Why Ticks Suck

a year older than Umi right now? Oh she your age? Yeah, I think it's so funny. It's okay when you say that because you are way way older than me. But it's funny when people say that about people who are like a year or two different. They're like, you know somebody, um, who's they're almost our age. It's like our age is a year, maybe a year and a half on either side of your age, maybe two years. But often think we're the same age until you do something that reminds

me it's because we both act like we're eight. That's where we're that's where we're on the same page. Case in point, where's the worst place you've ever had a take? Well, Josh, I know you know, because we share a commonality, and I should a side from the show, I should warn you I'm not going too fest up to anything on this one before you do. I just want to give

you fair warning. Well, since I said that we share this, I don't know what you're talking about, dude, Josh and I have both had a tick in a very unfortunate place. If you're a man, it was. There were different ticks though, Okay, as far as we know, they good, well years apart. Mine was last summer. This is the worst birthday? When was your? Oh? Mine was years and years ago. Two

ticks last summer? Did you really horrible? Well, no one was on my thigh and it's still itches and like swells into a little bump every now and then look at year later. You want to get that checked out there, it's fine. I read up online. Sound fine? Now? I read and they said tick bites can still bother you for like years, evidently without lime disease or something like that. Yeah, okay, well we're talking about ticks. Oh can I say the

inspiration for this real quick? Sure? Because I'm curious myself. As you know, Josh are an official house fan the Henry Clay people out of y Infested. They came through town about a month ago, stayed at my house. About a week and a half later, I get a call from Joey, the lead singer and songwriter guy, and he said, hey, you got ticks in Georgia. I said, sure, there's ticks all over the place in this country. He got ticks in l a And he said, Jordy, our keyboard player

has lime disease. Holy cow. He thinks he probably got it from your house because you know, I live in a wooded section of Atlanta, of Yeah, actually most of Atlanta's wooded. Yeah, I think george is one of the most wooded states in the country from what I understand. So, Jordy got lime disease, and I am very sorry. Uh, Jordan, if you got that from my house and residents, it is likely, but although you were on tour, dude, you

could have gotten it from anywhere. Yeah, it's likely because he's like, you know, the eighth or ninth person this year to get lime disease. After you're like it, maybe you know what that would make your house chuck a infested haven of disease, a disease vector. Yes, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Here was my original intro. You're ready. That was great, Chuck, thank you, that was great. I was gonna say, Chuck, Josh, there is a tick

species called Epanoma comemodo, and say komodo wins. Eponoma komodo wins. This is fascinating. It is a tick and it looks almost completely like the scale of a Komodo dragon. It's only host, the only animal that it feeds on is the komodo dragon. Right. If it's sucking the life out of a Komodo dragon, you can't tell just by looking at it that it's a ticket. Looks like a scale. That is the most interesting thing anyone has to say about any tick anywhere. Okay, that's it. Uh. Does that

explain why the komodo dragon attack Sharon Stone's husband? Yeah, it does. That's what I read it was mad with in the Daily Mail. Disease. Yeah. Um, well, since we've already gotten the most interesting part of this podcast out of the way, Chucks um ticks story. The Henry Clay People's lyme disease drummer, Right, keyboard player, keyboardists. And I should mention you can buy the album somewhere on the Golden Coast. You're such a chill how much what percentage

are you getting of growth sales? Nothing? Um, And and then we've got the Eponoma Commodo ents story. Yeah, so we're gonna get to explaining ticks just because you know, what we're doing here is explaining every aspect of the universe, right, Yeah, ticks are a part of it at a time and everyone stuff you should know, lovers, we have to trudge through this together. Yeah. And I kind of see this as sort of a half kind of interesting and half

public service announcement. Yeah, because the summertime and ticks are everywhere. That is great idea and a lot of people there's a lot of misinformation out there about ticks and how to remove them. So we're gonna say straight yes, thanks Chuck, way to frame that. Um, there is a lot of misinformation out there, misunderstandings, uh, specifically with ticks being insects. Right,

they are not insects. They're arachnets. They have eight legs. Yeah, well they're born with six like an insect, but they will ultimately develop eight unless they're they're um disfigured. Uh, they are not spiders, though they are in the same group arachnets as spiders, but spiders have segmented bodies and ticks is just one nasty, bloody lump of a body. That's right. And um, there's about eight hundred and fifty species of ticks in the world. And uh there I

