If you’ve read any of our beer-related articles over the past month, you’ve seen a ton of references to fall and what this season means for beer drinkers. Autumn is a time for dark lagers, pumpkin beers, brown ales, and (as the weeks go on) strong ales, barleywines, stouts, and porters.
Of course, there are still plenty of seasonal IPAs on the shelf, too. It’s a style that never really has a fallow period. After all, citrus, tropical fruits, and spice are key elements of many fall and winter flavor profiles.
For this craft beer blind taste test we picked eight well-known, fruit-forward IPAs. They’re hoppy, slightly bitter, and loaded with notes of mango, lime, and even grapefruit. Keep reading to see which beers were our favorites and which crashed and burned.
Our lineup includes:
Saint Archer Tropical IPA
Hop Valley Stash Panda
Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin
Ska Modus Mandarina
Terrapin Luau Krunkles
Anchor San Franpsycho
Dogfish Head Flesh and Blood
Belching Beaver Here Comes Mango
Let’s dig in!
Part 1: The Taste
Taste #1:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
While many fruit-based IPAs rely too heavily on the fruit flavor up front, this beer starts with resinous pine needles before moving on to grapefruit and lemon zest. The flavor is complex with caramel malts, more ripe grapefruit, and a subtly bitter, very earthy hops kick.
Taste #2:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Nosing this beer, I found a bold citrus aroma. This was followed by a heavy pine scent. That’s about it. Sipping it revealed a wallop of orange peel, some tropical fruit flavors, dank pine, and some malt presence. The finish was fairly bitter, with some fruit as well.
All in all, a beer that will most appeal to citrus fans. It’s a bit overwhelming for me.
Taste #3:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Aromas of grapefruit, mango, lemon zest, and a nice helping of dank, resinous, pine needles. Sipping it reveals notes of pineapple, grapefruit, lime, tropical fruits, light malt presence, and just the right amount of bitter, spicy, floral hops at the finish.
Taste #4:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
This beer’s nose is really fruity. There are a ton of aromas including grapefruit, mango, and some floral hops scents. Even with the hops presence, the nose is almost too fruity. The palate is loaded with guava, passionfruit, and lots of citrus.
It ends with a bit of resin, but not as much as I’d hoped.
Taste #5:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Taking a moment to nose this beer, I found aromas of tangerine, grapefruit, mango, and guava, as well as dank pine. The palate is loaded with more tropical fruit flavors, citrus zest, bready malts, and a nice, piney, slightly bitter finish that only seems to heighten the fruity flavors.
Taste #6:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, I found hints of wet grass, pine resin, orange peel, and lemon zest. The palate is more of the same with lemon, orange, some tropical fruits, an earthy flavor, as well as a nice floral, bitter hops presence that brings everything together.
Taste #7:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Complex aromas of sweet malts, floral hops, lemongrass, dank pine, and tropical fruits are prevalent on the nose. Sipping it revealed mango, guava, tangerine, caramel malts, and a gentle, dank, resinous pine. The finish is sweet, loaded with citrus, and ends with more floral, slightly bitter hops.
Taste #8:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
This beer has a bit of a strange aroma. It’s overly citrus-scented, overpower any other potential scents. The palate is sugary sweet with hints of lemon, lime, and tropical fruits. It’s very juicy but doesn’t have remotely enough hop or malt presence to go back to for another sip.
San Francisco’s Anchor is one of the most well-known, oldest breweries in the U.S. It’s known for its classic beers, but it also makes a slew of great contemporary brews. This includes its fruit-forward San Franpsycho. This hazy, juicy beer gets its tropical fruit flavor from the addition of apricot and peach puree during the second fermentation.
Bottom Line:
This beer is juicy, hazy, and loaded with fruit flavor. But it’s too sweet for me to enjoy it very often. It’s almost like someone made Fruity Pebbles cereal into a beer.
San Diego’s Saint Archer makes a wide variety of beers including a handful of IPAs. The brewery makes a fruity West Coast IPA called Saint Archer Tropical IPA brewed with Simcoe, Mosaic, and Citra hops. It gets its tropical fruit flavor from the addition of real passionfruit and mango.
Bottom Line:
I understand I’m taste testing fruit-forward IPAs. But I’d still like to taste beer. This IPA was a little too fruity for my liking. I could use more balance.
One of Ska’s best beers for fruit fans is its Modus Mandarina IPA. This bold brew is dry-hopped with Mandarina hops and brewed with orange peels to turn the citrus up to eleven.
Bottom Line:
This is a pretty good beer. The only problem is that it’s a little too heavy in the citrus zest department. It overpowers the rest of the flavors.
Stone is one of the biggest names in the IPA game. It’s won numerous awards over the year for its beers. Fans of fruity IPAs love Tangerine Express, a citrus-fueled IPA that gets its cloudy, hazy appearance and bright, citrus flavor from the addition of tangerine and pineapple purée.
Bottom Line:
This is a great example of a great fruit IPA. It plays on the flavors already associated with IPAs with complementary citrus and herbal flavors paired with slightly bitter hops.
Ballast Point is well-known for its Sculpin IPA. One of the highest-rated IPAs of all time, the beer comes in other versions including the popular Grapefruit Sculpin. This seven percent ABV IPA that’s flavored with grapefruit is available year-round. It’s known for its bitter, hoppy, slightly tart flavor.
Bottom Line:
This is obviously a citrus-based beer. But while that flavor note is obvious, it isn’t overwhelming. The other IPA flavors work in unison with the citrus fruits included.
With a name like Belching Beaver, you might not want to take this brewery seriously. You should. This brewery is consistently dropping bangers including Here Comes Mango. This 6.5 percent ABV IPA was brewed with Simcoe and Amarillo hops as well as natural mango flavors.
Bottom Line:
This is a very well-balanced IPA. It has a nice, tropical fruit flavor that pairs well with the pine and malt flavors. This is a beer I’ll definitely try again.
Athens, Georgia’s Terrapin Brewing makes a handful of memorable IPAs. One of its best is its Luau Krunkles. It’s called a POG IPA because on top of being brewed with Mosaic, Zythos, Citra, Galaxy, and Amarillo hops, and is dry-hopped with Simcoe, Citra, and Amarillo hops it gets its flavors from the addition of passion fruit, orange, and guava.
Bottom Line:
This is a truly two-dimensional beer. First is the tropical and citrus fruit base that’s subtle in its complexity. Add in the malt and pine and you have an extremely well-balanced IPA.
It’s right there in the name. Eugene, Oregon’s Hop Valley is a brewery for fans of the floral, slightly bitter beer ingredient. While the brewery makes a ton of great IPAs, one of our favorites is Stash Panda. Brewed with Cryo and Citra hops as well as grapefruit peel, this is truly a beer for pine and citrus fans.
