Stuff You Should Know - Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me

Episode Date: April 20, 2011

Flies: They're disgusting, disease-spreading flying machines. They're also really fascinating. Flies taste with their feet, smell with their antennae and use a pair of eyes as a compass oriented to sunlight. Listen in to learn more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. You're a good friend's wall. Wait in the house. It's a good portion. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is Josh. That's Chuck. This is Stuff You Should Know.

How do you smell, Chuck? I was out of deodorant this morning, so. How are you holding up? Well, this is, we got a good three and a half feet between us. Yeah, so we're fine. This is fine. You heard, this was a non-usual opening for this podcast. You didn't hear, but. Oh, I heard. Oh, you did, okay. Earlier today, yeah. Okay, so that's the last few seconds, I guess, of the fly, the original 1958 version starring Vincent Price, and that is the inventor named Seth Brindle, who. Brindle fly. Yeah, who has converted himself into a fly. Well, switched heads with the fly, right? Switched bodies, I guess, and now he's a tiny little fly man who's being attacked by a spider on the spider web.

You know, I just saw the Kronberg version a couple of months ago. I think I told you that. Yeah, it holds up for you. Yeah, except I don't understand why. Oh, what is his name? The main guy. Goldblum. Goldblum. I don't understand why Jeff Goldblum decided to add, I guess, a kind of like sexy arrogance to his character, because it came off weird. That's just the Goldblum. That's he can do nothing. I guess so. I guess so, man. The Hefe brings that to everything he does. He's tripping with it. So, Chuck, we played that part of the fly, not so much because we could, although that was a large part of it, but because we can explain what is on that little fly body now. That's right. We've read how flies work and specifically how houseflies work by Steph

to blow your mind's Robert Lam, who's been popping up a lot lately, hasn't he? Who, Robert's work? Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. And he just kind of pops in to the cubicles and says, hey, how's it going? A lot lately. We go, oh, yeah. Yeah, the housefly, Josh. If you live in a house and you've got flies flying around, you've got about a 90% chance that that is an actual muska domestica. Yeah. The common housefly. That's the housefly's name. That's right. There's not some other more exotic name. No. It is on all initial appearances, one of the more mundane bugs ever. But it's actually pretty interesting if you ask me. And disgusting because they carry lots of diseases like typhoid fever and salmonella and leprosy and cholera. Isn't that crazy? They carry leprosy and testinal worms.

Well, I knew that. Bacteria that can lead to dysentery. I didn't know that they could carry leprosy though. I didn't either. You know, I always equate leprosy with nudism because they both live in colonies. Really? Yeah. I always think of leprosy. When I think of leprosy, I think of the Bible because growing up in churches where I heard about leper colonies and leprosy. Sure. Yeah. And lepers being healed and all that. Exactly. Have you ever seen the fog? The second one, I guess? No. Oh. The reason they are the fog too. Was there a fog too? I don't know. I mean, John Carpenter did the original fog, I think. Right. This is the remake where the people attacking were lepers who were turned away and now their ghosts have come back for vengeance.

I think that was the original as well. Oh, was it? I didn't realize they were lepers. I thought they were like pirates that have been done across or something. Geez, we need to get our act together. That's such a good movie. The first one. Yeah, I'll check it out. I just watched the thing last night. Oh, that's a great one too. Yeah. Well, and I had a fairly voracious alien versus the thing comments on Facebook. I heard or I saw people get into that. I definitely say alien is badder, but the thing is more disgusting. A little more twisted. Yeah. All right. This has been a long set up. Flies, huh? Yeah. So Chuck, we've got down that they spread disease, right? Potentially. One of the things that kind of cropped up while I was reading this is it was

kind of an expansion of everything I'd always knew about flies. Yeah, we all know a little bit, which I find very reassuring. You know, it's not like quantum suicide where it's like everything you think you know is just completely unreal. Right. Just go ahead and stop thinking now. This is like, yes, you understand houseflies and here is some more information about them. So I guess kind of this is almost like an elementary school episode, which I find comforting and reassuring. I like it too. Let's talk about fly anatomy, housefly anatomy. And if I accidentally say fly, if you accidentally say fly, we mean houseflies specifically, right? That's right. Oh, and disperse throughout the podcast, we will have fly facts that sound like this.

