Eels Alive!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know – "Eels Alive!"

Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: May 19, 2026

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Overview

In this fascinating deep dive, Josh and Chuck explore the enigmatic, often misunderstood world of eels. Sparked by a book recommendation via David Byrne, the episode journeys from eel taxonomy and anatomy, to their bizarre metamorphoses, pivotal roles in global cuisine and economies, and finally, the mystery (now mostly solved) of their reproduction. The tone is casual, humorous, and thoroughly inquisitive as the hosts challenge eel myths, discuss conservation, and offer a spirited call to protect these slippery creatures.

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Episode Breakdown

1. Genesis of the Episode & Pop Culture Chatter

• [01:44-05:00]
  • Sparked by David Byrne mentioning a book on eels, Josh and Chuck decide to tackle the eel episode.
  • Opening banter includes book recommendations and filmmaker talk, referencing Cameron Crowe and Abel Ferrara.

“I want to give a hat tip to David Byrne via Yumi, who inspired this episode.” – Josh [02:10]

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2. What Makes an Eel an Eel?

• [05:00–08:50]
  • True eels are members of the order Anguilliformes: 20 families, 111 genera, over 800 species.
  • Eels have long, worm/snakes-like bodies, lack pelvic fins; many lack pectoral fins.
  • Not all "eels" are true eels — for instance, electric eels are not eels but knife fish.

“If you want to claim to be an eel, you gotta have certain qualifications. You can’t just be like a sea snake or an electric eel.” – Chuck [05:00]

• Eels are remarkable: they can swim backward by reversing the wave motion of their bodies ([06:20]).
• Their skin is coated in a protective slime that helps with swimming and regulates body water content.

“Eels can swim backward just by changing the direction of the wave.” – Josh [06:20]

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3. Lifecycle & Migration – Metamorphosis and Mystery

• [07:37–09:57]
  • Eels undergo dramatic metamorphosis similar to butterflies — they look nothing like adult eels at birth.
  • Many species migrate vast distances, navigating with Earth's magnetic fields using magnetite in their heads.

“They migrate… and they think they use the earth’s magnetic fields… that’s essentially the only explanation we have on hand.” – Chuck [08:14]

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4. Types of Eels – Oceanic Marvels

• [09:52–14:38]
  • Moray eels: The most famous ocean eels, constituting about 25% of eel species, love hiding in coral holes.
  • Ribbon eels: Born as blue/yellow males, can transition to all-yellow females, reproducing as both.
  • Defensive Adaptations: Morays “smile” (show teeth) to help funnel water through their gills due to lacking opercula, not as a threat. Their bite is extremely painful, prone to infection, and includes a slime with hemagglutinin and possible crinotoxins.

“They have two sets of jaws…the pharyngeal jaw faces backwards to kind of lock you in and keep you from escaping.” – Chuck [12:11]

• Conger eels: Deep-water, heavier than morays—the record conger weighed 242 pounds ([15:16]).

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5. Fun with Measurements

• [15:39–17:18]
  • Introduction to the playful website “Josh Clark Calculates,” which lets users compare measurements in whimsical units.

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6. More Bizarre Eels – Garden & Gulper

• [20:02–21:45]
  • Garden eels: Social, look like grass waving on the sea floor, retreat when startled.
  • Gulper (Pelican) eels: Deep-sea dwellers, jaw bigger than their skull, jaw unhinges like a “bucket” for catching prey. Visually astonishing.

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7. Eels in Human History – Food, Money, and Myth

• [22:05–29:48]
  • Dietary Staple: American, European, and Japanese freshwater eels have been major human food sources; high in protein, vitamins, and good fats.
  • Global Cuisine: Unagi (Japanese eel) is beloved, always cooked due to toxic eel blood.
  • Colonial & Indigenous America: Eels were critical food for Native peoples, making up a quarter of fish in NE U.S. streams.
  • Medieval Europe: Eels were so valuable they were used as currency—eels paid as rent! (e.g., 500,000 dried eels paid yearly in medieval England).

“Had no idea that…about half a million dried eels were used to pay rent in England every single year.” – Chuck [27:23]

• Fasting Food: Eels were allowed during Christian fasting periods—possibly viewed as “asexual” due to mystery of reproduction.
• Factoid: Eel fillets are said to taste more like venison, not fishy.

