Eels Alive!

Guarantee the human.

“Hey guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, I'm Joe.”

I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick, and guess what? We created our own podcast. Oh, hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast.

Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to our people to do podcasts. We used to ask other people questions, because we're sick and tired of being an ask questions. Well, sick and tired of just a strong way to put it,

but you know, tired and sick, tired and sick. Listen to hey, Jonas, on the "I Heart Radio App," Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen, we don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL, "Light Night Comedy Guy,"

not quite on humor me with Robert's "Michael" and "Friends." Me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden Creek to David Letterman help make you funnier this week, my guess. SNL's "Miky Day" and "Head Riders" street or side L helped an Occupella band with their "Between Songs" banter.

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or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Michelle McFee, and I've been unraveling the strangest criminal alliance I've ever reported on, on "Mormim Polygamist," and on our "Mini and Business Man." Multimillion Dollar House for our "Eason Lamborghini's"

private jets a billion dollar fraud.

But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the "I Heart Radio App," Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Welcome to "Stuff You Should Know," a production of "I Heart Radio." Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too,

“and this is "Stuff You Should Know" about "Eel."”

I know another podcast that is ruined something I'd like to eat, but now I can't. What did it ruin? Or why? How?

What part? How about this? When we get to the part where you're like this, ruined "Eel" for me? Shout.

Scream at the top of your lungs. Okay. Okay. I want to give a head tip to David Burn, got he, you me, who inspired this episode.

The David Burn? Yeah, the David Burn, you me was watching David Burn videos, he's on tour, and I think she's going to see him. Yeah, it's great, Joe.

Oh, have you seen it? Oh, yeah, I've seen the last couple of tours. It's great. Awesome. So, he apparently was talking about

a book he was reading about "Eels" and how fascinating it was. No. That kicked off the idea for an episode on "Eels." Yeah, I went to read a new book.

I just finished my book, Cameron Crow's memoir, which is fantastic. I'm sure. And by the way, I commented on his Instagram about what a great book it was and he started following me.

No. Yeah, and I got to think that it was either an accident

“or maybe he, like, listens to stuff you should know.”

I don't see why he would randomly just be like, I'll follow anyone, he says they like my book. Great. So, I don't know. Cameron Crow, if you're listening,

it's pretty exciting for us. Yeah, what up? Great book, though.

His memoirs, it's almost too incredible

to believe that that happened to him and his life. Is it called Recounting Crow? Oh, boy. No. It's called The Uncooled, but man,

he really missed an opportunity there. Yeah, I think more he dodged a bullet. Probably so. But I went to read a new book, Talking Heads. It was, I had two books in my hand,

the Talking Heads book, and Abel Farrah's memoir, The Filmmaker. And I went with the Abel Farrah just because Bonnie Prince Billy recommended it and it's shorter, but Talking Heads is up next.

That's it. I just watched Badly Ten and all the way through for the first time. Ooh, this is a good move. Buddy, what a film.

I've got King of New York next. So, are you on a kick now for him? A little bit. Where'd that come from? Bonnie Prince Billy?

Yeah, no, I don't remember. I think I just ran across Badly Ten and I've known about it since I was a teenager

and it's never really watched it.

Oh, have you ever seen King of New York? No. Oh, dude. It's so good. Oh, good. I can't wait.

Yeah, I mean, he's one of my favorite filmmakers. Great. Yeah, apparently there's lots of rumors that Harvey Kaitel actually was on all the drugs he was supposed to be on on Badly Ten it.

I'll let you know when I get to that chapter. And I saw someone say, like, no, he actually wasn't. He's just that good of an actor, but that Abel Farrah and the rest of the crew probably were on all those same drugs while they were shooting.

I know he was, he was pretty into drugs. So I have only a couple of chapters in so far, but it's really good. OK, well, when you get to the chapter, called "Drogs Colen," I love them.

Let me know.

All that to say is that we're talking about eels

and we'll get right into it.

“If you're an eel, if you want to claim to be an eel,”

you've got to have certain qualifications. You can't just be like a sea snake or an electric eel, which is an eel, by the way. You have to be a member of the order and guilla forms or a guilla formus.

20 families of eels, 111 genera, more than 800 species, ranging from just about four inches to those big ol' morning eels, sometimes up to 12 feet. Yeah, 12 foot long eel. That's just amazing.

The one thing that they all have in common is that they have long bodies that are typically warm like. They don't have pelvic fins, right? So yeah, the ones that you would have developed had you descended from water hippos.

