The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Illegal Cheese, The Worst Dairy Disaster, Holes in People (and Cows)

Episode Date: September 26, 2018

The weirdest things we learned this week range from the world's worst dairy-related disaster to a Sardinian cheese that is illegal to sell. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/weirdest_thing #weirdestthingpod Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Sara Chodosh: www.twitter.com/schodosh Mary Beth Griggs: www.twitter.com/MaryBethGriggs Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme Music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jason Lederman: www.twitter.com/Lederman --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 oceanfront room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or their. 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. Hey, weirdos, you might notice that this episode sounds a little different from our usual weirdest thing recordings. And that's because you're about to listen to the first half of our very first live show, which we had on September 14th at Caviot in New York City. We loved it. We had so much fun and we're really excited to share it with you.

and we're even happier if you were able to join us in person. Thanks so much to everyone who bought a ticket and came out. It was awesome to meet you weirdos in person. Next week, we'll be back with a regular episode of Weirdest Thing. Thanks for listening. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and text stories every week. And while a lot of the fun facts we stumble across make it into our articles, there are a lot of other weird facts that we just keep around the office.

So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to The Weirdest Thing I Learn This Week, a podcast from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Mary Beth Griggs. And I'm Sarah Trodosh. So, thank you. Thank you. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each teasing a little fact that we picked up while reading, writing, reporting,

prepping for a live show, whatever. And we decide which one we absolutely have to hear more about first. Then after we've all had time to spin those little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Now, given that this is a live show and our first live show at that, a few things will be like a little weird. Like, for example, I'm going to have a timer on my phone so that we don't go over. And when it goes off, if we're still talking,

we're just going to scream and be super weird about it. And that'll be fun. You may also notice that we pretend that we're picking in order for stories to go in, even though we very clearly have a PowerPoint that is in a particular order. So welcome to the magic of podcasting. And with that, Mary Beth, would you give us your T's? Absolutely.

So what I'm going to tell you guys about this week is, in my opinion, the greatest dairy disaster of all time. Ooh. Dun-dun-da. Hi bar. And Sarah, what about your teeth? I am going to be talking about an illegal chief. cheese.

Hmm. Well, my tease is that it'll come back around to Derry, but you won't like how we get there. Awesome. I really want to start the night on an illegal note, so I'm going to vote for illegal cheese. Fabulous. Could I grab that clicker for the totally spontaneous PowerPoint? Okay. It's not a PowerPoint.

They're just visual aids. We want to enrich the experience for y'all. It's the magic of podcasting, but in person. All right, so before I tell you about the illegal cheese, I just want to remind you a few foods that you may have heard of that are totally legal to sell and consume, including a fermented shark from Iceland, which multiple people have said was the worst thing that they've ever tasted.

Fugu, which is pufferfish, which, if not prepared properly, will kill you. Totally legal. And you can also eat october fish. with arms that have just been severed and can stick their little suckers in their in your throat as you try to eat it and you can suffocate. That is totally legal, but this cheese, this cheese is not legal and you might ask yourself, what does it take to make a cheese illegal? And the answer is maggots. I am sorry. I'm going to be honest, it's more than you think they're going to be. So, Casu Marzu, which I'm sure I'm butchering the pronunciation of, literally means rotten cheese in Sardinian.

So it is a Sardinian tradition. You make it by leaving a wheel of pecorino cheese, like a big wheel. And you cut the top off, and then you just sort of leave it outside. My favorite way to cook. Yeah. You leave it, like in your barn, say, because the goal. is that you want cheese flies to come and lay their eggs inside the cheese. And then they hatch into larva, and then the larva come along, and they eat the cheese,

and they digest all the lipids and the proteins, and they break it down, and their digestive juices get all up in the cheese, and it turns into a big, soupy mess, and then you eat it. Do you? Some people do. Okay, so I'm just going to show you some photos. There's like, there's one, there's one gif. I'm really sorry.

You have to see it to appreciate it. I watched videos of this for you guys trying to figure out what to put on here and I was too horrified by the video, so it's just photos. And a gif. One gif, it's really short. Okay, so this is a cheese.

You can see how goopy it is, but you can't really appreciate how many maggots are in here. Those are the maggots. It looks a little more soft. solid here. And then, so you can see like there's a lid. They're pretty active. Yeah, so you see like they're lifting up the lid because you, that's how you do the cheese at the cheese lid. Isn't it nice? So can I expect that much maggot activity? Maybe move to the next one. Yeah. Can I expect that

much maggot activity in my cheese? Oh yeah. You for sure, you for sure can. In order to eat the cheese, the maggots still have to be alive because of course if they've died, it's considered bad. Right, so they're alive And the unfortunate thing These larva are called cheese skippers Because they do this thing Where they sort of They're small but they curl into a little ball

And then they sort of fling themselves upwards Because they're trying to escape If they think there's a danger like say you're going to eat them They're trying to escape and so they jump like six inches Out of the cheese So to eat it you have to spread the cheese Like on a crack or a piece of bread And then you have to cover it with your hand

because they're larva. So if they get like in your eye or your nose, they want to eat you. You'll become the cheese. Exactly. Wait, wait. Do they actually eat you? Will they try to?

I mean, I couldn't. So I looked for case reports of like people who had had problems. I couldn't find any. So I think probably it's that if you are willing to eat the cheese, you're probably practiced enough that you know how to do. do it safely, as safely as you can eat maggot cheese, which is not that safe. So some people, like, I found a few case reports where people had gotten fly larva in their intestines.

Oh, God. It's not clear that it was from the cheese. Maybe they just ate some other cheese fly larva. I don't know where they might have ingested it. I don't know why they swallowed a fly. Oh, that was a good one. It's all done. So, I mean, Sardinians would tell you that it's a perfectly safe cheese.

They've been eating it for generations, and they never have any problems. But I will tell you that the Sardinians also believe that the maggots arise spontaneously inside the cheese, which you may recall we disproved. Like, I think a couple hundred years ago, there was a famous experiment, and they had to put the meat in the jar to prove that the maggots actually had to be... But, like, I get it because if eating that is such an integral... part of being Sardinian for you? Like it eases

the horror of it. The maggots come from the cheese. They're special cheese maggots. They're not actually an infestation. It's not an infestation. Definitely not an infestation. So what if I want my cheese with not live maggots in it? So you can kill them.

Some Sardinians kill them. You don't want to wait long enough that they die on their own. You have to murder them. So you can You can crush them into kind of a paste so that they blend with the cheese. Your other option, which I'm going to be honest is not better, is that you can put them in like a paper bag, and then you roll the paper bag up and you close it so that they start suffocating.

But unfortunately, because they do jump when they think that they're in danger, they do sort of like popcorn in a bag. And that's how you, you know how popcorn you know it's done when it stops popping. That's how you tell. I'm not joking. that's how you tell that the cheese is ready to eat. Oh boy. Yeah, it's horrifying.

I did find it. So, like, because this is, it's illegal in the EU and also in the U.S. to sell to anyone. So if you go to Sardinia and you want to try this cheese, which I know you do after listening to this podcast, you can't buy it in a store and everyone who you ask will tell you, like, we would never sell that cheese. That's so unsafe. But a couple of food writers tracked it down, so I want to read you this quote from someone who tried it. It was strong, challenging.

but actually very enjoyable. It hinted of Gorgonzola and Black Pepper, but left a thick film in my mouth, preventing me from forgetting that the little buggers currently digesting inside my stomach. I think that was the sound of our online director, Amy Schellenbaum, firing you.

