Barbell Shrugged - The Man, The Myth, The Mushroom: Storytime with the Founder of Four Sigmatic, Tero Isokauppila  — Real Chalk #50

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

Tero Isokauppila knows more about mushrooms than you ever thought possible, and he breaks it all down in ways that the average human can understand. (Don’t want to be an average human? Start drinking mushroom coffee.) Originally from Finland, Tero has farming and science in his blood, and he brings this heritage to bear in everything he does with his company, Four Sigmatic. It’s his goal to improve people’s life quality, using nutrition as a stepping stone to whole-person wellness.   His new book, Santa Sold Shrooms, will be published soon and it will blow your mind. We talk about the origin of the Santa Claus story we know today (hint: it involves psychedelic mushrooms), and dive into the controversial possibility that well-known religions were based on mushroom-induced hallucinations.   Tero explains the meaning of Four Sigmatic, how cordyceps were discovered, and why you shouldn’t eat raw mushrooms—using a semen analogy—as well as how foods become superfoods and why we need to care about eye health. It’s an info-packed episode that will make you feel smarter before you’ve even started drinking Lion’s Mane. Get educated! Episode Highlights: 2:50 🍄 Tero’s origins: degrees, parents, heritage 4:20 🍄 Why natural supplements don’t appeal to athletes, but adaptogens are different 7:00 🍄 Some science-y sh*t about nutrient density, and what “four sigmatic” means 9:10 🍄 If you give a yak a mushroom...(how cordyceps was discovered) 11:15 🍄 Why you shouldn’t eat raw mushrooms (there’s a sperm analogy in here) 13:15 🍄 The cure for cancer is...mushrooms?? 17:00 🍄 The new marketing landscape, and how information spreads 18:50 🍄 The four mushroom pillars 21:40 🍄 The next uncharted territories: eye health, immunity 28:00 🍄 The different kinds of magic mushrooms 29:40 🍄 What we currently know about mushrooms’ effect on the brain 31:50 🍄 The evolution of Santa Sold Shrooms 33:40 🍄 Details and spoilers 35:00 🍄 What do mushrooms have to do with religion? More than you might think 38:15 🍄 Rock-, plastic-, and oil spill-eating mushrooms 41:30 🍄 How a food gets to be super (Tero hates the word “superfood,” by the way) 45:00 🍄 The Four Sigmatic process, and how to sniff out a bullsh*t product 49:00 🍄 Don’t buy protein powder from China. 54:50 🍄 What a mushroom newbie needs to know 57:00 🍄 Books and other resources   Enjoy- Ryan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/rc_tero ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please Support Our Sponsor: @BiOptimizer: www.BiOptimizers.com/realchalk    ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/ barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged  

Ladies and gentlemen, it is Tuesday. It's time for the Real Chalk Podcast, because that's what we do on Tuesdays. I'm so excited to introduce Mr. Taro. I can't really say his last name, but the guy owns Four Sigmatic Coffee, which is a big deal. Which also makes it a very big deal that I could get him on my show, because he's a very important man. This guy knows more about mushrooms than anybody that you know, but he also is really, really good at breaking it down so that everybody can understand it. We have all the questions that you could possibly have about mushroom coffee, about mushrooms in general. We talk about hallucinogenic mushrooms as well, but very, very shortly.

And then he wrote a new book called Santa Sold Shrooms. Interested yet? I read the book. It was very, very interesting. And there were so many things in there that just blew my mind. So I had to bring up some of those things. And then we get into just some weird stuff, but also very, very, very interesting. The guy is intense. And when I say intense, he's not like high energy, but he's got some really good feedback. So I can't imagine you listening to this show and not expanding your brain and getting super, super excited. So get ready for this one. It's going to be a wild ride, and I'm going to be with you for the entire time. Get ready. Here we go.

Before we start the show, I want to talk about our friends over at BioOptimizer. I got the chance to meet the owners of this company this weekend, which really, really makes me excited when it comes to sponsorship because not only now do I know so much about the product, but I also know so much about the owners, which really helps me love the product even more. So I have so much knowledge when it comes to program design and working out and getting bigger and the supplements that aid to that. But I have never really known all that much about digestion and probiotics and a lot of these supplements that are kind of on the DL when it comes to getting jacked, if for lack of a better word. It's just not the number one

thing that comes up. But it's very interesting to me that it doesn't come up more often because if you're not digesting your protein, you're not really getting anything out of all that money that you're spending. So in my opinion, after talking to them and doing the research and actually reading some of the research across many different journal articles, a lot of us really aren't digesting all that much of our protein. So they do have a product called Mass Zymes. So obviously mass is going to put some more mass on you. And those supplements right there will help you absorb all that meat if you're like me and you're eating a pound plus of meat a day. It might not help you absorb all of it, but it's going to help you absorb a hell of a lot more than if you didn't have it at all. Um, I've been using it now for a month and a half maybe. And I definitely

feel a big difference as far as how bloated I feel after eating a huge meal. I don't really usually care if I get bloated after a big meal. I just want to feel full. But, um, if you do the research on that, that's actually not a good thing. So these pills will help you kind of like tame that down a little bit, especially if you have a little bit more training session going on in the day. It's going to help you feel way, way better. Another thing that they have that's really interesting is called Gluten Guardian. So if you're like me and you have a really cool donut shop in town,

once a week it's time to fuck that place up. So you take these Gluten Guardian pills with all your donuts or all your pizza or whatever you have that's very gluten gluttonous um and it helps you feel way way better uh you don't get the like gluten hangover the next day you don't really have as much of like that guilt feeling in your gut in your gut uh when you're done eating it because instantly i feel bad about it and i make myself feel really terrible so when you take these pills, I think mentally it just kind of helps you feel like, all right, I'm getting rid of the bad stuff that just went in. So I'm a huge fan of the mass times and the gluten guardian. Another thing that if you

suffer from the burps from protein powders, like I do as well. I love my protein powders when I'm at work and I don't really have a lot of time. I just crush protein shakes and I don't just crush one serving. I do like way too much protein. All right, that's enough of that. Anyway, they have this thing called HCI Breakthrough and that will help you for your burps. It'll just break down everything inside your gut and it'll help you feel way, way better there. So those are three products that they have that are absolutely insane. I talked to them about what actually makes a product good and what actually makes a product dead. There's tons of probiotics out there and over 80% of them have been documented to be

dead probiotics. So it's a really bad quality product. And you can go on BioOptimizer's website and look at their studies and look at their lab results, and it'll show you what quality product they have. And then you can look up other people, and they don't have that stuff visible for you guys because their product is not as good, and they're just kind of going with whatever's hot out there. So it is very important to hook up with some good people. And you know me, I would never bring anybody on the show that I didn't feel very comfortable passing on to you guys. So if you guys want to go to biooptimizers.com slash real chalk, you guys will get hooked up and you get a 20% discount.

