The Undercooked Mushroom Producing the Strangest Psychedelic Effects Known

Colin Dumnauer discusses Lanmaoa asiatica, a mushroom that produces unique, highly realistic Lilliputian hallucinations when undercooked.

Colin Dumnauer, ethnobotanist at the Dentinger Lab (Natural History Museum of Utah), joins Adventures Through The Mind for Episode 208 to discuss Lanmaoa asiatica — a widely-eaten bolete mushroom from Yunnan, China that reliably produces Lilliputian hallucinations when undercooked: hyper-realistic people 10–30 cm tall, rendered in exquisite detail, obeying the laws of physics, and embedded stably in the surrounding environment. Documented across three independent cultures (Yunnan, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea), with an onset of 12–24 hours and duration of 3–7 days, this is unlike any other known psychedelic. In this conversation, Colin and I unpack what's known, what remains a complete mystery, and why a food mushroom that makes you see little people might be one of the most scientifically interesting psychoactive substances yet to be studied. 🎧 Full show notes + listen on Apple/Spotify: bit.ly/ATTMind208 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 👤 COLIN DUMNAUER ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ► Instagram: instagram.com/eating_gaia/ ► Dentinger Lab: nhmu.utah.edu/research/dentinger-lab ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🍄 EPISODE SPONSOR ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ► Amentera — legal Amanita muscaria products: jameswjesso.com/amentara Use code ATTM22 for 22% off your first order ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ❤️ SUPPORT THE PODCAST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ► Become a Patreon member: patreon.com/jameswjesso  ► Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/biz/fund?id=383635S3BKJVS ► All support options: jameswjesso.com/support ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📖 JAMES' BOOKS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ► Decomposing The Shadow: jameswjesso.com/decomposing-the-shadow/ ► The True Light Of Darkness: jameswjesso.com/true-light-of-darkness/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📬 STAY IN TOUCH ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ► Newsletter: jameswjesso.com/newsletter ► BlueSky: jameswjesso.bsky.social/ ► Instagram: @attmindpodcast ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ EPISODE BREAKDOWN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 - Opening 02:35 - Ad Break 03:11 - Interview Begins 03:19 - From Astrophysics to Ethnomycology: An Unusual Path Into Psychedelic Research 07:44 - Discovering Lanmaoa Asiatica: The Hallucinogenic Bolete of Southeast Asia 13:03 - Lilliputian Hallucinations: The Psychiatric Phenomenon of Seeing Tiny People 16:37 - Seeing Little People for Days: Cultural Attitudes & the Duration of Effects 20:26 - Delirium or Psychedelic? What fMRI Data & Eyewitness Reports Reveal 23:53 - More Real Than a Dream: The Uncanny Stability of These Hallucinations 30:12 - Mushrooms, Fairies & Ancient Folklore: The Deep Connection to Little People 32:53 - Patreon Thanks 35:23 - Is This Mushroom Dangerous? Safety Data from ~1,000 Hospital Cases 45:00 - Hunting for the Active Compound: Why It's Not Psilocybin or Ibotenic Acid 50:04 - Ad Break 51:55 - Are There More Hallucinogenic Bolete Species Around the World? 55:03 - Why Psychoactive Compounds Evolve in Nature 1:00:36 - Future Research,