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Hunting Fireflies for Fun (and Profit) · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. It is a beautiful summer
0:31
Speaker 1: afternoon here in Atlanta in nineteen in the midst of
0:35
Speaker 1: what many economists call the gig economy. We're going somewhere
0:39
Speaker 1: with this. I promise my name is Bett. You would
0:42
Speaker 1: not believe your eyes. Nate Milion fo your flies, some
0:47
Speaker 1: young It sounds just like the Postal Service, but it's
0:50
Speaker 1: a band called Owl City. Are they on wherever that
0:53
Speaker 1: record label was in the Midwest? Saddle Creek, Saddle Creek. Yes,
0:57
Speaker 1: I'm trying to okay, I don't think I don't think so,
1:00
Speaker 1: just felt like they would be well. No, they literally
1:02
Speaker 1: are like a one to one rip off of the
1:04
Speaker 1: Postal Service. But they have the song called Fireflies that
1:06
Speaker 1: was very popular and grocery stores across the country. Wait,
1:09
Speaker 1: who are you? I'm no great good, You're in the
1:11
Speaker 1: right place. A resident music snarker who was responsible for
1:15
Speaker 1: those lovely dulcet tones we heard just a second ago.
1:18
Speaker 1: Why that was super producer Casey Pegram And you may
1:23
Speaker 1: be asking yourself, gig economy, fireflies? Are you guys finally
1:28
Speaker 1: doing that? Weird experiment where you both do one half
1:30
Speaker 1: of a completely different show. The answer is no, though
1:33
Speaker 1: that would be fun. Yeah. Have we discussed this, Uh
1:36
Speaker 1: in my head, we have. I love it my and
1:40
Speaker 1: we also we also discussed the Nixon episode. Whatever happened
1:43
Speaker 1: to that? I think it's just sort of a terrible idea.
1:47
Speaker 1: You thought it was a great idea. I think it
1:49
Speaker 1: would wear thin very quickly. It would have to be
1:51
Speaker 1: like its twelve to fifteen minute episode. I think you
1:53
Speaker 1: would wear thin after about three minutes. Really for me personally, okay,
1:57
Speaker 1: like as you experience it as I experience it. Oh okay,
2:00
Speaker 1: But it's not about us. It's about the audience. It's
2:02
Speaker 1: not you, guys. How do you really feel about it?
2:05
Speaker 1: All Nix and Impression episodes? And how do you feel
2:07
Speaker 1: about fireflies? Do you what do you call them? Fireflies?
2:10
Speaker 1: Lightning bugs, torch bugs? Yeah, little glowy boys, bright butts, uh,
2:16
Speaker 1: flashlight locusts. I'm just making things up here, uh, strobe skeeters.
2:21
Speaker 1: These are all very good then? Thanks still? Thanks? So
2:24
Speaker 1: fireflies are actually beatles, which I think would surprise a
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Speaker 1: lot of people, and they are the subject of today's episode.
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Speaker 1: I think anybody who's grown up around these amazing creatures
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Speaker 1: has at least a few nostalgic memories of seeing them
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Speaker 1: come out. You know, as as the sun is western
2:44
Speaker 1: and the night begins, you can start to see them
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Speaker 1: pop up. And you can because they're very easy to catch.
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Speaker 1: You can get one in a jar, old in your hand,
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Speaker 1: squish them and take that bioluminescent juice that drips forth
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Speaker 1: from their tiny broken bodies and you rub it on
3:00
Speaker 1: your hands or your face like some sort of weird
3:03
Speaker 1: ferald jungle child or future makeup artists. Yeah, exactly. Um,
3:09
Speaker 1: you know, not not not necessarily a nice thing to do,
3:11
Speaker 1: much nicer to just like hold them and look at
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Speaker 1: the cupped hand and then release them. But you know,
3:16
Speaker 1: we all knew those kids that would that would give
3:18
Speaker 1: them a good squish. And it turns out in nineteen
3:21
Speaker 1: sixty through the mid nineties, uh, there were a lot
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Speaker 1: of firefly squishers in the Midwest round about Missouri. Yes, yes,
3:29
Speaker 1: due to something called the Sigma Fireflies Scientists Club, tens
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Speaker 1: of millions of fireflies were caught in areas across twenty
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Speaker 1: five states and shipped into containers not just to have
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Speaker 1: some got to collect them all pokemon esque thing. But
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Speaker 1: because there was a big business about let's let's talk
3:50
Speaker 1: real quickly about what the let's call it the lantern, right,
3:54
Speaker 1: what makes fireflies glow? It's an enzyme called lucifer as,
3:59
Speaker 1: and under the conditions this stuff produces that, as you
4:02
Speaker 1: described it, no bioluminescent gleam. And for this gleam to occur,
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Speaker 1: the bug has to use a kind of energy called
4:08
Speaker 1: a t P. So if the bugs but is a lamp,
4:14
Speaker 1: then a t P would be the fuel and the
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Speaker 1: enzyme would be like the match of the lighter that
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Speaker 1: lights it. Scientists figured out how this all worked in
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Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties, and pretty soon after that biochemists said,
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Speaker 1: how can we apply this amazing substance? What can does
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Speaker 1: this have industrial applications? And that's where Sigma comes into play. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and Sigma for our purposes today are sort of like
4:41
Speaker 1: the man, you know, the man that wants to squash uh,
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Speaker 1: these beautiful creatures on a mass scale because they just
4:48
Speaker 1: need that sweet sweet enzyme. You know. Because they actually
4:51
Speaker 1: had developed uh an entire kind of slate of chemicals
4:56
Speaker 1: that were able to use this bioluminescent stuff to light
5:01
Speaker 1: things up, right, And here's the thing Sigma for our
5:04
Speaker 1: purposes today. Um, they're sort of like the big the
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Speaker 1: big bad of this story. I mean, they didn't necessarily
5:09
Speaker 1: weren't all bad, but they were definitely the enemy of
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Speaker 1: fireflies everywhere because they figured out that that enzyme could
5:16
Speaker 1: actually be used to detect bacteria in environments that were
5:20
Speaker 1: meant to be sterile. So it was something that really
5:23
Speaker 1: came in handy and was valuable to make sure there
5:25
Speaker 1: was no contamination in labs for example. Right. Yeah. Additionally,
5:30
Speaker 1: these chemicals can detect contamination and milk and water, and
5:34
Speaker 1: they can determine how much cancer is in a tissue.
