WEBVTT - The Rocket Scientist's Poison Mushroom 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:06.520 Media. Something strange is going on. Another member of the 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:08.119 Russian elite has been found dead. 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:11.240 Reports suggests that he fell out of a window poisoned 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:12.039 with mushrooms. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.000 He died of heart failure, died. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.040 Of carbon monoxide poisoning. How comes you are they? 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:22.959 Dozens of Russian oligarchs politically motivated millionaires have died in 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:28.000 the space of three years, most of them in suspicious circumstances. 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:32.199 Many have hidden links to the Kremlins. This is sad 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:37.960 Oligach Season two, an ongoing investigation into these recently dead 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:42.880 Russian power brokers. Sad Oligach is created by me jake 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:47.960 Hanrahan and my Ukrainian colleague, Sergey Slipchenkok. This is a 0:00:48.159 --> 0:01:04.399 H eleven studio and Coolso Media production. August three, a 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:08.199 rocket scientist by the name of Vitally Melnikov is laid 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:12.280 in a Moscow hospital bed. He's trapped under a nest 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.039 of medical tubes and wires that are keeping him alive. 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.440 Seventy seven years old, Melnikov is hardly in the prime 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:26.120 of his life. Death is imminent. At some point in 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:31.160 the past four weeks, Melnikov managed to consume poison mushrooms. 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:37.000 When your body digests deadly mushrooms. The poison spreads through 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.760 your blood. Fast toxins head straight for the liver and 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:44.080 the kidneys. They bind to enzymes in the cells the 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:49.040 body needs to produce proteins. Once this happens, the cells 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:55.160 shut down that protein synthesis. You start to die. Just 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:59.480 twenty four hours after consuming the poison mushrooms, Melnikov began 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:05.240 via throwing up. He was chronically unwell, profuse, sweating, intense 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:10.440 stomach cramps, blood in the toilet. His body dehydrated first, 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.799 blood pressure tanked, heart going like the Clappers, total dizziness 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:19.119 and disorientation. The day later in his liver is being 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:24.640 disintegrated by the toxins. He goes yellow jaundice, His kidneys fail, 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.320 he gets nosebleeds that don't stop for ages. It's blood 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:34.720 one clot now within a weak. Multiple organs begin to fail, lungs, liver, 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:44.720 skin sepsis moves to the gut. The gut leaks caustic 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.560 bacteria into the bloodstream and in and out cycle of 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:53.079 toxins destroying the body. The liver tries to cleanse itself 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:57.120 and recycle the poison, but instead it concentrates it and 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:02.160 makes the damage, worse and worse. Despite the critical care 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:06.560 Melnikov receives at the Moscow Intensive care unit, it's far 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:12.680 too late. He's got brain swelling, internal bleeding, full organ shutdown. 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.640 The rocket scientist slides off his mortal coil and enters 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:33.240 the Cosmos for real dead. No, you might be wondering 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:37.680 why Vitali Melnikov is in this series. It was not 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:42.000 a billionaire Russian lobbyist or anything like that. As I've said, 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.880 he worked in the rocket, energy and space exploration industry, 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.120 not as a man behind a desk, caching dodgy checks 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:52.720 or stealing from the coffers, but as an actual hands 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:59.840 on scientist. Monokov's demise was, however, possibly one of the 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:05.000 many sad Oligarch deaths, at least that's what we've come 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:10.160 to believe. Remember, the sad Oligarch umbrella covers the many 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:14.160 branches of what could well be a large scale Kremlin 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:20.640 policy of assassinating its own people, possibly a real conspiracy 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:28.040 with a Russian elite clears its house with blood. But still, 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:31.080 why would someone in the darkest depths of the Russian 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:36.400 deep state want to kill a rocket scientist. Well, considering 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:40.679 the expertise that such a role requires. There could actually 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.800 be many different reasons a man like Melnikov might end 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:51.239 up in murky waters, advanced weapons systems, propulsion technology. Who 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.480 knows what a rocket scientist ends up working on, Especially 0:04:55.560 --> 0:05:01.520 when the government is involved, The possibilities are endless. We 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:05.320 think it might be connected to something much more obvious, though. 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:10.960 Lunar twenty five Russia's first lunar probe mission in forty 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:18.120 seven years. This moonlanding expedition failed spectacularly on August twentieth, 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:23.799 twenty twenty three. A week later, Melnikov was dead. 