Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's twenty twenty two. Ali with a last minute,
Speaker 1: preempting release of one of the best episodes we've ever done,
Speaker 1: Mycology with Doctor Tom Folk. So this first aired in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and I've been saving it and saving it
Speaker 1: to encore, But I just got the sad news that
Speaker 1: this beloved guest passed away on November twenty eighth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, at the age of sixty three. I found
Speaker 1: out yesterday. So I'm holding the regularly scheduled episode until
Speaker 1: next week, and I'm re airing this for you tonight
Speaker 1: to either hear the first time, or I really urge
Speaker 1: you to revisit it with some fresh perspective as a
Speaker 1: way to celebrate the human that we were lucky enough
Speaker 1: to have on the planet and on this podcast a
Speaker 1: dear friend. So listen, or listen again and carry him
Speaker 1: in your heart today. Oh hey, it's straight up your
Speaker 1: weird internet dad, just sniffing candles in a blissfully empty
Speaker 1: aisle of a discount home goods store. Ali board back
Speaker 1: with another episode of Ologies, one that you have requested,
Speaker 1: rather you have begged for since the inception of this podcast.
Speaker 1: I keep hearing dad Ward mycology 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 going
Speaker 1: to make more sense later. But first, Okay, a little
Speaker 1: bit of business, and by business, I mean thank yous
Speaker 1: to all the folks on Patreon supporting this podcast for
Speaker 1: as little as twenty five cents an episode. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for making this whole thing possible. And thank
Speaker 1: you to anyone who makes sure that they are subscribed
Speaker 1: and have rated the podcast. Special tip of the old
Speaker 1: hat to those who leave reviews which I read when
Speaker 1: I'm sad, and then I pick a fresh one each
Speaker 1: week to read you, such as this one by m
Speaker 1: post Legator, who says Ali approaches each scientific subject with
Speaker 1: the eagerness of a toddler meeting kittens. M post Legator,
Speaker 1: I feel seen and also attacked, and I like you
Speaker 1: for it. Mycology. What is the etymology of mycology? Let's
Speaker 1: start with it. How did this word burst forth from
Speaker 1: our brains and out of our mouths? So mico comes
Speaker 1: from the Greek for fungus and little bonus points for you.
Speaker 1: The word fungus itself has its roots in the word
Speaker 1: for spongy. So this mycologist, oh my word, who has
Speaker 1: been on my list for well over a year, and
Speaker 1: he is a major reason why I took a Midwest
Speaker 1: road trip a few weeks ago. I wanted to find
Speaker 1: the best mycologist out there, and I asked Eugenia Bone,
Speaker 1: author of the book Micophelia, Thank You to Talk Nerdy's
Speaker 1: karas Aanna Marie for that intro, and she told me
Speaker 1: that this ologist is quote a mycologist of the utmost charm.
Speaker 1: I 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 Lanoillam hallway.
Speaker 1: Right to his office I found you, which was this
Speaker 1: thrilling jumble of mushroom knickknacks and maps and hard bound
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: best and having run a mushroom and fungus web page
Speaker 1: nearly twenty five years when the Internet was just a
Speaker 1: squirmy baby, this guy has been cool since before you
Speaker 1: were born. He's been a professor in the Department of
Speaker 1: Biology at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse since nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six and teaches general mycology, medical mycology, not to mention,
Speaker 1: has helmed some classes in food and industrial micology, also
Speaker 1: in Latin and Greek for scientists. He seems like that's
Speaker 1: the kind of guy I would have gone to concerts
Speaker 1: with in my goth days and then spent all night
Speaker 1: talking about cell division in a Denny's while our friends
Speaker 1: smoked clothes in the parking lot. This is truly the
Speaker 1: highest compliment I could give a person anyway. He let
Speaker 1: me pepper him with questions for an hour and we
Speaker 1: cover what the hell is a fungus foraging under the
Speaker 1: forest canopy? Fairy rings, magic mushrooms, being blindfolded in the woods,
Speaker 1: the tastiest mushrooms plus mildew, fungal infections, and how having
Speaker 1: a part of you replaced can change the way you
Speaker 1: live your life. So prepare for a budding fungus obsession
Speaker 1: with a mushroom expert of the utmost charm, my cologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Tom Bulk. I would love to know when did
Speaker 1: you start getting interested in mushers? When did they become
Speaker 1: captivating for you?
Speaker 2: So I took a course in my collegy in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight at a high university and I found it
Speaker 2: you can get free food, and so that was good,
Speaker 2: and that was pretty different, and I'm sort of a
Speaker 2: different kind of person, and so that's appealed to me
Speaker 2: that it was something unusual that not very many people
Speaker 2: studied and knew about. So when it came time to
Speaker 2: go to grad school, that's what I decided I would study.
Speaker 1: Did they give you free mushrooms to eat?
Speaker 3: You find them in the woods.
Speaker 1: They're all free, is it? But there's always the risk
Speaker 1: of foraging. You have to get really good in order
Speaker 1: to get free food out of it.
Speaker 3: Reletely.
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 dive if you
Speaker 2: eat the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: Has to be on your side.
Speaker 3: 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: going to be some forging secrets in a bit. But first,
Speaker 1: and this is such a basic question, but what is fungus?
Speaker 1: What is a fun guy? Why does it have his
Speaker 1: own kingdom? It's neither animal nor plant? What's happening?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So, and remember in the olden days, when you were
Speaker 2: in schol we probably learned about the two kingdoms, the
Speaker 2: animals and the plants, and find you were included with
Speaker 2: the plants because they didn't move and they had cell
Speaker 2: walls and all that. It turns out that fung gerienmorkless
Speaker 2: related to animals than plants. So physiologically they and genetically
Speaker 2: they're much more similar to animals than plants. But they're
Speaker 2: really different than animals obviously, So the cell walls of
Speaker 2: kitan they share the kitan in common with some animals,
Speaker 2: like the arthropods, insects and such of kitan exoskeletons and
Speaker 2: 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 rite. 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: polymer and a derivative of glucose. But the important aspect
Speaker 1: is it gives arthropods skeletons and fungi cell walls some
Speaker 1: rigidity and 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 fun. Guy. 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 fungai okay.
Speaker 1: Oh there's a third way. What fungi okay?
Speaker 3: 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 epists, the conta, which is the
Speaker 2: rare flagellum, which refers to the some of the fungi,
Speaker 2: the primitive ones have a flagellum on them, and of
Speaker 2: course human males have the sperm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with the flagellum. So I know that that's the
Speaker 3: one of the things that link 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 cone heads, right.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So you're looking at the reproductive structures.
