The Candy Corn Menace

that we were recording this in costume. Um, Julie, would you describe your costume? Um? Well, it's kind of hard to describe because I think I just look very uh well, I mean I've got a lot of stainless steel surrounding me right now, yes, and people keep dumping vegetables into me, and then like two hours later, I produce a substance. Can you guess what I am? Um? You're do? You look kind of like a robot with soup on you? But I thought was the costume like a super robot

that wasn't very like complex and just kept spilling my soup? Yeah? Right now now I'm the Chloeac Machine. Oh, that's gross. I know. Yeah, it's a it's a terrifying, uh Halloween costume, which we will describe a little and a little more detail at the end of this this podcast. And we but we mentioned it in a previous one about digesting robots. So you are a digesting robot more like the pooping duck. And and just to make everybody feel better, there's some

actual stuff produced by me. But if you had like brought in some like soft served chocolate ice cream, that would have been appropriate based on the pictures I've seen of the poop that the Cloaca bot produces. Yes, yes, yes, gosh, now you've told everybody in my secret. Okay, so you you're sitting over there eating your your Halloween candy. What

are you? I am? Humpty hump See you noticed the glasses and the large fig nos in the first from you know, Digital Underground, right, I thought I thought it was just Wednesday. Now this is my Humpty costume. UM A big big fan from way back, especially the Digital Underground cameo with tupac in um that horrible dan ackroid

movie Nothing but Trouble. Oh goodness, I have to say that I have not seen that it was like Danacroid's pet project and and God bless him, it's it's it's a horrible film that Gimmy Moore in it and uh Chevy Chase, and it's just it's very Halloween theme, like a kind of a haunted house and all these grotesque

characters running around and not really funny at all. And then there's just this huge theme or digital underground is is brought before the the the Evil Judge, one of like eighteen characters played by Dan Ackroyd in this, and then they're made to perform that sounds like the result of too much money, too much time, and too many stimulants. So speaking of yes, speaking of stimulants. Not not too much time, time or money, but stimulants, speaking stimulants. So

we're of course talking about it's Halloween. You think Halloween, you think Halloween. Candy. The topic of this particular podcast the candy Cordinace, and we're we're not just talking about candy corn, but about various candies and just sugar in general as a is a childhood obsession and to a certain extent, and adulthood obsession as well. Yeah, Yeah, why

kids are so transfixed and why we are too. Why we continue to be just sort of going to that siren call of candy except for candy corn, for me, for you. I'm in the camp of hating candy corn. I don't think it really should exist other than to create little things with um way abomination. Well, I this was we're talking about this yesterday and I I asked people on the house stuff Works main Facebook page. I was like, hey, guys, what's what's your favorite candy and

what candies? How do we tip candies do you find is particularly vile? And a number of people mentioned candy corn. Uh. At least one person mentioned my least favorite candy, which happens to be circus peanuts, which are you know those giants like they I guess they kind of they're kind of molded to look like a giant swollen peanut. But it's made of some are thought you're going to say something else, some sort of orange spongy material that may

or may not be food but is ingested. It's it's it's really grim And then uh, I asked my wife and she she mentioned Boston beans. It's like who would name a candy buston? And then and then there we'll talk about some other disgusting candies as we we go forth, and and also maybe candies that are not all that disgusting as far as their taste may go, but there their marketing has been some questionable and uh and if I had to pick one though that I'm not really

a candy eater anymore. And this is something we're gonna talk about, how adults tend to move more and more away from candy while children cannot get enough. I will occasionally have a hankering for some Twizzlers. Ah yeah, and I bet that it's probably that that time of the day when you're Circadian the self dropped right, and you need an easy pick up Twizzler o'clock, Twizzler o'clock, three o'clock. I see them on your desk, not on them. Yeah,

well no, you don't. Don't. Don't make the listeners, especially my wife, think that I'm pulling out twisted every afternoon from your little safe underneath your desk. I don't know what else is in there, the Twizzler safe. Yeah well, okay, great, now I've got explaining to do. But but anyway, so let's let's move on. So why are kids so into candy like Why are they because they were just obsessed with it? Well, we should probably talk about it from

evolutionary perspective. Yes, yeah, let's let's because if they're craving it, there's there's something at work there. We tend not to crave things unless we need it on some level. So, so on a very basic level, like what is sugar about? As a structural material, sugar is involved in just about

every aspect of our biology. It's involved in recognizing pathogens, blood clotting, enabling sperm to penetrate the ovum, regulating the half life of hormones, directing embriyonic development, acting as an address code for directing traffic of various cells and proteins.

