Reefer Madness

Apparently "Just Say No" doesn't work on animals. We look at the most seedy vices in the human and natural world. Doped up dolphins, bats with DUIs, naughty otters, and a drunken mutiny on a Russian plane. With special guest Robert Evans from Behind The Bastards and Cracked.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Creature Feature, a safari through the consciousness of
animals and man, finding the common threads that bind together
all living creatures. I'm Katie Golden. I studied psychology and
evolutionary biology at Harvard and I pretend to be a
frustrated bird on Twitter. Today I'm Creature Feature. We'll be
talking about how both animals and humans go to dramatic

(00:27):
lengths to get krunk off there, but it's re for
madness as we find out what drug junkie dolphins are
hitting rock bottom for. Where are the bird mothers against
drunk flying? Why our scientists creating a butterfly sex potion. Also,
we find out about the Bermuda Triangle of death that
all the otter teens are dying to explore. Discover this

(00:49):
and more as we answer the age old question what's
the grossest alcoholic beverage in the world and why did
my guests drink enough of it to get a lot?
So first, I want to talk about flying. It's kind
of scary, especially because you're at the mercy of a
human pilot. Whenever the pilot comes on over the speakers
to give an announcement, I'm always searching for vocal cues

(01:12):
of something wrong, like does he sounds stressed, anxious, angry? Well,
my absolute nightmare would be if he sounded drunk, even
though you shouldn't mix flying and drinking, or about to
find out that some humans and animals do. In fact,
one such pilot has become a master of flying under
the influence Creature feature starts right now. So, Robert, do

(01:36):
you fly much? Yes? Good? Well, do you ever like
fantasize about flying cars and why we don't have them
yet in a glorious future where all cars are just
flying around? No? You know, I drive a lot. I've
probably driven up and down California alone more than anyone

(01:57):
who's not a truck driver, put about a hundred and
twenty thousand miles on my car in the last two years.
So I have very little faith in the driving ability
of most people, and I have even less faith in
their ability to pilot a flying car. Well, that's the
thing that's what always gets me when it's like, uh,
you see, like Star Wars or the Fifth Element with
Bruce Willis. Uh, you know, if any asshole like Bruce

(02:21):
Willis can just fly a car, the consequences of drunk
drivers is just way, way, way worse. Oh my god,
it's a nice and think about terrorism, like, yeah, like
we're already having this problem because people can buy guns.
But what if you let people buy like a two
ton flying bullet that they can crash into anything, Like
what do you do? How do you regulate that? Or

(02:41):
like a drunk would it would it cancel it out?
Like if it was a drunk terrorist, would they'd be like,
I'm trying to terrorism, but I'm too drunk. I mean
I think in that case, alcohol is kind of the
hero of the story. Yeah, it's like zero dark thirty,
but instead of a bunch of CIA guys, it's like
a bottle of gym bean instead of John because the
ski who's now always the hero, it's just alcohol. Yeah

(03:04):
when did when did he get abs? I don't know.
They look angry and everything I've seen of him now
like furious ads. We never did see his bare chest
in the office, so maybe they've always been there. I
mean no, you can tell you can see in his
eyes that he doesn't have impressive abs, and they the
faint reflection of the abs that should be there weren't

(03:27):
in his eyes at that time. But flying cars, flying cars.
So yeah, I mean, like we're all very we have
wishful thinking about flying cars. But you know you've got
you got drunk people like Hayden Christensen jumping out of
a car and everybody going great, now there's no driver
in that car. It's just going to crash into an orphanage.

(03:47):
Oh yeah, I mean it's like the that scene is
like there's so many questions I have about how traffic
control works in Horissant, Like what is the organization? Right?
Do jed I not have to go to traffic school? Well,
I don't. Like what's shocking about that is that nobody
reacts as if it's a big deal like the other
Like it's it's like you can't see it all the time, yeah,

(04:07):
which is terrifying, right, Like everyone's hyped up on death
sticks and jumping out of their cars and everything's crashing around,
and you know, maybe the Empire wasn't such a bad idea. Yeah,
I think you would probably start to hunger for like
an authoritarian dictator after like living in suicide traffic for
that long, right, just to stop these awful flying cars

(04:29):
from smashing into everything. As soon as someone like four
twenties that day yeah, yeah, no, that seems although I
gotta say, like when you talk about drinking or smoking
and flying cars, that's when I want them, because I
love going out in the middle of nowhere on like
a friend's land and like a jeep or an old
truck and just getting wrecked on painkillers and liquor and

(04:50):
doing donuts and stuff and driving through fields of trash
with like just old beater cars. It's the most fun
in the world. So if you could like have like
a safe flying car are driving area, that doesn't sound
like you could. Well, but as long as you're the
only push around, well if you die, it's fine. You're
choosing to take that risk. It just needs to be

(05:11):
a bit way where it's like you can come out
here and do stupid things in a flying car while
you're ripped a ship and nobody will get killed other
than maybe you. Yeah, like that sounds like a lot
of fun. Yeah, well, this is why I'm having you
on this podcast about vices and animals. And speaking of which,
birds totally go the full uh star wars root and

(05:33):
they drink and fly all the time. So like in
the winter they will the berries freeze and then sort
of the insides of the berries ferment and brew into
like a little jello shot, and the birds eat these
and get wasted. It's like the bird equivalent of those
like semi frozen margarita, those little slushy packs. Those are nasty. Yeah,

(05:59):
they're tear doble, But at the same time there I mean,
I'm a big fan of like, uh, that kind of drinking,
like like fruit drinking for when you're like walking around
a city. Yeah, the drinking that you immediately regret before
the alcohol has even hit your system. Yeah, but you want,
Like the reason I think the birds are being smart
and they're drunk flying choices is that if you're going

(06:20):
to be out in the world getting really wrecked in
the middle of the day and then like navigating a city,
you want not just alcohol, but you want sugars and
salts and and some cars. Exactly exactly, that's a smart
way to city drink. Gatorade up your booze people. Yeah,
it's safe. No. When I was wandering around San Francisco
with a couple of friends last week and we we

(06:41):
took a camel back and we filled it half full
of tequila and half full of frozen lime popsicles, and
that's basically the same thing except where we were on
the ground. Yeah, you're being birds, Yeah, we were being birds. Yeah. Yeah.
I've got a great, great quote here from Megan larry
V who's the obratory coordinator at the Government Agency Environment

(07:03):
Yukon in Canada. Where these birds are getting crunk. She
says most birds likely just get a bit tipsy, and
very few people would be able to pick them out
as intoxicated. However, every now and then some birds just
overdo it. And when they overdo it, they like crash
into buildings and die. Well, yeah, but you gotta weigh

(07:25):
that against how much fun they're having. That's true, and
it sounds like a lot. It's a wild five minutes
and then a sudden, invisible force field death for the bird.
Will you say this is in the Yukon, right, Yeah,
that's right, because I know that very cold places have
way higher rates of alcohol abuse than places that are
not very cold, because there's nothing else to do when

(07:47):
you say that cold, but drink a lot. Right, You
can't like go to the beach, so you gotta get
wasted on drunk berries. Yeah, so I wonder if that's
the same for animals as people is like both. When
we're like stuck in frozen wasteland, it's like, well, I
guess I'm just to drink myself to death. It's better
than another winter. Well, there is an entire flock of
Bohemian wax wings that went on a bender and they

