Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Schmidt Stinging Pain Index

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

If you want to know how the pain from that yellowjacket sting on your arm compares to stings from other insects, you need look no further than the body of work of entomologist Justin O. Schmidt. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for

Dave, but he's here in spirit. So this is short stuff. So yeah, I miss Dave. I miss Dave too. It's been a little while. I haven't seen this lovely handsome face. I have not seen another human being in two years. Oh, that's not true. It's been a while. You know, a human being who I have never seen, but wouldn't mind seeing because he has a great mustache is a man named Justin O. Schmidt. He seems like a stash guy. Oh, he's a big time stash guy from pictures. So I've seen him in pictures. I've never seen him in real life. How about that? Yeah, he seems like a guy. I wanted to see if there were any interviews with him on video because he seems like quite a character. You would have to be to come up with what he did, which is the Schmidt Sting Pain Index,

which is a scale that qualifies at least, and I guess quantifies numerically, the pain associated with the stings from different insects. Right. So we've talked about the hot pepper chart. I think we've talked about the regular pain chart. Yeah, with the faces. With the faces. And I think Schmidt realized that they knew about the damage a sting could cause, but not the actual pain level. Is that right? Yeah, and he was already... He works with hymnopterans, bees, wasps, and ants. He's an entomologist, we should probably say. And he was getting stung already, and he's like, well, I might as well be the one to just go ahead and start making something like this so that there is some sort of

index of how painful these things are. And I think ultimately, Chuck, he was trying to see if there was a correlation between the amount of damage done and the amount of pain inflicted initially. And where was Dr. Schmidt working at the time? UGA. Home of our national champion, Georgia Bulldogs. That's right. It feels so good to say. He was probably there not too long after the last time they were national champions. Yeah, I mean, that was 1980, and I think this was in 1984. Yeah, 83, 84 is when he first published the first index. He's now at University of Arizona, known in Georgia Cares. Oh, come on, go Wildcats. Sure. I think that's Wildcats, right? Yeah, that's Wildcats. Arizona states the sun devils. So as the story goes, he was going back to his

office at UGA, their own campus, probably North Campus, where the science buildings are. I didn't go over there much. Not very good looking part of campus, but that's where those science buildings are. And you haven't been to Athens in a while, right? It's been a while. Yeah, you should check it out. You'll see people there too, so you can kill two birds with one stone. Oh, okay, people. Haven't seen them in a while. That's right. So he was coming back after a cross country road trip with his wife Debbie, who's a zoologist. And this is when he put out his, it's like one of the few times you can name something after yourself without, like, because of ego, you know? It's rather appropriate he named it after himself, not just for all the pain he endured. He was stung

at least a thousand times by his estimate while he catalogued 83 different species, but also like the personality he associated with the index too. It's not just like a sweat bee is a one moving on. Like he had to describe what the pain was like or else it's basically useless. Yeah, I think, I mean, we're going to probably spend the rest of this episode talking about this stuff and how brilliant he was in his descriptions, right? Yeah. Should we do a couple of them before the break or should we break? I say we break and then we come back and just let them rip. All right, let's do it. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get

tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Go, Sweat Bee. Sweat Bee is a one. I think that's surprising that it's even a one, but Sweat Bees are little tiny bees that are attracted to human sweat, as you probably know. And they don't sting very often. And I don't think we said, Chuck,

zero to four. Yeah, we didn't say zero to four. It's a big one. But also Dr. Schmitt didn't, he rarely tried to get stoned. Right. Yeah, yeah. But I think Sweat Bees might have been one of the ones that he basically had to make sting him. Induce. Induce, thank you. But he said that the sting is light, ephemeral, almost fruity, as if a tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm. It's like a nice pinot grigio too. Exactly. People very frequently compare this, the Schmitt Stinging Pain Index to like wine descriptions. I love it. Tasting notes. How about fire ants? The fire ant you would think would be higher, but it's only a one. And you point out very astutely. And we should thank Business Insider,

