Kathy H’s Reviews > Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures > Status Update

We’ve learned so much since the last check in but one of the things that really got me was the chapter about fungi zombifying ants (without being present in the brain!!!!!) and people taking LCD. There was some talk about how mushrooms may have given us religion (not his words or thoughts) and that the serenity and interconnectedness you feel with LCD is basically the mushroom expressing itself through a human!

Lichens? Apparently, infinitely confounding. Lichens = fungi + algea. Can’t be just any two either, they have to offer each other what the other lacks. But then when they grinder them up to see the two main components turns out there’s waaaaay more than just two. Everyone they try as see what’s going on in there, whose doing what, MORE THINGS ARE IN THERE. Apparently, queer theory is helpful in describing them

We’ve launched the mushrooms and lichens into space.

Later- we tried observing them on earth but in a mars like environment and the lichens said “fuck you” and went dormant for the entirety of the experiment. Incredible.

There is a lichen, in Sweden, it’s over 9 THOUSAND years old. Terrifying. Actually insane.

We are learning about truffles and my man is already back on his bullshit. Ready to run after dogs and bury his face in the dirt. I’m so happy for him.

Truffles = testicles. Alright, sir.

We have only just finished the introduction and I’ve already learned some terrifying things that have me questioning reality and the various definitions of the word ‘individual.’ The man is slowly going insane. Solution? DRUGS hahahaha (it was LSD in a clinical trial at the hospital.) This guy? Dedicated.

I always love it when an author reads their own book. Makes it really come to life and it makes it more meaningful too. But this man had me hooked when, in the prologue: he dug a little trench, scratch at a root to sniff it, and spent several HOURS inching along the ground smelling this root system. Well played sir, you got me.