Episode 393: The World of Mushrooms
/Julia loves mushrooms. That’s why we are doing a whole month of mushroom episodes, but she just wanted to share her favorite facts from the world of mushrooms with you all.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, disease, infection, psychedelic drug use, colonialism, racism, and body horror.
Housekeeping
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, mycology, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story and mushroom from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. And if you can't tell after the past two episodes, we're still in mushroom month, baby.
AMANDA: Hey.
JULIA: I am really excited. I love mushrooms. I like— let's just like— let's put it out there. I love mushrooms. I think they're really cool. I think they're really neat. And while, like— we talked a lot about horror and mushrooms in our previous episode, and then the mythology of mushrooms and stuff like that, in the episode before that, on this show, I mainly get to talk about things that are, like, mythology and folklore-related, right?
AMANDA: I mean, yeah, that's— that's the— that's the name on the tin.
JULIA: Sometimes I just want to talk about mushrooms, so that's kind of what this episode is about.
AMANDA: I love it. I think it makes all the sense in the world, especially as people are loving mushroom month so much, to go ahead and give them more raw material, Julia. More substrate for them to work with, so that they can learn about mushrooms and maybe come up with some new mythology, some new urban legends of their own.
JULIA: Maybe, maybe. Maybe you're gonna hyper focus on this topic like I have the past couple of years. And now, it's like your whole personality, and people keep buying new mushrooms as gifts. Like, you know, mushroom themed things as gifts.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Or maybe you're just like, "Hey, this is interesting stuff, and I'm— I'm glad that I got to hear two of my favorite podcasters talk about it." If that's the case, awesome. I'm so excited. And let's— let's get into it. This is really just kind of going to be, like, fun facts about mushrooms, facts about mushrooms that I find super interesting, as well as kind of tying it towards the end to the sort of religious practices around mushrooms. But I have a lot of fun and exciting history and science about mushrooms to tell you about today.
AMANDA: Incredible. I mean, as we all know, mythology and science are not binary opposites. They're intertwined and have been from the very beginning, so I love learning more about the science and facts behind mushrooms as part of understanding their mythological potential.
JULIA: When I was first learning about mushrooms, I was like, "What the fuck is a toadstool?"
AMANDA: Sure, yeah.
JULIA: You know, you think about Toad as the character in Super Mario, and you're like, "Well, how'd they get Toad from that? Oh, toadstool. That makes sense." But mushrooms are also like known as toadstools, which you've probably heard before. But did you know that calling a mushroom a toadstool has a more specific meaning?
AMANDA: No. I thought it was just a really cute way to refer to the little— we grew calling them hassocks, but little footstools that, you know, appear in nature, perhaps exactly the right size for a frog.
JULIA: Yes. Well, I like the idea of picturing a little frog sitting on it like, "Ah, this is my stool. I'm at the—"
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "—cute, little frog bar, and I'm ordering—"
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: "—myself a margarita." But actually, toadstool, in general, is used for mushrooms that are specifically poisonous to humans.
AMANDA: Helpful and probably— if someone, yeah, named like a pet toadstool or kind of asks for it. I believe that's one of the names of the witch's familiars in Macbeth.
JULIA: That makes sense.
AMANDA: If not, close to it, then. I— I love that— very helpfully. It's ones that you shouldn't eat, that are called the toadstools.
JULIA: Yes. And we'll talk a little bit about this later, but, like, the thing about mushrooms and poisonous mushrooms is there's no, like, through line to identifying what makes a mushroom poisonous versus what makes it safe to eat.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So having a, like, fun, little, like, category, like all squares are rhombuses, but not all rhombuses are squares thing is really cool. And I love that it has such a cute name.
AMANDA: And, you know, if they're not for us to eat, Julia, I know it's one of the principles of foraging that you're probably familiar with is, you know, don't take more than you need and you gotta leave enough that the— the overall health of the ecosystem and of the— the resource that you are foraging, you know, remain strong and resilient. And so, I— I love and I'm just charmed by the idea that the mushrooms that you don't harvest to eat and you leave behind, you gotta leave some for the toadsies. They— their— their feetsies need all the little rest.
JULIA: They do. The rule of thumb in foraging mushrooms is if you find two mushrooms, you take the larger of the two and leave the smaller one, so it has more time to grow. And if you are— like, come across a field of mushrooms, let's say, like a large group of mushrooms, you take 50% and you make sure you leave, like, a lot of the small ones so that they can continue to grow.
AMANDA: That makes sense.
JULIA: That makes sense, right? And that's— that's a rule of thumb for most foraging. So like even something like ramps or something like that, you never clear out an entire area of the thing that you're foraging.
AMANDA: One of my, I guess, cousins-in-law has like a highly-protected ramp foraging spot near his house. And every year for two years, he's been, like, ramp watch. Like, essentially, letting us know exactly when the ramps are ready to go.
JULIA: Ramp watch.
AMANDA: Haven't made it up yet, but he genuinely won't tell us where it is. He's like, "If you're gonna come to my house, I'm gonna drive you somewhere and you're gonna close your eyes."
JULIA: "I'm gonna blindfold you."
AMANDA: Essentially, yeah,
JULIA: That's wild. I love it, though.
AMANDA: But Julia, why the word toadstool? Like, what does that in etymology?
JULIA: Well, Amanda, interestingly, it comes from 14th century England, as you can imagine, like the translation is pretty clearly English. And it was literally a reference to stools for toads. That was it. That was it.
AMANDA: Yay!
JULIA: That was basically it.
AMANDA: I love when etymology is just as whimsical as I hope.
JULIA: Exactly. It's the dream. You're just like, "Ah, yeah, 14th century England. Of course, they're just like chillin', having a good time, making up like little—
AMANDA: Popping around, smelling like poop.
JULIA: Personifying little toads and how they have little houses. We love to see it.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Well, let's get into a little bit more about, like, how we know what a mushroom is, what a mushroom is defined as, and kind of also— we'll get to an etymology corner as well, Amanda. Don't worry.
AMANDA: Always. Always, Julia. You come through for me.
JULIA: So for a pretty long time, mushrooms were kind of folded into different kingdoms in taxonomy, but it didn't get its own kingdom of fungi until 1969, when scientist Robert Whittaker separated Fungi from Animalia and Plantae AI based on how they gain nutrition.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: So plants are autotrophs. They basically, like, you know, use photosynthesis to make their own food. Animals or— are heterotrophs, we ingest our food. Fungi are saprotrophs. Basically, they process decayed organic matter in order to get their nutrients.
