Really now, really.
Really now, really Hello, and welcome to Really No Really with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who guarantee that if you subscribe to our show, people will automatically think of you as a fun guy. And speaking of fung Guy, there's an entire world just below our feet that defies our conventional understanding of intelligence, a super highway of fungal interconnection, a network that extends for trillions of miles and that enables trees to recognize their families, communicate.
With each other, and even share resources. Really No Really.
In this episode, Jason and Peter are joined by Louis Schwarzburg, director of the beautiful twenty nineteen documentary film Fantastic fung Guy. They talk about the amazing world of funguy and mushrooms and their awe inspiring power to heal, protect, and transform our world. And now here are your two favorite fun guys, Jason and Peter.
So I feel bad because we're starting this particular interview. You and I just had lunch, and I'm picking mushrooms out of my teeth, and I'm beginning to feel like that's not you. I'm a little now, I'm a little conscientious that I've committed a murder, that I've that something terrible. Now, I know the film has been out for a while, but the film Fantastic Fun Guy, which I saw on Netflix, but I'm sure it's been around a lot longer. Netflix
had it. First of all, if you've not seen it, it is absolutely fascinating about the world of my Celia.
Recursor to that.
But yeah, I recommended Einbinder Binder, who's a comedian, and this is going to go to Joan Rivers and the Hacks. Hacks is about the thing. The thing is like Joan Rivers, Un Joan Rivers, he was your godmother, Guyhead. I just want for the audience that doesn't know, I'm just trying to truncate the.
Degrees of I recommended her special. I didn't know her as a comedian, and on the special she's from Hacks. She talks about the trees communicate, and she did it from a comedic standpoint about male femail. But how underground please communicate. They help each other out, they support each other.
And then because of that, and I know that you mentioned Fantesakung Guy, I watched it again and I wanted to talk to Louis Schwarzberg, who created the film and does a lot of stuff in nature with stop action photography. That's stunning. Because when I watched it again in preparation for this episode, I mentioned to him that I got the overview effect, which is what astronauts get to when they see the Earth in a black void. You realize
how precarious it is, how fresh it is. And after I was I was so moved by watching the film because I understood how all of these plants communicate, how there's a language that we don't know that we don't operate under, but how they save the planet, and how they recycle CO two and what they do. And under each footstep is mycilium, and there's thirty miles under each footstep, and this is communication system.
And I went.
Very emotional, and it made me even I was already feeling bad about the salad.
With every word, you're.
Driving a dagger through my heart. So let's turn to our guest.
You kill you like to deform a murder. I apologize. I want to introduce Louis Schwarzburg.
Hello Louis, Louie, and also apologize for Jason.
You did you only eat the sexual organ of the planet. The plant is under the ground. Oh, I can't tell you how not better You've made me feel.
So Louis, I should mention Louis is a visual artist and the stories he tells are fantastic. He did the three d Imax film Mysteries of the Unseen World, and the cool thing about that is when I read about it, it said he focused on things going too slow, too fast, and are too small for us to see, because there's a whole world of that stuff. Sure, so that's kind of fascinating. He's worked for Disney and did a film
narrated by Myrtle Street, and also this fantastic fundike. It's like an art piece, but it also it elucidates things that are right there.
But look, before we even get into your knowledge of all of that systems, I just want to ask as an introductory question, the thing that you are actually you know, you came to this as a filmmaker, a cinematographer. You personally have advanced the technology of time lapse photography. How did you come to be fascinated a way with that?
Sure? And move it forward? Yeah, Well, when I was at UCLA, I fell in love with photography and fine art photography like Ansel Adams and Western And then I fell in love with film, and I moved to Northern California, and I wanted to just make experimental film, but to buy thirty five millimeter movie film, As you guys know,
it's expensive. And so one of the ways I could shoot thirty five millimeter, which only commercials and future films were using, was to get into time labs, which had never been done before in thirty five millimeters in sixteen, it'd been used for like scientific research. Here's a plan for a graph behind it. Hey, guess what it does. Grow.
