Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Turkeys

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why turkeys are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Turkeys, known for being birds, famous for being meats and two types. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why turkeys 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 because I'm joined by my cohost, Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of turkeys?

Gobble gobble, gobble gobble, gobble gobble, gobble gobble. I, this is Katie, not a turkey. I know my turkey impression was really, it was really good, right? Like I do a very good turkey impression. Gobble gobble, gobble gobble, gobble gobble, gobble gobble. I thought it was a turkey. It was really good, right? Like I do have a very good turkey impression. Gobble, gobble. It's too good.

I like turkeys, so I think they are really interesting animals because they've been so they're so affiliated or associated with Thanksgiving. Of course we do eat them. Let's just get that out of the way, right? We eat them folks, that happens. We do eat the, we do eat the turkeys. Wild turkeys are really interesting. I think they're very beautiful.

Like the kinds of turkeys we eat do not, I mean, I'm sure we're probably gonna talk about all this. They don't really resemble as much the wild turkeys that you see right roaming the American Wilderness and suburbs, but you know Yeah I think it's it is just really cool because I like I like birds and I especially like birds that remind me that birds are the last living family of dinosaurs, which is fun last living family of dinosaurs, which is fun.

Yes, I agree with all that. And also I should disclose how much I like eating turkey. I think I eat more turkey than most Americans. We would do Schmidt family Thanksgiving and only me and my dad were excited about turkey as a food, it's my main sandwich meat, all of the types, deli meat, dark meat, white meat with gravy, it's all great. Let me ask your sandwich meat, all of the types, deli meat, dark meat, white meat with gravy. It's all great. Let me ask your sandwich preferences, Alex.

So like, what kind of turkey do you get? Like, do you have like a turkey sandwich pretty much weekly? Yes, I'm a big deli counter person. I get like a turkey and a cheese, often a provolone. That's the right answer. This was a test and you passed it. So, yeah, I can't... I really...

The show could continue. That's good, yeah. I really can't deal with packaged turkey. When I look in there and I see it kind of moist and jiggly and a little slimy, and then I open that up and then I get that sort of like, of like turkey smell right from the the package I cannot deal with that that that is too much for me so it's gotta it's gotta be fresh sliced from a local deli or not at all. Yeah I feel the same like I am actually fine with the package but it's just not nearly as good to me you know. Yeah. Why settle? I'm a poultry fiend I

love it. And so I have many opinions on this. And many thanks to Dacoupe Bear, also you, Agent, for suggesting this, supporting this on the Discord. I think it's a pretty US Thanksgiving-driven suggestion. Also shout out to our Canadian friends who celebrated Thanksgiving last month. But either way, we're going to talk about the bird and the food all at once. This is a great show.

Yeah. I mean, I think that it is, you know, it might sound contradictory, right, to appreciate the animal, but also not like want to maybe sometimes eat that animal. I personally think that it is important to know where our food comes from, to respect them and to also encourage sort of better practices in terms of what we eat and how we treat our farmed animals. We can appreciate the food, but also want to appreciate and respect the animal. I feel the same. And also with bison.

Everybody knows I love bison and I eat bison when it's offered to me. For all those things, the bird, the food, everything, we're leading with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called... Oh come ye fans of Cif pod stats, let not bad facts dismay. Dear us, say stats straight to your face to start the pod today. So perk your ears and listen clear these digits that we say. Oh tidings of stats we enjoy, stats we enjoy, oh tidings of stats we enjoy.

I'm clapping because you really got the pentameter right on that one. I don't know what I'm saying. You did a good job. Also, is this sort of airing on Thanksgiving? I think you just mentioned when it was airing, but... It'll be, it's the week before the week of US Thanksgiving. Okay, okay, well...

Which is kind of Christmas mode. I don't know, I don't know. What is it, like, do you start jamming out to Christmas songs before Thanksgiving? I do not, but I appreciate Christmas stuff. Okay. Which is maybe a weird position. Right. Like if I see Christmas decorations, I'm like, that's cool, but I don't really put on Christmas music till December

It's like I I can both Appreciate Santa and also eat him as a food. So I get it Save me the beard. I don't know how you would eat Save me the beard. I don't know how you would eat the beard. That name was submitted by Lemons and Leaves on the Discord. Thank you for that. We have a new name every week. Please make a Missillian Wacky and Bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to CivPod at gmail.com. And the first number this week is around 800 BC. And that's the one number that came up on our Ren Fair show. That's when native people in North America began domesticating turkeys around 800 BC. Yeah.

And I think I remember reading the findings about this where we had found evidence of a type of enclosure for turkeys. Yeah. It was a wild bird and then they started domesticating it, keeping it at their communities. Yeah. I mean, that's similar to the story with chickens. I mean, chickens come from a bird known as the jungle fowl and they're now sort of our big juicy chickens.

