Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This is part one of a series
Speaker 1: we did on mushroom foraging. This was originally published September fifteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. It's actually I feel like around this time
Speaker 1: last year we were doing a lot of wandering in
Speaker 1: the Woods related episodes. We were yeah, yeah, because we'd
Speaker 1: done the Leshy, and then we were talking about mushroom
Speaker 1: foraging as like a human behavior and a human cultural practice.
Speaker 1: Pretty it's it's pretty fun. This is part one, and
Speaker 1: our next Vault episode will be part two. And a
Speaker 1: little notice here at the beginning, this is an insert
Speaker 1: because Robert and I we started talking about mushroom foraging
Speaker 1: and we ended up going on for like more than
Speaker 1: two hours. So we're splitting this episode into two parts.
Speaker 1: And here is your warnings, so be sure to not
Speaker 1: only listen to this one, but come back next time.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going
Speaker 1: on the Quiet Time. That's right, we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about mushroom foraging, which we kind of touched on very
Speaker 1: briefly in our recent episode about liking, and then I
Speaker 1: realized we just had to come back to it because
Speaker 1: I guess the basic genesis for this is that I've
Speaker 1: noticed a lot more mushroom talk and a lot a
Speaker 1: lot more mushroom activity this year. Part of it has
Speaker 1: been social media, for sure. I've noticed people I know
Speaker 1: taking photographs of interesting mushrooms that they've spotted, sometimes correctly
Speaker 1: identifying them or even harvesting them. And I have to
Speaker 1: admit that my own family we've gotten into identifying mushrooms
Speaker 1: on hikes, and we've even done a little bit of
Speaker 1: foraging ourselves, but only with racie mushrooms and chanterelles. In
Speaker 1: a way, mushroom foraging is an ideal social distancing activity, right.
Speaker 1: It's something you can do that in a way feels
Speaker 1: social because you take them home and you take pictures
Speaker 1: of them and you put them on the internet and
Speaker 1: everybody thinks it's beautiful and they comment on them, and
Speaker 1: it's a way of interacting in a significant productive way
Speaker 1: with the world outside your house, but you don't have
Speaker 1: to get close to anybody. Yeah, yeah, it's I think
Speaker 1: part of it has certainly been COVID nineteen restrictions on
Speaker 1: our lives, because some of us are doing a lot
Speaker 1: more walks through either parks or you know, or hiking
Speaker 1: trails if we have access to them and we're able
Speaker 1: to get to those, but even through our own neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: Like we've harvested some raci mushrooms from just our immediate
Speaker 1: neighborhood environment just walking walking around, spotting them and then
Speaker 1: ideing them, and then also just ideing various other things
Speaker 1: that were not attempting to collect. It's a great it's
Speaker 1: a great way to occupy your time to sort of
Speaker 1: have It's kind of like the Pokemon Go of the Wild.
Speaker 1: It gives you sort of goals to achieve on your walks,
Speaker 1: things to chronicle, and for most of us anyway, a
Speaker 1: new topic to immerse ourselves in, you know, because prior
Speaker 1: to the last couple of years or so, I really
Speaker 1: didn't know much about mushrooms outside of like the few
Speaker 1: varieties that I had previously consumed or that you can
Speaker 1: find at the grocery store or order on a pizza.
Speaker 1: But of course that's only a slim variety of the
Speaker 1: mushroom whirld. There are some delicious, edible wild mushrooms that
Speaker 1: have resisted cultivation. Yeah, totally, And there are some interesting
Speaker 1: reasons for that too, like one of them being that,
Speaker 1: tying back to our recent Lin episode, some mushrooms that
Speaker 1: are delicious to eat exist in symbiotic relationships with other organisms,
Speaker 1: specifically often like plants and trees that are difficult to
Speaker 1: recreate in a controlled environment. So you can't just start
Speaker 1: a chantrelle farm. Or maybe you could, but you know
Speaker 1: your yield would be inconsistent. It's just really difficult to do. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Another thing, though, is it's funny that we think of
Speaker 1: mushroom foraging as sort of the natural world version of
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go. It's it's a sign of like how sort
Speaker 1: of microchif tamed our brains are. That Isn't Pokemon Go
Speaker 1: really a sort of substitute or surrogate for this ancient
Speaker 1: instinct we have to scour the land for bits of
Speaker 1: edible plant matter and other life. It absolutely is, and
Speaker 1: and so that's why I encourage everyone to, you know,
Speaker 1: keep listening to this episode even if you're you're not
Speaker 1: that into mushrooms, you're not interested in mushroom foraging, because
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss mushroom foraging, but we're also going
Speaker 1: to discuss foraging behavior, uh in a broader sense. And
Speaker 1: I think that's something that that that certainly you can
Speaker 1: gauge into. So when you're on a walk and you're
Speaker 1: looking for something, be it birds or mushrooms or non
Speaker 1: existent Pokemon lurking, you know somewhere in the GPS domain.
Speaker 1: And I think it also comes into play in shopping,
Speaker 1: in sorting through a big box of unsorted legos to
Speaker 1: find the pieces you're looking for. I mean, it pops
Speaker 1: up in so many different human activities and it captivates us.
Speaker 1: It is, it latches into a part of our neural
Speaker 1: hardware because it is part of what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: This is interesting. I wish I had thought about this
Speaker 1: before we started talking, so I could research it a bit,
Speaker 1: But it just occurred to me. What makes the difference
Speaker 1: between search activities that are intensely pleasurable and search activities
Speaker 1: that are maddening. Like I'm thinking about search activities such
Speaker 1: as locating a specific item within your house or a
Speaker 1: given room that is not fun, that feels awful, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like where are my keys? You just you just
Speaker 1: want it to end as soon as possible. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, of course, foraging for mushrooms, playing Pokemon Go,
Speaker 1: or even sometimes digging through a container of legos that
Speaker 1: can be very fun, or searching for a puzzle piece.
Speaker 1: So what's the difference. I mean, it might be the
Speaker 1: difference between the search for the thing lost and the
Speaker 1: search for the thing not yet obtained. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: But I also have noticed, I think I've mentioned this
Speaker 1: on the show before. I have found that jigsaw puzzles
Speaker 1: the process of looking for the correct piece. For me,
Speaker 1: I feel it's both like it's both kind of mentally
Speaker 1: exhausting and frustrating and yet at the same time completely enthralling.
