Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: shock in Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know, part of the ongoing, never ending, stupendously outstanding
Speaker 2: animal editions.
Speaker 3: That's right. And for us Friday morning edition, which never happens,
Speaker 3: we had a little family issue yesterday and you guys
Speaker 3: were very sweet and kind and sure agreed to punt
Speaker 3: to the recording a day, and so now we are.
Speaker 3: We're in our morning show routine.
Speaker 2: That's right. I can't even begin to do a morning
Speaker 2: show host impression. I'd like to, but I can't bring myself.
Speaker 3: To who likes lizards?
Speaker 2: That was pretty good, Chuck, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And that's probably a morning show person. We would probably
Speaker 3: call this a lizard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, good point, because they're not lizards. They're amphibians.
Speaker 2: And what we're talking about are called ACXE Lottle's. And
Speaker 2: before we get into it, I think we should give
Speaker 2: a hat tip to a guest researcher who helped us
Speaker 2: with the very initial research on axeltos, a listener named
Speaker 2: Charlie's Flores, who, by the way, her grandma calls her Chuck,
Speaker 2: she mentioned.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's very sweet. Did she send us a sweet
Speaker 3: letter in a picture that she drew?
Speaker 2: Yes, a picture of her Axe Lottle Boba, And she
Speaker 2: told us some pretty amazing initial things about Axe Lottle's
Speaker 2: and she and her mom, Gabrielle listen out in Omaha.
Speaker 2: So thank you very much to Charlie's for helping us
Speaker 2: out with this one. I guess we should also thank
Speaker 2: Dave Ruths too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, but Dave's not what like six years old?
Speaker 3: How old is Chuck?
Speaker 2: She's ten going into she just started the fifth grade.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I feel like a dummy too. And I'm
Speaker 3: a dad of an eight year old, and I guess
Speaker 3: too young. You never know, You never know. You just
Speaker 3: can't tell at that age. You're like, are you three?
Speaker 3: Are you fifteen? I can't see?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: So should we talk pronunciation real quick? Because I, because
Speaker 3: of my screwy day yesterday, I meant a thousand times
Speaker 3: to go look up sort of the indigenous pronunciation of
Speaker 3: what we call axe Lottele, and I failed to. But
Speaker 3: you were schooling me before we started recording schooling in
Speaker 3: a good way.
Speaker 2: I got you covered. Yeah, So that very strange looking
Speaker 2: word is actually taken directly from the naw What language,
Speaker 2: which is the language of the Aztec people, and they
Speaker 2: came up with this. We'll talk. Do you want to
Speaker 2: just go ahead and talk about that part now?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure, okay, good. So the the word axe a lottle,
Speaker 2: what we call acx a lotto, is actually as showlut,
Speaker 2: even though it's spelled the exact same way in the
Speaker 2: knaw What language, Atl is pronounced lut and x is
Speaker 2: very often pronounced show. It can also be pronounced waw.
Speaker 2: It's kind of all over the place. It's like a
Speaker 2: utility baseball player. It can do whatever.
Speaker 3: Wow, look at you.
Speaker 2: And by the way, also the Aztecs were called the mischika,
Speaker 2: and that x is a she in that case. So
Speaker 2: the ax a lottel or a show lut is named
Speaker 2: after the Aztec god show lut xolotl.
Speaker 3: That's right, the god of fire and lightning.
Speaker 2: Correct, also what else?
Speaker 3: Also the god of physical deformities and dogs and death.
Speaker 3: And I'm glad we're starting here because this sort of
Speaker 3: reinforces why the ax a lottle, by the way, which
Speaker 3: is a very very cute little salamander amphibian. I think
Speaker 3: you did say amphibian, But if you think you haven't
Speaker 3: seen one, you probably have because of blown up the
Speaker 3: internet semi recently with their cute smiles. But they're very
Speaker 3: important to the lore and the culture of Mexico because
Speaker 3: of the Aztec origins and specifically this god show Lut, who,
Speaker 3: like we said, physical deformities, fire, lightning, death, and dogs.
Speaker 2: Right, and so according to lore, Sholt was escaping Ketsukotl,
Speaker 2: which is Sholt's twin god sibling, and to escape he
Speaker 2: transformed into three things. May's plant, which is show lut
Speaker 2: in nowa language agave which is mesh mess show Lut,
Speaker 2: and then a salamander alt and he still was caught
Speaker 2: and killed. But I believe by transforming into those things
Speaker 2: he made them exist per chance. So the reason that
Speaker 2: the Asshola is kind of like a big deal in
Speaker 2: as tech culture is that they were very hyper local
Speaker 2: to the as tech people. They were where the as
Speaker 2: tech were, and they were a huge food source, a
Speaker 2: source of medicine, and also I guarantee a source of
Speaker 2: amusement and delight because I don't care what era or
Speaker 2: age or epoc you're living in. Yeah, Acxi Lotte's are
Speaker 2: one of the cutest animals on the planet.
Speaker 3: They really are. I mean, there's something about that perma
Speaker 3: smile that is undeniably cute and affectionate looking. And I
Speaker 3: know this is humans putting their stuff on animals, but
Speaker 3: you know, the thing smiles. What else can you say?
Speaker 2: You can't there's nothing I need to say. But that's
Speaker 2: the thing about Acxi Lottle's Chuck is, yes, if they
Speaker 2: were just that cute and it stopped there, they'd still
Speaker 2: be worth talking about. But they're really really worth talking about.
Speaker 2: And this what Charlie's Flores was trying to explain to
Speaker 2: us is that there's so many other amazing, astounding things
Speaker 2: about Axel Lotteles that this is just one of the
Speaker 2: most interesting animals on the planet.
Speaker 3: It turns out, here's your Disney movie. It's centered around
Speaker 3: I'm surprised you haven't done this quite frankly, it's centered
Speaker 3: around and Axel Lottle.
Speaker 2: Of course, na Axel.
Speaker 3: But sure, yeah, exactly perfect, thank you, and it is,
Speaker 3: but it is. And you know, Disney movies always sort
Speaker 3: of and you know Pixar all that stuff, they always
Speaker 3: sort of have their larger point to make about emotions
Speaker 3: or this or that. Maybe this one deals with mental
Speaker 3: illness and you have an axe a lottle that is
Speaker 3: actually depressed but smiles all the time anyway, and his
Speaker 3: little buddies have to help him out and see him
Speaker 3: through this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like the climax of the film is where
Speaker 2: he've manages to frown, right.
