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Matt and Sean talk about using mushrooms for food, packaging, clothing, and more. Can it truly replace bacon and boots?
“No, Thorium Won’t Power Everything” video we talked about:
https://youtu.be/iXz302oMphQ?si=7NgBLWm6s-UPj-NE
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, Why Mushrooms are Starting to Replace Everything https://youtu.be/jI2LC3WTryw?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Matt and Sean talk about using mushrooms for food, packaging, clothing, and more. Can it truly replace bacon and boots?
“No, Thorium Won’t Power Everything” video we talked about:
https://youtu.be/iXz302oMphQ?si=7NgBLWm6s-UPj-NE
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, Why Mushrooms are Starting to Replace Everything https://youtu.be/jI2LC3WTryw?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Follow us on X: @stilltbdfm @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
Undecided with Matt Ferrell: https://www.youtube.com/undecidedmf
★ Support this podcast ★
Creators and Guests
What is Still To Be Determined?
Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.
Today on Still to be Determined, we're talking about mushrooms. That's it. End of sentence period. No jokes, you'll understand why. Hello everybody. I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci-fi and I write some stuff for kids and I'm just generally curious about technology and luckily for me, my brother is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell.
Which is why we are here today. We're gonna talk about Matt's most recent, which is Why mushrooms are starting to replace everything, including people. That's the subtext. Matt was too afraid to put in the title! Last of Us, Sean, Last of Us.
As always, I'm not here alone. That voice you just heard or that face you saw pop up on your screen. I dunno if you're on YouTube, I don't know if on you're on Spotify. I dunno if you're on Apple Podcast,
I'd like to know, but I don't. Anyway, that voice, that face. That's Matt. Matt, how are you doing today?
I'm doing really well. I do regret not making more Last of Us jokes in this video.
I mean, they were right there, but I know they were also right there. So yeah, like good on you to not go for the low hanging fruit or low hanging fungus.
Anyway, before we get into our conversation about mushrooms, we're going to take a look quickly at some of your comments from our previous episode, which is episode 2 71. In that episode, we inadvertently talked about microplastics. Matt, if you'll remember, we were gearing up for a nice conversation about other things, and then suddenly we talked about microplastics for about 20 minutes, and there was some interesting responses to that, like this one from bknesheim who jumped into say, I think radioactive materials and plastics have some of the same problems. So many see not the difference amount and source made. The fact is that tires are a major source for microplastics. Every car loses three to four millimeters a year from each tire, all as microscopic flakes.
Other plastics are more stable and generate very little, so that can be class that can be classified as a microplastic. It's also difficult to trace an effect from a small amount that is found in most places. We should limit the amount getting spread in nature. There has to be some sense to it also. And I appreciate that, uh, bk that's, you know, similar to what Matt was saying, that we need a lot more research to see what this is potentially doing to us and to nature.
And one of the things about most of our conversations, Matt, I feel like most of the time we're like, let's have as small an impact as possible. Yeah. Regardless of whether we think there is a direct cause and effect to a problem or not, why upset apple carts when you can find a process that keeps all those apple carts happily sitting upright.
So yeah, that's where I find myself landing. Like why would we want to, if somebody comes forward and says, look, microplastics, we've just proven microplastics, don't do a thing to anybody, I would still say let's not spew them into nature. Let's not find a better way. Let's not fill jellyfish full of microplastics.
Let's not have microplastics swirling around at the bottom of the ocean. Let's not have fish with microplastics in their eyes. Like, let's just not do that. That's just not something I think we should do because yeah, let's leave nature alone. So that's where I land, where like. Big picture. I'm, I imagine you're in a similar terrain.
I'm definitely in the same boat, uh, because I would use EVs as an example of like, you don't have to believe in climate change to advocate for EVs. It's really just comes down to, I don't like the smell of gasoline on my hands when I'm pumping into the car. No, I don't like the smell of gasoline. I don't like the smell of exhaust in the city when I'm walking around the streets.
