Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. And this is the
Speaker 1: leeches episode that we've all been waiting for for about
Speaker 1: a million years. Yeah, this is I love this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff though, because there's the general you know, stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, classic bug slash animal kind of show. Okay,
Speaker 1: got it, but then you got your whole second half
Speaker 1: of the episode, which is super interesting. Yep. I mean
Speaker 1: the other stuff is interesting too, but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a I know, it's a
Speaker 1: basically a perfect stuff you should Know episode. Dave Ruce
Speaker 1: called it a S Y s K softball as if too,
Speaker 1: as if to say that he couldn't have gotten it wrong.
Speaker 1: It was just too great of a stuff you should
Speaker 1: know topic. Yeah, he did a great job, though, always does.
Speaker 1: He did great Yep. So we're talking leeches, and I
Speaker 1: think Chuck this actually this episode was inspired by our
Speaker 1: dentistry episode where we talked about using medical leeches for
Speaker 1: dentistry all the way up until like the nineteen teens.
Speaker 1: I think leeches on the gums not a pleasant thought, no,
Speaker 1: And it sounds bonkers and wacky um and repulsive, but
Speaker 1: they have come back into fashion in some medical circles,
Speaker 1: and not just like new ag circles, like actual medical circles.
Speaker 1: So it's like you said, we're gonna make this kind
Speaker 1: of a two parter in a one one episode, let's
Speaker 1: do it. So we're talking leeches, and we should probably
Speaker 1: start with leech biology. And if you want to know
Speaker 1: what a leech is, uh is cousin to, you need
Speaker 1: look no further than a few inches underground and some
Speaker 1: fertile soil at our friend the earthworm, which was another
Speaker 1: great stuff you should know episode. Yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: really good one. But yeah, if you want to get
Speaker 1: up close and look at a leech, which you probably
Speaker 1: are not prone to do, uh, they are ringed, just
Speaker 1: like our little friends the earthworm. They have thirty two
Speaker 1: segments in their little gross looking bodies and they inch
Speaker 1: along like worms stew as well. They have you know,
Speaker 1: a head sucker up at the front and a sucker
Speaker 1: in the rear. No jokes necessary there, Yeah, oral an
Speaker 1: anal is it really called the anal sucker. It's also
Speaker 1: called the anterior imposterior sucker too, and or the party
Speaker 1: in the this is in the front, party in the rear. Sure,
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell the day was joking. I figured it
Speaker 1: was called an anal sucker, but uh yeah, they just
Speaker 1: inch along just like an inch worm or a worm
Speaker 1: might by expanding and contracting and using those suckers. That's right. Um.
Speaker 1: I saw that the the oral sucker, the the anterior sucker,
Speaker 1: was the one that's typically used for feeding, and that
Speaker 1: the sucker on the rear is the one that you
Speaker 1: us to help propel the leech forward. Um. I didn't
Speaker 1: see definitively that it can't feed on the rear anal sucker,
Speaker 1: but um, it's possible it can't. I did see that
Speaker 1: it's primarily used for locomotion, So whatever science writer wrote
Speaker 1: that was hedging their bets. Yeah. The other thing I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting was land leeches, which we're not going
Speaker 1: to talk too much about because you know, most of
Speaker 1: the leeches that we're acquainted with you will find in
Speaker 1: the water. But land leeches do a a tick like thing,
Speaker 1: and they're both bloodsuckers. Like remember how ticks will attach
Speaker 1: to a plant and then just like start snapping their
Speaker 1: little lobster claws everywhere hoping something walks by. Yeah, they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: come get me somebody. The land leach does a similar
Speaker 1: thing and attaches the rear sucker to a branch or
Speaker 1: a leaf or something and then just sort of does
Speaker 1: a little shimmy shake with her head, hoping that something
Speaker 1: will walk by so it can just stick its little
Speaker 1: face into it. It's just there in chimmys and it's like,
Speaker 1: you'd like this, huh, you'd like that, Come get it.
Speaker 1: And they're both bloodsuckers, and they both do very desperate
Speaker 1: things to attach to a body. I know they also
Speaker 1: un I know tis Yeah, I know. Ticks and leeches
Speaker 1: both also share the trait of um being able to
Speaker 1: um detect c O two as a way to detect prey,
Speaker 1: at least the land leeches too. So yeah, that definitely
Speaker 1: stuck out to me as well. UM. And I feel
Speaker 1: like there's some really great myths out there on the
Speaker 1: Internet that we're gonna get to just um crush, crumble
Speaker 1: myth crushers. Yeah, that's perfect myth. We're gonna crush those myths, um.
Speaker 1: And one of them is that leeches have thirty two brains,
Speaker 1: which is definitively false. No, they have thirty two body segments.
Speaker 1: And you will see people on the internet that say
Speaker 1: they have a brain in each segment, but they don't.
Speaker 1: They have to brains, one up front and one in
Speaker 1: the back, and like a lot of little critters that
Speaker 1: can be cut off and still function. You can cut
Speaker 1: their brain off and they can survive and do quite well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reason that people say thirty two brains, by the way,
Speaker 1: that's what Google says. If you just type in leech brain,
Speaker 1: it serves you up leech has thirty two brains. There's ganglia,
Speaker 1: which are basically relay stations between these two brains in
Speaker 1: each of the segment, and those segments can those ganglia
Speaker 1: can make each segment function autonomously and be responsible for
Speaker 1: some other stuff. So that's why people are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: each one's a brain, but it's it's really not. It's
Speaker 1: not each a brain. It's just kind of like an extended,
Speaker 1: stretched out segmented brain. Yeah, but they're notren't thirty two
Speaker 1: ganglia either, right, The ones on each end are kind
Speaker 1: of fused together, so there's twenty one total. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's what I saw. See that the computers are all wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Google's got it wrong again. It's the computer, right. Sure,
Speaker 1: it sounds like, Wow, I'm really getting old. The computer
Speaker 1: is wrong. Yeah, it's you sound like somebody who like
Speaker 1: types under the keyboard like this, right, computers wrong? Remember
Speaker 1: what I said to you, like fourteen years ago before
Speaker 1: we were even podcast hos, I remember what I say.
