WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.580 Imagine this. You sit down for a lovely, completely 00:00:03.580 --> 00:00:07.019 normal dinner. You have a dish of wild, beautifully 00:00:07.019 --> 00:00:11.980 cooked mushrooms. They taste incredibly rich, 00:00:12.820 --> 00:00:15.939 nutty, just absolutely packed with umami. Sounds 00:00:15.939 --> 00:00:18.399 great so far. Right. So you finish your meal, 00:00:18.539 --> 00:00:20.920 you clean up the kitchen, you go to sleep. You 00:00:20.920 --> 00:00:23.239 wake up the next day and you go about your morning 00:00:23.239 --> 00:00:27.359 routine. It has been... 12 full hours since that 00:00:27.359 --> 00:00:29.879 meal. And then suddenly you look down at your 00:00:29.879 --> 00:00:33.039 dining room table and there is a bustling, incredibly 00:00:33.039 --> 00:00:36.640 detailed society of 33 centimeter tall people 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:38.899 wearing red and green just, you know, marching 00:00:38.899 --> 00:00:41.079 straight across the wood. And you are completely 00:00:41.079 --> 00:00:43.140 convinced they're real. Yes. Like you can hear 00:00:43.140 --> 00:00:45.000 them, you can watch them interact. Your entire 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:47.939 reality has fundamentally shifted and not in 00:00:47.939 --> 00:00:51.140 some blurry dreamlike way, but a vivid overlay. 00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:53.619 Exactly. A high definition overlay on your actual 00:00:53.619 --> 00:00:55.740 environment. And this isn't, you know, the plot 00:00:55.740 --> 00:00:58.759 of a fantasy novel. This is a very real, scientifically 00:00:58.759 --> 00:01:01.859 documented medical phenomenon. Welcome to today's 00:01:01.859 --> 00:01:04.120 Deep Dive. Glad to be here. Our mission today 00:01:04.120 --> 00:01:07.340 is to explore the completely baffling, honestly 00:01:07.340 --> 00:01:09.920 slightly terrifying and undeniably fascinating 00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:13.659 world of hallucinogenic bolete mushrooms. We've 00:01:13.659 --> 00:01:18.099 got a massive stack of sources today from 1990s 00:01:18.099 --> 00:01:22.120 hospital reports to historical Taoist texts. 00:01:22.319 --> 00:01:25.599 All the way up to cutting edge 2025 and 2026 00:01:25.599 --> 00:01:28.200 pharmacological research. Right. We are going 00:01:28.200 --> 00:01:30.859 to figure out what these mushrooms are, why they 00:01:30.859 --> 00:01:33.280 are driving mycologists crazy. and how they are 00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:35.319 completely rewriting what we thought we knew 00:01:35.319 --> 00:01:38.219 about the human brain. OK, let's unpack this. 00:01:38.579 --> 00:01:41.040 Well, to set a baseline for you, it is crucial 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:43.040 to understand what these mushrooms are not. Right, 00:01:43.040 --> 00:01:44.739 because everyone immediately jumps to the same 00:01:44.739 --> 00:01:46.959 conclusion. Exactly. When most people hear the 00:01:46.959 --> 00:01:48.739 phrase magic mushroom, they immediately think 00:01:48.739 --> 00:01:51.640 of two things. They either picture classic psilocybin 00:01:51.640 --> 00:01:54.439 mushrooms, the little brown ones that bind to 00:01:54.439 --> 00:01:56.859 serotonin receptors. The standard psychedelic 00:01:56.859 --> 00:01:59.579 trip. Yeah. Or they picture Amanita muscaria. 00:01:59.879 --> 00:02:02.420 that iconic red mushroom with the white spots, 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:04.719 which contains a compound called musimil. The 00:02:04.719 --> 00:02:06.840 classic video game mushroom. Right, the Mario 00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:09.240 mushroom. But the bolete mushrooms we are looking 00:02:09.240 --> 00:02:12.280 at today contain neither of those chemicals. 00:02:12.439 --> 00:02:15.080 No psilocybin at all. No psilocybin, no musimil. 00:02:15.520 --> 00:02:18.460 Instead, these are fleshy, porous mushrooms, 00:02:19.180 --> 00:02:22.159 specifically blue -staining boletes, that produce 00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:26.020 a highly specific, very unusual medical phenomenon 00:02:26.020 --> 00:02:29.389 called Lilliputian hallucinations. Which is the 00:02:29.389 --> 00:02:32.610 actual clinical term for seeing visions of tiny 00:02:32.610 --> 00:02:35.069 entities globally referred to as little people. 