Exciting Updates at Mushroom Revival

Transcribed by https://otter.ai**Subject to error

Alex 0:00
You're listening to the mushroom revival podcast

Lera 0:22
this week we've got housekeeping number three, because there's some new things going on at mushroom revival, new products, some new branding revamping on the website, and we're gonna talk

Alex 0:33
about them. Yeah, we're living our lives. So a lot of new new stuff behind the scenes with lira, and I and, and an echo our new family member, we're still in the same house in South Austin having a good time. So most of our podcast is we bring on experts from all around the world to geek out about mushrooms, but we like to break it up, you know, once or twice every year or so to give you guys a little insight on who we are, who you guys are listening to in the first place, and what's going on with much revival, what's going on in our personal lives. And this is going to be one of those episodes.

Lera 1:15
Yeah, and for all of you podcast listeners, and most of you probably know, we're always asking you to visit our website. But there's a whole other facade to mushroom revival. And that is a company that provides functional mushrooms before we were just offering Liquid X extracts. But now there's more offerings, and we want to talk about it because it's not easy to provide these things.

Alex 1:38
No, we've been working on these for years. And especially with COVID and the supply chain craziness, it just became one one step harder to to create these product products. But this is what I do in most of my free time is you know work on the next new products for mushroom revival. And it's been a while since we've had some new ones. It's been a long, long time coming and we are releasing 11 new products. And by the time this is launched, we'll release seven of the 11 this year. And then next year, we have six new product line, six new products coming and possibly even more so we've been super busy and they're all just kind of launching around the same time. And the first being we just launched the world's first USDA certified organic mushroom capsules. And this is so excited and we're so proud to bring this to the market it you know, we just slipped in at the perfect time to get these organic capsules. And they're unbelievably potent. We have four capsule products. So the first is energy. And the main mushroom in that is quarter SEPs that is the bread and butter and the musher behind the scenes of that product. And we packed the equivalent of 2501 milligrams of cortisol EPs in each serving that's 75,030 milligrams and each bottle that you're getting. So this is pretty astounding. And the next product is focused lion's mane is the mushroom behind that. And we pack the equivalent of 2634 milligrams per serving equivalent to 79,020 milligrams per bottle, which is unbelievable calm reishi is the mushroom behind that we pack the equivalent to 2752 milligrams per serving at 2560 milligrams per bottle daily 10 Our 10 Mushroom blend we got quarter steps in there Lion's Mane reishi Shi talkie my taki chogha Turkey Dale tremella portico who's an Mishima equivalent to 2526 milligrams per serving. We're so excited about these.

Lera 4:21
So I have a question. And I've been pretty removed from product development since I have another full time job now. But why was it so difficult to find a certified organic mushroom capsule?

Alex 4:34
The hard thing is because the capsules themselves it they were banned from getting certified organic and so the companies that were making these capsules there was a time way back in the day where they could be certified but for the longest time, they you couldn't and all these companies were trying to make get certified. But the capsule itself for whatever reason, they couldn't make it organic. And so we just happen to, we were waiting to make capsules forever, right and it's been on our product line development list for longest time, but I didn't want to do it before I was able to get it certified organic. I then say that, you know, a month later they they allow it to be organic. So we waited and waited until literally the week of that company made these organic capsules, we jumped on it and we got it certified and put it through production and it just happened to be perfect timing. And these capsules are actually made a pullulan so it's a totally vegan capsule. Most capsules out there actually manage gelatin, but these are these are vegan, which is also amazing benefit and fun fact Polen is actually produced from starch by the fungus, Oro presidium Poland's. And so that's another fungi product that we're adding into these these fun capsules. And you know, they're also Non GMO Project verified. They all have the QR code that people love that they can scan to see our lab results transparently. They're in glass bottles, which is super amazing and sustainable. We want to use plastic. And those glass bottles sit in a cardboard bungalow to make sure that we're using as little plastic in our in our shipping as as well. So we didn't want to use bubble wrap. So we went with the cardboard bungalow. And for people I do want to point out, one of the other ingredients is rice concentrate. And for anyone who's followed us any duration of time, you probably heard us being pretty adamant about using 100% fruiting bodies and no mycelium on grain. Specifically, you know, any mycelium are the roots of the mushrooms growing on oats or rice. And you might see rice in the other ingredients and say what the hell guys. Now it is not, you know, it is not a filler, it is not the media in which the mushrooms are growing on. This is specific for capsules. So you'll see a couple different ingredients in every single capsule on the market. And so in capsule production, you need a flow agent, or an anti caking agent. And

