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How Snails Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody out there in the Pacific Northwest or with
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: access to an airport or a car rental place that
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: can get you to the Pacific Northwest specifically at the
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: end of January. We'll see you in Seattle, Portland, and
• 0:13
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• 0:14
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  Speaker 2: four is Seattle, Washington January twenty fourth at the Paramount Theater,
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  Speaker 2: then Portland at our Homeway from Home at Revolution Hall
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: in the twenty fifth, and then winding it all up
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: at Sketchfest on the twenty six at the Sydney Goldstein Theater.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Very nice. If you want tickets, if you want information,
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• 0:48
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• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Slowcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too. We're just inch and along
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: doing things our own way, our own speed, our own time,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: leaving a trail of mucus behind us as we do.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Wow. Inch and a long point five inches per second.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that. One guy said life is a highway.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I want to write it all night long, covering only
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: an inch.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Was that the parenthetical of that title?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was you had to read between
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the lines, Yeah, exactly what a great song?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Or play it backwards that song you think is great?
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do, I do. If you take away all
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the bit it's actually a great song. It's very upbeat
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: and enthusiastic and very this is a good song.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Who was that?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I don't remember. I think that might have been his
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: only song. Although now I've said that, I'm sure he's
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: a huge since in Canada or something, and now everybody's
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: gonna be mad at us.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that happens a lot.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: We'll find out. But anyway, whoever you are out there,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: who made that song? For listening bretton cap off to you.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: That's right, Chuck, I picked this one.
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  Speaker 2: He's Canadian.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: By the way, I knew it, dude, I know that
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: always happened. I don't know, I don't know what's.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: His name, Tom Cochrane.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I wanted to say Tom, but I wanted to say
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Tom Brocall and I was like, I'm not even going
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: to bring that up.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: And you know what, he's in the Canadian Music Hall
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: of Fame.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Oh M, so so much for that.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, at any rate, hats off Tom Cochrane, I think,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: is what I was trying to say. Right, So, we're
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: doing an episode on snails, which I'm kind of psyched about.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Our new good friend Allison helped us with this one,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and believe this is our second one. She's doing great.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, was this a listener recommendation?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: No, this was a Josh recommendation.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know if this was. You know, we
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: did some stuff recently with kids in the classroom, like
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: little virtual appearance appearances for our book stuff kids should know,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: uh huh. And I know we got a lot of
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: ideas and just for some reason, I thought snails might
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: have been one of those.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Not a single one of those kids came up with
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the idea of snails. It was really sad.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Kids these days. I don't even know what snails are.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Snails that was was my pick. And I'm not sure
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: where it came from. I think I just pulled it
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: out of my head. But I'm glad I did, because
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: this is one of those things where, I mean, snails
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: are everywhere. Everyone knows what a snail is, like, it's
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: just a part of living on Earth. You know about snails.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And yet what Alison turned up and I wasn't aware
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: of when I selected this, there's actually a bit of
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: a dearth of information academic information on snails specifically, and
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: that a lot of what we think we know about
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  Speaker 1: them is actually just like old yarns that gardeners have
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: come up with over the years. So I love topics
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: like that, And actually, from researching this, I've come to
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: actually really appreciate snails like I Actually I kind of
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: think they're cute now, just from watching them in some videos.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I looked up a picture of the and we'll
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: talk about these in a little more detail later, but
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  Speaker 2: that giant African snail, and there was one picture of
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  Speaker 2: a woman holding one of these things. Yeah, and I
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  Speaker 2: swear it looked like a bunny rabbit with a turtle shell.
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  Speaker 1: Weird. No, I've not seen that picture.
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  Speaker 2: It looked like a bunny I mean it's a snail. Clearly,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: it didn't look that much like a bunny, right, I
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: wasn't like, what in the world.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it was eating a bunny? Is that what it was?
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: I don't think so, But you were right, Allison was
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: keen to point out that malacology, which is someone who
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: studies mollusks, it's just I guess there's just not a
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: ton of those people out there, so they're just tend
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: to be more people studying, you know, fi er, cuter
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  Speaker 2: things than snails.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I guess, right exactly, And even if you do have
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of malacologists, they're studying mollusks, and snails just
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  Speaker 1: make up part of one class of a larger phylum
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  Speaker 1: of mollusca. They're part of Gastropoda. And it's not just
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: snails in Gastropoda. We're talking slugs, sea slugs, conks, whelks, limpets.
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  Speaker 1: Basically all snail like creatures are in the Gastropoda class.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: So they're gastropodes, yeah, or gastropods.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know how that was pronounced.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: So it's gotta be gastropod, right.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's gastropod. But would it be
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: gastropoda No here' is it one of those weird things
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: that just flips when you shorten it.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: It's that second thing. Okay, great, so I said, Also, Chuck,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: just living on Earth, you're aware of snails, and there's
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: a reason for that. They've been around for a really,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: really long time. They are everywhere. And even if you're
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: walking around Antarctica and you look down on the ground,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: you might see a snail waving up to you wearing
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: a parka.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And even if you know snails, as we will
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: find out, love moisture, Even if you're in the desert,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: even if you're in Arizona living there in Phoenix, you
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: might see a snail. Yeah, because there's still random water
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: here and there.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus also some of them have evolved to like
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: really hang on to their water better than other times,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: so they can survive in the desert. It's just nuts.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: They're everywhere. As a matter of fact, they think that
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  Speaker 1: they there's about one hundred and fifty thousand gastropod species
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  Speaker 1: in total. Remember that includes slugs and all that stuff.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: But they think snail species are between thirty thousand and
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: thirty five thousand, and I mean, you know, we think
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: of snails as typically like the little garden snail, maybe
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the s car ghost snail. I think that's the Roman snail,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, But there are all sorts of snails.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the giant African land snail. Those things get
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  Speaker 1: I saw that they get to be about the size
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: of a human fists or bigger. That's a big snail.
