248: Nicholas P. Money | The Mycologist Leads Us Through The Potential Path For Humans

In the Department of Biology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Dr. Nicholas P. Money brings his expertise to teaching about the world of fungi/mushrooms, as well as related organisms like yeast and microbes.

In his book, The Selfish Ape: Human Nature and Our Path to Extinction, Dr. Money leads us through some of what has led humans to where they currently are, and as well, to our potential positive or negative paths down the line.

Show notes:

• how Dr. Money got into mycology in the first place, and what kind of work he has done with fungi and mushrooms in recent decades
• the way that fungi and mushrooms relate with the lives of humans, and what kinds of takeaways we can take from their evolution
• what it means that food comes from entropy and ends with sugar
• some of the evolution that has occurred in a non-linear fashion, along with features passed on for different future functions than original
• information about some of the high-speed camera work Dr. Money worked on early on to see fungi releasing spores in slow detail
• how we are more closely related to fungi than we are to plants or other animals
• whether we have a potential good path out of upcoming extinction, due to global warming and related industrial pollution
• what population growth means to the potential of human success on Earth
• some of the scientists that Dr. Money liked or worked with

Glad to have Dr. Money on the show. You can check out his faculty page, personal page at The Mycologist, or The Selfish Ape on Amazon.