The Mushroom Hour Podcast

Today on Mushroom Hour we are blessed to have the chance to chat with international fungi photographer Stephen Axford.    Watch the new "Planet Fungi - Northeast India" documentary made by Steve Axford and his partner Catherine Marciniak : https://www.planetfungi.movie/     Stephen is an ambassador for Sony Australia and has an international reputation as a specialist in nature photograp...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are joined by Dan de Lion of Return to Nature. The mission of Return to Nature is to provide a safe and healing teaching bridge for individuals and communities to recognize Nature as a continual and abundant provider of nourishment, medicine, food, and sacred connection, and to help reconnect the perception that Nature is the very source of our sustenance as humans. By te...

Antonio Cosme is an indigenous (Coahuiltecan and Boricua) writer, public speaker, entrepreneur, radical economist, educator, artist, beekeeper and farmer from Southwest, Detroit. Much of his work has been dedicated to lecturing, writing, and acting in opposition to the neoliberal assault on Detroit and water. Antonio has a unique gift for connecting social movements with struggles for land reclama...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are grateful for the opportunity to speak with Amber, one of the founders of Moon Mountain. Moon Mountain is a 40-acre biodynamic farm, wild food refuge and all-around sacred space located in the beautiful Michigan wilderness among some of the oldest mountains in the world. This compound functions as a demonstration site for regenerative agricultural practices and serves...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are blessed to speak with our very special guest Alan Rockefeller. Alan is a mycologist who has undertaken extensive field and lab research on the mushrooms of California and Mexico. He has been collecting mushrooms for 17+ years and has focused on the taxonomy and photography of Mexican mushrooms for the past 11+ years.    Our epic journey brings us back to the dawn of t...

Today on Mushroom Hour we have the glorious opportunity to speak with Kristen and Trent Blizzard from Modern Forager. This fungal dynamic duo started out as online marketers who turned a love of mushroom adventures into a calling, a community and an obsession. Our mushroom hunting caravan makes it's first stop in the Midwest where Kristen and Trent grew up exploring nature and hunting those i...

Today we are excited to chat with Tyler Huggins and Justin Whiteley – cutting-edge food pioneers and founders of Meati, a fungi-based protein company. Meati's mission is to help provide the world with nutritious protein with minimally-processed, fungi-based meats with superfood-level nutrition that don’t compromise on taste or sustainability. Tyler and Justin believe that finding the right pr...

Robert Dale Rogers has been an herbalist for over forty-five years, and is a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild. He earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Alberta, where he is presently an assistant clinical professor in Family Medicine. He teaches plant medicine, including plant and mushroom medicine, aromatherapy and flower essences in the Earth Spirit Medicine facu...

Today on Mushroom Hour we have the amazing opportunity to interview Lorelle Sherman. Lorelle is an accomplished field naturalist who has studied flora, fauna and funga of diverse ecosystems across the US. She received her BS in Forest and Wildlife Biology from the University of Vermont and received her Masters Degree in Forest Ecology at Oregon State University.  In the wilds near Pittsburgh, Penn...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are honored to speak with our distinguished, bespectacled guest Roger Phillips. Roger is a natural nonconformist and a legendary godfather of foraging in the UK. Drawing upon decades of experience, his knowledge of wild food is unrivaled. Known as “Mr Mushrooms” he is an expert mycologist, renowned for his work tracking and recording more than 1,600 species of fungi in No...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are excited to sit down and chat with Lisa Cutcliffe from Leeds, Yorkshire in the UK. Lisa is the founder, foraging-guide-in-chief and all-round mushroom-nut at Edulis Wild Foods. With a degree in biology, being a keen gardener, veg grower, and having a lifelong fascination with nature and wildlife, she is interested in all aspects of wild food and medicinals.    As we ex...

Today on Mushroom Hour, we have the honor of speaking with Martin Ball. Martin is a PhD, writer, independent publisher, energy worker, visionary artist, and musician. Martin earned his M.A. and Ph. D. from UC Santa Barbara in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Native American traditions, Philosophy of Science and Religion, and the Phenomenology of Mystical and Shamanic Experience, as well as th...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are graced by the presence of Daniel “Sitaram Das” Shankin. Daniel is the founder of Mt. Tam Psychedelic Integration, which supports individuals who are exploring their consciousness for spiritual growth and transformational healing. He is the proud host of the Mt. Tam Psilocybin Summit which brings together leaders in the field of psychedelic science in a virtual summit...

