All right, the Last of Us just wrapped in. I wasn't impressed to nothing me either.
I just did not think it was as interesting or as gripping as the previous seasons. I was very bored, and.
I feel like the only takeaway was that I was sideye in the oyster mushrooms at the Farmer's market and I.
Was like, listen, this is the first season of the Last of Us. We've been needing to talk about this. So oh, because did I tell you I am taking a mushroom supplement. I'm taking Lion's main mushroom girl.
No, I mean nothing wrong with it. Do you feel okay?
I feel I mean, you know, I don't know if it's just like all in my mind or if it's actually doing something because I took it because I wanted to like make sure that I wasn't like having so much brain fog and stuff like that. Okay, so to help me focus, and I think it's going okay. I am not sure if it's doing anything, but I don't feel like I haven't been focused.
Okay, all right, long as you're not clicking like on the Last of Us, we're good. We're good.
Could you imagine I'm TT and I'm Zakiyah, and this is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. All Right, I think we already know funger everywhere. Yes, that is one of the first things that we know.
And I know just from a little bit of microbiology background. I got to learn a little bit about fungus, but I know they have these like vast underground networks. They live on our skin and our guts, and they can even be spores in the air.
I don't have a biology background, so I know nothing of those things. But I do know the pop culture, which is that everyone is obsessed. HBO's the Last of Us, put Cordyceps on the center stage, and TikTok Wellness keeps pushing lines made lattes and creams and all these different things.
Girl, I had a mushroom beer the other day. I mean mushroom root beer.
Oh there's mushroom coffee.
Yes, there is also foraging for mushrooms is booming.
Too, absolutely Now.
I don't know. It's one thing to id birds. That's because I'm not gonna eat them. I don't know if I can I d mushrooms?
You well, the only bird I mean is chicken. I think, oh in those quail eggs. We won't talk about it.
And you're eating turkey, girl, What are you told?
Right? I do eat turkey? Okay, So you know these these animals just don't register my mind when I'm eating. I'm sorry.
Sorry, Peter thinking about the mushrooms and fun guy, Like, what do we want to know?
I think what I want to know is which parts of the Cordyceps horror are rooted in like real actual mushrooms science, you know what I mean.
It's like, where does the science separate from the fiction?
Yeah? Where is the line between the sigh and the five? That whole show.
Made me so nervous and I want to know, like I'm a Marketer's dream. Okay, I'll try it.
All.
Are these mushroom coffees and tinctures and brain elixers, you know, things to help lift the fog? Are they legit or are they just clever marketing?
M Yeah? I mean if we take it a step further, it's like, how do fungi affect us every day? Like? How does it? How does it impact our well being and like our lives.
Yeah, well, I think it's pretty clear today we're diving into fungui, those mysterious little things. And I'm not talking like Mario Brothers little you know, Tolstool. We're talking about things that are in our food, under our feet and on the last of us, controlling dead people. So we went to an expert in fungui and in foraging for fungui too.
My name is Darling Go and you know I would say that first and foremost, I am a scientist. I do study and I major in data science at Georgia State University and so Apart from being a full time student, I'm also a park ranger at the Arabia Mountain National
Heritage Area. I am the founder of Hikes of Georgia as well Hikes of Georgia as an educational and science based organization that's really meant to educate people on the study of fungi and mold as well as just general nature knowledge and you know, helping our community become better stewards of our land, because if not us, who will awesome.
From park ranger to data scientists, you're connecting the dots between nature and technology and that is really really cool and we're really excited to have you. Okay, So my question is is that we want to break down mycology for our audience. What does the word mean?
Mycology works from es centrally just a study of fungi, and the fungi comes from the micopart and so the ology we would know as generally being attributed to fields of study. When we think of the word mushroom and we think of the word fung gui, they can be synonymous. But technically the fung guy is the body.
So we know the fruiting body that we typically see or we think of having that top and stem, that is what we typically call a mushroom. But there's so much more that you mentioned where the fun guy are growing underground, and sometimes there are things that we can't even see. I can remember growing up thinking about fung guy as decomposers, like they help stuff go away, or when wood is rotting, you're gonna see mushrooms there. Yes.
