December 8, 2023 • 36 mins
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
If you ain't trying to get well, you're in the wrong place.
(00:04):
You're listening to Only the Best Herbs with Ryan Boulda.
Another day, another podcast. How's everyone doing today? Hope you're doing good.
I have my interview with Edward Grand. I've been meaning to get this edited.
(00:29):
I have had some malfunctioning happening with my podcasting storage.
I lost a bunch of audio and some new audio that I was working on, so I've kind of been really annoyed.
We're going to move past that with this interview today.
Edward Grand on a positive note. Really awesome individual.
(00:53):
Go check out sporeswaps.com.
Reach out to him. He's on Facebook.
Edward Grand, his profile picture, kind of looks like the underneath of a mushroom.
He's a mycologist. Hope you guys enjoy this.
Before we get started, a word from our sponsors, Searchin's LLC.
(01:15):
If you ain't feeling 100% like yourself, get in contact with us.
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I mean, what would you tell you about my whole life or what I'm doing now?
(01:36):
I mean, sure. If you got time for it, I'm down for it. I love stories.
I'm sure you got it. You said you used to live in Michigan, right?
Yeah, I'm originally from Michigan and then I lived there until I was like 26.
And then I went to graduate school in Tennessee.
So then I was there for four years and then I came directly to Thailand after that.
(01:59):
I had a job lined up already, like maybe about a year, almost before I finished my PhD.
So I just pretty much came straight into a job here and I thought maybe I was going to stay here for a year or two.
And that turned into like two years. And then I got another job and that turned into like five years.
And then like now it's like almost 20 years later.
(02:22):
I've lived here for like 19 and a half years.
Yeah, something like that.
So I've, it's kind of funny I've lived more, I've lived longer time outside of America for the night.
And then I did in America for most of it, for my adult life.
(02:43):
So yeah, it's a little bit weird. I don't think it's that weird, but I guess it is a little bit weird.
I don't know if I consider myself an ex-pan or whatever, but I guess at this point I kind of am.
I didn't really have anything to go back to and like, I don't know, you know, mom and dad did and stuff like that.
I don't really have any family, so it was pretty much just like no reason to go back.
(03:07):
Right, you know, you're good. But I mean, tell me, tell me more because you, I know you're in the microbial community, right?
How exactly, how exactly do those connect?
So basically, when I, when I finished my PhD, what I did my PhD as is what, what they would call systematics.
(03:30):
It's where I basically took DNA sequences and morphology and what we call the biological species concepts basically mating.
And I tried to merge those into one sort of cohesive kind of idea about the genus that I was studying, which is Luntinus.
So it's like shiitake mushrooms used to be in them in that genus, but I should, I say them because it's multiple dinner now.
(03:54):
And every time somebody puts out a new DNA sequence, they sort of resurrect or make a new genus or switch things around.
So I don't know, I grew up like hunting mushrooms in Michigan and that was like kind of where my passion lie.
But then, you know, life and school, I studied to be a chemical, well, I did finish my engineering degree at U of M, but it seems so like boring at the time that I didn't really want to like, I don't know, I just didn't really want to be an engineer.
(04:25):
I know the money was good and everything, but I had friends that had already started working.
And I was working in a lab. So, so how it kind of happens is I worked in a medical research lab for three years, basically because I wanted to stay in Ann Arbor.
And then I was like, I don't know, it was pretty, I wouldn't say boring, but it was like, wasn't really what I was passionate about it.
(04:46):
I worked for a stomach doctor, like a gastroenterologist.
So it was like not really, you know, my thing, we got to do lots and lots of cool experiments and he was quite well funded.
So I learned how to do all kinds of weird stuff like immunoblots and northern blotting and southern blotting and PCR and you know, reverse transcriptase, blah, blah, blah, and like all this stuff.
(05:09):
And I figured there must be a way that I could apply that stuff to mushrooms.
And so I was literally sitting at work one day on a Friday like bored.
And I just did like a Google search, which would have been like Netscape then I think.
And I just like typed in something like studying mushrooms or something like that and it popped up a bunch of people.
(05:31):
And I started emailing people and within like a day I was communicating quite frequently with a guy in Tennessee.
And that was like my advisor, he became my advisor for my PhD.
So I kind of skipped the master's thing and I went straight into a PhD because it's quite common now in science to not do the master's degree.
(05:53):
So I pretty much like jumped head first into like, wow, like now I'm getting a PhD in mushrooms.
And I had no idea for like the first year and a half or so I had no idea what I wanted to study.
I mean, obviously I would like to, you know, study salacity, but like that was not really an option 20 years ago.
And so I picked Lentinus, which is another group of, you know, genus of mushrooms that has lots of edibles.
(06:18):
I figured I could apply, make the whole like edible thing, maybe give that a go, you know, that's back what even 20 years ago everybody and their brother was like opening a gourmet mushroom farm.
And I didn't really want to be like a farmer farmer, you know, like, you know, some there and like learning about harvest schedule and all that, but that's kind of what I inevitably became.
(06:40):
So yeah, fast forward now I started working in academia here, and then basically like that has run its course and so now I'm pretty much just like a full time mushroom farmer.
But I'm really into the like the breeding aspects of it like I'm really, really, because I have a quite diverse background, I think I bring like a whole maybe like a little bit of a different way of looking at it.
(07:05):
You know, I'm your typical home cultivator, but I add like layers onto it that the average person probably wouldn't because of my background and I'm quite familiar with like DNA sequencing and all these like programs and stuff where you basically can put together, you know, phylogenies and what they call them or trees based on DNA sequences and things like that.
(07:27):
Like a lineage. Yeah, yeah, basically the lineage here and how the how the species are related to each other. So when you study like, you know what they call like some kind of cryptic organisms like bosses and burns and fungicide.
There's not a whole lot of criteria like morphological characters that are used to separate them. Well, there are microscopic details, but it's a little bit hard when you get to species that are very, very closely related. You have to think about how they date with each other and how basically you know these things in the natural world like yeah how they evolved and how they how they exist today and like what makes them this species or that species.
(08:10):
Or you know a different species. And so I tried to I'm trying to like maybe bringing a little bit of that to the home cultivation world, maybe like, you know, give people ideas that might maybe make them a little more interested in, you know, just like, oh, I want to grow mushrooms.
So maybe try to get, I don't know, peak a little bit more of an interest in the academic aspects of it.
(08:37):
Yeah, it's really right now for the.
I mean, now pretty much my goal is just to like try to get people to grow mushrooms and grow them well and understand the process a little bit better. And maybe if they can, you know, I think a little bit interested in it, maybe they'll decide to pursue no more academic interest, maybe they'll go back to school or finish school or whatever.
(09:02):
Maybe they'll just read a paper, you know, come up with some new technique or maybe some new ideas.
