Hey everyone, it is Marshall.
I am back from New Year's and we are working on our next episode of Tumble, which is going to come out in two weeks, and I'm really excited about it.
I want to tell you what it's about, but I can't.
It's a secret.
But I do have some really awesome news to share, which is that Lindsay and I are going to be performing at New York City's Lincoln Center in just a few weeks.
Yes, it's that Lincoln Center.
It's a big deal.
Like, seriously.
Anyway, the details are that we will be at the David Rubenstein Atrium at the Lincoln Center in New York City on Saturday, February 7th 2026.
That is this year at 11 a.m.
Our show will be about one hour and it will be about the sounds of space and science and all that awesome stuff.
And it is totally, totally free!
Free!
That's right, it is free!
We can't wait to see you all there.
If you're in the New York City area, please do come say hello.
And if you would also like to bring Tumble to your own neck of the woods, to your school, your library or literally in the woods.
If you want, just reach out and talk to us at tumblepodcast at gmailcom.
We are booking out live performances all through the spring and summer and just would love to come to your town.
Anyway, it's going to be a really, really fun time.
And now we're going to do an old story, an old episode of Tumble about a fun guy.
Well, fun guy.
It's our episode, The Science of Fun Guy.
I hope you enjoy.
Hi, I'm Lindsay.
And I'm Marshall.
Welcome to Tumble, the show where we explore stories of science discovery.
Today we're talking about fungi.
Fungi?
You mean guys like me?
Fun ones?
No, I'm talking about fun-gus.
We're about to discover the mysteries of how fungi live, with help from the largest collection of mushrooms in the world.
Today's question comes from Tumble listener Alice.
Do fungi breathe?
Like, do fungi breathe in and out like we do?
Just center yourself.
Do you think they're just like constantly meditating?
No, I think Alice's question is, do fungi need oxygen to live?
And she has an idea of how scientists might find out.
I think scientists could find out by putting some mushrooms on a rotting wall or something in a space without oxygen and see if they die.
That's a pretty good experiment, but I don't think the fungi would enjoy it.
Well, let's ask our listeners.
Do you think fungi would breathe, and how would scientists find out?
Take a moment to think about it, because we're about to...
Find out about the fungus among us.
To find an answer for Alice, I called up Lee Davis.
He's responsible for the largest collection of fungus in the world.
My name is Lee Davis.
I'm the collection manager of the Fungaria McHugh Gardens.
Is he also a fun guy like me?
You've already made that joke, and Lee's definitely heard it before.
When I started I think I was getting oh, you must be a fun guy at least three times a week for the first six months.
I think I got sick of that one.
I'm sorry, but you know we're already two fun guy puns into this episode and we're definitely going to do more.
I hope Lee will understand.
And he did give me an alternative fungi pun.
There's not much room in here.
If a room is busy.
That's pretty good.
It's definitely like a little bit of a deeper cut.
Well, you might say there's spore where that came from.
Good one.
So I know there's probably more to fungi than making puns, although I'm sure that could be the whole show.
Definitely.
It seems like we should at least try to answer Alice's question if there's mushroom left.
We're definitely going to get to Alice's question.
But first, let's take a little tour of the fungarium and get to know our guide.
All right, let's do it.
So Lee didn't start out as a fungi scientist or mycologist, as they're called.
He was actually a paleontologist.
I'm a very bad paleontologist.
I think dinosaurs are boring.
Get like, you know, one bone.
Oh, look, it's got big teeth.
Whoa, they're dinosaurs?
Boring?
I don't know.
Should we just end the episode right now?
No.
Look, we just need to apologize and move on from this, Marshall.
Sorry to the dinosaur fans.
We do not agree with Lee's views.
Just want to make clear that the views held by our guests do not reflect the views of the Makers of Tumble Science podcast for kids or any of our sponsors.
We think dinosaurs are cool.
So anyway, but how did a paleontologist with a weird fringe view end up studying fungi?
Lee's job is really looking after collections of specimens in museums as a curator.
So over his career, he's moved from collections of fossils to plants to now fungi.
And it turns out it's the best thing ever because fungi are far cooler than plants or dinosaurs.
Wow, he's really throwing plants in there too.
Sorry, plant lovers.
I know this is extreme, but try not to hold it against Lee.
He's just so in love with his job at the fungarium.
It's a bit like a warehouse of large green boxes, each filled with dried mushrooms.
And it's kept nice and cool so that no little nasty insects get in and eat up their way through the collection.
And it's floor to ceiling with these really nice fabric covered green boxes.
So is that so that nothing gets mushy in the room?
Good one.
In the mushy room?
There are over 13,000 of these green boxes, and Lee has to keep track of all of them.
I would say I'm like a librarian of mushrooms.
