The World Opens Up: Fungi, Wonder, and Ways of Knowing

Elizabeth Rovere, MTS ‘95, hosts Wonderstruck®, a podcast that takes listeners on a journey into the space between knowing and not knowing, where wonder and curiosity guide us, and the extraordinary is explored through conversations with artists, scientists, seekers, and storytellers. She interviewed Giuliana Furci, foundress and executive director of the Fungi Foundation, National Geographic Explorer, Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy, deputy chair of the IUCN Fungal Conservation Committee. She is also author of several field guides to Chilean fungi and co-author of “State of the World’s Fungi” (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2018) and of the paper on “Delimitation of Funga as a valid term for the diversity of fungal communities: the Fauna, Flora & Funga proposal (FF&F).” In this wide-ranging conversation recorded at the Center for the Study of World Religions, they explore how fungi serve as vehicles to the divine, the profound interconnectedness of all life, and Furci’s pioneering work documenting Indigenous relationships with fungi around the world—knowledge that reveals not only the essential role of fungi in sustaining life on Earth, but also ancient wisdom about reciprocal relationship with the natural world.

Subscribe to @wonderstruckpod to hear more conversations with speakers from the “Thinking with Plants and Fungi” conference, including episodes with Monica Gagliano, Merlin Sheldrake, and Zoe Schlanger. This interview was edited for clarity and readability.

ELIZABETH ROVERE: I want to begin with two powerful statements I’ve heard you make. First, once you discover fungi in nature, your vision of nature will never be the same. And second, without fungi, the world as we know it would not exist. These are compelling statements that speak to both wonder and ecological necessity.

GIULIANA FURCI: Fungi play a role in nature that extends far beyond what we can see. Most land plants cannot survive on land without fungi that live on and in their roots and cells. They cannot live outside of water without this symbiosis. Consider that without plants, we wouldn’t have the oxygen necessary for life. And, there would be no animals. So literally, without fungi, the world as we know it would not exist. When you learn about how fungi live in different ecosystems and how they interact with plants and animals—including us—your perception of the world changes forever. Suddenly, you appreciate what you can’t easily see, and you realize that there’s much more to the world around us than we thought.

ROVERE: That insight is incredibly powerful, and it represents something that most people have not appreciated until recently. What struck me about our meeting at Harvard Divinity School is how it reframes our understanding of transcendence. Traditionally, when we think of transcendence, we think of something elevated above us. Through learning about fungi and your work, however, I’ve come to think about transcendence as something that emerges from underground—something beautiful that originates beneath, hidden yet revealed. As I’ve read about your work, the world has begun to open up.

FURCI: Your observation is particularly intriguing because when we consider humanity’s search for the divine, we as a species have always looked from the terrestrial toward the celestial. Yet fungi have been instrumental in that quest for the celestial. Think about the range from psychedelics to communion in the Roman Catholic Church today—you receive communion through wine and bread, both of which require yeast for their creation, and yeast are fungi. Throughout our spiritual quest to encounter the celestial, the vehicles have consistently been fungi. ROVERE: I’m curious about your initial experience in the
forest—your first encounter with fungi. I understand that you weren’t sure what you were doing, but experienced a profound sense of calling.

FURCI: I was studying aquaculture and red algae when I saw an advertisement at the university seeking students and volunteers to help sample fox scat and the opportunity intrigued me, so I volunteered. I accompanied a professor to a forest in southern Chile, and that’s where I experienced fungi for the first time. And that’s where I saw for the first time. It’s the first time I saw fungi. It’s not that I hadn’t seen them, but it’s that we saw each other. There was a very beautiful orange mushroom on a tree stump, and I wanted to know who she was. I experienced an immediate sense that this was my path—this was what I needed to do. This feeling has never diminished. Something profound occurred in that moment, creating a responsibility, a calling from which there is no escape.

ROVERE: During your fieldwork, you get physically close to fungi and lie down on the ground, as if you are sensing fungi. Could you describe that process? It seems to represent an embodied form of learning and knowing, as if something is guiding you from within.

FURCI: There are two aspects to consider. One involves experience. I’ve been engaged in this work for over 25 years, spending extensive time with fungi in their natural habitat. I find deep satisfaction in being with them in their home. I have developed a physical awareness of temperature and humidity, an understanding of when they are likely to be visible, and factors such as how many leaves remain on the trees or their color. This represents accumulated experience with fungi.