Bottom Line:
This hazy, juicy, crisp beer is a great example of the best of both worlds. It’s filled with floral hops as well as juicy citrus. It’s a great beer to toast to the end of warm weather for a few months.
As a Drizly affiliate, Uproxx may receive a commission pursuant to certain items on this list.
In 2019, San Francisco’s Outside Lands became the first major US festival to allow on-site sale and consumption of cannabis. The Grass Lands area (which debuted the year before) is nothing short of a weed wonderland. Now in 2021, the full-on experience is set to feature cannabis-themed demos, canna-convos, performances from artists like Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem and Salami Rose Joe Louis, and of course, on-site sales and trippily decorated places to toke up.
A description of the area in a release feels like something out of a Haight-Ashbury-heyday Grateful Dead show: “Once inside Grass Lands, visitors can stroll down Eighth Avenue, skip up to High Street and check out the Arts District, Farmers’ Market, and Consumption Areas.” This year, attendees can even pre-order their cannabis products using the Outside Lands mobile app, so you can pop in and pop out and not miss a set at another part of the festival in Golden Gate Park.
Some of the cannabis programming that stands out include a cooking demo called “Brigadeiro It On! with Vanessa Lavorato: How To Make Brazilian Chocolate Brigadeiro Truffles With That Kief You Just Made” and “How Many Weed Jokes Can I Fit Into 30 Minutes?” with comedian Ngaio Bealum.
Check out all Grass Lands details here. Outside Lands Festival goes down in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park From October 29-31.
The premise of this story is flawed. You don’t have to drink one bourbon forever. In fact, the bourbon world is literally overflowing with options. If you enjoy wheated bourbons, we can list a dozen for you to try at a moment’s notice. Are spicy, higher-rye bourbons your jam? There are countless expressions on the market. Looking for a sweet, high corn option? Your local liquor store surely has a few.
But as humans, we like hypotheticals. So what if — in this sea of amazing, high-quality, nuanced bourbons — you could only select one bottle to drink until the end of your days? What would you pick? Would you go for a hard-to-find unicorn? A steady bargain sipper? How about a craft bourbon? It isn’t an easy series of questions for bourbon drinkers to answer.
Luckily, a few of our drinks industry pals were willing to try. We asked a handful of our favorite bartenders to tell us the one bourbon they’d drink for the rest of their days and their answers didn’t disappoint. Check out all of their bourbon picks below and click on the prices if you want to try them too.
Michter’s Toasted Barrel is such a pleasure to drink, I’d have no problem being married to it forever. It’s easy to drink, but not boring. It’s got all the characteristics you want in a good bourbon: vanilla, oak, and a touch of cinnamon, but it also has an unexpected marshmallow-like butterscotch note, with a long warm finish.
If I could choose one bourbon to drink for the rest of my life, I would choose Basil Hayden’s. It has so much versatility because it can be an ingredient in a cocktail, or it can be enjoyed on its own. It is extremely smooth and, at first, has a little kick to it but at the end of each sip, there is an almost caramel-like finish that completes it.
Michter’s 10-Year
Michter
Eric Heinel, certified sommelier and beverage director for David Burke in New York City
This is actually a very easy answer for me. My pick is Michter’s 10 Year. This is a bottle that is quickly becoming more expensive every day — so buy it up now, if you can. Even at $200, this bourbon over-delivers on flavor and structure. A true sipping bourbon meant to be enjoyed neat or with one large ice cube. This bourbon is on the heavier side with a maple syrup-like mouthfeel, the sweetness is very well balanced and makes for an incredibly smooth experience.
Buffalo Trace is an incredible stand-by that is becoming harder to find with good reason. There are killer notes of vanilla and subtle oak to remind you where it came from.
Old Grand-Dad Bonded
Jim Beam
Robert Kidd, head bartender at Le Cavalier in Wilmington, Delaware
The high rye mash bill and the extra proof make for an excellent bourbon. It’s a bourbon that you don’t have to worry about getting lost in your cocktail. A lot of people think to use soft wheat bourbon in their cocktail to make it “smooth”.
Smooth is terrible. Smooth is boring. Give me a complex cocktail that makes me taste everything that went in the glass.
Laws Four Grain
Laws
Joshua Duncan, beverage manager at Adrift Tiki Bar in Denver, Colorado
I would absolutely pick Laws Bourbon time after time. I love Laws because they don’t take shortcuts, and it shows in their end product. Their Four Grain Straight Bourbon is a blend of corn, barley, wheat, and rye, which are locally grown in Colorado and carefully blended into a delicious and unique bourbon. The added grains add a layer of depth and complexity to this bourbon that you won’t find from other more traditional Kentucky or Tennessee Bourbons.
Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel
Elmer T. Lee
Jessica King, master mixologist at Brother Wolf in Knoxville, Tennessee
My desert island bourbon bottle is hands down, Elmer T. Lee. Although it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to drink any, due to allocation, Elmer T. was my well whiskey at Peter Kern Library some years ago. And I would have to convince people to try it, which is hilarious to think of now. With a slightly higher rye content, it’s soft vanilla honey to start and finishes with a crack of black pepper and tobacco. It’s great for mixing too, I made many a cocktail with it.
I would drink it all the time if I could get my hands on a bottle.
Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 15
Pappy Van Winkle
Emily Lawson, bartender and owner of Foxhole Public House in Bentonville, Arkansas
If I could curl up with a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve Bourbon 15 Year Old for the rest of my life, all will be right with the world. It’s full of classic-aged bourbon flavors like nutmeg, stewed cherry, and tobacco.
Weller 12
Weller
Stephen George, director of outlets and bartender at 20 | Twenty Grill in Carlsbad, California
If I’m only allowed one bourbon for the rest of my life, I’m going to get greedy and go with the Weller 12-year Bourbon. Very tough to get your hands on right now, but the “Reserve” and “Antique 107” also over-deliver. The sweeter profile of the wheat does add a distinct layer of complexity to go with the depth of flavor that you can only get from the 12 years of aging in barrel.
Baker’s Single Barrel from the Jim Beam small batch collection is bottled at 107 proof, with a minimum of seven years of aging. It’s great neat but also really nice on the rocks. Because it is a single barrel, there will always be different nuances and flavors that change from barrel to barrel, allowing a different drinking experience through the rest of your life.
I’m a big fan of Blanton’s Single Barrel bourbon. ‘The world’s first single barrel bourbon offers premium flavor with a higher rye content to boot, my favorite kind of Bourbon. I could happily sip this spice-laden bourbon all day every day. Vanilla, nutmeg, and baking spice with that kick of rye.
Maker’s Mark
Maker
Rachel Stidham, bartender at Paul’s Landing in St. Petersburg, Florida
I would choose Maker’s Mark, hands down. It’s smooth and easy to sip straight, whether neat or on the rocks. It has sweet yet bold flavors of vanilla and caramel with hints of oak and spice, and is also super versatile, making it the perfect whiskey for a cocktail.
It would be Henry McKenna Bottled in Bond from Heaven Hill. It’s such a solid example of the “bottled in bond” style — all of the bourbon flavors we know and love turned up to eleven. At 100 proof, this delivers a long, complex finish when enjoyed neat.
As a Drizly affiliate, Uproxx may receive a commission pursuant to certain items on this list.
Shake Shack is a bit of an anomaly in the fast-casual space. On one hand, they make what is hands-down the best beef patty in all of fast food, with meat sourced from well-respected butchers with years of experience. Then they top that shit with American cheese and serve it alongside frozen French fries and a milkshake that tastes like birthday cake. Rather than doubling down on the gourmet preparation like most fast-casual joints, Shake Shack plays to the fast food crowd.
They include American cheese because it melts fast and better than any fancy aged cheese out there can. The frozen fries crisp up better. The milkshake tastes like birthday cake because who doesn’t love birthday cake? But we’d be lying if we weren’t at least curious about what Shake Shack could create if they went full gourmet. If they treated each component of their menu with the same craft and care they put into their delicious beef patties, how deep can Shake Shack’s flavor get?
The new Black Truffle Burger answers those questions for us. After a successful pilot launch at a few shacks in New York and California last December, Shake Shack’s new Black Truffle Burger and Parmesan Garlic Fries with Black Truffle sauce will be added to the menu at Shake Shack locations nationwide, from October 15th through January 10th. We gave each a taste to see if the new treats are enough of an excuse to make your next meal Shake Shack.
Let’s dive in, starting with the fries.
Parmesan Garlic Fries With Black Truffle Sauce
Dane Rivera
Price:$4.79
If you’ve caught our fast food French fry ranking you’d know that I’m no fan of Shake Shack’s crinkle cut fries. It’s not because they’re crinkle cut (though crinkle-cut is the worst French fry form factor) and it’s not because they’re frozen before frying. It’s just because they’re boring. They don’t even really taste like French fries to me, they just taste like a fried texture in desperate need of sauce and seasoning.
So anytime Shake Shack does anything to their fries, I’m intrigued. But they really knocked it out of the park with his one. The Parmesan Garlic Fries with Black Truffle Sauce consists of a basket of crinkle cut fries dusted in a fragrant sprinkling of Parmesan cheese and chopped garlic and served with a cup of Shake Shack’s new black truffle sauce for dipping, which comes sourced from Regalis Foods and is made using USDA Organic Black Truffle Arbequina Oil.
Predictably, the oil is well-sourced and flavored with real truffles, making it apparently the only truly natural truffle product on the fast food market. According to Shake Shack, 98% of truffle products sold globally are actually artificially flavored with synthetic essences and aromas — a point with media outlets and independent research have also made.
Cool. But how does it taste? Well, in a word — delicious.
So delicious in fact that I wish Shake Shack took the liberty to put it on the fries! The sharp, nutty, and spicy qualities of the parmesan garlic combo — which is already packing lots of flavor — comes alive when paired with the deep umami complexity of the sauce, igniting your taste buds in the sort of way that makes you literally go “mmm!” like an idiot in the middle of Shake Shack.
Yes, they’re that good.
The Bottom Line On The Fries:
They’re a must order but I have a message to Shake Shack: Be Brave! Toss that sauce on the fries and add bacon and you’ve got a dressed fry that beats any chili cheese fry order out there as well as In-N-Out’s legendary Animal-Style fries.
Black Truffle Burger
Dane Rivera
Price: $8.79
As if the fries weren’t good enough, we come to the real star of the show, the Black Truffle Burger. Featuring a burger patty (or two, if you get the double) topped with melty gruyere and a serving of crispy shallots sandwiched between a toasted potato bun brushed with the same black truffle sauce served with the fries, this burger is a straight-up grenade of flavors.
Different flavors hit your taste buds at all angles like shrapnel — creamy salty Gruyere elevates the savory juiciness of the beef, while the crispy fried shallots add a remarkable crunchy mouthfeel that induces a counterbalance of delicate sweetness to the salty meat and cheese mix. The contrasting flavors then meld together in harmony, thanks to the deep umami qualities of the sauce.
Dane Rivera
The whole thing takes you on a wonderful ride. The toppings feel like the gourmet ingredients that Shake Shack’s exceptional burger meat deserves. Is it better than the Shack Burger? From a purely flavor perspective, I want to say yes. But the flavor is delivered with such decadent intensity that I can’t quite see myself ordering this as my new standard order at Shake Shack.
A burger featuring classic toppings, including American cheese, is just so damn hard to beat, which is probably why it’s Shake Shack’s standard in the first place. But now we know how beautiful it is to fly this close to the sun!
The Bottom Line
Drop what you’re doing, head to Shake Shack and order the Black Truffle Burger if you feel like getting your mind (and taste buds) blown for less than $10.
As the NBA season approaches and training camps get underway, we’ll be taking a look at the player on each team that holds the key to unlocking their full potential.
In Chicago, which overhauled the roster this offseason, there are plenty of options to choose from. But here, we’ll focus on their new point guard, Lonzo Ball. The Bulls gave Ball a handsome new contract and expect him to be the point guard they’ve been seeking for years, as Bulls fans now have hopes of a new star backcourt tandem between he and Zach LaVine. There are plenty of other new players that Billy Donovan will have to sort out in terms of scheme and rotations, but we know, mostly, what to expect from veterans like Nikola Vucevic and new addition DeMar DeRozan.
For the Bulls to make the leap not just into playoff contention but into the tier above the play-in in the East, a lot falls on the shoulders of Lonzo. He has long carried a reputation as a strong defender, but his best work comes off the ball rather than as a point of attack stopper — you can read in detail about that here. It is this conundrum that presents some real questions in Chicago, where it seems the expectation that he will be leading the defense at the point of attack at times given the construction of the roster around him — although Alex Caruso can alleviate that pressure when on the court. Figuring out how to maximize his defensive gifts, which tend to be his ability to anticipate and jump into passing lanes and make the right reads on when to send help from the perimeter, while understanding the Bulls need of an on-ball defender will be the most difficult task for Donovan.
Offensively, the fit seems much more snug. With LaVine on board (and DeRozan and Vucevic), they don’t need a primary creator, but someone who can finish plays as a shooter or a secondary creator, which is where Ball excels. He’s become a terrific spot-up shooter, something that will please LaVine who has all too often faced collapsing defenses in his time in Chicago, and should defenses rotate too aggressively, Ball can put the ball on the floor and make the right read to take full advantage of a team suddenly caught in rotation. On top of that, Ball and LaVine will immediately become one of the best fastbreak combos in the league, turning opponent mistakes on offense into quick, highlight worthy buckets on the other end.