So yeah, I just almost thinking myself as sort of like a catalyst for some of these things that like put ideas, you know, plant seeds or spores in people's heads so that maybe they'll have a little bit more of a, you know, an interest.
Maybe, yeah, maybe someday, you know, they might be the next greatest, you know, one of these fungal rouses that we all, you know, see on the movies and the YouTube videos and whatnot.
(09:34):
I don't really have much of a plan to be honest.
I just sort of take it every day as it comes and just try to keep myself entertained and still interested, which is not that hard when you get into the reading and.
And the amount of genetics that's out there these days and it's what people have come up with and trying to make your own new ones, there's just like there's literally like no end to the amount of things that you can do.
(10:04):
I've noticed, I've noticed, because you mentioned that you're you like doing.
Like the breeding aspect of it right and that's that's a hot topic, especially in these communities.
In all, you know, in all, you know, the fungal groups and whatnot you're talking about shiitake right.
(10:27):
Have you ever thought of.
I don't know how to say this like crossing.
I don't know really how you'd call them like different classes of mushrooms together like let's say a shiitake and then you can, you know, you can cross that with, I don't know, a different straight of mushroom.
I mean, is that I mean, are things like that possible like are you going to, you know, just just because.
(10:54):
Yes, it's all possible.
There's limitations. I mean, I hate to use analogies and other things, but it's like if you want to cross a cat with a dog, it's not going to happen.
If you want to cross like an oyster mushroom with a magic mushroom, it's not going to happen.
Right.
There's limits to the things you can do.
I mean, this isn't like, you know, it's not the kind of thing you just mix them up in a blender and throw them in.
(11:19):
It's there's a lot of things you need to consider.
I mean, there's simple things like, you know, I mean, if they're so distantly related, it'd be like humans trying to make with chimpanzees.
You know, we're pretty close, but as far as I know, like there have been some attempts to do that.
But then you get into weird things like there's just simple chromosome numbers like humans and chimpanzees have different numbers of chromosomes.
(11:43):
So if you were to successfully make them, you have to overcome a lot of barriers.
There's biochemical barriers.
There's just simple like physical barriers like these two species have different numbers of chromosomes.
And then there's the technical aspects of it.
A lot of people, they're called inter specific hybrids.
So inter like between two species.
(12:05):
So the holy grail and like, oh, my apologies.
Take the pantyolis, which are the kind of, I don't know, people have different names for them.
I don't even know what the common names are formed.
To be honest, like the grass lovers, there's a genius called pantyolis that everybody wants to cross a pantyolis, which generally are stronger with like a cubensis,
which is the one that people typically grow, you know, in their closet.
(12:28):
So we've got the cubensis aspect.
It's pretty, it's fairly pretty well understood how to grow them.
But people want to, of course, increase the potency.
So they want to make inter specific.
If you go on any of the mushroom boards or forums or discords or whatever, that's, it's a perennial topic.
(12:49):
I started doing this kind of stuff like literally like 30 years ago when I was in college.
And this same topics that people were talking about 30 years ago, they're still talking about them.
There's just a simple thing like you can't cross a cat and a dog, right?
So if you're looking at mushrooms, I mean, just the fact like a cat, the dog or mammals, but if you got two mushrooms, they can be so distantly related.
(13:16):
It's again, the same thing like mammals, like you can't make like a horse with a cat or a dog with a cat.
And so the same thing, I think people try to mistakenly sort of apply this idea that well, they're all mushrooms.
They should just like sort of mix with each other.
But that is not the case.
It's a good analogy.
Yeah.
(13:37):
That's about it.
I mean, there's like lots of other more like technical and scientific reasons, but that's the basic idea when we call species species because they're a reproductively isolated group.
So I mean, the basis for what's called the biological species concept is that essentially all the members of that, you know, that species are fully compatible with each other.
(14:00):
Right.
So I don't know if it's an Aboriginal from Australia, you know, maybe a Native American or European or someone from Africa.
Like we all know that you can make fully, right, almost sapiens like all almost sapiens can make and produce fertile offspring.
So there's another little caveat there.
If you made something, so if you could make an interspecific hybrid, these are those would technically be called hybrids because they're two species.
(14:28):
So if you could do that, there's a second problem you need to basically have that organism be reproductive.
So I mean, you can make like say for the classic example again is like a horse and a donkey.
Right.
Horse and a donkey, they're both separate species, but you make them together and you get a mule.
Right.
But you can't make more mules from mules.
(14:51):
Right.
Mule you need a horse and a donkey.
Like so that's the kind of more common.
I mean, most people know that, you know, that, you know, you can't make more mules from mules.
They're not reproducible.
Like you have a horse and a donkey.
So that's another little kind of problem is that like if you are successful making it.
(15:13):
So they were calling a pan cube hybrid, an interspecific cross or in that case it would be an intergeneric cross because they're two different genera.
So if you could do that, you would be very, very, very famous.
In fact, if you could do that, you would probably get like a Nobel Prize if you published and and you're documenting your results because it's very uncommon in any biological system to have intergeneric process.
(15:41):
Again, that would be kind of back to like, you know, chimpanzees and humans were actually two different genera.
Right.
What is it?
I forgot the chimpanzees or the bonobos or whatever. I forgot what the the genus is for chimpanzees.
You're way smarter than me.
Yeah, well, I've got different background.
Right.
(16:02):
It doesn't mean I'm smarter.
You've done a lot of research.
It's kind of funny that you say that because this is actually sometimes I get, I get this from, I'm not smarter than you.
I just study different things.
Right.
For sure.
I'm sure you do know how to do lots and lots of stuff that I have no clue about.
It's, it's kind of funny that you mentioned that because like a lot of people in the sort of home cultivator community, they have like what I would call a chip on their shoulder because maybe they're not as educated as I am.
(16:39):
And they're not like maybe in a position to be able to do some of the things I do.
Like, you know, they've got wife, kids and debts.
I'm a single guy who's pretty much like, can do whatever I want.
A bachelor?
Yeah.
So, so I don't have the limitations that some people do.
So I can literally, I can study fungi and play with fungi like 20 hours a day if I wanted to.
(17:04):
Like here at the 11 o'clock at night, well, I'm at 30 now.
I mean, I already put in like an eight hour day, but after I get up here with you, I'm literally going to go like play with my mushrooms and make spawn.
I was pressure cooking some stuff earlier.
So my, my work day after this, I'll just, and I love it.
That's the thing.
I'll stay up till four or five in the morning doing my fungal stuff.
(17:25):
I'm going to like subculture some things, transfer some, you know, put some spores on plates, things like that.
And that for me is like entertainment.
Like I would rather be playing with my mushrooms and watching some dumbass Netflix series, you know, that's like what I do.
What? It's a lot of the people, this is something that when I was on a lot of podcasts with a guy called Michael geeky.
(17:50):
And we haven't kind of, we tried introducing some of these more, more detailed, like scientific ideas.
And I don't, I really wish people would get, I wish they would like forget about the education life.