00:02:35.310 --> 00:02:37.500 Yeah, it's wild. But before we get into where 00:02:37.500 --> 00:02:39.740 these mushrooms grow, we really need to understand 00:02:39.740 --> 00:02:42.120 exactly what happens to a person who eats them. 00:02:42.439 --> 00:02:44.639 Because the clinical reality of these symptoms 00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:48.379 is wildly different from any known psychedelic 00:02:48.379 --> 00:02:50.699 we have on record. It really is. The reported 00:02:50.699 --> 00:02:53.800 effects are profound sensory distortions. Beyond 00:02:53.800 --> 00:02:55.939 seeing the Xiao Ren. Which translates to lots 00:02:55.939 --> 00:02:57.960 of little men, right? Or little people. Exactly, 00:02:58.039 --> 00:02:59.879 yeah. Beyond seeing them, people report seeing 00:02:59.879 --> 00:03:02.580 complex geometric patterns, moving walls, and 00:03:02.580 --> 00:03:04.879 these incredibly specific object transformations. 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:08.469 Oh, like the Yes. We read one medical account 00:03:08.469 --> 00:03:10.849 where a patient stared at their shoelaces and 00:03:10.849 --> 00:03:13.889 the shoelaces literally physically morphed into 00:03:13.889 --> 00:03:17.509 butterflies and flew away. That is insane. In 00:03:17.509 --> 00:03:20.169 another case, every drop of water from a faucet 00:03:20.169 --> 00:03:22.650 turned into a crawling insect. Ugh, horrifying. 00:03:23.009 --> 00:03:24.289 It's like these mushrooms don't just take you 00:03:24.289 --> 00:03:26.689 on a traditional trip. They install a highly 00:03:26.689 --> 00:03:30.229 specific biological augmented reality filter 00:03:30.229 --> 00:03:31.930 over your vision. That's a great way to put it. 00:03:32.090 --> 00:03:34.210 You aren't just seeing colors breathing, you 00:03:34.210 --> 00:03:36.930 know? Your brain is rendering a fully interactive 00:03:36.930 --> 00:03:39.930 society of tiny people overlaid onto the real 00:03:39.930 --> 00:03:43.150 world. So if it's not psilocybin and the timeline 00:03:43.150 --> 00:03:45.740 is so delayed, What exactly is happening in the 00:03:45.740 --> 00:03:48.439 body? Well, to ground this in the hard data, 00:03:48.680 --> 00:03:51.020 we have to look at the medical literature. Specifically, 00:03:51.319 --> 00:03:54.439 a landmark 1991 hospital report from the Yunnan 00:03:54.439 --> 00:03:57.139 province of China. Right. Researchers documented 00:03:57.139 --> 00:04:00.219 an astonishing 300 cases of poisoning from a 00:04:00.219 --> 00:04:02.439 mushroom known locally as xiaomianu gungeon. 00:04:03.060 --> 00:04:05.000 And what stands out immediately in that report 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:07.539 is the bizarre timeline. The delay. That was 00:04:07.539 --> 00:04:09.979 the wildly fascinating part of the study to me. 00:04:10.110 --> 00:04:12.409 Right, because with almost any known psychoactive 00:04:12.409 --> 00:04:14.969 substance, you ingest it, it hits your bloodstream, 00:04:15.069 --> 00:04:17.110 and you feel the effects within an hour or two. 00:04:17.350 --> 00:04:19.870 Obviously. But with these beliefs, the symptoms 00:04:19.870 --> 00:04:22.509 do not start until 6 to 24 hours after eating 00:04:22.509 --> 00:04:25.750 them. That is a massive delay. I mean, you could 00:04:25.750 --> 00:04:27.889 eat them for dinner and not start hallucinating 00:04:27.889 --> 00:04:29.670 until you are sitting at your desk at work the 00:04:29.670 --> 00:04:33.009 next afternoon. Exactly. And the duration is 00:04:33.009 --> 00:04:36.079 just as alarming. The 1991 report noted that 00:04:36.079 --> 00:04:38.800 while most cases resolved in a few days, the 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:41.420 hallucinations could last for weeks, months, 00:04:41.500 --> 00:04:44.720 and in a few rare severe cases, up to half a 00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:47.439 year. Half a year of shoelaces turning into butterflies. 00:04:47.860 --> 00:04:50.100 I cannot even fathom the psychological toll of 00:04:50.100 --> 00:04:52.199 that. How are the hospitals even treating these 00:04:52.199 --> 00:04:54.480 patients? Well, in the most severe cases, patients 00:04:54.480 --> 00:04:57.279 entered a state of complete stupor. The researchers 00:04:57.279 --> 00:05:00.959 actually performed EEG brain scans on these stuporous 00:05:00.959 --> 00:05:03.329 patients. And what did they find? They found 00:05:03.329 --> 00:05:06.050 changes in their brainwaves that looked strikingly 00:05:06.050 --> 00:05:08.949 similar to the effects of LSD. Interestingly, 00:05:09.449 --> 00:05:11.129 the medical staff found that they could effectively 00:05:11.129 --> 00:05:14.329 manage these severe symptoms using chlorpromazine. 