Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. It is a beautiful summer
Speaker 1: afternoon here in Atlanta in nineteen in the midst of
Speaker 1: what many economists call the gig economy. We're going somewhere
Speaker 1: with this. I promise my name is Bett. You would
Speaker 1: not believe your eyes. Nate Milion fo your flies, some
Speaker 1: young It sounds just like the Postal Service, but it's
Speaker 1: a band called Owl City. Are they on wherever that
Speaker 1: record label was in the Midwest? Saddle Creek, Saddle Creek. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to okay, I don't think I don't think so,
Speaker 1: just felt like they would be well. No, they literally
Speaker 1: are like a one to one rip off of the
Speaker 1: Postal Service. But they have the song called Fireflies that
Speaker 1: was very popular and grocery stores across the country. Wait,
Speaker 1: who are you? I'm no great good, You're in the
Speaker 1: right place. A resident music snarker who was responsible for
Speaker 1: those lovely dulcet tones we heard just a second ago.
Speaker 1: Why that was super producer Casey Pegram And you may
Speaker 1: be asking yourself, gig economy, fireflies? Are you guys finally
Speaker 1: doing that? Weird experiment where you both do one half
Speaker 1: of a completely different show. The answer is no, though
Speaker 1: that would be fun. Yeah. Have we discussed this, Uh
Speaker 1: in my head, we have. I love it my and
Speaker 1: we also we also discussed the Nixon episode. Whatever happened
Speaker 1: to that? I think it's just sort of a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: You thought it was a great idea. I think it
Speaker 1: would wear thin very quickly. It would have to be
Speaker 1: like its twelve to fifteen minute episode. I think you
Speaker 1: would wear thin after about three minutes. Really for me personally, okay,
Speaker 1: like as you experience it as I experience it. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: But it's not about us. It's about the audience. It's
Speaker 1: not you, guys. How do you really feel about it?
Speaker 1: All Nix and Impression episodes? And how do you feel
Speaker 1: about fireflies? Do you what do you call them? Fireflies?
Speaker 1: Lightning bugs, torch bugs? Yeah, little glowy boys, bright butts, uh,
Speaker 1: flashlight locusts. I'm just making things up here, uh, strobe skeeters.
Speaker 1: These are all very good then? Thanks still? Thanks? So
Speaker 1: fireflies are actually beatles, which I think would surprise a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and they are the subject of today's episode.
Speaker 1: I think anybody who's grown up around these amazing creatures
Speaker 1: has at least a few nostalgic memories of seeing them
Speaker 1: come out. You know, as as the sun is western
Speaker 1: and the night begins, you can start to see them
Speaker 1: pop up. And you can because they're very easy to catch.
Speaker 1: You can get one in a jar, old in your hand,
Speaker 1: squish them and take that bioluminescent juice that drips forth
Speaker 1: from their tiny broken bodies and you rub it on
Speaker 1: your hands or your face like some sort of weird
Speaker 1: ferald jungle child or future makeup artists. Yeah, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, not not not necessarily a nice thing to do,
Speaker 1: much nicer to just like hold them and look at
Speaker 1: the cupped hand and then release them. But you know,
Speaker 1: we all knew those kids that would that would give
Speaker 1: them a good squish. And it turns out in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty through the mid nineties, uh, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of firefly squishers in the Midwest round about Missouri. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: due to something called the Sigma Fireflies Scientists Club, tens
Speaker 1: of millions of fireflies were caught in areas across twenty
Speaker 1: five states and shipped into containers not just to have
Speaker 1: some got to collect them all pokemon esque thing. But
Speaker 1: because there was a big business about let's let's talk
Speaker 1: real quickly about what the let's call it the lantern, right,
Speaker 1: what makes fireflies glow? It's an enzyme called lucifer as,
Speaker 1: and under the conditions this stuff produces that, as you
Speaker 1: described it, no bioluminescent gleam. And for this gleam to occur,
Speaker 1: the bug has to use a kind of energy called
Speaker 1: a t P. So if the bugs but is a lamp,
Speaker 1: then a t P would be the fuel and the
Speaker 1: enzyme would be like the match of the lighter that
Speaker 1: lights it. Scientists figured out how this all worked in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties, and pretty soon after that biochemists said,
Speaker 1: how can we apply this amazing substance? What can does
Speaker 1: this have industrial applications? And that's where Sigma comes into play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Sigma for our purposes today are sort of like
Speaker 1: the man, you know, the man that wants to squash uh,
Speaker 1: these beautiful creatures on a mass scale because they just
Speaker 1: need that sweet sweet enzyme. You know. Because they actually
Speaker 1: had developed uh an entire kind of slate of chemicals
Speaker 1: that were able to use this bioluminescent stuff to light
Speaker 1: things up, right, And here's the thing Sigma for our
Speaker 1: purposes today. Um, they're sort of like the big the
Speaker 1: big bad of this story. I mean, they didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: weren't all bad, but they were definitely the enemy of
Speaker 1: fireflies everywhere because they figured out that that enzyme could
Speaker 1: actually be used to detect bacteria in environments that were
Speaker 1: meant to be sterile. So it was something that really
Speaker 1: came in handy and was valuable to make sure there
Speaker 1: was no contamination in labs for example. Right. Yeah. Additionally,
Speaker 1: these chemicals can detect contamination and milk and water, and
Speaker 1: they can determine how much cancer is in a tissue.