Since then, and as I've grown, I've learned more. I think about the micro rhizal networks and I think they don't get enough credit. You know, I'm all about giving credit whorres to. But I feel like they don't get enough credit. Yeah, so I want to tell us a little bit about these networks. It help us imagine what would our force look like without those fun guy in the mix, because I think we don't really appreciate it.
Y's right, absolutely, it's a wonderful question. By the way, Zakia, this opens up a whole You know, we can get very abstract here, but let's start very low level and we'll work our way up. There are three main categories. Off mushrooms or a fun guy. One of the main categories which are the saprophetic mushrooms. Saprophetic mushrooms, it's just the technical term for a decomposer, right, okay, And primarily a cool thing about them is usually on your hikes.
This is going to be one of the more popular categories of mushrooms that you come across, because decomposition is always occurring in the ecosystem. And then we have another minor category with the smallest category would be the parasitic mushrooms. They have their own important ecological functions. For example, if there was a subset of an ecosystem of trees and an ecosystem that was already susceptible to a given disease. They're a compromisation by these parasitic fungi a lot easier.
And this is generally what sort of trees. These parasitic fungi will prey on organisms that are already susceptible, and sometimes this parasitic fungui could easily mitigate the spread of disease to the greater population of the ecosystem. So exactly, although they're pretty gnarly right in nature, things are just merely designed beautifully with a cause and effect, and I think the more we understand that, the better we understand
ourselves too. But getting onto your main point, these infamous Michael rises mushrooms and what's all to talk about them or microhyzel fungi. Think of it as filamentous threads that are roughly just one cell wall thick, and they're just moving underground, just spreading right. No eyes, no ears, no taste buds. It's super cool. These are organisms with no central nervous system that are still one of the most effective at acquiring resources, which is what makes it profound.
But these microizal mushrooms is they're underground, they're looking for certain chemicals, and these chemicals are exactly what the trees are providing. There's always a chemical universe and a chemical relationship and dynamics going on underground. The roots of trees are pumping out these chemicals that attract mushrooms that can help provide them more resources. And here's where it gets
even more fun. So this michael rhyzel mycilium, which is the network of this body of fungi, right, we refer to it as just a mycilium network. This myceilial network is it's spreading underground but encounters a chemical from a root of a tree that it thinks it can work with and maybe pair up for life. And what happens
here is super cool. When they're within proximity of each other, the tree will keep letting out the chemical that's attracting this michel rhyzel mushroom that wants to form a relationship with it, and the micro hyzel myceolium realizes this and it starts letting out a specific chemical that lets it know that, hey, you know your best friends here type of deal.
So that's chemotaxis moving away from or in this case, towards different chemical signals.
Right, it's like their secret chemical message. And what happens is is and this is science and we've been able to figure out in the last decade. But as we know now, the root of the tree will let down it saw wall.
Yeah, I saw that. Plants or trees recognize it as a symbiotic relationship, and the plants just dissolve their seal walls in that region that's near the fun guy and say like, come on in, I'm rolling out the red carpet for you.
Okay, Okay, I think I get it. So it's building an infrastructure. It's kind of like a sidewalk welcoming you into the tree.
Not just a sidewalk, a highway where nutrients and information is being passed twenty four to seven, three hundred and sixty five days of the week. Right, And this is the mic hoorizal relationship that's formed.
This is really interesting. How does it affect us or does it affect us?
Well, roughly eighty percent of trees are connected to a symbiotic relationship with some fungi, right, So they're connected with some sort of mic rhizo fungi, and fungi can be found everywhere in the World's the Arctic apart from those two poles, but everywhere else it's fair game. Even in deserts it's it's interesting. So essentially, this tree is siphering off carbon and it doesn't use all of this carbon,
though it saves roughly twenty to thirty percent. It turns it into glucose and it trades it with the micylorhizol mushroom. It gives it sugar, and then what does the micro
rhizal mushroom give in return? The myceelial network is so adept it can reach deep underground reservoirs the roots of trees can never dare imagine to reach right or just nutrient spots from dead animals or highly nutrient locations that are a little bit further off from the tree's main location that its roots can't reach to, and it's sending over the phosphorus, the nitrogen, and these are some of the main nutrients provide.