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8. The Great Eel Reproduction Mystery

• [33:13–42:11]
  • For centuries, no one had seen eel eggs or mating. Theories abounded, some fanciful (spontaneous generation).
  • In 1777, Carlo Mondini identifies eel ovaries; Freud, early in his career, finds testes after dissecting 400 eels! ([34:55])
  • The lifecycle: adult eels (silver eels) leave fresh water, spawn at sea; larvae (leptocephalus) return as transparent “glass eels,” become elvers, then adult.
  • French scientist Yves Delage observes metamorphosis in captivity; Italian Giovanni Battista confirms in the wild.
  • The long-sought breeding ground: Danish researcher Ernst Johann Schmidt, backed by the Carlsberg Foundation, traces larvae to the Sargasso Sea. Confirmed with tagged eels in 2018 by Rosalind Wright. Similar journeys happen in the Pacific and Indian oceans for Japanese and African eels.

“They're like, well, it's time for me to go reproduce…They swim all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Sargasso Sea. That's where they mate. And then their little tiny larva…make their way all the way back to Europe…” – Josh [41:37]

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9. Conservation Crisis & The Morality of Eating Eels

• [42:25–44:55]
  • Most major eel species are now endangered or critically endangered, their populations down over 90% since the 1970s.
  • Main causes: hydropower, damming, overfishing, wetland loss, pollution, and, crucially, removal of wild glass eels for aquaculture.
  • Most farmed eels start as wild-caught glass eels, further compounding the population declines. This revelation prompts Josh and Chuck to both swear off eating eel ([46:39]).

"American and European eel populations have dropped by more than 90% since the 1970s." – Chuck [43:03]

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10. Closing Banter & Listener Mail

• [46:51–49:08]
  • Amusing facts about measuring things in "sticks" and "binds" of eels.
  • Listener mail: DIY deodorant recipe using baking soda, coconut oil and cornstarch.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "Great book, though. [Cameron Crowe's] memoir...it's almost too incredible to believe that that happened to him in his life." – Chuck [03:13]
• “Eels can swim backward just by changing the direction of the wave.” – Josh [06:20]
• "If you've ever been snorkeling or scuba diving, you probably haven't seen one during the day. But if you've ever gone and put your face in a hidey hole in that coral, maybe you could see one [moray eel]..." – Chuck [10:23]
• "This is the fact of this episode for me, had no idea that in medieval times...about half a million dried eels were used to pay rent in England every single year." – Chuck [27:23]
• "They knew how everything else came about basically. Eels, they're like, I guess they just spontaneously generate." – Josh [34:10]
• "I want to say catocephalic. That might be it. But essentially, they're born in the ocean, but they live their lives in fresh water." – Josh [42:25]
• "American and European eel populations have dropped by more than 90% since the 1970s. Same with Japanese eel populations." – Chuck [43:03]
• "I'm going to stop eating American or European eels, for sure." – Josh [46:39]

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Highlighted Timestamps

• [06:20] – Eels’ ability to swim backwards.
• [12:11] – Moray’s double jaws and bite.
• [27:23] – Eels used as currency in medieval England.
• [34:55] – Freud’s search for eel testes.
• [39:34] – Schmidt theorizes eels breed in the Sargasso Sea.
• [42:25] – The conservation status of eel species.

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Takeaways & Final Thoughts

• Eels are more mysterious, fascinating, and ecologically important than commonly appreciated.
• Their biology (metamorphosis, long migrations, double jaws), history as food, and economic importance in Eurasia and the Americas is extraordinary.
• The “great eel mystery”—their elusive reproduction—took centuries and hundreds of dissected specimens to unravel.
• Eel populations are in crisis; farming still relies on wild-caught larvae, raising urgent conservation concerns.
• Josh and Chuck, now resolved to stop eating eel, encourage listeners to do likewise and to dig deeper into eel lore at their local libraries, aquariums, or via David Byrne’s book recs.

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Stuff You Should Know: Eels are the misunderstood, time-traveling, shape-shifting rockstars of the animal kingdom. Just don’t eat them.

Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Narrator/Host]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you should know about eels.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know another podcast that has ruined something I like to eat, but now I can't.

[Josh Clark]

What did it ruin? Or why? How? What? What part? How about this? When we get to the part where you're like, this ruined eel for me, shout, scream at the top of your lungs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay?

[Josh Clark]

Okay. I want to give a hat tip to David Byrne via Yumi, who inspired this episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

The David Byrne.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. D. David Byrne. Yumi was watching David Byrne videos. He's on tour. I think she's going to see him.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's a great show.

[Josh Clark]

Have you seen it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, I've seen the last couple of tours. It's great.

[Josh Clark]

Awesome. So he apparently was talking about a book he was reading about eels and how fascinating it was. So that kicked off the idea for an episode on eels.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I went to read a new book. I just finished my book, Cameron Crowe's Memoir, which is fantastic, I'm sure. And by the way, I commented on his Instagram about what a great book it was, and he started following me.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I gotta think that it was either an accident or maybe he listens to stuff you should know. I don't see why he would randomly just be like, I'll follow anyone who says they like my book.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I don't know. Cameron Crowe, if you're listening, that's pretty exciting for us.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. What up?

[Chuck Bryant]

Great book, though. His memoir, it's almost too incredible to believe that that happened to him in his life.

[Josh Clark]

Is it called Recounting Crow?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, boy. No, it's called the Uncool. But, man, he really missed an opportunity there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think more he dodged a bullet.

[Chuck Bryant]

Probably so. But I went to read a new book, Talking Heads. I had two books in my hand, the Talking Heads book and Abel Ferrara's memoir, the Filmmaker. And I went with the Abel Farrar just because Bonnie Prince Billy recommended it and it's shorter, but Talking Heads is up next. That's it.

[Josh Clark]

I just watched Bad Lieutenant all the way through for the first time. I'm like, this is a good movie, buddy.

[Chuck Bryant]

What a film.

[Josh Clark]

I've got King of New York next.

[Chuck Bryant]

So are you on a kick now for him?

[Josh Clark]

A little bit, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Where'd that come from? Bonnie Prince Billy?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. No, I don't remember. I think I just ran across Bad Lieutenant. And I've known about it since I was a teenager, and I just never really watched it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, have you ever seen King of New York?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, dude, it's so good.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, good. I can't wait.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, he's one of my favorite filmmakers.

[Josh Clark]

Great. Yeah. Apparently there's lots of rumors that Harvey Keitel actually was on all the drugs he was supposed to be on on Bad Lieutenant.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'll let you know when I get to that chapter.

[Josh Clark]

And I saw someone say, like, no, he actually wasn't. He's just that good of an actor. But that Abel Ferrara and the rest of the crew probably were on all those same drugs while they were shooting it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know he was pretty into drugs, so I haven't. I'm Only a couple of chapters in so far, but it's really good.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, when you get to the chapter called Drugs Colon, I love them, let me know.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. All that to say is that we're talking about eels and we'll get right into it. If you're an eel. If you want to claim to be an eel, you gotta have certain qualifications. You can't just be like a sea snake or an electric eel, which isn't an eel, by the way. You have to be a member of the order anguilliformes or Anguilliformis. 20 families of eels, 111 genera, more than 800 species, ranging from just about 4 inches to those big old moray eels, sometimes up to 12ft.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. 12 foot long eel. That's just amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

The one thing that they all have in common is that they have long bodies that are typically worm like. They don't have pelvic fins. Right. So, yeah, the ones that you would have developed had you descended from water hippos.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Whales, A lot of them don't have pectoral fins. Some of them do have the dorsal fin on the back, but essentially they're just like worms or snakes, like slithering through the water. And that actually is exactly what they're doing. They're slithering in a wave, like, motion. That's how they make their way. Because again, they don't really have fins. This, to me, is one of the facts of the podcast. Do you know what I'm talking about?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Take it, though.

[Josh Clark]

So eels can swim backward just by changing the direction of the wave. It's a reverse. And yes, they make a beeping sound when they.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man, that's amazing. I mean, they got to let everyone know. It's like, I can't see where I'm going. Everyone. Eel coming through.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Also, I just want to take a second for a psa. If you drive a truck that makes a beeping sound when it backs up, never ever just sit there idling with your.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh.

[Josh Clark]

In reverse gear. In reverse.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, God.

[Josh Clark]

Do people do that? You're not allowed to do that. Yes. You mean I used to live next to. It was like a nursing home, I guess, and they, like. We lived on the side of their, like, delivery area. And dudes would just do that. Just sit there with their truck in reverse, not moving.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

At like 6 in the morning.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's not allowed.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. I agree. Eels have that smooth, slippery skin and it is coated in a slime. It's a protective Slime. It helps them with their swimming, it makes them very streamlined. And it also helps regulate how much water is in their bodies, which is pretty unusual. And they're predatory, like they're eating other fish basically while they're down there.

