My MB Alex breakdown is supported by Helix sleep. Bring is in the air and so are all of the allergens that come with it. Spring allergens means you need more sleep, but there are a ton of factors that can prevent us from getting a good night's rest. Night sweats, back pain, feeling the person next to you when they roll over a million times. We were so excited to hear that Helix wanted to partner with us. I've had my Helix mattress for about five years now and I have been sleeping so much better. Jonathan and also our kids love their Helix mattresses and all of those issues, night sweats, back pain, motion transfer, those things are significantly better with a Helix mattress. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door, which is so much fun with free shipping in the US. They have a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty plus they're happy with Helix guarantee. Rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience designed to ensure that you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Go to helixleap.com slash break down for 27% off site wide. That's helixleap.com slash break breakdown for 27% off site wide. helixleap.com slash breakdown. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Hi, I'm Miami-Alic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to part two of our conversation with my collegeist Paul Stammitz. We hope that you heard episode one of our conversation with Paul. He's an incredible advocate, not only for an understanding of fungi, mycelium, and mushrooms, but in particular the psychedelic components of these mushrooms and how other traditions have used them for consciousness expansion and how he believes that it can literally change the world. We're going to get into all of that and more in part two of this conversation. Break it down. Why would nature produce something that has these effects? And I mean, I think the earliest art that shows mushrooms that we think were possibly used in some sort of ritual capacity, it's 7,000 years old. And almost every culture that can grow them is showing art. And there's mythology, there's literature supporting this for thousands of years. So what do you believe is the intelligence of the universe that produced a mushroom that has this transformative capacity? Well, let me broaden it. I like that question a lot. And these are all cultural representations of, I think, that have been very helpful for their societies. They're also called vision-quest mushrooms. And you know, they're definitely, you know, make you more spiritually aware of person. But we live in a, in a trip to mean consciousness. Nature is full of trip to means. A thought experiment I'd like to tell people is that if you're living in a farm in Pennsylvania, right now listening to this and on your porch and Beautiful wide group. I spend a lot of time in Pennsylvania at a prep school there And you looked at the fields and the trees and I if you took away all Of the ligney and all the hemacellulose all of the cellulose All you can see is trip means what would you see? You see the same thing. There are tripdomines and grasses and trees. There are tripdomines throughout nature. We live basically on a foundation of tripdomines. So when people ask why this is just one elaborated tripptomine that creates the spark that I think is resident nature and makes us more nature aware, it goes to the quorum effect that I talked about earlier. If you are more nature aware, you will protect nature better. Isn't that an evolutionary successful strategy for the mushrooms that live in an ecosystem that depend upon the biodiversity, the ecosystem you store in the biodiversity, you just store them the mushrooms? And also just to clarify, tripdomines are the chemical class of hallucinogenic compounds, correct? Serotonergic, hallucinogenic compounds. And when we say tripdomine, you know, it's, if you've ever seen like a chemical description of what like caffeine looks like or really anything, it's literally how many nitrogens are there, how many hydrogens are there, you know, they're, I'm looking at the form right now. It shows where the, where the bonds are, where the kind of free, you know, electrodes are like, it's a chemical compound that essentially is the foundation of a tremendous part of our evolutionary destiny. We're talking right now primarily using serotonin. You know, serotonin is a tryptamine. Melotonin is a tryptamine. All these things are, they are, there are so many tryptamines.

So we lived in the state of a, this tryptamine based consciousness and nature is based on these tryptamines. The ebb and flow of these compounds, you know, I think there's, you know, this is where if people listening to this podcast, think we're a woo woo. Do not underestimate what we were saying. Once you have this experience, it can be revelatory. And many people only have it once in their life, one time. And that's phenomenal. You know, it's Michael Paulins, that are very good business model for the pharmaceutical industry.

