Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

20:17Chuck Bryant:Far and away, most species of caterpillars and hence butterflies are herbivores. They just eat leaves. That's what they do. They eat leaves and shoots. Wait, eat shoots and leaves. Eat shoots and leaves. So there's the ones in Hawaii, they'll eat snails. And not only do they eat snails, it's really awful. They tie the snails to, say, like a twig or a leaf or something using spinnerets. They have silk-producing organs. And they'll tie the snail, the whole shell and all, to like a twig so the snail can't get away. And then they climb into the shell and eat the snail alive. It is horrifying. I don't like that particular kind of caterpillar, but I like all the rest.

21:02Yeah.

21:03Chuck Bryant:They tie it down and eat it. So awful. Imagine it just coming into your house, too, and you're like, please no, and you have no escape, and that's that. Yeah, it was pretty horrifying to read that and, frankly, disappointing. But there's also a brand in Australia. A brand of Cali Pelley. They lay their eggs in ant hills, and when they come out, they will eat those ants. But aside from that, in the Hawaiian, they, like you said, are strictly herbivores, and they are using those leaves also to camouflage themselves. They have a lot of great mechanisms to keep this. not quite octopus level, but they seem like they're, you know, I don't know if it's wrong to use the word smart, but they know to like feed under leaves so birds can't see them.

21:53They also have some natural camouflage, like sometimes those eyes can look like, the fake eyes can look like snakes. Did you see that one? Yeah, it looks like a snake.

22:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it looks like a bright green snake, and apparently they'll arrange themselves sometimes to make it look like a long snake, Like 300 caterpillars will get together and line up, and it's like, wow, there's a snake. No, it's a line of caterpillars. Yeah, like a lot of them are solitary caterpillars, but there is, what was the one in particular that traveling groups? The gregarious caterpillars. Yeah, I get the feeling those are the ones that might do the old snake one too. Yes. I think those are swallowtails, and they might be gregarious, yeah. So I say we take a break, Chuck, and then we'll come back and I propose that we talk some more about caterpillars.

22:44Let's do it.

23:07Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

23:18NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:57Chuck Bryant:I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him. I was like, hi, dad. And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk. This is a badass convict. Right. Just finished five years. I'm going to have cookies and milk at mom. Yeah. On the Sino Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances. The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.

24:43I'm an alcoholic. And without this trouble, I'm going to die. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search The Cino Show and listen now.

25:25Come check this. all day. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.

25:39Chuck Bryant:Okay, so you mentioned a couple of things that they do to protect themselves. Camouflage, just eating a little bit on the underside of a leaf. There's a lot of other things that they can do too. There's so many different species of caterpillar. Because again, we're talking about moths and butterflies. They're not just all the same thing, that they've developed all sorts of really interesting means of defense. One of the ways they say the best defense is shooting your poop out. And there's a type of caterpillar that does that. I think it's the silver-spotted skipper. And skipper is basically a type of butterfly.

26:17Chuck Bryant:And it shoots its waist, called frass, It's poop as far as five feet from itself in order to keep predators from being able to track it back to its source. That explains that old saying, you ain't nothing but caterpillar for ass. I never knew if you're really good at jumping. That's what they say to you. Yeah. And that's one of the things they do, like several other things, which is it all sort of falls in the umbrella of I don't want anyone to know. I'm like even here. So a poop will be a big giveaway, obviously. Another is if like they love to eat, if a predator sees a ton of chewed up leaves everywhere, they're gonna be like, ooh, the caterpillars nearby.

27:03I love to eat those things. So as much as those caterpillars love to eat, it is their singular purpose in life. They will many times just eat little bits off of many, many leaves to kind of disguise the fact like no caterpillar here. There's just a few nibbles here and there. Yeah, just leaflets. Rather than just, yeah, rather than just like taking a leaf down to its spine.

27:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah, which any, even the dumbest of birds can be like, there's a caterpillar around here. And you know, they want to do that, but they still don't do it. I know. Caterpillars have tremendous self-control. They do. We mentioned that they have spinnerets, that they can spin silk, and they use it to great effect in all sorts of different ways, including defense. It's apparently some kinds of of caterpillars will like spin a little thing of silk that they'll attach to the leaf they're on. And when a predator comes, they just jump off. Yeah, basically like John McClane and Die Hard. And they're attached to the to the silk.

