Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature, a safari through the consciousness of
Speaker 1: animals and man, finding the common threads that bind together
Speaker 1: all living creatures. I'm Katie Golden. I studied psychology and
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology at Harvard and I pretend to be a
Speaker 1: frustrated bird on Twitter. Today I'm Creature Feature. We'll be
Speaker 1: talking about how both animals and humans go to dramatic
Speaker 1: lengths to get krunk off there, but it's re for
Speaker 1: madness as we find out what drug junkie dolphins are
Speaker 1: hitting rock bottom for. Where are the bird mothers against
Speaker 1: drunk flying? Why our scientists creating a butterfly sex potion. Also,
Speaker 1: we find out about the Bermuda Triangle of death that
Speaker 1: all the otter teens are dying to explore. Discover this
Speaker 1: and more as we answer the age old question what's
Speaker 1: the grossest alcoholic beverage in the world and why did
Speaker 1: my guests drink enough of it to get a lot?
Speaker 1: So first, I want to talk about flying. It's kind
Speaker 1: of scary, especially because you're at the mercy of a
Speaker 1: human pilot. Whenever the pilot comes on over the speakers
Speaker 1: to give an announcement, I'm always searching for vocal cues
Speaker 1: of something wrong, like does he sounds stressed, anxious, angry? Well,
Speaker 1: my absolute nightmare would be if he sounded drunk, even
Speaker 1: though you shouldn't mix flying and drinking, or about to
Speaker 1: find out that some humans and animals do. In fact,
Speaker 1: one such pilot has become a master of flying under
Speaker 1: the influence Creature feature starts right now. So, Robert, do
Speaker 1: you fly much? Yes? Good? Well, do you ever like
Speaker 1: fantasize about flying cars and why we don't have them
Speaker 1: yet in a glorious future where all cars are just
Speaker 1: flying around? No? You know, I drive a lot. I've
Speaker 1: probably driven up and down California alone more than anyone
Speaker 1: who's not a truck driver, put about a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand miles on my car in the last two years.
Speaker 1: So I have very little faith in the driving ability
Speaker 1: of most people, and I have even less faith in
Speaker 1: their ability to pilot a flying car. Well, that's the
Speaker 1: thing that's what always gets me when it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: you see, like Star Wars or the Fifth Element with
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis. Uh, you know, if any asshole like Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis can just fly a car, the consequences of drunk
Speaker 1: drivers is just way, way, way worse. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's a nice and think about terrorism, like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: we're already having this problem because people can buy guns.
Speaker 1: But what if you let people buy like a two
Speaker 1: ton flying bullet that they can crash into anything, Like
Speaker 1: what do you do? How do you regulate that? Or
Speaker 1: like a drunk would it would it cancel it out?
Speaker 1: Like if it was a drunk terrorist, would they'd be like,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to terrorism, but I'm too drunk. I mean
Speaker 1: I think in that case, alcohol is kind of the
Speaker 1: hero of the story. Yeah, it's like zero dark thirty,
Speaker 1: but instead of a bunch of CIA guys, it's like
Speaker 1: a bottle of gym bean instead of John because the
Speaker 1: ski who's now always the hero, it's just alcohol. Yeah
Speaker 1: when did when did he get abs? I don't know.
Speaker 1: They look angry and everything I've seen of him now
Speaker 1: like furious ads. We never did see his bare chest
Speaker 1: in the office, so maybe they've always been there. I
Speaker 1: mean no, you can tell you can see in his
Speaker 1: eyes that he doesn't have impressive abs, and they the
Speaker 1: faint reflection of the abs that should be there weren't
Speaker 1: in his eyes at that time. But flying cars, flying cars.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, like we're all very we have
Speaker 1: wishful thinking about flying cars. But you know you've got
Speaker 1: you got drunk people like Hayden Christensen jumping out of
Speaker 1: a car and everybody going great, now there's no driver
Speaker 1: in that car. It's just going to crash into an orphanage.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it's like the that scene is
Speaker 1: like there's so many questions I have about how traffic
Speaker 1: control works in Horissant, Like what is the organization? Right?
Speaker 1: Do jed I not have to go to traffic school? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't. Like what's shocking about that is that nobody
Speaker 1: reacts as if it's a big deal like the other
Speaker 1: Like it's it's like you can't see it all the time, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is terrifying, right, Like everyone's hyped up on death
Speaker 1: sticks and jumping out of their cars and everything's crashing around,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe the Empire wasn't such a bad idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you would probably start to hunger for like
Speaker 1: an authoritarian dictator after like living in suicide traffic for
Speaker 1: that long, right, just to stop these awful flying cars
Speaker 1: from smashing into everything. As soon as someone like four
Speaker 1: twenties that day yeah, yeah, no, that seems although I
Speaker 1: gotta say, like when you talk about drinking or smoking
Speaker 1: and flying cars, that's when I want them, because I
Speaker 1: love going out in the middle of nowhere on like
Speaker 1: a friend's land and like a jeep or an old
Speaker 1: truck and just getting wrecked on painkillers and liquor and
Speaker 1: doing donuts and stuff and driving through fields of trash
Speaker 1: with like just old beater cars. It's the most fun
Speaker 1: in the world. So if you could like have like
Speaker 1: a safe flying car are driving area, that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like you could. Well, but as long as you're the
Speaker 1: only push around, well if you die, it's fine. You're
Speaker 1: choosing to take that risk. It just needs to be
Speaker 1: a bit way where it's like you can come out
Speaker 1: here and do stupid things in a flying car while
Speaker 1: you're ripped a ship and nobody will get killed other
Speaker 1: than maybe you. Yeah, like that sounds like a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Yeah, well, this is why I'm having you
Speaker 1: on this podcast about vices and animals. And speaking of which,
Speaker 1: birds totally go the full uh star wars root and
Speaker 1: they drink and fly all the time. So like in
Speaker 1: the winter they will the berries freeze and then sort
Speaker 1: of the insides of the berries ferment and brew into
Speaker 1: like a little jello shot, and the birds eat these
Speaker 1: and get wasted. It's like the bird equivalent of those
Speaker 1: like semi frozen margarita, those little slushy packs. Those are nasty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're tear doble, But at the same time there I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of like, uh, that kind of drinking,
Speaker 1: like like fruit drinking for when you're like walking around
Speaker 1: a city. Yeah, the drinking that you immediately regret before
Speaker 1: the alcohol has even hit your system. Yeah, but you want,
Speaker 1: Like the reason I think the birds are being smart
Speaker 1: and they're drunk flying choices is that if you're going
Speaker 1: to be out in the world getting really wrecked in
Speaker 1: the middle of the day and then like navigating a city,
Speaker 1: you want not just alcohol, but you want sugars and
Speaker 1: salts and and some cars. Exactly exactly, that's a smart
Speaker 1: way to city drink. Gatorade up your booze people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's safe. No. When I was wandering around San Francisco
Speaker 1: with a couple of friends last week and we we
Speaker 1: took a camel back and we filled it half full
Speaker 1: of tequila and half full of frozen lime popsicles, and
Speaker 1: that's basically the same thing except where we were on
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah, you're being birds, Yeah, we were being birds. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've got a great, great quote here from Megan larry
Speaker 1: V who's the obratory coordinator at the Government Agency Environment
Speaker 1: Yukon in Canada. Where these birds are getting crunk. She
Speaker 1: says most birds likely just get a bit tipsy, and
Speaker 1: very few people would be able to pick them out
Speaker 1: as intoxicated. However, every now and then some birds just
Speaker 1: overdo it. And when they overdo it, they like crash
Speaker 1: into buildings and die. Well, yeah, but you gotta weigh
Speaker 1: that against how much fun they're having. That's true, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot. It's a wild five minutes
Speaker 1: and then a sudden, invisible force field death for the bird.
Speaker 1: Will you say this is in the Yukon, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, because I know that very cold places have
Speaker 1: way higher rates of alcohol abuse than places that are
Speaker 1: not very cold, because there's nothing else to do when
Speaker 1: you say that cold, but drink a lot. Right, You
Speaker 1: can't like go to the beach, so you gotta get
Speaker 1: wasted on drunk berries. Yeah, so I wonder if that's
Speaker 1: the same for animals as people is like both. When
Speaker 1: we're like stuck in frozen wasteland, it's like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm just to drink myself to death. It's better
Speaker 1: than another winter. Well, there is an entire flock of
Speaker 1: Bohemian wax wings that went on a bender and they
Speaker 1: had to go to a recovery unit, like an animal
Speaker 1: recovery unit, where they were like, wow, these birds are
Speaker 1: They need some fluids and eggs and coffee. Their beaks
Speaker 1: were like stained with berries um, and the workers at
Speaker 1: the animal recovery unitor like their movements are uncoordinated and
Speaker 1: they struggled to fly. Poor gat. No, they need some
Speaker 1: of those little hangover cure shots you get from the CBS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do those work? Yeah, they're like, it's just caffeine in
Speaker 1: a seat of metal. Fine. So it's the same as
Speaker 1: people take coffee and aspirin in the morning. I didn't.