But yeah, the original sort of jungle fowl are, were leaner. They're like, I mean, they still exist, but they're leaner. They're not really, they're, they're, you know, more of a game, gamey sort of bird. But then we domesticated them and then, yeah, made them, made them all plump. Yeah. The turkey and jungle fowl are sort of similar in that, like, they're very colorful in the wild and they have all sorts of browns and yellows and golds and jungle fowl even have some greens as well. But then when we domesticated both of them, probably not this early on, I would imagine that in the early domestication there, we didn't have turkeys with white feathers running around, but now turkeys do have white feathers as do chickens, which makes it, I think the purpose of that is to make it easier to, like

when we're cleaning the bird carcass, like then there's the feathers, like the white feathers are just less conspicuous. Yeah, that's all right. Yeah, apparently that's part of it with turkeys. There's also just some flattening out of the different kinds of turkeys and how we've domesticated it. Yeah. Yeah.

North America is where turkeys come from. It's the home of five subspecies of turkey, scientific name Meliagris gallipavo. And that connection to fowl actually, it leads us into our first takeaway number one. The bird named Turkey comes from the name of the country and 1500s world trade confusion. Ah, okay. That's really okay. All right. They are in English modern day.

They are named after the country of Turkey in West Asia. That is very interesting because yeah, of course, turkeys are not from Turkey. They are from North America. They're an indigenous species of bird here. So yeah, tell me what happened there, Alex, because it sounds like someone messed up big time. What's that Simpsons thing? Like, I hope someone got fired for that blunder.

I hope someone got fired for that blunder. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a couple of key sources here. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, also the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America, and a book called A Hundred Birds and

How They Got Their Names by nonfiction writer Diana Wells. Because yeah, the word Turkey entered English as a name for a country. It's a long time name for the part of Asia Minor that was part of the Ottoman Empire. Also, when that area became a new country in 1923, it named itself Turkiye, country in 1923, it named itself Turquie, which is not how we tend to say it in English. Turquie, it's spelled T-U with an umlaut, R-K-I-Y-E, Turquie. That's actually more similar to the Italian version of Turquie. Yeah, this bird name and what we often call the country is very anglicized. And also another number here is 2022, because that's when the Turkish government made a formal request to the United Nations that they and other countries call the country Turkiye rather than Turkey.

They're trying to shift to their actual name for themselves. Yeah, I get that, but it's like once we start calling something our own little American name for it, that's pretty sticky. We're stubborn. Yeah. You know, now I'm thinking more about words like with the, it is interesting because in Italian,

like the term for like turkey, the meat, or the bird is like taquino. It's not Torquilla. Cool. I don't know why. That actually tracks with this. Yeah, cause the name Turkey is relatively English specific. In France, this bird is called Din Don.

Din Don. Which, yeah, like yeah, doorbell bird. But the first French name was Cocteens, Which, yeah, like, yeah, doorbell bird. But the first French name was Cocteens, meaning cock from India, bird from India. And what generally happened here is Europe in the 1500s, with the Colombian exchange and with better sailing ships and world trade, they start importing tasty birds and interesting birds from all over the world. Yeah. They're like, let's get the fowl from all over the world. Yeah.

They're like, let's get the fowl. Let's do it. Yeah. It's, I mean, you know, you see a bird and you're like, look at that graceful, elegant creature of the ground and the sky. I do want to eat it. And so, okay, that's so, so then, yeah, we were at the point where we're importing a bunch of tasty birds and I'm assuming that a crate of turkeys from America and a crate of some poor Turkish bird got, like their labels got switched or something. Exactly. They all got lumped together because, yeah, you've got lots of species of fowl from East Africa,

in particular Numididae is a taxonomic group of African Guinea fowl. There's other fowl from India, from the South Pacific. With a lot of that trade, the key funneling point was Ottoman Turkey because it's this place in this big Ottoman Empire that has existing trade relationships in a bunch of ways with Europe. And so, so many of the foul get funneled through there that people in say France just start calling all of it Indian foul, people in England start calling all of it Turkey foul, or just turkeys. We kind of consider the modern trade of like things just coming from all over the world and the origins of food and other

imports being sometimes confusing, not knowing where they come from, right? As a new thing, but I guess that it's not all that new. Yeah. Yeah, we're into it, but also messy with it. And they did that with not just these birds coming through the country of Turkey, but also birds from the Americas. Because like we said on the Ren Faire show, it's plausible for Elizabethan England to have turkey legs. Because as soon as 1511, the Spanish royal court started requesting turkeys from their new conquered colony in Mexico. And they had already heard of turkeys when they requested them. Like these were brought

over very quickly by food fan Europeans. And how soon did Rye follow? When was Turkey on Rye introduced? Well look up a deliologist for this information. Yeah, so the name of a turkey, it's probably one of the two biggest cases of English speakers doing that. The other one is the word corn. That was an old English word for any grain in a generic sense. And then we applied it to maize that they called Indian corn and then just called corn. Right.