I'm one of the people who looks after the 13 million dried mushroom specimens that are used for science research by scientists all over the world.
That's really like a lot of mushrooms in a room.
And a lot of boxes.
I bet I could open one box every day for the next 20 years if I wanted to.
I think there's enough boxes here to do at least one a day for 20 years.
So like every day he could do a new unboxing video.
Ooh, what do we have here?
And then he plays with the mushrooms and makes them talk to each other.
I'll watch that.
Me too.
But so why do we need all these boxes of mushrooms?
Well, they help scientists understand fungi, what makes them unique and how they're related to each other.
So building a family tree of all the different fungi, because we don't know.
Probably.
There are two or three million species of fungi in the world and we've barely scratched the surface.
Well, that's a lot of species.
Yes, and researchers are looking for more.
Most of it is focused around understanding what fungi are out there.
They've got looking for new species.
Fung-splorers.
Fung-sporers?
Fung-sporers.
That's two for one, really.
There we go.
So researchers collect new specimens to add to the fungarium's collection.
And in turn they ask for existing specimens to study and compare.
Are dried specimens all over the world for people to study?
So what do people do with all these dried mushrooms?
I assume they just aren't making soup.
A lot of what people do these days and researchers do these days is they extract the DNA from them.
DNA is the genetic code that's in the cell of every living thing on Earth.
And getting it out of a fungus is a little like preparing a recipe.
You take a little piece of the mushroom, you grind it up in the laboratory, you add different chemicals and you pull all the DNA out of it.
And then you sequence that DNA.
You're a little butter and you really get that like umami flavor.
Hold the butter because we're doing science and the DNA is useful, if not tasty.
It gives you like a fingerprint. of that species and tells you what makes it unique.
So every spore is special.
Yes, and after seeing how each species is different, scientists look for their similarities.
You can compare all those fingerprints between lots of different species and you can understand how they're related to one another.
So that's how they build the family tree, one little ground-up mushroom at a time.
But I have a question.
Is the mushroom the fungus part, or is that something different?
Well, the mushroom is actually just one part of what makes a fungus a fungus.
The mushroom is like the flower or the fruit of a tree.
In a fungus a mushroom is produced to produce spores which go off and grow into new mycelium and a new fungus.
In other words, mushrooms are for reproducing and they happen to be the best part of the fungi to collect.
It, you know, really dries out nice.
Right.
So what's the other thing that Lee mentioned, the mycelium?
So this is the bit that's underground that you don't see.
That's kind of like the leaves, the branches, the trunk and the roots of a tree.
It's the bit that does all the work.
The mycelium looks like lots of little threads or even fuzz.
If you've ever looked at moldy food that appears to be growing something, that's the mycelium.
It's the living, breathing part of the fungus.
And the key to answering Alice's question, do fungi breathe?
How's that the key?
I'll let Lee explain.
So in humans, we have lungs.
We breathe to fill our lungs with air so that our bodies can absorb oxygen out of the air to take it into our blood.
For humans, breathing oxygen helps us turn our food into energy that we use to live.
Fungi also need oxygen.
And they get oxygen directly through the mycelium.
Because it's so small, they're able to just absorb oxygen into their cells.
They don't need lungs.
So in that sense they don't breathe like us, because they can just absorb the oxygen through their tissues.
So if you put a fungus on a log in a place with no oxygen, it would die.
Yes, it would.
And Lee said Alice's idea of how scientists find out was right.
It's a really simple, really elegant and very neat way of testing that out.
You know, you could do that at home almost.
Good thinking, Alice.
Lee says that fungi evolved to use oxygen just like plants and animals did.
And they played a really important role in making Earth a livable planet.
If you think that plants made the atmosphere, fungi made the ground and the soil and the terrestrial environment.
Well, that's no small job.
No kidding.
Fungi made it possible for plants and animals to live on land.
Before plants moved onto land, there was no soil.
It would have been sort of dry, rocky, sandy, dusty soil.
But because fungi had already got there and were on land.
They were breaking down any organic matter and making soils for plants to get established in and to literally take root.
Man, I had no idea that fungus was basically the reason that we're here.
It still is.
Fungi are the foundation that any ecosystem is based upon.
There's two big groups of fungi that play essential roles in nature.
The vast majority of fungi.
I'd say that we might come across if we're out and about somewhere.
They're what we call saprobes.
So they decompose plant material.
So these are the ones that break things down, like basically rot dead stuff.
Yeah, they help nutrients return back to the earth.
It's the circle of life.
And another type help plants live.
The second big group of important fungi are things that we call mycorrhizal fungi.
They live in what we call a mutualistic relationship with plants.
What's a mutualistic relationship?
It's like having a best friend and you're always helping each other out.
Is that really what it is?
It means that both the organisms work together in a way that benefits them.
In this case, a plant and a fungus.
