Stuff You Should Know - What is parallel evolution?

Episode Date: May 19, 2011

In the process of parallel evolution, two seemingly unrelated species living in isolation can evolve surprisingly similar traits -- but how does it work, and why does it happen? Join Chuck and Josh as they break down the process of parallel evolution. 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. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I am here, sir. Yeah. And that makes this Stuff You Should Know. Indeed. Indeed. The Friday version. Yeah. Been a while on the Friday. It is Friday, isn't it? Are we shouting out to Kiva first thing?

Yeah. I think we definitely should. Dudes and dudettes, we have surpassed half a million bucks as a team in microloans to kiva.org. Yeah. And that was our goal was to hit it in May and darn it all if we didn't do it. We totally did it. And we started our team October 2010. 2009. 2009. And by the next October, we'd already passed our $250,000 goal. Yeah. And then we wanted to get to 500,000 in May. I didn't think it was possible. We totally did. It's possible because of people like Glenn and Sonya. Yes. Who helm the team for us. That's right. There are de facto captains. It's because of people like Blake. Yep. This guy who came in and basically put 16 loans, I think, on his credit card because he said he was sick of us being so

close to half a million dollars, but not quite there. That's awesome. And everybody who's a member on our team who's contributed anything, well, at least 25 bucks. Yeah. We're number three on all of Kiva and the number of team members ahead of team Obama in Australia and Europe. We're just so proud of you. We're very proud of everybody. And it's just cool. And I guess Glenn and Sonya will probably help us figure out the next goal, which I guess will be a million bucks. I would say I'd say a million. Why not? Let's do it. It might take a year from now, but I ain't going anywhere. We'll find out. Yeah. Let's do it. Okay. So our goal now is to lend a million dollars on Kiva through our Stuff You Should Know team. Let's go, guys. All right. Way to go. Everybody eat a

cupcake. That's right. A good one too. And if you want to know about Kiva and you don't know about our team, you can find that at kiva.org. Uh, slash team or is it teams? Team, team, singular, slash Stuff You Should Know. And you can join up with the team and just make one little lousy $25 loan and you can get your money back and then you can pull it out if you want, but you're probably going to want to reinvest it because it's kind of cool. And you know what? Before you do, before you sign up, um, or if you just recently signed up, you should read our two-part blog post on Kiva and how we feel about Kiva because it's not a perfect system. No. Um, and after a while, everyone inevitably runs up against the flaws in it and talks about

quitting and all that. Right. Right. Um, so we wrote a couple of posts on it so you could search why we lend at SYSK. Yeah. Um, and, uh, that will bring it up on the blogs. Right. Yeah. And just, you know, what I've learned is just like regular loans, micro loans are no different. There are people that get in trouble and should not have borrowed what they borrowed and it's even sadder. I think that people borrow, you know, 600 bucks and can't, uh, for that. And so there are, there are some downsides, but we found not only that there are also tons of predators out there lending to people at horrible rates, but we believe in Kiva and we found that there are many, many more positive associations. So agreed. Moving on. Moving on, dude. Um, so, uh, also probably

wouldn't hurt to go listen to our, uh, micro lending, how micro lending works podcast. Yeah. Where we first discovered Kiva. That's right. Um, so Chuck, we're going to talk about something that has absolutely nothing to do with Kiva as far as I know. Okay. I think you're right. Um, 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. Of course, yes, they can do that in on the prime example. Okay. 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. 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 podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ready, set, slay. Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast is taking you behind the scenes of RuPaul's Drag Race season 15 on MTV with me, Alec Moppa and my co-host, Lonnie Love. Alec and I will recap the latest episode, the best and worst looks, and we'll even be joined by some