So turkeys are like that too. It's just a choice by English speakers of the 1500s. I see. I see. It's, you know, another thing. Corn and turkeys. I always see corn as a, you know, this is strange to me. Corn is very associated with like Thanksgiving and fall, but I only ever eat corn in the summer. What's going on, Alex? Yeah, it is a good summer food. I'm also kind of a corn fiend. I eat it all the time. So.

You do. You're just like out and like you're the going around to farms, eating all the corn, grabbing chickens. People think it's chupacabra, but no, it's Alex. Chupashmitty. Yeah. But no, it's Alex. Chupashmitty, yeah. And yeah, so that's why this North American bird is named after Turkey, sort of. Yeah, because we're dumb. Yeah, we're dumb.

And back to more numbers. The next number is 11,500 feathers. This 11,500 feathers is the feather contents of one Native American blanket that was found by anthropologists in 2020. So, okay, explain to me how is, because like when I think of a blanket, I don't necessarily think of feathers unless it's like, is this like a blanket that's been filled with feathers sort of like a duvet or is it woven out of feathers? It's neither. It's that the feathers are sort of tied together by woven plant fibers.

Ooh. What's now the Southwestern U.S. they used Yucca plant fibers to weave together over 11,000 feathers into one blanket and we think they harvested that from at least nine adult male turkeys just feathers into one blanket. And we think they harvested that from at least nine adult male turkeys just for the one blanket. Do we know what the purpose of this blanket was? Was it like a cozy blanket for cuddling under or was this more of an artistic piece for say something more formal? It's sort of everything. Apparently Pueblo peoples in what's now the Southwestern US, they pretty much made a blanket for each member of the community. According to Shannon Tushingham of Washington State University, quote, it is likely that every member of an ancestral

Pueblo community from infants to adults possessed one of these blankets, end quote. That's so cool. You're a human being. You get one of these. You care about you. It was very fundamental. I want to live in a society where from the day you're born, you are guaranteed an awesome blanket. Yeah, it was very big and crucial for them. And Hopi people, Zunyi people, they also made turkey feather blankets. And there's also people still weaving those today. According to New Mexico Wildlife Magazine,

archaeologist Mary Wiecki produced new samples in 2018 for a museum. And she's of Comanche and Santa Clara descent. She said she was inspired by her ancestors and their creativity and their patience to do this. So it's a long running art practice, sort of textile practice, and it brings up something really surprising about turkey domestication. Because it turns out that for many centuries, Native North American people mainly domesticated turkeys to harvest the feathers and without necessarily killing the birds. Oh, really? It was not a food thing initially.

And so they're also harvesting the feathers as the birds are molting them. They're not killing them for the feathers. Exactly. Yeah, they either molt them naturally or they would remove a few feathers in a way that let the birds still be alive. So it's almost sort of like what I think of with fiber art stuff with llamas and sheeps and things, like raising them for what they generate on their outsides. I'm looking at a picture of one of these turkey feather blankets and it is so like, it is way fluffier than I was anticipating. It looks really, really fluffy and it looks very comfortable.

It would be super soft and super fluffy. It's also really pretty. It's like it looks very cozy and comfortable, but also really beautiful. And so that was a huge surprise to me about the history of turkey domestication. And Smithsonian says that we think Pueblo people only began eating their turkeys around the 1100s AD. So well more than a thousand years after they started domesticating them. It was probably just population growth and a lack of other game was why they started eating some of them. I see. Interesting. So they didn't, they maybe didn't need them as a food source before then, but then you got enough mouths

to feed and there wasn't enough other game animals and then you start eating them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Apparently there's also finds at Mayan sites in Central America where it seems like turkey meat was only used rarely in religious and cultural ceremonies until pretty late in Mayan history. And so, like when Europeans were eating turkeys, they were imitating how native people use them, but it was a very recent native practice. It was only a few centuries before the Colombian exchange.

I mean, I get that. Like if you have other choices, turkey can be a little dry. I know you like it, Alex, but let's admit turkey can, it can be a little dry turkey can be a little dry. I know you like it, Alex, but let's admit, turkey can be a little dry. Can be a little dry. Yeah, people tell me this and they're right. And I love it anyway. It's my foolish palate. Because yeah, but also I love it. I guess some people like dry sandwiches.

And also, you know, native people are not a monolith. There are probably some native people who ate turkeys earlier than this. And then people hunt turkeys to this day, the wild ones. And one amazing modern number about that is the year 2023. That was, you know, I'm going to say one year ago. That's true for a while. And in 2023, residents of Carmel, California bestowed the name Cupid on a local wild turkey. And they did that because some hunter put an arrow through this turkey.

