Tripping Through Time: The Strange History of Mushrooms That Changed Civilization

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to the Strange History Podcast,

0:04 Speaker 1: the show that exists solely to remind you that history

0:07 Speaker 1: was written by people who absolutely did not know what

0:10 Speaker 1: they were eating. I'm your host, Amy, and tonight we

0:14 Speaker 1: are pulling back the curtain on one of history's quietest

0:17 Speaker 1: chaos agents. Mushrooms, not loud mushrooms, not villain mushrooms, just

0:25 Speaker 1: mushrooms minding their own business until humans panic, get hungry,

0:29 Speaker 1: and invent consequences. This episode is about the times fungi

0:34 Speaker 1: didn't just exist, They interfered spiritually, politically, psychologically, and sometimes fatally.

0:42 Speaker 2: Aragoat the fungus that hid in plain sight.

0:46 Speaker 1: Ergot is a parasitic fungus that infects rye and other grains.

0:51 Speaker 1: It replaces healthy kernels with dark, hardened growths that medieval

0:55 Speaker 1: farmers called horns. They didn't know it was alive, they

1:00 Speaker 1: didn't know it was toxic. They definitely didn't know it

1:03 Speaker 1: was psychoactive. Once ground into flower, ergot disappears, no smell,

1:08 Speaker 1: no taste, no warning, but once eaten, it goes to work.

1:12 Speaker 1: Historical medical records describe two types of ergotism, convulsive ergotism

1:17 Speaker 1: causing muscle spasms, seizures, hallucinations, frenzied movement, the feeling that

1:23 Speaker 1: demons were inside your body, and gangrenous ergotism, where blood

1:28 Speaker 1: vessels constrict, fingers, toes, and limbs rot, flesh turns black

1:34 Speaker 1: and falls off. Medieval Europe had a nickname for this disease,

1:38 Speaker 1: Saint Anthony's Fire, because when your skin is burning, your

1:42 Speaker 1: mind is unraveling, and your bread is cursed, you assume

1:46 Speaker 1: God is involved.

1:48 Speaker 2: The dancing plague of fifteen eighteen when poison became performance art.

1:54 Speaker 1: In July fifteen eighteen in Strasbourg, a woman named Frautrofhea

1:59 Speaker 1: began dancing in the street. She danced for hours, then days,

2:04 Speaker 1: then weeks. She couldn't stop. Within a month, over four

2:07 Speaker 1: hundred people were dancing uncontrollably, collapsing, screaming, convulsing, and in

2:13 Speaker 1: some cases dying from exhaustion or stroke. Local officials were baffled.

2:19 Speaker 1: Physicians blamed hot blood, clergy blame sin. The city council

2:24 Speaker 1: decided the solution was encouragement. They hired musicians, They built stages.

2:29 Speaker 1: They made it worse. Modern historians point to ergot contaminated

2:34 Speaker 1: rye combined with stress, famine, and religious terror a perfect

2:39 Speaker 1: neurological storm, which means the deadliest raven history may have

2:44 Speaker 1: been caused by bread, poisoning, and vibes.

2:48 Speaker 3: This episode is sponsored by Saint Anthony's Fire Insurance, covering

2:52 Speaker 3: acts of God, acts of fungus, and unexplained group dancing.

2:57 Speaker 3: Coverage excludes clogs worn voluntarily.

3:01 Speaker 2: Salem or how bred may have put people on trial.

3:06 Speaker 1: In sixteen ninety two, the village of Salem, Massachusetts, collapsed

3:10 Speaker 1: into paranoia during the Salem witch trials. Witnesses reported invisible attackers,

3:17 Speaker 1: pinching and choking, sensations, fits and convulsions, hallucinations, sudden personality changes.