of your favorite queens along the way. One thing's for sure, there is no shortage of queens this season because we are witnessing the biggest cast in RuPaul's Drag Race herstory and the stakes are higher than ever with the largest cast prize in Drag Race herstory. So make no mistake, the competition is going to rev up. Watch season 15 of RuPaul's Drag Race every Friday on MTV. Then join us on the podcast right after the show to recap the episode, debrief on all the looks and more. Listen to Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk first about Australia. Australia is this awesome little natural laboratory,

a giant petri dish, if you will. Just from childhood, I've always been amazed that it's a country and a continent. My hat's always gone off to Australia for that, so to all of our peeps down in Australia, Chuck, take off your hat. Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy. Okay, there you go. You're supposed to say oi, oi, oi. Yes, okay. Just pretend I just did. And the reason being is because at one point the continents all formed a supercontinent, Pangaea. Some of the other continents kind of stuck together a little more. Australia went off by itself as Australians do. It went off to do its own thing. That's right. And there were animals in existence about 60 million years ago when it broke off that were living on Australia. Yeah, I picture the little crack forming and then separating and

literally animals looking at their little species brethren going, bye. That's a really good way to look at it too because it's not like these cracks happened like this species lives over here and this species lives over there. That's pretty much exactly how it happened. Not that quickly, obviously. Maybe using time lapse photography. But essentially that gave rise to related species evolving in completely different parts of the world. That's right. So Australia gave us some freak shows like koala bears, kangaroos, wombats, Tasmanian devils. Yeah, they're really different than other animals in other parts of the world. Exactly. But it also gave us a little something called the flying phalanges. I've never heard of this. Okay, the flying phalanges looks, it's a

rodent. It has a tail. It has a tiny head. It's covered in fur. It'll give you some sort of pestilent disease if you eat it raw. But it also has this weird little bit of skin that retracts, except when it's jumping from tree to tree. It spreads its arms and legs out, spread eagle, and this flap of skin in between its arm and say its ribs, and then its legs, and it's so say buttocks. Okay. This skin flaps out to allow it to glide. It's like those flying dudes that you see now, the skydivers that they basically wear little flying phalanges suits. Yeah, wingsuit. Yeah, wingsuit. Those things are awesome. Pretty cool. And way dangerous. So this is like the original. This is the OG of that. Yeah, I think it was based on that. Flying

phalanges. Sounds like, again, a total freak show until you remember, oh yeah, North America has flying squirrels that are the exact same thing. And I had a pet one. I think I mentioned that before. You did, didn't you? Yep. Okay, so if you go back far enough on the family tree, you're going to find that both of these animals' ancestors were living on Australia and elsewhere in the world at the time. That's right. Okay. So when they split off when Australia broke off, this animal's habitat was disrupted. And so you had two members of the same species living on different parts of the world, but evolving completely differently, right? So they've gotten to the point now where the flying squirrel and the flying phalanges are not the same animal. They're different species

because they can't engage in successful reproduction any longer. But they still both evolved independently. These flaps, which are just totally odd. That's what's called parallel evolution, right? That's right. And the flying phalanges and the flying squirrel are far from the only species that are no longer related, that are no longer the same species that have evolved similarly, which poses a really big question for biology and evolution. How is this happening? That's right. Well, parallel evolution further defined is when they're related species that have been split. When two different species share these traits, it's morphological similarity. Kind of neat. Uh-huh. And when two completely unrelated species develop this morphological similarity,

it's called convergent evolution. And it's kind of hard to tell because we don't know exactly how things were millions of years ago. When you look at species. Sure, exactly which one of these were similar back then. But we do know in the case of the squirrel and the phalanger. Phalanger? Yeah. Phalange. Phalanges. I've been saying phalanges. Oh, really? Phalanger. Yeah, it's a phalanger. The flying phalanger. They should just call it a squirrel. Too silly. Well, that occurred to me. Maybe there isn't such a thing as parallel evolution. Maybe it's all humans. We're just not calling everything the same thing. Yeah. It's our naming convention. There's problem solved. So one of the reasons, and it's pretty simple actually, and it makes

