105: A lesson from “Succession” that we can all learn from

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

So we were, we were talking about topics for the show today and had this idea and thought it'd be kind of fun and a way for us to sort of think of things a little differently. So Rachel and I and some other people in the office are big time Succession fans. So for anyone who's seen Succession, we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about the finale as well. So. Oh, hold on. Did I cut out? Is my. I think I'm back. I'm going to move. Moving close to the router people. I don't want to cut out. We're going to talk about the finale of the show. So if, you know, if you haven't watched the show and you care about it, then you probably shouldn't listen to this. There's a bunch of other episodes you can listen to, but maybe don't listen to this one because we're going to talk about some stuff. But real quick.

For those who are in here.

The way that the Clubhouse Room here works is we're actually recording live for the podcast. This is going to be put onto the podcast afterwards and we will do some, some time for Q and A. The way that we'll do this is anyone who has a question, basically back channel message, Rachel, and you can let her know your question. And she's going to manage the question queue of what's going on. And then when it comes time to do questions, she will basically call people up and get them up onto the stage. So that's how we're going to set this up. And yeah, so let's kind of get into the general topic for today.

And that was this quote that Logan basically had at the kind of towards the end of the finale. And I was actually looking it up afterwards because I thought I had heard the quote before. And the quote was actually originally quoted by this guy. His name is Leon Trotsky. And he says that revolution is impossible until it's inevitable and that this guy won a Nobel Prize.

And so Logan had like a version of this quote basically. But, like, I don't know. Rachel, do you kind of want to set up Sort of what? What, like, led up to this point into the show, like, what's going on? All the kids are trying. It's not working. This other guy kind of like. Kind of like a quick overview of what's happening.

Oh, yeah, sure. Well, I just feel like there's so much.

Let's not do the entire series.

I know.

Let's give a summary of kind of what happened and then what his ultimate decision was. Let's do it there.

Well, okay, so what had happened is he was Logan, who is like, the dad, kind of like the main. What is he, like, CFO or just CEO of the company?

He's the CEO of this massive media conglomerate. This global media conglomerate.

Yeah, yeah. So he meets this guy named Lucas Matson, and this guy can basically take his company to the next level. And Logan's pretty stubborn. If you watch the show, he kind of feels like he wants to give it to his kids sometimes or, like, tries to put them in positions where they can sort of be open to taking the company. But this guy Lucas comes along and he. He just has an opportunity for them. I mean, it's been a while since I, like, I watched it, like, as it came out, so I feel like you could probably better explain this.

All right, so here's what I took out of it. Okay? So Logan is the father in this story, right? He's got three kids, and he owns this big, massive company. And you kind of get that. The whole point of the show, actually, he's got four kids. So funny I said three, because really only three of them are, like, capable of maybe doing it. He actually has four kids. But the whole point of the show is called succession. It's this idea of, like, how are the kids are, like, jockeying to take over the company, Right? The whole thing is that, like, is he going to leave the company down to his kids? Right. That's kind of the thing. But then each kid just kind of isn't ready in their own way, right? And so he keeps thinking he will, and then he, like, pulls the rug out from under them, and he keeps it to himself, and he keeps doing this. And basically, at the end of this, you know, as the season went on, there was this other external character that came in, this Lucas guy that you were talking about.

And.

And initially they were kind of talking about, like, partnering or something as a way to help grow his company. And Logan wasn't, like, super hot on it, but then this Lucas guy behind the scenes was doing all this maneuvering to the point where he actually could overthrow Logan and take the company over at this point. Right. So things kind of like changed and migrated throughout the point of the series. And the thing about Logan is that he's this dude that just thinks he's completely like untouchable. Right, right. He's this, I mean he's just such an unlikable character. He's just this super arrogant, you know, dirtbag basically. But he thinks that he's the greatest thing that's ever been created. Nothing, you know, anyone that comes with a different opinion has no idea what they're talking about. And he knows everything. Right. And that's kind of, you know, and he's kind of stuck in his old ways. This, the company he owns is like this multimedia company. It's like TV news basically.

