Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's straight up your weird Internet dad just
Speaker 1: sniff and candles in a blissfully empty aisle of a
Speaker 1: discount home goods store. Alley Woard back with another episode
Speaker 1: of Ologies, one that you have requested, rather you have
Speaker 1: begged for. Since the inception of this podcast, I keep
Speaker 1: hearing Dad ward my cology when and I keep saying,
Speaker 1: settle down. I have a plan, please trust me all
Speaker 1: this time that my celia have been growing and it's
Speaker 1: finally time to enjoy my dirty bloom. That it's gonna
Speaker 1: make more sense later. But first, okay, a little bit
Speaker 1: of business, and by business, I mean thank yous to
Speaker 1: all the folks on Patreon supporting this podcast for as
Speaker 1: little as twenty five cents an episode. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for making this whole thing possible. And thank you
Speaker 1: to anyone who makes sure that they are subscribed and
Speaker 1: have rated the podcast. Special tip of the old hat
Speaker 1: to those who leave reviews which I read when I'm sad,
Speaker 1: and then I pick a fresh one each week to
Speaker 1: read you, such as this one by m post Gator,
Speaker 1: who says Ali approaches each scientific subject with the eagerness
Speaker 1: of a toddler meeting kittens. And post legator. I feel
Speaker 1: seen and also attacked, and I like you for it. Okay, mycology,
Speaker 1: what is the etymology of mycology? Let's start with it.
Speaker 1: How did this word burst forth from our brains and
Speaker 1: out of our mouths? So mico comes from the Greek
Speaker 1: for fungus, and little bonus points for you, the word
Speaker 1: fungus itself has its roots in the word for spongy.
Speaker 1: So this mycologist, oh, my word, who has been on
Speaker 1: my list for well over a year, and he is
Speaker 1: a major reason why I took a Midwest road trip
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago. I wanted to find the best
Speaker 1: mycologist out there, and I asked Eugenia Bone, author of
Speaker 1: the book Micophelia, Thank you to Talk Nerdy's karas Aanna
Speaker 1: Maria for that intro, and she told me that this
Speaker 1: ologist is quote a micologist of the utmost charm. I
Speaker 1: had to meet him. So on a rainy spring morning,
Speaker 1: I headed to the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse, and I
Speaker 1: stayed in a charming B and B that was apparently
Speaker 1: a castle built by a lumber baron whatever. I navigated
Speaker 1: to the campus up some old elevators, down a linoleum
Speaker 1: hallway right to his office. I found you, which was
Speaker 1: this thrilling jumble of mushroom knickknacks and maps and hard
Speaker 1: bound dissertations of his former students, and he himself stood up.
Speaker 1: He has gaged ears and salt and pepper hair. He
Speaker 1: streaks with purple or pink, and he stood up to
Speaker 1: greet me. He was wearing a short sleeve shirt that
Speaker 1: was screen printed with mushrooms and ferns. Both of his
Speaker 1: arms are heavily decorated in fungus themed tattoos. He's the best,
Speaker 1: and having run a mushroom and fungus web page nearly
Speaker 1: twenty five years when the Internet was just a squirmy baby,
Speaker 1: this guy has been cool since before you were born.
Speaker 1: He's been a professor in the Department of Biology at
Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse since nineteen ninety six. Teaches
Speaker 1: general mycology, medical mycology, not to mention, has helmed some
Speaker 1: classes in food and industrial micology, also in Latin and
Speaker 1: Greek for scientists. Ah. He seems like the kind of
Speaker 1: guy I would have gone to concerts with in my
Speaker 1: goth days and then spent all night talking about cell
Speaker 1: division in a Denny's while our friends smoked clothes in
Speaker 1: the parking lot. This is truly the highest compliment I
Speaker 1: could give a person anyway. He let me pepper him
Speaker 1: with questions for an hour and we cover what the
Speaker 1: hell is a fungus foraging under the forest canopy, fairy rings,
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms, being blindfolded in the woods, the tastiest mushrooms
Speaker 1: plus mildew, fungal infections, and how having a part of
Speaker 1: you replaced can change the way you live your life.
Speaker 1: So prepare for a budding fungus obsession with a mushroom
Speaker 1: expert of the utmost charm, mycologist, doctor Tom Bulk. I
Speaker 1: would love to know when did you start getting interested
Speaker 1: in mushers? When did they become captivating for you?
Speaker 2: So I took a course in my college in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight at High University, and I found it you
Speaker 2: can get free food, and so that was good, and
Speaker 2: that was pretty different, and I'm sort of a different
Speaker 2: kind of person, and so that's appealed to me that
Speaker 2: it was something unusual that not very many people studied
Speaker 2: and knew about. So when it came time to go
Speaker 2: to grad school, that's what I decided I would study.
Speaker 1: Did they give you free mushrooms to you eat?
Speaker 2: You find them in the woods. They're all free, is it?
Speaker 1: But there's always the risk of foraging. You have to
Speaker 1: get really good in order to get free food out
Speaker 1: of Italy.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a few you can learn right away that
Speaker 2: are pretty easy, but then it gets trickier after that
Speaker 2: because you could get sick or even die if you
Speaker 2: eat the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: So knowledge has to be on your side.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. That's true for everything, right.
Speaker 1: So on the topic of knowledge, Doctor Volk got his
Speaker 1: bachelor's in botany from Ohio University and his PhD in
Speaker 1: botany with a minor in genetics from the University of
Speaker 1: Wisconsin Lacrosse, where he teaches now. And he studied, among
Speaker 1: other things, the life cycle of the coveted and delicious
Speaker 1: moral mushroom, which are the ones that have like a
Speaker 1: spongy looking honeycomb texture and sell fresh for upwards of
Speaker 1: sixty bucks a pound. If you're like where, pray tell,
Speaker 1: can I get me some of that hank tied? There's
Speaker 1: gonna be some forging secrets in a bit. But first
Speaker 1: let's ask a smart person something pretty stupid, and this
Speaker 1: is such a basic question. But what is fungus? What
Speaker 1: is a fun guy? Why does it have his own kingdom?
Speaker 1: It's neither animal nor plant? What's happening?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, and remember in the olden days when you
Speaker 2: were in scholar we probably learned about the two kingdoms,
Speaker 2: the animals and the plants, and fungia were included with
Speaker 2: the plants because they didn't move and they had cell
Speaker 2: walls and all that. But it turns out that fungi
Speaker 2: are more closely related to animals than plants. So physiologically
Speaker 2: they and genetically they're much more similar to animals than plants.
Speaker 2: But they're really different than animals obviously. So the cell
Speaker 2: walls of kitan they share the kitan in common with
Speaker 2: some animals like the arthropods, insects and such of kitan
Speaker 2: exoskeletons and so that chemicals in common.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside, what is kitan? You ask? It is
Speaker 1: a word that looks like chitlins, but minus one l. Now, fungus,
Speaker 1: hog guts, all things that seem dicey to eat but
Speaker 1: are a delicacy of sourced and prepared right, all right,
Speaker 1: So kitan, the thing that makes up the cell walls
Speaker 1: of your favorite mushrooms and is technically a long chain
Speaker 1: and a derivative of glucose. But the important aspect is
Speaker 1: it gives arthropods, skeletons and fungi cell walls some rigidity
Speaker 1: and a little chew if you've ever eaten books. So
Speaker 1: how varied are fungi? There are an estimated five point
Speaker 1: one million species of fung gui. Now that's about thirteen
Speaker 1: times as many species as plants known to science. Okay,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, how do you pronounce fungi? Because Tom
Speaker 1: said fungi, and I think I said fungi. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I asked my good friend Wikipedia, and they said, this
Speaker 1: is how you pronounce it in the US. Okay, definitively,
Speaker 1: this way fungi got it? Okay? Oh wait, there's another
Speaker 1: audio clip. Or you can pronounce it this way fungi okay.
Speaker 1: Oh there's a third way. What fungi okay?
Speaker 2: Or fungi?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? Okay, So just say however your mouth
Speaker 1: wants to say it. Let's get back to kingdoms.
Speaker 2: But there's they put them. The fungi in the animal
Speaker 2: sense group called the Epistola conta, which is the rare flagellum,
Speaker 2: which refers to the some of the fungi, the primitive
Speaker 2: ones have a flagellum on them, and of course human
Speaker 2: males have the sperm. Yeah, with the flagellum. So I
Speaker 2: think that that's the one of the things that link
Speaker 2: them together.
Speaker 1: Okay, So ps yeast possessed twenty three percent homologous genes
Speaker 1: to human beings. So you're walking around, you're wearing pants,
Speaker 1: you're driving a car, and you're like twenty three percent
Speaker 1: kind of the same as a single celled fungus. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, Go dance in public, tell someone you're
Speaker 1: in love with them. Nothing matters. What even are we?
Speaker 1: What is life? That which humbles liberates? So tattoo that
Speaker 1: on a pillow, embroidered on your butt, I don't care.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about the structure
Speaker 1: of fungi. I know a lot of people think fungi
Speaker 1: is just mushrooms, but that's just like essentially looking at
Speaker 1: their coneads, right.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, So you're looking at the reproductive structures most
Speaker 2: of the time, that private pots. But what you don't
Speaker 2: see most of the time are the highee that are underground.
Speaker 2: So these are highee on my arm, and so you
Speaker 2: can see if you were on if you were here,
Speaker 2: which you are, you could see the mycelium the high
Speaker 2: fee growing and that's how they feed.
Speaker 1: So their reproductive areas are their most public parts. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like if you wore a full body spandex
Speaker 1: jumpsuit all the time, but it was crotchless. It's just
Speaker 1: the fungus way.
Speaker 2: And so when fungi feed, they can grow through the ground.
Speaker 2: They can grow through the wood or whatever they're growing
Speaker 2: on through your brain by dumping their enzymes to the
Speaker 2: outside of their body, and they digest outside of their
Speaker 2: body and then they take in the small molecules and
Speaker 2: use them in metabolism, and so it's totally different. They
Speaker 2: digest their food first and ingest it, whereas we ingest
Speaker 2: our food and then digest it, yeah, inside our bodies.