Speaker 2: Most of the time that private pos But what you
Speaker 2: don't see most of the time are the high fie
Speaker 2: that are underground.
Speaker 3: So these are hiphie.
Speaker 2: On my arm, and so you can see if you
Speaker 2: were if you were here, which you are, you could
Speaker 2: see the mycelium the hyphie growing, and that's how they feed.
Speaker 4: So their reproductive areas are their most public parts.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you wore a full body
Speaker 1: spandex jumpsuit all the time, but it was crotchless it's
Speaker 1: just 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 inside our bodies.
Speaker 1: And that's how they're breaking down substrates, so.
Speaker 3: They 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. When what
Speaker 1: are some places that a fun guy live? And also
Speaker 1: I want to hear about our brains and how they
Speaker 1: 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 them and inches the lining
Speaker 2: of the brain, not so much in the brain, but
Speaker 2: there are some that'll get in there as well.
Speaker 1: Cryptocoxosis, by the bye is what this is called. Oh
Speaker 1: it's a nasty bugger. So these Cryptococcus yeast form their
Speaker 1: name means hidden sphere. They're found worldwide in soil, but
Speaker 1: for those with compromised immune systems like folks with HIV,
Speaker 1: it can be fatal. Cryptocoxosis accounts for twenty to twenty
Speaker 1: five percent of the HIV related mortality in Africa, So
Speaker 1: that's 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 or.
Speaker 3: Is that there's a lot of things.
Speaker 2: If you look on the internet, every single disease that's
Speaker 2: possible is caused by Canada 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 digestice system because
Speaker 2: you have this as a part of the normal flora
Speaker 2: of your body, and so in the you've got Canada
Speaker 2: in your mouth as part of the normal floora keeping
Speaker 2: the bacteria in check. And then you swallow some of
Speaker 2: that and it goes through the digestive system and some
Speaker 2: of it remains intact, 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 candinemia,
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 diff tomato tomato. Now, speaking of food, if
Speaker 1: a Canada 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 fungi like
Speaker 1: to live. I know we think of them in dark,
Speaker 1: damp places.
Speaker 2: Fungi are anywhere where it's where they have enough moisture
Speaker 2: to grow and enough heat, and so you know they
Speaker 2: need you know, room temperature they like, although there are
Speaker 2: some that'll grow low and very low and very high temperatures,
Speaker 2: but most of them like this middle ground where they
Speaker 2: can do well.
Speaker 3: But you can find fungi in just about any environment
Speaker 3: where there's enough water 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 when they're in the log and
Speaker 2: they're growing, they just are growing their their hyphi their
Speaker 2: my celium to eat the food. But then you know,
Speaker 2: at some point they reach the surface of the log
Speaker 2: again and the light is their signal to make the mushroom,
Speaker 2: and so that tells them they're outside of the log
Speaker 2: and that they it's okay to make a mushroom. There's
Speaker 2: also more oxygen outside of there, so that's another signal
Speaker 2: for them to make the mushroom on the outside of
Speaker 2: the log or whatever.
Speaker 1: And can you tell me the difference obviously between the
Speaker 1: my celia and the hiphie and the mushroom for anyone
Speaker 1: who's just like, what, there's more to fungi than the mushroom.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there are these hyphie that are underground or in
Speaker 2: the wood. I'll just talk about wood for now, that
Speaker 2: are in the wood, and they they're they're not particularly dense.
Speaker 2: They're growing through the wood. But when they send up
Speaker 2: the fretting body, there's the fretting body. The mushroom is
Speaker 2: still composed of high fee and if you, you know,
Speaker 2: tear one apart and look in the microscope. There's they're
Speaker 2: the same kind of ighee, but they're all stuck together
Speaker 2: in such a way that they're very strong. And they
Speaker 2: can put this thing up above the wood to make
Speaker 2: this mushroom so that they can release their spores and.
Speaker 3: Get somewhere else. I want to get out of here.
Speaker 2: And so the mushroom is made up of hiphee, but
Speaker 2: they're really dense in that form rather than more spread
Speaker 2: out as they are down 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 bacitia, these club shape things, and then the
Speaker 2: spores drop off of their and they're usually caught in
Speaker 2: the air and spread somewhere.
Speaker 4: Spores they just they grow so fast and then before
Speaker 4: you know it, they're just a huge web of underground
Speaker 4: hyphie forming a mycelium and barfing onto their lunch before
Speaker 4: just exposing their reproductive structures to the sun.
Speaker 1: Where 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: being spread by the wind. And so they produce huge
Speaker 2: numbers of spores to by chance some of them 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 gild mushrooms, but you also have some that have
Speaker 2: different ways of increasing the surface area with pores underneath
Speaker 2: or even small teeth, or some of them are just
Speaker 2: kind of wrinkled, and some of them are smooth, but
Speaker 2: they can dry out and revive, and so they increase
Speaker 2: in their surface area 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 puffballs and
Speaker 1: bracket fungi and toadstool shapes and lattice types, glow in
Speaker 1: the dark ones, the ones that look like they're bleeding
Speaker 1: terrifying human blood, and ones named after dicks, on and
Speaker 1: on and on. Now with five million species, there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of selection going.
Speaker 2: On, and so they you know, there's a lots of
Speaker 2: different kind of strategies that that fung i use.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite mushroom?
Speaker 3: Favorite for what?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 1: I got? 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 Chantrell'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 know these folds
Speaker 2: on the outside, and they smell like apricots. Oh, so
Speaker 2: they're pretty smelling. They're pretty dense, and they're usually not
Speaker 2: contaminated with bugs and stuff.
Speaker 3: That's just sex to protein.
Speaker 1: And when you go to like a farmer's market you
Speaker 1: see the mushroom stand. Are you like nice but I
Speaker 1: can get them myself or are you excited to see
Speaker 1: 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, but that's a whole,
Speaker 2: a whole different thing. But maybe they're you know, if
Speaker 2: you're taking them somewhere else, the chance of the spores
Speaker 2: landing for their way might be good. It might be
Speaker 2: good for their genetics. But you know that's that's a
Speaker 2: half hour conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't have you.
Speaker 1: Just shut up, shut up and test you. Okay, I
Speaker 1: look this up, boy howdie who? This is a topic
Speaker 1: of some fierce debate, but most hardcore mushroomers obsorb some
Speaker 1: basic funkal decency and and 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 cologist 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 how would you advise
Speaker 1: people if they are interested in maybe starting to forage
Speaker 1: or starting to catalog mushrooms, or also want to make
Speaker 1: 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: and make friends at any of I think there's one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty mushroom clubs in North America, and so
Speaker 2: you can join one of those and they go out
Speaker 2: on foray's, 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 Na, 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.
