Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Rats!

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/writer Josh Gondelman (new stand-up special 'People Pleaser') for a look at why rats are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. (Alex's podcast hosting service requires a minimum of 5 characters per episode title, so that's why this episode's title has 1 exclamation point)

Rats, known for being rodents, famous for being chefs. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why rats are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guest today is Josh Gondelman. I know, very exciting. Josh Gondelman. Josh is a wonderful writer. You might have seen his work as head writer of the show Desus and Mero on Showtime, or as a writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, or in The New Yorker. I'm going to link

a couple favorites there of mine, especially one about meeting up in New York City. On top of that, Josh is an author. His latest book is entitled Nice Try Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results. And then, hey, Josh Gondelman is a standup comedian, multiple great specials out. His latest and greatest is entitled People Pleaser. And it's a really, really funny hour. You can see it in here at lots of places. I'll have links for that at sifpod.fun. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that Josh and I each recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about rats,

an incredible animal in cities and in almost everywhere else. Also, this episode is a special patron pick. Rats have been a frequent suggestion in the polls at SifPod.fun. Extra thanks to Sarah Stella for being a listener who's championing those and rooting for those in the polls. And then what happened is a few weeks ago, I did a live episode of this podcast at a great venue in New York. It's called Caveat. The live episode that we did, it's an entire Sif episode about raccoons. And, you know, after the show, I got to meet a bunch of you and I met a bunch of you before too. And that was maybe the best part, just an absolute total treat to get to know you, to get to talk to you, to put names to faces

or faces to names, however that works. Anyway, thank you all so much for making that so joyful. And one of the folks who came and attended the show is Sarah. Got to meet Sarah. We also talked about how raccoons as a topic, pretty aligned with rats, especially the city angle that we ended up taking on it in the live show. Also, by the way, do check the links at SifPod.fun if you want to see that raccoons live episode, because we recorded it. It's available video on demand. You can check it out. You can just go ahead. There's links and explanation there. In the meantime, thank you so much to Sarah Stella and everybody else who got excited about to there were a lot of people, but thank you for pushing for a rats episode. It's happening now.

Please sit back or keep walking through a city that probably features the topic. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with my wonderful guest, Josh Gondelman. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Josh Gondelman, it is so good to have you on the show. Thank you for being here. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it.

So I'd love to know how you feel about rats. So as a New York City resident, I have, I would say, intimate relationship with rats is maybe too much. But I have a familiar relationship with rats. That too much but i have a familiar relationship with rats that makes it sound a little less sensual um good stuff yeah i i think about them a lot because during the kind of deep period of isolation during the pandemic the rats kind of lost a bunch of their regular places to go because there was less like restaurant trash and industrial trash so they were just around in regular trash bags more than usual and so once the sun went down you could hear my wife Maris described like 9 30 to 10 30 as quote the hour when the rats scream and they were just like so much more of a neighborhood presence than they'd

ever been. And it's, it's abated for sure. But it was like, really, I had a real, like I would walk my dog and be like, we got to watch out.

This is a bad neighborhood. Cause there were like rats that were straight up looking for a fight. It seemed like. Congratulations on weathering the hour when the rats scream. Thank you. Yeah. We moved here like August 2021. So most experiences I think are post the rat adjustment to this new situation.

I did not go through that. Wow. It was really weird. It was like, yeah, it was like 2020 into like when people were mostly vaccinated. And then I think when stuff kind of loosened up, the rats were like, all right, back to normal. But it was like, you know, there was the COVID-19 pandemic and then the rat scream pandemic as well. Could you tell how your dog felt about the sound of the rat screaming? Because I don't have a dog, but as I understand it, they don't love weird sounds like fireworks and stuff.

Our dog is pretty sound agnostic unless it signifies something she knows is an enemy to her. She's never had a problem with fireworks or storms, but there's a dog that kind of careens up the stairs of our building. And you can hear this dog like kind of bang against our doorway. Like it runs up this. It's the only dog I've ever heard that sounds like it's running up the stairs the way you would fall downstairs. Like there's just like smash.

And and that sets her hair on end a little bit. But the rats didn't seem to bug her unless she could see them visually. And then there was a little bit like, what's that? Do I chase it? And she's like an old she's an elderly pug. So when she wants to chase something, it's like it's ceremonial more than anything. OK, like it's like one lunch and like nah you kids have fun it's like what an old admiral is back on a boat like i could do the sales as we know

yeah they don't she's not pulling the rigging or she's someone's doing it for her and she's sitting in a coat covered with medallions and uh with new york being such a source of rad experiences i'm also curious if you had any prior because i'm i'm from the chicago suburbs and really didn't see them like we'd have like raccoons chipmunk squirrels and then in my first la neighborhood we had a bunch of skunks but this is really my rat city. This is the rat city, isn't it? That sounds like what a Batman villain made of rats would say, like the rat king. This is the rat city, Batman.

