EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,077 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) What is going on, my friend? How are you?
- PSPaul Stamets
Hey.
- NANarrator
Good to see you again.
- PSPaul Stamets
Good to see you, brother.
- NANarrator
It's been a while.
- PSPaul Stamets
It's been a while, and there's a lot of interesting developments. So this is the never-ending story, I feel.
- NANarrator
The never-ending story of mushrooms.
- PSPaul Stamets
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- NANarrator
Yeah. So this giant one that you brought me, explain this again, 'cause you were telling me out there, I'm like, "Let's save this for the show," 'cause this- this is crazy.
- PSPaul Stamets
Sure. This is, uh, the best gift that I can give from a mycologist to a friend. This is a rare old growth mushroom called Agarikon, only grows in the old growth forest, is now on the red list of threatened species, uh, in Europe. This one was found on the ground, folks. So it's important that people don't pick these. They are very rare. Literally, one out of a hundred times in the old growth forest, I'll find one. So this is, uh, really important that people understand how important biodiversity, mycodiversity, we're talking about fungi. Agarikon was first described by Dioscorides over 2,000 years ago as elixirium ad longum vitam.
- NANarrator
Wow.
- PSPaul Stamets
The elixir of long life. It's also revered by the Haida and the Tlingit in the Northwest First Nations as a mushroom very important for their own pharmacopeia. So a 2,000 years history of use, other sides of the world, and directly after 9/11, I was approached by the BioShield, uh, Biodefense Department, and they ran over 2,200 assays. The ser- the concern was, uh, weaponizable viruses. So they saw an article I wrote in Herbal Gram called Novel Antivirals from Mushrooms, a whopping one page long. That's all there was in the scientific literature. So I knew in my intuition this rare species could have some properties. Of more than 2 million samples tested by the US Defense Department, USAMRID, US Army Research Institute, infectious diseases, and NIH, in collaboration of more than 2 million samples, synthetics and natural compounds, we were in the top 10 of all samples active against, in this case, poxviruses, and we're the only natural product. So the- there's a vetted press release that talks about this that we- came out in 2004. So I've dedicated my life, you know, I have a company, and fortunately, I put in a lot of my resources. I've literally spent millions of dollars collecting strains from the old growth forest, and I'm happy to announce that we have more than 107 strains of Agarikon isolated from Northern California, even Northern Arizona, British Columbia, and in Europe. I have now the largest culture library of Agarikon in the world. And so people go, "Why is this important?" Well, it's not only important because the old growth forest are declining. I mean, there's less than 1%, but I believe the old growth forests are cultural libraries that will be essential for biodefense. And from the research that we did with the BioShield program in 2004, then I have a TED Talk in 2008 that talks about this, and that I'm very thankful that we have completed a COVID-19 clinical trial, the results of which was presented at the Georgetown University of Medicine, uh, School of Medicine on September 23rd, 2023. And what we looked at, and my colleagues and superb physicians and researchers led by a great team at the Krupp Center for Integrative Medicine at University of California, San Diego, and it was a double-blind placebo-controlled study. And in that study, um, the idea was to look at vaccine enhancement. So before mRNA vaccines, there's just so much noise and confusion, and you know, the- the sense the dust hadn't settled enough. But the mRNA enhancement vaccine, which is called MOCA19, they gave half the patients a placebo, which was mycelium grown on rice, of- I'm- I'm sorry, just rice, and Agarikon and turkey tail combined that were grown on rice. So one, the control, the placebo, is just rice, neutral, and the other one is Agarikon and turkey tail. That turkey tail is the most well studied medicinal mushroom in the world. We populate a website for physicians at mushroomreferences.com. No branding, just pure science. People can go to mushroomreferences.com and see this. So double-blind placebo-controlled, and they literally recruited people directly out of the vaccination lines or people getting Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and said, "Hey, do you want to be involved in a medicinal mushroom vaccine study, enhancement study?" And people- people then signed up. And so they got hide- uh, they consumed Agarikon or turkey tail or the placebo for four days, and then they measured symptoms post-vaccination, and then six months out. And so I- there are two slides that I have that I sent along to you that I'm allowed to show.
- NANarrator
When- when you say symptoms post-vaccination, w- what do you mean?
