WEBVTT - Mushroom Foraging, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.640 My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.279 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:20.720 it's part two of Mushroom Foraging. We we started going 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:24.000 into the woods and we got lost, and uh, so 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:25.680 we had to we had to say, you know what, 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:28.080 this is actually two episodes. Here we are again with 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.000 part two. All right, let's jump right in. So we 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:33.640 already talked about how mushroom hunting appears to be this 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:37.040 really popular activity in Russia, and this goes way back, 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:39.840 and it's so popular that there are these common media 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.680 stories about people getting lost in the wilderness because they 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:44.960 went into a trance while mushroom hunting and then they 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:48.640 couldn't find their way home. But apparently things are very 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.479 similar in Poland. It's also a very common activity to 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:56.560 go mushroom hunting in Poland. And uh. The Polish romantic 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:01.800 poet Adam Mitskevitch, who lived from seven to eighteen fifty five, 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:07.160 wrote famously about mushroom foraging in his epic poem Panta Days. 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.400 And so I was looking at this in a few 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.440 different translations. I think the clearest one unfortunately doesn't go 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:16.560 for the whole poetry and meter of it. It's a 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.520 prose translation by George Rapaul Noyus, but I think this 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:23.640 will give the best sense of the passage, maybe losing 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:27.080 a bit of the music. Are you ready, Robert, Okay. 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:30.480 So there are these characters who are The basic drama 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:34.920 of Pantadash is about this conflict between these clans over 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.240 some kind of real estate dispute. I've never read the 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:39.320 whole thing, but I like the parts I have read. 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:41.560 And and so it's got all these, uh, these fancy 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.520 ladies and lads going out to hunt for mushrooms in 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:48.440 the forest, and they've announced that, you know, whichever lad 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.440 finds the fanciest mushroom will get to sit next to 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:53.920 the prettiest girl in the castle. And it's that kind 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:57.320 of thing. Uh. And so it goes into the section 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:01.680 on mushrooms. Quote of mushrooms, there were plenty. The lads 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:05.520 gathered the fair cheeked fox mushrooms, so famous in the 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:09.520 Lithuanian songs as the emblem of maidenhood. For the worms 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.640 do not eat them, and marvelous to say no insect 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:17.240 alights on them. The young ladies hunted for the slender 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:21.440 pine lover, which the song calls the kernel of the mushrooms. 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:24.400 And that's colonel, like the military rank, not like the popcorn. 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:27.639 I don't know why it wouldn't be the general of mushrooms. 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:33.040 But moving on, all were eager for the orange agaric. This, 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:36.480 though of more modest stature and less famous in song, 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.680 is still the most delicious, whether fresh or salted, whether 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:45.800 in autumn or in winter. But the sineschal gathered the toadstool, flybane, 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:49.800 the remainder of the mushroom family, are despised because they 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.920 are injurious or of poor flavor, but they are not useless. 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.680 They give food to beasts and shelter to insects, and 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:01.080 are an ornament to the groves. On the green cloth 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.720 of the meadows, they rise up like lines of table dishes. 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:09.240 Here are the leaf mushrooms, with their rounded borders, silver, 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:13.480 yellow and red, like little glasses filled with various sorts 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:17.120 of wine. The cos lac like the bulging bottom of 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:22.520 an upturned cup, the funnels like slender champagne glasses, the 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:27.560 round white, broad, flat white ease like china coffee cups 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:30.920 filled with milk, and the round puff ball filled with 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:34.800 a blackish dust like a pepper shaker. The names of 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:37.600 the others are known only in the language of hairs 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:41.200 or wolves by men. They have not been christened, but 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:45.040 they are innumerable. No one deigns to touch the wolf 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:48.760 or hair varieties, but whenever a person bends down to them, 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:53.120 he straight away perceives his mistake, grows angry, and breaks 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:55.960 the mushroom or kicks it with his foot, in thus 0:03:56.000 --> 0:04:01.560 defiling the grass. He acts with great indiscretion. I like 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:03.520 at the end there it gets a little bit offended 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:05.400 on behalf of the grass. I guess I'm not sure 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.760 I fully understand the meaning of that last statement, but 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:10.360 I wanted to look at a couple of things about 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.640 this passage um So. One is that, first, while while 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.640 Russian and Polish cultures are considered to have a great 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:22.120 affinity for mushrooms, making them generally micophilic in some terminology 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:25.520 that will address a little bit later in the episode, uh, 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:29.400 this doesn't, of course manifest as a love for all 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:33.839 mushrooms unqualified. Instead, it seems to me that the mushroom 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:38.919 loving culture actually has a highly discriminating eye from mushrooms 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.800 noticing much more the important and perhaps life saving differences 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:47.880 between varieties. So like a mushroom culture doesn't just love mushrooms. 