All right, Scott are you ready?
Oh?
I'm so ready today, I'm.
Just raring to go here. It is potatoes are better than human blood for making space bricks, scientists.
Say, And what else would you think of besides human blood and potatoes when you're talking bricks? You know what, everybody, Today's going to be an interesting day in all of our lives. So no puns. Let's just invite everybody to jump ears first into a little bliss pit that we call bananas World.
Would your mindsillion pieces.
Guys, gals, non binary pals, Welcome to Bananas I am kerk Brown Owler.
I am banana Boy number two. Scotti Landis. Thank you for listening to the silliest little podcast ever was. We're glad to have you. It's just gonna be an extra good episode today for many reasons. Kurt, do you have any stand up but you need to announce or anything ahead of this?
We're getting right into our guests. Scottie, our guest today is an author, a wild plant expert, a James Beard Award winner, an Emmy Award winner, but most of all, she is a forager. Her social media accounts under Black Forager have millions of followers, and she has a cookbook coming out next year. Please welcome Alexis Nicole Nelson.
Hello, hypen Animals.
I like I told you before we start recording, we are fans, are wonderful people who often recommend people. And your name kept coming up over and over and over, and then there was almost like a tip point moment where and I think you'll remember this story. Alicia Silverstone was in England walking around and ate something off a tree and everybody, oh, yeah, congratulations, you're about to die. And then everybody's like, talk to the black Forger, she
will know. So what do you remember that? What was that?
Oh? I remember it extraordinarily clearly. They were Jerusalem cherries, which are not cherries. They are in the night shade family, just like tomatoes, potatoes and also deadly nightshade. Okay, it has some of the tastiest treats. It also has some of the most dangerous tricksters in the plant world.
Oh, I see.
So. Unfortunately, despite their name sounding delicious, uh, not edible, but also not deadly, a lot of people were just like rip sham Horowitz, like I love your work. Yeah, it's been it's been real. And I was like, if anything, she's gonna have a stomach ache, and that's like the worst it's going to get. She's gonna be so fine. If you've ever eaten a potato chip with a little green still on it, of course you've also had a little bit of solinine and you lived to tell.
The tale because it's the same, right, because it's the same same family. Oh it's potatoes, need to eat?
Oh that's so interesting. Well, you must have to encounter that quite a bit. The Internet is often almost right about so many things. But what I'm really saying is they're often wrong about nearly everything. And you are an expert, you're an aficionado. So do people come to you constantly in your regular life too, and go is this good? Is this bad? Can I eat this? Can I not eat that?
Oh? Absolutely? I don't think a day passes without someone a former co worker, second cousin twice removed, reaching out and saying, this mysterious fungus slash berries slash leaf has appeared in or around by home, and I want to know if I can put it into my mouth hole without consequence. Which it's so funny, but that's always everyone's
first question. Mushroom aficionado Michael Kuo, who I love, was like, it's so wild that that's the first thing you ask, because if someone sees a cool bird, you never go and ask a burder. Oh can I eat this barn?
That's so true, that is so funny, But that is you know what. Ever, since I started watching your Instagram, I have been thinking about you so much because you're so funny. You're basically a stand up comedian who just uses digital media instead, but so smart, and yet you're like a daredevil to me because my entire life, the one thing it's like, do not eat mushrooms. Do not Like, if you eat one, you'll anything out of the forest.
And in your videos you'll start screaming that you see something really excited about, I cook it up and eat it. And that to me is like stunt woman level of crazy. Just because I'm an ignorant fool, that's the problem.
No, No, because you recognize your strengths and your weaknesses, and that is that is very important.
Yes, staying alive? Yeah true?
Did you have like growing did you coming up? Did you have a mentor who knew all about wild and medicinal plants?
Yeah? For me. That was my mom, my mom who I used to just trail along behind her whenever she was working in the yard. And I was not very helpful, as most children are not when you give them a task in the outdoors. There's just so much to see, there's so much to do. But my favorite times would be when we'd be like planting something or pulling something up, and she'd be like, Oh, this is Econasia purple cone flower, and the roots are a great tea that helps strengthen
your immune system. And in my little brain rolodex, I'd be like, oh, okay, gotta write that down, store that away for safe keeping for later.
Oh my god. And then and then you So it started with your mom? And then did you have did you take classes or was it online? Like how did you kind of get fully immersed into the forging world.
It's been a multi decade hyperfounxation. I think I inhaled every plant book first in my mom's library, then every plant book at my school's library, then every plant book at my local library branch. And I also went to overnight camp, got like shipped out to the woods during the summertime so my parents could have a couple weeks peace, and I was obsessed with all of the outdoor classes,
the plan identification, animal tracking, orienteering, mountain biking. If it involved like being out and about interacting with the natural world, that was like all I ever wanted to do. And so I later ended up becoming one of those camp counselors and getting to that knowledge on to a new generation, which is just the best.
