Foraging Mushrooms with Gabrielle Cerberville (@ChaoticForager)

0:19 Welcome, welcome to the mushroom revival podcast. How's everyone doing? Sending all the love to wherever you're listening to around the world? If you don't know, I'm your host, Alex Dora, and we geek out about mycology, mushrooms, fungi, everything fungal bringing experts all around the world to geek out with us and go down a fungal rabbit hole. So welcome, Gabrielle. How you doing? I'm good. Hi. Thanks for having me. Of course. Yeah, you want to say hi to our listeners to everyone what you're up to? And what brings you to the mushroom space? Yeah, so hi, I'm Gabrielle. If you're on Tik Tok or Instagram, you might know me as chaotic foragers, I'm just your friendly neighborhood mushroom enthusiast, I use my platform to teach people how to spot and identify edible mushrooms in their backyards, and their green spaces. And I also talk a lot about plants responsibility to the land. And then like the really good stuff, which is just the beautiful reciprocity and the relationship that we can build with our environment as we care for just the needs of what's around us already. Where does the word chaotic come from? Do you identify as being chaotic? I have ADHD. I am a very chaotic person. I'm sort of one of those like, I always think there's like a little weird when people are talking about like, Oh, I'm Omni potential. I'm just like, interested in everything. So I find that I have a really hard time staying on topic. I jump around I have a hard time like sticking to like just one interest because how could i There are so many interesting things in this world. So I bounced around from like mushrooms to music to all of these different things that make up you know who we are. We're just these mosaics of people. Can you kind of paint a timeline of how that mosaic was creative? Did you get into plants first, or music or mushrooms? How did this mosaic come to fruition? Oh, man. So I have always been a musician I have actually I have two degrees in music composition. Now I just finished my master's degree while I was building my tic tock persona, I guess. And thank you. When I was really little, like five or so I moved to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania with my family. And a neighbor pointed out the blueberry bushes that were growing all over the property that we lived on, we lived really close to a marsh and blueberries really love that soil. And from that point on, I got really, really obsessed with the blueberries. And I would go out with a little notebook be at five years old, barely able to write going out with a little notebook and like tracking the dates of when things would start to come out. You know, when did the flowers come out on the blueberry bushes? And then when did the flowers turn into the little green berries? And then when did the green berries start to turn purple? And then like What day was it really the season started and I had just pages of of stuff about these blueberries. They're kind of like my first plant relationship. And I think that that experience really taught me how to pay attention to the details when foraging because I've sort of carried that kind of idea through how I approach new plants and now how I approach mushrooms but I didn't get into mushrooms until I was an adult mushrooms became a thing for me when I was about 2425 I had gotten into trail running and I was running in this beautiful forested area. I'm 30 now Yeah, so I've been a mushroom geek for about five, six years. But yeah, I've got ace amazing trail running and I saw these mushrooms and I was like what are they? So I took some very unhelpful pictures and I uploaded them to the Indiana mushrooms Facebook group. And very, very nice guy, Derek talkington identified them for me as at that time Armillaria tab lessons, they've recently been reclassified to death Armillaria caespitosa. But I looked them up and I was like, Oh my God, wait, these are edible. Like I could eat that. So I went back and I was like pretty unsure. Like I don't know if I should actually eat these. Maybe I should take some time maybe I should like, figure out if this is something that I really want to like risk my life on because I had this very mica phobic idea that all the mushrooms out in the world were toxic unless they were like handed to me in a grocery store. But 5:00 it, I decided that I was going to risk it and I ate a couple and they were delicious. And then I didn't die. And from that point on after you don't die once, maybe you won't die again. 5:12 Great philosophy, I actually found you through Tik Tok. And I'm sure a ton of people have because you just blew up, and are one of if not the most influential person on that channel in terms of mycology, which is super exciting. And it's super cool that as young people and you know, especially in the younger generations, they can connect to nature and at this education through their phone, which hopefully they're eventually getting into the woods. But how was that journey for you? And what was the moment where you knew that you wanted to continue being an educator on tick tock, and it was working? Yeah, it was unexpected. I only started tick tock because I moved out of the place where I had lived for nearly 10 years to a new city to go to grad school, and I had to leave all my foraging spots behind. So I saw other tech talkers, who were talking about the things that they liked to eat outside, and I was like, Oh, my God, like