The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Government Cheese, Mitochondria NOT Powerhousing, Dawn of the Cockroach

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

This time, Laura Baisas explains the dawn of the cockroach in New York, Rachel discusses a situation when the mitochondria is NOT the powerhouse of the cell (not ideal), and Claire Maldarelli divulges all about the legendary government cheese. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Thanks to our Sponsors! Get 20% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST! #honeylovepod Right now get 50% off a ONE-TIME PAYMENT FOR A LIFETIME Babbel subscription at https://Babbel.com/WEIRDEST This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at https://BetterHelp.com/WEIRDEST Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code Weirdest. It's third party lab tested and ships directly to you in a discreet box. Best of all, everything's backed by Mood's 100-day satisfaction guarantee. And like I said, you can get 20% off with code Weirdest. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now with code weirdest.

That's code weirdest for 20% off. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or The Hilton. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises, it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of

popular science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Laura Bysis. And I'm Claire Maldarelli. Laura and Claire, welcome to the show. Both of you. It's been a while. Very long time for me. Yes. Yes. Thanks. Good to be back. And listeners, you got to hear from Claire at our live show, which we dropped into the feed around Christmas. But would you remind listeners what you're up to these days when we're not roping you into coming on on weirdest thing oh yes for sure um okay so update on my life let's see um i am now a senior editor for science and tech um at inverse which is part of bustle digital group um so do a lot of editing and writer wrangling um hurting cats uh you Yeah, that's about it.

Still running. I don't know. I haven't done an update on my life in a long time to anyone else. So, wow, I'm doing this for the first time talking to a lot of people. Yeah, that's it. Do you have specific questions? No, we're just so psych to have you back on. And we hope it's going to be more of a regular thing this year.

So listeners, I know Claire's, you are like a crowd favorite. it. Like, people will message me being like, where's Claire? Oh, no. I want Claire facts. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but. No, no. It's definitely a good thing. And those people, if you're listening, you're welcome and you have great taste. Cool. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, et cetera, decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then, once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. And actually, before we do

our teasers, I remembered that I wanted to remind people again that Jess and I are hoping to do a live stream Q&A soon. By the time this episode airs, I would say we're hoping to do it very soon imminently. So definitely follow Jess on Twitch and follow me on Patreon. And hopefully we'll have, you know, a date set soon and make that happen. And also like, you know, let us know if you have questions you want us to answer. You can always email me at Rachel at Popsai.com. That's p-op-s-C-I.com or hi at Rachelfeltman.com. Either one works. Cool. So now we'll do our teasers. So, Laura, what's your tease? There are roughly 120 cockroaches for every single person in New York City.

That's so many. So many. It's more than I would like there to be. Claire, what's your teeth? The most coveted cheese for making grilled cheese might have come from the U.S. government. Incredible. You know we love a cheese fact on weirdest thing. I saw I saw Jess's face light up.

So can't wait. My tease is that there's some really interesting new research on long COVID that may explain why I'm so tired all the time, which is both upsetting and exciting. So fair wording. I'm going to get up on my little soapbox a little bit, but we're going to learn a lot so it's going to be fun. Gosh, I want to start with cockroaches.

Yeah, same. Because I saw a cockroach friend this morning. Not going to lie. Yeah, I see them more often than I wish to. We have sort of a tense truce, I would say, in my home. Yeah. It's hard when you're an animal lover and a science journey. journalist who understands everything has its place in the ecosystem, but when it's something that's

just so fast and so dirty in some ways, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, I think truce is kind of a perfect word, so. So, yes, the estimate is 120 cockroaches for every person in New York City. This won't really come as a huge surprise to anyone who's lived in the Big Apple and, you know, gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, only to, find this roommate that's not paying rent yet eating all of your snacks, has happened many times. So yeah, they're everywhere. And I stumbled on this factoid actually while watching a docu-series called A Real Bugs Life, and it kind of like a cockroach sort of jumped out at me just because, you know, just doing

that, you know, back of the napkin kind of calculations. That is a lot of cockroaches, even for a place where they are so ubiquitous. I also found out they can, their females can have up to 150 babies in their lifetime. So, yeah. Well, a little bit too many. Too many. Give those cockroach moms a break. Come on now.

In New York, as with all urban centers, it's not that surprising. There's a ton of food for them. There's millions of people who live here. And they're actually the absolute masters of evolution. In addition to just kind of being able to eat almost anything, they fit into cracks that are only about a tenth of an inch wide. I spoke with a bug wrangler from this series named Tim Cockrell. He's an entomologist in the UK.

And he said they work kind of like when you crush a soda can. And then it sort of like pings back together once that pressure is released. Yeah. So yeah, they're kind of like, you know, buggy soda cans. And he even said, you know, he's a bug wrangler, literal entomologist with his PhD who describes roaches as having hidden superpowers. yet he even gets startled from their speed and said that they're some of the more difficult bugs to work with on set.