All you got to do is type in chalk, C-H-A-L-K 20, and you'll get hooked up. I promise you guys, this is one of those things that you definitely want to try. And it's making a big difference in the way that I feel all around. And I'm really, really stoked on it. Not only did I learn a whole bunch from these guys, but it's just it's making a big difference in the way that I feel all around. And I'm really, really stoked on it. Not only did I learn a whole bunch from these guys, but it's just, it's a cool product. Um, and of all the stuff that I take, I think this is my number one thing that I'm really, really excited about at the moment. So I hope you guys get excited about it too. Let's get back to the show. We're going to talk about mushrooms. Here we go. All right,

Chalk Nation sitting down with Taro, founder of Four Sigmatic. If you guys don't know what Four Sigmatic is, that makes me very sad. You guys are in the health and wellness field, and I'm sure you guys have heard about mushroom coffee at some point. This is the man and the myth and the legend behind all of it, and I think – does anyone really contend with you? I guess so. I've never heard of anyone really selling there's a couple of quote-unquote copycat products but at the end of the day it's uh four schematic tries to help people have more clean energy and better concentration sports performance there's a million companies that serve that they try to achieve it with a different method so in but in in theory we're trying to help people have more energy

concentration um performance and there's plenty of products out there they might not have these mushrooms in them but they try to achieve the same goal it's like what if you have a unique workout system you're like your deadlift protocol so you still have competitors of other workout methods or whatever i love how easy you guys make the labeling on your stuff so like i'm looking at just a couple of the packets here and i'm by no means trying to sell any of this stuff right now but it literally tells you exactly what you wanted to do on every single one and it even has a picture because everyone loves to correlate things to pictures. So you either have like someone

that looks like they're thinking or someone that looks like they're falling asleep. So that's actually a challenge. So if anybody's there in dietary supplement, food and beverage industry is that there's FDA and FTC regulates kind of what can you say and what you can't say, which is good.

US is probably far the loosest country on on the market so being in europe australia canada it's much more strict what can you say and what you can't say but um our product is a food product so we have a nutritional facts panel and just means that um it's not a dietary supplement dietary supplements they have a supplement facts panel in the product so if you ever see these like improves memory and does that those are usually supplements because ours is a food we have we can say that our product improves memory because it's a real food yeah it is but then you have to we had to think many many years on how to explain what things do without saying that they do So using creative images and colors and our products say like, it's like a hug from

your grandma, but it's just like a judo move to, to use the opposing energy for you. But that's like industry minutiae. But yeah, we had to spend a lot of time thinking, how do we explain what something is like? Nobody knows, like very few people know what's a chaga or a cordyceps so how do you that's what i really want to get into here sure so your background is you were you went to school for um yeah chemistry yeah chemistry was my first degree then then uh nutrition but it starts kind of earlier with my family so my mom is a teacher of physiology and anatomy and then my dad is an acronymist so my dad is basically a well-trained farmer and my mom is a expert in the human body works and just like you didn't want to become unsuccessful yeah somebody would have been

pissed yeah i guess so um and it's a lineage thing we've had like many many many i was in europe i grew up in finland so there's a lot of generations um but yeah multi-generational journey of people who know about this stuff and learning from there and then going to school i actually i think it's sometimes beneficial to educate yourself after you've done it in practice even probably an exercise as well it's like once you've worked out a bit and then you start to study about different muscles and joints and stuff versus first trying to go and learn all the Latin names. And it's like, what are these muscles? Um, so that's, that's how I started at first trying to learn in practice and then, then schooled for it. Okay. So now you're in school or actually

have we hit the enough of the back history with the pants? I don't care. Okay. So we have that going. Now you're in school and you're going through this chemistry stuff. Yeah. Are you starting to specialize like more into like the plant-based type of things and getting into the mushrooms? Yeah. So I was always, I loved sports. I played soccer and stuff.

Um, I was, I was good and I was not great. And I guess when you're not natural, you have to have to and i like like top you have to figure out what's an edge i was always super interested in top physical performance from a point of view of like how do you improve your performance and obviously first you start with you know the beat the creatines and you know the basic yeah and then you're like okay there needs to be next level and kind of like without cheating yeah for sure. Everyone thinks about cheating too. Yeah. And where I come from, that's not really like...

Drugs are not like a big thing. So it's like also a different cultural mindset. So every year I started adding something in. And what I just felt that this were more sustainable and easier to work with natural things anyway. They might not be as effective immediately so synthetic things tend to have a stronger impact but there's a trade-off of longevity and sustainability so so going through that rabbit hole and i started coaching professional athletes in nutrition about 13 almost 14 years ago

and one of the things i noticed that athletes did not enjoy a lot of hippie stuff that i knew because it didn't work like nobody wanted to be on bears like hippie herb herbs and stuff um but mushrooms was an exception because they few of the mushrooms are really noticeable you notice them quite quickly very few people if they're not a believer are willing to be on a protocol for six to eight weeks and then wait maybe to get results. That's why things like creatine is popular and, and, or caffeine or pre-workout. I mean, pre-workout in general, but I think caffeine is the ultimate for even people who don't work out, enjoy caffeine because fuck you notice it. It's like, Oh, it works. Um, So that's why I was pretty passionate about daptogens and mushrooms and some of these superfoods because you could get that, if not instant gratification, quite quick feedback loop.

So that made people who are not believers, believers. So it was an easier tool to work with. So what were some of the things that you found to work really, really well for athletic performance? Because there's a ton of different mushrooms that we can get into. Sure. It seems like you guys focus on the reishi, the chaga, and the quarter steps. Yeah, those are the way it started. So the company named Four Sigmatic is actually a very kinky way of saying that we only focus on the 50 most researched foods in the world. So basically math is if you take a large enough sample size of anything and you compare that sample size against one variable, for example, how tall or how smart people are, and you take the whole population of America and you look at their IQ or you look at how much they can bench press, it will form a normal distribution, some sort of bell curve, where most people can bench press average then there's people who are really weak and then there's the outliers right and same happens in nature and nutrient density so if you take all the worlds at most anything you can eat and you look at their nutrient density most foods are okay

and then there's foods that are bad and really bad but then there's foods that are good and really good and every standard deviation from the mean from the center point is called the sigma again this super nerdy geeky stuff i like it i'm good but they go to like the top 50 foods and out of the top 50 foods there's a lot of household names like lemon black pepper cinnamon like coconut cacao green tea these are like like hundreds if not thousands of research papers on green tea and cinnamon on their benefits. There's no magic pill, but these are things that are proven after. Olive as well, like amazing.

Then there's things that some people know, like turmeric, maca, ginseng. Like there's a lot of research papers on ginseng. And then there's these things that very few people know about, like rhodiola and cordyceps and reishi. And I just wanted to focus on the real things, no hype, just the top 50. So we take these less known ingredients in that top 50, like cordyceps, and we combine it with things that people already know, be it coffee and cacao, and try to make a delicious beverage so you get best of both worlds. And for athletic performance, the one that kind of sticks out the most by far is cordyceps. Is it true that cordyceps grow on a caterpillar? Yes, although none of the commercial products in the U.S. does that.

