RCL 2 Passion Blog 2 – Fantastic Fungi
Fantastic Fungi is a documentary that follows the different effects and uses of mushrooms in nature, as well as how they are used by humans for multiple different reasons. The main amount of the documentary also follows stories told by Paul Stamets, and his view on the lifechanging nature of Fungi. Some voice overs are also done by Brie Larson from the point of view of fungi themselves.
Throughout the documentary, Paul describes how his life had changed ever since he was introduced to mycology, and radicalized when a friend’s father burned his favorite book on the subject due to the negative connotation to mushrooms or “shrooms” at the time. He detailed a story that I found quite interesting, where he had difficulty with a stutter his whole life and eventually took up using magic mushrooms, or mushrooms containing the chemical psilocybin, and took an exceptionally large dose unintentionally. He recalls that during his trip, he focused his mind on getting over the demoralizing stutter that plagued his life, and kept repeating that idea in his mind over and over again. He eventually awoke the next morning after his experience, and was managed to talk the girl he had a crush on without any stutter at all for the first time in his life.
The rest of the documentary also explores many of the other health benefits related to fungi, including another story told by Paul Stamets at his TED talk, where he details the use of turkey tail mushrooms in aiding his mother’s recovery from stage 4 breast cancer, who at the time of the talk had zero cancer detected in her body.
The documentary followed the story of the outlaw of mushrooms in the country, causing a massive halt in research on the substance. Many people at the time of prohibiting the use of psilocybin would fearmonger and use unlikely events and outlandish claims to scare the public into rallying against the use of the substance, when many organizations and medical care facilities were researching it for its exceptionally strong use as a mental health aid, including decreased anxiety, depression, and addiction.
The documentary also talks about the natural history of fungi and how they are exceptionally different from both plants and animals. In nature, fungi are what recycles dead nutrients and turns them into usable sources of nutrients for different kinds of plants and animals to use, ultimately becoming the binding connector from death to life. Fungi are also some of the most common organisms found on the planet, with the largest organism being a fungi spanning nearly four square miles of land. Fungi can also be used in ways many wouldn’t expect, such as being able to break down pollutants like oil into naturally safe and sustainable matter.
I think this documentary definitely opened my eyes to the powers of fungi and the vast amount of kinds of them. For me personally, I will always tend to forget that plants and fungi are two different kingdoms of organisms, but this documentary will definitely make that hard to forget. Highly recommend giving this documentary a watch!