Speaker 1: Guess what will what's that man go? So there's this
Speaker 1: fact you always hear about Pablo Escobar. At the height
Speaker 1: of his career, Pablo was bringing in eighteen billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year. That's all cash. It was so much money
Speaker 1: that he was spending a month just on rubber bands.
Speaker 1: Rubber bands, I know. But here's what's crazier. He and
Speaker 1: his accountant budgeted to lose ten percent of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: Escobar expected to lose one point eight billion dollars and
Speaker 1: the money was going to rats. Rats literal rats, Like
Speaker 1: there were so many of them scarring around his warehouse
Speaker 1: that he just accepted that the rodents were going to
Speaker 1: eat his profits. And you think about it, right, this
Speaker 1: is Pablo Escobar, the most ruthless kingpin in the world,
Speaker 1: and he's happy to kill judges and police officers and
Speaker 1: anyone that's threatening his business. But even he's like, there's
Speaker 1: no way to beat rats. Let's just give them the
Speaker 1: ten percent they deserve. That's how unstoppable rats are. I'd say, hey, there,
Speaker 1: podcast listeners, you're listening to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and I'm joined by my good friend Mangues show
Speaker 1: Ticketer and today we're asking why have rats out smart
Speaker 1: at us for so long? It's a good question, and listeners,
Speaker 1: I know it sounds disgusting, but I promise you this
Speaker 1: is going to be fascinating. We've packed this show with fun.
Speaker 1: We'll have writer A. J. Jacobs on in a little bit.
Speaker 1: We've got a part Time Genius quiz coming up where
Speaker 1: a couple of our listeners can win some very big
Speaker 1: and very important prizes. So who do we invite to
Speaker 1: play in this episode? Mango? Today we asked for librarians
Speaker 1: and only librarians, and I think next week we're looking
Speaker 1: for accountants. That sounds right, yeah, and then I think
Speaker 1: it's pastry Chef's name Kyle. And anyway, be sure to
Speaker 1: follow us part Time Genius on all the social media
Speaker 1: thing he's you know, Twitter, Facebook, if you want to
Speaker 1: come on and compete. So let's dive into today's question, Ango,
Speaker 1: what do you know about rats? Well, the first thing
Speaker 1: I learned is that there are some great titles out
Speaker 1: there about rats, including this book from the eighteen fifties
Speaker 1: called The Rat It's History and Destructive Character. I have
Speaker 1: to say that title does not sound pro rats. It
Speaker 1: isn't it's this famous book in rat studies, and it's
Speaker 1: great because you can tell that the author, James Rodwell,
Speaker 1: has zero love for rats. Like one of the things
Speaker 1: he does is to challenge the reader to say the
Speaker 1: word rat slowly, just to confirm how terrible the word sounds.
Speaker 1: He calls it the foulest word in British zoology. You've
Speaker 1: got to try it. Um, yeah, it's it's not a
Speaker 1: pretty sounding word, I'll give you that. I know he's right,
Speaker 1: and it kind of sounds foul. So I got curious
Speaker 1: and started looking up synonyms in the thesaurus, and I
Speaker 1: realized there are no pleasant sounding alternatives for the word rat.
Speaker 1: All right, give me something like, you know, vermin is one,
Speaker 1: rodents nars. It doesn't even sound like a word, but
Speaker 1: that's it. That's where the list stops. The only pleasant
Speaker 1: term I could find for rats was track bunny. I know.
Speaker 1: That's what subway workers call them when they see a
Speaker 1: rat on the subway line. You know, treck bunnies is
Speaker 1: almost a little too cute, I think, though, But I
Speaker 1: I get what you're saying. Rats have a terrible reputation
Speaker 1: and could use some rebranding. I don't know, maybe like uh,
Speaker 1: like radio Shack rebranded itself the shack because shacks are
Speaker 1: in right now, I guess the shack. Uh Yeah. The
Speaker 1: fishing industry has done this with what they call trash fish,
Speaker 1: so instead of calling it the slime head, they renamed
Speaker 1: it the orange roughie. Or instead of the Patagonian toothfish,
Speaker 1: which just sounds disgusting, we've got the Chilean sea bass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're there are tons of these. I think
Speaker 1: my favorite is how the pil short goes by the
Speaker 1: name cornish sardine. I'd never eat a pil shirt, but
Speaker 1: a cornish starting I kind of want some, now, I know.
Speaker 1: I just pictured it on like a tiny fork. So
Speaker 1: that's what I'd love to do. Listeners, if you're up
Speaker 1: for it, We're going to run a little contest to
Speaker 1: come up with a new name for rats, something that
Speaker 1: acknowledges the critters are gross but also deserving of admiration.
Speaker 1: And to the top five geniuses who come up with
Speaker 1: a rat replacement that's better than I don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: sewer kittens, We'll send you a tiny wheel of cheese. Alright,
Speaker 1: sewer kittens. Yes, Listeners, please write your suggestions for rebranding
Speaker 1: the rat and we'll honor you on our Facebook page.
