Venus Flytraps: Plant or Monster?

Published Oct 12, 2021, 9:00 AM

After looking into the Venus Flytrap, we quickly moved it to the top of our favorite plant list. Part plant, part monster? What's not to love?

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Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and the three of us are easy, breezy, beautiful cover girls and this is stuff you should know. How you doing, I'm great, good I'm doing. I wanted to be a cover girl. Well you are now I degree such fantastic. Um. I'm excited about this one, Chuck. I'm really excited because it's like a combination of one of our plant episodes with one of our animal episodes. Yeah it is, isn't it. It's really hard to not look at a venus fly trap in action on a video and not think it's an animal. Um. Yeah, I guess so, I guess sure. It's just so like all you can think of, or all I can think of, is that thing is like thinking with the brain. Let me close my mouth and eat this thing. Yeah, I know what I mean, That's what it looks like for sure. Yeah. But the thing is, Chuck, is there's like there's a whole thread of botany. Now there's like a big dispute in the botanical world about just yes, about just how much plants think and thinking, and not necessarily in ways that we would recognize its is thinking, but still having intelligence memory um. And one of the things that that seems to be kind of emerging as far as studying venus fly traps goes, is that plants, just like us, use what are called action potentials, which is electrical transmissions that cause cells to do different things when they're stimulated. And that is thinking, like, that's how we think, that's how neurons fire. So the idea that plants use the same kind of general principle to do things or to react to things or respond to things, or to change the behavior. Buddy, that's thinking in a lot of ways. What's a vegan to do? I know it does, definitely, that's a that's a can. They're gonna all end up breathe atterrians, right, oxygen materians. No, that's the thing. Did you know that breathe at terrians? I feel like I've heard of that. It's exactly what it sounds. So they don't need anything. They just breathe in and drink water or is that awful limit? I don't even know if they drink water, probably water. Are they all dead eventually? I'm sure Okay, but yeah, we'll have to do an episode on that because I don't know enough about it to speak on of intelligently. But it is pretty interesting because I know some people at least try it well. It sounds like a movement that would probably not gain much steam, you know, right, because they're too tired to prostalytize about it. It sounds like a short stuff. Okay, there you go, gotcha. I think that's a great idea. But we're here to talk about the Venus fly Trap, not the w KRP in Cincinnati. DJ what a great character. He had a lot of facets played by what was named Tim something, right, Tim Reid. Wow. Nice. I saw a lot of WKRAP when I was I did too, Man, I love that show. It's funny. I remember, I'm already going on a tangent before you even get started. But I remember watching that show when I was little and seeing Johnny Fever where the Grateful Dead t shirts, which was my first exposure, and they had like the skeleton and stuff, and I thought they were some kind of like a metal thing. I did too. I actually had a couple of other posters and I was like, this band must be the coolest fan of all time. And I finally heard them, I was like, this doesn't match at all, like the best name ever, the best imagery, and then I just didn't add up. Music didn't fit. But we're talking about the venus fly trap, the plant which if you think sure effort of those things that that's like the one carnivorous plant. No, no, no, there are hundreds and hundreds of plants that actually eat other things by attracting things and capturing and killing them. Uh, but the venus fly trap gets all the press because it just it looks like it looks and it's so cool. Yeah. I mean a lot of the other plants um like eat and digest insects or even like some rodents. There's a kind of picture plant that I saw. It's the size of a toilet and like, if you're a mouse and you fall in, that's it for you. Mouse. Um. But they don't do anything. They just kind of sit there and hope that something falls in. That. The thing that makes the venus fly traps so fascinating is it's one of only two plants in the world that actually like closes that actually traps and and and it traps its prey and like, that's just you just don't see that the other ones the European water wheel, and it looks like a fern with the very tips of each fern frond um, kind of like venus fly trap, the very very small version of it. The Venus fly trap is just big enough to be like, wow, that's really neat, right, Like they would never write a character named Audrey after those ferns and put them in Broadway musicals No and Audrey two. Technically Audrey two. Yeah, Audrey was the guy was Seymour's love interest, the girl that he liked, so he named the plant Audrey two. Can I confess something? Yeah, I know nothing about Little Shop of Horst. I mean, I haven't seen in a really long time either, but I um I went and looked up some stuff on it. Okay, so you're confessing to um. I saw on a YouTube video this guy from the Carolinas talking about the Venus fly trap, and he said a more