You know, no animosity towards them. He said they were, when I asked, you know, what are some of the more difficult bugs to work with? Cockroaches came to mind right away. A sub-fun fact, jumping spiders are actually easier to work with. So, which, you know, I don't know, I think if I had to meet a cockroach or a jumping spider, that's a, that's a tough call. That's a, you know, not a fun choice.

have to make. In terms of their speed, on their scale, they reach speeds of about 200 miles per hour. What? So literally, yeah, but yeah, they are, it's insane. Okay, if you look at a cockroach, they don't look like they should be fast. They almost look like they should be like, right? You know, like those hot dog, like dashing, dashing dogs. Yeah, yeah. They shouldn't be like made for speed.

Yeah, they're kind, yeah, they kind of look like they should be lumber. sort of like, you know, I'm kind of picturing Eeyore a little bit. But no, they can, yeah, like on their, I don't know the exact equivalent, so we don't need to include this if we don't want to. But yeah, it's about 200 miles per hour to cockroach scale. And for bug wranglers, like Tim, they really need to know their subjects to safely and ethically work with them. They need to kind of understand how temperature and lighting affects them and also where to find them, which, again, New York would seem to be the perfect place to have to find one of these bugs. Where can't you find them?

Yeah, just give it a couple of minutes. I'd love to know and live there. Antarctica. They're on every continent except Antarctica. Oh, really? So if you want to go, you know, move there. Yeah, I don't think I want to do that. But it's good to know.

You know, it's good to know if one day you really just do get so sick of them that you have to move. So what else makes them tick and flock to? cities. For New York specifically, obviously, rats get a lot of the buzz, thanks to, you know, viral celebrities like pizza rat and they're bigger. You can see them on the subway tracks, that there technically are more cockroaches. They have a very long history in the United States, but are not native to the country. They arrived with European colonizers on ships. And in no time, they just kind of started to spread here because, you know, the population kept growing. Um, They started to arrive in New York City in really large numbers during the 1840s.

This coincides with a couple of things. The city is starting to expand upward north along Manhattan Island and out a little bit towards the Bronx and south to Brooklyn. And the population is swelling due to massive waves of immigration. They started to get here and they earned the nickname Croton Bugs. Does anyone want to guess why Croton? Not Croton. Croton. Does anyone want to guess?

Like Croton, like the stop on the Metro. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Croton on Hudson, right? Croton on. Very close. Not exactly the stop. The posh nickname comes from what was then the newly constructed Croton aqueduct and water system.

That's the system that brings water down from the Hudson Valley into the city to this day. Some early newspaper reports were linking the influx of the cockroaches to all of this construction. However, it's kind of like with lots of things in science, it's kind of a yes and no. It was more of the pipes that were installed to bring the water and not the construction themselves. In a book that I found on the subject called, Love This Title, Aliens in the Backyard, Professor John Leland wrote, the new water system not only supplied New York with cheap and abundant water, it also provided the cockroach with warm water pipes that were dank,

dark conduits from apartment kitchen to apartment kitchen. It's like spas for them. Yes. They were a spa, a transit system, a housing complex, kind of all in one. It's like they're just kind of like the ultimate urbanists in many ways. So with any bug infestation comes some fun, strange ways of getting rid of them. Ads for different poisons and powders started to fill up various newspaper. And one doctor even advertised that stale beer could kill them as it is a, quote, cockroach's favorite drink.

Yeah, anybody who's worked in a restaurant or a bar can tell you that probably is not going to work. I read that and pictured like a bunch of, you know, old-timey guys outside of McSorley's, the famous alehouse in the East Village that did not allow women until like the 1970s. I kind of picture a bunch of old-timey guys just like chucking beers at a cockroaches. And yeah, not going to work. Another which seems a little bit more somewhat accurate, if not inhumane, was pulverized borax that showed up about the turn of the century. one manual for servants advised, sprinkle it into their haunts, especially under and around sinks and stationary washstands. As this kind of emerging Roach versus People battle was happening, the advent of more access to home heating, some people thought that that would help get rid of them. But unfortunately, also as anybody who's lived in a metro area in the summer knows, no, it will not.

They love the warmth and humidity, and it will even attract more of them. Now, what will be interesting with climate is if temperatures become too extreme, either hot, too hot or too cold, they will naturally feel uncomfortable and disappear, but the jury is still kind of out on like what those thresholds are. But generally, you can expect to see more of them in New York from May to September and fewer in the winter when they're dormant and sleeping because they're smart. They might be a little gross, but they're smart. So as the city's population continued to grow and really explode into the 20th century, the problem obviously didn't go away. One apartment dweller, who remains anonymous, wrote into the New York Times in 1921, never in all New York's history has such a plague of vermin visited us.