AMANDA: Julia, that's a really weird way to say lesbian. They're Sappho tropes. They feed off of sapphic energy, much like young Amanda torrenting the L word.
JULIA: Hmm. That would make sense. Robert Whittaker did not consider that at the time, I don't think.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: But also, the way that they go about the process of like being a saprotroph— and, like, this is worth mentioning as well, because we're going to talk a little bit more about, like, what they eat and how they eat a little later in this episode. But basically, what they do is they spread out through their mycelial network, which we talked about in previous episodes. They dump enzymes outside of that network, outside of their body, basically, digest it outside of the body, and then take in the molecules once they've been kind of, like, decomposed and digested. Which is kind of the opposite of what animals do when we ingest our food.
AMANDA: Interesting.
JULIA: Like, we ingest the food, we digest it in our bodies. They digest it outside of their bodies and then ingest it.
AMANDA: That's fascinating. So they're like— they're making the nutrients they need from a world that doesn't have it. It's just not happening in their guts. It's happening around them.
JULIA: Yes, pretty much. But, like, it's also not the same process as, like, a photosynthesizing plant, right? They're— they have to actively make the nutrients out of something else, something physical.
AMANDA: Interesting.
JULIA: And we know that's not only how they eat, but it's also how they spread. So, like, as they are eating, basically, the things that are around them, then the mycelial network spreads into those spaces. So it's really, really cool.
AMANDA: That makes sense. So they're not like reproducing and hoping like a seed, right? Like, when a tree, you know, drops, seeds or pollen. It's— it's spreading, hoping, and knowing that most of it won't find somewhere hospitable, but some of it will. But instead the— the mushrooms almost have, like, an advanced guard, you know, that are like making hospitable landing place, and then, I mean, I guess like colonizing, right? Or like spreading into the land that they have been made hospitable for them.
JULIA: Yes. I think that's— that's pretty accurate. There is also a— we'll talk about spores and, like, what the mushroom is compared to the mycelial network after this, but you're— you're on the money there, for sure.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: We also know that, fun fact, Amanda, fungi are more closely related to animals than they are to plants.
AMANDA: Really?
JULIA: Yeah. So, like animals, they take in oxygen and release CO2. Their cell walls actually contain chitin, which you might recognize as the thing that makes up, like, exoskeletons of stuff—
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: —like insects or crustaceans, or even like the beaks of octopi, which is really, really interesting. So at some point, human beings, all animals and fungi, had a shared ancestor, which I think is amazing.
AMANDA: That's really fascinating. And isn't chitin what your fingernails are made up of, too? Or is that something different?
JULIA: I think that's something different. So the thing is, taxonomy, in general, is sometimes really broad and really weird. Like, you've probably heard the fact that, like, "there's no such thing as a fish," quote-unquote.
AMANDA: Oh, is that what that's from?
Juilia: Yeah. So it's—
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: —this idea from this biologist named Stephen Jay Gould, who said that there are so many sea creatures, but most of them are not closely related to each other. So for example, a salmon is more closely related to a camel than it is a hagfish.
AMANDA: That's really interesting, and also seems like a little bit arbitrary. Like— again, like, how are we counting it and it just— the— the, like, realm of— of biological difference is—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —so— like, we're talking in such a minute amounts. Like, you know, when you look at a timeline of human history, like evolutionarily, we're living in like—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —the last 10 minutes of the day, you know? Or that kind of timescale. That's how it feels when we talk about, like, the difference of DNA of organisms, where it's like, there's— there's so much of that code that just goes into, you know, making cells and making those cells regenerate, that when we talk about, like, the tiny differences that separate, you know, human beings from, you know, other species much else one another, or even things like a fish or a mushroom. It just— it feels like we're— we're painting with such like a small realm of the visible spectrum that it makes me want to learn more about like microbiology, because, you know—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —viruses, and microbes, and like all these different organisms are just like— the possibilities are, like, even bigger than I think my little brain can wrap around.
JULIA: Yeah. And, you know, it's complicated for scientists who study these things too, and they're constantly disagreeing. All this to say, taxonomy is super messy in general. And even in the kingdom of fungi, that is true. So fungi applies not only to things like mushrooms and toadstools, but to the microorganisms like yeast and mold as well.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: Which means that we have an estimated 5.1 million species of fungi, which is many, many, many times over what the amount of known plant species on the planet is.
AMANDA: Yeah, that checks out.
JULIA: Isn't that amazing? Isn't that so cool?
AMANDA: Very cool. All— also all the delicious things.
JULIA: All the delicious things.
AMANDA: Give me some fermented, give me some aged, give me some cave ripened. This is the— this is a kingdom I want to eat from, you know?
JULIA: Oh, yeah. Don't worry, don't worry. We'll get there. But let's— let's head over to our little etymology corner, shall we?
AMANDA: Hurray.
[music]
JULIA: So we get fungus directly from the Latin word fungus, which means mushroom in Latin.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: The Romans took their Latin word from the Greek word sphongos, which means sponge, which is a reference to kind of the spongy qualities that mushroom bodies as well as mold had.
AMANDA: Any relation, Julia, to the sea sponge, or is that just a sort of quirk of nature?
JULIA: I believe that's a different type of thing altogether. It's a different, like, animal species.
AMANDA: Listen, early in COVID, Eric and I watched a lot of videos of jellyfish and, like, jellyfish segments from my second favorite show, The Aquarium, after my first favorite show, The Zoo, and we learned that jellyfish are not fish. They're— they're called jellies. And so, every time I hear people talk about jellyfish, I'm like, "The— the real name is even more charming, and it's jellies."
JULIA: No, I love it. It's so cute. You're like, "Oh, yes, the little jellies."
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And I— I was double checking to make sure, sea sponges are in fact animals.
AMANDA: Hey.
JULIA: Not plants, animals.
AMANDA: A whole different thing.
JULIA: So when we talk about something like mycology, which is the study of mushrooms, that comes from the Greek word mykes, which translates to mushroom as opposed to sponge, which we just mentioned before. And I've seen some references online to a dryad named Mycene or Mycenai who is supposed to be kind of like the— the dryad of mushrooms, like the— the spiritual embodiment of mushrooms. But I can't find any, like, scholarly sources about that, just kind of passing references on the internet. So I'm not sure how true that is exactly.