You're just a rat of the sky. And then Bruce Wayne is like, I am just a sky rat. That's what a bat is. But I didn't have a ton of it. We had, I think I lived in Alston, Massachusetts and we, for a while in like a big house full of like guys who hadn't figured it out yet. And there were some mice and then, but there wasn't like the rat culture in New York is just like, you're going to see rats.

They'll be on the subway tracks just wandering around. They somehow have this confidence to cross the subway tracks and hang out. And you rarely see it turn out badly for them. They're just very much like, we got this. We know how this works. Like a better sense of the train schedule than I have. But before that, yeah, there were occasional mice in my life and then i grew up in the in the boston suburbs and alston i should say is like a borough of boston essentially and so

it's within the city yeah and um and that's where i would see some mice and like an occasional outdoor rat like scurry across uh you know like a cement front lawn area. But in New York, it's just like, oh, yeah, you will see rats all the time, and that's part of it. Yeah, especially that subway tunnel comfort, you would think. Just the noise of a subway train going over you would be bothersome. But they know. They seem very at ease. It's fine.

Yeah. This is almost meditative for us. It's a white noise machine for us. We're very relaxed by it it's just how we was raised well uh there's a bunch of stuff here about rats and thank you so much for joining me for it and thank you for having me oh yeah and and on every episode our first fascinating thing about the topic it's a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics and this week that's in a segment called uh and folks imagine

a lot of electric guitar and then stats stats stats the numbers for this beast statistics feel this podcast released that ruled thank you yeah i think that was very metal metal, and it put me in the right frame of mind for some rat stats, baby. This name was submitted by Paul Jarvanen. Thank you, Paul. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com.

And this week, it's a very loaded stats and numbers section this week. Okay. Also, Josh was doing some heavy metal hands, and I really appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the first number here is a ratio. The ratio is more than one to one. And that's the approximate ratio of rats in the world to humans. We think there are more rats globally.

Okay. Which is fine. Right, it's fine not a judgment no judgment there i do i like that ratio because i don't think there shouldn't be rats i'm not like uh eliminate them but i do i do like if we had to like fight them one to one, we could take the rats. I agree. Yeah. In a fight. Yeah.

I feel like each listener to like each of you is prepared to handle your like assigned rat when the time comes. Yeah. And hand to pod comment, right? This is, you just listeners know that this might be coming and just brace yourself to have to fight one rat.

And I think you killed. Yeah. And I think you killed it. Yeah. And with all rat population estimates, it's very loose. Like, I was checking sources for, like, how many in New York City and got everything from hundreds of thousands to, like, millions and millions. It's all too hard to count. It's hard to tell also if you've seen one twice, you know. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They don't reply to the census in any kind of, like, organized manner. There's another rat with a little sash at, like, the clipboard. Oh, yeah, yeah, coming knocking on the door. Just a few questions. This ratio is from back in 2011. This was NPR doing coverage of a human population milestone, because in October 2011, the United Nations said we reached 7 billion humans. And now we're approaching eight, so it's grown fast. But NPR was like, okay, if we know how many humans,

how many of everything else? And experts told them there are definitely more bacteria and viruses than humans more insects in most species a lot of like ocean species there's more of them but as far as like land animals with that are vertebrates that are more than us there actually aren't that many one of them is chickens because we've just farmed so extensively yeah that's kind of sad yeah they estimated over 18 billion at the time which is way more than 7 billion humans yeah harder fight i wonder how i wonder if the rats are closing in on 8 billion by now yeah i wonder if it's been a better decade plus for humans or rats in terms of just numbers raw numbers not in terms of like health and happiness i feel like the rats are holding steady in terms of like we've had a pretty up

and down last few years and i feel like the rats you know other than the stress of needing to find new garbage as we talked about before yeah i don't i don't think that they felt that as hard i don't think they were like wow donald Trump really showed the fragility of democracy. Yeah. They've had the exact lack of social media before and after, you know? Yeah. It's just been the same life. Every rat is an inbox zero from birth till death.

They do a lot of deep work,'t they the rats it's a lot of people know that term focused they're present yeah present in the moment i that's me that's what i wanted to be just rat style that's my new aspiration just at my desk with cheese really taking it in yeah yeah that's i'm gonna write a self-help book that's called like make every year the year of the rat or whatever and like maybe something less of a of a culture that i do not belong to but you know just something about uh like rats all folks maybe that could do it and just like talk about how you should live like a rat i really appreciate that vibe that feels good yeah yeah and yeah and then with other species there might be more mice than us we're not sure and then they think that there are probably more

rats but also probably not a lot more so like there's closer neck and neck yeah and we we do have a higher biomass if people want to know biomass there's at the time 350 million tons of humans and that's way more weight than the population of rats would that's part of why i thought that we could take them in a fight just the weight class is not close. If it was professional boxing, you wouldn't be allowed to fight a rat by a long shot. They would be like, it's immoral. It's unethical.