Of course, this doesn't mean that it's it's a good nutrient, like it's it's right when it comes to uh that it's like mostly calories and no vitamins, no fiber, and it's liking the good stuff you'll find and things like apples, oranges, oranges, other fruits that deliver sugar, but also other helpful things. Yeah, when we talk about sugar, we should probably acknowledge that, right, So, yeah, definitely fruits carry that. So it's it's an easy, quick

burst of energy. Yes, you've got you know glucose, and glucose is quite a prize when you're surviving in an environment where food is hard to come by. Right, So if you came upon an apple, that would be great. Although, of course apple has fiber, so it's gonna full you up a little bit more. Just from a evolutionary perspective, we know that this would be important for us having a leg up in the survival game. Right. It gives

you a little boost. Uh. And if we if we've discussed in our one of our previous topics about decision fatigue, that boost is not just like a physical energy boost that can also help you in your ability to navigate the world around you to figure out what choice you're gonna make. Are you gonna when when you're running from that sudden sabretooth tiger attack, are you gonna Are you gonna run towards the rock or you're gonna run towards

the tree. Maybe that fruit you just date off the ground is going to give you the mental leg up

you need to know which place is gonna mean your survival. Yeah, yeah, And you brought this up the other day when we were just sort of casually talking about the topic about how it really does help your decision making abilities, especially in the context of decision fatigue, which we talked about before, and we talked about a study there where the judges were becoming extremely fatigued and they were making decisions that were, you know, essentially just kind of putting off the parole

decision that they were trying to make. And they found that when the judges were given a quick burst of sugar in the form of fruits, that all of a sudden, their decision making came back online. So it makes you think that that like, especially in the courtroom and basically need a big hummingbird feeder full of sugar water for for the judges. Yeah, I mean, really, if you've got a case at three o'clock in the afternoon, you should probably bring a snack for the judge, although you need

to clear it with the security guard first. Yeah, that would be bad form if you did not. So let's go in the way back machine and look at prohibition and how actually, wait, we just traveled back into the past. So aren't we going forward at this point? Oh we are, Well, we were still in the way back machine. But anyway, well yeah, okay, let's go in the way back and forth machine. Okay, that works as forwarding. Then from the saber tooth, tiger dodging, ground fruit eating caveman dates and

now we're prohibition. Yea, everybody's doing to Charleston biglebee gowns are being worn, and alcohol is getting itself. Um and in the United States, that's right, it's not as readily available. So what do they find is happening? They find that uh, candy like nickel nips no tittering please, these are wax bottles with sugar sort up become really popular growing probe

and these are still around. Um. I picked them up as a novelty a few years back to take to uh Mystery sent theater night, which I get to every week, and used to we would have more of an emphasis on absurd candies like nerds, rope and stuff. But we got over that because we're older and wiser. But but I remember bringing some of those and they're they're just really gross. I mean, I guess, like I say, I'm I'm I'm approaching this as as a non for the

most part, a non candy person. So kids, I'm sure we'll still find them very exciting because it's like this little wax bottle filled with something that is it's a liquid and I guess it's like colored sugar water kind

of a thing, some sort of weird syrup. And I actually thought about picking them up for this podcast, but we record in the morning, and I was gonna have to pick them up in the morning, and I might get arrested if I'm seen buying what are these called again, uh, nickel nips, nickel nips, Or I go into a store asking for nickel nips at eight am. You're probably have to go to a specific store for this. I don't

think that this is just a your corner drug store. Yeah, and they're available now, but I don't know if they make them anymore. Like have this suspicion that candies like nickel nips and Circus peanuts that they haven't been made in decades. They just made enough of them and the consumption rate is so low. But you know, if you open a new drug store and you're just issued some nickel nips and some Boston beans and some Circus peanuts, and then and they're like, all right, you got your candy.