Speaker 3: Maybe, so that's pretty great, chuck. Yeah, just to put
Speaker 3: a sort of cherry on top of the original cultural story.
Speaker 3: Though when the Spanish came around as conquerors, they were like,
Speaker 3: oh man, this stuff is delicious. It was. They tried
Speaker 3: to they tried to keep a lot of records at
Speaker 3: least of what was going on with the Aztec and
Speaker 3: like what was important to them culturally. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to say like so they could respect them or anything
Speaker 3: like that, but they did keep records, and they did
Speaker 3: learn about the axe lottle and learn that it was
Speaker 3: a source of medicine, and they called it the food
Speaker 3: of the lords, and there was there were festivals. It
Speaker 3: was this. I mean, I don't want to eat one
Speaker 3: of these things. But they had Tamali axe lottle, Tomaly's
Speaker 3: and I like it. Tomali. So That's the only time
Speaker 3: I was like, hmmm, I.
Speaker 2: Could eat one of those if you wrapped it up
Speaker 2: into tamali.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I really couldn't because all I could see
Speaker 3: is that smile in my brain.
Speaker 2: So axe Lottle's are that would be tough to do,
Speaker 2: especially if the head's poking out the end of the
Speaker 2: tamali just looking.
Speaker 3: Oh man, no, you can't.
Speaker 2: So I said. Axi Lottel's were hyper local to where
Speaker 2: the Mishika, the ASTech lived, uh. And they lived in
Speaker 2: uh like, basically on a lake. Like Mexico City used
Speaker 2: to be an az tech capital called tenock Teetlan, and
Speaker 2: tenak Teetlan was built basically on top of lake Uh.
Speaker 2: What is it Toshoko?
Speaker 3: I think probably Teshcoco.
Speaker 2: Toshcoco, thank you.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Lake Toushcoco is where the the ax Lotto hails from.
Speaker 2: And it's again it's a salamander, and there are other
Speaker 2: salamanders that live in that area. But the axe Lotto
Speaker 2: only lived in the Lake Toshcoco area. And and as
Speaker 2: the Spanish came along and said, you can't build a
Speaker 2: city on a lake, what are you crazy, We're gonna
Speaker 2: go ahead and drain this lake. One of the remnants
Speaker 2: of that lake was an even smaller body of water.
Speaker 2: And it's not only a smaller body of water, it's
Speaker 2: it's even harder to pronounce than Lake Teshcoco.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: It's Lake Sochi Milko and friends. Look up Sochi Mealko.
Speaker 2: It is not, in any way, shape or form, as
Speaker 2: far as an English speaker is concerned, spelled like gets pronounced. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's XO c Chi m I Lco. But Lake Sochi
Speaker 2: Mealko is a very small body of water. It's basically
Speaker 2: a small system of freshwater canals that are the remnants
Speaker 2: of Lake Teshcoco. And that is where x a Lotto's live.
Speaker 2: Now in the entire world, there's nowhere else, even in Mexico.
Speaker 2: There's nowhere else you will find an ax Lottel in
Speaker 2: the wild except for in Lake Sochi Milko.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm actually going to Mexico City for the
Speaker 3: first time in November.
Speaker 2: It's a very cool town.
Speaker 3: I can't wait. Man, And uh, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: go on an ax A Lottle tour. I don't know
Speaker 3: if they have those. I bet they do. They do,
Speaker 3: but they're they're generally not out during the day. But
Speaker 3: we'll get to all this stuff as we go, right,
Speaker 3: Should we start at the beginning?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought we had started well.
Speaker 3: Historically the beginning, I just mean the beginning of axe
Speaker 3: lottels as a species, because they are amphibians, like you said,
Speaker 3: of the order Urudella, and that is all salamanders. The
Speaker 3: scientific name is Ambistoma mexicanum, which very appropriate. I even
Speaker 3: know what that means. Ambostoma means blunt mouth, and when
Speaker 3: you see to axi lottle, it kind of has a
Speaker 3: blunt looking mouth, so it all makes sense. And in Latin,
Speaker 3: amphibia for amphibia means double life, and it's called double
Speaker 3: life and amphibia because, as we all know, amphibians start
Speaker 3: out in water when they're hatched as little eggs, and
Speaker 3: they spend some time there as young and swimming around
Speaker 3: and using their gills, and then eventually they metamorphosize and
Speaker 3: transform into a land creature, which means they grow legs,
Speaker 3: their little tails shrink, and they learn to use their
Speaker 3: lungs and those gills aren't useful anymore, and sometimes they
Speaker 3: even go all right.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a that's a typical amphibian. That's just what
Speaker 2: they do. Yeah, the gills go away, they start breathing
Speaker 2: with their lungs and they live on land. They go
Speaker 2: from living in the water living in the land. It's
Speaker 2: what makes an amphibian of an amphibian, except except with
Speaker 2: axe lottels and a couple other there's a couple other
Speaker 2: species of amphibians, mud puppies, I think, is one that
Speaker 2: they never leave the water. They're amphibians, but they don't
Speaker 2: amphibiate essentially. Yeah, and it's it's something called naotiny, which
Speaker 2: is they stay forever young, just like that Rod Stewart's song. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and another word for it is pedamorphic, and like Rod Stewart,
Speaker 2: yeah exactly. Although no, no, that's not true at all.
Speaker 2: But that means that they even in their adult form,
Speaker 2: even in like they're fully grown up, they can reproduce,
Speaker 2: they're drawing social security, they still are not only look
Speaker 2: like their childhood form for all intentsive purposes, their body
Speaker 2: inside and out is still in the childhood form.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't drop that tail like other sallyes do.
Speaker 3: They keep that tails called a body fin because it
Speaker 3: kind of you know, once you see it, it kind of
Speaker 3: looks like it runs up their body. Yeah, they keep
Speaker 3: those well, they keep those legs. Their legs wouldn't go
Speaker 3: way anyway, but they have those stubby little legs. They
Speaker 3: do have lungs, and they also still have those gills,
Speaker 3: which we'll talk about a little more in a second,
Speaker 3: but they basically breathe almost exclusively through their gills and
Speaker 3: they also never use their legs to walk on dry land.