I don't, you know, it's, all of these things can factor into the benefits of driving an EV that have nothing to do with scientific research. Nothing to do with believing in climate change. It's just there are, it's a better technology. It's just better. Yeah. It makes your life better. I can fuel my car in my garage that I've been thinking about overnight, so it's like there's so many benefits to having an EV that you don't have to do.
It's the same thing for microplastics. That argument you're making, it's like, it doesn't seem like something we should be doing. There's gotta be a better way, there's gotta be a better material or a better way to build this thing that we don't have to worry about this stuff. So I'm, I'm definitely in that camp.
At the other end.
We get comments like this from Juan who says very thoughtfully, I know that plastics are irreplaceable in places like medicine, and I support everything PolyFloss is doing. But at the same time, I think there's a risk of it being like carbon capture as an excuse to keep business as usual, even though there's still no evidence that microplastics have all the negative impacts that are being claimed.
No one can think having tons of microplastic in every corner of the world is a good idea. Plastics should be reduced to the bare minimum, and more resources should be put to replacements like fungi, innovations Matt talked about already. So that's another aspect of the, of the argument here, which is you and I just talked about, there are good reasons to do away with things simply from a, it seems like the right thing to do.
Mm-hmm. And then there's the aspect of how much do you think we land in research, which is geared around reinforcing the status quo because the status quo is easier to stay in.
There's,
we talked about that yeah. In a number of videos recently of, of yeah, like be careful of advocating for a thing simply because change is hard and.
We talk about that and we see it all the time. What are your thoughts about that, maybe in regards to some of the details of that particular conversation, but also bigger picture?
Well, uh, what's stuck in my head is like what Juan said in there about carbon capture is the first thing that sticks in my mind.
And that you, you, you see this a lot in my comments and from people I talk to, there's a fear that, oh, well this technology could be an excuse to keep doing this thing that they don't like. I would challenge that to an extent. I mean, yes, carbon capture is, there's a lot of funding into carbon capture from fossil fuel companies, so there is a connection there.
I get it, but at the same time, we shouldn't cut our nose off to spite our face. There are things that are happening around something like how PolyFloss is doing this plastic kind of second life reuse. Or if we find a good way to do some plastic recycling that's actually affordable and easy to do, or carbon capture technologies actually proved to be economically viable to do, we should look at these technologies in ways of we need to implement them full stop.
We need to hold people still to account to make sure they're not using it as a crutch to keep doing something we don't like. 'cause for me, carbon capture, there are reasons why we'd wanna be doing it. Yeah. Even when you take climate change at the equation, there is use for carbon that we can put to use.
So by capturing it, we can put it to use potentially, if they can make it economically viable to do it. So there's, there's a rationale to want to do it. And then if you believe in climate change, which I do based on all the research, we need to pull so much carbon back outta the atmosphere that we've put into the atmosphere that the natural ecosystem cannot handle.
So it's like, if we wanna try to right the ship, we need technology like this. We need clean air. So it's like, it's not that, oh, we can do carbon capture or this, we need to do carbon capture. Everything else we're already talking about. So it's like, it's a, it's a both approach. So I just, I worry that some people get so concerned about this becomes an excuse for the fossil fuel industry to keep doing what they're doing.
That they're basically damning carbon capture to the, the recycle bin. When we actually do need this technology potentially. So it's like that's, that's my only concern.
Finally, a comment that was about a video that because of a variety of travel that was happening a few weeks ago, Matt and I had a week where we did not record this podcast, and as a result, there was an episode of Matt's around thorium reactors mm-hmm.
That we did not even discuss. And perhaps it is a video that we should make time to revisit at some point in the future because it was a well received video and it also created a bunch of debate. Mm-hmm. And Zach points out that debate by saying, I was kind of bummed that you guys did not talk about the video that was created specifically to debunk your recent thorium reactor video.
So Matt, the Debunkers? Yeah. They're out to get you. What did you, what did you think about the video that took your video head on?
