Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh here, Chuck here,
Speaker 1: Jerry No here, Dave no here. That's okay because, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's a short stuff.
Speaker 2: Good Eve being everyone, we are. Death Cap Mushroom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great one.
Speaker 2: It's a metal band right for sure.
Speaker 1: Even just death cap would work too, death Cap for
Speaker 1: Qtie even would be cool.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I like those guys, Yeah, they're great.
Speaker 1: Did you like Postal Service?
Speaker 3: I love the Postal Service more than death Cab.
Speaker 1: It's just the one dude from death Cab, right, isn't
Speaker 1: his solo?
Speaker 3: Probably not solo, he Ben Gibbert. He linked up with
Speaker 3: someone else. It's like him and another guy. I can't
Speaker 3: remember the other guy. But man, I love that Postal
Speaker 3: Service record.
Speaker 1: Okay, good good. So I'm glad you did. I'm glad
Speaker 1: they made it. Then me too. So we're not talking
Speaker 1: about death Cap for Cutie. We're talking about death cap mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Not for you, I think is the main message.
Speaker 2: Here, not for Cutis or anyone.
Speaker 1: No. And the reason they call it death cat mushroom
Speaker 1: is because it can kill you if you eat it.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily an automatic death sentence. But apparently the
Speaker 1: fatality rate from eating this mushroom is ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of people who eat it. High.
Speaker 3: That's in this house to berks article, they are like,
Speaker 3: you know, that's pretty low.
Speaker 1: I'm like not to me, no, that's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: really high. Look at white button mushrooms, buddy, it's almost
Speaker 1: like zero. And I think the people who do die
Speaker 1: from eating white button mushrooms ate too many at once
Speaker 1: and choke to death.
Speaker 3: This is why I don't eat mushrooms at all. Oh
Speaker 3: you don't, huh No, it's a texture thing. They're too
Speaker 3: slimy for me.
Speaker 2: I've tried.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you gotta wash the slime off. And I'm
Speaker 1: not expecting you to actually try this, but I know
Speaker 1: exactly what you're talking about. If you wash the slime off,
Speaker 1: you dry it, you lick the top of it, put
Speaker 1: some salt on it, and eat it raw, and it's
Speaker 1: got a nice thirty crunch almost to it. And I
Speaker 1: love those.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever mentioned not liking eating something
Speaker 3: where you didn't say no, no, no, you're just.
Speaker 2: Doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: I like eating everything, all right.
Speaker 3: So there was an outbreak in twenty sixteen. In the
Speaker 3: Bay Area of San Francisco, where fourteen people consumed well
Speaker 3: the defcat mushroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, got really, really sick.
Speaker 3: One very sad story of a child suffered permanent neurological damage.
Speaker 3: And the question is like, how did these things get here?
Speaker 3: Because they did not originate here. That's one of the questions.
Speaker 1: Are you setting me up to answer it?
Speaker 2: Well? Sure do you?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Answer because I do.
Speaker 1: I have a general answer apparently. So. It's a ecto
Speaker 1: micorhizal fungus that engages in symbiotic relationships mutualism with specific
Speaker 1: kinds of trees, and in Europe they're typically beech trees
Speaker 1: or oak trees, and it lives in the roots, the
Speaker 1: main part of the fungus, and it trades nitrogen that
Speaker 1: the mushroom draw from the soil to the oak or
Speaker 1: the beech tree in exchange for sugars and water and carbon.
Speaker 1: And they do this by basically connecting their roots to
Speaker 1: the tree roots. And everybody's happy until you come along
Speaker 1: and eat one of the death caps. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think we did a whole episode on mutualism, didn
Speaker 3: we surely sibiosis.
Speaker 1: Or something else. Yeah, but I didn't answer your question.
Speaker 1: The answer seems to be that somebody imported a tree
Speaker 1: from Europe at some point that had a death cap
Speaker 1: mushroom mike or ISAA in its roots. And surprise, death
Speaker 1: cap mushrooms are in North America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they know that it wasn't a native species,
Speaker 3: because you know, that could be possible that there's just
Speaker 3: like a California, North America version. Sure, but it would
Speaker 3: be genetically different somehow. But the ones that we have
Speaker 3: over here are exactly the same. It's the same mushroom.
