Cedar Falls Mycology Podcast

Episode #19 "Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless" Book Review Featuring Maria Pinto

Alright good people, welcome to episode #19 where we are going to discuss the book “Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless”  with the author Maria Pinto.  This book is not a textbook about fungi.. It’s more of a mycozooistic memoir about things Maria has learned from her interactions and her personal relationship with fungi throughout the years.
Maria starts her book with a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson so we’re gonna start this episode by reading that.
“Nature,  through all her kingdoms, ensures herself. Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she shakes down from the gills of one of agaric countless spores. Any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores tomorrow or the next day... a fearless, sleepless, deathless progeny, which is not exposed to the accidents of the weary kingdom of time.”
To say Maria Pinto is unique as a mycologist is an understatement.  First of all she was born in Jamaica and grew up in Florida.  The jacket of the book describes her as a black naturalist.  Her growing up as a Caribbean
Native  has given here a different perspective on the world than your average mycologist. Her world view is unique or at least poorly documented,  this has lead to the creation of a book that unlike many other mushroom books would be best described as... Beautiful. 
Early mycology authors often used huge words that would bury the reader in vocabulary words, making a complicated subject even more confusing and intangible. 
A lot of other books are just a regurgitation of science published in other sources.  This book draws its unique inspiration  from art, poetry and the largely undocumented history of Africans living in the Caribbean. Which brings us into the realm of theoretical mycology which I know we all love. This unique take on the world makes this book fascinating and hard to put down.   Whether she is referring to Christopher Columbus as being, “the name we never speak”... or addressing  the Kingdom of Fungi as the Queendom of fungi, or her passion for eating dirt as a kid or her preferred “party go to move” of laying on the floor rubbing a   dogs belly.  Throughout this book you really get to know this likable woman and join her on here mycology adventures.
Maria is joining us today so let’s ask her some questions.

Episode #18 Checking In With The PSMS Featuring Danny Miller and Wren Hudgins

On Today’s episode we are going to talk about the Puget Sound Mycological Society commonly called the PSMS.  We actually have two guests here today and they are co-chairs of the PSMS Education department. The first is Danny Miller.  Danny helps to design and teach the curriculum for the club’s mycology classes.  He is also the club Librarian, and ID Committee co-ordinator and he is an emergency poisoning point person for King County Poison Control. Our second guest is mycologist Wren Hudgins.  Wren has been a member of PSMS for 49 years. He teaches identification classes, trains foraging guides and takes new club members out on field trips.
 
We are podcasting from The Cedar Falls Tree house in beautiful North Bend Washington.  The Cedar Falls Treehouse is a mycology education facility available through Airbnb.  Come join us for a magical evening immersed in the fascinating world of Fungi.

Episode #17 "Hawaiian Fungi Diversity" Checking In With Graham Steinruck

Greetings everyone. This is Tim Leavitt from Cedar Falls Mycology,  We also have my co-host Dan Sullivan here today.   Welcome to Episode #17 of the  podcast where we ask ourselves not what the fungi can do for us... But what we can do  for the fungi.  Join us as we explore the world of Fungi... a world not more complex than you think but more complex than you can think.
 
Today’s guest is  the well rounded mycologist Graham Steinruck.   Graham is a renown mushroom chef and taxonomist.   He is the founder of the Biodiversity Collective a project focusing on the conservation of Fungi in Hawaii. He also regularly gives lectures on Fungi and Taxonomy across the country.   It took awhile to track him down but he is here now.
 
We are podcasting from The Cedar Falls Tree house in beautiful North Bend Washington.  The Cedar Falls Treehouse is a mycology education facility available through Airbnb.  Come join us for a magical evening immersed in the fascinating world of Fungi.

Episode #16 Boletatacae That Induce Hallucinations of Little People Featuring Colin Domnauer

Greetings everyone. This is Tim Leavitt from Cedar Falls Mycology,   Welcome to Episode #16 of the  podcast where we ask ourselves not what the fungi can do for us... But what we can do  for the fungi.  Join us as we explore the world of Fungi... a world not more complicated than you think but more complicated than you can think.
 
Todays episodes guest is Colin Domnauer.  Colin is a professor and phd student at The University of Utah and works with with the fungi esteemed Dentinger Lab and the  Natural History Museum of Utah .  Colin is a Bay Area California native whose research focuses on unravelling the ethnomycological mystery of psychoactive bolete mushrooms.  .  On today's episode we are going to discuss the fascinating topic of South East Asian Boletes that are known to consistently produce hallucinations of little people.
 
We are podcasting from The Cedar Falls Tree house in beautiful North Bend Washington.  The Cedar Falls Treehouse is a mycology education facility available through Airbnb.  Come join us for a magical evening immersed in the fascinating world of Fungi.
 
Please keep in mind while listening  to this that  some of what you are about to  hear is speculation or the opinion of the commentator and does not necessarily  reflect the opinion of... Jenn the producer.

Episode #15 Checking In With Cedar Falls Mycology Featuring Guest Host Dan Sullivan

Greetings everyone. This is Tim Leavitt from Cedar Falls Mycology,   Welcome to Episode #15 of the  podcast where we ask ourselves not what the fungi can do for us... But what we can do  for the fungi.  Join us as we explore the world of Fungi... A world not more complicated than you think but more complicated than you can think.
Today's episode is going to be a little different.  It has been brought to my attention that everyone who listens to this has no idea who I am or what we are up to here at the  Cedar Falls Treehouse.  Jenn the producer is to mean to do the interview herself so she hired my mycophilic co-host Dan Sullivan  who was supposed to be my co-host the whole time... but she didn’t hire the first time so she hired him back  for todays episode.  Jen is not here today so the show may sound a little less professional.
 
