Speaker 1: Really now, really.
Speaker 2: Really now, really Hello, and welcome to Really No Really
Speaker 2: with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who guarantee that if
Speaker 2: you subscribe to our show, people will automatically think of
Speaker 2: you as a fun guy. And speaking of fung Guy,
Speaker 2: there's an entire world just below our feet that defies
Speaker 2: our conventional understanding of intelligence, a super highway of fungal interconnection,
Speaker 2: a network that extends for trillions of miles and that
Speaker 2: enables trees to recognize their families, communicate.
Speaker 3: With each other, and even share resources. Really No Really.
Speaker 2: In this episode, Jason and Peter are joined by Louis Schwarzburg,
Speaker 2: director of the beautiful twenty nineteen documentary film Fantastic fung Guy.
Speaker 2: They talk about the amazing world of funguy and mushrooms
Speaker 2: and their awe inspiring power to heal, protect, and transform
Speaker 2: our world. And now here are your two favorite fun guys,
Speaker 2: Jason and Peter.
Speaker 4: So I feel bad because we're starting this particular interview.
Speaker 4: You and I just had lunch, and I'm picking mushrooms
Speaker 4: out of my teeth, and I'm beginning to feel like
Speaker 4: that's not you. I'm a little now, I'm a little
Speaker 4: conscientious that I've committed a murder, that I've that something terrible. Now,
Speaker 4: I know the film has been out for a while,
Speaker 4: but the film Fantastic Fun Guy, which I saw on Netflix,
Speaker 4: but I'm sure it's been around a lot longer. Netflix
Speaker 4: had it. First of all, if you've not seen it,
Speaker 4: it is absolutely fascinating about the world of my Celia.
Speaker 1: Recursor to that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I recommended Einbinder Binder, who's a comedian, and
Speaker 4: this is going to go to Joan Rivers and the Hacks.
Speaker 4: Hacks is about the thing. The thing is like Joan Rivers,
Speaker 4: Un Joan Rivers, he was your godmother, Guyhead. I just
Speaker 4: want for the audience that doesn't know, I'm just trying
Speaker 4: to truncate the.
Speaker 5: Degrees of I recommended her special. I didn't know her
Speaker 5: as a comedian, and on the special she's from Hacks.
Speaker 5: She talks about the trees communicate, and she did it
Speaker 5: from a comedic standpoint about male femail. But how underground
Speaker 5: please communicate. They help each other out, they support each other.
Speaker 5: And then because of that, and I know that you
Speaker 5: mentioned Fantesakung Guy, I watched it again and I wanted
Speaker 5: to talk to Louis Schwarzberg, who created the film and
Speaker 5: does a lot of stuff in nature with stop action photography.
Speaker 5: That's stunning. Because when I watched it again in preparation
Speaker 5: for this episode, I mentioned to him that I got
Speaker 5: the overview effect, which is what astronauts get to when
Speaker 5: they see the Earth in a black void. You realize
Speaker 5: how precarious it is, how fresh it is. And after
Speaker 5: I was I was so moved by watching the film
Speaker 5: because I understood how all of these plants communicate, how
Speaker 5: there's a language that we don't know that we don't
Speaker 5: operate under, but how they save the planet, and how
Speaker 5: they recycle CO two and what they do. And under
Speaker 5: each footstep is mycilium, and there's thirty miles under each footstep,
Speaker 5: and this is communication system.
Speaker 1: And I went.
Speaker 4: Very emotional, and it made me even I was already
Speaker 4: feeling bad about the salad.
Speaker 1: With every word, you're.
Speaker 4: Driving a dagger through my heart. So let's turn to
Speaker 4: our guest.
Speaker 1: You kill you like to deform a murder. I apologize.
Speaker 1: I want to introduce Louis Schwarzburg.
Speaker 5: Hello Louis, Louie, and also apologize for Jason.
Speaker 1: You did you only eat the sexual organ of the planet.
Speaker 1: The plant is under the ground. Oh, I can't tell
Speaker 1: you how not better You've made me feel.
Speaker 5: So Louis, I should mention Louis is a visual artist
Speaker 5: and the stories he tells are fantastic. He did the
Speaker 5: three d Imax film Mysteries of the Unseen World, and
Speaker 5: the cool thing about that is when I read about
Speaker 5: it, it said he focused on things going too slow, too fast,
Speaker 5: and are too small for us to see, because there's
Speaker 5: a whole world of that stuff. Sure, so that's kind
Speaker 5: of fascinating. He's worked for Disney and did a film
Speaker 5: narrated by Myrtle Street, and also this fantastic fundike. It's
Speaker 5: like an art piece, but it also it elucidates things
Speaker 5: that are right there.
Speaker 4: But look, before we even get into your knowledge of
Speaker 4: all of that systems, I just want to ask as
Speaker 4: an introductory question, the thing that you are actually you know,
Speaker 4: you came to this as a filmmaker, a cinematographer. You
Speaker 4: personally have advanced the technology of time lapse photography. How
Speaker 4: did you come to be fascinated a way with that?
Speaker 1: Sure? And move it forward? Yeah, Well, when I was
Speaker 1: at UCLA, I fell in love with photography and fine
Speaker 1: art photography like Ansel Adams and Western And then I
Speaker 1: fell in love with film, and I moved to Northern California,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to just make experimental film, but to
Speaker 1: buy thirty five millimeter movie film, As you guys know,
Speaker 1: it's expensive. And so one of the ways I could
Speaker 1: shoot thirty five millimeter, which only commercials and future films
Speaker 1: were using, was to get into time labs, which had
Speaker 1: never been done before in thirty five millimeters in sixteen,
Speaker 1: it'd been used for like scientific research. Here's a plan
Speaker 1: for a graph behind it. Hey, guess what it does. Grow.
Speaker 1: But I would shoot things that had never been done before,
Speaker 1: like take it outdoors, sunrise, fog, moving flowers, opening shafts
Speaker 1: of light, filming beauty, and all of that hadn't happened.
Speaker 1: And then it was a film happening in a Hollywood
Speaker 1: called A Secret Life of Plants. Yeah, Stevie wondered to
Speaker 1: the score for it, remember back then, and they go, Heydri,
Speaker 1: it's this crazy guy and probably a hippie. They probably
Speaker 1: referred to me in Northern California. It's shooting all these
Speaker 1: weird flowers. So I got involved in filming that which
Speaker 1: brought me back to Hollywood, and this I think is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I show the studios, I show the networks
Speaker 1: this gorgeous thirty five millimeter time lapse. They look at it,
Speaker 1: they go, oh my god, it's incredible. It's beautiful, but
Speaker 1: we don't know what to do with it, because you
Speaker 1: can't tell a story without conflict. And in my head,
Speaker 1: I went and the people who got it were the
Speaker 1: ad agencies because basically it's eye candy. I could grab
Speaker 1: your attention in a second or two and bingo, I
Speaker 1: can sell products, right, And that's kind of how it
Speaker 1: all be unfolded. And then from there it look it's
Speaker 1: on your iPhone now, the whole idea of time lapse,
Speaker 1: everybody does it. It's a feature and the other aspect
Speaker 1: is it I think it also figures your sense of
Speaker 1: wonder to be able to see things that you and
Speaker 1: I can't see. It's like you're a child, don't with
Speaker 1: whether you're watching a flower open, or you know, a
Speaker 1: mosquito being born out of larvae, or just the beauty
Speaker 1: of a sunset. You know, all of that triggers you
Speaker 1: in a very spiritual way, which is what I think Peter,
Speaker 1: you were saying about the overview effect because it's a
Speaker 1: god's eye point of view. You know, you can't talk.
Speaker 1: You can talk about equals mc squared, but to see
Speaker 1: it in the movie.
Speaker 5: One of the parts that blew my mind, and this
Speaker 5: is theoretical, is that mushrooms and the magic mushroom, the
Speaker 5: part that the the that that part which is the
Speaker 5: spiritual part of getting high or whatever you want to
Speaker 5: call it. That one of the hypotheses is that the
Speaker 5: art original man, his brain grew at a faster rate
Speaker 5: of experimentation and learning language than it would have normally
Speaker 5: because he found psilocybin. He found all of this stuff
Speaker 5: way way back and was using it. And because that
Speaker 5: opens your mind to other choices which you wouldn't and
Speaker 5: things you wouldn't have normally seen, that the language intensified quicker.
Speaker 4: The pre primitive man, psilocybin and language took the leap
Speaker 4: because he started to go, holy crap, if you I
Speaker 4: got to tell you.
Speaker 1: What I'm seeing in my head. I got to get
Speaker 1: word of leerve and a blind and the other guy goes,
Speaker 1: I don't know, blind, I got reenactment, thank you, but
Speaker 1: talk first.
Speaker 5: So the people who didn't see the film about what's
Speaker 5: going on underground and the network of my celium.
Speaker 1: So mycilium is the organism, it's the root structure of
Speaker 1: budding mushrooms. The mushrooms are the really the reproductive organ
Speaker 1: It's like the apple to the tree, you know, the
Speaker 1: mushrooms the apple, the trees the mycillial network. And what
Speaker 1: they've discovered is that this network is an incredible shared
Speaker 1: economy under the ground where nutrients and information is shared
Speaker 1: for ecosystems to flourish. So the trees are.
Speaker 5: A community and recognize their kin. Well, yes, they'll help
Speaker 5: their kin, they'll help each other. They and this isn't
Speaker 5: like you know, hippie dippy crystal shit. This is like
Speaker 5: Susan Samar, the PhD professor in British Columbia, again as
Speaker 5: a woman, probably got a lot of resistance from other
Speaker 5: male scientists saying that it's all connected. They put a
Speaker 5: radio isotope inside of a tree over here, fifty yards
Speaker 5: away from that tree, another tree has absorbed that radioactive isotope,
Speaker 5: so they were able to trace it right, and then
Speaker 5: it's you know bona fide, you know, experiment, and they
Speaker 5: see that the mother tree is feeding its kin, you know.
Speaker 1: And the trees talk to each other. They'll help each other.
Speaker 1: If one tree's in the shade, it'll give it more
Speaker 1: nutrients for it to grow. It's a beautiful blueprint probably
Speaker 1: for our survival when you think about it. That when
Speaker 1: when nutrients and information is shared and ecosystems communicate, societies
Speaker 1: flourish without greed, you know. And that is nature's operating structure.
Speaker 1: So is it a good way to go? All? I
Speaker 1: can say it evolved over hundreds of millions of years,
Speaker 1: and therefore it's how life has evolved to be successful.
Speaker 1: But this is what works. But you know, there's a
Speaker 1: dark side to this.
Speaker 4: I'd like you to speak to Okay, because we had
Speaker 4: the gentleman who is running the HBO show of the
Speaker 4: Last of Us, in which the conjecture is that a bacteria,
Speaker 4: a fungal adaptation happens and it jumps into the human system,
Speaker 4: is able to survive at the higher temperatures of a
Speaker 4: human system and zombifies.
Speaker 1: But the people that.
Speaker 4: To that extent I always wonder about because I do
Speaker 4: think the planet fights back we as we tear away
Speaker 4: at it. I think the natural systems do fight back,
Speaker 4: that there was some conjecture that a lot of these
Speaker 4: diseases that were even COVID may or may not be
Speaker 4: a man made or a man enhanced thing. But I
Speaker 4: wonder as we jeopardize these these ecological systems and this
Speaker 4: communication is happening along the macellium network, there.
Speaker 1: Not capable of going, well, we have to we were
Speaker 1: here co exists with that kind. But if they're not
Speaker 1: going to get along with us, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a turn here. Yeah. I think the fungi kingdom recycles
Speaker 1: everything in nature, so there are nutrients to grow. And
Speaker 1: also what's import for us to know they're inside of us?
Speaker 1: I mean in your microbiome, in our intestines, our fungui.
Speaker 1: If you didn't have them, you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: digest food. So we have these symbiotic relationships. I think
Speaker 1: when the symbiotic relationship gets broken, then there is disaster.
Speaker 1: And that's what we've been doing. We take the carbon
Speaker 1: that's underground, we burn it, put it in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: We put fake you know, oil pesticides into the earth.
Speaker 1: So instead of the tree depending on the my cillial
Speaker 1: network for nutrients, it's like a heroin attic we're giving
Speaker 1: it this fake absorb and that then becomes addicted to that,
Speaker 1: and if you don't give it the fertilizer, it dies,
Speaker 1: So you break up relationships. Everything in nature is about
Speaker 1: relationships cooperation, which is why I think on a moral ground,
Speaker 1: these lessons are beautiful. You know, It's like, how do
Speaker 1: you cooperate, how do you get along, how do you share?
Speaker 1: How do you do things that enable other people to flourish,
Speaker 1: to be healthy? And that's how I think it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful moral code we could follow, which is all I meant.
Speaker 4: You know, we'll go into those other assets, but it
Speaker 4: is a great metaphor for the work that you do,
Speaker 4: which is to focus on stuff that we decide we
Speaker 4: don't have the time to watch and see in its
Speaker 4: entirety and see the beauty of it. And you are
Speaker 4: able to compress it in such a way that we
Speaker 4: can have an experience that most of us would never
Speaker 4: take the time to have and to notice it's really
Speaker 4: kind of wonderful.
Speaker 1: Well imagine, you know, if you told someone you know,
Speaker 1: you're in a yoga resort, you go stare at this
Speaker 1: flower for the next three days, don't go to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: don't eat, don't do anything, and that'll really help you
Speaker 1: be enlightened. But I can actually show you what that
Speaker 1: would look like in five seconds, which is great because
Speaker 1: it might be nice to be there and stare at
Speaker 1: a flower for all day. But none of us have
Speaker 1: that time. I mean, I don't meditate. I wish I
Speaker 1: had another lifetime to be a Tibetan monk and I
Speaker 1: could sit on a rock and look at it at
Speaker 1: the stars at night. But what's the reality. We don't
Speaker 1: have that option at all. But if I can give
Speaker 1: you a visual of what that might be like, which
Speaker 1: is why I think it does trigger spiritual or transcendent feeling.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it when the flower opens and
Speaker 1: closes the day in the life of that being. I
Speaker 1: mean the films we loved it are like by biographical
Speaker 1: when you see like from the beginning to the end,
Speaker 1: they're powerful. They touch you because we're all gonna die.
Speaker 1: We all realize as a transcendent experience we're having here,
Speaker 1: and to be able to experience that, I think it
Speaker 1: touches your soul in a way that's hard to describe.
Speaker 5: So the macilium are everywhere. I mean, like I said
Speaker 5: in the beginning, it's thirty every continent, thirty million miles.
Speaker 5: What's the state of where we're at right now? I mean,
Speaker 5: we watched your film. We now understand if you watch
Speaker 5: that and understand it the importance of the networks and
Speaker 5: that we shouldn't screw with them. Where are we with that?
Speaker 5: Because I know you do extensive stuff all.
Speaker 1: Over the world. Yeah, are we in? Is that network
Speaker 1: as endangered as the rest of our it is? And
Speaker 1: one of the big problems is, you know, agri industrial agriculture.
Speaker 1: So one of the ways to prevent the network from
Speaker 1: being cut up is no till farming. You know, you
Speaker 1: want to keep the network in place. That's a big
Speaker 1: deal because all industrial farming is like you know, the
Speaker 1: tractor going down the rows and chopping it up, train
Speaker 1: it up, killing it all, and then putting petroleum fertilizer
Speaker 1: on it. And we're destroying it. So there's a movie
Speaker 1: been now about regenerative agriculture. It's perhaps the most one
Speaker 1: of the top environmental movements that are happening right now
Speaker 1: is regenerative agriculture. If we kill the soil, we kill
Speaker 1: our food supply, and that's really critical.
Speaker 5: Can I just saying, Louis is funny. When we were talking,
Speaker 5: he goes, so when I do TED Talk and he
Speaker 5: had a Ted talk, I think sixty million downloads on
Speaker 5: the Ted Talk. But he said I asked simple questions
Speaker 5: like where does soil come from? And I went, okay,
Speaker 5: let's answer that question.
Speaker 1: Where do you got me? Where? Where does soil come from?
Speaker 1: Soil comes from fun guy that breaks down organic matters
Speaker 1: so that it can be in its smallest component parts
Speaker 1: to be recycled. But most people don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to that, right, So, I mean people don't know where
Speaker 1: does an orange come from an apple? Where is an
Speaker 1: or come from an apple? In flower, right, a flower
Speaker 1: becomes fruit, not vegetables for us to eat. The flower
Speaker 1: is the sexual organ of the plant, right, beckoning these Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in Wings of Life, I have Meryl Streepy you
Speaker 1: the voice of the flower. She's seducing bees, baths, hummingbirds,
Speaker 1: and butterflies to come get her to move her DNA around.
Speaker 1: Because of flower. A plant doesn't have legs. It needs
Speaker 1: to mate with somebody else. Diversity is one of the
Speaker 1: key elements of evolution. You can't mate with yourself all
Speaker 1: the time. Sometimes certain species do it, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: create a stronger DNA. Correct, So you got to get
Speaker 1: these messengers to come move your DNA around. And then
Speaker 1: the bee, of course, that's moving the pollen around. It's
Speaker 1: getting that pollen bringing you back to the and it
Speaker 1: enables it feeds its children. So what's beautiful about the story.
Speaker 1: It's not sexual intercourse. It's an intersection between the animal
Speaker 1: world and plant world that gives us the food we
Speaker 1: need to eat. And it's not transactional because I don't
Speaker 1: think the flower is telling to be Hey, come transport
Speaker 1: my pollen and in exchange you get food. I think
Speaker 1: it's an accident because the pond just sticks to the
Speaker 1: furry part of the beat, right, So what's really even
Speaker 1: on a higher spiritual in the sense story they enable
Speaker 1: each other unknowingly. You know, I'm going to help you,
Speaker 1: and they don't realize that they're helping the other party.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so beautiful that they that, and that's
Speaker 1: really the foundation of life. So after I made that film,
Speaker 1: I go, well, if plants are critical for our food supply,
Speaker 1: food shelter, medicine, all of it comes from a plant
Speaker 1: where the plants eat soil or it'll come from fun Guy.
Speaker 1: Without fun Guy, there'd been no soil and then again
Speaker 1: no life, so you.
Speaker 4: Must be aware of There was another document and I
Speaker 4: think it was called Yes the Ground. Called Common Ground
Speaker 4: is the title of the movie. I'm not sure to
Speaker 4: make sure we're talking about the same one. It is
Speaker 4: basically a documentary advocating this non tilled farming, because it
Speaker 4: says it basically, they took two fallow fields that had
Speaker 4: been over farmed, and both of them had farmed out.
Speaker 1: The ground was dead, and they.
Speaker 4: Did this non till farming on one and left and
Speaker 4: kept using it.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: The one they stopped tilling came back in three years.
Speaker 4: There was a the Chinese government gave a fourteen thousand
Speaker 4: square mile sector of dead land to this sperre amount, and.
Speaker 1: They went in and they applied the practices.
Speaker 4: Of non tilled farming, and in ten years that entire
Speaker 4: forest came back to full life. Where this is happening,
Speaker 4: carbon emissions in the air are sucked into the earth.
Speaker 1: It is literally filtering the air. It may it.
Speaker 4: Presented the idea of saving our soil, respecting our soil
Speaker 4: as the centerpiece of how we save ourselves from some
Speaker 4: of the climate destruction that we've done, and it was
Speaker 4: it was just an extreme.
Speaker 1: Most powerful natural phenomena that can suck all the carbon
Speaker 1: out of the atmosphere. I've heard that if we would
Speaker 1: stop polluting tomorrow in like five years, this process of
Speaker 1: photosynthesis and sequestering carbon in the ground into my cilial
Speaker 1: network could totally clean the atmosphere. We could do that.
Speaker 5: Can we seguay before we go into the mush Going anyway?
Speaker 5: I got questionsom the mushroom part of this. So the
Speaker 5: mushroom part in the movie, there were a couple people
Speaker 5: and this was moving to me because there were no
Speaker 5: claims it's going to cure me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But and it moved me too because when you have
Speaker 5: people who have stage four cancer diagnosis, you're there right
Speaker 5: there with them because you get it. We've all been
Speaker 5: around that.
Speaker 1: Kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Sure, I watched that, and I just want to know
Speaker 5: your experience with that, having been around it, having filmed that,
Speaker 5: being open to it, what was your experience.
Speaker 1: So these are patients that had a severe diagnosis of
Speaker 1: cancer and the psilocybin treatment what it does is it
Speaker 1: reduces the fear of death anxiety. So imagine you got
Speaker 1: this physiological problem. Now you got these other problems that
Speaker 1: what happens when they die, the existential question. They got
Speaker 1: two things going on. So the psilocybin psychedelic experience to
Speaker 1: make people feel more connected. They feel the oneness of everything,
Speaker 1: and that's why it triggers this feeling of lost, the
Speaker 1: fear of dying, of love, of connection. And by doing that,
Speaker 1: it enables I think, the body to heal faster because
Speaker 1: you've taken away this incredible anxiety of like what's going
Speaker 1: to happen when I die? So that is really, I
Speaker 1: think an example of the healing energy of it. What's
Speaker 1: also interesting, I just recently finished the clinical trial here
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica where patients with addiction to alcohol take
Speaker 1: psilocybin and they watch a big video, an eight inch
Speaker 1: video screen of my imagery of rhythms and patterns of
Speaker 1: nature as they're coming onto it. Then they do the
Speaker 1: thing as we saw in the movie. They lay down
Speaker 1: with a therapist with eye shades and they go inward.
Speaker 1: After that they watch a video that helps them feel grounded.
Speaker 1: The results showed that the combination of my Imagery with
Speaker 1: psilocybin was more effective than the psilocybin by itself in
Speaker 1: treating alcohol addiction, so better end results, lower heart rate,
Speaker 1: respiration rate, blood pressure. This feeling of getting reconnected to nature,
Speaker 1: whether it's music, whether it's visual, whether it is a
Speaker 1: chemical like a psychedelic plant, medicine, all of these are
Speaker 1: portals just to becoming grounded. You know. So you brought
Speaker 1: us today. Is this your company? Yes, and it's called
Speaker 1: Fantastic Fun Guy. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And you've got tinctures based on I'm assuming almost all
Speaker 4: fungal product that do a variety of different things. The
Speaker 4: one that I asked you for and you shared with
Speaker 4: me is for immunity. I'll let you know. So my
Speaker 4: question is sometimes from out of nowhere, not necessarily a
Speaker 4: rainstorm or anything else, but I'll walk out my husband
Speaker 4: day and my lawns suddenly covered with mushrooms.
Speaker 1: My first question is a y all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: and B is there a way to know, Oh I
Speaker 1: can eat that, or I can dry that I can
Speaker 1: or that one's a bad one. There are so many, right,
Speaker 1: there's so many different kinds.
Speaker 4: And I've been on nature walks with guys who knew
Speaker 4: the immediate area that.
Speaker 1: They got that one's good that one will kill you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what's your advice to all of us? Why? First
Speaker 1: of all, why my lawn suddenly becomes a garden part?
Speaker 1: There's probably ten times more species of fun guy than
Speaker 1: there are plants, and of course there's more plants than
Speaker 1: there are people, so there are so many. We've only
Speaker 1: probably discovered ten or fifteen percent of the funnel species
Speaker 1: on the planet. In order to understand or to know
Speaker 1: what you can eat it don't eat, you have to
Speaker 1: be with someone who knows. In other words, you forage
Speaker 1: in these groups. There's by cillial clubs, micological clubs. That's
Speaker 1: really the best way. There might be some apps you
Speaker 1: can use to photograph it, but don't take a chance
Speaker 1: because there are mushrooms that can kill you. There are
Speaker 1: also buries in the woods that can kill you. So
Speaker 1: you know, you just have to be knowledgeable. And why
Speaker 1: they popped up after that rain, time for them to
Speaker 1: get it on and reproduce, I mean, come on, I
Speaker 1: mean they're there all the time. Sometimes, you know, years
Speaker 1: can go by with certain species of mushroom and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, if the conditions are right, they
Speaker 1: decide we need more of us. And you know, mushrooms
Speaker 1: come out, spores are released, they fly through the air
Speaker 1: and they find other territory that they can grow in.
Speaker 1: So you know, nobody can predict. That's why wild mushrooms
Speaker 1: are expensive because you only know certain spots, and people
Speaker 1: that are my cologists they don't share their secret spots.
Speaker 1: Kind of like a clicky club of nerds that are
Speaker 1: signed to have a scientific bent to them and they
Speaker 1: just keep it all as a secret, you know, because
Speaker 1: it is kind of like birders, another kind of interesting groups.
Speaker 1: But it's on every continent. They have found fungui under
Speaker 1: the ocean. By the way, wonder why is this a
Speaker 1: fascinating topic? I mean, Avatar movie is the number one
Speaker 1: box office hit of all time. Who are they battling,
Speaker 1: Not the Blue Bend, it's Aya. Aya is the mycillial
Speaker 1: network under the ground, right That is the hero of
Speaker 1: our story. And I've talked to Cameron about it. More
Speaker 1: and more of the sequels are going to be about
Speaker 1: Aya and Aya is that underground spiritual energy of connection.
Speaker 1: And the fact that it's the number one film of
Speaker 1: all time kind of makes me believe that people are
Speaker 1: really fascinated and interested and that it innately taps. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a way of a big deal. This isn't a
Speaker 1: weird topic. It's a popular topic.
Speaker 5: I think the market for mushrooms was what did I
Speaker 5: see fifty billion? I mean fifty billion dollars bill. It's mushrooming.
Speaker 5: So if you find out that could kill you, if
Speaker 5: you cook portavello is a certain way, it could kill you,
Speaker 5: it may not be good for business.
Speaker 1: Look, the white button mushrooms are a thing of the
Speaker 1: past people are shopping for or the bellows my taki,
Speaker 1: I mean every country. But here's the beautiful thing right
Speaker 1: now we have you know, you know inner cities that
Speaker 1: you know are food deserts. You can grow mushrooms in
Speaker 1: your closet. You can grow mushrooms in the junkyard, you know.
Speaker 1: And this is a way for people to have protein,
Speaker 1: make a living, good values protein and mushrooms. Yes, big
Speaker 1: time steak and have mushroom steaks. No, I thought it
Speaker 1: was just because it had a nice texture. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's great. And plus it's got the same kind of
Speaker 1: anti It fights these same viruses and antibodies that they fight.
Speaker 1: You fight. That's why it's good. That's why I gave
Speaker 1: you that immunity thing. It fights the same viruses that
Speaker 1: they have to fight. So what they are there geniuses
Speaker 1: at chemical warfare. My solio network has a little t
Speaker 1: and if they encounter an organism friend or foe, I'll
Speaker 1: either eat you or I'll fight you. And so penicillin
Speaker 1: is an example of that. It's a fun guy, and
Speaker 1: we eat penicillinas save more lives than any other medicine.
Speaker 1: So when you eat mushrooms, they kill the same viruses
Speaker 1: that they're trying to fight against. Also affect us because
Speaker 1: we have more in common with fung Guy than we
Speaker 1: do with plants. Right, Plants take light energy, convert that
Speaker 1: into chemical bonds. We like mushrooms, have to digest food,
Speaker 1: so we have a stomach. They have an external stomach.
Speaker 1: They put out enzymes, they break it down, and they
Speaker 1: absorb it. So we have this similar relationship with fung
Speaker 1: guy because we digest food.
Speaker 4: I'm beginning to think fun guy. It's cooled that because
Speaker 4: they're kind of like a fun guy.
Speaker 5: And on that note, i want to thank you Louis
Speaker 5: for coming in fantastic books I'm looking for.
Speaker 4: I'm going to tell you know what. It's a fast
Speaker 4: On our show, I'm going to open this up. You
Speaker 4: keep talking, and I'm going to become immune. Take it.
Speaker 4: It's a fantastic movie. It's a stunning movie. We're rereleasing
Speaker 4: it in theaters. I remastered version, got a new life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we added a couple of new sequences because
Speaker 1: we want people to come together in community.
Speaker 5: Movie with death comes life. The movie's back again.
Speaker 1: There you go. Now, literally this has to take a
Speaker 1: full dropper. Take a full dropper? Do we have to
Speaker 1: do this in real time? Now? Real time? And you're
Speaker 1: going to discover that it actually tastes good. Jason, did
Speaker 1: it taste sweet to you a little bit? Yeah? No sugar?
Speaker 1: So what what is the Sweetness Company's Glisterings Preserved? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It is. Listen, I gotta tell you.
Speaker 4: If someone told me I could open up ten bottles
Speaker 4: of your stuff a day and just instead of the
Speaker 4: do you know the c I have, I've become. This
Speaker 4: is how I know I'm ready for aar pi. I
Speaker 4: have the long box Monday. There's gotta by the way.
Speaker 1: There is by the way is lions mean? And uh
Speaker 1: no turkey taale, I'm sorry, that's turkey.
