Talks 21 - The Karel Janeček Podcast

Talks 21 - The Karel Janeček Podcast Talks 21 is a space for depth and authenticity.

Every 21 days, a visionary mathematician Karel Janeček hosts open and honest conversations with guests from science, philosophy, education, health, technology, spirituality, and systemic transformation.

09/16/2026

Maybe mushrooms have never been something you thought much about..

And then you hear a conversation like this and suddenly an entire world opens up. Honestly, that is exactly what we wanted Talks 21 to be.

Conversations that widen your perspective and make it a little harder to see the world as a collection of separate things.

Andrew Carter describes this beautifully when talking about fungi. Sometimes, to understand a single mushroom, you need to understand the tree beside it, the insects around it and the soil beneath it. The mushroom only really makes sense as part of the whole ecosystem.

And throughout the episode, we discovered many more ideas like this: that fungal tissue can be found almost everywhere in plant life, that fungi help make nutrients available in soil, and that learning about mushrooms can become a gateway to understanding much larger ecological systems.

Comment “FUNGI” and we’ll send you the full episode!

09/14/2026

Using fungi to help restore polluted soil sounds almost like the perfect ecological solution. And yes - there’s a “but.” The reality is much more complicated.

In this .podcast episode, Danielle Stevenson explains how some fungi can break down pollutants such as diesel, while fungi and plants together may help remove heavy metals from damaged soil.

Sounds almost too good to be true, right? Well… kind of.

What works in a lab does not automatically work in nature. Fungi need to survive in complex environments, many useful species are difficult to cultivate, and we still have to figure out how to make these methods work on a scale that could actually make a difference.

And maybe that’s exactly what makes this topic so fascinating. The potential is huge, but so are the unanswered questions.

We are only beginning to understand what fungi may be able to do for damaged ecosystems, and how much we still need to learn before we can really work with them at scale.

And the conversation goes even further, into waste, new materials, mycelium and the way we think about our relationship with nature itself.

Comment “FUNGI” and we’ll send you the full episode 🍄

09/12/2026

Comment „FUNGI“ and we will send you whole episode! ⬇️

Environmental scientist Danielle Stevenson says that around 70% of land worldwide is now thought to be degraded or polluted.

And our most common response is not always to eliminate the pollution, but simply to move it somewhere else.

In the podcast, Danielle explains how mycoremediation could offer a different approach. Certain fungi can break down carbon-based pollutants such as diesel directly in the soil, while others support plants growing in toxic environments. Some plants can then draw metals such as lead and arsenic into their tissues, allowing them to be removed from the site.

Heavy metals cannot simply disappear, and successful laboratory experiments do not always translate into real-world conditions. But by finding the right combination of fungi, plants and local conditions, we may be able to restore some contaminated environments without removing the soil itself.

Surprised? Watch the full episode on YouTube: Talks21.

09/10/2026

A boat grown from mushrooms sounds impossible until it survives 40 kilometres of open ocean.

But that is only the beginning, fungi can also:

▫️ Break down certain petroleum-based pollutants in contaminated soil

▫️Support plants in extracting heavy metals from the ground

▫️Transform cardboard and agricultural by-products into new materials

▫️Become packaging, textiles and potentially even building blocks

▫️Offer nutritious and more sustainable alternatives to the mushrooms most of us already know

And with millions of fungal species believed to exist and most of them still unidentified - we may have explored only a fraction of what fungi can do.

How much of our future could be grown rather than manufactured? And can you imagine this in your future?

Comment „FUNGI“ and we will send you whole episode!

What if one of the least understood kingdoms on Earth could help us rethink some of our most urgent challenges?From rest...
09/07/2026

What if one of the least understood kingdoms on Earth could help us rethink some of our most urgent challenges?

From restoring polluted environments to growing the materials of the future, fungi are opening possibilities we are only beginning to explore.

Fungi can break down certain petroleum-based pollutants. In partnership with plants, they may help restore soil contaminated by heavy metals. Mycelium can be grown into packaging, textiles, building blocks and even a seaworthy boat that completed a 40-kilometre ocean crossing.