28:00Chuck Bryant:So they swing into, you know, a window in the Nakatomi building and then climb back up when the bird goes away. But they just jump off the leaf to get away. It's I'll bet that's pretty neat to see. That's right. And to combat jet lag, they make fists with their toes. What do you know? I wonder if they leap. I'd like to see that in slow motion. I wonder if all those legs and pro legs at once do that in concert. That would be pretty cool. Or if they inch, they just shoot themselves off. They inch so quickly that it shoots them right off of the leaf. Yeah. So, yeah, that's one use of the silk is like literal climbing rope.

28:37So, and like we said, like the solo caterpillar, which is many of the, I keep wanting to say brands, what a dummy. Varieties, species, there you go. You know, they're just going around, they're eating, they're laying an egg, they're using the silk as like a lasso, or maybe they might make a little nest. Like we said earlier, maybe they might restrain that snail. But those gregarious kinds that live in big groups, they really get going with the silk production. They make big nests in trees and around tree trunks.

29:12Chuck Bryant:You've probably seen them before. Oh, yeah. They're like big tents, basically. If you've seen big, you know, it looks like sort of a really dense spider web. I guess sometimes those are spiders, right? Yeah, there's some kinds of spiders that do that. But I think probably more often than not what you're seeing are gregarious caterpillars getting together. Yeah. But they also use their little spinnerets as like a trail. Like, hey, we're all going this way and we're going to lay this little trail. And we know that, you know, if you want to get home, this is how you get home. What's neat is those trails are often intergenerational.

29:47Chuck Bryant:And so like an older generation will leave that silk for the next generation to use. And that next generation then can grow bigger and stronger because they didn't have to use that energy to create the silk. that leads to the food source. I thought that was pretty nice. Yeah, like hand-me-down silk. Yeah, exactly. Or like, you know, a length of rope that Grandpa gave you. Yeah, same thing. Hand-me-down silk, length of rope from Grandpa. What else? There's another thing, too, that we haven't quite figured out, and we, I mean the entomology world, and by we, I also mean them, that it may or may not be advantageous to live in a gregarious community as opposed to being solitary.

30:35Chuck Bryant:Because, yes, it's easier to build a big shelter for yourself if you have a bunch of other friends helping you. It's easier to find food if you have other people looking at the same time you are and then telling you what they found. But at the same time, you're also competing with those same people, those same caterpillars, I should say. Yeah. And that's a big that can be a big problem, too. I like it. Caterpillars are people, too. Exactly. And if there's a disease, you know, it's going to spread pretty readily within that population. They're all living together. But I think, you know, we've held off long enough.

31:08We should we should talk about that metamorphosis. OK. Which is what everyone wants to know about. And that is basically a caterpillar is doing its thing. It's going through those molts. It's that fifth molt. and they say, you know what? This has been great, but I think I'm tired of eating finally. I'm going to go off and wander off into the woods. I'm going to find a safe spot and I'm going to pupate everybody. And when you see me again, I will be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

31:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah, pretty neat. And this is where the terminology gets really confusing if you do any research on this. Yeah, it can for sure. So the pupa is often referred to as the form, the body form that the centipede or that the caterpillar is in as it enters the transformation, right? Yes. It's actually the life stage. Like the caterpillar is the larval life stage. The butterfly or the moth is the adult. The pupa is the life stage in between. But for all intents and purposes, you can also say that's a butterfly pupa. or that's a moth pupa, right? That's the easiest, most understandable part of it. It starts to get really strange from there because the butterfly caterpillar, when it emerges from that fifth molt, it has a special kind of skin on it.

32:35Chuck Bryant:And over time, when it turns upside down and hangs from a leaf and begins its transformation, that skin hardens and it forms basically the protective layer that's going to protect that caterpillar-turned-butterfly as it undergoes its transformation. And that's called a chrysalis. But just butterfly caterpillars do that, right? Not moths? I think that's right. And then I think it's just moths, because they don't form chrysalis or chrysali, they are the only ones to spin a cocoon to protect themselves, correct? Right. And that cocoon starts out kind of soft, but that eventually hardens as well. But I think that's right.