Love that, love that, love that person's energy. I love how they remained anonymous. Yes, it was an anonymous apartment dweller. I kind of loved, I think maybe they were afraid like the big roach lobby was coming for them. I don't know. But yeah, so again, it still persisted. And they started to become even more like New Yorkers. A study from Rockefeller University in New York found that they really do tend to stick to their own neighborhoods, kind of sharks versus jet style. They looked at. it, the study looked at three distinct neighborhoods, the upper west side, which is west of Central Park, the upper east side, which is east of Central Park, and Roosevelt Island, which is that little island in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. Roughly 70 to 80 percent of the cockroaches in each of these neighborhoods are only from one genetic type, and they're also genetically different. Now, since they're distinct, they aren't distinct species, they can still

interbreed, but the study kind of was this genetic, this, you know, specific genetic line is showing, which was enough to show that they're not really doing a lot of commuting or relocating. They're not really the bridge and tunnel crowd. They kind of like to stick to their, to their turf, which is somebody who I, admittedly, I do live in Manhattan. And a perfect weekend for me is one where I don't have to go south of like the Museum of Natural History for fear of running into throngs of, people, I kind of get it. They like to stay. And for a Roach, if you think about it, like they've got everything they need here. They have their wonderful spas and apartment complexes and bugways that they can kind of travel and live to. So why go all the way down to the battery, you know, just for a

slice of pizza when you could probably find one right around the corner from you? These urban environments give them. So true. Right? I mean, you really, I mean, it really truly, they, again, I mean, urbanists and cockroaches really do need to find some way to unify to save cities because they both could work together so well. And one thing I do want to end on because this very, this little factoid very often comes up anytime cockroaches enter the conversation, they actually can survive without a head for up to a week. That is, I always wondered if that was one of those like, you know, just gets passed around kind of facts. They breathe through small holes in their body segments. And, And they have an open circulatory system.

So they don't need their heads to breathe. So they can still get oxygen and survive for about a week. But after about a week without water, they will die of dehydration. So wanted to put that in there just because, you know, it's kind of like the other fun fact about roaches. Is that how they can run so fast? Because they'm just like oxygen coming in from everywhere. They're like directly right into their muscles. I want that badly.

I know that would, yeah, as a swimmer, that would be very, you know, advantageous. It would help with muscle recovery, I think. Yeah. So there we go. Cockroaches. New appreciation for them. Love to hate them. Love to hate them.

The rats don't run the city. The cockroaches do. Who run the world? Roaches. I mean, let's be honest. Amazing. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts.

Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? And talking about mood.com, they have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code weirdest. I'm not a smoker myself, but I do love the occasional weed gummy to, you know, help me go off to Dreamland. And I can't have one right now because I have a new kit. And, you know, I definitely miss it a little bit. but maybe you can have a weed gummy, and you can get one at mood.com. So the reason that different cannabis grains can make you feel different ways isn't just about

the THC. It seems like it's also based on other components called terpenes. Turpines influence how a product tastes and smells, and it seems like they can also impact the way you feel. Mood partnered with dozens of small American farms to custom cultivate flour with specific terpen profiles designed for specific moods. So you can choose your cannabis gummy, edible flour, or pre-roll based on how you want to feel. Just go to mood.com and click shop by mood. And yes, it is now 100% federally legal to have really great bud shipped right to your door. It's third party lab tested and ships

directly to you in a discreet box. Best of all, everything's backed by mood's 100-day satisfaction guarantee, and like I said, you can get 20% off with code weirdest. I'm eyeing mood.com's Delta 9-THC butter cream caramels because in addition to not being able to have THC, I also can't have dairy right now. So the idea of having a caramel that also me me out and sends you to Dreamland sounds very nice. And speaking of fun edibles, mood.com has Delta 9 THHC freezer pops. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now with code Weirdest. That's code Weirdest for 20% off. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're

built for what you are building. Fit for your ambition for citizens back. Okay, we're back. And I'll jump into my fact. Also kind of like vaguely distressing and relevant to many people. So as many listeners have probably heard before, I have myelgic and cephamyelitis. I always think I'm going to drop one of the syllables in there somewhere, but it is myelgic and cephamyelitis.

previously known as chronic fatigue syndrome, often MECFS for short. And it's likely in large part due to the time that I got COVID three times in five months back in 2022. Not an experience I recommend. But I'm going to talk about some new research on long COVID and MECFS that is like upsetting and validating and potentially going to be really useful. So I am both upset and excited. So MECFS in itself isn't actually new, contrary to what many people might assume. The World Health Organization actually first recognized something like it in 1969. And more importantly, there's a Golden Girls episode about it.

So that's how you know. I was totally. I was hoping you were going to reference that because that's where I learned about it. Doctor played by Jeffrey Tamor. Yeah. Yeah. And she tells off the. doctor, she says I have, it's called Chrotic Fatigue Syndrome.

Anyway, really great, you know, great forward thinking ahead of their time, Golden Girls, as ever. But even with all of that cultural representation, it's been largely misunderstood and ignored for like most of the time that it's been in the literature. In fact, in 1970,

these two British psychiatrists looked at case notes from 15 outbreaks of ME, and they concluded that it was caused by mass hysteria. They based this conclusion on... Her usual. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, exactly. And what's really infuriating is what their evidence was. Their evidence was, we don't know what causes it. Okay. That sounds like a you problem. Then they looked back and said, you know, a lot of these patients had normal physical test results, which like, you know, is definitely a thing, but what if there are tests you don't have yet? You know, what if things aren't showing up on tests? Think bigger, guys. Have some imagination.