Speaker 1: This next one reminds me of the old school Adam
Speaker 1: West Batman because people even attempted to use it as
Speaker 1: a shark repellent, and according to Sue Hartwick, a supervisor
Speaker 1: at Sigma, it was once sent into outer space as
Speaker 1: a way to test for extraterrestrial life. We're getting a
Speaker 1: lot of this information from an author named Sarah Was,
Speaker 1: who was a firefly expert at Tufts University. She wrote
Speaker 1: a book called Silent Sparks The Wondrous World of Fireflies.
Speaker 1: I love the title and The story is worth an
Speaker 1: entire book here because, as we said, Sigma realizes there's
Speaker 1: tremendous potential in capturing all these all these bright butts, right,
Speaker 1: And their problem is that you only get a little
Speaker 1: bit of this enzyme per bug, and you have to
Speaker 1: gather a massive amount of them, when we say earlier,
Speaker 1: tens of millions. And so they said, how can we
Speaker 1: collect these We can't necessarily get all the fireflies together
Speaker 1: in one place, so we have to we have to
Speaker 1: enlist the help of people who are around fireflies when
Speaker 1: they occur. They literally needed to establish a supply chain,
Speaker 1: and they did so in the form of I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's some really clever marketing, that's for sure. I would
Speaker 1: almost argue they are tricking kids into doing this. But
Speaker 1: they formed this thing we talked about the top of
Speaker 1: the show, which was the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club. Doesn't
Speaker 1: that sound fun and nerdy? It sounds like a good,
Speaker 1: healthy summer for a growing tyke. And here's what they did.
Speaker 1: They started publishing advertisements and then articles that were really
Speaker 1: just longer advertisements disguised as news in local papers all
Speaker 1: across the Midwestern United States. These would be classified ads
Speaker 1: with all cap lines like catch lightning bugs and then hey,
Speaker 1: kids join the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club. It's fun, it's profitable,
Speaker 1: handed opportunity to make a valuable contribution to science. And
Speaker 1: so they say, you know, we're appealing to youngsters throughout St. Louis,
Speaker 1: for example, and you get thirty cents in cash for
Speaker 1: every one bugs you catch, or one dollar in ride
Speaker 1: tickets at three local amusement parks. It's genius. And I
Speaker 1: maybe mischaracterized earlier on the show saying they were tricking
Speaker 1: the kids, but it was definitely, uh a way of
Speaker 1: getting pretty cheap labor, right, Oh sure, absolutely, thirty cents
Speaker 1: per hundred. I mean that's I don't know, what is it?
Speaker 1: What is that like good money for kids? Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think definitely the company is saving a
Speaker 1: lot in their supply chain, right because it's not like
Speaker 1: they're only making thirty five cents in cash, thinking how
Speaker 1: we're going to keep this operation afloat. They did, however,
Speaker 1: form a pretty effective community. People were writing into Boys
Speaker 1: Life the boy Scout magazine about how this was a
Speaker 1: great way to have fun, get outdoors and make money.
Speaker 1: Adults approved of it because they said, you know, these
Speaker 1: kids are getting exercise, they're having fun, they're learning the
Speaker 1: value of hard work. And Sigma kept all these all
Speaker 1: these kids that were collecting fireflies for them in the loop.
Speaker 1: They would send out news. You know, you would get
Speaker 1: these collection kids, but then you would also get information
Speaker 1: on what Sigma was doing with what they were catching,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So it wasn't a black box.
Speaker 1: You weren't just sending fireflies off into the void and
Speaker 1: getting a dollar's worth of rides at an amusement park. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But they also like they really built a culture around this.
Speaker 1: They had all kinds of swag like T shirts and
Speaker 1: the special catching nets or whatever, and they had buttons
Speaker 1: UM and of course you got that kind of candy money.
