Episode Transcription

00:00 America's at war, open your eyes people were at war with flesh eating worms. That's right. The US and Central America are trying to create a barrier to a completely eradicate a type of worm slash fly yeah. So next time you see an IRS rep say thank you for killing the work. That's what your tax dollars at work. 00:17 fighting the war on worms, the war, the war more or more. Anyway, so why you're giving money to the I R S? You can also give money to me by tickets to my shows this weekend. I'm in Oklahoma next week and I was Arizona and the rest of the month is the smoking hot life comedy tour with Shamah Marima. We're in Virginia and Massachusetts and then November. We've got some crazy fun tour dates, so I will probably be somewhere near you soon. Hopefully, that would be great. 00:46 so this is a podcast. It's a comedy podcast. We're going to laugh a whole lot and then maybe you're going to learn something stuff about screw worms. Yeah, like and subscribe and share it and or if you hate it, just keep quiet. Don't don't tell anybody except for the comments. Don't tell any 01:06 Here's the episode. 01:10 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of the great American warm wall? The great American what worm wall, the great American, I thought yeah, I thought you said worm wall, but I was like there's no way I heard great American worm wall. I don't know if that's what is actually called. It's like that's what is it a wall really called kind of because I don't want to do an episode about a wall of war. It's a metaphorical wall of worms, but it is, but it is a wall of worms okay. 01:40 I think I miss when we had an intro. You know we had music because we just go like just roll it. You know I mean we could get a little bumper. You know whatever yeah so this is it's funny. You get it. It helps in comedy. There's a rule of three. You have to do it the way we're going to understand the worm was if we start with understanding the worm 02:13 I'm sorry. 02:21 Okay. I hate you for that, that was good. All right, let's understand the worm. Okay, so there's a specific breed of worm called the screw worm. And the screw worm is called a screw worm because it kind of resembles a screw and because of its life cycle. So an adult screw worm looks like this fly. And they were, they're- This is a worm? This is an adult worm. So- 02:47 I say Pupate into the larvas. You pay yeah, that's the word I know, but I don't like that you used it okay, so they start out as one they pupate you pay into that, but the there I remember I Pupated that's the word. Yeah, you're right. It is your domin is so their flies are fairly large flies and they used to be like a lot. 03:14 in the United States. They used to be very, very common flies a deal with cicadas. What do you mean? What's they only come out every seven years? No, that's not true. They come out in force every seven years. It's their election year and I remember the freaking cicada olympia. What's happening every seven years? They're like yeah, I don't know exactly. I don't know the science, but here's my shot at it. I think there's a few breeds and I think there's certain breeds that come out every year, but then there's certain breeds. 03:42 that come out every seven years. What does that mean? They come out? Where do they come from? I think they're, where do they go in their caves? Are they the McRib? It's cut yeah, yeah, yeah, we're bringing up as are back. I mean, this was the year that they're aggressive. I remember yeah, twenty seventeen in Kansas City. Yeah, I was like oh my gosh dude. Yeah, I don't know why these cicadas because you walk outside and you're just like I it's almost like I like a like a noise machine. Yeah, well you walk outside and you're like I can't hear myself think right now. 04:11 it's so we don't have him in L. A. By the way, oh really, we didn't have him in Denver. It blew me away the first time I heard him. I love him. I genuinely I'm not kidding. I genuinely love sitting in back porch and you love hearing that yeah, I do. I really like the sound like it's it's relive like that. I can tell what year I was when I was a kid because I have those memories and I go that was two thousand three because you know the because the cicadas were out. Well, they're out every year. That's just how much are out 04:39 No, you can tell when they're out. Yeah, that's what I'm saying is like sometimes it's louder like yes. Yesterday, actually I walked back in the house and I told Brio's I was like cicadas are louder today than they've been all year because this year was supposed to be a big year for them, but here it hasn't been very big like is big been big south of us, but here it's been pretty average hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Yeah, it's usually the worst in August and September like through the fall. Interesting. Yeah, so because I remember anyway quite 05:09 basically what this says is that they hatch every seventeen years and it's because of predators. They hatch every seventeen years lately in thirteen thirteen there's some of them are thirteen some of our seventeen so they and so the but the brood will hatch and so that brood will hatch and a bunch of where they lay their eggs. Where are they at? I don't know whether I guessing in the dirt, but I think what happened for seventeen years. 