Like, I, like it's literally to the point now I don't tell people I have the education that I do because they immediately get a complex life.
(18:15):
So it's something that if I, if I were to meet you on this three, like you would never know that I have a PhD because I simply wouldn't tell you.
Right.
I figured that was appropriate for the podcast, but if it's not, you can delete that part.
I don't, I don't, I don't want to make it.
It's not like pretentious.
They're like, I have like zero ego and pretentiousness, but even when I try to like enforce that idea of people, I don't know, there's always that little thing on their shoulder.
(18:45):
I don't know what it is.
That's why I bring it up.
That's why I bring it up because a lot of there is a lot of that going on people who think they're like not, I wouldn't say smarter, but you know, have that.
Uh,
seniority, I guess, seniority, I guess would be a better word to kind of throw their weight around a little bit and maybe get what they want.
(19:12):
And, and you know what, that's, that's, uh, obviously respectable.
That's obviously going to happen, right?
But with, with the community being about like love and like passing around genetics and sharing and it's just, it just seems very counterintuitive to me.
You know, for, for that to be, for that to be around like talking with you, I get a completely different feel.
(19:39):
You're, you're, uh, going to go play with mushrooms at four o'clock in the morning.
You know, that's completely different than your, you know, your traditional professional grower cultivator, for example.
You have a passion for it, you know, what's a project that you're working on right now?
Yeah, I just want to think about that is like, I'm well familiar with that because those people when I came in about two and a half years ago, like I took kind of a hiatus for about 15 or 20 years.
(20:09):
I had to deal with those people.
I know, I mean, I could tell you by name that if there's like five people that should be eliminated from the mushroom community, like they all hate me because I've made an effort to actually the gatekeepers.
Like I've made an effort and almost made it a goal of my life now to basically educate people through my YouTube and through my live streams and through answering questions.
(20:36):
And those people that want to be the gatekeepers, they don't like that.
Right.
Because as you said, they make money off of their little secrets.
And so when I started to like breathe mushrooms and I started making videos about how simple it is to do it.
I got a huge amount of black and kickback from those people who were not happy about me, you know, giving out their secrets.
(21:01):
And I do, I mean, I've worked in academia for 20 years, believe me, I'm very, very familiar with the way academics are their egos and their pretentiousness.
I am very, very familiar with that.
And that's the problem is when you when you get labeled like, oh, you're an academic or you've got all this fancy education, people like shut down.
(21:25):
It's like I used to teach chemistry and when I told people I taught chemistry, 99% of the time the very first thing they say is, oh, I hate chemistry.
So I'm like, well, I don't know.
Thank you. Like that my my profession, like you the first thing like you tell me is how you hate it.
It's like, oh, if you work in a grocery store, you know, and somebody's like, oh, I hate groceries.
(21:52):
Yeah, funny.
I'm like so familiar with that pretentiousness.
That's why I'm leaving academia.
I've been in academia for about 20 years and that's particularly why I'm leaving academia because I just don't want to deal with that.
The levels of egos and pretentiousness and it's even worse here because like it's very age like dependent.
(22:14):
Like if you're younger or older than someone, they treat you very different.
And I look kind of young.
So I often run into this case of like, like people, especially the other like most type people, they look at you and they judge you based on how old you look immediately.
So if you're older, they have a particular word they call you P and if you're younger, they call you long.
(22:37):
And it's like they immediately want to know how to address you.
And if you are younger than them, they're going to treat you a certain way and it goes with the, you know, your education and your job and all that kind of stuff.
It's very, I wouldn't call it like a caste system, but there's very defined roles, whether you're the older one or the younger one, and they're going to treat you appropriately.
(23:00):
Or inappropriately depending on the situation.
I got my hair cut the other day. It's all messed up back there.
You do look younger.
I mean, you're looking the mirror.
Like this is the only time I see myself like is there any podcasts?
I'm looking at the reflection of my TV.
No man, you do look young. You do look young.
(23:22):
So how do you, how do you fit like clearly you're white, you're American, right?
There's different, obviously, like you're talking about, there's cultural differences.
How, what, how are the, how are the laws and stuff in Thailand as far as microbial work and, you know, just laws in general with Psylocybe and perhaps or the Amorita or anything really?
(23:45):
Yeah, well, I don't really know to be honest.
There's certain like gray areas.
And so a lot of some people occasionally get busted, but it's usually because they're doing other stuff.
They like legalized cannabis or whatever. I don't know what words we can use.
Can we, you can do any word you want.
Really sense.
Okay.
(24:06):
So people are very sensitive about, because they'll get like demonetized or whatever on YouTube.
So the cannabis was legalized here.
It was like June of last year, May or June of last year.
So it's been fully legal like last year.
It's been fully legal for over a year and a half now.
The psilocybin laws, it's a little bit, it's one of those things they just like they have higher priorities.
(24:33):
The big thing like in the U S they're mostly the muramboids, they're mostly it's math and the opioids, opiates, opioids.
That's their big problem.
So they're like, unless you're doing, I mean, unless you're standing out front, you know, with a stand selling drugs or whatever, they're not going to really bother you.
It's like, I mean, that being said, you know, if you piss off somebody, like, you know, we were just talking about this earlier.
(25:01):
It's like, you know, that you got an ex or some friend or ex employees or somebody, maybe it's a business competitor.
Now those are the kind of people that might, you know, wrap you out.
Like it's like, I have my farm where I do all my growing, like nobody, like literally nobody has ever been to this location.
(25:22):
I have to keep it that way because even friends who want to come see the operation, it's like, I'm sorry, you're never going to see it.
You can look at the pictures I showed off the show on social media, you can watch my YouTube videos, but you are never physically going to be at my farm, which makes it a little bit lonely sometimes.
(25:43):
But yeah, it's the smart business move.
It's the smartest thing you could probably do.
Yeah, people, you know, I've been in this kind of like culture for a long time, there was a teenager and I see other people, the things they do and the mistakes they make and they trust the wrong people.
Yeah, you know, somebody is your friend today might be your enemy next week.
(26:07):
And that's going to be a problem.
I mean, I had a classic example.
We had a, this back in, gosh, it must have been like 94 or something.
We had a pretty big weed grow in our basement and my room, we had kept it under secrecy for a while and my roommate, he saw me going down to water the plants one time and he followed me.
(26:28):
And then the next day he told one person, that person told five people, you know, it's that.
So then the whole of Ann Arbor pretty much do and literally like this was a before social media and mobile phones like literally a couple hours later we had people coming in and out of the house.
People coming and asking if they could get some weed.
And it was like a couple hours later.
(26:50):
Well, we ripped the whole thing down.
It was me and my buddy, we had several thousand dollars invested in lights and you know, irrigation and all this kind of stuff.
We just basically ripped it all down.
And it was getting one of those things.
My roommate was trying to impress a girl.