a lot of sense that parallel evolution can occur, is that when you have a similar environment with two species, population pressure is going to lead to similar traits. Like we got to survive. So if we live in a similar environment, then we're probably going to evolve similarly. Like if it's really cold, we're probably going to have thick fur as different species. It's pretty basic. Another really good example I think that was used was teeth. Yes. Right? Yeah. I know that's jumping around a little bit, but teeth. Things we take for granted, they're so ubiquitous. Sharp teeth. Sharp teeth are found in all carnivores. And the reason why is because it's a really good trait. Yeah. Right? Because we can dig into meat. Right. Same thing though.

Although I can't with my stupid bum tooth. I'm devolving. Someday again, through technology. I hope so. So what you're talking about, Chuck, is with natural selection is that basically if you imagine dropping an animal into an environment, say a jungle. Right? There are parts of it that are going to allow it to thrive. There are things that are going to make it less likely to thrive. Yeah. The things that make it likelier to thrive are the traits that are going to get passed along from generation to generation. Yeah. As long as they hang on long, hang on long enough to survive through the reproduction process, then it gets ingrained and boom, you've got yourself a trait. Well, by nature, the traits that allow it to hang on

long enough to reproduce are going to be most successful traits because with reproduction, those are the ones that are going to get passed around the most frequently. Sure. Then eventually, the animals that had more of the traits that didn't allow it to thrive are going to die out. They're not going to reproduce. So on a long enough time scale, this reproduction will lead to a higher frequency of traits that make an animal fit for its environment. Right. Like the gorilla, for instance, used to have a large tail with a pinwheel on the end of it, but it didn't really do much for him. So over time, it just kind of went away. That's not true though, is it? No, it's not true. What do you mean is it? All right. I was making sure. So these changes though,

these traits, right? They just kind of seem to pop up here or there. If you're in our current understanding of genetics, same 1980s understanding of genetics, they just kind of pop up out of nowhere. Right. Sure. But Chuck, if I may digress for a second, please. Have we ever explained what came first, the chicken or the egg? Yeah, it's been a while though. It has, but we have already? Yeah, but it's been a while. I think it deserves a recap. Okay. Because you actually know the answer. Yes, I do. I can say that the egg came first because the genetic mutation that gives rise to new species to new animals occurs in the zygotic stage of development. Right. Right. So that means a non-chicken and a non-chicken got together and created a zygote that had a

mutation that eventually turned it into a chicken. Its genes were expressed to be a chicken to the egg came first. The egg came before the chicken. Eventually the egg hatched and you had the first chicken, but the egg came first. All right. But the point of me saying that is that the mutations that appear, these traits that change over time or show up that make an animal more fit for its environment happen in the reproductive level of zygote. That's right. And the accumulation of those traits, the beneficial traits that make it able to survive in a certain place like the polar bear in the cold is called an ecological niche. Yeah, niche, as some people say. We talked about the polar bear before separating from the brown bear and the black bear in evolution and

isolation, which is kind of a companion podcast of this one. Agreed. Did you write that one? Yeah, I wrote that one. I didn't write this one. This was the grabster. Yeah, that's right. Of course. Grab. So that's an ecological niche and animals like we mentioned the polar bear that have adapted to live in a cold area throw a polar bear out in the savanna of Africa and it's not going to do too well. Right, which brings up another point. I think that there's a lesson in all of this, what we're talking about, especially with ecological niches. We, especially us being humans at the top of the food chain and the smartest things ever since sliced bread or prairie dogs. Go ahead. Okay. Tend to look at evolution as basically a ladder and we're at the top, baby.

Right. That's not the case in ecological niches. Point that out. If humans, okay, great example. If you take a human and put it at the bottom of the Mariana trench, it's not going to thrive. No, it's going to drown or its head's going to explode. We're not suited for it. So we're not evolved. We're not at the top of evolution. If evolution were a ladder and we were at the top, we'd be suited for any environment. We're not. That's a good point. So as a guy named Matt Ridley points out in a book called The Red Queen, Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, that evolution is not a ladder. It is a treadmill. Yeah. No animals necessarily better than another. Right. More highly evolved. It has to do with adapting to your local environment.

