PETER McCOY on Fungi and the Birth of the Modern Psyche /37
Photo by March Young
Today we welcome back Peter McCoy, who speaks on behalf of the fungi, the most overlooked and misrepresented organisms in the web of life. Peter leads us through the earliest evidence of the fungal “queendom” in the development of culture and human intelligence, and shows how understanding fungal biology and mycelial webs can steer our social experiments.
Peter McCoy
Peter is an original founder of Radical Mycology, a grassroots organization and movement that teaches the skills needed to work with mushrooms and other fungi for personal, societal, and ecological resilience. Peter is the lead cultivation expert for the Amazon Mycorenewal Project and Open Source Ecology and the primary author behind Radical Mycology, a nearly 700-page book on accessible mycology and mushroom cultivation. Apart from his work with fungi, he is also a community organizer, street medic, zinester, artist, musician, lecturer, and teacher.
♫ Music featured in this episode includes "New Old Waves" by Cult of Youth, The Song and Indications of Maria Sabina and Mazatec Mushroom Ceremony, The Black Caribs of Honduras from Garifuna (1952), "Waiting Underground" by Patti Smith, "If We Come as Soft as Rain" by Sarah Webster Fabio and "Like a River" by Kate Wolf.
For The Wild Podcast is an anthology of the Anthropocene; focused on land-based protection, co-liberation and intersectional storytelling rooted in a paradigm shift away from human supremacy, endless growth and consumerism.