05:34 Yeah, and then they come out and I think it's to avoid predators because they're like if we're only out once every seventeen years, it's hard. They can't get us. I don't know, but it says brood. So my guess is that they pinpointed all the broods. And so every seven years, like a brood is just like a pile of eggs. That's what I'm saying. What is cicada eggs look like? I have no idea. Well, that's not if only that's not what the episodes about. I didn't research this. Okay, well, I do like the sound. It's it's quaint to me. 06:04 It reminds me of summer. It feels like summer. The sound feels like summer to me to me and it's nice. I like sitting on the back and sample it and make a summer song to the drinking my sweet tea, researching cicada thirty three or one yeah and trying to figure out the mystery pre video. Wow, that's crazy. Okay, so screw worms. That is an adult screw arm. It's a fly 06:34 what the fly, this flies cub, so what what they do is they're native to like south America. Over the course of time, they've migrated into the Americas, okay, so they were really, really popular in North America for a long time, right. The way that they their life cycle goes is an adult screw arm will go and lay her eggs where she lays her eggs is in the wound of an animal, the open wound of 07:03 a live animal goes and finds an open wound drops a bunch of eggs in there. Those eggs hatch. You're going to like this part buckle up hatch and up to be a eat the flesh, so the eggs hatch and then they burrow in and they eat the flesh. They look like screws and so they screw in and they eat the flesh and they eat all the flesh around to get to all the nutrients that they need. Once they grow large enough, then they drop out of the body, dig into the dirt pupate, come out of full full, you paid yeah 07:32 And so obviously this is not healthy for animals. It happened when these were popular. A very common place that they burrowed was in deer because deer they would get in their fights with their horns, get wounds, and then they would burrow into the deer. That was really popular. Home sweet home. Another thing that was really popular was livestock. Livestock was constantly getting infected. For us. Yeah. 08:01 And then also people, sometimes it did happen to people. It was pretty rare, but it did happen to people. I just cut my whole arm off. Yeah, and it's dangerous because obviously it's a flesh eating parasite. So that's not good, but it also like, it leads to infections and all sorts of other health concerns. So it's not a good thing. The estimate is that in the early 50s, this was costing the United States $750 million a year, United States farmers, because it was killing cattle. 08:30 and or making that cattle not sellable when they killed it or took the I think if they got infected too they couldn't milk it because it was not safe for like human consumption. So the USDA was like this is the major problem we need to come up with a solution for this and so they started working on this and oh wait this is actually the 30s and actually I worry 08:58 No, I said fifties, but this was the thirties because there was a guy, a scientist by the name of Nippling Edward F. Canipling. I'm going to be honest with you. I read that and I'm pretty confident it's nippling, but every video I've read or listened to, the guy calls him the narrator calls him canipling, so I'm going to say that to to fit in with the crowd, but I'm pretty sure they're all wrong and it's nippling because the K is silent in a word like that. Usually 09:27 There's no there's no vowel after it's just K. And I don't know. Edward F. Nippling, he was a USDA entomologist in the 30s and he was tasked with figuring out this problem. Right. One thing he realized in his studies was the screw arm only made it once and then it would never made again for the rest of its life. That was this one shot at reproduction. And so he said if they're yeah, the fly. 09:56 and so they said if there was a way we could they call the fly the screw worm still. I actually am not sure once it becomes a fly. If they actually call it, if they change the name, I don't know. Okay, I mean maybe probably screw or fly screw fly. So the screw fly, he said if there was a way for us to sterilize these flies and mass, then they would basically make themselves out of existence because they only made once. And so if 10:26 one of them one side of that was sterile, then they wouldn't be able to reproduce anymore right, and so he started researching ways to sterilize flies and the complicated surgery a little and so the problem with that though was this was the thirty's and then the war happened, and so he went off to the war and had to do the war thing for a little bit and then the war thing the war ended and the war inspired him. 10:55 because at the end of the war, something happened, the atomic bomb, and he was like oh, we just bomb these. He's like, why don't we just drop a bomb on him? Have you ever nuking the flies? We thought about nuking him. No, he was like he's like wait a second. Well, I shouldn't say he said wait a second radiation. What happened is he saw the effect of everyone who survived the bomb and then he's like wait, radiation might be our solution, and so what he did is he got a friend 11:22 who had an x-ray machine. I shouldn't say friend, probably a colleague that had a lab with an x-ray. It wasn't just like his neighbor. I just go to my house. I got an x-ray machine in my basement. It's right next to the poker table and on Thursdays we do pool night. If you're a fan of billiards, you can come on over and my wife will cook us some. I don't know. She's been on a she's been on a Amish bread kick lately, so we might eat some of that yeah and 11:49 but if you're busy Thursdays on Fridays, we do x rays. We figure out what your bow is like. I don't know what your guys just slamming beers and going it got less fun when we saw that tumor. Yeah, that was a pretty disappointing guys night. Yeah, so we just put Gary down right then and there we made him walk. We just told him walk and not stop. We flushed him down the toilet. 