didn't either. I thought it was just like I hate you when I hate you more, right, um, And they're generally you can divide ticks into two general types, the hard tick and the soft tick. And the hard tick I get the impression that if there is such a thing as intelligent design, the hard tick was like version one point oh and the soft ticks version two point oh. Yeah, hard ticks are They're like the philis signs of the arachnid world. They are an example of just the single

minded ruthlessness of genes to anthropomorphize, right, yea. Their entire purpose in life is to suck blood so they can reproduce and die so they can make babies that suck more blood. Bloodsuckers are I'm a I'm a big animal, guys, you know, as are you? And I even save insects. You know. I won't kill a bee, you know, or a spider. I will usher them out somewhere else. But flies, mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas no use for him. You and I are on the exact same page. Those are the only four

insects that all kill. I won't kill a roach. Um, I will kill roach. I won't kill kill the hell. Roach never did anything to anybody. It's just it just happened to be unfortunately ugly and like scuttle. That's what it is. Roaches scuttle. That's why we don't like them. You can't kill something for scuttling, something for being a parasite. If it moved at least slowly across the room, I

probably wouldn't kill it. But the fact that they run like they've they're like they're looting exactly makes me want to kill them. All right, So those are insects we hate. I don't mind roaches, don't. I'm not going on record with you on well, what does Umi do when she sees a roach? I try to keep roaches out of

Umi sight. Think if we ever see him, I'm like, hey, you look over here, and I'm like kind of brushing it out like yeah, um, so Chuck, we're talking about we were talking about the differences the hard tack and the soft take. Right, let's talk about the commonalities. Takes a pretty basic creatures, right, Um. They are one celled organisms. Right, No, they're not. I'm just trying to jazz this up a little bit. Okay, Um, they are. The commonalities are a body,

eight legs, I think eyes on either side. Generally most of them have eyes. Um. And then the capitulum, which is the mouth part. Right yeah, mouth parts is actually a word, a single word, mouthparts, blood, sucking and gorge. Everything about ticks are wrong blood meal, yes, um. And then you've got on the hard tick a something called

a dorsal shield or a scutum, right um. And that's pretty much it, unless you want to get into the details of the mouth parts, which really just to add a little more time to this podcast, we probably should.

Now they get in your body, that's what matters. What it was interesting though, my friend, is the legs are covered in little spiny hairs and it has the legs have a tiny little pincher claw at the end, and they use this too, you know, climb up grass blades and vegetation, sticks, trees, and should we'll go ahead and talk about questing, should we? Since we're right there, why not ticks? How? This is how the hard tick feeds.

It goes on a quest and it literally will wait on a blade of grass with this little pincher claws up in the air for somebody to brush by them, and then they'll go hack and then they'll latch onto your pant leg or shoestring or whatever your face. Yeah, and then it's all over. But we'll get into questing more. But that's what they use, a little pincher. I don't think there's anything more to questing. Well, yeah, you're right,

um we I I gotta vta you man. We should talk about the mouth parts, right, Okay, So you've got like the little what looks like their head, that's actually their mouth parts, right right? Um. You have two flaps on the side that are called palps. Yes, right, that's a beautiful illustration. You have their color shiny um. Uh So the palps when when a tick gets on you right and starts digging in, the palps moved to the side. Yeah, they're they're not part of the eating and digging in process.

Then you get the cellisera, which are too I guess, kind of cutting boring mouth parts and not boring like more like boring into your skin, right, um. And then you have the hypostone, right, which is this um barbed needle like protrusion that they just go room and start sucking blood. But it's barbed in. The hooks curve backward toward the tick, which makes it harder to pull out if you if you pull a tick out the wrong way, you just pull its body right off of its head

and its head stays in there. We'll get into how you can you can get rid of a tick appropriately, right speedily, safely, Yes, with with um, the whole thing intact, So you can do what I do and drop it into a glass of bleach and alcohol and just let it die. Oh, I've put mine in a ziplock so I could take well, no, just in case I needed to take it to the doctor if my vice had a bull's eye rash on it. Well, yeah, I mean you can take the glass of the doctor. But yeah,

