Selects: How the Flu Works

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Speaker 35 Oh god.

Speaker 51 Hi everybody.

Speaker 5 It's Chuck here.

Speaker 51 Oh boy, my selection this week is Hell the Flu Works. And I'll give you one reason why.

Speaker 17 This is from November 14th, 2017.

Speaker 35 I hope you like it. I'm going back to bed.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 38 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
There's Jerry. This is Stuff You Should Know about the flu, flu, which I have.

Speaker 51 You know the flu, do you?

Speaker 52 I don't know, man. I can't.

Speaker 38 I can't. I've been on the planet for 41 years.

Speaker 35 Okay.

Speaker 38 I still can't really tell the difference between a flu and a cold.

Speaker 51 I think the difference that I can tell, and I don't get the flu much, you know, I always get the stomach bug, which,

Speaker 51 as it turns out, is not a flu I just learned.

Speaker 35 No.

Speaker 51 But

Speaker 51 I don't get the flu flu much.

Speaker 51 But I can always tell, though, when I'm super achy, like the flu just makes me feel like dog doo-doo.

Speaker 41 Right.

Speaker 51 Whereas a cold is just a big inconvenience.

Speaker 38 Yeah, I've had, no, I've definitely had like lots of aches, and I woke up, like, shivering one night.

Speaker 51 Oh, so you had a fever for sure.

Speaker 38 I guess so.

Speaker 38 I guess it must have just been one night in the middle of the night. So that's the flu, right?

Speaker 53 Probably.

Speaker 38 So I guess I do have the flu.

Speaker 52 No joke, everybody.

Speaker 51 Well, I'm erecting the clear glass in between us.

Speaker 38 Yeah, I think that I've had it long enough now, based on the research from this article, that I'm I'm not contagious or else I would have called this off.

Speaker 51 So, did you get it in New York, I wonder?

Speaker 38 I think so. Yeah, another

Speaker 35 thing. Right, yeah.

Speaker 38 Which I was like, I was just walking around like with my hands

Speaker 38 inside of a couple of like plastic Dwayne Reed bags that still didn't work.

Speaker 51 Well, that was your problem, probably, right there.

Speaker 35 Right?

Speaker 41 Dwayne Reed.

Speaker 38 Because I didn't take them off when I ate.

Speaker 35 Gross. Yeah.

Speaker 38 So, yes, we were in New York for some bell house shows, right? Those went pretty well.

Speaker 51 Yeah.

Speaker 35 Thought they were great.

Speaker 38 All right. So the flu.

Speaker 38 We won't reminisce about past victories. We'll just talk about the flu instead.

Speaker 51 Yeah. How about a stat right off the get-go here?

Speaker 35 Okay.

Speaker 51 The flu,

Speaker 53 the CDC.

Speaker 38 Also, sorry, everybody, for the sniffling that's going to inevitably happen. I'm trying hard not to do it.

Speaker 51 You're a method podcaster. All right.

Speaker 51 Which is also what I said in my very first episode.

Speaker 35 That's right.

Speaker 51 Remember that?

Speaker 31 Yep.

Speaker 51 It's not any funnier now.

Speaker 51 So the CDC right here in Atlanta, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

Speaker 51 not the CDCP.

Speaker 38 No, they just stuck with the original.

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 51 They reckon that about 5 to 20, between 5% and 20% of United States peoples

Speaker 51 get the flu each year compared to about 10% to 25%

Speaker 51 in dirty cold Canada.

Speaker 52 Right, I know.

Speaker 38 And normally when you get the flu,

Speaker 38 it's just

Speaker 38 you're laid up for a couple of days, right?

Speaker 42 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Like you said, you feel like dog dew or something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 38 That's the seasonal flu. But even with a seasonal flu, which usually here in the United States or in North America, runs from what, like October to March.

Speaker 51 Yeah, roughly.

Speaker 38 And then I didn't really think about this before, but in the southern hemisphere, it runs the opposite and actually peaks in August. Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 38 Most of the time, it's just an inconvenience for you.

Speaker 35 But

Speaker 38 it actually kills people sometimes.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 51 So it can be dangerous, for sure.

Speaker 38 So in 2011 and 12, that was a pretty low year for deaths from the flu in the U.S. There were 12,000 people who died from the flu or complications from the flu.

Speaker 38 2012-13 flu season, 56,000 people died that year. And I think the average is something around 36,000 people in the U.S.
die from the flu every year.

Speaker 51 Yeah, and apparently the World Health Organization says around the world, as many as a quarter of a million people to a half a million people can die every year from the flu.

Speaker 35 Right. It's a lot of folks.

Speaker 38 It is. So, I mean, and the idea of dying from the flu, that's awful because, I mean, if you feel bad enough as it is from a flu that you recover from in a few days, imagine dying from that.

Speaker 38 That would just be a terrible way to die. Yeah.

Speaker 38 And the whole thing, Chuck, comes down to this little tiny virus,

Speaker 38 the influenza virus, and there's different types. And influenza, I found is actually

Speaker 38 a shout-out to the Italian name for it originally. Did you know this?

Speaker 35 I did not.

Speaker 38 So I'm going to say it normally, but then you have to say it in your famous Italian accent.

Speaker 38 Influenza di Fredo.

Speaker 51 Are you talking about the influenza di fredo yeah

Speaker 38 which means influence of the cold oh all right a lot of for for many many many many years because the flu um is most predominant in the colder months um

Speaker 38 everybody just assumed that it was the actual cold that was getting you sick right um that turns out not to be true it it's an actual it's a virus that does seem to favor the um cold drier conditions of the winter months um But this little tiny virus gets into your body and it starts this chain reaction that is just fascinating.

Speaker 51 Yeah, so it is a respiratory illness.

Speaker 51 So like I said before, when you hear people say the stomach flu, which I've said a lot in my life because I get it once a year with the poopy butt and the vomitous mouth and the ill belly.

Speaker 38 At the same time, though, I can't, I think I've asked you this before, but I don't know.

Speaker 51 Has it literally ever happened at the same time?

Speaker 51 I think once in my life.

Speaker 51 I was on the John with a bucket. Oh, God.

Speaker 35 So rough.

Speaker 51 Well, the worst time I ever had it, I may have told the story before. I was sick at a friend's house, which is the worst,

Speaker 51 when I was not living in Atlanta, but I was in Atlanta.

Speaker 42 Oh, no.

Speaker 51 And

Speaker 51 I was like, I just got to get to my mom's house.

Speaker 35 Mom.

Speaker 51 Yeah. I was like, I just was much more comfortable being sick there.
Yeah. And he was working.
It was just one of those things.

Speaker 51 And so I got in my brother's car that I was borrowing while I was in town i don't like where this story's going and i drove

Speaker 51 no lie probably about a hundred miles an hour to snellville from atlanta yeah thinking and i pooped in my pants in the car

Speaker 51 and i remember thinking if a cop pulls me over he would have to be a cold heartless individual to give me a ticket because i would just say sir Don't take me to prison.

Speaker 51 Take me to a hospital because I'm dying.

Speaker 35 Yeah. So I drove 100 miles miles an hour.
It was kind of fun.

Speaker 38 So you made it home. You showed up with poopy pants and your mom took care of you?

Speaker 51 Yep. Showed up to Diane's house and I lived.

Speaker 42 But anyway,

Speaker 51 that was a long way of setting up this, which is that is actually not a flu. The stomach flu is not because the flu is 100% a respiratory illness.
Right.

Speaker 51 And it's not something that happens in your stomach or in your

Speaker 35 butt. Right.

Speaker 38 And let's talk first before we talk about the actual effect of the flu. Let's talk about the virus a little bit for a second, okay?

Speaker 38 So back in 1931, there was this Iowa farm physician, which is to say he was a human physician of humans, but he probably lived on a farm because it was Iowa in 1931.

Speaker 38 His name was Richard Schope, and he was trying to figure out what this bug that was getting people was.

Speaker 38 And he investigated with pigs first because there are plenty of other animals that can come down with the flu, not just humans right right

Speaker 38 and he finally isolated he isolated the flu virus in swine and it led to this discovery of the isolation of the flu virus in humans too so right after that they started classifying the flu by strains you got a b and c right

Speaker 51 so a is the most common and most severe that's the bad news yeah uh b is a little milder a little less prevalent and then we go all the way down to c which is i get the feeling C doesn't happen a lot, and it definitely isn't the one that you're going to have like a

Speaker 51 big epidemic of the flu from a C.

Speaker 38 Yeah, I couldn't find much on C influenza either. Poor C.

Speaker 38 Yeah, it'll make a comeback one day, and it'll shock the heck out of all of us.

Speaker 35 Exactly.

Speaker 38 So, type A infects all sorts of different species, right? Humans, birds of all kinds, pigs, bats, horses, even.

Speaker 51 Yeah, I mean, remember the avian flu, that was,

Speaker 51 that scared the world. Oh, yeah.
And that was A. Right.
That was A strain.

Speaker 38 B strain is almost exclusively infective of humans. Apparently, the only other species we've ever found a type B influenza virus in is seals.

Speaker 38 God knows where they got it from. Or if we got it from seals, who knows? Maybe up north?

Speaker 53 I don't know.

Speaker 38 And then that C one, it just infects humans and pigs.

Speaker 38 So you've got the three types. That's right.
And then one other thing about them,

Speaker 38 about the classification of flu strains, is that there are also subtypes, right? And so you mentioned like avian flu. And the one that scared everybody was, I think, H5N1.

Speaker 51 Yeah, that was it. I remember.

Speaker 38 So the H and the N are the, they refer to the... the two kinds of, the two main proteins that you find on the outside of a flu virus,

Speaker 38 Hemagglutinin

Speaker 38 and neurominiase.

Speaker 35 Okay.

Speaker 38 And so depending on those types of H protein or M protein,

Speaker 38 that's how they subtype flu strains.

Speaker 51 Yeah. So, I mean,

Speaker 51 that's a good little factoid. I don't think anyone really understands what those letters mean.
That's what they mean, you know?

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 51 But as far as you're concerned, just pay attention to the news. And when they talk about the scary ones, they'll mention mention those letters and numbers, and then you can impress your friends.

Speaker 38 Yeah, you can be like, oh, well, they're talking about hemagglutinin and neuraminidase.

Speaker 47 And they'll say, shut up, nerd.

Speaker 51 I hope you get sick.

Speaker 51 So as far as the standard flu that we're talking about here, the virus, it gets into your body and it kind of makes a beeline to your respiratory tract.

Speaker 51 And it binds with your cells.

Speaker 51 Viruses, did we do one general one on viruses?

Speaker 38 The one I think we really went in depth on was HIV, where we talked about how virus enters the body and takes over.

Speaker 46 It's just vicious.

Speaker 38 It is, but it's also, it's kind of like admirable in a really like deadly, efficient way, you know?

Speaker 35 It is.

Speaker 51 So they bind to the surface of the cells in that respiratory tract, and then they say, hey, I'd like you to meet my little friend, RNA.

Speaker 51 Why don't I inject my genetic information into your nucleus and see how you like it?

Speaker 38 Right. And when it does that,

Speaker 38 the cell has been officially hijacked. And the virus uses the cell's own RNA transcription process

Speaker 38 to create the proteins that are needed to make new versions of the virus. So the virus is using this host cell in your respiratory tract to make copies of itself.

Speaker 38 And suddenly, before the cell knows what's going on, it's made millions of copies of these viruses, right? And apparently, when you talk about it step by step, it seems like this takes a little while.

Speaker 35 Right.

Speaker 38 No, in seconds, seconds after that the virus has entered your respiratory cell, millions of copies of it have been made.

Speaker 51 Yeah, like this is happening so fast. It moves in there.
It says, I'm in charge now. So

Speaker 38 out of the way.

Speaker 51 Yeah, completely out of the way. I'm running the show here.

Speaker 51 We're copying each other and we're going to move out to the cell membrane because this cell is going to die very quickly.

Speaker 51 And then that's just going to poof me out into the body further to infect other cells. And it's scary how quickly this happens.

Speaker 38 Right.

Speaker 38 So, if you think about it, if that first cell produces millions of viruses, viral copies, and then they're released from the cell out into the rest of the other respiratory cells, and each of those infects another cell, and then those cells all make millions.

Speaker 38 You see how quickly these

Speaker 38 viruses reproduce in your body.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And once that starts to happen, you are infectious. I think once that first cell ruptures, you become infectious.

Speaker 38 But this can be like a day before symptoms, right? So this is something people are always saying, like, oh, I'm not infectious anymore. Like me, I said it earlier too, right? I know.

Speaker 38 But supposedly, the day before

Speaker 38 you even know you're sick, the day before the first symptoms start, before you start like sniffling a little bit or whatever, you're infectious, buddy. Yeah.

Speaker 38 And you're infectious up to seven days after that day you first start showing symptoms with the flu.

Speaker 38 And if you're a kid, you can be infectious even longer because if kids are anything, they're walking germ factories.

Speaker 51 They are disgusting monsters.

Speaker 35 It's hilarious.

Speaker 51 It's true, man. Like my kid didn't get sick at all for the first 18 months of her life.
And I thought, I've got a wonder baby.

Speaker 35 Yeah, really?

Speaker 51 I don't know what's going on. We put her in daycare a couple of days a week, and she was sick nonstop for the next six months.

Speaker 38 Man, that is rough.

Speaker 51 It is rough. And then they get the family sick.
And we'll talk a little bit about that and how that happens.

Speaker 51 But all this is to say, during flu season, especially if you work in like an office where, you know, when you hear like the flu's going around or whatever, or anywhere you work or in school, if you hear about the flu going around,

Speaker 51 even if you don't feel sick or your cube mate doesn't feel or look sick, just start washing your hands a lot.

Speaker 38 Oh, yeah. That's like they say that's the best way to prevent getting the flu or spreading the flu is washing your hands a lot.

Speaker 17 Do it.

Speaker 38 And it's so simple that you almost might discount it, but it's actually true. Like that's the best way to do it.

Speaker 38 You can wash the flu virus off of your hands with some soap that will bind to it and the water will wash it right off.

Speaker 51 Wash that flu right out of your hair.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 52 And if you have the flu, stay home.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 53 Everybody but me.

Speaker 38 Stay home.

Speaker 51 Well, we're up against it. We had to record today.

Speaker 38 And also wash your hands just constantly. Like if I'm about to touch anything, I'll wash my hands first.

Speaker 38 If I'm going to go somewhere outside of the hot zone, which is whatever room I'm sequestered in, you know, I will wash my hands. You know?

Speaker 51 I appreciate that. I mean, trust me, we're in this tiny studio now, the three of us.

Speaker 38 I know, I'm trying not to breathe.

Speaker 51 Yeah, you've done all this on one breath. It's impressive.

Speaker 35 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 51 Well, quickly, before we take a break, so you can breathe again,

Speaker 51 we're going to to talk about symptoms afterward.

Speaker 51 Before you get these symptoms, though, what's happening is your respiratory system is going to become inflamed.

Speaker 51 And this inflammation might stick around for a few weeks, but from there, it moves into your bloodstream.

Speaker 51 And then that's when you're going to get these symptoms, once it sort of moves into the bloodstream.

Speaker 9 Right.

Speaker 51 And we're going to talk about the symptoms as promised right after this.

Speaker 2 Support for the show today comes from public.com.

Speaker 4 You're thoughtful about where your money goes.

Speaker 5 You've got core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side.

Speaker 9 The point is, you're engaged with your investments, and Public gets that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously.

Speaker 10 On Public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul.

Speaker 13 Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there.

Speaker 14 Plus, an industry-leading 3.6% APY high-yield cash account.

Speaker 16 Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously.

Speaker 18 Go to public.com slash SYSK and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

Speaker 21 That's public.com slash SYSK.

Speaker 22 Paid for by Public Investing.

Speaker 24 All investing involves risk of loss, including loss of principal.

Speaker 25 Brokerage services for U.S.-listed registered securities, options, and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Public Investing Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC.

Speaker 28 CryptoTrading provided by ZeroHash.

Speaker 32 Complete disclosures available at public.com/slash disclosures.

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Speaker 38 all right chuck let's breathe yeah a little bit let's talk symptoms okay

Speaker 38 You know what I need? I need one of those like

Speaker 38 reeds that Bugs Bunny used to like hide in the water when Elmer Fudd was hunting them uh-huh I could just like get a long one and maybe a crazy straw would be even better and just like pipe it out to the air duct right there that's a great idea what do you think we'll get everybody else sick except you and Jerry

Speaker 51 so um the symptoms sound a lot like a cold because the symptoms are kind of the same

Speaker 38 A cold is usually not as fraught with potential complications and maybe a little less severe, but they're pretty close, which is why you couldn't tell earlier if you had a cold or fever or a flu right the the but that fever um that's the the big one apparently that's a big distinction between the two yeah i think that's kind of the way i just distinguish it right yeah and the cold colds are also caused by viruses they're caused by coronaviruses which can there are types of coronaviruses that are really bad that cause like mers and sars yeah um but for the most part when you catch a cold from a coronavirus it's a low-level virus or it's a rhino virus um that's the other one that caught that causes the common cold, right?

Speaker 38 So it's just a different kind of virus producing similar symptoms to a flu.

Speaker 51 Do you remember when Peter Sarsgaard was on Saturday Night Live years ago?

Speaker 51 No. He was, you know, the actor.
Sure. He was on there during the SARS when there was that SARS scare in the United States.

Speaker 51 And one of their skits was he had developed the SARS-Guard, SARS-Guard, which is just basically a surgical mask, but it was just funny.

Speaker 51 They said SARS-Guard, SARS-GARD, like 30 times, and I laughed every time.

Speaker 38 I think his younger brother was Pennywise the Clown in the it movie, right?

Speaker 17 Oh, I don't know.

Speaker 38 I'm pretty sure that was a Sarsgard, and he is amazing. Yeah, have you seen it? No.
Oh, you got to see it. You're going to love it.

Speaker 51 Now, was he a SARS guard or a Scars Guard?

Speaker 42 Oh, God.

Speaker 38 I didn't know there were two different things.

Speaker 51 Well, they're the Scars Guards, which is like Stellan Scarsguard is the dad. Okay.
And then the son was the dude on

Speaker 51 True Blood, The Vampire Show, and then recently on that

Speaker 51 Pretty Little Liars, I think. I don't know.
One with Nicole Kidman.

Speaker 38 Okay.

Speaker 51 That's Alexander Skarsgård.

Speaker 38 I think that might be him.

Speaker 35 Is Sarsgaard the one who's in Fargo?

Speaker 35 Sarsga? No.

Speaker 35 Who is that?

Speaker 38 Peter Sarsgaard.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's another dude.

Speaker 51 What is up with all these guys?

Speaker 38 So are you sure you're not just dropping the K off of Peter Skarsgård?

Speaker 51 All right, here's the deal. Okay.
The guy in Fargo.

Speaker 35 Uh-huh.

Speaker 51 Man, this is such a bad sidetrack already.

Speaker 38 It's pretty bad.

Speaker 51 The guy in Fargo was Peter Stormir.

Speaker 35 Okay.

Speaker 38 So he's not even in the equation then.

Speaker 51 No, but I definitely know that there is Peter Sarsgaard. Okay.

Speaker 51 Because he either was or is married to Maggie Gyllenhall.

Speaker 38 Oh, yeah. I guess I knew that.

Speaker 51 Peter Sarsgaard.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 51 And then there's Stellen and Alexander Skarsgaard. And I don't know who It the Clown was.

Speaker 38 It's Bill Skarsgaard.

Speaker 51 And is he related to the Skarsgaards?

Speaker 38 I guess so. Yeah, I believe he's the youngest of them.
Okay. Oh, I'm sorry.
I was wrong. It was Tim Curry I was talking about.

Speaker 51 No, actually, we never looked stuff up, but I did look that up.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 51 Because the headline here says Alexander Skarsgaard's reaction to his brother Bill's

Speaker 35 clown costume. Yeah,

Speaker 35 it's good.

Speaker 38 His acting goes way beyond the costume. They did go with the costume, but it was his acting that, oh, yeah,

Speaker 38 it was good.

Speaker 51 I know there were so many people screaming at their phones, but I think we finally got it right.

Speaker 38 Yeah, sorry about that, everybody.

Speaker 38 I also want to apologize for any medical students who are being forced to listen to this as part of their class. Hopefully your instructor fast-forwarded through that part.

Speaker 51 All right. Back, this all got started with SARS-Guard, SARS-Guards.

Speaker 38 Oh, yeah, that's right, because that's from the coronavirus. This is the influenza virus we're talking about that creates this inflammation, which is your immune response, right? In your lungs?

Speaker 51 That's correct. And the symptoms like a cold are coughing, sneezing, the fever, which is different, like we said, with the flu, achy body, which usually comes with that fever.

Speaker 51 And then Josh's runny nose and congestion that you can hear and your overall lethargy.

Speaker 38 Yeah, I am a little

Speaker 38 under the weather, I guess, is a good way to put it.

Speaker 35 I can tell.

Speaker 38 So those are just standard flu symptoms. You can have secondary symptoms from complications of the flu, right?

Speaker 38 One thing that has long gone hand in hand with the flu as far as like death from flu complications goes is bacterial pneumonia. Yeah, that's no good.

Speaker 38 And for a very long time, science wasn't quite sure why that was why you were just so susceptible to bacterial infections when you were battling the flu. And they figured it out.

Speaker 38 It's actually your body's immune response that is responsible for it, right? Right. So when you have the flu and your body starts to battle it off and you get a fever

Speaker 38 and your lungs become inflamed,

Speaker 38 that's your immune system, your immune system's response to the flu virus. But when your body says, okay, calm down, everybody, let's bring the temperature back down,

Speaker 38 and your body represses its own immune response, it opens the door for bacteria that normally it would be able to fight off to take advantage of this kind of naturally weakened state that your immune system is in.

Speaker 38 And you can, you're much more susceptible to infections from bacteria. And that's where pneumonia comes from.
You can get viral pneumonia, but you usually get bacterial pneumonia.

Speaker 38 And that's the stuff that people can die from because that bacteria infects your air sacs in your lungs, which fill fluid and pus and blood.

Speaker 38 And you die from choking on bloody froth that fills up your airway.

Speaker 35 Oh my God.

Speaker 38 Yeah, it's not, it's a bad jam, man.

Speaker 51 Severe dehydration is another secondary symptom of the flu. That's why, of course, you always want to drink plenty of water when you have a cold or a flu.

Speaker 38 I looked that one up too, Chuck, because if you think about it, why? Why would you be dehydrated from the flu? It's from sweating.

Speaker 35 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 38 Your nose running?

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Just leaking fluids.

Speaker 38 Yeah, you are. And like

Speaker 38 they start to add up, and all of a sudden you're dehydrated before you even know it.

Speaker 51 That's right.

Speaker 51 Ear infections, especially if you're a kid, sinus issues. Emily always gets bad sinus problems along with this stuff.

Speaker 38 I know she was starting to get a little sniffly. Is she sick?

Speaker 51 She did get sick.

Speaker 38 Oh, that poor lady.

Speaker 17 Yeah, New York, man.

Speaker 51 Yeah. It killed everyone I love.

Speaker 51 And then, if you, like, in Emily's case, she's slightly asthmatic. But if you are asthmatic, you have like diabetes, it can make that stuff worse.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 38 She doesn't have diabetes, right? No. Well, the reason diabetes is

Speaker 38 comorbid with the flu or is problematic when you have the flu is because

Speaker 38 type 1 diabetes, especially, is an autoimmune disease. So your immune system is already

Speaker 38 repressed, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 38 And then heart conditions can be exacerbated by it because you're getting less oxygen from your lungs into your bloodstream, which strains the heart.

Speaker 38 And if it's already weak, people have heart attacks from the flu if they already have a heart condition. Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 35 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 38 Again, it's a bad jam.

Speaker 51 Well, actually,

Speaker 51 in the episode coming up about the silly one about the 10 cursed movies,

Speaker 51 remember the little girl from Poltergeist

Speaker 51 died

Speaker 51 at 12 from a heart attack brought on by the flu.

Speaker 35 Yeah. Right?

Speaker 42 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Or she had like a stomach blockage. They initially diagnosed it as the flu.

Speaker 17 Oh, okay.

Speaker 51 But I thought it was never like a virus like that.

Speaker 38 I don't think so. I think they mistook it.

Speaker 51 All right. Well, then forget all that.

Speaker 38 But people do. So your point still remains correct.

Speaker 35 Okay.

Speaker 51 So how you get the flu

Speaker 51 is this.

Speaker 51 Like you said, it's generally about November through March. January and February tend to be the worst of it here in the United States.

Speaker 51 And as we mentioned, offices and schools, especially, because children are filthy monsters who just don't wash hands and they breathe on each other and touch each other and they don't cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze.

Speaker 38 But it's pretty cute when they hug each other.

Speaker 35 It's very cute, actually.

Speaker 38 It's worth all the sickness in the world.

Speaker 51 It's pretty great. But

Speaker 51 that's the reason that kids tend to spread it more because as much as you try and teach them to cover their mouth when they cough and sneeze and wash their hands a lot, it's just not really on their radar like it is for adults.

Speaker 20 No, you know?

Speaker 38 Not at all. Because they are dirty, dirty, dirty creatures.

Speaker 51 And then, you know, the kid then in turn brings it home and the family gets infected pretty quickly because try as you might, there's just a lot of close contact with kids that you can't avoid.

Speaker 51 And even if you're washing your hands, they will find a way to infect you.

Speaker 38 Right. And if you go even further back, there's an even earlier origin before kids picking it up at daycare or preschool.

Speaker 38 for the flu.

Speaker 38 Usually it comes from other animals, we were finding, right?

Speaker 38 Very frequently birds, like we were saying, right? And they used to think that for a human to catch a flu from a bird, especially,

Speaker 38 that flu had to show up in a mixing vessel, usually a pig, which was capable of taking,

Speaker 38 it could be infected by a bird flu and a human flu. And flu viruses have this amazing talent called reassortment

Speaker 38 where a flu strain and another flu strain can get together and be like, oh, hey, you have eight proteins that make up your

Speaker 38 RNA. I do too.
Let's mix and match and see what happens.

Speaker 38 And they thought for a long time that this really only took place in pigs, and then out would come a new super virus that no one had ever seen before that humans could catch.

Speaker 38 But from Southeast Asia, people being in close contact with infected birds, especially like in the poultry industry or something,

Speaker 38 there have been cases that started in the the 90s of avian flu coming directly from birds to humans. So that theory went out the window.

Speaker 42 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And that's what set off those fears of a bird flu pandemic that we lived with for many years.

Speaker 51 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 51 As far as, and you know, a lot of that was just spread from bird poop.

Speaker 38 Yeah, and it scared people because

Speaker 38 those bird flus are no joke. Like they have like a 60% mortality rate.

Speaker 38 60%, six out of ten people who come down with H5N1 bird flu die right Yeah, luckily it's really really difficult to catch it even when you are around sick birds.

Speaker 38 It doesn't very frequently make the jump to humans, but it can is what they what they found.

Speaker 51 Yeah, as far as the regular flu the the garden variety flu that we're talking about mainly here uh it spreads from

Speaker 51 uh well like we said from from touching stuff from coughing and sneezing when you cough cough and sneeze,

Speaker 51 even if you think you're covering your mouth pretty well,

Speaker 51 there may be little

Speaker 51 fluids squirting out between your fingers

Speaker 51 up to a few feet.

Speaker 53 Like a fire hose.

Speaker 31 It's in the air around you.

Speaker 51 That stuff can travel, you know, so if that lands on a doorknob or if someone covers their mouth like a, like a normal and then opens a door or borrows a stapler or whatever, it's going to be on that doorknob and then you touch it.

Speaker 51 And that's why like hand washing by the sick and by the non-sick is so crucial.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And if you're like having an anxious day at work and you're doing your normal thing of chewing on your stapler to relieve anxiety and the guy who borrowed it was sick, you're toast.

Speaker 51 You are toast. And as you mentioned earlier, it bears repeating.

Speaker 51 You can be sick a day before symptoms and you can, or you can be contagious a day before symptoms and still remain contagious up to seven days after the symptoms start right so even if you feel better after day four you could still be spreading that junk around for a few more days right and they say that even after you feel better you should stay in bed an extra day because again your immune system is is compromised and you are are

Speaker 38 like you can catch other stuff so you want to be careful that extra day really pays off and that's when you just lay in bed and watch stranger Things 2. Right.
I haven't seen it yet. Is it good?

Speaker 51 Yeah, we just finished it last night. Cool.

Speaker 35 Did you see the first season?

Speaker 38 Yeah, yeah. That was great.

Speaker 51 Season 2 is just as great, if not better. I'm glad to say.

Speaker 38 I'm glad to say that, too.

Speaker 51 I was a little nervous, you know, because it was something I loved. And it's like, oh, man, season two, a lot of pressure.

Speaker 38 Well, yeah, that's how it happens. The sophomore season is very frequently like.

Speaker 38 Everyone's aware of the success of the show and what people are saying about it. And they try to adapt to the expectations rather than continuing on doing what they were doing before.

Speaker 38 But good for you guys, Stranger Things.

Speaker 51 Yeah, so great. I want to get those Duffer Brothers on Movie Crush.

Speaker 38 Oh, yeah, that'd be cool.

Speaker 20 Those guys would be great.

Speaker 51 Should we take a break?

Speaker 38 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 51 All right, we'll come back and talk a little bit about pandemics.

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Speaker 44 Living with a rare autoimmune condition comes with challenges, but also incredible strength, especially for those living with conditions like myasthenia gravis or MG and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, otherwise known as CIDP.

Speaker 59 Finding empowerment in the community is critical.

Speaker 54 That's right.

Speaker 62 And in the latest season of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby studio production in partnership with Argenix, host Martine Hackett explores what it means to reclaim your identity, discover resilience, and cultivate self-advocacy.

Speaker 59 From the frustration of misdiagnosis to the small victories that fuel hope, every story told is meant to unite, uplift, and empower.

Speaker 59 And that inspires us all to take one step closer to being a better advocate and seeing life from a different point of view.

Speaker 63 So if you or a loved one are living with an autoimmune condition, find inspiration along your path.

Speaker 64 Listen to Untold stories life with a severe autoimmune condition on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

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Speaker 38 All right, Chuck. So we were talking about how seasonal flu has seasons.
That's why it's called seasonal flu, right?

Speaker 38 That's, I guess, one classification of flus.

Speaker 38 There's also a pandemic flu, and the same kind of flu virus can be a pandemic flu or a seasonal flu.

Speaker 38 And I think usually the way it happens is a new virus will emerge from, say, like livestock or poultry or something like that and infect humans.

Speaker 38 And if it's totally novel, where no human has ever encountered a flu of this type before, it can just lay waste to people. It can kill a lot of people.
It can infect a lot of people.

Speaker 38 It can spread the world.

Speaker 38 And when that happens, it becomes classified as a pandemic flu. After a couple of rounds around the world, people will have started to develop an immunity to it, but it'll still be passed around.

Speaker 38 And so for the decade or so, it can be the predominant strain of the flu, but

Speaker 38 it'll have changed over to a seasonal type of flu. So it's almost like the pandemic versus seasonal type flu describes how contagious it is and

Speaker 38 how virulent it is. I think that's the big distinction.

Speaker 51 Yeah. And I think also in the pandemic, doesn't that mean it has left the country?

Speaker 38 Yeah, I think that is kind of one of the indicators of it, too. Yeah.

Speaker 51 1918,

Speaker 51 these numbers are staggering. This is the worst flu pandemic in world history in 1918

Speaker 51 for

Speaker 51 I don't know what months exactly, but 1918 and 19. And it killed more than 20 million

Speaker 35 people around the world.

Speaker 38 And it killed most of those people actually in four months from September to December.

Speaker 51 Isn't that crazy? More lives were lost than all 20th century wars combined to the flu.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 38 You said 20 million?

Speaker 51 20 million worldwide, about half a million in the United States.

Speaker 38 I saw in many reputable places 50 million people died around the world.

Speaker 51 It's just, it's staggering.

Speaker 38 Yeah. And it was like right at the end of World War I

Speaker 38 and just came out of nowhere.

Speaker 38 And one of the other really noteworthy things about it that just baffled people was it was killing like healthy people under the age of like 22, 23, 24, like just healthy young people killed by the flu.

Speaker 38 And a lot of them died from pneumonia. And they finally figured out that it was because

Speaker 38 it had been about 20 something years since a flu resembling that type of strain had made the rounds. So people under, say, like age 25 had never been exposed to it.

Speaker 38 So it was a novel flu, which just leveled the people it was exposed to who had never, never encountered something like like it before. Yeah.

Speaker 51 I mean, it's scary to think about.

Speaker 51 I mean, surely that couldn't happen today, could it?

Speaker 35 Or could it? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 42 Yeah? Sure.

Speaker 51 Man, you'd think that we could head something like that off these days.

Speaker 38 Do you know like a third of the population of the world was infected with that flu that year?

Speaker 41 Wow.

Speaker 51 Isn't that crazy? I know. That's hard to believe.

Speaker 38 Yeah, that can totally happen.

Speaker 38 It's a real concern.

Speaker 51 All right. So as far as your risk of getting the flu,

Speaker 51 if you're a kid, like there's different risk groups, like high risk, low risk, whatever, medium or average risk. But if you're under two years old,

Speaker 51 your little immune system isn't quite smart enough yet to know how to fight things off. So you're definitely more at risk.
And as always, what affects the children also affect the elderly.

Speaker 51 So if you're over 65,

Speaker 51 seniors, is elderly wrong to say?

Speaker 38 I think elderly is technically 81. Oh, really?

Speaker 51 Yeah. All right, so we'll go with seniors.

Speaker 38 Seniors. Active senior adults who have decades left ahead of them.

Speaker 35 That's right.

Speaker 51 Who else? Anyone who has any kind of chronic, like I mentioned, asthma or diabetes, any kind of chronic condition, if you're pregnant.

Speaker 51 If you work in a hospital or a doctor's office or nursing home?

Speaker 38 Nursing home, not just the people who work there, but the residents too are in a really vulnerable position. Yeah.
Because they are in the elderly age range.

Speaker 38 Their immune systems are pretty compromised. If they're in a nursing home, they're probably ill already.
And then they're living in close quarters with other people who are ill.

Speaker 38 That's a recipe for disaster.

Speaker 51 Yeah, sure is. It's also a recipe for tapioca pudding.

Speaker 35 It is.

Speaker 38 The best around.

Speaker 51 Remedy-wise, and we'll talk about vaccinations here in a minute because I thought that was kind of one of the most interesting parts of this.

Speaker 51 But as far as remedies, if you get the flu,

Speaker 51 it's a virus. So you can't take antibiotics.

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 51 You can't take a pill that's going to cure you. There are some antiviral drugs, which I've never tried any of these.
Have you?

Speaker 50 No.

Speaker 35 No? No.

Speaker 51 I tried Zycam last year once. I think that's for colds.

Speaker 38 Yeah, I thought that was like discredited.

Speaker 51 Well, I mean, I had a few people say, oh, you know, you should try Zycam. It helps knock out your cold faster.

Speaker 51 It killed my sense of taste and smell.

Speaker 35 Oh, no.

Speaker 51 for several days to the point where I was scared.

Speaker 38 I don't remember that. I'll bet you were scared.

Speaker 51 Yeah, and I looked it up and it's a thing.

Speaker 38 Oh, I do remember that, actually.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Yeah, that's just really unnerving, the idea of maybe it's permanent.

Speaker 51 Yeah, it was

Speaker 51 pretty freaky.

Speaker 20 Yeah, I'll bet.

Speaker 51 And super noticeable. It wasn't like a subtle thing.

Speaker 50 You'd be like, Chili,

Speaker 50 I miss you.

Speaker 51 So that was my experience. I'm not making some sweeping statement about that medication.

Speaker 38 Way to COA, man.

Speaker 51 But there are antiviral drugs called, there's one called Tamaflu,

Speaker 51 Ralinza, Flumedine.

Speaker 51 A little on the nose if you ask me.

Speaker 38 Flu stop.

Speaker 38 Well, the antiviral drugs, they seem like a good idea, but they seem like a good idea.

Speaker 38 under the premise that seasonal flu strains were used to think, they used to think that they died out at the end of a season, right? Right. Well, they started tracking them.

Speaker 38 Like our global monitoring system is really top-notch and they can track flu around the world and they found that seasonal flu at the end of the season in North America, it just goes to South America.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 38 So since

Speaker 38 that's the case, when you use antivirals and you're exposing these flus that go on to survive, you're also training them, evolutionarily speaking, to adapt so that those antiviral drugs are useless against them for people who like really need them.

Speaker 38 So just like with antibiotics, using antivirals just to cure a common flu or to shorten a common flu is probably a bad idea when you're talking about the whole population.

Speaker 51 Yeah, and that's what they do.

Speaker 51 What they try to do is just keep the spread, cellular spread, from happening as much as it can. Right.
And that's sort of the easiest way to say it.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 38 There's there's one keeps them, well, two, a pair of them keep them from replicating, and then another one traps them inside a cell once they enter right it's like oh god i can't get out the door is locked and then death

Speaker 38 and they're all prescription drugs right if i'm not mistaken so vaccines are like pretty hot they're like the hot thing to do on a friday night is to go get a flu vaccine right yeah i didn't get uh i didn't get flu shots for

Speaker 38 many many many many years until uh i had a kid yeah and they say like if you if you especially if you have a a baby under six months of age, they can't be vaccinated. Um,

Speaker 38 and so everyone around them should be vaccinated is the the recommended recommendation from the CDC.

Speaker 51 Yeah, like our close family, the the grand-grands and the Abbas,

Speaker 51 all uh and the pop pops and the papas and the poopas and the mee mangs and the momos.

Speaker 35 Hey, Momo. That's your daughter.
Yeah.

Speaker 51 Yeah, Momo got a flu shot.

Speaker 38 That was nice of her.

Speaker 42 She's very kind.

Speaker 51 So, yeah, we all got flu shots. And I just wasn't, you know, I never got the flu much.
I never, I didn't have a disbelief in the flu vaccine.

Speaker 51 I was just like, nah, I don't really need to bother with that. Yeah, that's kind of

Speaker 51 fine.

Speaker 38 Do you get them now, though? Is it a habit of yours now?

Speaker 51 Well, yeah, now they just sort of recommend it when you have kids

Speaker 51 up until they're a certain age. You should get vaccinated as a family.

Speaker 38 Right. And when you have kids, if you get them vaccinated,

Speaker 38 once they're able to be vaccinated, again, under six months, months, they say, no, no, no, don't do that.

Speaker 38 When they're young, though, and you're getting them vaccinated, they need to be vaccinated twice, like a month apart. Yes.

Speaker 38 And so with flu vaccines in general, they recommend that you get it as early in the season as possible because it takes about two weeks for that to take effect.

Speaker 38 So with a kid, then I guess you would want to get them

Speaker 38 so that six weeks before the flu season. I don't know.
Or is that second one pretty much like, oh, okay, now it's taking effect? So is it four weeks plus two weeks?

Speaker 51 I don't remember the schedule.

Speaker 51 Yeah, I don't remember the schedule.

Speaker 38 Well, ask your doctor, okay? We're not doctors.

Speaker 38 Stop pressing.

Speaker 51 Well, they'll tell you, like when you go to get your little kiddie checkups, they say, you know, come back this month and get your flu shot. Right.
Number one, and then flu shot number two.

Speaker 38 And so for a while there, there were two kinds of flu shots that the CDC recommended. One was an actual shot,

Speaker 38 the flu vaccine that was in a shot form. Yes.
And then there was another one that's called a live attenuated influenza virus,

Speaker 38 which came in the form of a nasal spray. And that was usually recommended for kids.
I don't know if it's because kids don't like needles or what, but the CDC has officially stopped recommending

Speaker 38 nasal flu vaccines. Yes.
You don't do those anymore.

Speaker 51 Well, and when they were doing it, when we say kids, you had to be over five because it was a, like you said,

Speaker 51 a live virus.

Speaker 38 Right. It was a live weakened virus.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and that's different.

Speaker 51 Like if you think, all right, I'm going to get a flu shot, so that means I'm going to get the flu virus shot into me, and so I might feel like I have the flu. That's not really the case.

Speaker 51 It's really kind of neat how they do it.

Speaker 51 These scientists and doctors, like you said, track what's going on in the world of flu all over the world. And

Speaker 51 they sort of make a, well, they don't sort of, they very definitely make a prediction and say, here's the flu strain specific to the United States, let's say, that I think we're going to be faced with this year.

Speaker 51 And they make their best scientific guess possible.

Speaker 51 And that is the, you get a not live version of that virus injected into your body. Your body...

Speaker 2 sees, hey, foreign invaders here.

Speaker 51 Let me produce antibodies. Then if that virus or if the real flu knocks on your door later that winter, your body says, wait, I've met you before.
I know how to fight you. Yeah.
But it's pretty cool.

Speaker 51 And it literally, the effectiveness,

Speaker 51 I looked up this year, and it's a year-to-year thing. It's 40 to 60% on this year's strain.
And it varies because it really just depends on how

Speaker 51 well those scientists have predicted, how much they get it right.

Speaker 42 Right.

Speaker 38 Because if they get all three wrong, well, then you're toast when you encounter the flu that's going around that season.

Speaker 35 Like the vaccine produces.

Speaker 38 But even when they do get it right, it's kind of baffling that sometimes the flu vaccine just doesn't bestow any kind of immunity.

Speaker 38 Apparently, Australia just came out of a really bad epidemic flu season down there. And it didn't cause a lot of deaths, but...
everybody was sick with the flu. It was a H3 type flu that went around.

Speaker 38 And even though that strain showed up in the vaccine vaccine that was given out,

Speaker 38 only like 15%

Speaker 38 of people who got vaccinated and were exposed to the flu were immune to it. Like 85% of people who got flu vaccines and then encountered the flu still got sick.

Speaker 38 That's a pretty bad track record for a flu vaccine. And they're just not sure why.

Speaker 38 One of the theories is: so when they make

Speaker 38 flu vaccines, they grow them in egg protein typically, like egg eggs. That's the medium they use to actually grow the viruses that they then kill.

Speaker 38 One researcher pointed out that at least one kind of flu virus mutates in the presence of egg protein, so that the virus that you put in to grow in there is different from the one that comes out.

Speaker 38 It's a mutated version, and so maybe that would prevent your body from recognizing the original one that you were trying to introduce it to in the vaccine.

Speaker 51 So interesting.

Speaker 38 It is pretty interesting.

Speaker 51 Well, and they say there's a list of people who should not receive the flu shot. And

Speaker 51 one of those qualifications is if you are allergic to chicken eggs, then you shouldn't get a flu shot.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 38 There's like a couple of other ways that they make flu shots, flu vaccines, but chicken egg is the most predominant way to do it.

Speaker 51 Yeah. If you're currently have a fever, wait on your flu shot.
Under six months, of course, we said you cannot.

Speaker 51 If you have had flu shots in the past and you had a bad reaction, because like I said, it's not not going to make you sick, but you might feel a little achy or have sore muscles or something.

Speaker 51 But you can have a bad reaction. And if that's the case, then maybe flu shots aren't for you.

Speaker 38 Right. And if you're an anti-vaxxer, then you probably already decided that flu shots aren't for you.

Speaker 20 Correct.

Speaker 38 Which we will never do an episode on that.

Speaker 35 On vaccinations? Right.

Speaker 35 Oh, you don't think so? I don't know, man.

Speaker 53 So

Speaker 38 the idea that a flu vaccine can, you you know, check all the boxes but still just be wrong, wrong, wrong, or not confer immunity

Speaker 38 has some people looking for a universal vaccine or one that lasts way longer than just a year.

Speaker 38 What they're targeting is, so when you get a normal vaccine, that vaccine is based on that HA protein, the

Speaker 38 hemagluten.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And that's the most quickly evolving part of any flu virus, right? So they're saying, well, let's look at other parts of the flu virus that don't evolve nearly as quickly and target that.

Speaker 38 And some of those parts are even basically universal among all flu viruses.

Speaker 38 So if you can find, if you can create a vaccine based on a stable part of a flu virus that's a part of every flu virus, one vaccine could confer

Speaker 38 ideally lifelong immunity from all influenza for anybody who takes the vaccine.

Speaker 51 One vaccine to cure them all?

Speaker 35 Exactly. Wow.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 38 So, you got anything else?

Speaker 51 No. I mean, I guess we're not going to cover the boogie woogie flu.

Speaker 38 I thought that was boogie woogie fever.

Speaker 51 No, it's the rock and pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu.

Speaker 42 Oh, that's nice.

Speaker 38 What's that from?

Speaker 38 Is that an Atlanta rhythm section song?

Speaker 20 No, they're better than that.

Speaker 41 Okay.

Speaker 38 Well, since I said Atlanta Rhythm Section, everybody,

Speaker 38 that means it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 51 Yeah, this is a Simpsons overlooked,

Speaker 51 overlooked Simpsons bit from us.

Speaker 51 And this is not one of those, we get plenty of things where people are like, how could you not have mentioned this quote? Yeah, I know. Or this episode.
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 51 But the response was good, then people weren't necessarily poo-pooing it.

Speaker 38 No, and also, I want to say thank you to everybody who wrote in to just say congratulations or to thank us. That was all, every single one of those emails or tweets or posts were all well received.

Speaker 38 So thanks for those guys.

Speaker 51 Totally. But this is something we failed to mention, which definitely deserves its own email.
And this is from Rich,

Speaker 51 our man on Cape Cod, as he says. Hey guys, was listening to The Simpsons 2 Parter.
Enjoyed it very much.

Speaker 51 You explained how an episode came to be from conception to animation, etc., and you paid respect to each portion. But then you slided off one of the most important men in the franchise.

Speaker 51 You just said, and then they slap Danny Elfman's score on it and it's done.

Speaker 35 Well,

Speaker 51 as any true Simpsons aficionado would know, Danny Elfman has never once written a score to The Simpsons.

Speaker 51 He wrote, as we know, just the title or the

Speaker 17 theme song.

Speaker 51 So he says, that job fell to the immensely talented and recently terminated via email, Alf Clausen.

Speaker 35 Wow.

Speaker 51 For 27 years, every score, every cue, every song was composed, orchestrated, and conducted by Claussen and his live orchestra he's won two Emmys and seven Annie Awards for his work the reason this was such a painful sight was because this omission has been happening for years Claussen has worked insane hours writing music for a live orchestra to accompany an animated show he's always played second fiddle nailed it he said

Speaker 51 to all those who think elfman is any part of the show after he pinned the main title in fact the main title theme song we all know and love is actually Claussen's reorchestration of Elfman's Theme that took place mid-season three with a lusher, more crisp orchestration.

Speaker 35 Wow.

Speaker 51 I bet you anything Rich plays the oboe.

Speaker 42 Alf Claussen, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 17 I know.

Speaker 51 He said, I admire your podcast for bringing light to information that has been stuck lurking in the shadows.

Speaker 51 You always make sure credit is given to those who sometimes went their entire lives without getting the nod they deserve.

Speaker 38 Well, this guy's really turning the knife in our backs, isn't he?

Speaker 51 And I feel you owe Clausen that respect. So, Alf Claussen, for real.

Speaker 51 And then he, it was a bit of a longer email. He told the story of how he was recently fired by email, which is not cool.

Speaker 38 No, it's definitely not.

Speaker 35 Yes,

Speaker 38 27 years of dedicated work.

Speaker 35 I know, man.

Speaker 17 Not cool, guys.

Speaker 51 So that is Rich, our man on Cape Quad.

Speaker 38 Well, thanks a lot, Rich. Appreciate that.
That was one of the better emails I've heard in a while.

Speaker 20 Agreed.

Speaker 38 If you want to try and top Rich, let's see what you got. You send us an email, stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com, and join us at our home on the web, stuffyushouldknow.com.

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