How To Do Everything - Bear Grylls stays (disgustingly) hydrated

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

This week from the archives, all things wilderness survival. Mike and Ian take a trip to Denali National Park in Alaska to learn how to survive a bear attack. And when a listener asks how to quench thirst if they're stranded in the desert, another kind of Bear (Grylls) walks them through it. Plus, how to discover a new species with the help of some bloodsuckers.You can email your burning questions to [e-mail] To Do Everything is available without sponsor messages for supporters of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me+, who also get bonus episodes of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! featuring exclusive games, behind-the-scenes content, and more. Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org.How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. It is produced by Heena Srivastava. Technical direction from Lorna White.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. Hey there, it's Ian and Mike. You find yourself once again in one of our resuscitated episodes. This has some favorite segments in it. I want to say, at a certain point making the show, we established something called the

carry rule. The carry rule, what it does, it's there to tell you that things might get a little gross coming up. Yeah. One of our listeners, Carrie, wrote in and said, could you just at least warn me guys? Just warn me. So this show is a Carrie Rule episode, but it's, it's really fun. So, um, it's worth it. Close your eyes. Don't give up, but, but still listen. This episode begins in Alaska in Denali National Park, which is home to grizzly bears. I,

I am afraid of bears, which is a, we don't even call that a fear, it's just a logical thing to be as a human being. But while we're here, we'd like to figure out how to avoid getting mauled by a bear, and there's somebody here who's gonna help us out. So Matt, what should we call you? Well, a naturalist guide, that's my position.

Okay, let's say I'm walking through the woods and I see 20 feet away, a big grizzly. How do I survive? How do you survive? Well, see, that kinda jumps the whole spiel I would give somebody asking that question, because the first thing I would say is don't be in certain places.

If you weren't in those certain places you probably wouldn't be 20 feet from the bear that you're now in front of. Like don't walk down a stream next to soap berries when bears are eating soap berries every day of their life. Or don't walk around the site of a kill they just made. But you're right, you can't always avoid a bear. Sometimes you just kind of run into them, especially here in Denali with our open tundra. So you just want to make yourself look big. You want to make yourself seem loud and strong but not intimidating. You don't want to really stare the bear down in the eye or sound very aggressive. You just want to sound big.

Look, can you give me an example? So let's say you've come upon that situation. So you want to be making a lot of noise but you don't want to sound too intimidating. What might you sound like? Oh man. Well, really just like right into it. Hey bear, whoa. Hey bear. Hi bear.

Hello. Okay bear. Walking away. And you'd probably keep talking until you were away from that bear or it started running the other direction. Now, one thing I've heard that you definitely don't want to do is, and this I think would be my first impulse, is to turn and run. Yeah, that's probably the worst thing you could do besides throwing rocks at a cub. The bears in Denali, you know, they're omnivores, they eat meat, but they mostly eat fruits and plants.

And they aren't actively hunting except when certain triggers are kind of catching their attention. And one of those triggers is something running away from it. So if that's you running away from the bear, you're instantly pulling on, you know, well-ingrained instinctual triggers in its behavior to give chase, to investigate.

For other kinds of bears, I mean, you go to the one extreme, polar bears will actively hunt people. Period. You need to carry guns around polar bears. So where an old mantra is, when attacked by a grizzly, curl up into a ball, act dead, so that the female thinks she's done her work and she leaves. If a black bear starts chewing on you, you got to start punching it in the face. Or it's gonna keep chewing on you. If anything is ever chewing on you, it's probably a good idea to start punching it in the face. Bears, anything. People, lions, really anything chewing.

Let me ask you this. I went out on a couple hikes and I carried one of those walking sticks. And I thought, I had the thought, like, well if anything comes at me, I've got a weapon. I could just poke it. What do you think my chances are? Well, you'd piss it off. No I mean you can't outrun them you can't outfight them you can't do anything but out knowledge them is that a good phrase? Yeah that works. I mean bears have been known to pull doors off cars to get to picnics you know so they're not gonna

have a problem. Depending on your stick. Yeah. Now I feel them. Yeah. You look good with the walking stick now. Thanks. This is how to do everything. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. On today's show, how to find new species. But first, we got a question from Lear. Lear wants to know, if I'm stuck in the desert, how do I get water from a cactus? Joining us now is the intrepid explorer, the great Bear Grylls. Hi, Bear.

Bear, can this be done? Yeah, totally can be done. And yeah, there's so many stories of cactus saving people's lives, but it's not as easy as you think. It's not like in the cowboy movies where you can just rock up and drink from this cactus. They don't have a lot of fluids in them and as you know they're covered in thorns and that holds a little bit of danger to it as well so you need to be careful. But I've learned the easiest way is if it's like a barrel cactus or a prickly pear or

something it's just to get a stick, get your knife, cut it down, burn all the thorns off, put it on your fire, and then once the thorns are off, you can peel that prickly pear and squeeze the juice out of it. Or if it's a barrel of cactus, you can cut the head off the top of it and then take out all that flesh in the middle and squeeze that. But, so yeah, there you go. It can save your life. And when you squeeze it and the water comes out, is it just water? Is it cactus juice? Is it cactus juice? Yeah, no, it's not water. It's the kind of drinkable, fleshy, juicy flesh of it, really.