Oh man, that is so fantastic. It's so great to be able to pass out. I had him. I had kind of a mentor of sort. His name was Steve Lee, and he lived in upstate, in upstate New York. For he lived in a yurt for twenty five years in upstate New York with no running water or electricity.
I love that for him, Oh my.
Gosh, he was real. I mean, he was the real thing. And he used to teach at this school called, oh my god, Dan Brown, Dan Brown sur and so it was all just like primitive survival skills, plants, identification, all
that sort of stuff. And so he used to be a teacher there and so he would just teach us as kids, and it was I mean, it was like it just so once you to go for a walk, I find with someone like yourself, who note like who to the to a walk through the woods is not just simply I see trees and leaves, but seeing like a corncopia of medicinal plants, a cornucopia of food available.
It is.
It is the most beautiful thing in the world. And I'm so very happy to have you on this show.
Also, cornucopia, great word that doesn't get used outside of the month of November enough.
Yeah, yeah, it is sort of a horn of plenty. I've described him that before on the pot.
But it's Thanksgiving or the Hunger Games, and those the only times you see that.
True. Also, Kurt, that is true. I was thinking about that also when we when we booked alexis like, Kurt's a big loves the outdoors, camping, hiking, that sort of thing too, And I was thinking, because in some of your videos, alexis you you'll you'll jokingly be like, I'm the most annoying person to take a walk with, even in like city scapes, because it's like you can eat that crack on the sidewalk, so you can eat that.
But Kurt would be the perfect person to walk alongside, like eyes wide open, ears wide open, and to hear you. So if you ever do a guided tour in southern California, you have two people that will sign them immediately. Yeah.
Yeah, Oh my gosh. And southern California has such cool flora. Oh man, you guys have some of the coolest plants.
Good a right, great when they're not on fire, when.
They are not on fire. Very important addendum. I know all of us in like North America kind of have the dice roll of our own particular natural disaster. Yeah, and while tornadoes are terrifying, I do think I would take our tornadoes over everyone else's everything. I was in southern California for that earthquake back in March, and it was Baby's first earthquake, and I was not all right.
I like them, like, I fought them so interesting because they're like, there's a great reminder that we do live on a dynamic planet that can kill us at any time. So it's important to be present and to go, yeah, we're not the top of the galactic food chain.
We're not in charge. We're not in charge. It's a nice reminder.
I agree.
I don't like the I don't like the wildfires. I would take tornadoes over wildfires because they're just so it's just every it affects so much of the state.
It's exactly.
I don't know nature's baptism. That's what I say.
All right. I love that we were talking about night shades before. Should we get into this story real quick.
Some potato stuff, some potato stuff.
Love potatoes stuff. That's what they called me in.
The words.
This was sent in by Jessica Hawks. Thank you, Jessica. If you want to send us stories, you can DM them to us on Instagram at the Bananas Podcast, or you can email them to us at the Bananas Podcast atmail dot com. This was on space dot com, classic place to get your Space news. Potatoes are better than human blood for making space bricks, scientists say, and this is published by Josh Dinner.
Serving them up hot in there it is.
Scientists have created an intriguing concrete alternative using simulated simulated Martian or Lunar soil, potato, starch, and salt. The space concrete is twice as strong as conventional concrete. The researchers say they hope the new material will eventually facilitate construction efforts on the Moon and Mars. Okay, so those are a great that's a great opening paragraph.
Right, couldn't love it more?
Couldn't love it more? Based on the title potatoes are better than human blood, the next paragraph should be about human.
Blood, human hemoglobin.
Right, there we go. Let's count. Let's count the paragraphs Josh Dinner puts before he mentions human blood. One, two, There's three, four, five, six. It is the sixth paragraph down. It's just talking about how strong potatoes are as bricks. That's the whole Thing's talking about it for six paragraphs and big paragraphs.
Weird as astronauts. Okay, here we go. Sorry.
Potato starch wasn't the first medium that University of Manchester scientists tested in their search for ISRU building supplies. In a previous study. Previous study, the same team explore the possibility of using human blood and urine as binding agents for their extraterrestrial concrete. They didn't go to potatoes first. They went to potatoes second. They went to blood and piss first. Okay, And the reason is the blood and urine of astronauts, after all, are renewable resources, and they're
available wherever an astronauts mission might take them. Concrete from the researcher's trials using blood and urine also produced straints above traditional mixtures these bricks. Construction, however, would require that astronauts replet repeatedly drained their own bodily fluids, which was viewed as a drawback.
Yeah, thank you, Josh. Okay. Yeah, wasn't this in the Martian the book in the movie. Wasn't he growing potatoes to build? Wasn't he? I thought that was a part. It was growing.
It was definitely growing potatoes. I think it was to try and see, like what sustenance can be grown in the soil on Mars. But now we know you can also use it for building materials. I love a starch.
Also, the fact that it's stronger than concrete is very interesting. Like that's okay, I'm interested, I'm listening.
I'm now suddenly like, oh my god, State of Idaho, I have a crazy proposition for you.