Speaker 1: You pay me the high compliment of saying that when
Speaker 1: I type, I type very loudly, especially when I'm into it,
Speaker 1: that it sounds like the loneous monk away. I can't
Speaker 1: believe you remember that. Oh yeah, it was a very
Speaker 1: high compliment as far as I took it, like I
Speaker 1: had a tattooed on my arm bit, my inner arm bit,
Speaker 1: and I made you me get the same type. She's like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense, but I love you. Uh so.
Speaker 1: Leech species are about six to seven hundred of them,
Speaker 1: and they generally fall into three categories depending on what
Speaker 1: they eat. Um because you know, we know they're blood suckers,
Speaker 1: but not all of them are exclusively blood suckers. No,
Speaker 1: And if they're blood suckers, they are called two of
Speaker 1: the greatest words. Take your pick, uh sanguivorous or hamado
Speaker 1: fadgis either way, it means that they subsist on blood.
Speaker 1: They're not. They don't want any of your skin or
Speaker 1: your flesh, or your muscles or great steak. They just
Speaker 1: want the blood. But yeah, like you said, not all
Speaker 1: of them are are blood suckers. There's some called worm
Speaker 1: leeches that eat an entire invertebrates, very very small invertebrates.
Speaker 1: But they they don't they don't really care about the
Speaker 1: blood or else they're they're not just interested in the blood.
Speaker 1: But most leeches, as far as we as as we
Speaker 1: think of leeches, are sanguivorous. Yeah, but the other two
Speaker 1: categories are pretty horrifying. And how they get their blood
Speaker 1: out It's like one sounds really bad and then the
Speaker 1: next one doesn't sound much better. Kind of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: The jawed leeches the one that we're most uh commonly,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're when you're watching stand by me
Speaker 1: and poor little Will wheat and gets a leech on
Speaker 1: his pp Which, now that we've seen that, and now
Speaker 1: that I should say, now that we've researched this, they
Speaker 1: got it so wrong. Those kids really did it wrong
Speaker 1: when they remove the leeches, Oh for sure, and it's
Speaker 1: probably unlikely that that leech would have made his way
Speaker 1: to its pp that quickly. Yeah, you never know. I
Speaker 1: heard they do like kind of a warm, secluded area
Speaker 1: to do their work. Will Eaton used to listen to
Speaker 1: the show. I wonder I doubt if he still does.
Speaker 1: Oh shout out to two thousand ten. Will He's like,
Speaker 1: quit talking about my BP. But that's the jawed leech,
Speaker 1: the one that you know, the one that's kind of
Speaker 1: the most common and most familiar with. And it's we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about medicinal leeches later. That's what they use there.
Speaker 1: But these things will feed on almost anything that they
Speaker 1: can latch onto that has blood. Um, mammals, frogs, birds, fish,
Speaker 1: basically anything that can get a hold of that has
Speaker 1: blood it will latch onto. They strongly prefer mammals, though
Speaker 1: the rest of this stuff is just kind of junk
Speaker 1: food basically formed from where I can tell. Can we
Speaker 1: talk just for a second about how the jawed leeches, um,
Speaker 1: how they do their thing. Yeah, with those little razor
Speaker 1: sharp teeth, let's do it. It's scary. So they have
Speaker 1: like if you look at a picture of a jawed
Speaker 1: leech mouth, everybody says it looks like a Mercedes emblem,
Speaker 1: and and it does. There's really no better way to
Speaker 1: put it. But if you zoom in closer, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of little teeth on there right called denticles, and
Speaker 1: they act as like circular saws. So like the leech
Speaker 1: itself starts making this kind of sucking motion or inhale
Speaker 1: exhale really quickly and creates us like suction within its
Speaker 1: body cavity. So when it's when it puts its lips
Speaker 1: on you, it actually creates suction. And then when it
Speaker 1: uses those little denticles that act as like little circular saws,
Speaker 1: it just keeps sawing deeper and deeper into your skin,
Speaker 1: finally reaching a blood vessel. When it strikes gold, red gold,
Speaker 1: which you and I would call blood, it just sucks
Speaker 1: out into the leach because it's created a vacuum pump. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love this. Where did you get this, uh
Speaker 1: that that you sent? Do you remember? I think pure
Speaker 1: side of the Day. I don't remember I wrote down
Speaker 1: everything else, but this might be the paraside of the
Speaker 1: day site because it sounds like like this one part
Speaker 1: sounds like it was written by a Midwestern exterminator. When
Speaker 1: they're talking about anything basically can attach to anything like sandpaper, glass, paper, velcrow,
Speaker 1: fine wire, plastic, wicker work, fabric. Yeah, just like lists
Speaker 1: all these weird things out that I guess that they've
Speaker 1: put a leech on and it's stuck to. That was
Speaker 1: a great Midwestern impression. By the way, it says even
Speaker 1: vertically positioned surfaces coated with vasoline are no major problem
Speaker 1: for a leech to climb. Uh. The deal with these
Speaker 1: teetho is that they're so sharp that it's more scalpel
Speaker 1: like in the I mean, a leech bike can hurt
Speaker 1: mainly in land leeches, but it's not. When you hear
Speaker 1: like razor teeth, you think it would be super painful.
Speaker 1: But they're so sharp that they really don't hurt that bad. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and let's crumble another myth here. You want to sure
Speaker 1: leech saliva contains anesthetic myth or not? Uh? By the way,
Speaker 1: I like that, we're myth crumblers now instead of crushers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, I like crumbler better. Okay, cool, Um, that
Speaker 1: is a myth. Awesome, Yes, another myth crumbled boom. There's
Speaker 1: a TV show in there, I think, I think so.
Speaker 1: It's very graphics heavy, like whenever we do the myth,
Speaker 1: it'll just crumble away. Look a cookie. Oh that's a great,
Speaker 1: that's great, but it will use it as a wipe
Speaker 1: from one scene to the other. You and your wipes,
Speaker 1: I can't wait. Go ahead and say it, Star White
Speaker 1: Star wipe, the king of all wipes. Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: crumble wipe, we really might be onto something. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: there is no I mean you can find textbooks that
Speaker 1: that say that too, right, Yeah, it's it's all over
Speaker 1: the place. There's a lot of misinformation about leeches, it
Speaker 1: turns out, but that is one that and they do
Speaker 1: have all sorts of cool stuff in their saliva um
Speaker 1: that are amazing. They do amazing things, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about those, but those are not Uh. Anesthetic is
Speaker 1: not one of them. It's just that for the jawed leeches,
Speaker 1: there there little semi circular denticals that they use as
Speaker 1: circular saws are so sharp and there's they go so
Speaker 1: um such a what's the word was the opposite of deep?
