Mycoculture Research, Arts, and Development
inspires and promotes diverse relations between humans and all fungi.
Through the production of immersive events, the curation of community-sourced media initiatives, and the publishing of mycophilic art and literature, MYC^RAD works to capture landmark moments of the rapidly expanding mycocultural landscape. Guided by the philosophy of Radical Mycology, our efforts encourage mycology as both an art and science to evolve holistically and collaboratively by enabling emergent and established voices to share their unique connection with fungi through the intention-driven cultural artifacts that we curate and foster.
We strive to guide social trajectories toward a healthy future with fungi by inspiring more people to reflect on their relationship with mushrooms and molds, and by encouraging diverse contributions to this important field.
We see the modern re-discovery of fungi as a precious opportunity to redefine humanity’s connection with an immense component of the natural world – one that most societies have overlooked for generations. As MYC^RAD documents this historical moment and the importance that mushrooms, lichens, and micro fungi hold on the world’s cultures, we also work to take an active role in highlighting all that this cultural change suggests through open dialogues on the fate of the human-fungal relation.
Mycoculture Research, Arts, and Development promotes and records diverse expressions of the human-fungal relationship. Our community-sourced initiatives enable creators to share their unique perspective through established and new forms of media, while our small and large events provide novel spaces for sharing, connecting with, and being inspired by the breadth of today’s mycoculture.
In even-numbered years (e.g. 2024, 2026, etc.), we host hundreds of attendees at the Radical Mycology Convergence (RMC) near Portland, Oregon. This four-day gathering brings together an international community of teachers, artists, performers, and mycofolk to engage with, explore, and expand the Radical Mycology philosophy.
In the years between, we release the latest volume of the Radical Mycology Mixtape, our acoustic archive of mycophilic music and musings. Each year the Fungi Film Fest curates a diverse program of fungi-centered cinema for audiences around the world.
These inroads for the mycoculture expand conversations that began in the book Radical Mycology over 10 years ago – dialogues that continue to evolve alongside the fungi that guide our work. How these ideas continue to grow will only be told in time, with each new thread guided by the spores that each initiative’s contributors share and spread.
Much like the mycelia that motivate us, our legacy has traveled and evolved over the years. While the ideas behind that Radical Mycology ethos that guide Mycolculture RAD has been developing since 2005, the first spores were released in 2008 through the grassroots distribution of a zine entitled Radical Mycology that had been written by our founder, Peter McCoy. The text was novel with its eclectic suggestions for integrating mushrooms and molds into social design and phenomenology while also highlighting the need for integrating aspects of fungal ecology, mushroom cultivation, and mycoremediation in efforts aimed at addressing social and environmental causes.
After several years of underground global circulation, the zine’s popularity led to our first large event in 2011: the Radical Mycology Convergence (RMC). Here, days of workshops and discussions were held to explore Peter's ideas and to build a community among the hundreds of international attendees who shared similar values around fungi. Little did we realize at the time that our work was paving the way for a major change in the world's perception of mushrooms and other fungi. For at its core the RMC aimed to initiate a new type of mycoculture: one aimed at uplifting the whole world and one in which anyone could directly contribute.
In the years that followed, Peter worked to develop his zine's initial notions into a robust way of seeing and experiencing the world that was inspired by fungi. Along the way, collaborators joined the effort, with each event they held further expanding the edges of the conversation.
In 2016 Peter compiled all that he had learned into his first book, Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working With Fungi, which sparked a global movement of self-identified Radical Mycologists propagating the skills and philosophy the text conveyed. The book’s popularity and praises prompted Peter to further support the growing mycoculture by initiating the Radical Mycology Mixtape and Fungi Film Fest as platforms for highlighting the inspirational influences of fungi, and to start a mycology school.
When the Radical Mycology zine was first released, mycology was a fringe topic and so our efforts focused on getting the uninitiated excited about all that they were missing out on. Since then, awareness of fungi has rapidly grown from the edges of society into some of the most exciting centers of scientific research and pop culture creation. Thankfully, it’s no longer a challenge to demonstrate how rad mycology is to newcomers. As the mycoculture has evolved over the years, so too has our approach to ensuring its healthy survival.
In 2026, on the 10-year anniversary of the Radical Mycology book’s release, Mycoculture Research, Arts, and Development (MYC^RAD) was founded to take the Radical Mycology spirit to new heights.