00:05:14.589 --> 00:05:16.850 Which is a standard antipsychotic medication, 00:05:17.250 --> 00:05:19.129 right? Usually used for schizophrenia. Yeah, 00:05:19.149 --> 00:05:21.610 exactly. But why does that work? If this isn't 00:05:21.610 --> 00:05:24.750 psilocybin or LSD, why does a schizophrenia drug 00:05:24.750 --> 00:05:27.290 shut down a mushroom trip? What's fascinating 00:05:27.290 --> 00:05:29.930 here is that chlorpromazine works primarily by 00:05:29.930 --> 00:05:33.230 blocking dopamine and serotonin receptors in 00:05:33.230 --> 00:05:35.470 the brain. The fact that it dampens the little 00:05:35.470 --> 00:05:38.910 people hallucinations gives us a vital clue about 00:05:38.910 --> 00:05:41.689 the unknown chemical in these mushrooms. Ah, 00:05:41.810 --> 00:05:44.170 so it targets the same pathways. It suggests 00:05:44.170 --> 00:05:47.269 the compound, whatever it is, is severely disrupting 00:05:47.269 --> 00:05:50.100 those same neural pathways. The actual mechanism 00:05:50.100 --> 00:05:52.319 is completely unknown, but we have some strong 00:05:52.319 --> 00:05:55.019 theories. Like Dennis McKenna's theory. Right. 00:05:55.379 --> 00:05:57.939 Dennis McKenna, a prominent ethnopharmacologist, 00:05:58.360 --> 00:06:00.560 has suggested that these effects do not mirror 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:03.819 a standard serotonergic trip. Instead, the effects 00:06:03.819 --> 00:06:06.540 closely mirror an anticholinergic delirium. I 00:06:06.540 --> 00:06:08.699 know anticholinergics are found in plants like 00:06:08.699 --> 00:06:11.060 Datura. But for someone listening who isn't a 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:13.459 pharmacologist, what is the mechanical difference 00:06:13.459 --> 00:06:16.319 between a standard trip and this kind of delirium? 00:06:16.540 --> 00:06:19.370 It comes down to reality testing. With a classic 00:06:19.370 --> 00:06:21.589 psychedelic like psilocybin, you might see the 00:06:21.589 --> 00:06:24.170 walls breathing, but a part of your brain knows 00:06:24.170 --> 00:06:26.129 you're under the influence of a substance. Right, 00:06:26.269 --> 00:06:29.250 you know you took a drug. Exactly. Your reality 00:06:29.250 --> 00:06:32.329 testing is intact. Anticholinergics, on the other 00:06:32.329 --> 00:06:35.009 hand, block the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. 00:06:35.689 --> 00:06:39.029 This creates a true delirium, like a waking dream 00:06:39.029 --> 00:06:41.930 state, a dream state where your reality testing 00:06:41.930 --> 00:06:44.610 is completely shattered. You cannot distinguish 00:06:44.610 --> 00:06:47.310 the hallucination from reality, which perfectly 00:06:47.310 --> 00:06:49.350 matches the reports of people trying to hold 00:06:49.350 --> 00:06:52.410 actual conversations with the Xiao Ren Ren. And 00:06:52.410 --> 00:06:54.610 the delayed onset. How does that fit in? The 00:06:54.610 --> 00:06:56.810 delays suggest the active compound might not 00:06:56.810 --> 00:06:59.370 be psychoactive itself. It might be a precursor 00:06:59.370 --> 00:07:01.680 compound. Oh, meaning your body has to change 00:07:01.680 --> 00:07:05.000 it first. Exactly. Your liver has to slowly metabolize 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:07.360 it into a hallucinogen over many hours before 00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:10.019 it crosses the blood -brain barrier. So if modern 00:07:10.019 --> 00:07:12.620 chemistry couldn't explain this in 1991, and 00:07:12.620 --> 00:07:14.939 we still don't have the molecule, we have to 00:07:14.939 --> 00:07:17.420 look at whether this is purely a biological reaction 00:07:17.420 --> 00:07:20.240 or just a massive cultural placebo. Right, checking 00:07:20.240 --> 00:07:23.079 for cultural bias. Because to test that, we need 00:07:23.079 --> 00:07:25.779 to see if cultures completely disconnected from 00:07:25.779 --> 00:07:29.240 China experience the exact same thing. And surprisingly, 00:07:29.319 --> 00:07:31.959 They do. They do. The first Western reports of 00:07:31.959 --> 00:07:34.100 this phenomenon actually emerged between the 00:07:34.100 --> 00:07:37.019 1930s and the 1960s, thousands of miles away 00:07:37.019 --> 00:07:38.920 from China. Down in Papua New Guinea, right? 00:07:39.220 --> 00:07:41.980 Yes, among the Kuma people in the Western Highlands. 