Oh man. And it just continued walking around and hanging out. No! And was alive still. I hate this. I don't like this. I'm not anti-hunting, but I'm very much pro-finishing what you started because, ow! It's very incompetent hunting. Ow! That looks not fun for this turkey. I mean, the turkey is carrying it well in a way that I would not personally, I think, be able to handle if I had a whole arrow running directly through my body. Right, in and out. So props to this turkey. Yeah. And like, it's moving well enough that according to the San Francisco Chronicle, locals were not able to catch Cupid to bring them in for treatment. Because Cupid is just living, at

least in 2023. And yeah, the Guardian says that it was a 30-inch arrow and that locals named it Cupid because of cute Valentine's Day stuff. Yeah, adorable. It's really cute when an animal has an arrow just jetting out of its body. And turkeys will probably be of excitement to game hunters for a while because according to National Geographic, they're the largest game bird in North America. They're significantly bigger than grouse, ptarmigans, other mostly ground birds. And so, you know, if any game bird is going to survive an arrow, it's probably a turkey. And it's amazing if they can do it.

It's rare, but it happens once in a while. We got to start getting more wild ostriches and emus. So not only can they survive an arrow, they can actually shoot one back at you. Increase the challenge difficulty level. Yeah, teach your ostrich archery, folks. So many of you just have an ostrich and you haven't taught them any important sports or hunting combat. They've got the long legs, the long necks. Don't tell me they can't use their own necks as like a sort of bow string like in cartoons. I trust them.

And the next amazing turkey number is 1.6 miles, which is more than 2.5 kilometers, 1.6 miles. And I would watch, walk 1.6 miles. It's not all that far. I don't care that much, you know? Yeah, not that into it. But that distance, that's how far away a female turkey can hear the gobble of a male turkey. 1.6 miles.

Garble, garble, garble. Garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, garble, That's great. That's actually pretty distant, I think, to hear a gobble. I really thought it's pretty soft. Yeah. No, they're loud. Yeah, and the thing is, it's so loud because males specifically make the gobble sound and it is for mating and courting females. Oh yeah.

So when any of us do a gobble impression, we are hitting on lady turkeys. It is a come hither call for them ladies. Can you do a good turkey gobble? Like a real one? Brrrr. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Brrrr.

Oh, that's pretty good too. Yeah. Yeah. This, we will, we can do that and we'll just have lady turkeys flying sort of ungracefully into our laps. It's like beetle mania, like a crowd of them flipping out. Yeah. But yeah, and it turns out turkeys are highly communicative. Yes. But yeah, and it turns out turkeys are highly communicative.

And according to the US National Zoo, biologists have identified at least 15 different turkey vocalizations. 15 vocalizations. It's far more than gobbles. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of murmurs and weird purring sounds that they make. And it's both the males and females that use them. Although like that kind of like loud gobble is really the males doing it. But yeah, there's a lot of, they're a

very social bird and there's a lot of communication. Yeah. I'm glad you know. I had no idea before researching. Because yeah, like you said, purring, murmuring, they can whistle. Apparently, young turkeys use a repeated whistle to signal that they're lost. It is complex communication for a turkey, you know? It's cool. Yeah, absolutely. And the little baby turkeys are called poults.

I love this topic. It's great. Thank you, folks. And then turkeys, of course, communicate partly to be social. And during the winter, they will form bands with social hierarchies that occasionally tussle with other bands. In spring, they mate. The chicks live with their mothers until autumn.

So mostly in the hard winter season, they will all get together and then they'll kind of scatter after that. Yeah. There are competitions for hierarchy, for ability to mate, and then there is these sort of turkey standoffs, kind of like a West Side Story turkey situation. When you're a blue, you're always a blue. Yeah, and there's too many examples, but I'll link a few of just news stories in the US because annually there's some kind of story about a gang of wild turkeys is running the

streets of Staten Island or Boston or Los Angeles or wherever. And it's just because they're social late in the year and that'll happen. I mean, it's also just funny to be like, oh no, a gang of wild turkeys. It's like, what do you mean? They're just, they're not allowed to exist. They're just existing. Make it sound like they're doing some kind of like drive-bys or something. Yeah, and in like every story,

there's always a picture of turkeys in the way in like a suburban road. And the driver could just go over to the next block. It'd be very easy. It's not a crisis. Whose streets are whoo? Yeah. So that's their situation. And the other exciting thing turkeys do in the wild is they will sleep in tree branches and in tree tops.

And so most of the time wild turkeys walk or run, and then at night they use their wings to fly up to a roost for sleep. Yeah, they can fly very, very short distances. I mean, it's similar to chickens, right? Like, and others are gala form birds where they really are mostly, it's mostly walking, but they can glide and fly short distances, which helps with the roosting, which is, it is funny to

imagine just happening upon a tree of turkeys looking down at you, kind of more, I don't know, raptor-like. They're not raptors in the sense of bird raptors like hawks and eagles and stuff, but I mean like Jurassic park raptors. Yeah, that's so cool. And again, they can fly a little bit, which leads into our next big takeaway because takeaway number two, turkeys have both white meat and dark meat because wild turkeys fly a little bit. If you've ever wondered why when you're eating a turkey there seem to be two totally separate categories of turkey meat,

the answer is the biology involved in wild turkey flight. Oh, whoa. So we've got two muscle groups, I'm assuming. Yes. It turns out it's a difference between fast twitch and slow twitch muscle. Right. Yes, it turns out it's a difference between fast twitch and slow twitch muscle. And in mammals, including humans, those tend to be kind of mingled together or mixed up in a way where when you're eating a mammal, don't eat a human. It'll look like a relatively uniform color and we'll call it red meat or something. Turkeys, they're very separate.