We grew taller, so that our spores could spread even further.
We welcome all to take part in our community-sourced creative initiatives and to join us for our next gathering. Join us as we work to co-create new means for seeing and working with fungi and, perhaps, learn something about ourselves along the way.
Having first discovered a passion for fungi in his early teens, Peter McCoy has spent more than two decades developing means to promote and enable an increasingly resilient future for the modern mycoculture.
His work with fungi has included years developing accessible fungal cultivation and mycoremediation practices as well extensive writing on the history of human-fungal relations and the presentation of novel hypothesis on the nature of fungal growth, communication, and evolution.
Peter is the author of Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working With Fungi and The Mycocultural Revolution: Transforming Our World with Mushrooms, Lichens, and Other Fungi, as well as the founder and lead instructor at Mycologos, a mycology school and applied mycology research center based in Portland, Oregon. His work has been featured in the films Fantastic Fungi and The Mushroom Speaks, and in the books Entangled Life, In Search of Mycotopia, and The Future is Fungi.
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No. In 2006, Peter McCoy coined the term Radical Mycology to describe alternative perspectives he had long held on fungi. In 2008 he wrote a zine about these ideas, and in 2011 the first Radical Mycology Convergence was organized by Peter and several friends to explore the zine’s proposals.
Three subsequent RMCs in 2012, 2014, and 2016 had a rotating crew of organizers, with a core group, the Radical Mycology Collective, maintaining continuity between the events. This group amicably disbanded in 2016 and Peter McCoy took on the role of director for all subsequent Radical Mycology related events and initiatives.
These events aimed to promote the philosophy of Radical Mycology, but a formal organization was never established to connect these efforts. Mycoculture Research, Arts, and Development was founded in 2026 to fill this role and to serve as an embodiment of the Radical Mycology ethos and as a means to support its development. MYC RAD carries on the legacy and spirit of the initial Radical Mycology efforts, while adding greater depth and focus to our events, encounters, and initiatives.
Radical Mycology is a way of thinking about fungi and a cultural framework for engaging with them. It seeks diverse perspectives for considering fungi and encourages self-described Radical Mycologists to add their voice to the mycocultural conversation. Much of the Radical Mycology paradigm was detailed in the book Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working With Fungi, though additional ideas have been woven into the concept since the book’s initial release in 2016.
The Radical Mycology movement is the decentralized and unofficial web of Radical Mycologists around the world who advocate for the Radical Mycology perspective – some of whom are listed on our RAD Map. Like a mycelial network, the Radical Mycology movement is an invisible web, with spores spread in a variety of habitats. There is no formal way to join the movement, nor are their rules for identifying as a Radical Mycologist.
MYC RAD works to inspire and document ideas and insights from across the Radical Mycology movement. We curate events and media initiatives that encourage new and established voices within the modern mycoculture. We aim to expand and evolve the Radical Mycology movement alongside its philosophical framework.
The Olympia Mycelial Network and Bay Area Applied Mycology are groups mentioned in the book Radical Mycology, and were outgrowths of the first Radical Mycology Convergences. They aimed to share low-cost applied mycology skills with their local communities – topics that weren’t readily accessible at the time. As these skills have become increasingly commonplace in the years since, what Radical Mycologists do now varies widely.
MYC RAD encourages new Radical Mycology-inspired groups to form – whether to run experiments, build friendships, or to get creative. However, as there are many ways to approach mycology, we don’t have standards or protocols for how such groups should operate.
We welcome you to form a group inspired by the Radical Mycology book (though we ask that your group’s name not include “radical mycology”), and to focus on whichever topics are most important to you. And, we’d love to know about all such groups, so that we can add them to the RAD Map! You can also read about what being a Radical Mycologist can look like here.
The zine that started it all is no longer printed for reasons detailed here. We ask that the original Radical Mycology zine not be sold or reproduced and that anyone wanting to learn about the Radical Mycology movement refer to our other titles.
As is detailed here, mycoremediation is one of the many frontiers of mycology that motivates the Radical Mycology spirit. While our first events emphasized the importance of mycoremediation, the scope of the Radical Mycology conversation has widened significantly over the years to encompass a variety of other topics and skillsets.
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