durable change. That's our measure of success, the change we can make.

• 18:19Tim Ferriss?

  So where did you go, or how did you go from aquaculture to fungi? How does that happen?

• 18:27Speaker 03

  Oh, it's a funny one, Tim. So I was in university and I remember one morning walking along the corridors and there was a poster stuck on the corridor that said, "Volunteers needed to look for fox poop in forests." And I was like, "Oh, that sounds amazing." Fox poop, I really love scat and poop, and we can get into that afterwards. Like so much grows out of it. And so, of course, I volunteered and of course, I was the only one who volunteered. And I ended up getting the volunteer position and traveling with my professor Jaime Jimenez, who studies foxes and other animals.

• 19:12Tim Ferriss?

  It's a great name also.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  We traveled to Chiloé Island in southern Chile. And what we had to do was, we had to put these big cages out to capture, non-violently, but to capture and trap the foxes. We would put radio transmitter collars on them. And then we would free them and walk around the forest, collecting poop and also with a huge antenna, trying to find a signal to triangulate their position using radio telemetry. So this is really old school technology. Today, you would just put like a GPS chip on them, you know, on a collar. But this was, you know, 20 something years ago. And we're walking around bushwhacking with a huge antenna

• 20:03Speaker 03

  and trying to get some sound in to see where their position is. And at the same time, picking up all the poop we could find. And then I would go back to the laboratory and dry the poop. And then Sort of open it up and see what they had eaten. That was my job. But it was on that trip that I was walking along a path with this antenna. And I saw a huge mushroom on a tree trunk and I wanted to know who it was. And there were no books on Chilean fungi and it was a lightning bolt. It was like, I'm gonna do this. And something happened that I have never been able to stop, even if I've tried.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  But I got home and online shopping had just begun. And Barnes and Noble had the opportunity to ship books to the US. And then I'd have somebody, you know, ship them to Chile. And then Amazon was a thing too. And I bought every book I could find on fungi. Of course, Paul Stamets' books were the first ones I found. And I would devour everything I could read. It was that one mushroom who I wanted to know that that triggered it all.

• 21:19Tim Ferriss?

  I love that you use who with the fungi. I really, really like that. And I must ask, because I just need to know, it'll bother me if I don't. What was the objective of the research with the fox scat and radio telemetry?

• 21:36Speaker 03

  We were measuring how the foxes were being displaced due to logging of native forest. So as the forest was being lost, habitats destroyed, where were the foxes going? Um, and they were going uphill, up the mountain, trying to get into more and more remote places. But then, you know, you get to the tree line and there's not much more food for them. So we, we wanted to know what they were eating as they were moving. And there were a lot of rodents they were eating and a lot of really beautiful beetle exoskeletons. You find rainbows in fox scat. I have to say that.

• 22:18Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds like an art opportunity for some aspiring graphic artist out there. And as you tell the story of seeing this mushroom on the tree trunk, being unable to find a book that covers, that describes or catalogs Chilean fungi, for me, that begs the question, in general, why does it seem that mushrooms and fungi have been so understudied?

• 22:44Speaker 03

  There are two main reasons. And the first one is because fungi have always been associated to the pagan, to paganism, right? They're organisms that are associated with rot, with decomposition. They often have textures and odors that aren't pleasant to all. They grow associated to humid and sometimes dark places. So that's one reason. And of course, their fantastical properties at altering states of consciousness, which for the Catholic

• 23:24Speaker 03

  Church was something very scary and very dangerous. And on the other hand, they were thought to be plants, and they were thought to be inferior plants, which is even worse. They were treated as this group of organisms with moss and with ferns that were just very minally important with respect to vascular plants that form trees and beautiful flowers. And so they were discarded.

• 23:56Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned Paul. Paul is a huge fan of yours, as we both know. You have certainly, from that first encounter with that mushroom on the tree, learned a lot. And I'd love to hear, within Chile, what you've found that strikes you as as unique or interesting with respect to mycology?

• 24:25Speaker 03

  There are two ways to to answer this question. First of all, my journey is

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Forged on the absence of opportunity in Chile. So when I discovered fungi and discovered that I couldn't really find much more about them. There was nowhere to study here in Chile, nowhere at all. I had a choice. My choice was I could leave Chile and I could go back to England. I could study my ecology. I could become a researcher, really, really enrich my knowledge. Or I could use my life's effort to make sure that nobody else would ever be faced with that decision again and use my life's effort so that nobody would ever, ever have to feel

• 25:18Speaker 03

  they had to leave their country if they loved my ecology. And that was my choice. And that's where I found I could give back. So really what startled me about Chile, first of all, was the absence of opportunity and the opportunity to create opportunity. And in terms of the fungal diversity of Chile, everything is fantastic. Every encounter is sublime. The colors, the textures, the possibility to walk in a forest in fall and in an hour encounter over a hundred different species, different sizes, different contextures, textures, smells, different functions.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  And ultimately, this opportunity to coincide with these most amazing organisms in the world. Yeah.

• 26:10Tim Ferriss?

  Have you discovered any new species of fungi?

• 26:15Speaker 03

  Yes, I have. I've had the honor and pleasure of coinciding for the first time as a human with a fungus. I've named two formally.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  One is a very special fungus called Amanita galactica. It's it's an Amanita that grows in mixed monkey puzzle trees with southern beech. So Araugadia with notophagus. And it's a very, very old species, Tim. It's an elder species. It's a species that was around when the supercontinent Gondwana existed. When the continent still hadn't drifted apart. So we know that it's a species that originates when that huge landmass that created the southern hemisphere was still stuck together.

• 27:07Tim Ferriss?

  How do you know that in the sense that unlike, say, stuff like you could take a snuff tray in Atacama and do carbon dating. But with with fungi, that is not the tool that you would use. Is it looking at, this is a term I only recently learned, the phylogeny and somehow mapping it to the span of humankind. I would just love to know how humans have confidence that that is the case.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  We've convened as humans that we organize life based on common ancestry. So we know, for example, that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants because we have a more recent ancestor. And curiously, this is a small parenthesis to what we're talking about, but that common ancestor between fungi and animals are the opistoconts. So it's a cell that has a posterior flagellum, namely a sperm, for example. Sperm cell is an opistocont. Now, there are some fungi that have that same type of cell. There's this one cell with a posterior flagellum.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  So that's how we know that we're more closely related because both fungi and animals have that type of cell that's like a sperm. Now with Amanita galactica, we know how old she is or he is because.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  The most recent common ancestor that we have discovered is extremely old. So we build relationships and timing of these relationships based on common ancestry and the closest relation.

• 28:51Tim Ferriss?

  What was the term you used for the supercontinent?

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Gondwana.

• 28:58Tim Ferriss?

  Gondwana, is that the same as Pangaea or is Pangaea?

• 29:02Speaker 03

  No, they're not the same. So Pangaea was one big supercontinent that first split into two. Loresia that then divided to form the northern hemisphere and Gondwana that then divided to form the southern hemisphere.

• 29:19Tim Ferriss?

  I see, thank you.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:22Tim Ferriss?

  Learning so much.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 29:24Tim Ferriss?

  I'm learning so much and I'm gonna dig further. So with, say, Amanita galactica, you mentioned he or she. Now, is that just a personal preference as to which pronoun you choose or are fungi gendered? I don't know.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  They are not gendered, but they're not its either. They're not objects. So if we're talking about an animal, we wouldn't really call it an it, right? If we're talking about plants, we wouldn't either. I honestly cannot and I'm very uncomfortable with objectifying any species of living organism. I just can't call them it, really.