that's true. Yeah, good point. You just wanted to kill it in a cruel way. Okay, I hate those things, man, Well, who likes ticks? So you'll notice then, um that you've got the barbed hypostome, you have the hooked legs. Right. Um, Everything these everything that has to do with ticks has to do with like hanging on right and digging in sucking right. As Tracy Wilson put it in this article, Um,

they are basically like a living blood pump. Yeah. The all they feed on is blood, right, so gross, And the entire point of their life is to eat so they can grow up and reproduce and die like we said, right, yeah, and when they eat, josh, their body their ideo suma. If you want to get technical, it expands. A male tick has the scutum or scoot them on the back. I'm not I said scutum, but yeah, I couldn't tell which way either way. We're both too lazy to go

onto mirriam webster dot com, aren't we. Uh So what happens is the body of a hard tick male hard tick can't stretch that much to hold the blood. Soft ticks don't have the scut um, but they don't require a whole lot of blood to live and lay eggs. The real nasty one of the bunch is the female hard tick. That's the one that goes from the science of about a sesame seed to you know, something like the right. Yeah, I saw one of my dog when I was a kid, and that is stuck with me.

A big gorge tick that was I mean, it was a big look like a big purple balloon. That was disgusting. Their body is also very flat, so they can lay flat while they're feeding. This is especially important for a hard tick because the hard ticks are born, they feed, they reproduce, and they die. Right, So a hard tack, actually the hard tack female especially, we'll sit there and feed for twenty four hours and that's that's really dangerous as far as survival goes, because you're just sitting there

feeding hoping no one notices. Um, you get larger and yeah, and you get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then finally, if you make it until you're done with your blood meal, um, you can fall off and lay some eggs after mating, as many as eighteen thousand eggs. Yeah. Did you see that picture. There's a picture in this article. It's pretty boss. It looks like caviar coming out of the bottom of a tick. You don't want to put that on the tick just pooped out a bunch of caviar. That's what

it looks like. Can we talk about two amazing facts, Josh, about how the tick um does its work when it when it rips into your skin and die is in. I thought we got the amazing facts out of the way. No, no, no, these two are pretty amazing to Ticks do two things. When they feed that blow me away. They excrete a cement like substance into your body where they attached to make it harder for them to fall off, and that

dissolves when they're ready to fall off. Fact number one, I know they're like spitting up like that shot that tastes like cement in your mouth. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's awful. And number two is they have um, a substance to prevent your blood from clotting, so they can just continually drink and it and it won't heal. And that's all in your their saliva. And this this happens from a tick's mouth. They have cement and blood thinners basically, and their spit chuck. Let's talk

about the tick life cycle. All right, Clearly you weren't as blown away by that's me no. Um, the tick is born from caviare right after this stork brings it to somebody's skin, maybe a lizard skin after the quest and a latch onto your gene pant yes, right, your pant leg Yeah, your gene pant your gene pant leg um. So you're born, you are a tick larva. Yeah right. And at that point you are about the size of

a period. And I couldn't find the font size for this, but you're about the size of a period at the end of a sentence twelve point five. Maybe there's a big difference between ten and twelve point And I mean, what if it's like a hundred and forty four point Yeah, but that's you know, let's go with twelve standard. All right, thanks for that. Um, you have six legs, remember, Yeah, when you're born, you got six legs. If you've got good genes, you're gonna have eight eventually. But first you

have to go find yourself a blood meal. And to do that, you have to crawl along the ground and maybe find a mouse with its tail hanging out or lizard something with blood, And and the closer to the ground the better because you can't really crawl that well yet, Yeah, this is just before you can if you want to grow up to be an adult tick. If you don't get that first meal, you're done. Yeah, it's like a sea turtles. Sure, after you get that first meal, right, say you are a a soft tick. You get that

first meal, you're gonna do it pretty quick. And then right you go back down to the ground. You drop off. After you have your meal. You hang out. You're like, Okay, I'm really that that mousetail was packed with energy. I'm growing, I'm growing. I'm literally getting too big for my shell. I'm gonna mold. And now all of a sudden, I have an extra pair of legs. Look at that, and you might call me a nymph. That's exactly what you would be, right, And then you say, well, you know

what being a tick nymph? Now that I've molted and a little bigger, it's kind of nice. I like a six year a pair of legs, right right. Um, I'm hungry again, so I'm going to go get another blood meal. It's so grass Okay, So then you go you get another blood meal. Um, and then you drop off again. Sure you you stop hardening and clotting that your host's blood from your you know, um saliva, you drop off, you go grow again, you molt. Now you're an adult.