- PSPaul Stamets
Well, it's not quite showing up there, Jamie, uh, for some reason, the chart, th- both of them. You might have to do a PNG on the snapshot.
- NANarrator
Which one? Do you want both at the same time?
- PSPaul Stamets
No, just see if you can f- the charts are not showing up for whatever reason.
- NANarrator
Uh... Um, yeah, so...
- PSPaul Stamets
No worries. So what happens, I mean, I've got mRNA vaccine. You feel like you're hit by a truck, right? Th- two days later, your- you got the vaccine and some physicians say, "Well, it's your immune system, uh, acting or reacting."So, there is ten symptoms the CDC has identified, Center for Disease Control, that are adverse events due to vaccines. There are actually, UCSD has 25 symptoms. So the idea was to look at whether agarikon and Turkey tail reduced the adverse effects of vaccines.
- JRJoe Rogan
And how would they do that?
- PSPaul Stamets
Well, they measure, they ask you, "Did you get a headache?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. But I mean, how would the mushrooms reduce the adverse-
- PSPaul Stamets
Well, this is, this is very... This is a very good question. We had to convince the FDA that these were safe. And so because we had sold hundreds of thousands of agarikon and Turkey tail with no adverse effects, we were able to prove that. So it went through these... Called the Institution Review Boards and the FDA for approval, and they approved it. Now, the biggest concern they had was if you stimulate the immune system, which is the, the presumption of how these mushrooms work, you could create a cytokine storm. And so this is one of the charts. Now this was written up in JAMA, um, and the concern was a cytokine storm, uh, poses the greatest risk, uh, not the virus itself. And so when people took agarikon, on day one is where the vaccination occurred with Moderna or Pfizer mRNA, and then if you look at the black line, that's the placebo, which is just the rice. And FOTV is Fome Thompson's Fusionalis Trinitatis Versicolor. That's agarikon and Turkey tail combined. And you'll see that at day two and day three on the scale there, there's almost no adverse effects. And whereas those people who did not take agarikon or Turkey tail had a massive increase in adverse symptoms. Now, article just came out this past year, 30% of people avoid vaccinations because they fear the adverse effects, because they hear people miss school, miss work, they feel terrible. They go, "I don't want to get a vaccine."
- JRJoe Rogan
Not just that. The, the really scary ones like myocarditis, pericarditis, heart attack, strokes, blood clots.
- PSPaul Stamets
All... So the reason why the FDA approved this and we are able to make the argument is we found that these matru mushrooms stimulated what's called, uh, an- anti-inflammatory cytokines, interleukin-1RA and interleukin-10. Now, most of the... When you have an immune response, many of these interleukins is part of your natural immunity, but they can cascade and they can then unthrottled... Create a cytokine storm. So most people then die from overstimulation of the immune system, inflammatory reaction. We found that with agarikon and Turkey tail, we were able to reduce the adverse effects, which are inflammatory effects, headache, sore throat, insomnia, muscle ache, soreness, malaise, et cetera. Insomnia is also included. So this was a big surprise. It was double blind placebo. I had no access to any, any of the data until it was unmasked, which is normal. So we found that, and then something else very, very surprising occurred, and it's due credit to my colleagues. They came up with this idea at the University of California, uh, cr- Krupp Center for Integrative Medicine, is let's look at antibody extension. The idea with the vaccines that you create an, an antibodies to prevent the spike protein from docking on your cells and gaining entrance and infecting your cells. So they looked at people six months later. Now, 89 out of 90 people, I think, came back six months later, tremendous conformity. Let's take your blood six months later. And then, Jamie, if you can pull up the next slide. And this is what we found that was so astonishing, is six months later with the short exposure to agarikon and Turkey tail, there was a carrying on where the antibody response was far greater than that of the reservoir of antibodies just from the vaccine.
- JRJoe Rogan
Are these people that had actually contracted COVID as well?