So he was like, oh, you want it wasn't even his grow.
And so he took her down there and thought he was going to get laid or whatever and it just turned into this.
(27:17):
So after that, I've had other instances my roommate, his another roommate, his brother-in-law was an ex cop and like he basically robbed me one time.
And so after this happened a few times, you get really, really super sensitive about who you trust.
And they tell certain things.
(27:39):
Yeah. And I, you know, I live in Thailand, so I'm not really too worried about like the US authorities.
I mean, I suppose they could, but they're such a low priority here.
It's again, one of those things I don't really make any money selling stuff like I sell spores.
So like there's like, I don't walk down around a tour there is like, you know, now if you're on a beach in one of the holiday places and you walk in with a backpack with a half pound.
(28:04):
Or something in there, you're going to have a problem, right?
But if you do what I do, and I just basically, I mean, my fruit never goes anywhere.
All I do is I harvest the spores and I, you know, wrap them up and people buy them off my website.
The website, it's a bunch of people on there.
Spore swaps it. And yeah, then that's all I really do.
(28:28):
Like I'm not selling, I'm not moving weight, you know, I'm just basically like selling spores.
So there's like, swarswap.com.
Yeah.
Okay.
Make sure with a piece or swaps, like for the P it used to be there's other, you know, how people try to change it a little bit.
It's for swaps.com.
(28:50):
Gotcha.
Yeah, they might cut us off here.
Zoom might cut us off here here in a moment.
But oh, that's the I forgot about that.
I can't wait to.
Yeah, I've been using Streamyard.
It works really, really well.
It's surprising how easy it is.
I probably, I probably having issues because I'm on the Z Fold probably.
(29:17):
If and when we do this again, because I'd love to talk to you again, and pick your brain and do some stuff.
If you ever have time, you know, you know, what we have right now,
what we have like 30, 30 minutes trimmed down to like 25 probably added some stuff.
So I mean, we got a lot of good, we got a lot of good information in there.
(29:39):
I'm going to send you, I'm going to send you a link.
If you want to say anything like real quick to the audience, you know, like, hey, you know, my name's Ed, you know, I'm here for sportswaps.com or, you know, whatever.
You know, if you want to add anything real quick, because I can trim it and throw it in the front.
(30:02):
You know, yeah, sure.
I encourage people to go check out my YouTube channel too.
There's an incredible amount of information on there.
It's not well edited because I'm not really like an editing guy.
So they're just like kind of one off where it's just me doing a technique.
And I just moved into, I just kind of reset up my lab.
So I'm going to just, I'm going to be pumping out videos.
(30:25):
But I did get a strike one time.
So I eased back.
I was showing fruit and they gave me a warning or a strike.
And so I really, really had to be careful.
But I've got like backups of that too.
And obviously have everything saved locally.
But yeah, check out the sites sportswaps.com.
That is where I don't even know.
I must have 150, 200 list things on there.
(30:47):
There's other vendors on there now.
So I'm just having like a vendor there.
I don't really have any interest in like running my own website.
It just seems like a major pain in the neck and like,
I'm really, really happy sportswaps is that they treated me well.
There's a good group of people over there.
And yeah, my YouTube videos and my Facebook page.
(31:08):
I do Instagram a little bit, but I can't, there's so much social media now.
I can't really concentrate on, I just concentrate based on Facebook and YouTube.
But if people want to contact me, yeah, I mean, I'm on Instagram.
Just search for my name.
I don't have any aliases or anything like this is my real name.
So if we don't know, like you want to go check out my PhD, you know, it's online.
(31:31):
It's the university's website.
I'm very, very boring for most people, but yeah, this is my real name.
So I think you're kind of a little bit of a sponge.
And you know, if you search YouTube, I'm going to really, really amp the YouTube up this year.
And I just want to, I just want more people to basically know how to grow mushrooms.
That I have like one purpose in that is to teach people who might need medicine or maybe they just want to hobby, or maybe they're just bored, or maybe they just want to get high.
(32:02):
Nothing wrong with that.
Right.
Like, you know, that's, that's, you know, maybe you just want to go enjoy a concert a little more.
I'm all for that.
And if people want to get in contact with me, just I'm, I spend a lot of time just communicating with people on a daily basis.
To be honest, Facebook Messenger is probably the easiest way.
(32:23):
I'm on the other ones, but it's a lot easier just to, I got to use Facebook for other stuff.
So, but yeah, get out there, get some spores and that's the thing.
So I, my love of this is kind of morphed into like, I started selling spores so I could have money to buy more spores.
But now that was like two and a half, maybe a year and a half, two years ago.
(32:46):
Now it's turned into like, while people enjoy growing new stuff.
So my idea is to just put it out there.
You know, it's 15 bucks for a set of swabs.
Not too much.
I send them from Thailand.
It takes about three or four weeks to get to America, but they always arrive.
Just got to be a little more patient.
I mean, there's sites that'll say, oh, we'll get them out in 24 hours.
(33:08):
I just can't do that.
I'm literally on the other side of the world, but they always arrive.
A little white like reading card and like nobody's the wiser.
But yeah, I might start doing like, like liquid cultures, which have different names.
I might start doing that after maybe a couple more months.
Oh yeah, if anybody wants to contact me, man, I'm all over.
(33:29):
That's the thing.
People don't need to think of me as like, I'm not this pretentious like, you know, person.
I don't care.
I mean, out there in the world, there's people that need help and I want to help them.
Yeah.
And any kind of questions they have is more than happy to talk to people.
You're exactly the type of person literally that you fit this podcast really well because
(33:54):
you do what you do.
You're really good at it and you're really passionate about it and you like helping people.
And that's, that is based, that is the core of this, of this podcast.
So I, I really deeply appreciate you taking the time to, to come out, you know, to come
on this podcast and talk about, you know, your love of mushrooms.
(34:17):
Because I have a lot of people who have said mushrooms have changed their life, not even
just eating them, the whole process of growing them, you know, multiple people.
Yeah.
It's therapeutic of itself.
And I think it helps people maybe organize their thoughts too.
You know, you have like a plan, you know, you wake up and you've got a plan for the day
(34:40):
and some people lack that kind of structure in their life.
And if you're going to be successful, grow mushrooms, like it forces you to have a structure
in your life.
That wraps up today's episode of only the best herbs.
I really enjoyed this interview with Ed again, sporeswops.com.
(35:02):
Another word from one of our sponsors here, Ruga Monteto.
A word from one of our sponsors, Ruga Monteto.
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(35:26):
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(35:47):
Where you'll find only the best.
Until next time, this is Ryan Boulder with only the best herbs, and you'll talk to me
soon.
Thank you for what it takes to be only the best.
Thanks for watching.
If you ain't trying to get well, you're in the wrong place.
(00:04):
You're listening to Only the Best Herbs with Ryan Boulda.
Another day, another podcast. How's everyone doing today? Hope you're doing good.