Speaker 1: And that's how they're breaking down substrates, and that's how they.
Speaker 2: Can push through the soil or push through the wood.
Speaker 1: Also the fungus way barfing on your lunch and absorbing
Speaker 1: a sandwich through your arm, it's casual, it's effective, and
Speaker 1: now you mentioned also our brains just casually. What are
Speaker 1: some places that a fungi live and also I want
Speaker 1: to hear about our brains and how they might live.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I teach of course in medical mycology as well
Speaker 2: as mycology, and so there are fungi that will infect
Speaker 2: your brain.
Speaker 1: Which kinds.
Speaker 2: There's one called Cryptococcus that's famous for that. It's a
Speaker 2: yeast and it usually gets themon inchies the lining of
Speaker 2: the brain, not so much in the brain, but there
Speaker 2: are some of that'll get in there as well.
Speaker 1: Cryptocoxosis, by the bye is what this is called. It's
Speaker 1: a nasty bugger. So these Cryptococcus yeast form their name
Speaker 1: means hidden sphere. They're found worldwide in soil, but for
Speaker 1: those with compromised immune systems like folks with HIV, it
Speaker 1: can be fatal. Cryptocoxosis accounts for twenty to twenty five
Speaker 1: percent of the HIV related mortality in Africa. So that's
Speaker 1: no joke. Now, if you've ever lurked around on Goop,
Speaker 1: chances are you've seen scary articles like there the insidious
Speaker 1: yeast infection we all have, And what's the latest on
Speaker 1: Canada yeasts and whether or not they can cause the
Speaker 1: leaky gut syndrome? Has that been debunked by medical science.
Speaker 2: Or is that there's a lot of things. If you
Speaker 2: look on the internet, every single disease that's possible is
Speaker 2: caused by Canada. Yeah, this yeast so, but I mean
Speaker 2: I think there's something too some of it, but there
Speaker 2: still needs to be a lot more research done with that.
Speaker 2: There is Canada that passes through the digesticis because you
Speaker 2: have this as a part of the normal flora of
Speaker 2: your body, and so in the you've got Canada in
Speaker 2: your mouth as part of the normal flora, keeping the
Speaker 2: bacteria in check, and then you swallow some of that
Speaker 2: and it goes through the digestive system and some of
Speaker 2: it remains intact. It goes through and.
Speaker 1: Okay, so did a little digging on this, and systemic
Speaker 1: candidiasis can spread to the blood, where it's called candinmia,
Speaker 1: and the CDC estimates about twenty five thousand folks in
Speaker 1: the US a year will have a Canada overgrowth in
Speaker 1: their blood, but that the total number of Canada overgrowth
Speaker 1: may be twice as high if other organs are the
Speaker 1: site of the primary overgrowth and it doesn't just show
Speaker 1: up in the blood. So yes, it does happen in
Speaker 1: the millions per year that we don't know. But leaky
Speaker 1: gut syndrome isn't recognized as a medical diagnosis. Doctors call
Speaker 1: it increased intestinal permeability, which is kind of like how
Speaker 1: if your family calls you scooter, but you're like, don't
Speaker 1: call me that from my boss. So it's pretty much
Speaker 1: the same de tomato tomato. Now, speaking of food, if
Speaker 1: a candida overgrowth diet, which suggests cutting out gluten and
Speaker 1: dairy and sugar and alcohol makes you feel better, there
Speaker 1: could be a number of reasons why. And now, can
Speaker 1: you tell me a little bit about where a fung
Speaker 1: i like to live? I know we think of them
Speaker 1: in dark, damp.
Speaker 2: Places, puire, anywhere where it's where they have enough moisture
Speaker 2: to grow and enough heat and so there you know
Speaker 2: they need, you know, room temperature they like, although there
Speaker 2: are some that'll growed low and very low and very
Speaker 2: high temperatures, but most of them like this middle ground
Speaker 2: where they can they can do well. But you can
Speaker 2: find fungin just about any environment where there's enough water
Speaker 2: to support their growth.
Speaker 1: Why do you think they like darkness?
Speaker 2: Well, they don't like darkness. Say that's just where the
Speaker 2: food is. Oh and so that they don't necessarily need
Speaker 2: to be dark. They grow inside of things because that's
Speaker 2: where they can get in and that's where all the
Speaker 2: food is. Their main competition is bacteria, and bacteria can
Speaker 2: only grow on the surface. They can't push their way
Speaker 2: through the wood or wherever they're growing in, and so
Speaker 2: the fungi can go and escape the bacteria by growing
Speaker 2: into the wood.
Speaker 1: I always figured that they must be like photophobic or something,
Speaker 1: but really it's just their pro food.
Speaker 2: And so when they're in the log and they're growing,
Speaker 2: they just are growing their their hyphie, their myceelium to
Speaker 2: eat the food. But then you know, at some point
Speaker 2: they reach the surface of the log again and the
Speaker 2: light is their signal to make the mushroom, and so
Speaker 2: that tells them they're outside of the log and that
Speaker 2: they it's okay to make a mushroom. There's also more
Speaker 2: oxygen outside of there, so that's another signal for them
Speaker 2: to make the mushroom on the outside of the log
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: And can you tell me the difference obviously between the mycelium,
Speaker 1: the hyphie and the mushroom for anyone who's just like what,
Speaker 1: there's more to fungi than the mushroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are these high fee that are underground
Speaker 2: or in the wood. I'll just talk about wood for now,
Speaker 2: that are in the wood, and they they're they're not
Speaker 2: particularly dense. They're growing through the wood. But when they
Speaker 2: send up the freeing body, there's the fretting body. The
Speaker 2: mushroom is still composed of high fee. And if you,
Speaker 2: you know, tear one apart and look in the microscope,
Speaker 2: there's they're the same kind of high fee, but they're
Speaker 2: all stuck together in such a way that they're very strong,
Speaker 2: and they can put this this thing up above the
Speaker 2: wood to make this mushroom so that they can release
Speaker 2: their spores and get somewhere else.
Speaker 1: I want to get out of here.
Speaker 2: And so they're the mushroom is made up of high fee,
Speaker 2: but they're really dense in that form rather than more
Speaker 2: spread out as they are down in the in the wood.
Speaker 1: And then where are these spores getting made?
Speaker 2: So the spores are made on the gills of the mushroom.
Speaker 2: If you have a typical mushroom kind of thing, you
Speaker 2: can see when you look at the gills that they
Speaker 2: kind of undulate up and down, and you know, and
Speaker 2: so they have a huge surface area, and the spores
Speaker 2: are born on the external areas of the gills, on
Speaker 2: things called b the citia, these club shape things, and
Speaker 2: then the spores drop off of their and they're usually
Speaker 2: kind in the air and spread somewhere.
Speaker 1: Spores they just they grow up so fast and then
Speaker 1: before you know it, they're just a huge web of
Speaker 1: underground hyphie forming a mycelium and barfing onto their lunch
Speaker 1: before just exposing their reproductive structures to the sun. Where
Speaker 1: does the time go?
Speaker 2: So they have to make this enormous number of spores
Speaker 2: because otherwise the chances of landing on something they can
Speaker 2: actually use is pretty small if you're just random leaves
Speaker 2: of being spread by the wind right. And so they
Speaker 2: produce huge numbers of spores to by chance some of
Speaker 2: them will will survive.
Speaker 1: This is just a numbers game. It's just a gamble.
Speaker 2: And so you have some you know, you think about
Speaker 2: the guild mushrooms, but you also have some that have
Speaker 2: different ways of increase in the surface area with pores underneath,
Speaker 2: or even small teeth, or some of them are just
Speaker 2: kind of ring gold, and some of them are smooth,
Speaker 2: but they can dry out and revive, and so they
Speaker 2: increase in their surface every over time rather than by space.
Speaker 1: So side note, if you like variety, may I suggest
Speaker 1: a mushroom obsession. There are cup fungi and puff balls
Speaker 1: and bracket fungi and toadstool shapes and lattice types, glow
Speaker 1: in the dark ones and ones that look like they're
Speaker 1: bleeding terrifying human blood, and ones named after dicks, on
Speaker 1: and on and on. Now, with five million species, there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of selection going on.
Speaker 2: And so they you know, there's a lot of different
Speaker 2: kind of strategies that that funge I use.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite mushroom?
Speaker 2: Favorite for what? Well?
Speaker 1: I go, I know that's such a stupid question. What
Speaker 1: is one? When have you been out lurking around you're
Speaker 1: looking for mushrooms and you come across one that it's
Speaker 1: like dada like angels singing.
Speaker 2: If it's so, if it's food, then I'm talking about Chantererell's. Okay,
Speaker 2: So Chanterrell's are the you know, the the I think
Speaker 2: the most delicious. They're bright orange. You have these folds
Speaker 2: on the outside and they smell like apricots, so they're
Speaker 2: pretty smelling. They're pretty dense, and they're usually not contaminated
Speaker 2: with bugs and stuff. That's just sixtra protein.
Speaker 1: But and when you go to like a farmer's market,
Speaker 1: you see the mushroom stand. Are you like nice but
Speaker 1: I can get them myself, or are you excited to
Speaker 1: see what their variety is.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to see that people are promoting mushrooms, So
Speaker 2: I'm happy that the growers are finding a way to
Speaker 2: exploit the life cycle of the mushrooms in order to
Speaker 2: that people can try different things.
Speaker 1: Does it help the mushrooms to get picked because then
Speaker 1: their spores go more places?