I'm so, so sorry. Yeah, they are trying to get a protected designation of origin, which is like, you know, Gorgonzola, which she mentions. And like a huge number of other cheeses have, which is that, you know, if you have a food that in your area has been prepared in a very traditional way for a long enough time, you can basically get the EU to like waive the sanitary requirements that they put on other food. So they're trying to get this because it would mean that if they got it, they would be allowed to legally sell you maggot cheese. The EU has been unconvinced. The University of Cesari, which again, I'm sure I'm not pronouncing correctly.

made a hygienic version in 2005, which did still have maggots, but it was a controlled maggot level. And after that failed, after the EU didn't care about that, I think they sort of gave up. But my hot take on the cheese, because I had to turn it around it. I felt like it couldn't just be gross. Please do, you have about two minutes. Okay, great.

Your final argument on the cheese, please. My closing argument is that this is just a macro version of regular cheese. Like, cheese is little organisms that live in your cheese. They're still living when you buy the cheese. And they break down the lipids and the proteins, and they turn them into compounds that taste good to us, or at least to most people. I personally love all kinds of cheese.

I mean, blue cheese, like, that's mold. Gold is growing inside your cheese, and it's breaking it down and making it taste good to you. This is just a bigger version of that. It's gross. It's definitely gross, but it's just a big version. well I look forward to you trying this I'm not sure I would try it

I might I might crush them into a paste and try it but I wouldn't seek it out I think that would make it worse for me yeah I would know they were there and I would I don't know I would rather have to I want them dead right but I think I would not crush them because if every bite is

ostensibly just like maggot paste that's I think I've eaten like crickets before You just jump inside your mouth. Think about that. I don't like that. I think maybe I just won't eat this cheese. Yeah, I think that's probably the way to go. It's a fairly horrifying cheese. But it is the weirdest thing I learned this week, so it's appropriate.

Well, wonderful. I love it. And with time to spare. Yes, with one minute to spare. Amazing. It's really easy to get confused by all of the tech news flying around the internet. On last week in tech, the popular science tech team explains everything and tells you how All of these stories affect your daily life.

New episodes post every Monday on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, and pretty much anywhere else you can listen to podcasts. We'll talk to you then. Well, up next, uh, totally is, mine is kind of body horror. Um, both of my stories for tonight could be described as, uh, body horror. So I think we're going to go to, yeah, I think we're going to go to Mary Beth, um, for a dairy disaster, palate cleanser. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not quite as, well, just get into it. Yeah. It's still a little bit gruesome. A little bit, a little bit. But, I mean, I got to say, after looking at those images, I just want to kill it all with fire. Like, just burn, burn that cheese. Listen, I love cheese. I like fire.

Fire is cool. And you set cheese on fire. That's usually a pretty good combination. And initially, I was going to talk to you all about one of my favorite disasters of all time, which happened in Norway five years ago, a truck carrying 27 tons of brown goat cheese, which is a Norwegian delicacy. It is lovely. It is creamy.

It has no maggots, I promise. Then what's even the point? Boring. To each their own, really. So anyways, 27 tons or nearly. 60,000 pounds of goat cheese is just chugging along down the highway. And then in the middle of a highway tunnel in northern Norway, it caught on fire. And it burned.

Oh, how it burned. Oh, it burned. It had such a high fat and sugar content that it burned like gasoline. And it burned for five days. Which completely just, it flabbergasted. Everybody, which I thought was just completely wild and wonderful, and it closed the tunnel down for weeks, and, you know, it's fantastic. But that, that, everyone, that is just the appetizer, the Saginaaghi appetizer, if you will. Because, see, as I was looking into what was then my favorite dairy-related fire,

I thought I would poke around and see what else was out there. And it turns out that this happens more often than you would think. In 2011, there were two cheddar-related fires in Somerset, England. New Zealand has seen two massive cheese facility fires. It's an epidemic. And then I came across the greatest flaming dairy story of all, which occurred back in 1991. And I found it thanks to this amazing clip from News 3 in Madison, Wisconsin.

I think it was about the next day. We found out that it was butter once it started to come out. It literally came out in gushes. I mean, it's like a damn open up. That's butter. A river of butter. And firefighters were in it for days.

Yes. Yes. Yes. A river of butter. A river of butter. Welcome my friends to the great Madison butter fire. So this was described by some of the firefighters on scene as a football field of flames. It was a 500,000 square foot storage facility that held 13 million pounds of butter and 7 million pounds of cheese.

So that's 20 million pounds of dairy total. It stored butter surplus for the U.S. government. It stored food for Oscar Meyer. That will come back later, remember that. It stored eggs and butter for local farms that were all ready to go to market. And so, as you might have gathered from the Norwegian cheese fire, dairy contains a lot of fat. Fat burns. It burns very well, and it burns at fairly low temperatures.

Like 350 degrees Fahrenheit is the smoke point for butter. This all presented the firefighters with some very serious challenges. Madison firefighters are battling a huge multi-alarm fire. They got a lot of combustibles and you got a lot of heat. Disaster. Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. And that was kind of just the broader picture.

And this is a really amazing fire because it was like a maze and it was refrigerated and so it had tons of insulation and so everything that was keeping it cold also you know started keeping everything hot and the grossness that was faced by the firefighters I mean you saw a part of this it was so bad that the city eventually had to replace all of the firefighters uniforms for the city at a cough they were just drenched in butter they were drenched in butter it was like a seafood dinner but like a nightmare and it ended up costing just hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the rigs got stuck.

There was no movement in the range once that butter came out. When I was following a line back, I slipped into a hole that was roughly up to my neck. And it was all butter. All butter. Oh, that poor man. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? That's more gross to me than the maggot cheese.

Just that sentence. It was up to my neck and it was all butter. butter, just all butter. And, you know, the butter is just the start of this, because this is such a massive, massive blaze. To this

day, there are firefighters that fought this fire that will not eat hot dogs thanks to what they witnessed that day. Hot dogs literally exploded out of the back in the back. I mean, there were guys that were running

backwards and getting passed up by cases of a hot dog. just cases the hot dogs just going like I think I can imagine being traumatized by that I would never eat a hot dog again yeah also just like the smell I don't think I would ever enjoy the smell of butter or hot dogs again you know of one hot dog is already quite intense right cases and and so I mean we've been talking about kind of the challenges of the firefighters and they ended up learning a lot from this fire. It ended up in so many ways, really.

But they did learn a lot about industrial fires and how to battle them. That's always kind of a challenge because these big facilities end up being mazes because they're always, the stuff inside is laid out in different configurations. They had to sit down with blueprints and kind of map out where everything was

in order for the firefighters to get in and out safely. So it was a challenge in a lot of different ways. But then there was also the environmental cleanup. 20 million pounds of stored butter burned, essentially turning the warehouse into a giant deep friar on fire. Wow. The DNR had to build a dam before any of the nasty concoction could get into the lake. And at one point, the neighborhood was evacuated for fear

and anhydrous ammonia tank could explode. Were those ice fries of butter? Yes. Just floating? Yes. Oh, my gosh. A deep friar on fire. A deep friator?

I mean, he should have. So. Yeah, because this is beautiful. And we will absolutely have the entire clip up for your viewing pleasure on popsye.com. On popsye.com. And I mean, this fire actually started, and you can see kind of the size of it in this screenshot. It was, it was huge. The blaze dominated the skyline. It ended up costing about $100 million. No one was injured. No one was killed. But it took until 2010, remember this happened back in 1991, it took until 2010 for all of those refrigeration facilities to be rebuilt. And the fire itself, it burned for eight days. Oh my God, like a menorah. Like a minora. Miracle. Miracles do happen. So, you know, you can think of that. I will. That is what I

I think of how it is here. Wow. Truly the greatest dairy disaster of our time. I believe it. I was beautiful. I feel better after the maggots too. That's kind of hardwarming. I can't believe it's hot butter.

I know. Thank you. Just had to get that in there. Hey, pals. Looking for super cool popular science merch, we've got you covered at popsai. threadless.com. Pick up T-shirts, notebooks.

and mugs with iconic vintage covers and illustrations ripped from the magazine. Plus, check out our podcast store and rep your favorite shows like Last Week in Tech and the weirdest thing I learned this week. That's popsai.threadless.com. P-O-P-S-C-I.thudlis.com. Okay, so pull back the curtain in a second. I did pick this fact before I knew that these two wonderful ladies had both independently spontaneously picked dairy-related facts.

And I said, I can get a dairy angle into this and you'll hate it. Body horror, dairy, where are we going? You bought tickets for this. Take a drink, go buy another one. No, it's going to be fine. Okay, so on June 6, 1822, Alexis St. Martin, who was an 18-year-old French-Canadian working for the American Fur Company in Michigan Territory, he received. a life-changing musket wound.

He was accidentally shot in the back from very close range, lost bits of muscle and rib, duck shot, lacerated his lungs and diaphragm, and most importantly, punched right through his stomach. St. Martin was not in a good way, and when Dr. William Beaumont tended to him, about a half hour later, there was like a bit of burnt lungs, sticking out of his wound, his breakfast was oozing.

He bled, he had a fever. he coughed so hard his lung bits kept poking out this is in the medical literature for the record but then he got better his bowel started working regularly again despite the hole in his stomach and his appetite returned

he was basically an indentured servant by the way he was an immigrant and he had no prospects so far from home he couldn't go back to work so the choice was basically ship him back to Canada or somebody take responsibility for him and take care of him, which Dr. Beaumont saw as a huge opportunity because hello St. Martin was otherwise in decent health. His wound had healed around a hole that peered right into his stomach.

That is a fistula. That is a nipple. It's not a very good picture. But it was 1822, so that's all I have. I'm sorry. So, yeah, so Beaumont like cared for St. Martin. Martin but it was kind of an exploitative relationship because we knew very little about the human digestive system at that time and so Beaumont was like I can watch this in real time and so he conducted a bunch of experiments you know moved to this oddly homoerotic drawing of the two of them and we'll just stay on that for a while just let it sink in this is undated so for all we know someone could have drawn this in Beaumont's

living room. They had a weird dynamic, for sure. And basically, Beaumont would like, he did, he did like the kind of experiments you would expect, like a middle school boy to do. He, like, dipped bits of meat in the stomach hole. And at one point, he actually licked St. Martin's empty stomach to determine that it was only acidic when there was food in there. So he did, He did learn quite a bit about digestion and like the movement of the stomach and the movement of food through the digestive system. Sorry, can I ask a question? Sure, yeah. How big was the hole?

Are we talking like one finger or two fingers? Sorry. So you could fit a finger through there. Okay. Maybe two fingers. Here's my real question. If he like bent over, would his stomach contents pour out? So I know that I really tried to find literature describing like how precarious was the stomach

whole situation. All I know is that when he ate, he did have to bandage it to keep stuff from leaking out. But other than that, he lived a totally normal life. He went back to like doing manual labor at various points in his life. He fathered six children. Yeah, he did fine. All right. But, yeah, so Beaumont kept St. Martin underwent.

under his care for two years. Alexis eventually came to resent this. Who knows why? You know, this guy who was like, you're basically my servant and I lick your stomach sometimes. And also the locals were really mean to him. They kept calling him the man without a stomach or the man whose stomach has no lid, which is just vicious.

Wow. That's some cruel school yard taunts right here. So he ran off and up. He got married, had kids, and Beaumont kept trying to get him back, because Beaumont was really making a name for himself, writing this up in scientific journals. And he always... Look at their faces, come on. Yeah.

