Something You Should Know - How to Find True and Lasting Happiness & The Truly Amazing World of Mushrooms

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

Does a full moon really bring out craziness in people? Does it cause more car accidents and hospital admissions? This episode begins with a look at whether or not the moon really affects human behavior – or at least why so many people believe it does. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/stop-blaming-the-moon-says-ucla-scientist Being happy is a big goal for almost everyone. And finding it is often a struggle. Joining me with some insight and science regarding how we can all be happier is Tim Bono, a lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis where he teaches courses on the Science of Happiness and author of the book Happiness 101: Simple Secrets to Smart Living & Well-Being (https://amzn.to/3cPVgY3). Every child is told a million times to “stop fidgeting!” However, in some cases fidgeting may be the perfect thing to do. Listen as I discuss how fidgeting can help you learn better and improve cognitive performance, despite what your grandmother told you. http://www.inc.com/thompson-wall/how-fidgeting-at-work-can-promote-creative-thinking.html I never thought I would be discussing mushrooms on this podcast. However it turns out that mushrooms and all fungi are absolutely fascinating. If we didn’t have fungus – life would be very different. Biologist Merlin Sheldrake has studied the world of fungus in great detail and you are about to discover things about the mushrooms you eat and all other fungi that will amaze you. Merlin is the author of the book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (https://amzn.to/2Xfdb3F) This Week's Sponsors -Better Help. Get 10% off your first month by going to www.BetterHelp.com/sysk and use the promo code: sysk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, does a full moon really bring out the worst in people or is that just a myth? Then what you didn't know about acquiring happiness that will make you a lot happier. A lot of recent research is showing is that happiness itself is best experienced when it's not pursued directly,

but rather when it becomes the byproduct of other behaviors that we are motivated to pursue. Also, your grandmother was wrong. Fidgeting is a great thing to do. And mushrooms, fungus. Without it, you might not even be here. Fungus is truly amazing. There are fungi found growing in the blasted nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. They seem to be able to use radiation as plants use the energy in sunlight.

You also have fungi that live in the fuel tanks of aircraft. You have a specialist's molds that live around whiskey barrels. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to

called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today.

Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. So my wife is a nurse at a hospital and she is among those people who believe that a full moon has an effect on things like cancer survival rates, births, depression, violent behavior, and even criminal activity. Ask anybody who's worked in a hospital emergency room and chances are they believe things are different

and a bit more wacky on the night of a full moon. In fact, the word lunatic is derived from the Latin word luna, which means moon. So a professor of astronomy at UCLA did some extensive research and looked into these claims, and he found that the moon is innocent. That in fact, there is no connection whatsoever between a full moon and just about anything else except the tides.

So why do so many people believe otherwise? He concluded that it's what's called confirmation bias. It's people's tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms their beliefs and ignores the data that contradicts those beliefs. When life is hectic on the day of a full moon, many people remember the association because it confirms their belief. But hectic days that do not correspond with a full moon are promptly ignored and forgotten because they do not reinforce that belief.

And that is something you should know. A topic we've touched on before on this podcast is happiness. And we discuss it from time to time because, well, it's important. Many people say in surveys that happiness is at the very top of their list of things they want. Often more than fame or money or anything else, it's happiness. Who doesn't want to be happy? Yet happiness is not always easy to find and often even harder to hold on to. Still, happiness has been studied a lot, and one of the people who studies it is Tim Bono.