Speaker 3: And so if you're.
Speaker 2: Doing this with people and you know, go to these
Speaker 2: big mushroom for a people go out and find mushrooms
Speaker 2: and then they lay them out on a table and
Speaker 2: you can look at them side by side and find
Speaker 2: which ones, you know, the poisonous in their edible, you know,
Speaker 2: the things that look alike. You can distinguish between them
Speaker 2: more easily if you have them sitting there in three
Speaker 2: D and you can touch them and feel them and
Speaker 2: smell them and everything else. So you know there are
Speaker 2: really they're wonderful mushroom clubs that are fantastic.
Speaker 1: Have you met some of your favorite friends mushroom hunt?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yeah. 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 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 a more
Speaker 2: hunt I found this, and don't tell anybody.
Speaker 1: Because will they come back and look for more later?
Speaker 3: They might?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then what's up with with pigs and dogs
Speaker 1: finding treuffles?
Speaker 3: Sah? So you can you can train a dog to
Speaker 3: find anything.
Speaker 2: So, but the pigs are trained to it because it
Speaker 2: smells like a pig pheromone, and so they immediately try
Speaker 2: and find that.
Speaker 1: They eat them when they find it. They can you Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you ever been travel hunting?
Speaker 3: Yes, but not with dog or pigs. I would like
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 1: How do you do it without a dog or pig?
Speaker 3: You look for where the squirrels have been digging.
Speaker 2: Oh, and the squirrels are you know, the squirrels are
Speaker 2: digging them up, They eat them and then they put
Speaker 2: the spores out somewhere.
Speaker 3: So that's their method of dispersal.
Speaker 1: Oh, it seems like in the knowledge of mushrooms you
Speaker 1: also have to have a good knowledge of soil systems
Speaker 1: and animals and trees and substrates. Is that true?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: And so if you know, you know, in order to
Speaker 2: really understand funging, it's on the whole environment around them.
Speaker 2: And so as a mycologist, you know, I have to
Speaker 2: know about plants, and in order to learn about plants
Speaker 2: you have to Yeah, they have got animals and then
Speaker 2: all the other stuff in the in the soil. So
Speaker 2: you know, I've been studying fungi since my class in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight, and only in the last couple of
Speaker 2: years do I think I have an understanding of what
Speaker 2: goes on under the soil.
Speaker 3: But I don't know it well enough to tell anybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's what I'm working on, is being able
Speaker 2: to explain or have a diagram or have something a
Speaker 2: diorama that explains what I think is going on into
Speaker 2: the soil.
Speaker 3: It's really complicated.
Speaker 1: Do you ever dream about fungui always you do? What
Speaker 1: 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: if you've gone ten feet further on this trail, he
Speaker 2: would have seen this, or if you had turned left
Speaker 2: here instead of right.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite mushroom? In pop culture? Do
Speaker 1: you ever see someone you're like that is not what
Speaker 1: that species looks like?
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 f
Speaker 2: artsy kind of depictions of mushrooms with the elves dancing around,
Speaker 2: which is kind of funny because it's a locinogenic mushrooms.
Speaker 2: You get the elves in dancing around, and these mushrooms
Speaker 2: are red with white trim and soasanta, and there's reindeer
Speaker 2: flying and there's elves dancing around things like that. So
Speaker 2: when the reindeer actually do eat these mushrooms to hallucinate,
Speaker 2: do they.
Speaker 1: Really what happens when a reindeer is shrowman?
Speaker 3: I don't know how you tell for sure, but.
Speaker 2: They but they do. They guard their their little cache
Speaker 2: of 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, dudees 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 trip and
Speaker 1: balls on red and white mushrooms red and white, and
Speaker 1: then gives you the gift of advice from another dimension. Duh,
Speaker 1: and the reindeer also tore up on shrooms. Are like, whoo,
Speaker 1: check me out, I'm in a flying I'm a reindeer
Speaker 1: and flight in the air. Oh no, shit, man. Look,
Speaker 1: even the BBC's reported on this.
Speaker 5: In autumn, reindeer seek out the mushrooms even under an
Speaker 5: early fall of snow. No one knows whether the reindeer
Speaker 5: are affected. But in the past saw me Shamans took
Speaker 5: flyergaric in their visionary rituals. They even drank urine from
Speaker 5: reindeer believed to be under the.
Speaker 1: Influence red nose, red toadstool 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. How long have humans been aware of
Speaker 1: the hallucinogenic properties of mushrooms.
Speaker 3: Probably for millennia.
Speaker 2: You know they've been used in shamanistic rituals in Siberia
Speaker 2: for many years. And different mushrooms in Central South America
Speaker 2: for millennium.
Speaker 3: Probably where are.
Speaker 1: We at in terms of psilocybin trials and therapies for humans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's actually quite a bit of research.
Speaker 2: Doing it being done now on psilocybin psilocyby mushrooms a
Speaker 2: very prestigious places such as John Sapkins and such. So
Speaker 2: they're looking at especially treatment for kind of end of
Speaker 2: life psychological kinds of treatments using to treat PTSD, symptoms
Speaker 2: of PTSD and sessive compulsive disorder of CD and cluster headaches.
Speaker 2: So there's really a lot of research that's being done
Speaker 2: in terms of you know, that hallucinid and that the
Speaker 2: philosophy or psilocyba however you want to say, it is
Speaker 2: a much more mild to lose some gen than the
Speaker 2: than the mine muscaria that the reindeer eat, and so
Speaker 2: they're usually there. You have to have someone to lead
Speaker 2: you through this kind of psychological journey. Is the you know, physiologically,
Speaker 2: this thing is making neurons fire in your brain and
Speaker 2: so that's making connections and reconnections that were lost or
Speaker 2: you never had.
Speaker 1: Really, so is that how it might have a lasting
Speaker 1: impact after the actual.
Speaker 3: Experience, it seems to be there.
