Today we're talking to Dr. Mark "Merriwether" Vorderbruggen. Mark is a Ph.D. chemist, an herbalist, and a nationally-recognized foraging instructor bringing you over a decade of public speaking at museums, garden clubs, prepper groups, historical societies, nature parks, botanical gardens, MENSA clubs, distilleries, Toastmasters, and multiple podcasts. We talk about the benefit of plants, how astronauts are trying to grow them in space, the medicinal properties of mushrooms, and even some Houston culture. Check Mark out at https://medicinemanplantco.com/
Today we're talking to Dr. Mark "Merriwether" Vorderbruggen. Mark is a Ph.D. chemist, an herbalist, and a nationally-recognized foraging instructor bringing you over a decade of public speaking at museums, garden clubs, prepper groups, historical societies, nature parks, botanical gardens, MENSA clubs, distilleries, Toastmasters, and multiple podcasts. We talk about the benefit of plants, how astronauts are trying to grow them in space, the medicinal properties of mushrooms, and even some Houston culture. Check Mark out at https://medicinemanplantco.com/
hey, what's up, everybody. Welcome to another episode of teach two dumb dudes bento. Got my co-host Bobby with me today. We're talking with mark. he's a PhD chemist herbalists and nationally recognized forging instructor. we talk about a whole bunch of things today. we'll talk about space, grow and plants and space plants as natural remedies. Houston culture. A lot of good stuff in here. Totally pulled the ultimate dumb dude, move again. I forgot to hit the record button. So we missed about the first 10 to 15 minutes of the podcast, but, what kind of do kind of do a hard jump right in, so if it seems a little weird, that's why. still not taking anything away from, mark here. it was a great interview. So enjoy this.
Bobby:And so out of the plants that you've come across, what are the ones that you feel are most impactful? One way or.
Mike:Okay. So definitely burdock root and milk thistle for liver health. They are both liver stimulators and they'll mix milk. This'll actually goes a step farther and is a liver cell and maintains the integrity of the liver cells. Even if there's something trying to damage them. So if you eat a bad mushroom and you get the poisoning usually those mushroom poisonings are going to attack the liver, right. Start killing off cells. So one of the few things they have to give you other than a liver transplant is the milk thistle seed extract has it. It has this ability to, to maintain the integrity of the, of the liver cells.
Bento:A lot of pharmaceuticals are made from plant extracts to begin
Mike:with. Right? Yeah. In fact, we really didn't switch over to synthetic. Medicine until 1836 with the invention of chloral hydrate, which was a sedative. But at that time the scientists said, Hey, we finally made something that has an effect on the human body. What else
Bento:can we do
Mike:now? And then they'd start a lot of, it was just, you had mentioned purification of particular compounds from the plant, but there's a whole body of evidence that shows yeah, the particular compound is good, but the whole plant it, you know, there are other things that are working synergistically. So you get a better effect that way. And if you think about it, you know, survival of the fittest evolution, the first stone chipping fire making prodo humans appeared about two and a half, million years ago. They were using plants and mushrooms to maintain their health. Those that were the healthiest or the ones that were most likely to reproduce, passed these genes on. So there's a, an evolutionary blending of these plants with us
Bento:to support them.
Bobby:Yeah. And as, and as the strongest prodo humans survive also the strongest plants
Bento:survive. Yeah. And a lot of other countries that aren't, you know, as, as has as much modern medicine as we do, you know, they still prescribe plants. I, you know, I, I have high blood pressure and I remember reading that hibiscus, you know, as prescribed a lot of places in the world to treat high blood pressure as it is.
Mike:I have the, yeah, in fact, one of my products is the blood pressure pill. It has the Rosella hibiscus. What that does is increases the nitric oxide in the body, which causes the blood vessels to dilate or get bigger. So it's easier to pump the blood through there. It has Hawthorne berries, which suppresses the heart's reaction to adrenaline, adrenaline and other stimulants. So it doesn't get as stressed out by that, but it's also been shown to strengthen the heart muscle. And then there's a ginger in there too, that also helps convert the high or the low density lip. It's the bad plaque building cholesterol type stuff. It breaks it down into the high density, lipid stuff. So it's all working on different mechanisms to, to help support the blood pressure in the circulatory system.
Bento:It's interesting. And we've seen like a big swing of these these supplements recently and why are they. Yeah. I feel like kind of Western medicine took over and just kinda, you know, push these plants and natural remedies away. Why do you
Mike:think that happened? So here's the thing. If you are trying to medicate the masses, you need mass produced medicine, it's hard to get the plants and reliably harvest them, especially wild plants and process them and do all this stuff. It's easier just to make a few molecules, slap it in a sugar pill
Bento:and give it to the person. Right. So I officially make whatever the compound
Mike:is. Yeah. And just pick a few. And also with the FDA testing, you're only allowed to test one molecule at a time for medicinal benefits. So with the plants that you legally can't test the plant
Bento:plant. Yeah. I think the artificial version did they create is just as good as the natural.
Mike:So. Molecule to molecule that pretty much identical. But as I mentioned earlier, all the other molecules that are in with the plants. Yeah. The
Bento:synergy and, Hmm. Interesting. Is that kinda how like you know, like store brand works as opposed to name brand, you know, it's always the same active ingredient, but it's different blend, you know, some stuff just doesn't feel like it works the same as the name brand stuff.