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  Speaker 1: But on the other end, there's another type of snail
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  Speaker 1: that they recently discovered and I think Vietnam and Cambodia
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  Speaker 1: on the walls of caves, and they can fit inside
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  Speaker 1: like a grain of sand, they're that small. But if
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: you look at them under a microscope, they are very
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: clearly snails.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw about five hundred native species to North America,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: and we're generally going to be talking about, you know,
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  Speaker 2: sort of your average land snail, but there are snails
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  Speaker 2: that live exclusively in the water under the sea. It
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: would you know, there's just no way we could talk
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  Speaker 2: about all the snails, So we're going to mainly concentrate
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: on the kind that leave that mucasi trail on the sidewalk.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Like, we could probably get through thirty four thousand
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  Speaker 1: species today, but definitely not thirty five.
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  Speaker 2: Thousand, that's right, So we're not getting dry.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. So the other thing that's kind of like a
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: bummer about snail species is that as long as we've
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  Speaker 1: been scientifically paying attention to snails, we've recorded more than
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  Speaker 1: four hundred extinctions of snail species. And there's an atlantic
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  Speaker 1: short documentary I think it's like twelve minutes long. I
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  Speaker 1: think it's called Goodbye Snails, and it's set in Hawaii
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  Speaker 1: where they're experiencing this crazy mass extinction of their native
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  Speaker 1: snail species that exists nowhere else in the world. And
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  Speaker 1: it's a really kind of a tense little documentary. But
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  Speaker 1: the people who are trying to rescue these snail species
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  Speaker 1: and prevent them from extinction are really doing some amazing
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  Speaker 1: work over there.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's about a thousand of them that are lands
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  Speaker 2: now alone that are endangered right now. So that's that's
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  Speaker 2: a lot of species to be in trouble. So that's
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  Speaker 2: that's no good because as we will see, they can
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: there can be invasive snails, and they can do some
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  Speaker 2: harm to the garden, but they also do a lot
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  Speaker 2: of great things for your garden and for the world.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, leave the snails alone.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: You read them, I have.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Like once or twice. I'm not crazy about them, No,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: they're not. I'm not an S cargo fan. I'm a
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: fan of the s cargo joke though.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Right, which is look at that S cargo?
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Is that what it was? What a snail painted an
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: ass on the side of his car?
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  Speaker 2: That's right, that's a great elementary school kid joke.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Yep, that's wonderful. I was.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Trying to remember if I've ever I feel like I
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  Speaker 2: might have tried it one time, many many many years ago,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: because I do remember seeing snails floating in a buttery
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: solution on a plate.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: M hm.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that was a little tiny.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Tong yeah, that's involved.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I really had a very very faint memory.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: So if I did try it, I don't know under
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: what circumstance it was, but it was a long time ago,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: and it's not something i'd really be into now.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: They even have like a specialized plate for serving them,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and it basically doubles as like a doubled egg serving
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: plate too. It's like, you know, got a bunch of
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: depressions in it that the snails sit in.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Right, I'd rather have a double legg You can also
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: eat snail eggs. They call it white caviar. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: it's a thing. There's a I think it's like one
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: hundred and thirty bucks for about one point seventy five ounces.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, well that's a lot of snail eggs now
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that I think about it.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like it. I mean, it looks like
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: it comes a little ten like caviar. But although I
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: do love caviar, now I don't think I would try
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: snail caviar.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll accept that answer.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: And I know I've talked about a new wish to
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: caviare just the past couple of years. So was it
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: something I ever had until semi recently?
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: But now you have it at dinner every night.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Just you've heard an avocado toast every morning. I just
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: have caviar toast. Cut it all over the biggest piece
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: of sour dough I can.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: With gold flakes on top.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: All right, Should we talk about the body of a snail?
