Maria Pinto, "Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival" (UNC Press, 2026)

A

Welcome to the New Books Network.

B

Is that all there is, I thought, the first time I had a proper sampling of a truffle. It's mostly earth and funk with nothing at its center. Very expensive, empty, earthy funk. A metric ton of what looked like a lump of coal had just been shaved over. Tagliatelle I ordered at a hip Italian restaurant in Cambridge. My friend was a cook there and kept sending freebies to my table, so it was kind of bratty of me to notice the expense. But skepticism is the natural state of those of my class, especially when we're assessing one of the world's most expensive foods. This truffle tasted nothing like the coat your mouth oily essences that had been obligatory on Menus in 2010 as a dressing for french fries, along with rosemary and parmesan. And I was disappointed. My naive palate had been expecting that chemical assault to the nth degree. I wouldn't learn till later that truffle oil is more a clumsy ode to reality than any kind of faithful distillation of it. The words and the short lived disappointment of mysophile and educator Maria Pinto from her book Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless, what Fungi Taught Me About Nourishment, Poison Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies and Black Survival. Out now from University of North Carolina Press. Maria, welcome to the podcast.

A

So good to be here. Thank you.

B

So before I clicked record I. I told you that I might say some, some of the scientific words wrong and I encourage you to correct me at any point. And as it was coming out of my mouth, I realized is my sophomore mysophile. Did I say that right?

A

Mycophile is how I usually hear it said. Yeah.

B

Okay. I'm so glad I asked. Off the top. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna keep a tally of the words that I, that I mispronounced, even though I. Even though I thought I practiced mycophile. What is what is what? Now I feel like you should define it. What is a mycophile?

A

A mycophile is one who is filled with fungal love or mushroom love. So mycology, Myco plus phyl or you know, love.

B

Okay, great. Well, listeners may be coming to this particular episode from a variety of new books network channels. Some will be coming in it to it from history, some from science. An interesting combination then. So when somebody asks what is this book about? What do you tell them?

A

Yeah, it really depends on the day, the mood I'm in, because as you will know from having read it, it sort of speaks to many different things. But usually I say that it's about how to love a mushroom, how to be a mycophile. It's also sort of about the world, the entire world that I found when I went looking for mushrooms. I went looking for mushrooms but found so much else. Right. Like ecology, sort of the ways that we're connected that, that might be hidden to, you know, connected to one another, connected to our more than human kin, connected to historical moments. Yeah. I went looking for mushrooms and found basically a way to live in, a way to be in the world that was maybe a little bit more balanced than, than before. And I wanted to take the reader along on that walk.

B

We're going to talk a bit more about some of the things you found, but it's interesting to hear you say, you know, I went looking for mushrooms and found so much else because this, for me as a reader, this, this book found me. I think. I was not looking for mushrooms. I was not looking for a book about mushrooms. I don't think I would have taken a book about mushrooms off a shelf. But after reading I thought, or maybe a quarter of the way through, I realized this. I didn't know I needed a book about mushrooms, but I did. Like I did. Well, not any book I needed, I needed this book. I didn't know I, I didn't know I cared.

A

Yeah, yeah. And, and what's cool, I think about having sort of come into it the way I did, having come into a love of mushrooms the way I did, is I didn't know I needed them either. So I think that that's an experience that the reader maybe shares with me. They came out of nowhere for me as well. And then also the, the so called shroom boom that started, I think right around the lockdown of the pandemic, the ongoing pandemic. A lot of people were going outside and realizing that mushrooms were there. And there was a so called shroom boom that came on the heels of that. And so we have books like Entangled Life, really beautiful Treatment of Mushrooms by Biology or biologist Merlin Sheldrake. You know, we got the documentary that was on Netflix for a while, but we really, for my money, didn't really get to see micro files that look like me. And you know, during the course of, of writing this book, I realized just how big that gap was. So I think that's another thing that I might say to people when, when they ask what the book is about. It's about all the people who don't necessarily get mentioned when you're talking about Naturalists and mycophiles in that world, you know, you.

