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Joe Rogan Experience #2134 - Paul Stamets

Paul Stamets is a mycologist and advocate for bioremediation and medicinal fungi. He has written, edited, and contributed to several books, including "Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World," and "Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet." www.paulstamets.com

Paul StametsguestJoe Roganhost
Apr 11, 20242h 32mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:15

    Agarikon: rare old-growth mushroom, ancient medicine, and biodefense potential

    1. NA

      (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?

    2. PS

      Hey.

    3. NA

      Good to see you again.

    4. PS

      Good to see you, brother.

    5. NA

      It's been a while.

    6. PS

      It's been a while, and there's a lot of interesting developments. So this is the never-ending story, I feel.

    7. NA

      The never-ending story of mushrooms.

    8. PS

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    9. NA

      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.

    10. PS

      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.

    11. NA

      Wow.

    12. PS

      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

  2. 3:15 – 9:03

    COVID-19 clinical trial: mushroom mycelium reducing vaccine side effects

    1. PS

      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.

    2. NA

      When- when you say symptoms post-vaccination, w- what do you mean?

    3. PS

      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.

    4. NA

      Which one? Do you want both at the same time?

    5. PS

      No, just see if you can f- the charts are not showing up for whatever reason.

    6. NA

      Uh... Um, yeah, so...

    7. PS

      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.

    8. JR

      And how would they do that?

    9. PS

      Well, they measure, they ask you, "Did you get a headache?"

    10. JR

      Right. But I mean, how would the mushrooms reduce the adverse-

    11. PS

      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."

    12. JR

      Not just that. The, the really scary ones like myocarditis, pericarditis, heart attack, strokes, blood clots.

    13. PS

      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,

  3. 9:03 – 12:07

    Antibody durability and “immune readiness”: a surprising six‑month effect from four days of dosing

    1. PS

      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.

    2. JR

      Are these people that had actually contracted COVID as well?

    3. PS

      These are what we call naive. We want them... We didn't... When you get COVID, then the antibody response-

    4. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. PS

      ... 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.

    6. JR

      Right.

    7. PS

      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.

    8. JR

      And this is just for a short dosing?

    9. PS

      Short dosing of only four days.

    10. JR

      And this was the dosing that happened right after the vaccine?

    11. PS

      Uh, right simultaneously in the same day-

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. PS

      ... the vaccine for four days. Now, this is where... This is one of my favorite phrases by Volterra, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." You can twist yourselves into pretzels just to try to explain how this works.

    14. JR

      Right.

    15. PS

      But the bottom line, it does work. And if you could upregulate community immunity of the population, the problem that I did not realize is immunologically depressed people, when they get a vaccine, their antibody response is not only poor, but they become a breeding ground for vaccine resistance. So you have a lot more virus replicating. You want to stop the viral replication-... early on in the process. So the more antibody response, the more robust your response is, specific to th- this virus and other viruses. And this is what we're really wondering now, wow, how does this carry over to other viruses?

  4. 12:07 – 13:33

    Mechanisms (and limits): anti-inflammatory cytokines, multi-pathway ‘entourage’ effects, and what can’t be claimed yet

    1. JR

      Can I stop you? Like, how does it work? Like what is, what's the mechanism that's causing this to, to happen?

    2. PS

      We think there is an entourage effect of multiple mechanisms that are in play. We know that increases cell immunity, so daughter cells, when they're created, don't pass on the virus. We've been able to show that, which is extraordinary. But it speaks to host defensive immunity, the immune cells, the, the, your immune cells are enabled, your endogenous immune system's able to prevent the virus f- from replicating. And that's what's, what's so exciting. We know the anti-inflammatory effects. So we have this, as one person said, as you're putting on the gas pedal and you put on the brakes at the same time, you can augment immunity and decrease inflammation. Now that's, that's what these vaccine companies are spending billions of dollars, let's create a vaccine without any adverse effects. The fact that you can take a natural product that's been used for thousands of years, uh, Dioscorides is one of the father, uh, fathers of medicine. The fact that it's been used for, by s- for so long, we know it's safe, and now in this time, we are finding we have 100 plus strains of agarikon, so I think we have a super strain in my library, and that's what I'm trying to discover, what strain in our library of 107 strains now, do we have a ... We just used one strain and we saw these, these effects. So if we can boost community immunity, then we can ameliorate the spread, you know, of pandemics, obviously.