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I feel like we kind of have to because
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of misconceptions people have about snails, including me,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: as far as their body goes.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we can talk about their shell for
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: a little bit. They have that well, we'll talk about
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: the shell kind of threw out. It's obviously a protective device.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Snail can pull themselves back into that shell, and they
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: can actually put a little I think it's called an epigram,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: and that is like a it's like a front door,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: basically a temporary front door that they can put on
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: the whole of that shell. So if you ever pick
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: up a snail shell and it's covered with something, that
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: is a temporary front door that a snail uses to
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: keep people like you from poking around into that snail shell.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I saw that some of them have denticles
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: on their like sharp kind of tooth like projections, so
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: that if a predator tries to come in there after them,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: they'll get all torn up. Oh.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: On the epigram, yeah.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: It's like those reverse tire damage things that like a
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: car rental parking lot. It's like that.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: From what I understand, that's pretty cool. And it also
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: keeps some moist because what a snail does not want
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: to do is dry out, because once again, a snail
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: is basically a slug with a helmet on.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Right, So I'd like to talk a little bit about
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the misconceptions of how the snail body is arranged. If
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: we can, let's do it. Inside that shell is the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: actual body of the snail. What we see as the
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: head in the in the tail is actually the head, true.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: But what looks like the tail is actually like the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: heel of its foot. That's what it's moving around on.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Is its foot, right, it sing exactly, And so above
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: on top of that foot is the whole body and
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: all that is encased in the shell. And what's weird
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: is there's one opening that the what do you say
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: covers the opening.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: The I think it's called an epigram. Okay, I'm sorry,
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: I've been saying epigram, epiphram, epi.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha. So what the epifram covers is called the aperture.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: And on land snails there's one aperture. There's one way in,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: one way out. And because all of their body is
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: tucked up in the shell, they still got to poop,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: they've still got to breathe, they still have to do
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: all the stuff that requires the outside atmosphere. And so
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: what they've done is they've figured out how to double
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: their bodies around so that their head and their including
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: their anus are basically right next to one another at
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the aperture at the opening of their show.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like on top of their head. And
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: this is something called torsion, which means to twist. You know,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: if you've heard of something, you've heard of torsion before. Probably.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Chubby Checker was going to call his dance the torsion,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and he's like, this doesn't have the right ring. Let's
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: do the torsion, right. A traveler from the future came
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: back in time and told him, no, we should call
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: this the twist. Rocked out the high school dance and
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: that was history.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: That's pretty good. Did you think of that one beforehand?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: No? No, okay, no I didn't. I've just gotten that
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: good this late in the year.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: So. Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: That body basically doubles back one hundred and eighty degrees
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: on top of itself. And there's a lot of debate.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, should we get into that, like the great
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: torsion debate.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we can at least touch on it. Sure, it's
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: almost impenetrable if you're not a malacologist.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say so. So as far as when
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: torsion emerged, they're not exactly sure, because you can't tell
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: from like a fossil whether or not a you know,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: you can find a fossil of a shell, but the
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: torsion is happening within the shell, so you can't really
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: tell if it's been torsioned. Is that even a verb?
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know torted, I was gonna say torted. I
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: didn't look it up, though, so I think tort it's right,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: let's say torted.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's torted. So you can't really tell
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: if it's been torted by looking at a fossil. And
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: so there's just been a lot of debate, like obviously
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: this happened for a reason, no one knows exactly what
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: that was. And like you mentioned at the beginning, some
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: of the sort of old farmer's tales. One of those
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: is you might hear some gardening people say, oh, well,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: actually they're asymmetry inside that shell provides balance, and that's
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: it's not true.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: No, no, that's definitely not There's also one that back
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: in the day when they were all marine animals, because
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: land snails evolve from marine aquatic snails, that it was
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a way to keep their their hind quarters, their tails,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: all that stuff from being bitten by a predator.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Probably it does make.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Sense, it's probably not it what the two biggest competing
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: hypothesis are the rotation hypothesis and the asymmetrical hypothesis. And
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the rotational hypothesis the one that's been around since like
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine, and it basically says that at some
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: point in the past, the the snail, some snail mutant
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: came along and twisted around during its development and it
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: became naturally selected because it was advantageous because it allowed
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the snail to retract its head faster, whereas before it
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: would have had to retract the tail and then the head.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Now it can retract the head because it's all it
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: had to retract.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that was just like a spontaneous thing, right.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: That's that's what they think. But it's just such a
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: bizarre thing to have happen, especially in a single mutation,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: because again, what we're talking about is during the larval
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: development a snail's body, it count it moves counterclockwise to
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty degrees, and so its circulatory and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: nervous system forms a Figure eight inside the shell. It's
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: not all just packed in there straight. It's all over
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the place, and because of that weird torsion thing, the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: entire right side of its anatomy, including its organs, are
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: just not there. It's all left side organ stuff. It
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: all just got moved over toward the inside of the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: shell because the right side is pressed up against the
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: shell itself, and it's all because of torsion. And they
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: just cannot figure out why that would have happened in
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the past. And clearly it could have happened as a
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: as a like a mutation, and that obviously did, but
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: why would it have been naturally selected for for hundreds
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: of millions of years, which strongly implies that it was
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: like an advantageous mutation.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would think so, right.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's kind of like this debate that's going
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: on that that is, I mean, you really have to
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: understand snail anatomy and evolutionary history to go much further
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: in understanding that debate. That's pretty much what I could
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: glean from the whole thing.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would say hesitate even getting into that debate.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: If you've had a couple of drinks at the bar
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: and you're feeling a little squarely and you want to
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: dive into this hot conversation.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would stare clear, just take a.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Break and have another drink and just relax.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe it's time for you to go home.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, get a car to take you home or
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: walk or whatever.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's snails tort and we're not sure exactly why,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: but what we do know the upshot of it is
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: that their body is double back on itself and there
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: there ain't and their head are essentially right next to each.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Other, yes, exactly. They also have a mouth and inside
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: that mouth is something called a radula. It has teeth
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: on it and it's like it's kind of like a tongue,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: and they have you know, if you look at a
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: snail and they turn those two little tentacles to look
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: back at you, that's because they have eyes mounted on
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: either one or two pairs of tentacles, and they can
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: look at you. They can't hear you, they don't have ears.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: From what I saw, snails are basically deaf. But they
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: can see you.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: They can see you, and depending on the species, there's
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: different types of eyes. Some have very simple eyes where
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: they can detect changes in light and dark or maybe
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: maybe movement. But there's some kinds I think that have
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the ability to see you, to focus on you. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: because they're on the ends of those stalks, they can
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: retract the eye themselves in the stalk, and then the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: stalk into the head, and then the head into the shell.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: And then when they want to see if danger's gone,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: they can peak one of those stalks out from the shell.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Look around. Isn't that cool?