Speaker 1: So in the past I found myself helping to put
Speaker 1: together a jigsaw puzzle and not really like, I'm asking myself,
Speaker 1: Am I enjoying this? Am I having a good time?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I also cannot stop. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess one thing we're highlighting is the sometimes fuzzy
Speaker 1: line between work and play a lot of you ever
Speaker 1: notice how much video game time is taken up with
Speaker 1: things that like are basically like they would be work
Speaker 1: in the real world, but something about the way they're
Speaker 1: framed just makes it a game instead. Yeah. So many
Speaker 1: of these games, especially, you know, they want you to
Speaker 1: play regularly. It's not just play through the story, it's
Speaker 1: play every day. So they give you these little, basically
Speaker 1: grocery lists of things to do, and you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you see players complaining about it, and rightfully so, but
Speaker 1: but also there's something kind of addictive about it, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to go out. I need to you know,
Speaker 1: find and scrap eight hats in this post apocalyptic world,
Speaker 1: you know, something like that, and uh, and it's you
Speaker 1: can weirdly get into it. Yeah, I gotta break rocks
Speaker 1: in my digital domain. Though I guess that that sort
Speaker 1: of introduces the slot machine element, because if it's exciting,
Speaker 1: if there are variable, intermittent rewards, I think that's the
Speaker 1: candy in there. Yeah, I mean it was. Sometimes there's
Speaker 1: like a random the reward is random, but like sometimes
Speaker 1: like in Fallout seventy six, which which I know fans
Speaker 1: kind of go back and forth on this particular game
Speaker 1: and the way it's designed and all in that elements
Speaker 1: in it, But like a lot of the sort of
Speaker 1: grocery list assignments you have, there's there's not really a
Speaker 1: random rewards. You know exactly what you're gonna get, Like
Speaker 1: you're gonna get so many like you know, atoms that
Speaker 1: you can spend in the store or whatever. You know
Speaker 1: exactly what you're working for with it. So in that regard,
Speaker 1: I feel like it kind of falls in line with foraging.
Speaker 1: But then again, foraging is also an exercise in not
Speaker 1: necessarily knowing what you're going to get or knowing what
Speaker 1: quantities you're going to get. And we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean what if one of these digital
Speaker 1: rocks you broke could kill you? Yeah? Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: going to be a huge part of mushrooms here. But
Speaker 1: before we get go any further, I do want to
Speaker 1: just show us a couple more things. First of all, yes,
Speaker 1: photography is a tremendously fun activity to engage in with
Speaker 1: mushrooms when you're scavenging them and finding them and charting
Speaker 1: them in the wild. Spore prints are also a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Now, this is when you you can look
Speaker 1: up guides on how to do this online, but where
Speaker 1: you collect like the cap of the mushroom, and then
Speaker 1: you put it on a sheet of paper and then
Speaker 1: cover it with like a glass container or a bowl
Speaker 1: or something, and then the spores leave a print of
Speaker 1: the mushroom cap on the sheet of paper, which you
Speaker 1: can then photograph and share online or even you know.
Speaker 1: I think they're ways to preserve it as well. Noting
Speaker 1: the emission of spores is a great reminder of something
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, which is that when you harvest
Speaker 1: a mushroom, you are not harvesting the entire organism that
Speaker 1: you know, the fungus is a web of things that
Speaker 1: live under the ground, usually or in some kind of
Speaker 1: decomposing matter or parasitic on another organism. The mushroom that
Speaker 1: you collect is the fruiting body that's like an organ
Speaker 1: of the overall fungus. It's almost, I mean, not exactly analogous,
Speaker 1: but the closest analogy I think would be that it's
Speaker 1: like you're breaking off the sexual organs of an animal
Speaker 1: and walking away with them. Now that being said, I
Speaker 1: want to stress something that mushroom foragers often stress regarding
Speaker 1: the fruiting body, and that is that you're not going
Speaker 1: to be hurting the organism by by harvesting the mushrooms themselves.
Speaker 1: Now that being said before, first of all, before you
Speaker 1: engage in any kind of mushroom foraging, be aware that
Speaker 1: in some places it is prohibited some places or maybe
Speaker 1: not going to be hipped to this idea that you're
Speaker 1: not really hurting the organism. They're still saying, well, you're
Speaker 1: taking away from this natural environment that is protected in
Speaker 1: this space. The other huge thing we want to stress
Speaker 1: before we go any further is that while we're going
Speaker 1: to be discussing mushroom foraging for mushrooms that one would
Speaker 1: then consume for culinary or medicinal purposes, do not engage
Speaker 1: in this, you know, just based on anything we've told
Speaker 1: you here. As we are going to outline shortly, there
Speaker 1: are some risks involved there if you if you pick
Speaker 1: the wrong mushroom, some dire consequences can occur, and you
Speaker 1: just really need to know, you need to go down
Speaker 1: that road with professionals who know what they're talking about
Speaker 1: with mushroom foraging, and you know, don't just run off
Speaker 1: into the wild. Based on listening to this episode. Yes,
Speaker 1: do not choose to put any particular thing in your
Speaker 1: mouth because of anything we say here today. Right, So,
Speaker 1: speaking of this this danger factor, uh, yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to stress that while while I myself have enjoyed engaging
Speaker 1: in mushroom identification and the limited foraging, that my family
Speaker 1: feels comfortable with, yeah, to really, you know, drive the
Speaker 1: nail home here. If you eat the wrong mushroom that
Speaker 1: you find in the wild, you will die, because you know,
Speaker 1: most notoriously, there's a variety of mushroom known as destroying angels,
Speaker 1: and and these will indeed destroy you should you make
Speaker 1: make if you should mistake them for an edible mushroom.