It's like totally different muscle districts in the body. What kind of meat is on a Santa? Christmas meat. Gingerbread flavored. And beard, the two types. Gingerbread and beard. Yeah. For the fast twitch muscles that is like, what are we describing here for slow twitch

muscles are those that are like the mechanism that engages the muscles like it's is it like a slower mechanism whereas like for the fast twitch muscles like the mechanism that engages the muscles like faster what why are they given those names? Fast twitch is basically for sudden movements once in a while on command. Wild turkeys are able to fly because they need to nest in trees. And slow twitch is more for like a powerful and endurance based movement. So like walking, our standard walking, moving around versus like clapping or punching or biting.

Yeah, a good like other example here is ducks. We think of ducks as being just dark meat if we're eating them, is like a conceptual thing about ducks. And that's not really true. They have some fast twitch muscle, but ducks, when they're in trouble, they mainly just fly because they fly in almost all situations unless they're walking a couple of steps to eat the next grass. Yeah, that's so interesting. And so their body seems to be almost all slow twitch muscle because when they fly out of

an emergency it's pretty much their usual flight speed. They can't do different gears of that very much. That is interesting because with bird, bird muscles, cause like for birds that are migratory, they have to build up a bunch of mussels for their migration. And so they're not like these like migratory geese and stuff aren't doing like squats and, you know, crunches in order to get buff for their migration. They just eat more and then convert more of that food

into muscle like without even trying, which is really not fair. Like you could, like imagine, just like imagine being like seasonally, like it's, you know, the, the holiday is coming up and you just like, you know, eat a lot of food and that automatically gets turned into nice muscles for your transatlantic flight. I want to visit Europe with my food muscle.

You know, like people are always like, you know, gorilla mindset in terms of getting swole and stuff. I'm goose mindset, man. I'm goose-ing it. I'm also imagining Gold's gym, but it's goose's gym. That'd be a good workout space. Yeah, that'd be fun. I feel like that'd be a laid back vibe there.

Well, and a couple of key sources here are writing for National Geographic by Mark Strauss and also an episode of SciShow on YouTube. That one was hosted by Michael Aranda. They say that the chemistry of these different muscles is why they appear white and dark to us when we're eating. The fast twitch muscles contain glycogen, which is a type of sugar that we can burn in emergencies. And the glycogen is pretty colorless, but slow twitch muscles contain lots of myoglobin,

which is red, and lots more mitochondria, which tends to look brown. That's useful for steady endurance type activities. The red myoglobin and the brown mitochondria, that makes those muscles look darker. That's really, really interesting. I love that that is the case for birds. What is your preference, Alex, dark meat or white meat? Or do you love them both? I love them both, definitely.

Yeah. It's just great. Yeah. Yeah. I think I- Because gravy too. Oh boy. Yeah.

It is pretty good. And for the human eating end of it, so wild turkeys are able to fly because they need to nest in trees. And then when we domesticated turkeys over generations, we made especially their breasts larger and larger and made them more top heavy to the point where they cannot fly. Sorry. But we only did that a few centuries or millennia ago. And so they haven't totally lost those flight related muscles when we're eating. It's just that they can't fly anymore.

In particular, after World War II, we figured out how to artificially inseminate turkeys. Then we made them so lopsided they can't mate with each other without our help anymore. The upshot there is a lot of people think turkeys can fly because wild turkeys can fly. But then domesticated turkeys cannot. The extremely round rotund turkeys that you see on sort of like a happy Thanksgiving card is not really the reality for wild turkeys. They are much more live. And so, yeah.

Yeah, they're like skinny looking. Yeah. For a lot of domesticated birds actually, like, you know, chickens as well, and other domesticated animals where we have like so like min maxed them such that they are so meaty. And like, there's like this like double musculature that like they can struggle to like, they can't mate. So we've got to like go around with like a fake bird wiener. Seems a little wild, guys. Seems like maybe flying too close to the sun. Right. Well, or not flying.

But yeah, or not flying and certainly not mating. Being artificially inseminating too close to the sun. The most famous story about Americans not understanding this is a piece of fiction that was based on reality. In 1978, CBS premiered a new sitcom called WKRP in Cincinnati, which was about a fictional radio station. And in their first season, they aired a Thanksgiving themed episode where the station does a promo of dropping turkeys from a helicopter as a gift to the community, like living turkeys.

Oh no. Yeah. But these are domesticated turkeys and fall to their death. That's a solid joke. That's solid joke writing there. It's probably the most iconic WKRP episode. There's a part where one character walks into the station afterward and says, as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. It's just great.

I've never seen this and yet somehow I think that has entered my consciousness at some point. So yeah, I think that- It's the famous one. Yeah. It's the famous one, yeah. And it turns out the writers wrote that because they heard about this happening in real life in Atlanta. And that was one of several- Turkeys out of a helicopter? They Pinocheted turkeys?