That's right. That's right. A lot of them don't have pectoral fins. Some of them do have the dorsal fin on the back. But essentially, they're just like worms or snakes

like slithering through the water. And that actually is exactly what they're doing. They're slithering in a wave-like motion. That's how they make their way.

“Because again, they don't only have fins.”

This to me is one of the facts of the podcast. So you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, take it though. So eels can swim backward just by changing the direction of the wave.

Is it a rubber band? Yes, they make a beeping sound when they-- Right. Oh, man. That's amazing.

I mean, they got to let everyone know. It's like, I can't see where I'm going, everyone. Eal come in through. Yeah. Also, I just want to take a second for a PSA.

If you drive a truck that makes a beeping sound

when it backs up, never, ever just sit there

idling with your reverse gear and reverse side. People know how to do that. Yes, you mean I used to live next to a nursing home, I guess. And we lived on the side of their delivery area. And dudes would just do that.

Just sit there with their truck and reverse, not moving. Yeah, like six in the morning. That's not a reality. No, all right, I agree. Eels had that smooth, slippery skin.

And it is coated in a slime. It's a protective slime. It helps them with their swimming. It makes them very streamlined. And it also helps regulate how much water is in their bodies,

which is pretty unusual. And they're predatory. Like they're eating other fish, basically, while they're down there. What does something else is very neat about Eels

is that they don't like-- they're not born little baby Eels and then they grow up into big 12 foot long 250 pound Eels. They actually go through stages of metamorphosis like the butterfly does. Yeah.

They don't like anything like a meal when they're born. And as they grow, they actually change shape and color in addition to size. They also very frequently will move from the ocean to freshwater creeks far inland.

Like there's a lot of great stuff that Eels do that we just had overlooked for a very long time. Yeah, I mean, there's some fun, really fun stuff coming.

They're basically solitary.

“I think there's a couple that we'll talk about later”

that hang out in the hundreds or thousands. But generally, like if you're a eel of size, you're going to be swimming around by yourself, back and up by yourself, beeping by yourself. They migrate and we'll talk more about how they spawn later

because it was a bit of a mystery for a long, long time and still kind of isn't some ways. But they do migrate to a spawning area. And they think they use the Earth's magnetic fields. They use magnetite in their bodies to navigate.

Yeah, they're not the only animals that do. So we don't know for a fact. We just know that there is magnetite in their heads and that that is probably what's going on because it's so spectacular.

The migrations that they have to go. That's essentially the only explanation we have on hand. That's right. If they are in tropical areas, warmer waters, where they get migrate to spawn is probably near-ish.

But if they're in the colder areas, it seems like they migrate to the warmer areas to spawn. So they may have to go a long way. Yeah, it's like how people in the Caribbean they don't go on vacation because they live on vacation.

That's right. And like you said, electric eels aren't eels. And there's really not a whole lot else to say about electric eels, really. No, they're nice fish.

They're closer to a catfish than an eel. Sure. So forget those guys. Yeah, pretty much. We really look too, we're like electric eels.

We've got to find out, even though they're not eels. They've got to be kind of interesting. Not really. So sorry, everybody. Yeah, but what is interesting is the more eel.

This is the sort of the most famous of the ocean dwelling eels, the saltwater eels.

makes up about 25% of all the eels.

And they live like, you know, if you've ever been snorkeling or scuba diving, you probably haven't seen one during the day. But if you've ever gone and put your face in a hidey hole in that coral, maybe you could see one, because that's where they like to hide.

Yes, be careful though, because they probably will buy you if you stick your face in their hidey hole. Yeah, I did that a little bit in Belize. I was asked a snorkel fishing guys with this. They were spear fishing and stuff.

And I was like, like, with spear gun, so I was like, can you teach me? They're like, come on, just follow along. And then, you know, he told me, dive down there and put your face in that hole.

Tell me where he's going to be. Did he really? Yeah, yeah, it was cool.

“I was like, I was trying to do it like they did it, you know?”

Sure. But I didn't get anything. They did. But I didn't. Did you see any, although?

No, but it was a little scary to put your face down there, you know? Yeah, I mean, doing that above ground can be pretty unnerving under the sea. That's just scary. Yeah, I felt like Timmy Dalton and Flash Gordon

when he reached his hand into that thing. Or, I guess, Indiana Jones, did need do that in one of them? Where he had this stick is, oh, yeah, fighters everywhere? Yeah, they were insects.

He had just to his hand, I think, reaching for a lever or something. Yeah, that's so great. One of my favorites is a type of mory. It's called the ribbon eel. Did you look pictures up of these guys?

