WEBVTT - From the Vault: Mushroom Foraging, Part 2 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.239 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:11.440 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:13.640 Time to go into the vault for an older episode. 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.840 This is Mushroom Foraging Part two. Part one was last Saturday. 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:26.200 This episode originally published September. Here you go, Welcome to 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:35.800 Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:37.879 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:40.640 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's part two 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:44.240 of Mushroom Foraging. We we started going into the woods 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:47.199 and we got lost, and uh so we had to 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:49.120 we had to say, you know what, this is actually 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:51.919 two episodes. Here we are again with part two. All right, 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:54.720 let's jump right in. So we already talked about how 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:58.440 mushroom hunting appears to be this really popular activity in Russia, 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.520 and this goes way back and so popular that there 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:04.160 are these common media stories about people getting lost in 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:07.000 the wilderness because they went into a trance while mushroom 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:09.679 hunting and then they couldn't find their way home. But 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:13.600 apparently things are very similar in Poland. It's also a 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:18.080 very common activity to go mushroom hunting in Poland. And Uh. 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:22.160 The Polish romantic poet Adam mits Kevitch, who lived from 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:28.000 eighteen fifty five, wrote famously about mushroom foraging in his 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:32.399 epic poem pan Tadash. And so I was looking at 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.200 this in a few different translations. I think the clearest one, 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.040 unfortunately doesn't go for the whole poetry and meter of it. 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:42.920 It's a prose translation by George Rapaul Noyus. But I 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.679 think this will give the best sense of the passage, 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:47.840 maybe losing a bit of the music. Are you ready, 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:52.400 Robert Okay? So there are these characters who are The 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:56.880 basic drama of Pantadash is about this conflict between these 0:01:56.920 --> 0:01:59.520 clans over some kind of real estate dispute. I've never 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:01.600 read the whole thing, but I like the parts I 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:03.520 have read. And and so it's got all these, uh, 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:07.560 these fancy ladies and lads going out to hunt for 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.400 mushrooms in the forest, and they've announced that, you know, 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.799 whichever lad finds the fanciest mushroom will get to sit 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:16.280 next to the prettiest girl in the castle. And it's 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.600 that kind of thing. Uh. And so it goes into 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:23.679 the section on mushrooms, quote of mushrooms, there were plenty. 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:28.000 The lads gathered the fair cheeked fox mushrooms, so famous 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:31.560 in the Lithuanian songs as the emblem of maidenhood. For 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:35.480 the worms do not eat them, and marvelous to say 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:39.280 no insect alights on them. The young ladies hunted for 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.960 the slender pine lover, which the song calls the kernel 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:45.880 of the mushrooms. And that's colonel like the military rank, 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.160 not like popcorn. I don't know why it wouldn't be 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:53.680 the general of mushrooms. But moving on, all were eager 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:57.840 for the orange agaric. This, though of more modest stature 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:01.239 and less famous in song, is still the most delicious, 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.760 whether fresh or salted, whether in autumn or in winter. 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:09.680 But the snochal gathered the toadstool flybain. The remainder of 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:13.720 the mushroom family, are despised because they are injurious or 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:17.560 of poor flavor, But they are not useless. They give 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:20.720 food to beasts and shelter to insects, and are an 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.720 ornament to the groves. On the green cloth of the meadows, 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:28.560 they rise up like lines of table dishes. Here are 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.760 the leaf mushrooms with their rounded borders, silver, yellow, and 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:36.760 red like little glasses filled with various sorts of wine, 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:40.960 the coslac like the bulging bottom of an upturned cup, 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:46.880 the funnels like slender champagne glasses, the round white, broad 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:51.160 flat white ease like china coffee cups filled with milk, 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.760 and the round puff ball filled with a blackish dust 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:58.120 like a pepper shaker. The names of the others are 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.680 known only in the language of hay errors or wolves 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:05.240 by men. They have not been christened, but they are innumerable. 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.120 No one deigns to touch the wolf for hair varieties, 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:12.600 but whenever a person bends down to them, he straightaway 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:16.640 perceives his mistake, grows angry, and breaks the mushroom or 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:20.280 kicks it with his foot, in thus defiling the grass. 