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The Fifth Hour: The Day an Egg McMuffin Owned Mr. Met · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kubbooms.
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Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:05
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
0:09
Speaker 2: of the old Republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
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Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
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Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
0:18
Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
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Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Mallor starts right now.
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Speaker 1: In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with me Ben Mahlor,
0:35
Speaker 1: and a happy Saturday to you. It is the fifteenth
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Speaker 1: day of August as we are recording this in real
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Speaker 1: time in the early morning hours here on a Saturday.
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Speaker 1: You listen, when you listen, it is the two hundred
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Speaker 1: and twenty seventh day of the year. There are one
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Speaker 1: hundred and thirty eight days to go. That's it, thirty
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Speaker 1: third week of the year. Here we are, and on
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Speaker 1: in this edition of the Fifth Hour podcast, we have
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Speaker 1: the day the Egg McMuffin owned Mister met and the
1:08
Speaker 1: Hamburglar's graduation with a gaggle of fun facts by request,
1:14
Speaker 1: by request, a gaggle of fun facts. But we begin
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Speaker 1: with this. We flash back in the hot tub time
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Speaker 1: Machine we set the year to nineteen ninety eight, back
1:26
Speaker 1: when Furby's and the iMac were popular. Back in the day,
1:31
Speaker 1: people still used America Online. Social media wasn't really much
1:35
Speaker 1: of a thing in nineteen ninety eight, and in baseball,
1:41
Speaker 1: the New York Metropolitans had guys like Mike Piazza, John Olerude,
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Speaker 1: and Guardo Alfonso and a guy named Butch Husky. Now
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Speaker 1: they also had, on one very memorable Sunday morning, at
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Speaker 1: least to me, something that no other team in baseball had.
2:02
Speaker 1: They had the ability to be absolutely twisted into a
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Speaker 1: pretzel dominated by an egg McMuffin, now not metaphorically an
2:14
Speaker 1: actual egg McMuffin. And I can explain this never before
2:19
Speaker 1: told story that flashed back into my mind this week
2:24
Speaker 1: because I was there, I lived it, and I've seen
2:29
Speaker 1: a lot of cool things. I've been very lucky in
2:31
Speaker 1: my time in the radio business. It remains, though, one
2:35
Speaker 1: of my very favorite memories from the handful of years
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Speaker 1: that I was given VIP access hanging around the Los
2:44
Speaker 1: Angeles Dodgers when I did their pregame and postgame shows
2:48
Speaker 1: way back in the late nineteen nineties into the year
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Speaker 1: two thousand. Now, keep in mind, this was a period
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Speaker 1: when the Dodgers did not win the World Series every year.
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Speaker 1: They had mostly middling teams. They were a team of
3:02
Speaker 1: underachievers for the most part, considered to be elite, had
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Speaker 1: a lot of talent, they just never actually lived up
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Speaker 1: to those expectations, and they were many times a disappointment. Now,
3:14
Speaker 1: regardless of that, this moment in time that I want
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Speaker 1: to share with you came rushing back to me this week.
3:22
Speaker 1: In fact, it was yesterday on Friday. This pop back
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Speaker 1: into my head because of the sad news that Butch
3:28
Speaker 1: Husky is dead. He died suddenly in his hometown, we
3:33
Speaker 1: are told in Lawton, Oklahoma, reportedly from a blood clot
3:39
Speaker 1: in his lungs. He was only fifty four, and he
3:42
Speaker 1: has left our mortal coil. It's hard to believe that
3:47
Speaker 1: the story that I'm about to tell you happened almost
3:49
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. It feels like maybe twelve, maybe twelve
3:55
Speaker 1: years ago, which, as we pointed out time and again
3:59
Speaker 1: on the Fifth Ar podcast, it's one of those things
4:01
Speaker 1: that lies to your brain. Your brain starts telling lies.
4:07
Speaker 1: It's like as you get older. Eventually everything before last
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Speaker 1: Tuesday happened about ten years ago. I don't know how
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Speaker 1: old anyone is. I think everyone's kind of somewhat close
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Speaker 1: to my age, and most people aren't. The date we're
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Speaker 1: going to talk about is August second, nineteen ninety eight.
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Speaker 1: I remember the exact date. I remember where I was,
4:31
Speaker 1: I remember what I was doing. The Doyers Traveling Circus
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Speaker 1: headed to the Big Apple and we were at Chase
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Speaker 1: Stadium to play the Mets. It was a one thirty
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Speaker 1: Sunday afternoon game. It was hot. It was not just hot,
4:46
Speaker 1: it was humid. It was New York in August. If
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Speaker 1: you've ever spent any time in New York in August,
4:54
Speaker 1: just standing outside qualifies as a cardiovascular workout. It's just
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Speaker 1: insanity in that part of the world in the month
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Speaker 1: of August. Now, this was particularly juicy. The Dodgers were
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Speaker 1: playing the Mets in this series, and this was the
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Speaker 1: third game of four. It was a wrap around weekend series,
5:17
Speaker 1: a wrap around weekend series. There. The reason it had
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Speaker 1: a little bit of extra juice is because the Dodgers
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Speaker 1: and the Mets were playing for the first time since
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Speaker 1: Mike Piazza had joined New York and only a few
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Speaker 1: months earlier, Piazza had been the face of the franchise
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Speaker 1: for the Dodgers, their biggest star and arguably the most
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Speaker 1: popular player in Southern California. In nineteen ninety eight. Got
5:44
Speaker 1: to remember, the Lakers weren't very good and there was
5:47
Speaker 1: no NFL in La. It was pretty barren at that time.
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Speaker 1: And then came the stunner from down under. The Dodgers
5:58
Speaker 1: said bye bye to Piazza. They dumped him on the
6:02
Speaker 1: Florida Marlins. The Marlins apparently looked at Piazza and said, Ah,
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Speaker 1: this is nice. What else can we get? And a
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Speaker 1: week later or so they flipped Piazza to the Mets
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Speaker 1: and he didn't play against the Dodgers that year. And
6:18
Speaker 1: so in nineteen ninety eight I traveled that was with
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Speaker 1: the Dodgers. We were in New York, as I said,
6:24
Speaker 1: there at Piazza's first game against his former team, and
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Speaker 1: it was a spectacle, the kind of baseball drama orrama,
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Speaker 1: the theater that you wanted to be around. And on
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Speaker 1: that Sunday morning, this is way before the game and
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Speaker 1: again game three of four that that weekend wrap around series,
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Speaker 1: I was on the field at Shay during batting practice,
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Speaker 1: schmoozing with my media, free loading buddies. Now, schmoozing is
6:53
Speaker 1: an important skill. I don't do it often. It involves
6:58
Speaker 1: standing around in baseball, involves standing around the batting cage
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Speaker 1: saying things like how about that boy, that's a good swing,
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Speaker 1: while giving the impression that you're gathering very valuable information,
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Speaker 1: and then we notice something the Mets couldn't hit again.
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Speaker 1: We're talking about batting practice, not a game.
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Speaker 2: Not a game.
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Speaker 1: Not a game, Alan Irison, We're talking about batting practice.
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Speaker 1: The entire purpose of batting practice, if you've ever been,
7:29
Speaker 1: is right there in the name. No buddy is trying
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Speaker 1: to strike you out, nobody. The pitcher is essentially your accomplice.
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Speaker 1: His job is to put the baseball in the happy
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Speaker 1: zone so you can launch it into the seats and
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Speaker 1: feel good about yourselves and impress a couple of beautiful
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Speaker 1: women in the crowd who are like whoa.
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Speaker 2: You know.
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Speaker 1: The marketing campaign around that time was chicks dig the
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Speaker 1: long ball, and yet the nineteen ninety eight Mets were
7:57
Speaker 1: flailing so wing and a miss, saw a miss, and
8:04
Speaker 1: suddenly their batting practice pitcher, I have no idea who
8:07
Speaker 1: it was, looked like a love child of Nolan Ryan
8:11
Speaker 1: and Dwight Gooden, possibly Tom Seaver tossed in there, and
8:17
Speaker 1: it was wild, like some kind of weird baseball science
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Speaker 1: experiment in a laboratory somewhere with a bunch of beakers
8:24
Speaker 1: and Dwight Gooden, Nolan, Ryan, Tom sever all into one
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Speaker 1: as a batting practice pitcher. You've got to be blooding me,
8:31
Speaker 1: blady killing me. No way. Nobody was having a worse
8:36
Speaker 1: time than Butch Husky. Husky stepped into the cage and
8:41
Speaker 1: began putting on a performance that even after all of
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Speaker 1: these years, I have never forgotten. The man couldn't hit anything.
8:52
Speaker 1: He looked like he was swinging blindfolded at a pinata
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Speaker 1: at a child's birthday party after somebody had wietly moved
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Speaker 1: the pinata to another tree. With with with with with
9:07
Speaker 1: with with with with with with with At first it
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Speaker 1: was strange, then it became funny. Then it became mesmerizing.
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Speaker 1: And my media buddies and I we stopped schmoozing. We
9:22
Speaker 1: were witnessing history. Well kind of you see enough, you
9:29
Speaker 1: go to enough baseball game, you watched batting practice. I
9:31
Speaker 1: remember I was fortunate enough back when Maguire and Sosa
9:34
Speaker 1: and those guys were doing all kinds of pharmaceuticals, hitting
9:37
Speaker 1: the ball to the moon, And you go to batting practice.
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Speaker 1: It was insane. So you're watching a video game, watching
9:42
Speaker 1: he Man or four, it was next level. You see
9:46
Speaker 1: enough baseball, Eventually you develop a certain arrogance about what
9:50
Speaker 1: you've seen. Ah, I've seen a no hitter, I've done that.
9:53
Speaker 1: I've seen a walk up. I saw a guy hit
9:54
Speaker 1: two Grand Slams in one inning. Check check, check, check,
9:57
Speaker 1: great catches. I've seen some terrible errors. I've seen baseball's
10:01
Speaker 1: bounce off guys junk. It happens. But this, this was
10:06
Speaker 1: right up there with Fernando to Teasse Senior hitting two
10:10
Speaker 1: Grand slams in the same inning off the same picture
10:12
Speaker 1: Chanho Park at Dodger Stadium, a game I also attended.
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Speaker 1: This was different, the single worst batting practiced in Major
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Speaker 1: League history. At least that's what it looked like now. Eventually,
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Speaker 1: butch Husky climbed out of the cage, and I caught
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Speaker 1: his reaction in my periphial vision. Now it turns out
10:34
Speaker 1: shockingly enough, butch Husky was not amused. He was hopping mad.
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Speaker 1: He was ready to chew, not on popcorn, on nails.
10:45
Speaker 1: Nails the man to chew on some nails. Okay, he
10:48
Speaker 1: was all in on the nails, and so he was
10:51
Speaker 1: hopping around and some Mets staffer asked whether everything was okay.
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Speaker 1: Clearly it was not one of those questions you immediately
11:02
Speaker 1: regret asking when the person you're asking is visibly on fire.
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Speaker 1: So no, everything was not okay. And as I remember it,
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Speaker 1: bush Husky turned towards the longtime Mets pr man Jay
11:19
Speaker 1: Horowitz and unloaded. Now keep in mind I am paraphrasing
11:23
Speaker 1: after nearly three decades, but the message was essentially, hey, Jay,
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Speaker 1: we can't see the ged baseball because of your effing
11:36
Speaker 1: advertising sign in center field. Can you get somebody in
11:41
Speaker 1: stadium ops to change the background back? Please? Please? We
11:48
Speaker 1: all looked forward to the directly out in center heir.
11:52
Speaker 1: We looked towards the centerfield wall, and there it was.
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Speaker 1: There was an egg McMuffin. The mystery had been solved.
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Speaker 1: The Shayse Stadium batter's eye, where if you go to
12:07
Speaker 1: any big league stadium, it's always usually black behind center
12:10
Speaker 1: field so the batter can see the baseball. The Shae
12:12
Speaker 1: Stadium batter's eye was supposed to provide hitters with a
12:16
Speaker 1: dark background so they could pick up the baseball coming
12:20
Speaker 1: off the pitcher's hands. However, the Mets, on this day,
12:23
Speaker 1: during batting practice, had rigged part of the backdrop from
12:27
Speaker 1: road with a rotating advertising sign that I guess they
12:32
Speaker 1: had done this between innings. They'd flip it so fans
12:36
Speaker 1: got a view of an advertisement agains almost thirty years. Well,
12:40
Speaker 1: somebody apparently forgot a very important detail. If the Mets
12:45
Speaker 1: are hitting, or any other team is hitting for that matter,
12:48
Speaker 1: this is not a good idea. So instead of the
12:51
Speaker 1: normal dark background, there was a bright McDonald's advertisement. It
12:57
Speaker 1: was in white and yellow, mostly white and yellow, sitting
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Speaker 1: right behind where the ball came out of the pitcher's hands.
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Speaker 1: The baseball was disappearing into breakfast. Butch Husky hadn't suddenly
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Speaker 1: forgotten how to hit The Mets batting practice pitcher had
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Speaker 1: not become the second coming of Doc Gooden or Nolan
13:18
Speaker 1: Ryan or Tom sever The egg McMuffin was dealing. The
13:23
Speaker 1: egg McMuffin was dealing. It had late life on its fastball.
13:27
Speaker 1: Nasty movement, nasty movement, great command, wonderful command. Couldn't pick
13:33
Speaker 1: up the release point could not pick up the release point. Now,
13:37
Speaker 1: if stat cast had existed, and thank god it didn't.
13:41
Speaker 1: If stat cast had existed, I'm pretty sure the egg
13:44
Speaker 1: McMuffin would have posted a thirty eight percent wfweight, probably
13:50
Speaker 1: even better than that. The whiff rate was insane, and
13:54
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety eight Mets had finally met their match,
13:58
Speaker 1: and it came with America and cheese and Canadian bacon
14:01
Speaker 1: and whatever else. I don't even know. It's on an
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Speaker 1: egg big muffin. But eventually someone changed the sign back.
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Speaker 1: The dark background returned, and all of a sudden, major
14:11
Speaker 1: league hitters miraculously regained the ability to hit batting practice
14:16
Speaker 1: fastballs over that apple out and outfield in the outfield
14:20
Speaker 1: at Chase Stadium. But I've never forgotten Butch Husky's reaction,
14:26
Speaker 1: And that's mostly how I remember Butch Husky. He was
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Speaker 1: a fascinating baseball character. Husky had real power and was
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Speaker 1: a more of a batting practice hitter than anything, which
14:40
Speaker 1: makes the story even more ironic. He did enjoy a
14:43
Speaker 1: few stretches where he looked like he might become something special.
14:47
Speaker 1: And we've talked about a prospect being a suspect and
14:50
Speaker 1: to proven otherwise, and unfortunately, but Husky never became elite. Occasionally,
14:56
Speaker 1: he'd have a game here or a game there where
14:59
Speaker 1: he breathed that rarefied air, and he had a few
15:02
Speaker 1: Mets records obscure Mets records. However, sustainability is the secret
15:08
Speaker 1: sauce to longevity and continued domination. He didn't have that.
15:13
Speaker 1: He also occupied a small but significant place Butch Husky
15:16
Speaker 1: in baseball history because of the digits. He wore number
15:20
Speaker 1: forty two. Yes, when Major League Baseball said bye bye
15:26
Speaker 1: to the number forty two, retired that number for Jackie Robinson.
15:31
Speaker 1: That was in nineteen ninety seven on Jackie Robinson Day,
15:35
Speaker 1: players had already been wearing number forty two. Those guys
15:38
Speaker 1: were grandfathered in they were allowed to keep it, and
15:40
Speaker 1: Butch Husky was one of a handful of players that
15:43
Speaker 1: got to keep the number forty two. Now it turns
15:46
Speaker 1: out that Butch became the ultimate Met permitted to wear
15:52
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson's number, with Mo Vaughn eventually becoming the last
15:57
Speaker 1: Mets player to wear number forty two. Now Husky he
16:00
Speaker 1: spent most of his career with the Mets, and later
16:04
Speaker 1: on he went to Seattle, Boston, Minnesota, Colorado. He was
16:09
Speaker 1: on the Dusty Winnemucker Road. And it seemed for a
16:13
Speaker 1: while like Butcher Husky was always somewhere in the major
16:18
Speaker 1: leagues until he wasn't. His final big leget bat came
16:22
Speaker 1: in the year two thousand. He was still only twenty
16:26
Speaker 1: eight when he was playing, and that was it. You
16:29
Speaker 1: was about to turn twenty nine, and baseball comes at
16:33
Speaker 1: you fast. One minute you're standing around Shase Stadium watching
16:36
Speaker 1: Mike Piazza take batting practice. The next minute, Schase Stadium
16:40
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, Piazza is in Cooperstown. You're much older than
16:45
Speaker 1: you care to discuss, and you're learning that Butch Husky
16:50
Speaker 1: has died at the age of fifty four. That's the
16:54
Speaker 1: part of the story that's obviously not funny at all. However,
16:58
Speaker 1: the memory still is to remember Butch Husky with a smile.
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Speaker 1: He made me smile that day, not really knowing who
17:06
Speaker 1: the hell I am. I just happened to be an observer.
17:08
Speaker 1: I was background noise, and I just loved his reaction
17:12
Speaker 1: and the whole thing. And sometimes an entire major league
17:17
Speaker 1: batting order can't hit because somebody forgot to turn off
17:21
Speaker 1: the egg McMuffin. And that's baseball, Susan. That's also why
17:27
Speaker 1: the weird little moments stay with you longer than so
17:33
Speaker 1: many supposedly much more important moments. Now, I don't remember
17:37
Speaker 1: much about the game that afternoon. I think the Mets won.
17:40
Speaker 1: I remember the humidity. I remember a guy that had
17:44
Speaker 1: snapped at me with the Angels years earlier was playing
17:47
Speaker 1: for the Mets. He was at the very end of
17:48
Speaker 1: his career. At guy named Tony Phillips, who was not
17:51
Speaker 1: a big fan of mine, and he was at the
17:53
Speaker 1: end of his career, still hanging on with the Mets,
17:56
Speaker 1: not playing very well. And I just remember the Mets
17:59
Speaker 1: swinging and missing near that batting cage I was standing,
18:03
Speaker 1: and I remember Butch Husky storming out of the cage,
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Speaker 1: ready to declare war on Chase Stadium's operation department, all
18:11
Speaker 1: because McDonald's had turned Chase Stadium's battered the batter's eye
18:15
Speaker 1: out there. And there's some kind of breakfast menu, And
18:18
Speaker 1: almost thirty years later, it still makes me laugh. It's
18:22
Speaker 1: sadly now it makes me smile and shake my head
18:25
Speaker 1: for another reason. And again, rest in peace to Butcher
18:29
Speaker 1: Husky dying suddenly, for one glorious Sunday afternoon though in
18:34
Speaker 1: Queen's you and your then teammates for the New York
18:38
Speaker 1: Mets got dominated by an egg McMuffin. And I was
18:42
Speaker 1: lucky enough to have a front row seat to witness that.
18:47
Speaker 1: And all these years later, I still smile from ear
18:50
Speaker 1: to ear your reaction, butch Husky was unreal. Rest in peace,
18:56
Speaker 1: but man, that was quite the day. Now. In a
19:02
Speaker 1: related but unrelated story about the Golden Arches, I was
19:06
Speaker 1: reading this week some writer for the magazine slash website
19:10
Speaker 1: called Wired. I think it's just a website now, it's
19:12
Speaker 1: called Wired, all right. So there's a guy named, a
19:17
Speaker 1: writer named Rhys Rogers who requested his personal data from
19:23
Speaker 1: McDonald's under California privacy law, which is a thing in
19:26
Speaker 1: the People's Republic of California. And this guy received a
19:32
Speaker 1: mind blowing, staggering five hundred and fifteen page dossier documenting
19:39
Speaker 1: year and year and year and year and year years
19:44
Speaker 1: of his activity using waite Ford Kids. That's right, the
19:51
Speaker 1: McDonald's app loyalty program. So the file went far beyond
19:56
Speaker 1: just the purchase history. No, no, no, McDonald's uses the
20:01
Speaker 1: data to adjust the algorithm to predict future behavior, estimating
20:09
Speaker 1: that the writer named Rogers would visit two point one
20:13
Speaker 1: times over the next six weeks and spend thirteen dollars
20:18
Speaker 1: and forty nine cents per order, and when you include
20:22
Speaker 1: the tax, it was like twenty nine dollars and fifteen
20:25
Speaker 1: cents or something along those lines. So the question quickly
20:30
Speaker 1: is what is the moral of the story. What is
20:33
Speaker 1: the moral of the story about McDonald's commercial surveillance? Which
20:40
Speaker 1: is what this is? Commercial surveillance. So there is an
20:44
Speaker 1: old saying that is one of my favorite sayings. If
20:47
Speaker 1: you're not paying for the product, whatever the product is,
20:51
Speaker 1: if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
20:55
Speaker 1: And apparently Ronald McDonald, the legend Ronald McDonald, had been
21:02
Speaker 1: caught red handed, yellow gloved, and knee deep in the
21:07
Speaker 1: surveillance business. Who knew? So think about it. If McDonald's
21:11
Speaker 1: has a five hundred and fifteen page dossier on some
21:16
Speaker 1: random tech nerd imagine the filing cabinet they've got on
21:22
Speaker 1: the rest of us. Now. Fortunately I don't have the
21:24
Speaker 1: McDonald's app. I just never got around to getting it.
21:28
Speaker 1: And every Man, Woman and happy meal eating child, though,
21:33
Speaker 1: is apparently being tracked, categorized, and profiled. I don't want
21:40
Speaker 1: to be profiled all in the noble pursuit of getting
21:44
Speaker 1: deeper in to your wallet. Now times have certainly changed, Obviously,
21:50
Speaker 1: times changed. When I was a kid back in MINDR,
21:54
Speaker 1: we were singing bars from McDonald's Menus song, trying to
21:59
Speaker 1: remember Big Mac McDLT a quarter pounder with some cheese,
22:03
Speaker 1: and we do that whole thing. And now now it's
22:07
Speaker 1: a gold rush for the hamburglar. Yeah, like McDonald's has
22:11
Speaker 1: really leaned into the character arc of the hamburglar with
22:15
Speaker 1: an adjustment. Who's He's not stealing hamburgers anymore, the Hamburglar,
22:20
Speaker 1: he's moved into senior surveillance. He's graduated to stealing metadata. Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: the hamburglar says, I'm on a diet. I don't want
22:29
Speaker 1: to eat the burgers. I'm going to steal your metadata instead.
22:33
Speaker 1: And that is the hidden price. If you want those
22:36
Speaker 1: free fries, if you want that free drink on your birthday,
22:40
Speaker 1: then you gotta play the game. So you thought you
22:43
Speaker 1: were getting two hundred bonus points. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the Golden
22:49
Speaker 1: Arches are building your psychological scouting report, predicting where you'll go,
22:56
Speaker 1: what you'll order, and whether you'll ever escape. Big brother
23:02
Speaker 1: is watching you, and apparently so is Big Mac. Stay
23:06
Speaker 1: away from Big Mac, do it? Stay away? All right? Meanwhile,
23:11
Speaker 1: it time now for fun facts. That's right, we kind
23:15
Speaker 1: of fun facts. You'll be the judge whether these are
23:18
Speaker 1: fun or not. So today is August fifteenth. It is
23:22
Speaker 1: National Honeybee Awareness Day. Now, I do find it hard
23:27
Speaker 1: to believe that there are many people in this world
23:31
Speaker 1: over the age of eight that don't know about honey bees. However,
23:36
Speaker 1: rather than just focus on the bees knees, why don't
23:41
Speaker 1: we focus on one of the some of the quirkier
23:43
Speaker 1: sides of the honey bee? Did you know the honeybee
23:46
Speaker 1: has not one, not two, not three, not four? How
23:48
Speaker 1: about five eyes? Two large compound eyes and three smaller
23:54
Speaker 1: simple eyes on the top of its head. They have
23:59
Speaker 1: four wings, two pairs that hook together in flight, making
24:04
Speaker 1: them function as a much larger pair of wings. Even
24:08
Speaker 1: though they don't have that large pair of wings. They
24:10
Speaker 1: work together, work smarter, not harder. The honey bee pretty fast,
24:16
Speaker 1: pretty fast if it drives like a golf cart, although
24:19
Speaker 1: not as fast as kids on e bikes. And it
24:22
Speaker 1: drives around flies around fifteen to twenty miles per hour.
24:27
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty good. And a worker bee may visit
24:30
Speaker 1: thousands of flowers a day. Those are draconian, draconian working conditions.
24:37
Speaker 1: We need someone to advocate for the worker be rights.
24:42
Speaker 1: Somebody needs to advocate for the worker be rights. And
24:46
Speaker 1: that's it. Now. Honey essentially doesn't spoil. It's one of
24:49
Speaker 1: the great foods. I've talked about this in the past.
24:51
Speaker 1: If I were to ever open a store, I would
24:53
Speaker 1: open a honey shop. I would. I would. It does
24:58
Speaker 1: not spoil when properly sealed. It's low moisture, and you
25:02
Speaker 1: look at the way it's made. It's extremely hostile to
25:07
Speaker 1: the microbes that attack the food. So it's very well
25:11
Speaker 1: persuved preserved. In fact, archaeolologists back, you know, go back
25:15
Speaker 1: and find all this old stuff, and they've found ancient
25:19
Speaker 1: honey from back in the early days of humanity, and
25:24
Speaker 1: the honey is well preserved, preserved all these years later. Yeah,
25:29
Speaker 1: And the of course, the worker bees are female. Nearly
25:35
Speaker 1: every bee you see gathering pollen or nectar is a
25:38
Speaker 1: female worker. You gotta put the ladies to work. The
25:40
Speaker 1: male honey bees are called drones. They're primarily biological job.
25:46
Speaker 1: Their job is mating with a queen for another colony.
25:50
Speaker 1: So they're essentially just uh, you know, I don't if
25:54
Speaker 1: I can say that it's a family podcast. I think
25:56
Speaker 1: you there are kids listening. Let's just say there's a
25:58
Speaker 1: term for that. You'll learn it later, kids, You'll learn
26:01
Speaker 1: it later. The queen is not actually the boss of
26:06
Speaker 1: the colony. The hive operates through a decentralized collective behavior model.
26:12
Speaker 1: She's primarily the colonies reproductive specialist. So if you want
26:17
Speaker 1: to reproduce, you go to the queen and that's it.
26:21
Speaker 1: And honey bees do not talk. They don't have a mouth.
26:24
Speaker 1: They communicate by dancing the famous waggle dance, telling other
26:30
Speaker 1: workers the approximate direction the distance of a food source
26:35
Speaker 1: through the waggle. You gotta do the waggle. Do the
26:38
Speaker 1: waggle dance. Yes, absolutely. Bees can translate the sun's position
26:44
Speaker 1: into directions their sisters can follow. It's the sisterhood of bees.
26:49
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah. Their brains are about half or about
26:53
Speaker 1: the size of a sesame seed. About the size of
26:55
Speaker 1: a sesame seed containing roughly one million neurons seems pretty
27:02
Speaker 1: good for the size of a bee. They have built
27:04
Speaker 1: in air conditioning. I'd like to get that. We need
27:07
Speaker 1: to get built in air conditioning. The fan in their wings. Obviously,
27:13
Speaker 1: the workers fan their wings, and that manipulates the water
27:16
Speaker 1: evaporation to regulate the hive temperature. So you got to
27:20
Speaker 1: make sure the queen's happy. You got to make sure
27:23
Speaker 1: the queen's happy. You just have to. Yeah, Now, honeybees
27:28
Speaker 1: can sting some creatures repeatedly, right. They typically with humans,
27:36
Speaker 1: they can only sting once, right, that's it, and they
27:40
Speaker 1: lodge into the skin and then ultimately kill themselves. It's
27:44
Speaker 1: a coma case emission. However, they do sting other creatures repeatedly.
27:49
Speaker 1: One sting in your dead rule mainly results from the
27:52
Speaker 1: stinger becoming trapped in thick elastic mammal's skin, and so
27:59
Speaker 1: that that's that. Native Americans were probably referred to honeybees
28:05
Speaker 1: as white man's flies. Okay, very very nice. Most bees
28:12
Speaker 1: species do not make honey. They don't. Large communal honey
28:16
Speaker 1: reserves are a specialty of honeybees and a relatively small
28:21
Speaker 1: number of the other bee species that are just out there,
28:25
Speaker 1: just out there futting around doing their thing and that's it.
28:28
Speaker 1: That's just it's just playing around. That's all we're doing here.
28:32
Speaker 1: Honey bees do sleep. Researchers have observed sleep postures and
28:36
Speaker 1: periods of reduced responsiveness, and sleep deprivation can interfere with
28:43
Speaker 1: their communication. There you go. The oldest known bee fossils
28:47
Speaker 1: are around one hundred million years old, meaning that the
28:52
Speaker 1: bee ancestors were buzzing around during the age of the dinosaurs.
28:56
Speaker 1: Think about that. T Rex is out there and triceratops
29:01
Speaker 1: and there's bees just like that. It is relaxation day today,
29:09
Speaker 1: so make sure to relax. It's a Saturday. Your body
29:13
Speaker 1: has a built in brake pedal. The nervous system is
29:18
Speaker 1: often called the rest and digest system. It helps slow
29:22
Speaker 1: the heart rate and shifts the body away from fight
29:26
Speaker 1: or flight mode. So there is that. Now. I'm not
29:31
Speaker 1: very good at relaxation. I've read all of the pamphlets
29:35
Speaker 1: about relaxation, all right, and I'm in the majority They've said.
29:39
Speaker 1: Over the years, there have been studies done that humans
29:41
Speaker 1: are not particularly good at doing nothing. That they generally
29:48
Speaker 1: you and I dislike simply sitting alone with our thoughts,
29:52
Speaker 1: and many choose to give themselves an unpleasant electric shock
29:58
Speaker 1: rather than continue doing in this study that they did
30:02
Speaker 1: back back in the day. Most people prefer to go
30:06
Speaker 1: out to nature when they want to relax. Music also
30:11
Speaker 1: helps calming. Music has been associated with reduction and heart
30:16
Speaker 1: rate and blood pressure and all that, and many studies
30:19
Speaker 1: over the years. A warm bath chewing gum has actually
30:23
Speaker 1: been studied for stress. Some experts have found chewing gum
30:28
Speaker 1: is associated with lowering your stress level. There's a term
30:34
Speaker 1: in Japan, the Japanese practice of chinrin yoku. I'm probably
30:42
Speaker 1: butchering that chinrin yoku, meaning forget bathing. It doesn't involve
30:50
Speaker 1: a bath tub. It essentially deliberately spending quiet, attentive time
30:56
Speaker 1: immersed in a forest environment. You're going out to the woods.
31:01
Speaker 1: Say hey, honey, I'm going on. I'm gonna enjoy some
31:03
Speaker 1: shin rin yoku. Okay, that sounds good. Don't get attacked
31:07
Speaker 1: by a grizzly bear. And doing nothing has also attracted
31:11
Speaker 1: some pretty crazy names elsewhere. In Dutch, there's a concept
31:18
Speaker 1: nixon nik s e n so. I think it's probably
31:23
Speaker 1: not pronounced Nixon, whatever that is. It roughly refers to
31:28
Speaker 1: intentionally doing nothing without needing the activity to be productive.
31:33
Speaker 1: So even humanity finally found a way to put loafing
31:39
Speaker 1: on a resume. Just come up with these shiny words
31:42
Speaker 1: and you are good to go. All right. We also
31:46
Speaker 1: have tomato glory Tomatoes, Glory Day, Tomatoes Glory Day, which
31:52
Speaker 1: is a apparently a thing. Yeah, I like the ketchup,
31:59
Speaker 1: not that to tomato. Although my favorite tomato reference is
32:04
Speaker 1: Manager's Quarter with Earl Weaver and the Great Bill Whitehouse,
32:10
Speaker 1: and that line from Earl Weaver was outstanding, outstanding. From
32:20
Speaker 1: Ella Sweet from Norfolk, she wants to know, Earl the
32:24
Speaker 1: best time to put in a tomato plant, And then
32:28
Speaker 1: Earl Weaver went on that famous rant and saying she
32:32
Speaker 1: had to worry about where her next blank is coming
32:35
Speaker 1: from rather than where her next gd tomato plants coming from.
32:40
Speaker 1: It was so good, It was so good. Now tomatoes
32:43
Speaker 1: are fruits, we are told botanically they're berries because they
32:50
Speaker 1: developed from a flower's ovary and contain seeds. But in
32:55
Speaker 1: the United States, the country I live in, they are
32:58
Speaker 1: legally vegetable. That's right. In eighteen ninety three, there was
33:04
Speaker 1: Believe or not, There was a Supreme Court case in
33:07
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety three in the relative early days of America
33:12
Speaker 1: still compared to where we are now. And they determined
33:17
Speaker 1: that tomatoes classified as a vegetable for purposes of tariff.
33:21
Speaker 1: You know, they had tariffs back then and people didn't
33:25
Speaker 1: mind because it wasn't our current president. But that aside,
33:29
Speaker 1: they were commonly served with dinner rather than dessert, so
33:33
Speaker 1: that's what they determined. And tomatoes are all American babysa USA.
33:39
Speaker 1: They originated in America. Wild ancestors grew in western South America.
33:47
Speaker 1: While you think about the evolution of the Americas and
33:50
Speaker 1: all that they were there before before tomatoes reached Europe
33:55
Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds. Yeah, and the Europeans, those hearty
34:02
Speaker 1: souls from Europe once feared tomatoes were poisonous. Yeah, stay
34:07
Speaker 1: away from the tomato. Stay West stair wes Stair, wes
34:11
Speaker 1: stair way. Yeah about that. The French once came up
34:17
Speaker 1: with the term for potatoes or forto for tomatoes. You
34:21
Speaker 1: say potato, I say tomato for the tomato. The French
34:26
Speaker 1: came up with a word that means love apples. Yes,
34:30
Speaker 1: because they acquired a representation of getting you horny, so yeah,
34:36
Speaker 1: you had to have They were an aphrodisiac a nice afrodisiac,
34:41
Speaker 1: and you could enjoy that Italians where I think when
34:45
Speaker 1: I think of the tomato, I think of the Italian right,
34:47
Speaker 1: the tomato sauce with the red sauce. The It's just
34:51
Speaker 1: that's what it is. So they had a term which
34:54
Speaker 1: translated meant the golden apple. Early varieties included introduced to
35:00
Speaker 1: Italy may have actually been yellow rather than the bright
35:04
Speaker 1: red they are today. There you go, but wait, there's
35:09
Speaker 1: more tomatoes. Seeds have gone all the way to space.
35:13
Speaker 1: I know you're impressed by that, alf you are. You're
35:16
Speaker 1: nodding your head. And Ferk Dog is trying to come
35:19
Speaker 1: up with a proper email to the mailbag for tomorrow.
35:22
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it will be about Edwin Diaz almost blowing
35:25
Speaker 1: the save last night against the Brewers. However, somehow Milwaukee
35:29
Speaker 1: could not finish the comeback against the Dodgers, So there
35:36
Speaker 1: you go. They say to never refrigerate a good ripe
35:40
Speaker 1: tomato unless you need to preserve it a little bit longer.
35:44
Speaker 1: Cold temperatures end up being bad for the flavor of
35:50
Speaker 1: the tomato. There you go. And Rotten Tomatoes, which is
35:53
Speaker 1: a very popular show business website where they review movies.
35:58
Speaker 1: That is an old cliche action in the early days
36:02
Speaker 1: of entertainment, vaudeville and Hollywood. The name references the image
36:08
Speaker 1: of an unhappy audience member throwing that's right, a rotten
36:12
Speaker 1: tomato at an absolute terrible performer. Just there you go.
36:18
Speaker 1: All right on that note, we will get out of here.
36:21
Speaker 1: Should have the mail bag up and running tomorrow. We'll
36:23
Speaker 1: let you know who's on the mail bag. We have
36:25
Speaker 1: not figured that out. I know, I know it's a
36:28
Speaker 1: disheveled mess. But either way, have a wonderful, wonderful, glorious
36:35
Speaker 1: Saturday here and we will chat with you tomorrow. Tomorrow
36:39
Speaker 1: is another day, as Dick and Dayton would say, bye bye,
36:43
Speaker 1: bye bye