FLAUNT casted our net into the bog to understand the current state of mycology, surveying experts at the top of their fields on topics related to psychedelia and indigenous healing, microbiology, mushroom leather, and cinema. Please see here, world-renowned chef and fermentation expert David Zilber, DrPH candidate at UC Berkeley and Diné and Mescalero Apache scholar Marlena Robbins, Chief Truffle Officer and Managing Director of the American Truffle Company Robert Chang, and filmmaker and mushroom lover Gabriele Fabbro, as they guide us through the muck towards mycological clarity. Happy hunting!

David Zilber has worked in some of the world’s top kitchens–most notably serving as the director of the Fermentation Lab at Restaurant Noma, where, for the better part of a decade, he employed microbes to transform familiar foods into bold new ingredients. Today, he works at the intersection of gastronomy, food science, and fermentation in collaboration with leading bioscience companies like Novonesis, cooking, writing, and rotting from his adopted home of Copenhagen, Denmark.

What is the most  rewarding item that a food science layman can ferment? Or, in your tenure, what’s proved the most difficult to ferment?

The most rewarding? A bean. They seem so simple. You get them in your Chipotle bowl, your chickpea salad, your full English, and they feel sort of…alright. When you’re cooking, it tends to really take a lot of attention and care to elevate simple pulses into sublime offerings. But when you ferment them, you “set it and forget it.” You outsource that loving time and attention to microbes that do the hard work for you…the thing about beans is, they try real hard to lock up their nutrients in a manner that only makes them maximally accessible to their own offspring. They’re full of starch and protein, yes, but also full of antinutrients, minerals, and complex fibers that need to be dismantled and unwound to be properly digested. When you ferment a bean, microbes do those jobs for you in advance of your meal. And by doing so, they make those beans all the more delicious. If nature provided an ingredient list on her plants, you’d find beans have the perfect mix of proteins and carbs to make for the perfect bite. When microbes use their enzymes to break down those products into umami and sweetness, your palate sings. From miso to dawadawa to douchi, a fermented bean is a transformational experience.

The most difficult thing for me to ferment was bear. Don’t ask.

Marlena Robbins is a Doctor of Public Health candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the Program Coordinator for the Collective Continuance: Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship, where her research utilizes implementation science, Indigenous methodologies, and public health prevention theory. She has contributed to tribal engagement strategies for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and served on the Colorado Natural Medicine Tribal Working Group.

Can you touch on the Indigenous epistemologies that can be integrated into psychedelic-assisted therapies? What can be done now to ensure that the future of psychedelic participation remains connected to Indigenous stewardship and community? 

Across the globe and throughout time, Indigenous knowledge systems have given rise to sophisticated ceremonial practices for engaging with the metaphysical dimensions unlocked by plant medicines. These traditions were shaped over countless generations through careful observation, lived experimentation, and the patient transmission of wisdom from elder to apprentice, evolving into a refined technology for accessing transcendental states of consciousness. Ceremony serves as a sacred container: altars, song, prayer, and ritual cultivate intention, provide protection, and call upon practitioners’ guidance to help participants navigate the depths of psychological and spiritual experience.

Amid the current “psychedelic renaissance,” psychedelic-assisted therapy has largely continued the colonial pattern of extracting Indigenous traditions and repurposing them for Western clinical frameworks, severing them from the cosmologies, languages, and cultural worlds that give them life. Stripped of that living context and the responsibilities embedded within it, these practices become diluted and, in some cases, dangerous.

The pressures of bioprospecting, commercialization, and the conversion of Indigenous knowledge into venture capital and pharmaceutical profit reduce sacred plant and fungal medicines to intellectual property or isolated compounds. This perpetuates a stubborn Western assumption that science can improve upon designs that nature has spent millions of years refining.

A more ethical path would involve less standardization of these traditions into therapeutic protocols, and far greater investment in creating the conditions for Indigenous nations to govern these medicines on their own terms, determining how they are understood, practiced, and carried forward across generations.

At its heart, Indigenous teaching holds that human beings are inseparable from the fabric of the natural world. Learning to live in accordance with natural and spiritual law may be the most profound lesson these medicines are here to offer.

Robert Chang is the Chief Truffle Officer and Managing Director of the American Truffle Company (ATC). His technical training (Stanford University: B.S. in Electrical Engineering and minor in Biology, M.S. in Electrical Engineering and qualified for the Ph.D. program) helps ATC client-partners design and implement electronic monitoring systems, moisture-sensing irrigation systems, drainage systems and environmental monitoring systems—all central to the collection of data and fine-tuning of truffle cultivation methodology. Readers of Flaunt are able to get preferential position in the launch allocation of fresh truffles with promo code: flauntreader2026!

As a food enthusiast with a special love for mushrooms, what is it about wild ingredients that draws you to seek them out, and what continues to fascinate you about their place in the culinary world? 

What fascinates me about wild ingredients—truffles especially—is that they exist at the intersection of science, mystery, and culture. Even after decades of research, truffles still surprise us. That unpredictability, that refusal to be fully domesticated, keeps me endlessly curious.

But here’s what really drives me: truffles engender something primal in us. When a dog finds a truffle underground, or when a chef shaves fresh truffle over a simple dish, there’s this moment of discovery that you can’t manufacture or replicate. It’s pure magic.

As someone trained in business, engineering, and science, I’m ever curious and drawn to solving problems. Truffles presented the ultimate challenge—how do you take something so wild, so capricious, and make it reliable through science without losing what makes it special? That tension between control and mystery, between rigorous methodology and nature’s unpredictability, is what keeps me endlessly passionate and fascinated on this journey.

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Gabriele Fabbro is an Italian filmmaker, cinematographer, and director of 2024 film Trifole, which follows a young woman to Italy where she cares for her aging expert forager grandfather Igor, hunting for a highly sought-after truffle to save his home. Fabbro has a BFA degree in Filmmaking from the New York Film Academy, and has written, directed, and produced over 30 productions including features, short films, music videos and commercials.

Are there moments in your personal life when actively seeking out overlooked or undervalued treasures—whether in people, places, or ideas—have changed the way you see the world or shaped your values? Of course, this happens all the time. It’s one of the best parts of this job. The quietest people, places, and ideas are often the most beautiful and the most overlooked in a fast-moving world. Both of my films came from immersing myself in real places and meeting the people who inspired them. My first (The Grand Bolero) was about a pipe organ cleaner who loved her instruments so much that she chose to live inside them, moving from church to church to repair them. In Trifole, Igor Bianco is a truffle hunter who has dedicated his life to preserving the forests around Alba. Both characters are based on real people. The real Igor, moreover, also had to leave his yellow house because the surrounding vineyards wanted to expand.

Spending time with people like this, understanding their lives, is the most enriching part of filmmaking. It reveals worlds that feel both magical and real. I believe in seeking out these hidden lives with curiosity, and as a director, my goal is to bring those quiet treasures into the light, onto the stage they deserve.

Illustrated by Daniel Quintero.