Lera 7:49
because otherwise, that powders just stick to all the machinery that's depositing the thing in the capsule, right? Or just be a mess,

Alex 7:57
it would be possible to produce it and it's like less than 1% of the whole products. So it's a very negligible amount and but we'll still we'll still have the beta glucans first alpha glucan so you can actually see, you know the impact of that in the final product and you can see the lab results transparent. So you can actually see how potent it actually is. And so, yeah, that that's our mushroom capsules, we're so excited. There's so many people that can't really do alcohol or don't really like the taste of mushrooms. This is a really good way in which people can consume functional mushrooms on a daily basis now the next product line that we're launching the same week that we're releasing this podcast are our mushroom powders and you chase him

Lera 8:57
What do you think I tasted all of the samples I thought they were really good, super palatable. Really creative with you know the formulations that you came up with and I like them a lot. I think that they're one of the better ones that I've had I'm not really into powders to be honest. I tend to just go for capsules or tincture. I love the taste. But it was good you know, by itself with with coffee would be fantastic. And

Alex 9:35
it's funny I'm also not a powder person. I am way more drawn to tinctures or capsules or gummies. To take my supplements powder is just I used to make a lot of smoothies now. I don't and so it's not really part of my daily routine. And I would really I would only probably use it every once in a while. But for other people, they make a smoothie every day, they make coffee, hot coffee every day. And so it's really easy for them to weed powders in. And so for these powders, you know, I wanted them to taste unbelievable. Like I wanted people to try these powders for the first time, not being a mushroom person and say, Holy shit, this is so delicious. And straight up mushroom powder is pretty hard to do that. There are people that love just straight up that earthy, bitter mushroom taste. But most people don't, you know, especially in the United States, so I wanted to formulate something that you can put it in your coffee, you could put it in your smoothie, you can even drink it just straight up. And for it to taste absolutely delicious. So the first we have an our energy blend, which is quarter SEPs. And we made that mocha or coffee flavored. And it is so freakin delicious. Like, oh, my God. And we did so many trials of r&d. I mean, we had so many batches. And there's so many batches that were great, but it wasn't quite there. You know, and we had so many people taste tested, it was so funny, like everyone has a different palette. So we kept making iteration after iteration trying to find something that every single person just absolutely loved. Right. And there are some people that were had more of a sweet tooth. So they they might like a little more sugary. And some people didn't, you know, and they were they were sweet, adverse. And some people like bitter some people didn't. So it was really hard to formulate something that pretty much everyone was was like a Hell yeah, too. And, and we ended up packing a stupid amount of mushrooms in there too. So each serving of the quarter steps is equivalent to 2880 milligrams of cordyceps militaris mushrooms per serving, which is 86,400 milligrams per jar. And it's a month's worth supply. So you're we tried to pack in, I've looked at every single company out there selling capsules and powders and I I wanted to pack in the most amount of mushrooms I could. Right. And and from what I'm aware of, I think we have the most amount of equivalent mushrooms per serving. There might be a company out there that I I missed but from my knowledge from my research, I think we have the most mushrooms per serving, which I think is really awesome.

Lera 12:53
I remember you being a stickler about that. With all the new products you just shoot for the stars.

Alex 12:59
Yeah, I don't want to run or No, I just want more people to have mushrooms in their bloodstream. You know, the second powder that we picked was our focus blend. So lion's mane was the mushroom of choice there. And we packed an equivalent of 2580 milligrams of Lion's Mane mushrooms per serving 77,400 milligrams per bottle month supply. And this one we actually did a chocolate flavor. And it's so good. Oh my god is really really good. I think that's the one I remember the most. I wish this was a phenomena hands down favorite among everyone.

Lera 13:41
And it's awesome because you just add water. Just hot water. It's all you need.

