Hello and welcome to another episode of Popapeerites.

Today we have with a stand-up comic and amateur my college is mushroom hunter Chris.

Chris, welcome to the show.

Why don't we start by you telling us a little bit about why you started, what got

you interested in mushrooms? Sure. I had a job, I really hated. I was pretty miserable. I'd been a stand-up comic for a few years after I got out of the military and then ended up just at a pretty garbage job where I was working 60 to 80 hours a week and even wasn't

spending time with my family and friends and I was just exhausted but I started to deal with the depression that was rising up in me.

I started going for hikes, which I'd always done, and all of a sudden I started seeing

mushrooms all over the place and I said, why don't I identify these and learn which ones I can eat and

which ones have medicinal properties and that a lot of times there were several months

there was the only thing I looked forward to every day was just I'm going to go find some new mushrooms today and

It's been a great journey since then

So you call yourself a mycologist amateur mycologist could you tell our listeners a little bit about what mycologist, could you tell our listeners a little bit about what mycologist mycology is?

A study of fungi and fun gals you know. It's all about learning how fungi interact with our world.

It's a pretty important field on the scientific end.

There's people out there doing research into different fungi that can eat plastics. There's actually a fungi right now that

they figured out colony collapse disorder wasn't taking effect in areas near where certain fungus

was growing and so now they might be able to cure

colony collapse disorder with a fungus and so yeah. You sound very knowledgeable on the

topic of mycology. Tell us a little bit about where you've been able to get your knowledge from.

I mean, this isn't exactly the type of thing where there's volumes of textbooks at everybody's

disposal, but tell us how you were able to start your knowledge,

get your entry-level knowledge, and bring it to the level it's at right now.

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