  5. 13:33 – 14:28

    Strain diversity and conservation: 107 Agarikon strains, reintroduction challenges, and why old-growth matters

    1. JR

      And when you're saying there's all these different strains, there's 107 strains?

    2. PS

      We have 107 strains in our library, the largest library in the world. There are probably f- hundreds of thousands of strains if there are hundreds of thousands of mushrooms or millions of mushrooms, but there aren't. This, this, th- this species is rapidly on the brink of, um, of becoming ex- extremely threatened, if not extinct now.

    3. JR

      Can, can it be repopulated?

    4. PS

      We can culture it in a laboratory. All we need is a tiny piece of tissue.

    5. JR

      You can't reintroduce it into forests?

    6. PS

      We have inoculated from snags, which have been unsuccessful. Um, the idea would be we'd like to reintroduce it into forests, or we can ... These forests are like islands, genomic libraries on islands that we need to protect. And this is why I made the statement in my TED Talk, we should save the old growth forests as a matter of national defense. That's not quite correct, it's for international defense. You know, viruses don't care about borders.

    7. JR

      Right.

  6. 14:28 – 31:02

    ‘Viral storms’ and bird flu: factory farming, multi-epicenter spread, and pandemic risk framing

    1. PS

      And we're entered ... Joe, we've entered into a period of viral storms. We're gonna have viral storms converging at us all the time now. And it's due to factory farming, the collision of industrialization, suburbanization, ecosystems on those margins. What we're facing now that's currently in the news is bird flu. Six different, uh, herds of cattle have been infected with bird flu. First time in history. First time in history. It's jumped from birds to large mammals, cattle, from Idaho-

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. PS

      ... and it's now, uh, got scientists on high alert.

    4. JR

      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?

    5. PS

      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.

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm. And if it jumps to pigs-

    7. PS

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      ... we're in trouble.

    9. PS

      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.

    10. JR

      Is it possible to give this to cows?

    11. PS

      Don't know.

    12. JR

      Hmm.

    13. PS

      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.

    14. JR

      Did they have any idea where this ... It's, so it, it originated with birds?

    15. PS

      Yes, it's called bird flu.

    16. JR

      And do they think that it's just birds traveling to these different herds?

    17. PS

      Generally speaking, that's the, that's the modality that most-

    18. JR

      So they just fly around, give it to new cows-

    19. PS

      If I- They find they go into a pond-

    20. JR

      ... fly around, give it to new cows. Mm-hmm.

    21. PS

      You know, they're co- commingling the virus in the drinking water.

    22. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    23. PS

      You know, i- e- egrets sit on top of cows and-

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. PS

      ... 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.

    26. JR

      Hmm.

    27. PS

      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.

    28. JR

      Hmm.

    29. PS

      And so the chickens start sneezing and they get sick and it's extremely communicable.

    30. JR

      Hmm.

  7. 31:02 – 37:32

    From penicillin to Agarikon genomics: why “moldy cantaloupe” matters for modern discovery

    1. PS

      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.

    2. JR

      Wow.

    3. PS

      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.

    4. JR

      You mean lives.

    5. PS

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Hundreds of millions of lives.

    7. PS

      Yeah. Sorry, I underspoke. (laughs)

    8. JR

      No worries.

    9. PS

      Uh, hundreds of millions of lives, uh, because of her moldy cantaloupe.

    10. JR

      That's wild.

    11. PS

      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.

    12. JR

      And so you said there's four strains that you identified that were particularly effective?

    13. PS

      Yeah, that was, that was, it was the Bioshield program. And so-

    14. JR

      So out of the 107, how many of them were viable?

    15. PS

      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.

