125. Spooky Mushrooms, Modern Folklore, and Mycelial Mind Control w/ Amanda McLoughlin and Julia Schifni

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
What is up, plant people?
It's time once more for thePlanthropology Podcast, the show
where we dive into the lives andcareers of some very cool plant
people to figure out why they dowhat they do and what keeps them
coming back for more.
I'm Vicarin Beliga, your hostand your humble guidance journey
through the sciences.
And as always, my friends, I'mso excited to be with you today.
Y'all, this is such a good one.
So if you're listening to thison the day that it drops,

(00:22):
tomorrow is Halloween.
That's right, Halloween 2025.
And what possible Halloweencould be scarier than the one in
2025?
I implore you.
I ask you, I beg you to tell me.
I don't I I can't think of one.
It's pretty bad, but that'sokay.
Because I have such a good pairof guests for you today.
So I reached out to my friends,Amanda McLaughlin and Julia

(00:44):
Shafini, who are the hosts ofThe Spirits Podcast, a
long-running show aboutfolklores and a dive into all
the mythology that defines us ina lot of ways as a people.
And I thought as plant loversand as nature lovers and as
folklore lovers, who would bethe more perfect guests for
Halloween?
And I was right.
I was right.

(01:05):
But what I didn't expect is howmuch Julia loves mushrooms.
It's wonderful.
Wonderful.
And I just had so much funlistening to both of them talk
about folklore and storytellingand how that fits into our lives
as humans and how that tells usso much about how we think and

(01:25):
how we evolve and how we livebased on the stories we tell
each other.
So this is such a fun episode.
We talked about everything frommycelial mind control and how
different mushrooms can, I don'tknow, let us see the future or
something, to reindeer, tocordyceps and TV shows and
modern and ancient folklore andjust about life and and how we

(01:47):
contextualize life best based onstories.
And y'all, it was so good.
I loved talking to them so much.
They are wonderful.
I've been on their show.
Amanda's been on Planthropologybefore, y'all might remember.
I know that was a very popularepisode, and a lot of y'all had
some really great feedback aboutthat.
So without blabbering too muchabout how excited I am to talk
to my friends, I'm just gonnajump into it.
So get ready for episode 125 ofthe Planthropology Podcast:

(02:11):
Spooky Mushrooms, ModernFolklore, and Mycelial Mind
Control with Amanda McLaughlinand Julia Schafini.

(02:48):
Just to get to talk with y'allagain.
I it is always a pleasure, butit's spooky month, it's October.
I think if I'm doing my mathright, this is going to come out
right before Halloween.
So I think it's the perfectopportunity to talk to both of
you.
So just to kick us off, whydon't y'all introduce yourselves
a little bit and give us therundown and the elevator pitch

(03:08):
or a longer elevator pitch forspirits, and then we'll jump
into talking about how creepynature can be.

SPEAKER_03 (03:13):
Yeah.
Vikram, I like to give the stuckin the elevator with me pitch,
where perhaps this is like alocal elevator going like many
floors and between zero andtwenty or something.
And so you have a little longerthan you expected to be stuck
with me, but here we are.

SPEAKER_00 (03:26):
I I like that.
I'm I'm gonna have to like keepthat in my back pocket.
And for me, I think, you know,at some point into my
introduction and the stuck onthe elevator pitch, people start
to panic a little bit, just likebeing stuck on the elevator,
which is just perfect.
I love that.

SPEAKER_04 (03:39):
And I mean, if you're going with the theme of
sort of our podcast, beingtrapped in an elevator for an
extended period of time, don'tknow when you're gonna get out,
the lights are flickering.
Perfect, really, thematicallyfor us.

unknown (03:51):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (03:52):
Tell a couple ghost stories.
And so I'll start.
I'm Amanda McLaughlin.
I'm a past guest, and I am herewith my BFF from kindergarten,
Julia Shafini, who is also avery accomplished historian and
religious studies lover ofmythology.
And we, for the last almost 10years, have been running a
podcast called Spirits, which isall about mythology, folklore,

(04:14):
and urban legends.
Apart from spirits, we're alsotwo spooky bitches who love
plants.
Um, and so a big part of ourhanging out together is hey, do
you want to go to the plantstore?
Hey, look at this new plant Igot.
Let's check out our garden.
We have a little like gardenco-op wherein I take over some
of Julia's garden each year.
So it's it's a wonderful timeand a big thread of our

(04:34):
friendship.
Apart from podcasting, I work onhouseplants and reading books
generally about plants.
So that's me.

SPEAKER_00 (04:41):
Well, and your your background there is actually
house plants and books, which isjust perfect.

SPEAKER_04 (04:46):
What's not totally?
You know, that is mypersonality.
And I'm Julia Shafini.
My my background is mythologyand folklore and urban legends.
I have degrees in history andreligious studies, and I'm the
person that explains a lot ofstuff on spirits.
So you hear my voice a lot whileI tell you about why Dionysus is

(05:06):
so cool when he gets drunk andhas people do a bunch of murders
and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 (05:10):
So and even more than the dramatic details of
mythology, which is often kindof what people come for.
Ultimately, spirits is about thestories we tell each other as a
society.
There are some stories thatwe've been telling each other
for thousands, if not tens ofthousands of years in different
variations.
And we're really curious as towhy.
And so often that meansexplaining things like why the

(05:32):
sun goes up, why the crops workor don't work, why floods occur,
why people we love have to die,like all these kind of big
questions through a lens of thewildest and often most touching
ways that folklore andcollective wisdom has explained
that over the years, which issometimes spooky, sometimes
heartfelt, but always somethingin between.

SPEAKER_00 (05:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
And and I I've listened, yeah,it's crazy that you said that
y'all have been on for 10 years.
That does that does it feel like10 years to you?
Because I've been doing thissix, and it doesn't feel like
six.

SPEAKER_04 (06:04):
No, whenever Amanda says that out loud, I have a
small existential crisis becausewhat is my life?
I've been doing this for 10years.
Is this going to be a job in 10years?
It's always a thing that reallykind of rushes through my mind
very quickly.

SPEAKER_03 (06:21):
Yeah, it's pretty astonishing.
We started the show in our early20s as we were like establishing
our careers, both back in thesame city for the first time
since high school, as a way tostay in touch, really, and like
just be interested in eachother's lives and do a creative
project together, which hasbloomed into careers.
So it is, it is totally wild.
We've had the chance to do alittle bit of reflection in some
recordings over the past fewweeks.

(06:41):
And it is, at least for me, likean absolute joy and thrill to be
able to make a living doingcreative stuff.
And I feel like real urgency to,I don't know, contribute to
people's lives in some way.
It's cool that they want to hangout with us in their earbuds.
And I want to try to make surethat they take something useful
or at least useful, meaning theycould, you know, scare their kid

(07:03):
cousins with it or somethingdown the line.

SPEAKER_00 (07:06):
Well, you know, and I'm I'm a longtime listener to
the show.
I have been a fan of spirits forforever.
And I just I I love the way thaty'all talk about it because the
way that I think you approachthe storytelling and, you know,
mythology, folklore, it oftendelves into some of the dark,
like gritty places of our lives,our our minds, and as we'll talk

(07:30):
about today, our the worldaround us.
But I think y'all do such a goodjob of making it fun.
Uh, and then making it seriousand and heartfelt where
appropriate and where you needto, and and just taking it like
seriously, but not in a way thatmakes it stuffy.
And and I think when I thinkabout the media that I like to
interact with and I like towatch, it's something that can

(07:51):
approach heavy topics and heavythings in a way that's
relatable.
And I think y'all do such a goodjob of that.
So thanks for what you do, andthanks for being on today
because it's again a lot of funfor me.
And I always love getting totalk to y'all.

