Seirian Sumner (behavioral ecologist on wasps)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Experts.

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] I'm joined Across the Pond by Monica Pladman.

[3] Hi, Wasp, boy.

[4] We have a cool guest today, Sarian Sumner.

[5] Sarian is an entomologist and behavioral ecologist.

[6] She is an expert on wasps.

[7] She has an incredible new book called Endless Forms, The Secret World of Wasps.

[8] And in a nutshell, she's on a publicity tour to rebrand the wasp.

[9] Yeah, and we got to learn a lot about wasps.

[10] And I'll be honest, I went in skeptical because I don't like bugs.

[11] Mm -hmm, especially ones that sting you.

[12] Yeah.

[13] You're not fond of those in particular.

[14] No, but she had some compelling points.

[15] She did.

[16] They're really vital for our ecosystem.

[17] And she did a great job rebranding.

[18] For me, I now like them.

[19] And as we will hear about in this episode, I've had a very traumatic experience with a wasp.

[20] You have.

[21] So if she convinced me, then by God, she's doing her job.

[22] Please enjoy Sarian Sumner.

[23] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[24] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[25] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[26] He's an armchair expert.

[27] He's an option expert.

[28] How are you?

[29] I'm all right.

[30] How are you?

[31] So good.

[32] Good.

[33] Am I saying it correctly when I say Syrian?

[34] Serian.

[35] Serian.

[36] I need the etymology of that name.

[37] Where does that come from?

[38] It's Welsh.

[39] So I'm from Wales and it means sparkling in the translation to English.

[40] Sparkling.

[41] Well, you're already delivering on the promise.

[42] Well, I'm not sure about that.

[43] It's quite late here now.

[44] Who did we?

[45] Oh, oh, oh, Matthew.

[46] Matthew Reese.

[47] We interviewed him and he spoke in Welsh for us and we were just gobsmack.

[48] Well, I did learn Welsh at school, but my schoolgirl Welsh is not brilliant.

[49] We wouldn't know the difference.

[50] Did your parents speak Welsh in the home?

[51] No, no. My parents were English, which is why I sound really English.

[52] And I grew up in quite a tiny town on the west coast of Wales.

[53] So proper mid Wales, seven hours drive from London, you know, a long way from anywhere.

[54] And if your parents are English, then you'd be put in the English stream at school.

[55] And basically there'd be a bunch of classes in it.

[56] English and a bunch of classes in Welsh.

[57] And because I had English parents, even though I was born there, and they gave me a Welsh name, I was put in the English class.

[58] So all my friends were from parts of England, which is partly why I didn't pick up a Welsh accent.

[59] Well, what the hell were your parents doing in Wales if they were English?

[60] I know.

[61] It's crazy.

[62] So my dad was a university lecturer.

[63] He was a geographer.

[64] And he just happened to get a job lecturing in a geography department in the smallest university in the UK.

[65] which is in the middle of nowhere in Wales.

[66] And I think they only meant to move there for a couple of years.

[67] They moved there before my older brother was born.

[68] But they ended up staying 47 years or something.

[69] Oh, no kidding.

[70] It sounds very storybook in Ideal.

[71] Yeah.

[72] So the town where I spent most of my childhood was on the coast, and it was called Abereretron.

[73] And it's really pretty.

[74] All the houses are painted different colors.

[75] We live right on the harbour, and the boats were always clinking in the harbour.

[76] There's a tiny town, 1 ,500 people, but it had about 15 pubs.

[77] So it was quite a holiday destination for people.

[78] I want to go there.

[79] You should go there.

[80] That sounds perfect.

[81] Pretty, but drinking.

[82] Charming and lots of drinking.

[83] Yeah.

[84] Did you want to leave?

[85] Because sometimes these small, beautiful places, you're like, yeah, I get it.

[86] Where's the action?

[87] Yeah, I know.

[88] I definitely wanted to leave.

[89] I lived there in my entire school life, but as soon as I got the chance to go to university, I was out of there and I went to London.

[90] Yeah, and then now you've stayed here.

[91] Now your kids will go to Wales and you'll ping pong back and forth through eternity.

[92] I know.

[93] Now, where you grew up in Wales were wasps a plenty?

[94] Were they everywhere?

[95] Or did you have minimal interactions with wass?

[96] Because I have a personal story to share with you.

[97] You have an uphill battle just in general.

[98] You're trying to rebrand the wasp.

[99] You're trying to get people to embrace them.

[100] We just talked about this yesterday with the possum.

[101] There was a big movement to rebrand them because they're just so ugly.

[102] They're very ugly.

[103] And they look mean, but they're not mean.

[104] Yeah.

[105] But I'm going to say you have your work cut out for you with me specifically because of this very traumatic experience I had as a child.

[106] I'm going to share it with you now.

[107] Second grade, I was eight years old.

[108] We had a small entomology project where we had to catch a butterfly.

[109] We had to catch this and that.

[110] And then we stuck them to some styrofoam.

[111] and that was the project.

[112] And so you kind of had a hit list of what you were supposed to get.

[113] Well, I had not gotten a B. And so in front of my school, I discovered an enormous hive.

[114] Well, what I later found out was a was a was a mess.

[115] And I was A, and I got the whole thing in my net.

[116] I got the whole whatever that is called that the nest or the nest.

[117] The nest, yeah.

[118] And immediately realized that was a bad mistake because they started flying out everywhere.

[119] and then I dropped my net and I ran as fast as I could, but anyways, I got stung right under the eye.

[120] And so I go back into class and by, I don't know, 40 minutes later, I've got a pretty good size swelling on my eye.

[121] They call my mom.

[122] My mom's a single mother working afternoon shift at General Motors.

[123] She's like, how dire is this?

[124] We think he's fine.

[125] We'll send him home with a friend.

[126] Okay.

[127] They send me home with my best friend Clay Smaids.

[128] When my mother finally gets home, she comes downstairs into the living room.

[129] My little friend, an eight -year -old friend, put a wet wash. cloth over my face to soothe me and he was holding my hand and my mother thought oh this is the sweetest thing I've ever seen in my life and she said okay dax let's see what you got here and she pulled back the washcloth and I had no features it was so swelled up she said it was just flat skin from the sides of my cheeks across my nose my eyes swollen and she said maybe he put the cloth on because he didn't want to look at you maybe it didn't want to let me it was too scary Anyways, my mother rushes me to the hospital.

[130] I get the shot of adrenaline.

[131] They say shortly there after his throat would have probably close.

[132] And then, of course, I'm told I'm allergic to these things.

[133] They thought it was bees.

[134] I really think it was was was was was.

[135] There you go.

[136] That's my traumatic story.

[137] Oh, boy.

[138] I'm so sorry.

[139] But I'm pleased to know you too have been injured severely.

[140] That helps.

[141] To get to the bottom of what they were, though.

[142] Do you remember what the nests looked like?

[143] It was kind of long.

[144] football shape?

[145] No, that means soccer ball to you.

[146] It was oblong and kind of fat at the top, and it was in a bush?

[147] And was it covered up?

[148] Was it kind of like an envelope?

[149] You couldn't see any action inside.

[150] It just looked like a paper ball.

[151] Exactly, like a paper mache deal.

[152] So that's definitely a wasp nest.

[153] You've probably had a vespula, a yellow jacket, wasp nest.

[154] Okay.

[155] And you probably got a lot of stings, and that's a problem.

[156] That's the best way to develop an Anaphylactic shock.

[157] Okay, so before we march onward, here are the words in Michigan where I grew up.

[158] We'd say Hornet, we'd say Yellow Jacket, we'd say Wasp, we'd say Bee, Bumblebee.

[159] Tell me, are Hornets and Wasp the same things?

[160] What are we got here?

[161] Yeah, so Hornets are Wasps, and Yellow Jackets are Wasps.

[162] So Yellow Jacket is the American term used to describe, to use the Latin name, the Vespula Wasps.

[163] And they are called the Vespines.

[164] They include the Dolico Vespulers, which are the...

[165] these kind of longer -faced wasps.

[166] I think you call it the bald -faced hornet or something in America.

[167] But it's elegant.

[168] It's gracile.

[169] It's longer.

[170] Some people say a bit more scary looking, but I like elegant.

[171] We'll stick with elegance.

[172] So hornets and yellow jackets are basically cousins.

[173] They're very closely related.

[174] There's a bunch of different species of hornets.

[175] There's a bunch of different species of yellow jackets.

[176] And then there's these Dolica Vespulas, which are like the long -faced yellow jackets.

[177] But together, the Hornets, the Yellow Jackets and the Dolica Vespulas are called the Vespines and they all build these big paper nests.

[178] Sometimes inside tree trunks, so like the hornets will often be inside tree trunks, might be under the ground, might be in a bush, like your childhood nightmare or in your loft or your shed.

[179] But they're all called the Vespines, they're all highly social.

[180] They're a little bit like the honeybee of the wasp world.

[181] So everything that's amazing about honeybees, these vespine wasps also have it.

[182] Okay.

[183] We should be just as amazed about them as we are about honeybees.

[184] Great.

[185] So let's catch people up to speed on the bee rebranding.

[186] And I feel like this has happened in the last 20 years.

[187] We have a very popular news show here, 60 Minutes.

[188] I remember watching a dedicated two whole segments to clone collapse, how vital bees are for all agriculture, for all flowers, or all pollination.

[189] And, I think for us nationally, we're in a panic.

[190] Like, oh, gosh, bees are so important.

[191] We're losing them.

[192] What happens if we lose them?

[193] We must protect them.

[194] Was that a global phenomenon?

[195] Or was it here?

[196] Well, I think it was specifically very severe in the U .S. Because, to be frank, you guys work your bees really hard.

[197] Of course, we're hardworking people.

[198] You have hardworking bees.

[199] But the honeybees are very good pollinators for agriculture.

[200] And they basically get moved around the country, the U .S., in particular, to satisfy the growing season as the seasons change.

[201] So they basically shipped in these enormous trucks across the country.

[202] I think some people will have seen, yeah, you're driving on the road and you see a field and then you see huge stacks of wooden boxes.

[203] Yeah, that's right.

[204] When that growing season's over, they'll pack them up, put them on the truck, drive them north, catch the next bit of the season as their seasons move north.

[205] So honeybees can live quite happily in the tropics where there's no end to the colony cycle.

[206] So there's no winter diapause or winter hibernation period.

[207] How long can a bee live, an individual?

[208] Well, a honeybee queen can live for 20 years.

[209] Get out of here.

[210] I didn't know any insect lived for 20 years.

[211] Yeah, no, it's crazy, I know.

[212] But the workers only live for a few weeks.

[213] Sure, sure.

[214] And that's partly because the queen never leaves the colony.

[215] She is quite well protected and looked after.

[216] She's well fed. She's protected from disease.

[217] She's protected from small boys, trying to find wasps and bees, small boys and other predators.

[218] Whereas the workers are out foraging, they can get lost in rainstorms, they can get disease, they can get eaten by predators like wasps, for example.

[219] Sometimes you hear these cute anapomorphized titles like Queen, but in this case, this really does parallel.

[220] It's a metaphor for human life.

[221] Yeah, I mean, the workers and the soldiers and they're dying quicker and the Queen's up.

[222] there in the castle and she's fine and staying hydrated and living forever.

[223] They can live for 20 years.

[224] That's mind -boggling.

[225] Now, this shocked me when I was reading about you today.

[226] 99 % of wasps are not social.