It's like government issues subsidized a shelf light of five years. We've got to get rid of them. But yeah, I mean, this is what people were tipping back in lieu of alcohol because it was giving them a sugar rush, and people were to eat drinking like massive amounts of alcohol before prohibition. That's one thing to to keep in mind. It's not just an issue of like, oh well, we were drinking and then we had this brief period where we cut back because it was illegal, and then we

were right back where we started. According to Ken Burns, who currently or by the time they sit airs, they may have varied the entire mini series. Have the new mini series Prohibition that goes into great detail about the roots of prohibition and then uh, you know, draw parallels to current political climates. And he pointed out before prohibition, the average person was consuming somewhere between ninety and a

hundred and eighty bottles per year of alcohol. Okay, so a lot of that booze is going to have a fair amount of sugar in it. Yeah, yeah, and so we know right exactly, So it's sort of a double whammy. And we know that with the sugar rush and with alcohol that it's going to start affecting the reward center of our brain. Right, So this is obviously why we keep coming back to it time and time and again, and that's why during that time period it was viewed

as an epidemic. So let's talk about the reward center and candy. Basically, we have sugar causing the release of dopamine in the nucleus incumbents old friend nucleus that combins which I see, I feel like we talked about a lot lately, um delivering the classic sugar high. So Neurosciences Behavioral Review reports that binging on sugar stimulates the same euphoric pathway targeted by hardcore drugs like cocaine and can

cause similar withdrawal, craving, and cross sensitilization. So it's no wonder that one of the slang terms for cocaine is nose candy. Oh yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's the same ding ding in the brain. Not to be confused with ding dongs, which are like a there's not definitely a candy, I guess, but a a junk sweet food, yes, yes.

And another thing though, to keep in mind about prohibition real quick is that the alcohol makers and the and the brewers a lot of them found themselves unable to legally produce alcohol, so they turned their attention to creating candies or sugary sodas. That's right. Yeah. So so suddenly a lot of the guys that were in the business of giving you your alcohol were now saying, well, that's illegal, but we have orange soda like crazy, so drink this instead, right,

and you can get a quick little high and system. Yeah. So it's the new drug ar Okay. So back in the time machine a little bit forward here the Great Depression, and then now you see candy being come completely marketed in another way. Right, So, as you mentioned, it was in the form of Kula's. But now, I mean, resources are seriously scarce and people are not able to actually buy a full meal or make a full meal for themselves or their families. So they go to the store

and they buy themselves a chicken dinner candy bar. That is truth. That sounds at all I like, I looked it up. You can if you do a Google imag search on chicken Dinner candy bar, you will find images of this this awesome and terrifying like like like you as you stress that it was not flavored like a chicken dinner. This is not like the candy that they have in uh In Willy Wonka that tastes like a

seven course meal. It's just a candy bar. The gimmick here is, Hey, you don't have time or money, um et cetera to have an actual chicken dinner, buy a candy bar instead. Right, And according to Beth Camerly Issues, the author of Candy the Sweet History, that the package actually had a picture of a coasted chicken with like steam coming off of it, which again it's just sounds kind of awful and disgusting, but they were trying to

to to market this as healthy and inexpensive. Hearing that, on one level, I'm like, oh my goodness, what an unenlightened age, or you know, or I want to make you know judgments about about the differences. But you go to the store now and you have all these things like the like the cliff bars, and various diet and energy bars, and and those may not be marketed as here is a substitute for your dinner, but but it is very much the idea of here is the equivalent

of a meal or huge energy punch in bar form. Well, yeah, but you can also look at fast food joints and you can you know, the dollar menu is a good example, right, so they have um, you know obviously like there's much more protein, there's much more to this in terms of what a person is consuming. That it's the same idea of here's this healthy and inexpensive thing, it's a dollar when in fact it's something that's unhealthy and it's very much subsidized and may have basically come out of a

clot Well we'll see, we'll see in two hours. But you know that the same sort of idea exists, right, Like, whatever you have at your disposal at that time, you've got candy, let's market it as something that's going to satiate your appetite. So candy has just kind of morphed a little bit, you know, through history in terms of

how people have perceived it. But I do really love the fact that it was that this package, this roosted chicken on a package was was like as if you just put it right there, then you would believe it, I'm going to eat this chicken. But I also think that it points to how dire the circumstances were at the time. Now you you mentioned the fast food, and it is important to mention that this sort of stereotypical the average fast food meal. As we can see, it does pack a huge sugar punch in the form of

a supersized cola drink. Yeah that's true. Um well, and also additives to right depending on what you're getting. Okay, so let's let's talk about kids, why they are such candy fiends and how honestly they can't help themselves. All right, well, we let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we will discuss these little monsters. 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. All right, then we're back, uh so on the issue of children and candy. One of the memory that always comes to my mind is that there was this uh about mitzvah that my my