• 30:06Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, this is a very sensitive subject in a lot of places now, but in English, this is where we fail in a sense because we have to choose a pronoun. We could use they, of course.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:19Tim Ferriss?

  But then you have something like Chinese where it's like the pronunciation at least, the writing is different, but you have ta, ta, ta. It's the same pronoun regardless of who or what you're talking about effectively. So it's a lot easier to navigate. How did you choose the name? And also, I'm not familiar with many Amanita, I'm only familiar with Amanita muscaria. And pretty much everyone is familiar visually with that because it is the most commonly depicted sort of red cap with white dots. What does Amanita galactica look like and how did you name it?

• 30:56Speaker 03

  So Amanita galactica is...

• 31:00Speaker 03

  A little smaller than Amanita muscaria, which is the fly agaric. And some people know it as, you know, the smurf mushroom. Some people call it.

• 31:10Tim Ferriss?

  The Santa Claus mushroom.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  Santa Claus mushroom. Actually, soma, Amanita muscaria is the god soma in Vedic cultures. It's a very, very divine fungus. And it's the oldest known hallucogen to humanity. Huge respect to Amanita muscaria. Amanita galactica has a black cap with white scales. And I can let you in on a funny story. People think that it's really romantic to find a new species. I was actually in the car driving. And of course, you know, one's eye is pretty used to catching that fungal fuzz. You know, there's, there's some, there's a vibe in fungi that's different from soil. It's different from plants.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  That visual vibe came through and I stopped the car. It was snowing, it was freezing cold. And I saw this black mushroom cap with white dots. And it was like looking into a starry night. And I immediately said, this is Amanita galactica. It was instant. It was looking into the galaxy. And I was in the car with two other people and nobody would get out because it was snowing and raining and literally freezing. And I was like, oh, I'm getting out. Of course I'm getting out. And I spent quite a while with the mushrooms there and had the sense that it was something new. It was in an old habitat and a very pristine habitat. And so, yeah, it was called Amanita galactica.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  And then the journey begins of finding out if somebody else has ever coincided. And that's a long journey. You know, you have to look at records of people finding Amanitas. And if they did, what were those Amanita? You know, what did they look like microscopically? You know, what was their DNA? And over time, it became evident that it was a species nobody had ever coincided with before.

• 33:04Tim Ferriss?

  So what is the protocol? I'm just imagining you're, you're in winter clothing. You're driving along, you hop out, your friends are like, oh God, how long is this gonna take? Freezing our asses off.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 33:17Tim Ferriss?

  And I've, I've been to Portillo and some places in Chile and it gets cold. And.

• 33:25Tim Ferriss?

  Do you pluck the mushroom, the fruiting body, and then go back to the lab? And I'm not sure if it would be spore prints or what the current process is. How do you go about determining if it is a new species?

• 33:45Speaker 03

  So the first thing to do, I have a particular method, which is I like to spend time with every species I encounter. So I get to their level. So I'm one of those, you know, people who lie on the floor and I will lie down, I will... First, you have to feel, Tim, because if you're going to describe, you have to feel. So there's a lot of looking without touching. There's a lot of smelling without touching, observing the surroundings. Who is it growing with? What trees are close? Because fungi are specific to their substrate. They never grow and live separate from a symbiont. So what trees are around? Are there more?

• 34:31Speaker 03

  And then clearing begins. Clearing around the mushroom, observing what happens if I touch it. Does it change? Does it change in color? Does it stain? Does it break? There's a lot of that. There's a lot of very detailed feeling with the senses of touch, of seeing, of smelling, observing if, you know, animals come out of it or don't. And we don't pluck them. We will, when you're doing scientific collecting, you will try to pop it out, making sure that nothing remains in the soil. So you will dig a bit with your fingers and you will make sure you get to the bottom

• 35:14Speaker 03

  of this sporum, of this macroscopic body, and pick it up, observing every single step. Because there are some mushrooms that you touch and they change color, that you touch and you lose a texture, that you pick up and it breaks. And whether it's hollow, whether it's stuffed, whether it's solid, are really important features. Whether, when you pick it up and it starts going dry, it changes color, is a really important feature. Everything is important. So there's a lot of sensuality in that first encounter.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  And then you carefully wrap it in something that that doesn't scratch it. Or sometimes you can just hold it in a basket, making a little bed. And we go back to, if you're lucky, you're in a place with electricity. I I am a field mycologist that explores pristine areas of the world. So sometimes it's just going back to camp. We go back and another process of observation begins, but now opening that mushroom up, cutting it. Again, what's inside? Is it solid inside? Does it change? Does it smell? It's really a sensual process. And after you write down all these notes, you take photographs with size references. You proceed to dry it.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Now, you have to dry it in a very specific way in which DNA isn't degraded. Now, we can't cook them. Eighty, ninety percent of a mushroom is water. So it's a process that's really important, otherwise it will rot. And if you have electricity, you'll use a food dehydrator. Now, traditionally, because I explore pristine places for fungi and there's no electricity, the drying part is the biggest challenge. And believe it or not, nobody has invented a really efficient field dehydrator yet. So I put them in my sleeping bag and I normally share a tent with my fungi,

• 37:22Speaker 03

  my collected fungi, and use body heat to dry them or silica gel. And then, once they're stored dry, you look at the microscope for microscopic features and you extract DNA for sequencing. Now, before, it used to be the microscopic features that would determine the relationships between species. Today, we know that those microscopic characteristics aren't enough to determine relatedness, and we use DNA. So based on those DNA sequences and databases that exist of all these sequences, you know whether it's been discovered or not, and then you proceed to describe.

• 38:05Tim Ferriss?

  I see. So you have the equivalent of like an Interpol DNA database for fungi.

• 38:14Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably Athletic Greens. I view it as all in one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in The Four Hour Body. This is more than 10 years ago and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard pressed to find a more nutrient dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multimineral, greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases

• 38:59Tim Ferriss?

  if I miss anything I'm not aware of. Of course, I focus on nutrient dense meals to begin with. That's the basis. But Athletic Greens makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. From travel packets, I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around. Right now Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all in one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I've found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 39:44Tim Ferriss?

  You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 39:55Tim Ferriss?

  Are you drinking mate?

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:58Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'm so jealous. So jealous. Now, do you call that straw? Okay, for people who can't see the visual, you're holding a gourd. It has, I don't know if it's, if it's covered in carved leather.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  No, it's pumpkin, carved pumpkin.

• 40:16Tim Ferriss?

  Calabaza with, with, with some ornamentation on the outside. It has, it has a metal top, so it looks kind of like a baseball that has the very top cut off. And then it's hollowed out. You have hierba mate in there, which looks kind of like chopped spinach to the untrained eye, which you then, what is the word in English? Steep, sebar, right? Sebar. And then you have the straw. Do you call that a bombilla? Bombilla?

• 40:42Speaker 03

  Una bombilla, yes.

• 40:43Tim Ferriss?

  Una bombilla.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:45Tim Ferriss?

  So you stick a straw into this and the straw has holes in it. It's a metal straw, so the straw does the filtering. That really brings back the memories. I used to live in Argentina, so I drank mate almost every day, whether it was Cruz de Malta, Rosamonte, con palo, sin palo.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Oh, wow, you lived in Argentina, Tim?

• 41:07Tim Ferriss?