Oh gosh, yeah. Either that or high buildings. And apparently that happened a few times across the mid 19001900s US. This change people didn't totally comprehend or understand. Was it the same reason as in the fictional show? Was it like, turkeys for all, and then we drop them out of a building? Yeah, it was either promos for grocery stores or media.

It was like stunts, publicity stunts. Yeah, it was either promos for grocery stores or media, you know, it was public stance. Because like the lioness, God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. They thought it would be fine. It wasn't intended to be brutal. Guys, have you ever seen a turkey gracefully soaring overhead? Right. I get that there's the confusion because wild turkeys can fly a little bit, but also wild turkeys aren't great flyers.

They're really not built for like getting tossed out of a helicopter. Yeah. They're borderline jumping into trees. Like they are flying, but it's not. It's elegantly flapping their way to sort of an elevated jump, you know? Like they're able to dunk a basketball in with a bit of help from flapping. It's not, they're not, you know, gracefully soaring the skies. That should be the new puppy bowl is turkey stunking.

It's gotta be. Turkey slam dunk contest. It's gotta be the new air buds gotta be air. And folks that's two huge takeaways and a lot of numbers. We're going to take a quick break then come back with a couple more quick takeaways. Round this week. MonkeyPod. A pod full of monkeys? Alex, tell me more.

It's something even better. MonkeyPod helps nonprofits get back to their mission by eliminating the busy work with their all-in-one software. Explain to me how monkeys do this for me, Alex. Do they use their little monkey athletic skills to tippity-type on keyboards? No, but I'm just realizing a secondary benefit of this service is thinking about monkeys. That's just great. The primary benefit is that MonkeyPod brings together financial and people management into one platform so that nonprofits can run accounting

and manage grants from the same software that they use to send email, collect donations, track donors. You can put together nonprofit accounting, CRM and donor management, online fundraising, email marketing, grant management. Basically every feature of needing to run a nonprofit gets funneled into one thing in a Basically every feature of needing to run a nonprofit gets funneled into one thing in a way that makes you better at being a nonprofit. It's great. We gotta find friends where we can find them.

And if they're little monkeys inside your computer, that's all the better. I've done a little bit of volunteering work, mainly with a community refrigerator. It was like an outdoor refrigerator where we put food in for the community to have. And we did a lot of it through like one text message thread. It was like an outdoor refrigerator where we put food in for the community to have. And we did a lot of it through like one text message thread.

I really wish we had used something like this because that's just better across the board. Like, that whole thing kind of hinged on one guy sending us screenshots of Venmos and us just trusting him. Monkeypod just organizes and runs all this kind of thing a lot better. Secretly Incredibly Fascinating listeners can get 20% off the first year of their MonkeyPod subscription. What a deal! Learn more by visiting www.monkeypod.io slash sifpod.

Again, that's monkeypod.io slash sifpod. Say you like video games, and who doesn't? I mean, some people probably don't. Okay, but a lot of people do. So say you're one of those people, and you feel like you don't really have anyone to talk to about the games that you like. Well, you should get some better friends. Yes, you could get some better friends, but you could also listen to Triple Click, a weekly

podcast about video games hosted by me, Kirk Hamilton. Me, Maddie Myers. And me, Jason Schreier. We talk about new releases, old classics, industry news, and whatever really. We'll show you new things to love about games, and maybe even help you find new friends to talk to you about them. Triple click. It's kind of like we're your friends. Find us at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jesse Thorn, the founder of Maximum Fun, and I have a special. Hi I'm Jesse Thorne the founder of Maximum Fun and I

have a special announcement. I'm no longer embarrassed by my brother, my brother and me. You know for years each new episode of this supposed advice show was a fresh insult. A depraved jumble of erection jokes, ghost humor and frankly this is for the best, very little actionable advice. But now as they enter their twilight years, I'm as surprised as anyone to admit that it's gotten kind of good. Justin, Travis, and Griffin's witticisms are more refined, like a humor column in a fancy magazine.

And they hardly ever say bazinga anymore. So after you've completely finished listening to every single one of all of our other shows, why not join the McElroy Brothers every week for My Brother, My Brother and Me. We're back and we're back with Takeaway number three. Benjamin Franklin advanced his electricity experiments and zapped himself in a quest for tastier turkey meat. Is Ben Franklin the one that wanted turkeys to be the USA's bird of the nation? Let's go ahead with that because mini takeaway number four. Benjamin Franklin did not try to make turkeys the national bird of the United States.

He succeeded. Right, everyone finishes the episode and everything's changed. There's turkeys on flags, turkey, USPS logo. He finally did it. This is a quick takeaway because it's a common internet myth that's like making too much out of a real letter that Franklin wrote. He was seriously into turkeys though. That part's true, right?

Yeah. In that bigger takeaway, we'll talk about how much he loved eating them and he was into them in general. So like, it makes sense people have heard this myth, but all he actually did is privately criticize eagles and compliment turkeys in one letter to his daughter. He did not like throw his body in front of the process to make eagles the national bird.

