Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
Speaker 1: are here to tell you about our upcoming book that's
Speaker 1: coming out this fall, the first ever Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know book, Chuck. That's right. What's the cool, super cool
Speaker 1: title we came up with. It's Stuff you Should Know colon,
Speaker 1: an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. That's right, and
Speaker 1: it's coming along so great. We're super excited, you guys.
Speaker 1: The illustrations are amazing, and there's the look of the book.
Speaker 1: It's all just it's exactly what we hoped it would be.
Speaker 1: And we cannot wait for you to get your hands
Speaker 1: on it. Yes, we can't. Um and you don't have
Speaker 1: to wait. Actually, well you do have to wait, but
Speaker 1: you don't have to wait to order. You can go
Speaker 1: pre order the book right now everywhere you get books,
Speaker 1: and you will eventually get a special gift for pre ordering,
Speaker 1: which we're working on right now. That's right, So check
Speaker 1: it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Chuck, Jane Chucker Bryant, and this is stuff you
Speaker 1: should know, the super gross, but I love it. Addition, uh,
Speaker 1: big time trigger warning for people. This is about tape worms.
Speaker 1: It is disgusting and super creepy and gross, and I
Speaker 1: knew that you would love it. It's so great, it's
Speaker 1: so great. It's just so crazy. We're going all the way. Baby.
Speaker 1: The word perianus comes up at least once, and not
Speaker 1: in a good way. Oh man, Perry As he was
Speaker 1: a good guy. He was that's I've ever had was
Speaker 1: Oh he was? Was he? Uh? Was he the one
Speaker 1: who who made himself everybody's secret saying every year that's right,
Speaker 1: you know, old perry Anus uh down on him and
Speaker 1: he would he would sign his name perianus parentheses saw ari. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: if you don't know what perenus is, just buckle up, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, Chuck, it's going to be quite a
Speaker 1: ride because we are talking about tape worms, and we're
Speaker 1: not talking just about tape worms. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: idea of taking a tapeworm, ingesting it, and letting it
Speaker 1: live and grow in your body and the hopes that
Speaker 1: it will uh divert enough nutrients and calories away from
Speaker 1: you that you can just eat whatever you want and
Speaker 1: lose weight at the same time because you're not getting fatter.
Speaker 1: The tapeworm is right, but we're mainly just talking about
Speaker 1: tape worms because well, I don't want to issue a
Speaker 1: spoiler this really seriously, We'll save that for Act three.
Speaker 1: So tape worms. Uh. This is from our old house
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com website, which is nice to find
Speaker 1: one of these. It is a little hidden gym hanging out.
Speaker 1: This is a grab store article, originally just hidden in
Speaker 1: the anus, waiting for us to discover it. That's right.
Speaker 1: Actually it crawled its way out and dropped it at
Speaker 1: my feet. So tapeworms. The very first line of this
Speaker 1: article is a tapeworm is like something out of a
Speaker 1: horror movie, and it really is. It is this wormy,
Speaker 1: little ribbon shaped creature that is a parasite in every
Speaker 1: sense of the word. They can be very big. It
Speaker 1: can be as big as eighty ft long, and they
Speaker 1: can live in a host for up to thirty years. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: you could get a tapeworm as a kid, and that
Speaker 1: thing might be with you through every formative experience you've
Speaker 1: ever had, and you might actually be sad when it
Speaker 1: calls out of your anus and detaches itself from you.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a Simpsons episode or something kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a little more like um Cleveland show. Um. The
Speaker 1: good news is, uh, if you don't live in a
Speaker 1: developing nation, then you probably don't need to worry about
Speaker 1: a tapeworm, although it can still happen, to be sure,
Speaker 1: but with good hygiene, good hand washing, good livestock practices,
Speaker 1: and good um just feak overall fecal and food handling practices,
Speaker 1: it's not likely to be an issue with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great practice livestock, great practice everybody. Yeah, So if you
Speaker 1: are in the developing world, Um, you there is a
Speaker 1: good chance that you can get a tapeworm because in
Speaker 1: some cases, uh, sanitation is not as great as you
Speaker 1: would like it to be, and there's more poop hanging
Speaker 1: around than then there should be, or that there there
Speaker 1: could be considering other modern practices. And then even beyond that, um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more living among livestock then there are,
Speaker 1: and say like developed urban areas. Right, so even in
Speaker 1: the developed world, there there if you go outside of
Speaker 1: the urban areas and you start running up against pigs
Speaker 1: and cows and their poop and stuff like that, um,
Speaker 1: you can conceivably catch the tapeworm fairly easily, especially if
Speaker 1: you're not really big into hand washing, sure, which you
Speaker 1: should be if you're around poop from animals or humans
Speaker 1: or any kind of poop. Yeah, just any time there's
Speaker 1: even any kind of coincidence of poop in your hands,
Speaker 1: even possibly, just take twenty seconds, recite the alphabet, and
Speaker 1: wash your hands, because if you don't, you might get
Speaker 1: some of that fecal material in your mouth and a
Speaker 1: board that fecal material can be um tapeworm eggs, and
Speaker 1: that is how you get a tapeworm infection. One way.