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it UM. And it absolutely thrived.
Speaker 1: Eventually it had thousands of members and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: in the Midwest. It was across twenty five different states UM.
Speaker 1: And actually we don't really have exact data on you know,
Speaker 1: where they were dispersed, UM. But what we do know
Speaker 1: is that the club members brought in over three million
Speaker 1: fireflies each year UM. And this really was quite a
Speaker 1: massive operation that was pretty loosely run. At first, it
Speaker 1: was right yeah for a while, and then they said, okay,
Speaker 1: this sustainable, this is growing into a national phenomenon. Now
Speaker 1: we need to we need to invest a little in
Speaker 1: our communities. So that is why by the middle of
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, club members could pay a small deposit
Speaker 1: and then they would get their official firefly hunting kit.
Speaker 1: The firefly hunting kit was pretty neat. It's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that I would be into as a kid,
Speaker 1: and probably a lot of us listening would be as well.
Speaker 1: You would get a pamphlet telling you what a firefly is,
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do, how you catch them, custom
Speaker 1: shipping canisters that were lined with desecant a net that
Speaker 1: get This had some branding and it was silk screened
Speaker 1: with the official insignia of the Sigma Club. It was
Speaker 1: a bug with a bow tie and white gloves. And
Speaker 1: then they also got buttons with a little glow in
Speaker 1: the dark paint where the fireflies but would be. He
Speaker 1: was made of fireflight guts. They probably had to use
Speaker 1: all that stuff just for the cancer research. They didn't
Speaker 1: want to waste. That's an interesting question. And of course,
Speaker 1: although it's I'm having a great time saying the word,
Speaker 1: but repeatedly on the air. We should point out that
Speaker 1: the fireflies light emitting organs are in most of most cases,
Speaker 1: they're on the lower abdom so the rot where like
Speaker 1: your lower abs. Dirty V would be Can I say
Speaker 1: dirty V on the air? I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: It's not like a happy trail. It's kind of it's
Speaker 1: happy trail adjacent. It's where like, Casey, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I mean, I do, but I've never
Speaker 1: heard the term before. Maybe I actidually made it up
Speaker 1: possible Casey. On the case. They also had some pretty
Speaker 1: clear standards about how they preferred the fireflies to be shipped.
Speaker 1: They said, look, we'll take them dead or alive, but
Speaker 1: we prefer them refrigerated and sent to us within five
Speaker 1: days of capture because the chemicals that were after are
Speaker 1: more active if we get them alive. And these kids
Speaker 1: were I mean cutthroat in the way that they competed
Speaker 1: with one another. Um. Sure, this was kind of just
Speaker 1: like a fun thing to do, like as a hobby
Speaker 1: or whatever, but it for some people it was a
Speaker 1: serious business, right, and Sigma actually had a sliding scale system,
Speaker 1: so you would actually get paid proportionately more um as
Speaker 1: you know, you sent them bigger loads, So you would
Speaker 1: start at fifty cents for a hundred flies. I think
Speaker 1: we said thirty yearlier was somewhere between thirty and fifty cents,
Speaker 1: but once you reached twenty thousand, you were up to
Speaker 1: one cent per bug, right um. And so there were
Speaker 1: these like almost factions that would emerge where entire towns
Speaker 1: where groups of kids would pool of their resources to
Speaker 1: maximize right Uh. The Allison Firefly Club in Iowa actually
Speaker 1: brought in one million fireflies over the course of five
Speaker 1: years and they used that money to build a pool
Speaker 1: for their community, which is great. And there were other
Speaker 1: things that we could we could kind of describe as
Speaker 1: firefly Mafia's still in Iowa and vent in Iowa there
Speaker 1: was a kingpin and a queen pin of of the
Speaker 1: firefly game. One kid, it was, it was not identified,
Speaker 1: it was ten or eleven years old. He said, instead
Speaker 1: of going straight to Sigma as a single operator, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna rent a ton of firefly nets, I'm gonna hire
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids who work for me at a
Speaker 1: lower rate, and I'll take their bugs and I'll give
Speaker 1: them to Sigma and he was making about a penny
Speaker 1: apiece according to experts. But remember I said there were
Speaker 1: two dons. Venton was home to another quite successful young entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: Judy Would, also known as the Lightning Bug Lady. Such
Speaker 1: a cool nickname. So the Lightning Bug Lady. Uh, she
Speaker 1: spent um an entire school year by her teacher's side,
Speaker 1: and she used her free summers and this network of
Speaker 1: kids that she was kind of controlling and turned it
Speaker 1: into this like bug kind of like industry. I guess
Speaker 1: you could say she had over four hundred kids that
Speaker 1: brought her their spoils every night from like as far
Speaker 1: as forty five miles away. I mean, this is like
Speaker 1: a serious operation. She's almost like the marm Mandel Bomb,
Speaker 1: which we did an episode on on stuff that it
Speaker 1: wants you to know recently, the first mob boss of
Speaker 1: New York who acted as like a fence. But this
Speaker 1: is exclusively one product and she it's absolutely fense. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not illegal, but she's like this kind of go
Speaker 1: between um with all of these folks that are going
Speaker 1: out and doing the actual work. Yeah. So when Judy
Speaker 1: Wood wrote to the Chicago Tribune. She said that she
Speaker 1: was bringing in about thirty five thousand fireflies to St.