And finally, they noted that the illness was more common in women, which they felt like, since they couldn't think of a biological mechanism for that, that that was more evidence. that it was hysteria. Thank you, 1970. The uterus is just going to uterus. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. And while other researchers, not all, but other researchers, like immediately and publicly

disagreed with them, that work and the lack of clear cause for the disease meant that a lot of doctors became very comfortable and stayed very comfortable, just shrugging it off as like totally psychosomatic. And when we talk about psychosomatic illness, it's, it's like, tricky because you can become very physically ill and have it be, you know, entirely due to stress and PTSD. And, like, that stuff does affect your body. But then there's this line where it's like, you know, this disease profile that many people have that, like, very obviously has some, like, really specific physical mechanisms going on. And maybe it's not just that they're sad. You know, like there's, it's, uh, we definitely need more nuance in how we talk about psychosomatic illness,

but definitely the way people were framing, uh, MECFS as being psychosomatic was like not good and not correct. The media even started calling it the yuppie flu with the implication being that it was some kind of burnout that like was caused by like being privileged. And modern life being like so unnatural and whatever. And this was so pervasive that in 1990, when Newsweek ran a cover story on what was at the time called chronic fatigue syndrome, it was like very supportive of the idea that there was an organic cause of the illness, which was like a big deal at the time. But it also talked about the term yuppie flu.

So like there was just this underlying assumption that like, you know, this. because this is so mysterious and we don't know how to test for it, like we can't discount the fact that maybe this is just like whiny, privileged people. So fast forward to today, and doctors are seeing a lot of overlap and intersection between ME-CFS and long-COVID, which is an umbrella term for symptoms that persist long after an initial infection with COVID-19. About half of people diagnosed with long-COVID have symptom profiles that all also match MECFS. And the one upside to this is that it means there's been a new surge in research on chronic fatigue as an actual physical condition. Research on it never stopped.

There are like amazing clinicians and scientists who have kept pursuing better diagnostic methods and treatment protocols, et cetera, for MECFS this whole time. But those people are now becoming sort of the go-to authority on long COVID, especially where chronic fatigue is involved. And there's more of like a general willingness to fund research and look into it. So one recent study in particular has patients and clinicians really excited because it shows physical evidence of and a possible mechanism to explain one of the most common and debilitating symptoms of ME-CFS, which is post-exertional malaise. I love mechanisms so much. Yeah, I love a mechanism. I'm so ready for this. Everything is a mechanism. Exactly. That's true. So post-extritional malaise, it's this phenomenon of

symptoms getting worse about 24 to 48 hours after physical exertion. And I can say from experience that those symptoms aren't limited to fatigue or muscle pain. It's not just like a worse. It's not just like a worse version of sort of like, you know, post-workout muscle fatigue or muscle soreness. I've had P.M. Floreps that, like, include gastronal intestinal symptoms, migraines, really bad brain fog, and more. And the flare-ups can stick around for days or weeks at a time. And what's really frustrating is that it's not like there's some obvious correlation between like the amount of exertion and the severity of the flare up. Like different people have wildly different thresholds for how much activity is too much. And even in an individual, like an activity that's

okay, one day can really knock you out the next. In my case, that's often literally true because I have like a lot of trouble accepting that what I see is a very light and easy workout might like, if I combine it with like a social outing and a busy work day and a long walk over the course of a couple of days, that might cumulatively be too much. So P.E.M. is a big problem. And people want to know what's up with it, especially because it's sort of the classic chronic fatigue symptom that a lot of patients still feel like doctors don't believe is real or don't believe is physical. But according to a new study, the muscle fibers of MECFS patients may literally be starved for energy after physical activity. And researchers in the Netherlands found this by taking

muscle biopsies and blood samples from two sets of subjects. Twenty-five of them had long COVID that they developed after mild cases of the virus, meaning nobody was hospitalized, nobody was put on a ventilator. And they had been relatively healthy before getting COVID. And And then the control group were people who had had COVID and recovered fully and had no lingering symptoms. So they had the subjects work out on an exercise bike for about 15 minutes. They started slowly. They ramped up and basically got up to like the highest intensity they could handle.

And the researchers took blood and muscle samples both one week before and one day after this exercise test. And the first thing they found, unsurprisingly, people with long COVID had. worse muscular strength. They had lower oxygen uptake compared to healthy subjects, even though they were putting in the same amount of effort and they had similar heart and lung function. And that's something that's shown up in studies before and is really important. It's like there's something that's like keeping muscles from getting the oxygen they need, but it's not lung and heart damage. And what's really striking about this study is that they found really clear evidence that

mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, as many people know, were actually compromised. And so that is a mechanism by which tissues can literally be denied energy when they need it. Mitochondria, they generate most of the chemical energy that cells use to be alive and function and conduct all of the biochemical reactions that, like, you know, are important as a cell. So if your mitochondria aren't functioning, you're, like, fatigued at the cellular level. They also tested the muscle tissue to see how well it could take up oxygen specifically. And there they also found evidence that the mitochondria were abnormal in long COVID patients. There were a few other things they found.

Long COVID patients started producing lactate much sooner. Then healthy patients, which, of course, you know, causes muscle pain and is also a sign that the muscles just, like, don't have the energy they're supposed to have because lactate is supposed to be your body being like, okay, like, we'll find a little bit more in the barrel. Please, please stop soon. And when they looked at the muscle fibers, they also found that long COVID patients had a higher proportion of fast-twitch glycolytic muscle fibers. And these are muscle fibers that work at really high intensity for very short bursts, but they have fewer mitochondria. So they fatigue really easily. And they found that after exercise, mitochondrial function was worse in long COVID patients. And they had a higher amount of muscle damage than the healthy subjects.

So the muscle damage was happening faster. It was way above normal. they were seeing, they said immense amounts of cell death, shrinking of the fibers. Basically, it looked like immune cells were infiltrating the muscle tissue and attacking it. And they found T cells in the muscle tissue at a much higher rate than they would expect in healthy patients. So all of this points to the idea that, first of all, the immune system is, you know, having, some kind of inappropriate response to exercise and maybe targeting the muscles. That might be why the mitochondria aren't functioning, but certainly the mitochondria aren't functioning. So there's

this inability to make and get energy down to the cellular level. And one important thing that I want to make sure to point out is that they did confirm that, like, like these patients were not sedentary. They got an average of 4,000 steps a day. So they were like, we made sure this isn't like deconditioning. This is a different thing that's happening. And so, you know, this could be really great because it's a potential mechanism to target, you know, looking into compounds that support mitochondrial function might really help with MECFS and long COVID.

But it's also really important because there's still. this idea that's like pervasive among many individual clinicians, even though like health organizations have all come out against it, that graded exercise therapy is a really great treatment for long COVID and MECFS, which is basically like you just ramp up your activity really slowly and keep doing more and more. And for some people that may work, but what's really crucial is that the increased in activity can't be based on some sort of like you do this for one week and then you do the next thing. It has to be based on how you're responding and what your physical symptoms are and when post-exertional malaise is being triggered. Because research like

this indicates that it's not just that you're tired, you're tired because your body has like taken damage and that's only going to get worse if you continue to really push through it. So the researchers are like, what people need to know is that this isn't a question of like building back up your cardiovascular fitness. This is like a totally different animal and it's really important that people take care and get the rest they need and, you know, maybe totally reevaluate sort of the way they think about movement and fitness to find what is actually beneficial for them. And yeah, it's really, I've been trying to get back into strength training and it's really tough. Really, like every time I think like I've dialed it down so much that like this could not possibly be a problem. It becomes a problem. And I love being physically active.

So it's something I'm going to keep working on for a lot of reasons. But, you know, I think research like this just shows how much we still have to learn and, you know, how important it is for clinicians to, like, stay up to date on, you know, what the best advice is, even for a disease as mysterious as ME-CFS and long COVID. And I get up on my little soapbox. long COVID is, you know, I don't want to scare people, but it's still something you can get, even if you have had COVID before and haven't gotten it yet. You know, there was a statistician like last year came out saying like your chance of getting long COVID goes down a little bit with every case of COVID you get. But he still said it's a not, it's a non-negligible risk. And I think the thing people forget is that even if you're maybe a little less likely to get it the second time and the first time, every time you get COVID, that's a new chance for you to get long COVID. It's better to

just not get COVID at all. People are very bad at risk assessment. It's okay. I understand. It's hard. But I would just remind listeners that like even though capitalism would like you to pretend COVID's not a thing anymore and get back to quote unquote, normal, anything you can do, like wearing a mask and testing if you don't feel well or if you've been exposed, isolating. Like, I can't believe I have to say that, like, you shouldn't just, like, go out in the world with COVID if you know you have it. So, like, please do that. Because, first of all, there are people who, you know, are now in a position to potentially get really, really sick because they have an existing chronic illness. And also, that could become

you. So, like, even if you're just being totally selfish, which I won't tell anyone, it's okay, be careful. And that's my soapbox. That's the end of my fact. And I really hope somebody figures out how to make my mitochondria stop being little bitches, you know. I just, I would love for them to to get their act together. Yeah, I definitely second that. I feel like you are healthy until you're not. And there's really, there isn't in between, but you don't realize it. And for a lot of people, it's very black and white.

Also, I find it interesting that, like, for people who can, like, see themselves as athletes, which is anybody who works out or does any type of sport, like, we're always telling ourselves to like listen to our bodies and so if you're trying to push through a workout and you're not feeling well any coach or other athlete will say like stop pull back re-evaluate so i find it interesting the doctors are just like push through follow this plan and it just goes completely against what any like professional athlete or amateur athlete would ever do in that situation totally and i feel like it it comes down to um like, who is, who's trustworthy in interpreting what their body needs?

