Joe Rogan Experience #1035 — Paul Stamets Transcript

Transcript

0:00 And we're live. All right. Paul, first of all, welcome. Thank you for coming here. And you are There's no doubt that we came from Africa. time, you would die. It's very soft. So even the Chinese invented gunpowder. larger. So the larger the conch, the more And the embers of the joint got on my hat. Oh. you need, like your knife, you know, and things that you want to make sure you have if you're

3:27 Well, mushrooms are weird in that some of them are incredibly edible and nutritious, and other ones will kill you. Some can send you on a spiritual journey. up to about 5 million is being estimated. Fungi outnumber plants 5 to 10 to 1. 30%. Now think of that. And that makes new nutrition available. So let me describe it this way. Animals came from fungi.

7:44 As do fungus. As the fungus does. We source, a new toxin, or something, these fungal networks have great plasticity in being able to the computer internet. And more and more that I explore this, not dissimilar from that of our neural networks, not dissimilar from the computer Well, that stimulates my thought into talking about the microbiome. The mycelial landscapes networks, they don't live by themselves.

10:58 two different mushroom species planted on those wood chips, And the microbiomes that were created and selected for by the mycelium thereafter. hypocrisy of the statement that you're giving me. You're telling me nature is not intelligent, Use that word. Right. thinking that these things cannot occur, did not occur, almost like a neural network. And that's equivalent to about 665 football fields.

14:44 So for those listeners out there, if any soil biologists know this well, if you go out and get some nice, rich soil, a gram of it, and you analyze it, there typically is a million, five million microbes per gram in that soil. selected by the mycelium. And these guilds and communities then cooperate in order to prevent pathogens So it comes in and kills the trees.

16:54 What is that? But as it decomposes the wood, 30% of wood becomes water. This is unbelievably fascinating. around this, but the universe was created about 13.8 billion years ago from the Big Bang. The We separated from fungi 650 million years ago. Why do they do that? in the mycelial mass, of us communicating with mycelium that can give us rapid responses to catastrophic.

21:26 our head that don't really apply to some things that are very very confusing to us like the idea They put a little bit of it. The main oat was where Tokyo was. Whoa. But as his brother Dennis, which I think has been on your show. A theory is a hypothesis that has been tested and proven with facts. Psilocybin substitutes as serotonin, becomes a better neurotransmitter,

25:33 Homo sapiens arrived at 200,000 or 300,000 years ago. And with that, our language centers increased our ability to prognosticate You have empathy. It would happen millions and millions and millions and millions of times over millions and millions of years. if you're the leader of that clan and you can overcome your fear response, you have courage Johns Hopkins

28:54 You're going so good. It's up for legalization. Right, of course. And he offered me more and more money, pretty soon about $200,000, $300,000. And he was writing all these coded letters. And it was obviously a DEA agent Well, not enough money on the planet. a really loosely but isn't it of a courageous person when it comes to that stuff than me. can't be marginalized by the party atmosphere and uses a party drug.

32:17 Actually, I got my numbers reversed. It's time for us to wake up and look at this in a much more seasoned and intellectual fashion than we have before. I get it. extent, but I also think that Right, right. FDA to have it be recategorized because in the words of FDA researchers I know, one arm's length And the coming of age, you know, when I was 16 to, you know, the age 22, 24, it's the coming of age ceremony.

35:55 Exactly like that, but worse in my case. because we're thinking three or four sentences ahead, and the only way you can do is trick the And it was in the summertime, and so I thought setting is important. So, and, but I didn't know, no, I had no one to, no one so but i knew but i went to this i wanted and they're coming close and I could hear the thunder, you know, and then I'm going

38:40 and the lightning would hit and I go. And I was up there and I felt in touch with Gaia, the universe. This is not the best place to be. You know, you always have the dark side. And so I said to myself, stop stuttering now. things like that. She was actually very kind and sweet, but I didn't want to stare at her in the And I looked at her straight in the eyes, and I said, I'm doing fine.

42:16 And so if someone comes through a door, you know, into the bar and I'm looking at you, I know that they've come through. So there's a time that I'll – you only give 10 percent of my brain to communicating That's what's important. And we told this whole story and his eyes were wide open because when you meet other stutterers and you talk to them, they're really desperate for a solution.

44:08 Do you recall? form of dementia and neuropathy occurs. There is a really wonderful, safe and legal mushroom to use and he postulated it as a potential preventative or treatment for Alzheimer's, So you buy it? Why Host Defense? Winterize yourself. Demyelination occurs. Upon sacrificing the mice in the first part of the experiment, they saw the amyloid plaques and the demyelination.