    16. JR

      And out of these 107 strains you have currently-

    17. PS

      Yes.

    18. JR

      ... how many of them have you tested?

    19. PS

      Um, well, in terms of, um... How many have we tested for immune support?

    20. JR

      Yeah, for everything. For-

    21. PS

      Clinic- clinically? Only one.

    22. JR

      Only one?

    23. PS

      In vitro, I think s- seven or eight. Some of them are not active. We are currently involved with another university who is now testing multiple strains in vitro, and we have new signal now, and, um, I want to show you how big these agarikons get. So Jamie, if you could... Yeah.

    24. JR

      Okay. Before we go any further, when, when you identify ones that aren't active, do you, uh, bookmark them and see if you can try them for other things that could be beneficial to the human body? Or do you just only look at the immune system and do you a- always assume that they only have one mechanism?

    25. PS

      Um, we... The answer to that question, I'm a very small company. I have 150 employees, you know, own, own the whole company. Um, I have eight or nine full-time researchers. There are so many applications potentially of this, we have to be very narrowly focused on that which we can achieve. If I was a part-

    26. JR

      So it's a resource issue then?

    27. PS

      It's, it's a resource issue. If I was a part of NIH or... And I've made NIH applications, you know, one out of eight, you knows made it through. Um, but it's very, very difficult for an independent researcher like me to-... advance the science without collaboration with larger entities. So mostly universities.

    28. JR

      It seems like if there's- if we're- we're finding these benefits in these mushrooms, it seems like it's to anybody- to everyone's benefit if there was some large-scale funding of some research on this. 'Cause if you bookmark these ones that don't have efficacy towards a specific goal that you have, is it possible that we would be missing out on some of the other, uh, additional benefits of these mushrooms that we're not aware of in these different strains?

    29. PS

      As an immunologist on our team said, because inflammation is s- is at the root cause of so many illnesses, the fact it can up-regulate your immunity and down-regulate inflammation has- has implications across the medical field.

    30. JR

      Right. But they- but they don't all show this ability, correct?

  8. 37:32 – 40:54

    Field collecting, giant Agarikon specimens, and the ‘why doesn’t it rot?’ question

    1. PS

      The weird thing about agarikon, from my experience, it's the only mushroom that grows on an old growth tree. All these other trees I find, I find four or five, six, maybe 10 different species. But when I find agarikon, you know, this is an example, this is my good friend Scott Baker, he climbed 100 feet up to this agarikon. We got a s- tiny piece of tissue the size of your fingernail from the bottom of that, and we got it at that in culture. Four or five years later, a storm came through, broke off that tree that's- that- that agarikon now is not there.

    2. JR

      Oh, no.

    3. PS

      So we saved it. We've saved it from fires, agarikon, we've saved from logging. I've actually had some logger buddies of mine who know about this.

    4. JR

      Look at the size of that one.

    5. PS

      This is the biggest one we've ever seen. Um, and, uh, this one is over 100 pounds, uh, over 100 years of age. And, um, it is, um-

    6. JR

      That's crazy. It looks like cement.

    7. PS

      Oh, it is- those are annual growth rings.

    8. JR

      Wow.

    9. PS

      Basically. Basically, they're annual growth rings. Um, I have to say, this is- this is- this is, my- my kind of guy. He's known as Yosemite Sam, and I do have permission to show this, so thanks, thank you.

    10. JR

      He looks like Yosemite Sam.

    11. PS

      Yeah. (laughs)

    12. JR

      (laughs)

    13. PS

      But this- this guy, I mean, that is a massive agarikon, the biggest one I've ever seen.

    14. JR

      That's insane.

    15. PS

      So- so think about it, these grow in the old growth forests, subject to vast weather changes, wind and rain and snow, and they live for 100 years and they don't rot.

    16. JR

      Mm.