[Josh Clark]

Something else that's very neat about eels is that they don't like they're not born little baby eels and then they grow up into big 12 foot long, 250 pound eels. They actually go through stages of metamorphosis like a butterfly does. Yeah, like they don't look anything like an eel when they're born. And as they grow, they actually change shape and color. In addition to size. They also very frequently will move from like the ocean to freshwater creeks far inland. Like there's a lot of great stuff that eels do that we just had overlooked for a very long time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean there's some fun, really fun stuff coming. They're basically solitary. I think there's a couple that we'll talk about later that hang out in the hundreds or thousands. But generally if you're an eel of size, you're gonna be swimming around by yourself, backing up by yourself, beeping by yourself. They migrate. And we'll talk more about how they spawn later because it was a bit of a mystery for a long, long time and still kind of is in some ways. But they do migrate to a spawning area and they think they use the earth's magnetic fields. They use magnetite in their bodies to navigate.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they're not the only animals that do. So we don't know for a fact. We just know that there is magnetite in their heads and that is probably what's going on because it's so spectacular, the migrations that they undergo. That's essentially the only explanation we have on hand.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. If they are in tropical areas, warmer waters where they get migrate to spawn is probably nearish. But if they're in the colder areas, it seems like they migrate to the warmer areas to spawn. So they may have to go a long way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's like how people in the Caribbean, they don't go on vacation because they live on vacation. That's right. And like you said, electric eels aren't eels. And there's really not a whole lot else to say about electric eels. Really?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, they're knife fish. They're closer to a catfish than an eel. So forget those guys.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, pretty much. We really look too. We're like electric eels. We gotta find out. Even though they're not eels, they've Gotta be kind of interesting. Not really. So sorry, everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but what is interesting is the moray eel. This is sort of the most famous of the ocean dwelling eels, the saltwater eels, member of the family Muranidae. Fifteen genera there, 200 species makes up about 25% of all the eels. And they live like. You know, if you've ever been snorkeling or scuba diving, you probably haven't seen one during the day. But if you've ever gone and put your face in a hidey hole in that coral, maybe you could see one because that's where they like to hide.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Be careful though, because they probably will bite you if you stick your face in their hidey hole.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I did that a little bit in Belize. I asked the snorkel fishing guys with this. They were spear fishing and stuff and I was like, like with spear guns? I was like, can you teach me? They're like, come on, just follow along. And then, you know, he told me, dive down there and put your face in that hole. Tell me what you see.

[Josh Clark]

Did you really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, it was cool. I was like, I was trying to do it, like they did it, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I didn't get anything. They did, but I didn't.

[Josh Clark]

Did you see Anil, though?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, but it was a little scary to put your face down there, you know?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, doing that above ground can be pretty unnerving under the sea. That's just scary.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I felt like Timothy Dalton and Flash Gordon when he reached his hand into that thing.

[Josh Clark]

Or I guess Indiana Jones. Didn't he do that in one of them where he had to stick his arm into spiders everywhere?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. There were insects. He had to stick his hand, I think, reaching for a lever or something.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So great. One of my favorites are, it's a type of mori, it's called a ribbon eel. Did you look pictures up of these guys?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, they're gorgeous.

[Josh Clark]

Gorgeous. So they're, they are very appropriately named. They're very flat and wide. They do look like ribbons, especially when they're undulating through the water. But one of the cool things is, is that they're born as males, blue and yellow males, and. And then all of a sudden they go, boop. I'm an all yellow female now, check me out. And they can reproduce either way, depending on what phase of life they're in.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they're just incredible. Very bright, almost fluorescent. Like kind of one of those, you know, undersea colors that just don't feel like they should exist in Nature, but it definitely exists in the ocean.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Beautiful.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so there. If you know amore, you know, they have a great smile. They're known for those really scary looking teeth. They have two sets of jaws. The second set, the pharyngeal jaw, faces backwards to kind of lock you in and keep you from escaping if they have you in their grasp. But they're not after you. You don't need to be afraid of the mori eel. Like, if they get you in the water, it's probably because you're in there at night and it's obviously an accident. They're not like after people.

[Josh Clark]

Right. They only get you when you stick your face in their hidey hole.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Josh Clark]

One of the reasons why people are like, man, those things look really aggressive is because they show their teeth a lot. And that's not because they're trying to scare you or because they're really proud of their teeth. It's because they lack opercula, which are those plate like covers that go over fish gills, you know, that they kind of go back and forth on.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they flap.

