Original subtitles

[narrator]

There's a feeling.

The pulse of eternal knowledge.

When you sense the oneness...

you are with us.

We brought life to Earth.

You can't see us,

but we flourish

all around you.

Everywhere.

In everything.

And even inside you,

whether you believe in us

or not.

From your first breath

to your last,

in darkness

and in the light,

we are the oldest

and youngest.

We are the largest

and smallest.

We are the wisdom

of a billion years.

We are creation.

We are resurrection,

condemnation,

and regeneration.

We are mushrooms.

[Paul Stamets]

Mushrooms are very clandestine

and very much the trickster.

So, they're hiding

from you all the time.

We're in Agarikon

territory now.

There're some big

living snags up here.

It's always interesting

and exhilarating

to be in the old growth forest,

but not always rewarding

in accomplishing our mission

to find a new Agarikon strain,

but nevertheless,

it beats being

in the office.

Fungi are the grand molecular

decomposers of nature.

Now, what does that mean?

Well,

they break down wood,

and here I'm laying

in the forest.

I haven't peeked yet,

but here's a piece of wood

laying down on the ground.

If I was laying down

on the ground and I died,

fungi would leap up

to recycle me.

Well, that's the way

of nature.

Mushrooms represent rebirth,

rejuvenation, regeneration.

Fungi generate soil

that gives life.

The task that we face today

is to understand

the language of nature.

My mission is to discover

the language of nature

of the fungal networks

that communicate

with the ecosystem,

and I believe

nature is intelligent.

The fact that we lack

the language skills

to communicate with nature

does not impugn the concept

that nature's intelligent.

It speaks to our inadequacy

for communication.

If we don't get our act together

and come in commonality

and understanding

with the organisms

that sustain us today,

not only will we destroy

those organisms,

but we will

destroy ourselves.

Mushroom.

It's not like a vegetable,

and it's not like a animal,

but it's somewhere in between.

The fungus is its

own kingdom altogether.

There's over

1.5 million species.

That's six times more

than plants.

Of all those species

of fungi,

about 20,000

produce mushrooms,

and mushrooms come

in an incredible diversity

of shapes and sizes

and colors and lifestyles.

There are even

bioluminescent mushrooms.

A lot of people are afraid

of mushrooms.

People associate mushrooms

and fungi-- you know, mold--

with death and decay,

which makes sense.

You know,

there's a lot of fear

because of fungi's role

in the cycle of life.

They decompose dead

and dying organisms

and move all those nutrients

back into the cycle.

They kind of are

at the very end of stuff,

but they're also

at the beginning.

[Michael Pollan] Once you start

working with mushrooms,

you get drawn in.

A really important difference

between plants and fungi

is that plants have evolved

to catch your eye.

When a tomato gets red,

it is saying,

"Hey, I'm ready. Come get me."

The mushrooms

don't give a shit.

They're doing their own thing,

and a lot of them are hiding.

Every time you pick up

a mushroom,

you are faced

with the omnivore's dilemma.

Do I know enough

to eat this?

Should I eat this?

Will this kill me?

And that's one

of the reasons why

people are freaked out

about mushrooms, because yeah,

there are ones

that can kill you.

There are some that'll take out

your liver or your kidneys,

but to be honest with you,

there's berries in the woods

that can kill you too.

So, it's really a matter

of knowing your mushrooms.

There's a huge subculture

of mycophiles,

of people who are fascinated

with mushrooms.

They hunt mushrooms

together, and they

eat mushrooms together,

and they're sort

of bloated pleasure seekers

with a scientific bent.

You know,

really my kind of crowd.

[Gary Lincoff]

This is a tricholoma.

[Bone]

Grifola frondosa.

[Lincoff] This is

Cortinarius ludogriseus.

[Bone]

Agaricus bisporus.

That's a Cladonia lichen.

[Bone] So I started attending

these festivals and forays

and learning more and more.

It changed the way

I saw everything.

Mushrooms actually

were the window by which

I came to understand nature

in a deeper way.

[Stamets]

If we didn't have fungi,

we would get this buildup

of plant matter that

would choke the Earth.

They really are the key.

They break down plant life

and make it usable

for new plant life

and for animal life.

[Bone] They are the digestive

tracts of the forest.

One of the lifestyles of fungi

is as decomposers,

called saprobes or rotters,

if you want.

The yeasts and molds used

in making beer and wine

and cheese

are all saprobes.

That's actually

a penicillin mold

in Gorgonzola

and Roquefort.

Bourbon

is fungi-fermented corn.

But this ability

to break things down

is a talent,

if you will,

that can be harnessed

to help us deal with some

of our problems like pollution.

These rotters,

they can break down

anything that's natural.

That's what

they've evolved to do.

Anything

that's hydrocarbon-based,

so that includes stuff

like oil spills,

pollutant problems.

That's kind

of the truth of it.

[Stamets] I was a part

of this experiment.

There were four piles saturated

with diesel

and other petroleum waste.

One was a control pile,

one pile was treated

with enzymes,

one pile treated

with a bacteria,

and our pile, we inoculated

with mushroom spores.

The fungi absorbs the oil,

so the fungi is producing

enzymes for oxidases

that break

carbon-hydrogen bonds.

These are the same bonds that

hold hydrocarbons together.

So the fungi becomes

saturated with oil.

And then when

we returned six weeks later,

all the tarps were removed.

All the other piles

were dead, dark and stinky.

We came back to our pile.

It was covered with hundreds

of pounds of oyster mushrooms.

Some of these mushrooms

are very happy mushrooms.

They were very large,

by showing how much nutrition

that they could obtain.

But something else happened,

which was an epiphany

in my life.

They sporulated.

The spores attract insects.

Birds then came,

bringing in seeds,

and our pile became

an oasis of life.

[Bone] Mushrooms are

the fruiting bodies of fungi.

So the mushroom

is like the apple.

The bulk of the organism

is growing underground

and it's composed

of these long threads

and these threads grow

one cell at a time

and then they branch

and rebranch,

growing in every

direction they can,

even three-dimensionally.

And that mass of threads

is called a mycelium.

When a stick falls

onto the ground...

you pull it up...

and there's mycelium.

It is virtually everywhere.

A mycelium has more networks

than our brain

has neural pathways,

and works

in much the same way,

with electrolytes,

electrical pulses.

They're the most

common species on Earth.