Speaker 1: Oh so shallow into your skin that you you might
Speaker 1: not feel them being there. That's what it is, right,
Speaker 1: opposite a deep. They just can't pick one, uh, there's
Speaker 1: also the jaw less leech. Was the other kind, which
Speaker 1: includes the giant amazon leach, which can grow to what
Speaker 1: like eighteen Yeah, look up a picture of these things.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's horrifying. How how long think about it?
Speaker 1: They say that your wrist to your elbow is the
Speaker 1: same length as your foot. Have you ever heard that?
Speaker 1: I haven't, but I'm looking and there's no way my
Speaker 1: foot smaller than that. That's I think that's an optical illusion,
Speaker 1: is it really? Let's just say it is. So I've got, like,
Speaker 1: I wear size eleven, and I could see that being
Speaker 1: that that would mean that a leech is actually almost
Speaker 1: one and a half times the length. One of those
Speaker 1: leeches is one and a half times the length of
Speaker 1: the distance from my wrist to my elbow. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine having one of those on you? Not on me?
Speaker 1: But when you look up photos of the giant amazon leach,
Speaker 1: all you see your pictures of people with them, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I put it on my arm to show you how
Speaker 1: big it is. It's yeah, it's frightening. Those are the
Speaker 1: same people who seek out insects on the Schmidt stinging
Speaker 1: pain index cycle. Uh, but this one, you know, I
Speaker 1: said there were two different, equally horrifying ways in which
Speaker 1: they can draw blood. This one doesn't have the circular
Speaker 1: salt teeth. It has a hypodermic needle, basically a proboscis
Speaker 1: that it sticks into your body and draws it out,
Speaker 1: just like you would drawing blood. Yep, which I don't
Speaker 1: know which is worse, the denticles, the three dentical saws,
Speaker 1: or proboscis coming out of a leech. Can we take
Speaker 1: a break and think about it. Yeah, let's all right,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. M h. What's your result? Which
Speaker 1: is worse? I've decided I don't have to choose. I
Speaker 1: think they're both terrible and awful, and I don't want
Speaker 1: either one of them happening to me or anyone love
Speaker 1: or care about. Oh thank you? Am I in that
Speaker 1: group that includes you, Buddy, okay, Jerry, Jerry of course? Sure, Dave, yes,
Speaker 1: Dave too? Who else you got? What about the other? Dave? Sure?
Speaker 1: Dave Kustin, M I'm sorry, Dave Kuston, sure for sure.
Speaker 1: Olivia Julia Layton grab grab sir Frank chair. Oh yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: of course. Remember when he used to have our regular
Speaker 1: guest producers just float in and out. There's Matt Noel
Speaker 1: care about them too, don't want leeches on them either.
Speaker 1: Who else guests produced us? I don't know. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are people out there that actually know this though.
Speaker 1: My friend I forgot to say something at the top
Speaker 1: of this episode, and I wonder if you can indulge
Speaker 1: me on a tangent of epic proportions. Yes, my sweet
Speaker 1: niece Mila, I think I've told you before. She's gotten
Speaker 1: some parts of movies. The big one, her first big
Speaker 1: one where she's like one of the main characters, is
Speaker 1: coming out February on Hulu. It's huge. It's a big
Speaker 1: twentieth Century Fox production called No Exit. It will be
Speaker 1: out on Hulu on February. She does. I saw the trailer.
Speaker 1: She gave me chills. She plays a kidnapped young girl
Speaker 1: who is just terrified and has to be rescued by
Speaker 1: a slightly older girl, Havannah Rose Lou. Wow, that's super exciting.
Speaker 1: It is very exciting. We're all very proud, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure everybody knew about it in case
Speaker 1: you wanted to see it in a cash calumar right,
Speaker 1: yeah's rolling in it. She couldn't even drive. She's got
Speaker 1: like a whole garage full of cars already. Wow, that
Speaker 1: is super cool. That is awesome. Uh, my daughter is
Speaker 1: funny and fun but like she can't act up. Tried
Speaker 1: to see if she could. She can't. It takes a
Speaker 1: lot more than personnel city. Like, you've got to really
Speaker 1: have talent. It's absolutely true. It's like really tough for
Speaker 1: an adult to watch a child actor most of the time.
Speaker 1: If she does superbly well, I mean she's well, that's
Speaker 1: what I was saying. We're all really really proud of her.
Speaker 1: She does like actual great work in this movie. So
Speaker 1: way to go, Mila, Way to go Milan. Uh, to
Speaker 1: me a text when that's out so we can watch it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I will. I'll send you the trailer too, all right,
Speaker 1: So back to leeches. Oh yeah, definitely sending the trailer.
Speaker 1: Um they are. I mean, we have fossils of leeches
Speaker 1: from four million years ago, and they do it seems
Speaker 1: like they can see better when they're younger. They do
Speaker 1: have what's called simple eyes where they can kind of
Speaker 1: see blurry, shadowy, fuzzy things. Uh, and the young uns
Speaker 1: kind of rely on that. But I think when they
Speaker 1: get older, I guess their eyesight either fails or they
Speaker 1: just get so good at sensing vibration that they don't
Speaker 1: really need those eyes. Yeah, I read that it's the latter.
Speaker 1: That they they're so good at sensing vibrations. They have
Speaker 1: little hairs on their bodies that act as century organs
Speaker 1: so that they can they can detect like movement in
Speaker 1: the water. And I'll tell you what, I can really
Speaker 1: relate to leeches because after I saw my niece Mila
Speaker 1: and the trailer for No Exit coming out February, the
Speaker 1: hairs on my arm we're standing on and I could
Speaker 1: have detected vibrations in water with those things. That is
Speaker 1: a Hodgemen level plug. Thank you. It's good. Leeches. No, no no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't need Leeches are amazing swimmers. Uh. They can
Speaker 1: kind of inch along in the water very definitely. And
Speaker 1: then when they hit your skin, they're gonna probably not
Speaker 1: go towards your bits, but they will probably hit you
Speaker 1: around the ankles or the shins or someplace and try
Speaker 1: and do their thing down there. Because it's thin skin,
Speaker 1: they have less to deal with. Um. So one of
Speaker 1: the things we said that there um there, they're saliva
Speaker 1: really does have some pretty neat compounds in it, and
Speaker 1: like things that science is just now you know that
Speaker 1: whole arrogance of science that science went through after it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, all this is just witchcraft and folk magic.