It's actually kind of a connection to almost like. And this fictional company has not but kind of like this old school guy for a long time. He's really hesitant to give in to new ideas and he's really hesitant to give control of situation over. And that's kind of like who he is. Right. And so he's got these kids, all these kids want to own the company because it's multi billion dollar company. And so he like kind of teases them along and stuff. That's kind of like a lot of the seasons. But the thing at the end of this, the thing that really stuck out to me was kind of how he shifted here. And this quote that I mentioned a minute ago, which was revolution is impossible until it's inevitable. Basically what that means, like from his point of view, it was impossible for anyone to take this company from him until all of a sudden it was inevitable for it to happen. Right. And when it became inevitable, his entire mindset shifted. He was like, okay, my company's now going to get taken from me. I got to figure out the best solution. I got to figure out how to like make the best of this and make it happen the right way. Right. And when I was like watching that, I don't know why I always think back to frickin mold stuff all the time, but I do. And so I'm like watching this thing, I'm like, this is basically like the path and the journey that a lot of, you know, our clients and just other people that are going through it, that they go on, right? They kind of start and they're at the beginning of where Logan was and they kind of think that all this stuff isn't real and they're kind of untouchable and you know, it's normal human nature, right? Like, when you're younger, right? You think nothing can hurt you. Then you get older, and all of a sudden you start realizing, maybe some stuff can hurt me, right? That kind of happens in, like, a faster sort of flow and cycle when you're dealing with your mold journey, right? Like, at the beginning, you're like, oh, this stuff isn't real. This can't be that big of a deal. I can't even see. That's like, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then things start happening and start paving the way to sort of change that mindset for you, right? So in the show, initially, this guy, this Lucas guy, reaches out to him to try to partner together, right? He's like, hey, I think that we can, like, do something that's really cool, right? And he's like, no, go f yourself. He cuss. He cusses all the time.

Yeah, that's his thing.

Yeah.

Catchphrase.

Yeah, his catchphrase is that. And. And so. But. But it's like things started to change a little bit, and he started to just at least kind of see what was going on. And I think that's sort of like the path that we go down a lot. First, we don't think that it's an issue. Then all of a sudden, we start not, you know, we start not feeling a certain, you know, the way that we want to, but still we think that it's impossible, and it's like, this can't happen. And, like, whatever. And then it just starts, you know, adding up, right? All of a sudden, you're feeling worse. You start going to see doctors. Doctors start coming to you, and they say, hey, you got these things going on. You got to fix this problem, right? At that point in the journey when you're like, okay, I realize that this is a thing that I need to at least think about. That's kind of the point in the show where this Lucas guy came to Logan and was like, hey, listen, why don't we partner on this thing? We could do some good work together, right? Like, that's kind of that connection, right? When you've got the doctor that's telling you or you're finding out that, oh, wait, there is a connection here. Like, there's something going on. We need to address this. That's kind of like that point in the arc of what's going on. But then a lot of people do what Logan did, and they're like, go f yourself. So they're like, I'm not sick. My house doesn't have Mold in it, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, all these things. And at that point, you know, they kind of backtrack a little bit, right? And that's kind of what happened to him some. He took his foot off the pedal, he backtracked a little bit. And then what happened? The Lucas guy, he basically regroups. He's like, all right, well, if this guy's not going to work with me, then I'm going to take this company over. Right? And so that's kind of like the symptoms and all the different things sort of adding up and adding up and adding up to the point where you not addressing it is no longer an option.

Right?