48:16 now the remaining population is alive And they sat there with counters to measure the points of contact. contact, how many points of contact the mice have exploring a new toy. Now, even their full-blown dementia-like symptoms Now, the tragedy that we face, I believe, as a society is we have people like yourself, cognitive function, but to expand it. Now, I personally would love to see it legal to stack them both together,

50:52 I think is well worth testing, is that niacin can help drive the neurogenic benefits of psilocybin Yeah. And give up your mycophobia or even what I call xylophobia, the irrational fear of psilocybin mushrooms, without commercial interests who have done this independently, then it's being taken very seriously. found this moldy cantaloupe found a penicillium strain that was 200 times more potent.

54:29 So if their lavatories were bombed or they were captured, Whoa. And then on top of it, the commercial pharmaceutical industry, which doesn't want to have anything to do with anything that it can't patent and has so many doctors and so many researchers in its pocket. I think now there's over 700 patients have gone through Johns Hopkins Only 70%? nicer to get along. They're less prone to anger. They had many values that we would cherish as an

58:29 So these mushrooms are obviously not for everyone. But for the people who do benefit, these statements. But I think as a group, there are some people who are on the edge and they may No, no, no, fuck this. tradition. Shamanic tradition. Shamanic tradition, rituals, elders. They've done this for a long time. Whoa. And so these mushrooms are looked upon as being

1:01:40 that he believed that as the climate changed less introspective thinking, much more chaos, right? And that he believes that this is probably resulting in some sort of a shift, or he believed, rather, before he passed, You don't think that had anything to do with mead? So you just disagree with his initial idea? on his birthday. I go, don't you think that's a little

1:03:52 I think so. Yeah. Yes. and maybe you could elaborate on this, And we know the neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus. occur in the peripheral nervous system. I have an extraordinarily powerful story that I would I met him when I was around 20 years of age. book publisher in the early 1970s. And so I was told to go up there, and I made an appointment,

1:07:18 Sur and we tripped together. It was a great mentoring, you know, father-son relationship. I'm losing my sight. I go, got it, Bill. And I said, well, how does this relate? And he's laying there just, you know, he's like 80, mid-80s at that point. He shakes his ear by near his head for three or four days. researchers who have dea license who are doing clinical research this is an easily measurable

1:10:25 But I think this is something that medical researchers should pay attention to. So I think, you know, just like water chooses the path of least resistance, I think that neurologically, if there is a neurological pathway that can help you as a species, as an individual survive, should there be a saber-toothed tiger on the horizon, then I think that the economy of energy in nature would reward the neurological pathways that are most likely to lead to your survival.

1:11:49 We're looking at these images, Most of the people are just listening rather than viewing. And this is why microdosing is the rage in Silicon Valley. So it's on the order of like a 10th of a gram of Cubensis where people are taking this and then they're taking it repeatedly over time. he says that when he's sparring it's almost like he's psychic like he knows what people are going

1:15:25 Two days out of seven. It's also consistent for those of us who drink coffee like myself. You drink coffee for five and I'm pulling it but it's stuck under the cushions and I'm struggling to get this blanket over me while I'm on the couch. And I'm pulling it, but it's stuck under the cushions, and I'm struggling. running into bears and caves and really bizarre, very, very vibrant colors. And apparently from

1:17:38 All my friends who did it experienced it. Colony Collapse Disorder. Now, Apis meleifera is a honeybee, and it's factory farmed now. Even cannabis and other non-dependent plants benefit from what's called buzz pollination because the bees then can spread the pollen better through the air. Avis melephora is a honeybee from Europe, brought over in the 1700s.

1:20:47 Now the average time for pollination is only four days. And interestingly, it's the number one bridge issue between liberals and conservatives. And for 40 days, from dawn to dusk, there was a continuous convoy of bees to my mushroom bed. mushroom extracts, and we found extracts that were highly active against flu viruses, Yeah, we'll get to that in a second. Yeah, we'll get to that in a second.

1:23:21 That's been making for 10 years. BioShield biodefense story and my antiviral stuff. A huge paw strike in the tree. threat to the economic stability of the school system. I don't understand why the bears would to make propolis from the resins, to patch their hivesives from cracks to prevent invaders coming into a beehive. These are all seemingly disparate stories, and this is why this waking

1:26:34 space. And then I had synapses activate a new neurological pathway. I had an epiphany. I think pigs, and birds, what would they do with bees? Now, we all grew up with Winnie the Pooh. So if you invented the bicycle, the wheel, that tells, the more experts that teach away from my invention, the more unconventional my invention is, hence, no prior art, even though we all grew up with the Winnie the Pooh, we knew that bears went in the

1:29:54 we began to dismantle the immunological mycelial nets of nature. The researchers then finally published when they got the results that was contrary to the interests of Syngenta and Bayer, that in fact neonicotinoids harmed the second and third It's called the cytochrome P450 pathway. We all immunological networks of nature, the mycelium that's resident. The fact that these same mushrooms reduce viruses in bees, pigs, birds, people, speaks to me of a bigger concept, that the mycelium

1:32:41 Bioterrorism became the front and center of concern of the U.S. Defense Department. We have a company of 78 great employees. And we had this large library. So they said, So I get the first reports come back, and I'm flipping through them, agaricon that grows exclusively in the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. And I called him up saying, these research results are wonderful.