5:38
Speaker 1: This next one reminds me of the old school Adam
5:40
Speaker 1: West Batman because people even attempted to use it as
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Speaker 1: a shark repellent, and according to Sue Hartwick, a supervisor
5:48
Speaker 1: at Sigma, it was once sent into outer space as
5:52
Speaker 1: a way to test for extraterrestrial life. We're getting a
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Speaker 1: lot of this information from an author named Sarah Was,
6:00
Speaker 1: who was a firefly expert at Tufts University. She wrote
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Speaker 1: a book called Silent Sparks The Wondrous World of Fireflies.
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Speaker 1: I love the title and The story is worth an
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Speaker 1: entire book here because, as we said, Sigma realizes there's
6:15
Speaker 1: tremendous potential in capturing all these all these bright butts, right,
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Speaker 1: And their problem is that you only get a little
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Speaker 1: bit of this enzyme per bug, and you have to
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Speaker 1: gather a massive amount of them, when we say earlier,
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Speaker 1: tens of millions. And so they said, how can we
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Speaker 1: collect these We can't necessarily get all the fireflies together
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Speaker 1: in one place, so we have to we have to
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Speaker 1: enlist the help of people who are around fireflies when
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Speaker 1: they occur. They literally needed to establish a supply chain,
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Speaker 1: and they did so in the form of I don't know,
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Speaker 1: it's some really clever marketing, that's for sure. I would
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Speaker 1: almost argue they are tricking kids into doing this. But
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Speaker 1: they formed this thing we talked about the top of
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Speaker 1: the show, which was the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club. Doesn't
7:03
Speaker 1: that sound fun and nerdy? It sounds like a good,
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Speaker 1: healthy summer for a growing tyke. And here's what they did.
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Speaker 1: They started publishing advertisements and then articles that were really
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Speaker 1: just longer advertisements disguised as news in local papers all
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Speaker 1: across the Midwestern United States. These would be classified ads
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Speaker 1: with all cap lines like catch lightning bugs and then hey,
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Speaker 1: kids join the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club. It's fun, it's profitable,
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Speaker 1: handed opportunity to make a valuable contribution to science. And
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Speaker 1: so they say, you know, we're appealing to youngsters throughout St. Louis,
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Speaker 1: for example, and you get thirty cents in cash for
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Speaker 1: every one bugs you catch, or one dollar in ride
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Speaker 1: tickets at three local amusement parks. It's genius. And I
8:00
Speaker 1: maybe mischaracterized earlier on the show saying they were tricking
8:03
Speaker 1: the kids, but it was definitely, uh a way of
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Speaker 1: getting pretty cheap labor, right, Oh sure, absolutely, thirty cents
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Speaker 1: per hundred. I mean that's I don't know, what is it?
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Speaker 1: What is that like good money for kids? Like, I
8:18
Speaker 1: don't know. I think definitely the company is saving a
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Speaker 1: lot in their supply chain, right because it's not like
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Speaker 1: they're only making thirty five cents in cash, thinking how
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Speaker 1: we're going to keep this operation afloat. They did, however,
8:31
Speaker 1: form a pretty effective community. People were writing into Boys
8:36
Speaker 1: Life the boy Scout magazine about how this was a
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Speaker 1: great way to have fun, get outdoors and make money.
8:43
Speaker 1: Adults approved of it because they said, you know, these
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Speaker 1: kids are getting exercise, they're having fun, they're learning the
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Speaker 1: value of hard work. And Sigma kept all these all
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Speaker 1: these kids that were collecting fireflies for them in the loop.
9:00
Speaker 1: They would send out news. You know, you would get
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Speaker 1: these collection kids, but then you would also get information
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Speaker 1: on what Sigma was doing with what they were catching,
9:09
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So it wasn't a black box.
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Speaker 1: You weren't just sending fireflies off into the void and
9:15
Speaker 1: getting a dollar's worth of rides at an amusement park. Yeah.
9:18
Speaker 1: But they also like they really built a culture around this.
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Speaker 1: They had all kinds of swag like T shirts and
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Speaker 1: the special catching nets or whatever, and they had buttons
9:27
Speaker 1: UM and of course you got that kind of candy money.
9:30
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it UM. And it absolutely thrived.
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Speaker 1: Eventually it had thousands of members and it wasn't just
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Speaker 1: in the Midwest. It was across twenty five different states UM.