So cordyceps is a parasitic fungus. It's like exception even in the... So the fungi or the mushrooms are an exception in many ways, but then this is an exception of the exception. But it is a parasitic fungus. So there's even a popular video game, Last of Us, about this cordyceps taking over. Oh, like a zombie?

A zombie. It doesn't impact. There's multiple hundreds of cordyceps species. None of them are invasive to humans, but they are invasive to certain animals and how they actually discovered cordyceps is is very telling back in the day before there was scientific labs how they figured out what works is the sherpas the guys who carry stuff up the himalayans they have yaks that are domesticated large mammals like bulls basically that are domesticated large mammals, like bulls, basically, that are suited for the high climates.

And they were carrying stuff. And after multiple days of climbing up into these mountains, the yaks were tired of carrying shit. And they started grazing on these little cordyceps mushrooms that were made from parasitically, had taken over these ants. And suddenly they have this burst of energy. So the Sherpas was like, what happened? How did they get energetic? And they realized that it was because of these mushrooms. parasitically had taken over these ants and suddenly they have this burst of energy so the sherpas was like what what happened how did they get energetic and they realized that it was because

of these mushrooms and then they started eating it so it was used in high altitude for paraoxin intake um but yes it takes over a plant now later um there's different forms of cordyceps as well right and one is like the alpha of all the other ones, right? And they're all the ones are trying to chase one particular one, correct? So back in the day, I believe it was 74, the Chinese realized that finding little caterpillars dead in the mountains is a lot of work.

And the price had gone so high is that, and the sources vary, but it's tens of thousands of dollars per pound of cordyceps it's like very expensive and it's often more expensive than many precious metals like silver and stuff so not really sustainable right so they went and take took all these strains of cordyceps in the market and they then took it to a lab and see what's the most powerful one they found this strain number four being the most potent one and they cloned it right and and then

they just cloned it and because fungi kind of and the mycelium like in a way grows differently you could do that fairly easily while still having the potency of this cordyceps so pretty much i could 100 of if you see a wildcrafted cordyceps product on the market it's unless it's incredibly expensive it's probably bs so it's mostly um um kind of this liquid fermentation process which is again very nerdy but um you basically throw these fungi in a tank give them protein and put them fighting with each other. And who comes out is the, is what you're going to eat. I like that. Yeah. Is it true that every mushroom must be like heated? Yes. Uh, don't eat raw mushrooms. So if you ever, um, mushrooms or fungi have this

cell structure, they're extremophiles. So mushrooms can survive in the, in the nuclear reactor of Chernobyl and in Antarctica and Sahara desert, and they can survive in the nuclear reactor of Chernobyl and in Antarctica and Sahara Desert. And they can survive in these extreme conditions. And mushroom spores can survive decades before blossoming. So think of like your jizz, your sperm sitting in the corner of the room for 20 years and suddenly it's put. That's like my adolescent bedroom. Yeah. And then suddenly your adolescent bedroom babies start popping up right

20 years after um so but that's what mushrooms can do so they have this one of the how one of the ways how they achieve this is that they have this really strong shell structure called chitin and most people know chitin from as the the substance that makes lobster shell for example so that you wouldn't eat the shell of a lobster right i'm pretty badass if you do that anyway you're not going to benefit any benefits out of it so you unlock it with heat and lipids or alcohol or a combination of those things and so mushrooms like heat and lipid so if you're ever in a buffet lunch salad place and they have those raw mushrooms like leave them out like no bueno oh that's so interesting i think so many people think that

everything raw is healthy no and i know most of the top raw food experts like this would be an exception so heat and fats are good so when chefs prepare mushrooms like they saute them in butter or oil and or put in a soup or a broth that's the ancient way basically like broths and soups and teas, and that's how these mushrooms were consumed. So there's, like, an insane amount of studies out there, too, that are showing, like, especially, like, a lot of the Asian cultures, like, they're living around certain types of mushrooms, and, like, they just virtually have, like, no cancer in their population. Yeah, there's multiple. There's, one of them comes from the city where there's an Olympics in Nagano in Japan. And they were like, why doesn't people in Nagano have cancer? And they found this particular mushroom. But this is the leading herbalist systems in the world. It's actually kind of quite incorrect.

It's just that those people like Chinese and Indian were really good at documenting things versus if you go to Amazon, they don't document anything. They're just word of mouth, like generation after generation. So, um, I guess Russians kind of somewhere in the middle.

Um, but, and for example, there was a, there's a mushroom called Acaricus plazae or Brazilian plazae. It's probably like the healthiest butter mushroom. And there was a village in Brazil, hence Brazilian plazae. And they found that this tribe didn't have any cancer. And it was not until like Japanese researchers went there

and realized that it was this mushroom that they were popping. And it's right now like one of the most researched mushrooms in the world. Is that one of the big reasons that you started this company as well as like for the medicinal purposes for the public? Yeah, for sure. I mean, our goal is to improve people's life quality. And, and I don't, I don't actually think food and nutrition and beverages are the main point. They're like the white belt. They're like the fundamentals of life. But the end game is like the mental game and the connections and other things. There's way more important things. But if you don't have your nutrition in order, it's hard to kind of survive in today's world and have energy and concentration for the other stuff.

So yeah, we definitely, I started the company to help people with functional purposes. And, and as much as we focus on getting people delicious cacao and coffee, it's also about these lesser known ingredients like these mushrooms. Yeah. I think that's like, so, so interesting. So like, when did you realize that this was something that was going to be like a mainstream thing? Did you always know it was going to be something? Yeah. I don't, I don't know if you can relate to this, but like I said, I always knew, but I don't know if I fully believed in it. Like I knew the power of mushrooms, but there's a lot of stuff in the world that works that is not popular.

Like there's, it's, it's, there are things that are great, but people don't use them on the regular. Yeah. But it all depends on like how your passion is around the subject and how you can give it to other people. So I think the coffee changed it. Because I knew from the beginning is that the effects are there, but people, even if they know something works, very few people are willing to do it if it doesn't taste good. And some of the mushroom beverages we do, like the elixirs, I would say like 20% of people love their flavor and 80% don't. Right now I'm drinking one of them, Chaga, and I love it. I think it's great.