Alex 13:45
Yeah, and we were dissolves really easily. We were trying everything. We tried cold water. We tried hot water. We tried four ounces, we tried 12 ounces of liquid, like trying to figure out like,

Lera 13:56
okay, all the different ways people would consume this. And how do

Alex 14:00
we make it taste good in every single way because in some of our batches, it tasted so amazing with hot water. The second you did it with cold water was like whoa, that was weird. Yeah. And it had just circus strange aftertaste. So we went went back to the you know, food lab and Okay, we got to go to make this better. And so yeah, it's pretty versatile. We wanted to make something that could literally taste good, and most everything you can think of. And then the third powder that we launched is our daily 10 So it's our kind of a refresh from our old powder that we launched 10 mushrooms in there. cordyceps Lion's Mane reishi should talk to you my taki chogha Turkey Tail tremella porticoes amazima, the core 10 And we packed 1950 milligrams per serving 58,500 milligrams per bottle and this one I feel like took a while to get it just right. But we did a maple flavor on this and daily 10 in and of itself has this really distinct flavor. It's very earthy, right, it almost feels like you're tasting something right off the forest floor. You know it is 10 mushrooms, it's 10 mushrooms. So it just it's so earthy and maple the first time I tried this exact formulation that we came up with. I I grew up in the northeast, most of my life and maple season is just so reminiscent, right and it just brings me back of people tapping their trees or tapping our own trees in our backyard and having maple water or maple syrup. And, and the first time I tried this, it was like such a flash, I almost felt like I was walking in the woods. With just all these maple trees around and just sipping on maple water. You know, it's just this earthy smell. And it's just like, I felt like I was walking through the forest. And it just tastes so good. You know, it's very grounding. And super delicious. Super good.

Lera 16:23
I remember seeing all of those maple tap trees, just walking around Western math going on hikes. You'd see someone's little setup was so cute.

Alex 16:32
Super. Yeah. And it just it it's almost like that fall feeling of you know, you're just cooking all the seasonal vegetables and you're preparing for the winter. You're getting hot, delicious squash this evening. We did Yeah, super good. And you're just starting to wear your wool socks. And you're, you know, it just that's what this powder reminded me of. It's just like, the leaves were changing. You're tapping your trees, and it's just you're in a forest and you're smelling that maple you're smelling the earth change. And this is really good. We, for y'all who have followed us for a while. You know that we like to follow four different blends our energy focus, daily tannin, calm powder, we took calm out. And I know this is gonna upset a couple people out there. And I'm sorry. But we thought long and hard about this. And we just didn't think that people most people had the routine of powder at night. Right? We're trying to think, okay, there are some people that make a night cap. But out of those people that make a night cap, how many people are actually putting a powder in their night cap? Very few. And so if enough people email us and messages and want that reishi powder will bring it will make it happen. But at this time, it's placeholder, we're kind of, we're letting the people talk. So if you want it, let us know. But in the meantime, it's just those three, the energy, the focus, and the daily 10. Just to amplify your coffee routine amplify your smoothie game, these will be your best friend.

Lera 18:25
These are also in glass jars with a scoop inside. Like many other powder products just makes it easy to get your serving size, right?

Alex 18:36
It does. And this was another thing we didn't want to do. We're trying to limit the amount of plastic we made these products with and so you know, we didn't want to do like the thick plastic tubs, you know, usually see these these, these powders in these thick plastic plastic tubs or the plastic bags and it's just we're trying to avoid that as much as possible. The next product line that we have and these were pushed out a little bit, but they're coming so frickin soon oh my god and um these are what I'm most excited for. And they are the world's first USDA certified organic mushroom companies. You know what I pulled up a picture in 2018 of the first mushroom gummy prototype. We've been working on this for like four years. This is insane. Yeah.

Lera 19:32
It was hard. So hard to find a gummy co manufacturer that we liked. Oh my god that would do the r&d Because I don't even want to get into it is the gummy world or,

Alex 19:49
like it's not only gummies period, but mushroom gummies and then organic mushroom and

Lera 19:56
organic mushroom gummies that meet our criteria. have been like super low sugar and atonic yeah vegan and then what is it a gram per serving at least and tastes good so we could do all of that but is the gummy going to be enjoyable? That's hard.