We're talking about chemical signals that are saying like, hey, me and you, two different species, let's cooperate. And I feel like that's a little wild because when we think about cooperative I'm always thinking like in one species, you know.
I, Yeah, that's wild. I mean that's a strong scent, that's strong cologne, strong perfume. You know, is that baccarat rouge? I heard that that's what all the young folks are.
Wearing these I'm not smelling that. Now.
Is this limited to just tree or plant communicating with symbiotic fungus or does this type of communication exist between one tree to the next tree.
This is how the communication also happens. And if ecosystem and there was a mother tree that was doing pretty well off, but then you had saplings a couple miles off in the forest that were in danger. There's this communication, there's a distress signal that's sent from the sapling and they're all communicating via this micro ryzel network. And what happens is the mother could decide to channel its resources to the saplings in helping it grow some more, which
is just it's beautiful. And so it brings on a new meaning of you know, we have this notion of saying the forest is alive. Right, these things are just communicating, transferring information and resources. And micro rhizel mushrooms are the nervous system of the forest, right, many ways of looking at it, but without microhizel mushrooms. We wouldn't have trees in a lot of places that we do now, or you wouldn't have forest as dense and deep in the growth.
So then this plays into how much forest can actually siphon off from sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Microhizal mushrooms or by far one of my favorite categories of mushrooms.
I really loved how you describe that, because, I mean, at first I was like, oh, this sounds scary, but then you you describe such a beautiful relationship between the tree and the fungus, and it's it's like almost emotional, like how much they depend on each other and they used, how much they use each other. The way you described how the fungus moves underground and it is moving through things, you know what reminded me of They reminded me of
the Last of Us. I don't know if you've been watching that as a mushroom expert, cortescep, but they talk about cordyceps all the time, and I feel like the word cordycep now is now a part of the zeitgeist because of this show, and we don't know a lot about it, and this show is basically teaching us, and we don't know if it's true or not, right, so we just want to kind of have a little bit of a reality check when it comes to courtusps and human zombies.
I always always get at least one person on the high Ku recommends that show and I still haven't yet watched it. I've heard about it so much that I actually went I've read up on the show. Quartersps are really cool because they sort of are the prime example of a zombie like takeover and what that could look like. Mushrooms are shaped in all sorts of ways, right. You'll see some with caps, You'll see some with oozing jelly,
You'll see some with multiple fronds. But they're all meant to enhance their sporelation process, which is just the way that they released their sports, and the spores could germinate on a lot of different things, right. It doesn't just have to be the dead wood or the leaf litter in the forest ecosystem. It can be a living tree. Primarily a lot of insects and a ragnet are the
favorite host for the quarter steps. The way mushrooms grow is by way of external excretion of enzymes, and these enzymes are ponent enough to break down the kitan, which is just the shell of these insects, and so once a spore, which is microscopic, it's almost invisible to the eye. It lands on this and to lands on this beetle. As it eats its way into its body, it starts filling it with mycilium. And the insect has no idea this is happening. It is just living life as it
always was. It's a PG Friday, It's Taco Tuesday for it. There is nothing going on. Slowly, but surely, the mysilium completely encapsulates this insect, and at that point then something very special happens. We still have here a chemical relationship. The masilium starts flooding the brain of this insect with chemicals of dopamine and a lot of excitement and a lot of rage, and it starts to take control of the movement of this insect, and it forces it not
too far off from its colony. It forces it to the highest point by the colony, close enough to where when the mushroom sprouts, its spores have a higher probability of encountering more hosts like it. So this ant climbs up the closest tree, looks at the twig that's really high up, finds a leaf, clamps on the leaf, and that's the last thing this insect ever does. Within yep, and within days two weeks, the mushroom completely eats the
ant or the insect insight. And then we get this cool and this really awesome looking horn that comes out of the mushroom in the form of quartersps and quartersps. Because at this point people may be like, ah, a parasitic mushroom, Like it's kind of gross. I get why they'd make a show about it, But it's actually really popular in holistic medical practices.
