Meet the Self-Taught Medicinal Mushroom Cultivator

[Narrator] So you think you like mushrooms?

Well, this man-

Bing!

[Narrator] Has cultivated hundreds and thousands

of mushrooms from dozens of species,

teaching himself how to turn them into extracts, tinctures,

and even DNA barcoding them.

I am that I am, I'm a '94 model human.

They call me William Padilla-Brown,

multidisciplinary citizen scientist,

founder of Mycosymbiotics and MycoFest.

[twangy electronic music]

[Interviewer] How many mushrooms

do you think you've grown or cultivated?

[Interviewer] Like individual mushrooms? Yeah.

Holy sheesh, man.

I believe I've cultivated about 38 species of mushrooms.

I can't even go outside saying I run a mushroom business

without somebody saying, Oh, what kind of mushrooms?

Or asking about magic mushrooms or something like that.

My response is all mushrooms are magic.

[bell dings]

[Narrator] In the pursuit of the magic of fungi,

William has to take his work

far from the hum of electric lights.

[William] We're here in central Pennsylvania

in one of these beautiful hemlock-dominant forests

on the Appalachian range, along the Susquehanna River.

We can find really good specimens out here

that we can bring back to our lab

to increase our genetic diversity

that we have available to our farmers here in the US.

These are coral mushrooms.

Some people call these the Crown Rip Coral,

but there's a lot of species variation

in this type of mushroom.

These are saprophytic mushrooms.

They'll generally grow on dead and dying materials,

like these logs.

Some cultures and some people will eat these.

I have not eaten this one.

They look cool though.

I think that there has been a fear of mushrooms.

I think there's a lot of people

that think mushrooms are toxic.

The more you spend time with something

that you think is weird,

the more it becomes something that you understand.

[Narrator] William continues

to eye the forest floor as he hikes,

his vision attuned

to spotting these small natural marvels at a distance.

We're looking at a display of goldenthread Cordyceps,

is the common name.

There you go.

You can see it was growing on this little truffle ball.

For certain mushrooms,

we carry them around in bags like this

so that their spores are released.

I designed this bag with a friend

so that it's completely mesh

and all the spores can come out.

Spores are the reproductive cells of mushrooms, super tiny.

They're really good at getting around

and about on their own.

[curious percussive music]

Here we have Lactifluus volemus,

and this is a delicious choice edible

of the summer season here in Pennsylvania.

I like to make chili with these.

These mushrooms are really fun because

if you cut them along the gills,

you'll see that they start to produce a latex.

But when you cook it, it all kind of just goes away.

[Narrator] What he's found so far today

is just a fraction of the mushrooms William cultivates.

[William] Turkey Tail Mushrooms, Trametes versicolor.

These mushrooms can be found all around the world.

These mushrooms are called versicolor

because they have a variety of colors

that you can find on the top,

but they will generally be white on the bottom,

unless they are starting to get a little bit old.

These mushrooms are highly valued

for their immunological support.

Here we have our local Reishi, Ganoderma tsugae.

Grows on the hemlock tree.

This is known as the mushroom of immortality

and used in teas and valued for its antioxidant effects.

We got our good old Oyster Mushrooms.

These are one of the more commonly cultivated mushrooms

by hobbyists and citizen scientists

because of how easily it takes

to growing on all sorts of different substrates.

From coffee grounds to cardboard,

Oyster Mushroom is your guy.

Wow, this place is popping.

[Narrator] As William continues to forge,

he's about to make an exciting discovery.

[William] So this is exactly what we were looking for.

Cordyceps militaris is the most valuable mushroom

that I can come in here and leave with.

I could leave with dinner,

but I can leave with this mushroom,

which we can take back to our laboratory,

breed out new cultures for people to farm.

So we can create value for ourself.

Other people can create value for their families,

a lot more than just taking home a couple mushrooms

for a meal.

These mushrooms are Entomopathogenic,

which means that they grow on insects.

We generally find them on moth pupa here in Pennsylvania,

generally the orange tip oakworm moth.

So we wanna dig that whole thing up.

You can actually get a clone of the mushroom from the insect

because the insect is completely mummified in mycelium.

Sick.

Great forage.

We found exactly what we were looking for.

I got two different types of Cordyceps

and a little bit of food.

So we can take everything back to the lab.

I can get some nice clones, get some spores going.

We can start growing and doing some business.

[Narrator] Spotting and harvesting mushrooms

may seem second nature to William.

Yee hee!

[Narrator] But his deep well of insight and knowledge

didn't happen overnight.

[William] When I was 16, I dropped outta high school.

And when I was 17, I got my own apartment.

Around that time, I found it very imperative

to understand the source of what I was consuming.

In wanting to know where my food came from,

I began cultivating organic food.

I started to see mushrooms and play with them,

figure out how to grow them.

Because at that point in time, I was a vegan,

that I realized that I was developing a literacy

around mycology that not many people had.

So I took that information,

started to gather as much as I could

and made myself very publicly accessible

so that I could share it with other people

and develop more literacy around mycology

so that I could have more nerds to hang out with.

[Narrator] All of his study and dedication has led William

into a scientific familiarity with fungi

that allows him to see and study what most people cannot.

William has to be very precise

as he processes samples from his foraging finds,

neatly dissecting and pulling what he needs with delicacy.

[William] Before COVID we were already using masks in here

because you breathe out a lot of organisms

out of your mouth and your nose,

that it can potentially contaminate the work

that you're doing.

So if you're wondering if your mask works or not, it does.

You'll get bacteria on your Petri dishes.

The mycelium in the insect is dense,

and the mycelium in the mushroom is just very small

to get a piece of mycelium out of.

So I'm gonna take this scalpel, get it sterilized.

That only needs to be in there for a few moments,

and I'm gonna put my Cordyceps sample

onto the alcohol paper towel.

Gently mist it with some isopropyl alcohol.

This was in the soil,

so there's a lot of organisms on it.

I'm going to slice it in half long ways.

So what I'm doing now is I'm just going

for some of this inner tissue,

which for Cordyceps is very little.

It's just a little bit difficult

when the mushroom is so tiny.

That's all I need.

Nature's technology is incredible.

This little bit of tissue has enough

to replicate the entire organism.

[Narrator] Cloning and growing mushrooms

is complicated enough as it is.

But William's recent study

is into the DNA of mushrooms themselves.

I discovered that there are now portable DNA sequencers,

and that is incredible.

I got super inspired

and I used one of the stimulus checks to purchase one.

And then I spent the month teaching myself

how to work with polymerase chain reaction,

gel electrophoresis and DNA sequencing.

Now that these things are becoming more commonplace,

we're going to reach a different type of awareness

that this is just a story.

All life is just a story.

[Narrator] And William continues telling these stories

through his research into mushrooms

and exploration of the mushroom community.

I hope that my work encourages more people

to take their education into their own hands

and start to operate from a more decentralized standpoint

like the mycelium does.

The mycelium doesn't just put

all of its energy into the center.

It's all distributed throughout.

And I think that this way is more resilient.

As an individual that looks to mimic nature,

mimic natural designs that have been perfected

over millions of years,

I think that working with these types of systems

that we see with the mushrooms

may prove to be very effective

for some of our human systems that have been very flawed.