SPEAKER_04 (08:03):
Thank you.
You know what?
That is the highest compliment.
And the thing that we often hearfrom listeners of our show is
the conversations that we havefeel like you're having
conversations with your friends.
And you should be able to talkabout heavy topics with your
friends in a way that feelsrelatable, but also feels like
someone is taking care of you.
And that's really the way thatwe try to handle talking about

(08:25):
like mythology can be fun andsilly at times, but it also can
be dark and, you know,mysterious and inexplicable in
ways that seem unfair andbecause that's how the world is.
And we like to handle those withas much love and grace as we
would show any of our friends.

SPEAKER_03 (08:44):
Absolutely.
Well put, Julia.
I think that's the first timeI've heard you phrase that in
that way.
And it's it's so true.
Like, how else would I want toface life's biggest challenges
than, you know, shoulder toshoulder with a friend holding a
beverage, you know, looking upat the stars?
Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (08:57):
Well, and that's a perfect segue, I think, to what
we're talking about today, whichis spooky nature or scary and
creepy nature.
And, you know, as a species thatgrew up on a planet and spent a
lot of time staring at the starsand looking into the dark woods
and wondering what's behind thenext tree.
I think, at least for me, a lotof the folklore and a lot of the

(09:19):
stories that I connect with fillin around those themes in a lot
of ways.
And it helps us, at least forme, I don't know, conceptualize
myself as sort of an ecosystem.
If I can look at the spookythings in a natural ecosystem
and be like, oh, we tell storiesabout that.
I can tell stories about me.
And and I don't know, I don'tknow if I'm explaining that

(09:40):
well, but I think thatnature-based storytelling wraps
up so much of what we do aspeople, as humans.
And so I wanted y'all to come onsince it is basically Halloween
and it's been a weird, spookymonth, year, whatever in a lot
of a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_02 (09:58):
Decade, millennium so far.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (10:00):
Yeah, something.
I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 (10:01):
Longer than we've been doing our podcasts at
least.

SPEAKER_00 (10:05):
Uh but yeah, I thought it'd be great to be able
to talk to y'all about some ofthe spooky stories in nature.
And what y'all suggested when Ireach out or what Amanda
suggested is that we talk aboutmushrooms and what is scarier
than a mushroom?
And I I'm not sure that there'smuch.
So I I I'm gonna let y'all kickit off and and tell us all about
spooky mushrooms.

SPEAKER_04 (10:25):
Oh boy.
I mean, when we're talking aboutmushrooms, I think that
mushrooms are fascinating.
It was one of my pandemichobbies once I got like out of
the house and I was like, oh, Ican go hiking.
That is a pandemic safe hobbythat I can do.
You know what I mean?
I can be outdoors and everythinglike that.
And I got really into mushroomhunting, like in incredibly so.

(10:46):
Like every gift I think I gotfrom family members since 2021,
I think, has been vaguelymushroom related in some way,
shape, or form.
So it is fascinating to knowthat there is like a a species
out there that is bothintrinsically interesting, that

(11:07):
like we can get in our localgrocery store, but also could
very easily kill us if weingested it, if we decided to do
that.
But also the fact that they'recapable of eating other things
as well.
I just I think mushrooms areinteresting.
Now, my obsession with mushroomshas gone to the point where last

(11:29):
year we did a full mushroommonth on spirits.
So I kind of dove into variousdifferent mythologies around
mushrooms.
I did a sort of boilerplateepisode on explaining how
mushrooms and mythology sort ofinterlock with each other.
And we did a reading of perhapsthe best story we've ever told
on spirits, which every month wedo a listener-submitted stories

(11:52):
episode called Your UrbanLegends and the shuddering of
creekside mushrooms.
If you've never even heard of anepisode of Spirits before,
search that one and listen toit.
It's the best story we've evertold on the podcast.
That's the one.
That's the one.
That's the one.
That's the one.
But Amanda, maybe you can talk alittle bit about what you like
about mushrooms before I getinto the nitty-gritty of like

(12:14):
what they are, what they mean tomythology, and why in real life
they can be a little scary.

SPEAKER_03 (12:20):
Absolutely.
So as the sort of like armchairanthropologist on spirits, I am
here as the lay person toJulia's expert, listening and
wondering out loud and trying tomake sense of why these stories
mean something to us and whathuman beings are are doing here
narratively.
And so you bring up Vikram, andI totally agree with you, that
like the idea of the scary woodsis often where I start.

(12:43):
When I think about human beingsand the stories we tell
ourselves, I picture us, youknow, huddled around a campfire
or maybe the hearth of a home,but something where, you know,
there is a kind of like feeblebut significant barrier between
us and the wide unknown worldout there.
And often that does mean makinghome against nature, right?

(13:04):
Like making indoors, making thisarea where we can control
something about what's happeninghere.
And a thing I really appreciateabout mushrooms is they creep up
in places that you don't expect.
They can grow in the dark, theycan grow in the damp, they can
grow in substrate that we don'tnecessarily think of as being
easy and hospitable for plantlife, particularly as somebody

(13:26):
who I use straw mulch in mygarden.
And much as I'm trying to growcucumbers, baby, I am
cultivating mushrooms out there.
I get way more mushrooms fromdamp straw than I do from
cucumbers in my cucumber vine.
But that is just to say that Ithink when we look out at the
dark and we ask ourselves whatcould be out there, as human

(13:47):
beings, we evolve to identifypatterns and also to identify
aberration from those patterns.
It's really evolutionarilyhelpful for us to be able to
scan the tree line and see wherea predator might be approaching
or where something we couldcatch might be lurking.
And so, so often in mythology,like any good narrative, right,
where like Joseph Campbell'shero's journey begins with the

(14:08):
call to adventure.
The person is in their dailylife and something is different.
Often that is true in mythologyas well, where the season you
expect doesn't come, or the um,the the you know, crop that you
want doesn't grow, the husbandyou expect home at the end of
the day doesn't show up.
What do you do now?
And very often the presence of amushroom is unusual or

(14:32):
unotherworldly.
They sometimes will signify aportal or a zone or something
that is not usual.
And like Julieta said too, theykind of dance.
Yeah, they kind of dance thatline between what is helpful and
what is harmful, what is useful,what is poisonous.
So much of mythology cautions usagainst taking too much of a

(14:54):
good thing or not takingsomething useful when it's
offered.
Um, and particularly forsubstances we literally ingest.
That is a case study of whatmythology wants us to do and not
do as we differentiate ourselvesfrom other members of the
ecosystem, which, you know, wearen't that different, but we
like to think that we are.

SPEAKER_00 (15:16):
You know, that's that's a really interesting take
on mythology in general, but inthe way that it connects to
nature specifically, is don'ttake more than you're due,
right?
Don't don't overuse.
And then also, like you said,don't uh maybe, I don't know, uh
look down on the gift thatnature's giving you sometimes.

(15:36):
And and I think that I haven't,I've probably on some level
thought of it that way before,but never in those terms.
And that's really interestingbecause you're right, so many
stories share that rhythm overand over and over again where
people overplunder a naturalresource and then, oh no, you're
cursed forever, that kind ofthing.
And that that's fascinating tome.

