Paul Stamets  0:01  
I want to redefine Darwinian theory. It is not the survival of the fittest, it is the extension of generosity of surplus to other members in the ecological community to build biodiversity. So it's not the individual that survives, it's the community that cooperates that survives. 

kevin edwards  0:19  
You are listening to the real leaders podcast, your number one source for impact leaders harnessing capitalism to sustain the planet, people and profits. I'm your host, Kevin Edwards. And that message, my friends, was from Paul Stamets, a world renowned mycologist, an ambassador for the fungal kingdom. And in today's episode, I asked Paul, why fungi should have equal funding to technology, the misconceptions of psilocybin and what Darwin got wrong. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up for the real Paul Stamets. Enjoy All right, and welcome, everyone to this special episode. I'm your host, Kevin Edwards. Along with me. We have Paul Stamets, an ambassador for the fungal kingdom. Paul, thanks for being with us today.

Paul Stamets  1:10  
Thank you very much honored to be here,

kevin edwards  1:12  
San Francisco, California singularity University's global summit. What brings you to the global summit?

Paul Stamets  1:17  
Well, the singularity that people don't realize, or most people don't realize is that we are descendants of fungi. We were born from fungi 650 million years ago, fungi gave birth to animals. And so many of these mushroom species are much older than we are. We were basically little voles at the time that mushrooms had their true forms, many of them and so mycelial networks, multicellular organisms, the first evidence of a multicellular organism has been found in Lava Beds, and it is a mycelium. And so, the multicellular organisms where they came to land where they came to and land on the form of mycelium, these fungal networks, the fine little threads. Anybody can go out right now find out old piece of wood on the ground. tip it over and see mycelium is virtually everywhere. under a single footstep, you can have more than 400 miles of these fungal networks in a single cubic inch that can be more than eight miles. Now think of this, the largest organism in the world is a mycelial mat in Eastern Oregon, 2200 acres in size. And it navigates through a very microbially hostile environment and a single gram of soil that can be more than 1000 species of bacteria, and literally millions of microbes, yet the mycelium navigates through, and indeed it sets up the microbiome in the ecosystem. So once people understand that fungi and these mycelial networks are the foundation of the food web, they consume rocks, they release the minerals to plants, they pair with plants and micro rising mycorrhizal associations means plants and fungi come together and they give the plants the ability to absorb more nutrition. Resist disease in the micro biomes of the beneficial bacteria are set up by these fungal networks to help the biodiversity of the ecosystem. And so they are deterministic because they have a vested interest in survival of ecosystem. It creates the plants they grows the trees and the vegetation that then fall and decompose and feed the progeny the descendants of fungi. So they're deterministic in the evolution of habitat. So the Singularity is that we are descendants of fungi. fungi have been here a lot longer than we have there network based organisms. And we know about how important networks are the computer, internet, a brain, the brain networks, right. And so understanding that our origins come from this wellspring of these fungal networks should give us pause to think about how we can preserve the very foundation of the ecosystems that give us life. reinvesting in fungi is a very, very wise investment with all this technology. At at this conference, we can't literally lose sight of the complexity and then inherent wisdom of nature. And the more that we deforest destroy the ecosystems more. We're more we're shooting ourselves in the foot. And we can have the most great computer technologies but if you don't have air to breathe, clean water to drink or food to eat. Good luck on your iPhone and your Droid when you when the ecosystems collapse,

kevin edwards  4:30  
right well Paul with you know, this conference being so focused on tech, ai ton of capital and time investors here investing this new technology for the businesses is there a lack of funding towards that the fungi kingdom? 

