April 23, 2024 • 50 mins
Jess McHugh joins Kurt and Scotty to talk about Czechia banning music that is too fast or too slow, Lala the penguin who loves to shop, how Pavarotti used to keep secret caches of pasta on sides of stage, a TV news station that accidentally aired man’s testicles during eclipse coverage, and how billions of cicadas are about to invade America!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Scott Are you ready, kurty B.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm ready to laugh and laugh and laugh here it
is Chechnya is banning music that's too fast or too slow.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
A very very medium episode of Bananas is coming your way.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
World, Understand your life, sillion pieces, banas, guys, gals down,
(00:45):
binary pals. Welcome to the Bananas Podcast. I am KERB Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Older, I am Banana Boy number two Scotty Landas. Thank
you for listening to the silliest little podcast there ever was.
We like recording. It doesn't matter if you're a day
one bananamal or this is your first episode. So glad
to have you.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I am standing right now, four years after the pandemic began,
with such actual wallpaper behind me that I finally finally
put up four years after I've needed it, after doing
countless hours of talking in front of a creepy wall
(01:22):
that looked like I was being held a hostage in
my basement.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Death yes true, but now it looks like British Columbia
and all its majesty is right behind you and right
behind me.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's where I podcast from. I'm so excited. Let's get
right into our guests.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
We have a cool guest today.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Hey, we do Our guest today is an author, journalist,
and editor. In addition to the thousands of articles that
she's written for places like The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, the Nation, places you we
rarely visit for this guest real places. Her first book, Americanon,
was just recommend by The New York Times as a
(02:01):
must read paperback, and her new audiobook and ebook, Nazi Hunting,
a Love Story, is available right now through Ever And
please welcome the delightful Jess mc hugh.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I guess so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
How are you. I'm excellent, glad to have you because
you're in Paris, France. That is right, and you made
time for us.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I do my best.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Thank you. I like it.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
This is I don't know why, but Scotty has some
some setting on his zoom where thumbs up continually pop up.
I was wondering what that was.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, different things that happen and I don't understand, but.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It always seems accidental. No, you can't trigger them purposefully.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Whenever you try say I I think this.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Is what AI is, I retire a lot of positive affirmation.
So good.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
They're just going to keep coming. Uh, Jess, you we are.
I'm so excited to have an actual journalist on the
podcast because this we celebrate journalists here at Bananas, and
our podcast would not be possible without them. But we
rarely get a chance to actually talk in depth with
a real live journalist.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh, I feel so special.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
You should.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
We will if you can send us her address, you
will send her a post.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I'll show up to her house. Yeah. No, I will
send her a post call to be like Jess is
just doing. We wanted you to know that. Banana Boy
number two, can you tell us about the story of
Nazi hunting, a love story which is totally bananas. I
listened to it last night. It's a great listen.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Thanks, thanks so much. Yeah, it's a pretty banana's listen. Basically,
the story is young German Girl and this is a
true story. Young German girl in nineteen sixties Paris falls
in love with a French Jewish boy and they meet
on a on a metro and like a subway, and
they decide to get married, and of course, what do
(04:07):
they do. They then decide to become freelance Nazi hunters
and they spend the next forty years together hunting down
Nazis in South America and Europe and throwing them in
the trunk of their car at one point, which seems
completely wild. So yeah, that's that's Nazi hunting.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Oh my, this is a hot take. But I do
not like Nazis.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
That is the one thing Bananas Bananas has a firm
stance on this that we say no to Nazis.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
We like to get that the old ones, we don't
like the neo ones. We don't like anything in between.
We are anti Nazi on this podcast and very proudly.
But it is crazy. When I was listening to your book,
the thing that struck me the most is how many
of these former uh like high Nazi generals were just
in France. Like I always thought they were going to
(04:57):
be in Bolivia or be in Peru or Argent and
then it was like, no, they're just right there, crazy
four miles away.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, it was wild. I mean, so many of them
basically just moved back to the towns. So the ones
who worked in France during the German occupation just moved
back to whatever town they were in in Cologne or
wherever in Germany. So like, for instance, for one of
the top rest Nazis Kurt Lishka, who they were looking for.
They literally found him by calling information and were like, hey,
(05:25):
do you have a Kurt Lushka in the phone book
and the woman said.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yep, crazy Kurt.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, that's where Kurt was.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
We got HP.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So, I mean, like, didn't the people in that town
know this person from the occupation and no one was
just like, no, you're a Nazi, you can't live here.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I mean, it's pretty wild. I just think, you know,
the way that human brains operated is such that sometimes
we have to come up with some sort of excuse
as to why this can't be the case. So I
think people assumed, well, if he's living freely, whatever he
did can't have been that bad, which was not the case.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
WHOA, that is so crazy. So how many Nazis did
they actually end up bringing.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
To justice hard to say a tally, because it was
you know, over the course of many years they found
you know, French collaborators, German ss I'd say, you know,
all told the people who they brought to justice were
responsible for the deaths of like upwards of one hundred
and fifty thousand people, So a lot of a lot
(06:29):
of a lot of top brass over the years.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Good. Yeah, yeah, shake them down, That's what I said.
Oh yeah, go get them all. Yeah, it's a nightmare.
I also have to say, and this is like I
do listen to a lot of audio books, and yours
is on an app called Everand, which I downloaded for this.
But I thought the woman who read it, who narrated
(06:54):
the story, Hope new House. I just wanted to say
her name because she's very good.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
She's so good.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Find the she's good, right, and she did.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I actually sent her a message a few weeks ago
when I first came out, because it is so hard
to pronounce all of those ss names. I was just
flubbing my way through it when I was interviewing people
in French and I was trying to do the German
name with a French accent. So I don't know how
she did the French words and the German words and
the English of course. So I was very impressed.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I knew Kurt. We talked about this once years ago.
I was in New York with my cousin Emon and
he's like, Hey, do you want to go this gallery show?
And I was like sure, And it was his two
German friends Greg Gore and Julia and they had learned
English in India. So these were German citizens who learned
English and idiots, so German accent, Indian accent English, but.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Also with like a British accent on because that's how
they learned the Indians learning English.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, yes, and so they were like, h I can't,
I can't do it. But it was something belong the
lines of we were gonna go get drinks, we were
gonna go get some cocktails. And he was like, Scotty,
would you like to get cocktails? And I was like,
if this is gonna be all night, I'm gonna need
multiple cocktails by the end. It just sounded totally normal.
(08:14):
But so yeah, she hope new House did a great
job of all the French pronunciations, the German pronunciations. It
was It's excellent. Everybody should download and listen to it.
And it's it was shorter. It's about two hours of listening,
so it's like perfect for you. You know, I did
a little work out, I did the dishes. I had
a great time.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, perfect amount of time.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Do you want to hear about this some strange news?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I would love to hear about some strange news.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
So I did start off I'm gonna do a bait
and switch. I did start off with this checking his
banning music that's too faster, too slow, But when you
get into the details of it, it's pretty upset, so
funny at all. It's essentially Russia being really awful to
Chechenian people, and so I'm just gonna you can look
(09:09):
that up. You definitely should look it up. But they
are banning music that's between eighty and all music has
to between eighty and one hundred and thirteen bpms, which
is essentially a way to control information coming in and
out of the country, gotcha, and to keep gay people
from dancing as well. It seems.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I think adulthood begins when you enjoy sitting at concerts.
I think that is when you become an actual adult,
when you go I'm glad we sat that.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I just saw Bruce Springsteen and we stood the whole time.
But there was actually no I didn't stand the whole
time because for Bruce Springsteen, it's a three and a
half hour long show, and there's long. There's certain parts
where you're just like, I've never heard this song before,
and so you like take a seat, and so you
sit down, like, no matter how much Bruce Springsteen, there's
(09:59):
certain songs you don't you won't know because he's just like,
I'm pulling this one out butt at. This is during
the encore, So they do, they do their ending song,
they leave, he comes back encore. It's Born to Run.
It's the song that made Bruce Bringsy famous. Everybody knows
Born to Run, and everybody's going crazy. All the lights
(10:19):
are up so that everybody can sing along. And the
dude directly in front of me is just on his
phone reading the Wall Street Journals, sitting There's video of
it on my Instagram if you go. But it's just
like the whole place is losing their bad and then
panned out guy on his phone Wall Street journal looking
(10:42):
looking for an article to read, scrolling through articles, just
like what am I going to get into on the
WSJ Okay. I also didn't want to start with this
because I was like, we're having a real That's why
I started with the chech journalist story else wherever a
real journalist.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
If I out with.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
If I start with remember Laala, the penguin who loves
to shop, She's gonna just get off the line.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
I'm so sorry. I actually had an urgent journalist emergency.
I need to get to.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Uh yeah, but this is awesome. This article is truly fantastic.
The video is the best part of it, and we
will post the video on our Instagram. But it is
Remember Lala, the penguin who loves shop. This is sent
in by someone. This is their first article they've ever
sent into our Instagram, The Bananas Podcast, Jos Jos. Thank
(11:41):
you Jos for sending this in.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So this is.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
This was on News eighteen, which I believed is an
Indian I believe it's an Indian channel because I think
all of this has been translated. They talk about what
penguins are in the beginning and okay, yet a Japanese
(12:09):
family supported this unusual choice to keep a penguin at
home and decided to keep one of these beloved creatures
as their pet. Their unique decision caught Oh this is
written by buzz staff. By the way, Oh they're good,
Yeah good, They're best in the business. Their unique decision
caught global attention, and journalists worldwide wanted to interview the family.