    17. PS

      What is- what is about this fungus that allows it not to rot? Um, so it- it seems to have a host defense of protection innately. And since we're more closely related to fungi than any other kingdom, and the- what- the antibacterial antibiot- bi- biotics that we've found mostly have come from fungi. But with very few antifungal antibiotics. And so research is also showing that these agarikon and other polypore mushrooms are active against pathogenic fung- fungi. So it's this interesting nexus point that agarikon's in the center of antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal, and yet has such a long history of use and safety. So we're really at the threshold. This is where science can get ahead of itself and be so reductionist, but you know, we are whole systems of enormous complexity, um, and science tries to decomplexify and disambiguate things so it's very narrowly focused so they have a stimulus response they can measure. That's not way the human, uh, immune system works. You know, it's a- it's a entourage effect and synergy and keeping that in balance is the key. Now there- there's between two and 20 million species of fungi. Uh, about 10%, about 140,000 species to 200,000 species or so are mushroom-forming fungi. We've only identified 14,000. There's another real curious phenomenon. About 1% of mushrooms are poisonous. About 1% of them are edible and choice. About 1% of them are psychoactive, are psilocybin present. The other 97%, they're just, you know, they just don't taste good, they're not poisonous, they're not of interest.

  9. 40:54 – 1:25:44

    Amanita muscaria vs psilocybin: folklore, legality, and the dangers of repetitive motion syndrome

    1. JR

      But what do you think is going on with the Amanita muscaria? Because the- the Amanita muscaria is one where there's this historic use, there's all this mythology that's connected to Santa Claus and shamans and elves and all these different things. But most of the people that I know that have tried it have not been able to experience like extreme psychoactive effects.

    2. PS

      I have consumed Aman- Amanita muscaria and Amanita pantherina, um, on multiple occasions. And my Amanita mus- muscaria but higher doses, it's a- it's a somniferous, it can put you to sleep. Uh, I get dull yellows and browns. It's not a euphoric experience. You know-

    3. JR

      What, dark yellows and browns? What do you mean-

    4. PS

      Yeah, dark- the colors are not bright, you know?

    5. JR

      Oh, okay.

    6. PS

      It's not like you're flying saucer in the background here. Everything is-

    7. JR

      Okay.

    8. PS

      ... very, very diminished in terms of- of the colorama. You know, it tends to be muted colors, reds and browns, but not blues and, you know, fractals and things like that.

    9. JR

      So you're talking about what you see that is, uh, a hallucination? Are you talking about like actual colors that you see look differently?

    10. PS

      The actual colors I look, uh, look at, uh, are different. And-

    11. JR

      So it ex- it changes the- the visual spectrum?

    12. PS

      It changes the visual spectrum. Now, Amanita pantherina, see, Amanita muscaria has muscimol, muscarine, and ibotenic acid. Actually had very little muscarine. Um, but, and the muscarinic symptoms cause you to salivate.And as you send up, you know, salivating and tearing and, um, lac- lactating, et cetera. So it's a, um... So these shamans in Siberia, by consuming Amanita muscaria, they would remove the muscarinic symptoms. And then the urine, because they bio-filter it through their body, it would be high in ibotenic acid and, and, and musimol. And these are the, uh, can, in a sense, purifies it. So, I mean, th- this is a legend that's mixed up in fiction and fact-

    13. NA

      Hmm.

    14. PS

      ... and fables. I will say, in the field of mycology, from my experience now, over 47 years studying this subject, many of the folklore has been validated only lately by science. So before, people th- are super skeptic and think this is, has no relationship. Well, with the Santa Claus myth, hmm, okay, the Amanita muscaria grows underneath, you know, trees, tre- you know, fir trees, chr- fir trees or Christmas trees. There's the berserkers, uh, legend is that the berserkers are surrounded, you know, 10 to one by an, uh, very powerful army. Um, th- these Norwegian, uh, Scandinavians were gonna be slaughtered the next day. They made a giant pot of Amanita muscaria, you know, a brew. They drank it, and then at dawn, high as a kite on the Amanita muscaria, they took off all their clothes and they just become these mechanistic warriors that attacked the other side, freaked them out, and they won the battle. So that was the, how the word berserk came about-

    15. NA

      Hmm.