But Michael, Michael, those he is, Michael, those he is. So, you know, we speak to a lot of physicists who are interested in extra sensory ability and and expansions of consciousness. We speak to a lot of people who have had near death experiences. And in my age question, you know, the idea of why would this exist? Why would the universe bring us mushrooms to help us expand our consciousness? It's for me, there's a question of, does it want to reveal the larger reality? You know, is it that we're in a game where we've come here to remember and that this regular reality that most of us live in until we have an awakening, however that might be, whether it's through psychedelics or otherwise, is just the process that we're all in to reconnect and become more aware of a larger conscious reality. Well, I mean, we are right now talking and we are alive and the people who are contemporaneously listening to this are alive. We didn't exist before we were born. Well, we did exist. We existed as atoms and molecules that have assembled into the form that we have now. We're one giant coincidence of nature. And then we will die. We will decompose, make friends with the fungi now because they're gonna get you. And then they, these molecules go out, the atoms, their reform into new molecules. We're in a stream of a molecular universe that has a continuum that goes through billions of years. I want to give a shout out to Roots to Thrive, it's the most advanced, in my opinion, non-profit in Canada. And Dr. Pamela Crisco is one of the co-founders, she's a medical doctor licensed by Canada Health for high doses of psilocybin. What they did, I think, is very pertinent to many of people listening here is they have a program typically with about eight people who have been given a stage four diagnosis, typically cancer, or are traumatized law enforcement officers, soldiers, or firefighters.

Now listen, me, this is really important to me. If you are traumatized and you have PTSD, I met some veterans. He told me some stories about Afghanistan, which I wish I didn't hear. They were traumatized. They made a mistake. Will you be judged by the worst day of your life? And if you are angry at yourself, the potential for you is very likely for you to extrovert that pain that you feel to others, because you're angry and you are in an inflammatory state of anger, which depresses your immune system, which causes a cascade of other problems. I'd reach to thrive eight individuals, lots of therapy preparation on typically indigenous land, you know, with indigenous people involving well in British Columbia. And what has come out of this program is really amazing, is that they're there, they're worried about anxiety, they're depressed because they're prognosis they're not disoan their family is an high alert they're traumatized by this what's going to happen on mom and dad or brother and sister die and typically what happens is they're bonded together because they they same diagnosis were about to die and they do a high dose of soul siphon in a very carefully constructed environment. And typically what happens is after the experience, the patients become the therapists of their family. I'm okay about dying. I have a better understanding about life and death, my purpose in life, don't worry. One and one woman had a classic. I'm not going to swear, but she swore on, on her recording of this and with permission. It says, I don't care about cancer. Effin cancer. I'm going golfing. I want to touch on something that you indicated is a significant component of the hallucinogenic, the psychedelic and the kind of transcendental components of these higher doses of psilocybin. And, you know, therapy assisted psilocybin journeys. It's becoming more of a thing. We live in Southern California. I always say you can't swing a dead cat, you know, without finding eight people who have done an ayahuasca journey or a this, that or the other. Right. I've never heard that phrase before swinging a dead cat. I haven't done that yet. That's an expression. No, I'm from the 1940s. Anyway, when I hear you talk about, you know, what it is to journey with someone and to be part, not as a party drug, but to be part of someone's really expansion of consciousness as a guide, as a partner. Obviously, I can't help but think about the numerous indigenous cultures that use plant medicine as part of not really even just a therapeutic journey. It's in many cases it's part of the awakening consciousness of being human is to come of age with an opening that is assisted by plant medicine. And in this book in psilocybin mushrooms and their natural habitats, there's this wonderful map of the world. And it shows the distribution of psilocybin mushrooms. And as Jonathan points out, in all of the places where it's very, very cold, there is no psilocybin. So, you know, Siberia, um, well, there's psilocybin mushrooms, Siberia. Remember, those are reports. Basically, you know, it looks like central, northern Europe, western Europe. Those are very rich with psilocybin mushrooms. Parts of the United States, the West, the East and some in the middle, but, you know, huge concentration down into Yucatan, you know, that whole peninsula scattered across South America, an interesting concentration in southeastern Australia. Japan has a little cluster there. And some in Central and Southern Africa. But I wonder if you can talk about kind of given that consciousness of where on the map, we tend to see these larger concentrations of psilocybin mushrooms. What does that tell us about the cultures where this was used and what do we know historically about the function of these journeys as transcendental and transformative? Well, first of all, we have to look through the filter that these are observations. Sure. Observations of scientists who've recorded the presence of these mushrooms. The reason why Siberia doesn't have a lot is that there's not these reports. It's from the 1800s. There's several thousand reports of psilocybin mushrooms and specimens that are collected in herbaria that have been deposited. So now because of this massive awakening, we're finding numerous new species all over the place. And some of these species are really hard to find and some of them aren't. Slossomy Cubensis, you can see it 50 miles an hour going down the highway in Louisiana, you know, as their golden tops are huge. So, it's also be polykylose in the northwest here, it's difficult to find. It grows only in the particularly much, you know, long trails and whatnot, but it's a non-descript species that looks very similar to deadly poisonous species. So, don't underestimate the intelligence of a delicious people who are in themselves scientists, making observations in nature. And that's why, by the way, for the record, I dedicate my book to Maria Sabina, a Mazatec, knowledge keeper, Asabiya. She said, I'm not a shaman, that's too much work. I choose a knowledge keeper. To Kit Skates, who is a renowned my college as an Idaho, who mentored me. And Tina Wasen, our ordained wassens wife who died in 1958, she was a Russian physician. These are three hugely important women who literally opened up the doors that many of us have walked through. Women do not get enough credit for their pivotal influence and the lesson from psilocybin even from Mazda Tech shaman recently. I'd be here this all the time. The message from psilocybin is to share. Now, the psilocybin mushrooms are sustainable. They can be grown. And ps Silside mushrooms that are being grown now, Slots of Equipence, which we think came from the old world, Africa, are being grown in Wohaka for the Mazatech Shaman's, so they can have access to the Silside mushrooms when it's not the rainy rainy season so they can continue their practices. So this is a fusion of Western and Eastern coming together. It speaks to something called two-eyed seeing which is something Albert Marshall and his wife. Moderna came up with this concept of two-eyed seeing when they're Eastern Canadian First Nations people and they're confronted by a mother who asked why should I send my Indigenous child to a Western school and Moderna and Albert Marshall came up with a fantastic, you know, analogy saying one eye we can see with Indigenous wisdom and the other eye we can see in the help with Western technology with two eyes we can see better than one. So this is respecting indigenous wisdom. We don't want to influence it but we want to help access so they can continue their practices so they can preserve their culture. You know, this is so important