Speaker 1: So does caffeine actually help with hangovers or does it
Speaker 1: just wake you up? I mean it make sure you
Speaker 1: don't feel as bad. Like caffeine doesn't sober you up
Speaker 1: if you're still drunk from the night before, but if
Speaker 1: you like wake up feeling like garbage after a night
Speaker 1: of drinking. I always find that I feel better after coffee. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I get wrecked by caffeine. It destroys me. It makes
Speaker 1: me feel like like my heart is gonna fail. Isn't
Speaker 1: that how everyone feels all the time. Yeah, moving on. So,
Speaker 1: I used to have a phobia of flying. I hated
Speaker 1: at the idea like we shouldn't be in the air,
Speaker 1: were defying Gods, were spitting in Jesus's face by doing this.
Speaker 1: It's the best thing about flying is like looking down
Speaker 1: at at God and being like, yeah, yeah, that's right, motherfucker,
Speaker 1: screw you go. You can tell me what to do.
Speaker 1: We figured this ship out. We could bomb Mount Olympus
Speaker 1: right now if we want to do not my mom God. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: drunk pilots is a recent thing I started worrying about
Speaker 1: when I was reading about Drunk birdas as like, I
Speaker 1: wonder if pilots get drunk and like I know, and
Speaker 1: they do. They do, like I mean, not all the
Speaker 1: time time, but occasionally and occasionally as bad when you're
Speaker 1: flying a plane. Well, I don't know. The documentary Flight
Speaker 1: made me think that sometimes it works out for the better. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna we're gonna get back to that, Robert.
Speaker 1: I have a I have a fun, a fun story
Speaker 1: about that. Um. But first let's go to Let's go
Speaker 1: to Russia, because that's where, like, I mean, they really
Speaker 1: love fulfilling stereotypes. And I get to say this because
Speaker 1: I'm like sort of half Russian. You've got that classic
Speaker 1: Russian red hair. Yeah, yeah, they're they're classic Jewish Russian
Speaker 1: who got kicked out because of the programs. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: ancestry right there. So I'm gonna I'm gonna dump on
Speaker 1: Russia right now. Uh. And so, like, there's been a
Speaker 1: few instances of drunk pilots causing crashes in Russia. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, drunk navigator was found to be
Speaker 1: partially responsible for crash that killed forty seven people. Partially, yeah, partially,
Speaker 1: partially maybe which part There was like a mechanical failure,
Speaker 1: but if the navigator hadn't been drunk, he probably could
Speaker 1: have worked around the issue. But instead he was just
Speaker 1: like panicking and didn't didn't help the situation. I had
Speaker 1: something similar happened in my truck while I was drunk
Speaker 1: with a cigarette lighter and a blunt So yeah, I
Speaker 1: get it, get it, I get it. We can all
Speaker 1: relate to that. Yeah. Uh So back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, again in Russia, there was a mutiny on
Speaker 1: board a plane. So um, I just love that it's
Speaker 1: in Russia because just imagining a bunch of like angry
Speaker 1: babushez on a plane like so good couple imagining a
Speaker 1: group of Russians like, aren't angry? Yeah, because like you
Speaker 1: would imagine, it's like a murder of crows and like
Speaker 1: a fury of Russians exactly. So they're on an aero float.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm doing that right, but it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's aeroflot. But I don't really know. I heard it sometimes,
Speaker 1: So before the plane had taken off, when they're still
Speaker 1: on the tarmac, passengers notice that the pilot, Alexander Chaplevski,
Speaker 1: was stumbling slurring a speech, and according to passengers, he
Speaker 1: kept repeating the words duration of the flight. I see,
Speaker 1: that's sober. That's sober profiling. That's just that's sober profiling.
Speaker 1: That's all that. It's you know, you, that's not fair.
Speaker 1: Like We've plenty of capable people slear their words, stumbled
Speaker 1: around or repeat the same phrase a lot of times. Well,
Speaker 1: when I get nervous, I sometimes just say like duration
Speaker 1: of the flight, duration of the flight. And maybe he
Speaker 1: just didn't like to mantra, meaning like like you only
Speaker 1: have to get through this for the duration of the flight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm on this guy's side so far. Well, the flight
Speaker 1: crew would agree with you, because they were telling the
Speaker 1: passengers to settle down and to stop making trouble. And
Speaker 1: the passengers like, you're talking to Russians who have done
Speaker 1: like several revolutions. Don't ever tell Russian stop making trouble um,
Speaker 1: and so they continue to rabble. And then Aeroflot representatives
Speaker 1: came onto the flight to address the issue, and the
Speaker 1: Moscow Times quotes one of the representatives is saying, it's
Speaker 1: not such a big deal if the pilot is drunk. Really,
Speaker 1: all he has to do is press a button and
Speaker 1: the plane flies itself. The worst that could happen is
Speaker 1: he'll trip over something in the cockpit. See, I'm a
Speaker 1: dent on board with the company. Now, that's that's the
Speaker 1: kind of straight talking that you want. These clients flay themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's easy to feel like it's fine if he's drunk.
Speaker 1: If he's drunk. It's fine, right, But it continued to
Speaker 1: get worse because the passengers did not take that boilerplate
Speaker 1: company response and why, I don't know. They're fussy, real fushy,
Speaker 1: and so Captain Chiplevski attempted to bargain with the angry passengers,
Speaker 1: reportedly saying, I'll sit here quietly in a corner. We
Speaker 1: have three or more pilots. I won't even touch the controls,
Speaker 1: I promise. I'm thinking now that their policy is to
Speaker 1: have four pilots per flight just because they at least
Speaker 1: half of them are going to be wasted. Like, we
Speaker 1: just know that you got to get one sober. Statistically,
Speaker 1: it's called the Stolnaya rule. Yes, at least one of
Speaker 1: them will be so hungover that he can't keep drinking.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the sober pilot, right. It's it's like
Speaker 1: having multiple doctors on call because one of them is
Speaker 1: going to be sleepy. A Russian pilot is going to
Speaker 1: be drunk at any given point. Yeah. So, finally, first
Speaker 1: class passenger was able to convince the airline to bring
Speaker 1: in an entirely new crew, and she happened to be
Speaker 1: a Russian celebrity, whose father has ties to putin Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess you know this ties into my grand theory
Speaker 1: of rich people ruin everything, because I bet without first class,
Speaker 1: all of the people in third class and all the
Speaker 1: drunk pilots would have had a really cool just like
Speaker 1: just like booze plane out, like break out, some cigars.
Speaker 1: Let's turn this into a flying bar. It's not a
Speaker 1: party until someone says, wait, who's flying the plane right now? Well,
Speaker 1: they fly themselves. You just push a button. It's the
Speaker 1: plane fly button, wings stay on button, plane fly button.
Speaker 1: You don't want to mix those two up, right, they're
Speaker 1: right next to each other. So even after this, the
Speaker 1: airline continued to insist that the pilot had not been
Speaker 1: drunk and that he hadn't tested positive for alcohol. Uh
Speaker 1: and now they're claiming he developed high blood pressure as
Speaker 1: a result of all the complaints and the stress of
Speaker 1: the news and stuff, which is funny because high blood
Speaker 1: pressure is there's a medical link between repeated wind drinking
Speaker 1: and high blood pressure. So I mean, okay, alright, let's
Speaker 1: let's let's be fair to this guy. First off, if
Speaker 1: there's a better place to drink than a plane, I
Speaker 1: haven't found it. Because I love getting drunk on planes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't see why piloting one should make you
Speaker 1: immune to the fun of getting drunk on a plane,
Speaker 1: especially if it's a one button plane. Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of those easy one button planes. Why not? Why not
Speaker 1: people need to lighten up? Well after that incident, Russian
Speaker 1: investigators looked into Aeroflot crash that found the pilot had
Speaker 1: alcohol in his system. Um. At the time, all they
Speaker 1: knew was that he had allowed his fifteen year old
Speaker 1: son to take over the controls and subsequently the plane
Speaker 1: crashed and killed. All this on burden, I wonder why.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That sounds like one of those mysteries
Speaker 1: with no I mean, kids got to learn somehow, like
Speaker 1: like if not that flight, another flight. Yeah. I feel
Speaker 1: like we hold pilots to do highest standard just because
Speaker 1: hundreds of other people get killed if they make a mistake. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem fair to me. It's unfair. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the double standard really. Um, so you know, is this
Speaker 1: a big problem? Shouldn't we be afraid to fly? Well,
Speaker 1: of course you wouldn't think it's a big problem even
Speaker 1: if it was, Like, even if pilots were drunk you'd
Speaker 1: be on on board with us. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: I feel like people get too worried about what's going
Speaker 1: to kill them and not worried enough about having a
Speaker 1: fun time on right right, Yeah, yo, yolo, you only um,
Speaker 1: so this isn't something you should worry about, at least
Speaker 1: in the US because in two thousand fifteen, ten out
Speaker 1: of twelve thousand, four hundred US pilots failed a random
Speaker 1: alcohol test. So, according to that study, if I'm good
Speaker 1: at math, which I am not, you have a point
Speaker 1: zero zero zero eight percent chance of getting on board
Speaker 1: with a drunk pilot. Don't DM me if my math
Speaker 1: is wrong, I apologize. That also means that only point
Speaker 1: zero zero eight percent of pilots or rad there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's a sobering statistic. Yeah. So you mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier Denzel Washington and fight every day who just who
Speaker 1: rocked it? He drank? He was drunk and he's doing
Speaker 1: coke too, Yeah yeah, Goodman's Yeah. And he landed that plane,
Speaker 1: damn right he did. He He barrel rolled that plane,
Speaker 1: crushed it. Yeah, nailed it. And if you want a
Speaker 1: pilot like that, you should look to New World species
Speaker 1: of bats. Okay, so researchers, we're wondering, if bats get drunk,
Speaker 1: can they still echo? Okay, that's a great question to ask. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like these researchers just probably vapin and be like, man
Speaker 1: drunk bats, could they still use their little quickie things?