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:24.720 He acts with great indiscretion. I like at the end 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:26.800 there he gets a little bit offended on behalf of 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:29.120 the grass. I guess I'm not sure I fully understand 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.960 the meaning of that last statement, but I wanted to 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:34.200 look at a couple of things about this passage. Um. 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.320 So one is that first, while while Russian and Polish 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:41.760 cultures are considered to have a great affinity for mushrooms, 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.080 making them generally Mico philick in some terminology that will 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:48.880 address a little bit later in the episode. Uh, this doesn't, 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:54.679 of course, manifest as a love for all mushrooms unqualified. Instead, 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:58.560 it seems to me that the mushroom loving culture actually 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:02.440 has a highly discriminated eating I from mushrooms, noticing much 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:06.680 more the important and perhaps life saving differences between varieties. 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:10.800 So like a mushroom culture doesn't just love mushrooms. It's 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.719 more like they really love the good ones and really 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.919 hate the bad ones. But of course plenty of mushroom 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:21.880 hunting and accidental mushroom poisoning happens even in the modern era. 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:25.320 In Poland, I was looking at a scientific report compiling 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:28.440 cases of mushroom poisoning in Poland from the year's nineteen 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:32.000 sixty two to nineteen sixty seven by an author named 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:37.000 Eliza Lewandowska, and this was called Mushroom Poisoning in Poland 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:39.919 in the years nineteen sixty two to sixty seven. Species 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.560 of poisonous fungi. Now there's no surprise at all here 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.760 that the species representing the most danger was our old 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:52.120 friend Amanita feloides or the deathcap mushroom. We we've talked 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:56.040 about this already, right, yes, now, this one was responsible 0:05:56.320 --> 0:05:58.720 for at least four hundred and sixty one cases of 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:01.800 poisoning and a hundred and twenty six deaths by this survey. 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:04.800 A commonly cited figure that I've seen elsewhere is that 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:10.640 death caps today represent more than of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:13.120 So so they're the real bad boy in terms of 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:17.400 accidental accidental mushroom poisoning. Um. But I was also reading 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:23.360 about how the specific way that Amanda filoids kills is deceptive, 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:27.920 lee devious. So when somebody eats this mushroom, it's not 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.040 necessarily what you would picture where you eat it and 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.000 then you're immediately doubled over in pain and you know, 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:37.040 and hallucinating and sweating with a fever and screaming. Instead, 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:41.680 when somebody eats the Amanda floids, it doesn't necessarily cause 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.400 any immediate pain or discomfort. In fact, people often don't 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:48.320 have any symptoms at all for many hours I've read, 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:51.479 sometimes maybe six hours later, sometimes even not until like 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:55.640 a full day later. And then the cramps and the 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.240 nausea and the vomiting and the diarrhea. Set in, and 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:01.840 I've read that this can make it easy to mistake 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:04.920 the poisoning for something else. You might think you've got 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:07.520 a stomach bug or whatever because of the length of 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.440 time between eating the mushroom and the onset of symptoms. 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:13.680 And uh. And at this point, after the symptoms set in, 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:17.800 they can sometimes even retreat, they can grow milder if 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:21.000 the patient is properly cared for, properly hydrated, and all that. 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.920 The entire time the amanita toxins are in the background, 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:28.960 just massacring cells in the liver and harming the kidneys, 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:33.440 eventually leading to organ failure and eventually to death. And 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.640 I don't know that there's there's something kind of especially 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:41.200 terrifying about that that there's this You can have this 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.080 false sense that things are getting better and that, oh, 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:46.400 I'm actually feeling a little bit better than I was earlier, 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.760 or maybe I'm not even feeling bad at all, while 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.840 the mushroom is actively killing your vital organs. I think 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:56.600 it also underlines just the sort of precision that had 0:07:56.640 --> 0:08:00.280 to take place in figuring out the properties of theirs 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.320 mushrooms and and other organisms in one's environment, you know, 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:08.040 because this is clearly something where you you would have 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.440 to do a little detective work to figure out it. Yeah, 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:16.600 exactly what had caused this awful illness in the individual. Exactly. 