12:19 We told his wife he went to the farm. 12:26 okay, so he found his friend who's got an x-ray machine all right and canipa leg and his friend. They start taking flies. I hate when I go to the dentist and they put that heavy blanket on you. Oh gosh yeah, that's that's a I was so they're gonna shoot me. I was on there to put it on me and they're gonna be like not bulletproof yet. Got out a layer, so they they start 12:54 taking flies and sitting them down in the X-ray machine and X-raying them, catching with chopsticks just yeah and then they start testing them to see if they're sterile there and so after a while they figure out it takes five passes through the X-ray machine to sterilize a fly and so like we've got our solution. How many passes through a machine does it take to sterilize a human? I mean probably a lot more than five because I mean flies are way smaller than how often I fly. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you think I don't. 13:24 I think the radiation there is probably a lot less Because if you think about it, 13:38 Yeah, it's for your protection. There's a lot of radiation. Yeah, I think the x-rays at the airport are just pretty crazy that we haven't figured out something else, though, you know? To x-ray you? I don't think that's kind of crazy. I think it is. Because it's light. I understand what it is. I'm just saying, I feel like we're at a point where science could probably figure out how to do it with less radiation. It did, though. It's x-rays. Right. 14:06 But I'm saying they could keep progress. I feel like they just stopped. 14:11 I I'm having a hard time with this. I'm saying yeah. I know what you're saying. I just don't understand why. I think that the thing is like there's not a reason we got it. We figured it out. No, we're still getting radiation every time we do it yeah, but it's such a small amount. It's the same amount that you get just from breathing outside yeah, and I think we should fix that too. 14:32 I mean yeah, I guess maybe we can try to be the same thing is like you're still eating micro plastics. Yeah, none of us should be eating microplastic. That's kind of the whole point. That's what I'm saying. I become radicalized where we should probably fix all these problems. I saw I saw a meme and it was like it. I my grandpa body full of lead, my dad body full of asbestos, me body full of microplastics and it's like they're all like doing that arm thing holding. We're all in this together, baby, 15:01 Anyways, so they basically figured out the dosage of radiation to give a fly to sterilize them. And so then he writes a paper and puts it out and it's like, hey, we need, I don't know, a few million dollars to breed a giant group of flies, sterilize them, and then release them to the wild to eradicate this. Right. And it was pretty widely criticized. There was a quote. I don't know if we could say this, but I'm going to say it and then maybe 15:31 Alex, you decide you decide if we should censor this or not. It was a quote. It was quote idiotic insect sex scheme was what they the critics were calling this because they were just going to sterilize a bunch of them and make a make. Where did you think we couldn't say in that idiotic? They were going to sterilize them out of excess right? 15:58 people thought it was a bad idea. People were like there's no they're going to dump a bunch of these into the world and expect that to work and so did they do this with mosquitoes as well? I'm pretty sure I read. I think I sent this to you. They might have because this was a I think we talked about this on our discord with the member, the patreon hang out thing where we talked about how they were trying to get rid of mosquitoes in California. Maybe I think this is what they did interesting yeah anyway. 16:30 If you've been watching for a minute and you like this show, Our patrons get a ton of perks for their support. 16:41 We do monthly hangouts. There's a way to get birthday messages on your birthday. There's a lot of great perks, but more than anything, you just help make sure that this show continues to happen forever. We never want to stop. We're going to keep doing this forever. If we have enough patrons supporters, we can put our brains in those little vats and have AI pretend it's us. And so we can keep doing it long after we die, but that only happens if you support us on Patreon. So we appreciate your support. Thanks for your help. If you don't want to support, that's totally fine. Thanks for being here. We really appreciate you watching the show. 17:13 he's campaigning for it. Some people think it's a bad idea to see certain people. They don't want us all to have kids. There's a lot of people who think is a bad idea, but he is eventually able to secure some funding for a test run in Florida, and so they put together or in not Florida. 