00:07:43.220 --> 00:07:45.819 Missionaries and anthropologists noted a phenomenon 00:07:45.819 --> 00:07:49.259 they called mushroom madness, where locals would 00:07:49.259 --> 00:07:52.060 consume certain elite mushrooms and interstates 00:07:52.060 --> 00:07:54.439 of frenzy or delirium. And that caught the attention 00:07:54.439 --> 00:07:57.310 of some pretty famous mycologists. It did. Gordon 00:07:57.310 --> 00:07:59.670 Wasson and Roger Haim traveled to Papua New Guinea 00:07:59.670 --> 00:08:03.089 to investigate. They zeroed in on a specific 00:08:03.089 --> 00:08:05.870 mushroom the locals were eating called Boletus 00:08:05.870 --> 00:08:08.290 manicus. And they actually sent samples to Albert 00:08:08.290 --> 00:08:10.310 Hoffman, didn't they? They did. The Swiss chemist 00:08:10.310 --> 00:08:13.730 who famously discovered LSD. Wow. But Hoffman's 00:08:13.730 --> 00:08:16.569 analysis was a dead end. He ran the samples and 00:08:16.569 --> 00:08:19.189 found only trace amounts of three unidentified 00:08:19.189 --> 00:08:21.790 indelic compounds. Wait, indelic compounds. What 00:08:21.790 --> 00:08:24.250 does that actually mean in this context? So an 00:08:24.250 --> 00:08:27.550 indole is a specific ring -shaped molecular structure. 00:08:28.430 --> 00:08:30.810 Many classic psychedelics, like psilocybin and 00:08:30.810 --> 00:08:34.090 LSD, are indolic compounds because their structure 00:08:34.090 --> 00:08:37.629 closely resembles human serotonin. Oh, okay, 00:08:37.909 --> 00:08:40.590 so finding that sounds like a big deal. Finding 00:08:40.590 --> 00:08:43.129 trace -indulant compounds was exciting, sure, 00:08:43.190 --> 00:08:46.149 but the quantities were so infinitesimally low 00:08:46.149 --> 00:08:48.649 that they couldn't possibly cause hallucinations. 00:08:48.830 --> 00:08:50.850 Unless they were super potent. Right, unless 00:08:50.850 --> 00:08:53.309 those specific compounds happened to be as staggeringly 00:08:53.309 --> 00:08:56.570 potent drop for drop as LSD itself. Which they 00:08:56.570 --> 00:08:58.889 couldn't prove. So Haim actually tries eating 00:08:58.889 --> 00:09:01.370 tiny amounts of the mushroom himself to test 00:09:01.370 --> 00:09:03.340 it. Yeah, plain guinea pig. And all he gets are 00:09:03.340 --> 00:09:07.000 some strange dreams. Nothing conclusive. And 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:09.220 because they couldn't isolate the chemical, Hyman 00:09:09.220 --> 00:09:12.440 Waston just...they gave up. Pretty much. They 00:09:12.440 --> 00:09:15.279 concluded that mushroom madness wasn't a pharmacological 00:09:15.279 --> 00:09:17.860 effect at all. They wrote it off as mere social 00:09:17.860 --> 00:09:20.360 catharsis, basically arguing that the indigenous 00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:22.840 locals were just being theatrical and acting 00:09:22.840 --> 00:09:25.620 out cultural expectations. It is a rather dismissive 00:09:25.620 --> 00:09:27.860 conclusion. I have to push back on their logic 00:09:27.860 --> 00:09:31.460 entirely. That is such a classic mid -century 00:09:31.460 --> 00:09:35.539 scientific blind spot. Just because your 1960s 00:09:35.539 --> 00:09:39.440 laboratory equipment can't isolate a highly unstable 00:09:39.440 --> 00:09:42.200 molecule, and just because you didn't eat enough 00:09:42.200 --> 00:09:44.259 of it to cross the threshold dose doesn't mean 00:09:44.259 --> 00:09:46.679 an entire culture is faking a psychiatric event. 00:09:46.980 --> 00:09:49.279 They gave up on the puzzle way too soon. Well, 00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:51.639 modern science actually validates your skepticism. 00:09:51.679 --> 00:09:55.279 We can look at the incredible 2024 findings of 00:09:55.279 --> 00:09:58.149 ethnobiologist Colin Domnauer. to prove it. Yes, 00:09:58.289 --> 00:10:00.690 the Philippines study. Right. Don Nowar traveled 00:10:00.690 --> 00:10:03.870 to SCADA, up in the Philippine Cordilleras, investigating 00:10:03.870 --> 00:10:06.230 local reports of blue staining beliefs that the 00:10:06.230 --> 00:10:08.610 indigenous people call C. distem. OK. He found 00:10:08.610 --> 00:10:11.470 that locals regularly ate these mushrooms, and 00:10:11.470 --> 00:10:14.509 irregularly they would cause severe visual hallucinations, 00:10:15.269 --> 00:10:17.710 specifically visions of what they call the ansicit. 00:10:17.960 --> 00:10:19.919 Are the Anzats the Philippine equivalent of the 00:10:19.919 --> 00:10:21.720 Little People? That is their local term for them, 00:10:21.759 --> 00:10:24.460 yes. So you have isolated indigenous cultures 00:10:24.460 --> 00:10:26.500 in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the remote 00:10:26.500 --> 00:10:28.559 mountains of the Philippines, and the valleys 00:10:28.559 --> 00:10:31.039 of China. All independently reporting the exact 00:10:31.039 --> 00:10:34.379 same thing. Yes. All independently reporting 00:10:34.379 --> 00:10:37.019 that eating these specific blue -staining beliefs 00:10:37.019 --> 00:10:40.500 summons visions of tiny people. That cross -cultural 00:10:40.500 --> 00:10:43.039 consistency completely shatters the social theater 00:10:43.039 --> 00:10:45.820 theory Wasson and Heim