Speaker 1: Louis every other day, and she did this every summer
Speaker 1: for over twenty five years. Her firefly money put her
Speaker 1: kids through college. Jeez, that is commitment right there. That
Speaker 1: is a real racket. I love it. I gotta respect
Speaker 1: that entrepreneurial spirit. Um, it's true, twenty five years enough
Speaker 1: to put her kids through college. So we have uh,
Speaker 1: folks improving their local communities, building pools, fun stuff. We
Speaker 1: have someone actually putting their kids through college. Um. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. It wasn't so good for everyone in
Speaker 1: this equation. And by that, I'm referring to the fireflies themselves.
Speaker 1: So this is a firefly expert from Toughs University, Sarah
Speaker 1: Lewis calculated the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club probably killed in
Speaker 1: the name borhood of one hundred million fireflies during its time,
Speaker 1: and firefly population data, according to Louis, is pretty sparse.
Speaker 1: And you know, little kids with nets probably isn't their
Speaker 1: biggest predator. I mean, they've got other problems to deal with.
Speaker 1: But uh, Louis says, a hundred million fireflies is nothing
Speaker 1: to sneeze at and it's really, in her estimation, kind
Speaker 1: of the principle of it, right, Yeah, it's sort of
Speaker 1: the tragedy of the commons, or at least tangentially related
Speaker 1: to that concept. If we consider these fireflies and the
Speaker 1: beauty they provide the world to share natural resource, then
Speaker 1: according to Louis, it should be for everyone, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to her that people would go out
Speaker 1: and harvest vast numbers of this, you know, especially for
Speaker 1: personal gain. And as you said, like these insects are
Speaker 1: facing a ton of other issues habitat loss, light, pollution,
Speaker 1: pesticides everywhere. But despite the misgivings of of of some folks,
Speaker 1: some folks who did have a problem with this, the
Speaker 1: industry was booming until the nineteen nineties. And here's a
Speaker 1: bit of a mystery. We don't know why, but the
Speaker 1: Sigma Firefly Scientists Club closed down, you know, they're in
Speaker 1: the nineties for undisclosed reasons. And people people guessed at
Speaker 1: a couple of different things. They said, well, maybe the
Speaker 1: world is more environmentally minded, or the U s is
Speaker 1: maybe child wages are too inflated for this to be profitable.
Speaker 1: Maybe the patent on synthetic lucifer as expired. Write a
Speaker 1: company named am Gin had control of that patent for
Speaker 1: a long time. The company responsible for the firefly harvesting
Speaker 1: craze is now known as Sigma Aldrich and they're valued
Speaker 1: at seventeen billion dollars. That's a lot of dollars. Company
Speaker 1: built on the backs of on the butts. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's good. Then built on the butts of a little
Speaker 1: glowy boys um. And thankfully they came up with a
Speaker 1: synthetic version of this stuff. They didn't have to keep
Speaker 1: doing that anymore, right, right, with a patent on it expired,
Speaker 1: so they didn't have to collect the natural stuff. But
Speaker 1: still that speculation there is a synthetic You're right, there
Speaker 1: is a synthetic version of this. Uh. You can, still, however,
Speaker 1: buy a whole jar of fireflies from Sigma, pulled from
Speaker 1: the huge amount of fireflies they caught over the decades.
Speaker 1: You can write to them today and buy a jara
Speaker 1: jar fireflies. Let's see up, let me correct that I
Speaker 1: was looking for fireflies whole desiccated. That product has been discontinued,
Speaker 1: so until recently you could buy a whole jar of fireflies. However,
Speaker 1: you can buy firefly lantern extract. It's the powder. It's
Speaker 1: just the powdered version of the glowing chemical, and it
Speaker 1: will set you back two hundred and twenty four dollars US,
Speaker 1: which seems kind of expensive. But I am not uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not an expert in that market, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I think that kind of sets
Speaker 1: up the story part of this. It was sort of
Speaker 1: a happy ending for the creatures. Didn't decimate their entire population.