But I would shoot things that had never been done before, like take it outdoors, sunrise, fog, moving flowers, opening shafts of light, filming beauty, and all of that hadn't happened. And then it was a film happening in a Hollywood called A Secret Life of Plants. Yeah, Stevie wondered to the score for it, remember back then, and they go, Heydri, it's this crazy guy and probably a hippie. They probably referred to me in Northern California. It's shooting all these
weird flowers. So I got involved in filming that which brought me back to Hollywood, and this I think is pretty cool. I show the studios, I show the networks this gorgeous thirty five millimeter time lapse. They look at it, they go, oh my god, it's incredible. It's beautiful, but we don't know what to do with it, because you can't tell a story without conflict. And in my head, I went and the people who got it were the
ad agencies because basically it's eye candy. I could grab your attention in a second or two and bingo, I can sell products, right, And that's kind of how it all be unfolded. And then from there it look it's on your iPhone now, the whole idea of time lapse, everybody does it. It's a feature and the other aspect is it I think it also figures your sense of wonder to be able to see things that you and
I can't see. It's like you're a child, don't with whether you're watching a flower open, or you know, a mosquito being born out of larvae, or just the beauty of a sunset. You know, all of that triggers you in a very spiritual way, which is what I think Peter, you were saying about the overview effect because it's a god's eye point of view. You know, you can't talk. You can talk about equals mc squared, but to see it in the movie.
One of the parts that blew my mind, and this is theoretical, is that mushrooms and the magic mushroom, the part that the the that that part which is the spiritual part of getting high or whatever you want to call it. That one of the hypotheses is that the art original man, his brain grew at a faster rate of experimentation and learning language than it would have normally because he found psilocybin. He found all of this stuff
way way back and was using it. And because that opens your mind to other choices which you wouldn't and things you wouldn't have normally seen, that the language intensified quicker.
The pre primitive man, psilocybin and language took the leap because he started to go, holy crap, if you I got to tell you.
What I'm seeing in my head. I got to get word of leerve and a blind and the other guy goes, I don't know, blind, I got reenactment, thank you, but talk first.
So the people who didn't see the film about what's going on underground and the network of my celium.
So mycilium is the organism, it's the root structure of budding mushrooms. The mushrooms are the really the reproductive organ It's like the apple to the tree, you know, the mushrooms the apple, the trees the mycillial network. And what they've discovered is that this network is an incredible shared economy under the ground where nutrients and information is shared for ecosystems to flourish. So the trees are.
A community and recognize their kin. Well, yes, they'll help their kin, they'll help each other. They and this isn't like you know, hippie dippy crystal shit. This is like Susan Samar, the PhD professor in British Columbia, again as a woman, probably got a lot of resistance from other
male scientists saying that it's all connected. They put a radio isotope inside of a tree over here, fifty yards away from that tree, another tree has absorbed that radioactive isotope, so they were able to trace it right, and then it's you know bona fide, you know, experiment, and they see that the mother tree is feeding its kin, you know.
And the trees talk to each other. They'll help each other. If one tree's in the shade, it'll give it more nutrients for it to grow. It's a beautiful blueprint probably for our survival when you think about it. That when when nutrients and information is shared and ecosystems communicate, societies flourish without greed, you know. And that is nature's operating structure.
So is it a good way to go? All? I can say it evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and therefore it's how life has evolved to be successful. But this is what works. But you know, there's a dark side to this.
I'd like you to speak to Okay, because we had the gentleman who is running the HBO show of the Last of Us, in which the conjecture is that a bacteria, a fungal adaptation happens and it jumps into the human system, is able to survive at the higher temperatures of a human system and zombifies.
But the people that.
To that extent I always wonder about because I do think the planet fights back we as we tear away at it. I think the natural systems do fight back, that there was some conjecture that a lot of these diseases that were even COVID may or may not be a man made or a man enhanced thing. But I wonder as we jeopardize these these ecological systems and this communication is happening along the macellium network, there.