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.960 But in in second place for poisonings was a species 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.240 that is also interesting and and requires a similar kind 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:26.920 of precision, but with a different difficulty. I don't think 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:29.360 we've talked about this one yet. The second place in 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.640 the Polish survey for for most poisoning and death was 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:38.200 gyrometra esculenta, or the false moral. Mushroom. Uh, that's moral 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:42.040 like m O R E L moral mushrooms dot morals 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:46.560 you know, doing good h Yeah, And so in this survey, 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.880 the false moral was responsible for a hundred and sixty 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.360 four cases of poisoning and ten deaths in this time, 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.800 in the sixties. Now, the false moral is a very 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.280 strange and interesting case study in fungal toxicity because, first 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:03.720 of all, it looks crazy. It looks like a brain 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:05.720 on a stick, or not even a normal brain. It 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.880 looks like if you tried to make a raisin out 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:12.680 of a brain. Yeah, it kind of looks like what 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:18.120 you have, mushroom but ground chuck, you know. Yeah, it's 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:22.240 got the little grinder extrusion patterns. Yeah, it does. It 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:24.240 looks kind of like it's come out of a machine 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:26.760 in a way. I agree, had an extruded kind of 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.719 appearance to it. But a lot of delicious mushrooms look 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:32.640 very strange and very unlike other foods we eat. So 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:37.000 you know, that's fine. Um. But but gyrometra is an 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.400 interesting case because the toxicity seems to vary a lot. 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:43.640 Just one example I was reading in a stat pearls 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:48.120 entry by Horowitz, Kong and Horowitz and the author's report quote, 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:52.760 most poisonings occur in Eastern Europe, particularly in the conifer 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:57.439 forests of Germany, Poland, and Finland. In North America, most 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.720 exposures occur in Michigan, although I less toxic variety grows 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:04.760 west of the Rockies and has been clustered in Idaho 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:08.920 and Western Canada. Exposures occur mostly in the spring, unlike 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:13.400 other serious mushroom poisonings such as Amanita filoids, which occur 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:18.080 more commonly in the fall. So there's this geographical distribution 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.200 I've read about how there are different rates of poisoning 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:25.200 from the false morale depending on where the mushroom was grown. 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.480 You know, in in different countries and at different altitudes 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:30.720 and things like that. It seems to vary a lot 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:34.160 depending on you know, what local strain you're getting, and 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:38.600 possibly due to interactions with you know, with the body 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.400 of the person who eats it. Another thing I've read 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:44.079 is that poisoning is here are much more common when 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:47.600 these mushrooms are eaten raw. Now, there's one thing that 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:51.520 poison control authorities often emphasize, which is that you should 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:55.840 not use intuitive smell and taste senses to figure out 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:58.959 what is poisonous in the mushroom world, because even though 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.720 our senses of smell and taste are certainly evolved to 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.400 help us figure out what's good to eat, they are 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:09.400 not an infallible guide. And a great example of this 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.280 is once again the deathcap mushroom, one of the most 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:16.000 dangerous mushrooms to humans and the most deadly one in Poland. 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:18.560 During that survey we were just talking about the deathcap 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:22.400 mushroom does not taste like poison. It reportedly does not 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.000 taste bitter, does not taste sour, does not you know, 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:28.920 set your mouth on fire with needles going into your tongue. 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:33.360 In fact, it is widely said to be absolutely delicious. 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:37.520 There are people who have had these hepatotoxic mushrooms absolutely 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:41.360 destroy their liver. But they report that, you know, before 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:43.679 the pain and the nausea set in, six hours later, 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:46.560 twenty four hours later, when whenever it is while they're 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.600 eating these mushrooms, they are some of the best tasting 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.199 mushrooms that they've ever had. They're said to smell sweet 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:58.120 like honey and taste absolutely delightful, sauteed and butter. Don't 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:00.880 do this, don't It's not worth it. It will kill you. 