  I did. Don't hold it against me.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  I won't, I won't, but I'm really curious as to why.

• 41:14Tim Ferriss?

  I was spending time in Panama in 2005. I think it was 2005, might have been 2004. And I became friends with someone who was half Panamanian and half Argentine in Panama City. And his family had been there a very long time, living in Panama. And he had spent a lot of time in Argentina. And I had no plans for my next step. I was letting the wind carry me at the time. And he said, you need to visit Argentina. I said, why do I need to visit Argentina? And he said, they have the best wine in the world, best steak in the world, the most beautiful women in the world, and you can live for pennies on the dollar.

• 41:59Tim Ferriss?

  And I said, well, that's a, that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good pitch. And went to Argentina, planning to be there for four weeks. And I was just dying one day in the middle of summer. It was so humid and I was walking down this pedestrian walkway called Avenida Florida, which is a peatonal. And I'm walking down this pedestrian walkway, which is like an arcade and like the Santa Monica promenade for people who have ever been to that. Walking down and there was a Tango Shop.

• 42:38Tim Ferriss?

  Blaring music, but I could feel the air conditioning coming out of the Tango Shop. And so I walked in and I'm just loitering. I'm waiting for a friend to get out of a class, a Spanish class. And ultimately, the woman who was working there, this chain smoking older woman was very upset. Or she wasn't upset, she was annoyed that I was clearly not going to buy anything. And she was like, hey, bebé, bebé is like kid.

• 43:09Tim Ferriss?

  Bebé. She said, if you're gonna sit here, you might as well buy a ticket to a Tango class upstairs. And so I did for 10, I think it was 10 pesos. And I became obsessed with Tango and I danced and stayed there for nine months.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Tango, that's incredible.

• 43:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I ended up competing and doing all this stuff.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 43:29Tim Ferriss?

  So I have, so it's great, it's great. So I haven't, I haven't danced Tango in probably 10 plus years, but that is what took me to Argentina. And I drank mate all the time.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 43:40Tim Ferriss?

  And I actually had something called mate leo from Brazil.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:46Tim Ferriss?

  This morning, which I had the instantized mate, but I was thinking to myself this morning, I'm like, this just isn't the same. The instant mate is not, it's not the same.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  No, I have to send you a mate. I'm going to the US next month, so I'm gonna take the mate gourd. I'm gonna take, I promise here, no, I gifted Pablo Paul.

• 44:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  I miss one too. I wonder if he uses it. I have to get back to that one.

• 44:11Tim Ferriss?

  If he doesn't, he could just mail me his.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  No, no, I'm sending you a mate. You have to. It's so good for your health.

• 44:18Tim Ferriss?

  I love mate. People, people ask me all the time, we're getting off topic here, but you know, what is your favorite smart drug? And I, the brain's a very sensitive instrument, so I don't, I try not to bludgeon it too often. But for me, yerba mate is absolutely.

• 44:36Tim Ferriss?

  My favorite stimulant. And you know, the Argentines will say that there's mateina, which is different from cafeina. I don't think that's true. But my understanding is that mate has not just caffeine, but also theobromine, as found in dark chocolate, theofrine, as found in green tea. So you get the pharmacokinetics of it are very, very interesting in the sense that you don't just get this one peak and then tail. You get seemingly at least three peaks and tails, which for me allows me to write for several hours. Whereas in contrast, drinking a cup of coffee, and I love coffee, but I will, I'm a fast metabolizer and I will have this very rapid peak within maybe 20,

• 45:20Tim Ferriss?

  25 minutes, and then I'll feel tired.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  And I think it's worth mentioning that there is also an amazing ritual around drinking mate.

• 45:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  Obliges you to share your mate and really creates kinship, brotherhood, sisterhoods. It's important to our cultures. Yeah.

• 45:40Tim Ferriss?

  And also, also side note, at least in Argentina at the time, there was a line, you could ask someone if they wanted to, you know, tomar un mate. Is mate, I'm forgetting, is it masculine or feminine?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  El mate.

• 45:53Tim Ferriss?

  El mate, yeah, tomar un mate. So you could ask, if somebody asked you if they want, if you wanted to, you know, to take a mate in their apartment, that was like, hey, come upstairs for a drink kind of thing.

• 46:08Tim Ferriss?

  So yeah, it's a very deep culture of mate with the gauchos and everything. I mean, it's, and it's, and it's different. And you go to Argentina, if you go to Uruguay, it's slightly different. The gourds.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  And the gourds, the gourds are different too. So I'm drinking, this is a Uruguayan mate that has a wide mouth. Yeah.

• 46:27Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. Brings back the memories, really brings back memories. So you mentioned, I think, two species? Was it two species? What is the other?

• 46:37Speaker 03

  So the second species is called Cortinarius chlorosplendidus. Chloro is green and splendidus is splendid. It's a beautiful green mushroom that has a great story to it. I have not only found new species to science, but I found some new species to Chile and.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  There is a way of finding them that's quite amusing to many, and this is how I found Quaternarius chlorosplendidis. And of course, you know, you're in the forest, you're hiking with, you know, mycologists and you have to go have a pee, of course, when nature calls and you go behind a tree and there you go, you're there, you know, you're like, oh, look, there's a green mushroom. And oh, it's new to science. And so I found Quaternarius chlorosplendidis while taking the pee break in the forest with my mycologist from Kew Gardens, Tula Niskanen. So I'm like, Tula, wait for me, I'll be right back. And

• 47:42Speaker 03

  then I'm coming back, I'm like, Tula, look, this is a green mushroom. It's like, but where did you find it? I said, I was having a pee behind the tree and it was there.

• 47:53Tim Ferriss?

  So do you, do you have colleagues who have spent like decades going on the expeditions to find new species? And they're like, god damn it, Juliana, what next? She's going to go to find a sandwich and look behind, you know, the hot dog vendor and find a new species. I can't imagine. Or maybe you're just a good luck charm. They, they, they keep with them.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  It's the mati. Drinking of mati, you have to stop more.

• 48:19Tim Ferriss?

  You have to stop and pee and it definitely sharpens your visual senses. Where is Kew Gardens? That's K E W?

• 48:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, K E W, Kew Gardens, it's a royal botanic garden in England, in Richmond, and it houses the world's largest fungarium, the largest collection of dried fungi in the world. And it has the largest collection of hollow types, which are the actual physical dried mushroom from which a species was described. So Amanita galactica has a hollow type, which is the exact mushroom I got out of the car to, to feel when I first encountered and to collect. And so Kew is very important in mycology.

• 49:11Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, hollow type, like H O L O, like wholeness?

• 49:16Speaker 03

  Wholeness, yeah.

• 49:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like holistic, holotropic, hollow type.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  You can split a hollow type to form an isotype.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  Which is part of that hollow type.

• 49:31Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, so the the isotope would be like taking an arm or a leg off of a human is

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 49:40Tim Ferriss?

  Is it the equivalent?

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like taking, this brings us to something really interesting and and it's the fact that the mushroom isn't the entire fungus.

• 49:50Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Now, we're all talking a lot about mycelium lately, right? And so mycelium would be like the body. If we do a parallel with a tree, the mycelium is the tree and the mushroom is like the apple of the apple tree.

• 50:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  So when we see mushrooms on the first floor, we may be seeing twenty mushrooms spread out, but they may be from one same individual, one mycelium. So it might be like seeing twenty apples. It comes from one tree. The problem is we don't, we never see the tree. So if we walk into a forest and it's full of Amanita muscaria, you know, this red mushroom with white dots, we have no way of knowing how many individuals are there.