[Josh Clark]

Remember like that Monty Python sketch and with the meaning of life where they're goldfish and they're moving their hands. They were simulating opercula. And one of the things opercula does is it regulates and kind of moves water over the gills. Well, the mores don't have that, so they have to get a lot of water through their mouth and then that's how they funnel the water through the gills. And of course, the gills is where the oxygen is absorbed out of the water into the circulation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. So that's when you're going to see the teeth. Like I said, you're. You're not gonna get bitten, most likely, but if you do, it's not gonna be fun for you. No, those teeth are very sharp. It's a very painful bite, apparently, because it punctures very deep. So it could always get like tendons and nerves and stuff. And while they are not venomous, they do that slime. They have slime in their mouths as well. And it's a substance called hemagglutinin and it causes red blood cells to clump up. But they also, they think they generate something called a crinotoxin, so that destroys red blood cells. So all of that stuff is a why it's painful. And it can be like super prone to infection. Those teeth can break off in your wound. It's really not good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I saw. Crinotoxins also are the reason catfish stings hurt.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I feel like we talked about that in our noodling episode.

[Josh Clark]

That makes sense. Yeah. That's like sticking your face in a hidey hole but using your arm instead of your face.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So the moray is a type of ocean eel and you can kind of divide eels into ocean and freshwater, as we'll see. Although ocean eels are far and away the largest in number and type. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

One of the other big, I guess ocean eels is called the conger, from family Congre de. And they are like deep water dwellers, like 3,000ft below the surface. Some of them hang out in some rocky areas like morays, maybe around coral reefs. But the thing that's remarkable about the European conger is that that's the heaviest one, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They're not as long and slender as the moray. They're still long and snake like, but they're rounder. Like the biggest one recorded was 242 pounds.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is a game fish. So if you got a 242 pounder, that's a pretty good catch that day.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's like how much a couch weighs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I'm so glad I said that because I've been forgetting just to mention this. So our dear awesome friend, Brandon Reed, right. Um, he created, he's our webmaster, everybody. He, he runs and created stuff. You should know Dot com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and pal.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, and great, great pal. He created a website called Josh Clark Calculates. And you can go to joshclarkcalculates.com I

[Chuck Bryant]

didn't know about this.

[Josh Clark]

And get this. So you can basically describe anything in a measurement of whatever you want. So somebody is eight Big Macs tall. So you can select Big Macs, Olympic swimming pools, all the stuff that we've ever used to essentially describe the size or shape or volume of something you can now do on joshclarkcalculates.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

why am I just now learning about this?

[Josh Clark]

Because I kept forgetting to mention it. And he showed it to me before. I guess he showed it to me in Chicago when he came to the show.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'm looking at it now. Josh Clark calculates the weirdest way to measure absolutely anything.

[Josh Clark]

Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

The example on the homepage is the space shuttle Endeavor has the speed of how many washing machines? And you press the button and it says beep boop. The space shuttle Endeavor has the speed of 22,778 washing machines.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And he was telling me like those are legitimate measurements, like comparisons.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, this is My new favorite homepage.

[Josh Clark]

Isn't that awesome? Yeah, that's very cool, man. Love, Brandon.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll have to get a band name generator or something going.

[Josh Clark]

Ooh, that's a good idea too.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. That was a lot of fun. I feel like we should take a break. Everyone can go visit that website and calculate some stuff. And we'll be back with more about eels.