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:31.640 Three Russia's first moon mission in forty seven years has failed. 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:39.760 The Lunar twenty five spacecraft spun out of control and 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.080 crashed into the Moon after a problem preparing for pre 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:50.560 landing orbit. Russia's state space corporation ross Cosmos, said it 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.800 had lost contact with the craft. In a statement, it 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.960 said quote the apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:00.839 ceased to exist as a result of a collision with 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:04.159 the surface of the Moon. It added that a special 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.880 into departmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:11.560 behind the loss of Luna twenty five. Best the reasons 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:12.960 behind the loss. 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:13.799 Of the five. 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.560 When Surgery and me looked into this, our first thought 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:25.360 was that the two are possibly connected, Like, how serious 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:30.799 was this crashing into the moon? This lunar twenty five, 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.480 this big space mission, the first one in almost half 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:38.640 a century for Russia and then it crashes? Can you 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:41.040 kind of explain what actually happened? 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:45.400 Yeah, So when I was looking into this, actually monetarily, 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:47.760 like it's a a big of a loss, it was 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:50.760 around one hundred and thirty million USD right for the 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.080 whole project. I thought it would be a couple maybe 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.880 even billion. I think the conversion is like twelve billion 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:58.600 rubles by no means small, but it's also kind of 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:03.040 on the smaller side of like the fans aerospace projects, right, 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:07.440 the bigger thing is one hundred percent the kind of symbolism. 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:11.200 So initially this project was started in the like nineteen nineties, 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.800 they were already talking about it, like a design was 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:16.320 chosen or at least they were kind of like looking 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.520 at designs in like the nineteen nineties. By nineteen ninety 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:22.520 eight they selected like I think, like the design that 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:24.920 was going to go forward with, but it kind of 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:26.840 died down in two thousands. I think they were just 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:28.760 focusing on other stuff at that time, and it was 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:31.720 kind of like in like limbo. It looks like it 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:35.400 picked back up in twenty tens. Initially the project was 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:40.280 actually called like Luna Globe, so like Globe Moon whatever. 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:42.280 Basically it was a different name, right, It was kind 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.320 of not associated with the Soviet program until it was 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:49.080 changed to Luna twenty five, kind of having that continuity 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.200 with the Soviet Union, even though the last the Luna 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:55.480 twenty four, like the one before that, was actually launched 0:07:55.520 --> 0:08:00.560 in nineteen seventy six, right, so like the reason they're 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:02.480 naming it twenty five is to have that connection to 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.160 the Soviet Union. In Russia, they're very much you know, 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.560 the whole nostalgia thing is like very capitalized on. Soviet 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:11.880 Union was the good old times. It's when Russia was 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.160 like on par with the United States, you know, the 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:15.440 only kind of. 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:19.280 Rival to the big bad US, right, like a spiritual 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:20.520 successor project. 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:23.560 Yeah, exactly. The space race was like a really big thing. 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.440 It still is. It's still a very much like point 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:28.960 of pride. They'll love to point out that, oh, yeah, 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:31.440 the US land and on the moon, but we did this, 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.040 We send the first man, we sent the first like woman, 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.559 we did this, we did that. It's still looked back 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:39.000 on as like kind of like a great achievement, and 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:41.720 they see it as like very you know, like Russia 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:43.679 as a successor of the Soviet Union, So they kind 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.840 of play on that. That's the whole reason it's Luna 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:48.599 twenty five, Like it was renamed, you know, like it 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:50.920 was initially a different thing, and they intentionally renamed it 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.840 to Luna twenty five to have that connection. There's like 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.200 a national pride, right Like, yeah, like the one hundred 0:08:57.200 --> 0:08:59.719 and thirty million is a lot, but I think more 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:02.959 so it's more of like showing that Russia is still 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.440 a big boy. They can send things into space, right'. 