33:17But the chrysalis itself is not some, like, shell they build. Like, it is the thing.

33:24Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's the outer layer of skin. Yeah, because it can actually twitch and move as a defense. Yeah. Like, it's a thinking sentient, well, not thinking necessarily, but it is a shell that is a living thing. It's not like, let me build this, you know, this thing to get into. It is the thing that it is in. Right. So imagine if you underwent this transformation, you would probably go off into a corner and kind of ball up maybe in a bit of a fetal position. But then imagine as part of this process, all of your skin fused together and turned into like an outer shell rather than, you know, this thing covering you.

34:04Chuck Bryant:It's like this now this big ball that you're now kind of separated from inside and you're doing your thing inside. Oh, yeah. That's kind of like what the chrysalis is like. Yeah, and so we mentioned the silk, like the uses as like a climbing rope and stuff like that and to build little nests. It really comes in handy when it's time to pupate because they use this silk in a variety of ways. There's more than one way to skin a cat and there's more than one way for a caterpillar to metamorphosize. Sometimes, like you said, they hang upside down from that leaf. So they've spun like a little silk pad that attaches to something.

34:40Sometimes they create like a little hammock. Sometimes they make like a little sling in concert with a stick. There are different ways that they can do this, but it always involves using silk to sort of stabilize itself, either upside down or right side up or sideways or whatever. And then they start to do that thing, whether it's a moth spinning that cocoon or just the gradual transformation of Caterpillar into chrysalis. Right.

35:07Chuck Bryant:And then so once that happens, once the cocoon is full or the chrysalis is hardened, this is one of the most amazing things that on Earth happens in there. And it's neat because we've gotten to the point where we have photography that can peer inside of this without harming the caterpillar. And they have like time lapse videos of this transformation. And as the thing turns more and more into what's obviously like a butterfly or a moth, and you see it hanging upside down, just forming, it looks like a cross between an H.R. Geiger painting and Michael Crichton's coma, the movie version. Yeah. It's really neat, but it also gives you this – it has this kind of regal and majestic feel to it as well.

35:59Chuck Bryant:It produced a lot of emotions in me apparently. Yeah, I mean it's – this isn't the science-y explanation, but it's almost as if you can take a tray of – put a bunch of spaghetti and meatballs in a dish and cover it up. And then when you open it up, it's a lasagna. Yeah. And you're like, how did that happen? Like, how did that even happen? So this is how it happens. The caterpillar breaks itself down into a soup of cells. Like, it's basically like a caterpillar soup for a while. And some of the cells keep their form generally or at least stay attached to one another. So those leg cells, they change.

36:47Chuck Bryant:They look different, like a caterpillar's actual true legs look different from the butterfly's true legs, but they're still the same cells. They're just, they rearrange themselves a little bit. Most of the other cells just completely come apart, turn into imaginal cells, which are analogous to our stem cells, and that they can turn into any kind of cell. And then it reconfigures itself using the same cells, same amount, same everything, into a butterfly. It reconfigures itself over the course of about two weeks. It's unbelievable. Yeah. It really is. Like my brain breaks every time I try to make sense, especially when you see what comes out.

37:28You know, I mean, if it came out looking like a dung beetle, like that would still be awesome. But to come out looking like a butterfly with those iridescent wings and the little faces on those wings, it's just unbelievable. And I guess, I mean, evolutionarily speaking, this is all to eventually get to like a pollinator.

37:47Chuck Bryant:I don't understand it. This is where I think that science is kind of thrown off. They're like, the best explanation I saw is that it's better than having two things compete for the same food source. But that doesn't really make any sense, you know, because that doesn't make any sense to me at all. I don't understand that. But that was the best explanation I saw, and I didn't even understand it. So as to as to the why? Yeah. Yeah. Like it's just so strange. It's I just don't understand it. And everything goes through life, life stages. We go through puberty. We become adults. We go from infant babies to grown adults.