So when you hear that, it's going to be a new fly fact. So Josh, if you're talking a housefly body, it's like a lot of insects. It's got an exoskeleton made of chitin, and it's got three sections to the body. You got the head, right? You got the thorax, you got the abdomen, right? And as everyone knows, this is the, this is actually isn't a fly fact. So no buzz, but it is a fact, but it's not one of our fly facts. So no jingle, no jingle. Everyone knows that the fly has all those tiny little bitty eyes. And like you said, it's reassuring to know that's exactly what they are. They're two common eyes divided up into three to 6,000 simple eyes. Yes. And it's like a bunch of little video monitors because they can't focus

on one little thing in particular. Right. It's like a mosaic. Right. But I also got the impression that it's like a mosaic, but each little eye is kind of its own, it's representative of the physical grid. It makes a grid of its physical environment. Right. Yeah. So I wonder if the fly is like, oh, there's a movement in sector 90,000. That's what I wonder. And like I go focus on that one simple eye to see that, you know, piece of poo on the ground that I need to go, you know, rattle through. Or there's a human who's coming toward me or something. And of course, by sector 90,000 G, I meant sector 3,000 to 6,000 G. Right. Yeah. So those are the eyes. And there are also a couple of little, I think three of cell eyes. Or if you're in Italy or Chile. Or Chile. And

they are between the two compound eyes. And that's sort of like a compass that keeps the fly oriented and ideally flying toward the sun. Okay. So I think that this should be the first fly fact. All right, let's do it. Okay. Chuck, the reason house flies are commonly found kind of flittering against a window because they're stupid. No, that's a fly myth. Okay. The fly fact is that they're Ocelli or Ocelli, the two simple eyes that act as a compass orient themselves upward by finding the sunlight. They're all constantly searching for sunlight, which is why they always go to a window or a bug's ever. That was fly fact number one. All right. I like it. On the head, Josh, which is where a lot of the action takes place with the fly. They get their sense of smell

from their antennae right there for tasting and eating. They have a probiscus, which is a little plunger like thing that sticks out from the bottom of its mouth. Yeah. And I'm sorry, the bottom of the head. They have little feelers, two of these, and they are max maxillary palps. Yeah. Yeah. And then they are the tasters. And at the end of the probiscus, you have the labellum, which is, is that the mouth, the little spongy part? Yeah. It's like a sponge mouth. It's not like an open mouth that you think of. It's like a sponge on the end of the proboscis. Okay. Where you just suck. That's a probiscus, didn't it? It's close. It's proboscis. It's all right. Sorry about that. No, it goes either way. And that always makes me think of adaptation. Chris Cooper's

character talks about the probiscus of the orchid. Oh yeah. Jerry's in there just saying yes. It's really weird. Apparently she's guest starring in this episode. She's paying attention for the first time in weeks. So Chuck, there's a huge, huge little thing that you pointed out that the labellum, the spongy mouth, doesn't allow solid food in. And we're going to get to that in a minute, but just keep that in mind. That's fly foreshadowing, not a fly fact. But we've come to what I think is fly fact number two, don't you? Are you going with the biting? Yeah, the biting. Okay. Fly fact number two. Houseflies do not bite. If you get bitten by a fly. It was not a housefly. Not a housefly. It

might be a horsefly. And you know those in the summertime and you're in the pool, the land on your head. Yeah. And bite the tar out of you. Or it might have been your little sibling, brother or sister. That's true. And what other, did they list another one? Stable flies. Which are, yeah, horseflies. They're, they're, they kind of take care of all the horses at once where a horsefly is just like, I just want this one horse. Right. That's my take on it. All right. So that's fly fact two. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take America's public enemy, number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah,

and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Yes, they can do that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. How's that New Year's resolution coming along?