Tim is on the faculty in the psychology department at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches courses on the psychology of young adulthood and the science of happiness. He's author of a book called Happiness 101, Simple Secrets to Smart Living and Well-Being. Hey, Tim. Thanks, Mike. It's great to be joining you today. So how do you view happiness? It seems like it's a hard term to define because happiness is so subjective. What makes me happy might not make you happy. So what is it? Well, when we think about happiness from a psychological perspective, and specifically how we study it in the academic world, we actually don't even use the term happiness. A much more common phrase is subjective well-being with a

really important emphasis on that word subjective. Because to know how happy somebody is, you can't always look at the objective circumstances of their life, like how much money they have in the bank or what their education level is. A much stronger predictor, I should say, is their subjective appraisal of what's going on in their life and the extent to which they are grateful for what they have and how they savor the experiences around them. And how important generally is happiness, at least when you ask people, you know, are you happy? Do you want to be happier? How important is happiness? Where does it rank? Well, typically, when you ask people what's most

important to them, and researchers have gone to all different corners of the world to do this, happiness is pretty consistently among the very top priorities that people set for themselves. So it is something that I think is an age-old interest that people have always had a desire to pursue. And more recently, you know, we've had the field of positive psychology to provide some scientific evidence on the behaviors and strategies that can help people realize that and incorporate it into their lives. But if happiness is so subjective, then how do you have objective ways to incorporate it into your life? Yeah, that's a really important question because certainly if we are to develop a science around happiness, we have to have an objective way of measuring it.

Which is why the most common way for us to measure happiness is simply by asking people to rate their happiness on a single item questionnaire. For example, saying on a scale from one to 10, how would you rate your happiness? And that does seem to capture that subjective appraisal of that overall well-being. Because even though it is the case that different behaviors or mindsets can bring different levels of happiness for different people. In general, we know that happiness usually boils down to incorporating behaviors that will be associated with at least one of three characteristics. And those three characteristics are number one, a sense of autonomy, which is focusing on those behaviors that are within our own control. Number two, it has to do with a sense of competence, feeling a sense of accomplishment from pursuing goals that are important to us. And third, which is arguably most important,

is pursuing a sense of relatedness, connecting with friends and family and other people who help us feel connected to something bigger than ourselves. Is happiness, though, very fleeting? Can I be happy now and get a phone call and then be unhappy? Or is happiness more of a state of being that maybe ebbs and flows a little bit, but generally you're happy? Well, we know that all about happiness, we have to acknowledge that there's really nothing that we can do to put us in a state of everlasting bliss or position us to always be experiencing happiness. So most of the strategies within positive psychology are interested in doing one of two things. They're interested in slowing down

how quickly we adapt to happiness so that when we do have that positive moment or we get that good news or we do life's stressors, such that when we're having a difficult time, we can incorporate behaviors that allow us to speed up how quickly we adapt, so that that negativity, although it's there, won't last as long as it might otherwise. There do seem to be, though, just from my own observation, people who just, they're just generally happy people. They just don't dwell on the problems in life like other people do. They just seem happier, and it seems to be part of their personality. Is it? Yes, there is some evidence that for some people, they have a higher

set point for happiness. There's some evidence to suggest that part of our happiness is due to genetics, you know, what we inherit from our parents. But we also know that there's generally a range that we all have. And that's why I think an important mindset when we think about the pursuit of happiness is not to think about whether I'm happy or how happy I should be, but rather to think about how can I become happier, such that regardless of where I fall on the emotion continuum and whether I have a high set point for happiness or whether that's relatively low, still there are things that I can be incorporating into my life to become happier. And that's really what the goal of the

research. You know, it's not to say, well, let's all try to have a rank order to see who can be the happiest, or can I be as happy as my neighbor, or as happy as my coworker, but instead to say, given the circumstances of my life, and perhaps things that are outside of my control, preventing me from being as happy as I could be, positive psychology really has an interest in helping us identify those things that are within our control that can at least help us to become happier. And if we can put ourselves in the habit of incorporating those behaviors and those mindsets into our day-to-day lives, that can really go a long way to help us a year from now or a month from now or maybe even a week from now at least become happier than we are today.