38:28Chuck Bryant:But there's not a period where we stop and over the course of two weeks completely reconfigure ourselves into a new form. There's not that many things out there that do do that. And we just don't fully understand why it happens. And maybe we never will. And I think that'd be just fine. Although I would argue that the Josh Clark I knew 15 years ago, his caterpillar like has now emerged as a beautiful butterfly. Thank you. I remember reading when Christopher Hitchens became a conservative. One of the liberal members of parliament said that this is one of the rare instances where the butterfly turns back into the slug.

39:06Chuck Bryant:Oh, no. Yeah. Wow. I like to hear with that accent. I think I read that in 2007 and it still stuck with me. Yeah, that's a good one. We didn't take our second break, did we? No, it's time. All right. Well, let's take our second break. We'll probably still be talking about this metamorphosis, you know, when we come back. So just be prepared.

39:33What if mind control is real?

39:35Chuck Bryant:If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness.

40:11Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

40:36Chuck Bryant:I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him. I was like, hi, dad. And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk. This is a badass convict. Right. Just finished five years. I'm going to have cookies and milk at my mom. Yeah. On the Sino Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation and the power of second chances. The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville and more.

41:22I'm an alcoholic. And without this trouble, I'm going to die. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search the Cino Show and listen now.

42:01Come check this. Make it a preset and stay connected all day. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know. All right. I mean, I guess we're done talking about metamorphosis. It's called holometabolism. Yeah. That full transformation. And I don't think we said it takes a couple of weeks generally.

42:30Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I saw about two weeks. something like that on average. It can be more or less depending on the weather and stuff. Yeah, and I took it as depending on the weather, meaning is that they don't want to do this in the middle of winter. So if they get started and like winter comes early, maybe they'll just stay in there for a few months. Is that right? There are some species that overwinter in their cocoon or in their chrysalis, and that's just part of their thing. But I saw that there's an ideal temperature. That's what I took it to mean. Oh, okay. And that the ideal temperature is 21 degrees Celsius.

43:03Chuck Bryant:And get this, buddy. I converted it to Fahrenheit using the formula we talked about the other day. So you did it yourself? Yeah. It's like I wrote it down. I could do it again if I wanted to, but I'm just going to find what I wrote down. I think it's like 88, 89 degrees Fahrenheit. All right. I love it when after all these years. It's 81. You're still brave enough to put yourself out there with math. Here, I'll just do this. Okay. So we're trying to find Fahrenheit from 21 degrees Celsius. So it's 21 plus 32. Okay. We're getting everything back equal again. So what is that? 56 times 1.8, I believe comes to 81.

43:42When was the last time you did sort of written down long division or something like that?

43:50Chuck Bryant:Oh, it's been a long time. By the way, it's 84.6. 84.6. Can you still do that stuff? i don't know probably if i gave enough time to it sure i just it's just it's not a part of my life yeah anymore i actually don't know if i remember how to do long division i recently uh because ruby is starting you know like this past year started like multiplication and stuff and came at me with like a three digit times a two digit and i was like oh you know what it's like i got it. I got it. I remember. And I remembered how to do that and to carry the stuff. But I definitely don't think I could do long division anymore.

44:29I don't, I sort of remember, but I don't think I would fully be able to complete a problem.

44:34Chuck Bryant:By the way, I, I know I brushed past it because I don't handle compliments that well, but I do appreciate the comment about me metamorphosizing into a butterfly. Oh, that was a joke. I'm just kidding. We'll definitely edit this part out. No, it was for sure true i appreciate you appreciating that so did we just come back from from ab break is that really uh yeah that's what's going on uh but we can wrap it up and talk about caterpillar management because here's the deal caterpillars eat leaves and um you know they can they can eat garden stuff if you have a garden that you're planting but it's not that big a deal like individual caterpillars are not going to ravage your garden and spoil your garden.

45:20If you have big groups of those gregarious caterpillars, they can cause problems. But, you know, if you see caterpillars in your garden, don't like, don't overreact and be like, I got to start killing all these caterpillars. You know, take a breath, assess your problem. Are they ravaging your garden or do you just have some caterpillars here and there? Like, because you want those butterflies later on, don't you? Right.

