In the late ’90s, at age 19, Giuliana Furci was searching for foxes on the Chilean island of Chiloé when she stumbled upon a fungus—large and orangey-red—that would change her life. The encounter prompted Furci to seek out more information about the field of mycology, but she found herself faced with a scarcity of resources in her native Chile: the internet was in its nascent years, and Furci was unable to find any local field guides on fungi; laws to protect them from overharvesting, deforestation, and land exploitation were all but absent. She asked a friend in the United States to ship her a few books by Paul Stamets, an American mycologist who has written extensively on fungi cultivation for edible and medical purposes. Upon its receipt, Furci began to explore the fungi kingdom, and has never looked back.