I do that too. Maybe I could do like a little video log of these new things that I'm finding these new spots where I like finding my mushrooms and finding my plants. And the thing that really put it over the edge was I had like 12 Regular viewers, right, like just 12 people. And we would, we would have our little conversations, and I posted a video of a giant puffball mushroom. And suddenly there were 40,000 people just wanting me to talk more about mushrooms. And as a person who often bores people with the amount of time that I want to spend talking about the things that I'm interested in, it was kind of a dream come true to have 40,000 people wanting me to info dump on them. So I started making more videos and over time, realized that a lot of people felt very alienated by the mushroom education that was out there. There are amazing mushroom educators out there. Don't get me wrong, like Adam Harrington is somebody that I learned a tremendous amount from. There are some amazing people in mushroom, Facebook groups and on Reddit, who are like very enthusiastic, and who really want to help people. But a lot of what was out there felt like very gatekeeping IE, it felt like you've had to know so much in order to be accepted by these people. And I definitely remembered feeling that way when I started looking for mushrooms. So I wanted to do something that felt very friendly, that felt approachable. And that also taught the important things about how to be safe. And all of those things that you need to know if you're going to eat food that comes from outside. Have you posted on other platforms as well? And have you noticed a I'm just curious about the general response on tick tock, because as a company mushroom revival, we posted a few videos on Tiktok. And their response was radically different than other channels that we posted on and people. I don't know if you've had a similar experience, but people were, you know, every mushroom that we posted about even if it was, you know, and gnocchi, they were like, Oh, those are magic mushrooms or, you know, we post oyster mushrooms like, Oh, those are magic mushrooms or even cordyceps or like, Oh, those are psilocybin like, or, you know, we had this video, I can't remember what we're picking maybe my talkie, and we got all this hate comments. And people were like, how could you destroy nature? Like you're at what? And we had to respond like, hey, like you were helping spread the spores. And that's, you know, there's this underground organism and like, we just never gotten those responses from people before so it seems like there's a lot more education needed on tick tock maybe because they're a lot younger, but how is your response been on that platform? And kind of 9:01 maybe what hurdles have you gone through? Oh, my God, what a mixed bag. Such a mixed bag. Like I've absolutely gotten, like every comment that you've sort of reiterated there. I have gotten on my page the more traction a video gets, the more misinformation is going to pollute the comments. I've never actually had my account taken down but I've had several videos go under review or get axed. I had a video about morels go under for drugs and like we know that morels are not drugs. But you know anything if I show like a blue staining bilete that is going to go under review because people assume that oh, if a mushroom turns blue after you bruise it, it must contain philosophy. Anything that has gills must have a look alike that wants to kill you. It's just waiting like a little assassin, a little mushroom assassin. Anything you eat from the wild must like in the words of Sam Fayer exist under quote 10:00 imaginary clouds of urine like people have so many misconceptions about the wild and about the natural world. And frankly, it's because we don't spend enough time with it anymore. Green things are just there for us to look at and not there for us to interact with, you know, mushrooms are all deadly toxic and out there waiting to kill us. But that is just simply not the reality of the natural world. The natural world demands respect. But it's not like waiting to kill us. There's so much mica phobic misinformation that just comes out of pure ignorance. And I tried to make specific videos addressing each of those different commonly quoted comments because people really don't know A common misconception is that mushrooms exhibit a faux Semitism, you know, color linked toxicity, which we know is not true, there are plenty of deadly toxic white mushrooms. And there are plenty of perfectly edible brightly colored mushrooms. The one that I keep hearing recently is that mushrooms that grow on wood, are all perfectly fine and edible. And I'm like babes Have you heard of Gala, rhina and Marginata because that grows on wood, it looks a little bit like a gnocchi, if you're not paying attention, and it will kill you because it contains tons of antitoxin. There's just like a lot of misinformation. And it can feel really overwhelming to try to stay on top of it all. But what I will tell you is that after doing this for, I guess two years now, I am noticing that people are learning because when I go on, tick tock and I see mushroom videos that contain a lot of misinformation. People are in the comments correcting it, because they are learning from people like you like me, like other mushroom people, mushroom tech talkers and other education sources that mushrooms are not to be feared. They are to be respected. But they're not there to