SPEAKER_03 (15:56):
Yeah, and if you ever like straying from the
path, right?
Like we one of the first, Ithink, scientific explanations
for mythological phenomena thatI remember us talking about on
Spirits, Julia, was the will ofthe wisp, where there is little,
you know, electrical dischargesand methane gas and like ways
that we can make or ways thatoptical illusions arise out of

(16:17):
just mist in the bog.
And of course, we come up with anarrative explanation for it
because it is uh unpredictableand kind of low-key terrifying
to think of the world assomething that could just make
weird light shows for our ownamusement.
And so looking around us,thinking like, what is there?
What couldn't be there?
Am I being led to something?
Am I being led away fromsomething?

(16:38):
Human beings make ourselves themain character of every single
thing that we, you know, engagewith.
And often the lesson frommythology is, babe, you are not
that important, whether it's agod saying, like, no, no, no,
you are not the exception, orit's nature saying, come on, you
can't have that much.

SPEAKER_04 (16:55):
I I also think that's really interesting
because if you exist in any sortof communication with the
foraging uh community online andeverything like that, they will
make a point of being like, youcan forage, that's fine.
You always have to leave like atleast 50% of what you find in
the forest, or else they'llthere won't be enough for
everyone.

(17:15):
And I think that is somethingthat mythology likes to teach us
as well in countless stories andfairy tales and folk tales,
right?
The idea of like, if you taketoo much, you will be punished.
If you don't like share withyour community, you will be
punished.
Uh, mythology in particularloves the like hospitality laws
as a thing that if you do notfollow them, the gods will

(17:38):
punish you for that.
And I think that's somethingthat we all should probably
continue to remember and learnas a lesson.
And, you know, I think a lot ofpeople in power maybe could
learn that lesson as well.
But I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 (17:51):
Yeah, I agree.
You know, it's interesting yousay that.
I had a guest recently,Gabrielle Serberville.
She is the chaotic forageronline.
Yeah.
And she's awesome.
But she made an interestingcomment, sort of to that same
end, where she says sheapproaches foraging and going
into these wild spaces, not interms of like, okay, what can I
go eat?

(18:11):
What can I go get?
How can I, you know, fill mycoffers, so to speak, but to
learn more about and the way shesays it is like, who's out
there?
Who is this mushroom?
Who is this plant that I'mharvesting from?
And she talks about being incommunity with people, but also
community in nature with nature.
And uh she had one of myfavorite quotes from that that

(18:33):
she that's been bouncing aroundin my head, and I think it
speaks well to what you'retalking about, is that we need
to approach nature from astandpoint of curiosity and
community rather than conquest.
And uh I think that again, thatfits so well with those themes
of the way that through ourstories people approach nature
and that, you know, again, takemore than they should or or do

(18:56):
it right and are rewarded insome way.

SPEAKER_04 (18:59):
Yeah, if if you haven't read The Service Berry
by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I meanthat's that's exactly what
they're talking about the entirebook.
So highly recommend.
Definitely check that out.
I promise to talk aboutmushrooms, though.
So we could we could talk alittle bit about mushrooms.
I I feel like I should do like alittle bit of a mushroom primer
because I think most people knowat least a little bit about

(19:19):
mushrooms, but maybe don't knowlike the specifics of the
scientific aspects aroundmushrooms.
So one of the things that Ialways like to say was it was so
late before we realized thatlike fungi were their own thing
and not just plants.
And so it was back in 1969, itwas a scientist named Robert

(19:41):
Whitaker who decides he's gonnaseparate fungi from animalia and
the plantalia, right?
And so he decides to change thatbased on how they gain
nutrition.
So plants are autotrophs, right?
And then animals like us, we areheterotrophs.
So we ingest our food.

(20:02):
Plants can make their own foodusing photosynthesis and other
chemical processes.
Fungi are saproths, which meansthey process decayed organic
matter in order to get theirnutrients.
And so he was like, okay, that'show we're gonna separate these
things out, right?
So I always think that it'sreally interesting because sort

(20:24):
of how mushrooms go about eatingis interesting because they're
not always apotrophs.
Sometimes they do ingest livingcreatures that are not decayed
matter that is being brokendown.
Um, but basically what they dois they create their mycelial

(20:44):
network, they dump enzymesoutside of their network,
outside of their bodiesessentially, and then they
digest it outside of theirbodies and they take in the
nutrients through their network,which I think is fascinating.
It's kind of like the oppositeof what animals do when we
ingest our food.

SPEAKER_03 (21:02):
Extremely efficient.
Why, why should I swallow, ifI'm a snake, a whole rat and
then excrete out or you know,pass out all of the parts of the
rat I couldn't actually eat?
Whereas instead, I will justbring it to me.
I will just get all the goodstuff out of there that I want
and then slurp it all up.
Yeah.
I mean, much better.

SPEAKER_04 (21:20):
Isn't that fascinating?

SPEAKER_00 (21:22):
I mean, it really is in a in a unsettling sort of
way.
Yes.
And I feel like that's there's alot of that here.

SPEAKER_03 (21:28):
Yep.
Bram Stoker wishes, right?
Like imagine if a vampire likesprayed its its, you know, stuff
so that all the flesh dissolvesand just the blood was left, and
then they like slurp it all up.
Ooh, creepy.

SPEAKER_00 (21:38):
That's actually that would be a good movie.
I would watch that movie.
It just carries a straw around,like a big, like crazy straw.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (21:45):
Listen, we love a little body horror.
I'm all about the little bodyhorror when it comes to any sort
of horror movies.
I've been watching so manyhorror movies lately because we
are recording this in October.
And man, like John Carpenter'sthe thing, the fly is always a
great one.
Any sort of like reanimator, thesubstance is a great one to
watch right now as well.
But I'm just, I'm a body horrorfan.

(22:06):
So what can I say?
In terms of also, we're talkingabout like the the mycelial
network, right?
And how uh these fungiessentially eat their food, but
also the mycelial network is howthey spread out and what leads
to maybe one of the things thatpeople will associate mushrooms

(22:29):
and mythology with first, whichis the fairy ring, this idea
that mushrooms will grow in whatessentially is a circle and
create this phenomenon thatyou're like, why did they grow
like that?
That doesn't make any sense, youknow.

SPEAKER_03 (22:44):
I don't often see perfect circles in nature.
And again, like scanning theenvironment, being like, what's
out of place here that couldkill me?
The answer of a perfect circleof mushrooms all the same age
and size, like I'm prettyscared.
Yes, it's it's incredible.

SPEAKER_04 (22:58):
So if you've spent any time outside before, you
probably have seen a fairy ringof some kind.
Again, this is like a group ofmushrooms that naturally forms
either a ring or sometimes it'san arc, depending on how you see
it.
The fairy ring, the fairy circleis probably the most common one
talked about in mythology andfolklore.
But naturally speaking, the arcdoes occasionally happen as

(23:20):
well.
So this is seen as this sort ofsupernatural occurrence in a lot
of folklore, not just in Europe,but across the world, right?
And basically, sometimes they'lltalk about them as a positive,
sometimes it's a negative.
A lot of times it's like if youstep into the fairy ring, the
fair is going to take you.
You are transporting yourselfinto another portal, you are

(23:42):
trapping yourself there to beeaten by some sort of monster,
et cetera, et cetera, right?
But uh you might also bewondering like, why is it a
perfect circle?
Why is it so unnatural in thethe natural world, right?
So part of this is because ofthe the root system of
mushrooms, that's the mycelium,right?