B

In the first chapter you write. I was once asked by journalist Ari Gray, who's also my occasional hiking buddy, something along the lines of what it means to be black in the woods. What does it mean to be black in the woods?

A

I think that it means kind of coming. Coming home, coming back home. It does for me, especially just in my. My lifetime having grown up in rural areas initially. I am from Jamaica originally. The mountains just beyond Kingston or the hills just beyond Kingston. And when I moved to the United States, I was in rural South Florida. I was a little swamp rat running around in my wellies and bathing suit and catching bugs and stuff. And then we moved to the suburbs and sort of being outside had this. I don't know, it was not. Especially as I got older and we got into the sort of computer age, being outside was something I was a little bit alienated from. So for me, literally, it means coming back home to sort of my youth, the training I've had since I was young, to be curious about the world around me as I think all young people have. And maybe they get it trained out of them, but then also for black folks. So Baronda L. Montgomery wrote a beautiful book called When Trees Testify about the relationships that black folks in this country have always had with trees, with the natural world, with agriculture. That becomes vexed right when you're talking about it being in a forced labor context. And I see that sort of across the board when it comes to that vexedness, that sort of, like, stereotype that black folks, we're indoor creatures, you know, we don't go outside, we don't do all that stuff. That is definitely unraveling, and I'm so glad to see it unravel. But I think that that sort of idea is. Is slow to die, especially when you. You think about the cost of being outside now for some in our community and, you know, the, the ways that has been encoded in law, you know, the Reconstruction era, sort of like black codes about who can be outside where, when, then the Jim Crow sort of reinforcement of that. So I think it's like a lot to be battling against this. This notion that you're not meant to be outside if you look a certain way. And there's also, you know, so. So that's maybe the public facing what it means to be in the woods.

B

The.

A

What it means for me to be in the woods is just like what it means for anybody to be in the woods. And, you know, my. The cortisol. Gets mitigated the second I'm, you know, under the canopy, breathing the air that the trees are, like, so beautifully filtering for me. You know, like, it's, It's. It feels extremely natural, for lack of a better word, to be out there encountering birdsong and doing all the things that sort of my body knows it wants to be doing, especially now in the summer. It's. Yeah, it's just. It's the natural way of things, and it's a coming home for sure.

B

For the indoor people, do you think it's simply that they've not had the experience? I'm curious because I. For, for listeners, I did say to you before I hit record, I am. I though I live in New York City now. I, like, I'm an outdoors person for sure. Like, I'm. I'm outdoors a lot. And so I'm, I'm. I'm curious about.

A

Yeah, I. I'm reluctant to say that.

B

Okay. Okay.

A

That's because of. I think. I think that there's a tendency, and there can be a tendency within the, you know, nature writing or, you know, just biophilic communities to have paternalism towards people who count themselves as indoor folks. And, you know, it's not the case that New York City or being in New York City or living in New York City or identifying very strongly with the city means that you're divorced from your sort of more than human kin, because any walk down a city street means that you're encountering birds and know you're not some separate animal because, you know, there's concrete near. I think one of the great gifts of this time in my life, I think, has been being introduced to publications like Orion Magazine, where you have a writer like Emily Robitaud writing this beautiful piece, I think, that came out in 2023, called Spark Bird. And in it she talks about the Audubon Society sort of backed campaign to get these beautiful murals of birds throughout the city. And she talks about. The very first paragraph is about how if I can be said to be a birder, and then she sort of proceeds to be a birder in the most sort of spectacular and beautiful way, sort of, you know, assessing the legacy of Audubon as a person, and also what it means for these murals to be in these communities. Just sort of like an immense and incredible piece of nature, I think, coming from a place that a lot of people would not necessarily assume is coming from. And I think, yeah, I think city folks, indoor folks, people who never step foot in the woods, are you know, they inherit all of. They inherit all of this stuff. They inherit city trees, they. It's all, you know, it's all of a piece. So, yeah, I think my very. My very manicured and sort of like cultivated trails that I go on, you know, as a rule, it's not a true wilderness either. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I think there are degrees. And even the person who need someone to come into their room to take the spider away is still a natural, you know. You know, a being capable of loving the natural world as well.