That's one of the processes of parallel evolution. Makes sense. We adapt to our local environment or our ecological niche. That's right. That's a very good point. And the reason we're pointing out ecological niche to begin with is because animals are, I'm sorry, organisms period that have parallel or convergent evolution are usually or more likely to have a similar ecological niche. That's a really, really long way of putting that. Was it? Yeah. For instance, you look at an animal like the wildebeest or North American cattle. They're actually sort of parallel evolutionized. And they live in very similar areas, you know, planes, hot, grassy. And so they're really similar in the end, even though they're on two different continents. Yeah. Number one,

evolutionized t-shirt. Okay. Okay. Number two, that's absolutely right. All right. Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely right. Right. Okay. Great. What do you think I said? I thought you said wrong. And I heard you wrong. It's absolutely white. Okay. That's absolutely blight, Chuck. But Josh, sometimes convergent evolution does not depend on this ecological niche because the trait is really advantageous for all kinds of organisms. And that's when you brought up the sharp teeth. Teeth, limbs, wings, arms. Consider this the arms. We can say now, looking at genomes, that arms are a direct relative of fins. Yeah. This again goes to the idea that evolution is a treadmill, not a ladder, right? So it's not like arms are the inevitable end of fins. What are

you laughing about? Nothing. It's that fins are better suited for swimming around the water. Yeah. Right. But the same genes, the same genetic set, the same genetic code that give you fins also give you arms if you're walking around maybe swinging from trees or need to climb them. Sure. Or need to like, you know, high five somebody to keep society going. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. You're right. But, you know, we're not the only things that evolve limbs, but limbs are so advantageous. Just like teeth that we are, that a lot of different completely unrelated species evolved. Right. Limbs. To walk and to grab things. Which is, what is that, convergent evolution? Yes, I would say so. The very least parallel. You know, I have to say I'm surprising myself. I'm

extremely passionate for this one. I don't understand why. Well, it's cool. And, you know, we haven't covered evolution in earnest as a podcast, but we've hit on it in so many. I think we're covering it in the long run one way or the other. You know what I think it is, Chuck? I am just barely hanging on by my fingernails. So I'm really like, yeah, if I say it really fast, it'll, it'll be right. All right. Let's talk about genetics in this whole mess. Okay. A parallel evolution. There are two things to think about when you think about genetics. And the first one I think is kind of cool. The genetic code for species potentially has a hidden blueprint almost for what it could do, but not necessarily does do. And the grabster

likened it to, let's say you have a blueprint of a house and the architect designed it such that you can add on a master bedroom here in this spot, but you never do it. But it's there. You've got the land and the blueprint for it. You just don't use it. Right. Because the architect said, don't build that addition yet. They don't have the money for it. They're just building the house. Exactly. But it still exists in the master blueprint. And the same can be said of, let's say, a jellyfish, which is round, right? There's no right or left side of a C and an n-in-in-in-in me. Right. It has radial symmetry, right? A jellyfish or an anemone. God, that's so hard for me. Anemone. Show off. An enemy. No, it's not an enemy. An enemy.

The genetic. There is no left or right side as a radial body plan, it's circular, and which is not a funny shape at all. And the genetic code though is there. So, eventually one day, let's say the jellyfish needed to evolve to have a left or right side. For some reason, it could do that. Genetically speaking, the code is there. Yeah. For bilateral symmetry. Yeah.

Which I have, which you have. That's right. If you cut us down the middle, we could be folded in half. Yes. If you put a mirror up to your nose perpendicular to your nose, parallel to your nose, the point of your nose, it would be half. It would look like you. That's right.