Oh, yeah, they're gorgeous. Gorgeous, so they're very appropriately named. They're very flat and wide. They do look like ribbons, especially when they're undulating through the water.

“But one of the cool things is that they're born as males,”

blue and yellow males. And then all of a sudden they go, boop. I'm in all yellow female now, check me out. And they can reproduce either way, depending on what phase of life they're in.

Yeah, they're just incredible.

Very bright, almost fluorescent. Like, kind of one of those undersea colors that just don't feel like they should exist in nature, but it definitely exists in the ocean. Yeah, beautiful.

All right, so if you know more, you know they have a great smile. They're known for those really scary-looking teeth. They have two sets of jaws. The second set, the fair and geol jaw is faces backwards.

To kind of lock you in and keep you from escaping. If they have you in their grasp. Yeah. But they're not, they're not after you. You don't need to be afraid of the more evil.

Like if they, if they get you in the water, it's probably because you're in there at night. And it's obviously an accident. They're not like after people. Right, they only get you when you stick your face

in their hidey hole. Yeah, I guess so. One of the reasons why people are like, man, those things look really aggressive, because they show their teeth a lot.

And that's not because they're trying to scare you, or because they're really proud of their teeth. It's because they lack opricula, which are those platelet covers that go over fish gills. You know that they kind of go back and forth on.

Yeah, they flammer like that. Monty Python sketch and what the meaning of life, where they're go fish and they're hitting their hands. They were simulating opricula. And one of the things opricula does is it

regulates and kind of moves water over the gills. Well, the moories don't have that. So they have to get a lot of water through their mouth.

“And that's how they funnel the water through the gills.”

And of course, the gills is where the oxygen is absorbed out of the water into the circulation. Yeah, for sure. So that's when you're going to see the teeth. Like I said, you're not going to get bitten most likely.

But if you do, it's not going to be fun for you. No. Those teeth are very sharp. It's a very painful bite apparently, because it punctures very deep.

So it can always get like attendants and nerves and stuff.

And while they are not venomous, they do that slime. They have slime in their mouths as well. And it's a substance called Hema Glutenin. And it causes red blood cells to clump up. But they also, they think they generate something

called a cranotoxin. So that destroys red blood cells. So all of that stuff is A, why it's painful. And it can be like super prone to infection. You can thus teeth can break off in your wound.

It's really not good. Yeah, I saw Cranotoxins also are the reason catfish things hurt. Yeah, I feel like we talked about that than our noodling episode.

That makes sense. Yeah, that's like sticking your face in a hidey hole, but using your arm instead of your face. That's right. So the more a is a type of ocean eel,

and you can kind of divide eels into ocean and fresh water as we'll see, although ocean eels are far in a way, the largest in number and type, right? Yeah. One of the other big, big, I guess ocean eels

is called the Conger from Family Congridae. And they are like deep water dwellers,

Some of them hang out in some rocky areas,

like more aes, maybe around coral reefs. But the thing that's remarkable about the European Conger is that that's the heaviest one, right? Yeah, they're not as long and slender as the more ae, they're still long and snake-like,

but they're rounder, like the biggest one recorded is 242 pounds, which is, you know, it's a game fish. So if you got a 242 pounder, that's a pretty good catch that day. Yeah, that's like how much a couch weighs. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I'm so glad I said that because I've been forgetting this to mention this, so our dear awesome friend, Brandon Reed. Right? Uh-huh. He created, he's our webmaster, everybody.

“He runs and created stuff you should know.com and pal.”

Yes, they're in great, great pal. He created a website called Josh Clark Calculates. And you can go to Josh Clark Calculates.com. I didn't look it up at this.

And get this. So you can basically describe anything in a measurement

of whatever you want. So somebody is a Big Mac's tall. So you can select Big Mac's, Olympic swimming pools, all the stuff that we've ever used to essentially describe the size or shape or volume of something you can now do on Josh Clark Calculates.com.

Why am I just not learning about this? Because I kept forgetting to mention it. And he showed it to me before I guess he showed it to me in Chicago when he came to the show. All right, I'm looking at it now.

Josh Clark Calculates, the weirdest way to measure absolutely anything. All right. The space in the example in the home page is the space shuttle in Debra

“has the speed of how many Washington Washington machines.”

And he press a button and it says beat boob. The space shuttle in Debra has the speed of 20278 Washington machines. Yeah. And he was telling me like, those are legitimate measurements. Like comparison. Well, this is my new favorite home page.

