Brain Soda Podcast - Episode 4 - Teenage Mutant Compost Fungus

Episode Date: February 25, 2023

Today's episode we're talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, compost, and Alexander Fleming!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the fourth episode of the Brain Soda Podcast. I am your host Kyle, and with me as always today is Brad, and Frog. Today ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be talking about compost. We're going to be talking about Alexander Fleming, and we're going to be talking about the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books from 1984. We're going to start with that. Voice, let me ask you a question. What's your favorite memory of the Ninja Turtles?

Oh, Frog, you better go first on this. I gotta think about that for a second. Well even just your first, like the first one that comes to mind. I mean the 1990 movie is probably my favorite of all time. I would say it's my favorite for sure. Yeah, like I mean, if you talk about my first, I don't know man, I think I remember there was a game on, I think it was Nintendo or something like that that I played that was Ninja Turtles.

But I must have known them before that, but I just, was it the original NES game? It was early. You go down into like the sewers, it was like a side scroller, you know, and I just remember like you would go down into the sewers. Sega Genesis might have had that too. It might have been Sega Master System or Genesis, because I had the Master System. I didn't have Nintendo. Is it 8-bit or 16-bit style?

It'd be a 16-bit. I was an 8-bit. I wasn't an 8-bit. Okay, and like that old school beat-em-up style games is how everybody really remembers a lot of those games. They literally just came out with all of them and a clone of them at the same time in this last year, you know, for sure. Well everything that you know, regardless of what your favorite memory of these heroes

are, all spawn from one single, like 21-25 pages produced in 1984 by two guys who named their studio Mirage because it pretty much didn't exist. Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, doodling one night, draw up a turtle, like a painter's turtle standing up with Tanfa and that evolves into this cool daredevil from Frank Miller and New Mutants from Chris Claremont, like parody book that is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These guys all have red bandanas and these guys are like more violent and edgy in that older 80s style. And like Grimm and Gritty Ninja Turtles really is the thing and I love it.

Was it? So I didn't know it was that early in 1984. Yeah. Uh, weren't they black and white when you were saying they had red and white? Yeah, these are black and white. But I guess the covers, right? The covers and even beyond that, like there were promotional materials and things like that done.

These guys signed on to do a role-playing game. Yeah, for sure. And like, I don't know why, but for me, like the, for some reason they don't seem like superheroes to me. I know they are. They're not. They're street-level heroes. But to be honest, yeah, that's, yeah.

But like, you think that, but right now, okay, so right now I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a little bit open with it. You might have heard me fiddling with it in the background. I'm holding the Ultimate Collection from IDW right now. This is the first seven issues and what they call the Raphael One Shot plus it's oversized, it's hardcover and it's got little tidbits from Eastman and Laird in the back of every issue, right? This has the first appearance of Casey Jones, Baxter Stockman and the Mousers.

But like, I'm gonna tell you right now, the Ninja Turtles you kind of think of even when I'm telling you they're grim gritty and black and white comic books from the 80s, like the stuff you're thinking of is really the first two issues in the One Shot in here. And then issues three through seven are like this cool space epic sci-fi thing that like lead off the back end of those first three issues that are like first three to four publicated things that are actually street level things that happen. And like one of the interesting things that, that I love about this is that like it's such a parody homage book that like they kill Shredder in the first issue.

In the very first issue you're introduced to the Ninja Turtles. Eastman and Laird founded it to be so much of a trope that like obviously the hero always defeats the villain, the veer, the villain falls into like a pit or something like that, but there's never a body recovered or anything of that sort. So by the end of the first issue Shredder has been defeated as well as the foot soldiers that join him on the roof. He throws like a thermite grenade and is knocked down with it. And they find a piece of the armor and throw it away, literally the last panel they are

throwing it behind them and looking forward. So he's kind of like assumed to be dead. OK, so let's let's bring this back to the beginning. Let's let's start to the beginning because it's been like 10 years or more since I read the first issue or any of the issues. So how does this start? Because does it start as the beginning from from what I remember? They fell into some green ooze.

It was with you. They were with a rat and that became Master Splinter. So in the film, the film takes the the weird route of saying that he was a rat sitting there and mimicking his master's movements. That's also in the book. OK, as far as what I understand, the mainstream narrative is that the turtles fell into some toxic chemical and they became these. Well, that ooze.