Speaker 1: So just to get this out there, I'm totally creeped
Speaker 1: out by rats, and it's because their germ elevators. We
Speaker 1: all know that rats carry ticks and lice with them,
Speaker 1: and throughout history they've carried diseases into food sources and
Speaker 1: into people's homes. But they're also just creepy to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you ever seen these videos of how
Speaker 1: rats squeeze their bodies under door frames and through tiny
Speaker 1: It's so gross. I know, that gelatinous body thing is
Speaker 1: just so disgusting. Like octopuses can do that too. A
Speaker 1: good sized octopus can squeeze through a hole the size
Speaker 1: of a cherry tomato. And to be honest, as much
Speaker 1: as I hate rats, I would be so freaked out
Speaker 1: if my apartment had an octopus infestation, just a nest
Speaker 1: of baby octopus hanging out under the saints. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that Mitch Hedberg bit about how koalas would scatter
Speaker 1: whenever you turn on the lights in his apartment. That
Speaker 1: would be so much cuter than rats or octopus, I know,
Speaker 1: so much more adorable. Here's something I never thought about.
Speaker 1: I was reading this book Rats by Robert Sullivan, and
Speaker 1: Sullivan makes this an analogy that if you see a
Speaker 1: grizzly bear, you know you're in the wilderness, right, like
Speaker 1: you never see a grizzly bear anywhere else. But what
Speaker 1: we don't often think about is that if you see
Speaker 1: a rat, it's also an indicator that humans are nearby,
Speaker 1: right right. I mean, it's no secret that rats thrive
Speaker 1: by following human populations around. I mean, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, there really aren't natural predators to pick them
Speaker 1: off in the city. It's basically just rats versus humans.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, while there are plenty of
Speaker 1: rats out there today, we're really focusing on the Norway rat,
Speaker 1: also known as the brown rat. Yeah, I we should
Speaker 1: clarify why we're homing in on the Norway at well.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are black rats too, which are smaller
Speaker 1: and they tend to be located in warmer climates, But
Speaker 1: the brown rats are really the common ones most of
Speaker 1: us think about. I mean, you might have heard of
Speaker 1: warf rats or street rats, or barn rats or sewer rats,
Speaker 1: or even you've heard of all I've heard of all
Speaker 1: of them. Keep me keep a list. These are all
Speaker 1: just brown rats. I mean, the same rat goes by
Speaker 1: all these names because they're so adaptable. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean basically any rat you've been worried about, including
Speaker 1: the ones that swim out of toilets. I know you're
Speaker 1: looking at me skeptically, but every year there are ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen reports of this in Portland, Oregon alone, So
Speaker 1: you've got to imagine that a good number of rats
Speaker 1: creep out of toilets across the US. I mean, Norway
Speaker 1: rats are great swimmers, and of course they're not really
Speaker 1: from Norway. Yeah. I guess it's just one of those
Speaker 1: things where you want to blame another culture for the
Speaker 1: new type of grossness, like how the Germans called the
Speaker 1: German cockroach the Russian cockroach, and Russians call it the
Speaker 1: Prussian cockroach, and everyone's happy to blame it on somebody else. Which,
Speaker 1: by the way, the other part of that rats story
Speaker 1: is that the scientists in England name the rats Norway rats,
Speaker 1: even though they had come from Denmark, the Denmark part
Speaker 1: of Norway. That's right. I mean he might have been
Speaker 1: a little bit bad at geography, but at the time
Speaker 1: Norway rats had not even yet invaded Norway. That's so weird.
Speaker 1: The other thing Sullivan mentions is a rule of thumb
Speaker 1: is that if you see a rat, it means there
Speaker 1: are ten more lurking nearby. And if you see a
Speaker 1: rat during the day, like on the subway tracks, then
Speaker 1: you're really in trouble because there's definitely a problem. Like
Speaker 1: rats love to roam at night. They don't want to
Speaker 1: be seen, but if they're out running around, it means
Speaker 1: the population is stressed because there's too much competition for food.
Speaker 1: I never thought about it that way. Well, let's get
Speaker 1: down to it. So we know people hate rats, and
Speaker 1: we know they're lurking in bigger quantities than anyone sees.
Speaker 1: But why are rats so hard to control? I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest reasons is that they populate so
Speaker 1: darn't quickly. I heard this crazy thing that if you're
Speaker 1: in a city at any given moment, you're not that
Speaker 1: far from rats having sex. I can't even think. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell you where I heard it. I
Speaker 1: heard it somewhere. So but rats are really really good
Speaker 1: at mating. When rats aren't eating, all their due ing
Speaker 1: is having sex. I mean, there's there's no four play,
Speaker 1: no berry White. It's just business. In fact, it's one
Speaker 1: of the biggest reasons rats are so hard to defeat,
Speaker 1: because a male Norway rat can have sex with twenty
Speaker 1: different partners in six hours. And the math on it's baffling.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about this, alright. So one pair of
Speaker 1: rats can churn out fifteen thousand descendants within a year.
Speaker 1: Each letter then has eight to ten rats, and if
Speaker 1: the gestation period is only twenty one days, well that's
Speaker 1: a lot of rats that are then also eager to
Speaker 1: make this It's pretty gross, which makes you wonder why
Speaker 1: we aren't all in the rat catching business. I know.
Speaker 1: So while we're on the topic of rat sex, I've
Speaker 1: got to tell you about my favorite study on the subject.
Speaker 1: There's this well regarded scientists from Cairo, amd Chfique, who's
Speaker 1: been dead for a while now, but he published this
Speaker 1: experiment in European Neurology where he tested the effects of
Speaker 1: various pant materials on the sex drive of rats. Let
Speaker 1: me get this straight. He made tiny pants for rats.
