Selects: How Coelacanths Work

Hi everyone, Happy weekend.

I hope you're having a lovely, lovely Saturday wherever you are in the world. We're gonna jump back in time to June six, twenty seventeen to talk about Sela cants, how Cela cants work. What in the world is a Cela cant? I think I kind of remember. Check it out right now.

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

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Roland, just the whole house Stuff Works Gang here to present to you Stuff you should.

Know, all three of us. How you doing. I'm good? Yeah, yeah, Oh I'm a little caffeinated.

I should warn you, oh a little bit, like when teeth are to just come right out of my face.

That's not good.

You know, we did a video about Cela cants one time.

Yeah, like was it this day in history about when they were discovered?

Yeah. I ran across because it smacked as familiar to me.

And you know, the constant fear we have of recording an entire podcast over is sort of always there.

Yeah, the fear that sometimes comes true.

Yeah, So I definitely went back and looked, and I was like, I knew he did something.

Yeah, we were trapped in a shipping container.

Right, I didn't watch it. I didn't either.

Enough to say, oh, yeah I remember that one. Yeah, that really weird, weird thing we did.

But this is really cool. I think I do too.

Cela cants were well, they're interesting, despite what the house Stuff Works article.

Would lead you to believe.

Oh it was, Yeah, it was a little thin, wasn't it a little bit? It was all right, okay, but luckily the rest of the Internet is.

There for us.

Right, thanks especially to Smithsonian and Mental floss for this one.

Right, Yeah, that mental Flass article is kind of neat, actually it was.

So you want to go back to the beginning, actually the second beginning maybe.

Oh, well, I don't know what you're talking about now, so.

Just okay, well follow me. We'll go back to the very beginning. We'll go back to something about four hundred million years ago, okay, during the Devonian period, which is aka the Rise of the fish, Yes, the Age of the Fish. Right, And in this Devonian period there's a lot a lot of stuff going on. Things have been swimming around for a while on Earth. There's a nice atmosphere that's developed. The things in the ocean are starting to say, oh, what's out there? I want to see what's on land?

Yeah, I want can just crawl out and see.

Yeah, I want to taste clover. So they start trying. And during this period there was the progression from the sea to the lane.

Yeah.

And one of those things that was starting to develop legs to get onto land was called the Cela canth.

Yeah, which A it means hollow spine, which is we'll get to there's a reason for that. And B it's spelled ceo E l A c A n t h, which is, you know, not how you would think it might be spelled.

No or pronounced rather right, either one. But it's Cela camp. It is Cela camp.

And what it is is a fish that is, like you said, been around for a long long time. It's kind of funny looking, and we'll get into all the physical characteristics that make it unusual in a sect, but it is notable mainly for the fact that everyone thought it was gone forever until it was suddenly discovered. This thing that that swam with the dinosaurs was discovered anew in the nineteen thirties, right, and then again a little bit later on.

Yeah, because it was it pops up for the first time around four hundred and seven million years ago, I think, I said, and then it just drops off eighty million years ago. So they said, well, a lot of stuff went the way of the dinosaur around the time the dinosaurs went away, so that's probably what happened to the

And she's like, I.

Don't feel like it, but the world was saved. The world of ichthyology was saved this day. Yeah, because this lady, Marjorie Courtney Latimer was so nice that she decided to go look at the fish anyway, just to wish the captain and his crew a merry Christmas.

So she takes a look at this fish.

And here is her quote as she recounted. It wasn't her quote at the time or quote at the time. It's probably a South African explative, right, but she said later, I picked away the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. And of course only a fish lover can find this thing truly beautiful, Yeah, because it's kind of ugly it is. It was five feet long, a pale mauve blue with faint flecks of whiter spots. It had an iridescent silver blue green sheen

That's the dogfish that has that.

It was such a beautiful fish, more like a big China ornament. But I didn't know what it was. And it was pretty faithful that she was called in to look at this thing, because it ended up being one of the most important zoological finds of you know, history, probably of the.