What's it taste like? It's kind of not particularly nice, but when you're thirsty, anything kind of wet like that is liquid gold. So when you're lost in the desert, are there any other sources for water that maybe we would take for granted? Well, you know, the big battle in the desert is all about water. You know, I've been in deserts where they say, you know, if you don't have water and don't have any survival skills, you're going to be dead in three hours, you know. So don't underestimate water in the desert. It's all about that. And it's about being smart, knowing where to look and looking for patches of green that might be plants growing with some underground aquifers there, finding

dry river beds and following those and looking for the outside bends of those where often water will collect deep under the sand if you dig down a few feet. If you're well hydrated you can drink your own pee. If you're really dehydrated and there's brown pee it's not going to help you but if you're well hydrated you and there's brown pee, it's not gonna help you, but if you're well hydrated, you don't wanna waste it. And I've had to do that quite a few times as well. You know, you can use your pee to pee on a t-shirt, wrap it around your head and keep you cool.

So yeah, it's just about, it's like all the survivors about ingenuity and being resourceful and thinking about left field sometimes. All right, so when you have to drink your pee, when that's your only option? Every interview I do, it always comes back to pee drinking. I'm amazed it took 30 seconds. We're trying to be polite.

So it wasn't about the cactus, was it? It was about getting around to the pee. But when you have to do it, how do you do it? Well, it's like all difficult things. When you got to do it, the best way of doing it is just packing these things head on and just getting on with it. Don't try and dress it up in any way. But urine is never going to taste very nice.

But there are lots of stories where it saves people. I mean, I've done it where one of the worst times was I remember killing and eating a snake in the desert and I kept the skin afterwards and I thought I can use that as like an improvised water bottle and I peed in the skin, tied both ends, wrapped around my neck. We were in this desert salt pan and then a day later I was drinking from it. But that was particularly bad because it mixed with all the snake intestinal juices and that was kind of a pretty bad sort of heated cocktail of pee in it.

But normally if it's straight and fresh it's still pretty bad. Yeah, yuck. What happens to me whenever I go to a bar everyone comes up and goes, oh Bear Grylls do you want a pint of urine? And I'm thinking oh thanks. Wow, so wait if you had a prickly pear cactus and you had some pee which would you drink first? I'd probably drink the pee and then the frecky pear afterwards because that could take the

taste away. Oh, that's smart. Yeah, yeah. That cactus chased her. The thing is, you know, again, fluids in the desert, if you've got some fluids, you don't want to be drinking it all at once because you're better off taking lots of little sips and stuff, so it kind of prolonging the agony, isn't it? Yeah Is there anything you don't know how to do there? I'm pretty bad in cities

I get run run almost run over on a daily basis here, you know Well, let's let's offer you this opportunity then we are a how-to show Do you have any questions that we could help you with any how-to questions? Yeah, I do So you allowed to turn right at the stoplight when it's red? Yes, you are. In general, I think you can, right on red. Okay, no wonder they keep honking me from behind.

I mean, look both ways. We don't wanna lose you this way, but yeah, you're not gonna get pulled over for it. Okay, okay. Well, that's helpful to know, thank you. There you go, we've served each other well today. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna go drink pee. You're gonna get a $30 ticket for going right on red. You got the rum end of that deal. I would like to jump in about the interview we just heard. I have moved to New York City

since Mike and I recorded that right on red, you can't do it here. So check local traffic laws before turning right on red. Really, you can't turn right on red? No, they don't like it. My father-in-law got a ticket. If you have any questions and you'd like us to answer them, you can email us at howtoatnpr.org. Maybe think of a question that results in you drinking a delicious liquid intended for human

consumption. Yeah, not something self-produced. Once again, that email address is howtoatnpr.org. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wyse app today or visit wyse.com, tease and seize apply. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the

club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Election Day is over. While we're starting to get some answers, there are still some things we're finding out. Make sure you're in the know by checking in with us on the NPR News Now podcast. In just five minutes, every hour, we'll give you quick election updates with the latest results. We're the NPR News Now podcast. Stay with us. Researchers who are looking into the biodiversity of species around the Earth need to be able

to find species and see where they are. But how do you do that when the species don't want to be found? Yeah, they're hiding. Tom Gilbert of the Natural History Museum of Denmark is on the line now. Now, Tom, your team figured out a new way to find species. How'd you come up with this? Originally it was just a crazy idea. We just thought, well, in fact, my colleague,

Mads Bertelsen, who's a vet at the Copenhagen Zoo, he was out at his field site, and I think while suffering the attack of numerous leeches, the idea clicked in his head. He was like, you know, I wonder how long the DNA stays inside these guys. I mean, they're everywhere. They come for you.

