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Paul Stamets, a fun guy focused on fungi, gave me a troy ounce silver coin, which he minted as a coin collector and mycologist. Now that’s some fungible coinage!

We had dinner together at Craig’s house: “65 million years ago, with the asteroid impact, the sun was blocked and fungi inherited the Earth. Before the asteroid, the pollen to fungal spore ratio was 10:1 and then it became 100% fungi. Those organisms that paired with fungi were rewarded, for fungi do not need light. Today, all plants depend on fungi.”

Here is his evangelical TED Talk, which he updated with Hickey’s discovery of comet nuclei, supporting his belief that fungi form an “externalized neurological network.”

15 responses to “In Fungi We Trust”

  1. Is that a pyramid in the eye of the fungi?

    I, for one, welcome my genetically engineered fungal overlords!

    Because when we engineer and cultivate life, who is using who?

    And for what?

  2. I totally want to buy one of those for our family mycologist. Where can I get one?

  3. I can’t believe I just watched a 17 minute video on mushrooms…
    …and thought it was great.

  4. Psilocybe-numismatensis? 😉

    ps: Paul Stamets TED talk rocks.

  5. BTW you can buy some of his fungi at http://www.fungi.com/. I’m going to try an experiment on my lawn, using the fungi in some places but not others, and see what happens.

  6. There’s a fungus among us, and this may become one of the few worthy coins of the realm in the very near future…. 😉

  7. The sun was kind of blocked out last month in New England, during a month of rain, and "Indian pipe" flourished. That’s a plant with no chlorophyll that is parasitic on fungi.

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/31715949@N00/3688007246/]

  8. What has the world come to ?
    I thought that the VCs were the ones supposed to be providing some coin to the geeks, not the reverse

  9. Hi, I’m an admin for a group called L’amicizia fa la differenza – Friendship makes the difference, and we’d love to have this added to the group!

  10. .. because it’s fungible 😉

  11. How interesting!

    I didn’t know prior to coming to Spain, but mushroom hunting is a huge past time here. They love their fungi….although Spain is in a bit of a mushroom crisis because we have had such a dry season.

  12. A 2 hour podcast interview of Stamets just came out on the Tim Ferriss Show

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