Speaker 1: I imagine it's a guy sitting next to his friend
Speaker 1: in the car spending ten minutes to get Google Maps
Speaker 1: to work. Like, I got it. I'm so good at this.
Speaker 1: I bet I'm better than bats at this. So they
Speaker 1: collected about a hundred Belize native bats and either gave
Speaker 1: them sugar or ethanol. Uh. They measured the bats blood
Speaker 1: alcohol levels, and some of the bats had blood alcohol
Speaker 1: levels as high as like point three. I believe that's impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe the limit is point zero zero eight to
Speaker 1: drive zero. Um, I'm bad at the zeros at three
Speaker 1: you are, yeah, you are not just drunk, but like flammable.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, a tinder box. Maybe you need to go
Speaker 1: to the hospital. If you're in California, you'll start a fire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they're like, all right, they're good and drunk now.
Speaker 1: Then they set them loose on an obstacle course. This
Speaker 1: is my kind of science. It's like now a physical
Speaker 1: challenge go and to their great surprise, is the bats
Speaker 1: nailed it. They did. They there was no significant impairment
Speaker 1: either in their echolocation or their ability to navigate this obstacle. Course,
Speaker 1: so we should let hordes of bats loose on planes
Speaker 1: and hope they hit the one button. Yes, yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: do that? Yes, yes, yes, board yes. So this isn't
Speaker 1: the case for all bats. Some bats will get drunk
Speaker 1: and then just not not be good at flying anymore.
Speaker 1: But apparently with the New World bats, they have a
Speaker 1: really high tolerance. You run into a lot of cases
Speaker 1: of animals that like seek out out like it's it's
Speaker 1: a sensible evolutionary strategy to seek out alcohol in fruit
Speaker 1: because of fruit to start a to ferment that it
Speaker 1: means that it's at its most calorically dense because it's
Speaker 1: not it it's the ripest it's going to get. Which
Speaker 1: is why I like. There's this animal, the pintailed tree shrew,
Speaker 1: which is like a mammal that scientists think is pretty
Speaker 1: close to like one of the common ancestor species that
Speaker 1: humans and ape share, like the early primates um and
Speaker 1: they will drink all day every day because they drink
Speaker 1: this fruit that ferments really really quickly, the palm nectar um.
Speaker 1: But they don't get drunk. But they we think that,
Speaker 1: like scientists think that some animal like them seeking out
Speaker 1: alcohol because it had a shipload of calories. Is why
Speaker 1: human beings and monkeys can metabolize alcohol and get drunk
Speaker 1: off of it, because our bodies sort of adapted to
Speaker 1: take in more alcohol. And that's like, being getting wasted
Speaker 1: is a happy side effect, um, which is cool. It's
Speaker 1: a side effect to survival, survival of the lettucet hashtag darlin.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, that's good. Bats can hold their liquor. But
Speaker 1: what differentiates a lightweight from a beer pong master in humans?
Speaker 1: It turns out there's something of a drunk gene. Researchers
Speaker 1: have found out that alcohol taller in experience can be
Speaker 1: linked to differences in the c y P two E
Speaker 1: y protein found in DNA, which might explain why you're
Speaker 1: gone after a single beer, whereas others can drink five
Speaker 1: shots off an ice luge. But being a lightweight actually
Speaker 1: has its benefits. Those that have a greater tolerance for
Speaker 1: alcohol are at a greater risk of developing alcoholism, while
Speaker 1: a link between the c y P two E one
Speaker 1: protein and alcoholism has not yet been established. There's a
Speaker 1: possibility that further research could open up new avenues for
Speaker 1: treatment through gene therapy. Kay, bro hold my beer. We're
Speaker 1: gonna do a few messages and we'll return to the
Speaker 1: part A. Snopes, the Internet rumored debunking website, has a
Speaker 1: treasure trove of drug related mints. Some of my favorites
Speaker 1: are school kids crushing up bedbugs and smoking or injecting
Speaker 1: them to get high. False. But what about this? Are
Speaker 1: kids rubbing birds bees lip bomb on their eyelets to
Speaker 1: get high, which the kids dubbed beason both? What about
Speaker 1: sham boiling our kids boiling shampoo and inhaling the fumes
Speaker 1: to get high? Well, no, they're not. What about this?
Speaker 1: Did excessive? Ellis? Do you leave a young man in
Speaker 1: a psychiatric hospital with a delusion that he was a
Speaker 1: glass of orange juice where his biggest fears that someone
Speaker 1: will drink him? Well, that one's unconfirmed, so we may
Speaker 1: never know whether it's true. But there are real ways
Speaker 1: in which people and animals will endure the extreme in
Speaker 1: the name of getting high. I talked to Robert about
Speaker 1: some of the strangest substances he's tried in the name
Speaker 1: of researching his book, and we unveiled the animals for
Speaker 1: in desperate need of an intervention, Robert, I have a
Speaker 1: hypothetical question for you that might be upsetting. Okay, what
Speaker 1: if we could have booze in a pill and like
Speaker 1: a synthetic booze, or even just a drink that's synthetic,
Speaker 1: like in Star Trek where they have sent the hall.
Speaker 1: I knew it. I knew it. That's one of I
Speaker 1: love Star Trek the Next Generation. It's a magical show,
Speaker 1: but it has a lot of dumb things. The dumbest
Speaker 1: thing in the show other than that time Riker and
Speaker 1: his dad fight in weird ass future gladiator suits fights.
Speaker 1: That's such a bad um is synthe hall? What? It
Speaker 1: just sounds like nonsense the way the show. It's just
Speaker 1: alcohol that you can decide to be sober from. Well no,
Speaker 1: so it's alcohol that has no bad effects. So you
Speaker 1: can't get alcohol poisoning, you can't get like too drunk,
Speaker 1: you can't get cirrhosis of the liver, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess you won't. What does it do? I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like it prevents you from drunk texting your ex a
Speaker 1: bunch of Wiener pictures or something. I'm not sure. Not
Speaker 1: a future I want to live in. But I mean
Speaker 1: like you sound like a I don't want to say
Speaker 1: Scottie because I feel like that's no longer correct. But
Speaker 1: you know, he was like the Transporter guy, okay in
Speaker 1: the original series he was he was drunk all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like and he was in the T and G
Speaker 1: the Next Generation and they're like, here's some Syntha Hall
Speaker 1: and he's in his Scottish brogue. He's like, no, he
Speaker 1: was so pissed. Yeah, because it's it's garbage. I cannot
Speaker 1: drink it's nonsense. That's such a bad Scottish Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a clearly Russian. I can't help it my conditioning.
Speaker 1: So you're you're not on board, And I wonder how
Speaker 1: many people would be on board with synthetic alcohol. No,
Speaker 1: it's okay. If you want to see how people would
Speaker 1: have to cope with being in space for long periods
Speaker 1: of time, look at how they coped with being at
Speaker 1: sea for long periods of time. Coming sex with manatees.
