About
An honest source in a noisy field.
Mycology Minded is an independent publication about cognition, capacity, and the role mushrooms can play in both. We cover three things: functional mushrooms for mental and physical performance, home cultivation, and the science and policy of psilocybin.
We exist because the mushroom information landscape — supplement marketing, wellness influencers, psychedelic evangelism, reflexive skeptics — is mostly noise. Our readers are builders, founders, researchers, athletes, and anyone else who treats their brain like an instrument worth tuning. Those readers deserve an honest source.
Mission, in one line: improve human cognition and capacity through the miracles of mycelium and mycology.
Who runs this
Research-first, brand-free.
Mycology Minded is operated by Harrison Ford — independent researcher, agency founder, and longtime student of the cognition-and-mushrooms intersection, based in Anchorage, Alaska.
I'm not a doctor, clinician, or credentialed mycologist. What I bring: a research-first habit (I've been reading clinical trial papers as a default since 2020), no financial relationships with any supplement brand beyond disclosed affiliate programs, a builder's bias toward systems that actually work, and a willingness to say when a market-leading product is mostly starch.
I've been a quiet biohacker since college — sleep tracking, supplementation, cold exposure, the standard stack — long before any of it became content. Mycology Minded is the venture I've been most invested in for the longest, and the one I think can compound the hardest.
The three lanes
Cognition, Cultivation, Consciousness.
The three lanes share a substrate: the mycelial network and the human brain are the two most interesting compounding systems on the planet, and they have more in common than most people realize.
Functional mushrooms for focus, memory, sleep, recovery, and output. Lion's Mane, Reishi, Cordyceps, Chaga, Turkey Tail. What's in the bottle, what the research actually shows, what's worth buying and what's a waste.
Grow your own. Beginner grow kits, substrate science, sterile technique, eventually liquid culture and grain-to-bulk. For the readers who'd rather produce than purchase.
The science, research, and policy landscape around psilocybin. State-regulated programs, clinical trial summaries, state-by-state legal status. We cover this lane journalistically — not advocacy, not facilitation.
The guardrails
What we don't do.
- We don't sell supplements or any product of our own. (That may change one day. When it does, every page that covers it will disclose the relationship.)
- We don't accept paid placements that aren't clearly labeled as such.
- We don't provide information on acquiring psilocybin or any controlled substance outside legally regulated programs.
- We don't claim mushrooms cure anything. We use the language the research uses: associated with, evidence suggests, clinical trials found.
- We don't take editorial direction from affiliate partners. When a partner ranks low, we say so.
How we evaluate products
Five criteria, every review.
Source material
Fruiting body vs mycelium grown on grain. Most of the active compounds live in the fruiting body. We tell you which it is.
Extraction method
Hot water for beta-glucans, alcohol for triterpenes, dual extraction for both. We tell you which method was used and what it captures.
Beta-glucan content
The actual measured percentage when the brand publishes it. When they don't, we say so.
Third-party testing
Does an independent lab verify what's in the bottle? Is the certificate of analysis publicly available?
Price per gram of active compound
The per-bottle price is meaningless. The per-gram-of-beta-glucan price is the only number that matters.
For cultivation gear: first-time success rate, substrate quality, support responsiveness, replacement policy on contaminated kits, and shipping reliability. For psilocybin content: peer-reviewed research, published trial data, and government program documentation — never recreational forums. Read our full editorial process →
A note on what we believe
Mushrooms aren't magic.
They're not a panacea. The space is full of overstatement on every side — supplement marketers, psychedelic advocates, anti-supplement skeptics. All of them are partly right and partly full of it.
What we believe is this: the science is interesting, the policy is evolving fast, the supplement market is messier than it should be, and the people working seriously on their own cognition deserve a publication that talks to them like adults. That's what we're trying to build here.
When we get something wrong, we update the article and note what changed. We don't quietly edit history. Spot an error? Contact us — we take corrections seriously.
The newsletter
Grow with the network.
One email a week — what the research actually says, what to grow next, and where policy is moving. No hype, unsubscribe anytime.
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