Speaker 4: And that is the one that Peter was talking about
Speaker 4: that in some cancer study that cured the cancer.
Speaker 1: So if you go at the NIH National Institute of Health,
Speaker 1: look at the clinical trials that turkey tale along with
Speaker 1: other drugs reduced breast cancer and women, there was really
Speaker 1: scientific evidence.
Speaker 5: And again, people who are listening to this before they
Speaker 5: try stuff, check it out with your doctor.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that there is research that has been
Speaker 1: proven that turkey tale is a powerful component in helping
Speaker 1: to fight. Well, thank you.
Speaker 4: All our medicines are coming from you know, from nature exactly.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go watch them. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get high on on on immunity, gonna watch the movie again,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna come on to it about five minutes.
Speaker 1: What will I feel you're gonna be I'm joking. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna You're gonna at another episode.
Speaker 2: You're gonna.
Speaker 1: Oh that's fantastic. All right, Well, thank you.
Speaker 4: And by the way, that stuff is starting to kick in,
Speaker 4: I'm feeling hold on, hold on, hold on one second, yeah,
Speaker 4: I got it.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Oh I just did episode about the took a thing
Speaker 5: a second and a half ago.
Speaker 1: It's still here, going all the way down and you're going,
Speaker 1: whoa I can I didn't say. I didn't say I'm tripping.
Speaker 4: Ooh you ooh you you know you always talk about
Speaker 4: me poo poo and you poo poo poo.
Speaker 1: Mister google him.
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh my god, how are you?
Speaker 1: And what do we have? He's high on mushrooms right now?
Speaker 6: And I have to say, Jason, with your earlier rendition
Speaker 6: of Caveman, I'm thinking if they remake one million years BC.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, you could you bet who was in that?
Speaker 1: Come on, we all know who was in that? The
Speaker 1: beautiful rock out? Will there you go? There you go? Yeah? Right,
Speaker 1: come on, that was a that was a poster every
Speaker 1: kid my generation. I don't remember it.
Speaker 3: And that's of course your role, Jason.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think if they're going there's a lot
Speaker 6: of gender switched somehow.
Speaker 1: I would have been in quest for fire. That would
Speaker 1: have been my I'm the guy and his army by
Speaker 1: the cannibal truck. That's right, David. What else you got
Speaker 1: for us? I know? But in that section you must
Speaker 1: have had quite a field day of research.
Speaker 3: Did you.
Speaker 6: Did you guys touch on the fact that what is
Speaker 6: the largest living organism on the planet?
Speaker 1: I did not. We did not. I know what it
Speaker 1: is other than a redwood tree or something. I know.
Speaker 1: We're just can I give you a hint if I'm
Speaker 1: right sure? Oregon?
Speaker 3: Oh, you're saying where it is? Yes, yes, it is
Speaker 3: in area. It's it's a it's a mushroom.
Speaker 6: It is in the mall here National Force an organ
Speaker 6: it's three.
Speaker 3: Point five miles wide.
Speaker 1: Excuse me that? And they a mushroom, Yeah, a mushroom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're forgive me.
Speaker 6: Remember remember the sexual organs. Remember the sexual organs are the.
Speaker 3: Are the mushrooms?
Speaker 6: I'm talking about the fung guy under the ground you
Speaker 6: mean under the ground.
Speaker 1: Yes, the three thousand miles Not it's not a giant
Speaker 1: shaitaki sitting above the field. That may happen one day.
Speaker 5: But yes, it's the largest area of fungi in the world.
Speaker 6: Again, three point five miles And they believe that it's
Speaker 6: at least two four hundred years old, but they believe
Speaker 6: it might actually be be older. That fungus can dissolve
Speaker 6: certain plastics. Yeah, and here's here's the interesting thing. The
Speaker 6: most expensive edible mushroom in the world. How much do
Speaker 6: you think it costs for one pound of that mushroom the.
Speaker 1: Most expensive, most expensive in the world.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: Fifteen hundred dollars and I'm going to say twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: fifty thousand, two thousand for an ounce, but I guess that.
Speaker 3: But here this is listen to what you're paying for.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: It's called a yards goo goomboo. Okay, yards of goomboo.
Speaker 6: Or it's commonly called the caterpillar fungus, and guess why.
Speaker 3: It's a parasitic.
Speaker 6: Fungus like the one the cordycept in the field in
Speaker 6: the in the video game TV show Last of Us.
Speaker 6: It's a parasitic fungus that kills its host caterpillar and
Speaker 6: uses it to produce a mushroom that grows out of
Speaker 6: the caterpillars head.
Speaker 1: And this is the one. I'm paying fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a pound for a pa because it has the sweet
Speaker 1: taste of caterpillar on it.
Speaker 3: What of murder, It's well, there's a whiff. It has
Speaker 3: a whiff a bouquet of antenna, which is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can't get really. Yeah, the mushroom thing is fat.