Just a lot of really confusing weigh-in photos. They're way below the frame. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be a real wide-angle shot. Yeah. him you know yeah yeah yeah you would be like real wide angle shot yeah yeah and uh and also like the biggest reason they are almost tracking our population is they're very comfortable living with us like they can they can live in nature they can be outside of human society but the next number here is more than 4 000 and more And more than 4,000 is the number of different things found in the stomach of one rat. Whoa. More than 4,000 things that the scientists who were looking at it

said, okay, this is this, this is that. It ate all of these different things. Wow. What's the range of like what kinds of things? They don't say. It's just, it's the Smithsonian National Zoo. They have like a whole page about the brown rat species, like it's an elephant or something. And then just one of the fun factoids on the side is more than 4,000 things. And they didn't tell me what. That's, I have so many follow-up questions. And you're not the guy to go to with them. I have so many follow-up questions and you're not the guy to go to with them, but some of them include, uh,

how long do these things stay in the rat stomach? What are the things like, what's the range of things? Um, is that normal for a rat or is this rat like, uh, the Guinness world record setter? or is this rat like the Guinness World Records setter? This 4,000 things in the stomach of a rat is like the worst first draft of Seasons of Love from Rent. It's like, how do you measure a year? 4,000 things in the stomach of a rat?

Shut up. Shut up. Stop singing. Don't sing any more ideas. Like, they meet with them. They're like, we're going to raise your rent. We need you to leave. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We agree with the landlord about you specifically. Get out. Specifically you. Yeah, you've got to go. Like, even if everybody else were going to strike some kind of deal, you've got to leave. You've been doing some weird rat autopsies you're gross stomach of rats get out get out you're being evicted for that we took we took a video which is much harder we had to have a guy walking around with a camcorder for the entire 90s

couldn't just turn a phone around right Which is much harder. We had to have a guy walking around with a camcorder for the entire 90s. Couldn't just turn a phone around. Right. And the rats are like, what's a smartphone? I'm so zen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rats are so chill. They're just like, hey man, put down that camera, Mark. Live in the moment.

Now I'm just picturing the word rat in the rent font of like the almost magazine clipping ransom. I, I'm going to, I'm going to jump to a number that's sort of relevant to that. The next number is 500 cases of wine. And 500 cases of wine is how much wine Disney Pixar planned to sell as a promotion for Ratatouille when it came out in theaters. They were like, the LA Times covered this.

It fell apart. It didn't become a thing. But in July 2007, Disney Pixar made a deal with Costco to sell Ratatouille Chardonnay. It was a 2004 French Chardonnay, and then the label had Remy the Rat on it. And according to the LA Times, it all got scrapped because there's like existing advertising rules that bar wine bottle labels from having stuff that could attract kids, such cartoon characters obviously that's the first google search yeah that's when you said like a ratatouille wine i was like there's no way you can't have a

pg movie with a wine die in yeah that's like having um that's like having up right and then it's like call your doctor about a recreational morphine drip like you can't do that hey he's an old guy who needs palliative care i don't like this this is a bad idea whoever had that idea this is like the four thousand this is four thousand things in the stomach of a rat song guy which is not a good not a good plan following number here because like ratatouille was a big hit anyway but the following number here is a date it's january 1st of 2021 okay and new year's day 2021 is the date of the one night only performance of a live stream of a ratatouille musical. That I remember, yes. Yeah. Do you watch TikTok for fun? Because we were watching it in 2020,

and we saw the run-up. I remember, I see TikToks when they surface other places. Right on, yeah. I'm not a big, this is another little digression, I'm not a big short video watcher. It just doesn't, when I'm i'm scrolling i'm like let me look at a thing let me read a thing like i'll read with a caption but sometimes i'll like look at a tiktok trend and be like i don't get this and then i'll hear one with the song and i'll be like

oh now i understand what everybody's doing but i like i'm like sound off listen to a podcast or to my own music and so at tiktok as an, I feel like I would only be getting like 70% enjoyment out of it, Max. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, you're really, all of your senses have to be paying attention to it. Big time. Yeah. And then like in 2020, there was just this groundswell of a bunch of different users of TikTok saying like Ratatouille would be a good musical. That would just fully, that should be a Broadway musical.

Let's do it. And then people were like making songs. They were making like diagrams of sets. They were making posters. Oh, I didn't realize it got that deep. I just remember the little song snippets and stuff. There was, I saw one person did one where they did, it was a sample voiceover for a radio ad for selling tickets for the Broadway musical that did not exist. It was not a thing.

That's amazing. So, like, when I say I'm not, like, a big TikTok watcher, it's not because I think it's, like, not inventive or ingenious. It just, like, isn't the way I consume entertainment. do think like what a what a fun way to employ this technology and distribution mechanism to like to make ads for a fake musical that doesn't exist like that that to me i love yeah especially because people can like kind of remix or pull each other's things so they can build you know and like they were doing different vocal parts and harmonies and it was great yeah that's so fun yeah that is really nice that's so much better like if anyone who was like so chardonnay that we sell at costco if somebody what about like a crowdsourced musical that's so much better yeah and like unless disney is

super super smart which they could be this seems to just happened. Like they didn't push it or come up with it. And then there was enough enthusiasm that there hasn't been an ongoing musical, but like New Year's Day 2021, there was a one night only musical starring Titus Burgess, Wayne Brady, Ashley Park, and Adam Lambert for charity. Like they streamed it and- That's a good cast.

Very appealing rats and good cast. And yeah, just really good. I like that. I think this is the lighter side of rats. So far, I feel like I'm really coming around on enjoying rats. Even like, you know, I was slight negative coming in, but now maybe slight positive. I like the range of,

because I also found just various articles about like here's a list of every rat villain and culture and it's like a humongous slideshow like it goes on and on and then ratatouille is like one of the most beloved movies and they're friends they're great that is great and the the next number here this is a little of the flip the next number is the number 2000 not the year okay 2000 is the number of the flip. The next number is the number 2000, not the year. Okay. 2000 is the number of live rats that were specifically bred and trained for the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The third Indiana Jones, the one with the grails.

Yeah. They bred 2000 rats for one scene of the movie. Wow. And were they all in that scene or some of them understudies like backup rats because i feel like they're like there's gonna be some attrition we're gonna have some melt with this number of 2000 maybe maybe you have extras for that thing where like one extra in the group is clearly trying to get on camera the most yeah yeah you gotta get that guy out of there. He's spiking the lens.

He's looking directly at the lens. We can't have that rat. It's unnerving. We can't have a rat breaking the fourth wall. Just like, you might be wondering how I got here. Yeah, that's me. Oh, I see the picture you sent of Indiana Jones, of Harrison Ford cuddling with a rat. Yeah, and I'll have this link for people and this movie.

And as a tip from listener Sarah Stella. Thank you, Sarah. There's one scene of the movie where Indiana Jones and the soon to be villain Elsa, they're underneath the city of Venice. They're like going through catacomb tunnel kind of stuff. And there's such a huge pile of live rats. It's like an obstacle. They can't walk through it.

And movie productions that are live, they don't use wild rats because of the disease and they're not trained. Of course. And so according to producer Robert Watts, they bred a family of 2,000 rats to be in that scene and do it. Wow. I bred a family of 2,000 rats.

I guess that's what it is when you breed them all, right? You're like, this is a family. Um, pretty much. That is, that is a lot. I wonder, like I've done some weird stuff,

you know, I've worked adjacent to production where with production where it's like, okay, we need this weird thing on set at this specific time. And it's like, you have to think about like, okay, we need 2000 rats on this day. When it's like you have to think about like okay we need 2 000

rats on this day when do we need the rats to start um fornicating um when do we need the rat reproductive process to start how long is the gestation when will the little rats grow into big rats and that's such that's now a production question it's like okay where do we put the rats um the where do we put the rats and while this is happening is there something we do to induce it like you know how with pandas that you have to like yeah seduce you have to like mutually seduce the pandas because they don't want to mate i feel like with rats and i hope this isn't too adult content for this podcast we're just you know just trying to be National Geographic about it. But I wonder if the rats are just like, oh, let's go.

Or if you've got to play some mood music, put down some rose petals or whatever. Rappers from a McDonald's Big Mac. We'll touch on it later, but the short answer is they love it. They're down. They're very ready. But I hope somebody on the crew acted like it's hard and got paid a. They're very ready. That's nice. But I hope somebody on the crew acted like it's hard and got paid a lot of money and got a lot of resources.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And was like, oh, boy. I'm up to my neck trying to get these rats to make love. It's been a week. But what are those noises from in the rat room? Don't worry about it. don't worry about it that's them difficult that's them being like uh maybe tomorrow not tonight i've got a big day tomorrow um but that's that's so interesting right because you you need to like budget that time into the

film production and then you gotta raise the baby rats right like yeah i looked at the clip it mostly looked like adults and stuff like if production got delayed or sped up that's a whole issue you have the rat member of the crew being like um excuse me no no rats are too young and they're like gross are you the same guy from the other thing because this is gross got to get out of here. But yeah, that's that's so funny. Right. Or they're late. They're like, the rats are elderly.

You can't get them in a dangerous looking pile anymore. They just want to nap and watch Wheel of Fortune. When the last number here, there's another date. The number is Februarybruary 11th of 2032 okay so in the future february 11th the rat future of course when they rule the world yeah uh with where it's like there's there's going to be real rats and there's going to be rat plecants that are cyborgs. Blade Ratter. Yeah, sure.

Blade Ratter. Yes, of course. February 11th, 2032. Yeah, that is, that's Chinese New Year that year. And it's the start date of the next year of the rat. The previous one was 2020. And so that's a little ways out. We got some time to wait. Yeah. For me that's a little ways out. We got some time to wait. Yeah. For me to start working on this book.

That's right. If we're going to launch during the year of the rat, of a rat philosophy. Oh, you got lots of time. Yeah, that's great. I got a decade. This is going to be my opus. It's going to be like 1,200 pages long. Just weird fragments and metaverses.

For the first time, you're super frustrated at your book agent. Like, Josh, we've done books before. They were five. I don't know why this is hard. I need more time. Isn't this a self-help book about being like a rat? An idea I already told you not to write. Yes, it's that.