Speaker 1: The deadly webcap mushroom as another example. This one has
Speaker 1: been mistaken for edible chantrelle mushrooms. It's even been mistaken
Speaker 1: for psilocybin mushrooms before, and it has a horrifying reputation
Speaker 1: for causing irreversible kidney failure in those who consume it,
Speaker 1: including some very notable cases such as that of English
Speaker 1: author Nicholas Adams. Yeah, there are actually a number of
Speaker 1: historically notable alleged mushroom poisonings that I've been reading about,
Speaker 1: specifically in a book by Cynthia D. Burtleson called Mushroom
Speaker 1: a Global History from Reaction Books in twenty thirteen. I
Speaker 1: think it was also distributed by the University of Chicago Press.
Speaker 1: But Burtleson at one point writes about how the French
Speaker 1: philosopher Voltaire, who lives sixteen ninety four to seventeen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: once wrote, quote a dish of mushrooms changed the destiny
Speaker 1: of Europe. Now, how could that possibly be true? Well,
Speaker 1: he was talking about the poisoning of a specific king
Speaker 1: of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg King, Charles the
Speaker 1: sixth of Austria. To pick up with what Burtleson writes,
Speaker 1: quote who ate deathcap mushrooms? Amanita falloitties the subsequent War
Speaker 1: of the Austrian Succession from seventeen forty to seventeen forty eight,
Speaker 1: which developed into a global war. In the American colonies,
Speaker 1: it was called King George's War, absorbing in the process
Speaker 1: the War of Jenkin's Ear between the British and Spanish
Speaker 1: and the Caribbean affected people as far away as India,
Speaker 1: all because of mushrooms. Those quote toadstools, And here she's
Speaker 1: referring to the fact that it was allegedly common among
Speaker 1: especially English speakers, to take a very indiscriminating attitude toward mushrooms.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of English speakers would just look
Speaker 1: at all kinds of mushrooms and say, well, they're all
Speaker 1: just toad stools. In terms of other political consequences. In history,
Speaker 1: it's also been alleged that the Roman emperor Claudius was
Speaker 1: poisoned with mushrooms, though this is disputed. The earliest accounts
Speaker 1: indicate that on October thirteenth, fifty four CE, at the
Speaker 1: age of sixty four, the emperor started to complain of
Speaker 1: extreme stomach pain. He had diarrhea and vomiting. He had
Speaker 1: trouble breathing, low blood pressure, and excessive salivation. And I
Speaker 1: was reading a report in Scientific American from two thousand
Speaker 1: and one about a conference presentation by a doctor named
Speaker 1: William Valente from the University of Maryland School of Medicine,
Speaker 1: and Valente argued that mushrooms containing musquarine were the cause
Speaker 1: of his death according to the symptoms reported, and one
Speaker 1: of the traditional explanations for what happened to Claudius was
Speaker 1: that he was poisoned by his wife Agrippina in order
Speaker 1: to clear the way for her son Nero to ascend
Speaker 1: to the throne, and we all know good old Nero. Now,
Speaker 1: the conclusion that Claudius died by some form of poisoning
Speaker 1: does appear to at least usually have been the historical consensus,
Speaker 1: but other experts doubt this one. We should note I
Speaker 1: found a paper published by the Journal of the Royal
Speaker 1: Society of Medicine in two thousand and two by Marmion
Speaker 1: and Wiederman, and they wrote, quote, we see no reason
Speaker 1: to believe that Claudius was murdered. All the features are
Speaker 1: consistent with sudden death from cerebro vascular disease, which was
Speaker 1: common in Roman times. And they also note that one
Speaker 1: of the forms of evidence they cite is that physical
Speaker 1: depictions of Claudius in the couple of years before he
Speaker 1: died show visibly declining health that would be consistent with
Speaker 1: the symptoms of this disease that they think would also
Speaker 1: explain what people saw when he died. So we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. But as a strange note, apparently Emperor
Speaker 1: Nero declared that mushrooms were the food of the gods.
Speaker 1: And it's also kind of interesting because Claudius was deified,
Speaker 1: meaning made into a god, basically immediately after his death. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that does one could certainly interpret that as
Speaker 1: nero being a very it being a very dastardly sneaky
Speaker 1: thing to say, huh, or it could be a coincidence
Speaker 1: because hey, I mean, mushrooms are kind of the food
Speaker 1: of the gods. Mushrooms are delicious. We've gotten this far
Speaker 1: into a podcast about mushrooms without me just like I
Speaker 1: love mushrooms. I've been cooking with a lot of them
Speaker 1: recently that we've been getting from a local CSA that
Speaker 1: has been supplying us with shattaki mushrooms and oyster mushrooms,
Speaker 1: which are so delicious if you just like roast them
Speaker 1: lightly in the oven until they get a little bit
Speaker 1: dried out and browned, and you can use them in anything.
Speaker 1: They're they're like they're meatier than meat. They are certainly
Speaker 1: like my family we are we're pescatarians, but we don't
Speaker 1: even eat fish that often. So it's it's it's wonderful
Speaker 1: to have mushrooms in a dish to create that that
Speaker 1: that meaty texture and that meaty flavor. Yeah, so good,
Speaker 1: all right, We're going to take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. And we're back. Now. Now we've
Speaker 1: discussing these like terribly poisonous mushrooms, we should of course
Speaker 1: stress that it's not just a you know, good versus
Speaker 1: evil situation here. It's not just this mushroom will will
Speaker 1: be delicious or have some sort of curative properties to it,
Speaker 1: and this one will destroy you. There's a wide variety
Speaker 1: of mushrooms out there, some of which if you eat
Speaker 1: by accident, you're not going to die, You'll just get
Speaker 1: violently ill. You know, there's a whole world of light
Speaker 1: mushroom poisoning. Yes, there are certainly mushrooms out there that
Speaker 1: are technically edible but not good to eat. And then
Speaker 1: there's also something to be said for just everyone's particular
Speaker 1: digestive system is going to react differently to different things.