Not capable of going, well, we have to we were here co exists with that kind. But if they're not going to get along with us, we're going to take a turn here. Yeah. I think the fungi kingdom recycles everything in nature, so there are nutrients to grow. And also what's import for us to know they're inside of us? I mean in your microbiome, in our intestines, our fungui. If you didn't have them, you wouldn't be able to
digest food. So we have these symbiotic relationships. I think when the symbiotic relationship gets broken, then there is disaster. And that's what we've been doing. We take the carbon that's underground, we burn it, put it in the atmosphere. We put fake you know, oil pesticides into the earth.
So instead of the tree depending on the my cillial network for nutrients, it's like a heroin attic we're giving it this fake absorb and that then becomes addicted to that, and if you don't give it the fertilizer, it dies, So you break up relationships. Everything in nature is about relationships cooperation, which is why I think on a moral ground, these lessons are beautiful. You know, It's like, how do you cooperate, how do you get along, how do you share?
How do you do things that enable other people to flourish, to be healthy? And that's how I think it's a beautiful moral code we could follow, which is all I meant.
You know, we'll go into those other assets, but it is a great metaphor for the work that you do, which is to focus on stuff that we decide we don't have the time to watch and see in its entirety and see the beauty of it. And you are able to compress it in such a way that we can have an experience that most of us would never take the time to have and to notice it's really kind of wonderful.
Well imagine, you know, if you told someone you know, you're in a yoga resort, you go stare at this flower for the next three days, don't go to the bathroom, don't eat, don't do anything, and that'll really help you be enlightened. But I can actually show you what that would look like in five seconds, which is great because it might be nice to be there and stare at a flower for all day. But none of us have
that time. I mean, I don't meditate. I wish I had another lifetime to be a Tibetan monk and I could sit on a rock and look at it at the stars at night. But what's the reality. We don't have that option at all. But if I can give you a visual of what that might be like, which is why I think it does trigger spiritual or transcendent feeling. I mean, think about it when the flower opens and
closes the day in the life of that being. I mean the films we loved it are like by biographical when you see like from the beginning to the end, they're powerful. They touch you because we're all gonna die. We all realize as a transcendent experience we're having here, and to be able to experience that, I think it touches your soul in a way that's hard to describe.
So the macilium are everywhere. I mean, like I said in the beginning, it's thirty every continent, thirty million miles. What's the state of where we're at right now? I mean, we watched your film. We now understand if you watch that and understand it the importance of the networks and that we shouldn't screw with them. Where are we with that? Because I know you do extensive stuff all.
Over the world. Yeah, are we in? Is that network as endangered as the rest of our it is? And one of the big problems is, you know, agri industrial agriculture. So one of the ways to prevent the network from being cut up is no till farming. You know, you want to keep the network in place. That's a big deal because all industrial farming is like you know, the tractor going down the rows and chopping it up, train it up, killing it all, and then putting petroleum fertilizer
on it. And we're destroying it. So there's a movie been now about regenerative agriculture. It's perhaps the most one of the top environmental movements that are happening right now is regenerative agriculture. If we kill the soil, we kill our food supply, and that's really critical.
Can I just saying, Louis is funny. When we were talking, he goes, so when I do TED Talk and he had a Ted talk, I think sixty million downloads on the Ted Talk. But he said I asked simple questions like where does soil come from? And I went, okay, let's answer that question.
Where do you got me? Where? Where does soil come from? Soil comes from fun guy that breaks down organic matters so that it can be in its smallest component parts to be recycled. But most people don't know the answer to that, right, So, I mean people don't know where does an orange come from an apple? Where is an or come from an apple? In flower, right, a flower becomes fruit, not vegetables for us to eat. The flower is the sexual organ of the plant, right, beckoning these Yeah.