Speaker 2: There's some evidence that one large dose of psilocybin can
Speaker 2: have an effect for many years after that.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so quick aside, this is a whole other
Speaker 1: puffball of wax. But quickly, there have been trials on
Speaker 1: psilocybin's effect on anxiety, on depression, on OCD, anorexia, and
Speaker 1: 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 Up Jason Slot came up with a theory that
Speaker 1: when sprouting from dung, there are a lot of insects
Speaker 1: that want to munch a mushroom. So the shrooms evolve
Speaker 1: to have mind altering effects which might reduce the appetites
Speaker 1: of the bugs that want to eat them. So also,
Speaker 1: if you listen to last week's Boofology episode, which completely
Speaker 1: coincidentally included some info on smoking toad poison. The basic
Speaker 1: premise is for an organism to evolve a defense that
Speaker 1: essentially communicates, can you not thanks, is it our body
Speaker 1: maybe detecting something like a poison and reacting to it,
Speaker 1: or is.
Speaker 2: It it's really a poison. It's an analog to you
Speaker 2: chemicals that we already make.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, so it's it's.
Speaker 2: Doing the same thing as those chemicals, but in a
Speaker 2: slightly different way in larger amounts.
Speaker 1: And then I know that it's it's legal in some places,
Speaker 1: not legal in others.
Speaker 3: In the United States, it is not legal anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's on the ballot in I think Denver
Speaker 2: will be the first to have it on the ballot.
Speaker 2: And I heard something about California, and I heard something
Speaker 2: about somewhere in Iowa's proposed, So.
Speaker 1: You know, that's surprising. I would think Washington would be
Speaker 1: that third state like California. Okay, So side note. In
Speaker 1: the two weeks since recording this episode, Denver did indeed
Speaker 1: 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's like, you can
Speaker 1: grow it, but I guess not for drugs. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Everyone just chill out, have some schnitzel, yoldle it up.
Speaker 1: It's cool also in some states, because the spores don't
Speaker 1: have any psychoactive ingredients, you can own them, but just
Speaker 1: not to grow them for drug purposes. Just like barfing
Speaker 1: your way through a substrate of manure. It's all a
Speaker 1: little dim and murky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, 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 you asking you
Speaker 1: about that, is it something that you try not to
Speaker 1: give them advice on or give them advice on.
Speaker 3: I give people advice.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean I think it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: not legal, but I'm not opposed 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 too.
Speaker 2: Much and you can have a bad day and you
Speaker 2: know if you're if you're not taking any things. So
Speaker 2: but that's that's one of the reasons why there's usually
Speaker 2: someone to lead you through this process. Is the ideal
Speaker 2: way to do it, and that's in the In the
Speaker 2: in Central America, there were shaman type people who would
Speaker 2: lead you through these rituals to speak to your dead relatives.
Speaker 3: You know, or help you to accept something that happened
Speaker 3: 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 docs in l A doing
Speaker 1: trials on MDMA and soil, so I just have to
Speaker 1: figure out if that would be cyco pharmacology, mico psycho
Speaker 1: pharmacology anyway to be continued, but outside of a lab,
Speaker 1: Tom says, 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 he kept getting stolen, so he
Speaker 2: stopped growing it.
Speaker 1: Oh no, He's like, well, if you need it, I
Speaker 1: guess you need it. And now, what is the difference
Speaker 1: between molds and slime molds? I understand that they're very
Speaker 1: 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 and mildew basically the same thing. They
Speaker 2: usually use mildew or something that looks wetter. But they're
Speaker 2: all the just fungi, and usually they're fungi that are
Speaker 2: reproducing asexually, so with mitosis that if your listeners know that,
Speaker 2: and so they are reproducing without having sex, and so
Speaker 2: they you know.
Speaker 3: Can produce enormous numbers of spores.
Speaker 2: It's really cheap, and so you know, they can grow
Speaker 2: on just about anything and produce tons of spores almost literally.
Speaker 2: And so you know, these molds are pretty common. You're
Speaker 2: breathing in them in and out right now, wherever whoever
Speaker 2: is listening is breathing in and out scores and so.
Speaker 2: And most of the time they come back out. Sometimes
Speaker 2: they stick in your body, and if something's wrong with
Speaker 2: your immune system, you can you know, have problems with
Speaker 2: with with the fungel infections in your body. Slime molds
Speaker 2: are a totally different thing. They're they're not related at all.
Speaker 2: They're related to the amib 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. No, No, they're not
Speaker 1: at all them out you did, was there a ceremony,
Speaker 1: Like there was.
Speaker 3: Not a ceremony about that there should have been.
Speaker 1: And at what point did you realize, like, you're not
Speaker 1: even a mold?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we always knew that they were really different, huh.
Speaker 2: But you know in the when when people started talking
Speaker 2: about the Five Kingdoms and you know, and simulds are
Speaker 2: clearly not fungiant and just by as an aside, and
Speaker 2: my organistle biology class, we talked about 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 fung
Speaker 2: giant 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 that 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 i probably diversified before
Speaker 2: the animals did.
Speaker 1: And can iphi can a big web of my sam
Speaker 1: Can it talk to each other? What is happening communication wise? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So there have been reports now and we always suspected
Speaker 2: that the fungi underground or 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 are forming an
Speaker 2: association with the roots of trees and other plants in
Speaker 2: the soil, and so these trees are getting the trees
Speaker 2: are giving their sugars to the fungus, while the fungus is.
Speaker 3: Picking 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 where you have this
Speaker 2: mother tree that's very big and maybe shading all of
Speaker 2: her offspring, she's actually feeding some of them through her
Speaker 2: micorize and so when the mother tree eventually dies, the
Speaker 2: offspring are there 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 well out every time, And then how did they
Speaker 1: 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 funge are very large. See I might have
Speaker 2: heard of the humungus fungus, the humungous fungus. Goodness, this
Speaker 2: was maybe it's been twenty years now, since nineteen I
Speaker 2: don't remember exactly when, but a thirty seven acre honey
Speaker 2: mushroom was found in underground in the upper peninsular Michigan.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And then everybody else started looking for big ones. And
Speaker 2: there's a fifteen hundred acre one in Washington and a
Speaker 2: twenty five hundred acre one in Oregon.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 1: Oh my lord. Are these big humongous fungus? Are those
Speaker 1: the same species or 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 are different species of the
Speaker 2: same fungus that you know. When all that happened, there
Speaker 2: was an argument about 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 root 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 see you can pick out which which of this
Speaker 2: the same clones. They change color and the fall at
Speaker 2: the same time. They all leap out at the same
Speaker 2: time because they're all the same individual.
Speaker 1: Oh that's bananas.
Speaker 3: And what do you think that bananas are clonal too?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, the cavendish.
Speaker 2: Right, Bananas are going to change in the next ten
Speaker 2: years because they're always they're all susceptible to this fungus
Speaker 2: that's been introduced, so we'll see what happens. And they're
Speaker 2: all clones, 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 or no, like, why are you doing that fungus?