So is unhappiness just the lack of happiness or is happiness the lack of unhappiness? I kind of see it like, you know, there's sea level and then above sea level you're happy and below sea level you're unhappy, but a lot of people may be just at sea level where they wouldn't characterize themselves one way or the other. They're just, eh, I'm okay. Yeah, and that's a really important question because when we think about our emotions, we typically think about them residing on a continuum. That on one end of the continuum, we have really positive emotions. On the other end of the continuum, we have negative emotions. And then in the middle, there's sort of a zero point. I think this is what Pink Floyd once referred to as comfortably numb. And one of the things that we know about our emotional experiences

is that those different kinds of emotional experiences operate independently, which means that it's possible for us to experience happiness at the same time that we are experiencing unhappiness. You can think of something like college graduation where you are simultaneously excited that you have accomplished something, but at the same time, you're sad that you're having to move away from your friends. Or there are days when you're not necessarily experiencing happiness or unhappiness, but you're just sort of at that zero point. So the question is happiness the opposite of unhappiness? Not necessarily. Those emotions can be experienced independently of one another, or they can happen all at the same time. Are there objective things you need to be happy? I would assume, you know, you've got to have food on the table and a roof over your head or that there are things that without them, it would be almost impossible to be happy.

Yes, certainly we know it's the case that if you don't know where your next meal is coming from or you otherwise don't have your basic needs taken care of, it's really hard to achieve a sense of happiness in our day-to-day lives. It's kind of related to one of the age-old questions about whether money buys happiness. And what we've found is that although there is a small correlation between money and happiness, that relationship really exists at the lower end of the socioeconomic continuum. Because as you say, if you don't have your basic needs met, then you're so preoccupied with survival that you can't be thinking about the higher order goals like self-esteem or gratitude or social connection. But once we've reached that point where we do have basic needs met, that's where an increase in wealth doesn't necessarily correspond with

an increase in happiness. And it really has to do with other behaviors and mindsets that we are incorporating into our lives. But I would imagine, though, it would correlate in this way, that if you were once very wealthy, and then you lost a lot, but not all of your wealth, so now you've still got your basic needs met, but four out of your five mansions are gone and your speedboat's gone and your private plane's gone. You might be pretty unhappy about that. Yes, you're exactly right. One of the things that we know is that we human beings are very adaptable to our circumstances. So whereas many people would look at somebody who has many mansions and boats and all sorts of wealth and a life of luxury, people would look at that and say, wow, if I had those things, I would be a lot happier. But once we get those things, we tend to be comparing our more modest way of living,

which by other standards would be perfectly comfortable. But we are comparing that against this higher set of expectations about how amazing and how wonderful life would be. So when researchers have examined that, people who have had lots of money and then they've lost it for one reason or another, you do tend to see pretty reliably, in fact, a decrease in their overall well-being. However, within a period of time, they eventually recalibrate those expectations and eventually they are able to reach a new equilibrium about, you know, what life should be looking like and what life should be like. So

one of the things that we've come to understand pretty reliably in all of this research in positive psychology is that humans are adaptable both to good things and to negative things. Great. Tim Bono is my guest. He is author of the book Happiness 101, Simple Secrets to Smart Living and Well-Being. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes.

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The note from Kripke was, he's great. We love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

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So Tim, do you think that happiness is a consequence? Is it the result of what happens to us and the decisions we make and the situations that we're in? Or is happiness in and of itself, something to try hard to attain? Or none of the above, I guess, you know, I think that that happiness is certainly a worthwhile goal. But when researchers look at the kinds of decisions that people make, or the kinds of circumstances they're in, unless it's people who are below the point where their basic needs are not met, you know, if they've lost a job and now, you know, they can't pay the mortgage, they can't put food on the table, that aside, you know, because those are circumstances where, again, that preoccupation with survival makes it very difficult to achieve

a sense of happiness. But once we've crossed that point, the objective circumstances don't seem to matter quite as much as the mindset that we take to the circumstances that we're in, to the outcome of the choices that we have made. And to this point about, you know, whether we can actively pursue happiness, that also is a very important one because what a lot of recent research is showing is that happiness itself is best experienced when it's not pursued directly, but rather when it becomes the byproduct of other behaviors that we are intrinsically motivated to pursue. So for example, there's a lot of research showing that people who keep a gratitude journal tend to see an increase in their overall well-being or people who exercise a lot tend to see an increase in their happiness.

But if you're only doing those've overcome some problems and they, by all objective standards, you would think would be pretty happy. But it almost seems human nature that you've got to find some problem to bitch about and to complain about. That perfect happiness with no problems and nothing to worry about is almost not human. Yeah, I agree with you completely there. And I think that that is another one of the myths about the nature of happiness. A lot of people think that if they're not happy all the time, that something must be wrong with them. And so therefore, they try to do everything that they can to downplay anything that could be going wrong in their lives and to sort of project this image that they're happy all

the time. But the reality is that any psychologist will tell you that if you were happy all the time, that would be the indication that something were wrong with you. We know that we humans have evolved this incredibly complex set of emotions, and there is a time and a place for each of them. And in fact, it's a natural, healthy response to experience sadness and anxiety when things aren't going well, or when we find ourselves in circumstances that are not good for us. So part of psychological health involves, number one, acknowledging that negativity is simply part of life. And number two, it's about having strategies that allow us to cope with that negativity

to allow us to get back up on our feet and back on the path toward well-being and happiness as quickly as possible. And that spirit of resilience turns out to be a really important characteristic of well-being and happiness as quickly as possible. And that spirit of resilience turns out to be a really important characteristic of well-being. That brings up an interesting point about, can you really experience and appreciate happiness if you've never been unhappy? If you, I think of like the spoiled little rich kid who doesn't really realize how good they have it because they've never known anything else. Yeah, there has been some research to suggest that when you look at lifetime happiness and lifetime satisfaction, often the people who have the highest scores on those variables, who seem to be doing best on measures of well-being are those who had to overcome some difficulty. So I do think that there is some value in kids having to struggle a little bit with

something that they tried for or that they had their aspirations set toward that didn't seem to work out for them, because often it is in the process of having to overcome some obstacle or having to overcome some obstacle or having to overcome some challenges in their lives where they develop a set of coping mechanisms. And those coping mechanisms provide that resilience to allow them to keep going when they experience challenges in their careers or in their relationships. And persevering through that difficulty often is what positions them for success and happiness and the ability to work toward other challenging goals without quitting too early or quitting prematurely because that resilience is helping them to stay on track with that. Lastly, understanding that, you know, happiness is something that is a consequence of decisions in life and all that.

But if somebody really wanted to make an effort to try to be happier, are there things that you can recommend that people do that really seem to have benefits? Absolutely. I can tell you that when you look at the thousands of studies that have been conducted on the science of happiness, the single strongest predictor of happiness and well-being for an individual has to do with the sense of social connection that they feel with those around them. So doing whatever we can to get involved in organizations in the community

or reaching out to other people or rekindling friendships, that really goes a long way in ensuring a sense of well-being. In fact, every single study that has ever looked at happiness among a large group of people, when they examine, say, the top 10 percent, you know, the people who are in that top range of happiness, what is common to every single one of those individuals is that they each have rich and satisfying social relationships. And so doing what we can to invest in relationships with others, that's one of the most important things. And then on top of that,

there are other daily behaviors we can be incorporating. The practice of gratitude is incredibly important. We think about happiness often as the quotient of what we have compared to what we want. And gratitude really places a spotlight on those good things that we already have in our lives that we might simply be taking for granted. Another important thing is to prioritize our physical health, getting exercise on a regular basis, prioritizing sleep on a regular basis. We know that both of those activities are associated with the release of neurotransmitters that can boost our mood and help to put the brakes on negative thinking cycles. I did have one quick question. Are people generally self-reporting that they are happier that can boost our mood and help to put the brakes on negative thinking cycles.