Speaker 2: There's a lot of controversy about that. That's a whole
Speaker 2: different thing. But maybe they're you know, if you're taking
Speaker 2: them somewhere else, the chance of the spores landing for
Speaker 2: their way might be good. It might be good for
Speaker 2: their genetics. But you know that's that's a half hour conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just shut up, You shut up and test you? Okay,
Speaker 1: I look this up? Boy howdie who? This is a
Speaker 1: topic of some fierce debate, but most hardcore mushroomers obsorb
Speaker 1: some basic funkal decency, and when they encounter pairs of mushrooms,
Speaker 1: they leave one, and they leave behind the smallest fifty
Speaker 1: percent of the mushrooms they find. They try to identify
Speaker 1: mushrooms without picking them first, and as you'll see if
Speaker 1: you google mushroom hunt, each my collogist collects in an
Speaker 1: adorable little picnic basket, not just because it's cute as
Speaker 1: hell and it looks like an outtake from a period
Speaker 1: piece set in the English countryside, but because the baskets
Speaker 1: allow for the spores to catch on the wind, go
Speaker 1: out and make more fungus babies. So step one, start
Speaker 1: basket shopping. Step two send out a press release letting
Speaker 1: everyone know how goddamn adorable you have just become. Okay,
Speaker 1: and then what's next? What would you How would do
Speaker 1: you advise people if they are interested in maybe starting
Speaker 1: to forage or starting to catalog mushrooms, or also want
Speaker 1: to make sure they don't eat the wrong ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the best way to learn is to have friends
Speaker 2: who will help you. Or if you don't have any friends,
Speaker 2: you can make friends and any of I think there's
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty mushroom clubs in North America, and
Speaker 2: so you can join one of those and they go
Speaker 2: out on forays which are little mushroom hunts.
Speaker 1: Okay, so ps, A foray is different than a forage.
Speaker 1: A foray is when you're looking at all the ding
Speaker 1: ding mushrooms, but a forage is when you're out specifically
Speaker 1: looking for edible yum yums. So toda, we just learned
Speaker 1: that together.
Speaker 2: And you can learn a lot from people in the woods.
Speaker 2: You know, they say, oh, look this is where you
Speaker 2: look for this one. And there's somewhere el there and
Speaker 2: you look, there's an elm tree right there, So that's
Speaker 2: where you need to look. And you know they can,
Speaker 2: you know, and everything is better than three D. And
Speaker 2: so if you're doing this with people and you know,
Speaker 2: go to these mushroom for it. The people go out
Speaker 2: and find mushrooms and then they'd lay them out on
Speaker 2: a table and you can look at them side by
Speaker 2: side and find which ones. You know they're poisonous in
Speaker 2: their audible, you know, the things that look alike. You
Speaker 2: can distinguish between them much more easily if you have
Speaker 2: them sitting there in three D and you can touch
Speaker 2: them and feel them and smell them and everything else,
Speaker 2: so you know there are really they're wonderful mushroom clubs.
Speaker 2: That are fantastic.
Speaker 1: Have you met some of your favorite friends mushroom hunt?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's a vibe like on a mushroom hunt?
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different kind of vibes on a
Speaker 2: mushroom hunt depending on whether how competitive people are. So
Speaker 2: sometimes the morale hunts are really different because that's really competitive.
Speaker 2: But other times, you know, people are you know, I
Speaker 2: found this, come and look at it, or I found
Speaker 2: this and don't tell anybody.
Speaker 1: Because will they come back and look for more later?
Speaker 2: They might?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And then what's up with with pigs and dogs
Speaker 1: finding treuffles?
Speaker 2: So you can you can train a dog to find anything, so,
Speaker 2: but the pigs are trained to it because it smells
Speaker 2: like a pig pheromone, and so they immediately try and
Speaker 2: find that.
Speaker 1: Do they eat them when they find it?
Speaker 2: They can?
Speaker 1: You Yeah, have you ever been trouble hunting?
Speaker 2: Yes, but not with dog or pigs. I would like
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 1: How do you do it without a dog or a pig?
Speaker 2: You look for where the squirrels have been digging, and
Speaker 2: the squirrels are you know, the squirrels are digging them up,
Speaker 2: They eat them and then they put the spores out somewhere.
Speaker 2: So that's their method of dispersal.
Speaker 1: Oh, it seems like in in the knowledge of mushrooms,
Speaker 1: you also have to have a good knowledge of soil
Speaker 1: systems and animals and trees and substrates. Is that true?
Speaker 2: Yes? And so if you know, you know, in order
Speaker 2: to really understand funding and it's on the whole environment
Speaker 2: around them. And so as a mycologist, you know, I
Speaker 2: have to know about plants, and in order to learn
Speaker 2: about plants, you have to you know, they have got
Speaker 2: animals and then all the other stuff in in the soil.
Speaker 2: So I've been studying fungi since my class in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight, and only in the last couple of years
Speaker 2: do I think I have an understanding of what goes
Speaker 2: on under the soil. But I don't know it well
Speaker 2: enough to tell anybody. Yeah, So that's what I'm working on,
Speaker 2: is being able to explain or have a diagram or
Speaker 2: have something a diorama that explains what I think is
Speaker 2: going on into the soil. It's really complicated.
Speaker 1: Do you ever dream about fungi?
Speaker 2: Always?
Speaker 3: You do?
Speaker 1: What kind of mushroom dreams do you have?
Speaker 2: Usually finding some big load. They say when you go
Speaker 2: to mushroom hell. They show you every play your life,
Speaker 2: and they show you all the mushrooms you missed. But
Speaker 2: just if you've gone ten feet further on this trail,
Speaker 2: you would have seen this, or if you had turned
Speaker 2: left here instead of right.
Speaker 1: Something is, do you have a favorite mushroom? In pop culture?
Speaker 1: Do you ever see someone you're like that is not
Speaker 1: what that species so click?
Speaker 2: Well, the most common one, of course, is the red
Speaker 2: mushroom with the white tops on it, so that's aminie muscaria,
Speaker 2: and that shows up in all of the artsy fartsy
Speaker 2: kind of depictions of mushrooms with the elves dancing around,
Speaker 2: which is kind of funny because it's a hallucinogenic mushroom.
Speaker 2: You get the elves in the dancing around and these
Speaker 2: mushrooms are red with white trim and so asanta, and
Speaker 2: there's reindeer flying and there's elves dancing around things like that.
Speaker 2: So when the reindeer actually do eat these mushrooms to hallucinate.
Speaker 1: Do they really what happens when a reindeer is shrewman?
Speaker 2: I don't know how you tell for sure, but they
Speaker 2: but they do. They guard their their little cache of
Speaker 2: mushrooms under the under the snow.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Oh okay, So without falling down a
Speaker 1: real alice in Wonderland, mushroom cravass, I'm gonna briefly relay
Speaker 1: that this is just a widely circulated no doy. I
Speaker 1: had no idea. So the Sami indigenous people of northern
Speaker 1: Northern Scandinavian regions are like, yeah, dudes, guy from the
Speaker 1: North Pole, he's being pulled by a sleigh reindeer we
Speaker 1: do that comes to your house in winter tripping balls
Speaker 1: on red and white mushrooms, red and white, and then
Speaker 1: gives you the gift of advice from another dimension. Duh.
Speaker 1: And the reindeer also tore up on shrooms, are like, whoo, man,
Speaker 1: check me out'n a flying I'm a reindeer on flight
Speaker 1: in the year Oh no, shit man. Look. Even the
Speaker 1: BBC's reported on this.
Speaker 4: In autumn, reindeer seek out the mushrooms even under an
Speaker 4: early fall of snow. No one knows whether the reindeer
Speaker 4: are affected. But in the past saw me Shamans took
Speaker 4: flyergaric in their visionary rituals. They even drank urine from
Speaker 4: reindeer leave to be under the influence.
Speaker 1: Red nose, red toad stool mushroom, And I'm starting to
Speaker 1: like this story more than the age old one about
Speaker 1: indentured elves and leaving a frosty cola out for your
Speaker 1: winter sugar daddy. You know, how long have humans been
Speaker 1: aware of the hollucinogenic properties of mushrooms?
Speaker 2: Probably for millennia, you know, Yeah, they've been used in
Speaker 2: shamanistic rituals in Siberia for many years, and different mushrooms
Speaker 2: in Central South America for millennium probably.
Speaker 1: And where are we at in terms of psilocybin trials
Speaker 1: and therapies for humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's actually quite a bit of research doing
Speaker 2: being done now on psilocybin psilocyby mushrooms at very prestigious
Speaker 2: places such as John Sapkins and such. So they're looking
Speaker 2: at especially treatment for kind of end of life psychological
Speaker 2: kinds of treatments using to to treat PTSD, symptoms of
Speaker 2: PTSD and sess of compulsive disorder o c D, and
Speaker 2: cluster headaches. So there's really a lot of research that's
Speaker 2: being done in terms of you know, that hallucinid and
Speaker 2: that that the psilosophy or psilocyby, however, you want to say,
Speaker 2: it is a much more mild to loose some gen
Speaker 2: than the than the mine muscaria, the reindeer eat and
Speaker 2: so they're you know, usually there you have have to
Speaker 2: have someone to lead you through this kind of psychological journey.
Speaker 2: Is the you know, physiologically, this thing is making neurons
Speaker 2: fire in your brain and so that's making connections and
Speaker 2: reconnections that that were lost or you never had.
Speaker 1: Really, so, is that how it might have a lasting
Speaker 1: impact after the actual experience.
Speaker 2: It seems to be there are there's some evidence that
Speaker 2: one large dose of psilocybin can have an effect for
Speaker 2: many years after that.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so quick aside, this is a whole other
Speaker 1: pop fall of wax. But quickly, there have been trials
Speaker 1: on psilocybin's effect on anxiety, on depression, on OCD arexia,
Speaker 1: and end of life existential depression and anxiety. So what happens,
Speaker 1: very very simply is that psilocybin converts to silicin, which
Speaker 1: has a chemical structure similar to the neurotransmitter serotonin. So
Speaker 1: it binds to those receptor sites in your knockin. But
Speaker 1: why do so many mushrooms, over two hundred species make psilocybin.
