Our Plastic Future

We’ve spent this season tracing how fungi, and especially mycelium, can shake up industries and remediate the harm caused by climate change. We’ve talked about foraging, growing, healing and commercializing mycelium. But there’s one frontier we saved for this episode, the last of this season. It’s one that, here at Healthy Materials Lab, we’re honestly most excited about: affordable housing. We speak with Chris Maurer and the team at BioHab, who are building housing with mycelium.  This project represents the culmination of our exploration of fungi (and aligns with HML’s big audacious goal of making all affordable housing with healthy materials). BioHab is, all at once, addressing waste issues, food insecurity, carbon sequestration, affordable housing, circularity… all powered by fungi.Here's a link to the recording of our Trace Material Live event with Chris.For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Mycelium based materials have a wealth of potential applications. But how does a new material get out of the experimental phase and into mass production? That transition is often where material development can stall. Luckily, that isn’t happening with mycelium. In this episode, we speak with Gavin McIntyre, who is the co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Ecovative. Ecovative is a revolutionary company at the forefront of the mycelium industry. He leads us through the journey Ecovative has taken to get mycelium products into homes across the world. For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Did you know that Mycelial networks can break down dead plant or animal matter and they can connect with the roots of living plants to share nutrients between them? Whether that was news or not, mycelial networks are much more complicated than you might imagine. To get down in the dirt with them, we spoke with Maya Elson. Maya works with CoRenewal, a nonprofit dedicated to providing education and research in ecosystem restoration, where she leads projects around post-fire bioremediation and ecological generation. She also runs her own organization: Mycopsychology. She calls herself a ‘mycelial networker.’ For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

The power of fungi has been neglected by academic institutions and marginalized in the larger society. By the 1960s the American imagination had linked fungi to magic mushrooms, the counterculture movement, and Nixon’s war on drugs. That lingering association has meant that American mycophiles have gathered in community at the margins.We wanted to dig into those margins with William Padilla Brown, a citizen scientist who’s been thriving at them. William is the founder of Mycosymbiotics, and he both sells and researches mushrooms. We went down to Pennsylvania to talk to him about what it took to become a renowned citizen scientist, and what makes the fungi community so special.Here's where you can find more from William: Instagram: @mycosymbiote and @mycosymbioticsWebsite: mycosymbiotics.com For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

In this episode we go on a journey led by revered mycologist John Michelotti into the forests of the Catskill mountains to learn the basics about what makes mushrooms so special. Can fungi change the way we approach our ecosystem? Can they give us healthier food systems, healthier bodies, healthier materials, and healthier housing? That’s what we want to explore this season, and there was no better place to start than deep in the woods with an expert.Visit catskillfungi.com to schedule a mushroom walk or purchase a mushroom extract. Give them a follow on instagram @catskillfungiFor more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Trace Material explores the intersection of our lives and the lives of the materials that surround us, one material at a time. This year, for Trace Material’s third season, the podcast team at HML is investigating fungi.Does this mysterious kingdom hold the keys to a healthier future? Tune in this summer to find out and subscribe today!

Over the course of this season, we’ve told stories of iconic plastic objects like Tupperware and Bakelite and looked at how this material has woven itself into our culture and our bodies. We’ve traced how we found ourselves in the plastics age, but what comes next?To help us envision the future plastics, we invited Pete Myers to speak with us in our first ever live taping of Trace Material. Pete is the founder and chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences (which publishes the famous Environmental Health News) and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University. Pete has decades of experience in the chemistry of plastics, particularly with a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors––a term he coined in the early 90s and explored in the best selling book he co-authored called “Our Stolen Future."We know the 3 R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle) and explored the myth of plastics recycling in this season of the podcast. In this episode Pete makes his argument for a new set of R’s: rethink, redesign, reform. Subscribe and listen to the episode on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.Have you enjoyed this season? Let us know on Apple Podcasts Trace Material is a project of Parsons Healthy Materials Lab at The New School. It is hosted and produced by Ava Robinson and Burgess Brown. Our project director is Alison Mears, and our research assistant is Olivia Hamilton. Trace Material was made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our theme music is Rainbow Road by Cardioid. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

We're looking back at the stories we've told on this season of Trace Material. How did we find ourselves living in the plastics age and where might we go from here?  Be sure to go back and listen to any episodes you may have missed this season! For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

More than any other generation, Gen Z’s lives have been marked by climate change and climate anxiety.  In this episode of Trace Material, we speak to young climate activists to understand how they’re imagining a future away from plastics and a materials designer working to make that future a reality. For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

The nation’s first plastic bag ban in Suffolk County, NY set off panic in the plastics industry. How did industry create the myth of recycling and squash potential bag bans?We speak to Assemblyman Steve Englebright, who sponsored the bag ban in 1988, about the decades long fight to ban plastic bags in Suffolk County and the tactics used by the plastic industry to thwart these bans. Plus, Kara Napolitano from SIMS Municipal Recycling Facility in Brooklyn offers us a new way to think about plastics recycling. For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.