You can't not address this thing anymore. You can't not address the mold issue in your house. You can't not address what's going on in your body, because it's inevitable that it's going to take you down. Right? And that is essentially what Lucas did in this whole thing. He basically turned into mold. Like, in this scenario, Lucas turned into mold. He was like, all right, you don't think I'm. I'm a real threat. I'll show you what a real threat looks like. And then he went and he basically, like, imagine. Imagine Lucas is in a safe little nest area, right? And then. Or Logan is. And then Lucas goes and he rallies a bunch of other people to surround Logan where he is to the point where he has no escape, right? So what does that kind of look like? That looks like maybe. I don't know, in my mind, like, maybe mold growing behind the walls and under the floors in different areas and like, surrounding you in your space to the point where there's no escape, right? And it becomes completely inevitable to the point where you. You now can't do what you wanted to do. What you wanted to do was not really worry about it too much. What Logan wanted to do was figure out a way to get the company to his kids, but he wasn't in a big rush to do it. Right, Right. That's what he wanted to do. But then the timeline gets pushed up, the pressure gets put on. Right? And all of a sudden, you can't do what you want to do anymore. Right? That's off the table for Logan now. He can't do that anymore because you got Lucas over here that's pressing him from all sizes, basically, to take his company over. Right? That's the equivalent of you got these mold issues going on, and they're coming down on you. You got to do something about it. Right? So what we Maybe initially wanted to do from a mole perspective was not think it was a big deal or maybe we just wanted to like kind of surface clean something and get it out of the way so we don't have to think about it. We didn't want to do the detox stuff. We didn't want it. We just wanted our bodies to be fine and maybe we'll address it later. So we wanted to do. But eventually you can't do that anymore, right? And eventually you have to take action. And then that ties back to that original quote that revolution is impossible until it's inevitable. Right? Something is impossible until it's inevitable. That's kind of where we are, right? So I just kind of saw that and when I watched it and my mind went down this road a little bit and, and I think sometimes it's nice to just see things through a different perspective sometimes. Right? Like this, this isn't like a massive, like technical lesson or anything that we're talking about right now, right? I'm not telling you exactly where to find something. I'm not telling you any of that stuff. Right, right. We're just kind of talking through more of like a mindset, you know, and, and, and sort of understanding that at some point if you keep fighting this thing and you, and you keep assuming it's not a problem and you keep, you know, ignoring the signs and ignoring the advice and all of that stuff, well, you could end up, you know, Logan at the end had two options. He either sells the company to this guy because at that point.

That was the only way that he could get something out of it, or he kept fighting all the way to the end until his company was ripped away from him and he got nothing. Right? That's the equivalent of his health just completely deteriorating to the point of no return. Right? Because for him, his company is his life. So those are his two options. So all this stuff started adding up to the point where he's like, okay, it's inevitable this thing is going to happen. Right. I've got two, two paths here. I either do something about it, make the best out of this situation and get myself where I could, then maybe try something new later, or I go down with the ship and lose everything. Right? That's kind of where a lot of us get to. We're at this point, we have this decision. We're either going to commit to this mold thing or we're going to go down with the ship and the worst case scenario is going to happen. Right? And so you know what he Did. He sold the company and made the best of his situation and got a bunch of money and he'll go off and do whatever he's going to do next. And I didn't think I would ever, ever say this, but I think we can learn a lesson from Logan and I think we should be like him.

Oh my gosh.

At least for that piece of it. Don't be like him in any other.

Way except you're influencing people.

Except for that piece of it.

So.

Yeah, anyways, that was my 2 cents on what I was seeing. So I know there's only a couple people in here. I feel like we could not be so formal with the question asking stuff today.

So I don't know. Just going to pop. Mary's had her hand up for a while. Let's just have a chit chat with Mary. What do we think?

Awesome.

Let's do it.

Coming up. Maybe, Maybe.

Hey, how are you?

Hey, what's going on?

So, Brian, congratulations on becoming a father.

Oh, thank you.

Congratulations on your fabulous podcast.

Oh, I appreciate that too. Thank you.

I feel like I have been through the mold wringer a million times. I'm not exactly a newbie, but I am ready to sell the company. I. I don't know what else to do. Yeah, it's exactly like you said. You are in denial because mold really isn't recognized by mainstream doctors. Insurance, you know, whatever realm, it's not recognized. I had bought a new home or bought an older home, gutted it, added an addition, and it was, you know, builder of the year. It's pristine. This is a beautiful, beautiful home. And my health started going down. My kids health started going down. We were diagnosed with Lyme. We were treating that, you know, finally switched to a different doctor. He's saying, you have mold. And I'm like, no, I don't, I don't have mold. Yeah, you've got mold. I'm like, no, we don't have mold. Because there was nothing visible, nothing showing, nothing smelling, no major catastrophes. So it wasn't until we, we did agree to start some binders. We were doing prescription binders and we went to Florida for an extended period for, for three weeks. And when we came back, oh my God, within 24 hours we were like non functional. It was that unmasking thing where you get away and then you come back and then it smacks you in the face that you, your house is killing you.