Speaker 3: So you know, there's a term in Mexico, Mexican walking
Speaker 3: fish is what they can be called, which Day very
Speaker 3: funnily points out, like they are Mexican, but they're not
Speaker 3: fish and they don't walk, so it's a bit of
Speaker 3: a misnomer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a touch. There's a theory as to why
Speaker 2: this is going on, like why would this happen? This
Speaker 2: doesn't really make any sense.
Speaker 3: Like why would they have legs?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's a great question. And some one of
Speaker 2: the theories is that there was a point in time
Speaker 2: where they did amphibiate fully and make it out of
Speaker 2: the water, so they needed their legs, they needed their lungs.
Speaker 2: They do have little tiny lungs, but they're very undeveloped,
Speaker 2: so they can't they can survive out of water for
Speaker 2: a very short time with those little tiny lungs, but
Speaker 2: not for very long. They're clearly not designed to stay
Speaker 2: out of water. So the idea is that somewhere in
Speaker 2: their evolutionary history they spent some time on land. But
Speaker 2: the place where they lived, either like Tushcoco or Lake
Speaker 2: Sochi Milko, was so such a great environment for them,
Speaker 2: so ripe, with food so abundant. No, what's the opposite
Speaker 2: of abundant, Oh, scarce? So there was such scarce predators.
Speaker 2: It was just a perfect place to live man, a
Speaker 2: golden age to be an Axi lotto, I would say.
Speaker 2: And so they stayed in the water, and at some
Speaker 2: point in time those genes got frozen in some individual organisms,
Speaker 2: and those got passed along, and those gave us Axi
Speaker 2: lottos and chuck also, may, I retort to myself. Sure,
Speaker 2: So that is one theory. My theory which I would
Speaker 2: like to share is wow, Axi lottles are only about
Speaker 2: ten thousand years old as a species. Okay, they basically
Speaker 2: evolve from other salamanders that they live among, and they
Speaker 2: haven't fully I believe, evolved into it an entirely separate species.
Speaker 2: They can still procreate with other salamanders, and so I
Speaker 2: think what it is, it's a remnant of the salamanders
Speaker 2: that they evolved from. That they haven't fully evolved out
Speaker 2: of that, and that if you looked at Axi lottles,
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred thousand years from now, they won't
Speaker 2: have any legs anymore.
Speaker 3: And this is, uh, does anyone is this out there
Speaker 3: at all? Is this all you?
Speaker 2: I'm putting it out there, baby?
Speaker 3: Okay? So they used to mate with their other salamander friends.
Speaker 2: And they still can. Like Rod Stewart, that's right, that's right,
Speaker 2: he's had one or two salamanders in this time.
Speaker 3: All right, I like it. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: In one hundred thousand years, we'll know for sure, right right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: once the earth is a big flaming ball of hot gas.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it'll have come and gone by then.
Speaker 3: All right, So maybe we should take a break. I
Speaker 3: think that's a good setup and we talk about how
Speaker 3: remarkable this thing is. Just hold on to your hats, everybody,
Speaker 3: because this sort of blew my mind and it will
Speaker 3: blow yours as well. Right after this, soft jaws.
Speaker 1: Want to learn about terrors or color sord Actol, how
Speaker 1: to take a perfect boom?
Speaker 4: All about fractalink is con that's a little hunt the
Speaker 4: Lizzie Borderers A.
Speaker 2: Word up, Jerry.
Speaker 3: All right, So, uh, if you haven't looked up a
Speaker 3: picture of an axe lottle, by now, pull your car
Speaker 3: off or take a break from jogging or cleaning your
Speaker 3: house or whatever you do when you listen to us.
Speaker 3: Wake up. Maybe if you're sleeping, look up a picture
Speaker 3: of that cute little thing. You've probably seen them on
Speaker 3: TikTok or YouTube. Uh, you've probably seen a bunch of
Speaker 3: very colorful axe lottles. And those are bread specifically to
Speaker 3: sell as pets in those amazing colors. That is not
Speaker 3: what color they are in the wild. They are dark brownish,
Speaker 3: sort of greenish or really really black. And kids don't
Speaker 3: want that. Kids want a hot, pink one, and so
Speaker 3: humans have made that possible, right.
Speaker 2: They want the Barbie version of ax lottles, the Barbie edition.
Speaker 3: We all do we want what Barbie versions of everything,
Speaker 3: don't we?
Speaker 2: Yeah? For sure? So there's pink and the pink can
Speaker 2: it's usually pretty pale, but I would say their faces
Speaker 2: can be kind of hot pink. Yeah, white ones pale
Speaker 2: yellow lavender. That's my favorite model, green gray. And they
Speaker 2: also have glow in the dark ones, which are a
Speaker 2: little bit misname because it's not glow in the dark.
Speaker 2: They glow under UV lights because they have the same
Speaker 2: genes that jellyfish. Some jellyfish do and they were bred
Speaker 2: into them. This is not a natural thing, although apparently
Speaker 2: they can spontaneously generate that gene in the wild weirdly enough.
Speaker 2: But the upshot of it is if you have a
Speaker 2: glow in the dark axilotel and you're showing it off
Speaker 2: with the black light how it glows, you actually don't
Speaker 2: want to do that very much because you're blasting them
Speaker 2: with UV radiation and their skin is so delicate. It's
Speaker 2: actually really bad for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you're a teenage boy and your mom's
Speaker 3: in the room, you don't want to do that anyway.
Speaker 2: Right, What do you mean I'm not catching that one?
Speaker 3: That's right. Adults will understands. Moving on, They are about
Speaker 3: ten inches long, or they can grow up to ten
Speaker 3: inches long. They have those big, wide mouths that look
Speaker 3: sort of unusually large for their size and for their head,
Speaker 3: and they do have little teeth top and bottom, teeth
Speaker 3: and their stubby little legs have four web toes on
Speaker 3: the front and five on the rear. And we got
Speaker 3: to talk about those gills, because the first thing you
Speaker 3: might notice, aside from that winning smile when you look
Speaker 3: at an Axi lotto, are those amazing feathery gills sticking
Speaker 3: out from the head. They don't look like fish's gills
Speaker 3: that you would see, just sort of, you know, just
Speaker 3: like dumb old gills on the side of a fish head,
Speaker 3: just opening back and forth like an air vent. These
Speaker 3: things are, as Dave says, magnificent. There's no other to
Speaker 3: describe these wispy, feathery, branched feathers.