So in Wings of Life, I have Meryl Streepy you the voice of the flower. She's seducing bees, baths, hummingbirds, and butterflies to come get her to move her DNA around. Because of flower. A plant doesn't have legs. It needs to mate with somebody else. Diversity is one of the key elements of evolution. You can't mate with yourself all the time. Sometimes certain species do it, but it doesn't create a stronger DNA. Correct, So you got to get these messengers to come move your DNA around. And then
the bee, of course, that's moving the pollen around. It's getting that pollen bringing you back to the and it enables it feeds its children. So what's beautiful about the story. It's not sexual intercourse. It's an intersection between the animal world and plant world that gives us the food we need to eat. And it's not transactional because I don't think the flower is telling to be Hey, come transport
my pollen and in exchange you get food. I think it's an accident because the pond just sticks to the furry part of the beat, right, So what's really even on a higher spiritual in the sense story they enable each other unknowingly. You know, I'm going to help you, and they don't realize that they're helping the other party. You know, it's so beautiful that they that, and that's
really the foundation of life. So after I made that film, I go, well, if plants are critical for our food supply, food shelter, medicine, all of it comes from a plant where the plants eat soil or it'll come from fun Guy. Without fun Guy, there'd been no soil and then again no life, so you.
Must be aware of There was another document and I think it was called Yes the Ground. Called Common Ground is the title of the movie. I'm not sure to make sure we're talking about the same one. It is basically a documentary advocating this non tilled farming, because it says it basically, they took two fallow fields that had been over farmed, and both of them had farmed out.
The ground was dead, and they.
Did this non till farming on one and left and kept using it.
Well.
The one they stopped tilling came back in three years. There was a the Chinese government gave a fourteen thousand square mile sector of dead land to this sperre amount, and.
They went in and they applied the practices.
Of non tilled farming, and in ten years that entire forest came back to full life. Where this is happening, carbon emissions in the air are sucked into the earth.
It is literally filtering the air. It may it.
Presented the idea of saving our soil, respecting our soil as the centerpiece of how we save ourselves from some of the climate destruction that we've done, and it was it was just an extreme.
Most powerful natural phenomena that can suck all the carbon out of the atmosphere. I've heard that if we would stop polluting tomorrow in like five years, this process of photosynthesis and sequestering carbon in the ground into my cilial network could totally clean the atmosphere. We could do that.
Can we seguay before we go into the mush Going anyway? I got questionsom the mushroom part of this. So the mushroom part in the movie, there were a couple people and this was moving to me because there were no claims it's going to cure me.
Yeah.
But and it moved me too because when you have people who have stage four cancer diagnosis, you're there right there with them because you get it. We've all been around that.
Kind of thing.
Sure, I watched that, and I just want to know your experience with that, having been around it, having filmed that, being open to it, what was your experience.
So these are patients that had a severe diagnosis of cancer and the psilocybin treatment what it does is it reduces the fear of death anxiety. So imagine you got this physiological problem. Now you got these other problems that what happens when they die, the existential question. They got two things going on. So the psilocybin psychedelic experience to make people feel more connected. They feel the oneness of everything, and that's why it triggers this feeling of lost, the
fear of dying, of love, of connection. And by doing that, it enables I think, the body to heal faster because you've taken away this incredible anxiety of like what's going to happen when I die? So that is really, I
think an example of the healing energy of it. What's also interesting, I just recently finished the clinical trial here in Santa Monica where patients with addiction to alcohol take psilocybin and they watch a big video, an eight inch video screen of my imagery of rhythms and patterns of nature as they're coming onto it. Then they do the thing as we saw in the movie. They lay down with a therapist with eye shades and they go inward. After that they watch a video that helps them feel grounded.
The results showed that the combination of my Imagery with psilocybin was more effective than the psilocybin by itself in treating alcohol addiction, so better end results, lower heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure. This feeling of getting reconnected to nature, whether it's music, whether it's visual, whether it is a chemical like a psychedelic plant, medicine, all of these are portals just to becoming grounded. You know. So you brought
us today. Is this your company? Yes, and it's called Fantastic Fun Guy. Yeah.