kill us. What do you feel like? Is there maybe one misconception that you see the most that you've had the most struggles with educating people? Maybe it's a complex topic, or something that you've just tried to articulate to people and it's just not getting through? Like, it feels like a brick wall to you? And maybe there's a couple? Yeah, something that's been on my mind recently is how a lot of times I think people are coming from a really good place when they're telling others not to forage or imposing like really weird arbitrary restrictions on their foraging, like, oh, only take 5% of what's there? Where did you get that number from? What organism are you talking about? Because if you're talking about invasive garlic mustard, by God, please take all of it if you can, if you're talking about let's say Austria, Citroen, or pilotis, or the invasive golden oyster mushroom here in the Midwest, well, don't just take 5% of it, like take as much as you're going to use and as much as you can preserve and as much as you can give away, because it's invasive. You know, I think that the rule of thumb rather than, you know, Take 5% Take 10% should be take from native species, what the population can reasonably recover in a relatively short amount of time. That's the definition of being sustainable. And from invasives. Take as much as you are able and go for that first, because it's responsible, it's responsible to the environment. I think that a lot of people who don't forage impose really weird restrictions and ideals on foragers, that don't always make sense scientifically, or interpersonally. If you're somebody who works with nature, there's this idea that we are stealing food from the animals, for example, well, I plant far more milkweed than I ever take. You know, I do lots of mushroom permaculture so that it's easier for me to forage and so that all of my animal friends have things to eat to, when you care about nature, because you are eating from it. You are incentivized to do something to make sure that it remains there. And rather than getting angry at a forage or for plucking a Shawn Terrell and stealing the food from the animals get angry at the corporation that is ripping up a wetland to put a bank in. Right, exactly. The Shawn Terrell is a low hanging fruit and you know, it is a lot harder to talk about those larger impacts. And this might not be true for every single mushroom but the majority a lot of times when you pick it, if you're not just directly throwing it in a plastic bag, you're helping the spores relocate in other parts. 15:00 of the forest in which they wouldn't have gotten, you know, a lot of mushroom spore mechanisms, or they don't go very far. Like this Moors don't travel that far, you know, especially, yeah, there's a lot of mushrooms, the spores just go like an inch or two, and they don't go very far. And they rely on animals like us to transfer them to other places. And so if you have an open weaved basket, or you're carrying it around, and you're shaking it in the woods, you're actually helping the organisms survive. And so I think people don't realize it's a fruit, you know, and they think that you're just killing the entire organism. And it's like, no, that's just the fruit like, it makes the fruiting bodies so it can transfer the spores, and we're helping it Oh, absolutely. I run into this all the time with people who really strongly believe that you should never pull a mushroom out of the ground. Well, we know from at least 40 years of combined studies across multiple continents, that that's just simply not the case. With most of Mike arisal terrestrial mushrooms, plucking them makes the most sense. It's like you wouldn't expect somebody to harvest apples by cutting the top part off and leaving it there, it would just rot that mushrooms just they work by ways that you cannot always see. But ways that make a lot of sense. If you actually listen to the organism and what it wants. It's really funny because your slogan says saving noobs from accidental on aligning themselves since 2021. What what do you feel like are your I don't know, if you have some go to things that you feel like, you know, we're talking about a few of them. But if a complete newbie comes to you, they don't know anything about fungi, mushrooms, and they're like, hey, teach me your stuff. What are some of the most valuable things that you want to get across to complete mycological newbies, okay, a lot of them are just mindset things. Because frankly, you can watch a video on the internet. And you can learn how to identify like, chicken of the woods, for example, or a morel, I would start by just encouraging somebody to be cautious. Because a lot of times you don't know what you're looking for. If you're a brand new forage, or you don't know that you can have different Stipe attachments, and you can have, like fish smell is important, or you don't know to look at the fine details of the gills and how they attach to the cap. It's a lot of things like that, you know, slowing yourself down, and making sure that you take the time to verify every detail of that mushroom against the description of the mushroom you think it is. And if those details don't match, you don't have that mushroom, you need to go on to another specimen. And you need to keep looking, or you need to consider other possibilities. I usually when I'm learning a brand new mushroom, and I did this a lot at the beginning, I like to identify it three times before I will actually