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10 Advocates of psychedelic “magic” mush- rooms tout them as a promising treatment for depression, addic- tion and other mental health disorders. In 2021, the U.S. govern- ment awarded a $4 mil- lion grant for a study to determine whether the psychoactive ingredient in psychedelic mush- rooms (psilocybin) can help people quit smoking. 11 Meanwhile, microdosing— taking small doses of psilocybin— has become a popular productivity-boosting hack in California’s Silicon Valley and beyond. The scientific community is divided about how effective microdosing is for enhancing mood, cre- ativity and focus. But the practice was given (unofficial) royal assent in Prince Harry’s recent memoir, Spare . During an interview later, he described psychedelic mushrooms as a “fun- damental” part of his mental health practice. 12 Mushrooms might even be able to save our planet. They can sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and they produce enzymes that can digest pretty much anything, including toxins in landfills and oil spills. And according to climate scientists in Germany, if we replace just 20% of the meat we consume with alterna- tives such as mush- rooms, by 2050 we could cut the rate of deforestation by more than half. 13 Get your tele- scopes ready: Mushrooms may find their way to outer space as soon as 2025 in the form of mycotecture: using mushrooms for archi- tectural purposes. Turns out, growing mycelium in molds makes for a cheap and versatile stuccolike building material that NASA could then use to build future bases on the moon and Mars. This funky fungus truly is out of this world. A Piece by Any Other Name You don’t need to share a language with someone in order to play chess with them. But it’s likely you’ll have different names for the pieces. The rook, for example, is called a chariot in Iceland, a cannon in Bulgaria and a boat in Russia. Knights are jumpers in Germany, and the queen is known as a lady in Italy. But no piece elicits a wider range of epithets than the bishop. In France, it’s a jester. In Spain, it’s an elephant. It’s a spear in Estonia, a hunter in Croatia and a gunner in Latvia. And in Georgia, it’s a turtle. ATLASOBSCURA.COM reader ’ s digest 44 may 2026 1 New Zealand’s Southern Alps are a moisture magnet, and nowhere is that more evident than at the Cropp River. It is officially one of the wettest places on the planet; in 1998 alone, the area recorded a staggering 18,413 milli- metres of rainfall. To put that in perspective, that is over 18 metres of Bluster About Extreme Weather BY Caitlin Stall-Paquet water—enough to sub- merge a six-story build- ing. If you think you’ve seen a heavy down- pour, the Southern Alps are there to remind you that nature can turn the sky into a literal waterfall. 2 In Australia, heat is not just a season; it is a mar- athon. The small town of Marble Bar, Western Australia, holds one of the most punishing records on Earth: back in the 1920s, it endured 160 consecutive days where the temperature hit 37.8?C (100?F) or higher. That is over five months of relentless, oven-like conditions without a single day of reprieve. It serves as a stark reminder that readersdigest.com.au 45 17 Things 17 THINGS