How To Do Everything - Eggs and Bald Eagles

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

[Headphones recommended for this episode] Closing out the season with another episode from the archives: Mike and Ian learn how to clean the greatest ceiling in the world and help a listener decide if they should go to the gym or stay in bed.You can email your burning questions to [e-mail]. How 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 show outtakes, extended guest interviews, and a chance to play an exclusive WW+ quiz game with Peter! Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org. How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. Production from Nadia Wilson. Technical direction from Lorna White.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey folks, just a quick heads up that what you're about to hear is another archive episode of our show. Something we've pulled from the vaults and resuscitated for your enjoyment. And that enjoyment is key. So don't let the fact that this is an older episode diminish in any way the experience you're about to have. Yeah, enjoy this or we're going to have a problem. received 6.26 a.m. Thursday, March 17. Hi, this is Whitney. I was wondering if I should go to the gym or sleep for another hour. Please sleep. All right, Whitney, this is a serious problem. And it happens that Mike and I disagree about what's the right choice here. I believe that you should stay in bed.

And I believe you should get up and go to the gym. And so I think what, we're going to do here. This is only going to work if you're wearing headphones is we are actually, we're going to pan ourselves to either side as if there were an angel on one's one shoulder. And then Ian will be on the other side. Okay, so here goes. Well, first of all, Whitney, sleep is very important. And anyone who's looked into sleep research knows that the longer you sleep, the more creative you are, the healthier you are, you'll probably live longer if you stay in bed and get an extra hour of sleep. Whitney, do you like bumblebees? Everybody loves bumblebees. Does you know that bumblebees start their day when it's cold by warming up with exercise? They

don't even attempt to fly before exercising. Don't you want to fly today, Whitney? Whitney, if you get out of bed and you make your bed, you have a greater chance of getting bedbugs. Because if your bed is messy, the bedbugs have no areas to crawl into the covers. This is true. This is based on research that a made bed is more likely to get bedbugs. Wait, so Whitney, Mike is trying to convince you to stay in bed by reminding you about the existence of bedbugs, reminding you that they're very well. Maybe bugs crawling all over your body right now. And I don't know, but maybe one way to get rid of them would be to get out of the bed, go to the gym, and then take that post-gem shower, which will both feel great. You've already worked out. And you're no longer covered

with the blood-sucking insects that Mike just mentioned. Whitney, I just pulled up some information from the CDC that says that the number of emergency room visits for unintentional injuries. It's 31 million. That's how many people get hurt. This was in 2011. You will not be injured if you stay in bed another hour. I would argue that there are many possible bed-related injuries. Do you have a roof above you? She probably does. That roof could fall. Stay where you are. Think how cold it is outside right now, Whitney. Whitney, did you know that in Brazil there's a prison where the prisoners ride exercise bikes and that powers the lights, the street lights, in the next town over.

And if they agree to do this, they can reduce their prison sentence. So I think you should go to the gym to celebrate the fact you have a choice to go to the gym, just as an assertion of your personal freedom. I think if you stay in bed, Whitney, You will be able to luxuriate in that freedom and not have to experience the hardship that they inflict on prisoners riding a stationary bike

or doing really anything that people do at the gym. I will concede if the lights in your apartment are powered by prisoners down the road, you are giving them a break by staying in bed because you don't have to turn the lights on. Yeah. Whitney, I think maybe the best way to convince you to get out of bed is to remind you that in 1983,

Arnold Schwarzenegger released an album of exercise songs, which could very well be playing when you get to the gym. And it's not his own music. What he did was he took other people's songs and just counted off workout moves on top of it. I'm going to play a little bit right now as a preview for what might await you if you were to get out of bed. Six, seven, and concentrate on your chest. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and keep going, 16, 17, 18, keep pressing, keep pressing, up down, up down, up down, five more, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, and one big one, yes. One time when I lived in Philadelphia, I went for a run, and I finished up my run and I was walking,

you know, 100 yards to my car. And there was a rainbow. I could see this rainbow. And coming the other direction with her back to this rainbow was this like maybe 85-year-old woman. And I stopped her. I said, look, there's a rainbow. And she turned around and she said, I've never seen one before.

Wow. But I always think about that as like, like, why do you go? like if nothing else going to the gym right now or going for a run, you're going to run into people and weird things happen. Weird and great things happen when you run into people. So Whitney, if you want to meet a strange old lady that you have absolutely nothing in common with,

at least rainbow-wise. Get out of bed. Otherwise, it's so warm in bed. It's just so cozy right now. Don't ruin that. Stay where you are. That bed is nice. All right, I'm over here now.