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:08.720 That's kind of like a mark of a great nation 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:09.680 as they see it. 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.000 The mission has raised hopes in Moscow that Russia was 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:16.520 returning to the big power moon race, but this failure 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:19.680 has underscored the decline of Russia's space power since the 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:21.679 glory days of Cold War competition. 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.280 A Sergeimy was saying, without the full context, the theory 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:40.280 that Melnikov was killed because of a failed moon landing 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:44.440 might sound fetched, but if we look at the history 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:47.000 of Russia and what the space race means to the 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:52.680 country's hegemony. Things look a lot less conspiratorial. Let's go 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:57.640 back to the beginning, the days of the Soviet Union, 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:06.800 Red Army, boots on the ground, communist rule. Okay, now 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:14.760 it's time for a quick adbreak. All right, enough for that. 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:24.440 Now back to the shop mother Russia in the nineteen 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:29.960 forties World War Two. Squalid goolags and a ruthless dictator. 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:32.760 If you don't get snitched on by your neighbor and 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.560 sent to the dungeons, you might stab to death for 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:42.760 thought crimes. Welcome to the USSA socialist utopia, it is not. 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:48.600 The war against Nazi Germany was drawing to an end. 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.760 Soviet troops had taken Berlin, and Hitler blew his brains 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:56.199 out of his head on April thirtieth, nineteen forty five. 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:00.920 The Soviets copied the Americans, and they capped Nazi rocket 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.360 engineers and set them to work for the state. This 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.680 supercharged the ussa's long range missile programs and launched the 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:14.280 next phase their plans to go into space. In nineteen 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:18.600 fifty seven, the Soviet Union launched the first ever artificial 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:24.480 satellite into orbit Sputnik one. It was an incredible feat 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:27.840 of engineering that had the Yanks shaken in their boots. 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:34.720 A month after Spotnik one came Spotnik two. This satellite 0:11:34.760 --> 0:11:37.439 went into space the same as the first, but they 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:39.240 put a dog in it to test how the first 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:43.480 living creature in orbit might fare. This was the famous 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:48.240 Lika the dog. Laikas sadly died a horrible death just 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:54.240 hours after launch, a malfunctioning thermal control mentally overheated. Shocking, 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.400 I know, but fans of the USSA don't know how 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:03.440 to treat dogs. But the sixties, the space race was 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.720 in full swing. The Cold War was heating up, and 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.360 the Americans were desperate to be the first superpower to 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:22.280 dominate space travel that were lacking on. On April twelfth, 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:26.319 nineteen sixty one, Russia sent the first human into orbit, 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:32.080 Yuri Gagarin. This was a victory for the Soviets. The 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:35.920 Americans were left sour faced, tinkering with their rockets and 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:41.360 twiddling their thumbs. Now, a retrospective, watered down telling of 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:46.199 history might sometimes say that everything was just healthy competition. 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:53.640 It absolutely was not. The space race between the USSR 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.280 and the United States of America became an emblem of 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:03.160 the global power struggle between both. By the mid sixties, 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:08.200 the Russians were still collecting stripes, launching the first human spacewalk, 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:12.240 first shuttle soft landing, and the first multi person mission 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:19.600 to the stars. Why the only way for the US 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:23.280 to recover from these Soviet space achievements was to put 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:27.200 a man on the Moon first, And sure enough, on 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:33.320 July twentieth, nineteen sixty nine, they did just that. At 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:47.439 US astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the dusty earth of 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:52.080 the Moon's surface and planted a big, fat American flag 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:57.040 into the ground. At this moment, the USSR had officially 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:03.679 lost the space race. After all of that, the capitalists 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.240 beat them to it. It was a big embarrassment for 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:13.400 then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. At this time, a sixteen 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.199 year old of Vladimir Putin would have watched his country 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:19.040 lose on the TV. He'd have read about it in 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:25.120 the papers, heard about it in the street. First forward 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:31.240 to the collapse of the Soviet Union nineteen ninety one. 