that indigenous communities are respected and protected.

They're not marginalized,

but the Western and science

that being able to grow these things

and my book in particular,

I think we'll go down in history as a book

that will support indigenous cultures

by allowing them to be able to have a supply of these And an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, an, you know, humans migrate, right? You pick your number 25,000, 100,000, 200,000 years ago, there was no humans in the America's, right? So humans migrated into the Americas. Knowledge threads were afraid, broken, some survived. So exchanging knowledge is the way of humans. We meet someone on a trail. It's much better to be a friend than a foe just from infection if you get a wound you're likely to die. But exchanging and the again, at random acts of kindness is what has built our societies is the foundation of our societies. So sharing and respecting, but not marginalizing, not colonizing their culture, even though migration is a form of biological colonization. The two are very distinctly different. But the pan's permeate humans like to travel were adventurers. We go to new lands. We take the skills of our ancestors. We go to new lands. Hopefully meet a friend, not a foe, you collaborate, you exchange gifts, and you both are better for it. And the lesson of these mushrooms is that these are so such beautiful peacemakers. You know, we need more peaceful. This episode is sponsored by Wondering Jews, an an open door media brand. If you've ever found yourself feeling like you have more questions than answers, you're in good company. The Jewish people have been like that for thousands of years. Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam is a podcast where two of today's most dynamic Jewish voices, Michal Beton and Noam Weissmann dig into the biggest questions about life through a Jewish lens.