Speaker 1: That's one, right, it's one part. You're gonna need to
Speaker 1: bring some manities into space for fucking Yeah. But number
Speaker 1: two is rum, and I just I don't buy a
Speaker 1: few space navy without rum. That's just a vehicle for
Speaker 1: sex with the manity. Well, okay, so the British Navy
Speaker 1: was famously able to function because of rum sodomy in
Speaker 1: the lash, So Star Trek the next generation, you've got
Speaker 1: the sodomy lockdown. I mean that's just clear looking at
Speaker 1: the way just Data and Jordy look at each other.
Speaker 1: But Rum is missing because Syntha Hall is not going
Speaker 1: to fill that hole in their hearts, and neither is
Speaker 1: Picard's flute playing it. What is it about? Real? Like
Speaker 1: if if the taste is exactly the same and the
Speaker 1: effect the pleasant effects are the same, but you just
Speaker 1: can't get the negative effects? Is it? Is it just
Speaker 1: because like without that risk, it's just like it's it's
Speaker 1: just too fake. It's it'd be like it's like bowling
Speaker 1: with the guardrails up where you get a strike but
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel good. Well, yeah, the most fun things
Speaker 1: always involved some sort of risk them ending terribly right, um,
Speaker 1: which is why people love the ski Like it's exciting
Speaker 1: and you can die. But yeah, so like if alcohol
Speaker 1: can't hurt you, then it's less exciting. But also, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I feel like these the lame future
Speaker 1: people in Star Trek the next Generation say it's it
Speaker 1: tastes the same, But I feel it's the same as
Speaker 1: like going to a party and like someone handing me
Speaker 1: a mock tail and being like it tastes just like
Speaker 1: a whiskey sour, Like, yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: lemon juice. What if we what if we spice up
Speaker 1: the deal and say that this this synthe hal also
Speaker 1: somehow simulates the experience of sex. What yeah, well, like
Speaker 1: like miss An episode, No no, no, no, Well maybe,
Speaker 1: but like you know, like in Futurama, that episode where
Speaker 1: everybody's having sex with robots and then the human race
Speaker 1: goes extinct. Yes, do you think if we had sex
Speaker 1: and pillform that would happen? I mean that's the best
Speaker 1: case scenario for the future. Well, we'd go out, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun, and then we'd stop harassing animals.
Speaker 1: I feel like our best case scenarios we invent a
Speaker 1: super intelligent AI that's self sustaining, and then it gives
Speaker 1: us sex pills and discards us like a cocoon. That's
Speaker 1: that's like my hope for the future of our race.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean that's such a more. That's
Speaker 1: that's like a really humane way for the robots to
Speaker 1: take over. Like in the matrix, just have a sex matrix.
Speaker 1: We would know Max, and he's like, no, why would
Speaker 1: you fight against this? No, one would try to wake
Speaker 1: up from the fun matrix. No, you're totally free to leave,
Speaker 1: but like you gotta pay taxes and stuff like No, nope,
Speaker 1: back to the fu matrix. Yeah, well, so this is
Speaker 1: not just pleasant hypothetical um meandering. Uh. You know how
Speaker 1: insects they like to drink booze. Uh, there's theories that
Speaker 1: they it helps with their spermatophores, which are these like
Speaker 1: protein capsules that they transfer along with their Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: protein capsules. Yeah, So they transfer it to the female
Speaker 1: along with their sperm during copulation in it provides nutrition
Speaker 1: and drinking booze, you know, like gives them some kind
Speaker 1: of nutritional boosts, like you were saying earlier, and so
Speaker 1: they think that maybe that's why. But they found that
Speaker 1: so these researchers made like this synthetic booze sex thing.
Speaker 1: It combined, Like it both replaced sex and booze for
Speaker 1: these fruit flies. So when male fruit flies are sexually rejected,
Speaker 1: they will turn to booze more often to heal their
Speaker 1: emotional wounds and all of us. And uh, the study
Speaker 1: just like following these poor like uh unlaid fruit flies
Speaker 1: and saying like how much they drink? And you know,
Speaker 1: it's very very relatable. But the crazy part is so
Speaker 1: they suspected that maybe it was because, um, after they
Speaker 1: have sex, they get this spike in neuropeptide F and
Speaker 1: drinking alcohol triggers that neuropeptide F. So it's the next
Speaker 1: best thing to actual love and physical contact. Um, And
Speaker 1: that's how I would describe alcohol. Yeah. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: artificial simulation of neuropeptide F. So this is not alcohol,
Speaker 1: this is not sex. This is a crazy creepy science
Speaker 1: thing that they give to the fruit flies. It stops
Speaker 1: them from seeking out alcohol. Um, so like replicates the
Speaker 1: rewards gained from either having sex or drinking booze, so
Speaker 1: that these rejected fruit flies are like like, once they
Speaker 1: get this neuropeptide F, they don't feel they need to drink. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we're that's clearly inevitable. That like, science will
Speaker 1: figure out a way too with the push of a
Speaker 1: button and maybe the stimulation of a couple of chemicals
Speaker 1: make you as happy as you are in the arms
Speaker 1: of a person you love, like walking through Disneyland as
Speaker 1: a six year old with your parents back before they
Speaker 1: split up. Right, That's that's inevitable. It's going to happen.
Speaker 1: It's going to collapse everything that we know, and either
Speaker 1: robots will take over or we'll just funk ourselves to death.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually see that. They did a study to
Speaker 1: see if giving them the narrow peptide f stops them
Speaker 1: from having sex, and I would really like to see that,
Speaker 1: especially if you do it to mosquitoes or something else
Speaker 1: we don't like, because then we could like make animals
Speaker 1: go extinct even easier. Yeah, boy, that's one of those like, yeah,
Speaker 1: why not why not release it into the air, like
Speaker 1: it could be like in Snow Piercer, how they like
Speaker 1: freeze the whole planet trying to fix it. What if
Speaker 1: we just flood the whole planet's atmosphere with this happy,
Speaker 1: fun chemical and everything just sort of goes to bed
Speaker 1: and dies. That sounds like a much nicer way than
Speaker 1: freezing the earth, like a much nicer way than what's
Speaker 1: going to happen other right, right, Like maybe we could
Speaker 1: just have this failsafe like like here, here's the fun bomb,
Speaker 1: Like like we're gonna die anyways, might as well have
Speaker 1: it be nice. Yeah, Look, the world's got maybe two
Speaker 1: years left. We're gonna sit off the fun bomb. It's
Speaker 1: it's fine. Yeah, And everyone's like probably like at first
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, but I want to live, But as
Speaker 1: soon as that fun bomb goes off, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, you know what. This is fine, This is fine. Um.
Speaker 1: And so here's the cool thing is that researchers are
Speaker 1: starting to link neuropeptides to alcohol intake and humans as well.
Speaker 1: So we are so close to this funck bomb becoming
Speaker 1: a reality. That's always been the dream. Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's the goal. It's what we have done from
Speaker 1: our earliest bone wielding days to now. Um. And there
Speaker 1: is a champion of this cause, David Nutt, who great
Speaker 1: name for a champion of any cause. Oh he's got
Speaker 1: the perfect name to be a contentious neuro psycho pharmacologist
Speaker 1: Dr Nut Dr Nut Mr Doctor Nut. He Okay. So
Speaker 1: he was on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Speaker 1: Drugs in the UK, and he was relieved of his
Speaker 1: position after he said that horse riding is more dangerous
Speaker 1: than ecstasy. Oh this guy, Yeah, he's totally right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's because also, horseback riding is incredibly dangerous.
Speaker 1: You can snap like a twig on a horse. We
Speaker 1: just get kicked trying to that. Horse falls asleep, falls
Speaker 1: on you. You're done, your ribs smashed in. But the
Speaker 1: British really take their questionnaians, I don't know that a
Speaker 1: question equestrian ism. There we go. I'm smart, I know words.
Speaker 1: They take it super seriously and it was very offensive
Speaker 1: to them that they would make this unfavorable comparison between
Speaker 1: ecstasy and horses. But I loved in their comments about it.
Speaker 1: I was like, they're like, oh, this is such an
Speaker 1: such an uh, you know, inappropriate comparison. But they didn't
Speaker 1: like mention like that. He was saying to see is
Speaker 1: better than horses. Yeah, don't do drugs, but also don't
Speaker 1: do horses. That's That's what I'm going to legally safely say. Anyways,
Speaker 1: David Nutt is studying Benzo diazepines, which I knew you'd
Speaker 1: like it. Benzos yeah, um, so they're found in valium,
Speaker 1: and valium is just Lovely's and valium is found in
Speaker 1: Mexico and in mother's coffee. Uh um. So he's seeing
Speaker 1: if he can replicate the pleasant effects of alcohol all
Speaker 1: avoiding the dangerous side effects. Um, and he's He's also
Speaker 1: saying that benzos can be switched off with an antidote hill,
Speaker 1: which would be so great for Russian pilots. Just like,
Speaker 1: get real drunk on benzos, then turn it off before
Speaker 1: your flight when people get fussy. See that sounds like
Speaker 1: the real cynthe Hale is not change alcohol, but just
Speaker 1: add a little switch inside people's heads, like oh I
Speaker 1: gotta be sober now and then you're good. You should
Speaker 1: make it external though, so other people can operate, see
Speaker 1: whether or not, like red light green light? Okay, Like no,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta switch off man remote controlled, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you spent forty dollars on vodka shots last night,
Speaker 1: but you really gotta, like there's a plane to be flown.