Given his reputation, it’s odd that I feel far more confident in Ball’s fit in Chicago offensively, but considering the personnel, he’s a terrific fit there. Defense is going to be where the Bulls have the most work to do and how the pieces to that puzzle fall into place is going to be the most challenging task for Billy Donovan. If he can figure that out, or if Lonzo can tap into more as a point-of-attack defender and negate those questions on that end, then the Bulls might just be back.
Chances are, you might be one of the many people who have driven the raunchy and flat-out awesome video for Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” featuring Jack Harlow to 160 million views on YouTube (and counting). You know, the one where Nas dances naked in a prison shower along with an army of equally naked and totally ripped backup dancers? In the clip, he breaks out of his prison cell in a metaphorical nod to removing the handcuffs placed on him by the music industry and now we know a heckuva lot more about the inspiration for the video thanks to the latest behind-the-scenes look in the Vevo Footnotes series.
The new clip has Pop-Up Video-style notes to every hidden reference and then some. “I wanted to go to a place people would least expect me to go in a music video,” Nas says early in the clip. “An overly masculine place and make it gay asf. I also wanted to visualize the theme of breaking free from the shackles society places on you.”
We learn that the Grammy statues in his jail cell are indeed his actual awards and that the security guard that he punches out while he makes his escape is played by Teen Wolf star Colton Haynes. Nas also confirms that while the video itself wasn’t inspired by The Shawshank Redemption, the escape through a hole in the wall with a pickaxe that Jack Harlow sneaks him was indeed inspired by the film.
Director Christian Breslauer chimes in at one point to explain the underlying point of the video:
“This visual is essentially a giant metaphor to represent Nas’s unwillingness to conform to the industry standards or be caged in because of his beliefs. No matter the scenario he will be who he is and no prison is strong enough to contain him.”
But the best part comes towards the end, when Nas admits that, “the hardest part of making this music video? Honestly? Twerking in front of Jack Harlow. Very uncomfortable.”
Watch the “Industry Baby” Vevo Footnotes clip above and listen to Lil Nas X’s latest album, Montero, out now via Columbia.
Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Succession returns on Sunday, October 17 after almost exactly two years off the air. There’s good news and bad news wrapped up in all of this. The good is that, well, it’s back, finally, and having a good show — one of the best, even — back is always good news, especially since the new season lives up to the high standards of the first two seasons. Do you want to see these awful creatures tear each other apart? Do you want to hear Logan Roy grumble profanity like a wounded beast? Do you want to experience the pure joy of Cousin Greg discussing memes? Baby, that is all coming your way very soon. It’s exciting.
The bad news is that this long hiatus may have dulled the sharp edges of your memory of the show. You might not recall important plot points. And while the ideal solution to this is a full-on rewatch, or at least a mini-binge through the last three or four episodes of season two, time is getting a little tight for that. You went and procrastinated again and here you are. We’ve talked about this.
So, here’s what we’ll do. Below, please find a mini-refresher that can get you mostly caught up before the premiere, with 100 words or less devoted to each major character. It’s not perfect or comprehensive or ideal. A rewatch is still preferable. But you really can’t go about complaining to me when you put yourself in this situation. What I’m saying here is that I’m sorry this isn’t everything but you’re welcome that it is something. We’re all doing the best we can.
Here we go.
Kendall Roy
HBO
What a whirlwind. Kendall went from performing the world’s cringiest rap tribute to his father — shoutout to his boy Squiggle for the beat — to defending his father and the company in front of Congress to hanging the whole operation out to dry at a press conference where he was allegedly going to take the fall for the whole cruise ship fiasco. He’s a man on an island now. The island is called Ambition Island. It is infested with termites and might get swallowed up by a wave at any moment. But he’s there and he’s not leaving now.
Logan Roy
HBO
Logan enters season three under attack from multiple angles. He’s fighting off a proxy battle from his investors and facing heat from Congress over years of sexual harassment/abuse on his cruise line and his own son is now leading the charge. And yet… look at his face. He seems like he’s relishing it all, whether it’s the adrenaline rush from the old scrapper getting in one last fight or the perverse pride he feels in a traitorous son he had just chastised for not being “a killer.” He needs this stuff to feel alive. And he’s getting it all at once.
Shiv Roy
HBO
Shiv was passed over as CEO in favor of Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter), who left the company about 90 seconds later when she realized she couldn’t trust Logan. Then Shiv had it out with her husband, Tom, over the way she treats him. Then, with tears in her eyes, she begged her dad to not make Tom the sacrificial lamb for the cruise business, which resulted in her brother getting the short straw and choosing to burn the house down instead. The Roys are an extremely normal family.
Roman Roy
HBO
All things considered, putting aside the thing where he was briefly kind of held hostage while attempting to secure a major cash infusion from an oil-rich Middle Eastern family, Roman came out of season two in decent shape. He impressed Logan with his read on the situation, he got promoted to COO, he has his unconventional thing going on with Gerri. He’s a slime puppy, of course, always and forever, but he’s a good boy. Kind of. And either way, his existence allows me to keep using that screencap up there, so… no complaints here.
Connor Roy
HBO
The oldest and most-forgotten of the Roy children financed his girlfriend’s play and watched it bomb through a combination of terrible reviews and potential lawsuits related to vermin infesting the set. He felt out a run for political office and was told to end it by Logan, who, using his gift for language and paternal worth, said “everyone thinks you’re a joke and you’re fucking embarrassing me.” Also, in what is maybe the perfect Connor moment yet, he introduced himself using his full name in a tribute to his father, as though he might not be recognized otherwise. Not great!
My beautiful lanky boy Cousin Greg
HBO
Cousin Greg:
Is a sweet boy
Might be developing a secret cocaine problem
Appears to be siding with Kendall in the family free-for-all, based only on the shot at the press conference of him in the back holding a folder full of documents
I love him.
Tom Wambsgans
HBO
Tom got cooked at the hearing about the cruise ships, most memorably for the “can’t make a Tomlette without breaking a few Greggs” line. He got weepy with Shiv about the power dynamics in their relationship and the thing where she told him on their wedding night that she wanted it to be open. Tom is in an interesting place. He can either buckle in and fight with the family or wriggle free and help Kendall take them down. I’m fine with either as long as he and Greg share the screen 4-5 times per episode.
Gerri Kellman
HBO
Gerri is in a weird spot as the highest-ranking non-Roy at Waystar. She’ll never get the top job even though she is more qualified, she’ll always be one move away from personal and professional ruin, and she’s engaged in that whole mommy-son non-sexual humiliation-based thing with Roman. Gerri has a lot going on. I root for her. I kind of hope she quits the company in the middle of season three and gets way into, like, hang gliding. Gerri deserves a break.