In the nineties, Real TV got the opportunity to make
(12:31):
a documentary about the penguin named Lalla, who lived in
a small Japanese village, shot in nineteen ninety six, when
the creature was approximately ten years old. The documentary shed
light on as I'm reading this is crazy, guys, this
has never happened before. As I'm reading, a video popped
up in the space where my eyes were looking. I
(12:54):
don't think that's like, it wasn't in the corner where
it usually pops up. And now I go back and
it's gone, oh, this is so creepy, all right. On
the lifestyle of Lalla, the king penguin, who enjoyed living
in a comfortable home with air conditioned room, freely wandering
the streets of his town and eating his favorite fish.
(13:15):
The footage this video keeps popping up, so I'll just
talk about it. I've seen the video, Like all it
is is an article describing a video that we're gonna post.
It is a king penguin, so that's kind of like
an emperor penguin. They're really tall, they're probably like come
up to almost like your waist. And he just like
is in a room and then this Japanese woman opens
(13:36):
the door, sliding glass door and he like waddles out
and then she puts a backpack on him that's a
pengu backpack. That's a penguin. So he has a penguin
backpack on a penguin and then she like ties it
so it can't fall off. And then he just walks
from their house into town, which seems like it's like,
(13:58):
I don't know, like fifteen to twenty minute wattle for him. Yeah,
and it's a wattle street. It's a long wattle. He
goes into a fish store by him, say, he's all
by himself the whole time. They give him a fish,
he eats it. Then they get put another fish in
a plastic bag, put it in his backpack, and then
he just like wattles home. On the way, he sees
(14:21):
someone like washing the street down with a hose and
like makes a noise and then the guy just like
sprays him down and he like has fun with it
and then walks back. They take the fish and he
gets to eat the second fish when he gets home.
And it is this it's very reminiscent of the penguins
who were going to the sushi store in New Zealand.
(14:41):
We did a long time ago, but I've never seen
anything like it. It's a delightful video. I'm talking about
it just so we can show.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
You the video.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I love this. I want to know what kind of
currency he's exchanging for these fish, Like, is I he?
Is he going back? Does he have bigger deals? He's due?
You know, what's the long term? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Apparently I think they put money in his little backpack,
in his little penguin backpack. And also apparently this was
an injured penguin that they found.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Oh my gosh, it's the cutest thing I ever heard
I know.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
But also they don't say how they found it or
where they found it. Is definitely a penguin who lives
in the antarctict.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah, he's being held hostage by these people and put
into a penguin backpack.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Is the dark, Yeah, in a very hot and humid town.
It seems like I hope Laala was happy. Lala died
in nineteen ninety eight, so just two years after the video,
but it's been It's a pretty great video and we'll
post it now.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Give them this context. I like to think that Lala
is really harried and like being forced to wattle these
fifteen minutes to get the one fucking fish and come back.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Oh God, I hear that narrative.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, this is my dark journalist to instinct here, this
is what happened.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Will enjoy food more than humans? Do you think that
La la eating that first fish? It is the absolute
pinnacle of everything.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
It must be right, Like, I mean, I had a
Labrador Retriever and those I mean all dogs of food,
but Labrador is more than any dog.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
It's like the best thing that's ever happened. And this
dog would eat the same food every day and it
would be like so excited, eat it in two seconds,
just so so I think.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So yeah, my friend Reggie's sort of that way to
know that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
But also when I like, if I'm making a turkey sandwich,
for instance, Zelda will sit down and wait patiently, and
then I'll throw a little piece and she will eat,
She'll swap, She'll chomp it and swallow it with such
speed that I'm positive it did not there was no tasting.
Thing is the joy is the simple joy of it
(17:07):
going into the stomach, because there's no tasting. I feel
like with most dog eating you might be right.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I just I just feel like you can train animals
with food. But maybe it's maybe us too. Maybe it's
just the benefit of being in society where food is
readily available. It's we've changed our what the high water
mark has shifted for us?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Oh, this is something that I've been trying to figure
out how to talk about and stand up. But like
when does our brains and bodies, Like our brains are
so evolutionarily based that like when do they catch When
does our brain and body catch up with the refrigerator?
Like instead of instead of like when you eat a big, big,
heavy meal, your body's like we might not eat again
(17:53):
for we know, we don't know when food will come.
We got to make it all into fat, and it's
like there's a frigerator, Like when do we brains catch
up with that where it's like when you eat a
big meal, it's just like I got a lot of calories.
You get's like you're on coke or something. You can
just like throw a car or something like you should
just have I got so many calories, I couldn't do anything.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I feel like we need another ten thousand years.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
That's true. Just when you're writing so for something like
Nazi hunting, you know there's some real heaviness to these
stories and a lot of you know, there are a
lot of people dying and you and there's a lot
of writing about people getting sent to Auschwitz. And like,
when you're writing something heavy or any story, do you
take breaks for yourself to get away? And what do
(18:40):
you do when you do that?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Good question? I mean, much like La La de Penguin,
I'm very food treat oriented, so I did take Like
I live in Paris, so I would go to a
cafe a have some wine, have some cheese. Because it
was a pretty brutal, it was a pretty brutal research process.
I've spent about six weeks in the the Holocaust world
here in Paris and the archives, which is amazing to
(19:04):
be with the primary stores documents, but it's it's tough
to kind of do all the time. But in terms
of breaks, I mean, I'm a nerd. I've always been
a nerd, So like I like to read in my
free time, I love to knit. I was actually knit
a sweater for my friend's dog while I was writing
this story.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
There we go. Yeah, that's what I'm talking. That's the
real Stuff's a good break. You gotta take a you
gotta take a mental health break to go like this
is dark. I need a little bit of an escape.
Yeah all right, Well I only wondered because this story
talking about food. Alex Hartley sent this in and it's
just about another legendary artist who took little breaks. Legendary
(19:44):
tenor Luciano Pavati used to keep secret cachets of pasta
on the side of the stage. Trust me, I was
all in time. This was sent yeah by Alex Hartley
sent this in. This was in the Selma Sun, but
it was in time of times of New India everywhere
and they all had the same writer. By celebritainment, celebritainment
(20:09):
and not like a specific celebrityment, just.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It mentor.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
She's good, she is now. I tested.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I took classes at Yelle from professors celebrity.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
She taught me everything I know.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, best in the biz. The late rip Luciano Pavati
used to keep secret cachets of pasta on the side
of the stage so he could snack between his songs.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I'm surprised he's not still alive.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Shocking.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I don't know what kind of pasta.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yes, the legendary tenor who died of cancer in two
thousand and one. I would have guessed twenty twelve. I mean,
that's just I'm not up on my tenor it was
like me neither. He was aged seventy one, had an
insatiable appetite and insisted on having food tucked out of
sight from the audience so he could indulge his hunger
during concerts. I sold this, I do love it.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Is there a chance these were like four hour long performances.
There is a slight chance that's true.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Sure, And he is hitting some notes. So that guy needs,
you know, you need, you need some wood in that
stove to keep it burning. Sources told the New York
Post newspaper Page six column that during a backstage tour
of the Metropolitan Opera House, director Peter Gelb told guests
quote Pavatti, who had an insatiable appetite, kept secret cash
us of his favorite pasta in the wings, just the
(21:33):
same thing we've said four or five times, so that
he could wander off stage between songs and have a snack.
The director was giving a tour Friends Society for the
Friends of Society Grand Dame of Grand Dame Barbara Toburt,
who is set to be honored blah blah blah. Back
in nineteen seventy six, Pavaratti told reporters how he had
(21:57):
gone on a diet with the help of his medical
staff in Modina. That it allowed him to have only
eighteen hundred calories a day, and that included just sixty
grams of pasta. That must be tough.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I'm trying to picture what sixty grams of past even
looks like.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, it's sixty little baggies.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
All poured together.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
He noted to The New York Times at the time
that that is one sixth of what he had normally
been eating. But I can't have everything, Pavarotti said, It's
just that everything. Oh, I can have everything, It's just
that everything now must be little. The Italian opersoner also
spoke of how much he loved eating. He said, one
of the very best things about life is the way
(22:46):
we must regularly stop whatever it is we're doing, a
devote our attention to eating.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
I agree, amen, I'm still now. The way that it's
presented makes me feel like there was specific police in
the theater, in the opera house that this was being capped.
I like to think it was in like a little
inlay and a special, tiny, tiny sixty grand bowl.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Mm hmmm. And do you ever think there was a
time where like a spaghetti noodle was too long and
the music was coming back, slurping it up, and he's
like stalling and he's slurping and his bow tie spinning
and his face is turning red. Also, the way that
the article.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Is written, it says so that he could wander off
the stage, which is such a funny way. He's singing
and they're like, wait, wait, where is he going. He's
just slowly sliding over to the side of the midding
no while singing. Yeah, there used to be I remember
when when we did the Aspen US Arts Comedy Festival.
(23:47):
It was with big comedy Festival that HBO put on
an Aspen. I don't know what year with this was
two thousand and five maybe four. They had, because Aspen's
so high up on the side of the stage on
every stage, they had oxygen tanks so that you could,
like if you got winded while you were performing, you
come and like hit it. And I remember this David Gorman,
(24:09):
this guy David Gorman who did an amazing, amazing one
man show. At a certain point he like used it
dramatically you just like hit like he was like making
points and then just grabbed it and sucked on it
for a little while and it was like such a
delightful little you know, work in work into Yeah. I
(24:30):
really just trailed off.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
With whatygen bar in Vegas because we all thought it
was stupid? And then I did it and I was like,
actually that was kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Really, and again, really, what is an oxygen bar?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Flavored oxygen? You put on masks that have a little
bit more oxygen than what's normally what we're normally breathing.
It's not even like that much more, maybe like five
percent more, but it just kind of gives you a
little energy rush, like yeah, like it chugged a Red
Bull or something good.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I've lived outside of America for t because this is
so to me.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Also, Vegas is in America. I mean Vegas is besides
the Miami Grill at the Walmart that pit balloons. It's
not US, it's not.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
But that one specific place is very US. Yeah, I'll
tease us into some thumbs up ex count let me see. Well,
I'm sorry to do another stupid one, but I can't
help it.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
It's a dumb podcast.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
It's a dumb podcast. TV outlet accidentally airs man's testicles
during solar eclipse coverage.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
I almost did this one too. This is if you
don't think this is Banana's news. One oh one, you've
lost your marbles is so good.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Sums ups.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I just want to give one myself thumbs up to Melissa.