AMANDA: That feels like an internet fever dream, for sure.
JULIA: It does. It does feel like an internet fever dream, for sure. So we know that human beings have been using mushrooms in some form or another since prehistory. One of the earliest references to human beings using mushrooms that we have is from Otzi the Iceman. Have you heard of Otzi before?
AMANDA: Isn't he like a— a preserved body that gives us some, like, scientific insight into early humanity?
JULIA: Yes. He is a 5,300-year-old Neolithic mummy that was found in the Austrian Alps. And on his body, they found two polypore mushrooms, which scientists believe were either used as tinder or for medicinal purposes.
AMANDA: All right, Julia. That's incredible. But I do want to just ask, if your body were preserved with like the thing you would bring on a mountain trek, like on a long walk or on a hike, what would future scientists have to assume about, you know, humanity at the time of you? Because for me, there's gonna be a lot of ChapStick.
JULIA: Interesting.
AMANDA: They're gonna be like, "Wow. ChapStick must be so important to these people." I carry a variety of like phone chargers and adapters because the shit protocol keeps changing."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: So they're like, "Wow. You know, I don't know, must be just, like, prepared for anything. Maybe she traded these. There's so many of them."
JULIA: Yeah. Mine would be a— a small, like, pocket-sized book on mushrooms, because Jake got—
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: —that for me when I got really into my mushroom hunting, and like a small bag of almonds. Like, one of those like tall bags.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: You know what I mean?
AMANDA: Oh, yeah, yeah.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Yeah, they're like, oh, so classic. Yeah, mine is probably a Chewy granola bar.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Where they're like, "Oh, yeah."
JULIA: Hmm. Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "Important food, sacred food."
JULIA: "The sacred food, the chocolate, yes." So we know that human beings were at least utilizing mushrooms in some form or another for at least 5,300 years. Mushrooms have since then been used across the globe in traditional and folk medicines as well. A Greek physician, Hippocrates of the Hippocratic Oath, wrote about mushrooms having anti-inflammatory properties and how they could be used to cauterize wounds.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Indigenous North American people used puffball mushrooms in wound care. Chinese traditional medicine utilizes many different types of medicinal mushrooms, including the Lingzhi, which we talked about in our Mushrooms in Mythology Episode.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And it's also worth noting that we get penicillin from mushrooms, Amanda.
AMANDA: Hey, thanks, guys.
JULIA: There are so many ongoing studies as well to see if mushrooms can be used to develop various different treatments, including antibiotics, immunosuppressants, even anti-cancer drugs. Like, we're constantly trying to figure out what it is about mushrooms that can make us feel better and feel healthier, as well as trying to figure out like, "Hey, what's up with these?"
AMANDA: I feel like we've also just scratched the surface barely on— like looking at plants and animals for all kinds of treatments from insulin to, you know, all kinds of like antiseptics. And so it makes sense that the— by far, the vast majority of, like, biodiversity on Earth would have some secrets to share that we haven't found yet.
JULIA: Amanda, I'm so glad you mentioned insulin, because we're going—
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: —to talk a little bit about pigs.
AMANDA: Hey, let's do it. Those truffle sniffing little friends.
JULIA: Yes. So obviously, we know that human beings have been cultivating or eating mushrooms for a very long time. We train animals like pigs and dogs to find rare mushrooms. And I know you know a lot about truffles, Amanda, because you read that incredible truffle underground book, right?
AMANDA: That's right.
JULIA: So, Amanda, do you know why we specifically use pigs to find truffles?
AMANDA: It feels like a thing I knew at some point, but don't now, so please tell me.
JULIA: Well, so we can train dogs to basically find anything. Dogs love finding things. It's like in their DNA. Pigs are trained to truffle hunt, because truffles smell like pig pheromones.
AMANDA: Oh, yes. Good. Fun.
JULIA: They— they want to track down that sexy, sexy other pig that is somewhere underneath the ground. And then they find mushrooms and they're like, "Fuck."
AMANDA: "Dammit." I saw a tweet this morning, Julia, that was like AI can't make art because AI can't be horny, which is the first step to so many kinds of good art.
JULIA: That is true.
AMANDA: And A, it made me laugh. B, fuck AI. I want AI to work, so I can make art, not the other way around.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: And— and C, that just makes me laugh so much that this cork of nature means that the— the scent profile of truffle mushrooms, the thing that humans have decided is super tasty and—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —therefore, valuable, is similar to, you know, a pig being like, "Hmm."
JULIA: Hmm, hmm.
AMANDA: "I want a piece of that."
JULIA: "I want a little action there." A little pig action.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Also, can I blow your mind?
AMANDA: Please.
JULIA: Picture your kind of, like, average neighborhood grocery store, right?
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Go to the produce section, and you see mushrooms there.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: What kind of mushrooms are you seeing there?
AMANDA: Probably like a white button mushroom.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Maybe a portobello.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Those are the two that come to mind the most. Maybe like a hen-of-the-woods. That's like a very common boujee mushroom.
JULIA: Fancy boujee mushroom. Yeah.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But we're talking like— so the ones that you've— you've listed, two of the three that I was thinking of.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: Button mushrooms portobello mushrooms, cremini mushrooms.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Amanda, I'm gonna blow your mind. They're all the same species.
AMANDA: No! Really?
JULIA: The only difference is their age and color, but they are all versions of Agaricus bisporus.
AMANDA: Really? They look so— I mean, I guess button mushrooms I could see growing into the portobello. They have a similar shape. But creminis look so different.
JULIA: So creminis are basically just like baby button mushrooms.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: White button mushrooms are just an albino strain of that same species of mushroom. And then portobellos are the fully mature version of those mushrooms.
AMANDA: Fascinating.
JULIA: It's all lies. It's all lies.
AMANDA: I mean, I— I guess in theory like, you know, all apples are the same species. There's just different, like, varieties you know, and like cultivars of the same thing.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: But for some reason, yeah, just the— that really struck me. It's like shocking. I had no idea.
JULIA: Well, that's like— this is not a plug for Head Heart Gut, the friendly debate show, where there's no right answer, just the best answer. But Mischa blew my mind when we were doing our best vegetable argument, by saying that like brassica— like, you know, you think of brassicas, you think of like broccoli and stuff like that. But then they kept listing—
AMANDA: Cabbage, Brussel sprouts.
JULIA: Amanda, they're all the same species of plant, just grown differently.