Then there is another dimension—a sense of openness to encounter that becomes accessible when you are calm and receptive. Achieving this state requires taking a brief moment to enter the forest properly, perhaps offering a small prayer or seeking permission. The approach need not be ceremonious. Some people prefer more ceremonious approaches, but I am simply calm and quiet. This state of openness to encounter allows you to follow your intuition and senses. Recently, there have been occasions when I’ve had the confidence to say, “There is someone there.” Even in the dead of night, I would stop the car and investigate, and I would find the fungi. Previously, I wouldn’t acknowledge this sense. Now, with certain people, I’m beginning to mention it more openly.

ROVERE: I appreciate your willingness to share this because the more we learn, the more we understand alternative ways of knowing and trust our intuitive senses. As we increasingly respect intuition, imagination, and experience, the more the world can open up to us.

FURCI: Once you experience it, it becomes inevitable, absolutely inevitable.

ROVERE: How has creative expression and artistic collaboration contributed to your work with the Fungi Foundation?

FURCI: Artistic collaboration has always been integral. Since 2012, the Fungi Foundation has been working with artists in different international biennials through video art pieces, dance, painting, poetry, installations, and pop-up museums. Art has always been a central means for people to develop an emotional connection to fungi. The goal is not merely to disseminate facts, but to foster feelings. Once you’ve experienced that emotional connection, your world will never be the same again.

ROVERE: Could you discuss animism and its relationship to your work with fungi?

FURCI: Animism represents the belief that there exists a spirit in every living being. It involves both the certainty of this spiritual presence and maintaining relationships with every living being in a soulful way. It’s a way of living.

ROVERE: When you are in the forest but not actively working with the fungi, do you miss them? Do you feel their absence, or do you always feel them present?

FURCI: They are everywhere. My entire existence is dedicated to thinking about and serving the fungi. I work for the fungi, for their habitats, and for the people who depend on them. My existence is not separate from theirs. I serve them, and the question becomes: what can I do for you? It’s a vocation.

ROVERE: The Fungi Foundation also conducts an oral history campaign. You mentioned this at the Harvard conference, and it resonated deeply with the audience. This work seems quite significant—could you elaborate on it?

FURCI: This work has evolved from simply collecting oral histories to documenting relationships and leaving that documentation with the communities themselves. In most places around the world, no one has asked Indigenous people, local communities, or traditional societies about their relationships with fungi. This feels like essential work I must pursue for at least the next decade. I speak several languages and have developed an approach that avoids extraction—instead, I invite communities, or am invited by them, to document these relationships. We do not extract anything for external use, we primarily use audio recording, we do not publish without permission, and we leave everything with the people and communities. We have no expectations beyond providing elders with the opportunity to leave documented relationships for younger people in their communities, to allow these relationships to be preserved.

ROVERE: Yes, because as you mentioned, many grandchildren have left for urban areas.

FURCI: The elders are grandparents who learned from their grandparents, but whose grandchildren have left for the cities. There is no one that they can share their wisdom and stories with. For example, consider the relationship between lightning and mushrooms—a connection that you can find throughout the world, across diverse cultures. When I ask the elders if there are any deities or forces of nature that their culture or people relate to mushrooms, most respond: lightning and thunder. They often explain that as children, they would go where lightning struck to search for mushrooms. You find such stories everywhere, but you need to create space for them to emerge in conversation. My long relationship with fungi provides an opportunity to invite certain possibilities into these conversations.

ROVERE: Is there something you’ve learned that surprised you or opened your mind?

FURCI: There are astonishing things where adjacent communities have a relationship with the same fungus in a medicinal way. Maybe one will use it for the eyes, and the other will use it for the ears. They live 10 kilometers apart, but they never knew the other was using it differently. Nobody has ever asked, and nobody has triggered those conversations among them.
My experience has been that we reignite something that unravels much more. One of the relationships that has blown my mind the most is the relationship that the Yanomami people have. They weave baskets with mycelial strands of the leaf-catcher fungi. These are thick, black, shiny mycelial cords, threads. Sometimes you may even see little mushrooms coming out of them. That shows the extent of connections with fungi—it’s not only medicine, not only eating, but also weaving everything together.

ROVERE: Your work beautifully demonstrates how fungi connect us not only ecologically, but also culturally, across human communities.

FURCI: Once you’ve felt it, your world will never be the same again. The world starts opening up, and you realize there’s much more beneath the surface than we ever imagined.