Marcia Roy
HBO
Marcia is the best. Logan’s third wife pops up like once or twice per episode and says the most cutting things you’ve ever heard anyone say, then she just zips off for a while until she comes back to do it again. I get legitimately excited every time she shows up. I would watch an entire episode from her perspective, just one full hour of her chopping people down and being ruthless. I hope she ends up running the company.
Willa
HBO
Willa, Connor’s younger actress and playwright lover, was last seen heaving a tablet into the salty abyss after reading the reviews of the play she wrote and Connor funded. It was notable for a few reasons but mostly because it made for a very useful GIF that I have posted above for your “right click + save as” needs. My gift to you. And Willa’s gift to you. Our gift, really.
Various Franks and Carls and Hugos and Karolinas
HBO
The collection of non-Gerri, non-Roy members of the Waystar team. They’re the best because they are constantly ready to sell each other out if it means their own survival. Which makes sense. Think about the work it took to navigate those shark-infested waters in a way that allowed them to rise to this level. These people are survivors. They’re just as cutthroat as anyone, but they have to mask it in servitude and politeness lest they offend one of the failsons and kneecap their future. My favorite is Karl, but please know this situation is fluid and subject to change.
Stewy and Sandy
HBO
Currently leading the proxy fight among the Waystar shareholders to takeover the company. In the finale, Logan and Kendall took their yacht to Greece to visit Stewy and make him a pitch to retain control and Stewy a) told them to go screw, and b) looked like this. He’s a sicko money vulture and everything I hate in the world and yet I adore him immensely. Sometimes he shows up in sweaters that look so stylish and comfortable I might update my will to request I be buried in them. It’s all very conflicting.
The Pierce Family
HBO
The Pierce family is notable for three main reasons:
They were briefly in the mix as a lifeline for Waystar but things got complicated over politics
Naomi Pierce remains an on-again, off-again fling for Kendall, even if Logan had her kicked off the yacht at the end of season two for various reasons related to her and Kendall doing drugs together a lot
At one point in season two, Nan Pierce, the family’s matriarch, brushed off some hooey by describing it as “horse potatoes,” and that phrase has lived in my head ever since
Horse potatoes!
Ewan Roy
HBO
Ewan Roy rules. He hates everyone so much and loves telling them to their faces. At one point, he made a surprisingly reasonable argument that Logan is worse for society than Hitler. I want him and Marcia to get married and defy biology to have a dozen of the meanest and crankiest children in the world. This is not an unreasonable request.
Succession is a good show. I’m so glad it’s back on Sunday night.
As NBA star Kyrie Irving continues to stir up controversy by refusing to get the COVID vaccine, essentially preventing him from playing home games for the Brooklyn Nets, he’s had no shortage of right-wing voices rushing to his defense. This time around, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who rode into office as the “QAnon congresswoman,” fired off a wildly offensive and scientifically illiterate attack on the NBA.
“The fascist NBA won’t let Kyrie Irving play for refusing a vaccine,” Greene tweeted. “But yet they still let Magic Johnson play with HIV.”
Naturally, as with all things related to MTG, there’s a lot wrong here. Right off the bat, the NBA has not banned Irving from playing — the team he plays for (the Brooklyn Nets) made the decision to force him to sit out until he is either vaccinated or New York City drops its vaccine mandate for indoor events. Secondly, HIV and COVID-19 are two extremely different diseases, particularly when it comes to how they’re transmitted. While COVID-19 is so contagious that you simply have to be in the room as an infected person, HIV can only be transmitted via sexual intercourse, sharing intravenous needles, or a contaminated blood transfusion. Last time we checked, absolutely none of those are happening on the court during an NBA game, and social media lit Greene up for her asinine tweet.
Most NBA games don’t include unprotected sex or other exchanges of bodily fluids. Covid transmission, however, can happen during a normal NBA game. https://t.co/aGaZn0CGjs
It’s 2021 and a sitting Congresswoman who believes in Jewish Space lasers doesn’t understand how people get HIV. This is why sex education and not being a bigot matters. https://t.co/SXzjy8nYrD
I told y’all this is the Right Wing talking point of the week.
These folks don’t give a sh-t about Kyrie, Magic Johnson, or the NBA. They just want to own the libs, and they don’t care how dumb they look in the process. https://t.co/GCgH3OoADv
Greene joins fellow right-wing figures like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jr. who have voiced support for Irving’s decision to continue to buck New York’s vaccine mandate. Cruz suggested that Irving should be traded to Houston where fans would be happy to see him play.
Show me one real @HoustonRockets fan who wouldn’t be psyched to have @KyrieIrving on the team. We have a great young core, but are very much rebuilding. Kyrie can play point or shooting guard.
If Brooklyn won’t let him play, it’s a great chance for him to come to Houston! https://t.co/qEOgT5JJG3
Guilty Party: Season 1 (Paramount+ series) — Kate Beckinsale stars in this charming-looking dramedy series about a disgraced (and opportunistic) journalist who works to redeem herself by digging for the real story on a young mother who was convicted of murdering her husband, a crime that the mother insists that she did not commit. Expect (strangely enough) some whimsy amid this seemingly serious premise, including some adversaries that are a real pain in the butt.
Indefensible: Season 1 (SundanceTV and AMC+ series) — This show works to put a different spin on the true-crime genre with host Jena Friedman, who previously wrote for The Late Show With David Letterman and produced for The Daily Show. Friedman aims to take the story beyond the conventionally satisfying outcome, where the criminal gets locked up, end of story. She’s digging far beyond, into the dysfunction inherent within the criminal justice system and the reasons why the crimes in question could’ve happened.
Aquaman: King of Atlantis: Season 1 (HBO Max) — While DC fans sit in the limbo in between live-action Jason Momoa movies, this three-part animated miniseries from James Wan could tide things over a bit. This week’s installment involves the Dead Sea with Aquaman learning that he’s still got a lot of learning to do upon becoming king. The voice cast includes Cooper Andrews, Gillian Jacobs, Dana Snyder, and Thomas Lennon.
The Kids Tonight Show: Season 1 (Peacock series) — One late-night show wasn’t enough for Jimmy Fallon, who executive produces this child-friendly version that introduces talented young kids and lets them dominate the airwaves.
Ghosts (CBS, 9:00pm) — A freelance journalist and a chef move into a massive country estate while hoping to transform it into a bed-and-breakfast. As the title indicates, however, there are ghosts afoot, and they’re comedic. So, there’s a Prohibition-era lounge singer, a hippie who indulges in hallucinogens, a scout leader, and a Militiaman. This week, one character gets to (at long last) enjoy a traditional Viking funeral.
Legacies CW, 9:00pm) — Season 4 begins with the Super Squad and Hope hatching a rescue plan while Malivore has apparently taken over souls and bodies, and what the hell is going on here?
