Cedar Falls Mycology Podcast

Greetings everyone. This is Tim Leavitt from Cedar Falls Mycology,   Welcome to Episode #21 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.
On today’s episode we are going to talk with Britt Bunyard about the Telluride Mushroom Festival.  Britt Bunyard is a world esteemed mycologist.  He is the editor of Fungi Magazine, the author of several excellent books and the organizer of the telluride mushroom festival.  Hopefully you all remember him from episode 17.  If you are just joining us you have a little homework to do.  You might want to check out that episode.  It’s one of my favorites.
 
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.

All right, good people. Welcome to episode #20 where we are going to talk with Dr. Rob Silver about his new book “There is a Mushroom for that” Learn How Mushrooms, Cannabis and Integrative Medicine Help Your Pets Live Long and Healthy lives.   This book is a guide to managing your pets' health.  
 
We love to talk about mycozooism on this show,  that is the interconnectedness of fungi and animals.  We have mentioned on this show several times that animals and Fungi share a common ancestor and that Animals and Fungi are much more closely related to Animals than plants.  Knowing this  it seems pretty reasonable to assume that many of the medicinal properties of  functional medicinal mushrooms would apply to animals, in a similar way that they apply to humans.
 
When it comes to medicinal mushrooms the old saying “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of Cure”  is definitely true,  historically mushrooms have been included in diets as a defense as much as a cure  but they are also used to boost one's immune system  therefore encouraging your body to fight off disease.
 
  Like most mushroom books this  book starts with a mandatory introduction to Mushrooms and Mushroom physiology.  I have obviously read a lot of these books and Dr. Rob's take on the subject is exceptional.
 
  Then the book moves into a discussion of Medicinal  mushrooms and Dr Silver's experience and expertise really shines through and grabs your attention as he makes this complex subject easy to understand.  Dr. Rob explains what the active compounds like Beta glucans, Ergosterol and Cholesterol Statins are actually doing.  He then describes the benefits of 11 commonly used medicinal mushrooms and tells you how to give them to your pets.
 
In the second half of the book Dr. Silver  draws on his 40 years of experience in veterinary medicine to look at actual case studies of mushrooms and cannabinoids being used  treat his furry patients for ailments including Skin Allergies, behavior problems, cancer, arthritis, digestive disorders and Epilepsy.  Dr. Silver translates complicated studies into language that anyone can understand
 
This book is  fascinating to say the least and is a must add to your mycological library but don’t just take that from me... Dr Silver is here so let’s ask him some questions...
www.wellpetdispensary.com
www.RealMushrooms.com

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.