- PSPaul Stamets
These are what we call naive. We want them... We didn't... When you get COVID, then the antibody response-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
... gets very cloudy, and then you have antibody response from your natural immune system, then you have the, the, the vaccine itself. So these are called the vaccine naive group. I mean, the virus n- naive group. We did not want them to have the virus.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PSPaul Stamets
So we tracked them to make sure that they did not get the virus. But this elevates you into a state of immune readiness. And this is the thing I did not know. I did not know if you're immunologically depressed, you have immunological lower activity due to whatever, whatever reason. If you get a vaccine, your antibody response is not that great. Your immune cell levels are very low. They're very... Not, not very active. What's exciting about this to the immunologist is that if you can upregulate immunity and then get the vaccine, your immune cell population is much more robust, much more responsive, and so the antibody response is much greater. And this is what we found. The fact that it extended out six months, we didn't go out a year, we didn't go out longer.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Mm-hmm. …
- PSPaul Stamets
cattle, from Idaho-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
... and it's now, uh, got scientists on high alert.
- JRJoe Rogan
It says bur- this is, uh, from Nature, it says, "Bird flu outbreak in US cows, why scientists are concerned. A virus has killed hundreds of millions of birds, ha- (coughs) has now infected cattle in six US states, but the threat to humans is currently low." Currently?
- PSPaul Stamets
Currently low because if it jumps to pigs, we already know that viruses that infect pigs can infect very likely humans. So cows and pigs are oftentimes in the same farms.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. And if it jumps to pigs-
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... we're in trouble.
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah, we're in big trouble because that's, that's just one species away. Historically in virology, um, swine viruses, H1N1 is swine flu. We have found high activity wi- at the BioShield program of agarikon also against H1N1 and H5N1.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it possible to give this to cows?
- PSPaul Stamets
Don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
Don't know. Um, so my concern and those of other virologists that I've been in contact with for literally decades now is it's strange that six herds of cattle from Idaho to Oklahoma to Texas would spontaneously get bird flu. It's not like the cattle made contact with each other. So there's more than one epicenter. When you have these epizo- zoot- zoootic, zoonotic centers where the virus can jump to larger mammals, then you have many, many, you know, ground zeros, you know, for the virus to emerge. So if it jumps to swines or to, to pigs or hogs, the increased likelihood that it jumps to people. So it's, it's a very big concern. With Wuhan, uh, okay, it came out of one city, one location. But this is showing epidemiologically that the virus is jumping to larger mammals simultaneously. Right now, it doesn't have the mutation, uh, and so there's very low risk. Let's be very clear about that. There's very low risk, but virologists are on extremely high alert because of this unusual pattern of sudden occurrence, first time ever. It's jumped to seals and bears, of a- all things, um, and it's devastated hundreds of millions of, of, uh, of birds around the world.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did they have any idea where this ... It's, so it, it originated with birds?
- PSPaul Stamets
Yes, it's called bird flu.
- JRJoe Rogan
And do they think that it's just birds traveling to these different herds?
- PSPaul Stamets
Generally speaking, that's the, that's the modality that most-
- JRJoe Rogan
So they just fly around, give it to new cows-
- PSPaul Stamets
If I- They find they go into a pond-
- JRJoe Rogan
... fly around, give it to new cows. Mm-hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
You know, they're co- commingling the virus in the drinking water.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
You know, i- e- egrets sit on top of cows and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PSPaul Stamets
... get bugs off the backs of, of, uh, you know, of large mammals, et cetera. So migratory birds, of course, is the most obvious vector.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
But when you have factory farming of chickens and mi- uh, hundreds of thousands of chickens this past year, I think hundreds of millions of chickens if you look it up, have been euthanized in the past year because they did get H5N1.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
And so the chickens start sneezing and they get sick and it's extremely communicable.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Excellent question. With the…
- JRJoe Rogan
is... uh, are some more potent than others or some have different effects?
- PSPaul Stamets
Excellent question. With the BioShield program, I think I submitted six strains of agarikon. Only three showed any, any activity in the BioShield program.
- JRJoe Rogan
So three showed nothing?