(24:03):
And so the mycelium is the thingthat absorbs the nutrients
around the mushroom.
It breaks down different soilsand stuff as they feed.
And this mycelium network growsoutward from a center point
until the nutrients in thecenter are entirely exhausted.
Now, at that point, the centerpoint dies off, which then
allows the mushrooms to themushroom spores to sprout, which

(24:27):
creates this circle around thealready eaten point.
And that's how you get yourperfect fairy circle of
mushrooms.

SPEAKER_01 (24:34):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (24:35):
So I think that's just incredible.
Like the idea of this likesystem that works so perfectly
that it just continues sproutingand spreading and sprouting and
spreading is fascinating to me.
And of course, it does feelsupernatural in a way, right?

SPEAKER_00 (24:51):
Yeah, it does.
And it we see like sort of thatresonating through nature in
some uh places and in the plantworld too, like aspen trees.
I think aspen trees are sofascinating because they're all
kind of the same tree, and youcan get some that cover hundreds
of acres.
Uh and then I think it, but allof that leads to sort of that
otherworldly uh effect thatyou're talking about, right?

(25:14):
Like, oh, why are thesemushrooms here?
Why is it getting bigger?
Why is it you know, it's takenover my whole yard.
Surely this is a a fairy trap.
And I've seen and I was gonnasay maybe they're popular
videos.
It may just be that my algorithmis very specific, tailored in a
really specific way.
Uh but I've seen a bunch ofvideos of people like walking

(25:34):
through the woods and comingupon like a ring of mushrooms or
like uh a root with a specifickind of mushrooms on them, or
like a leaf that looks like it'swaving at you.
And it's always like, that's afay trap if I've ever seen one.
And and that's like coolcontemporary folklore
surrounding the same thing.

SPEAKER_04 (25:53):
Yeah.
And a lot of it too is just alot of the fay folklore that we
talk about to this day tends tobe the create I don't even want
to say creation, but the umextrapolation of a lot of
fantasy writers that, inparticular, generations like
ours and later have sort ofcontinued to evolve the stories

(26:18):
around the Faye itself.
Like the idea of the like Fayeromance novel is so popular
nowadays.
And I mean, like it was backthen, but it was much more
streamlined to like, you know,nerdy fantasy romance books.
And now that is mainstream.
The nerdy fantasy romance booksare now the New York Times

(26:38):
bestselling series, you know?

SPEAKER_03 (26:41):
Yeah.
And as a society, we have alwaysdreamt about what it would be
like to be swept off of thisworld and into a different one,
right?
Like whether we are thinkingabout what happens before we're
born or after we die, whathappens in faraway lands or
below the sea or withinmountains or in the earth, we
are always thinking about, well,surely it must be just like
this, but different.

(27:02):
And so, even thinking back tosomething that, you know, grabs
Julia's and my attention we whenwe were kids, like Alice in
Wonderland.
There's the idea that like thereis that portal that you can
enter that place and thateverything's a little too big,
too small, out of order, youknow, different colors,
different style than you wouldexpect.
And specifically with the Fae, Ilove what you said earlier,
Julia, about the hospitalitylaws.

(27:22):
And that is often really woundup in what we talk about when we
talk about the Fae, that idea ofthe, you know, the drink me
potion or the delectable foodthat if you eat, you're actually
entering into a bargain that youdidn't understand.
A lot of as society, you know,we operate by a set of rules
that we really punish people,either in the carceral state or

(27:43):
in like the morals of VictorianEngland, however you want to
think about it, by when theyaberrate from that rule.
And so when we look in natureand so many parts of it are
surprising, I think that is justa delectable treat to or or
entreaty to like have a fantasyabout what it would be like if
it was just like this, but alittle bit different.

(28:05):
And the people were, you know,uh more beautiful, the food was
more lovely, the timelines werelonger, lifetimes, you know, you
have a little more time.
And it really is about enteringinto that unseen bargain, which
I think a lot of us, you know,in trying to have a more complex
and I would say reciprocalrelationship with nature, in

(28:27):
trying not to just be a, youknow, extractor or a user, but
to try to live in community withthe planet that we're on as one
species of many.
I think that mythology has a lotto teach us about that, because
you can't just take somethingwithout expecting to give
something in return.
You are a part of, you know,forces that you can't see.
You are acted upon by stuff thatyou're not aware of.

(28:48):
Um, and whether that's as smallas like a mushroom popping up
somewhere in your yard thatseems completely random and like
someone put a lego of a mushroomon that square of grass when in
fact there is so much under theearth that is uh not visible to
us actually happening there, orlike the aspen tree, where you
think, oh my God, how is thattree 400 miles away from here
genetically identical to thisone?

(29:10):
It boggles the mind.
And I think in the best casesand in the writings of Kimmerer
and others, like gives us othermodels than the individualistic,
capitalistic one that we areraised with here in the US.
So maybe it's just a circle ofmushrooms in the forest and you
don't pay it any mind, or youknow, a I once saw a perfectly
ripe apple sitting in the middleof an empty subway car.

(29:32):
Absolutely.
And I said, no babe, nope, nobabe.
I'm smarter than that.
No, sir.
Those are I just little littleinvitations, little
re-enchantments asking us, youknow, who we are acting with in
our daily lives.
Yeah.

unknown (29:44):
Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 (29:45):
Uh to the point of the Aspen tree, this is a total
aside, but it is the fun factthat blew my mind when I was
first starting to learn aboutmushrooms.
You know, when you go to yourlocal grocery store, Virgum,
what what like what are thetypes of mushrooms that You see
at your like local stop and chopor food lion or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 (30:03):
Mostly, you know, oyster mushrooms or shiitake
mushrooms.
Every now and then you'll get alion's make.
Wow.
But actually, you know, it'sinteresting.
Our local market carries some ofthose because we have a couple
of growers locally who are whoare growing like warehouse-grown
mushrooms.
And so we get some of the bougiestuff because they show up.
Or like button mushrooms orwhatever, you know.

SPEAKER_04 (30:25):
So the the ones that always come to my mind, I'm
like, okay, the ones that Ialways see are the button
mushrooms, you'll see thecreminy mushrooms, and you'll
see like portobello mushrooms,right?
Like those in my mind are likethe grocery store mushrooms.
Those are all the same speciesof mushroom.

SPEAKER_03 (30:39):
I can't get over this a year ago.
I still don't accept them.

SPEAKER_04 (30:43):
They're just like different points in the grow
process of the mushroom.
So your button mushrooms andyour creamini mushrooms are just
like the baby versions of yourportobello mushrooms.
And that blew my mind the firsttime I found out about that.

SPEAKER_00 (30:57):
Yeah, that's that's pretty wild.
And it almost feels likesomeone's playing a trick,
right?
Like, hey, this is unfair.
You're selling these as threedifferent things, and it's the
same thing.
It's it's fascinating, though.

SPEAKER_04 (31:08):
Well, wait until you find out about brassica and how
all like broccoli and alsoBrussels spellets are all the
same plant, just different typesof the plant.
That drives me crazy too.
I'm like, how dare you?

SPEAKER_00 (31:18):
Yeah, it's all some like dumb wild cabbage that
someone was like, you know what?