Twentieth century at least. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, this woman's curiosity, something in her said, this is weird, this is unusual, this is this is something worth looking into. So she took it with her. This thing was like five feet long, just under two meters, about one hundred and how many pounds.

One hundred and twenty seven pounds. This is a.

Significant fish, Yeah, and Mss Courtney Latimer talked her way into a cab with it.

She took a cab back.

To the East London Museum with this fish stuffed in the back seat, and she took it to the taxidermist and had it stuffed. Unfortunately, the taxidermist wasn't completely aware of how to preserve a fish for identification and threw out the skeleton and the gills, which are what you need for.

The idea fish.

Apparently, well, she probably should have said something, well, she like, this is no ordinary mount.

Yeah, right, she probably should have, or maybe she did, and he just ignored her.

He's like, I'm not going to get boss drawn by a woman's nineteen thirty eight. So she contacts a guy named J. L. B. Smith, who is an ichthyologist. He's the head of the ichthyology department at a university in Grahamstown and PhD in chemistry. He's a smart guy and he's the the local fish expert as far as she knows.

Yeah, and their pals and so she said, hey, I've got this weird looking fish. And then Smith his quote was I told myself sternly not to be a fool, but there was something about that sketch, and apparently it was sketch.

She sent him a sketch of the fish to begin with.

Yeah, that seized upon my imagination and told me that this was something very far beyond the usual run of fishes in our seas.

And luckily, even though.

The fish was, I guess mounted in a traditional form, which, like you said, takes away, it's how you can identify it, she was able to preserve some of the scales, and somehow from these scales he was able to say, this is a cola cant seala cant Well, that's what he said. At first, and she went his pronounced seala cant.

He's like, oh, apparently, he said when he saw that scale and I and identified it positively as a seala cant. His quote was, if I'd met a dinosaur in the street, I't have been more astonished.

I like that guy, a little hyperbole there, but I like it.

So he I mean, this is seriously, this is like the zoological find of the century and would be for the next sixty something years. Right, So he very magnanimously says, you know what, I'm going to name this thing after you, and he named it as a new species, Latimeria chilumnae, because well, obviously her name is Courtney Latimer. Yeah, Courtney hyphen Latimer.

Yes.

And it was found in the Chilumna River at the mouth of it where it hits the coast off of the eastern coast of South Africa.

So that's a great name.

It's perfect. Yeah, it really puts it in a place in time.

So they have now discovered this thing, they realize that they have a big find on their hands. They thought this thing had long been extinct by tens of millions of years, and so they started to research and you know, trying to learn more about this fish.

Yeah, which is no ordinary fish.

No, but I mean this was so this was nineteen thirty eight, right, Yeah, and it was the only one that had been found for another sixty years.

Yeah.

I mean there's only so much you can find from a stuffed fish. But it did prove because it had been caught alive. It wasn't like they pulled up a fossil or a dead fish. It had been alive when it was caught.

Yeah.

I think it was attached to another fish. Oh, really, like potentially trying to eat it. Oh, okay, which is one of the well, not unusual but interesting things about the Sela camp is that it's it eats meat.

Well, there's a lot of unusual things about the Cela camp. Yeah.

So fast forward another sixty years exactly in Indonesia, which is on the other side of the Indian Ocean, the eastern side of the Indian Ocean. It was actually first seen in nineth ninety seven by a biologist named Mark Erdman who was in Indonesia doing his PhD dissertation, and he saw a Cela cant in the market.

That's crazy, that's a cela.

Can't what's that doing here? So apparently he put a bit of a bounty out on it with the locals, and within a year, by nineteen ninety eight, they had brought him a freshly caught one.

Yeah, which is quite a task.

Yeah, it's finding a once thought extinct fish. Yeah, it's a big one. Well, and we'll get to a little bit why. It's even tougher than you would think too.

Sure. So the one that Erdman found was brown, right, Yeah, it was a little bit different color.

Right, the one like Courtney Latimer described, those are known to be like steel blue. This is brown, a little smaller than the one that Courtney Latimer found. And so eventually when Erdman got his hands on that one, he described it as a new species.

Yeah.

I mean, it turns out that at one point, you know, hundreds of millions of years ago, there were you know, potentially over one hundred different varieties of this fish, and they came in all shapes and sizes. These obviously were pretty big, but there were some that were smaller and faster. Basically just kind of a wide variety. And as far as we know, I think, are these the only two known survivors?

Yes, so far?

Yeah, the one that Corney Latimer founder known as the West Indian Ocean Seala camp those are the blue ones. They're typically found off of the west, you know, the east coast of Africa, south of Kenya, I believe, yeah, down to about the Cormeros Islands. I think that's they're actually also known as the Cormeroos Islands sela cant because there's that's that seems to be where they inhabit the most or the highest density of them is Yeah.

And some of the weird some of the weirdos that have well, we assume that they've been extinct, but you never know. One of them was toothless and over ten feet long. That was the megalo se Lacanthus very appropriately some of them said, forget you, ocean, I'm going to go to the fresh water.

So there were actually freshwater selacants at one time.

And like I said, some of them were slow and ambushed prey somewhere smaller and faster. But they've pretty much universally all been predators from what I've seen.

Right, And the two species that are alive today that we know of are aside from that megalis Selacanth tend to be a little bigger than the extinct species. Yeah, which I read is a good it's a good example of why they shouldn't be called living fossils, which is what they're frequently called.

Yeah, that's Darwin's term for something that basically never changed. And they've actually studied the genome of the selacant and found that they very much haven't changed. And the kind of the main reason is they haven't had to. They've kind of stayed in the same places. And when you say in the same places and you eat the same stuff, then maybe you don't change so much.

Read.

I read the opposite of that that they have changed enough that they that they have been evolving, and a good example of that is that they're bigger than they used to be.

Oh interesting.

Yeah, but the two species that are alive today, they have traced their genomes back and decided that they've been separated for several million years at least.

Yeah, this one, they finally got the full genome and they said that it does indeed match the fish's appearance of slower evolution, and a journal published in Nature because they have a slower rate of substitution.

Gotcha.

Basically, she's the the doctor.

Well, yeah, I guess she is a doctor. Just sounded weird to say that.

The doctor the researcher who was also a doctor, Yeah, who was She said it may reflect the fact that they do not need to evolve quickly because they've lived in relatively unchanging environment where there are a few predators, and they basically haven't needed to change over time like other organisms.

Well, that brings up another thing too. There's a big question why would they just drop off of the fossil record if they've been around this whole time, if they didn't just go extinct eighty or sixty five million years ago.

You want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a break, go back and talk a little bit about this funny fish.

Sevy shit.

All right, So we've talked a little bit about what makes the Sela camp such a interesting critter.

Can a critter be a fish? Yeah?

Have you heard of the cuddlefish? That's a critter if there ever.

Was, Yeah, a cuddly critter. So here are some remarkable things about the Cela camp. They can live as deep I mean they're deep water dwellers. They can live as deep as two thousand or more feet, but generally they think the I think they generally live about five hundred to eight hundred feet and what they call the twilight zone, right, which.

Is still pretty deep.

Remember our cave episode, Yeah, that had the same thing. Remember there was like organisms that live in the dark, organisms that live in the twilight zone, and organisms that live in the lighted zone. Yeah, these guys live in that threshold between light and dark and the ocean. And they apparently are nocturnal hunters.

Yeah, they come out at night, kind of stay hidden.

Most of these habitats are caves, right, that they tend to stay in. But there's one off of Tasmania that do not live in caves, and so they have officially been placed on an endangered list because they don't have the protection from bycatch that these other cave dwellers have.

Right, that makes sense.