Yeah, build a wall at the very top between us and Canada. That really weird little.
Part of this little tiny strip.
That nobody I've ever met in my entire life has ever been to, probably for great reason, but build a potato wall between US and Canada. Just as a google, just.
As soon as a and we're talking about a three foot wall. You can step over it. You can step over it.
We mean no harm with it. We're not trying to keep anybody out with it, but just to say that we did it, they should do it.
And we know it's not going to go anywhere. So I also read once the coffee grinds make cement like twice as strong too. So what I'm asking is why are we making this week ass cement? Should we be using all this stuff?
I find nothing about questions. It's time to hold construction on trial.
It's just a mafia thing. What's going on this?
Exactly?
Why was the first move asbestos? Why was that like the first choice to get the most the most toxic ingredients.
An asbestosis defense, which is not something you will hear me say often. It's very good at stopping fires, Oh.
Yeah, that's why there, it is.
Very bad for literally everything else.
Yeah. We every generation has its things. Our grandparents had as fast as our parents had lead, and we have microplastics. We all have things that are just killing us that we readily welcome into our walls and homes.
Exactly. Oh man, I can't wait for Gen Alpha to turn and look backwards at us with our microplastics, and I can't wait to find out what their weird, small bad will be.
I mean, like I really didn't expect it to be that. I mean like when we were like the water coming out of the tap is bad. So everybody, this is a new healthy thing to do. Drink water out of plastic bottles. Oh turns out no, don't do it. That kills you faster.
Way worse in New Okay. So you're out. You know you can. You can do all the stuff in the woods. If you had to bind something you're building, you need to stick one thing to another thing. What would be your dream discovery in the woods? What is a natural glue or ceiling? Or we're building ooh Oxy.
What part of the country do both of you hail from? I know, Kurt, so you are from my side of the of the woods, or at least you did stuff in upstate New York.
Yes, upstate New York, New Jersey. Scotti's from Maryland. You're in Ohio?
Correct?
Oh okay. So have you guys seen osage oranges aka monkey balls? Those big, oblong green balls that you sometimes find in the woods and kids love to throw them at things. Y yeah, yes, yeah, those.
Guys and eggs or something.
Yes, they look like big old alien eggs, like wrinkly little alien brains. I guess in the South they call them horse apples. Please don't feed them to your horse. They are filled with latexy goo. And when I was a small feral child at my Montssori school, we were allowed to build forts during recess, and that goop was liquid gold. Every fall, people people ran businesses, stabbing them and bleeding them of their late taxi glue. So I don't know. We could glue leaves to the walls of our forts.
Oh that's so awesome, so.
Much so yes, O sh orange mclaura palmifera. If you're nasty or a.
Botanist, and now do you have a do you have a botany degree at all?
So I studied environmental science and theater, which makes me make perfect sense.
It does, yes, it does. That's amazing.
Honestly, go bucks. If I don't say it, they take my degrees away if I don't take a box every time they're mentioned big school, big into the sportball. My like big secret is that I am low key such a huge college football fan. I did not miss a home game my entire undergraduate career at the Ohio State University.
Nice. My mother in law is a huge college football fan, and so now my seven year old has become a college football.
Start on.
But I'm just like in the middle, just being like, all right, let's do it. That's fine.
But those big programs, especially Ohio State, University of Georgia, the big ones, the ones that sell those one hundred thousand seat stadiums on every other weekend. When you go to those universities, they always are building new labs, new gyms, new dorms, Like it does fund academian this way, Like I'm sure your environmentals I would hope your environment studies buildings were new or more modern buildings. Because there goes that football team like going ten and one every season,
sometimes eleven or zero. It does weird, Like I was always envious I went to state school. I went to UMass who used to have a great basketball team, but the years I were there did not, And you could feel the budget cuts of a D one school without huge athletic department, which is a shame, but it does fund other things on campus for people that hate spores. Oh big exactly.
Any if any sports haters are out there, rest assured that the theater department. The theater department got a brand new building exactly at the end of my time at Ohio State. And that's not a thing that a lot of theater programs say these.
No, maybe at Amber's College the theater departments getting the football team some helmets, but I don't think they've won a game in like thirty five years. So that's fine too. We're all different, different strokes for different folks. I have a fun one for you. So part of being a vegan, you know, not the main thing about being a vegan, but part of it is loving animals and not wanting bad things to happen to them. So Corey Corey the Steel Feather sent this in thank you, Corey Corey the
steel Feather. I mean, I think if Corey Corey something and then their handle is the steel Feather, the steel Feather. This was in People dot Com, hilariously written by maryon Watts, who is the best in the biz. She's really good. Woman says she won the lottery, then dumped her boyfriend who insisted his dog deserved a trust fund.
What yeah, yeah, yeah, that there was so much to unpack.
There's a lot to unpack.
A good, good story, Thank you the steel feather.
Yeah.