Speaker 1: He did the rats went topless, of course, but he
Speaker 1: took seventy five million rats and had tiny trousers custom
Speaker 1: made for each of them. One group were a cotton pants,
Speaker 1: another war wool, another war a blend, and these rats
Speaker 1: they didn't get any less frisky. They just continued to
Speaker 1: get down. Except except for what, Except for the ones
Speaker 1: dressed in polyester. I mean, this is an amazing part.
Speaker 1: The ones outfitted in a polyester pants started losing their
Speaker 1: sex drive, or their confidences or something else. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe it's the chafing on their tiny rat
Speaker 1: bits that made them lose interests, or just being forced
Speaker 1: to wear polyester. But let me get this straight. What
Speaker 1: you're saying is all we have to do to end
Speaker 1: our war with rats and get them to stop reproducing
Speaker 1: is to hire an army of tailors, have the millions
Speaker 1: of brown rats fitted for polyester trousers, and then sit
Speaker 1: back and watch the population blendle. That simple. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: Nicky Mouse doesn't have kids, and if Disney just switched
Speaker 1: out his fabric and let his boys breathe a little,
Speaker 1: maybe he could start the family. His mom is always
Speaker 1: naging him about. Brilliant And now it's time for a
Speaker 1: dramatic reading of America's foremost rat poet, Jack Handy, from
Speaker 1: his volume Squeaky Poems Rhymes about my rat. Look at
Speaker 1: her whiskers, look at her toes after you've rested, look
Speaker 1: at her nose. Thank you? So ango, who do we
Speaker 1: have on the line? So we have two librarians, Margaret
Speaker 1: and Michael, going head to head in today's matchup. Now,
Speaker 1: we wanted librarians and only librarians today because librarians are
Speaker 1: known to be word people, and we will be playing
Speaker 1: a word game before we uh, before we get to
Speaker 1: that one, don't we introduce our two contestants. We have
Speaker 1: Margaret on the line. Margaret is a librarian at m
Speaker 1: I T. Margaret, welcome. You said that you actually appeared
Speaker 1: without your permission in a calendar of librarians, a calendar
Speaker 1: of fictional librarians. But you're not fictional. No, I'm real
Speaker 1: at as far as I can tell. Michael, you are
Speaker 1: second contestant, and I want you to tell us what
Speaker 1: calendars you've appeared in. I've never appeared on a calendar. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: librarian exactly, all right. Well Michael, you are in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about what you do. Okay.
Speaker 1: I'm a reference librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And you also have a really interesting story though as well.
Speaker 1: In addition to being a librarian, you've been an improv
Speaker 1: comic now for whatever a decade, yes, thirteen years. My
Speaker 1: specialty is working at the hospitals and nursing homes. I
Speaker 1: per form at hospitals and I hope run an improv
Speaker 1: workshop at a nursing home where the people themselves if
Speaker 1: you improv, anybody's interested in joining or contributing. It's www
Speaker 1: dot van ob doc work information. That's very very cool.
Speaker 1: And I see, actually you do. One of your characters
Speaker 1: is a librarian, so we are now speaking to people
Speaker 1: that play two fictional librarians. Do either of you have
Speaker 1: a favorite library in the world, I'm just supposed to
Speaker 1: pick one um in terms of just like Pure Knock,
Speaker 1: my soft soft best library experience I've ever had was
Speaker 1: visiting the British Library in London where they keep because
Speaker 1: they have like an enormous collection of historical manuscript and
Speaker 1: I remember I think I went from a letter uh
Speaker 1: signed by Queen Elizabeth, to a copy of the mc
Speaker 1: mccarta to the manuscript for Persuasion resting on Jane Austen's
Speaker 1: writing descument. It's just like I had to sit down
Speaker 1: minutes and collect myself. That's pretty great. All right, Well, Mango,
Speaker 1: what game are are two contestants going to be playing today?
Speaker 1: So we're going to play a game called rat in
Speaker 1: the middle, all right. So the rules of the game
Speaker 1: are simple. Every answer is going to have the word
Speaker 1: rat in it. So, for example, we could ask about
Speaker 1: the second Star Trek movie because the word wrath and
Speaker 1: wrath of con has the letters rat in it. We
Speaker 1: thought it would be fun because your librarians and you're
Speaker 1: used to the world of having to be rather quiet
Speaker 1: in your spaces, we thought we could let you, guys
Speaker 1: maybe chime in with animal noises if that works for you. So, um, Margaret,
Speaker 1: you want to be our You want to be our Moor?
Speaker 1: All right? Michael, you want to uh what what animal
Speaker 1: would you like to pick? You want to you want
Speaker 1: to coca? All right? There we go. Yeah, that and
Speaker 1: that's it. That's more like it. There we go. Alright,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna get started here. Remember you're playing for
Speaker 1: a big prize. Whoever wins, we'll get a handwritten note
Speaker 1: from us to your mom or your boss or someone
Speaker 1: else who is important to you, uh, singing your praises.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot on the line here. Okay, guys.
Speaker 1: Question number one, I don't forget your noises, and when
Speaker 1: we hear your noise, we will call on you and
Speaker 1: you'll have a chance to answer. While this dinosaur had
Speaker 1: over eight hundred teeth, it's more notable for the three
Speaker 1: horns protruding from its face. I believe that was Michael
Speaker 1: with the cauca. Alright, what's the answer? Michael? Well done?
Speaker 1: I love how you emphasize the rat there, so alright.