AMANDA: That's how the Broccoli family, owners of the James Bond IP, got their money.
JULIA: I don't— is that true? I don't know if that's true, but I— like, I want it to be.
AMANDA: I won't look it up, Julia, because I don't want to be disappointed if it's wrong.
JULIA: Don't—
AMANDA: It is true that the James Bond IP is owned by the Broccoli family.
JULIA: Yes. I knew that. I did know that.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: But that's like wild to me, the— like, "Ah, yes, the Broccolis of Broccoli fame, and also James Bond." Wild.
AMANDA: I'm pretty sure because they worked with Di Cicco. The Di Cicco Broccoli—
JULIA: Yeah, I know.
AMANDA: —is like a very common variety, so—
JULIA: They're tied to the mob. That's all I know.
AMANDA: That's all we know. That's all we know.
JULIA: All right. So not only were human beings, mushroom hunting, cultivating mushrooms, but like you kind of mentioned earlier, we use fungi in a lot of different foods as well. Mold fungi is used in a lot of soybean products. For example, miso and soy sauce, and tempeh. And of course, this is most important to me, we wouldn't have cheese if it wasn't for cultivated molds. So like you think of a nice Brie or a nice Camembert, the white fuzzy stuff on the outside of that, that's mold, baby. Delicious mold. The blue that makes blue cheese blue cheese, that is Penicillium roqueforti, which is—
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: —the scientific name, and it got its scientific name from the fact that is most frequently used in blue cheese, Roquefort.
AMANDA: Amazing.
JULIA: And not only are we using it for our foods and stuff like that, we also use it for stuff like dyeing clothes, you know? Like, there are a bunch of mushrooms that can be used by combining them with either like ammonia or another kind of like color- extracting solvent, which kind of pulls the color out of the mushrooms. And then by using stuff like turkey tails, dyer's polypore, blewits, even stuff like chicken of the woods like you mentioned. You can get colors anywhere from red to yellow, to green, and even purples and blues when combined with other things.
AMANDA: Extremely metal.
JULIA: It's so cool. So, basically, that was what we were using before we had synthetic dyes. We often would rely on mushrooms for strong and vivid colors in textiles.
AMANDA: So cool.
JULIA: Now Amanda, I think you know this fact, because I did reveal it to you recently off this camera, off this microphone. But did you know that there are in fact carnivorous types of mushrooms?
AMANDA: You know, I didn't, and then I did, and then my brain kind of calloused over it like a splinter.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Makes sense.
AMANDA: And so now, I am re-reckoning with the fact that there are carnivorous mushrooms, yes.
JULIA: In the 1980s, scientists discovered that oyster mushrooms, which is a fairly common mushroom in the culinary world. You can probably find it at your local boujee or supermarket, like a Whole Foods or something like that. They found out that they are in fact carnivores.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So here's the thing. Oyster mushrooms typically grow on damp logs, but mushrooms also need a lot of nitrogen in their diet in order to thrive and survive, right? So in order to get that essential nitrogen, oyster mushrooms feed on nematodes, which are a kind of very small worm. They're like basically microscopic.
AMANDA: I mean, still a nematode has a shape.
JULIA: It has internal organs.
AMANDA: The idea of a mushroom consuming a thing with a shape makes me a little bit feel like I'm in a horror movie.
JULIA: Yes. It is a little scary, but here's— here's how they go about it. It's pretty cool. They wait until the nematodes crawl onto their body, like the— the mushroom, the spore itself.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And then they release a toxin that then paralyzes the nematodes. And then all mushrooms have this type of, like, tendril. It's like the— the tendrils, like the fingers of the mycelial network, called the hyphae.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And the hyphae, basically, reach into the nematodes, disrupt their cell membrane, which causes them to rapidly dissolve, so that the oyster mushroom can then devour them and get that sweet, sweet nitrogen that the oyster mushroom craves.
AMANDA: That is some Cthulhuian maw injecting poison into a—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —body and then dissolving it from the inside.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Holy shit.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. It's very scary.
AMANDA: Very scary.
JULIA: I was reading the article and they were interviewing, like, someone who— one of the scientists who helped discover this, and they're like, "It's very dramatic." I'm like, "That's one word for it. That's a word for it, my guy. Yeah."
AMANDA: Yeah. No lies detected.
Bobby: There are other types of fungi out there that catch and kill nematodes in various other ways. Sometimes they use pheromones to lure the nematodes to them. Other times, they release like these tiny, sickle-shaped spores that take over the body of the nematode and kill them from within. The reason—
AMANDA: Uh-huh.
JULIA: —we don't get as hyped up about these is because they're not edible. We can't buy them in the store, so we're very hyped on oyster mushrooms being a thing that can— can eat other things.
AMANDA: Yeah. And it really— it really makes the oysters of the sea seem like real saints, because all the—
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: —oysters do is they— they sift out pollution and make a— make a tasty little tongue for me to— to slurp down.