You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement. Well, you're not alone. If you haven't made progress yet, roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, how to money can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now, and we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering lists or questions, interviewing experts and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge

that you need with guidance three times a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, how to money has got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to how to money on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we are on the wings now, which isn't necessarily a fly fact because it's so essential, right? Right. Back in ancient times, which was up to 65 million years ago, as I understand,

that's how long houseflies have been around. Okay. They had two sets, two full sets of wings. And nowadays in our modern times, it looks like flies have houseflies have one set. That's not necessarily true. Yeah. If you're a little jerky kid, a little myoclonic jerk, and you pull the wings off of a fly, you probably think you're just pulling off two. Yeah. And you may be because those are the large ones, but there's little tiny guys under there. They're called halters, right? Yeah. And the halters are actually, if you pull the halter off these little tiny wings that are underneath or above. I think they're underneath. They're underneath the big wings. They basically allow the fly to move quickly in the air, right? Yes.

To maintain balance, a direct direction. Yeah. Hover. Yes. And so if you remove one of these, it can only go in circles. If you remove both of the halters, the fly isn't airborne at all. Yeah. With those two big wings, it still can't fly without those little halters. Yeah. It's pretty good, but not a fly fact. No. Very interesting nonetheless. But the big wings, the large wings that you see when you look at a fly are the ones that do the real heavy lifting, right? Yeah. We're talking 200 to 300 flaps per second, and they can go about four and a half miles an hour, which I would have assumed they could go faster than that. Yeah, me too. I can run four and a half miles an hour, and it's... And I've seen flies zipping

by me when I'm running. Yeah. So Chuck, first, I don't know if you said all of the moving parts, the wings, the legs, all this stuff are located in the thorax, right? Yes. So you've got the two sets of wings up top, and then below that, you have the different legs. And the legs are... Well, they're standard legs. They're segmented and jointed. But the most interesting part for me about the fly legs, the house fly legs, are the tarsi, right? Yes. Which are little tiny hairs on the end of the legs that act as pretty much the same thing as taste buds do for us. So that's why a fly... That's why it'll land on food. It's not just landing. It's tasting to say, do I want some of this? Yeah. And most of the time, the answer is yes. Yes. And we'll get to the gruesome

truth of that in a moment as well. Right. My favorite part of the legs is the pulvilli. Yes. They are little moist suction pads, and they are the little grippers. So that's why when you see a fly jump on a wall, fly into a wall, and just all of a sudden, they're like Spider-Man. Right. Walking up the wall. Right. Little grippers. Or that's how Jeff Goldblum did it. With some Zradiviv as well. Right. Throne in there. And then the abdomen, they have the key organs, which are the reproductive organs in the female, the oviposter. And the male has the ideagus. And actually look that one up. Nice. And that's not how I would have pronounced it. But these little things retract when they're not in use on both the male and the female. So they'll stay protected there. It's very aerodynamic.

Yes. It would be very unerodynamic to have the ideagus just kind of flapping in the wind as the fly is sipping around the house. Yeah. It's like putting the landing gear down a little too soon. Exactly. So Chuck, we already foreshadowed what's going on with the the mouth, the sponge mouth, the libellum. Right. That it can only accept liquids. Well, not everything a fly eats is liquid, right? No. Not if they want to jump on that steak or that dog crap. Or dry blood. Yeah. When a fly encounters something, well, first of all, when it accepts food into the libellum, it basically sucks it straight into the stomach. Yeah. If it's liquid, it's good to go. So when it lands on the food and it finds that it can't just suck it up, it basically tries to

crumble it with the end of its proboscis. At that point, it's got tiny little, it's smaller, it's more manageable. Sure. And then it pukes on it. Yep. That's step two. Everything you've ever heard about flies vomiting on you or your food or whatever when they land is absolutely true. Yeah. I thought I might have thought that was an old wives tale in this article. No, it is true. What the fly does is basically spit up saliva and digestive juices onto the little crumbs that it's made using its proboscis, right? And it sits there for a couple of seconds thinking. And then it tries to slurp it up. Yeah. And Robert makes a really good point in the article. This sounds extremely disgusting to us, right? But the fly isn't doing anything we don't do. Right. When we