Speaker 1: Question number two? You ready to move, Margaret? I think
Speaker 1: this one might be yours. This is a good one.
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley was a practitioner of this martial art, and
Speaker 1: in fact, in nineteen alright, hold on, I'll finish the question,
Speaker 1: he shot a documentary called The New Gladiator, hoping it
Speaker 1: would propel it into the mainstream. What do you think,
Speaker 1: Michael Karate? Well done? All right? Answer answer? You're you're
Speaker 1: still not in a calendar, Michael? All right? Here we go.
Speaker 1: Number three. The b Boys and Markey Mark and the
Speaker 1: Funky Bunch both had a hit song with this rat
Speaker 1: word in its title? Was that a move I heard?
Speaker 1: What do you think? Michael? Vibrations? That's absolutely right. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. Alright, I'm going to skip to another
Speaker 1: one here. All right, it's okay, This is okay. This
Speaker 1: Sasha Baron Cohen character is known for being the sixth
Speaker 1: There we go. What do you say, Margaret? Y are
Speaker 1: well done? Alright? One more question here, question number five.
Speaker 1: Lisa and Bart are obsessed with this violent Tom and
Speaker 1: Jerry rip off on the Simpsons. Was that a sound? Okay?
Speaker 1: Here we go, go for it. Show well done? Alright, alright,
Speaker 1: man goes. So what's our final tally here? So we've
Speaker 1: got Michael in first place with three points and Margaret
Speaker 1: in second place with two points. Michael, our letter do
Speaker 1: your mom will be in the mail shortly, and because
Speaker 1: we don't want anyone's mailbox to feel too lonely, Margaret,
Speaker 1: we're gonna send you a potato from Potato Parcel, the
Speaker 1: world's premier site for sending a potato through the postal service.
Speaker 1: Thank you both for playing. So One thing I found
Speaker 1: surprising was just how new rat studies are. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was actually thrown off by how new rats are
Speaker 1: to the United States. Like historically they're documented in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: then they move up to China, they invade Siberia and
Speaker 1: they march into Russia and then they sneak onto ships
Speaker 1: and move across the water with people. But and this
Speaker 1: is hard to fathom, rats didn't even arrive in places
Speaker 1: like Spain until eighteen hundred. That is pretty crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: you imagine rats have just always been around and part
Speaker 1: of the cultural fabric. But it's true they only invaded
Speaker 1: states like Montana and the nineties or yeah. And and
Speaker 1: just to drive that point home, you know, j Otto
Speaker 1: Been the dudes who studied birds. Of course, he also
Speaker 1: studied rats and did rat paintings. And according to Sullivan,
Speaker 1: when oddo Been showed his paintings to members of Congress
Speaker 1: and we're talking about the early eighteen hundreds here, a
Speaker 1: number of them mistook the rats for squirrels. Like these
Speaker 1: were educated men, many who worked farms, and they couldn't
Speaker 1: tell the rats from squirrel. It can be tough sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to admit that. I mean, it's a little odd,
Speaker 1: but but you're right. The government only started studying the
Speaker 1: animals during World War two, back when we thought the
Speaker 1: Nazis might harness rodents to spread disease all across Europe.
Speaker 1: In fact, people who wanted to study rats before, they
Speaker 1: had to do it on the sly. So take Elmer McCollum,
Speaker 1: for instance. He was one of the pioneers at Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins in the early nineteen hundreds, but he started his
Speaker 1: research with rats at the University of Wisconsin. But the
Speaker 1: thing is he had to do it in secret because
Speaker 1: and I'm quoting, the Wisconsin state legislature would not support
Speaker 1: public expenditures on room and board of rats. A pest
Speaker 1: to the Wisconsin I guess they paid tuition. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was a weird. That's so weird.
Speaker 1: But what we've learned about rats in the last seventy
Speaker 1: years is incredible, and it's basically that they're little geniuses.
Speaker 1: Like they followed us across continents. They have this extraordinary
Speaker 1: sense of smell their home bodies, like they really don't
Speaker 1: travel more than sixty from their nest unless they have to,
Speaker 1: in which they can travel great distances and tread water
Speaker 1: for like three days at a time. They can be
Speaker 1: dropped from heights of fifty feet without injuring themselves. I
Speaker 1: mean that's five stories off the ground. And they're really adaptable.
Speaker 1: Like if rats have been born in an alley that
Speaker 1: serves Indian food, they'll have a preference for samosas and
Speaker 1: curries and spicy foods. And they don't even eat that
Speaker 1: much food, only like three to four ounces a day.
Speaker 1: That's pretty adaptable. They're also super cooperative, like in one
Speaker 1: study from two thousand, twelve rats were offered a chocolate
Speaker 1: chip treat or the opportunity to free a fellow rat,
Speaker 1: and over and over they freed the rat first, and
Speaker 1: then they shared the treat. And in studies where two
Speaker 1: rats had to press their own buttons at the same
Speaker 1: time to release treats, they quickly learned to cooperate. And
Speaker 1: this was the craziest to me. They're really sensitive, kind
Speaker 1: of like humans. Like if one of them get stressed,
Speaker 1: they bring that energy back to the nest and all
Speaker 1: of the rats get stressed. That's so sweet. The other
Speaker 1: thing I was reading about was just how suspicious they
Speaker 1: are of anything new, which of course is why pest
Speaker 1: control is so hard. Right, So we've established they're really
Speaker 1: reproductive unless they're sporting polyester, and they're really smart, but
Speaker 1: why haven't humans figured out a way to keep them
Speaker 1: in check? Yeah? Well, one of the funny things that
Speaker 1: keeps coming up in history is that we kind of
Speaker 1: keep forgetting about rats until we're actually confronted with them again.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of an out of sight, out of
Speaker 1: mind thing. But as soon as we do see them,
Speaker 1: we move super quickly. Right. So, in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: Ebony magazine did this spread of housing projects in New
Speaker 1: York where the apartments were so dilapidated and drafty that
Speaker 1: children were under thick blankets trying to protect themselves from
Speaker 1: the cold. This wasn't at night, this was during the day,
Speaker 1: and the public was largely unmoved by the scene. But
Speaker 1: then people from the buildings started catching rats and bringing
Speaker 1: them into courts and showing the rats to the press.