JULIA: That's true. That's true. Amanda, I have so many more mushroom facts that I want to tell you about, and maybe like answer some of your burning questions about mushrooms.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: But first, I think we got to take a quick refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
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AMANDA: Hello, hello, everybody. Amanda here, and welcome to the midroll. Thank you so very much for listening to this episode, for supporting us, for hanging with us through mushroom month. It's been really fun to try new stuff and learn more about one of Julia's very favorite things. And thanks as well to new patron, Scott Sheldon, who upgraded to a $40 annual patron. Thank you so much, Scott. It is so helpful for us when you are annual patrons, because it helps us understand how much support we're gonna get throughout the year. And also for you, it gives you a discount on a whole year of support. Thank you to our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Arianna, Ashley, Ginger Spurs Boi, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jeremiah, Kneazlekins, Lily, Matthew, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Scott Sheldon. And thank you to our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. You can join these lovely folks to get access to hundreds of bonus posts, recipe cards, director's commentary behind every episode, and so much more. We just posted a brand-new advice video and audio podcast from Julia and me, answering your advice questions at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. This week, I would highly recommend that you go ahead and get a plant. Now, you guys know I love plants. That is no surprise to anyone here. But I recently got some strawberry plants that were on sale, just like little sprouts from my local, like, corner flower shop for just three bucks for a little set of, like, three strawberry plants, which was incredible. And so, I put them in some, you know, extra soil I had lying around, and I put them in a little pot, and I put them on my windowsill, and they just make me so happy to look at. And listen, maybe the birds will get it and maybe the squirrels will get it, but I know that it brings me so much joy to see them, and their beautiful little leaves, and their flowers poking up every day. So if you've never been a plant person and you're like, "Hey, it's— it's nice where I live, or everybody in the southern hemisphere. It's getting to be the season where I want to be inside and be cozy. Maybe I want a little— a little green friend with me." Think about it, and then tag me @shessomickey. This week, there has been so much great stuff happening over on Big Game Hunger. Jenna recently had a member of The Doubleclicks, a band that was a huge deal when I was coming up on the internet. Laser Webber on to Big Game Hunger. Her weekly comedy show where Jenna and friends craft the next big video game every episode. They start with a randomly generated genre concept and vibe, and then improvise, and talk, and work their way through an IP so resistible that you'll be ready to, like, risk 20 bucks for it on Steam. It's so fun. It's so good. It's a wonderful thing to put on in the car to listen to with you and your friends, or when going on a walk, or whatever else you're going to be doing. So go ahead and check out Big Game Hunger, new episodes every Monday. We are sponsored this week by Shaker & Spoon, a subscription cocktail service that helps you learn how to make handcrafted cocktails right at home. It was recently the birthday of my grandfather, who passed away a few years ago, helped raise me, take me to school every day, and his favorite drink was a gin and tonic. And so I decided to make myself a little zhuzh up gin and tonic in his memory, and to enjoy it, and think about him, and share some photos and memories of him with my siblings. And I remember from many years ago getting a gin box with Shaker & Spoon that taught me about some wonderful techniques, about how to use gin beyond the gin and tonic. I didn't have tonic at home, so I was like, "What am I going to do?" And made a beautiful gin cocktail from the gorgeous recipe cards that Shaker & Spoon sent, and that I saved, so I have a lovely little stack of recipe cards that I can pull from going forward. That's the whole point of Shaker & Spoon. It's not just, "Oh, here's enough stuff to make three really cool, different cocktails every month. It's also teaching you skills and upping your home and mixology knowledge. They're so great. They're a lovely team. We'd love to work with them, our longest lasting sponsor, I believe. So go ahead, go to shakerandspoon.com/creepy to get $20 off your first box. That's shakerandspoon.com/creepy. And finally, we are sponsored by Soul, who make absolutely wonderful CBD gummies I am very sensitive to temperature while I'm sleeping, and recently, my air conditioners have been on the fritz at home. Not great when it's above 90 degrees here at— in New York City. So I really appreciate that CBD gummies help me fall asleep faster and sleep through the night. I used to be a very nervous sleeper. I would honestly like not want to go on trips with friends because I was like, "What if I can't fall asleep? Like, what am I going to do?" And honestly, CBD has been really, really helpful for doing that. And I love that gummies are so easy to take. You can pack a couple of them on a trip. You can bring them on— you know, just in your regular bathroom, in your regular life, but I highly recommend their out of office gummies by Soul. They are perfectly microdosed by hemp-derived THC and CBD to give any day or evening, like chillin' on the beach kind of relaxing vibe. 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JULIA: Amanda, we took our break and I know you have some dying questions for me.
AMANDA: Some urgent, urgent questions, Julia. There's only— there's only one more week in the month.
JULIA: I know. I have— I have answers to, I believe, your urgent, urgent mushroom questions. So why don't you hit me with your first one?
AMANDA: All right. We touched on a little bit with toadstools, but I'm curious, what exactly makes some mushrooms poisonous to humans and some not?
JULIA: Think of it kind of like this, similarly to why some plants are poisonous to humans and others aren't. Some mushrooms are poisonous in order to, like, protect themselves from being eaten so that they can more easily reproduce. Like— much like plants, however, some adapt to be edible in order to encourage being eaten to spread spores that way.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: They are like— there are actually types of mushrooms that will coat their spores so that they can survive the digestive processes of animals. It's very cool.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: But mushrooms are different for most plants, because they tend not to last as long in mushroom form. So when we talk about mushrooms versus the mycelial network, mushroom is the— the fruiting body of the mycelial network, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Much like, you know, plants have fruits that— or like berries or stuff like that, that grow and those are their kind of like reproductive organs. That is what the mushroom, the thing that you see grow out of the ground, or out of a tree, or something like that, is for the mycelial network.
AMANDA: So I may regret asking this, but then how do they really spores, and what are spores exactly?
JULIA: So spores are just kind of like baby mushrooms.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: They grow typically— like gill mushrooms are typically the ones that spore as opposed to others, which don't necessarily spore, and just tend to spread out in other various ways. But they kind of grow on the gills of the mushroom, and then they are released through various different methods. Typically, they'll, like, wait for wind in order to kind of, like, spread that way. Fun fact, though, Amanda, total kind of aside for what we're talking about in toxicity. Some species of mushrooms— because they spread via their spores, a lot of times they need that wind. But did you know that sometimes they don't wait for the wind, but rather they can make their own wind?
AMANDA: What?
JULIA: So, basically, research has suggested that by releasing water vapor out of their bodies, for lack of a better phrase, the—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —cooling of the vapor in the air can create these very small, localized air streams that help spread the spores away from the fruiting mushroom.
AMANDA: That's nuts, because— I mean, especially in what I would imagine of, like, a— a dank environment, low to the ground, maybe partially covered, like you're—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —not gonna get a ton of wind, the way you are at the top of like the canopy of a forest.
JULIA: True. That's so cool. Okay. So going back to the toxicity of mushrooms a little bit, because they don't last very long, they need to be able to spread their spores quickly, which means they can't risk being eaten.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Hence, the toxicity. And there are really only a small number of species of mushrooms that are like truly deadly to humans, but many are toxic to some extent. And there are, like, 11 identified mycotoxins that had been— that can be produced by a mushroom with varying degrees of toxicity. So there are some that can be made safe by cooking them sometimes. Like, for example, you can like sauté something— a mushroom to make it more palatable for the human body. You can double boil them. You can dry them, et cetera, et cetera. But there are a lot of other mushrooms, like deadly mushrooms. Like, the— the fly agaric that we've talked about before, that like— they're thermo stable, so it takes a lot, a lot, a lot in order to make it sort of consumable. And even then you're risking, like, severe liver damage by— by trying to consume it.
AMANDA: Yeah. So maybe don't, maybe don't.
JULIA: That is the problem, like I mentioned earlier. There is no single trait that all toxic mushrooms have, which makes identifying mushrooms a little bit difficult. So if you aren't extremely positive about the identity of a mushroom you find in the wild, don't eat it.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Just don't eat it.
