Would You Rather: Bug Diet vs. Bacteria Diet

horizon against the dim red sun. You're starving, you're weak, You're stumbling through the remnants of civilization, and then you trip over something. If you fall, maybe you skin your knee, you hardly notice because you're so hungry. And when you get up on your your your feet again, you start looking around. You start sifting through the ashes, and you find a hatch and you open it and you crawl down through the dark, and at the bottom of this

twisting tunnel you find this massive storeroom. It's filled with shells and shelves of these strange jars, and you you can pluckily. You have a light on you, one of these windy d of course, yeah, yeah, because other you can't find batteries unless you had your preparedness kit. Yeah,

you had, you had some some supplies in store. So you crank up your little flashlight and you you notice that the labels have all worn away, so you can't read what's in them, but you can see through the glass that they all contain dark shapes and murky liquids. You've you've found pickled and fur minuted food items, all right. That this makes your stomach turn a little, right, makes it?

It makes your stomach turn. And yet that anvil in your stomach that keeps beating away, you know this hunger pangs. He's gotta eat, gotta eat, says, could it be sour krout? Yeah? But then you notice movements in the corner of the storeroom, on the shelves across the ceiling, and you realize the place is crawling with insects, delicious nutritious insects, Yes, big lovely fattened concroaches. Specifically, what do you do? Yeah, which which are you going to feast on? You have a

choice here. You can start cracking open some jars and uh and and even in your state, you probably realize that this is maybe all the pickled items left in the world, So you can't just start opening until you find something. Right, if you open a jar, you're probably gonna need to go ahead and eat what's in that jar. That's right. You have to be smart about that. Be smart about it. Likewise, h you've got all these bugs, you're just gonna have to I mean, but which ones

can you eat? Which one should you eat? Which ones are gonna taste good? Do you have time or or the energy to be choosy about it? And this is what we're gonna do today. We're gonna walk you through

this wasteland and help you to make this choice. Should you ever have to face some sort of apocalypse and be faced with just fermented items fermented by bacteria, right like sara kraut or a lovely juicy caterpillar or I don't know, sa kata y. Yeah, and all the benefits of this, by the way, I mean, actually we we kind of turn our noses up about that here in the Western world, but this is not so unusual in

other parts of the world. These these food items right, these in in the same way that we're talking about them in a sort of postmodern society of food choice situation. They are also a huge part of our culinary past. I think we touched a little on this in our previous food episodes Ancient Foods that believe it was the title of it. At some point we were hungry and we looked around and we found bugs. At some point we were we were hungry and realized we needed to

stick um away some food for the hard times. And we discovered what pickling, what fermentation was all about. Yea, and oftentimes by accident, right, I mean, if you put honeywater out is eventually going to ferment into mead a good tasty um craft of meat, right yeah, also beneficial for apocalyptic survival, why not? Um? So, basically we're talking about is remaking your food with microbes. And this is already done to some extent, we just don't think about it. Chocolates, wine, cheese,

those are all products of fermentation. But of late there have been fermentation activists in a wider food underground movement extolling the joys of bacteria. Now, when it comes to pickles, let me just touch base. They're real quick about the two basic types of pickling. They're essentially two categories. The first involves items preserved in vinegar, which is a strong acid in which few bacteria can survive. UM, So you think of things like bottled kosher cucumber pickles at the supermarket,

that sort of thing. And then you have this other category where things are soaked in a salt brine that encourages fermentation and the growth of this good bacteria that

we're talking about. It makes the food less vulnerable to bad spoilage causing bacteria, so UM more common examples this would be like kimch uh and cucumber dill pickles, Sauer krauts a big one, right, And this this is really important to you to think about this type of fermentation because although it does allow bacteria to thrive, it's anaerobic conditions,

so it's it's thrive. Actually, I should say that pathogens that could be really um horrible for us if we ate them are stopped in their tracks because it is an anaerobic environment. So there's no oxygen for those sort of pathogens to like listeria for instance, um to actually cultivate onto this food source. So what you get are the good bacteria growing on to say like sauer kraut um,