Alex 20:13
Right right. Yeah Did it there yeah, there's those are my favorite there's so close to get Yeah, there

Lera 20:21
was so hard to not eat all of them like save some for other people to try and

Alex 20:28
y'all I think it was hard. I think I'm getting get a pallet delivering like, just go go through it in like a day. It's gonna be hard y'all like we're gonna have to make like seven days subscriptions just for gummies you know where it should last you a month but y'all just eat it in seven days. They are dangerous. We're gonna have to sell like a lockbox. You know with your own special code. You know, Ben Ben and Jerry's made that for their ice cream tubs what they made these rings with like, you can have a lock code on it. So no one steals your ice cream. We're gonna have to make these for these gummies because they are so freaking seems like overkill, but they're organic. They're vegan, which is awesome. Most gummies are made of gelatin. And so having vegan gummies is super cool. And they're low sugar, which is also amazing most gummies out there are just packed with sugar.

Lera 21:26
Or they tapioca based. pectin. pectin.

Alex 21:30
Nice. Yeah. Yeah, there are pectin based low sugar super potent as well. We tried to pack as much mushroom mushroom extract to

Lera 21:43
cater while the company keeps its structural integrity and still tastes good.

Alex 21:47
That was the hardest thing. And when you go with a gummy, like you expect it to be the sweet, yummy thing. And so to formulate that is like so impossible. And some of them like our reishi. Impossible,

Lera 22:01
because you did it.

Alex 22:02
We did it. I mean, the reishi gummy is still pretty bitter. Like, why it is, is still super bitter. And that's how reishi is supposed to be. Like if you have any reishi product and it's not bitter. That's not a reishi mushroom. So that's one of our gummies this the reishi. And then the lion's mane daily 10 and quarter sips actually are not bitter, and they taste really, really good. We have the hardest time with reishi. And then at the end we're like well, this is probably as good as we're gonna get and we added bitter blocker in there we added

Lera 22:40
which also comes from a fungus. It it does we have a whole podcast talking about the bitter block or quarter substances.

Alex 22:48
Yep, of your course of senescence. Bottom line, we are so freakin excited to launch these. And stay tuned. Feel if you are signed up for our email list, you will be notified the second they are launched. And we will even be launching an email signup on our site very, very soon, which will have a list where you will be notified first and foremost when they launch and you'll get some some goodies. All in all, we're so freaking excited to launch these sign up for email list to be notified first when they launch. Other news, we made the switch to offer free domestic shipping on all orders. This is not a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale. This is not a short time limited offer. This is every single order domestically, you will get free shipping. This is the new standard. This is the new standard. And for all of our international listeners out there. We used to only be able to ship to 56 countries. Mexico we had some problems Canada that we had some issues we couldn't ship to the UK. We only get you to 56 countries. Now we can ship to 206.

Lera 24:13
Is that because we have products that don't contain alcohol because I remember the ethanol being a huge problem.

Alex 24:19
No, we're working with this company which has magical powers. And somehow they made it happen to where we can ship now

Lera 24:32
to 260 and 206. That's most of the countries

Alex 24:35
it is Yeah. Last plug. And then I'll stop talking about this topic and we can get to talking about echo and truffle hunting and what lira is up to. But we are running some pretty damn good Black Friday specials pretty soon. And we're adding a feature where people can actually create their own bundle. So up to now we had only the standard bundles that you can buy, right? And we had so many people messaging us, you know asking, Well, what if I created my own Can I get the same discount? I mean, listen to y'all. And so we made it happen. We've been working really hard with our developers and the back end to make it happen. And it's this really easy page where people, people can drag and drop their own creations, whatever bundle that you want to make, you get a discount, we have a whole sliding scale system. Depending on how many products you put together, create your own bundle, create your own wellness, super excited for that.

Lera 25:43
That's awesome. Thank you to the coders for figuring that out.

Alex 25:47
We have a dream team, oh my god, I loved him so much. I'm gonna give them all like, a 10 minute hug each. Yeah, they're making it happen. We've been we've been on the struggle train for so long to get really good developers to work on our website. And I don't know what it is. But we've been just hitting so many dead ends. And we had this laundry list, it was like 10 pages long of all these website fixes that we needed to fix and improve. And as always, you can use the coupon code pod treat for an undisclosed amount off, you have to plug it in for and I'm going to tell you how much you're going to save. We constantly change it. So you may get a small discount, you could get a huge discount. never know until you try it. If you guys want to be featured on our show, we've reviewed we pick one lucky reviewer of the week and shout him out on our show. So this one is going to try my best with this username more chelmer I believe, from Germany, and the title is to New Horizons. And the review is thank you for this weekly journey into different worlds of the fungal multiverse. You are unique in your passion and breadth of topics. Can't wait for what's to come much love from Germany. And speaking of futuristic stuff, glow in the dark mushrooms are pretty weird and very futuristic.