Speaker 1: So recently some evolutionary fungal geneticists at Ohio State University
Speaker 1: what's ubjacent slot, came up with a theory that when
Speaker 1: sprouting from dung, there are a lot of insects that
Speaker 1: want to munch a mushroom. So the shrooms evolve to
Speaker 1: have mind altering effects which might reduce the appetites of
Speaker 1: the bugs that want to eat them. So also, if
Speaker 1: you listen to last week's Boufology episode, which completely coincidentally
Speaker 1: included some info on smoking toad poison, the basic premise
Speaker 1: is for an organism to evolve a defense that essentially
Speaker 1: communicates can you not thanks, is it our body maybe
Speaker 1: detecting something like a poison and reacting to it, or.
Speaker 2: That's really a poison. It's an analog to you chemicals
Speaker 2: that we already make. Oh okay, So it's it's doing
Speaker 2: the same thing as those chemicals, but in a slightly
Speaker 2: different way and larger amounts.
Speaker 1: And then I know that it's It's legal in some places,
Speaker 1: not legal in others.
Speaker 2: In the United States, is not legal anywhere, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it's on the ballot in I think Denver will be
Speaker 2: the first to have it on the ballot. And I
Speaker 2: heard something about California, and I heard something about somewhere
Speaker 2: in Iowa's proposed.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's surprising. I would think Washington would
Speaker 1: be that third state like California. Okay, So side note,
Speaker 1: In the two weeks since recording this episode, Denver did
Speaker 1: indeed decriminalize it. Laws are a little sticky. So Vietnam, Samoa,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, Jamaica, Brazil, and British Virgin Islands are like,
Speaker 1: go for it. It's legal here. Austria is like, you
Speaker 1: can grow it, but I guess not for drugs. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Everyone just chill out, have some schnitzel, yodle
Speaker 1: it up. It's cool also in some states, because the
Speaker 1: spores don't have any psychoactive ingredients, you can own them,
Speaker 1: but just not to grow them for drug purposes. Just
Speaker 1: like barfing your way through a substrate of manure. It's
Speaker 1: all a little dim and murky.
Speaker 2: Now there's it certainly is you know, like cannabis. It's
Speaker 2: the same idea. There's you know it was you know
Speaker 2: it's not it doesn't belong in Schedule one. You know,
Speaker 2: it's there's there are medicinal uses for it that are
Speaker 2: that should be explored.
Speaker 1: If you have someone who comes to asking you about that,
Speaker 1: is that something that you try not to give them
Speaker 1: advice on or give them advice on.
Speaker 2: I give people advice. I mean, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's not legal, but I'm not opposed
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always hear people being afraid of having some
Speaker 1: sort of bad trip. Is that just if they've taken
Speaker 1: too much.
Speaker 2: You can have a bad day, and you know, if
Speaker 2: you're if you're not taking any things. So, but that's
Speaker 2: that's one of the reasons why there's usually someone to
Speaker 2: lead you through this process. Is the ideal way to
Speaker 2: do it, and that's in the In the in Central America,
Speaker 2: there were shaman type people who would lead you through
Speaker 2: these rituals to speak to your dead relatives or you know,
Speaker 2: or help you to accept something that happened to you.
Speaker 1: So given its technical us illegality and everywhere, but I
Speaker 1: guess Denver Tom and I didn't talk too much on
Speaker 1: the record on this. I myself have never tripped on shrooms,
Speaker 1: partly because I had a boyfriend who had a super
Speaker 1: bad trip in college, which he referred to for years
Speaker 1: as the incident like Capital T Capital I. But I'm
Speaker 1: super curious about its future potential in mental health fields.
Speaker 1: So there'll be more on this topic in a later episode.
Speaker 1: There are some top notch docks in LA doing trials
Speaker 1: on MDMA and psilocybin, so I just have to figure
Speaker 1: out if that would be psycho pharmacology, mico psycho pharmacology anyway,
Speaker 1: to be continued. But outside of a lab, Tom says,
Speaker 1: common shroom species are pretty chill the cultivate.
Speaker 2: It's one of actually one of the easiest ones to grow.
Speaker 2: My old professor used to grow it in grad school. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know, he stopped growing after a while. He
Speaker 2: just used it for an example and had really good
Speaker 2: spores on it, but it kept getting stolen, so he stopped.
Speaker 1: Growing in Oh no, He's like, well, if you need it,
Speaker 1: I guess you need it. And now, what is the
Speaker 1: difference between molds and slime molds? I understand that they're
Speaker 1: very different, and mildew. What's the difference between mold and mildew? Actually,
Speaker 1: oh man, that was so many questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so mold, mold, and mildew basically the same thing.
Speaker 2: They usually use mildew or something that looks wetter, but
Speaker 2: it's they're all the just fungi. And usually they're fungi
Speaker 2: that are reproducing asexually, so with mitosis that if your
Speaker 2: listeners know that, and so they are reproducing without having sex,
Speaker 2: and so they you know, can produce enormous numbers of spores.
Speaker 2: It's really cheap and so they can grow on just
Speaker 2: about anything and produce tons of spores almost literally. And
Speaker 2: so you know, these molds are pretty common. You're breathing
Speaker 2: in them in and out right now, wherever whoever is
Speaker 2: listening is breathing in and out scores and so and
Speaker 2: most of the time they come back out. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: stick in your body, and if something's wrong with your
Speaker 2: immune system, you can you know, have problems with with
Speaker 2: with the funnel infections in your body. Slime molds are
Speaker 2: a totally different thing. They're they're not related at all.
Speaker 2: They're related to the AmIV and so they climb around
Speaker 2: and they have these Essentially a giant amoeba can be
Speaker 2: a meter more across and climb around and you know,
Speaker 2: engulf their food and eat it in a different way.
Speaker 1: But they're still a fun guy.
Speaker 2: No no, they're not at all threw we threw them out?
Speaker 1: You did? Was there a ceremony?
Speaker 2: Like, there was not a ceremony about that. You should
Speaker 2: have been And.
Speaker 1: At what point did you realize like you're not even
Speaker 1: a mold?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean we always knew that they were really different.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: But you know in the when when people started talking
Speaker 2: about the five kingdoms and you know, and and slim
Speaker 2: w olds are clearly not fungi, and just by as
Speaker 2: an aside, and my organismal biology class, we talked about
Speaker 2: twenty five kingdoms.
Speaker 1: Now twenty five kingdoms really and at least how is
Speaker 1: there a process for getting those validated?
Speaker 2: Well that's what Maleca biology has done. DNA sequencing has
Speaker 2: allowed us to be confident about replacements of a fungiant
Speaker 2: and other organisms into different groups.
Speaker 1: Okay, so quick check. And right now it looks like
Speaker 1: there are two super kingdoms, seven kingdoms, eleven sub kingdoms,
Speaker 1: eight infra kingdoms, and six super phyla. So please don't
Speaker 1: quote me on that in case it's changed, and please
Speaker 1: don't ask me to make up a more detailed mnemonic
Speaker 1: for the king Philip came over for group sex, because
Speaker 1: that just sounds messy. It sounds confusing. Also, what is
Speaker 1: the fungus evolutionary backstory?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the fungi and animals shared a common ancestor
Speaker 2: a very long time ago, probably in the ocean, and
Speaker 2: the fungi went one way and the animals went the
Speaker 2: other way. And so the fungi probably diversified before the
Speaker 2: animals did.
Speaker 1: And can iiphi can a big web of my sam
Speaker 1: Can it talk to each other? What is happening communication wise?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there have been reports now and we always
Speaker 2: suspected that the fungi underground are in communication with one another,
Speaker 2: and not quite in the same way that we do it,
Speaker 2: but they have chemicals that transfer back and forth between them,
Speaker 2: and so many of these fungi are forming an association
Speaker 2: with the roots of trees and other plants in the soil,
Speaker 2: and so these trees are getting the trees are giving
Speaker 2: their sugars to the fungus, while the fungus is picking
Speaker 2: up more water and minerals for the tree to use.
Speaker 2: And so there's evidence now that these micarisi as are called,
Speaker 2: are shared between different plants, usually the same species, but
Speaker 2: not necessarily, and there are signals going back and forth
Speaker 2: between them these chemical signals and food being traced. So
Speaker 2: and especially with a large forest, we have this mother
Speaker 2: tree that's very big and maybe shading all of her offspring.
Speaker 2: She's actually feeding some of them through her micorizing, and
Speaker 2: so when the mother tree eventually dies, the offspringer there
Speaker 2: to take her place.
Speaker 1: Imagine a baby growing out of your corpse foot and
Speaker 1: then just try to be casual about that. You can't.
Speaker 1: Fungus will out freak you every time. And then how
Speaker 1: do they figure out which is the same organism?
Speaker 2: So that's a different story. So, I mean, with animals,
Speaker 2: it's very clear what an organism is because it's something
Speaker 2: that gets up and goes somewhere else. With fungi, what
Speaker 2: is an organism? Most of it is underground. We can't
Speaker 2: see it. And so it turns out that some of
Speaker 2: these underground fungi are very large. See I might have
Speaker 2: heard of the humongous fungus. No, the humungous fungus. Goodness,
Speaker 2: this was maybe it's been twenty years now, since nineteen
Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly when, but a thirty seven acre
Speaker 2: honey mushroom was found in underground in the Upper Penicsula, Michigan,
Speaker 2: oh my god. And then everybody else started looking for
Speaker 2: big ones. And there's a fifteen hundred acre one in
Speaker 2: Washington and a twenty five hundred acre one in Oregon.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And so they're you know, they're quite large organisms.
Speaker 1: I can't even how much weight do you think that is?
Speaker 2: There's that been published. I don't remember the exact numbers,
Speaker 2: but it's thousands of tons. Oh my lord.
Speaker 1: Are these big, humongous fungus? Are those the same species
Speaker 1: or are these totally different species of fungi?
Speaker 2: All of the three that I just talked about are
Speaker 2: all the same genus. They're different species of the same
Speaker 2: augus that you know. When all that happened, there was
Speaker 2: an argument about is what is an organism? And they
Speaker 2: people started talking about aspen grows. So aspen grows, the
Speaker 2: trees are just clones of one another. You start with
Speaker 2: one tree and it suckers from the roots, and you
Speaker 2: get another tree coming up from the roots next to it.
