Fungi Diplomacy

Mycopreneur Podcast: A Fungi Diplomacy Initiative

The Mycopreneur Podcast is a platform dedicated to people solving problems with mushrooms.

Since starting the show in January 2021, I’ve hosted over 50 fungi entrepreneurs from 13 countries who are leveraging the power of fungi to radically transform industry, culture, and human society on a planetary scale. 

Fungi are the dark horse in our doomsday race against the hubris of humanity.

Ukrainian families trapped in a radioactive warzone forage and eat giant fungi that are especially good at absorbing radiation, providing a critical lifeline in the leanest of times.

In Kampala, Uganda, Josephine Nakkakande and her network of over 400 fungi entrepreneurs disrupt generational poverty by cultivating and selling oyster mushrooms, reinvesting into their community by building schools and providing entrepreneurship training to critically vulnerable women. 

On The La Jolla Indian Reservation near San Diego, California, Shane Norte conducts free macrodose psilocybin mushroom ceremonies for military veterans in his Wamkish. 

In Finland, Kappa Biotech CEO Eric Puro holds company meetings in a traditional sauna while the company raises five million euros for their Series A round, putting it towards managing the largest chaga mushroom cultivation network on the planet and constructing one of Europe’s largest indoor exotic mushroom growing facilities to help meet the demands of their Chinese and American trade partners.

In Bangalore, India, Jashid Hameed and Prithvi Kini of Nuvedo eye the billion person plus market their polyglot homeland promises to supply the mushroom revolution with. 

And in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, William Padilla-Brown creates regenerative micro industries for marginalized communities and regularly lectures on mycology at major universities across the U.S, despite the fact that he himself is a high school drop-out.

The roots of modern global environmental policy can even be traced back to a crackdown on undocumented workers foraging fungi on the Mongolian steppes in Qing dynasty China (Read ‘A World Trimmed With Fur’ for more on this).

Almost Two hundred years later and two thousand miles to the west in China’s Xinjiang’s Uygur Autonomous Region, Uygur entrepreneurs buttress their meager income by cultivating shiitake mushrooms on the upcycled wood of the walnut trees that constitute a major part of their local economy. 

Knowledge of mushroom foraging and cultivation is a bulwark against volatility in its many forms: political and social instability, financial precarity, oppressive states, and the ugly side of globalization. 

The role of fungi in nature is connector, medium of exchange, and communication network. 

In human society, fungi can be a vehicle for international diplomacy and decentralized wellness. 

And Mycopreneur Podcast is the story of people leveraging the power of fungi to radically transform our world. 

You can listen to Mycopreneur Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and visit our website here

You can also tap into Ego Death Magazine psychedelic satire produced by the same team here

The Post-Truth Post expands upon the content and ideas contained within the scope of Mycopreneur Podcast and Ego Death Magazine; it offers a lens through which to view and consider global events and their indoctrination into the media landscape.

It offers hot takes and independent long-form journalism content that are virtually absent from our social media landscape and legacy media platforms.

And it is an opportunity to financially and morally support my work across all platforms.

There is a strong likelihood that I will run afoul of our digital overlords on the Gram and Tik Tok, and as such the content posted on my personal platforms such as this will likely wade into territory that would be impossible to hold on other people’s ground - as the saying goes, “Don’t Build Your Castle In Another Person’s Kingdom.”

As the post-truth world accelerates and the Information Age becomes increasingly diluted and bombarded with non-sequiturs, red herrings, and data dumps that benefit no one but silent partners and majority stake-holders, the Post-Truth Post claps back -

Because you alone are my target audience.