wife shot and she's a photographer. She was shooting this thing and I came along to do some on site printing for the guests, and so you had this entire room just filled with little girls, and they had all the like their their snack bar slash lunch dinner bar or whatever you got time to day it was, but it was just loaded with things like uh, you know Ben and Jerry's ice cream and all sorts of sweets to put on it, and then like a cupcake fountain. Yeah, yeah,

that kind of thing. I mean then of course like pizza and and other kind of kid friendly foods as well. But they were just crazy on sugar and they were just running around and they would just swoop into the photo booth that we had set up and they would just go crazy for these photos. I would remember thinking, Wow, these kids are insane, and it was just because they were just getting a NonStop rush of sugar. They were

just doing more sugar every five minutes. And what's really it's really funny if the kid doesn't actually belong to

you and you just get to observe it. But especially with little girls because in those circumstances, because he usually have dresses on with crinolines and stuff, and then all of a sudden, like they there's like a wrestling pile of them and they're just so high on sugar and they start beating each other up, at least with the parties I've been too, they're all like little Hull Colgan's. But yes, I mean this is this is the result

of sugar. It creates a even the most docile child becomes a sort of whole Cogan up kid, right right. And it's interesting that you mentioned the whole cogan thing because of course we think of whole coke and we

think hulking up. We think of muscles and bones, um and uh and and that's actually linked to this uh we we think um, they're The theory is that that a lot of this um, this sugar craving is linked to rapid grown bone growth, that they're hardwired to it because growing bones secrete hormones that influence metabolism, and we know that other metaball hormones are like left in and insulin um, connect on areas of the brain that control cravings and appetites and even directly behind the tongue where

they affect the preference for sweet tas, which is fascinating, right because what they found, um, this is from an article from mp ARE called Kids Sugar Craving maybe biological, is that they found that kids actually have a different taste landscape. I guess you could say, yes, yeah, this is what really like sensory sen pete really yeah. Yeah. They they referred to it as kids living in a

different since reworld than adults. Yeah, it was. So it's I mean, it's just like the entire world is turned slightly on its head when it comes to what tastes good and what doesn't. Yeah, it's very different from an adult. Researcher Julie Manella of the Monell Chemical Census Center says, quote, kids prefer much more intense sweetness and saltiness than the adult and it doesn't decrease until late adolescents. And we have some evidence that they may be more sensitive to

bitter taste. So when Manella's researchers studied this, that they did as they gave adults a sucrose and water solution that was on part of like your average cola, okay, and so that that was kind of the extent that the adults wanted their sugar. They didn't want it anymore,

They didn't want it really any less. Kids, on the other hand, prefer twice the amount of sugar, and then younger children had absolutely no limit when it came to the amount of sugar that was put in the solution and keep dumping it in until the solution cannot hold more sugar before it just becomes a big container of damp sugar. Yeah, they were all like heavy on the sugar and lead on the water, if you know what I mean. Wink wink um. So I mean that gives

you a clue right there. That Yes, that's a different sensory palette, which leads us this whole idea that it is hardwired that for a kid surviving, particularly back in the way back, way back day, right, Yeah, the sugar would give them an advantage. Yeah, I mean it makes me think back to Halloween bag of candy days, and I mean I would just over a few days, I would eat all the candy. Yeah. It was like, look, if you gave me a sack of Tutsi rolls and told me to eat them, now, there's no telling how

sick I would become. Right, there would have to be like some sort of five rewards, right they would have. It would be a pretty serious endeavor. But you had a bag of Tutsi rolls to like a six year old, they're like that. They won't even blink an eye. Oh no, Like I remember Halloween's in my candy stash and my pillow case and being horribly protective of it because I thought that my brother was going to rate it. So I mean you to understand why people, why little kids

get so connected to it. Um. This is actually another really interesting thing that came from that article that sucre sucros is actually a natural pain reliever and little ones. Um. They gave sucro solutions to newborns receiving circumcisions and babies receiving immunizations, and they found that there was a significant decrease in pain. Sugar actually makes them stronger, It actually

heals their wounds. No, it doesn't. But my my daughter received a bunch of shots when she was born from the get go for a two week period and they did give her sugar water before every single shot. And now sugar. Yeah, she has never had candy, but the store around the corner from us has like the old fashioned like you know, little bins of candy and she just will will stare at it. Uh, I mean for