Law & Order: SVU (NBC, 9:00pm) — Season 23 (!) continues with an episode called “Fast Times @ The Wheel House,” and I’m not sure if a Spicoli-themed character will appear, but there will probably be more strange expressions from Benson while she thinks about Stabler.
Law & Order: Organized Crime (NBC, 10:00pm) — Bearded Stabler is still doing the enormously risky undercover thing while uncovering what Flutura is really doing in the family business, all while Bell is maneuvering on a case, and Bernadette and Eli are getting used to their new circumstances.
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon — Jamie Foxx, Jodie Comer, Tom Thakkar
Doom Patrol: Season 3 (HBO Max series) — DC’s struggling misfit superheroes are back for another round of being portrayed by an incredible cast. Brendan Fraser has received plenty of raves for his fury-filled Cliff Steele/Robotman, and more kudos should go to Diana Guerrero (Orange is the New Black) as Crazy Jane, which is actually a role that requires Diane to play dozens of incarnations, including a very timely take on a Karen.
In case you missed this pick from last week:
One of Us Is Lying: Season 1 (Peacock series) — The New York Times bestselling novel comes to life when a group of give teens go to detention, and one of them does not emerge. Naturally, the four remaining students are all suspects, and all of them are looking sketchy for one reason or another.
House Haunters: Season 1 (Discovery+ series) — Yep, this house is exactly what it sounds like: a play on the long-running House Hunters series. Join up with comedian Anthony Anderson and his mom, Doris, who inject some horror into the housing market by pranking the hell out of prospective buyers and their realtors alike.
Unless you’ve also been living under leaf litter, in the dank reaches of a shady forest, you surely know that the mushroom revolution is upon us. Foraging is all anyone in the food world can talk about, as more and more people take part in sourcing their own ingredients; psilocybin mushrooms are at the forefront of medical research while also racing toward legalization; and non-psychedelic, medicinal mushrooms are being added to everything from hot chocolate to face cream. Plus you’ve got a million Steve Bramuccis at every party trying to bend your ear to the joys of microdosing (I promise to back off if I see you roll your eyes at the phrase “neural flexibility”).
Yes, the mushroom boom very is real. Interest in medicinal, edible, and psychedelic mushrooms is spiking in a way that is both measurable and easily perceptible. Instagram has a whole mushroom hunting community now. Reddit has multiple forums dedicated to the subject. Joe Rogan discusses his microdosing often. Shows feature psilocybin storylines or themes that would have been taboo (or played with little nuance) until quite recently. And Coach Beard from Ted Lasso is literally obsessed.
Perhaps the most notable moment of mushrooms permeating pop culture over the course of the pandemic has been the reception given the documentary Fantastic Fungi. The Brie Larson-narrated film was recently given a new life after being licensed by Netlfix and has become Google Meets discussion fodder in virtual workplaces worldwide.
The documentary is based heavily on the work of mushroom rock god Paul Stamets — who has appeared on Rogan, spoken at EDM festivals, and is truly the lion’s mane of the fungal jungle. It’s directed by Louie Schwartzberg, a genuine mushroom aficionado and a pioneer of timelapse filming techniques, who captures the beauty and magic of his subject matter (both its edible and hallucinogenic varieties) with an inventive approach and a loving eye. Together, they tell a story that acts as a sort of Trojan Horse — hooking audiences by explaining the mind-boggling complexity of mycelial networks and the importance of fungi in a thriving ecosystem, before shifting to psilocybin and the massive amounts of research and anecdotal evidence that point to it being what the FDA has labeled a “breakthrough drug.”
With Fantastic Fungi drawing new voices into the conversation around mushrooms, Stamets and Schwartzberg have planned the Fantastic Fungi Global Summit — a virtual gathering of some of the most well-regarded names in the field, along with mushroom-friendly musicians, actors, spiritual leaders, and artists. I spoke to the duo on the eve of the summit about how all mushrooms shape our world and how psilocybin, in specific, has the potential to completely reframe it.
Our conversation is below, edited for brevity.
Let’s get started with the beauty of the movie, because I think that was a really active choice — making sure that people felt the magic, first of all, that Paul has always talked about in mushrooms but also just that we see in the natural world. What was the visual language that you wanted to share with people to make sure they could understand, for instance, mycelium networks, throughout this film?
Louie: The beauty — I’ve always been saying this that is what I’ve learned from 40 years of filming, is that beauty is nature’s tool for survival. Because we protect what we love. So I think it’s enabled DNA to move forward and life to move forward. It’s intrinsic to the films that I make. And it’s not a superficial, glossy exterior. It’s really inherent to the story, because of how it engages your emotions.
It certainly encourages reproduction, throughout all species. Whether it’s pollinators or animals. It’s a language that makes life go forward.
Paul: What I would like to add is… think about it — people go for a walk in the woods, okay? It’s nice to go for a walk in the woods. Good exercise. You’re out in nature. Then they get turned on to mushrooms and they suddenly see these mushrooms everywhere. So often what I hear is, “How could I not see them before? They’re all over the place. And moreover, there are so many colors and shapes and forms.” So, formerly, they would just go for a walk in the woods. And secondarily, now they have an interest in finding mushrooms as they walk in the woods. That changes until, primarily, their motivation for walking in the woods is finding mushrooms. And it sort of elevates this whole idea of hiding in plain view these majestic forms and expressions of nature that are so colorful, so exciting.
You could take some of them home and eat them. You could engage your kids. It’s like an Easter egg hunt for adults and children. So it brings the family together on this shared adventure, and you have this “eureka!” experience. Now, it’s a really important thing. How many of us have a eureka experience? Not that often. That eureka experience biochemically creates an endorphin rush and it becomes a little bit addictive. You’re so excited, and you’re so excited to be out with your family with a shared joy of your five-year-old son or your daughter finding some mushrooms, and you rejoice with them.
I think it’s very primal, and I think it hits these very fundamental receptor sites of what excites us as a community. And this film very eloquently brought that into front view.
It absolutely did. And it validated those who were already on this wave.
Louie: The fact of the matter is, 99% of the people watching movies and films are not hunting mushrooms. But they see it sort of like it’s almost cheating in a way because the movie brings it to the forefront without them having to do the exercise. But now they see them everywhere. Mushroooms have become a zeitgeist of our time. There is a mycological revolution sweeping the planet — largely sparked by Paul — that brought this into the forefront during these COVID times where you cannot be indoors. You want to be outdoors, and this is a shared purpose and a way of sharing joy amongst your family.
Paul: That’s why babies are cute and puppies are cute and kittens are cute. We want to protect life.
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I feel like the growing interest in mushrooms — and the doc did such a good job with this — helps people reframe our notions of life and death as somehow permanent. You go into a forest and you see fruiting bodies coming off of a theoretically dead tree and you realize that the dead tree is alive. I remember the artist Andy Goldsworthy once talked about how rocks were alive in some sense because they’re turning from sand to stone to sand. That may not be true. That may be more metaphorical. But obviously, with the forest, it’s very much true.