So they live together in the soil and they feed each other and support each other.
And about 95% of all plants need to have a mycorrhizal partner in order to thrive and to survive.
95% of plants need a fungus to live?
That's like almost all of them.
Exactly.
If fungi didn't exist, Earth would be a very different place.
So most plants would get sick and die.
And when they did die, they wouldn't decompose, they wouldn't rot down and it would just build up and we'd be up to our necks in dead plant material.
And ecosystems would slowly start to collapse.
I'm suddenly a lot more thankful for fungus than I've ever been before.
Maybe it's okay that some of them end up in my feet.
Ew.
Well, so now that we have the fungimentals of fungus, it's time to discover some wonderful and weird new fungi species right after this quick break.
Tumble is brought to you with support from IXL.
Coming back from the holidays is a key time for any homeschool curriculum.
Whether you're a homeschool parent struggling to keep up with an academic calendar or your kid is whizzing through material faster than you can manage, IXL can help.
It's got a full standards-aligned curriculum with problem sets and activities to help your kids keep up if they're behind or keep that fire lit if they're racing through three grades this year.
IXL's interactive practice, step-by-step video tutorials and easy-to-navigate layout can really take a mental load off any parent struggling to keep up with their kid's academic progress.
It's personalized and flexible, so it can adapt to kids who are grasping concepts easily and kids who need a little extra support to get to the next level.
Make an impact on your child's learning.
Get IXL now.
And Tumble Science listeners can get an exclusive 20 off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixlcom.
Slash tumble.
Visit ixl.com slash tumble to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.
We're back.
So remember how Lee said that we've barely scratched the surface of all the fungus among us?
Yeah, we're just like right at the top of the toadstool there.
And now we know there's much more fungus under the surface.
And that's what excites Lee about fungi.
The possibility of infinite change.
And it's fairly easy to find new species.
There are big areas of the planet we've never really gone exploring looking for fungi.
There's a few countries at the top of Lee's mushroom hunting list.
One of those countries is Madagascar.
Madagascar is an island country off the southeastern coast of Africa.
Yes, it's also known for being a hotspot of biodiversity, meaning there's a lot of unique species there.
So Lee takes groups of students to the country every year to search for new species.
Everything we're finding is potentially a new species.
Everything?
Like everything?
Yes, everything.
One kind of mushroom that Lee's really interested in finding are called amanitas.
Amanitas should be fairly familiar.
They're the ones that are red with the white dots.
They're the ones you see in books and pictures and video games.
Oh yeah, it's like the Super Mario Brothers mushroom.
Yes.
So you can say that there's a researcher who's exploring the mushroom kingdom of Madagascar.
He's trying to understand what species of amanitas Wait.
So it's just like we don't know what's there.
So people are just going and being like oh, there's one.
Yeah, it sounds incredible.
And that's not all, because if Amanitas are the classic fairy tale mushroom, there's also the horror story mushrooms.
These are a group of fungi that we tend to call zombie fungi.
Wait, zombie fungi?
Do they eat brains?
No.
They infect insects.
And I assume eat their brains.
They turn them into zombies and they eat them from the inside.
Oh, man.
Sometimes, kids, nature isn't so nice.
It's rough.
It's a fungi-eat-insect world out there, you know?
I guess so.
But to Lee, what zombie fungi do and how they do it is deeply fascinating.
Take, for example, a potential new species he found on a moth.
And it was a thing called acanthomyces.
Um, okay.
I'm a little afraid to ask what it does.
Don't worry, I asked for you.
With the moth, it's quite nice.
Well, it's relatively nice.
It doesn't really control its behavior.
Wait, fungi can control insect behavior.
Yes, that's where they get the name zombie fungi from.
The fungus turns its host, the insect, into a zombie to do its bidding.
But this moth fungus finds itself a nice mothy meal and just grows from there.
Then you can find these big moths the size of your hand, almost you know, attached to a rock or a wooden post and they've got all these like white little white mushrooms growing out of their body.
It's beautiful.
I do think Lee's definition of beautiful in mine might be a little different.
But, you know, I guess we eat mushrooms.
So what's the difference?
Well, interestingly, Lee does not like eating mushrooms.
I've never liked them.
They taste like it's that weird, slimy, rubbery.
It's that horrible texture.
I don't like them.
So it's a taste thing, not a moral thing.
You mean a moral thing?
Like the type of mushrooms?
Oh boy.
I just appreciate them in a different way, I suppose.
I'll see a nice mushroom, I'll think that's beautiful and I can collect that and I can keep it for 200 years in the fungarium rather than ooh, that's beautiful.
I bet that'll be really nice fried with some garlic and butter.
To each their own mushroomy way.
Whether the mushrooms are headed for the kitchen or the shelf, millions of people around the world collect them.
And you can too.