Speaker 1: So there, you know, the mushroom that one person finds
Speaker 1: delicious and fulfilling might give someone else an upset stomach. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And in a way, the idea of mushroom foraging kind
Speaker 1: of reminds us of something that would have been much
Speaker 1: more common throughout history at times before, say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: having like an FDA and widespread food inspection and a
Speaker 1: very organized streamline process for supplying food stuffs to grocery
Speaker 1: stores and all that. I think if you go back
Speaker 1: in history, you'd find that eating was more it was
Speaker 1: a little bit more a game of roulette than it
Speaker 1: is today. You know that, Yeah, you were kind of
Speaker 1: you always just had to wonder, is like, is what
Speaker 1: I'm eating right now safe? Yeah? Indeed, But particularly I
Speaker 1: guess the thing about mushroom foraging is, especially in the
Speaker 1: modern connotation, it does really highlight that that risk, that
Speaker 1: inherent risk of foraging for your food and it and
Speaker 1: certainly if you look at some of these worst case
Speaker 1: scenarios and these horror stories of people consuming just deadly
Speaker 1: poison thinking that they found an edible mushroom or psychedelic mushroom,
Speaker 1: you know, it may raise the question why do this
Speaker 1: at all? You know, he is the reward truly worth
Speaker 1: the risk? And I totally get this question. When my
Speaker 1: wife became interested in wild mushroom foraging, my initial thought was, Okay,
Speaker 1: chanterelle sound delicious. I think I had had them previously,
Speaker 1: maybe once before, But are they really so good that
Speaker 1: it's worth and thinking about the possibility of getting it
Speaker 1: wrong or getting it deadly wrong, you know, even casting
Speaker 1: aside the more serious risk of death and oregan damage.
Speaker 1: Do I really just want to spend say an afternoon
Speaker 1: or an evening, you know, violently ill in my stomach
Speaker 1: because I wanted to have this, this experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would guess that part of it, Like you can
Speaker 1: sort of calculate your risks. You can't be one hundred
Speaker 1: percent sure, but you can say, like, Okay, I'm plucking
Speaker 1: a mushroom that looks like this. I think it's this species.
Speaker 1: How close in appearance and in habitat and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: Is it two things that are known to be poisonous? Yeah, yeah, certainly,
Speaker 1: Like in our case, you know, the mushrooms that we
Speaker 1: tend to gravitate towards are ones where at least in
Speaker 1: our area. There are only so many things you could
Speaker 1: mistake it for. And if you you can educate yourself
Speaker 1: on what details to precisely look for. And then one
Speaker 1: of the beauties of social media, one of the benefits
Speaker 1: I point too, is that you can then take your
Speaker 1: photograph of this specimen and share it with other enthusiasts
Speaker 1: and even experts and say, what do I have here?
Speaker 1: Help me identify this, etc. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: resources at hand. Yeah, that is kind of wonderful. And
Speaker 1: in the same way that the Internet can, of course
Speaker 1: be the source of collective delusions and things like that,
Speaker 1: it can also be the source of collective wisdom. And
Speaker 1: one of the ways in which I've seen it best
Speaker 1: used for collective wisdom is species identification. There's a whole
Speaker 1: part of Twitter that's just people posting species identification photos
Speaker 1: for snakes, for spiders, for wild mushrooms and things like that.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah. Now, now, particularly with mushrooms, I was
Speaker 1: looking around for people's thoughts on this, and I found
Speaker 1: an article on the website for Ian magazine by the
Speaker 1: author Cal Flynn, and the author writes, this whole whole
Speaker 1: piece is just about mushroom foraging and the risk rewards
Speaker 1: of it. And they write, quote, if the risk is
Speaker 1: so huge and the payoffs so small, why do it?
Speaker 1: The identification process is interesting, of course, and mushrooms are
Speaker 1: pleasant enough to eat, but perhaps the real intrigue arises
Speaker 1: from the risk itself and the skill required to sidestep it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This ties in with something I've often wondered about in
Speaker 1: two categories, both dogs and human children, And the question is,
Speaker 1: why do so many dogs and human children just put
Speaker 1: basically anything they find on the ground into their mouths?
Speaker 1: You know, like, chances are not good that this is food,
Speaker 1: but by god, I'm going to give it a go.
Speaker 1: You know, this has always struck me as a as
Speaker 1: a really maladaptive behavior. Why would we instinctually air on
Speaker 1: putting things into the mouth instead of keeping them out
Speaker 1: of the mouth. Wouldn't you think that we would instinctually
Speaker 1: air more on the side of caution. It seems like
Speaker 1: there's more risk in putting random, potentially poisonous or inedible
Speaker 1: things into your mouth than there is reward in whatever
Speaker 1: forsaken food energy you'd be missing out on if you
Speaker 1: didn't put it in your mouth. But I don't know
Speaker 1: who knows. I mean, maybe one thing is that the
Speaker 1: conditions of modern life somehow encourage behaviors that wouldn't occur
Speaker 1: very much in nature. I guess that's a possibility. Or
Speaker 1: maybe maybe nibbling on all kinds of nutritionally ambiguous material
Speaker 1: is just a lot less risky than it would seem
Speaker 1: less risky than we assume. Maybe you can actually put
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff in your mouth and in your
Speaker 1: body and most of the time you'll be fine. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to stress that we are not advocating anyone
Speaker 1: do this. No, no, no, no no no. But I am
Speaker 1: told that experienced mushroom foragers sometimes perform a quick taste test,
Speaker 1: tasting but not consuming a mushroom to help determine the variety.