I did have one quick question. Are people generally self-reporting that they are happier today than the past or less? It's a very good question. So we know that there have been a number of for a large part of the 20th century. So all through the 90s, through the early 2000s, it was relatively steady. And then it started to take some dips around 2011. And at the same time, when you were tracking things like anxiety and loneliness and other forms of distress, those also were relatively

stable. And then around 2010, 2011, they took a sharp increase. And one of the things that seems to be responsible for those dramatic shifts in our well-being seems to be associated with the advent of smartphone and other technology, especially with social media, that has made it very easy to compare ourselves with other people. So when we talk about the predictors of happiness being things like gratitude and exercise and social connection, one of the fundamental barriers to a sense of well-being is comparing ourselves with other people.

And social media, which to be clear, can be used for a lot of wonderful things. Sometimes it can be a vehicle for social comparison. It can be a way that we measure up the goodness of our life by comparing it to other people. And we sometimes feel worse about ourselves if we feel that our next door neighbor just got a promotion and that their career path seems to be on a trajectory that's better than ours or if a friend of ours from college is going on a really cool vacation that we ourselves would not be able to afford sometimes there's that inferiority and it's really difficult to be happy if we constantly have our head over our shoulder wondering how we measure up to other people, it's interesting how happiness is really important in everyone's life,

or people say it is anyway, and yet we're so often wrong about what it takes to be happy. And it's interesting to hear what the science says. Tim Bono has been my guest. He's on the faculty in the psychology department at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches the science of happiness, and he's author of the book, Happiness 101, Simple Secrets to Smart Living and Well-Being.

You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Tim. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice.

Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial.

And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic,

check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. One of the best things about doing this podcast is when a topic idea comes across my desk that I would have never come up with or even thought would sound like a good something-you-should-know topic that turns out to be really interesting. And that's the case with this next segment, which is all about fungus, mushrooms.

Now, I've always thought of mushrooms as a plant. You know, everything is an animal, a vegetable, or a mineral, and mushrooms are a vegetable. But it turns out that fungus, or fungi, or mushrooms, they're a category all unto themselves, according to Merlin Sheldrake. He is a biologist and author of the book Entangled Life, How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Future. I always thought it was pronounced fungi, but he says fungi, so we'll go with fungi today.

Hi Merlin, welcome. Great to be here, Mike. Thanks for having me. So I have to start by asking, because, you know, with all the things in the world you could study, why mushrooms, why fungus, what captured your attention and interest in this? I've been interested in the way that things change since I was a child. Now, how does a lump of wood turn into soil? How does a pile of leaves turn into soil? How do plants grow?

Now, how do these transformations happen? And my inquiry into these various transformations always led me back to microbes, these organisms that compose and decompose the world. And so fungi are prodigious decomposers, and you can't ask questions about how things transform in the natural world without encountering fungi before too long. What are fungi? What are we looking at when we look at a mushroom or we see something growing on the side of the wall? What is it? So mushrooms are just the fruiting bodies of fungi. So it's

like an apple on an apple tree. Imagine how much we would not be seeing if all we knew of apple trees were the apples that grew on its branches. So when we see mushrooms, we're just looking at a small part of the organism, the part of the organism concerned with producing spores, concerned with dispersing itself. And most fungi live most of their lives as networks of cells known as mycelium. And mycelium lives usually out of our sight because mycelium is embedded in its environment, whether the soil or wood or plant shoots or leaves. So mushrooms are just a small part of these organisms. Fungi, the kingdom of fungi, which is as broad and busy a category as animals or plants. So there are many ways to be a fungus. The yeasts that convert sugar into alcohol, they are fungi. And some of the largest organisms in the world are fungi as well.

These enormous networks that range over kilometers. Well, it's interesting. I don't think, I know I don't know a whole lot about mushrooms and fungus. And, you know, it all seems to happen like underground and, you know, in caves and in the dark. So it's interesting that it's so mysterious. Because much of fungal life takes place out of sight. And it's only with the development of new technologies and tools that we're really beginning to understand more about fungi and the way they live their lives. So science is within science. And you have departments of plant sciences.