A woman says her relationship with her ex boyfriend ended after he got barking mad. She didn't want to share her lottery winnings with his dog again maryon Watts Best in the bizz So in a recent post online, a woman claimed that her relationship soured after she won a lottery. This is the most interesting detail this whole thing, because I bet you were thinking it was millions of dollars she won.
Yeah, I was assuming, yes.
After she won the lottery, netting fifty thousand dollars.
Okay, so that's less than a lot of human trust funds. Yeah, were there children also vuying for this money? I'm starting to understand.
Yes, exactly. After taxes, you're bringing home a cool twenty eight k. That's a good amount of money. That can get a lot of people out of a lot of debts. That gets you your car fixed, that gets all your bills paid, that gets your credit cards debt.
But it doesn't get your dog a trust fund. No, that's not dog trust fund money. Dog trust fund money's over ten million. That's where exact dog Trust fund money starts.
Yeah, unless your pet will be living like the cats and the aristocrats. Okay, it isn't don't do it. It's not worth it.
Yeah, and we love we love dogs, we love all. Oh yes, pigs versus people. I'm going pigs all day. Are you kidding?
They're so smart?
They're so smart. So here quote she says, before I won, my boyfriend, who's a twenty nine year old male, and I would always joke about how if I ever hit hit it big, I had split it three ways between me and him and his dog, Baxter. She wrote, Baxter is a golden tree, great dog, and I love it. Great dogs, and I love him. But I always thought, you know, it was just a joke. However, once she won, she said her boyfriend became dead serious about Baxter getting a share of the money.
He wants a third of the money to go to Baxter. Correct, he is Baxter doing?
What is he doing? He's living fourteen defensive habits?
Has Baxter developed?
Oh my goodness, you could feed dogs just cheap good food and they go, thank you, thank you so much exactly.
No, Baxter is like, I don't know. They gave him wagu or something, and now he's just like Kimball.
He's a foodie for whom.
But also he's a golden retrieve, you pope on the ground, he's gonna eat it and wag his tail.
Dogs, they sure are. My boyfriend insisted that I had promised that Baxter deserves ten thousand dollars in a dog trust fund for future vet visits, Bill's toys and whatever he needs. She writes, I told him that's ridiculous. Baxter's dog, he doesn't need a trust fund. I'm I'm leaning in her direction. I'll say it that way instead, she said, her boyfriend started calling her selfish. He says, it's not about the dog. It's about me keeping promises, and it
shows that I don't take our relationship seriously. This is a red flag machine gun that is just firing a spray into the air.
For a second. He had me because I'm like, oh, you guys joked about it, Like, yeah, you can say it was a joke, but like the idea of you winning the lottery was also a joke. You know, strange things happen all the time. But no, no, the selfish and okay, no back on her side.
Also, if I won fifty million dollars. Maybe I would give a dog a ten thousand dollars trust fund. Absolutely, medical bills are coming one day.
One way, fine one or another.
Fifty k trust fund for anybody that's trust fun.
You can't all you.
Can't go to college on that money anymore, not the whole thing.
That's one year of college. Yeah, that's so depressing. By the way, that is so depressing. Send this dog to college. Maybe this guy's got the wrong idea if he said, I want my dog to go to the Ohio State University.
Honestly, we could use an air bud situation on our basketball team.
Yeah, there's no rule that says the dog can't play precisely precisely.
What a great conceit of an entoi. There's nothing in the rule book that says. Still, the woman says she did treat backs her to a pretty fancy dog bed and some expensive treats with the money. That's see, that's how she sees the deal. Yes, we're on her side, but she said her ex demand said that doesn't count because it wasn't an official part of the ten thousand
dollars I supposedly promised. No, No, the original poster even said that her boyfriend mentioned going to a lawyer to set up a trust fund for the dog to make this official. What she says, I feel like I'm living in the Twilight zone, she concluded, going on to ask others if they really thought she was in the wrong. The answer from social media was a resounding no. The woman read it, Yeah, I know, Reddit got in there.
The woman updated her claim, saying that her boyfriend double down on his way of thinking and that ultimately she broke up with him. Quote. I told him that this whole situation raised huge red flags, and after two years together, I can't believe he's acting like this, she wrote. If he's this unreasonable about something so absurd, I cannot imagine dealing with more serious issues down the road.
Exactly.
Yeah, the two year the two year mark is where you make calls like that, exactly. Have definitely made calls like that at the two year mark, where something happens and I go that is I'm just taking that as an example of how you will act in the future. And we are no.
Longer going to be together, right, because I don't know people can can hide their kookiness for a year or so. Once you hit year two, it just gets exhausting. Everybody's showing their true colors. Everyone's putting their cards on the table, and his cards were dull. Trust fun And that is a wild card.
It's a wild wild card because if he went to a lawyer, a lawyer would say a dog cannot have a trust fund.
I cannot wait to ask my attorney fiance about this when he gets home from work.
I mean, you might be able to open one. But again, fifty thousand dollars after taxes is if they gave ten thousand dollars. Yeah, they each get ten thousand dollars. So she should even give her boyfriend ten thousands, should give me?