Paul Stamets  4:44  
Absolutely, there's only 50,000 mycologists in the world, approximately. I believe that mycology should be funded equal to the computer industry, because it's so fundamental to our survival. And people wonder well how these fungi affect us, well we just published an article in nature Scientific Reports. We may hopefully have a solution the colony collapse with bees. Bees are dying off all over the world. One of every three bites of food that you consume comes to you because of bee pollination. Right. wild bees are  dying off in a way that we can hardly even calculate but the honeybees, I have 10 beehives, when you have colony collapse, you go out on Monday, your beehives are fine you got on Thursday, all the bees are gone. And it's because it's a group of viruses being  spread by the Varroa destructor mite. And this mite was introduced to united states from 1984 originally came from Asia, but it's like a dirty hypodermic syringe to the bees and it's putting a slew of viruses into the bees that now are shortening their ability to pollinate. Bees used to fly, when you see bees on a flower is the last nine days of their lives. And there they go and they pollinate up to 1000 flowers at Day, but now bees rather than flying for nine days early flying for four or five days, so that means four or 5000 flowers per day for for four or 5000 less almonds per day. cherries. Yeah, apples. I mean it goes on and on. So, because of this debilitating virus coupled with pesticides, loss of habitat deforestation, factory farming, gli phosphates interferes with the microbiome is an unfortunate perfect storm of stressors and see life and death and health and disease is a series of coefficient multipliers. factors as a multifactorial equation life is and you have these stressors and coefficients, then the end of the equation is health or disease, longevity or dying, you know, much quicker than you should. And so, what we have found and we thought scientific reports that this ahmadu mushroom that my hat is made from this mushroom reduces some of these viruses yeah so would conquer. And some ladies in Transylvania made this hat and you can put this mushroom into ash and water and after a few days at de lamination to mycelium, so this mushrooms are made of mycelium mycelium makes mushrooms. The mycelium is the root of the mushroom, like the roots to a tree. The mycelium is the mice is the roots of the mushroom. Okay, and so these mycelial networks navigate for hundreds of years, and then may produce a fleshy mushroom that comes up and disappears in a few days. So it's the proverbial tip of the iceberg. With these underground networks, seemingly invisible but not invisible to those of us who know walk out into nature. Realize that under every footstep you take are miles of mycelium, the mycelial networks are alive. They're creating the soil webs. We are benefiting from the Consequences of healthy mycelial networks, the viruses that are reduced by this mushroom that we published reducing the viruses, in one case 45,000 times with one treatment extracts put into the extracts of the sugar water, that commercial bee keepers feed. Now, this is an extraordinary result. And we're able to demonstrate and the reason why our nature Scientific Reports article to this day is in the top 1% of all scientific articles ever downloaded in the nature publication ecosystem is because we're able to demonstrate a natural product as a broader biofield bioshield of benefits than a pure pharmaceutical. That's because of the complexity of nature, the complexity of our immune system, and so it appears that up regulates immune enhancing genes, which then secondarily and consequentially enables your immune system to fight pathogens, including viruses

kevin edwards  9:00  
That's a big discussion at this conference is how connected everything is. And you're just referring to the bees night the parasitic, symbiotic relationship with that. Climate change affects ecosystems as well. How can mushrooms work with us? And how can technology help mushrooms to create and strengthen that mutualistic symbiotic relationship?

Paul Stamets  9:23  
Well, the good thing about technology, it's like the invention of the microscope. Now with cloud computing, with nanotechnology with the ability to be able to take big data, we're looking at now that the big data in the ecosystems when you have 1000 species of bacteria in a gram of soil more than you know eight miles of mycelium and a cubic inch, you know, the the inner violent molecular communication channels that are occurring, creating these guilts of a multi speciql ecosystem boggles the mind in terms of the computational complexity. So I think big data is struggling to catch up with nature. The hubris of humans is thinking that we're smarter than nature, right? And that we can, you know, and all this technology is going to save us. None of this technology will save us unless it's invested in the natural systems. So I'm a big fan of Ilan Musk, but he goes on to Mars, are you freaking kidding? You're going to a prison. No ecosystems where people are going to have enormous psychological issues. They're gonna look at that beautiful blue planet and the distance and wish that they were there. We shouldn't leave this planet. I am all about space exploration. I love it. Right. And I think terraforming other planets with fungi will be a great way of creating new satellite earths, you know, around the cosmos or helping condition those already existing earth like planets to be human supporting. But we need to really look at the intelligence and complexity of evolution. I want to redefine Darwinian theory. It is not the survival of the fittest. Is the extension of generosity of surplus to other members in the ecological community to build biodiversity. So it's not the individual that survives, it's the community that cooperates that survives. And these are the enormously wealthy people here. And many people listening here don't can't even imagine that the wealth of people who, who are at this conference, I think it's imperative that they reinvest in the commons. The best way to reinvest the commons from a commercially, you know, commercial mindset is to understand by reinvesting in the commons, you will have greater profits, not only for yourself, but then be able to give those profits to the commons. So that's something I'm really passionate about,