Yeah, So the average day or in the life of Azila canth or at least the cave dwelling species, they'll you know, during the day time, they're hanging out in a cave. They'll hang out in a cave with I've seen between up to twelve to sixteen other sela camps.

Yeah, have a little coffee, Yeah, maybe just talk.

Yeah, you know, talk about their night and then as night falls, they'll leave their caves and they they'll go hunting. And like you said, they're carnivorous predators. They do that passive bycatch thing for the most part right where they let the current bring the food to them.

But they.

Just basically hang out and wait for a cuttlefish. It's one thing. They eat, squids, other cephalopods, some fishes, but they seem to not show aggression toward one another from what I understand.

Yeah, and while they are passive hunters, they do have an unusual feature which is, like we said, one of many. But they have what's called a rostral organ which just means it's in the nasal region and their snout and it's filled with a jelly like substance that they think, and they think most of this stuff. I mean, they've done a lot of good studying, but for something so rare, you can't be super sure. But they think that it detects low level electrical signals and frequencies from prey.

Yeah, like a shark or a ray. Yeah.

It's an electro sensory organ where when living tissue contacts water, it can make an electrical impulse that can be picked up.

Yeah.

And this cool Mental Floss article is I think eleven eleven things about the sei loocanth. I can't remember how it was put, but just eleven interesting features.

Eleven fishy facts was that it.

Unfortunately that's why I forgot it title aside, it's an interesting article. And one of the things that they don't know why they do, and I have a feeling it has to do with that electrical frequency, is they'll swim nose down for up to two full minutes, which is weird for a fish.

They're just kind of hovering in place, head standing, right.

Yeah, yeah, And I guess I mean, if they have that nasal bag of jelly that helps them locate fish, I would imagine that's what they're doing there.

Right, I imagine it like tonto, like holding a railroad track, you know, Yeah, I think it's the same thing.

Basically, So.

When they catch their prey, they eat them, and they can eat stuff that's way bigger than them because again, which is this is unique to see the cants among living things. They have a hinge in their cranium that allows basically their head is convertible, the top of their skull can retract, allowing their mouth to open really wide, so they can eat a large, large cuttlefish.

Yeah.

And I think that feature also allows it to their mouth to close with like much greater.

Force with extreme prejudice.

Yeah, like when it's unhinged emotionally, and basically it can really close that mouth super hard.

They hate themselves for eating cuttle fish, so they just can't stop.

So those are just a couple of the features.

Another is, and we mentioned earlier that the name literally translates into hollow spine. This is because they have what's called a notochord, which is a hollow pressurized tube filled with oil where a lot of fish start this way and then they'll eventually get a spine. But this doesn't go away.

Right, and not just fish vertebrates apparently there's a lot of mammals that go through this, I think possibly even humans in the embryo.

And the selacanther just says, I'm good with the notochord.

I'm going to stick here. Yeah, I'm going to stop here. Which is strange. It is strange. You want to hear some more stranges. I could do this all day.

Well, it's a strange fish.

Celacanth. We don't quite understand how they reproduce, and the reason why is because males don't seem to have any sex parts.

They don't have junk.

They think possibly males grow it when they need it, but it's otherwise. It's it's not around the showers, right exactly.

That's exactly right.

So we have no idea how they reproduce, but we know that the mode of reproduction is called ovo viviparity, which is, however the eggs that the female has get fertilized. Once they're fertilized, they gestate or the eggs develop in the female, and then they hatch in the female. Yeah, and then the live fishes continue to gestate and like the whole period lasts like three years before they're born. So they go from egg to being hatched to being born within a three year period, and so apparently this

Yeah.

So supposedly selacanth pups that's what they're called, can dive really deep, very quickly the moment they're born, to get away from mom, to get away from their mom, who's like three years.

Yeah, three years, paging doctor Freud.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think sharks may be the only other fish that give birth the live little ones.

Is that right?

I mean most fish lay eggs, right, so it's definitely unusual.

