Recommendation: 'Fantastic Fungi'
EXCERPT //
It’s possible during a pandemic to finally reach the end of your “to-watch” list. You’ve exhausted all the time-bending, multi-season mystery thrillers (don’t miss Germany’s Dark, and make sure you stick it out to the very end). You’ve gorged on romantic period pieces that take you away to another time and place, Jamestown, Outlander, and Bridgerton among them, where you can learn some of the contours and customs of the last several centuries while you swoon at dirty men with swords. You’ve had your fill of seriously wonderful, life-affirming candy—any season of Queer Eye will do but we recommend the Philly season, of course, as well as how much out-and-out humanity and hope you’ll find in the season that takes you to middle America.
After that, the final course arrives, friends, and it is...a plateful of mushrooms. Don’t let this get you down, because the 2019 documentary/advocacy film Fantastic Fungi really is fantastic. Come for the stunning stop-action photography of mushrooms sprouting like magic out of the foulest of environs, and stay for Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape” hypothesis of human evolution, which posits that our pre-human brains expanded at a rapid pace because our pre-human brethren, following herds of animals across plains, found mushrooms laced with psychedelics growing in animal dung and consequently blew their (eventually our) minds.
For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //