Short Stuff: Death Cap Mushroom

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh here, Chuck here, Jerry No here, Dave no here. That's okay because, like I said, it's a short stuff.

Good Eve being everyone, we are. Death Cap Mushroom.

Yeah, that's a great one.

It's a metal band right for sure.

Even just death cap would work too, death Cap for Qtie even would be cool.

Oh man, I like those guys, Yeah, they're great.

Did you like Postal Service?

I love the Postal Service more than death Cab.

It's just the one dude from death Cab, right, isn't his solo?

Probably not solo, he Ben Gibbert. He linked up with someone else. It's like him and another guy. I can't remember the other guy. But man, I love that Postal Service record.

Okay, good good. So I'm glad you did. I'm glad they made it. Then me too. So we're not talking about death Cap for Cutie. We're talking about death cap mushrooms. Not for you, I think is the main message.

Here, not for Cutis or anyone.

No. And the reason they call it death cat mushroom is because it can kill you if you eat it. It's not necessarily an automatic death sentence. But apparently the fatality rate from eating this mushroom is ten to fifteen percent of people who eat it. High.

That's in this house to berks article, they are like, you know, that's pretty low.

I'm like not to me, no, that's I mean, that's really high. Look at white button mushrooms, buddy, it's almost like zero. And I think the people who do die from eating white button mushrooms ate too many at once and choke to death.

This is why I don't eat mushrooms at all. Oh you don't, huh No, it's a texture thing. They're too slimy for me.

I've tried.

Oh no, you gotta wash the slime off. And I'm not expecting you to actually try this, but I know exactly what you're talking about. If you wash the slime off, you dry it, you lick the top of it, put some salt on it, and eat it raw, and it's got a nice thirty crunch almost to it. And I love those.

You know, it's funny.

I don't think I've ever mentioned not liking eating something where you didn't say no, no, no, you're just.

Doing it wrong.

I like eating everything, all right.

So there was an outbreak in twenty sixteen. In the Bay Area of San Francisco, where fourteen people consumed well the defcat mushroom.

Yeah, got really, really sick.

One very sad story of a child suffered permanent neurological damage. And the question is like, how did these things get here? Because they did not originate here. That's one of the questions.

Are you setting me up to answer it?

Well? Sure do you?

Okay?

Answer because I do.

I have a general answer apparently. So. It's a ecto micorhizal fungus that engages in symbiotic relationships mutualism with specific kinds of trees, and in Europe they're typically beech trees or oak trees, and it lives in the roots, the main part of the fungus, and it trades nitrogen that the mushroom draw from the soil to the oak or the beech tree in exchange for sugars and water and carbon. And they do this by basically connecting their roots to

I think we did a whole episode on mutualism, didn we surely sibiosis.

Or something else. Yeah, but I didn't answer your question. The answer seems to be that somebody imported a tree from Europe at some point that had a death cap mushroom mike or ISAA in its roots. And surprise, death cap mushrooms are in North America.

Yeah, and they know that it wasn't a native species, because you know, that could be possible that there's just like a California, North America version. Sure, but it would be genetically different somehow. But the ones that we have over here are exactly the same. It's the same mushroom. I think the first known sightings were in nineteen thirty eight del Monte Hotel in California.

There's a lot of these in California, Yeah, and then.

Five six, seven, eight years later at the cal Berkeley campus. And now they're kind of all over the place or on the East coast. They live in the pines in the East Coast, but those oaks in on the West coast all the way up to Vancouver, I believe. But they've also found them outside of Europe and Western Russia, southern Scandinavian coasts and North Africa.

Yeah, they go. I think also on the West coast of the United States. They grow all the way down to La County. Yeah, which is how cheech Marin accidentally ate one.

Oh did he really or is that a joke?

That is Joe, I'm sorry so mad at you. You could have said, like I know it was you have to say it really weird like that.

Seems so likely that cheach mayor might have accidentally in one of these.

I think he kind of went straight with that whole Nash Bridges gig that he got, And Dobbey Chong is like, no, man, I still eat whatever I find on the ground.

Uh, speaking of Nash Bridges, And you know, maybe I shouldn't say this.

I'll tell y'all here.

Oh, I can't wait. Is it about Don Johnson? Yeah?

All right, So should we take a break or should we talk a little bit more about it?

Let's take a break, all right, We'll be.

Right back with more on this death cap mushroom.

All right, we're back.