• 50:35Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  It might be one individual and that's why we know that the largest living organism on earth is a fungus, is the the humongous fungus that's in Oregon. It's one mycelium, one genetic body that covers nine hundred acres and produces thousands of mushrooms every year, right? But it's one mycelium.

• 51:04Tim Ferriss?

  That's also true. I want to say, I don't know if the location is Colorado, but for certain aspen groves, I want to say are also one gigantic biomass.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  Yes. Absolutely right.

• 51:18Tim Ferriss?

  It's so incredible to try to wrap your head around.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:22Tim Ferriss?

  Question for you, as we think about. Or just hold as a bookmark this description of the mushrooms being the apples on the tree, the fruiting bodies. Okay, so, so various animals are attracted to fruits. They eat these fruits, they spread the seeds, they help propagate the lives of these, these species, right? So we are symbionts in that way. How would you explain why mushrooms as fruiting bodies, the equivalent of apples, might have hallucinogenic properties?

• 52:03Tim Ferriss?

  Since if we look at, say, serotonin, it's a very old neurotransmitter and the serotonin receptors are very old. And so you'd certainly, many animals, if not all, I don't know, above my pay grade, but would, would experience some of these hallucinogenic effects like the reindeer in La Plante who eat amanita and so on. How do you explain that? Is it, well, I'm not even going to hazard a guess. I would just love to know because there are people who have hypothesized or speculated that the hallucinogenic effects of some plants are a, basically an insecticide or pesticide,

• 52:44Tim Ferriss?

  but that, that seems to contradict the purpose of a fruiting body. Putting aside, or maybe not putting aside, also there are many, many fungi that are extremely toxic if ingested. But how should one think about the, the analogy of the apple and the mushroom and factor in the fact that you have hallucinogenic mushrooms, you have poisonous mushrooms and so on?

• 53:08Speaker 03

  One thing that we're learning, and at the fungi foundation, we are participating in a phylogenomic study of the genus silosoby with the Natural History Museum of Utah. And what we're learning, so we're, we're not looking at the hallucinogenic compounds and the chemistry of the fungi in detail, we're looking at the whole genus. So if we're, if we look at the genus silosoby, we are discovering, because this is all very new research, we are discovering that it's very old, that it precedes humanity, that it originates most probably in Africa.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  Over twenty five million years ago, and that it has radiated across the world because of animal vectors, because plants have moved as well. Now, the relationship of a species with a compound isn't necessarily direct. There is psilocybe in species that aren't, sorry, there is psilocybin in species that aren't psilocybe. There is psilocybin in genera like inosoby, gymnopilus and others. So the relationship of how a species is or a genus is propagated, even if it houses these compounds,

• 54:38Speaker 03

  doesn't tell the story by itself.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  So these compounds are found in other genera as well that have the same mechanism of propagation. So it's not that simple to talk just about, you know, that one genus housing the species. We know that some of these hallucinogenic compounds are related to reactions that have nothing to do with propagation. There's no evidence of a direct relationship to inhibit ingestion from an animal. Animals eat psilocybe containing psilocybin and propagate them. And it doesn't seem to be something that deterrs them.

• 55:24Tim Ferriss?

  Do you think it's something that attracts them? I mean, there are certain animals do seem to, I mean, they seem to.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  Homo sapiens are really attracted to.

• 55:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Just for, so we can cover our bases here with sort of taxonomy one oh one, since this is not an area I know much about. But you mentioned genera. Can you just walk us through the basics of what that stack looks like, please?

• 55:53Speaker 03

  So humans have convened to name species in a binomial system. So two names, and this was coined by Linnaeus, by Carl Linnaeus. And we still use that system in which we call a species with a first name, which is the genus, and a second name, which is the specific name. So the genus Cyllosyby and the species Cyllosyby cubensis, for example. And that binomial, those two names, compose the way we talk about all species on earth. And we can go back up that system, it's the taxonomical system. And that's how we get to a kingdom.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  So we talk about kingdom of the fungi, kingdom of animals, kingdom of plants. And we break that down based on shared characteristics. And finally, ultimately, get to the species name composed of genera and species.

• 56:57Tim Ferriss?

  What is between kingdom and then species?

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Well, let's talk about fungi. So because we have kingdom of the fungi, then we have phyla. The phyla, in the case of plants, we talk about division, not phyla. But animals and fungi talk about phyla. Then class, order, family, genus, species.

• 57:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oof.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:27Tim Ferriss?

  I need to, I need to brush up.

• 57:30Speaker 03

  It's a language. It's a language. Language matters, but it's a language in itself. And it's a language that not everybody should have to speak, because it's a language that you can learn.

• 57:43Tim Ferriss?

  Now, when you talk about the world's largest fungarium, Kew Gardens, and you mentioned the holotype, if I'm remembering correctly.

• 57:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:53Tim Ferriss?

  Is a holotype different from, what is the term? It just shot out of my head. Hold on one second. Is, is a holotype the same as a voucher specimen for plants? Or is it different?

• 58:07Speaker 03

  A holotype is the first voucher. It's the voucher from which the species was described. It's the physical specimen that was the first to give the name to a species.

• 58:19Tim Ferriss?

  I see. It's the, for the first field sample.

• 58:22Speaker 03

  It's the first one. It's the one that was used to give the name. And then you can voucher many more of the species and deposit them in a fungarium. So for example, I'm curator of the FFCL fungarium. We house over 2,000 specimens vouchers, but we only have, I think, three holotypes.

• 58:44Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about Jane Goodall. She's a friend and supporter of yours, and she's also been on the podcast. Tremendous woman, of course, credible human being. How did she come into your life?

• 58:57Speaker 03

  Oh, Jane Goodall visited Chile and I was invited to a dinner, a small dinner that was held to welcome her. And I took her my books as a gift. I think it was actually only one book I had published at that moment. And I greeted her, listening to her in awe of this tremendous force of nature. And when I gave her the books, she, she said, you know, this incredible, you know, the fungi, you're, you're absolutely right. We, they're, they're different from plants and animals. And, and I, I'm trying to make a point of acknowledging them as who they are. And it was, it was a very simple conversation. But the next day I went to one of her talks again, and she came up to me and she said,

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Juliana, I've been thinking, and I've been looking at your work and your book. And, you know, you are where I, you are with fungi where I once was with the chimps. Don't stop.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  She said, don't stop. I'll never forget her words. You know, this feeling of being a voice for the voiceless. She was, at the beginning of her career, a voice for chimpanzees when nobody was talking for them or about them. And what she had seen from, from that first encounter with me to the next day where, where we met again, she had found out that I was working to voice for fungal justice, you know, justice for the fungi. And she acknowledged that. And that was the first encounter. And about a month later, I received a handwritten letter from Jane to my home in the post that said

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  how much she had, you know, loved meeting me, how much she had been thinking about it. And for me to please excuse her because she had just written a book and she hadn't been in time to deliberately include the fungi. So it's still only referred to plants and animals and that she was sorry and that she would make sure in her next book to acknowledge the fungi. Of course, I have that letter very well.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was my story with her. And then, and then over time, because of her support and her encouragement to not stop on my mission, there was something very acute in that bonding and that looking at each other. You know, we're both field scientists, both mothers. And being a mother field scientist takes some extra energy, let's put it that way. You know, in her case, she had put her son, you know, in a cage to protect him from harm. I've had to leave my son, you know, for a long times to go on expeditions. And, and, and it takes that a higher understanding of your determination. And we, we saw that in each other.