That used to be one of the big ways that I would ask people like, hey, when was the last time you were on vacation. Like, think about that. Like that that line of questioning doesn't really work as well anymore because nobody goes anywhere anymore. But that was a big way to just go. Like, hey, did you. Were you gone for a long weekend? Like, how did you feel when you got back? Like, sometimes that helps people sort of put it in perspective.

Well, and we had been away and my daughter said, why is this time such a big difference? And I think because we were a little further down the path, we had started binders because we have. We've been away before, but not with this profound.

Realization that, oh my God, the house is really making us sick. So anyway.

It has.

An evil way to twist your brain so that you can't think. And I think it keeps people stuck in their houses and in denial in some weird way. I don't know what it is exactly.

But I mean, I've actually heard some doctors talk. And I don't know. I mean, I don't know a lot about the medical stuff, so let's be clear about that. But I talk to enough doctors where I get kind of the highlights on some things. But this one in particular, I've only heard a couple times, like, not as much, but this idea that like, mold's trying to survive. Right. And so it does things to you to make it so it will survive better. And so part of that is adjusting your cravings on what you want to eat. And part of that because if you eat certain things, it will feed it to grow easier and colonize easier. And part of it is addressing mindset and the way that you look at things and decisions that you make. Right. I don't know the full connection of that. And honestly, you know, I don't know how much of that really is and really is not happening.

Yeah, there's a. There's a threat of that with parasites, too. That parasites, if you become infected, that they have a way of controlling you that you're not unaware of.

Yeah, yeah.

But with more. It just. You can't find your way out of a paper bag. It is so debilitating.

So do you have a question or anything?

Well, when do you throw in the towel? When do you sell the company? How many remediations are enough? Because I've done quite a few and I feel worse. This last one was supposed to be the big hurrah. I had the mold dog come up from Florida. He alerted and hit on areas that we hadn't opened up, and then sure enough opened them up, there was mold. And now I'm Feeling worse.

Well, when do you throw the.

When do you throw the towel in?

It's a fair question, right. The thing that we have to understand is that every house is going to have something going on. So it's not so much of when do we throw in the towel to like leave the one house that we think has the problem. Right. Because this is just a systemic building problem. And so unfortunately people that are sensitive to it is something that we have to navigate now. I mean, there are times where like, yeah, maybe it just makes sense. Right. And we like talk about that a little bit. But I think, you know, if you had this big remediation done, I'd, you know, I did the. The last episode was kind of talking through some of the common issues and sort of the phases of remediation and the post testing process. I did an hour on that last episode, which I didn't think I was going to do. So there's like a lot in there to dive into, but I haven't heard that one. I would maybe like check into that because it sounds to me, I mean, just top line, I don't know everything, right. But like it sounds like if that maybe only one piece of the remediation was done. Right. So you kind of found behind specific walls and this and that. But like, were the H vac systems tested? Was the main just living spaces of the house tested? Do we know if there's still issues moving through the house? The big thing about remediation and the reason why you go on all these Facebook groups and ready to tell you to burn your house down because all this stuff doesn't work is because there's actually multiple phases to remediation. But most remediators only focus on one of them. They only focus on where like the wall, the ceiling, where the actual source of the problem was. The issue is the only way we're exposed to those sources is that they actually get out from behind those areas and get into our breathing space. That's how we're exposed to it. So if we think that we're just going to fix the wall or the ceiling and everything's going to be fine. Honestly, that thing behind the wall or the ceiling wasn't directly impacting you, it was indirectly impacting you. Right. So you take that out, but then all of the byproduct and the spores and toxins and whatever else came out from it, that's that moved out into the living space and potentially into the air conditioning system. That's what was impacting you. So if the Focus of the remediation was all on kind of like phase one portion of it, which was just getting rid of the source. But then we didn't actually address like cleaning the whole house in a very, you know, systematic way and understanding the impact of the air conditioning systems. And do they need to be cleaned? Do they need to be replaced? Then there might be more things that have to happen, and that might be why you're feeling the way that you are. Right. I don't know. But that's.

