Merlin Sheldrake eats mushrooms sprouting from his book, Entangled Life

Fungi make mushrooms, but first they must unmake something else. In this video, I eat oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus) that have sprouted from my book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures. Now Pleurotus has eaten Entangled Life, I can eat the Pleurotus – and so eat my words. Initially I was flattered that Pleurotus had so eagerly devoured the book, but on reflection I’m not sure that I can interpret their behaviour as a vote of confidence. Pleurotus have famously diverse tastes and are able to eat an astonishing variety of things, from crude oil, to used cigarette butts, to glyphosate – they can even trap and consume worms when they need to. The mushrooms were delicious: I couldn’t taste any off notes, which suggests that the fungus had fully metabolised the text. The book was soaked in boiling water. The fungus was introduced to the book in the form of myceliated grain and placed in a sealed plastic bag in the dark. After a couple of weeks, when the mycelium had grown, I removed the bag, placed the book in the light, and kept it moist with a water spritzer while it fruited over the course of about five days. Many thanks to my friends at who inoculated and incubated the books. Find out more about Entangled Life at .