All right, we have two people on the line right now, Enkita and her roommate Aditi. So, Aditi, what can we help you with? Well, we had an unfortunate incident in our house. Okay. I put eggs to boil. I do this normally. I put them to boil, and then I go upstairs,

and do all the things I have to do in the morning, and then by the time I'm done, they're ready. But this particular morning, I just had a lot in my mind, and I forgot. And then all of a sudden, we heard a big explosion. Actually, Ankieta wasn't home. The other roommate was downstairs. There was an explosion. I heard her scream.

I still forgot that they were my eggs, and I asked if she was okay. And then she told me to come downstairs, and I saw literally a million pieces of egg all over the kitchen, and I realized what I did. Oh, my. So I immediately started cleaning it up. You can't imagine how much mess two eggs can actually make. And then I left the ceiling for the end because it's the hardest to reach.

And once I got to the ceiling, it wasn't coming off at all. Okay, and this is Aditi, this was you. Yeah, it was me. I did it. Okay, and Anquita, what happened? When did you discover what had happened? Well, I got home pretty late, and then I walked into the kitchen, and it looked like a smurf had been, like, murdered on the ceiling. Wait, what?

Because the billow pads left, like, the blue marks, I assume. So there are three roommates in this house? Currently, there's four. Okay, four roommates. I have to ask, since this incident, how many times have the four of you talked about the explosion? How many times has the word explosion been said? It's been used a lot. So Ankita and Aditi, we want to help you, and we really, we think that your ceiling is great.

But I think we all have to acknowledge it is not the greatest ceiling in the world. So to help you guys out, we're going to bring in someone. someone very qualified, someone who does know the greatest ceiling in the world. Could you just introduce yourself and what you do for us? I have a name like a railroad train. The full extent is Kathleen, Wilderis, Brandt, and my friends call me Katja, as I hope you will. And in your career, one of the things you were involved with was the restoration and conservation of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Well, exactly, you know, many times in the past attempts had been made to clean the sistine ceiling, the vault of the Sistine Chapel and its walls as well, because they were getting darker and darker.

And the reason was people come to it and they bring from the outdoors with them dust and every possible particle matter that you could imagine. all body fluids and acids and everything. And because the chapel is so high, it also means that convection currents are set up so that everything that is in the air is carried up and attaches to the ceiling. And after a while, you just really couldn't see anything at all.

And you were part of this team that was restoring and conserving it the project starting in 1980. That's right. So were you up on the scaffolding actually sort of in touch with the ceiling? Those are exactly the right words. I was up on the scaffolding all the time, and I'm not a tall person. But standing on the scaffolding at the top of the vault, I extend my arm, I can put my hand against the fresco.

And it's like the skin of a beautiful animal. It's not smooth. It's bumpy. It's warm. It's dry. The figures are much bigger than we are ourselves. Well, I'm curious what surprises you found up there, things you didn't expect from that vantage point. We saw where the older and cracked open chapel had been stuffed with plaster and with straw and bunches of playing kind. cards and the sort of old lunch of the Mason who was repairing a vault. You're saying there were playing cards and someone's old lunch stuck in the ceiling of the that's right. And a dish of beans, every kind of thing, tools that had been lost and stuck in the plaster,

just as filler because part of the vaults were simply destroyed and need to be strengthened. Well, Kachia, speaking of imperfect ceilings, we're hoping you can help us with another ceiling that we've heard about. And what would that be? It belongs to these two women. It's a ceiling that has exploded egg all over it. How did that happen?

Well, one of the women, Aditi, put some eggs in a pot to boil and she forgot about it. The water evaporated and then the eggs exploded. Ladies, I have bad news. Not only is it going to smell, but it's going to smell a lot because molds and bacteria will delightedly feed upon it. Would one solution, Kachia be then, to maybe paint a beautiful fresco on top of the exploded egg and just cover it up that way?

