1
00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:04,720
Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

2
00:00:04,840 --> 00:00:09,119
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

3
00:00:09,240 --> 00:00:12,160
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A

4
00:00:12,280 --> 00:00:13,920
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

5
00:00:24,200 --> 00:00:26,360
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

6
00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:27,280
Speaker 2: my name is Nolan.

7
00:00:27,440 --> 00:00:30,320
Speaker 3: They called me Bed. We're joined as always with our

8
00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:35,680
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Mission Control Decant. Most importantly, you are you.

9
00:00:35,680 --> 00:00:39,400
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't

10
00:00:39,560 --> 00:00:43,920
Speaker 3: want you to know. When there's something strange in the

11
00:00:43,960 --> 00:00:48,879
Speaker 3: space station, you gotta blame space fungus, Paul, Can I

12
00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:51,440
Speaker 3: get at like a weird siren and then like an

13
00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:56,080
Speaker 3: astronaut like whatever an emergency signal is on the ISS flusters?

14
00:00:56,080 --> 00:00:58,440
Speaker 4: Themes sound alike that we won't get sued for by

15
00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:05,720
Speaker 4: Huey Lewis and the news proposo, how dare you?

16
00:01:06,120 --> 00:01:07,760
Speaker 2: How dare you invoke poposo?

17
00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:11,600
Speaker 3: We defer to you, Paul, because you're the best in

18
00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:14,240
Speaker 3: the business at this. That's right, folks. After years of

19
00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:18,600
Speaker 3: speculating on space travel and mushroom aliens a la Lovecraft,

20
00:01:18,800 --> 00:01:22,120
Speaker 3: we're finally diving into the topic of fungus in space.

21
00:01:22,240 --> 00:01:26,200
Speaker 3: And forgive us for saying it it's literally out of

22
00:01:26,360 --> 00:01:30,199
Speaker 3: this world. Hashtag no pun left behind. Here are the facts.

23
00:01:30,280 --> 00:01:33,560
Speaker 5: Fungus is amazing. Mm hmm, dare we say fantastic.

24
00:01:33,880 --> 00:01:35,880
Speaker 4: If you want to find out some more outside of

25
00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:40,440
Speaker 4: this episode, we highly recommend the documentary Fantastic Fungi, which

26
00:01:40,760 --> 00:01:42,600
Speaker 4: goes through a lot of the things that make these

27
00:01:43,360 --> 00:01:50,440
Speaker 4: creatures organisms, weird, sentient beings, very special and confusing.

28
00:01:50,920 --> 00:01:54,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, and confusing, speaking and confusing. Let's have some fun

29
00:01:54,360 --> 00:01:56,800
Speaker 3: with this one. We were talking a little bit off air.

30
00:01:57,120 --> 00:02:02,040
Speaker 3: Is it fungi? Is it fung guy? Is fungi or fungi?

31
00:02:03,080 --> 00:02:07,240
Speaker 3: I suggest, respectfully that we use all of them interchangeably,

32
00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:10,040
Speaker 3: just to stick it to the mycologist in the crowd.

33
00:02:10,960 --> 00:02:15,480
Speaker 4: While there aren't necessarily this many pronunciations of what these

34
00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:17,760
Speaker 4: things are, there are one hundred and forty four thousand

35
00:02:17,880 --> 00:02:21,399
Speaker 4: different species of them, and that includes you know, sort

36
00:02:21,440 --> 00:02:29,079
Speaker 4: of cousins like yeasts, rusts. I'm sorry, Ben smuts smuts, Yeah, yeah,

37
00:02:29,120 --> 00:02:31,080
Speaker 4: like like dirty mags.

38
00:02:31,160 --> 00:02:32,079
Speaker 5: What are we talking here?

39
00:02:32,120 --> 00:02:38,240
Speaker 3: That's anthropomorphizing, that's like the human term. Yeah, fung gui, fungi.

40
00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:42,840
Speaker 3: There are a lot of fungal things. They include mildew's molds,

41
00:02:42,960 --> 00:02:46,680
Speaker 3: rust yeast, and of course, most famously the Kobe Bryant

42
00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:50,560
Speaker 3: and the gang mushrooms. And the weird thing is, we

43
00:02:50,639 --> 00:02:54,359
Speaker 3: know for sure that there are many, many more species

44
00:02:54,800 --> 00:02:59,280
Speaker 3: in this kingdom that science has yet to discover. Some

45
00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:02,840
Speaker 3: might not even be from Earth spoiler, Some are definitely

46
00:03:02,880 --> 00:03:08,840
Speaker 3: not from Earth. We also know there are many fungus

47
00:03:09,080 --> 00:03:14,440
Speaker 3: like organisms. Biologically they're kissing cousins, things like slime molds

48
00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:18,360
Speaker 3: or which we'll talk about they're quite intelligent, or water molds.

49
00:03:18,800 --> 00:03:22,920
Speaker 3: Fancy game for those is ooh, my sakes.

50
00:03:22,840 --> 00:03:24,160
Speaker 2: And I guess if.

51
00:03:25,480 --> 00:03:28,280
Speaker 4: My say too, that sounds like a thing you'd say

52
00:03:28,280 --> 00:03:34,040
Speaker 4: when you're excited, don't This isn't something of these these

53
00:03:34,120 --> 00:03:36,839
Speaker 4: things have in common kind of the way they proliferate,

54
00:03:37,480 --> 00:03:39,080
Speaker 4: like using spores.

55
00:03:39,080 --> 00:03:40,280
Speaker 5: And the like. Yeah.

56
00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:45,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, they reproduce differently from the fauna of Earth in

57
00:03:45,280 --> 00:03:50,720
Speaker 3: that they they shoot out spores, and these spores evolved

58
00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:53,400
Speaker 3: to function, at least the ones we know about, they

59
00:03:53,440 --> 00:03:57,160
Speaker 3: evolvet to function in Earth's gravity, which means it's kind

60
00:03:57,200 --> 00:04:00,600
Speaker 3: of like you shoot an arrow into the air and

61
00:04:00,640 --> 00:04:03,160
Speaker 3: you're not sure where it lands, but you know it

62
00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:06,320
Speaker 3: will fly in something like an arc unless it picks

63
00:04:06,400 --> 00:04:12,000
Speaker 3: up a wind pattern, and true story, some creatures or

64
00:04:12,200 --> 00:04:17,599
Speaker 3: entities in this kingdom of fungus, they have evolved to

65
00:04:17,800 --> 00:04:23,880
Speaker 3: propagate towards certain wind patterns, which is cartoonishly specific of them.

66
00:04:24,120 --> 00:04:27,320
Speaker 3: But that's not even the beginning of how specific these

67
00:04:27,680 --> 00:04:31,280
Speaker 3: these little guys get. I mean, they're mysterious, and it's

68
00:04:31,320 --> 00:04:36,040
Speaker 3: weird that they're still so mysterious, right because fungi, these

69
00:04:36,279 --> 00:04:40,120
Speaker 3: fun guys are some of the most widely distributed life

70
00:04:40,120 --> 00:04:43,120
Speaker 3: forms on Earth. To your point zero, that sporing reproduction

71
00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:44,599
Speaker 3: works very well.

72
00:04:45,320 --> 00:04:49,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and when those spores get shot out, sometimes

73
00:04:49,800 --> 00:04:53,160
Speaker 2: if they land on like a surface like soil, like

74
00:04:53,200 --> 00:04:56,680
Speaker 2: the ground, they proliferate best. Some if they land in water,

75
00:04:57,120 --> 00:04:59,080
Speaker 2: they like to live there and they grow the best.

76
00:04:59,360 --> 00:05:04,240
Speaker 2: Some grow on your walls, man, behind your walls, And

77
00:05:04,279 --> 00:05:04,720
Speaker 2: those are.

78
00:05:04,600 --> 00:05:06,000
Speaker 5: The ones you got to be scared about.

79
00:05:06,080 --> 00:05:08,440
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, if you're any any homeowners out there,

80
00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:11,760
Speaker 4: I just heard you know, black mold in this voice

81
00:05:11,800 --> 00:05:15,040
Speaker 4: screaming in the back of their minds. That requires serious mitigation.

82
00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:17,880
Speaker 4: It can mess up your property value first off, but

83
00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:20,640
Speaker 4: it can also like you literally kill your family slowly,

84
00:05:20,720 --> 00:05:26,360
Speaker 4: you know, over time by ingesting and inhaling these these molds.

85
00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:31,279
Speaker 3: And yeah, like mesolothemioma, it's or as best dis exposure consequences,

86
00:05:31,520 --> 00:05:34,920
Speaker 3: it's something you might not notice for years or decades.

87
00:05:35,279 --> 00:05:38,920
Speaker 2: Very silent killer exactly. And the important thing to note

88
00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:41,479
Speaker 2: there is that moisture is often one of the major

89
00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:44,320
Speaker 2: factors when it comes to the way these things grow

90
00:05:44,320 --> 00:05:47,000
Speaker 2: and how well they grow, whether it's in soil or

91
00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:49,640
Speaker 2: just you know, in a body of water or something

92
00:05:49,680 --> 00:05:50,039
Speaker 2: like that.

93
00:05:51,680 --> 00:05:54,799
Speaker 4: Good de humidifier and avestment is worth its weight in gold.

94
00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:58,840
Speaker 3: I'm just laughing because to that point, Matt, I'm picturing

95
00:05:59,200 --> 00:06:04,000
Speaker 3: whomever is this week the world's most evil billionaire talking

96
00:06:04,120 --> 00:06:10,560
Speaker 3: to some species of fungus and saying YouTube Rick biomoistia,

97
00:06:11,160 --> 00:06:14,920
Speaker 3: We're not so different you and I. You know, still

98
00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:17,599
Speaker 3: my favorite villain life. We're not so different you and I.