We have a lot of fans who love it. But if you blind test it to 1,000 people, probably like 20% will enjoy it and 80% won't. But when we made the coffee and it tastes like healthier coffee, that was kind of the game changer in many ways. And after that, I definitely saw the potential where it could go on a bigger scale. I knew always it would be like success to a certain extent,

but that really made when the flavor was on point. This company now is like one of the biggest companies out there. I mean, it's a humongous company now is like one of the biggest companies out there i mean it's a humongous company now you guys are insane yeah it's grown it's grown a lot um it's it's grown a lot and and to our benefit uh besides us doing good work also just generally health wellness fitness like like just this what we're doing right now podcasting has like absolutely revolutionized how information is spread back in the day it was like general mills and nestle and craft and all these big companies were dominating the marketing space and what's healthy better like fiber let's

get fiber from and whatever they wrote in the box was true yeah of course and uh and i think first blogs then like facebook and Facebook in its early days, and now it's more like more podcasting is really like people are like, no, actually I feel shit when I have that. And more and more people can access to explain how they feel beyond the BS. And I think that's helped companies like ours who are like doing, we're on a mission- company and, and like how small micro companies can grow bigger with the help of just how the world is today. So it's crazy too,

how you can get the information. So like back in the day, if the box said, you know, eat your Wheaties are going to be a champion. Yeah. I'd sit there on dial up for like, you know, 30 minutes waiting to sign online just so I could research something that would take another 10 minutes to pop up. And then now it's like, is this really good for me? And I can check, you know, 30 minutes waiting to sign online just so I could research something that would take another 10 minutes to pop up. And then now it's like, is this really good for me? And I can check, you know, I can go to PubMed and have access to peer-reviewed journals at the tip of my fingers. Oh, PubMed is insane.

It's like, it's sometimes even I'm blown away how easy it is. To get insane journals and anything from any year. And just how quickly, not just the breadth, but also like the convenience of it. I could look it up right now. You could tell me something about cordyceps and I'd be like, no, you're a bullshitter. Yeah, yeah. No, it was 92, not 93. Yeah.

So I think that's really helped us a lot as well. It's just transparency has increased. I mean, there's still a long ways to go. There's all kinds of stuff happening, but it's going to the right direction. I think another thing that's going on right now in the world is everyone wants to figure out how to get smarter. I'll give actually an anecdote on that. So we started with four mushrooms. Chaga, that is good for antioxidants and inflammation travel stuff.

Reishi that calms you you like the classic evening thing and then cordyceps is the upper the pre-workout that's actually the reishi one is how i was first introduced to your company yeah i didn't even know the company at all oh funny a girlfriend told me she's because i had trouble sleeping she's like try this coffee isn't it by the way funny how women actually help us change our behavior so much. You have to try this coffee. And I looked at it and I was like, Oh, this thing looks really cool.

And I drank it and I was like, Oh, that's, it's so interesting. That was, I was just drinking mushrooms. Yeah. And then I went onto the website and I looked at all these other things and I

was like, Oh my God, this is so cool. And then I got really, really into it. And then we reached out to you guys. Totally. It's a shrugged collective and God,

you guys are the sponsor on the show. And thanks for that. You guys are awesome. But we have fourth mushroom. That was Lion's Mane. Lion's Mane is for the brain. And so this is where I started 2012, launched in US 2015. So from 12, 13, 14, 15, it was sold so little that every time we had a quarterly meeting with our team, it was like, should we discontinue it?

It's like, it's not that popular. No people want it. They want it cordyceps. They want energy. They want to sleep. And I was like, we just loved it. And a couple of years ago, it blew up and it became basically like our most popular mushroom and it's just insane how people's knowledge and understanding and interest about cognitive function has blown up from this niche thing

into like anybody you talk to they're like hey what can i take to be smarter and i think that's telling of the requirements of our life now like like it's emphasized more and more that you have to be smarter and better and um i think if you went to Google and looked up most searched things, I actually don't know this off the top of my head, but I'm just guessing, you would go from performance-enhancing drugs to probably mental-enhancing drugs. I think the amount of searches on those two, I bet you have flip-flopped tremendously over the last five years. Yeah, I just know from our own experience is that went from a niche thing of like few

some random biohackers in the corner of the room biohacker is a big name right now yeah but now it's like every just an average like average but like a normal human being who's like um it's like no i you know fuck i want i want anything natural that can help me think smarter so um plus i think that a pretty delicious mushroom as well. The flavor is pretty on point. But yeah, it's been a huge transformation in the last couple of years on people from energy, energy, energy to also other aspects of it. I think there's still work to be done.

For example, I don't think people appreciate eye health and immune system enough. I think these are two super underrated areas, same way as brain health was before. Eye health, we're looking at our iPhones, computers all day long. What's the impact for the next 30, 40, 50 years? No clue. I'm so interested in that. And nobody gives a fuck right now. There's almost no eye health products.

Even like Wi-Fi and all these things that are going on in one shot. And that's the oxidative stress. The electromagnetic stress is one. But then definitely like how is our eyes going to hold up? So I think polyphenols, antioxidants, berries. So many berry products on the market though are kind of BS. But like if there's a product blend of something that's good for the eyes, I think long termterm, that's a huge play right now. People don't care for that, but they will, they will. The other one is immune system. It's like people only care for the immune system when

they're sick. It was like, Oh, and I was like, no, it's going to take something. It impacts so many things. Inflammation recovery after workout, your immune system is actually jeopardized. I think people are going to, and now when we're living older and there's more viruses, bacteria, and the lifespan has increased, and now with obviously cancer, just like getting in. And pretty much everything. Yeah, so I think immune system is going to be, I mean, if you look at every horror movie about where the world is going to end,

it's either a huge war or there's like a virus killing everyone or something. So I think eye health and immune system are so, the system-wise so important, but people are not giving them enough attention. It's crazy you talked about the screen and all that stuff too, because I had someone on the show who's like, that's all they do is look into like biohacking stuff,

even though the word biohacking doesn't make any sense. Sure. This guy was really, really amazing. And he actually showed me the box when you buy an iPhone. It says, like, this phone should not touch your skin. I didn't know that. But that, I mean, I'm not surprised. Yeah, like there's so many things that we overlook and just be like, ah, it's fine for now.

And then 50 years down the road, we're going to be like, oh, shit. Oh, for sure. So if you're saying immune health and eye health. And that's something if you want to learn from the history is how many times we, as that's why I love when somebody says is that there's no proof of anything. I was like, if you just look at history, how has human race, we've been wrong so many times, like every, like a decade or 25 years, we're like, fuck that. We're pretty wrong about that one. Aren't we? Yeah. It's like, it's like oh that's that's fine there's no studies show that aspartame is bad for us right um so i i

instead of something being true or false i think it's like opinion that is either strong or weak it's not black and white you have you might have an opinion that has back strongly or it was a weak opinion but it's it's pretty dramatic to say that something is healthier or something is not bad for you when it's something so new. To add into the brain power stuff, like the lion's mane and all that stuff, where do you see all this kind of blending into mushrooms that do hallucinogenic effects?

Yeah, that's the other one. I don't know. Cause I eventually want to get to your book. Yeah. And I want it to kind of tie into that. Cause I think there's some properties that are in the book versus, um, things like that as well. Yeah.