Speaker 1: We can't be associated with this, and they turn their
Speaker 1: backs on some like legitimately good stuff. Leeches was one
Speaker 1: of them, and they're just now as we'll talk about
Speaker 1: coming back around to like really looking into leeches, because
Speaker 1: they're kind of a medical marvel gift from nature itself.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because in its saliva it
Speaker 1: contains a bunch of chemicals, not the least of which
Speaker 1: is called I believe here you didn't you think I'm
Speaker 1: pronouncing that correctly. That sounds right, I'm thinking here, you didn't.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's a and we'll talk about it more
Speaker 1: in depth in a minute. But it is pretty amazing
Speaker 1: that this thing that allows them just to feed better
Speaker 1: because it thins the blood and it doesn't coagulate and
Speaker 1: it just gives them dinner. It's pretty amazing that it
Speaker 1: actually has like legitimate medical properties. Yeah, because it's so
Speaker 1: powerful when that leech and injects some of its saliva
Speaker 1: containing here you didn't in it um, like your blood
Speaker 1: starts flowing. And one of the things you'll find is
Speaker 1: that if you get a leech bite, once that leech
Speaker 1: is gone, whether you get it off of yourself or
Speaker 1: it fills up and wanders off, you're gonna still keep
Speaker 1: bleeding for up to ten hours afterward because that here
Speaker 1: it in is so so powerful as as far as
Speaker 1: anticoagulants go. Also, so there's another compound in there. I
Speaker 1: can't remember which one it is, but it's a vasodilator,
Speaker 1: which means it opens up your blood vessel so that
Speaker 1: more blood pumps out more freely. Yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: is a little evolutionary miracle of a of a well
Speaker 1: it's not a bug, but slug. Yeah. Uh. They will
Speaker 1: drink blood like crazy. They will drink as much as
Speaker 1: ten times their body weight sometimes because they're a bit
Speaker 1: like the camel of the of the lake in that
Speaker 1: they go a year or so, sometimes many months at
Speaker 1: least between meals and they can store this stuff up
Speaker 1: and a little power where they have these enzymes because
Speaker 1: you know, blood will eventually go bad, but they have
Speaker 1: enzymes that protect it and keep it fresh. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's another thing that they're studying with leeches these days
Speaker 1: is it's um, it's a microbiota and its stomach and
Speaker 1: it's gut, just like they're studying our microbiota, which I
Speaker 1: think is the most fascinating thing of all time. They're
Speaker 1: also setting leeches to figure out what's going on in
Speaker 1: there to keep the blood from spoiling, because you know,
Speaker 1: they might go six months or a year between meals.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take them that long to digest it, but
Speaker 1: it still takes weeks and weeks for a leech to
Speaker 1: digest its its meal. And it takes long enough that,
Speaker 1: I mean a leach probably only feeds a few times
Speaker 1: in its life, I believe, yeah, because they don't live
Speaker 1: that long. I mean, but I think no more than
Speaker 1: a few years probably max. That would be my guess.
Speaker 1: As well, we should talk about the tyrant king leech,
Speaker 1: the Taranta della rex and this is a one jawed
Speaker 1: sucker that uh is also in the Amazon River. And
Speaker 1: these are the stuff of nightmares because this is one
Speaker 1: of those leeches that's like, forget the ankle, forget the shin.
Speaker 1: What I really like is to get inside of you
Speaker 1: and up in that mucus membrane so it will get
Speaker 1: into your nasal cavity. You can be a kid, and
Speaker 1: there are many reports of kids and teenagers who were
Speaker 1: bathing in the Amazon or playing in the Amazon and
Speaker 1: ended up with a leech up their nose or somewhere
Speaker 1: like deep within their nasal cavity, which is the stuff
Speaker 1: of nightmares to me. It gets even worse than that
Speaker 1: because they found these kinds of leeches in eyeballs, like
Speaker 1: attached to the mucus membrane around your eyeball, your urethra
Speaker 1: so so much they will block the your ability to pee,
Speaker 1: your anus or your vagina, have one there than the
Speaker 1: other two places, or your vagina. They found leeches in vaginas,
Speaker 1: these kind of leeches. And the other worst part about them, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is that you know a leech that's feeding on you externally,
Speaker 1: like a typical jawed leech. It'll feed for maybe twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty minutes something like that. These guys stick around
Speaker 1: for weeks, maybe months, And sometimes people detect that they
Speaker 1: have one of these internal leeches because they they they
Speaker 1: feel what's called foreign body movement, like there's something moving
Speaker 1: around inside of them and their bodies like m I
Speaker 1: might want to get this checked out, because I'm about
Speaker 1: to puke everything up right now. Oh man, I just
Speaker 1: can't help but think of when I pulled that spider
Speaker 1: out of Emily's ear cavity and she was like, it's
Speaker 1: something like buzzing, Like that's not a good sign. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that was so funny. I mean, it was funny for me,
Speaker 1: and she handled it pretty well. I gotta say, can
Speaker 1: we read that thing from eight thirty five since we're
Speaker 1: just at the maybe the grossest part of this whole episode.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, go ahead, hit it. Do you know the
Speaker 1: one I'm talking about? I think so? Yeah. Okay, So
Speaker 1: there was a there was a case study that mentioned
Speaker 1: on a site, a historian site called Jerry Walton dot
Speaker 1: com g E. R. I Walton dot com, who is
Speaker 1: a historian, and she wrote about a girl who was
Speaker 1: gathering watercress in and there was a leech that went
Speaker 1: around her ankle and then for some reason, the leech
Speaker 1: made its way all the way into the girl's leg
Speaker 1: and just climbed up to her thigh where finally her
Speaker 1: thigh was about twice it's natural size, tents red and
Speaker 1: shining and very painful. And finally the doctor like cut
Speaker 1: out this blood clot of blood and puss, he says,
Speaker 1: which you say, which he drained and emptied into a bowl.