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  She saw it in me and she acknowledged that. And so she's been fundamental and from then on has supported with reviews for, for books I've published afterwards and with endorsing the proposal to include fungi in language in, in conservation frameworks.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  She's amazing.

• 1:02:07Tim Ferriss?

  She is amazing. And I am going to ask you in a moment about the Chilean constitution, which is going to seem like a non sequitur to people who don't know what I'm talking about. We'll get there. Before we do get there, I've only met Jane via Zoom or via teleconference. And she has a uniquely powerful presence even on a screen. What is it like? Could you describe what it is like to spend time with her or to meet her in person?

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Okay, so I'm Italian, right? So she's like a, she's like a mother. She's like a mother. She, she is sensorial. She hugs you. She will touch you. She will greet you. And because I'm also British, it's uncharacteristic of Brits. She's very physical, which is amazing, and she's very easy to reach. I think what Jane has that is, of course, something to admire and something I strive to achieve is really, really leaving yourself out of the picture and focusing on what your mission is for these organisms that you dedicate your life to.

• 1:03:25Tim Ferriss?

  So how did you get fungi recognized in the Chilean constitution? And why is that meaningful? Why is that a mission worth dedicating yourself to?

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  They're recognized in a constitutional law, so it's not the actual text of the constitution. It's the law that is called the general law for the basis of the environment. So it's the highest legislative level. And really, there's an MO. There's a modus operandi on how to work for policy change. I learned that way of working while working in, I worked in Oceana, Chilean office of the US organization, Oceana. And I worked in a Chilean foundation called the Ram Foundation. And I was working around issues related to the negative environmental impacts of salmon farming.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  And so I learnt a way of getting environmental issues recognised in regulation and legislation. And in two thousand and ten, there was an opening to modify the Chilean law. And when a law is open to comment, anything can happen. And that's why legislators are so reticent to even, you know, modifying a small word in in legislation or regulation. Because it opens the opportunity for a lot more to change. And when that happened in two thousand and ten, I started driving the issue that fungi needed to be recognised on par as plants and animals.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  And so that really, we cannot talk about an ecosystem if we don't acknowledge the fungi. A lot of international agencies had been pushing the world to adopt an ecosystemic view of nature. Now, what is an ecosystemic view of nature? It basically is the fact that nothing is independent from another, that everything is connected. The organisms that connect everything are the fungi. If we look at a forest, it's like, you know, the plants, the animals, they don't connect unless the fungi are there. The fungi are like the egg in a cake. If you're going to make a cake and you have flour and you have sugar and you have butter.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  If you don't put egg in it, those ingredients don't stick together and you can't make the cake, right? And the fungi are that like that egg. If they're not in the mix, all these ingredients and components don't stick together. So we went forward to Congress with a group of NGOs and made the case using fungi's astonishing attributes and charismatic data and said Chile has been is a country that has a poor environmental performance. There's international recommendation from different agencies to adopt an ecosystemic view of nature. The only way to do that is to recognise the fungi. We're a country that houses the first NGO on earth, the first nonprofit on earth that works for the fungi.

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

  So there was somebody pushing with the know-how of the environmental sector.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  And after two years, two years, Tim, of talking to senators, talking to members of parliament, producing briefs that really made the case of why this was important, how it would be done. Chile became the first country in the world to recognize fungi in its law and then its regulations. So honestly, the country has an ecosystemic view of nature. It doesn't look at plants and animals as separate from each other. It considers the organisms that unites it all.

• 1:07:12Tim Ferriss?

  What are your hopes for the implications or consequences of that? Where do you hope it to go, might be a better way to put it?

• 1:07:21Speaker 03

  I'm happy to see that it's going towards global recognition of fungi in policy on an international level. Today, I am very proud to say that large conservation bodies have adopted micrologically inclusive language in how they communicate nature. So Rewild, the organization that was co-founded by Leo DiCaprio in a rebrand it had from Global Wildlife Conservation, has adopted the use of fungi in its language, acknowledgement of fungi in its language.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  The IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, is talking about plants, animals and fungi and flora, fauna and fungi. They are acknowledging the existence of the kingdom of the fungi in policy and regulations and legislation recommendations. And so my hope is that we leave the obsolete term of fauna and flora behind, that we start talking about fauna, flora and fungi. Funga is the word that delimits fungal diversity of a given place, that we stop talking about animals and plants as macroscopic life on earth only, that we talk about animals, fungi

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  and plants. Because language creates reality, and if we are still constantly discarding their existence through language, or not acknowledging their existence and their role in language, we will never be able to create funding streams for their research, we will never be able to create policy for their inclusion in education, we will never be able to... Really create the pipelines and the systems by which the nature-based solutions that fungi hold can be brought to light.

• 1:09:20Speaker 03

  My hope for the future is that in at least my lifetime's effort, people will acknowledge in language their importance and their existence, and that they will be considered in policy for education and conservation everywhere.

• 1:09:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's so important to underscore what you said about language creating reality. And if you want to affect change in policy or regulation, the language that is used is so important. The labels we use sort of determine what we see and don't see. I can't remember, I think it was either Wittgenstein or Gutt, who said, "The limits of my language are the limits of my world."

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:10:02Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's very, very, very true. Let me ask you, if we step back for a second to come back to an earlier comment, if fungi and animals have this common ancestor, this kind of fork in the road that might be represented by this posterior flagellum, and so on, what are the, if there are any implications of that? Or if we think about fungi being closer to animals or humans than to plants, if that's a defensible statement, what does that mean? Does it mean more than just the sort of academic

• 1:10:47Tim Ferriss?

  understanding or agreement that there is this common ancestor? What does that represent or mean to you? I mean, for people listening, I would imagine that's kind of a question that comes to mind.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  It means a lot. First of all, it's a fact. We are more closely related to fungi. Than fungi are to plants. So fungi really are more closely related to animals. It's hugely important because if we look at, for example, I'm gonna use an example. Penicillin. Penicillin is an antibiotic that has changed the fate of humanity. Because let's convene that before the First World War, you could have died from an infection from a paper cut. And it's thanks to penicillin and these antibiotics, especially penicillin, that we can cure infection.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Now, penicillin is an antibiotic produced by fungi to protect themselves from bacteria. Now, the fact that we're so closely related to fungi implies that it works for us too.

• 1:11:59Tim Ferriss?

  That's wild. I've never heard anyone put it that way.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  It works for us too. We have the sensitivity to be able to use it because we defend ourselves from infection the same way that fungi do. And it's because we're related.

• 1:12:16Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  So that's a huge implication, and that's probably the best way, the most graphic way to say it.

• 1:12:23Tim Ferriss?

  So if we were to make a list of reasons or give a few reasons why it's important to protect fungi, I would love to hear your take. I mean, one that comes to mind, which you alluded to earlier with a comment about touching the mushroom or picking up the mushroom and seeing if any animals come out. So you could have worms, insects come out of a mushroom, in which case if you lose a species, this is your wording, so I don't wanna make any claim to this wording, but if you lose a species, you're not just losing an individual, you're losing an ecosystem. Right? So there's that. There is the fact that, given our...

• 1:13:08Tim Ferriss?