Yeah. Actually, it has been sort of piecemealed by different specialists. We had to grind out mortar on the original part of the house and the brick to get to failing windowsill, yada, yada. And then I did go up in the attic and all the mortar dust is in my freaking attic. I'm like, oh my God, this is going to contaminate the H vac upstairs. But.

I have two different units. One we. We haven't used in a couple of years. When we first knew we were sick, we just turned it off.

Because it was cleaned. It was, you know, the guy who wrote the code for New York City came down and did it as a favor and turned it on and we had to shut it off immediately. The upstairs unit had been fine, but then, yeah, we remediated this brick wall, ground out all this mortar, and it never occurred to me to seal the attic vents, you know, on the side of the house by the roof. Never occurred to me that all that mortar dust was going to come into my attic and I had to pay a cleaning crew to come in and clean the attic.

Yeah, well, the thing is, is that cleaning crew is not cleaning it in a way that's actually going to handle the fine particle and stuff that's moving around. So what it sounds like to me is you've done. You've obviously taken steps, but there are things that just haven't happened yet. And so at that point, it's not a surprise that you're not necessarily notice feeling worse. Yeah. When you're there and a lot of times when you do remediation and you and you stir stuff up, it actually does get worse before it gets better. Right. Like there are. And. Thanks, Mary. We're gonna. We're gonna take Kira up here next in a second because I know that she wanted to chat.

So there's. I. I've heard this happen with clients before too. They'll be working with some, like, Instagram, you know, mole consultant who's never actually inspected a house before. They just talk about it because they were sick themselves, which is interesting. But anyways, they're like, hey, you know, we had remediation done. And then that person, that mold personality, it's like, okay, go do an ermie right now. But the problem is that the house hadn't been cleaned yet. Like, they just handled the source area and then the ermi comes back and it's way worse. And then they go, the remediation. Like, you failed, you did all this wrong, blah, blah, blah. No, they didn't. They just weren't done yet. Like, so you can't. You can't do that earlier, right? And then think that it's. It's going to look great and that. So that story is just about, like, when you're doing remediation, you're stirring stuff up. It's, you know, you contain things for a reason. But there's pathways, there's ways that this stuff gets out, right? Containments help. They're not 100%. We have to know that they're not 100%. People walk in and out of the containment doors, right? The containments themselves are actually negative pressurized, which means they're sucking air into the containment. Where's that air coming from? It's coming from behind the other walls in the house. It's coming from the attic. It's coming from the crawl space. You're changing the airflow of the house. There's other things that are being stirred up and moved around during remediation. Even if you're only remediating one area in your house. That's why cleaning your whole house is so important. Even afterwards, right? Even if you're only doing one or two areas, you should be doing a full house cleanse because you're disturbing so much and aerosolizing so much throughout the process. Right? So, yeah, hopefully that helps. I saw Kira popped in here. I don't know if you want to raise your hand up, Kira, if you wanted to talk. I thought I saw a question come from you somewhere, but if not, that's okay.

While we look at that, I'm going to. I also put out on stories yesterday.

Just like a call for different questions and stuff. So I'm going to try to pull those up.

Although I see Kira with her hand raised.

Oh, you do? Okay, good. Because I can't find the questions off the top of my head. So that works. That works. All right, here we go.

So Kira's coming up here in a second.

Kira, what's up?

Hi, you guys.

Hey, what's going on?

So this is my first clubhouse, actually speaking. So if I'm doing it wrong, just tell me.

Okay.

Just talk. If you know how to talk, you're doing it right.

Well, you know, I know how to talk. Tom is going to beat me to death with one of those petri dishes if I tell him one more time that mold is like a smoke back. A smokestack in a factory, Ryan.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I used your analogy about that a whole bunch of times. A whole bunch of times.

Good. I say it a whole bunch of times every day. So I'm glad.

It actually really is helpful. I keep talking about how what Mary was just talking about in terms of fragments and spore, like not just spores, but fragments and pieces. And I think it's a helpful thing on mold tests to be able to convince your spouse that things are still a problem or a problem in certain. Certain areas if there's fragments still seen.