Mike:Yeah. But it really is a case sort of Versity is strength. You got a better blend of molecules, everyone to, to try and pull up an analogy here, think the taste of potato chips. If I say potato chips, you know what they taste like that taste is due to four molecules. Everyone tastes one of those four molecules, more strongly than the other three. And maybe they get a second one in secondary. So like two of these molecules are responsible for the flavor of potato chips, but those two molecules are different and every. Hm.
Bento:So it's sorta like salty food and some people for
Mike:our sweet yeah. Or the whole cilantro. Some people can pick up the soapy flavor and cilantro, others can't
Bento:and that sort of thing. So potato chips don't taste the same
Mike:to everybody. Exactly. We all have a culturally culturally agreed upon, you know, flavor. This is a potato chip flavor, but if you take those four molecules and put them on a piece of paper and give the paper to the person that a potato
Bento:in.
Mike:Yeah. But the, the different molecule, that's why as a forging instructor, when people ask, well, what does this tastes like? It tastes like golden rod, because it really depends on which molecules in the leaf or in the flour that your tongue is going to pick up on. So the flavors and golden rod let's say range from a black licorice to a ginger, to a cinnamon to a kind of a water Melanie sort of flavor. It really depends on what molecule the people are paying.
Bento:Hmm.
Bobby:That's incredible. That's unbelievable. The thing about food on a molecular level, molecular level, that's absolutely mind boggling and that's like all taste molecules are like that. Yeah.
Mike:Wow. That's incredible. What are your taste buds? It's going to focus on more strongly than others
Bento:and I'm sure that's the research they had to do, like Pepsi and things like that. Right. T, you know, do chemical studies on these molecules to see what everyone's
Mike:going to like. And they actually hire what are called super tasters. So the average person can say,
Bento:oh, be an awesome job.
Mike:See between five and 6 million colors, super Sears can see 7 million colors. The average person then can taste 10,000, whatever 10,000 times 6 million is. But then the super tasters can take that to a whole, another order of magnitude and pick out the individual things. And this actually, while we're S I don't know if we're even
Bento:going to get to the moon here. Oh yeah. leads to conversations, you know,
Mike:how, how medicinal plants were found. Okay. So let's talk about that for a second, because it's near and dear to my heart. So to do this, you first have to get lost at sea in a life. So we're, we're sitting in our life raft and we got a fishing kit cause the good life rough to have a fishing kit,
Bento:rum ham on a door, and I'll never
let
Mike:you go. And, and the people they start eating the, the, the meat of the fit, you know, the Shami, you know, the, the, the flesh of the fish after about six weeks, a very interesting thing occurs, and this is over and over. This has happened, the person catches the fish and they're looking at the fish and suddenly they're thinking those eyeballs, damn, I want to eat those eyeballs and that liver, why have I've never eaten the liver and the gills and the, you know, all these, this organ meat. I don't know what it is, but damn, I want to eat this. So. You have this ability to analyze through, smell through taste through sight, through colors, what's in front of you. The thing that's made humans capable of going to the spaces we are better than any other creature on the planet at analyzing the resources around us and figuring out which ones are beneficial, which ones may be harmful. Sometimes we kind of suck at the harmful side. The whole thing, if you, if you read the historical records or talk to the, the medicine, men that are still in the indigenous, you know, the Amazon and the different places like that, when you ask them, well, how did you know these plants were medicinal? They always say the plants told us and from our Western belief system and nomenclature. And when we think the plants told us, we're thinking. Yeah. And some sort of dream transplant. Hey, hello, use me for a favor. Hey, Hey, crazy person. Yeah. And, and it's, it's not that it was just through the, the, the body knows what it needs and through observing and tasting and smelling and just looking at things, they were drawn to particular plants at a particular time in need and they got. I'm better. I need to share this with the rest of the tribe, but then we get into these stone to ape shamanism. So there's a, there's a whole thing that every culture has discovered the psychedelics. And let me just say that I neither condone or, you know, blah, blah, check your local listings. But the, the, one of the things that the, that psychedelics do is allow people to make different connections that wouldn't normally be made. And so there's a lot of belief that, that played a role in the plant stocking. So there was some of the data, okay. You know, I'm quite sure
Bento:their brain was
Bobby:as you're trying different things and different things. Calling out to you in a sense in your attention. And then at some point you are going to take something, you know, in that time and space and be like, wait a
Bento:second. Some philosophers think that the story of Moses and the burning Bush was the fact that a Bush of a psychedelic, I figured out that what plant was in that area at that time but was burning and was causing Moses to basically have a host nation that God was talking to him.
Mike:Yeah. It seemed to work
Bento:out for them. Yeah,
Bobby:exactly. Once
Bento:you try it. So on the, on the mushroom thing, and that's actually good that you bring it up. Cause recently I think just yesterday day before they had a bunch of articles come out, that there were studies being done that are proving now that siliciden is helping people with depression. And you know, I've been hearing that, you know, on the underground, I guess you could call it, you know, God for, it feels like decades now. And it's just finally starting to come to light. You know, are you familiar with, with fungus at all and, and how that affects the brain and, you know, can help
Mike:with depression. Yeah. And so it's like a big reset. So one of the things, so depression has multiple aspects to it and different people have different reasons. Sometimes it's too low levels of serotonin. And in fact, that's a lot of light of the thing is clinical, but there's also the emotional based where the brain, you both look smart. You've been to college. I see things back there. You know, how there are the real trails on college campuses and then the dirt trails connecting things. That's the same sort of thing in the brain. There are specific connections, but eventually if you walk this other trail long enough, you start wearing something into it, right? So if you find yourself in a traumatized and just kind of get over it, and there's an emotional impact, you know, sorta depression sort of thing, you start wiring your brain, the different connections in the cells to stay on that path rather than go off to maybe happier paths, right. Where the mushrooms come in then is a basically. Kind of shake everything up and unplug everything and then plug it back into kind of the factory default settings.