AMANDA: It's a good rule. Good rule.
JULIA: So that explains why are some poisonous, why are some not?
AMANDA: Right on. And I know we got to this a little bit with the— the mycelial network and with the spores, but I guess in my mind, like people refer to like a colony of mushrooms or like a group of mushrooms is like one being. Whereas—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —we don't refer to something like a field of flowers or like a, you know, rock covered in moss in that same way. So, like, how do scientists refer to a, like— I know the mushroom itself is not an organism. It's like the fruit of the organism. So tell me a little bit—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —more about like how they're organized and how we refer to them.
JULIA: Yeah. So we— we've talked about the mycelium a little bit, that's that root-like structure that really makes up the fungus. And the mushrooms that we see pop out of the ground are just the fruit that allow the spores to spread more. But we often do talk about how huge fungal networks are, mainly because that, like, sounds really cool and is a cool biological example. Like, for—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —example, the— the honey fungi, which is an extremely long-lived and, like, the largest living fungi in the world. There's one mycelial network that covers 3.4 miles of Oregon's Malheur National Forest, and is also bioluminescent.
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: But in reality, like most of the mycelium that you'll find in nature are quite small, they're too small for us even to see without the assistance of a microscope.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: They also— unlike stuff like moss and flowers, and stuff like that, they don't require light to grow, because they don't do photosynthesis. But rather, they get those nutrients from the ground around them when they help things to decompose.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: The largest living thing in the entire world is, in fact, a mushroom mycelial network.
AMANDA: That's amazing. And makes sense—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —to why, like, you can probably— individual parts of it can be damaged, but the, you know, network as a whole is fine, because unlike old school Christmas lights, disrupting one little portion of it is not going to throw off the entire network.
JULIA: Exactly. Exactly.
AMANDA: Julia, I think in my mind, I assume that mushrooms and the kingdom fungi are some of the oldest sort of organisms that we have on Earth. Is that true?
JULIA: Yes, they are extremely old. And in fact, we found out fairly recently that they're actually older than we thought that they were.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: So in 2020, a scientist from the Université Libre de Bruxelles announced that mushrooms evolved somewhere between 715 to 810 million years ago, which is actually 300 million years earlier than we originally believed.
AMANDA: That's like star math. That's like the age of stars. Holy shit.
JULIA: Part of the reason that we don't have a ton of information on the history of mushrooms and fungi as a— as a whole, is because they're pretty fragile, all things considered, which makes mushroom fossils extremely rare and difficult to find. But they did find these fossilized mycelium in the Democratic Republic of Congo, giving scientists kind of a glimpse into the importance of mushrooms on the early Earth. And they've kind of discovered that early fungi were usually found in coastal regions and—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —kind of were very involved in a sort of symbiotic relationship to early plants. And they were like very important partners to one another in the kind of developing world of the Earth as it was an early planet.
AMANDA: Yeah. I mean, I remember be— you know, being very moved by— you know, in— in geology, studying how, you know, mosses kind of start breaking down. There's some of those like, quote, "pioneer species" is how we learned about it back then. Maybe a—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —a different term is in use now, breaking rock into soil and kind of beginning that process where there is a more, like, organic, you know, mulchy, loamy material that plants as we know, it can start to thrive in.
JULIA: Yeah, and mushrooms and fungi, in general, are very important to that, like, process of, like, life itself. Like I was— I was listening to a episode of Ologies from the mycologist episode of Ologies, and he stated pretty succinctly. He's like, "If fungi did not exist, we would have a lot more— like, the world would be covered in much more wood and much more shit."
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: So extremely important to the process of what the world is as we know it. Like, nature as a whole.
AMANDA: Mushrooms, very cool. Much cooler than I thought at the start of this month.
JULIA: Yay. So let's move on, and— and then obviously, on this podcast, we— we talk a lot about human culture, we care a lot about human culture, how humanity kind of interacts with the natural world, et cetera, et cetera. And when it comes to culture's relationship with fungi, that is a science that is called ethnomycology.
AMANDA: Hell yes. What a good term. If I met an ethnomycologist at a party, I'd be like, "We're— we're going to a different room, because you and I are going to talk all night."
JULIA: You're also probably going to a different room because they would love for you to take some psychoactive mushrooms, in general. So, like, I'm getting ahead of myself. So—
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: —ethnomycology is the sociological impact that fungi have on humanity. There's a lot of focus on the topic of mushrooms as medicine, mushrooms as food, mushrooms as fuel, et cetera. But starting in the 1950s, it became focused particularly on the study of psychoactive mushrooms and their role in human history.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: And that's because it's— it's a fairly extensive thing to talk about. And I want to break down a little of, like, what is happening to your brain and body when you take a psychoactive mushroom, because we're going to be talking a little bit about that more in the back half of the episode. But when we're talking about the like, quote-unquote, "magic mushrooms," you know?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: As we understand it in specifically Western culture. Typically, we are talking about mushrooms that produce psilocybin.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Something that people may have heard of before. There are certain areas in the United States where it is legalized, et cetera, et cetera.
AMANDA: And I know something that I read a lot about, psilocybin being used in like mental health and mental illness research as, you know, potential like treatment resistant mental illnesses.
JULIA: Yes. Specifically, it is being researched right now in order to treat things like PTSD, OCD, cluster headaches, depression, and especially is really being interestingly researched for end-of-life mental healthcare—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —which I think is— is very fascinating. Like, you can look up Johns Hopkins, I think, is doing a lot of research on the usage of psilocybin in those kinds of care situations.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: So talking about psilocybin, psilocybin in your body converts to something that is called psilocin, which has a very similar structure to another important part of our brain chemistry, which is serotonin.
AMANDA: Sure. The good one.
JULIA: Yes, the good. So the psilocin will bind to the serotonin receptor sites in your brain, which is basically what causes the trip, because basically, it's like the chemicals we already produce in our brains, just in much higher quantities.
AMANDA: Not too dissimilar, it seems, from my antidepressant. In my case, an SSRI, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, figuring out and sort of regulating how much serotonin my brain eats and how much it— it leaves me.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. So you can see why people are doing research into, "Hey, how can this help people who maybe are not producing the right amount of serotonin? Or how can it help people like"— you know, it's basically creates different, like, connections in neurons in your brains by attaching to those receptors in your brain.