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Okay, Chuck, we're back. And now we're going to Talk about my favorite kind of eel. Is this your favorite kind of eel?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. These cute little guys look like plants.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so I've seen these before. I had no idea they were eels, but they're like. Yeah, little worm like stems sticking up out of the sandy bottom, waving kind of back and forth with the current. And there's so many of them. It does. It looks like just kind of a field of plants. But if you zoom in, they are these cute little eels with cute little faces just eating plankton that goes past. And they spend most of their lives cemented in the sandy bottom. Even though they're able to get out and move free, that's just kind of where they live. It's also their hidey hole, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They're called garden eels and I think when they get startled, their whole body goes back in their little burrow. But yeah, these are the ones that can hang out together. So it'll look like a little field of seagrass. There'd be thousands of these little guys just waving around.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they're so cute, too. Just look up gardine eel and look at their little, very serious faces.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. If you are an eel that's living deep in the ocean, you're not going to be one of the colorful ones. You're probably going to be black or dull gray. And the gulper eel is another one that you should look up when it's safe to do so. It's also called the pelican eel. They're all over the world, basically in tropical and temperate climates. And they are very deep dwellers, like 5 to 10,000ft below the surface. And they look crazy. They're a few feet long and their jaw is really the star of the show. It's a lot bigger than their skull and it can unhinge and act as a scoop. It looks sort of like. Well, I mean, they call it pelican for a reason. It looks pelicanesque, but it's shaped like a shovel. Like if a shovel and a bucket got together and mated, this is what it would look like.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And it doesn't always look like that. Right. So when it changes shape, it looks extremely alien. It's really neat. The video I saw was gulper eel balloons its massive jaw on nautilus live. And it's just amazing to watch that thing do its thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I agree that very, very cool. This next section to me is kind of one of the most astounding things that I didn't know about it is the fact that eels have a real big significance in human history and especially in medieval Europe. But we're talking mainly about the American eel, the European eel, and the Japanese eel. These are freshwater eels. They go to spawn in the oceans, but they live in freshwater. And they were a huge, huge source of food for a very long time in a lot of parts of the world.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And still are. Japan loves unagi.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah. One of the reasons why they played such a role as a food source around the world is that, number one, they were easy to come by. Like, literally, they're swimming around in streams and rivers all over the northern hemisphere. And in addition to that, they're really, really nutritious, it turns out, high in protein. Lots of vitamin B12, vitamin A, vitamin D. That's. That's hard to come by if you're not out in the sun.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. B12, for God's sake. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And only 375 calories for an eel filet, which is actually pretty calorie dense for a fish, but it's very good for you too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. A lot of good fat and protein in there as well. And that unagi that I used to love to eat, I would cook it up myself. It was delicious.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really? You cooked it yourself?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I think I talked about this before. There's. Near the Dekalb Farmers market near where I live, there's the.

[Josh Clark]

I think it's called Eelstein, the first

[Chuck Bryant]

oriental market, and they sell eel as well as lots of, like, kitchenwares and kind of cool stuff from Japan. But, yeah, you can go get eel there out of the fridge and bake it in your oven and coat it with some. I use teriyaki, but I think traditionally is the kaboyaki sauce is used.

[Josh Clark]

Is that right?

[Chuck Bryant]

To grill those things up. And it's. I mean, kaboyaki is basically the same. I think it just doesn't have, like. I think it's like a stripped down teriyaki. It doesn't have ginger and garlic in it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think it's also a little thicker, too, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. I think it's about the same, but it's just. It's kind of just the sweet stuff.

[Josh Clark]

It is very good. I agree with you. Nothing in here really put me off of eel. Especially unagi.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, that's good for you.

[Josh Clark]

One of the things. You haven't screamed yet. We haven't reached that part yet, huh? No.

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. So one of the reasons unagi is, I guess, noteworthy in. In Japanese culture, one, as far as sushi goes, it's one of the rare parts of sushi that's ever cooked, like, across the board.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then number two, it's called one of the big four foods of the Edo period, which I think ran from the 17th century to the 19th century. Those four were soba, sushi, and Dr. Pepper.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know this answer, so you didn't get me this time.

[Josh Clark]

What is the other one?

[Chuck Bryant]

The other one is tempura, and you mentioned it's the only one that's, like, routinely cooked because you have to. Because eel blood is toxic to humans, so you have to grill that stuff up just right.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is one of the things that astounded me is I didn't know that it was such a big deal in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada before and after colonization. So indigenous peoples loved eel. I think eels made up about a quarter, more than a quarter of the fish found in streams along the coast of the of northeastern northern America.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And, you know, you could smoke it and carry it with you on the trail. You could salt it and cure it, and obviously you could, you know, trap them and grill them up.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think one of the things that I've read somewhere is that, like an eel fillet is it does not taste fishy. I saw it compared to a taste of venison even. My experience with eel has never been like that. It's always been a little bit on sushi. Did you ever eat a big hunk of eel at once?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it's always just been like, you would eat on sushi, but they come in a long eel, like, package.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you just bake it in the oven. I think they're already pre cooked.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, gotcha. Okay. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they may be shrunk or something, but you're basically just heating it up and glazing it.

[Josh Clark]

I gotcha. Smoked eel sounds kind of good. I would try smoked eel.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it sounds really good.

