A bit of what is in today’s edition:

🍄 Traditional African Medicine and Mushroom Rituals

🍄 From Shark Tank India to Scaling New Heights?

🍄 Unraveling the Psychedelic Odyssey: From MAPS to Lykos Therapeutics

Exploring Traditional African Mushroom Practices

Que pasa Mufasa?!

While it's well-documented that Traditional Chinese Medicine practices have incorporated functional mushrooms for over 4,000 years, did you know that Traditional African Medicine has done the same?

In Honor of Black History Month, I'd like to recognize the many contributions that members of the African Diaspora and their descendants have made to the mycopreneurial space.

I learned a lot about traditional African mushroom use courtesy of Moudou Baqui, who I recently hosted on the podcast. Moudou is a student of traditional mushroom knowledge and a martial artist based in Detroit, Michigan. He apprenticed under the legendary Kilindi Iyi, who was an advocate for ultra-high macrodose mushroom journeys - like 20 to 50 grams of dried psilocybin cubensis high.

Moudou shared that he's visited various parts of the African continent on research trips 6 times, and that he's directly witnessed ritualized mushroom use and traditional wild mushroom medicine consumption by multiple different tribes in West Africa.

The iconic image of a mushroom 'bee shaman' shown above was discovered in a cave in Algeria and dates back to 7,000 BC - almost 10,000 years ago. Algeria is in the north of Africa, and lots of unanswered questions remain about its origins as well as those of traditional mushroom use in Africa.

In fact, very little outside attention has been given to mushroom knowledge and use in Africa, considering the entheogenic and functional practices of other mycophilic cultures in places like China, Poland, Mexico, etc., which are extremely well-documented and publicized. This map "documenting" the distribution of psilocybe species across the world, as compiled by famed entheogenic mushroom researcher Gastón Guzmán, demonstrates what a huge blind spot the African continent is in the broader world of mushrooms. Researcher Darren Le Baron often cites this in his classes on Psychedelics in Africa.

Check out this article for more: Moudou Baqui on Visionary Plants in Africa

If you live in the Western world, chances are you haven't seen too many foraged functional mushrooms for sale at markets in the way they are across pockets of the African continent - although they are certainly becoming more common at Farmer’s Markets and boutique specialty stores across North America.

Real Mushrooms: Elevating the Functional Mushroom Industry in the Western World

But thankfully, our friends at Real Mushrooms have done the research and development deep dive for us and, in doing so, have set the bar for the functional mushroom industry in this part of the world. 

I wholeheartedly recommend checking out their product line and ordering some for yourself or for family and friends. Stay tuned for upcoming Mycopreneur podcast episodes featuring representatives for the company - or check out our podcast with Real Mushrooms Founder Skye Chilton, which has been featured not once but twice in Rolling Stone - Check it out here: What makes a Mushroom a Mushroom?

Nuvedo’s Mushroom Mission: From Shark Tank India to Scaling New Heights

Nuvedo Co-Founders Jashid Hameed and Prithvi Kini pitched the sharks on their home-grow mushroom kits, mushroom tinctures, and other products from their line to no avail.

They asked for 50 Lakhs ($60,000 U.S.) for a 3% equity stake in the company and were ultimately rebuffed by the sharks due to a perceived lack of scalability and doubts about broader public perception of mushrooms among other factors.

Check out the full pitch here (it helps if you speak Hindi.)

I thought it was particularly intriguing that one of the sharks chided the Nuvedo founders for not pursuing another discipline given their prestigious educations from one of India's top institutions - and that the example of an alternate career choice they could be investing their time and energy in was 'space travel' - this flippant dismissal of the largely unmapped frontiers of mushroom science and exploration shows a complete unawareness of the concept of 'inner space travel', which has no greater vehicle for deep exploration than various strains of psychoactive mushrooms.

As Phil Ross, Co-Founder of mycomaterials powerhouse MycoWorks says, "We are still very, very early on the deep fungal technology wave."

In case the sharks from Shark Tank India are interested, MycoWorks recently closed a $125 million Series C round and opened an industrial-scale production facility in South Carolina to produce reishi leather at scale, which has created 400 new jobs.

Stick that in your 'this won't scale' pipe and smoke it!

I hosted Jasheed and Prtihvi on Mycopreneur Podcast in May of 2022 to learn about their approach to spearheading the mushroom revolution in India, check out the episode here.

In October 2023, I had the good fortune of meeting them in person while attending Shroom Sabha -  the first mushroom festival in India.

I wrote an article for High Times about it.

From MAPS to Lykos Therapeutics

Moving back towards the United States, I had my first article published in Double Blind Magazine yesterday. It charts the evolution of the psychedelic juggernaut MAPS PBC into Lykos Therapeutics.

I was ecstatic when Double Blind reached out to ask me to write this piece - they have been the cool kids on the block in the psychedelic media scene since their inception in 2019 and I'm inspired by their dedication to taking on nuanced and potentially risky stories while regularly platforming underrepresented perspectives in the psychedelic conversation. Check out the article here

MAPS is a polarizing organization in the psychedelic space, and I'm increasingly baffled at the seeming lack of middle ground in public sentiment toward the organization. They have a legion of ride-or-die supporters counterbalanced with a growing body of very anti-MAPS people. There are a variety of reasons for this, and I sought to highlight some of them in the piece while offering a dose of humor and some context for their evolution into a traditional pharmaceutical vehicle with the recent rebranding to Lykos Therapeutics and closing of a $100 million Series A round.

What is on Mycopreneur?

This last week also saw the release of a Mycopreneur Podcast episode with Mason Marks, senior fellow and project lead of the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School - say that ten times fast on ten microdoses of Golden Teachers. 

Listen in! This episode dives deep into the legal and regulatory landscape around psychedelics in the United States, with special consideration given to the developing ecosystems in Oregon and Colorado.

Be sure to subscribe and share!

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