Speaker 1: 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 it's interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: and you mentioned the bat white nose syndrome, so that's
Speaker 2: certainly something to worry about. That fungus grows optimally at
Speaker 2: four degrees centigrade, which is not around forty fahrenheit, And
Speaker 2: so that's the reason it's grown in the on the
Speaker 2: hibernating bats and making them wake up early and then
Speaker 2: 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 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 cusher popping out from
Speaker 1: behind a ficus unpunked.
Speaker 2: So that's why I hit the broccoli police at the border,
Speaker 2: so we don't bring in these pathogens.
Speaker 1: The broccoli police, I've never heard of them. Call back,
Speaker 1: and is it hard to kill a fungus?
Speaker 2: And why it is hard to kill fungi because they're
Speaker 2: so big and they're so diverse in what they do
Speaker 2: in terms of a fungal infection with humans, It's hard
Speaker 2: to kill the fungi because we're so closely related and
Speaker 2: so there's very few targets to kill the.
Speaker 3: Fungus without killing us, 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 their 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.
Speaker 3: How do they even do It's just it's just the wind,
Speaker 3: 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 status,
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.
Speaker 1: I guess I know. My eye just caught a VHS
Speaker 1: tape that says, counseling patients with vaginal yeast infection, You're like, huh,
Speaker 1: that's another one among all these. Yeah, I just have it,
Speaker 1: is he And I was like, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's at least half of our listeners I've
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: So 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 3: But okay, there's a.
Speaker 2: Lot of research and money, you know, doctor bills and
Speaker 2: everything else based on all that, and you know it's
Speaker 2: 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,
Speaker 1: and so that.
Speaker 2: It's because they're you know, they're targeting this substance called
Speaker 2: ergosterol and the memoranes which replaces cholesterol, and so it's
Speaker 2: a gostri and cholesterol very close. You have to target
Speaker 2: the aergosterol 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 very.
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 used right for
Speaker 1: as an exicot and so well, yeah, so is that
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: And the reason is that thirteen years ago I had
Speaker 2: a heart transplant, I know, and so and actually my
Speaker 2: heart is in that recycled thing right there?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: Really? I know? If you wanted to look at it,
Speaker 3: you could, of.
Speaker 1: Course I do. Can I look at it now? Or
Speaker 1: shoul I look at it later? Oh my gosh, it's
Speaker 1: in here. I knew your heart was in here. Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness.
Speaker 3: So it's in It's a top. Friends made a heart
Speaker 3: cozy for it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm going to pick it up. Yeah please,
Speaker 1: I mean I've read about it knives and pictures.
Speaker 3: Oh food.
Speaker 2: So that's all made with wool that's dyed with mushrooms,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, 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 into
Speaker 1: thick slices. It's bathed in about a cup of liquid preservative.
Speaker 1: The woolen box keeps it all contained.
Speaker 3: So my dear friends and Seattle made that for me.
Speaker 1: Oh May twenty second, two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: That's a date I'm my transplanting, so it's gonna be
Speaker 3: thirteen years pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Here. Oh my gosh. Now that's in a tupperware.
Speaker 3: It's been dissected, so you can take it out and
Speaker 3: hold it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Oh, it's your heart.
Speaker 3: Wow, you're holding my heart in your hands.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I wear it on my sleeve.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. This must be so surreal for you.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of used to it now after all 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 it's it's
Speaker 2: just really weird.
Speaker 1: Yes, did you have to petition to keep it?
Speaker 2: I asked him for it at that, you know, after
Speaker 2: about three months, and they said they were still studying it.
Speaker 2: And then about a year later I asked for it
Speaker 2: and they said I could have it. I knew I
Speaker 2: had this, you know, biolay professor, so I would find.
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So because of the transplant, I'm on antirejection drugs, so
Speaker 2: it suppresses my immune system. So I have to be
Speaker 2: more careful about what kind of fungi encounter. And so
Speaker 2: we have to be barely careful. And I teach medical
Speaker 2: mycology because we're working on actual pathogens, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: I had to be careful about that. And I have
Speaker 2: to be careful about everything. So who touched this before me?
Speaker 2: And where 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, so,
Speaker 1: nic it's so nice to meet you. I've heard so
Speaker 1: much about you. And when you are looking at medical micrology,
Speaker 1: what are some of the what are some of the
Speaker 1: things that you're looking at the most the therapeutics or
Speaker 1: the anti funkals.
Speaker 3: So we look at everything.
Speaker 2: So we're looking mostly at the fungi that infect people,
Speaker 2: so medicinal mycology, which will be getting you know, drugs
Speaker 2: from fungi, but we're working at medical mycology, which is
Speaker 2: fungia that infect people mostly got it, And so we
Speaker 2: look at everything from you starting the outside of the body.
Speaker 2: There's things that are really superficial. Then you go into
Speaker 2: the dermatophytes that are in the cutaneous layer, and then
Speaker 2: there's some that are below that it'd have to be
Speaker 2: inoculated by a trauma, and then some that are inhaled
Speaker 2: in the fill lungs and go further than that.
Speaker 1: This was going to be in a side describing some
Speaker 1: of the Narnar fungal infections you can get from like
Speaker 1: inner ear sludge to jock probs to some tonenail goblins
Speaker 1: to the fungal lung ball that is valley fever. My
Speaker 1: friend Tigan had part of her lung removed because of it. Huh.
Speaker 1: But things started getting a little too real when the
Speaker 1: words ice cream scoop appeared in a paragraph about excising
Speaker 1: infected flesh. I was like, okay, I'm good, We're good here.
Speaker 1: I did get a rash on my face when I
Speaker 1: was living in a house or black mold. But do
Speaker 1: you have people who ask about black mold in the
Speaker 1: walls or under the carpet? Is that a problem?
Speaker 3: So there are a lot of studies trying to figure
Speaker 3: out this.
Speaker 2: The funk that you're talking about is a black mold
Speaker 2: stacky batries, And so the stacky batrice is, you know,
Speaker 2: found kind of rarely. Usually it's a black mold, it's
Speaker 2: kladisporium or something else. But there are people trying to
Speaker 2: prove that.
Speaker 3: That stacky batries causes these things.
Speaker 2: And there's been a distinct lack of proof of it.
Speaker 3: So far.
Speaker 2: There are known mycotoxins on the spores that could be inhaled,
Speaker 2: and if you enthal in large amounts, hypothetically there could
Speaker 2: be something that happens.