eat it. Because like honestly, no matter how experienced we are, we can all be a little touched by Dunning Kruger at times. So the first time I just observed the mushroom in its habitat, I pay attention to where it's growing, what it's growing around. I might do some botanical drawings to get some of those details sort of burned in my mind. I compare it against my favorite sources. I really like mushroom expert.com for this because they have sort of a Michael Cole has like created lists of different things to look for almost like flowcharts so that you can see okay, does the detail match here? If it's this, then maybe we're looking at this. If it doesn't, maybe we need to look at these possibilities instead. I think that's really helpful. It's a great website the second time Yeah, it's so great. And quot is just the loveliest human being. He was at our Michigan mushroom camp this past September, and he gave a fantastic presentation and he was just so fun to foray with. I just read his bio last night. I was just looking on his website and I was like, Who made this website? And yeah, he's a teacher and like he does mycology part time as like a hobby. It's like Wow, amazing. Yeah, I'm super grateful for the site. Everyone should check it out. It's really helpful. He also has a book I just purchased it. Oh, it's on one of my other mushroom shelves, but it's something like 100 edible mushrooms and it's mostly like Midwestern mushrooms but it's very well written and it compiles a lot of the information that's on the website. So if you're new, I highly suggest checking out myco close new book, but kind of going back to like the steps to getting to know a mushroom like the second time I find one. I will sometimes bring it home and do long term observation. So I especially like to do this with beliefs because 20:00 is timing is an important factor in identifying a bleed, you know, does it bruise with a lot of different beliefs, the timing of the bruising will be important. So maybe it will turn black after three minutes, and then that bruising will fade, maybe it won't. So that's always important. And then the last time I tried to make sure that I can recognize it on site, that I would like stand before a judge and jury and swear on my mother's life, that that is what I think it is. And at that point, I will eat it. I like that rule. Yeah, yeah, it's, again, like rules are kind of made to be broken. You know, you may not need to do that if you find like a morel, or something that's pretty easy to identify. But it is kind of helpful to just slow yourself down. Yeah. And I'm curious if you have a couple or up to 10 or however many that you go by for that newbie that unbelievable beginner? You know, do you have a list of species that are like these are great to start with? And maybe, you know, because we're both in the US, let's stay to the US. You're in the Midwest, I'm in Texas. So I don't know maybe there's species across the US that you are kind of safe for beginners that they can learn and know like the back of their hand. Sure. Yeah, I'll kind of keep it to the genus level for the most part because I think that our species are going to be slightly different since you're on the West Coast and I'm in the Midwest but I would say certain poly pores learning how to identify them for example, chicken of the woods very easy mushroom to identify there really are not very many toxic poly pores so it's something that you can feel relatively safe with. And if you learn what a chicken of the woods looks like, I think that do you guys have a little bris Gilbert Sony AI out there? We have lots ypersele furious and Libris Cincinnatus and possibly a couple others, but not that I'm actually not sure. Yeah, I'm actually not sure. I'm actually still learning the mushrooms of Texas and I've been 22:06 honestly I haven't gone out because I'm used to. I've grown up on the northeast my whole entire life. And I'm kind of like not inspired to go out here because there's no like no mushrooms. So I'm just I don't go out. Honestly, I traveled to mushroom hunt outside of the state. 22:24 So yeah, yeah. So anyway, yeah. You know, here in the Midwest, we also have like, hen of the woods we have a number of other really tasty edible poly pores. One of my favorite is MicroPilot Samsonite, or black standing poly four, which is out right now. And it's really beautiful. It's really delicious. It's also one that's often mistaken for chicken of the woods and then people take it home and like the name suggests it stains black after it's an oxygenation reaction. And then people bring it home and they're just like, oh my god, I got a bad one. It's like no, no, you just misidentified the mushroom. But yes, that would be one. I think that morels are also a popular gateway mushroom for good reason. They're pretty easy to identify and they're also just really fun to look for. They like to blend in with the forest floor. There's a reason that it's called like Easter egg hunting for adults, but kids are better at it than adults are. So I don't know why they say that. But morels are pretty easy to identify. There aren't really that many I guess I don't like to say toxic lookalikes. I don't think that it's a really helpful way to think about mushrooms it doesn't like center the individuality of them but there are many things that look like morels that you can get too confused by if you pay attention to things like you know the pitting on the cap and the attachment of the Stipe to the cap what else I think that puffball species are also a good place to start because unless you're mixing them up with like scleroderma which is hard to do, then you're pretty much gonna be able to eat any puffball you find as long as it's pure white inside I'm not aware of any toxic puffballs but of course if you slice when open and it's yellow or green inside or if it's not a death cap egg or something yeah, definitely cut out open every every boy you have make sure there's no little mushroom. 