Bento:It actually breaks down a protein in the brain. Right. Is that, that's
Mike:how it works. Other things there's there's multiple mechanisms. Yeah. So what the, the, the serotonin, and those are some different molecules involved with memory and so forth and in the hippocampus.
Bobby:Hmm. So it was like a big brain reset. And that's why you're saying that it could assist with things like depression though, because it's a relief from
Bento:yeah.
Mike:Do you
Bento:get out of those,
those
Mike:trails and you have new trails, so that's why it's still, it helps to have counseling and stuff after that to keep you from falling back. And if you get out of the, the lifestyle and, you know, the, the,
Bento:the, if it's a environment
Bobby:in terms of the reset though, and saying, you know, is it new trails or is it corrective and putting you on the right track?
Mike:The there's still research being done on that, but it seems like there is kind of a. Back to the default with a few other new trails going
Bento:off it.
Bobby:Okay. Interesting. I recently heard of this, this new practice being done called neurofeedback.
Bento:Have you ever
Mike:heard of this? There's lots of different neural. Feedback's going very far back, technically meditation and
Bento:all that really
Bobby:sort of thing. I've never
Bento:heard this term before, but it's the idea of resetting
Bobby:your brain to the correct paths. And I always thought that was so interesting because you know, so many things that they say are just, oh, that's a chemical imbalance. Well, but if you can divert chemicals to the correct places, technically you don't need
Bento:medicine anymore.
Mike:Yeah. There are certain things where it's still good to have some Western medicine.
Bobby:You don't think it's that far, you know, things like that. You're
Bento:all kind
Mike:of thing. So it depends on how soon you get to the doctor too. Okay. Now things like that. So, you know, if you already have a raging staph infection that you've have for the last two weeks, it's going
Bento:to be hard to get the
Bobby:plants where they need to go. Got it. Got it. That makes sense though. Gunshot wound, you know,
Bento:oh my God, my shot, get my, get my Allo Rosemary essential oil burn, a little Sage, you know, you get to go. Yeah. So let's talk about space since we've gone off the beaten track here, which is totally fine. That was amazing. You know, you had mentioned growing plants in space and how it's, it's kind of a problem for NASA right now. How is it possible to even have an environment?
Mike:Okay. So the, so just let's use the international space station because it was familiar with and just this game, a Bart I actually worked with NASA one of their think tanks of coming up with, out of the box solutions to NASA problems and then kind of fell into the space farmers part too. But up on the international space station, they originally had what was called the vegetable production system, which was basically the sizes, individual chambers about the sizes of suitcases that has some water pumps and some led lights. And they were supposed to be like a hydroponic system or the plants. And so they put seeds up there and they didn't do all that great. Every so often here. Yeah, we grew around. Something like that, but there, there were a lot of failures and then in 2018, and they upgraded it to the advanced plant habitat, which has each chamber. And it has like a dozen of these chambers has 180 sensors for controlling light and moisture and air content and all these
Bento:sorts of things.
Mike:Yeah. You know, and these were supposed to finally be doing it and they still didn't have very much luck. So I'd say basically there were three problems with growing plants in space, there's botanical stuff. There's things that the plants themselves have problems with there's engineering stuff, you know, the actual mechanics of doing it. And then there's, there's human nature stuff, no pun intended. And let's start with the human nature stuff first. So the, these systems are supposed to just automatically, you know, when the plant needed water, it gives it water or just the light and all. Not working. And so the SNL has had to spend a lot of time gardening taking care of the plants, checking on the plants. They loved this. They oh, it was great. They were
Bobby:well, that's the reminder of home to right. Green and plant life is going to, you know, definitely one of the things you miss the most
Bento:and you know,
Mike:I get to eat this later on and I don't get much fresh food up here. Something, yeah. The problem then from the human is they started neglecting other important duties, had to take care of the plants to the point where NASA had to yell at them. Like, come on guys, you know, just, just
Bento:leave the plants and all
Mike:that, that oxygen scrubber that you use to breathe. It's kind of time to swap that out. So the, the, the joy of taking care of the plants is a problem up in this space because there's a lot to do when you're up in space, even on the international space station.
Bobby:So is that a thing too with plants? Like I've heard before. Over handling of plants and things like that. Like if you're just, you know, regular old vegetable garden and you're picking off too much or giving it too much water that they can have that, that line. Do you think that that may be way to a piece
Bento:in this too?
Mike:Or? Yeah, like the too much water and so forth. That was more of a problem with the robot version rather than the human version, but there's a, there's a saying the best fertilizer for a garden is the gardeners shed. Meaning you're out there checking on things. You're checking for pests, you're checking for taking care of it. And there's also a whole bunch of studies showing just interacting with nature, releases, endorphins, and all sorts of other good stuff. So I'm okay with this and oh, why can't I breathe? So that, that, that, that's the human nature side. Just the joy of working with the plants caused problems because the equipment wasn't working. So now let's jump over to the botanical side. So to, well, one of the things that occurs when plants are growing, they found in these micro gravity or zero G type situations, we don't know why, but the plant's immune system turns off. They stopped protecting themselves. And normally you don't think of immune systems with plants, but everything has an immune system. Well, maybe not viruses, but everything else is trying to prevent this. And another thing people don't realize is so the space station, it started being built in 1998 and was habits. You know, people have been in there since the early two thousands, imagine a gym locker that has never, ever, ever been claimed the international space. Yes.