I have my interview with Edward Grand. I've been meaning to get this edited.
(00:29):
I have had some malfunctioning happening with my podcasting storage.
I lost a bunch of audio and some new audio that I was working on, so I've kind of been really annoyed.
We're going to move past that with this interview today.
Edward Grand on a positive note. Really awesome individual.
(00:53):
Go check out sporeswaps.com.
Reach out to him. He's on Facebook.
Edward Grand, his profile picture, kind of looks like the underneath of a mushroom.
He's a mycologist. Hope you guys enjoy this.
Before we get started, a word from our sponsors, Searchin's LLC.
(01:15):
If you ain't feeling 100% like yourself, get in contact with us.
We have hemp extract, CBD products, kinogenetics, nutrients, glass pipes, and more.
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I mean, what would you tell you about my whole life or what I'm doing now?
(01:36):
I mean, sure. If you got time for it, I'm down for it. I love stories.
I'm sure you got it. You said you used to live in Michigan, right?
Yeah, I'm originally from Michigan and then I lived there until I was like 26.
And then I went to graduate school in Tennessee.
So then I was there for four years and then I came directly to Thailand after that.
(01:59):
I had a job lined up already, like maybe about a year, almost before I finished my PhD.
So I just pretty much came straight into a job here and I thought maybe I was going to stay here for a year or two.
And that turned into like two years. And then I got another job and that turned into like five years.
And then like now it's like almost 20 years later.
(02:22):
I've lived here for like 19 and a half years.
Yeah, something like that.
So I've, it's kind of funny I've lived more, I've lived longer time outside of America for the night.
And then I did in America for most of it, for my adult life.
(02:43):
So yeah, it's a little bit weird. I don't think it's that weird, but I guess it is a little bit weird.
I don't know if I consider myself an ex-pan or whatever, but I guess at this point I kind of am.
I didn't really have anything to go back to and like, I don't know, you know, mom and dad did and stuff like that.
I don't really have any family, so it was pretty much just like no reason to go back.
(03:07):
Right, you know, you're good. But I mean, tell me, tell me more because you, I know you're in the microbial community, right?
How exactly, how exactly do those connect?
So basically, when I, when I finished my PhD, what I did my PhD as is what, what they would call systematics.
(03:30):
It's where I basically took DNA sequences and morphology and what we call the biological species concepts basically mating.
And I tried to merge those into one sort of cohesive kind of idea about the genus that I was studying, which is Luntinus.
So it's like shiitake mushrooms used to be in them in that genus, but I should, I say them because it's multiple dinner now.
(03:54):
And every time somebody puts out a new DNA sequence, they sort of resurrect or make a new genus or switch things around.
So I don't know, I grew up like hunting mushrooms in Michigan and that was like kind of where my passion lie.
But then, you know, life and school, I studied to be a chemical, well, I did finish my engineering degree at U of M, but it seems so like boring at the time that I didn't really want to like, I don't know, I just didn't really want to be an engineer.
(04:25):
I know the money was good and everything, but I had friends that had already started working.
And I was working in a lab. So, so how it kind of happens is I worked in a medical research lab for three years, basically because I wanted to stay in Ann Arbor.
And then I was like, I don't know, it was pretty, I wouldn't say boring, but it was like, wasn't really what I was passionate about it.
(04:46):
I worked for a stomach doctor, like a gastroenterologist.
So it was like not really, you know, my thing, we got to do lots and lots of cool experiments and he was quite well funded.
So I learned how to do all kinds of weird stuff like immunoblots and northern blotting and southern blotting and PCR and you know, reverse transcriptase, blah, blah, blah, and like all this stuff.
(05:09):
And I figured there must be a way that I could apply that stuff to mushrooms.
And so I was literally sitting at work one day on a Friday like bored.
And I just did like a Google search, which would have been like Netscape then I think.
And I just like typed in something like studying mushrooms or something like that and it popped up a bunch of people.
(05:31):
And I started emailing people and within like a day I was communicating quite frequently with a guy in Tennessee.
And that was like my advisor, he became my advisor for my PhD.
So I kind of skipped the master's thing and I went straight into a PhD because it's quite common now in science to not do the master's degree.
(05:53):
So I pretty much like jumped head first into like, wow, like now I'm getting a PhD in mushrooms.
And I had no idea for like the first year and a half or so I had no idea what I wanted to study.
I mean, obviously I would like to, you know, study salacity, but like that was not really an option 20 years ago.
And so I picked Lentinus, which is another group of, you know, genus of mushrooms that has lots of edibles.
(06:18):
I figured I could apply, make the whole like edible thing, maybe give that a go, you know, that's back what even 20 years ago everybody and their brother was like opening a gourmet mushroom farm.
And I didn't really want to be like a farmer farmer, you know, like, you know, some there and like learning about harvest schedule and all that, but that's kind of what I inevitably became.
(06:40):
So yeah, fast forward now I started working in academia here, and then basically like that has run its course and so now I'm pretty much just like a full time mushroom farmer.
But I'm really into the like the breeding aspects of it like I'm really, really, because I have a quite diverse background, I think I bring like a whole maybe like a little bit of a different way of looking at it.
(07:05):
You know, I'm your typical home cultivator, but I add like layers onto it that the average person probably wouldn't because of my background and I'm quite familiar with like DNA sequencing and all these like programs and stuff where you basically can put together, you know, phylogenies and what they call them or trees based on DNA sequences and things like that.
(07:27):
Like a lineage. Yeah, yeah, basically the lineage here and how the how the species are related to each other. So when you study like, you know what they call like some kind of cryptic organisms like bosses and burns and fungicide.
There's not a whole lot of criteria like morphological characters that are used to separate them. Well, there are microscopic details, but it's a little bit hard when you get to species that are very, very closely related. You have to think about how they date with each other and how basically you know these things in the natural world like yeah how they evolved and how they how they exist today and like what makes them this species or that species.
(08:10):
Or you know a different species. And so I tried to I'm trying to like maybe bringing a little bit of that to the home cultivation world, maybe like, you know, give people ideas that might maybe make them a little more interested in, you know, just like, oh, I want to grow mushrooms.
So maybe try to get, I don't know, peak a little bit more of an interest in the academic aspects of it.
(08:37):
Yeah, it's really right now for the.
I mean, now pretty much my goal is just to like try to get people to grow mushrooms and grow them well and understand the process a little bit better. And maybe if they can, you know, I think a little bit interested in it, maybe they'll decide to pursue no more academic interest, maybe they'll go back to school or finish school or whatever.
(09:02):
Maybe they'll just read a paper, you know, come up with some new technique or maybe some new ideas.
So yeah, I just almost thinking myself as sort of like a catalyst for some of these things that like put ideas, you know, plant seeds or spores in people's heads so that maybe they'll have a little bit more of a, you know, an interest.