SPEAKER_04 (31:23):
Mm-hmm.
We can do something with this.
We're gonna make this bettersomehow.
And actually, I'm glad youbrought up oyster mushrooms
because I do want to talk alittle bit about oyster
mushrooms.
They eat things, Vikram.
They eat things.
I don't know if the audienceknows this, but so oyster
mushrooms, they typically growon like damp logs.
They are mushrooms that need alot of nitrogen in their diet in

(31:44):
order to thrive and survive,right?
In order to get that essentialnitrogen, which they can't
necessarily get to the amountthat they really need by
breaking down all of the woodthat they are occupying, right?
Oyster mushrooms feed onnematodes, which are essentially

(32:04):
very, very small worms.
They're like microscopic worms,essentially.
It's they release basically athing that makes the nematodes
want to crawl onto the body ofthe mushroom, the spore itself,
and then they release a toxinthat paralyzes the nematodes.

(32:25):
And then the mushrooms havethese sort of tendrils that are
sort of like I would comparethem to like the fingers of the
mycelial network.
They're called hyphae, and theyreach for the nematodes, they
disrupt their cell membrane,which then causes them to, and
we talked about this earlier,rapidly dissolve so that the

(32:46):
oyster mushroom can then devourthem and get essentially sweet,
sweet nitrogen that the oystermushroom craves.

SPEAKER_03 (32:54):
They said nitrogen fixing beans, hold my beer.

SPEAKER_00 (32:59):
Yeah, the the thought of a predatory fungus is
uh upsetting.
Upsetting.
Yeah.
And I I actually I think let'stake a quick break right now.
And I want to come back and Iwant to pick back up with this
and a very famous Tumblr postthat lives in the same vein, and
and we can go from there.
So let's take a quick break andwe'll come right back.

SPEAKER_04 (33:20):
That sounds great.

SPEAKER_00 (33:21):
Well, hey there.
Welcome to the mid-roll.
So happy to have you here.
Are you scared of mushrooms yet?
I'm a little bit.
I may have been before.
And the story that we come backwith and the quote that we come
back with right after the breakmay not make that better, and I
can't wait.
And I I hope you can't waiteither.
So, how great are Amanda andJulia?
I know the answer to that, but Iwant you to think about how

(33:42):
great they are too.
Thanks for listening toPlanthropology.
Thanks for being a part of whatwe do here, and this great
stories that we get to tell, notjust about ourselves, but about
how we fit into nature.
If you'd like to support theshow, there's a lot of ways to
do that.
You can tell a friend about it.
Uh, word of mouth is still thebest way to get podcasts out
there.
You can monetarily support theshow at buymeacoffee.com slash
planthropology.

(34:04):
And for the price of a cup ofcoffee, I will not put plants in
my coffee cups like it's sittingon the shelf behind me, put
coffee in it.
This show runs on coffee.
And thanks for helping withthat.
You can also head toplanthropologypodcast.com and
snag some merch, listen to pastepisodes, and connect that way.
If you want to reach out aboutthe show with some advice or
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(34:27):
gmail.com.
You can find me all over socialmedia as planthropology or
planthropologypod, or mepersonally as the plantprof.
So, so much good stuff going on,so many great episodes coming up
for the next few weeks betweennow and the end of the year.
But let's talk more aboutmushrooms and get a little bit
more ready for Halloween.
So let's get back to it in five,four, three, two, one.

(34:52):
And we're back.
This is again a thing that maybeis only famous in certain
circles.
But for you know, maybe thetumblr generation or a very
specific like niche in theTumblr generation, there was
this post from however manyyears ago.
Do you say it again?

SPEAKER_04 (35:10):
Probably 15 years.
And then you found Vikram.
We're the Tumblr generation.

SPEAKER_00 (35:14):
Yeah, target market achieved, right?
And I think a lot of the mylisteners probably ours too.
Yeah, 15 years, which I don'tlike to think about very much.
But there's this post that goes,me holding a gun to a mushroom,
tell me the name of God.
It says, Can you feel your heartburning?
Can you feel the strugglewithin?
The fear within me is beyondanything your soul can make.

(35:35):
You cannot kill me in a way thatmatters.
And that last line with thethought of a mushroom saying
this to you is chilling.
Yeah.
Horrifying.

SPEAKER_04 (35:44):
Yeah.
Yep.
They they are in a lot of waysfully Eldra cars.
They just they just are, right?
Like I think Amandy, when I toldyou about the oyster mushrooms
and their tendrils for the firsttime, I think you called them
Cthulhu-esque.
And I was like, Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
Sounds like me.
You're right.
It does seem like that, doesn'tit?
And I mean, I I think we wouldbe I think your audience would

(36:08):
yell at me if I didn't mentioncordyceps as a horror trope and
also terrifying mushroom.
Which are these bad boys?
Yeah, essentially you peopleknow what they are.
They're the zombie ant fungus.
You've heard of it before.
It's they is oviocordycepsunilateris.
So it is essentially a fungusthat will infect ants and will

(36:36):
take over their bodies and willhave them try to go towards
other ants so that they caninfect even more ants.
And if you've seen The Last ofUs, both the video game and the
television series, you arefamiliar with the term cordyceps
because they really shorthandedit to the whole genus and said,

(37:00):
Yeah, those scary mushrooms,you're going to fear those for
the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_03 (37:06):
And if you think about it, like this is, I mean,
this is normal in nature, right?
Like we attract the otherspecies that is useful to us.
Don't give me that inquisitivehead tilt, Julia.
I see you there.
Like, think about a tree.
Like you, you attract animalswith fruit that can digest the
seeds that you are trying topropagate and then bring them
forth into other parts of theworld.

(37:26):
Something about the fact that itlike hijacks the nervous systems
and brains of these animalstakes a very normal thing to an
absolutely horrific end.
Because, like, think about it.
All of the stuff that I fearcomes back to the erasure of my
individuality.
I fear death because I'm nothere anymore.

(37:47):
I fear being taken over by avirus or zombieism or vampirism
because someone else is feedingoff of my body or doing
something that I'm not used to.
We fear our relatives comingback as specters that look like
what they used to, but areactually infernal or have some
other purpose.
And so just the like naturedoesn't do individuality in the

(38:08):
way that humans have reallyinsisted on this as like the
thing that makes us differentand the thing I love most and
find most chilling about thesecordyceps, which deserve their
place in the Last of Us, youknow, franchise, is that they
really hijack another speciesfor their own benefit in a way
that, you know, I don't know.
I think we're currently thinkingabout when it comes to AI and

(38:31):
corporations.
And like everything, you know, Ithink you can see through this
lens of does it rob me of myautonomy and individuality?

SPEAKER_00 (38:39):
Yeah.
And and there's one specificspecies that in addition to
telling me ant, hey, go hang outwith your buddies, you know, go
make some friends, go be a, youknow, a spy for me or whatever.
It will act it.
And uh to your point, Amanda, ofit of something causing us to
act against our free will oragainst our nature, it'll tell

(39:00):
these ants, you know, you shouldreally go climb that tall thing.
And that's a place where an antmay not want to be, because
that's where the birds live, andthat's where the other insects
live, and that's where they geteaten by stuff.
So they'll climb up to the topof whatever branch or twig or
blade of grass and then justclamp down with their jaws and
just hang out there.
And then the little mushroomsporulates and comes out through

(39:21):
their head and then drops sporesonto all of their friends.
And like, where does that getfun?
You know?

SPEAKER_04 (39:29):
Fun for the mushrooms, fun for the
mushrooms.
Certainly.
And there's like uh severalspecies of mushrooms that
specifically will coat theirspores so that it can survive
the digestive systems of animalsso that it can continue to
reproduce even far away.

