Moving Forward

Que Pasa Mufasa friends?!

This newsletter marks an experiment in direct communication between us - no third party community guidelines, censorship, or bots to contend with (if you’re a bot tell me now)

(BTW, what did you think of the newest podcast episode with Reggie & Ian from Oakland Hyphae?)

I will use this space to offer behind the scenes insights into the Mycopreneur Podcast and Ego Death Universe, to dish up longer-form independent journalism excerpts, and to eventually sell you products and services in a bid to finance some of the more ambitious projects on the horizon for me.

When I started Mycopreneur Podcast in January of 2021, I had no expectations for it. I’ve been deeply committed to exploring and advocating for psilocybin mushrooms since my first brush with them in the summer of 2006 when I was 17 years old at the San Diego County Fair. 

My fascination with their scope and potential accelerated over the course of the ensuing decade, during which I entered the media production landscape from a very unique vantage point - as a Media Studies student and media lab employee at the University of San Francisco from 2007 - 2012, where I had a chance to study with academy-award winning filmmakers, rockstars, silicon valley magnates, and a revolving door of other creative visionaries that populated the San Francisco Bay Area arts, tech, and culture scene.

(Backstage in Portugal while on tour with my college band. August 2011)

All the while, I leaned into mushrooms as a conduit to creativity and social disruption, and came to view them as an advanced media communications network - my relationship with mushrooms and the broader pantheon of psychedelics came to inform much of my creative output, social network, and understanding of the world. 

Despite all this, the San Francisco psychedelic media universe felt much like an echo chamber – I was unable to share and talk about my experiences publicly outside of the circles I ran in, and it felt like I lived inside a bubble. The bubble burst in the summer of 2012 when I encountered severe burn out in my post-college transition year; all the sudden I was financially responsible for myself, the rent in San Francisco started skyrocketing, and my personal life got sucked into a black hole of excess and confusion.

(Making 16 mm films on 4.20 in Golden Gate Park)

The high-roller psychedelic rock star world slipped away from me and was replaced almost overnight by a sobering, drab, cold concrete reality of adulthood and ‘civil society’. 

I spent the next decade trying to blend in with the “responsible adult world” , often failing miserably. I worked a succession of odd jobs and occasional career-oriented positions, from moonlighting as a hillbilly scarecrow at a haunted house to running the front desk at a party hostel in San Diego to teaching English in Saudi Arabia to packaging green-shell mussels in New Zealand to filming weddings to teaching multimedia production at one of the world’s most prolific charter schools, with a dozen other random jobs in between. 

During all this, I managed to start dating and eventually marry a young woman I’d known since middle school and travel the world with her on a shoestring budget by doing work exchanges and calling upon favors from friends around the planet. I’ve managed to travel to around 75 countries on 6 continents, including a lot of places that westerners never go. 

(Scuba diving in Thailand with my boo. 2014)

By the time pandemic hit in March of 2020, I was hustling video production and podcast editing gigs for a variety of different academic and corporate clients, living in an ocean view estate in Malibu (for free) and growing mushrooms in the master bedroom. As the social fabric of ‘civil society’ began ripping apart, I knew that it was time for me to come out of the psychedelic closet in a big way. I could never go back to tap dancing and drug screenings for employers owned by hedge funds, could not sign away my creative potential to gigs that sucked the soul out of me for a few hundred bucks at a time. 

(Malibu pad. Summer 2020)

After getting booted from the Malibu spot by Tommy Chong’s daughter and her film company, I moved abroad to one of my favorite towns in the world and started to organize weekly creative meetups - it was at the very first of these meetups that I met Michelle Janikian, a well-known drug writer and activist. On that same night, I had a conversation with a French podcaster who walked me through the technical and logistical steps of how he set up his brand new podcast that he was hosting. I had edited other peoples podcasts, but never considered starting my own. 

I felt the creative juices flowing, and resolved soon after to start my own podcast focusing on mushroom entrepreneurs - I lined up a half dozen people I knew who were ready to talk publicly about their work, including Michelle (the first episode) and my college friend Simon Yugler, a therapist and writer who is crushing the game right now (www.depthmedicine.com). 

After recording a handful of episodes, I was blown away with the reception and the interest that people had in the podcast. Mycopreneurs from as far afield as Denver and Germany reached out to me to validate my work, and within 6 months I was hosting mycopreneurs from Australia, Uganda, Chile, Jamaica, and numerous other places around the world. 

(Hablas Español? - esta fue nuestro primero podcast en 100% Español)

There are a lot more angles I’d like to cover and anecdotes I’d like to provide you with here, but those will have to wait for future editions of the newsletter.

To close, I’d like to share some of the projects I’m entertaining and actively working towards right now –

I’m writing a book. It’s been in the works for months now, and dives into stories of people around the world who are solving problems with mushrooms. From refugees in war-torn regions who cultivate oyster mushrooms to high-roller psychedelic CEO’s to Chiapanecan mycologists bridging the gap between ancestral fungi use and scientific rigor -

It’s titled “Fungi Diplomacy”, and it’s taking shape one mycopreneurial success story at a time. 

I’m also preparing to embark on an extended, magnificent trip to a fascinating and highly destabilized area of the world, which I’m beyond excited for - and I’m in the early process of building a house right now on the land that my wife and I recently purchased. 

(Fungi Diplomacy Tour 2022, coming soon)

Finally, I’m looking to expand my psychedelic satire offerings into a physical product in the form of a print magazine – Ego Death Magazine.

Last but not least, I’ve launched a Patreon where you can support the independent psychedelic media platforms I’m building and scaling – I’ll be experimenting with various forms of paid subscriptions and membership communities over the next year in a bid to have a more direct, uncensored, and valued relationship with all of you.

Oh shit, and the Mycopreneur Podcast too. The queue of guests for forthcoming episodes is pretty insane. 

There’s a million other things I want to share with you right now, but this is a good start. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this newsletter and on Mycopreneur Podcast and Ego Death Magazine, etc. Don’t be a stranger!

Cheers, Dennis