All of Our Geoducks in a Row

This curiously shaped mollusk is the largest species of digging clam in the world – and a delicacy wherever it’s served. Anney and Lauren let it all hang out with the science and history of the geoduck.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeart Radio. I'm
Annie Reese and I'm Lauren vocal Baum, and today we
have an episode for you about gooey duck. Yes, which
despite the fact that every publication I read pretty much
told you how to pronounce it, I think I'm going
to struggle with but I'm going to do my best.
Yes that the word is spelled in English geo d

(00:31):
u c K, so it looks like ge o duck,
which is not what it's called. Nope, Nope, not at all.
And I a lot of listeners wrote in about this
one when I first started, I because I like to
do kind of a like before and after in these
top notes. Um, and I didn't know what it was.

(00:54):
I had no idea what it was. I thought it
was a type of duck. I thought it was are
a kind of mushroom. I thought maybe it's like a
geo from the Earth. I don't know, but I was
way way off. I was so far. But now that
I've done the research, I'm pretty sure I've had it.
Because I was in China for eight months. It's pretty

(01:16):
popular in China. Yeah, so I feel like I must
have had it. And I did go to some fancy
meals in China, so okay, I think it might have
shown up on my plate, right, Yeah. I've definitely seen
them out at like like Hmart, like like like local
Korean supermarkets, but I have never had one to my knowledge,

(01:38):
m h or or part of one, because they're quite large.
I don't think anyone is really going around just eating
a whole one. They are quite large. I'm telling you.
This was a This was a fun one for a
lot of reasons. Like number one, you know, we love
kind of interesting creature creatures and invertebrates are like red

(02:00):
upper Alley. So yes, yes, so that was fun. There's
fun mascot fact in this. There's a lot of just
the pictures are worth looking atures. They are they are.
We will get into the appearance of them in a second.

(02:21):
Uh huh yeah yeah, yes, yes. And also a lot
of people, a lot of people have written a lot
about it, very big fans and very fondly right sure, yes, yes, es, yes,
so it was. It was. It was very very fun
and as someone who didn't know about this going in, um,

(02:43):
it was a delight research great yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
I guess you can see our oysters episode scallops maybe sure,
other other bivalves, yeah, maybe our episode about the the
the big fish industry. Um partially thanks to some of

(03:04):
the folks we talked to out on o Wahu. Yes, yeah,
that was a good one. That was a good one. Um.
But okay, if you like me and you're curious, don't know,
I guess this brings us to your question. I guess
it does. Gooey ducks what are they? Well, uh, gooey

(03:26):
ducks are a type of large saltwater clam. Uh. Picture
you know, a clam um, You know, like a wide,
oval shaped, hinged shell. But but the clam's body is
so meaty that that it spills over the edges of
its shell. And furthermore, it has this thick neck at
one end of its body that that ends in two openings.

(03:48):
So it looks sort of like a like an elephant's
trunk or a worm with spouts. Sure, spouted worm, yeah, um.
And their bodies are so big, in fact, that they
cannot fully retract into their shells. Their flesh is ivory
in color, and I've right, I have not had it,
but from what I understand, they can be like tender
to crunchy to chewy to meaty, depending on how they

(04:10):
are prepared. Um with a with a really delicate sweet
fresh to to oceany flavor. I get the idea that
it's like squid but more flavorful, like sort of the
texture of squid, but with that good fresh sweet clam flavor.
Mm hmm. It's like a like a teenage mutant ninja

(04:31):
razor clam. Um. It's like have you have you ever
had a dustbuster with one of those hose attachments? No,
but I wish I had in my life. Yeah, just
a little handheld dust buster with a long hose attachment.
It's it's like that. But but you know, a prized
mollusk excellent, excellent as always. And if somebody doesn't make

(04:57):
an artwork teenage ninja razor clam that, I don't know
what we're doing here. Why don't we even have a
podcast at that point? Pod hats oh heck. Zoological name
Panapea generosa. They are native to the Pacific Northwest coast

(05:19):
of North America, and and part of these clams do
reside within their their shells. They're those those white oval shells.
But yeah, they have these long ivory to muddy colored
necks or siphons that stick out from one side, and
y'all they are real phallic. I'm not I'm not trying
to be rude here. It just that it just is

