Gay mushroom

And that inherently is something that we can’t extend to other organisms without having a conversation with them about it.

But what we do know in studying all sorts of organisms, from fungi to birds to lizards and algae, is that the way in which all sorts of organisms are moving throughout the world, there’s so much variation in their reproduction and in their sexuality.

And it’s all about delineating the difference between different species so we can better understand them.

And that, of course, is very functional. I knew nothing of the world of mushrooms—or so I thought.

For my interview, I met North Spore’s three owners at a coffee shop in Westbrook, Maine. The LGBTQ+ revolution started in the shadows of society but could not be contained there!

Mushrooms have the power to transform things.

There’s, we think, tens of thousands of species of them. Welcome back to Science Friday.

PATTI KAISHIAN: Hi, Kathleen. The flip side of the coin is that if we don’t allow the possibility that other organisms are as dynamic and complex as we are– if we don’t believe that they can, for example, feel pleasure or pain– that’s also not really scientific.

Similarly, queer folks can transform society by challenging and breaking down harmful norms and stereotypes. It didn’t take me long to realize that this alternative, chill energy permeates through the entirety of North Spore, and a lot of the mycological community in general. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future.

Many North Spore employees are queer. So you can’t even neatly summarize all of the ways that they behave. Can you tell me what a sit spot is?

PATTI KAISHIAN: Yes. I love this idea. Remember that both mushrooms and queer people have the power to grow and flourish, even in the darkest and dampest corners of the world.

Join a community that loves mushrooms and queer folks as much as you do!

Many folks have opined that mushrooms are queer–both in biology and the social culture around them. So they can basically have the same structures in one or multiple structures in different fruiting bodies. In a sense, mushrooms thrive in environments where they may otherwise be destroyed. So you’re not the only one, certainly, that this type of thinking is new for.

And so I think what queer ecology teaches us is that A, we are not so apart from nature as we might have been taught; B, we have the capacity to learn a lot from the organisms around us in their myriad diversity of form, and use that as inspiration for better and more equal societies. So fungal biology is really complicated because there are so many different fungi out there.

It actually starts, over time, to change the way your brain functions.