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.560 It's more like they really love the good ones and 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:54.720 really hate the bad ones. But of course, plenty of 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:58.560 mushroom hunting and accidental mushroom poisoning happens even in the 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.040 modern era. In Poland, was looking at a scientific report 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:05.240 compiling cases of mushroom poisoning in Poland from the year's 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:09.000 nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty seven by an author 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:13.880 named Eliza Lewandowska. And this was called Mushroom Poisoning in 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.160 Poland in the years in nineteen sixty two to sixty 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:20.440 seven species of poisonous fungi. Now, there's no surprise at 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.400 all here that the species representing the most danger was 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:28.760 our old friend amanda felloids or the death cap mushroom. 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:32.159 We we've talked about this already, right, yes, now, this 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.240 one was responsible for at least four hundred and sixty 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.880 one cases of poisoning and a hundred and twenty six 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.160 deaths by this survey. A commonly cited figure that I've 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.640 seen elsewhere is that death caps today represent more than 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:48.719 nine of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. So so they're the 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:53.640 real bad boy in terms of accidental accidental mushroom poisoning. UM. 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:57.039 But I was also reading about how the specific way 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:02.440 that Amanda philoids kills is deceptive lee devious. So when 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:06.240 somebody eats this mushroom, it's not necessarily what you would 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:08.760 picture where you eat it and then you're immediately doubled 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:12.200 over in pain and you know, and hallucinating and sweating 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.520 with a fever and screaming. Instead, when somebody eats the 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.720 Amanda floid e is it doesn't necessarily cause any immediate 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:23.200 pain or discomfort. In fact, people often don't have any 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:26.520 symptoms at all for many hours I've read, sometimes maybe 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.240 six hours later, sometimes even not until like a full 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:33.680 day later, and then the cramps and the nausea and 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.120 the vomiting and the diarrhea set in. And I've read 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.960 that this can make it easy to mistake the poisoning 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:42.640 for something else. You might think you've got a stomach 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.560 bug or whatever, because of the length of time between 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.880 eating the mushroom and the onset of symptoms. And uh, 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:51.520 and at this point, after the symptoms set in, they 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:55.200 can sometimes even retreat, they can grow milder if the 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.320 patient is properly cared for, properly hydrated, and all that. 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:01.560 The entire time, I'm the amine to toxins are in 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.240 the background, just massacreing cells in the liver and harming 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:09.559 the kidneys, eventually leading to organ failure and eventually to death. 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.240 And I don't know that there's there's something kind of 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:18.320 especially terrifying about that that there's this You can have 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.360 this false sense that things are getting better and that oh, 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.680 I'm actually feeling a little bit better than i was earlier, 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:26.040 or maybe I'm not even feeling bad at all, while 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:30.160 the mushroom is actively killing your vital organs. I think 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:33.880 it also underlines just the sort of precision that had 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.600 to take place in figuring out the properties of various 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:41.640 mushrooms and and other organisms in one's environment, you know, 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:45.320 because this is clearly something where you you would have 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:48.680 to do a little detective work to figure out it. Yeah, 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:53.880 exactly what had caused this awful illness in the individual exactly. 