45:45Chuck Bryant:Yeah, definitely. That's a big part. And it's not just for their beauty either. Caterpillars and butterflies alike are a food source for birds, which is sad, but it's part of the circle of life, I guess. So that's one reason alone. They're also probably even more important for your garden pollinators. big time pollinators. There was a dead milkman joke in there. I couldn't quite make it. But they pollinate their food source. And most caterpillars, although all of them eat leaves, and again, like we said, they're eating machines, the amount of damage they're doing is really kind of pales in comparison to the benefits you get from having them in your ecosystem.

46:27Chuck Bryant:So for the most part, you want to just leave them alone. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole section if you're interested on how to kill and get rid of caterpillars at howstuffworks.com in this article, but I don't even feel like talking about it, to be honest. Well, let's talk about gregarious caterpillars because those are the ones that really are problematic. They can, on a bad year or a good year for the gregarious caterpillars, they can consume up to a quarter of the leaves in a forest. Yeah. And if they attack the same tree enough times, they'll kill a tree. So gypsy moth caterpillars are gregarious and they're well known for killing trees just from eating the leaves off of it.

47:08Chuck Bryant:That's how much damage they can do. And they can also harm crops too. So gregarious caterpillars, you actually probably do want to get rid of if you come across it. But the key is prevention. Like you look for the eggs, which form a ring around like a tree branch and take care of those then. Like, don't try to deal with them later. It's going to be too late. You want to be proactive. They say the best defense is shooting your poop five feet away from you. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're in forest management or if you're a farmer and it has like a literal effect on your crops and your forest and stuff like that, they're out there, you know, burning tents and nests and things like that.

47:48But that's not something you should go out and try to do because you don't want to catch something on a tree on fire. Just not a good idea.

47:57Chuck Bryant:Can't you just see somebody trying to get rid of caterpillars and be like, uh-oh, and they just started a wildfire? Yes, I can. I really can. It's hilarious if you think about it. It's so dumb. It is. Should we finish up with the assassin caterpillar? Well, can I talk about one more thing you don't want to talk about just for a second because I think it's kind of nuts as well? Okay. There's a bacterium called Bacillus thuringianus, I believe, or B.T. for short. This is a bacteria that people purposely introduce as a caterpillar control measure. And it goes in and produces holes in the caterpillar's gut and leads to sepsis, and it dies a painful death a few days after being infected.

48:39Chuck Bryant:This is considered organic gardening. The problem is it doesn't just target caterpillars you don't want. It targets all caterpillars, and it's also a pretty terrible way to die. So I'm with you, Chuck, man. I think you just say the caterpillars are here to stay as long as they're not gregarious. I'm just going to let them live and let live. Okay, I just wanted to get on that soapbox for a second. Yeah, I'm with you. So I mentioned the assassin caterpillar. This is the Lonomia obliqua, or the giant silkworm moth, or the assassin caterpillar. It is the deadliest caterpillar in the world, and there have been supposedly several hundred people in South America that have died from the toxin injected from this caterpillar quills.

49:28Chuck Bryant:From the settee. Yeah, I think it takes a lot. Like even if one of them, you know, injected some toxin into you, you're going to be uncomfortable and it probably won't feel great. But I think you need to get like, you know, 20 to 100 times that to actually kill you. Yet it still happens. Yeah, it does. Apparently, it's responsible for 500 deaths around South America. I think total, like in all time, as far as documented goes. It takes a lot, like I think 20 to 100 times to kill you. But the way that it kills you is it's an anticoagulant, a very powerful one, and you die of internal bleeding, essentially.

50:07Yeah, it's a blood thinner. Yeah.

50:10Chuck Bryant:And that actually is being studied. The toxins in that particular caterpillar are being studied for its usefulness in biomedicine. Yeah. I think there are only, what is it, there's like 32 species of lonomia, but only two of those have that blood thinner venom, the obliqua and then the achilles. But the rest will still sting you. It's just not going to kill you. It'll still hurt. That's South America. In North America, the biggest one we have is the Puss Caterpillar, P-U-S-S, Megalopage Upper Cularis, the Southern Flannel Moth. And just accidentally brushing it can cause excruciating pain I've seen.