B

In the book, before I even get to the chapters, you have a couple of footnotes in the introduction that talk about pronouns. Can you talk about that?

A

Yeah, yeah. So it doesn't really take that long once you start to want to honor your more than human kin, to realize that the language that we have been given to speak about those around us, those other beings around us, is inadequate to really, you know, make sense of the selves that they are. And nowhere does that become more tangible than in writing about, you know, a tree that you love or a whale that you are thinking about. And if you don't know the sex of the whale, then that means the whale isn't it. That feels very weird and wrong. And so I think despite the fact that sometimes it would sound clumsy, I wanted to sound clumsy. Just like from a beautiful sentence standpoint, I wanted to make sure that it was never an it. You know, the tree that I was speaking about was always sort of accorded the kinship that I felt. So. And I think that because in queer community, there's already a practice of sort of not assuming or not. Not. Yeah, not sort of like projecting. It was easy to. To start to sort of like, think with different pronouns. Not easy, but definitely something that was necessary in order to feel like I was being correct.

B

You were speaking for a minute in there about sentence structure and maybe a little bit of craft from a writing standpoint, I should say. This book is so beautifully written. It is such a. A beautiful book as a piece of literature.

A

Thank you.

B

And I made. No, I mean, this is. Again, this is for. This is for, you know, you and I, off mic over coffee or what, what have you. But there's so many just like funny references and because you and I are about the same age and, you know, pop culture references and all of. Again, if we got into all of them, we'd be. This would be a six hour podcast and we can't do it. But there's just. There's a. There's A lot there that was just really inviting and fun and heartwarming and resonant to read throughout as well. So you have, you have a, you have a chapter called. And again you'll correct me if I, if I mock this one up. In search of ophiocordyceps unilateralists. The zombie ink, the zombie ant fungus.

A

And I say it a different way almost every time I snub.

B

Is there one right way or is this one of those words where like different people can say it correctly? Differently?

A

Yeah, I think most people I, I think for the most part I hear ophiocordyceps and then for that second word, unilateralis, I, you know, depending on the spirit that day, it's unilateralis unilateralis. Like I was once made to feel very, very free about it all by one of the sort of like mushroom elder experts who, you know, has been pronouncing these words for years and just said, you know, every single person I encounter pronounces this specific thing a different way. I don't put any stock in the people who like are jerks about it and decide that there is one way because again, dead language. But I guess there are norms. And then even for fungi, right? Some people say fungi.

B

I did notice that too. I was going to ask you about that if I like I said fungi and I was like, am I saying that wrong?

A

I like fungi because I love a soft J sound. That's, that's it. That's the reason. And, and so I trained myself to say it that way and that's the,

B

I feel like there are more puns available though with fungi.

A

That's true. Maybe that's why, maybe that's why.

B

I mean I don't have one off the top of my head, but I feel like they're, they're more available to me.

A

It's true, it's true, it's true.

B

But okay, zombie ant fungus. What is the zombie ant fungus?

A

So by now maybe a lot of people have seen or played the last of us. You know, there's there, there are all sorts of, there are all sorts of fungal apocalypses in our stories. The zombie ant is a fungal pathogen that infects ants and essentially takes over their, you know, simple nervous systems and basically makes them into a fungus. It, it, you know, you're looking at an ant, but what's actually inside of that ant is an ever evolving mycelial network that manipulates the ants behavior such that it makes them move to a place that is, that would be good for the spreading of spores. So in many cases that would be the underside of a leaf and it makes them clamp their mandibles down on a vein on the underside of the leaf, the better to spread the spores. And then a mushroom starts to sort of grow out of a part of their anatomy, sometimes the head. And yeah, that ant, that former ant is now basically a way for the, the fungus to spread its spores.

B

How often does this happen? Here's what I'm asking, because now I feel compelled whenever I see ants to find one. Like, is this something that's possible or is this more like finding a four leaf clover?