SPEAKER_03 (39:43):
Dude, where can I get some of that?
I just want to digest milk.
Okay.
Can someone can someone let meaccess burrata once more?
Can we study this?
I'm your scientist.
Can you work on this for now?
I'll get on that.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I think we have lectategirlfriend.
Yeah, but it doesn't coat thedelicious cheese and then make
it go through my digestivesystem, uh, you know, unbidden.

SPEAKER_04 (40:05):
What you're suggesting is a thing that
allows you to just poop out afull thing of yeah, that's not
what I want.

SPEAKER_03 (40:10):
You're right.
You're right.

SPEAKER_00 (40:10):
Yeah, that that's that's a whole other thing.
Yeah, that may not be funeither.

SPEAKER_03 (40:14):
Yep.
Can we talk too about the factthat mushrooms don't grow from
soil in the ways that I expect?
They like Julia, you weresaying, they can grow on on like
full tree branches and like noteven necessarily need to break
it down into what I would thinkof as soil.
I think that's also a little bitcreepy.

SPEAKER_04 (40:31):
Yeah, I think so.
Like, I think when it all comesback to the fact that it is able
to break apart things outside ofits body by releasing those
enzymes and then breaking themdown and then absorbing it.
So it does really allowmushrooms to attach themselves
to areas that you might besurprised by.

(40:51):
So you might be thinking, like,how does that mushroom get all
the way up on top of that treeup there?
And the idea is that because ithas these tendrils and it is
putting these microscopictendrils into the trees and the
plants and everything, it's ableto hold on in that way and
sprout and fruit from somethingthat it normally would not be

(41:13):
able to grow out of,essentially.

SPEAKER_03 (41:15):
Not the earth.
It seems it seems like it canfly.
Like if I'm limiting myself tomy visual imagination and I'm
not thinking, oh, surely it hasa microscopic, you know, kind of
like spine up the trees.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It feels like it can fly, whichfeels unfair.

SPEAKER_00 (41:31):
It does, it does feel unfair.
I don't, I don't want themushrooms to have wings.
And and the fact that some ofthem are just like visually
creepy too.
Like they just look weird.

SPEAKER_04 (41:40):
Like to the inky cap, one of my favorite
mushrooms of all time, justlooks like it's slowly
dissolving over time.
If you have a moment to look itup and Google what it looks
like, it looks like a normalkind of like capped mushroom
that is slowly dissolving intoblack goo.
It looks haunted.

SPEAKER_00 (42:00):
Oh, this was a new one for me.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I don't think I'd seenthat one.
That is like it feels like theyshould grow in like a horror
house, like in an art exhibit orsomething.

SPEAKER_04 (42:13):
Yes.
And I mean, then we have toobviously talk about the
bleeding tooth mushroom, whichjust looks like it is sweating
blood.
Sure does.
Hate that.
We really try to give it betternames sometimes.
Like people will be like, oh,you mean the strawberries and
cream mushroom?
No, I mean the bleedingmushroom.
I don't mean that.
No, babe.

(42:33):
I don't.
I mean the devil's toothmushroom, another name that they
have for it.

SPEAKER_03 (42:38):
And Julia, how about like the super, super red ones
that have led us to the kind oflike smurf toads, you know,
little people of the forest?

SPEAKER_04 (42:46):
The fly agarrick, which is probably the reason
that people know it so well isbecause it is one of those
mushrooms that uh historically,but also in pop culture and the
world we live in today, wereassociated with tripping, you
know?
So the fly agarrick is one ofthose ones where if you ate it,

(43:07):
it would potenti it couldpotentially kill you.
So a lot of times the idea thatwe were able to use it in order
to have like religiousexperiences, for example.
Oftentimes it would be like ifyou're talking about like in the
sort of like Arctic region areawhere they they would sometimes

(43:29):
grow, what would happen isreindeer would eat those, and
then the reindeer would pee outtheir their excrement,
essentially.
And then the this is gonna soundreally gross.
I'm sorry that I'm going throughthis.
The psychedelic effects, likethe the it's not psilocybin, but
the neurotoxins would still bein the reindeer pee, but to a

(43:55):
lesser extent where it wouldn'treally make a human being sick,
and so it would be drank byshamans, and then they would
have that religious experience.

SPEAKER_03 (44:07):
Listen, man, we're all breaking down each other's
nitrogen when it comes to it.
Like it doesn't, it doesn'tfreak me out anymore that I am
consuming something else's peeat most times of the day.
Like it just it's it's gonnahappen, but only only rarely
does that set me into trip andboss.

SPEAKER_00 (44:26):
Yeah, it usually doesn't.
Usually it's just, you know,everything has been cycled at
some point and you know, withwith mixed results in some
cases.

unknown (44:34):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (44:35):
I I think this is a fun opportunity to talk about a
weird uh a weird history ofmagic mushrooms in the United
States, if if you'll indulge mevery quickly into this one,
because I do think it kind ofgoes along with modern
mythology, we'll call it interms of like conspiracy
theorists and stuff like that.

(44:57):
So 1950s culture really is wherethe magic mushroom started for
the United States, and it has todo with this guy named Robert
Gordon Wasson.
Now he was an author threenames, I'm suspicious already.
Anytime a man has three names,Amanda is like immediately no,
this man is terrible.
So he's gonna do somethinghorrible.

(45:19):
And that's two-thirds firstnames, which is he's on notice.
So Robert Gordon Wasson, he'slike an author, he's sort of
like an amateur ethnomycologist.
That's not a thing yet, but hekind of creates it as a thing.
But he loves mushrooms, and atthe same time, he is also the

(45:40):
vice president for publicrelations at the bank, JP
Morgan.

SPEAKER_01 (45:46):
Okay.

SPEAKER_04 (45:48):
So he is super interested in mushrooms because
when he was on his honeymoonwith his wife in the Catskill
Mountains in 1927, he discoveredhow cool the mushrooms were up
there.
His wife was from, I believe,Russia or somewhere in Eastern
Europe, and she taught him allabout foraging and stuff because
she had grown up foraging in theforests out there.

(46:09):
So he learns foraging from hiswife.
Oh, I'm sorry, she was a Russianuh pediatrician.
So he was like, Teach me allyour ways.
And so she says, yes,absolutely.
That's 1927.
We fast forward to the 1950s.
This guy is super interested inmushrooms.
He is working for JP Morgan, andhe is particularly interested in
the different view of mushroomsin the United States compared to

(46:32):
what his wife has told him abouthow mushrooms are seen in
Russia.
Loves his Russian wife.
Now, he is specifically veryinterested in the Amanita the
Muscaria, which is the flyagaric, which we were just
talking about, that red mushroomwith the white spots.
Everyone knows it's poisonous.

(46:54):
Exactly.
It's poisonous, but it'spsychoactive.
So he writes a book that becomesvery popular.
But moreover, he startstraveling and doing a bunch of
research into psychoactivemushrooms.
Now, you might be wondering,like, hey, why is this guy who
is the VP for public relationsat JP Morgan doing all this
world traveling and researchingmushrooms in 1956 when he has uh

(47:18):
presumably a job, right?
He not only has his financesalary, but he also was being
funded by the CIA.

SPEAKER_00 (47:29):
Oh.
Like you do, you know.

SPEAKER_04 (47:32):
Like you do.
So he claims in all of his booksthat he didn't know that the CIA
was funding him.

SPEAKER_01 (47:39):
Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (47:40):
Okay.
But documents have surfacedsince the Freedom of Information
Act happened that claimed he wasquote unquote an unwitting
participant.
Which I think is interesting.