Speaker 2: It almost looks like little pieces of coral coming off
Speaker 2: of it. There's three, three pair on each side of
Speaker 2: its head. Now there's a pair on each side of
Speaker 2: its head, times three, right, Yeah, Okay, Chuck, no more
Speaker 2: Friday morning recording sessions for me.
Speaker 3: Okay, that was some tough mess.
Speaker 2: And they look like flowy and branched and philigreed because
Speaker 2: they're essentially like our lungs. Our lungs have avoli, these
Speaker 2: air sacs, and if you really look at a detail
Speaker 2: of our lungs, they're branched in feathery and philigreed because
Speaker 2: that expands the surface area for gas exchange. Same thing
Speaker 2: with the axe lottel, except those are gills to them
Speaker 2: because they do the oxygen exchange of the gas exchange
Speaker 2: under water. And they're on their head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it looks like an adornment almost, you know,
Speaker 3: or a hair do.
Speaker 2: Like a Larry Fine hairdo from the Three Stooges.
Speaker 3: Right, it's cuterer than that.
Speaker 2: I think Larry's hair was super cute.
Speaker 3: Okay, As I mentioned earlier, I kind of teased about
Speaker 3: an Axi lottle tour in Mexico City. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: how they do those, but they are generally not around
Speaker 3: during the day. They're pretty sedentary and they hide in
Speaker 3: the mud. Nighttime is the right time for the Axi
Speaker 3: lotte They come out and eat basically anything that they
Speaker 3: can eat their carnivores, anything with a beating heart, whether
Speaker 3: it's a worm or a mollusk, or even a crustacean
Speaker 3: or a tiny fish, an Axi lotta will chow down
Speaker 3: on them. And you mentioned earlier that they can even
Speaker 3: though they never go through that metamorphosis that other amphibians
Speaker 3: do in order to live a life on land and
Speaker 3: do things like reproduce. They can reproduce. They are sexually
Speaker 3: mature at six months old, and they're just it's called
Speaker 3: the peter Pan state. They're sort of stuck in this
Speaker 3: eternal childhood. But those children still want to have babies
Speaker 3: and do that thing, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how do they do it?
Speaker 3: Well, like many animals, there's a little dancing ritual. It's
Speaker 3: called the mating waltz where the male and the female
Speaker 3: kind of swim very tightly together. They get their cloacas
Speaker 3: and rub them against each other. Things are getting a
Speaker 3: little steamy down there in the lake, and then the
Speaker 3: male says, here you go, here's a big cone full
Speaker 3: of sperm. And the female says, well, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: I we'll use my cloaca to accept that be whip
Speaker 3: and fertilize my eggs. And those eggs are a lot.
Speaker 3: They are about three hundred to one thousand fertilized eggs.
Speaker 3: What I wondered is how, I mean, I know, we'll
Speaker 3: talk about why they're so endangered, but if they're laying
Speaker 3: that many eggs, how many come to fruition? Because that's
Speaker 3: a lot of eggs.
Speaker 2: I got you. I found on some message boards. I
Speaker 2: don't even know if they call them that any longer,
Speaker 2: but on the internet from people who raise acxilatos that
Speaker 2: they're actually they a lot of them do, like more
Speaker 2: than a than half. It was a news serve. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: they they I saw somebody predict about eighty percent. Well hatch,
Speaker 2: which is a big deal. If you have a female
Speaker 2: and a male Acxi lotel in your tank, you really
Speaker 2: have to keep an eye out for eggsacs floating around
Speaker 2: because those you'll have a lot of acxi lottos on
Speaker 2: your hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they if you get one as a pet,
Speaker 3: and we'll talk about care a little bit at the end,
Speaker 3: but be prepared to have that thing for a while
Speaker 3: because in captivity they can live up to twenty five years.
Speaker 3: In the wild about ten to fifteen. And if you
Speaker 3: remember our we talked about the proteus alemander a long
Speaker 3: time ago.
Speaker 2: In our biosbiology episode.
Speaker 3: That's right, that was a good creepy episode. Those things
Speaker 3: can live to be one hundred so it's not unusual
Speaker 3: for a sally to have a long life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you said, in captivity up to twenty
Speaker 2: five years, And I just want to make sure that
Speaker 2: everybody who's buying Acxi lottos as pets these days knows that, like,
Speaker 2: you're twenty five years, you're going to have graduated college
Speaker 2: and had your first job and maybe even have a
Speaker 2: kid while your axilout is still around. So keep that
Speaker 2: in mind.
Speaker 3: Well, in the Disney movie, maybe that's why the excel
Speaker 3: suppress that might be a little too toy story that
Speaker 3: the kid sort of doesn't care anymore, but hey, you
Speaker 3: never know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we couldn't do that they flushed him down
Speaker 2: the toilet because that's like finding Nemo, right, Hmmm.
Speaker 3: Is that how Nemo got back into the wild?
Speaker 2: I feel like that happened the summer at some point.
Speaker 2: I could be making that up, though it.
Speaker 3: Isn't drifted in and out of some of those, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's just sooned out.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean a lot of those I really like.
Speaker 3: But then you know, when you have a kid, you're
Speaker 3: watching so many Sometimes you're working and you know you
Speaker 3: know Nemo's down there, but you don't remember how he
Speaker 3: got there. You know.
Speaker 2: I liked finding Nemo overall, but okay, moment to moment,
Speaker 2: I didn't like that movie very much.
Speaker 3: But the whole is greater than the sum of its tissue.
Speaker 2: Party, yes, yeah, well put well, put all.
Speaker 3: Right, all right, so we haven't blown your mind yet.
Speaker 3: Everyone's like, all right, they don't metamor size not the
Speaker 3: biggest deal in the world, guys. Here's where the mind
Speaker 3: blowing stuff comes in. Overall, salamanders and newts can regrow stuff.
Speaker 3: They can regenerate tissue. They can regrow a tail. We
Speaker 3: all know that they can regrow a limb. That's fine,
Speaker 3: and they come out usually okay. But the axe a
Speaker 3: lodel can well you know what I should read, actually
Speaker 3: what Stephanie Roy says. This is a researcher from the
Speaker 3: University of Montreal.