A

Like, well, funny you should ask because a friend of mine, and so to be clear, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is not common or it's a complex, it's a species complex. So there are many different species sort of within that umbrella. But it is not a common fungus here in the northeast of the U.S. but my friend shout out to Lindsay of the mushketeers, just found Ophiocordyceps complex like an ant that had been infected in a local woods here. And it was like there was much, you know, celebration and surprise. But usually it's sort of a rainforest or a tropical species. And we do, however, have all sorts of other fun insect pathogens that are less rare in our area. But ophiocordyceps is not likely to happen here. It's not a rare fungus by any means, where it does happen as a rule, but it's definitely not the kind of thing that's likely to cause even an insect apocalypse. It's very specialized and it keeps the balance in the rainforest where it does infect, it's not likely to sort of, yeah. Cause a huge disruption to ant populations where it does happen. Because as I write in the book, if an ant sees or suspects that kind of infection, it will rip apart, you know, its former compatriot and like stuff the body into a place where it's unlikely to infect others.

B

I mean, the stuff of zombie movies, right?

A

Exactly. Very gory stuff.

B

Yeah. Which you talk about in this chapter and you talk about, you know, it's this weaving of the zombie ant fungus from a scientific standpoint. But you also get a bit into the, into zombies as a, as a part of history, as a part of our history. Can you talk a little bit about that as well?

A

Yeah, yeah. So when I was learning about ophiocordyceps and I think this was one of my spark mushrooms way back in the day I was struck by the fact that the language used to describe them was always zombie. Like, even in the academic papers, these biologists, these, you know, entomologists were all using that word. And I knew from history classes that I took in college that zombie, that the zombie was a. A spiritual vessel or a part of Haitian cosmology. And I wondered how many people, you know, who are using this word knew that. So doing the sort of deep dive on the history of the zombie, the sort of bringing of certain parts of that cosmology from Africa, you know, via the slave trade to these new places and sort of like the way the idea of a Jumbie or there are all sorts of different words throughout the Caribbean for a kind of ghost. But the way it gets sort of like crystallized in Haiti was fascinating to me. And so learning more about that history and being very thankful to Zora Neale Hurston for, you know, during her time in the Caribbean thinking about and even meeting a zombie. Yeah, it all sort of came together in this strange stew that is that. That chapter. But it was impossible to learn more about the zombie without sort of going a little bit deeper and learning sort of what all made it happen in the Haitian context.

B

You write elsewhere in the book. I don't seek out transatlantic slave trade or slavery times narratives. They simply arrive on my plate whenever I try to learn about the movement through time of the people and things that interest me.

A

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's interesting, like, right. Like, if you have any curiosity about your place in the world as a black person or how it came to be, it's. This is the story that the minute you start to investigate anything, there are links and ties to the slave trade. And, and it's funny, you know, not funny ha ha, but it's funny to be thinking about poison and realize, oh, okay, there's this story of Mark Codman and the, you know, the, the way that Mark Codman's story intersects with Paul Revere's ride is this fascinating thing that you, you know, you're. You start off thinking, okay, how has poison been used in New England? And then you end up with, you know, a formerly enslaved person being hung from a gibbet, and you learn about gibbets and, you know, like, it's just this, this. This thing. Funny story. When I was writing this, the chapter on poisons, I just would end the writing day. You know, I'd spend like three, four, four hours writing after having done a few hours of research maybe sometimes, and I would just feel bad And I was. I'd walk around my house like, just like, what is. What is wrong with me? And my partner was like, you were just reading and writing and metabolizing about some of the sort of most awful things in human history. Like, what do you mean? What. Why. Why don't you understand why you feel bad? And I think it's just like, yeah, this. This sort of, like, you know, thing that you. You maybe even stop seeing for what it is because it's so commonplace to just land there when you're investigating something else. But there is nothing else. Right? Like, almost like, you know, it all roads lead there. So