Kind of like what Michelangelo did? well, you know, I'm not a chicken guru, but from my limited experience, I would strongly, strongly advise against it. The different materials that are in one way or another attached to each other respond in anarchic, different contradictory ways depending on uncontrollable external factors, heat, cold, wet, you know, from. Painter to poultry, the problem is the same. Hey, if you have a question for us, you can get it to us at how-to at npr.org. And we are on a brief hiatus, so we're not going to be getting to anything too quickly. So no urgent questions. But we're going to be using every waking minute of that hiatus to track down your questions

and solve them in the, honestly, the least helpful way. possible, but we will solve them. We will solve them, and it'll take a lot of time. Bennett has called in with a question. He's online with us now, and we understand he should be in class right now, but he's not. Hey, Bennett. So what grade are you in? I'm in sixth grade. Okay. Oh, what class are you guys in right now? Um, we're just, um, talking about Oedipus Rex. Oh. And you're missing that to talk to us. Yeah.

All right. Well, we won't tell you how it ends. All right. Well, what can we help you with? So I got this deaf animal eagle. Okay. And it's a bald eagle. And I was wondering if I had Peter Shagel's permission to name it Peter Shagel.

Any particular reason why you want to name it after Peter? Because he's bald. and he's also really awesome, and it's a bald eagle. So did the name come to you instantly when you got this stuffed animal bald eagle? It took a few minutes. Were there any other names that you were considering? I was thinking of something like freedom or justice or something.

Okay. Freedom or justice or Peter Sagle. Yeah. Okay, so now can you give us a few minutes? Yeah. Okay, we're going to try and... figure this out. We're going to call you back fairly soon. Okay.

Hey there, Bennett. Are you back? Yeah. All right. Thanks. Did you read any Oedipus Rex while we were gone? No. Okay. We still won't reveal the end. Okay. All right, so you had a question for us.

We're just going to let you ask Peter your question yourself. Is that going to work? Yeah. Hello, Bennett. Hi. This is Peter. Hi. How are you? Good, how are you?

I'm pretty well. I'm pretty well. I'm wondering what are those I can help you with. We haven't told Peter, I know. Anything, Bennett. I am ignorant of your needs here, Bennett. So I got a stuffed animal bald eagle. Uh-huh. And I was wondering if I had your permission to name it Peter Sagle.

Oh. Oh, you absolutely have my permission. And can you tell me why you want to name your stuffed bald eagle? um after me um because you're bald and you're awesome you know i will take that i will take that because i am bald i mean that's a fact so it really comes down to what people then say after that yeah some people say i'm bald and tiresome i'd much rather have bald and awesome so i appreciate that i will accept that honor with pride in fact if you could send me a picture of of yourself and your bald eagle i put it on my wall and say, that

bald eagle is named after me because he thinks I'm bald and awesome. Okay. I think that the right thing to do now to sort of set the name, put the name in place, would be, Peter, if we could hear your best proud,

patriotic eagle cry. That's tricky. Bennett, I, off the top of my head, do not know what eagles sound like. Can you give me an eagle to inspire me here? I don't really know either. Yeah, I mean, could you guys, I mean, so can you do a, um, an eagle sound? How do Eagles? Well, I think the problem with, with Eagles is the Eagles have a terrible sound.

It's a scream. Yeah, they're a dumb bird sound. They make dumb sounds. The sound that you hear often is a redtail hawk, right? That's a, yeah. That's what I was going to see. Ben, what does Peter Sagal the eagle sound like? It's your eagle. How does, what does he sound like? That's good. Very good. That was really good. I'm going to try it, Peter. All right, here we go. That's terrible. I'm really bad at that. Nope, that's good.

I think that's it. That's the way Peter Sagle the eagle sounds. Well, Bennett, I hope that you and your Peter Sagle are as happy as me and my Peter Sagle are. Mm-hmm. All right. that does it for this week's show. Would you learn, Ian? Well, I learned that for hundreds of years there was someone's lunch in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Do you think that's what God was reaching for? It had nothing to do with creating Adam. Yeah. Sorry, nope, not you. It's my beans. Those are

God's beans. Not yours, Adam. I also, I will say also that the Sistine Chapel, the ceiling fresco, darkened over time. And we learned that that darkness was actually us. It was centuries of people walking through there, the dust that we brought in, but also the oil from our bodies. And so I find it kind of amazing that you would have walked in and you wouldn't have just seen a somewhat dimmed creation of Adam, but you would have seen something of every person that had walked in there before you.

Every offspring of Adam. Yeah. How to Do Everything is produced by Nadia Wilson with technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is Rusty. Rusty is in charge of making sure that all of our coins are collected and counted correctly. I'm sorry for all that alliteration. Great work, Rusty. Get us your questions at how-to at npr.org.

And you can visit our website, How to Do Everything.org. I mean, my mic. Thanks.