and you've got the bad bacteria dying away. Yeah, it's placed in an artificial environment, because we're in the authentic environment. It would quickly be consumed, it would it would ride it with decay. But if you took some sauer kraut, you salted it, put a jar on the top, on the jar and let it sit there for you know, seventeen eighteen days. All of a sudden you have this really good, nutritious food that is preserved for many, many months,

sometimes years. Right, And and the important thing here is that this all emerges from a time when there was no uh refrigerator to stick things, and there was preservatives in your food. Uh, it was just not happening. Is the precursor to cold storage. Yeah, yeah, And so we end up with I mean, this is where you get like Chutt and he's in India, Miso pickles in Japan's um even uh well, pickled herring and Scandinavia, corned beef in in Ireland, various sauces in Mexico, pickled pigs feet

in the United States. Um. One that I always find interesting the the century egg or p done of China, often hundred year old egg that's pickled and all um. When when my family lived in Roddington, Newfoundland, Canada when my dad worked for he worked for Grinful Health. But there was a dentist, there was the various health personnel there. They were kind of from all over the world, so like like we were from the US. UH. There was you know, was a doctor from India. There were doctors

from uh from various places in Canada. There's a guy from Scotland. And then there was Dr Lowe M. And Dr Lowe was was a Chinese extract and he had he had one of these eggs and he would always try, he would, he would it was. It was really big on trying to convince my father to eat this egg. He was like, you should come over and have the egg sometime, and uh and and and my dad was like, all right, maybe I'll try an easight, but you you can.

You have to eat it while I'm here. You have to eat it while I'm present, Like he didn't want a doctor needs to be present while you eat this egg. With his argument but really, yeah, I don't know, but you may have been getting around. But that's about to say, and this is this really a hundred year old egg? I don't know if it was really a hundred years old,

because I don't know how he would have. I've obtained it there like he would have, I guess how to have brought it with him, because rodic to Newfoundland didn't have like a huge Chinese grocery by any stretch of regination. It had a crab plant and well in generations of people and his family would have preserved it and passed it down, right, I guess, or he was or it was just an egg that he boiled and it was

all a joke. I think so. But my point is that you see pickling traditions in all these different cultures and it becomes at least it a part of their culinary tradition to varying degrees, depending the culinaria is right right. And again fermentation, um, you know, largely accidental in the beginning, but the alcohol and acids can preserve fruit and grains for months, like I said, and it also changes the flavor, it changes and it can change some of the properties.

So you know, in general it's pretty safe. Again, you know, talking about how the anaerobic conditions, we will stop pathogens in their tracks. So botuli is um, no big deal, right, I mean, souer kute really is something that you could make and it's it's going to be completely fine to eat, you know, ten months later. Um. And you know it's not just sara kute. We're talking about yogurt, not necessarily yogurt ten months down the road. Um, but sour dough, bread, mead, sausages,

can and cheese. As you mentioned, some Scandinavian fish actually prepared this way. There's the hack roll, for instance, the poisonous ice shark, yeah, which if you eat it too fresh, it's poisonous. But if you let it putrefy for six weeks fermenting, and then it becomes something altogether different, which sometimes it's called the p shark because it has a slight um ammonia or urine smell, which just I mean again, come on, guys, you've got it in jar. It's the

post apocalyptic scenario. You can't get a tow upity about it. Yeah. I actually know a guy who a friend of mine who works for a gaming company. They had some people bring in a bunch of these survival foods. I think I mentioned this before, but that he actually tried the P shark and he said it wouldn't He actually wasn't that bad. Um And neither was the pickled whale blubber. He said that was actually pretty good too, um, but but it was it was other things that were a

little grim, but the pickled sea life not so bad. Well, this is a delicacy, right, and you have to understand if you're in this culture, you're probably going to have more of an affinity for it. And only that when we talked about I can't remember if it was we were talking about the sea urchins, but we found out that there was a bacteria particular to Japanese people who can break down seaweed um that that we lack here,

say in the United States. Right of it comes down to the whole argument that we are cities of bacteria, but we are there, we are creatures of bacteria and uh, and the the whole idea of of eliminating bacteria from our bodies can can be harmful at times where there's so there's a careful balance. Now we've talked about the gut flora before, um and and that's actually it actually plays a big role in people who advocate not pickled only diets, not sauerkraut only gets, but diets that include

these these traditional ferment items yeah. Yeah, and just to bring up the stud again, we are made up of one trillion cells and host ten trillion bacterial cells, so the great majority of DNA and this is actually bacterial and not human. Um. Now, consider that it takes four years for your gut flora to recover after a round of antibiotics, and you can see why we're storing good bacteria.