No, it's her money. She shouldn't be like, if you will have we'll go on vacation or something like that. So this is how you handle this. You go, let's make the dog trust fund. She goes, no, no, no, I'm not doing that, and you're like, oh, yeah, I guess. So that's it.
That's it. Conversation terminated. They could I don't know, they could make a thousand dollars health savings account for that dog. Great, just for future vet things. Yeah, because that is just a smart thing. To do. Invest it.
Yeah, and then you can laugh, buy thirty thousand dollars worth of scratch tickets and quadruple your money overnight. It would be fun for the dog to scratch at them too. Get the whole family out there with pennies in their paws.
Here's what you do. Here is what you do.
You get.
You go to the pet insurance people and you say how much for a lifetime insurance plan for this dog? Yes, I bet you it's fifteen hundred dollars exactly.
And then you go to that dog and say, okay, sweetie, get as sick as you want.
I canceled my I had pet insurance for I had pet insurance for ten years. I canceled it three months before my dog needed knee surgery on both knees.
That is the way, as someone who used to work for a dog company, that is the way it always goes.
Because they start upping the premiums and I was like, I can't pay this much money for the dog. We've never used the insurance. And I should have thought, no, this is when you'll start using the insurance. That's your dog more Now.
Opotello was like, it's my time to shine.
Go my goodness, Curdie. But you want to tease us into some thumbs ups.
Bud, Yeah, I will.
Here we go.
Bing and look at this. I will continue the lottery with a man who found twenty dollars on the ground uses it to buy a one million dollar winning lottery ticket.
See that's all these people needed to do.
It's just see it's just that easy.
Uh okay. So these are our thumbs up. These are real user submissions where they just root somebody else on. It's always nice. Kayla is thumbing herself up for graduating with two master's degrees, one in legal studies, the other in psychology. Bananas helped her get through grad school and she's continuing on to get her PhD. Thumbs up, Kayla.
Thumbs up, Kayla, that is that is awesome.
Were you a double major Alexis or just a major minor?
I was a double major A lot of long days. I can only imagine what double master's degrees.
Yeah, it would make.
Your day look like because double undergrad degrees was already five hours of sleep maximum A lot.
Yes, I just wanted to thumbs up. Tina and Liam Williams. They came to our banios live in Seattle. Kurt and Tina. I hope everything's looking good and you're doing well feeling healthy. Thumbs up to Sarah Painter, who is my bestie, and Boulder, who completed her poll watching training so she'll be watching on election day to make no on her words, sananers take place, so good forew Sarah Painter, go Maple leaves thumbs up. Meredith Malarch cool name. What's the thumb her
boyfriend r J reins up. Now, that's a good name.
That's a good name. That's a comic book character.
Name, mar Jay rains. He is an incredible tattoo artist. She's thumbing up his incredible tattoo art. Mayor, that's what she wrote. Mayor says that Kurt, you and I should visit Traverse City, Michigan or yeah.
I guess Traverse.
Yeah, Traverse City, Michigan for the local wine, local beer, and local spirit industries there, and for Sleeping Bear National Park.
I've been to Traverse City many, many times. It is a delightful little town.
Well, I bet it's a good place to forage too. Sleeping Bear right goes wrong? Right?
Absolutely beautiful.
Oh, and last but not least, another great name Samantha Joy is thumbing her retired dad Joey Walker up so murder bananas are murdering no bananimals. He is listened to this. He has a new true crime podcast. He is a two time Karate World champion, retired police officer in Total Badass. He as a true crime podcast and I checked they posted a new episode four days ago, so it's still active. It is called Serial Defense and it reviews cases from
law enforcement perspectives. As I said, he's a retired cop, and then he provides life saving tactics that could be used in those type of crimes if any of us were ever in danger. Look at that now, that is a great idea for a true crime podcast. So if you're a victim of this type of crime, he provides you with the way to fight your way out of it. Samantha wants she wanted to.
Know everyone run away what I do for every single one or my grab my put my hands on my hips and bend at the knees and moan because that is what I did the last time.
Some would.
Just act weird and they will leave you alone.
Yeah. Mine is the verse psychology where I get too excited about the crime happening for me and act like I'm a part of it, and we go try to get somebody else. And then I run away, like, yeah, while you're kidnapping me, let's go get somebody else. This is cool, man, I've always wanted to do this. I'm pretty strong. Let's go for a big guy. And then I run away. And Samantha wanted to know what we record bananas on so her dad can sound even better. Our mics are sure SM seven dbs and we record.
We plug those into zoom H four n pros. So there you go, sure SM seven dbs and into zoom h fourn pros and we sound pretty good. I think, I think so.
And so I got a recommendation for microphone companies. Why don't you name your microphone like the good One. E's a name, especially for podcasters.
This is the good one.
Just get that, sure the good one, quote unquote.
I agree.
All right, here it is, and of course we are here with Alexis Nicole Nelson. You can find her online, of course, at Black Forager, on Instagram and on TikTok.