99
00:06:17,839 --> 00:06:22,320
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I do love that line. Well, and it's

100
00:06:22,400 --> 00:06:25,000
Speaker 2: just so true because in the end, right, everybody's got

101
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:27,919
Speaker 2: that greater good they're fighting for, even fungus.

102
00:06:28,160 --> 00:06:29,160
Speaker 5: Yeah, fungus is.

103
00:06:29,080 --> 00:06:32,080
Speaker 3: The protagonist of its own story, dude.

104
00:06:32,120 --> 00:06:35,039
Speaker 2: Well, because some fungus is great and is actually beneficial

105
00:06:35,279 --> 00:06:39,680
Speaker 2: for other plant in animal life. Other fungus, though, is

106
00:06:39,880 --> 00:06:41,279
Speaker 2: just out for its own thing.

107
00:06:41,720 --> 00:06:44,360
Speaker 3: Shout out Last of Us, shout out Cortis EPs.

108
00:06:44,480 --> 00:06:47,440
Speaker 5: Yeah, fruiting, fruiting bodies.

109
00:06:47,240 --> 00:06:52,080
Speaker 3: Right, parasitic right. We did an episode and video back

110
00:06:52,880 --> 00:06:55,200
Speaker 3: before we went to audio podcast. We talked a bit

111
00:06:55,640 --> 00:07:02,520
Speaker 3: you think about the the incredible subgenre of fungus. I'm

112
00:07:02,520 --> 00:07:06,520
Speaker 3: not saying, I'm not using the crrect taxonomy, but there

113
00:07:06,600 --> 00:07:09,920
Speaker 3: are not like Last of Us. For anyone who doesn't know,

114
00:07:10,400 --> 00:07:15,000
Speaker 3: does not come from a vacuum, there are parasitic life

115
00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:20,120
Speaker 3: forms that alter the behavior of their prey and they

116
00:07:20,360 --> 00:07:23,800
Speaker 3: make them do crazy, crazy things. Now it's not just

117
00:07:23,880 --> 00:07:27,080
Speaker 3: related to or it's not just restricted the fungus, but

118
00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:30,160
Speaker 3: you have to know these things are much more animate

119
00:07:30,600 --> 00:07:33,239
Speaker 3: than they may appear. If you and your hippie friends

120
00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:34,760
Speaker 3: are out foraging in the woods.

121
00:07:35,640 --> 00:07:37,800
Speaker 4: Well yeah, even in the way they like communicate with

122
00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:40,800
Speaker 4: each other through practically neural networks. We'll get to that

123
00:07:41,360 --> 00:07:44,040
Speaker 4: one percent, But you know, the question then become maybe

124
00:07:44,040 --> 00:07:47,200
Speaker 4: we lead with what exactly is a mushroom?

125
00:07:47,360 --> 00:07:47,560
Speaker 5: You know?

126
00:07:47,720 --> 00:07:50,600
Speaker 4: We know, I mean, I'm surprised there hasn't been more

127
00:07:50,640 --> 00:07:53,640
Speaker 4: of a mushroom lobby to like encourage the edible types

128
00:07:53,720 --> 00:07:56,000
Speaker 4: like the incredible edible egg. But the fact of the matter,

129
00:07:56,000 --> 00:07:58,240
Speaker 4: it is not all mushrooms are created equal. Some of

130
00:07:58,280 --> 00:08:01,360
Speaker 4: them are delicious when sauted with butter, and some of

131
00:08:01,400 --> 00:08:04,280
Speaker 4: them will kill you. As we know from that story

132
00:08:04,320 --> 00:08:06,600
Speaker 4: out of Australia that Matt brought to us about the

133
00:08:07,280 --> 00:08:09,560
Speaker 4: woman that I believe made some sort of beef Wellington

134
00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:14,480
Speaker 4: out of what was it, deaf cap mushrooms, Yeah.

135
00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:17,200
Speaker 3: Which probably came over to Australia and the pine trees. Yeah,

136
00:08:17,320 --> 00:08:21,680
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a weird, weird story. And this is not,

137
00:08:21,920 --> 00:08:26,640
Speaker 3: by the way, the first person to allegedly commit homicide

138
00:08:26,720 --> 00:08:31,080
Speaker 3: in this fashion. Tale as old as time, and I

139
00:08:31,760 --> 00:08:34,520
Speaker 3: think that's a great question to start with. What are mushrooms?

140
00:08:34,840 --> 00:08:38,480
Speaker 3: Most of us, if we're not mycologists, even if we're

141
00:08:38,679 --> 00:08:42,240
Speaker 3: very good at identifying mushrooms in the wild, you might

142
00:08:42,280 --> 00:08:46,720
Speaker 3: often think that what you are seeing is the entire organism.

143
00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:49,920
Speaker 3: It's not. You're sort of just seeing like it's dick

144
00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:53,840
Speaker 3: and balls, Because, yeah, the mushroom that you see in

145
00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:56,880
Speaker 3: the air, right above the surface or on the surface

146
00:08:56,920 --> 00:09:00,400
Speaker 3: of something is the fruit of a much lef larger

147
00:09:00,640 --> 00:09:05,560
Speaker 3: organism living underground. They're the reproductive organs of a much

148
00:09:05,640 --> 00:09:06,360
Speaker 3: larger creature.

149
00:09:07,280 --> 00:09:09,880
Speaker 5: So let's just get it out of the way. I mean,

150
00:09:10,160 --> 00:09:12,280
Speaker 5: you know, the mushroom tip that you.

151
00:09:12,280 --> 00:09:15,720
Speaker 4: See does quite result even think about human.

152
00:09:16,120 --> 00:09:17,000
Speaker 2: You know, phallus.

153
00:09:17,040 --> 00:09:19,520
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess it just does, you know.

154
00:09:19,600 --> 00:09:25,760
Speaker 3: So I guess you're right. The real life form is

155
00:09:26,080 --> 00:09:31,600
Speaker 3: a network of microscopic filaments things you can you might not.

156
00:09:31,880 --> 00:09:34,360
Speaker 3: You can't see the entirety of it with the human eye.

157
00:09:34,520 --> 00:09:37,120
Speaker 3: They're called Hyphi h y p h A.

158
00:09:37,720 --> 00:09:38,199
Speaker 2: Not to be.

159
00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:41,040
Speaker 4: Confused with the hip hop craze of the early two thousands.

160
00:09:41,040 --> 00:09:44,360
Speaker 4: Remember Hyphie like vans like got my vans on, but

161
00:09:44,360 --> 00:09:47,480
Speaker 4: they look like sneakers, the Wolfgang and like early Little

162
00:09:47,559 --> 00:09:50,360
Speaker 4: b That was the Hyphi rap movement.

163
00:09:50,720 --> 00:09:54,840
Speaker 3: So these colonies, these my celia, they spread out in

164
00:09:54,960 --> 00:10:00,160
Speaker 3: three dimensions through the undersurface, if we want to on

165
00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:02,319
Speaker 3: D and D about it, the under dark, when a

166
00:10:02,440 --> 00:10:06,960
Speaker 3: sound balder's gate. And they are essentially always at a buffet.

167
00:10:07,400 --> 00:10:12,720
Speaker 3: They are not discriminatory. They will feed on basically everything roots, wood,

168
00:10:12,920 --> 00:10:15,080
Speaker 3: and yes, the bodies of the dead.

169
00:10:15,679 --> 00:10:20,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they form networks. Okay, so like as one

170
00:10:20,760 --> 00:10:24,079
Speaker 2: let's say one of these series, right, one of these

171
00:10:24,120 --> 00:10:29,080
Speaker 2: colonies imagine it forty feet from where you are right now,

172
00:10:29,160 --> 00:10:31,959
Speaker 2: and then there's another one where you are, and then

173
00:10:32,200 --> 00:10:34,560
Speaker 2: as those things spread out, they connect together.

174
00:10:35,280 --> 00:10:39,480
Speaker 4: This is something that's really beautifully i guess dramatized for

175
00:10:39,679 --> 00:10:42,480
Speaker 4: lack of a better term. In Fantastic Fungi, they have

176
00:10:42,600 --> 00:10:46,680
Speaker 4: these sort of cgi kind of recreations of what it

177
00:10:46,679 --> 00:10:49,800
Speaker 4: would look like if you sort of animated the way

178
00:10:49,920 --> 00:10:53,680
Speaker 4: signals kind of bounce around in these networks, and they're

179
00:10:53,720 --> 00:10:56,480
Speaker 4: they're sort of, like I guess, animated using sort of

180
00:10:56,880 --> 00:10:59,760
Speaker 4: beads of light kind of dancing around between these points,

181
00:10:59,760 --> 00:11:02,640
Speaker 4: and like said Bennetts, it is a three dimensional network

182
00:11:02,920 --> 00:11:05,480
Speaker 4: that goes a lot farther than you might think. And

183
00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:07,760
Speaker 4: we'll get into what that actually, you know, means in

184
00:11:07,800 --> 00:11:10,880
Speaker 4: a little bit. But really really cool images in that film.

185
00:11:11,040 --> 00:11:14,240
Speaker 4: Oh also, just last thing, if if anybody is into

186
00:11:14,360 --> 00:11:18,720
Speaker 4: just trippy imagery, there's nothing cooler than watching mushrooms grow

187
00:11:18,760 --> 00:11:22,800
Speaker 4: in time lapse. It is so cool and it really

188
00:11:23,040 --> 00:11:25,800
Speaker 4: points to kind of how alien and mutant some of

189
00:11:25,800 --> 00:11:28,240
Speaker 4: these things really seem like. And there's tone of that

190
00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:30,280
Speaker 4: in the Fantastic Fungi documentary.

