[00:00:00] hey, Hey, welcome back to another episode of super human radio. Today is August 13th, 2020. We're going to be talking about a subject we've talked about before on this show. Oh, and that is a psychedelics, how they affect the brain later in the show. We're going to be talking about, uh, Those who like to forage people who are looking to forage, we're going to talk to a father and daughter who have made a lot of foraging, more popular around the country.

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[00:01:20] And that is dr. Frederick Barrett. And he is over at John Hopkins medicine. How are you doing, uh, dr. Brown? I do. I'm doing well, Carl, how are you doing? Good. Good, good. So why this area of interest? First of all, psychedelic. So what research preceded this, that, uh, that made you want to know more about how they affect our brain?

[00:01:44] Right. Well, I'll give you the executive summary. I I've always been really interested in trying to understand my own mind and the minds of others. And, uh, I. Uh, my first, uh, my first degree program in undergrad was music education. Cause I had played, I played music most of my [00:02:00] life and uh, I thought I've always recognize music as, as a really good way to kind of communicate emotionally and explore yourself, but emotionally and help others do the same.

[00:02:11] But yeah, but, uh, along the way, I really got hammered with. Psychology. And then the brain. And, uh, I went to grad school to get my PhD in psychology. Uh, and, and I studied in a program at university of California Davis, where I was able to use music as a tool to evoke memories and emotions in the brain. And the, and then I learned some methods of using MRI and other techniques to study the activity and the changes in the brain that occurred when we do all kinds of things as the humans out in the world.

[00:02:39] Um, So I use music as a tool to study emotion and memory in the brain, but the music is complicated because people are complicated and, and that, you know, we have these tricky, tricky things called preferences that make it difficult to, to really determine what music is going to evoke a specific response in a given individual.

[00:02:55] And along the way, I, uh, there was another graduate, uh, graduate student at the [00:03:00] time, Catherine McLean, who was a couple of years ahead of me. And she came to Hopkins to work with my mentor. Roland Griffiths studied the effects of psychedelic drugs on. People with a meditation practice and they were able to do some brain imaging.

[00:03:12] Yes. And she knew that I did studies with music and she said, Oh, can you tell me how you design your study so that we can look at the effects of psychedelics on emotions? And we can use music to that to evoke the emotions. And this all makes sense. And I basically got her to hire me so I could do it for her.

[00:03:27] And she subsequently left science, but, you know, I saw this amazing opportunity and psychedelic drugs. There are such powerful modulators of consciousness and cognition and emotion. And I thought, well, if we can really use these as tools to understand more about consciousness and the brain and emotion than, than we may really have something.

[00:03:47] So that's, that's kind of how. I got into it. So that that's one aspect of the psychedelic drugs. The other aspect is that there's this, uh, let's say for lack of better terms, this inertia that occurs with a brain, [00:04:00] uh, BDNF upregulation and even a neuronal sprouting. Um, I had the great fortune of having an opportunity to sit and talk with dr.

[00:04:10] Timothy Leary when I was living in Las Vegas and he came to UNLB to do a lecture and no one showed up cause no one knew who he was. And yeah, I know. And, and, and back then the group that he was involved with, a lot of these pioneers in psychedelics believed that, uh, you know, tripping. For lack of better terms because the right and left hemisphere of the brain to start to bypass the Corpus callosum, this data clearing house and communicate directly.

[00:04:39] And this is why things like synesthesia and original thought were possible. Once you started to experiment, uh, with the drugs. And so. We know now that, I mean, I think I read a couple of years ago that the college of London was doing a, a large scale study with a low dose LSD on people who [00:05:00] suffered from a major depressive disorders.

[00:05:02] I have never followed it. I don't know what the outcome was. Maybe you do. Um, but these chemicals are really amazing because they not only, uh, alter our perception of our life. In the now, but they seem to have a, uh, an effect later on as well. I mean, remember, I don't know, I'm 62. I remember being told by my, my parents don't do LSD because you'll be walking down the street 10 years from now and you'll have a flashback.

[00:05:31] They called them a flashback. I'm still waiting for the flashbacks. I'm still waiting for it to happen, you know, but it's, these, these, these compounds are amazing and there's evidence that. Um, early, uh, uh, native Americans use them. In fact, they followed the Buffalo. It is said that those who followed the Buffalo would pick the mushrooms out of their excrement and eat them.

[00:05:52] And it would, it would change their lives. These are really amazing chemicals that go far beyond even just this one category of discussion [00:06:00] today. Would you agree with that? Well, so, so they, they certainly do have a rich and varied history and. And there certainly was a lot of misinformation shared about psychedelic drugs, especially in the sixties and seventies, uh, at the point, which psychedelic drugs became kind of a vector for culture Wars, uh, and.

[00:06:22] And, uh, I, you know, I want to, I want to preface this by saying they are controlled substances. You can get into a lot of trouble for, for, for, for seeking them out and using them. Um, and they're not without their risks. These are very powerful drugs and lots of people have used them, you know, over the past, God knows how many decades, uh, and been find that there've been plenty of people who legitimately have.

[00:06:43] Run into real issues using them. So they are powerful drugs, but, but, but the reason that they're getting so much attention in science and in popular culture now is because of these really profound effects that they can have. And, and a lot of the research going on is it's [00:07:00] focused on the acute effects of drugs, so of these strokes.

[00:07:03] So, so when you're, you know, when you're under the effects of drugs, all kinds of really, uh, profound and abnormal things are happening. And of course, people really want to understand that. Uh, as best I can. And I think that's really, really valuable to do, but yeah, no, I'm actually more interested in the longterm effects.

[00:07:19] You know, what's happening in your brain or in your mind a week or a month to three months or a year after you take these drugs. And, and, and that's where the real therapeutic value of the stroke occurring. So, so you mentioned that the, the studies by Imperial college, London, um, they, they published a study in 2016, uh, where they demonstrated that two separate doses of siliciden actually, which the active component in magic mushrooms, um, that, that.

[00:07:46] Two administrations of that compounds under very controlled settings in a clinic led to, uh, most of the people in that study, uh, who had treatment resistant depression, which means that they had [00:08:00] depression that was long lasting, that, that, uh, they, they saw multiple forms of treatment and nothing really gave them relief from.

[00:08:06] And their sentence. Um, these people after two doses of psilocybin, uh, many were at least reduced to mild to moderate depression or somewhere went into remission. And, and, and after about three weeks after just two doses, a lot of people started to kind of float back up towards being depressed, but, but many of them were still in remission and, and, and that remarkable effect, um, That was w is, was, was also, uh, met with a couple of other studies that were published in the same year.

[00:08:34] One was published by a group here at Hopkins, demonstrating that folks who had a late stage cancer diagnosis. Um, also saw similar reductions in depression and anxiety. And, and if you, if you get a terminal or a late stage cancer diagnosis, one of the most difficult things to treat aside from the cancer is the kind of, uh, overwhelming existential crisis that you, that most people say like, Oh, I'm not ready.

[00:08:57] Or what am I I'm leaving my family behind [00:09:00] her. You know, I, I'm not done with life. I have more than I want to do, or, you know, and then, and it's terrible position that people end up in and, and, uh, People who were treated with psilocybin under controlled conditions in our lab. Uh, most of them saw, saw incredible reduction in that depression and anxiety.

[00:09:17] So this is what everybody's excited about, and this is what, yeah. That's really useful. Um, so talk about the area of the brain that you saw most of the activity and seems to be the focal of your, your research now, right? It's called the claustrum. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. The cross, the cross claustrum. So not to be confused with colostrum.

[00:09:43] So the cross room. Yeah. It's this really. In kind of a sheet of gray matter. That's tough in almost the center of each of your hemispheres of your brain. So your left hand and soon your right hemisphere. And it's like right in the middle of each one. And it's the word cholesterol from [00:10:00] actually, I think it's derived from a.

[00:10:02] A Latin word, meaning hidden. Um, so my cluster cluster cluster. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think they had the same route and, and, um, and, and it was called that because it is very deep within each hemisphere of the brain and was very, very difficult to find those two and to, and to study, uh, especially in, in, in what we call preclinical research or animal research, um, over the past, you know, you know, many decades.