hours she would she knocks on them sometimes. Oh yeah, like well, because every single children children something that every single one, but every other. One of them talks about candy children's books talk about maybe maybe there's like they're just hardwired to the point where like a child can hear sugar, you know, they walk into the store and they're like, what's it saying. You can hear the sugar, like grinding the follicles in their ears are like that

sensitive to sugar. Uh. I don't know that could be, who knows, But let's talk about the downside of candied um other than just you know, having that initial rush and then plummeting with your energy. A lot of it comes back to our our origins and how we evolved and what our diet was originally like. And generally you you might you'll find some fruit on the ground, you'll eat it, You'll get some sugar out of that, but we also get some other things that are important for

you in addition to just the pure sugar. Uh. And in many cases, you would go for a long period time without getting sugar, Like sometimes sugar is difficult to acquire. Anyone who's seen the amazing BBC Discovery co production Human Planet has seen that amazing sequence where the Biaka tribesmen line this enormous tree to raid this bee hive enormously high, like stories and stories up just climb up with nothing more than like a burning brand um, you know, some

smoke to ward off some of the bees. And the guy still gets stung, just hundreds and hundreds of times while he's retrieving this honey for himself and his family. But the promise of honey and this sugar rush is strong, and not just the sugar rush, but the calories. Right. Yeah, like you said, there's there's a benefit to having it. But in the old days it was more work or or when you got it, you you didn't just get the pure sugar. You received other you know, nutrients, and

you might not get it every day. Now it's an entirely different story, right, Right, we have to worry about being propped up until the next meal, right, especially industrialized nations. I mean, it begins the first thing in the morning for some folks with a nice sugary cereal or even like some some wholesome oatmeal that has been just attacked with a sugar spoon until it's just standing on end, that's right. I mean, you really don't have to go

that far for it. Um. Scientists Ralph di Leone at Yale, your university found that an animal sweet or fatty foods can act a lot like drugs in the brains, which which we've talked about, and there's growing evidence that eating too much of these foods can cause long term changes in the brain circuits that control eating behavior. UM. So you know, both animal and human brains include special pathways that make us feel good when we eat right and really give when we eat sweet or fatty foods with

lots of calories. And he says that drug addiction is really hijacking some of these pathways that evolve to promote food intake for survival reasons. So we talked about dopamine being released in the brain right when you when you eat sugar, and we know that with addiction that if you abuse a substance you know, whether it's sugar, if you can call it that, you know, a substance UM that is really truly addictive, or alcohol or cocaine, that the more and more you do it, the more and

more your dopamine is released. But then your brain backs off on really using it, actually stops releasing as much, which then requires the user to go and sort of double up on the substance to get the same sugar high, right, So so a real sugar junkie is essentially chasing the dragon after a while, to use the old Victorian terminology. Yeah, yeah, seriously, I mean they're seeing this. There's actually a Teresa Rays.

She's a research assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania, and she was part of a team that gave mice a high fat diet from the time that they are weaned until they reached twenty weeks, so they gained significant amounts of weight and they became obese.

Then the researchers looked at the brain's pleasure centers um, which are the areas that we know change in drug addiction, and she said that what we found is that in animals that were obese, there were really dramatic changes in these areas of the brain that participate in telling us how rewarding food is. The changes made these areas less responsive to fatty foods, so no beast mouse would have to eat more fat than a typical mass stick at

the same amount of pleasure. And some of these changes didn't go away for these mice, which I think is kind of fascinating is that that the whole idea, that it really is changing the way that your brain functions. And then you think about highly processed foods, right, I mean, that's basically just concentrating sugar, you know, to to the point where it's no longer just the sugar from my fruit.

It's something completely different and much more potent, right, I mean, even if you you are just talking about the difference between eating an apple and drinking a glass of apple juice, like, there's a huge difference in how what you're taking in there. But then you add this, uh like a chemical process on top of that, and then these varying levels of refinement you get even even farther and farther from the

the original source. Well and from from what I read that, you know, when you've got it concentrated like this, the message to your brain is a lot louder if I can put that in air quotes, then something like a simple sugar in a banana, and so you get a bigger response from the rewards there. So it's it's essentially like the difference between heroin and opium, or you know, or say crack cocaine and cocaine. It's like a processed

