How To Do Everything - Signs of Winter, Mystery Smells, and Blimps At Night

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

This week from the archives:  Mike and Ian search for signs of winter, and Peter test-smells a mystery scent from a professional flavor chemist. Plus a Goodyear blimp pilot reveals more than you’d ever think to ask about blimps including where they go to sleep at night.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 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. This episode was produced by Gillian Donovan. Technical direction from Lorna White.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. Hey, take a break from the 24-hour news cycle with us and listen to long-form interviews with your favorite authors, actors, filmmakers, comedians, and musicians, the people making the art that nourishes us and speaks to our times. So listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and W-H-Y-Y. Hey there, it's Ian and Mike. I just want to let you know.

This is a show from our archives. That means it happened in the past, in some cases the distant past. But we believe it's still relevant now that we are in the future, the distant future. Winter is just around the corner. And one thing that always sticks with us around here is the Groundhog Day when New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was holding Staten Island Chuck, New York's version of Punksitani Phil. Good old Staten Island check. And dropped it. So what do you do when you want a folksy way to tell how bad winter's going to be

without endangering any groundhogs? Online with us now is Peter Geiger of the Farmer's Almanac. So, Peter, are there some other ways we could forecast the winner? Oh, absolutely. I think the most popular one is the woolly bear caterpillar. If there's a narrow orange band in the middle of the Willie Bear Caterpillar warns of heavy snow, and if it's fat and fuzzy, the caterpillar means bitter cold weather. So that one everybody can find, and it has to do with the orange band in the middle of the caterpillar.

But that's something that people follow. I get a lot of questions about acorns. How many acorns are dropping? How fast are dropping? How fast the squirrels are scurrying around. If there's a lot of activity and that it's earlier the usual, then it means a long winter, If there are numerous fogs during the month of August, it means a rough winter. Oh, no.

The woodpecker is sharing a tree, thicker than normal corn husks, early departure of yeast and ducks. Wait, you said woodpeckers sharing a tree? I guess they don't like to share a tree in normal times. So if they're pecking the same tree? If they are, you know something bad's going to happen after that. A couple of others are spiders spinning larger than usual webs or entering the house in great numbers is another side of a hard winter. Insects marching a bee line. rather than meandering around is another one.

And the early seclusion of bees within the hive is also yet another one. So there's... Well, wait, what insects march in any line other than ants? I would be going to answer the question as ants. I don't know what they're going to march. But if you see other insects marching in a line, then you know you're in big trouble. Yeah.

I mean, a lot of these things that you mentioned, like, you know, spiders coming inside, the caterpillar, you know, growing a fuzzier band. They all seem like maybe responses to cold. They kind of make sense. Well, but they also occur before the winter occurs. So you have to figure years ago people had to observe. I mean, you didn't have radio and television, everybody else telling them what was the winter it could be like.

So you had to observe what was going around. And I think that's how all of these traditions came about. And so it does take the power of observation, but also paying attention to it year after year as well. Well, this has been great. Thanks for talking about it, Peter. Hey, thank you so much. You know, we should go out and test some of these. We should see if we can find some signs of winter.

So we're going to head out into the wilderness, into the forest. You'll know we're there when we start speaking in hushed tones. Maybe some animal sounds. Hushed animal sounds. You know, it's hard to convey. There's not a lot of sound that we're going to get from caterpillars or, acorns. Maybe just to make clear

the scene, we should get our footsteps. Yeah, okay. I'm not seeing a lot of caterpillars. I do see a spider. Where? Right down there. Okay, it's on the move.

It hasn't spun a web yet. You get the sense if it were with other insects, they'd be in a line. Actually, I think that If you look at it, that spider is headed towards my house. If he goes in my house, that means it's a long winter. How far away are you from where we are right now? Where's your house?

Four miles. Oh, there's a bee. Anything about bees? Hey, Jillian, was there anything about bees that we learned? Seeing a bee is not good because a sign of a hard winter. Oh, it is good. A sign of a hard winter is a bee secluding within a hive early. So if we just saw a bee, that means it's going to be a good winter.

What's the say about grasshoppers? There's a lot of grasshoppers here. Nothing about grasshoppers, unless it's a cricket on a half. Sorry? If there's a cricket on a half, unusually early. I don't know what you're saying. A cricket, like a little jumpy guy. That I get, yeah, what's the next part?