propose. Absolutely. It 00:10:45.820 --> 00:10:47.759 proves beyond a doubt that the phenomenon is 00:10:47.759 --> 00:10:50.980 driven by a shared hardwired pharmacology, not 00:10:50.980 --> 00:10:53.460 a shared cultural script. The hallucination is 00:10:53.460 --> 00:10:56.279 literally baked into the mushroom, which brings 00:10:56.279 --> 00:10:59.000 us to a really fascinating pivot, because having 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:01.120 established that this pharmacological phenomenon 00:11:01.120 --> 00:11:03.879 is very real, we have to look closely at how 00:11:03.879 --> 00:11:06.100 people interact with it today. Right. Going back 00:11:06.100 --> 00:11:09.220 to China. Yunnan province in China is the only 00:11:09.220 --> 00:11:11.100 place in the world where these hallucinogenic 00:11:11.100 --> 00:11:13.419 mushrooms aren't just a mysterious ritual or 00:11:13.419 --> 00:11:16.460 an isolated tribal practice. They are a mainstream, 00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:19.820 highly sought -after culinary staple. It is a 00:11:19.820 --> 00:11:23.039 profound cultural paradox. You have species like 00:11:23.039 --> 00:11:26.340 Lanmaua asiatica and Buddha rubuletus rosa flavus 00:11:26.340 --> 00:11:28.639 sold openly in massive wet markets. You're sitting 00:11:28.639 --> 00:11:31.039 next to the cabbage. Yeah. People pay premium 00:11:31.039 --> 00:11:33.480 prices for them because they're considered umami 00:11:33.480 --> 00:11:36.139 -laden delicacies, supposedly tasting even better 00:11:35.919 --> 00:11:39.200 than the finest gruccini. But the catch is sanity 00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:42.059 or insanity. To eat them safely, you must cook 00:11:42.059 --> 00:11:44.820 them at a rolling boil for a minimum of 15 to 00:11:44.820 --> 00:11:47.700 25 minutes. The sustained high heat presumably 00:11:47.700 --> 00:11:50.039 denatures the unknown hallucinogenic proteins 00:11:50.039 --> 00:11:52.519 or compounds. Denature's meaning? When a compound 00:11:52.519 --> 00:11:55.720 is denatured by heat, its complex molecular structure 00:11:55.720 --> 00:11:58.379 physically unwinds and breaks apart, rendering 00:11:58.379 --> 00:12:01.299 it inert. Once that happens, the mushroom is 00:12:01.299 --> 00:12:04.039 perfectly safe and delicious. But the risk, I 00:12:04.039 --> 00:12:05.980 mean, it is like trying to defuse a biological 00:12:05.980 --> 00:12:08.379 bomb where time and temperature are your only 00:12:08.379 --> 00:12:11.120 wire cutters. Like a culinary fugu fish. Exactly. 00:12:11.559 --> 00:12:15.360 One undercooked batch of Lanmo Asiatica because 00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:17.179 you pulled the pan off the stove three minutes 00:12:17.179 --> 00:12:19.200 too early and you are trapped in a fairy tale 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:22.000 for weeks. And this high -stakes culinary tradition 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:24.340 has a massive footprint in China that goes back 00:12:24.340 --> 00:12:27.980 millennia. The Taoist scholar, Jay Hong, wrote 00:12:27.980 --> 00:12:30.899 a text around 300 CE, where he described flesh, 00:12:30.960 --> 00:12:34.080 spirit, mushrooms. 300 CE. Wow. He wrote that 00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:35.779 if you eat them, you will see little people, 00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:38.509 about seven to eight cun. which translates to 00:12:38.509 --> 00:12:41.309 roughly 3 to 33 centimeters riding on carriages. 00:12:41.590 --> 00:12:44.669 So specific. Right. And he actually believed 00:12:44.669 --> 00:12:47.809 these specific visions were a path to attaining 00:12:47.809 --> 00:12:50.070 spiritual transcendence. People have been seeing 00:12:50.070 --> 00:12:53.289 the Jiao Ren Ren for nearly 2 ,000 years and 00:12:53.289 --> 00:12:55.330 it's still happening right now. Oh, absolutely. 00:12:55.870 --> 00:12:58.129 The local and national media in China frequently 00:12:58.129 --> 00:13:01.299 cover poisoning outbreaks today. Between 2022 00:13:01.299 --> 00:13:04.220 and 2024 alone, there were a major series of 00:13:04.220 --> 00:13:06.860 poisoning reports with dozens of hospitalizations. 