What was his problem with eagles? He's like, they're a bunch of jerks. They sound dumb. Cause like every time you hear an eagle, that majestic eagle cry, that's actually red-tailed hawk, right? That's like, that's like, that's a red-tailed hawk. Whereas like actual eagle calls are like, yeah. And when James Bond punches or kicks a guy, they're actually breaking celery in

the Foley Studio. End quote, Ben Franklin. They're actually breaking a bald eagle over their knee. Yeah, so he almost said those first things in the Franklin Institute is one source here. In 1784, Ben wrote to his daughter, Sarah, saying, the bald eagle is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. He is too lazy to fish for himself. I guess he observed a little bit of kleptoparasitism in bald eagles, where they stole fish from another bird and he judged them really judgily.

Yeah, pretty impressive scientific observation. Then the other thing is he later in the letter just brings up turkeys as a criticism of bald eagles. He says that the turkey is, quote, a much more respectable bird and with all a true original native of America, he is besides, though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage." End quote. Bird of courage.

Yeah. He thinks turkeys are courageous. They pretty much are, I think. Yeah. The thing is, he just wrote this one time in one letter. He never ever said any of that publicly. And it just seems like a thought crossed his mind and he wrote it down. There was never a Franklin for turkeys campaign button or

something. This was never an actual effort in any way. He didn't start a move.org petitions. Yes. Yeah, he started a podcast about movies and foley art, and then he started a Move.org petition. Move On, whatever it is. Move On. I don't know stuff anymore. Yeah. And also the other thing I like about this myth is not only did Franklin not really push turkeys, his letter does have one, to my mind, inaccurate criticism of bald eagles. Because when he's complimenting turkeys,

he says they're a true original native of America, which is true. Bald eagles are also natives. Exactly. And yeah, especially before the heavy human development by colonizers in places like the US, bald eagles were endemic and a lot more of it. They're still reintroduced or living in places like New York that were original 13 colonies. Bald eagles are also from here. Yeah. They used to be like pigeons, like everywhere, scrounging around in your trash, just getting everywhere.

What a cool pigeon, man. It's probably one of the most common turkey facts on the internet and it's just exaggerated. It's not really a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, but he still liked them, right? And you're saying that he was trying to create the ultimate, like there's so many like turkey mishaps that people do. Like when they try to cook turkeys, like ranging from just drying it out a bit to like setting the entire neighborhood on fire. Cause you tried to deep fry it in your driveway. Exactly.

And it sounds like Benjamin Franklin started the trend of endangering yourself and others trying to cook a turkey. Exactly. He's one of these guys. He invented stoves too. He was very interested in eating a lot of food, cooking, and also electricity. And along the way, there's this much more interesting true fact about Franklin and turkeys, where he was so bent on cooking them better than ever before, he electrocuted himself

pretty painfully and learned a valuable lesson. Knowing what I vaguely know about Benjamin Franklin, I doubt that the electrocuting himself was a negative. I think he might've liked that a little bit in a certain way. He partied, yeah. He was a real bon vivant. The key source here along with the Franklin Institute is Timothy J. Jorgensen. He's a professor of medicine at Georgetown University and award-winning nonfiction author. He covers this in his book titled,

Spark the Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life. Because the famous Franklin electricity thing is in 1752, he puts a metal key on the end of a kite string and uses that to conduct electricity from a storm into a container. I watched that Disney short about the little mouse hanging out with Benjamin Franklin. I know my stuff. Yeah, we can move on. Yeah, Disney mice are involved, true. And the one piece of gear in that dimension is called a Leidenjar. It's named after a city in Europe. Early in the 1700s, scientists invented

Leiden jars to contain electricity in a static state. And they would painstakingly rub things together or do other stuff to generate very small amounts of static electricity and fill one of these jars with it to the point where the jar could give you an actual shock, not like just touching a doorknob or something. Right. What I know about Lydon jars is you have a fluid in it, and then you have a lid on it with a metal ball on top of it. And the fluid contains certain mineral compounds

that are meant to keep that charge in it. And then you would just rub your socks on something, then touch the Lydon jar and try to get that in it. And then you would just sort of like rub your socks on something, then touch the Leiden jar and try to get that in there. But then if you touched it again, you'd get zapped. Right. And when Franklin did his kite experiment in 1752, he probably would have died or severely harmed himself if he hadn't had a previous experience with a turkey in 1750, two years earlier. Turkeys saved one of our most hedonistic founding fathers' lives.

That's right. He never would have boinked everybody at Versailles without this life-saving situation. And so in 1750, Franklin says, I'm going to cook a turkey tastier and better than anyone ever has. What he did is he took a bunch of filled Leiden jars and arranged them to all zap a turkey to death and at least a little bit cook it too. What? Oh my god, electric chair for the turkey? Where you're like, you've been sentenced to the electric chair and a nice 425 degrees for about four and a half hours. I don't know how to cook a turkey.