It's the kind of conversation where you'll laugh, learn something new, and probably shout and disagreeman at least once. Michal and Noam tackled the tough topics, like anti-Semitism in America, what happens after we die, and the future of religion, with guests like Brett Stevens, Michael Rappeport, and Sarah Herwitz. In this past month, in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, they've been celebrating some

of the Jewish lives and institutions that have shaped American life from food to music and

comedy. Sarah Herwitz. Check out Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam podcast and subscribe at unpacked.bio-nmx My ambiolch breakdown is supported by by optimizers. I struggled to get good quality sleep And I just thought like it's stress, but I learned During paramanopause and menopause your hormones shift and it affects your magnesium levels Low magnesium makes everything harder harder, not just sleep, but focus, moods, stress tolerance. That's why we added magnesium breakthrough by bioptimizers to our nightly routine. It's a blend of seven different forms of magnesium designed to support relaxation and overall sleep quality. Try it, see if you wake up more rest and refreshed. You've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Bioptimizers offers a day, no questions asked, money back guarantee. Magnesium breakthrough is a fantastic way to improve that hormonal imbalance that especially happens with magnesium. And then you have better focus, you have better sleep hygiene in general. Bi optimizers makes it so easy. Here's what you get when you go to bioptimizers.com slash breaker and use the code breaker. 15% off your entire order and a free bottle of mass signs. That's bioptimizers best selling digestive enzyme added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code. That's a $20 product free on top of your discount. This is a limited time offer while supplies last. You cannot get this on Amazon. You can't get it in stores.

The offer exists in one place.

Our link, our code. That's it. So if you were already thinking about trying it, this is the sign. Go to bioptimizers.com slash breaker, use the code breaker, grab it before it's gone. Make 2026. The year you finally start sleeping again. I think we have a crisis of creativity right now.

And these souls I have in mushrooms, I believe are Einstein mushrooms, Einstein molecules. They inspire creativity. And I think, you know, we, this is where artificial intelligence, according to Sam, Altman can't really create. They can assemble. They can have derivative assemblies. They can do things much better than humans can do. But we need to have a quantum leap in consciousness. And I think Solisheim inspires creativity for that quantum leap that certainly has been true in my life. Yeah, it's said AI can only do derivative action of what it's been programmed to do, but net new ideas it struggles with. I just spoke at the United Nations the day before yesterday, and we had the biggest AI people there. There is a disruptor audacity conference that's up on the web. It's at 100 disruptors, and I'm one of them who think outside of the box. Again, it's the idea of leapfrogging so this whole concept of mycelium is a deep well of intelligence of the Earth in the universe. It makes so much sense to so many people now. This is one of these aha moments. There are some things in life. I think we all would agree that we just know intuitively are true. You don't have to be convinced with logic. You just have this aha moment where you realize it is true. And I think this is, you know, mushrooms bring that aha moment to the forefront. You know, I think these are Einstein molecules that can help build bridges over caosums of division, religion, politics, you politics, culturally. The ecosystems want to survive, folks. And we're for better or worse, we are shepherding these ecosystems. And we're not going to have a good job of it. Well, I think one of the things that that is a challenge for many people, you know, when people look at the world, forget about our interpersonal worlds and how many of us are suffering from depression, anxiety, you know, loneliness, in many cases trauma with a lower case T and in some cases trauma with a capital T. When we think about what society looks like, when we think about the countless wars and conflict and nonsense and just even in the United States, you know, what goes on in the government and shutdowns and, you know, all of this kind of craziness, what's true is that if more people had an intuitive sense of a desire to share, to be open to more love, more acceptance, more compassion, it could potentially shift the entire landscape of the world that we live in. And in addition, as we talk about with the awakening in the 60s and the 70s, you know, people who have had a sense of an awakened consciousness do not want to put on uniforms and be sent to other countries to fight wars for a government that they don't support. Is that part of the threat that this kind of consciousness expanding medicine holds. Is this why we are not allowed access to it? And it's not supported and advertised. Like what is the block to us being able to expand our consciousness and our potential as humans? What doesn't the government want us to have? It's the inertia of ignorance. You know, so many, I mean, dealing with government, we have many examples of this. Bureau crafts don't want to change. It's jeopardizes their career and puts them in danger. Easier for Bureau crafts than government to say no than yes. You know, comes at an expense. But I want to again to give a shout out to veterans and law enforcement and to physicians and firefighters. They see the healing properties. Look at Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas. He's had this awakening. And the fundamental Christians in the fundamental Jewish community and Muslim community, I mean, it's the golden rule, do unto others as you wish them to do to you. I mean, this is something that it's the vitro-olic extremes and the narrative. I just, I just, I turned off comments off all my social media today.