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: That's pretty cool?
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: I love it. And there's also the mantle, and the
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: mantle will come up quite a bit. And the best
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: I could figure is that mantle is that area around
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: the rim of the shell that connects the foot in
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: the head to the shell itself, right.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's also whatever holds all of our organs
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: and guts in place. That membrane is very analogous to
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the mantle tissue of the snail because it holds all
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the organs in place. But it also does something really important.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: It secretes all of the stuff that eventually is built
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: into the shell itself.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: So are we at the shell partner? You think.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: You know what? This is a good We're twenty minutes in.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I think we should take a break, Yeah, because that
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: shell formation is quite a cliffhanger. Okay, and we'll be
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: back after this, all right, So we promised to talk
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: to you a little bit about the shell. A snail
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: shell is beautiful. You should never ever ever smash a
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: snail shell or a snail because that's animal cruelty and
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: it's a terrible thing to do, so just don't do it. Right,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: But it is basically there's a little bit of protein
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: in there, but it's mainly something called calcium carbonate, and
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: it is, like you said earlier, secreted by that mantle tissue,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: and it builds up over time. It's if you look
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: at sort of the center part of that shell, that's
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: the oldest part of the shell. You can tell a
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: snail's age by how big that shell is. And that's
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: also the hardest part of the shell because it's been
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: around longer. So they just keep adding material along that
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: outer edge little by little as it expands outward. And
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: that is why a like the outer edge of a
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: snail shell will be much more you know, sort of
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: breakable than the inside harder part.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: That makes sense. So the oldest part is the closest
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: to the to the center. Yeah, apparently also, I didn't
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: realize this they're born with a tiny shell already attached.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: They just grow it over time by secrete starter starter
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: shell exactly, and then you yeah, they're born like little
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: tiny baby snails like that preformationism theory from our things
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: we used to believe before the Scientific Method episode.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: So I also said, Chuck, the mantle holds the mantle
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: tissue holds all the the important guts and stuff like
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: that in place. And the way that snails breathe is
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: through the mantle cavity. They have blood vessels in there,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: but they breathe using kind of like a primitive I
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: don't want to say long. I think that's kind of
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: a stretch, but basically, they have an opening that it's.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Called a lung. I've seen it called the lung in diagrams.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I've also seen it called a numistome, and
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: it's essentially a breathing port that they can open and
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: close using their muscles that takes in air and exhales air.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: But it's pretty neat, and it's right there next to
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: their head, right there at the aperture where everything else
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: that needs to be outside is.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can. If you're talking about sea snails.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Like I said, we're not going to get two into them,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: but they can have similar body parts in terms of breathing,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: or they can also have gills kind of upfront as well.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of the things snails are most famous
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: for is there mucus, right, Yeah, that is apparently secreted
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: by the foot, and as the foot moves along, it's
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: just a series of muscles that just kind of propel
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: as they ripple, propel the snail along, but they lay
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: down a trail of mucus that does a lot of
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: different things. For one, it allows the snail to do
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: some Spider man esque moves, like just crawl right up
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the side of a building because it's very strong.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: It's glue like, yeah, but it can be it's funny
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: because it can be glue like or act as a
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: lubricant exactly, which is pretty remarkable.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, it also separates the snail from the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: rest of the world that it's running over. You know,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: it's strong like glue, but it also allows the snail
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: to move smoothly, and it also protects the snail's body
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: from sharp things that it might be crawling over slowly
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: crawling over. And it also keeps the moisture locked inside.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: So much so that snail mucin, as we'll see, has
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: been used for millennia as like kind of a skin thing.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: If you have very dry skin and you can get
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: your hands on sna mucan or mucus, it will cure
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: your dry skin.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's what keeps the I mean that
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: and other things is what keeps that snail moist So
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: if it's if it's keeping the snail alive, then imagine
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: what it can do for your crow's feet exactly. I
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: don't think we said what was actually made of. It's enzymes, peptides, proteins,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: trace minerals, and it's it's pretty remarkable stuff. It's you know,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: the tailtale sign is when you see that stuff on
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: the sidewalk, and just the term snail trail itself, that
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: sort of snotty, glistening, shiny snail trail is you know,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: it's become sort of part of the lexicon to you know,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: as a stand in for other things at times.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: So yeah, for sure. So one of the other things
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: that the snail trail, the mucous trail does is it says, hey,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: sailor come come this way. Right, because it's one way
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: that snails find one another to mate, which is surprising
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: that they mate because they're hermaphroditic. They both all snails
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: or most species of land snails are equipped with both
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: male and female sex organs, and when they come together
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: to mate, it's there's no telling who's who or who's
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: doing what, because in the end both of them often
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: come away with fertilized eggs.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, to me, this section is the most
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: remarkable stuff about snails. How they reproduce is just amazing.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: They are hermaphroditic because and it just makes sense if
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: you're moving point five inches per second, you would die
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: out as a species if you if like a male
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: had to search for a female or the other way around.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: So they basically just double their chances of finding somebody
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: within the you know, ten feet or so that they're
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: they're wandering around. I mean, they move more than that
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: within a lifetime obviously, but you know, if it's that
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: time of year, which is what like.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Autumn, sure, autumn and spring.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Autumn and spring, they're gonna wander around, They're gonna find
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: another snail. They're gonna dance around each other and that
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: just means very slowly circle each other. For I saw
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: four to six hours. I saw. The whole thing can
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: take up to twelve hours. It's a very obviously as
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: you would imagine, a very slow process.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It is slow, but it's really involved, like they are
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: really into it while they're they're going at it.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're they're and this is before they're
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: going at it. This is when they're just sort of
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: like sizing each other up. They're getting their steam, they're
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: touching tentacles, they're biting each other's lips. Things are getting
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: really pretty hot and heavy in there, and then they
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: have something that is amazing, And I don't know if
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: any other animal that has something like this. They have
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: something called a love what they call a love dart.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Love dart only forms after the first mating, so you
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: have to have at least a little bit of sexual
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: experience to even form a love dart. Sure, they take
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: about a week to form, and you don't always have
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: to have one to mate, because if you've used up
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: your love dart and then you know within the week
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: you want to go at it again, you can still
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: do that. It's not necessary for reproduction, but it helps
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: in reproduction. They form in the dart sack and is
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: stored in a dart sack, and if you look at it,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: it's a little it is a little dart. It's got
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: this little sharp harpoon like tip and they actually it
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: says they shoot it, but it doesn't like fly through
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: the air. It's more like a They stab one another
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: with it.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, I imagine it like ew and then just sailing
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: a couple feet and then spraying.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: That would be great. It's more like it's stabbing. But
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: apparently it's very imprecise. This hydraulic pressure builds up as
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: they circle and bite each other's lips, and then they
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: shoot this thing out each other and it can I
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: think about a third of the time. It doesn't even
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: do what it's intended to do, which we'll get to
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: in a sect, but it can pierce organs. It can
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: go all the way through the head and out the
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: other side. So it's it's really crazy. It's a weird adaptation.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's super weird. And the I think what's
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: most weird about it to me is there's other animals
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: that do that to deliver sperm. That's not what the
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: snails are doing. These love darts deliver other hormones that
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: help protect the sperm as it makes its way to
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the eggs to fertilize. It's like a really clumsy, superfluous
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: extra step that, like you said, doesn't even like they
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: miss a lot of the time. They still manage to
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: fertilize eggs. It's just a very strange thing that they do.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: But it's part of this really long, really slimy courtship
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: mating process that they get involved in. And then the
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: sex itsel is like just one rubs its foot against
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the other foot and there you.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Go, right, and they say who's pregnant which and they go,
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, maybe both of us.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, both of us?
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Actually can it be both?
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm saying, that both both can walk
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: away with fertilized eggs after this.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can lay. I think they can hatch
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: up to four hundred and fifty eggs per year and
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: when and that doesn't take very long actually, right in
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: the gestation period it can be like really short.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Right for some species, especially in captivity, it can be
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours. Others it seems like the outside is
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: four weeks and usually in the while it's like two
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: to four weeks for gestation.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and once those little guys are born, they may
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: immediately start eating the rest of the eggs as their
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: first meal.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a bummer, especially because leading up
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: to it, it's so cute, this little tiny snail with
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: its little tiny shells inside its egg and it starts
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: tapping its way out until it cracks through the egg.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: And then yeah, it grewsome eats its siblings very quickly.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it'll eat smaller siblings that have already hatched, not
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: just the eggs. What I didn't realize though, is that
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: some and that's that's actually not all snail species. That's
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: ones that will eat eggs, but for the most part
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: they'll eat just vegetation. Yeah. The snail parent will often
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: stay nearby to provide protection for the young snail hatchlings
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: for a little.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: While they hang out for a while, right, Yeah.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I did not realize though. I thought it was pretty cool.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they can. They can hang out for up to
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: three months together while the parents are kind of protecting them.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: And like you said, they're born with that little baby
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: shell and just gets bigger and bigger. They did we
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: talk about how long they can live.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: No, we didn't. It's pretty spectacular.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in the wild they can live up
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: to five years, which that shocked me quite frankly.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really, I feel bad for all the snails you've
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: accidentally stepped on after a rainy evening.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: You hope at least they were old.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like they had their time.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so five years is a pretty long time in
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: the wild. I think in captivity they can live up
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: to twenty five years, which is astounding.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a really great little short documentary called The
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Strange and Wonderful World of the Snail Wrangler. It's on YouTube,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and it's about this woman who takes photos of her
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: snail friends in like little miniature settings, human settings. It's
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: really cute, and she talks about one of her snail
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: companions that she's been with for like ten years, and
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: it's just I mean, when you think of it like that,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: like snails are just so they're off doing their own thing.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: They live in a world far different from ours, even
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: though we share the same geography. It's just a different world.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: So when you cross paths with one, you're like, hey alien,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and they're probably like hey, giant alien, and that's it,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the idea that they're there in that same patch as
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: long as you are. In some cases, when you're like
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: if you live at a house for ten years, a
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: snail might have lived there just as long as you
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: did for the same time, like you shared that with
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: them that whole time. It's they're not just this anonymous,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: generic animals running around. They I mean, anything that lives
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: that long, there's just something more substantial to it than
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: you would think initially.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Are you saying a snail has a soul?
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, all right, so snails are doing their things. I
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: love this account that Alison found that was a scientist
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History that said snails
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: are leaky bags of water that survive on dry land.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: And it almost sounds like they're saying like they happen
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: to survive, because it doesn't seem like a snail was
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: really made for that environment. But they survive anyway because
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: snails really need to stay moist, like a snail. Drying
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: out just like a slug, means certain death. So even
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: though there are snails in the desert, you're mainly going
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: to find snails in more moist areas. We're gonna say
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: that word quite a bit. I apologize, I.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Was gonna say, unlike humans, moist is a snail's favorite word.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: It really is. They do live on the ground, mainly
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: if they are terrestrial snails, but they can live in trees,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: but they really like it down there on the ground
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: in that sort of moist outer layer of decaying plant matter.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: They're pretty active at night because things can get wetter overnight,
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: as we know, like when you wake up with like
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: morning dew and stuff like that. So they're just down
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: there on the ground, sometimes eating meat and other snails
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: and other eggs. But generally what they're doing is eating
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: and munching down on that either decaying plant matter, or
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: if you have a garden, they will also munch down
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: on your nice new fresh plants.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and as we'll see that, they run a foul
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: of gardeners for that reason. But just hold your horses, gardeners,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: put your rubber mallets away for a second until we
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: get to that part and talk you out of it.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: But in that leaf litter layer, they do a lot
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: of really important stuff they are in charge of, like
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: recycling plant matter, decaying stuff. They love decaying everything in
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: addition to live plants to they love dead plants. And
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: when they're doing that, they're like recycling nutrients. They eat
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: that stuff, they break it down, and they poop it out,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: and that means it's bioavailable in the soil for plants
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: to use, for other animals to come along and like that,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: like to lick the dirt, that kind of thing. They
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: also are really important in the food web because calcium
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: is not really easy necessarily to come by in food
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: at least if you're like a small like an invertbrate
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: or a mammal or something like that. If you eat
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: a snailshell, you get a burst of calcium, So that
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: snailshell is really important. And then they're also chock full
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: of protein themselves, so they're like a really important part
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: of any food web in the ecosystem that they live in.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're also moving stuff around down there. I mean,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: plant matter in that outer layer that just sits and
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: sits isn't great. But if they're if you've got thousands
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: of snails moving around through it, it's going to help
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: drainage out, it's going to help keep distributing those nutrients
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: if there's you know, it can help move dirt and
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: clay even very important. All that stuff is great. And
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: they can actually help pollinate too. Some of them are
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: nighttime pollinators. They get in there with that plant nectar,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: they eat that stuff and then they poop that out
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty crazy. I had no idea that they were pollinators.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: It just makes them even more important, you know what
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I mean totally. So I think, Chuck, we take a
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: break and then we come back and talk about why
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: you should leave the snails alone. How about that.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: So one thing that we said earlier, Chuck, was that
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: snails run a foul of gardeners, and the reason why
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: is because they will I mean, they will eat a
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: lot of plants. The burgundy snail also known as the
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Roman snail, the one that's mostly used for s cargo
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: these days. They weigh twenty gramsish as an adult, but
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: they'll eat six grams of plant matter in a day. Yeah,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: you have a bunch of burgundy snails running around your garden.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: They're gonna eat your hostas, they're gonna eat your seedlings.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: They're going to tick you off. And so there's a
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of animal mosity that gardeners have
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: towards snails and slugs too, and so the people have
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: been trying things to get rid of snails for a
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: very long time. The problem is number one, you don't
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: actually want to get rid of snails, especially native snails
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: or common garden snails. And number two, the methods typically
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: used are chemical and they can harm other life as well.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: So there's you basically want to leave the snails alone
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: as much as possible.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is some information here that Allison got from
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain, and they say, you know,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: don't use chemical pesticides please, Like, if you want to
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: get rid of your snails, you can try and do
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: so naturally by introducing predators. I guess you know, you
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: throw a bunch of garden beetles out there and see
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: what happens. Just say, who whoever walks out of here
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: alive is, you know, deserves to live. It's like the
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: thunder don't exactly to enter one leaves.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, if you're bored, just go
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: ahead and build a small scale replica of the thunderdome
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and put the snail in the beetle in you sick.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right, But then you have to act like
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Tina Turner and use that voice when Hello, raggedy snail,
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: that's what you would have to call it.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: That was a great impression, by the way, Chuck, thank you.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: In addition to putting them in a death match against beetles,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: you can go pick them out yourself. If you go
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: out at night with the flashlight, you can pick up
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: plenty of snails.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: The thing is you put them in your neighbor's guard.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Especially if they're a jerk hosta grower, they
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: will really job them crazy. No, what you want to
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: do is put them on your compost pile because again,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: they like decaying stuff and they're really useful, so they'll
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: be pretty happy there. And you can also trap them
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: by carving out like melons or grapefruit or something like that,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: and they'll be attracted to that, and it's just basically
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: act as a trap. You just throw it back on
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: your compost pile the next day and there you go.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Some people do, say you Some people still use pesticides.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: If you're organic, use peric phosphate, which interrupts their ability
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: to digest so they die of starvation in a few days.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: There's another one called metaldehyde that is hardcore stuff. It
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: desiccates them. They end up dehydrating to death, and it's
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: banned in the EU because they consider it unacceptably harmful
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: to birds and mammals. Here in the US, you can
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: use it as much as you like, and they use
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: it for the giant African land snail in particular, because
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: again metaldehyde is hardcore stuff, and it turns out that
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: the giant African land snail is hardcore snail.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a hard core snail. Obviously, would be an
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: invasive species here in North America. These are the big ones,
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: the one that look like a bunny. I thought they
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: can be eight inches long. They eat more than five
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: hundred species of plant. They will eat everything and in
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: their paths, including in Florida. They're a real problem in Florida.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Apparently they will eat the stucco off your house to
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: get more calcium. And they can pass disease along to
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: people and animals. Yeah, rat lungworm, yeah, meningitis. I've seen
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: that there. They can carry a host of parasites, or
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: they can host a host of parasites some of which
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: will is you know, good for the snail because it
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: keeps animals from eating them, so it's like a defense mechanism, right,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: But that can be harmful to people at times as well.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you don't want rat long worm. Like you said,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: it can create meningitis in humans, so it's best to
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: not really handle snails with your bare hands, and especially
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: don't eat the snail alive from your garden. Really bad idea.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but people actually collect and I'm not sure if
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: that's how they got here, but people collect these, you know,
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: as an illegal pet, these giant African land snails.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: That's my understanding that they were imported as illegal pets,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: at least to South the doing I don't know, but
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: they also have been have shown up in some other places,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: including Hawaii and Polynesia, and somehow they got from Florida
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: to these places, probably through the illegal pet trade. And so,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: in just typical human fashion in the fifties, people said, well, wait,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: there's this this snail called a rosy wolf snail, and
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: it's a predator. It's a little literal snail predator. It's
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: just import a bunch of them to take care of
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: this giant African land snail because I'm sure nothing will
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: possibly go wrong because of this plan. It's fool proof.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: And that's what they did, and as a result, Hawaii
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: has lost almost all of its native snail species in
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the wild because the rosy wolf snail was like, I'd
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: just rather eat these other kinds of snails than leave
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: the giant African snail alone.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these things are pretty creepy though. I imagine there's got
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: to be some kind of nat geo video of the
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: wolf snail, like, you know, following its prey because for
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: a snail, they're moving pretty fast. Yeah. When they're tracking something,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: they go double to triple their normal speed. They will
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: go up a tree after something. They will go underwater
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: after something for a little while until they need to
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: come up. It seems like they're just tenacious little fellas
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: and they will go after something until they catch it.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they like to swallow other snails whole, including
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: their shell.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: And there's a malacologist named Harry G. Lee who dissected
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: a rosy wolf snail and found thirteen other snails shells
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: in its gut.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot. It's like in
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: a Louisiana state license plate.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, you don't want these things on
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: your beautiful, pristine island. And once you bring them in,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: they're going to cause all sorts of problems. And that's
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: what that Goodbye Snail video was about. It's definitely worth watching.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: But the rosy wolf snail is definitely considered invasive. And
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: what I didn't know, Chuck, is the common garden snail,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the one we're so familiar with, is considered invasive in
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: the United States. Cornew espersum poof that is the common
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: garden snail, and it was originally imported because it was
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: the one that used to bees cargo and some of
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: them escape from farms and set up shop in the wild.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: And now it's called the common garden snail because it
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: became so prolific.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they don't know when people started eatinges cargo.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: And I think es cargo is the French name for
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: that edible snail. And also doubles is the name of the.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Ish, right, Yeah, yeah, I think you're right, like French
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: of us both.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, people like this stuff. It was
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: always you know, growing up, you always heard about s
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: cargo was like this you know, sort of as a
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: as a kid, the first fancy, weird food you'd heard of, probably.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Like do the wealthy have no bounds? Kind of right.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly, And then you know, we've got all signs. Should
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: we finish up with just a bunch of kind of
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: cool factoids?
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: Well jewelry. Snail shells have always or have long been
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: used as jewelry for humans as some of the oldest
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: known human jewelry. They found this stuff like necklaces and
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: stuff made of sea snail shells that date back like
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: at least one hundred and twenty thousand years.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: That's nuts, man.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what else?
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: The author Patricia high Smith, who was a very interesting
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: person in her own right. She wrote The Strangers on
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: a Train and The Talented Mister Ripple novels. She was
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: a snail pal like the snail wrangler in that video
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: that I talked about, And like the snail wrangler in
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: that video that I talked about, she would go out
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: in public with their snails as companions. There's a story
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: of Patricia Highsmith at a party who was revealed to
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: have dozens of snails in her purse who she brought
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: so she'd have someone to talk to her snail friends.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how about that?
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: How about that? That's what snail people do, is that
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: kind of thing?
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, This is really interesting is they've been studying
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: how snails might help us figure out Alzheimer's disease. From
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: what I found is they've you know, we've talked about
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: Alzheimer's before, which is when you have these amyloid plaque
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: build up or plaques I guess that build up on
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: the brain tissue, and they don't exactly know how it
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: causes memory loss. But this is what they're trying to
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: figure out what the snails. These plaques are formed from
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: a protein called amyloid beta, which we've talked about, or
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: a beta, and they have taken a beta and put
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: it on otherwise very healthy pond snails. I have no
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: idea why they chose, like why they thought the pond
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: snail was a good candidate.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: To begin with, terrible lobbying group.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's what it is. But they put this a
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: beta on these healthy pond snails and within twenty four
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: hours they show evidence that they have harmed their memory basically,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: but the finding is that they haven't found any damage
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: to the brain tissue. Like no cell loss, no brain
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: tissue damage at all. So basically what they're they have
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: sort of you know, the result of all that is
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: that a beta by itself can trigger the memory loss
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: and it's not from like damage to the brain or
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: like a deterioration of the brain or the plant builds up, right, Yeah, exactly.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: They think it's like a specific pathway for memory that's
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: being damaged and the brain itself.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you pond snails.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: I know it's amazing.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: I also saw it goes the other way too, that
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the common garden snails mucus has been found to be
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: bioactive as an anti inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti apoptic, which
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: means it prevents cell death. Oh wow, So they think
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: that they are figuring out how to turn that into
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: a drug to treat Alzheimer's too. So snails are just
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: coming at us with the one two punch to battle
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Alzheimer's disease. Yeah, God bless it. Speaking of God bless them,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: if you're subscribe to the West African Yoruba religion, you
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: would say God bless the snail because they're associated with Obitala,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: the Skyfather, as well as the Arisha's collective deities to
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: whom the land snail, the giant African land snail in particular,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: is sacred.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: I gotta read this last thing. This is the only
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: last thing I got. Okay, this Nigerian snail recipe. Yeah,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not into eat snails. They call this congo meat.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: It's got red pepper, havinio's okay onion, all right, and
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: then a season with cayenne and ground crayfish.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You lost me at Hobin Euro but it does
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: sound extremely interesting. I would try it. I'd just be like,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: can you leave the hobbin niro out?
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Too hot?
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Too hot?
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Too hot for the hot tub, yeah.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Too hot for TV.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Uh huh.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: So I've got one more thing, chuck, let's hear it. Uh.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: There is a weird thing that started popping up at
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: the end of the thirteenth century in northern France. If
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: you look through illuminated manuscripts, meaning manuscripts that have the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: doodles in the margins and all that like a map magazine, yeah,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: you will start to notice there are pictures of nights
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: battling giant snails.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's so interesting.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: And they It lasted for like one hundred or so
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: years is like a trend. It actually came back again
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: for a little while in the fifteenth century, and no
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: one has any idea what they were trying to say.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: One of the theories is that is just it's hilarious that
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: it was men who's like kind of comic relief. While
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: you're reading like this kind of heavy text or whatever,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: you just look over and you're like, that's a night
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: battling a snail. Right.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Other people say that the snails symbolize something like superhuman
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: strength because they carry their house on their back. I
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: kind of pooh pooh that one. I like this the
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: comic relief one.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: And people were just like, hey, this is funny. Look
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: at this. This night's fighting a snail.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this will be good for a laugh, said the
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: medieval monk. Very interesting, I say so too. So if
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: you want to know more about snails, everybody, go forth
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: research them. You could do worse than watching The Strange
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: and Wonderful World of the Snail Wrangler. And Goodbye snails.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: And if you see a snail in your garden, and
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: especially if it's not doing anything to harm things, you
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: just tip your hat to it and say, good day, snail.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: You could be as much as five to ten years old.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: That's right, Chuck said, that's right. It means it's time
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: for listener mail.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna do a correction. I wish we could
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: this one out sooner because we're going to continue to
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: get emails about the great isotope ion. My goodness issue,
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: which I didn't know is an issue. This was we
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: had a lot of them. But this is from Nick Lufty,
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: PhD student at U see Irvine and Nick is getting
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: a PhD in quantum chemistry.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, man, I want to hang out with you, Nick.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: And Nick listens with his wife Dinah. Hey Dinah, and said,
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: can't wait till we're in town for a show. But
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: if you're at Irvine, I mean Irvine, how far is
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: that from San Francisco.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: I have no idea.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: I mean it's in the state of California. So Scott
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: to just be like an.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Hour away exactly. Yeah, everything in California is an hour away.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Come see us. Hey, guys, wanted to offer a slight
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: correction about the periodic table. Don't hate me. When you
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: mentioned the different weighted averages being a result of different isotopes,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: you mentioned that it is a loss or gain of
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: an electron that constitutes the different isotopes. This is actually incorrect.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: What you've defined is an ion, not an isotope. It
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: is the varying number of neutrons that makes up the
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: different flavors of isotopes. This is the thing that makes
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: carbon dating possible. I love that episode. By the way.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: Last thing, guys, chemistry as a whole is a very
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: inaccessible branch of STEM. I hated it. I failed my
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: first chemistry class in one day. Our professor was out sick,
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: and the chair of the chem department came to sub
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: in and she implored us to get a PhD in chemistry.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: I said to myself, she must be nuts. Here I
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: am ten years later and I am clearly the one
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: who is nuts. The long and short of this last
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: bit is to never give up on science. Nice And
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: that again is from Nick. I think it said lufty,
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: but it's actually lutfi.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, like chipotle chipolte. Yeah, that's right, Thanks a lot, Nick.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: We'll call him nick L from now on. Yeah, that
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: was a great one. So everybody who wrote in to
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: let us know, we appreciate you for doing that, because
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: we like to get things right. And that was definitely
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: a slip up and it is something that we needed
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: to correct for sure. So good job Chuck picking that one.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Well, if you want to get in touch with us
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: and let us know we got something wrong or we
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: got something right, or tell us something about yourself or
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: your dog or your pet goat doesn't matter, you can
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: send it via email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 53:31
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• 53:34
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• 53:38
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