Correct that's me, oh on TikTok, it's at Alexis Nicole because I didn't think the kids liked plants when I started it.
All right, but they do. And I watched your Ted Talk earlier this week. If the animals out there who liked Ted Talks, Alexis is possibly the funniest one ever made.
That's awesome.
Oh it's good. And it's also good because the audience are a bunch of smarty pants people who I wouldn't say are the world's greatest comedy crowd. No, Alexis's sense of humor was rising so far above their heads that I was laughing at them, not laughing at some of the jokes because in their head they're trying to outsmart silly and you just can't do it.
You just can't do it. You just can't do it. Sometimes you just got a high kick at Bill Gates.
Yes, it was great. Anyways, it's a great, great Ted Talk. If you're the kind of person that likes those, make sure you look it up. It's a really good one.
That's got to be a hard room.
It is. Yeah, I have never been more nervous in my life. Also, when they asked me if I wanted to do it, I was like, yes, let me take this thing. That is famously hard and make it harder. I'm going to cook a dish in real time while I'm giving my talk with a recipe that has to do with what I'm giving my talk on, So don't do that.
It was good because it was not. It really wasn't even so much about forging. It was about veganism, and I thought that you were extremely consider it about a lot of people when they think vegan, they think of like you said, that's sort of an amalgamation of all the annoying vegans they've ever met, telling them that they're bad people and wrong, and then comparing real bacon to vegan bacon, and you're never going to win that debate.
It's never So introduce a brand new vegan food that tastes great, that can't be compared.
Exactly, and encourage people to make little changes, because anytime that you are like, hey, change your entire life and livelihood, people are gonna be like, whoa there, Tiger. I actually want to do that, even less than I already did, because you told me to.
That's right. I remember when the TV industry tried to get us to buy curve TVs and I was like, oh, fuck yourself, there's no way, you know what, I was right about that way?
Why would we I don't never have they even give us a reason why. They're just like this is it?
By it?
Now?
New thing?
Do it? Do it?
They just ran out of new ideas. But also it's like, you're probably living alone. You don't have anybody sitting to the left and right of you more than four feet. This was just you and me.
Oh that's how I thought about Quibbi. Everyone was like, no, no, do it. No, I know, I think I'll be okay.
It was so fascinating the amount of money that it was. I was like, I kept saying, I was like, because that idea specifically had been tried by three to four other companies who had then gone under within one or two years. And I was like, they got to these people have so much money, they gotta have thought that they must know something we don't know, and they did. They're just dumb.
It was just just a bunch of groups of people being like, no, no, but we're better than the last people.
Yeah, were amazing.
It was absolutely amazing. And anyway, everybody pick up Scotty's Quibbi show.
Yeah, bad Ideas. It's onku right now, bad ideas.
Ten straight minutes of bad ideas.
That's about all it was worth, to be honest, it was great. They did send us around the world. We went to Peru and to the Bahamas. We went up the end.
That's amazing on.
Quibi and we knew it wasn't gonna work. But they took an hour long format that we had been pitching the NBC, to Fox, to all the streamers, and we walked into Quibi and they said, we'll buy ten right now, but they have to be seven to ten minutes. And so imagine taking an hour episode pitch and going, how do we just do one thing and keep it interesting?
Oh my gosh.
So we knew. Thank god, when Quibi fell, they sold all their nonscripted all the reality shows to Roku, where it found a new audience that was a much better audience.
Oh yeah, Roku is Roku thirty flirty and thriving.
Yeah.
I really only wanted to say thriving, but I can't say it without saying.
Golly, yeah, exactly, I get it. But we knew going in, so we like looked at you, Adam and I were like, Okay, this thing's gonna fold let's get paid, let's travel as friends, and yeah we won Quibi. We did the best thing you could do. We traveled with friends around the world and never had to pay a penny out of pocket.
No, you're an American hero. You did what I wish I could have also time, which is like, well, while they are throwing just groundles of dollars, let's just go have a guitime.
That is forrigin the Seychelles. How about that?
Yeah that sounds that sounds perfect and very necessary.
That's why whenever I hear of a new thing. But I'm just like, get in early, get in early when they have that first round of investor money, get them money and get out.
That is all you need to do. Bingo all right?
So right, yeah, I'm making TV for watches right.
Now, just kidd.
Television, all right.
So, uh, we had that man who found twenty dollars on the ground used to buy a million dollar winning lottery ticket. The story is in the title, That's what happened. So I'm gonna go and do another one because this one I've been wanting to talk about. But it feels like what used to what what what my old English teacher used to call a brown paper bag book. It is not something you show that you're reading to other people.
This is in Mashable dot Com. I don't know if this is legit, like I searched for many different places where it was re published. It is a real company. But here's the here's the title, talking in Dreams. Question Mark scientists achieve first ever communication between two people in their sleep.
Huh.
This was written by the Mashable News staff. Nobody wanted to Nobody wanted to take of this.
