Center for Science and the Imagination | The Future is Fungi: The Rise and Rhizomes of Mushroom Culture @imagineASU | Uploaded July 2023 | Updated October 2024, 20 minutes ago.
Mushrooms aren’t just in your garden anymore–they’re everywhere, making star appearances in books, movies, TV, graphic novels, video games. More scientific experts than ever before are examining how mushrooms affect human physiology. Social media is awash with mushroom hunters teaching followers how to find and safely eat fungi. Yes, mushrooms are everywhere, but why? What is it about mushrooms that spark our imaginations? Why do they inspire both wonder and terror? And what might their future look like on our ever-changing planet?
On July 11, 2023 Orion Magazine and ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination joined forces to probe these mycological mysteries with biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake, scholar and naturalist Kaitlin Smith, best-selling novelist Jeff VanderMeer and author and lecturer Corey Pressman. Together they discussed the fascinating and sometimes contradictory ways in which mushrooms are shaping our cultures and our world.
About the panelists:
Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and author of Entangled Life, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation.
Kaitlin Smith is a writer, scholar, naturalist, and founder of Storied Grounds—a Boston-based venture that delivers outdoor learning experiences and virtual tools that foster connection to place through folk knowledge and humanistic ideas. Kaitlin is also a Ph.D student in History of Science at Harvard and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker, Jeff VanderMeer has written many bestselling and award-winning works of fiction, including the Southern Reach trilogy. His nonfiction on the environment has appeared in Orion, The Nation, Current Affairs, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, and more.
Corey Pressman is an artist, author, and teacher at the school of integrative health and wellness at the University of Portland. His work at the university focuses on finding ways, through imagination, to manage stress and compassion fatigue for caregivers.
About Orion Magazine:
Orion magazine invites readers into a community of caring for the planet. Through writing and art that explore the connection between nature and culture, Orion inspires new thinking about how humanity might live on Earth justly, sustainably, and joyously. Learn more at orionmagazine.org
About the Center for Science and the Imagination:
The Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University engages in research, outreach and radical collaborations to reinvent our relationship with the future. From writers, artists, and teachers to scientists, engineers, and technologists, we bring diverse intellectual practices together to create visions of the future that are inspiring, inclusive, and imaginative. Learn more at https://csi.asu.edu.
Mushrooms aren’t just in your garden anymore–they’re everywhere, making star appearances in books, movies, TV, graphic novels, video games. More scientific experts than ever before are examining how mushrooms affect human physiology. Social media is awash with mushroom hunters teaching followers how to find and safely eat fungi. Yes, mushrooms are everywhere, but why? What is it about mushrooms that spark our imaginations? Why do they inspire both wonder and terror? And what might their future look like on our ever-changing planet?
On July 11, 2023 Orion Magazine and ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination joined forces to probe these mycological mysteries with biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake, scholar and naturalist Kaitlin Smith, best-selling novelist Jeff VanderMeer and author and lecturer Corey Pressman. Together they discussed the fascinating and sometimes contradictory ways in which mushrooms are shaping our cultures and our world.
About the panelists:
Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and author of Entangled Life, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation.
Kaitlin Smith is a writer, scholar, naturalist, and founder of Storied Grounds—a Boston-based venture that delivers outdoor learning experiences and virtual tools that foster connection to place through folk knowledge and humanistic ideas. Kaitlin is also a Ph.D student in History of Science at Harvard and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker, Jeff VanderMeer has written many bestselling and award-winning works of fiction, including the Southern Reach trilogy. His nonfiction on the environment has appeared in Orion, The Nation, Current Affairs, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, and more.
Corey Pressman is an artist, author, and teacher at the school of integrative health and wellness at the University of Portland. His work at the university focuses on finding ways, through imagination, to manage stress and compassion fatigue for caregivers.
About Orion Magazine:
Orion magazine invites readers into a community of caring for the planet. Through writing and art that explore the connection between nature and culture, Orion inspires new thinking about how humanity might live on Earth justly, sustainably, and joyously. Learn more at orionmagazine.org
About the Center for Science and the Imagination:
The Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University engages in research, outreach and radical collaborations to reinvent our relationship with the future. From writers, artists, and teachers to scientists, engineers, and technologists, we bring diverse intellectual practices together to create visions of the future that are inspiring, inclusive, and imaginative. Learn more at https://csi.asu.edu.