00:13:07.080 --> 00:13:09.179 Just from people undercooking their dinner. Yeah. 00:13:09.539 --> 00:13:12.059 And while most cases are accidental undercooking, 00:13:12.179 --> 00:13:16.440 some are intentional and deeply tragic. In 2014, 00:13:16.659 --> 00:13:19.440 there was a widely reported case of a Yanan woman 00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:22.399 who intentionally ate undercooked hallucinogenic 00:13:22.399 --> 00:13:25.159 beliefs continuously for eight years. She did 00:13:25.159 --> 00:13:27.500 that specifically so she could hallucinate visions 00:13:27.500 --> 00:13:29.909 of her deceased daughter. Yeah. When I read that 00:13:29.909 --> 00:13:32.350 in the sources, it completely recontextualized 00:13:32.350 --> 00:13:34.990 this for me. It highlights the profound emotional 00:13:34.990 --> 00:13:37.409 reality these hallucinations can create. They 00:13:37.409 --> 00:13:39.669 aren't just blurry shapes. They are fully realized 00:13:39.669 --> 00:13:41.789 emotional experiences that people can interact 00:13:41.789 --> 00:13:45.470 with. It's incredibly sad, but it really emphasizes 00:13:45.470 --> 00:13:49.450 how real the delirium is. The culinary popularity 00:13:49.450 --> 00:13:52.710 of these mushrooms is so mainstream that it actually 00:13:52.710 --> 00:13:55.149 created a massive international news story recently. 00:13:55.309 --> 00:13:58.200 Oh, the Janet Yellen incident. Right. In 2023, 00:13:58.440 --> 00:14:00.879 U .S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was visiting 00:14:00.879 --> 00:14:03.500 China on a diplomatic trip. She went to a very 00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:06.080 popular hot pot restaurant in Yunnan, and she 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:10.080 and her team ordered these exact mushrooms. Lunmawa 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:13.379 Asiatica, widely known locally as Jian Shaoking, 00:14:13.720 --> 00:14:16.919 which translates to sea hand blue, because the 00:14:16.919 --> 00:14:19.159 mushroom violently bruises blue the second you 00:14:19.159 --> 00:14:20.860 touch it. That's the one. Now, of course, the 00:14:20.860 --> 00:14:23.019 restaurant was incredibly high end. The chefs 00:14:23.019 --> 00:14:24.740 knew exactly what they were doing and the mushrooms 00:14:24.740 --> 00:14:27.649 were boiled properly, nobody got high, nobody 00:14:27.649 --> 00:14:30.110 saw little people. Right, totally safe. But the 00:14:30.110 --> 00:14:32.730 media frenzy when reporters realized she had 00:14:32.730 --> 00:14:35.370 just eaten a plate of famous hallucinogenic mushrooms 00:14:35.370 --> 00:14:38.230 was incredible. It completely sold out the dish 00:14:38.230 --> 00:14:40.929 across the province. And again, if you're listening, 00:14:40.970 --> 00:14:42.750 we're just looking at the cultural surrealism 00:14:42.750 --> 00:14:44.509 here. We aren't taking any political stance on 00:14:44.509 --> 00:14:47.909 the trip. It's just a wild example of how normalized 00:14:47.909 --> 00:14:50.529 this extreme culinary risk is in Yunnan. Which 00:14:50.529 --> 00:14:52.690 brings us to the most frustrating question for 00:14:52.690 --> 00:14:54.730 the scientific community. Why we don't know what 00:14:54.730 --> 00:14:57.990 the chemical is. Exactly. If high profile diplomats 00:14:57.990 --> 00:15:00.759 are eating them. If thousands of locals are eating 00:15:00.759 --> 00:15:02.840 them, and if hundreds of people are ending up 00:15:02.840 --> 00:15:05.899 in hospitals with identical symptoms, why hasn't 00:15:05.899 --> 00:15:09.259 modern science isolated the exact molecule yet? 00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:11.259 Here's where it gets really interesting to me. 00:15:11.580 --> 00:15:14.799 We have mass spectrometers. We have AI -driven 00:15:14.799 --> 00:15:17.899 chemical analysis. How do we still not know what 00:15:17.899 --> 00:15:20.460 the chemical is? Well, if we connect this to 00:15:20.460 --> 00:15:22.740 the bigger picture, you have to understand the 00:15:22.740 --> 00:15:26.000 sheer difficulty of studying these fungi. It 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:29.830 is a true taxonomic nightmare. The primary issue 00:15:29.830 --> 00:15:32.909 is a concept called convergent evolution. Meaning 00:15:32.909 --> 00:15:35.230 different species evolved to look identical over 00:15:35.230 --> 00:15:37.629 time because they were adapting to the same environmental 00:15:37.629 --> 00:15:39.970 pressures. Precisely the problem. In the dense 00:15:39.970 --> 00:15:42.690 forests of Yunnan, there are dozens of different 00:15:42.690 --> 00:15:45.509 blue -staining bulete mushrooms that are visually 00:15:45.509 --> 00:15:47.830 indistinguishable to the naked eye. So you don't 00:15:47.830 --> 00:15:50.230 even know which one you're picking. Right. Even 00:15:50.230 --> 00:15:52.769 the world's top experts struggle to categorize 00:15:52.769 --> 00:15:56.350 them without a DNA sequencer. The primary culprit 00:15:56.350 --> 00:15:59.669 for these poisonings, Lanmoa asiatica, wasn't 00:15:59.669 --> 00:16:01.649 even officially described in name as a distinct 00:16:01.649 --> 00:16:05.649 species until 2015. That recently? Yes. Before 00:16:05.649 --> 00:16:07.649 that, it was just lumped in with other generic 00:16:07.649 --> 00:16:10.470 boletes. When researchers recently sequenced 00:16:10.470 --> 00:16:12.809 the genetics of the Lanmoa genus, they found 00:16:12.809 --> 00:16:16.429 massive cryptic diversity, multiple undescribed 00:16:16.429 --> 00:16:20.149 species masquerading as one. Ah, I see. So when 00:16:20.149 --> 00:16:22.049 a patient comes into the hospital hallucinating, 00:16:22.350 --> 00:16:24.649 the mushroom they ate is usually already digested. 