take food into our mouth, we chew it, we masticate it, right? Saliva is attacking it, it's starting to break it down and then it goes through our esophagus into our stomachs and it becomes digested by juices. The flies are just doing the same thing, but on the outside of its body. Yeah. Because it doesn't have teeth and jaws. We have the decency to keep it all internal. Right. So we don't go into restaurants and puke up onto our plate. Yeah. That would be untoward. So if this food is in an in-between state and it's been spit on and vomited on and left and it's still not quite right, it gets moved to the crop, right? Yeah. Should we call this fly fact? Oh, sure. Okay. Fly fact, what is this, three? Yeah. There's a crop, like you said. And instead

of just saying, oh, well, this little bit of crumb isn't quite liquid enough. Let me just go fly to another one. The fly is pretty efficient. So they say, actually, let me save this for later. Stick it down another hole into the crop and in the crop it waits and then they'll pass it back and forth, maybe add a little more digestive juices, throw up on it a bit more. And they do this until it's ready to be liquid, ready to go down the chute. Yeah. It doesn't waste its food. That was fly fact three, right? Yes. There is one thing we said that the fly is not really doing anything differently than we do to our food. It's just doing it on the outside. Yeah. That's still horrific and disgusting because not only is the fly carrying possibly leprosy to your sandwich,

when it throws up on it, it's probably throwing up something at just eight, which as you pointed out could be dog poop, could be blood, could be the poop from a leprous dog, something like that. Yeah. So when you're at a picnic or something and you see that fly on your Sammy, it's probably, and if you see it moving his little hands around, it's vomiting disease on your food. That's what it's doing. Right. Exactly. Potentially disease, not always. No. And plus, you don't underestimate the human immune system. I mean, we all have white blood cells. We all can mount a pretty decent defense unless we have some sort of immunodeficiency. And if we do have that, then we're probably in some sort of treatment for it. So for the most part, I mean, it is gross,

but I think in modern times where we got the flies under control, at least here in the west. Yes. For now, until the apocalypse comes. The rise of the flies. Do you remember that part in Amityville horror? The priest is like, he's covered in flies and starts sweating. Who is that? Rod Starger? Uh-huh. Yeah. Nice. I would have been so out of there. Chuck. Yes. We talked about their sexy bits already. What do they do with them? What's the fly family like? A fly family. Josh is like many insect families. They male will chase down a female and impregnate her. And it happens really quick. She's ready to lay her eggs. Too sweet. And they don't stick together after they mate. They separate and the mother doesn't even guard the eggs like a lot of species do. One

night love affair. Yeah. And she basically dumps the eggs and what she deems to be a safe place. And she's like, I'm out of here. It's one night stand followed in child abandonment. And how many eggs is it later time? Did we get that up to 900 over the life cycle of a fly? Okay. In a life cycle, I think this is the average lifespan is about three weeks, but it could be three months. Yeah. I don't think a fly can live physically beyond three months, but yeah, the average lifespan in reality because of fly swatters and things like that is like 21 days, I think you said. Yeah. So the life cycle is a lot like most insects. It's got the egg and then the larva, then the pupa, then the adult. Warm summertime is optimal. It takes about seven to 10 days

to go from egg to adult. And they go through, I think three molting stages. The little maggots do, don't they? See, you know this. You know all this. You learn this in school. Isn't it nice to know this? Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. So Chuck, with the maggots, the first stage of the most interesting stage, we've arrived at a story that I have. Oh boy. When I was in college, cooked steak, I threw cooked steak and really actually now that I think about it, I guess I've probably trimmed some raw meat off. Okay. And put it in the garbage can as is normal. A garbage bag in a garbage can, the kitchen garbage can. Okay. And I get up the next, so I'm a normal person. I'm not like some freak, right? I throw and stick away. Exactly. So I get up the next morning