Speaker 2: And so you can get these, you know, ten thousand
Speaker 2: stems that are above ground, but they all share the
Speaker 2: same exact roots system.
Speaker 1: I had no idea.
Speaker 2: And so there's something called the panda grove that's supposed
Speaker 2: to be the world's largest organism.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I had no idea about aspen trees.
Speaker 1: That's wild. I had no clue.
Speaker 2: And you can see you can pick out which which
Speaker 2: of this we have the same clones. They change color
Speaker 2: and the fall at the same time. They all leap
Speaker 2: out at the same time because they're all the same individual.
Speaker 1: Oh that's bananas.
Speaker 2: And what do you think that bananas are clonal too?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, the cavendish Right.
Speaker 2: Bananas are going to change in the next ten years
Speaker 2: because they're always they're all susceptible to this fungus that's
Speaker 2: been introduced, so we'll see what happens. And they're all clones,
Speaker 2: so they're all susceptible to the same fungus.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel when you hear about a fungus, say,
Speaker 1: threatening a population, like the white you know, a white
Speaker 1: nose fungus or these banana fungi. Are you like, go
Speaker 1: fungus go?
Speaker 2: Or no, like, why are.
Speaker 1: You doing that? Fungus? There's so many other things to eat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, it's hard to root for the
Speaker 2: fungus when you're talking about food to feed a lot
Speaker 2: of people. But you know, it's interesting, you know, and
Speaker 2: you mentioned the bat white nose syndrome, so that's certainly
Speaker 2: something to worry about. That fungus grows optimally at four
Speaker 2: degrees centigrade, which is, you know, not around forty fahrenheit,
Speaker 2: and so that's the reason it's grown in They on
Speaker 2: the hibernating bats and making them wake up early and
Speaker 2: then there's no food and then they die.
Speaker 1: And so are we seeing different kind of fungus blights
Speaker 1: as climate changes or as population gets more dense or
Speaker 1: is that just part of the cycle. You're going to
Speaker 1: have a blight when you have a blight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's predictions that climate change will cause more infections
Speaker 2: because things will be able to Things are now limited
Speaker 2: by a low temperature that they can't survive at, and
Speaker 2: if that low temperature is different, they may be able
Speaker 2: to survive the winter right at these other temperatures.
Speaker 1: Tom says that most of the fungal blights are invasive species,
Speaker 1: so they were in control in their home country because
Speaker 1: exposed organisms likely had evolved some defense or resistance. But
Speaker 1: they kind of pop up when you're unprepared. They're like
Speaker 1: in loss coming over or Ashton Kusher popping out from
Speaker 1: behind a ficus unpunked.
Speaker 2: So that's why hit the broccoli police at the border,
Speaker 2: so we don't bring in these pathogens.
Speaker 1: The broccoli police, I never heard of them call that.
Speaker 1: And is it hard to kill a fungus? And why.
Speaker 2: It is hard to kill fungi because they're so big
Speaker 2: and they're so diverse in what they do in terms
Speaker 2: of a fungal infection with humans, It's hard to kill
Speaker 2: the fungi because we're so closely related, and so there's
Speaker 2: very few targets to kill the fungus without killing us.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And so then killing things that are on crops or
Speaker 2: just it's a matter of size, massive amounts of spores,
Speaker 2: and they're sports are resistant. And you know, they thought
Speaker 2: they were get killing off the black sam rest of wheat,
Speaker 2: and they found out that the sports were actually migrating
Speaker 2: on the winds to Mexico for the winter and then
Speaker 2: coming back.
Speaker 1: God, that's quite a journey. How do they even do that?
Speaker 2: It's just the wind, the way the wind goes.
Speaker 1: Tom noted that grad students in his lab can work
Speaker 1: on whatever they like, so long as it's fungal and
Speaker 1: it's something he's interested in, and he's had students work
Speaker 1: on medical mycology, on finding new species ecology.
Speaker 2: I have one student at Hardcoard nuclear physics on fungi,
Speaker 2: so you know they I've learned a lot from my students,
Speaker 2: So I don't really have a specialty. I worked on
Speaker 2: k fungi for a long time. I know a lot
Speaker 2: of different things about a lot of stuff, I guess
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: My eye just caught a VHS tape that says counseling
Speaker 1: patients with vaginal east infection. You're like, huh, that's another
Speaker 1: one among all these. Yeah, I just have it, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, well, you know, I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: at least half of our listeners have been familiar with that.
Speaker 2: Well, they say that three out of every four women
Speaker 2: will get a yeast infection sometime during her life, so
Speaker 2: oh sure, that's a very high number.
Speaker 1: And I'm no doctor, but I estimate that one out
Speaker 1: of every four persons with ivagina has lied about never
Speaker 1: having a yeast infection.
Speaker 2: But okay, there's a lot of research and money, you know,
Speaker 2: doctor bills and everything else based on all that, and
Speaker 2: you know that's it's hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it is crazy to think that
Speaker 1: they're so close to us that it's hard to kill them. Yes,
Speaker 1: I never even thought about that. Systemic anti fungals could
Speaker 1: do quite a number on your liver and right, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: So it's because they're you know, they're targeting the substance
Speaker 2: called ergosterol and the memories which replaces cholesterol, and so
Speaker 2: a goostri and cholesterol very close. You have to target
Speaker 2: the ergosterol and the fungi without affecting the cholesterol in
Speaker 2: the humans. There are a lot of folk remedies that
Speaker 2: probably work, but I think it's pretty variable.
Speaker 1: I guess is it these kiteness membranes though they're pretty tough,
Speaker 1: they're the same thing with Arthur POD's use right for
Speaker 1: as an ex scot and so well, yeah, so is
Speaker 1: that is that their main source of protection then?
Speaker 2: So that is a physical protection, yes, But most fungi
Speaker 2: also produced chemicals to deter their competitors, and so some
Speaker 2: of these are useful to us, like penicillin. So that's
Speaker 2: trying to kill off the bacteria in the surrounding environment.
Speaker 1: And so is someone who has all of this backdoor
Speaker 1: knowledge about fungi, has it made you live your life
Speaker 1: any differently.
Speaker 2: So yes, And the reason is that thirteen years ago
Speaker 2: I had a heart transplant.
Speaker 1: I know so.
Speaker 2: And actually my heart is in that recycled thing right there?
Speaker 1: Is it? Really?
Speaker 2: I know if you wanted to look at it, you could,
Speaker 2: of course I do.
Speaker 1: Can I look at it now or shall I look
Speaker 1: at it later? Oh my gosh, it's in here. I
Speaker 1: knew your heart was in here. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: So it's in it made a heart cozy for it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm going to pick it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah please.
Speaker 1: I mean I've read about it, and I've some pictures.
Speaker 2: Oh so that's all made with wool that's dyed with mushrooms.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, then felted.
Speaker 1: So right now, I was holding something about the size
Speaker 1: of a Kleenex cozy. It's this wooly box. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like a golden yellow with these felted mushrooms and
Speaker 1: my celia crafted almost woven into the surface, and inside
Speaker 1: of it is a clear tupperware, and inside the tupperware
Speaker 1: is a ziploc bag. Inside the ziploc bag is another
Speaker 1: Ziploc bag, and inside of that is Tom Volk's heart,
Speaker 1: kind of blanched looking drained, of blood and dissected to
Speaker 1: thick slices. It's bathed in about a cup of liquid preservative.
Speaker 1: The woolen box keeps it all contained.
Speaker 2: So my dear friends and Seattle made that for me.
Speaker 1: May twenty second, two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: It's a data my transplant. Yea, so it's gonna be
Speaker 2: thirteen years pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Here. Oh my gosh. Now that's in a tupperware.
Speaker 2: It's been dissected, so you can take it out and
Speaker 2: hold it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Oh it's your heart.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, you're holding my heart in your hands.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I wear it on my sleeve.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. This must be so surreal for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm kind of used to it now after all
Speaker 2: these years.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what was it like the first time you
Speaker 1: saw this on the outside of your body?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I it was in the doctor's office and
Speaker 2: I asked to see it, and so they brought it
Speaker 2: to me. And I cried, of course, because that's it's
Speaker 2: just really weird.
Speaker 1: Yes, did you have to petition to keep it?
Speaker 2: I asked them for it at that, you know, after
Speaker 2: about three months, and they said they were still study it.
Speaker 2: And then about a year later asked for it and
Speaker 2: they said I could have it. I knew I had
Speaker 2: this biology professor, so I would find use for it.
Speaker 1: Tom of course has to be really careful because his
Speaker 1: immune system is compromised, and he went through so much
Speaker 1: before the transplant. He had Hodgkin's disease cancer the lymph nodes,
Speaker 1: and the radiation from that therapy damaged his heart, and
Speaker 1: then he got flesh eating bacteria in his foot and
Speaker 1: his pacemaker was shocking him every ninety seconds. At some point,
Speaker 1: he says he was the most interesting case at the
Speaker 1: Mayo Clinics ICU, which is not a good thing. But
Speaker 1: after the transplant, except for the gash in his chest,
Speaker 1: he says, he felt immediately better. Oh my gosh. And
Speaker 1: now how obviously you're doing well post transplant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so because of the of the transplant I have,
Speaker 2: I'm on antirejection drug, so it suppresses my immune system.
Speaker 2: So I have to be more careful about what kind
Speaker 2: of fungi encounter. And so we have to be barely careful.
Speaker 2: And I teach medical mycology because we're working on pathogens,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, I had to be careful about that,
Speaker 2: and I have to be careful about everything. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: who touched this before me? And were they clean?
Speaker 1: Right? I imagine? Oh, and I see that you have
Speaker 1: hand sanitizer, which is very smart. So to my left
Speaker 1: was this hefty pump top bottle of purel. I put
Speaker 1: his heart back in its cozy. Tom hasn't found out
Speaker 1: who his donor was, but he wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: the family, thanking them for the gift, telling them all
Speaker 1: the places he's lectured, the fifteen hundred students that have
Speaker 1: learned from him since the transplant, the dozens of master's
Speaker 1: theses and PhD students he's been able to supervise, all
Speaker 1: because he got that new heart. I put his original
Speaker 1: one back in its cozy little koozy, where it remained
Speaker 1: on my lap for the rest of our chat. I'm like,
Speaker 1: so nice, it's so nice to meet you. I've heard
Speaker 1: so much about you. And when you are looking at
Speaker 1: medical micrology, what are some that what are some of
Speaker 1: the things that you're looking at the most of therapeutics
Speaker 1: or the anti fungals.