(08:09):
had to go to a recovery unit, like an animal
recovery unit, where they were like, wow, these birds are
They need some fluids and eggs and coffee. Their beaks
were like stained with berries um, and the workers at
the animal recovery unitor like their movements are uncoordinated and
they struggled to fly. Poor gat. No, they need some

(08:32):
of those little hangover cure shots you get from the CBS. Yeah,
do those work? Yeah, they're like, it's just caffeine in
a seat of metal. Fine. So it's the same as
people take coffee and aspirin in the morning. I didn't.
So does caffeine actually help with hangovers or does it
just wake you up? I mean it make sure you
don't feel as bad. Like caffeine doesn't sober you up

(08:53):
if you're still drunk from the night before, but if
you like wake up feeling like garbage after a night
of drinking. I always find that I feel better after coffee. Interesting,
I get wrecked by caffeine. It destroys me. It makes
me feel like like my heart is gonna fail. Isn't
that how everyone feels all the time. Yeah, moving on. So,

(09:18):
I used to have a phobia of flying. I hated
at the idea like we shouldn't be in the air,
were defying Gods, were spitting in Jesus's face by doing this.
It's the best thing about flying is like looking down
at at God and being like, yeah, yeah, that's right, motherfucker,
screw you go. You can tell me what to do.
We figured this ship out. We could bomb Mount Olympus

(09:40):
right now if we want to do not my mom God. Yeah. So,
drunk pilots is a recent thing I started worrying about
when I was reading about Drunk birdas as like, I
wonder if pilots get drunk and like I know, and
they do. They do, like I mean, not all the
time time, but occasionally and occasionally as bad when you're

(10:03):
flying a plane. Well, I don't know. The documentary Flight
made me think that sometimes it works out for the better. Well,
you know, we're gonna we're gonna get back to that, Robert.
I have a I have a fun, a fun story
about that. Um. But first let's go to Let's go
to Russia, because that's where, like, I mean, they really
love fulfilling stereotypes. And I get to say this because

(10:25):
I'm like sort of half Russian. You've got that classic
Russian red hair. Yeah, yeah, they're they're classic Jewish Russian
who got kicked out because of the programs. Yeah, it's
ancestry right there. So I'm gonna I'm gonna dump on
Russia right now. Uh. And so, like, there's been a
few instances of drunk pilots causing crashes in Russia. In

(10:46):
two thousand and eleven, drunk navigator was found to be
partially responsible for crash that killed forty seven people. Partially, yeah, partially,
partially maybe which part There was like a mechanical failure,
but if the navigator hadn't been drunk, he probably could
have worked around the issue. But instead he was just

(11:07):
like panicking and didn't didn't help the situation. I had
something similar happened in my truck while I was drunk
with a cigarette lighter and a blunt So yeah, I
get it, get it, I get it. We can all
relate to that. Yeah. Uh So back in two thousand
and nine, again in Russia, there was a mutiny on

(11:29):
board a plane. So um, I just love that it's
in Russia because just imagining a bunch of like angry
babushez on a plane like so good couple imagining a
group of Russians like, aren't angry? Yeah, because like you
would imagine, it's like a murder of crows and like
a fury of Russians exactly. So they're on an aero float.

(11:56):
I don't know if I'm doing that right, but it's fine.
It's aeroflot. But I don't really know. I heard it sometimes,
So before the plane had taken off, when they're still
on the tarmac, passengers notice that the pilot, Alexander Chaplevski,
was stumbling slurring a speech, and according to passengers, he

(12:16):
kept repeating the words duration of the flight. I see,
that's sober. That's sober profiling. That's just that's sober profiling.
That's all that. It's you know, you, that's not fair.
Like We've plenty of capable people slear their words, stumbled
around or repeat the same phrase a lot of times. Well,
when I get nervous, I sometimes just say like duration

(12:37):
of the flight, duration of the flight. And maybe he
just didn't like to mantra, meaning like like you only
have to get through this for the duration of the flight. Yeah,
I'm on this guy's side so far. Well, the flight
crew would agree with you, because they were telling the
passengers to settle down and to stop making trouble. And
the passengers like, you're talking to Russians who have done

(12:57):
like several revolutions. Don't ever tell Russian stop making trouble um,
and so they continue to rabble. And then Aeroflot representatives
came onto the flight to address the issue, and the
Moscow Times quotes one of the representatives is saying, it's
not such a big deal if the pilot is drunk. Really,

(13:18):
all he has to do is press a button and
the plane flies itself. The worst that could happen is
he'll trip over something in the cockpit. See, I'm a
dent on board with the company. Now, that's that's the
kind of straight talking that you want. These clients flay themselves. Yeah,
it's easy to feel like it's fine if he's drunk.
If he's drunk. It's fine, right, But it continued to

(13:42):
get worse because the passengers did not take that boilerplate
company response and why, I don't know. They're fussy, real fushy,
and so Captain Chiplevski attempted to bargain with the angry passengers,
reportedly saying, I'll sit here quietly in a corner. We
have three or more pilots. I won't even touch the controls,

(14:04):
I promise. I'm thinking now that their policy is to
have four pilots per flight just because they at least
half of them are going to be wasted. Like, we
just know that you got to get one sober. Statistically,
it's called the Stolnaya rule. Yes, at least one of
them will be so hungover that he can't keep drinking.
And that's that's the sober pilot, right. It's it's like

(14:26):
having multiple doctors on call because one of them is
going to be sleepy. A Russian pilot is going to
be drunk at any given point. Yeah. So, finally, first
class passenger was able to convince the airline to bring
in an entirely new crew, and she happened to be
a Russian celebrity, whose father has ties to putin Okay,

(14:48):
I guess you know this ties into my grand theory
of rich people ruin everything, because I bet without first class,
all of the people in third class and all the
drunk pilots would have had a really cool just like
just like booze plane out, like break out, some cigars.
Let's turn this into a flying bar. It's not a
party until someone says, wait, who's flying the plane right now? Well,

(15:14):
they fly themselves. You just push a button. It's the
plane fly button, wings stay on button, plane fly button.
You don't want to mix those two up, right, they're
right next to each other. So even after this, the
airline continued to insist that the pilot had not been
drunk and that he hadn't tested positive for alcohol. Uh

(15:38):
and now they're claiming he developed high blood pressure as
a result of all the complaints and the stress of
the news and stuff, which is funny because high blood
pressure is there's a medical link between repeated wind drinking
and high blood pressure. So I mean, okay, alright, let's

(15:59):
let's let's be fair to this guy. First off, if
there's a better place to drink than a plane, I
haven't found it. Because I love getting drunk on planes. Yeah,
and I don't see why piloting one should make you
immune to the fun of getting drunk on a plane,
especially if it's a one button plane. Yeah, it's one
of those easy one button planes. Why not? Why not

(16:21):
people need to lighten up? Well after that incident, Russian
investigators looked into Aeroflot crash that found the pilot had
alcohol in his system. Um. At the time, all they
knew was that he had allowed his fifteen year old
son to take over the controls and subsequently the plane