50:52Chuck Bryant:So just be careful. Like admire caterpillars with your eyes, not with your hands. Yeah. I guess I got lucky as a kid by just letting them crawl on me for a minute. But I never felt that sting. There's one other thing, too. The eastern tent caterpillars are problematic, especially in places like Kentucky, because they cause what's called mare reproductive loss syndrome, where just, I think, 50 grams, which is a tenth of a pound of these caterpillars ingested by a horse while it's foraging, can cause it to lose its fetus, have a stillborn birth. All sorts of crazy stuff, so much so that it has a whole syndrome named after, and it's just from eating these caterpillars.

51:35Chuck Bryant:Oh, wow. Isn't that crazy? That is. This is a good one. I thought you'd like that. Yeah, caterpillars are great. I think we should do a two-parter with butterflies. Oh, should we? Sure. I think Tracy wrote that one, too. Okay, I say we get on with Ben Chalk. I was going to suggest that, but then I thought, is that too much? I don't know. I don't know. I guess they don't have to come out back-to-back. They can be companion pieces. How about that? Or back-to-back, and then we can skip the metamorphosis part. Okay. Well, while we're figuring that out, I say, everybody, it's time for listener mail.

52:10I'm going to call this Stuff You Should Know Crossy. I was very excited because one of our listeners, well, I'll just read it. I'll let you hang on that for a second. Hey, guys. When my wife, Katie, and I were dating, we would meet up at lunch to do the daily crossword together. I proposed to her 20 years ago using a crossword I constructed myself. and years later it's not only crosswords but stuff you should know that keeps our marriage life vibrant. It gives us something to talk about every week and needless to say your recent episode on crossword puzzles brought our life together full circle.

52:43About 10 years after we married I became a published crossword constructor and have continued ever since with puzzles in the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times among others. So Jeff is pretty experienced as a crossword maker. As a thank you for a wonderful episode, I'm sending you an original puzzle with a Stuff You Should Know theme.

53:05Chuck Bryant:Wow. For you to enjoy. Wow. And I haven't done it yet. It is printed out in my office. He sent me just a, you know, sent us a, it's not a digital version, so I can't do it on my phone. I got to get out the old pencil. Nice. Which would be kind of fun. And I can't wait to tackle it. I'm just been waiting for the right window of time. And that is from Jeff Stillman. and a big shout out to Jeff and his wife, Katie. I don't know how I missed that one, but I'm glad you called it out because I can't wait to do that puzzle too. So thanks, Jeff. Yeah, yeah. Jeff Stillman, go look at your emails and print that sucker out.

53:42Chuck Bryant:Yes. Well, thank you to you both, Jeff and Katie. And if you want to be like Jeff and send us some amazing thing, that's fine with us. You can send it via email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

53:59Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

54:15Peace to the planet. Charlemagne the God here. And listen, we are back. The Black Effect Podcast Festival is back in Atlanta on April 25th at Pullman Yard. And the full lineup is nuts. We got the Grits and Eggs podcast. Deontay Kyle and Big Ice Cup Cat we got Club 520 with Jeff Teague and the gang. Don't call me white girl. Mona will be there. Keep it positive sweetie with Crystal Renee. We got reality with the king with Carlos King and yes Drink Champ will be in the building. Plus you know we gonna have a lot of guests so you need to join us and we got the Black Effect Marketplace to pitch your podcast and everything you expect from the Black Effect Podcast Festival.

54:53Tickets are on sale right now. Go get Get yours at blackeffect.com slash podcast festival. Don't play yourself, okay? Pull up.

55:04What if mind control is real?

55:06Chuck Bryant:If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

55:45Chuck Bryant:Then she says, have you seen a photo of my son? And I'm like, who is this person? Welcome to the Boys and Girls podcast. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show And you're auditioning for your soulmate And who's judging? Only your entire family I sacrificed myself to this ancient tradition Hoping to find love the right way And instead, I found chaos, comedy, and a lot of cringe Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts This is an iHeart Podcast Guaranteed Human