The Big Sting: Wasps vs. Bees

you gonna side with? And this this classic rivalry between the the wasps and their stingers and their nests and their stingers and then the bees with their hives and their honey and their their fancy culture, Like which which side do you you go for? And and everyone seems to go for the bees. I mean right, I'm probing. It's not just because I'm a lady and I'm like, oh, they're so cute and fuzzy, but they're going yeah, but they do get buying cute, you have to admit, yes

they are. Whereas the wasp. I'm actually pro wasp because even though they tried to kill my sister. They are sleek. Um they are they are deadly. They have this like totally sci fi horror book kind of lifestyle going on. Um so they really speak to the nine year old in me. Um and uh yeah. So I'm gonna side with the wasp every time, I think, even though there is no such thing as delicious wasp honey. Uh and and I can't think of a single wasp cartoon character,

whereas cartoon bees, they're everywhere. They're stinging Donald Duck there. You know, they're they're the centerpiece of whole motion pictures. Yeah yeah, I don't know. I mean yet they are you sometimes as sports mascots, right, which makes sense because they are aggressive jerks. Well that's the thing you want to you want your your mask got to be an aggressive jersey. I mean, you don't want to be a big fuzzy bumble bee. Fuzzy bumble bee. It's like the

Cleveland Bumblebees. They're gonna becoming the whole audience starts going which and that's not menacing at all. Right, we might sting you, but we'll eviscerate ourselves in the process, I mean, which we'll get into later. It's it's just not as as as fearful a prospect as the wasps coming at you know. But it's interesting to look at these creatures side by side because they have a shared history. Yeah, it's not just an arbitrary pairing, like what would win

in a fight a grizzly bearer a bull shark. I mean, these two species share a common history and evolved from a common form in the far far far ancient past. If you were to go back about a hundred million years back to the Cretaceous period, you would find a very interesting world. A very green world, all right, if you call it. Take us back. Yeah, it's a very green world. But there you know, you're not gonna find You're not gonna find any flowering plants. It's occupied mostly

by conifers. So we have a lot of pine cones, a lot of pine cones, of greenery, a lot of greenery. And the whole way that these plants that spread their seeds are via the wind um or you know, or just sort of letting them fall and letting them just casting the dice and let them go where they will. So on top of this green world, you already have

a thriving insect community things. I mean, just like like the insect world is today, it's just a NonStop brawl of species eating each other, um, you know, mating with each other, warring against each other, forming these little uh you know, hives and nests. It's it's already the original brave hearts. Yes, and you have carnivorous wasps in this time. And these these are wasps that are going around they're hunting generally, they're hunting spiders, and spiders remain another classic

enemy of the wasp. Uh, the kind of kind of the whipping boy for the wasp really. Um, and these waspers are pretty much owning everything like that. They're just going around there eating what they need and their and there, and they're using the meat that they gather to feed their their young. It's a you know, it's a perfect world, right, Like what what could change? M You see pine cones, no flowers, oh those romancers the flowers, right, the flowers emerge.

And basically the idea here is that I'm gonna probably inevitably personify evolution a little bit here. We're going to do that a bit here. So you have this plant world, you have all these insects warring each other on its surface. The plants eventually come to exploit all that traffic. You need to get some genetic material from plant A to plant B. Say, well, let's put it on the back of this, uh, this creature that is waging a war

across several different plants. So what we have here is the rise of the angiosperms, plants that depend on insects to spread genetic material and pollen from male up plant parts called anthers to female plant parts called stigmas. Okay, so uh, they start to they start producing this delicious nectar and pollen uh, and sweetens the deal for the insects, and it gives them specific reasons to traffic the parts of plants where Holland is produced because now they have

a food source. Yeah, and so suddenly these wasps who were all into you know, they're killing and brutalizing and they're eating and the spiders. Suddenly there's all this sweet duff food stuff available right there, and it's easier to get. It's just there for the taking. It's dripping you know,

off the off the flour. You don't have to engage in Mortal Kombat with an eight legged horror to get it, so it becomes the predominant food source for the wasp, and the carnivorous wasp, the wasp that goes out and kills and eats another animal that steadily fades away, and the wasp that emerges the kind of the and there, of course thousands of different types of wasp, but but this strain of wasp that remains with us today. They do not eat other insects. No, they don't. They don't.

They've completely removed it from their diet. What they do eat is the the nectar and carrying the pollen from plant to plant. But the kids are a different store, Yeah, the kids, and we'll get to that in a bit. So what we have evolving from this is basically bees. Right, So we've got bees and wasps because bees now are a bit different from wasps, but they're coming from the same genetic material, right, bees and wasps are both both

of them share a common descendant in these carniverse. Wasps. Yeah, and youve got these bees who are sort of hipped to the whole flower gig, right, because they're like, okay, let's let's start really exploring this in earnest or being exploited by flowers and earniest depending on who you look at it. And you get these these uh bees versus wasps where we are right now? Yeah, and of course this this leads to a difference in their body types. To write, one has the body of befager and one

has the body of a predator. Because we're gonna get into this a little more, but it's essential to to note that even though the the wasp no longer eats prey itself, it still has to hunt prey to feed it's young. It's kind of yeah, you have this a great article on this how wasps were and I think you're what was the analogy of the vegan parents bringing home a pepperoni pizza for their young ones because they refused to eat anything else. Yeah, it's kind of like that, which,

uh they never quite that. The wasp world never was able to completely remove meat from its diet, whereas the bees do. Okay, I see that's where all this the like a tree hugging vegetarian type of lovey dovey bee comes in, right exactly. It's the bees are more of a tree hugger. And then the wasps are out there killings. They're out there you know, harvesting their meat. Even though they're not gonna need it themselves, they need it for they're young. So the wasp has to has to retain

the body of a killer. It has to sleep design um stinger that's that that has some generally has some sort of powerful venom involved. The beat is this kind of fat, doughy guy with I think rotund instead of fat and hairy with bristly flat legs. Those are good for gathering honey. And of course, as you said, the wasp havethers, thin waist, and they're very sleek and they've got smooth shettles. And then if you look at these two, they've got um and and whilst they have ovipositors to yes,

no ova positor is pretty interesting. Of course, only the females have this because it is avi for overm over eggs exactly. It is an instrument for the laying of eggs. So travel back againto that carnivorous wasp. How's it depositing? It needs to deposit eggs with that oppositive, but where is it gonna put it? It started laying eggs on other creatures, so it's it's like, now I'm going to

lay eggs on you. Yeah, right, okay, And eventually they were like, well, laying laying my young on a caterpillar is one thing, but I want them to I want them to stay warm, I want them to have a nice meal when they wake up. I'm gonna to lay them inside the caterpillar. Now, of course, the wasp doesn't ask the caterpillar what it thinks of this. Uh, it just starts doing it. So the ovipositor become not only an instrument to lay eggs, it becomes a surgical instrument

for the implantation of eggs inside the body of another insect. Right, this ovipositor is is literally like a blade, right right, it's it's fashion like this just so that it can do that, right, And and then they begin to evolve these different chemicals, you know, because you're performing this crude surgery in the insect world to lay your eggs inside this caterpillar. You know, the caligory baby moving around a little too much. So uh so, yeah, they begin to

develop venoms as well. They end up paralyzing the prey or or in in some way impacting it to facilitate the surgery. So wasps continue to use this in many cases. There are plenty of parasitic wasps today, as we'll get into, that still lay their eggs inside or on other animals. Then there are other they're they're ones that don't they're ones that that build nests, lay their their eggs in there,

and then bring the food back for they're young. And we're talking about whilest talking start in generalities because do recall that it's like species for both bees and loss. There's a ton of them, and they all have a little bit different uh behavior to them or um a bit you know, this and that going on in times of where they lay, where they lay eggs, and what

they do. And these are even further removed from the prospect of laying eggs inside another creature, but they still have the oppositor, the stinger, and it retains the sting uh they have. They have kept that because it ends up being very useful as a defensive weapon. And we're gonna talk about weapons in a moment here after the break, we're gonna talk about some brawling, right so the battle

continue right after this. This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel at Intel we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions. And we're back. We we rejoined the battle between bees and all right, we've talked about the oppositor and stinging. Let's talk about the big sting. The sting. Yeah, what happens here? Do they all of them die after

they sting you? Just some of them? Oh? Well, of course, wasps generally can can stain multiple yeah, over and over again. They've got smooth stingers. But the one that I'm thinking about is the honey bee stinger, which is actually barbed and it sticks in your flesh. Um, And when the honey bee tries actually fly away, her stinger won't budge. So it's very sad. Actually, um, it RiPPs from her