B

this book, though, does something interesting. I know we're going to talk more about the interconnectedness of all the things, but I had this interesting experience reading the book where I could only read one chapter at a time. Like one. Not more than one chapter a day. And look like I play around in the Civil War era all the time. Like, I will sit down in it for hours and read those narratives, and it's not easy, but I'm just sort of like, I'm conditioned. I don't, you know. But this book, like, more. I couldn't do more than a chapter. And I think it's because there is just. There is a depth of the writing and I'll call it storytelling in such a way that, yes, there's the science. You know, the science is there. The history is there. There's a quite a bit of you in your personal story throughout the book as well that comes together in a way that, as the reader makes it very clearly see. I make very clearly see how I fit in to this too, as the reader, that I didn't. I didn't put the book down because I felt bad. I. I put the book down and walked away because I felt like. It's like when I leave yoga class and I don't want to pick up my phone for a few hours because, like, the vibe is there. And I know the minute I pick up my phone, you know, the vibe will go away because I'll start reading emails again. It was like that. It was like, I just need to sit in the vibe for a while, a while before I move on.

A

That's one of the most lovely things anyone has said about. About the book. Thank you so much. Yeah, you're not. You're not the only person to say that. It was like needing to sort of like, pace oneself or like step away or sip rather than chug.

B

So I want to talk about another. Another one of Your chapters, which is Psilocybe species, the magic mushroom. Did I say that one right?

A

Some people say psilocybe, some people say psilocybe, some people say.

B

Oh, I would never want to say

A

that I wasn't, I don't love it, honestly. I, Yeah, I call them psilocybin mushrooms. So it's what?

B

Yeah, okay. Magic mushrooms.

A

Yeah, yeah, all mushrooms are magic. But definitely, definitely these sort of make their, they bop you over the head with their magic.

B

So what I thought. So in this particular chapter you're talking about, I mean, for a fair bit of it, you're talking about tourism. I mean, is that a fair statement of the.

A

Yeah, yeah. I, I wanted to talk to a fellow, a person who was linked to one of these psilocybin assisted therapy retreats in Jamaica. Jamaica has it, it doesn't have any laws sort of prohibiting the use of psilocybin. So for people who are interested in forwarding those therapies, Jamaica has been an amazing place to set up shop. Has the added, you know, bonus of being a place that a lot of people consider to be paradise. So there's. Yeah, there's. It. For people who are interested in making money in a particular way, there's like a lot, a lot there for them. I was interested in talking to someone linked to the sort of emerging ecosystem of these retreat centers to see how they thought of themselves within the Jamaican economy, how they thought of themselves in reference or in relationship to Jamaicans. And so the conversation that I had with the CEO at one of these places, yeah, just sort of like, I'm not a journalist. So going into the interview process, sort of having a sense of how it might go was definitely, you know, a part of the equation. But yeah, he. The conversation reinforced some of the worries that I had that there was not a whole lot of maybe thought given to what would emerge after sort of the, the initial extraction. And, and I can't help but think of it as extractivist as, as some people with a lot of money investing money into a place and you know, saying that the tourism dollars that, that will be fed into the, the Jamaican economy will, will benefit all Jamaicans and, and then sort of not really seeing much but self interest reflected in the actual business model. So yes, there, there is a lot of me thinking, what are you doing? What are you doing in my homeland? And, and, and will anyone actually call this out for what it is or will we just be happy again to have the same old model of people from outside being enriched and using the Natural resource. That is the law. Right to make themselves rich, to line their own pockets.

B

In that chapter. As part of this conversation, you take this press on this question of Westernness, like Jamaica as a Western or even the term Western.

A

Mm, yeah. What is that term? It's so sticky and weird and amorphous and it seems to sort of ebb and flow depending on the needs of white supremacy. Like Western doesn't really mean. It doesn't signify until like someone defines it within the conversation they're having. It seems to me like it, it's in constant need of being redefined. I don't know. What do you think? I'm curious about this because I, I think I interrogated it the hardest I ever have while using it in this chapter and still kind of came out not really knowing.