So I don't know, was it a chicken or the egg? Which one was first? But, like was that people were interested in brain boosting natural substances that increase cognitive function. And then that led them into the more increased awareness of psychedelics or was it vice versa? But right now, roughly on the same timeline as the interest of things that are nootropics,

like smart drugs, has also increased at the same time the interest in psychedelics. And in the psychedelics world, there's a couple of mushrooms that fall into that small group of psychedelics world, there's a couple of mushrooms that fall into that small group of psychedelics. And I think because probably historic reasons, one of them psilocybin has been very – people are very curious about that. And I think it's in its early stages of mass recognition. So there's a lot of like – They're starting to get peer-reviewed articles now. Yeah.

Which is pretty cool. starting to get peer-reviewed articles now yeah which is so so that's cool is that there's the research that has been halted by drug wars for several decades since basically nixon kind of axed it before that there was some stuff already um but also mass interest has really really caught up recently so now like um people are okay talking about it used to be such a taboo or super hippie or yeah super hippie it's like now people are definitely asking questions and and they increase interest and but i mean it's always been there like i've i've given thousands of talks in the last decade uh on mushrooms and there's not one talk in my life where somebody isn't at some point of talk is like what about magic mushrooms so it's always been there but now it's kind of socially accepted and i think that's even though there's definitely things that we need to learn and understand better i think it's very

healthy that we are having that conversation because if if there isn't that conversation then there's a risk of something going terribly wrong. So, yeah, I never really heard too much about it. And I went to like a podcast like in Austin, Texas, and like everybody there, like, you know, Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss and like everybody they were having on their shows and the whole people on it and all this stuff. And they were talking about mushrooms and microdosing and all these things. And I was like, well, shit, I want to try it. Yeah.

So I did. And I like I thought it was like the coolest experience and i instantly felt like more like probably like artistic sure you know i didn't go into like a full trip type of deal i just had like a little bit of this guy's chocolate bar but uh yeah well i mean yeah um i think it's a very interesting topic and i think i think we're living in very exciting times as far as that part goes. And then there's all these horror stories where the world could end and so many things could go wrong. But I just believe that like people's consciousness is the one that will save us if people become more aware.

And I think these mind expanding substances offer a lot of promise for that. But that being said, they are not without their own flaws or rules. So let's say any workout regimen that is good for you can also fuck you up pretty bad. And the same here. They're very powerful tools, very powerful. That little thing you ate

gave you a substantial experience. So these small substances can make a big difference. So you just got to kind of be kind of respectful for them. What exactly is happening when that experience comes into play? Do you know? Yeah. So, so I guess like if we go to one take back, so misunderstandings of what are psychedelics. So there's many kinds of psychedelics. Some of them are mushrooms. There's two kinds of families of mushrooms that provides a psychedelic experience. Pretty much people exclusively focus on the first one, which is the psilocybin family.

But there's many kinds of psilocybin. That's also like people just take a pill or pop something and they don't even know what it is. But the more common variety is called psilocybin cupensis. The original research is on this variety called Mexicana but there's many others um and that has a different mechanism of operating versus the other family which is the amanita family that my new book uh is circles around amanita family is more it's poisonous um but also legal so psilocybin is very legal everywhere in the u.s to uh consume psilocybe, but the amanita is legal everywhere except Louisiana. But it's poisonous, not lethal.

So they operate completely differently. In layman terms, the psilocybin is very happy, very opening, heart-opening and creative mushroom, versus amanita is more like a GABA agonist. So it operates more like alcohol. It makes you like sedatively drowsy. So the effects are very different. But how mushrooms work is there's still so much to learn on how they actually impact

our brain because the research was halt for multiple decades. But some of the themes that we right now know is that they offer this neuroplasticity so basically like their neuropathways in your brain how you think and when you were a child by certain age again people argue what that age those neuropathways got blocked so you kind of didn't use them so they got blocked and what is shown under brain scans is that your brain fires to these different neural pathways when you're under psilocybin versus when you're not so it basically opens up new neural pathways and new ways to think so literally makes you think outside the box um but amanita is a whole nother story operates very differently so talking about amanita and talking about your

new book yep um first off i was like when i got the book in the mail i was like oh my god this is such an aggressive um cover and it basically says santa sold shrooms yeah um am i allowed to talk about the book right now yeah go for it okay i don't care. So, well, good thing. I am allowed to talk about it cause I put it on my Instagram this morning and I was on my balcony and I was like, all right, I'm going to read this thing right now before I come here. Um, it was, it's not a long book, so it only took me like, I don't know, like an hour or something. Um, and I remember just taking the snap and putting it on my, my, um, my story and I was like, all right, I'm going to read this book and I'm going to go interview the founder of Four Sigmatic.

And I cannot tell you how many messages I got from people that are like, what? What? Like, you know, like, what is this book? Where is this book? I want to buy this book or like whatever. Yeah. Or if they, a lot of them know your company

and they're like very interested in like basically what the book says. But I couldn't believe the amount of messages I got from people um and then when i was done reading the book and actually within the first few pages i was like captivated and i was like oh wow this is such a cool concept and then i was like oh my god this is probably right and then like it kept going and then like any sort of thing that felt like christmas you had like just such an interesting spin on and how um how similar it was to a certain situation so let's talk about the new book yeah how it came into play like what made you want to write that book um it's been almost 10 years in making it's basically 10 years yeah paying homage to uh my indigenous people called the sami. So Finland, Sweden, Norway share a few types of tribes of heritage.

And in the northern part, so it's hard to track how long my ancestors have been in that part, but the Sami have been there like 5,000 years. And the Sami people are the semi-nomadic reindeer herders. And not to spoil the whole story, the origins of Santa Claus kind of dates back to those Sami people. It's gone through a whole road, and in the book I explain how it got there. A lot of people think St. Nicholas is the reason, and people think he's German, he's actually Turkish,

and there's all these misconceptions. And the story is about a 10 year old little girl whose dad tells him a bedtime story that basically goes south and um and they're like and through that night and that bedtime story the girl kind of learns more about Santa's history and I would argue that Santa Claus is probably the most famous character or person in the world it goes beyond a religion or culture. People celebrate Santa Claus now, but very few people know why these Christmas traditions like the chimney and the red ornaments and how did they come about. And there's a story to all of them. And I just wanted to write the

best time story. But it does involve this psychedelic mushroom called Amanita, which is legal, but still controversial. So I was not, for a long time. I was not sure. I already talked about this book. I was about to write it with this one art director from Coca-Cola, um, four or five years ago. It was just like the time was not right, but I had to get this book out. Like it was inside of me such a long time. And, um, yeah, now it's out. It's called Santa's whole shrooms. Can we talk a little bit about the book? Sure. Yeah. Let's do it. So like, um, when you start talking about how the mushrooms were like hung on a tree and then how they were put into the socks and all that stuff, um, how did you, are these all pretty accurate? Yeah, they're all facts. So nothing in the book is not true it's it's a true book

you know pretty much um although when something has a 5 000 year story every culture along the way has added their own spice and flavor to it so think of it like a pizza or pasta or soup that is flavored by multiple cultures so basically the the Sami, the Slavic people, Russia Orthodox got the story from the Sami, became this guy named Dejimoros and went to Turkey. The Italians stole it from Turkey. The Turkish took it to a Catholic church to Germany and to the Netherlands.