Because I went to a rock, Gemini, chat GPT, all these different things and you can ask the question, how many comments on social media are bots or foreign nation states that are trying to create divisions in America. Moving on, the number is up to 80%. I mean, we're fighting a war that doesn't even exist in many cases. You know, I mean, when people realize that the comments are there to manipulate you to cause inflammation that harms your immune system as well as the social fabric of our society. People are being manipulated by AI that's being weaponized in the comments sections. I just gave a talk and saving the bees and operating in the immunity to a huge paradigm shifting discovery. Someone comments about something is totally unrelated. It's just to poke you and to cause reactions. It's a viral infection on our society. And this is where we need to fight back. One way to fight back is just turn it off those comments and going outside with your children into nature and Take photographs of flowers mushrooms and insects and go to high naturalists and you know Get back into the the natural world folks. That's where we came people have to recognize it as a viral infection as Immunipulation as Something that is being done to them because it's been normalized and then they just ride this wave and get inflamed and get distracted and don't want to go outside and it's having the intended effect if we are not calling it out and recognizing it. I'm guilty as well, folks. I'm like, why am I not going for a walk right now? Okay, I went down this wormhole, you know, and it's like I think we're also offering from that. So, you know, I'm optimistic because this is literally a revolution from the underground, with as gourmet, medicinal, or salasibon mushrooms, it brings parents together with children, It's multi-generational, multicultural, it's sweeping the planet. It's as it's the quote unquote forbidden fruit that we were told not not to consume and weird edgy science, but all of that now is so much more robust in the foundation of science. And so that's people follow the science follow the science, you know, you, you, this is the other thing I heard at this, the UN conference I was, I was, I was at, is that you want to be the pilot of artificial intelligence. You don't want to be the passenger. This is where we need to take control. We need to establish the ethos that artificial intelligence will have is origin story and the best of humanity and kindness, thoughtfulness, cooperation, building guilds of individuals who contribute to the commons. This is our power. We can do this now. Don't become subservient. Don't become a victim of AI. Become a pilot of it. And so I just challenged everybody, ask all AI platforms about the importance of random acts of kindness as the origin story of the human species that gave rise to artificial intelligence. I did this last night actually.. I went and I had that problem and I put it into chat GPT and it gave me five paragraphs asking me if I also would like visions and scenarios in which it could be applied to AI in hospitals, AI in the workplace, AI in communities and where algorithmic acts of kindness could change measurably health outcomes. So it is moving in that direction. Um, I, I, I would like to say I've never used any of these platforms. I don't even know where to find them if you, I've never have done any of these things, but I did want to give a shout out. I don't know much. I can't speak to the Christian community or the Muslim community, but there is a growing Jewish psilocybin community, and there's an organization called chefa that a friend of mine runs, and they cater. psilocybin journeys therapeutically, but specifically coded for the cultural specificity of the Jewish experience, because for many of us that were raised in a traditional way, we have different imagery, we have different language. You know, there's a lot of Hebrew as an important language for many components of a mystical experience. Anyway, so just wanted to give a shout out that that is something that exists and is growing. Again, I can't speak to it for Christians and Muslims. Well, he can serve a Christian community. It's a very big right now. It's very big with the Mormons. And for law enforcement, people out there, it's a great model. It's called the Healing Warrior Church at the San Antonio, Texas. I mean, I'm sorry, out of Austin, Texas. It's a nonprofit. They take veterans, law enforcement, officers, seals, special forces, et cetera, who've been living traumatized. They have such high suicide rates. And it's been very, very helpful to them. And so both in the religious subsets and the professional services subsets, we need better law enforcement. Imagine if you're a law enforcement officer, a two in the morning, that you pull over a car, and you have two seconds to make a decision whether this person is dangerous or not. You do that 100, 200, 300 times, are you going to make the right decision every time? No. No one's. But that wrong decision should that determine the rest of your life? And then because the insular community of law enforcement, they share the stories with themselves that they don't want other people. So it becomes more closeted. Be able to break the shackles of shame, to forgive yourself and realize, I am really a good person. I screwed up. But I'm going to do extra better now. I'm going to pay it forward. I'm going to make sure I'm the best law enforcement officer I can be. That's who we need. That's who we need with doctors, firefighters. Well, and also people who lead with compassion and people who are looking to find the best part of people so that we can maintain also this, I mean, my children, God bless them. They have very negative perceptions of all helpers in society. People that we grew up, I mean, I still wave at firefighters still as a grown woman. But we grew up that these are the heroes, these are the protectors and I completely understand why that has shifted, but I also think of the amount of time they spend on social media and what's being fed to them. And I said there are still good people, but just the notion that we want to have more people in those positions of power, right? Meaning they're in situations where they have the ability to make these kind of decisions leading with compassion.