Now you're ready to reproduce. But first you give a little tick bar mitzvah I guess sure, or bought mitzvah h. But first you need a blood meal, so you go get another blood meal. Right, and it's about here that the life cycle of most ticks begins to end. Right, Most ticks are three host ticks, is what they're called. Yeah, but you know, Tracy pointed something out I thought was interesting, is that a tick that does not get their blood meal will die. But it could take like a year

to starve to death, to starve to death. So they might be just um in nymph stage or adult stage or whatever, just pining away on that blade of grass, waving their little claw. No one ever walks by. And they can't they can't reproduce, they can't lay eggs, they can't uh, they can't do the bump with their little female tick friends. They can't do anything if they don't get their blood meal. So they just it's like on the couch basically, right, And so you would think, well,

then ticks are just stupid for being questers. You know, it's such a willy nilly way to go look for food. But as we said, ticks do have eyes and they can um differentiate shapes that kind of thing. So they can technically hunt us as parasites, right but not really. Yeah, and they can see colors, yeah, so Tracy said they can. They they use that to get in on a good blade of grass with a high likelihood of some schmuck camper like me walking by. Uh. They also can sense

carbon dioxide that animals exhale. Yeah, so that's kind of cool. Actually. Um, so let's say you are a tick that has you're a female hard tick and you're engorged. You've just made it. The male you made it with just went off and died right after mating. Yeah, well you both eat first, right, and then you come together and you're like, hey, I'm super full, and then you made That's what I called him. The Philistines are like, let's go eat and then have

sex and then I'll die. So you're the female. Okay, where where are you going? He said, I'm the female. Oh and then after the guy goes off and dies, you're like, oh, I better go lay my eggs and then there's all this caviar that comes out, and um, now you're dead, and then the life cycle begins a new right. Generally, I don't think they always die, but generally the female dies after they lay eggs, and the male dies after they do do that thing, do the

thing that thing? Um yeah, so chuck, that's the life cycle. I wish we had some sort of applause, right, is that was riveting? Um? If at any point, let's say, remember I said that most ticks are three host ticks. Yeah, uh, if at any point one of those hosts, especially the first or second host, happens to be a disease host, then ticks become their disease vector. There a disease vector, right, Yeah, But you can also, I don't even think you said you can be a one host tick. If you find

a very gracious host, you might stay there your whole life. Right. If you are a hard tick, yeah, you can be a one or two host. But if you're a one host, like you said, you're born and then you go start feeding wherever you're born, and you reproduce and die and you're like, this is this interior thighs? Nice? I think I'll just stay here for my whole life. Yeah, so

chuck um if they do become a disease vector. And by the way, ticks are the number one disease vector in the animal world and among humans they're number two only to mosquitoes as bugs that spread disease. Yeah. Um, if you are a disease tick, how what what are some of the things that you're going to spread? Well, Josh,

you can, um spread. I know everyone's sort of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, that is if it started out obviously in the Rocky Mountains, but now it's kind of in many places in the US because of animals at migrate and move around. Uh, you can get if you're in Australia, you can get Queensland's tick typhus or Finlander's Island spotted fever. Yeah, or uh, you know the big one is lime disease, yes, which um Jordan has. I think he got the kind that goes away with some antibiotics. You can I think

you can get it for life. If I'm not mistaken. I think I didn't do a whole lot of lime disease reacharch research, but I worked with a director one time that um did a short film online disease. No, No, he had lime disease I think forever and needed to take like a little afternoon naps because it would wear. He was just a lazy, So lime disease. The big giveaway for that one is a bull's eye rash. It's an inflamed raised area wherever the bite was. That's the center.

