A hand in a blue glove plucks a white mushroom from a dense stand of mushrooms. Mature magic mushrooms are carefully harvested to minimize damage. Credit: Filament Health Some scientists theorize that ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Scientists found that the magic behind so-called “magic mushrooms”—psilocybin, a psychedelic compound—has evolved at least twice in mushrooms, and in very different ways. Researchers in Germany and ...

Two distantly related groups of mushrooms take radically different routes to producing psilocybin, a mind-bending molecule. By Rachel Nuwer No one knows why magic mushrooms evolved to produce ...