They're easy to collect. So he had the idea. We then sort of put it into motion and with him, we tested out a method and it was surprisingly good. So the idea is the leeches are everywhere and you get the leeches who have sucked the blood out of these animals you're looking for and you can then get that same blood out of the leeches and determine if they're out there. and you can then get that same blood out of the leeches and determine if they're out there? Yeah, that's right. I mean, basically anybody in forests with terrestrial leeches,

which is very much Southeast Asia, Madagascar, South America, no matter what you're doing out there, you tend to get attacked by leeches. In different times of year, it can be better or worse. The wet season's obviously the worst. I mean, I've done field work in Borneo, for example, and the amount of times I've had to pull and engorged leech off somewhere unpleasant, like inside your armpit or on your neck or inside your groin, is crazy. So the leeches pick up the

blood of the animal they're fed on. What we found that's particularly surprising is that even months later, the DNA, the blood and the DNA is still inside the leech. They basically seem to kind of engorge, they fill up with blood, and then they slowly use that through time. It's kind of like a camel's hump. It's an ongoing larder. Now that means that pretty much any leech you encounter, and normally you encounter them because they're trying to eat you, has got DNA from the blood from its last meal. And given they're so easy to get, because they just come to you and they fancy to get them, and given that they're easy to get because they just come to you and fancy to get them I'm all you do then is extract DNA inside them

look at what kind of DNA it is and bingo you've got your match on what animals in the area so that's such a unique method of tracking something because all you have to do then is just go sit out in a swamp and wait for the leeches to attack you and then take them back to the lab. That's right it doesn have to be a swamp some leeches are terrestrial leeches they basically live in the forest other ones live in the water on the swamps but that's right that's all you're doing and i think really the beauty of the method is it doesn't require any training to

collect them you can have villages in the area and you just say you know do you guys mind wandering around there and collect whatever tries to eat you so you know once they're collected you store them and then you ship them back to a lab like ours and then, pingo, we see what's in there. So, Tom, have you guys, when looking at these leeches, have you ever come upon any DNA that you couldn't identify or that was surprising?

Yeah, that's, well, surprising, yes, definitely, because in our initial screen of these 25 leeches, we found 22 of them gave us mammal DNA and 21 of them were animals we could identify and what was surprising was that two of the species are extremely rare. There's a kind of rabbit called the Anomite Striped Rabbit and there was a new kind of muntjac and they've both only been described to science in the last 10 years. So and they've also you know with 2,000 nights of camera trapping in the region they've never been seen.. That was a big surprise that we found these. It wasn't just cows and pigs and things. It was really interesting animals.

The 22nd sequence, this was particularly interesting because we got the sequence and we looked at it and we were like, okay, well, it's kind of like a cat, but it's not a cat. It didn't match anything in the databases of cat sequences. It was about a 90% match and we still don't know what that is. We kind of didn't have time to investigate it further in the study, but it could be one of two things. It could either be some kind of cat which is known but hasn't been sequenced yet, or it could be some kind of new forest cat that we just, you know, hasn't been discovered yet. So has this changed the way you feel about leeches? Yeah, I actually feel bad that we're killing them.

I mean, I used to be a researcher in the forest and they used to come on me and I would, you know, find one on my neck and scream and throw it off and everything. And then when we got into this and at first it was like great revenge, you know, get these things and sacrifice them to science. But actually, the more I read about them, they're actually quite remarkable animals, right? The fact that they can find you and they can track you through heat and carbon dioxide and the fact they can live for so long. Actually I've started to feel a bit bad for the leeches because I'm really

getting quite affectionate of them. So we're in this kind of situation where, well, you know, when they die it's for a good cause, but I do kind of like the critters now. I mean, you said affectionate. Would you consider a pet leech now? You know, we have a couple of pet leeches already. You've really gone to the other side on leeches here, Tom. Yeah, I just have to take them out very often, and if I do I make sure I cover myself and have to take first. But we have a few. All right. Well, Tom, thank you so much.

My pleasure. Glad to help. Well, that does it for this week's show. What did you learn, Ian? I learned that you really can, if you are thirsty enough in the desert, you can drink your own pee. That is, it's great to know. It's right. It's reassuring. I think it's, you know, I love a seltzer. I like a cocktail from time to time. I never drink anything where I look at it and I'm forced to question, how much do I want to live? a question, how much do I want to live? Because I think like staring at a snake full of pee, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it? Or is maybe has my time come? That's the kind of situation where you go to a bar, you go to a restaurant, and they're like,

well, just so you know, we do things a little differently here. That I feel like, okay, yep, you're right. That is different. Is there even a coaster where I can set down this pee snake? You just hear the rattle of the snake with the, oh, I think our drinks are coming. How to Do Everything is produced by Hina Shrivastava. Technical Direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is Chas Antonelli.

Chas, thank you for all of the technical support. I want you to know our finest people are on it. If you have any questions, you can send them to us at howto at npr.org. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Who's claiming power this election? What's happening in battleground states?

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