So it's real red and then kind of pale skin or regular skin color and then real red again like a ring around it, right or bull's eye all right, exactly, So if you have that, you are um in big trouble. And uh, Rocky Mountains spotted fever, I don't think lime diseases, but Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a Ricket seal Rickett seal um illness, and I looked this up. So basically, you have a fever, general malaise, headaches, muscle cramps, you're tired,

it's just not you're feeling lousy. Yeah, you can actually die from Rocky Mountain spotted fever if you don't get anything treated. If you're like out, you know, doing the Ted Kazinski thing and you never get treated for anything, you could die. That's the second time today you mentioned Ted Kazins know he's coming back? Are you bringing up He's not really coming back? Don't worry. Um, if you're bitten by a tick that's say, is spreading a protozoa or a bacteria that's going to give you some sort

of infection. Um, you are not necessarily going to get it immediately. Apparently. The rule of thumb is it takes about four hours for a tick to transmit a disease, right, Um, And it does so in a number of ways. The first way is through its saliva, all right. Another way is if you squeeze a tick, it can regurgitate blood back into your skin. Oh that's what I was doing, right, Okay, And um, either one of those ways could spread the disease. Again,

it takes about four hours. Um. So a good way to combat ticks, if you're in a tick combat situation is to look every couple hours. And you want to look around your scalp. You want to look in the folds like your armpit folds. Your neck you have like one of those hot dog packs like for a neck, back of your neck. You know I'm talking, um, around your collar, the band of your whitey tidies that kind of stuff nether regions, which you know, we don't need to get back to that story, but that is those

are dark, spooky, damp places, and ticks like to go there. Um. So if you find a tick, there's a certain way that you want to get rid of it, right, only one way. Pretty much. All those wives tales are no good. Yeah, if you hear the you know, put a nail polish on it and it'll suffocate it, or put a hot match on it and it'll it'll release from you. All that stuff is gonna make it do is and it will vomit, disease, blood into your body. So none of

those things are right. What you want to do, Josh, you want to get some tweezers, and you want to grasp the tick very firmly, right as close to where it attaches to your skin as possible. What you don't want to do is twist it or yank it out real fast. You want to pull firmly and really slow and straight up and straight back or straight up from your from your body, straight up, and you want to pull it. Remember a tick, a tick's body is flat,

so it can lay flat. This is straight up. If you if you were holding the tick up by its bottom and its head was going straight down. Pull straight up from where its head is burrowed into your skin. Yeah. So if he's flat on your skin, you need to get up under him and pull him right like a perpendicular and then out. But you want those tweezers making contact with his mouth parts right, not his head or his body, because you're gonna pull his body right off

of his head. Yeah. Or you can squeeze the abdomen and that will make it go right. So you don't want to squeeze at the belly of the tick. Uh. Immediately afterward, you want to wash the area with soap and water. Oh you left out a step. You want to drop the tick and glass of alcohol and bleach. But like I said, don't do any of those other stupid home remedies. There's really only one way to get the tick out. Um. And you know we mentioned the cement like substance in the saliva. It uh, it actually

works better the longer it feeds. So if the tick has been in there a little while, it's gonna be harder to remove for that reason, because the cement is is you know, working right, because you have the cement.

You have the barbed hypostome, you have the the hooked legs that the thing doesn't want to let go until it's ready to, So you have to you have to make it want to with your tweezers, right, yes, So there are some ways to protect yourselves from ticks in the first place, light colored clothing helps because ticks show off against them very easily. Um. And if you see some ticks crawling on your light colored clothes, take some packing tape and make a ring around your four fingers

and then just like you're getting hair off you. Yeah, that's the the cheap lin roller, Yes, poor man's lit roller, right yes, um, or in this economy, just about everybody's lint roller, am I? Right? Um? You want to wear long sleeves And the rest of the sentence is the best visual that I got from this entire article. You want to look like a Doric basically where long sleeves comma, and tuck your pants into your socks or boots. Can you just see Tracy Wilson working out in the yard

with like her pants tucked tinder socks with a hat. Yeah, where I had some number three? And you should wear a hat and wear gloves and you can use insect repellent with deet. And if you're interested in learning more about deep I wrote a pretty interesting article about deet, not long enough to do a podcast, but I would recommend reading it. Eats nasty though, Dude, check out my article. Isn't it like really harmful? Just read the article. Just type in D E E T in the handy search bar.