kevin edwards  11:42  
oh, I appreciate that. And I can sympathize. I grew up the Northwest, obviously full of nature. I'm always out in the trees and I can appreciate that. So when we think about our impact on the environment, society, I personally am impacted. Do you think that's a problem nowadays that people aren't as immersed in the environment? And kind of look the other way and look towards technology and things like that. 

Paul Stamets  12:03  
Yeah. How many I hike in the old growth forests a lot. Yeah, I hike in the Cascades in the Olympics. And there's astonishing, the drop off in the number of people hiking in the old growth forest and the Olympics and the Cascades compared to 30 years ago. 30 years ago we'd encounter lots of people. Now there they number of visitors, and I'm sure there's some metrics on this has declined drastically. Because people don't get an iPhone or signal or Wi Fi signal. They're addicted to their devices to the point that you've been distracted from enjoying experientially and spiritually nature. 

So just like movies like the matrix and other movies that have come out as one movie I don't remember the exact name of it, but as a beautiful a wall on your there was a window waterfalls and mountains and then there the electrical field got to disturbed, and you saw really static and was a screen and as a person living in a polluted urban super urbanized city, and a small tiny apartment like in Shanghai when the nostalgia of nature was being provided on the video screen, but it showed that the human need to be in contact and contact with nature, unfortunately, was not being met by quote unquote, the real world and instead there was a VR world or virtual reality world that was trying to appease those receptors that I think all of us know that we need to get back in touch with nature.

kevin edwards  13:40  
I'm gonna change subjects on Yeah, we had a big section on mental health and the opioid crisis talked a little bit about yesterday with Yeah, and from what I've learned is opioid addiction. There's no one size cure all solution, but it has to be managed, whether it's pre exposure exposure, withdrawal symptoms, inpatient or outpatient recovery. But I did read a study in the Wall Street Journal said psilocybin or LSD. I don't know the scientific name on it, like a 40% success rate. Are we misunderstanding the use that the healthy uses of psychedelics? 