24:27 Yeah, it's pure waste. They're like softball sized. You know once you get to the giant puffballs like there's nothing else that looks like a giant alien volleyball in the middle of the forest, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. I think the chanterelles are also a good one to learn and probably oyster mushrooms as well. These are all things that are like really easy to identify on their own. They don't have too many distinctive characteristics that make it easy to confuse them with other mushrooms. So I think that the 25:00 That's probably like a pretty decent starter list, and it'll get you pretty far in most places in the US. Yeah, so just starting with chicken of the woods. I don't know if you have the answers to this, but I've always been curious. And I was just researching this, that it's about 10% of the population that has gastrointestinal issues with eating chicken of the woods. And, you know, I've always heard this, that just a small portion of the population. They have gastrointestinal issues with eating certain mushrooms that are choice and amazing edibles for most of the population. And I've heard certain people say, Oh, it's the tree that the chicken of the woods is growing on. And then I was just doing research that it could be two related species. I don't know if I'm pronouncing this correctly, but we had a porous Harun Nia ANSYS and then later porous Gill, Burt Gilbert Gilbert, Sony AI. Yeah. Which are the problem ones that you know, 10% of people that eat those two species, have it for whatever reason, and same could be said for Morales. I know there's like a percentage of people that just for whatever reason, get upset stomach. So I don't know if you have any insight on why. So what I can tell you is my own opinion, my opinion is that the vast majority of Gi problems that come from eating chicken of the woods are either people who are just like kind of nervous about what they ate, and then they kind of give themselves a little bit of like the anxiety gi problem, because that happens a lot with edible mushrooms. And I will also say that chicken of the woods can be very upsetting to your stomach if it is not thoroughly cooked, and people will sometimes undercooked chicken of the woods and then experienced GI upset and attribute it to the mushroom rather than attributing it to the preparation of the mushroom. This is also often the case for morels. morels are a mushroom that contains hydrazine, just like a lot of other mushrooms. Do you know for example, the grocery store mushrooms that we buy Agaricus bisporus, they contain hydrazine as well. And if you do not cook hydrazine off, it can make you ill because it will convert to monomethyl hydrazine in your gut. And the synthetic form of mono methyl hydrazine is a component of rocket fuel and a known carcinogen and just like very non good for you. Morels can also interact with alcohol depending on whether or not that is neutralized and just depending on your own body chemistry. So if you make a moral risotto and you crack open a bottle of wine, you might end up making yourself very ill. And that's going to vary from person to person. But there is also some kind of going back to chicken of the woods. Some people have postulated that chicken of the woods grown on eucalyptus may be kind of the problem. And that's sort of the discussion around L Gilbert Sony i out on the west coast because that's a West Coast chicken of the woods. Many of the specimens of whatever is Gilbert Soni, I are grown on eucalyptus, especially in places like California where I don't know if you've ever spoken with my friend Gordon Walker, Dr. Gordon Walker, fascinated by fungi, but that's the majority of great, yeah, that's the majority of what he forages out there and most of it grows on Eucalyptus. So if you are concerned that you may have a GI reaction to chicken of the woods, a start small and B, do a pre bake, you can pre bake or you can boil your mushrooms for 1520 minutes and then cook them as you normally would in whatever you want to make. I have personally never had a problem with somebody eating chicken of the woods, if it was pre baked. So just some things to keep in mind. I suppose. It's really funny. I was just going down a rabbit hole about koala bears. And I was reading about how they sleep for like 23 hours a day, because there's just not very many nutrients and eucalyptus so they're just like anemic and very, like not getting the nutrients they need. Yes, wow. Maybe one day we'll develop the same mechanisms to break down eucalyptus as koala bears then we could eat all the eucalyptus chicken of the woods we want that'd be great. animals that have evolved to only eat one very nutrient poor food are just fascinating to me like Panasonic 29:39 and it's just like, I only want to eat this one kind of bamboo. And also I am on the brink of death at all times. I actually love a little side tangent here. I love watching videos of panda bears. Like they just roll