appropriate name for them would probably be did you see this guy the Caro the Carolina spider trap. Because of two things, they are basically only found in about a seven hundred mile area as far as growing wild along the coast of North and South Carolina, and then he said they really only eat about five percent of their diet as spiders or I'm sorry, as flies. He said, they mostly eat spiders and ants. Uh. And you can also throw in crickets and slugs and some other caterpillary things in there. Yeah. I mean, you know, very frequently whatever just kind of happens to to wander onto the plant itself. But I mean it'll take what it can get. But I guess winged insects and maybe get away faster or more easily. Yeah, I mean, I get the idea that the flies can get out of there easier. So it's just I mean, they're fine to eat flies, and it's harder. Yeah. I also I saw I saw um. I don't know if it was in that same video or not. That there's only an estimated one d and fifty thousand of these plants in the wild and the entire seven hundred miles just tiny strip along the coast of North and South Carolina, and they live in bogs like marshy bogs, sometimes salt marshes um sometimes pete bogs, but you know, like a wetland that's like always wet that's that's where they grow. Um, and they like the sun and they like you humid. But they can also whether the cold, as we'll see, because it can get pretty cold in the winter in North Carolina. So there's really no way around explaining the origins of the name without it being a little well, it's just a little dicey because it was named at a time where, uh, things were different back then, and they named it because the plant resembled, uh, perhaps a woman's anatomy. Help me out here. No, I'm really enjoying watching your tap dance. Well, I mean, and we've talked. We may have mentioned it in the folklore episode the idea of the vagina dentata, which in many different cultures and nations around the world, there are these folkloric legends of these women who had teeth and there vagina act as a trap keep going chuck. And that is where this name comes from. It's named after Venus, that got pagan goddess of love because of that plant's resemblance and because of that folklore. Yes, chee, good job man, I think you really presented that well right, Um, I wouldn't name it that today, can I say that? No? They definitely wouldn't have. People are a lot less uptight when it comes to s e X you know what I'm saying. Yeah, it be the Carolina spider trap, that's right. I also saw that when the it was imported to England for studies around the mid eighteenth century, UM that it was popularly called tippity witch. It's that's what they called venus fly traps in England. I thought it was fun too, And Charles Darwin said that it was one of the most wonderful plants in the world, which I'm mean, that's a that's a pretty good endorsement coming from him, you know. Oh, I bet he loves the venus fly trap. Yes, he really did. And I don't think because he um had any kind of sexual proclivities toward it like some of his other fellow botanists who actually named it that. No. I think because it's a wonder of natural selection and evolution. I would say that's why too. One of the other things he's like, oh natural selection, yes, um. So one of the other things about the venus fly trap has another name too. It's um it's a taxonomic name. Is Diane a Musca pula. I think that's right, and that actually is named after Diana, a different goddess, the Roman goddess of the hunt, and muscapula apparently means mouse trap. So the other name thing you could call it besides Venus fly trap is Diana mouse trap. It's not bad. It's got a lot of really great names. I mean, tippity, which it alone is worth, you know, celebrating. I think Diana mousetrap might be my new hotel check in name. Oh that's a good one. I like that. But at any rate, they eat insects and not because they um just love the taste of spiders or flies. Uh, they're they're regular plants to They love photosynthesis and they do their thing during photosynthesis like all plants do, and take the energy of the sun and and then convert it to sugar and oxygen and use that stuff as energy. But they also need other stuff, just like all plants need, but they can't get it because of where they live and that p D. Marshy bog. They need all these amino acids and vitamins that their land doesn't provide, and they get that from these insects. Yeah, because most other plants are able to get things like nitrogen from the soil and phosphorus and magnesium soul for cassi calcium potassium. Like, yes, they need a TP energy and they a word in the form of carbohydrates like all plants to um, but there's other nutrients that they need to build sell walls to produce dna um, to transport water throughout that kind of stuff. Like you definitely need a lot more than a TP. And since they can't get it from the soil, they have evolved to get it by eating other bugs or eating bugs or you know, even in some cases like like those giant pitcher plants like mice, because animals are really great mobile stores of stuff like calcium in sulfur and phosphorus and magnesium. That's right, And then that wet pd acidic soil they must seek purchase elsewhere. And luckily those little spiders are happy to just crawl in there. And maybe we should take a little break and we'll tell you all about how this trap happens right after this, Okay, chuck, Before we go any further, I just want to restate one of the coolest things I've ever heard, that the venus fly trap and other carnivorous plants couldn't get nutrients from the soil they grew in, so they learned to eat bugs to get those nutrients. It's astounding, and it also makes them so similar to the to the animal world, because that's why animals eat other stuff, like other animals or even plants, because we need to get our energy elsewhere. We don't get it from the soil. So it makes them, in some weird way akin to us as well. Do you feel a kinship a little bit? And you know, I'm a little attracted to it too, like some of those early botanists, not in a Darwinian way or both you swing both ways. Okay, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't judge. Who knew this podcast would go in this direction? Right when I saw that first thing about it being dicey, yes, about the name being I knew exactly where it's gonna go. Uh. So they are not the only plant also that attracts things via their smells or these delicious syrupy SAPs. I mean, if you go out in your garden on any day and see butterflies and bees and other insects flying around, they're all going to these plants and these plants are using these insects in one way or the other. They're just not quite using them up like venus fly trap does. Yeah, they're using them to help pollinate. That's why they do that. Yeah, because they want the bee to fly away. They the venus fly trap does not want anything to fly away. No, it says, come here, let me eat you. So here's what happens. If you look at a venus fly trap, when it's unfolded and beautiful and has all these little beads of sweet nectar on it, an insect will land on that, and on each side of uh what are they called petals? I saw, lobes, and then like that, the thing that connects them in the middle is called the mid rib. The mid rib, not the mid rib. It's good, you only get it at certain times. The heather. Right on each lobe, you've got three little trigger hairs arranged in a little triangular pattern. And these are part motion detectors and part sort of timers almost, because when a little fly or a spider or any kind of insect that's small enough lands in there, and we should say by small enough we mean ideally about a third of the size of those two lobes. Can't go much bigger than that. No, and they're not big there, it's not a big plan. I saw that they grow to be about five inches tall. Yeah they're small. Yeah, they're fairly small. And then each plant will have, you know, between five and ten I think um fly traps on it. Yeah, like if you get your information from Little Shop of Horrors, you're being the slag um. So you've got these little trigger hairs and once one of those is is flicked by a fly leg or an ant leg or a spider, it's sort of a timer kind of starts, and they've got about twenty or thirty seconds to dance around that thing without hitting either that one again or one of those other trigger hairs. And once it hits the second one, or hits that first one the second time within that little timer, that is when the trap closes in a fraction of a second, the blink of an eye. Oh yeah, it's super quick. Um. And you know, I think one of the things that makes it seem animal like is it's it's really hard to find a nature documentary about the venus fly trap without some sort of foreboding orchestral music playing that ground so it really kind of juices it up a little bit. Uh. But here's the deal is, they don't they don't know exactly why or exactly how the mechanism works, since it doesn't have a brain, you know, they know they trigger that trigger hair and then it claps shut. But all they've got is a pretty good hypothesis. Yeah, So what they think happens is that the the um the lobes stay open um like that you just um liken it to a mouth, So the mouth is wide open on the venus fly trap. By the cells around that the lobe I guess around the midrib and the lobe where they connect are basically being crumpled. And then something about the trigger hairs being stepped on starts to um d crumple that still like it starts to release a little bit of the pressure, and then when that second hair is triggered, the pressure is fully released. And they think what happens is through the use of um of burning a TP for energy, that the the the water pressure changes in those cells so that they go from being crumpled to being plump, and so they're no longer holding the flower open and the mouth open. So it just shuts, and all of that is again carried out by those action potentials, which starts with the trigger hair being stimulated, which somehow creates an electro chemical um transmission that goes through the plant cells to tell it get ready, get ready because it might happen again. And when it happens again, it says, okay, release the water, and then the thing snapshot, which is pretty neat. But even after that, even after that second stimulation and the mouth um the mouth closes, that's not the end of the whole process, Like, that's there's still another third one, and it has to do with those amazing trigger hairs as well. Yeah, like this, to me, it's already pretty remarkable that this plant can do this, and and I knew I kind of knew all that stuff, But this is when it really floors me, because even before I got to this part, I started thinking like, yeah, but how long does this take into like reset the trap? Like what if a what if something kind of floats through there that's not an insect and it just happens to trigger two of those hairs, you know, does it just open right back up? Does it spit it out? Like oh, I don't want this thing in there. What if some dumb little kid sticks his finger in there, it's gonna close of course, because it's triggering the trigger hairs. Yeah, and you should not do that, by the way. No, you should totally not do that. But you know that's why I said, dumb little kid. So what it counts on is a living thing squirming around in there. Once it's sort of you know, it's not sealed tight exactly at the very very beginning. It's it's like shut. Ideally, they're not getting out, but maybe a fly can slip out if it's quick enough, or maybe it can work its way out. But all that's doing is triggering those little trigger hairs again. And that's the signal basically that like, no, no, no, you've got a living thing in here. It's not a something that fell off a tree or whatever that you don't want. So now is the time where you really really close down and locked down tight. Yeah, it's the thing's been inside scirming because like you're saying, it's it's like it's got alive one here. One of the other things that just I found absolutely astounding, Chuck, is when the when the venus fly trap seals shut, when it's like, Okay, I've got a bug in here, and I want to go ahead and start eating it. The little things that look like teeth, the cilia, they lace together and form an air tight seal. And there's a couple of reasons for this. One. It keeps the bug from escaping, which it couldn't really get out after the second the second hair was tripped, like, it forms a cage. But then after it squirms around inside that cage, then it seals tight, air tight, and that's it for the bug, by the way, um and it keeps the bug inside. It also keeps um uh bacteria from entering because this is not a fast process what's about to happen. It takes the course of days before it's completed, and in that time bacteria can enter through any like hole in that seal. And so the seal prevents bacteria from getting in and rotting the bug and in turn rotting them the venus fly trap, causing the poor little fly trap to turn black and fall off. So I saw it takes about an hour or two to fully seal. Uh. It takes about Remember I said earlier, like what if something just happens to go how long does it take to reset the trap. That takes about twelve hours if there's a uh twig or something. But I was looking for a kind of a fun word for a that's not sexual. How about a a twitter like a false alarm? But my mind just keeps going to dirty places. Well, like, why I have no idea false alarm? Let's just call it? No? Know what? What were you going to think? That was dirty? What were you thinking that was dirty? I can't I'll tell you later. I guess I can't say it out loud. I kind of figure this out. Oh, oh, I know. To me, let's just say it's a false alarm about twelve hours, and then the entire digestive process can take a week or more. Yeah, Like, if there is an actual bug in there, it takes about a week to digest it. It doesn't sound like a pleasant way to go for a bug to be trapped in a venus fly trap, because after that seal is completely sealed, w'd you say, it takes about a couple of hours an hour or two for that seal to be airtight. Yes, the whole time that bug is still alive, chuck, and it's still just sitting there flipping and flopping against those trigger hairs. And this is the other service that the trigger hairs provide that I referred to earlier, that when they're stimulated again after this thing is sealed, what they're doing is telling the venus fly trap, Okay, this thing's about this size. Um, it's not a big thing. It's about medium size. So I only need to release, you know, a little bit of digestive enzymes. And this is a really great adaptation because it's really energy um intense to produce digestive enzymes. UM. So the fact that it just kind of dolls out just as enough to dissolve whatever is in there, whatever size insect is in there, is pretty astounding. And it judges this somehow, some way, in a mindless sort of way, by how much those trigger hairs are tripped while the thing is is squirming around in the ceiling um fly trap. It's just awesome that it can do that. Yeah, I mean, and this this jumps to the end a little bit. But the reason it does that is because it can only do that so much. Um. They do. They do recycle what they can from those juices at the end of the process. But I get the feeling like each With each opening and digestion and manufacturing of those enzymes and recycling of of what they can of those enzymes, it just gets a little bit less and a little bit less, until eventually the lobes uh can't do their job anymore. And then they just stay open and say, all right, I'll just be a regular plant and soak up the sun. I'm just gonna photosynthesize. Brother. I showed my daughter this morning when before she left for school, I was watching these videos. It's like, oh man, she's gonna love this. And she watched it and got really sad about the fly. That's sweet, and it's because of the way they shoot these. They do that dramatic music, and she's conditioned, you know, she's been disnified. So it's like it's Bambi's mom in there, you know, Yeah, it's Bambies fly mother, or it's uh, it's Dory sure, Dory the fly version. Just show her a fly close up or have her listened to our Flies episode and she'll be like, I don't care. I know. Um. The other thing they do that really kind of um is really easy to overlook, but definitely perhaps overly dramatizes a venus fly trap. Shutting on a fly is they they will very often dub in like a panther's roar right when it um right when it shuts, and it's you can't pick it out unless you're looking for but when you are, it just sticks out like a sore thumb. Uh. I think they get about ten to twelve either partial or complete closures per lobe set. So that's how long they can hang in there before they coast into retirement. Not a bad run. And when you consider that, uh, they're only eating an insects every like week or two maybe in the wild, how about three times a month. Yeah, so multiply that times tend it twelve and that's that's your lifespan basically. Although I did see that they can live twenty years in the wild well because they'll regenerate new lobes and yes, so yeah, they grow from a rhizome and those things pop up. But the plan itself, that's a fairly long lived plant. Yeah. So okay, so inside, so one thing I feel it is worth like explicitly mentioning here with the venus fly trip, You've got this open mouth and then when it closes, it converts into a stomach. It's kind of like one of those washer it's also a dryer once the wash cycles over. Right, I've always wanted one of those. Yeah, I think it'd be pretty cool. I've never heard if they actually like work or not. But maybe we'll just we'll we'll go in Dutch on one together, Okay, and see we'll just straight it off month to month. Well, we'll rent a I don't have room for it, neither do you. We'll rent a storage space, yes, and we'll just buy a little single unit. We'll hire an electrician and a plumber to come out and outfit it for a washer, dryer combo, and our our bunk beds from the old days will be moved in there, just for nostalgia. Yeah, but this time we'll be able to wash our sheets. So so in this, in this, what's went from the mouth now the stomach those digestive juices just enough to to melt basically the bug that's in there, based on its size and it's scormy nous. Um. They flood this thing and again over the course of like five to twelve days. Um, it's going to basically break down all the soft tissue inside that bug inside it's exoskeleton and basically liquefieding to goo until it just kind of mixes in with the digestive juices. Right. And then in this mouth that's now become a stomach, the nutrients that that fly or that spider that ant carried around with it, that became liquefied, are broken down into like really tiny basic particles like amino acids and stuff, not even like proteins, like even more basic than that. And then the plant absorbs it just like you do in your gut, right, and it uses those nutrients to do things like build cell walls or repair it's DNA, or to transport water throughout its body. Just not so stuff, right. And then there's one other trigger. There's one other signal that happens where when the digestive enzyme is basically all that's in there, all the nutrients have been sucked out. Somehow, it is able to UM to analyze the ratio of digestive juice to nutrients, and when there's basically nothing but digestive juice is left, it reabsorbs the digestive juice and that acts as a trigger for those cells to compress again and the mouth to come back open and then ideally a gentle breeze will blow away what's left. There's a little exoskeleton in there, and then Audrey's ready again. Uh, and you know again about a week to twelve days. It depends on how big. You know, it's a little ant, it's gonna be quicker. We mentioned that the juices get weaker, so if it's an older trap or set of lobes, it's gonna take a little longer. And then the temperature can actually speed it up a little bit. If it's itit's warmer and there's more heat, then there's gonna be a faster breakdown, so that will also speed it along. Just as amazing, man, I mean, I knew it was going to be an amazing like topic, but I was even astounded by how it using these things are. But we're not done. We're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and tell you all about if you want to grow one of these monsters in your house, what you can do right after this. All right, if you're a fan of Broadway or Evolution or Charles Darwin or ancient folklore, or just freaking out your neighbor's kids or your own kids or grandkids and you want to venus fly trap in your house, you can do that. You don't have to live in the Carolinas. You just have to set up an environment that is like you're in the Carolinas in your home somewhere. Yes, you have to become a tar heels fan or outside your home. Yeah, because you know, I mean, I'm sure in the Atlanta Piedmont, in probably parts of Alabama, in North Florida, you could probably grow these things in a pot outside probably so um. But if you live in um, say a much colder area, um, you know, above the Mason Dixon line probably, or in a much drier area like the Southwest, you're gonna have to You're gonna have to unnaturalize it a little bit. For example, if you live in a low humidity area, you would want to probably put this thing in a terra arium. Yeah, and that's I've always wanted