Maybe, yeah, maybe someday, you know, they might be the next greatest, you know, one of these fungal rouses that we all, you know, see on the movies and the YouTube videos and whatnot.
(09:34):
I don't really have much of a plan to be honest.
I just sort of take it every day as it comes and just try to keep myself entertained and still interested, which is not that hard when you get into the reading and.
And the amount of genetics that's out there these days and it's what people have come up with and trying to make your own new ones, there's just like there's literally like no end to the amount of things that you can do.
(10:04):
I've noticed, I've noticed, because you mentioned that you're you like doing.
Like the breeding aspect of it right and that's that's a hot topic, especially in these communities.
In all, you know, in all, you know, the fungal groups and whatnot you're talking about shiitake right.
(10:27):
Have you ever thought of.
I don't know how to say this like crossing.
I don't know really how you'd call them like different classes of mushrooms together like let's say a shiitake and then you can, you know, you can cross that with, I don't know, a different straight of mushroom.
I mean, is that I mean, are things like that possible like are you going to, you know, just just because.
(10:54):
Yes, it's all possible.
There's limitations. I mean, I hate to use analogies and other things, but it's like if you want to cross a cat with a dog, it's not going to happen.
If you want to cross like an oyster mushroom with a magic mushroom, it's not going to happen.
Right.
There's limits to the things you can do.
I mean, this isn't like, you know, it's not the kind of thing you just mix them up in a blender and throw them in.
(11:19):
It's there's a lot of things you need to consider.
I mean, there's simple things like, you know, I mean, if they're so distantly related, it'd be like humans trying to make with chimpanzees.
You know, we're pretty close, but as far as I know, like there have been some attempts to do that.
But then you get into weird things like there's just simple chromosome numbers like humans and chimpanzees have different numbers of chromosomes.
(11:43):
So if you were to successfully make them, you have to overcome a lot of barriers.
There's biochemical barriers.
There's just simple like physical barriers like these two species have different numbers of chromosomes.
And then there's the technical aspects of it.
A lot of people, they're called inter specific hybrids.
So inter like between two species.
(12:05):
So the holy grail and like, oh, my apologies.
Take the pantyolis, which are the kind of, I don't know, people have different names for them.
I don't even know what the common names are formed.
To be honest, like the grass lovers, there's a genius called pantyolis that everybody wants to cross a pantyolis, which generally are stronger with like a cubensis,
which is the one that people typically grow, you know, in their closet.
(12:28):
So we've got the cubensis aspect.
It's pretty, it's fairly pretty well understood how to grow them.
But people want to, of course, increase the potency.
So they want to make inter specific.
If you go on any of the mushroom boards or forums or discords or whatever, that's, it's a perennial topic.
(12:49):
I started doing this kind of stuff like literally like 30 years ago when I was in college.
And this same topics that people were talking about 30 years ago, they're still talking about them.
There's just a simple thing like you can't cross a cat and a dog, right?
So if you're looking at mushrooms, I mean, just the fact like a cat, the dog or mammals, but if you got two mushrooms, they can be so distantly related.
(13:16):
It's again, the same thing like mammals, like you can't make like a horse with a cat or a dog with a cat.
And so the same thing, I think people try to mistakenly sort of apply this idea that well, they're all mushrooms.
They should just like sort of mix with each other.
But that is not the case.
It's a good analogy.
Yeah.
(13:37):
That's about it.
I mean, there's like lots of other more like technical and scientific reasons, but that's the basic idea when we call species species because they're a reproductively isolated group.
So I mean, the basis for what's called the biological species concept is that essentially all the members of that, you know, that species are fully compatible with each other.
(14:00):
Right.
So I don't know if it's an Aboriginal from Australia, you know, maybe a Native American or European or someone from Africa.
Like we all know that you can make fully, right, almost sapiens like all almost sapiens can make and produce fertile offspring.
So there's another little caveat there.
If you made something, so if you could make an interspecific hybrid, these are those would technically be called hybrids because they're two species.
(14:28):
So if you could do that, there's a second problem you need to basically have that organism be reproductive.
So I mean, you can make like say for the classic example again is like a horse and a donkey.
Right.
Horse and a donkey, they're both separate species, but you make them together and you get a mule.
Right.
But you can't make more mules from mules.
(14:51):
Right.
Mule you need a horse and a donkey.
Like so that's the kind of more common.
I mean, most people know that, you know, that, you know, you can't make more mules from mules.
They're not reproducible.
Like you have a horse and a donkey.
So that's another little kind of problem is that like if you are successful making it.
(15:13):
So they were calling a pan cube hybrid, an interspecific cross or in that case it would be an intergeneric cross because they're two different genera.
So if you could do that, you would be very, very, very famous.
In fact, if you could do that, you would probably get like a Nobel Prize if you published and and you're documenting your results because it's very uncommon in any biological system to have intergeneric process.
(15:41):
Again, that would be kind of back to like, you know, chimpanzees and humans were actually two different genera.
Right.
What is it?
I forgot the chimpanzees or the bonobos or whatever. I forgot what the the genus is for chimpanzees.
You're way smarter than me.
Yeah, well, I've got different background.
Right.
(16:02):
It doesn't mean I'm smarter.
You've done a lot of research.
It's kind of funny that you say that because this is actually sometimes I get, I get this from, I'm not smarter than you.
I just study different things.
Right.
For sure.
I'm sure you do know how to do lots and lots of stuff that I have no clue about.
It's, it's kind of funny that you mentioned that because like a lot of people in the sort of home cultivator community, they have like what I would call a chip on their shoulder because maybe they're not as educated as I am.
(16:39):
And they're not like maybe in a position to be able to do some of the things I do.
Like, you know, they've got wife, kids and debts.
I'm a single guy who's pretty much like, can do whatever I want.
A bachelor?
Yeah.
So, so I don't have the limitations that some people do.
So I can literally, I can study fungi and play with fungi like 20 hours a day if I wanted to.
(17:04):
Like here at the 11 o'clock at night, well, I'm at 30 now.
I mean, I already put in like an eight hour day, but after I get up here with you, I'm literally going to go like play with my mushrooms and make spawn.
I was pressure cooking some stuff earlier.
So my, my work day after this, I'll just, and I love it.
That's the thing.
I'll stay up till four or five in the morning doing my fungal stuff.
(17:25):
I'm going to like subculture some things, transfer some, you know, put some spores on plates, things like that.
And that for me is like entertainment.
Like I would rather be playing with my mushrooms and watching some dumbass Netflix series, you know, that's like what I do.
What? It's a lot of the people, this is something that when I was on a lot of podcasts with a guy called Michael geeky.
(17:50):
And we haven't kind of, we tried introducing some of these more, more detailed, like scientific ideas.
And I don't, I really wish people would get, I wish they would like forget about the education life.
Like, I, like it's literally to the point now I don't tell people I have the education that I do because they immediately get a complex life.