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:57.280 But in in second place for poisonings was a species 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:01.200 that is also interesting and and requires are kind of precision, 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.600 but with a different difficulty I don't think we've talked 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.240 about this one yet. The second place in the Polish 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:11.760 survey for for most poisoning in death was gyrometra esculenta 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:16.360 or the false moral mushroom. Uh, that's moral like m 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:19.560 O R e L moral mushrooms not morals as you know, 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:24.720 doing good. Yeah, and so in this survey, the false 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:27.800 moral was responsible for a hundred and sixty four cases 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.960 of poisoning and ten deaths in this time in the sixties. Now, 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.480 the false moral is a very strange and interesting case 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:39.960 study in fungal toxicity because, first of all, it looks crazy. 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:41.920 It looks like a brain on a stick, or not 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:44.280 even a normal brain. It looks like if you tried 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:48.080 to make a raisin out of a brain. Yeah, it 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:52.120 kind of looks like what you have mushroom but ground chuck. 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.880 You know. It of appearance, Yeah, it's got the little 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.280 grinder extrusion patterns. Yeah it does. It looks kind of 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.000 like it's come out of a machine in a way. 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:04.840 I agree, had an extruded kind of appearance to it. 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:07.960 But a lot of delicious mushrooms look very strange and 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:12.599 very unlike other foods we eat. So you know, that's fine, um. 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:16.120 But but gyrometra is an interesting case because the toxicity 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.280 seems to vary a lot. Just one example I was 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.840 reading in a stat Pearls entry by Horowitz, Kong and Horowitz, 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:28.440 and the author's report quote most poisonings occur in Eastern Europe, 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:32.520 particularly in the conifer forests of Germany, Poland, and Finland. 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:37.320 In North America, most exposures occur in Michigan, although a 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.520 less toxic variety grows west of the Rockies and has 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.960 been clustered in Idaho and Western Canada. Exposures occur mostly 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.800 in the spring, unlike other serious mushroom poisonings such as 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:53.400 Amanda filoids, which occur more commonly in the fall. So 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:56.880 there's this geographical distribution. I've read about how there are 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:00.320 different rates of poisoning from the false morale to ending 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.320 on where the mushroom was grown, you know, in in 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.640 different countries and at different altitudes and things like that. 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:09.679 It seems to vary a lot, depending on you know, 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.920 what local strain you're getting, and possibly due to interactions 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.680 with you know, with the body of the person who 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.800 eats it. Another thing I've read is that poisoning is 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.840 here are much more common when these mushrooms are eaten raw. Now, 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:28.040 there's one thing that poison control authorities often emphasize, which 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:31.640 is that you should not use intuitive smell and taste 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:35.280 senses to figure out what is poisonous in the mushroom world, 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.760 because even though our senses of smell and taste are 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.960 certainly evolved to help us figure out what's good to eat, 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:46.240 they are not an infallible guide. And a great example 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.240 of this is once again the deathcap mushroom, one of 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.600 the most dangerous mushrooms to humans and the most deadly 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:54.720 one in Poland. During that survey we were just talking 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:58.720 about the deathcap mushroom does not taste like poison. It 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.400 reportedly does not taste bitter, does not taste sour, does 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.240 not you know, set your mouth on fire with needles 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.120 going into your tongue. In fact, it is widely said 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:12.160 to be absolutely delicious. There are people who have had 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:17.880 these hepatotoxic mushrooms absolutely destroy their liver. But they report that, 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.120 you know, before the pain and the nausea set in 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:23.040 six hours later, twenty four hours later, when whenever it is, 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:26.040 while they're eating these mushrooms. They are some of the 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.480 best tasting mushrooms that they've ever had. Uh. They're said 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:34.120 to smell sweet like honey and taste absolutely delightful, sauteed 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:37.360 and buttered. Don't do this, don't It's not worth it. 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.000 It will kill you. Do not take the death cap 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:42.800 challenge if you see something like that on YouTube. No, 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.720 not at all. But but this does bring me back 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:50.199 to an interesting observation from Miskovich, which is that some 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.000 of the species of mushroom that are detestable to humankind, 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:55.839 and I'm sure the death cap is one of these 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:59.839 in in his survey, they're known in the cultures of 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.400 he calls the wolves or the hairs, you know, the 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:05.760 language of wolves or rabbits. Now, you might think that 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.240 this is just another folk tale about the animals of 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:10.719 the forest, but I think that this could actually be 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.680 based on real observation, because despite being one of the 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:18.360 most deadly fungi to humans, it is not necessarily deadly 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:21.839 to everything in the forest all of the time. It 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:24.720 came across one statement about this when I was reading 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:28.720 an article about the spread of the deathcap mushroom throughout 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:31.959 North America, and this was by Craig Childs in the Atlantic. 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.680 It's a very interesting article. It's worth reading. A Child's 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:40.439 talks about how deathcap mushrooms naturally live in a symbiotic 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.480 relationship with host trees. And we've talked about how several 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:46.880 mushroom species are like this. They attached themselves to the 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:50.000 roots of trees and they sort of trade resources between them, 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:53.000 uh and so that they're able to get some nutrition 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.440 from from tree roots. And this is the reason that 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:57.680 you will often find them sort of in a ring 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.840 of deadly fruiting bodies around the roots of a central 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:05.240 tree trunk. But their spores don't naturally tend to spread 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.839 very far, at least under normal circumstances, and it has 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:14.439 taken human intervention to really set them spreading far and wide. Specifically, 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.439 what's named by Craig Child's in this article is that 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:23.160 deathcap mushrooms have been spreaded, spreading rapidly throughout northwest North America, 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.760 riding along on the roots of imported European trees, like 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.760 imported sweet chestnut trees and beech trees. So you get 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:34.120 this fancy tree from Europe, it's got deathcap mushrooms in 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:36.360 a relationship with it. You bring the tree over here, 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:40.920 planted and it brings the poisonous mushrooms with it. But anyway, 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.360 the reason I brought this article up was that there's 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:49.040 this quick side note where Child's mentions that that squirrels 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:53.040 and rabbits have sometimes been observed to eat deathcap mushrooms 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.400 without being harmed at all, which sounds again like like 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.760 mits Kevich, like that, you know, the hairs don't really 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:03.320 mind in the mushrooms that the humans find absolutely detestable, 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:06.200 and so I think that's interesting. It's another indication of 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:08.839 what you should not do. You should not watch what 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:11.760 animals eat in the forest to determine what would be 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:13.800 okay for you to eat, because they may be able 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:18.000 to digest and metabolize stuff just fine that would absolutely 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:21.120 kill you with just a few mouthfuls. And also in 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:26.520 this just another reason to respect the mighty squirrel. Yes, yeah, 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:28.640 I saw squirrels were thrown in there too, So I'm 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.120 sure our fans are gonna gonna go hog wild about that. 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:38.680 Meme away, Yeah, meme until you drop. But one last 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:40.720 thing I wanted to add about this was I saw 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:44.160 some mushroom enthusiasts online just in comments sections and stuff, 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.600 saying that they kind of wish they had whatever resistance 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:51.520 these rabbits have to to the death cap toxicity is 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:53.920 because they would love to taste them, for one, since 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:56.880 you know, by all accounts, when people eat them, even 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:01.720 though it kills them, they are very tasty. Interesting. Um, 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:05.480 you know, in our previous episode we mentioned we mentioned 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:08.960 a few different mushroom foraging cultures, and I believe Scottish 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:12.600 culture came up. As luck would have it, was watching 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:17.160 hum the the TV adaptation of Outlander last night. Start 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:19.840 watching that, yeah, and in the second episode, what happens 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:23.600 they're forging for mushrooms, talking about them, the medicinal use 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.000 of mushrooms and which ones are good to eat and 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.360 which ones are poisonous. I found it rather interesting. Also 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:32.760 castle they used in that show, same castle they used 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:36.080 in Highlander, uh and in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:38.360 So it's got that going for it. So even in 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:41.640 your ultimate kilt lift or narrative, you cannot escape a 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.680 good mushroom hunt, right, I mean that's I mean you've 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:46.960 got time travel in there, so it's uh, it's it's 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:49.880 a big part of the plot apparently, at least as 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.720 I can gather thus far well, whether you're time traveling 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:55.200 or not, whether you forage for mushrooms or not, stay 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:57.640 away from the death caps, just just don't even try 0:15:57.680 --> 0:15:59.840 it now. Of course, this is this goes way back. 