Speaker 2: Can you do your Stephanie Roy impression while you read it?
Speaker 3: Sure, here we go. You can cut the spinal cord,
Speaker 3: she sounds a lot like me. You can cut the
Speaker 3: spinal cord, crush it, remove a segment and it will regenerate.
Speaker 3: You can cut the limbs at any level, the wrist,
Speaker 3: the elbow, the upper arm. This all sounds very sadistic,
Speaker 3: by the way, and it will regenerate and it's perfect.
Speaker 3: There's nothing missing, there's no scarring on the skin. At
Speaker 3: the side of amputation, every tissue is repla. They can
Speaker 3: regenerate the same limb fifty sixty one hundred times parentheses.
Speaker 3: Trust me, I've cut off a lot of legs of
Speaker 3: exilotis in parentheses and every time perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And what's crazy is like this continues throughout their life.
Speaker 2: Like they can do this when they're very young, they
Speaker 2: can do it when they're very old. Apparently. The only
Speaker 2: change is that it just takes longer the older they are.
Speaker 2: But that that new leg, that that new tail, it's
Speaker 2: as good as new every time, no matter how old
Speaker 2: they are. And that's pretty mind blowing in and of itself.
Speaker 2: It gets even crazier than that.
Speaker 3: Chuck that's here.
Speaker 2: In addition to like extremities and limbs and tails and stuff,
Speaker 2: they can do the same thing with organs. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: like important organs too, like the heart and the brain
Speaker 2: and their spinal cord. They can regrow it good as
Speaker 2: new every time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really amazing. And if you think they should
Speaker 3: study this stuff to see if humans, you know, could
Speaker 3: potentially do something like this with a little help from
Speaker 3: ax a lot of stuff, right, they are studying this
Speaker 3: stuff because and they've already found some pretty good breakthroughs,
Speaker 3: but Axi lottels are very very valuable to study. And
Speaker 3: what they've learned so far as far as these limbs
Speaker 3: go and other things, is you get that little limb
Speaker 3: cut off or something, and the cells nearest to that
Speaker 3: limb wound differentiate immediately, so that means it's sort of
Speaker 3: like a stem cell. That means they can become any
Speaker 3: type of cell kind of instantaneously, and they form a
Speaker 3: little a little pile around these undifferentiated cells, and that's
Speaker 3: called a blastema. Or then this helps you to visualize
Speaker 3: it more, it's also called a regeneration bud. So it's
Speaker 3: like a little plant butd or something. Basically, we scar
Speaker 3: up like dummies. We form scar like cut off your
Speaker 3: arm and you're going to start forming scar tissue. Axe
Speaker 3: Lott's say no, no, no, we're going to grow that
Speaker 3: thing back with this blastoma, and they do that. They
Speaker 3: generate stem cells, bone cells, muscle nerves, whatever you need
Speaker 3: to replicate perfectly whatever is now missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty amazing considering we have pretty much
Speaker 2: the same genes we've figured out the Axi Lottel So
Speaker 2: they sequenced an Axi Lottal genome in twenty eighteen. I
Speaker 2: believe it's the largest genome ever sequenced because amazing, the
Speaker 2: Axi Lottal's genome is second only to the Australian lungfish
Speaker 2: in size and number of base pairs. Humans have three
Speaker 2: billion base pairs. We're doing pretty good with three billion
Speaker 2: base pairs is kind of to be expected. That's a lot.
Speaker 2: Axi Lotte's have ten almost eleven times the number of
Speaker 2: base pairs that humans do, thirty two billion base pairs
Speaker 2: in their genome. And so after examining all this, scientists
Speaker 2: said like, hey, we've got some of these genes. What's
Speaker 2: different They think is that with axe lotels, those genes
Speaker 2: are stuck in the on position. Either they never make
Speaker 2: the hormone that would turn those genes off, or they
Speaker 2: continue to produce the hormone that keeps those genes on
Speaker 2: regardless the fact that those genes are turned on and
Speaker 2: then makes them able to just regrow like brand new
Speaker 2: every time throughout their life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really something else. There's another cool theory about
Speaker 3: why this might be true evolutionarily speaking, and there are
Speaker 3: scientists that think that maybe at one point in their
Speaker 3: history when they were in that lake and they were landlocked,
Speaker 3: and food may have been abundant at one time, but
Speaker 3: maybe at one point there were too many Acxi lottels
Speaker 3: and food wasn't as abundant, and so they may have
Speaker 3: turned cannibalistic and said, hey, friend, no, we've been hanging
Speaker 3: out a lot lately, but your rear leg is looking
Speaker 3: pretty tasty to me, and so I'm just going to
Speaker 3: bite that off and eat it if you don't mind.
Speaker 3: And that happened so much that the axe A lottos
Speaker 3: who thrived were the ones who could grow those limbs
Speaker 3: back quicker and survive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which makes sense, not bad. I don't have a
Speaker 2: rival theory for that one.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: Shoot, I could make one up real quick. No, I can't.
Speaker 2: It's Friday morning. Maybe if it were a Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 3: But I know.
Speaker 2: So you might say, like, oh, that's cool. I want
Speaker 2: to try this at home with my ax a lot
Speaker 2: I'm going to cut off its right front leg and
Speaker 2: half of its brain and see what happens. Please don't
Speaker 2: don't because they do have pain receptors, so they can't
Speaker 2: feel pain. Apparently they have a high threshold pain, but
Speaker 2: they will still feel pain if you essentially torture them
Speaker 2: for your own amusement. So don't do that to your
Speaker 2: axe a lottle at home. And by the way, is
Speaker 2: these aren't messages to Charlie's flooras because based on her
Speaker 2: her preliminary research, she knows what she's doing. She's taking
Speaker 2: good care of Boba totally.
Speaker 3: Another amazing superpower that these little guys have is the
Speaker 3: you know, not only can they grow back things and
Speaker 3: grow back organs, but they can transplant organs perfectly, just
Speaker 3: like they can grow things back. They don't have a
Speaker 3: learned immune system like we do when you get and
Speaker 3: we did an episode on organ transplant many years ago,
Speaker 3: and as we all know, a lot of times, in fact,
Speaker 3: about a third of the time, the human body will
Speaker 3: reject the organ because we have a learned immune system
Speaker 3: and we'll just say, no, this isn't, this isn't shouldn't
Speaker 3: be on my body. Yeah, get this thing out of here.