[00:10:31] And it wasn't until recently that, uh, that are, that my colleague, Brian, Nathan, uh, at the university of Maryland, uh, developed techniques to really isolate and identify the claustrum in, in animal models. Um, and, and within human, uh, models, it wasn't until very recently, uh, We, we, we, uh, together, I together, uh, in collaboration with, with folks at university of Maryland, including Dave Seminole and, uh, and Sam criminal, uh, came up with a way of [00:11:00] actually identifying and trying to measure claustrum activity in humans.

[00:11:03] The thing that makes the claustrum interesting is that, um, the one thing we do know about it. Is that it seems to be heavily interconnected with just about every other part of the cortex. The cortex is going with the outer layer of the brain, where a lot of the, a lot of the computational processing happens.

[00:11:19] And of course the classroom is not the only person in regions, highly interconnected with other things that sourness is another one of them. And then there are lots of what we call hubs in the brain, but, but essentially this classroom region. Was bi-directionally connected with everything, uh, in such a unique and pervasive way that, um, in 2005 Francis Crick of DNA, fame, and Christophe Christof, Koch, who, who is a famous neuroscientist, uh, they kind of teamed up to, to publish this, uh, theoretical hypothetical article.

[00:11:50] And they highlighted the classroom and said, well, you know, if you were to have one brain region, That was going to stitch together, all of this various sensory [00:12:00] information from the environment into a unified percep that we experienced, because it's what geez, the classroom that would be great. That would be perfectly set up to do it with this the way it's connected to everything.

[00:12:10] And, and they threw this hypothesis out there. I think there's data that has been shown more recently, that kind of thing. Kind of undermine that idea that the classroom, it was like the seat of consciousness or the conductor of consciousness, because if such a brain region existed and was orchestrating the integration of all this information to create a seamless perceptive touch, it's just that we all experienced.

[00:12:32] It would have to be active all the time. And it turns out it's really not, it's only transiently active different points, but in the meantime, my colleagues at university of Maryland figured out that, um, That it's actually, uh, active, uh, and, and most active at, at, at high effort. Uh, decision making points in places where we have to really rearrange our brain, a network organization, a, you know, functional organization.

[00:12:56] So to attend to a different thing, like I'm closing my eyes and I'm thinking of a [00:13:00] memory, but then the phone rings and I have to pick it up and I have to orient my attention outside or have to make a difficult decision. So that, that seems where the claustrum is. Functioning. So it sounds like the claustrum is like the clutch of the brain, right.

[00:13:12] You're shifting gears. So it's, it makes the transition smooth from what you're doing here to what you're about to do. And it puts you into that. It probably activates faculties of the brain that put you. Into a place where you're not starting from scratch. You already, you're already in motion to handle that already.

[00:13:34] Like it's firing up all the faculties to go along with that. That's really fascinating. Get now, can we, can we see that in functional MRIs, uh, when people are asked to do certain things or certain life experience, can we see that activity go up and down in this region of the brain? That's precisely. What we found in, in paper were saying criminal was the first author we published in neuro image, the [00:14:00] journal neuro image last year, where we both, uh, rolled out, um, our method of trying to, uh, isolate claustrum function as humans with MRIs.

[00:14:08] And we showed that that's precisely what happens when doing certain types of decision making tasks, then you see the claustrum come online, but it's most interesting to us, uh, In terms of psychedelics is because the claustrum is Al so one of the brain regions that very densely expresses a receptor that psychedelics latch onto.

[00:14:30] So it's the serotonin to a receptor and the decades of research before that's a really identified the serotonin two, a receptor with being responsible for. Everything we understand about psychedelic effects and so secondary drugs bind to the serotonin two, a receptor. Then she calls all this signaling cascades that, that, that leads to whatever state of mind we find ourselves in.

[00:14:51] So that the, the idea then became well, if. Psychedelics are binding to a receptors in the classroom and then disrupting classroom [00:15:00] function. Could that lead, could that be like the, the, the kind of tipping point that leads to all of the other effects that we see and, and the public, the study that we just recently published with psilocybin administration changing claustrum function seems to point in that direction.

[00:15:16] It's a preliminary study. It's a small sample size. Um, When we, we could have had more stringent control conditions, but, but that's, that's basically what we found is that it may be that that disrupting claustrum function is what then allows psychedelics to disrupt all kinds of other brain network processes.

[00:15:36] So when we talk about things like synesthesia, is it because the cloud scrum. Is connected to all these other brain regions. And somehow, because it's the clutch, so to speak, it can actually take them offline and make them do certain things let's say is the reason that we experienced synesthesia, man, I, I, I remember so many instances of cities as a, as a young man in high school.

[00:16:00] [00:15:59] I remember one day coming home after dropping some acid and coming home was raining out and back then we all had the fancy hairdos and I had a blow dry my hair. And I remember seeing the heat coming out of the blow dryer. And I remember thinking, wow, that is amazing. You know, and people talk about, uh, listening to music and feeling sensations of taste.

[00:16:21] And this is where these different regions of the brain, they start to get confused for lack of better terms and started sharing data. If you will. Is that all happening in the claustrum? Is that why we experienced synesthesia? Because it does communicate with all these other areas of the brain. So I can't answer, we haven't done that study to determine it, you know, with, with proper controls and all these things.

[00:16:46] But, but let me, let me, uh, let me, uh, speculate for a moment, right? So, Um, you have, you have these networks of brain regions in the prefrontal cortex and the medial prefrontal and lateral prefrontal cortex that are involved in decision making. And you have these [00:17:00] other networks, like the frontal parietal attention network, like here and here they're are involved in the deployment of attention and resources to help support that decision making and these brain regions, everything interacts in the brain and there's no isolated thing in the brain.

[00:17:14] Everything, everything is interacting, but a lot of these brain regions will exert. Hop down control on sensory information to help aid all of the things that we do when we go out in the world and human and yeah, and, and, uh, the brain is a big kind of prediction engine. Um, we, we take in sensory information, we try to process it and come up with a model of what's happening.

[00:17:36] And then we try to predict what happens next. And a lot of that has to do with, uh, the action of the prefrontal and frontoparietal regions and regions deeper than our brain of the basal ganglia. These are all interacting to try to predict what will happen next and, and try to predict what will happen next.

[00:17:53] Sometimes we have to kind of filter out extraneous information, right? So. So if the [00:18:00] claustrum is sitting there, uh, acting as a, a gearshift when we're, when we're shipping between all of these different operations, right? Some of those operations involved, these, these executive regions exerting top down control on sensory information.

[00:18:13] Is that okay? That that's, that's not interesting olfactory. Stuff's not interesting. Forget that we need to look at visual stuff in order to make this decision and behave right. If you, if you then kind of like your, your flight in the highway, 60 miles an hour, and then you just kind of remove the stick shift from your car, your not going to be able to sit, to do those things.

[00:18:32] You're not going to be able to have dessert top down control over sensory information. And, and then, uh, but, but those other, other ones, because of the brain that are just looking at everything and try and make predictions and models about the world, they're still online and they're thinking what the heck's going on because I have this flood of information and the speculation would be that taking out the stick shift then undermines the ability of the executive.

[00:18:55] To filter everything. And that may, that may be one way that we get synesthesia. [00:19:00] There, there are other models out there for brain function. Uh, and there are other ways that might explain these things. And frankly, we're just get the tip of the iceberg now, but yeah. So taking out the claustrum might theoretically do that.

[00:19:10] So ironically, um, the act, the actions of siliciden on the claustrum, I thought it was going to be that it was heightened. Activity, but in fact it reduced activity, didn't it? Yes. And then that, and why that's the case? Not, not entirely clear are our measurements of activity in the classroom where we're not perfect.

[00:19:37] Um, we, uh, one of the things we did was just look at variation in signal in the claustrum and that became smaller. Uh, it's actually possible that, that, you know, if, if you were kind of maxing out. The activity, the claustrum and may be feeling so there's less room for variation, or it could be reducing it overall, but, but we can say for certain that it's being disrupted and, and we can also, uh, [00:20:00] well, we, we see, we seem to be able to, okay.

[00:20:01] That has been disrupted. And then we can also look at the relationship fostering function to other brain regions and networks. And, you know, we think of something called social connectivity, which may be related to health. Brain areas are networks communicate. And that communication was reduced as well.