(16:42):
crashed and killed. All this on burden, I wonder why.
I don't know. That sounds like one of those mysteries
with no I mean, kids got to learn somehow, like
like if not that flight, another flight. Yeah. I feel
like we hold pilots to do highest standard just because
hundreds of other people get killed if they make a mistake. Yeah.
It doesn't seem fair to me. It's unfair. Yeah, yeah,

(17:03):
the double standard really. Um, so you know, is this
a big problem? Shouldn't we be afraid to fly? Well,
of course you wouldn't think it's a big problem even
if it was, Like, even if pilots were drunk you'd
be on on board with us. I mean, I just
I feel like people get too worried about what's going
to kill them and not worried enough about having a

(17:24):
fun time on right right, Yeah, yo, yolo, you only um,
so this isn't something you should worry about, at least
in the US because in two thousand fifteen, ten out
of twelve thousand, four hundred US pilots failed a random

(17:45):
alcohol test. So, according to that study, if I'm good
at math, which I am not, you have a point
zero zero zero eight percent chance of getting on board
with a drunk pilot. Don't DM me if my math
is wrong, I apologize. That also means that only point
zero zero eight percent of pilots or rad there. Yeah,
so that's that's a sobering statistic. Yeah. So you mentioned

(18:10):
earlier Denzel Washington and fight every day who just who
rocked it? He drank? He was drunk and he's doing
coke too, Yeah yeah, Goodman's Yeah. And he landed that plane,
damn right he did. He He barrel rolled that plane,
crushed it. Yeah, nailed it. And if you want a
pilot like that, you should look to New World species

(18:33):
of bats. Okay, so researchers, we're wondering, if bats get drunk,
can they still echo? Okay, that's a great question to ask. Yeah,
like these researchers just probably vapin and be like, man
drunk bats, could they still use their little quickie things?
I imagine it's a guy sitting next to his friend

(18:54):
in the car spending ten minutes to get Google Maps
to work. Like, I got it. I'm so good at this.
I bet I'm better than bats at this. So they
collected about a hundred Belize native bats and either gave
them sugar or ethanol. Uh. They measured the bats blood
alcohol levels, and some of the bats had blood alcohol

(19:16):
levels as high as like point three. I believe that's impressive. Yeah,
I believe the limit is point zero zero eight to
drive zero. Um, I'm bad at the zeros at three
you are, yeah, you are not just drunk, but like flammable.

(19:37):
Yeah yeah, a tinder box. Maybe you need to go
to the hospital. If you're in California, you'll start a fire. Yeah.
So they're like, all right, they're good and drunk now.
Then they set them loose on an obstacle course. This
is my kind of science. It's like now a physical
challenge go and to their great surprise, is the bats

(20:01):
nailed it. They did. They there was no significant impairment
either in their echolocation or their ability to navigate this obstacle. Course,
so we should let hordes of bats loose on planes
and hope they hit the one button. Yes, yes, yes, okay,
do that? Yes, yes, yes, board yes. So this isn't

(20:22):
the case for all bats. Some bats will get drunk
and then just not not be good at flying anymore.
But apparently with the New World bats, they have a
really high tolerance. You run into a lot of cases
of animals that like seek out out like it's it's
a sensible evolutionary strategy to seek out alcohol in fruit

(20:44):
because of fruit to start a to ferment that it
means that it's at its most calorically dense because it's
not it it's the ripest it's going to get. Which
is why I like. There's this animal, the pintailed tree shrew,
which is like a mammal that scientists think is pretty
close to like one of the common ancestor species that
humans and ape share, like the early primates um and

(21:04):
they will drink all day every day because they drink
this fruit that ferments really really quickly, the palm nectar um.
But they don't get drunk. But they we think that,
like scientists think that some animal like them seeking out
alcohol because it had a shipload of calories. Is why
human beings and monkeys can metabolize alcohol and get drunk
off of it, because our bodies sort of adapted to

(21:27):
take in more alcohol. And that's like, being getting wasted
is a happy side effect, um, which is cool. It's
a side effect to survival, survival of the lettucet hashtag darlin.
Oh shit, that's good. Bats can hold their liquor. But
what differentiates a lightweight from a beer pong master in humans?

(21:50):
It turns out there's something of a drunk gene. Researchers
have found out that alcohol taller in experience can be
linked to differences in the c y P two E
y protein found in DNA, which might explain why you're
gone after a single beer, whereas others can drink five
shots off an ice luge. But being a lightweight actually
has its benefits. Those that have a greater tolerance for

(22:13):
alcohol are at a greater risk of developing alcoholism, while
a link between the c y P two E one
protein and alcoholism has not yet been established. There's a
possibility that further research could open up new avenues for
treatment through gene therapy. Kay, bro hold my beer. We're
gonna do a few messages and we'll return to the

(22:35):
part A. Snopes, the Internet rumored debunking website, has a
treasure trove of drug related mints. Some of my favorites
are school kids crushing up bedbugs and smoking or injecting
them to get high. False. But what about this? Are

(22:57):
kids rubbing birds bees lip bomb on their eyelets to
get high, which the kids dubbed beason both? What about
sham boiling our kids boiling shampoo and inhaling the fumes
to get high? Well, no, they're not. What about this?
Did excessive? Ellis? Do you leave a young man in

(23:18):
a psychiatric hospital with a delusion that he was a
glass of orange juice where his biggest fears that someone
will drink him? Well, that one's unconfirmed, so we may
never know whether it's true. But there are real ways
in which people and animals will endure the extreme in
the name of getting high. I talked to Robert about

(23:39):
some of the strangest substances he's tried in the name
of researching his book, and we unveiled the animals for
in desperate need of an intervention, Robert, I have a
hypothetical question for you that might be upsetting. Okay, what

(23:59):
if we could have booze in a pill and like
a synthetic booze, or even just a drink that's synthetic,
like in Star Trek where they have sent the hall.
I knew it. I knew it. That's one of I
love Star Trek the Next Generation. It's a magical show,

(24:19):
but it has a lot of dumb things. The dumbest
thing in the show other than that time Riker and
his dad fight in weird ass future gladiator suits fights.
That's such a bad um is synthe hall? What? It
just sounds like nonsense the way the show. It's just
alcohol that you can decide to be sober from. Well no,

(24:40):
so it's alcohol that has no bad effects. So you
can't get alcohol poisoning, you can't get like too drunk,
you can't get cirrhosis of the liver, you know, I
guess you won't. What does it do? I don't know,
Like it prevents you from drunk texting your ex a
bunch of Wiener pictures or something. I'm not sure. Not
a future I want to live in. But I mean

(25:04):
like you sound like a I don't want to say
Scottie because I feel like that's no longer correct. But
you know, he was like the Transporter guy, okay in
the original series he was he was drunk all the time. Yeah,
and like and he was in the T and G
the Next Generation and they're like, here's some Syntha Hall

(25:25):
and he's in his Scottish brogue. He's like, no, he
was so pissed. Yeah, because it's it's garbage. I cannot
drink it's nonsense. That's such a bad Scottish Yeah, that
was a clearly Russian. I can't help it my conditioning.
So you're you're not on board, And I wonder how
many people would be on board with synthetic alcohol. No,