Lera 27:21
Not at all. They're mainly primitive and have probably been around longer than we have. But sure it sounds like some kind of novelty science project from the 21st century. But no this this phenomenon exists. You our listeners probably know very well that bioluminescent fungi are a thing. No typically, it's either the mycelium or the mushroom. That is bioluminescent, but there are a few species one being panellist trypticase, aka the bitter oyster. It grows throughout North America and Europe that both the mycelium and the mushroom glow. And it turns out that they're not too difficult to cultivate. So at my other job at the Odin, we've been working on cultivating this wonderful fungus. And it's just been a delightful projects. We made a product to just glow in the dark fungus and a jar. We sold out in 48 hours. So clearly, it's a hot commodity. And yeah, hopefully, we'll have that back on the website really soon. We're working on scale right now are trying to really think about what's the fastest way we can grow them while staying clean and looking beautiful and all the things that we are ironing out. And it's been fun. I'll take home some jars or Petri plates or whatever, occasionally, and it's nice to see it bring a smile to people's faces. When we had guests over. I'll bring a jar home and I think you and me Julia and Leif were in a dark closet for like 30 minutes. Just admiring this jar of Panella styptic is glowing. Yeah, and talking about life. It was pretty funny the

Alex 29:14
first time you you made the bag. I mean, I remember the first first time you put it in our room on a shelf and I woke up in the middle of night and it's like the mushroom bag is kind of like a square rectangle shape. You know and so in pitch black it looks like this glowing rectangle. Right? And for I'm like half asleep and I just like what is my computer doing up on that shelf like and I thought like you just like I don't know is so weird. I was so disoriented, and it took me like a full 60 seconds to realize to remember you put that goal In the dark mushroom bag up there, and it's so bright. I mean, it's very bright. I'm very surprised that how much it glows. It is not, you know it does. It's almost like faint stars in the night sky, like the more your eyes adapt to the darkness the brighter they get. So at first, it's not overwhelming. But once your eyes get acclimated to the darkness, it's, it's very cool. It's a very,

Lera 30:29
it's subtle, and you can't even really capture it with a photograph and you need long exposure. Even in the darkest room, you would need long exposure to truly represent the vibrancy that you can see with your eyes. But it's it's really fun and really beautiful. And I'm just astounded at how long it lasts. Yeah, I mean, these things, none of them have stopped glowing for me since I've started working for them back in the summer, I think June. And I yeah, I don't have any reason to believe that they would stop glowing anytime soon. So I would think the shelf life is something like seven months to a year if you kept kept in good conditions. And it's cool because yeah, people sell bioluminescent organisms like the dinoflagellates. In the bacteria. There's a strain of Ecoli engineered called PJ 202. You make a liquid culture, shake it up. And it glows super super brilliantly, like way brighter than the fungus. But in 48 hours or so they all die. Right? And the fungus is cool because it stays alive. And it's just it's beautiful. I think the mycelium,

Alex 31:41
and you've been you've been working really hard on this. I mean, it's not just a fungus growing on some wood, right? That I mean, I mean, it is but I mean, you've been really working hard on finding the right strain finding the right substrate, and you've been made like this secrets, secret sauce that makes it glow brighter, and ways in which that in less than five seconds, you can make it glow brighter, you know, and just figuring out how this this fungus works. Really, I mean, it's been cool to watch you form this a relationship with it and, and make it work and make a product that which people can have in their house. I mean, that's super cool.

Lera 32:30
Thanks. I mean, it's definitely the more you learn the less you know, oh, because yeah. And I what I'm really needing to do is surrender from perfection, or the striving to make the best or the perfect product. And my coworkers have been super helpful with that. And it's just like, Look, you got something that works. It's impressive to me, let's just roll with this. Okay. This works now. How do we make it grow faster? So we can satisfy the demand, which is huge. We were so surprised at how how many people wanted glow in the dark fungus. So yeah, stay tuned. We at the Odin plan to have more mushroom related products, material materials stuff, artsy stuff, education. All of that goodness. And.

Alex 33:30
And you're you're teaching a class? Oh, yeah.