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:04.520 Do not take the death cap challenge something like that 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.840 on YouTube. No, not at all. But but this does 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:11.839 bring me back to an interesting observation from Miskovich, which 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:14.880 is that some of the species of mushroom that are 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.960 detestable to humankind, and I'm sure the death cap is 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:21.720 one of these in in his survey, they're known in 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:24.680 the cultures of what he calls the wolves or the hairs, 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:27.920 you know, the language of wolves or rabbits. Now, you 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:30.280 might think that this is just another folk tale about 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.520 the animals of the forest, but I think that this 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:36.920 could actually be based on real observation, because despite being 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:39.560 one of the most deadly fungui to humans. It is 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:43.120 not necessarily deadly to everything in the forest all of 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.920 the time. It came across one statement about this when 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:49.640 I was reading an article about the spread of the 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.839 death cap mushroom throughout North America, and this was by 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.520 Craig Child's in The Atlantic. It's a very interesting article. 0:12:56.600 --> 0:13:00.800 It's worth reading. A Child's talks about how death mushrooms 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:05.160 naturally live in a symbiotic relationship with host trees. And 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:07.640 we've talked about how several mushroom species are like this. 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.760 They attached themselves to the roots of trees, and they 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.240 sort of trade resources between them, uh and so that 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:16.920 they're able to get some nutrition from from tree roots. 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.200 And this is the reason that you will often find 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.040 them sort of in a ring of deadly fruiting bodies 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:25.760 around the roots of a central tree trunk. But their 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.840 spores don't naturally tend to spread very far, at least 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:33.480 under normal circumstances, and it has taken human intervention to 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.760 really set them spreading far and wide. Specifically, what's named 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:41.320 by Craig Child's in this article is that deathcap mushrooms 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:46.800 have been spreaded spreading rapidly throughout northwest North America, riding 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:51.040 along on the roots of imported European trees, like imported 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:53.560 sweet chestnut trees and beech trees. So you get this 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.920 fancy tree from Europe, it's got deathcap mushrooms in a 0:13:56.960 --> 0:13:59.600 relationship with it. You bring the tree over here planted, 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:03.640 and it brings the poisonous mushrooms with it. But anyway, 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:07.040 the reason I brought this article up was that there's 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:11.760 this quick side note where Child's mentions that that squirrels 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:15.760 and rabbits have sometimes been observed to eat deathcap mushrooms 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:19.080 without being harmed at all, which sounds again like like 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:22.520 mits Kevich, like that, you know, the hairs don't really 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.680 mind the mushrooms that the humans find absolutely detestable. And 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.000 so I think that's interesting. It's another indication of what 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.280 you should not do. You should not watch what animals 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:34.760 eat in the forest to determine what would be okay 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:36.640 for you to eat, because they may be able to 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:41.000 digest and metabolize stuff just fine that would absolutely kill 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:43.920 you with just a few mouthfuls. And also in this 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:49.280 just another reason to respect the mighty squirrel. Yes, yeah, 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:51.320 I saw squirrels were thrown in there too, So I'm 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:55.640 sure our fans are gonna gonna go hog wild about that. Sure, 0:14:55.800 --> 0:15:01.400 meme away, yeah me until you drop. But one last 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:03.440 thing I wanted to add about this was I saw 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:06.880 some mushroom enthusiasts online just in common sections and stuff, 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.280 saying that they kind of wish they had whatever resistance 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:14.240 these rabbits have to to the death cap toxicity is 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:16.640 because they would love to taste them. For one, since 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.560 you know, by all accounts, when people eat them, even 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:24.400 though it kills them, they are very tasty. Interesting. Um, 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:28.200 you know, in our previous episode we mentioned were mentioned 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:31.680 a few different mushroom foraging cultures, and I believe Scottish 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:36.560 culture came up. As luck would have it, was watching uh, 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:40.640 the the TV adaptation of Outlander last night. Watching that, yeah, 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.800 and in the second episode what happens they're forging for mushrooms, 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.480 talking about them, the medicinal use of mushrooms and which 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.000 ones are good to eat and which ones are poisonous. 