Bento:So the whole thing that stinks, it
Mike:stinks. It's covered in mildew. It's covered in vector because they can't use strong cleaning agents because, you know, they're, they have to breathe everything, everything they use up there, they have to be able to breathe. Where's all
Bento:the, where's
Mike:all the. Armpit from, yeah, just the everything coming up. I mean, they try and sterilize
Bento:things. Yeah. You can't jump in the shower and the space station
Mike:and yeah. I mean, yeah, you're, you're,
Bento:you're giving yourself wipe downs,
Bobby:so it's all, but I'm saying like for like mold or mildew to grow, doesn't it
Bento:need
Mike:it? So th the international space station at 76 degrees, 30% humidity, it's ideal, you know, basically what's ideal for humans is also ideal for this
Bento:scum in your bathroom. Got it. And so it's. And so it just starts, the briefest starts growing
Mike:and yeah, and like I said, they can't, they can't spray it with Lysol or anything. Cause then the SNS of breathing the Lysol and cause damage. So yeah, they can't open a window
Bento:and air it out, so they're,
Mike:they're stuck. So yeah. I mean, that's part of the reason you might have heard in the news that they're gonna, you know, basically crash the international space station into the ocean sometime in the next 10 years or so, because it's just becoming
Bento:unlivable. Yeah. Right. Also a
Mike:lot of these, yeah. The mildew and the stuff produced acids, which are causing corrosion and all sorts of bad
Bento:things are happening. Yeah. It was a Sammy. If they, they can't breathe in the chemicals, the cleaner, I mean, breathing in the mold, isn't much better for
Mike:you. Yeah. And the plants don't know, they have some antifungal properties and so forth. They'll protect them from this stuff. And a lot of that is what we find as the nutritious parts of the plant. You know, the different compounds in there that we've evolved to use to build our body. So there's that. Now there's another thing. So right now here on earth, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is around 400 parts per million. So for every million air particles, 400 of them are carbon dioxide. Okay. Up in their attentional space station, it can get up to 7,000 parts per million.
Bento:So
Bobby:it's a way too much,
Bento:way too
Mike:much. Yeah. The I, I looked this up cause I was kind of curious for those people who are growing marijuana in their secret clubhouses and stuff like that, the maximum CA cause they will actually get tanks to CO2 and increases. That's one of the thing like the, they show Scotland and Africa and all these places. They've had a huge explosion of greenery over the last two decades because the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is higher. So it's a common plant thing, especially in hydroponics and greenhouses and places where you can control the environment to actually open up and release, increase the amount of CO2 in the thing. But the problem is, like I said, once you get up above 1500 parts per million, the plants start choking. It's
Bento:too much carbon dioxide. Oh
Bobby:wow. It's like drinking too
Bento:much water at once.
Mike:Exactly. Yeah. And so they can't handle
Bento:that.
Bobby:And so that combined with potentially no immune system is always going to lead to poor
Bento:grows. Yep. Did they have any theories on why the plants have no immune system in space? No, that's so strange. And not even, I mean, and it's funny too, because like, like you said, the environment is, you know, 76 degrees. It's perfect environment. So that's
Mike:why, and we've recreated this on earth. You don't the, you might've seen like in the SNR training, they got this thing that spins the astronaut and yeah. Oh yeah. You put plants in one of those and grow them from a seed and that they don't have an immune system. Either. Their immune system gets shut off. We don't know why they there's something about knowing which way is up and which way is down that that triggers or is piggybacking on the immune
Bento:system, Minnie, Monsanto to get in and genetically modify us that the immune system, no one has space GMOs.
Bobby:I mean, so at the end of the day, right, the first thing you're going to do is look at the differences between growing here versus growing there. What are the major differences?
Bento:It, hi, carbon
Mike:dioxide and, and they can do the high carbon dioxide. So if they grow it on earth with the high carbon dioxide, you still get weak growth, but the plants do have an active immune system. We can see the molecules when you've intersected, but yeah, there's something about lack of
Bento:gravity. So how much success have they had growing
Mike:plants?
Bento:Great to success.
Mike:It's enough to show pictures. They get, you know, a few pieces of lettuce and so forth. But there is concerned because for like the trip to Mars and so forth, it's probably going to be a year long travel. They will have to grow
Bento:the plants something.
Mike:Yeah. And that's where the wild plants come into place. So the, one of the things, when we domesticated plants, we basically made a deal with them. We will take care of your needs and then we get to eat you.
Bento:Whereas there's writing up here.
Mike:Whereas the wild plants, they are constantly. Having to fight, they need a stronger immune system because no one's going, oh, you poor little thing. Let me change the pH of the soil. Just a little to help you fight with it. You know? So they have a strong thing. And then in particular so far the best success I've had is with a type of wild onion that is actually very invasive all around the
Bento:world. Those are the onions in your backyard,
Mike:but they're, there are great because they're very high in vitamin C, which the astronauts need, but they're also have a very strong flavor. So going back to human issues for a second, one of the problems that I asked her hat, Austin, not having the space is there's no gravity to pull the fluid down. So it all just kind of stays in their head. And they get, it's like being with a constant congestion. So their sense of taste and smell is suppressed by this congestion. So they need really strong flavored food, so hot. They need their hot sauce. They need the strong flavor to cut through that, that, that lack of taste. Incredible.
Bento:Okay. And
Bobby:so to go back to the wild plants, right? Let's talk about the range of plants that they have attempted to grow. I mean, is there a difference between growing potatoes versus growing?