[227] They don't live in colonies.

[228] Yeah, that's right.

[229] Yeah.

[230] So the insects that we think of as wasps are the yellow jackets and the hornets and the ones that bother us because they come into contact with us.

[231] And so we notice them.

[232] And actually, those vespine wasps, there's only about 70 species worldwide.

[233] And yet there are over 100 ,000 species of wasps that have been described by scientists.

[234] And there are probably 10 times that.

[235] Because wasps are so understudied.

[236] Wow.

[237] How is that compared to other insects species?

[238] That seems like a tremendous diversity.

[239] It is pretty mind -boggling.

[240] Just to put it in perspective, bees, which we think are amazing and fantastic.

[241] Jerry Seinfeld even made a movie.

[242] about them.

[243] Exactly.

[244] They're about 20 ,000 species of bees and there are about 13 ,000 species of ants.

[245] So that puts it in perspective.

[246] The only rival group are the beetles, which are about 350 ,000 described species.

[247] Oh my God.

[248] So everyone thinks beetles are the most specios of the insects.

[249] But actually, we suffer from beetle bias.

[250] Beetlemania.

[251] Yeah, beetlemania.

[252] Totally.

[253] We spot them, they're cute, they're bright, they're iridescent, they're gorgeous, they're big, really impressive things.

[254] And so we end up spotting them.

[255] The early naturalists, they saw beetles, they described beetles, they named beetles.

[256] And they carried on doing that, and wasps are kind of gone overlooked.

[257] I think I like about beetles, that's interesting.

[258] A, I watched a dung beetle do its thing in Africa.

[259] That was fascinating.

[260] I watched that for like an hour and a half, side note.

[261] But also the thing I learned was that the biomass of beetles, if you added up the wind, of every single beetle on planet Earth is greater than the biomass of humans, which seems absolutely impossible.

[262] It's an estimate.

[263] It's possible.

[264] I think probably when that estimate was made, there were a fewer humans on the planet.

[265] I think it was made in the 1960s, 70s.

[266] One of the reasons for that, though, is beetles can be very large, and so they have very large biomass.

[267] Having said that, they can also be very small.

[268] Bringing it back to wasps.

[269] Yes.

[270] Of those 100 ,000, only about 1 % are social wasps.

[271] But there are another 30 ,000 species, which are wasps that hunt and have stings just like the social wasps.

[272] And then the rest of the wasps, the other sort of 70 ,000, are parasitoid wasps, which most people don't even notice.

[273] They're often quite skinny -looking, fly -like things.

[274] They don't have a sting, so they don't really bother us.

[275] Sometimes they look quite impressive, and they have very long of repositors, which are these things that stick out their bums that look like stings.

[276] but they're actually just egg -laying sheets.

[277] They're ovipositors.

[278] These parasitoid wasps don't hunt in the same way that the stinging wasps do.

[279] Instead, they'll find some prey, a host, and then they'll use their ovipositor to lay an egg into or onto the caterpillar prey that they found.

[280] But they leave it in situ, and then they'll just leave.

[281] They'll just go away and find something else to parasitize.

[282] I loved your five interesting things that we should know about wasp, the virus sector.

[283] Is that different from that?

[284] or does that involve a sting?

[285] When they implant the egg and a virus, is that with that tube?

[286] Those are parasitoid wasps that do that.

[287] This is really fascinating.

[288] I was tempted to read it, but yes, hit us.

[289] Well, why didn't you read it?

[290] Because you might remember it better than I do.

[291] I've written a lot of words.

[292] I'll set it up.

[293] The virus vector.

[294] The virus suppresses the caterpillar's immune system, preventing it from attacking the wasp egg, Monica.

[295] I mean, this is advanced.

[296] This is what my immunosuppressant's doing against my arthritis.

[297] Okay.

[298] Okay, it also alters the saliva of the caterpillar that the immune systems of the plants they eat are suppressed, allowing the caterpillar to grow into a fatter, juicier meal for the wasp larva.

[299] Wow, that is advanced.

[300] Non -stinging parasitoid wasps can be farmed on an industrial scale to defend crops against pests like the fall army worm.

[301] Okay, so, yes, break that down.

[302] The virus, they somehow merge their DNA and they take over this thing, but it's, symbiotic in a way until it's not?

[303] Exactly, yeah.

[304] The wasp benefits by having this symbiosis with the virus because, as you just described, it suppresses the caterpillar, the host immune system.

[305] And that's exactly what you want to do.

[306] If you're laying your baby in a living organism, you can't blame that living organism, that host, for trying to attack whatever you've just laid on it.

[307] In fact, the venom of wasps has evolved.

[308] The parasitoid wasps inject venom as well, normally.

[309] And the venom is very good at suppressing the immune system.

[310] But in this case, these parasitoid was taking it a step further and they have this virus that is also integrated.

[311] And it suppresses the immune system of the caterpillar and it changes how the caterpillar feeds off the host of the plant as well.

[312] But it also does another really cool thing.

[313] The changes in the saliva of the caterpillar not only cause the plant to allow the caterpillar to feed off it more.

[314] Also, the plant releases volatile, so volatile chemicals smells effectively, which attract in another parasitoid wasp which lays its eggs on the egg of the parasitoid.

[315] So you've got a plant on which a caterpillar is feeding.

[316] And then on the caterpillar, you've got the parasitoid wasp with the virus.

[317] And then on top of that, you've got this hyper parasitoid wasp, another parasitoid wasp, which is parasitized in the parasitoid wasp.

[318] Oh, my goodness.

[319] So will it eat the initial egg or does it eat the caterpillar with the initial egg?

[320] It will parasitize the whole thing.

[321] So it will parasitize the original parasitoid wasp and also the caterpillar.

[322] So, I mean, it's like a Russian doll of crazy evolution.

[323] So yeah, it makes the plant release pheromones.

[324] I got a deep dive into this a little bit because I'm a little confused.

[325] So the caterpillar turns into a butterfly eventually.

[326] Is that what you're going to?

[327] Well, that's all I know about caterpillar.

[328] So now I'm confused.

[329] The caterpillar is walking around.

[330] All of a sudden, this wasp lands on its back.

[331] And it inserts its little tube into.

[332] to it and injects its egg.

[333] Inside the catapylus.

[334] Yeah, internally.

[335] And then the caterpillar's immune system says, well, there's a foreign object in me. I need to go kill that thing.

[336] It's got a virus that's also suppressed that.

[337] So it just lives there peacefully.

[338] And also now that caterpillar incorporates somehow this virus into itself, which then makes its saliva different.

[339] So when it eats this plant, the plant would normally have some kind of defense system to it, whether it gets it drunk or angry or whatever things they can deploy.

[340] But now that thing's suppressed.

[341] So now it's free to just gobble, gobble, gobble.

[342] And then now the plant, also not defending itself, is also sending off a signal.

[343] Hey, bigger wasp, come on in, lay an egg on the first egg and go crazy.

[344] Okay, great.

[345] So then what happens with the egg inside the caterpillar?

[346] It gets eaten by the second wasp's egg that comes and becomes a larvae.

[347] Yeah, that's right.

[348] So actually, the second wasp that comes in is a hyperparasroid.

[349] It's very tiny.

[350] So it's not a bigger wasp that's coming in.

[351] And it eats the caterpillar.

[352] And the first egg.

[353] Which is inside the caterpillar.

[354] That's right.

[355] Yeah.

[356] So sometimes they're on the caterpillar.

[357] Sometimes they're in the caterpillar.

[358] It depends on the species of the parasitoid.

[359] Wow.

[360] Crazy stuff.

[361] You've seen those little birds that live on the back of water buffalo, right?

[362] I have.

[363] And then they eat the insects off.

[364] The fascinating part is that the egg is inside the caterpillar.

[365] I might have lied.

[366] Maybe it's mostly on the outside, but sometimes inside.

[367] I mean, it depends on the species.

[368] In a way, it doesn't really matter because the caterpillar is oblivious to what's happening.

[369] Yeah.

[370] And defenseless of its back.

[371] There's nothing it can do.

[372] Try to scratch up against a tree.

[373] It doesn't care.

[374] It's just getting really fat.

[375] Okay.

[376] Now, the implication of this is really mind -boggling, and I almost find hard to believe.

[377] The fact that there is an industrial farming application to this that we could potentially reduce the amount of pesticides we put on things.

[378] How would that look?

[379] In action, what would the system be?

[380] How many would it require?

[381] How would they breed them?

[382] How does that work?

[383] How big could they scale?

[384] Hell it up.

[385] So they're already doing this in Brazil?

[386] No. Yeah.

[387] Parasitoid wasps have actually been used for biocontrol, for controlling economically damaging crop pests for decades.

[388] So this is not new stuff.

[389] And in fact, of all the wasps, a small number of parastoid wasps are incredibly well studied because they have this really important economic value.

[390] So they have these big factories.

[391] I mean, it's probably like this in the States as well.

[392] It's like massive, massive fields, as far as you can see, nothing but maize fields.

[393] It's just a complete monoculture.

[394] It's rather depressing, actually, because there's no biodiversity there.

[395] It's just all crop farming.

[396] And so what they do is, of course, they spray chemicals, but what they also do on some farms, and you have to be a multinational farming corporation to be able to do this, they have these factories which will be farming, rearing parasitoid wasps all year round, just so at the right time when the pest comes along in the season to release these parasitoid wasps into the fields.

[397] And they kind of released them in these sort of football -type things.

[398] They chuck them in the fields.

[399] And then all these little parasitoid wasps move out of the football and find the prey and do their thing.

[400] It's quite phenomenal.

[401] And then they die.

[402] What's the life cycle of those?

[403] It's short?

[404] Yeah, I mean, the parastoid wasps will keep on going as long as there's hosts.

[405] So if there's lots of hosts, so caterpillars eating the crops, if it's a really big infestation, then the parasitoid wasps will be around for a while.

[406] But as soon as the hosts die out, the parasitoid wasps die out.

[407] It's the same argument for some of your listeners will probably have done this.

[408] They will have gone on the internet and bought some parasitoid wasps to put in their house to get rid of clothes moths.

[409] No way.

[410] Yeah.

[411] And they're absolutely minuscule insect.

[412] You never realize.

[413] You buy the eggs and then they hatch into the adults.

[414] You put them in your wardrobes and your cupboards and wherever you've got the moth problem.

[415] Just scatter them around your house.

[416] And then they will go off and find the moth eggs.

[417] The idea that you've got these tiny little creatures, these little wasps running around your house, in addition to the moths, might be rather terrifying.

[418] But the beautiful truth is that as soon as it's got rid of all the moths, the wasps just all die out.

[419] As long as there's no moths, there'll be no wasps.

[420] Well, it does make me think of the times they've tried to, like, bring in an animal to get rid of snakes, and then they've got to bring in an animal to get rid of that animal.

[421] Next thing you know, you've got to get a bunch of lions.

[422] It just keeps climbing the food chain.

[423] My wife would love this.

[424] We were just talking about this the other day in the podcast, mothballs, which is how we repel moths here in the States, it's putrid.

[425] You'd rather have your clothes eaten.

[426] Okay, but here's where I'm going to now challenge you.

[427] So I love this idea of these wasps controlling the pests.

[428] But you know I'm going to interview a fall army worm expert at some point.

[429] And he or she is going to be making an argument.

[430] They're an incredible creature.

[431] How do we delineate which one?