Right. You know, they say symmetry equals beauty. Yes. That's what they say. That's what a lot of people say. Yeah. If you've got a big walleye on one side, that's why you're not attractive. What are you going after the eyes for, as you mentioned Disco Eye and another recent

podcast. Did somebody wrong you recently? No. No. Yeah. Okay. So, jellyfish have radial symmetry, but they have a genetic marker to kick in bilateral symmetry.

If they ever need it. They would run horrified. Maybe that's what Cthulhu is. It's a jellyfish whose bilateral symmetry has started to kick in a little bit. Nice. The point is, it's not just jellyfish. There are a lot of dormant genes just ready to go off with the right mutation to change all sorts of stuff.

And they think also, I read the article that he cited, the Ars Technica article, that the jellyfish have that so that they can develop their mouth. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, cool. Because the mouth requires bilateral symmetry on even a jellyfish. The reason we mentioned this to begin with though is that the belief that you can develop similar traits even though you evolve separately, which is what we've been talking about this

whole time, because the trait has always been in your genetic code to begin with. Just dormant. Right. It's just very, very ancient. Yeah. And then it can express in different ways. Like apparently they looked at the fins of a fish, right, and found that they have pretty much the same genes that we do for our arms.

Okay. And bilateral symmetry, those genes are the same for everything. Wow. Right. So we're all a lot more related, I guess, than we thought now that we're starting to look into it. I wonder if, well, we probably know this by now, if we have any dormant genetic codes in humans.

Like, we could potentially grow that tail if we needed to. Well, apparently we do have tails in some embryotic development stage. Oh, yeah. We still have vestigial tails, and there are people who are born with them who don't shed them. That's pretty cool. Who had the tail? Jason Alexander had one in one of the Fairleigh Brothers movies.

Yeah. Or like if it was, was it there's something about Mary, wasn't it? No, no, he wouldn't have that. Are you sure that wasn't it? Shallow howl. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant too.

Didn't one of the friends have a tail? No, no, no. Chandler had a third nipple. Yeah, superfluous nipple. So did Krusty the clown. Hey, hey. 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 2200 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. 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 for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ready, set, slay! Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast, is taking you behind the scenes of RuPaul's Drag Race Season 15 on MTV. With me, Alec Moppa, and my co-host, Lonnie Love. Alec and I will recap the latest episode, The Best and Worst Looks, and we'll even be joined by some of your favorite queens along the way. One thing's for sure, there is no shortage of queens this season, because we are witnessing the biggest cast in RuPaul's Drag Race Herstory, and the stakes are higher than ever with the largest cast prize in Drag Race Herstory.

So make no mistake, the competition is going to rev up. Watch season 15 of RuPaul's Drag Race every Friday on MTV. Then join us on the podcast right after the show to recap the episode. Deep brief on all the looks and more. Listen to Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Josh, what's the second thing to consider? Well, I guess the other thing, we've been, what got biologists into the idea of looking at genes is that we were looking at morphological changes, right? Stuff we can see.

Yes. Like this flying squirrel is not related to that flying squirrel, but they're both flying squirrels, even though we call them different things, phalangers. Right. When we look at the genetic level, we're finding that like these same morphological traits, the similarities, are also found on the genetic level. Right. Right? So basically they're thinking like, you can look at the ecological pressure, the environmental pressure that caused a polar bear's coat to become white. Right.

Right? On an internal level with the interactions between amino acids and proteins that are causing these genes to be expressed. Right. So internally and externally, these changes are occurring to form flying phalangers. And squirrels on two different continents. Thank you, the freak show that is Australia, for basically pointing science in the right direction. They love it when we talk about them too. We always get emails from Aussies that are just like, you guys are the best. Yeah.

And they gave us another one too, the Tasmanian wolf. Oh, is that Australian? Now extinct wolf, which is almost completely unrelated to any other wolf. It's extinct, like I said. But it is the spitting image of the gray wolf here in North America. Same size. Even though they're like, they were not related. Yeah.