191
00:11:30,679 --> 00:11:33,640
Speaker 3: I've never said no to a time lapse and I'm

192
00:11:33,640 --> 00:11:36,880
Speaker 3: not about to start saying that now. I'll also one

193
00:11:36,920 --> 00:11:41,520
Speaker 3: way to understand it, folks, if you have studied termite colonies,

194
00:11:41,640 --> 00:11:45,280
Speaker 3: termite hives, then maybe the best way to put it

195
00:11:45,360 --> 00:11:51,400
Speaker 3: is through comparison. Termite hives are like duplow constructions, and

196
00:11:52,320 --> 00:11:56,400
Speaker 3: these fungal networks are like the lego or technique for

197
00:11:56,559 --> 00:11:59,319
Speaker 3: the nerds in the crowd, right, welcome.

198
00:11:59,480 --> 00:12:01,040
Speaker 2: Correctly technechnic.

199
00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:07,640
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, we're fun guys. So there's also, uh,

200
00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:11,319
Speaker 3: there's also a common misconception I think a lot of

201
00:12:11,360 --> 00:12:14,600
Speaker 3: people have, which is we think of mushrooms as plants.

202
00:12:15,080 --> 00:12:18,079
Speaker 3: We think of fungus as a plant life form. It

203
00:12:18,160 --> 00:12:22,720
Speaker 3: is not. They are actually more closely related to animals

204
00:12:22,760 --> 00:12:27,480
Speaker 3: in that they breathe oxygen, they excel carbon dioxide, and

205
00:12:28,040 --> 00:12:32,680
Speaker 3: they cannot contain chlorophyll or they don't for the most part.

206
00:12:32,800 --> 00:12:37,800
Speaker 4: They literally have gills, really, you know, oh yeah, underneath

207
00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:42,520
Speaker 4: the mushroom, the tip the head, there's there's these things

208
00:12:42,559 --> 00:12:44,600
Speaker 4: that are officially called gills.

209
00:12:44,520 --> 00:12:48,880
Speaker 3: But not not not for water. But now exactly, like I'm.

210
00:12:48,720 --> 00:12:52,520
Speaker 4: Just saying, almost, there is a certain part of the

211
00:12:52,559 --> 00:12:56,600
Speaker 4: nomenclature of mushrooms. It feels more like describing human or

212
00:12:56,640 --> 00:13:00,920
Speaker 4: animal biology, you know, physiology that it does like describing

213
00:13:00,960 --> 00:13:02,160
Speaker 4: plant life.

214
00:13:01,960 --> 00:13:07,040
Speaker 3: Again Lovecraft in Yeah, so these weird mixtapes of superpowers.

215
00:13:07,520 --> 00:13:12,360
Speaker 3: According to some more out there researchers, like the late

216
00:13:12,440 --> 00:13:17,560
Speaker 3: and controversial ethnobiologist Terence McKenna and philosopher I would argue,

217
00:13:18,320 --> 00:13:22,040
Speaker 3: they'll even suggest that certain mushrooms are responsible for the

218
00:13:22,200 --> 00:13:25,559
Speaker 3: evolution of human intelligence as we know it, getting human

219
00:13:25,600 --> 00:13:31,280
Speaker 3: civilization across the gap of the bicameral mind, even leading

220
00:13:31,320 --> 00:13:35,280
Speaker 3: to the creation or discovery if you like, of religion.

221
00:13:35,720 --> 00:13:39,720
Speaker 3: And it's no secret that mushrooms and other fungi are

222
00:13:40,080 --> 00:13:44,840
Speaker 3: often associated with witchcraft and anywhere you go in the world,

223
00:13:46,120 --> 00:13:51,080
Speaker 3: these entities have existed in step with the primates that

224
00:13:51,160 --> 00:13:55,280
Speaker 3: later became humans. As a result, there are tons and

225
00:13:55,400 --> 00:14:01,160
Speaker 3: tons of folklore involving mushrooms, often in a sinister or

226
00:14:02,080 --> 00:14:04,920
Speaker 3: epiphantic or like revelatory sort of way.

227
00:14:05,760 --> 00:14:09,199
Speaker 2: Yes, and if you're super interested in that concept of

228
00:14:09,960 --> 00:14:13,440
Speaker 2: mushrooms potentially having an effect on the evolution of humans

229
00:14:13,480 --> 00:14:16,559
Speaker 2: right and our intelligence, do check out our episode from

230
00:14:16,600 --> 00:14:21,080
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. It's called Psilocybin, Fact, Fiction and Future with

231
00:14:21,200 --> 00:14:23,640
Speaker 2: Robert Lamb it's a great conversation.

232
00:14:24,080 --> 00:14:26,760
Speaker 3: Oh beautiful. Yeah, and check out stuff to blow your

233
00:14:26,760 --> 00:14:30,960
Speaker 3: mind with our pals Rob and Joe and so Joe also,

234
00:14:31,080 --> 00:14:33,960
Speaker 3: of course famously we say it several times a year.

235
00:14:34,080 --> 00:14:36,640
Speaker 3: Joe Joe let us down quite the rabbit hole with

236
00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:40,920
Speaker 3: the bi caramel mind episode and so like. Okay, German

237
00:14:40,960 --> 00:14:44,520
Speaker 3: folklore which is dance inside fairy rings. Fairy rings are

238
00:14:44,520 --> 00:14:49,400
Speaker 3: formed by mushrooms. French fables will warn anybody against stepping

239
00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:53,200
Speaker 3: into these fairy rings, which are sometimes in France called

240
00:14:53,520 --> 00:14:55,880
Speaker 3: source of his rings, and they say, if you do,

241
00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:59,600
Speaker 3: you'll get cursed by a specific kind of toad, a

242
00:14:59,680 --> 00:15:03,960
Speaker 3: toad that seems haunted. A toad that has bulging eyes.

243
00:15:05,080 --> 00:15:06,520
Speaker 4: Did you put this in here for me, my my

244
00:15:07,040 --> 00:15:08,800
Speaker 4: young gumm and boy heritage?

245
00:15:09,520 --> 00:15:11,600
Speaker 3: I did. I did. That's why I put the German

246
00:15:11,640 --> 00:15:12,440
Speaker 3: folklore there.

247
00:15:12,600 --> 00:15:12,920
Speaker 2: Thank you.

248
00:15:12,920 --> 00:15:13,680
Speaker 5: I appreciate that.

249
00:15:14,440 --> 00:15:16,760
Speaker 2: What is this? What's this toad gonna do to you?

250
00:15:16,880 --> 00:15:19,120
Speaker 2: Hop around near you and just look at you.

251
00:15:19,160 --> 00:15:20,880
Speaker 5: Bulge at you man, those eyes.

252
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:26,880
Speaker 2: I'll just give you the evil eye.

253
00:15:28,720 --> 00:15:30,680
Speaker 5: Huey Lewis will be coming for you, buddy, before you know.

254
00:15:31,280 --> 00:15:31,560
Speaker 5: You know what.

255
00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:33,600
Speaker 4: Else though, it's something that you see a lot in

256
00:15:34,240 --> 00:15:37,760
Speaker 4: kind of psychedelic fiction, like Alice in Wonderland, Alice eats

257
00:15:37,800 --> 00:15:40,760
Speaker 4: the part of the different mushrooms, you know, to become

258
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:44,840
Speaker 4: big and small and all of that, and the hookah

259
00:15:44,880 --> 00:15:48,720
Speaker 4: smoking caterpillar, you know, as described by Jefferson airplane, is

260
00:15:48,720 --> 00:15:50,320
Speaker 4: sitting on giant mushrooms.

261
00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:56,200
Speaker 3: And interestingly enough, in most obviously right, we're all making

262
00:15:56,200 --> 00:15:58,640
Speaker 3: the connection the idea of a toad with bulging eyes

263
00:15:58,680 --> 00:16:01,320
Speaker 3: had it been infected by a certain type of fungus

264
00:16:01,320 --> 00:16:04,200
Speaker 3: that was changing its behavior. There there may be some

265
00:16:04,320 --> 00:16:08,920
Speaker 3: sand to that, but in the bulk of Western folklore,

266
00:16:08,960 --> 00:16:12,480
Speaker 3: at least uh these things are seen as magical objects,

267
00:16:12,760 --> 00:16:16,520
Speaker 3: or they're seen as perhaps a symbolic gateway to a

268
00:16:16,560 --> 00:16:23,080
Speaker 3: greater realization. They're not seeing as entities with agency. And

269
00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:26,560
Speaker 3: that's fascinating because one of the hottest debates in recent

270
00:16:26,680 --> 00:16:30,760
Speaker 3: decades concerns the idea of kid you not conspiracy, realist

271
00:16:31,080 --> 00:16:35,920
Speaker 3: fungal intelligence, which sounds super hp Lovecraft. It's about to

272
00:16:35,960 --> 00:16:40,400
Speaker 3: get even more Lovecraft, by the way, but legitimate scientists

273
00:16:40,400 --> 00:16:44,800
Speaker 3: are making this argument. We picked one that we've got

274
00:16:44,800 --> 00:16:49,359
Speaker 3: to mention just because his name is Amazing. Professor biology

275
00:16:49,600 --> 00:16:55,000
Speaker 3: at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I know his name

276
00:16:55,120 --> 00:16:57,040
Speaker 3: is Nicholas P. Money.

277
00:16:57,280 --> 00:17:02,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was really quickly to the Lovecraft reference.

278
00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:03,760
Speaker 5: Just I know most people are familiar, but.