All right, wait wait, wait, wait wait, because you would just talking about something a little while. That's not the plot twist that I saw coming right.
Quartersps are known, especially in Asian medicine, right to enhance athletic performance, speed up recovery.
So today we learn mushrooms can either create insect zombies or boost your athletic performance. Choose your fighter.
It's really cool. It's really cool. So as far as the clinical trials that are being done in the West right now, it's primarily for enhance energy, athletic performance and speeding up recovery. There's also another medicinal factor. It's known for in a lot of Asian countries, and it's known as the mushroom that can slow down aging. It's really cool. But just for more practical clinical research, we have found that there is a specific compound known as quarti sapin
in these quartersap mushrooms. But believe me, this thing is only going to get more popular because from what trial is already showing from the last several decades, i'd say ten to twenty years, there's a lot of research that's being backed up and corroborated now in the scientific world regarding the medicinal benefits of mushrooms and quarters apps. It's right there with the top along with Lion's main and the like.
Listen, the benefits seem great, but I don't feel like those advances are enough to make me want to be infected by mushrooms like Courtyceps last of Us style. I'm just glad that's not possible, Okay.
Same, Can I ask you a question?
Yes?
Yeah, why not?
Right?
Because here's the thing. Every time we breathe in, unless you're in a cleanly ventilated closed system. Yeah, every time we're breathing in. You're breathing in at least ten to at least thirty different mushroom spores, So why don't mushrooms? No, it's okay, like breathe it in, Come on, come on, okay, okay, right, So then the question is, you know, I know, is I ask this and I get some funny answers, But it's really simple. Why don't mushrooms grow inside of us?
We're too warm for them.
Yes, our temperatures are hot enough to inhibit its growth, but they can survive pretty warm temperatures.
You know, I'm glad spores aren't germinating and growing in my lungs, but I do know we have them on our skin. We have a microbiome, so fun Guy exists in our scalps, our hands, our feet, and you know, instead of just the two of us, it's just the three of us, fun God, bacteria and ourselves. And sometimes you know, that balance gets out of line, and that's when you start to see yeast or some other component
like growing too much. So when you see babies having thrush all that white stuff in their mouth, or some types of dandruff and acne are caused by yeast overgrowing like Malicesia is the name of that yeast.
Wow, I did not know that.
Yeah, that's the cool thing about this dance we call life and the dance that we have here in the universes. Not everything is a giver, some things are takers. But in some way, the levels of which these relationships are working, it can create a whole organ system. For example, I think you alluded to a perfect fact that our body actually carries more helpful bacteria than not just the majority of these bacteria or parasitic in nature and actually giving
us something back. They're helping us live. And of course, when you have this imbalance between givers and takers, right between these parasites that are just exploiting and not giving us much back, this imbalance creates a wreck in the body, and we see that in the form of rashes and fungal infections and disease and illness. Right, But a healthy symbiotic system is a body that has healthy parasites.
You know.
And some people may be put off by this, and I get that, but honestly, it's really the reality.
That's such a good point.
I'm on TikTok, I'm a I won't say I'm a TikToker, but I'm a TikTok watcher, and I feel like I am on the mushroom side of TikTok where everybody's talking about all these different mushrooms that can help you. Like you mentioned that in the earlier on in our conversation, Lions Maine. That's the one that's been creeping up a lot on my for you page, And I feel like people like the videos I'm seeing. I'm like, yeah, I started taking lines made. Now is it a placebo I don't know.
Even if it.
Is, it's working, Oh wonderful. But that's the one that I hear about a lot, is Lines Maine mushroom.
It is a huge boom right now. What's going on with the mushroom herbal medicinal space, right You have companies coming out of the woodwork touting whatever remedies, whatever benefits for their latest mushroom supplement and their latest mushroom. It's great. The best way I would say is to keep yourself informed and keep yourself protected obviously by you know, getting in touch with Hyser Georgia. If you need a company to be reviewed, of course, get in touch with us.
Oh but perfect.