around. They're the best like they feel like they're living their dream life. Oh 30:00 They're so cute. So bamboo seems to be working. I mean, like, if we're talking about quality of life, I don't know what's going on inside. But I just see all these videos of like baby panda bears just like rolling around and they seem like they're living living the best life. Maybe, I don't know, I'd be curious to see if koala bears ever eat any mushrooms or anything or pandas. It's always fascinating to hear different animals, you know, eating mushrooms and not being a big part of their diet besides homosapiens, you know, and I was just reading about a bird the other day that takes I can't remember the name of the mushroom, but it's a bright blue mushroom. And they take the mushroom and like, incorporate it in a mating ritual to like, attract the female bird. And they make this whole nest looking thing with the bright blue mushrooms. And it's really cool. It's like they don't even eat it. It's like a part of a display and Socrata is decorative. Yeah. And also, there's tons of mushrooms that people like Earth stars we were talking about puffballs, those are pretty close. And you know, there's a bunch of people in Europe that just display Earth balls, or earth stars, you know, in this like moths display on their on their table. It's great. I mean, people don't even have to eat mushrooms to appreciate them. And I think that's really, really cool. And what I appreciate when going on forays with experts, you know of like, you always get the newbies of like, can I eat this? Can I eat this? You know, I'm sure you get that question all the time. And then I feel like you reach another plateau of like, you can appreciate it without eating it. And I think you just get into another place that's pretty blissful of like appreciating the organism without having to eat it. And that's it's perfectly okay to necessarily have that kind of utility. Yeah, right. Yeah, cool. An interesting thing is a lot of the time, the question that I will get from people is, what is this good for? Well, it's good for decomposing and for providing beauty to the world and for contributing to fungal diversity in the soil. It's good for existing, it doesn't exist, just so that you can eat it or do something with it. It doesn't have to be medicinal, it doesn't have to be edible. It just has to be there. Not everything is just there for a specific type of utility for us. Right, I actually love telling people the story about the ecology, and history of psilocybin, you know, and how it existed for millions of years, even before early humanoids were on the planet. And it's like, it's not for us. 32:47 And like, it doesn't exist as this, like, I hear all these stories of people saying all like magic mushrooms exist as to raise our consciousness and blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, they're trying to deter insects, like they don't care about us, you know, like, this is not made for us. We evolved to eat them potentially. But they're doing their own thing, you know, and it is a humbling experience, once you realize that we're not the center of the universe. 33:15 We're not even the center of the ecosystem. No, no. And that, that is a very humbling realization. And I think, you know, you're talking about one of the first things that you do when talking to quote unquote, newbies is like trying to change their mindset. And I think that is number one of like, yeah, we're just, we're another animal, just experiencing this ecosystem. And here's all the other organisms just like us living their life, and can we just experience it? And I think that's such a treat that most people have forgotten about. And I think, as these new generations get more attached to screens, I think we're moving away from our connection to nature. So it's really cool that you can kind of hack the process. 34:06 And you know, when people are attached to their screens, you can stop them and be like, hey, nature, you know, and connection and education. So I'm sure you would rather be out in the woods more than in front of your phone. But I think it's good work that is needed, especially for younger generations. Yeah. And the thing is like, Okay, so there's this book that I read many years ago by Neil Postman called amusing ourselves to death, right? People have been saying the same things about basically every technological advancement since the printing press, and that it makes us lose our connection to each other. It makes us dumber, all of these things. I think that this technology of the cell phone of the internet is easily harnessed double for really good purposes. I think that we lost our connection to nature, when we stopped listening to indigenous people about how the land should be interacted with when we 35:00 stopped working with the land and started trying to make the land work for us instead. And when we decided that the things that we needed as a species were more important than the overall ecological needs of an entire system that we belong to. And so like, yeah, the screens do quite literally separate us from one another and from nature to a certain extent, but I have my phone with me out in the woods all the time, because it's useful to be able to access this brick of information, where I can go on mushroom expert.com. And I can go and find this beautiful flowchart of things so that I can get to know this organism that I'm looking at that much better. And I think that the internet has