Lera 33:32
Yeah, I enjoyed a Gen space. In January. I don't know when exactly probably the last week and that will be a myco materials class again. And if anyone out there is interested and myco materials 101. Check it out. We're going to talk about composites, foams, leathers and do some hands on stuff as well. Still kind of putting together the outline and what exactly we'll be doing. But it's a great way to be to get introduced to fungal based materials, if that is something that you're interested in. And I hope to provide something new in that class that you know, about something different than just purchasing the DIY kit and adding some water and flour and making your own composites. I want to really show people that they can push the boundaries of this and get even more creative just in their kitchens. So I'm super excited about that. Maybe we'll post more closer to the date. You can always follow me on Instagram or maybe mushroom revival. We'll post about it. But yeah, there's that and

Alex 34:49
we're also we have so many travel plans next year. We'll see how many of them go through we have a bunch that are solidified. Pretty solid and some that are up in the air.

Lera 35:04
But definitely we're going to Guatemala.

Alex 35:07
Yeah, we're in Academy. We're teaching. We're co teaching a class at fungi academy next fall, which was in Guatemala, which we're super excited for. I've been trying to go down there for so many years. And, yeah, finally making it happen. It. We're super excited about it. We have fun co teaching, you know, it's very natural for us, because we co host the podcasts and yeah, I mean, we're, we're dying. We're gonna stay there for a little bit longer and go mushroom hunting and just hang out. And then, yeah, where are you? Where are you going in the spring?

Lera 35:48
Well, we're summer. This summer, I'll be going to Ukraine to visit and set up a little mycology space for Jani Lab, which is my friend, Daya, who works for the OTA. Now, she came to work with us for three months. And, you know, working side by side with another super cool nerdy science chick from Ukraine. I mean, we really got along, and I definitely got her infected with myco Philia, you know, so she's pretty ecstatic about mushrooms. And apparently a lot of people in Ukraine are asking about mycology and cultivation. And I just I've always wanted to go to Ukraine. It's close to my heritage. It's I love the food. I love the people. I have like a weird amount of Ukrainian friends. I don't know what that is.

Alex 36:42
Yeah, in the last year. It's like every other person we meet is from Ukraine. Yeah, it's really

Lera 36:47
weird. Yeah, I'm not complaining, though. I love I love Ukrainians. And I want to go to the Carpathian Mountains, and mushroom forage and the season to do that as in June. So as much as I want to get over there as soon as possible. I think Ukraine would be nice in the spring and summer. So it's not that harsh winter, more mushrooms, we might even venture up to Chernobyl, just like get a little closer, you know, take our Geiger counters, make sure we're not shaving too much time off our lives. But I am curious just to you know, dip my toes into that radio. And

Alex 37:23
I might come

Lera 37:25
I come I thought you were very opposed.

Alex 37:28
No, I have so many places. That one I need to travel next year. And then to that I want to, and I only have such a limited, I'm over. I'm already way over the amount of time that I feel comfortable taking off. I'm way over that for next year. And so just to add on another amount of time, and just like it's pricey, and we're going to a lot of places like So one example is that I need to go to Japan and China next year. And

Lera 38:08
please take me with you to Japan and China again. Yeah,

Alex 38:10
totally. And they're like, that's an expensive trip right there. Then it's like going to Guatemala and then Serbia. There's the international functional mushroom Conference, which is freaking amazing. And like, and they're all happening at different dates. So it's it's like, we can't just knock it all in one oven. You know? And then I just got invited to Finland. And and, and then Peru. I mean, there's so many places. I'm probably forgetting like three other places. Well, yeah, that's

Lera 38:46
outside of the US, too.

Alex 38:48
Yeah, they

Lera 38:49
know that we, yeah, we're in the Bay Area. And

Alex 38:54
actually, there's so many places in California, we got to do a whole California trip. There's yeah, there's actually a couple mushroom farms in California that we're partnering with, to provide some mushrooms for for our products coming up. And so that's really exciting. We have so many friends, so many people that we interviewed on the show that we got to visit their facility or just hang out with them.

Lera 39:20
I missed my New York friends so much and I'm like, I need to go back in 2020 Yeah, looking. This is like seven trips.

Alex 39:29
I know. That's a lot. I know. It's

Lera 39:32
only six weeks ish between each. That's

Alex 39:36
it since that's a little insane. I think we can make it happen, but it's gonna be insane. And I'm so excited and very overwhelmed at the same time.

Lera 39:47
Like I'm bad for caffeine and mushrooms.