Speaker 1: On emptying the matter from the bowl on a clean
Speaker 1: flag outside the door, the girl's mother was surprised to
Speaker 1: find among it a leech, coiled up, quite alive and
Speaker 1: moving actively. Yeah, I mean, this isn't something leeches are
Speaker 1: known to do, like burrow and move around inside your body,
Speaker 1: like from the skin, like they'll crawl up your nose
Speaker 1: or if you swallow one. This um limnatis uh niloticta
Speaker 1: is one of the ones that doesn't have the power
Speaker 1: to break the skin with its little teeth or jaw,
Speaker 1: so it it hangs around and waits for you to
Speaker 1: drink it, or a cow to drink it, so like
Speaker 1: they'll get in that way. But they are not known
Speaker 1: to generally do what happened in this girl right now,
Speaker 1: which is why a hundred and eighty five years later,
Speaker 1: eighty seven years later, we're talking about it on stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know because it is so messed up that
Speaker 1: almost fainted when I first read it, And it takes
Speaker 1: a lot to make me feel like I could faint
Speaker 1: if I if I don't stop imagining like putting myself
Speaker 1: here in this situation. Yeah, I mean that's horrifying. Um
Speaker 1: hasn't happened a ton since then, because that was right, right, No,
Speaker 1: it is extremely rare. And even like you said, that
Speaker 1: one that will um that will like when you you'll
Speaker 1: drink it up and it attaches um. That's actually killed.
Speaker 1: Some people famously killed some of napoleon soldiers in Egypt
Speaker 1: and seventeen. They drank from a water source that a leech,
Speaker 1: some leeches attached to like their esophagus, and as they
Speaker 1: became engorged from feeding, it blocked the soldiers airways and
Speaker 1: some of them died from suffocation. Yeah, I mean, what's
Speaker 1: probably not gonna happen almost certainly, as you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be bled out by leeches. But there have been cases
Speaker 1: where people have gone to the emergency room with like
Speaker 1: more than a hundred leeches on them and they were
Speaker 1: anemic or lightheaded or both, and so that can happen.
Speaker 1: But you're generally not going to die from a leech, I'll,
Speaker 1: you know, unless you're in Napoleon's army, right right. The
Speaker 1: need deserved it. So you want to talk about how
Speaker 1: leeches reproduced because that's pretty interesting as well. Sure they're hermaphroditic. Yep,
Speaker 1: they have male and female sex organs. Uh, they are
Speaker 1: internal sex organs, and they do make you know. They
Speaker 1: have uh, they have sperm, they have eggs, they have ovaries,
Speaker 1: and in order to mate, they get together. And I
Speaker 1: thought we had talked about this before. It was some
Speaker 1: insect that did something similar, probably ticks maybe, where they
Speaker 1: attached to each other and kind of just line up
Speaker 1: where their parts should be and the sort of fit.
Speaker 1: The male produces a container like a syringe light container
Speaker 1: of sperm called a spermataphor, and it pierces the skin
Speaker 1: near that sex organ, and I guess they say it's
Speaker 1: close enough for rock and roll. And they somehow find
Speaker 1: a way to the ovaries, and then they produce these
Speaker 1: little cocoons that are very hardy. Yeah, out of a
Speaker 1: little part of their body called the clitellum. It produces
Speaker 1: a thick fluid that the the fertilized eggs are are
Speaker 1: enshrouded in in that cocoon. And then they attached the
Speaker 1: cocoons to like plants or put them in the mud
Speaker 1: or something like that. In a few weeks or months later,
Speaker 1: um baby leeches hatch and and they just they hatch
Speaker 1: like fully formed and just grow over time as they
Speaker 1: feed um. But they they do this reciprocally. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was right. Where each leech fertilizes one another's eggs. So
Speaker 1: as the leeches um mate, they are um fertilizing one
Speaker 1: another's eggs. They're both receiving amp and sending um sperm.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty neat. It's it's kind of a real
Speaker 1: tip for ted arrangement. It is. And those cocoons are
Speaker 1: really hardy. Dave talks about it, says that they're tough
Speaker 1: enough to be swallowed by waterfowl and just go right
Speaker 1: through them and come out the other end and be okay,
Speaker 1: which gave rise to the famous saying that went through
Speaker 1: me like a leech cocoon through a waterfowl, which is
Speaker 1: what I always say. Sure, no, it was good. What
Speaker 1: about the kangaroo leach? I think that one bears mentioning
Speaker 1: as well too, as as far as reproduct. Yeah, they kangrew.
Speaker 1: I mean, these things come out kind of ready to
Speaker 1: take on the world. They don't need a lot of care,
Speaker 1: but they are doting parents in some cases, which is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, especially the kangaroo leach, which has a little
Speaker 1: a little pouch like a marsupial does, and they carry
Speaker 1: around their little leech in the pouch until they're ready
Speaker 1: to think for themselves, which is sort of adorable and
Speaker 1: so and this definitely was from the Daily Parasite dot com,
Speaker 1: but they said that the leech um basically shoots them
Speaker 1: the pouch of baby leeches explosively onto a passing frog
Speaker 1: when it's ready, when it says like, fly away, a
Speaker 1: little Berris's time for you to to live on your own,
Speaker 1: to make sure that they get a good first meal.
Speaker 1: So some poor frog gets splattered with baby leeches because
Speaker 1: because it happened to be in the wrong place at
Speaker 1: the wrong time. I mean, I wonder if I know
Speaker 1: what they can't kill a human? Can leech just kill
Speaker 1: a sure fish or a frog? I think they can
Speaker 1: kill livestock if if you don't get them off. I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons they have trouble killing humans
Speaker 1: is because we have opposable thumbs, and we can get
Speaker 1: them off. We can get them off a lot easily easier.
Speaker 1: I read that poor elephants will will be driven like
Speaker 1: almost crazy when a leech gets up inside of its
Speaker 1: trunk like, and I thought, yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like animals are just s o l in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. So yeah, I think they can think they
Speaker 1: can kill animals because they can't get them off as easy.
Speaker 1: Poor elephants. I know, I feel sucking that water up
Speaker 1: have been fun mhmm, very sad. So I say we talk.
Speaker 1: We we give everybody, the good people, some advice about
Speaker 1: how to get rid of a leech if you find
Speaker 1: one on you, and then let's take a break hop
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, like I said, you don't need to
Speaker 1: be too freaked out, even though it's pretty scary looking.