a terra aium. I think they're fun. Sure, So uh get a ru aium, make it wet in there. Uh, you're gonna have a you know, I think I think about a four inch pot is a decent starter pot and you may not need anything else actually, because they're really not that big, like you said, and you gotta keep checking that soil. You don't want it, um you don't want it swimming in water, but you definitely don't want it to dry out at any point. Yeah, and you also don't want to um water it from above. I didn't see why, but I suspect that it might, like a rain drop, could conceivably cause it to um to close accidentally if you've got enough water splattering on it and triggering those those trigger hairs. Oh. I wonder if they grow in the wild under more densely covered areas to prevent that. That's possible. But um, so what you do is you you water them from the bottom up. You place them in a pan of or a little tray of standing water about a third of an inch or a centimeter deep. What watering tips with jobs? Well, listen, there's one of there's something else that you want to keep in mind. I think most people wouldn't realize. It's like you can't you can't water these guys with tap water. Um Oh, I just got what reference you are making? You cutter? Do we need like a million feet worth those of water? Like you, you basically want to make sure that your house is completely flooded with water to make these things live. Uh. No, you bring a good point, though it needs you can't. Like tap water is no good and probably most of the filter water using is probably no good either. No, because the salts and nutrients will build up in the soil and these things have evolved not to use that stuff and like it will actually harm them for the same reason you don't want to use fertilizer either. They don't need fertilize or they any bugs. Basically, yeah, they said, and I thought this is really cool. Just collect some rainwater, and that's that's your best bet. If you can't collect enough. If you, you know, live in Phoenix and you want to grow a venus fly trap, you're already kind of growing upstream. But um, you may not be able to collect that rainwater either. So at least get some deionized water, maybe some distilled water, or if you've got a reverse osmosis system, which you might in Phoenix, then you can use that stuff too. You can use that stuff, and if you don't have a reverse ostomosis system, you can buy it. Usually at any aquarium store they sell that. Okay. Um, so the water is the important what kind of water you use again, don't use fertilizer um and apparently uh, because they grow in areas that get cold in the winter. If you are growing when in a tra areum from November to February, you want to take it out of a tra areum and like put it in a window in your garage or something like that, Like let it actually get cold, and you're gonna get freaked out because the plant will actually die back to the rhizome and it'll look like you lost it or something like that. But then come March, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised when it comes bouncing right back. Yeah, and you can treat it like any plant that you overwinter that kind of goes dormant. You can clip off the dead detritus and it'll grow back. How many how many of those are we gonna get per plant? Like four or five? I think it's a five to tend somewhere, oh, five to ten even Okay, that's what I saw, but I could be making that up. There's a lot of numbers flying around in this one um. But what about the feeding? You know, it's uh, if you have this thing in your house or in a tru Areum, you're not just going to count on a rando fly that got in or or akucaracha to walk into its midst. So just like if you have a constrictor and you've gotta you know, go to the pet store to pick up some mice, you have to feed this thing. Yeah, apparently, um, you can feed it live bugs, but you know there's problems with live bugs. Apparently, live meal worms can actually burrow their way out of the plant, which is not pleasant for the plan. I'm sure. Um, crickets can easily get too big or can stick a leg out which will keep that seal from getting air tight, so they can um they can decompose uh from bacteria that gets slipped in that can actually make the plant decomposed to So your best bet is to get some freeze dried meal worms, blood worms or crickets, Uh, put a little water on there, stir them up, and then put it uh drop it on the the plant in its mouth basically and so um you might get a closure response from just dropping it in there because it might hit a couple of sillia. But don't forget like it's not going to start releasing those digestive enzymes until it's sillia. The little trigger hairs are stimulated once it's closed, So you actually have to have like a little toothpick or something like that and just very lightly, very gently kind of rub those sillia so that it'll close fully and release those digestive enzymes. Right, And like you said earlier, don't uh invite your neighbors kids over to trigger this thing for fun because it only gets tinner twelve with those closures, and you're you're you know, you're literally shortening the lifespan of that lobe if you're doing so for fun. Uh, So you gotta drop an insect. You probably won't be able to catch any flies. Even if you're good with those chopsticks. Man, very few can accomplish that feed. You have to