Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. Hey,
Speaker 1: how many times, like when you're just walking around the
Speaker 1: city we live in Atlanta, Like you're at a park
Speaker 1: or you're just walking around, maybe with your son or
Speaker 1: something like that, do you see just these utterly bizarre mushrooms? Oh? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I This is something I love about living in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: or at least the slice of Atlanta I live in,
Speaker 1: because there's plenty of you know, plenty of vegetation around,
Speaker 1: plenty of you know, park areas, and then after a
Speaker 1: rain typically so when you see these these strange fungal
Speaker 1: bodies burst up out of the ground and take on weird,
Speaker 1: bizarre shapes. In fact, it's something that I've I've loved
Speaker 1: doing with with my son who's four now, but for
Speaker 1: for years now, when we're going to the park, park
Speaker 1: and all, if we see some sort of a weird mushroom,
Speaker 1: like go oh, let's look at this weird mushroom and uh,
Speaker 1: and so he'll point him out. Now I go, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a weird mushroom over here, let's go look at
Speaker 1: it and you guys try to figure out what it
Speaker 1: is that you take pictures and then back home you
Speaker 1: try to like match it to a database or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, you know, you just do a do
Speaker 1: a search for Hey, what kind of mushroom looks like
Speaker 1: a weird fallust? And uh And in fact, that mushroom
Speaker 1: which frequently pops up in our in our own yard
Speaker 1: out of the mulch, is one that's called mu tennis
Speaker 1: caninus or dogs stink horn, because it supposedly looks like
Speaker 1: a dog fallust and it smells really awful. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the worst image. I don't know what a dog
Speaker 1: stink horn looks like. The media the dog lipstick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the worst. Well, yeah, because you know, I'm from
Speaker 1: the Northeast originally, and man, the mushrooms down here are bonkers,
Speaker 1: like like, uh so some of our Facebook followers might
Speaker 1: remember this, but I posted to our Facebook page maybe
Speaker 1: six months ago. Took my dog to the dog park
Speaker 1: and it was right after a rain like you described,
Speaker 1: maybe a day, and there was this totally bizarre thing
Speaker 1: growing up out of the ground. Didn't even look like
Speaker 1: a mushroom. It looked like the egg from Alien and
Speaker 1: it looked like the egg had opened, um, and it
Speaker 1: was red on the inside. And so I took a
Speaker 1: picture of it, and I was like, well, who better
Speaker 1: to answer what this thing is than our Facebook followers.
Speaker 1: So I uploaded the picture and said, does anybody know
Speaker 1: what this is? And they did. Somebody figured it out.
Speaker 1: It's the Devil's finger fungus, that's what it's called. And
Speaker 1: like not a month later, Nurdiced did like a like
Speaker 1: a feature on their site on the Devil's finger fungus
Speaker 1: and how it looks exactly like a xenomorphag. But I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't this looks like some alien thing
Speaker 1: that's in the dog park. I don't want my dog
Speaker 1: around it. What what is this thing? You know? Um?
Speaker 1: So I was a little worried at first, but it
Speaker 1: turns out it's relatively harmless. Yeah. There's another one that
Speaker 1: I can't remember what this one is called, but I
Speaker 1: see it in our yards sometimes where it's it's as
Speaker 1: if there is an underworld and occasionally they use cocking
Speaker 1: to to fill to fill in holes between our world
Speaker 1: and there, and it kind of puffs outing bubble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, exactly which one you're talking about. I've seen
Speaker 1: that one before, like on the sidewalking your where I live. Now,
Speaker 1: now tell me this. Uh, you're a dog owner, I'm not. Um.
Speaker 1: In various neighborhood threads that I've seen about weird mushrooms,
Speaker 1: I've seen some people react with wonder and off and
Speaker 1: occasionally you know, uh uh nausea. But other people's, particularly
Speaker 1: a few dog owners, are like, oh, I hate those mushrooms.
Speaker 1: How can I get rid of them? Because there's this
Speaker 1: fear and I don't know to what extent it's it's
Speaker 1: founded or unfounded, but uh, they're afraid their dog is
Speaker 1: going to eat the mushrooms, which of course can have
Speaker 1: disastrous consequences. My wife worries about that constantly. Every day
Speaker 1: when she gets home, she does a walk through the
Speaker 1: yard and picks every single mushroom up that's growing in
Speaker 1: the yard so that our dogs won't eat them. Um,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of mushrooms actually, because we have
Speaker 1: a really big We've been over to my place before.
Speaker 1: My front yard has a really big old tree. Uh.
Speaker 1: And our landlord is actually an arborist, and so he
Speaker 1: told us, look, this tree is really old and a
Speaker 1: couple of years, we're gonna have to take it down because,
Speaker 1: like the roots are rotting. And the way you can
Speaker 1: tell is because of the way that these bizarrely huge
Speaker 1: mushrooms are growing up all around the tree, and so
Speaker 1: they're fitting on the rot of the down there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because of course the fun guy and mushrooms are are
Speaker 1: excellent decomposed or something. Yeah, totally that. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: how they get by, right. Um, And uh so you know,
Speaker 1: at first I was a little worried, and I said, well, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, you're the arborist. Is this cool for my
Speaker 1: dogs to be around? He said it was fine, But
Speaker 1: my wife still worries. So yeah, she's she always cleans
Speaker 1: up that stuff. And are you talking about like next
Speaker 1: door dot com or like those uh you know those
Speaker 1: like message boards. This is just like a Facebook, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of that chatter on our neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Well even I live in a fairly close proximity to
Speaker 1: one another, so maybe it's the same neighborhood board. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's concerned about those mushrooms. I haven't heard anything about
Speaker 1: like watch out for this one. It's poisonous. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that's fascinating about Atlanta is that there's
Speaker 1: so many fungal spores flying around that you get these
Speaker 1: really bizarre, kind of off the wall mushrooms that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't normally see, you know, especially in a city area. So, um,
Speaker 1: who knows. I mean, I don't know about you. But
Speaker 1: for the mushrooms that we we're gonna talk about today,
Speaker 1: if you guys haven't guessed yet out there, listeners, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about weird mushrooms today. Of course, we can't
Speaker 1: cover all of them by any stretch of imagination, So
Speaker 1: we just picked three either specific mushrooms or sort of
Speaker 1: a general type of mushroom or a type of mushroom behavior,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna sort of have a you know, the
Speaker 1: potpourri uh episode. Yeah, the none of minor poisonous. Did
Speaker 1: you choose any poisonous ones? Um? I always chose the
Speaker 1: death cap, which is the most poisonous one. And um,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's varying levels of things you shouldn't do
Speaker 1: with the ones that I'm going to talk about today,
Speaker 1: but the the toxicity doesn't really factor heavily into the
Speaker 1: areas I discuss. One of them is definitely not poisonous
Speaker 1: because it's a it's an edible mushroom, um. The others.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it encompasses a number of different types.