Yeah, I mean, that's part of it. Right. The kind of what I was saying is like the exposure isn't the thing behind the wall. Like, yeah, that's the factory, but your face isn't behind the wall. Right. The exposure is what's getting put off of those things that are growing behind the walls. So you have to know that piece. If you don't know that piece, then it's still going to be there. Right? You'll still be exposed to stuff.

Yeah.

And I do have a question, but I just kind of also want to first give Mary a little encouragement because I'm one of the people like Mary who's done this in pieces.

And it is more challenging. It's harder. We started actually with a washing machine leak in the garage that had happened earlier, like many years earlier. And I just kept saying, because I had done a little coaching session with my friend Scott, who has the Better Health Guy podcast.

Yeah.

And he kept saying, mold, mold, mold. So I kept saying to Tom, I'm wheezing and you know, I feel like I'm going to die tonight. And is there mold in the house? No, no, no. And then one day I left, I was at Best Buy with my iPad getting it for fixed, and he texted me three little words. I found mold. And it was Christmas Eve. And. And so that actually started it. And it started with a, an old washing machine leaking the garage that had bled through to the back of the kitchen cabinets that we didn't realize until we started that piece. So it just turned out to be impossible to do this all at once because we then decided to pull up the carpets, which, you know, you couldn't. That nothing, smelled nothing, looked bad, but they were old. And then by the time we thought, oh, maybe we should have just left this, we had three, you know, subfloors. One was painted purple, one was green, one was white. We had no kitchen cabinets underneath the counter. And then we sort of had to stay. And then we discovered one thing after the next. So.

I think, actually what would be a really interesting podcast talk, I mean, it's not relevant to me, but I think would be really interesting at some point, which is not my question, is what does a family do? What does a person do? What does a couple do? If the remediations are like 15 different things over time and it's not feasible to move everything out, contain things, do the remediation, wipe everything down, do the deep cleanse, and then move things back in, because then there will be 15 more things in different areas.

Yeah.

So I think that'd be a really interesting podcast at some point.

Yeah. I mean, the short answer is I feel like you probably wait on doing the full mega cleanse until you're done with everything. Honestly, you could do like many versions of the cleaning in between. But, you know, to your point, you're just gonna. There's still gonna be other things going on. Right. So why go through the whole thing? And you just have to know in your mind that we're not addressing this all at once. Right, Right. So if you think when you're doing it in phases that you're gonna start noticing significant differences, you probably aren't.

Yeah.

Right. But you're taking steps to get there. So you have to reframe in your mind what the process is, what the timeline is, and what the expectation is and how you're doing it. That's a short answer.

That's. That's a good answer.

So I do have a question, though.

Yeah.

I mean, other than the one that I. That I asked you last night or yesterday, a couple days ago, that you. Thank you, you answered, which is relevant to me because we have one bathroom and we're about to do something to it.

My question is.

I wonder if you could speak a little bit, if you feel equipped to, about. The forks are really common molds that show up on every ermie. That can be an indication of a problem, even if they're not flagged as, oh, my God, you have 45 spores of fumigatas. And the reason I'm saying this as it relates to you and your work is just for sort of interest, because I think you're brilliant. And this was a phenomenal tool, the ERMI code. I was really, really, really excited to see you come out with it.

Yay. Thanks.

Yay. You're welcome. Thank you. I think I actually emailed my ermicode to about six people and said, you must do this. You must do this.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

And so I did mine on our last ermi, which was almost. Which was a year and a half ago, two Augusts ago. And because I was in Jill's group and she sort of introduced me to you, and also the IP that she uses. We've been doing swab testing more than just Ermes, because, you know, we've done 16 things and they're hella expensive. Right. So that, I mean, I did six of them before I discovered that there was cheaper alternatives. You know, if you. If I was working with somebody who had access to that and introduced me to people who could do that. So I did mine.

From the results that were not current anymore.