Speaker 1: They're not poisonous, you're not. They don't carry or they
Speaker 1: haven't at least been known to carry um human blood
Speaker 1: born diseases. Yeah, anytime there's like a blood sucker, you
Speaker 1: kind of might want to worry about that, but not
Speaker 1: in this case. But what you want to do is
Speaker 1: don't panic and just tear it off of you because
Speaker 1: it might detaching, part of it might get left kind
Speaker 1: of like a tick. Again, you don't want any of
Speaker 1: it left in your skin, right right, because that that
Speaker 1: remnant usually the jaw can get infected um. And another
Speaker 1: one that you want to do is you don't want
Speaker 1: to treat it too rough, like you might want to
Speaker 1: beat it up and and um and really show it
Speaker 1: who's boss, but you don't. You want to treat it
Speaker 1: very gently because if you like squeeze a leech or
Speaker 1: a lot of people recommend putting a little table salt
Speaker 1: or even like alcohol or lemon juice on a leech,
Speaker 1: if you disturb it biologically like they're physiologically like that,
Speaker 1: you might make it vomit. And that's bad because it's
Speaker 1: vomiting up some of its stomach contents into your body
Speaker 1: and you can get an infection from that as well.
Speaker 1: So the key here is to treat the leech very
Speaker 1: gently and go against every fiber of your screaming nerves
Speaker 1: in your entire body. Will just be like, oh fiddle
Speaker 1: d d there's a leech on me. I better carefully
Speaker 1: remove it. He dial up the stuff you should know
Speaker 1: episode and listen all the way through the thirty two
Speaker 1: minutes until I get to the point where they tell
Speaker 1: us to be gentle and just use a little Dave said,
Speaker 1: like a credit card or your fingernail or something, and
Speaker 1: gently kind of press on the side of its head,
Speaker 1: hopefully it will detach that sucker. And then Dave said
Speaker 1: to flick it off before it reattaches. And that is
Speaker 1: an understatement. Yeah, I mean, you're just trying to break
Speaker 1: that seal that the leech creates with its mouth and
Speaker 1: your skin, and then enough for it to be like,
Speaker 1: hey man, what the heck, so that it pulls its
Speaker 1: jaws out too as well. Um, and again, that wound's
Speaker 1: gonna bleed for maybe ten hours. I saw in a
Speaker 1: Popular Science article. So just you gotta clean the wound,
Speaker 1: you gotta dress it, and you're gonna have to redress it,
Speaker 1: probably more than once because it's kind of just keep bleeding. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like I had a leech on me at
Speaker 1: one point or another when I was a kid, but
Speaker 1: nothing stands out story wise, but I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 1: remember it happening. You. I don't think I've ever had
Speaker 1: a leach on me. I've had plenty of ticks, but
Speaker 1: never elach. Keep that street going. I'm trying what I say.
Speaker 1: I'm trying. I steer clear of fresh water, salt water.
Speaker 1: You don't get in the water. I don't go to
Speaker 1: Japan or Indonesia. I'm pretty I'm steering clear of the leeches.
Speaker 1: I see. That's my problem is I am one to
Speaker 1: jump in any body of water that I can jump in.
Speaker 1: I remember once when I was a kid and we
Speaker 1: had this creek that we used to swim in, and
Speaker 1: we were hanging out with some kid who didn't normally
Speaker 1: hang out with us, and he saw the first of
Speaker 1: us go into this creek and start swimming and he
Speaker 1: goes that kid wants dysent terry or something like that,
Speaker 1: and I mean, we're like ten. I don't know how
Speaker 1: this kid even knew about dysent terry, but I knew
Speaker 1: what he was talking about enough to be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you don't want that. You can get that from creeks.
Speaker 1: I better steer clear of creeks. That has made a
Speaker 1: huge impression on me. Yeah, with the creeks behind my house.
Speaker 1: So I just I don't know. I'll always try and
Speaker 1: get water if I can. Oh. The other thing that
Speaker 1: scared me too in that same creek, with somebody saying
Speaker 1: like what about water moccasins? Like there they always everybody
Speaker 1: always has a story about how somebody jumped into a
Speaker 1: pit of water moccasins, and that was that. So that
Speaker 1: kind of steered me clear of creeks too, So you
Speaker 1: get it, I get it, don't really regret it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's have a little pause for the cause, and we will.
Speaker 1: Jesus just turned into Johnny fever r I P. By
Speaker 1: the way, Howard Heman? What he just passed away? What
Speaker 1: a b s year already for celebriting man. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you who turned out to be a great person in retrospect?
Speaker 1: Was Bob Saget. My goodness read any of the tributes
Speaker 1: to him, pretty heartwarming. You should read. Have you read
Speaker 1: John stamus as eulogy? Amazing dude, I think very highly
Speaker 1: a Bob sagging out, but also John Steams and weirdly
Speaker 1: John Mayer. Uh, I don't know if you were any
Speaker 1: of that stuff. I didn't know. They were good buddies.
Speaker 1: He wrote some John Mary a lot. She didn't like
Speaker 1: his music, but she thinks he's pretty cool and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's how we kind of got sucked into the
Speaker 1: whole Bob sag It death thing. Alright. And Jeffrey Ross,
Speaker 1: who he was a really good friend of Bob. My
Speaker 1: brother worked with Saga and he remember years ago saying
Speaker 1: that he was like the nicest dude. Yeah, he's he
Speaker 1: seems to have been the real deal for sure. Alright,
Speaker 1: pe everybody who we've lost this year, how about that?
Speaker 1: And that let's take a break and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about blood letting right after this. M okay, chuck.
Speaker 1: So we're finally at part two thirty five minutes in.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about the history of blood letting um
Speaker 1: and using medicinal leeches and just a brief overview of
Speaker 1: blood letting. It's based on the humoral theory of health
Speaker 1: and disease, which says that we have four humors, right,
Speaker 1: We've got um, blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.
Speaker 1: And over time people said, I think bloods like the
Speaker 1: real like money, money, humor. We need to keep things
Speaker 1: in balance. So if you want to keep everything in
Speaker 1: balance to be healthy, you need to get rid of
Speaker 1: some excess blood. That's the real problem. And so for
Speaker 1: a long time people use like knives or whatever and
Speaker 1: cut your into your veins to to bleed you out
Speaker 1: to remove some of that blood. And somewhere along the
Speaker 1: way people said, I think leeches are a better a
Speaker 1: better treatment for this because it's a lot gentler and
Speaker 1: kindler than cutting into somebody's arms. Uh, and you probably
Speaker 1: don't is nearly the amount of blood We covered this
Speaker 1: years ago. It had to have been in one of
Speaker 1: our weird medical top tens. And I know we talked
Speaker 1: about medical leeches at some point, but here we go again,
Speaker 1: because they used them a lot back then. Um. I
Speaker 1: think the early nineteenth century is when in Europe they
Speaker 1: were like, this is really the best kind of treatment
Speaker 1: we've ever heard of. We would call that the Golden
Speaker 1: Age at least so far of leeching or leech mania, yeah,
Speaker 1: of losing blood via leach And there was a man,
Speaker 1: specifically a doctor in Paris, Dr Francois would that be
Speaker 1: Brusa m hm okay, And he was. He was a
Speaker 1: physician in Paris who he basically was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: everything that's wrong with anyone is inflammation of your intestines.