That awesome. Yeah, that's very cool, man. A lot of Brandon. We'll have to get a band named generator or something going. Ooh, that's a good idea, too.

All right. That was a lot of fun. I feel like we should take a break. Everyone can go visit that website and calculate some stuff. And we'll be back with more out yields.

Hey, it's us, the Jonas brothers and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news? The news. We created our own podcast.

Oh. Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it.

First, people to do podcast.

Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts, right there. But this one's extra special.

“So how do we actually come up with a name, hey, Jonas, guys?”

I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. And, oh, we were thinking, originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers, well, this is how you guys remember it going down. Yes.

I have a very different memory of this. We're talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, we could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then, I broke down on my little note pad, hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title. Oh, I got it.

But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to, hey, Jonas, on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL, late night comedy guy, not quite on humor me with Robert

Michael and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden Kirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier this week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and Headwriters, Streeter Sidel, helped an Occupel a band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes, those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert's Michael and Friends, on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged, it's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the

athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds, I was having troubles stopping the muscle growth. Listen to superhuman on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, we're back now, we're going to talk about my favorite kind of you.

Is this your favorite kind of you? Uh, yeah, these cute little guys look like plants. Yeah, so I've seen these before, I had no idea they were eels but they're like, yeah, little

current.

And there's so many of them.

It does. It looks like just kind of a field of plants. But if you zoom in, they are these cute little eels with cute little faces, just eating plankton that goes past and they spend most of their lives cemented in the sandy bottom. Even though they're able to get out and move free, that's just kind of where they live.

It's also their hidey hole to you. Yeah, they're called garden eels and I think when they get startled, they're whole body goes back in their little burrow. Yeah, but yeah, these are the ones that can hang out together, so they look like a little field of sea grass.

There would be thousands of these little guys just waving around. Yeah, they're so cute too. Just look up garden eels and look at their little, very serious faces. Yeah, if you're an eel that's living deep in the ocean, you're not going to be one of the colorful ones.

You're probably going to be black or dull gray.

“And the gulper eel is another one that you should look up when it's safe to do so.”

This is, it's also called the Pelican eel. They're all over the world, basically, in tropical and temperate climates, and they are very deep dwellers, like five to 10,000 people of the surface. And they look crazy. There are a few feet long, and their jaw is really the star of the show.

It's a lot bigger than their skull, and it can un-hinge and act as a scoop. It looks sort of like, well, I mean, they call it Pelican for a reason. It looks Pelican S, but it's shaped like a shovel, like if the shovel in a bucket got together and made it, this is what it would look like.

Yeah, and it doesn't always look like that, right?

So when it changes shape, it looks extremely alien. Yeah. Really neat. The video I saw was gulper eel balloons, it's massive jaw, unautilus life. And it's just amazing to watch that thing do it's thing.

Yeah, I agree. Very, very cool.

“This next section to me is one of the most astounding things that I didn't know about.”

It is the fact that eels have a real big significance in human history, and especially in medieval Europe, but we're talking mainly about the American eel, the European eel, and the Japanese eel. These are fresh water eels that go to spawn in the oceans, but they live in fresh water and they were a huge, huge source of food for a very long time and a lot of parts of the

world. Yeah, it's still hard to pan-loves oonaki. Oh yeah. So yeah, one of the reasons why they played such a role as a food source around the world is that number one, they were easy to come by, like literally they're swimming around

in streams and rivers all over the northern hemisphere. And in addition to that, they're really, really nutritious, it turns out, high in protein, lots of vitamin B12, vitamin A, vitamin D, that's hard to come by if you're not out in the sun. Yeah.

B12? Yeah. Yes. And only 375 calories for an eel fully, which is actually pretty new calorie dense for a fish, but it's very good for you too.

Yeah, a lot of good fat in protein in there as well. And that unagi that I used to love to eat, I would cook it up myself, it was delicious. Oh, really? You cooked it yourself. Yeah.

I think I talked about this before. There's near the decap farmers market, near where I live.

There's the field stand, the first oriental market, and they sell eel as well as lots

of kitchenwares and kind of cool stuff from Japan. But sure. Yeah, you can go get eel there out of the fridge and bake it in your oven and coat it with some, I used Teriyaki, but I think traditionally that is the Kabeyaki sauce is used. Is that right?

It's a drill that to grill those things up, and it's, I mean, Kabeyaki is basically the same. I think it just doesn't have, like, I think it's like a strip down Teriyaki. It doesn't have ginger and garlic in it.