They loved each other. Exactly. Or, you know, at least Beaumont wanted it to be so. Maybe it was one way. But he, yeah, he kept trying to get him to sign contracts, which occasionally Alexis did sign. He would get like $100, $200 agreeing to do several years of experiments. Alexis could not read or write so that was very chill

of Beaumont to give him contracts to sign and he eventually went back to Canada for good lived into his 70s and again fathered six children and yeah at one point when he was kind of in this on again off again exploitative

patient doctor relationship with Dr. Beaumont he was offered a contract and his wife went to live they all went to live with Dr. Beaumont the wife and the wife and the kids, and she was like, I don't get why you keep having this guy do experiments on you when you're perfectly capable of, like, doing a manual trade.

That was, she was like, I don't get why we're doing this when you could be, like, logging. So he apparently was in great health. Now, later on, Beaumont would frequently complain about how much money he'd spent on Alexis. He would say that he had a bad temper and he was, like, greedy. And this narrative existed into papers written in the 60s and 70s. I found very modern academics who were just like, oh, yes, and it's notorious that Alexis was just such a money grabber. He really took advantage of Dr. Beaumont,

which really says a lot about, like, ethics in science. I mean, of course this guy has a bad temper. You're sticking stuff in his stomach. Yeah, same. Same. I'm with you on that. So we did learn a lot about digestion. but like, did we need to do this?

I hope not. You know, I think it is not an experiment we would repeat today. One 2013 study argues that St. Martin actually helped inspired doctors to actually examine their patients, like, directly, when deciding how to treat them, because they were inspired by Beaumont's case notes that involves such a, like, personal. Like licking people's stomachs like that? Like licking people's stomachs. But no, but it was at that time pretty common for doctors to just like, you know, list off your symptoms and be like, so you have this, like not really physically examine you very much. So he also undoubtedly inspired our modern fistulated research. Yes, we fistulate things on purpose. Do you tell us more about that. Yes, usually cows. So there are.

many, many, many, fistulated cows. Look at this American tableau. That's a boy with his arm and a cow. So the cow is not in any physical pain. The cow looks really chill about it. Yeah, the fistulated cows are on the whole, extremely chill about the whole thing.

But why does this research exist? Why put a hole in a cow? Great question. So cows that are fed on corn, which we really like growing a lot of and using for a lot of things in America. They get terrible gut problems because that is not what they have evolved to eat.

They like grass, not corn. So kind of the initial fissulated cow research was about preventing that kind of impaction and pain in cows. So first of all, you can physically get an impaction out, but it also creates research animals for them to study the rumin. I know, it's really gross. I just love the idea of someone like reaching it. The backup will just sort of like pull it all out.

And there are like stoppers over it when they're not doing a procedure. That's what Alexis needed. A little stopper. Alexis really needed a stopper in his life. He did. And there's also a lot of research now looking at how the cow gut microbiome handles food and how that contributes to their production of methane. cows burp and fart a lot of methane and that is a potent greenhouse gas so a lot of researchers are looking at like how can we kind of like tweak the cow microbiome to make that happen less or I don't know you could eat less beef or we could put holes in cows Rachel come on that's much more interesting so yeah that's my fact I like the dairy angle I was good you brought it around in the end I did I brought it home I brought it home all right well We have all stayed under time.

We're all heroes and champions tonight. Should the audience decide with the weirdest thing they learned this request? Yeah. Okay. Wow. All right. So, um, stomach whole.

Yeah, I know. It wasn't very good. Um, dairy fire. Their love for you burns, like a fieldful butter. A beautiful butter fire. Um,

maggot cheese. It's close, but I think the dairy fire has it. I think the dairy has it. Yeah. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever you're listening right now. And if you like what you hear, please rate and review us on iTunes.

It helps other weirdos find the show. You can buy our merch, including Weirdest Thing T-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at popside. com. The show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Faltman, and our editor, Jason Letterman. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, weirdos. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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