00:16:24.679 --> 00:16:27.179 Even if they have a leftover scrap of the kitchen, 00:16:27.279 --> 00:16:29.919 identifying the exact species they consumed is 00:16:29.919 --> 00:16:32.860 incredibly difficult. OK, but once you do manage 00:16:32.860 --> 00:16:35.580 to isolate a guaranteed specimen of Lanmua asiatica, 00:16:35.759 --> 00:16:38.120 why is the chemical so hard to find inside it? 00:16:38.259 --> 00:16:40.639 I was reading one hypothesis in the sources that 00:16:40.639 --> 00:16:43.299 I found fascinating. A gene transfer idea. Yeah, 00:16:43.419 --> 00:16:45.340 because we already know the chemical structure 00:16:45.340 --> 00:16:47.759 of psilocybin, right? Did these beliefs just, 00:16:47.759 --> 00:16:50.639 like, steal the genetic code for making hallucinogens 00:16:50.639 --> 00:16:52.899 from psilocybe mushrooms? You're referring to 00:16:52.899 --> 00:16:55.500 horizontal gene transfer. It was a leading hypothesis 00:16:55.500 --> 00:16:58.279 for a while. Could you explain how horizontal 00:16:58.279 --> 00:17:01.659 gene transfer works in fungi? Because it sounds 00:17:01.659 --> 00:17:05.319 like sci -fi. It kind of is. Unlike humans, who 00:17:05.319 --> 00:17:07.660 only pass genes down vertically from parent to 00:17:07.660 --> 00:17:10.559 child, fungi living in the soil can sometimes 00:17:10.559 --> 00:17:13.660 swap DNA sideways. Trading genes with their neighbors. 00:17:13.960 --> 00:17:16.140 Literally. They can absorb functional genetic 00:17:16.140 --> 00:17:18.960 blueprints from completely different fungal species 00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:21.539 living next to them. Researchers wondered if 00:17:21.539 --> 00:17:23.759 Lanmo has simply absorbed the genetic code for 00:17:23.759 --> 00:17:25.859 psilocybin from a neighboring mushroom. Make 00:17:25.859 --> 00:17:29.759 sense. But in 2023, genomic analyses were conducted 00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:32.299 to check exactly that. The researchers looked 00:17:32.299 --> 00:17:35.119 for the specific biosynthetic gene clusters responsible 00:17:35.119 --> 00:17:37.460 for creating psilocybin and the gene clusters 00:17:37.460 --> 00:17:40.559 responsible for creating ibutenic acid, the compound 00:17:40.559 --> 00:17:43.059 in the red Amanita mushrooms. And what did the 00:17:43.059 --> 00:17:46.230 DNA show? They were completely absent. The lano 00:17:46.230 --> 00:17:48.650 mushrooms lack the genetic blueprints for every 00:17:48.650 --> 00:17:51.210 known fungal hallucinogen. That is mind -blowing. 00:17:51.589 --> 00:17:53.930 So nature just independently invented a completely 00:17:53.930 --> 00:17:57.589 novel chemical key using totally different evolutionary 00:17:57.589 --> 00:18:00.569 blueprints to unlock the exact same neurological 00:18:00.569 --> 00:18:03.250 door in the human brain. That is exactly what 00:18:03.250 --> 00:18:06.230 the evidence suggests. We are looking at an entirely 00:18:06.230 --> 00:18:09.309 novel, undiscovered class of psychoactive compounds. 00:18:09.329 --> 00:18:12.650 Wow. But the good news is we are closer than 00:18:12.650 --> 00:18:16.009 ever to unlocking that door. As of late 2025 00:18:16.009 --> 00:18:18.869 and early 2026, we are sitting on the absolute 00:18:18.869 --> 00:18:22.009 frontier of this research. Ethnobiologist Colin 00:18:22.009 --> 00:18:25.230 Domnauer and mycologist Bryn Dentinger, who is 00:18:25.230 --> 00:18:26.730 considered one of the world's leading experts 00:18:26.730 --> 00:18:29.009 on boletes, have finally made a breakthrough. 00:18:29.390 --> 00:18:31.529 How close are they to cracking it? They're actively 00:18:31.529 --> 00:18:34.250 zeroing in on the molecule. They have successfully 00:18:34.250 --> 00:18:36.910 extracted different chemical fractions from Lanomo 00:18:36.910 --> 00:18:39.450 Asiatica and administered them to animal models. 00:18:39.710 --> 00:18:41.950 But wait, how do you know if a mouse is hallucinating 00:18:41.950 --> 00:18:44.430 little people? You can't ask it what it's seeing. 