279
00:17:03,920 --> 00:17:07,000
Speaker 4: I think one thing that evokes this for me is

280
00:17:07,040 --> 00:17:10,760
Speaker 4: that a lot of the deities of Lovecraft stories are

281
00:17:10,880 --> 00:17:14,320
Speaker 4: these kind of ancient earth spirits or from the depths

282
00:17:14,359 --> 00:17:17,280
Speaker 4: of the sea, or in some way from so deep, deep,

283
00:17:17,320 --> 00:17:20,600
Speaker 4: deep down that they're basically in another realm. But I

284
00:17:20,680 --> 00:17:23,919
Speaker 4: picture these things as having like mushrooms growing out of

285
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:27,040
Speaker 4: their bodies, you know, and so of being like one

286
00:17:27,200 --> 00:17:29,760
Speaker 4: with the roots of the trees, and part of this

287
00:17:29,880 --> 00:17:33,800
Speaker 4: sort of like deeper you know, esoteric knowledge of the

288
00:17:33,960 --> 00:17:35,720
Speaker 4: planet and the universe.

289
00:17:36,160 --> 00:17:37,920
Speaker 3: Oh, we'll get to that part. Well.

290
00:17:37,960 --> 00:17:40,240
Speaker 2: It's kind of weird because the stuff that Nick Money

291
00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:47,480
Speaker 2: is talking about almost lends itself to maybe I'm sorry,

292
00:17:47,520 --> 00:17:50,280
Speaker 2: go ahead please, but it's feeling like maybe there's something

293
00:17:50,320 --> 00:17:51,240
Speaker 2: to it.

294
00:17:51,520 --> 00:17:57,080
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And Professor Money first off, also a great name.

295
00:17:57,240 --> 00:17:58,360
Speaker 5: These are for free Nick.

296
00:17:59,080 --> 00:18:04,040
Speaker 3: Professor Money argues for fungal intelligence in terms of operation

297
00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:07,840
Speaker 3: operational capacity, right or capability, which is what we've talked

298
00:18:07,880 --> 00:18:10,800
Speaker 3: about when we talk about how the human species still

299
00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:16,080
Speaker 3: can't defy in intelligence. Fungus can operate as like different

300
00:18:16,119 --> 00:18:19,200
Speaker 3: species of fungus can operate as an individual or as

301
00:18:19,240 --> 00:18:23,840
Speaker 3: a group. It appears to make decisions based on things

302
00:18:23,880 --> 00:18:28,320
Speaker 3: that would increase its likelihood of consuming resources and reproducing.

303
00:18:28,480 --> 00:18:31,800
Speaker 3: It can learn. It has short term memory. That doesn't

304
00:18:31,840 --> 00:18:35,680
Speaker 3: mean it's conscious or sentient, but it does. It does

305
00:18:35,800 --> 00:18:39,680
Speaker 3: make a case that these things are having some sort

306
00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:47,080
Speaker 3: of agency creating or pursuing better environmental situations. Spooky spooky stuff.

307
00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:51,280
Speaker 2: Well, think about short term memory like that means something

308
00:18:51,600 --> 00:18:54,840
Speaker 2: some information is stored somewhere within the network, within the

309
00:18:54,880 --> 00:18:58,280
Speaker 2: single organism or the group of organisms. You cannot have

310
00:18:58,320 --> 00:19:03,720
Speaker 2: short term memory without informa being stored and then accessed. Again,

311
00:19:04,680 --> 00:19:05,840
Speaker 2: that's so intense to me.

312
00:19:06,440 --> 00:19:09,760
Speaker 4: Think of memory in a computer that sort of access

313
00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:12,520
Speaker 4: short term memory, you know, and like hard drive space

314
00:19:12,520 --> 00:19:14,000
Speaker 4: would be maybe the long term memory.

315
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:15,880
Speaker 5: But the RAM or.

316
00:19:15,840 --> 00:19:18,439
Speaker 4: Whatever it is you know that you're using in whatever

317
00:19:18,480 --> 00:19:21,000
Speaker 4: computer system you have, it is like the stuff that

318
00:19:21,080 --> 00:19:23,240
Speaker 4: is needed for like the short term for the time

319
00:19:23,280 --> 00:19:25,199
Speaker 4: being loaded into that and then moved on.

320
00:19:26,080 --> 00:19:28,720
Speaker 3: And guys, I want to take a quick side note, folks.

321
00:19:29,320 --> 00:19:32,480
Speaker 3: For the last few episodes, you may have heard a

322
00:19:32,560 --> 00:19:36,200
Speaker 3: cat in a background. Unfortunately, I have a cat who

323
00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:39,280
Speaker 3: is not doing very well, so I need to keep

324
00:19:39,280 --> 00:19:42,320
Speaker 3: an eye on him. And Matt Nolan, I want to say,

325
00:19:42,320 --> 00:19:46,239
Speaker 3: I appreciate you guys for tolerating that. So we're going

326
00:19:46,320 --> 00:19:48,480
Speaker 3: to go ahead and get through this episode because I

327
00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:51,000
Speaker 3: think what you bring up there, Noel, the idea of

328
00:19:51,080 --> 00:19:56,239
Speaker 3: the computer analogue is the idea of storage of a

329
00:19:56,359 --> 00:20:01,520
Speaker 3: past situation is indeed fascinating. That is not That is

330
00:20:01,560 --> 00:20:04,800
Speaker 3: not what you think about when you're eating a fantastic

331
00:20:04,880 --> 00:20:08,480
Speaker 3: mushroom pizza, right, That's not what you think about when

332
00:20:08,640 --> 00:20:13,080
Speaker 3: you are, like me, sorry, making a kick ass mushroom case. Ada.

333
00:20:13,480 --> 00:20:18,480
Speaker 3: We also know that things very much like fungus, the

334
00:20:18,520 --> 00:20:25,360
Speaker 3: aforementioned slime molds, they can make incredible logistical decisions that

335
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:31,240
Speaker 3: rival those of human beings. Perhaps the most i would

336
00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:37,280
Speaker 3: say illustrative experiment involved slime mold that was able to

337
00:20:37,440 --> 00:20:42,479
Speaker 3: generate the most effective and accurate map of the Tokyo

338
00:20:42,640 --> 00:20:43,440
Speaker 3: rail system.

339
00:20:43,640 --> 00:20:46,360
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can find that in an article from Wired

340
00:20:46,400 --> 00:20:50,040
Speaker 4: by Laura Sanders from their science desk. Slime mold grows

341
00:20:50,119 --> 00:20:53,520
Speaker 4: network just like Tokyo rail system. It's got images of

342
00:20:53,800 --> 00:20:56,600
Speaker 4: how long it takes it to form. And once again,

343
00:20:56,720 --> 00:20:59,160
Speaker 4: like if you watch like time lapses of this kind

344
00:20:59,160 --> 00:21:03,080
Speaker 4: of stuff is remarkable because you also might notice that

345
00:21:03,119 --> 00:21:05,480
Speaker 4: if you have like your front yard or whatever, and

346
00:21:05,520 --> 00:21:07,520
Speaker 4: you see a little mushroom and then you have a

347
00:21:07,520 --> 00:21:10,359
Speaker 4: big rain, you might come out like two hours later

348
00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:13,520
Speaker 4: and that thing's doubled in size. So these things grow

349
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:18,879
Speaker 4: at alarming rates, with the serious complexity to them, and

350
00:21:18,920 --> 00:21:21,280
Speaker 4: because we're not even seeing what's happening behind the scenes

351
00:21:21,359 --> 00:21:22,600
Speaker 4: right underground.

352
00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:28,160
Speaker 3: And again credit to Laura Sanders from January of twenty

353
00:21:28,240 --> 00:21:32,800
Speaker 3: twenty two for that fantastic summation over on Wired on

354
00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:37,520
Speaker 3: the Slime Mold Network. It seems that overall, in exchange

355
00:21:37,640 --> 00:21:43,480
Speaker 3: for not having the superpower of photosynthesis, fungi have gained

356
00:21:43,640 --> 00:21:47,920
Speaker 3: other superpowers, the ability to control other creatures, to live

357
00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:51,800
Speaker 3: with or through them, et cetera, et cetera. Why are

358
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:54,240
Speaker 3: we telling you all this? First because we think it's

359
00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:58,359
Speaker 3: super interesting. Second because we want to explore a notion

360
00:21:58,560 --> 00:22:02,040
Speaker 3: this evening that haunts just as much as it haunted

361
00:22:02,280 --> 00:22:06,760
Speaker 3: HP Lovecraft in his day. What if the first extraterrestrials

362
00:22:06,840 --> 00:22:10,639
Speaker 3: humans meet aren't animals at all? What if there's some

363
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:14,840
Speaker 3: sort of mushroom. We're gonna pause for a word from

364
00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:18,359
Speaker 3: our sponsor. Let's all go check on our portabellas and

365
00:22:18,400 --> 00:22:28,160
Speaker 3: we'll be right back. Here's where it gets crazy.

366
00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:34,119
Speaker 2: Then, I just had a flash of fungus technology, like

367
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:40,239
Speaker 2: an intelligent fungal species that we encounter that creates its

368
00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:44,480
Speaker 2: own technology. I know that's been portrayed in places, but

369
00:22:45,119 --> 00:22:49,440
Speaker 2: I don't like what just happened inside my brain visual stuff.

370
00:22:49,800 --> 00:22:54,240
Speaker 3: And your brain is really your first spaceship, So hold on.

371
00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:56,320
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe not a mushroom like you do order

372
00:22:56,359 --> 00:22:58,480
Speaker 3: a pizza, but how about a fungus.

373
00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:02,320
Speaker 4: Well, you know, you mentioned mushroom technology. In the realm

374
00:23:02,359 --> 00:23:04,760
Speaker 4: of like cinemon fiction, I think a creator that does

375
00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:07,280
Speaker 4: a great job of depicting this kind of stuff, as

376
00:23:07,840 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 4: David Cronenberg, and in movies like Naked Lunch or you know, Videodrome,

377
00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:15,120
Speaker 4: there's a lot of kind of like body horror modification

378
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:18,719
Speaker 4: kind of stuff that involves these sort of outgrowths, you know,

379
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:22,439
Speaker 4: that have very mushroom like qualities. Pretty pretty, pretty neat stuff.

380
00:23:22,720 --> 00:23:28,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's stick with fiction here because we owe

381
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:32,640
Speaker 3: it to the Lovecraft fans, of which I count myself

382
00:23:32,680 --> 00:23:36,080
Speaker 3: in their number in the mythos of HB. Lovecraft, as

383
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:40,400
Speaker 3: many of us listening tonight doubtlessly know, there is precedent

384
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:44,600
Speaker 3: for this. The alien race. The Mego m I dash

385
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:51,040
Speaker 3: Go are a. There are an interstellar capable species of

386
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:54,520
Speaker 3: things that kind of look like crustaceans but are actually

387
00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 3: fungoid in nature. They're from a planet called Juga or Yuggolf,

388
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:02,640
Speaker 3: and they get into all sorts of what we can

389
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:06,480
Speaker 3: just call lovable hygiens the way that Requiem for a

390
00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:08,200
Speaker 3: Dream is a great date night for them.

391
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:12,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are infernal beings, aren't they been there?

392
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:17,719
Speaker 3: They're ancient aliens, is a go way to describe them.

393
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 3: And as bizarre as that might sound, it might sound

394
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:25,280
Speaker 3: like Lovecraft was off off his gourd right out of

395
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:29,240
Speaker 3: his badger bag on drugs or something. But turns out

396
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:34,359
Speaker 3: science is proving that these fun guys are actually a

397
00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:39,680
Speaker 3: pretty fantastic candidate for the first aliens that humans meet.

398
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 3: They're up there with the water bear, the Tartar grade,

399
00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 3: the legend in the game when it comes to outer

400
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:48,080
Speaker 3: space for survival. They're there may be better than the

401
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 3: Tartar grade. Honestly, and like human astronauts, some form of

402
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:55,240
Speaker 3: them is already in space. It's already happening, like that

403
00:24:55,359 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 3: ship has sailed, that rocket has launched, mushroom a fungus

404
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:04,959
Speaker 3: are there are other astronauts that are non human that

405
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 3: beat you to space. If you're listening tonight.

406
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:13,640
Speaker 4: Far far more adaptable than you are, right, I mean,

407
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:17,639
Speaker 4: don't we already have like space mold. That's that's become

408
00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 4: a bit of of an issue for astronauts and the

409
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:21,119
Speaker 4: International Space Station.

410
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:25,440
Speaker 3: It's a huge problem. Imagine, I mean, owning a house, right,

411
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 3: a little spaceship on the space of Earth's surface is

412
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:30,560
Speaker 3: already pretty stressful.

413
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:31,200
Speaker 2: Now.

414
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:34,719
Speaker 3: You you can't drive to home depot, you know, you

415
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 3: can't door dash some taco bell or whatever. You're officially

416
00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 3: responsible for your own diarrhea. In space, you can't. You can't.

417
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 3: You can't do a lot of stuff, and there are

418
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:50,399
Speaker 3: so many things that could go wrong. Ever since people

419
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:53,639
Speaker 3: went to space for longer than just like a lost

420
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:59,240
Speaker 3: cosmonaut Gagarin kind of jaunt there and back. Ever since

421
00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 3: that moment that people spend time in space, mold and

422
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 3: fungus has been a huge problem. Science Magazine has talked

423
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 3: about it with the journalist Richard a love it, and

424
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 3: even now in the International Space Station, one of the

425
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 3: things they have to constantly battle is mold, specific types

426
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 3: of mold that are as determined and tenacious as your

427
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:30,520
Speaker 3: favorite horror movie villain. They're like Jason, They're like Friday

428
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 3: the thirteenth. They don't stop. They always come back.

429
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 2: And we'll find out why these things proliferate so much

430
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 2: better in space than they do even on Earth in

431
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 2: a moment.

432
00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we have to also say that these issues

433
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:49,760
Speaker 3: go back much further than they go back much further

434
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 3: than the ISS, as far back as nineteen eighty eight.

435
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:58,919
Speaker 3: Russians aboard the Mirror Space Station. They were Russian because

436
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:02,639
Speaker 3: it was a space station. They looked out one of

437
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:06,880
Speaker 3: their observation ports one time one orbit and they said, hey,

438
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:12,040
Speaker 3: something's on the window. And they probably checked with ground

439
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 3: control and they were like, is there's some supposed to

440
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:19,480
Speaker 3: be something on the window And ground control is like, bro, yet.

441
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:22,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean this you know Alien literally, I mean

442
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 4: you say trudging towards and I'm just picturing you know,

443
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:29,160
Speaker 4: the first Alien film, you know, or this this unstoppable

444
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:32,880
Speaker 4: force is you know, you're you're locked up with this

445
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:35,479
Speaker 4: thing in space and no one can hear you scream.

446
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 4: But it turns out, you know, the stowaway and this

447
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:43,360
Speaker 4: situation that was slowly destroying these for all intents and purposes,

448
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:47,399
Speaker 4: pretty impervious windows made of something called titanium quartz was

449
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 4: revealed to have been a type of fun guy that

450
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 4: had stowed away by clinging to the astronauts themselves.

451
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 2: Think about how horrifying that is. You're stuck in a spaceship.

452
00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 2: If anything breached into the outside of that spaceship, you're gone.

453
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 2: Everybody's gone. Nothing you can do about it, Bye bye e.

454
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:09,959
Speaker 2: And this fungus is just sitting there hanging out on

455
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 2: your windows.

456
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:17,560
Speaker 3: Eating them. It's coming in and from the inside. This

457
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 3: happened multiple times on the Mirror space station alone. There

458
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:27,959
Speaker 3: is an infamous story from nineteen ninety seven on Mirror

459
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 3: because they were never able to fix this problem nor

460
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 3: really get their heads around it. And it's something we're

461
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 3: talking about off air. Let's go cinematic with it. Let's

462
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 3: go to the astronaut David Wolf. No, no, we don't

463
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:44,720
Speaker 3: know if he's a relation to Dick Wolf. But one

464
00:28:44,800 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 3: day this astronaut is a board Mirror and he opens

465
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 3: a service panel, a little maintenance panel, and inside he

466
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 3: finds not just the mechanisms who was looking for, but

467
00:28:56,400 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 3: large condensate globs bowling ball size, beach ball size, big

468
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 3: big boys.

469
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 5: That's right.

470
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:09,760
Speaker 2: Think about that. The globs of water that on mirror

471
00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 2: in their what they don't call it a non gravity

472
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:20,960
Speaker 2: of situation, it's a very low, very very low gravity situation.

473
00:29:22,200 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 2: Balls of water that's got stuff in and inside the ball,

474
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 2: and on the surface.

475
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 4: Of that ball, gooey, slimy ice, cold orbs of stagnant

476
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 4: water that were just absolutely swarming, teeming with dozens of

477
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 4: species of bacteria and fungi. And of course they weren't

478
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 4: just stagnant themselves just by pemale of stagnant water. They

479
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 4: were already beginning to colonize and expand and move out

480
00:29:56,280 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 4: in this low gravity environment into the Why the electrical

481
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:05,720
Speaker 4: systems of the plane talk about moisture on Earth is terrifying,

482
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:08,240
Speaker 4: you know, but you can usually mitigate it with like

483
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm an evangelist for dehumidifiers. But in space,

484
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 4: where this stuff is just going everywhere, are getting into stuff.

485
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's occluded, right, which means you can see

486
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 3: kind of through the water, but you can see the

487
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 3: things moving within, which is even creepier. And let's say

488
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 3: talisized colonizing, because that goes back to the idea of agency. Right,

489
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 3: are they deciding to do a thing, you know, or

490
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 3: are they just fun guys fung guying It's it doesn't

491
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter philosophically for Wolf though, because he's got

492
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 3: to like figure out how to stay alive untill he

493
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 3: can get back to Earth.

494
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I keep imagining the moment of beholding it

495
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 2: for the first time, pulling away that panel and seeing

496
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 2: what looks like probably a creature of some sort, right,

497
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:05,160
Speaker 2: I mean, it probably looks like a living, breathing creature

498
00:31:05,280 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 2: that is, you know, moving in the way it's floating there.

499
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 3: I hope it has I hope it has a funny voice.

500
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 3: It'd be awesome if it was like love it the wiry.

501
00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 5: Jeez. It's terrifying.

502
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 3: So it adapted. It didn't just adapt to the inner

503
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 3: environment of space space station, but it adapted to the

504
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:37,480
Speaker 3: outer environment. It survived. It thrived on windows, control panels,

505
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 3: air conditioners, cable insulators. You know, if you have ever

506
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 3: you know, had to mitigate black mold in a house

507
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 3: or a domicile here on Earth. You know that it

508
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 3: just does. It doesn't just go away, it doesn't move on.

509
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 3: You have to intervene.

510
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 2: But again, anything that could potentially form condensation within the

511
00:31:58,440 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 2: environment of the space station, right, that's what we're talking about,

512
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 2: because it's that water. It's that all beautiful, precious holy

513
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,640
Speaker 2: water that allows these things to generate.

514
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 3: We both have moisture. We're not so different to you

515
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 3: and I, Oh, there it is.

516
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 4: And it just points out too that like in this situation,

517
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:20,760
Speaker 4: like is the mold, is the funguy the villain or

518
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 4: just the hero in its own story? And like we're

519
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 4: kind of irrelevant in the exchange, you know what I

520
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 4: mean as far as it's concerned.

521
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 3: Non fungal life forms are vectors. There are another part

522
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 3: of an environment to the thing, and every living thing

523
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 3: is the protagonist of its own story. At this point,

524
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 3: we can't blame anybody for saying, dang, this is the

525
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 3: perfect setup from an ex sci fi horror novel. Thanks guys.

526
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 3: But in the real world where the real orbit around it,

527
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 3: scientists are not scared. They're very excited about the implications

528
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 3: of life. That seems, weirdly enough, pretty great at this

529
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 3: whole space thing and that let's get to that thing

530
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:03,480
Speaker 3: you foreshadowed so beautifully. They're thriving because they're able unlike humans,

531
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 3: they're able to reproduce in space.

532
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 5: Right.

533
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it turns out the low gravity situation really works

534
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 2: out when the way you reproduce is to shoot spores

535
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 2: out from your person or your fun guy. Because in

536
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 2: the low gravity it's you get a three sixty shot basically,

537
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 2: especially if you're floating right when you're beginning to reproduce.

538
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 2: It's kind of nice, kind of works great because you

539
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 2: can shoot those spores clear across right to the other side,

540
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 2: maybe even fill an entire space or room with your spores.

541
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's nuts too because they since they don't have gravity.

542
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:45,959
Speaker 3: It's like when you see fire and lower gravity or

543
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 3: a lack of gravity, or when you see do you

544
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 3: guys watch those videos of astronauts talking to kids or

545
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 3: talking to news organizations and they have different foods that

546
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 3: are floated around, Like, that's what those spores are doing,

547
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 3: and they to your point, Matt, they have nothing to

548
00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 3: stop them from expanding. Also, I think people still don't

549
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:11,840
Speaker 3: understand how space borne fungal species are able to be

550
00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:15,880
Speaker 3: dormant until the perfect time. Somehow they know when to

551
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,919
Speaker 3: activate and begin sporing. And I would imagine, again we're

552
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 3: not mycologist, but I would imagine that's somehow based on

553
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 3: perception of water or access to moisture or sensing food.

554
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 4: I don't know, so, you know, I think we've sort

555
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:32,760
Speaker 4: of made this point a couple of times. This stuff

556
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 4: is just incredibly adaptable, and as you mentioned, they are

557
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 4: able to reproduce out there. They've seem to have an

558
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 4: evolutionary leg up on human beings from the jump, wouldn't you,

559
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:44,760
Speaker 4: guys say?

560
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, at least in this environment. Yet, it

561
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:51,319
Speaker 3: seems some of the stuff they evolved on Earth has

562
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 3: benefited them and they have powers that humans don't. And

563
00:34:56,800 --> 00:35:01,800
Speaker 3: scientists also have concluded that they need to study fungal

564
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 3: growth and behavior in microgravity, especially to your point about adaptation,

565
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 3: all that ability to repair DNA damage from radiation, Like,

566
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:15,840
Speaker 3: what if you could somehow adapt that to humans. I

567
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 3: don't know how you would begin to do that, but

568
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:23,959
Speaker 3: what if you could make the homo fungoid. Homo fungi insists.

569
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 2: With Crisper, one can do anything.

570
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 4: David Cronenberg, He's got the imagination for let's put him

571
00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:32,000
Speaker 4: in charge. No, it's true, and it really does make

572
00:35:32,080 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 4: you when you zoom back out and think about like

573
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 4: our place in the universe, and you know, our attempts

574
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 4: to push out word into the deeper into the universe,

575
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,840
Speaker 4: and how much better suited fungui are for that journey.

576
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:49,120
Speaker 4: It really makes you kind of question, like, did they

577
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 4: come from there in the first place?

578
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:57,359
Speaker 3: Deep water, my friend, deep water. And it's startling knowing

579
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 3: all this, knowing that the world old's top scientists, we're

580
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:06,279
Speaker 3: aware that fungus was awesome in space. Nobody launched any

581
00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:11,600
Speaker 3: of this into space on purpose until twenty sixteen, which

582
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 3: is kind of recent, right.

583
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:17,560
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, well, as we know time is accelerating, everybody

584
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:21,360
Speaker 2: we know this, twenty sixteen feels like it was a

585
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:26,879
Speaker 2: couple weeks ago. Nope, No, but why did they do that,

586
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:30,360
Speaker 2: Like why would they wait until twenty sixteen to really

587
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:33,799
Speaker 2: try and study this stuff? For my money, I would

588
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:37,480
Speaker 2: say it's probably because you don't want too much proliferation

589
00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 2: of fungus right on a spacecraft, so you got to

590
00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 2: make sure you can control it, at least to some extent.

591
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 2: And they were probably figuring out the technology like to

592
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 2: control it.

593
00:36:49,920 --> 00:36:53,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense, because your first priority is going

594
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:57,399
Speaker 3: to be to save the shuttle or the station and the.

595
00:36:57,560 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 2: SA save the mission, save the mission.

596
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 5: And there we go.

597
00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:03,600
Speaker 3: It's bigger than all of us. And so yeah, that's

598
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 3: a great point, man, because naturally it means that research

599
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,319
Speaker 3: is going to focus on the best cleaning method, the

600
00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:14,439
Speaker 3: best sanitation method, et cetera, et cetera. And by the way,

601
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:19,959
Speaker 3: long story short, that stuff worked, but they were never

602
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 3: able to get to one hundred percent success with it.

603
00:37:22,560 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 3: And then they began to look at the problem in

604
00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:28,279
Speaker 3: a different way, from a different angle, and they said,

605
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:33,879
Speaker 3: we can perhaps learn from these tiny boys. And at

606
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:39,480
Speaker 3: first scientists weren't super worried about how these things might

607
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:45,879
Speaker 3: cause potential health problems without mitigation. They said, look, this

608
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:49,440
Speaker 3: will only really cause health problems if people live under

609
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:55,320
Speaker 3: stressful conditions, if they have compromised immune systems. And then somebody,

610
00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:59,319
Speaker 3: one of the boffins in a room somewhere years ago said, hey,

611
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:04,799
Speaker 3: though space is stressful for humans also.

612
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:08,759
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, especially it's stressful on our immune systems, right,

613
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 2: And we didn't know that at first. That's something we

614
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 2: learned after launching you know enough human beings into space

615
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:19,359
Speaker 2: to realize, oh, something in the environment up there is

616
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:22,959
Speaker 2: causing the immune systems to be at least mildly compromised.

617
00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:24,920
Speaker 2: And a lot of that has to do with the

618
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 2: stress the body any human body undergoes when existing in space.

619
00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 2: Think about the flight itself to get out of there

620
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:35,280
Speaker 2: writing on that rocket, right, and then.

621
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 4: You've got to go through megatraining to even prepare yourself

622
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:39,759
Speaker 4: to deal with those kinds of conditions.

623
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the psychological stress of floating in space, like

624
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:46,759
Speaker 2: what is that? Were all those sci fi movies are

625
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 2: about that? Almost almost every single one ends up addressing

626
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:53,600
Speaker 2: the psychological effect of being in space. That is a

627
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 2: real thing that is occurring inside the minds and bodies

628
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 2: of every astronaut and cosmonaut and who else goes up.

629
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:03,839
Speaker 4: That's right, And this was a bit of a red

630
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 4: flag to some scientists, including a pharmaceutical scientist by the

631
00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:11,880
Speaker 4: name of Sarah de Sager, who co authored a paper

632
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:18,239
Speaker 4: for a team of scientists in Belgium's Ghent University. In

633
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:21,879
Speaker 4: an exhaustive review of literature. They didn't find a whole

634
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:23,440
Speaker 4: heck of a lot, but what they did find was

635
00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 4: mostly related to the detection of these different fungal species

636
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 4: and speaking to Live Science, she said concerning the findings

637
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:34,759
Speaker 4: of their paper specific fungi that have been found on

638
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:36,239
Speaker 4: space faring.

639
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 5: Vessels such as Aspergillis flavas and.

640
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:41,799
Speaker 4: Members of the genus all Turnaria, which couldn't sound more

641
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:45,760
Speaker 4: spacey if you ask me, are known to produce carcinogenic

642
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:50,720
Speaker 4: and immunodepressing compounds. To your point, Matt, these molecules often

643
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:53,520
Speaker 4: form when fungi get themselves.

644
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 2: Stressed exactly, Isn't that crazy? That's really really neat, like

645
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:05,239
Speaker 2: a contained stressful situation shared by different species somehow like

646
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 2: contributing to one another, and then that fung guy can

647
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 2: potentially the big problem here is that the fung guy

648
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 2: can infect the humans because they are more like compromised, right.

649
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, difficult environment cough cough outer space cough cough. I mean,

650
00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:24,360
Speaker 3: and they also can survive in the vacuum of space

651
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 3: for long periods of time. Right now, the fungus shows

652
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:33,960
Speaker 3: no signs of stopping exploration. And that's part of that

653
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:38,279
Speaker 3: is because because of their other superpower, they're highly resistant

654
00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:43,280
Speaker 3: to Some species of fungus are highly resistant to radiation,

655
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:48,240
Speaker 3: let's go to Marta Cordisau, who is Ortisau.

656
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:50,600
Speaker 5: That's kind of great.

657
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:55,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, awesome microbiologist and love the way she writes and

658
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:59,959
Speaker 3: speaks with people. She is a microbiologist at the German

659
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 3: Aerospace Center and Cologne, and she led a team that

660
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 3: took a common black mold that is a regular at

661
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 3: iss Aspergillis, Niger, and they just smacked it with X

662
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 3: rays and heavy ions. The way she describes it is,

663
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:22,240
Speaker 3: we fired quote stupid amounts of radiation at these little guys.

664
00:41:22,520 --> 00:41:24,760
Speaker 3: And I love that you're a scientist and you're saying

665
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 3: stupid amounts of radiation, right, because that's a good way

666
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:29,239
Speaker 3: to communicate with folks.

667
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 5: You know what that means.

668
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:35,840
Speaker 3: And what they found was astonishing. Also we'll have a

669
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,799
Speaker 3: bit of a tech explanation, but her team found that

670
00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 3: these specific spores could survive radiation doses of five to

671
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:48,960
Speaker 3: one thousand gray. And gray is by the way, for

672
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 3: all of us old fogies in the crowd, gray is

673
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 3: the new rad It's a measurement of X radiation exposure

674
00:41:56,200 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 3: and humans in comparison, if you were exposed to point

675
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:04,319
Speaker 3: five gray, you start to get radiation sickness. If you

676
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 3: get up the five gray, you're dead.

677
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 5: Ben.

678
00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:10,440
Speaker 4: In my mind, when you said gray is the new

679
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,240
Speaker 4: rad I was picturing as replacing like the word rad

680
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 4: as a as a slang. So I'm just gonna start saying, Bro,

681
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 4: that was totally gray.

682
00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 5: I think that might pick up What do you think, guys, happened?

683
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 5: Gray happened?

684
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 2: I think we should. I'm gonna start saying, cort Sao,

685
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 2: I love it.

686
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 4: What did Cordisao, though, have to say about this radiation testing?

687
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 2: Well, well, let's let's get in that. But just to

688
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:36,960
Speaker 2: quickly say this and connect it back to another episode

689
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 2: or another topic, that UV radiation we're talking about isn't

690
00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:43,319
Speaker 2: the exact same but thing, but it's very similar to

691
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 2: the radiation from those lights we've talked about over and

692
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:50,359
Speaker 2: over and over again, the ones that kill the bacteria

693
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:52,919
Speaker 2: and you coli and all the stuff in the water.

694
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 2: They're used in water treatment plants, same kind of radiation.

695
00:42:57,480 --> 00:42:59,880
Speaker 2: Not quite the same thing, but in this you know,

696
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 2: in this instance, it's the stuff that you would use

697
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:06,320
Speaker 2: for disinfectant in a medical situation like a hospital.

698
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:11,840
Speaker 3: And so Cortisol finds that these spores survive huge amounts

699
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 3: of high energy UV radiation to your point, Matt, about

700
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:20,280
Speaker 3: like the energy emitted by some of those high powered lights.

701
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 3: And the weird thing about this is this research led

702
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 3: them to disprove some of the established protocols for cleaning spaceships.

703
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 3: The radiation that is used to sterilize the surfaces of spacecraft,

704
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 3: it's the same stuff this fungus is immune to. So well,

705
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:43,480
Speaker 3: it's like if you're trying to uh, it's like if

706
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:47,080
Speaker 3: you're trying to get rid of fruit flies and you say,

707
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:49,400
Speaker 3: the best way to do this is this smear rotten

708
00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:53,080
Speaker 3: fruit on the walls.

709
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:55,720
Speaker 5: So what's the takeaway here, y'all?

710
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:56,279
Speaker 2: I think we.

711
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:02,720
Speaker 4: Can already say one of them is the fungi fungi fungi,

712
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:09,319
Speaker 4: mushrooms are freaking amazing. They're so versatile, they're so adaptable.

713
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,759
Speaker 4: And I think another is, like we said maybe a

714
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 4: minute ago, Ben, we were kind of going back and forth,

715
00:44:14,840 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 4: is that it's possible or actually probable. Then from the evidence,

716
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:23,719
Speaker 4: I would say the case that mushrooms fungi rather are

717
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 4: actually better equipped to survive and explore space than almost

718
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 4: any other form of life on planet Earth.

719
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:33,319
Speaker 2: It's true. I mean, they still, like we said, they

720
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:36,319
Speaker 2: need oxygen, right, and some a few other gases for

721
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:40,120
Speaker 2: them to breathe or live like that, and they need moisture.

722
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 2: And if you could make an environment with that stuff

723
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 2: and then just launch it out, guys, maybe we can

724
00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:48,239
Speaker 2: be the pan spermia we've always been looking for.

725
00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:52,400
Speaker 3: It was the friends we made along the way right there.

726
00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:56,840
Speaker 3: That's crazy because it also tells us about the origin

727
00:44:56,920 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 3: of life. I'd love to bring up pant spermia in that.

728
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,359
Speaker 3: Let's go to an astrobiologist at New Mexico State University,

729
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 3: Paul Mason. He says, Look, the thing we don't always

730
00:45:07,560 --> 00:45:11,279
Speaker 3: talk about is that no one knows how life went

731
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:16,120
Speaker 3: from prebiotic ingredients all the way to pretty complex micro

732
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 3: organisms so early in history. And in fact, some scientists

733
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:25,480
Speaker 3: believe this evolution required more time than it passed since

734
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 3: the planet first became habitable. So he points to panspermia.

735
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:35,000
Speaker 3: He says, maybe life originated elsewhere in our solar system,

736
00:45:35,200 --> 00:45:38,759
Speaker 3: maybe somewhere even further away, farther away. Excuse me, and

737
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:41,280
Speaker 3: he says, now we know life from Earth can survive

738
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 3: in space, so maybe it could have arrived on Earth

739
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:48,799
Speaker 3: from somewhere else is not stoned college kids talking in

740
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 3: the door room. These are experts in their fields, and

741
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:55,799
Speaker 3: they're talking about exactly what I think more people should

742
00:45:55,840 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 3: be exploring. Fungus as astronaut. Was it the first astronaut

743
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:04,600
Speaker 3: ever in you know, like Earth terms. Can we make

744
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 3: deep space explorations with fungus as our crew?

745
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:12,399
Speaker 2: I don't know, Well, I mean imagine what that would

746
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 2: look like. I think it would look. I'm no scientist,

747
00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:19,720
Speaker 2: I'm no expert. I'm not even a stoned college student.

748
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,719
Speaker 2: The I feel like if there was some kind of

749
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:29,839
Speaker 2: carrier for a fungus, right that was traversing within a

750
00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 2: galaxy somehow, or in a solar system, you know, they

751
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 2: got launched from some explosion of other heavenly bodies and

752
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 2: on that whatever that projectile was, that meteor, that asteroid,

753
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:46,880
Speaker 2: if it had enough ice on it that was being

754
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 2: burned off essentially as it's being warmed up, you could

755
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 2: have an environment that had potentially the necessities for this

756
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:58,319
Speaker 2: you know, fungal growth, right, and it could just hitch

757
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:02,359
Speaker 2: your ride. And if it somehow miraculously survived the burn

758
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:05,560
Speaker 2: right of entering, well maybe there's no atmosphere right to

759
00:47:05,600 --> 00:47:09,320
Speaker 2: burn it up upon entering at least close enough to

760
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:12,439
Speaker 2: a planet to land. I can totally see that.

761
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,359
Speaker 4: You know, we're speaking of Lovecraft a lot here too.

762
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 4: It just reminded me of more so think the film

763
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:23,280
Speaker 4: adaptation but the Color Out of Space with Nicholas Cage.

764
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 4: I think it involves a meteor that crashes into the

765
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:29,759
Speaker 4: Earth and then cracks open, and inside of it is

766
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 4: this black slime mold stuff that kind of creeps around

767
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:38,920
Speaker 4: and infests things and turns them into monstrosities or sort

768
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:42,440
Speaker 4: of these hybridized kind of you know, abominations.

769
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 3: And with that, now that we're getting to the deep water,

770
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:49,600
Speaker 3: the deep ink, I propose we pause for a word

771
00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:53,360
Speaker 3: from our sponsors, of course, the famous Migo of Yugoth,

772
00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:56,880
Speaker 3: not to be confused with the Migos of Atlanta or

773
00:47:56,920 --> 00:48:00,960
Speaker 3: maybe the same, and we'll be right to dive further

774
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 3: into this. We have returned. So can we purposely grow,

775
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,840
Speaker 3: for lack of a better phrase, non human astronauts. The

776
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 3: short answer, believe it or not, is yes, it'd be

777
00:48:20,520 --> 00:48:25,279
Speaker 3: expensive to build a craft and launch it out in

778
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:32,240
Speaker 3: the correct trajectory, but you could theoretically pick your favorite

779
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:36,520
Speaker 3: fungal life forms, pack them up into something, and shoot

780
00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 3: them to Mars, or shoot them to the moon be

781
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:42,359
Speaker 3: even easier, and then just you know, let a few

782
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:44,800
Speaker 3: million years pass, roll the dice right.

783
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:47,360
Speaker 2: To the moon. Fung guy.

784
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:49,080
Speaker 5: We go.

785
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:54,360
Speaker 3: It's the new stunk, It's the new game. Stop fungal astronauts.

786
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:57,360
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not on the list of priorities though,

787
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:02,319
Speaker 3: right because right now science humans is concerned with what

788
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 3: can be learned from these superpowers. I was surprised to

789
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:10,279
Speaker 3: find that one of the big areas of study is

790
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:15,960
Speaker 3: what fungi can teach us about medications. Could you somehow

791
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:21,720
Speaker 3: adapt this survivability to ensure the safety of, for instance,

792
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 3: a pharmacy on Mars, right, because you can't ship the

793
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 3: various substances there easily, They're going to be exposed to

794
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:32,399
Speaker 3: radiation and all kinds of other variables.

795
00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 5: Well, hell, man, isn't penicillin a fungus.

796
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 2: And yeast? Don't forget Baker's East.

797
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:44,400
Speaker 4: Yeah, Penicillium fungi first mass produced antibiotic.

798
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 3: I mean, pretty crazy stuff, right, And what I think

799
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:53,520
Speaker 3: is crazier is that the future or the ancient past,

800
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:56,879
Speaker 3: seems to be rushing toward the present. There's a guy

801
00:49:56,960 --> 00:50:01,360
Speaker 3: named Andrea Antones who's a research at the Macaw University

802
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:05,240
Speaker 3: of Science and Technology in China who says the same stuff,

803
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:09,760
Speaker 3: especially shouts out yeast and fermentation and says doubt on Earth,

804
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:13,400
Speaker 3: you know, fungi are employed to make food. We use

805
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:17,680
Speaker 3: yeast for fermentation as well as medicines, chemical enzymes for industry,

806
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:22,799
Speaker 3: and metal nanoparticles in different fields and applications. We're never

807
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 3: going to be able to get rid of the fungi

808
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:29,320
Speaker 3: as we venture into space, so we need to understand them.

809
00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:33,480
Speaker 3: That verges on philosophy in a way or therapy. I

810
00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:37,840
Speaker 3: don't know. I don't know if fungus has a therapist.

811
00:50:38,120 --> 00:50:39,880
Speaker 3: I also don't know where that joke's going.

812
00:50:42,120 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 4: I think we're all just like deep in thought here

813
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 4: because this is some heavy stuff, no question about it.

814
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had no idea that I guess yeast and

815
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:55,239
Speaker 2: other funguses were being launched into space, like as early

816
00:50:55,280 --> 00:51:00,400
Speaker 2: as two thousand and nine to study things like how

817
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:05,040
Speaker 2: dangerous can bacteria and other forms like that be if

818
00:51:05,080 --> 00:51:07,239
Speaker 2: you just let them hang out in space and you know,

819
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 2: if they aren't experiencing the other factors that environments on

820
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 2: Earth would like kind of mitigate some of the not

821
00:51:15,360 --> 00:51:19,640
Speaker 2: virility but the again the dangers of like a bacteria

822
00:51:20,120 --> 00:51:23,520
Speaker 2: or a yeast, like a yeast infection or something like that.

823
00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 2: So they launched a satellite where they let this stuff

824
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:31,680
Speaker 2: kind of just proliferate inside this little micro satellite, and

825
00:51:31,719 --> 00:51:33,400
Speaker 2: then they were going to use that for their research

826
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:36,439
Speaker 2: to see if you can actually create drugs or some

827
00:51:36,560 --> 00:51:39,760
Speaker 2: kind of medication that would would stop that growth.

828
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's smart, it's necessary if humanity's future

829
00:51:46,719 --> 00:51:51,080
Speaker 3: is indeed the stars. And it's so strange, you know,

830
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:54,360
Speaker 3: it's it's a good lesson about antro centrism because the

831
00:51:54,400 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 3: same factors that limit human reproduction outside of Earth are

832
00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:06,120
Speaker 3: the same factors that help fungal reproduction. Like the lack

833
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 3: of gravity is a huge disadvantage to developing embryos or

834
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:14,960
Speaker 3: fetuses in Earth life or human life, I should say,

835
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:18,960
Speaker 3: but it's awesome for these tiny guys, and we don't

836
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:22,040
Speaker 3: know how far they could go, right, Like here's a

837
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:29,240
Speaker 3: cool thing from Adriana Blashowitz or Blackowitz. She investigated fungi

838
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,839
Speaker 3: on the ISS, the International Space Station, and she said this,

839
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:36,400
Speaker 3: I think the biggest message is that fungi and bacteria

840
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:39,360
Speaker 3: are an integral part of human bodies. Wherever we go,

841
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:42,879
Speaker 3: fungi and bacteria will follow, so we can't get rid

842
00:52:42,880 --> 00:52:46,320
Speaker 3: of them right like they're also more successful in space.

843
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:50,400
Speaker 3: I think the scientists, the human scientists, are smart when

844
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 3: they say let's team up. And then of course maybe

845
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:57,480
Speaker 3: this is I don't know about you, guys, this is

846
00:52:57,560 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 3: the thing that keeps catching me. What if aliens do

847
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 3: contact human life on Earth or on the Moon, or

848
00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 3: on the Solar System somewhere, and it turns out that

849
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 3: they are fungal life forms. What if their version of

850
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 3: take me to your leader is their network sending out

851
00:53:17,640 --> 00:53:23,320
Speaker 3: electrical signals that doesn't clock for the humans or the

852
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:26,759
Speaker 3: human astronauts, but all of a sudden, the fungus and

853
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:31,000
Speaker 3: the mold starts reacting in a new way to that message.

854
00:53:31,200 --> 00:53:35,960
Speaker 2: I can imagine it, I don't. It feels to me

855
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 2: like those organisms function on such a different time scale

856
00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:46,080
Speaker 2: than humans and other larger life on Earth functions. I

857
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 2: just wonder how the interaction would actually go right, What

858
00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:54,880
Speaker 2: would what's the speed of the communication, what's the technology?

859
00:53:55,040 --> 00:53:58,719
Speaker 2: Because you can't get just fungus in space, like just

860
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 2: hanging out or traveling long far distances. It would have

861
00:54:02,239 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 2: to use some kind of technology.

862
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:08,799
Speaker 4: Fund those technologies mushroom tech there, we go back to

863
00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 4: that again, but also like what is their intention and

864
00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 4: is there even an intention? Is it just purely physiologically

865
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:18,200
Speaker 4: driven and it need to just bro create and spread, spread, spread,

866
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:19,839
Speaker 4: Like I think that's what we see in like these

867
00:54:19,840 --> 00:54:23,480
Speaker 4: complex systems of bacterium and and and and fungi.

868
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:24,520
Speaker 5: Is that, you know?

869
00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:27,879
Speaker 4: But then we posit in this episode too. Is there

870
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:31,120
Speaker 4: a certain sentience to these things too that maybe we

871
00:54:31,160 --> 00:54:33,800
Speaker 4: don't fully understand? Is there a language?

872
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:35,840
Speaker 5: And we we we've we've.

873
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:38,279
Speaker 4: Hit on the ability to have short term memory and

874
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:41,560
Speaker 4: to be able to quote unquote make decisions, but does

875
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:42,799
Speaker 4: it like go beyond that?

876
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:44,520
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. Yeah.

877
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:48,680
Speaker 3: And it's the it's the same question, right, the same

878
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:53,000
Speaker 3: series of questions. How would that contact work? What if

879
00:54:53,200 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 3: what if the extraterrestrials quote unquote that humans meet are

880
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 3: some sort of interstellar lime mold and they're just expanding

881
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:06,080
Speaker 3: through vectors. What if Earth is just a little stop

882
00:55:06,160 --> 00:55:10,520
Speaker 3: point or a way station on the path to what

883
00:55:10,560 --> 00:55:14,080
Speaker 3: they're actually looking for, which is like spore prime or

884
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:17,839
Speaker 3: whatever that version of religion would be. If we could

885
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:23,040
Speaker 3: even ascribe religion to non human entities. It's fascinating stuff

886
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:25,000
Speaker 3: and we'd love to hear your thoughts.

887
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:25,360
Speaker 5: Folks.

888
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:29,200
Speaker 3: Was HP Lovecraft onto something? Do you have the answers

889
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:34,280
Speaker 3: to some of the questions we're asking here? Will fungal

890
00:55:34,640 --> 00:55:40,279
Speaker 3: astronauts be okay with us? We poor earthlings who still

891
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:43,800
Speaker 3: enjoy eating mushrooms? Will they be fine with it? Or

892
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:47,200
Speaker 3: will it be like a bad bad look for us?

893
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:52,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, some sort of uffront like who's eating who here?

894
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:54,879
Speaker 4: Because after all, we know mushrooms eat us too.

895
00:55:57,680 --> 00:56:01,560
Speaker 3: The circle of life and we hope that you participate

896
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:04,480
Speaker 3: in the circle of life on this show. Folks, let

897
00:56:04,560 --> 00:56:07,320
Speaker 3: us know the answers. We can't wait to hear from you.

898
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:09,960
Speaker 3: You may end up on the air with us. We

899
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:11,799
Speaker 3: try to be easy to find online.

900
00:56:11,920 --> 00:56:17,080
Speaker 4: Conspiracy stuff on x YouTube and Facebook, conspiracy stuff show

901
00:56:17,120 --> 00:56:18,640
Speaker 4: on Instagram and TikTok.

902
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:20,000
Speaker 5: But wait, there's more.

903
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:22,759
Speaker 2: We have a phone number. It is one eight three

904
00:56:22,840 --> 00:56:28,400
Speaker 2: three STDWYTK. When you choose to call, you'll have three minutes.

905
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:31,000
Speaker 2: Do give yourself a cool nickname and let us know

906
00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:33,560
Speaker 2: if we can use your message and voice on the air.

907
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:35,960
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do that, why not instead

908
00:56:36,040 --> 00:56:37,200
Speaker 2: send us an email.

909
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:41,279
Speaker 3: And let us know if you are of fungal intelligence. Regardless,

910
00:56:41,320 --> 00:56:44,359
Speaker 3: we read every email we get where we are conspiracy

911
00:56:44,440 --> 00:57:04,080
Speaker 3: at iHeartRadio dot com.

912
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production

913
00:57:06,719 --> 00:57:11,280
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

914
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:14,440
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.