Speaker 1: And it's my understanding that it's it's done with potentially
Speaker 1: toxic mushrooms as well. Again, do not try this because
Speaker 1: we mentioned it. But but but but this, this would
Speaker 1: make sense that you would be able to just taste
Speaker 1: some of these specimens to see, I don't know, to detect,
Speaker 1: say a bitterness, to help in the identification process. I
Speaker 1: was also thinking about, okay, what has actually been observed
Speaker 1: in wild animals in terms of just like tasting everything,
Speaker 1: trying everything in their environment when there are so many
Speaker 1: toxic plants and mushrooms in the world. And one thing
Speaker 1: I came across that was kind of interesting was an
Speaker 1: older article in the Alaska Fish and Wildlife News by
Speaker 1: Riley Woodford called how Deer Eat Poisonous Plants, and it
Speaker 1: cites an Alaska Wildlife biologists named Tom Hanley who talks
Speaker 1: about how actually in the wild, deer eat toxic poisonous
Speaker 1: plants just all the time. And Hanley says, quote, deer
Speaker 1: will eat a little bit of almost everything out there,
Speaker 1: including a few bites of various toxic plants. There seem
Speaker 1: to be threshold levels for the toxicity of different plants,
Speaker 1: and as long as deer eat below the threshold, they're okay.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. It's like, maybe you just eat toxic
Speaker 1: things in moderation, nibble on a little bit of this
Speaker 1: here and a little bit of that there, and over
Speaker 1: time you can sort of build up some nutrition for
Speaker 1: your body without reaching toxic levels on any one particular poison. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's also worth worth remembering that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to vary from species to species. For instance,
Speaker 1: with humans, poison ivy is generally no fun. But goats
Speaker 1: goats are like, let me add it, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: eat it all. Goats eat poison ivy. Yeah, yeah, goats
Speaker 1: will eat it up. Yeah. Now that that means you
Speaker 1: need to not have goat milk from those goats, but yeah,
Speaker 1: goats goats have no problem with it. Another outstanding example
Speaker 1: of this sort of thing. Are box turtles. Box turtles
Speaker 1: are all about eating up some some some poisonous mushrooms,
Speaker 1: for example, and you know it doesn't doesn't bother them
Speaker 1: at all. But for a similar reason, don't go out
Speaker 1: harvesting box turtles think thinking you're gonna make su about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the fact that different species are tolerant of different
Speaker 1: toxins is of course something that's mentioned in this article
Speaker 1: as well, Like it talks about how mule deer, for example,
Speaker 1: are more tolerant of something called locoweed than pronghorn antelopear,
Speaker 1: and it says that elk are more tolerant of Ponderosa
Speaker 1: pine than bison are. And I think this would probably
Speaker 1: have to do with what their natural habitats are, what
Speaker 1: the evolved relationships they are with different plants, and probably
Speaker 1: also their nutritional needs. But there was a quote that
Speaker 1: Burtleson has in her book that I really liked. It
Speaker 1: was from the American food writer John Thorne, who wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: all hunters put life at risk, but for mushroomers, the
Speaker 1: amount of danger comes well after the quarry has been
Speaker 1: run to ground. Finding the mushroom is the initiation, but
Speaker 1: eating it is the test. I think that's interesting comparing
Speaker 1: it with hunting like that, you know, hunting is a
Speaker 1: dislocation of where the lens could set in, and this
Speaker 1: connects to some Russian traditions that I'll talk about in
Speaker 1: a minute. But there's also a folk adage. I think
Speaker 1: we may have mentioned it when we did our episodes
Speaker 1: about psilocybin and psychedelics, But the folks saying is there
Speaker 1: are old mushroom hunters, and there are bold mushroom hunters,
Speaker 1: but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters, which hammering
Speaker 1: home the idea that mushroom foraging, while a highly rewarding
Speaker 1: activity to millions of people around the world, is something
Speaker 1: that's best practiced with a kind of conservative mindset, like
Speaker 1: you do need to be cautious to understand what you're
Speaker 1: doing before you dive in head first. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I've heard Paul's fame. It's echo this same nugget of wisdom.
Speaker 1: And speaking of wisdom concerning that, you know, the consumption
Speaker 1: of mushrooms and also plants, this brings to mind this
Speaker 1: mythological figure from Chinese mythology that have brought it before,
Speaker 1: and that's up Chinong, the divine farmer. It's also the
Speaker 1: Chinese father of agriculture, and he's you know, he's credited
Speaker 1: with inventing various important agricultural technologies, but also was said
Speaker 1: to have consumed basically that the myth is he looked
Speaker 1: around and he saw that the people were starving, they
Speaker 1: were they were sickly, they needed medicine, they needed more food.
Speaker 1: So what he did is he's set to work, consuming
Speaker 1: hundreds of plants per day and as many as seventy
Speaker 1: poisons a day in order to chart the medicinal properties
Speaker 1: of the natural world in order to alleviate sickness and
Speaker 1: starvation and disease. And you'll often find illustrations of him
Speaker 1: kind of like chewing on the end of some sort
Speaker 1: of vegetation. And he's a really interesting character in the
Speaker 1: artistic depictions as well, because he has these kind of
Speaker 1: bovine features and even these kind of horn like protusions
Speaker 1: on his head, which apparently we see in some other
Speaker 1: Chinese mythological figures as well. Well. This is great because
Speaker 1: even though there may be there could be mythological elements
Speaker 1: to the specific story of Shinong, it highlights the fact
Speaker 1: that at some point there had to be a lot
Speaker 1: of trial and error going into our knowledge about mushrooms, right,
Speaker 1: you couldn't just like look at them and reason from
Speaker 1: that knowledge. And like, people were making decisions about what
Speaker 1: mushrooms were safe to eat long before we had laboratory
Speaker 1: testing procedures and all that. So there are just years
Speaker 1: and years and many historical recapitulations of painful, horrifying trial
Speaker 1: and error in mushroom foraging. In fact, Bertilson writes about this,
Speaker 1: she talks about specifically what was going on in the
Speaker 1: literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In the medical literature,
Speaker 1: she says, quote, it is full of accounts of unsuspecting
Speaker 1: foragers coming home with their prizes, only to find themselves
Speaker 1: hours or even minutes later, laughing hysterically or bent over
Speaker 1: with intestinal pains, unable to move from chair to bed.
Speaker 1: So serious were cases of poisonings in France that in
Speaker 1: Paris in seventeen fifty four, the city fathers passed an
Speaker 1: ordinance prohibiting the sale of any mushrooms in the markets. So, like,
Speaker 1: there's so much mushroom poisoning. People just trying to like
Speaker 1: figure out what you're supposed to eat and not or
Speaker 1: or maybe disregarding what was already known by other people.
Speaker 1: Uh that they were they were, they were just like, okay,
Speaker 1: we're saying nix on the mushrooms, no mushrooms at all.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, indeed indeed what was known and perhaps forgotten.