B

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna. Instead of answering directly, I'm gonna pivot back to where you were just talking about the tourism piece of it. Because that's. Actually, I have put more thought into that piece than this question of what is west? What is west? Which is, and look, I've never been to any of these sort of places that you write about. Nor, nor will I. Like, I just. For a lot of reasons, just not for me. But I. These people wouldn't have a business if there were not a market for this. And so me personally, what gets me really spun up is not the business owner, it's the customers. Is the customer base. This, the way that I understand it anyway, is this, is. This is a demand driven industry. And, and the people are creating the demand. And if the people thought differently, acted differently, interrogated a little more deeply themselves, then these people wouldn't have a business. And, and also I think those same people, I'm generalizing, of course, but these same people are the type of people who will point a finger at the business owner and be like, look what that guy's doing. It's like, well, he's doing it because you're buying. He's selling it because you're buying it. And I, and I'm saying that not, not I, I'm not, I'm not making a judgment specifically on mushroom therapies or any of those kinds of things. Again, that's not for me. But I don't have a. Not making a comment on that. I'm making a comment on the business model. Like it could be anything. And in fact, there are a lot of other things that I have the exact same argument about. Yeah.

A

Like, yeah, yeah. And, and it, it feels like something that I don't get to sort of. Like, there's no. It's not a me and them thing, especially because I know a lot of people who would look at my use of. Of psilocybin that I pick. Right. Like, they would look at that and say that it's not the right context, that it's, you know, there's a way that it's, you know, there's a colonized mentality because it's not being done in the right sort of spiritual place. Like, there are levels to all of these different critiques. And I'm, you know, wanting to be really clear that, like, while I'm so glad that the research is being done and that these places with these models are at the forefront of putting, you know, studies into the ecosystem so that people can do it responsibly, whatever that looks like, monetize it responsibly, whatever that looks like. Again, so many different people from different traditions would look at any of this and say, what. What are you doing? You know, so, yeah, it's. It's.

B

You.

A

You can't. Yeah, you can't point the finger without several pointing back at you sort of thing. But then also, it's. It's. There's. There's a lot to unpack when it comes to watching neocolonialism do its thing.

B

Yes. And being a part of it. Being a part of it.

A

Yeah, I. Yeah, there's. There's no escaping it. I. Yeah, it's. There, there is escaping it, but I just don't know what that life looks like, I guess.

B

Well, yeah, to escape it everywhere in all parts of life. Like, that's the part I'm like. I also. I have no idea what that, what that looks like at all. This question about ethics. You. There's this really interesting. It's very brief, but a really interesting anecdote in the book where this person, you know, takes. I actually think he takes you out in New Hampshire, which is the state I was born in, takes you out to New Hampshire and to a spot, a foraging spot.

A

And.

B

And you say that you sort of know that ethically you can't return without him, even though you know how to get. Even though you know how to get there. Now talk a little bit about those ethics.

A

Yeah, yeah. This. This guy, this. This mushroom elder, this. This person who I saw on the mushroom Internet, well before I met him, he offered to take me to see the Mushroom at the End of the World, one of the most beautiful, you know, one of the most valuable mushrooms There is in like a capitalist sense. And he was actually doing some commercial picking. So it meant a lot for him to bring me to this spot. And I joked with him that I was surprised that he didn't blindfold me, that we weren't, you know, that I wasn't spun in circles so that I didn't know how to home back in on it. But the bottom line is, yeah, there it is. There's a lot of trust when it comes to this, this thing, this. These places that you find that are these, you know, just sites of treasure for. For people. These places that they've been searching sometimes months, sometimes years on end to find that are extremely meaningful to them. They, you know, they found this place, spot when they'd just given up, you know, and that giving up could mean all sorts of things, right? And yeah, they're oases, they're treasured places. And sometimes I've seen it done where people will bring someone to a place like this and that someone doesn't respect that and maybe brings a whole group to, you know, sort of plunder the spot. There's. There's just something inherently, there's a beautiful trust that goes into taking someone to a loved foraging spot, a place that produces many mushroom or mushrooms or produces a rare kind of mushroom. It's sacred. It feels like a consecration of friendship. It is almost, you know, if. If I do that, it means that I'm. I think that you are trustworthy above all else. And so to break that would just be unthinkable. And what was funny about it was that he said, you just try and beat me back to this place. I mean, this, this is a spot also that he spent years understanding, knowing the years that it's likely to produce, understanding the patterns that go into, you know, the. Whether the prior season was a drought, how many years it's been since it fruited, a lot of mushrooms. So me as a Johnny come lately, I'm not going to be able to, you know, understand it the way he does either. So there's also that.