- PSPaul Stamets
Three showed nothing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
Um, two of them were active against, uh, flu viruses. And, uh, one of them was, uh, uh, active against poxviruses.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
Now that's weird because poxviruses are DNA viruses, flu viruses are RNA viruses, and so you think the modality would be different. But it just speaks to the fact how little we know. I met, um, a Nobel la- uh, laureate in San Diego who got the Nobel Prize in immunology. And I'm not gonna mention his name, but he gave a great quote, he goes, "I can't believe I got the Nobel Prize because I know shit about the immune system." (laughs) And here's the Nobel laureate.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- PSPaul Stamets
He ga- he just said, "It is so incredibly complex. Every time we think we understand it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PSPaul Stamets
...that we're challenged with new ideas that are contrary to our assumptions."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
So it's really important to keep an open mind. The, the beauty of, uh, agarikon and turkey tail is a multi-thousand year history of use. Traditional Chinese medicine has been s- advocating this for l- literally 2,000 years. Long history in Europe, long history in, in North America with indigenous first- first nations. So this is, I mean, I think... So let me really put this into context. Alexander Fleming, most people know the story, in 1929 he got a mold and his Petri dish was growing staph bacteria, and there was a zone of inhibition and the bacteria stopped growing. So he looked at that margin of no growth and he thought, "Well, that mold is ex- excreting something." It turned out to be penicillin. So he published that and there's a massive number of researchers all over the world, especially in London and Europe, started isolating molds to see if they could find a highly potent strain that produced penicillin. So, but they couldn't industrialize it. And in the Netherlands at the Imperial College, they did a lot of work, but they couldn't scale up the production of penicillin, uh, during World War II until a lab researcher by the name of Mary Hunt working in Peoria, Illinois at a USDA laboratory went to a farmer's market and found a moldy cantaloupe. And the moldy cantaloupe was covered with a golden mold, and so Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillium notatum, she discovered that Penicillium chrysogenum, chrysogenum means the gold, golden color, and then she isolated that mold and it tu- turned out to produce six times more penicillin, at least, of any other strain hitherto we discovered. And with the advantage that we had in the United States is that we had corn steep liquor. We grow corn. And a coin- you take corn cobs, you boil them in water, you can make corn steep liquor, and that turned out to be a perfect medium for the massive production of penicillin.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- PSPaul Stamets
The Germans, they had a factory that was making penicillin, it got bombed, so they were, they were kicked out of the race, but Japanese ne- developed it. Penicillin literally saved hundreds of millions of dollars because of Mary Hunt's cantaloupe.
- JRJoe Rogan
You mean lives.
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hundreds of millions of lives.
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah. Sorry, I underspoke. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
No worries.
- PSPaul Stamets
Uh, hundreds of millions of lives, uh, because of her moldy cantaloupe.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's wild.
- PSPaul Stamets
And just, I think agarikon with 107 strands, when we start s- sequencing them, we see the whole genome sequencing on 95 strains so far, whole genomic sequencing, so we have the entire genomic fingerprint. And to go back to your question, we have found four or so different clades. These are s- little sub-genre, uh, s- s- s- sub genomic, uh, associations, lineages you might call them. And in those lineages, we are just beginning to see early signal of what lineages h- have greater potency, um, in, as an anti-inflammatory and also for supporting the immune system. So it's, this is my biggest contribution to science, I hope, historically, will be because of this library. And I've literally spent millions of dollars, I'm not exaggerating, millions of dollars on agarikon to amass the 107 strains, and we're accumulating more. We're gonna publish this, uh, i- in the in, uh, in, uh, in the commons, w- in, in the, uh, large genomic, uh, library databases so other people can see this.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so you said there's four strains that you identified that were particularly effective?
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah, that was, that was, it was the Bioshield program. And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
So out of the 107, how many of them were viable?
- PSPaul Stamets
Well, we didn't have 107 back then. I only had six or seven strains back then at the Bioshield program in 2004. So in 2024 now we have 107. We only had one choice for the COVID-19 clinical study, so I chose the strain of agarikon that was the most robust, uh, that we saw in our early in vitro tests with the Bioshield program.
