Reggie Harris joins Madison Margolin to talk about opening portals, connecting to ancestral roots, and the future of mushrooms.
“I knew internally that they were connecting me with my ancestors. Now I have an external validation that these are opening portals, my people were using this before me, and maybe this is how we can communicate through time and space.” – Reggie Harris
Reggie and Madison dive into:
- The psychedelic community spanning across different cultures
- Connecting with ancestors and receiving spiritual insights
- The personalities and traits of various mushrooms
- Reggie’s mushroom practice and how he journeys
- His thoughts on the ideal economic and political policy around psilocybin mushrooms
- Encounters with police
About Reggie Harris:
Reggie has over a decade of political campaign experience ranging from city council races to presidential elections, working to replace police with guidance counselors in Oakland public schools, and managing the western and southwestern state campaigns with Color of Change PAC.
Reggie has consulted with the largest mushroom cultivators in the world – working with the largest cultivators in The Netherlands and has recently advised in the establishment of the largest commercial mushroom farm and state of the art testing lab in Jamaica.
Over the past 3.5 years, Reggie has established Oakland Hyphae which hosted the Psilocybin Cup (now known as the Hyphae Cup) and the most impactful Psychedelic Conferences across the country. He is a co-founder of Hyphae Labs, leading the industry in psychedelic mushroom potency testing, and offering adaptogenic medicinal fungi through Hyphae Nootropics. Reggie is a strong advocate for who he calls, “the little guy” or the “legacy plant medicine workers” whose perspective he uplifts through his recent publication, HyphaeLeaks. It is Reggie’s goal to protect the legacy plant medicine workers and create barriers to entry for big-money interest groups in the psychedelic space.
Connect with Reggie’s work at HyphaeLeaks or @oakland.hyphae on Instagram
About Madison Margolin:
“I’m a journalist straddling California, New York, and Israel-Palestine, focused on psychedelics, cannabis, and Judaism (in jest, I’ll say “Jews & Drugs”). I also cover culture, policy, and science. I’m passionate and curious about how people can transcend their minds to access something greater than themselves — be it through getting high off acid or God, meditating, creating art, or something somatic, I’ve set out to explore the various ways people nourish their souls. This is what drives me, and most of my writing, in some way or another, connects back to this theme.
These days, I work as an editor at DoubleBlind, the print and digital magazine I co-founded, covering psychedelics and where they intersect with mental health, spirituality, environmental justice, and social equity. I also co-founded the Jewish Psychedelic Summit and host a podcast called Set & Setting on the Be Here Now Network. I’ve been practicing journalism since 2014 and have been published in outlets like Rolling Stone, Vice, Playboy, High Times, Tablet, and Nylon, among others.
I got my start with a column on cannabis at the Village Voice, just after graduating from Columbia Journalism School. Prior to that, I lived in Tel Aviv, working with Israel’s African refugee community. In a past life, I also lived at a crazy co-op called Cloyne, while studying rhetoric and linguistics at UC Berkeley.
I’m a nerd about language and speak or dabble in French, Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. When not working, writing, or reporting, I’m usually dancing, spinning my hula hoop, or practicing yoga.”