So that ooze is what transforms them in this. But that's where the daredevil parody really kicks in. You find out that a vat of chemicals driving down the street almost runs into an old man. A boy pushes that old man out of the way and he then has a canister knock and hit him in the face. That canister bounces down and then burst in the sewers. So is this guy that got hit in the face? Is he like a future villain?

Well, Matt Mordak's origin story is exactly that, except the like the barrels burst into his eyes or canister burst into his eyes, essentially. Like, yeah, it's so it's literally a daredevil reference that all the Ninja Turtles. Oh, so wait, I love the Daredevil story. I like the way it played out. Right. Your house is one of my favorite superheroes. Yeah, same.

So think about that, like that they literally kind of copy that origin story to give them theirs. And like, if you go through this volume of the ultimate collection, you end up reading pretty much everything that came straight up from the film in those two books. But it's all kind of spread out. It's all done differently. And it all works in both on the page and on the big screen.

So the first episode. So it's the same as like the first movie, is what you're saying? Or well, I'm sorry, not the first episode of the first issue. If you look at the film, well, that is pretty much the rooftop fight minus foot soldiers. They just do it differently. That's they do it for a 1990s independent film for kids. Yeah. Versus, you know what I mean, an independent comic book.

It is more like kind of like mature, right? It is way more like dark. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I remember. Yeah. Yeah. So what's episode two about, though? So issue two. I keep saying episodes are issues. Issues are first appearance of Baxter Stockman and April Neal.

April Neal is a scientist or computer engineer that works for him, essentially, like a software designer and he's a reporter. That's in the that's in the cartoon and in the movie. She's actually she's actually probably one of the sexiest cartoons that were created, to be honest. Her and her little red or yellow jumpsuit. Didn't she wear a yellow jumpsuit? Yeah, she did. She did.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With the red hair. Yeah, with red hair as well. I'm just like, I think I watched the card. I reference the cartoon more than the movie. Well, they parallel each other. See, that's the thing that's so brilliant about that movie, not that that's really our focus today.

But in general, like that movie is so good because it takes its original source material at its core and uses that in different blocks to create its narrative. Stuff that comes later comes first in that story. You know, the ending is the beginning where issue one Shredder dies. We'll use that for the ending where they defeat Shredder in our film. But it's the ending, you know what I mean? Like just different things like that.

Shredder does come back, obviously, right? But like it was not a thing that was supposed to happen when they originally produced this this thing. And like it was off the road success. It started with a loan from one of their uncles, and then they just kept flipping it and then turned it into, you know, the next issue, the next print. And it it bloomed out until the spot that eventually

they ended up being bought by Nickelodeon like 2010 or something like that. And that's when I started reading the IDW comic books that they then were doing. And I I still think that's one of the best turtle runs I've read, for sure. Yeah, like, I mean, it is like I remember it's really good. And like so issue two is is essentially introducing April and Neil. And and Baxter Stockman. You see the mouse is for the first time. It's it is it is one of the things that is very much glossed over.

And the same with three threes, an issue that I always forget about. Like when I picked this back up for the first time in a while, I was like, oh, yes, you three, I kind of issue three. And I don't hate it at all because it's all so good. But like there's other stuff later that I'm like, yeah, this is so much fun. I forgot about this. And then there's some stuff and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot this was in here. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, but that's that's any given comic book. Sometimes you're going to have that two issue arc in between a bigger arc. And you know what I mean? Like that. Yeah, you're not going to enjoy it as much. Sometimes it adds a little bit in more when you see that character come back in 10 issues or whatever it is. And sometimes it's just a fun little two issue romp.

And but that leads into like the more sci-fi stuff, honestly, because by the end of that, you know, you're about you're about to go into like deep space, to be honest. By end of this book, the turtles are already going into space already. Wait, seven issues in already going to space. The turtles go into space as superhero comic book. I don't read a lot of superhero comic books. So like the few comics I have went.

Right. That's part of the point. Yeah. See it as a superhero comic book. But it is a super obviously it is. That is true. That is true. I think Ninja Turtles, people have the idea of the, you know, oh, let's cowabunga, dude, let's eat some pizza. And like when you read the comics, it's like, whoa, this is not the it's it's different.