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:04.000 This this basic um reality that we're discussing here, and 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:07.880 we've we've covered humanities hunter gatherer past on the show before. 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:10.880 I mean, the basic is you know, we're we're omnivores, 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.320 and mushrooms have always been on the table. Uh. Though 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:17.800 of course our ancestors had to devise the expertise to 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.200 avoid harmful species as well as figuring out which ones 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:25.320 are beneficial, which ones can be food, etcetera. One of 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:27.880 the resources we were looking at for this section was 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:32.120 Eric BoA's Wild Edible Fungi a Global Overview of their 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:34.920 Use and Importance to People. Yeah, it looks like this 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.239 was a report compiled for the Food and Agriculture Organization 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.480 of the u N in two thousand four. Yeah, and uh, 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.200 and Boa points out, I'm gonna mention a few different 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:46.880 facts that points out here. First of all, wild edible 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:49.800 fungi are collected for food in more than eighty countries, 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.440 and we're dealing with more than one thousand, one hundred 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:58.200 species and interestingly enough, some cultures may be viewed is 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:03.480 microphobic being you know, meaning there's a fear of mushrooms 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:07.360 or a reluctance to engage in mushroom consumption and foraging, 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:12.320 while other cultures are are microphilic meaning you know, the 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:15.439 loving mushrooms, you know, being open to those experiences in 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:19.199 those quests, with English culture standing interestingly enough as an 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:25.320 example of microphobic UH culture, while Chinese culture, he mentions, 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:29.040 is a strongly micophilic culture. He points out that a 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:32.200 lot of Chinese writings on mushrooms have yet to be translated, 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:34.359 but there's a lot of material there. Now. I found 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:38.120 this very interesting because I've certainly seen some documentaries um 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:42.240 that really focus in on on British and Scottish traditions 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:46.239 regarding mushroom hunting. Yeah, and of course that highlights that 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:49.520 these designations. I've seen these designations used by other people 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.520 as well. Burtleston talks about this, where you know, cultures 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:56.080 that are predominantly microphobic or microphilic, they're all gonna be relative, 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:58.880 right Like, within each of these broad cultures, there will 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:01.440 be subcultures and then individuals that sort of run against 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:05.359 the grain. Um. But on the note of of of 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:09.359 Chinese culture being microphilic, of course that comes through in 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:13.280 in certain types of ancient medical practices, but also in cuisine. 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:17.080 And I just think about one of my earliest memories 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:19.639 of Chinese food. I've loved Chinese food as long as 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.639 I can remember, but one of my earliest memories is 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:27.520 of the unidentifiable fungus within the Chinese soup I was eating, 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.760 and how much I loved it, and how how it 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:33.240 was like there was nothing else like this in my diet. 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:35.200 I guess it was probably a type of black fungus 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:37.920 in a hot and sour soup, and I was just like, 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.399 what is this? I have no idea. It's like something 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:45.320 from another planet, and it's delicious. But as to microphobia, 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:49.840 Birtleson mentions evidence of strains of microphobic thinking in many 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:53.320 of the historic common names for mushrooms in some European cultures. 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:56.280 For example, though today we think of French cuisine as 0:18:56.359 --> 0:19:01.119 being very very pro mushroom, historically there was some French 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:05.679 aversion to mushrooms, like calling mushrooms things like eggs of 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:10.439 the devil or the devil's paint brush, or toads bread. 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.880 Of course, there's the English expression toad stool. In Danish 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.600 and Norwegian you have variations on poda hot toad's hat, 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:22.280 and in Germanic and Celtic cultures. Burtleson writes that you 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:26.960 sometimes see an association between mushrooms and witchcraft, and this 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:30.359 association may have played a role in keeping the British 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:35.359 Aisles relatively microphobic for for many centuries. You know, I 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:37.199 can't help me be reminded. I'm sure I've brought this 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:40.000 up on the show before. Um, but there's that that 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.399 wonderful um a little bit in uh Burt of Eccos 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:45.720 the Name of the Rose, where there's the story of 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:49.960 of one monk. You know, it's like a multi multi cultural, 