You have departments of animal sciences. But you don't really have departments of fungal sciences because fungi were lumped in with the plant kingdom for much of their history. It was only in the 1960s that they won their independence in taxonomic terms and were decided to be another kingdom of life. So scientists neglect them on the whole, although that's starting to change, thank goodness. So mushrooms are not plants? No. So mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, of fungal networks. They are just one part of the organism which is there to serve a very particular function to produce spores which are the equivalent of plant seeds and to spread those spores and so when we say things fall into one category or the other animal mineral or plant fungi is something else entirely

yes so you to that game the animal or plant, you might add animal, mineral, plant or fungus. And you might add also bacteria, which are another kingdom of life. are major categories and important categories that guide the way that we think and order the natural world. I understand that scientifically it's important, but why is this important to me when I think of a fungus? I either think of something in my salad or something growing on the side of a cave wall, but it doesn't have much to do with me, or does it? Well, it does. And many people describe fungi as a hidden kingdom of life, which may be so, but many hide in plain sight. And so, there are many ways that you could find fungi impacting your life in a way that you haven't realized for example almost all plants depend on fungi that live in their roots in order in order for them to grow so without fungi we wouldn't have plants as we know it if

we didn't have plants we wouldn't have anything to eat. And apart from that, many of the drugs that are used in the human world come from fungi, from statins, cholesterol-lowering statins, to the anti-cancer drug Taxol, to alcohol, very familiar, psilocybin so there's this pharmaceutical role that fungi play in our lives and then there are the ways that we use fungi to produce enzymes and chemicals in industry so citric acid which is used in all soda pop drinks that's produced by fungi in big fermenters. Many vaccines are produced in biochemically engineered yeast strains. So there are lots of ways that everyday life spins on fungal metabolic abilities in just ways that we don't often recognize. Why is it that I will sometimes be walking down the street and in the middle of a lawn somewhere, there's a mushroom. And I don't know where it, where'd it come from?

Those mushrooms that you'd see in a lawn, most of the organism would be living below the surface of the soil as a big sprawling network that could range anywhere from a few inches to several feet to several meters and at that moment that organism would have sprouted mushroom to disperse its spores much as an apple tree would grow an apple so in that moment you could ask yourself what would I be missing if I saw an apple sprouting from the ground in place of this mushroom now what would I be missing if I saw an apple sprouting from the ground in place of this mushroom? What about the apple tree sprawling and twisting below the surface of the soil? And it's a kind of analogous situation with this mushroom that you're seeing.

The rest of the mushroom's organism, the rest of the fungal network, would be making a living digesting, decomposing, rotting material in the soil. The mushroom seems to, if my recollection is correct, seems to pop up when it's wet, though. There seems to be a particular weather element to it. Yes, so many prop up after rain because fungi use to grow, they inflate their cells with water. So when it rains, there's enough moisture to power the growth of mushrooms. And in fact this growth can be very strong. We can have mushrooms that punch their way through asphalt roads or lift heavy paving stones. And you wouldn't think it possible if you

picked one of these mushrooms. They're a kind of soft, squidgy, fleshy material, many you can eat, of course. But nonetheless, they generate enough force by this hydrostatic, this water-driven power of their growth to crunch through very tough materials. And many of them we can eat, but many of them, even if you eat a little bit, will kill you. So what's going on there? Yeah, so it's a bit like much of the natural world. So there are lots of plants. There are also lots of plants that produce poisons that would kill us. And there are lots of animals that we could eat, but there are also animals that produce poisons,

whether scorpions or puffer fish or poisonous snakes that would kill us. And it's similar in the fungal world. There are these mushrooms which produce powerful poisons that will kill us. And it's similar in the fungal world. There are these mushrooms which produce powerful poisons that will kill us. But it's not a unique feature of fungi to be potentially deadly. The way you describe it, it sounds, you know, very, it's, you know, almost like another life form. But when I think of mushrooms, fungus, I think of, you know, cultivated, you know, you buy them at the supermarket because somebody grew them rather than it's living under the ground in this kind of mysterious network. Yeah, exactly. And this is a very common perception, and it's a very understandable perception, because the parts of fungi that we can sense with our unaided senses are mushrooms, usually.