Speaker 1: Uh Yeah. It's it's interesting too to think of, like
Speaker 1: just the very early days of humanity. As the human
Speaker 1: expansion spreads out of our our you know, our ancient
Speaker 1: places of origin, the human these humans and and and
Speaker 1: and pre humans would have encountered just new environments that
Speaker 1: means new species, new substances that they would then have
Speaker 1: to test out and figure out again like what is
Speaker 1: what is beneficial, what is dangerous? You know, what is food?
Speaker 1: And what is the potential medicine as they continue to
Speaker 1: spread out in the world. Yeah, and I think this
Speaker 1: is something you see throughout the history of mushroom literature
Speaker 1: is a gradual process of ruling things in So in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century French example, I mentioned in seventeen fifty four,
Speaker 1: they said, okay, no mushrooms at all in the markets,
Speaker 1: but you know, mushrooms are good. So this was eventually amended,
Speaker 1: and Burtleston mentions that in eighteen O eight, they changed
Speaker 1: the law to allow seven species, in particular in markets
Speaker 1: in Paris, and the mushrooms had to pass inspection by
Speaker 1: police appointed experts in order to be sold. Now, that
Speaker 1: would make for a good historical television show, the Mushroom Police.
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. All right, we're back. You know,
Speaker 1: there's something I've sometimes gonna wondered about when people really
Speaker 1: enjoy meat, you know, people who are big carnivores like
Speaker 1: I just love a good steak, if part of the
Speaker 1: enjoyment is a sort of sublimated, implied sense of violence
Speaker 1: or struggle in the idea of eating the meat, because
Speaker 1: you know, if you're eating meat, there was some violence
Speaker 1: that happened at some point. Something is a little bit
Speaker 1: dangerous about your food. And it makes me wonder if maybe,
Speaker 1: in the back of our minds, there's something slightly psychologically
Speaker 1: similar going on with mushrooms. I mean, probably not, because
Speaker 1: not if you're buying button mushrooms from the store or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just like any other crop at this point.
Speaker 1: But maybe with forage to mushrooms, there's a similar danger
Speaker 1: running underneath the skin. Oh, maybe so yeah. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: to come back to to cal Flynn's piece in Ian,
Speaker 1: the author there also compared it to the consumption of
Speaker 1: a particular meat, the Japanese delicacy of fugu, you know,
Speaker 1: in which the risk and the skill is part of it.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like, is the is the is the
Speaker 1: chef in this case? Are they skilled enough to pull
Speaker 1: this off, to remove the dangerous parts and serve only
Speaker 1: the delicious parts? And so so that author ties this
Speaker 1: in to the uh to our relationship with mushroom foraging. Now,
Speaker 1: now to come back just briefly to just the idea
Speaker 1: of there there's seeming to be an uptick in mushroom enthusiasm,
Speaker 1: you know, especially what we see online and all, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to share a few more thoughts about it.
Speaker 1: First of all, I do think there is probably a
Speaker 1: connection here to the increased mainstream interest in psychedelic mushrooms
Speaker 1: and the increased and promising clinical research, which we outlined
Speaker 1: what was it last year in a several parts series
Speaker 1: on psychedelics. I feel like that, I feel I feel
Speaker 1: like that is part of the scenario, at least with
Speaker 1: some people. Also, we should always drive home that humans
Speaker 1: have always been fascinated with mushrooms, So there's nothing new
Speaker 1: about mushroom fascination. We see it in ancient art, we
Speaker 1: see it in Super Mario games. So it's it's it's
Speaker 1: just part of who we are. And if you want
Speaker 1: to read more about this last point, it was touched
Speaker 1: on in a New York magazine article by Sydney Gore
Speaker 1: with the wonderful title why are my streams taking over
Speaker 1: my social media feed, my medicine cabinet and my closet,
Speaker 1: referring to like fashions I believe there, Oh, like those
Speaker 1: fungus hats, you know, like Paul Stamens squares. Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Paul Stament's fashions. I also found an interesting article about
Speaker 1: a huge uptick in Scottish mushroom foraging steep rise in
Speaker 1: Scot's Enjoying Fruits of Foraging by Maggie Ritchie. And this
Speaker 1: article put it this way, quoting Terry Carmichael, resident forager
Speaker 1: for Wild Tastes at the Carmichael Estate and in Lancashire quote.
Speaker 1: More people were trying to get back to their roots
Speaker 1: and to nature since the pandemics started, and we reconnect
Speaker 1: with nature. There are so many foods that are right
Speaker 1: on our doorstep that we see every day and can
Speaker 1: bring into our kitchens. They're all packed with nutrients far
Speaker 1: more than any sold in supermarkets. And it's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that articles speak. You find articles speaking to the
Speaker 1: rising quote hipness of mushroom foraging in twenty nineteen and earlier,
Speaker 1: so a lot of this was already in motion. For instance,
Speaker 1: there was the Guardian article titled the Gospel of Mushrooms,
Speaker 1: How foraging became Hip, and that was from October of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. And for my own part, I have to
Speaker 1: point out that my family took a guided foraging exercise,
Speaker 1: like a guided hike through an area where they were
Speaker 1: known to be some meedable mushrooms in earlier in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: I think summer of twenty nineteen as well. There's apparently
Speaker 1: been just overall kind of a demographic shift on top
Speaker 1: of this, where mushroom foraging was previously the kind of
Speaker 1: hobby that you would often see older individuals engaged in,
Speaker 1: and that has shifted a bit younger in recent years.