“Yeah, I think it's also a little thicker too, right?”

I don't know. I think it's about the same, but it's just, it's kind of just the sweet stuff. It is very good. I agree with you. I, nothing in here really put me off of eel, especially unagi.

Hey, that's good. But for you. You haven't screamed yet, we haven't reached that part yet, and then, okay. So one of the reasons unagi is, I guess, noteworthy in Japanese culture, one, as far as sushi goes, it's one of the rare parts of sushi that's ever cooked, like, across

the board. Yeah. And then, number two, it's called one of the big four foods of the Edo period, which I think ran from the 17th century to the 19th century, those four were soba, sushi, and Dr. Pepper.

I know this answer, so you didn't get me this time.

The other one is Timpura, and you mentioned this the only one that's, like, routinely cooked

“because you have to, because eel blood is toxic to human, so you have to grill that”

stuff up just right. Yeah. This is one of the things that astounded me is. I didn't know that it was such a big deal in the Northeastern U.S. in Eastern Canada before and after colonization.

So indigenous peoples love to eel. I think eel's made up about a quarter, more than a quarter, of the fish, bound in streams along the coast of the Northeastern Northern America, and, you know, you could smoke it and carry it with you on the trail. You could salt it and cure it, and obviously you could, you know, trap them and grill them

up. Yeah. I think one of the things that I've read somewhere is that, like, eel filet does not taste fishy. I saw it compared to a taste of venison, even.

I've, my experience with eel has never been like that.

It's always been like a little bit like on sushi. Did you ever eat like a big hunk at eel at once? Uh, no, it's always just been, you know, like you would eat on sushi, but they come in a long eel-like package. Sure.

And you know, you just bake it in the oven. I, I, I think there are already pre-cooked. Um, oh, gotcha, okay, okay. So you're, so they maybe trunk or something, but you're basically just heating it up and glazing it.

I gotcha. Smoked eel sounds kind of good. I would try smoked eel. Yeah. Sounds really good.

So, um, it wasn't just the indigenous peoples of North America who, um, were eating eel. The people in Europe at the same time were crazy for eel and had been for centuries and centuries. Apparently they found old willow traps, which are basically like woven baskets that are easy to get into and hard to get out of that eel would swim into and they'd be like, oh no.

Not again. And, uh, they would become smoked or salted or dried. And very interestingly, Chuck, they would often be used as currency.

“That's how valued eel were, but also how common they were, too.”

Yeah. This is the fact of this episode for me, uh, had no idea that in medieval times, not at medieval times, but during medieval times, uh, about half a million dried eels were used to pay rent in England every single year. Yeah.

Yeah, for all sorts of debts. And I mean, it continued on for a very long time and into kill a mockingbird Walter Cunningham from Old Sarah and pays Atticus Finch in a thousand live eels in one point. Is that per reel? Yeah.

Oh man, I never wanted to cuss so bad on the show.

No, and the reason why that's a giveaway, Chuck, is that I said live eels, nobody wanted the live eels I wanted, prepared, smoked, dried, and then depending on how many were put together, did you see like they were different names for like 10 eels together? Yeah. Yeah.

Only five eels together. Like wrap 'em up and, uh, but what one was a stick was one? Uh-huh. That's like 25. Okay.

And then, uh, no. That's 10. Oh, yeah. Yeah. A bind is 25.

And those are basically, they were treated like denominations. Like, I'll give you a bind of eels for that. Canon, Dr. Pepper. Two vines in a stick. Yeah.

It would be, uh, 28, 5, or it would be 60.

Oh, we should type it into Josh Clark. Yeah. Exactly. It would be like, does not compute. There needs to be one in there for Josh Clark Calculates, so it's like how

“any eels would it take to live in the e-svilleage for a month?”

That's a good one, man. And whatever year, 10 trillion eels, uh, or how many sticks is that? Uh, that's a trillion sticks. Oh, okay. Thank you. That was an easy one. They were very popular food wise, though, during church holidays, and during fasting

seasons, because, uh, and this is like up to like a few months out of the year, or more than that, 120 days. Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah. That's like six months.

So a quarter of the year. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, god. Here we go.

A third. All right. I'm going to type it into your website again. Uh, you could not eat meat, but you could eat fish during those fasting seasons. So because there were so many eels, uh, they were, you know, it was a pretty attractive

meal. Yeah. A nice meal of eels. That's right. Uh, what there was one other reason too that we'll see why they were highly thought

of for, um, fasting during Christian or Catholic, I guess, feast days, um, was that they are, have long been considered asexual, because as we'll see, like, people have no idea how they reproduce, um, and I thought that was pretty interesting. Yeah. Super interesting.