And so. But I didn't. And I didn't redo it because what I was finding was in my current swab testing, all the Hertz Me molds, all the Shoemaker molds, the really dangerous stuff is all gone from finally, as of last June, when we took off the bottom two feet of one of our living room walls where the siding had been nailed down. But I'm trying to use Oreo, Basidium clad 1, Penicillium brevi, Penicillium crystogenum. I'm trying to use the ones that are like, you know, some of them are on that right side of indoor molds, and some are not, but they're not the ones that everybody freaks out at the quantities of and the fragments of the quantities of as an indicator of where we're going and how better we're getting. And it would be great. I actually haven't heard anybody talk about that.

And I was actually on Shoemaker's Mold Congress. Like they did a SERS conference recently, and I went to his two years ago online. And so when I went two years ago, I really wanted people to talk about actinomyces, which I think you might know, because I asked you that one question one time and they didn't. But this time I went on again just to hear about SIRS stuff. And I was texting with Michael Schronson. He had, you know, he started his podcast again, and I asked him to address this as well.

Because we're not finding. And it's just not a commonly talked about topic. I don't Think. But we're not finding, you know, any more ketomium or eulogladium or stachybotrys because we finally did the. We finally. It was a really hard diagnostic thing.

Because it was the other end of a wall that wasn't nailed down. The biggest problem was in the nail, the wall. The end of the wall that was nailed down, not the end of the wall that wasn't. So it was hard, but now I'm trying to chase feeling less itchy, less irritated, less congested, which are my only remaining symptoms by the quantities of things I haven't cleaned, or areas that are problematic based on Hermes that have those four molds. And that's why I haven't really redone my ERMI code, even though I love little geeky tests like that. And I want to redo your test because I love it, but I don't think it's going to show up with most of the major molds anymore. So that's a long, long setup. Sorry, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah.

I mean, I think.

I talked about this and I talked about this on the last episode. I even. I talked about kind of my post testing framework and where the importance of individual species on an army ranks and there's three things, and it ranks as third. Right. There are other things that are more important. And I think one of the things with Ermes that people get hung up on is because it's a test you could do on your own. Right. It's easy to do. You kind of mentioned this, right. That we do these. I was just talking to a client yesterday about it. She did like eight of them across her house.

Huh.

I don't think that's necessary. Right. Because we have to understand, like, what the goal and the purpose of an army really is and where its weaknesses are. Right. An ERMI is showing what is out in the main circulating airflow space that's settled onto surfaces. So it's not telling you where the source is.

Right.

And your airflow patterns move throughout the house, you know, so just because you pick something up, let's say in your master bedroom, doesn't mean that the source was necessarily in your master bedroom. It was in your H Vac system. Maybe it was in the room next door and it pushed through for some reason. Right. There's like, other ways that it gets into other rooms. And so I actually really try to not emphasize the mold species a lot because I think it could lead us down this road where you're never going to have these things. Gone, they're never going to be gone. You're never going to have a urmy that's going to have zero on all this stuff. And if that's the measurements that we're trying to go down, we're using that as the. This is how I finally know we're effective. You're never going to get there. It's just, you're just never going to win. And so I think instead of looking at particular molds, obviously if you're doing remediation, you want the overall loads to go down. But I don't think that there's specific target numbers necessarily, because every person is also different too, to come out and say, well, we need to get this type of mold to this number. Right? Well, for you maybe that's okay, but maybe for Rachel, who's over here, maybe she was exposed when she was younger to a particular species of something and her body reacts to that differently and sees that and it has a massive response, more of an autoimmune response than maybe you do to that particular type of mold, right. So I think it's really hard to do it that way. The core is to under is to figure out where the sources are and make sure that the factories are gone. That's the biggest, biggest thing thing. Like, and you know, you validate that through surface level testing. You're not validating that through Hermes, right? So if the walls opened up, you're doing a swab test on the framing, you know, you're doing things that are more specific to where the growth issue was. Then the second most important thing is the biotoxin piece, right? Biotoxins are equal opportunity destroyers, right? They, you know, and so it doesn't matter if you're sensitive or you're not, they're literally a biochemical toxin. That's a problem, right? And so then that's kind of like the next level of improvement importance. And then after that is the fragment is the actual fragment piece. Because if you've gotten rid of the sources, so, you know, there's no more factories and then, you know, there's no toxins in the house. So now you don't have the biotoxin piece, so now all you're dealing with is the fragment piece that's left over those. And you know, if they're not carrying the toxin, if you've tested for that and you know it's not there and it's not actively growing somewhere, then that's just sort of residual, right? And so to think that that's ever Going to be zero. We live in a, we live in a world where this stuff exists. Right. So like that's the piece, but for some, for a lot of. Because people use ERMI at the front end as like a diagnostic to understand like, well, how bad is everything? And that's really what ERMI code is meant for. ERMI code isn't meant to come back and keep using it and to see if remediation is working. It's really meant.