It's longer than that. But the- That's the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. But that's- what's the situation with this? What did the situation with this? What did the turkey experience? Yeah, it was somewhat an experiment with electricity, but mostly a cooking experiment.

Turkey was one of Ben Franklin's favorite foods. He also believed that most people would decapitate a turkey and then cook it, but he felt that that gets you a less juicy turkey. What if you cannot puncture the turkey in any way and electrocute it to death before cooking it? Good God. It was his idea. He thought, okay, well. Which doesn't really make sense, but it was an experiment.

No, I mean, I guess it's like, oh, well, if you exsanguinate a turkey first, there's less Well, if you exsanguinated turkey first, there's less bloody juices in it. But what do you think is going to happen to all those juices if you like, you know, completely... It's just going to like turn into a balloon of hot turkey blood. Yeah, electrocution is not a hydrating experience. No. So Franklin says, yeah, I'm going to set this experiment. He did achieve at least one Killing a Turkey that way. And he said, now I'm going to demonstrate it to

people. Very exciting. Oh, a live show. Fun. Yeah. Why didn't we do this at our live show? Electrocute a living creature on stage. British laws. Stupid British laws. Mad at the king. So the thing is, Franklin decides, I'm going to start showing this off to people. But one of his first attempts to demonstrate it publicly, Franklin accidentally touches one of the wires that's connected to the turkey and then grounds his other hand so that all the Leiden jars electrocute him. And so was he delicious after this, Alex? Was his juiciness maintained during the cooking process? I guess he stayed so juicy he lived.

Ah, that's, oh man, I love that. Stay so juicy that you live. That's such a good motivating phrase. Wow. Stay juicy and live. I'm going to take that home. Stay juicy. Take that home with you, folks. Stay juicy and live.

Yeah, and he was basically lucky this was a public demonstration, so people immediately helped him. How? What do you do with a founding father who electrocutes himself? Poke him with a stick? Wake up, wake up. Yeah, nothing super helpful, but I think bring him water and stuff. I see.

That'll help in this electrocution. Some water. Just keep zapping him. And he wrote a letter about this shortly after in a letter to his brother John. He said, quote, the company present say that the flash was very great and the crack as loud as a pistol. Yet my senses being instantly gone, I neither saw the one nor heard the other, nor did I feel the stroke on my hands. Though afterward I found it had raised a round swelling where the fire entered as big as neither saw the one nor heard the other, nor did I feel the stroke on my hand, though afterward

I found it had raised a round swelling where the fire entered as big as half a pistol bullet." End quote. All right. Well. Like he had a visible, this is where electricity went straight into me from my turkey execution apparatus. And then Franklin just stopped trying to cook turkeys this way because he decided the lethal danger is not worth it.

He should find other ways to get his kicks. Quitter. Coward. And the thing is, in his kite experiment two years later, Franklin made a point of using a piece of silk to manipulate the kite string because he had done further experiments and found out that the silk would insulate him from the electricity and he would be safe. And he mainly bothered to do that kind of thing because of his turkey accident. If he hadn't had that knowledge, a lightning bolt from a thunderstorm could have killed

him. But he learned to do it differently. Well, that's a good lesson for you folks. If you electrocute yourself trying to cook a turkey live, you know, take that and grow from it. Have a growth mindset. And stay juicy. Have a growth mindset and a juicy mindset.

And stay ju- stay juicy and live, folks. I love it. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro, with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the bird named Turkey comes from the name of the country Turquay and 1500s World Trade Confusion. Takeaway number two, turkeys have both white meat and dark meat because wild turkeys fly a little bit.

Takeaway number three, Benjamin Franklin advanced his electricity experiments and electrocuted himself in a quest for tastier turkey meat. Mini takeaway number four, Benjamin Franklin did not try to make turkeys the national bird of the United States. And then so many numbers about turkey domestication, turkey blankets, the wild behaviors and socialization of turkeys, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, 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 at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists. So members 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 historical role of Turkey in the first U.S. Thanksgiving and the first Canadian Thanksgiving. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show for a library of more than 18 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation.

Additional fun things? Check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include a lot of biological reference texts about turkeys and other birds, especially the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America, also the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, more Ben Franklin resources from the Franklin Institute, and more well-researched journalism from the New Mexico Wildlife Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land

of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoat people, and others. Also Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free CIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord.

We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 199, that's about the topic of hyenas. Fun fact there, especially at the very end of it, female and male hyenas are built very differently than most other mammals in just an amazing way biologically and socially. That is also of course another

CIF episode about an animal. We do those sometimes. If you enjoyed this turkey show or that hyena show, I highly recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the BUDDUDOS Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members. Thank you to all our listeners.

And a little programming note, next week's show is going to be a special message from us and also something we built up extra special in the Maximum Fun Drive this year because a lot of good things happened in 2024. It is worth remembering that. So we'll bring you that next week. So excited to bring it to you. And in the meantime, talk to you then. The end.