Louie: Well, I mean Paul really had beautiful words. It’s not the end of life. It would be the beginning of life. But 20, 30 years ago I shot that mouse trap rotting. And who would think that observing that was actually very beautiful. Watching it decompose. Watching the bones separate. Watching new life come through the ground.
I think it’s important what you’re saying. It does change … It changes your spiritual outlook and your worldview. And if you do that, you lose the fear of dying — which is another important part of the movie with John Hopkins and the people taking psychedelics — is that they have this physical-mystical experience and they lose their fear of dying. Why should we have this fear of dying when perhaps we can accept it as feeling the wonders of the universe?
I love the choice to have Brie Larson be the voice. It’s funny because I get PR emails and things like that and they say “narrated by.” Most documentaries have a celebrity narrator at this point, so I didn’t really think much of it. But when I saw the movie and I realized she was literally voicing the mushrooms themselves. How did that choice come about to kind of let her articulate the point of view of mycelium and mushroom and fungi?
Louie: The stories that I like to tell are more the feminine side of nature, not the macho stories that you’re going to find on Discovery or BBC. Kill or be killed; survival of the fittest. That creates drama and anxiety. But what I find, and I’m sure Paul does as well, what is more spectacular are the millions upon billions of interactions that are going on that we’re not aware of.
Before I did Fantastic Fungi, I did Wings of Life — where I had Meryl Streep be the voice of a flower seducing the pollinators. So I think it’s cool to give nature a voice. Brie Larson had yet to become a superhero for Marvel when she agreed to work with me on it. That was way before that occurred. But when you think about it, how beautiful is it that she represents such a feminine side of nature but she’s also a superhero?
In the movie, what’s really cool is she’s really having a dialogue with Paul in that she sort of is the voice of nature and Paul is the voice of the enlightened, scientific mind trying to understand the fungi world and the cycle of life. But they’re actually having a bit of a back and forth, which is subtle but I think creates a really engaging dynamic narrative dynamic.
So Paul… now I’m going to do the thing that every — I would imagine that so many of the people interviewing you do. I feel like everyone wants to hold off a little bit, and you probably anticipate it, but before long can you sense people getting ready to turn the interview to the talk of psychedelics?
Paul: Well, it’s hard to ignore the amazing avalanche of scientific articles and peer review journals validated by the FDA occurring in reputable medical journals showing that psilocybin is one of the most profoundly beneficial therapeutic drugs with the lowest toxicity index of practically any drug used in psychotherapy. That is not an exaggeration, folks. That is not an exaggeration. This is a statement of fact.
So many of these anti-depressant drugs mollify or dumb you down. They down-regulate emotional response and connectivity. The use of the psilocybe mushrooms is coming at a time-critical point in medicine. The massive stressors that our society is experiencing internationally due to the COVID pandemic just further support the urgent need for these breakthrough medicines.
And that’s what the FDA has called psilocybin — a breakthrough medicine. This is why there are over 67 clinical [currently 76] trials listing psilocybin at clinicaltrials.gov. And think about this: they have to go through the institutional review boards, called IRBs, that are curated by physicians and scientists to address primarily three subjects. One, does it address an urgent need that is not being addressed currently by conventional or existing medicines? Two, is it harm reduction? Is it known or can be shown that it’s unlikely to cause you harm? And three is scalability. Or is it medicine that is so expensive that it can’t be scaled?
All of those three boxes are checked. Then the fourth one was “is there good scientific evidence already published and supported?” So those are the four major criteria that I’m aware of that the IRB boards … And when you consider that 67 of them, and maybe 68 as of today, have passed the litmus test, then I think it’s a profound medicine of our times.
It’s staggering.
Thank goodness that our cultural intelligence, our scientific intelligence, has escaped the gravitational pull of Tim Leary and the 1960s and the war on drugs, which was so misdirected. That now these substances like psilocybin can be looked at scientifically — with scientific objectivity – and based on medical intelligence, not on political convenience.
I think we’re in a new dawn in a new era of medicine.
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I’m actually part of your Microdose.me study. Before you started that study, my own microdosing was just kind of blind and figuring out dosage on the fly. But one thing I learned through you that I think surprises a lot of people that maybe you can unpack a little bit is that with microdosing — a lot of the positive effects have actually been found to be … which is reverse intuitive, have found to be bigger, or better rather, when there is no effect felt on the user. That a microdose is perhaps most effective on a subliminal level.
Can you unpack and explain that just a little bit for people who are interested in microdosing?
Paul: Well, when you talk about depression and anxiety, these are subjective. Psychiatrists are trying to help a patient to feel better and escape their depression. How do you feel? So the microdosing and the study we have right now that has just passed peer review and is soon to be published in a major scientific publication of the highest reputation. The kind that when this interview is out I can tell you what the journal is.
But we surveyed over 8,000 individuals. Surprisingly, more than 4,000 people were not microdosers. We were just shocked. They wanted to have a baseline of known cognitive, emotional, and psychological health. So we had a very good balance between microdosers and non-microdosers. The people who microdose, this is open-label, right? People know that this is not a placebo, double-blind control study. This is an observational study that the people are reporting through microdosing what happens after four weeks. Statistically, that’s a highly significant reduction in depression and anxiety — higher than that any other conventional drug.
Any pharmaceutical company would leap for joy to see how specifically significant these results are.
So that is one aspect to it. But what we have been looking at is more of the neurophysiological benefits. And what we’re finding is that beyond the subjective, “How do you feel,” we’re able to demonstrate now neurophysiological benefits that show that microdosing improves the health of your neurological landscape even through the central nervous system.
I think this is the beginning of a whole new chapter in medical history.
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So Louie, just to add to that, I’m also a big believer in the macro-dose — the “hero dose” of psilocybin. Obviously, you were going to be touching on psilocybin in the movie. The psychedelic experience has been portrayed to all different levels in film and television, and quite often poorly or quite often focusing on paranoia aspects, et cetera.
What were the conversations you and Paul had around how to portray it? Or just kind of the visual aspects of the psychedelic experience. What did you guys talk through about that?
Louie: Well, I don’t recall us having many conversations about it because it’s kind of a personal experience we have. What I did was I had some incredible content that I have in my library, which I’ve always been filming these patterns and rhythms of nature, which I think is a gateway to your soul, these universal rhythms and patterns.
Then I was able to then blend it into sort of a mandala pattern that I felt was very organic and similar to what I had experienced in my life. And I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and say, “Wow, that’s the best example I’ve ever seen of a psychedelic experience.”
Paul, how did you feel about how psilocybin has been represented in the past in film and TV? And then how do you feel about how it was represented here?