  Sort of shared origins or biological overlap, something like penicillin and future discoveries could be made that could have enormous medical or therapeutic implications for humans. What are some other reasons why it is important to pay attention to this? And part of the reason I bring it up is that with deforestation or replacement of biodiverse forests with, say, pine farms and things of this type, you can dramatically reduce, dramatically, dramatically reduce, whatever it is, 50, 100 fold reduce, the biodiversity of fungi in a given area.

• 1:13:51Tim Ferriss?

  Why is it important to preserve fungi? To really pay attention to this? What are some other reasons?

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  Plants can't live out of water without fungi that live on or in their roots. So we can go as essential as the fact that without the fungi, life on Earth wouldn't be as we know it. Plants, trees are incapable of living in soil without their symbiotic fungi. They can't synthesize the nutrients of the soil by themselves. Herbivores can't break down the cellulose cell wall of the grass they eat or the plants they eat without the fungi in their gut that do it for them.

• 1:14:42Speaker 03

  So we know that energy is not lost. Energy is transformed. The organisms that transform energy in nature are the decomposers, the fungi, the bacteria. Without the fungi, nothing would decompose. Nothing would regenerate because nothing would degenerate. And so fungi are essential to life on Earth as we know it in terms of symbiosis, helping plants and animals live. And in terms of decomposing, which is really the start of the life cycle.

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  Depending on, I mean, it's arguable here. You know, depending on where you stand in a cycle is where that cycle begins. For mycologists, the cycle begins when things start to rot. The death of a life form isn't the end of life. It's the beginning of other life forms. And that's what fungi teach you, that

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  the process of decomposition and rotting is the start of a cycle and it's the start of the creation of the conditions for life to compose. So ultimately, without the fungi, plants couldn't live out of water. Nothing would decompose. Animals wouldn't be able to nourish themselves from plants. And in terms of humanity, nothing would ferment. And therefore, we wouldn't be able to preserve anything. And so many fundamental food and medicine functions wouldn't be available without fungi.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  Fungi are essential to life as we know it. We cannot live without them. There is no life without them on earth.

• 1:16:45Tim Ferriss?

  So why don't you tell us more about the fungi foundation? What is the charter, the objective or the mission? Or all of the above of the fungi foundation?

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  Oh, the fungi foundation is the mycological platform that I founded to ensure that anybody who wants to know more about fungi, wants to work for the fungi, has a place to go to and find an answer, which is what I didn't have when I started. It's an organization that was born in Chile, founded here in Chile, that has had important policy success, that has now opened in the US. We are a global organization. We're 501(c)(3) in the United States of America. We are an organization that

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  enables people to understand the wonder and the awe of kingdom of the fungi. And we are extremely ambitious in what we want to achieve as durable change. We have Five overarching programs. One is the expeditions program, in which we go to places where nobody's ever been before to see what fungi there are, the last wild places on earth. Those habitats you were talking about that are being destroyed at rates that we've never seen before on earth. Because fungi have so many of these nature-based solutions, like medicine, food, textiles,

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  we want to document those species before they're lost forever. And tied to that, we have a conservation program that takes action for them not to be lost forever. So we work in the proposal of public policy for their protection. We work to assess their threat of extinction through redlisting.

• 1:18:54Tim Ferriss?

  What is redlisting?

• 1:18:55Speaker 03

  Redlisting is estimating the probability of extinction of a fungus or a species. So not only animals and plants can go extinct, fungi can too. And the process of redlisting determines how close or how far we are to extinction for a species. So through the tool of redlisting, we can make the case of policies and management plans to protect those species in those last wild places. We also have an elders program, which is, it's a line of work that is very dear to me, as is expeditions. And what we've taken on is to map

• 1:19:40Speaker 03

  every known ancestral and traditional use of fungi by humanity. And that map is very well advanced. We have collected

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  Both published information and oral history from different parts of the world that talk of how humanity has culturally co-evolved with fungi. To weave baskets, to make sunblock, to dye fibers, to be used as symbols of power, to treat infertility, to treat wounds. And so that program really is a reservoir. It's like the Noah's Ark of fungal solutions for the world. And it's a huge responsibility we have. It's never been done before.

• 1:20:34Speaker 03

  And last but not least, I would say, our work in education. We believe that in schools around the world, children should be taught as much about fungi as they are taught about plants and animals. And to do that, fungi have to be included in school curriculum. We have developed a curriculum and we have co-created part of that curriculum with Fantastic Fungi. And I'm happy to say that the fungi foundation will be implementing a school curriculum paired to US standards we'll be implementing in the US

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

  and in other parts of the world so that children can learn about fungi in school. Now, that's a huge task, but if you think about it, Tim, fifty years ago, when people studied in school and they studied the cell, nobody knew that the cell had, you know, a mitochondria. A mitochondria, which is this, you know, structure inside a cell that has its own DNA. It has its own information. You know, my mother didn't study the cell with the mitochondria. Today, you wouldn't think about teaching the cell without teaching about mitochondria. My hope is that in thirty years, forty years, you would never dare teach about nature without fungi having their own explicit.

• 1:22:00Speaker 03

  Uh, modules and curriculum. So we're building that. So those are some of the things we're doing. The organization is blessed to have Paul Stamets on its board, to have Natalie Kelly on its board, Joanna Foster, who is a winemaker in Argentina and other places with amazing natural wines, and Antonio Basiga Lupo and Jose Mingo, who are, who are founding members. So we're a pioneering organization and we've been faced with the challenge of bringing justice to fungi through formal inclusion and, and all, everything I've mentioned, but at the same time of being trailblazers and trying to find a way for this to happen for the fungi.

• 1:22:42Tim Ferriss?

  And people can learn more at Ffungi.org. Is that right? All right. Wonderful. And we will mention that again. I will mention that again, and we will also include it in the show notes. What other sources of inspiration and knowledge have greatly influenced you? Let's start with books. Are there any, any particular books that have greatly influenced you with respect to mushrooms, mycology, fungi, nature? And are there any books that you would most recommend to others? Perhaps they're the same, perhaps they're different.

• 1:23:24Speaker 03

  Books that have greatly inspired me recently is Merlin Sheldrake's book, Entangled Life. I love it. I've read it several times. Entangled Life is a must read. If I look back, there are different titles of Chilean authors that have really inspired me. Luis Sepúlveda has written some, some amazing books that, short stories, but that really talk about the complexity of, of life and the simplicity also with which you can face complexity.

• 1:23:57Tim Ferriss?

  I love that.

• 1:23:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. I have drawn inspiration from authors.

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  Like Luis Sepúlveda, who even if you read deep into complex authors like, you know, Milan Kundera or, you know, or others, you can always from these huge complexities, find simplicity. And that's been, I think, what has inspired me from everything I read is finding simplicity from complexities. I would say that authors like Gabriela Mistral have been important. Galeano, Eduardo Galeano, an important, also a very important author. So a lot of Latin American books, really into that.

• 1:24:43Tim Ferriss?

  I just pulled up Luis Sepúlveda.

• 1:24:46Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:24:46Tim Ferriss?

  And it seems like quite a bit of his work has also been translated. And in addition to Spanish, he speaks English, French and Italian, or spoke, I should say, passed away in 2020.

• 1:24:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:59Tim Ferriss?

  And in the, in the late eighties, he conquered the literary scene. This is from Wikipedia. I'm impressed with the wording. With his first novel, The Old Man Who Read Love Novels. So very well known.

• 1:25:12Speaker 03

  And I would definitely recommend one of his titles, which I will translate directly from the Spanish, but it's the story of a seagull and of the cat that taught it to fly.

