This educational film is an introduction to the ergot fungus, including lifecycle, cultivation, medicinal uses, and toxic effects. The film also summarises methods for the chemical extraction of ergoline compounds.
Henry H. Dale
as Himself
I was scrounging around the neighborhood for inspiration. Within a block from my apartment, I found a wild mushroom in the grass, and an advertisement for a psychic named Sara.
Jack Parsons: Jet Propelled Antichrist is a story about one of the fathers of modern rocketry and a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which as part of NASA still leads the way in the development of rockets and the exploration of space. He was also an occultist, a sorcerer and a magus. The infamous magician Aleister Crowley the self-proclaimed Great Beast called him son. He called himself ‘The Antichrist’ and was repeatedly investigated by the FBI. At the age of 38 Parsons died in a mysterious explosion that made headlines around the US. Officially it was a tragic scientific accident — other interpretations of the event persist to this day.
In search of the lucrative matsutake mushroom, two former soldiers discover the means to gradually heal their wounds of war. Roger, a self-described 'fall-down drunk' and sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a Cambodian refugee who fought the Khmer Rouge, bonded in the bustling tent-city known as Mushroom Camp, which pops up each autumn in the Oregon woods. Their friendship became an adoptive family; according to a Cambodian custom, if you lose your family like Kouy, you must rebuilt it anew. Now, however, this new family could be lost. Roger's health is declining and trauma flashbacks rack his mind; Kouy gently aids his family before the snow falls and the hunting season ends, signaling his time to leave.
Dr Michael Mosley explores the bizarre and fascinating world of parasites by turning his body into a living laboratory and deliberately infesting himself with them.
This video provides step-by-step instructions for cultivating Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms at home. Viewers areintroduced to the mushroom lifecycle, sterilization techniques, inoculation methods, substrates, incubation, terrariums, humidification methods, casings, agar media, strain isolation, and bulk growing.
This 1971 color anti-drug use and abuse film was produced by Concept Films and directed by Brian Kellman for Encyclopedia Britannica. “Weed: The Story of Marijuana” combines time-lapse, montage, illustrations, animation (by Paul Fierlinger and emigre Pavel Vošický) and dramatized, documentary-style interviews to survey the evolving role of cannabis in U.S. society, with emphasis on the legal risks faced by young people. A unique score of experimental synthesizer music is provided by Tony Luisi on an EMS VCS 3 “Putney”
That smelly, pale yellow liquid that people flush down the toilet every day is an industrial fertilizer, a diagnostic tool, a medicine, a renewable energy resource; it is an inexhaustible substance that is produced daily in huge quantities. This is the golden story of urine.
Dipendra Bhandari follows a family from Rolpa as they head up north to the Himalayan foothills in search of the yarsagumba, the fungus that grows out of caterpillars prized for its virile properties. They join the caravan of thousands of other Yarsa hunters on their yearly trek up the treacherous yet breathtaking mountain trails.
Coming in all shapes and sizes, bacteria are present in every corner of the Earth. Their purposes and types are even more diverse, with only 1% being truly harmful. Dive into the world of Bacteria to experience the latest discoveries and scientific knowledge surrounding these plentiful and necessary microbes.
Documentary about births around the different cultures and regions of the world.
Tony and Ajani, two mushroom foragers based in Minneapolis, spend the day foraging at a local park and musing on the power of nature.
As the Dead Sea shrinks, engineers prepare a daring solution: connect it with the Red Sea by way of a massive desalination plant. If it works, it could stabilise the lake and ease regional tensions.
Expert John Wass presents a documentary telling the story of how hormones were discovered and remain at medicine's cutting edge as we try to deal with modern scourges like obesity.
Professor Richard Fortey delves into the fascinating and normally-hidden kingdom of fungi. From their spectacular birth, through their secretive underground life to their final explosive death, Richard reveals a remarkable world that few of us understand or even realise exists - yet all life on Earth depends on it.
In the 1970s, Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin significantly contributed to the development and psychopharmaceutical use of MDMA: a catalyst to personal doors entombed or unknown. His widow, co-author, and research partner, Ann—alongside friends, family, and colleagues—gives a guided tour of their life and laboratory, reflecting on how risks and revelations opened a world of compound enlightenment. Stippled with spirituality, sadness, and skepticism, the Shulgins’ chemical love story examines the power of psychedelic psychotherapy, sacred alchemy, and challenging the path of misunderstood resistance.
Injectable anti-inflammatories, anticoagulants, anti-infectives, anticancer drugs and even cotton wools are in short supply. Like many others in France, the pharmacy at Rennes hospital is constantly on the edge. Over the past two decades, shortages of medicines and health products have increased twentyfold in Europe. With almost all laboratories affected, practitioners and health establishments are forced to juggle with quotas to make up for shortages. Some even have to prioritise patients in terms of access to treatments, according to scales established by the laboratories. In the Netherlands, hospital pharmacies have resigned themselves to manufacturing the molecules they lack.
This film reveals the exquisite machinery of the human cell system from within the inner world of the cell itself - from the frenetic membrane surface that acts as a security system for everything passing in and out of the cell, the dynamic highways that transport cargo across the cell and the remarkable turbines that power the whole cellular world to the amazing nucleus housing DNA and the construction of thousands of different proteins all with unique tasks. The virus intends to commandeer this system to one selfish end: to make more viruses. And they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.
CERN, the world's largest physics laboratory, is also a society in itself. A mythological microcosm and science's answer to the Tower of Babel, with its many thousand employees as an indispensable element among cables and computers. The researchers speak the same esoteric and nerdy language. But their physical trials are not the only experiments in the human anthill. CERN is also a utopian experiment in collaboration across cultures, where the world's most advanced technology meets the world's sharpest—and some of the quirkiest—minds.