and I go into the kitchen and I wonder, why is the kitchen floor moving like that? Oh man. And I kind of followed the floor as it went up the garbage can and into it. And I realized that my kitchen floor is a small kitchen, granted, but my kitchen floor was covered in a living layer of maggots. The whole thing? The whole thing. Wow. So I'm like, I've got to get rid of this. How do you take care of a maggot infestation? Holy cow. And I tried bleach first, did nothing to them. What? Didn't even slow down one of them. Really? I ended up having to walk all over them. Well, yeah, that's the old fashioned way. That's what I had to do. And I did not actually have a fly infestation after that. So I guess I got them all, but they make a horrific little popping sound.

Did you have like snowshoes or something at least? No. Probably like hiking boots or something. Right. Oh, it was an Athens. Why were they all over the floor? Was it from the stake in the garbage can? They came out of the garbage can overnight? Yeah. Like that. That's frightening. But that, I mean, that follows with what we know about the housefly life cycle that larvae's hatch within a day. Right. And don't forget larvae. And by larvae's, I meant larvae with an E on the end equals maggots. Right. They breathe out of their butt, right? Didn't we learn that somewhere else? Yeah. So they never have to stop eating? Exactly. So they're just like this little fleshy, worm-like thing with a hooked mouth that just does nothing but eat. And poop. Yeah,

because they breathe out of their butts. And molt, like I said, three stages. And in the third molting stage, you know, it goes, gets a little darker and enters the pupa stage. And that's the larger protective shell that it fully develops and outcomes a beautiful butterfly or a disgusting housefly. Like Bart in the Simpsons. Yeah. And how to, like what? Bart in the Simpsons. There's a treehouse of horror where they redid the fly. That's right. He's like that mindless, like the fly with Bart's body is this mindless eating machine. Yeah. That was one of the earlier ones. That's a good one. And then they get out of their little shell there with a temporary swollen bump because they can't chew to get out of an egg or the shell. So they, they literally use this bump

on their head to crack their way out. And then after they get out, that bump deflates and it just becomes part of the head again. I wonder if it's unique to each fly. Like they can recognize one another from the bump on the head. Like, I don't know. And I didn't, there wasn't a name for that in here either. No, it's just a swollen bump. All right. Fly fact number four. Yes. So we talked about a fly. It can't live longer than three months. That's right. That is if it's existing outside of diapause, right? Totally fascinating to me. Yes. So diapause is basically like suspended animation or hibernation for a fly. Basically, if there's no food around and there's no predators either, the flies like, I'm going to see what's going on a few

months from now. The fly can basically shut down its, its life processes to this state where it can just exist without moving. It's like a state between life and death for a few months, right? Yeah. And then wake back up and be like, it's the future or it's winter and I'm dead soon. That's another part because don't they only live during the warmer months or do they, they don't live all year round? Do they thrive in the warmer, warm, muggy areas? So Josh, surely these things add nothing to the world aside from being disgusting little creeps. Agreed. Not true. You don't want them in your house. Oh, remember, Chuck, these are one of the one, one of like three bugs that you and I agreed are, are fine to kill. Yeah. What else did we say?

Ticks. Mosquitoes. And mosquitoes. Ticks. And this is the only non-blood sucker. Yeah. Interesting. It's a poop eater though. And that's why you don't want it in your house, but they are good, like all flies in the world at large. Great source of protein. They break things down and, and into smaller bits for other bacteria and life forms to feed on. Right. They are an important part of any ecosystem that they live in. I mean, there's nothing here that's useless, right? That's right. Okay. I think they even found a use for the old appendix, didn't they? They did. Doesn't it like combat cancerous growth? I can't remember. I believe so. And I think they even use maggots in freshwater fishing, raising commercial fish.