These are the parts of the fungus made edible, poisonous, covetable. Some of the most expensive foods in the world are fungi, truffles, the fruiting bodies of some fungi. So these are the parts of the fungus made perceivable, made noticeable. And so we would naturally think of mushrooms when we think of fungi. But that's what's so thrilling about this, the fungal world, the fungal kingdom, is that the more we find out about it, the more we realize that these organisms underpin many of the natural processes that we take for granted. They support many of the ecosystems that we

didn't know they supported. We learn more and more about how different things would be if fungi didn't exist. How different would things be if fungi didn't exist? Well they'd be unrecognizable. I mean the history of life would would have unfolded in a very different way. These kind of questions are always very hard but for example plants could only make it out of the water and onto the land about 500 million years ago because of fungi, because of the partnerships that they formed with fungi. So when the ancestors of plants, which were small algae, you know, these photosynthetic, they were green, they were photosynthetic, so they could eat light and they could produce energy from

light. But they weren't able to scavenge and forage around in the soil, in the solid ground. So when they washed up onto the shores of lakes and rivers, they formed relationships with fungi, which are very capable foragers in solid ground. And fungi behaved as root systems of these plants for about 50 million years, until plants could evolve their own root systems. So the rest of the history of life on land is a history driven by this relationship between plants and fungi. And plants, what we call plants, are really fungi that have evolved to farm algae and algae that have evolved to farm fungi. So all of the ecosystems that sustain us and in which we live, these are all things that arise from these relationships formed by fungi.

When I think of fungi, I think of mushrooms because that's what I see. Are there other ways to see it? The naked eye sees it other than when it creates a mushroom? Yes. So you can see fungal networks, you can grow them on, when you have moldy bread, for example, when your bread goes moldy, what you see there, those are fungal mycelium growing across the surface of the bread. So there are many ways in which we can see it. In the natural environment, you can sometimes see molds growing.

You can sometimes see fungal networks growing. If you peel off the side of a rotting log, you'd be able to sometimes see fungal tissues there digesting the log. So there are other ways to see fungi apart from mushrooms and so when mold grows on my bread generally we know that the bread's probably been sitting around for a long time and and what happened what where did that mold come from and then if i put it in the fridge it probably won't come or at least won't come for a few more days so those molds on your bread would have come from spores in the air and spores are how fungi disperse so spores are a bit like plant seeds and they're a fascinating subject fungal spores are the largest source of living particles in the air so fungi produce

about 50 megatons 50 million tons of spores every year, which is the weight of about 500,000 blue whales. And these spores circulate in the air, in the atmosphere, and they can even trigger, they change the way that weather patterns take place because they trigger the formation of droplets and ice crystals, and so can influence the formation of droplets and ice crystals and so can influence the pattern of rain and hail and snow so these fungal particles are traveling in the air and when they land on a suitable surface for them to grow they sprout and they develop into a new fungus and so when you see the mold growing on your bread you're seeing this the early life of a fungus that has most likely arrived as a spore. What is it about my bread that makes it do that, that it doesn't do on my crackers or on my plates or whatever?

Well, you probably find fungi that did grow on the crackers after a while. The bread is more moist, and so fungi can find an easier home there. Plates would be hard because there isn't much organic material for them to digest. They live on the sources of food. You do find fungi living on all sorts of strange materials. They have a wide variety of appetites. There are fungi found growing in the blasted nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, these fungi grow towards radioactive hot particles. They seem to be able to use radiation as plants use the energy in sunlight. You also have fungi that live in the fuel tanks of aircraft, the kerosene fungus.