On a half. Like by a fireplace? That's. A half. So if we can find a naturally occurring fireplace somewhere here in the wilderness with a cricket on it, that's a good sign. That's a bad sign.

Oh, it's a bad sign. Oh, look! It's a caterpillar. Is that... I don't know if that's the caterpillar we're looking for. Wait, if it is... If that's a woolly bear caterpillar, it's only the orange stripe.

I think that means that it's going to be a horrible, horrible winter. Yeah, the orange striper. has extended to cover the whole body. Hang on, though. Quote, fat and fuzzy caterpillars, presage, bitter cold. And he's a chubby guy.

A lot of fuzz. Oh, I think I just saw his face. Yeah. Oh, no. I think that was his butt. Yeah, it was his butt. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Ian.

And I'm Mike. On today's show, we're going to tell you where blimps go at night. But first, Ken, what can we help you with? Well, I had a question about bubble gum. I met a friend at a get-together a few years ago, had somebody over that they knew from Northern Italy that was visiting, and I just pulled out a pack-up gum, you know, bubble gum flavor, paint the package,

and I was getting a piece and offered it around, and he just kind of looked at it. Not knowing what it was, and I just said it's bubblegum, and he's like, okay, what does it taste like? And I was completely stumped, and that just became like the, you know, almost like the party game. You know, I tried to describe what bubblegum tastes like. Yeah. Yeah, it's just its own thing. It tastes like gum.

Yeah, it's not exactly minty. It's not fruity. It's kind of sweet, but, yeah, if you encounter some of it. that's never had it before, you know, when we were at a loss. So what we can do for you is try and determine, try and articulate what that flavor is. Yeah, that would be great. You know, I think we've got somebody who can help Ken. Ken Chu is the vice president of research and development, and he's a flavor chemist at Gold Coast, Inc.

Ken, can you articulate what bubblegum flavor is? Oh, the bubblegum flavor, usury, that basically is strawberry, something. time buy apple, plus the lemon, orange, and lime, some root beer type of note, and then cinnamon, and then clove. And that's what the bubble gum is all about. Wow. So if I were to take all of those fruits, the clove and cinnamon and a dash of root beer, and, you know, mash them up, mix it in a bowl, and I took a spoonful of that, that would taste like bubble gum? Yes. No. Well, of course, you know, all those organic chemicals, depending on the percentage of each ingredients in the formula. So, in your work, will a client sort of bring you a flavor and say, we want something like this?

You mean, like, for example, they pick up something like, for example, just pop-tat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they give us the pop-tad and then say that I want exactly. how that tastes. Okay. So we would analyze it, taste it, smell it.

Experience flavor cameras, it could easily identify 70 to 80% of the flavor profile in their products already. Wow. Are you ever surprised by how

a disgusting flavor can contribute to a delicious flavor? Yes. Yes. I'm glad you asked this question. One of the ripe nook, when you try to make a ripe flavor, expressory fruit flavor, you have to add dimethyl sulfide in it.

Okay. Diomethal sulfide itself. Can I just use the work of fart? Sure. You can. Okay. It's smell like that. So if I, say when we get off the phone here, if I get a ripe mango and I'm thinking about this and concentrating it on it and I take a bite of it, I will be like, oh, there is some fart in there.

Yes, yes. So you being so well trained, you can probably pick that out right away. Yes, but then you could too. I don't want to. Now I tell you, and as a matter of it, I create a flat, a fire. flavor for my neighbor's grandkid and take it to school for show and tell. Oh, my. He said, what is their flavor?

I said, fart flavor. He was jumping for joy. He tried to open it. I said, no, don't open it. And I said, you take it to school, you will have fun. So he did. And I understand that for the last two months after he showed and tell, he put that fat flavor under his spiro,

and nobody can take it away from him. He'd probably be a favorite camera when he grew up. Well, Ken, this has been so much fun. Thanks for talking to us about what you do. Oh, no problem, sir. I'm going to go on Amazon and order some dimethyl sulfide right now. You could order it. If you like to, I can send you some.

Yes. Okay, we're going to fast forward a little bit here. We've just received the package from Ken Chu containing the bottle of fart smell. It doesn't look like it's too delicately wrapped, but in that box is a fart. All right, I'm going to open it up. You know, if you've ever wondered, is there anything more boring than a YouTube unboxing video? And there is. It's podcast unboxing audio.