Speaker 1: It all goes back to that. So anybody that comes
Speaker 1: by my clim my military hospital, the first thing that
Speaker 1: we're gonna do, I don't care what you say is
Speaker 1: wrong with you, is we're going to throw fifty leeches
Speaker 1: on your body right out of the gate. To see
Speaker 1: what happens. Yeah, he earned the nickname le Vampierre de
Speaker 1: la medicine, which seems appropriate. But he was hugely popular,
Speaker 1: so much so that um and leeches were hugely popular too.
Speaker 1: But the ideas of Brussay were so popular that, um,
Speaker 1: he even reached into the fashion world where people would
Speaker 1: wear like dresses with leeches embroidered all over him. Like
Speaker 1: leech mania seems to be a really good descriptor of
Speaker 1: this period of time. And I saw and I could
Speaker 1: not find what happened. But Britannica said that his his
Speaker 1: theories about blood letting and leeches were hugely influential until
Speaker 1: a cholera epidemic in eighteen thirty two and his methods
Speaker 1: proved disastrous and he fell out of favor. Interesting. I
Speaker 1: couldn't see what happened, but you can probably guess that
Speaker 1: a lot of people die because he mistreated them by
Speaker 1: blood by you know, massive blood lighting or whatever. But
Speaker 1: it seems to have ended that that leech mania thing.
Speaker 1: And then, like we said before, um, the leeches is
Speaker 1: kind of fell to the wayside because modern medicine was like, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's claptrap, that's quackery. We need to separate ourselves
Speaker 1: from that, even if there was really something to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're wondering, you know that it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of leeches. It's not like a doctor would have
Speaker 1: like six or eight of these laying around. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty five million medical leeches were being imported every year
Speaker 1: into France alone in the eighteen thirties. And if you're
Speaker 1: asking yourself, how do you get this many leeches? You
Speaker 1: get him the old fashioned way. There were people like
Speaker 1: leech I mean, Dave calls him leech gatherers or leech hunters.
Speaker 1: They would wade into waters with their pants rolled up
Speaker 1: or maybe no pants at all, and they would get
Speaker 1: leeches to attach to themselves and then pull them off
Speaker 1: and sell them. And yeah, and Jerry Walton's website I
Speaker 1: saw she wrote that they would, in this manner gather
Speaker 1: about five leeches a day. It's crazy. We're doing a
Speaker 1: good job. It is crazy. It's very because she wrote
Speaker 1: a whole post on leech gathering as a weird profession
Speaker 1: that that finally kind of fellow the wayside, and it
Speaker 1: did indeed fell the wayside until I think the seventies,
Speaker 1: when some daring adventurous UH physiologists started studying what's called
Speaker 1: herudo therapy UM, and it was it became kind of
Speaker 1: important first in reconstructive surgery. And it just makes uttering
Speaker 1: complete sense that you would use it for this. So
Speaker 1: I guess they were starting to study it in the seventies,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't until when a plastic surgeon name named
Speaker 1: Joseph Upton like really put it to the test. I
Speaker 1: get the impression it was mostly clinical or lab studies
Speaker 1: and maybe UM just kind of posture elation. And Upton said,
Speaker 1: I'm trying. I'm at the end of my rope. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get it is pretty amazing. There was a boy,
Speaker 1: a five year old boy in Boston who went in
Speaker 1: and said, my right, HEEA was bitten off in the pock.
Speaker 1: It was dog and very sad. I'm just kind of
Speaker 1: getting around UM. But that all ends well, don't worry.
Speaker 1: That's the reason I'm telling that joke. UH. He reattached
Speaker 1: the ear, but the tissue was suffering from necrosis. It
Speaker 1: was starting to turn black and die because it was
Speaker 1: swelling up with blood that couldn't go anywhere. It was
Speaker 1: pulling up and becoming stagnant and This is a you know,
Speaker 1: this was an ongoing and still is an ongoing issue
Speaker 1: when you're trying to reattach a body part to get
Speaker 1: that blood flow not just going one way but going
Speaker 1: the other way. Like they can attach a major artery
Speaker 1: to send blood to a thing, but they don't attach
Speaker 1: all the little tiny veins that send blood back away
Speaker 1: from it, so that chance than that risk of pooling
Speaker 1: is always there. So this doctor Upton said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I remember reading this, just stay with me, kid, this
Speaker 1: crazy article about leech therapy. And he said, let's give
Speaker 1: it a shot, and he ordered thirty leeches, had him
Speaker 1: shipped overnight from Britain from a leech farm. They attached
Speaker 1: two of them to this kid's ear and the leeches
Speaker 1: did the work. And we're sucking that blood up enough
Speaker 1: to where it regained its color and he made a
Speaker 1: complete recovery. Yeah, And it did that by um that vasodilation,
Speaker 1: so it improved blood flow. It kept that that blood
Speaker 1: from um coagulating so it wasn't clotting, so it was
Speaker 1: flowing even more smoothly um. And the leeches themselves were
Speaker 1: pumped steadily pumping the blood out, so there wasn't any
Speaker 1: blood to pool and turn ransom and become stagnant. So
Speaker 1: and the veins can do amazing thing. Your blood vessels
Speaker 1: do spectacular things. Whenever they they face an obstacle, they
Speaker 1: will figure out a way to go around and grow
Speaker 1: around and make new actions. So by using leeches, you
Speaker 1: are giving those veins enough breathing room to kind of
Speaker 1: figure it out themselves and reconnect and and you know,
Speaker 1: reinstitute that kind of blood flow out of that area.