[00:20:17] Reduction in costs from communication with higher brain regions was also correlated with a reduction in the integrity of those brain networks and, and, and the degree to which nodes in those other brain networks were communicating with each other. So it seems that. Turning down claustrum function or altering cluster function alters all of these downstream things.

[00:20:39] Yeah. Interesting. So do you need to, so what kind of dosing are we talking about here? Micro dosing. Of, uh, of LSD precursors, like one P LSD is very, very popular today. You know, psilocybin is a little sketchy because there's little standardization, unless you're in a lab and you're buying [00:21:00] something from Sigma Aldrich or something like that.

[00:21:03] Um, there's little standardization. So people are turning to the more chemical type of compounds, like, like one PLS. Do you have to, for these things to occur? Do we have to be on a full, all out trip or do, does micro dosing do this in some, uh, noticeable way? So there are a couple of things to unpack there.

[00:21:27] One is that, um, micro dosing seems to have gotten a lot of buying from a lot of people who are doing it and claiming that it's helping, uh, on one hand, uh, if it's helping you great. On the other hand, Uh, it really has all of the hallmarks of the really beautiful placebo effect the problems include, but are not limited to the fact that very little science has actually been published on this yet.

[00:21:54] There are maybe three, maybe four studies that have been published so far on microdosing [00:22:00] and by and large, the, the effects are a big fat zeros. Um, nothing detectable except. Uh, a slight shift in the function of a brain region called the amygdala was this detective, but, but nothing behavioral, nothing cognitive must be in creativity, nothing in perception or attention.

[00:22:18] And I, I only to have unleashed it. Yeah. An enormous battery of somewhat sensitive tests, uh, on microdosing. And they came up empty handed. Um, So, so it could be that the test that people have used so far, aren't sensitivity, nothing to detect these changes. And it could be that we're asking the wrong questions, but, but so far, I don't think there's any convincing, actual, empirical controlled science suggest that microdosing does everything.

[00:22:45] But assuming it does the effects that we showed in this claustrum paper. We're with, uh, essentially, uh, a super threshold dose. They were with a larger dose than micro, for sure. It was a 10 milligram per 70 Grillion kilogram doses [00:23:00] of psilocybin, which. It's it's difficult to say, but the average dose of actual mushrooms that it would, would would account for that are, you know, on the order of like one to two grams of, of, of, of, of mushrooms, which is a substantial dose, not a dose that will, will give you this kind of peak or mystical, or kind of ego disillusioned, uh, experience.

[00:23:21] And, and this is only one study that we've published that has ever been published with psilocybin and claustrum in humans. So, so. Uh, you know, one small study with 12 people in it, uh, is, is, uh, well, you know, more than 16 people, but, but it, you have to be yet to kind of put the brakes on the great generalizations you can make about it.

[00:23:40] But yeah, we don't know anything about claustrum functioning, uh, changing with microdose. Huh? Okay. So, so yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's good. So, um, A lot of people who do threshold doses, where they actually have their perception of reality is altered. [00:24:00] They, they talk about feeling a connectedness with everything and.

[00:24:06] That connectedness seems to be the abandoning, the ego, if you will, for lack of better terms, right? I mean, that's, that's what your research was kind of looking at, right? Your research was titled that, that the psilocybin actually tampered it's down the ego center of the brain, which I am assuming that the claustrum is considered the ego center of the brain.

[00:24:27] Well, yeah, to be completely fair, that, that, that tamping down the ego center with the press release that was released about the paper. We don't actually use the word ego in the paper. And, and, and I think that if you're going to try to attend the word ego on a brain region or network, um, that, that others have claimed that the default mode network is really a definitive seat of the ego.

[00:24:48] I, I have, I have problems with the word ego and the whole second, second dynamic framing, but I'm not going to. Go down that road right now, if we, if we can assume that the default [00:25:00] mode network has some, uh, functioning related to what we call ego, uh, it's actually that connection that I mentioned a little while ago, that claustrum activity and tonic activity with the default mode network was correlated with reduction and integrity of the default mode.

[00:25:16] So, so as claustrum function reduced, So also did the conductivity of the classroom with the default mode network and as the connectivity of the costume with the default mode network reduced. So did communication among all of the regions of the default mode network. And, and that's, I guess that's what we're really what we're saying is that, is this, this cluster some kind of activity may, may maybe involved in, in reducing default mode network, which has been shown in a number of other labs in a number of other publications that.

[00:25:47] LSD psilocybin Iowasca and possibly other drugs reduced deep on those network connectivity. And that may, that may relate in some part to, to these ego dissolution kind of effects. I want to [00:26:00] take a quick commercial break. And when we come back, I'd like to talk about what, from your perspective, this means in a clinical sense, you know, what, what, what, what does this have the potential to do for people?

[00:26:12] If we can, we're going to take a quick commercial break. We'll be right back with more super human radio. Stay tuned. Superhuman channel doing reps with the weight of the work.

[00:26:26] Welcome back. We're talking with dr. Fred Barrett from John Hopkins medicine. We're talking about how some psychedelic drugs may be interacting with the brain and how this may give us a better insight into. Maybe, uh, some disorders, right? I mean, so now you, now you, you want to look at it and see like major depressive disorder.

[00:26:47] What is this region? The claustrum of the brain look like with these people. And then can you change that status with maybe these drugs that seem to act specifically on that region of the [00:27:00] brain? Right. Yep. Yep. The, uh, honestly, those are the multimillion dollar questions that we're asking you. We're hoping to ask soon.

[00:27:08] Um, the, the, uh, the thing, one of the, one of the things to think about when, when thinking about psychedelic drugs for therapeutics is the remarkable way in which at least so far, our preliminary evidence it's been shown that that careful application of psychedelic drugs in, in a therapeutic context, Uh, maybe helpful in, in treating not only mood disorders like depression, but also substance use disorders like tobacco use disorder or alcohol use disorder, or maybe even cocaine use disorder.

[00:27:40] Um, just a little side note on that. Uh, that's, that's unheard of almost completely in, in, in, in therapeutics through substance use disorders, you know, there, there are, uh, some, uh, compounds out on the market, uh, and available for prescriptions to help treat opioid use disorder. Ooh, excuse me. I'm sorry.

[00:27:58] Opioid use disorder or, or [00:28:00] alcohol use disorder or tobacco use to sort of be another separate drugs, specific drugs for specific problems. Right? Take the patch. You take the patch or you chew gum. For smoking, you, you take an abuse or something like that for alcohol use, you may, you may find medication assisted treatment with a friend or, uh, you know, or something similar for opioid use disorder.

[00:28:19] Um, but you don't, you know, you don't, you don't see these single interventions being broadly applicable for a number of things, but almost the same intervention with psilocybin seems to be possibly be effective for a LAR a wide range of substance use disorders. So that's remarkable, but then broadening out.

[00:28:37] You have to ask yourself, well, why would a drug like psilocybin? Be so effective in treating such a wide range of disorders, like mood disorders and substance use disorders and possibly other disorders. Uh, you know, people are now studying anorexia and OCD and, and headache, cluster headaches, and then you start to scratch your head and, and, and, and it'd be reasonable to say, uh, Starting [00:29:00] to look like a panacea and that should really worry us.

[00:29:03] Um, but wait, wait, wait, wait. But what should it worry us? Or is it possible that the claustrum is the underpinning of lots of a, for lack of better terms, you know, uh, uh, uh, problems that the brain has, that, that, that it seems to be the lowest common denominator of functionality of the brain. So when you alter that you alter everything upstream from it.

[00:29:27] Well, that's great. Great, great question. I couldn't have paid you for that. Uh that's that's exactly the question. You're so, so there, there could be trends, diagnostic processes at work. Um, something common to, to a number of these disorders is some form of executive dysfunction of executive control. Um, and in patients with depression, there may be too much top down control.

[00:29:51] Of, of, of emotion and behavior in, in patients with substance use and sort of, they may not be enough time rollover, rewarding behaviors and seeking [00:30:00] rewarding, uh, rewarding actions. And, and, uh, as, as, as a colleague and someone, a mentor of mine in the past has said, you know, uh, Demonstrating that you can develop a substance use disorder is a sign of a really healthy functioning reward system, but it may be also a sign of possibly a change in the effectiveness of your executive.