Speaker 1: So Robert, this is my favorite part because I get
Speaker 1: to ask you, um, how far have you gone to
Speaker 1: test out getting high. I mean in terms of danger
Speaker 1: or in terms of distance. Yes, okay. So in my book,
Speaker 1: one of the last or the last chapter is about
Speaker 1: there's this drug I read about on Cracked years and
Speaker 1: years ago called salamander brandy that is a local beverage
Speaker 1: to Slovenia, and Slovenia is a tiny little Balkan nation
Speaker 1: of like two two million people, some very very tiny
Speaker 1: country you can drive across in two hours. Um. So
Speaker 1: they have this drink that's made from drowning a salamander
Speaker 1: to death in brandy. Yeah, it's horrible. It's a horrible process,
Speaker 1: and the salamander as it's drowning, releases a shipload of poison.
Speaker 1: And according a guy named Blaje, who was like a
Speaker 1: Slovenian Slovenia hunter, s Thompson's kind of how I would
Speaker 1: describe him. Um. He wrote an article in the nineties
Speaker 1: for a magazine called Latina about his experiences on salamander
Speaker 1: brandy and claimed that it caused spontaneous, uncontrollable sexual attraction
Speaker 1: to inanimate objects that he wanted to fund trees on it.
Speaker 1: Like it just got him so lit that he was
Speaker 1: like couldn't stop, like trying to get his hands on
Speaker 1: a local tree. I mean, it's a belief of this
Speaker 1: podcast that trees are very sexy. Well, then you would
Speaker 1: agree with this brandy, or at least the mythical brand would.
Speaker 1: Well maybe may not. I mean I traveled there and
Speaker 1: I spent like eight or nine days trying to track
Speaker 1: down salamander brandy. When all over I found a bunch
Speaker 1: of different brandy makers and saw their stills, and they
Speaker 1: drank a lot of terrible Slovenian Like I had human brandy,
Speaker 1: which is unbelievably bad. Um. I had some very good
Speaker 1: honey brandy too, but like, I've never had anything as
Speaker 1: bad as human That sounds so bad. They kept giving
Speaker 1: us free bottles of human liquor. What do we what
Speaker 1: do we do with trying to get rid of that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's the worst idea one's ever had. Um. But
Speaker 1: I couldn't find the salamander brandy. So I headed home
Speaker 1: and I learned as I was like desperately trying to
Speaker 1: find someone who brought some of this stuff to the
Speaker 1: States and who could maybe get me some, I found
Speaker 1: out that you can just buy the kind of salamans
Speaker 1: that they have over there, and so I had one
Speaker 1: delivered to my door and they sent it to me
Speaker 1: within like yeah, sound well, no okay. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not I love amphibians and reptiles. I've had them
Speaker 1: since I was a kid, frogs and turtles, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to murder a little animal to get drunk.
Speaker 1: So I got him. I set him up in like
Speaker 1: a cage and everything like. I got him like a
Speaker 1: good habitat, and I let it give him about thirty
Speaker 1: days to settle in, and then once every three days,
Speaker 1: I would I would wash off a pair of non
Speaker 1: latex gloves um, and I would pick him up and
Speaker 1: I would massage his poison glands until he secreted poison
Speaker 1: onto my hand and then I would put him back
Speaker 1: in the cage and let him rest for a couple
Speaker 1: of days. And they do. And I did that like
Speaker 1: a dozen times until I had uh oh, and I
Speaker 1: would wash the gloves off with liquor um, and then
Speaker 1: I simmered it all once I had about a pint's worth,
Speaker 1: and then I drank all of that in the course
Speaker 1: of I don't know, twenty or thirty minutes, and I
Speaker 1: didn't feel spontaneously attracted to animals. But it almost paralyzed
Speaker 1: my legs, Like I couldn't walk for a while. I was,
Speaker 1: I was like wobbly. Fourteen or fifteen hours later, Um,
Speaker 1: I had like terrible motor cord nation. It was just
Speaker 1: like like and there's some paralytic agents inside the poison.
Speaker 1: So I was like, Okay, maybe that's what was going on.
Speaker 1: But that's yeah. I don't want to endorse this, but
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe if you had drowned the salamander,
Speaker 1: maybe you would have been attracted to inanimate objects like
Speaker 1: you didn't do it, right, That's that's possible. I I
Speaker 1: I can't confirm that because I wasn't able to find
Speaker 1: any of it. Um, not like you could walk towards
Speaker 1: like the chair you were suddenly interested in. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: I wanted to suck the chair, I probably couldn't have
Speaker 1: made my way over to it. So was it pleasant
Speaker 1: or like? No, oh no, she didn't kill it. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: he's still alive as far as I know. I gave
Speaker 1: him to a biology student at a local university, so
Speaker 1: he's he found a good home. That's great. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: like a biology student of like like dissection. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's Humboldt States, and he's probably a hippie kid, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so so it wasn't pleasant, and I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: something were you in danger, like do you think could
Speaker 1: have killed you? I mean maybe if I'd had more.
Speaker 1: It certainly wasn't good. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So don't don't do salamanders, don't do horses maybe, but
Speaker 1: you didn't hear it from me. Don't do wink ecstasy,
Speaker 1: but don't seriously don't do it legally speaking. So what's
Speaker 1: a rat parents worst nightmare? It's not drug pushers, it's scientists.
Speaker 1: There are tons of studies that look at the effects
Speaker 1: of drugs on rats, but the hope that it may
Speaker 1: treat human addiction. But these dastardly drug lord scientists haven't
Speaker 1: been able to offload their drugs on non mammals until
Speaker 1: just recently. Neuroscientists at the University of Scranton have gotten
Speaker 1: ants addicted to morphine. The studies senior author Mark Sade says,
Speaker 1: we can addict individual ants and see how that affects
Speaker 1: the ants social network, which is somewhat like humans. The
Speaker 1: study found that after developing an addiction to morphine. The
Speaker 1: ants even preferred it to sugar, and ants are like
Speaker 1: crazy for sugar. Then, because the study wouldn't be complete
Speaker 1: without a torture porn element, the researchers removed the ant's
Speaker 1: brains and measured higher amounts of dopamine, and dopamine indicates
Speaker 1: a similar response in ants as in humans to the morphine.
Speaker 1: Not content to stop there, the next step in their
Speaker 1: research is to see if they can tear apart the
Speaker 1: fabric of ant society by introducing a morphine epidemic. We
Speaker 1: need to take a quick break to hold an antervention.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, here's a message back soon. So my
Speaker 1: favorite song from West Side Story is Officer krup Key.
Speaker 1: I remember it being shown in a history of psychiatry class.
Speaker 1: It was meant to illustrate how mental hygiene and juvenile
Speaker 1: delinquents had entered the public conscious this But is there
Speaker 1: truth to the idea that young people are more susceptible
Speaker 1: to being troublemakers? Can we find examples of young punk animals?
Speaker 1: Robert and I discussed the science on whether the kids
Speaker 1: are all right? And we find a rather literal example
Speaker 1: in the wild of the jets versus the sharks, except
Speaker 1: it's otters versus the sharks, and spoiler, the sharks usually
Speaker 1: win and we are back. Um. So Robert was just
Speaker 1: telling me about how salamander juice booze was not a
Speaker 1: fun time, and like, I feel worse for the salamanders
Speaker 1: that get drowned to make the booze. But it's also
Speaker 1: a little bit strange. I feel like for that salamander
Speaker 1: to just get like massaged for his juices. I mean,
Speaker 1: like it it sounds kind of okay, but also just
Speaker 1: like just a little like did he make eye contact
Speaker 1: with you ever? And was it like super awkward? He
Speaker 1: certainly didn't understand what was happening salamander, right, But you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's one of those I'm not going
Speaker 1: to claim that like it was an act of goodness
Speaker 1: to missogyn for his poison. Um, it was necessary for science.
Speaker 1: I mean it affects me at a deep personal level
Speaker 1: because when I was a kid, I read this book
Speaker 1: called The Chocolate Fever where the kid eats so much
Speaker 1: chocolate he breaks out in a chocolate rash and people
Speaker 1: are trying to lick them and like dogs, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: dogs like chase after him, trying to lick them, which
Speaker 1: is really horrifying because first of all, chocolate is poisoned
Speaker 1: to dogs. Dogs I don't know. I think dogs just
Speaker 1: love chocolate and they don't know any better. So so
Speaker 1: it's like dogs are chasing them, but if he lets
Speaker 1: them catch them, he gets mauled and the dogs die.