Yeah, it may not be unique.

But the other thing about their sexy time is there's also a theory that they are monogamous.

Yeah.

In twenty thirteen, a German team they had a couple of corpses are too pregnant. I believe the African version, Yeah, the Vladimir Chlumne and because what was I don't remember what the other one was, it was Latimir something else. For the Indonesian version.

Yeah, we'll just go with that for now.

I was practicing pronouncing it Latimera menadoensis.

Okay, wow, thanks, nice work.

So they analyze these two pregnant ladies unfortunately that we're no longer with us. And they found out that they had, like most definitely had a single father.

Yeah, which they said was unusual.

Sure, because one of them had twenty six, twenty six little baby pups inside.

Of her, right, And they they thought at first, well, maybe it's because the celacanth is so rare that the female wouldn't have opportunity to mate with more than one male. And they said, well, wait a minute, well that's true. Well, no, not necessarily. Once they found out that they stayed.

They hang out together.

Yeah, in caves all day long. What else are you going to do once general Hospital's over? Just looking around at everybody, like, well, what do you want to do?

Yeah, that's a good point.

All right, Well let's ponder that and take another break and we'll finish up with even more interesting things about the Seila.

Camp Sevy shit.

All right, so these guys have live babies. They might mate with a single mate. Good a they have They can unhinge their jaw to eat more. They have a jelly filled thing in their.

Nastra that detects electricity, detects electricity.

I know I'm having trouble saying to text.

Uh what else? This is sort of a recap.

They have an oil filled spine.

Oil filled spine they're just good with. They're like, I don't need a real spine.

This one's my favorite. They were long thought to be the missing link between the fishes yea and the tetrapods, which are land dwelling for lambed animals.

Yeah, because a notable thing I don't think we mentioned yet is this thing has well. I think I did a quote from Miss Latimir Courtney Latimir. But they have four fins that smooth, sort of like you would think legs would move if a fish could swim out onto the beach.

Legs and arms. Yeah.

Can you remember how Shaggy walked and Scooby Doo do just like that. That's basically how a cila can't swim. Yeah, And the fact that their fins are suspiciously arm like in appearance just made people think that even more. What's more, their arms, what are called lobes, are attached by a bone that is compared to the humorous in humans. Yeah, so a lot of people said, well, that's it. It's

It's a little disappointing. They said, yes, we're all related.

Technically, we are all what are known as sarcopterygians, okay, man, which means we are fleshy limb vertebrates.

So we're all that gross.

So we are related, but it's not like our direct ancestor. In fact, we're more closely related to the lungfish than the selacanth. But the celacanth holds its place of honor, is probably living on something of its own branch, and is a very close cousin, if not bro of the lungfish. So we're related by marriage.

To the cela.

Can't say, but we legally we probably could marry a celacanth, sure, and have it not be super creepy, right, except for the fact that it's a fish.

Right, you feel it's a fleshy lobe thin stroking the back of your head as you kiss it.

I got something for you that was I'm just walking right past that one. They taste gross, so don't think it's some weird delicacy, right, not? You know that there are that many of them to eat, but apparently if you do eat them, they can make you sick because these things are filled with urea, with oil, with wax.

Ester and fat. Yeap, like ninety eight point five percent fat. That's just an skull. Oh I thought that was the whole body.

No, it's it's brain occupies one point five percent of the area inside its skull. The other ninety eight point five percent is fat.

And that's at the point that they're an adult, right. Yeah.

Supposedly their brains are bigger proportionately when they're younger.

And they just stay there. Yeah, they're frozen in perpetual like I guess.

Toddlerhood pretty much. They love life.

Yeah, no responsibilities, no bills.

Yeah, exactly what else I got one for you, okay. Prestigial lungs.

Oh yeah, man, I love these things.

So they grow.

They had CT scans done and this is from the mental article of these embryos, and they start growing little lungs early in the gestation period and it slows down a bit, and then by the time they're an adult, the organ serves no purpose.