We are podcasting from The Cedar Falls Tree house in beautiful North Bend Washington.  The Cedar falls treehouse is a mycology education facility available through Airbnb.  Come join us for a magical evening immersed in the fascinating world of Fungi.

Episode #14 Ethical Foraging and “The Lives of Fungi” Book Review Featuring Author Britt Bunyard

Greetings everyone. This is Tim Leavitt from Cedar Falls Mycology,   Welcome to Episode #14 of the  podcast where we ask ourselves not what the fungi can do for us... But what we can do  for the fungi.  Join us as we explore the world of Fungi... a world not more complicated than you think but more complicated than you can think.
 
  This episodes guest is Britt Bunyard.  This is really the episode we have all been waiting for.  While most of our previous guests including Eugenia and Dr. Walker  have stated they are not mycologists.  Our guest today is by all definitions a mycologist.  Britt Bunyard is the founder and editor in chief of the magazine “Fungi”  the widest circulating mycology magazine in North America.  He is also the executive director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival.  He has authored several books including “Amanita’s Of North America”, “Mushrooms and Macrofungi of Ohio and Midwestern States”, “The Beginners Guide to Mushrooms” and “the Little Book of Mushrooms.”  Today we are going to discuss an array of topics including, ethical harvesting and his 2022 definitive book titled “The Lives of Fungi,  A Natural History of Our Planets Decomposers.”
 
We are podcasting from The Cedar Falls Tree house in beautiful North Bend Washington.  The Cedar Falls Treehouse is a mycology education facility available through Airbnb.  Come join us for a magical evening immersed in the fascinating world of Fungi.

Episode #13 "Checking In With The Pacific Northwest Mushroom Producers Network" Featuring Christian Clarke

Welcome to episode #13 on todays episode we are going to discuss the fascinating topic of mushroom farming.  We   have  Christian Clarke, owner of Myco Munity Mushrooms here today...Christian is also the fascilitator of the Pacific Northwest Mushroom Producers Network based in Portland Oregon.   The Network (PNWFMGN) consists of growers, researchers, and educators working to expand forest-cultivated mushroom production as a viable enterprise in the Pacific Northwest.

Episode #12 "Checking In With Flourish Labs" Featuring Dr. George Sellhorn

Greetings everyone. This is Tim Leavitt from Cedar Falls Mycology,   Welcome to Episode 12 of the  podcast where we ask ourselves not what the fungi can do for us... but what we can do  for the fungi.   We also  have  DR. George Sellhorn here today.  Dr.  Sellhorn is the co-owner of Flourish Labs in Oregon.   Flourish Labs uses HPLC which stands for High-Performance Liquid Chromatography... HPLC is commonly used in chemical analysis and biochemistry, for example, in the analysis of food or environmental samples or  drugs.
 
We are podcasting from The Cedar Falls Tree house in beautiful North Bend Washington.  The Cedar falls treehouse is a mycology education facility available through Airbnb.  Come join us for a magical evening immersed in the fascinating world of Fungi.

Episode #11 "Passport to Kingdom Fungi" featuring Dr. Gordon Walker

Alright good people,  welcome to episode #11. We have Dr. Fun Guy  himself here, Dr. Gordon Walker, here and we're gonna ask him some Theoretical mycology questions ,but first we're gonna talk a little bit about his new book, “Passport to Kingdom Fungi”. So, as the name implies “Passport to Kingdom Fungi” is your gateway to all things Fungi.
 
The world of mycology is always changing. , every decade or so, one of these really definitive books comes out and lets everybody know kind of where we're at right now as mycologists. And, you know, we really owe the authors of these types of books a huge debt of gratitude.  It is incredibly important that these books even exist because, , wherever you're at in your pursuit of mycology, there's always something to learn. That’s  probably one of the main reasons why a lot of us keep coming back to the never ending rabbit hole that is mycological science.
 
This book reads like a college level textbook. It's got everything you would want to know about Fungi in one book,  Accurate information delivered with photos, and also with illustrations and graphs that to really make it very obtainable  information.  If you do a brief Google search for Mycology Text Book you will quickly find a bunch of expensive and obtrusive books,  a lot of which are probably out dated.
 
You know, if you were teaching a college level, mycology class, you could just hand this book out to your students and you could say, “here memorize this book, and, come back at the end of the semester and there's gonna be a test. Um, if you don't feel like taking a college level mycology class, you can just read this book yourself and memorize it, and then, you know, you're there. You got, a very good foundation and, like I said,  this is information that is current, which is important.

Episode #10 Checking In With The Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival featuring David Rogers

Alright Good People welcome to episode #10  today we will be discussing the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival.  This festival promotes discovery.., connection, and community. The festival encourages learning about various mycology topics and brings people together.  The festival is held October 18th -19th which is prime mushroom season and is located on the northern end of the Olympic Peninsula, a region renowned for fungi, this festival features lectures,... hands-on workshops,... guided forays,... mushroom cuisine and more from internationally acclaimed experts. There will be live music, a vendors’ market, and even  camping.   So.  no matter where you’re at on your journey into the mycology rabbit hole they guarantee this festival will inspire something new.  Our guest today is David Rogers.  David is a mushroom farmer and owns Maddies Mushrooms in Port Angeles Washington.   David is also the organizer of the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival our fascinating topic of todays episode.  So let’s get started....