    16. PS

      ... from the berserkers. They went berserk. And so that's the origin of that.

    17. NA

      And it is Amanita muscaria that we're assuming they took?

    18. PS

      Amanita muscaria, but Amanita pantherina does not have, uh, muscarine in it. So I ate Amanita muscaria several times. I was with my friend and I looked at him and he was foaming with bubbles all around his mouth. (laughs) I said, "Dude, you look like you have rabies." He goes, "You should see what you look like." (laughs) You know, so we're both like... And so, um, and it puts you to sleep. The biggest concern about Amanita muscaria is hypothermia by most of us experts, because you can actually fall asleep in the snow and then you can get hypothermia and die. Um, very people, few people have, if any, have ever died. There's one potential report. It has killed dogs. Um, but there's a repetitive motion syndrome that's very, very strange. And I ate Amanita pantherina as well, and I don't think I told you this story about my pantherina experience. I don't want to be redundant here, but I had a 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."

    19. NA

      (laughs)

    20. PS

      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)

    21. NA

      Ugh.

    22. PS

      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-

    23. NA

      Ugh. (laughs)

    24. PS

      ... I get out of the car and my camera falls and it hits the ground.

    25. NA

      (inhales deeply)

    26. PS

      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.

    27. NA

      Oh, no.

    28. PS

      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.

    29. NA

      Oh my God.

    30. PS

      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-

  10. 1:06:33 – 1:11:24

    Practical use: capsules vs tinctures, mucosal entry points, and the gut microbiome link

    1. JR

      You have to be robust. You, you have to eat well. You have to take vitamins. You have to get exercise, and, you know, it seems like mushrooms can help you quite a bit. I, I'm, uh, a big fan of lion's mane. I take lion's mane every day.

    2. PS

      Yup.

    3. JR

      That's one of the big ones that I take, I take tinctures-

    4. PS

      I, I, I do, too. Yeah.

    5. JR

      You know, but I b- I wanted to ask you this. Like, are there better ones to take? Uh, uh, is there, is, is, uh, tincture better than capsules? Is capsules better than tinctures?

    6. PS

      No, those-

    7. JR

      Uh.

    8. PS

      ... are good questions. Um, the extracts allow you to d- activates directly to, to, to the mucosa, so it gets into your bloodstream. But for instance, turkey tail, lion's mane, and agarikon are very good as prebiotics, uh, for the, the, uh, microflora in your stomach.

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. PS

      Uh, double blind placebo-controlled study. Again, go to mushroomreferences.com. Um, with, uh, amoxicillin patients where their mi- their microbiome in their gut's destroyed because of this potent, a- antibacterial antibiotic, and so they found when they gave turkey tail mushroom mycelium-... again, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, and they looked at their microbiome, the, those who took turkey tail mycelium, uh, recovering from, uh, w- uh, with amoxicillin end up, um, up-regulating beneficial bacteria and down-reg- r- re- down-regulating staph and clostridium, et cetera. Uh-

    11. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    12. PS

      ... lactobaci- cilus acidophilus, uh, and, uh, and bifidobacterium were up-regulated. These are beneficial bacteria. So there's an example that also, if you orally ingest, then you can set up the microbiome to a higher state of readiness, uh, to help hold stasis, you know, health. Um, and then you absorb the components directly in.

    13. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. PS

      So: it again, it tend- depends on what your target is. If it's general immunity support, then the oral ingestion. If you're l- concerned about the port of entry, you know, like of, of a pathogen, through the mucosa, then obviously, you know, oral introduction, in so far as it supports immunity, can stave off the entry point of the, of those pathogens.

    15. JR

      So, would you recommend both a tincture and capsules? So, the tincture would stave it off at the source?

    16. PS

      I, I cannot respond to anyone using the question recommend.

    17. JR

      Okay.

    18. PS

      I can say what I personally do is a combination of both.

    19. JR

      Okay.

    20. PS

      Again, nature's the number of scans.