- JRJoe Rogan
And out of these 107 strains you have currently-
- PSPaul Stamets
Yes.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
(laughs) …
- PSPaul Stamets
heroic experience on Amanita pantherina. And, uh, that one was very, uh, it... I had repetitive motion syndrome and I was living up in the mountains. I had freeze-dried Amanita pantherina. I knew it didn't have muscarine. I'd eaten muscaria. I foamed a lot. It wasn't that much fun. So I knew pantherina was four to five times more potent. So I took the freeze-dried specimens from the herbarium, from the college I was working at. I was living in, underneath a volcano up in Darrington, Washington, and I was with my friend, Dave, and he had... He has smaller body weight and so we made an omelet and let's try pantherina. And he trusted me. Um, note to self, note to others. And so we ate the pantherina, um, in an omelet, and I cut the omelet bigger for me because I'm bigger body weight than him. And we ate the mushrooms like at 10 o'clock in the morning, you know, in an omelet, they were delicious. And, uh, just across the river was a Squire Creek campground. And this is where the tourists come up in their Winnebagos and, you know, campers and their families and stuff, and we're long haired hippies. And, um, I said, "You know, just on the other side there is this hill that we can get up on the hillside. There's an incredible view of the valley, the snow capped volcano, just a great vista. Let's go there." So we, for some reason, it's so close but we drove my car, like, you know, 1,000 feet to this campground, went over the bridge, over this little river and we parked, you know, you know, just on the outside of the campground, right where all the campers are. And so we walked past, you know, all these tourists and their families, and we went up on the hill. And then we're sitting up on the hill and, uh, waiting for the mushrooms to come on in like an hour. Nothing, no experience, like, you know, what's going on? And this is very typical, by the way, this is characteristic. Amanita muscaria and pantherina take a long time for the onset of first symptoms. And then, uh, we're up on the hill and I'm looking out into her right, beautiful view, and suddenly... (imitates explosion) What was that? (imitates explosion) This look, this sort of, this, this wave came through our visual field, like this invisible wave. And I said, "Did you feel that?" And he goes, "Yeah, I felt that too." And like, whoa, we're feeling the same thing and then... (imitates explosion) And so our visual field started getting distorted and they start coming on so fast. We're going, "Holy shit, we got to get out of here."
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- PSPaul Stamets
You know, this is coming on too fast. Let's go back home and be... 'cause it's more intense. So we walk back through and I have a Rolleiflex camera, 35 millimeter, been a photographer all my life. And, uh, and then we're walking through the back side of the campground and there's all these kids and families and Winnebagos and camper vans and, and then I remember this one Winnebago, it was like the longest Winnebago in the universe. Every time I was walking... (imitates explosion) It was a Winnebago of no end. I couldn't get past this one Winnebago. I kept on walking... (imitates explosion) My friend... And then finally, we get past this Winnebago, seemed like it took forever and there's my car. And for some frigging reason, I locked the door. (gasps) And I have my keys and I looked at the keyhole of the door and I looked at my keys, I went-... missed that one (laughs) did it again, pfff, missed that one, just a pfff, then my friend goes, "Everything okay, Paul?" I goes, "Everything's fine, just give me some time." And then, you know, after, uh, I don't know how many times, magically, just by the fact that I tried so many times I think, it just slipped into the lock and, uh, unlocked the door. I say, "Okay," so I sit in the car and now I have to put it in the ignition and I'm going boom, oh no, boom, and my friend goes, "Maybe you shouldn't drive." (laughs)
- NANarrator
Ugh.
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah, good advice. Maybe I shouldn't drive. So, uh, it is no way. I couldn't, and it was getting more and more intense. I was not responsible to drive, you know, so absolutely the right decision not to drive. So then I got out of the car and the camera was on my lap and then I got out of my car and, you know, meanwhile a group of people started gathering 'cause we were there for a long time trying to get into the car and then trying to... and so these people got kind of curious and Dave goes, "You know, some people over there are kind of gathering, Paul, looking at us," and I'm going, "Oh my God, I didn't want to look at them." And so-
- NANarrator
Ugh. (laughs)
- PSPaul Stamets
... I get out of the car and my camera falls and it hits the ground.
- NANarrator
(inhales deeply)
- PSPaul Stamets
I go, "Oh, shit. My cam- I just dropped my Rolleiflex camera," and then I picked up the camera and going, "Wow, I just dropped my Rolleiflex camera," pfff, I drop it again.
- NANarrator
Oh, no.
- PSPaul Stamets
And I pick it up. I go, "Did I just drop my Rolleiflex camera?" Pfff, dropped it again. Repetitive motion syndrome. I picked up that camera and dropped it dozens and dozens of times.
- NANarrator
Oh my God.