Bento:Okay.
Mike:So first off, regardless of what you may have seen in Hollywood movies, they have not tried to do right now. The, the chambers they're they're 18 inches, tall, 18 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and they have about four inches of. Quote, unquote soil. And then the thing has to be able to grow in four inches of soil and then have 14 inches height gruff. So pretty much all they've ever used are variations on the theme of mustard. There's a, a bunch of different wild mustards but also a bunch of domesticated ones. And so the, a lot of it is based on this one particular mustard that has always been the, one of the plants of choice for research, not just space research, but just plant research and botany. It's very, very well understood. They know its genetic code. They know it's genes, they know how it's going to respond and all sorts of different systems. And so, because they already know what's going on and it has a pretty good flavor, strong mustard horse, right. Yeah, here it's variation. you know, and like it's at radishes, radishes are in the mustard family and you know, if they did do some lettuce and some kale variations, kale is a very, is another mustard, lettuce. I don't know why they wasted their time with lettuce because there's no nutrients or anything like that. You know, if they're going to do cabbage cabbage is a member of the mustard
Bento:family.
Bobby:Oh really? Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Cabbage cabbage would have been the first one. I
Bento:tried to get the cabbage easy little, little, little.
Mike:Yeah, yeah,
Bento:yeah. That's the other thing. Yeah, thanks. Anyway, it's going to have it so you can have it to breathe, everything that goes into air there.
Bobby:So now in terms of, you know, growing this on the international space station obviously. That's pretty much the only limited place they have in space to test something like this. Have they ever thought about doing things like this on a shuttle or something like
Bento:that? They
Mike:did. They had minor things, but the shuttles were never up long enough to, to grow anything. So they'd send up seeds and things like that. But let's do it now into the engineering and engineering issues. Cool. Because that's a whole nother thing. So every pump, every computer, every led light on the international space station and in spacecrafts in general produce heat. And so when they designed the international space station, they knew their heat limitations, and people don't realize this, but some, one of the biggest challenges with the international space station and with a spacecraft and like going to Mars and so forth is how do you keep it? Cool. And you think spaces cold. Why, why is keeping
Bento:things? Sure. Yeah,
Mike:it doesn't make sense. Well, if either of you ever boy Scouts or anything like that up in north, you know, so you might remember, you know, out in the winter and freezing to death and the safety things, and basically there are three ways you can transfer heat. So there is convection where you have something hot and the air around it heats up and gets know less dense and floats away and more heat comes in. So, or if you put a a hot thing in water, the water does the same thing that the water heats up and cools off the thing. Okay. So that's, that's convection. There is conduction where you have a hot rock against the cold rock and the hot rock cools off and the colder off warms up. So direct physical contact in space. You don't have either of those in space, all you'll have is radiating. Hmm. Sometimes they'll call black body radiation. So it can only radiate heat at a very slow rate because there's nothing to take that heat away. So it's the slowest most inefficient way of release. So the international space station, the design is really fascinating. So you have the inner inner walls in our hole and the outer walls. And in-between it. You have liquid ammonia and yeah, you don't, you don't be hanging a poster up. So you have the liquid ammonia, which then runs out the big, long rings. You see, with all the solar panels. There's also lots of little tubes in there, and there are pumps that are taking the liquid ammonia from near the, against the walls of the living spaces and all that. And running it out through these, you know, like the back of a
Bento:refrigerator, the
Mike:heat, and that's
Bento:how they're getting. Wow. You've been running for 20 something years. That's incredible.
Mike:Yeah. It also means they can't make it very rigid or while they have to make it rigid, but you can't have it very thick or anything because that is weight. It costs money maneuvering. So you have these long wings. As much for power as the cool. So you can't do a sudden maneuver you'll snap them off. So, you know, and even like when they talked about like the rotating and the spaceships to maintain the, the artificial gravity inside, well, if you've got these big, long Goulian wings out there, that's going to be a problem. So
Bobby:now do they, do they have similar systems on the shuttles for things like this, or again, because they're not
Bento:yet
Mike:not up that long, they have the ability to open the bays and shade themselves, but they also had huge cooling things to do that running through the wings.
Bobby:Oh, okay. Okay. I wonder, I wonder if a replica is
Bento:established.
Mike:Yeah. They didn't have the liquid ammonia in the walls sort of thing, but that other coolant type systems. Yeah, but dumping, dumping, heat and space is really difficult in the scifi movies where you see someone throwing out the airlock and suddenly they, now it takes up actually can take quite a while for the body to lose its heat to freeze. So eyes might blaze over pretty quickly,
Bento:but yeah, you'd suffocate before you. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. No one can hear you scream in space. So yeah,
Bobby:in terms of that radiation right. Obviously that radiation is not penetrating inside the walls
Bento:of.
Mike:So it's not
Bento:radioactive gamma rays. It's not out
Bobby:yet. Yeah. I'm not. Cause I'm sitting here thinking like, I wonder what type of effect that would have on the plants, but if it's not, it's not getting in there and that's what that liquid liquid ammonia then sheds the heat too. So that's how they maintain
Bento:the temperature
Mike:for the, you can almost think of it as like radio transmitters, electromagnetic waves, but down in the infrared spectrum, as opposed to the radio spectrum.
Bobby:That's unbelievable. And so, and so throughout this whole process, they've obviously established more modern tests and I know that like NASA now is planning the Artemis project to go back to the moon. Are they going to continue to testing plant growth
Bento:there or?