Speaker 1: It's the worst thing. But that book like gave me nightmares,
Speaker 1: just the idea of like someone like, Wow, your skin
Speaker 1: looks delicious, I'm gonna lick it. And so I feel
Speaker 1: a lot of sympathy for your salamander, but also, uh
Speaker 1: for toads, because you know, the whole toad licking thing,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not purely an urban legend, although there
Speaker 1: are aspects to it that are sort of apocryphal. But like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get high from licking cane toads, well, not
Speaker 1: from licking them. You gotta scrape the poison, you gotta um. Well,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't chew on them. You can suck
Speaker 1: on them and get it. I'm pretty sure I've never
Speaker 1: heard that, but you may be right. Well I've always
Speaker 1: heard you had to. It's like it's a d M T.
Speaker 1: That's in there right right, Yeah, it's five m e
Speaker 1: O d mt. I think yeah. And I've always heard
Speaker 1: that you had to you had to get the poison
Speaker 1: and then you had to dry it and then you
Speaker 1: would like basically smoke it in a crack pipe. That
Speaker 1: may be true for humans. Um. For dogs, they just
Speaker 1: go go full ham on that toad and just start
Speaker 1: chewing on it. So in um and humans, it's not
Speaker 1: really that big of a problem. Like teens aren't doing
Speaker 1: toad pods, they're just like, uh, you know that. There's
Speaker 1: a professor are of Tropical and Emerging Infectious Diseases, the
Speaker 1: same Spark Cury, who claims that there have been a
Speaker 1: lot of deaths and other parts of the world from
Speaker 1: people trying to use cane tone venom for recreational purposes,
Speaker 1: and he's doing research into like how snakes are able
Speaker 1: to survive it and for a possible antidote. But that's
Speaker 1: not I think that's probably what you're saying. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's toad licking. I think that's that's they're just
Speaker 1: using the venom and processing it. Um. But there aren't
Speaker 1: any There haven't been any deaths in Australia from cane
Speaker 1: toad licking. But there have been deaths in dogs because
Speaker 1: they will they love them. They like they just picked
Speaker 1: them up in their mouths and they start like chewing
Speaker 1: on them and slow fat treat and they get super high.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's sad because there have been fifty
Speaker 1: reported dog deaths a year in Australia. But like there
Speaker 1: are some more lighthearted ones where it's like, there's this
Speaker 1: family whose dog Lady was caught sucking toads all the time.
Speaker 1: And they said, and this is a quote, we noticed
Speaker 1: lady spending an awful lot of time down by the
Speaker 1: pond in our backyard. And then they say, she finally
Speaker 1: staggered over to me from the cat tails. She looked
Speaker 1: up at me, leaned her head over and opened her
Speaker 1: mouth like she was going to throw up, and out
Speaker 1: plopped this disgusting toad. She had the whole toad in
Speaker 1: her mouth. But they're big, right, Oh yeah, cane toes
Speaker 1: are big. They're they're like the size of a large well,
Speaker 1: they're bigger than a rat. I think, do we have
Speaker 1: a picture of this lady's mouth. This is a dog
Speaker 1: named sorry that no, no, this is a dog named
Speaker 1: Lady Dog named lady. Okay, total sense. This lady just
Speaker 1: like spending a lot of time by the pond shoving
Speaker 1: entire toads in her m. That's why I imagine it
Speaker 1: like it almost Twilight Zone thing, like woman walks up
Speaker 1: to you from your backyard and you're like, there's something wrong,
Speaker 1: am giant. That sounds like a David Lynch thing, and
Speaker 1: I don't like it. Yeah, that's that was in fact
Speaker 1: in the New Twin peaks like that frog thing crawls
Speaker 1: into that chick's mouth. I haven't watched any of the Twin.
Speaker 1: David Lynch, you stinker, And I drink his coffee sometimes,
Speaker 1: David Lynch, it's called David Lynch coffee. Is it like
Speaker 1: weird with vague references to Native American? It's just good coffee.
Speaker 1: I think David Lynch just likes coffee and has a coffee.
Speaker 1: So fugu fish, Robert tried to uh no, but I
Speaker 1: watched the Simpsons episode. Yes, I believe we all have.
Speaker 1: So there's the episode where Homer eats the fugu fish,
Speaker 1: which a fugu fish is a puffer fish and they're
Speaker 1: extremely toxic, but parts of the fish are very good sushi.
Speaker 1: And in the episode, which is racist. It is a
Speaker 1: racist episodes, thanks the Simpsons. Like, the chef is just
Speaker 1: like some intern and he doesn't know what he's doing
Speaker 1: my business. That's well, that part's not racist. No, having
Speaker 1: sex with Kribopple is just a it's just a natural thing.
Speaker 1: But like, um, uh so in the in the episode,
Speaker 1: he may have eaten it, but they're not sure because
Speaker 1: this inexperienced chef prepares it and so the doctors like,
Speaker 1: you probably have only forty eight hours to live, and uh,
Speaker 1: but that's just that's not how it works. I mean,
Speaker 1: people do occasionally die from it, but very occasionally. They're
Speaker 1: From two thousand and four to two thirteen, there were
Speaker 1: only twelve deaths from eating food goo. And there's a
Speaker 1: treatment for it, which is you go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: They keep your respiratory and circulatory systems going until you
Speaker 1: can get the poison out of your system the natural way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you're only what a quarter million dollars in debt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. I don't know how healthcare works like in Japan,
Speaker 1: it's it's way better, and I'm sure it is. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but it is scary because the toxin paralyzes you while
Speaker 1: you remain fully conscious and you eventually die from asphyxiation
Speaker 1: being unable to breathe. So it's method of action is
Speaker 1: similar to Sarah gas. Yeah cool, but in a fish
Speaker 1: that's hip. Yeah yeah, And but you know you can
Speaker 1: go to a hospital, but there are no dolphin hospitals,
Speaker 1: and dolphins are having the reef madness. Wait our dolphins
Speaker 1: getting high off of puffer fish. It's fantastic. Ya. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like living heroin if you get high up.
Speaker 1: It's because it's like a ball. It's like a ball
Speaker 1: of needles you find on the ground and you're just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a living ball of needles. I'm gonna rub
Speaker 1: up against it. So they like play a little dolphin
Speaker 1: volleyball and then like and then researchers report seeing them
Speaker 1: lying around on the floor of the ocean in a
Speaker 1: catatonic state. Do we I mean, first off, that's amazing
Speaker 1: to be the puffer fish in that situation, because I
Speaker 1: imagine if you're an animal like a puffer fish, that
Speaker 1: means instant death to anything that touches you. You have
Speaker 1: a lot of confidence. It's like always having the Mario star.
Speaker 1: And then like dolphins come into the picture. What is happening? Oh,
Speaker 1: can you imagine like zorbing and like so the zorb
Speaker 1: is one of those big orbs that you go into
Speaker 1: and it's like this like inflatable ball that you're in
Speaker 1: the center of. And then like having just like large
Speaker 1: marine animals like killer whales just like whooping you around
Speaker 1: an option for life, I hope, so make it happen.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're describing a dream. No, no, I
Speaker 1: mean the zorb is real. I don't think having killer
Speaker 1: whales boop you around while you are inside of the
Speaker 1: zorb is real. That feels like an oversight. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean like Tesla get on it. So yeah, that that
Speaker 1: does seem fun for both the dolphin and the puffer fish.
Speaker 1: Um Marine biologists Christie Wilcox uh says she's skeptical that
Speaker 1: dolphins are intentionally dragging themselves, but come on, of course
Speaker 1: they are. Come on fucking courses, get high, intentionally open
Speaker 1: your eyes. I know they're your precious babies, but you
Speaker 1: know you got to have the talk with them, Like
Speaker 1: an animal doesn't have to be smart to when I
Speaker 1: get drunk. But we know that lots of like elephants
Speaker 1: will seek out alcohol and get wasted. Elephants will kill
Speaker 1: people to get access to their wine. Um so, like
Speaker 1: dolphins are smart, of course they intentional. I disagree with you,
Speaker 1: expert marine biologist Christie Wilcox. I'm calling you out. Well.
Speaker 1: I feel like she might be an expert on animals,
Speaker 1: but she's not an expert on getting wrecked, right right,
Speaker 1: That is true. You need to be both. Um. So,
Speaker 1: she describes the pepper fish toxin as one and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand times as deadly as cocaine, four hundred thousands and
Speaker 1: times as deadly as meth, and more than fifty million
Speaker 1: times as deadly as th HC. Although we is t
Speaker 1: C deadly at all. I don't think it has an
Speaker 1: elderie fifty, which is like the amount of it that
Speaker 1: you would have to take to die. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's ever been determined, which is not to say
Speaker 1: that you couldn't. But I feel like fifty million maybe
Speaker 1: might do it. Fifty millions, fifty millions. My questioning here
Speaker 1: actually is okay, So she's saying that this poison is
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty thousand times deadlier than cocaine and
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand times deadlier than meth, which means is
Speaker 1: she's saying, now, I'm not I'm not a smart man,
Speaker 1: I'm not good at math. But is she saying that,
Speaker 1: like it seems like from her calculus then that she's
Speaker 1: saying that cocaine is a lot deadlier than meth. I
Speaker 1: mean that seems to be what the math math is saying.
Speaker 1: So I have some questions right off the bad because
Speaker 1: I I feel like, first off, having done both of
Speaker 1: those substances, like meth amphetamine is a way more powerful drug,
Speaker 1: and I feel like it kills a lot more people
Speaker 1: than just cocaine. Now, if we're comparing it to crack,
Speaker 1: like they're on more of an even keel. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: maybe that's what she means. Maybe she's just too fancy
Speaker 1: to say crack. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I can't
Speaker 1: speak for marine biologist Christie Wilcox. Also, is it four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand times as fun as cocaine? I don't know.
Speaker 1: She didn't say. I would assume so though, like in
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty would be a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand times more fun than cocaine and more fun than meth.
Speaker 1: Cocaine is not very fun, but I feel like a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty thousand times funner would be really fun.
Speaker 1: She also says, and this I think is more in
Speaker 1: her wheelhouse. She says it's tends tends to hundreds of
Speaker 1: times more lethal than the venoms of the most notorious
Speaker 1: animals in the world, including the widow spiders in the
Speaker 1: black mamba. It's more potent than VX, nerve gas, formaldehyde,
Speaker 1: or even rice, and it is quite literally one of
Speaker 1: the most toxic compounds known to man. Okay, but none
Speaker 1: of this is her talking about how how fun it
Speaker 1: is to get high. No, she didn't say how fun
Speaker 1: it is, which makes me think it's really really fun.
Speaker 1: Or is it possible that it's just like dolphin chocolate,
Speaker 1: Like so, like we chocolate is great for us, it's delicious,
Speaker 1: but dogs die from it. Maybe they're fine taking this ship,
Speaker 1: but it kills everything else. Dogs is to chocolate is
Speaker 1: to humans, as humans is to puffer fish is to dolphins. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's probably yeah, yeah, like they're just
Speaker 1: having the equivalent of a dr pepper, but to us
Speaker 1: it's instant death. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean she didn't say any dolphins has has died from this.
Speaker 1: Maybe they have, but she didn't say. I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like we nailed this and should get the credit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nailed it. Yeah, so let's talk to the teens for
Speaker 1: a minute. Let's talk talk to something their teenagers here,
Speaker 1: because I was not told that. No no, no no,
Speaker 1: um why why why do you mean to know? I
Speaker 1: don't like teenagers? Yeah, well I don't approve of them.
Speaker 1: Well you know that don't do teens? Teens stop being teens.
Speaker 1: We should have an island for teenagers and then a
Speaker 1: country for adults. Yeah, yeah, teen island. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: how sick and rad it would be to be on
Speaker 1: teen islands? I don't want to imagine. I just want
Speaker 1: them to be locked away. Well, you know, so let's
Speaker 1: sell those teens all that dabbing, all the tide pod dabbing.
Speaker 1: Are talking about the dance move dabbing, the dance dab
Speaker 1: dance dab dance dabs that that the tanagers like to do.
Speaker 1: The tanagers do you do have the deb So like
Speaker 1: we we think they're just idiots, and I mean, like
Speaker 1: scientifically a little bit, but like we do overestimate their
Speaker 1: risk taking at least by one metric which is that
Speaker 1: when the risk is of something known like drugs or sex,
Speaker 1: they overestimate how risky it is. So they think things
Speaker 1: and God bless our sex education. Um. But when they
Speaker 1: were pulled, it was found that teens think there's a
Speaker 1: sixty chance of a girl getting HIV if she's having sex. Uh,
Speaker 1: which is a little off because in the US the
Speaker 1: lifetime risk for women is only one in two and
Speaker 1: forty one. I feel like that's as much an indictment
Speaker 1: of our mathematics classes as it is of our sex. Yeah. Yeah, math,
Speaker 1: math and sex. My history teacher was my sex, said teacher,
Speaker 1: and like, no, no, no, I'm sorry. My economics teacher
Speaker 1: was my sex, said teacher. And you would like pop
Speaker 1: in a John Stossel And I'm like, are we learning
Speaker 1: about sex or economics? I can't tell they're stuff. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I mean teens are big risk takers, but like when
Speaker 1: the outcome is unknown own, Uh, they are much more
Speaker 1: likely to want to take risks. And also, um, wild
Speaker 1: teens are still the biggest binge drinking demographic. The rates
Speaker 1: of alcohol consumption amongst teens have been going down for
Speaker 1: at least a decade. Um. Yeah, and I liked how
Speaker 1: the authors of the article is like, is it social media? Maybe?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, there's a lot of things happening
Speaker 1: right now that have never happened before, so you're gonna
Speaker 1: latch onto any of those. But you could also be like,
Speaker 1: is it tide pods? Probably the tide tide pods has
Speaker 1: replaced millennials are killing the alcohol industry with the type pods. Um. So, conversely,
Speaker 1: alcohol consumption has been increasing amongst the baby boomer demographic,
Speaker 1: especially especially for those who are educated. In our women
Speaker 1: so shout out to my smart old ladies getting crunk. Well,
Speaker 1: it's for for old women to get drunk and young women.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. No, it is. It is. Um.
Speaker 1: It's safer to get drunk after you have had a
Speaker 1: kid because breast tissue continues to develop until the point
Speaker 1: at which you get pregnant and developing. That's why you
Speaker 1: don't want kids to drink, because developing tissue is more
Speaker 1: likely to be affected. So you have a higher risk
Speaker 1: of breast cancer if you drink before your pregnancy as
Speaker 1: opposed to starting afterwards. Okay, okay, yeah, no that I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. That's that's really interesting. I wish you
Speaker 1: and told me that no, none of its goodness. Um well,
Speaker 1: that that is interesting. So they are. I guess they're
Speaker 1: just like it's time, it is time, time for the
Speaker 1: young corn. But I mean teens are still I mean
Speaker 1: they still do drink the most. It's just good. I
Speaker 1: think it is good. Um yeah yeah, but like like
Speaker 1: you know, like catch them up, like my my final
Speaker 1: educated ladies, you know, beat them, take them down. I'm
Speaker 1: I feel like anything that's slows these kid liam they're
Speaker 1: all getting into politics now, you just gotta slow them down. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: drunk protesting, that doesn't once you're Once you've had a
Speaker 1: few drinks, you don't feel like being politically hacked out.
Speaker 1: That's what the n r a ot to do is
Speaker 1: give more money to whatever charity tries to get kids
Speaker 1: to drink, be the National Rum Associated. There you go.
Speaker 1: Um So, teen animals, I'm sorry to say human teens
Speaker 1: are way more extreme than you. Um So. I believe
Speaker 1: you wrote about this in your book, But teen Vervet
Speaker 1: monkeys love alcohol and they prefer it over sugar water.
Speaker 1: And there are stories about people capturing monkeys by offering
Speaker 1: them rum and molasses and coconut shells. Did you write
Speaker 1: about this? I didn't write about vervet monkeys, but other
Speaker 1: monkeys have been found too. It's like a monkey thing.
Speaker 1: They love. They love to get let yeah, and and
Speaker 1: like I just love that, like these these old timey
Speaker 1: people would put rum and molasses and coconut shells and
Speaker 1: like the monkeys get wasted. They just like pick up
Speaker 1: the monkeys and like the monkeys are like, dude, are
Speaker 1: you in my Huber's. I'm gonna be honest, that's almost
Speaker 1: certainly how we got aids. It's just people getting monkeys
Speaker 1: drunk and one of them is not quite drunk enof
Speaker 1: and bites you. I thought you were going away different
Speaker 1: and I'm glad. Oh hey that's not um so uh
Speaker 1: but you know, so, you know, like with these like
Speaker 1: stupid challenges, like now there's the condom snorting challenge, which wait, no, okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to catch me up on this one. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't actually know. I'm I am not eight eighteen teenagers,
Speaker 1: so I'm not really sure. I think it's like snorting.