um more impactful version of the of the original substance. Right, that's really going to mess with your brain a lot more. And again, just sugary sodas and juices can make a huge difference. I ran across this study that showed the teens who quit drinking sugar, soda and juices lost basically a pound a month over six months. And it wasn't insane. And that's not that's not factoring in other things that could potentially cut out, but but just like really sugary

sodas and and the like. So yeah, I mean the reason why candy is really actually a menaces because of childhood obesity. And we know that from the CDC, the Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta, that they have put some pretty staggering statistics out there, and uh and not counting situations where the brain is really then reprogrammed um in terms of how much sugar it thinks the body needs. It's actually not that difficult for the average person to cut down on their their on their taste

for sweetness. Like I think I've seen the figure around like three weeks it takes to sort of adjust your taste to something say, even if it's something is mild as cutting down from a normal soda to a diet soda tastes weird at first, but they say, like three weeks thereabouts, that's about how much time it takes to get used to the new flavor, right, right, which makes sense, But you know, it's it's it's a matter of being

aware of it and taking out. But when you know, in Forks Ever Knives, they talked about the childhood obesity rate, and they were actually saying that the coming generation will have a shorter lifespan than ours, which is kind of like, ohh, I mean, I haven't gone in fact checked the movie, but I will say that when from what the CDC says, they said, child childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past thirty years because of all these highly processed foods, right,

and because of high fructous corn syrup, and the percentage of children age six to eleven years United States who are a beasts increased from seven percent in nineteen eighty two nearly in two thousand eight. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged twelve to nineteen who are a beast increased from five percent to eight percent. Over the same period. So you know, in two thousand and eight, we have more than one third of children and adolescents who are

overweight or abase. Yeah, and the long term health effects, you know, obviously are are many. And uh, I mean we're talking about increased incidences of certain cancers, type two, diabetes, uh, kidney problems, pancreas list goes on and on. It's kind of pressing. Then you mean to bring candy down like this? Well, it leads to the ultimate question here, and that is, Halloween is approaching. If you're listening to this at the publication time, and even if you're not, Halloween's gonna roll

around again. And if not Halloween, then Easter or any any of the various holidays that have some sort of marketed candy associated with them, which is pretty much every holiday. Uh So, do you give the kids Halloween candy? Do they get to have the candy? Do you try and stop them? Do you dare try and stop them with their strange little zombie minds? Does your house get egged because you give out apples or toothbrushes? Yeah? Don't you

know anybody the neighbor that never came out a toothbrush? No, my dad was a dentist, and we didn't give out the toothbrushes. We gave out candy. But then again, as a dentist, you kind of have in a center give out candy. I guess, yeah, yeah, that's what your dad was like. Here you go, there's the it's the really sweet yuh. I'll see at the office. There you go. Well, let me reach into the Halloween bag here and get some listener mail. Have a couple of interesting ones, and

the first one does relate to the chloec Abot. Would you describe the chloekabot? That's just a refresh. I can't remember the artists, but them del Vo, okay, fim Delvoy who who created this chloec a bot and put it in a really sterile environment, basically put it in a museum with like, you know, stark white walls around it. And so I can't remember how long this actual bot was, but I'm I'm going to say, like, I don't know,

maybe twelve feet or something like that. And he would feed he had a chef actually prepare meals for the cloak a bat and feed it regularly, and then he would add some enzymes, some acids, basically trying to replicate the conditions in your stomach and lo and behold that cloak a bot would produce coo like every two hours or so, No, not actually every two hours because it was mimicking the human digestion, but anyway would then produce actual pooh, and then people in the museum would come

and look at it and they could buy the samples. Well, yeah, it's it really blew our minds when we find out found out about it, because then it also delivers on earlier Victorian attempts or aspirations of mimicking the human bottom and by chemical active digestions with the machine. And this guy comes along and and nails it with horrifying results. But of course we just had pictures to go on and uh, we have to depend on other people to actually smell the exhibit for us, and our listener, Bernard

from Australia, does just that. He writes, listen to your podcast on the pooping duck. I have witnessed of them Delvo's cloaca professional in action at the Mona Museum in Hobart, Tasmania. Uh picks I took below. They feed it lettuce apparently, and at three pm every day it does its thing. I can confirm the smell is realistic almost there's something not quite right and disturbing about the smell. Maybe that