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:53.600 I found it rather interesting. Also castle they used in 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:57.200 that show, same castle they used in Highlander and in 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:59.320 Monty Python and the Holy Grail, So it's got that 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:02.640 going for it. So even in your ultimate kilt lift 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:06.200 or narrative. You cannot escape a good mushroom hunt, right, 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:08.440 I mean that's I mean you've got time travel in there, 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:10.360 so it's a it's it's a big part of the 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:14.200 plot apparently, at least as I can gather thus far. Well, 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:16.760 whether you're time traveling or not, whether you forge for 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:19.160 mushrooms or not, stay away from the death caps. Just 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:21.640 just don't even try it now. Of course, this is 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:25.400 this goes way back, this this basic um reality that 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.920 we're discussing here, and we've we've covered humanities hunter gatherer 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.960 past on the show before. I mean the basic is 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:35.600 you know, we're we're omnivores, and mushrooms have always been 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:38.800 on the table. Uh. Though, of course our ancestors had 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.640 to devise the expertise to avoid harmful species, as well 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.520 as figuring out which ones are beneficial, which ones can 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.840 be food, etcetera. Right. One of the resources we were 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.800 looking at for this section was Eric BoA's Wild Edible 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.040 Fun Guy. A Global Overview of their use and importance 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:58.440 to people. Yeah, it looks like this was a report 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:01.360 compiled for the Food MAgric Culture Organization of the u 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:04.639 N in two thousand four. Yeah, and uh and Boa 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.800 points out and mentioned a few different facts. He points 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.680 out here, first of all, wild edible fungi are collected 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.679 for food in more than eighty countries, and we're dealing 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:18.400 with more than one thousand, one hundred species. And interestingly enough, 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:22.879 some cultures may be viewed is microphobic being you know, 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:27.679 meaning there's a fear of mushrooms or a reluctance to 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:32.000 engage in mushroom consumption and foraging, while other cultures are 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:36.560 are microphilic meaning you know, the loving mushrooms, you know, 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:39.720 being open to those experiences in those quests, with English 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:43.560 culture standing interestingly enough as an example of of microphobic 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:49.000 UH culture, while Chinese culture, he mentions, is a strongly 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.480 micophilic culture. He points out that a lot of Chinese 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.200 writings on mushrooms have yet to be translated, but there's 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:57.359 a lot of material there. Now. I found this very 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:01.359 interesting because I've've certainly seen some documentaries um that really 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:07.280 focus in on on British and Scottish traditions regarding mushroom hunting. Yeah, 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:10.640 and of course that highlights that these designations. I've seen 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.640 these designations used by other people as well. Burtleson talks 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:16.800 about this, where you know, cultures that are predominantly microphobic 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.639 or microphilic, they're all gonna be relative, right Like, within 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.520 each of these broad cultures there will be subcultures and 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:26.199 individuals that sort of run against the grain. Um. But 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.879 on the note of of of Chinese culture being microphilic, 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:33.280 of course that comes through in in certain types of 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:37.560 ancient medical practices, but also in cuisine. And I just 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:40.640 think about one of my earliest memories of Chinese food. 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.080 I've loved Chinese food as long as I can remember, 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:47.600 but one of my earliest memories is of the unidentifiable 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:50.520 fungus within the Chinese soup I was eating, and how 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:53.840 much I loved it, and how how it was like 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:56.040 there was nothing else like this in my diet. I 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:57.960 guess it was probably a type of black fungus in 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:00.600 a hot and sour soup, and I is just like, 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:03.119 what is this? I have no idea. It's like something 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:07.800 from another planet, and it's delicious. But as to microphobia, 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:12.520 Burdleston mentions evidence of strains of microphobic thinking in many 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:16.040 of the historic common names for mushrooms and some European cultures, 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:19.000 for example, though today we think of French cuisine as 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:23.840 being very very pro mushroom. Historically, there was some French 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:28.359 aversion to mushrooms, like calling mushrooms things like eggs of 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:33.160 the devil or the devil's paint brush, or toads bread. 