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Speaker 1: And actually we don't really have exact data on you know,
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Speaker 1: where they were dispersed, UM. But what we do know
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Speaker 1: is that the club members brought in over three million
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Speaker 1: fireflies each year UM. And this really was quite a
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Speaker 1: massive operation that was pretty loosely run. At first, it
10:02
Speaker 1: was right yeah for a while, and then they said, okay,
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Speaker 1: this sustainable, this is growing into a national phenomenon. Now
10:09
Speaker 1: we need to we need to invest a little in
10:12
Speaker 1: our communities. So that is why by the middle of
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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, club members could pay a small deposit
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Speaker 1: and then they would get their official firefly hunting kit.
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Speaker 1: The firefly hunting kit was pretty neat. It's the kind
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Speaker 1: of thing that I would be into as a kid,
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Speaker 1: and probably a lot of us listening would be as well.
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Speaker 1: You would get a pamphlet telling you what a firefly is,
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Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do, how you catch them, custom
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Speaker 1: shipping canisters that were lined with desecant a net that
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Speaker 1: get This had some branding and it was silk screened
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Speaker 1: with the official insignia of the Sigma Club. It was
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Speaker 1: a bug with a bow tie and white gloves. And
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Speaker 1: then they also got buttons with a little glow in
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Speaker 1: the dark paint where the fireflies but would be. He
10:59
Speaker 1: was made of fireflight guts. They probably had to use
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Speaker 1: all that stuff just for the cancer research. They didn't
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Speaker 1: want to waste. That's an interesting question. And of course,
11:09
Speaker 1: although it's I'm having a great time saying the word,
11:12
Speaker 1: but repeatedly on the air. We should point out that
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Speaker 1: the fireflies light emitting organs are in most of most cases,
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Speaker 1: they're on the lower abdom so the rot where like
11:23
Speaker 1: your lower abs. Dirty V would be Can I say
11:27
Speaker 1: dirty V on the air? I don't know what that is.
11:29
Speaker 1: It's not like a happy trail. It's kind of it's
11:30
Speaker 1: happy trail adjacent. It's where like, Casey, you know what
11:34
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I mean, I do, but I've never
11:36
Speaker 1: heard the term before. Maybe I actidually made it up
11:39
Speaker 1: possible Casey. On the case. They also had some pretty
11:51
Speaker 1: clear standards about how they preferred the fireflies to be shipped.
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Speaker 1: They said, look, we'll take them dead or alive, but
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Speaker 1: we prefer them refrigerated and sent to us within five
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Speaker 1: days of capture because the chemicals that were after are
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Speaker 1: more active if we get them alive. And these kids
12:13
Speaker 1: were I mean cutthroat in the way that they competed
12:17
Speaker 1: with one another. Um. Sure, this was kind of just
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Speaker 1: like a fun thing to do, like as a hobby
12:24
Speaker 1: or whatever, but it for some people it was a
12:27
Speaker 1: serious business, right, and Sigma actually had a sliding scale system,
12:33
Speaker 1: so you would actually get paid proportionately more um as
12:37
Speaker 1: you know, you sent them bigger loads, So you would
12:40
Speaker 1: start at fifty cents for a hundred flies. I think
12:43
Speaker 1: we said thirty yearlier was somewhere between thirty and fifty cents,
12:45
Speaker 1: but once you reached twenty thousand, you were up to
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Speaker 1: one cent per bug, right um. And so there were
12:53
Speaker 1: these like almost factions that would emerge where entire towns
12:57
Speaker 1: where groups of kids would pool of their resources to
13:01
Speaker 1: maximize right Uh. The Allison Firefly Club in Iowa actually
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Speaker 1: brought in one million fireflies over the course of five
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Speaker 1: years and they used that money to build a pool
13:13
Speaker 1: for their community, which is great. And there were other
13:18
Speaker 1: things that we could we could kind of describe as
13:21
Speaker 1: firefly Mafia's still in Iowa and vent in Iowa there
13:26
Speaker 1: was a kingpin and a queen pin of of the
13:29
Speaker 1: firefly game. One kid, it was, it was not identified,
13:33
Speaker 1: it was ten or eleven years old. He said, instead
13:36
Speaker 1: of going straight to Sigma as a single operator, I'm
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Speaker 1: gonna rent a ton of firefly nets, I'm gonna hire
13:43
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids who work for me at a
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Speaker 1: lower rate, and I'll take their bugs and I'll give
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Speaker 1: them to Sigma and he was making about a penny
13:53
Speaker 1: apiece according to experts. But remember I said there were
13:57
Speaker 1: two dons. Venton was home to another quite successful young entrepreneur,
14:02
Speaker 1: Judy Would, also known as the Lightning Bug Lady. Such
14:06
Speaker 1: a cool nickname. So the Lightning Bug Lady. Uh, she
14:10
Speaker 1: spent um an entire school year by her teacher's side,
14:15
Speaker 1: and she used her free summers and this network of
14:20
Speaker 1: kids that she was kind of controlling and turned it
14:24
Speaker 1: into this like bug kind of like industry. I guess
14:27
Speaker 1: you could say she had over four hundred kids that
14:30
Speaker 1: brought her their spoils every night from like as far
14:34
Speaker 1: as forty five miles away. I mean, this is like
14:37
Speaker 1: a serious operation. She's almost like the marm Mandel Bomb,
14:41
Speaker 1: which we did an episode on on stuff that it
14:43
Speaker 1: wants you to know recently, the first mob boss of
14:45
Speaker 1: New York who acted as like a fence. But this
14:48
Speaker 1: is exclusively one product and she it's absolutely fense. I mean,
14:52
Speaker 1: it's not illegal, but she's like this kind of go
14:54
Speaker 1: between um with all of these folks that are going
14:57
Speaker 1: out and doing the actual work. Yeah. So when Judy
15:01
Speaker 1: Wood wrote to the Chicago Tribune. She said that she
15:05
Speaker 1: was bringing in about thirty five thousand fireflies to St.