Body is so important to your immune system. And you think about fermented vegetables and they actually contain natural populations of lactic acid bacteria. And this is the kind of bacteria that we see in pro prebiotics that help maintain our health and our guts. Um. And again, as you say, it regulates our overall health and in some cases it actually can help your mental state. We know that your gut produces chemicals that trigger sleep and um and certainly

we know that the sarantonin is released by your gut. Right. Uh, so this isn't interesting. This is from the article Nature Spoils by Brookhart Builder. Yeah, this is great. This is a New Yorker And uh, if you look it up on the line, I think you have to have like a membership to get the full version. Yes, behind a paywall, but it's probably worth it if this is a topic that's really intriguing. And they also have an audio file available, so when you're not listening to this podcast, check it out,

switch on over to New Yorker for a moment. But one of the people that build your interview says, there's no such thing as an individual and this is coming from a Lynn Marculist, and she's a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and she says, what we see as animals are partly just integrated sets of bacteria. I mean, we're just we're backter bots, We're like corporations. Really, yeah, if we're just we're just hosting.

I mean, that's it's very interesting when when you start to break it down that way to see the ways in which we um move through the world. I mean, how much of that is directed by bacteria? How many of the choices that we make are directed by bacteria? About the stuff that's going on in our guts. You know, when we feel an emotion or we feel a drive to do something, a lot of that is predicated on

on the wellness factor of our guts. And in fact, this is such an interesting uh field that there is a second human genome project going on and they're trying to map all the thousands of bacteria in our bodies. So instead of focusing on pathogens um as they've done in the past, they're really trying to focus on the symbiotic relationship that we have with bacteria. Yeah, we've discussed this, uh in various levels in the past. The idea that these things in our lives, these bacteria on up to

uh parasitic organisms. Uh, these are things we have coevolved with, so we we have evolved over time to exist with them, some in varying levels of symbiosis. I mean, that's another thing, just that the realization that the idea of parasite and non parasite is not so cut and dry. In some cases, there's all there's all this gray area of symbiosis where in some cases it's a little more one sided than others. You know. Well, we've talked about parasite therapies before too.

Of course, this is not a d I why project for anybody at home, but there is some evidence coming out of medical community that parasites can help in some instances. UM. But like I just wanted to go back real quick to again something like sauerkraut and the fact that it does have that lactic acid bacteria, but only that, Um, there's a bunch of other nutritious elements to enzymes, bacteria

that are being created because of the fermenting process. So you could get things that are really rich in vitamin C, you know, according to this process. Um. The problem, though, of course, comes when you take a really great idea like this and you extend it to you know, it's the degree, right, So you take this idea of symbiosis and you say it can be beneficial for humans, and then you try to apply it to say something like

raw meat. Okay, yes, you're talking about high meat, of course, high meat, and not high as in cannabis, but high as termed by eskimos who um have used caribou and seal raw seal not just as something that's nutrition for them,

but also as a cultural artifact. Yeah. And in fact, apparently this is according to the article, um I think we're talking about, and the New Yorker said, so that I believe that a regular serving of decayed, harder liver can have a quote tremendous viagra effect on the elderly. So yeah, now this is also this fact here is coming to the author of that from a man by the name of a Jonas voter Plu, who is his whole big idea was the primal diet. Yeah, and uh,

and I think we've discussed in the past. Hole, there are a lot of concerns with with with any well with any crazy diet that comes along the path, because they tend to be um. They tend to be someone on the extreme edge of something like, for instance, sauer kraut diet. I said, you wouldn't want to die of just sauer kraut, But doing a search for sauerkraut diet just out of curiosity did turn up some results. Like you know, somebody's gonna advocate it. So this guy in