Speaker 3: So, you know, it was an interesting time.
Speaker 2: So I had to spend a couple of months in Rochester, Minnesota,
Speaker 2: where the main clinic is, and you know, and get
Speaker 2: used to.
Speaker 1: That 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 in trouble at
Speaker 2: justin because I know somebody had died and I had
Speaker 2: their heart inside of me, and so that, you know,
Speaker 2: that's some survivor guilt.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But also there was changes also in the way I
Speaker 2: thought about things. I don't let the little stuff bother
Speaker 2: me anymore. Yeah, And that turns out everything's little stuff,
Speaker 2: and so you just go with what you what you got,
Speaker 2: and you, you know, just do what 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 6: When my mother grew up during the depression, and whenever
Speaker 6: we got some new dishes or new clothes or new
Speaker 6: furniture or something, she would say, save it for good
Speaker 6: and put it off in a closet somewhere, or put
Speaker 6: a pulse to put plastic over the couch, or things
Speaker 6: like that. We're saving it for some good. It turns
Speaker 6: out that every day is good. Every day is good.
Speaker 6: I use the good china now, I sit on the
Speaker 6: good furniture and wear the clothes I want to. Every
Speaker 6: day is good, and there's no reason to save it
Speaker 6: for 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.
Speaker 3: Said, I made it.
Speaker 2: I made it because there was a time I didn't
Speaker 2: think I was make it to fifty. So you know,
Speaker 2: the birthdays are a bonus and said of something, you
Speaker 2: know the dread I guess, yeah, yeah, we have I
Speaker 2: have a heart birthday every year, so they the people
Speaker 2: in my department don't have a little party for me.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Oh is there a heart shaped cake on usually? Do
Speaker 1: you get mushroom shaped cakes the other times the.
Speaker 3: Year sometimes Yeah, I've had mushroom shape cakes. Yes.
Speaker 1: And does it change the way that you maybe interact
Speaker 1: with yourtudents or how you maybe guide students into working
Speaker 1: 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 friendlyer, I'm not as uptight as I was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so things are. I'd talk to anybody about anything.
Speaker 1: I have to say. I was running fifteen minutes later
Speaker 1: and you're like, okay, no problem, whatever. That's a little
Speaker 1: done every day is good in some way. So instead
Speaker 1: of saving all your 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, Fungui dot org and twenty twenty
Speaker 1: Ali here. So a third donation will be made to
Speaker 1: a charity that was really close to Tom's many hearts,
Speaker 1: and that is the Blue Stars Drum and Bugle Core.
Speaker 1: They are based in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, and Tom was a
Speaker 1: volunteer and a major donor to them for fifteen years.
Speaker 1: He was part of their family, and so we are
Speaker 1: making a pledge of support to them and their name
Speaker 1: as he would have wanted. And thank you to the
Speaker 1: following sponsors who I like so much for making those
Speaker 1: donations possible. Okay, back to your questions. Can I ask
Speaker 1: you some questions from listeners?
Speaker 3: 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 the subject has reached some havoc on our home
Speaker 1: recently I would be very grateful if this was asked
Speaker 1: the mycologists. Why do psilocybin mushrooms react to black light?
Speaker 1: Do psilocybin mushrooms react to black light?
Speaker 2: There are actually a lot of funds 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.
Speaker 3: A homage to that.
Speaker 2: But there are people who bring black lights to mushroom
Speaker 2: forests and you find all the mushrooms laid out, and
Speaker 2: you turn the lights out and you find out which
Speaker 2: ones glow which color. So that's a a consequence of
Speaker 2: having different kinds of pigments that happen to glow under
Speaker 2: Evie light, and so they're just different. It's just so
Speaker 2: far as we know, it's just happenstance that happens. But
Speaker 2: there may not be any value to it to the
Speaker 2: fungus to do that, but it just happens. There are
Speaker 2: some fungi that glow in the dark without an Evie light.
Speaker 2: Which one So there's one called the Jack O'Lantern mushroom
Speaker 2: that's actually bright orange and clothes in the dark.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside, I look these up and they're bananas.
Speaker 1: They're this beautiful, soft golden rod 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, so
Speaker 1: orange and glowing at night. Hence Jack o' lantern spooky cute.
Speaker 1: I approve of this branding. Also, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a 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, rot, fungi,
Speaker 1: the bearded hedgehog, mushroom, octopus, stinkhorn, bearded tooth, mushroom, the
Speaker 1: 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, hairy nuts, disco,
Speaker 1: weeping tooth, crust, King, Alfred's Cakes, hot lips, pancake crust,
Speaker 1: dead mules, fingers, scurfy twiglet, plums, and custard. Literally, any
Speaker 1: one of those mushrooms could be playing Coachella next year.
Speaker 1: Do my collegees 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 mushroom. Black there 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: are on DV or just I think it's just coincidence, huh.
Speaker 1: And Brown Rice wants to know, like Brian 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 disappeared?
Speaker 3: No, that's a good question.
Speaker 2: So I talked about that in my class and I
Speaker 2: tell them, if there were no fungi, we would be
Speaker 2: knee deep in everything or probably over our heads and
Speaker 2: wood and feces. Oh god, no. So the fungi and
Speaker 2: the bacteria are the degraders in the environment, and they
Speaker 2: break everything down so 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 ju were all like,
Speaker 1: what is up with them? And Jerry Davis specifically asked
Speaker 1: which native ones are the most magic and easiest to find?
Speaker 1: Asking for a friend winky face asking.
Speaker 3: Or for him. It depends on what part of the
Speaker 3: country you're in.
Speaker 2: So you know, in the South there's different ones than
Speaker 2: there are in the Northwest, Northeast, and Midwest are not
Speaker 2: very resplendent in magical mushrooms in the wild. They're actually
Speaker 2: turned out to be really easy to grow, as I said,
Speaker 2: but they're in the wild, they're you know, special places
Speaker 2: where they're showing up, so I don't know where he's from.
Speaker 1: So he's got to join a mushroom club.
Speaker 3: He has to join the mushroom clubs.
Speaker 2: So some of the mushroom clubs are kind of frown
Speaker 2: upon the psychedelic things. But I think people are coming around.
Speaker 2: Is that, you know, we're showing that there is actual
Speaker 2: medicinal value to them. Sometimes they call them nutraceuticals because
Speaker 2: there are many many fungi that are eaten for their
Speaker 2: healthy properties, so especially in East Asia, so they've been
Speaker 2: using nutriceuticals. They've been using mushrooms as medicine for thousands
Speaker 2: of years probably, you know. And unlike what storm medicine
Speaker 2: where we want to take a pill and everything suddenly better,
Speaker 2: they eat these mushrooms over a long period of time
Speaker 2: and that leads to a healthy.
