Advertise on podcast: Understory - An InoculateTheWorld Podcast

Brooke Sanders refuses to separate her online persona from her academic one, and that fusion is the core of what makes her so special. A cannabinoid neuroscientist turned SSDP policy staffer, she walks us through what it actually looks like when the DEA schedules a compound out from under a working lab, including one case where federal prosecutors submitted printed Reddit posts as evidence of a drug crisis. We get into SR-17018, the 7-OH scheduling fight, harm reduction on the ground at a syringe exchange, and what Shulgin's legacy still owes the next generation of scientists willing to test on themselves.

In the first recorded interview of its kind, we speak to a legendary figure of underground psychedelic history: Charles Perry, longtime friend and roommate of Owsley “Bear” Stanley. There would be no Grateful Dead, no LSD craze, and no iconic dancing bear imagery without Owsley Stanley, and few knew him as closely as Charles Perry. This interview blows the lid on many of the most treasured icons in psychedelic history as we’re regaled with tales of Timothy Leary, crime and chaos in the Haight Ashbury, touring with the Grateful Dead, dining on Baklava with the President of Türkiye, and so much more. Charles Perry is among the greats of his psychedelic generation, and this interview is the deepest dive to date on his incredible life story.

Jasper Degenaars co-runs Fungi Academy, a mushroom education center and intentional community on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. He has been growing mushrooms for over 15 years and teaching cultivation and ecology to a huge group of devoted students for the last seven. In this conversation Jasper talks about what fungi model for human community. He walks through the Dutch truffle loophole that made his early age experiments legal, the archetypes of people who show up to learn cultivation, and his case against the inbred Cubensis mutants currently dominating the hobby. We get into plastic-eating fungi, yeast engineered to produce psilocybin, the fungicide resistance problem nobody is talking about, and the mushroom-lightning connection that shows up in mythological traditions all over the world.

We’re joined this week by the legendary Joey Santore, the man behind the viral YouTube channel Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t. Joey is an authority on all things plant-life, and this conversation is an expansive dive into his fascinating mind. We talk native habitat conservation, deep desert lore, and strategies for staying sane in a world bent on self-destruction.  There’s truly something for everyone in this episode, and we’re grateful that Joey was down to chat.

Dr. Pamela Kryskow is a preeminent researcher and practitioner working at the intersection of frontline medicine and psychedelic care. She is a chair of the Psychedelic Association of Canada, and a lead study therapist on the microdose.me citizen science study. Having spent 8 years fighting fires in the Canadian wilderness, Dr. Kryskow is intimately acquainted with the unique challenges that face first responders: daily traumas, exposure to extreme environments, and less attention to their pain from the general public.  We go deep in this week’s episode, exploring themes of memory, resilience, and the many promises of psychedelic medicines.

Rookie Mycologist is a dominant content creator in both the mushroom and the 420 space. He has single-handedly built a massive educational platform and continues to inspire millions of people to explore the world of home cultivation.  Rookie joins us this week for a deep-dive into mycology, economic self-determination through content creation, and the politics of online censorship. Stick around to learn how you, too, can build an empire by doing what you love.

Dimitri Mugianis is an underground psychedelic legend and one of the most celebrated figures in the ibogaine movement. A former addict himself, Dimitri traveled extensively through Holland and West Africa in search of an answer to the pain that led him to heroin and crack. After being initiated into Bwiti, the indigenous African tradition that uses ibogaine as a sacrament, Dimitri became a traveling medicine man and an evangelist of sorts, serving ibogaine to bohemians and artists and activists in his native New York City.  This conversation is a searingly honest journey through Dimitri’s life—the joy, the triumph, and the many ways in which he got things wrong.

Visionary mycologist and citizen science extraordinaire William Padilla Brown joins us for a deep dive into everything from truffle biochemistry to cordyceps cultivation to the history of world religions. This is an epic conversation with one of the brightest thinkers in the field. Learn the secrets behind William’s DIY approach to building a mushroom business, and discover the hidden story of his success. You can find more of Williams work on his website: https://mycosymbiotics.com/

Soren Shade is a producer of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, co-founder of a kratom tea company, and an inveterate drug policy expert. He discovered kratom in his dorm at Columbia in 2017, leaning on it to get through a workload he wasn't prepared for after growing up in an underfunded school system in West Virginia. What started as a study aid quickly transformed into a passion, leading him to a deep education in how the drug war actually operates, from regulatory backroom deals to international treaty politics to the strange economics of a substance that keeps almost getting banned and keeps surviving anyway. We dive deep in this episode as Soren recounts the many disastrous failures of the drug war and regales us with stories of an old mentor who carried decades of secrets.

Alan Rockefeller has spent twenty five years teaching himself everything there is to know about mushrooms, entirely outside any university or institution. This episode is a myth-busting session: a look at how the stories we tell about fungi, which ones are dangerous, which are native, which names actually mean what we think they mean, get built, repeated, and rarely questioned. It's worth listening to with your assumptions in hand, because most of them won't survive the hour.

Keeper Trout is a peyote conservationist and a legendary figure in the American psychedelic movement. This conversation is about what real stewardship demands, what reverence looks like once you've seen a sacred plant in crisis with your own eyes, and what it means to spend a life in service to something that can't ask for help directly. It's also a conversation with one of the last people alive who spent real time with Sasha Shulgin, still sorting through the incredible archive he left behind. Keeper shares remarkable and occasionally shocking stories from his colorful life on the frontlines of psychedelic advocacy.

Colin Wells is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, a devoted father, and a man who has transformed his pain into service. This conversation moves through the ravages of addiction, the promises of psychedelics, and the specific loneliness that follows a uniform. There’s one question that motivates Colin to keep showing up for his nature-based psychedelic peer support group, Veterans Walk and Talk. Stick around ‘til the end to find out what it is.

Stephen Kinzer spent years reconstructing the mysterious life of a man the CIA worked hard to keep invisible: Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist behind MK-Ultra and the man responsible for some of the most extreme experiments the US government ever ran on its own citizens. This conversation is an investigation into the specific kind of person capable of doing that work, what he told himself to make it possible, and how much of what he pioneered around the manipulation of personality and the re-structuring of belief still persists today.