Paul Stamets becomes fungi phenom with acclaimed documentary and Star Trek character

Olympia mushroom guru Paul Stamets, long a major figure in the world of mushroom research, is now a pop-culture celebrity, too.

Stamets, a scientist and business owner selling mushroom remedies, cultures and supplies, is the central expert featured in the current documentary “Fantastic Fungi” and the inspiration for science officer Paul Stamets on CBS’s “Star Trek: Discovery.”

“Fungi’s” Olympia premiere, happening Thursday, Dec. 12, will include a Q&A with Stamets, who has spoken at only a few of the screenings nationwide. That screening is sold out, but both the Olympia Film Society and the Grand Cinema in Tacoma hope to bring back the film.

“This show sold out in about two weeks, which is unusually quick for us,” said OFS spokesman Jonah Barrett. “We get so many calls every day from people asking for tickets, and it’s so sad to turn them away.”

Directed by time-lapse photography master Louie Schwartzberg, “Fungi” celebrates the healing power of mushrooms and mycelium, vast underground networks that spawn them and connect plants and trees, to heal both humans and the earth.

Yes, psychedelic mushrooms are part of the story — and an interesting one given that research on psilocybin’s power to alleviate depression and anxiety is so promising that Johns Hopkins University recently opened a center for research into it and other psychedelics.

The film, which opened in October, has received international acclaim.

It was one of just nine films to get a perfect score on the film-review aggregate site rottentomatoes.com in 2019, according to a recent article in London’s Daily Mail.

“ ‘Fantastic Fungi’ is a must see for anyone interested in life, death and the pursuit of the planet’s well-being,” David Carpenter wrote in Forbes.

Stamets, who graduated from The Evergreen State College in 1979, is a leader in that pursuit.

Though his only graduate degree is an honorary doctorate from the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, he holds numerous patents, with the most recent ones relating to the enormous power of fungi extracts to fight viruses that have killed huge numbers of honeybees and contributed to colony collapse disorder.

“My bee research is a paradigm-shifting breakthrough,” he told The Olympian.

“Nature can repair itself with a little help from mycologists,” he wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times in December 2018.

“Mycology is an underfunded, understudied field with astonishing potential to save lives: ours and the bees’.”

That’s just one example of the potential Stamets and others see in the mushrooms that Los Angeles Times critic Robert Abele labeled “capped crusaders” and in the mycelium beneath.

It might sound science-fictional — especially when you think of the fungi as superheroes — but the interconnected organisms Stamets studies are quite down to earth.

On “Discovery,” meanwhile, his science-fictional namesake studies alien fungi. Stamets said he talked with writers on the series about mycelium, which is a key technology on the show.

“Science fiction often precedes, conceptualizes and can predict science facts,” Stamets said.

‘Fantastic Fungi’

• What: The documentary, featuring Olympia mycologist Paul Stamets, combines mushroom-expert interviews with time-lapse photography and animation that illustrate both the underground world of fungi and the effects of ingesting psychedelic varieties.
• When and where: The Dec. 12 Olympia screening, which will be followed by a Q&A with Stamets, is sold out, but both the Olympia Film Society and the Grand Cinema in Tacoma — which showed the film Oct. 25-Nov. 7 — hope to schedule additional screenings.
• More information: fantasticfungi.com, olympiafilmsociety.org, grandcinema.com
• Paul Stamets: Find out more about Olympia mycologist Stamets and the mushroom remedies and supplies he sells through Fungi Perfecti and Host Defense at paulstamets.com, fungi.com and hostdefense.com.