[432] You know what I'm saying?

[433] The fall army worm is an incredible creature.

[434] When it's not treated with a kind of party land, of enormous monocultures of crops and before we started having these huge monocultures with no natural enemies around they wouldn't have caused any trouble because there would have been natural enemies wild insects present in the ecosystem that would have taken care of them maybe not reduced them completely it wouldn't have obliterated the pests like pesticides do but it would have kept them at a very low level which would have meant that the level of damage that the crops are getting was sustaining But as soon as we move to these enormous monocultures deserts, basically, of maize or sugarcane or whatever else you're growing, there's no natural enemies.

[435] And so the fall army worm moves in and just has a party.

[436] It's like being led into a candy store if you're a child.

[437] Yeah, it is indeed.

[438] So the use of parasoid boston to control things like the full army worm has been well used and very well developed, particularly in the Americas.

[439] But the problem with the full army worm is that it's now been introduced to other parts of the world, like after.

[440] Africa, for example.

[441] And it was only introduced there, I think, in 2018.

[442] And within a year or two, it swept through the continent.

[443] Wow.

[444] And causing absolute devastation to crops.

[445] And that's kind of serious, bearing in mind that most of the farmers in Africa are subsistence -level family farmers.

[446] So you have a family with a backyard, you grow your maize, you look after your maize, you harvest it, and you feed your family on it for the rest of the year.

[447] If your crop fails, your family goes hungry.

[448] So there is a bit of a humanitarian disaster going on in Africa at the moment.

[449] And many of the country's governments have responded by subsidising the use of chemicals, pesticides, to kill the full army worm.

[450] But the chemicals that they are using would not be allowed to be used in most parts of the world.

[451] You know, they're highly toxic, very old -fashioned chemicals that are just really toxic, not only to the insects and all the other wildlife, but also to the humans.

[452] Yeah.

[453] And it's often the women who are in the fields spraying the crops with a baby strapped to their back.

[454] And there are already studies that show that the levels of toxic poisoning from pesticides, from agricultural chemicals, it's a real gender problem.

[455] It affects women in Africa a lot more than men.

[456] Yeah.

[457] Why aren't we talking about this more?

[458] You know, we need to be thinking about more sustainable ways to help people in the global south to develop methods to control their pests in a sustainable way, in a safe way.

[459] I just throw out one other bummer of that whole aspect.

[460] When your crop dies in that subsistence farming community, now you've got to go hunt bush meat, which you normally want it.

[461] Now you've got chimpanzees being killed.

[462] I mean, it just goes up really quick.

[463] Exactly, yeah.

[464] So one of the things we've been doing with our research is looking to see whether the hunting wasps could be used.

[465] So these are the stinging wasps.

[466] And the reason why they might be really useful in a continent like Africa is because these subsistence -level farmers, they don't have access to these amazing parasitoid wasps and these huge factories.

[467] They just don't, you know, that's a large -scale farming component.

[468] That's just not an option for them.

[469] But what they do have is lots of local hunting wasps of a very high species diversity.

[470] You know, you go to any part of Africa, you go to a city or a rural area.

[471] And on buildings, you'll see these wasps nesting.

[472] And they're very small colonies.

[473] They're like literally the size of your hand.

[474] and with the right kit, you know, a pair of good old marigold gloves or washing up gloves and sort of a homemade net over the hats to protect yourself, you can actually move these colonies around.

[475] And so there is the potential that they could work with the wasps that are local to them, the local natural enemies, and set them up in places on their farms where they're not near their houses because they don't want them in their houses because they sting their family.

[476] But you keep them at the back of the field somewhere.

[477] And the wasps then can access the fields.

[478] They can do their hunting thing on the pest in the fields.

[479] It's a sustainable way.

[480] And it's also promoting local biodiversity as well.

[481] Who eats them?

[482] The main predators of wasps, social wasps, it depends where you are in the world.

[483] So in the UK, badgers are the big predator.

[484] They'll dig up a whole nest.

[485] They've got very thick skin.

[486] They're not bothered by the stings.

[487] Well, they famously don't give a shit.

[488] That's the thing about it.

[489] They don't give a shit.

[490] In other parts of the world, ants are big predators, particularly of the larva of the wasp.

[491] So the ants won't catch the adults.

[492] But I've had whole field sites utterly decimated by army ants in Panama, where they would come.

[493] We've got all these lovely wasp colonies that we've been monitoring for months and we've marked them all individually and a huge amount of work's gone into it.

[494] And you turn up one day and the ants have moved in and they are literally systematically going through your nest, plucking out the brood.

[495] And the wasps are just sitting there going, shit, man, what do we do now?

[496] Yeah.

[497] The hunting wasps, do they just kill anything in sight?

[498] Or do they sting anything in sight?

[499] Or is it more specific?

[500] Yeah, so really good question.

[501] So it entirely depends on the type of wasp.

[502] So the social wasps, we think, tend to be much more of generalist hunters, which means that they will catch pretty much anything, particularly the yellow jackets.

[503] They will hunt anything that's abundant.

[504] That might be caterpillars, it might be flies or spiders, or it might be your barbecue sausages if they're abundant.

[505] Because they'll also go for carrion, they'll go for dead meat.

[506] So they are very useful in terms of just regulating the populations of insects.

[507] They're not just in farming systems, but in natural wild systems.

[508] They're doing a really important job in just dampening down those fly populations, the caterpillars, the entire invertebrate community.

[509] They're just keeping things in check.

[510] But because they are not specialists, they're very unlikely to ever hunt anything to local extinction.

[511] So sometimes I get asked, wasps are hunters?

[512] Are they the reason why insects are declining?

[513] No. Because they are only literally creaming off the excess.

[514] Some of the other social wasps, like the ones that I was talking about in Africa.

[515] And actually, you get these in the US, there's Pallistis paper wasps, where they build these smaller nests on your houses and they're open.

[516] There's no envelope around it, so you can see them sitting on their cells.

[517] you might have seen them.

[518] They tend to pretty much only hunt caterpillars.

[519] Oh.

[520] That's really important for farming because caterpillars are one of the main crop pests.

[521] So they're doing a really good service.

[522] But the solitary wasps, so the other 30 ,000 hunting wasps, tend to be prey specialists.

[523] So you'll have particular types of wasp.

[524] So like your pompilid wasps will only hunt spiders.

[525] And you'll have other wasps that only hunt caterpillars and other wasps will only hunt cockroaches or weevil.

[526] and they're very prey specific.

[527] They are looking for a particular kind of prey.

[528] If that prey is not available, then that wasp population won't be sustained.

[529] Ostensibly, could a wasp be weaponized, like a parasitic wasp, to inject their virus into us and kill us?

[530] Like an M. Knight -Sharmelon movie?

[531] Okay, so this is more of a science fiction question.

[532] Well, but no, could it happen?

[533] I think no. Okay.

[534] All right.

[535] I'll cover that.

[536] I may be wrong here, but the only wasps that have, these viruses integrated into their DNA are these parasitoid wasps.

[537] And parasitoid wasps don't have stings.

[538] They have ovipositas and evolution hasn't adapted them to lay their eggs on us.

[539] Got it.

[540] So you're safe.

[541] Don't worry.

[542] Okay.

[543] But I'm going to still keep my eye out because never say never.

[544] That's true.

[545] It's kind of an interesting conversation within CRISPR.

[546] Like, let's get rid of the mosquito.

[547] Yeah, yeah.

[548] I'm sure a lot of people would say, let's get rid of wasps because they hurt people and it's not hearing the whole story and what they actually do.

[549] Yeah, I mean, there's a reason to get rid of mosquitoes, or at least control mosquitoes, because they carry diseases that kill us.

[550] Yeah.

[551] As far as we know, wasps don't carry diseases that kill us.

[552] Yeah.

[553] They don't seem to ruin every single night gathering in the Midwest, either like mosquitoes do.

[554] But they did send you to the hospital.

[555] That's true, but that was only once.

[556] I've been bit by a mosquito probably upwards of 25 ,000 times.

[557] Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

[558] If you dare.

[559] What's up, guys?

[560] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[561] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[562] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[563] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[564] And I don't mean just friends.

[565] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[566] The list goes on.

[567] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[568] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[569] We've all been there.

[570] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[571] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[572] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[573] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[574] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[575] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[576] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[577] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon Music.

[578] Okay, I want to go through four other really fun, exciting ones.

[579] So the Zamba Fire, the infamous Emerald Jewelwax.

[580] turns its prey, the American cockroach grumblies, we call them affectionately here grumblies, into brainless zombies.

[581] Please tell us how this happens.

[582] They're another example of one of these wasps that has actually been very well researched.

[583] They are super cool.

[584] So they are a hunting wasp.

[585] So they have a sting and they have a very specialized venom, which is full of neurotoxins, which befuddle the brains of cockroaches.

[586] So they're very specific to cockroaches.

[587] The cockroach is like 10 times its size.

[588] It's massive compared to the wasps.

[589] So there's no way that the wasp could paralyze it, which is what most wasps would do with a caterpillar or something, pick it up and carry it back to its burrow.

[590] But it still has to paralyze it because it has to kind of make it into this placid living larder that it can bury with its offspring.

[591] All solitary hunting wasps will catch prey, take it to a burrow or a, Lair, bury it, lay an egg on it, seal it up, and then say goodbye.

[592] So it's effectively like leaving your newborn baby at home with no care at all.

[593] They just left their own devices.

[594] But leaving it in an enormous pie.

[595] But that pie could go mouldy.

[596] That pie could be full of bacteria that could kill your baby.

[597] So wasps have had to evolve lots of ways to make sure that that living larder is compliant in that it doesn't come back to life and eat the baby itself.

[598] So it has to be paralysed to the right level, but not paralysed so much that it dies.

[599] And also, they inject lots of antibiotics in it, but that's another story.

[600] Let's get back to the Emerald's Jewel Wasp.

[601] The way that they zombieify these cockroaches is that they deliver two very precise stings.

[602] So their first sting goes into the thorax, which is like the chest of the cockroach.

[603] And that kind of stuns it enough that it doesn't move much.

[604] And that enables the wasp to get into the right place on their head to sting a precise, part of the brain to inject the venom into the brain so that it hits the right neurotransmitters and paralyzes it in the right way.

[605] It gives it lock -in syndrome immediately.

[606] Oh.

[607] It's pretty amazing.

[608] So it does hit the motor neurons.

[609] It does hit the processes, the nervous system that control movement.

[610] But just enough such that the cockroach can walk.

[611] And then basically what the wasp does is she leads her victim by its antenna.

[612] So you've got this big cockroach being led like a poodle.

[613] by this little tiny wasp to its burrow.

[614] It makes it remote control, Monica.

[615] Are you hearing what?

[616] I am.

[617] It's just kind of like the new top gun.

[618] There's two missions.

[619] Yes, you've got a first thing, the thorax, then the brain.

[620] How is it leading it by the antennas?

[621] Is it tugging it?

[622] Is it a kinetic thing?

[623] Or is it sending a electrical signal?

[624] How on earth is it controlling the brain to that degree?

[625] The leading of the antenna is just so that it's got something to grab hold of.

[626] It's just dragging it.

[627] She's not even dragging because it's actually walking.

[628] It's literally, you know, if you grab a zombie by the hand and lead it.

[629] Who hasn't?

[630] Who hasn't let a zombie?

[631] Yeah, who hasn't done that?

[632] To a swimhole or a cookout?