(25:48):
it's okay. If you want to see how people would
have to cope with being in space for long periods
of time, look at how they coped with being at
sea for long periods of time. Coming sex with manatees.
That's one, right, it's one part. You're gonna need to
bring some manities into space for fucking Yeah. But number
two is rum, and I just I don't buy a

(26:08):
few space navy without rum. That's just a vehicle for
sex with the manity. Well, okay, so the British Navy
was famously able to function because of rum sodomy in
the lash, So Star Trek the next generation, you've got
the sodomy lockdown. I mean that's just clear looking at
the way just Data and Jordy look at each other.
But Rum is missing because Syntha Hall is not going

(26:29):
to fill that hole in their hearts, and neither is
Picard's flute playing it. What is it about? Real? Like
if if the taste is exactly the same and the
effect the pleasant effects are the same, but you just
can't get the negative effects? Is it? Is it just
because like without that risk, it's just like it's it's
just too fake. It's it'd be like it's like bowling

(26:52):
with the guardrails up where you get a strike but
it doesn't feel good. Well, yeah, the most fun things
always involved some sort of risk them ending terribly right, um,
which is why people love the ski Like it's exciting
and you can die. But yeah, so like if alcohol
can't hurt you, then it's less exciting. But also, like

(27:12):
I don't know, I feel like these the lame future
people in Star Trek the next Generation say it's it
tastes the same, But I feel it's the same as
like going to a party and like someone handing me
a mock tail and being like it tastes just like
a whiskey sour, Like, yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, it's just
lemon juice. What if we what if we spice up
the deal and say that this this synthe hal also

(27:34):
somehow simulates the experience of sex. What yeah, well, like
like miss An episode, No no, no, no, Well maybe,
but like you know, like in Futurama, that episode where
everybody's having sex with robots and then the human race
goes extinct. Yes, do you think if we had sex
and pillform that would happen? I mean that's the best

(27:56):
case scenario for the future. Well, we'd go out, it's
a lot of fun, and then we'd stop harassing animals.
I feel like our best case scenarios we invent a
super intelligent AI that's self sustaining, and then it gives
us sex pills and discards us like a cocoon. That's
that's like my hope for the future of our race.

(28:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean that's such a more. That's
that's like a really humane way for the robots to
take over. Like in the matrix, just have a sex matrix.
We would know Max, and he's like, no, why would
you fight against this? No, one would try to wake
up from the fun matrix. No, you're totally free to leave,
but like you gotta pay taxes and stuff like No, nope,

(28:39):
back to the fu matrix. Yeah, well, so this is
not just pleasant hypothetical um meandering. Uh. You know how
insects they like to drink booze. Uh, there's theories that
they it helps with their spermatophores, which are these like
protein capsules that they transfer along with their Yeah yeah, yeah,

(29:04):
protein capsules. Yeah, So they transfer it to the female
along with their sperm during copulation in it provides nutrition
and drinking booze, you know, like gives them some kind
of nutritional boosts, like you were saying earlier, and so
they think that maybe that's why. But they found that
so these researchers made like this synthetic booze sex thing.

(29:28):
It combined, Like it both replaced sex and booze for
these fruit flies. So when male fruit flies are sexually rejected,
they will turn to booze more often to heal their
emotional wounds and all of us. And uh, the study

(29:49):
just like following these poor like uh unlaid fruit flies
and saying like how much they drink? And you know,
it's very very relatable. But the crazy part is so
they suspected that maybe it was because, um, after they
have sex, they get this spike in neuropeptide F and

(30:09):
drinking alcohol triggers that neuropeptide F. So it's the next
best thing to actual love and physical contact. Um, And
that's how I would describe alcohol. Yeah. Yeah, and then
artificial simulation of neuropeptide F. So this is not alcohol,
this is not sex. This is a crazy creepy science

(30:31):
thing that they give to the fruit flies. It stops
them from seeking out alcohol. Um, so like replicates the
rewards gained from either having sex or drinking booze, so
that these rejected fruit flies are like like, once they
get this neuropeptide F, they don't feel they need to drink. Well,
I mean we're that's clearly inevitable. That like, science will

(30:53):
figure out a way too with the push of a
button and maybe the stimulation of a couple of chemicals
make you as happy as you are in the arms
of a person you love, like walking through Disneyland as
a six year old with your parents back before they
split up. Right, That's that's inevitable. It's going to happen.
It's going to collapse everything that we know, and either
robots will take over or we'll just funk ourselves to death.

(31:15):
I didn't actually see that. They did a study to
see if giving them the narrow peptide f stops them
from having sex, and I would really like to see that,
especially if you do it to mosquitoes or something else
we don't like, because then we could like make animals
go extinct even easier. Yeah, boy, that's one of those like, yeah,

(31:37):
why not why not release it into the air, like
it could be like in Snow Piercer, how they like
freeze the whole planet trying to fix it. What if
we just flood the whole planet's atmosphere with this happy,
fun chemical and everything just sort of goes to bed
and dies. That sounds like a much nicer way than
freezing the earth, like a much nicer way than what's

(31:57):
going to happen other right, right, Like maybe we could
just have this failsafe like like here, here's the fun bomb,
Like like we're gonna die anyways, might as well have
it be nice. Yeah, Look, the world's got maybe two
years left. We're gonna sit off the fun bomb. It's
it's fine. Yeah, And everyone's like probably like at first
it's like, oh, but I want to live, But as

(32:19):
soon as that fun bomb goes off, it's like, yeah,
all right, you know what. This is fine, This is fine. Um.
And so here's the cool thing is that researchers are
starting to link neuropeptides to alcohol intake and humans as well.
So we are so close to this funck bomb becoming
a reality. That's always been the dream. Yeah it is.

(32:41):
It's it's the goal. It's what we have done from
our earliest bone wielding days to now. Um. And there
is a champion of this cause, David Nutt, who great
name for a champion of any cause. Oh he's got
the perfect name to be a contentious neuro psycho pharmacologist
Dr Nut Dr Nut Mr Doctor Nut. He Okay. So

(33:07):
he was on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Drugs in the UK, and he was relieved of his
position after he said that horse riding is more dangerous
than ecstasy. Oh this guy, Yeah, he's totally right. Yeah,
I mean he's because also, horseback riding is incredibly dangerous.
You can snap like a twig on a horse. We

(33:30):
just get kicked trying to that. Horse falls asleep, falls
on you. You're done, your ribs smashed in. But the
British really take their questionnaians, I don't know that a
question equestrian ism. There we go. I'm smart, I know words.
They take it super seriously and it was very offensive

(33:50):
to them that they would make this unfavorable comparison between
ecstasy and horses. But I loved in their comments about it.
I was like, they're like, oh, this is such an
such an uh, you know, inappropriate comparison. But they didn't
like mention like that. He was saying to see is
better than horses. Yeah, don't do drugs, but also don't

(34:12):
do horses. That's That's what I'm going to legally safely say. Anyways,
David Nutt is studying Benzo diazepines, which I knew you'd
like it. Benzos yeah, um, so they're found in valium,
and valium is just Lovely's and valium is found in

(34:33):
Mexico and in mother's coffee. Uh um. So he's seeing
if he can replicate the pleasant effects of alcohol all
avoiding the dangerous side effects. Um, and he's He's also
saying that benzos can be switched off with an antidote hill,

(34:55):
which would be so great for Russian pilots. Just like,
get real drunk on benzos, then turn it off before
your flight when people get fussy. See that sounds like
the real cynthe Hale is not change alcohol, but just
add a little switch inside people's heads, like oh I
gotta be sober now and then you're good. You should
make it external though, so other people can operate, see

(35:18):
whether or not, like red light green light? Okay, Like no,
you gotta you gotta switch off man remote controlled, Like yeah,
I know you spent forty dollars on vodka shots last night,
but you really gotta, like there's a plane to be flown.
So Robert, this is my favorite part because I get
to ask you, um, how far have you gone to

(35:40):
test out getting high. I mean in terms of danger
or in terms of distance. Yes, okay. So in my book,
one of the last or the last chapter is about
there's this drug I read about on Cracked years and
years ago called salamander brandy that is a local beverage

(36:03):
to Slovenia, and Slovenia is a tiny little Balkan nation
of like two two million people, some very very tiny
country you can drive across in two hours. Um. So
they have this drink that's made from drowning a salamander
to death in brandy. Yeah, it's horrible. It's a horrible process,
and the salamander as it's drowning, releases a shipload of poison.

(36:27):
And according a guy named Blaje, who was like a
Slovenian Slovenia hunter, s Thompson's kind of how I would
describe him. Um. He wrote an article in the nineties
for a magazine called Latina about his experiences on salamander
brandy and claimed that it caused spontaneous, uncontrollable sexual attraction
to inanimate objects that he wanted to fund trees on it.

(36:50):
Like it just got him so lit that he was
like couldn't stop, like trying to get his hands on
a local tree. I mean, it's a belief of this
podcast that trees are very sexy. Well, then you would
agree with this brandy, or at least the mythical brand would.
Well maybe may not. I mean I traveled there and
I spent like eight or nine days trying to track
down salamander brandy. When all over I found a bunch

(37:12):
of different brandy makers and saw their stills, and they
drank a lot of terrible Slovenian Like I had human brandy,
which is unbelievably bad. Um. I had some very good
honey brandy too, but like, I've never had anything as
bad as human That sounds so bad. They kept giving
us free bottles of human liquor. What do we what
do we do with trying to get rid of that? Yeah,

(37:33):
because it's the worst idea one's ever had. Um. But
I couldn't find the salamander brandy. So I headed home
and I learned as I was like desperately trying to
find someone who brought some of this stuff to the
States and who could maybe get me some, I found
out that you can just buy the kind of salamans
that they have over there, and so I had one

(37:53):
delivered to my door and they sent it to me
within like yeah, sound well, no okay. So I was like,
I'm not I love amphibians and reptiles. I've had them
since I was a kid, frogs and turtles, and I'm
not going to murder a little animal to get drunk.
So I got him. I set him up in like
a cage and everything like. I got him like a
good habitat, and I let it give him about thirty

(38:14):
days to settle in, and then once every three days,
I would I would wash off a pair of non
latex gloves um, and I would pick him up and
I would massage his poison glands until he secreted poison
onto my hand and then I would put him back
in the cage and let him rest for a couple
of days. And they do. And I did that like
a dozen times until I had uh oh, and I

(38:35):
would wash the gloves off with liquor um, and then
I simmered it all once I had about a pint's worth,
and then I drank all of that in the course
of I don't know, twenty or thirty minutes, and I
didn't feel spontaneously attracted to animals. But it almost paralyzed
my legs, Like I couldn't walk for a while. I was,
I was like wobbly. Fourteen or fifteen hours later, Um,

(38:58):
I had like terrible motor cord nation. It was just
like like and there's some paralytic agents inside the poison.
So I was like, Okay, maybe that's what was going on.
But that's yeah. I don't want to endorse this, but
I feel like maybe if you had drowned the salamander,
maybe you would have been attracted to inanimate objects like
you didn't do it, right, That's that's possible. I I

(39:18):
I can't confirm that because I wasn't able to find
any of it. Um, not like you could walk towards
like the chair you were suddenly interested in. Yeah, if
I wanted to suck the chair, I probably couldn't have
made my way over to it. So was it pleasant
or like? No, oh no, she didn't kill it. Yeah, No,
he's still alive as far as I know. I gave
him to a biology student at a local university, so

(39:41):
he's he found a good home. That's great. Yeah, he's
like a biology student of like like dissection. I mean,
it's Humboldt States, and he's probably a hippie kid, right yeah.
Um so so it wasn't pleasant, and I wouldn't say
something were you in danger, like do you think could
have killed you? I mean maybe if I'd had more.

(40:04):
It certainly wasn't good. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Yeah,
So don't don't do salamanders, don't do horses maybe, but
you didn't hear it from me. Don't do wink ecstasy,
but don't seriously don't do it legally speaking. So what's

(40:27):
a rat parents worst nightmare? It's not drug pushers, it's scientists.
There are tons of studies that look at the effects
of drugs on rats, but the hope that it may
treat human addiction. But these dastardly drug lord scientists haven't
been able to offload their drugs on non mammals until
just recently. Neuroscientists at the University of Scranton have gotten

(40:50):
ants addicted to morphine. The studies senior author Mark Sade says,
we can addict individual ants and see how that affects
the ants social network, which is somewhat like humans. The
study found that after developing an addiction to morphine. The
ants even preferred it to sugar, and ants are like
crazy for sugar. Then, because the study wouldn't be complete

(41:14):
without a torture porn element, the researchers removed the ant's
brains and measured higher amounts of dopamine, and dopamine indicates
a similar response in ants as in humans to the morphine.
Not content to stop there, the next step in their
research is to see if they can tear apart the
fabric of ant society by introducing a morphine epidemic. We

(41:36):
need to take a quick break to hold an antervention.
In the meantime, here's a message back soon. So my
favorite song from West Side Story is Officer krup Key.
I remember it being shown in a history of psychiatry class.
It was meant to illustrate how mental hygiene and juvenile

(41:57):
delinquents had entered the public conscious this But is there
truth to the idea that young people are more susceptible
to being troublemakers? Can we find examples of young punk animals?
Robert and I discussed the science on whether the kids
are all right? And we find a rather literal example
in the wild of the jets versus the sharks, except

(42:18):
it's otters versus the sharks, and spoiler, the sharks usually
win and we are back. Um. So Robert was just
telling me about how salamander juice booze was not a
fun time, and like, I feel worse for the salamanders
that get drowned to make the booze. But it's also

(42:40):
a little bit strange. I feel like for that salamander
to just get like massaged for his juices. I mean,
like it it sounds kind of okay, but also just
like just a little like did he make eye contact
with you ever? And was it like super awkward? He
certainly didn't understand what was happening salamander, right, But you know,

(43:01):
I don't know. It's one of those I'm not going
to claim that like it was an act of goodness
to missogyn for his poison. Um, it was necessary for science.
I mean it affects me at a deep personal level
because when I was a kid, I read this book
called The Chocolate Fever where the kid eats so much
chocolate he breaks out in a chocolate rash and people

(43:21):
are trying to lick them and like dogs, Yeah, and
dogs like chase after him, trying to lick them, which
is really horrifying because first of all, chocolate is poisoned
to dogs. Dogs I don't know. I think dogs just
love chocolate and they don't know any better. So so
it's like dogs are chasing them, but if he lets
them catch them, he gets mauled and the dogs die.

(43:43):
It's the worst thing. But that book like gave me nightmares,
just the idea of like someone like, Wow, your skin
looks delicious, I'm gonna lick it. And so I feel
a lot of sympathy for your salamander, but also, uh
for toads, because you know, the whole toad licking thing,
it's not it's not purely an urban legend, although there

(44:05):
are aspects to it that are sort of apocryphal. But like, yeah,
you can get high from licking cane toads, well, not
from licking them. You gotta scrape the poison, you gotta um. Well,
you can't. You can't chew on them. You can suck
on them and get it. I'm pretty sure I've never
heard that, but you may be right. Well I've always

(44:25):
heard you had to. It's like it's a d M T.
That's in there right right, Yeah, it's five m e
O d mt. I think yeah. And I've always heard
that you had to you had to get the poison
and then you had to dry it and then you
would like basically smoke it in a crack pipe. That
may be true for humans. Um. For dogs, they just
go go full ham on that toad and just start
chewing on it. So in um and humans, it's not

(44:50):
really that big of a problem. Like teens aren't doing
toad pods, they're just like, uh, you know that. There's
a professor are of Tropical and Emerging Infectious Diseases, the
same Spark Cury, who claims that there have been a
lot of deaths and other parts of the world from
people trying to use cane tone venom for recreational purposes,

(45:12):
and he's doing research into like how snakes are able
to survive it and for a possible antidote. But that's
not I think that's probably what you're saying. I don't
think that's toad licking. I think that's that's they're just
using the venom and processing it. Um. But there aren't
any There haven't been any deaths in Australia from cane

(45:32):
toad licking. But there have been deaths in dogs because
they will they love them. They like they just picked
them up in their mouths and they start like chewing
on them and slow fat treat and they get super high.
And I mean it's sad because there have been fifty
reported dog deaths a year in Australia. But like there

(45:56):
are some more lighthearted ones where it's like, there's this
family whose dog Lady was caught sucking toads all the time.
And they said, and this is a quote, we noticed
lady spending an awful lot of time down by the
pond in our backyard. And then they say, she finally
staggered over to me from the cat tails. She looked

(46:18):
up at me, leaned her head over and opened her
mouth like she was going to throw up, and out
plopped this disgusting toad. She had the whole toad in
her mouth. But they're big, right, Oh yeah, cane toes
are big. They're they're like the size of a large well,
they're bigger than a rat. I think, do we have
a picture of this lady's mouth. This is a dog

(46:40):
named sorry that no, no, this is a dog named
Lady Dog named lady. Okay, total sense. This lady just
like spending a lot of time by the pond shoving
entire toads in her m. That's why I imagine it
like it almost Twilight Zone thing, like woman walks up

(47:01):
to you from your backyard and you're like, there's something wrong,
am giant. That sounds like a David Lynch thing, and
I don't like it. Yeah, that's that was in fact
in the New Twin peaks like that frog thing crawls
into that chick's mouth. I haven't watched any of the Twin.
David Lynch, you stinker, And I drink his coffee sometimes,

(47:25):
David Lynch, it's called David Lynch coffee. Is it like
weird with vague references to Native American? It's just good coffee.
I think David Lynch just likes coffee and has a coffee.
So fugu fish, Robert tried to uh no, but I
watched the Simpsons episode. Yes, I believe we all have.

(47:48):
So there's the episode where Homer eats the fugu fish,
which a fugu fish is a puffer fish and they're
extremely toxic, but parts of the fish are very good sushi.
And in the episode, which is racist. It is a
racist episodes, thanks the Simpsons. Like, the chef is just

(48:10):
like some intern and he doesn't know what he's doing
my business. That's well, that part's not racist. No, having
sex with Kribopple is just a it's just a natural thing.
But like, um, uh so in the in the episode,
he may have eaten it, but they're not sure because

(48:31):
this inexperienced chef prepares it and so the doctors like,
you probably have only forty eight hours to live, and uh,
but that's just that's not how it works. I mean,
people do occasionally die from it, but very occasionally. They're
From two thousand and four to two thirteen, there were
only twelve deaths from eating food goo. And there's a

(48:52):
treatment for it, which is you go to the hospital.
They keep your respiratory and circulatory systems going until you
can get the poison out of your system the natural way. Yeah,
and then you're only what a quarter million dollars in debt. Yeah,
that's great. I don't know how healthcare works like in Japan,
it's it's way better, and I'm sure it is. Yeah, um,
but it is scary because the toxin paralyzes you while

(49:16):
you remain fully conscious and you eventually die from asphyxiation
being unable to breathe. So it's method of action is
similar to Sarah gas. Yeah cool, but in a fish
that's hip. Yeah yeah, And but you know you can
go to a hospital, but there are no dolphin hospitals,

(49:36):
and dolphins are having the reef madness. Wait our dolphins
getting high off of puffer fish. It's fantastic. Ya. It's
like it's like living heroin if you get high up.
It's because it's like a ball. It's like a ball
of needles you find on the ground and you're just like, oh,
this is a living ball of needles. I'm gonna rub
up against it. So they like play a little dolphin

(49:59):
volleyball and then like and then researchers report seeing them
lying around on the floor of the ocean in a
catatonic state. Do we I mean, first off, that's amazing
to be the puffer fish in that situation, because I
imagine if you're an animal like a puffer fish, that
means instant death to anything that touches you. You have
a lot of confidence. It's like always having the Mario star.

(50:23):
And then like dolphins come into the picture. What is happening? Oh,
can you imagine like zorbing and like so the zorb
is one of those big orbs that you go into
and it's like this like inflatable ball that you're in
the center of. And then like having just like large
marine animals like killer whales just like whooping you around
an option for life, I hope, so make it happen.

(50:46):
It sounds like you're describing a dream. No, no, I
mean the zorb is real. I don't think having killer
whales boop you around while you are inside of the
zorb is real. That feels like an oversight. Yeah, I
mean like Tesla get on it. So yeah, that that
does seem fun for both the dolphin and the puffer fish.

(51:07):
Um Marine biologists Christie Wilcox uh says she's skeptical that
dolphins are intentionally dragging themselves, but come on, of course
they are. Come on fucking courses, get high, intentionally open
your eyes. I know they're your precious babies, but you
know you got to have the talk with them, Like

(51:28):
an animal doesn't have to be smart to when I
get drunk. But we know that lots of like elephants
will seek out alcohol and get wasted. Elephants will kill
people to get access to their wine. Um so, like
dolphins are smart, of course they intentional. I disagree with you,
expert marine biologist Christie Wilcox. I'm calling you out. Well.
I feel like she might be an expert on animals,

(51:49):
but she's not an expert on getting wrecked, right right,
That is true. You need to be both. Um. So,
she describes the pepper fish toxin as one and twenty
thousand times as deadly as cocaine, four hundred thousands and
times as deadly as meth, and more than fifty million
times as deadly as th HC. Although we is t

(52:12):
C deadly at all. I don't think it has an
elderie fifty, which is like the amount of it that
you would have to take to die. I don't know
if that's ever been determined, which is not to say
that you couldn't. But I feel like fifty million maybe
might do it. Fifty millions, fifty millions. My questioning here
actually is okay, So she's saying that this poison is

(52:33):
a hundred and twenty thousand times deadlier than cocaine and
four hundred thousand times deadlier than meth, which means is
she's saying, now, I'm not I'm not a smart man,
I'm not good at math. But is she saying that,
like it seems like from her calculus then that she's
saying that cocaine is a lot deadlier than meth. I
mean that seems to be what the math math is saying.

(52:54):
So I have some questions right off the bad because
I I feel like, first off, having done both of
those substances, like meth amphetamine is a way more powerful drug,
and I feel like it kills a lot more people
than just cocaine. Now, if we're comparing it to crack,
like they're on more of an even keel. Yeah, but
maybe that's what she means. Maybe she's just too fancy

(53:15):
to say crack. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I can't
speak for marine biologist Christie Wilcox. Also, is it four
hundred thousand times as fun as cocaine? I don't know.
She didn't say. I would assume so though, like in
a hundred and twenty would be a hundred and twenty
thousand times more fun than cocaine and more fun than meth.

(53:35):
Cocaine is not very fun, but I feel like a
hundred and twenty thousand times funner would be really fun.
She also says, and this I think is more in
her wheelhouse. She says it's tends tends to hundreds of
times more lethal than the venoms of the most notorious
animals in the world, including the widow spiders in the
black mamba. It's more potent than VX, nerve gas, formaldehyde,

(53:58):
or even rice, and it is quite literally one of
the most toxic compounds known to man. Okay, but none
of this is her talking about how how fun it
is to get high. No, she didn't say how fun
it is, which makes me think it's really really fun.
Or is it possible that it's just like dolphin chocolate,
Like so, like we chocolate is great for us, it's delicious,

(54:20):
but dogs die from it. Maybe they're fine taking this ship,
but it kills everything else. Dogs is to chocolate is
to humans, as humans is to puffer fish is to dolphins. Yes, yeah,
I feel like that's probably yeah, yeah, like they're just
having the equivalent of a dr pepper, but to us
it's instant death. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. I

(54:43):
mean she didn't say any dolphins has has died from this.
Maybe they have, but she didn't say. I mean, I
feel like we nailed this and should get the credit. Yeah,
nailed it. Yeah, so let's talk to the teens for
a minute. Let's talk talk to something their teenagers here,
because I was not told that. No no, no no,

(55:04):
um why why why do you mean to know? I
don't like teenagers? Yeah, well I don't approve of them.
Well you know that don't do teens? Teens stop being teens.
We should have an island for teenagers and then a
country for adults. Yeah, yeah, teen island. Can you imagine
how sick and rad it would be to be on
teen islands? I don't want to imagine. I just want

(55:26):
them to be locked away. Well, you know, so let's
sell those teens all that dabbing, all the tide pod dabbing.
Are talking about the dance move dabbing, the dance dab
dance dab dance dabs that that the tanagers like to do.
The tanagers do you do have the deb So like

(55:49):
we we think they're just idiots, and I mean, like
scientifically a little bit, but like we do overestimate their
risk taking at least by one metric which is that
when the risk is of something known like drugs or sex,
they overestimate how risky it is. So they think things
and God bless our sex education. Um. But when they

(56:12):
were pulled, it was found that teens think there's a
sixty chance of a girl getting HIV if she's having sex. Uh,
which is a little off because in the US the
lifetime risk for women is only one in two and
forty one. I feel like that's as much an indictment
of our mathematics classes as it is of our sex. Yeah. Yeah, math,

(56:35):
math and sex. My history teacher was my sex, said teacher,
and like, no, no, no, I'm sorry. My economics teacher
was my sex, said teacher. And you would like pop
in a John Stossel And I'm like, are we learning
about sex or economics? I can't tell they're stuff. Um. So,

(56:55):
I mean teens are big risk takers, but like when
the outcome is unknown own, Uh, they are much more
likely to want to take risks. And also, um, wild
teens are still the biggest binge drinking demographic. The rates
of alcohol consumption amongst teens have been going down for
at least a decade. Um. Yeah, and I liked how

(57:18):
the authors of the article is like, is it social media? Maybe?
I mean, it's like, there's a lot of things happening
right now that have never happened before, so you're gonna
latch onto any of those. But you could also be like,
is it tide pods? Probably the tide tide pods has
replaced millennials are killing the alcohol industry with the type pods. Um. So, conversely,

(57:46):
alcohol consumption has been increasing amongst the baby boomer demographic,
especially especially for those who are educated. In our women
so shout out to my smart old ladies getting crunk. Well,
it's for for old women to get drunk and young women.
I don't know if that's true. No, it is. It is. Um.
It's safer to get drunk after you have had a

(58:08):
kid because breast tissue continues to develop until the point
at which you get pregnant and developing. That's why you
don't want kids to drink, because developing tissue is more
likely to be affected. So you have a higher risk
of breast cancer if you drink before your pregnancy as
opposed to starting afterwards. Okay, okay, yeah, no that I
didn't know that. That's that's really interesting. I wish you

(58:28):
and told me that no, none of its goodness. Um well,
that that is interesting. So they are. I guess they're
just like it's time, it is time, time for the
young corn. But I mean teens are still I mean
they still do drink the most. It's just good. I
think it is good. Um yeah yeah, but like like

(58:50):
you know, like catch them up, like my my final
educated ladies, you know, beat them, take them down. I'm
I feel like anything that's slows these kid liam they're
all getting into politics now, you just gotta slow them down. Yeah. Yeah,
drunk protesting, that doesn't once you're Once you've had a
few drinks, you don't feel like being politically hacked out.

(59:11):
That's what the n r a ot to do is
give more money to whatever charity tries to get kids
to drink, be the National Rum Associated. There you go.
Um So, teen animals, I'm sorry to say human teens
are way more extreme than you. Um So. I believe
you wrote about this in your book, But teen Vervet

(59:33):
monkeys love alcohol and they prefer it over sugar water.
And there are stories about people capturing monkeys by offering
them rum and molasses and coconut shells. Did you write
about this? I didn't write about vervet monkeys, but other
monkeys have been found too. It's like a monkey thing.
They love. They love to get let yeah, and and
like I just love that, like these these old timey

(59:56):
people would put rum and molasses and coconut shells and
like the monkeys get wasted. They just like pick up
the monkeys and like the monkeys are like, dude, are
you in my Huber's. I'm gonna be honest, that's almost
certainly how we got aids. It's just people getting monkeys
drunk and one of them is not quite drunk enof
and bites you. I thought you were going away different

(01:00:18):
and I'm glad. Oh hey that's not um so uh
but you know, so, you know, like with these like
stupid challenges, like now there's the condom snorting challenge, which wait, no, okay,
you're gonna have to catch me up on this one. Well,
I don't actually know. I'm I am not eight eighteen teenagers,

(01:00:41):
so I'm not really sure. I think it's like snorting.
I think an unused condom. I don't know why, I
don't know how or any of the details or even
if it's a thing or if it's just Fox News
being like teenager. Yeah. I feel like there's two types
of this thing, and one of them is like Oprah's

(01:01:03):
Lipstick Parties, where it's never happened and like somebody just
makes it up and it's such a good story for
salacious news. And then there's like tide Pods, where like
two people do it for a laugh and then it's
like this is a craze that's hitting the country, like
Anthony Jason, stop it, Yeah you too, but then everyone
else gets the rap for it. Yeah. Well, so imagine

(01:01:27):
though that like the nude like tide Pods is like
teenagers going to a really really dangerous part of the world,
um like just like going to North Korea for spring
break or something, which I'm actually not sure how dangerous
that is for tourists. I mean, if you do it legally,
it's perfect pretty safe as long as you don't try

(01:01:48):
to steal a banner, oh man. But like if they
went there and they're like trying to like take down stairs,
like griff feeding over statues, putting like weird little mustaches
on propaganda posters, just like seeking out the most dangerous
like active war zones that they can possibly go to
and then snapchatting from it. It's just all these like

(01:02:11):
teenage guys going like with sub snapchat here. I am like,
sounds like there's some drones overhead anyways, like in subscribe.
I bet we could get logan Paul to do that
and also solve our Logan Paul problems. Birds with one stone. Yeah,
I know some places we should send Logan Paul um
so obnoxious. Yeah, I it makes totals like dangerous. Stuff

(01:02:35):
is fun. It's always been fun, and it's probably always
like that's why. That's why some groups of human beings left.
Like you look at like early human life and like
eastern Eastern Africa where like the first people were. It's
like it's nice, you got all the food you need,
you pick it up. Like there's some animals you gotta
worry about, but like it's a pretty chill life. You

(01:02:55):
only have to work a couple of hours a day.
But like some people are like you know that play
it's like across the ocean that always looks like it's
stormy and cold and miserable. I bet, I bet it's cool. Yeah, yeah,
I bet it's dangerous and then chicks will be impressed. Well,
that's definitely how otters feel, because teenage otters like to

(01:03:16):
venture into the Triangle of Death, which is so metal sounding,
oh my god, and it's it's just teenage boy otters,
like like juvenile male otters who go to this triangle
and it is in fact a death triangle because it's full,
it's in the ocean south of San Francisco Bay. It's

(01:03:39):
full of great white sharks, strong currents, sharp rocks, and
it's riddled with ti ganda. Yeah, it's a murder beach. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's the death Triangle. And like conservationists don't find
adult otters, they don't find baby otters because the moms
are like holding their lily ends because otters are so cute. Um,

(01:04:02):
But like teenage punk otters are going in like male
otters too. Apparently the female otters are just like not
having any of it, but like they're they're the only
ones that the conservationists tend to find in this uh
and like the death zone. Yeah, it's like the otter
equivalent of Vice News going out there and yeah, yeah,
it's just like like we just went into this pool

(01:04:23):
of sharks and chicken out and they're like and they're
like stupid little like like hipster uniforms. So otters like
to risk danger like the rest of us. Yeah, it's
the same thing. It's the auto equivalent of joining the
marine corps, like sharp rocks and sharks. Yeah, Ti Ganda. Yeah,
is that the same thing that cats have. Yeah, it's
the thing that rats get that makes them like cats.

(01:04:46):
So that's fun. It is fun. Yeah, that would be
like the thing to do if you could go back
in time to like really upset the military history. It's
just like air drop a bunch of cats on the
like the Mongols, and then be like they can't fight,
so get no more. Didn't some group of people do
the thing where they strap bombs to cats, Like I
think we've tried to weaponize cats a few times. The

(01:05:08):
US tried a thing where they wanted to strap bombs
to pigeons and drop hundreds of thousands of pigeons on
Tokyo and then the pigeons would hide in houses and ignite.
But then we figured out a nuke and that was
that's worse. But the other one's pretty bad too. I mean,
there's they're morally different because like one of them involves

(01:05:31):
murdering a bunch of animals to murder a bunch of people,
and one of them is just murdering more people for
a longer period of time. I would still have to
say the non pigeons one is worse, which sounds really
bad because the first one is still They're both bad.
It's not a contest. Yeah, but only one of them
would get protested by Peter Harsh but true. Yeah, um yeah,

(01:05:53):
I mean I thought someone tried to do like a
surveillance with cats once to I mean they may have,
and then like the cat just like immediately got hit
by a car. I feel like any plan that involves
a cat doing a thing that is not whatever the
cat wants to do. No, don't invest your military box
into cats, guys. How should we go about dealing with

(01:06:16):
human teens? Is there a way to curb their risky behavior?
A lot of our culture seems to believe in scaring
the crap out of kids to get them to stop
risky behaviors, terrifying p s a s or movies like
Red Asphalt, but the goal of showing so much gore
and terror kids will be too scared to do anything stupid,
But does this actually help? Researchers looked at Scared Straight,

(01:06:38):
a prison visitation program. It right and young people away
from engaging in criminal activity by showing them unsettling consequences.
But not only did the program fail to reduce the
numbers of juvenile offenders, it actually seemed to increase them,
ranging from two to five across a number of studies.
So what can adults do? One study suggested that open

(01:07:02):
communication with parents reduced the amount of sexual risk taking
in teens. So, as uncomfortable as it is, a frank,
honest discussion about the birds and the bees might be
the only way to go about it. Speaking of birds,
scientists created some daredevil finches in the lab. They bred
a line of finches who naturally produced more portosome, which
is a stress hormone, in response to startling situations. These

(01:07:26):
high level stress hormone birds took greater risks and were
bolder in exploring new environments to find seed. The scientists
would also test their braveness by startling them with food
dishes that would snap closed, and found out that the
hero birds weren't so easily scared off. So let me
get this straight. Scientists have created fearless birds, whom they

(01:07:47):
repeatedly tormented, thus giving them a motivation for revenge. Uh,
let it be known that I've never done anything to
betray bird kind and will gladly offer bread in exchange
for my life. So, Robert, is there an you know
we could follow you? You can find me on the
twitters at at I right, okay, um, that's my Twitter

(01:08:09):
okay to letters. And you can find my book on Amazon.
It's called A Brief History of Vice and you can
buy it and be my friend. It's really it's really great.
And also check out Robert's new podcast. Oh yes, by this,
I don't know when this episode is coming out, It
might be might just everyone's heard of it and everyone
loves it. And I'm just sound like a real lame,
like I mean, fingers crossed. But my new podcast is

(01:08:32):
Behind the Bastards. It's gonna drop me first. There will
be a new episode every Tuesday. And yeah, we talked
about stuff like like I said, Saddan Hussein's romance novel Career,
the Mysteries of Osama, Mind, Lawton's porn Stash, Hitler's favorite
young adult author, and just a bunch of other wacky
ship about the worst people in history behind the bastards

(01:08:52):
at Bastard's Pot On Twitter, We're all all around the
Anna great so you can follow me on Twitter. Um.
I am at Katie Golden and I am also at
pro bird Writes, which is my bird sona um and
uh you should do that. Please spit some hot fire

(01:09:13):
about bird truth. Yeah, speaking bird truth, speaking bird to power.
Thanks so much for listening. If there is next Wednesday,
please join us again.