SPEAKER_03 (47:51):
I don't know, man.
At some point, someone likeslides you an envelope of of
cash, and you you do need to askwhere it came from, or else it's
an unbidden gift from the Faye,and you find yourself in bed
with the US government.

SPEAKER_00 (48:03):
Yeah.
Oh, that that actually thoseconnections work pretty well.
There's a lot that works there.

SPEAKER_04 (48:07):
Yeah.
So the project that is fundinghim from the CIA is one you
might have heard of before,which is MKUltra.

SPEAKER_01 (48:16):
Oh.

SPEAKER_04 (48:16):
Yep.

SPEAKER_01 (48:17):
There you go.

SPEAKER_04 (48:18):
There it is.
So they're basically hoping thathis research on psychoactive
mushrooms would help them learnhow to brainwash and mind
control people.
So he's getting his CIA money.
He accepted it under the covername, like the CIA's cover name
is the Gesticker Fund forMedical Research, which I think

(48:41):
is just really funny.
I have some questions about whythey chose a German name, but
yep.
Around this time, Life magazinepublishes an article about his
research that is called Seekingthe Magic Mushroom, which
outlines both him and his wifebecoming the first Westerners to
participate in a Mazatec, whichis an indigenous people of

(49:01):
Mexico's mushroom ritual, right?
So we're tying this again toreligious practices that involve
using psychedelic mushrooms.
He is a white man, and so he'strying to do a religious ritual
from people that is not hisculture, right?
He lies to this coronera, whichis a you know medicine person

(49:26):
from the this region who doesthe ritual for him.
He essentially tells him, he'slike, Oh, I'm worried that like,
you know, my son is dying.
Can you please help me?
It's all a lie.
Yeah, it's it's veryfrustrating.
I'm sorry, it's not that his hisson was dying, it was that his
son was missing, and this ritualwas specifically to help find

(49:46):
missing people, right?
So this guy ruins this person'slife because he immediately goes
and he publishes about this,profits greatly from it, never
faces any consequences.
That's why we call him out onshows like this, because he's a
terrible person.
But this is what popularizesthis idea of recreational use of

(50:08):
psilocybin mushrooms in theUnited States, right?
And so it's just veryfrustrating because this is
obviously a religious ceremony,and now you have a bunch of, you
know, 1960s stoners doing magicmushrooms, being like, I'm I'm
seeing God.
I'm like, you're not, becauseyou're you're so disconnected
from what this actual religiousexperience was supposed to be,

(50:30):
that you just it's just veryfrustrating.

SPEAKER_03 (50:34):
Julia, I think disconnection is exactly the
word, right?
It's it's removing part of anecosystem or part of ritual,
whether that's contextualized byculture and religious belief
from that system and culture.
It's you know, extractingwithout valuing or putting
anything back.
And to this day, finance bros dothis and they go on ayahuasca
trips and, you know, just pay alot of money to get access to

(50:55):
acid that in a way that theycriminalize other people for
doing that.
So the cycle of history goes on.
But this is, I think, such avaluable lesson for us in you
can't just extract what you wantand leave the rest.
There are going to beconsequences.

SPEAKER_04 (51:08):
And it's not to say that like Mesoamerica is the
only place where they weredoing, you know, religious
practices with psychogenicmushrooms, but it's just that
this guy popularized it by lyingto someone who was doing folk
medicine, assuming he wastelling the truth.
And that's the frustrating partto me.

SPEAKER_00 (51:27):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And and again, there's thousandsof years of folklore that
basically say don't do thatthing.
Yeah.
Don't do the thing.

SPEAKER_04 (51:36):
Just just don't do that thing.
Just don't do that thing.
I don't don't know why we'redoing the thing, but here we
are.
Um yeah, I'm trying to think.
I I love talking aboutmushrooms, obviously.
And there's so many good, like,creepy things.
Like the idea that like Santa'sreindeer fly because of the
folklore around that area fromyou know, the fly Garrick is a

(51:59):
whole story as well, but it'salso debatable because the first
actual like writings we haveabout that are from like the
1960s.
And so you're like, I think youmight have extrapolated
something that wasn't exactlytrue, but sounds fun.
And so that just ends up gettingrepeated over and over again
because people like things thatare fun and not realistic, I

(52:22):
guess.

SPEAKER_00 (52:23):
Yeah, and and that is interesting, and that's an
interesting point, too, aboutyou mentioned earlier talking
about everything fromconspiracies and and modern
mythology that comes out of someof this.
Uh I I think where some of thatfalls for me is that it's not
like we were you're y'all werejust talking about connection.

(52:44):
Yeah.
And it's not rooted in uh thisconnection to community, to
nature, to all these things.
It's it's rooted in some ways injust, oh, here's a thing I can
say that will that people willlike and I'll get you know
famous from it.
And so I think as we talk aboutsome of this, it's really
fascinating to think about theuh heritage that comes with some

(53:06):
of these stories and how we kindof throw some new ones out there
sometimes that are like, ah, youknow, we're gonna get weird
zombies that have mushrooms ontheir face and things like that.
But I don't know.
I this whole idea of this uhother facet of life of fungi
that are, you know, they're notan animal, they're not a plant,

(53:28):
they're sort of a little bit ofboth is so strange.
I wanted to uh uh make a pointearlier just to kind of jump
back a little bit of you youwere talking about how mushrooms
and fungi in general eat thingsand maybe eat things they
shouldn't.
And you were talking about howthey climb trees.
And yes, you know, the conceptof me going out and chewing on

(53:51):
the inside of a tree is weird,but a Ganoderma mushroom doing
that and turning it into, youknow, spongy foam that makes a
tree fall over isn't.
And they're the things thatcycle all of us one day back
into the system.
I think that's part of what uhfor me leads to sort of this uh
weird vibe around them, right?

(54:13):
That like at the end of the day,they're sort of the winners,
they're patient and they're uhin some ways inevitable to you
know use an overused term atthis point.
But something that has comeabout in recent years that
they're studying that I think isso fascinating is that blue
oyster mushrooms, um PleurotusAustriatus, can eat plastic.

(54:37):
Yes, petroleum.

SPEAKER_03 (54:40):
Well, that's helpful.

SPEAKER_00 (54:41):
It is.
And so they're looking at uhputting it on big rafts and
things and putting it out in theocean into some of these big
plastic islands and just tellingthese mushrooms, hey, go do the
thing.
Go because they'll they'll breakdown all those hydrocarbons and
they'll eat all those things andjust take them apart.
And uh again, I think it's likewe let the fungi off the chain

(55:05):
at some point and they just theystart fixing things, maybe not
in a way that's comfortable forus as you know, living things
that can think about scarystuff, but it's really
fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_04 (55:17):
But I think that's also really important, right?
Because fungi play such anincredibly important role in the
life cycle of our planet andbreaking down the like
essentially like dead things.
And we as humans get nervousabout that because we're like,
oh no, one day we're going to bethe dead thing.

(55:39):
But I think that is so that'swhat mythology is about, is sort
of grappling with this idea ofthe life cycle exists even when
we are no longer part of thelife cycle.
And so to have mushrooms be soimportant to like take over and
to correct things is such a Ithink it's I think it's

(56:01):
beautiful, you know?
And I know that like scares alot of people, this idea of like
decay and something taking overand like taking over your body
is a lot of like big body horrorstuff around mushrooms, but it's
just part of the cycle of life.
And when humanity fears death alittle bit less, I think we see

(56:23):
how beautiful it is to havesomething that takes care of us
in death to bring us back intothe cycle itself, right?
So I I don't know, I lovemushrooms.
I I think they're beautiful andI think they deserve more
respect than we tend to givethem.