And you've got tinctures based on I'm assuming almost all fungal product that do a variety of different things. The one that I asked you for and you shared with me is for immunity. I'll let you know. So my question is sometimes from out of nowhere, not necessarily a rainstorm or anything else, but I'll walk out my husband day and my lawns suddenly covered with mushrooms.
My first question is a y all of a sudden, and B is there a way to know, Oh I can eat that, or I can dry that I can or that one's a bad one. There are so many, right, there's so many different kinds.
And I've been on nature walks with guys who knew the immediate area that.
They got that one's good that one will kill you. Yeah, So what's your advice to all of us? Why? First of all, why my lawn suddenly becomes a garden part? There's probably ten times more species of fun guy than there are plants, and of course there's more plants than there are people, so there are so many. We've only probably discovered ten or fifteen percent of the funnel species on the planet. In order to understand or to know what you can eat it don't eat, you have to
be with someone who knows. In other words, you forage in these groups. There's by cillial clubs, micological clubs. That's really the best way. There might be some apps you can use to photograph it, but don't take a chance because there are mushrooms that can kill you. There are also buries in the woods that can kill you. So you know, you just have to be knowledgeable. And why they popped up after that rain, time for them to get it on and reproduce, I mean, come on, I
mean they're there all the time. Sometimes, you know, years can go by with certain species of mushroom and then all of a sudden, if the conditions are right, they decide we need more of us. And you know, mushrooms come out, spores are released, they fly through the air and they find other territory that they can grow in.
So you know, nobody can predict. That's why wild mushrooms are expensive because you only know certain spots, and people that are my cologists they don't share their secret spots. Kind of like a clicky club of nerds that are signed to have a scientific bent to them and they just keep it all as a secret, you know, because it is kind of like birders, another kind of interesting groups. But it's on every continent. They have found fungui under the ocean. By the way, wonder why is this a
fascinating topic? I mean, Avatar movie is the number one box office hit of all time. Who are they battling, Not the Blue Bend, it's Aya. Aya is the mycillial network under the ground, right That is the hero of our story. And I've talked to Cameron about it. More and more of the sequels are going to be about Aya and Aya is that underground spiritual energy of connection. And the fact that it's the number one film of all time kind of makes me believe that people are
really fascinated and interested and that it innately taps. Oh yeah, it's a way of a big deal. This isn't a weird topic. It's a popular topic.
I think the market for mushrooms was what did I see fifty billion? I mean fifty billion dollars bill. It's mushrooming. So if you find out that could kill you, if you cook portavello is a certain way, it could kill you, it may not be good for business.
Look, the white button mushrooms are a thing of the past people are shopping for or the bellows my taki, I mean every country. But here's the beautiful thing right now we have you know, you know inner cities that you know are food deserts. You can grow mushrooms in your closet. You can grow mushrooms in the junkyard, you know. And this is a way for people to have protein, make a living, good values protein and mushrooms. Yes, big time steak and have mushroom steaks. No, I thought it
was just because it had a nice texture. Oh no, it's great. And plus it's got the same kind of anti It fights these same viruses and antibodies that they fight. You fight. That's why it's good. That's why I gave you that immunity thing. It fights the same viruses that they have to fight. So what they are there geniuses at chemical warfare. My solio network has a little t and if they encounter an organism friend or foe, I'll either eat you or I'll fight you. And so penicillin
is an example of that. It's a fun guy, and we eat penicillinas save more lives than any other medicine. So when you eat mushrooms, they kill the same viruses that they're trying to fight against. Also affect us because we have more in common with fung Guy than we do with plants. Right, Plants take light energy, convert that into chemical bonds. We like mushrooms, have to digest food, so we have a stomach. They have an external stomach. They put out enzymes, they break it down, and they
absorb it. So we have this similar relationship with fung guy because we digest food.
I'm beginning to think fun guy. It's cooled that because they're kind of like a fun guy.
And on that note, i want to thank you Louis for coming in fantastic books I'm looking for.
