Short Stuff: Death Cap Mushroom

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0:31podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward. Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

1:10Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. Josh here, Chuck here, Jerry Noe here, Dave Noe here. That's okay. Because like I said, it's The Short Stuff. Good evening, everyone. We are Death Cap Mushroom. Yeah, that's a great one. It's a metal band, right? For sure. Even just Death Cap would work, too. Death Cab for Cutie even would be cool. Oh, man. I like those guys. Yeah, they're great. Did you like Postal Service? I love the Postal Service more than Death Cab. It's just the one dude from Death Cab, right? Isn't it his solo project? Not solo. Ben Gibbard, he linked up with someone else. It's like him and another guy.

1:48I can't remember the other guy. But, man, I love that Postal Service record. Okay, good, good. I'm glad you did. I'm glad they made it then. Me too. So we're not talking about Death Cab for Cutie. We're talking about death cap mushrooms. Not for you, I think, is the main message here. Not for cuties or anyone. No. And the reason they call it death cap mushroom is because it can kill you if you eat it. It's not necessarily an automatic death sentence, but apparently the fatality rate from eating this mushroom is 10 to 15 percent of people who eat it die. In this House of Works article, they were like, you know, that's pretty low.

2:26I'm like, not to me. No, that's, I mean, that's really high. Look at white button mushrooms, buddy. It's almost like zero. And I think the people who do die from eating white button mushrooms ate too many at once and choked to death. This is why I don't eat mushrooms at all. Oh, you don't, huh? No, it's a texture thing. They're too slimy for me. I've tried. Oh, no. You got to wash the slime off. And I'm not expecting you to actually try this, but I know exactly what you're talking about. You wash the slime off, you dry it, you lick the top of it, put some salt on it and eat it raw. And it's got a nice sturdy crunch almost to it.

3:04And I love those. You know, it's funny. I don't think I've ever mentioned not liking eating something where you didn't say, no, no, no, you're just doing it wrong. I like eating everything. All right. So there was an outbreak in 2016 in the Bay Area of San Francisco where 14 people consumed, well, the death cap mushroom. Yeah. Got really, really sick. One very sad story of a child suffered permanent neurological damage. And the question is, like, how did these things get here? Because they did not originate here. That's one of the questions. Are you setting me up to answer it? Well, sure. Do you have an answer?

3:43Because I do. I have a general answer. Apparently, so it's a ectomycorrhizal fungus that engages in symbiotic relationships, mutualism, with specific kinds of trees. And in Europe, they're typically beech trees or oak trees. And it lives in the roots, the main part of the fungus. And it trades nitrogen that the mushroom draws from the soil to the oak or the beech tree in exchange for sugars and water and carbon. And they do this by basically connecting their roots to the tree roots. And everybody's happy until you come along and eat one of the death caps. Yeah, I think we did a whole episode on mutualism, didn't we?

4:27Surely we did. Or symbiosis or something? Yeah. But I didn't answer your question. The answer seems to be that somebody imported a tree from Europe at some point that had a death cap mushroom, mycorrhizae, in its roots. And surprise, death cap mushrooms are in North America. Yeah, and they know that it wasn't a native species because, you know, that could be possible that there's just like a California, North America version. Sure. But it would be genetically different somehow. But the ones that we have over here are exactly the same. It's the same mushroom. I think the first known sightings were in 1938 at the Del Monte Hotel in California.

5:08There's a lot of these in California. Yeah. And then five, six, seven, eight years later at the Cal Berkeley campus. And now they're kind of all over the place. They're on the East Coast. They live in the pines on the East Coast. But those oaks on the West Coast, all the way up to Vancouver, I believe. But they've also found them outside of Europe in Western Russia, Southern Scandinavian coasts, and North Africa. Yeah. They go, I think, also on the West Coast of the United States. They grow all the way down to L.A. County. Yeah. Which is how Cheech Marin accidentally ate one. Oh, did he really?

5:45Or is that a joke? That is a joke. I'm sorry. So mad at you. You could have said, like, I know it was. You have to say it really weird like that. Seems so likely that Cheech Marin might have accidentally eaten one of these. I think he kind of went straight with that whole Nash Bridges gig that he got. And Tommy Chong is like, no, man, I still eat whatever I find on the ground. Speaking of Nash Bridges, maybe I shouldn't say this. I'll tell you all fair. Oh, I can't wait. Is it about Don Johnson? Yeah, it is. Okay. All right. So should we take a break or should we talk a little bit more about it?

6:20Let's take a break. All right. We'll be right back with more on this Death Cap Mushroom.

6:38Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.

7:17We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, Director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr.