[00:30:19] And so the claustrum being positioned kind of as a switch stick shift for the executive. Yeah. It could be that we, I really have no idea whether the costume itself is showing. Dysfunction within these, these disorders, but that doesn't mean that targeting the claustrum couldn't help. Right. So, so there've been a lot of analogies and stuff, no drugs, uh, such that, you know, you're should picking up the snowglobe or, or you're, you're, you're fixing the antenna on the TV or you're smacking the side of the TV to get it to work.

[00:30:49] And, and, and, and all of these kind of, uh, give you kind of a sensor or vision of, of, of like a reset process. Right. And, and it could be that disrupting the claustrum. [00:31:00] Uh, leads to the cast, hating set of other network disruptions that kind of lead to a reset, you know, and, and there's this principle in neuroscience, a basic principle fire together, wire together, you know, neurons and circuits that, that, that are reinforced become stronger and they can take over your functioning.

[00:31:18] And, and the question then becomes, could, could kind of resetting through kind of disrupting the claustrum. Lead to that kind of resetting of network functions that allows someone to then have the room to recover, uh, from, from some of these types of disorders. One of the, uh, most used, I think, brutal resets approach that we have in, in psychiatry and brain science is the electric shock therapy.

[00:31:47] Okay. So do we know anything about how electroshock therapy affects the claustrum? Has that been looked at? No. No. And, and I'll, I'll come back to the history of the classroom. It's been so difficult to get at for so [00:32:00] long that the very little work, especially in humans has been done with it. There has been working with the claustrum, uh, more work than done.

[00:32:07] In animal models, but, but yet again, this was the tip of the iceberg and we don't know what the cluster looks like with ETT. Um, but, uh, an interesting side note, some people have referred to psychedelics as a chemical ECP and, um, and, and the benefits of psychedelics over ETT. Could possibly be that, you know, you don't get the, the potential, uh, accumulating, uh, brain damage that you may incur from ETT or for the memory loss that you, that occur as well.

[00:32:33] So, so I, both my mother and my sister on the web electroshock therapy at different points in their lives, my sister, when they went on to win it, because she was misdiagnosed with Parkinson's disease and they, they tried everything and they said, well, we're going to try electroshock therapy. And I can tell you that both my mother and my sister after.

[00:32:49] Coming out. They were zombies for the rest of the day. They were zombies. I mean, there was nothing there, all people, and then they would slowly kind of snap out out of it. I was never a [00:33:00] zombie after tripping. I mean, usually my face hurt from smiling and laughing for three days in a row. But other than that, you know, you, you almost have this, um, Renewed sense of, of everything around you, you know, you kind of feel like, wow, everything feels new again.

[00:33:15] So I would say that I'd much rather, um, in a clinical setting, be given a, you know, a therapeutic dose of a hallucinogen and, and have fun, uh, then, then be wired up with a, you know, gag in my mouth to keep me from biting my tongue off and have somebody zap my brain that, that, you know, seems barbaric. Hey, you know, E T T has been successful in helping then helping people for which no other treatments can help.

[00:33:43] It can be effective. It just does come with these clear side effects and it has to be repeated over time. And. You know what may be the case, it's like a dog. So we may, we may find that the psychedelics need to be readministered every three months or six months or one year. But, but, but, but the, the, the, uh, the aftermath [00:34:00] of that does seem to vary quite a lot from, from the aftermath of DC.

[00:34:05] So explain functional MRI. How is it different than just regular MRI is regular MRI, just static and functional means we're watching things in real time, light up. Yeah. So I'll try my best here. I'm not a physicist. And I think to get the precise answer, you need a physicist, but basically, you know, MRI and functional MRI use the same device to do different things.

[00:34:26] The MRI and MRI can, can, can come in many forms. There's a static kind of, uh, anatomical MRI that gets a re it's almost like a 3d x-ray of your brain, but it doesn't use any radiation. Right? Uh, there are other techniques with MRI that, that can look at, uh, the orientation and density of white matter tracks in your brain.

[00:34:44] Like almost like long range network connections in your brain, structural condition. Other forms of MRI can look at the concentration of different metabolites in different areas. You've read like magnetic resonance, spectroscopy, functional MRI. Uses properties [00:35:00] of the magnetic signal in your brain to try to track changes that are related to blood flow and blood oxygenation.

[00:35:07] So, so what happens during a functional MRI is that, uh, like a, a think of it like a slice of your great we'll be, we'll be, uh, magnetised. Right. Very strongly. And then a little bit of radio frequency energy will be projected into that place and, and a small number of water molecules, and a small number of, of, uh, blood, uh, uh, blood cells will orient to whatever that, that field, that, that magnetization right.

[00:35:37] And when you, when you shoot in the radio frequency energy, what it does is it knocks those knocks, those ions off, off of, off of that orientation. As they absorb that radiofrequency energy, they get knocked off of orientation. But as soon as you stop putting the radio frequency energy back, they slowly returned to that orientation and they reflect back out the energy that they absorb.

[00:35:56] So functional MRI includes magnetization [00:36:00] shooting in the RF energy and then listening to see where it's red back out and, and, and, and areas of that areas of that space. Oh, okay. We lost 11 verses Oxy, hemoglobin, wait, we lost you. And when you said areas of, of those spaces and you dropped out, I think your internet dropped out for a second.

[00:36:22] You too. I hope. Sorry. I hope that's okay. Okay. Well we'll, we'll make it through. We'll make it through areas of that. Oh, well you're in and out right now. I guess we're on wireless. Is that what it is? Uh, yeah. It's honestly better than the wired connection. Right, right. Where I am, but, okay. So am I back on line now?

[00:36:39] Yeah, you are. Okay. Okay, great. So, so, so you have, you have a bar, an area of brain that's been magnetized, and then you shoot radio frequency, energy out into it. And then you listen to them, see where that radio frequency energy is being reflected back out. Right. And, and areas that have higher or lower levels of oxygenated blood, we will defer it.

[00:36:59] Yeah. And [00:37:00] the way that they reflect out the radio frequency energy. And so when a brain region, when a brain region does something, it essentially consumes oxygen. And glucose and a couple of other things, but, but, but then the brain will flood that region, fresh blood, right. And there's that this functional MRI technique can, can, can differentiate between regions that have oxygenated or low, you know, high concentration of oxygen and blood and a low concentration class, which indicates activity.

[00:37:27] Which would indicate activity. Yes, exactly. Okay. So we do this like one slice here. Once I see her, once I see her, once I see her wants to start over one, one, one, one, one, one, and you can get a whole brain image in two seconds. And then we just keep getting whole brain images every two seconds for as long as it takes us to answer the question and you can determine what areas of the brain are being stimulated, because they're consuming more oxygen and you can tell what activity is.

[00:37:48] Yeah, that's interesting. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, What what? So, so what, what are the next steps for your group right now? Right. So, [00:38:00] so, you know, this claustrum paper was conducted in small sample of, of, uh, otherwise healthy individuals and, um, We tried it. This is really just the first step. The center for a second health and consciousness research at Hopkins was recently established in September of 2019, uh, to really expand our footprint and to begin to ask, uh, quite a few more questions and, and we're, we're launching into studies.

[00:38:23] With major depressive disorder, uh, and, and also substance use disorders, but we're also branching out to see if there's a signal in new indications, like anorexia or opioid use disorder. OCD. I got to think OCD would be a good target for you guys. And we're starting a study where we're getting a study up and running with obsessive compulsive disorder.

[00:38:43] Um, and, and so the good. Did we have lots of, lots of irons in the fire, both getting more data and more precise data on, on conditions that we're familiar with and then new data on new conditions to see how far the therapeutic effects can stretch. But we're also wrapping around these, [00:39:00] these studies, these clinical trials, a number of efforts to try to really document and better understand how brain function changes over time.

[00:39:08] So the costume a study was conducted during the acute. Could affect. Um, but, but we want to look now a week, a month and three months out to see, well, what's changing over time. Right? Right. Ultimately, all of this information will hopefully come together so that we can optimize treatment and therapy for people.

[00:39:25] If this guy's ever get through it for a mitigation. Yeah. And it's got to, it's got to get approved eventually. I mean, I can't imagine there's so much great information and it's great work being done in this area. That it's hard for me to believe that it won't get. Uh, the Greenlight at some point in time in the future.