Speaker 1: In the developed world, you're much more likely to get
Speaker 1: it from something like eating undercooked meat. Right. I've never
Speaker 1: even had pink eye. Oh really never. It's not a
Speaker 1: pleasant experience. Chunk, all right, pop, Yeah, I got some
Speaker 1: FeCO material in my own eye a couple of times,
Speaker 1: I guess poop by the sailor man. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: was sniffing my fingers and I guess I got too
Speaker 1: close to my eye. Then you got your nose confused
Speaker 1: with your eyeball right again, Right, I had a little
Speaker 1: itch and I was like, oh no, what have I done?
Speaker 1: And it was too late. So parasites, like I said,
Speaker 1: A tapeworms, like I said, are true parasites. Um. Everything
Speaker 1: that it gets that it needs it gets from its host, right,
Speaker 1: and like that's how it lives. Man. It just it is,
Speaker 1: like you said, a true parasite in that, like all
Speaker 1: those things that you're supposed to be getting from the
Speaker 1: food you eat, some of it is being diverted by
Speaker 1: to the tapeworm um and they absorb nutrients like gangbusters.
Speaker 1: They actually don't have a mouth, which is weird because
Speaker 1: it looks like they have several mouths, but they actually
Speaker 1: use those mouths to hang onto your intestines inside so
Speaker 1: that they don't get flushed out by the paristalic action
Speaker 1: that you know, helps move poop and stuff along your intestines,
Speaker 1: and instead the tapewormage is kind of floating there absorbing
Speaker 1: nutrients in the matrix of your gut juices basically, and
Speaker 1: they absorb it. They absorb it through their skin um
Speaker 1: and they're just really good at it, so much so
Speaker 1: that there's at least one type of uh tapeworm out
Speaker 1: there that you can actually get from eating undercooked fish
Speaker 1: pike specifically. That's so good at absorbing B twelve. It
Speaker 1: can outcompete you it's host, and you can get a
Speaker 1: pretty bad vitamin B twelve deficiency as a result. Do so,
Speaker 1: these tapeworms live in uh all kinds of host animals,
Speaker 1: like they could you could be you or me. It
Speaker 1: could be, like you said, a fish, which is pretty surprising. Um.
Speaker 1: Most often you hear about beef and pigs or cow.
Speaker 1: I guess it's the animal and pigs. Uh. But they
Speaker 1: you know, depending what kind of species it is, it
Speaker 1: might have a preference for a kind of host. And
Speaker 1: I guess we should describe the body of this thing
Speaker 1: right now. It's it's pretty gross. It's got a a head.
Speaker 1: I guess you would call it. I call it the
Speaker 1: skull X. Yeah, it's called the skull ax skull X.
Speaker 1: It's the top of the worm what we as humans
Speaker 1: might call a head. Yeah, but it looks like an
Speaker 1: old timey diving head diving helmet, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's it's round, it's got those suckers, so they look
Speaker 1: like kind of the portholes on the old div diving helmet. Um.
Speaker 1: And those again, those suckers, they look like mouths that
Speaker 1: the thing would eat on, but no, they use it
Speaker 1: to suck onto the sides of your intestine. But at
Speaker 1: the top of the head um there are some hooks,
Speaker 1: like a ring of hooks that actually latch onto the
Speaker 1: like really grip onto the side of your intestinal wall,
Speaker 1: so that that tapeworm, once it gets its hooks and
Speaker 1: it suckers into your intestinal wall, it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: You know, we should bring back the term skin diver.
Speaker 1: Sure you remember that skin diver. Yeah, wasn't that like
Speaker 1: a snorkeling. I think snorkeling or maybe even scuba is
Speaker 1: just such an antiquated term, like nobody uses that anymore, No,
Speaker 1: I know, because it makes no sense now, and it's
Speaker 1: possible it never made any sense. Like I could see
Speaker 1: someone's granddad now saying, you know, I'm gonna get certified
Speaker 1: to be a skin diver, right, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: get me some pearls, and all the kids laughing Grandpa,
Speaker 1: No one's his skin diver, right, And Grandpa was probably
Speaker 1: saying a bunch of other stuff. Nobody says anymore to
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1: So we're bringing skin diver back. What was the last
Speaker 1: thing you said something about the skull X. I said
Speaker 1: that once this thing gets his hooks and it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's suckers into your intestinal wall, it's not going anywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a good catchy tune. Yeah, like it your tape worm.
Speaker 1: So if it wasn't for the skull x, uh, this
Speaker 1: article points out, you know, the skull eos is the problem.
Speaker 1: If it wasn't for this thing, that your intestines would
Speaker 1: just churn it out and you'd poop it out, no problem.