particularly who was like high meat. Uh, it's it's good for you. It's part of our evolutionary past. We're going around, were occasionally eating the rotten carcass here and there, so and and and our body needs that. It's like a nice kick in the face from the bacterium world. That's right. That the the idea that we evolved with bacteria and parasites, so therefore it must be good for us to eat

some rotten meat with parasites every once a while. That's actually probably not such a great idea, it turns out, and that's what's been extrapolated from this whole symbiosis, right. Um. I just can't and I can't get this image of like what those commercials would be for for like this viagra of of rotten meat, you know, like you always

see the guy golfing and the commercials with viagra. I mean, I'm just trying to imagine how they're going to roll that out with with seal meat or a rotten caribou. You know, well, you know, we we've we've touched on examples in the past, like we mentioned in the Ancient Foods, we mentioned Kivak, the green landing tradition of of of catching all the little birds, tiny birds, and then you you put them in a seal skin and you just hold just like like after you catch them, snapped a little.

Next take them home in a sack, stuff them in the seal skin, get all the air out, and then bury it under rocks and let it let them ferment in there. That you know, that's there's that, but you have the fermenting process, fermenting process there. Even though essentially you have just birds in a sack of skins under some rocks. Um, you know, the surface it looks very similar to hey, I found some dead birds, let's chow down. But but there, but there is a chemical process going on.

It turns out you do need to convert some of the foods that you eat to make them palatable, um and digestible. So yeah, I mean this this is all part and parcel of these underground food movements that are taking hold right now. But this was from the article that that that actually there are scent molecules that have been identified with decaying meat. And these are the sort of scent molecules that usually send warning signs who are brain right, like don't eat this. Um. They've been identified

as cadaverine and putrescing. Of course that's after putrid and putrescence. So I mean, just that alone makes you think, perhaps, I you know, if those are that the molecules those are emitting, and that's what we're calling them, perhaps I should not eat any high meat. Yeah. Well I don't know. I certainly have not, to my knowledge, had any high meat. UM. I may have had a questionable sandwich in the past, but it was by accident, by accident, but it's not

advertised as high meat. But but certainly I would love to hear from anybody who has so. Yeah. So now, if you go in a cafe and you see high meat, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not It doesn't mean it's just borre's head or something, or some sort of artisan cut or you know, cannabis laden. Well, let's move away from all these strange murky jars and their fermented secrets. Uh and uh, and start looking at the insects calling

around this place as well. Let's that's the sound of the roaches crawling all over the table right now, excellent, Well, which one's of these guys should we eat? Let's let's discuss mmm. Okay, so we're talking about into mafagy, right, the practice of eating insects, including arachnids and maria pods, which are centipedes or little friends centipedes um. And And here's you know, a newsplush if you don't know about this already, If you're eating processed foods, you are eating bugs. Yes,

it's just a fact. The FDA has an acceptable level of insect fragments and all canned and boxed goods. Oh yes, I like, for instance, uh, take figs, whether you're talking about fresh figs or or a lovely fig bass. The cookie cake item, um, fig newtons, Well they're various, big based that's one of them. But you can, I mean you can also just get a baked like fig cake fig wafer thing at the most bakeries. Oh yeah, wink wink,

nudge nudge. Yeah. Yeah, but there you're gonna those are likely to contain fig wasps just because they're the fig itself depends on these tiny little wasps that have to go in and take care of the pollination. So I mean you have that, you have just bugs showing up in in any kind of agricultural crop. Um, it's just

gonna happen. You're gonna eat some bugs. Yeah. And then just during the process too, uh that sometimes the canning, in the in the like the eating process, like you're gonna get yeah, you know, sometimes I just start buzzing around and I start munching. But no, I mean in

the process themselves. I mean that there's there's a food item, there are you know, little microscopic bugs all over, plus the ones that we can see and they're gonna get in there and chow down as well, right and then U it is in terms of just the evolution of man. People have had to eat and if you're looking around for things to eat, bugs are everywhere. I mean, it's

