He Inspired Millions to Grow Mushrooms - The Rookie Mycologist

What happens when the platforms you built your livelihood on suddenly erase your work? In this episode of Understory, we sit down with Frank, the creator behind 90 Second Mycology, to discuss his unexpected removal from YouTube, Instagram, and Patreon, and his ongoing fight to preserve years of educational content. Known for making mushroom cultivation accessible to beginners through his popular Uncle Ben's Tek tutorials, Frank helped introduce countless people to the world of mycology. But as automated content moderation intensified, his educational videos began disappearing, eventually taking entire accounts with them. Together, we explore the growing influence of AI censorship, the challenges facing independent educators, and what happens when algorithms fail to distinguish scientific education from prohibited content. We also dive into the evolution of mushroom cultivation, the future of beginner-friendly techniques, the importance of disconnecting from technology, and 90's determination to rebuild his platform and leave a lasting legacy. Despite the setbacks, Frank's mission remains unchanged: make mycology accessible, encourage curiosity, and inspire people to explore the fascinating world of fungi. Subscribe for new episodes.

Ramzi Fawaz is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of several books on everything from superhero comics to queer and feminist pop culture and, more recently, psychedelics. He teaches a course called Psychedelic Imaginaries and leads workshops at Esalen. In this wide-ranging and lively discussion, Ramzi traces his path from Cold War cultural historian to democratic political theorist, and explains why he thinks a good humanities class functions like a psychedelic experience. We get into the weeds on sticky questions of cultural appropriation and the surprisingly recent origins of some ayahuasca ceremonies, Wendy Brown's idea of wounded attachment and what it means for the left, what he sees in his Gen Z students, and why he thinks constant moralizing gets people nowhere. Ramzi is a fearless scholar, a man committed to truth, and a refreshingly unorthodox thinker.

Brooke Sanders refuses to separate her online persona from her academic one, and that fusion is the core of what makes her so special. A cannabinoid neuroscientist turned SSDP policy staffer, she walks us through what it actually looks like when the DEA schedules a compound out from under a working lab, including one case where federal prosecutors submitted printed Reddit posts as evidence of a drug crisis. We get into SR-17018, the 7-OH scheduling fight, harm reduction on the ground at a syringe exchange, and what Shulgin's legacy still owes the next generation of scientists willing to test on themselves.

In the first recorded interview of its kind, we speak to a legendary figure of underground psychedelic history: Charles Perry, longtime friend and roommate of Owsley “Bear” Stanley. There would be no Grateful Dead, no LSD craze, and no iconic dancing bear imagery without Owsley Stanley, and few knew him as closely as Charles Perry. This interview blows the lid on many of the most treasured icons in psychedelic history as we’re regaled with tales of Timothy Leary, crime and chaos in the Haight Ashbury, touring with the Grateful Dead, dining on Baklava with the President of Türkiye, and so much more. Charles Perry is among the greats of his psychedelic generation, and this interview is the deepest dive to date on his incredible life story.

Jasper Degenaars co-runs Fungi Academy, a mushroom education center and intentional community on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. He has been growing mushrooms for over 15 years and teaching cultivation and ecology to a huge group of devoted students for the last seven. In this conversation Jasper talks about what fungi model for human community. He walks through the Dutch truffle loophole that made his early age experiments legal, the archetypes of people who show up to learn cultivation, and his case against the inbred Cubensis mutants currently dominating the hobby. We get into plastic-eating fungi, yeast engineered to produce psilocybin, the fungicide resistance problem nobody is talking about, and the mushroom-lightning connection that shows up in mythological traditions all over the world.