Like regular fish that have sex would just make you think of nothing but sex while you're eating on my guess, but you're all good.

I mean, should we take a break or should we talk about the reproduction now?

I think we take a break, man. Okay. All right. We're going to talk about how they reproduce right after this. Hey, it's us, the Jonas brothers and guess what, we have some big news.

What's the news? The news. We created our own podcast called Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. People to do podcasts. Pretty. Yeah,

pretty wide range of podcasts, but this one's extra special.

“So how do we, how do we actually come up with a name, hey, Jonas, guys?”

I honestly don't remember.

I think it was on a call about what we should call it.

And, oh, we were thinking, I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers, well, this is how you guys remember going down. Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast.

We could call in and say, hey, Jonas, and then I broke down on my little note pad. Hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title. Oh, the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to hey, Jonas on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast, just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL, late night comedy guy, not quite on humor me with Robert Michael and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden, Kirk, to David Letterman, help make you funnier this week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and Headwriters, Streeter Side

L, helped an Occupella band with their "Between Songs" banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes, those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert's Michael and friends on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged, it's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games, and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days I'd put on 10 pounds, I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to superhuman on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right everybody, back to the mystery of eel reproduction, in the old days in the classical Mediterranean era.

They had all kinds of crazy ideas about how eels reproduce because they seem to just appear, no one ever saw him doing it, no one ever saw eel eggs, people had cut eels open and found no reproductive organs. They were seems to be unusually preoccupied with this, in my opinion.

“They had a lot of weird opinions and theories as well, right?”

Sure, sure. But imagine if like, you know how much cow, or say chicken? Okay, humans a lot of chicken, imagine if while you're eating chicken, we're the hell do chickens come from. No one has any idea, like I was chicken, it's delicious, but I have no idea how chickens

are born. Yeah, I mean, you probably should have picked something that doesn't lay an egg in front of you, but yeah. Sure. I get what you mean.

But I think that's another reason why the mystery was so deep as they're like, yeah, chickens lay eggs, pigs, they'd love to do it, like they knew how everything else came about, basically. Eels, they're like, I guess they just spontaneously generate. Yeah, for sure.

Finally, in 1777, those in Italian surgeon in research named Carlo Mundini, and he finally don't ask me how, but he finally located the ovaries of an eel. And they, for decades, no one could replicate that fact, and then eventually they found the testicles as well, and no less than Sigma Freud was one of the, one of the people looking for those eel testies.

My friend, he was the one who found them. Yeah. I mean, he, this was earlier in his career, but he'd dissected 400 Eels, I guess he, on the 4011st, found them. Right.

It's always the last eel you look in.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, so Freud was the person who identified for the first time, people have been thinking about this for 2,000 years, at least, how eels reproduce. But at the same time, they're like, great, they have gone into the ovaries.

“Where do they, like, why don't we ever see them using these things?”

Why don't we ever see their babies? This is all very weird. So the mystery continued even after Freud, although it was really kind of starting to heat up around that time.

a decade, they had far more material to work with than they had.

“So like, it went from 2,000 years of not knowing what the heck was going on to bam, bam,”

bam. We almost haven't figured out. Yeah. For sure. Like, we knew that they metamorphicized.

We knew that those glass eels that they're basically transparent, uh, little babies,

they would show up in coastal waters every spring. And they knew that they turned into adolescent eels, they're called Elvers, and they know that they would eventually turn color and swim up rivers, and they knew they would eventually become yellow eels, and that they love to eat those things. And then eventually, they would become silver eels, is the final stop on the eel train.

Sure. And that is when they develop the equipment to reproduce and go up river into the ocean. But the part between silver eels going from the river and then the glass eel floating around was the mystery. Yeah.

But if you put those two things together, like, okay, the glass eel show up on the coast, the silver eels swim out to sea, seems like that these freshwater eels breeding grounds are somewhere out there in the ocean. It's got to be, right? Yeah.

Um, so before that, there was this idea that there were these little things almost plankton,

“like, um, organisms, or I think they were plankton, which apparently the definition of”

plankton is any floating sea life that just gets moved along by the current, can't move around itself. Mm-hmm. Um, there were these little tiny floating, I guess, they were shaped like willow leaves. And, um, they were identified as, uh, leptosephalis, revy, rostis, rostris.