1:35:11 But the U.S. government sometimes is not very well organized. It teeter-tottered. No, it's fine. He goes, listen, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp. And I went, oh, my gosh. I'm in Canada. They were doing it on purpose. I asked everyone to go in their car, shut down the business immediately, and decentralize us as a target. I filed this patent and four or five years later, it still had not been published.

1:38:46 We also have done work at the Tuberculosis Research Institute with Dr. Scott Franzblau Their immune system over-amps. that can help protect you. But I'm curious why they don't recommend the vaccine after the age of 24. have it i don't know the answer to that that's bizarre i've never been able to get someone to We've identified around 14,000. set of 50 species, we're finding these mushrooms which have tremendous potential health benefit.

1:42:43 between conservatives and liberals because Osama bin Laden didn't have access to an old-growth forest. Can you recommend a website that perhaps would recommend? medicinal shiitake mushrooms are it's very very medicinal the big the big stars right now uh by And portobello's in particular should be cooked at high temperatures. the hydrazines, the agaritines in these mushrooms, but that jury is still out.

1:45:20 It puts your life in danger talking about portobello mushrooms? I can tell you the story. funded by NIH and the University of Minnesota Medical School She had a chemotherapy using Herceptin and a little short time Taxol. difference in improving your immunological defense. Absolutely. about 30% less than the national average. And after exhaustive study, he found that they were

1:50:07 reduction of cancer across the board of all cancers, statistically significant, I think over Yeah. And apparently they discovered this from – it's a weird one because they grow it on a caterpillar. It's been a very complicated taxonomy because when researchers would go What that means is it has two forms. now it's two sides of the same coin. You see the

1:53:21 I can't keep up with you, man. The good news is, based on the best of my knowledge, several of these companies that or hardly anyone knows only way to go about this where they sequence the entire genome. And so there's a lot of elasticity or plasticity in the expression of DNA. So what was accurate a few years ago is considered to be highly inaccurate today.

1:56:10 they mix, oftentimes distributors mix suppliers, and it's a form of, quote, unquote, Russian roulette. So you really need to buy U.S.-grown, certified organic mushrooms that have a clear chain of custody and hopefully one that is from a reputable supplier or scientist and not somebody who's just trying to make money. You just had Cordyceps loidei up on the screen there.

1:57:50 And this, I'm a character on Star Trek now. just like cordyceps, you know, coming out of the – We're kind of stuck. So I said, okay. The great thing about Star Trek is the flip phone and the iPad. and astromycologist Paul Stamets is using the mycelium spore drive. It's a propulsion system because in my TED Talk, and I've been talking about this a long time, about networks.

2:00:42 confidentiality. And there's an incredibly strict confidentiality agreement that I can only state which has been publicly displayed. across for hours from one part of the universe But if you look at the multiverse, and now I'm going to sound like Terrence McKenna, of entering into the multiverse. John went to Yale University. He got a graduate scholarship in neurophysiology at the University of Washington.

2:03:08 I love running a chainsaw. but I need another two minutes to set the stage here I'm really fascinated, now John went to, Columbia, came back with great stories of eating soul-scied mushrooms. This is part of our textbook. We're hanging together all the time. finally, give me my book. And Ryan goes, I can't give it to you, Paul. I said, why? He says, my dad burned it. I said, your dad burned my brother's book?

2:05:10 John calls me up. And I go, is the spores purple brown? Do you see a little skin that's translucent? So I jumped in my car I go, why all the secrecy? It was about 50 feet by 30 feet, So we waited until the police cars went away, and we're kind of idling there. So it was like pretty soon, everyone's all hanging out as a little group at the bus stop.

2:07:29 all these mushrooms called in scientific literature So we go back to the house, and it's like, we've got to dry them. Talk about the gag reflex. I bonded with my brother. But what could kill all these cattle? and they were joking with me, And I go, well, it's not this weekend. All the rivers were flooding. from the river now. My cabin was on the verge of falling into it, but I got my manuscript. I got

2:11:57 Now, as a scientist, you realize when you say something like that, you open yourself up to ridicule. This happened to me. I'm not making this up. Let's end with that. Please. And Louis Schwerzberg, a shout out. Thank you, brother.