Speaker 1: It's pretty spectacular. And that was like everybody just found
Speaker 1: the closest leech and put it on their shoulder and
Speaker 1: the leech like shook its hands on either side of
Speaker 1: its head and triumph. So leeches kind of came back
Speaker 1: like in a big way starting in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and science has really been taking them seriously ever since.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. It's almost like they are meant to do this.
Speaker 1: This is their one little function that can benefit humankind.
Speaker 1: Uh so much though that in two thousand four the
Speaker 1: FDA said medical leeches approved. Uh, it's actually approved. And
Speaker 1: this is where I definitely remember us talking about it.
Speaker 1: It's it's approved as a medical device. I know what
Speaker 1: you're thinking of what we did an entire episode on maggots,
Speaker 1: and they're also approved as a medical device for similar
Speaker 1: off but really removing like dead and infected tissue. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's what you're thinking about. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing for both of them, though, so they are
Speaker 1: legit medical devices. I think the actual quote from the
Speaker 1: FDA was for the purpose of overcoming the problem of
Speaker 1: venus venus congestion by creating prolonged localized bleeding. It sounds
Speaker 1: like something Galen would have written. Uh, and they are
Speaker 1: this is this sort of sad part is their single use.
Speaker 1: So they use these leeches and then they euthanize them
Speaker 1: an alcohol instead of I don't know, take him outside,
Speaker 1: throw them in the shrubbery. Well, I mean, there's got
Speaker 1: to be something you can do, especially if you leave
Speaker 1: them on until they are done. It seems like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could kind of retire them or let them go
Speaker 1: off and digest their meal in like a used leeches
Speaker 1: jar or something like that. I just I think it's
Speaker 1: sad an old folks on for leeches. Sure, at least
Speaker 1: let him stay alive for the next few weeks so
Speaker 1: that they can digest that meal and enjoy it like
Speaker 1: this is just the worst kind of using somebody. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: there was that one attorney, that lawyer years ago who
Speaker 1: had a couple of leeches that that he said, uh
Speaker 1: saved his life and he kept them in a jar
Speaker 1: like a good guy, but he was a little wacky.
Speaker 1: He actually named them and would supposedly asked their opinion
Speaker 1: on on cases that he was handling as as a
Speaker 1: lawyer and looking at like how they swim as some
Speaker 1: sort of divining uh indicator of how he should uh
Speaker 1: which direction is case should go crazy? Kind of like
Speaker 1: that octopus in the World Cup. I don't know, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that, yeah, exactly like um and there's that
Speaker 1: was Thomas Erskine and he there he's part of this
Speaker 1: really interesting article from j Store Daily by Amelia Soft
Speaker 1: that I think rus found. That's it's really good if
Speaker 1: you're into that, if you want to read about that
Speaker 1: whole leech mania, because it was way more than just
Speaker 1: the medical profession. It was like the whole society just
Speaker 1: kind of revered Leach for kind of like what you said,
Speaker 1: almost like they were intended to do this, that's how
Speaker 1: they kind of saw it, and they really kind of
Speaker 1: respected lee just for a while, because Yeah, but while
Speaker 1: the medical community is legitimately using them, the wellness community
Speaker 1: is probably over using them. Uh. There are clinics in Arizona,
Speaker 1: there's some in England and other parts of the world
Speaker 1: where their leech therapy is really far reaching and basically
Speaker 1: saying it can help with everything from arthritis to cancer,
Speaker 1: to carpel t Herp's to hemrhoids. Uh. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: exactly where that treatment, how that goes, but I have
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea. Yeah, but um, there are other
Speaker 1: uses therapeutically that doctors are looking into, but they are
Speaker 1: round me saying like, places like this you need to
Speaker 1: be really wary of because the jury is still out
Speaker 1: on a lot of this stuff. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if we should go back to the you know, the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century Europe or wherever that was, right, right, But yeah,
Speaker 1: they do think that they're anti inflammatory properties, anti tumor properties,
Speaker 1: like in those leeches saliva. It's pretty neat, so you
Speaker 1: never know. Keep keep an ear out for for a
Speaker 1: leech update in ten years from US. Okay, maybe ellech
Speaker 1: will be in the Senate by then. There's already a
Speaker 1: few in there. I would say, hey, yo, uh, you
Speaker 1: got anything else? Chuck? I got nothing else. Chuck's got
Speaker 1: nothing else everybody, which means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I no, you don't always worry about pronunciation,
Speaker 1: but us it's different on an oft repeated phrase, and
Speaker 1: I just can't help my self, so we're gonna allow this, Robin.
Speaker 1: We usually don't take pronunciation emails very seriously because we
Speaker 1: famously mispronounced things almost on purpose, right almost. Uh. The
Speaker 1: Arctic Fox episode is the latest. And Josh said the
Speaker 1: phrase gras, where he correctly left the PA silent but
Speaker 1: incorrectly said fat graw and French is fat with a
Speaker 1: silent last letter like foi gras instead of gross silent e.
Speaker 1: But a soft C loosely sounds like grass. Doubtless you
Speaker 1: were doing your best, but foi gras is a decidedly
Speaker 1: different thing from a kuda grass. Okay, to teach French
Speaker 1: too little people, What I generally say is that the
Speaker 1: last letter of silence. So if there's an E that
Speaker 1: means a consonant in front of it, isn't the last
Speaker 1: letter and is not silent. That's the difference between PETI
Speaker 1: and tait mm hmm with an E on the end
Speaker 1: or not. You don't have to read my message on
Speaker 1: the show. Please take it, dare you not to, but
Speaker 1: please take the message to heart. And now back to
Speaker 1: the adorable Arctic Fox. And that is Robin. Who is
Speaker 1: she her? In Victoria b C. Great town, that Victoria BC. Robin,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for that a little French lesson.
Speaker 1: It's been many, many years since I had one. I
Speaker 1: will try to remember from now on everyone says kuda
Speaker 1: gra though everyone says it, yeah, but everybody's got it wrong,
Speaker 1: you say, I mean, it's Americans saying you say kuda
Speaker 1: grass at the next dinner party and prepared to be
Speaker 1: laughed out of their yokol. I'm gonna I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: a different one. I'm gonna say kuda Okay. That's good, okay, see,
Speaker 1: and just just make everyone if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, like Robin did with a little
Speaker 1: French lesson, the little Italian lesson, who knows some other
Speaker 1: kind of lesson, We don't care. We want to hear it.
Speaker 1: You can send it to us via email at Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you should Know
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
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