15:09
Speaker 1: Louis every other day, and she did this every summer
15:14
Speaker 1: for over twenty five years. Her firefly money put her
15:18
Speaker 1: kids through college. Jeez, that is commitment right there. That
15:21
Speaker 1: is a real racket. I love it. I gotta respect
15:24
Speaker 1: that entrepreneurial spirit. Um, it's true, twenty five years enough
15:29
Speaker 1: to put her kids through college. So we have uh,
15:31
Speaker 1: folks improving their local communities, building pools, fun stuff. We
15:35
Speaker 1: have someone actually putting their kids through college. Um. But
15:39
Speaker 1: here's the thing. It wasn't so good for everyone in
15:44
Speaker 1: this equation. And by that, I'm referring to the fireflies themselves.
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Speaker 1: So this is a firefly expert from Toughs University, Sarah
15:53
Speaker 1: Lewis calculated the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club probably killed in
15:59
Speaker 1: the name borhood of one hundred million fireflies during its time,
16:04
Speaker 1: and firefly population data, according to Louis, is pretty sparse.
16:10
Speaker 1: And you know, little kids with nets probably isn't their
16:14
Speaker 1: biggest predator. I mean, they've got other problems to deal with.
16:17
Speaker 1: But uh, Louis says, a hundred million fireflies is nothing
16:21
Speaker 1: to sneeze at and it's really, in her estimation, kind
16:26
Speaker 1: of the principle of it, right, Yeah, it's sort of
16:28
Speaker 1: the tragedy of the commons, or at least tangentially related
16:31
Speaker 1: to that concept. If we consider these fireflies and the
16:35
Speaker 1: beauty they provide the world to share natural resource, then
16:39
Speaker 1: according to Louis, it should be for everyone, and it
16:42
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to her that people would go out
16:44
Speaker 1: and harvest vast numbers of this, you know, especially for
16:48
Speaker 1: personal gain. And as you said, like these insects are
16:52
Speaker 1: facing a ton of other issues habitat loss, light, pollution,
16:57
Speaker 1: pesticides everywhere. But despite the misgivings of of of some folks,
17:03
Speaker 1: some folks who did have a problem with this, the
17:06
Speaker 1: industry was booming until the nineteen nineties. And here's a
17:09
Speaker 1: bit of a mystery. We don't know why, but the
17:13
Speaker 1: Sigma Firefly Scientists Club closed down, you know, they're in
17:18
Speaker 1: the nineties for undisclosed reasons. And people people guessed at
17:22
Speaker 1: a couple of different things. They said, well, maybe the
17:26
Speaker 1: world is more environmentally minded, or the U s is
17:29
Speaker 1: maybe child wages are too inflated for this to be profitable.
17:34
Speaker 1: Maybe the patent on synthetic lucifer as expired. Write a
17:40
Speaker 1: company named am Gin had control of that patent for
17:43
Speaker 1: a long time. The company responsible for the firefly harvesting
17:47
Speaker 1: craze is now known as Sigma Aldrich and they're valued
17:51
Speaker 1: at seventeen billion dollars. That's a lot of dollars. Company
17:56
Speaker 1: built on the backs of on the butts. That's that's
18:00
Speaker 1: that's good. Then built on the butts of a little
18:03
Speaker 1: glowy boys um. And thankfully they came up with a
18:07
Speaker 1: synthetic version of this stuff. They didn't have to keep
18:08
Speaker 1: doing that anymore, right, right, with a patent on it expired,
18:11
Speaker 1: so they didn't have to collect the natural stuff. But
18:14
Speaker 1: still that speculation there is a synthetic You're right, there
18:17
Speaker 1: is a synthetic version of this. Uh. You can, still, however,
18:21
Speaker 1: buy a whole jar of fireflies from Sigma, pulled from
18:26
Speaker 1: the huge amount of fireflies they caught over the decades.
18:31
Speaker 1: You can write to them today and buy a jara
18:34
Speaker 1: jar fireflies. Let's see up, let me correct that I
18:39
Speaker 1: was looking for fireflies whole desiccated. That product has been discontinued,
18:44
Speaker 1: so until recently you could buy a whole jar of fireflies. However,
18:48
Speaker 1: you can buy firefly lantern extract. It's the powder. It's
18:52
Speaker 1: just the powdered version of the glowing chemical, and it
18:55
Speaker 1: will set you back two hundred and twenty four dollars US,
19:00
Speaker 1: which seems kind of expensive. But I am not uh,
19:04
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not an expert in that market, you
19:06
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I think that kind of sets
19:13
Speaker 1: up the story part of this. It was sort of
19:15
Speaker 1: a happy ending for the creatures. Didn't decimate their entire population.
19:18
Speaker 1: You can still go out on a on a twilight
19:22
Speaker 1: night in the woods and see little glowy boys sparkling
19:25
Speaker 1: everywhere like tiny, tiny fairies. But Ben, we haven't answered
19:29
Speaker 1: the most important question in all of this. Is there
19:32
Speaker 1: a difference between a firefly and a lightning bugs? Of
19:35
Speaker 1: the two? You know, we added some other names in
19:37
Speaker 1: the mix there, but these two are the ones that
19:39
Speaker 1: have always stuck for me. Are they its regional names
19:41
Speaker 1: for the same thing? Are there scientific differences? Yeah? I
19:45
Speaker 1: was wondering about that too, knowl It's it's to rephrase
19:48
Speaker 1: the question. It's sort of like our our lightning bugs
19:51
Speaker 1: a distinct species or just this distinctly different thing from
19:55
Speaker 1: a firefly? Or is it more like the way people
19:59
Speaker 1: in different parts of the country described soda, right. Is
20:01
Speaker 1: it a pop? Is it a coke? Is it I
20:05
Speaker 1: don't know what the other slang names for soda are.
20:07
Speaker 1: But there are over two thousand species of fireflies that
20:11
Speaker 1: we know of, and according to Bert vox H, University
20:15
Speaker 1: of Cambridge linguistics professor, the answer is probably something more
20:19
Speaker 1: along the lines of regional terms. Most people in the
20:24
Speaker 1: US use both terms interchangeably firefly and lightning bug. So
20:29
Speaker 1: thirty nine point eight percent of us in the United
20:32
Speaker 1: States will use both of them. Thirty something percent, thirty
20:36
Speaker 1: four say firefly exclusively and twenty nine point one percent
20:42
Speaker 1: say lightning bug exclusively. And I'm wondering, Uh, I'm wondering
20:47
Speaker 1: if that Southern lightning bug feels like a Southern thing
20:51
Speaker 1: to me. Here's one. This is the weirdest one in
20:56
Speaker 1: this study. Again, ten thousand people point zero to two
21:00
Speaker 1: percent or two people total in the study called these
21:04
Speaker 1: bioluminescent bugs peeny wally? Did they know each other? Was
21:10
Speaker 1: it the same guy? That's very strange. Nobody called him
21:14
Speaker 1: little glory boys No, no, glory boy and bright But
21:17
Speaker 1: those are those are things that I think we discovered today.
21:20
Speaker 1: That's unfortunately, it could be a great T shirt. I
21:23
Speaker 1: think it could. Well, I guess that at no, we
21:29
Speaker 1: got soft. It's time, gentleman Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
21:36
Speaker 1: The quister you got. You've got a lot of nerve
21:39
Speaker 1: come in here, mr. Yeah, I mean you had plenty
21:42
Speaker 1: of advanced warning today. That's true. We did hang out
21:45
Speaker 1: and talking about this earlier on base camp. We're talking
21:47
Speaker 1: about it. You also totally tipped your hand on the
21:51
Speaker 1: message board. I did. Yeah, no, well, I mean they
21:55
Speaker 1: I didn't tell anybody what I was going to talk about.
21:56
Speaker 1: Watch that. I think I thought I out. It was great.
22:00
Speaker 1: We got to dual old school shout out to our
22:05
Speaker 1: companies continuing deep seated beef with Wikipedia. Yes, yes, the
22:10
Speaker 1: ongoing rivalry. No, there's no rivalry there. It's just we
22:14
Speaker 1: aren't allowed to We were never allowed to use it
22:16
Speaker 1: as a source. But are Yeah, so now back to
22:20
Speaker 1: back to my my nemesis. Yeah, that's right against you guys. Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: you're you're speaking of rivals there. Well, you are not
22:30
Speaker 1: here today to give any of us a gift, ne necessarily,
22:34
Speaker 1: or to to wish this happy birthday or pay a
22:36
Speaker 1: social call you're not here to borrow a cup of sugar. Europe.
22:40
Speaker 1: You're up to your old tricks again. I am up
22:43
Speaker 1: to my old tricks. We are going to have another
22:46
Speaker 1: attempt to see if you guys can determine whether or
22:48
Speaker 1: not the the scenario I present you as real or
22:52
Speaker 1: if I made it up seas as as is always
22:55
Speaker 1: the case for those of you who are not familiar, Yes,
22:57
Speaker 1: this is the most cringe worthy segment at all the podcasting,
23:00
Speaker 1: where I come in and I present our beloved hosts
23:03
Speaker 1: a scenario. They have to figure out if it is
23:05
Speaker 1: a true thing or a fake thing. They get three
23:08
Speaker 1: minutes to do it, and they also can ask me
23:11
Speaker 1: a question if they follow an arbitrary rule of my choosing.
23:16
Speaker 1: And uh so, I'm going to read out the scenario
23:19
Speaker 1: for you. I will give you the rule, and then
23:21
Speaker 1: we will start the clock. So here's the scenario. Now, First,
23:25
Speaker 1: the following is absolutely true. I'm establishing a prologue. This
23:33
Speaker 1: is something I never ever do, so be grateful for it.
23:36
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy four, the Great Plains the United States
23:42
Speaker 1: was devastated by a plague of grasshoppers, or more accurately,
23:47
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountain locust. There were literally trillions of the bugs,
23:52
Speaker 1: and they ate pretty much everything except peas. There were
23:58
Speaker 1: stories of them eating wool off of sheep in the
24:01
Speaker 1: fields or the clothes off farmers backs. All of that
24:05
Speaker 1: is true, but is this part true. Different communities tried
24:09
Speaker 1: battling these things in various ways. They put together hopper dozers,
24:14
Speaker 1: which were essentially pals that would scoop up locusts by
24:17
Speaker 1: the thousands. They would set fires to try and discourage
24:20
Speaker 1: the bugs, which the locusts would simply extinguish by landing
24:24
Speaker 1: on the burning heaps and smothering the fire. One way
24:27
Speaker 1: communities tried to deal with it locusts was to offer
24:29
Speaker 1: bounties for dead grasshoppers. For example, in Nicolett County, Minnesota,
24:36
Speaker 1: the county government offered one dollar for every bushel of
24:40
Speaker 1: locusts brought in. The final total came in at twenty
24:44
Speaker 1: five thousand, fifty three dollars, and it didn't even put
24:49
Speaker 1: a dent in the problem. On top of that, John S. Hillsbury,
24:54
Speaker 1: governor of Minnesota at the time, passed laws stating that
24:57
Speaker 1: every able bodied man would have to spend one day
25:01
Speaker 1: a week for five weeks destroying grasshopper eggs. Now, if
25:07
Speaker 1: you want to ask a question, you must proceed it
25:09
Speaker 1: with the phrase, what's the buzz? Tell me what's happening? Okay,
25:14
Speaker 1: hang on, I have to write the clock. Oh man,
25:17
Speaker 1: one day this clock is going to be worth it. Okay,
25:20
Speaker 1: and begin, Hey, Hey, what's the buzz? What's that happening? Why? Shoot?
25:27
Speaker 1: Do you want to go ahead? Tell me? Okay? Okay.
25:31
Speaker 1: So the part that is established is true is the
25:34
Speaker 1: fact that there was a locus plague in the Great Planes,
25:38
Speaker 1: plague of locusts in the Great Plains. And what we're
25:42
Speaker 1: attempting to determine the veracity of is whether or not
25:46
Speaker 1: the methods of trying to uh to attack these locusts
25:51
Speaker 1: are true. Exactly, buzz buzz, what's happening? What was this
25:56
Speaker 1: area of the country known for sinful? I mean it's
26:01
Speaker 1: the Great Planes. It's a flyover states. I never pay
26:03
Speaker 1: attention to them. Wow, that's that's a hot take from
26:07
Speaker 1: No No, But for serious, I have no clue. I mean,
26:11
Speaker 1: it's eight it's a plague of locust that just kind
26:14
Speaker 1: of made a figure. They had it coming amblically, be fair.
26:16
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole nation in eighteen seventy four was
26:19
Speaker 1: sort of in a kind of healing pattern. That's true. Hey, hey,
26:24
Speaker 1: what's the buzz? What's that happening? Uh? Not big Android
26:28
Speaker 1: Webber fans here and there from Jesus Christ Superstar go ahead,
26:33
Speaker 1: So yeah, hey, hey, what's buzz? What's that happening? Is
26:36
Speaker 1: this is scenario where in most of this could be true,
26:40
Speaker 1: but one thing could be untrue. And sink us I'm
26:43
Speaker 1: asking because I'm not doing something where out of all
26:46
Speaker 1: the stuff I told you, one little thing has been changed.
26:50
Speaker 1: I think. I think what's in question here is whether
26:52
Speaker 1: or not the bounty existed. And you know, the response
26:55
Speaker 1: to the locals how much the bounty was. It's it's
26:58
Speaker 1: either it's either all true or it's all I made
27:02
Speaker 1: it all okay because I didn't want us to get
27:04
Speaker 1: pink on something where it's like ha ha it was
27:08
Speaker 1: dollar Yeah that's what that's what think? You know, Ben,
27:12
Speaker 1: I'm going true. I'm going big time true on this.
27:14
Speaker 1: All right? Well it in block it in three to
27:17
Speaker 1: one true curses, Casey, can we get some celebratory music. Yeah,
27:28
Speaker 1: it's been a hot minute. We were reaching out to
27:30
Speaker 1: the internet to see if someone was keeping track, maybe
27:33
Speaker 1: because we certainly aren't, but I'm pretty sure we are
27:36
Speaker 1: miles behind. You managed to make up a little bit
27:39
Speaker 1: of territory. Here. We'll let me give you a little
27:41
Speaker 1: bit more insight, at least because this is exact. So, Yes,
27:45
Speaker 1: there was a grasshopper plague a locust plague in eighteen
27:48
Speaker 1: seventy four. Yes, people made hopper dozers, which were essentially
27:53
Speaker 1: these plows that had been adjusted to collect locusts in
27:57
Speaker 1: various ways. People did issue bounties for bushels of dead grasshoppers.
28:03
Speaker 1: A bushel, by the way, in case you're curious, is
28:05
Speaker 1: a about equivalent to nine point two gallons. So one
28:09
Speaker 1: bushel of dead grasshoppers is about ten gallons of dead grasshoppers.
28:14
Speaker 1: And so you get a dollar for that, and I
28:16
Speaker 1: also adjusted for inflation, just for the heck of it,
28:18
Speaker 1: that's about twenty two dollars fifty cents perfect up top.
28:23
Speaker 1: And it also means that that the entire payout from
28:26
Speaker 1: that one county in Minnesota was nearly was slightly more
28:30
Speaker 1: than half a million dollars total just for bushels of
28:34
Speaker 1: dead grasshoppers. Uh, there were multiple places that would issue
28:38
Speaker 1: these sort of bounties. Uh, Missouri had a dollar bushel
28:43
Speaker 1: bounty that started in March of eighteen seventy five, I believe,
28:46
Speaker 1: and then it went down to fifty cents the next month.
28:49
Speaker 1: Then it went down to the next month, and it
28:51
Speaker 1: went down to ten cents next month. So diminishing returns
28:53
Speaker 1: for your dead grasshoppers. I'd like to point out something
28:56
Speaker 1: for the listening to audience. Uh, the quister is wearing
28:58
Speaker 1: his own T shirt. AM. He's like one of those
29:01
Speaker 1: guys in the band which you you know what, I
29:06
Speaker 1: really I still really like that T shirt. And to
29:09
Speaker 1: be fair, you did say that you were going to
29:11
Speaker 1: wear that for anybody on ridiculous his stories. Really, yeah,
29:15
Speaker 1: I committed interestingly. John S. Pillsbury, the governor of Minnesota,
29:20
Speaker 1: was also co founder of the Pillsbury Company, named after
29:24
Speaker 1: his nephew, Charles Alfred Pillsbury. So the two of them
29:29
Speaker 1: were the co founders of the company. Where's the dough
29:31
Speaker 1: boy thing come from? I mean it was whenever you
29:33
Speaker 1: pushed John Pillsbury's tummy, he went he and then locus
29:38
Speaker 1: would fly out of his mouth and swallow you hole.
29:40
Speaker 1: You know this guy sounds like a good time. That
29:42
Speaker 1: might have been a lie. Also, interesting fact, something that's
29:46
Speaker 1: truly the stories of these locusts is something that will
29:50
Speaker 1: make your your blood just chill in your veins. They
29:52
Speaker 1: talk about the sun going dark because of clouds of
29:56
Speaker 1: these things, and that they literally were eating the clothes
30:00
Speaker 1: of people's backs as they were trying to get inside.
30:02
Speaker 1: They ruined the economy to two hundred million dollars worth
30:06
Speaker 1: of damage in the Great Plain States. There was actually
30:09
Speaker 1: a Missourian scientist who recommended eating them, and a lot
30:13
Speaker 1: of people said you gross, and they didn't. But it
30:16
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. You never could have eaten
30:18
Speaker 1: as many as we're out there. Interesting fact, though, despite
30:22
Speaker 1: the fact that there were trillions of these things devastating
30:27
Speaker 1: the middle of the United States, today they're extinct and
30:30
Speaker 1: there's not really a good scientific explanation for exactly what happened.
30:36
Speaker 1: There are a lot of hypotheses, but we don't actually
30:39
Speaker 1: know what led to them going to extinct. I mean,
30:42
Speaker 1: did they serve a purpose other than just decimating crops?
30:45
Speaker 1: And do humans serve a purpose apart from flying over
30:49
Speaker 1: the Great Plain States? We make all sorts of snacks.
30:54
Speaker 1: Also true, we we all also are the only creatures
31:00
Speaker 1: that seemed to hold abstract, at times contradictory belief systems. No,
31:05
Speaker 1: have you ever talked about to a grasshopper about like
31:08
Speaker 1: any like really deep philosophical question, because they will will
31:12
Speaker 1: fle waffle all over. It always goes back to grass though.
31:15
Speaker 1: With them, that's the thing. It's probably that they could
31:17
Speaker 1: constantly jump to conclusions. Also, I feel like hopper dozer
31:22
Speaker 1: is a cool, fake, anachronistic insult. I I when I
31:26
Speaker 1: came across that line, as did I write this hopper
31:29
Speaker 1: dosers this me that wrote this thing? No, it was,
31:32
Speaker 1: But it is interesting that this was a problem that
31:35
Speaker 1: was devastating the United States. Uh, there were real efforts
31:40
Speaker 1: to send disaster relief to those states from other parts
31:44
Speaker 1: of the US because there were entire economies that were
31:47
Speaker 1: completely devastated. It sounds like literal hell on Earth swarmed
31:51
Speaker 1: and like having your clothes eaten off of your body.
31:54
Speaker 1: They're eating the wool off of sheep in the fields.
31:57
Speaker 1: And they said that you could actually hear them choo wing,
32:00
Speaker 1: and that it could reduce acres of corn in just
32:04
Speaker 1: three hours, which to nothing, just chew it all the
32:07
Speaker 1: way down to the ground. The still, the most insane
32:09
Speaker 1: part to me is this mysterious extinction. You know what
32:12
Speaker 1: makes you think this country. I I don't want to
32:15
Speaker 1: sound like a performative environmentalist or something, but that's the
32:20
Speaker 1: most chilling part, the fact that this, this entire life
32:23
Speaker 1: form disappeared. Like the passenger pigeons that also used to
32:27
Speaker 1: blot out the sky right, yes, yes, yes, they would
32:30
Speaker 1: also pick the clothes off of people's backs when they
32:32
Speaker 1: were trying to run into the farmhouses. That can hear
32:35
Speaker 1: the picks in the distance, that's the other thing, because
32:37
Speaker 1: you could probably hear the swarm coming. Oh yes, no,
32:40
Speaker 1: they said that it sounded like a really terrible storm
32:43
Speaker 1: because they were just they're just hitting against the walls
32:46
Speaker 1: and rooftops. And yes, apparently the the Rocky Mountains area
32:51
Speaker 1: where the grasshoppers when they're by the way, when they're individuals,
32:54
Speaker 1: they're crasshoppers. It's only when they're in mass that you
32:56
Speaker 1: call them locusts, which is also kind of interesting. So
33:00
Speaker 1: they but they apparently had a just a very good
33:05
Speaker 1: year for their for all the eggs survived, more eggs
33:09
Speaker 1: survived than normal, but there was a food shortage in
33:12
Speaker 1: their native habitats. So then they migrated down from the
33:16
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain area across the Great Plains, and it was
33:19
Speaker 1: from the Dakota's down through Texas that was just absolutely
33:24
Speaker 1: affected by this. Kansas was really hit hard. Missouri was
33:27
Speaker 1: hit hard. Today I learned something I had no idea
33:30
Speaker 1: that grasshopper by itself is a grasshopper, a grasshopper, and
33:35
Speaker 1: mass its locust. People don't have anything that cool yet.
33:39
Speaker 1: You know where you got like a one one dufus.
33:43
Speaker 1: It's just a dufus and a whole bunch of dufaces
33:45
Speaker 1: is Congress. Okay, here we go, there we go. We
33:50
Speaker 1: got the button, we got, we got there. Jonathan Strictly
33:53
Speaker 1: a k the Quister, thank you so much for coming
33:57
Speaker 1: onto the show. It's been too long. You know. We
33:59
Speaker 1: had a in the audience who were asking us, uh
34:03
Speaker 1: they were they were asking us where the heck you
34:05
Speaker 1: were at? And then we read, uh, you actually showed
34:08
Speaker 1: up in some of the reviews that we foolishly read
34:11
Speaker 1: on our listener mail episode. Sorry about that guy, true, No,
34:15
Speaker 1: we uh we took How bad was it? Like? Boy?
34:18
Speaker 1: When the Quister comes on, I just have to hidn't
34:21
Speaker 1: even name you by name. They just referred to some
34:24
Speaker 1: annoying component of the show, and that's fair. We knew
34:28
Speaker 1: which one was. I knew it when I pitched it. Well,
34:31
Speaker 1: we were pretty sure that we were the annoying components
34:33
Speaker 1: of the show. No, no, no, it was it was.
34:35
Speaker 1: It was very specifically. Other than us, we were also
34:37
Speaker 1: identified as annoying components, but it was the third comp
34:42
Speaker 1: am somewhat consoled by the fact that at least one
34:44
Speaker 1: person said they think that the Quister should start showing
34:46
Speaker 1: up on other shows too. But I have I like that,
34:48
Speaker 1: I like the in universe tie in. Let's let's talk
34:51
Speaker 1: about this. Let's talk about this offline. Let's see we
34:54
Speaker 1: can figure out a way to have you appear and
34:59
Speaker 1: like crash some one else's podcast. We have to figure
35:01
Speaker 1: out someone would be a good sport about it. Let
35:04
Speaker 1: us know what podcast do you think the Quisters should
35:06
Speaker 1: crash next. You can tell us at Facebook. You can
35:10
Speaker 1: let us know on Instagram, you can let us know
35:13
Speaker 1: on Twitter. We highly recommend our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians,
35:18
Speaker 1: where you can meet our favorite part of the show,
35:20
Speaker 1: your fellow listeners. Also let us know if you have
35:24
Speaker 1: ever been in the firefly catching business. Just interested I
35:27
Speaker 1: would say, let us know if you live through that
35:30
Speaker 1: uh locust swarm in the locust plague in the eighteen hundreds,
35:34
Speaker 1: But if you have lived that long, I think you
35:37
Speaker 1: probably won't confess it, just honestly. So thanks as always
35:42
Speaker 1: to the part of the show we all love to
35:45
Speaker 1: hate but mostly just love to love, Jonathan Strickland, the
35:48
Speaker 1: the Notorious Quister. I gotta give you props for finding
35:51
Speaker 1: such a similar story to the story that we talked
35:54
Speaker 1: about today. That was very well done. I really wanted
35:56
Speaker 1: to do that, you know. The original story I picked
35:58
Speaker 1: was one that you guys have already covered in a
36:00
Speaker 1: previous episode. It was using fleas as weapons in World
36:05
Speaker 1: War Two. But then you guys did a full episode
36:07
Speaker 1: we did. We also uh did another episode about a
36:10
Speaker 1: similar situation where uh school kids were encouraged to shoot
36:13
Speaker 1: squirrels and send their severed tales to the governor's office,
36:18
Speaker 1: almost like cereal box tops. Golly that I I'm going
36:22
Speaker 1: to have to listen to that show. Uh. So thanks
36:25
Speaker 1: as always to our super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams,
36:29
Speaker 1: who composed our theme research associates Gave Luzier and Ryan
36:33
Speaker 1: Barrish yes, thanks of course as well to Eve's Jeff
36:38
Speaker 1: Coat and Christopher Hasciotis, friends of the show and friends
36:41
Speaker 1: of ours. Thank you for tuning in, and thanks to
36:46
Speaker 1: uh all the bright butts, all the glowy boys out there,
36:49
Speaker 1: and no, thank you to you for for yet another wonderful, whimsical,
36:55
Speaker 1: ridiculous journey through history, and you as well, sir. We'll
36:58
Speaker 1: see you next time, folks. Yeah. For more podcasts from
37:08
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
37:11
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.