Mike:Yeah, in fact that's one of the things cause they, they want to set up a permanent moon base. It's much cheaper to launch seeds than it is to. Send food up. So yeah, one of the things they do want to set up these, these growth chambers. And so I'm tangentially involved with that group too, but like one of the things, I don't know if we can see this, but I have actually a simulated lunar soil and Mars soil.
Bento:Oh my God. Different things. So
Mike:that's terrific. Thanks. And this is where I was successful with the wild onion. But another problem is
Bento:while they,
Bobby:ah, you were successful growing the wild onion in one of those simulated soils,
Bento:that's incredible.
Bobby:What's the composition of that soil. Like comparatively. I mean, there can't be nutrients in that. So there isn't.
Mike:Yeah, it's basically think fresh volcanic Ash. Oh, well, yeah. With very little nutrients,
Bento:but then Dan was fucking hungry to go anywhere that I
Mike:planted the seeds and watered them with Texas spring water. Cause we will have there's water up on the moon.
Bento:There's water on
Bobby:Mars. And
Mike:eventually I started growing.
Bobby:I didn't have to
Bento:get nutrients
Mike:or anything. No, I, well I had a whole test, a whole bunch of them with different types of nutrients added and so forth. But the fact that these would grow just the loop itself.
Bento:Yeah. Did they take longer than the other ones with nutrients
Mike:in general? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I would say the, the speed of growth was reduced 3,000. Wow.
Bento:They're like the cockroach of plants. They are
Bobby:honestly, honestly, so I live in a place called Scituate, Rhode Island, and it's all used to be farm land, but mostly pigs, a lot of pig farming out here. And so for whatever reason, my yard, the next yard over the house behind me, it's just littered with wild onions. Like, no matter what we do, you
Bento:can't get rid of them. You open the window. They think if you're an astronaut, it's like, yeah. Right. It covers up the smell of
Bobby:Bobby's feet. Yeah, exactly. It's perfect. I love it. It's very convenient for, and I choose to not shower. Okay. So now that you've accomplished this and pass that data along to NASA, I assume.
Bento:Yup. Yup. Yeah. And so.
Bobby:Like, I just think that's unbelievable. So they are going to try and simulate the same
Bento:thing on this.
Mike:So I wasn't the only person trying to grow plants. There was quite a few researchers, you know,
Bento:doing this.
Mike:And so they'll, they'll eventually pick, you know,
Bento:hopefully a variety.
Bobby:Yeah. Try a bunch
Bento:of things. Yeah, absolutely.
Mike:But hopefully the wild onions will be one of
Bento:them. Yeah.
Bobby:That's cool. Good for you.
Mike:You know, I was too tall to be an astronaut, but
Bobby:plants up there. Hell yeah, I'll do it. That's awesome. That's so freaking cool. And so what do you know of those kinds of Artemis? Projects or anything like that? The Mars projects in terms of, of getting plants there. Cause I assume like even just getting to Mars is a whole nother challenge. Nevermind. Trying
Bento:to grow something
Mike:there. Yeah. One of the big challenges is actual radioactivity. Like the bad radiation, that's it? Something that plagues, you know, any astronaut travels or even people, you know, pilots and air crew, because they're exposed to more of the cosmic radiation, you know, it turn you off.
Bento:Yeah. I just thought about this the other day didn't believe me. And I said yes, that people that fly a lot are exposed to more radiation. Cause they're 30,000 feet in the sky. They don't have any, he didn't believe it was fair.
Bobby:That's crazy. 30,000 feet. It's like your commercial
Bento:air flight. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike:But if you're up there, so, but yeah, so the effect of the radiation on plants, so that's one of the things that's being studied, you know, which plants can survive because they can shield it some but shielded. Is heavy. Right. And they have to maximize useful weight and minimize
Bento:dead weight, dead weight. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's just like us, right. I mean, we, our atmosphere protects us from all that radiation and the plants are engineered the same way in essence, so right. They don't, they don't have a space suit
Bobby:and especially if they have no
Bento:immunity right. Makes even
Mike:worse. Yeah. So the question is if they, once they get the seeds, once they get to Mars, we believe they will have the immunity Baptist church. God-willing there's
Bento:gravity.
Mike:Interesting. But yeah, so just subjecting the seeds to different radiation and definitely loves the times which can be subjected to that and still have a really high germination rate and, you know, still low mutation rate that things, but just to go sideways for a second, it was very few people realize this sweet. Yeah. Yeah. So fuck. Yeah. After world war II, there was a lot of worry about what nuclear bombs could do to seed crops, right. To our food. So once a researchers were zapping everything, the seeds, a little plant, you know, everything with radiation and then planting them and seeing, you know, what group, what was resilient. Yeah. And so one of the things they did this too, was sweetcorn and the researcher, he grew, you know, he exposed the seeds to radiation. Like if like from a blast, from a nuclear bomb planted, it grew, it studied the kernels and everything. And just abstinently popped a few in his mouth. Just, just randomly cause this sweetcorn who doesn't like sweetcorn and he was shocked. And it's like the sugar content of this one year a corn had been quadrupled due to a mutation caused from this radiation. Wow. That ear of corn became the mother, father ear foreign for all the other sweetcorn that we now enjoy as sweetcorn really. Like your grandparents, your great grandparents sweetcorn was, was sweet. It was way better than the hard field dent corn. Yeah. But it isn't what we have. Well, since the fifties
Bento:that somebody nuked
Mike:it yeah. And altered the genetic code to quadruple the amount of sugar made in the,
Bento:in the class, they should have nuked it again and did another quadruple don't think they haven't tried.