I don't smell, I don't, I don't smell anything yet. Okay, so wait, what's in there? So you open the box, you've gotten in. Okay, so you have packing peanuts, and then inside the packing peanuts, it looks like it's bubble-wrapped. What's inside the bubble? Okay, there's a little brown bottle. It looks like, like an old, you know, like an old apothecary would have. It's a brown glass bottle, and there's a label on it that says fart flavor.

Oh, my gosh. So let's cover the label with something, and then let's get our official taste tester, Peter Sagal, in the room, and let's have him open it up and smell it. Yeah. What are you doing in here? Oh, the other one's being used. Yeah. Hey, thanks for coming in.

Sure. Is I put it on my headphones? If you want. Okay. So a couple of minutes ago on the podcast, we were talking to this flavor technician about bubblegum and what makes up that flavor. And in the course of that conversation, he brought up another flavor that he makes. And we asked him to send us a bottle. And we just wanted to...

The other flavor. The other flavor. I know what your thing. You want to try and guess what it is, but don't. We haven't opened it yet. No. So what we want to give you the honor. of opening it and smelling it for the first time.

Okay. You ready? Oh, more than you know. Okay. So this is just a little brown laboratory bottle. The label has been carefully blanked out. Yeah. So there's no clue here.

And while it is, this is a flavor, technically, in that bottle. We just want you to smell it. Don't drink. Don't drink it. Don't. Ooh, very pungent. Very reminiscent of something. Wait a minute.

it's not awful it's not it doesn't make me want to gag it smells like something I know okay I don't want to eat it is it say that well can I maybe nothing about this that's making me hungry

as a as a production thing because we want to get a can you move close to the mic and do a really good sniff so we can get that smell but get it close up yeah ah I have that weird feeling

you know when there's like some word that you know you should know and you can't remember it. Like, I can't remember the name of the guy who started in the Evil Dead movies. I said, I know it. I've known it for years. Bruce Campbell.

But I can't think of it right now. Is it a smell that you smell a lot? Do you think? It is a familiar smell. This is like, oh, I've smelled that before. But it's like not something I like. It's not a warm and happy feeling. It's a fart.

That's a fart smell? Fart in a bottle. No, really? Yeah. Here, give another whiff. Now I'm, you see, now I, I, I've no one, nothing to do with it. That is, really?

Smell it again. Okay. I mean, I'm now a little nauseous. Yeah. It is nauseated. I've just like, that's why you really, your lungs are filled with that. This may be the very worst thing, now that I think of it,

now that I completely encapsulate what you've done to me, the very worst thing you've ever done to me. Peter, thanks. Oh, thank you. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, Greg, what can we help you with? Yeah, so I have a question about blimp. Every time I see a blimp, I always wonder how it got there. I mean, obviously, I understand the flies there, but if you see a blimp, like, if you see a blimp, like, I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and we'll see a blimp over the football stadium. And I always wonder where it came from. There are blimps everywhere. where do they go? I've never seen a blimp at an airport. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, you see planes on the ground all the time, but I've never, I've never seen a blimp on the ground.

No. I mean, it's possible they come from space. They're from the space station, but it's not a... I've not ruled that out yet. How long have you been wondering about this? Oh, years. Absolutely years. Well, and I travel for work, and I always look for blimped at airport. You figure that an airport is probably where a blimp would go, and I've never seen a blimp at an airport. These are questions that I hadn't even thought to contemplate. We're going to look into this, Greg.

That would be great. We should call a blimp pilot, someone who flies blimps. Derek Reed is online with us now. He flies the Goodyear blimp. Probably the best blimp there is. Derek, are you flying a blimp right now? No, not currently. I just landed about 30 minutes ago.

Oh, wow. Really? Yeah, yeah, it was a beautiful day out here in Akron, and now we're doing some pilot training. So, Derek, you heard Greg's question. He doesn't really know where blimps come from, and we don't really know either. Well, a lot of the airships come from airports, and, you know, it does stay there, but it only stays there really at night. once it's in the air, we travel and we'll take it anywhere from 12 to 14, 20 hours in the air. So that explains why, you know, you see planes on the ground, but you never really see blimps there because they're only there at night.

Yeah, they're only there at night, and then, you know, there's really only about 12 blimps in the world. So, you know, though you may see them often, it may not be as often as you may think, Because, I mean, there's only so many places we can fly with 12 of them. There's only 12 in the whole world. Yeah, there's only 12 in the world, and there's only 34 blimp pilots in the world. What? Wow. And you're one of those guys.

I am one of the few, yeah. I feel very lucky to be where I'm at. It's so interesting because, you know, we've heard about how competitive it is to be a fighter pilot, you know, top gun and all that. But there's far fewer of you guys than there are of, I guess, almost any other kind of pilot. Yeah, yeah. We are the select, very, very select few. It's about 0.001% of the pilots have lighter than airship licenses. We actually, we kind of brag a little bit, and we say that there are more astronauts than there are blimp pilots.

Wow. Yeah. So if Greg wants to see maybe a blimp on the ground, he should just go to the airport at night after he spotted the blimp during the day. Yeah, that would be one of the best times to do it. You know, we do fly at night, but the chances of seeing it at the airport, especially the specific airports that that airship is planning on landing at, are much higher at night. And this may be a dumb question. Are they ever deflated? No. Once an airship is inflated, it stays inflated for the entire duration of its life, especially the Goodyear blimp. So we actually just decommissioned the Spirit of Goodyear, which is based in Akron, Ohio, and we deflated it in Florida, in one of our hangers.

And that was the only time that it was ever deflated. And it's actually holds a Guinness World Record of the longest operating airship in the world. How far, what distance can you travel in a blimp? Well, the book answer, without any winds, you can fly about 600 miles. Okay. Now, you have to take wins into consideration. We're a gigantic sail. So if you have a headwind, I've actually gotten to the point to where the airship is going

backwards. You know, it's pretty bad when people are walking past the airship. Now, there's always the moment at a football game. game or whatever where the camera on the ground points up and shows us the good year blimp. Do they tell you this is happening and you have to kind of turn the blimp toward the camera? Yeah, what happens generally is the director will let us know that, hey, we're about to do what we call a lookup. And a lookup is where the camera zooms into the good year blimp.

So the director will tell us out about five minutes beforehand and they will tell us, hey, we want you to be pointing in this direction when we ask for it. And so it's really my job to make sure that we're in the correct position at the correct time. Wow. Do you ever blow it? No, never. I'm not good. No. No, I don't particularly remember a time that I blew it, but I'm sure I have in the past. Yeah. What's the most surprising thing you've spotted on the ground from up there?

in the blimp. One of the funniest things I think I have ever seen was a bird flying into the Goodyear Blimp, and it bounced right off, kind of like a trampoline. It was one of the funniest funniest things I've seen. It was, it was hilarious. Well, this has been great. Thanks, Derek. Absolutely. Any time. Thank you, guys. Okay, so we just got off the film with Derek talking about blimps. and out in the hallway is Robert Plant Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin I'm pretty sure that's a band about blimps

We are going to see if he has an answer for where blimps go at night Wait, hold on there he goes, we gotta go Okay, he's getting in the elevator All right, I'm going to go in. Just two minutes, just... It's pretty dumb. No, sir.

It's dumb, no. Sorry. I don't know. They're from M.P.R. and they want to ask you a couple of dumb questions. So, I don't know. Sorry. You already look dumb.

Tweedle dumb. We're doing a piece about blimps, and someone asked us a question about it. And we thought, oh my God, it's Robert Plant. Maybe we could ask you one question. I can't remember. All right. You guys have a good day. All the best.

If you couldn't make out what just happened, we're in the elevator with Robert Plant, Legend of Rock, and he said we looked dumb. He looked at us and said we looked dumb. And then he looked me in the eye and said, tweedledum. And then I don't know if he looked me in the eye because I had my head down. This is the greatest moment in my life. That does it for this week's show. What we learned today, Mike? I learned that if you want to know how bad the winter is going to be, you just go outside.

You just take in the natural world around you and there you'll find signs. I feel like watching local news would be a lot more fun if this is actually what the weathermen used. If instead of some guy in front of a map, it was just some guy in a suit just covered in bugs. Yeah, caterpillars, bees, he's got crickets all over his fireplace. Just full of welts. I'm sorry, according to this infestation, it's going to be a horrible winter. This studio is crawling with spiders. It's time to get a scarf.

How to Do Everything is produced by Jillian Donovan with technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is Kelsey Hardison, who is also made of cinnamon, clove, and root beer. Our artisan residence is Justin Morrow. witty. You can get us your questions at how to at npr.org. Our website, how to do everything.org. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thank you.