Speaker 3: I think the first known sightings were in nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: eight del Monte Hotel in California.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of these in California, Yeah, and then.
Speaker 3: Five six, seven, eight years later at the cal Berkeley campus.
Speaker 3: And now they're kind of all over the place or
Speaker 3: on the East coast. They live in the pines in
Speaker 3: the East Coast, but those oaks in on the West
Speaker 3: coast all the way up to Vancouver, I believe. But
Speaker 3: they've also found them outside of Europe and Western Russia,
Speaker 3: southern Scandinavian coasts and North Africa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they go. I think also on the West coast
Speaker 1: of the United States. They grow all the way down
Speaker 1: to La County. Yeah, which is how cheech Marin accidentally
Speaker 1: ate one.
Speaker 2: Oh did he really or is that a joke?
Speaker 1: That is Joe, I'm sorry so mad at you. You
Speaker 1: could have said, like I know it was you have
Speaker 1: to say it really weird like that.
Speaker 3: Seems so likely that cheach mayor might have accidentally in
Speaker 3: one of these.
Speaker 1: I think he kind of went straight with that whole
Speaker 1: Nash Bridges gig that he got, And Dobbey Chong is like, no, man,
Speaker 1: I still eat whatever I find on the ground.
Speaker 3: Uh, speaking of Nash Bridges, And you know, maybe I
Speaker 3: shouldn't say this.
Speaker 2: I'll tell y'all here.
Speaker 1: Oh, I can't wait. Is it about Don Johnson? Yeah?
Speaker 3: All right, So should we take a break or should
Speaker 3: we talk a little bit more about it?
Speaker 1: Let's take a break, all right, We'll be.
Speaker 3: Right back with more on this death cap mushroom.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back.
Speaker 3: And this is something I don't fully understand, but the
Speaker 3: death cap mushroom is an invasive species in California, where
Speaker 3: it grows in very beautiful woodlands and forests. It is
Speaker 3: not considered such on the East Coast, where it grows
Speaker 3: in more urban settings like urban parks, but it still
Speaker 3: could be invasive. Like I don't understand what the diath is.
Speaker 1: It's very easily contained an urban area. You've got your park.
Speaker 1: But then you know, you say, like, hey, mushroom, try
Speaker 1: to try to spread from this part. Yeah, deal with
Speaker 1: this sidewalk, then the street, then the sidewalk, then a building,
Speaker 1: then another sidewalk, then the street, then the sidewalk, then
Speaker 1: a sidewalk, then the sidewalk, then the sidewalk, and the
Speaker 1: mushroom goes Okay, final, I'll just stay.
Speaker 2: Here, all right.
Speaker 3: So I guess that makes sense. Yeah, I guess I
Speaker 3: didn't fully understand what invasive meant. I thought invasive just
Speaker 3: meant if it was there and not great for the area.
Speaker 3: I didn't mean it had to be like super widespread.
Speaker 1: I didn't either, But that's what I took from this
Speaker 1: description of it. So that's my take. I should say,
Speaker 1: that's not like.
Speaker 2: The I thought that was a quote It was.
Speaker 1: Of am Pringle the letters in Science Rubinstein, Professor of
Speaker 1: Botany and Bacteriology at the University of Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: Wow, look at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should say shout out to how Stuff works
Speaker 1: for helping us with this article by writing it, and
Speaker 1: they interviewed Professor Pringle about this and she was very helpful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a couple of toxins when it comes to
Speaker 3: the death cap. One of them is a phallotoxin, and
Speaker 3: you're talking, you know what you would expect dehydration, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea,
Speaker 3: but eventually electrolyte imbalances and kidney damage. But the really
Speaker 3: bad booger in there is amatoxin, and that will stop
Speaker 3: cell function. It targets the transcription of RNA by RNA
Speaker 3: polymer raise two, which we've talked about before, and that
Speaker 3: basically causes cell death. That prevents the cell from making
Speaker 3: the proteins and cell components that it needs to be
Speaker 3: a cell.
Speaker 1: Right, So that's always bad. And apparently it goes very
Speaker 1: quickly to your liver and just starts destroying your liver.