B

So you write about how when you first began posting photos of mushrooms online on social media, that essentially you were asked, you know, do you work? And. And you write, I wish that I had said no, I don't work. Like any freelance artists in the 21st century, I have a practice.

A

Yeah, yeah. It's a little jokey joke about the words that we use to sort of relate to folks with nine to five with the kinds of jobs that get you that good insurance and all that. Kind of stuff. As someone who has freelanced and taken odd jobs my entire adult life, what's funny about it is at that time, I was dog walking, so I was outside all day. You know, I was working with a capital W. But it doesn't appear that way when we're, like, enjoying aspects of it and taking pictures of mushrooms. And, you know, you seem to be, like, learning something on top of the work that you're doing. And so to me, it was easy to translate that and to be a little bit ungenerous to that person and say, oh, what you don't like is that I'm doing it, is that I'm, like, enjoying my life and seem to have a hobby during the daytime hours when maybe you're locked away in a room doing something you don't like. So just to be, you know, a little bit catty. But, like, also, it felt. It felt like. It felt strangely confrontational and very much if. If my ungenerous reading is correct, it felt like one of the ways that this capitalist ethic of the way you're supposed to use your daytime hours sort of disfigures thinking around joy and just simply existing and noticing other creatures and beings. What I was doing was I was noticing these mushrooms at her, I think. And so it was a moment where I was like, what does it mean to just be mushroom hunting during the day? Like this. Is it, like, a little bit radical? Is it, like, a little bit revolutionary? But yeah, it's also just funny to think about why that was so confronting.

B

Oh, there's this weird. Because I have not spent my whole adult life as a freelancer, though I am now, I spent the majority of it, you know, deep. Deep in the bowels of corporate life. And today, now, while I am infinitely happier, there's not a word to talk about how much happier I am. I feel this weird need to justify the hours I have worked every day. Like, I will tell people who don't ask, like, how many hours I have spent working, because I'm not. I don't go to an office from 9 to 5.

A

I recognize that.

B

Yeah. And I'm like, where does that come from? I'm like, well, I know exactly where it comes from. But it's a strange, strangely ingrained thing.

A

Yeah. And it's funny because I think that for some people, with some people, I'm at this point in my life, I think, where I want to appear. Like, I'm resting even when I'm not. Like, so it. The. The. Yeah. So the. The The. The psychology of it all. Like, even when you think you've gotten past the place where you need to sort of justify what you're doing, the bills are paid, like, you know, whatever, like. But still there are these weird ways that it circles back in on itself. So I'm the most busy I've ever been and, you know, I feel like I've gotten to a place where that no longer feels both like a complaint and a brag at the same time. I'm reading this amazing. Or I just finished reading this amazing book by Nina McLachlan called Summer Solstice where she talks about having had a teacher who would ask when he heard students complaining about all their homework, are you bragging or are you complaining? Like. Or is it both?

B

Oh, I totally get that.

A

But now there's this other thing because we've come back round to understanding that rest is necessary for, you know, our bodies and for our minds, where it's almost like we're gotten to a place where it's now cool to pretend to. I don't know. I don't really know if that's true or not, or maybe it's just me, but I definitely. I think now that we've come back around in the. In certain communities of artists to being on a grind and also wanting to look like we can enjoy life more than we. More than we actually can. I don't know.