[Josh Clark]

So it wasn't just the indigenous peoples of North America who were eating eel. The people in Europe at the same time were crazy for eel and have been for centuries and centuries. Apparently they found old willow traps, which are basically like woven baskets that are easy to get into and hard to get out of, that eel would swim into, and they'd be like, oh, no, not again. And they would become smoked or salted or dried. And very interestingly, Chuck, they would often be used as currency. That's how valued eel were. But also how common they were too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This is the fact of this episode for me, had no idea that in medieval times, not at medieval times. But during medieval times, about half a million dried eels were used to pay rent in England every single year.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. For all sorts of debts. And I mean, it continued on for a very long time. And To Kill a Mockingbird, Walter Cunningham from Old Sarum pays Atticus Finch and a thousand live eels at one point.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that for real? Oh, man, I've never wanted to cuss so bad on the show.

[Josh Clark]

No. And the reason why that's a giveaway, Chuck, is that I said live eels. Nobody wanted the live eels. They wanted them prepared, smoked, dried, and then depending on how many were put together. Did you see, like, there were different names for like 10 eels together? Yeah, 25 eels together.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like wrap them up. And one was a stick. Was one.

[Josh Clark]

Huh? That's like 25.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And then. No, that's 10. Yeah. A bind is 25. And those are basically. They were treated like denominations. Like, I'll give you a bind of eels for that. Can of Dr. Pepper.

[Chuck Bryant]

Two vines and a stick.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, pretty.

[Chuck Bryant]

25.

[Josh Clark]

Or it'd be 60.

[Chuck Bryant]

We should type it into Josh Clark calculates.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. It'd be like. Does not compute.

[Chuck Bryant]

There needs to be one in there for Josh Clark calculates. So it's like, how many eels would it take to live in the East Village for a month?

[Josh Clark]

That's a good one, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

In whatever year.

[Josh Clark]

10 trillion eels.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or how many sticks is that?

[Josh Clark]

That's a trillion sticks. Okay, thank you. That was an easy one.

[Chuck Bryant]

They were very popular food wise, though, during church holidays and during fasting seasons because. And this is like up to like a few months out of the year or more than that. 120 days. Yeah. That's like six months, a quarter of the year. Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Wait, a third.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, God, here we go.

[Josh Clark]

A third. A third.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'm going to type it into your website again. You could not eat meat, but you could eat fish during those fasting seasons. So because there were so many eels, they were, you know, it was a pretty attractive meal.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. A nice meal of eels.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

There was one other reason too, that we'll see why they were highly thought of for fasting during Christian or Catholic, I guess, feast days was that they are have long been considered asexual. Cause as we'll see, people have no idea how they reproduced. And I thought that was pretty interesting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep, super interesting.

[Josh Clark]

Like regular fish that have sex would just make you think of nothing but sex while you're eating them, I guess. But an eel. You're all good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, should we take a break or should we talk about the reproduction now?

[Josh Clark]

I think we take a break, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Talking about turf prevention. Talking about Jerem.

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right, everybody Back to the mystery of eel reproduction. In the old days, in the classical Mediterranean era, they had all kinds of crazy ideas about how eels reproduce because they seemed to just appear. No one ever saw them doing it. No one ever saw eel eggs. People had cut eels open and found no reproductive organs. They were. Seems to be unusually preoccupied with this, in my opinion. They had a lot of weird opinions and theories as well.

[Josh Clark]

Right, sure, sure. But imagine if, like, you know, how much cow, or, say, chicken, okay, humans eat a lot of chicken. Imagine if while you're eating chicken, you're like, where the hell do chickens come from? No one has any idea. I like this chicken. It's delicious. But I have no idea how chickens are born.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, you probably should have picked something that doesn't lay an egg in front of you, but, yeah, sure, I get what you mean.

[Josh Clark]

But I think that's another reason why the mystery is so deep, is they're like, yeah, chickens lay eggs. Pigs, they love to do it. Like, they knew how everything else came about. Basically. Eels, they're like. I guess they just spontaneously generate.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Finally, in 1777, there was an Italian surgeon and researcher named Carlo Mondini, and he finally, don't ask me how, but he finally located the ovaries of an eel. And for decades, no one could replicate that fact. And then eventually they found the testicles as well. And no less than Sigmund Freud was one of the people looking for those eel testes, my friend.