Today on Mushroom Hour we have the fantastic opportunity to chat with Matt Berger. Matt is a trained horticulturalist with a masters in forest pathology from West Virginia University. He currently works as a seasonal botanist for Sierra Pacific Industries and an Ecological Surveyor for the Great Basin Institute.  Our adventure begins as we find Matt mid-expedition hunting for rare plants in one of...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are grateful for the opportunity to interview biologist Nelson Dueñas who is a founding member of the MycoMaker project in Ecuador. Mycomaker is an organization that was born in the minds of biology students in late 2016 and was founded by Nelson in early 2017. The group has undertaken keystone fungal projects including promoting mushroom cultivation, researching mycelium...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are honored to be joined by Terry Henkel, Professor of Botany at Humboldt State University. Terry boasts a Masters in Botany from the University of Wyoming and a PhD in Botany from Duke University. Terry’s main body of research investigates macrofungal biodiversity and ecological relationships in the remote tropical rainforests of South America's Guiana Shield and th...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are excited to have the chance to hear from our guest Christian Schwarz. Christian is a Research Associate at the Norris Center for Natural History and he is coauthor of "Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast" – the bible for California mushroom foraging. Christian Schwarz has been intrigued by fungi ever since he inherited his first mushroom guidebook from his brother...

Today we are graced by the presence of Dr. Roo Vandegrift - queer scientist, illustrator and producer of the forthcoming documentary film Marrow of the Mountain . Roo received his doctorate in mycology from the University of Oregon’s Institute of Ecology and Evolution, doing much of his dissertation work on the ecology of fungi at Los Cedros, in Ecuador.  Please support Roo's documentary &quo...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are honored to be joined by Indy Srinath. Indy is a forager, educator, gardener, mushroom cultivator, and steward of both her environment and her community. Her work brings many of the principles that we discuss on Mushroom Hour - wild food, mycology, permaculture, environmentalism - into urban settings and into a relational context with BIPOC communities.  Please support...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are graced by the presence of John Michelotti. John is the founder of Catskill Fungi and past President of the Mid-Hudson Mycological Association (MHMA). His goal is to inspire people to partner with fungi to improve their health, communities, and the environment.  Our journey takes us to the Catskill Mountains in New York state where we find a young John spending the sum...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are graced by the presence of Leah Bendlin AKA Leah Mycelia. For anyone on Instagram or Facebook, you will know Leah for her near-encyclopedic knowledge of wild macrofungi, some of their underappreciated fungal brethren and even their distant cousins, the infamous slime molds.  On our way to visiting her myceliated domain of Portland, OR we make a stop in Leah's home...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are honored to be joined by Professor Tom Bruns of the UC Berkeley Dept. of Plant & Microbial Biology. Tom’s primary focus has been fungal ecology, and most of his work in this area has been at the community ecology or autecology levels.  The Professor breaks down some fundamentals about the study of ecosystems before he pushes us into the deep end or exploring one of...

This week on Mushroom Hour we are grateful for the opportunity to speak with our guest Giuliana Furci. Giuliana is founder and president of the Fungi Foundation and has been the greatest advocate for the study and protection of the Fungi Kingdom in recent decades in the country of Chile. She managed to make Chile the first country in the world to include fungi in its environmental impact assessmen...

Today on Mushroom Hour we are blessed to have the opportunity to interview Daniel Winkler. Daniel has been organizing mushroom focused eco-adventures across the world since 2007. His research on different species of Cordyceps has been featured in The Economist, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, BBC World Service and more. Emerging from the deep, Bavarian forests we meet a...

Today on Mushroom Hour we have the pleasure of speaking with Merlin Sheldrake, author of the groundbreaking fungal narrative, Entangled Life. Merlin is a biologist and a writer with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science. He received a Ph. D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropic...