Sawbones: King of Sting

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion.

It's for fun.

Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil?

We think you've earned it.

Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth.

You're worth it.

All right, tomorrow meeting is about to books.

One, two, one, two, three, four.

We came across a pharmacy with its windows bossed out.

Pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a lucky round.

The medicines, the medicines, the escalat macabre

Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones, Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine.

I'm your co-host Justin McElroy.

And I'm Sidney McElroy.

And then we die.

Justin,

I'm so grateful for our listeners.

Oh, yeah, me too.

They make our entire way of life possible and I care about them all a great deal.

And an equal amount, as much as they try to trick me into picking a favorite.

I agree with all those sentiments.

And I also appreciate that they routinely send send me wonderful topic suggestions that take me down very interesting rabbit holes that I otherwise may not have explored.

You want to hear a toe pick suggestion?

Topic?

It's from the hit hit.

You remember that hit movie?

About the

hockey player falls in love with the ice

ice skater.

Oh, yeah.

Sure.

It's cute.

I don't, I never saw that.

You never saw that?

We should watch it.

We should watch that.

Should we?

Be a good still buffering.

It says a lot to say about our current

state.

Yeah.

So Jonathan, our listener, thank you, Jonathan, sent in a recommendation that it was interesting to hear that there is a pain scale for insect stings.

We referenced that on our last episode about wasp stings.

And

maybe there would be more out there about the guy who invented this pain scale.

Yeah.

The Schmidt pain scale.

And

maybe we'd want to delve into it.

And I thought, well, I don't know.

Yeah.

I mean, I'll dig around.

Let me see.

It is kind of interesting that somebody came up with a pain scale because it kind of begs the question.

What's the most?

What's the least?

What's wrong with that person?

No, no.

But like, definitely what's the most, what's the least.

But also, if I was developing a scale of like, I don't know, the best sodas.

I would like, if I had like, if I rated all the sodas, I would try the sodas, right?

To develop the scale.

So how are you doing the testing?

How is this?

Yeah.

How are you developing the scale?

I mean, that's the assumption, right?

He must have been stung by all these things if he made a scale of them because pain is such a subjective experience

that you can't just ask, like, okay, you get stung by these 10, I'll get stung by these 10, and then we'll do it together.

You know what I mean?

There has to be a control that is something.

So I did look into Schmidt, Dr.

Schmidt, Dr.

Justin O.

Schmidt.

Of course, he's a Justin.

We knew it, didn't didn't we?

You know, we love Ajustin.

Nature, too.

Nature's favorite child, Ajustin.

As they say, nature abhors a vacuum and loves Ajustin.

I wanted to dig into this Justin.

Why did he, how did he develop a pain scale?

Why?

Who is he?

And I am so glad that I did because I am just obsessed with...

this other Justin.

Not as much as I'm obsessed with

you, Justin.

Oh, yeah.

That's definitely the verb I think of when I I think of your relationship to me.

Yeah, Sidney's obsessed with.

Yeah, dude.

But this, this,

this man was a stellar Justin, let's just say.

Fantastic.

He's welcome aboard.

So, yes, that's Justin.

Dr.

Schmidt always loved chemistry.

I found a great, man, I love when people do like interviews.

You can, this was with like an alumni magazine.

He went to Penn State.

And so you can find these really like open, honest, kind of fun interviews in those settings.

You know what I mean?

Because it wouldn't have been for like a gigantic like national publication.

Yeah.

And so you get some really interesting kind of like color.

And, and anyway, I found this interview where he talks about, because I was trying to dig into, there's, obviously there's a Wikipedia article and you can read more about him in a couple scientific ways.

But I wanted like, who was he?

Yeah.

I need to get a sense for who is, who is this guy.

So he always loved chemistry, like way back to medal school.

He went to Penn State because he wanted to study chemistry, but he worked with a lot of inspirational professors and advisors.

And so this happens sometimes in science.

You kind of think you know what you want, and then you start working with somebody who all of a sudden you feel like I want to see the world the way they do.

I want to, I found that for myself in family medicine.

I thought I was going to do infectious disease.

And then, when I started working with family doctors, I thought, oh,

that's maybe this is me.

I feel like we're kindred spirits.

Maybe this is where I belong.

So, anyway, he began to become interested in some other scientific pursuits as well, biology and physics.

And he kind of wanted to combine all of of these interests into one area.

And what he came up with was chemical ecology, which didn't, at first I was like, I don't, I don't even know what I'm reading.

Chemical ecology.

I mean, I know what those words mean, but what exactly are we studying?

And specifically, about three years prior to him entering this field of study, the first insect pheromone had been discovered.

Oh.

So this sort of like chemical look at the ecological world, at the animal world, insect world.

Hey, was it the dung beal out of curiosity?

Because that would, I feel like that would be so embarrassing.

You know, I don't know.

That's a great question.

What was the first insect pheromone that was discovered?

It was three years prior to Dr.

Schmidt entering the field of chemical ecology.

I know that fact.

So anyway, there weren't a lot of primary chemists involved in this field at the time, which again, I was like, well, it's cog chemical ecology.

So I am shocked.

Yeah.

But

he decided he wanted to pursue that and he had to play a little bit of catch up because entomology was the hot area.

Insect studies was the hot area at that point.

And he needed a PhD in it if he was going to pursue it.

Listen, we know some entomologists through our lecturing to them about bugs.

And they can party.

So I don't blame people for wanting to

get in on the action.

And they're nice to you when you use the term bug loosely and the term insect loosely.

And then sometimes.

Like when I got up on stage and I said, bats, giant bugs that terrorize.

And they're like, bats aren't bugs.

And when you, when you, because colloquially, colloquially, cicadas are so often called locusts, but they're not locusts, because that's like a grasshopper.

But when you make that mistake, they're very nice about it.

I think,

can I lodge one other complaint as long as we're here?

It sucks that colloquially is so hard to say.

Like for the topic that it is discussing, it sucks that, like, colloquially, every time I say it, I have to turn into freaking John Travolta, you know, colloquially speaking.

Well, and I don't want to say, I feel like an alternative because my mind's always looking through, like, what else could I say?

Like, I'm flipping through synonyms.

Yeah.

Layman's term sounds demeaning.

Well, in layman's terms.

I prefer it because I think of myself as a layman in pretty much

every regard of my life.

So I like things boiled down to that.

That doesn't hurt my feelings.

But we do end up having to say colloquially a lot on Sawbones.

None of Suffered as well.

So he's doing his research in entomology.

Not had been, not much had been explored in insect venom.

And so he had this, he talks about in his interview, he had this chemistry ability, and that would be a good area for him to sort of start doing his research.

Specifically, he discovered that the stings of southern harvester ants hurt for a long time and produced unusual local skin reactions, but nothing was really known about their venom.

And so he thought, aha, here is a topic that I can jump into and use my chemical background to solve some mysteries.

Okay, honey.

And I think that is the coolest intro.

Okay.

It is 100%.

You are talking like, so far, this is 100% a like.

silver era comic book origin story.

This is absolutely like Dr.

Paul,

you know, Stingsworthy went to the jungles to test the limits of chemical stings and insects using his different knowledge to solve mysteries.

And then he got stuck by some crazy one, some like crazy big one is radioactive.

And then now he's, you know,

bugging me.

Listen,

I feel like, here's, here's going to be

like the bummer side of this is that if you wandered, is there an insect out there that could sting me?

that would it would give me some sort of superpowers, right?

Instead of just like, ow.

I feel like he has answered that question definitively.

Definitively, he has fought zero crime.

Or created crime on a mass scale apropos super villain, to be fair.

So, now, to be fair, he admits very openly in his book that he has not been stung by everything out there.

That would be impossible.

He's been stung by lots of stuff, but there's always new insects out there, right?

So, it would be scientifically speaking, he certainly has not been stung by everything.

But he's asked about, so he developed the

sting, the Schmidt Sting Pain Index and became known as the King of Sting, which is his book as well.

I'm not color the sippy.

But basically, he said he didn't set out to do that because nobody sets out to say, like, I know my goal, well, somebody probably does, but my goal in life is to get stung by everything that stings.

No, no way.

I actually have a long-standing goal to the contrary.

What he was trying to figure out is

the societal nature of of some insects.

So we talked about on the last episode that some wasps are solitary and some live in social groups.

Why are different ants, bees, wasps, why are some of them social?

Why are some of them, you know, why do they build these nests together?

Like what is that?

And does their venom have anything to do with it?

If their venom is more toxic, does that tell you something about them?

Or if their venom produces more of a pain response?

You know, is that because then it deters large predators?

And so you can live a better solitary life?

You know what I mean?

If you're solitary, you need that kind of ability.

Or does the social thing, I'm able to go, you know, immobilize large predators, bring them back to my social group?

You know what I mean?

So, like, this is what he was trying to say.

Troubling cases, like, is it just for kicks?

Is that just how you get your jollies?

There's some bugs.

That's just how they get their jollies, man.

This is how they get their, it's how they get their rocks hard.

You know, they get out there.

Other large predators or anything, just like, just for fun.

Uh, he so he goes on to decide, like, he decides basically we need to have a like if I'm going to talk about what stings hurt the most and then try to apply that knowledge scientifically, like these are the ones that hurt the most, and so this is what it means about their social behavior.

Like, if I'm going to make that correlation, I have to know what hurts the most, and there has to be a pain scale.

And so, it wasn't that he wanted to, but he had to for science.

Yeah, yep, yep, yep, gotta do it.

He said, by the way, uh,

he was asked, were you ever afraid, like, of getting stung by something?

Because, you know, it hurts.

And so did fear ever hold you back.

And he said, my greatest fears were of catching some horrible tropical disease, being mugged in the field, or getting struck by lightning while out in the barren expanses of desert environments.

I think this is a cool dude.

He never worried about the stings himself.

Wasn't worried about that.

I mean, I think that that's very legitimate.

It's like, are you worried about bugs?

Like, look where I have to go to get stung by the bugs.

Like, I could get killed by some, you know, where the bugs are?

Where there's tigers?

Like, what are you talking about?

Are you scared?

I'm going to be scared of the pain.

He said that he has no stinging, he has no favorite stinging insect.

He like harvester ants have fascinating venom chemistry, but they hurt a lot.

Velvet ants are beautiful, but they're hard to find.

Fire ants have amazing chemistry.

They're easy to find, but they suck to work with.

And this is all throughout his book, by the way.

He has very

complex opinions about all stinging insects and their behavior and the way that, I mean, they're capturing them and then the stories about his adventures to go find all of these different stinging insects.

And so I thought it was really interesting then.

I wanted to look at his book, The King of Sting, which you can purchase,

to see, first of all, like more about

how this came to be, and then to learn about the pain scale itself.

You know what?

Sorry, Sydney.

I realize we are now 12 minutes into this episode and did not mention the fact that we are dovetailing off last week's episode about our incredible

drama

and

subsequent heroic triumphant recovery over wasp stings.

That's right, which we thought, honestly, in our naivete

that were pretty darn bad, all things considered, the on the great scale of uh of stinging well and that's why i wanted to go ahead and tell you where our wasp stings

so justin and i got stung by paper wasps as far as i could tell yes i think that that is what they were

Well, now there is also an unstable paper wasp.

I'm just learning.

Okay, these guys were definitely those.

You do not see them the way that I did.

Okay, these were absolutely, if there is an unstable kind, it was absolutely those.

They were, I'm America's america's favorite podcaster and they settled me three times like no question unstable textbook oh but there's also golden paper wasps well crap there's all kind of paper wasps these are in north america okay okay so here's the point most wasps fall into like the two range it's a scale of one to four okay he gives like half like there's one 1.5 like he gives you know what a i think there are even some broken down further it's like a 1.8 on here somewhere does he delve into the logic of that

one to four is like, is he leaving room for a five?

The mythical five?

He has said that if there was a five, well, I won't ruin that yet.

There is a five.

I mean, there isn't a five, but if he was going to, there's one.

He's like, this is like, I had to change this game.

But to give you, I want to give you a flavor of what this is like.

Okay.

So for your standard paper wasp,

it's a pain level of 1.5.

And he just, and they, they've got descriptions.

It's not just a number.

Burning, throbbing, and lonely.

A single drop of superheated frying oil landed on your arm.

Yeah.

Lonely.

Lonely.

Lonely is so interesting.

Now,

if it was an unstable paper wasp, it would be a two, so a little worse.

And he describes it as like a dinner guest who stays much too long, the pain drones on.

Yes.

A hot Dutch oven lands on your hand and you can't get it off.

That's okay.

That is what happened to me.

That describes my ordeal, but they're all described.

Like, listen to this.

If it was an artistic wasp, which I didn't know, I didn't ask about its artistic abilities.

But if it was an artistic wasp, it would be a two.

And he describes it as pure, then messy, then corrosive.

Love and marriage, followed by divorce.

Sounds like a lot of artistic roommates I've had.

The whole thing is like this.

It's incredible the way that all of these different stings.

And these, I'm just pulling from some of the wasps.

Like, there's also all of the ants and and the bees.

And I mean, all the stinging insects are described throughout this book.

And he was asked, like, why, why do we need this from a practical standpoint?

And I mean, part of it, I guess, is like, now we know what's worse.

So we know what to stay away from.

Although, I'd rather stay away from all of them.

None, none, please.

Thank you.

So, Justin, I want to give you, I know the answers everybody wants.

Like, what are the best and the worst?

The best thing to get stung by, the worst thing to get stung by.

And I've got a couple other stories about his, his travels from his book that I think kind of elaborate on this.

But before we do that, we got to go to the belly department.

Let's go.

The medicines, the medicines that escalate macabre for the mouth.

You want to eat smarter.

You want to eat faster, though.

You don't have a lot of time to make these delicious meals, but you want to be putting all the things in your body that you love, that you crave, that you need with a great taste and not a lot of time commitment.

You got to reach for Factor.

I keep a few of these in my fridge at all times.

Anytime I want a real actual meal, you know, not some bar that I've ripped open, but a real hearty meal and I don't want to wait more than two minutes to do it.

The Factor is there for me with over 65 weekly meals to choose from.

The variety here is really unreal.

If you were already a factor member right now, you might have in your fridge garlic herb chicken with a vegetable risotto and roasted green beans.

You can just heat up and eat it.

No problem.

You want charred corn and shredded chicken cavatopi?

No freaking problem.

Oh, but Justin, I don't have two hours to make.

Aren't you listening?

Two minutes, you could be eating a delicious meal from Factor.

They are very, very tasty, very easy.

And they're, you know, you could tell these are made by people that care about your body and your tongue.

Is smart at factormeals.com/slash sawbones50off and use code sawbones50off to get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year.

That's code Sawbones50Off at factormeals.com for 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year.

Get delicious ready-to-eat meals delivered with Factor.

Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase.

Oh, these shorts?

You've noticed them.

Yeah, these are sort of a transitional short.

They go from the warmer months to the more formal short-wearing months of August and September.

When you need a classier short, where did I get them?

Yeah, thank you.

It's very flattering.

Quince is where I get most of my semi-formal shorts like these.

With the great prizes at Quince, you can get the perfect short or pant or any other garment or other item for whatever occasion, but you're going to get them with a great price and really wonderfully sourced.

Listen to this.

Quince has all the elevated essentials for fall.

Think 100% Mongolian cashmere from $50.

Washable silk tops and skirts.

perfectly tailored denim.

By partnering directly with ethical top-tier factories and cutting out the middlemen, Quince delivers luxury quality pieces at half the price of similar brands.

I've really been impressed with all the garments that I've gotten from Quince.

I'm going to keep buying from them as a regular customer, even after the ad, because I've just been so impressed by these, and everything I've gotten from them has fit great, and I've felt great about buying it.

Keep it classic and cozy this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash sawbones for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e dot com slash sawbones.

To get free shipping and 365 day returns, quince.com slash sawbones.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no, nope, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no.

It's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

You know, Sid, it's interesting as I was thinking about this

and about this scale.

There was something kind of novel about the pain of that exact sting.

It was like a different experience, obviously hugely unpleasant, but there was a specificity to it that like changed and evolved.

It was, it was a very different kind of, you feel how different it is from like a physical pain or a physical trauma

because it really is like an evolving sort of pain and it's there was a specificity to it.

Well, and I think that's what that's what's really fascinating about this research is because he comes from a chemistry background, his question isn't just like what hurts most, it's how it hurts and what it's doing to you and how that's reflected in the components of the venom.

So, I mean, the reason that he was getting stung so much in part is because he's collecting these things.

He's going out with his nets and he's collecting these various insects.

And then he is, you know, breaking down the compounds in the venom, collecting the venom, looking at what's in there.

Why does it do this to you?

What's also interesting about that is, you know,

being able to synthesize different aspects of venom in a lab, making a synthetic compound, you could perhaps desensitize someone who has an anaphylactic reaction,

which they've worked on with like bees.

And so there are practical applications to this as well.

And then part of it, I think, is just you never know when you start exploring this kind of, this kind of science, where it will lead you to, or what compounds you'll find that you'll say, well, now that could be useful against this inflammatory condition or against this autoimmune condition, or maybe we'll try that against cancer.

We don't know.

Well, I mean, we saw Medicine man.

It was in the ants.

Remember, it was in the ants.

Don't you think it's weird that there aren't any of these that feel good?

He does say that there's a type of parasitic bee,

a triapiolus,

and he rates it a 0.5.

And his description is, did I just imagine that?

A little scratch that dances with a tickle.

Yeah.

That doesn't sound bad, does it?

No, it sounds like, you know, in New Orleans, when the mosquitoes mosquitoes bite you, you don't say ow.

You say ooh.

Well, he actually says

the anth, the anthophorid, anthophorid bee

is a one, and it's almost pleasant.

A lover just bit your earlobe a little too hard.

Ooh, okay.

All right, Dr.

Schmidt.

All right.

But I mean, that's, and so did you want to know what the worst is?

Um, I'm assuming it was whatever whatever stung us or me specifically.

No, ours was not the worst.

No, no, not even close.

Not even close.

Not even close.

So he talks about, as I said, he really loved the harvester ants, and he really gets into the harvester ants.

They're almost at the top.

They're not the worst.

They're threes.

They're not fours.

My guess would be something.

Okay.

In my gut, it's, I feel like something African plains or rainforest, like something like that, something exotic is what I feel like.

Because I feel like we would have driven these extremely painful bugs out of anywhere we inhabit.

So that would be my guess.

Well, so the

most intense are in Central and South America.

The harvester ants, the Argentinian harvester ants of South America, he describes as a ferocious pang lasting 12 hours or more.

Flesh-eating bacteria dissolve your muscles one by precious one.

Now,

that is not the worst.

That's not the worst.

That is not the worst.

The worst is the bullet ant.

The bullet ant?

The bullet ant.

It is a pure, intense, brilliant pain, like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel.

Holy crap.

And he rates that a four.

He said, if it could be a five, the bullet ant would be a five.

He talks about it.

Do you know how like...

That's so wild.

If it could be a five, it would be a five.

Do you know how crazy that is?

He made up the scale.

He made up the scale.

And this is what this man said.

When I created the scale, I imagined in my head the upper limits of how painful something could be i imagined what that could be with my entire human mind and i said that is a four and then i got stung by this guy and that pain was so great it exceeded the limits of my human imagination to an extent where it would make a mockery of my scale to do so but it does exceed the possibilities of pain that i set out for us he recounts so throughout his book he talks about how he got these stings.

And like, again, he doesn't, he is not setting out to like put his arm out there and then wave it around to get a wasp to sting him.

You know what I mean?

Like he is trying to collect them, but he is also getting stung a lot.

He very intentionally is trying not to get stung by the bullet ants as he's collecting them because he knows.

He knows.

Do it again.

And during the collection process, he upsets.

the hive or hill or colony, colony, that's the word, colony of the ants.

And they're all kind of going wild and they're all over the place and he's trying to collect like the last ones and like toss them in a bag and get the ants and this is when he finally gets stung by the ants like they finally get to his foot and he he sustains a couple of different stings on his foot and he talks about just the severity the intensity and he's trying to get away from the colony and he's trying to get back to where they're staying i'm going to ask why he was barefoot obviously i think they got his ankle or something i don't know but anyway well they're ants they can crawl up under your pant leg so but he gets but he talks about like he makes it back to where they're staying and he's like just in absolute agony.

He's just in, it's excruciating.

He can't even think.

And he recounts that he drinks a beer and then he's finally able to eat a little bit and the food was really good.

So then he drinks another beer and it's still throbbing, but he's at least being, but like this is the story.

He tells this story as he's, I mean, they're really fascinating.

He talks about

getting stung by the tarantula hawk, which is one of the worst wasp stings you can get.

It's a four on the wasp sting chart.

The bullet ant still beats everything because of the duration, he said.

But tarantula hawk's really high up there.

And he describes it as blinding, fierce, shockingly electric.

A running hair dryer has just been dropped into your bubble bath.

And he talks about that.

The best thing they asked him, well, if you get stung by a tarantula hawk, what should you do?

And he said his advice is lie down and scream.

Because he said, first of all, the pain is so all-encompassing that you cannot think straight.

And you are in more danger of running about and flailing uncontrollably and running into something or tripping over something or maybe upsetting another stinging insect.

But you will be so out of control of your body in pain that you may cause more harm to yourself.

It's like the advice for somebody having a seizure.

Similarly, you're trying to get them to.

Don't just do something, stand there.

Yeah, like you're trying to protect them from

just hurting themselves.

Exactly.

Lay down.

And then he said, and the screaming is just because it usually feels good to scream.

Sure.

Okay.

When you're in pain.

Hey, listen, I'm going to trust him.

Honestly, like, I'm going to, I'm going to, I trust the expert.

If you, if you, so if you get stung by a tarantula hawk wasp, his advice is lay down and scream.

Uh, the, the, I want to talk about one of the experiments he did, but the, the one, the last one I did want to mention is the warrior wasp or warrior wasp or armadillo wasp.

Uh, he described as torture.

You are chained in the flow of an active volcano.

Why did I start this list?

The whole book is really, it's very cleverly captured all these stories.

If you're interested, I mean, I didn't know I was interested in entomology or the stings of insects, but I found like the descriptions really fun and fascinating and clever and, you know, told with like a, the appropriate amount of humor for what it is.

He talks at one point about he's out looking for a specific insect and there's a snake and he knew it was a dangerous snake and he sees it and he's like, ah, I don't know.

Like the snake is like up, rearing up with its mouth open in a way that says, like, go away.

You're messing with me.

So he uses his insect neck to scoop up the snake and decides his safest bet is just to carry the snake with him because then he knows he can't step on it if he's carrying it.

But eventually it gets really heavy

because he's just carrying this like huge snake around with him in this net.

And I imagine the snake's getting progressively more upset because he's carrying it around in a net.

And so he eventually has to like sort of like roll it down a hill and then run away from it.

You think there's a part of him that's looking at the fangs and he's just like, I gotta know.

I gotta know.

I want to explain.

I gotta know.

I gotta put it on my.

I gotta branch out.

I'm gonna expand as a DLC expansion pack from my list.

Here's a, here's an experiment he did.

He wanted to know, um, he saw a kingbird outside of his office.

He worked at the University of Arizona for a while.

And he was, uh, the kingbird was eating a colony of Africanized honeybees.

And he was trying to figure out, like,

how in the world can it just eat all these bees and not get sick or something, right?

Like, there's venom,

you know.

Um,

and uh, so he collected 147 regurgitated pellets that the bird left below its perch.

Okay, okay, fantastic.

And as he dissected them and looked at the honeybee carcasses inside, he discovered they were all male.

Okay,

now only female insects sting, right?

Yeah, because that's ava

positor.

Ava positor.

And so, how is the bird telling the difference?

How does the bird know which ones?

Stinging?

How does he know which ones are male and which ones are females?

How is he only scooping up the males just like that?

How does he know?

Because they're stinging.

So he

no, but how, no, he's eating them.

How does he know which ones are male and which ones are female?

I know.

This is, but like, that's a question.

How would the bird know?

No, but I don't, it's hard for me to tell the difference in the social social cube between this is a trivia question and this is a thought starter.

Oh, this is a thought starter.

Okay, thank you.

I will tell you.

This is really panicking.

No, this is a thought starter.

Thank you.

Okay, so he captures a bunch of male and female bees from that hive.

Yeah.

And then he dissects them.

Okay.

Head, thorax, abdomen.

And then one by one,

he eats them.

This is Justin Schmidt.

Okay.

He's eating the bees.

Oh, man.

Because he wanted to use, he wanted to be like the predators.

How can I use it?

He's like testing their methodology.

He says sense of taste is pretty much generic.

In other words, what something tastes like to me is probably similar to what it's going to taste like to a raccoon, possum, skunk, shrew, or other.

Sure, makes sense.

Right.

So he ate the heads of the different bees to see if female and male bees taste different.

Sure.

And female bee heads taste like nasty, crunchy fingernail polish.

Okay.

Gross.

And the abdomen echoed a sort of corrosive turpentine.

Great.

Glad that he bit them in different parts.

It's so smart and good.

The males he described, the male heads tasted like Fritos.

A bit like custard.

Oh, okay.

Gross.

That's why the bird eats the males.

Because they're more delicious.

They're more delicious.

Can you imagine doing a study

where you eat the heads of bees to see?

It's fascinating, but that answers the question.

They can't be fascinated.

It's fascinating.

You're right.

It's hard for me.

The only thing that I can think is that somewhere out there, there's probably a bee who's like, oh, my greatest fear.

I just don't want to die like my Aunt Janice.

What happened to your Aunt Janice?

I was there.

It was crazy.

Freaking

giant comes out of nowhere.

I swear to God, bites her head.

Biggest thing I've ever seen is like a bee with no wings and two legs and two arms, I guess you'd call him.

And he just bites my Aunt Janice's head off.

And he goes, and this is the worst part.

He goes, yeah.

And it's like, then he bites my Uncle Dan's head off and says, yes.

That's my greatest fear.

So I just, by the way, I've been saying King of Sting.

That's what he was known as.

His book is actually called The Sting of the Wild.

So The Sting of the Wild, which is available if you're interested.

I have been fascinated with it.

I'm really glad I own it now because I've read some of the stories and then I really wanted to delve into the the schmidt payne scale because that was you know the point but um it's really fascinating and there's all kinds of stuff like um

why

he he did an experiment where he was trying to see if he could like walk into one of these colonies of africanized honeybees and not get stung

um and he had like a big tube that he was breathing through so that he would direct his ex

exhaled air somewhere else away from the bees and he was able to like walk among them oh weird Because the carbon dioxide is some is part of the trigger because predators exhale carbon dioxide and that can trigger the bees.

And so by redirecting his carbon dioxide, which would tell you like if you were around a bunch of bees and you held your breath long enough to get away, you might be able to get away.

Did he ever mention like treating these things or like did he ever do anything that was like equivalent to the glass of milk when you've been taking some sort of wing challenge?

Was there a like, okay, that's enough.

I get it now.

The novelty's over, or did he just have to write it out?

I have to, I haven't read the whole book.

I will say, full disclosure, in the instances where he talks about recovering from the stings, he most often references like getting some ice on the sting.

And then, I mean, I guess in that one episode, he drank beer.

But I mean, I don't think.

I don't remember him mentioning specifically.

There is a chapter I haven't read yet on honey about like bees and honey and honey for stings, but I haven't delved into his thoughts on that

I think it's the answer for most things is usually gonna be ice and anti-inflammatory and then of course if you're allergic which he notes again and again he is not so he didn't have to worry about that he won in 2015 there's the Ignoble prize

it's the like Igg Nobel prize it's like a little joke little joshy thing for something that was really interesting it kind of raises it's always good to do science that people find interesting like good science that also draws public interest because it reminds people why science matters and why it's important.

So there's value to it, even if it can kind of seem sensationalist or silly sometimes, if it's done well.

If it's science done right, it's valuable.

And obviously his work was done, done very well.

I also liked the advice.

They asked him if he had any advice.

And he said, be curious, be passionate about what you love to do and work hard.

Do not dwell on, quote, finding your passion.

Just have fun exploring life and science and your passion will find you.

That's nice.

Yeah.

And again, I think if it's the kind of thing you might be interested in, The Sing of the Wild is the book that he wrote all about and his whole pain scales in there.

They're all like that.

Those descriptions are all that fantastic.

So if that's the kind of science writing you like, which as you may, as you may have noticed, I do.

Yeah.

I'd recommend it.

That's going to do it for us this week on Sawbones.

Oh, thanks to the taxpayers for use of their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program.

Also, I wanted to mention that I'm going to be doing my brother, my brother, and me on July 11th in Anaheim.

July 12th, we're doing the Adventure Zone in Anaheim.

July 13th, we're going to be in Sacramento doing My Brother, My Brother, and Me.

You can get tickets at bit.ly forward slash McElroyTours.

Thanks to taxpayers for the use of their song medicines.

This is the Internet Entrepreneur program.

Thanks to you for listening.

I really appreciate you.

And that's going to do it for this freak.

Until next time, my name is Justin McLoy.

I'm Sidney McRoy.

And as always, don't drill a hole in your head.

All right.

Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.