Speaker 1: So part of this goes back to pre pandemic times
Speaker 1: to twenty nineteen, and these trends but I definitely also
Speaker 1: to come back to what you were saying before, that
Speaker 1: would connect it to trends we've seen in self sufficiency
Speaker 1: and production of food stuffs in the home or around
Speaker 1: the home. The same way there was sort of a
Speaker 1: craze for like people making sour dough bread, people growing
Speaker 1: herb gardens and things like that. This year when I think,
Speaker 1: I think suddenly a lot of people realize that it
Speaker 1: might be much easier than they had previously thought to
Speaker 1: acquire food items from places other than the grocery store. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I also want to mention that that that foraging course
Speaker 1: that my family took, that the high guided hike, it
Speaker 1: was kind of a varied group. You know. You had
Speaker 1: some people who are just kind of nature enthusiasts, but
Speaker 1: then there's one guy that was like straight up survivalist, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was there to learn. I mean, he was there
Speaker 1: I think for a little socialization as well, you know,
Speaker 1: but he was also one of these guys who was like, Yep,
Speaker 1: it's coming and I'm gonna I'm gonna be the one
Speaker 1: to know where the mushrooms are when the Y two
Speaker 1: K bug hits. I'm gonna be here with my gun
Speaker 1: mushroom hunting. Yeah, and I think we could all relate
Speaker 1: late to that. You know, we do a little uh,
Speaker 1: you know, doom fantasizing, and we're like, oh man, if
Speaker 1: it's suddenly Corny McCarthy's The Road, I want to know
Speaker 1: what's up, you know, especially as we previously mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: fungi are gonna gonna presumably do do all right if
Speaker 1: the sun gets blocked out right, This is a great point.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about this. So the in Corian McCarthy's
Speaker 1: The Road, the earth is kind of dead. The sky
Speaker 1: appears to have been, I don't know, clouded by some
Speaker 1: kind of particulate matter. Did you ever have a personal
Speaker 1: theory as to what the event was in the road.
Speaker 1: Was it volcanic eruptions or an impact from space? Or
Speaker 1: I always lean more towards nuclear war just because they
Speaker 1: have those He had those, really, I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: book is beautiful and dark, and so has those richly,
Speaker 1: But those they has these deposits of just exceedingly rich language,
Speaker 1: and there are a few they are describing, like what
Speaker 1: it's like in the cities, where like the cities seem
Speaker 1: to be a very toxic place to be, and he
Speaker 1: talks about like people rummaging through the rubble to get
Speaker 1: you know, probably radioactive foods that they can eat, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So I kind of I would tend
Speaker 1: to lean towards that, but he does keep it vague
Speaker 1: as to what exactly happened. Right well, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: something has darkened the skies and this of course has
Speaker 1: killed all the plant life, so nobody can grow any
Speaker 1: food to eat. But yeah, I would be thinking, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't mushrooms be doing awesome? Yeah, yeah, there's no. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any mention of them growing anywhere, but
Speaker 1: one would hope. So it would be. It would be
Speaker 1: almost kind of a comical scene right where the cannibals
Speaker 1: are hanging out and they're like, whoa, guys, there are
Speaker 1: mushrooms everywhere. We'll have to eat babies anymore? Is Sean
Speaker 1: trell season, Yeah, hand of the woods. So anyway, so
Speaker 1: there's the survival aspect of it, certainly, but you know,
Speaker 1: there's just fascination with nature. But I would say that
Speaker 1: another huge part of this, and something we're gonna continue
Speaker 1: to discuss here, is that foraging would seem to be
Speaker 1: an innate part of the human experience, and we engage
Speaker 1: in it in various ways. Mushroom hunting stands out as
Speaker 1: a as a thoroughly authentic example of this sort of
Speaker 1: foraging behavior. But again, we can we can all identify
Speaker 1: with activities that are like foraging, that are oddly satisfying. Again,
Speaker 1: like jigsaw puzzles, lego pieces. Shopping, even going to the
Speaker 1: grocery store can be an act of foraging. It can
Speaker 1: sort of engage some of those same circuits. I feel
Speaker 1: like it certainly varies from person to person. For example,
Speaker 1: I've been fascinated by the way that some people really
Speaker 1: enjoy shopping, you know, they enjoy like shopping for clothes
Speaker 1: or whatever. And that's always been very mysterious to me.
Speaker 1: I don't enjoy that at all. It seems like a
Speaker 1: really irritating, tedious activity that I don't do unless I
Speaker 1: absolutely have to. But then I realized, actually I can
Speaker 1: relate to it, because I really enjoy under at least
Speaker 1: like less stressful circumstances. I really enjoy shopping for food.
Speaker 1: I like going out to find like nice produce, you know,
Speaker 1: going to the farmers markets, you know, finding a really
Speaker 1: good looking cucumber or a bunch of mushrooms or something. So,
Speaker 1: so I think I do actually relate to that foraging
Speaker 1: shopping instinct is just with different kinds of items, and
Speaker 1: I guess that probably works out differently from for different people.
Speaker 1: I know some people who love going to the hardware store.
Speaker 1: I don't really get that either. But you know that's
Speaker 1: like a very classically like dad, things like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the hardware store. Well, I know you and I back
Speaker 1: when we could actually physically go in there. Going to
Speaker 1: the last video store in Atlanta, video drome, you go
Speaker 1: in there and forage for particular you know, movies we're
Speaker 1: interested in. Saying like that, that is is I think,
Speaker 1: very comparable to foraging. Very interesting. Why Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: love the videodrome and the produce aisle, but I do
Speaker 1: not love the hardware store or the clothes aisle. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, maybe it comes back to again this idea,
Speaker 1: is there a reward? Is there something that I'm working
Speaker 1: towards getting that is meaningful to me sustenance, either in
Speaker 1: a food sense or in a B movie sense. But
Speaker 1: clearly for many people there is a lot of pleasure
Speaker 1: in mushroom foraging that is not related to the reward.
Speaker 1: It is related to the activity itself, and this is
Speaker 1: something that kept coming up for me when I was
Speaker 1: reading about the Russian traditions of mushroom foraging. This is
Speaker 1: what I referenced at the beginning of the episode. But
Speaker 1: the term the quiet hunt. Apparently, mushroom foraging is very
Speaker 1: popular in Russia, and it's often been called this the
Speaker 1: quiet hunt. I like that Burtleson mentions this tradition in
Speaker 1: her book when she's quoting a passage from Vladimir Nabakov's
Speaker 1: memoir Speak Memory, which he published in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: and in this book he writes about his own mother's
Speaker 1: obsession with mushroom foraging. Quote. One of her greatest pleasures
Speaker 1: in summer was the very Russian sport of hodi pogribi,
Speaker 1: looking for mushrooms fried in butter and thickened with sour cream.