be friends with Pat Morita. And they got to be small, remember about a third the size. I told you I worked with Pat Marida once, right. Uh. No music video, No, I don't think you have to want to say it was. It was one Emily producer and I worked for it was I think it was alien Ant Farm and they did a Karate kids send up and Pat Morita starred and um I was Pat Marita's guy that day to to get him what he needed in his trailer, and he was as nice as he could be. R I p God rest his soul. And I don't think it's a big deal to say that Pat Marita loved sipping on Chardonnay during the day on a shoot. Oh he didn't get plaster or anything, but he he wanted a bottle of wine, a nice bottle of white chardonnay. And he was just a lovely guy, how positively cultured. You know. I heard Mr T likes to drink huge cups of um. I don't know what it was he was drinking, but he would he'd like to drink on set as well during the day. Oh. Really interesting. I did a Wye Cliff video one time, and uh, he and his his crew they really drank. Oh yeah. But I mean sometimes those music videos that was just sort of the um it was just sort of a party atmosphere, like they would use as an excuse to be like, all right, all my friends are coming here for twenty four hours and we're just gonna get down. And um. I also had one of the coolest experiences of the music video life on that whye cliff job, and that I was standing kind of right next to a and I'm just so square. I don't know what it's called. When they're improv rapping and like dissing each other like the competition style. I don't know what that's called. It's called a mile Yeah, it's called an eight mile face off. Okay, that's what I said. I went, Hey, guys, nice eight mile face on. Um. But I got to kind of witness one of those in person, and I was like, oh my god, it's like the ellen is just off the chart. So it was good because sometimes those things are really not good. No, I mean these were these were pros. Oh good man, I'll bet that was cool to see. It was fun, but they were they were fun too. Wow. Uh did we say everything there is to say about Venus fly traps. I also had to put a joint in Buster Rhymes lips. I think I've told that story. He smokes marijuana, believe it or not, because he was in a in a video for Gimme Some O. He was fake tied to the train tracks in one scene, so he was he was couldn't move and he was on the ground and he would always ask me. I would stand by and hold the burning blunt and I would put it in his lips every you know, probably eight seconds. Good lord, it was great. Like, those are the fun things you can do as a p A. Sometimes I recommend it. Those are some cool stories, Chuck, you can really get in the mix. There's nothing to do with penus fly traps, so but it does. Now well, if you want him about venus fly traps, go buy one. You can buy one online, although supposedly you should probably go to a nursery that specializes in carnivorous plants because they actually know what they're talking about. So let's start there. Okay, can you grow them from seed? You can? You can go from seed. You can also divide them, like as they get to be adult size, right before they come out of their winter dormancy is a good time to divide them. So they make great gifts. I love it. Uh And since Chuck said he loves it, of course, everybody, it's time for a listener Mayo, I'm gonna call this Clark me a listener mail. Okay, did you see this one? It sounds familiar. It's from a few weeks ago. Hey, guys, I just want to tell you that I've been subtly leaving Clark as a verb in the conversations with my family for the last three weeks. Uh, this is Leslie, this is mom that's doing this. At first, I did it just to be funny and see what they would say. None of them had heard that particular episode and don't even know about clarking, but no one questioned it. I asked my husband to clark me a ten dollar bill, and I told my son I would clark him a notebook for school, and it's told. I told one of my daughters that someone could clark her a phone charger. Everyone just proceeded as if I'd said nothing out of the ordinary, and it was totally surreal. Anyway, I just had to share that with you guys, because I feel like I have a hilarious inside joke but no one to laugh about it with. If you do read this on the air, and how could we not? Uh, will you please shout out my husband, Clint and my kids Jackson. Uh, it looks like Emma and Grace it maybe m E, M m E. Thanks for what you do. I'm a longtime listener to love your show so much It's perfect for those like me who have a love of learning and laughing. And that is from Leslie and her family just sound wonderful and I it says something about how much they're listening to you, Leslie. I hate to break into you. That's pretty great. Or they're just like moms on off a rocker. I guess we'll just go with it. What a great email. I'm going to guess the middle kid's name is Emmy. Okay, so we've got m Emmy and Emma. I don't think we can miss Chuck unless it's just the artist formerly known as Well. Thanks again, Leslie, that was a great email, one of the all time greats. If you ask me, and if you want to throw in your two cents and see if you can compete with Leslie's email, we would love to hear it. You can send it to us at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD,  
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