Same everything. This is the kind of science I dig. Yeah. Cool science. Yeah. Not that physics. Magnetism. You're into physics though, sort of.

Just not a necessity, I guess. Yeah, but you have an appreciation more than I do, I think. Really? Yeah. You don't like fulcrums? What is wrong with you? What's a fulcrum? The fulcrum is the point.

I know. It's like a seesaw, right? Isn't that the fulcrum? Yeah. Okay. It's like a balance on a seesaw. Yeah. It's the point that a seesaw balances on.

Yeah. Yeah. Same thing. Got anything else? No. Are we just going to evolve separately here? I think so. Okay.

If you want to learn more about evolution, you should type in evolution in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. Also, check out, can animals evolve in isolation? That's a cool article. Yeah. This article we've been talking about from the Grabster. You can two seemingly unrelated species that live in isolation from each other evolve into identical forms.

You can also reach it by typing in parallel evolution in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. So there's a lot for you to go check out there. All right. Yeah. And I would say just type in evolution in howstuffworks and you're going to get a whole bevy of cool stuff. That's what I said first. Oh, is it?

Yeah. I'm reinforcing that. Well, Chuck said search bar at howstuffworks, right? Yeah. I did too. It's a super, super time for listener man. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this, um, uh, mountaintop removal coal mining email from an insider.

One of millions. Yeah. We got a lot of positive feedback on this. And I surprisingly, not one person has written in yet that said, you jerks, you never think about the minor side of things. Most people have been like, yeah, this is probably shouldn't be some, some guy on Twitter basically said, I don't like it when they get political, but this one was pretty good. All right.

Yeah. I'll take that then. Hey guys, I've heard all your podcasts from day one and keep up the good work, please. Sometimes you're all I need to get away from the day stress. I mean, mining engineer student enrolled at the University of Kentucky, go Wildcats, one of the largest exporters of eager and to do mining engineers. In reality, the decision to enroll here had more to do with scholarship opportunities than a lifelong love of Appalachian mining.

However, after being surrounded by overzealous students who would personally blow up the earth for an ounce of coal because it keeps the lights on, I have become entirely infatuated with this mindset. I've interviewed for all the big name companies, some of which spend hundreds of thousands of dollars recruiting new workforce. When I interview for these companies, they seem to be in complete denial of the statistics. Occasionally showing a picture of a deer standing on a patch of grass and claiming that it's as if we were never there in the first place.

As I have been shown firsthand what the mining field entails, I have nothing but devout respect for what these people do on a daily basis. That's something I don't know if we make clear. We're not anti-miners. We know these people work very hard. I think we made that extremely clear. I have nothing but devout respect for what these people do on a daily basis to make sure that I can send this email on my electricity-powered laptop.

At the same time, I shudder in disappointment that they wishfully remain ignorant of the science involved in the harm they are doing. Part of me wishes to enter the field to reinvent the idea that providing energy must come at a sacrifice that compromises our ability to take care of the environment in our neighbors. Wish me luck as I have a lot of work ahead of me. And I asked him if he wanted to remain anonymous, and he said, it's probably a good idea. So that's anonymous. But pretty cool.

Hey, thanks a lot, Anonymous. Yeah, changing the place from the inside, right? Good luck, buddy. We like anonymous emails, right? They're usually the most like, what? Exactly. All right. Well, if you want to send us an anonymous email, we would love to hear from you.

You can address it to StuffPodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready.

Are you? 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 or 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 Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Claudia Lanier sang with Icontina Turner and inspired songs by David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Shantae Brode has turned Snoop Dogg from LA's worst drug dealer into a cultural icon. You can hear these stories and more on season four of About a Girl, now nominated for two signable words. I'm Nikki Lanette, the host of About a Girl. Listen to About a Girl on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nikki Lanette, the host of About a Girl on the iHeart radio app.