They're everywhere.

Just to give you an idea

of how much fungi

are in the forest,

what you're walking through

is about 300 miles of fungi

under every footstep

that you take.

And that's

all over the world.

And they form

these massive links.

It's like a big web just

growing through the forest.

Mycelium that can grow out

even just this big

can have trillions,

literally trillions,

of end branchings.

Almost everyone knows

about the computer internet.

The mycelium shares

the same network design.

[Pollan]

Trees are communicating,

using the mycelium as pathways.

They're connecting

one tree to another.

They're using the mycelium too

to feed one another.

In other words, one tree

can swap nutrients with

another tree,

using mycelium

as the passageway.

[Simard] So we often

think of kin recognition

as an animal behavior.

Humans, you know,

we love our babies.

We know it's our baby,

and we're going to look

after that baby.

Well, we never thought

that plants could do that,

but we're finding

in our research

that plants can recognize

their own kin.

So these mother trees

recognize their kin

through their

mycorrhizal networks.

The mother tree

and the baby seedlings

are sending signals,

talking to each other.

When they're

connected together

and carbon is moving

between plants,

the trees are supporting

the weaker ones.

If she knows

that there's pests around,

and that she's under danger,

she will increase

her competitive environment

towards her own babies,

so that they regenerate

further away.

It's a magical thing.

And this could not happen

without the fungi.

[Stamets] I'm not this

super-idealist tree hugger.

I do hug trees occasionally.

I do confess to that,

but I was a logger.

I cut the woods.

Damn, we got a two-for-one

on that one.

Cutting down these trees

and we're going to let them rot,

but we're letting them rot

with a purpose.

We're letting them rot

with shiitake mushrooms,

which are delicious

and medicinal

Yes!

September of '74,

Paul was working as a logger

in Darrington.

I went up to visit him

one weekend,

and we were out walking

in the woods,

and I started showing him

all these mushrooms, you know?

He says, "What are those?"

I said, "You're

looking at mushrooms,"

...for the first time.

We came around a corner and

there's this purple mushroom.

I'd never seen one

like that before.

It was just like

this huge epiphany,

like... Whoo-whoo!

You know?

And that's where it began.

He just never stopped.

These are old red belted

polypores.

Elegant polyporus.

It's got a furry stem.

This is a delicious

shrimp russula mushroom,

edible and choice,

and it grows here

in the old growth forest.

[Pollan]

It's rare in science you have

such powerful amateurs.

The meaning of the word

"amateur" is a lover,

and he loves his mushrooms.

And he's proven that

amateurs can do credible,

important research.

And that used

to be the case.

The 19th century obviously,

you know, was full of

great amateur naturalists,

Darwin being one of them.

[Harman] He's handed over to

this universal consciousness.

That's where genius

comes from.

Every magnificent thing

that humans have ever achieved

comes from that place.

[P. Stamets]

I grew up in a small town

called Columbiana, Ohio.

Very conservative,

very religious.

And my brother John

went to Yale,

and my brother Bill

went to Cornell.

So we were

an academic family.

But I had

a severe stuttering habit

that greatly interfered with

my ability to express myself.

I went through six years

of speech therapy.

I could not speak

a single sentence

without stuttering

profusely,

and nothing in speech therapy

could help me.

I couldn't look at

people in their eyes.

So all my life,

I stared at the ground.

Anybody came up to me,

I'd stare at the ground.

I found fossils

and mushrooms.

[wind blowing]

[narrator]

We are all of the stars.

My kingdom was born

from the heavens

four and a half billion

years ago.

We are the pioneers.

We climbed out of the sea

to create the fertile soil,

and set the stage

for all of life.

[P. Stamets] In South Africa,

in the sediments of lava,

they have found

fungus-like organisms,

mycelium fossils in the lava

2.4 billion years old.

This is the oldest record of a

multicellular organism on Earth.

This year another

fossil was found in

the sediments of Brazil.

It's 113 million years old

and it's a perfectly

shaped mushroom.

We divided from fungi

about 650 million years ago.

One branch led to fungi.

The other branch led

to animals.

We chose a path

of encirculating our nutrients

in sort of a sac, the stomach.

The mycelium

remained underground,

externally digesting

its nutrients.

Biodiversity surged...

until we had these great

cataclysmic extinction events,

and when the asteroids

impacted the Earth, bam!

Enormous amounts of debris was

jettisoned in the atmosphere.

Sunlight was cut off.

Plants die, animals die...

and fungi

inherited the Earth.

From these extinction events,

there's one lesson.

Those organisms that

paired with fungi survived.

We are more closely

related to fungi

than we are to

any other kingdom.

What this means is that

we are descendants of mycelium.

Mycelium is

the mother of us all.

[Pollan] Living creatures

like fungi are intelligent

in the sense that they respond

to their environment,

they seek out food,

and they defend themselves.

They solve problems,

and that's intelligence.

[Bone] A mycelium can

theoretically live forever

as long as it

has food to grow into,

which is why the oldest

and largest organism on Earth

is a fungus.

It lives on top

of a mountain in Oregon.

It's like thousands

of acres,

and it's thousands

of years old.

The mushroom is the organ

of sexual reproduction

for the spore

of the fungus.

Fungi don't have seeds.

They have spores.

The spores are extremely tiny,

little lightweight

gene-carrying systems.

When they land on something

they can eat,

they break down the food

that they're on,

and then reabsorb

the nutrients

because you need

to move on

and find another place

where there's food.

The mushroom releases zillions

of spores into the atmosphere.

There's so many spore.

I mean,

you take one breath...

you just breathed in

ten fungal spore.

So they are everywhere.

We've evolved with them.

[Harman]

When you see what mushrooms do,

it's kind of spooky

in the most wonderful way.

I mean, they correct

everything on Earth.

They support life,

they convert life,

they carry life.

They're remarkable beings.

If humans become extinct...

what's the next species

that will take over the Earth?

Maybe mycelium already are

the dominant species,

not just because they're the

most common species on Earth.

They're everywhere.

I mean, you look at humans.

There's seven billion of us,

but we're just one little

creature wandering around,

incredibly vulnerable,

and don't survive easily

if we're assaulted.

[reporter] Hurricane Harvey

has started to make landfall

here on the Texas coast.

More than 30,000 people

are without power,

and things are only

expected to get worse.