Speaker 5: Did you see the Nicholas Cage movie The Pig. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was a fat kind of a fascinating movie with
Speaker 5: where the pig is, the people sniffing out the truffles,
Speaker 5: the whole world of mushroom.
Speaker 1: When I found it was fifty truffles on mushrooms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it is, a MUSHes. I thought it was
Speaker 1: like a.
Speaker 3: Well, they're a fungus.
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't know if much it is. It's
Speaker 1: a firing part of a fungus.
Speaker 4: So but yeah, truffles show never ceases to fill my
Speaker 4: head with information and delight.
Speaker 5: The delight was an afterthought. I noticed, I saw that
Speaker 5: there's a pause. You thought, I need to put an
Speaker 5: asterisk on.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think. How we try.
Speaker 5: And it fills my head.
Speaker 1: Sounds like an s a T test. You finish this out,
Speaker 1: help me with this, Peter.
Speaker 3: Wait, I don't want to interrupt. I don't want to interrupt,
Speaker 3: but uh, truffles are edible.
Speaker 1: Spores, ediports, you know, But where do they come from?
Speaker 1: Fun guy? This show, this show is a front of distance.
Speaker 5: So David, thank you very much, and never correct me.
Speaker 5: By the way, all right.
Speaker 4: God bless So really, I was told as as Louis
Speaker 4: was leaving, he said, eat mushrooms eat fermented food because
Speaker 4: they nourish the bacteria. They nourish the fung guy in
Speaker 4: your system. And uh and I still I don't but
Speaker 4: I never got the answer. Is it good that I
Speaker 4: hit the mushroom the silence? And by the way, yes,
Speaker 4: and it's good? Or cut out the middleman and go
Speaker 4: eat a rotting rabbit in the woods. Good, right to
Speaker 4: the hell because the funk guy breaks it down, you
Speaker 4: can stop the process.
Speaker 1: David, thank you and thank you and thank you for listening.
Speaker 3: You know you're there.
Speaker 1: Damn, I'm in a room with this maniac right right right?
Speaker 5: Really no, really the show that fills your head with
Speaker 5: fung guy.
Speaker 1: And you did that generically so enough to pay.
Speaker 5: Royalty had a little love Love Bak royal Ki.
Speaker 2: There's another episode of Really No Really. He comes to
Speaker 2: a close. I know you're wondering, how can I tell
Speaker 2: if the wild mushroom in front of me is safe
Speaker 2: or poisonous? The answer to that in a moment. But
Speaker 2: first let's thank our guest, Louis Schwarzburg. You can follow
Speaker 2: him on Instagram and TikTok where he is at Louis Schwarzburg.
Speaker 2: On x he is at Louis films on YouTube. He
Speaker 2: is at Fantastic Fun Guy Official and his website is
Speaker 2: Louie channel dot tv. Find all pertinent links in our
Speaker 2: show notes now our little show hangs out on Instagram,
Speaker 2: TikTok YouTube, and threads at Really No Really podcast And
Speaker 2: of course you can share your thoughts and feedback with
Speaker 2: us online at noreally dot com. If you have a
Speaker 2: really some amazing factor story that boggles your mind, share
Speaker 2: it with us and if we use it, we will
Speaker 2: send you a little gift. Nothing life changing, obviously, but
Speaker 2: it's the thought that counts. Check out our full episodes
Speaker 2: on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and take that bells
Speaker 2: here updated when we release new videos and episodes, which
Speaker 2: we do each Tuesday, So listen and follow us on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: And now, how can you tell if that wild mushroom
Speaker 2: in front of you is poisonous or safe to eat? Well,
Speaker 2: the only absolutely certain way is to consult a professional
Speaker 2: and assume that nothing is safe unless you do.
Speaker 3: But apart from that, here's a few general guidelines.
Speaker 2: The gills of the mushroom are right under the large
Speaker 2: cat if they are tan or brown, there's a good
Speaker 2: chance they're edible.
Speaker 1: But if you see white gills, donate it.
Speaker 2: The deadly amanita spam leave mushrooms all have white gill.
Speaker 2: If the mushroom is red on the cat or the stem,
Speaker 2: will leave it alone. It's kind of like nature's traffic light.
Speaker 2: If it's red, it's telling you you should stop. If
Speaker 2: the cap looks or feels scaly, or the cap is spotted,
Speaker 2: and let it go. That is often an indication of
Speaker 2: a potential toxin. Lastly, if there is a secondary ring,
Speaker 2: like a second cap lower on the stem, put it down.
Speaker 3: Not for you.
Speaker 1: These are just.
Speaker 2: General guidelines though, and again the only surefire way to
Speaker 2: know is to consult an expert. My personal tip, if
Speaker 2: you're not a fungi expert, maybe don't be foraging in
Speaker 2: the forest for random mushrooms. Public service announcement. There's probably
Speaker 2: a supermarket near you that is a whole produce aisle
Speaker 2: that has plenty of mushrooms that are confirmed to not
Speaker 2: kill you. Elina Really is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 2: Blase Entertainment.