I was at a bar with Alson Fields last night,
Curdie b I was a Capri club and a woman
named Melissa came over and she's a huge fan of
pod and very kindly introduced herself with is always cool
with me. I'm a writer. Nobody talks to me. Mss
Catherine is giving a mega thumbs up to our boy
Khan Azzadi, who wrote and performed our theme song for Bananas.
(26:12):
I would argue it's the best theme song in all
of podcasting. Miss Catherine says her seven year old son Hugo,
has been singing the Banana's theme song for days. He
said that the Banana's theme song is almost as good
as Fireball by Pitbull, which is the pinnacle of music.
To Hugo, son, you're the dude. Thank you so much.
(26:36):
Will is thumbsing himself up for his solo show in Edinburgh.
Tickets just went on sale last week. The show is
called Hi I'm Will and it's running August second through
the eleventh. So Bananimals. If you're going to Edinburgh Fringe
this year in August, go see a show called Hi
I'm Will and support another bananimal. That's a good one.
(26:58):
That's great burgh Two more quick gies. Chris Wiggle wants
to say yeah, he's a new Jersey guy I think,
wants to thumbs up his son who's graduating Cumloudy from
with a degree in sound recording technology. He has a
kick ass band, Kurt the Sun does in Buffalo called
(27:18):
Relentless Moisture, which I think we should name this episode
Relentless Done Done. And you can find them on Spotify
or YouTube. I mean, I'm gonna listen to Relentless Moisture.
And last, but not least relevant to our wonderful guest today,
Natalie Beale is thumbing herself up for finishing a first
(27:40):
draft of a novel. She says it will likely never
leave the drawards in and nobody will probably ever read it,
but she's proud of herself for cobbling it together and
finishing it with her own two hands.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Oh yeah, Natalie, Oh, that's wonderful. Thumbs up to all
our thumbs uppers today, and of course we are here
with wonderful Jess McHugh. You can get her ebook and
audiobook right now. Nazi hunting a love story through ever
and is it called everand or ever?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
And that's a great question, but I wish I had
the answer to I'm gonna say it's like a tomato
tomato thing.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Great, it's perfect, it's good answer. That's right. How many
stories do you have to work on it one time?
These days journalists do when you cover in four or
five things at one time, or do you get to
focus on one really big one.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
It depends. I like these kind of ultra long form
things because I work then I can work on just
one thing. But a lot of the time I'll do
is I'll do a silly thing and a dark thing
at the same time. So when I was writing this,
my kind of silly thing was I'm obsessed with bats,
and so I was writing along. But now I'm still
working on story about how awesome bats are.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
That's kind of therefore.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Yeah, and in France, actually this is pretty wild. There
is a bat police. I mean they're not just for
the bats, but they protect all why animals. And these
are fully armed police that go around prosecuting crimes against bats.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Whoa god, what is a crime against a bat? Like
swatting at it with a broom on the end of it.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
That would count room with a room without a sock.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
One of the biggest ones is that people will shoot
at bats for target practice for like paintball.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
What.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Oh yeah, that's cruel.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah, which is cool. There was an influencer who broke
into a bat cave. That's also a crime.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Oh, I can understand that. So what's your favorite back
bat fact?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
That it's so hard to choose? I can have a
whole podcast called.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Okay tell us tenat Facts.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
The first one that comes to mind is that bats
actually prolonged the Civil War because they're guano can be
used to turn into saltpeter, which is used to make bombs.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
That's their poop exactly, that's their boop.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Their poop makes bombs. And so there was this huge
cave I think in Texas during the war and they
were just collecting guano from it, and this is how
the Confederates were able to continue long after they did
not have the money for bombs or not bombs.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I guess crazy from that must be it must be
where you're like, you're that guy Tho's Texans or batshit
crazy like that. If that is true, I'm going to look.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
It up at Also, I feel like I should stick cannons,
not bombs, because it definitely wasn't bombs at the time.
It would have been some other kind of you know, warfare, explosive,
thank you, thank you. Yeah, that's a good one. Another
one I really love is that that formed their own daycare.
So like every year that's form these meeting these meeting
(30:49):
colonies and then these maternity colonies where it's all female
bats and each year one female will just kind of
like elect to be the nanny and will not have
a baby and we'll take care of the there wants babies.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
What That's cool And it's a choice. It's a choice
they think for that.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
I mean in so far as like evolutionarily, I think, yeah,
I don't. I don't know that the bat is like
my year to be the anti to these seventy batpups.
Bat babies are called pups, by the way. That's but yeah,
each year one kind of takes the takes the helm
of the daycare while the other moms go out and
hunt and eat bugs all night.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Bad facts, man, fascinating. What is the French word for bat?
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Oh my god, it's so much better than anything you
could ever hope for. It's which means bald mouse.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That is good man. I love a good bald mouse
zooming over my head.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Also, that is the main identifying thing about a bat.
You're always like, look at that, it's bald wigs, not
a mouse with wigs.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Bald. No, the French they have a higher beauty standard
than We're, like, dang, look at that ways over there,
They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it
is bold. This bird is bold. All right.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Well, speaking of bald, ah, here it is Mexican TV
outlet accidentally airs man's testicles during solar eclipse coverage.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
By Josh Bram. Thank you, Josh.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
This was good.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
You know, look, guys, do we look for articles not
in the New York Posts? We sure you do.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
We do.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
We find ones as snappily written, We don't, We really don't.
This was written by Ronnie Reyes. Thank you, Ronnie, so good.
Here's why, here's why we go to the post. This
eclipse coverage was nuts. I mean it's like thank you,
we're done, thank you, and good night.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
I always like to think of, like what was the
headline that the New York coos did not choose? Was like.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
They're like we can't. We simply can't. A Mexican news
outlet is garnering ridicule online because it accidentally aired a
man's testicles when presenting viewers submitted footage of Monday solar eclipse.
Fantastic RCG Media's twenty four to seven twenty four to
seven That's the Problem news program was covering the eclipse
(33:31):
when it's three anchors presented clips submitted by fans experiencing
the celestial phenomenon, only to fall prey to a well
known prank. In Latin America, the local La van Guardia
newspaper reported, as the male host was listing the cities
from where the eclipse could be enjoyed, the clips being
presented on the left side of the screen cut to
a man blocking on the some of his testicles and
(33:52):
the video is it's it's it's a it's crazy. It
is fully like you see legs coming into view and
then it just blocks out the sun. I mean, yeah,
there is there's no way anyone who was watching these
(34:13):
clips wasn't aware. It wasn't like subtly done. It was
very clearly what it was, and one of one of
the two female anchors could be heard gas van shock
while her male colleague carried on ignoring the obscene image.
The clip was quickly taken off the screen, with the
mail anchor explaining the clips were submitted by viewers, as
he admitted that the fervor to include fans experience can
(34:35):
lead to embarrassing situations for broadcasters. It is not uncommon
for people to share clips of a so called testicular
eclipse during a solar event. What I did not know
this is oh it started during the ninety twenty nineteen
eclips in Chile. Even Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee has
gotten in on the risk a gag, posting a similar
(34:57):
video on his Instagram. Just before taking it down, Mirror said,
you know.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
We've seen everything that guy's already got.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Say that already feels pretty up his alley regardless of
the eclipse.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Yeah, Tommy Lee, wait to inject yourself back into the news.
Cycle in the strangest way possible, in the.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Very strangest way.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Damn, that is so funny. I mean, yes, it's gross,
nobody wants to see it, but also hilarious, so stupid,
it's so dumb that it's like a trend down there.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Did anybody get to see either this or the last eclipse,
the partial one or the full one? Anybody?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
No, you can see anything over there. Yeah, it wasn't
over there now. Yeah, I watched it. I thought it
was cool. I got those glasses that you get from
the library, and I realized as I was looking at it,
I think the peak in LA was like eleven eleven
or eleven twelve am. It's pretty early. But I watched
it for probably an hour and about ten minutes into
(35:59):
like glancing up at it every now and then I
realized I'd never looked at the sun before, like you
stared at the sun. And those glasses I got, I
hope they were because apparently there was a spike in
Google searches within hours of the eclipse about eye damage,
like yeah, like a huge.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Course of course there was. I saw one tweet which
it was like ophthalmologist the well you're gonna need polarized
lenses if you're going to the beach. These glasses are
one hundred and twenty five dollars. Hey, here's two dollars.
Stare at the sunny.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Don't ask how they worked at it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
It was cool, Kurt, did you look at it?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I saw the one that happened a couple of months ago,
which was like a three quarters in La We went,
and I thought the most interesting thing about it was
that there was a tree, and so as it was happening,
like at the peak, the sun was coming through tree,
a tree and painting painting. That's how it does painting
shadows on the wall, and the shadows are all eclipse shadows,
(36:59):
which is fascinating and cool.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
I thought that was a I thought it was cool
that so many people got into a lot of my
friends like took their kids out of school to watch it,
Like it's great. I don't know. I'm glad we care
it all. To be honest, it's one hundred percent the
natural world is still interesting to a majority of people.