It was a group effort.
Scientists of California have turned a sci fi idea into a reality. A company called rem Space has successfully achieved two way communication between two people who were both asleep and lucid dreaming. Lucid dreamings, when someone becomes aware that they are dreaming, can even control parts of the dream. This happens during rem stage of sleep, which is when
our dreams are the most vivid. The two participants in the experiment were both experienced lucid dreamers, meaning they had developed the skill to be aware that they were dreaming. The experiment took place on September twenty fourth. Daily Mail reported see it's being reported by the Daily Mail.
It's already suspicions.
Before falling asleep, the participants were hooked up to special equipment that tracked their brain activity and sleep patterns in real time. This data was sent to a central system that monitored their dreams as they unfolded. I don't know if you can monitor dreams. That's already the first question.
The first thing. I'm just like, we're so much closer to inception than I thought we were.
All of this, yeah, exactly, I read, let's go. The first participant entered a lucid dream in the system, recognizing the brain activity linked to this state, sent a random word to the dreamer. The word was from a language created specifically for the experiment.
This is why no way call.
The language is called remio. The word jollick was transmitted through earbuds while earbuds while the participant was still dreaming. In this dream, the person heard the word and repeated it out loud. Sensors captured this spoken word and sent it back to the system. I don't know what censors can capture a word spoken in a dream, So this is where its sentenced like it falls apart. A few minutes later, the second participant also entered a lucid dream.
The system detected the brain activity indicating this and sent the same word jolick to her through earbuds. In her dream, she heard the word and repeated it as well. When she woke up, she confirmed that the word she heard in her dream was jeollic, marking the first second the first successful communication between two people in their dreams.
I see that, I think so. I thought you meant they were talking.
To each other to each other same and I was like what I thought.
But what they're saying is they can here understand and respond and see lucid dreaming. That kind of makes sense to me. That seems that seems possible.
Yeah, I don't know, this doesn't because it also it almost seems like this is not what the they said happened. This is just someone saying a word while someone dreams, and then they wake up and they know what word was said. They're suggesting that these two people somehow communicated, and then then the Mashable staff actually correctly report on this.
I look.
The thing is I look up rem space and remspace is a real company. It has a you know, a website. You know also, I have a website.
Means it's real. There's no lying allowed on.
The internet, right exactly. I have Scotty's getting petent dot org. Yeah it's doing fine, but that doesn't mean that I've updated it.
Also, I really wish they had chosen a real word, because that's giving. Oh they said something in gibberish while they were a spape and everyone's like, no, no, that was the word, right, a language. It was a language you've never heard.
Really wrote that sounds like somebody snoring a little bit. It sounds a little bit. It sounds a little bit like a snoring sound. Okay, Because we've gotten stories in the past about people that were in comas, both medically induced and non medically induced, who were able to communicate using brain waves, and that was sort of mind blowing to prove they were there was a consciousness in there even though they were asleep or in comatose. So I guess I could see what they're doing here.
They did do that, did They did have that one story that we did do, which was a person listening to Pink Floyd while they slept and their brain waves actually showed the music on there and then they played the music. They played the music that was in the brain waves and you could act and it was so crazy. It sounded like a very faint, underwater version of Pink Floyd. It was pretty crazy. So the fact that they can do that, maybe they're using that tex I don't know.
Yeah, I guess I'm too dumb to see what the next phase of this is.
Yeah, yeah, and why we would want it exactly, I know exactly what it is. Okay, it's advertising.
While we said no.
Immediately, they're just trying to ruin everything. It's honey, wake up, I want Arby's right now. Damn, that's very interesting.
You just wake up singing the Chili's baby back ribs.
So see that. I'm okay with that.
It is really catchy.
Yeah, and it's if anybody's ever dated, or or has ever slept next to somebody who has night terrors, who who's a sleepwalker, who is a sleep eater, who's like I've had, or just a talker. Like the conversations I've had with people that are sleep talkers are fascinating. I've definitely talked about a couple on the pods. But yeah, I dated someone that would eat entire meals while they were asleep and not know it in the morning, and then I'd be like, you want to go get breakfast
or lunch and they'd be not hungry. And see, I didn't know at first because I was asleep that they had gone and eat an entire meals And they didn't really know either because they would just come back to ben go to sleep, and the wake up feeling full.
And then you have you have very angry roommates at you and you don't understand why they're so angry because they're not good at communicating.
That's right, and that's very aggressive.
Post it notes can look at you so far.
That is real. Kurt knows that that is from a real experience, and nobody's making fun of this person at all. I'm not making fun of this XXX from years ago. But yeah, she would eat a dozen eggs at one am without knowing, or one time an entire barrel inter sleep, completely unconscious. A loaf of bread, just a whole loaf of bread bread. We were asleep, and then my roommate like a week later would be like, hey, man, can
you just pay me for that bread? And I was like, oh, I didn't eat any bread, and he's like, well, there's a whole loaf missing. Uh. Oh, the eggs is even better example because the person I was hating was a vegan and so she didn't eat eggs or meat at all, and that was what was going miss cover. Yeah, and so I'm like, I'm like, am I drinking so hard that I'm eating twelve egg omelets? Like I couldn't figure out what's going on? Whole meals, I mean whole orders
of Chinese food and stuff. And so what happened is, uh, it was an honest mystery that we were like, is somebody coming up the fire escape and eating food?