basically we're it's essentially an insect planet. When you start breaking down some of the numbers, um and and for the most part, we don't you know, especially here in the States, we don't think about about eating the bugs. But the next time you're on a summer day and just look around you and and just take in the bugs, especially on a nice cicada afternoon. Just listen to the because we we mentioned on that podcast I believe about

the cicadas. These are tasty guys. Um Or, or the next time you're out doing a little work in the yard and you're digging in the dirt and you come across some grubs, just I mean, look at we grubs are such amazing um like nuggets of nutrition, because because these are anytime you have like a a larva pupa situation, this is this is an animal loaded down with the goods to get it through this stage of its life. So it's just it's just a very nutritious morsel. Yeah,

and then think back to the past. I mean this is this was eaten good than neighborhood, right, And mean, if you had some locusts and honey, you are living life pretty large. So it makes sense that this would be a really good source of protein forests, and in fact, in a lot of Southeast Asian countries, this is not just a delicacy, but it's something that you would eat

all the time. Right. It's a street food in some places, right, Yeah, Like various food shows have wound up on the streets of Bangkok with somebody going to a food cart and eating insects out of a cart, and they're generally it's generally done for kind of like a gross out factor, unless it's like Anthony Bourdain, who tends to really get on a high horse about traditional quote unquote peasant food. Yeah,

and he has actually eaten seal meat with asking moments before. Yeah, so watch out for Bourdaine after he said the seal meat. But when I was in Bangkok several years back, my wife and I were actually looking around hoping to find the cart with the but I mean it's it's with it with the insects, but it's very confusing out there on the streets looking around at the different cards, and eventually you just really get kind of an overload decision fatigue kind of a thing. And yeah, and you can't

sess out the crickets. Yeah, but I wish we'd found because I really wanted to try them. I'm not opposed to eating the insects, especially when it's part of some sort of a culinary tradition. Well, I mean, and again, it's not that weird. It seems odd to us, but what we're talking about here is some huge health benefits. Um, the average insect contains protein exactly ten percent omega, three

five percent minerals, and five percent sugar and two percent fat. Yeah, okay, so I mean this is this is a great source of energy right here. Uh. Different insects have different health benefits, with varying amounts of calories, fat, and carbohydrates. For instants, for instance, excuse me, one hundred grams of crickets contain one hundred and twenty one calories and their chock full

of calcium and iron. While our little caterpillar friends, uh before they become lovely butterflies, we deprive them of that unfurling of their wings. They have twenty eight crams of protein per one grams, and they're also a good source of vitamins B one and three. Yeah, well, the I mean the butterflies has it's not going to be nutritious, is that catapulary you want? It's kind of like if you wanted to hijack a space shuttle for its fuel. You wouldn't want to get the space shuttle in orbit.

You would want to get it to want it has all the external tanks on it before it drops plod. Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's the payload you want. You want to harvest that payload because the payload is energy that allows this organism to change from one state to another and as carnivore well as omnivorce. Rather, um, we are saying, hey, I want that payload, Let me have that energy, because I

mean we've discussed before pretty much at every level. Um, to eat on this in this planet and to consume energy just to steal energy unless you happen to practice photosynthesis, and even the most devoked vegans and vegetarians I know do not practice photosynthesis themselves. Yeah, and blame Margine blame Margine, blame our brain for the energy drain. Actually right talked about that because it needs a lot of energy. So that's why we have to go after this um and

that's why our forebearers had to do it. Uh, so let's talk about this. There are one thousand, four hundred seventeen species of edible insects and nearly three thousand ethnic groups that currently practice into mafagi. And most of these insects are eaten in the larval in the pupil stages um, though some are are pretty good from you know, all the way into adulthood. Right, nice little cricket and talking.