And it's kind of cool because it's more mature. And I feel like it's it's kind of a it's a different type of comic, you know. No, it very much stays grounded later on that little space romp where it's only a few issue arc that leads into like the race that Crang is in this universe is called an utrom, the little brain like people. Right. Those characters in here are kind of just a passer in the night in the story overall, because they end up leaking us to the fugitoid. And then if you know who that is, you lead on into the Triceratons,

which they were kind of featured in the show pretty regularly. There was a a villain there. Well, now you're starting to like you're ringing bells now. OK, I see what you're saying with sci-fi. Yeah. Well, and even just being able to mutate things with this weird random slime that makes animals turn into human-esque, you know, it's always been fighters. Right. It has been. It has been. Yeah. Right.

You know, like slime. There's a stuff out slime mold that's kind of cool that I don't know if you'd seen in a compost pile, but that you would see some other type of mold. So I don't know if you guys want to learn a little bit about some shit, but I can talk about it if you'd like. Mold is actually a beautiful topic because one of the characters I want to talk about later has a lot to do with mold. Mold has a lot to do with his findings and his influences.

OK, yeah, I actually I know a little bit about this flaming guy, but I'm not too familiar with him, so I can't wait to learn a month. But right now let me tell you a little bit about compost, because me myself, I'm an avid gardener. I know, Kyle, lately you've been kind of getting into it. You've been dipping your toes into it and frog, you're you garden a little bit. You know, you've done a few things if I'm not mistaken. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So so compost is, I think, probably one of, like, if you're going to garden, you have to have compost. Like you can't garden without compost in my eyes. I mean, yes, you can do the container garden and buy bags of all this potted potting soil and all that stuff. But you're not going to get the the fullest potential, like the just the stuff where you just look at this fruit or this vegetable and you're like, man, look at this.

Look at this thing that I grew from a seed. You know, it's beautiful. But anyway, so I myself, I don't compost too much. I compost some cold composting. I'm going to go over a few different types of composting today, but I do some cold composting. There's there's three different types, I guess, since it started off. There are three different main types, should I say.

There's cold composting. There's hot composting and there's vermicomposting. So cold composting is like where you essentially just throw some things on a pile and let it break down over the year or two or five or ten, whatever. And eventually you get some nice rich soil. Hot composting is where you mix things at the right proportion, at a certain proportions and you you mix it over over a certain period of time. And you get this this bacterial and essentially a bacterial.

There's some mold in there, but it's mostly bacterial growth. We've just gone crazy and it just heats up like crazy and like it'll be steamy. You can have like, you know, cold weather and it is like over over 100 degrees. It's crazy. Have you guys ever seen something like that? No, I there's nothing that I can think of that does that. Yeah, not not right off the hand for me. Yeah, sometimes they'll show like pictures of stuff like like on the news and stuff of like big here's tractors turning like piles of dirt.

It looks like but and like it's like smoke's coming off of it, you know, or something like that, like that's like big. That's massive things of hot composting. One of the craziest things I think I've ever seen was they were spraying out fields with fertilizer or whatever, right? And then they had somebody coming through and churning it and it did. It looked like what do you call like not a sandstorm necessarily, but you could you can see like brown earth, the mold and everything like that,

like kind of kicking up in the air and stuff like that. Like, is that part of it? Like that's a little different, but I see what you're saying. Like it is that's actually hot composting because they're putting hot manure on the field. Right. But hot compost like hot composting is essentially like you're trying to like promote like a specific bacteria to heat up the things that kill the bad things, but also break down stuff really quick, you know.

And then you have your your vermicomposting. So vermicomposting, which vermi means in like a Latin sense, I think means all like worms, you know, vermiculture is like the study of worms, things like that. So that's breaking down stuff with with worms of making worm castings. I've heard a lot of good things only with worms, not just with like small which is it other things like bugs? Like you essentially want the worms to be in the dirt, creating the nutrients.

I mean, versus just something that sits on top. Exactly. OK. Yes. So for me, I guess it's related to worms, especially like, well, unfortunately, parasitic ones, but it's usually like vermus, vermus from the word, the Latin word, vermus means worm. So vermicomposting means worm composting, essentially. Right. So, yeah, it's like that one I'll get into later, but it's essentially the best and like frog, you're right.

That is that's like where you get this rich, just like worm poop is like it's gold, it's gold and gardening, essentially, right? It's the best thing you can get. So we'll start with cold. This is kind of the easiest one to do and it's the laziest one to do. It's the one I do because I live in the suburbs. So cold composting is essentially where you just throw stuff together. You know, you just you just throw you got leaves, throw it out there.