So that's you know. Obviously, the gloves thing is if you're working in the yard, and that's where you're to find a lot of ticks around wood piles and uh high, Well, they say to keep your yard in shape because if you have like a well kempt mode lawn, you're not as likely to have ticks as if you've got weeds and piles of garbage. Because remember the an adult um hard tick quests right high up on unmod you know, grass or whatever. Um, so you want your hand, you're

waiting for um. So yeah, keep your mar yard mode. You're all set um and chuck. You know what you need to do? Check my dogs. You need to go around your yard with like a piece of white cloth and just drag it. And if you see a bunch of ticks, on it, you got an infestation. If not, you tell Jordan then he's a liar. Right, Yeah, that's scary. I I've had a flea infestation and that was awful. When I was in l A dude, we were infested big time. And uh, it was one of those deals

where I couldn't find they were coming from. So I went out in the backyard with bare feet one day in shorts on because I had a feeling they were coming from outside. And I just kind of walked around the yard really slowly, looking down. And we had this shed in the back for a yard with about a two ft gap between the shed and the fence that no one ever goes. Obviously went around there. As soon as I walked around the corner, I looked down and

I had about two hundred fleas on my legs. Oh yeah, And I freaked, obviously, and then I destroyed them with chemicals and fire. Nice fire just kind of puts the exclamation point on things. Ton. I can't imagine a tick infestation though, that's like, that's even worse. Yeah, No, I can't even then fleas, But I don't think it looks like a flea infestation. I think if you have like five or six ticks on your white cloth. That's an infestation. I couldn't tell. I thought it might be like hundreds

of ticks on your No. I think like, if you're dragging your cloth through your yard, there shouldn't really be that many kicks. All yeah, like there should be a chance that there's no ticks. But if there's some. I know you're talking about the fleas and it is disconcerting because I've looked at my leg and seeing that too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we have very similar backgrounds. Are you wearing that? What?

Trashy backyards and infestations? Chuck? You and I are going to come up with a T shirt design that says I listened to the Tick episode and we have to figure out a way that people can prove that they listened to this entire episode, and if they did, we need to come up with a T shirt because they deserve one for making it through this one with us. Yeah, this was sort of scabies esk in the itch count

stay more interesting. I'm saying, like they made it through it like they are hardcore devotees, you know what I mean? I thought this is good? Okay, Uh, if you want to learn more about ticks or get a visual of um Tracy Wilson with her pants tucked into his socks. You just tight ticks into the handy search bar at how stuff for dot com? And now it's time for a new segment, an occasional segment. Don't freak out. It's

not like listener mails going anywhere. We'll still do Facebook stuff, but every once in a while we have to say thank you. So this is what we call so, yes, Chuck, this is a new segment. Right, every once in a while we get stuff UM mailed to us, all sorts of awesome stuff, and it just piles up. Um, I should say the thank you's pile up and we just need to knock him out every once in a while. Yeah,

because we are very grateful for everything. Right, Yeah, I would have called this fan appreciation or fan thank you, not administrative detail. But you weren't raised in a skinner box, were you. Okay, Josh, Well we'll split these up here. We we've had a lot of wait, what are we doing? We're doing the thank yous? Right, Okay, Um, We've had a lot of people send us things over the past what is this past six months or so? You want

to start with stuff. Yes, stuff, yes, because like ticks, administrative detail, thank you's can be divided into two groups, right, and even stuff can be divided into books. We got a lot of books we did UM from the authors themselves, right, including our buddy I Inspector. He created the Chuck Norris fact Generator, right, and he just came out with his new book, Chuck Norris Cannot Be Stopped, and he sent

his copies of that. He's milking it. I was disheartened that he sent it to the tech stuff guys too. I tried to talk him out of it. He's like, no, I'm too nice a tool him. I would Uh. We also got how to Speak Pirate, a treasure chest of seafaring slang by Jordie Telfer, and we got one called Revolutions for Fun and Profit Ryan Shattuck. I have not listen. I have not read that one yet, but I'm very