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.600 Of course, there's the English expression toad stool. In Danish 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:41.320 and Norwegian you have variations on PoTA hot toad's hat, 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.000 and in Germanic and Celtic cultures. Burtleson writes that you 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:49.680 sometimes see an association between mushrooms and witchcraft, and this 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.120 association may have played a role in keeping the British 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:58.080 aisles relatively microphobic for for many centuries. You know, I 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:00.000 can't help be reminded. I'm sure I've brought this up 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.680 up on the show before. Um, but there's that that 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:06.119 wonderful um a little bit in uh burd of Echos 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:08.400 the Name of the Rose, where there's the story of 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:12.680 of one monk. You know, it's like a multi multi cultural, 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.840 multi linguistic community of monks there, and one is talking 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.960 about having this pig that will accompany them into the 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:24.440 woods to search for truffles, and the the other monk 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.800 that's hearing this story is I believe German, and he 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:30.600 thinks that he's not saying truffle but to full, which 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:33.119 is a German for devil. So he thinks this is 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:36.600 a horrific story of this weird pig that will accompany 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:39.520 uh you into the woods so that you can seek 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.800 out the devil. I remember that moment, and that's oh man, 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:45.280 that's so emblematic of everything I love about Name of 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:49.959 the Rose. Now, in terms of the ancient uh uh 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:53.040 foraging for mushrooms and the use of mushrooms by by 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:55.960 human beings, you know, there's there's apparently evidence in what 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:59.600 is now Chile of mushroom consumption by humans thirteen thousand 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:03.080 years ago. Um Obsouly the iceman who we've mentioned on 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:07.560 the show before, who lived between thirty four UM hundred 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:11.359 and thirty bc uh somewhere in that area, was found 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.560 with two varieties of fungia on his person, one of 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:17.840 which we've discussed on our other show or previous other show. 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.600 Invention was likely a dried fungi used to help start fires, 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:24.040 but the other was a birch fungus that was likely 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:27.480 consumed for medicinal reasons, and so that the consumption of 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:30.600 mushrooms for culinary and or medicinal purposes dates back in 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:33.760 a number of ancient cultures. They're they're more examples of 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:37.400 this than we could easily cover on the show here. Uh. 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:41.240 And with the agricultural revolution came the eventuality of mushroom 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:44.160 cultivation as well. Though, as we previously touched on, there 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:47.800 are so many varieties that are resistant to cultivation. Yeah. 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:50.399 I think specifically a lot of the ones that you 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:52.840 think of that are most commonly used in food that 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:56.720 are the hardest to cultivate, or are the ones that are, 0:21:56.760 --> 0:22:00.399 for my corpsal reasons, unable to be cultivated because they 0:22:00.400 --> 0:22:04.639 exist in these symbiotic relationships with other plants, trees, and 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:08.680 forest atmospheres. And so the truffle is a common example, 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:11.040 but of course Sean trells are like this as well. 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:14.840 I believe also porcini mushrooms, uh, that it's just really 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:18.679 hard to recreate the conditions in which they arise. Yeah. 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:23.200 So even as as humanity inevitably be you know, began 0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:27.439 to shift uh this revolution in neolithic times, uh, shifting 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:30.520 away from the hunter gather existence to one dependent on 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:34.800 intensive agriculture, there's kind of this you know, this tendency 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:36.359 to sort of think of that as Okay, well, you know, 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:39.000 you're just changing the way you live entirely, you're just 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:41.399 stopping where you are and now you're gonna grow plants, 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:43.760 and maybe mushroom foraging is one of those things that 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:47.200 remains outside of that tradition for these very reasons we've 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:51.280 been discussing. Um. However, this was quite interesting. I was 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:53.280 looking around for resources on this and I ran across 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:57.000 a paper published in the Royal Society b by Curtis w. 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:01.679 Uh Marine titled the Transition to Foraging for Dense and 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:05.160 Predictable Resources and It's Impact on the Evolution of modern humans. 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:10.600 And in this uh the the author um is discussing, 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:13.320 you know, this basic shift, but he points out, they 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:15.760 point out that there's another shift to consider. Quote the 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:18.880 foraging shift to dense and predictable resources is another key 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:22.320 milestone that had consequential impacts on the later part of 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:26.840 human evolution. Now, the basic idea here is that there 0:23:26.920 --> 0:23:30.120 wasn't just this sudden shift from hunting and gathering to cultivation. 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:34.000 And there are many hypothesized explanations for this, but Marine 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:37.440 argues that hunting and gathering would have seen an increased 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:41.200 focus on dense and predictable resources. As such, this also 0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:45.159