[633] Exactly, yeah.

[634] That is incredible.

[635] Lots of what these hunting wasps do is they inject antibiotics into the victim as well.

[636] So the best studied of that is the European bee wolf.

[637] This is the embalmer.

[638] Yes, that's right.

[639] So as the name suggests, they are wolves of bees.

[640] They hunt bees.

[641] And they're amazing to watch.

[642] You can see them flying along and their undercarriage is the bee.

[643] So it's like these two insects flying along, belly to belly.

[644] Also like Top Gun.

[645] Yeah.

[646] The bee is paralyzed.

[647] And then when she gets it to her burrow, she licks it all over, which embalms it and creates a sort of waterproof coating around it.

[648] And that is kind of the first layer of defence.

[649] It's a bit like wrapping your kid up in a waterproof coat before you send them out in the rain.

[650] But that's just the beginning.

[651] This is so cool.

[652] So she then will put it under the ground and the egg is inside at this point.

[653] And then from her antenna, she exudes a bacteria, a streptomyces bacteria.

[654] Really quick, let's not blow past that.

[655] Streptomycin is the second most used medical antibiotic after penicillin.

[656] So they're making...

[657] Oh, my God.

[658] Can we extract that?

[659] Well, we already have it.

[660] Yeah, we already have it.

[661] They had it first.

[662] We can say that.

[663] They got there first.

[664] They got there 250 million years before we even thought of it.

[665] it so you know hats off to the wasp so it's actually not the streptomycin is the antibiotic that's produced by the streptomyces bacteria so the bacteria live in the antenna and the wasp exudes the bacteria from her antenna into the cocoon and then from that bacteria it produces the antibiotics which is the streptomycin which has antibacterial and antifungal properties and antiviral properties so that's very cool when the wasp egg hatches the larvae of the wasp spreads this antibiotic around its cocoon, just making sure it's really nice and clean.

[666] But the problem is that wasp egg still has to survive a few days before it hatches into a larva.

[667] So what are you going to do to keep your eggs safe during that time?

[668] You've got a little bit of antibiotics in there, but it's not been spread everywhere.

[669] So what the egg does is it produces nitrous oxide, which is of course what we use as a fungicide.

[670] So the egg has these toxic farts that fill the cocoon with this antifungal, antiviral properties.

[671] Nitric oxide.

[672] That is bongers, Monica.

[673] Okay, but I'm kind of still a little bit on an M. Night Shyamalan kick.

[674] Sure.

[675] So, like, let's say, you know, it was apocalypse.

[676] We are surviving out in the wild.

[677] We could use some of these wasps for antibiotics.

[678] Well, yes, the good doctor has a point about that, which is they are the medicine cabinet for us to, yeah, explain.

[679] That's right, yeah.

[680] What else are all these other hunting wasps doing to keep their prey safe?

[681] We know that the venom has antibiotic properties as well, but it's so understudied.

[682] Stryptomycin is in 1B.

[683] What other antibiotics are waiting to be discovered in these other species, these other 30 ,000 species of hunting wasps?

[684] Yeah, that is fascinating.

[685] Okay, let's talk about the mother eater.

[686] Ooh.

[687] Oh, not all solitary wasps bother to transport their prey to a burrow.

[688] Some spider -hunting wasps hunt pregnant spiders and deposit an egg into its abdomen with the spider's own eggs.

[689] Hit us.

[690] What happens next?

[691] Yeah, so this is proper Hollywood horror movie stuff.

[692] Yeah, now Monica's paying attention.

[693] I'm really itchy now.

[694] so the wasp will lay its eggs on the abdomen of the spider so unlike most of the hunting wasps these spiders aren't paralyzed they just carry on their daily life so this spider's wandering round amazingly the wasp always chooses a pregnant spider and of course that's really really useful because pregnant organisms have got developing eggs inside them and they are full of nutrients and they are a wonderful source.

[695] of nutrition.

[696] Talk about one more time women get the shit end of the stick.

[697] Just like spreading the pesticide in Africa.

[698] Here we go again.

[699] You're a lady spider with all these eggs and you're targeted.

[700] It's rough living out there.

[701] My God, give you all a break.

[702] Sorry.

[703] Continue.

[704] He's just a really big feminist.

[705] Probably the male spies are just too weedy to be able to support the nutrition of growing a wasp larva.

[706] We're probably too tough.

[707] We'd probably identify it.

[708] I'm teasing.

[709] I'm I bet the male spider's a super weegee.

[710] Nutrient -free.

[711] Yeah.

[712] Anyway, so the egg is stuck on the backside of the spider.

[713] It hatches into a baby larvae wasp, and it burrows into the spider, and it basically starts eating the spider.

[714] And the spider's still wandering around.

[715] The wasp larva will be eating the parts of the spider, but the extra especially cool thing is that the lava only eats the less important parts of the spider.

[716] So the spider is still alive and happy and oblivious.

[717] Abliveted to the fact her bottom is being eaten off by this wasp.

[718] Well, by the way, this parallels the good virus.

[719] A good virus doesn't kill the host immediately because then it can't spread, right?

[720] So it's, yes, it's very clever.

[721] Yeah, exactly.

[722] Evolution is very clever.

[723] And then basically, the last thing it will eat is the head and the brain.

[724] All that's left are the mandibles and the sort of the outer kite in the hard bits of the spider.

[725] It's super cool.

[726] Super, super cool.

[727] Can we get one for the attic?

[728] Because Dak said that he saw a horrible spider.

[729] Yeah, there is a lethal spider in this attic.

[730] I saw the other day.

[731] And he didn't want to kill it.

[732] And so we might need to bring in a wasp, a mother eater.

[733] That specific one, yeah.

[734] Although, I don't know if that's a dude or a woman, but it'll know.

[735] It's a woman.

[736] Okay, we have one last exciting one, and I saved the grossest title for last, Monica.

[737] The cannibal.

[738] Unusually for solitary wasps, some species of sphesids how do i say that svecids or sfecids well that's a sph no thank you or we can call it the thread wasted wasp let's do that some species of thread wasted wasp lay several eggs in the same nest take over what happens next so this was quite a recent study that came out that isn't in my book so typically a solitary wasp like your svecid wasp will just lay one egg with one prey but some of them were lay multiple eggs.

[739] In this species, they discovered, I think, that even though the wasp laid multiple eggs in one prey chamber, only one of those wasps would survive.

[740] They did some cool experiments where they added different amounts of prey in.

[741] And depending on the amount of prey that they added in, there may be more or less wasps that survive.

[742] The paper is pretty descriptive.

[743] It just kind of describes what the process is.

[744] So we don't really understand the how and the why.

[745] But for my interpretation situation is that probably the reason that's evolved is that a It's cheaper for the mother to lay multiple eggs in a brood chamber and let the wasp eggs hatch into larva.

[746] And if there isn't enough prey in the chamber, then she'll let those wasp larvae fight it out.

[747] Basically the biggest one, the first a hatch, will end up feasting on her younger siblings.

[748] It's pretty gruesome.

[749] But from the wasps perspective, there must be some trade -off between the difficulty of catching enough prey to fill the brood chamber.

[750] So providing your babies with enough food to ensure that they've got enough to eat for their whole development versus actually there aren't many spiders around today I can't be bothered going to hunt anymore are just kicking another couple of eggs and they can just be extra food for the siblings if they need it.

[751] Yeah.

[752] Well, you said it's not totally unique to this wasp that birds do this, several different animals that have incorporated this strategy.

[753] And even in other insects, so actually social insects.

[754] will often lay what we call trophic eggs, which are feeding eggs.

[755] So trophic means feeding.

[756] So workers will sometimes lay extra eggs that will never develop into proper adults.

[757] They're simply there as a form of nutrition.

[758] It's like a storage, really, that they can then feed that trophic egg to a larva later on if they need it.

[759] Okay.

[760] So all of this is in, of course, your book, Endless Forms, the Secret World of Wasps.

[761] I wouldn't have known how complex the wasp colonies can be of the social wasps.

[762] But you say that within them exist a division of labor, power struggles and rebellions, the monarchies, the undertakers, the police, and negotiators.

[763] How could all those things exist?

[764] So social wasps do have all of that.

[765] And the lovely thing is that there are so many analogies there parallels with our own societies.

[766] But actually, it's not just social wasps.

[767] So honeybees do those as well.

[768] And lots of ants do it as well.

[769] So it's not a wasp -specific thing.

[770] But the social wasps, the Vespine Yellow Jacket Wasps, are like the honeybee of the insect world.

[771] And these amazing facets of a complex social life that the honeybee has, these wasps have as well, these complex societies of wasps.

[772] How does a rebellion take place?

[773] How do you observe it?

[774] What does it look like?

[775] What percentages against?

[776] what percentage are they successful?

[777] Is this part of how they evolve?

[778] How does the rebellion work?

[779] Yeah, so worker wasps, as in worker bees and worker ants, their job is to not reproduce, but to help raise the brood of usually their mother.

[780] And so they give up the chance to reproduce in order to help another individual.

[781] And the reason that they do that, the reason that that can evolve is because they're related to the brood that they're helping rear, because they're rearing siblings.

[782] So they're passing on their genes, which is the purpose of life for any organism, by helping raise the brood that carry their genes for them.

[783] And we call that sort of indirect fitness.

[784] Really quick.

[785] Are they clonal?

[786] No. And that's the really cool thing.

[787] If they were clones, if they were identical genetic replicas, then there would be no conflict.

[788] Right.

[789] And it wouldn't matter whether you reproduce or whether I reproduce because we're identical.

[790] The problem is that clonality in these insects is very rare.

[791] I don't get it in wasps at all.

[792] And so they're related.

[793] They share genes as you do with your siblings and your parents.

[794] And so they pass on their genes by helping raise these relatives.

[795] So a good worker in a proper society that's well regulated should not reproduce.

[796] You know your place.

[797] And the queen is your mom and she pumps out the eggs and that's how it works.

[798] That's how the society functions.

[799] And so long as all the workers obey that rule, everything is fine.

[800] The system works really well.

[801] It's very productive.

[802] You've got this division of labour, like a factory, you know, where you've got individuals that specialise in different tasks, and they're very efficient.

[803] But sometimes you get rebellions.

[804] And so sometimes a worker will try and sneak in an egg.

[805] And that's the rebellion there.

[806] And this is also where the policing comes in.

[807] If you're a worker and you can get away with laying an egg, then actually you gain more because you're sneakily passing on your jeans by reproducing yourself as well as benefiting from all the siblings that you're fellow workers are helping raise.

[808] There's a marginal gain just to you, but that's a selfish behavior because it's a cost to the colony by not doing what you're supposed to do.

[809] Can I ask a dumb question I should have asked an hour ago?

[810] It's asexual reproduction or sexual?

[811] It's sexual reproduction.

[812] So you could lay your egg and then some other male has to fertilize the egg, but the male fertilizing would have no clue that that was a bogus egg.

[813] No, so the way that this reproduction works in these insects is that males don't really matter.

[814] Males are just flying sperm.

[815] Okay.

[816] They exist purely to have a mating flight with a virgin queen, and sometimes females will mate with multiple males, and they'll store the sperm from all of their mates in a sack in their abdomen called the spermathica.

[817] Oh, they have a sperm donor bank on board.

[818] They have a sperm bank inside their bottoms.

[819] And then as they release an egg to lay it, they also release sperm, which will fertilize the egg as it's being laid.

[820] Okay, so if these worker bees aren't intended to ever lay eggs, why are they taking these sex flights where they're gathering sperm?

[821] Ah, so the worker wasps in a big vespular nest, like your yellow jackets or your hornets, can't actually mate.

[822] So this is the other crazy thing that these insects do.

[823] So bees, waspen ants have a really peculiar genetic reproductive system, which is called haploidy.

[824] Now, you and I, we're all diploids, okay?

[825] We get half our DNA from our mum and half from our dad.

[826] and we've got two copies of every gene.

[827] And those gene variants can be different, but you have two copies of that particular gene.

[828] Homologous pairs.

[829] Yeah, homologous pairs, exactly.

[830] It's called diploid.

[831] Haploid means you've only got half the components of the DNA.

[832] So, effectively, you just got one half of that.

[833] Bees was financer all haploid organisms.

[834] And males are almost always haploid.

[835] So they have half the amount of genetic material as females, which are always diploid.

[836] So you could say that males are half as good as females.

[837] Yeah.

[838] Because it only contains half the DNA.

[839] But the really cool thing about that is that it means that workers can lay male eggs without having mated.

[840] And that's how they rebel.

[841] So they are virgins who are laying eggs.

[842] How is that not then asexual reproduction?

[843] It's not complete copy of their entire genome.

[844] It's half of their genome.

[845] So the worker is female and she's diploid.

[846] And so she will divide her DNA up to produce half the complement, which will then go on to, you know, a random selection of half of the genes to her male offspring.

[847] So it's not asexual.

[848] Okay, but the worker B, who's diploid, still needs sperm, no, to lay a viable egg?

[849] Not a male egg, no. Oh, not a male egg.

[850] So she can lay a male.

[851] Because they only require half.

[852] Right.

[853] She lays an unfertilized egg, which is always male.

[854] Okay.

[855] And that can grow into a mouse.

[856] Am I wrong in saying that they can do asexual and sexual reproduction?

[857] So the male would be an asexual reproduction because they don't require anybody but themselves, but a female would require sexual reproduction.

[858] Yeah, you're right there.

[859] Yeah.

[860] Okay.

[861] I'm just trying to figure out how they go rogue without the sperm sac, and then I'm wondering if they do have a sperm sack, why the hell do they have one if they're never intended to lay an egg to begin with?

[862] Okay, I'm all caught up.

[863] So in these Hornets and Yellowjacket societies, you have these rebellious workers who are laying male eggs.

[864] And they're females that are rebelling.

[865] The females are the rebels.

[866] Yeah, so still females are unruly and terrible as well.

[867] All they're doing is exploring different ways of reproducing.

[868] Sure, sure, sure, sure.

[869] It's all about the replication of their.

[870] genes.

[871] The actual workers themselves are just vehicles for replicating these genes.

[872] So they are victims of their own genetic material.

[873] This is so fascinating.

[874] How many times have you been stung in your 25 years of studying these creatures?

[875] Oddly, not very many times.

[876] It's under 20, I think.

[877] You say it gets worse and worse, though?

[878] Yeah.

[879] So firstly, my journey to the wasps started off with these very cute, unaggressive little wasps that live in Southeast Asia called hover wasps.

[880] And they can sting, but their stings are so pathetic that it's merely a little tickle, so they rarely penetrate your skin.

[881] So for the first four years of my wasp life, I didn't actually get stung much at all.

[882] And then I graduated to proper wasps, these big Policistis wasps that live in Panama, which have whopping stings.

[883] I went from the most pathetic wasp to one of the most horrendously aggressive wasps.

[884] And I did start to get stung quite a lot because I was a bit careless and happy go lucky about it.

[885] But then one day, quite similar to you, actually, I got stung on my face and my whole face blew up and I realised that if I was going to work on wasps for a career, I had to stop getting stung.

[886] So from then onwards, I had just a really strict protocol with myself that I always wear a bee hat.

[887] Since then, I barely been stung by a Polistis wasp.

[888] I've been stung a little bit more by Vespula wasps by the yellow jackets in the UK that I've been working on, but I've been sung very little.

[889] So if you are protected, it's pretty easy to avoid it.

[890] Yeah, for the Vespula, we do wear full B -suits, and we will gaffer tape, duct tape up the sleeves and your neck and your boots because a B -suit will keep bees out, but it won't keep wasps out because wasps like to go for dark crevices because they're hunters, right?

[891] And who knows, there might be a caterpillar inside your sleeves, so they're going to have a look.

[892] So you have to sort of strap up every single tiniest hole, otherwise a wasp will get in there.

[893] Did you get wonderful bruising after your face unswled?

[894] Because it looked like I had broken my nose, which was a very cool look in second grade.

[895] I had black and blue.

[896] Did you get black and blue from yours?

[897] No, I don't think I did.

[898] Oh, I'm sorry.

[899] I remember being very puffy.

[900] Okay.

[901] I remember being quite embarrassed as well, because obviously everybody knew I worked on wasps.

[902] Yeah, yeah.

[903] And then I was walking around with this big swell on that face.

[904] You know who it's like, Manichore and...

[905] Oh, a Siegfried.

[906] Yeah.

[907] Yeah.

[908] It's extra embarrassing if a professional gets it.

[909] Yeah, I've done a layperson.

[910] I have one more question.

[911] What makes the queen the queen?

[912] Well, first she's in Vogue, and then she gets out of in Vogue, and then she marries Jay -Z, and it's all there, yeah.

[913] Well, sometimes they're born into royalty.

[914] So your yellow jacket wasp and your hornet, just like a honeybee queen, their fate will be decided during development.

[915] So when there are a small larva, in the case of the honeybee, they're fed raw jelly.

[916] And if they're fed raw jelly, they develop on a particular pathway and they have to become a queen.

[917] If they're not fed that really nutritious food, then they become a worker.

[918] So nutrition plays a really important role.

[919] And of course, it's the workers that are feeding the larvae that have control over what those wasps are being fed. So they can kind of control caste fate.

[920] We know a lot about what determines cast fate and what makes a queen and what determines the queen in the honeybees.

[921] But we don't know much at all in the Vespine wasps.

[922] All of those experiments have yet to be done.

[923] But it must be some kind of nutritional cue.

[924] Certainly in a vespular yellow jacket wasp nest and also a hornet nest, the cells are a different size for the royalty for the queens in the same way that you get queen cells in a honeybee society.

[925] And so it's possible that this size of the cell in some way is a cue to the workers to feed those larvae a particular kind of food.

[926] We just don't know.

[927] But the reality is that in these colonies, as with the honeybee, once that individual wasp has been set on that developmental trajectory, it's doomed to be a queen or a worker and it can't change.

[928] Does it ever happen that an attractive American bee penetrates and then abscons with the appointed progeny, takes them back.

[929] to America and then does an interview on Oprah.

[930] Does that ever happen?

[931] Well, I actually do get absconding.

[932] That's so interesting now.

[933] We're on to something, aren't we?

[934] So, yeah, so often you will get, particularly in some of the more simpler societies, like the Politi Society, everyone can be a queen.

[935] That's what I really like about these simpler societies like the Politi's paper wasps, is that unlike your Vespula wasps, when a female emerges from her pupil cell, she can be anything.

[936] She can start life off as a worker and she can end up as a queen later on in life if the opportunity arises.

[937] She can be a worker for a bit on a nest and then decide, hang on a minute, I'm going to abscond and set up my own kingdom and she'll just leave the nest and set up her own nest because she can mate, unlike the yellow jacket workers.

[938] So the process of becoming queen is different in these really complex yellow jacket societies compared to the much simpler polystice society.

[939] where anyone has the potential to become a queen.

[940] And of course, because everyone can be a queen, there's a lot more conflict over who should be queen.

[941] The species that I've studied in Panama, we can do these really cool things with insects.

[942] The ethics committees don't mind if you kill wasps.

[943] They do care if you kill a cute animal like a mere cat, but no one cares if you kill a wasp.

[944] So we can remove the queens from our nests, and we can watch to see what happens.

[945] And these Panamanian big stinging wasps, they have an almighty fight when you remove the queen.

[946] So they go from a society of harmony where everyone knows their place and everyone does their thing and doesn't ask any questions, no rebellions.

[947] Take the queen away.

[948] A couple of hours later, all hell breaks loose.

[949] Power void.

[950] Yeah, definitely.

[951] Not everybody fights.

[952] That's a really cool thing.

[953] It's just a subset of the wasps that will fight.

[954] The rest of them just carry on foraging.

[955] They're like, oh shit man, yeah, all right.

[956] You guys fight.

[957] I'll just do the work.

[958] I'll keep going shopping and feeding the brood.

[959] And the wasps that are fighting, sometimes they fight to the death, you know, and we're sitting there watching them and we're in our big bee hats because these wasps are fighting us as well.

[960] They're so fired up, they'll be flying off the nest at us as well.

[961] They're angry as wasps.

[962] Yeah, and it can take a couple of weeks.

[963] It can take a few weeks for them to decide who the new queen is.

[964] Well, I am really glad that you are on the mission of rebranding the wasp.

[965] Knowing that they are such competent predators for things that we would want to be preyed upon, I think this is what rebrand.

[966] and did the bat.

[967] Bats are absolutely disgusting.

[968] They're a flying mammal with skin wings.

[969] They bump India.

[970] They're blind.

[971] There's a vampire bat.

[972] We hate them.

[973] But in the Midwest, we're like, wow, they're eating the mosquitoes.

[974] Bring them on.

[975] You don't mind at all having bats in your back here.

[976] They took a hit in 2020, reputational hit.

[977] COVID.

[978] Oh, because they didn't do their job, bats?

[979] No, it was supposed to be a bat.

[980] Oh, no, it was a pangolin.

[981] Remember my joke?

[982] But wasn't it originally a bat?

[983] They did theorize a bat.

[984] Right.

[985] You're right.

[986] They took a hit.

[987] They took a hit.

[988] Yeah.

[989] You're right.

[990] Disinformation.

[991] Well, it's hard to say.

[992] Do you want malaria or do you want COVID?

[993] I think I'd rather have COVID.

[994] Oh, yeah, me too.

[995] Yeah, in the end.

[996] Dr. Summer, this has been so fun.

[997] I hope everyone reads, endless forms, the secret world of wasps.

[998] You know, we're on a real exploration, aren't we, of the animal, yeah.

[999] And they're all 30 times more interesting than you would have ever guessed.

[1000] They are, yeah.

[1001] So we thank you so much for being our guest.

[1002] Oh, thank you so much for having me. And thanks for spreading the word about wasps to your listening.

[1003] I hope they become as convinced as they are about cuter animals like bees.

[1004] Well, you're not going to like this, but I am going to interview whatever worm.

[1005] Specialist next.

[1006] The full army worm.

[1007] Oh, my goodness, me. I'm teasing.

[1008] That's just betrayal.

[1009] Ask them about the wasps.

[1010] She's going to make a case for us to get rid of all wasps.

[1011] This has been so much fun.

[1012] I wish you luck on the book, and thanks for talking with us.

[1013] Thank you so much for having me. Bye, bye.

[1014] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1015] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1016] I'm recording.

[1017] I'm recording too.

[1018] I'm recording everything you say.

[1019] Oh, scary.

[1020] So you should, yeah, you should be very careful.

[1021] Okay.

[1022] Because I'm getting everything.

[1023] Okay.

[1024] I'm not going to talk about my pooties.

[1025] Oh, no. Did you have some pooties?

[1026] Some uncontrollable pooties?

[1027] What hotel are you at?

[1028] It looks fancy, and the courtyard looked fancy.

[1029] The Greenwich.

[1030] Oh, sure.

[1031] I stayed there one time.

[1032] You did?

[1033] Did you get the fancy massage?

[1034] I'm about to, well, not about that.

[1035] In an hour and a half, I'm getting a fancy massage.

[1036] What makes it so fancy?

[1037] It's drop in knees.

[1038] Oh.

[1039] It's healers.

[1040] And I see you've got a long white nail on.

[1041] I do.

[1042] Yeah.

[1043] You just gave your face a scratch and your fingertips were like three inches from your face.

[1044] I know.

[1045] You know, I've been taking a break from the nails.

[1046] I don't know if you noticed that.

[1047] I've had plain my regular nail for a while.

[1048] Old -fashioned nails.

[1049] Yeah, regs.

[1050] Rags.

[1051] But then I came here to do something specific.

[1052] I'm not allowed to talk about yet.

[1053] Why can't you talk about it?

[1054] I just asked, I'm not allowed.

[1055] But you had a photo shoot.

[1056] You can do it.

[1057] definitely say you had a photo shoot.

[1058] Okay, I did.

[1059] I had a photo shoot.

[1060] Okay, I concede.

[1061] And then I needed a good nail for that.

[1062] Okay.

[1063] And were you nervous when you're flying on the plane that you might damage one of them in transit?

[1064] Of course.

[1065] That's always a fear.

[1066] Like, how active is the fear?

[1067] What percentage of your active thoughts is it taking up?

[1068] Five percent?

[1069] Honestly, 0 .5 this time, because I had other problems.

[1070] Oh, yeah.

[1071] Walk me through what happened.

[1072] This is a ding, ding, ding duck, duck, goose.

[1073] Okay.

[1074] Because you had travel issues and I had travel issues.

[1075] It's true what they're saying.

[1076] That travel's all fucked up.

[1077] It really is.

[1078] Callie had a friend who was also coming to New York the day before and she had travel issues.

[1079] What were hers?

[1080] Also delays, like major delays.

[1081] Our plane was delayed once, then twice.

[1082] Hold on.

[1083] Were you flying with Callie to New York?

[1084] Yeah.

[1085] So you guys got to the airport?

[1086] together.

[1087] No, luckily we hadn't got to the airport yet.

[1088] Our flight was at 9 .15 in the morning.

[1089] And so before we left, they had already told us, oh, it's delayed till noon.

[1090] Oof, that's a bad sign.

[1091] Exactly.

[1092] But especially after the day before with her friend, we were like, oh, okay.

[1093] That still gets us in, like, that's not crazy.

[1094] And then it was delayed till 8 p .m. Oh, okay.

[1095] So then we ended up getting on a number.

[1096] flight at four.

[1097] Okay, that the same airline put you on or that you guys just said, fuck it, let's book totally new tickets.

[1098] Fuck it.

[1099] Okay, the latter.

[1100] Uh -huh.

[1101] But, and look, I, you know, I always hesitate to talk about this because it's like.

[1102] Bougy?

[1103] Yes, it's a stupid problem.

[1104] Yeah, sure.

[1105] But, you know, the original flight was first class.

[1106] Uh -huh.

[1107] And pricey, I imagine.

[1108] New York, first class is not a cheap ticket.

[1109] Yeah.

[1110] mine was paid for okay that's why i flew first class otherwise i would never fly first class because i'm a man of the people yeah you're so humble and modest i'm just saying the words for you anyway there weren't any first class seats available on any of the flights so we flew coach middle seats oh it was a long flight it was a long flight for coach middle seats Yeah, kind of like my flight up to Seattle, remember?

[1111] I was at the wrong airport.

[1112] I thought about you.

[1113] Yep.

[1114] And then you had to sit by the bathroom.

[1115] Right next to the toilet in the middle seat.

[1116] Dream, dream, dream.

[1117] Two cherries.

[1118] I was actually thinking about it today because there's a significant chance.

[1119] I said to Eric today, I'm like, you know, we got to consider there's got to be at least 20 plus percent chance.

[1120] We're not getting out of Florence.

[1121] Because we're at the end of all the routes.

[1122] You know, it's like we got to go to Germany.

[1123] Florence, that's a backwater and Italy.

[1124] I love Italy, but guys, things aren't running as smoothly as they were, let's say, in Austria.

[1125] Do you think COVID has set it back?

[1126] No, they're just people who like flounseys.

[1127] Well, there's a couple things going on.

[1128] Yes, COVID is a part of it because, and by the way, even in Austria, I was at this little airport to get on a helicopter because I'm a man of the people.

[1129] And I said, how many flights are out here?

[1130] and he said, oh, there's virtually none because they let so many people go during COVID, and they just no one came back.

[1131] They can't repopulate the ranks.

[1132] Like, people just are not going back.

[1133] So they're completely understaffed.

[1134] That's one thing.

[1135] Yeah.

[1136] Now, two, and this is really interesting, none of this is derogatory.

[1137] It's just observations.

[1138] Okay.

[1139] And we've talked about it before.

[1140] I've said this before.

[1141] Amazing time in Austria.

[1142] Everything works really well, and everyone's really on it, right?

[1143] Now, you come to Italy and pretty quickly, things are a little more helter -skelter.

[1144] Sure.

[1145] But the food's better.

[1146] Now, granted, the service is, it's not even, you wouldn't even call it service.

[1147] Eric and I were saying tonight, because we asked this guy for Coke Lites six times.

[1148] Never did come.

[1149] They had the whole meal, appetite, this and that.

[1150] They just never came.

[1151] And every single time, you can, oh, could we get those four Coke lights?

[1152] Yeah, just refuse to bring them.

[1153] Now, if you worked in an American restaurant, you wouldn't make it through the shift.

[1154] You know, like 20 people would have complained you want to make through the gym.

[1155] Side note, Eric and I went out last night by ourselves, and we got to talk to this young guy who managed the restaurant.

[1156] I asked if he had been to California.

[1157] He had worked in Orlando for two years at Disney World, at the Italian restaurant at Epcot Center.

[1158] And so I said, well, God, I wish you would have been stationed like in L .A. or something, you know, of the many cities you could spend two years.

[1159] And, you know, Orlando's fantastic.

[1160] We all love Orlando.

[1161] But New York might be fun or Chicago.

[1162] Anyways, Austin, fuck.

[1163] Don't get me started.

[1164] Nashville.

[1165] Okay.

[1166] So we said, did you like it?

[1167] And he said, you know what I really loved about it was if you are a hard worker in America, it's recognized and you can make more money.

[1168] Here, you make the same amount of money no matter whether you work hard or you're lazy.

[1169] And he said, and a lot of people just, they don't work that hard because there's no incentive.

[1170] Wow, this is a ding, ding, ding for an upcoming episode of Flightless Bird.

[1171] Oh, it is?

[1172] Yeah, that we...

[1173] About what?

[1174] Tipping or something?

[1175] Tipping.

[1176] David and I recorded it.

[1177] We felt naughty because you weren't there and Rob wasn't there.

[1178] It was just us, too, in the attic.

[1179] Oh, oh, my God, yeah.

[1180] It was naughty.

[1181] I said it was Mommy and Sinney's day out.

[1182] Right, but could also turn romantic without...

[1183] No, not Sinney.

[1184] Oh.

[1185] Okay.

[1186] Okay.

[1187] Okay.

[1188] Okay.

[1189] But it does, I don't know, like, I don't know, it's always interesting to leave the United States.

[1190] I've had a million thoughts since I've been here.

[1191] One of them was, like, let me say a positive one.

[1192] I'm sitting there tonight on these canals in Milan.

[1193] I'm seeing thousands of people walk by.

[1194] There's so many people, and they're so close, everyone's pretty darn happy.

[1195] And I just was watching people bump into each other or look at each other's girlfriends.

[1196] And there was just no friction, right?

[1197] And I was just thinking, man, if this were about, in Michigan, or if I was on the Jersey Shore, or just any number of, you go to the Universal City Walk, you get that many people together, Americans, there's going to be some fighting, there's going to be some yelling, there's going to be some riffraff.

[1198] And then I was thinking, God, what is the cause of that?

[1199] And one of the things, of course, is I would think of that book, Dopamine Nation, which is like, well, we're a country of immigrants.

[1200] So we have higher levels of dopamine, right?

[1201] So that's one thing.

[1202] I think our baseline mental illness is just much higher.

[1203] I was actually looking at these Italians thinking, you could probably give these guys guns and they wouldn't shoot each other up the way we do.

[1204] Interesting, yeah.

[1205] So I thought that was one component I was thinking of.

[1206] But then another one I was thinking about was because we're so capitalist and we're so much advertising and signs everywhere, like, are we way more aware of being less than than other people?

[1207] Where it's just like everyone here is kind of middle class.

[1208] Everyone's kind of making the same amount of money.

[1209] There's no super rich people.

[1210] There's no really poor people.

[1211] is it that we're all walking around feeling less than so when a guy bumps into you it's like this guy thinks he's better than me that's why he can bump into me or this guy can look at my girlfriend because he thinks he's better than me like i don't know what it is or if it's a combination of things but it's just really quite different the civility that seems to exist here with really thick throngs of people commingling yeah i mean because we're so status -based here Yeah.

[1212] And the American dream of like getting rich.

[1213] It is.

[1214] You should get rich.

[1215] And if you don't get rich, it's a failing.

[1216] The American dream is inherently extremely competitive.

[1217] Mm -hmm.

[1218] It's a mix.

[1219] So I'm like seeing one thing and I like that.

[1220] But now what I like much more about America is like we invent an insane amount of things.

[1221] You just look at the last hundred years.

[1222] We've invented so much shit.

[1223] You ask for a Diet Coke six times.

[1224] You're going to get six Diet Coke.

[1225] Like there's some level of it that I actually love.

[1226] And it's, I guess it's just like, it's all a spectrum.

[1227] You're going to gain something and lose something.

[1228] But it is just, I don't know, it's always so fascinating to come somewhere else.

[1229] I totally agree with you.

[1230] And you've got like this kid that's running the restaurant that, like, wants to be in America because this guy's got Hutzpun, he would work his ass off and he would make something on himself.

[1231] Like he, he'd be great for America.

[1232] And then probably a lot of his coworkers, that's not their jam.

[1233] And they're happy to have insurance and everything and just barely bring the food out.

[1234] I don't know.

[1235] It's like, you almost.

[1236] need a country for each type of personality type or something.

[1237] I don't know.

[1238] It's very interesting.

[1239] Well, that's funny that you're telling the story because I don't know if you remember, but when me and you were in London and we went to interview Stanley on the way, but we walked a lot back and we stopped at that coffee shop.

[1240] And there was a guy from Paris who said this same thing.

[1241] Yes.

[1242] The exact same thing you just said.

[1243] In America, you have the opportunity to make more.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] Yeah.

[1246] If you just, if you got a lot of hustle, it's a great spot for you.

[1247] If you're allergic to tons of violence and guns going off every five seconds, it's not the place for you.

[1248] It's just all curious.

[1249] You know, it's like, it's so layered.

[1250] Look, when I feel the same way when I go to other countries, I feel really grateful to be an American.

[1251] I don't, even though there are so many issues, obviously, and it feels like they're increasing, I still don't want to live anywhere else.

[1252] I love this country.

[1253] I'm not, I'm never here thinking I'm better than any.

[1254] or that Americans are better or worse, I'm just thinking I'm a good match for America.

[1255] Like my personality type, being very frenetic, wanting to start a million businesses and all that kind of stuff.

[1256] That suits me. And we've been both handed a good deck for that, too.

[1257] Like, you're a tall, handsome white man. That's great for America.

[1258] You're welcome.

[1259] Tell me with the handsome part a little bit.

[1260] Yes.

[1261] Okay, you're really handsome.

[1262] I miss your handsome face a lot.

[1263] Oh, I miss your beautiful face a lot.

[1264] And I've also been given a great hand.

[1265] I had a family who, like, created a great security net and was able to do that.

[1266] And, like, you know, we can say that.

[1267] And they were already people that, like, your family left somewhere.

[1268] They already, they got those genes.

[1269] We've been dealt pretty good hands for it.

[1270] And a lot of Americans aren't, like, a lot of.

[1271] black people in America.

[1272] That's, we've created a bad environment.

[1273] Yeah.

[1274] I don't know.

[1275] I think it's also interesting.

[1276] Like, I have my own level of being appalled at home.

[1277] But then, of course, when you're here and you're even more removed for a minute, like just looking around and seeing these Europeans learn that at our big celebration and a little town parade, you know, there's hundreds of bullets are whizzing around and people are.

[1278] It's unfathomable to them.

[1279] Yeah.

[1280] I mean, it's already obviously quite.

[1281] shocking for all of us.

[1282] But if there is an extra layer when you're here, I get it.

[1283] It's like, it seems like a sci -fi country.

[1284] Like, what are they watching?

[1285] Blade Runner?

[1286] Like, what?

[1287] Or is it the old West?

[1288] Is it a period piece?

[1289] Everyone's still a cowboy?

[1290] Yeah, they're doing weird stuff.

[1291] They're taking away women's around.

[1292] What are they doing over there?

[1293] I also have enough humility to go, like, and time will tell.

[1294] I don't know.

[1295] About what?

[1296] I don't know.

[1297] I just don't, like.

[1298] I don't know what ends up winning in the long run.

[1299] I mean, I think less mass murders.

[1300] Yeah, yeah.

[1301] It's just all, it's, it'd be easy to say they're like individual issues, but I weirdly think they're not.

[1302] They're just this very specific Americanism.

[1303] Like, like China, I don't know, like China, that they have mass control over the population.

[1304] At times, that seems to be working great for them.

[1305] At other times, it seems terrible.

[1306] Yeah.

[1307] It's just curious.

[1308] I don't know.

[1309] I hope I live long enough to get some of the answers.

[1310] You will.

[1311] There's going to be that medicines.

[1312] Oh, yeah.

[1313] Also, in another ding, ding, ding, flightless bird upcoming on Amazon.

[1314] You know, Jeff Bezos is obsessed with living forever, so he's working on some solutions, too.

[1315] Of course.

[1316] This is, you know, one of my fascinations is the early patrician class rich people.

[1317] Cornelius Vanderbilt, all those people.

[1318] There's the most predictable thing.

[1319] It's like, you try to build a thing, that succeeds.

[1320] You try to become the richest, then you succeed at that.

[1321] Now the only thing left is like, well, fuck, I want to stay on planet Earth forever.

[1322] Rockefeller became obsessed with it.

[1323] I guess I'm kind of ruining the episode or just a part of it, I guess.

[1324] But I said the same thing.

[1325] Because it's sort of a race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to like, first of all, go to space.

[1326] Second of all, live forever.

[1327] Like, they're both obsessed with it.

[1328] And I was like, well, yes, both of those people have literally achieved the impossible.

[1329] So now they're moving on to the next step, which is this other thing, living forever, that's possible too.

[1330] Because these other, you know, like.

[1331] Totally agree.

[1332] When it's in your narrative that there's no such thing as impossibilities, living forever becomes an option.

[1333] Yeah.

[1334] I have some degree of that.

[1335] I have a mix of a I'm not one who worries about dying at all And yet, I have yet to accept the notion That yes, I will be 90 In a bed withering away And my fluids will fall out of me I just I haven't actually accepted That that's truly the reality ahead of me As I'm sure a lot of people feel that way But yeah hold on I got a I knocked on wood Oh okay Okay I'll knock on wood too Were you knocking on wood?

[1336] Oh, about living for a long, long time.

[1337] Oh, okay.

[1338] We want that.

[1339] Well, okay, we want it.

[1340] Not knock on wood, we hopefully.

[1341] No, I'm making it clear.

[1342] Don't do that.

[1343] Knocking on wood, we're both going to live at least to 90, if not forever.

[1344] Okay.

[1345] It does radically change the retirement plan, though.

[1346] It's like when you think you could make enough to retire, well, you can't ever retire then.

[1347] If you're living forever, there's no retiring.

[1348] We could do this forever.

[1349] How fun would that be?

[1350] Yeah, well, none of the celebrities will die.

[1351] So the pool will be getting bigger and bigger, I suppose.

[1352] How long are you in New York?

[1353] I come home Thursday.

[1354] What more are you going to do?

[1355] I don't know.

[1356] I've already bought one purse.

[1357] Oh, I bought three helmets today.

[1358] Oh, my God, cool.

[1359] Because I have a Dukardi.

[1360] Yeah.

[1361] Because I'm in Italy.

[1362] Uh -oh.

[1363] Okay, this is a good update.

[1364] So we were driving from Austria, from the Grand Prix, to Verona.

[1365] Long drive after the end of a long day.

[1366] And we're going through the Dolomites.

[1367] We're in Italy.

[1368] You can't really tell quite yet because it just looks very alpsy or whatever.

[1369] But one of the girls says to go to the bathroom really bad.

[1370] So we pull off this exit.

[1371] Immediately it's Italy.

[1372] It's like all the trees are those trees.

[1373] We get out of the car, it smells so beautiful.

[1374] And we're in a farm.

[1375] I've, like, driven down this little dirt road.

[1376] And, of course, because I'm just there, I'm going crazy with the accent, right?

[1377] Oh, boy.

[1378] And so the girls were taking a peenex to the car, and I kept going, what are you doing?

[1379] You take them, look at my girls.

[1380] I take a sheet in this field.

[1381] What are you taking a sheet?

[1382] And I got obsessed with saying, you take a sheet.

[1383] And by God, Lincoln took a sheet.

[1384] Oh, she did.

[1385] She actually took a sheet in this field.

[1386] Because of your cheer, I think you got it, got it moving.

[1387] It started as me just joking that they were going to take a sheet, but then she did take a sheet.

[1388] Oh, my gosh.

[1389] But I've actually been abnormally behaved, I think because I've had a cold.

[1390] I haven't been as much of a da -da -da -de -l -l -l -de -l -l -de -l -l -th.

[1391] So I'm going to try to get it full strength before we get to Tuscany.

[1392] I had an ailment last night.

[1393] I had such a bad headache because three things.

[1394] I'd been drinking and like the late travel, then the early makeup, and it's hot.

[1395] And I haven't had this in a while, but sometimes when my flies are coming in.

[1396] Sure.

[1397] They're in route.

[1398] I get these crazy bad headaches.

[1399] Ooh.

[1400] Like kind of migrainy.

[1401] Like, they're like behind my ear, I mean, my eyes.

[1402] Behind my hair.

[1403] And it was so bad.

[1404] And I only got two hours to sleep because of it.

[1405] Before your big photo shoot?

[1406] Yeah.

[1407] And then I was like, oh, I'm going to look so ugly.

[1408] But it was weird because I'm sharing a room with Callie and I haven't shared a room in a long time.

[1409] In my head, I was like, I can't get up and get Advil because, like, it'll wake her up.

[1410] You know, it's just...

[1411] Oh, you're trying to be conscientious.

[1412] You guys poop in front of each other, right?

[1413] Yes and no. Yes, like I have.

[1414] But also, if there's a good opportunity for me to go downstairs, I will.

[1415] Oh, okay.

[1416] Even with her.

[1417] Yeah, with everyone.

[1418] Okay.

[1419] I just think childhood friends, you know.

[1420] Of course.

[1421] I mean, we did.

[1422] It's fine, but my, you know, I'd rather not.

[1423] Also, just because it's New York Hotel, like, walls are thin.

[1424] Yeah.

[1425] I will say it's not a perfect two -way street if I could throw a weekly under the bus.

[1426] I am so tolerant of his farts and his poop, which is ever -present.

[1427] He's constantly farting.

[1428] They reek all the time.

[1429] They're super high -pitched.

[1430] I never care.

[1431] Yeah.

[1432] And if I get a bad case of the stinkers, he'll kind of ruffle his feathers about it a little bit.

[1433] He will?

[1434] Yeah.

[1435] Isn't that unfair?

[1436] Come on, Sharon.

[1437] Who's this fact check about?

[1438] A wasp.

[1439] It's crazy how much wasps have come up since this episode.

[1440] I've thought about that story about you and Clay Smaids and him putting a little towel on your face.

[1441] Wet towel.

[1442] That was a heartbreaker.

[1443] The wet washcloth on the face?

[1444] Yeah, just like picturing a small you.

[1445] And your face is so big And he put this other little boy He put a washcloth on his face It's funny because I like obviously I don't know what the tableau was that my mother saw But I can imagine it quite clearly Which is like I was sitting in the middle of the couch With my head back And I assume like he was on the couch too I imagine he's just staring at me right?

[1446] Like making sure you're breathing maybe Yeah Yeah.

[1447] Like he must have been sitting kind of side saddle on the couch so he could stare at me. I would imagine.

[1448] He was holding my hand.

[1449] My mother tells it.

[1450] Oh, yeah.

[1451] I'm so sweet.

[1452] Oh, I'm going to use the time machine to go see that.

[1453] You would love it until the cloth came off the face and then you'd be panicked.

[1454] I would feel panicked then I would know you lived forever.

[1455] That's true.

[1456] It'd be crazy because I'd be like, oh, wow, he almost died, but then he lived forever.

[1457] It's crazy that this fucking mushroom right here is going to live forever.

[1458] When we were in Austria, there were some bees or wasps, whatever.

[1459] There was a variety of, because there's flowers everywhere.

[1460] It's beautiful.

[1461] And the kids, they go berserk when there's a bee around.

[1462] It drives me bonkers.

[1463] And I finally said them, I said, you guys, you see the only person that's not swinging flailing is me. And I'm allergic to them.

[1464] Yeah.

[1465] Like, if I can be chill with this allergy, you can be.

[1466] And I hope you told them about the wash claw.

[1467] They didn't, they don't care.

[1468] Oh, my God.

[1469] Heartless.

[1470] They are heartless.

[1471] They're really heartless.

[1472] We should update everyone that Rob had a sensational time.

[1473] At Alinea, yes.

[1474] Yes.

[1475] He sent pictures and he was just ecstatic.

[1476] So I'm just very grateful that they took care of Wobby Wob.

[1477] Me too.

[1478] Thank you.

[1479] Thank you, Alinia.

[1480] And thank you, Armcherry, who a lot of.

[1481] A lot of reachouts.

[1482] Yeah, a lot of people were going to try to get Wobby to that dinner.

[1483] And I guess, I mean, let's close the loop for people.

[1484] What happened is it got back to Alinia and they reached out and helped rob out.

[1485] Really took care of them.

[1486] Okay, you made a Beyonce joke.

[1487] You said, because I think I asked, how does the queen be, get, Oh, how did she be con, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1488] And then you said, well, you said first she was in vogue.

[1489] Oh, you have to start off in invogue.

[1490] What's that mean?

[1491] What was her band she was in?

[1492] Destiny's Child.

[1493] No, Destiny's Child.

[1494] Yeah, wait, wait, wait.

[1495] In Vogue was a super group two of women in Vogue.

[1496] Okay, so.

[1497] So I blew that.

[1498] Well, but then you knew Destiny Child because you just said it just now.

[1499] Yeah.

[1500] I knew it would be one of those.

[1501] two words.

[1502] Let me see who's in Vogue while we're here.

[1503] Okay.

[1504] Okay.

[1505] So Don Robinson, Cindy Herron, Terry Ellis, Maxine Jones, Rona Burnett.

[1506] Okay, so I thought there was more, that was more like, I don't know.

[1507] I don't know what I'm saying, but there's been some of these groups that were like in sync where the Timberlake comes out of them.

[1508] I guess it wasn't in Vogue, but...

[1509] It was Destiny's Child.

[1510] When you first said it, I thought you were saying in Vogue magazine.

[1511] Oh, that works better than EnVogue.

[1512] Right, that would work.

[1513] First you have to be in Vogue, the magazine.

[1514] Uh -huh.

[1515] And then you got to marry JZ.

[1516] Okay.

[1517] And then you said the biomass of beetles added up is greater than the biomass of humans collectively.

[1518] Big claim.

[1519] It says here, if all the insects on the planet were put together, they would weigh more than humans put together.

[1520] It is estimated that total insect biomass is 300, times greater than total human biomass.

[1521] 300 times.

[1522] So then all we'd have to figure out is if beetles are 100th of...

[1523] Of insects.

[1524] 1 ,300.

[1525] Then I think they are.

[1526] I'm going to say they are.

[1527] Okay.

[1528] Do you love to add facts.

[1529] Was penicillin the first antibiotic?

[1530] Really quick.

[1531] That's staggering, isn't it?

[1532] That the insects weigh 300 times more than us?

[1533] I don't like that fact.

[1534] Yeah.

[1535] Because they could take over.

[1536] Well, in a Gulliver's travel sense, they might string us down and pull us into the ground.

[1537] Exactly.

[1538] That's what I'm saying.

[1539] They have more power than we want to give them credit.

[1540] When everyone's like, don't kill bugs, it's like, it's us or them.

[1541] Well, and also look at it this way.

[1542] Every bug, they always say is like they can lift 10 times their body weight.

[1543] So not only are they 300 times more weight than us, they can also lift 300 times more weight than us.

[1544] hundred times more than us.

[1545] Ew.

[1546] So really it's like, they're billions of times stronger than us.

[1547] Billions of times.

[1548] This is a ding, ding, ding.

[1549] Because in this episode, I was pretty obsessed with the idea of wasps getting weaponized against us, like an M. Knight Shown.

[1550] Oh, yeah, you really thought it could be trained.

[1551] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1552] Didn't find any traction, but.

[1553] She didn't think so, but, you know, just like before, we just don't know.

[1554] We don't.

[1555] Oh, I was going to see what our names meant because in Welsh, her name means sparkling.

[1556] Oh, right.

[1557] So I was going to look up the meaning of Dax.

[1558] There's not going to be a meaning.

[1559] They'll say German stock exchange.

[1560] What?

[1561] Wow.

[1562] Dax.

[1563] Dax is a boy's name of French origin, meaning leader.

[1564] Come on.

[1565] That's what this says.

[1566] This is from the buck .com.

[1567] From your Wikipedia.

[1568] It says this short and punchy name is unlikely to go unnoticed.

[1569] And I think that's right.

[1570] Okay, Monica name meaning.

[1571] But doesn't say where it's from.

[1572] This is from Wikipedia.

[1573] It says meaning unique to advise alone, none, solitary.

[1574] Wait, that's contradictory.

[1575] Alone and non solitary?

[1576] No, none.

[1577] None solitary?

[1578] No, none common, a nun.

[1579] Oh, a Catholic nun.

[1580] Oh, my gosh.

[1581] And then solitary.

[1582] And then to advise and then unique.

[1583] Unique for New York.

[1584] Duck, Doug, Goose.

[1585] Oh, my gosh.

[1586] Yeah.

[1587] Yeah, I see another associated with the Greek word monos meaning alone.

[1588] Also a name in Latin deriving from the verb meaning to advise.

[1589] Okay, so we have both.

[1590] Oh, a leader and an advisor.

[1591] That's pretty much it, you know, because she's an expert.

[1592] Yeah.

[1593] How much can you learn about wasps?

[1594] We learned about wasps, and we did learn a lot about them.

[1595] I was intrigued, like, whoa, they're crazy.

[1596] Yeah.

[1597] Again, I was saying that it comes up an inordinate amount of time since we had this episode, but we were reading, well, we weren't.

[1598] Kristen was reading The Girl's Some Book, and then there's something about ants, and then we learned that ants came from wasps, and they were shocked, and then I didn't want to act like, and I know it all.

[1599] I wanted to go like, yeah, I know that already.

[1600] that two weeks ago.

[1601] I already know this.

[1602] But it's come up a bunch of times.

[1603] Like, yeah, I know that their answer wasps.

[1604] Of course.

[1605] I think you'd be allowed to say that because wasps trigger your young self with the washcloth over your eyes.

[1606] And the washcloth boy would probably be like, I already know that.

[1607] I'd love to get Clay on to find out his, if he, A, even remembers it.

[1608] B, if he does what his perspective of the whole experience was.

[1609] Oh, my God.

[1610] Because he had a lot on his plate.

[1611] He had, like, one of his peers.

[1612] He was left to take me home and watch me. He wasn't equipped for that.

[1613] Oh, holding your little hand.

[1614] I probably stressed him out to no end.

[1615] He was so relieved when your mom came in.

[1616] I might ask Trevor if I can get Clay's number, see if we can find out.

[1617] I would love that.

[1618] Oh, my God.

[1619] I would love that.

[1620] Okay, TBD.

[1621] TBD.

[1622] Easter egg.

[1623] I wonder if you'd also remember how embarrassing it was that I wouldn't hold that fish, the pike.

[1624] I don't know if a lot of people know that, but there's a picture of you in your photo album and you're holding a fish on news.

[1625] A 22 -inch pike, which I thought was enormous.

[1626] I've come to find out that's not a very big pike.

[1627] But when you're eight, it was the biggest fish I ever saw someone catch.

[1628] And I caught it, but I wouldn't touch it because I don't.

[1629] like how that feels so poor clay he had to get it off the hook and everything and then i had to pose for photos with it it's a polaroid picture that his mom took and we're in his backyard and we're in our tiny short shorts and i've got newspaper between my hands and the fish his family must have thought i was such a brat they thought you were a leader i don't know starting a movement Oh, my goodness.

[1630] All right.

[1631] Well, I love you.

[1632] I hope you have a spectacular time in New York.

[1633] Thank you.

[1634] Can we just real quick, like one minute, recap race?

[1635] The race.

[1636] Oh, oh, yeah.

[1637] I mean, it was, oh, my God.

[1638] I don't know if I should tell this story or not.

[1639] We were staying at a hotel by the track, and many of the drivers were staying there.

[1640] And Lincoln, this is so curious because Lincoln sees people come in and out of the attic all the time.

[1641] She doesn't care.

[1642] I've never seen her giddy about, like, celebrities.

[1643] She was losing her mind that the drivers were in the restaurant.

[1644] She kept getting up and going to the bathroom and then looking and coming back.

[1645] Oh, my God, I saw there was, I saw Leclerc.

[1646] And I saw Carlos Sines.

[1647] Carlos Sines was like two tables over from us.

[1648] And she really wanted to say hi to him before we left.

[1649] And I said, if you're going to interrupt him, you have to give him a memory that he'll remember.

[1650] for the rest of his life.

[1651] You have to make it worth it.

[1652] So she took a shit.

[1653] She took a shit.

[1654] Pretty much.

[1655] So she said, what should I say?

[1656] And I said, if you go up to him and say, excuse me, Carlos, I just wanted to say, you drive like a motherfucker.

[1657] I said, if you say that, he will remember that for the rest of his life.

[1658] She was like, oh, no, I'm too scared.

[1659] Like it was this whole thing, the last 20 minutes of dinner, she was like, She was like, almost having hives.

[1660] Like, is she going to do it?

[1661] She was practicing.

[1662] I can't do it.

[1663] I can't do.

[1664] What if he's mad?

[1665] I'm like, no, he'll love it.

[1666] He'll love it.

[1667] We're walking out, and by God, she fucking did it.

[1668] She stopped.

[1669] I said, you can't half step, but if you're going to say it, you got to say, go for it.

[1670] You drive like a motherfucker.

[1671] You got to hit that.

[1672] So she said it, mind you, they're all Spanish, right?

[1673] So there's an added level to this where they don't know what they just heard.

[1674] several of the guys are laughing immediately.

[1675] Carlos is confused.

[1676] I don't know if he, she then left immediately.

[1677] She like got it out and then she left.

[1678] And then he said like, there must be what her dad wanted.

[1679] You know, like inferred, of course, that I said it.

[1680] But I don't know if he knew that was a compliment because he had been scrapping earlier in the day with Leclerc in the sprint.

[1681] Some people were critical of it.

[1682] We loved it.

[1683] Fucking scrap.

[1684] We're scrappers.

[1685] Oh, this is interesting.

[1686] it could be lost in translation.

[1687] Yes, so regardless, I was very proud of Lincoln.

[1688] Yeah.

[1689] Well, then the race, his car caught on fire.

[1690] His car caught on fire.

[1691] He had to pull off the track, but when he pulled off the track, it was on fire, but he was on a hill.

[1692] So when he was trying to get out, the car was going to roll away.

[1693] So he had to stay in the car to hit the break, because if he got out, the car would have just rolled back into the track on fire.

[1694] So he's in this crazy position where he didn't know if he was.

[1695] he should get out or not and he's waving people over to put i mean the car is fully engulfed in flames not like a tiny little brake fire they finally threw something under the tire he was able to get out and then he was obviously so bum because this is like the fourth time his car is broken this year when he was doing great so he was there's this long shot of him sitting on the side of the racetrack with his head and his hands and i thought is he thinking about lincoln jinxing him No, she didn't.

[1696] No, because her intentions were so good.

[1697] That couldn't have been a bad thing.

[1698] It just, of all the things to happen.

[1699] Oh, my God, that's scary.

[1700] Yeesh.

[1701] But the race was fucking awesome.

[1702] Leclerc one.

[1703] He did a great job.

[1704] I don't mind seeing Max lose when it's Leclerc.

[1705] And Max is doing so well.

[1706] Danny got points, which was great.

[1707] Love it.

[1708] It was awesome.

[1709] It was so much fun.

[1710] Okay.

[1711] Well, I'm glad I got to see your face.

[1712] I'm glad I got to see yours.

[1713] I'm so glad you're having a fun trip with your girlfriend in New York City.

[1714] You deserve it.

[1715] And I'm glad you were in a photo shoot.

[1716] You deserve it.

[1717] Thank you.

[1718] I love you.

[1719] Love you.

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