17:34 car car carousel. Is that how you say that the island nation care? How did you get Florida from that? Well, how did you go? Not it's later in the story is like the story carousel. I jumped. I jump story, so caruso carousel carousel. That's how you pronounce it. I don't know Alex has it. Where are we time? It's an island nation in the Caribbean that has a bunch of Caribbean 18:03 it that has a bunch of screw or it's a smaller island nation. So like oh it's it's small enough. We could actually pull this off, so they go. They make a bunch of flies and you were like that's Florida. This happened. Okay, if I got some supporting for Florida, I mean gosh somewhere in the Caribbean. So what they did is they same thing put together a few million flies right and then they radiated them all and so they'd be sterilized and then they cooled them down. So they would basically be in like a chirogenic sleep. 18:32 and then they put these cool boxes into a plane and they flew over the island and they had a guy in the plane, dumped the boxes, and so that way all the flies would fall out of the boxes and the fall they would hit normal temperature and they'd wake up falling from the airplane, go down to the island, go down to the island and then mate. 18:56 with all of sure I got a mate right now, but all of the the flies in the I had a near death experience, maybe once you fall. Once you wake up falling out of a plane, he's realized life too short. Things in perspective and in in I need to become a family man now now and then you know the the start pay out. So here's a shot from that test. 19:23 of him inspecting some fly boxes. What year is this? This is in 51 when they did this initial test. And so they flew over and they did it and it worked. They are that within a few months of running these tests, the fly was completely eradicated from the island. OK, so imagine you go down there to count the flies, right? You're like, OK, let's see if we can. And you spend like a whole week, I haven't seen a single fly. We did it. Yeah, we did it. And you get. 19:50 Back to the airport, you're getting ready to fly back, you get in the little plane, they're doing the run up, doing pre-check stuff, and then in your plane is just a zzzz 20:14 no more, no more screw rooms here right. Sometimes I just look at the camera and I go you guys hear him right? Swimmingly what the heck? Where's your pipe? The test goes swimmingly idiot. I've just said through this and so the and that sells is something popping my neck right now. You change hats, Celsius, live fit, pop your neck, 20:41 Did you change your head and change my hat to make it seem like a different episode? I have a completely different shirt. I meant to change into the same shirt on different at same shirt, same at different hat, different at same shirt. Okay, same crap. So my manager says we need to post more about them. That's why I'm going to post a picture and just caption it. My manager says I have to post this 21:09 my manager keeps threatening me. So the Florida Cattlemen's Association, here's about this test sure and they were like hey, all of our cattle are dying from these screw worms and they're like. Can you please do this here and so they started campaigning the USDA yeah, they said er yes, I'm positive. I jumped ahead in the story early okay, fine. So they they campaign the USDA the USDA took him a few years, but in nine to fifty seven they're like fine. We'll do it for you and so they do a campaign to do this and 21:39 Florida and they work their way up and they basically create a line and so they they're pushing the border of screw arms from the the keys all the way up to the panhandle and then you're out of Florida and it works they in a matter of a couple years eradicate the screw arm from Florida. Wow. And so the USDA is like this is great and so they keep pushing that line and so they push it up to the south pushed across the west and they end up getting this the entire continental United States eradicated. 22:09 The problem is they have to maintain this eradication because they're still screw arms in Mexico right and so they have what they're doing at the time is they are flying over the entire Mexican border and they're dumping two hundred million sterile flies a week on the border to keep these flies from mating and then you know looks like if you just see like and so 22:35 This is how are they getting the flies that they're sterilizing? Oh, they've got a plant they're farming flies and so they've got a whole like internal ranch, an indoor ranch of where they're having the mate yeah and then they're pubating them yeah, so they have non sterile flies that they're using to create and then they're the ones that they're creating. They're sterilizing and then dropping them out of the plane. Science could get rid of mosquitoes. You know saying yeah 22:57 Well, the benefit is the I don't know about mosquitoes. I don't know how many times mosquitoes made in their life. The benefit of these is they made once and then you're done right. So the United States is like, hey, I think we're spending more money than we need to be spending on this. The US Mexico board is really big. Mexico's got that spot in the middle of Mexico. That's pretty thin, and so they call it Mexico and they're like, hey, you guys know these screw worms and they're like, yeah, screw those worms. They're like they're like, hey, 23:26 What if at least she didn't do what I thought you were like? What if we work together to get rid of them in Mexico and they're like what's the catch and it's just cheaper for us because it's thinner there and so we have a thinner border to run and then like okay cool and he's like in the US was like okay, let's do some math. How many cattle do you have on the north side of Mexico and like how much cattle do we have and so they basically figured out we're going to split the cost based on how much cows were saving her 23:55 And so the US was going to pay 80%. Mexico was going to pay 20%. And they moved the border down to that halfway point in Mexico where it's pretty thin. And so they ran that into the 80s doing the same thing, dumping flies less than they were before, but still dumping a lot of flies every single week. And then over time, Mexico was like, hey, but wait, we've got more country down there. Can't we just do this further down? And so year on year, it starts becoming a thing where 24:24 Mexico and the United States are calling every country further down the Central America and just like, Hey, you guys want to get rid of those flies? And then they're all starting to pour into this budget and moving that, that border down. And over the course of the 1900s, that line just keeps getting moved down and moved down and moved down and moved down until eventually it has reached the isthmus of Panama and it hit that point in 2001. 24:52 and so that's our barrier right now. There's a point in the middle of Panama where we're doing this and we do this to this day. There's an organization there called cope, which first of all cope, peg has probably the coolest logo out of any government organization. We stinking pretty sick, pretty sick. It's just a fly in a radiation symbol because we're radiating those flies out of existence. Yeah, no pubating here, no pubating here. Okay, 25:22 I just realized something, but I'm going to save it for the after the fiddle. I pulled a Mitch McConnell and so now copag in two thousand one. They built this big facility and this is their farm where they are creating all these flies is a prison for flies. Yeah, this is private fight fly prison and they are all it takes is two of them to get out though. You know saying I mean not. I mean 25:51 Yeah, but there is a ground game here and we'll talk about that in a second. What a ground game they they know that though you can't defeat a species like this just with the air attack. You got to go on the ground to yeah and you got to use mental warfare. They convince some of the flies that there were vampires in their area. Yeah, yeah, watch out. So the CIA did that. That's actually something the CIA tried to do is they convinced to yeah 26:20 We talked about that in an episode right in the M K. What episode was that M K ultra? Okay, yeah, you're right. We'll link it somewhere. It'd be cool if you could click that on the screen or something. Yeah, we're not going to do that. Alex put a note in, so I actually do it. Hey Alex, would you please take a note of that so that maybe we can remember to do that? Do you see how I talked to them like a person and you talk to them like like an AI assistant? He is an AI right Alex take so 26:48 They know that's not the right way to do it. Oh, you certainly sorry. So that I tell you, I was, I was looking up something. It was about our episodes. I was trying to create some threads or content for the stuff and it got one of the facts wrong. Okay. About one of the stories and I said, no, this is the real one. And then it goes, oh, you're right. And then it gave me the, the, the post again with the real facts and I was like, 27:14 did you just say that because I told you was wrong or did it was I actually right about that? I think it was no, you were right about that. I was like and trust. This is all interesting, you know, interesting. So copeg is here and they are producing inside that factory. These things have like a six day life span, so they don't live very long yeah, but every week they're producing around twenty million screw worms and then they're radiating them and four days a week. They take a flight 27:44 with a little over two million of them and they have a rigged plane. So this is them loading up flying the cockpit and then one of the things is actually opens and all of a sudden there's just freaking fly and ever flying all over. Gosh, Rick, that would be such a nightmare. And so what they do is they take a flight. There's a tech who mans the bomb bay doors and then there's the pilot and the tech opens up the doors and they fly over the ism of Panama and it's quite literally a wall. They just 28:13 they spend four hours flying back and forth, just slowly dropping these like rhythmically yeah to make sure that they really do create a wall of these worms to stop them from being able to mate past that line and then what they do with what's left over is they kind of have like a strategic reserve. Were they getting money for this 28:36 the United States, the USDA is paying for this. Wow! Well, I mean I should say flights a week. I shouldn't say just the USDA. It's like this whole North American consortium of nations. It's like we don't want this in our country sure and so so yes, what you're saying is we're paying for it. They to keep the flies out 29:00 build the wall pretty much. It's a worm wall, a worm, a worm wall, and so they're dropping a little over two million of these flies every couple over Panama every every couple days, and he's the grove next to the wall next to that area, the plane coming. Oh yeah, you come. They come to drop all the flies. The Atlantic has an article for this and I'm going to pull this real quick. I didn't pull this to 29:28 originally, but I am going to they did like a like a rendering of this for the article and I think it it's beautiful. Honestly, this is the Atlantic's rendering of what that would look like. Yeah, I mean that's a little bit more organized than it probably is, but they yeah. I don't think they're trained to fly in formation like well. What's interesting is because they because they basically freeze them, and so when they hit the air 29:56 they thought and then they wake up, so they're they're knocked out halfway through that flight and then they wake up and I'm sure they lose their minds and they like start flying really crazy. So if you were, if you were watching that you'd see him about halfway just falling and then all of a sudden they wake up and they start probably being pretty erratic on the way down. I have videos of this. I haven't seen any videos like of it cool happening maybe, but I didn't come across any and so 30:23 But here's the thing they're producing twenty million a week. They're only dropping eight to ten million a week and they don't live long. And so the question is what what are they doing with the other twenty million? Well, a portion of that goes back into the breeding to keep the population alive, right there, sterile population alive and then a portion of them they freeze and they put away for a rainy day because sometimes these outbreaks happen. So the Florida Keys 30:52 in the early 2000s had an outbreak of screwworms because there are some nations in the Caribbean and then South America especially is not part of this. They're still there. And so there are occasions where things get shipped from South America or they somehow make the jump from Cuba to the Keys and there's an outburst, what's the word I'm looking for? Outbreak? 31:20 of the screw worms and so they have to do something about it and so then they wake up their frozen soldiers. They're still frozen soldiers, come on and then they fly over. They drop the worms in that you think you figured out how to unfreeze Walt Disney's brain yet that's not actually there. You don't think so that's not actually there right. I sign court in the conditions 31:48 That's not actually well, I was interested because they're they're doing a new animatronic in Disneyland. Yeah, we're mr You know, mr. Lincoln is you have like an afternoon or get an encounter with mr Lincoln. Yeah, it's an animatronic of Abe Lincoln and all that stuff they're putting in a showing of an animatronic of waltz or waltz of Walt. Yeah, and 32:12 I don't think so many amatronic. I think it's gonna be in. I think they're bringing him back. You think they're putting his brain in a robot, the coolest comeback of twenty twenty five. If Disney was like hey, by the way, here's Disney, that would be pretty cool. I think we'll be alive when it happens. I doubt that's real, but then I mean, I guess there's a chance. I guess anything's possible. 32:37 but I don't that's. This is your little unbelief thing happening now. Is it as your little? Oh okay. Oh, you know what you're right sure you're right to be skeptical about the. I should do some source criticism. Why would they? Why would they do that? Why would they be like 32:51 oh the founder of our company dies episodes going swimmingly. Let's cut his head off and freeze it and bury it. Why? Who does that? Who says my boss just died? I'm going to cut his head off and freeze it and bury him. People whose boss told him to do that before we die. Dude, yeah, who's boss was like I'm going to create a village where people never have to leave all right and like honestly we're never going to let him leave and then when he dies like oh shoot. I guess we'll turn this in one of the other parks and call it Epcot, but the original idea 33:21 was pretty freaking terrifying. Yeah, maybe episode about that too. It's linked somewhere Alex, write it down. 33:31 Hey, you know what? 33:37 show sucks. You don't seem so stressed right now. I say the energy to the thing. This isn't a sponsored segment, but I tried yesterday. This is not sponsored. I hope not, but I hope that whatever you're about to say didn't was like hey bring this up after a controversial Disney bit. 34:00 Have you ever heard of odd job hats? 34:12 Oh, should I drink? What do you do to Celsius? You can't do to Celsius. That's gonna get a cups good for the day. Are you good? Oh, thinking about that's gonna give me the hiccups. Are you good? Can we proceed? I think so. Okay, so I dang it. No, I 34:38 No. Okay. So here's the thing. I yesterday I bought an ad I fell for an ad and it was the rise app. Have you ever heard of this? Does it help you wake up in the morning? Kind of. It's a sleep app. It is a sleep app but it's I don't think it's I mean I guess that's part of it. The concept is like you take a quiz and then you connect your Apple health data and it takes both of those to like deduce your peak melatonin production. 35:08 during that peak production, you'll sleep through the night and you're going to wake up at the time that you need to wake up or that like your time is your bed time is so mine said between ten forty eight and eleven fifteen. That was the window and says everyone's somewhere between a thirty minute and hour long window where you're at the peak production. If you go to sleep during that, then you're going to have the best of ever and I it I'll be honest could be placebo, but first night 35:37 Honestly, one of the best sleeps I've had in like months. And I did. I, it said, it said, wake up at six a.m. Is what it told me. It said, go to bed here, wake up here. And I actually woke up five 59 on my own before my alarm woke up. And I went on. So I actually, and I didn't wake up at all through the night and I feel great. I have noticed that, that you can, your body has like an internal alarm clock. Yeah. Your circadian rhythm. And while I'm saying like, if you set an alarm for six 30, your body, 36:06 well at six twenty five wake up yeah yeah your body knows it's really hard to do a podcast with the hiccups. I'm getting really frustrated over here, but I'm doing my best to stop pick up just stop just stop it. I was even thinking like okay. I'm going to try to intentionally hiccup into the microphone that'll make it not happen and then it happened so that sucks. Here we go. I'm going to really yeah Alex. You can just edit it out and it out his hiccups sensor on bleep him every time he hiccups 36:35 But anyways, what I'm saying is you should try it. It's pretty cool and it also tells you where your energy is throughout the day. So based on like your sleep, it's like here's your peak energy time. So it's like do all your important tasks because your energy is not going to be the highest right there. It's pretty cool. It's a good app. Anyways, we're not sponsored and if we were, we probably want to talk about a while. Jared has the hiccups. I'm trying so hard to get rid of them. Yeah, I can tell you are anyways, just keep hiccuping over there. I'll talk about Copac a little more. So they had this outbreak. 37:03 in the fort keys in the early two thousands you're falling apart. I'm trying so hard not to hiccup and it's real. It's really taking me off a hold your breath, hold your breath, pause, let me walk. Oh my gosh 37:24 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. Want to let you know real quick. We have an email list and it's not like a hey, we're going to send you our merch and new episodes all the time. We actually give you updates on these stories as we find out about them. So a lot of our episodes we've done a couple years ago now have updates or that the person the top was about passed away or was caught by the police or whatever updates we can find on episodes that we've done. We want to let you know about it so that our episodes just aren't 37:52 you know out there out of date. It's really fun way to keep learning new information and then every once in a while we let you know about new events coming up or new episodes and it's just a way to help us keep spreading the show. Join that email list. You can text till into six six eight six six or there's a link in the description of this episode or you can just go to till and dot com. It's very easy to join this email list. It's everywhere. It's actually really hard to not join it so 38:25 So in the early 2000s, they popped back up in the Florida Keys. Right. And they took that extra surplus that they had and flew over and dropped them and re-eradicated them. And this happens every so often where throughout Central America, North America, the Caribbean, where there will be these little outbreaks and they'll fly over, re-eradicate them to keep the screwworms out of our lives. Okay. But this isn't. 38:51 the worm wall by itself isn't quite enough. You need the ground game. I mentioned that earlier. So there's actually a group of people in Panama that work for Copac that travel around that area in Panama, the isthmus of Panama, and they will traps. Well, what they do is they travel around by horse, boat and motorcycle, and they go from farm to farm. And depending on your risk area, 39:18 you're like risk rating. They come either every month, every four months or once a year and they swing in and they expect inspect your farm, inspect all your animals and if you have any animals with wounds, they had this like special paint that they paint on the wound and that paint will kill the screw arms and so okay. This is kind of like their extra layer defense to make sure like if the wall from the sky isn't working, we're gonna right. We're gonna do this if the firmament 39:48 isn't working that we're going to do this extra thing to dome the dome. Yeah, the iron dome, the yeah, if that's not working, then we will eradicate him this way. So at the end of the day, the USDA spends fifteen million dollars a year on this project. That's you and I, we pay for that. Yeah, we pay tax dollars with their what our tax dollars, our tax dollars dropping bombs basically of worms every single week. 40:16 somewhere in the ballpark of eight to fifteen million worms in panama every single week. Don't look at it like that. 40:29 you're going to give it back to to make the worms mate, so that way the worms can't kill our cows, but they estimate that today the saves the United States one point three billion dollars a year for sure. So the fifteen million is totally worth right 40:54 And it also makes that's the problem. Yeah, a lot of people who are like I want my tax dollars to go to this stuff. It's like you're not understanding what it would cost for us not to have this in place. Yeah, there's certain things where it's like yeah, the cost is it does it. Yeah, it's like oh yeah, fifteen million easy. I would pay that every day if it means I'm saving one point three billion and I say that as if I pay extra money for first class because I don't want to sit next to the poor. I'm saying the experience of sitting next to a poor person. Yeah, 41:24 is costs me more yeah than the money that you know saying yeah yeah it's it's kind of like a texas roadhouse. I pay extra for the loaded baked potato because I don't want the experience of eating a baked potato with nothing in it and I pay extra to not sit next to someone who goes to Texas 41:46 Do you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? You know what I mean by that there is never mind, never mind, never mind. Are you poor? Stay away from me. Yeah, so that is the great, the great North American worm wall. It protects us from what's honestly kind of the nastiest worm I've ever heard of. 42:10 because this really this could burrow into you if stop don't if why are you fear mongering in here? This could get you this can get you. You know when your kid scrapes their knee, this could get them. This could get your kid, but we give the USDA fifteen million dollars a year in our tax revenues to make sure that that can't happen. So next time you see an I R S million dollars here next time you see an I R S employee, thank them for killing the screw worms. Thanks for killing those worms. 42:41 can you imagine? Thanks for killing the worms. Can you imagine getting audited? I hope that your house. I hope that this comes up in the next presidential debate. Hey, there's I don't really have a question. I just really want to say thank you for your service in killing the worms, killing the worms. Excuse me. I thought that's what the wall was. That's what you were doing the wall, right? The worm wall, 43:11 Yeah, so it's not a physical wall of worms. It's kind of like a metaphysical wall of worms, but it is physical at the same time. You know what I'm saying? Worms. I think it would be sweet if we did make a lot of worms, but that's not what we're doing. Because imagine. 43:28 When do they freeze them pretty quickly, so like they they they pubate. So what's actually kind of nasty is in this facility here. They kind of have their breeding ground and then the worms will what they they put the eggs and some meat, so they get like and stuff and they put them in there. They grow and then they pubate and throughout the facility they have to set the temperature at different temperatures. So like in that room it's a hundred and two degrees to simulate the temperature of a body that they've infected 43:57 and then just just meet sitting in a hundred and two yeah yeah. Apparently it smells really bad in there. Oh you don't say and then they go like and then they move them to a new room where then they radiate them and so it's like the radiation chamber. Imagine I mean to these flies. This is their alien encounter yeah. You know I put in some weird room with a bright light and the next thing I know I was falling asleep and then I woke up. I was falling in the sky 44:26 Yeah, that's exactly what happened. It is a crazy day for them for sure. I was trying to pubate. Do I just try to pubate next thing? I don't fall in from an airplane half frozen. I wish we saw an intro so we could have us saying just trying to pubate, you know, pubate, just throw it in the beginning. No context. So yeah, so that's the great American worm wall is they think the IRS next time you see him. Thanks for the kill in the worms. It's a very important thing, a little funny. 44:55 Thank you for killing the worms. You know, instead of thank you for being a friend. Yeah, that's a great, say it again. Thank you for killing the worms. Cool, good point to fiddle off, fiddle it off. 45:12 Hey, thanks for checking out that episode of Things I Learned Last Night. And speaking of governments versus wildlife, we have an episode about the Great Emu War. Again, one of my favorite episodes. The Australian government was trying to defeat an infestation of emus. Turns out emus are pretty smart and outsmarted military maneuvers. Pretty wild stuff. So if you can't wait for another episode, go watch some old ones. Or you can watch next week's episode right now by joining us on Patreon. 45:39 You get next week's episode right now ad free. That's audio and video, whichever way you want to watch that or consume that media, whatever that is. However, you also get access to our discord immediately, so you get to chat with us and hang out there. Thank you so much for supporting our show. It really does mean a lot to you that you are here for these episodes, so we'll see you next week on things are on a site.