proven to be more useful to me than detrimental. And the way that we're able to present all of this beauty to so many people who maybe don't even have green space in their neighborhood to go and experience is just so so valuable. Thanks for giving that insight. It's an important insight to have, you know, screens are not the root of the problem. And the root of the problem has been here well before screens were developed. And without them, we wouldn't be talking right now and having this conversation and sharing this information to people all around the world. So it's really cool to be able to partner with this new technology to further connection rather than distance ourselves from it. Definitely. Yeah. And this might be a very hard question or very easy question. Do you have an I'll give you different options. You have a favorite mushroom or species, genus family, or you know, as wide as you can get of like ecological role, like just love SAP prophetic fungi? 36:54 Yes. Do you have a favorite single or group of fungi? This is so hard because I love different fungi for different reasons. But I would say that poly per ACA has been a longtime love of mine. I think that poly pores are absolutely fascinating. They're beautiful. They look so stupid sometimes just like, What are you doing here? Why are you so big? Why are you so small? What is wrong with you? I love poly pores. And they just make me smile when I see them. And the more I learned about them, the more interesting they get, you know, like ganoderma are also just like, there's so much that we don't understand about how they work. And it's really cool to like go into a forest and see this inedible mushroom with like, chew marks on it because a deer has been eating it not because the deer wanted to eat food, but because the deer was using medicine that was readily available in its own environment. But I think that's really fascinating. I've been getting really into beliefs recently, my partner just gave me this book that I've wanted for two years. So I've been reading that and just finding it so fascinating. There's a really fantastic Facebook group, where I've been learning about beliefs, beliefs of North America. And there are some really fantastic experts on there who answer all kinds of questions, and I learned so much from them, but down to the species level. Gosh, there are so many there are so many that just feel like old friends. It's really hard to pick one. I love foraging chanterelles, just because it's just like finding little nuggets of gold on the forest floor. It's just there's nothing quite like it. But gosh, I would say the very first magic mushroom that I ever foraged was philosophy, Salomon Siata. And I was in Iceland, and that was pretty special. So that's a yeah, that's, I guess, like a favorite, in some ways, because it was just like a pretty, a pretty unique experience. I was just reading a news article. I wouldn't say just but I went to Iceland a couple years ago. And right before it there was this news article that was released of like, it made all these headlines because people were just stopping on the side of the road and looking for those philosophy species. And then like news reporters showed up and they're just like, why is there 30 People stopped on the side of the road like looking for these mushrooms? Yeah, Iceland is a magical place. And speaking of are there, you know, before we hopped on, you're saying you haven't been to California and I know Gordon Walker's from there. And this is kind of a multi part question. But are there places that you haven't gone that you're wanting to go and it could be states in the US or places in your own state or other countries? And then with that are there may be poly poor species or delete species are some rare species that you're like, dying to find, but I've never found it yet. And then also, are there people that you would like to forage with that you're like, Oh my God, I've only talked to them on the internet. 40:00 And that would be a dream country if I could ever forge with them. Oh my gosh, so many answers to that question first. Like, I realized many years ago that if I could pick my dream job, I would be the Anthony Bourdain of mushrooms, how you travel all over the world and meet fascinating people doing cool things in Mike illogical spaces and in foraging spaces, and just like hanging out with them forage and eat food. So I would quite literally go anywhere in the world to forage mushrooms, but someplace that's been sort of on my bucket list for a while is Indonesia. There's a fascinating psychological culture in Indonesia. There are so many super cool mushrooms and Indonesia, the people understand mushrooms like they work with mushrooms, many cultures are more naturally mica phobic, maybe there are just more toxic species in their area, you know, maybe it's just not never been a part of their culture. But that's not the case in Indonesia. So I would love to go there. I was recently in Guna, Yala, Panama, Guna. Yala is sovereign indigenous land within the borders of Panama, and in parts of Colombia. So it was very close to the Colombian border. And I had a really incredible time there. I have family who are from Puerto Rico, and are indigenous to Puerto Rico. So I would really love to go out there and to other parts of the Caribbean and get to forage in some of those forests. It was kind of a an incredible experience to be around people and in contexts that were relatively similar to what