SPEAKER_00 (56:42):
Yeah, that's that's really cool.
We all as we sort of wrap uphere, this is I could I could
talk about this all day.

SPEAKER_03 (56:49):
Like I can just yell mushroom facts at you all the
time.
That's fine.
Whatever you need.
I highly recommend it.
Julia's an excellent friend, andthe mushroom facts only happen a
couple times a week.
Only a couple times a week.

SPEAKER_00 (57:00):
Only a couple times a week.

SPEAKER_04 (57:01):
No, not Monston, I promise.

SPEAKER_00 (57:04):
Not that often.
But just just real quick as wewrap up, I I like to you know
try to leave listeners withsomething we've talked about so
much just in terms of what wetake from nature and what we
take from mythology aboutnature.
But for both of you, and I'm I'maware I'm surprising you with
this question a little bit, butis there a do you have a thing

(57:24):
that you've learned from likenature-based mythology that you
carry around with you?
Is there something that likereally jumps out as you is like,
this is the thing.
This is the thing that likebrings me back to this type of
storytelling over and over.
And maybe that's a really hardquestion because y'all look at
so much of it.

SPEAKER_03 (57:43):
It's a great question.

SPEAKER_04 (57:44):
I think for me, and I don't know if this falls under
nature.
It talks about the changing ofthe seasons.
So I will say that's nature.
I'll I'll give myself a broadcategory of nature.
For me, there is a story that wedid uh fairly early on in our
canon.
I don't know how I feel aboutcalling it a canon, but I'll
allow it.
Our body of work, our corpus.

(58:04):
Yes, which is the story ofBiavi.
And now Biave is a sun goddessfrom the Sami people.
And essentially her worship dayis actually on the winter
solstice.
And I think that's fascinating.
It's a sun god because obviouslythat is the the shortest day of
the year.
It is the the longest and thedarkest night.

(58:27):
And her worship and particularlike festival day is all about
checking in on the vulnerable,checking in on the vulnerable
people in your community, makingsure that like it's like
recognizing that, yeah, this isdark.
And, you know, there are peoplein the community who might not

(58:48):
have the support that they needevery single day.
And this idea of like there is aday that we check in on those
people and make sure mentallythey're doing all right.
And that feels so beautifullyhuman to me, and something that
I wish we could incorporate allthe time into uh, you know,
human culture rather thanindividual cultures uh across

(59:11):
the world, you know, where thisidea of like your community is
here for you when you aresuffering and is there to check
on you, to make sure that youknow that the sun is coming
back.

SPEAKER_01 (59:23):
That's yeah, that's lovely.
I love that.

SPEAKER_04 (59:26):
Yeah, it's one of my favorites.

SPEAKER_03 (59:28):
Mine is a little less specific, but I am more and
more interested in hospitalityand homekeeping mythology as
time goes on.
Some of the earliest mythology Iremember learning in my vague
Irish German American, you know,upbringing is around spilling
salts, around thresholds andboundaries, how to keep things

(59:49):
out, keep things in, andspecifically around house
spirits, how dwellings do morefor us than protect us from the
elements.
They are so important andpsychologically, like I Was
saying earlier, just thinking ofourselves as folks that are
protected in some way from theoutside world.
Maybe it's part psychological,but it certainly is mythological
because there are so many housespirits where you have to, you

(01:00:12):
know, reward them, feed them,compensate them with bread or
milk or salt or sweets.
And we see this for me, I wasraised late, laying out carrots
for the Easter bunny, laying outcookies for Santa Claus.
There are so many ways in whichthose rituals, which I think of
as kind of, you know, maybe alittle frivolous, a little
silly, a little childlike,really, you know, draw from a

(01:00:33):
long human experience of makinga dwelling more than four walls
and a roof and a floor, ifyou're like that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:42):
Yeah, and I think both of those are such good
lessons.
Um especially just right nowwhen when there's so much uh
division between people, and itjust brings us back to some
commonality, some lessons aboutthe way we treat each other and
the way that we see each otherand how connected we all are at
the end of the day.

(01:01:03):
And that's that's really cool.

SPEAKER_04 (01:01:04):
And that's something that we talk a lot about on
spirits too, is human beingshave so much in common.
And when we like culturallydivide ourselves, it can be
really frustrating to be like,no, you both kind of think the
same thing, even though you areseparated by thousands of miles
and oceans and have neverinteracted.

(01:01:27):
Like the fact that we have floodstories that span the entire
globe and just like do theirthing, uh like and have such
similarities, I think isabsolutely fascinating.
The idea that we all havestories about why the seasons
change or why the sun rises whenit does and sets when it does is

(01:01:50):
amazing.
And so when when I talk aboutlike the division that people
are feeling, particularlynowadays, the idea that our
cultures are so similar and ourour ideals and our like love for
one another, our love for oneanother is so similar, is really
highlighted by mythology.
And we could all learn fromlooking and listening to those

(01:02:13):
stories a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:15):
Yeah, absolutely.
Very cool.
Well, y'all, thank you so much.
That was as always.
I love getting to talk to bothof you, and it's just a delight.
Um, so real quick, one moretime, plug your stuff, tell us
where all we can find you, anduh we can find more about
mushrooms or whatever, just totell us your stuff.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:33):
You got it.
Listen to spirits in yourpodcast app, but just type in
spirits mythology, and we willcome up.
We have 450 episodes andcounting.
You can jump in anywhere youlike.
You don't have to start in anyparticular place.
And spiritspodcast.com is whereyou can learn more about Julia
and me.
Follow us on the show on social.
Pick up some of our merch.

(01:02:54):
We have merch if you are an oldwives tale teller.
We have merch of Mothman's juicyass.
Yes, you'll learn more aboutthat if you listen to Spirits,
um, and more and more.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:04):
Awesome.
Well, thank y'all so much.
I hope you've had a wonderfulOctober.
I hope that it wraps up well andthat you have some fun on
Halloween.
And hopefully we get to do thisagain another time.

SPEAKER_04 (01:03:15):
Oh, I can't wait to tell you about more creepy
plants.
I would be my delight andprivilege.
Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:20):
Like mushrooms vic room, we're here under the
surface.
Just waiting.
Waiting.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:24):
Y'all listening to this episode, I hope that you
never forget to wonder about thelife around us and whether it's
mycelium in the ground that eatsold trees or controls the mind
of an ant or the big stories wetell each other about ourselves
as a species.
Wonder is such an amazing thing,and storytelling is a way that
we express that and we share itwith each other.

(01:03:46):
So thanks so much to Amanda andJulia for your passion for what
you do and for being my friend.
I really enjoyed it.
Plananthropology is written,hosted, directed, all the things
by me, yours truly, VikramBeliga.
Our intro music is by theaward-winning composer Nick
Scout, and our mid-roll is by mybuddy Rui and his lo-fi dad jazz

(01:04:06):
beats.
And I hope you'll go look bothof them up because they're
fantastic.
Keep being kind to one another.
If you have not yet been kind tothe people around you, this is a
real good time to start.
You know I love you, and that Ihope you're safe, and that
you're well, and that you'rebeing good.
So keep being good, keep beingreally cool plant people, and

(01:04:27):
we'll talk next time.

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