    21. JR

      I'm just gonna ask you that from now on. What do you do, Walt?

    22. PS

      (laughs)

    23. JR

      So, you know, I don't wanna get you trapped in these conundrums.

    24. PS

      Yeah. It's, um, I, I, I-

    25. JR

      So you, you take both tincture form and capsule form.

    26. PS

      Yeah. I take a, a throat spray, uh, which has Agarikon and turkey tail in it. I, I love it. That's what I use all the time when I go to concerts and I'm in crowds, et cetera.

    27. JR

      Oh, smart.

    28. PS

      Uh, in the morning I'm taking lion's mane, turkey tail, and, and Agarikon. I'm 68. You know.

    29. JR

      You look great.

    30. PS

      I ... Well, to talk about hubris, I- my partner's a medical doctor, and every time that I feel like, I feel like I'm 30, I don't feel my age at all, the next day I fall off a ladder-

  11. 1:11:24 – 1:32:03

    Microdose.me and the ‘Stamets Stack’: large citizen-science dataset and psychomotor improvements

    1. PS

      Um, but I'm very keen on, um, on stacking, you know, in microdosing. That's something that we've had a lot of activity. And I'd like to give you a huge thank you. And this is very sincere to you and to the JRE audience. And Jamie, can we put up that si- signed, the Nature article on microdosing?

    2. NA

      Give me a second. Sorry.

    3. JR

      No worries.

    4. PS

      And basically when I was here last, we were talking about microdosing, and I came up with a stack of lion's mane and, um, microdosed psilocybin, below the threshold of feeling it, and niacin, nicotinic acid, which is a, a flushing form. And we cl- did a call out for people to join and download an app at microdose.me. It's for iPhones and Androids, so they could measure before and after effects of microdosing. And what we found ... And we published this.

    5. NA

      Yes.

    6. PS

      Um, this is the first article that we published. Um, and this was in 2019, I believe. Oh, 2000, 2021. Uh, this is on their motivations. And if we go to the next article...

    7. NA

      All right.

    8. PS

      Well, we can stop here for a second.

    9. JR

      But just look at the, the title here. Adults who microdose psychedelics report health-related motivations and lower levels of anxiety and depression compared to non-microdosers. What does that mean, health-related motivations?

    10. PS

      Why are you microdosing? Because you are, don't feel creative, because you're depressed, because you're, uh, have anxiety. This is the extraordinary metric. And, uh, this is something you may not realize. This, ma- majority of this came from your audience, this audience right now. But if you look at that, 4,600 non-microdosers, and only 4,000 microdosers.Joe, do you have any idea? We have more citizen scientists who are non-micro dosers who jumped into this app. This is why the editors at Nature liked the study because it was called so well weighted.

    11. JR

      Hmm.

    12. PS

      So well weighted because they're, the, the non-micro dosers exceeded, in this case fairly comparable, but 4,653 non-micro dosers who downloaded the microdose.me app to measure performance and how they felt. The, and Jamie, if we could go to the next, the next one.

    13. JR

      So let, let's be clear here.

    14. PS

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      They, they're non-micro dosers, but they micro dosed for the study?

    16. PS

      Nope.

    17. JR

      No?

    18. PS

      Nope.

    19. JR

      They didn't?

    20. PS

      All they did is got these, these challenge tests. Memory tests-

    21. JR

      So they, so they took the, the, the app, they downloaded the app, but they didn't do anything to their consciousness?

    22. PS

      That's, they didn't do any micro dosing at all.

    23. JR

      Okay.

    24. PS

      So, and this is w- why they were there, and then they're-

    25. JR

      Why do you think so many of them that don't micro dose signed up for that?

    26. PS

      We have no friggin' clue. You, you tell us.

    27. JR

      Wow.

    28. PS

      I, I, I think it may have been citizen scientists who wanted to get a baseline first and then they're just-

    29. JR

      Have you considered people lying because they don't want you to know that they micro dosed?

    30. PS

      It's anonymous, you know?

Episode duration: 2:32:34

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