But it's so much more.'s about everything can't you see and the and the year they're at in the chinese zodiac it's like surprisingly significant tell me more for for one thing just in general there's a lot of positive beliefs about people born under the rat sign in particular about high intelligence, creativity, adaptability. It fits narratively with rats, like the good things about rats. They're very flexible. Yeah. And then there's also, there's like a sort of legend about their place in the order because they're first in the Zodiac of the 12 animals. And I didn't know there was an order,

but it turns out they're considered first, and it's because the way the story goes, there was a mythic jade emperor who made the different zodiac animals run a race to see who would be what order. Yeah. And there was a huge river they had to cross. The rat convinced the ox to let the rat ride on its head.

Very rat-like behavior. And then as soon as they got across, it just ran to the finish and won. Very rat-like behavior. This checks out. Yeah. This checks out. Yeah, it's some rat stuff, yeah. There's a lot of myths, or, you know, a lot of folklore about, like, a thing crossing a river on another thing.

Yeah, huh. There's, like, the scorpion and the frog right that's one the gingerbread the gingerbread man is like a there's like a river crossing that one doesn't it i thought the ginger yeah you're probably right i don't know much gingerbread man's part of it you don't know but yeah it's so interesting that that's such a prominent feature and it's usually a trick right yeah like somebody fools somebody and it's like let's tell the story forever it's fun yeah yeah and it's so now if somebody wants my help crossing a river no dice that's a long-held belief i have i'm'm not going to help anybody. You get across yourself, I'll meet you on the other side, then we'll link up. And then there's one other interesting thing, and this seems to be more of a niche belief. I don't know if everybody thinks this, but there's a very well-established thing with

the Chinese Zodiac where there's 12 animals and then also they rotate through five classical elements. I didn't know that. It's wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. So each Chinese New Year, it's not only an animal, but it's specifically one of the five elements. Like 2032 will be a water element rat specifically. Okay.

And I couldn't find amazing sourcing, but the Philippine edition of Esquire magazine has an article about a perceived curse for one element of the rat year. They think that the metal rat specifically, which with, you know, it's 12 times five. These are the specific ones are only once every 60 years. Right.

But they think each 60 years, the year of the metal rat comes and it's bad oh interesting and you said 2020 was a metal rat it was yeah uh so like uh people said it was a pretty cool year all things considered i thought 2020 was pretty sick nothing bad happened especially because like chinese new year starts like sort of january 2020 and that's really that was really like a difficult series of things in there all at once you know like covid and chaos you know we keep full camp right and then previously before 2020 there was a metal rat in 1960 which was a major rice famine in china. And before 1960 was 1900. That was the

main year of what Europeans call the Boxer Rebellion, which resulted in eight countries allying to invade China and do imperialist stuff there. And then before 1900 was 1840, which was a key year in Britain's first opium war, where they tried to impose the opium trade on China. And that's as far as the article went. But there's this belief about one super specific rat year on the zodiac. I'm glad that it's not all rat years. Yeah. Because I don't think it would be good for the rat's reputation.

And it's just too often to have real bad stuff happening. Yeah. And shout out to people born in years of the rat. I had no idea it was such a big deal until researching it specifically. I forget what year. I think I was ox. Oh, nice. That's the next one after rat.

You just missed rat. Oh, OK. All right. Great, great, great. I was ox. So I was tricked by the rat. And that's how we came in second in the race. But I was looking it up

this is like a real bleak moment for me there's like an infographic that the year it's like a concentric circles and the years are listed inside them like in ascending order as it goes outward. And the year I was born was the oldest rat year listed. And then it's like, before that, you're just going to have to use subtraction. I was like, Oh boy. Okay. I see what this means for me. I mean, we can tell listeners you are 100 years old, right? 100 years old yeah cool yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean that's that's fair i'm not i'm not bashful about my age i think you know i work in entertainment but i think it's important to be honest i'll post a selfie with no makeup i'll reveal that i'm 100 years old i just want to fight the stigma hashtag no filter hashtag then people are like he is keeping it 100 he's like no i'm

100 i'm keeping 100 to like turn 101 that's what i'm keeping it keeping 100 hopefully for only 365 days they don't keep 101 for a little while all right off of that we're going to a short break followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, beyond those stats and numbers, there's a couple main takeaways for the main episode. So let's get into them, starting with takeaway number one. There is one main kind of world rat, and it's misnamed in two ways. Okay. main kind of world rat and it's misnamed in two ways okay it turns out there's there's like dozens of rodent species but there is one main rat species called the brown rat that has pretty

much taken over the world especially in north america and europe that like that's usually the rat you're gonna that's the rat you're looking at yeah okay how is it misnamed yeah and the the one way is it's not always brown so okay sure the other way is that not a rat it's a tiny horse little bitty horse long tail like they're doing the zodiac race and it's like it looks like the rat one and it takes off a mask and it's the horse i'm also in the chinese zodiac tiny horse it's like, it looks like the rat won and it takes off a mask and it's the horse. I'm also in the Chinese Zodiac. Teeny tiny horse. We can't have year of the teeny. We're still going to say rat.