I'm going to tell you know what. It's a fast On our show, I'm going to open this up. You keep talking, and I'm going to become immune. Take it. It's a fantastic movie. It's a stunning movie. We're rereleasing it in theaters. I remastered version, got a new life.
Yeah, and we added a couple of new sequences because we want people to come together in community.
Movie with death comes life. The movie's back again.
There you go. Now, literally this has to take a full dropper. Take a full dropper? Do we have to do this in real time? Now? Real time? And you're going to discover that it actually tastes good. Jason, did it taste sweet to you a little bit? Yeah? No sugar? So what what is the Sweetness Company's Glisterings Preserved? Yeah? It is. Listen, I gotta tell you.
If someone told me I could open up ten bottles of your stuff a day and just instead of the do you know the c I have, I've become. This is how I know I'm ready for aar pi. I have the long box Monday. There's gotta by the way.
There is by the way is lions mean? And uh no turkey taale, I'm sorry, that's turkey.
And that is the one that Peter was talking about that in some cancer study that cured the cancer.
So if you go at the NIH National Institute of Health, look at the clinical trials that turkey tale along with other drugs reduced breast cancer and women, there was really scientific evidence.
And again, people who are listening to this before they try stuff, check it out with your doctor.
I'm just saying that there is research that has been proven that turkey tale is a powerful component in helping to fight. Well, thank you.
All our medicines are coming from you know, from nature exactly.
So I'm gonna go watch them. I'm gonna I'm gonna get high on on on immunity, gonna watch the movie again, and you're gonna come on to it about five minutes. What will I feel you're gonna be I'm joking. Okay, you're gonna You're gonna at another episode.
You're gonna.
Oh that's fantastic. All right, Well, thank you.
And by the way, that stuff is starting to kick in, I'm feeling hold on, hold on, hold on one second, yeah, I got it.
I'm sorry.
Oh I just did episode about the took a thing a second and a half ago.
It's still here, going all the way down and you're going, whoa I can I didn't say. I didn't say I'm tripping.
Ooh you ooh you you know you always talk about me poo poo and you poo poo poo.
Mister google him.
Yes, Oh my god, how are you?
And what do we have? He's high on mushrooms right now?
And I have to say, Jason, with your earlier rendition of Caveman, I'm thinking if they remake one million years BC.
You know, yes, you could you bet who was in that? Come on, we all know who was in that? The beautiful rock out? Will there you go? There you go? Yeah? Right, come on, that was a that was a poster every kid my generation. I don't remember it.
And that's of course your role, Jason.
I mean, I think if they're going there's a lot of gender switched somehow.
I would have been in quest for fire. That would have been my I'm the guy and his army by the cannibal truck. That's right, David. What else you got for us? I know? But in that section you must have had quite a field day of research.
Did you.
Did you guys touch on the fact that what is the largest living organism on the planet?
I did not. We did not. I know what it is other than a redwood tree or something. I know. We're just can I give you a hint if I'm right sure? Oregon?
Oh, you're saying where it is? Yes, yes, it is in area. It's it's a it's a mushroom.
It is in the mall here National Force an organ it's three.
Point five miles wide.
Excuse me that? And they a mushroom, Yeah, a mushroom. Yeah, we're forgive me.
Remember remember the sexual organs. Remember the sexual organs are the.
Are the mushrooms?
I'm talking about the fung guy under the ground you mean under the ground.
Yes, the three thousand miles Not it's not a giant shaitaki sitting above the field. That may happen one day.
But yes, it's the largest area of fungi in the world.
Again, three point five miles And they believe that it's at least two four hundred years old, but they believe it might actually be be older. That fungus can dissolve certain plastics. Yeah, and here's here's the interesting thing. The most expensive edible mushroom in the world. How much do you think it costs for one pound of that mushroom the.
Most expensive, most expensive in the world.
I'm gonna say.
Fifteen hundred dollars and I'm going to say twenty thousand, fifty thousand, two thousand for an ounce, but I guess that.
But here this is listen to what you're paying for.
Okay.