And they thought this was a whole different type of fish. Yeah. And it turned out what they were looking at were the larvae of eels. They misidentified them as something, and it took like a couple of decades before they were like, nope, this is actually eel larvae.

And they found out thanks to a French game name Eve Delage, who probably was quite surprised when he put these things in a tank. Yeah. He put one in a tank and saw it go through every metamorphosis, I guess. Uh, I would assume you get getting bigger tanks unless you had a big one to begin with.

But eventually it became a glass and then an elver. And then about 10 years after that, there was an Italian zool just named Giovanni Battista who saw this happen out in the wild. And so, all right, we really are cooking with gas now. But where do those little silver eels go?

Where are they going to make this larvae? They still hadn't figured out that part. Yeah. Once they mature, so there's a Dutch marine biologist named Ernst Johann Schmidt, which is a great Danish name.

I think I said Dutch, right? He's a Danish. Sorry. Danish people. He was supported by the Carl's bird foundation.

And yet they were founded by the beer company. Yeah. And they essentially funded scientific expeditions and they funded Ernst Schmidt.

And he started, he just basically set out to figure out this mystery of how silver eels

produce the little Willow leaf larvae. That's right. So he started fishing, casting his nets along the coast. And he found them in the North Sea, he found them in the Mediterranean and they were pretty big by this point.

So he was like, I don't think this is where they started because they've grown a little too much. So he got together with some commercial fishing boats to say, hey, I could use some help because you guys are all over the Atlantic. And they helped him out.

And in 1912, he had a report finally to publish that said, these little small larvae and silver eels are, which is the end stage, all the way out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah.

“So he was like, I think that they probably breed in the Sargaso Sea.”

And he never found him.

He never saw that they were in the Sargaso Sea, but it turned out he was correct.

That's right. Sargaso Sea apparently is a pretty rich breeding ground for a lot of reasons. One reason because the brown Sargasm that floats on top, I think it just creates a sort of a nice covered shady habitat, and it's not just the eels. I think a lot of things kind of reproduce in the Sargaso Sea.

For sure. And the reason the Sargaso Sea is remarkable is it's a sea in the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah. And it's kept in place by, I think, four currents that kind of come together and create a gire.

And in the middle of this gire is what we call the Sargaso Sea. And it's relatively still compared to the rest of the ocean. It's very high in saline, and it stays pretty warm. It's largely off the coast of the eastern United States, I believe, is where it's mostly

Azores. Azores. Azores. Sure.

And it turns out, and I think 2018, European team led by Rosalind Wright, found out that,

yes, Ernst Schmidt was correct, that they do eels do actually mate in the Sargaso Sea. That's right. Now that's those. There are other freshwater eels that spawn in other places.

Obviously, they don't all go there. I think Japanese eels spawn at these underwater mountains around the Mariana Ridge, which is pretty incredible. So neat. Yeah.

And then, I think, African Longfin eels spawn in the Indian Ocean. And you might say, like, who cares? Like, yeah, I was a mystery, but think about this, eels are halfway up the Rhine in Germany. They're like, well, it's time for me to go reproduce, so I'm getting to be that age.

They swim all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean, swim all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Sargaso Sea. That's where they mate, and then they're little tiny larvae, these little floating plankton, make their way all the way back to Europe again, where they turn into glass eels than elvers and then swim back up and take their place up the Rhine until they do the same

thing.

“That's a very strange reproductive strategy, but that's what eels do.”

Yeah. Eels are like salmon. Please. Exactly. Yeah, there's a word for it.

And quite bring to mind, I want to say caticephalic. That might be it. But essentially, they're born in the ocean, but they live their lives in freshwater. No. Yeah.

Yeah. What was that word? I remember seeing it now. Caticephalic. It's probably wrong, but I'm going to say that, authoritatively.

All right. So today, eels, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Red List, Lism as the threatened species, the European eels are critically endangered and the American Japanese and New Zealand long fin eels are endangered. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay. I'm screaming now. Yeah. I could see that.

Yeah.

“Because they're endangered and then some of this other stuff that come was a pretty”

big turn off for me as far as eating them goes. Yeah. I guess that puts me off a eating eels. Hey. No pressure bud.

American and European eel populations have dropped by more than 90 percent since

1970s, same with Japanese eel populations, hydropower turbines and dams as a big reason. You know that they disrupt all sorts of underwater aquatic life, but also overfishing the loss of wetlands in pollution. So the eels that you eat, and this almost got me back on it, they're raised in aquaculture facilities.