Collecting fungi and picking them is fairly safe.
There are very few fungi that are dangerous just to touch and pick up.
Really?
There are very few that are dangerous just to touch?
I guess they won't bite you.
Yeah, finding a strange fungus is just the same as what you'll do when you find an unfamiliar plant or seed.
You could carefully collect it, but you definitely shouldn't put it in your mouth.
Never eat anything you find because you don't know what it is you found.
And there are lots of fungi that can make you very, very ill if you get it wrong.
That seems like great advice just in general.
Like, don't put things in your mouth, kids.
Science.
Don't put it in your mouth.
The key thing is get a nice book to help you identify them, get out there and look for them and then see if you can identify what they are.
You know I like to take pictures of mushrooms and plants and bugs and stuff and then use the app iNaturalist to help identify them.
Yes, and some fungus are so beautiful and cool.
And if you find something really unusual, you can let the fungarium know.
Lee will be there, busy with his boxes.
So sometimes I'm looking for something and I find something I've never seen before.
So there's a continual sense of discovery here.
Yeah, it's good fun.
Is it good fun, Gus?
It's so funny!
As Lee said, it's easy to start your own collection of fungi at home.
You can pick and dry wild mushrooms to start your own fungarium or even grow your own mushrooms.
They make really cool kits and it's something I've always wanted to do.
Let us know if you find some cool mushrooms or get even more curious about the fungus among us.
Just email us at tumblepodcast at gmail.com to show us your photos or send us your questions.
Thanks to Lee Davis, collection manager of the Fungarium in Kew Gardens in London, England.
And special thanks to Alice for her excellent question.
Lee's interview is a joy to listen to, and you can learn more about the science and culture of fungi in our bonus interview episode, available when you support us on Patreon for just 1 or more a month, on patreoncom slash, tumblepodcast or through our Spotify subscriptions feed.
We have more resources to learn about Lee the fungarium and fungi or fungi, on the blog, on our website, sciencepodcastforkidscom.
Sarah Robertson-Lentz is our editor and designed the episode art.
Elliot Hijaj is our production assistant.
Gary Calhoun-James engineered and mixed this episode.
I'm Lindsay Patterson, and I wrote this episode.
And I'm Marshall Escamilla, and I made all of the music and sound design for this episode.
Tumble is a production of Tumble Media.
Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for more stories of science discovery.
All right, everybody here.
We are at the end of the episode, and I think you all know what that means.
It is time for birthday shoutouts to go to our supporters on Patreon.
But before we get to that, I want to give a call out to two of our newest supporters on Patreon Rhea Gracie, Anne and Ben.
Thanks so much, you guys.
And okay, here we go with some birthdays.
First, happy ninth birthday on january 11th to nathan.
Whether you're exploring redstone in minecraft or watching mark rober which, by the way, i am a huge mark rober fan like, really love mark rober, his youtube and also like personally, he just seems like a great guy.
Anyway, where was i?
Oh yeah, so whether you're watching mark rober turn watermelons into rocket ships, you're always curious, creative and totally unstoppable.
With much love from mom, dad and Seth.
Hey, Layla, a happy birthday on January 11th to you, too.
Mom and Dad enjoy watching you investigate and learn about the world around you.
Keep learning and stay curious.
Another happy January 11th birthday to Charlotte.
Mommy, Daddy, and Eloise love you so much.
To Tommy, a happy birthday on January 15th.
Your parents love you.
And a happy birthday on January 16th to Elika.
Thanks so much to all of you and everyone who supports Tumble on Patreon.
We do appreciate it so, so much.
It really helps us keep the show going.
And I know we really couldn't do it without the support of our Patreon supporters.
If you want to join these fine folks and get a birthday shout out of your own, go ahead and support Tumble on Patreon at the $5 level or higher by going to patreon.com slash tumblepodcast.
Once again, that's patreon.com slash tumblepodcast.
And I also want to welcome everybody who's still listening to to the first Easter egg of Tumbles 2026.
I'm so glad you decided to listen all the way to the end of this episode, because you know there's going to be a reward for you.
I've got two great gifts to give anyone who's still here listening.
First of all, I'm going to offer a special 90 off a month on our Patreon, which you can redeem just by going to our Patreon, which is patreoncom slash tumblepodcast, and using the code EGG2026 at checkout.
That will give you 90% off.
And once again, that code is EGG2026, EGG2026.
And the second gift I have...
This will go to anyone who reaches out to me via email and mentions this Easter egg at tumblepodcast at gmailcom.
If you want to come meet me and Lindsay in person in New York City after our show at Lincoln Center.
As I'm sure you know, we'll be there on Saturday, February 7th from 11am to 12pm.
If you can't make the show but would like to meet up with us afterwards at 12pm, just send me an email.
More information about that will be coming soon.