[00:39:41] Um, w I want to take our last commercial break. I have a couple more questions for you. We're talking right now with dr. Frederick Barrett, uh, and he's with John Hopkins medicine. We've been talking about how, uh, psychedelic drugs affect a specific area of the brain, a newly discovered area of the brain called the claustrum.

[00:40:00] [00:39:59] It's very, very fascinating. Uh, just another piece of the puzzle stay tuned. We'll be right back. Spit that out right now. This is the superhuman channel.

[00:40:12] welcome. Back to superhuman radio. We're talking with dr. Frederick Barrett from John Hopkins medicine. We've been talking about psychedelics and how they may be the future of treating a variety of, of different, uh, Uh, disorders like OCD, depression, and so on. So I have to ask you, uh, dr. Barrett, have you ever used any psychedelics?

[00:40:37] We, we, we generally don't answer that question for a lot of reasons. Uh, yeah, so, so thanks. But I'm going to pass. Okay. Alright. Um, so. Do you, do you feel, are you guys, I was planning on Cola, corroborating or collaborating with any other, uh, universities out there that are doing work in this area, because it seems like there's lots of different groups that are looking at [00:41:00] this stuff right now.

[00:41:02] There are lots of different groups and we've been involved in assisting other groups in getting us up and running and getting started. Um, we've, we're, we've also, uh, been involved and will continue to be involved in, in multisite clinical trials. So, so right now there's a multisite clinical trial being, uh, organized by something called the Sona.

[00:41:20] Which is a, is a, is a private company out of Madison, Wisconsin. That that essentially is, is just serving this role of being a coordinating center for, for a number of different sites, uh, to, to look at the effects of psilocybin in major depressive disorder. Um, and, and they're conducting a phase three clinical trial.

[00:41:39] That is, that is a dynamo, uh, with the input of the FDA at the end of this clinical trial, if all of the end points are met, that might actually need to. To approval by the FDA of still seven and medication. Um, well, there's a lot of value in collaborating with other universities directly, but there's also a lot of that.

[00:41:58] Oh, you would not doing that because [00:42:00] to the extent that you can have independent labs and independent research organizations, uh, kind of come up with corroborating evidence that becomes much more powerful than then. A bunch of people who were all in the same room together. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense because, because the, the, the real value in science is the reproducibility by other people that shows that the science is valid.

[00:42:23] So that's, that's, that's the, that's the rigors of science. Yeah. Yes. And, and challenging each other's ideas. Like, you know, we don't, we don't all agree on what the real brain mechanisms are. We don't, we don't all agree on, on, on what the exact right approach to administering these, these compounds is. And so that's, that's what makes sense.

[00:42:43] What makes science challenging each other's ideas and seeing what, seeing what the data say Klaus strum, uh, is, seems to be the primary, uh, uh, point of activity for psychedelic molecules. Uh, what are the, some of the other [00:43:00] areas of activity that you see, uh, psychedelics like psilocybin, uh, activating and effecting in the brain?

[00:43:07] Well, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's an interesting question. So, so there are these serotonin, these serotonin receptors are distributed throughout many different parts of the brain. We see high concentrations of the two way receptors they're in a brain region called the posterior cingulate, which is going to back here in the middle, the posterior singlets involved in, in, in supporting, uh, self-referential processing.

[00:43:29] When you're asking questions, like, does that adjective describe me? Is that a behavior that I would exhibit it is that Facebook was mine or like somebody else's, those, these are all somewhat mediated by the posterior singular. That's also involved in autobiography. Emory to some extent. Um, so, uh, but the, the visual system, maybe not surprisingly, all also has a high concentration of serotonin receptors.

[00:43:51] There are nuclear. I was in the thalamus, the salad. This is like a sensory relay station. Um, and they're a nuclei within the [00:44:00] thalamus that have expression to a receptors. And, uh, and, and, and all of these brain regions are, are, uh, brain regions that show differences. With a functional MRI, uh, when you're comparing on or off a drug with, with variety of psychedelics.

[00:44:15] And so, and so the cost costume, the cost we're finding is really adding to the already developing literature, showing all these other changes, suggesting what the cluster might be, the initiator possibly, maybe not, but, but, um, yeah. Yeah. And, and, and they're, these serotonin receptors are another tool, right?

[00:44:30] They're in the gut, they're in the heart. So I would imagine that these, uh, these drugs have, is to be having some sort of effect on other parts of the body. It'd be interesting now that science is involved and not just a bunch of kids sitting around their basement, listening to pink Floyd, uh, you know, the, the, the, I'm sure we're going to discover other the attributes of these molecules, right.

[00:44:53] Yeah, one of the questions that really it should be asked that that, that we're gearing up to try to try to address is it's the relationship [00:45:00] of, of the gut microbiome and psychedelic drug effect, especially with the expression two receptors in the gut, all over the gut. Um, and, uh, you know, some of these things may just be kind of secondary, like, yeah, there are two receptors in the heart and heart, muscle and heart tissue.

[00:45:16] Um, and, and you see an increase in blood pressure and heart rate during sex. Alex, maybe, maybe that's it. Maybe that's. Maybe that's the effect. We know all about that effect. Right. Um, but yeah, really, uh, uh, I'll keep saying, you know, we're at the tip of the iceberg and understanding the effects of these drugs in the mind and the body and, and, uh, I, I I'm humbled and, and kind of, uh, uh, elated that, that, that I get to be in the driver's seat of some of this research.

[00:45:40] So, so it looks like you're looking at some other molecules that have a psychedelic aspect. What is, salvinorin a. Yeah, Salvador in a is, is, uh, is as a, as a, is a compound within, within a plant that has been used by, I believe the math [00:46:00] tech Indians, uh, for at least some, uh, some time, uh, for ritual and spiritual purposes.

[00:46:09] Is that, is that, is that they use an Iowasca? No. Completely different. Yeah, completely different plant, completely different compounds. Uh, this compound is not a serotonin two, a receptor agonist. It is a Kappa opioid receptor agonist. And that doesn't, that doesn't lend it to any of the abuse liability of what we think of traditional abused opioids, which are all new opioid receptor agonist.

[00:46:33] This is a Kappa opioid receptor agonist and the cap opioid receptor itself is also very kind of, um, uh, elusive and, and, and not nearly as much as known about it. Um, They're individuals right now for some time now doing studies on the Kappa opioid receptor to see if it has anti nociceptive. So it pays some kind of pain relief, uh, qualities and how it interacts with new opioid receptors.

[00:46:56] Can it be used in the treatment of opioid use disorder? Um, and, and the [00:47:00] Tobin RNA is unique in so far as when you chew it or vaporize and inhale it, it gives you a pretty. Stark change in consciousness that many people have said it is in many ways, similar to psychedelic effects, especially with inhaled hallucinogens.

[00:47:16] So, so th th th the strongest comparison is the name between inhaled vaporized, DMT and inhaled salvinorin accepts people make it clear that Salvador is a lot less fun. It's very dysphoric. Um, but, but the, the, the question is then, well, If there are any similarities between Salvador, Renee, the fact and classic psychedelic effects.

[00:47:39] Why and how, and what's going on there because, because they have completely different pharmacological actions. So the 780 doesn't find it all to the serotonin receptor. And none of the classic psychedelics are known to bind to the Kappa opioid receptor. So we actually just finished writing up and we have under review now for publication, a manuscript [00:48:00] demonstrating that Salvador and a.

[00:48:02] Uh, changes default mode, network, uh, activity and connectivity in ways that are similar to that with classic psychedelics, it also changes the function of other tasks, positive or executive networks in similar ways. Um, And after that, we're going to go after the claustrum question. Well, we're going to, we're going to follow up with another paper to really look into the effects of Salvador on the claustrum.

[00:48:24] And I guess the punchline here is that the claustrum expresses lots of different receptors, not just serotonin way, right. But it expresses serotonin to a very densely and it also expresses. The type of opiod receptors, very densely. So, uh, it's, it's one, it's one of the, it's one of the dentist's expressions, it's in the brain of the Kappa opioid receptor.