was all in my mind. As it comes out of the out of the little glass plate it falls on, rotates in a circular pattern to create a mr whippy like soft serve. Uh. There were lots of kids there and none of them cried. None of them laughed either. Um, and then he has on another subject. Was standing on a rock a couple of feet in diameter a few yards out into a lake fishing. Once a platypus swam up and circle the rock against it a few times, then swam away. I have seen them from a distance

many times, but that was special. I was just blown away by that because it's two really cool things, right, like we're fans, which is pretty weird and has a cloak yes, thank you, and then yep, and just right around back to actually seeing the kaka bought in person and then sending his photos. I couldn't have end. I mean, honestly, it looks like a mad scientists laboratory. Um. This looks to be like five hanging vessels right with all sorts

of tubes that are coming from it. I'm assuming that this is the this is the junk that they put in there to actually break down the food and make it into feces um. And it's hanging from a track. It is horrific looking. And then the soft serve is that comes out of the shoot onto this plate. I can't believe we're making me describe this UM and it

kind of looks a little bit like Plato. But anyway, hey, we're always game to putting these up on Facebook, and so so definitely thank you Bernard for writing in UM not only to share the pictures, but also to to describe your first hand experience with this strange and fascinating exhibit. I mean, we were kind of recoil and horror from it,

but it is, it is a very fascinating piece of art. Like, it's not this dude is create obviously creating UM art that is that is shocking, that's going to evoke a certain response from the viewer. But but it's intelligent work. It's not just it's not just messing. She is serious about excrement, this artist. Let's see, we have another email here in response to an older episode we did UM

nine nine and nine Birthday Candles. Writer Evan writes in and says, Hi, Robert and Julie, but mostly Robert because it has to do with Dune. I realize that the tie in with the N nine Birthdays Channel podcast in Doom may have been a little too heady nerdy for most listeners, but the story has significant relevance to the podcast, particularly in terms of maturity in the later parts of the Dune series. The character the Letto the Second undergoes

the transformation to make him part man, part sandworm. He does this so that he can extend his life expectancy to an indefinite period of time. He states that the problems humanity has a result of typical human life expectancy and then and that makes them particularly vulnerable. If they were able to naturally live longer, they might gain a more far sighted perspective and give up or change their ways,

since a whole race can't do that. Letter the Second undergoes this transformation and purposely represses almost every aspect of the human race in an effort to build in a race memory of tyranny. By doing so, he was able to mature the entirety of humanity because they despised him, so they underwent an exponential expansion when he died, making it so that he they would be virtually impossible to

wipe out the Golden Path Man. The saddest part about this is that Frank Herbert died before he could continue the series. If he could have lived to be a few hundred years old, US fans would have been able to see his vision come to print instead of his son's attempts to fulfill and change that vision. Great podcast. Thanks for the Dune references. So yeah, indeed, the U the later books, I mean, the first book, in my

opinion is is the best. Uh and then from there Frank Herbert began to expand this even more elaborate story. And at one point Letto does change into this enormous sandworm human hybrid that's featured prominently on the cover art for Emperor of Dune and always intrigued me as a child long before I actually read it. Um and there's in that particular volume is choked with all of a lot of like really cool existential ponderings about the state of humanity, the long term survival of the human race.

Uh So, so indeed, thanks Heavan for writing in about that and raising that point in regard to the Dune series, and it kind of makes me want to read the first book again. All right. I just keep thinking of Sting. That's a non Dooner, That's that's my only reference. And then I start thinking, what if what if Sting were to live to be a thousand years old? Would he still be practicing tan trick yoga, h and sacks? Would

anybody want to see them? I don't. I'm sure there would be a market for it somewhere, but there's no wrong with There's no problem with the market. Yeah, there's no there's no problem with appreciating the movie Dune. It's an imperfect adaptation, for sure. It has some some definite flaws. It's kind of boring, but it's also got some some serious flare and moments. It's got some great costumes and uh even you know, as a Dune fan, you can't

help but like something about it. Right, But you're saying the books are a richer experience, Well, the first book is Richard's right, It's it's complicated. Fine, then I'm just gonna read the first one enough rest Well, the second one pretty good too. Anyway, if you have some thoughts to share it with us. They may relate to candy, They may relate to cooping robots. They may relate to the Dune series. Right in let us know you, especially

on the candy and the whole staying thing. Yeah, I mean, but you know, not together unless you have a candy sting story that might be it. Now. You can of course find us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the mind on both of those, and you can always drop us a line at blow the Mind at house stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.