Paul Stamets  14:15  
we have because of cultural prejudice. And you know, in the 60s, there was a cultural revolution, basically the environmental movement, the anti Vietnam War movement, the psychedelic movement and the birth of the computer, Internet technology, all those were co occurring at the same time. And unfortunately, when you have a powerful tool that has not put it in the hands of responsible experienced citizens and leaders, it can be abused. So the psychedelic Medicine Research was set back a lot, you know, Timothy Leary, popularized it, but he really, unfortunately sabotaged a lot of the legitimate research. There's some great things to say about him. And there's a lot of things that retrospectively, I think he himself would recognize that there would have been a better path, how do they kept it within the medical community. Also our society lacks the rights of ascending into adulthood. And these initiation rites in indigenous cultures when a child becomes an adult, there's a very specific initiation rites that have been that are to have traditions. Unfortunately, us and Americans, many of us from Europeans are displaced. You know, we are not the first peoples, the first peoples of this country understood this very, very well. We are displaced population that unfortunately has become, quote unquote, divorced from many of the rituals that helped us ascend into adulthood into the greater wisdom. The psychedelic plants and medicines were very much a part of that and many indigenous cultures. So the problem of the 60s is that we didn't have those traditions. We didn't have those rituals. We didn't have the experienced leaders. So inexperienced leaders then unfortunately because of ego and popularity and also the the counterculture, a rebellion against authority, all these things unfortunately. sabotage the legitimate use of the psychedelics now we are looking at the opioid crisis. My son is an opioid addict. My son is vacationing in prison right now. Okay, so, um, and he is not ready to try psychedelic medicines many addicts are so I've got the guy personally and I should indeed be careful. But I reserve the right to treat my family and my son with what I think the best medicines that are that are out there. Yeah. But this the opioid crisis is pandemic. It is so harmful and no, psychedelics cannot are not addictive. You know? You You take a psychedelic mushroom experience. And most people who have done haven't done this, don't know this, but the next day, if you see the mushrooms on a table, you go no way I'm not touching. I'm gonna process it for a while. So they have no addictive potential. But they they rewire the biochemistry of the mind temporarily, is an opportunity coupled with professional therapy, to change the biochemistry of the mind. And to have a in a sense rebooting the mind. And that's why Michael Pollan's book, how to change your mind is very, very centered on that concept. And so, thankfully, the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA scientists have looked very, very critically at the science without prejudice, and they've come out with statements saying this is the least toxic most powerful psychotherapeutic drug they've ever seen. And the toxicology studies, these things are virtually non toxic, but they have a tremendously powerful Experience temporarily now. I have done many of these psychedelic drugs I experienced and going on journey with mushrooms maybe once a year. It's um, I nature provides I don't so make that very clear. I had a DEA license are covered by one for about 10 years. I published in four new species in the genus philosophy the soul Simon mushroom genus.

And so the use of these mushrooms therapeutically is opening up a door to be able to save society money and harm, harm reduction. Now think of the view your brother, my son, how much does the prison paying to house him? What is he contributing to the society? Yeah, his court dates keep on getting delayed anybody gone through the court system knows as well as extremely inefficient. Yeah, delay after delay after delay resources, our taxes are paying for those resources of a basically got a dysfunctional system Have you got a four to six, four to six hour experience and change that person and your brother, your sister, your daughter, father, your mother, your brother can be reformed as a responsible citizen. Are you going to argue me that your your ill informed prejudice against psychedelic mushrooms is something that you should not try? When you look at the societal benefits, the return on the investment, the benefit reward ratio is so high. Now to be clear, you mentioned 40% some other addiction profiles are 25% the best still better than any drug out there that's been approved by the FDA for being able to help addicts. And so this is something we're all live in the commons. We're all hands on deck. We're all in this mothership together. But whether your mothership is your family, whether whether it's your neighborhood, whether it's your village, your city, your state, your country, or this planet. We're all echoes of the health of the minute, right and if we cannot solve internally the problems within our family, then there's many other families are sharing those problems and that reverberates out into the matrix of human existence.

kevin edwards  20:11  
Many other families. I know plenty of their families. I don't think I know one friend that doesn't know someone that hasn't been affected by this.

Paul Stamets  20:16  
Well my hat's off to the republicans who have woken up because they have this personal problem within their families. And they are coming on board MAPS, the multidisciplinary Association for psychedelic studies, has received several grants and approvals. Now with the FDA for PTSD. They strategically very, Rick Doblin and his great team really went to try to help veterans with PTSD, because Veterans Administration, you know, is looking for solutions. They're a political, they want to find solutions for the veterans. And so they opened up the door, but enter a A secondary conversation I heard with FDA regulators and scientists. When it was they were approached about psychedelics for PTSD for veterans, the FDA scientist stopped them and said, No, this is not just about veterans. This is about rape victims. This is about child abuse. This is about anyone who suffered psychological abuse. Now, I know very intimately that when you're abused as a child, you have lifelong issues that you have to deal with. I know several personal friends that are dealing with issues and I've seen them dealing with these issues for 20 to 30 years they have not been resolved. What these psychedelic medicines do. And psilocybin mushrooms in particular, because the experience is short. The problem with LSD is 12 to 14 hours and you do LSD for me, the next day I felt older, with mushrooms the next day you feel younger and out got it and also interestingly conforms to an eight hour Work Day for the psychotherapists and the doctors and they clock in and eight, they go out at five, well, you can give a patient  psilocybin mushrooms at 10. And they can walk out of the clinic at four o'clock, right? So that is a life changing experience but actually conforms to the work day. So it's also very, very helpful and being able to be integrated into medical practices. So now to be clear on this, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, a number of other universities, you can go on the net, people should get good medical advice. They should do this in a in a clinically acceptable medical setting. And they should follow the rules and not break the law. I'm absolutely squeaky clean. I'm an expert on psilocybin mushrooms but nature provides I don't, one of the very important things in my life that I realized is I will I don't give psilocybin mushrooms to anyone because I don't want to be responsible for your trauma, right? You're gonna go through a trauma resolving experience, and you're gonna relive their trauma and then come to a reconciliation. That's a lot of work. That's not my job. And I don't want the responsibility of somebody having, you know, I'm responsible for their experience. So I have enough issues of my own, I'm dealing with, you know, sure. Um, so that's why it's really important that this is we create the structures and modern society with our best technology, and the and the wisdom of science, to be able to maximize the benefit, and a way that we don't drop the ball on this. We don't fumble the ball. Because if, if we do, then this will set us back into what happened in the 60s and 70s, or the Timothy Leary, and then we lose this huge opportunity. But when you get 25% 40% of these patients, then Being able to break their addictive cycles from one experience and they don't have to do it again. I think that brings to society enormous emotional, economic, and political benefits. 

kevin edwards  20:18  
I think that's important because, you know, it's important for our viewers to know you're not making a pitch, you're not trying to give people mushrooms, like you said, nature provides you don't. And that's important to know going in. And that's important that you're saying that that's the message that needs to get out there because people that you know, have a strong opinion about say, I'm a pharmaceutical company, like, I'm not going to say my farmers are bad, I'm giving my farmer for your pain. And that's why I think was so difficult when the medical examiners or the medical field came out and said, Let's treat pain. Now the average diagnosis to give someone an opiate prescription is 13 seconds, you get back pain. There you go. It's creating this opioid problem, especially for my family members, now there's into touch on your points about struggles in things. It's all connected.

Paul Stamets  25:00  
It is, my girlfriend is a pain doctor, she's a medical doctor, she actually works in a hospital clinic environment. And it's been so interesting to her, to me to learn from her about pain. So much of these inflammatory cycles become resident within the within your inflammatory pathways of your body. So actually, you can actually have an injury and have chronic pain, but the pain cycle pathways become resident. And even though the injury may have gone, the patients are still experiencing pain. They are experiencing real pain, even though the injury has resolved because the inflammatory pathways have been set up metabolically and how do you interrupt those? So that's really as well you you can modify them with opiates, but that doesn't resolve the inflammatory pathways. And so what's really interesting is the potential of psilocybin mushrooms and these other compounds to allow you to heal interrupt the inflammatory merry go round that you're on. And you can you can, you can break that cycle I want you have a new pathway established, the inflammatory pathways are no longer resonant. And so so much of this pain becomes psychological. And as my, my, my doctor friend has told me, these patients are really experiencing it. But we know it's psychological. And if we can break the psychological in train reaction, then biochemically the body can can go back into homeostasis,

kevin edwards  26:36  
right? Because isn't when you take a drug isn't the brain just like flipping a switch? It's not really actually the drug itself, isn't it? The brain just controlling everything?

Paul Stamets  26:43  
You know, I think it's more complicated than that. But I appreciate the nuance of your thinking, Man, you know, again, doing so hard to convey canvas with one brush, you know, there's many doctors watching this. I wouldn't say it's much more complicated than that. But yes,

kevin edwards  26:57  
I'm not a doctor. Not gonna pretend.

Paul Stamets  26:59  
And even with my friends, patients, you know, there are some patients that she's been unable to help. And there's, you know, there's inflammatory viruses, there's illnesses that can be resident within your own body's ecosystem that may not be evident. And so that could actually be a cause and effect relationship that's beyond the psychological merry go round that I mentioned. Okay. So it's a much so because, you know, pain is a broad umbrella of a symptom that has many root causes.

kevin edwards  27:33  
Got it. Got it. Colorado, just I don't know if they decriminalized or legalized psilocybin. But what would you like to see going forward in four years?

Paul Stamets  27:43  
Well, I think decriminalizing nature. The Oakland movement. It makes perfect sense to me. I've long believed, how dare humans have the hubris to outlaw a species? Come on, give it up. And these mushrooms have been here longer than we are. Right, you know, we're descendants of fungi. We're gonna outlaw our ancestors. Yeah. I mean, that is so antithetical to the origins of our own biology. 

kevin edwards  28:13  
That's actually crazy to think about.

Paul Stamets  28:15  
Yeah, it is absurd. 

kevin edwards  28:17  
I don't want that point to go unnoticed? Yeah, that's really interesting. We're nature.

Paul Stamets  28:21  
Yeah. And like, you know, would you make your the memories of your grandfather grandmother illegal? Would you make her grandfather illegal? Well, how many generations you want to go back? Right, so. So the exciting thing about the field of mychology, and why that I come to these conferences is that I've opened up the MindScape of many smart people who realize that this has been hiding in plain sight. And it's so fundamental to the the to our existence, that for us not to know this at this stage. You know, we are truly Neanderthals with nuclear weapons. And unless we become more responsible citizens on this planet, we will be ejected out of this biosphere as a pathogen. And so, now the planet will survive. I've no doubt about that fungi and bacteria will survive. But will the ecosystems have the ability to sustain human existence? Right now in the cities, we depend upon the farms, we've ended up on the forests, we end up urbanizing this entire planet, that's the life support systems collapse. And even though Ilan Musk has great inner genius, you know, you're not gonna be able to give the complexity of nature to create a life support system on the scale that we have today. We should center the earth as our sacred and library and laboratory. We should use the earth biome as a library and laboratory to be able to replicate it on other planets. We lose that library of knowledge we cannot transport that information. into the future. 

kevin edwards  30:01  
Well Paul, as an ambassador of the fungal kingdom, what advice do you have for leaders around the world?

Paul Stamets  30:06  
Most important, simplest thing to do, I think is for people to plant trees to take their children into walks in the forest, celebrate decomposition. Let wood rot. When you have a storm or a tree falls down, give up the concept of the Elizabethan, highly manicured yard is that neighbor that's down the street that has debris and brush. Nature likes highly fractionalize niches at different orders of magnitude that kills complexity, that habitat so the microbiome and the diversity of the organisms can thrive within that ecosystem. We need to free frame our thinking that decomposition is bad. I'm going to decompose you're going to decompose, you're going to decompose. We're all part of this biome electron matrix as streams through time. We need to celebrate and own our decomposition because we give and crete the soil for future generations.

kevin edwards  31:02  
Paul, well said, appreciate your time here on the release podcast talked about a lot talked about the diversity of the fungal kingdom. We talked about its effect on drugs and addiction. And we talked about what leaders need to know and what some of the misconceptions about the fungal kingdo and appreciate your time here on the real leaders podcast for Paul Stamets. I'm Kevin, I was telling you all to keep it real. 

Paul Stamets  31:24  
Okay. Thank you. 

kevin edwards  31:25  
Appreciate it.

All right, good people. And thank you for tuning into this episode of the real leaders podcast. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, and if you haven't yet subscribed, then please, by all means, hit the subscribe button to start receiving notifications of this podcast. If you haven't left a review yet, you're low subscribe to the podcast. Let us know what you like what you want more of and how we can improve your experience and for lucky listeners today. Well, you're gonna walk away with a free real leaders magazine. All you got to do is go online to real dashlane.com slash subscribe and enter in coupon code podcast 25 and for the visual learners today, make sure you go onto YouTube, check out a new YouTube channel. It's at relators magazine to watch this interview with Paul. And sit and enjoy at home. Thanks again everyone for being a real leader and stay tuned for the next episode of the real leaders podcast.

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