The Dutch brought it to the US. So there's a whole how that story evolved over time, but it all dates back to the Sami.S. So there's a whole, how that story evolved over time, but it all dates back to the Sami and to Lapland and to this magical place where reindeers, like reindeers don't live in North Pole or Turkey.

So that's where the base of the story comes from. But obviously how we celebrate Christmas today has so many other spices thrown into it. Yeah. And it's commercialized. I think that's interesting too because even in the end of the story comes from. But obviously how we celebrate Christmas today has so many other spices thrown into it. Yeah. And it's commercialized. I think that's interesting too because even in the end of the book,

you talk about like how this could be a likely story with something like Jesus as well, correct? Yeah, now you're really dropping the... Yeah, I want to get... So... If we can, but... So yeah, I don't think we have in this podcast enough time to go this, but there are people who strongly think, and there is some quite, I would say, strong evidence that psychedelics were part of a lot of our mainstream religions, including Christianity. And if somebody wants to go down this rabbit hole, one of the more fascinating rabbit holes

is John Allegro and the Mushrooms and the Cross. He was a famous Oxford scholar and he studied these Dead Sea Scrolls. And if you want to... Is this a book you're recommending? No. Yeah. So I guess if we're down this path.

So Dead Sea... It's definitely a path that no one else is going to take. Yes. I've never talked about this in a podcast so i'm trying to i'm trying to word this um so there are things very historic things called dead sea scrolls dead sea scrolls were found like 10 miles away from the dead sea there's a lot of them just like 80 something different some scrolls were in good shape some were in bad shape but they're basically scrolls from the time of Jesus lived, or supposedly lived, and their writings.

And John Olegro was an Oxford scholar and a famous Bible researcher, and he was with him and his team started researching these scrolls. And then I believe in 1970, he came out with this book called Mushrooms and the Cross, where based on after analyzing these ancient writings and understanding of Bible, this leading Bible researcher came to the conclusion that maybe Jesus didn't exist, it's just a story, or that Jesus was a mushroom, and it's based on psychedelics. Anyway, that part may be true or may be not true, but I think there's pretty convincing evidence that some sort of these entheogens, these mind-expanding substances were used in all major religions and um and that was one way to reach god and definitely among indigenous cultures mind expanding substances from dmt and ayahuasca to san pedro whatever be around the

world these these mind expanding psychedelics were used in ceremonies to talk to God, go to the other side, to another galaxy, to meet dead people, and whatever in that culture it was, but definitely from the Mayans to the Sami. It's part of how religions were conducted was with psychedelics. It is so interesting because that was one thing I wanted to bring to this podcast is I just wanted to talk about mushrooms on a 360 degree. Yeah. I wanted to talk about the performance-enhancing parts of it

that you have with your company. I wanted to talk about psychedelics very slightly like we did. I think there's enough talks about that on Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan and all that. And then even stuff like this is super interesting. So mushrooms are pretty much everywhere. I mean, not everywhere, but in history. They are everywhere, actually. They play a vital role.

Yeah. I guess if we want to do 360, then we have to talk about environmental aspects. So mushrooms are pretty much everywhere. So if the world is, let's say, 4.2, 4.5 billion years old, mushrooms came from the seed of the dry land 2.4 billion years which meant that over 1 billion years there was no plants or animals growing on on dry land it was just fungi and these mushrooms ate rocks to survive and then later created topsoil rocks ate rocks. Eight rocks, yeah. Mushrooms or fungi, just like animals, cannot produce their own food.

Plants can. Plants can use photosynthesis to create energy, but fungi and animalia can't. So they had to eat something, so they ate rocks. So they're quite survivors, you know? I see. You can eat rock and survive, I'd say. Yeah, and pretty much all plants or plantae

require fungi to collect energy and nutrients so trees um your if you go to grocery store and you buy kale or whatever all of these required fungi to to live uh beer requires wine bread cheese these different types that require fungi different yeasts and and uh and and mycelium to grow. And so they're also potentially helpful to a lot of environmental catastrophes. There's oyster mushroom can help clean out oil spills, or there's a mushroom that was discovered a few years ago in the Amazon that eats plastic. We've invented plastic, I think, 120, 130 years ago years ago and since then we haven't yet figured

out fully to biodegrade it yeah it's ruining the planet yeah and maybe we'll biodegrade in 500 years we just don't know it yet um but there's this mushroom who likes to eat plastic um so mushrooms can break organic and inorganic matter um so they're a bunch of so they're like somewhere that all these mushrooms are eating right now yeah i mean that's that's that's one whole full promise that this mushrooms can help clean out because mushrooms are like the vacuum cleaners of the forest so they like to eat and and clean things that don't belong and basically recycle them to things what the nature can reuse again oh wow that's amazing so besides mind expanding substances and sports performance

there's also this environmental aspect oh how fun guy but i just want to note that mushrooms are not you know the saving grace for everything they're just one of the few major kingdoms and when something is a kingdom there's also bad kinds of mushrooms not all mushrooms are good like the normal butter mushrooms are not necessarily something I would recommend people consuming large amounts or something. There's also poisonous mushrooms. So when something is a kingdom, there's good and bad. So not all mushrooms are great. And mushrooms is one of the kingdoms.

So it's not saving grace. There's just very underrepresented and misunderstood. And so that's why I'm excited about them. There's probably thousands of them, correct? There is estimated to be 1.5 million types. So how did you come down to just 50? Well, first of all, out of those 1.5 million, we discovered less than 10%. So that's an estimate of how many are there.

Oh, wow. And so that's kind of a starting point. On functional purposes, there's usually two ways how something gets, quote, unquote, elevated, how it becomes – I hate this word, but a superfood. Basically, like one is just purely out of research. Why do you hate the word superfood? I just think it's – I have to hit that if you're going to say it. I mean we use it in our products just because people know that word.