Bobby:And that's, and that's now why we have
Bento:the corn Frutos. That's high fructose corn syrup.
Bobby:Yeah. See, it's all their fault.
Bento:I never knew that about corn. That's so fast.
Mike:Yeah. The sweet corn is the sweet corn. We
Bento:love a plague on mankind, but now it's one of the best things that ever happened to us.
Bobby:I guess it depends where you're looking on that one.
Bento:Oh shit. Good stuff. It's terrific. So yeah, so mark this has been really fun. We really appreciate you coming on. Why don't you tell us what you got going on right now. I think want to plug, let the listeners know where to check
Mike:out. So yeah, medicine man go.com is my, my herbal supplement business. It's a small start with three guys with a dream to take on the big dogs and return ancestral health to people. So the ancient plants scientifically supported for modern issues. Mmm. Our medicine, men plant code.com
Bento:stuff there.
Bobby:Can I ask you about that quick to I, that was one thing I forgot to mention. I did want to bring up was I did see the products that you had on that website. And so, you know, supplements and natural products for me. I would always rather want to try something like that first, but I feel it's so hard to gauge effectiveness. Yeah. And so what do you recommend, huh?
Bento:Really? No, this affects right away, really
Mike:things like the brain pill deliver pill, the blood, actually the blood pressure pill. It takes probably three weeks to really notice
Bento:that.
Bobby:Yeah. Cause I, cause I'm definitely interested in trying some of these things
Bento:Give things a shot, you know, I'll set you up for samples. Yeah. Perfect.
Bobby:It's always, it's always so interesting to try to notice effectiveness. Like I said, you know, the Silcox scene, I'm like, he takes some of that stuff and it's like taking nothing. Like what's the point of this. And I feel that you know, a lot of people are dubious about these types of things only because of the testing stuff feel like you're a chemist. And so you do your own testing. How do you go about proving
Bento:that?
Mike:So a lot of the formulations, they're my own custom formulation. So let's, let's, let's talk about that first. So how do I come up with a new product? So I decide, okay. What is a very common health issue people have? So let's say blood pressure. Then I look at all the different Traditional herbal medicines that people have used for blood pressure. We have records that go back 6,000 years of, of study of herbal medicines. Like the earliest as the Sumerian, they had a whole book of not really book, but a clay tablets with the cuneiform that is covered 250 different medicinal plants. Wow. In China, traditional Chinese medicine goes back almost as far India, almost as far, and it held it anyway. So we look at weight. I look at what has been used before then I look at okay. And then how many of these have been actually confirmed by science and what are the mechanisms by which they have this effect? And then what I try and do is I find like three different mechanisms, plant mechanisms to. Tackle it from different angles
Bento:and just kind of mimic
Mike:that and mimic, and then look at what the research has been found. You know, there's tons of studies out there, pub med.gov. It's the national Institute of health, electronic database, all scientific papers are on there. So I'll go there. I'll look up and see, okay. What have proven powers? How much did it take? Can we get it in a capsule? What are the other side effects? Cause drug interactions are another
Bento:big thing.
Bobby:Yeah.
Bento:So
Mike:yeah, so there's a lot of trust and end it in and then, and then I come up with several of them for formula. And I do have a fairly decent following, like on Facebook, 30,000, something like that. So I say, okay, who has some blood pressure issues or who has, you know, different things to say, yeah, I want to send you some to try and report back and through that, then I get real
Bento:world testing.
Bobby:Terrific. I'll just through a volunteer basis. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Real world, real world feedback. I
Bento:like that.
Mike:And then from there we settle on one and go, okay, here we go. Because I have trust issues.
Bento:Do you
Bobby:all, do you publish the results of those
Bento:studies? No. Okay. Now
Mike:the but like I said, trust issues. I I've been in the chemical formulating world for decades. And I've worked with a lot of different toll manufacturers to make the stuff, and I've learned mistakes happen sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose. So like all the products that we get in I have it sent off for third-party testing for things like heavy metals and pesticides, herbicides, fillers, things like that to make sure what the farmer or the herb, you know, the wholeseller is supplying, is what it's supposed to be. Then the things get blended together at the toll manufacturer here in Texas. And then we get a tested again to make sure nothing accidentally was added. And then it gets put in the, you know, encapsulated putting the bottles. Then we take some of the bottles and send it out again for third testing, just again, to make sure nothing happens that every my signature is on each bottle. So if this goes down, Yeah. I'm, I'm dead.
Bobby:You get all your eggs in this basket.
Bento:Yes.
Mike:I mean, I can go live in the woods after this, but my wife and kids aren't
Bento:too keen on that.
Bobby:I bet not. I bet not. Well that's terrific. Well, like I said, too, this is definitely stuff I'm interested in, so I am excited to give it a shot for you. Yeah, that's awesome. That's terrific. Yeah. And then inserted, jump on your plug there.
Bento:No,
no,
Mike:no. And then the other thing that I don't think I say, so May 3rd, my new book, the outdoor adventure guide for Jane comes out. And again, trying to show these in green scheme can be tricky because
Bento:like,
Mike:but yeah. So multiple pictures of the plants, any mimics north American map a bunch of recipes. So let's get one with that. Yeah. Like different recipes to use the stuff us through one of the other things that makes us different than all the other forging books up there is the calendar because. Plants. They, they, they follow ecosystems, soils,
Bento:temperatures, things like that. Or when
Mike:I, exactly, so what to look for now in the north is very different. What to look for in the south. It's the same plant, but like a lot of the wintertime weeds of the south are summertime weeds of the north. And so if you're just going by the average foraging book, you'll be looking at the wrong time, depending
Bento:on
where
Bobby:you are. Right. And then it'll grow with different, you know, based on the acidity you hear in the Northeast, we have very high acidity versus like the Northwest, which is very high alkaline.
