The power of fungi
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2022
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Hayward takes a journey into the world of fungi. There’s a global wave of interest in the potential uses of fungi right now - and businesses are catching on and playing their part.
Tim starts at the Fungarium in Kew Gardens, the world’s biggest collection of dried fungal specimens, guided by collections curator Lee Davies. He then heads to a forest in Finland, where chief executive Eric Puro and lab manager Joette Crosier walk him through the setup at Kääpä Biotech - one of a new breed of fungally-focussed companies with big ambitions rooted in a passion for mushrooms and mycelium. Then he talks with Albert Garcia-Romeu, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Albert is part of a research team looking at the fungally-derived compound psilocybin - about which there’s a huge amount of interest relating to its therapeutic potential.
Presenter: Tim Hayward Producer : Richard Ward. Image: Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) mushrooms being cultivated at Kääpä Mushrooms, Karjalohja, Finland. Used with permission.
Tim’s three-part series about fungi, ‘Fungi: The New Frontier’, is available now on BBC Sounds.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I want to jump up and down and dance and scream. |
| 0:03.9 | This is a dream come true. |
| 0:06.6 | I have four wonderful words for you. |
| 0:09.3 | Podcast of the year. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm Namilanta Combo and yes, my show has won top prize in the British podcast awards. |
| 0:19.1 | Dear Daughter is podcast of the year 2022. |
| 0:24.5 | So, if you aren't already a regular Dear Daughter listener |
| 0:27.8 | and want to know more about what all the fuss is about, |
| 0:31.2 | you know what to do. |
| 0:32.9 | Search for Dear Daughter from the BBC World Service |
| 0:36.4 | wherever you found this podcast. |
| 0:38.5 | The whole of season one is available to binge now. Go on. Listen to the podcast of the year. |
| 0:47.4 | I'm Tim Hayward and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC. Today we're going to be talking about fungi. |
| 0:56.6 | Over the last year, I've been on a journey for a radio documentary series and immersing myself in this weird and wonderful world. |
| 1:02.4 | I was just laying there fascinated by the mushrooms, the mycelium, the roots, the soil, and how |
| 1:10.3 | intricately complex they were. |
| 1:12.7 | I'd never seen anything so deep and intricate before. |
| 1:16.2 | I'm not the only one to have become hooked. |
| 1:19.0 | Businesses all over the world are waking up to the idea that fungi could hold seriously lucrative, |
| 1:24.5 | untapped potential. |
| 1:25.9 | They've started looking at the ways fungi can do everything |
| 1:28.3 | from growing buildings to digesting pollutants in contaminated environments, how they eat up discarded |
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