Speaker 1: You can still go out on a on a twilight
Speaker 1: night in the woods and see little glowy boys sparkling
Speaker 1: everywhere like tiny, tiny fairies. But Ben, we haven't answered
Speaker 1: the most important question in all of this. Is there
Speaker 1: a difference between a firefly and a lightning bugs? Of
Speaker 1: the two? You know, we added some other names in
Speaker 1: the mix there, but these two are the ones that
Speaker 1: have always stuck for me. Are they its regional names
Speaker 1: for the same thing? Are there scientific differences? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: was wondering about that too, knowl It's it's to rephrase
Speaker 1: the question. It's sort of like our our lightning bugs
Speaker 1: a distinct species or just this distinctly different thing from
Speaker 1: a firefly? Or is it more like the way people
Speaker 1: in different parts of the country described soda, right. Is
Speaker 1: it a pop? Is it a coke? Is it I
Speaker 1: don't know what the other slang names for soda are.
Speaker 1: But there are over two thousand species of fireflies that
Speaker 1: we know of, and according to Bert vox H, University
Speaker 1: of Cambridge linguistics professor, the answer is probably something more
Speaker 1: along the lines of regional terms. Most people in the
Speaker 1: US use both terms interchangeably firefly and lightning bug. So
Speaker 1: thirty nine point eight percent of us in the United
Speaker 1: States will use both of them. Thirty something percent, thirty
Speaker 1: four say firefly exclusively and twenty nine point one percent
Speaker 1: say lightning bug exclusively. And I'm wondering, Uh, I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if that Southern lightning bug feels like a Southern thing
Speaker 1: to me. Here's one. This is the weirdest one in
Speaker 1: this study. Again, ten thousand people point zero to two
Speaker 1: percent or two people total in the study called these
Speaker 1: bioluminescent bugs peeny wally? Did they know each other? Was
Speaker 1: it the same guy? That's very strange. Nobody called him
Speaker 1: little glory boys No, no, glory boy and bright But
Speaker 1: those are those are things that I think we discovered today.
Speaker 1: That's unfortunately, it could be a great T shirt. I
Speaker 1: think it could. Well, I guess that at no, we
Speaker 1: got soft. It's time, gentleman Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
Speaker 1: The quister you got. You've got a lot of nerve
Speaker 1: come in here, mr. Yeah, I mean you had plenty
Speaker 1: of advanced warning today. That's true. We did hang out
Speaker 1: and talking about this earlier on base camp. We're talking
Speaker 1: about it. You also totally tipped your hand on the
Speaker 1: message board. I did. Yeah, no, well, I mean they
Speaker 1: I didn't tell anybody what I was going to talk about.
Speaker 1: Watch that. I think I thought I out. It was great.
Speaker 1: We got to dual old school shout out to our
Speaker 1: companies continuing deep seated beef with Wikipedia. Yes, yes, the
Speaker 1: ongoing rivalry. No, there's no rivalry there. It's just we
Speaker 1: aren't allowed to We were never allowed to use it
Speaker 1: as a source. But are Yeah, so now back to
Speaker 1: back to my my nemesis. Yeah, that's right against you guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're speaking of rivals there. Well, you are not
Speaker 1: here today to give any of us a gift, ne necessarily,
Speaker 1: or to to wish this happy birthday or pay a
Speaker 1: social call you're not here to borrow a cup of sugar. Europe.
Speaker 1: You're up to your old tricks again. I am up
Speaker 1: to my old tricks. We are going to have another
Speaker 1: attempt to see if you guys can determine whether or
Speaker 1: not the the scenario I present you as real or
Speaker 1: if I made it up seas as as is always
Speaker 1: the case for those of you who are not familiar, Yes,
Speaker 1: this is the most cringe worthy segment at all the podcasting,
Speaker 1: where I come in and I present our beloved hosts
Speaker 1: a scenario. They have to figure out if it is
Speaker 1: a true thing or a fake thing. They get three
Speaker 1: minutes to do it, and they also can ask me
Speaker 1: a question if they follow an arbitrary rule of my choosing.