Speaker 1: Her delicious fines appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not
Speaker 1: that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was
Speaker 1: in the quest. Burtleson also quotes the Russian American p
Speaker 1: the Attrician Valentina Pavlovna Wasson, who of course was married
Speaker 1: to the famed microphile our Gordon Wasson. There were sort
Speaker 1: of amateur mushroom expert team in the mid nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: I think that they were also heavily involved in spreading
Speaker 1: the word about psilocybin mushrooms to much of the world.
Speaker 1: But speaking of her childhood, you know she came from
Speaker 1: a Russian family. Valentina Pavlovna wrote that quote, when we
Speaker 1: were naughty, our mother would punish us by forbidding us
Speaker 1: to go mushrooming. Great. You know, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: a video game. Yea. And Bertleson in her chapter identifies
Speaker 1: a couple of possible factors influencing the widespread passion for
Speaker 1: mushroom foraging in Russia. One of them that she highlights
Speaker 1: is the number of fast days mandated under the Russian
Speaker 1: Orthodox Church, which would specifically, it would imply that Christians
Speaker 1: were expected not to eat meat on these days, and
Speaker 1: mushrooms would provide a luxurious meatiness to a plate that
Speaker 1: you know, when you can't eat meat itself. But also
Speaker 1: just general poverty leading to that same lack of meat.
Speaker 1: But there's also a thing that appears to go beyond
Speaker 1: culinary preferences. I was reading an article by Ellen Berry
Speaker 1: in The New York Times for the Moscow Journal called
Speaker 1: a hypnotizing hunt leaves Russians bewildered. This is from two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, and Berry writes that practitioners of the
Speaker 1: quiet hunt quote routinely becomes so hypnotized that they get
Speaker 1: hopelessly lost. H Yeah, apparently Russian media is full of
Speaker 1: stories like this. She cites a couple I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: going to read from her article here quote. Earlier this month,
Speaker 1: a sodden and unshaven man emerged from the woods near
Speaker 1: the southern Russian village of Gorriacchi Kliuch, telling rescuers that
Speaker 1: he spent three nights perched in trees to get away
Speaker 1: from jackals. A similar tale came from the Taiga near
Speaker 1: Bratsk in Siberia, where a twenty two year old man
Speaker 1: wandered for five days, covering himself with pine boughs at
Speaker 1: night to ward off frost bite. Eleven time zones to
Speaker 1: the west, near the Baltic Sea, a search and rescue
Speaker 1: team found an elderly couple in a swamp where they
Speaker 1: had spent the night. The wife in what officials described
Speaker 1: as a state of panic. It happens every mushroom season,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, very interesting. Barry writes that for a
Speaker 1: lot of mushroom hunters in Russia, the foraging activity induces
Speaker 1: a kind of trance state. I don't know how literally
Speaker 1: to take that, but that's what she says, and it
Speaker 1: does seem to be consistent with what a lot of
Speaker 1: people have written about the Quiet Hunt. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: that there's a kind of disconnect because, of course, ancient
Speaker 1: mushroom foraging practices would have been established by people who
Speaker 1: were probably better at navigating the wild landscape and finding
Speaker 1: their way home following the angle of the sun, for instance,
Speaker 1: while in modern times we have lost a lot of
Speaker 1: these wayfinding skills because we don't need them very often,
Speaker 1: and instead we rely on technology, which is not always reliable.
Speaker 1: So autumn comes and people go in, they go to
Speaker 1: the woods, they trance up, and they get lost. And
Speaker 1: the article quotes a rescue worker named Alexanders Manovski who
Speaker 1: calls the people who get lost quote the children of asphalt. No,
Speaker 1: of course, with stories like this you also just have to,
Speaker 1: you know, wonder with some of these stories, people might
Speaker 1: just be doing other things and then later they say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got lost while mushroom foraging. There are some there
Speaker 1: are allegations in the article of some people's particular stories
Speaker 1: where people are like, well, they were just on a
Speaker 1: bender or something. But but clearly it does seem to
Speaker 1: happen fairly often. Well. I mean, one is of course
Speaker 1: reminded of the fact that if you go on a
Speaker 1: nature walk, you you you may get lucky and find
Speaker 1: some from chanterells or whatnot growing close to the trail,
Speaker 1: but in all likelihood you're gonna you're gonna spot that
Speaker 1: tell tale yellow patch a little further off the trail,
Speaker 1: and then you may wander off the trail to go
Speaker 1: and get them. And of course leaving the trail can
Speaker 1: is one way to get a little closer to becoming
Speaker 1: lost in the forest. I mean, this is how isn't
Speaker 1: there there's a part in the Hobbit I think where
Speaker 1: basically the same thing happens, except it's the series camp Fire,
Speaker 1: which of course has parallels to patches of mushrooms in
Speaker 1: the wood well, and it specifically highlights things about forging
Speaker 1: strategies that we observe in humans and in other animals,
Speaker 1: about say the density of rewards in certain areas, like
Speaker 1: probably the closer you stay to the occupied area, the
Speaker 1: more picked over the stores are going to be. So
Speaker 1: you might need to make a little bit of a
Speaker 1: journey to go to places that haven't been picked over
Speaker 1: by other people already. And the farther you get away,
Speaker 1: the more the risks multiply, the more energy you expend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the next thing you know, you got the
Speaker 1: head of a bear. The little mushroom man has transformed you.
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna have to interrupt the conversation right there. Again.
Speaker 1: We had to split this conversation into two episodes, so
Speaker 1: expect the second half on the next publication day for
Speaker 1: Stuff to Bowl Your Mind. But in the meantime, feel
Speaker 1: free to write in we'd love to hear from everybody
Speaker 1: on the topic of mushroom foraging, your experiences with mushroom foraging, etc.
Speaker 1: I should also point out that if you if you're
Speaker 1: interested in merchandise for the show, we actually have a
Speaker 1: mushroom theme Stuff to Blow your Mind logo T shirt.
Speaker 1: It's kind of black light themed. If you go to
Speaker 1: I think if you go to stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com, it'll still refer you to this iHeart
Speaker 1: listing for our show, and there should be a store,
Speaker 1: a selection that you can You can click on store
Speaker 1: and it'll take you to that store. So if you're
Speaker 1: interested in that sort of thing, that's where you'll find it.
Speaker 1: Huge things, As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
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