Speaker 1: That's when the public opinion shifted. So and the odd
Speaker 1: part is that this happens over and over. Like in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, the New York Times had stories about
Speaker 1: the atrocious rat infestation on Rikers Island. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the prison island between Queens and the Bronx. Well,
Speaker 1: the rat problem was so bad that the guards bought
Speaker 1: a dog to control the rats. You know what the
Speaker 1: rats did, They actually killed the dogs. So it was
Speaker 1: it was that bad, and pretty soon the officers on
Speaker 1: the island were dumping poison and discussing bringing snakes onto
Speaker 1: the island to deal with the rats. But New York
Speaker 1: totally ignored the situation until the rats swam from the
Speaker 1: island to this super exclusive summer community on Long Island Sound.
Speaker 1: And you know, when these ultra rich beach goers saw
Speaker 1: rats on their beach, they weren't having it. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes sense, but let's get zen for a second. This
Speaker 1: is actually one of the themes that keeps coming up
Speaker 1: in Sullivan's book, and it's that exterminators have the cisphius
Speaker 1: like task. They're given this enormous job of trying to
Speaker 1: control the rodent population, but as soon as they stop
Speaker 1: seeing rats, their budgets get cut, so no one wants
Speaker 1: to admit they exist. And it's crazy because, like past,
Speaker 1: controllers will work at five star hotels, and when they
Speaker 1: do that, they have to work in disguise, or when
Speaker 1: they introduce themselves at parties are on the first date,
Speaker 1: they kind of have to tread carefully, and so you
Speaker 1: you kind of come away feeling sorry for them, but
Speaker 1: also with this tremendous sense of respect. Like the best exterminators.
Speaker 1: They actually work as rats ares, and they're essentially archaeologists. Archaeologists,
Speaker 1: What what do you mean by that? Like, the rats
Speaker 1: won't travel far from home, but they will travel deep.
Speaker 1: So a good exterminator actually sees those city and layers.
Speaker 1: They study old maps, and so in New York, for instance,
Speaker 1: a real student will decipher that a new sewer system
Speaker 1: is built on top of a system from the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and that might be built on one from the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and that might be over where a stream used to be.
Speaker 1: And while those places aren't really functional or even accessible
Speaker 1: to humans anymore, there's no doubt that there's a rat
Speaker 1: population that's made a home for themselves there, and as
Speaker 1: long as they can still get to a food source. Well.
Speaker 1: The other thing I think that's kind of fascinating is
Speaker 1: how you were telling me that Sullivan almost compares catching
Speaker 1: rats to think you said, fly fishing. Yeah, Like you
Speaker 1: kind of have to know the rhythm of the rat
Speaker 1: population and where they're flowing, and except that it's going
Speaker 1: to take a while, and you've got to go in
Speaker 1: with this mentality that the rats are going to come
Speaker 1: to you. I guess I've never thought about rats being
Speaker 1: so zen. Thank you now for another dramatic reading from
Speaker 1: Squeaky Poems, Rhymes about My Rat by America's foremost rat poet,
Speaker 1: Jack Handy. What more is a man need than a
Speaker 1: Scotch and a rat and maybe a gun to rest
Speaker 1: in his lap. So our guest today is one of
Speaker 1: our favorite people in the world, right mango. Yeah, definitely
Speaker 1: top forty. Oh, easily top forty. So for the past
Speaker 1: several years he's thrown himself into these crazy experiments and
Speaker 1: written about them, whether it was reading the entire Encyclopedia
Speaker 1: Britannica from A to Z, living an entire year according
Speaker 1: to the laws of the Old Testament, working to bring
Speaker 1: his body to peak help through diet and exercise, or
Speaker 1: working to build the world's largest family reunion. He's always
Speaker 1: ready to dive in. Oh and he's a distant relative
Speaker 1: of Michael Jackson, which he can tell us about A. J. Jacobs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to part time genius. Thank you guys, happy to
Speaker 1: be here. You're in my top forty two. Thank you.
Speaker 1: This is so flattering. That's that's really what we were
Speaker 1: fishing for there, to be honest with you. So wow.
Speaker 1: So A j It's it's hard to believe it's been
Speaker 1: over a decade since he wrote no it all. I
Speaker 1: read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover. But
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you've managed to retain it all pretty much everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe one or two facts in the eight those
Speaker 1: were earlier. No, unfortunately I've forgotten. I play a good
Speaker 1: ninety nine point eight percent still is better than, you know,
Speaker 1: better than when I started, so ver minus. Did did
Speaker 1: you actually sit down and read every single entry, every
Speaker 1: single page of Encyclopedia Britannica. I did. I did. I
Speaker 1: started at A A A K, which is a type
Speaker 1: of Korean music, as I'm sure you know, and then
Speaker 1: I ended A D D Y W I E C.
Speaker 1: So I read and that's the town in Poland right again,
Speaker 1: not not too sure. So yes, I read the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And I did it because my dad, when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, he started to read the encyclopedia. He loved learning,
Speaker 1: he loved read inc. But he only made it's the
Speaker 1: middle of the beach like Bolivia or so uh, And
Speaker 1: I figured, you know, why not try to finish what
Speaker 1: he began and removed that black mark from our family history.
Speaker 1: I like that you were worried about spoiling the reading
Speaker 1: of the Encyclopedia Britannica. So is there anybody would even
Speaker 1: know where to find a printed At this point, I
Speaker 1: know it's true. I fell my kids and I'm like,
Speaker 1: why are you talking about that mysterious encyclopedia? So a J.
Speaker 1: One of the things I love reading in your books
Speaker 1: is these stories of your wife's spinusmen and also her
Speaker 1: beleaguered responses to things. And I was curious both what
Speaker 1: project has been like the most difficult on your family
Speaker 1: and if you've abandoned anything because it's been too hard.
Speaker 1: As you know, the one about following all the rules
Speaker 1: of the Bible as literally as possible, so I had to.
Speaker 1: The Bible says no shaving, so I had this huge beard.
Speaker 1: She didn't love that. She did not kiss me for
Speaker 1: literally seven months. There was no physical contact. UM. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is appropriate to UH to your show,
Speaker 1: but I'll just throw it out there. And but the
Speaker 1: Bible says in Levinicus that you cannot touch women during
Speaker 1: their time of months. And if you take it the
Speaker 1: Bible really literally, you cannot sit in a seat where
Speaker 1: UH a woman, a menstruating woman has that because the
Speaker 1: seat becomes impure. And my wife found that offensive, so
Speaker 1: she sat and everything apartment. I also love that you
Speaker 1: actually stoned someone right as I did. So I was
Speaker 1: in sort of the middle of the year. I was
Speaker 1: getting very into it, so following everything and I looked biblical.
Speaker 1: So I had the beard and a white robe and sandals,
Speaker 1: and I was in Central Park in New York where
Speaker 1: and a man came up to me and said, why
Speaker 1: are you addressed like that? And I explained, well, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to follow all the rules of the Bibles that
Speaker 1: from the ten Commanders to sony adulters. He says, well,
Speaker 1: I'm an adulterer. Are you going to stone rate? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, that would be fantastic. So in recent
Speaker 1: years you've been obsessed with genealogy and proving that we're
Speaker 1: all related, and you even have a terrific podcast, one
Speaker 1: of our favorites called Twice Removed where you focused on this.
Speaker 1: It would have been some of the more interesting findings
Speaker 1: from this obsession of yours. Yeah, this started because I
Speaker 1: got the strange email from this guy who said, you
Speaker 1: don't know me, but I'm your eighth cousin, and I
Speaker 1: thought he was gonna, you know, ask, here's my bank
Speaker 1: account in Nigeria, please lire ten thousand dollars. But it
Speaker 1: turns out he's just part of this group that are
Speaker 1: building these massive family trees that are trying to connect
Speaker 1: everyone in the world, and the biggest one is literally
Speaker 1: now a hundred twenty million people all connected. So I
Speaker 1: found out this is exciting. As a I am Barack
Speaker 1: Obama's relatives. He is my fifth grade aunt's husband's brother's wife,
Speaker 1: seventh grade nephew, so we are very close brothers. What's
Speaker 1: up next for you? A j What are you? What
Speaker 1: are you thinking about? Now? I am Actually I've got
Speaker 1: another book that I'm doing with Ted Books, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take something normal, uh, something I use every day,
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee, uh, and then I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: around the world and try to thank everyone involved in
Speaker 1: making that cup of coffee a reality, so the beans
Speaker 1: and I hope, so, I hope. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: we'll see it is uh, So I have to do that. Well,
Speaker 1: since you've been, uh, the subject of so many studies,
Speaker 1: we thought it was only appropriate for you to join
Speaker 1: us in this episode to answer some questions about rats.
Speaker 1: So are you up for this high stakes quiz? A J?
Speaker 1: I am? I love rath alright, So what quiz are
Speaker 1: we playing with A J? Today? We're playing a game
Speaker 1: called Fancy Rats. And the good news for AJ is
Speaker 1: it's a true false quiz. Right, Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1: I think we have five questions for you, a J.
Speaker 1: The first one true or false. The fannie pack was
Speaker 1: originally invented by a rat fancier who often used the
Speaker 1: pounds to sneak his lucky rat, Theodore into bowling alleys
Speaker 1: with him. Is this true or false? Oh? Man, I
Speaker 1: love it. I wanted to be true very much. And
Speaker 1: I actually was at some party recently and like the
Speaker 1: funkiest person there was wearing a fanny pack. So I'm
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that we're seeing a resurgence the santy packs.
Speaker 1: The HTR crap. I'm going to say that is weird
Speaker 1: enough that it's got to be true. Oh, I wanted
Speaker 1: to be alright. The second question, that's right? All right?
Speaker 1: For one second question, true or false? Before he transitioned
Speaker 1: to being a mouse and two thousand twelve, Chuck from
Speaker 1: Chuck E Cheese was formerly a rat, an unusual mascot
Speaker 1: for a children's arcade slash pizza parlor. What do you
Speaker 1: think true or faults? Oh that's a good one. Oh
Speaker 1: that's a good one. In I feel like I got
Speaker 1: to go through again because you wouldn't do you wouldn't
Speaker 1: do two falses in a row, and really tricky. You
Speaker 1: guys are really tricky. Alright, you're right, true, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: true even born a cigar chomping New Jersey rat and
Speaker 1: initially went by the name Rick Rick the rat. Alright,
Speaker 1: good job you are. You are one out of two
Speaker 1: number three true or faults. In two thousand sixteen, researchers
Speaker 1: discovered something that rat fanciers have long known that rats
Speaker 1: laugh when tickled. I feel all I read that somewhere
Speaker 1: not in the encyclopedia, So I'm gonna say, yeah, you're right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they giggle and ultrasonic volume that's too high pitched fris
Speaker 1: to hear. Good job, all right, Number four true or
Speaker 1: faults and fancy rat circles. The critter or pet that
Speaker 1: changed your mind about rats is called a heart rat um.
Speaker 1: And I do know this is the one of one
Speaker 1: of the few facts I remember about raps is that
Speaker 1: they do get bad tr because I think a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, didn't they find that it was probably
Speaker 1: Gerbils who spread the black plague and that so go
Speaker 1: onto something here a little that was my heart rap.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say true, Yeah, it's true, and uh, it's
Speaker 1: odd because that phrase doesn't work for everything, like no
Speaker 1: one talks about their heart. Bruce Willis, Look he's talking,
Speaker 1: is my Yeah, I think that's mine too. Actually, So
Speaker 1: you're on a roll here, a J. So with let's
Speaker 1: see if we can finish strong question number five. Angelina
Speaker 1: Jolie once had a pet rat named Harry, but gave
Speaker 1: it up when it started chewing through too many of
Speaker 1: her curtains. Well, I feel I used to work of
Speaker 1: entertainment weekly and I feel I did a lot. Like
Speaker 1: she had a vial of Philly Bob Thornton's blood. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, maybe it's like, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a vicious rumor, but I feel I've heard that. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say true, true tries, which is our endless
Speaker 1: admiration at the top thirty or so I think at
Speaker 1: this point. So well, A J. We can't wait to
Speaker 1: check out your your next book, and of course everybody
Speaker 1: should check out your podcast. Twice removed, but thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us today. Thank you, guys. I'm huge fans.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited you're doing this podcast and honored to
Speaker 1: be a part of and and ruin it by talking
Speaker 1: about wife's rats nine situation. All right, so let's bring
Speaker 1: this all home. Is their hope for humans in this
Speaker 1: war with rats? So it seems like there are only
Speaker 1: a few solutions because rats have been resistant to poisons
Speaker 1: and they're really just so clever and one is and
Speaker 1: this isn't happening anytime soon. But we could all turn
Speaker 1: vegan because rats are not fans of raw vegetables. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say that's not happening anytime soon. Where we can
Speaker 1: make a move to things like metal garbage cans, because
Speaker 1: it all comes down to basically starving out the rats
Speaker 1: and protecting our garbage, or by abandoning a place and
Speaker 1: having them try to live without us, or what's what's
Speaker 1: the other option? Well, this is kind of the best hope,
Speaker 1: and that's birth control. You're saying, put them on the pill? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: since the polyester pants, things seems like a stretch. This
Speaker 1: might be the best option. And there's this new e
Speaker 1: p A approved birth control for rats. It's been made
Speaker 1: super sweet and really fat rich because rats have even
Speaker 1: more of a sweet tooth than us. And it basically
Speaker 1: spurs mouse a pause I know, which is the cut
Speaker 1: ci term scientists used for rat menopause. But it triggers
Speaker 1: it super early so that the populations can't breed. Poor
Speaker 1: rats have hot flashes. Well, it's better than having them
Speaker 1: in your cupboards, right, But that's the great hope for
Speaker 1: now and how we'll finally win this battle against the
Speaker 1: grossest of foes. Um. And actually there's one more school
Speaker 1: of thought on this, and that is to do nothing. Wait,
Speaker 1: that makes no sense. We were just going through hy
Speaker 1: Rats are winning this war. Why would we ignore them? Well,
Speaker 1: the thought is because rats are super sensitive. When we
Speaker 1: kill a rat, it's peers tend to feel the danger
Speaker 1: and start varying from their norm. And when that happens,
Speaker 1: they ran into other rats and scrape it up. And
Speaker 1: that's really where pathogens cross and diseases spread and mutap.
Speaker 1: So if you can get their rat, he needs to
Speaker 1: stay to themselves and sort of curb the diseases that's
Speaker 1: kind of what scientists think might be the best you
Speaker 1: can ask for. Anyway, if you're interested in the subject,
Speaker 1: you should definitely read Robert Sullivan's Rats, which formed the
Speaker 1: backbone of this episode. M All right, you know what
Speaker 1: time it is, Mango, time for the fact off you
Speaker 1: bet it is as to the part of the show
Speaker 1: where we get to use the fascinating things we learned
Speaker 1: in our research for this episode but didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to mention. And I kind of have a feeling
Speaker 1: Mango intentionally held back a few just for this big moment,
Speaker 1: So why don't you go first, Mango? So this one
Speaker 1: is totally gross. Back in the eighteen fifties, gamblers in
Speaker 1: New York City used to crowd into halls to watch
Speaker 1: and bet on the sport called ratting. Ratting. Yeah, Like basically,
Speaker 1: a guy would show up with a big, misshapen sack
Speaker 1: full of rats, and when the ref said go, he
Speaker 1: let all of the animals just spill out, and then
Speaker 1: they let a dog go after them, and people would
Speaker 1: bet on how many rats trained dog could kill in
Speaker 1: a short period of time. So you got to imagine
Speaker 1: this scene, right, people are betting and yelling in this terrier,
Speaker 1: because terriers are just the best at this. This terrier
Speaker 1: is going crazy while rats are running around, and it's
Speaker 1: horrible and super popular and bloody. But discuss I know,
Speaker 1: but that's not even the weird part, right. Ratting was
Speaker 1: considered a man's sport because it was so vicious, like
Speaker 1: a single dog could kill a hundred rats in six
Speaker 1: minutes or something. But to expand the audience and make
Speaker 1: it more palatable for women and children, they had organized
Speaker 1: the same thing in the afternoons, but they'd replaced the
Speaker 1: dog with a weasel. Oh of course, right, because that's
Speaker 1: not gross at all. I know. They honestly thought watching
Speaker 1: a weasel kill a bag of rats was more appropriate
Speaker 1: for kids or something. But anyway, that that was America's
Speaker 1: favorite spectator sport until baseball took over. Okay, that's that's
Speaker 1: a gross way to start this one. Gets a good
Speaker 1: job on this one, all right. So all this talk
Speaker 1: of rats, maybe want to go to a place where
Speaker 1: there are no rats, And it turns out that's what Alberta,
Speaker 1: Canada is all about, and act, if we're being honest,
Speaker 1: it might be the number one reason to go to Alberta.
Speaker 1: Alberta is huge. It's actually bigger than France or any
Speaker 1: country in the EU. But it's so committed to the
Speaker 1: rat free bit that they've dedicated a rat patrol monitoring
Speaker 1: the borders for rats, and anytime there's an infestation, they
Speaker 1: bring in heavy machinery and dig out the entire nest
Speaker 1: to eradicate it. So in big years they'll find maybe
Speaker 1: two or three infestations across the region, but most years
Speaker 1: they're not any that's kind of crazy. Uh So this
Speaker 1: is a super simple one, but it makes me happy.
Speaker 1: Did you know that male rats are called bucks and
Speaker 1: females are called does? I did not know? I know.
Speaker 1: And the best part of it is that you can
Speaker 1: sing the sound of music song with new lyrics like
Speaker 1: dough or rats. I get the idea. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. All right. Rats are subject to
Speaker 1: peer pressure. If they see a bunch of their friend
Speaker 1: rats eating something on appetizing, they'll join into rapper tupac.
Speaker 1: Shakur studied ballet in high school and started the nutcracker
Speaker 1: as the mouse bringing some tupac. Well done, you get
Speaker 1: a extra point for that one, alright. Fancy rat owners
Speaker 1: practice something called road dentistry. You're not gonna believe this one.
Speaker 1: So where they'll open up their mouths and let a
Speaker 1: rat nibble and pick food from their teeth, they're basically
Speaker 1: outsourcing the job of flossing to their pets. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: You have to YouTube this. I'm not I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: It so gross. The owners will just lean back and
Speaker 1: the rats get really deep in their mouths. It's because
Speaker 1: rats have a grooming behavior where they'll clean each other's teeth,
Speaker 1: and rat parents basically consider it the ultimate compliments. So
Speaker 1: you have to YouTube it. Um well, I cannot top that,
Speaker 1: So you win this week's fact Off. Thank you to
Speaker 1: our listeners out there. Please send in your suggestions for
Speaker 1: rebranding the Rat and we'll make sure you get a
Speaker 1: fun prize out of it. And you know, well, there's
Speaker 1: one last part of the show that we need to
Speaker 1: deal with, the Part Time Genius Awards, And today I'd
Speaker 1: like to nominate the author of the best book I
Speaker 1: read last year, The Stench of Honolulu, of course, and
Speaker 1: also America's pre eminent rat poet. That's right, Mr Jack Handy.
Speaker 1: You'll be added to our Hall of Genius and we'll
Speaker 1: be mailing you a certificate to hang on your fridge.
Speaker 1: Congratulations Jack Handy. And in honor of Jack Handy, why
Speaker 1: don't we read one last poem from America's greatest rap
Speaker 1: poot to close the show. I think that's a fine idea.
Speaker 1: The Middle Ages were the best of times to be
Speaker 1: a rat. You could point to a man with plague
Speaker 1: and say I gave him that. Thank you. Until next time,
Speaker 1: we're Will and Mango for Part Time Genius. Thanks again
Speaker 1: for listening to Part Time Genius. Be sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your podcast, and because we're a
Speaker 1: brand new show, if you're feeling extra generous, we'd love
Speaker 1: it if you give us a rating on Apple Podcast.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is produced by some of our favorite geniuses.
Speaker 1: It's edited by Tristan McNeil, theme song and audio mixing
Speaker 1: by Noel Brown. Our executive producer is Jerry Rowland. Our
Speaker 1: res arch team is Gabe Bluesier, Lucas Adams, Autom white
Speaker 1: Field Me Toronto, Austin Thompson and Meg Robbins. Jason Hoke
Speaker 1: is are chief cheerleader.