It's simple um it's pretty universal but but it wraps a whole bunch of different things it is so emotionally charged yeah and that happens unfortunately with everything and there's so many antioxidants yes it like we people love to destroy even scientifically accurate things like but yeah superfoods are used so broadly and widely um that that's why i don't like them but to really back in um so there's purely the amount of research so you can go to pubmed for example and um in a matter of minutes or hours you can go through various foods and put their Latin name into this basically Google, Google of scientific research papers,

and you can look at how many results you get. It's not black and white that that is good if there's a lot of research papers on it. But if scientists are excited to study for the potential of something, that's still telling of something, right? And if the first five ten research papers all don't show any promise then probably there will not be an 11th and 12th one right the other thing is looking at indigenous cultures and it's like how does how does a food

survive generation after generation as something sacred so if um if So if the culture eats 500 to 5,000 things and they elevate one or two things as something really sacred for them, be it in the Mediterranean like olive oil or in the Central America, South America, cacao or coconut products, and generation after generation they almost worship that food or becomes like a sacred key part of how they operate um i think that's telling like um i think there's a lot of nutritional experiments that are going on that might or might not show promise but if something has been used for 20 generations and every generation thought this is awesome that's telling of something and a lot of these mushrooms how you end up is basically they just gone through that multi-generational filtering process so as a company like yours who's you're focusing so hard on giving people

the best quality products that you can yeah when you start selling so many of these things how do you keep the quality under control where you can only like is there selling so many of these things how do you keep the quality under control where you can only like is there a time where like you might have to sell so many that you can't actually produce that many i mean that's basically the last four years something like that so the first two years we're just like trying to get people to understand these mushrooms but um increasingly in the last four years we've been chronically out of stock so if somebody's been following us you probably noticed it and happens very often and um that's a good sign though of a good company i think yeah but there's um in my opinion yeah so there's there's one thing is that i i i'm like a

product founder so like i obsess more about that um before before focusing on sales marketing building the team it was most about the product. And that culture is definitely like a big part of maintaining quality. We have like our operations team is way bigger than companies our size normally. We have basically just one person looking at lab tests like full time. And she just sits at home and goes through these. So that's only her job. Oh, wow.

But I think the critical thing that we do besides being organic and using dual extracted fruiting bodies, and we kind of tick all the boxes, but from the quality point of view, I think the main thing we do is called positive release. Again, kind of industry minutiae, but basically means that we produce our products. Most of the products are produced in Utah. So when they're produced in the facility, it does not leave the facility until we've sent it to a third-party lab. We mostly work with this lab called Eurofence. It's a huge lab. And we send the results. They don't know what it is. So it's a third-party lab. It's a sample size. They send the labs back on the key markers, and then we compare it against the regulation and looking at the purity and often also efficacy of the products.

And then it does not leave the facility into our warehouse and into the customers or retailers before it's been approved through every batch. And I think that's, at the end of the day, that's kind of the only way to really keep tight reins on quality. But as far as supply go, there's a lot of mushrooms in the world. The mushroom industry is much bigger than people think. But obviously sourcing the high quality mushrooms is a little harder. But just as an anecdote, Taiga is the world's largest forest. It's mostly in Russia, but it's the forest size of America.

Wow. And that's where, for example, the chaga mushroom predominantly grows from. Because I had seen something with Joe Rogan and the guy, Paul Stamets. Yeah, I know Paul. And he was saying that basically all the mushrooms from China are just basically garbage. Yeah, that know, Paul. And he was saying that basically all the mushrooms from China are just basically garbage.

Yeah, that's very common, partly truthful, partly misconception. So China produces something like 90-something percent of the current mushrooms in the world. Oh, over 90 percent. Wow. Yeah, because the reason being is that they actually consume it themselves. They're huge fans. Chinese culture is very mushroom friendly, so that's a big part of what they do. Just herbs in general, I feel like. Yeah, I mean, if you look at a lot of these, even vitamin C, I think something like 97% of the world's vitamin C comes from China.

So a lot of the supplements come from there. So there's a long history of mushroom production in China. Unfortunately, right now, it's kind of the only place that produces real mushrooms. So in the US, most of the mushrooms are not actually mushrooms, but they're mycelial matter. So according to FDA, mushroom is the fruiting body. So taking one step back, think of a tree,

and the tree produces apples, you eat the apples. In the world of fungi, there are spores that are seeds that then create mycelium, which is like the tree in the apple tree. And then the mycelium, which is underground, produces a fruit, which is called a fruiting body, and that's the mushroom shape. So if you look at the classic mushroom shape, the cap, that's the fruiting body. And according to FDA, that is the actual mushroom. beings kind of concentrate their life force into the fruit, onto the seed. Same way, mushroom fruiting bodies naturally are much higher in active compounds. That's what indigenous people ate. They never ate mycelium. You can't go over the underground and collect mycelium. Deers or animals, that's what they eat, they eat the fruiting body. And the fruiting body has a higher

concentration of these polysaccharides and active compounds so unfortunately pretty much the only ones producing these medicinal mushrooms is in china and only u.s based products are pretty much mycelium matter but the problem that paul is eluding is very real um i've lived three years in china and air pollution um with mushrooms i wouldn't worry about air pollution because like I said, mushrooms really like, they're kind of strong against that. I just wouldn't buy like protein powder from China. Like a lot of actually protein powders are,

even plant-based proteins are Chinese-based. I would have just, wouldn't go there. But as far as mushrooms, their growing mechanism is very different. So a lot of my concerns would be pesticides and heavy metals with mushrooms as far as China goes. So if you're looking for a mushroom product on the market, wherever it comes from,

definitely look at certified organic. There's a lot of DCP brands that say super organic, something they come up with the name yeah beyond organic i don't know um but just look at like certified organic products it's not a guarantee you have quality but it tells something so you can say super organic but you can't say certified or yeah you can't use the usda logo without there's all kinds of quackery they call it yeah i guess quackery um the other thing is definitely look at brands that have tested for heavy metals even if they're wherever they come from since mushrooms can have

a higher concentration of those so how do the heavy metals get in from the ground yeah ground um or through the tree that's kind of how they them again the mushrooms uh cannot produce their own food so they have to eat something. Most of these functional medicinal mushrooms eat trees, and then they get the power of the trees. So definitely on the lookout for products that are organic and lab-tested and fruiting bodies. There's an article from Paul from, I want to say 2001, 2002, a peer journal on him saying

is that the mycelial products had 2% polysaccharides and the fruiting bodies had like 40%, something like that. So- Makes it easy which one to choose? Yeah, it's like higher, much higher efficacy. But he makes a good point about purity and knowing where your source is.

He also points a lot to like medicinal purposes that you know claims that he's not allowed to make but that mushrooms can provide for different people and especially i guess his mother i think had cancer yeah and so that's also hard like i got um generally four sigma has been loved by a lot of people in the community but a couple times people have snapped at me. And then one of the reasons was that we don't say things, what he also didn't want to say. And there's a very clear legal reasons why we are very careful what can we say. And one of the obviously very sensitive topics is the topic of cancer.