Okay. And they aren't bread and captivity because it's really hard to do as obviously that we've seen their reproduction is pretty tricky, overall. Right. So if they were to try and do that, they would have to introduce hormones to induce sexual

development. Keeping those larvae alive is really difficult in captivity, just because of the organic matter that exist in the wild, like they really need that stuff. So what they do is they capture those little glass eels in the wild and bring them into the farms to raise them to maturity, so you can eat them.

Right. And one of the reasons, maybe the reason that American and European eels have dropped by 90 percent since the 70s is that when you're taking these glass eels out of the ocean, number one, you're preventing that same number of eels from ever growing up to reproduce because they're going to get eaten before they get a chance to.

And two, if eels follow any kind of typical evolutionary strategy, they probably have eight ton of larvae in a huge percentage of them die off in the glass eels or the ones that make it. So what you're doing is saying, like, thanks for the surviving larvae, everybody. We're going to take them and eat them.

So that prevents an entire species from reproducing for the most part.

“And that's why their stocks have died off from those fisheries.”

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we skip the part where, like, didn't they tag eels to track them? Yeah. That's how they found out.

Rosalind Wright in 2008. Okay. That's how they found out. But yeah. I forgot to mention that part.

Yeah. Crazy. A little eel. Main. The U.S. state of Maine is the only state that has a glass eel fishing industry.

They have licensed what they're called Elverman because remember the Elvers is the, I guess the penultimate stage. No. And there are 425 licensed Elverman that can harvest around 7,500 pounds between late March and early June every year and then they ship it off to Hong Kong.

Very nice.

Do you know what the third to last is called?

Oh, is that a word for that? Are you about to do it me? No. This is for real, Chuck. I promise.

What? It's anti-penultimate. But like anti-e, like anti-imper, anti-penultimate. Yeah. I like that.

That always reminds me. And I think I mentioned this in the Gary Larson episode.

The second to the last of the Mohicans cartoon, which is just a big line of indigenous,

I guess Mohicans and the last of the one in line, everyone's facing one way and he just turned around and waving and smiling. How great, man. Yeah. Okay.

You got anything else about Eels? No. That's it. Okay. Yeah.

“If you want to know more about Eels, I go watch videos about David Bern and see what”

books he recommends. You can also visit your local aquarium. You can also go online and visit the website of your local aquarium. There's all sorts of stuff you can do to learn more about Eels than I urge you to and maybe stop eating them.

I'm going to too. Okay, Chuck. Really? I'm going to stop eating American or European Eels for sure. All right.

No more unagi for us. No. It's been a while since I had it anyway. So it's not like it's a huge gift loss for me. All right.

Good. Well, since Chuck agreed that we're both going to give up Eel, it's time for listen or male. This is from Alex, and this is a follow up about the baking soda and coconut oil deodorant from the listener male.

“Apparently Alex is sort of an expert on this.”

Okay. Again, you don't tread carefully whenever you're playing anything to your skin and body. Can you refresh my memory? I don't remember that deodorant.

Basically like baking soda and coconut oil, if you mix together into a paste, it can

be a good natural deodorant. Okay. Like, shave your skin and cause outbreaks if you don't get the mix right. Okay. So this is what Alex says.

I've been doing this for the better part of 15 years, guys. And have continuously adjusted the recipe to balance what I found to be three main factors, odor eliminating effectiveness, skin reaction and staining of clothing, baking soda is responsible for the first two and needs to be carefully balanced to be effective enough. While not causing a rash, a coconut oil is commonly used to act as a concentration reduction

and application medium, but it stains the clothes. I found that cornstarch is an excellent, is excellent in being a neutral alternative to reduce the concentration of the baking soda. I usually go about equal volumes of the two, then add only enough coconut oil to make a thick paste.

Hmm. In a pinch, if I have myself having forgot to use deodorant, I will moisten my finger and dab it directly in baking soda so that it is only very lightly dusted and then rub that on my armpits. And don't do that too often, guys, you'll end up with unhappy pits, but it's a great

backup because most people have a box of baking powder open in the fridge and don't care about fingers in it because it's not there for eating. A girlfriend from another lifetime once told me I should start an armpit empire. And by the way, guys, I'm in Puerto Rico, so if you ever feel like coming to do a show in the tropics, I'll be the first one out telling everyone to buy tickets and that is Alex.

Thanks a lot, Alex. He needs to see Alex dipping his fingers in some baking soda and rubbing it on his arm pit and saying, "Ah, refreshed, I can just see it."

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