my ancestors would have experienced. Yeah, there are definitely mushrooms here in Michigan that I am still looking for. I have never found polyporus on Bill latas. And it was evidently a good season for it because a lot of my friends found it. And it's rare and I was in Panama during its season, so I would still make the choice to go but dang it some people go for two years without finding it and I'm worried I'm going to be one of those people. I would also really like to find Michigan trick Aloma Matsu Takei. And really that one is not because I don't know where it grows, because I can figure that out, but really likes Jack Pine, and it grows in the Upper Peninsula, but it's just a matter of getting to the Upper Peninsula during that two week stretch and going to the right spot and finding it. So that would be another sort of bucket list. One hopefully I will check that box at the end of this year. And as far as people there are so many people that I would love to forage with. I've made so many just lovely friends through Tik Tok and through social media, I was always sort of a solo forger. Before that I was alone, I didn't really do much with the Psychological Society. I was sort of a silent watcher. So now that I've put myself out there, there are people that I've been able to interact with who I would love to go forage with Gordon actually came out here and came to our mushroom camp this past year. And that was really fun. And I would love to go out to Napa with and visit him. And maybe we'll do some like bilete hunting or something like that. He always finds so many stupid burn morels that I've got to get out there for his morale season one year and start cleaning up because he's in peace embarrassing me. There are a number of people on the East Coast that I would love to go visit. There are some other Midwestern foragers that I've just gotten haven't gotten around to hanging out with yet. Sam FERS one, we've got to make a plan some time because he has family like 45 minutes away from me, Alexis Nicole and I have hung out but we haven't foraged together. Neither of us really like making videos with other people quite so much. It's really hard to have that sort of like to be silly in front of a camera when you relate with another person. So when you're like with another tick tock or there's like all this pressure to make videos, and I really just want to like hang out with my friends and, and eat good food and yeah, but there are like lots of people that I would really love to love to get to hang out with and eat good food with. Talk about nature with. So I hope that that answered all of the questions because I'm told remember this. Yeah, definitely. And it's all going to come true. You're still young and yeah, all of this is you're gonna find all the umbrella polypores all around you with all the amazing people and just basking in them fill my car. Yeah, exactly. What's next for your journey? Your work with mushrooms you work with tick tock. Do you have any secret projects that you're working on other projects that have nothing to do with mushrooms, maybe include mushrooms? So there's one secret project that I'm not allowed to talk about yet, but hopefully very soon. 45:00 I'll be able to announce that it's pretty exciting. Any hint, let's just say it involves some kind of a step towards Bourdain. I love it. And that's all I can tell you. But I am applying to PhD programs. I got into a couple this past year and decided not to go because it just didn't feel like the right thing. So I'm looking forward to possibly moving on and getting my PhD in music competition, or some adjacent field, you know, to useless degrees isn't enough. I gotta get one more just one more baby, the trio. Yeah, I'm gonna be doing some lecturing, I have some, some contracts and make some videos, I'm gonna be doing a little bit of traveling. It's pretty exciting. So I'm really looking forward to it. Amazing. And where can people follow your work and see what you're up to? Yeah, so again, I'm on Tiktok, and Instagram and YouTube as chaotic foragers. I'm trying to start the YouTube thing, I don't really understand it. You can also find me on Twitter, but I don't know how to use it. So my Twitter just kind of sits there. And I also have a website, Gabrielle superville.com, where you can check out what I do. And if you're interested in any of the music stuff, any of the any of that like interdisciplinary stuff, I actually have a lot of music that is related to mushrooms or made by mushrooms on my page. So you can check that out there. Sweet. I will put all of this in the show notes. And thanks for coming on. Awesome. Yeah, cool. Thanks for having me on. If you're new to the show, or you've been a longtime listener, we don't have a Patreon we don't have payments that people can subscribe to. So if you want to support the show, you can check out our website at mushroom revival.com And we have a bunch of functional mushroom products gummies capsules, powders, tinctures all the goodies there along with you know all the show notes of our of our podcasts. We have a bunch of educational blogs on there. And other ways you can help us just telling people about mushrooms and geeking out you know telling people fun facts that you learned on the show and leaving a review and just geeking out and loving mushrooms and you know living your dream life. So sending everyone a big fungal hug out there. Much love and may the Force be with you Transcribed by https://otter.ai