I was at Burning Man Mudman. I've been there 19 times. I got lost in the plight on my way out at three in the morning and I saw a law enforcement officer way in the distance and I drove up to him and said, hey, man, I'm lost. I don't know where I am. He routed me the right way. And I just said, hey, I just want to say, you know,

you folks have a difficult job.

I really respect and appreciate what you do. But I believe 99% of people are basically good. They looked at me and smiled and he said, 97. But he said, now that's his experience too. There's not the most extreme negative experiences being amplified into the commons to create a viral infection of our society of inflammation that the Fomens anger and retaliation. You know, this is really important. These are these, I really believe that functionally people are good and we should not let extremists steer the future of our society. My and B.O.X. break down is supported by optimizers. You know, I struggled to get good quality sleep and I just assumed it was stress. But as I learned, during paramanopause and menopause, your hormones shift in a way that affect your magnesium levels. And low magnesium, it makes everything harder, not just sleep, focus, mood, your tolerance for stress. That's why I have added magnesium breakthrough by by optimizers to my nightly routine. It's a blend of seven different forms of magnesium designed to support relaxation and overall sleep quality. Try it, see if you wake up more rest and refreshed, you've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. By optimizers offers a 365 day, no questions asked money back guarantee. Magnesium breakthrough is a huge breakthrough to improve hormonal balance, to help with focus, decrease brain fog, improve sleep hygiene overall. Bi optimizers makes it very easy. Jonathan, what do they get when they go to bioptimizers.com slash breaker and use the code breaker? You get 15% off your entire order and a free bottle of mass times. By optimizers best selling digestive enzyme, that'll be added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code. That's a $20 product free on top of your discount already. This is a limited time offer and while supplies last, you can't get it on Amazon, you can't get it in stores, this offer exists in one place. Our link, our code, that's it. So maybe you were already thinking about it, this is the sign, go to bioptimizers.com slash breaker, use the code breaker, grab it before it's gone. Make 2026 the year, you finally start sleeping again. I'd love to touch on your 2005 book and also talk about what's changed since then, because a lot of people talk about the health benefits. We're talking about PTSD recovery and all the other areas in which it can help us physically. But I think less people understand the implications to all the different industries that it can benefit. And that, like I forget the number, but I heard the number of patents that you have.

...