What Is a Mushroom, Really?

A mushroom isn't a plant. It's barely even the organism. In the pilot episode, Maya and Theo start with the largest known fungus on Earth — a 2,385-acre honey mushroom slowly eating an Oregon forest — and work down to the real star: the mycelium, the vast hidden network doing the actual living. Along the way: two thousand years of calling mushrooms "imperfect plants," why you're closer to a mushroom than a mushroom is to a fern, digestion that happens outside the body, a billion spores a day, an imperial assassination (allegedly), and the three jobs fungi do. Field Notes: go flip a rotting log. Gently. Spore Lore is an eclectic mycology podcast — rigorous about the science, playful about everything else. New episodes weekly. Follow @sporelorepod everywhere, visit sporelorepod.com.