Yeah. Uh, one of my patrons actually shared that video with me and it's like a 42 minute video. I watched it. I loved it. I thought it was a really good video that, that, that guy is a nuclear scientist engineer.
He works in the nuclear industry. That's where his experience is. And so hearing his take on the technology was awesome. And I've noticed on his channel, he has other debunking thorium videos, so he clearly has a point of view on the technology, but the way he went about, I'm gonna put this in air quotes, debunking my video.
I did not think he debunked my video at all. What I thought was fascinating was he just watched the video and he kept pausing it and he kept putting his 2 cents in as to what his take was, some of the nuances of what I was saying. He added a lot of color to it and a lot of deep understanding of like, yeah, that's true, but it actually goes further than that.
Or, you know, this kind of hype. It's a little overhyped. It's true, but it's overhyped because of X, Y, and Z. And here's the actual truth behind it. So it was not debunking, it was just dropping a contextual of knowledge and contextualizing things in a way only somebody like him could do. And I, right. Really appreciated it.
And so I comment, I even comment on this video saying, this is an awesome video. So it's like, if I, if I remember, I'm gonna put a link to it in the description of this video, um, it's definitely worth watching. And the reason I'm kind of complimenting him is a lot of debunkers can be really nasty in how they debunk, where they will attack the person and not the idea.
And he is not doing that. He is going straight at the idea and talking about the idea. And I thought the way he handled watching my video was so well done. Um, I just got a paying props to that. Um, so it's definitely worth watching.
That's great because the, ultimately everything that you talk about on your channel are things that require debate, uhhuh to land in the right application and the right, the right leverage, and the right tool for the right job.
And very often you and I end up in our conversations, I feel like our conversations are attempts to contextualize some of your own videos.
Yeah.
In that same way of providing a little more color and looking at, well, what is the use case here? As opposed to what marketing speak or a headline might present.
So you end up with those moments where somebody says. This is gonna change this forever. And you report, they are saying this is gonna change things forever. And then you and I talk about is it? Mm-hmm. Is that, is that what's going to happen? And to have that happen in a collegial way? Yeah. In the wider ecosystem is to be applauded.
Hundred percent. So I do hope like you, including the link in this video, I think is really important. I would encourage you even to put the link to that video. Yeah, in the notes on that original video because like that's the kind of conversations we're living through an era right now where people try to take each other out at the ankles.
And when we do that, we end up reinforcing a status quo, which is contentious and not serving people well. Well.
And one thing I would go add to this is, this is a analogy that always comes into my mind, the old saying of like, you know, are you a pessimist or optimist? Are you a glass half full kind of person?
Are you a glass half empty kind of person? I'm 100% unabashedly, a glass half full guy. I, that's why I make the videos I make on my channel a hundred percent. I love to geek out on these innovations and the things that people are finding ways to do innovative, cool things, and I just wanna geek out on like, how cool is this?
This is just really cool. That rubs the glass half empty people the wrong way in a massive way. And so I get a lot of flack and my comments from the overly skeptical glass half empty crowd because if I'm saying something nice about this thing, it didn't say enough nasty things about that thing, then clearly I'm on the take.
Or clearly I'm paid by that company, or there's something nefarious going on here because there's no other reason why I would say all these nice things about something. Right. At Newsflash there is, it's all about your point of view, your editorial choices, right? And why you do them. And I've, I will always state if there's any kinda relationship in any way, shape, or form with a company in my videos.
Always do. Always have, always will. That's never gonna change. I had no relationship with Copenhagen Atomics, nothing like that. So this was all just me, just geeking on and like, how cool is this? But it's, it's all, that's why I love his video. It's not attacking my take on it, per se. It's adding wonderful color commentary from somebody in the nuclear industry and his point of view, and I, I applaud him for that.
It was, it was really well done.
Interesting. You mentioned the, you know, the glass half full. The glass half empty and you fall into the glass half full. I fall into the camp that looks at the glass and says, who the hell's been drinking my water? On now to our discussion about Matt's most recent, this is of course about mushrooms replacing everything, including me as co-host of this podcast.