Speaker 1: And apparently people go to the emergency room sick with
Speaker 1: sick on basically after eating a death cap mushroom, we'll
Speaker 1: find that the doctors want to give them a liver
Speaker 1: trans plant if one is available. Wow, that's how bad
Speaker 1: it can get. And one of the reasons why it
Speaker 1: can get so bad is because after the initial like
Speaker 1: nausea and vomiting and horrible, like I shouldn't have eaten
Speaker 1: that mushroom that I found in that field. Sensation it
Speaker 1: goes away and you think that you're fine, but actually,
Speaker 1: in reality that amatoxin is is just destroying your body.
Speaker 1: And then by the time you start to feel those effects,
Speaker 1: you're in really big trouble.
Speaker 3: Didn't liver one of the longer weights or am I
Speaker 3: making that up?
Speaker 1: Longer weights?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Of weight w A I T s for transplant.
Speaker 1: I don't know. No, I don't think so, because you
Speaker 1: can cut off like a chunk of your liver and
Speaker 1: don'tt it because I don't know if it grows back
Speaker 1: or else. It just a little bit can can perform
Speaker 1: a lot of function one of those kidneys. No, I
Speaker 1: don't think I don't think so. I think it's liver.
Speaker 3: So we got all the organs are readily available.
Speaker 2: Right for transplanting for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so easy to get when you just
Speaker 1: walk in and they try to give you two livers
Speaker 1: most of the time.
Speaker 3: I could have maybe this is while ago I could
Speaker 3: have sworn. I read reports of like people dying on
Speaker 3: the liver transplant list.
Speaker 1: Oh I believe it, but I don't think that. I
Speaker 1: don't think livers the least available. Okay, I gotcha, but
Speaker 1: I could be wrong. But yeah, I think everybody dies
Speaker 1: on the organ transplant list waiting, or I should say
Speaker 1: not everybody on the list dies, but I'm saying for
Speaker 1: any organ there are people dying on the wait list.
Speaker 2: I gotcha. Yeah, boy, that's a nice courage.
Speaker 3: So the takeaway from this is, don't eat the death
Speaker 3: cap mushroom at all. You need it, And if you're
Speaker 3: a forager, you really got to know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't be like, hey, I saw this on Top Chef,
Speaker 3: like I can go out in the woods and just
Speaker 3: pick stuff and eat it. You got to be really
Speaker 3: familiar with the fungi where you are, and if you aren't,
Speaker 3: just don't try it.
Speaker 2: Don't risk it. It's not worth it.
Speaker 1: No, I think we should issue a general CoA for
Speaker 1: us here. Don't even if you think you are familiar
Speaker 1: with your local mushrooms, don't try it. We're not telling you,
Speaker 1: under any circum stances to go try this.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think foraging is wonderful, but so I'm not
Speaker 2: going to.
Speaker 3: Say that personally, but we're saying you're welcome to just
Speaker 3: know what you're doing to reform. Now, there are all
Speaker 3: kinds of resources if you're interested in stuff like that
Speaker 3: that can very clearly tell you like what's safe and
Speaker 3: what isn't. But you should still take a buddy who's
Speaker 3: done it before. I think you can identify, according to
Speaker 3: doctor Prinkle, who can eat just one. It has olivaceous
Speaker 3: with coloring with green tinge, and a mature death cap
Speaker 3: has a brown brown striations on the cap.
Speaker 1: And don't forget fairy rings around the stem.
Speaker 2: Which who can forget the fairy rings?
Speaker 1: Right? It goes without saying that that's just a bunch
Speaker 1: of fairies forming a circle by holding hands. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I saw one of the things Chuck about this. The
Speaker 1: reason why people eat these is because they taste good.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
Speaker 1: So people are caught by surprise when all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they start puking because the fact that it tasted good,
Speaker 1: I think indicated to them that this is fine to eat.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, who's never going to get sick by
Speaker 3: eating a bad mushroom?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 3: And it has two thumbs, and it's podcasting with you
Speaker 3: right now?
Speaker 1: I do this guy, right here. Oh that's not how
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. Oh, cheech Marin, you got anything else?
Speaker 2: I got nothing else.
Speaker 1: Short Stuff is out.
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