You got some food scraps, throw it out there. You got you got some some old plants, throw it out there. And eventually the microbes that are naturally present in the in those plants and those scraps and everything will slowly break that down. And you'll get some worms and stuff coming up. You know, get some bugs. There's different there's different type of there's a whole like web, essentially, in composting.

So let me ask you a question right now. A lot of what I've been able to put in is coffee grounds. Is there stuff I should be expecting to have produced from coffee grounds or better from coffee grounds, more so than not? Yes, so so we'll get in this more with hot composting. But so you got your you when you compost things, you you you separate things into your greens and your browns, essentially, or your nitrogens and your your carbons.

OK, so a coffee grounds would be considered a green. That would be considered like a nitrogen base. And with coffee grounds, I mean, they're great. They're great for a compost. You have to be a little bit careful with them because they are acidic. So you want to you don't want to add like too much. You know, you don't want to be like a half or coffee grounds. That would not be good.

But yeah, they're great to add. And actually, you can go to some local your local coffee store. Some of them, you know, they they will give them away for free. You can go to ask like your Starbucks or something like that or around us. We have a big B or something like that. They might have them, they might not. But if you ask them, they might say them for you because they usually just throw away. So try to be green.

That's a good way to be green. You with co-composting, you're just you're just throwing stuff together. You're letting it break down naturally. That's just kind of how how things naturally break down, right? And it takes a while. It takes a year or maybe more. I mean, I mean, myself, I will flip it a couple of times over the year, which means like I'll take it and I'll just turn everything around and mix it all up, you know.

And with that, it will break down more or quicker, should I say. And then, you know, after I see that most of the sticks and of the plant material and the food scraps and all that broke down and it looks like more like soil than just junk, that's when I'll start using it. It's usually like once a year, I'll I'll make I'll use a pile that I made the last year. And a good way to do that is to make like three piles and or three separate spots and rotate one pile into a second spot or from the first spot to the second spot. And then start adding fresh stuff to the first spot.

And then as the second spot breaks down more, mix it a little bit. And then as it gets good, move it to the third spot. And then as the first spot, see, my mistake there was I just I started one pile when I mulched a bunch of gourds, a bunch of like pumpkins and squash and stuff like that. And then I just started to add to it over time and flip it as it went. Chop it up, add to it, chop it up, add to it. You're saying to rotate each spot into another one in a cycle over, I would say, a season. You can you can do that.

You definitely could do that. And I've kind of, but I essentially have a spot for a year. Like I have I have three spots. So, you know, one year I'll throw fresh stuff on and then all year long. And then that next year, I'll move it to a second spot. Or as that, you know, as that year is progressing, I'll mix it up. But it breaks down a little bit. But like we're in Michigan, so stuff's going to break down

through the winter and in the spring, actually, it is kind of a good time is to mix it up, you know, because I don't start using it until, you know, June, July, because that's when I'm really planning a lot of stuff. So starting March, you know, March, April, May is when I'm mixing that thing up. It's breaking down because it's warm enough. It may not be warm enough to plant plants, but it's warm enough for it to activate the biological process to happen. Exactly. Yep.

So that's what I really get it that like because that winter just kills. It just breaks down all those cells. It doesn't. I mean, it kills things, but it also it breaks down. It robs it of nutrients, I would assume, like if you freeze a burnt food. No, it doesn't. It well, it, you know, it breaks down the cells. So it breaks down all those cells that are locking in those nutrients. So as those as those cells break down, they release the nutrients

and the microbes can break them down further, which then are available to plants, which, you know, is what compost is essentially is nutrients. So and that goes to hot composting. So hot composting is that's where you kind of accelerate the process with a bacterial dominant compost. And what you do with that is you have a three to one ratio of three, three parts carbon to one part nitrogen. So so to get in this to greens and browns,

like you were asking a little bit earlier, kind of about coffee grounds earlier, Kyle. So nitrogen, you you want your NPK and and with compost, nitrogen is kind of like the thing you're looking for with with compost. Like that's essentially what is kind of the big thing. It's never a really high number, but it's kind of the dominant thing in compost. So but you have your nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Those are the three things you're looking for with compost. There's nitrogen and there's carbon.

Carbon is kind of like your bulk in a sense, but you still need that in, in, you know, in plants, plants need carbon. Carbons like the building block of life, obviously, so they need that. So so that's the bulk, you know, that's so you need three parts of that. And that would be like dead leaves or brown material, you know, even cardboard or paper or things like that. You know, you want you want like wood chips, you know, that's that's that's a carbon. And then you have your nitrogen, right?