Lots of very, I mean, this was a video that you could not watch and not immediately go. This is science fiction, this is science fiction. Because right off the bat, Monkfish jumps into the comments. The sci-fi author, Octavia Butler already wrote about cultivating live plants into buildings in the 1980s.
I'd love to see something close to that in my lifetime. This is just such, I mean, you just literally talked about like, this is cool stuff. Let's talk about it. This is cool stuff. Yes. It's really cool. Let's talk about it. Like growing homes. Yeah. Growing. You were in that grow room. Yep. Which didn't look overly massive. It was big. Like it was big, but it didn't look like the biggest room I've ever seen. And you're like touching what looks like a mattress bed and you peel off a chunk and you're just like, oh, it's so spongy. It's kind of tacky. It's like, it looked like you pulled off a giant thing of taffy.
Yeah. And then the video goes on to be like. Maybe we could use this to grow a house or a space station or bacon. And I'm just like, what? Yes, exactly. I found Adidas is marketing shoes made out of mycelium leather. Yeah. Yeah. And which takes us to some of our other comments, Zach Wright, the leather being so cheap will likely be the main selling point over anything else about it.
Yep. That may be true. Right now it's not. Is that, that's my understanding right now is the mycelial leather is actually more expensive than regular leather. So the argument for it right now I think would largely be from like Stella McCartney. Her clothing line, it's Paul McCartney's daughter, who is a very famous clothing designer.
She is using it for ethical reasons, like there's the marketing aspect of like this purse, these shoes, these are, this is not real leather. This is mycelia leather. Therefore, you are wearing something that no animal has died to make. So that right now is I think, the biggest angle. Do the people making these things see a day where the cost is dropping because they perfect growing and manufacturing techniques?
Is that the goal?
It's, yeah. Oh yeah. Of course. It's all about scale. We've talked about about this before. It's always about scale. The larger the scale of manufacturing means the cost per unit starts to drop, and so it's like Ecovative has been doing this for a decade or so, and so it's kind of like in time, it's gonna get bigger and bigger.
In fact, the facility I was in again was multiple buildings. So what I was seeing, Sean was just like one, one room of many. Yeah. And then it was like, they were like, oh, we're building another one of these. And this other place and like, so it's like they're expanding and the more they do that, the more they can produce, the more the costs start to drop.
And when you see how their system works with, like those conveyor belts like just get lowered and then it just starts to slide off. And they have this machine that slices , does all the things. It's like it is just snappy, like it can move fast. So they're able to produce this really quickly that's gonna cause these leathers to drop and drop in price to the point where it is cheaper than getting cow hide to make leather where the mycelium not only did no animals die in the production of this thing, it's also cheaper. And so they're not quite there yet. But like, when that day happens, you're gonna start seeing this stuff in more and more and more places, right? So right now it's the, it's the ecologically, um, or, or like you mentioned, like if you're a vegan and you don't wanna have animals in your products, that's the first market.
It doesn't mean it's the only market.
And what's the price point. Do you know what the price point is right now around the, about around the food products, around bacon and stuff like that?
It's more expensive. It's, it's a little, it's you're paying a little bit of a premium right now for the, MyBacon.
Again, as they ramp up more facilities and are producing this more, I expect that price to drop, uh, because they are rolling this product out into more and more places. Like you'll find it in Whole Foods. Whole Foods is not known as your, your cheap grocery store, but they are trying to roll out into more major places.
Like, you know, your, in my area, big Y or like some major supermarket change, like maybe Wegmans, that kind of a thing. So as you start to get into those larger chains that are more mass market, you're gonna have to hit a price point to be competitive. And so they're, they're definitely aiming for that.
They're not looking to be a niche product at all.
Another question that popped up was about longevity, where. Roadkill ironic name jumped into the comments to say, I've seen this technology come up a few times, and I've always had a couple questions. How long does it take to break down and what conditions are required for this to happen?