3:25 Speaker 1: Court transcripts described children screaming, freezing mid sentence, or writhing

3:30 Speaker 1: on the floor. Modern researchers noticed something unsettling. Salem relied

3:36 Speaker 1: heavily on rye. The climate before the trials was wet

3:39 Speaker 1: and cold. The symptoms match convulsive ergotism almost exactly. This

3:45 Speaker 1: does not mean ergot caused everything. Fear, theology, misogyny, and

3:49 Speaker 1: social pressure absolutely mattered, but it may have lit the match,

3:54 Speaker 1: which means American history's most infamous moral panic could have

3:57 Speaker 1: started because someone baked cursed bread, and no one questioned it.

4:02 Speaker 2: Sacred drinks and secret visions.

4:06 Speaker 1: For nearly two thousand years, Greeks participated in the Eleusinian Mysteries,

4:10 Speaker 1: a ceremony so secret that participants swore lifelong silence. They drank.

4:16 Speaker 1: Kikian Ancient accounts describe overwhelming visions, loss of ego, encounters

4:22 Speaker 1: with divine beings, the certainty that death was not the end.

4:27 Speaker 1: Scholars suspect Kaikion may have included ergotized barley, which would

4:31 Speaker 1: mean philosophy democracy. Western metaphysics may have been jumpstarted by

4:37 Speaker 1: ritualized mushroom chemistry. Plato attended these rites, so did Sophocles,

4:42 Speaker 1: and probably people who immediately became unbearable at dinner parties afterward.

4:47 Speaker 2: Amanita muscaria, the mushroom that won't mind its business.

4:53 Speaker 1: Bright red white spots, fairy tale, innocent. Amanita muscaria is

4:59 Speaker 1: anything but. Used across Siberia and Northern Europe. It causes dissociation, euphoria,

5:06 Speaker 1: distorted reality, violent or ecstatic behavior. Shamans consumed it for visions.

5:12 Speaker 1: Others drank their urine afterward because the psychoactive compounds passed

5:16 Speaker 1: through unchanged, but less toxic history rarely explains itself. It

5:22 Speaker 1: just happens and dares you to cope.

5:25 Speaker 2: Vikings and possible war fungus.

5:28 Speaker 1: Descriptions of Viking berserkers are alarming. They screamed, they bit shields,

5:34 Speaker 1: they ignored pain, They fought until collapse. Some historians suggest

5:40 Speaker 1: amanita mescaria may have been involved. Others argue alcohol or

5:45 Speaker 1: psychological conditioning. But here's the important part. Even considering mushrooms

5:51 Speaker 1: as a tactical warfare option tells you everything you need

5:55 Speaker 1: to know about early medieval Europe.

5:58 Speaker 3: Today's episode is also brought to you by berserkir energy

6:01 Speaker 3: brew legally distinct from mushrooms. Probably side effects include yelling, crying,

6:08 Speaker 3: and an intense need to fight God.

6:10 Speaker 2: When the French army lost to foraging.

6:14 Speaker 1: During World War One, starving soldiers foraged mushrooms near the trenches,

6:19 Speaker 1: mistakes were common. Symptoms included vomiting, hallucinations, temporary blindness, death.

6:28 Speaker 1: Military doctors quietly noted that mushroom poisoning sidelined entire units,

6:33 Speaker 1: which is not how you want to be remembered in

6:34 Speaker 1: a war.

6:35 Speaker 2: The tone that hallucinated together.

6:38 Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty one, pont Saint Esprit France erupted into

6:42 Speaker 1: mass psychosis. People screamed about snakes crawling from walls. Some

6:47 Speaker 1: thought they were glass. Several jumped from windows. Bread was shared.

6:51 Speaker 1: Bread was blamed the official cause Ergot poisoning, because of

6:56 Speaker 1: course it.

6:57 Speaker 2: Was history's quiet saboteur.

7:00 Speaker 1: Mushrooms don't conquer, they don't announce themselves. They just wait

7:04 Speaker 1: for famine, fear, and desperation, and then they gently tip

7:08 Speaker 1: humanity sideways. I'm Amy and this has been the Strange

7:12 Speaker 1: History Podcast. Remember question bread, respect fungi, and never assume

7:17 Speaker 1: history was sober