Speaker 3: But axe lottos don't have that, so you can transplant.
Speaker 3: It's like one hundred percent non rejection rate for organ transplants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean that's for axe lottel. Right, You
Speaker 2: couldn't put like a pig heart in it or anything.
Speaker 3: I don't think they've tried, but probably you're right, I
Speaker 3: would say.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we said it or not. But
Speaker 2: the different kinds of like lab grown types and varieties
Speaker 2: of ax lottols are called morphs. Did you say that.
Speaker 2: So there's a type of morph called the firefly morph.
Speaker 2: And when it's in the embryonic stage, they'll take if
Speaker 2: it's a like a black or dark modeled Axi lottle,
Speaker 2: they'll take a tail from a white axe lotto or
Speaker 2: pink one, and vice versa, and they will transplant the
Speaker 2: tail in the embryonic stage and the thing grows up
Speaker 2: and it's like black with a white tail or white
Speaker 2: with a black tail. I don't think it's very cool looking,
Speaker 2: but I think some people do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another superpower is that they are one thousand more
Speaker 3: times resistant to cancer than other mammals. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: And again researchers are studying this because like, could the
Speaker 3: cure for cancer potentially be in these cute little sallies
Speaker 3: And you know, you never know. They have treated breast
Speaker 3: cancer patients with Axi loottle egg serum and it halted
Speaker 3: the growth of cancerous tumors. So you know, know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they looked into it and they think what happened
Speaker 2: was that the axe Lottle juice reprogrammed the tumor suppressing
Speaker 2: genes that had been turned off epigenetically went in and
Speaker 2: turned it back on, and so the tumor fighting proteins
Speaker 2: and hormones were able to fight that tumor and stop
Speaker 2: it from growing. Wow. Yeah, Wow is right, And I
Speaker 2: say that big wow calls for a message break. What
Speaker 2: do you think? I agree, Stoff we Josh Soft.
Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terroristort in college Taradactyl,
Speaker 1: how to take the berg bo all about rectalink is gone.
Speaker 4: That's a little hunt the Lizzie Borderers on the plane.
Speaker 4: Everything should know.
Speaker 2: Word up, Jerry, so Chuck. There's a big irony with ax.
Speaker 2: Aside from the irony that they can reproduce even though
Speaker 2: they're young and YadA YadA, they are critically endangered in
Speaker 2: the wild because again there's one small, tiny body of
Speaker 2: water in outside of Mexico City where they live, and
Speaker 2: they live nowhere else in the wild, But there's countless
Speaker 2: accil Lottels thriving and living in captivity. Because it was
Speaker 2: very clear early on in the mid nineteenth century to
Speaker 2: at least some French physicians that they would make great
Speaker 2: lab animals to experiment and test on. And so they
Speaker 2: took some sample Acxi lottels to France and from that
Speaker 2: point on they just kept breeding them and breeding them
Speaker 2: and breeding them. Another world has tons of Acxi lottels,
Speaker 2: they're just not around in the wild much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, big time. You know, we talked about the habitat loss.
Speaker 3: There's also a pollution problem. Also, the government introduce carp
Speaker 3: i believe in Tilapia into where the axilottos were into
Speaker 3: that lake and you know it for a food source
Speaker 3: basically for fishermen, but they eat the plants where the
Speaker 3: axil lottles like eggs. So that was a problem. And
Speaker 3: here's some numbers for you. In nineteen ninety eight there
Speaker 3: were about six thousand Axi lottles per square kilometer and
Speaker 3: that is down to thirty five three five per square
Speaker 3: kilometer today, which is very dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again critically endangered. And one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why there's so many in captivity. I was saying is
Speaker 2: that they do make a great lab animal. Apparently they're
Speaker 2: experimented on second or third only to rats and mice. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's surprising. That must be as far as vertebrates go.
Speaker 2: But they that's where the pink Axi lottels come from
Speaker 2: and all the other specimens. Apparently there were there was
Speaker 2: what are called lucistic axi lottels. They're almost oh buy
Speaker 2: I no, not quite, but they were in that group
Speaker 2: of thirty four X lottels that were first taken into Paris.
Speaker 2: And so every pink axe lotte is descended from those.
Speaker 2: I think there are like six original ones. But the
Speaker 2: reason that they work so well in labs is that
Speaker 2: they have some really interesting traits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are very easy to breed in captivity. They
Speaker 3: are easy to keep alive.
Speaker 2: If you know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: Check sure, because we said, you know, they live a
Speaker 3: long time. Apparently they have very big cells and they're
Speaker 3: easy to look at and easy to examine. And I
Speaker 3: think the eggs are thirty times larger than a.
Speaker 2: Human, roughly the size of a beach ball.
Speaker 3: They're embryonic neurons are six hundred times larger.
Speaker 2: What's that it's the size of the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 3: Okay in big max. Sorry, right, And you know they're
Speaker 3: they're just ideal model organisms for the lab, and so
Speaker 3: that's why, and you know, because of their superpower, that's
Speaker 3: why they are studied a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we found a few things from them already.
Speaker 2: We've figured out how organs develop invertebrates, including us, because,
Speaker 2: like I said, we realized when we scan their genome
Speaker 2: that we have a lot of the same genes. We
Speaker 2: use those genes to grow limbs ourselves and lose our
Speaker 2: tails ourselves while we're in utero, but after we're born,
Speaker 2: probably right before we're born, those genes get turned off.
Speaker 2: So we've figured out, thanks to the Axil Lottel how
Speaker 2: those genes work and which ones are important. We figured
Speaker 2: out how spina bifido works and where it comes from.
Speaker 2: And thyroid hormones you wanted those isolated Axi Lotte's got
Speaker 2: you covered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. If you're in did you already
Speaker 3: say that the fact that they're growing like tons and
Speaker 3: tons of these in a lab doesn't mean you can
Speaker 3: just throw them back in a lake because they have
Speaker 3: a shortage.
Speaker 2: There, right, I did not say that.