Speaker 1: And uh so, I'm going to read out the scenario
Speaker 1: for you. I will give you the rule, and then
Speaker 1: we will start the clock. So here's the scenario. Now, First,
Speaker 1: the following is absolutely true. I'm establishing a prologue. This
Speaker 1: is something I never ever do, so be grateful for it.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy four, the Great Plains the United States
Speaker 1: was devastated by a plague of grasshoppers, or more accurately,
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountain locust. There were literally trillions of the bugs,
Speaker 1: and they ate pretty much everything except peas. There were
Speaker 1: stories of them eating wool off of sheep in the
Speaker 1: fields or the clothes off farmers backs. All of that
Speaker 1: is true, but is this part true. Different communities tried
Speaker 1: battling these things in various ways. They put together hopper dozers,
Speaker 1: which were essentially pals that would scoop up locusts by
Speaker 1: the thousands. They would set fires to try and discourage
Speaker 1: the bugs, which the locusts would simply extinguish by landing
Speaker 1: on the burning heaps and smothering the fire. One way
Speaker 1: communities tried to deal with it locusts was to offer
Speaker 1: bounties for dead grasshoppers. For example, in Nicolett County, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: the county government offered one dollar for every bushel of
Speaker 1: locusts brought in. The final total came in at twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand, fifty three dollars, and it didn't even put
Speaker 1: a dent in the problem. On top of that, John S. Hillsbury,
Speaker 1: governor of Minnesota at the time, passed laws stating that
Speaker 1: every able bodied man would have to spend one day
Speaker 1: a week for five weeks destroying grasshopper eggs. Now, if
Speaker 1: you want to ask a question, you must proceed it
Speaker 1: with the phrase, what's the buzz? Tell me what's happening? Okay,
Speaker 1: hang on, I have to write the clock. Oh man,
Speaker 1: one day this clock is going to be worth it. Okay,
Speaker 1: and begin, Hey, Hey, what's the buzz? What's that happening? Why? Shoot?
Speaker 1: Do you want to go ahead? Tell me? Okay? Okay.
Speaker 1: So the part that is established is true is the
Speaker 1: fact that there was a locus plague in the Great Planes,
Speaker 1: plague of locusts in the Great Plains. And what we're
Speaker 1: attempting to determine the veracity of is whether or not
Speaker 1: the methods of trying to uh to attack these locusts
Speaker 1: are true. Exactly, buzz buzz, what's happening? What was this
Speaker 1: area of the country known for sinful? I mean it's
Speaker 1: the Great Planes. It's a flyover states. I never pay
Speaker 1: attention to them. Wow, that's that's a hot take from
Speaker 1: No No, But for serious, I have no clue. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's eight it's a plague of locust that just kind
Speaker 1: of made a figure. They had it coming amblically, be fair.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole nation in eighteen seventy four was
Speaker 1: sort of in a kind of healing pattern. That's true. Hey, hey,
Speaker 1: what's the buzz? What's that happening? Uh? Not big Android
Speaker 1: Webber fans here and there from Jesus Christ Superstar go ahead,
Speaker 1: So yeah, hey, hey, what's buzz? What's that happening? Is
Speaker 1: this is scenario where in most of this could be true,
Speaker 1: but one thing could be untrue. And sink us I'm
Speaker 1: asking because I'm not doing something where out of all
Speaker 1: the stuff I told you, one little thing has been changed.
Speaker 1: I think. I think what's in question here is whether
Speaker 1: or not the bounty existed. And you know, the response
Speaker 1: to the locals how much the bounty was. It's it's
Speaker 1: either it's either all true or it's all I made
Speaker 1: it all okay because I didn't want us to get
Speaker 1: pink on something where it's like ha ha it was
Speaker 1: dollar Yeah that's what that's what think? You know, Ben,
Speaker 1: I'm going true. I'm going big time true on this.
Speaker 1: All right? Well it in block it in three to
Speaker 1: one true curses, Casey, can we get some celebratory music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a hot minute. We were reaching out to
Speaker 1: the internet to see if someone was keeping track, maybe
Speaker 1: because we certainly aren't, but I'm pretty sure we are
Speaker 1: miles behind. You managed to make up a little bit
Speaker 1: of territory. Here. We'll let me give you a little
Speaker 1: bit more insight, at least because this is exact. So, Yes,
Speaker 1: there was a grasshopper plague a locust plague in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy four. Yes, people made hopper dozers, which were essentially
Speaker 1: these plows that had been adjusted to collect locusts in
Speaker 1: various ways. People did issue bounties for bushels of dead grasshoppers.
Speaker 1: A bushel, by the way, in case you're curious, is
Speaker 1: a about equivalent to nine point two gallons. So one
Speaker 1: bushel of dead grasshoppers is about ten gallons of dead grasshoppers.
Speaker 1: And so you get a dollar for that, and I
Speaker 1: also adjusted for inflation, just for the heck of it,
Speaker 1: that's about twenty two dollars fifty cents perfect up top.