Which would be like your leafy, like leafy things, like leaf green type material. So like dead plants, things like that. Or food scraps are that you don't want to add meat materials because that can like a pest can get after that, obviously. And other things like that. So with that, like, like you just you want a three to one ratio. So and then you have your last thing is vermicomposting. So vermicomposting is like where you have the worms involved,

where they eat the stuff and poop out fresh, good nutrients. And vermicomposting, usually you use like red wigglers. Like you're not going to see like your Canadian night crawlers with vermicomposting. They usually just be like red wigglers. So like, yeah, it's it's really cool. Like I love composting. I love gardening and like we'll talk about it more in future episodes. So I want to do a little historical recognition segment.

And this episode, I would like to give Alexander Fleming, a Scottish scientist, a little recognition, little acknowledgement. OK. So Mr. Fleming happened to be born August 1881 out of Darvelle, Scotland. He died on March. Well, he died in March 1955 at the age of 73. Heart attack and his ashes are actually at St. Paul's Cathedral. Sure, you guys have heard of that. Mr. Fleming was a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

He also won the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh. He's also a night bachelor. He was knighted by the monarch, which. You're essentially it's it's a feat, but it's basic at best. I mean, you're knighted, but you're not inducted to any of the orders of the chivalry. Yeah, it's like a metal honor, essentially, right? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's cool, but. Not glorious.

So. Mr. Fleming, his his big contribution to the world. He he one day he was leaving for holiday leave. He was he was taken off for an extended period of time. So he left some bacteria on his desk. And when he returned, there was actually a mold he found growing on the bacteria and it was killing it. Was that a penicillin or a penicillin? So it's exactly what it was, which paved the way to save millions

of lives with various antibiotics. I mean. Who knows what, you know, we'd still be. History would end up being like, yeah, we'd be dying all the time still. So with that being said, at that time, they didn't really take his discoveries very seriously, which kind of why I'd like to give him a little recognition today. He's an underrated scientist because, I mean, he's not talked about at all, very little, at the least, you know.

Yeah, like, I don't know nothing about him. Like, I mean, like, what is he like as a person? You know, like, you know, like, I mean, I know about the whole thing about leaving the thing out, like, because I am actually a microbiologist as by trade, like that's what I do as a job. So quite familiar with penicillin and all that. But what what does he is like as a man? Honestly, just from what I dug up on him,

he was just a guy trying to save the world because. I couldn't find like a whole lot of favorite pastimes of his. Like, basically, I mean, really out of high school, he he went to med school right away and he he also served on the on the medical corps in World War One. So like his whole entire life was based on medical field and helping people in fashion profession, like to the utmost degree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like almost impossible to find anything funny did other than fixing people.

With that being said, I mean, life without Fleming could have been quite a struggle, you know, some say without Fleming, the antibiotic age might not have blossomed the way it did. Penicillin might have never been discovered. You know, you just never know where we'd be at with that. So what he did for modest modern medicine is absolutely wonderful and fantastic. Yeah, I almost feel like it's it's one of those things where just the act of finding it is one thing. But have that not happened? How much less exploration into things of that nature?

Brad, you've studied in a whole field, does that field shrink exponentially or even exist if this finding doesn't happen, right? Like that is one of those weird timeline things that like much like being a comic book fan, make you think of like it could be a dystopia, right? It could be an absolute place where things like COVID were the black pig, and they happened every 20 to 24 years on different continents. Yeah, no, like seriously, we use antibiotics all the time. Like I use antibiotics specifically to to prevent bacteria growing.

So like that I wouldn't be able to do that without him. And like I, you know, that's that's a big thing. Like I'm not even in the medical field. So like the medical field is like completely different. We can go into countless different stuff about antibiotic resistance stuff and stuff like that. But like obviously we don't have time for that today, you know. But man, it's crazy to think like how big of an influence he had

on history. Well, I think what's even crazier is it was by accident. It really was. Yeah. He didn't purposely do that. He just slept. He was very disorganized. So he had multiple petri dishes laying all over his head. That's the worst thing for a microbiologist. I could identify with that. I could identify with that.

Trust me, guys. I mean, trust me, it's hard. So, I mean, completely by accident, he changed the world. Man, crazy. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to thank you for coming into our world for this episode of the Brain Soda Podcast for Brad, for Frog. Have a great day. Good night. Later. See ya.

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