A recent New Yorker article profiles the lives and work of a group of mycologists In the mushroom community working to help increase popular understanding of fungi.
First the piece details how R. Gordon Wasson eventually popularized the understanding of psilocybin mushrooms by taking them in a remote Mexican village.
The article also highlights the work of Merlin Sheldrake, a biologist from the UK.
“Sheldrake was drawn to fungi because they are humble yet astonishingly versatile organisms, “eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the earth’s atmosphere.”
Also appearing in the piece is Paul Stamets, a former logger turned mycologist, and mushroom community pioneer, who has created innovative natural products using his deep understanding of fungi.