And there's all kinds of people saying claims that walk cures cancer online um that's not us and clearly that's probably why he was also careful as fdf tc like these structure function claims that some of these small you know brands make you know they're they're pretty much illegal so um so and that's basically the government just coming after people because they think that's going to make them. It's true. They are very conservative in certain ways, but then you could argue for them is that what if every company

without any proof could claim that we cure cancer? Do you as a consumer want to be in a world where a brand of like three, four people in a garage in Oregon suddenly decides this cures cancer. It's, it's, is that a marketing that we want to have on, on also FDA doesn't approve food and beverage products or dietary supplements. They approve drugs really. There's a kind of an aftermarket policy. So nobody has FDA approval in food, beverage, and dietary supplements. It would be too costly process to wait 10, 20 years or something like that to get approval. So that's

why he's probably pretty careful and for a good reason, but there are definitely brands that quite recklessly make the structure, function claims. You're saying 10 to 20 years for something to get passed. How long has 4Somatic been around for? It just made me think of that, that's all. Yeah, it's a good point. That's a very good question. I've actually, so our farm is now 13 generations. Me and my brother are 13 generations,

and it's a topic I've thought a lot about because somebody needs to be the first generation, right? But then what point do you foresee? Right now, farming is not really profitable. So 94% of farms in Finland lose money, and the only farms that really make money are dairy farms, and we don't want to have a dairy farm. So it's a very topical question for me. It's this my granddad and dad always said that in nature,

quarter is 25 years not three months a lot of these large companies operate on a on three month cycles to show results for their stockholders and in nature it works in a longer time frame it's a very topical question i don't have an answer for you um but yeah i've taught about it. It's like you want to enjoy the moment, but you also want to provide value, be like a perennial thing. And hopefully we build our brand in kind of a long-term focus,

but it's very hard to say. Especially when the world is changing so quickly. It's insane. I feel like every two years, I'm blown away by how much my life has changed and how much just the world. And that's why I'm like careful in saying anything. But I mean, uh, I definitely think about longevity and how is the world going to be for my great

grandkids or whatever, if that will ever happen. But, um, yeah. Um, so if I was listening to the show right now and I hadn't really heard a whole ton about mushrooms and I hadn't heard about your product, sure. What is like something that you would say to them right now? Like they're like, okay, well maybe I'm going to try some of this coffee stuff. Like what, what, what would be like your, not like a sales pitch to them, but like things that they should be looking into when looking at your products and looking at just mushroom products in general?

Especially mushroom coffees, I would say. So I think from the mushrooms, there's many mushroom names and a lot of them are quite exotic and you don't know which mushroom to take at first. When in doubt, start with reishi, which was actually funny that you started with it. It's kind of calming, grounding, evening type of a mushroom. It's also known as the queen of all mushrooms. It's the most clinically studied.

So that's the highest amount of research of all the mushrooms. That's why a girl gave it to me. Yeah, for sure. The other one that is fascinating is the king of mushrooms, chaga. So C-H-A-G-A. And I think that's another one that you would start with. As far as flavor, obviously some people love the flavor of mushrooms, but almost most of our customers don't like the flavor of mushrooms, surprisingly. I don't think that any of your products taste bad. Well, that's the thing is... I like earthy, like hippie type of tastes. Yeah.

Well, thank you for that. But I would say to be on the safe side, start with mushrooms in coffee or cacao just because – The cacao ones are insane. So just – The nighttime cacao one is out of control. Yeah. I mean, look. It tastes like Christmas.

I mean, this is not for everyone, but for most people, chocolate is pretty fucking good. Yeah. So – and it's real cacao. It's not cocoa. It's not artificial flavors. It's cacao powder. It gets clumpy and it doesn't mix perfectly, but it's the real cacao. It's not cocoa. It's not artificial flavors. It's cacao powder. It gets clumpy and it doesn't mix perfectly, but it's the real fucking thing. And that's also something to note.

Like a lot of chocolate and cocoa products are bullshit. It's like simple as that. But yeah, I mean I would start with chaga orishi, the king and the queen. I would start with them added in a in a in chocolate or coffee just because the flavors and then kind of kind of working from there onwards because a lot of these medicinal or functional mushrooms are very bitter or earthy and most people necessarily don't love that bitterness even though i think the bitter the better but the two bitters that people universally love is coffee and cacao so i think those are universal bitters that people universally love is coffee and cacao.

So I think those are universal bitters that people enjoy that you can then use, uh, to your benefit. And, um, it's like wine for sure. You've created like a mushrooms of wine. Yeah. Um, and then as far as education or knowledge goes, I would say, um, Paul actually wrote a book called mycelium running. It's a good

one. And, um, the, the, the other one that I would recommend is, um, mushrooms demystified is a good book. Um, I also made a mushroom Academy online that is completely free and it's video based learning. So if you want to, um, and then i wrote a book called healing mushrooms which is you know something like that's your first book yeah 12 14 bucks on amazon and walks through the 10 most researched mushrooms um so those are just some of some of the things if you are curious learning more obviously there's there's good podcasts out there about the topic as well but um those are a couple ideas all right cool now some of you guys have a little bit of an idea of where to start and where to go. And I've actually tried all of these products as well, and I agree that cacao ones are insane.

Yeah. And then lastly, the book, his book that I just read before I came here, that was kind of like the main reason I wanted to meet up and talk about the book. I hope a lot of you guys out there read the book. It's a great book. Yeah, thank you. It's called Santa's Holt Shrooms, and you can get it on Amazon. Yep. And then, yeah, I think we hit a lot of you guys out there read the book. It's a great book. Yeah. Thank you. It's called Santa's whole shrooms and you can get it on Amazon. Yep. And then,

um, yeah, I think we hit a lot of topics on there. So thank you so much for your time. I hope everybody coming over. Yeah. Thanks for meeting is like mildly mushroom geniuses at this moment, at this moment.

Yeah. Um, thank you again. And where can everybody find all of your products and just, uh, everything about you? Um, you don't need to find me.

But Four Sigmatic, F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C on the usual Facebook, Instagram. Foursigmatic.com. You can find us on freaking Whole Foods and natural product stores to Amazon to Thrive Market to our website. You can find us on many places. And you're really good about Instagram. Every time I tag Four Sigmatic within five minutes, I have a response from someone on your team, which is really great. No, I'm happy for that.

All right, guys. Well, hopefully you guys check out their products and I hope you guys learned all the things about mushrooms. Me and Tara are done here. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, man. I just want to say thank you to every single person who took time out of their day to listen to this podcast.

There's so many podcasts out in the world today. For you guys to listen to mine, makes me a lucky man. I really do believe that. And I love you guys. Not only that, every time you guys to listen to mine, makes me a lucky man. I really do believe that, and I love you guys. Not only that, every time you guys write messages on Instagram, you guys send me a DM, you send me an email. I read all that stuff. I may not get back to every single one. I try my best, but I do read them all. I promise you that. If you guys do not currently follow me on Instagram, it is Ryan Fish, R-Y-A-N-F-I-S-C-H. Or you can follow my gym, CrossFit Chalk,

just the way it sounds. We're always throwing up videos for movement tutorials. I'm always putting up all sorts of different stuff on my Instagram. The more you follow me, the more you'll understand what I do. In reality, I'm just a fitness expert. I'm the guy who did all the work for you guys so that you can just get all the knowledge,

whether it's podcasts or programming or nutrition stuff. This is my life. I've been doing it for 15 years, and I absolutely love it. And I'm just trying to get the word out as much as I can. So if you guys don't currently follow me, please give me a follow. And I hope to see you guys next Tuesday on the Real Chalk Podcast. I will be bringing the fire, ladies and gentlemen. I'll see you then.