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:54.119 multi linguistic community of monks there, and one is talking 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:57.240 about having this pig that will accompany them into the 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:01.960 woods to search for truffles. And the other monk that's 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:05.440 hearing this story is I believe German, and he thinks 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:08.040 that he's not saying truffle but to full, which is 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:10.520 a German for devil, So he thinks this is a 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:14.560 horrific story of this weird pig that will accompany uh, 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:17.040 you into the woods so that you can seek out 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:20.080 the devil. I remember that moment, and that's oh man, 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:22.600 that's so emblematic of everything I love about Name of 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:27.280 the Rose. Now, in terms of the ancient uh uh 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:30.320 foraging for mushrooms and the use of mushrooms by by 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.240 human beings, you know, there's there's apparently evidence in what 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:36.919 is now Chile of mushroom consumption by humans thirteen thousand 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.359 years ago. Um Obso, the iceman who we've mentioned on 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:44.840 the show before, who lived between thirty four UM hundred 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:47.960 and thirty one b c uh somewhere in that area, 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:51.080 was found with two varieties of fun guy on his person, 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:54.280 one of which we've discussed on our other show or 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.680 previous other show. Invention was likely a dried fungi used 0:20:57.720 --> 0:20:59.960 to help start fires, but the other was a bird 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:04.040 fungus that was likely consumed for medicinal reasons. And so 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:07.120 the consumption of mushrooms for culinary and or medicinal purposes 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:09.920 dates back in a number of ancient cultures. They're they're 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.199 more examples of this than we could easily cover on 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:17.040 the show here. Uh. And with the agricultural revolution came 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:20.120 the eventuality of mushroom cultivation as well. Though, as we've 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.120 previously touched on, there are so many varieties that are 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:27.119 resistant to cultivation. Yeah. I think specifically a lot of 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:29.240 the ones that you think of that are most commonly 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:31.600 used in food that are the hardest to cultivate, or 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:36.000 are the ones that are, for my corpsal reasons, unable 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:39.720 to be cultivated because they exist in these symbiotic relationships 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:44.520 with other plants, trees, and forest atmospheres, and so the 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:47.640 truffle is a common example, but of course shan trells 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:51.080 are like this as well. I believe also porcini mushrooms, uh, 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.159 that it's just really hard to recreate the conditions in 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:58.880 which they arise. Yeah. So even as as humanity inevitably 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:02.520 be you know that began this shift, uh, this revolution 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:05.879 in neolithic times, uh, shifting away from the hunter gathering 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:10.439 existence to one dependent on intensive agriculture, there's kind of this, 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:12.800 you know, this tendency to sort of think of that 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:14.880 as Okay, well, you know, you're just changing the way 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:17.560 you live entirely. You're just stopping where you are, and 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.320 now you're gonna grow plants and maybe mushroom foraging is 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:22.960 one of those things that remains outside of that tradition 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:27.760 for these very reasons we've been discussing UM. However, this 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:29.679 was quite interested. I was looking around for resources on 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:31.879 this and I ran across a paper published in the 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:36.919 Royal Society b by Curtis w. Uh Marine titled the 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:40.439 Transition to foraging for Dense and Predictable Resources and It's 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:43.800 Impact on the Evolution of modern humans. And in this 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:48.479 the uh the the author, UM, it's discussing you know 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:50.959 this basic shift, but he points out they point out 0:22:51.000 --> 0:22:53.840 that there's another shift to consider. Quote the foraging shift 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:56.960 to dense and predictable resources is another key milestone that 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:01.680 had consequential impacts on the later part of human evolution. Now, 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.760 the basic idea here is that there wasn't just this 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.119 sudden shift from hunting and gathering to cultivation. And there 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:12.040 are many hypothesized explanations for this, but Marine argues that 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:15.280 hunting and gathering would have seen an increased focus on 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.879 dense and predictable resources. As such, this also means that 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:22.960 a given area becomes increasingly worth defending and staking a 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:26.240 claim to. Oh, this is interesting, So this could be 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:30.640 the transition point between UM between people who just roam 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:34.359 about following resources and consuming them wherever they can be found. 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:38.600