AMANDA: Fascinating.
JULIA: This is also, I want to stress to you, a distinctly different experience than the trip you would have if you consumed, let's say, fly agaric.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: It's a different type of, like, neurotoxin situation that is happening inside your brain.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: But psilocybin is produced in over 200 different species of mushrooms, which is a lot, and are mostly found in temperate climates, both in Europe and the Americas. Though, there are some species that are found in Asia, Africa, and Australia, just to a lesser extent.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: Magic mushrooms, they became very popularized in Western culture in the '50s, but why?
AMANDA: I don't know.
JULIA: Amanda, this is wild and you just strap in, and stick with me.
AMANDA: Okay, because I— I'm just gonna tell you right now, I've heard some things about, you know, CIA research. I've— I've heard some things about, you know, hippies enjoying trips. I— I got nothing.
JULIA: So it all kind of starts in the 1950s in Western culture with this guy. His name is Robert Gordon Wasson.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: He was an author. He was, I would guess, an amateur ethnomycologist that isn't quite a thing yet in— in society and culture.
AMANDA: A guy who likes mushrooms.
JULIA: Yeah. He— he loves mushrooms, and wildly, Amanda, his other claim to fame was he was the VP for public relations for JP Morgan.
AMANDA: Oh, sure. My former employer. You know, Julia, surprisingly, they don't cover that in the history of JP Morgan you got when you join the company.
JULIA: Weird.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JULIA: Interesting.
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: So, Wasson becomes interested in mushrooms, because he is on his honeymoon with his wife in the Catskill Mountains in 1927. Loves finding out about mushrooms, learns about foraging, stuff like that. His wife, who is a Russian pediatrician, is also very like— remembers her childhood and, like, the— the mushrooms of her yore, you know?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: This is 1927. We fast forward to the 1950s. The man is still very interested in mushrooms while he's working at JP Morgan and— and whatnot. He is particularly interested in the different view of mushrooms in the United States compared to those in Russia. Again, because of his— his Russian wife.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Specifically, the Amanita Muscaria, which is the red and white mushroom everyone knows, the fly agaric.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Everyone knows it's poisonous, but also psychoactive. So he writes a book that becomes very popular, but moreover, he starts traveling and doing a lot of research into psychoactive mushrooms. Now, Amanda, you're probably wondering, you're like this guy is the VP of PR for JP Morgan, what is he doing? Traveling the world, researching mushrooms in 1956.
AMANDA: Julia, spending his finance salary on his crazy hobby, which all finance dudes do.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, he didn't have to spend his finance salary, because he was funded by the CIA.
AMANDA: Okay. All right, there we go. You know, again, some CIA things, you're like, "That's a conspiracy theory." And then some of them are like, "They— they did assassinate this radical leader? Yes."
JULIA: Right. Okay. So he claimed he didn't know that the CIA was funding him. Documents that were surfaced by the Freedom of Information Act also claimed that he was a, quote, "unwitting participant."
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: But they sponsored his research as part of MKUltra of all things.
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: Basically, they were hoping that his research on psychoactive mushrooms would help them learn basically how to brainwash and mind control people.
AMANDA: Yeah. That sounds like a thing the American government will put money behind. I mean, I— I'm sure I'm gonna read about this, but I'm— I'm just imagining that he's like, "Hey, honey, someone sent me a check in the mail for $15,000 for the mushrooms. Like, isn't that nice?"
JULIA: Well, it's— it's wild. He gets his money from the CIA, which he accepted under the cover name of the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research.
AMANDA: Oh, sure. Sure.
JULIA: So around this time, Life magazine publishes an article about his research called Seeking the Magic Mushroom, which outlines how he and his wife became the first Westerners to participate in a Mazatec, which is a— one of the indigenous people of Mexico's mushroom ritual.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: He is a shithead about this, which is unsurprising, because he's a white man working for JP Morgan and is trying to do a religious ritual from the people he is not from. But he lies to the curandera ,who does the ritual for him. Because typically, this is a ritual that is done to help locate missing people, and so He lies to her, and claims that his son is missing. He's worried about him. That's why he wants to do the ritual.
AMANDA: That's a very bad lie, especially in a religious ceremony context. Holy shit.
JULIA: And this guy fucking ruins this poor curandera's life. He becomes incredibly famous. He profits from it greatly. He never faces any fucking consequences. He is an asshole. He's just the worst.
AMANDA: Yeah. It feels like a story that Life magazine and, you know, wealthy Americans in the '50s would really eat up.
JULIA: Yes, but this is also what popularizes the idea of the recreational use of psilocybin mushrooms. For better or for worse, this is where it comes from.
AMANDA: Which sounds, again, it wasn't for recreation to begin with, based on the context of what the curandera thought they were doing.
JULIA: Yes, exactly. It wasn't. It was a religious ceremony, and so this guy kind of just— he just kind of ruined it all, you know?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: He really just took something that was sacred and kind of, like, made it into a thing that, like, hippies will casually do now.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: It's rough. But the use of psychoactive mushrooms in human culture is fairly widespread, was fairly widespread. And there are many theories that they were used in various religious rituals globally. Though, these—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —theories, again, kind of definitely vary in credibility. Like, we mentioned in the first episode, that Santa mushroom theory, again, things kind of are debatable, you know? We— we've mentioned the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece here on the podcast before, and there are some ethnomycologists who believe that the sacrament of the Kykeon from the Eleusinian Mysteries was some sort of psychoactive mushroom. And, like, ethnomycologists are in general kind of like an interesting bunch.
AMANDA: You don't say.
JULIA: A lot of them don't have a lot of, like, fo— either formal training and education, or they're otherwise, like, considered outliers in their academic field.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Like for example, Terence McKenna was someone who found a lot of notoriety in his claim that the ingestion of psilocybin was how human language was first formed. And that psychedelic mushrooms may have acted as the original, quote unquote, "Tree of Knowledge."
AMANDA: I mean, listen, I don't want to dismiss it all the way, but I— I see how somebody publishing a paper on, like, anything psychoactive, or anything rooted in folk medicine, like would have a layer of, like, you know, unbelievability to kind of push through before you can get to reviewing it on its merits.
JULIA: Right. And, you know, it's kind of a mixed bag. That theory is called the stoned ape theory, which, like, makes it seem a lot sillier than it probably really is.
AMANDA: Yes. It does sound like an NFT.