[00:48:43] So if we can demonstrate similar effects and so Simon and Salvador now, and claustrum function, then we may really go some way towards arguing for a kind of a, uh, I had a mechanism underlying secondary drug effects that cuts across different drug classes [00:49:00] that are all considered psychedelics or hallucinogens.

[00:49:03] Very interesting. Well, I hope that you'll come back on the show as more research comes forth. So I'll make sure that Alyssa stays on your radar and we'll get you back on. I want to thank you very much for coming on the show today. This is fascinating stuff and it's, it really is another piece of the puzzle.

[00:49:19] And I can't wait to see 10, 15 years from now, uh, where this all ends up because, um, I've been such a fan of hallucinogens since I was a very young man and all of a sudden it's becoming Vogue again and I'm, and I'm, I'll, I'll say it. I, you know, I, I. I tripped more than, uh, uh, than a lot of other things that I've done in my life when I was a young man.

[00:49:42] And so there you go. Listen, thanks so much for being on the air with me today. Take care. Well, thanks. Thanks for your interest. Alright, we're going to take one quick commercial break. When we come back, we're going to talk about foraging. That's right. And it's becoming more popular now that people are shut down.

[00:50:00] [00:49:59] You can't get toilet paper. If you could find that in the forest, you'd go get it. But you could clearly find food if you know what to look for. And, uh, we're going to talk to my two guests in a moment via violet Brill and, uh, our dad, Steve Brill, uh, who are experts in foraging to teach you, uh, how to forge and, uh, not run into something that, that kills you stay tuned.

[00:50:22] We'll be right back with more superhuman radio. This is the superhuman channel, doing reps with the weight of the world.

[00:50:35] I'm laughing because we've been having a little chat conversation in the background. This is violet Brill and her dad Wildman Steve Brill. And so the images that I've had up for the, uh, Magic mushrooms, which came from a, uh, from a, uh, royalty free image library that I subscribed to said that they was psilocybin mushrooms.

[00:51:00] [00:50:59] But, uh, Steve said they're not, they're actually honey mushrooms. And, uh, they're very delicious and they won't make you hallucinate. And he, and I, when I told him off the air, I said, I got them from a library. He said, don't ever go on a mushroom tour with them. Yeah, you're right. Could go poison me. Right. Uh, no, they will.

[00:51:18] Yeah, they will. They will. The only hallucination you'll get from honey mushrooms that you're in heaven because they taste interesting. Interesting. And they are, they are deadly dealt with . Yeah. An Oak forest. They'll kill an entire forest SREs. No kidding. So they're poisonous. Their parents went to the trees, not the people.

[00:51:38] Oh, okay. Yeah. Or people air for people. They're delicious. But if you happen to be a tree, stay away from them. So we have to stop at the beginning. So I'm going to affectionately call you Wildman Steve Brill, because that's what you're known as. So tell, tell you a story. It's a fascinating story. You actually got arrested right.

[00:51:58] Once in New York, before judging in central [00:52:00] park, right? Uh, yes, I was leading a tour, uh, looking for plants, but there were already plants on the tour. Undercover agents, a man and a woman. This was March 29th, 1986. They said they were married. They never held hands or kissed. So I figured they'd been married a long time.

[00:52:20] I've taken pictures. I'd hold up the specimen. Yeah, I was the specimen. He was taking the pictures of me at the end of the tour. I showed people. You could eat the leaf of a dandelion, your depth behind the Bush. There. He has an 81st street. Go get him for teaching people that range. Every park ranger in New York city popped up from behind the bushes.

[00:52:47] No. Now keep in mind, keep in mind. My grandmother, who is from Italy used to go out and pick dandelion on the, on the sidewalks and in Brooklyn, this, you know, wherever she could find them and they would put it in, in [00:53:00] salads, they would make it. And I could be wrong about this. But there's a song they're delicious.

[00:53:06] Yeah. Isn't there a song called Polk salad. Annie isn't folk, the Dan. Oh, different. Okay. Dandelion. We'll get into that one. We'll get into that one next. Okay. So, so what were you doing wrong? What did they say? You were doing wrong? Well, rest of the story. So they tell you they I'm holding off him to the police station enhanced.

[00:53:31] They searched my backpack. I don't know he was looking for weeds or weed. Oh, okay. So they told me that you had, you had marijuana on you, you think, is that what they thought you had? No. No, they knew I was teaching people to eat the damn the lines. Uh, I was, uh, handcuffed. Uh, they searched me. And I was in the police station for three hours.

[00:53:55] I was charged with criminal mischief for a moving vegetation [00:54:00] from the park they're guarding kid, like taking out a colored leaf from the park in the fall. Yeah, the regulation is obviously meant that people are cutting down the trees or something, but not eating dandelions. They have to alterior motive, which I'll get into later.

[00:54:15] But, um, since I know all the evidence they had to let me go with a test here in summons that said I could go to jail for up to a year. I was charged with. Criminal mischief, but it was a big mistake. Uh, I went home and called every, every TV station. Every wire's service, every newspaper, the next day on the way to the news stand five cops stop.

[00:54:40] What do you want? I said, I haven't eaten a single Dan line today. I haven't even had breakfast yet. They said we don't care. We want your autograph run pages. It was on front pages of the Chicago sun times on the NBC on everything. So violent, violent on Ghanim Letterman. Oh really? Even the [00:55:00] BBC, the BBC, the quarterback

[00:55:08] central park. Funny. That's hilarious. Um, Yeah, they still took me to court. So I went to the, uh, uh, Manhattan criminal courthouse on center street and serve wild. Man's fine. Farro salad on the steps of the man. Oh, that's hilarious. That's hilarious. That's okay. The ate it up. So violet, tell me about you. How old are you violet?

[00:55:34] I'm 16. And I started coming on the tours when I was two months old and I knew all the plans by the time I was six and I was helping people to like come out and to get, I was out going out of the stroller and helping people find the plans on the sidewalks. And then by the time I was nine, I was co-leading the tours.

[00:55:52] And since I just grew up with everything, it'll just like comes to me. When I look at the forest, instead of seeing just the forest of green and Brown, I see actually [00:56:00] like all the plants and know how to use them. And then last year I started leading my own tours and I worked with kids and at camps and day camps would school classes.

[00:56:10] Okay. Let me finish. The story of getting arrested had gotten so much bad publicity. They dropped the charges and hired me to lead the same tour as I was leaving. When I was arrested this one viral in 1986, when there wasn't such a thing yet. And I worked for the parks department for four years and it turned out to answer your question.

[00:56:30] The real reason they arrested me is because the administrators were terrified of frivolous lawsuits. Imagining that if they allow me to new forging towards someone would pretend to have been forging poison themselves and Sue the city it's called false arrest. And I wish they'd do it again. That's something.

[00:56:50] So they would, and it's true. There are nothing but frivolous lawsuits out there. I could see them worrying about that, but arresting you, that's not the answer. I mean, that, that was silly. Who was the mayor [00:57:00] at that time? That was conscious. And the parks commissioner was Henry stern. I liked cock. I actually liked him.

[00:57:07] I thought he was a good mayor. I thought he was a good, well,  got so many angry letters that he told stern. What's this wild thing, all about settling and then stern reversed and hired me. That's funny. That is funny. So foraging is even more popular today in the wake of COVID-19 and people having to be shut down and going to the grocery stores and not finding the foods that they want.

[00:57:36] Uh, th the people are, are kind of, I have a reawakening to this idea that, Hey, I could probably find what I want right here in my backyard or in the wooded area behind my home. Right. Yeah. People have been doing this for thousands of years before this time. People that native Americans use plants like black Birch, which has a low dose aspirin in it.

[00:57:58] And you can use it as a pain killer, [00:58:00] the old, the native plants before would, they was turn into farm land and then settlements. It was old North. The Northeast was old forest. So people already been using it for thousands of years. And now that COVID is happening there. Definitely. We've definitely been seeing more people being interested in forging and turning the foraging now that, um, the grocery stores aren't all open and people can't exactly get they want and everything outside has the same nutrition and health benefits that allow the stuff in the stores do if not more.

[00:58:31] And it's definitely a great alternate resource for people. So we, we, we talk about evolution on this show a lot. And we always talk about Hunter gatherers. We were Hunter gatherers for, for the majority of evolution. We will hunt to gather us for this small sliver of time. We go to grocery stores, we go to the refrigerator.