Atlas Obscura, Terminix, and Science blogs for a lot of this stuff. But you point out that it's a fire ant, not a thousand fire ants on your foot at once. That's a whole different jam. But even still, a fire ant bite hurts. So the fact that it's one is a really good reference point for all the ones that come after that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's not a zero. So there is pain involved. And this is, and of course, you're not allergic, obviously, if you're allergic, it's a whole different thing. But if you're not allergic, it's described as a sharp, sudden, mildly alarming sting, like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch. Okay. So far, so good. I could handle those. Now we're starting to get into where I just

don't want to have anything to do with these things, like starting with the bald face hornet. That's a two. That's a two. And the way that Schmidt described it, also, apparently, the bald face hornet's sting will keep going for about five minutes. And I'm sure those five minutes seem a lot longer than actual five minutes. Yeah. But he said that the sting is rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Well, yeah, that's exactly right. What would that mean? So he goes on to describe it as similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door. And all of a sudden, it does kind of like take more shape, doesn't it? Sort of. Yeah, I guess so. And he had to do that because a bald face hornet is a two, a yellow jacket is a two, but he points out like their

stings are much, much different. They feel, the pain associated with them feels much different. Yeah, because the yellow jacket can go on for about 10 minutes, give or take a minute or two, and it described as hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue. There's also something I need to point out. And I know I've talked before about the time I was stung 11 times in the face and neck when I came upon a yellow jacket nest camping. They hurt according to how deep the stinger was. So the far and away, the worst one and the longest lasting was the hardest to get out. It was almost fully buried in that little, is it the orbital bone right under your eyebrow? Oh boy. And it was almost

completely in there and I barely got it out. And that one throbbed and hurt for way longer than 10 minutes. Why did you do that? Why did I do what? Why did you get stung by 11 yellow jackets? I didn't do it on purpose. Man, were you like going after their honey or something? No, we were just, we were going down the side of a mountain toward a river and you know, they had their nest in the ground and we just disturbed it. And we got down to the river and all of a sudden we were swarmed and I probably ran a mile through the woods and they were probably not a mile. It felt like a mile, half a mile. And they were still coming after us. Like we stopped and like here come eight or 10 of them still after us. Angry, angry yellow jackets.

Well, I should probably also point out to Chuck that I know that they're yellow yellow jackets or wasps and wouldn't make honey. I was joking. Right. How about red harvester ants? Have you ever been stung by one of those? No, that's a three though. That's getting on up there. Well, you could have though because you lived in Yuma and they're found in New Mexico and Arizona. But they can inflame your nerves for hours, it says. Yes, bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail. Oh, actually I had a descriptor that I always said for years about the one in my eyebrow. Okay, let's hear it. It felt like someone had a thumbtack stuck on that bone and they were just tapping it with a little ball peen

hammer. So I guess I get kind of identified more than I thought I did with weird descriptions. There you go. Man, that sounds so terrible. I'm glad you made it. Yes, the paper wasp is next. The most pain I've ever seen my daughter in was this past summer when she got nailed by a wasp. Oh no. Awful. It's a 3.0. She screamed like I've never heard before and I felt so terrible. I bet. The good news is it's only about 15 minutes and then it completely went away and the pain and this is actually what she said. She said it's caustic and burning with a distinctly bitter aftertaste like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut. That's crazy. So she's read Schmidt's book? No, I think she just improved it. I was like, wow, that's really

good description. Maybe Schmidt was astrally projecting at that moment and happened to find his way in. I'm 50. I've never been stung by a wasp. You better knock on wood, buddy. Although Yellowjack gets a wasp. Yeah, true. But before that 11, and trust me, I paid for it with that 11, but I'd only been stung maybe a couple of times in my life really. I haven't been stung much. She's been stung like four times already and she's six and a half. Wow. Yeah, I think that has me beat too. Yeah. What's your worst? I don't remember. I've kind of blocked it out and I think about it, but probably a B, Yellowjacket. I think it was a Yellowjacket as well. They're ground dwelling, right? Well, yeah, these were in the ground. I don't know if it's exclusively in the ground,

but these were. Yes, I've been stung by a Yellowjacket and it's not pleasant at all. Yeah, those wasps look painful. They do. Yumi found this one. I want to say it's a tarantula wasp, but I don't know if it is or not, but it was purple and orange, and it looks just mean. I know what you're talking about. That looks like something that shouldn't be near Momo, so she got Momo away and then she went and looked it up. Yes, it turns out it has one of the most painful stings on the planet. It actually is a four, I believe, which would make it tied with the bullet ant, which Schmidt apparently says is a four because that's all the scale goes up too, but it's actually off the charts painful. Yeah, it's listed as four plus. Central and South American

ant, big and black, and 12 hour pain, pure intense, brilliant pain, like fire walking over flaming charcoal with a three inch rusty nail in your heel. Man. Yeah, I've heard that. There's videos of people purposely getting stung by a bullet ant on YouTube if you want to see that. Yeah, there's like a whole group of people who go around using the Schmidt Stinging Pain Index and purposely get stung and make videos of it just to see what it's like and write it out. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, well, that's it for short stuff, everybody. Stereoclure stinging insects, but if you ever do get stung by one, check it out on the Schmidt Stinging Pain Index and see if he's right. And short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a

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