Speaker 1: But the skull X is really where the rubber meets
Speaker 1: the road as far as attaching to your body and
Speaker 1: that need to think that paristalic action I was talking about, Like,
Speaker 1: that's just a bunch of like quivering muscles that move
Speaker 1: in a progressive direction towards your your rectum and anus
Speaker 1: and all that that push like poop out through your
Speaker 1: intestines or push nutrients through and where they absorbed. But
Speaker 1: then it ultimately like pushes the poop out um. And
Speaker 1: that's how the whole thing works. It's just like some
Speaker 1: quivering muscles in there. And I read Chuck that if
Speaker 1: you take a stimulant um laxative, that that's actually what
Speaker 1: it does is it really kind of um energizes and
Speaker 1: makes those muscles contract, which is good on the one
Speaker 1: hand because it really works. But on the other and
Speaker 1: it's bad because your body becomes dependent on those things
Speaker 1: really quickly. So you don't want to just take those
Speaker 1: willy nilly from what I saw. You want to try
Speaker 1: just about every other type of laxative there is. First
Speaker 1: starting with a diet high and insoluble fiber, and then
Speaker 1: work your way on up to where you're talking to
Speaker 1: a doctor or a nurse practitioner or something before you're
Speaker 1: hitting those those um stimulant laxatives. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: word laxative it's sort of is backward because it it
Speaker 1: makes it sound like it's relaxing everything, when in fact
Speaker 1: it's making everything work harder. It's pretty interesting. It's all
Speaker 1: upside down and dipsy do. But I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of signs along the way that say
Speaker 1: one way, one way, everybody. You're going this way whether
Speaker 1: you like it or not. Right, So, the sculex is
Speaker 1: the is, like I said, where you're you're sticking to
Speaker 1: the intestine, and then below the skull x is the
Speaker 1: neck and and the rest of it is, I mean
Speaker 1: from the neck down, it's just sort of the same thing.
Speaker 1: There are all these uh, just individual segments, can be
Speaker 1: thousands of them, at least hundreds, called the strobilla, and
Speaker 1: each segment by its own is known as a pro
Speaker 1: glatted And those are like when you look at a
Speaker 1: tapeworm and it just looks like a piece of like
Speaker 1: segmented tampe tape. Those those little segments, those proglottids. I
Speaker 1: I did not know this at all, but there they're
Speaker 1: they're basically reproductive organs that also contain eggs, and that
Speaker 1: the ones closest to the head are male sperm sacks.
Speaker 1: And then as you get further away from the head,
Speaker 1: those proglottids um become female and egg holding, and that
Speaker 1: under under some circumstances with some species of tapeworms, they
Speaker 1: can sell um, fertilize and and basically we produced themselves, right,
Speaker 1: But more often than not, they're they're just kind of
Speaker 1: exchanging sperm and eggs with nearby neighbors who are again
Speaker 1: floating around in your intestines, absorbing nutrients and just sperming
Speaker 1: and egging everywhere inside your gut. Yeah, and you're just
Speaker 1: sitting there watching Jeopardy and it might be eighty ft
Speaker 1: long and thirty years old. You're just you have no
Speaker 1: idea what's going on. Like your gut maybe infested with
Speaker 1: tape worms right now, and you probably you might not know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: isn't that creepy? It is super creepy. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let's take a break and I gotta I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: wash my hands again, and we'll talk more about these
Speaker 1: proglottics right after this. Well, now, when you're on the
Speaker 1: road driving in your truck, want to learn a thing
Speaker 1: or two from Josh Man Chuck stuff you should know?
Speaker 1: All right, okay, Chuck, so you promise more purglotted talk
Speaker 1: laid on us. Yeah, So these purglotteds can um like
Speaker 1: the tapeworm is hardy, but it can also break apart.
Speaker 1: It'll still be alive, like make no mistake, Like like
Speaker 1: a chameleon's tail. It's no big whoop if some of
Speaker 1: these purglottis break off and they'll just come out of
Speaker 1: your poop. And you might look at your stool and
Speaker 1: see these things and say like, wow, I have a
Speaker 1: tape worm. Thank goodness, I got rid of it. But
Speaker 1: don't be fooled. There might be a lot of tapeworms
Speaker 1: still back up in your body. Yeah, because remember up
Speaker 1: towards the neck is sperm. Down lower along the body
Speaker 1: is um eggs, and then the lower you get our
Speaker 1: fertilized eggs. So when those proglotteds break off towards the
Speaker 1: end and make their way out in your poop um,
Speaker 1: they are they're fully fertilized egg sacs and that's how
Speaker 1: they enter the environment. It's all part of the life cycle.
Speaker 1: The proglottis breaking off and making its way out of
Speaker 1: your anus. By the way, proglottids are spectacular in that
Speaker 1: not only are they segments filled with fertilized egg sax
Speaker 1: by the time they break off and leave you, they
Speaker 1: also contain muscles, meaning that they can walk on their own.