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:38.120 By this time Putin was almost forty. He was working 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:43.200 in some capacity in the Saint Petersburg political administration. Having 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:46.920 recently got back from his KGB posting in East Germany 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:52.080 with no funding, the Russian space program splinters. You will 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:57.360 have remembered all of this very well. This goes towards 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:01.520 explaining why Lunar twenty five was such a big deal. 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.040 Putin has spent his life trying to build his idea 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:08.880 of a great Russian empire. The old law of the 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:13.120 cosmonaut space race is very much part of that. He 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:17.880 needed Lunar twenty five to be spectacular, something new for 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.960 the history books for Russian space exploration. 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:24.760 And this mission was also supposed to be like a 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:27.200 first It was supposed to be a first lander on 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:31.120 the south pole of the Moon, not too into the whole, 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:34.200 like a space exploration. But for my understanding, that was 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:36.440 supposed to be a kind of a difficult feat. At 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:38.560 least nobody tried it. Nobody's been able to do it. 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.680 So that was kind of the idea. And this project, 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:43.560 even though like you know, it started back come in 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:46.600 twenty tens, it just kept being delayed. From my understanding, 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.080 it was supposed to launch like at one point in 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:52.600 twenty nineteen, it got delayed again at that point, like 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:55.120 so they were working with other partners, like for example, 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.360 Sweden pulled out. Sweden was supposed to give them like 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:03.120 some attack, I think, like something to look through samples 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.520 on the moon. They basically said, like you're taking too long. 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:10.680 They went with someone else. At this point, the project 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:12.960 is just kind of like keeps being delayed, keeps being 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:16.240 delayed to the point where the war in Ukraine starts 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:20.320 and essentially everybody kind of shuns Russia, right, everybody pulls out. 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:23.320 Tensions are high with the West, and nobody wants to 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.080 work with Russia. Which you know, they have their so 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:29.720 use rockets and stuff, but a lot of the technology, 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:32.720 a lot of the things that actually go into this tech, 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:35.080 they're having a harder time sourcing. 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.400 That's something that I thought was really interesting. If you're 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:42.520 trying to work out, well, oh, why would Melnikov be 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:46.520 maybe maybe why would it be maybe purposely poisoned? It's 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:49.360 just a scientist is to do with this in the 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:52.880 greater context of the Soviet Union, like you said, and 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.560 the fact that due to the war, all the people 0:16:55.600 --> 0:17:01.080 that will working kind of as international a political thing 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.640 on this just went no, fuck that we're not working 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:06.879 with Russia because of what they're doing I almost feel 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:11.719 like surely puting and his mentality or anybody's mentality in 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:14.680 that situation would be like, Okay, fuck it, we can 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.920 do it ourselves, will show them and the embarrassment of 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.639 it going boom crashing into the surface. I think in 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:23.960 that context it would have been a pretty big deal 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:25.080 for the Kremlin. 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:30.879 You're spot on. That's exactit. Rhetoric they had, like Piskov was, 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:33.000 you know, talking about it. He's like, oh, we don't 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:35.040 need the West, we can do this ourselves. Kind of 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.720 again going back to the Soviet Union, like we did 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:39.760 it back then, we could do it now, you know, 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:42.800 kind of ignoring that Soviet Union was a collection of 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:45.280 a bunch of nations. You know, they don't have all 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:47.639 these resources that we're in other parts of the Soviet Union. 