(18:15):
So it's something that if I, if I were to meet you on this three, like you would never know that I have a PhD because I simply wouldn't tell you.
Right.
I figured that was appropriate for the podcast, but if it's not, you can delete that part.
I don't, I don't, I don't want to make it.
It's not like pretentious.
They're like, I have like zero ego and pretentiousness, but even when I try to like enforce that idea of people, I don't know, there's always that little thing on their shoulder.
(18:45):
I don't know what it is.
That's why I bring it up.
That's why I bring it up because a lot of there is a lot of that going on people who think they're like not, I wouldn't say smarter, but you know, have that.
Uh,
seniority, I guess, seniority, I guess would be a better word to kind of throw their weight around a little bit and maybe get what they want.
(19:12):
And, and you know what, that's, that's, uh, obviously respectable.
That's obviously going to happen, right?
But with, with the community being about like love and like passing around genetics and sharing and it's just, it just seems very counterintuitive to me.
You know, for, for that to be, for that to be around like talking with you, I get a completely different feel.
(19:39):
You're, you're, uh, going to go play with mushrooms at four o'clock in the morning.
You know, that's completely different than your, you know, your traditional professional grower cultivator, for example.
You have a passion for it, you know, what's a project that you're working on right now?
Yeah, I just want to think about that is like, I'm well familiar with that because those people when I came in about two and a half years ago, like I took kind of a hiatus for about 15 or 20 years.
(20:09):
I had to deal with those people.
I know, I mean, I could tell you by name that if there's like five people that should be eliminated from the mushroom community, like they all hate me because I've made an effort to actually the gatekeepers.
Like I've made an effort and almost made it a goal of my life now to basically educate people through my YouTube and through my live streams and through answering questions.
(20:36):
And those people that want to be the gatekeepers, they don't like that.
Right.
Because as you said, they make money off of their little secrets.
And so when I started to like breathe mushrooms and I started making videos about how simple it is to do it.
I got a huge amount of black and kickback from those people who were not happy about me, you know, giving out their secrets.
(21:01):
And I do, I mean, I've worked in academia for 20 years, believe me, I'm very, very familiar with the way academics are their egos and their pretentiousness.
I am very, very familiar with that.
And that's the problem is when you when you get labeled like, oh, you're an academic or you've got all this fancy education, people like shut down.
(21:25):
It's like I used to teach chemistry and when I told people I taught chemistry, 99% of the time the very first thing they say is, oh, I hate chemistry.
So I'm like, well, I don't know.
Thank you. Like that my my profession, like you the first thing like you tell me is how you hate it.
It's like, oh, if you work in a grocery store, you know, and somebody's like, oh, I hate groceries.
(21:52):
Yeah, funny.
I'm like so familiar with that pretentiousness.
That's why I'm leaving academia.
I've been in academia for about 20 years and that's particularly why I'm leaving academia because I just don't want to deal with that.
The levels of egos and pretentiousness and it's even worse here because like it's very age like dependent.
(22:14):
Like if you're younger or older than someone, they treat you very different.
And I look kind of young.
So I often run into this case of like, like people, especially the other like most type people, they look at you and they judge you based on how old you look immediately.
So if you're older, they have a particular word they call you P and if you're younger, they call you long.
(22:37):
And it's like they immediately want to know how to address you.
And if you are younger than them, they're going to treat you a certain way and it goes with the, you know, your education and your job and all that kind of stuff.
It's very, I wouldn't call it like a caste system, but there's very defined roles, whether you're the older one or the younger one, and they're going to treat you appropriately.
(23:00):
Or inappropriately depending on the situation.
I got my hair cut the other day. It's all messed up back there.
You do look younger.
I mean, you're looking the mirror.
Like this is the only time I see myself like is there any podcasts?
I'm looking at the reflection of my TV.
No man, you do look young. You do look young.
(23:22):
So how do you, how do you fit like clearly you're white, you're American, right?
There's different, obviously, like you're talking about, there's cultural differences.
How, what, how are the, how are the laws and stuff in Thailand as far as microbial work and, you know, just laws in general with Psylocybe and perhaps or the Amorita or anything really?
(23:45):
Yeah, well, I don't really know to be honest.
There's certain like gray areas.
And so a lot of some people occasionally get busted, but it's usually because they're doing other stuff.
They like legalized cannabis or whatever. I don't know what words we can use.
Can we, you can do any word you want.
Really sense.
Okay.
(24:06):
So people are very sensitive about, because they'll get like demonetized or whatever on YouTube.
So the cannabis was legalized here.
It was like June of last year, May or June of last year.
So it's been fully legal like last year.
It's been fully legal for over a year and a half now.
The psilocybin laws, it's a little bit, it's one of those things they just like they have higher priorities.
(24:33):
The big thing like in the U S they're mostly the muramboids, they're mostly it's math and the opioids, opiates, opioids.
That's their big problem.
So they're like, unless you're doing, I mean, unless you're standing out front, you know, with a stand selling drugs or whatever, they're not going to really bother you.
It's like, I mean, that being said, you know, if you piss off somebody, like, you know, we were just talking about this earlier.
(25:01):
It's like, you know, that you got an ex or some friend or ex employees or somebody, maybe it's a business competitor.
Now those are the kind of people that might, you know, wrap you out.
Like it's like, I have my farm where I do all my growing, like nobody, like literally nobody has ever been to this location.
(25:22):
I have to keep it that way because even friends who want to come see the operation, it's like, I'm sorry, you're never going to see it.
You can look at the pictures I showed off the show on social media, you can watch my YouTube videos, but you are never physically going to be at my farm, which makes it a little bit lonely sometimes.
(25:43):
But yeah, it's the smart business move.
It's the smartest thing you could probably do.
Yeah, people, you know, I've been in this kind of like culture for a long time, there was a teenager and I see other people, the things they do and the mistakes they make and they trust the wrong people.
Yeah, you know, somebody is your friend today might be your enemy next week.
(26:07):
And that's going to be a problem.
I mean, I had a classic example.
We had a, this back in, gosh, it must have been like 94 or something.
We had a pretty big weed grow in our basement and my room, we had kept it under secrecy for a while and my roommate, he saw me going down to water the plants one time and he followed me.
(26:28):
And then the next day he told one person, that person told five people, you know, it's that.
So then the whole of Ann Arbor pretty much do and literally like this was a before social media and mobile phones like literally a couple hours later we had people coming in and out of the house.
People coming and asking if they could get some weed.
And it was like a couple hours later.
(26:50):
Well, we ripped the whole thing down.
It was me and my buddy, we had several thousand dollars invested in lights and you know, irrigation and all this kind of stuff.
We just basically ripped it all down.
And it was getting one of those things.
My roommate was trying to impress a girl.
So he was like, oh, you want it wasn't even his grow.
And so he took her down there and thought he was going to get laid or whatever and it just turned into this.