Well, as I mentioned, there are shoes being made. I think that means it can get wet. Yeah. I would hope to goodness, it means it can get wet. I would hate to see the person who's just like got my new sneaks on. Going out. Happens to be a little drizzly outside and as I'm walking along I end up with nothing but rubber soles.
My shoes turned into sandals. Yeah. From what I can see though, it looks like a lifespan of four to five years now. Leather lasts a lot longer.
Mm-hmm.
But. I find myself thinking, I don't know that I have ever had a pair of shoes that after a period of, and I'm talking leather shoes, I don't think I've ever had leather shoes that lasted.
Mm-hmm. Very long. Because every other part of the shoe that's made outta rubber Yeah. Falls apart. So you end up with the. It's a nice leather shoe that should last forever. The soul is gonna last six months, and it's gonna be prohibitively expensive to put new soles on that. I actually took a pair of shoes that cost me $90, and I'm not a guy who likes spending a lot of money on shoes.
I'm not a guy who's just like, gimme the $300 pair of shoes. I can't spend that much money on something I'm gonna immediately put on the ground, like I'm gonna buy this much money for a thing and I'm gonna take it and put it on the sidewalks of New York City. No. So a $90 pair of shoes, I wear them six months go by, the soles wear out.
I take it to a cobbler thinking this time I'm going to change the soles instead of buying new shoes. And he says, oh, we can definitely put new soles on that for $125. That's the problem. And I was just like, what? No, no. Yeah. So. Mycelia leather shoes sold to Sean that last, let's say they last a year.
That's longer than I'm currently getting with leather, and it's a shoe that could be composted. Well, that's wild. Hadn't even thought of that. Yes. Yeah. Very interesting. Very interesting stuff. The way,
well, the way I would also describe it is, think about this, it's like wood. Like if you're building a house outta wood, that house could last for hundreds of years.
Because the wood is protected from the elements and it's not gonna be, but if it's soaking up water and you have a leak and all that kinda stuff, the wood will rot. It's the same thing for this. It's like the proper conditions will break this down pretty quickly. Yeah. But in the average use case conditions, it's gonna last a very long time.
You know, you don't really have to worry about it.
There was also, once again, hat tip to Matt's audience. Some of you people out there are. Look at the big brains on Brad people. It's just very impressive. Kyle McGuff jumped in to say, I am in my second year as a PhD student. Good luck to you, Kyle.
Congratulations. In a group that focuses on fungal natural products, fungi are quite a niche organism to study, and each species has a unique chemistry profile that contain useful compounds. Some fungal metabolites have been used as electrolytes in batteries, so cool. So immediately, Matt, I'm like, have we talked about mushroom batteries yet?
No.
No. But Sean maybe reject one of my next to Kyle. One of my next videos coming up is about, pardon me, I swear shit that gets turned into things that go into batteries, so yeah.
Talk about poo power. That's right. Poo power. Once again, we've talked about poo power in the past, but it's coming back Sean, Poo power again.
And I can't wait to be able to say like number two is number one, use my remote and be like, wow, this battery is crap. And I will say that every time I pick up that remote. Finally this from Jopo, and here's why I didn't open this episode of the podcast with a pun around talking about mushrooms. Jopo has this to say, Jopo, I couldn't improve upon anything that you shared in this comment.
Jopo, your check is in the mail. Jopo writes, Matt is such a fun guy and his presentation style doesn't leave mushroom for improvement. Slow clap. Thank you. Listeners, what do you think? Is there anything about this conversation that you think we missed or is there anything that you'd like to add on to?
And we look forward to reading your comments as always commenting, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Super easy, super free ways for you to support the podcast, and we do appreciate each and every one of you doing those things. And if you'd like to support us more directly, you can click the join button on YouTube, or you can go to still TBD fm.
Click the become a supporter button there. Both of those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the bruises. We immediately apply mushrooms. No gravy.
And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of making terrible fungi puns. Thank you so much everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.