Yeah, it's just there. Yep, that's a good one. It is.

It was It's almost like the ceilacanth was an attempt, an evolutionary attempt, and it's just like, I'm gonna scrap this design.

Let's move on to the lungfish. Yeah maybe so. You know.

One of the things that struck me though, Chuck, was when they were talking about how a couple of females that had fully formed young in them ready to be born.

Were caught.

It's like that was a lot of the Seila camp population that got wiped out with those two caught fish.

Yeah. I mean, if there are only hundreds, then everyone matters. Yeah.

They think that there's possibly about a thousand of the ones that live around Indonesia.

And far fewer of the ones.

That live off of the west coast of Africa on the western side of the Indian Ocean, and as a result, both of them are on the endangered species list. They're both protected. The problem is is that if something happens to these species and these species die out this time, the whole order is gone for good this time around. Yeah, unless we revide them with some of.

Their Yeah, all right, I got one last one and this was on Mental Floss's list as well, under the title A prominent hematologist once wrote a selacanth operetta, So

Right, that's a hematologist for you. Wow. Sure, I have no comment on that. Well, I mean it speaks for itself, other than I wish this was on tape somewhere.

Surely it's on YouTube. Everything's on YouTube, you think, Yeah, sure.

You want to go over some of these other quote living fossils end quote.

Yeah, so again there was there's some fishes out there that may have made the jump kind of to land or almost did, or what have you.

But there's there's.

Some interesting fishes that are worth mentioning.

Speaking of making the jump. Did you see that shark that jumped into the boat the other day? No, there was a fisherman and I guess the shark just did you know one of their famous Uh there was a great white Oh god, did one of its breeches where they just jump out of the water. And this thing did that and landed in a dude's fishing boat.

Wow.

And he he got banged around a little bit, but was not like, you know, a bitten or anything, and basically went into his little control room, I think, and called for help. And this shark like, I mean, it was kind of sad. I think the chark just died. But there were pictures of it. It's huge. It's like eight feet long. Oh it's not a little guy.

Yeah, can you imagine? No, my god, that guy did the right thing. He ran. He pooped his pants too. Yeah. I may have jumped into the water had that happened. All right, So living fossils, the bowfin.

Yeah, the dogfish, mudfish or grindle, I like dogfish.

Yeah. This guy, I looked all these up.

He lives in the Mississippi River basin, in the Great Lakes and other places and are pretty mean supposedly like eats small mammals, snakes, frogs, other fish. Yeah, like they'll go after you. Right, It's sort of normal looking, just sort of a long fish. Nothing remarkable as appearance wise, though.

I'll tell you one that's remarkable appearance wise is the gar.

Yeah. You know, I just saw a long nosed gar.

They are so ugly last weekend and I was like, it was floating dead in a lake. I was like, what in the world. Because I went by it at first, I was like, was that a swordfish?

Right?

Well, no, it's not a swordfish, right, but in the long nose ones, I mean this thing had you had a twelve inch beak?

Oh, I mean it look prehistoric.

Yeah, they very much do look prehistoric, which is one of the reasons why they're called a living fossil. And they are just mean. Apparently they're known to kill other fish, even not even to eat them, yeah, just because they were in their way. Basically like you see this nose. Yeah, and you can't eat gar. They're inedible and as a matter of fact, if you eat their eggs, it will

No, and they did you ever see Vernon, Florida the documentary? No, I've never seen that one by the great Errol Morris. It has one of the interviews, it's one of my favorites, with guy talking about talking about the garfish.

Really. Yeah, I gotta see that one. Come across one of those.

Oh boy, I finally saw a thin blue line for the first time.

Oh yeah, that's a good one. It is really good.

You probably saw it after the parody of documentary, Now, yeah.

I definitely did. I saw the documentary now.

Which they nail like. It's like perfect. They really do.

One of the great shows. What's the next hagfish? Yeah, mud dwellers.