You were dressed like a rat. Can't be year of the teeny tiny horse. We already got a horse. Regular sized horse. And the other way it's misnamed is the scientific name is Radus Norvegicus okay which is referring to it being from norway the other common name for it is the norway rat oh and that's not accurate they're not from norway that's a mistake too how did that one come about and the main source here is a great book it's called rats observation on the history and habitat of the city's most unwanted inhabitants

that's by writer robert sullivan and then also counting on the smithson of the city's most unwanted inhabitants. That's by writer Robert Sullivan, and then also counting on the Smithsonian here. But the Norway rat, so-called, according to my sources, it's a rat species that originated in Asia. And they don't know exactly where or when, but by around 2,000 years ago, it was living in forests in modern China. It was a colder weather forest animal. Okay. And then apparently they pretty much stayed there and lived on human food and other stuff they could find.

Yep. All the way until the early 1700s. And then they, through international trade, rapidly spread across the whole world. Like, just they would eat stores on ships and they would just go, go, go. And they reproduced like crazy, so they got everywhere. everywhere right easy to come up with 2 000 of them just for indiana jones yeah it's it's a piece of cake even though that guy doesn't want you to know he wants to get paid he doesn't want you to know he wants you to think he's so special hey they why do they call you the rat whisperer i'm the only one who knows their secrets all right enough

you got didn't you are you the guy that got evicted from the rent building you're the only one they kicked out yes yes yes i am okay right right don't sing stop singing i see the problem um okay so they spread and then people kind of re-found them in Norway, or that's when they were categorized by whoever does this taxonomy? Pretty much, yeah. This name, Norway Rats, comes from the English. It was a naturalist named John Birkenhout. And his understanding was that they had come to England from Norway because that might have been the last stop before they reached England. Got it. And, but they're not Norwegian.

So he just didn't, didn't report this out all the way. Yeah. He's like, this boat came from Norway. No further questions. That's where the rat originated. Got that's i respect that laziness who cares where the rat's from yeah yeah oh i'm sorry it's from italy you want it to be called the italian rat who cares i guess that is very detail-oriented to be like what places have you been here's a map okay do you recognize this what about this yeah yeah yeah yeah show the rat does this yeah click doing a little like ratcha where it's like put your paw on all the things that are from that you recognize from childhood oh a really big wall that's not that seems right to me um wow, the Great Wall of Norway.

They know it. Cool. But that's so interesting that both of the scientific and the common name are misnomers. Yeah, because the other thing, and probably better known to people, but I never would have thought the rats I see day to day are specifically called the brown rat because they can just as often be gray most most laboratory rats are this species and they have white fur and then pretty much all pet rats are this species and i'm gonna link there's the american fancy rat and mouse association the afrma they do the equivalent of dog shows and cat shows for rats and mice and interesting their their online list of their judging standards recognizes 40 different color markings for rats

like in different categories to compete in known as the brown rat mostly yeah they're like this the site explicitly says like these are all the same species got it from varieties yeah they're all brown rats i can see how you would see a bunch of brown rats and be like that's one kind of rat and then find out later like oh all the other colors of rats that's the same guy yeah but that's so interesting what do you know roughly what the ratio of brown rats to other is? Oh, I don't. It's not a slim margin, though. It's not like 51% brown rats, 49% other rats. It's like predominantly by a landslide.

Yeah, apparently starting in the 1700s, brown rats spread across the world and pushed out or wiped out other populations of rats except right around the tropics and the equator. Interesting. So there's another main species called the black rat. Okay. And I guess it's just like a sub-interesting thing.

Like, if you were in, like, Dutch Manhattan, you would have seen black rats. And it took until the 1770s or so for brown rats to come and push them out. So it changed over. The book I read did a fun thing where they were like right at the start of the american revolution which is very uh cute to me i guess it's a little silly funny it's very um american tale an immigrant story yeah yeah so there's still like a lot of there's substantial populations of black rats. Got it. And apparently also even on like the U.S. West Coast, in

particular Los Angeles, like you'll find black rats in the trash and other places where they can eat human stuff. Oh, huh. But for the most part, and like in most countries this podcast is popular, you're dealing with just brown rats no matter how they look. And they're not from Norwayway it's made up they're not from norway which is a fact i didn't even know

until today and then i learned it and then immediately had to be like but that's wrong people think that but it's wrong don't don't let that take hold cut yeah don't just learn the first half where it's called the Norwegian rat and then just stop remembering, remember the part that that's wrong. Yeah. And it's fun. Like I,

I was reading a book about birds in New York city, just what lives here, trying to find out things about the city, but like a lot of the scientific names of those also come from basically errors in one naturalist thinking the bird was from a place sure sure it's just where they saw it tracking technology back then not as good as it is now it was mostly little parcel of string based i think yeah you're just like oh hey there's the string again then this is my Stringanona, is back or whatever.

Where have you been? Covered in salsa. This must have been from Central America. You're like, I don't know. I think someone just spilled salsa on your bird, man. I'm very hung up on Stringanona. I want to read that book. Thank you.

That's an Italian bird. It's a little bird, big pot of pasta. Yeah, yeah. Well, and there's just one other takeaway for the main episode here, and it's focused on the brown rat. Here we go into takeaway number two. Brown rat bodies are even more astounding than people think. I believe that.

Yeah. I had heard a few things about them being able to squeeze through doors and stuff, and there's more going on. Like that and more. Yeah. What else they got? With the squeezing, it turns out, I thought they could just get into small spaces. Robert Sullivan's book, he cites people who studied basically exactly how

tight they can get. And he says an adult rat can fit through a hole that is three quarters of an inch wide. So they can go full like toothpaste mode. Yes. That's eerie. That's too malleable. that's too malleable that's at that point you're bordering on being a ghost and for for metric folks that's slightly over 1.9 centimeters but three quarters of an inch wide like that yeah and that limit is dictated by the width of an adult rat's skull. Sure. You can't adjust your skull bones all that much. All of the rest of the bones in the body. I love toothpaste mode. That's correct. Like, that's exactly what they do.

That's what it is? Or are you just like... Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That is so flexible that it makes me squirm. It's pretty weird. Yeah.

And good for them, but weird yeah uh and good for them but weird yeah good good for sure if there's one thing that i want people to take away from my perspective on rats it's good for them let them have it you gotta hand it to them but that is like you it doesn't feel like that shit like a whole rat you would look at that and be like i can see that that's a hole that something could get through but certainly not a whole rat absolutely yeah like a a bug sure great yeah even a big bug yeah even a very big bug but but not an adult rat but yeah yeah that's incredible and then the next thing here is is probably the most actually negative thing about rats for our human perspective which is disease vector they are like

actually carriers of disease you know a pet rat is fine because it's been kept away from it sure like i guess i should have said at the top don't hang out with rats on the street they actually carry a bunch of diseases um this will be for the we'll see who's really listening you know people turn this off halfway through they're getting various plagues and poxes it's like oh you've been hanging out with too many rats because you didn't listen to the end that's on you their doctor is like show me your podcast application i need to see that this is your fault. Show me the timestamp where your commute ended or where you drifted off to sleep.

Or where you stopped working out. And yeah, I think rats are most famous for allegedly and kind of probably carrying plague to Europe starting in the 1300s AD, like the Black Death. Sure. And oddly, there's actually new studies suggesting that, you know, they are capable of carrying it and they might have played a role, but they're probably not the main thing. It was probably mostly lice and fleas. Sure. Biting infected people and also pack animals. So they might not have been the main thing.

so they might not have been the main thing if it was mostly rats just thinking about like how much people would have had to have been hanging out with rats back then like good point yeah there's not like all these oil paintings of just people in the town squares like throwing rats back and forth or like you know what i mean j. Like, sitting on a chair made of rats. All those Dutch paintings of five guys with big collars, and then there's rats, too. Like, also merchants, you know? Just like a still life that's just a bowl of rats. It's just, yeah, for it to be mostly rats, it's like, who weirdos that are that are making that human rat crossover because even if there was there was more permeability of boundaries back that you know things weren't weren't as sanitary it's still like i don't think most people were like rats

let's good morning rats and then just kissing every rat on the street just like a gorgeous day right bell and the beauty of the beast town just like good morning rat good morning baker good morning rat at the baker's like they're like hey i know you think that we think you're weird because of the books it's the rat kissing for sure that is so above and beyond the reading we all have books that's why you know the rats are weird right when then like beyond the plague thing because they can't carry it but they're known carriers of like pretty much every other disease you can think of apparently hantavirus leptospirosis lymphocytic

choreomeningitis i'm saying names i don't really understand but i've read these in sources uh tularemia salmonella like they they are doesn't sound good to some extent so full of disease it's kind of impressive they're fine you know like they're personally okay right that they're just they're just kicking yeah and they're just like oh you have paleothrombosis and the rat's like i don't know what that means but best of luck to you person yeah and like the spookiest thing i could find about this is that in robert sullivan's book he talks about a cases of public health scientists yeah it's it's probably a rat that's died but like examining a feral rat for disease and finding new viruses that had never been recorded in medical literature like they're that full of disease don't touch them hang out with them and your pet is fine separately yeah

that's that's so much disease that's were those some of the 4 000 things in a rat's stomach oh just like a big bite of salmonella. Right, it's like three 999 diseases in one candy bar. Like, that's what we found. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They like candy. We found our herpes molecule the size of a marble in this rat's stomach. And the next part of the body beyond the disease is the tail it turns out rat tails are amazing oh they have a lot going on and the the

this is new scientist is the source here the first thing is balance they help with balance which is lots of animal tails do that yeah but also like rat tales are famously not furry and that's part of people's revulsion to them i think is the bear like skin yeah you know it's like a like a long slender finger yeah that's pretty much accurate yeah and the and that vibe is coming from the tail being incredibly useful for what's called thermoregulation. Cause like, just like humans, rat can release, rats can release heat through their skin and the tail,

no fur, it's easier to release heat. And apparently also they can adjust the blood flow to their own tails to control how much or little heat they're releasing, which is amazing. That is amazing. I wonder now, does that regulate unconsciously or do you heat they're releasing which is amazing that is amazing i wonder now does that regulate unconsciously or do you think they're like blood to the tail just like thinking about it really hard like cool me down tail it it seems like the first thing but i really wish

yeah like i when i was young a rat tail was a hairstyle that, you know, and, uh, and those were, I think people also find them, found them sometimes unnerving, uh, even though they were very furry. I really didn't find anything wildly interesting about it, but I read this, thought about the rat tail hairstyle, and proceeded to think about Star Wars The Phantom Menace. Oh, yeah. That's just like a hairstyle in space in that movie. It's very interesting. It's interesting any time you see people's imagining of like the future the past space what elements from earth that they

decide to to bestow upon them like i always think like whenever something's in the past right it's like a vaguely british accent for some reason but like why not french or you know i understand why you wouldn't do like a have a bunch of white actors do like a japanese accent that would be super inappropriate but like why not greek you know why is it always british right like british is equally random sure right exactly so they could all talk like triumph the insult comic talk and it would be yeah the same right right those are those are not the droids i'm looking for to poop on when the and the last and it's part of their body but the last rat body thing to talk about is reproduction they are amazing at reproduction like even compared to other animals. And it turns out that male and female rats can each have sex up to 20 times per day.

Wow. And then apparently they've measured this with the feral ones. And there was a particularly dominant male rat that had 20 partners within a six hour period, which is a lot, a lot of work. That's the scientist who kept track of that certified freak, medical board certified freak, at least six hours a week. We know that. MTCF, medical doctor certified freak.

It's just written on the check. That's, I, you know, I don't even think i would go to a fertility specialist to list their certified freak and then the and then the other part of the reproduction is that a female rat only needs three weeks to like gestate have babies so now this brings us back to Indiana Jones. You could even figure out the timeline it would take for all this. And depending on how many you start with, not long. It would very easily fit into your pre-production process. Yeah.

Three weeks gestation. And then when they have babies, they have a litter of usually eight to 10 rats. And the female apparently can also get pregnant again immediately. Like no, no pods, just boom.

Um, that's yeah. That sounds anatomically strenuous. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, I guess it's our human centric perspective,

but still, I don't want to come on. That's true. Like, forget it. No. Right. To be like, I gave birth to a litter of eight to ten babies.

Let's get right back at it. Yeah. And then, because the last, last number here, apparently people have run the numbers on how extensive this can be. And within one year, one pair of rats could theoretically produce a large enough family tree to have 15,000 descendants. Whoa. One pair of rats, one year, 15,000 resulting rats. I feel like so many parents are hearing this now and going like, and we don't have one grandchild human parents folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks thanks to Josh Gondelman for not just helping make it a New York show, but make it a Broadway show, baby. We really tripped the life fantastic. I liked it.

Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the unique rat situation in Alberta, Canada. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost nine dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. By the way, if you become a patron, not only do you get that bonus show, you get a huge discount on the video on demand for the entire live episode about raccoons. Some of you were there, some of you also streamed it live, but many more of you, I know, have not seen it. And I think you would really enjoy. It's a live episode of the podcast

about raccoons with special guests, Kath Barbadoro, David Roth, and Martin Urbano. It does cost money to see it because the money funds the tech and the gear and the staff that recorded it, right? Like it's just they need to get paid something to do that labor and they do. And again, patrons get a big discount. I'm going to repost the discount code at cifpod.fun just for patrons so you guys can enjoy that. Also, I do hope you become a patron because then among other things, you get the secrets of Alberta, Canada's rat situation. In the meantime, thank you for exploring rats with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways.

Takeaway number one, there is one main kind of world rat, and it's misnamed in two ways. Takeaway number two, brown rat bodies are even more astounding than people think. And I feel like this one's the latest in a string of recent episodes with huge stats and numbers sections. It's a really big one this week and past weeks, too. This week, the numbers and stats include basically entire takeaways about the rat population, the Chinese zodiac, the role of rats in cinema and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest. He's great. Josh Gondelman has a new and fantastic stand-up comedy special. It's from Comedy Dynamics.

The title is People Pleaser. If you would please consider purchasing it, that, you know, funds more specials. The whole thing works. And then I'm going to have lots more links to other highlights from Josh Gondelman. In particular, his book, Nice Try, Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results. Just a really wonderful comedian, writer, everything else. I'm really grateful to him for making the time and being here. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. There's a great book that underpinned a lot of this. It's titled Rats, Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants. And that's by writer Robert Sullivan, who's a New Yorker contributor and from New York. The cover is like Manhattan, but with a rat as the shape. It's a really fun cover, but mainly book. I read what was inside the cover too. Also used a really handy rundown of brown rat biology and behaviors from the Smithsonian National Zoo and lots more online resources from the Atlantic, National Geographic, NPR, the CBC. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun.

And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more

secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.