(05:41):
what it is, UM, like a like a meaty parsnip.
Like like there was a moment doing this research where
I was kind of like it was it was giving
me similar vibes to that time that I had us
read Goblin Market and I was like, am I going
to get hr called on me? And what I deserve it? Um? Yeah? Anyway,

(06:08):
delightful um. They so these these these animals UM will
will burrow like two to three feet down into seabeds
and just sort of stay there and then use that siphon,
that long siphoned to poke up above the seabed into
into the water. The end of the neck has those
two openings, UM, and they're filter feeders. So one opening

(06:29):
is for drawing in gulps of water from which they
glean oxygen and food phytoplankton, and then they push out
excess water and in edible stuff through the other opening.
They can retract back into the sand or silt to
avoid predators. But again they cannot fully retract into their
shells like their body length including that siphon can be

(06:53):
up to three feet like a meter long. UM, but
the shells are usually only like six to eight inches long,
like fifteen fascinating. It's real goofy looking. It's great. Uh.
They are the largest burrowing clam in the world um

(07:14):
and and they can get big. They average it just
over two pounds including their shells. That's about a kilo,
but that means that they are often larger. The largest
ever verified um as of the year two thousand, anyway,
was eight point one six pounds. That's three point seven
kilo's wow. As a large clam, Yes, it is a

(07:39):
large clam. Uh. They reproduce through what's called broadcast spawning,
in which mail clams release sperm into the open water,
prompting female clams to release eggs like a couple million
and ago. And if and when they meet and fertilize
in the water, larva will form and begin swimming around,
eating algae and growing their shells. Over a few weeks,

(08:01):
they'll get heavy enough that they'll sink to the sea
floor and start burrowing down. As they get older and bigger,
they burrow further yeah, and they grow up pretty fast
during their first few years of life, reaching about one
and a half pounds in five years and their full
size by about fifteen years. That they can live much
longer than that, um over a hundred and fifty years. Uh. Yeah.

(08:25):
For for harvest, they're they're usually harvested at like five years,
but yeah, a very long time. Um. And every year
they will build a new layer of their shell from
the inside, so you can see the size of the
shell was in previous years by looking at the rings
formed on the outside as each progressively larger layer has
been added from underneath. Yeah. M hm. They are largely

(08:49):
harvested by hand by divers who who look for those
tell tale siphon tips poking up out of the sand. Nature.
What are you doing right up to all kinds of things?
I love it. Ostensibly we're a food show. These are

(09:11):
eaten in all all the ways that other molluscs are eaten,
you know, a simmered and soups and hot pots, sliced
into sushi or savich or crude, oh baked or stir
fried or barbecued or breaded and deep fried, ground and
deep fried, and fritters. They're they're a popular lunar New
Year ingredient. Mm hmmm, hmm. Yeah, yeah, and they are

(09:35):
considered a sustainable seafood choice by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration because at this point farming is pretty well
regulated to prevent environmental damage and and since they are
filter feeders, they can actually provide a net benefit to
the waterways that they inhabit. Yeah. Yeah, they're super cool.
They were so cool to research, and there has been,

(09:57):
as we'll get into in the history section, a lot
of of really recent researcher yea um, but a lot
of it was pretty pretty promising. They're still ongoing things.
But it was neat to see so many people so
passionate about it. They were like, no, we're gonna look
into this, We're gonna look into all these aspects and
kind of sessing out what is going on with the

(10:19):
goooey duck. Oh absolutely, and and right, I I you know,
we we don't do these protein episodes that often, but
I mean, if I could just have a show about invertebrates,
I would. And so if you can't tell, I'm having right.
This was a joy. It was a very strange joy.

(10:41):
It was an unexpected one for me, But I loved it.
I loved it. Well, what about the nutrition, Uh, you know,
by themselves, goomy ducks are pretty good for you, A
good punch of protein, relatively low and fats uh okay,
spread of micronutrients. Um. There are some concerns because they
are a filter feeder about getting you know, if the

(11:04):
environment that they are growing in is polluted, then some
of those pollutants making their way into their meat. But yeah,
I mean, you know, once you once you make them
into a fritter, that's that's a separate We're talking about
a separate issue, delicious one, a delicious separate issue. We

(11:26):
do have some numbers for you, Oh gosh, we do.
As of two thousand nine, Puget Sound fishermen sold about
four million pounds of goofy deck a year. Yeah. That's
equal to about two million individual gooey ducks. Yes, and
hundreds of millions of these clams live in that area

(11:47):
which we are going to be talking about that area
in particular. Oh yeah, yeah, that is that is mostly
the area where they occur and are harvested rights. Um.
And at that time, around two thousand nine, a pound
of gooy ducks went for more than a pound of
dengenous crab or salmon in that same area, So that's price. Yeah. Yeah,

(12:10):
they can go for like twenty to thirty bucks a pound,
and one fresh goody duck can go for about three
hundred dollars in a fancy restaurant in China, and that's
partly because they're usually transported live. Yeah. Yeah. The sale
of six point two million pounds of Washington goody duck

(12:30):
was estimated to be worth about seventy point five million dollars,
and nine or more of those guy ducks ended up
in China. Yeah. Also, interestingly, Washington State splits the commercial
fishing of gooey ducks with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission,
so it's a number of local Native American tribes the

(12:53):
state than auctions off their half to private businesses, which
generates some twenty two million dollars a year, which helps
fund aquatic habitat restoration. Yes, um, And going back to
your point earlier that they can live a long time,
one of the oldest known harvested guy ducks was one
and seventy three years old. Yes, oh my goodness, but okay,

(13:19):
here we go. Mascot fact of the episode. Okay, okay, okay, alright,
the gey Duck is Olympia's Evergreen State College official mascot.
I found two versions of the because you know, I
had to look up the images. Oh yeah, I found
two images of this mascot, like two kind of specific types.

(13:40):
So I would love if anybody has the lowdown on
which one is the official effection. Right, alright, but it
did show up on a couple of like creepiest mascots
our Weirdest mascot list. Yeah, yeah it is. It's quite
the sight. Um. I wanted to include the battle cry,

(14:05):
and I don't know the tunes, so I'm just gonna
read it ago, uh go gie ducks, go through the
mud and the sand. Let's go siphon high, squirted out,
swivel all about, let it all hang out. So really
leaning in to some things, we can say, Yeah, there's

(14:29):
a hole. I only did the porch. That's way better
than any of my uh fight songs from school. I mean,
it's giving me a lot to think about. Um. There

(14:50):
is a Salmon Bake and Gooey Duck Festival every July
in Alan, Washington. As the menu included ge duck chowder, Cevich, Saute's,
and sliders. There's also a two and fifty yard mud run.
And I must impress upon you, gentle listener, UM, that

(15:12):
some press for this event has included a photograph of
a craft table where an artist was selling models of
goody ducks that had been embellished with like a duck
bill and eyes on the end of that long neck
and then with with little duck legs and feet coming
off of the shell of the body to make them

(15:33):
into ducks. Into yeah, gooey duck ducks. It's beyond words.
I can't describe what I'm seeing because Lauren kindly provided
a picture in the outline, and that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah,

(15:55):
And they're posed like like like ducks would be posed,
you know, do do duck stuff? Duck stuff again. Pictures
galore to look up for you. That's your assignment of
this episode, because this is stunning, stunning, excellent, truly truly incredible,

(16:16):
beyond the pale film. UM. And this is one of
those ones where occasionally we have to make executive decisions
of what to include and not to include. UM, because
good ducks have been featured in books, they've been the
subject of books. They were the subject of the mockumentary

(16:37):
Love Muscle Um Muscle Not to Um, and shows like
Top Chef, and there are just so many fun quotes
about it. Yeah. I was laughing out loud a lot
during my reading today. I was as well. I was
as well because I don't think i'd seen a picture

(16:57):
of it yet, and I was starting to get is
handful of quotes that I was like, Oh, I've got
to look this up. And I did, and what a
what a research day it has been. But we do
have a lot of history for you, we do, and

(17:20):
we're going to get into that as soon as we
get back from a quick break forward from our sponsors
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. So.
The Pacific gooey duck is native to the US and Canada,

(17:41):
specifically the northwest coast, and it boasts an ancestry millions
of years long. And we talked about that in our
I think oyster and scalps, we talked about it, but
long time. Yeah. Yeah, these creatures have been doing what
they're doing for a good hot minute. Yes, they have.
Um Native American people's in the Pacific Northwest have harvested

(18:01):
goody ducks from the shallowest areas that they would burrow
in for centuries because they couldn't you know, dive into
the deep back then. Sure, and perhaps even longer like
thousands of years ago, though there is no known evidence
for that. A lot of the things I read were like,
it makes sense that they would have, but we don't
have like the archaeological evidence to prove it, right. Yeah,

(18:23):
and they they ate them smoked or just fresh. The name,
from what I read, comes from the Indigenous Missqually word
for you duck guy duck, meaning dig deep, though another
source posited at least part of the name stems from
its resemblance to Genitalia. But I only saw that in
one place, So what what can I say? Uh? But

(18:49):
because of the fallic appearance, as some have and do
use it as an affro deezy act. Yes. And then
as you mentioned earlier, Lauren as of n Native American
tribes hold exclusive treaty rights to half the commercial harvest
of shellfish in Puget Sound due to a landmark legal

(19:11):
case um which was really interesting to read about, and
I think it would be cool to return to in
the future. Yeah, super cool. Yeah, when the Europeans encountered
good ducks in the area, they also cooked them and
ate them. And from what I read, this is where
the kind of spelling comes in that doesn't really match

(19:33):
with how we might pronounce it today. But yeah, um.
Naturalist R. E. C. Starns wrote in eighty two about
goody decks that they quote puzzle persons who tasted it
for the first time as to whether they were eating fish,
flesh or foul mm hmm. And one of the first
known instances in print of the word goody duck appeared

(19:54):
in an eighteen eighty three issue of The New York Times.
The author labeled good ducks as quote the prints of clams,
and two years earlier, a fellow who studied mollusks named
Henry Himphil described them as quote the most delicious of
any bi valves I have ever eaten, not accepting the
best oysters. He even tried to come up with a

(20:16):
way to transport still living gooy ducks to the East coast,
but could never quite figure it out, um, which has
been an issue for gooy ducks for launch. Yes, the
popularity of these clams did lead to over fishing, and
in nineteen the Washington State legislature prohibited harvesting, possessing, and
catching gouy ducks, and this band remained in place for

(20:40):
five years. The officials still had a lot of concerns
about Gui deck populations when they were lifted, so because
of this, they only allowed for the harvesting of three
guy ducks per pose in per day, and only for
personal consumption, no canning or selling them, as you mentioned
at the top, laur And that's still yeah, that's that's
still in place, definitely, mm hmmm. Uh. The commercial GUI

(21:03):
deck industry and Puget Sound experienced massive growth in the
nineteen sixties, and it is quite the tale. So these
navy divers, we're searching underwater for lost torpedoes, which I
was like, wait what And then I researched and I
guess this was a thing with tests and stuff. Yeah, yeah,
just like, oops, where did those torpedoes go? Nobody knows.

(21:25):
I guess we should look for them. Yes, I had
to pause and like the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, So
these lost torpedoes belonged to a nearby military base where
they did a lot of these tests, and these military
divers they discovered colonies of guy ducks and the cold depths,
and this was a big deal because previously by all
just believed that they only lived between high and low

(21:47):
tide and no deeper. So this was like, whoa, there's
so much more than we thought. And the diving team
estimated that sixty three million individual gui x resided in
the depths a Puget Sound, which was a lot um
and this sparked the beginning of the commercial gu duck

(22:09):
harvest in that area. They do from a lot of things.
I read. They do spawn very quickly and you kind
of explained it, but it's sort of like there's so
many of them, but they also like spawn a lot
and a lot of them die. It's a lot of turnover,
I suppose. Uh And Okay, So Washington State auctioned off

(22:34):
the rights to harvest these clams. One of the buyers
was Brian Hodgson and some of his friends, and they
would collect gu ducks and sell them to local chowder houses,
and he quickly rose up the go duck ranks. He
made a name for himself in the industry, and with
the help of a business partner, he started selling you
ducks in Asia in the seventies. Within a decade they

(22:56):
had really been adopted and came beloved in Chinese cuisine.
The seventies also marks the beginning of the large scale
harvesting a puget sound gui ducks um. During that decade,
the unregulated market went from eighty two thousand pounds in
nineteen seventy to eight million, seven hundred and eight thousand

(23:18):
pounds in nineteen seventy seven. WHOA yeah, which I read
was its peak, which I believe because that's the unregulated market.
But a lot, a lot, a lots um. In the
early days of the commercial market, many did try and
fail to turn a profit because essentially it was new
to a lot of people. People are like, what are
you trying to sell me? Um? But clearly made a

(23:43):
market um biologists see. Lynn Goodwin became the first person
to grow gui ducks in a lab setting, which was
a five gallon bucket hey in the nineteen seventies. However,
he ran into a lot of shoes around things like
bacteria and water temperature. He looked to oyster hatcheries and

(24:05):
what they were doing with oyster farming for inspiration, and
along with some colleagues, he succeeded in producing baby geue
ducks in a research hatchery, but still problems remained. Um,
the h ducks didn't really grow once they were transplanted.
For one, Um Goodwin conducted all kinds of experiments over
one hundred of them, and he later estimated that he

(24:28):
and his fellow researchers planted over eighteen million clams. Who Yeah,
unfortunately they all died. Oh yeah. Yeah. Innovations in the
nineteen nineties allowed for the farming of guy ducks and
it wasn't perfect, and environmentalist in particular had a lot
of concerns around how this would impact the local ecosystem

(24:50):
and environment. Yeah, the farming techniques generally involved sheltering the
guy ducks spawn in plastic apes or cones or mesh
netting until they're big enough to borrow. But of course
putting those things down, Um, depending on where exactly in
the environment you plant them can really wreak havoc on

(25:11):
said environment. And since that's also the spawning site for
pacific salmon, if you if you mix them up into
the eel grass over there, then it can Yeah, it
can cause all kinds of issues. Yeah, And as we said,
this is despite the fact that you ducks have been
there for forever. Kind of this commercial aspect is fairly new,

(25:32):
so there have been a lot of studies looking into
the impact of this. UM two from found that gui
duck farming had minimal and temporary impact on the ecosystem
and had not impacted biological diversity as of yet, which
was another concern in terms of like, if only this

(25:52):
one type of gui duck is being farmed, and what
happens if it breede with other Gui ducks and anyway.
Seen survey, however, found that many people were still concerned
about a whole host of issues and and even though
there there is a lot of research being done, it
is still relatively new, so yeah, yeah, we'll see. Um.

(26:14):
By the price of the Washington Gui duck was four
dollars per pound, and that was up for fifty cents
a pound, which is where it had been for quite
a while. UM. Around the same time, British Columbia's Gui
duck industry, alongside a commercial hatchery, launched several studies to
learn more about these claims. Because again, it's a lot

(26:35):
to learn. We got a lot to learn, yeah, um.
And these days uie ducks are so prized and puget
sound that they have been the target of heist um.
There are books about this. Authorities go under cover to
watch watch from boats to see if the criminals are
up to no good. Um. They utilize they utilize underwater

(26:58):
cameras to gather proof of theft, although some criminals use
radar detectors to evade them. Yeah, it's a whole thing. Um.
In the late nineties slash early two thousand's, a gui
duck dealer was discovered offering five thousand dollars five thousand
dollars to a hit man to beat up another dealer

(27:19):
who was pushing up the pay for divers. And the
hit man was actually an informant who recorded the whole
interaction and handed it over to federal authorities. Yes, and
the dealer was arrested. But another twist. The informant was
later imprisoned for putting together in a legal smuggling ring

(27:42):
that harvested guy ducks valued at over one million dollars.
He used gonna pay up five thousand dollars to go
like fop the guy up. You're like, you're you're really
driving up my costs, sir, Um, my gooey duck costs yeah,

(28:02):
there is this article in Smithsonian magazine that that touched
on this, and uh, the then head of special investigations
for Washington States Department of Natural Resources and Department of
Fish and Wildlife told the magazine at that time, quote,
we've seen tax evasion, extortion, mail fraud, money laundering, people

(28:23):
trading claims for vikadin, you name it. I wasn't expecting that. Yeah,
the vikadin is a twist I think. Yeah, it's a
twisty journey dale it is. It is um Well in
Washington State passed the Shellfish Initiative aimed at both protecting

(28:45):
guy ducks and growing the industry. And you can read
the whole initiative. It was kind of dance for me,
but it had a lot of like very specific numerical
goals and yeah, yeah uh. And speaking of environmental impact,
because we ducks do live some hundred and forty plus years,
their shells have been studied to glean information about climate change.

(29:10):
You can look for markers of things like water temperature
in those layers of their shells, like like rings in
a tree, because in both trees and in gooey ducks,
more growth in a single year will will indicate warmer temperatures,
So yeah, very cool m m m hm. And places
like California, Alaska, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, and New Zealand have

(29:32):
been experimenting, have experimented with already growing at successful guy
deck market. And that's amongst other places. Um. A lot
of the research I found was specifically focused on the
Pacific Northwest and specifically Puget Sound. But that's not to
say other places aren't in this market or so have

(29:54):
like a successful smaller market for sure, right, or even
a market in Miller like like other species within that
genus that are not quite as spectacular, Yeah, they already
have a market for and so they're kind of like, oh, well,
we could move into the Kyak area. The gear duck

(30:15):
market did take a huge hit during COVID, especially during
early days since, as we said, a lot of it
is transported to China and a lot of it is
transported live slash fresh, and there was so much fear
around that um when the pandemic first started, and I
didn't really see any numbers, very recent numbers to say

(30:39):
if that's changed or not. I would imagine it it's
improved a little at least because I feel like I've
kind of moved away from that, but I don't know. Um, yeah,
I'm not sure. Yeah, if anyone does, please let us know.
Oh absolutely, yes, yes, yes, And if anyone has any
recipes anything we didn't talk about. If you're in this
area and you've seen, yeah, if you, I really I

(31:05):
really want to go on a gooey duck clam dig Now,
that is a thing that I absolutely want to do.
I read so much about the technique of doing it, ah,
and it sounds so messy and wonderful. Yes, yes, because
you're just you're just literally hauling this giant clam out
of out of the muck u and that sounds like
a great day, right, it does. I did say I

(31:30):
saw a lot of the quotes listeners, the quotes we found.
I saw a lot of comparisons to like the Sarlac
or Javath or something seed like day Gaba. So I'm like,
I live like my best Star Wars life doing right. Yeah?
Well maybe one day maybe. Yeah. Well we that that

(31:50):
is all that we have to say about the Gooey
Duck for now, But we do have some listener mail
for you, and we're going to get into that as
soon as we get back from one more quick break
for a word from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with burrowing. Yeah,

(32:22):
sand words. All these references, oh yeah, these references all right,
Bart wrote, I drank cream liqueur exactly twice a year,
once when putting up the Christmas decorations and once while
taking them down. I'm very traditional when it comes to
my decorations, so I always take them down. On January six,

(32:42):
I eat today. As I poured my glass of imitation Bailey's,
I grabbed my phone to see what podcast was next
in the queue. Imagine my surprise when I saw next
up was a Savor episode named Warming Up with Cream Liqueurs.
In the past, I mostly drank Bailey's when doing the
decorating and indecorating. But then I briefly discovered the coolest

(33:03):
liqueur ever, Sheridan's. It was from the same company as Bailey's,
but its bottle was literally split in two. There was
a vertical divider in the bottle, dividing the contents into
two thirds of a dark black coffee liqueur in one
third a white cream liqueur. If you hold the bottle
level as you poured your glass, you would get a
layered liqueur with two thirds black below and one third

(33:24):
white on top. I mostly bought it for the cool
bottle and the fun of pouring it, but since I
like coffee, I did enjoy the taste too. In recent years,
Bailey's have been releasing fun flavors like mint and salted caramel,
but this year I was captivated by an own brand
cream liqueur from one of our larger supermarkets, Gingerbread Latte flavor.
The spicy taste of ginger proves to offset the sweetness

(33:45):
of the sugar and sour notes of the whiskey perfectly.
I helped myself to a second glass while listening and indecorating.
I love these traditions like this. My mom and I
have one where we do it doesn't really make sense
when we do Bloody Mary's and we're taking on the
Christmas secreations and don't oh no, that sounds fabulous, right, yeah, yeah,
I've never heard of Sharedan's. It is definitely something I

(34:08):
would I would have been like, let me see how
this bottle. This bottle goes to the first thing I
thought of, though, was the that experiment you do in
like elementary school where you like have the different like
the oils and vinegars and all that, and try to
get the tellers. Yeah, and try to get them to
float properly. Yeah, most I love so. Yeah, I'm in

(34:31):
to it. To it every time. Every time a cocktail
calls for a float of something, I'm like, Oh, I'm
gonna I'm gonna mess this up. This is not going
to go howm But then I'm like, Oh, it's all
going in the same place. It's fine. So I don't know,
it's okay. I feel like I would I feel like
I would fail at pouring, this is what I'm saying,
but I wouldn't mind at the end of the day. Yeah. Uh,

(34:55):
Andrew Road, it is I, yet again dropping into your inbox.
I have a couple of episodes behind, but one of
you made mention of the infamous pocket one chip challenge,
and I thought I would share my harrowing experience of
that irresponsibly spicy chip here goes. On my way home
several weeks ago, I needed to stop at Walgreen's to

(35:16):
pick up a couple of items. I got in the
checkout line and spotted a display of coffin shaped boxes
labeled one Chip Challenge, which advertised itself as a single
extremely spicy chip. The teenager that still resides in about
two thirds of my brain decided that this would be
a fun, if slightly painful thing for me to do.
I'm a man. I eat a bowl of nails with
motor oil for breakfast. This will be a breeze. I

(35:38):
could not have been more wrong. I get home and
proudly display the box to my wife. That looks awful,
she says. I opened up the box and there is
a single foil wrapped, normal size tortilla chip inside. I
opened the bright blue wrapper and take out the chip,
which was heavily coated in what I now assumed to
be nuclear waste. I give it a sniff, and my

(35:58):
nostrils are immediately a soul by the aroma of skin
peeling corrosives. I don't hesitate. I break the chip in half,
shovel the whole thing in my mouth, chew and swallow quickly.
It's definitely got some flavor right off the bat. A
second later, my brain catches up to the events that
have just occurred on and around by now irreversibly damaged
tongue sweatpagins beating up on my hairless head. The sides

(36:20):
of my mouth start to tangle and then are fully
engulfed in invisible flames. Tears spring to my eyes. My
sinuses are suddenly free of clear of any traces of blockage.
I rushed to the cabinet and grabbed the toms. The
normal relief provided by the chalky tablets doesn't come, even
after munching down four of them. I fill a glass
with water and alternate swallowing small SIPs with swishing and spitting.

(36:42):
I down an oreo and half a glass of coconut milk. Finally,
I reached for a tub of Greek yogurt, allowing it
to rest on my poor burned tongue for several seconds
before swallowing. Nothing helps. Fast forward twenty minutes and the
initial pain of the mouth burns are starting to wear
are off, but the stomach cramps are setting in. I

(37:03):
rushed to the bathroom and fears my body would reject
the toxic contents of my stomach, but that relief never came.
I lay on the floor for a full ten minutes
while a literal puddle of sweat accumulated around me. After
I felt well enough to drag my idiot butt out
of the loop. I limped to the couch and nursed
a bottle of Gatorade for the rest of the evening.
Not one week later, I was in the restroom at

(37:24):
work and here a commotion behind me. I turned to
see an ill looking gentleman clutching the sink to arrest
his fall as he made his way to the floor.
I helped him down, discerned that he was experiencing stomach cramps,
and then called the company's rescue team. Fortunately, we have
our own paramedics on site. I returned to check on
my coworker and discovered that he too had stupidly eaten

(37:47):
the death chip, which I assume had him out of
commission for the rest of the work day. Once the
paramedics arrived, I quickly got out of the way. However,
I've seen this same dude around the building, so I'm
glad to report that he's survived with no lasting effects.
Had I done a quick Internet query prior to having
ingested that vile triangle, I would have discovered it's been

(38:09):
sending my fellow kids to the hospital in droves, and
his banned in many school districts. Shame, shame on me.
Oh yeah, the whole yeah, the whole chip friend, goodness.
We split it amongst what four people for humans? Yeah,

(38:31):
I think it was three babies for but I definitely
the smallest. Peace. Yeah, because I can't believe. There are
a lot of things in this story that I'm like, wow,
they were selling in a Walgreen because I think we
had a special order it, yeah, right, like it was
and it wasn't even like an order kind of thing.

(38:52):
It was like a like a raffle almost, so to
see it green, just in the wild, just available to
any one. Of course this was found to happen. Um.
But I love, first of all your descriptions. I love
the things people do when you're so desperate to alleviate

(39:14):
that burn and you've got your oreo, you've got your
coconut milk, You've got all these things and it's just
not helping. Yeah. No, and that's a true fact. That
is that is very much my experience. Yes, that's not nothing.
Nothing helped. Yeah. I was like, well, this is where
I live now, and I don't know when it's going
to stop. And then you do it again. So Lord

(39:34):
and I were talking about this um the human nature.
We were talking about it with Limburger cheese, but then
after we finished recording, we started discussing kind of with
spicy things too. Why why do people do this? Like
why do we like see oh the death Chip? Oh,
I'll see about that the whole thing, regret it immediately,

(39:58):
earned pain for like two days, and then we're like,
I'll give that another Why not? That was fine? It
really does crack me up. We just don't learn a
lot of us don't anyway. Yeah, yeah, right, just that
entire Yeah. I can't remember now what we said on

(40:19):
air and what we said afterwards, but right that that
human hubris of just like of just like like, oh
this is terrible you try it? Or or what a
what a fun experience? That terrible nous was? What if
I experienced that again? Do you want to share? It's
like yeah, And I'm just like, do we not have

(40:40):
enough danger in our lives? Like I I do we need?
Do we need more apex predators? Like is this I
don't know? Is it the deep thoughts that we must
must consider? Chip has brought up? Um Lauren and I will,

(41:02):
you know, gather our thoughts about it? Yeah, maybe return
because I am fascinated by this particular aspect of humanity,
which I also do. Please understand I am not above it.
Oh no, certainly not. No. I mean, have you reached
the point in the pandemic where you're no longer just
eating hot peppers for fun? You know what's interesting about peppers, though,

(41:26):
is that, like I do, I have eaten a lot
of spicy things around the pandemic. And I made um
oxtail student. It was so good, and you put Scotch
bonnet in it, right, Normally there not that spicy, So
I just eat the whole thing. And one time I
ate it and it was one of the hottest things
I've ever had. It's still kind of that like gambling nature.
So even though that experience was so terrible, I still

(41:49):
eat it. Yeah, it might not because why not? Yeah?
It was yeah, yeah, right. The last time that we
were playing d and d over at jam McCormick's house
and he had grown was it Scotch bonnets or something?

(42:09):
It was ghost peppers? Okay, yeah, I keep growing some
and just you know, chopped one up and was like, here,
this will be fun. Yeah, yeah, And we all kept
eating slippers of it. And then like most of you,
not all of you, but most of you are like,
oh so hot. I think Dylan was cool as a cucumber.
But anyway, I didn't eat any because I was the

(42:32):
d M, and I was like, I gotta be cool, Yeah,
I gotta keep it together. I was jealous though it was.
It's it's a fun experience. I don't know why I can't.
I don't know why I am like this. None of
us do the word, none of us do well. On

(42:54):
that note, thanks to both of these listeners for writing in.
If you would like to write to us, you can
our emails hello at saborpod dot com. We're also on
social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram at saver pod, and we do hope to hear
from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, you can visit the I

(43:15):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers
Dylan Cool as a Cucumber fagain and Andrew Howard. Thanks
to you for listening, and we hope that lots more
good things are coming your way.