You have specialist molds that live around whiskey barrels in Canadian distilleries that live off the evaporating alcohol fumes that emerge from these barrels over the course of years. So fungi have different appetites, and that determines where they grow. Fungus seems to have a PR problem in the sense that when I think of a fungus, and when you say, oh, a fungus is growing,us and mold and things like that really have a bad reputation. We want to get rid of them. We don't want to embrace them. There's a kind of cultural distaste in some places for fungi.

It depends where you are in the world. If you are in China or Japan or Korea, there tends to be a greater love of fungi and mushrooms, both in medicinal terms and culinary terms. But on the whole, in England and North America, we tend to find more mycophobic attitudes. It relates to our attitudes to supposed germs more generally. For much of the 20th century, germs were understood to be agents of disease. Now we understand our bodies to be made up of more bacterial and fungal cells than our own cells. And so these microbial partners and inhabitants of our lives are key players in the way that we behave and develop

and grow. And so this germ gross attitudes that we've inherited is not always appropriate. And so fungi suffer a bit from that, I'd say. It seems so kind of mysterious and out there in the wilderness and the wild and under logs and everything how does it get to the point where people say well here we're growing you know porcini mushrooms and here we're growing portobello mushrooms how does it get so controlled and so farmed when it sounds like the way you're describing it it's so like out there and kind of out of control. That's a good question. And it depends on the fungus.

So many fungi can't be cultivated. So truffles, for example, white truffles can't be cultivated, which is what makes them so valuable. When I joined truffle hunters hunting in Italy and for these white truffles, they have to be found in the wild because we don't understand enough about their life cycles. We don't understand enough about the relationships they form with their partner trees. We don't understand enough about the relationships they form with their bacterial partners to be able to simulate that environment and grow them in a controlled setting. There are other kinds of truffles and fungi that we can grow quite readily so we we understand a lot less about these you know the workings of these organisms but when when we do grow them and many can be grown and many are grown very fruitfully um then it's a question of finding out what so shiitake for example you grow on wood, on logs, because wood is what they eat.

So you'd provide them with an ideal food source, you'd provide them with the conditions that they need to grow, and then you'd let them grow, much as you do with a plant or with any animal that we domesticate. We have to anticipate the needs of these organisms and then supply those needs. So they can be grown in these controlled environments but as i say many can't but it must be hard because you know i can i can grow in my backyard a lot of the things i can buy at the supermarket but not mushrooms i've never heard of anybody that has a mushroom garden or or maybe i have well there are plenty i mean you can order online uh mushroom grow kits just add water kits and so you can grow a range of mushrooms quite easily from your kitchen um

don't even need to take them outside um it's a it's a field that's growing quite rapidly there's more and more interest in the subject because mushrooms are very good for you and they're very fast growing. And they're pretty interesting. I think the next time I see mushrooms in the supermarket, I'll look at them a little differently. Merlin Sheldrake has been my guest. He is a biologist and author of the book Entangled Life, How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you for coming on. Well, thanks for having me. Do you fidget?

You know, do you doodle or click your pen over and over again or just fidget with an object with your fingers? Well, if you do, good for you, because it turns out that that behavior can promote creative thinking and faster learning. Researchers at New York University's Polytechnic School of Engineering studied a group of 40 workers who used various fidget widgets to improve focus, ease anxiety, and boost creative thinking. The study taps a relatively new field of research called embodied cognition that maps the connection between body movement and cognitive function.

The same logic helps explain why students who take notes in longhand retain subject matter better than those who take notes on laptops. Or why children who play with blocks and puzzles show better performance on spatial reasoning tests, according to studies published in Psychological Science. Or even how counting your fingers can improve mental arithmetic functioning in adults. So despite what your grandmother told you, fidgeting is a good thing and can apparently make you smarter.

And that is something you should know. Hey, do me a favor and leave a rating and review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts. It'll help us and it will immortalize you on Apple Podcasts forever. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook,

where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family.

But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.