The list of edibles is the beetle with three hundred and forty four varieties, ants, when wasps with three hundred fourteen varieties, and then butterflies. They do make the list, actually, yeah, yeah, even though even though they're the I think all flash no flesh, moths, grasshoppers, and crickets. Well, I can see months they're a little fatter, and I've seen the cat eat them, so that's funny. I'll call I actually call him my cat Renfro because he loves a good spiderway

full of flies stuff. Um, I actually have a quick recipe here for anybody interested. I found this on a Nova article about bugs you can eat um, which has a number of different like from Australia, China, et cetera. But this one was for grass hopper tacos for Mexico. And this is all you need. A half pound of grasshoppers, two cloves of garlic minced, one lemon, little salt to ripe,

avocados mashed, and then six tortillas h corner flour. So you didn't you just roast the medium sized grapp reshoppers for ten minutes and degree oven, and you tossed in the garlic, the lemon, salt to taste, spread the mashed to avocad on the tortilla, and then sprinkle on the grasshoppers. You know, there you go. And I was just thinking too that if you didn't have time to cook, another advantage you just get on your bike or your motorcycle and just open your mouth for a couple of months.

Well it's what I think. The cooking is a little a little different. I was trying to dress it up here, and then you turn it back into riding around on a motorcycle eating live bugs. Well I'm just saying that if you're on the go, I mean, you don't need fast food, right, I mean the fast food is available to you just within mirror seconds. That's another thing that

comes to mind, fast food. Like I see people eating fast food, and I hope I don't come off to judge you here, but you see some of the things that people are eating, and you're like, that is so fried, Like it's just been fried to death. Like they could have fried a chicken wing and then remove the chicken wing and just sent you and just served you the shell, Like it could be anything at the middle of that fried bundle of good that you just purchased in a

styrofoam container. So why not bugs? Okay? So and and that's that's a good place to talk about. You know, why we don't go ahead and cultivate bugs on a large scale, right, um? You know, besides some of the cons here of you know, like don't pick any poisonous bugs or toxic bugs. Right, it's a pretty good idea to use bugs as as a sort of um many um or micro farming system for us, right, because you don't need the land you know that that we need

with livestock. Um you don't need the equipment, like the huge factory equipment is is really pricey um and and this is really easy to Also you don't have the veterinary medicine um and and then all the antibiotics that go along with it. Yeah, you're and you're also don't have to worry about naming a cricket before you eat it, you know, well though I don't know. I don't though. If you have like a thousand millipedes, it's probably it's uh,

probably not naming them. I have also read data before talking about the food costs of exploring other worlds with human space exploration, and those frequently come back around the idea of using insects for your protein. Yep, yep, just because it's less space. Like try and raise a cow on a spaceship versus raising some millipedes. It's going to

favor the millipies, right. Or if we ever established ourselves on another planet, right, Um, you would probably not be able to harvest lettuce and cows and so on and so forth. But hey, just bring some you know, larva with you and probably have some success. Um. Actually, one hundred pounds of feed produces ten pounds of beef. The same amount of feed would produce more than four times that amount in crickets. And that's just the feet. So we're not talking again about the land which is getting

pretty scarce for us, and so on and so forth. Um, So, I don't know, there's a there's an argument there, uh that perhaps this is going to be a sustainable food source for us in the future, just as fermented foods. Maybe. Yeah. I I I tend to imagine that we as a people, uh more or less talking about like the US, you know, audience audiences here, that we could I think we could get past the bug thing, get past the eating bug thing. I mean, because look at some of the stuff we

already eat. I mean, we're already eating shrimp in many many of us are eating shrimps, yeah, right, so they're basically they already look basically the same. And we're eating higher spiders of the sea right right, And we're eating higher organisms, were eating cuter organisms, and we're eating plenty of animals that that look gross. So I mean, I think we could get over that, that that mental barrier

to eating bugs rather quickly. Well, as we discussed in the Don't Eat the Panda episode, we have this this moral distancing that we use through semantic distance distancings. So we use certain words to kind of give us some space from what the actual item is, or to change that definition of what that thing is in our mind

right exact. For example, the grasshopper tacos versus driving around with your mouth though, because the grasshopper that sounds good if you would, Well, you got me with the garlic there. Well yeah, and then advocat you put avocat as in anything it's gonna be good. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I mean I will say that I was like, I don't know, I'm a vegetarian, but perhaps this is something that I could do, Uh, particularly if I'm in a post apocalyptic situation. Well,