Speaker 1: So these little segments of tapeworm filled with fertilized tapeworm
Speaker 1: eggs can move and crawl their way out of your butt,
Speaker 1: so much so that there's something called discharge of the proglottids,
Speaker 1: which um is when when right when totally I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that is so progressive, it's crazy, But when
Speaker 1: they start marching their way out of your butt, you
Speaker 1: have a there's a crawling sensation arianus um, and that
Speaker 1: this is one reason why dogs with tapeworms but scooch,
Speaker 1: and also why you might butt scooch too, because you
Speaker 1: are trying to erase the the very anus from your
Speaker 1: body to get rid of this crawling sensation. For sure.
Speaker 1: But even if they don't crawl right out of your
Speaker 1: bottom um, they they can still make their way out
Speaker 1: in your poop, and then they crawl away from the poop.
Speaker 1: Because if they crawl away from the poop, and say,
Speaker 1: like a pasture right where some human is just pooped,
Speaker 1: there might be a cow nearby that eats the grass
Speaker 1: that this periglotted has broken open and like deposited the
Speaker 1: eggs into the soil. And when that cow eats those eggs,
Speaker 1: this life cycle starts all over again. You know what
Speaker 1: we call that dog scooch in our house the boot
Speaker 1: scooting boogie. That's whenever you see the boot scooting boogie
Speaker 1: happen in your house. It may not meet a tape worm,
Speaker 1: but there it's not good. No um. Little Moe does
Speaker 1: it sometimes, but she does this cute thing where she
Speaker 1: does a little one eight in one place. She doesn't
Speaker 1: go like, she doesn't make a line, she stays and
Speaker 1: just kind of does like the twist, and she eventually
Speaker 1: bores a hole in the floor and falls through to
Speaker 1: another dimension. That's right. Yeah, the boot scooting boogie also
Speaker 1: could be like anal glands that need expressing, or just
Speaker 1: uh dingle berry that needs taken care of board on
Speaker 1: a Saturday night. But it's never something awesome. It's never
Speaker 1: you know, hundred dollar bills or just a dog that's
Speaker 1: like making some cool noise with their butt, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So man, Yeah, so the this life cycle thing that
Speaker 1: just kicked off again, we should follow this through one
Speaker 1: more time. Okay, I don't actually I don't even know
Speaker 1: if we've gone through this. But the thing about tape worms,
Speaker 1: and you kind of touched on it before, is they
Speaker 1: infest different animals, But the same kind of tape worm
Speaker 1: might infest different animals as part of its life cycle. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like when you just pooped in the cow pasture and
Speaker 1: that purglotted opened up in deposited the eggs into the soil,
Speaker 1: and this cow eating grass ate that soil. Those eggs
Speaker 1: went into that cow and they said, okay, time to
Speaker 1: turn into our larval stage, and in the cow they
Speaker 1: turned into larvae. But the larvae of tape worms form
Speaker 1: like a cyst around them, and from what I can gather,
Speaker 1: the reason that they form the cyst is because they um.
Speaker 1: It prevents them from setting off an immune response. Because,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, you can have a tapeworom infection
Speaker 1: unless it's really bad and you're becoming really malnourished as
Speaker 1: a result. UM, and it's a it's an adult tapew
Speaker 1: room in your gut. You may never know that you
Speaker 1: had one until the thing just falls out of your
Speaker 1: bottom one day, like it's done um or you start,
Speaker 1: you know, discharging purglotted in your stool. The same thing
Speaker 1: with cows, like when they become infested with um tapeworm
Speaker 1: larvae in these cysts forms, the cysts burrow their way
Speaker 1: out of the intestinal wall and then just implant themselves
Speaker 1: in the cows muscles don't seem to really provide any
Speaker 1: kind of discomfort or problem, and again they don't sit
Speaker 1: off an immune response. But the reason that they deposit
Speaker 1: themselves in their muscles is because somewhere along their evolutionary history,
Speaker 1: which from what we've seen and goes back at least
Speaker 1: two seventy million years. They figured out that the animals
Speaker 1: eat the muscles of other animals, and so we come
Speaker 1: along and we eat the muscles of the cows, and
Speaker 1: those cysts, those larval cysts of tapeworms deposit into our
Speaker 1: guts and they mature into the adult tapeworm, so that
Speaker 1: the whole life cycle begins again. Yeah, what these uh
Speaker 1: at the larval stage, what they're trying to do. They're
Speaker 1: trying to get to the bloodstream, right, So like if
Speaker 1: you eat eggs or whatever, then the they will become
Speaker 1: those syste the larval's and then they go into the
Speaker 1: blood stream. Right, that's right. Okay, So if you have this, uh,
Speaker 1: if you have the tapeworm, then you haven't an infection
Speaker 1: known as human tenise. Uh a man, I had it.
Speaker 1: I even spelled it out tiny assis, Is that right?
Speaker 1: I think? So that's how I was gonna say it.
Speaker 1: And if you have that, like it's like you said,
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. It's asymptomatic probably and you
Speaker 1: won't even know you've got it, but that can develop
Speaker 1: into sisters yarcosis, and that is when these things get
Speaker 1: into your blood stream, and that is not a good
Speaker 1: thing because the chain reaction that can happen from here
Speaker 1: is pretty bad. I mean, it can lead to death.
Speaker 1: It usually doesn't. But they can be anywhere in your body. Uh,
Speaker 1: they can grow, and they can inflame tissue. So if
Speaker 1: it's putting pressure, like near your eyeball, it can cause
Speaker 1: temporary blindness or permanent blindness. If it's near your brain,
Speaker 1: that's no good. It can cause brain damage and uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, in some UH countries they think it's the
Speaker 1: main cause for adult onset onset seizure. Isn't that crazy? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that. There's there's one guy it's called neurocystic
Speaker 1: or kosis, and this one doctor says that at least
Speaker 1: five million cases of adult onset um seizures worldwide or
Speaker 1: from having tapeworm cysts in your brain. So that that
Speaker 1: was the appropriate response, chuck. So the thing is like,
Speaker 1: when you eat a tapeworm larva um, it becomes an
Speaker 1: adult tapeworm in your gut. Humans aren't our bodies aren't
Speaker 1: set up or they're not in this kind of symbiosis
Speaker 1: with tapeworm eggs to do the same thing. So if
Speaker 1: we eat tapeworm eggs accidentally then those become those cystic
Speaker 1: larva's larva, and then that's that's what travels into our
Speaker 1: bloodstream and causes all of these problems. And there's specifically
Speaker 1: one kind of pig tape worm that it goes through
Speaker 1: its life cycle from pig to human to pig, and
Speaker 1: under normal circumstances, if we undercooked pork and get those larva,
Speaker 1: they're going to turn into adult tape worms. But if
Speaker 1: we undercooked pork and we accidentally eat some eggs from
Speaker 1: that pork, then that's when that cistic or cosis. Is
Speaker 1: that right, Yes, sistic or cosis. It can be a
Speaker 1: real problem that you will know, like you were saying
Speaker 1: that you've got a tape worm problem pretty pretty quick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If they get big, they can block your your ducks,
Speaker 1: your pancreatic ducks, your bile ducks. Uh, they can get
Speaker 1: in your organs and grow within your organs, which is
Speaker 1: something that should keep you awake at night. Uh. If
Speaker 1: they get large enough in your organs that that's gonna
Speaker 1: like those organs are not going to be good for
Speaker 1: very long. Uh. They can rupture sometimes. Um. And this
Speaker 1: is just in the body, not necessarily in the organs,
Speaker 1: but if it ruptures in your body, then it's your
Speaker 1: Your body is gonna out like an immuno response. You're
Speaker 1: gonna get hives, it's gonna itch uh, it's gonna swell,
Speaker 1: and you're just gonna have like this massive allergic reaction.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be like what bug bit me, right, except
Speaker 1: you won't be able to talk because your throat will
Speaker 1: have closed. Perhaps, so chuck um. If you don't want
Speaker 1: a tapeworm, which hopefully by now you've realized you don't
Speaker 1: want a tapeworm again, in the in the developed world,
Speaker 1: it's not that hard to avoid a tapeworm, and in
Speaker 1: the United States in particular, um like the meat packing
Speaker 1: industry is I mean, it's dirty and gross and horrific,
Speaker 1: but it's actually pretty good at spotting things like tapeworms.
Speaker 1: So there's a really low chance that you're going to
Speaker 1: get your hands on meat from an American grocery store
Speaker 1: that has tapeworm cists in it. Right, probably not going
Speaker 1: to get a tapeworm, but just to be sure, the
Speaker 1: government has very um conscientiously recommended some minimum king temperatures
Speaker 1: for things like whole cuts of meat like a chopp
Speaker 1: or a steak, right. I think it used to be
Speaker 1: one sixty fairret height. Now they've lowered it to something
Speaker 1: like one, which is sixty three degrees celsius. And here's
Speaker 1: the key. They say, after you've done cooking it to
Speaker 1: that internal temperature which you want to meet thermometer, Do
Speaker 1: you have one of those? One of the best things
Speaker 1: I've ever bought, Chuck. That really up my steak game
Speaker 1: quite a bit. But the key to a good steak,
Speaker 1: and apparently to killing tape worms and other parasites, is
Speaker 1: to letting your whole cut of meat rest for at
Speaker 1: least three minutes. I always do five after you cook,
Speaker 1: before you carve it up and start eating. Do you
Speaker 1: do that? You should do that anyway, because of the
Speaker 1: flavor and the juices. It just does something amazing. Like,
Speaker 1: before I started doing that, I was just a schlove.
Speaker 1: I was a total loser. I had no idea what
Speaker 1: was going on in the world. Once I started off
Speaker 1: the grill and put it in your mouth, sure, yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: I mean put it on a plate and like start
Speaker 1: eating it right. Once started letting meat rest, it was
Speaker 1: like a whole new world. Yeah. And here's another tip.
Speaker 1: If you want a really delicious steak uh or I
Speaker 1: guess pork chop. You you get one either. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you don't have one of these um sort of
Speaker 1: slotted cutting boards for to rest on, use like a
Speaker 1: baker's rack or something, because you still maintain that crisp
Speaker 1: on the outer, that char if you just let it
Speaker 1: sit in its juices, that's gonna get all. You know,
Speaker 1: it's going to change the texture, oh, like a grilled
Speaker 1: pan or something like that. Use that. Yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: this cutting board that has uh it's basically like a
Speaker 1: grid instead of being flat, uh and it and it
Speaker 1: has a a little uh like a grill grate that
Speaker 1: can lift up and out of it so it's never sitting.
Speaker 1: Like not much of the meat is sitting on a
Speaker 1: board when it's resting. So you don't want it to
Speaker 1: rest in its juices. No, I want to keep it crispy. Okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that I got it all. It's to
Speaker 1: try that because I always just basically I just put
Speaker 1: it on a plate and throw like a some foil
Speaker 1: loosely over it, or else like a like a pan cover.
Speaker 1: You cover it too, huh. Yeah, yeah, I've always read
Speaker 1: it's gonna keep cooking right. Yeah, yeah, for sure, But
Speaker 1: I mean it's not on the flame anymore, so it's
Speaker 1: like just kind of um yeah, yeah, I know. For
Speaker 1: I've never tried it uncovered. Maybe I will try uncovering
Speaker 1: and away from the juices and see what happens you
Speaker 1: try covering it and leaving it in his juices. I
Speaker 1: don't even use a meat thermometer, so I think we
Speaker 1: have different steak games. You don't huh do you like,
Speaker 1: here's rare, medium, rare, medium, rare. But if I know
Speaker 1: the thickness and the weight and the temperature, I don't
Speaker 1: need to meet thermometer. I stopped cooking as many steaks,
Speaker 1: so I have to kind of I had to go
Speaker 1: back to elementary school again. No, there's no shame in it.
Speaker 1: I'm not ashamed. I had a had a chef that
Speaker 1: I worked for that he could he just touched his
Speaker 1: He like, you can tell the internal what the inside
Speaker 1: looks like just by touching the outside, right, And we
Speaker 1: should tell people. They're probably people who haven't been listening
Speaker 1: that long and don't know the secret to steak that
Speaker 1: we've said before, Chuck, But you do not touch your steak.
Speaker 1: You don't cut it, you cook it, you see it
Speaker 1: on one side for a minute and a half two
Speaker 1: minutes tops, depending on how thick it is. Flip it
Speaker 1: over and do the same thing to the other side.
Speaker 1: And then you take it off of your oven or
Speaker 1: your grill or whatever and move it into a convection
Speaker 1: oven if you've got one at about three degrees three minutes,
Speaker 1: the three and a half minutes per side for six
Speaker 1: to seven minutes total. Let it rest five minutes, thank
Speaker 1: us in the morning. I don't do mind that way either.
Speaker 1: Like I said, we've got different steak games. I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought you said you'd tried it that way before,
Speaker 1: and you're like, this is amazing I've done. I'll do
Speaker 1: all kinds of way. Sometimes I do it in a
Speaker 1: pan and then stick it in the broiler. These days
Speaker 1: of all about the grill again, because I've got a
Speaker 1: grill that can get really really hot. Oh yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's the key, you know, Like you want to see
Speaker 1: hear in those juices to keep it from escaping. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is another reason to meet. Thermometer is good if
Speaker 1: you don't, if you can't, just use your thumb. You
Speaker 1: don't have to cut it open to look inside. You
Speaker 1: just plunge that thing in there and it tells you.
Speaker 1: I think all this talk of steak has made people
Speaker 1: forget that we're talking about tapeworms. Yeah, perryanus tapeworms. So
Speaker 1: um should we? I mean, I guess we should talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the symptoms before we come back
Speaker 1: for the final act of tapeworms as a weight loss aid.
Speaker 1: But you might not have infectra I'm sorry symptoms at first. Uh.
Speaker 1: You might feel a little weak, you might feel some
Speaker 1: you might have some diarrhea. You might feel dizzy or
Speaker 1: lose your appetite. You might lose a little weight. You
Speaker 1: might crave salt, which is an interesting one because I
Speaker 1: always crave salt. Yeah. I thought that was interesting to
Speaker 1: um or Pika in general, Like if you crave eating
Speaker 1: clay or just anything that you is a little weird
Speaker 1: is a big sign. You're saying Pica now, pa Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I've always said they haven't I you always said, Pika.
Speaker 1: This is amazing. It's like starting our podcast all over
Speaker 1: again after twelve years. It's a refresh. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: going with now, all right, Uh, So you will get
Speaker 1: a you will deliver a stool sample. Um. If you
Speaker 1: go to the doctor, if you suspect you have a
Speaker 1: tape worm, you want them to ask you for it first. Sure,
Speaker 1: just don't bring it in a bag unless you've happened
Speaker 1: to see that your poop has worms in it, um
Speaker 1: and that you could bring it in. But you could
Speaker 1: also just say there were those were definitely worms in
Speaker 1: my poop, and hopefully what happens is is that you've
Speaker 1: gone in there quickly enough to where it it doesn't
Speaker 1: end up being a very big deal. And you take
Speaker 1: a little anti worm medication and this thing works by
Speaker 1: basically kind of paralyzing the parasite so it's muscles are
Speaker 1: perm contracted. Yeah, and you know we're talking about how
Speaker 1: that that head just latches on. It's not able to
Speaker 1: latch on. It just comes right on out in your poop,
Speaker 1: I know, because it just falls out, basically. And there
Speaker 1: are plenty of videos on the internet that show tapeworms
Speaker 1: that have come out of people's anuses. If you want
Speaker 1: to go see that kind of thing, they can get
Speaker 1: really really long. Um. But that that drug chuck that
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, the anti warming agent, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing that they give dogs, Like any animal that's
Speaker 1: going to have a worm is going to get the
Speaker 1: same treatment. But they found they're pretty sure this particular one,
Speaker 1: Nick Close amid this d worming agent is actually also
Speaker 1: good for things like treating cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, graph
Speaker 1: versus host disease, endometriosis, and a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1: Because they're like, it does something to to channeling pathways, uh,
Speaker 1: multiple chane only pathways, And it might be like this
Speaker 1: wonder drug that's just waiting to be unlocked. Didn't that neat?
Speaker 1: That is super neat, Nick Close to meat? Do we
Speaker 1: take that break? Yeah? Man, let's take the break, all right.
Speaker 1: Then we'll get to the big revel revelation relevation, no revelation.
Speaker 1: Can you use the tape him to lose weight? Right?
Speaker 1: For this? Well, now we're on the road driving in
Speaker 1: your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh?
Speaker 1: Can chuck it stuff? You should know? All right? No,
Speaker 1: you can't and you shouldn't. That's right. So remember Kelly
Speaker 1: Kapoor tried that or else she considered taking it. I
Speaker 1: don't remember, do you. Oh that's right, I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: So I mean this has been around for a really
Speaker 1: long time. This idea that you can take a eat
Speaker 1: a tapeworm of some sort tapeworm cyst, not eggs, because
Speaker 1: those will turn into system and invade your brain. Um
Speaker 1: that that you could get a tapeworm infection and start
Speaker 1: to lose weight. Possibly as long as the nineteen century
Speaker 1: they think that there. So here's the thing. Do you
Speaker 1: remember when we did our episode on Flee Circuses. Sure
Speaker 1: it was really thrilling to me because even while we
Speaker 1: were podcasting, I still could not tell for a little
Speaker 1: while whether it was a real thing or just one
Speaker 1: of the most exquisitely perpetrated hoaxes ever, right, and that
Speaker 1: it was still working on us. There's this kind of
Speaker 1: a similar thing where it's not entirely clear if these
Speaker 1: old timey ads are real people think they typically are,
Speaker 1: or if they were real, if anybody actually did this,
Speaker 1: or if it was some sort of farce or hoax
Speaker 1: or satire. And if it wasn't satire, how widespread was this,
Speaker 1: Because it does seem that there were nineteenth century ads,
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century early twenty century adds four sterilized tapeworm
Speaker 1: pills that women could take. They were marketed toward women
Speaker 1: to keep their their figure trim. Right. Of course they
Speaker 1: were marketed toward women take a tapeworm, ladies, exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a singer and opera singer named Maria Callas
Speaker 1: who and this is almost certainly urban legend, but she
Speaker 1: lost I read eighty pounds I've seen other places sixty
Speaker 1: pounds over a few months in the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: so much so that it affected her singing as an
Speaker 1: opera singer. And we do know that she got a
Speaker 1: tapeworm at some point in her life, and we do
Speaker 1: know that she liked to eat her steak rare. But
Speaker 1: I think it looks, by and large like it was
Speaker 1: urban legend, that it got kind of all mixed up together.
Speaker 1: And people said that Maria Callis lost weight by ingesting tapeworm,
Speaker 1: right right, Like those two things did happen. She did
Speaker 1: lose weight, and she did have a tapeworm infection, probably
Speaker 1: at some point in life, but that the two were
Speaker 1: in no way related. But based on this kind of
Speaker 1: idea that you could take a tapeworm and lose weight,
Speaker 1: that that they became conflated into this urban legend, as
Speaker 1: you were saying, and that that's that's like the one
Speaker 1: that people point to is like proof that this actually happened,
Speaker 1: and actually it didn't, it didn't happen at all like that.
Speaker 1: Supposedly there is a clinic in Tijuana called worm Therapy
Speaker 1: uh and supposedly this is the one place in the
Speaker 1: world where you can go get a tape worm put
Speaker 1: into your body to lose weight for about bucks. You
Speaker 1: can get a beef tape worm um. And I've you know,
Speaker 1: have been to t one a few times. I never
Speaker 1: sought out worm therapy, but apparently it existed or still exists,
Speaker 1: it's not clear. So they have a website. I think
Speaker 1: it's worm Therapy dot com or dot org and it's
Speaker 1: as you know, like you know, contact form fields. It
Speaker 1: shows a map of where it is and it isn't
Speaker 1: to you one and all that there's a phone number.