Yes, yes, of course, But I would say that generally you want to get in the habit of understanding the dosages that these companies are working with, because that's really the whole playing field here that they're weeding through the companies. In general, we know for sure that these mushrooms are backed up scientifically with clinical research. Quarter steps enhance energy and it speeds up recovery great because it has these compounds known as polysaccharites that can help your immune system
benefit our health. So the main compounds that we derive from these mushrooms think of your turkey tail, your Lion's maine, your rati mushrooms, your quarter steps. These have unique groupings of polysaccharides that either help strengthen our immune system, help us fight against illness, help us provide energy. Taga is one of the best mushrooms for information. Well, I think it's the best mushroom for information, something like Lion's Main,
which is hands down the best mushroom for combating neurodegenerative diseases. Right, health is a layered thing. Mushrooms can be used to target the gut, They can be used to target the brain, They can be used to target the heart for example. I mean, this wouldn't be your primary treatment modality. But try to think about what it is you want right, what it is you're looking to enhance or optimize within your system? Is it brain health? Is it focus? Is
it energy? Is it gut health? Is it better sleep and move modulation? Because they are specific mushrooms that can really help you get closer towards this at a much faster rate.
Do you have to eat these mushrooms raw in order to get the benefits?
When we speak about medicinal mushrooms, we take a bit of a different perspective. These are generally found in a heart like texture once these mushrooms fruit, so some of them are already hard. Think of your raichi mushrooms, your turkey tail mushrooms, your you know, cordus steps aren't necessarily hard, but they're usually dried out and a lot of these are turned into powders.
Right.
Taga is really hard Lion's made. Although it's very fleshy and moist, it's usually dried out and turned into a powder, And so these are usually turned into powders and then used in the form of teas. Now for something like the tinstures. They're using certain chemical compounds to dissolve the mushroom and this liquid and this is what we get and as the concentrated form of this, mushrooms medicinal properties. And so that's how the tinctures are made. But primarily
a lot is turned into powder. Tinctures are sort of less in volume in the market. And then apart from the tinctures, you have the powders. And then the powders could be turned into capsules, okay, or or they're like yes, but generally powder formed and then tea or you know, directly turned into a tincture.
I think this just has me even more excited to finally start my mushroom forging. I won't be eating anything, wrang, I actually won't be picking anything. I'll just be taking pictures and tagging hikes of Georgia.
Wait until after our workshop, I think you'll you'll definitely feel a lot more confident.
And Hikes of Georgia workshop.
This was a really beautiful lab because it helped me get out of the binary. The last of us had me side eyeing my krimini mushrooms. You know, I like them in my eggs. I like and with my chick I like mushrooms with everything. I like it on my pizza. But after watching that, I was like, maybe I need to be a little bit more careful looking futy in the light.
And then even when thinking about breathing in spores, like maybe we are just a messy blob of sales carrying other organisms on our backs. Like everything is yuckie.
There's stuff everywhere.
I know, the deeper you go into it, the more convoluted it gets. And that's the beautiful thing, you know. It reminds me of that quote. You gaze into this abyss and the abyss gazes back, and it's this beautiful process of you know, uncovering. Within the last two decades, we've had a proliferation in DNA sequencing processes being amortized
across the globe. What this means is that we have much more of an accurate way we can categorize these mushrooms that were formerly unknown to us within their taxonomical categorization to the highest degree of certainty. And so now there are countless mushrooms being reclassified. Their countless mushrooms that
are being found. I believe within the next twenty to thirty years, they are going to be even more edible and medicinal mushrooms that we can talk about because the classification technology has just gotten much better than what it was before.
I think that that is a great way to say it.
I wonder what's next. Is it that we just haven't found something that can do what they're doing on the less of us? I don't know. Let's don't get into that. If you're in Georgia and interested in learning more, be sure to check out Ranger Darling and Hikes of Georgia to see the workshops they're offering and guide it tours so you can forge your own mushrooms. Zekiah, I'm packing
my bag now, scoot over, let's go. You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast, tt is on X and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho.
And you can find Takia at Z he said so.
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Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex sudi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs is executive produced by us T T Show Dia and Zakia Wattley.