B

So, speaking of work, you have again this amazing chapter, amazing line where you're talking about scientists generally and you say scientists whose work has lessons for us are going to have to get a little sluttier. And you talk about the fact that scientists are not slutty enough. I love this notion. I wholeheartedly agree, not just with scientists, but I would add historians into that as well. Just talk about what you mean when you say they have to get sleddier.

A

Yes, yes. There is a moment where I was talking to a botanist and she was doing incredible work on Arctic, not Arctic, alpine species of plants and sort of their life ways. And she was talking about this. She was talking about also the mycologists because she saw me perk up and she was like, oh, yeah, they're mycologists across the way, sort of in our same department. And I asked how often sort of they come together to talk about the ways that, you know, because it's an obvious cross pollination. And she said that they didn't at all. And I thought that was just so strange because, you know, we're talking about plants that have Fungal partners. We're talking about fungal partners that are there because those plants are there. We're talking about these two fields of study that need one another and then we're talking about how they don't ever cross, even though literally they're in the same building. So I was extremely struck by that. And it was the same story every time I asked around. Like the non communication between disciplines that need each other. And then in terms of thinking about how I think money, considerations, grant money, you know, the way studies get funded in certain parts of the academy, it's like very competition based. So people might be reticent to share certain things, especially before, you know, these things are widely known or even knowable. And it all seems to me to kind of stem from the same problem of just siloing, deciding that, you know, you have a focus and sort of being so driven within that field that you don't think about how the, the stuff that you're finding, the, you know, some beautiful new creature that we all should know about that lives in the soil in a place where they're about to start fracking or, or, or whatever, you know what I mean? Like these things, that public knowledge of them would be beneficial, broadly speaking, even if it meant that maybe, you know, someone else started studying it too. I, I don't know. Like there's, there's so much that we lose when we pretend that all this stuff is disconnected. And I think that kind of like the, I use sluttiness, I use the word slutty to be provocative on purpose because I think that there's just like pearl clutching all around and just this sort of sense of like needing to, to continue this ivory tower nonsense. And, and I get, I get a lot of the sort of, like there's, there's backlash, there's a lot of, you know, backlash against like good science and against experts and against, you know, the taking of a headline and running with it without really fully understanding the implications of what is being said or what was actually discovered. Maybe, maybe the thing that was discovered is more modest than the headlines would suggest. I get that. But then also I think to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, I'm going to keep mom about this or I'm going to explain this in the driest possible terms so that no one but us, we who can truly understand it, can understand it is also just so wrong headed and like bad for us. We're losing recipes. And I think it's, it's about, it's, you know, sometimes it's about the, the wanting to keep everything separate and quiet and reserved and going through the proper sort of like scientific channels. It's, it's not serving us well that, that system.

B

So the book has been in the world now for a little bit. Has there been anything that's surprised you about the reaction to it?

A

Yeah.

B

Okay.

A

Yeah. You know, first and foremost, you know, you dream, you dare to dream that the book will find its reader and that, you know, and maybe you dare to dream that it goes beyond that to some degree, but the way that teachers, professors, educators, the way that the people on my signing line are made up of people from all walks of life, like people who say that they were not looking for a mushroom book but found the book and it meant something to them that I don't, I, I don't. I continue to be gobsmacked by it and to feel incredibly lucky and to feel like, yeah, it's a surprise every single time. Like the, the, the being a part of a science curriculum as a non scientist. Right. Like as someone who just had and has a, you know, a passion, it's, it just doesn't. Doesn't. It continues to not compute. But also I think I'm, I'm just so happy that people who never saw themselves thinking about mushrooms or trees or the natural world have, have found the book and found something to liken it. It's the biggest surprise.

B

The book is Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless, what Fungi Taught Me About Nourishment, Poison Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies and Black Survival by Maria Pinto. Find out more about Maria and her work in the show notes. You have been listening to Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Sommer, a new Books Network podcast, and I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. If you like what you heard, like, follow and drop us a rating on your favorite podcast app. We're on Instagram ditions to the Archive and we're free over on Substack 2, where Maria and I are headed right now to continue our conversation. Thank you for listening to Additions to the Archive.