• 1:25:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there it is.

• 1:25:27Speaker 03

  I, I highly recommend that book. It's very short. And then another one of his titles that is extraordinary is The World of the End of the World. And it talks about the Southern Cone. But it really, there is a lot of beauty and, and a lot of life learning in his novels that can take complexities and, and show you sometimes how simple something complex can be.

• 1:25:56Tim Ferriss?

  The World at the End of the World, that's from 1989, Mundo del Fin del Mundo. Sounds so good in Spanish. And then The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly in 1996.

• 1:26:07Speaker 03

  That's a fantastic book.

• 1:26:09Tim Ferriss?

  Which seems like it was originally published in Portuguese. I'm not gonna, not gonna hazard to try to pronounce that. I'll get 40% of it right.

• 1:26:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:20Tim Ferriss?

  In your own life, or looking forward, it could be related to your mission, it could be in life in general, can you think of any examples of facing complexity with simplicity? Or finding the elegant or simple way to look at or contend with something that appears complex?

• 1:26:40Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I mean, positioning yourself, you know, as a nineteen year old, twenty year old, faced with an overwhelming fungal passion, fungal duty, and ineludable responsibility towards the kingdom of the fungi, in a world where they are associated to rot, to death, to paganism, founding, you know, the world's first NGO in a world where absolutely no funding existed at all, and still hardly exists for anything fungal in terms of policy. Now, we're talking about before the film Fantastic Fungi, before psilocybe was recognized as medicine in the Western world. That is the most complex scenario I've ever been

• 1:27:24Speaker 03

  faced with. And in that huge complexity and adversity, I found the simplicity of belief in yourself, first thing. I mean, it couldn't be that this thing that just wouldn't stop and would only grow inside me, and this vision that I could see possible, it couldn't be that it didn't exist. And so, as complex and as adverse as the environment was, the simple looking inside and giving yourself permission to try and to do it has been the

• 1:28:09Speaker 03

  most fundamental thing. And it still is that way. We are still, you know, when you talk to people and you say, you know, I work for mushrooms, and I work looking for mushrooms, protecting mushrooms, making sure that everybody knows about mushrooms, most people look at you and think, you know, what are you doing? You know, why? Why would you do that? I mean, how can you live like that? How can you feed your son from doing that, you know? And the answer is inside. And the answer is in hard work. So that's what I've learned from complexity, simplicity of looking in.

• 1:28:43Tim Ferriss?

  I certainly hope you're right that in Maybe not thirty, maybe twenty, maybe ten years that people will look back and the answer will be very obvious as to why you would dedicate yourself to fungi. In the same way that if someone were to say today, I dedicate myself to plants in X, Y, and Z capacity, or I dedicate myself to preservation and conservation of animals in X, Y, and Z capacity, they would not have that surprised response.

• 1:29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Tim Ferriss?

  And if you look at the importance of fungi, mycelium, mushrooms as not just the egg in the cake, I think, as you put it, the connective tissue that binds plants and animals together, but also as close cousins of ours, from which so many discoveries are waiting to be found, or within which so many discoveries are waiting to be found. I think it's a real imperative to to study, but you can only study that which you preserve, in a sense, and it's incredibly important. It's incredibly important.

• 1:29:55Speaker 03

  I think also, Tim, in this hyperconnected world, I have learnt, and I'm very grateful to be of a generation that wasn't as hyperconnected in our teens. I have learnt that it's important to be more with yourself than with others all day. I mean, I see people today constantly looking at what others are doing and constantly looking and trying to reflect themselves in what others choose to share. And how important it is when you believe in something, when you have an idea, to take

• 1:30:36Speaker 03

  the time with yourself to develop it, to investigate what you're thinking about. We all can make a contribution if we give ourselves the time and space to develop our contribution and not be constantly looking for everybody else's contribution, in a way. So this hyperconnectivity, I think, is not helping us to be able to take on these paths of in-depth, you know, study. Results aren't always immediate. No, it takes a long time and it's okay for it to take a long time. You don't present an idea and then the next day have a result. It takes a long time. It takes hard work and you can't do that if you're constantly looking at everybody else's life.

• 1:31:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, agreed. If, I can't remember the attribution, but if, if music is the space between the notes in some respects, you know, thinking and discovery are the spaces between the interactions sometimes.

• 1:31:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Tim Ferriss?

  And if the density is such that you're saturated with communication, saturated with stimulation, there just isn't the space for that germination.

• 1:31:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm gonna make an awkward segue, but I have to ask you before we go, because I've heard so much about the Telluride Mushroom Festival and I've never been. I have friends who have spent lots of time in Telluride and love Telluride quite in and of itself. I've also never been to Telluride and you will be going there very soon, I think, in mid-August or mid to late August, August 19th, something like that.

• 1:32:20Speaker 03

  Yes, I will be giving a keynote on August 19th, yeah.

• 1:32:24Tim Ferriss?

  Can you describe the Telluride Mushroom Festival, what it is, why it's interesting, and also what you'll be presenting on, what you'll be doing your keynote about?

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  Telluride Mushroom Festival is a must. Tim, you have to go to the Telluride Mushroom Festival. It is a safe place to express fungal love and adoration. That's one thing I have to say. It's the oldest festival in the US dedicated to fungi. It's in its 41st edition. It was founded by four extraordinary men, Paul Stamets, Andy Whale, Emanuel Solzberg, and Gary Linkoff. Now, this festival was the first place in the US where people could

• 1:33:10Speaker 03

  get together and talk about psychedelics and entheogens. And it has had some of the world's most renowned mycologists talking about the science of these species. It has the world's most renowned psychiatrists talking about

• 1:33:30Speaker 03

  The psychedelic Renaissance and even before the Renaissance, let's face it, you know, it's been a house to talk about, to research, to think about and to celebrate psychedelic mushrooms and anything mushroom in general. I have had the honour of participating for about six years now, so a very small portion of its existence. And my first feeling there was there are more of us. That was the first thing. I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one, you know, I found my tribe there. And for the last five years, I've had the honour of moderating the final panel with important people

• 1:34:14Speaker 03

  talking and thinking about fungi and psychedelic fungi like Dennis McKenna, Dave Nichols and many others where we can sit down and have a candid conversation and talk about things nobody really wants to talk about in a scientific paper and that maybe they won't say in a press, in the press. So it's a very safe and candid space to talk and to ask about psychedelics and really anything fungal. There's a lot of, you know, cooking with fungi, a lot of foraging, information about foraging. There's a lot of practical, you know, workshops on how to cultivate or decompose, you know, toxic substances with fungi. So it's an extraordinary space.

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  This year Paul Stamets will also be going and giving a keynote. It's a great year, just saying. And my keynote will be on our global policy work for conservation frameworks. So the fungi foundation is known for making change, political change in Chile. But we have now taken that to the world and we have had some important.

• 1:35:28Speaker 03

  International policy wins that I will be presenting and showing at the festival.

• 1:35:33Tim Ferriss?

  That is very exciting. Congratulations.

• 1:35:36Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:35:38Tim Ferriss?

  Just a few more questions. Dame of the Order of the Star. I did not look this up deliberately to someone to ask you about it. That is the coolest title I think I've ever heard in my life. What is, what does it mean to be a dame of the Order of the Star?