It's called a yards goo goomboo. Okay, yards of goomboo.
Or it's commonly called the caterpillar fungus, and guess why.
It's a parasitic.
Fungus like the one the cordycept in the field in the in the video game TV show Last of Us. It's a parasitic fungus that kills its host caterpillar and uses it to produce a mushroom that grows out of the caterpillars head.
And this is the one. I'm paying fifty thousand dollars a pound for a pa because it has the sweet taste of caterpillar on it.
What of murder, It's well, there's a whiff. It has a whiff a bouquet of antenna, which is.
Yeah, you can't get really. Yeah, the mushroom thing is fat. Did you see the Nicholas Cage movie The Pig. Yeah, it was a fat kind of a fascinating movie with where the pig is, the people sniffing out the truffles, the whole world of mushroom.
When I found it was fifty truffles on mushrooms. Yeah, that's what it is, a MUSHes. I thought it was like a.
Well, they're a fungus.
I thought, I don't know if much it is. It's a firing part of a fungus.
So but yeah, truffles show never ceases to fill my head with information and delight.
The delight was an afterthought. I noticed, I saw that there's a pause. You thought, I need to put an asterisk on.
I was trying to think. How we try.
And it fills my head.
Sounds like an s a T test. You finish this out, help me with this, Peter.
Wait, I don't want to interrupt. I don't want to interrupt, but uh, truffles are edible.
Spores, ediports, you know, But where do they come from? Fun guy? This show, this show is a front of distance.
So David, thank you very much, and never correct me. By the way, all right.
God bless So really, I was told as as Louis was leaving, he said, eat mushrooms eat fermented food because they nourish the bacteria. They nourish the fung guy in your system. And uh and I still I don't but I never got the answer. Is it good that I hit the mushroom the silence? And by the way, yes, and it's good? Or cut out the middleman and go eat a rotting rabbit in the woods. Good, right to the hell because the funk guy breaks it down, you can stop the process.
David, thank you and thank you and thank you for listening.
You know you're there.
Damn, I'm in a room with this maniac right right right?
Really no, really the show that fills your head with fung guy.
And you did that generically so enough to pay.
Royalty had a little love Love Bak royal Ki.
There's another episode of Really No Really. He comes to a close. I know you're wondering, how can I tell if the wild mushroom in front of me is safe or poisonous? The answer to that in a moment. But first let's thank our guest, Louis Schwarzburg. You can follow him on Instagram and TikTok where he is at Louis Schwarzburg. On x he is at Louis films on YouTube. He is at Fantastic Fun Guy Official and his website is
Louie channel dot tv. Find all pertinent links in our show notes now our little show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok YouTube, and threads at Really No Really podcast And of course you can share your thoughts and feedback with us online at noreally dot com. If you have a really some amazing factor story that boggles your mind, share it with us and if we use it, we will send you a little gift. Nothing life changing, obviously, but
it's the thought that counts. Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and take that bells here updated when we release new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday, So listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And now, how can you tell if that wild mushroom in front of you is poisonous or safe to eat? Well, the only absolutely certain way is to consult a professional and assume that nothing is safe unless you do.
But apart from that, here's a few general guidelines.
The gills of the mushroom are right under the large cat if they are tan or brown, there's a good chance they're edible.
But if you see white gills, donate it.
The deadly amanita spam leave mushrooms all have white gill. If the mushroom is red on the cat or the stem, will leave it alone. It's kind of like nature's traffic light. If it's red, it's telling you you should stop. If the cap looks or feels scaly, or the cap is spotted, and let it go. That is often an indication of a potential toxin. Lastly, if there is a secondary ring, like a second cap lower on the stem, put it down.
Not for you.
These are just.
General guidelines though, and again the only surefire way to know is to consult an expert. My personal tip, if you're not a fungi expert, maybe don't be foraging in the forest for random mushrooms. Public service announcement. There's probably a supermarket near you that is a whole produce aisle that has plenty of mushrooms that are confirmed to not kill you. Elina Really is a production of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertainment.