Speaker 1: Turkeys known for being birds, famous for being meats and
Speaker 1: two types. Nobody thinks much about them. So let's have
Speaker 1: some fun. Let's find out why turkeys are secretly incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks, welcome to a whole new podcast episode
Speaker 1: of podcast all about why being Alive is more interesting
Speaker 1: than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmetta,
Speaker 1: and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co host,
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion
Speaker 1: of turkeys? Gobble?
Speaker 2: We'll go.
Speaker 1: Bobblegle, gobble gobble.
Speaker 2: I this is Katie not I know my turkey impression.
Speaker 2: It was really good, right, like I do, a very
Speaker 2: good turkey impression.
Speaker 1: Give it a go up. But go Google goog gobble gobble. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like turkeys, so I think they are really interesting
Speaker 2: animals because they've been so they're so affiliated or associated
Speaker 2: with Thanksgiving. Of course, we do eat them. Let's just
Speaker 2: get that out of the way, right, We eat them, folks,
Speaker 2: that that happens. We do eat the We do eat
Speaker 2: the turkeys. Wild turkeys are really interesting. They're I think
Speaker 2: they're very beautiful, like the kinds of turkeys we eat
Speaker 2: do not. I mean, I'm sure we're probably gonna talk
Speaker 2: about all this. They don't really resemble as much the
Speaker 2: wild turkeys that you see right roaming the American wilderness
Speaker 2: and suburbs. But you know, yeah, I think it's it
Speaker 2: is just really cool because I like I like birds,
Speaker 2: and especially like birds that remind me that birds are
Speaker 2: the last living family of dinosaurs, which is fun.
Speaker 1: Yes, I agree with all that. And also I should
Speaker 1: disclose how much I like eating turkey. I think I
Speaker 1: eat more turkey than most Americans. We would do Schmid
Speaker 1: family thanksgivings, and only me and my dad were excited
Speaker 1: about turkey as a food. It's my main sandwich meat,
Speaker 1: all of the types Deli meat, dark meat, white me
Speaker 1: with gravy. It's all great.
Speaker 2: Let me let me ask your sandwich preferences, Alex, So, like,
Speaker 2: what kind of turkey do you get? Like? Do you
Speaker 2: have like a turkey sandwich pretty much weekly?
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm a big deli counter person. I get like
Speaker 1: a turkey and a cheese, often a provolone.
Speaker 2: That's the right answer. This was a test and you
Speaker 2: passed it, so yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1: I really like the show could continue. That's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really can't deal with packaged turkey like this,
Speaker 2: Like when I look in there and I see it
Speaker 2: kind of moist and jiggly and little flimy, and then
Speaker 2: I open that up and then I get that sort
Speaker 2: of like of like turkey smell right from the package.
Speaker 2: I cannot deal with that. That is too much for me.
Speaker 2: So it's got to be fresh sliced from a local
Speaker 2: deli or not at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel the same, Like I am actually fine
Speaker 1: with the package, but it's just not nearly as good
Speaker 1: to me, you know. Yeah, why settle. I'm a poultry fiend.
Speaker 1: I love it, and so I have many opinions on this,
Speaker 1: and many thanks to coop Bear. Also you agent for
Speaker 1: suggesting this supporting this on the discord. I think it's
Speaker 1: a pretty US Thanksgiving driven suggestion. Also shout out to
Speaker 1: our Canadian friends who celebrated Thanksgiving last month. But either way,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the bird and the food
Speaker 1: all at once. This is a great show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that it is. You know,
Speaker 2: it might sound contradictory, right to appreciate the animal but
Speaker 2: also not like want to maybe sometimes eat that animal.
Speaker 2: I personally think that it is important to know where
Speaker 2: our food comes from, to respect them, and to also
Speaker 2: encourage sort of better practices in terms of what we
Speaker 2: eat and how we treat our farmed animals. We can
Speaker 2: appreciate the food, but also want to appreciate respect the animal.
Speaker 1: I feel same and also with bison. Everybody knows I
Speaker 1: love byson and I eat bison when it's offered to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for all those things, the bird, the food, everything. We're
Speaker 1: leading with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics
Speaker 1: this week. That's in a segment called oh come y
Speaker 1: fens of sift podstats Let not bad facts, dismay do
Speaker 1: you say stats straight to your face to start the
Speaker 1: pod to day, So perk your ears and listen. Clear
Speaker 1: these digits that we say, Oh, tidings of stats we enjoy,
Speaker 1: Steps we enjoy, hot hidings of starts we enjoyed.
Speaker 2: I'm clapping because you really got the pentameter right on
Speaker 2: that one. I don't know, I don't know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: You did a good job. Also, is this sort of
Speaker 2: airing on Thanksgiving? I think you just mentioned when it
Speaker 2: was airing.
Speaker 1: But it'll be it's the week before the week of
Speaker 1: us thanksgoing. Okay, yeah, okay, well, which is kind of
Speaker 1: Christmas mode.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know what is it?
Speaker 1: Like, do you start listen?
Speaker 2: Do you start jamming out to Christmas songs before Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1: I do not, But I appreciate Christmas stuff, okay, which
Speaker 1: is maybe a weird position, right, Like if I see
Speaker 1: Christmas decorations, I'm like, that's cool, but I don't really
Speaker 1: put on Christmas music till December.
Speaker 2: It's like I can both appreciate Santa and also eat
Speaker 2: him as a food. So I get.
Speaker 1: It, save me the beard. I don't know how you
Speaker 1: would eat it right. That name was submitted by Lemons
Speaker 1: and Leaves on the Discord. Thank you for that. We
Speaker 1: have a new name every week. Please make a Missilli
Speaker 1: and Waggion bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to
Speaker 1: sip potot gmail dot com. And the first number this
Speaker 1: week is around eight hundred beests. And this is the
Speaker 1: one number that came up on our Renfare show. That's
Speaker 1: when Native people in North America began domesticating turkeys around
Speaker 1: eight hundred BC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I remember reading the findings about
Speaker 2: this where we had found evidence of a type of
Speaker 2: enclosure for uh for turkeys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they it was a wild bird and then they
Speaker 1: started domesticating at keeping it at their communities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's similar to the story with chickens.
Speaker 2: I mean, chickens come from a bird known as the
Speaker 2: jungle fowl, and they are now sort of our big,
Speaker 2: juicy chickens. But yeah, the original sort of jungle fowl
Speaker 2: were leaner. They're like, I mean, they still exist, but
Speaker 2: they're leaner. They're not really they're they're you know, more
Speaker 2: of a game, gamey sort of bird. But then we
Speaker 2: domesticated them and then yeah, made them, made them all plump. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the turkey and jungle flower a sort of some learned that,
Speaker 2: Like they're very colorful in the wild, and they have
Speaker 2: all sorts of like browns and you know, yellows and golds,
Speaker 2: and jungle fowl even have like some greens as well.
Speaker 2: But then, like when we domesticated both of them, I mean,
Speaker 2: probably not this early on, Like I would imagine that
Speaker 2: in that the early domestication there, we didn't have turkeys
Speaker 2: with white feathers running around. But now turkeys do have
Speaker 2: white feathers, as do chickens, which makes it I think
Speaker 2: the purpose of that is to make it easier to like,
Speaker 2: when we're cleaning the bird carcass, like then the there's
Speaker 2: the feathers, like the white feathers are just less conspicuous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all right on, Yeah, apparently that's part of it.
Speaker 1: With turkeys. There's also just some flattening out of the
Speaker 1: different kinds of turkeys and how we've domesticated it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, North North America is where turkeys come from. It's
Speaker 1: the home of five subspecies of turkey scientific name Meliagris galipavo.
Speaker 1: And that connection to foul actually it leads us into
Speaker 1: our first takeaway number one. The bird name Turkey comes
Speaker 1: from the name of the country and fifteen hundred's world
Speaker 1: trade confusion.
Speaker 2: Ah okay, that's really okay, all right.
Speaker 1: They are in English modern day they are named after
Speaker 1: the country of Turkey in West Asia.
Speaker 2: That is very interesting because yeah, of course turkeys are
Speaker 2: not from Turkey, they are from North America. They are
Speaker 2: an indigenous species of bird here. So yeah, tell me
Speaker 2: what happened there, Alex, because it sounds like someone messed
Speaker 2: up big time.
Speaker 1: What's that Simpsons thing? Like, I hope someone got fired
Speaker 1: for that. Blunder. I hope some won't get fired for
Speaker 1: that blunder. Yeah, perfect, Yeah, Yeah. And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of key sources here, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, also
Speaker 1: the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America,
Speaker 1: and a book called one Hundred Birds and How They
Speaker 1: Got Their Names that's by nonfiction writer Diana Wells. Because, yeah,
Speaker 1: the word Turkey entered English as a name for a country.
Speaker 1: It's a longtime name for the part of Asia Minor
Speaker 1: that was part of the Ottoman Empire. Also, when that
Speaker 1: area became a new country in nineteen twenty three, it
Speaker 1: named itself Turkie, which is not how we tend to
Speaker 1: say it in English, Turkia. It's spelled t u with
Speaker 1: an umlaut rkiye Turkie.
Speaker 2: That's actually more similar to the Italian version of Turkia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this bird name and what we often call the
Speaker 1: country is very anglicized.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also another number here is twenty twenty two, because
Speaker 1: that's when the Turkish government made a formal request to
Speaker 1: the United Nations that they and other countries call the
Speaker 1: country Turkie rather than Turkey, like they're trying to shift
Speaker 1: to their actual name for themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I get that. But it's like, once we
Speaker 2: start calling something our own little American name for it,
Speaker 2: that's that's pretty sticky.
Speaker 1: We're stubborn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's now I'm thinking more about words
Speaker 2: like with the It is interesting because in Italian, like
Speaker 2: the term for like turkey the meat or the bird
Speaker 2: is like takino. It's not turk.
Speaker 1: Cool. I don't know why that actually tracks with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the name turkey is relatively English specific. In France,
Speaker 1: this bird is called dian doon, which yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 1: doorbell bird. But the first French name was cooktiins, meaning
Speaker 1: cock from India, bird from India. And what generally happened
Speaker 1: here is Europe in the fifteen hundreds, with the Colombian
Speaker 1: exchange and with better sailing ships in world trade, they
Speaker 1: start importing tasty birds and interesting birds from all over
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, they're like, let's get the fowl. Let's
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, you know, you see a bird
Speaker 2: and you're like, look at that graceful, elegant creature of
Speaker 2: the ground and the sky. I do want to eat it,
Speaker 2: and so okay, that's so then, yeah, we were at
Speaker 2: the point where we're importing a bunch of tasty birds,
Speaker 2: and I'm assuming that a crate of turkeys from America
Speaker 2: and a crate of some poor Turkish bird got like
Speaker 2: their labels got switched.
Speaker 1: Or something exactly. They all got lumped together. Because, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got lots of species of fowl from East Africa,
Speaker 1: in particular New Mida day as a taxonomic group of
Speaker 1: African guinea fowl. There's other fowl from India, from the
Speaker 1: South Pacific, and with a lot of that trade, the
Speaker 1: key funneling point was Ottoman Turkey because it's this place
Speaker 1: in this big Ottoman Empire that has existing trade relationships
Speaker 1: in a bunch of ways with Europe, and so so
Speaker 1: many of the fowl get funneled through there that people
Speaker 1: in say France, just start calling all of it Indian fowl.
Speaker 1: People in England start calling all of it turkey fowl
Speaker 1: or just turkeys.
Speaker 2: We kind of consider the modern trade of like things
Speaker 2: just coming from all over the world, and the origins
Speaker 2: of food and other imports being sometimes confusing, like not
Speaker 2: knowing where they come from right as like a new thing.
Speaker 2: But I guess that's it's not all that new.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we're like into it, but also messy with it.
Speaker 1: And they did that with not just these birds coming
Speaker 1: through the country of Turkey, but also birds from the Americas, because,
Speaker 1: like we said on the Renfare Show, it's plausible for
Speaker 1: Elizabethan England to have turkey legs because as soon as
Speaker 1: fifteen eleven, the Spanish Royal Court started requesting turkeys from
Speaker 1: their new conquered colony and mecha Ago and they had
Speaker 1: already heard of Turkey's when they requested them. Like these
Speaker 1: were brought over very quickly by food fan Europeans.
Speaker 2: And how soon did Rye follow? Like did when was
Speaker 2: turkey on? Rye introduced?
Speaker 1: Well, look up a deliologist for this information. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the name of a turkey, Yes, it's probably one of
Speaker 1: the two biggest cases of English speakers doing that. The
Speaker 1: other one is the word corn. That was an old
Speaker 1: English word for any grain in a generic sense, and
Speaker 1: then we applied it to maze that they called Indian
Speaker 1: corn and then just called corn. Right, So turkeys are
Speaker 1: like that too. It's just a choice by English speakers
Speaker 1: at the fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: I see, I see, it's you know, another thing, corn
Speaker 2: and turkeys. I always see corn as a you know,
Speaker 2: this is strange to me. Corn is very associated with
Speaker 2: like Thanksgiving and fall, but I only ever eat corn
Speaker 2: in the summer. What's going on, Alex?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a good summer food. I'm also kind
Speaker 1: of a corn fiend. I eat it all the time.
Speaker 2: So you do, you're just like out in like you're
Speaker 2: the going around to farms eating all the corn, grabbing chickens.
Speaker 2: People think it's chupacabra, but no, it's Alex cheepishmitty.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh and yeah, so that's why this North American
Speaker 1: bird is named after Torqui sort of, Yeah, because we're dumb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're done, Yeah, and back some more numbers. The next
Speaker 1: number is eleven thousand, five hundred feathers. This is eleven
Speaker 1: five hundred feathers is the feather contents of one Native
Speaker 1: American blanket that was found by anthropologists in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: So, okay, explain to me how is because like, when
Speaker 2: I think of a blanket, I don't necessarily think of
Speaker 2: feathers unless it's like, is this like a blanket that's
Speaker 2: been fit with feathers sort of like a like a duvet,
Speaker 2: or is it woven out of feathers?
Speaker 1: It's neither. It's that the feathers are sort of tied
Speaker 1: together by woven plant fibers. Ooh, what's now the southwestern US.
Speaker 1: They used yucca plant fibers to weave together over eleven
Speaker 1: thousand feathers into one blanket. And we think they harvested
Speaker 1: that from at least nine adult male turkeys just for
Speaker 1: the one blanket.
Speaker 2: Do we know, like what the purpose of this blanket was.
Speaker 2: Was it like a cozy blanket for cuddling under, or
Speaker 2: was this more of an artistic piece for say, something
Speaker 2: more formal.
Speaker 1: It's sort of everything. Apparently Pueblo people's in what's now
Speaker 1: the southwestern US, they pretty much made a blanket for
Speaker 1: each member of the community. According to Shannon Tushingham of
Speaker 1: Washington State University, quote, it is likely that every member
Speaker 1: of an ancestral Pueblo community, from infants to it else,
Speaker 1: possessed one of these blankets. End quote. That's so cool.
Speaker 1: You're a human being, you get one of these, you
Speaker 1: care about you? You know. It was very fundamental.
Speaker 2: I want to live in a society where from the
Speaker 2: day you're born you are guaranteed an awesome blanket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like very big and crucial for them
Speaker 1: and hope people's donny people. They also made turkey feather
Speaker 1: blankets and there's also people still weaving those today. According
Speaker 1: to New Mexico Wildlife magazine, archaeologist Mary Weaki produced new
Speaker 1: samples in twenty eighteen for a museum, and she's of
Speaker 1: Comanche and Santa Clara descent. She said she was inspired
Speaker 1: by her ancestors and their creativity and their patients to
Speaker 1: do this. So it's a long running art practice, sort
Speaker 1: of textile practice, and it brings up something really surprising
Speaker 1: about turkey domestication because it turns out that for many
Speaker 1: centuries of North American people mainly domesticated turkeys to like
Speaker 1: harvest the feathers and without necessarily killing the birds. Oh
Speaker 1: whow Really it was not a food thing initially.
Speaker 2: And so they're also harvesting the feathers as the birds
Speaker 2: are molting them. They're not killing them for the feathers exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They either molt them naturally or they would remove a
Speaker 1: few feathers in a way that let the birds still
Speaker 1: be alive. So it's almost sort of like what I
Speaker 1: think of with fiber art stuff with lamas and sheets
Speaker 1: and things like raising them for what they generate on
Speaker 1: their outsides.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at a picture of one of these turkey
Speaker 2: feather blankets and it is so like it is way
Speaker 2: fluffier than I was anticipating. It looks really really fluffy,
Speaker 2: and it looks very comfortable, like it would be super
Speaker 2: soft and super fluffy.
Speaker 1: It's also really pretty.
Speaker 2: It's like it looks very cozy and comfortable but also
Speaker 2: really beautiful.
Speaker 1: And so that was a huge surprised me about the
Speaker 1: history of turkey domestication, and Smithsonian says that we think
Speaker 1: Pueblo people only began eating their turkeys around the eleven
Speaker 1: hundred's AD, so well more than a thousand years after
Speaker 1: they started domesticating them. It was probably just population growth
Speaker 1: and a lack of other game was why they started
Speaker 1: eating some of them.
Speaker 2: I see. Interesting, So they didn't they maybe didn't need
Speaker 2: them as a food source before then, but then you
Speaker 2: got enough mouths to feed and there wasn't enough like
Speaker 2: other game animals, and then you start eating them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, And yeah, apparently there's also finds
Speaker 1: that Mayan sites in Central America where it seems like
Speaker 1: turkey meat was only used rarely in religious and cultural
Speaker 1: ceremonies until pretty late in Mayan history, and so like
Speaker 1: when Europeans were eating turkeys, they were imitating how Native
Speaker 1: people used them. But it was a very recent Native practice.
Speaker 1: It was only a few centuries before the Columbian Exchange.
Speaker 2: I mean, I get that if you have other choices,
Speaker 2: turkey can be a little dry. I know you like it, Alex,
Speaker 2: but let's admit turkey can be a little dry. Can
Speaker 2: be a little dry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people tell me this, and they're right, and I
Speaker 1: love it anyway. It's my foolish palette because yeah, but
Speaker 1: also I love it.
Speaker 2: I guess some people like dry sandwiches.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, native people are not a monolith.
Speaker 1: They're probably some Native people who ate turkeys earlier than this,
Speaker 1: and then people hunt turkeys to this day, the wildlins.
Speaker 1: And one amazing modern number about that is the year
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: That was you know, I'm going to say one year ago.
Speaker 1: That's true for a while. And in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: residents of Carmel, California bestowed the name Cupid on a
Speaker 1: local wild turkey. And they did that because some hunter
Speaker 1: put an arrow through this turkey. Oh Man, and it
Speaker 1: just continued walking around and hanging out. No, and was alive. Still.
Speaker 2: I hate this. I don't like this. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 2: anti hunting, but I'm very much pro finishing what you started.
Speaker 1: Because wow, it's very incompetent hunting.
Speaker 2: Yo. That looks not fun for this turkey. I mean,
Speaker 2: this turkey is carrying it well in a way that
Speaker 2: I would not personally, I think, be able to handle
Speaker 2: if I had a whole arrow running directly through my
Speaker 2: body right in and out.
Speaker 1: So props to this turkey. Yeah, and like it's moving
Speaker 1: well enough that, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, locals
Speaker 1: were not able to catch Cupid to bring them in
Speaker 1: for treatment because it's because Cuba is just like living. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least in twenty twenty three. And yeah, the Guardian
Speaker 1: says that it was a thirty and J row and
Speaker 1: that locals named a Cupid because of cute Valentine's Day stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, adorable, it's really cute. And an animal has an
Speaker 2: arrow just jutting out of its body.
Speaker 1: And the turkeys will probably be of excitement to game
Speaker 1: hunters for a while because, according to National Geographic they're
Speaker 1: the largest game bird in North America. They're significantly bigger
Speaker 1: than grouse, ptarmigan's other mostly ground birds. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if any game bird is going to survive an arrow,
Speaker 1: it's probably a turkey. Yeah, and it's amazing if they
Speaker 1: can do it. It's rare, but it happens once in
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 2: We got to start, we got to start getting more
Speaker 2: like wild ostriches and EMUs. So not only can they
Speaker 2: survive an arrow, they can like actually shoot one back
Speaker 2: at you. Increase the challenge difficulty level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, teach your ostrich archery. Yeah, folks, so many of
Speaker 1: you just have an ostrich and you haven't taught them
Speaker 1: many important sports or hunting combat.
Speaker 2: They've got the long legs, the long necks. Don't tell
Speaker 2: me they can't like use their own necks as like
Speaker 2: a sort of bowstring like in cartoons.
Speaker 1: I trust them. And the next amazing turkey number is
Speaker 1: one point six miles, which is more than two point
Speaker 1: five kilometers.
Speaker 2: Watch walk one point six miles.
Speaker 1: It's not all that far. Oh, I don't care that much,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, not that I do it yet, but
Speaker 1: that distance, that's how far away a female turkey can
Speaker 1: hear the gobble of a male turkey. One point six miles.
Speaker 2: Garble, garble, garbel, garbage, gobble, Google Google, boggabo Google Google
Speaker 2: bug a goggle. Uh, that's great, that's that's that's actually
Speaker 2: pretty distant, I think to hear a.
Speaker 1: Gobble, I really thought it's pretty soft.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they're no, they're loud.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the thing is it is so loud because
Speaker 1: males specifically make the gobble sound and it is for
Speaker 1: mating and courting females.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's so when any of us.
Speaker 1: Do a gobble impression, we are hitting on lady turkeys,
Speaker 1: it is a it is.
Speaker 2: A come hither call for them them, ladies.
Speaker 1: Can you do?
Speaker 2: Can you do a good turkey gobble, like a real one?
Speaker 2: That's pretty good. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Oh that's pretty good too. Yeah. Yeah, this we will,
Speaker 1: we will.
Speaker 2: We can do that, and we'll just have lady turkeys
Speaker 2: flying sort of ungracefully into our laps.
Speaker 1: It's like beetle Baby, like a crowd of them flipping out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh but yeah. And it turns out turkeys are highly communicative. Yes,
Speaker 1: and according to the US National Zoo, biologists have identified
Speaker 1: at least fifteen different turkey vocalizations. Fifteen vocalizations far more
Speaker 1: than gobbles. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of murmurs and weird purring sounds
Speaker 2: that they make, and it's both the males and females
Speaker 2: that use them, although like that kind of like loud
Speaker 2: gobble is really the males doing it. But the Yeah,
Speaker 2: there is a lot of They're a very social bird
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of communication.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad, you know, I had no idea before researching,
Speaker 1: because yeah, they can like you said, purring, murmuring, they
Speaker 1: can whistle. Apparently, young turkeys use a repeated whistle to
Speaker 1: signal that they're lost. It is complex communication for a turkey.
Speaker 1: You know. It's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And the little baby turkeys are called pulse.
Speaker 1: I love this topic. That's great, thank you, folks. And
Speaker 1: then turkeys, of course communicate partly to be social and
Speaker 1: during the winter they will form bands with social hierarchies
Speaker 1: that occasionally tussle with other bands. In spring, they make
Speaker 1: the chicks live with their mothers until autumn, so mostly
Speaker 1: in the hard winter season they will get together and
Speaker 1: then we'll kind of scatter after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are competitions for hierarchy, for ability to mate,
Speaker 2: and then there is these like sort of turkey standoffs
Speaker 2: kind of like a West Side story turkey situation or
Speaker 2: in your you're.
Speaker 1: Always yeah, and there's too many examples, but a link
Speaker 1: a few of just news stories in the US, because
Speaker 1: annually there's some kind of story about a gang of
Speaker 1: wild turkeys is running the streets of Staten Island or
Speaker 1: Boston or Los Angeles or wherever. And it's just because
Speaker 1: they're social late in the year, and that'll happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, like what it's also just funny to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: oh no, a gang of wild turkeys. It's like, what
Speaker 2: what do you mean. They're just they're not allowed to exist,
Speaker 2: they're just existing. Make it sound like they're doing some
Speaker 2: kind of like drive buys or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in like every story, there's always a picture
Speaker 1: of turkeys in the way and like a suburban road
Speaker 1: and the drive could just go over to the next block.
Speaker 1: It'd be very easy, it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's that's their situation. And the other exciting
Speaker 1: thing turkeys do in the wild is they will sleep
Speaker 1: in tree branches and in tree tops. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: most of the time wild turkeys walk or run, and
Speaker 1: then at night they use their wings to fly up
Speaker 1: to a roost for sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can fly very very short distances. I mean
Speaker 2: it's similar to chickens, right, like and other sort of
Speaker 2: galliform galliform birds where they really are mostly it's mostly walking,
Speaker 2: but they can glide and fly short distances, which yeah,
Speaker 2: helps with the with the roosting, which is it is
Speaker 2: funny to imagine just happening upon a tree of turkeys
Speaker 2: looking down at you kind of more I don't know,
Speaker 2: raptor Like, they're not raptors in the sense of bird
Speaker 2: wrappers like and eagles and stuff, but I mean like
Speaker 2: Jurassic Park raptors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so cool. And again they can fly a
Speaker 1: little bit, which leads into our next big takeaway because
Speaker 1: takeaway number two, turkeys have both white meat and dark
Speaker 1: meat because wild turkeys fly a little bit.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: If you've ever wondered why when you're eating a turkey
Speaker 1: there seem to be two totally separate categories of turkey meat,
Speaker 1: the answer is the biology involved in wild turkey flight.
Speaker 2: Oh whow, so we've got two muscle groups. I'm assuming yes.
Speaker 1: It turns out it's a difference between fast twitch and
Speaker 1: slow twitch muscle, right and in mammals, including humans, Those
Speaker 1: tend to be kind of mingled together or mixed up
Speaker 1: in a way where when you're eating a mammal, don't
Speaker 1: eat a human, it'll look like a relatively uniform color
Speaker 1: and we'll call it red meat or somethings. They're very separate.
Speaker 1: It's like totally different muscle districts in the body.
Speaker 2: What kind of meat is on a Santa Christmas meat
Speaker 2: gingerbread flavored.
Speaker 1: And beard? The two types gingerbread and beard. Yes, for
Speaker 1: the fast.
Speaker 2: Twitch muscles, that is, like, what are we describing here?
Speaker 2: For slow twitch muscles are those that are like the
Speaker 2: mechanism that engages the muscles like it's is it like
Speaker 2: a slower mechanism? Whereas like for the fast twitch muscles,
Speaker 2: like the mechanism that engages the muscles like faster. Why
Speaker 2: are they given those names?
Speaker 1: Fast twitches basically for sudden movements once in a while
Speaker 1: on command. Wild turkeys are able to fly because they
Speaker 1: need to nest in trees. And slow twitches more for
Speaker 1: like a powerful and endurance based movement.
Speaker 2: So like walking our standard walking moving around versus like
Speaker 2: clapping or punching or by.
Speaker 1: Yeah a good like other example here is ducks. We
Speaker 1: think of ducks as being just dark meat if we're
Speaker 1: eating them, is like a conceptual thing about ducks, and
Speaker 1: that's not really true. They have some fast switch muscle,
Speaker 1: but ducks when they're in trouble, they mainly just fly
Speaker 1: because they fly in almost all situations unless they're walking
Speaker 1: a couple of steps to eat the next grass. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting, and so so their body seems to
Speaker 1: be almost all slow twitch muscle because when they fly
Speaker 1: out of an emergency, it's pretty much their usual flight speed.
Speaker 1: They can't like do different gears of that very much.
Speaker 2: That is interesting because like with with bird muscles are
Speaker 2: curious because like for like birds that are migratory, they
Speaker 2: have to build up a bunch of muscles for their migration,
Speaker 2: and so they're not like these like migratory geese and
Speaker 2: stuff aren't doing like squats and you know, crunches in
Speaker 2: order to get buff or their migration. They just eat
Speaker 2: more and then convert more of that food into muscle
Speaker 2: like without even trying, which is really not fair. Like
Speaker 2: you could like imagine just like imagine being like like seasonally,
Speaker 2: like it's you know, the holidays coming up, and you
Speaker 2: just like you know, eat a lot of food and
Speaker 2: that automatically gets turned into nice muscles for your transatlantic flight.
Speaker 1: I want to visit Europe with my food muscle.
Speaker 2: You know, like people were always like, you know, a
Speaker 2: gorilla mindset in terms of getting swollen stuff. I'm Goose mindset, man,
Speaker 2: I'm Goose in it.
Speaker 1: I'm also imagining Gold's gym, but it's Goose's gym. That
Speaker 1: would be a good workout space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be fun.
Speaker 1: I feel like that'd be a laid back vibe there well.
Speaker 1: And a couple of key sources here are writing for
Speaker 1: National Geographic by Mark Strauss, and also an episode of
Speaker 1: SI Show on YouTube. That one was hosted by Michael Randa.
Speaker 1: They say that the chemistry of these different muscles is
Speaker 1: why they appear white and dark to us when we're eating.
Speaker 1: The fast switch muscles contain glycogen, which is a type
Speaker 1: of sugar that we can burn in emergencies, and the
Speaker 1: glecogen's pretty colorless. But slow twitch muscles contain lots of myoglobin,
Speaker 1: which is red, and lots more mitochondria, which tends to
Speaker 1: look brown, and that's useful for steady endurance type activities.
Speaker 1: And so the red myoglobin and the brown mitochondria that
Speaker 1: makes those muscles look darker.
Speaker 2: That's really really interesting. I love that that is the
Speaker 2: case for birds. What is your preference, Alex, dark meat
Speaker 2: or white meat or do you love them both?
Speaker 1: I love them both differently. Yeah, it's just great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think because gravy too. Oh boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is pretty good.
Speaker 1: And for the human eating end of it. So, wild
Speaker 1: turkeys are able to fly because they need to nest
Speaker 1: in trees. And then when we domesticated turkeys over generations,
Speaker 1: we made especially their breasts larger and larger and made
Speaker 1: them more top heavy to the point where they cannot fly. Sorry,
Speaker 1: but we only did that a few centes or millennia ago,
Speaker 1: and so they haven't totally lost those flight related muscles
Speaker 1: when we're eating, it's just that they can't fly anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in particular, after World War Two, we figured out
Speaker 1: how to artificially inseminate turkeys, and so then we made
Speaker 1: them so lapsided they can't mate with each other without
Speaker 1: our help anymore. Yeah. The upshot, there is a lot
Speaker 1: of people think turkeys can fly because wild turkeys can fly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then domesticated turkeys cannot.
Speaker 2: The extremely round, rotund turkeys that you see on sort
Speaker 2: of like a happy Thanksgiving card is not really the
Speaker 2: reality for wild turkeys. They are much more live and
Speaker 2: so yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like skinny looking, yeah, for.
Speaker 2: A lot of domesticated birds actually, like you know, chickens
Speaker 2: as well, where like in other domesticated animals where we
Speaker 2: have like so like min max to them such that
Speaker 2: they are so meaty and like, yeah, there's like this
Speaker 2: like double musculature that they can struggle to like, they
Speaker 2: can't mate, so we've got to like go around with
Speaker 2: like a fake bird wiener.
Speaker 1: It seems a little wild, guys.
Speaker 2: Seems like maybe uh, flying too close to the sun
Speaker 2: right well.
Speaker 1: Or not flying but yeah.
Speaker 2: Or not flying and certainly not mating, being artificially inseminating
Speaker 2: too close to the sun.
Speaker 1: The most famous story about Americans not understanding this is
Speaker 1: a piece of fiction that was based on reality. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, CBS premiered a new sitcom called WKRP
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, which was about a fictional radio station, and
Speaker 1: in their first season, they aired a Thanksgiving themed episode
Speaker 1: where the station does a promo of dropping turkeys from
Speaker 1: a helicopter as a gift to the community, like living turkeys.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, but these are domesticated turkeys and fall
Speaker 1: to their death.
Speaker 2: That's that's a solid joke. That's solid joke writing there.
Speaker 1: It's probably the most iconic WKRP episode. There's a part
Speaker 1: where one character walks into the station afterward and says,
Speaker 1: as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
Speaker 1: That's just great.
Speaker 2: I've never seen this since yet. Somehow I think that
Speaker 2: has entered my consciousness at some point.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that it's the famous one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, famous one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it turns out the writers wrote that because they
Speaker 1: heard about this happening in real life in Atlanta and turkeys.
Speaker 1: They pino shade turkeys. Oh gosh, yeah, either that or
Speaker 1: high buildings. And apparently that happened a few times across
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen hundreds US and so what you know
Speaker 1: this change people didn't totally comprehend or understand. Why would
Speaker 1: we do?
Speaker 2: But was it the same reason as in the in
Speaker 2: the fictional show, Like, was it like turkeys for all
Speaker 2: and then we dropped them out of a bill ding?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was either promos for grocery stores or media
Speaker 1: you know it was it was stunts because because like
Speaker 1: the lion, as God is my witness, I thought turkeys
Speaker 1: could fly like they thought it would be fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't intended to be brutal.
Speaker 2: Guys, have you seen have you looked? Have you ever
Speaker 2: seen a turkey gracefully soaring overhead?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I get that there's the confusion because wild turkeys can fly.
Speaker 1: A little bit. But also wild turkeys aren't great flyers.
Speaker 2: They're really not built for like getting tossed out of
Speaker 2: a helicopter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're they're borderline jumping into trees like they are flying,
Speaker 1: but it's not.
Speaker 2: It's it's elegantly flapping their way to sort of an
Speaker 2: an elevated jump, you know, like they're they're able to
Speaker 2: dunk a basketball in with with a bit of help
Speaker 2: from flapping. It's not they're not, you know, gracefully soaring
Speaker 2: the skies.
Speaker 1: That that should be the new puppy Bowl is turkey's dunking.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be blame dunk contest.
Speaker 2: It's got to be the new air Bud's gotta be air.
Speaker 1: Well and folks, that's two huge takeaways and a lot
Speaker 1: of numbers. We're going to take a quick break, then
Speaker 1: come back with a couple more quick takeaways. Round this off.
Speaker 1: We're back, and we're back with takeaway number three. Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin advanced his electricity experiments and sapped himself in a
Speaker 1: quest for tastier turkey meat.
Speaker 2: Has been Franklin the one that wanted turkeys to be
Speaker 2: the USA's bird of the nation.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead with that because many takeaway number four
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin did not try to make turkeys the national
Speaker 1: bird of the United States. He succeeded. Right, everyone finishes
Speaker 1: the episode and everything's changed. There's turkeys on flags. Turkey, Yes,
Speaker 1: we go.
Speaker 2: He finally did it.
Speaker 1: This is a quick takeaway because it's a common internet myth.
Speaker 1: That's like making too much out of a real letter
Speaker 1: that Franklin wrote.
Speaker 2: He was seriously into turkeys, though that part's true, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: In that bigger takeaway, we'll talk about how much he
Speaker 1: loved eating them, and he was into them in general.
Speaker 1: So like it makes sense people have heard this myth,
Speaker 1: But all he actually did is privately criticize eagles and
Speaker 1: compliment turkeys. In one letter to his daughter, he did
Speaker 1: not like throw his body in front of the process
Speaker 1: to make eagles the national bird.
Speaker 2: What was his problem with eagles. He's like, they're a
Speaker 2: bunch of jerks. They sound dumb because like every time
Speaker 2: you hear an that majestic eagle cry, that's actually red
Speaker 2: tailed hawk, right, they're like, bah, that's like, that's a
Speaker 2: red tailed hawk, whereas like actual eagle calls are like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when James Bond punches or kicks a guy,
Speaker 1: they're actually breaking celery in the Foley studio end quote,
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin.
Speaker 2: They're actually breaking a bald eagle over their knee.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he almost said those first things in the
Speaker 1: Franklin Institute is one source here in seventeen eighty four.
Speaker 1: In seventeen eighty four, Ben wrote to his daughter Sarah saying, quote,
Speaker 1: the bald eagle is a bird of bad moral character.
Speaker 1: He does not get his living. Honestly, he is too
Speaker 1: lazy to fish for himself. End quote.
Speaker 2: I guess he observed a little bit of kleptoparasitism in
Speaker 2: bald eagles where they stole fish from another bird, and
Speaker 2: he judged them really judgaly, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of scientific observation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then the other thing is he later in the letter
Speaker 1: just brings up turkeys as a criticism of bald eagles.
Speaker 1: He says that the turkey is quote a much more
Speaker 1: respectable bird and withal a true original native of America.
Speaker 1: He is, besides, though a little vain and silly, a
Speaker 1: bird of courage end quote bird of courage. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: thinks turkeys are courageous. They pretty much are, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing is, he just wrote this one time, in
Speaker 1: one letter. He never ever said any of that publicly,
Speaker 1: and it just seems like a thought crossed his mind
Speaker 1: and he wrote it down. There was never a like
Speaker 1: Franklin for turkey's campaign button or something. This was never
Speaker 1: a like actual effort in any way.
Speaker 2: He didn't start move dot org petitions.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, he started a podcast about movies and folly
Speaker 1: art and then he started a move dot org petition.
Speaker 1: Move on whatever it, move on.
Speaker 2: I don't know stuff anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also the other thing I like about this
Speaker 1: myth is not only did Franklin not really push turkeys,
Speaker 1: his letter does have one, to my mind, inaccurate criticism
Speaker 1: of bald eagles, because when he's complementing turkeys, he says
Speaker 1: they're a true original native of America, which is true,
Speaker 1: bald eagles are also natives exactly. And yeah, especially before
Speaker 1: the heavy human development by colonizers in places like the US,
Speaker 1: bald eagles were endemic and a lot more of it.
Speaker 1: They're still reintroduced your living in places like New York
Speaker 1: that were original thirteen colonies, Like bald eagles are also
Speaker 1: from here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they used to be like pigeons like everywhere, scrounged
Speaker 2: around your trash, just getting everywhere.
Speaker 1: What a cool pigeon. Man. It's probably one of the
Speaker 1: most common turkey facts on the Internet, and it's just exaggerated.
Speaker 1: It's not really a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well you know, but he still liked them, right,
Speaker 2: and you're saying that he was trying to create the
Speaker 2: ultimate Like there's so many like turkey mishaps that people do,
Speaker 2: like when they try to cook turkeys, like ranging from
Speaker 2: just drying it out a bit, to like setting the
Speaker 2: entire neighborhood on fire because you tried to deep fry
Speaker 2: it in your driveway exactly. And it sounds like Benjamin
Speaker 2: Franklin started the trend of endangering yourself and others trying
Speaker 2: to cook a turkey exactly.
Speaker 1: He's one of these guys. He invented stoves too. He
Speaker 1: was very interested in eating a lot of food, cooking
Speaker 1: and also electricity. And along the way there's this much
Speaker 1: more interesting true fact about Franklin and turkeys, where he
Speaker 1: was so bent on cooking them better than ever before,
Speaker 1: he electrocuted himself pretty painfully and learned a valuable.
Speaker 2: Lesson, you know, knowing what I vaguely know about ben Franklin, like,
Speaker 2: I doubt that the electrocuting himself was a negative. I
Speaker 2: think he might have liked that little bit in a
Speaker 2: certain way.
Speaker 1: He partied.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a real bon.
Speaker 1: And the key source here, along with the Franklin Institute,
Speaker 1: is Timothy J. Jorgensen. He's a professor of medicine at
Speaker 1: Georgetown University and award winning nonfiction author. He covers this
Speaker 1: in his book titled Spark, The Life of Electricity and
Speaker 1: the Electricity of Life. Because the famous Franklin electricity thing
Speaker 1: is in seventeen fifty two, he puts a metal key
Speaker 1: on the end of a kite string and uses that
Speaker 1: to conduct electricity from a storm into a container.
Speaker 2: I watched that Disney short about the little mouse hanging
Speaker 2: out with Benjamin Franklin. I know my stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can move on, Disney Master involved. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the one piece of gear in that to mention is
Speaker 1: called a Leiden jar. It's named after a city in Europe.
Speaker 1: Early in the seventeen hundred, scientists invented Leiden jars to
Speaker 1: contain electricity in a static states, and they would painstakingly
Speaker 1: rub things together or do other stuff to generate very
Speaker 1: small amounts of static electricity and fill one of these
Speaker 1: jars with it to the point where the jar could
Speaker 1: give you an actual shock, not like just touching a
Speaker 1: doorknob or something.
Speaker 2: Right, So, like what I know about lighting jars is
Speaker 2: you have a fluid in it and then you have
Speaker 2: like a lid on it with sort of a metal
Speaker 2: ball on top of it, and the fluid contained certain
Speaker 2: sort of like mineral compounds that are meant to keep
Speaker 2: that charge in it. Yeah, and then you would just
Speaker 2: sort of like rub your socks on something then touch
Speaker 2: the light and jar and try to get that in there.
Speaker 2: But then if you touched it again, you'd get zapped.
Speaker 1: Right, And when Franklin did his kite experiment in seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty two, he probably would have died or severely harmed
Speaker 1: himself if he hadn't had a previous experience with a
Speaker 1: turkey in seventeen fifty, two years earlier.
Speaker 2: Turkey saved are one of our most hedonistic founding father's lives.
Speaker 1: That's right. He never would have poinked everybody at Versailles
Speaker 1: without this life saving situation. And so in seventeen fifty
Speaker 1: Franklin says, I'm going to cook a turkey tasty, er
Speaker 1: and better than anyone ever has. What he did is
Speaker 1: he took a bunch of filled Leiden jars and arranged
Speaker 1: them to all zappa turkey to death and at least
Speaker 1: a little bit cook it too.
Speaker 2: What you're oh my god, electric chair for the turkey
Speaker 2: where you're like you've been sentenced to the electric chair
Speaker 2: and you know, a nice four hundred and twenty five
Speaker 2: degrees for about four and a half hours. I don't
Speaker 2: know how to cook a turkey. It's longer than that.
Speaker 1: But the all thing, yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: What's the situation with this, Like what does the what
Speaker 2: did the turkey experience?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like somewhat not experiment with electricity, but
Speaker 1: mostly a cooking experiment. And turkey was one of Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin's favorite foods. He also believed that most people would
Speaker 1: like decapitate a turkey and then cook it, but he
Speaker 1: felt that that gets you a less juicy turkey. What
Speaker 1: if you cannot like puncture the turkey in any way
Speaker 1: and electrocute it to death before cooking it?
Speaker 2: Got this idea, he thought, Okay, well.
Speaker 1: Which doesn't really make sense, but it was an experiment.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I guess it's like, ah, well, you know,
Speaker 2: if you xanguinate a turkey first, there's less like bloody
Speaker 2: juices in it. But what do you think is going
Speaker 2: to happen all those juices if you like, you know, completely,
Speaker 2: it's just going to like turn into a.
Speaker 1: Balloon of hot turkey blood. Yeah, electrocution is not a
Speaker 1: hydrating experience. No, so, so Franklin says, yeah, I missed
Speaker 1: out this experiment. He did achieve at least one killing
Speaker 1: a turkey that way, and he said, now I'm going
Speaker 1: to dem it straight it to people. Very exciting.
Speaker 2: Oh a live show fun. Yeah, why don't we do
Speaker 2: this at our live show? Electrocute a living creature on stage?
Speaker 1: British laws stupid, British loves mad at the king. So
Speaker 1: the thing is, Franklin decides I'm going to start showing
Speaker 1: this off to people. But one of his first attempts
Speaker 1: to demonstrate it publicly, Franklin accidentally touches one of the
Speaker 1: wires that's connected to the turkey and then grounds his
Speaker 1: other hand so that all the Lyden jars electrocute him.
Speaker 2: Mm. And so was he delicious after this?
Speaker 1: Was he juicy?
Speaker 2: Was his juiciness maintained during the kirking process?
Speaker 1: I guess he said, so juicy he lived?
Speaker 2: But that's oh man, I love that stays so juicy
Speaker 2: that you live. That's such a good that's such a
Speaker 2: good phrase. You know, stay ju see take that home
Speaker 2: stage you see folks say say say ju see and live.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he was basically lucky. This was a public demonstration,
Speaker 1: so people immediately helped him, you know.
Speaker 2: But he do with a founding father who electrocutes himself
Speaker 2: like pokem with a stick, like wake up, wake up?
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing super helpful, but I think, like bring him
Speaker 1: water and stuff that'll help in this electrocution. Some water
Speaker 1: just keeps laughing him. Yeah. And he wrote a letter
Speaker 1: about this shortly after. In a letter to his brother John,
Speaker 1: he said, quote the company present say that the flash
Speaker 1: was very great, and the crack as loud as a pistol.
Speaker 1: Yet my senses being instantly gone, I neither saw the
Speaker 1: one nor heard the other, nor did I feel the
Speaker 1: stroke on my hand, though afterward I found it had
Speaker 1: raised a round swelling where the fire entered as big
Speaker 1: as half a pistol bullet end quote. All right, well,
Speaker 1: like he had a visible this is where electricity went
Speaker 1: straight into me from my turkey execution apparatus. And then
Speaker 1: Franklin just stopped trying to cook turkeys this way because
Speaker 1: he decided the lethal danger is not worth it. It's
Speaker 1: you know, he should find other ways.
Speaker 2: To get his kicks, quitter coward.
Speaker 1: And the thing is in his kite experiment. Two years later,
Speaker 1: Franklin made a points of using a piece of silk
Speaker 1: to manipulate the kite string because he had done further
Speaker 1: experiments and found out that the silk would insulate him
Speaker 1: from the electricity and he would be safe. And he
Speaker 1: mainly bothered to do that kind of thing because of
Speaker 1: his turkey accident. If he hadn't had that knowledge, a
Speaker 1: lightning bolt from a thunderstorm could have killed him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he learned differently.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good lesson for you, folks. If you
Speaker 2: electrocute yourself trying to cook a turkey live, you know,
Speaker 2: take that and grow from it. Have a growth mindset.
Speaker 1: And stay juicy. Have a growth mindset and a juicy mindset.
Speaker 2: And stage Jose, stay juicy and live, folks.
Speaker 1: I love it, folks. That's the main episode for this week.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such
Speaker 1: as help remembering this episode with a runback through the
Speaker 1: big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the bird name turkey comes
Speaker 1: from the name of the country Turkya and fifteen hundred's
Speaker 1: world trade confusion. Takeaway number two. Turkeys have both white
Speaker 1: meat and dark meat because wild turkeys fly a little bit.
Speaker 1: Takeaway number three Benjamin Franklin advanced his electricity experiments and
Speaker 1: arocuted himself in a quest for tasty or turkey meat
Speaker 1: many Takeaway number four Benjamin Franklin did not try to
Speaker 1: make turkeys the national bird of the United States. And
Speaker 1: then so many numbers about turkey domestication, turkey blankets, the
Speaker 1: wild behaviors and socialization of turkeys, and more. Those are
Speaker 1: the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because
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Speaker 1: of biological reference techs about turkeys and other birds, especially
Speaker 1: the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America,
Speaker 1: also the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, more Ben Franklin resources
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Speaker 1: the New Mexico Wildlife Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, The Guardian, the
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Speaker 1: of the Muncy Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as
Speaker 1: well as the Mohican people, scatigoaqu people and others. Also,
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Speaker 1: This week's pick Us episode one ninety nine, that's about
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