Speaker 3: Well, I just said it because that's what I was
Speaker 3: thinking this whole time. I was researching. It was well,
Speaker 3: why then, since they are critically endangered, can't you just
Speaker 3: release you know, tens of thousands of these But it
Speaker 3: just doesn't work that way. These morphs are bred for
Speaker 3: the lab, they're not bread for that lake, and it
Speaker 3: apparently just doesn't work.
Speaker 2: It'd be like moving your city cousin in with your
Speaker 2: country cousin. Like you might have a decent sitcom on
Speaker 2: your hands, but it's only going to last a season
Speaker 2: or two, that's right.
Speaker 3: It all falls apart on Super Tuesdays exactly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they can't do that. That's not to say
Speaker 2: that they won't find a place where they could introduce
Speaker 2: them to the wild. It's just apparently taking them back
Speaker 2: to where they're from or where they originated is not
Speaker 2: on the table.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And if you're wondering, well, what are they doing,
Speaker 3: they are trying because the axe lotel is such a
Speaker 3: culturally important thing, scientifically important animal. It is a flagship
Speaker 3: species that they designated i think semi recently, which which
Speaker 3: helps obviously protect it. They are now building sheltered areas
Speaker 3: that don't have those grass eating tilapia. They're blocking them
Speaker 3: out so they can lay those eggs safely. Where they
Speaker 3: had for you know, eons. Actually, how long is an eon?
Speaker 3: I probably misuse that. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Let's say, I'm sure I'll get any pretty long time, Okay,
Speaker 2: pretty long time.
Speaker 3: The tour guides and the locals have all been you know,
Speaker 3: educated and trained on best practices for like fishing and
Speaker 3: doing those tours, and you know, hopefully all that stuff
Speaker 3: makes a difference and really sinks in because it is
Speaker 3: a beloved cultural creature.
Speaker 2: So beloved in fact, chuck that. In twenty twenty, Mexico said, hey, everybody,
Speaker 2: check out our new fifty payso bill. And everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's pretty cool, all right, And then they said no, no,
Speaker 2: turn it over, right, and everybody turned it over. They're like,
Speaker 2: there's an axe lottle on the back of the fifty
Speaker 2: payso bill. Now Mexico's government said, yep, cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every time they do that trick, they put it
Speaker 3: on the wrong side and just say, watching this, yeah exactly,
Speaker 3: I tell them to turn it over. It kills.
Speaker 2: What's funny is the axe lottel appears to be floating
Speaker 2: above the water weirdly. Yeah, it's a strange jam, but
Speaker 2: it's cute as a button. On the back of the
Speaker 2: fifty payso.
Speaker 3: Bill, Yeah, I agree, and also shout out to Minecraft. Uh,
Speaker 3: that's a game that my daughter's obsessed with now, as
Speaker 3: many young EN's are. And there is an axe Lottel
Speaker 3: in Minecraft.
Speaker 2: Okay, I couldn't figure this out. What's a mob in Minecraft?
Speaker 2: It seems to be referred to like an individual thing.
Speaker 3: I don't know, okay, apparently no, I don't play, so
Speaker 3: I don't know. Okay, fair enough, you like, but do
Speaker 3: you talk to your daughter?
Speaker 2: And I'm curious though, ask her and let me know,
Speaker 2: will you? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just she can text you now.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, tell her to text me what a mob is?
Speaker 3: All right? She does have a phone, but she does
Speaker 3: have a little email address, so it's cute text her
Speaker 3: friends occasionally. She does have thumb and she does have
Speaker 3: thumbs and they work pretty well. Get ready for lots
Speaker 3: of memes.
Speaker 2: By the way, what do you mean, Oh, she's gonna
Speaker 2: send me if your okay? Does she have the good ones?
Speaker 3: I don't even know how to get a meme in
Speaker 3: a text. I have no idea. And the first thing
Speaker 3: she did was send me like sixty in a row.
Speaker 2: It's copy and paste buddy.
Speaker 3: I know, but I don't even know where to find them.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a big first step.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not going to give you your phone number.
Speaker 3: You'll your life will change, and not in a great way.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, then send me screenshots of her texts to you.
Speaker 2: Then all right, leave me out of it.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 2: So Mexico City in twenty seventeen said, hey, let's have
Speaker 2: an emoji contest because, as as is the case with
Speaker 2: cities these days, every city has to have its own
Speaker 2: official emoji. And guess what the emojis are based on
Speaker 2: in Mexico City to Molly's with the ax Lottle head
Speaker 2: sticking out of the Oh no, no, just ax Lottle
Speaker 2: doing stuff.
Speaker 3: That's great. Love it. So before we finish up, you
Speaker 3: found some good stuff about ax A Lottle care. We
Speaker 3: are not experts, but you did find some stuff. Where
Speaker 3: did you find this?
Speaker 2: I'll have to tell you in a moment.
Speaker 3: But go ahead, okay, And again you should you know,
Speaker 3: if you're getting into the ax A Lottle game, as
Speaker 3: pat wise, do all your own research. Don't just listen
Speaker 3: to the next you know, five minutes and think I
Speaker 3: got it covered. This is just sort of a broad overview, right, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's a few things that you need to
Speaker 2: remember with ax a lottles. There very sensitive to water
Speaker 2: temperature and water quality. Obviously you want to start with
Speaker 2: fresh water, but you want to start with filtered freshwater
Speaker 2: to begin with. But you can't just put fresh water
Speaker 2: in there and say hey, it's all good, get in there,
Speaker 2: ax a lottle. You want to tweak it enough so
Speaker 2: that the ax a lottle can be happy and thrive
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You also want to get a fish net. You
Speaker 3: don't want to handle as much as you might want
Speaker 3: to pet this thing. They have very sensitive skin. It's
Speaker 3: very easily damaged, and so you don't want to pick
Speaker 3: the thing up or pettit or anything like that. So
Speaker 3: get out your little fish net when you're changing water
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and feed them a lot. Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, you want to feed them live stuff if possible,
Speaker 2: especially when they're young, because they actually have a prey
Speaker 2: a predator response, so it's got to be moving for
Speaker 2: them to be like, oh that's food. They can eat
Speaker 2: dead stuff later on as they get older, but you
Speaker 2: want to also be very selective. Don't go out and
Speaker 2: like save some money and harvest your own bloodworms. If
Speaker 2: you even know how to do that. You want to
Speaker 2: buy them from a reputable bloodworm dealer, which you can
Speaker 2: find basically on any corner in any talent in America. Sure,
Speaker 2: But the reason why is because those things are typically
Speaker 2: like disease free parasite free, and if they aren't, those
Speaker 2: can basically make your axe a little sick.
