From foraging mushrooms for the dinner table, to deadly poisonous toadstools, the fungal world has always spanned delight and danger. Media often sensationalizes fungi as either saviors of the world or harbingers of its destruction, but does it truly hold such power? Could the next global pandemic be fungal? Join Dr. Lotus Lofgren in the basement of Moon Dog Meadery to learn about the dark side of fungal biology, including fungal mind-control, carnivorous mushroom, host-jumping, and the real threat of human pathogens. Following this lecture will be a demonstration of the sinister and dreadful power of the Fungal Dungeon by local metal band Noctomb.  

Dr. Lotus Lofgren is a postdoctoral scholar at the Rytas Vilgalys Laboratory in the Duke University Department of Biology.Prior to arriving at Duke, she completed a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota (2019) in the Kennedy Lab of Fungal Ecology, followed by a two-year postdoc in fungal population genetics and evolutionary genomics in the Stajich Lab at the University of California Riverside 

Noctomb: Three-piece crawling forth from the moldering basements of Raleigh, NC. A distinctively southern blend of black, sludge, and doom metal, combining low n' slow riffs with fast ragers. A sonic journey into putrid realms of fungal miasma and mycological abomination.

Please note that space is limited and entrance will be first come, first serve. Moon Dog Meadery is located at 1104 Broad St.