Oh, I'm glad you said that because I was going to actually do again.

Yeah, I mean it's actually meant as your initial diagnostic because what it tells you is how many sources that we found on average in a house like that. Right. So all the data behind ermicode, we excluded all post inspection testing out of it. Okay. It was only initial level testing because after a post things would be lower, it would dramatically skew that the other direction. Right. So we, we took all that out. But the ERMI at the front end is all about understanding top line screening tests. What am I dealing with, what's going on. Right. And then, then you get in and figure out where the sources are and stuff. So then to come around on the back end and use it for a different purpose, which is, you know, is, is this source gone? That's not what it's meant for. Right. And so I know, you know, individual species and depending on, you know what mole consultant you're talking about, they get super into the science of individual species, species and they grow on this material and this and that and blah, blah, blah. Honestly, the ultimate goal here, get the sources out and clean up the mess the source has made. And let's not get super hung up on the chemistry of individual molds and the type of material they grow on. Because if we go down that road, technically mold can't grow on metal. But do you know how many times I see mold growing on the metal housing inside of air conditioning systems? All the time. Because you're not in a controlled laboratory environment. There's other elements in that space. There's dust, there's particle, there's stuff settling on the metal. Right. So it's not technically growing on the metal, but it's growing on some of the other organic material that's floating around. You're no longer in this controlled laboratory environment. And so then a lot of those things have to go out of the window. You can't think of it that way anymore. And that's kind of, that's kind of the challenge when you're dealing with, you know when you're looking kind of species to species and things like that. So, I mean, I think it's okay if you, you know, if you want to kind of see progress and how things are going, but I wouldn't necessarily be chasing like, well, this species is higher right here. There's got to be a problem right here in this vicinity. I don't really think it works that way. I think it's a larger sort of understanding of just general flow and direction and impact of stuff and how it works like that. So hopefully, hopefully that helps to answer that.

So we're getting to the pointer. I actually have to wrap up here pretty quick, so thank you guys for coming in and participating and listening and joining and everything. It was nice to chat with you guys and for everyone listening on the replay. So every Wednesday, 9am Pacific, this is when the podcast is recording from now on. All right. So if you guys want to be a part of it, you can just like Mary and Kira were. You just come into the clubhouse and you're there. So that is. That's what I got for you guys. So, Rachel, any. Any final words on anything before I. Before I close it up here?

Yeah, just real quick. We were at the office, and one of.

One of my co workers found our mold finders radio starter kit, and I just hadn't told her about it, and she was like, how have you been hiding this for me? This is awesome. So if you. If you love the podcast, you should definitely go grab that@moldfinders radio.com it's basically like our best hits on there, and I feel like we'll keep adding to it and updating it as we start doing these live podcasts, but definitely go check that out.

Yeah. So that. That starter kit. Thank you for. I haven't even thought about it in a while either. I think we updated it like a. Maybe like a month ago. I went in.

We did.

Yeah.

But basically, I mean, we have 104 or five. I don't know how many episodes are. There's over 100 of them. It's a lot. Right. So what. What we did in this is that I went through and basically picked out like the three, four or five best episodes in each sort of topic set. So inspection, remediation, army testing, health, like, all that stuff. So I kind of picked out the ones that we thought were the best ones and stuck them there. So if you're trying to just get started and figure out where you're starting before you dive into listening to me ramble for, I don't know. What's 104 episodes in time? I don't know, like 80 hours. Before you listen to that, you can start, you can start on these guys, and you can kind of, kind of get the basics there. So anyways, that's. That's what we got going on. Thanks, everyone, for joining. We will talk to you guys next week.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.