Speaker 1: And it also means that that the entire payout from
Speaker 1: that one county in Minnesota was nearly was slightly more
Speaker 1: than half a million dollars total just for bushels of
Speaker 1: dead grasshoppers. Uh, there were multiple places that would issue
Speaker 1: these sort of bounties. Uh, Missouri had a dollar bushel
Speaker 1: bounty that started in March of eighteen seventy five, I believe,
Speaker 1: and then it went down to fifty cents the next month.
Speaker 1: Then it went down to the next month, and it
Speaker 1: went down to ten cents next month. So diminishing returns
Speaker 1: for your dead grasshoppers. I'd like to point out something
Speaker 1: for the listening to audience. Uh, the quister is wearing
Speaker 1: his own T shirt. AM. He's like one of those
Speaker 1: guys in the band which you you know what, I
Speaker 1: really I still really like that T shirt. And to
Speaker 1: be fair, you did say that you were going to
Speaker 1: wear that for anybody on ridiculous his stories. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I committed interestingly. John S. Pillsbury, the governor of Minnesota,
Speaker 1: was also co founder of the Pillsbury Company, named after
Speaker 1: his nephew, Charles Alfred Pillsbury. So the two of them
Speaker 1: were the co founders of the company. Where's the dough
Speaker 1: boy thing come from? I mean it was whenever you
Speaker 1: pushed John Pillsbury's tummy, he went he and then locus
Speaker 1: would fly out of his mouth and swallow you hole.
Speaker 1: You know this guy sounds like a good time. That
Speaker 1: might have been a lie. Also, interesting fact, something that's
Speaker 1: truly the stories of these locusts is something that will
Speaker 1: make your your blood just chill in your veins. They
Speaker 1: talk about the sun going dark because of clouds of
Speaker 1: these things, and that they literally were eating the clothes
Speaker 1: of people's backs as they were trying to get inside.
Speaker 1: They ruined the economy to two hundred million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of damage in the Great Plain States. There was actually
Speaker 1: a Missourian scientist who recommended eating them, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people said you gross, and they didn't. But it
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. You never could have eaten
Speaker 1: as many as we're out there. Interesting fact, though, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that there were trillions of these things devastating
Speaker 1: the middle of the United States, today they're extinct and
Speaker 1: there's not really a good scientific explanation for exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of hypotheses, but we don't actually
Speaker 1: know what led to them going to extinct. I mean,
Speaker 1: did they serve a purpose other than just decimating crops?
Speaker 1: And do humans serve a purpose apart from flying over
Speaker 1: the Great Plain States? We make all sorts of snacks.
Speaker 1: Also true, we we all also are the only creatures
Speaker 1: that seemed to hold abstract, at times contradictory belief systems. No,
Speaker 1: have you ever talked about to a grasshopper about like
Speaker 1: any like really deep philosophical question, because they will will
Speaker 1: fle waffle all over. It always goes back to grass though.
Speaker 1: With them, that's the thing. It's probably that they could
Speaker 1: constantly jump to conclusions. Also, I feel like hopper dozer
Speaker 1: is a cool, fake, anachronistic insult. I I when I
Speaker 1: came across that line, as did I write this hopper
Speaker 1: dosers this me that wrote this thing? No, it was,
Speaker 1: But it is interesting that this was a problem that
Speaker 1: was devastating the United States. Uh, there were real efforts
Speaker 1: to send disaster relief to those states from other parts
Speaker 1: of the US because there were entire economies that were
Speaker 1: completely devastated. It sounds like literal hell on Earth swarmed
Speaker 1: and like having your clothes eaten off of your body.
Speaker 1: They're eating the wool off of sheep in the fields.