Speaker 3: That's right. You don't want to do that. When tank
Speaker 3: shopping too, you also want to and this is true
Speaker 3: with any fish, and I think a common mistake is
Speaker 3: that you don't get the right size tank and habitat.
Speaker 3: For whatever it is, they need a little bit of room.
Speaker 3: So a twenty gallon aquarium is what they recommend for
Speaker 3: like just one single Axi Lottel. If you want more
Speaker 3: than one, they say you really shouldn't do that. You
Speaker 3: should just have one. You don't get five or six
Speaker 3: because you think it's five or six times as cute.
Speaker 3: But if you are some sort of professional aquarium type
Speaker 3: and you do want to house more than one, then
Speaker 3: that tank has to grow, you know, proportionally.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The other thing I was saying about the water,
Speaker 2: you need to tweak it. You want to keep your
Speaker 2: water temperature between sixty and sixty four degrees farent height.
Speaker 2: Go figure it out yourself. For Celsius and the pH
Speaker 2: you want somewhere between six point five and eight, but
Speaker 2: ideally about seven point four to seven point six, which
Speaker 2: is basically right in there at neutral. They like neutral
Speaker 2: fresh water at sixty to sixty four degrees farent height.
Speaker 3: That's right. And they aren't like fish. You can't just
Speaker 3: throw like fish gravel in there. And oh that's a
Speaker 3: big way. They need their own really specific habitat the substrate.
Speaker 3: And you know, little shards of gravel can really really
Speaker 3: harm an axi lottle it can. They tend to just
Speaker 3: sort of gulp down water and in that water could
Speaker 3: be little tiny shards of gravel. So maybe loose sand
Speaker 3: could be a foundation. Definitely, don't just think. Get a
Speaker 3: fish tank and fish tank stuff and it'll work for
Speaker 3: your axe a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And some people say, well, I'm just not going
Speaker 2: to put anything down. They can just leave the bottom
Speaker 2: of the tank bear, which your ax a lotta won't
Speaker 2: cut their skin on anything. But they'll also be freaked
Speaker 2: out because everything's so slippery. So sand is a good thing.
Speaker 2: And they also can burrow into sand if they're nervous
Speaker 2: or scared or want to sleep too. That's right, there's
Speaker 2: a lot more out there. By the way, that was
Speaker 2: from the Atlantic City Aquarium. They know what they're talking
Speaker 2: talking about, and you should probably do a lot more
Speaker 2: research before you actually get your ax A Lottle and
Speaker 2: set its tank up.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's right. And also now since we are wrapping
Speaker 3: this up, this means that we can go listen to
Speaker 3: the ninety nine percent Invisible Episode Model Organism, which also
Speaker 3: covers the ax A Lottle. But Dave, who helped us
Speaker 3: with this, was like, don't listen to that first, because
Speaker 3: you're just gonna want to steal it all because Roman
Speaker 3: and the gang there does they do such a great
Speaker 3: job and they have forever and Roman as a friend
Speaker 3: of the show, and I can't wait to go listen
Speaker 3: to it. I'm sure it's amazing here.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks to Roman for making that amazing episode, Thanks
Speaker 2: to Charlie's Flores and her mom Gabrielle for sending in
Speaker 2: that preliminary research. Thanks to Dave for helping us out,
Speaker 2: and thanks to you for listening. Since I thank you
Speaker 2: guys for listening and Chuck just said okay, tacitly by
Speaker 2: his silence, that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: That's right. And also thanks to Charlie's their own sure
Speaker 3: and Rod Stewart, we got shout out. I mean we
Speaker 3: have been picking on him. I was just watching the
Speaker 3: videos of old Sir Rod. Is he a sir?
Speaker 2: I believe?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sir, thanks for being such a great sport rotten.
Speaker 3: Uh all right, I'm gonna call this one. Which one
Speaker 3: should I do? I'll do this one. I'll call this
Speaker 3: bede bed.
Speaker 2: Oh man, what's wrong? I wanted to go the rest
Speaker 2: of my life without correcting that.
Speaker 3: Well. Sorry, Uh hey guys, longtime listener of stuff you
Speaker 3: should know from uh Wollongong, Australia.
Speaker 2: Okay, Wallongong, I guarantee that's not how it's pronounced.
Speaker 3: Wal I gong all you have to do to be
Speaker 3: Australian to sound surprise at everything while I go.
Speaker 2: I think that was a New Zealand accent too.
Speaker 3: By the way, probably hey guys, heard your podcast and
Speaker 3: how the English language developed and have to correct your
Speaker 3: pronunciation of b E. Saint b d E is a
Speaker 3: famous Catholic saint who was a learned scholar from the
Speaker 3: Jarro area of northern England. He's famous for writing a
Speaker 3: history of the English speaking people in English as opposed
Speaker 3: to Latin. I think he also had something to do
Speaker 3: with the change to the calendar and using BC and
Speaker 3: AD and prefixes for dates before and after the birth
Speaker 3: of Jesus. Now this is something deserving of a separate
Speaker 3: so if you should know topic one day. Anyway, as
Speaker 3: I am named after him, I can assure you that
Speaker 3: the pronunciation of his name is the same as Bead.
Speaker 2: Is that a disappointment, Yes, that's a disappointment, but I'm
Speaker 2: not even convinced. I mean, that's what Bed says.
Speaker 3: Well, Beide says, I've long had to put up with
Speaker 3: people mispronouncing my name Bead Bead I and could you die. Well,
Speaker 3: that's what he says, and could not help but correct
Speaker 3: your attempts to get his name right. Keep up the
Speaker 3: great work. Cheers that is from Bade Richie.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Beatty or Bead. I will call you
Speaker 2: Bead because you said that's how your name is pronounced.
Speaker 2: But this doesn't necessarily mean by extension unless you have
Speaker 2: a time machine handy that I don't know about that
Speaker 2: Beatie's name wasn't pronounced.
Speaker 3: Beatie auh greedy.
Speaker 2: Uh. Well, if you want to get in touch with
Speaker 2: this like bad did, thanks a lot. By the way, Bead,
Speaker 2: you can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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