Tarun Nayar seems like a fun guy.

The biologist-musician-lecturer-sorcerer is wrapping up a short tour of US cities under his nom de champignon Modern Biology. I was lucky enough to see his show, “Mushroom Church,” during a recent stop in Brooklyn. Several hundred weirdos like myself packed into pews at a Unitarian-Universalist sanctuary to watch Nayar and his partners-in-slime make mycelial art. And it was really cool.

“There’s so much we don’t know,” Nayar admitted about the fungi science as he then plugged one end of a wire into enormous mushrooms (a particularly nifty one that kinda looked like a McDonald’s Fry Guy was called a Lion’s Mane) and the other end into a synthesizer. And lo! There was music.

It’s not that the mushrooms are singing, but like all living things they have a bioelectrical current. Groovy-looking mushrooms just have enough of it that its “pulse” can activate a synthesizer and make all kinds of great noises.

Mushrooms, at least the ones displayed at the Mushroom Church show, sound like squat, fat, squirts of sound. The Modern Biology team contours these noises to have a retro Wendy Carlos-like quality. But later examples of plant music, like from moss, have a more glassy, piano-like tone. Indeed, following the lead of moss-derived pulses, Modern Biologist’s keyboardist soon jammed along on an analog concert grand piano.

It’s old and new tech working together, with real science working to create a science fiction setting. Modern Biology’s spoken work poetry certainly adds to the storytime element of it.

Clearly, I had a really good time at this show, or I wouldn’t still be talking about it a week later. There are a few more gigs planned for late October in Portland and Los Angeles, plus events scheduled in Ontario next spring. Hopefully more dates are announced soon (check here).

What was most exciting — besides the whole Star Trek: Discovery mycelial network vibe of the event — was exposing myself to the fungi enthusiast community. On line outside the venue I met people who make mushroom art (clothing, mostly) and those who grow their own groovy plants in the dark, musty corners of their homes.

Were some of the people attending Mushroom Church glassy-eyed stoners who just like to get high? Sure, a few, as is the case with any gathering. But the bulk of the audience were people actively engaged in a subculture completely new to me. Foraging for such experiences is, for me, what STARLOG is all about.

Jordan Hoffman, Communications Officer

Lord knows I’d love to be the guy who could plunk down exorbitant amounts of money for old pulp magazines on microfilm. (Not even microfiche, also known as microfilm’s more sensible sibling!) Younger people today really have no clue how much fun it was to run spools of this stuff at the library for special projects. One wonders if our current easy access is a righteous trade-off.

But I’m getting ahead of myself — check out the archive section of this week’s STARLOG Podcast to hear the full story.

You can listen by clicking the “listen” button below.

Few people have a cooler job than Michael Chaikin. He is a professional curator, working with museums and galleries, and also with artists and estates who turn to him and say “I’ve got trunks filled with stuff in the attic, go up there and sort it all out.”

The list of people he’s worked with is extraordinary — Bob Dylan, Isabella Rossellini, the Maysles Brothers, Randy Newman, and many more. He’s also put together the packages for several Blu-ray box sets, which brings us to why he ended up a guest on The STARLOG Podcast.

You may be aware that the Criterion Collection (an organization which is to elite physical media as STARLOG is to sci-fi fandom!) has just released a massive final word on the career of Stanley Kubrick. This doorstopper of a set includes every feature and every short he ever made, plus a slew of outstanding ancillary material housed in a gorgeous package that yearns to be displayed in your home.

People can argue over what is Kubrick’s true masterpiece, but I think most would agree his most influential film remains 2001: A Space Odyssey, a lodestar of science fiction if ever there was one.

Chaikin kindly took time to speak to Dave and me about how this set — arguably the most anticipated work in Criterion’s history — came together, and what treasures are tucked away on these stacked discs. We mostly talk about 2001, but don’t forget Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, and famously deployed NASA lenses to shoot Barry Lyndon. He’s definitely a STARLOG guy.

The new episode of The STARLOG Podcast, like the ones before it, is on whatever podcasting platform you prefer. Or you can just click the little “listen” button below.

SCI-FI

If an actor goes on a podcast and says they had an idea for a Star Trek prequel, that’s all well and good, but when it is James McAvoy, who already played a younger version of a Patrick Stewart character in the X-Men franchise, it takes on a lot more weight. Read this report for McAvoy’s idea for Mutiny on the Stargazer.

SCIENCE

The Japanese space agency JAXA launched a probe to the Martian moon Phobos this week, with the goal of returning ground samples back to Earth. The whole thing will take a few years, but if it is successful it will mark the first sample return from so far away of a place. For more about the MMX (Martian Moon eXploration) mission, check out this nifty website.

CULTURE

A strange person with unusual shower thoughts went on the Sci-Fi subreddit and asked what would happen if aliens invaded the Moon or Mars and … just stayed there? The responses are predictably unpredictable.

ETHICS

Every now and then it is important to be reminded that not everything AI is doing is bad. (But it’s also important to do so sparingly! AI is still mostly bad.) Check out this story of how AI agents are helping people with ALS and other ailments “get their voices back.”