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.280 But anyway, yeah, it was very much. It was very 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:53.280 much in that light of this Russia is amazing. It 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.359 can do everything by itself. It doesn't need anybody, It 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.720 doesn't really like depend on anyone. Right. It was a 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:02.080 lot of this calling back to the Soviet Union and 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:04.560 kind of I guess you could even say, like a 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.800 supremacist thing, like we're better than everyone. We don't need anyone, 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:11.119 We can do this ourselves. So when this you know, 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.159 big project again it was supposed to be at first 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.000 it would have been another kind of achievement for Russian exploration, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.880 all of a sudden it's it goes wrong, it crashes, 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.320 and not only does it crash, four days later, an 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:28.000 Indian mission does the exact same thing, successfully making it 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:31.520 the fourth country after China, Us and Russia to make 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.280 a soft landing on the Moon, which is like, you know, 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.159 a big technological achievement. But not only do they do 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:39.480 it on the Moon, it's on the South Pole where 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:41.760 Russia was hoping to do it, so they get that 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:44.800 first instead, you know, So not only did they did 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.000 Russia fail, but now some like a nation that they 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:52.159 see as inferior has also not only just achieved it, 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:54.159 but did it first, and they kind of took that 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:54.880 first from them. 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.880 That is a definitely relevant point. I mean, as horrible 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:01.560 as that is, let's be there is no way on 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:06.240 earth that the Kremlin has any respect for the Indian 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.080 space mission. I dare say most countries don't. And they 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:12.880 actually did it successfully and did a good job of it. 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:16.680 That must have been a kind of salt in the 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:18.040 wound moment right. 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:22.720 One hundred percent. They see people from China, from India, 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.880 like anywhere you know that isn't European as like kind 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:29.520 of lesser. How deep it is entrenched into the country, 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.119 and government is like, you can debate that, but it's 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:36.320 definitely there. It's very much a supremacist right, like we're better, 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:37.880 We're the better race nation. 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:38.320 Whatever. 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.720 So Russia's new space mission to the Moon's south pole 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:47.160 smashed into the surface and broke to bits. Then India 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:51.440 beat them to it just four days later. What disaster 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:58.280 for Putin. Someone had to be held responsible. Okay, now 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:05.520 it's time for a quick out break, all right, enough 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:14.120 for that, now back to the shore. Looking into this 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:20.119 case specifically has been difficult. Reporting on Vatally Melnikov's death 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:24.199 from the Russian press was very surface level. Things were 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:27.960 kept mostly quiet. The family aren't saying much, the hospital 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:31.679 isn't speaking. It's all a bit weird, especially when you 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:37.439 consider the alleged cause of death, toxic mushroom poisoning. The 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:41.879 death by fungi element of this case is especially unusual. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:46.360 According to his family, Melnikov had been picking wild mushrooms 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:50.520 his whole life. In the days before he was hospitalized, 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.200 he'd been making a broth from what he'd foraged near 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:59.160 his home in Moscow. Nothing unusual there. In Russia, picking 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.560 mushrooms is simply part of the culture, especially for the 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:07.680 older generation. Remember, Melnikov was seventy seven years old when 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:12.560 he died. Seems unlikely to me that he'd accidentally pick 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:16.800 a poison mushroom, boil it and eat it as an 0:21:16.960 --> 0:21:23.000 experienced micro file a mushroom forager. To be fair, though, 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:27.000 I know absolutely nothing about mushroom picking and the whole 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:30.639 tradition and culture surrounding it, so I spoke to someone 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:36.440 who does, Tommy Fitzpatrick. Tommy is an expert on mushrooms. 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:39.119 He's been involved in this his whole life and he 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:42.119 knows which ones to pick and which ones not. 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:46.879 To my mother's Polish and part of the Polish culture 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.960 in quite a lot of Eastern Europe and Europe is to. 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:51.840 Go foraging for mushrooms. 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:54.480 And from as young as I can remember, I was 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:56.679 giving a little pen knife and will go out in 0:21:56.720 --> 0:21:59.120 the forest every time we visited our family in Poland 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:04.359 and mushrooms, so I learnt from an early age, and 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.000 all of the mushrooms I was taught by my family. 