- PSPaul Stamets
Meanwhile the- the cluster of people got larger. Parents were hud- uh, were holding their children close to them (laughs) saying, "We don't know what's going on here, but it's getting weird over there." So pretty soon I had a very large group of these campers that were all watching us-
- NANarrator
Oh my God, yeah, yeah.
- PSPaul Stamets
... but they're keeping, they're keeping their distance and I had this repetitive motion syndrome of dropping and dropping and dropping, until finally, you know, we had this staccato pace. The timeline of the day got broken up so I had morning when we ate, then I had evening, then I had early afternoon, and then I had early morning, then I had late afternoon, then I had evening. The whole thread of time was disintegrated, like, and scrambled, and so then we walked and, uh, and- and I lost Dave, you know? Dave, I figured, "Dave, you're on your own, buddy." (laughs) "I got enough to work- deal with here." And so we walked over, then we walked over this bridge and we got to my place, and I got to my house and I had a combination lock on the door, I'm going-
- NANarrator
Oh my God.
- PSPaul Stamets
... "Last thing I need is another..." So I spun that combination lock and I couldn't get it open and- and then I went into convulsions and they felt good, so I'm convulsing on the ground, spiking like this, and every time I convulsed, right afterwards, it actually felt good. And so, like, you know, I'm convulsing but it seems to be helping me, so I convulsed and, you know, thrashed on the ground, don't know what happened to Dave, and so I go back to the lock and I spun it and just magically the lock opened up and then I fell into bed. And then I had this amazing rush of Einsteinian- Eis- Einsteinian thoughts. The thoughts were just so profound, I go, "Oh my gosh, if I could write these down. These are just, like, so important," you know, uh, conclusions of great mysteries of the universe. I have this at my hand and just before I came to the object of the sentence, I would have a prepositional, uh, or adverbial phrase, and then I'd get a tangent.
- NANarrator
Oh no.
- PSPaul Stamets
And I saw death then as being perpetual tangents that never gave you the satisfaction of having completed a thought. So I went down this rabbit hole of constantly forks in my thinking-
- NANarrator
(exhales deeply)
- PSPaul Stamets
... and then I blacked out and, um, and then at the end of the day, um, you know, the sunlight came through. It was a 12 experience. This is a long experience and so it was in the summertime and then at, you know, the very end of the- the day, the sunlight came through and flickered on my eyelids and- and- and I woke up and, uh, and my friend was convinced I was trying to kill him because I was a mushroom expert (laughs) so, um, I had no idea this was be- be this intense. So-
- NANarrator
Where is he?
- PSPaul Stamets
But they-
- NANarrator
Where- where was he during this time?
- PSPaul Stamets
Um, he ended up in the- in the cabin and safe, but he was, like, like a statue, you know? He was just there sitting when I got up, just looking straight forward, um, and we spoke a few words the next day and for the next few days and then, uh, you know, Dave, uh, went on his life journey. I think he's convinced to this day that I knew what- what happened, but this speaks to the berserkers, the idea of repetitive motion syndrome. Andy Weil, who you've had on this show, he was at Cougar Hot Springs and he was going to trail at Cougar Hot Springs when somebody ran down the trail and said, "We need a doctor. We need a doctor. This- this person up there is trying to kill himself." And Andy is a doctor so he goes up there and there's this big hippie guy and he's on this log, or on- on the bridge swinging his legs wildly, covered with blood, and before Andy's eyes, this guy throws himself off the bridge.
- NANarrator
(inhales deeply)
- PSPaul Stamets
Right onto the rocks in the creek down below, you know? 10 feet or more below.
- NANarrator
(exhales deeply)
- PSPaul Stamets
Smashes himself and gets stunned and looks around and walks back up and gets on the bridge again and throws himself off the bridge.
- NANarrator
Oh my God.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Nice. …
- PSPaul Stamets
down, we're at fungi.com, F-U-N-G-I .com. I registered that myself for 28 bucks.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nice.
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
When did you get that? What year?
- PSPaul Stamets
1992.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- PSPaul Stamets
Network solution.
- JRJoe Rogan
You were early.
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You had to be super early to get that. (laughs)
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah, it's funny. People don't want to write it down. I go, "It's a kingdom. You don't have to write it down. It's fungi.com." So...
- JRJoe Rogan
That's amazing that you got that domain.