Like tilapia? Yeah. Tilapia. Love them. They use pupa. The pupa is high in protein. Okay. So that's what they feed them. Little freeze-dried pupa. And you know, if you're, if you're a survivalist or you're in a bad situation out in the woods and you need to survive, maggots, if you get like a rotted, rotted tree on the ground, you want to eat those maggots. You'll eat it. You'll eat it and you'll like it. I would do it. And I'm not down with that stuff at all, but I would do that, of course, to save myself. Full circle entomophagy. Oh yeah. Nice job, Chuck. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have time for one more fly fact? I think so. I think yes, we do.

All right. Fly fact number six. No, five. Five. Ancient civilizations actually made regular sacrifices to the fly guides to keep the swarms out of their houses. In temples. Because they thought they were harbingers of sickness and death, even though they didn't know the science behind it. Right. The flies are just, there's something about them. They are, they're disgusting. They're unwholesome. That's the word I'm looking for. They are inherently unwholesome. Yeah. So if you want to keep flies out of your temple, right, you have several options available to you, right? Yeah. Keep a clean house. That's number one. That's the smartest thing to do.

Don't, don't, don't leave like your carton of milk open and just sitting on the counter when you're doing the shots of it, right? Yeah. Or the steak in the trash. Yeah. Emily makes me throw away food. Like I put it in a bag and take it out to the garbage. That's what we do too. That's what you do as adults in college. I think so. Yeah. It's like scraping the trash. It was in a kitchen garbage can with a top. I mean, in college, I would have left that plate out in the living room on the couch. I've always been fairly clean. Yeah, me too. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your

pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement? Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money, can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now, and we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering listener questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times

a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend-thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money has got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What else can you do? So biological control. You got the old Venus flytrap, which, you know, if you can keep them healthy, they're kind of tough. Not just that. At the end of the, um, at the end of the fly,

that was at the beginning of this podcast, right, caught in a spider web, which happens quite a bit. So as long as the spider is not going to kill you and your family while you're sleeping, just leave it alone because it's going to control the fly population tremendously. That's right. And farmers, even there's some commercial farms that actually buy parasitic wasps to, you know, eat larvae and take care of flies for their crops. The pteromelidae wasp. That's right. Pteromelidae. Keep your windows and doors shut. That's kind of obvious. If you're going to keep your door open in the middle of summertime, you're going to have a lot of flies.

I think that's funny that that even warranted its own bullet point. Yeah. And the fly swatter did to actually physical control and flypaper, which is disgusting. Yeah. It's gross too. I mean, especially around food, like if you see that in the kitchen at camp, you know, when you went to camp, you walk past the kitchen, they're like flies there. It's like, get some glass, glaze these windows. What is wrong with you? Or at least change the flypaper every day. That's something too. There's bug zappers and then I wouldn't even endorse pesticides for house flies. You don't want to be spraying that stuff in your house, but that is an option for some people. It's just not

for me. They can be very dangerous. And as anybody who's ever seen a bug's life knows, the bug zappers actually get bugs high. It's kind of like a hallucinogen to them. Oh, was that what happened in that? Yeah. I remember the guy that got zapped, the bug got zapped. He's like, oh, that was far out. Something along those lines. Yeah. Bug zappers are fun. So Chuck, you got any more flyfacts or anything? Uh, no. No? Nope. So we're done with house flies? I'm done. Forever. Yep. House flies? Just as disgusting as you always thought. That's right. And you already knew everything about them. So everybody,

give yourself a pat on the back for this one, right? Yeah. We should mention, if you use a fly swatter, it's a lot of fun to smash a house fly, but you leave behind quite a disgusting mess. Yeah. You will not allow house, or fly swatters in the house. No, we haven't owned it. They're really kind of gross. We don't own one. That's only second to the pooper scooper for the kitty litter, as far as disgusting devices in the house. Or the toilet scrubber next to the toilet. Yeah, or the plunger. Yeah. So that's it. Now you know what Chuck's in my houses look like. Yes. Right? If you want to know more about flies,

and you want to see these flyfacts in text even, you can type in house flies in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which of course brings up listener mail. Funny or sad? Funny. Okay. I'm going to read the Hodgman exchange. Oh, oh, really? Yeah. I was thinking we wouldn't do that and end up on Judge John Hodgman. Maybe he'll litigate us if we just pretend like he doesn't exist. We'll see. I'm going to read this though. So, our buddy Johnny Rocket Hodgman. John Kellogg Hodgman. The Rocket is his maiden name. He has a podcast he does through Jesse Thorns, Maximum Fun Sound of Young America, called Judge John Hodgman. We've plugged it before.