Speaker 2: So we look at everything, so we're looking mostly at
Speaker 2: the fungi that infect people. So it's not medicinal mycology,
Speaker 2: which we'll be getting, you know, drugs from fungi. But
Speaker 2: we're looking at medical mycology, which is fungi that infect
Speaker 2: people mostly got it, and so we look at everything
Speaker 2: from you start in the outside of the body. There's
Speaker 2: things that are really superficial. Then you go into the
Speaker 2: dermatophytes that are in the cutaneous layer, and then there's
Speaker 2: some that are below that it'd have to be inoculated
Speaker 2: by a trauma, and then some that are inhaled in
Speaker 2: fill lungs, and go further than that.
Speaker 1: This was going to be in a side describing some
Speaker 1: of the Narnart fungal infections you can get from like
Speaker 1: inner ear sludge to jock probs to some tonail goblins
Speaker 1: to the fungal lung ball that is valley fever. My
Speaker 1: front tigan had part of her lung removed because of it. Huh.
Speaker 1: But things started getting a little too when the words
Speaker 1: ice cream scoop appeared in a paragraph about excizing infected flesh.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I'm good, We're good here. I
Speaker 1: did get a rash on my face when I was
Speaker 1: living in a house or black mold, But do you
Speaker 1: have people who ask about black mold in the walls
Speaker 1: or under the carpet. Is that a problem?
Speaker 2: So there are a lot of studies trying to figure
Speaker 2: out this. The fun that you're talking about is a
Speaker 2: black mold stacky batries, and so the stacky batrice is
Speaker 2: found kind of rarely. Usually it's a black mold, it's
Speaker 2: clatysporium or something else. But there are people trying to
Speaker 2: prove that that stacky batries causes these things, and there's
Speaker 2: been the distinct lack of proof of it so far.
Speaker 2: There are known micotoxins on the spores that could be inhaled,
Speaker 2: and if you hale in large amounts, hypothetically there could
Speaker 2: be something that happens. So, you know, it was an
Speaker 2: interesting time. So I had to spend a couple of
Speaker 2: months in Rochester, Minnesota, where the main clinic is, and
Speaker 2: you know, and get used to that.
Speaker 1: Psychologically when you when you look back on it now,
Speaker 1: how maybe how has it changed the way that you
Speaker 1: maybe look at life or or look at the things
Speaker 1: that you want to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, psychologically I had trouble at justin
Speaker 2: because I know somebody had died and I had their
Speaker 2: heart inside of me, so that you know, that's some
Speaker 2: survivor guilty. But also there was changes also in the
Speaker 2: way I thought about things. I don't let the little
Speaker 2: stuff bother me anymore. Yeah, and that turns out everything's
Speaker 2: little stuff. And so you just go with what you
Speaker 2: what you got, and you, you know, just do what
Speaker 2: you have to do.
Speaker 1: And he did a ted talk called a Change of
Speaker 1: Heart about his experience, and he shared a thought that
Speaker 1: brought me to tears.
Speaker 5: When my mother grew up during the depression, and whenever
Speaker 5: we got some new dishes or new clothes, or new
Speaker 5: furniture or something, she would say, save it for good
Speaker 5: and put it off in a closet somewhere, or put
Speaker 5: a pulse to put plastic over the couch, or things
Speaker 5: like that. We are saving it for some good. It
Speaker 5: turns out that every day is good. Every day is good.
Speaker 5: I use the good china now, I sit on the
Speaker 5: good furniture, wear the clothes I want to. Every day
Speaker 5: is good, and there's no reason to save it for
Speaker 5: a good day. Use it now while you can.
Speaker 2: So you know everything that I have a very different
Speaker 2: attitude I have. You know, I just turned sixty, and
Speaker 2: so when you know some people have this crisis, I said,
Speaker 2: I made it. I made it, you know, because there
Speaker 2: was a time I didn't think I was make it
Speaker 2: to fifty. So, you know, the birthdays are a bonus
Speaker 2: and said of something, you know, the dread.
Speaker 1: I guess, Yeah, we have.
Speaker 2: I have a heart birthday every year or so that
Speaker 2: the people in my department all have a party for me.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Oh, is there a heart shape cake on me than usually?
Speaker 1: Do you get mushroom shaped cakes the other times of.
Speaker 2: The year sometimes? Yeah, I've had mushroom shaped cakes. Yes.
Speaker 1: And uh, does it change the way that you maybe
Speaker 1: interact with your students or or how you maybe guide
Speaker 1: students into working on things they want to work on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm better with students now than I
Speaker 2: was before. I'm I'm friendly er, I'm not as uptight
Speaker 2: as I was. Yeah, and so things are. I'd talk
Speaker 2: to anybody about anything.
Speaker 1: I have to say. I was running fifteen minutes late
Speaker 1: and you're like, okay.
Speaker 2: No problem whatever. That's a little bit.
Speaker 1: Every day is good in some way. So instead of
Speaker 1: saving all your stupid questions, ask them now. Patrons get
Speaker 1: to submit questions beforehand, so we're about to ask them
Speaker 1: after a quick few words from some sponsors of the show,
Speaker 1: but before the sponsors. Because of the sponsors, each episode
Speaker 1: we get to make a donation to a cause of
Speaker 1: the ologists choosing. And Tom is a big supporter of
Speaker 1: donatelife dot net. Donate Life America as a nonprofit organization
Speaker 1: dedicated to increasing awareness for the need for organs and
Speaker 1: tissue donation. They want to help develop a culture where
Speaker 1: donation is embraced as a fundamental human responsibility. There's one
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen thousand people in the US waiting for
Speaker 1: a donation of some kind. So to find out more
Speaker 1: about making your wishes known, you can visit donatelife dot net.
Speaker 1: And an additional donation was also made to the Mycological
Speaker 1: Society of America MSA Fungi dot org. And thank you
Speaker 1: to the following sponsors who I like so much for
Speaker 1: making those donations possible. Okay, back to your questions. Can
Speaker 1: I ask you some questions from listeners?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: Is that okay? They know that I'm meeting you specifically,
Speaker 1: of course, because I've been telling them forever. Zoe Bagger
Speaker 1: wants to know. I've not asked this question here before,
Speaker 1: and this subject has wreaked some havoc on our home recently.
Speaker 1: I would be very grateful if this was asked the mycologist.
Speaker 1: Why do psilocybin mushrooms react to black light? Do psilocybin
Speaker 1: mushrooms react to black light?
Speaker 2: There are actually a lot of funs that react to
Speaker 2: black light. And so you see my little poster if
Speaker 2: there's a black light poster, which is a you know,
Speaker 2: homage to that. But there are people who bring black
Speaker 2: lights to mushroom forests and you find all the mushrooms
Speaker 2: laid out, and you turn the lights out and you
Speaker 2: find out which ones glow which color. So that's a
Speaker 2: a consequence of having different kinds of pigments that happen
Speaker 2: to glow under Evie light, and so they're just different.
Speaker 2: It's just so far as we know, it's just happenstance
Speaker 2: that happens. But there may not be any value to
Speaker 2: it to the fungus to do that, but it just happens.
Speaker 2: There are some fungi that glow in the dark without
Speaker 2: an Evie light. Which one so there's one called the
Speaker 2: jack o'lintern mushroom that's actually bright orange and glows in
Speaker 2: the dark.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside, I look these up and they're bananas.
Speaker 1: They're this beautiful soft golden rot color. They look a
Speaker 1: little bit like Chantrell's. However, they're poisonous. Please don't eat them.
Speaker 1: But at night they glow this acid alien green and
Speaker 1: glowing at night, hence Jack o' lantern spooky cute. I
Speaker 1: approve of this branding. Also, I'm going to take a
Speaker 1: moment to read off some other glorious names of mushrooms,
Speaker 1: because frankly, you deserve to hear them. Okay, ready for this.
Speaker 1: There's the pear shaped wolf, fart puffball. There's witch, butter butt,
Speaker 1: rot fungi, the bearded hedgehog, mushroom, octopus, stinkhorn, bearded tooth, mushroom,
Speaker 1: the Devil's cigar, the bleeding tooth, fungus, hairsedge, smut, destroying angel,
Speaker 1: powdery piggyback, barometer, earth star, the gassy web cap, do drop, dapperling,
Speaker 1: the humpback, the pretender, the drumstick, truffle, club bug, sputnik, cinnamon,
Speaker 1: jelly baby, pink Disco, Lemon, Disco, midnight Disco, Harry Nuts, Disco,
Speaker 1: weeping tooth, crust, King Alfred's Cakes, hot lips, pancake, crust,
Speaker 1: dead mul's fingers, scurfy twiglet, plums, and custard. Literally, any
Speaker 1: one of those mushrooms could be playing Coachella next year.
Speaker 1: Do my colleges have just a hell of a time
Speaker 1: naming these mushrooms? Are think naming mushrooms.
Speaker 2: They're you know, there there's challenges to doing that, and
Speaker 2: we use you know, we use all Latin is the
Speaker 2: best way to do it, because there are no standard
Speaker 2: common names for mushrooms, like theart for birds and there,
Speaker 2: you know, there's only seven nine thousand birds in the
Speaker 2: whole world. And there's probably you know, in this room
Speaker 2: right here that we're sitting in. This little room probably
Speaker 2: has five hundred species of fungi, and I think there's
Speaker 2: probably ten there's probably more like one point five million
Speaker 2: species of fungi.
Speaker 1: One five million species, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And so the things that glow are you know that
Speaker 2: that are on DV or just I think it's just coincidence, huh.