You know, it's like if you, I think there's this issue with clinicians looking at these patients and saying, like, I think probably they maybe just need to perk up and get moving. So, like, maybe they should have listened to their body because they're bad at listening to their body. Or change their hairstyles like the doctor in the Golden Girls episode suggested that Dorothy do. Get it. He literally says, change your hair do. Go buy in your dress. I have done that. And you know what? It's better than nothing. But I am still disabled. But now I have a new hair color. So that's fun too. It could be it can be both and. All right. We're going to take one more break. And then we'll be back. with one more fact. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to

fire up summer cookouts with the next grill, four-burner gas grill, on special buy for only $199. And entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $49. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. While supplies last, price invalid May 14th, May 27th, U.S. only exclusions apply. See Home Depot.com slash price match for details. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd,

but too often, life gets busy or the price holds you back. Priceline is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline.

Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary, time offer. Did you know if your windows are bare, indoor temperatures can go up 20 degrees. Get ahead of summer with custom window treatments like solar roller shades from blinds.com and save up to 45% during the Memorial Day Early Access Sale. Whether you want to DIY it or have a pro handle everything. We've got you. Free samples, real design experts, and zero pressure. Just help when you need it. Shop up to 45% off site wide right now during the early access Memorial Day sale at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply.

Okay, we're back. And it's time for one of our favorite genres of weird thing, which is a weird cheese thing. Claire, please. Yes, I'm really excited to keep the weird cheese tradition going. Okay. So like many people out there in the world, I love cheese very much. when I was in elementary school, I ate the same sandwich every single day for lunch from kindergarten through fourth grade. And it was two slices of pepperage farm white bread, which my mom had decided was healthier somehow than all the other sliced white breads out there. I think it's completely the same as Wonderbread, but whatever. It was white. So, yeah.

two slices of American cheese and classic yellow mustard. Yes. That was my lunch. It was amazing. I looked forward to it every day. It is still arguably the best sandwich of all time. I will argue with anyone about that. I've never grown out of it. Though as I've gotten older, I have attempted to refine my palate. So now my grown-up version of this is a baguette with camember. or Bree, if you can't find Camembert. And Dijon mustard. Incredible. So sometime late into the pandemic, a friend of mine and I decided that we were going to figure out what makes the best grilled cheese sandwich of all time, because I got kind of into grilled cheese.

Kind of turned my childhood sandwich into a grilled cheese. I grilled it. Still kept the mustard in there. And I came. Yeah, mustard's great on a grilled cheese. It is. Oh my God. Some people put like ketchup or tomatoes in grilled cheese.

I'm completely against that. Like if you like it, that's fine. But for me personally, mustard. So we came across like a bunch of these Reddit posts and all these really like news stories claiming that the best grilled cheese was made with quote unquote government cheese. And I was like, what is. government cheese and where do I find it? So anyways, that was late in the pandemic.

Things happened. Life hits you fast. Suddenly, you find yourself in January, 2024, and you're doing V-Gannuary to try to cure all of your stomach problems in life. And all I can think about now is government cheese and where I can find it. And how do I make grilled cheese with this government cheese? So I was like, here's the perfect opportunity. I am going to finally understand what government cheese is.

And I got a good amount of facts about it. So here we go. Government cheese. So back in the 1980s, government cheese, if you've ever seen images of them, are these big blocks of like solidified. cheese product. It kind of looks like if you've ever bought Velvita, it's like that, but larger, much larger and like sterile like hardier, like hardier velvita. Melvita on steroids, if you will. Like velvita if it did strength training. And it was

labeled like it didn't have like the pretty like melts in a minute, velvita or whatever. It It was just like cheese. Big blocks, they weren't sold in stores. They were actually given out mostly to people on food stamps and other welfare programs, and they're also given out in schools too. And this cheese was stored in giant facilities distributed across the country. And that's where I was like, what is happening? Where did all of this come from?

And why did America find itself with so much extra cheese? So that question takes us back to the late 1970s. Jimmy Carter is president, and part of his campaign for presidency was, I am going to help out farmers. He was a farmer himself, and he was like, this is going to be key to my presidential campaign success. And once he was in presidency, no one really thought that he would follow through with this. But he was like, no, I am helping farmers. is my number one concern. So in 1977, Congress passed a law that milk prices would have to go up a certain amount every, I think, six months or a year. And they did this by forcing an increase in

demand for dairy products. Quickly, though, farmers ran into a small pickup, being that milk is extremely perishable and transporting it to and from various places from the farming facilities to stores and whatnot. It just became a literal logistics nightmare. So enter cheese. The government was like, okay, we hear you. So take all of your milk, turn it into cheese and we will buy any and all amounts of that cheese that you generate at a fixed price. So dairy milk production goes up because farmers are like, okay, can do. Cheese making sky rockets and the government finds itself with tons and tons and tons of stored cheese in facilities across the country. And they were like, oh my gosh, make it stop. Things aren't looking good because they're like, cheese is everywhere. It keeps piling up.

It's really costly to maintain because now the government has this added problem on their hands where they have all of this cheese. And it's getting old. It's getting moldy. Yes, it is easier to maintain than dairy milk, which goes bad much quicker than cheese. But cheese, you know, you have to eat it sometime. And no one is eating this cheese. It's just sitting in facilities. Clearly not every kid in the country had my refined lunch palette of two slices.

of cheese every single day. I wouldn't have that problem, but whatever. Okay. So, no, they needed to call in you. You could have been like, you know, Claire, special agent cheese and you could have totally taken care of this. Exactly. Truly, why wasn't I alive in the late 1970s? So to fix the problem, the government is like, where do we store all this cheese? It wasn't, their answer wasn't like, okay, how do we distribute this to people? How do we say like, cheese? everyone eat cheese. How we stop having so much cheese. Exactly. They were just like, we need a better storage facility. We want the cheese. We want to keep the cheese. So they find all of these like caves, literal caves in and around Kansas City, Missouri. And they rent them. I don't know like how

renting caves work, but they didn't purchase it. They rented it. They don't own the caves. and they start piling the cheese in. So, like, they truck all the cheese from all these areas of the country that were stored in, like, USDA facilities. And the cheese starts coming in. It goes into the caves. And it becomes this sort of, like, incredibly embarrassing situation on the U.S. government's part. And word gets out that, like, the government is, like, hauling cheese.

It's, like, the equivalent of, like, shoving stuff into your closet. Yes, yeah. When you're supposed to be cleaning your room. Yeah. I also love the, I love the image because like a cheese cave, it's such a classy thing. Like, you know, a cave where you're aging cheese. So the idea of an American cheese cave being full of just like tubes of velvita is really funny. Exactly.

Instead of like that classy French wine and cheese vibe, it's just, you know, rotting cheese product even. It probably is, you know, it's cheese product. Exactly. It is, it is cheese product. only the best cheese. So around this time, Jimmy Carter leaves office. He's like, goodbye presidency, goodbye cheese. And Ronald Reagan takes over. And he's like, oh, my God, what am I supposed to do with this cheese mess on my hands? There are literal caves full of cheese. I've just been updated on the cheese situation. I don't know what to do. And like he all.

the reports are out there, the media is still like, come on, like caves of cheese. So at this point, it's getting moldier and moldier by the day. So they come up with a solution. And they're like, we're going to take all of this cheese that is like, yes, it is similar to American cheese product, but it's also a lot of like cheddar cheeses and monsters and, you know, whatever. Farmers have a surplus of. So it's not all cheese product, but they were like, I have an idea. I am going to turn it into cheese product because guess what is even more shelf stable than cheddar cheese? It is American cheese cheese food product. So with the help of good old craft recipe for American cheese, which is basically cheddar cheese that's been emulsified. So it's proteins and

its fats and all its other components are taken apart and then enzymes are added to break everything apart even further and then reform it all back together when you spin it. And they take all this cheese and some of it like literally has mold on it. So they like scrape all the mold off and they're like, okay, this is good enough. You know, as with a lot of life. Like it's just it's good enough. So they take that and they process it into American cheese food and put it into these giant processed cheese blocks. And the caves are emptying. The cheese blocks are being formed and they're feeling good.

And they label it as government cheese and essentially give it out for free at this point because they don't want to compete with the cheese that is being sold in store. because that would kind of take away from their like I'm helping farmers out here by buying their excess cheese. So what they do is they give it out as part of like I said earlier food banks and food stamp programs and in school lunches. And honestly, it gets mixed reviews and this is where I find it incredibly interesting. I just so wish that I have tried government cheese. I don't know if government cheese is out there somewhere in some. some cave, but if any readers have government cheese in their freezer, please let me know.

So it gets mixed. I'm thinking we go find those caves. I don't know. I don't know about you ladies, but I'm kind of ready to hop on a plane to Kansas City and goes, there's got to be some left in those caves. Same. There has to be. A cheese hunt.

I love it. We'll be cheese truthers for the rest of our lives. Yeah. Perfect. So it's really getting mixed reviews. Some people who, you know, arguably have to rely on. government cheese say that it's incredibly salty, it's, you know, done too much strength training is too hardy, too heavy. It's really hard to cut. Like a lot of people were claiming that,

like, you basically had to use like your strongest knife to like get a slice into it just because it was so dense and hard and said that really the only thing that you could make with it was grilled cheese or macaroni and cheese, anything that kind of needed to take a lot, you could allow for a long time for the cheese to melt. But word gets around that government cheese is a thing and many people try it. And others are like, oh my gosh, this is the greatest thing to ever happen to grilled cheese. This is the greatest thing to ever happen to macaroni and cheese, I don't ever want to eat a grilled cheese sandwich again unless it is made with government cheese. So, like, there's even celebrities being quoted in the media saying government cheese

makes the best grilled cheese you've had in your life. So clearly there's this, like, dichotomy between, like, is government cheese good tasting or is it just the heartiest worst cheese you've ever had in your life? Now, I understand that, like, people's taste preference. are totally different. Like my favorite cheese, camembert are a lot of, like, a lot of people don't like that cheese or, you know, like any other food in life. So, yeah, I really, I really understand, but I am just so curious what government cheese tastes like and whether or not it makes the best grilled cheese sandwich in the world. And if there's none left, the world, my world, we'll never know. So yeah. So that is the story of government cheese. It did all, you know, once people ate it and they distributed it out, it got less and less. And the government actually started paying farmers to not make or to not produce as much dairy. They were like, okay, this is a better solution. Let me just give you money. And you can just do less, please, because you just did so much. And it was.

great and we couldn't handle it. It's our problem, not yours. So here's some money and you can, you can relax. And I think government cheese is probably going to always be a thing of the past, but you never know. I love that. Have any of you ever had Prevell? No, I don't even know what this is. So it's a St. Louis cheese. I had it once. I was introduced to it by a St. Louis-based reporter. It was created. Like it's only sold in St. Louis?

People only want to buy it in St. Louis. I don't know where else it's sold. Because it was invented, I think, in the 1940s. And it was specifically, the guy who invented it was like, you know how when you take a bite of pizza and the cheese pulls, what if we had a clean bite? That was his one goal is baking cheese, belted cheese with a clean bite. And it's a processed cheese. You can't just call it cheese. It's a, you know, like cheese processed product. But it's a blend of cheddar Swiss and provolone. The thing is, that it's gross. I know. There are people who disagree, but they are definitely in the minority. And like most of the use of it in St. Louis today is sort of like it's a point of pride that they make it palatable.

And it's like a quirky St. Louis thing. When I was, the time I had Prevell, it was from a mac and cheese place in St. Louis. and we had a regular mac and cheese and a mac and cheese with Prevelle. And when I was just eating with Prevelle, after a few bites, I would be like, it's not that bad. And then I would have a bite of the other one. And I'd be like, oh, my God, I forgot what cheese is supposed to taste like. Wow. And the texture is strange because the point of it is that it's like this, it melts into this kind of like buttery texture so that it doesn't strip pull when you bite it.

That's interesting because I feel like a lot of like vegan cheeses. their big problem is that they can't pull. And people are like, I want the pole. Where's the pole? Right. Yeah. So I find it interesting that like other people are like, get rid of the pole. I think this Prevel guy may have been the one person who ever wanted that.

Yeah. That seems like a him problem. That seems like a, you know, this inventor problem. Like whoever says like, oh, man, I would eat pizza if the cheese didn't pull. Like that's, I don't know. That's an interesting problem. Well, and Claire, it's interesting that you mentioned vegan cheese because back when I had this, I vegan cheese was much less of a thing and I don't think I had any, but now it is something I have on occasion. And while it's been a few years since I had Prevelle, I think texturally it's quite similar to like a mediocre vegan cheese. Probably there are some people in St. Louis who are very mad that I'm saying this. And listen, taste is subjective. You're allowed to like Prevelle. I really did not. but yeah i think it's it's uh so interesting um i think i think there was so much 20th century food

innovation was like just like really highly processing things for one reason or another and um i i like to imagine people being like we can make cheese better and it's like not really cheese is really good exactly like just just don't don't do it you can make cheese different yeah And like, in some context, it'll be great that there's this other cheese. I went to, I went to undergrad. I went to undergrad in Wisconsin, go Marquette. And it took me a really long time to get on the cheese curd bandwagon. I love a cheese curd.

But at first I was a little, like the squeak kind of bothered me. But it really, once I kind of ate them a little bit more, it reminded me more of like a string cheese from my lunchbox. And then deep fried. Like I've been on reporting trips to, I was in Texas and it was a couple years out of undergrad, hadn't been to a call version forever. And I drove like 90 minutes out of my way after I was finished reporting to specifically to get mostly the fry of cheese curds but then also the custard. So yeah, it can be, we can change it. We can make it a little bit different.

But it's just, it's perfect. No, there is literally a takeout place here that I will order from mostly because they do have fried Wisconsin cheese curds on. their menu. I love it. I need, I desperately need to go back because they are so, so good. The best ones are at Sobelmans in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Shout out to them too. Nice. Well, I love our assortment of weird things today. You know, we ended on a very delicious note, which is not how we started. So thank you both for that. Listeners, remember to follow Jess on Twitch and me on Patreon. You can find those links in the show notes. And shoot me an email at Rachel at poptseye.com or hi at Rachel Fultman.com. If you have any questions to ask for our upcoming Q&A. The weirdest thing I learned

this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bode, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share. Tweet us at Weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us. We've tried.

This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer at Columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on allolotion. You're welcome, Columbia, engineered for whatever.