Speaker 1: I think an unused condom. I don't know why, I
Speaker 1: don't know how or any of the details or even
Speaker 1: if it's a thing or if it's just Fox News
Speaker 1: being like teenager. Yeah. I feel like there's two types
Speaker 1: of this thing, and one of them is like Oprah's
Speaker 1: Lipstick Parties, where it's never happened and like somebody just
Speaker 1: makes it up and it's such a good story for
Speaker 1: salacious news. And then there's like tide Pods, where like
Speaker 1: two people do it for a laugh and then it's
Speaker 1: like this is a craze that's hitting the country, like
Speaker 1: Anthony Jason, stop it, Yeah you too, but then everyone
Speaker 1: else gets the rap for it. Yeah. Well, so imagine
Speaker 1: though that like the nude like tide Pods is like
Speaker 1: teenagers going to a really really dangerous part of the world,
Speaker 1: um like just like going to North Korea for spring
Speaker 1: break or something, which I'm actually not sure how dangerous
Speaker 1: that is for tourists. I mean, if you do it legally,
Speaker 1: it's perfect pretty safe as long as you don't try
Speaker 1: to steal a banner, oh man. But like if they
Speaker 1: went there and they're like trying to like take down stairs,
Speaker 1: like griff feeding over statues, putting like weird little mustaches
Speaker 1: on propaganda posters, just like seeking out the most dangerous
Speaker 1: like active war zones that they can possibly go to
Speaker 1: and then snapchatting from it. It's just all these like
Speaker 1: teenage guys going like with sub snapchat here. I am like,
Speaker 1: sounds like there's some drones overhead anyways, like in subscribe.
Speaker 1: I bet we could get logan Paul to do that
Speaker 1: and also solve our Logan Paul problems. Birds with one stone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know some places we should send Logan Paul um
Speaker 1: so obnoxious. Yeah, I it makes totals like dangerous. Stuff
Speaker 1: is fun. It's always been fun, and it's probably always
Speaker 1: like that's why. That's why some groups of human beings left.
Speaker 1: Like you look at like early human life and like
Speaker 1: eastern Eastern Africa where like the first people were. It's
Speaker 1: like it's nice, you got all the food you need,
Speaker 1: you pick it up. Like there's some animals you gotta
Speaker 1: worry about, but like it's a pretty chill life. You
Speaker 1: only have to work a couple of hours a day.
Speaker 1: But like some people are like you know that play
Speaker 1: it's like across the ocean that always looks like it's
Speaker 1: stormy and cold and miserable. I bet, I bet it's cool. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet it's dangerous and then chicks will be impressed. Well,
Speaker 1: that's definitely how otters feel, because teenage otters like to
Speaker 1: venture into the Triangle of Death, which is so metal sounding,
Speaker 1: oh my god, and it's it's just teenage boy otters,
Speaker 1: like like juvenile male otters who go to this triangle
Speaker 1: and it is in fact a death triangle because it's full,
Speaker 1: it's in the ocean south of San Francisco Bay. It's
Speaker 1: full of great white sharks, strong currents, sharp rocks, and
Speaker 1: it's riddled with ti ganda. Yeah, it's a murder beach. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the death Triangle. And like conservationists don't find
Speaker 1: adult otters, they don't find baby otters because the moms
Speaker 1: are like holding their lily ends because otters are so cute. Um,
Speaker 1: But like teenage punk otters are going in like male
Speaker 1: otters too. Apparently the female otters are just like not
Speaker 1: having any of it, but like they're they're the only
Speaker 1: ones that the conservationists tend to find in this uh
Speaker 1: and like the death zone. Yeah, it's like the otter
Speaker 1: equivalent of Vice News going out there and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like like we just went into this pool
Speaker 1: of sharks and chicken out and they're like and they're
Speaker 1: like stupid little like like hipster uniforms. So otters like
Speaker 1: to risk danger like the rest of us. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. It's the auto equivalent of joining the
Speaker 1: marine corps, like sharp rocks and sharks. Yeah, Ti Ganda. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that the same thing that cats have. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the thing that rats get that makes them like cats.
Speaker 1: So that's fun. It is fun. Yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: like the thing to do if you could go back
Speaker 1: in time to like really upset the military history. It's
Speaker 1: just like air drop a bunch of cats on the
Speaker 1: like the Mongols, and then be like they can't fight,
Speaker 1: so get no more. Didn't some group of people do
Speaker 1: the thing where they strap bombs to cats, Like I
Speaker 1: think we've tried to weaponize cats a few times. The
Speaker 1: US tried a thing where they wanted to strap bombs
Speaker 1: to pigeons and drop hundreds of thousands of pigeons on
Speaker 1: Tokyo and then the pigeons would hide in houses and ignite.
Speaker 1: But then we figured out a nuke and that was
Speaker 1: that's worse. But the other one's pretty bad too. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's they're morally different because like one of them involves
Speaker 1: murdering a bunch of animals to murder a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: and one of them is just murdering more people for
Speaker 1: a longer period of time. I would still have to
Speaker 1: say the non pigeons one is worse, which sounds really
Speaker 1: bad because the first one is still They're both bad.
Speaker 1: It's not a contest. Yeah, but only one of them
Speaker 1: would get protested by Peter Harsh but true. Yeah, um yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I thought someone tried to do like a
Speaker 1: surveillance with cats once to I mean they may have,
Speaker 1: and then like the cat just like immediately got hit
Speaker 1: by a car. I feel like any plan that involves
Speaker 1: a cat doing a thing that is not whatever the
Speaker 1: cat wants to do. No, don't invest your military box
Speaker 1: into cats, guys. How should we go about dealing with
Speaker 1: human teens? Is there a way to curb their risky behavior?
Speaker 1: A lot of our culture seems to believe in scaring
Speaker 1: the crap out of kids to get them to stop
Speaker 1: risky behaviors, terrifying p s a s or movies like
Speaker 1: Red Asphalt, but the goal of showing so much gore
Speaker 1: and terror kids will be too scared to do anything stupid,
Speaker 1: But does this actually help? Researchers looked at Scared Straight,
Speaker 1: a prison visitation program. It right and young people away
Speaker 1: from engaging in criminal activity by showing them unsettling consequences.
Speaker 1: But not only did the program fail to reduce the
Speaker 1: numbers of juvenile offenders, it actually seemed to increase them,
Speaker 1: ranging from two to five across a number of studies.
Speaker 1: So what can adults do? One study suggested that open
Speaker 1: communication with parents reduced the amount of sexual risk taking
Speaker 1: in teens. So, as uncomfortable as it is, a frank,
Speaker 1: honest discussion about the birds and the bees might be
Speaker 1: the only way to go about it. Speaking of birds,
Speaker 1: scientists created some daredevil finches in the lab. They bred
Speaker 1: a line of finches who naturally produced more portosome, which
Speaker 1: is a stress hormone, in response to startling situations. These
Speaker 1: high level stress hormone birds took greater risks and were
Speaker 1: bolder in exploring new environments to find seed. The scientists
Speaker 1: would also test their braveness by startling them with food
Speaker 1: dishes that would snap closed, and found out that the
Speaker 1: hero birds weren't so easily scared off. So let me
Speaker 1: get this straight. Scientists have created fearless birds, whom they
Speaker 1: repeatedly tormented, thus giving them a motivation for revenge. Uh,
Speaker 1: let it be known that I've never done anything to
Speaker 1: betray bird kind and will gladly offer bread in exchange
Speaker 1: for my life. So, Robert, is there an you know
Speaker 1: we could follow you? You can find me on the
Speaker 1: twitters at at I right, okay, um, that's my Twitter
Speaker 1: okay to letters. And you can find my book on Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's called A Brief History of Vice and you can
Speaker 1: buy it and be my friend. It's really it's really great.
Speaker 1: And also check out Robert's new podcast. Oh yes, by this,
Speaker 1: I don't know when this episode is coming out, It
Speaker 1: might be might just everyone's heard of it and everyone
Speaker 1: loves it. And I'm just sound like a real lame,
Speaker 1: like I mean, fingers crossed. But my new podcast is
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards. It's gonna drop me first. There will
Speaker 1: be a new episode every Tuesday. And yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: about stuff like like I said, Saddan Hussein's romance novel Career,
Speaker 1: the Mysteries of Osama, Mind, Lawton's porn Stash, Hitler's favorite
Speaker 1: young adult author, and just a bunch of other wacky
Speaker 1: ship about the worst people in history behind the bastards
Speaker 1: at Bastard's Pot On Twitter, We're all all around the
Speaker 1: Anna great so you can follow me on Twitter. Um.
Speaker 1: I am at Katie Golden and I am also at
Speaker 1: pro bird Writes, which is my bird sona um and
Speaker 1: uh you should do that. Please spit some hot fire
Speaker 1: about bird truth. Yeah, speaking bird truth, speaking bird to power.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. If there is next Wednesday,
Speaker 1: please join us again.