It's a huge victory.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Also, then it's like it's like everybody acknowledging that, like
that we're on a globe spinning in space. It's all round,
it's not flat, you know, it's just like, oh, thank goodness,
that's nice for all of us. Have you ever seen
an eclipse or any celestial event?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Chesso your mind out, I'm trying to think.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
I don't think so. I definitely looked at the sun
when I was a kid, though, but without those library glasses. No, no,
I'm still alive. I can still see.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
You're good, right, You're doing absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I know. I was just gonna say, I know that
you love the New York Post, and I have to
give you some credit because I use that as a
source from time to time. You can find, like some
good stories. I love to write about con artists. And
I found a couple absolutely batshit stuff that I first
found in the New York coast, like a Texas influencer
(38:10):
who's retreat I then went undercover at it was pretty.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Wild that Oh my god, that sounds fascinating.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
It was absolutely wild. So she her name is Brittany Dawn.
She her grift was that she was a fitness influencer,
like a bodybuilder, and she was selling three hundred dollars
a month fitness plans. Except it turns out all she
was doing was sending these automated like you've got this
babe text to these women that I had spent three hundred.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Dollars, which three hundred a month, a month, which.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
As we know, is how you get in shape. It
is with it. You've got this babe text.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
And that worked for me. Yeah, and so what Dad
said every day.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
What made it worse was that she was targeting women
who had eating disorders. And so some of the women
who eventually followed this complaint against her weigh like eighty
pounds by the end of this you know, fitness plan
that you had given them to lose weight. She decides
that she's now born again Christian, and she said, this
was my past life. It has nothing to do with
(39:15):
my current life, where where I am now running a
ministry for women. And so she has these like evangelical
all women's retreats that cost like between you know, five
hundred and two thousand dollars. And I convinced a the
Guardian to send me down there. We're in my little
(39:37):
crosseerings to see what was up about it. It was wild.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Wow, Oh my gosh, was it strange? Was there a
certain point where you were like, this is an alien
culture that I'll never or at a certain point where
you like, oh, I'm kind of like finding like connecting
with these women or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
I kind of had both, Like I get the appeal
of of evangelical I don't want to say I get
the appeal of culture, but I get the appeal of like,
you know, singing these beautiful little Christian rock songs and
you all feel like you're at a sleepover party together.
There's something fun about it and nice. But then as
(40:17):
soon as people started speaking in tongues and I saw
how a lot of people were wearing firearms, I'm not
quite sure. I can totally always.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
A scary combination the old speaking and tongues while wearing
a cao is not really you know, that doesn't make
it go. I'm gonna take no.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
And someone was talking about how there was like a
secular sorceress among us, and I was like, oh my god,
how did they know?
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Really? Yeah, Oh wow, that's such a cool put that
in your bio. I mean, the fact that that's not
the first thing on your Wikipedia is like secular sources.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Oh, it's so true. What am I I've been doing?
With my branding, my personal brand.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Let Scotty fix it please please, you got it?
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Come my way. I got some ideas. But that is
so funny. I went to a Curtin are both Catholic
school kids, and we had to get confirmed. I had
to go to like a confirmation camp for a weekend.
It was like forty eight hours. Yeah it was I
don't even remember. It must have been in Maryland somewhere.
But they were like, you know, just youth group stuff,
(41:28):
like team building stuff, like all just the most boring
crap ever, like some crafts, but then also teaching stuff.
And then they're like, who else could be a saint
that's alive today? And you're like, uh, I don't know.
After like mother Teresa, everybody just froze. Gary the guy
down the street, he fixed my bike for free. But
the funniest he told me, and this happened later too,
(41:49):
with this other retreat I had to go to is
the guy. The woman running it was named Trena. But
then there was like a guy that was like sort
of overseeing her. He might have been a deacon actually,
but he's leapt in his car the entire weekend because
he was so afraid of bugs and spiders. Wow, And
I remember thinking, like, you're a very religious person who
believes there's a creator and there's a path and all
(42:11):
these things. But then at the same time you're just like,
but I am not safe unless I'm sleeping in the
camera because the spiders could get to me here. It's
like say a prayer.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
But also I want to know why the spiders wouldn't
have access to the camri but they would have access
to other locales.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, spiders get places. That is so true.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
I also found out recently a disheartening fact that whenever
you know how you like, take a spider outside because
you don't want to kill it. Sure, if you take
a spider that you find in your home outside.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
They just die.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yes, I just learned this, But like, where are they living.
They're only living in the crevices in our kitchens forever.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
They're only house spiders.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
It's pretty cute, pretty cute cut Pixar call them up,
only house spiders.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Go ahead, Scott, he sends us all to do a
bug one.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
You know, we're on it. We're having a fun run.
Let's Creature Farm sent this in, which is a cool
name for an account. This was on CNN dot com.
And when you're talking bugs, you're talking Kate Golimbuski. Absolutely,
she just she types the stories that move our hearts.
Billions of cicadas are set to appear in a rare
(43:23):
double brewed emergence. Scientists say, where, Oh, great question. Luckily
if you Kurt, Kate Golumbuski has got us covered. Yes,
in a matter of weeks, they will dig their way
out from underground, red eyes shining, deafening songs filling the air.
(43:43):
It will be a confluence of creatures the likes of
which hasn't been seen in the United States since Thomas Frickin'
Jefferson was president.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Confluence of creatures is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah, give it up, and it won't happen again until
two two hundred and forty five. It's a rare emergency insects.
Some are referring to as cicada apocalypse.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
It is you always have to put apocalypse on it.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
You do you really do? Or gate? This is cicket
apocalypse gate. Billions with a bee of cicadas are set
to surface this spring. Has two different broods, one that
appears every thirteen years and another that appears every seventeen
years are going to simultaneously. Oh whoa, this is very cool.
(44:32):
They're also great. Also, my nephews pick them up and
throw them. They don't care, they're not afraid of them.
I'm like, yeah, it's very fascinating. One group that appears
every thirteen years known as Brood. I mean, it's known
as Brood nineteen. You would think it'd be Brood thirteen
if they come at third seventeen where I feel like.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
They could get a better name. They're only going to
be alive for what is it, a few days. Give
them a ruthless moisture kind of a band name or something.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
They are also referred to as the Great Southern Brood,
which is fine. That sounds like a band. Sounds like
a Leonard Skinner is the largest periodical cicada brood, stretching
across all of the southeastern United States. The Northern Illinois
Brood or Brood eight, which emerges every seventeen years, is
(45:27):
the ground.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Just if you just dig down into the dirt, are
you just gonna find cicadas everywhere that are just waiting.
I mean, it's so crazy that they lay eggs and
it takes thirteen years for the eggs to is that
it thirteen.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Or seventeen years. They emerged simultaneously, and it says that
there is something that triggers it, and it's in this article. Okay,
I'll get to that in just a second. It's a rare.
It's rare that we see the size of double brood emergencies.
Doctor Jonathan Larson, it's he's an extension entomologists and assistant
(46:01):
professor at University of Kentucky. We're talking about absolute oddity
of nature. One of America's coolest insects. I mean, this
is exciting because you know our listeners, we have tons
in the southeastern and the Illinois area. It's gonna be
crazy for y'all. I mean, have fun the spring and jogs.
Enjoy it. I'll skip ahead to some of the more
(46:24):
interesting stuff. So they follow different cycles in annual cicadas,
which don't actually have an annual life cycle, even though
you see them every summer. Yeah, the namser babies of
annual cicada spend two to five years underground, slowly growing
until they are ready to emerge this springs. Periodical cicadas
will make their appearance when soil temperatures eight inches deep
(46:47):
reach sixty four degrees fahrenheit, which is about eighteen degrees celsius. Okay.
Will likely happen in mid May, and the individual bugs,
as adult life cycles are just a few weeks, their
emergence will be slightly staggered, so there will be about
six weeks of billions of cicadas in the United States.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Wow, wow, wow, do you come back from Paris at all?
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Do the same?
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Just for that?
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Yeah, bring goggles in a net, Kurt. We're going to
be in the Midwest in May.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Oh yeah, that's exciting, mate, and the Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis
go get your tickets right now, close to selling out.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Run from the cicadas and into the comedy theater and
cheer for the banana boys. That month and a half
period will be jam packed with loud singing, mating, and
then dying sounds fun party like the most macabre Marty
Gral you've ever seen. Yes, this occurs every two hundred
and twenty one years when the thirteen year and seventeen
(47:49):
years circadas overlap. These two birds haven't been above ground
at the same time since eighteen oh three, and as
I said, they won't happen again until twenty two hundred
and forty five. There are other instances of cocurrences of cicadas.
Blah blah blah. If you live in an area with
cicada's making an appearance to spring, you can download a
community science app to help research or study these bugs.
(48:12):
The main thing we want people to do is know
they can go to Cicada Safari app, which is free
on the web, and all they have to do is
photograph whatever cicadas they see. That's it. These photographs are
sent to scientists who map where and when the cicadas
are merging, which is information vital to scientists studying how
climate change affects cicadas and predicting future scada activity. That is,
(48:33):
Cicada Safari app sounds fun.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, and I would encourage everyone to give a big
thumbs up in every photo of cicadas. Yes, it doesn't happen. Also,
we should declare it's hot cicada summer. We should all
decide that this summer we will sing, live, maybe may
drink and mate and then die.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
In the fall.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Okay, it's hot cicada summer for everybody out there.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
That's so true for it.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Good cool Jess, Thank you so much for being on
our show.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Is there anything we can plug for you? A website,
a social media following? Where can our bananamals find sure?
Speaker 3 (49:18):
I am on Instagram at Jess MQ three or you
can find me at jessmqu dot com. Hopefully more on
my bat fact soon and some other con artist stuff
coming out. So yeah, all kinds of fun weird news.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
That's very exciting. I love I want to read the
bad article. Would you please hit us up and send
it to us when it comes out?