And this is something I don't fully understand, but the death cap mushroom is an invasive species in California, where it grows in very beautiful woodlands and forests. It is not considered such on the East Coast, where it grows in more urban settings like urban parks, but it still could be invasive. Like I don't understand what the diath is.

It's very easily contained an urban area. You've got your park. But then you know, you say, like, hey, mushroom, try to try to spread from this part. Yeah, deal with this sidewalk, then the street, then the sidewalk, then a building, then another sidewalk, then the street, then the sidewalk, then a sidewalk, then the sidewalk, then the sidewalk, and the mushroom goes Okay, final, I'll just stay.

Here, all right.

So I guess that makes sense. Yeah, I guess I didn't fully understand what invasive meant. I thought invasive just meant if it was there and not great for the area. I didn't mean it had to be like super widespread.

I didn't either, But that's what I took from this description of it. So that's my take. I should say, that's not like.

The I thought that was a quote It was.

Of am Pringle the letters in Science Rubinstein, Professor of Botany and Bacteriology at the University of Madison, Wisconsin.

Wow, look at you.

Yeah, we should say shout out to how Stuff works for helping us with this article by writing it, and they interviewed Professor Pringle about this and she was very helpful.

Yeah, there's a couple of toxins when it comes to the death cap. One of them is a phallotoxin, and you're talking, you know what you would expect dehydration, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, but eventually electrolyte imbalances and kidney damage. But the really bad booger in there is amatoxin, and that will stop cell function. It targets the transcription of RNA by RNA polymer raise two, which we've talked about before, and that

Right, So that's always bad. And apparently it goes very quickly to your liver and just starts destroying your liver. And apparently people go to the emergency room sick with sick on basically after eating a death cap mushroom, we'll find that the doctors want to give them a liver trans plant if one is available. Wow, that's how bad it can get. And one of the reasons why it can get so bad is because after the initial like nausea and vomiting and horrible, like I shouldn't have eaten

Didn't liver one of the longer weights or am I making that up?

Longer weights?

Yeah?

Of weight w A I T s for transplant.

I don't know. No, I don't think so, because you can cut off like a chunk of your liver and don'tt it because I don't know if it grows back or else. It just a little bit can can perform a lot of function one of those kidneys. No, I don't think I don't think so. I think it's liver.

So we got all the organs are readily available.

Right for transplanting for sure.

I mean, it's so easy to get when you just walk in and they try to give you two livers most of the time.

I could have maybe this is while ago I could have sworn. I read reports of like people dying on the liver transplant list.

Oh I believe it, but I don't think that. I don't think livers the least available. Okay, I gotcha, but I could be wrong. But yeah, I think everybody dies on the organ transplant list waiting, or I should say not everybody on the list dies, but I'm saying for any organ there are people dying on the wait list.

I gotcha. Yeah, boy, that's a nice courage.

So the takeaway from this is, don't eat the death cap mushroom at all. You need it, And if you're a forager, you really got to know what you're doing. You shouldn't be like, hey, I saw this on Top Chef, like I can go out in the woods and just pick stuff and eat it. You got to be really familiar with the fungi where you are, and if you aren't, just don't try it.

Don't risk it. It's not worth it.

No, I think we should issue a general CoA for us here. Don't even if you think you are familiar with your local mushrooms, don't try it. We're not telling you, under any circum stances to go try this.

Okay, I think foraging is wonderful, but so I'm not going to.

Say that personally, but we're saying you're welcome to just know what you're doing to reform. Now, there are all kinds of resources if you're interested in stuff like that that can very clearly tell you like what's safe and what isn't. But you should still take a buddy who's done it before. I think you can identify, according to doctor Prinkle, who can eat just one. It has olivaceous with coloring with green tinge, and a mature death cap has a brown brown striations on the cap.

And don't forget fairy rings around the stem.

Which who can forget the fairy rings?

Right? It goes without saying that that's just a bunch of fairies forming a circle by holding hands. Yeah, so I saw one of the things Chuck about this. The reason why people eat these is because they taste good.

Oh interesting.

So people are caught by surprise when all of a sudden they start puking because the fact that it tasted good, I think indicated to them that this is fine to eat.

Well, you know, who's never going to get sick by eating a bad mushroom?

I do.

And it has two thumbs, and it's podcasting with you right now?

I do this guy, right here. Oh that's not how I was gonna say. Oh, cheech Marin, you got anything else?

I got nothing else.

Short Stuff is out.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

To your favorite shows.