Speaker 1: But but this is the kind of thing where if
Speaker 1: you guys like us talking about mushrooms, we can come
Speaker 1: back and do more. We can do a one speak
Speaker 1: various poisonous mushrooms, be good. Well, I have to say
Speaker 1: this reminded me of an episode we almost did I
Speaker 1: think almost a year ago, uh to this week, which
Speaker 1: was our episode about Wolfspange, and it reminded me of
Speaker 1: aconite poisoning. UM. Reading through these descriptions of all the mushrooms,
Speaker 1: and really I had no idea how in depth of
Speaker 1: field mycology is and how precise it is. And the
Speaker 1: entries for these mushrooms were very, very detailed. I mean
Speaker 1: so detailed that we could do an entire episode just
Speaker 1: on one species. So for these entries we really had
Speaker 1: to I think boil them down to their essence. Again,
Speaker 1: no pun intended. We're not actually boiling the mushrooms down here,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, they're they're fascinating um. And it's just
Speaker 1: this thing that we we all kind of just live with.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I mean like they're everywhere and
Speaker 1: we'm at the grocery store and we eat them, but like, uh,
Speaker 1: there there there's an endless variety of them, and they
Speaker 1: all do these like very different things and have incredibly
Speaker 1: complex compounds inside of them. And I feel like we're
Speaker 1: only like as a as a scientific society, like on
Speaker 1: the tip of understanding fungal growth. Yeah, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there is so much diversity out there. We keep discovering
Speaker 1: new species to the point where I'm I can only
Speaker 1: give like a rough estimate right now, but essentially we're
Speaker 1: looking at a hundred thousand different fungi species, and of those,
Speaker 1: we're looking at in the neighborhood of fourteen thousand mushrooms.
Speaker 1: And again that is that's a number that's constantly changing.
Speaker 1: I looked at numbers from a few years back and
Speaker 1: they were significantly less than that. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: an amazing world. And you know they are so because
Speaker 1: they're so weird, they're so alien. It's no wonder that
Speaker 1: you you can find conspiracy theorists who think they came
Speaker 1: from space, especially when you see ones that look like
Speaker 1: a xenomorph. Yeah, or I can I mean, going back
Speaker 1: to our Wolf Spain episode, right, Like, imagine all of
Speaker 1: the folklore that sprang up out of all the various
Speaker 1: species of mushroom. Yeah, they're so different looking. If you
Speaker 1: didn't you know, have a broader scientific understanding of them,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even classify them as being the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like one of my one of my favorite monsters from
Speaker 1: the Dungeon and Dragon universe or the Mikon It's which,
Speaker 1: of course our mushroom people, the monster science episode on them. No,
Speaker 1: we did a Monster Science on the Mushrooms of Matanga,
Speaker 1: which was a Tohoe horror film about this these spores
Speaker 1: that turned people into walking mushrooms. It's a it's actually
Speaker 1: a really creepy movie, totally different vibe than most of
Speaker 1: the Toho films. Well, so full disclosure, audience. The reason
Speaker 1: why I propose that we do an episode on weird
Speaker 1: weird mushrooms is I'm working on like a horror story
Speaker 1: right now that the basis is about mushrooms and spores
Speaker 1: and mycology, and so I was like, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: like to know a little bit more about this, and
Speaker 1: I think it would be a good topic for our listeners.
Speaker 1: So here we are Um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I just want to bring up before we dive into
Speaker 1: the individual ones. The funky as an organism essentially has
Speaker 1: a parasitic lifestyle, and that's something I think we we
Speaker 1: forget about. We see our mushrooms in the grocery store
Speaker 1: wrapped in plastic and we just go, oh, that's that's
Speaker 1: a lot of people just think it's a vegetable, right, Um.
Speaker 1: But they absorb soluble nutrients through sell membranes. That's how
Speaker 1: they subsist and uh with together with bacteria, as you said,
Speaker 1: they're responsible for the decay of organic matter. Now, some
Speaker 1: estimate that of the biomass on the entire planet is
Speaker 1: fun Guy, that's a lot. So I mean it's worth
Speaker 1: go mycologists. It's it's worth uh studying further and us
Speaker 1: knowing a lot more about these, especially when you get
Speaker 1: into the health benefits that we'll talk about. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, let's go ahead and kick things off.
Speaker 1: I believe you have our first mushroom of the episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is the one that is most well known
Speaker 1: for its health benefits. It's called the Rashima mushroom. Oh,
Speaker 1: and I want to jump in real quick and just
Speaker 1: tell everybody that on the landing page for this episode,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have a picture of each one that
Speaker 1: we're discussing. So if you start wondering about it, just
Speaker 1: go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you'll be able to see what each one of
Speaker 1: these looks like, especially because we were show some really
Speaker 1: bizarre looking The raci isn't as well known for being
Speaker 1: bizarre looking, although it is kind of weird looking. It's
Speaker 1: mostly known for its life extending properties. In fact, they've
Speaker 1: been used medicinally for at least two thousand years because
Speaker 1: they have a reputation for promoting health and longevity. Rayci,
Speaker 1: I believe, is the name for it in Japan. It's
Speaker 1: also called the ling g mushroom in China. Now you
Speaker 1: may recognize these, Uh. They're kind of a deep reddish brown.
Speaker 1: They're shaped sort of like saucers. The upper surface of
Speaker 1: them looks like it's lacquered when it gets wet. Um
Speaker 1: And because they have this glossy look, some people call
Speaker 1: them varnished conks. And I went, what's the conk? Well,
Speaker 1: conk is a mushroom that has pores instead of gills.
Speaker 1: Um And again I've never heard of them referred to
Speaker 1: as gills before, so that's a nice creepy metaphor there
Speaker 1: as well. I have to say this one kind of
Speaker 1: looks like they might be leathery human ears. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what's funny is um I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever played this video game, but for but there's
Speaker 1: a video game called battle Born, uh, and my wife
Speaker 1: is addicted to it and I play it with her
Speaker 1: a lot. Anyways, so there's this guy who's a living
Speaker 1: mushroom person and he his head is like a mushroom
Speaker 1: cap and his head looks like a racie mushroom and
Speaker 1: he's the healer in the game. So he's the one who,
Speaker 1: like he blasts the other characters with mushroom spores and
Speaker 1: makes them feel better. And then he can take off
Speaker 1: his mushroom cap and throw it down on the ground
Speaker 1: and it acts as like a healing area buffer or
Speaker 1: something like that. So I have to assume that the
Speaker 1: people who made battle Born were inspired by the Racehie
Speaker 1: mushroom when they came up with this character. Anyways, the
Speaker 1: Racehi they grow up to be eight inches to or
Speaker 1: around twenty centimeters in diameter. You usually find them in
Speaker 1: temperate forests. These are moist areas sometimes in Asia, Europe,
Speaker 1: South America in the US, and they typically attach themselves
Speaker 1: to trees. So similar to what I was just talking
Speaker 1: about with the tree in my front yard, they're probably
Speaker 1: feeding off of the decay on these trees. Uh. So
Speaker 1: here's the deal, why is it a weird mushroom? Well,
Speaker 1: there's actually something to this life extending property thing. This
Speaker 1: isn't just like a you know, folklore myth um. They
Speaker 1: are prepared as teas or as infusions. You can also
Speaker 1: get them as capsules or tinctures, and you can even
Speaker 1: eat them in candy, chocolate bars, and coffee blends. I
Speaker 1: was thinking to myself that a Racie coffee blend might
Speaker 1: be good, But I don't know what a Rachie US
Speaker 1: mushroom tastes like yet. Uh yeah, I guess it would
Speaker 1: taste like a mushroom tea, which is is not generally
Speaker 1: not that pleasant, and in my opinion, I don't know,
Speaker 1: probably maybe yeah. Um. Now you see, so when I
Speaker 1: went to do research on this one, you see a
Speaker 1: lot of advertisements or articles pop up about them, and
Speaker 1: kind of new age style publications about these life extending properties, right, um,
Speaker 1: and if we are talking about traditional medicine and supplement
Speaker 1: here so exactly, they used to be pretty rare, but
Speaker 1: there's new cultural cultivation advances that make them more widely available. Um.
Speaker 1: But the reviews of science literature do indicate that most
Speaker 1: of the medicinal claims for these mushrooms can be validated.
Speaker 1: So let's just talk briefly about what's the science behind them. Well,
Speaker 1: research has found that because of unique compounds in these mushrooms,
Speaker 1: they can stimulate our brain neurons, search and destroy cancer cells,
Speaker 1: and prevent the development of fat cells in obese individuals.
Speaker 1: So that alone is like, that's a pretty broad summaryn wow. Um.
Speaker 1: And they've done lots of studies on mice and humans.
Speaker 1: But studies on mice have shown that these mushrooms may
Speaker 1: also have therapeutic effects on asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: Parkinson's diabetes, liver failure, and more. Now that it all
Speaker 1: boils down to these three compounds that are in the
Speaker 1: rati mushroom that give it its health be fits. And
Speaker 1: this is this is what why I said earlier, like
Speaker 1: these mushrooms are just incredibly complex in their organic matter.
Speaker 1: So the three are polysaccharides. Now, these have anti aging
Speaker 1: effects because they prevent abnormal blood vessel formation in our bodies.
Speaker 1: They also boost immune system function. There's also triter penes
Speaker 1: that protect the liver. Uh. They lower our blood pressure
Speaker 1: and our cholesterol, and they prevent platelet clumping in the
Speaker 1: blood that leads to heart attacks or strokes. They also
Speaker 1: fight allergic responses that are triggered by histamines and indicate
Speaker 1: anti cancer activity. Now, the last compound is called the
Speaker 1: ganoderma lucidum peptide. We've got a lot of latin in
Speaker 1: this episode because mycology really loves its latin. Now, that's
Speaker 1: a protein that has strong antioxidant characteristics that are still
Speaker 1: being studied. So there's a lot going on here with
Speaker 1: this raci mushroom. Uh. There's other studies that indicate that
Speaker 1: it can reduce the size and growth rate of tumors,
Speaker 1: both in human and animal trials. UH, And in fact,
Speaker 1: it's most dramatic in cases of colorectal cancer. However, I
Speaker 1: do want to qualify that statement with there are other
Speaker 1: studies that dispute the use of these mushrooms for treating cancer.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of up in the air right
Speaker 1: now and it requires more research. But some oncologists have
Speaker 1: concerns that the mushrooms antioxidant properties may actually interfere with
Speaker 1: chemotherapy drugs. So yes, it may have anti cancer properties,
Speaker 1: but it may also interfere with other therapy for cancer. Um,
Speaker 1: these mushrooms are like a mini first aid kit, Like
Speaker 1: it seems like they're just this great thing that you
Speaker 1: should take every day, you know, although there's and and
Speaker 1: forth noting you were not in the pocket of big
Speaker 1: fungutions no big right, she does not support the show.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't done an ad read yet
Speaker 1: for this episode. Maybe it's there was a race dot
Speaker 1: com And I do have to admit that when I
Speaker 1: was doing research for this, I saw a lot of
Speaker 1: sites that were like, Hey, buy your raciot supplements here,
Speaker 1: get um, get the tease, get the chocolate bars, whatever.
Speaker 1: So there's totally a business that thrives around this. But
Speaker 1: there is some science to it. Well, actually a lot
Speaker 1: of science to it. So what do you have? Well,
Speaker 1: my first one here is not not a specific mushroom,
Speaker 1: though I will mention a couple of different specific ones
Speaker 1: as we go. But discussing the topic of of bioluminescent mushrooms,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so um, I'm sure everyone's quite well acquainted
Speaker 1: with the mushrooms elevated status in the iconography of stone
Speaker 1: or black light post Um. I'm thinking of like every
Speaker 1: you know metal fan, every sleep metal album poster has
Speaker 1: like mushrooms at the bottom of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they kind of engage in in that kind of iconography
Speaker 1: for sure. It's too often see it's it's either the
Speaker 1: caterpillar from the house in Wonderland a top of mushroom,
Speaker 1: or I've seen like bong smoking wizards with mushrooms. I've
Speaker 1: seen aliens, gray aliens into chikis with mushrooms. Um. And
Speaker 1: of course they all glow when you have the black
Speaker 1: light on it. But but there are of course actual
Speaker 1: mushrooms out there, and actual uh beyond mushrooms, just fung
Speaker 1: gui that are bioluminescent, uh, and we keep discovering more
Speaker 1: of them. Uh. Now there are there are a rarity
Speaker 1: within just the overall fungal population, with only about its
Speaker 1: seventy plus species. Out of again the hundred thousand fungi species,
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand odd mushroom species and they admit like twenty
Speaker 1: four hours a day, but they're only gonna be able
Speaker 1: to really observe them at night. Now. Some of the
Speaker 1: more common species here include the jack o lantern mushroom
Speaker 1: or um omphilatus, which will find in North America, as
Speaker 1: well as the honey mushroom. And they've belonged to two
Speaker 1: separate lineages here. There's another there's another one that made
Speaker 1: the rounds a few years back called my Sinna chloroffice
Speaker 1: and that's another glowing um mushroom, specifically a mushroom in
Speaker 1: that case. So three quarters of the glowing mushrooms belong
Speaker 1: to the Mycena genus uh and a group of mushrooms.
Speaker 1: And this is a group of mushrooms that decomposed organic
Speaker 1: matter to feed themselves, like like like a lot of
Speaker 1: fun guys, we've discussed um. So I know you and
Speaker 1: I share in common that we're both playing Fallout for.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you've gotten to the point yet where you
Speaker 1: find the glowing mushrooms. Yeah, they're popping up everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're I mean, I guess like in the premise
Speaker 1: of Fallout For it's probably because of radiation that yeah,
Speaker 1: just like the glowing feral ghouls. Yeah, yeah, but no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you find plenty of glowing fun guy, um without nuclear fallout,
Speaker 1: right yeah. Um. They even use them in the game.
Speaker 1: I think at one point as like there's like a
Speaker 1: community that uses them as the lights in their underground community,
Speaker 1: like they have the mushrooms and like lanterns. Yeah, I think, um,
Speaker 1: what is it the children of the Atom do? That's it?
Speaker 1: And and I'm I'm actually running a Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 1: campaign right now. It takes place in the under dark.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of five luminescent mushrooms and that
Speaker 1: because you gotta you know, you might have everybody in
Speaker 1: the party with dark vision, but otherwise you need to
Speaker 1: have a little light for people to see some light visions.
Speaker 1: You say, oh, well, there's some luminescent mushroom right here. Now,
Speaker 1: what kind of glow are we talking about? Generally it's
Speaker 1: a yellowish greenish light with wavelength of five nanometers. Not
Speaker 1: all of the parts of the mushrooms necessarily glow, and
Speaker 1: some species it's only the cap for the gills. In
Speaker 1: others it's the stem, and some species the mushrooms don't
Speaker 1: really glow. At all. But it's the fine thread like
Speaker 1: filaments the mycelium from which the mushrooms developed that grows
Speaker 1: brightly and specifically, we're talking about a lucifer in lucifories
Speaker 1: mediated reaction here. Now, basically what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: these are light emitting compounds that you can find in
Speaker 1: many creatures like fireflies. Of course they're named sort of
Speaker 1: named after lucifer, which means a shining one or light bearer.
Speaker 1: Makes sense because most people find them underground. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: with the devil. But but yeah, so this is this
Speaker 1: is just a common bioluminescent property, and so that's what's
Speaker 1: it hard here. It's nothing strange and alien and out
Speaker 1: of keeping with other glowing creatures. Now, according to San
Speaker 1: Francisco State University biology professor Dennis de Jardine, luminescent species
Speaker 1: of fun Guy come for about sixteen different lineages, which
Speaker 1: suggests that luminescence evolved at a single point and some
Speaker 1: species later lost the ability to close. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: a single early origin of fungal luminescets. Okay, so why
Speaker 1: but what, like why would a mushroom evolve to glow
Speaker 1: to begin with? Like what evolutionary advantage is there to that. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting. There a number of mysteries still remain. Uh.
Speaker 1: De Jardine believes that some fun guy probably glow in
Speaker 1: order to attract nocturnal animals, and these animals then you
Speaker 1: know it's dark, they're glowing, the animals come over to
Speaker 1: see what the glowing is about, and then they end
Speaker 1: up helping to disperse the spores um and therefore the species.
Speaker 1: And this is especially adaptive and closed canopy forest because
Speaker 1: there's you're not gonna have winds blown through their you know,
Speaker 1: crazy breezes to to to distribute the spores. Well, as
Speaker 1: we've learned here on stuff to blow your mind. Like
Speaker 1: any good parasite, they have an absolutely bizarre way of
Speaker 1: reproducing that are complicated, I should say, rather than bizarre.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that sounds like totally in line with what
Speaker 1: we know about other parasites. Yeah. Now, another theory is
Speaker 1: that in some cases they glow to attract the predators
Speaker 1: of insects they eat the mushrooms, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: an offensive mechanism. And then in other cases we just
Speaker 1: don't know, Like we're continually finding new bioluminocent mushrooms, and
Speaker 1: some of them may have a different game in play. Yeah, huh, fascinating.
Speaker 1: Now I'm now, I'm like really curious if you can
Speaker 1: really light up a room bioluminescent mushrooms in a lantern.
Speaker 1: Probably not, it'ld still be pretty gloomy. Well, it would
Speaker 1: be like tracking like a goth nightclub, but probably not
Speaker 1: in office space. It would have it would be the
Speaker 1: same sort of situation as trying to fill a lantern
Speaker 1: with lightning bugs and light your way, or or if
Speaker 1: you're in the original Riddick movie, like bioluminescent grubs. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the puff ball mushroom. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. Now. This one is This one is the
Speaker 1: phone because I have a lot of fond memories of
Speaker 1: this because when I was a when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I was in boy Scouts, and it seemed like we
Speaker 1: were always having our scout trips out to this area.
Speaker 1: They had a bunch of cows. So there was something
Speaker 1: about the puff balls were always growing up around the
Speaker 1: cows because of the manure. I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, so I certainly know that some mushrooms and
Speaker 1: including psychedelic mushrooms, depend on comedy or and that's where
Speaker 1: you go to find them. But in this case, I think,
Speaker 1: I don't know. They're just growing in the same fields
Speaker 1: with them. And so everyone got a big kick out
Speaker 1: of stepping on the puff balls and or stepping on
Speaker 1: the dried cow patties. Right, Because the spores puff out,
Speaker 1: that's why they're called called puff balls. I thought they
Speaker 1: were called puffballs because they looked like these little puffy clouds.
Speaker 1: Well that's when they grow up there. Actually, I would
Speaker 1: say of the mushrooms we're talking about today, these are
Speaker 1: probably the ones that people are most visually familiar with. Um.
Speaker 1: They do kind of look like the mushrooms that we
Speaker 1: you know, the just generic mushrooms that you buy at
Speaker 1: the grocery store and at to your salad or whatever,
Speaker 1: but they're sort of like a bigger, mutated version of them. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like I said, they're called puffballs not because
Speaker 1: of how they look, but because the spores puff out
Speaker 1: of them in a cloud when they're hit, even by
Speaker 1: falling rain drops. That's nuts to me. Any kind of
Speaker 1: impact amidst these spores. So again reproduction. Uh, they're found worldwide,
Speaker 1: but when they desiccate, they release their spores when they're agitated,
Speaker 1: and only one puffball species can produce psychoactive affection. Might
Speaker 1: be wondering why I'm bringing that up, Well, it's important
Speaker 1: to a case study that I'm gonna bring up in
Speaker 1: a little bit here. Um, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different varieties of puffball mushrooms. They all belong in the
Speaker 1: Bassie dio micada division, and they all have the following
Speaker 1: characteristics in common. They do not grow an open cap
Speaker 1: with the spore bearing gills, so that's why they have
Speaker 1: to you know, emit their spores when they're when they're agitated. Instead,
Speaker 1: the spores are grown internally and the mushroom develops an
Speaker 1: aperture or it splits open to release the spores outward.
Speaker 1: Puffballs are a variety of sizes. Some can be as
Speaker 1: small as a marble, and others can be as big
Speaker 1: as a basketball. I saw a picture of a guy
Speaker 1: holding one that was as big as a basketball, and
Speaker 1: I was I was kind of shocked by that. Um.
Speaker 1: But they're white and round. They look a lot like
Speaker 1: what you think mushrooms look like. Sometimes they're smooth than
Speaker 1: other times. They have large wartz or or even like
Speaker 1: little spikes on their surface, and there's very little stems,
Speaker 1: so they're pretty close to the ground. The term puff
Speaker 1: ball refers to three genera of fungi Calvadia, calbo vista,
Speaker 1: and leco perdon. Now leco pernn is the one that
Speaker 1: I really want to focus on today. Um, but really
Speaker 1: make sure so for instance, like if you're out there,
Speaker 1: like Robert, you just said you saw them when you
Speaker 1: were you know, going to look at cows and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, Right, So some people go and forage for
Speaker 1: puffballs and they you know, by all accounts it's it's edible.
Speaker 1: And uh we did actually an episode here at How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works about foraging in the woods for various foods.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna leave you with this disclaimer, like
Speaker 1: you should really make sure you know exactly what kind
Speaker 1: of mushroom you're picking before you just go out into
Speaker 1: the woods and grab a mushroom and throw it into
Speaker 1: a salad or pop it in your mouth. I don't
Speaker 1: don't go picking odd mushrooms based on anything we've told
Speaker 1: you here. If you're gonna engage in that, and make
Speaker 1: sure you are following the footsteps of a true expert.
Speaker 1: And the reason why, especially with puffballs, is because you
Speaker 1: can get quite sick even from just breathing in their spores.
Speaker 1: So this is the main mushroom that's responsible for something
Speaker 1: called lycoperdonosis. This is a really rare respiratory illness that's
Speaker 1: caused by inhaling mushroom spores. And this is the case
Speaker 1: study that I wanted to mention to you. Uh In
Speaker 1: eight teenagers in southeastern Wisconsin had inhaled and chewed the
Speaker 1: spores of puffball mushrooms at a party. Now, according to
Speaker 1: the study that I read, there were no other illicit
Speaker 1: drugs that were found at this party. But it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to believe that these kids weren't eating these
Speaker 1: mushrooms because they thought they would have some psychoactive properties.
Speaker 1: That's why I mentioned earlier there's only one of these
Speaker 1: that has any kind of properties like that. Three of
Speaker 1: these people reported nausea within six to thirteen hours. Within
Speaker 1: three to seven days, all of the patients had a cough, fever,
Speaker 1: shortness of breath, muscle pain, and fatigue. Five of them
Speaker 1: were hospitalized too, had to be intovated. They had to
Speaker 1: have a tube put down their throat. Three had to
Speaker 1: undergo various kinds of lung biopsies to figure out what
Speaker 1: was going on with them. This revealed that their lungs
Speaker 1: were inflamed and they had formed yeast like structures in
Speaker 1: between the flesh of their lungs that were like mushroom spores,
Speaker 1: but there were no fungal cultures found in their lungs.
Speaker 1: The spores got in there and and either replicated or
Speaker 1: just we're clogging up their lungs or something. It really
Speaker 1: didn't make them feel well. Uh so, I really want
Speaker 1: to warn you about this. This is like, this is
Speaker 1: a species that seems harmless, we see it all the time,
Speaker 1: and yet like it can make people quite sick. The
Speaker 1: other hand, this is very rare. Um. The people were
Speaker 1: given cotocosteroids, they got better. Four of them received antifungal
Speaker 1: therapy with rugs. All of them recovered between a week
Speaker 1: and a month. But despite this, there isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence for what in the literature was referred to
Speaker 1: as the efficacy of using anti fungal agents to treat
Speaker 1: this disease. When you breathe in these spores, they don't
Speaker 1: know if it really works. No. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: other than this, there's only been three other recorded cases
Speaker 1: of this, so two of them were in children in
Speaker 1: one and an adolescent. And remember these these were teenagers,
Speaker 1: so it seems to be something that affects younger people more.
Speaker 1: And I just want to point out to like, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm focusing in on the puff ball here because
Speaker 1: it has these rare cases of this disease, right, and
Speaker 1: they make people quite ill. But in general, the spores
Speaker 1: of mushrooms may contain microtoxins. Okay, uh, there are several
Speaker 1: diseases that are associated with inhaling fungal spores, including toxic numonitis, hypersensity, pneumonitis, tremors,
Speaker 1: chronic fatigue, syndrome, kidney failure, and even cancer. So you know,
Speaker 1: before again, before you got into the woods and you
Speaker 1: just start picking up mushrooms and breathing them in or
Speaker 1: chopping them up and putting them in a salad, you
Speaker 1: really want to make sure you know what you're getting. UM.
Speaker 1: Make sure you've either got an expert with you or
Speaker 1: I don't know, you're consulting a book or something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, just consider fungi have a parasitic lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Like I said, so imagine this, like you breathe in
Speaker 1: their spores. Of course, when they get inside your lungs,
Speaker 1: their cell membranes are going to start absorbing nutrients through
Speaker 1: your lungs. So, yeah, they've ended up in the wrong place,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean they're They're not gonna attempt to
Speaker 1: carry out their basic program. Yeah, absolutely so. Puff Ball,
Speaker 1: it's a cool, weird kind of It reminds me of
Speaker 1: jiggly Puff the Pokemon. I have to imagine that that
Speaker 1: Pokemon was probably a designed after the puff Ball. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's a cute, little weird mushroom. But you
Speaker 1: don't want to necessarily inhale those spores. Right. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're wonderable, what what mushrooms can I eat? Well, the
Speaker 1: one I'm going to talk about you can definitely eat.
Speaker 1: Um It is the edible oyster mushroom or Plerotis austriatis.
Speaker 1: And this, uh, I mean, I think I'm a lot
Speaker 1: most of us have had this before. Oysterroom mushroom. You'll
Speaker 1: typically find it in various stir fries. It's delicious. But
Speaker 1: the really cool thing about it, and what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about here is that this is essentially a carnivorous mushroom.
Speaker 1: So before it ends up on your your grocery store shelf,
Speaker 1: it's out there eating things. Now, I mean, obviously we
Speaker 1: eat things that eat other things, unless you're just eating
Speaker 1: straight up you know, plants that are absorbing um solar radiation.
Speaker 1: But but the thing here is that you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think about what the mushrooms are consuming, and you don't think, oh,
Speaker 1: they are essentially catching and consuming live nematodes and or spiders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's UM so when you eat them, you're getting
Speaker 1: a little bit of spider well you know, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it kind of comes back around to
Speaker 1: when you eat your food, how how far back are
Speaker 1: you're going to try and trace the heritage of your
Speaker 1: your nutrients? Um? You know it's gonna go to something
Speaker 1: dead at some point, right, But this isn't like, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of the fig wasp, which you and I
Speaker 1: have both research before, you know, which which ends up
Speaker 1: in most figs that you eat. But of course insects
Speaker 1: wind up in most foods of the eat. So what
Speaker 1: can you do UM in this particular case, though essentially
Speaker 1: the idea is that the mushrooms will eat these nematodes
Speaker 1: or these spiders. Uh. Probably is a way to supplement
Speaker 1: low levels of nitrogen available available in the wood because
Speaker 1: they tend to grow on like the size of trees
Speaker 1: and stuff they have that you know, they look like
Speaker 1: a little oysters, like little like like a little overhangs
Speaker 1: that you know, yeah, no, might hang under to get
Speaker 1: away from the from the rain the radio. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. So according to
Speaker 1: a two thousand fifteen study from ARC Imaging Center at
Speaker 1: Monash University and Brickbeck College published in Plos Biology, the
Speaker 1: shrooms employ special membrane attack complex paraffin like proteins or
Speaker 1: m A CPF proteins to punch holes in the cells
Speaker 1: of its prey. And what's crazy here is this is
Speaker 1: the very tactic the human immune cells us against bacterial invaders. So,
Speaker 1: like I'm trying to imagine this, So a spider crawls
Speaker 1: across this and these these cells start poking tiny little
Speaker 1: holes through it. Well, the better examples probably with it
Speaker 1: with the nematodes um and and there's actually a whole
Speaker 1: classification of nemoto phagees fun guy, And this covers nematode
Speaker 1: eating fungi in general. Uh. They often use um my
Speaker 1: cilial trap structures or spores to trap the nematodes, or
Speaker 1: they use special branching structures known as hypel tips to
Speaker 1: attack nematode eggs and cysts. Uh. So the yeah, they're
Speaker 1: actively engaging in I've seen some write ups even go
Speaker 1: so far as to say they're they're hunting and killing nematodes,
Speaker 1: they're hunting and killing spiders and in some cases as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's and it goes beyond just like near grotesque
Speaker 1: curiosity here because their potential medical applications here, learning how
Speaker 1: to to damp in immune response and people with autoimmune disease,
Speaker 1: stopping listeria escaping our immune cells, and preventing malaria from
Speaker 1: infecting the liver. Those are just a few possible um
Speaker 1: treasures we can unlock with the fungal key here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like the m A CPF that you you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, those proteins, the functionality of those can sort
Speaker 1: of be reverse engineered for our benefit. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the hope that the researchers have. But even if
Speaker 1: we never get there it is. It is fascinating to
Speaker 1: think that this this mushroom that we love is essentially
Speaker 1: feeding itself in part on nematodes, which nobody really wants
Speaker 1: to think about the role of nematodes uh in their diets.
Speaker 1: But of course there are other animals that eat nematodes
Speaker 1: as well. What can you do some people? Maybe this
Speaker 1: next mushroom is the one that I have the hardest
Speaker 1: time looking at pictures of. And so we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: we're gonna have pictures of all of these on stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind dot com. You should definitely go
Speaker 1: look at what this time looks beautifully bizarre. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: called the bleeding tooth mushroom, uh. And the reason why
Speaker 1: is because, well, it basically looks like a white mushroom
Speaker 1: that is bleeding all over the place. It has little droplets.
Speaker 1: Basically that's a younger specimens of this mushroom they quote
Speaker 1: bleed a bright red juice. And here's the crazy thing.
Speaker 1: That juice has anticoagulant properties. Now, the blood itself, it's
Speaker 1: not actual blood, uh, isn't because the mushrooms damaged. That's
Speaker 1: just what it really looks like. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: red sap that emerges from this mushroom because of high
Speaker 1: root pressure. When they get older, the pressure eases and
Speaker 1: the fungus turns brown own. But they're about three to
Speaker 1: eight centimeters in diameter summer round but more often not
Speaker 1: their oval or maybe multi lobed. They're white or pale pink.
Speaker 1: They become deeper pink and then brown as they did decay.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it basically looks like, uh, it's
Speaker 1: the stigmata of mushrooms. Like it's a it's a mushroom.
Speaker 1: It's it's a kind of bizarrely shaped mushroom too. It's
Speaker 1: a little pinkish, a little whitish, but there's just little
Speaker 1: dots of what looks like blood coming out of this thing,
Speaker 1: sometimes so much so that it drips down the side
Speaker 1: of these mushrooms. They're just utterly creepy looking. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: thing they really remind me of if we have any
Speaker 1: Mystery Science Theater three thousand fans out there. Uh, there
Speaker 1: was a film, a nine film titled Attack of VV
Speaker 1: Eye Creatures that had two vs in the title and
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, it's wonderfully bad film and it it
Speaker 1: involves a number of these shambling eye creatures and they
Speaker 1: look like bleeding tooth mushrooms. Okay, okay, yeah, they're real weird. Um.