body and essentially disembowels her when it stings human. Now, there's some sometimes they can use these against other insects, and it not if this rate the user, because it's not getting stuck in there. Yeah, but but in humans, Yeah, that's always the thing. It's like the the honey beetle stingy once and then it did die. Stinging, which I think also adds to It's like, oh, it's stung me, but it died, so I can't hate it. Where's the

wasp comes along? There's no bar. The wasp can sting you all day and it doesn't care for the be It's sort of like a noble death. Is that we're Yeah, it's like a noble desk in the wasp, Like, I use this all the time. I'll sing again. Can we do this again tomorrow eight am? You know, yeah, we'll set a day. I like the little voice you're doing for the wasp pair. I I know I should be able to do more of an Italian like, you know, stereotypical thug kind of a thing. Yeah. I don't know

what you were going there now. It's uh. It's interesting to note that even though the honey base this is something I found in Tracy V. Wilson's article Pies on the website, the males don't have stingers that break off in people's flesh, but they do have endo fouls's uh. When they mate with the female honeybees, it breaks off inside the female's body, with the queen, of course, fatally

injuring the mail in the process. So oh yeah, We've talked about this before too, and in another podcast about this sort of very scary proposition sometimes of mating in the insect world, decapitation and all sorts of fun stuff. Yeah, wasp and bees. When we're talking about the war here, we're talking about a war between females, because the females are the species and the male are just there to

facilitate mating. And in some cases I believe it was there's a type of bee where when the when the males are no longer necessary, they go and just kick them out. Because you're wondering, the bumblebee sting is one of the most painful stings, is it. Yes, you get a lot of swelling and the irritation. And I just wanted to also mention Africanized honey bees, also known as killer bees, that live in South America and southern United States.

They have been known to chase people for over a quarter of a mile once they get excited and aggressive. And the reason why they're called killer bees is not necessarily because they kill people so much, is that their venom. Their venom is uh, you know, no more dangerous than any other honeybee. It's because their attacks are more harmful because they attack in greater numbers. So um, that can really increase increase your chance of having a severe allergic reaction.

That's why they're scary. So let's let's talk a little bit about some of the abilities of these particular creatures. I'm gonna come back again to the parasitic wasp, which is a concept I love. You know, it's something about you know, you grow up watching Alien and uh and and and I mean that's basically the concept of the wasp taken into a sci fi human world. Is this the ladybug bummits for that? You that's what you call it? Oh yeah, yeah, I'll get to get to that. Yeah,

for sure. Growing up grew up in like rural Tennessee, and so they're they're dirt dapper nest everywhere that the or mud dappers if they're known in some areas. And uh, if you've ever broken one of these open, it's really neat you'll find it. There are these little cylinders, right and that's where the eggle will be in. The larva will grow and they'll just the the wasp will just stuff these things with with paralyzed or dead spiders. So that so when the young wakes up, it'll have a meal.

And so if anyone out there is just completely anti wasp, I think it's important to note these things kill the heck out of some spiders. So and a lot of the spiders that they go after it things like brown reclusives or black widows, things that you definitely don't want a round uh and and and definitely don't want crawling on you or in any coming into any kind of contact with you or your the people you love. And in these cases, they'll fill a cylinder with like upwards

of forty spiders. I'm not talking just like a few forty spiders. Then you have washp like the Pepsis wasps also known as tarantula hawks, and they will each lay an egg inside a single paralyzed tarantula, and then the emerging larva proceeds to eat the imprisoned spider from the inside out, which is pretty that's pretty greesome. I like it.

One of my my favorites, though, is a particular parasitic wasp known as the dino campus uh Cosinella, which what is called the dino campus so that the dino campus when it's when it hatches from the egg like a lot of wasps, it finds that it is inside another creature. In this case, it is inside a ladybug, all right, and it was of course deposited there by an adult.

And then and then it grows to larvahood and then it emerges in something that I am going to to try and coin a celebration of chess bursts burst mitzvah who it burst from the chest of this ladybug. And then it's they're squirming as a as a larva doesn't emerge fully grown in this case. Um, so it's it's still you know, it's it's not completely ready to fend for itself. So you would normally think, all right, so the ladybug has been uh surgically impregnated with this foreign entity.

This foreign entity has burst forth from its stomach. Uh, now the ladybug is gonna dimmersefull death, right right, like, please put her out of her misery? Yeah? Not not not so. In this case, not only does the ladybug live, but there's a little behavior modification involved in the the implantation process that forces it to hang around and guard it's parasite baby as it grows to adulthood. Yeah. So

the larva is smaller than the ladybugs. So you'll see pictures of this where the ladybug just continues to hang around, like hunched over the larva to protect it. And scientists believe that this has caused by secretions left by the larva when it bursts out. It essentially reprograms the host to stick around. Alright, so so the wasp grows to maturity, right then what happens, Well, it doesn't need to to eat this uh, this ladybug because it doesn't eat ladybugs.

As an adult, it doesn't depend on other animals for its food. But once it reaches this uh, this point, researchers found that of the manipulated ladybugs recovered normal behavior following the word a deal. So a lot of them just did eventually die, but but some of them didn't. Some of them like went on, like that's how cruel the insect world is. But then how resilient the insects are. It's like you could go through this kind of catastrophics u situation in your life as a ladybug, and then

you eventually move on. And now I'm just wondering if there's any sort of like memory racing enzymes that were involved with that, because you know that's of course we're humans and so we can't help. But thinking human terms, but imagine your body being occupied by this alien larva which you then are reprogrammed to to not just host but um protect. And then and then imagine the ladybug is out like walking around on a leaf and it looks over and sees this this wasp and she doesn't remember.

She looks and she's like, oh, he's so cute. Yeah, or maybe's like Stockholm syndrome. You know, it's like, oh, I remember you. You you fed off of me. Yeah, we were a little larva. Then the wasp says, come come here, I have something to give you, and it all begins again. I don't know if they could survive a second I would yeah, yeah, that would be cool. Um and then there but then there are other interesting uh moments of jerk them in the Lost World, such

as with cuckoo wasps. And these are wasps that figured out long ago that the best source of food for their larva was other wasp larva. Uh, and what better way to feed them than by leaving the larva their larva in another wasp nest to begin with. Um so, it just kind of like dead beat moms of the world. Um and when so when the cuckoo larva hatch, they feed on the larva and food left in the cylinder of the actual nest builder. Okay, all right, well I have a couple of stories for you, sir, about how

they are. They're pretty kicking themselves, Okay, okay, if they can do more than just make delicious honey and yeah and save the environment. Okay, So small hive beetles huge pests, right, they like to invade the hives of bees and eat their stored food which they've worked so hard to make. Oh you make it sound like the like this beetle as a jurich When it's doing the same thing with humans.

I know it's doing what it's programmed to do. When it's completely fine, and I'm just saying, and kill the bees young. Um So in Africa where the beetles come from, honey bees wait until the beetles are in a confined space and then they imprison them within the tomb of resin. Oh wow, like that Ed Groland post story. Yes, the uh I can't remember Montague No, not anyway, I'm sure someone out there listening can let us know what that what that is? Um? But yes, just like the girl

and post story, but they can also mummify. Okay, that is pretty cool. Ye Stings bees, which are native to Australia, uses this this tactic. The worker bees immediately start coating the beatles with bathroomen, which is a mixture of wax and resin that they used to build their nest entrances with, and all the while their hive mates attack continuously. So not only are they just kind of stopping the beetle in its tracks, but you know, putting them into this batoman.

But now all of them are like, hey, let's start pummeling on pa, pa, pa pa, and they're coming at them. Okay, Now I get it that it's maybe not as cool because they're all doing this as a group as opposed to having these individual abilities or abilities as an individual. But still, this is amazing that they're they have these sort of defense tactics, aren't able to act on them, um, and they're mommifying this beetle. It's kind of like you watch Fraggle Rock, right, I have seen it, I don't

currently watch it every time. You come home from work. Yeah, well, well now you put it like that, but it would remember the dozers, the little guys who built all these things. They're like, they build all these little bridges and towns, and then the fraggles will come around and eat their their their constructions. But it would be like if the fraggles came to eat the dozers constructions and the and the dozers built something around the fraggle and entombed it

to death underground. Yeah, you know, you're seeing it. You're seeing how cool the bees are right now. Of course, wasps social wasps have have the ability to attack as a group as well, which can be pretty devastating for someone who is attacked by a large swarm of loss. But but it doesn't likewise, it happens with bees too, So that's something they kind of share among their more social species. But what happens when they go motto a motto,

Then all sorts of interesting things happen. Because yes, so this is like the it's like the dark elves and the normal elves fighting. It's like the it's like angels and devils in a way, you know, It's it's like these these they have a common origin and then forced a war against each other like they can't help it. It's very experienced. It's kind of beautiful, yea brothers warring or sisters warring. But I think one of the coolest examples to look at are the encounters between Japanese honey

bees and the Asian giant hornets. If you have such an interesting mismatch here, because the Asian giant hornet is is pretty big, like it's um. I've seen pictures of it in people's palms, and it's it's not quite the size of a cicada, but it's it's it's pretty big. It's a sizeable thing. You would not want this, this

creature coming after you with its ovipositor uh. And the Japanese honey bees are small little bees, so you'll have these situations where the bees will be carrying on their normal business and suddenly a single giant hornet shows up. Now this hornet is there to basically, it's discover the nest. It's going to tag the nest with its pheromones, which sends out the signals for its UH it's us to come over and and launch a full scale attack on everything the bees have so they can take it back

to their nest and feed their young. And when this works, you'll have situations where merely thirty of these Asian giant hornets will kill thirty thousand honeybees. That's a slaughter. Yeah great, I mean just like can imagine that, like each one of is killing a thousand bees. It's but the thing is, believe you have this example. Sometimes, however, they're able to kill that first invader before it can send the signal back home. It's very very cool. It's called heat balling.

And the honeybees have developed this defense against the hornet, right, and they form a giant ball of bees and then they pile on like a beard of bees, a beard, a ball, just a large amount of bees congregating um.

But I like the giant ball because I like to think of it as like the giant ball of death coming at the hornet um and it weighs it down while vibrating their wing muscles, and the activity increases the temperature inside the ball to about forties six degrees celsius, hot enough to cook the hornet alive, but five degrees under the bees maximum tolerated temperature. I'm sorry, but that is really cool. Like they just crop potted that wasp. Yeah,

it's pretty amazing. I saw. I've seen some of these sternal images of what's going on, and you do you just see the temperature of just really rise and you see that little guy cook right in the middle right there, and then yeah, they had little Barbie with it. Um. And then their Cyprian bees, which their strategy is to suffocate hornets to death because hornets have sort of like there it's almost like a lung system in the back part of their bodies, and so they mob its abdomen

and they are like effectively strangling the hornet to death. Yeah. So I mean they can't be uh, pretty h rabble rousing themselves, I'll say, these bees. Yeah, they they seem to have evolved a certainly more social and strategic ways of d with what is physically a superior killer. Yeah. Yeah, and obviously, like I said, they can't really go one on one with wasps. That's not really gonna happen. Um, they are their strength is in their numbers. But really

fireball death, it's pretty cool strangling. Yeah, but then again I have to point back that one wasp uh killing a thousand bees in a single battle, that's that's pretty that's pretty awesome too. It's like and it seems like it's like a battle that can go either way, like

who what's gonna happen? It's gonna be a wholesale slaughter of bees or a strategic victory for the honeymakers when the slaughter is just sad considering that there's so important for the pollination of hundreds of wasps are important for pollination as well. That's well. And of course figs. I've had some figs, some local figs actually from just a couple of weeks ago, and they're so delicious and you

would not have figs without fig wasps. Uh. Fig fig wasps are really a whole other, mind blowing sort of scenario to look at because you have very tiny little wasp like these are not the kind of wasp you're gonna run from at the swimming pool. They're very small. And there's for every type of fig out there, there is a corresponding species of fig wasps. How cool. Yeah, and like arteesanal wasps. Yeah, and you would not get

the edible fig without them. Um, you'll you'll see pictures of I mean, it was one of the problems with figuring out how to grow figs in new areas because you can't just take the plant, you got to also bring the wasp. So you'll see pictures of like fig farms, fig plantations where there'll be a paper sack tied to the limb of a tree and that contains like older

figs with waspon. So okay, well that's cool. But I will say this is my my last comment for it is that recently a truck in Idaho overturned sharing fourteen million bees which were used for pollination. Um, so my point is that they didn't have fourteen million wasps they needed to transport. They were bees. Yeah, well all right, but but it also shows that the bee is kind of like, you know, owned by the man, whereas the wasp.

The wasp is a renegade. The wasp is out there living the life, but the man and the are on. Well okay, but at the end of the day, you're gonna have a delicious cheese plate and you're gonna have You're gonna have some cheese, which neither species had anything to do with until we breed the cheese producing cornet in the future. But then you have the cheese, you have the the honey to dip the cheese, and then you also have the delicious fig spread. That's so they're

both important to me and my cheese plate. That's what I'm saying. Well, don't forget about the honey over your precious cheese. Is exactly that can be quite delicious to all right, So bees versus wasp an old rivalry. Let's uh, let's get on to some listener mail. Here. Our first bit of mail comes from listener Eric, and Eric had some interesting comments to one of our recent podcast. He says, this is not meant to be a nasty gram, always a promising way to start one from an emails, I

just wanted to comment on something, he said. Sorry to bring up such an old podcast, but in the neuro Myths podcast, Robert made a comment that deeply disturbed me personally. He said, quote, understanding conscienness sometimes feels like a Pandora's box. I wonder the more we unlock about about consciousness and the more we understand what we are and who we are, do we stand the risk of de mystifying ourselves too much? Uh?

And then Eric goes on to say, as someone who has suffered from escar syndrome, which has caused serious social problems and depression. I long for a better understanding of the mind. All my life, I felt psychologists have simply been guessing as to what my problem is. The science of psychology is no better than which doctrine. Granted, we know that some medications help with some problems, but what about the medications that don't help. In most cases, we

don't even know why or how the medications work. It's amazing to me that you can take the heart out of a person who has diet and put it in someone whose heart is failing, and that person's life will be saved. And yet we can't here the blues think of what could be done with a complete knowledge of the mind. Ignorance is not bliss. It is how almost all suffering comes from ignorance. Knowledge is bliss. Uh. Sorry, Robert, I love the podcast, but I found your comment offensive.

But take heart, everyone is bound to make offensive comments from time to time. No apology is necessary. Well that is excellent because none will be given. But interesting at an interesting point, imposing this, uh, this question, I'm you know, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't seek to understand the brain, or you know, engage in any kind of quest for knowledge. I think that the thing is, when we in any quest for knowledge, you're inevitably going to find out some

things that alter your worldview. And the alterations to one's worldview can at times be experiments in enlightenment, but they can also be chaotic and result in a lot of reevaluation of what we are and why we are, especially

when you look at things like consciousness. Yeah, no, I understand you're coming from, because so much of our existence just feels like this mystical, just strange, incredible experience that we are able to even sit here and talk and cogitate on the level that we are all able to do so. And it's sometimes examining that can take away a bit that. But then I look at the other ways.

If when you examine it and you get to see the brain doing what it does, it's magic to be able to peer into that and to see the process of um So there's a kind of magic and peeling away the layers. Yeah. I think one of the things is that even even if we we build this map out, you know, completely, the brain has such a hard time seeing itself as a part of the environment. Yeah, that

you know will have a complete map. But well if we try and find the you are here sticker on the map, like get them all, um you may have some difficulty in finding it or fully contemplating what that means. Well, that's the crux of it right there. I think that's what you were trying to get to. And and obviously you weren't saying, hey, let's not explore their brain. I think you were kind of saying, like this, this consciousness, this I am, this me is really the big mystery

of our being. Um So if it's less than what we think it is, it could be disappointing, right because nobody wants to feel like just a cog in the wheel of nature. But essentially that we know, you know that that's kind of what we are. We want we want to feel a little bit more special than Yeah exactly. But anyway, I do thank ed for us sending in some thoughtful commentary on the question that we post. Yeah, he always sends very interesting commentary, said thanks Eric. And

we also heard from Francisca. Uh Francisco right soon and says, hey, guys, I thought you might want to hear a story about my brother Lorenzo and his music and math skills. Of course, responding to some music and math related podcast we've covered. He is studying to be a professional clarinetist and is very good. When he was in high school and middle school, he did advanced math because he always knew the stuff that the teachers were talking about. I also am pretty good,

pretty good French horn player. I used to play French yah um, I mean sort of played it. That was very good anyway, she says. I am also pretty good French horn and keyboard player, and also currently go to tenth grade math. Though I am in eight, I still wouldn't become a musician or mathematician because I don't love math that much and prefer to listen to music rather than make it. I love your podcast and hope you keep doing really interesting topics. All right, Well that's the goal.

To keep doing interesting topics. That is the goal. So let us know if you have any topics that you'd like us to hover. You would love to hear from you. Yeah, you can contact us on Facebook or Twitter. We are on both of those as Blow the Mind. One word Blow the Mind, and you can send us an email at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff

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