- PSPaul Stamets
But-
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, I use your stuff. Uh, I've, I've had your stuff at my house for a long time. I think it's great. And, and I'm so happy that you're out there. I really am. I'm, I'm happy that... I mean, there's not a lot of Paul Stamets in the world. And-
- PSPaul Stamets
There, there are a lot of unsung heroes. I, I have a lot of attention-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm sure you're so humble. But my point is that it's like, we really need, um, research on this stuff.
- PSPaul Stamets
We need a lot of-
- JRJoe Rogan
This stuff-
- PSPaul Stamets
... a lot of research. And the research is becoming increasingly credible. It's... The University of Arizona Medical School, Andy Weil Center, uh, Program for Integrative Medicine, University of California, San Diego, UCLA, um, Harvard, actually, um, and other institutions, uh, they're very excited now because this has been sort of, like, weird science, you know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what I was gonna get at. I was gonna say there's... The... There's this real reluctance to believe that people in the past had answers-... that we don't have today. It, this is the, this, this, um, almost religious belief in modern science. And also, this belief that the, the, the transition of knowledge has been fully complete from ancient people to today, and there's, nothing has slipped through the net. That's, that doesn't seem to be the case, and also, for sure, they didn't, they didn't have the ability to document things, at least, uh, and, and preserve those documents to today like we can today with the, in, in re- in regards to research, in regards to what you could find out and the modern laboratories and just what you're able to do to find out which of these mycelium strains are effective, which of them are not, eh- eh- at least for the particular thing you're looking for. Like, all this w- you've, you've gotta assume at one point in time, people had some sort of knowledge about this stuff that we, uh, just have lost.
- PSPaul Stamets
We had to. We were so dependent upon the environment.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PSPaul Stamets
We know what plants are edible from the experiences of our ancestors-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PSPaul Stamets
... who ate them before us.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it doesn't discredit-
- PSPaul Stamets
Doesn't-
- JRJoe Rogan
... modern medicine to say-
- PSPaul Stamets
No, not at all.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that these people had this extraordinary understanding of what was beneficial.
- 1:15:00 – 1:25:44
Well, let me show…
- JRJoe Rogan
to make a correction?
- PSPaul Stamets
Well, let me show the next slide with the graph, if you can see it. The, um, the reason why is that there was a typo in the original article.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- PSPaul Stamets
And it's the one with a bar graph, if you can see it. And, um- On the email list I got, it's a little tough to find the links. Sorry.
- JRJoe Rogan
No worries.
- PSPaul Stamets
Does it-
- JRJoe Rogan
How long have you had this company, Host Defense?
- PSPaul Stamets
I've started it, that Host Defense ran about 2004, is when I started it.
- JRJoe Rogan
I see them everywhere now. I see them in health food stores and shit.
- PSPaul Stamets
We're the number one mushroom-based immune product line.
- JRJoe Rogan
Get excited for you when I see them.
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, look at Paul. Go Paul, go.
- PSPaul Stamets
Do you want me to grab the slides? Okay. This is, yeah, we'll just go. This is the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- PSPaul Stamets
This is the app. We can go through the four slides here. That, that'll be great. So this is the app, microdose.me. I encourage everyone listening to help us because now the app has been improved. It was a little bit laborious before. We want to go out to three months. We want non-micro dosers and micro dosers, but please, the non-micro dosers, we need your input. These are challenge tests and they're-
- JRJoe Rogan
So these are acuity tasks?
- PSPaul Stamets
Acuity tasks.
- JRJoe Rogan
That are on the-
- PSPaul Stamets
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... actual app itself?
- PSPaul Stamets
There's vision, hearing, memory.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PSPaul Stamets
Um, there is, um, how do you feel, et cetera. So we'll go-
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I ask you before I forget?
- PSPaul Stamets
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Who was the scientist that, uh, ran those studies a long time ago where they showed that, uh, psilocybin in low doses, uh, increased, uh, edge detection, it increased your ability to see whether two parallel lines, one of them had gone off of parallel?
- PSPaul Stamets
I, I do know of the reference. I do not remember who-
- JRJoe Rogan
Foreign scientist?
- PSPaul Stamets
Yeah.
Episode duration: 2:32:34
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