[reporter 2] Puerto Rico

has had the worst storm

in about a century,

and it's struggling

to understand the new normal

of months ahead

without basic services.

[man] Climate change is one

of the biggest threats

to our present world,

to the future of our planet.

[Simard] CO2 is our

biggest greenhouse gas.

As plants photosynthesize,

they literally inhale CO2

while exhaling oxygen.

CO2 is what plants

photosynthesize,

and they take that carbon,

and they put it in

different places.

They put it in their leaves,

in their trunks,

but they put 70% of it,

we're finding, below ground.

And the root systems trade

that carbon for nutrients.

The carbon ends up in

the fungal cell walls,

where it's stored.

This fuels the

microbial community

and all the other parts

of the food web,

like the mites and nematodes,

and they start

cycling nutrients

through that

eating process.

So the fungi are

really important

in stabilizing

carbon in soils.

Once the carbon is stable,

it can stay there stored

for thousands of years.

We know, for example,

that carbon can move

from plant to plant,

and it evens out

the distribution of

carbon in that system.

They're working really hard.

If we maintain the plant,

the forest, and the natural

fungal community,

we've got a natural engine

that's just storing

carbon below ground.

So it's essential.

You know,

it's there for us, right?

It's right

in front of us.

[narrator]

We do more than make mushrooms.

We have the ability to

do so much more than

just breakdown matter.

Like the fruit

of our labor,

most of you have only scratched

the surface of our usefulness.

We are the changers.

[P. Stamets] I was 14 or 15

years of age, I believe,

when my brother John

gave me a book...

called Altered States

of Consciousness.

And within that book,

Andy Weil was referenced

on expanded consciousness,

and I got really excited.

I was going to charismatic

Christian revival meetings

and seeing people

being saved,

but it kind of was cool

from my perspective

that they're achieving this

altered state of consciousness.

So I thought that was part

of all the same idea here.

I really owe credit

to Andrew Weil.

[Andrew Weil] I think he

read one of my early books

in which I wrote

about mushroom hunting

and psychedelic mushrooms

and made some reference

to medicinal mushrooms as well.

It was like

a turning point.

You know,

I certainly was awakened.

Other people were thinking

about expanding consciousness.

And so I gave this book

to my friend Ryan Snyder.

So Ryan took it home

and a few days later,

I said,

"Ryan, where's my book?"

And he told me

his dad had burned it.

I said, "Burned my book?"

Rather than giving it back

to me or calling my parents,

he actually took the initiative

to burn this book.

I owe Ryan Snyder's father

a deep debt of gratitude

because that single act

galvanized my interest

saying, "If this is so powerful

to cause a person to do

such a bizarre act,

then I should examine

what this subject's all about."

[Charles Grob] Human existence

on this Earth goes back

an extraordinarily long

period of time,

most of which we have

no identifiable information.

It's entirely plausible,

given that the indigenous

people all around the world

know intimately

all the plant life,

and will know the different

combinations of plant life

that our

prehistoric ancestors,

they had come across the plants

that do alter consciousness.

[Dennis McKenna]

In about two million years,

the human cortex

tripled in size,

and the brain exploded

over a ridiculously short span

of evolutionary time.

Two million years is nothing

when it comes to evolution.

What triggered that?

[P. Stamets]

In the late 1970s,

Terrence McKenna

and his brother Dennis McKenna

were the first that proposed

the Stoned Ape hypothesis.

It is known now

that 22 primates--

23, including us--

consume mushrooms.

And the idea is our ancestors,

they came out of the trees

and went across the savannah,

would be tracking animals

that were pooping.

Well, in the subtropics,

the most common mushroom

coming out of those cow patties

is Psilocybe cubensis,

a potent magic mushroom.

[McKenna]

One thing that mushrooms

and other psychedelics

do reliably

is they induce

a synesthesia.

Synesthesia is the perception

of one sensory modality

in another,

hearing colors, for example,

or seeing music.

You have these profound

experiences

and you have to put yourself

in their place

and imagine what the impact

of such an experience

must have been

on an early hominid.

These magic mushrooms open up

the floodgates of

information you receive.

Basically, you can think of it

as a contact fluid

between the synapses

within the brain-- Wow!

What a competitive

advantage,

especially if you're working

with a geometry of weapons,

or having to put

together something

that will give you a better

chance of survival.

The fact that this happened

not once, not twice,

but millions

upon millions of times

over millions of years

is a very plausible

explanation

for the tripling of the brain

two million years ago.

[McKenna] It's not so simple

to say that they ate

psilocybin mushrooms

and suddenly the brain mutated.

I think it's more

complex than that,

but I think it was a factor.

It was like a software

to program this neurologically

modern hardware to think,

to have cognition,

to have language

because language

is essentially synesthesia.

Language

is just association

with apparently

meaningless sound

except that it's associated

with the complex of meaning.

A great deal of the brain's

real estate, you might say,

is devoted to the generation

and/or the comprehension

of language.

Those neural structures

are not found in our ancestors.

That's a human trait

to have so much physiology

devoted to generating

and understanding language,

and that's a reflection

of evolutionary advance

that made us

what we are.

[P. Stamets] I couldn't

get these mushrooms for

the longest time.

When I was in Ohio,

I actually purchased

a bag of magic mushrooms,

but I had no guide.

I had no recommendations

for how much to consume.

So I had a bag about this big,

so I thought,

"Well, that's probably

one dose."

So I consumed the bag!

Now, for those of you

who don't know,

this is like ten times more

than you probably need

to consume.

It was a warm summer day,

and there was a beautiful

big, big tree,

an oak tree,

and then I noticed

the black clouds

on the horizon,

and I realized there

was a storm coming.

And I thought, "This is great.

There's great visual.

The storm coming."

And I thought,

"Well I'm going to climb

to the top of the tree."

So I'm starting

to feel the effects.

I'm getting waves

where the air becomes a liquid,

and...

you'd have this

distortion field,

go through

the visual landscape.

I've never seen that before,

and go, "Oh wow, this is what

they were talking about."

And I see the boiling clouds

are coming closer,

but they're looking angry now.

And then the

lightning strikes would go...

[imitating lightning strikes]

and then all these

geometrical fractals

would emanate out

of the lightning strikes.

And pretty soon,

I have these overlying mosaics

of mathematical patterns

and geometric figures

of multiple colors

that are swimming

in this field of vision

that these waves

were flying through.

I've never in my life seen

anything like that before.

Wind's increasing

and the rains would come,

and I became extremely scared.

And then also I realize

I'm on the top of a hill,

I got a lightning storm

in the tallest tree.

Not the best place to be

when you're going to choose

a spiritual experience.

And so I held onto the tree

for dear life,

and that tree

was my pillar,

back into the core

of the Earth.

And I felt secure as long

as I held onto the tree.

Lightning strikes all around.

Thunderclaps.

One second between

the lightning strike

and a thunderclap.

You knew it was coming

closer and closer.

I was terrified

that I wouldn't survive,

And through this

"terror-rific" experience,

terrifying and terrific

at the same time,

I'm up in this tree

and I'm saying,

"Well, what should I focus on?"

I said, "Well, Stamets,

you're not stupid.

But you stutter all the time."

And so I thought I need

to stop stuttering.

And so I said to myself,

"Stop stuttering.

Stop stuttering now."

A little inner voice

in my head.

"You hear me?

Stop stuttering now."

I started saying that.

"Stop stuttering now.

Stop stuttering now."

Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds,

thousands of times.

After the storm had passed,

I came down from

the tree drenched,

soaked to the bone,

you know,

in love with life,

with nature,

in love with that tree.

That tree was so important

to me.

And I went home,

and I went to bed.

I didn't see anybody.

And the next morning

I woke up,

and there was a really

attractive lady

that I liked a lot,

but I could never stare

at her in the eyes,

because I was afraid to stutter

and embarrass myself.

So better to avoid

social contact than

have social contact,

even though I was

really attracted to her.

And she liked me,

but I didn't know

what to do with it,

with that tension.

And so she was walking past me,

and she looked at me,

and she said,

"Good morning, Paul."

And for the first time

I looked her straight

in the eye

and I said,

"Good morning. How are you?"

And I stopped stuttering

in one session.

[Skrillex playing on radio ]

This is the newest thing

my employees are listening to.

My employees are my best

source of new music.

We love loud music

for the mushrooms

in the laboratories.

It causes everyone

to be synchronized.

We have a lot of nonverbal

communication in laboratories.

You're not allowed to talk.

Your mouth spreads bacteria.

So we try

to minimize talking.

So a lot of it is done

by gestures and knowing.

So, why not have it

with loud music?

My dad was a businessman.

I swore

I'd never become one,

but I wanted to be

independent,

so I created a little

mail-order business

in order to supply myself

and other people who had

like interest in mushrooms.

When we started the business,

it was extremely

difficult back then,

and we didn't have

the resources.

We were putting

little advertisements

in Organic Gardening magazine

back when there was only

three television stations.

I invented this business

so I could buy equipment

for my laboratory wholesale.

Amazing to me, we have

nearly a hundred employees

and thousands

of media outlets.

These mushrooms

were so powerful to me

that I realized that

I wanted to study them.

This mushroom that's known as

reishi, or lingzhi,

the mushroom

of immortality.

And it's one of the most amazing

and interesting mushrooms

that we've ever grown.

This mushroom helps the immunity

of not only people, but bees.

Up this hill here,

we have a quarter section

of property,

160 acres,

and we have a large

mycological experiment.

We planted 33,000 trees,

half with mycorrhizal fungi

attached to the roots,

half without,

and this is year nine.

So, we are putting into

an Excel spreadsheet,

or have put in

1,100 trees

to compare the treatments.

I came into a chunk of change

from licensing one

of my patents,

and so when the political

climate of the United States

changed to be adverse

to environmentalists,

we bought land in Canada.

[Pollan] I think the fact

that he didn't come up on

a conventional academic pathway

is part of the reason

he's as willing

to really explore

ideas that...

are not on anyone

else's radar.

[P. Stamets] I'm really honored

that I discovered a few things

that no one else

had yet discovered.

So, I have now five patents

on entomopathogenic fungi.

These are fungi

that infect insects,

and in particular,

termites.

The biggest problem in

the commercialization

of biopesticides

from fungi

has been the spore

repellency property.

The insects avoid the spores

of these fungi.

In fact,

so concerned are termites

that if a worker goes out

and encounters this fungus,

when the worker

returns back to the nest,

guards, they'll

capture that worker

that's infected

with these spores,

take the worker

to a graveyard,

and they cut off

the worker's head,

and then the two guards

commit suicide.

They're trying to protect

the queen and the nest

and the colony

from infection.

And I discovered something

that no one else

had ever reported in the

scientific literature.

I found a biological switch

that delayed sporulation,

and then the insects

were not repelled.

But they were

super attracted,

which means one finds the

fungus now, and others follow,

and it ends up

being a Trojan horse.

The same fungi now are taken

past the guards,

given to the queen, the queen

feeds it to the brood.

The whole colony becomes

mummified with this mycelium,

and, whoosh! The whole colony

is infected and dies.

And then the spore

repellency properties

protects your house

from subsequent invasions.

This is a huge discovery.

And then I tried it

with carpenter ants,

with fire ants,

fungus gnats,

and then mosquitoes,

and now we're working

with bed bugs,

and we've had successes

across the board.

The entire ecosystem

is infused with fungi.

So, I see these deep reservoirs

of the ecology all around us.

[narrator]

In a world of invention,

the answer to

our greatest problems

may be hiding right

under our feet.

[Bone] There are mushrooms

that have been used

in Western medicine.

Penicillin, for example,

is a really effective

antibiotic.

Before it was synthesized,

during the Civil War,

when a soldier

would get wounded,

they would slap a piece of

moldy bread on his wound

to benefit from those

antibiotic properties,

so he wouldn't get

an infection.

[P. Stamets] Alexander Fleming

discovered penicillin in 1927.

The problem was that

they couldn't find strains

that could be

commercialized,

that could produce

enough of it

in a commercially

economic fashion.

We fast forward,

and in 1942,

a group of researchers

in Chicago went shopping,

and a lab assistant found

a cantaloupe that was rotting

with a beautiful

golden mold,

and from that strain,

we got the first

hyper-producing

strain of penicillium.

Penicillin literally saved

tens of thousands

of soldiers' lives.

The Brits had this,

but the Germans and

the Japanese did not.

It's been suggested

that the discovery

of this hyper-producing

strain of penicillin

was a significant influence

in winning World War II.

Alexander Fleming then received

the Nobel Prize in 1945,

in recognition

of the huge impact

that penicillin had

on human health.

[Bone] Here's how medicinal

mushrooms are thought to work:

A fungus will produce

all kinds of enzymes--

it's like

a chemical warfare--

in order to fight off

competition for food,

like other microbes,

other fungi,

bacteria, virus.

That's what makes

antibiotics work.

Chemicals that are

produced by fungus,

like the one that

penicillin is made from,

the fungus produces it

to kill bacteria

that are competition,

and when we take penicillin,

it kills our bacteria.

[Weil] There's a long tradition

of using mushrooms

as medicines in East Asia,

especially in Korea,

China, and Japan.

They appear to

be able to enhance

and protect the body's innate

defensive mechanisms.

The uses for them fill niches

for which we really

don't have anything

in Western pharmacology.

In Western medicine,

all of our effort

is on identifying

agents of disease

and eliminating them.

That has its place,

but we do almost nothing

about supporting the good.

[P. Stamets]

Shamans would treat patients

and the diseases

were thought to be

elements of

the spirit world.

Well, physicians today

treat infections,

and their spirits

are bacteria,

or a pathogenic,

or viruses.

So, whether the shamans

called them spirits

or whether the scientists

call them microbes,

with the invention

of microscopes

we get to see the microscopic

universe and landscape

that we thunder upon

with every footstep.

The fact that

these fungal networks

are seemingly invisible,

but then represent themselves

in a big flourishing mushroom

in a matter of a few days,

give us a window into

the invisible landscape

underneath our feet.

Fungal networks

have defended themselves

against vectors of disease

for millions of years.

Viral pandemics

occur periodically.

Between 1347 and 1353,

one-third of the

European population died

from the black plague.

The great flu pandemic

of 1918,

two percent of

the world population died.

Millions upon millions

of people.

I think everyone is aware

of the threat of bioterrorism,

but few people

may know that

Europeans were

actively involved,

consciously

or unconsciously,

in bioterrorism against

indigenous peoples,

especially in the New World,

in Meso-America.

They brought in diseases,

and when you're extremely sick,

you can't fight off an invader.

It's an irony

of history that now,

the US government

is interested

in protecting people

from viral pandemics.

[reporter] Paul Stamets

cultured numerous strains

in his lab, and prepared

natural extract.

He then submitted samples

to the Defense Department's

BioShield program for testing.

[P. Stamets] And ironically,

I have a debt of gratitude

to Dick Cheney

and George W. Bush.

It is vital that our nation

discuss and address the threat

of pandemic flu now.

[P. Stamets]

Their funding of that research

led to some very

novel discoveries,

to which we're still

elaborating today.

And what we know about these

mycelium networks

is they're learning membranes.

They are self-learning

and network-based organisms

that can share

and store knowledge.

The mycelium

is vaccinating itself

against pathogens

in the ecosystem.

We can capitalize on this

because many of the

same bacterial pathogens

that infect fungi,

also can infect animals.

We have found novel molecules

highly active

against pox viruses,

novel molecules highly active

against HPV,

the human papillomavirus.

Many scientists are

trying to come up

with the next antibiotic,

the next penicillin,

but we have barely tapped

into the fungal genome,

especially the

mushroom form of fungi.

Think of it: our old-growth

forests that contain

these ancient fungi

are deep reservoirs

of potential compounds that

can fight pandemic viruses.

We should save

the old-growth forest as

a matter of national defense.

[Weil] I recommend mushrooms

and mushroom products

frequently to patients

and I teach other doctors

about their uses.

Mushrooms have molecules

not found elsewhere in nature.

There're some that have

totally unusual properties

like Lion's Mane mushroom.

[P. Stamets]

The Lion's Mane mushroom

is a globular cascading

icicle-formed mushroom.

Tastes like lobster

or shrimp when you cook it,

but a researcher in Japan

by the name of Kara-Jishi

discovered in around 1993,

and I don't have the foggiest

idea how you discover this,

but he discovered that

this mushroom stimulates

nerves to regrow

and he postulated it could

be an effective treatment

against Alzheimer's.

[Weil] Since we don't have

anything for Alzheimer's

and since this is nontoxic,

we should test it.

Mushrooms are completely

unusual organisms

and they're ignored

by so many people

and yet they're

a vital interface

between all forms of life.

[P. Stamets] At the University

of Southern Florida,

a very interesting

study came out.

Mice were trained to have

a conditioned fear response

and so when there's a sound

that is associated with a pain,

later on when they

just heard the sound,

they cowered in fear.

When they treated the mice

with psilocybin,

the compound

of magic mushrooms,

the mice dissociated

that link.

The mice overcame the

fear-conditioned response.

[Sanchez-Ramos]

We started with very low doses

to as high a dose as

one milligram per kilogram.

Now what was interesting,

if you look

at double-labeled cells,

in other words,

the birth of new neurons,

we saw an increase

in neurogenesis.

Neurogenesis literally means

"neuro" for nerves

and "genesis,"

rebirth or beginning of.

The regrowing of neurons.

They were not using the same

neurological pathways

they have in the past.

This is really exciting

because it means that the brain

has a plasticity about it,

is able to heal,

is able to grow.

It just needs

the right compounds

to help it develop new

neurological pathways.

We're all getting older.

We'll all suffer some

degree of dementia.

What compounds can we take

that enhances and

preserves neurogenesis?

I know many, many people

who would not dare take

a psilocybin mushroom trip,

but the concept of them taking

one 50th of a dose,

something like that,

and it causes neurogenesis

that might make them smarter,

or in a better mood, or happier?

That's a whole

different subject.

[narrator] We are on

a never-ending search

for partners,

life-affirming relationships,

or at the very least,

nourishment for the

next leg of our journey.

We have flourished

side by side with your species

symbiotically

for centuries.

[Harman]

Many shamanic cultures

relied on mushrooms

for their transcendental

experiences.

This is pre-religion

all over the world.

It was all about

the individual's connection

to the spiritual world,

or the mystery that is

our context for living.

These are ancient artifacts

from the Mayan culture.

These are called

mushroom stones.

This may be

the largest collection

of mushroom stones

in the world.

The Mayan culture

was very mycophillic

and they revered mushroom

stones for divination,

for spirituality.

Also to be able

to predict incoming armies,

and how to strategize

against them.

A great ethnomycologist by

the name of R. Gordon Wasson

came up with the phrase

mycophilia,

the love of mushrooms

that the Mayans shared.

Mycophobia

is a classically--

the English

had a fear of mushrooms

because they're enigmatic.

You know, these mushrooms

can get you high,

they can heal you,

they can feed you,

they can kill you.

And so that which is so powerful

is naturally feared.

[Nicholas Cozzi] Wasson was

an amateur mycologist,

a person who

studies mushrooms

and was invited to participate

in a ceremony by a curandera,

Maria Sabina in 1955.

He took these mushrooms

and had

a psychedelic experience...

[P. Stamets] And when

R. Gordon Wasson came

out with this research

that was published

in Life magazine in 1957...

that was basically a field

guide to psilocybin mushrooms

delivered to tens of

millions of Americans

on their doorstep, during

the peak of the Cold War.

This then was quickly noticed

by academics at Harvard

and other Ivy League schools

and then the cognoscenti,

including Timothy Leary,

Ram Dass, and Dr. Andrew Weil.

Why do mushrooms

produce molecules

that fit receptors in

the human brain and body?

What does that say?

What does that mean?

I mean, does that mean

that we're supposed to

be using these things?

Psychedelics during

the '50s and '60s

were the cutting edge

of psychiatric research.

There were remarkable studies

with very, very

promising findings.

[Ross] Psychedelics became part

of research in psychiatry

for 30 years.

and there were several

very interesting indications

that they were researched.

The best data was actually

for alcoholism.

[Grob] We found that having

a mystical experience

during the course

of one session

was the strongest predictor

of positive outcome,

meaning maintaining sobriety

over the long follow-up period.

It was very impressive.

[Pollan]

Some of these drugs,

they had "escaped the lab,"

as the phrase goes.

Millions of people

were using them

and you have to realize

that this was a radical force

unleashed in the West.

[Timothy Leary] The kids who

take psychedelics aren't

going to fight your wars.

They're not going to join

your corporations,

they won't buy it.

[Bill Richards]

A lot was going on

back in the '60s.

It was a time of

rapid cultural change.

There was irrational fears

about too much

cultural change too fast.

President Nixon

called Timothy Leary

the most dangerous man

in America.

We must wage what

I have called total war

against public enemy number one

in the United States,

the problem

with dangerous drugs.

When everyone says

"shrooms" to me,

it invokes this whole idea

of using psilocybin mushrooms

as a party drug,

They are so much more important

than just getting high.

The movement to marginalize

the major psychedelics

is incredibly complex.

I mean, it plugged into

a counterculture movement,

an anti-war movement,

an anti-establishment movement.

There are many, many forces

that were at play.

[Richards]

Somehow the fuse blew

and one of the victims was

the medical research

with psychedelics.

There was a very irrational

and anti-scientific climate

that was fueled even

in government pamphlets,

really had

distorted information

that was not

scientifically accurate.

It was a bad trip,

instant insanity.

[Ross] The research came

to a halt in 1970.

War was declared on drugs.

The Controlled Substances

Act was passed

and the research

essentially was erased

from being taught

in psychiatry.

[Richards]

I think I may have the dubious

distinction of being the last

to give psilocybin

to a cancer patient

at the Maryland

Psychiatric Research Center.

And then the research

became completely dormant.

In our evolution

as a species,

we're at a point

of coming to terms

with a major paradigm change.

A change in how we view

what we call reality.

And that always evokes

tension and fears.

The culture wants to cling to

the old view of the universe.

[P. Stamets]

You realize that you've

been limited all this time

with your perspective

of reality.

Had reality been known to you

at this level early on,

how much more evolved

would we be as beings?

A lot of people would

be afraid of that.

This is very

dangerous territory.

People want to give up

the responsibility of

being able to understand

and because they

can't understand,

then they have faith.

and they put their faith

in other people who say

they can understand.

And I think it's a situation

that is ripe for

a predatory relationship.

[Bob Jesse] Anyone who's had

one of those experiences

in a country where it's

not legal to have them

is stuck in this position

where something

really precious...

and really giving

a great gift to you

is not understood

by the culture at large

and furthermore, puts you or

other people or/and other people

at risk of prosecution.

And one response to that

is to get angry,

and to want to fight that.

And another response

to it is to say,

"We've just got to explain

to people what's going on here."

And when people understand it,

then there will be

accommodation and respect.

There are a number of elders

living in the Bay Area

who've devoted some part

of their career

in psychology

or religious studies

who ended up being invited

to a small invitational

conference at Esalen

called the Pacific Symposium

on Psychedelic Drugs.

As we went around the room

making introductions,

most of the people

who were clinicians

were excitedly talking about

what kind of clinical

trial they would run

if they could use one

of these substances

to treat PTSD...

or to treat depression.

[Richards] We wrote

the best design we could.

We submitted it to the FDA

and they approved it.

This was 1999,

and it reactivated

psychedelic research

after basically a 22-year

dormancy in the United States.

It's like

a Rip Van Winkle effect.

You know,

it's waking up 20 years later.

The methodologies,

the questions that we can ask

on so many different levels.

[Tony Head] I had been diagnosed

with prostate cancer.

My diagnosis was so bad

that...

You know, they weren't giving me

any chance whatsoever.

[Judith Goedeke] My diagnosis

was kidney cancer.

Finding out that you may want

to get your affairs in order.

[Head] I first found out

about the study

when my oncologist

gave me a pamphlet.

He said, "Here's something

that might be able to help

you with the anxiety."

And I was accepted

into the study.

The most important thing

is to remember

that you're always safe.

And a recommendation is

that whatever is coming up,

that you allow it,

that you don't have to like it,

but you say okay,

rather than trying

to run away from it.

Once a volunteer is

enrolled in the study,

they're with us

for the preparation,

the psilocybin sessions

and the integration

follow-ups after.

I have been a guide for

around 350 psilocybin sessions

and then about a thousand

of the preparatory

and integration meetings.

Alright.

Okay, lift your head up.

It's really just about

experiencing what comes up

as the psilocybin takes effect.

[Head] In the intense part

of this journey,

this world and things

that matter to most people,

family and all that,

that wasn't even

what it was about.

They say anything mystical

can't be explained.

It's something like that.

It's a feeling

of such immense power

that you can't even imagine.

I've never felt

anything like it before.

It was about being in a place

of infinite space

and just being there.

[Griffiths] There's a

experience of positive mood,

sometimes

openheartedness, love,

a transcendence

of time and space,

and then finally, it's

thought to be ineffable.

People say, "I can't describe

that experience."

[Goedeke] In my mind I said,

"Okay, hold it.

If I give myself over to you...

can you promise me

that I will be in at least

as strong a shape

as when I entered this room?"

And I felt a voice

that I needed to heed.

"Do you think I would

disrespect my own handiwork?"

This is the voice

from on high saying,

"Do you think I would

disrespect my child?"

And I felt so beautiful.

I felt like I have

never felt before.

My sense of being loved,

of being worthy of love,

of being cared for,

of being important

to someone.

It's huge.

You're going into it,

you're doing beautifully.

[Griffiths] One-third

of individuals in the study

said it's the single most

spiritually significant

experience of their lives.

About 70% say

it's among the five

most personally meaningful

experiences of their lives.

Then you say,

"Well, so what does that mean?"

You know?

And initially I thought,

I wonder if they don't have

pretty dull lives.

But no,

people would say,

you know, when my firstborn

came into this world,

I'll never forget that.

And life has never

been the same since.

Or my father passed away.

That was deeply moving to me.

I'm different now

in the world.

They say, you know,

it's kind of like that.

[Head] The most

glorious part was that

it made me feel more

comfortable with living,

you know,

because, uh...

you're not afraid of dying.

[Griffiths] Frankly,

I'm just a laboratory scientist

and I wasn't prepared for that.

[Richards] From the memory

of the transcendental state

of consciousness,

many people report less anxiety,

less depression,

less preoccupation

with pain,

closer interpersonal

relationships,

and perhaps most impressive,

they claim to have a loss

of the fear of death.

It recalibrates

how they see death.

[Anthony Bossis]

It's been amazing hearing them

talk about this idea of love.

Many of them spoke about

how nature itself

is something like

this substance called love.

And having touched that,

They've recalibrated

and reshaped how they

die differently.

[Jesse] The Johns Hopkins

psilocybin research team

has completed or has underway

a total of nine studies

and it got the

world's attention.

When we finally released the

results of our first experiment

in a peer-reviewed

scientific journal,

it was very gratifying to see

how the daily press

responded to it.

A little bit of health news

for you.

A single dose of psychedelic

magic mushrooms

can make people with severe

anxiety and depression

feel better for months.

[Richards] It changes the

way they view themselves,

other people in the world...

from a single experience,

not Prozac that you have

to keep taking day after day.

[Pollan]

These are not chronic drugs,

and that's where most

of the research

and development

in Big Pharma goes.

The treatments that are

being explored for psilocybin

involve one, two, maybe

three pills. That's it.

That's not a very good

business model.

You can't make

a lot of money that way.

The core of this mystical

experience is, um...

is a mystery, frankly.

It's the existential mystery

of what are we really

doing here?

What's the meaning

of all this?

and that is a very uplifting

kind of experience to have.

[Richards] As a whole,

there's a sense of being part

of a larger network.

And somehow, that's more real

after a mystical experience.

You feel that you

really are connected

in some meaningful way

with every atom

of the universe.

[Griffiths]

From my perspective,

this core experience informs

all of the religious,

ethical and moral traditions.

I mean, that is the core of

"Love thy neighbor as thyself."

If we don't get some

of these priorities straight

with respect to how

we treat other people,

how we treat our environment,

we're gonna

cease to exist.

I could see this

as being critical

to the evolution

of the species, frankly.

[P. Stamets] You wouldn't go

hiking the Himalaya mountains

without any preparation.

Well, this is a journey.

These are sacraments

and medicines

that should be treated

with respect

and caution.

Consider it to be going

to your own personal church.

You're going to sit

in awe of the universe.

[Bossis] We have a new study,

which is kind of remarkable.

It's work with

religious leaders.

These are ordained clergy

who have many traditions.

Christianity, Buddhism,

Judaism, Hinduism.

Since these experiences

are at the core

of the major religions,

why not bring in

religious leaders

who spent their careers

studying this landscape

to have the experience?

-[phone vibrating]

-[Stamets] You guys hear that?

-You didn't?

-[man] Vibrating?

Vibrating.

Phone call was coming in.

There she goes.

Message from Mom.

Inbound message

from Mother.

[P. Stamets] I think I had

the best of all mothers.

My mother was extremely kind.

[cheering and applause]

So another mushroom

empowers the immune system

and this is turkey tails.

and turkey tail mushrooms

have also been used

for more than a thousand years.

This hit home to me very

personally, in June of 2009

when my 84-year-old mother

called me up

and said, "Paul,

I have something very serious

to talk to you about."

She said, "My right breast is

five times the size of my left.

I have six swollen lymph glands

the size of walnuts,"

and her voice started shaking

and I'm not ashamed to admit

that I started crying.

She had stage four

breast cancer.

But then the doctor said,

"You know,

you're too old to

have radiation therapy.

You can't have your

breasts removed.

But there's an interesting study

on turkey tail mushrooms

at Bastyr Medical School.

You might want

to try taking those."

And that's-- my mom goes,

"Well, my son's

supplying those."

So she was put on Taxol

and Herceptin, wonderful drugs.

And then she started taking

eight turkey tail

capsules a day.

Four in the morning

and four in the evening,

and that was in June of 2009.

And today, my mother

has no detectable tumors.

And I'd like

to bring my mother up.

You have to live through

it to believe it.

Hey, by the way, thank you

for giving birth to me.

I really appreciate that.

Oh, you haven't

thanked me lately?

[P. Stamets] It has been

reported in literature that

medicinal mushrooms

like turkey tail

help chemotherapeutic

agents work better.

And I think she's

a living example of that.

One can argue with me

on the statistics,

but my mother's alive,

and all the doctors

that saw her

did not believe

that she would survive.

[man] It is my great honor...

to introduce Paul Stamets.

[cheering and applause]

I have brought

a fungal friend of mine

from the old-growth forest

and I present to you...

Agarikon.

[cheering and applause]

Agarikon was described

in 65 A.D.

as elixirium ad longam vitam.

"The elixir of long life."

So I want to take you

on a magical mushroom

mystery tour.

and I'm going to push

the envelope here, folks.

Microdiversity

is biodiversity.

You will decompose.

I'm going to decompose.

We're all gonna die.

That's okay,

because we will enter

into the micro-verse.