Bento:Yep.
Mike:So that will be available on medicine, man, plant co and Amazon and
Bobby:everywhere. Terrific. And what was that title again
Bento:for us?
Mike:So it's outdoor adventure guide foraging.
Bento:Perfect.
Mike:So there's a whole bunch of different outdoor adventure guides series. A, this one is for. So there's like outdoor adventure guide, RV
Bento:and canoeing, and yeah, so
Mike:that's terrific. And actually the, the 21 recipes in it are designed for campfire cooking type stuff. So while you're out doing your bird watching or failed hunting trip or something.
Bobby:Yeah. That's terrific. That's terrific. Good. That'll be me then. Right. Guy fails to shoot something on a hunting trip
Bento:to Texas. We'll give you all the feral
Bobby:pigs you want to share. Yeah. There you go. All right. Oh God. I used to live at one point. I was in the military and I was stationed at San Angelo. The, the Goodfellow air force base out there. I got there wasn't much new, but we did go hunt some pigs at one point. Oh yeah. There wasn't much else though. No, put a, yeah, we made it, we made the trip. We drove across Texas and Dallas Fort worth and Houston and Sandy. We made all those trips. Yeah. What a
Bento:drive.
Mike:Oh, I do it every weekend. I teach all
Bento:over Texas.
Bobby:Oh, good for you. Hi, you must, you must really rack up the
Bento:miles.
Mike:Yeah. If I haven't put 500 miles on my car on a weekend, I
Bento:didn't,
Bobby:you're not doing it right. Fun. It's crazy. It's crazy driving down there. Cause like I remember like, you know, we get out at five 30, you know, from duty and we'd be like, all right, we get the weekend. Well, let's go. And so we would leave, you know, I was, I was there for like nine months, so it was maybe like springtime. And the first time we went and
Bento:all the roads is so dark and
Mike:straight and they just go
Bento:on forever.
Bobby:So like before you know it, like I'm going a buck 20 and he looked down, it was like, oh my God, you don't even realize it. It's so insane. Till you hit a deer and then you, yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. Thankfully, thankfully we were fortunate enough to not, not hitting a deer, but we did get pulled over once. That was funny. We got a, we got a good ear full, you know, if you weren't soldiers, you looked like you, I mean, you looked like Walker, Texas ranger. And we told him, you know, none of us being from
Bento:Texas. Yeah.
Bobby:He didn't like they all do. He did not like us. I mean, he, it was crazy at the boots on the big buckle, the 10 gallon hat, I mean,
Bento:yeah,
Bobby:right. Yeah, exactly. It was cool. It was, I mean, being from new England, it was so, so just culture. So cool. Yeah. I love Houston. Houston's one of my favorites. Best food anywhere. Yeah. We had some friends who were they were down there at the university of Houston at the medical center there getting his degree and so we would come down and visit all the time. And that was one of the things, every single food you could ever think
Bento:of.
Bobby:One thing about Texas is it's like, there's a lot of franchise. But in Houston, there's plenty of good small mom and pop places too. Like,
Bento:and
Mike:usually multi-generations, you know, some that are on like their third
Bento:generation now. Yeah,
Bobby:exactly. Really great place. There's a lot of cool bars, like so much cool stuff to do. Yeah. I love that.
Bento:Now there's
Mike:a ton of microbreweries.
Bobby:Terrific. Yeah. They're starting to pop up up here too. Behind the
Bento:curve, Massachusetts. There's
Mike:seven within like a three mile
Bento:radius of just
Bobby:as dangerous.
Bento:I'm sure
Bobby:you get the grout inferior the growlers at this
Bento:point. I can't afford
Mike:that
Bento:anymore. I'll just go to them. I'll get the,
Bobby:yeah. Empty growlers all over the place. We just got them stacked up. Now at
Bento:this point.
Mike:Is you pay 300 bucks, you get a custom mug. It hangs on the wall. And when you show up yeah, you get the,
Bento:yeah,
Bobby:those have actually been up here and around for a very long time. The mud club
Bento:they're just getting done and it's like, Ooh, club club. Yeah.
Mike:This would say, what do have the horn clubs for me
Bento:to raise? No, no, we got
Mike:several Viking. Meaderies here too. Where they have the drinking
Bento:horns. We actually had a meter here right down the street from my house. So we don't
Bobby:have any more. Yeah. I want to drink from a horn. That's life goals right there, doc, come on down. Well, thanks again so much for coming on and teaching us a lot about plants and space and God, I feel like we could have you on talk about something completely different. Still learn a shit ton. So
Bento:thank you so much.
Mike:I learned
Bento:about ham radio.
Bobby:Give me a call like, oh, that's not a bad idea. Actually. I love that. Yeah. Terrific. Well again, doctor, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on and teaching us, teaching a couple of dumb dudes, something. So thanks again. And we'll definitely be in touch. Cool.
Bento:Thanks. Have a good day, mark. You too.
Bobby:that do thought that we both went to college. I know,
Bento:I know, dude. He was like, oh, I slept, I see that thing in the back there. So I looked at your background. I'm like, no, I was just looking at mine. I was like, do I have anything that looks like, I mean, I got a lot of shit going on, but doesn't anything. It looks like a degree. And I was like, I don't think I do. No.