Yeah, they basically look like eels, but they're fish. But the interesting thing about hagfish, aside from the fact that they don't have any eyes, is that they eat fish from the inside out.

Yeah.

I think you underplayed it when you said they basically look like eels. It looks like something out of Dune. Okay, like the body looks like an eel, But have you seen the front end of this thing?

Sure? It's frightening. Oh yeah. And to think about that crawling up in you and eating it from the inside out.

Right, Because if you're dead or dying fish and you're like, oh man, I hope I hurry up and die before hagfish finds me. Yeah, and a hagfish swims down your throat and then each you from the inside out. That's a bad day. That's not a good death.

No.

And then lastly, what about the sturgeon.

I love the sturgeon.

Did you know that they they are both fresh water and saltwater here in North America.

I did not know that. But I know one thing is they're huge.

Yeah, they get up to like twenty feet long.

Yeah, And I didn't I didn't see any pictures of in that big. But I've seen pictures of fishermen with like sturgeon that look like they're at least eight or nine feet long, right, and they're crazy looking.

Yeah.

Well, the reason I was surprised that they are largely North America is I always associate them with the Baltic area, where they they're The Beluga sturgeon is prized for its cavear.

I always think of I think sturgeon.

Well I didn't realize that that's where beluga came from either. Yeah, and they have armor like skin and they're they're these retractable mouths that I guess there are different varieties, but some of them look almost like alligators from like the head forward.

Yeah, they're weird looking fish. Yeah, but they don't want to hurt anybody. They just want you to eat their eggs. Is that true?

Yeah, they're like the giving tree of the lake. All right, up with sturgeon, you got anything else? I got nothing else.

But if you want to know more about living fossils, like you know, sela, cants or us right, you can type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail.

I'm going to call this my mom married Bob doro. Oh. I like this one. You see that one, right?

And I thought it was because that was the subject line, right, And then the very first line of the email was sorry about that attention grabbing subject line, right, And I thought it was a lie because a lot of times people say something remarkable in the subject line that is completely false, which always ticks me off.

Sure, but this is true.

My mom married the wonderful, talented and sweet Bob Doro twenty three years ago. And if you didn't listen to the show, Bob Dora was part of the genius behind Schoolhouse Rock.

You know, the original genius.

It was wonderful to hear you, too, speak so highly of him in your recent podcast. My own family listens to you guys a lot, so to hear you speak of our Bob with such reverence it warmed our hearts. When you mentioned early in your podcast that you wished you could have gotten Bob on the show, I wanted to jump through my phone to say I can make that happen. Bob learned about you guys about two weeks ago when we took a short road trip for Mother's

I know the guy listened to us right before we released the Schoolhouse Rock episode. Yeah, so he was primed and ready to hear us mention it fortuitous.

Yeah.

He chuckled often during the ride, and when we got to our destination, he asked something to the effect of who are those comedy guys?

They're good? Man. That made me feel good.

And then to have the Schoolhouse Rock episode pop up a few weeks later.

It was like, whoa.

You guys were spot on in your characterization of Bob as a creative genius. A lot of his genius comes from his hard work. The age of ninety three, he is still traveling the world taking gigs.

That's awesome.

My mom often complains that he doesn't know how to say no. Thank you for giving Bob in Schoolhouse rockets proper due.

Next time you.

Come up the coast the northeast, that is, we'll be there, and I'm sure Bob won't say no. And that is from Pete, I guess his step son. Yeah, and Pete sending a picture of he and Bob and that's.

Him in the flesh. It's pretty awesome, pretty neat, And you.

Should go to www dot Bob doro ru gh dot com and just check it out.

Ninety three and going strong, nice going, Bob.

Thanks for listening to us, and thank you Pete for writing in to let us know that we were spot on about what a great guy he is.

Yeah, we were genuinely thrilled to hear this.

Yeah, if you want a annuinely thrill us, you can send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

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