We will forever exist together

within the

micromolecular matrix.

[Lincoff] When he talks

the way he does,

he is...

channeling the mycelium.

And this is a marvelous thing.

Brain neurons,

mycelium,

the computer internet,

the organization of the universe

all shares the same archetype.

I believe matter

begets life.

Life becomes single cells.

Single cells form chains.

Chains forms branches.

Matrices form interlocking,

intersecting mosaics of mycelium

and mycelium-like

organisms ebb and flow

not only on this planet,

on other planets

into the future.

Thank you very much.

Paul was wonderful

in bringing us information

about all these

aspects of mushrooms

and then it inspired

all these young people.

Now we have people

like Tradd Cotter

carrying on the great work

that Paul started,

talking about biopesticides,

talking about the ways

you could detoxify oil.

All of these amazing

things were started

because people like Paul

brought that to

the culture at large

and young people now

have taken up the cause

and are really expanding

our insights

into what the world

of mushrooms can do for us.

Hi, my name's Peter

and I'm with the radical

mycology project.

I recently trained a mushroom

to digest used

cigarette filters.

[Peter McCoy] Paul Stamets's

book, Mycelium Running

got my mind sort of in a whirl.

That was when I

first discovered that

there was much more to

mushrooms than just food.

[Brown] If you would've seen me

when I dropped out

of high school,

I was just making rap music.

I knew very little

about the natural world.

I had never even went

on a hike until I was 18,

but finding Paul Stamets'

TED talk video

was one of the biggest

inspirations that pushed me

into the wonderful world

of mycology.

My first mushroom book

was The Mushroom Cultivator

by Paul Stamets.

[Furci] I will be eternally

thankful to him

for showing me that it's okay

to be mushroom mad.

[Lori Cariss] We really don't

even know most fungi.

We're discovering new species

on a daily basis

and you don't have to go

to exotic locations

to discover them.

[McCoy] Anybody can

add to the science,

from identifying a new species

to developing a new

micro-mediation protocol.

[Cariss] There is a great need

for more people to study fungi

and there's lots

of opportunities.

[Pollan] It's amazing what

we don't know about mushrooms.

They really are a frontier

of knowledge.

They probably can help us

solve all sorts of problems

if we look a little deeper.

[Cotter] Anyone, anyone can help

by going and walking

in the woods

and contributing

to mycology.

You may have found a species

that has never been found.

We need these mushrooms.

We work together as a community

to solve problems.

We could be the community

that heals the planet.

[P. Stamets] It's been estimated

two-thirds of our food supply

is bee-pollinated-dependent.

Unfortunately, we're losing

bees across the world

in a dramatic die-off

that is very dangerous

for the biosecurity

of this planet.

So I started exploring ways

to help save the bees

and I noticed

in the summertime

there's a continuous

convoy of bees

going from my beehives

to my mycelium.

But then it dawned on me,

maybe the bees are benefiting

from the mycelial extracts

because they have

antiviral properties.

And so I cultured the most

aggressive strains

and then submitted them.

We started testing the

effects of these extracts

in helping bees survive.

[Nicholas Naeger] Some of these

fungal extracts are really good

at reducing viral

levels in the bee.

So here we have a fungus

that is helping fight

viruses in an insect.

[man] We're using

mushrooms to create

an entirely new class

of materials

which are totally compostable

at the end of their lives.

[woman]

The researchers found that

when they heated

a portobello mushroom skin

to roughly 2,000

degrees Fahrenheit,

it became a lattice

of carbon nano ribbon

that could be used

in battery design

because it allows a good

amount of surface area

for storing energy.

[Cotter]

You can filter water.

You can create medicinal

compounds almost on demand.

We've worked in Haiti,

and they look at you

like I have super powers.

Well, I tell them, I said,

"You are about to

have superpowers too."

[Brown] Coming from

the background of not

having any training,

getting myself into the

lab was very empowering.

I felt like a superhero.

I felt like I could do anything.

You're officially

a mushroom farmer.

Sporulating.

Sporgasm.

[Lincoff] I see my species

as part of a larger whole.

Rather than being at

the top of the pyramid,

being one of the organisms

with inside the circle.

and the circle is

made up of mycelium,

holding us all together.

[Simard] We've always thought of

plants as these inert objects,

these things that don't

actually interact with

each other and build things,

and what my work

is showing, and other

people's work as well,

it's saying actually,

they need each other.

They need each other

to grow in a community

so that they can start

sharing the load.

You do this, I'll do that,

and together,

we can make a beautiful

resilient community.

They have incredible capacity

to make things change

very, very quickly.

So if we can work with them,

if we get it, you know?

If humans get it,

we can change this

thing really fast.

So I am super hopeful.

We just got to get busy

and help nature do its thing.

Evolution never stops.

There's not one point

that it happens

and then it

doesn't happen again.

It's continuously happening.

The core concept of evolution

is that through

natural selection,

the strongest

and the fittest survive.

But moreover,

communities survive better

than individuals.

Communities rely

upon cooperation,

and I think that's

the power of goodness.

Evolution is based

on the concept

of mutual benefit,

and the extension

of generosity.

[Simard] When we see it,

we understand it.

And when we understand it,

we care about it.

And when we care about it,

we'll do something

to help save it.

We need to have a paradigm shift

in our consciousness.

What will it take

to achieve that?

We are not an individual.

We are a vast network

of molecules and

energies and wavelengths.

The interconnectedness of

being is who we are.

[narrator] This world of

ours is always changing,

not for the better

or for the worse,

but for life.

If the storms come

and the water rises,

if fire scorches the land,

or darkness descends,

we will be here

working,

as we always have.

Extending the network.

Building community.

Restoring balance.

One connection at a time.

It may take a million years,

or a hundred million,

but we will still be here.

[computer]

Lieutenant Paul Stamets.

I became an astral mycologist

because of awe.

Awe at the miracle of life.

[TV host] How did you feel

seeing a fictional

character on Star Trek

that is inspired

by your science?

I'm super honored.

I tuned into Star Trek when

I was about 12 years old.

Spores by their nature

travel through the cosmos.

When they germinate,

some mushrooms form.

Some magic mushrooms help you

bend time and space.

[laughter]

[TV host] So, uh,

if I were to visit you...

could we have some

of these magic mushrooms?

[P. Stamets]

Nature provides. I don't.

[laughter]