Yeah. He settles minor disputes between friends, lovers, husbands and wives. Yeah. And it's very funny. So John writes this last week, and there is a fan that said, I wish to file suit against the stuff you should know podcast. And this guy is complaining about the fact that we said in the Scooby-Doo show that there were the Boston area campuses. Yeah. The five, the five colleges that were represented by the characters supposedly, it was one of the Scooby-Doo myths. And we said that they're all Boston area colleges, like what ones? Amherst, UMass, Holyoke, Mount Holyoke. Northampton and, all right, that's the ones we'll get to. So, March 18th, 8.39 a.m.,

Judge John Hodgman writes to stuff you should know. Seriously guys, see this. Hello. The five colleges are in the Connecticut River or Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, specifically Amherst, Northampton and Holyoke, Massachusetts. This is painful to me, not only because this is Hodgman country, but it was, which is mainly other than Marble country, actually. Yeah. It also has more argyle. That's right. It was indeed while driving up and down the tobacco fields along the Connecticut River that I first came to enjoy your podcast and to admire your great knowledge ability. Wait, you say, tobacco fields? That is right. The Connecticut River Valley produces what is historically the most prized shade tobacco

in the United States. And Massachusetts tobacco is still dried and used as wrappers for fine cigars. Were you aware of this in all caps? He loves all caps. He's very intimidating. Some day even hope to show this fine country to you, my semi-hometown in my total home state, and to remind you of the great motto of Hampshire College, to know is not enough. I look forward to hearing this letter read in its entirety on your podcast before you force me to humiliate you on mine. That is all. At 9.57, Chuck Bryant writes back, Boy, John, did we hear about this one. It made it abundantly clear that the fine people of Massachusetts need to get right with one another and cease to throw

up walls between themselves. There's enough segregation in the world. At 10.04, Judge John Hodgman writes, So you have already run a correction then. I must have missed it. That was sarcasm. At 10.06, Chuck writes, We have not and shall not take part in the continued segregation of the fine people of Massachusetts. That is all. At 10.08, John writes, You leave me no choice, but to mention this on my own podcast. Oh, good. And I respond to him, and you leave me no choice, but to scoff at it publicly on our podcast. This is like a nerd battle at this point. Yeah. And then John writes very seriously, You don't want to go down this road, Chuck. Just read my letter on the air before this gets ugly.

I finally responded. If anything gets read, it shall be the entire exchange, John, complete with your threatening words from the alleged judge. And then he writes back. Finally, you are a monster. And that is the end of the exchange. That was a great, dramatic reading, man. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, John. Beep, beep, beep. And sorry, I guess, to everybody who was offended by that, which was a substantial amount of people who wrote in. I guess in Massachusetts, that'd be like saying, equating Macon with Atlanta or something. And we would say, no, no, no, no. Macon's not even close to Atlanta. Yeah. But I don't know if I would point out the difference angrily. Well, plus they were disassociating from Boston. Usually you glom onto the big city,

and they were like, no, no, no, no, no. We're not Boston. Yeah. This one. Yeah. I don't get it. I don't either. But to each his own, as we always say, right? That's right. If you want to litigate us somehow via email, maybe you can contact John Hodgman. We should probably give his personal email out, huh? Yeah, since he was so kind to copy ours. Yeah. Well, you can contact us first, and we'll see if we can put you in touch with John. You can reach us via Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast, right? And then you can always send us a good old fashioned email, which we're always appreciative of, although no longer respond to every single one. Be aware.

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