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Hell? Yeah, guys, we'll do.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Great talk with you. Say hi to everybody in Paris
for us please.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
I will thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
All right, enjoy Bananas. Bananas is an exactly right media production.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Our producer and engineer is Katie Levine.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
The catchy Bananas theme song was composed and performed by Kahon.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Artwork for Bananas was designed by Travis Millard and.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Our benevolent overlords are the Great Karen Kilgareff and Georgia
Hartstart
Speaker 2 (50:27):
And Lisa Maggott is our full human, not a robot
intern
Scott Are you ready, kurty B.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm ready to laugh and laugh and laugh here it
is Chechnya is banning music that's too fast or too slow.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
A very very medium episode of Bananas is coming your way.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
World, Understand your life, sillion pieces, banas, guys, gals down,
(00:45):
binary pals. Welcome to the Bananas Podcast. I am KERB Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Older, I am Banana Boy number two Scotty Landas. Thank
you for listening to the silliest little podcast there ever was.
We like recording. It doesn't matter if you're a day
one bananamal or this is your first episode. So glad
to have you.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I am standing right now, four years after the pandemic began,
with such actual wallpaper behind me that I finally finally
put up four years after I've needed it, after doing
countless hours of talking in front of a creepy wall
(01:22):
that looked like I was being held a hostage in
my basement.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Death yes true, but now it looks like British Columbia
and all its majesty is right behind you and right
behind me.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's where I podcast from. I'm so excited. Let's get
right into our guests.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
We have a cool guest today.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Hey, we do Our guest today is an author, journalist,
and editor. In addition to the thousands of articles that
she's written for places like The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, the Nation, places you we
rarely visit for this guest real places. Her first book, Americanon,
was just recommend by The New York Times as a
(02:01):
must read paperback, and her new audiobook and ebook, Nazi Hunting,
a Love Story, is available right now through Ever And
please welcome the delightful Jess mc hugh.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I guess so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
How are you. I'm excellent, glad to have you because
you're in Paris, France. That is right, and you made
time for us.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I do my best.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Thank you. I like it.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
This is I don't know why, but Scotty has some
some setting on his zoom where thumbs up continually pop up.
I was wondering what that was.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, different things that happen and I don't understand, but.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It always seems accidental. No, you can't trigger them purposefully.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Whenever you try say I I think this.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Is what AI is, I retire a lot of positive affirmation.
So good.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
They're just going to keep coming. Uh, Jess, you we are.
I'm so excited to have an actual journalist on the
podcast because this we celebrate journalists here at Bananas, and
our podcast would not be possible without them. But we
rarely get a chance to actually talk in depth with
a real live journalist.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh, I feel so special.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
You should.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
We will if you can send us her address, you
will send her a post.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I'll show up to her house. Yeah. No, I will
send her a post call to be like Jess is
just doing. We wanted you to know that. Banana Boy
number two, can you tell us about the story of
Nazi hunting, a love story which is totally bananas. I
listened to it last night. It's a great listen.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Thanks, thanks so much. Yeah, it's a pretty banana's listen. Basically,
the story is young German Girl and this is a
true story. Young German girl in nineteen sixties Paris falls
in love with a French Jewish boy and they meet
on a on a metro and like a subway, and
they decide to get married, and of course, what do
(04:07):
they do. They then decide to become freelance Nazi hunters
and they spend the next forty years together hunting down
Nazis in South America and Europe and throwing them in
the trunk of their car at one point, which seems
completely wild. So yeah, that's that's Nazi hunting.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Oh my, this is a hot take. But I do
not like Nazis.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
That is the one thing Bananas Bananas has a firm
stance on this that we say no to Nazis.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
We like to get that the old ones, we don't
like the neo ones. We don't like anything in between.
We are anti Nazi on this podcast and very proudly.
But it is crazy. When I was listening to your book,
the thing that struck me the most is how many
of these former uh like high Nazi generals were just
in France. Like I always thought they were going to
(04:57):
be in Bolivia or be in Peru or Argent and
then it was like, no, they're just right there, crazy
four miles away.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, it was wild. I mean, so many of them
basically just moved back to the towns. So the ones
who worked in France during the German occupation just moved
back to whatever town they were in in Cologne or
wherever in Germany. So like, for instance, for one of
the top rest Nazis Kurt Lishka, who they were looking for.
They literally found him by calling information and were like, hey,
(05:25):
do you have a Kurt Lushka in the phone book
and the woman said.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yep, crazy Kurt.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, that's where Kurt was.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
We got HP.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So, I mean, like, didn't the people in that town
know this person from the occupation and no one was
just like, no, you're a Nazi, you can't live here.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I mean, it's pretty wild. I just think, you know,
the way that human brains operated is such that sometimes
we have to come up with some sort of excuse
as to why this can't be the case. So I
think people assumed, well, if he's living freely, whatever he
did can't have been that bad, which was not the case.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
WHOA, that is so crazy. So how many Nazis did
they actually end up bringing.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
To justice hard to say a tally, because it was
you know, over the course of many years they found
you know, French collaborators, German ss I'd say, you know,
all told the people who they brought to justice were
responsible for the deaths of like upwards of one hundred
and fifty thousand people, So a lot of a lot
(06:29):
of a lot of top brass over the years.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Good. Yeah, yeah, shake them down, That's what I said.
Oh yeah, go get them all. Yeah, it's a nightmare.
I also have to say, and this is like I
do listen to a lot of audio books, and yours
is on an app called Everand, which I downloaded for this.
But I thought the woman who read it, who narrated
(06:54):
the story, Hope new House. I just wanted to say
her name because she's very good.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
She's so good.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Find the she's good, right, and she did.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I actually sent her a message a few weeks ago
when I first came out, because it is so hard
to pronounce all of those ss names. I was just
flubbing my way through it when I was interviewing people
in French and I was trying to do the German
name with a French accent. So I don't know how
she did the French words and the German words and
the English of course. So I was very impressed.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I knew Kurt. We talked about this once years ago.
I was in New York with my cousin Emon and
he's like, Hey, do you want to go this gallery show?
And I was like sure, And it was his two
German friends Greg Gore and Julia and they had learned
English in India. So these were German citizens who learned
English and idiots, so German accent, Indian accent English, but.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Also with like a British accent on because that's how
they learned the Indians learning English.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, yes, and so they were like, h I can't,
I can't do it. But it was something belong the
lines of we were gonna go get drinks, we were
gonna go get some cocktails. And he was like, Scotty,
would you like to get cocktails? And I was like,
if this is gonna be all night, I'm gonna need
multiple cocktails by the end. It just sounded totally normal.
(08:14):
But so yeah, she hope new House did a great
job of all the French pronunciations, the German pronunciations. It
was It's excellent. Everybody should download and listen to it.
And it's it was shorter. It's about two hours of listening,
so it's like perfect for you. You know, I did
a little work out, I did the dishes. I had
a great time.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, perfect amount of time.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Do you want to hear about this some strange news?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I would love to hear about some strange news.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
So I did start off I'm gonna do a bait
and switch. I did start off with this checking his
banning music that's too faster, too slow, But when you
get into the details of it, it's pretty upset, so
funny at all. It's essentially Russia being really awful to
Chechenian people, and so I'm just gonna you can look
(09:09):
that up. You definitely should look it up. But they
are banning music that's between eighty and all music has
to between eighty and one hundred and thirteen bpms, which
is essentially a way to control information coming in and
out of the country, gotcha, and to keep gay people
from dancing as well. It seems.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I think adulthood begins when you enjoy sitting at concerts.
I think that is when you become an actual adult,
when you go I'm glad we sat that.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I just saw Bruce Springsteen and we stood the whole time.
But there was actually no I didn't stand the whole
time because for Bruce Springsteen, it's a three and a
half hour long show, and there's long. There's certain parts
where you're just like, I've never heard this song before,
and so you like take a seat, and so you
sit down, like, no matter how much Bruce Springsteen, there's
(09:59):
certain songs you don't you won't know because he's just like,
I'm pulling this one out butt at. This is during
the encore, So they do, they do their ending song,
they leave, he comes back encore. It's Born to Run.
It's the song that made Bruce Bringsy famous. Everybody knows
Born to Run, and everybody's going crazy. All the lights
(10:19):
are up so that everybody can sing along. And the
dude directly in front of me is just on his
phone reading the Wall Street Journals, sitting There's video of
it on my Instagram if you go. But it's just
like the whole place is losing their bad and then
panned out guy on his phone Wall Street journal looking
(10:42):
looking for an article to read, scrolling through articles, just
like what am I going to get into on the
WSJ Okay. I also didn't want to start with this
because I was like, we're having a real That's why
I started with the chech journalist story else wherever a
real journalist.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
If I out with.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
If I start with remember Laala, the penguin who loves
to shop, She's gonna just get off the line.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
I'm so sorry. I actually had an urgent journalist emergency.
I need to get to.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Uh yeah, but this is awesome. This article is truly fantastic.
The video is the best part of it, and we
will post the video on our Instagram. But it is
Remember Lala, the penguin who loves shop. This is sent
in by someone. This is their first article they've ever
sent into our Instagram, The Bananas Podcast, Jos Jos. Thank
(11:41):
you Jos for sending this in.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So this is.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
This was on News eighteen, which I believed is an
Indian I believe it's an Indian channel because I think
all of this has been translated. They talk about what
penguins are in the beginning and okay, yet a Japanese
(12:09):
family supported this unusual choice to keep a penguin at
home and decided to keep one of these beloved creatures
as their pet. Their unique decision caught Oh this is
written by buzz staff. By the way, Oh they're good,
Yeah good, They're best in the business. Their unique decision
caught global attention, and journalists worldwide wanted to interview the family.
In the nineties, Real TV got the opportunity to make
(12:31):
a documentary about the penguin named Lalla, who lived in
a small Japanese village, shot in nineteen ninety six, when
the creature was approximately ten years old. The documentary shed
light on as I'm reading this is crazy, guys, this
has never happened before. As I'm reading, a video popped
up in the space where my eyes were looking. I
(12:54):
don't think that's like, it wasn't in the corner where
it usually pops up. And now I go back and
it's gone, oh, this is so creepy, all right. On
the lifestyle of Lalla, the king penguin, who enjoyed living
in a comfortable home with air conditioned room, freely wandering
the streets of his town and eating his favorite fish.
(13:15):
The footage this video keeps popping up, so I'll just
talk about it. I've seen the video, Like all it
is is an article describing a video that we're gonna post.
It is a king penguin, so that's kind of like
an emperor penguin. They're really tall, they're probably like come
up to almost like your waist. And he just like
is in a room and then this Japanese woman opens
(13:36):
the door, sliding glass door and he like waddles out
and then she puts a backpack on him that's a
pengu backpack. That's a penguin. So he has a penguin
backpack on a penguin and then she like ties it
so it can't fall off. And then he just walks
from their house into town, which seems like it's like,
(13:58):
I don't know, like fifteen to twenty minute wattle for him. Yeah,
and it's a wattle street. It's a long wattle. He
goes into a fish store by him, say, he's all
by himself the whole time. They give him a fish,
he eats it. Then they get put another fish in
a plastic bag, put it in his backpack, and then
he just like wattles home. On the way, he sees
(14:21):
someone like washing the street down with a hose and
like makes a noise and then the guy just like
sprays him down and he like has fun with it
and then walks back. They take the fish and he
gets to eat the second fish when he gets home.
And it is this it's very reminiscent of the penguins
who were going to the sushi store in New Zealand.
(14:41):
We did a long time ago, but I've never seen
anything like it. It's a delightful video. I'm talking about
it just so we can show.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
You the video.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I love this. I want to know what kind of
currency he's exchanging for these fish, Like, is I he?
Is he going back? Does he have bigger deals? He's due?
You know, what's the long term? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Apparently I think they put money in his little backpack,
in his little penguin backpack. And also apparently this was
an injured penguin that they found.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Oh my gosh, it's the cutest thing I ever heard
I know.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
But also they don't say how they found it or
where they found it. Is definitely a penguin who lives
in the antarctict.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah, he's being held hostage by these people and put
into a penguin backpack.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Is the dark, Yeah, in a very hot and humid town.
It seems like I hope Laala was happy. Lala died
in nineteen ninety eight, so just two years after the video,
but it's been It's a pretty great video and we'll
post it now.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Give them this context. I like to think that Lala
is really harried and like being forced to wattle these
fifteen minutes to get the one fucking fish and come back.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Oh God, I hear that narrative.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, this is my dark journalist to instinct here, this
is what happened.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Will enjoy food more than humans? Do you think that
La la eating that first fish? It is the absolute
pinnacle of everything.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
It must be right, Like, I mean, I had a
Labrador Retriever and those I mean all dogs of food,
but Labrador is more than any dog.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
It's like the best thing that's ever happened. And this
dog would eat the same food every day and it
would be like so excited, eat it in two seconds,
just so so I think.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So yeah, my friend Reggie's sort of that way to
know that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
But also when I like, if I'm making a turkey sandwich,
for instance, Zelda will sit down and wait patiently, and
then I'll throw a little piece and she will eat,
She'll swap, She'll chomp it and swallow it with such
speed that I'm positive it did not there was no tasting.
Thing is the joy is the simple joy of it
(17:07):
going into the stomach, because there's no tasting. I feel
like with most dog eating you might be right.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I just I just feel like you can train animals
with food. But maybe it's maybe us too. Maybe it's
just the benefit of being in society where food is
readily available. It's we've changed our what the high water
mark has shifted for us?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Oh, this is something that I've been trying to figure
out how to talk about and stand up. But like
when does our brains and bodies, Like our brains are
so evolutionarily based that like when do they catch When
does our brain and body catch up with the refrigerator?
Like instead of instead of like when you eat a big, big,
heavy meal, your body's like we might not eat again
(17:53):
for we know, we don't know when food will come.
We got to make it all into fat, and it's
like there's a frigerator, Like when do we brains catch
up with that where it's like when you eat a
big meal, it's just like I got a lot of calories.
You get's like you're on coke or something. You can
just like throw a car or something like you should
just have I got so many calories, I couldn't do anything.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I feel like we need another ten thousand years.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
That's true. Just when you're writing so for something like
Nazi hunting, you know there's some real heaviness to these
stories and a lot of you know, there are a
lot of people dying and you and there's a lot
of writing about people getting sent to Auschwitz. And like,
when you're writing something heavy or any story, do you
take breaks for yourself to get away? And what do
(18:40):
you do when you do that?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Good question? I mean, much like La La de Penguin,
I'm very food treat oriented, so I did take Like
I live in Paris, so I would go to a
cafe a have some wine, have some cheese. Because it
was a pretty brutal, it was a pretty brutal research process.
I've spent about six weeks in the the Holocaust world
here in Paris and the archives, which is amazing to
(19:04):
be with the primary stores documents, but it's it's tough
to kind of do all the time. But in terms
of breaks, I mean, I'm a nerd. I've always been
a nerd, So like I like to read in my
free time, I love to knit. I was actually knit
a sweater for my friend's dog while I was writing
this story.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
There we go. Yeah, that's what I'm talking. That's the
real Stuff's a good break. You gotta take a you
gotta take a mental health break to go like this
is dark. I need a little bit of an escape.
Yeah all right, Well I only wondered because this story
talking about food. Alex Hartley sent this in and it's
just about another legendary artist who took little breaks. Legendary
(19:44):
tenor Luciano Pavati used to keep secret cachets of pasta
on the side of the stage. Trust me, I was
all in time. This was sent yeah by Alex Hartley
sent this in. This was in the Selma Sun, but
it was in time of times of New India everywhere
and they all had the same writer. By celebritainment, celebritainment
(20:09):
and not like a specific celebrityment, just.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It mentor.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
She's good, she is now. I tested.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I took classes at Yelle from professors celebrity.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
She taught me everything I know.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, best in the biz. The late rip Luciano Pavati
used to keep secret cachets of pasta on the side
of the stage so he could snack between his songs.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I'm surprised he's not still alive.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Shocking.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I don't know what kind of pasta.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yes, the legendary tenor who died of cancer in two
thousand and one. I would have guessed twenty twelve. I mean,
that's just I'm not up on my tenor it was
like me neither. He was aged seventy one, had an
insatiable appetite and insisted on having food tucked out of
sight from the audience so he could indulge his hunger
during concerts. I sold this, I do love it.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Is there a chance these were like four hour long performances.
There is a slight chance that's true.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Sure, And he is hitting some notes. So that guy needs,
you know, you need, you need some wood in that
stove to keep it burning. Sources told the New York
Post newspaper Page six column that during a backstage tour
of the Metropolitan Opera House, director Peter Gelb told guests
quote Pavatti, who had an insatiable appetite, kept secret cash
us of his favorite pasta in the wings, just the
(21:33):
same thing we've said four or five times, so that
he could wander off stage between songs and have a snack.
The director was giving a tour Friends Society for the
Friends of Society Grand Dame of Grand Dame Barbara Toburt,
who is set to be honored blah blah blah. Back
in nineteen seventy six, Pavaratti told reporters how he had
(21:57):
gone on a diet with the help of his medical
staff in Modina. That it allowed him to have only
eighteen hundred calories a day, and that included just sixty
grams of pasta. That must be tough.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I'm trying to picture what sixty grams of past even
looks like.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, it's sixty little baggies.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
All poured together.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
He noted to The New York Times at the time
that that is one sixth of what he had normally
been eating. But I can't have everything, Pavarotti said, It's
just that everything. Oh, I can have everything, It's just
that everything now must be little. The Italian opersoner also
spoke of how much he loved eating. He said, one
of the very best things about life is the way
(22:46):
we must regularly stop whatever it is we're doing, a
devote our attention to eating.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
I agree, amen, I'm still now. The way that it's
presented makes me feel like there was specific police in
the theater, in the opera house that this was being capped.
I like to think it was in like a little
inlay and a special, tiny, tiny sixty grand bowl.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Mm hmmm. And do you ever think there was a
time where like a spaghetti noodle was too long and
the music was coming back, slurping it up, and he's
like stalling and he's slurping and his bow tie spinning
and his face is turning red. Also, the way that
the article.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Is written, it says so that he could wander off
the stage, which is such a funny way. He's singing
and they're like, wait, wait, where is he going. He's
just slowly sliding over to the side of the midding
no while singing. Yeah, there used to be I remember
when when we did the Aspen US Arts Comedy Festival.
(23:47):
It was with big comedy Festival that HBO put on
an Aspen. I don't know what year with this was
two thousand and five maybe four. They had, because Aspen's
so high up on the side of the stage on
every stage, they had oxygen tanks so that you could,
like if you got winded while you were performing, you
come and like hit it. And I remember this David Gorman,
(24:09):
this guy David Gorman who did an amazing, amazing one
man show. At a certain point he like used it
dramatically you just like hit like he was like making
points and then just grabbed it and sucked on it
for a little while and it was like such a
delightful little you know, work in work into Yeah. I
(24:30):
really just trailed off.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
With whatygen bar in Vegas because we all thought it
was stupid? And then I did it and I was like,
actually that was kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Really, and again, really, what is an oxygen bar?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Flavored oxygen? You put on masks that have a little
bit more oxygen than what's normally what we're normally breathing.
It's not even like that much more, maybe like five
percent more, but it just kind of gives you a
little energy rush, like yeah, like it chugged a Red
Bull or something good.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I've lived outside of America for t because this is
so to me.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Also, Vegas is in America. I mean Vegas is besides
the Miami Grill at the Walmart that pit balloons. It's
not US, it's not.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
But that one specific place is very US. Yeah, I'll
tease us into some thumbs up ex count let me see. Well,
I'm sorry to do another stupid one, but I can't
help it.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
It's a dumb podcast.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
It's a dumb podcast. TV outlet accidentally airs man's testicles
during solar eclipse coverage.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
I almost did this one too. This is if you
don't think this is Banana's news. One oh one, you've
lost your marbles is so good.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Sums ups.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I just want to give one myself thumbs up to Melissa.
I was at a bar with Alson Fields last night,
Curdie b I was a Capri club and a woman
named Melissa came over and she's a huge fan of
pod and very kindly introduced herself with is always cool
with me. I'm a writer. Nobody talks to me. Mss
Catherine is giving a mega thumbs up to our boy
Khan Azzadi, who wrote and performed our theme song for Bananas.
(26:12):
I would argue it's the best theme song in all
of podcasting. Miss Catherine says her seven year old son Hugo,
has been singing the Banana's theme song for days. He
said that the Banana's theme song is almost as good
as Fireball by Pitbull, which is the pinnacle of music.
To Hugo, son, you're the dude. Thank you so much.
(26:36):
Will is thumbsing himself up for his solo show in Edinburgh.
Tickets just went on sale last week. The show is
called Hi I'm Will and it's running August second through
the eleventh. So Bananimals. If you're going to Edinburgh Fringe
this year in August, go see a show called Hi
I'm Will and support another bananimal. That's a good one.
(26:58):
That's great burgh Two more quick gies. Chris Wiggle wants
to say yeah, he's a new Jersey guy I think,
wants to thumbs up his son who's graduating Cumloudy from
with a degree in sound recording technology. He has a
kick ass band, Kurt the Sun does in Buffalo called
(27:18):
Relentless Moisture, which I think we should name this episode
Relentless Done Done. And you can find them on Spotify
or YouTube. I mean, I'm gonna listen to Relentless Moisture.
And last, but not least relevant to our wonderful guest today,
Natalie Beale is thumbing herself up for finishing a first
(27:40):
draft of a novel. She says it will likely never
leave the drawards in and nobody will probably ever read it,
but she's proud of herself for cobbling it together and
finishing it with her own two hands.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Oh yeah, Natalie, Oh, that's wonderful. Thumbs up to all
our thumbs uppers today, and of course we are here
with wonderful Jess McHugh. You can get her ebook and
audiobook right now. Nazi hunting a love story through ever
and is it called everand or ever?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
And that's a great question, but I wish I had
the answer to I'm gonna say it's like a tomato
tomato thing.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Great, it's perfect, it's good answer. That's right. How many
stories do you have to work on it one time?
These days journalists do when you cover in four or
five things at one time, or do you get to
focus on one really big one.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
It depends. I like these kind of ultra long form
things because I work then I can work on just
one thing. But a lot of the time I'll do
is I'll do a silly thing and a dark thing
at the same time. So when I was writing this,
my kind of silly thing was I'm obsessed with bats,
and so I was writing along. But now I'm still
working on story about how awesome bats are.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
That's kind of therefore.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Yeah, and in France, actually this is pretty wild. There
is a bat police. I mean they're not just for
the bats, but they protect all why animals. And these
are fully armed police that go around prosecuting crimes against bats.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Whoa god, what is a crime against a bat? Like
swatting at it with a broom on the end of it.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
That would count room with a room without a sock.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
One of the biggest ones is that people will shoot
at bats for target practice for like paintball.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
What.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Oh yeah, that's cruel.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah, which is cool. There was an influencer who broke
into a bat cave. That's also a crime.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Oh, I can understand that. So what's your favorite back
bat fact?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
That it's so hard to choose? I can have a
whole podcast called.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Okay tell us tenat Facts.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
The first one that comes to mind is that bats
actually prolonged the Civil War because they're guano can be
used to turn into saltpeter, which is used to make bombs.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
That's their poop exactly, that's their boop.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Their poop makes bombs. And so there was this huge
cave I think in Texas during the war and they
were just collecting guano from it, and this is how
the Confederates were able to continue long after they did
not have the money for bombs or not bombs.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I guess crazy from that must be it must be
where you're like, you're that guy Tho's Texans or batshit
crazy like that. If that is true, I'm going to look.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
It up at Also, I feel like I should stick cannons,
not bombs, because it definitely wasn't bombs at the time.
It would have been some other kind of you know, warfare, explosive,
thank you, thank you. Yeah, that's a good one. Another
one I really love is that that formed their own daycare.
So like every year that's form these meeting these meeting
(30:49):
colonies and then these maternity colonies where it's all female
bats and each year one female will just kind of
like elect to be the nanny and will not have
a baby and we'll take care of the there wants babies.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
What That's cool And it's a choice. It's a choice
they think for that.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
I mean in so far as like evolutionarily, I think, yeah,
I don't. I don't know that the bat is like
my year to be the anti to these seventy batpups.
Bat babies are called pups, by the way. That's but yeah,
each year one kind of takes the takes the helm
of the daycare while the other moms go out and
hunt and eat bugs all night.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Bad facts, man, fascinating. What is the French word for bat?
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Oh my god, it's so much better than anything you
could ever hope for. It's which means bald mouse.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That is good man. I love a good bald mouse
zooming over my head.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Also, that is the main identifying thing about a bat.
You're always like, look at that, it's bald wigs, not
a mouse with wigs.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Bald. No, the French they have a higher beauty standard
than We're, like, dang, look at that ways over there,
They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it
is bold. This bird is bold. All right.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Well, speaking of bald, ah, here it is Mexican TV
outlet accidentally airs man's testicles during solar eclipse coverage.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
By Josh Bram. Thank you, Josh.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
This was good.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
You know, look, guys, do we look for articles not
in the New York Posts? We sure you do.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
We do.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
We find ones as snappily written, We don't, We really don't.
This was written by Ronnie Reyes. Thank you, Ronnie, so good.
Here's why, here's why we go to the post. This
eclipse coverage was nuts. I mean it's like thank you,
we're done, thank you, and good night.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
I always like to think of, like what was the
headline that the New York coos did not choose? Was like.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
They're like we can't. We simply can't. A Mexican news
outlet is garnering ridicule online because it accidentally aired a
man's testicles when presenting viewers submitted footage of Monday solar eclipse.
Fantastic RCG Media's twenty four to seven twenty four to
seven That's the Problem news program was covering the eclipse
(33:31):
when it's three anchors presented clips submitted by fans experiencing
the celestial phenomenon, only to fall prey to a well
known prank. In Latin America, the local La van Guardia
newspaper reported, as the male host was listing the cities
from where the eclipse could be enjoyed, the clips being
presented on the left side of the screen cut to
a man blocking on the some of his testicles and
(33:52):
the video is it's it's it's a it's crazy. It
is fully like you see legs coming into view and
then it just blocks out the sun. I mean, yeah,
there is there's no way anyone who was watching these
(34:13):
clips wasn't aware. It wasn't like subtly done. It was
very clearly what it was, and one of one of
the two female anchors could be heard gas van shock
while her male colleague carried on ignoring the obscene image.
The clip was quickly taken off the screen, with the
mail anchor explaining the clips were submitted by viewers, as
he admitted that the fervor to include fans experience can
(34:35):
lead to embarrassing situations for broadcasters. It is not uncommon
for people to share clips of a so called testicular
eclipse during a solar event. What I did not know
this is oh it started during the ninety twenty nineteen
eclips in Chile. Even Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee has
gotten in on the risk a gag, posting a similar
(34:57):
video on his Instagram. Just before taking it down, Mirror said,
you know.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
We've seen everything that guy's already got.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Say that already feels pretty up his alley regardless of
the eclipse.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Yeah, Tommy Lee, wait to inject yourself back into the news.
Cycle in the strangest way possible, in the.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Very strangest way.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Damn, that is so funny. I mean, yes, it's gross,
nobody wants to see it, but also hilarious, so stupid,
it's so dumb that it's like a trend down there.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Did anybody get to see either this or the last eclipse,
the partial one or the full one? Anybody?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
No, you can see anything over there. Yeah, it wasn't
over there now. Yeah, I watched it. I thought it
was cool. I got those glasses that you get from
the library, and I realized as I was looking at it,
I think the peak in LA was like eleven eleven
or eleven twelve am. It's pretty early. But I watched
it for probably an hour and about ten minutes into
(35:59):
like glancing up at it every now and then I
realized I'd never looked at the sun before, like you
stared at the sun. And those glasses I got, I
hope they were because apparently there was a spike in
Google searches within hours of the eclipse about eye damage,
like yeah, like a huge.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Course of course there was. I saw one tweet which
it was like ophthalmologist the well you're gonna need polarized
lenses if you're going to the beach. These glasses are
one hundred and twenty five dollars. Hey, here's two dollars.
Stare at the sunny.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Don't ask how they worked at it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
It was cool, Kurt, did you look at it?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I saw the one that happened a couple of months ago,
which was like a three quarters in La We went,
and I thought the most interesting thing about it was
that there was a tree, and so as it was happening,
like at the peak, the sun was coming through tree,
a tree and painting painting. That's how it does painting
shadows on the wall, and the shadows are all eclipse shadows,
(36:59):
which is fascinating and cool.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
I thought that was a I thought it was cool
that so many people got into a lot of my
friends like took their kids out of school to watch it,
Like it's great. I don't know. I'm glad we care
it all. To be honest, it's one hundred percent the
natural world is still interesting to a majority of people.
It's a huge victory.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Also, then it's like it's like everybody acknowledging that, like
that we're on a globe spinning in space. It's all round,
it's not flat, you know, it's just like, oh, thank goodness,
that's nice for all of us. Have you ever seen
an eclipse or any celestial event?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Chesso your mind out, I'm trying to think.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
I don't think so. I definitely looked at the sun
when I was a kid, though, but without those library glasses. No, no,
I'm still alive. I can still see.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
You're good, right, You're doing absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I know. I was just gonna say, I know that
you love the New York Post, and I have to
give you some credit because I use that as a
source from time to time. You can find, like some
good stories. I love to write about con artists. And
I found a couple absolutely batshit stuff that I first
found in the New York coast, like a Texas influencer
(38:10):
who's retreat I then went undercover at it was pretty.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Wild that Oh my god, that sounds fascinating.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
It was absolutely wild. So she her name is Brittany Dawn.
She her grift was that she was a fitness influencer,
like a bodybuilder, and she was selling three hundred dollars
a month fitness plans. Except it turns out all she
was doing was sending these automated like you've got this
babe text to these women that I had spent three hundred.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Dollars, which three hundred a month, a month, which.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
As we know, is how you get in shape. It
is with it. You've got this babe text.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
And that worked for me. Yeah, and so what Dad
said every day.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
What made it worse was that she was targeting women
who had eating disorders. And so some of the women
who eventually followed this complaint against her weigh like eighty
pounds by the end of this you know, fitness plan
that you had given them to lose weight. She decides
that she's now born again Christian, and she said, this
was my past life. It has nothing to do with
(39:15):
my current life, where where I am now running a
ministry for women. And so she has these like evangelical
all women's retreats that cost like between you know, five
hundred and two thousand dollars. And I convinced a the
Guardian to send me down there. We're in my little
(39:37):
crosseerings to see what was up about it. It was wild.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Wow, Oh my gosh, was it strange? Was there a
certain point where you were like, this is an alien
culture that I'll never or at a certain point where
you like, oh, I'm kind of like finding like connecting
with these women or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
I kind of had both, Like I get the appeal
of of evangelical I don't want to say I get
the appeal of culture, but I get the appeal of like,
you know, singing these beautiful little Christian rock songs and
you all feel like you're at a sleepover party together.
There's something fun about it and nice. But then as
(40:17):
soon as people started speaking in tongues and I saw
how a lot of people were wearing firearms, I'm not
quite sure. I can totally always.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
A scary combination the old speaking and tongues while wearing
a cao is not really you know, that doesn't make
it go. I'm gonna take no.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
And someone was talking about how there was like a
secular sorceress among us, and I was like, oh my god,
how did they know?
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Really? Yeah, Oh wow, that's such a cool put that
in your bio. I mean, the fact that that's not
the first thing on your Wikipedia is like secular sources.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Oh, it's so true. What am I I've been doing?
With my branding, my personal brand.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Let Scotty fix it please please, you got it?
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Come my way. I got some ideas. But that is
so funny. I went to a Curtin are both Catholic
school kids, and we had to get confirmed. I had
to go to like a confirmation camp for a weekend.
It was like forty eight hours. Yeah it was I
don't even remember. It must have been in Maryland somewhere.
But they were like, you know, just youth group stuff,
(41:28):
like team building stuff, like all just the most boring
crap ever, like some crafts, but then also teaching stuff.
And then they're like, who else could be a saint
that's alive today? And you're like, uh, I don't know.
After like mother Teresa, everybody just froze. Gary the guy
down the street, he fixed my bike for free. But
the funniest he told me, and this happened later too,
(41:49):
with this other retreat I had to go to is
the guy. The woman running it was named Trena. But
then there was like a guy that was like sort
of overseeing her. He might have been a deacon actually,
but he's leapt in his car the entire weekend because
he was so afraid of bugs and spiders. Wow, And
I remember thinking, like, you're a very religious person who
believes there's a creator and there's a path and all
(42:11):
these things. But then at the same time you're just like,
but I am not safe unless I'm sleeping in the
camera because the spiders could get to me here. It's
like say a prayer.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
But also I want to know why the spiders wouldn't
have access to the camri but they would have access
to other locales.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, spiders get places. That is so true.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
I also found out recently a disheartening fact that whenever
you know how you like, take a spider outside because
you don't want to kill it. Sure, if you take
a spider that you find in your home outside.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
They just die.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yes, I just learned this, But like, where are they living.
They're only living in the crevices in our kitchens forever.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
They're only house spiders.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
It's pretty cute, pretty cute cut Pixar call them up,
only house spiders.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Go ahead, Scott, he sends us all to do a
bug one.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
You know, we're on it. We're having a fun run.
Let's Creature Farm sent this in, which is a cool
name for an account. This was on CNN dot com.
And when you're talking bugs, you're talking Kate Golimbuski. Absolutely,
she just she types the stories that move our hearts.
Billions of cicadas are set to appear in a rare
(43:23):
double brewed emergence. Scientists say, where, Oh, great question. Luckily
if you Kurt, Kate Golumbuski has got us covered. Yes,
in a matter of weeks, they will dig their way
out from underground, red eyes shining, deafening songs filling the air.
(43:43):
It will be a confluence of creatures the likes of
which hasn't been seen in the United States since Thomas Frickin'
Jefferson was president.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Confluence of creatures is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah, give it up, and it won't happen again until
two two hundred and forty five. It's a rare emergency insects.
Some are referring to as cicada apocalypse.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
It is you always have to put apocalypse on it.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
You do you really do? Or gate? This is cicket
apocalypse gate. Billions with a bee of cicadas are set
to surface this spring. Has two different broods, one that
appears every thirteen years and another that appears every seventeen
years are going to simultaneously. Oh whoa, this is very cool.
(44:32):
They're also great. Also, my nephews pick them up and
throw them. They don't care, they're not afraid of them.
I'm like, yeah, it's very fascinating. One group that appears
every thirteen years known as Brood. I mean, it's known
as Brood nineteen. You would think it'd be Brood thirteen
if they come at third seventeen where I feel like.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
They could get a better name. They're only going to
be alive for what is it, a few days. Give
them a ruthless moisture kind of a band name or something.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
They are also referred to as the Great Southern Brood,
which is fine. That sounds like a band. Sounds like
a Leonard Skinner is the largest periodical cicada brood, stretching
across all of the southeastern United States. The Northern Illinois
Brood or Brood eight, which emerges every seventeen years, is
(45:27):
the ground.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Just if you just dig down into the dirt, are
you just gonna find cicadas everywhere that are just waiting.
I mean, it's so crazy that they lay eggs and
it takes thirteen years for the eggs to is that
it thirteen.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Or seventeen years. They emerged simultaneously, and it says that
there is something that triggers it, and it's in this article. Okay,
I'll get to that in just a second. It's a rare.
It's rare that we see the size of double brood emergencies.
Doctor Jonathan Larson, it's he's an extension entomologists and assistant
(46:01):
professor at University of Kentucky. We're talking about absolute oddity
of nature. One of America's coolest insects. I mean, this
is exciting because you know our listeners, we have tons
in the southeastern and the Illinois area. It's gonna be
crazy for y'all. I mean, have fun the spring and jogs.
Enjoy it. I'll skip ahead to some of the more
(46:24):
interesting stuff. So they follow different cycles in annual cicadas,
which don't actually have an annual life cycle, even though
you see them every summer. Yeah, the namser babies of
annual cicada spend two to five years underground, slowly growing
until they are ready to emerge this springs. Periodical cicadas
will make their appearance when soil temperatures eight inches deep
(46:47):
reach sixty four degrees fahrenheit, which is about eighteen degrees celsius. Okay.
Will likely happen in mid May, and the individual bugs,
as adult life cycles are just a few weeks, their
emergence will be slightly staggered, so there will be about
six weeks of billions of cicadas in the United States.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Wow, wow, wow, do you come back from Paris at all?
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Do the same?
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Just for that?
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Yeah, bring goggles in a net, Kurt. We're going to
be in the Midwest in May.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Oh yeah, that's exciting, mate, and the Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis
go get your tickets right now, close to selling out.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Run from the cicadas and into the comedy theater and
cheer for the banana boys. That month and a half
period will be jam packed with loud singing, mating, and
then dying sounds fun party like the most macabre Marty
Gral you've ever seen. Yes, this occurs every two hundred
and twenty one years when the thirteen year and seventeen
(47:49):
years circadas overlap. These two birds haven't been above ground
at the same time since eighteen oh three, and as
I said, they won't happen again until twenty two hundred
and forty five. There are other instances of cocurrences of cicadas.
Blah blah blah. If you live in an area with
cicada's making an appearance to spring, you can download a
community science app to help research or study these bugs.
(48:12):
The main thing we want people to do is know
they can go to Cicada Safari app, which is free
on the web, and all they have to do is
photograph whatever cicadas they see. That's it. These photographs are
sent to scientists who map where and when the cicadas
are merging, which is information vital to scientists studying how
climate change affects cicadas and predicting future scada activity. That is,
(48:33):
Cicada Safari app sounds fun.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, and I would encourage everyone to give a big
thumbs up in every photo of cicadas. Yes, it doesn't happen. Also,
we should declare it's hot cicada summer. We should all
decide that this summer we will sing, live, maybe may
drink and mate and then die.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
In the fall.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Okay, it's hot cicada summer for everybody out there.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
That's so true for it.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Good cool Jess, Thank you so much for being on
our show.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Is there anything we can plug for you? A website,
a social media following? Where can our bananamals find sure?
Speaker 3 (49:18):
I am on Instagram at Jess MQ three or you
can find me at jessmqu dot com. Hopefully more on
my bat fact soon and some other con artist stuff
coming out. So yeah, all kinds of fun weird news.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
That's very exciting. I love I want to read the
bad article. Would you please hit us up and send
it to us when it comes out?
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Hell? Yeah, guys, we'll do.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Great talk with you. Say hi to everybody in Paris
for us please.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
I will thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
All right, enjoy Bananas. Bananas is an exactly right media production.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Our producer and engineer is Katie Levine.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
The catchy Bananas theme song was composed and performed by Kahon.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Artwork for Bananas was designed by Travis Millard and.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Our benevolent overlords are the Great Karen Kilgareff and Georgia
Hartstart
Speaker 2 (50:27):
And Lisa Maggott is our full human, not a robot
intern
Host
Scotty Landes
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