00:18:44.609 --> 00:18:47.029 You can't. But you can look for the physiological 00:18:47.029 --> 00:18:49.309 markers that match the human hospital reports. 00:18:49.569 --> 00:18:52.490 Oh, like the stupor. Exactly. They found that 00:18:52.490 --> 00:18:54.950 these extracts produce identical behavioral and 00:18:54.950 --> 00:18:57.250 neurological effects in mice as they do in the 00:18:57.250 --> 00:19:01.049 human poisonings. The mice exhibit extreme hyperactivity, 00:19:01.349 --> 00:19:03.809 followed by that same long pronounced stupor 00:19:03.809 --> 00:19:06.890 we saw in the 1991 hospital patients. That's 00:19:06.890 --> 00:19:10.569 a huge step. It is. By isolating which specific 00:19:10.569 --> 00:19:13.170 extracts cause these reactions and discarding 00:19:13.170 --> 00:19:15.470 the ones that don't, they're eliminating variables. 00:19:16.009 --> 00:19:18.910 As of late 2025, they're actively preparing their 00:19:18.910 --> 00:19:21.849 findings for publication, meaning the identity 00:19:21.849 --> 00:19:23.990 of the active constituents could be revealed 00:19:23.990 --> 00:19:27.470 any day now. That is incredible. We are literally 00:19:27.470 --> 00:19:29.430 watching scientific history being written right 00:19:29.430 --> 00:19:31.329 now. Think about the journey we just took. It's 00:19:31.329 --> 00:19:33.549 been wild. We started with a Daoist text from 00:19:33.549 --> 00:19:37.369 300 CE talking about spirits and carriages. We 00:19:37.369 --> 00:19:39.829 traveled to the remote highlands of Papua New 00:19:39.829 --> 00:19:41.990 Guinea, where researchers arrogantly thought 00:19:41.990 --> 00:19:45.049 it was all just theater. We validated the reality 00:19:45.049 --> 00:19:47.230 of the visions in the mountains of the Philippines. 00:19:47.450 --> 00:19:51.710 And we ended up in a bustling modern hotpot restaurant 00:19:51.710 --> 00:19:54.289 in Yunnan, China. All connected. All of it linked. 00:19:54.250 --> 00:19:57.650 by this one mysterious, completely unidentified 00:19:57.650 --> 00:20:00.809 molecule that somehow reliably summons tiny people 00:20:00.809 --> 00:20:03.890 into our field of vision. So what does this all 00:20:03.890 --> 00:20:06.589 mean? Well, it leaves us with a profound, almost 00:20:06.589 --> 00:20:08.589 uncomfortable philosophical question regarding 00:20:08.589 --> 00:20:11.130 the human brain. Think about what we've established. 00:20:11.319 --> 00:20:13.759 You have people from completely different cultures, 00:20:14.220 --> 00:20:16.319 completely different eras, with entirely different 00:20:16.319 --> 00:20:18.920 mythologies and languages. Yet when they ingest 00:20:18.920 --> 00:20:21.940 this specific novel chemical, they don't just 00:20:21.940 --> 00:20:24.920 see random visual noise. They reliably induce 00:20:24.920 --> 00:20:28.519 the exact same highly structured archetype. The 00:20:28.519 --> 00:20:32.470 ansicit. The xiao ren ren. the 33 centimeter 00:20:32.470 --> 00:20:35.230 tall people. It forces you to look at history 00:20:35.230 --> 00:20:38.170 completely differently. If a single unmapped 00:20:38.170 --> 00:20:41.569 fungal molecule can reliably generate a bustling 00:20:41.569 --> 00:20:44.609 society of tiny people in our minds across all 00:20:44.609 --> 00:20:46.769 these different cultures, it makes you wonder 00:20:46.769 --> 00:20:49.410 about the origins of our folklore. Yes. If you 00:20:49.410 --> 00:20:52.210 think about. European fairy tales, you know, 00:20:52.430 --> 00:20:54.730 Irish leprechauns, Scandinavian gnomes, Germanic 00:20:54.730 --> 00:20:56.829 elves. We have always assumed these were just 00:20:56.829 --> 00:20:59.109 imaginative stories invented around campfires. 00:20:59.750 --> 00:21:01.490 But what if they weren't myths at all? What if 00:21:01.490 --> 00:21:03.950 these ancient stories were actually just undocumented 00:21:03.950 --> 00:21:06.970 encounters with local fungi sharing this exact 00:21:06.970 --> 00:21:09.529 same chemical key? What if the little people 00:21:09.529 --> 00:21:11.710 have always just been a latent software program 00:21:11.710 --> 00:21:13.930 hidden deep within the human psyche, waiting 00:21:13.930 --> 00:21:16.230 for a mushroom to boot them up? That is the question. 00:21:16.819 --> 00:21:19.680 Next time you're out walking in the woods or 00:21:19.680 --> 00:21:21.339 even just sitting at your dining room table, 00:21:21.579 --> 00:21:23.559 you might look at a wild mushroom and wonder 00:21:23.559 --> 00:21:27.099 exactly what kind of world it's capable of unlocking. 00:21:27.480 --> 00:21:29.660 A completely different world right under our 00:21:29.660 --> 00:21:31.819 noses. Thank you for joining us on this deep 00:21:31.819 --> 00:21:33.140 dive. We'll catch you next time.