much looking forward to that absolutely. I'm also looking forward to Molecular Gastronomy, a book by Harvey tests Um and Harvey US did not give us this book, but Liz from little Bit of Sweets dot Com did, remember, Yeah, l I D D A B I T sweets dot com. If you have two brain cells that you can muster up, go there and order her any of the candy bars, but order the peanut butter and jelly candy bar and thank me later. I didn't have that one, dude, it was so good. I had the King It was peanut

butter and banana. I had one. I had that one too, and a small one. Well it's yeah, it's several candy bars, didn't you. I had two. I didn't have several. She also makes this um beer and nut um caramel that's really good. And didn't get any of that either. What you got the popcorn? Right? Yeah? I did. The popcorn was awesome. It had bacon fat and and you could tell it was gorgeous. I mean it's seriously like handmade

in New York City with like really nice ingredients. So if you see like six dollar for a candy bar, just shut up and get it. Trust me, it's the best candy bar you'll ever have in your life. Yes, So thanks Liz for all that stuff. Keep it coming. Um, And we also got a Catcher's Companion, The Hidden World of Holden Caulfield by Sean McDaniel. And I've just kind of browsed it. I haven't given it a sit down and read yet. Um, but Sean put together basically like

an annotated catcher in the Rye. It's pretty amazing stuff. Um. And I don't know. I'm pretty sure you could probably find most of these on Amazon. I don't know some of the search. Yeah, definitely. Some of them might be self published, but I think people should support self published books. And there was one more book. We mentioned it briefly once, but we didn't mention the whole thing, The Zombie Combat Manual, A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead by Roger May.

It is really really awesome. And uh, here's when you don't know about Chuck. I want to say thank you to um Stephanie, who I went to high school with and was in children's theater with. We used to car pool there together. Sweet um. Way back in the day, she and her fiance Steve um listen. Steve turned her on to us. He heard us mentioned Sprayberry and he was like, wait a minute, didn't you go to Sprayberry and made her listen. She's like no way, so yeah,

she Uh. Fortunately for us we got more than just a high. Steve makes hot sauces and he sent a bottle of big smoke and I'll give you half of it eventually, like he's half of it. Yes, So thank you too, Stephanie and Steve for that. And hey, Stephanie, hope it's gone. Well, that's nice. Just look at you when your birthday being kind. I know it feels dirty. So those are the books and candy bars and things. Um. We got a bunch of CDs from a band in New Jersey called the Wag and we want to thank them.

Are best bud in the world. Martin ban Nostrin has He's always in the sons of stuff like bacon based things. Wesley is Lee Willis c D. Yeah, yeah, all sorts of CDs. The wood House Gang, Yeah, Woodbox Gang, Wood Box Gang. What I say, wood House anyway? Van Astri and you sick puppy, We love you. No, it's time for postcards. They yeah, we got a bunch of postcards. We got one from Vanessa in Japan. Todd from the Anne Frank House. Sorry about your umbrella there, todd Um.

And they're a there's a small group of conspirators found deep within the bowels of the Brigham Young University Library thank you for listening. Interesting, I don't even know that is Janelleen Traversity, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan Traverse. We want to say check out shutter cal dot com. Yes, um Rocky and his girlfriend from Hawaii via hurst Castle, Kate and Stewart who we met at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn when we were there. Uh, they independently wrote let us letters

to us on the same day. Isn't that weird? Yeah? But Kate was way better? Was that because Stewart like spent his whole letter taking us to task over the traffic podcast. Yeah, And Kates was all like, I'm so glad we got a chance to meet you. You guys are awesome. And Stewart's like, hey, hey, yeah, it's I hope you guys are doing well. It was nice to meet you. And here's everything that was wrong with the

traffic podcast. So kids later definitely one. Oh, and the fellows from New Belgium Brewery send us some delicious fat tire ale Yes, and the mail. So thank you to everybody who's ever sent us anything. If we forgot you, we apologize. You can shoot us an email actually and be like you fat jerks, or just send us what you sent us before again, refresh our memories trying. If you want to send us something, you can get our

mailing address by sending us an email. We don't expect anything, so if you just want to say hi, that is awesome in and of itself. You can correspond with us at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of about our topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page. M hmm brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you