Speaker 3: Condition.
Speaker 1: And is this like cordyceps, rechi, cord hops ricchi, all
Speaker 1: those kind of things. Okay, shataki, okay, so quick aside.
Speaker 1: Cord aceps may be familiar from the Mirmorcology episode about
Speaker 1: ants because it infects insects brains and turns them into zombies.
Speaker 1: Ever played the video game The Last of Us? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's real life. For some insects real life. Now shataki
Speaker 1: mushrooms are being studied for the possibility of tumor growth
Speaker 1: inhibition as well. Now side note to a side note,
Speaker 1: if you eat raw schataki, you might get something called
Speaker 1: shataki dermatitis, which looks like raised whiplash marks or claws
Speaker 1: scratches on your skin. I urge you to Google image
Speaker 1: search it because I am positive. In times of your
Speaker 1: village doctor healers were like, yes, I know science, and
Speaker 1: you've been attacked by a poltergeist. Put a leech on it.
Speaker 1: Your bill comes out to one goat but bye now. Also,
Speaker 1: this next question was asked additionally by Emily Hoban and
Speaker 1: Heather Dunsmore. Jared Frinston wants to know where can I
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: They might blindfold you as they.
Speaker 2: 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 3: I know where it is.
Speaker 1: Is it true that they sprout up more after forest fires?
Speaker 2: There are certain SPECIs ofwhere else that come up after
Speaker 2: forest fires in the west, yes, so maybe so you
Speaker 2: would look for you know, the fires there, and you
Speaker 2: know in other places you look at dead for dead
Speaker 2: elm trees and in the south you might look under
Speaker 2: toola poplars or 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: Know your trees.
Speaker 3: You have to know your trees, those trees.
Speaker 1: Dionn Dabolou wants to know what are your thoughts on
Speaker 1: Star Trek discoveries my Celial Network, have you any.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it, so I don't really know.
Speaker 2: I don't know the answered, but you know that's based
Speaker 2: on the you know, these trees talking to one another
Speaker 2: and they're you know avatar. You know that's not a
Speaker 2: bad way to think about these underground things. Is looking
Speaker 2: at 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 3: You can 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.
Speaker 2: To Yes, and so they you know, they're not as
Speaker 2: obvious because they're they're just showing their fruiting bodies during
Speaker 2: certain seasons. So you look for merles in the spring,
Speaker 2: you look for inrman Myria, you look for Chantrell's in
Speaker 2: the summer, and look for bull eats in the summer,
Speaker 2: and then you start to get a frost and you
Speaker 2: get it honey mushrooms and chicken of the woods and
Speaker 2: hand of the woods and things like that.
Speaker 3: So yes, they're they're seasonal. Fruiters.
Speaker 2: But they're growing all the time and then they have
Speaker 2: to in an area they get dormant in the winter,
Speaker 2: they do. Yeah, And so they're they're you know, they're
Speaker 2: living inside the log and some sort of suspended animation
Speaker 2: that is unclear as of yet.
Speaker 1: Are they typically under the frost line when they're in underground.
Speaker 3: Sometimes but not always.
Speaker 2: You know, these microizel ones are usually within the top
Speaker 2: meter of soil.
Speaker 1: Okay, April Mehan 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 a 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 is worried about it. And
Speaker 2: usually it's not anything, but there, you know, dogs do
Speaker 2: die from it, and you know, and and there have
Speaker 2: beeny 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.
Speaker 3: Like I had a dog case where dog eate a
Speaker 3: rotten mushroom.
Speaker 2: It would happened to be the am I scarrea of
Speaker 2: the lucinogenic one, but it was certainly way past what
Speaker 2: it would have been, and it probably died from the
Speaker 2: bacteria that it was needing all this junk. There's actually
Speaker 2: a really interesting Facebook grip where you can post your
Speaker 2: pictures really and I'll help 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 Kimberly and Jacqueline Snoke 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 2: very cay. There are some really good mushroom keys on books.
Speaker 2: There's a There's been a whole ton of books coming
Speaker 2: out in the last ten years that are really good.
Speaker 2: So it really depends on what part of the country
Speaker 2: you're in, which kind of books you do want to get,
Speaker 2: and there's plenty of web pages as well that are
Speaker 2: just identification pages.
Speaker 1: They have to start with yours, yes, duh.
Speaker 3: 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 Kenn. He wants to know
Speaker 1: I've read that there was a mushroom that could break
Speaker 1: down plastic. Is this true? And can use it to
Speaker 1: help clean up the sad plastic nightmare that the Earth
Speaker 1: is becoming.
Speaker 3: The sad plastic nightmare. Yes, but it needs a lot
Speaker 3: of development.
Speaker 2: So there are actually in two thousand and six we
Speaker 2: published a paper about breaking down finolic resin plastics, so
Speaker 2: of bowling balls and break linings and things like that,
Speaker 2: and we showed that they could break down, but they
Speaker 2: break down into something toxic. And so recently someone else.
Speaker 2: There have been several of these papers since that have
Speaker 2: working on different kinds of plastic.
Speaker 3: It's in different kind of fungi.
Speaker 2: So I haven't critically evaluated what's going on with those,
Speaker 2: whether I how far along they are in developing this for.
Speaker 1: 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 Leussion 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: to put those in a stir fry, 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, it's.
Speaker 3: Quite figured out how to grow it successfully.
Speaker 2: But the Hen of the Woods, Griffila, my Talkie, all
Speaker 2: that's sending for the same thing are available commercially and
Speaker 2: 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.
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 2: So right, do you.
Speaker 1: Think that they hurt when we pick them? I guess
Speaker 1: we're really just kind of picking their gennies. I mean
Speaker 1: we're really just getting their fruiting bodies, right, yennies kind
Speaker 1: of like? Okay, okay, Will Plea asks, should we be
Speaker 1: looking for new antibiotics in fungi?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, and so one of a few of my
Speaker 2: students have worked on looking for new anti fungal and
Speaker 2: antibiotic drugs on fungi. There was actually a whole group
Speaker 2: here that was looking for for those kinds of things
Speaker 2: in fungi and other things. So, yes, we need more
Speaker 2: antibiotics because of the you know, over prescription of antibiotics
Speaker 2: and various other problems that are causing drug resistant bacteria
Speaker 2: and such.