[00:58:49] So it's very, very different. But what you're doing is nothing more than our ancestors did every single day. Right? They, they walked, they found food, they chewed [00:59:00] food, they walked. So boy, they found some more food. They chewed some more food, right? This is, this is natural. Yeah, well, they didn't actually have to spend that much time finding their food for the day.

[00:59:10] So less time than going to the store and waiting online at the checkout counter, the stuff is just out there. And it's pretty easy to recognize if we have people come on about 10 tours in different parts and different times of the year. Um, they know, uh, well over 90% of the common edible plants may see them over and over again in different seasons.

[00:59:33] It's actually a very easy subject to learn. If someone teaches it to you with me, I had to learn it on my own with, uh, with books. This is before the internet, but then it took a while and we're still learning things. We just found a new wild mustard. We've never seen a few days ago. Uh, we were in, uh, um, German Sylvania for family toward we live in [01:00:00] Westchester, New York.

[01:00:01] So, uh, new habitat, we only been there once and immediately a new plant. Yeah. So everything, once people on the tourists see at once, then they go outside and they see it over and over again. And I grew up with it. So like, to me, it's like recognizing like what Lamb's quarters are common planting is outside in our backyard.

[01:00:19] It's like recognizing what a tomato or a carrot is in the grocery store. It's just sort of different plants. From different, um, air from like our area instead of fruits imported from like the tropics. So what we have invasive, we have invasive things also from other countries that the native people did not have.

[01:00:37] Uh, so we actually have more wild foods and the native Americans did, which can be dangerous. I mean, I have so many recipes now. Uh, I opened my freezer or one of them can fall out on my foot really. So, uh, the question I have right off the bat is it's one thing to go out into pristine, [01:01:00] uh, forest areas and find these plants, but doing it in central park.

[01:01:06] Aren't you worried about, or, or as an example, or a local park, aren't you worried about things that could have gotten on the plants, chemicals or dog urine or anything like that? Well in the first, the first in the country, when there's an like the forest, there's also a deer, the deer eat a lot of the plans that we're searching for.

[01:01:26] And when we go into, um, the city parks, you don't pick anything near traffic. Um, if there are dogs, we say to wash everything off when you get home, but we don't pick her like right near the fence. Is there anything way from traffic and yeah. And so we will clean everything off and, um, There's different habitats in the city.

[01:01:47] So instead of walking, just through the forest and the country, you may not find what you find in disturbed habitats and open fields. Like the little invasive plants, like a plant called wood Sorel, Sorel means sour. It tastes like lemonade. [01:02:00] Um, Burdoch which is the route you can use and tastes like potatoes and it's different habitats.

[01:02:06] You can literally go from a field to a wetland into the woods, just like that. And you can find the majority's like a majority of all the, um, Stuff that we harvest is from these disturbed areas that aren't just all shaded out by the trees. If you're going for mushrooms, then again, then late summer and fall, you go into the Oak forest and under Pines, and then you get all those.

[01:02:29] Is it, is it successful when you were, when you were 10, when you were 10, we're driving along as the Berman street on the way to. Uh, and would help are. And, uh, did you use that sound 30 pound chicken mushroom just on a tree on someone's someone's driveway. Did you go remove it? Yeah, we talked. So we came back all week, cooked it, and every recipe fried chicken machine, I made one the other day that I found in my grandma's yard, I coded [01:03:00] it with like bread crumbs and I fried it.

[01:03:01] So it was like fried chicken tenders, frat fried chicken, mushroom and soups, anything like that. And it was delicious. Then the next day my dad had another tour with chefs that he came back with and they took the rest of it back home. So is it, and I'm sure the homeowner didn't care that we ruled the fungus and I would probably dry out and be gone in a, in a, in a week anyway, they wouldn't even know it was gone.

[01:03:25] Uh, is it safe to assume that if the deer are eating a plant, that it's safe for humans to eat it as well? No. No, not at all. Oh, no, you have to be a hundred percent sure with everything that you're picking up. There are poisons plants. Deer are different animals. They have like this, um, different digestive systems like birds have different digestive system than us.

[01:03:48] So they actually eat the berries of poison Ivy, which obviously we can, and they'll just they'll eat everything. They, he actually brought goats into prospect park in Brooklyn and to eat [01:04:00] out all the weeds that's in there. Some of them include poisonous plants, like white, sacred, because Lincoln's killed LinkedIn's mother.

[01:04:10] Oh really? Sir. Yeah. Her cow went into the woods. This was before they were required to have pastures for the cows. They browsed in the woods. Oh yeah. It's in Europe is no harm. This is a native plant that stops your brain from telling your heart to be very deadly. They've only found one person who can eat that plant without being harmed.

[01:04:30] And that of course is Donald Trump. He has no brain and he has no heart. We're not gonna, we're not gonna, we're not going to get political now. I'm not going to get political. So yeah. Oh, I was gonna tell you what happens if you burn poison Ivy and breathe in the smoke, it'll kill you, but there's one person who's immune to that and that's still Clinton.

[01:04:47] He doesn't inhale. That's a good one. So, um, I found that interesting. A bit of information. So we we've been feeding deer for some time. We feed them corn. Which probably [01:05:00] isn't the best thing for them, but that's what everybody feeds him. And so we stopped feeding them one week, cause we went out of town and when we came home, they had eaten all the plants that Elisa had worked so hard to cultivate this year.

[01:05:13] And they especially liked the succulents, which they probably wouldn't find very easily. But one of the only plants, they never eat year after year, we had fun box glove growing in some parts of the yard and. I learned that Fox glove is deadly. In fact, the molecule and Fox glove became a, uh, an, a talus digital, and that even small amounts will stop your heart.

[01:05:39] And I always found it interesting that the deer ate everything, but they never ate the Fox up. They would even eat the flowers off of the hostas. They'd eat the leaves of the hostas. They ate everything, but they never did. That was the bouncer edible for people too. Are they really? They look like salad.

[01:05:54] That's good. Yeah, they state them in Japan. That's I've only been doing this 38 years [01:06:00] and this is the first year I learned that Haas. That is, uh, is edible not in any of the books. Certainly not in mine, but it will be in an update of mine. Yeah. App. Um, just took me through 38 years to discover that those are traditionally eaten in Japan.

[01:06:19] So you get the shoots when they're young. So I've found this out right after the shoots were too big. I have to wait like 11 months to actually try it. Oh, wow. That's interesting. So, so now violet, you're actually helping people who are homeschooling to try to add something new to the curriculum for their children, where they're actually taking them out and teaching them to forage.

[01:06:42] Is that correct? How's that going? Yeah. So we're like, we definitely, we work with a bunch of kids. I worked with girl scout groups. I have been a counselor at the Audubon Greenwich Audubon society at their nature day camp. We work at schools and camps in the summer, except for this summer. Um, boy [01:07:00] scout troops.

[01:07:01] We definitely try to educate the kids because it's definitely, it's the youth generation that's learned that needs to learn how to take care of their environment. Now, before I'm everything that we're doing, the harm, the climate and harm our earth. Is we'll progress into the future because they're the future generation.

[01:07:15] They're the key. Have they. Hi, if they're not, they've been, don't think that they should just sit in the classroom every day. It kept inside, not exposed, no exposure, no exposure to the outside environment and the environment around them and just taught everything, taking tests. Like I know, I know everything about it.

[01:07:33] Plants outside the edible medicinal properties of them. I've never taken a test in this in my life and you really have to connect them to the outside world because that's, if they have fun doing something outside, they're not being forced to learn something or forced to memorize something, then they're going to want to take care of it in the future.

[01:07:51] So we still have her and they're really the key to doing that. And we have. Kids come on the tours, you have them come on the tours, they have their family and they have fun. And [01:08:00] we're playing games with the plants. We have a book foraging with kids, and it has stories about the plans before floor and mythology.

[01:08:07] And we really try to get the kids engaged in what they're doing, what they're learning. So they're going to have fun doing it and continue to take care of the environment when they grow up. What about animal sticks? Yeah, we've had generations come on. Our tours. We had a homeschooling group that we always took to bear mountain and, um, And we've had the mom who came on the tours or the dad when he was a kid and then the mall.