Paul: Well, that’s a great question, because that’s where I think Louie’s film sets a new standard — showing more accurately the reality of psilocybin mushroom use. The absolute academic bankruptcy of these other films that try to jump onto the stereotypical reaction of people saying, “shrooms.” It’s not happening as much, but all of us have this experience. You mention mushrooms with a group of friends or at a social event who are not experienced. You bring up the subject, and very quickly, from my experience, 90% of the time somebody will make a stupid joke, someone will sneer, someone will say maybe like, “far out, man,” and they’ll totally discount this.
What Louis did is a total aikido move. I didn’t tell him to do this. No one told him to do this. Louie set the stage. First talk about culinary mushrooms and the history of mushrooms and their evolution. And then he was able to set a foundation of common wisdom, commonly accepted wisdom, based on cultural and scientifically backed themes, sub-themes, and then brings in psilocybin.
So he set this stage intellectually and emotionally and made that connection with the audience. And then he brings in this subject. Had Louie done this at the beginning, this movie would not have been successful.
I think that’s very true.
Louie: One other quick note about the psychedelic visualization. People do say when they’re on a journey, it’s like a filter is removed and you’re seeing trees or mountains breathing and moving. You’re actually maybe seeing what pure energy really looks like. That’s what I love to film. I can see that through the camera — like ripples on the ocean or reflections on the water and that pattern, that is a universal pattern. That’s what I use. And I kind of layer it and manipulate it. But the motion and the energy is medicine. And it’s one form of medicine that can heal your soul.
There are studies that have shown obviously that being in nature is the perfect combination of a psychedelic journey. That’s why I’m excited about doing this because we’re bringing the sacred visual medicine of nature into the home environment. And not just a shot of a tree or a river but seeing it through the altered perception of time and scale, which automatically gets the brain in the position to let go from the pre-conceived notions of the human point of view.
Is there something that you want to say to the person reading this who is thinking, “Oh this is a wave that I want to be on?” I’m sure you get asked that question a zillion times a week. What do you tell people who are looking to kind of embark in this process?
Paul: I think the take-home message is that it creates emotional intelligence. But I believe it increases intelligence, kindness, and courage. These are fundamental to the health of our society. When you have somebody who has been abused, raped, or a victim of a violent crime, of course, the victim is in the epicenter. But it affects their family. It affects their narration with their neighbors, within the neighborhood.
When that goes out into the cities and all the violence that we see, it’s a shared community of emotions. The opposite of that is that psilocybin can help cure these people fundamentally at the epicenter of this emotional and oftentimes physical tragedy. Then as a result, like a pebble on a pond, is the emanation of ripples of kindness, courage, and increasing emotional intelligence that ripples out through society.
This is a paradigm shift.
I say this now after saying this for a long time, but I say this now with great scientific backing. This is not me saying it or a few other lone rangers that are out there in the wilderness of science saying it. It has become a strong narrative of our time. Yale University, Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Imperial College, King’s College. You only have to be mildly inquisitive to have heard about this.
It’s a true paradigm shift that can actually transform society. Which is a vision that people have often had for psychedelics but finally feels viable now.
Louie: One of the things that Paul was talking about was the takeaway from the experience. I would say that the takeaway from the movie, which is something I did not anticipate or have a preconceived idea about, was the fact that looking at the fungal network, we’re looking at this underground network of a shared economy, where information is shared without greed for ecosystems to flourish. That’s a religious mantra. That is nature’s operating instructions.
That’s an actual way that we can rethink the world, right?
It’s actually a rethinking of all of society. It’s a non-hierarchical vision for the world.
Louie: That’s why the forest is a forest, a community. And they’re all caring for each other. You don’t have to have this dog-eat-dog attitude about competition, selfishness, et cetera because we all know whether it’s government or society, any culture, when we all do well, we all also individually do well.
I think we’ve got to use that as a moral compass as we move forward, looking at how human beings cooperate with each other.
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I have one last question. I am sure that taking mushrooms with Paul is on the bucket list of about 100,000 or maybe 200,000 people on this planet. I can’t imagine that too many people get to do it. First of all, I guess Paul, how many times do you hero dose a year? And second of all, did you guys get to have that experience together in preparation for the movie?
Paul: We’re two brothers from separate mothers, okay? So I’m not going to speak to what Louie and my personal experiences are. That’s not right. But I would say to the hundreds of thousands, and to hear it from my perspective, it seems like millions of people want to take psilocybin mushrooms with me. I would just respond with, “You are taking psilocybin mushrooms with me every time you journey.”
This is something that has deeply improved my life, the lives of our community, and our associates. So we’re joining together as one giant consciousness.
That’s about all I feel safe about saying. In terms of my personal use with psilocybin mushrooms, I have said for 30, 40 years, I will never be an apologist for my interest and expertise in psilocybin mushrooms. I have stated that dozens and dozens of times. And I do heroic journeys at least once a year. I oftentimes ask myself why am I not doing this more often?.
Psilocybin mushrooms are anti-addictive by their very nature. This is what is a big “a-ha” moment for so many people not experienced. That these are some of the most anti-addictive of all drugs. And all the other psychotherapeutic drugs have oftentimes, most of them, as far as I know, have an element of addiction and dependency upon them.
The fact that you can have a paradigm-shifting or a therapeutically powerful experience that can improve your life, but you only have to do them once a year. Some people select never to do them again. It has fundamentally changed their psyche to the point that they feel comfortable. They don’t feel diseased or distressed. They feel healed. So once healed, they no longer feel the need for the medicine.
Louie: I know we’re running out of time, Stephen. But for my last comment on that would be that my psychedelic experience early on in my college years definitely influenced my filmmaking. It’s why I became this pioneer of time-lapse — because I realized that this point of view, this narrow point of view of 24 frames per second real-time isn’t the way you experience life. It’s not the way a bee or a redwood tree looks at life.
I know that this isn’t just about the movie for either of you. You have the Fantastic Fungi Global Summit — which is free — coming up from October 15th to 17th. All these massive names from science to self-help to Hollywood…
I hope you will let your audience know to visit Fungiglobalsummit.com where I’ve got Paul and many thought leaders like Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil from Johns Hopkins. We have conversations about psychedelics, about wellness, about culinary arts… Jason Mraz. Lots of musical performances. And it’s free, and it’s a great way to dig deeper into the subject matter.
There is this movement. And now it’s kind of like “well you’ve seen the movie” — but people want more information. So the summit is going to be an opportunity where I did 50 interviews with 50 of the top voices from the underground of the experts in psychedelics, in medical, in wellness, culinary, arts, and science where we can do a deeper dive.
Fantastic Fungi
Fantastic Fungi is streaming on Netflix. The Fantastic Fungi Global Summit is free and runs from October 15th-17th online. Steve Bramucci can be found on Instagram.
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