Speaker 3: 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 for new things. But you know, getting making
Speaker 2: any drug is really expensive. Yeah, got all millions, billions
Speaker 2: of dollars billion.
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 3: Oh, that's nice.
Speaker 2: You can, you know, if there's some particular mushroom you want,
Speaker 2: you can collect it and then then you know, spread
Speaker 2: the spores in your yard. And so, you know, there's
Speaker 2: some fairy ring mushrooms you probably don't want an your yard.
Speaker 2: There's you know, fairy ring comes from a spoire land
Speaker 2: somewhere and it grows out in a circle because you
Speaker 2: have a pretty homogeneous environment in your in your lawn,
Speaker 2: and so then it just fruits on the edges of that.
Speaker 2: And then you know, the Middle English people thought that
Speaker 2: we're fairies dancing in and out of it and things
Speaker 2: like that. But the most common one that's in lawns
Speaker 2: is actually the most common cause of poison in North America,
Speaker 2: and it causes projective voarmbing productile diary at the same time,
Speaker 2: which is not as pleasant as it sounds. So they're
Speaker 2: you know this, this chlorophyllum all of diities, it's called
Speaker 2: is is is toxic. So that's one of the more
Speaker 2: common ones that's growing in fairy rings.
Speaker 1: So maybe not that one.
Speaker 3: Maybe not that one, but there are others.
Speaker 2: There's one called the fairy ring mushroom rasmus, which is edible,
Speaker 2: the most common.
Speaker 3: 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 this.
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 3: 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: e lligious 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 3: But that's you know, it's an our gamed 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 3: 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: there the mushroom has been pretty.
Speaker 3: 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 I'm the little stuff doesn't bother me.
Speaker 3: It's not easy to annoy me.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of different kinds of things, you know,
Speaker 2: I teach general micology every fall and we you know,
Speaker 2: you know, it's fun.
Speaker 3: We go and collect stuff.
Speaker 2: And I recommend it as as a good hobby for
Speaker 2: anyone to go out and collect mushrooms and make new friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're out in nature.
Speaker 3: 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, Yeah, you know, I like the mushrooms,
Speaker 2: but the people are really interesting. There's some really interesting
Speaker 2: people in mycology. They tend to be smart, they're interested
Speaker 2: in science.
Speaker 3: We go to these amateur mushroomers.
Speaker 2: There's you know, they're from all walks of life, and
Speaker 2: you know they're interested in fungi for all kinds of reasons.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think that's one of the most interesting
Speaker 2: things about it.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope they'll be a bloom of a new
Speaker 1: budding my cologists. Letting you get it, how many times
Speaker 1: are you introduced as a fun guy?
Speaker 3: Almost never?
Speaker 1: What, no one's like, you need to meet tom Bo,
Speaker 1: he's a fun guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's a very common.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Well, it's fine. I've prettended a lot every time.
Speaker 1: But you are a fun guy, so that only compounds
Speaker 1: the problem.
Speaker 3: I think, I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for letting us talk with
Speaker 1: you and letting me hold your heart in.
Speaker 3: My lap as I did 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. Join a mycological society,
Speaker 1: make some lifelong fungus friends. You can find doctor Tom
Speaker 1: Folk with an easy Google and his Wisconsin dot edu
Speaker 1: mushroom site will pop up. And if organ donation is
Speaker 1: now something you're interested in, that site was donatelife dot net.
Speaker 1: So links to those and the sponsors are in the
Speaker 1: show notes. They're also up at aliward dot com slash
Speaker 1: ologies slash mycology. We are ologies on Twitter and Instagrams
Speaker 1: who do follow there, I'm at ali Ward with one
Speaker 1: L on both come say hello. Thanks again to the
Speaker 1: patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies, where you could
Speaker 1: submit questions and support the show for as little as
Speaker 1: a dollar a month, and you can find other ologites
Speaker 1: by wearing merch from ologismerch dot com. You can tag
Speaker 1: photos on Instagram with hashtag ologies merch so I can
Speaker 1: repost you on Mondays. Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Chantie
Speaker 1: Feltis for managing that site. Thank you Aeron Talbert for
Speaker 1: being the moderator on the Wonderful Ologies podcast Facebook group.
Speaker 1: Thank you Jaried Sleeper of mind Jam Media for assistant
Speaker 1: editing and helping withst some research. I stole his Coachella
Speaker 1: joke and he said it was okay. And to the
Speaker 1: magical mushroom that is Stephen Ray Morris for editing all
Speaker 1: these clips and drops together stitching them together. Each week,
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. Now, if
Speaker 1: you listen to the end of each episode, you know
Speaker 1: I tell you a secret. And this week's secret. I
Speaker 1: have one of those shower doors that you need to
Speaker 1: squeegee so that it doesn't get spots on it. And
Speaker 1: I was late to the airport and I took a
Speaker 1: shorter shower than the amount of time it took me
Speaker 1: to squeegee the shower door. Wow, I spent more time
Speaker 1: cleaning this shower than myself. But this works. What can
Speaker 1: I say? And just a bonus twenty twenty two secret,
Speaker 1: I'm so sad to know that doctor Tombolk doesn't live
Speaker 1: among us, but I hope that he's in a mystical
Speaker 1: and mycological place, and I don't know. If you get
Speaker 1: a second to light a candle and illuminate the way
Speaker 1: for him, and just thank the universe for having him
Speaker 1: in it, albeit not for long enough, that would be cool.
Speaker 1: Also blow the candle out before you fall asleep, because
Speaker 1: we do not need anyone in a house fire. Okay.
Speaker 1: Also to be discussed in a later episode, but since
Speaker 1: this episode, under psychiatric supervision, I did a giant dose
Speaker 1: of magic mushrooms and it changed my life. It was
Speaker 1: just a few months ago. I have not yet talked
Speaker 1: about it publicly because I would like to do a
Speaker 1: mico psycho pharmacological episode on it. But it was a ride,
Speaker 1: so you'll hear about that at.
Speaker 3: A later date.
Speaker 1: Nobody even knows, so, Mom, if you're listening to that
Speaker 1: that happened, we'll talk later. Okay, farewell and save attorney
Speaker 1: doctor Bolk. Thanks for listening and celebrating him. Okay.
Speaker 3: Bye bye.
Speaker 1: Hacadermantology, hommeiology or doo zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology, paratology, ethology, seriology, elithology,
Speaker 1: It was just a detour, a shortcut, a shortcut to
Speaker 1: what the mushrooms more hum