[01:08:31] Yeah, there's a little girl. And she came on the chores. There was, um, this man, Ruben who came on tours. And my dad when he was a kid with my dad. And now he is, um, in forest park, he's making the in band in railroad tracks underneath the park, into the Queens, um, Greenway. So it's going to be a walkway with a bunch inspired from when my dad loved the chores with him.

[01:08:54] I used to spend a lot of time in forest park when I was a kid, that was my, I originally grew up in [01:09:00] bed, Bedford, Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, but then we moved to Richmond Hill, South ozone polo nine, grew up, grew up in Kew gardens. Oh sure. I had a, I had an uncle that, uh, that had a, uh, a clothing store in Kew gardens.

[01:09:14] I used to love Kew gardens. It wasn't called, you know, I was just gonna say it and I can't think of it now. Especially as we get off the Ariel. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly. When I remember it works with me. So, so, um, do you think people are interested in this more for the novelty or do you find that people that you train actually use forging on a regular basis to put stuff on their table?

[01:09:38] A lot of them do. We've had, we have people who we became friends with, um, and like connected to the environment. They've definitely like gone further. They're always telling they bring us mushrooms. They come on tours. We have friends who've started coming on to her food. Been coming on tours for years with us and is definitely, we make our diet, maybe like 10, [01:10:00] 15% of foraged foods.

[01:10:02] We have like the wild. Nuts like black walnuts, Hickory, nuts. A lot of the berries during the season. Um, purple flowering raspberry. The black berries are in season now and they are delicious. And then

[01:10:18] blackberries have actually become very rare in the past few years. Why competition with the iPhone? Why Blackberry? Blackberry. Oh, you stink you blackberries. I remember now the Blackberry, the boom Berry. You're funny. You're funny. I took me a second to catch that. Got all about blackberries there. So I haven't seen one in so long.

[01:10:41] That's funny. Well, we said. So we definitely make our diet out of a lot of the foods that we find outside. I'm walking down the path outside. I won't hesitate to like pick I'll chew on the black Birch twigs or pick like the flower head off of a plant called garlic mustard, which has a delicious, um, garlicky flavor that [01:11:00] we make pesto out of the leaves.

[01:11:01] And the roots tastes like horseradish and, um, it's a type of mustard, so it's related to broccoli and, um, We definitely have people that go, we, they go outside and they collect, um, herbs and plants and they bring them home. And people who come are chores, collect, um, collect all the bags of whatever herbs and greens that we're finding.

[01:11:21] And that I see on Instagram they're posting. Oh, I just made a whole like salad and a whole meal out of it. And they're going to continue to do this. Yeah. It's really, really tasty Steve and I'm I'm 71 and I'm in perfect, uh, perfect health. Before they closed all the health clumps. I was swimming a mile and 42 minutes and do when I do rapid walking and biking and yoga, white wipes calisthenics, and I'm a whole foods vegan and my only health problem.

[01:11:51] And this can be cured is a case of CCD yeah. Compulsive cooking disorder. Oh, that's funny. [01:12:00] That's good. That's very good. And you answered my other question. I was asking. If animal protein plays a role in the, uh, in the diet at all. So you're, you're a vegan, right? Sometimes. I mean, if no one's looking, I won't hesitate to pull out in the Bower, a cat tail, we eat lambsquarters sheep's sorrel, pigweed.

[01:12:19] Yeah. Yeah, my dad and I think I, hi, very healthy. I'm not also a vegan, but, um, definitely we find my dad takes like supplements and he finds all the protein and everything and like other, um, vegetables and like beans and the nuts. So violet, you're not a vegan or you are a vegan, I'm not a vegan or you like you eat eggs or fish, eggs and fish.

[01:12:45] So the healthiest diet on the planet. The longest lived people on the planet are lacto, OVO, vegetarians. They, they eat, uh, uh, Keefer and, and, and, and a [01:13:00] yogurt. They eat eggs and they eat vegetables. They don't eat meat. And those are, uh, I'm trying to think. I did a show about them, the Hunter, the Hunter.

[01:13:14] I think it depends on your metabolism too. So, uh, I've had lots of heart disease in my, in my family. So I definitely don't want to mess around with, uh, with, uh, again, it depends, uh, you have to, you have to see what really is works for you. Absolutely. Genes and metabolism play like a big role in it, but like definitely the diet is a huge part.

[01:13:39] Yeah, absolutely. We're learning so much about epigenetic effects now that we're starting to understand that our genetics are. Not a death sentence. Let's just say it that way. So I want to give you a website. So the website is wild, man. Brill. I'm trying to get it to come up here. Here it is. Here it is here.

[01:13:58] Wildman, Steve [01:14:00] brill.com. People can go there. They, now you have an app, you said? Yeah, it's just being updated. There are some bonds. So sadly my developer injured his legs. Yeah. Then he dragged his feet for the next two years. Sorry for the lame joke. Yeah. I plus plus there's some bugs in it and then you said there's bugs in it.

[01:14:22] And I was going to say, of course there's bugs. She needs a vegan. Yeah, you can. Right. So that's, that should be, that should be fixed within a week or two. And um, and then, then we're going to keep adding more features to it. So I have a lot of fun with that. And I'm currently working on an online forging course violent.

[01:14:44] Nire doing videos with our stories and all the different parts of the plants, uh, videos of recipes as I make them in the, in the kitchen and all our worst jokes. Yeah. And you have a book too, don't you? I [01:15:00] have five, five books books. Okay. And they're all about foraging so people can get those books where at your website.

[01:15:06] From my website. Yeah. If you get them from Amazon, I get like a 5 cents per book. So what a bargain and we will, we will stop. We will sign them. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Wild man. Steve brill.com. And I just thought of something. There was a, there was a train station in Kew gardens that when you went down inside of it, you felt like you went into Europe.

[01:15:27] It was like a little train station. Do you know what I'm talking about? The Kew gardens. Tree gardens a train station next to the next to what was the homestead, a hotel, which is now, uh, a nursing care facility. I love to ride my bicycle to that train station and go down and sit there. I felt like I was in Europe.

[01:15:48] I felt like I went back someplace that I wasn't in. You know, we probably passed each other on the bicycle. I definitely spent a lot of time in forest park. In fact, I just did a show before you guys. [01:16:00] Well, we talked about siliciden mushrooms and how psychedelics actually, uh, being used in therapeutic environments to discover if they can help people with major depressive disorder.

[01:16:12] And one of my favorite things to do was to drop a little acid and go hang out in forest park. So I was just talking to this, uh, this, the scientist, and I, I hope he took everything with a grain of salt, but, uh, I have a lot of fond memories of forest park, lots of fond memories. Oh, Palm forest park can be, can be dangerous.

[01:16:32] So when I was 16, I lived in Cuba, the gardens, I bicycle through the park to go to the Woodhaven Boulevard side, where they had chess tables. I'm a good chess player. Right. And coming back on the railroad trestle or a bunch of teenagers. And since there was just one of me and a bunch of them, they attacked me for no reason.

[01:16:51] One of them grabbed my bike. I was scared to death. I pedaled as hard as I could and barely managed to. Let him, uh, to, to get away [01:17:00] from him. But then all the other kids were considerably older than me and had racing bikes. I had a three speed back then all got on their bikes to chase me down. But you know, the road there is very curved yet.

[01:17:13] When I went around the curve for a few seconds, they couldn't see me. I, uh, ran through the woods with a bike, drop my bike off the Stonewall at park lane, South. Yeah. Perpendicular. And they all went right past me as if it was in a movie or something. So if you're ever back in forest park and you see these 75 year old men with long gray beards, uh, tattered clothes and rusty bikes, I don't tell them.

[01:17:43] Don't tell them that way you are. Okay. Listen, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. This is fascinating stuff. Sure. It's been a pleasure. Take care. Okay. Happy for you. Take care. You too. That's it for today. We're going to say goodbye. Uh, [01:18:00] tomorrow we have a show with BiOptimizers. We're going to be talking about a new supplement of theirs and hopefully you can make it for that.

[01:18:06] Please share today's show, uh, help people learn the truth about health, fitness, and longevity. We'll see you tomorrow. Don't forget. Check us out on Instagram at superhuman radio. See you tomorrow. [01:19:00] .