JULIA: Yes. And— and unfortunately, he— he passed away pretty tragically in the year 2000, but this was also the same man who kind of popularized the idea of the 2012 Mayan Calendar end of the world thing.
AMANDA: Oh, sure.
JULIA: That people got really hyped up about, like about a decade or so ago. So, you know, it's one of those things where it's like we kind of had to take some things with a grain of salt, you know?
AMANDA: You know? Like— like most stuff in life and like most mushrooms, some you eat, some you don't.
JULIA: Exactly. Amanda, because we have such a Western bias, we think of psychoactive mushroom usage in general, as a thing that was, like, really became popularized in the 1950s and '60s, but obviously, there is a history of humans altering their consciousness. Like, we've been talking about a lot in the past couple episodes.
AMANDA: Yes. Seeking communion with the universe.
JULIA: Yes, exactly. And that can be done in— in various different ways as— as you point out very eloquently often. But we've been basically trying to alter our consciousness since we have been humans, and psychoactives are a huge part of that. Like, we know that in Mesoamerica, they were being used thousands of years before the colonization by Columbus, as well as the Spaniards. We even have records of the Spaniards banning the use of sacred mushrooms, which were referred to by the indigenous people as the flesh of the gods.
AMANDA: I'm sure the Spaniards wanted none of that. Yep, that checks out.
JULIA: Yeah, they tried very hard to kind of eliminate all reference to it. Really, the only reason that we have a written record of it kind of right now, because the Spaniards did such a terrible, terrible thing to the indigenous people of Central America, is because there was, like, one monk who really wanted to write about it.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: And manage to keep the, like, writings that he did on record and not, like, destroyed by the church.
AMANDA: Incredible. Julia, I now have the very unique life experience of one of my very closest friends is about to become a nun and in— in the midst of nun training, and just learning about the— the absolute, incredible work that many monks and nuns as like people allowed to think for a living, and write, and record for a living under the crushing weight of first feudalism and then capitalism, really, you know, underappreciated, I think, by me up until, you know, last year.
JULIA: If only we were allowed to do that in society, not tied to religion, you know?
AMANDA: I know, Julia. Think of the number of— I mean, you and I both follow, like, so many, you know, histories, they didn't allow you to learn in school Instagrams, and like community-oriented Zine archives, and like oral storytelling, and oral history projects. How nice would it be if you did not have to dedicate your life to live off of the tithing of the rich, and could just do that.
JULIA: And this is why we are pro universal basic income here on the podcast.
AMANDA: Yeah, I'm going full socialism. I'm pro full socialism.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: And I think— I think UBI is a good bridge mechanism.
JULIA: I— I agree. I agree. So similarly, the ancient Egyptians believed that mushrooms were the food of the gods and believed that eating them could help prolong their lives, which is not entirely inaccurate. Mushrooms are very good for you in general.
AMANDA: Love it.
JULIA: There is similarly a theory that the Viking Berserkers— you— do you know the Viking Berserkers, Amanda?
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: They might have also utilized psychoactive mushrooms to get into their kind of, like, frenzied state before battle.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Originally, scientists and scholars thought that maybe they were eating the quintessential fly agaric mushroom, but as we've talked about, before processing fly agaric mushrooms is difficult and can also— can lead to severe illness and death if they're consumed in a larger quantity. But nowadays, scholars who subscribe to this theory believed that it wasn't fly agaric, but it was in fact, the Liberty cap, which is a psilocybin mushroom that can be found in the grasslands of Europe, usually in pastures fertilized by livestock dung.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: There's also a really interesting theory that I believe came out of Ohio State University, that the reason that psilocybin mushrooms often grow either in dung or in land that was fertilized by dung, and why they are so psychoactive, is because it was a deterrent so that the bugs that would normally be around—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —you know, feces and stuff like that, would then trip mad balls and would then not want to eat the mushrooms anymore.
AMANDA: Julia, are you sure it's because— it's not because of the ancient axiom, the closer to the cow pie, the closer to God?
JULIA: No, I don't think that that's accurate.
AMANDA: It's— that's not— that's not the case? Oh.
JULIA: How does that translate to Latin?
AMANDA: It rhymes in Latin, actually.
JULIA: Oh, interesting.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: That's pretty cool. I will also say that there are sources that say that Vikings would enrich their meat with fly agaric, but I also don't know what the process of safely extracting it to make it consumable would be like. I Googled that, there were several people on YouTube that claimed that they did it and did it safely, but I don't know.
AMANDA: That's a very high stakes tutorial to follow, but maybe some of those scientists that brewed beer from that ancient strain of yeast, that they recovered, that I think it was from ancient Egypt—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —or Mesopotamia, maybe they could get a go of this in a safe way.
JULIA: Maybe they could. I don't know. Who can say? But there are definitely other examples out there of psychoactive mushroom usage that dates back, like, over millennia. But I'm also kind of hesitant to talk about that as related to religious practices, because a lot of the research is, for lack of a better phrase, questionable. A lot of it was done by white Western men in, like, the 1900s, and as we know, there is a lot of bias, and projection, and colonial mindset that kind of comes from that area of research. But what we do know is that mushrooms have been playing a role in human beings since the dawn of human beings. Like, back when Homo sapiens were fighting it out evolutionarily with other members of the homogeneous. Like, we have cave paintings of mushrooms from Algeria from 47,000 BCE. We have Mesoamerican carvings of mushrooms from 3000 BCE. Siberian carvings from 1 CE and beyond. Like, mushrooms, humans have been into them since forever, and I am here to keep that tradition alive.
AMANDA: I love that, Julia. This has been such a fascinating episode, and I— I hope listeners are along with us on it. It— it really honestly feels like, you know, one of the things that sets human beings apart is our awareness of our own livelihood, right? Like, that's how we define consciousness in a lot of ways.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: And I think to have consciousness is to want to transcend consciousness. And that is just such a— a fundamental human urge. And knowing both how cool just biologically mushrooms actually are, and also they're consistent worldwide and widespread use in the human project of living in our body and our mind, and maybe beyond it is so fascinating.
JULIA: Thank you for letting me info dump about my special interest— one of my special interests for a whole month, Amanda. I appreciate it.
AMANDA: Anytime, anytime, bestie. That's— that's what friendship
is.
JULIA: Yes. And next week, we will be revisiting a story that I think our listeners know and love, but that's all I'm going to tease you with until we get there.
AMANDA: It sounds perfect. And in the meantime—
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: —stay cool.
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