Speaker 1: And they said that you could actually hear them choo wing,
Speaker 1: and that it could reduce acres of corn in just
Speaker 1: three hours, which to nothing, just chew it all the
Speaker 1: way down to the ground. The still, the most insane
Speaker 1: part to me is this mysterious extinction. You know what
Speaker 1: makes you think this country. I I don't want to
Speaker 1: sound like a performative environmentalist or something, but that's the
Speaker 1: most chilling part, the fact that this, this entire life
Speaker 1: form disappeared. Like the passenger pigeons that also used to
Speaker 1: blot out the sky right, yes, yes, yes, they would
Speaker 1: also pick the clothes off of people's backs when they
Speaker 1: were trying to run into the farmhouses. That can hear
Speaker 1: the picks in the distance, that's the other thing, because
Speaker 1: you could probably hear the swarm coming. Oh yes, no,
Speaker 1: they said that it sounded like a really terrible storm
Speaker 1: because they were just they're just hitting against the walls
Speaker 1: and rooftops. And yes, apparently the the Rocky Mountains area
Speaker 1: where the grasshoppers when they're by the way, when they're individuals,
Speaker 1: they're crasshoppers. It's only when they're in mass that you
Speaker 1: call them locusts, which is also kind of interesting. So
Speaker 1: they but they apparently had a just a very good
Speaker 1: year for their for all the eggs survived, more eggs
Speaker 1: survived than normal, but there was a food shortage in
Speaker 1: their native habitats. So then they migrated down from the
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain area across the Great Plains, and it was
Speaker 1: from the Dakota's down through Texas that was just absolutely
Speaker 1: affected by this. Kansas was really hit hard. Missouri was
Speaker 1: hit hard. Today I learned something I had no idea
Speaker 1: that grasshopper by itself is a grasshopper, a grasshopper, and
Speaker 1: mass its locust. People don't have anything that cool yet.
Speaker 1: You know where you got like a one one dufus.
Speaker 1: It's just a dufus and a whole bunch of dufaces
Speaker 1: is Congress. Okay, here we go, there we go. We
Speaker 1: got the button, we got, we got there. Jonathan Strictly
Speaker 1: a k the Quister, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: onto the show. It's been too long. You know. We
Speaker 1: had a in the audience who were asking us, uh
Speaker 1: they were they were asking us where the heck you
Speaker 1: were at? And then we read, uh, you actually showed
Speaker 1: up in some of the reviews that we foolishly read
Speaker 1: on our listener mail episode. Sorry about that guy, true, No,
Speaker 1: we uh we took How bad was it? Like? Boy?
Speaker 1: When the Quister comes on, I just have to hidn't
Speaker 1: even name you by name. They just referred to some
Speaker 1: annoying component of the show, and that's fair. We knew
Speaker 1: which one was. I knew it when I pitched it. Well,
Speaker 1: we were pretty sure that we were the annoying components
Speaker 1: of the show. No, no, no, it was it was.
Speaker 1: It was very specifically. Other than us, we were also
Speaker 1: identified as annoying components, but it was the third comp
Speaker 1: am somewhat consoled by the fact that at least one
Speaker 1: person said they think that the Quister should start showing
Speaker 1: up on other shows too. But I have I like that,
Speaker 1: I like the in universe tie in. Let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about this. Let's talk about this offline. Let's see we
Speaker 1: can figure out a way to have you appear and
Speaker 1: like crash some one else's podcast. We have to figure
Speaker 1: out someone would be a good sport about it. Let
Speaker 1: us know what podcast do you think the Quisters should
Speaker 1: crash next. You can tell us at Facebook. You can
Speaker 1: let us know on Instagram, you can let us know
Speaker 1: on Twitter. We highly recommend our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians,
Speaker 1: where you can meet our favorite part of the show,
Speaker 1: your fellow listeners. Also let us know if you have
Speaker 1: ever been in the firefly catching business. Just interested I
Speaker 1: would say, let us know if you live through that
Speaker 1: uh locust swarm in the locust plague in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: But if you have lived that long, I think you
Speaker 1: probably won't confess it, just honestly. So thanks as always
Speaker 1: to the part of the show we all love to
Speaker 1: hate but mostly just love to love, Jonathan Strickland, the
Speaker 1: the Notorious Quister. I gotta give you props for finding
Speaker 1: such a similar story to the story that we talked
Speaker 1: about today. That was very well done. I really wanted
Speaker 1: to do that, you know. The original story I picked
Speaker 1: was one that you guys have already covered in a
Speaker 1: previous episode. It was using fleas as weapons in World
Speaker 1: War Two. But then you guys did a full episode
Speaker 1: we did. We also uh did another episode about a
Speaker 1: similar situation where uh school kids were encouraged to shoot
Speaker 1: squirrels and send their severed tales to the governor's office,
Speaker 1: almost like cereal box tops. Golly that I I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to listen to that show. Uh. So thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: who composed our theme research associates Gave Luzier and Ryan
Speaker 1: Barrish yes, thanks of course as well to Eve's Jeff
Speaker 1: Coat and Christopher Hasciotis, friends of the show and friends
Speaker 1: of ours. Thank you for tuning in, and thanks to
Speaker 1: uh all the bright butts, all the glowy boys out there,
Speaker 1: and no, thank you to you for for yet another wonderful, whimsical,
Speaker 1: ridiculous journey through history, and you as well, sir. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next time, folks. Yeah. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.