And we have identified only a fraction of the millions of fungal species that may exist.

In episode 8 of Talks21, Karel Janeček enters this largely unexplored kingdom with three extraordinary guests:

▫️Danielle Stevenson - an environmental scientist and toxicologist exploring how fungi can help remediate polluted land, water and waste.

▫️Andrew Carter - an indoor-farming and mushroom-production expert working at the intersection of food, cultivation and sustainable agriculture.

▫️Sam Shoemaker - an artist and experimenter who transforms living fungi into sculptures, future materials and, most famously, the world’s largest mushroom boat.

Episode 8 premieres in 3 days - September 10 at 8:32 AM PDT I 11:32 AM EDT I 5:32 PM CEST on the Talks21 YouTube channel.

09/04/2026

Follow talks21.podcast and dive deep into this conversation where physics starts to change the way we see ourselves.

Nassim argues that we are not separate from the field we are trying to understand. We are part of it. The same structures and energy that make up the universe are also present in us - which means our existence is not isolated from the larger system around us.

And that has a surprisingly human consequence.
If everything is connected, then nothing we do is truly isolated.

The way we think, speak and act becomes part of the system we are living in.

As Nassim puts it, realizing this makes you think twice before doing or saying something hurtful - because you are not acting outside the universe, but within it.

Comment "ATOM“ below and full episode coming your way 👁

09/02/2026

What if we stopped waiting for someone else to fix things?

Darin Olien in .podcast speaks about something that feels increasingly important: responsibility, agency and the courage to act before we know exactly where the path will lead.

We don't always know the answer. We don't always know the outcome. But we can still share ideas, connect and expand our communities, create opportunities and move something forward.

With this episode, one of our hopes was to leave you with a stronger sense of agency, more courage to act, and the reminder that meaningful change does not always start with a perfect plan.

👉🏻 So take a moment and ask yourself:

What is something that matters to you that you could already help change, even in a very small way?

You don’t have to understand the whole problem. You don’t have to know the end before you pursue something. Start where you are. Create an opportunity where one didn’t exist before.

Because we are responsible. And the more work we do in that space, the more we create the possibility for better outcomes.

Did you know you can watch the cinematic version of Talks 21 on YouTube or simply listen to the conversations wherever y...
09/01/2026

Did you know you can watch the cinematic version of Talks 21 on YouTube or simply listen to the conversations wherever you are?

You can find the audio version on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music.

In this episode with Leigh McCloskey, we explore:

💡 The forgotten relationship between art and science. And why separating them may have changed the way we understand both.

💡 The possibility that mathematics is not simply a language for describing reality, but part of the deeper structure of what is alive.

💡Question - what if the moment when growth seems to stop is actually the moment before we begin to blossom?

💡Why art can transform us not through information, but through what it allows us to feel.

💡What it means to live not simply to arrive somewhere, but to unfold into our potential.

Interested? Comment "ART" below - full episode coming your way 👁

08/31/2026

Follow .podcast and dive with us into a question: What if the structure of the universe is hiding inside the smallest things we can observe?

In this conversation, Nassim Haramein explores a radical possibility: that the nucleus of an atom can be understood as a miniature black hole, a feature of spacetime itself. He connects this idea to the work of Einstein and Rosen from 1935, arguing that they were missing data and tools that are available today.

What makes the conversation even more fascinating is the bigger picture behind it: Nassim’s attempt to connect quantum mechanics and general relativity, two frameworks that describe very different scales of reality but, in his view, should ultimately belong to one continuous picture.

Nassim Haramein is a theoretical physicist, visionary thinker and founder of the International Space Federation. For more than three decades, he has explored the fundamental nature of space, the connection between quantum physics and gravity, and the role of consciousness in the fabric of the universe.

Filming this episode was deeply inspiring and reminded us that even the most complex questions in science can be explored with curiosity, openness and humanity.

We highly recommend watching the full conversation, comment “ATOM” below and we’ll send you the full episode!

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