Speaker 1: And brown rice wants to know, like brown rice, perhaps
Speaker 1: they're they're fam of very healthy eaters. How much decomposition
Speaker 1: are they responsible for? And what would happen if they
Speaker 1: suddenly disappear?
Speaker 2: No, that's a good question. So I talked about that
Speaker 2: in my class, and I tell them, if there were
Speaker 2: no fungi, we would be knee deep in everything or
Speaker 2: probably over our heads in wood and and feces. Oh god, no.
Speaker 2: So you know, the fungi and the bacteria are the
Speaker 2: degraders in the environment, and they break everything down so
Speaker 2: that other organisms can use that material.
Speaker 1: Again, just knee deep in feces. So a ton of
Speaker 1: people asked about psilocybin, which again I'm not a doctor,
Speaker 1: and I can offer no advice on if anyone should
Speaker 1: seek it out. I'm just relaying questions here. So Stephen Hoffman,
Speaker 1: Michael Novac, Lacy Gilbert, Zoe, Jane Diana Jou were all
Speaker 1: like what is up with them? And Jerry Davis specifically
Speaker 1: asked which native ones are the most magic and easiest
Speaker 1: to find? Asking for a friend winky face, asking.
Speaker 2: For her for him, It depends on what part of
Speaker 2: the country you're in, So you know, in the South
Speaker 2: there's different ones than there are in the Northwest. Northeast.
Speaker 2: Mids are not very resplendent in magical mushrooms in the wild.
Speaker 2: They're actually turned out to be really easy to grow,
Speaker 2: as I said, but they're in the wild, they're you know,
Speaker 2: special places where they're showing up. So I don't know
Speaker 2: where he's from.
Speaker 1: So he's got to join a mushroom club.
Speaker 2: He has to join a mushroom club. So some of
Speaker 2: the mushroom clubs are kind of frown upon the psychedelic things.
Speaker 2: But I think people are coming around is that, you know,
Speaker 2: we're showing that there is actual medicinal value to them.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they call them nutraceuticals because there are many many
Speaker 2: fungi that are eaten for their healthy properties, so especially
Speaker 2: in East Asia, so they've been using nutriceuticals. They've been
Speaker 2: using mushrooms as medicine for thousands of years probably, you know.
Speaker 2: And unlike Western medicine where we want to take a
Speaker 2: pill and everything suddenly better, they eat these mushrooms over
Speaker 2: a long period of time and that leads to a
Speaker 2: healthy condition.
Speaker 1: And is this like cordyceps, rechi.
Speaker 2: Cordobs, rishi, all those kind of things, okay, shittaki.
Speaker 1: Okay, so quick aside. Cord Aceps may be familiar from
Speaker 1: the Mirmorcology episode about ants because it infects insects brains
Speaker 1: and turns them into zombies. Ever played the video game
Speaker 1: The Last of Us. Yeah, that's real life for some insects,
Speaker 1: real life. Now, Shataki mushrooms are being studied for the
Speaker 1: possibility of tumor growth inhibition as well. Now, side note
Speaker 1: to side note, if you eat raw shataki, you might
Speaker 1: get something called shataki dermatitis, which looks like raised whiplash
Speaker 1: marks or claw scratches on your skin. I urge you
Speaker 1: to Google image search it because I am positive. In
Speaker 1: times of your village, doctor healers were like, yes, I
Speaker 1: know science and you've been attacked by a poltergeist. Put
Speaker 1: a leech on it. Your bill comes out to one
Speaker 1: goat bute bye. Now. Also, this next question was asked
Speaker 1: additionally by Emily Hoben and Heather Dunsmore. Had friends and
Speaker 1: wants to know where can I find me somewhere else?
Speaker 2: The usual answer is out in the woods under some trees.
Speaker 2: There you go, you know, and if you haven't, if
Speaker 2: you have a good friend, they might take it to
Speaker 2: your spot. They might blindfold you as they take you there.
Speaker 1: Does that happen?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, my god, this is so petty and I love it.
Speaker 2: Another way to do it is to steal the GPS
Speaker 2: coordinates after someone posts their pictures online.
Speaker 1: And then you know exactly where.
Speaker 2: They know where it is.
Speaker 1: Is it true that they sprout up more after forest fires?
Speaker 2: There are certain specieswhere else that come up after forest
Speaker 2: fires in the west, yes, so maybe so you would
Speaker 2: look for you know, the fires there and you know
Speaker 2: in other places you look at dead for dead elm
Speaker 2: trees and in the south you might look under toolip
Speaker 2: poplars or ash okay. So in different parts of the
Speaker 2: country there's different species that are that have different ecological habitats.
Speaker 1: So you got to get in also with a tree person,
Speaker 1: your trees. You have to know your trees, of those trees.
Speaker 1: Dionne Dabolou wants to know what are your thoughts on
Speaker 1: Star Trek discoveries my Celial Network, have you any.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it, so I don't really know. I
Speaker 2: don't know the answered, but you know that's based on
Speaker 2: the you know, these trees talking to one another and
Speaker 2: they're you know avatar. You know, that's not a bad
Speaker 2: way to think about these underground things. Is looking at
Speaker 2: at that.
Speaker 1: Movie Josh for I wants to know what's the best
Speaker 1: resource for someone who wants to start mushrooming at home
Speaker 1: growing and harvesting, not dripping, although I'm sure that maybe
Speaker 1: some could apply. So if someone wanted to start growing
Speaker 1: their own mushrooms, any advice.
Speaker 2: There's plenty of places online that will, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of guide you to that. There's Facebook pages and chatrooms
Speaker 2: and all sorts of things to to help you to grow.
Speaker 2: You can buy some books that'll that'll help you too.
Speaker 2: So very often these mushroom clubs have cultivation classes, and
Speaker 2: so you can join one of those and very often
Speaker 2: someone you know make your own bags and grow your
Speaker 2: own oyster mushrooms is a pretty common thing to do
Speaker 2: it for.
Speaker 1: It Dylan Ring wants to know do mushrooms have seasons
Speaker 1: the same way that plants to.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so they you know, they're not as obvious
Speaker 2: because they're they're just showing their fruiting bodies during certain seasons.
Speaker 2: So you look for merles in the spring, you look
Speaker 2: for in my aria, you look for chantrelle's in the summer,
Speaker 2: and look for bull eats in the summer, and then
Speaker 2: you start to get a frost and you get it
Speaker 2: honey mushrooms and chicken of the woods and hand of
Speaker 2: the woods and things like that. So, yes, they're they're
Speaker 2: seasonal fruiters, but they're growing all the time and then
Speaker 2: they have to in an area they go dormant in
Speaker 2: the winter, they do. Yeah, And so they're they're you know,
Speaker 2: they're living inside the log and some sort of suspended
Speaker 2: animation that is unclear as of yet.
Speaker 1: Are they typically under the frost line when they're in underground.
Speaker 2: Sometimes but not always. You know, these microezle ones are
Speaker 2: usually within the top meters.
Speaker 1: Okay, April Mihan wants to know if my dog eats
Speaker 1: the mushroom, how do I know if it's poisonous or not.
Speaker 1: What would some symptoms be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there you have to know what the mushroom is.
Speaker 2: And so the same thing if the child is eating mushroom.
Speaker 2: So I'm on the call list for Wisconsin Poison Center
Speaker 2: Minnesota as well. So you know, we often get calls
Speaker 2: from dogs that have eaten something or kids that are
Speaker 2: grazing in the yard and you know, the mommy finds
Speaker 2: something in their hand and was worried about it. And
Speaker 2: usually it's not anything, but you know, dogs do die
Speaker 2: from it, and you know, and and there have been
Speaker 2: any kid ones that I know of, but the dogs
Speaker 2: are out eating the you know, the stuff, and sometimes
Speaker 2: it's just rotten things. Like I had a dog case
Speaker 2: where dog eate a rotten mushroom. It would happened to
Speaker 2: be the am I to Muscaria, the volucinogenic one, but
Speaker 2: it was certainly way past what it would have been,
Speaker 2: and it probably died from the bacteria that it was
Speaker 2: eating all this junk. There's actually really interesting Facebook grip
Speaker 2: where you can post your pictures really and I'll help
Speaker 2: you identify a poisoning.
Speaker 1: That's great. I mean before that, it's not like you
Speaker 1: could just send out an APB to the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the poison center is available for human
Speaker 2: cases and they usually don't deal with dogs.
Speaker 1: Claire Kimbly and Jacqueline Snooke had the same question as Christy,
Speaker 1: whose syntax was perfection. Christy asked, do you have any
Speaker 1: mushy book wrecks?
Speaker 2: Mushy book wrecks? Wow, this is the time of the internet.
Speaker 1: Very Caul.
Speaker 2: There are some really good mushroom keys on books. There's
Speaker 2: a There's been a whole ton of books coming out
Speaker 2: in the last ten years that are really good. So
Speaker 2: it really depends on what part of the country you're in,
Speaker 2: which kind of books you do want to get? And
Speaker 2: there's plenty of web pages as well that are just
Speaker 2: identification pages.
Speaker 1: They have to start with yours, yes, duh.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: Of course his site is linked in the show notes
Speaker 1: by the Bye. Also, a group of folks wanted to
Speaker 1: know this next question, including Michelle Grondine, the Lorax aka Forest,
Speaker 1: Kitty Halverson, Thomas Beckett, Laura Kenny wants to know I
Speaker 1: read that there was a mushroom that could break down plastic.
Speaker 1: Is this true? And can use it to help clean
Speaker 1: up the sad plastic nightmare that the Earth is.
Speaker 2: Becinding the sad plastic nightmare. Yes, but it needs a
Speaker 2: lot of development. So there are actually in two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, we published a paper about breaking down finolch
Speaker 2: resin plastics, so of bowling balls and break linings and
Speaker 2: things like that, and we showed that they could break down,
Speaker 2: but they break down into something toxic. And so recently
Speaker 2: someone else. There have been several of these papers since
Speaker 2: that have working on different kinds of plastics and different
Speaker 2: kind of fungi. So I haven't critically evaluated what's going
Speaker 2: on with those, whether I how far along they are
Speaker 2: in developing.