(27:17):
So after that, I've had other instances my roommate, his another roommate, his brother-in-law was an ex cop and like he basically robbed me one time.
And so after this happened a few times, you get really, really super sensitive about who you trust.
And they tell certain things.
(27:39):
Yeah. And I, you know, I live in Thailand, so I'm not really too worried about like the US authorities.
I mean, I suppose they could, but they're such a low priority here.
It's again, one of those things I don't really make any money selling stuff like I sell spores.
So like there's like, I don't walk down around a tour there is like, you know, now if you're on a beach in one of the holiday places and you walk in with a backpack with a half pound.
(28:04):
Or something in there, you're going to have a problem, right?
But if you do what I do, and I just basically, I mean, my fruit never goes anywhere.
All I do is I harvest the spores and I, you know, wrap them up and people buy them off my website.
The website, it's a bunch of people on there.
Spore swaps it. And yeah, then that's all I really do.
(28:28):
Like I'm not selling, I'm not moving weight, you know, I'm just basically like selling spores.
So there's like, swarswap.com.
Yeah.
Okay.
Make sure with a piece or swaps, like for the P it used to be there's other, you know, how people try to change it a little bit.
It's for swaps.com.
(28:50):
Gotcha.
Yeah, they might cut us off here.
Zoom might cut us off here here in a moment.
But oh, that's the I forgot about that.
I can't wait to.
Yeah, I've been using Streamyard.
It works really, really well.
It's surprising how easy it is.
I probably, I probably having issues because I'm on the Z Fold probably.
(29:17):
If and when we do this again, because I'd love to talk to you again, and pick your brain and do some stuff.
If you ever have time, you know, you know, what we have right now,
what we have like 30, 30 minutes trimmed down to like 25 probably added some stuff.
So I mean, we got a lot of good, we got a lot of good information in there.
(29:39):
I'm going to send you, I'm going to send you a link.
If you want to say anything like real quick to the audience, you know, like, hey, you know, my name's Ed, you know, I'm here for sportswaps.com or, you know, whatever.
You know, if you want to add anything real quick, because I can trim it and throw it in the front.
(30:02):
You know, yeah, sure.
I encourage people to go check out my YouTube channel too.
There's an incredible amount of information on there.
It's not well edited because I'm not really like an editing guy.
So they're just like kind of one off where it's just me doing a technique.
And I just moved into, I just kind of reset up my lab.
So I'm going to just, I'm going to be pumping out videos.
(30:25):
But I did get a strike one time.
So I eased back.
I was showing fruit and they gave me a warning or a strike.
And so I really, really had to be careful.
But I've got like backups of that too.
And obviously have everything saved locally.
But yeah, check out the sites sportswaps.com.
That is where I don't even know.
I must have 150, 200 list things on there.
(30:47):
There's other vendors on there now.
So I'm just having like a vendor there.
I don't really have any interest in like running my own website.
It just seems like a major pain in the neck and like,
I'm really, really happy sportswaps is that they treated me well.
There's a good group of people over there.
And yeah, my YouTube videos and my Facebook page.
(31:08):
I do Instagram a little bit, but I can't, there's so much social media now.
I can't really concentrate on, I just concentrate based on Facebook and YouTube.
But if people want to contact me, yeah, I mean, I'm on Instagram.
Just search for my name.
I don't have any aliases or anything like this is my real name.
So if we don't know, like you want to go check out my PhD, you know, it's online.
(31:31):
It's the university's website.
I'm very, very boring for most people, but yeah, this is my real name.
So I think you're kind of a little bit of a sponge.
And you know, if you search YouTube, I'm going to really, really amp the YouTube up this year.
And I just want to, I just want more people to basically know how to grow mushrooms.
That I have like one purpose in that is to teach people who might need medicine or maybe they just want to hobby, or maybe they're just bored, or maybe they just want to get high.
(32:02):
Nothing wrong with that.
Right.
Like, you know, that's, that's, you know, maybe you just want to go enjoy a concert a little more.
I'm all for that.
And if people want to get in contact with me, just I'm, I spend a lot of time just communicating with people on a daily basis.
To be honest, Facebook Messenger is probably the easiest way.
(32:23):
I'm on the other ones, but it's a lot easier just to, I got to use Facebook for other stuff.
So, but yeah, get out there, get some spores and that's the thing.
So I, my love of this is kind of morphed into like, I started selling spores so I could have money to buy more spores.
But now that was like two and a half, maybe a year and a half, two years ago.
(32:46):
Now it's turned into like, while people enjoy growing new stuff.
So my idea is to just put it out there.
You know, it's 15 bucks for a set of swabs.
Not too much.
I send them from Thailand.
It takes about three or four weeks to get to America, but they always arrive.
Just got to be a little more patient.
I mean, there's sites that'll say, oh, we'll get them out in 24 hours.
(33:08):
I just can't do that.
I'm literally on the other side of the world, but they always arrive.
A little white like reading card and like nobody's the wiser.
But yeah, I might start doing like, like liquid cultures, which have different names.
I might start doing that after maybe a couple more months.
Oh yeah, if anybody wants to contact me, man, I'm all over.
(33:29):
That's the thing.
People don't need to think of me as like, I'm not this pretentious like, you know, person.
I don't care.
I mean, out there in the world, there's people that need help and I want to help them.
Yeah.
And any kind of questions they have is more than happy to talk to people.
You're exactly the type of person literally that you fit this podcast really well because
(33:54):
you do what you do.
You're really good at it and you're really passionate about it and you like helping people.
And that's, that is based, that is the core of this, of this podcast.
So I, I really deeply appreciate you taking the time to, to come out, you know, to come
on this podcast and talk about, you know, your love of mushrooms.
(34:17):
Because I have a lot of people who have said mushrooms have changed their life, not even
just eating them, the whole process of growing them, you know, multiple people.
Yeah.
It's therapeutic of itself.
And I think it helps people maybe organize their thoughts too.
You know, you have like a plan, you know, you wake up and you've got a plan for the day
(34:40):
and some people lack that kind of structure in their life.
And if you're going to be successful, grow mushrooms, like it forces you to have a structure
in your life.
That wraps up today's episode of only the best herbs.
I really enjoyed this interview with Ed again, sporeswops.com.
(35:02):
Another word from one of our sponsors here, Ruga Monteto.
A word from one of our sponsors, Ruga Monteto.
They supply quality, first generation bread, can of genetics.
Reach out to us here at Surgeons.
We supply all of Ruga Monteto's up to date strains, including strains mixed with runts,
(35:26):
cookies, grape stomper, josh dee, kush, and more.
If you're looking for unique, exotic, carefully created cannabis strains, Surgeons is the place
to be.
Visit our website, surgeonsolution.io.
(35:47):
Where you'll find only the best.
Until next time, this is Ryan Boulder with only the best herbs, and you'll talk to me
soon.
Thank you for what it takes to be only the best.
Thanks for watching.
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