Alex 39:50
Oh my god. Yeah, all the adaptogens like I love traveling. It fills me up so much. I mean, it's such a soulful experience or just humbles you and opens your horizons of what's possible what exists all the different cultures and languages and habitats and ecosystems and its experiences, ways of life and you can work remote. Yeah,

Lera 40:15
I think that's really holding you back as echo.

Alex 40:19
Let's talk about echo. She's right now sleeping on her floor.

Lera 40:24
Well, oftentimes during our podcast, if you ever hear a little, little a little ruckus in the corner, it's probably her walking around sniffing stuff, biting stuff.

Alex 40:38
So yeah, she's she's still puppy. She's about six months old now. So she's getting bigger. I mean, she's getting close to her full size, but she's still growing rapidly. And she's getting she's, we're, it sucks because she's so smart. But we're, Mary and I are so busy, right. And so we'd like to train her more. But we don't have the time to train her as much as we would like. So we're getting her all these, like puzzles, because she has some Border Collie in her. So she's an incredibly intelligent dog. And we're getting her like the hardest dog puzzles that we could possibly find on the internet expert level expert level level for like, you know, people like, yeah, top top level and she completes it like no problem. So she's super smart, and which is a really good thing. And so we're trying to give her all these different puzzles. I think she has like six different food puzzles now. And they're really complex. She has to move all these dials and levers and wheels and all this stuff.

Lera 41:54
With a hyper dog or a puppy foraging forage feeders, I think is what they call them. Yeah, highly recommended. So we don't even feed her out of a bowl anymore. We always put them in these toys are puzzles that she has to work with to get the food and not only does that slow her eating down, so it's better for her digestion. But she gets mental stimulation and it wears her out. It's really a wonderful tip. And yeah, she's got seven or eight of them. We just rotate through them. That's really delightful. Yeah, just in time for her truffle training truffle hunting training that's supposed to start in December. But oh my gosh, we do not have to make her a fungi lover because she already is we just took her out yesterday to a path and there's not a lot of mushrooms here in Texas but it's been a little rainy and cloudy. We found this little patch of puffballs, Jim, Jim started puffballs and she immediately just tries to eat them all. So I'm sitting there like so proud but so concerned at the same time, you know, so

Alex 43:05
yeah, we took her to Colorado this this summer and she just was going after these mushrooms.

Lera 43:11
We took them in Yeah, we took her to the ID table and picked her up and had her sniff everything and we're always bringing home mushrooms. So she just through through us have has probably associated like fungus with right the light and play and

Alex 43:26
right home. Yeah. And she I don't know what it is about puff balls, but she loves puff balls, especially. Maybe because it's a ball shape, you know, and but it's the smell like show, smell it and go crazy, like so freakin excited to eat it and lick it in like, you know, be a dog all over it. And yeah, I don't know what it is. I have to google like if there's any pheromones and puff balls or something, but we're trying to make her a truffle Hunter. And I wish we lived in Oregon because that's prime truffle hunting. But Texas we have pecan or pecan truffles. And they grow in association with pecan or pecan trees. And so we have this like, concentrated or it's actually pretty diluted. It's like an oil, or it's like a almost like an essential oil kind of scent. And you put them on these little you know, Q tips or paper squares and you hire them in these tins with the holes poked in them. And it's this whole training and we'll have people from this truffle training company on on our podcast to talk about it. If you have a dog you want to train them to be a truffle Hunter. Apparently you don't even need a smart doc. And you don't need a specific kind of breed. Although it might help. Any dog can be a truffle Hunter. And I was hearing about these truffle hunting This truffle hunting competition that happens in Oregon. And the number the the dog that got in first place was like this little yapper dog. And like all these, you know, Italian bread truffle dogs like ninth generation truffle dogs, they didn't win. And this little yapper dog came in first place was so funny. So that just goes show you like you don't need primo genetics of this smart, intelligent dog. Like, I feel like it's in their DNA to hunt truffles. So that's a little recap of our life. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We couldn't do this without you sending a big huge hug for everyone out there. And last final plug if you want some much functional mushroom products, we just launched our mushroom capsules and mushroom powder gummies are coming soon. look him up. Mushroom rebel calm. leave a review that helps us a ton and we'll pick one lucky reviewer to shout out on our podcast. As always, much love.

Lera 46:08
And may the spores be with you.