On today's episode of the Real Foodology podcast, people assume there's a lot of academic research

happening on the discovery of new mushrooms and new species right now. We only know about 7%

on the entire world's bundles. I'm really inspired by all these community scientists that are

making the discoveries. And what's even more inspiring about that is each of those new species

has a potential treasure trove of unique biochemical properties that could have novel compounds.

We're barely scratching the surface of what's out there.

Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. I am your host Courtney Swan.

Today's episode is all about mushrooms. Functional mushrooms. We are not talking about psilocybin today,

although I do have an episode all about psychedelics in psilocybin. Definitely go back and check out

the episode that I did with Allie Shaper. We dove as deep as we could go into psilocybin.

So fascinating subject. But anyways, I have the founder of Malama Mushrooms. His name is Ben Lili Bridge on the podcast today.

We talk about a lot of really exciting stuff. So we talk about his journey, how he got started in mushrooms, also where he thinks that the forefront is for mushrooms as we dive more to the

research. Mushroom is a really cool conversation right now because we realize that there's so

little that we know, but what we do know is incredibly fascinating. Like the fact that they are all connected

with this mycelium web and they essentially talk to each other and they talk to all the plants around

them, which is just fascinating. And it also goes to show that there's probably a lot there that we

don't know about yet, which I think is really cool. But what we do know and what has been heavily

researched is the effect that these mushrooms have on our brain, on our immune system, and how

when used correctly, they can be really beneficial to our overall health. And when I say used

correctly, the cool thing is there's no concern for overdosing, so you can't overdo it.

But I guess more when I think about, when I say correctly, is when used for the right context.

So like, for example, if you're looking for better cognitive function, you want to turn to something like Lionsmane, or if you're dealing with something with your immune system and you really need to turn on your immune system, turkey tail is a great one. Or if you're wanting to calm down and go to sleep,

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