Speaker 1: This for actual use, but they're working on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, so there's plenty of things to work on.
Speaker 1: Megan Janelle Lussion says, my boyfriend has texture issues and
Speaker 1: refuses to eat mushrooms. He's a vegetarian, though, so I'd
Speaker 1: really like to get him eating them, since they're a
Speaker 1: great substitution for meat, which mushrooms have the least mushroomy texture.
Speaker 2: So you should try some mushrooms called the Chicken of
Speaker 2: the Woods and the Hen of the Woods, which have
Speaker 2: the texture of chicken. Oh okay, so if you were
Speaker 2: put those in a stir fry or in a stew,
Speaker 2: you would probably not know the difference between that and
Speaker 2: the meat. So those are both very good. Chicken of
Speaker 2: the Woods Lady Porous is not available commercially, no one's
Speaker 2: quite figured out how to grow it successfully. But the
Speaker 2: Hen of the Woods, Griffila, my Taki, all that's sending
Speaker 2: for the same thing are available commercially and they're pretty good.
Speaker 1: Nice. So, yes, Hand of the Woods and Chicken the
Speaker 1: Woods totally different mushrooms, and I feel for them because
Speaker 1: they probably get each other's mail all the time. None
Speaker 1: of the ones are literally like what. Our mushrooms are
Speaker 1: pretty good substitute for meat in general.
Speaker 2: They are. They have they're pretty high in protein, they
Speaker 2: have a very good component of amino acids better than beans. Oh,
Speaker 2: they have a lot of B vitamins in them, and
Speaker 2: considering where they grow, they have lots of minerals of course.
Speaker 1: So do you think that they hurt when we pick them?
Speaker 1: I guess we're really just kind of picking their gennies.
Speaker 1: I mean we're really just getting their fruiting bodies right
Speaker 1: kind of like Okay, okay, Will Pleia asks, should we
Speaker 1: be looking for new antibiotics in fungi?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Okay, yeah, and so one of a few of
Speaker 2: my students have worked on looking for new anti fungal
Speaker 2: and antibiotic drugs on fungi. There was actually a whole
Speaker 2: group here that was looking for those kind of things
Speaker 2: in fungi and other things. So, yes, we need more
Speaker 2: antibiotics because of the you know, for a prescription of
Speaker 2: antibiotics and various other problems that are causing drug resistant
Speaker 2: bacteria and such. So yes, we need more of that.
Speaker 1: So get in it. If anyone wants to go study it,
Speaker 1: sign up, get on it.
Speaker 2: YEA. Even though you know, the drug companies are constantly
Speaker 2: looking for new things. But you know, getting making any
Speaker 2: drug is really expensive. Yeah, got as billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Crenilation asks, I love mushrooms and I love fairy circles.
Speaker 1: What can I do to invite mushrooms to live in
Speaker 1: my yard?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's nice. You can. You know, if there's some
Speaker 2: particular mushroom you want, you can collect it and then
Speaker 2: then you know, spread the spores in your yard. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, there's some fairy ring mushrooms you probably don't
Speaker 2: want any yard. There's you know, fairy ring comes from
Speaker 2: a spore landing somewhere and it grows out in a
Speaker 2: circle because you have a pretty homogeneous environment in your
Speaker 2: in your lawn, and so then it just fruits on
Speaker 2: the edges of that. And then you know, the Middle
Speaker 2: English people thought that we're fairies dancing in and out
Speaker 2: of it and things like that. But the most common
Speaker 2: one that's in lines is actually the most common cause
Speaker 2: of poison in North America, and it causes projective vombing
Speaker 2: productile diary at the same time, which is not as
Speaker 2: pleasant as it sounds. So they're you know this this
Speaker 2: chlorophyllum moll of diities. It's called is is toxic. So
Speaker 2: that's one of the more common ones that's growing in
Speaker 2: fairy rings.
Speaker 1: So maybe not that one.
Speaker 2: Maybe not that one, but there are others. There's one
Speaker 2: called the fairy ring mushroom rasmus, which is edible, the
Speaker 2: most common as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so obviously one would be the better choice. Yes,
Speaker 1: so green light on the Scotch bonnet mushroom, not to
Speaker 1: be confused with the tongue searing scotch bonnet pepper. Let's
Speaker 1: all agree also to avoid the other one, which is
Speaker 1: called a false parasol or simply the vomitter. Okay, one
Speaker 1: more question. Bob Ogden wants to know. I'm allergic to mushrooms.
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone else who is. How common is it.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people are allergic to mushrooms. So
Speaker 2: some people develop an allergy because they ate too much.
Speaker 1: Oh so I know at least ten.
Speaker 2: People who are allergic to morales who ate them for
Speaker 2: many years and then one year overindulged and now they
Speaker 2: can't eat them at all. And so, and they are
Speaker 2: people allergic to You know that people are doing anything
Speaker 2: be allergius strawberries or coconut or whatever, so it's not
Speaker 2: surprising some people allergic to some mushrooms. There are some
Speaker 2: mushrooms that people are allergic to touch. I know several
Speaker 2: people that that happens with one particular one called the
Speaker 2: chicken fat mushroom.
Speaker 1: Okay, so from what I understand, the chicken fat mushroom
Speaker 1: is a little slippery, kind of greasy and can have
Speaker 1: what's been described as an organy flavor. Not for everyone,
Speaker 1: particularly the allergic.
Speaker 2: But that's you know, it's analogy and like everything else.
Speaker 1: And last two questions, I always ask, what is one
Speaker 1: thing that is very annoying about mushrooms or your job
Speaker 1: in general?
Speaker 2: Annoying? I love my job.
Speaker 1: Anything that sucks.
Speaker 2: Some of them are difficult to work with. They don't
Speaker 2: cooperate and do what we want. But other than that,
Speaker 2: the mushroom's been pretty good to me.
Speaker 1: Anything as a micology professor that's annoying.
Speaker 2: No, not really, I mean, I mean, you know how
Speaker 2: I'm The little stuff doesn't bother me, so it's not
Speaker 2: easy to annoy me. There are a lot of different
Speaker 2: kinds of things, you know. I teach general micology every
Speaker 2: fall and we you know, you know, it's fun. We
Speaker 2: go and collect stuff. And I recommend it as as
Speaker 2: a good hobby for anyone to go out and collect
Speaker 2: mushrooms and make new friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're out in nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who compete that.
Speaker 1: You're wearing probably rubber boots, yeah, something like that, something
Speaker 1: like that. And then the last question, of course I
Speaker 1: always ask, is what is your favorite thing about mushrooms
Speaker 1: or your job.
Speaker 2: I like the people, you know, I like the mushrooms,
Speaker 2: but the people are really interesting. There's some really interesting
Speaker 2: people in my coology. They tend to be smart, they're
Speaker 2: interested in science. We go to these amateur mushroomers. There's
Speaker 2: you know, they're from all walks of life, and you
Speaker 2: know they're interested in fungi for all kinds of reasons. So,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that's one of the most interesting
Speaker 2: things about it.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope there'll be a bloom of a new
Speaker 1: budding my collogists.
Speaker 2: Letting I get it.
Speaker 1: How many times are you introduced as a fun guy?
Speaker 2: Almost never.
Speaker 1: No one's like, you need to meet Tom Bog He's
Speaker 1: a fun guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a very common Okay, I'm sorry, Well
Speaker 2: it's fine. I pretend to laugh every time.
Speaker 1: But you are a fun guy, so that only compounds
Speaker 1: the problem. I think.
Speaker 2: I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for letting us and letting
Speaker 1: me hold your heart in my lap as I did.
Speaker 2: It for the last half hour.
Speaker 1: I know, thank you so much. I can't wait for
Speaker 1: this to come out. You're the best. So ask smart
Speaker 1: people stupid questions. Join a mycological society, make some lifelong
Speaker 1: fungus friends. You can find doctor Tom Folk with an
Speaker 1: Easygoogle and his Wisconsin dot du mushroom site will pop up.
Speaker 1: And if organ donation is now something you're interested in,
Speaker 1: that site was donatelife dot net, so links to those
Speaker 1: and the sponsors are in the show notes. They're also
Speaker 1: up at aliward dot com slash ologies slash mycology. We
Speaker 1: are ologies on Twitter and Instagram, so do follow there.
Speaker 1: I'm at ali Ward with one L on both. Come
Speaker 1: say hello. Thanks again to the patrons at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash ologies, where you can submit questions and support
Speaker 1: the show for as little as a dollar a month,
Speaker 1: and you can find other ologites by wearing merch from
Speaker 1: ologiesmerch dot com. You can tag photos on Instagram hashtagologies
Speaker 1: merch so I can repost you on Mondays. Thank you
Speaker 1: Bonnie Dutch and Channigeweltis for managing that site. Thank you
Speaker 1: Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for being the moderators on
Speaker 1: the Wonderful Ologies podcast Facebook group. Thank you Jaried Sleeper
Speaker 1: of mind Jam Media for assistant editing and helping with
Speaker 1: some research. I stole his Coachella joke and he said
Speaker 1: it was okay. And to the magical mushroom that is
Speaker 1: Stephen Ray Morris for editing all these clips and drops
Speaker 1: together stitching them together. Each week, Nick Thorburn wrote and
Speaker 1: performed the theme music. Now, if you listen to the
Speaker 1: end of each episode, you know I tell you a secret.
Speaker 1: And this week's secret. I have one of those shower
Speaker 1: doors that you need to squeegee so that it doesn't
Speaker 1: get spots on it. And I was late to the
Speaker 1: airport and I took a shorter shower than the amount
Speaker 1: of time it took me to squeegee the shower door. Wow,
Speaker 1: I spent more time cleaning this shower than myself, but
Speaker 1: the squeegee works.
Speaker 2: What can I say?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: For Bride pack Aderman's College Hobbiology Cryptozoology lithology, new technology, meteorology, perahology, ethnology, seriology, selenology.
Speaker 2: It was just a detour, a shortcut, shortcut of
Speaker 1: What the mushrooms morem