7:54Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy, as in compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

8:46All right, we're back, and this is something I don't fully understand, but the death cap mushroom is an invasive species in California where it grows in very beautiful woodlands and forests. It is not considered such on the East Coast where it grows in more urban settings, like urban parks, but it still could be invasive. Like, I don't understand what the diff is. It's very easily contained in an urban area. You've got your park, but then, you know, you say like, hey, mushroom, try to spread from this park. Jump that street? Yeah. Deal with this sidewalk, then the street, then the sidewalk, then a building, then another sidewalk, then a street, then a sidewalk, then a sidewalk, then a sidewalk, then a sidewalk.

9:23And the mushroom goes, okay, fine, I'll just stay here. All right. So I guess I just didn't fully. Did that make sense? Yeah, I guess I didn't fully understand what invasive meant. I thought invasive just meant if it was there and not great for the area, I didn't mean it had to be like super widespread. I didn't either, but that's what I took from this description of it. So that's my take, I should say. That's not like the. I thought that was a quote. It was. Of Ann Pringle, the Letters in Science Rubenstein Professor of Botany and Bacteriology at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. Wow. Look at you.

9:56Yeah. We should say shout out to HowStuffWorks for helping us with this article. by writing it. And they interviewed Professor Pringle about this, and she was very helpful. Yeah. There's a couple of toxins when it comes to the death cap. One of them is a phallotoxin, and you're talking, you know, what you would expect, dehydration, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, but eventually electrolyte imbalances and kidney damage. But the really bad booger in there is amatoxin, and that will stop cell function. It targets a transcription of RNA by RNA polymerase 2, which we've talked about before, and that basically causes cell death.

10:41It prevents the cell from making the proteins and cell components that it needs to be a cell. Right. So that's always bad, and apparently it goes very quickly to your liver and just starts destroying your liver. And apparently people go to the emergency room sick with sick on basically after eating a death cat mushroom will find that the doctors want to give them a liver transplant if one is available. Oh, wow. That's how bad it can get. And one of the reasons why it can get so bad is because after the initial like nausea and vomiting and horrible, like I shouldn't have eaten that mushroom that I found in that field sensation, it goes away and you think that you're fine.

11:22But actually, in reality, that amatoxin is just destroying your body. And then by the time you start to feel those effects, you're in really big trouble. Isn't liver one of the longer weights? Or am I making that up? Longer weights? Yeah, weight, W-A-I-T-S for transplant. I don't know. No, I don't think so. Because you can cut off like a chunk of your liver and don't need it because I don't know if it grows back or else it just a little bit can perform a lot of function. One of those. I'm thinking kidneys. No, I don't think so. I think it's liver. So we got all the organs are readily available.

12:02Right. For transplanting? For sure. I mean, it's so easy to get when you just walk in and they try to give you two livers most of the time. I could have, maybe this is a while ago, I could have sworn I read reports of like people dying on the liver transplant list? Oh, I believe it, but I don't think that, I don't think liver's the least available. Okay, I got you. But I could be wrong, but yeah, I think everybody dies on the organ transplant list waiting. Or I should say, not everybody on the list dies, but I'm saying for any organ, there are people dying on the wait list. I got you. Yeah, boy, that's a nice correction.

12:35So the takeaway from this is don't eat the death cap mushroom at all. you need to and if you're a forager you really got to know what you're doing you shouldn't be like hey i saw this on top chef like i can go out in the woods and just pick stuff and eat it you got to be really familiar with the the fungi uh where you are and if you aren't just don't try it don't risk it it's not worth it no i think we should issue a general coa for us here don't even if you think you are familiar with your local mushroom don't try it we are not telling you under any circumstances to go try this. Okay. I think foraging is wonderful, but so I'm not going to say that personally, but you're welcome to.

13:15Just know what you're doing. Tort reform now. There are all kinds of resources if you are interested in stuff like that that can very clearly tell you like what's safe and what isn't, but you should still take a buddy who's done it before, I think. You can identify, according to Dr. Pringle, who can't eat just one. It has olivaceous coloring with green tinge. And a mature death cap has brown striations on the cap. And don't forget fairy rings around the stem. Who can forget the fairy rings? Right. It goes without saying that that's just a bunch of fairies forming a circle by holding hands. Yeah.

13:58So I saw one of the things, Chuck, about this. The reason why people eat these is because they taste good. Oh, interesting. So people are caught by surprise when all of a sudden they start puking because the fact that it tasted good, I think, indicated to them that this is fine to eat. Well, you know who's never going to get sick by eating a bad mushroom? I do. And has two thumbs and is podcasting with you right now? I do. This guy right here. Oh, that's not what I was going to say. Oh, Cheech Marin. You got anything else? I got nothing else. George Stuff is out.

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14:50Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.