Like I'm eating food and then escaping into the night right?
And then I read all the no sleeps and creepy pastas and stuff. So I'm like, is somebody frogging in my house? Is somebody living in the walls or behind the cabinets, are in the ceiling? Like it was a true mystery.
And then slender Man is eating your eggs?
Yeah, honestly staying so slender.
Wait, Kurt, you should be slender Man extual for Halloween, but just just a median version of slender Man. And so one night in the middle of the night, I was like, I gotta figure this out. And so I was sleeping more lightly, and then I heard like pots and pans and stuff in the kitchen. So I woke up.
My girlfriend at the time was not sleeping next to me, and I like walked carefully into the kitchen and she was there in what she had fallen asleep in, which was like just underwear nothing else and eating an entire meal. And I was like hey, and she didn't respond. I was like, hey, are you okay? And she like looked up at me, totally confused, like absolutely sleepwalking, like not didn't remize me, walked directly by me, walked back in
the bedroom, and went to sleep. But it took it took like three or four months to figure this out. I know that seems like a long time, but I just did not think it was coming from inside the house. So I wrote my roommate a check for four hundred dollars and apologized profusely, and yeah again, like this is a real affliction that she had, But it was like a mystery. It was a mystery. It was just nothing
but empathy and support for people going through those. But all that being said is I witnessed somebody preparing meals unconscious, So why couldn't they talk in their un conscious if they can function.
That's so fair, that's so fair. Crazy, right, did she ever dream about eating the meals or it was just.
Like nothing she did, And so we ended up figuring out. She ended up talking to I think a psychiatrist, but she ended up like talking through it, and they were like, yeah, this can happen. People have this thing, and so that I know this is crazy. But the first thing they told us was to kind of hide the nonperishables in the house. So box of cereal you would take it from the cereal cupboard and put it in the living room where I know, like on a bookshelf, so without
telling her. So it kind of like they go in, they look around, they don't find what they're sleep looking for, and then they just go back to bed. And then eventually she worked her way out of it. But it was so weird to wake up with somebody like do you want to go to that cute little cafe and get a coffee and breakfast? Like nope, in the least, sir, very interesting.
Oh my goodness, that's a while.
Bless her. I have a question for you, Alexis, before we get out of here. So let's talk bananas a great foraging food, right, I mean that must be one of the great things you can find and eat in this world. So any in America.
I have some good news and I have some bad news.
Great.
The good news is for all of our friends in southern California and in southern Florida, people love growing bananas as ornamentals. In those areas. You have likely walked past a banana flower in bloom and maybe not even noticed it. So make friends with your neighbors. A lot of times they're not even like the specific cultivar that we have in our grocery store, so you might even get to try a new banana which is ooh fun and shiny. The bad news is I'm allergic to bananas, so I
can't speak on banana forgin. Not allergic to the podcast otherwise, I mean, I have my EpiPen beside me just in case. It would have been really rough to figure that out in real time. I'm glad no anafleaxis has happened during the course of the recording. I know, and I loved them as a little kid, and then one day, as like an eleven year old, I ate one with lunch, and bad things happened, and I've been afraid to try because I know. I know sometimes people grow out of allergies,
but epipenz are really expended. Until that changes, I feel like I'm not going to test.
The water will be your bananas. If that's okay, well your sbstitute bananas.
Moving forward, Honestly, my life has gotten better and brighter for this.
Yeah, we better end it right now.
Yeah.
Tell everybody. Tell everybody where they can find you online, tell them everything about plug plug.
Plug plug plug plug plug plug.
If you are on Instagram or Facebook or that one app that used to be called Twitter, or any of the Twitter copycats, I am black Forager, no spaces, and that's Forger, not Forger. I wish I knew how to smell alas I do not, and that confuses a lot of people when I tell them my handle. If you are on the Tiki Talkies, I am Alexis and Nicole, and that is Nicole with a K, not a C. Thank you, mom.
Oh, come on back when your book's coming out.
We'd love to have you, please, I would love to I'll have to send you, guys some acorn cookies or some other hoodies from the book.
Oh, that would be exciting.
Oh, you guys have some of the best acorns in southern California.
H I know, tell me about it. That's good to know. And Bananas. There you go. Bananas is an exactly right media production.
Our producer and engineer is Katie Levine.
The catchy Bananas theme song was composed and performed by Kahan.
Artwork for Bananas was designed by Travis Millard, and.
Our benevolent overlords are the great Karen Kilgareff and Georgia Hartstart.
And Lisa Maggott is our full human, not a robot intern.
My never, no,