• 1:35:55Speaker 03

  Okay, so the Order of the Star, first of all, it's, you know, I was, how, how do I say? I was honored with the title of being Dame of Italy and there are different orders of damehood. So the Order of the Star is a house of celebrated Italian citizens that weren't born on Italian soil. So if I were born on Italian soil, I wouldn't be part of the Order of the Star. So the Order of the Star is exclusive to Italians who have made a contribution

• 1:36:37Speaker 03

  to the country from somewhere else. And I was named Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy because of my work in my ecology and for the fungi.

• 1:36:50Tim Ferriss?

  Man, I really, I'm so sad that business cards are no longer really a thing because if you print new business cards, if that ever happens, maybe they're still a thing in some places. I really hope that that is somewhere on that business card. It is just spectacular. Juliana, Giuliana Furci, Furci with a trill.

• 1:37:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Tim Ferriss?

  F U R C I. I'm so impressed by you and the work that you do. And I would like to heavily encourage people to go to Ffungi.org. And I would like to also contribute to your work in a small way. I'd like to donate $50,000 from my foundation to

• 1:37:39Tim Ferriss?

  Your foundation to the fungi foundation and I would like to encourage other people to take a look at the work, take a close look at the work that you do and consider supporting it. I think what you're doing is very important and I'll say the website one more time because I would really encourage people to take a look. You've been very dedicated. You've taken the true and the hard path. You've made a lot of sacrifices. I know it hasn't been easy. You've been incredibly strong and like you said, you've had wins and the fungi foundation is pursuing an important mission. So I'm very excited to support with my own

• 1:38:23Tim Ferriss?

  foundation and I encourage people to take a look and consider doing the same.

• 1:38:27Speaker 03

  Thank you very much, Tim. Thank you very much on behalf of the team and the board. That's emotion coming through the microphone, which isn't. Thank you very much. We've never had support like that before. Thank you very, very much.

• 1:38:42Tim Ferriss?

  It's my pleasure.

• 1:38:43Speaker 03

  I hope to make you proud and we will make durable change for the fungi.

• 1:38:51Tim Ferriss?

  And someday we'll have to share some mate together.

• 1:38:56Speaker 03

  Hopefully in Telluride or in a forest.

• 1:38:59Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. That's right. So if I make it to Telluride and I also would encourage people to check out the festival and to hear your keynote in person. I have heard tremendous things about the festival. I mean tremendous 10 out of 10 recommendations from multiple people I deeply respect and also multiple friends who know me really well. So it's really, it's really just a matter of time before I get there myself.

• 1:39:25Speaker 03

  I have to say that this year, for those listening, Paul Stamets is also known as Pablo. So Pablo doesn't go every year. He doesn't go every year. He's going this year and it's going to be an extraordinary festival. He is going to be giving a keynote as well and I encourage you to consider popping in. It's not very long. It's a few days and the community that exists there is extraordinary and the opportunity to talk to people who are trailblazing, thinking and debating and creation around.

• 1:40:05Speaker 03

  Access to use of psychedelic medicine through access to cultivating your own foods and medicines, through access to foraging and access to talking to people who are dedicating their lives to bringing justice to the fungi. I highly recommend it. This, no year is better than this year.

• 1:40:24Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Well, I'm gonna have to take a close look at my calendar in that case. And Julianne, is there anything else you would like to say?

• 1:40:34Speaker 03

  You got me. That was offside. I'm just calling this out now. Thank you very much. You know, we're not, we're not used to any help like this. So thank you. I'm just saying, like, give me a moment. I can't continue as if nothing's happened.

• 1:40:53Tim Ferriss?

  Take, take, take a minute. No problem.

• 1:40:57Speaker 03

  Thank you so much. It's only been, you know, 10 years trying, trying to ever, you know, our, our, um, our work is, um, thank you. I don't, I don't, there's nothing to say, right? I don't want to explain anything. I just want to say thank you and I wish I could give you a hug and give you some, I wouldn't give you this mate lavado. I'd make you a new mate.

• 1:41:21Speaker 03

  Okay. Let me gather my thoughts. Oh, gosh. Can I just add also, when I received your email saying that you had seen some of the, some of the videos, I was like, oh shit, I wonder what he's seen. And then I, I actually misleadingly thought, oh, let me think of what's been done in English. And now I know that you might have seen what was in Spanish. So now I'm feeling even worse. Like, oh no, what has he seen?

• 1:41:55Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I was impressed and not turned away. I was not discouraged in any way. And I'm so happy that we were able to connect and to do this. And I've really learned so much. I have tons of notes, tons of things to follow up on. I'm going to check out Luis Sepulveda.

• 1:42:12Speaker 03

  Okay, so your question, your question.

• 1:42:15Tim Ferriss?

  No, my question is not a mandatory question. It's very simple. Is there anything else you would like to say before we wrap up? Any request of the audience, anything you would like to share, anything at all, really? Before we close this conversation.

• 1:42:31Speaker 03

  I would really like to invite people to think about how important it is to let things rot. And that it's really not about rock and roll anymore. It's about rotten mold and we have to let things rot. You know, rotten mold, baby, all the time. If we don't let things rot, then cycles don't start, don't flow. We can't fix carbon. We can't decompose to be able to recompose. We can't degenerate to be able to regenerate. I would really like to invite people to think about how even the most glorious moment of an old tree's life

• 1:43:15Speaker 03

  is when that tree falls to the ground and starts decomposing and turns back into soil. Let's not be afraid about decomposition. And there's a lot of hype around regeneration. And that can't happen if things don't rot. Got to let it rot.

• 1:43:35Tim Ferriss?

  Got to let it rot.

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  Let it rot.

• 1:43:37Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm going to cheat and ask one more question. We gave a few, or you gave a few, book recommendations, Entangled Life and other novels and so on. If someone wanted to...

• 1:43:51Tim Ferriss?

  Take their first steps into learning more about fungi.

• 1:43:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:57Tim Ferriss?

  About, could be mushrooms, I mean, pick your term. Are there one or two books that you might suggest people take a look at?

• 1:44:05Speaker 03

  I suggest a film and then a book. So watch Fantastic Fungi and then read Entangled Life. And another, maybe, another fun, really fun way is to read The Triumph of the Fungi by Nicholas P. Money. Now, Nick Money has several books about fungi. There's a book called The Rise of the Yeast as well. And it's about the story of how yeast has shaped humanity. So Nicholas P. Money is a must read to learn in a lighter way, in a less scientific way,

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  but in a really well-informed and referenced and real way about how fungi have shaped the planet.

• 1:44:52Tim Ferriss?

  Beautiful. And may they continue to

• 1:44:55Speaker 03

  Forever.

• 1:44:56Tim Ferriss?

  to support and shape the planet and hopefully with our help and in part vis a vis the fungi Foundation. And people can find the fungi foundation at ffungi.org. You can find Giuliana Furci, I love just, I'm trying to get it right, at Giulifungi, G I U L I F U N G I, also at fungi foundation on Instagram. And we will include links to everything we discussed, in addition to all of that, at tim.blog/podcast. And what a tremendous pleasure and hope to see you in person, meet you in person very

• 1:45:41Tim Ferriss?

  soon indeed. Thank you for taking the time.

• 1:45:43Speaker 03

  Thank you very much. And thank you very much for the space.

• 1:45:47Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. My pleasure. And to everyone listening, let things rot, learn more about fungi, you're close cousins. And until next time, thank you for tuning in.

• 1:46:03Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:46:45Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My god, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on and repeating ad nauseam.

• 1:47:27Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:48:12Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:48:56Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:49:41Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:50:22Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:51:07Tim Ferriss?

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