Speaker 1: They were first described by an American mycologist in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: His name was Howard James Banker, and they are found
Speaker 1: in North America, Europe, Iran, in Korea. In Britain, it's
Speaker 1: mainly known as a woodland mushroom, so they mostly grow
Speaker 1: near coniferous trees. Um. They're not poisonous, despite how bizarre
Speaker 1: they look. Yeah, it looks like the last mushroom you
Speaker 1: would yeah. Well, okay, so one of the nicknames that
Speaker 1: it has, especially in Britain is strawberries and cream. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the last thing that I would call it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't at all look appetizing. Um. There's another nickname for
Speaker 1: it is devil's tooth um. But yeah, they're not poisonous,
Speaker 1: but they are pretty bitter. They have an accumulation of
Speaker 1: an element called c c M one seven in them,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make them very pleasant to eat. Their formal
Speaker 1: name is hyddenell um. Again, here we are with the Latin.
Speaker 1: Let me see if I can get this hydenylum pecky
Speaker 1: I believe is what it is is, but so yeah,
Speaker 1: they go by a number of names. That's the formal name,
Speaker 1: Devil's Tooth, Strawberries and Cream, or bleeding tooth. Now here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Remember I said it had anticoagulant properties in it,
Speaker 1: So this blood the same blood. It actually has something
Speaker 1: in it called atromanan which is an effective anti coagulation
Speaker 1: that's similar to heperin. It is anti bacterial against strepto
Speaker 1: coxus pneumonia. That this is the main bacteria that causes
Speaker 1: pneumonia and people. Uh. And you can even use this
Speaker 1: stuff to stimulate smooth muscles. I don't know what that means,
Speaker 1: but it was in the literature, and it causes apoptosis
Speaker 1: in certain leukemia cells, which we were We've talked about
Speaker 1: apoptosis before when we've mentioned m D M A on
Speaker 1: the show before. So M D M A also has
Speaker 1: a poptosis properties, but this is specific to leukemia. It
Speaker 1: might be a way to treat it. All these properties
Speaker 1: were discover it in nineteen sixty five by a team
Speaker 1: of researchers published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Science. So
Speaker 1: we've known for a while now that it has these
Speaker 1: anticoagulant properties. To it. The other thing that it made
Speaker 1: me think of was when we've talked about bats before
Speaker 1: on the show and how their saliva has anti coagulant
Speaker 1: properties in't it. I know. I love how that sixty
Speaker 1: five article that you reference here it includes mentioned of
Speaker 1: heiden Ellum diabolus. Yeah, so is that I'm wondering, is
Speaker 1: that's another species of it that is diabolic in nature,
Speaker 1: or maybe that was an earlier term for it, or yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that was what its name was earlier. So from
Speaker 1: what I remember loosely from the notes was that hyden
Speaker 1: Ellum Pecky was named as such because there was a guy,
Speaker 1: a well known mycologist with the last name peck Uh,
Speaker 1: and this it was like sort of like an honor
Speaker 1: to him by naming it after him. But I wonder
Speaker 1: if maybe diabolus was what its name was first, or
Speaker 1: maybe there's different difference between the devil's tooth and the
Speaker 1: bleeding tooth, like are the same species but different genera.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about that that that is a good
Speaker 1: point that it has a different name in there, but
Speaker 1: I believe they all have that same anticoagon kind of
Speaker 1: seeping blood property to them. So yeah, if you see
Speaker 1: one of these. I mean, you could pop it in
Speaker 1: your mouth. It's gonna taste pretty gross, but it's not.
Speaker 1: But absolutely do not pop it in your mouth. Do
Speaker 1: not pop any mushrooms in your mouth. Because you heard
Speaker 1: us talking about the Yeah that too. Uh no, So
Speaker 1: speaking of the devil, we're gonna get to our our
Speaker 1: last selection here and again with me. This is not
Speaker 1: a specific mushroom, but a type of behavior, if you will,
Speaker 1: manifestation that you see with with mushrooms and fun guy,
Speaker 1: and that is the fairy ring. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: There's lots of folklore that pops up out of the ferry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it shows up a gosh. It's in Shakespeare, right,
Speaker 1: and it's in Dungeons and Dragons. It's basically cultures around
Speaker 1: the world most important literally area achievements of human kind.
Speaker 1: Shakespeare douches. Yeah, you's encountered in cultures around the world
Speaker 1: because essentially what we're taught, fairy rings essentially just means
Speaker 1: strange circles on the ground or in the ground that
Speaker 1: you find in nature. And uh, we've the causes we
Speaker 1: attribute fairies dancing around and around on the spot, or
Speaker 1: perhaps it's witches or devils. Hey, maybe it's a ufo.
Speaker 1: If you're using a modern interpretation of it, it's whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever the attributed supernatural cause. However, the basic idea is
Speaker 1: that some unseen force is causing the circle to manifest.
Speaker 1: I want to say, have you ever seen is it
Speaker 1: pronounced haxon? I always get the pronunciation room because the
Speaker 1: old devil worshiping hasn't whom loud over the a. Is
Speaker 1: it hawks in? I'm not sure what the proper pronunciation
Speaker 1: is of it, but yeah, it's it's this old documentary
Speaker 1: about sort of the folklore around witches. Yeah, I've never
Speaker 1: watched it in in full, but it has some wonderful
Speaker 1: images in it. Yeah, I want to say that fairy
Speaker 1: rings show up in that, but I might be wrong.
Speaker 1: But but but because of the reasons you just meant,
Speaker 1: because of the idea that which is did like rituals,
Speaker 1: that they danced around the ferry ring right now, Absolutely
Speaker 1: no fairy rings are caused by fairies or aliens or
Speaker 1: the devil or the devil. Sorry, but that's the truth. Um,
Speaker 1: But there there are accounts of fairy rings that are
Speaker 1: that are not trum related, not directly funk related. So
Speaker 1: I ran across one, for instance, from Nambia, and there
Speaker 1: apparently fairy rings here that are caused by termite constructed
Speaker 1: water traps. Uh. But other instances of fairy rings are
Speaker 1: definitely tied to fungal activity and and not the dancing
Speaker 1: micons that you encounter in Disney's Fantasium. So there are
Speaker 1: essentially two varieties of fungal fairy rings. Then the first
Speaker 1: is more mysterious, and I don't think I've ever seen
Speaker 1: one of these in person. But this is just a
Speaker 1: circle of dark green grass in a lawn or meadow, okay,
Speaker 1: and with surrounding grass it's somewhat lighter. The culprit here
Speaker 1: is subsurface fungal mycelia that caused the darker color due
Speaker 1: to increased nitrogen produced by the fungus. Interesting, and you
Speaker 1: also find other fun guy that caused in a chronic
Speaker 1: ring of dead vegetation due to nitrogen depletion right, which
Speaker 1: you know again back to the parasitic aspect of Guy. Right,
Speaker 1: And the massilia is just kind of threading through underneath
Speaker 1: the grass. So you can imagine where you look at this,
Speaker 1: you're like, why is this grass screen or why is
Speaker 1: this grass dead or it must be some sort of
Speaker 1: supernatural force. Um. And then of course there's the more
Speaker 1: overt form, and that's where you have actual surface mushrooms,
Speaker 1: identifiable mushrooms that are lined up more or less in
Speaker 1: a rough surface. You know what I just realized is, uh,
Speaker 1: in my head, fairy rings combined two of the mushrooms
Speaker 1: you've mentioned today, the fairy rings and then the phosphorescent mushrooms.
Speaker 1: But I guess they don't necessarily right, they don't glow.
Speaker 1: I did not in my research. I did not run
Speaker 1: across a species of mushroom that was both. But but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's it's possible, as you'll see when
Speaker 1: I describe you know, what exactly is going on here.
Speaker 1: So in either case, whether we're talking about subservice mushrooms
Speaker 1: surface mushrooms, uh, the cause of the circle has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with fairy kingdom and everything to do with
Speaker 1: spore dispersal. So this is this is a fabulous model here.
Speaker 1: So you can start with a single spore, al right,
Speaker 1: it lands in a field, and then it grows, Okay,
Speaker 1: it eventually produces a mushroom, or at least it reaches
Speaker 1: this as adult form, and then it spreads out more spores. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then this causes the growing colony to spread only
Speaker 1: outward since the inner circle uh is the territory that
Speaker 1: it's ravaged. Okay, this is a there's no more nutrients there,
Speaker 1: so it can only spread out. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like theoretically the circle is going to get larger. Yes,
Speaker 1: the circle gets larger and larger, and the inside of
Speaker 1: the circle is depleted of the nutrients. That it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the grass is all dead. It just means
Speaker 1: that there's nothing else. Yeah, nothing else that the to
Speaker 1: this particular fun guy can feed off of. So the
Speaker 1: circle continues to grow and grow and uh. And sometimes
Speaker 1: there are additional circles so you'll actually get uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like figure eights and whatnot. Yeah, I was thinking, like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's like a ven diagram one out
Speaker 1: there somewhere maybe. But I love this because wonders of nature.
Speaker 1: But I love this one because it makes me think of, say,
Speaker 1: what have you had a like a sci fi or
Speaker 1: fantasy scenario with say, say zombies or vampires, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever your your breed of destructive monster that reproduces rapidly
Speaker 1: might be. You can have a similar scenario where it
Speaker 1: starts at one point and then it begins to spread outward,
Speaker 1: but it's spreading as a as a ring because it
Speaker 1: has to feed and it cannot continue to survive in
Speaker 1: the area that it has ravished. That would all right,
Speaker 1: producers of the new movie Rings that's coming out, I
Speaker 1: think pretty soon. Right, They didn't pay us to say this,
Speaker 1: but that would be a good spin on that mythos.
Speaker 1: The idea of the girl across on the television and
Speaker 1: kills me her ring forms in like an actual geographic
Speaker 1: area as she kills everybody around, only people in that
Speaker 1: ring like area can watch the video and it grows
Speaker 1: further and further, or you know what show it would
Speaker 1: It would work really well on a strain. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It reminds me a lot two of these creatures known
Speaker 1: as the shrunk in Um in our Scott Baker's books,
Speaker 1: because these are these are kind of the Orcs of
Speaker 1: his world, except there there seemed to be just they're
Speaker 1: particularly bred, particularly created to just ravage the land and
Speaker 1: so I get a mad and they bread rapidly, So
Speaker 1: they would be a good model for this, Like they're
Speaker 1: in one area and then they spread outward in this
Speaker 1: in this Ring of desolation. You know, I like to
Speaker 1: think that I'm there's still obviously a lot for me
Speaker 1: to read, But I like to think that I've read
Speaker 1: a lot of horror, and I think you have to.
Speaker 1: And I can't really think of a ton of mushroom
Speaker 1: based horror. And yet it seems to me that there's
Speaker 1: something fun mentally creepy. You have mushrooms and just have
Speaker 1: their formations are just their life process in general. Off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, I cannot think of a
Speaker 1: good one. Maybe I'll think of one after we go
Speaker 1: off off offline here. Maybe you out there have one.
Speaker 1: You're you're screaming at your podcast right now and saying,
Speaker 1: Robert Christian, what you forgot about whatever? I mean? Well,
Speaker 1: the most obvious one is that just the fun guy
Speaker 1: from you go with that believe that Themigo and Lovecraft
Speaker 1: stories are technically funguses, right, Okay, But but but that's
Speaker 1: the only example that's instantly coming to mind. So there
Speaker 1: may be some other great ones out there. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: there are alright. Well, on that note, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and close it out here again. We can only
Speaker 1: discuss a few different mushrooms a few different types of
Speaker 1: of mushroom behavior, if you will. So, if you have
Speaker 1: some other amazing mycological specimens that you would like us
Speaker 1: to discuss, let us know. Especially if you're a mycologist,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. I'd be really curious
Speaker 1: what your favorites are that and like, what what's the
Speaker 1: daily life of a mycologists? Like it just sounds it
Speaker 1: sounds charming to kind of go around and identify mushrooms
Speaker 1: and examine them and write about them and with lots
Speaker 1: of and occasionally get to name them. So, Hey, check
Speaker 1: out stuff to bow your mind dot com. That's where
Speaker 1: we'll find all the podcasts. You'll find blog posts, you'll
Speaker 1: find videos, uh, you'll find all sorts of content, including
Speaker 1: links out to our very social media accounts. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: are on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. We post lots
Speaker 1: of things to those channels, not just the podcasts that
Speaker 1: you're listening to, but also articles that we write, videos
Speaker 1: that we write or star in, and lots of other
Speaker 1: stuff that we find in our travels across the internet
Speaker 1: when we find bizarre science audities and we want you
Speaker 1: to know about them. As I mentioned earlier. I take
Speaker 1: pictures of weird mushrooms in the dog parks sometimes and
Speaker 1: post them to our Facebook page, and hey, you can do.
Speaker 1: That's a great place to share them. And you can
Speaker 1: also send your weird mushroom photos, your mushroom horror suggest
Speaker 1: to what have you to blow the mind and how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com