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:10.040 I now know them plus much much more. I've actually 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:13.040 gone advanced and got obsessed with it, and no more 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:16.040 than everyone who taught me about mushrooms. So now they 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:19.560 come to me for some mushroom micology knowledge. 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:22.000 So if you were walking through the forest, are you 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.280 pretty confident you'd be able to identify pretty much any 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:27.280 mushroom you'd see just by sight. 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:29.680 I wouldn't know all of them, but I know all 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:32.520 the dangerous ones and all the best edibles. That's how 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:34.679 you want to tackle foraging mushrooms. You need to know 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:37.400 the most dangerous ones so you can avoid them, and 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:39.679 then focus on the best edible ones. The ones in 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.640 between are the ones not worth bothering with. But obviously, 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:45.800 the more times you see some mushrooms that aren't edible 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:48.760 or aren't even poisonous, you familiarize yourself with them, and 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:50.240 then you might look them up in the book and 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:52.800 find out what they are. But focus on the deadly 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:55.280 ones to avoid them, and then the best edibles. 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:59.240 That's what I'm really interested, obviously, because this Worstian scientist 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:04.639 in his seventies ended up dying eating a poison mushroom. 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:07.880 Now you said yourself. This is something that you grew 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:10.320 up doing. It's part of the culture in Poland. I know, 0:23:10.359 --> 0:23:12.960 it's definitely part of the culture in Russia as well. 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:18.160 How likely is it do you think that someone would 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:21.119 be picking mushrooms as part of their culture, especially in 0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:23.120 old age. They've been doing it their whole life. They 0:23:23.200 --> 0:23:26.200 suddenly pick a poison one by accident. Is that something 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:28.080 that happens often or is it rare? 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:30.359 Would you say it will happen. 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:32.720 People do die every year and it would be from 0:23:32.760 --> 0:23:38.080 accidentally picking the incorrect mushroom. You have field mushrooms which 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:41.320 are all edible, apart from one which looks exactly the 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.440 same as the edible ones, but it's called the yellow stainer. 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:46.480 So the way you will test it is you'll cut 0:23:46.520 --> 0:23:49.439 this white mushroom in half or any way you like, 0:23:49.600 --> 0:23:52.680 and it will stain yellow, and if it doesn't, then 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:55.400 you know you've got an edible mushroom. Also, it's got 0:23:55.520 --> 0:23:59.120 a bad smell compared to the other edible button mushrooms 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:01.679 or field mushrooms. But yeah, it's quite interesting you talk 0:24:01.720 --> 0:24:05.040 about Russia because a lot of the mushrooms which you 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:07.879 wouldn't bother with, or they have toxins in so you 0:24:07.880 --> 0:24:11.240 wouldn't pick them. For example, the Russians sometimes will pick 0:24:11.280 --> 0:24:14.199 them and they'll boil the mushroom to take out the 0:24:14.280 --> 0:24:17.280 toxins and then make it palatable and edible. 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:20.440 But for me, you know that's going a bit far. 0:24:20.720 --> 0:24:23.119 You just again, I just focus on the best edibles, 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:26.639 not making things edible. And then in terms of the 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:29.560 most deadly mushroom in the world is the deaf cap 0:24:29.640 --> 0:24:33.160 mushroom and I believe that's probably what the Russian guy 0:24:33.200 --> 0:24:35.640 you're talking about would have been targetable. 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:40.119 How many deadly poison mushrooms are there? Is there loads 0:24:40.160 --> 0:24:42.120 out there? You have to be careful or is it now? 0:24:42.160 --> 0:24:44.160 And then like what are the levels to it because 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:45.360 I don't know anything about it. 0:24:45.640 --> 0:24:49.879 Well, in the UK there's probably five deadly mushrooms and 0:24:49.920 --> 0:24:52.840 then lots that will make you sick. In science, everything 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:55.960 has a Latin name, So for example, the deaf cat 0:24:56.040 --> 0:24:59.439 mushroom is called Amanita filloides, and Amanita is the name 0:24:59.480 --> 0:25:02.400 of the family. And there's many different amanitas out there, 0:25:02.400 --> 0:25:05.400 but Amnita feloides is the most deadly one out there. 0:25:05.600 --> 0:25:08.680 And what they do is now they try to give 0:25:08.760 --> 0:25:11.800 mushrooms common names, So instead of using the Latin name 0:25:11.880 --> 0:25:14.520 amnit to feloides, it's called the death cap, which is 0:25:15.040 --> 0:25:20.440 much more rememberable, and it helps you associate the mushroom 0:25:20.480 --> 0:25:25.240 of a common name. And yeah, it helps also spread 0:25:25.240 --> 0:25:27.200 the word that is dangerous. So you've got the deaf 0:25:27.200 --> 0:25:29.399 cap mushroom, which is a good name for it, a 0:25:29.400 --> 0:25:30.240 great name for it. 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:31.920 Then you've got a. 0:25:31.640 --> 0:25:35.399 Mushroom called the funeral bell, one which called angel wings 0:25:35.520 --> 0:25:37.800 gives you wings to fly up to heaven hopefully not. 0:25:38.760 --> 0:25:40.919 So the death cap, that's the one that you reckon, 0:25:41.080 --> 0:25:43.800 is what the most deadly and the most prevalent. 0:25:44.119 --> 0:25:47.960 Yeah, definitely the most deadly. It shuts down your liver 0:25:48.040 --> 0:25:52.680 and kidneys. It's also really quite a common mushroom and prevalent. 0:25:52.800 --> 0:25:55.960 And another interesting thing is that it originated in Europe. 0:25:56.160 --> 0:25:58.840