let's get back to the post apocalyptic situation. Then, which are you going to choose? If you have to choose between those those jars of pickled wonders or the creepy crawleys in the corners, which one are you going to chow down? Well, I will say that, um, the more nutritious option actually seems to be insects to me. Yeah, because you although it's just insects is one category, it seems like you have a huge variety in terms of some of them nutritive values that it possesses, whereas the

comfort level is definitely with fermented foods. Although I am not a fan of the pickle, I found this weird that you you don't like the pickles, like anything pickled like uh sauer kraut. Huh. It's just you know, But I would probably get over that, and in fact, in

a post apocalyptic scenario, I would probably go with both. Right, Well, yeah, I think that your chance of survival, you know, eating some cockroaches and some some two years old sauer kraut is probably gonna Yeah, in reality, you would want to go unless maybe there's a genie here that is saying that you have to choose one or the other. I don't know. We didn't introduce that in the original questions.

I'm not going to force it on everyone here and now, but I would I would tend to even knowing what we know now, I would I would still probably go with the pickled content. So would you, Yeah, I don't. I like plenty of pickled food, so I feel like there's there's a lot of diversity there in terms of the things that are pickled. So I mean, I could I could have some fish. I could have you know, I could have some cabbage. I can I can get my h my poisonous shark and spread the sower crout

on it and put it on. Um. Well, I wouldn't be able to put it on a bun unless somebody's has pickled buns. You can squeeze out the innerts of the birds. Yeah, give you act. Yeah, so yeah I would. I would have to go with the pickles. But but but that's just me and I love German foods. So there you go. Uh see, I think it all builts down into comfort level. UM. We'd love to hear from you guys out there. What what would you pick if

you had to bugs only or sarakraut essentially only? And and we would like to know your experiences with eating odd or very normal pickled items? But your what's your your approach to them? What's the weirdest pickled thing you've eaten? Um? Or the weirdest pickled or the most interesting pickled the food item in your own colinary history? Um? And then what's your what are your experiences with eating bucks? I? Like I said, I myself have not have the opportunity

to eat that many insects. Um, I would Well, I guess I always have the opportunity to eat them. There right now, I see a little fly over there. Actually, yeah, well there's that. But in terms of actually an actual culinary exploration of the insect world, I have not really pursued it. So I would love to hear from people who have. And on that note, uh, let's ask the robot to bring us over some mail. Robot, funny, funny, he brought you pickled hearing now your mail is all

wet with complaining. Um. Well, first, we had a couple of people to point out that we recently did a sword episode, The Way of the Sword. We talked about the the the history, the manufacturer and culture of of sword play and sword sword smiths and uh and like the day that it published, I believe Bob Anderson died at the age of eighty nine. The Sword Sword Yeah, oh that's right. He did Star Wars in Prince's Pride, right, yeah, yeah,

he was a pupil of Errol Flynn's. He also did like Lord of the Ring movies, and and he did Highlanding, so everyone's favorite. Yeah, well the Highlander. You know, if you've ever been like a thirteen year old boy. You gotta love highlanding, even if if most of it doesn't really hold up, you could probably be a thirteen year old girl. Yeah, I guess you know Christopher Lambert, he was pretty pretty dreamy. Or or Clancy Brown if you like the you know, gruffer type of guy. I guess

you know Fancy Clancy. Yeah, yeah, SpongeBob voice now or her husband Phil asked to however long SpongeBob but not really. Yeah. Mr Crab is where the crab guy that owns the the Krusty Crab good place that SpongeBob works out. Yeah, yeah, that's Clancy Brown, the Kurgain. Okay, we could probably do a whole episode on SpongeBob. I'm just discovering SpongeBob. I've never really watched it before. But there's no you know,

daily show right now. We've been watching other things, and so we've been watching episodes of SpongeBob and it's amazingly education and you know, actually, well biologists created that show. Oh yeah, yeah, I got that about that. Um. Well, so there we have it. Uh, if you have anything you would like to share with us, um, things related to the podcasts that we've discussed in the past, or

the or the more recent ones. Let us know. You can find us on Facebook as stuff to Blow the Mind, and we are handle on Twitter is Below the Mind, and you can always drop us a line at blow the Mind at how 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.