Speaker 1: I didn't call the phone number. But it's one of
Speaker 1: those things like is it actually real number one or
Speaker 1: is it just a hoax website? If it's not a
Speaker 1: hoax website and it actually is a helmet therapy because
Speaker 1: remember in our Hookworms episode, we were talking about that
Speaker 1: theory that losing some kinds of parasitic worms they think
Speaker 1: actually harmed our immune system and lead to a rise
Speaker 1: in like crones and stuff like that. Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: are clinics out there in the world that use um
Speaker 1: parasitic worms to help autoimmune diseases. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: worm therapy does that and that they don't do the
Speaker 1: beef tapeworm thing. But the urban legend is that they did,
Speaker 1: at least as as recently as two thousand nine, they
Speaker 1: offered it. It's just not clear whether any of this
Speaker 1: is true or not. Right. What we do know is
Speaker 1: true is that to to purpose do this is not
Speaker 1: a good idea. It is not a healthy way to
Speaker 1: lose weight. Uh, and you're not even gonna lose Like
Speaker 1: it said that you can expect to lose one to
Speaker 1: two pounds from a tapeworm a week. You can lose
Speaker 1: that much with a pretty aggressive diet and exercise plan. Yeah, supposedly,
Speaker 1: just cutting five calories out from your diet every day
Speaker 1: every week, you could lose a pound. You can look
Speaker 1: forward to losing a pound. So yeah, exactly taking a
Speaker 1: tapeworm to do that is not not a good idea,
Speaker 1: especially considering so because that tapeworm is competing for nutrients
Speaker 1: from you. You're gonna end up with a pretty nice
Speaker 1: little case of malnutrition if it gets pretty bad. So
Speaker 1: you're actually going to be your body is going to
Speaker 1: talk you into eating more than you normally would, right,
Speaker 1: so you'll develop even worse eating habits than you did
Speaker 1: than you have before the tapeworm infection, so that when
Speaker 1: you finally get around to taking a d worming eight
Speaker 1: it and it gets rid of that tapeworm, when you
Speaker 1: just keep eating again, you're gonna gain that weight right back,
Speaker 1: and you're probably gonna gain more weight back because you've
Speaker 1: developed even worse seeing eating habits from having the tapeworm.
Speaker 1: And again, all of this is based on the idea
Speaker 1: that any of this is even true to begin with,
Speaker 1: which is totally unclear still at this point. Yes, totally,
Speaker 1: So that's it. Don't don't take a tapeworm to lose weight.
Speaker 1: Just exercise and diet. That's that is it. There's no
Speaker 1: better diet fed than that. Just exercise and diet, and
Speaker 1: you will lose weight and feel healthier and better and
Speaker 1: sleep better and have less chronic disease and just be
Speaker 1: far better off. That's it. That's right. You got anything else,
Speaker 1: No well, since Chuck said no, it's time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail. This is from a high school student. We
Speaker 1: love hearing from high school students. This is from Kate.
Speaker 1: Kate says, Hi, guys, I am a junior in high
Speaker 1: school from mass Aitusetts. Discovered the podcast in September at
Speaker 1: the start of the school year, and I've loved it
Speaker 1: ever since. It definitely makes my morning car rides much
Speaker 1: more interesting, and it does wonders to decrease my horrible
Speaker 1: road rage. Recently, as I was driving to Cape Cod,
Speaker 1: I was listening to your Spartacus episode. I've been studying
Speaker 1: Latin since sixth grade, uh and this year was my
Speaker 1: first year taking Ancient Greeks, so needless to say, I'm
Speaker 1: a huge nerd when it comes to Roman history. I
Speaker 1: couldn't help but to laugh when I heard you both
Speaker 1: struggling to pronounce the names of the Roman consuls and
Speaker 1: they're important and other important historical figures. This quarantine has
Speaker 1: really been tough on me, guys, like it has on everyone,
Speaker 1: and I really needed that laugh. So I thought I
Speaker 1: would write to you as a sort of thank you note.
Speaker 1: Although your pronunciation may not have been great, the whole
Speaker 1: episode really did wonders to lighten my mood and make
Speaker 1: me feel better even though things are crazy right now.
Speaker 1: Always I know that I have your podcast to listen
Speaker 1: to when I'm feeling down or just want to smile out.
Speaker 1: Wishing you health and happiness. That is from Kate in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Kate. That was nice of her to
Speaker 1: say our pronunciation may not have been great. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: she means is, guys, you were way off. It was terrible. Well,
Speaker 1: that was very nice, Kate. And it's nice to hear
Speaker 1: that we're helping you out there. And uh, thank you
Speaker 1: for writing in. And if you are like Kate and
Speaker 1: we're helping you out we always love hearing that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You can send an email to us if
Speaker 1: you like, wrap it up, spend it on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
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