[Josh Clark]

He was the one who found them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, this was earlier in his career, but he dissected 400 eels. I guess he on the 401st found them.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It's always the last eel you look in.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah. So Freud was the person who identified for the first time. People have been thinking about this for 2,000 years, at least, how eels reproduce, but at the same time, they're like, great. They have gonads, they have ovaries. Where do they. Like, why don't we ever see them using these things? Why don't we ever see their babies? This is all very weird. So the mystery continued even after Freud, although it was really kind of starting to heat up around that time, I think. Freud found the gonads in 1876, and within a couple of decades, I think within a decade, they had far more material to work with than they had. So, like, it went from 2000 years of not knowing what the heck was going on to bam, bam, bam. We almost have it figured out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Like, we knew that they Metamorphosized. We knew that those glass eels, they're basically transparent little babies. They would show up in coastal waters every spring, and they knew that they turned into adolescent eels. They're called elvers.

[Josh Clark]

Neat.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they know that they would eventually turn color and swim up rivers. And they knew they would eventually become yellow eels and that they love to eat those things. And then eventually they would become silver eels is the final stop on the eel train, and that is when they develop the equipment to reproduce and go upriver into the ocean. But the part between silver eels going from the river and then the glass eel floating around was the mystery.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but if you put those two things together, like, okay, the glass eels show up on the coast, the silver eels swim out to sea. Seems like that these freshwater eels, breeding grounds are somewhere out there in the ocean. It's gotta be, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So before that, there was this idea that there were these little things, almost plankton like organisms, or I think they were plankton, which apparently the definition of plankton is any floating sea life that just gets moved along by the current, can't move around itself. There are these little tiny floating. I guess they were shaped like willow leaves. And they were identified as Leptocephalus brevia rostrus. And they thought this was a whole different type of fish. And it turned out what they were looking at were the larvae of eels. They misidentified them as something. And it took like a couple of decades before they were like, nope, this is actually eel larva. And they found out thanks to a French guy named Yves Delage, who probably was quite surprised when he put one of these things in a tank.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he put one in a tank and saw it go through every metamorphosis. I guess I would assume he kept getting bigger tanks unless he had a big one to begin with.

[Josh Clark]

I hope so.

[Chuck Bryant]

But eventually it became a glass and then an elver. And then about 10 years after that, there was an Italian zoologist named Giovanni Battista who saw this happen out in the wild. And so, all right, we really are cooking with gas now. But where do those little silver eels go? Where are they going to make this larva? They still hadn't figured out that part.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Once they mature. So there's a Dutch marine biologist named Ernst Johann Schmidt, which is a great Danish name. I think I said Dutch. Right. He was a Dane. Sorry, Danish people. He was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation. And yet they were founded by the beer company.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And they essentially funded scientific expeditions. And they funded Ernst Schmidt. And he started. He just basically set out to figure out this mystery of how silver eels produce the little willow leaf larva.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So he started fishing, casting his nets along the coast, and he found them in the North Sea. He found them in the Mediterranean, and they were pretty big by this point. So he was like, I don't think this is where they started, because they've grown a little too much. So he got together with some commercial fishing boats, said, hey, I could use some help, because you guys are all over the Atlantic. And they helped him out. And in 1912, he had a report finally to publish that said these little small larvae and silver eels, which is the end stage, all the way out in the mid Atlantic in the middle of nowhere.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So he was like, I think that they probably breed in the Sargasso Sea. And he never found them. He never saw that they were in the Sargasso Sea. But it turned out he was correct.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Sargasso Sea apparently is a pretty rich breeding ground for a lot of reasons. One reason because of the brown sargassum that floats on top. I think it just creates sort of a nice covered, shady habitat.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it's not just the eels. I think a lot of things kind of reproduce in the Sargasso Sea, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

And the reason the Sargasso Sea is remarkable is it's a sea in the Atlantic Ocean.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

And it's kept in place by, I think, four currents that kind of come together and create a gyre. And in the middle of this gyre is what we call the Sargasso Sea. And it's relatively still compared to the rest of the ocean. It's very high in saline, and it stays pretty warm. It's largely off the coast of the north. The eastern United States, I believe, is where it's mostly situated all the way out to the Azores. Azores. Azores. Azores, sure. And it turns out In, I think, 2018, a European team led by Rosalind Wright found out that, yes, Ernst Schmidt was correct, that they do. Eels do actually mate in the Sargasso Sea.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Now, that's those. There are other freshwater eels that spawn in other places. Obviously, they don't all go there. I think Japanese eels spawn at these underwater mountains around the Mariana Ridge, which is pretty incredible.

[Josh Clark]

So neat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And then I think African longfin eels spawn in the Indian Ocean. And you might say, like, who cares? Like, yeah, it was a mystery. But think about this. Eels are, like, halfway up the Rhine in Germany.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They're like, well, it's time for me to go reproduce. I'm getting to be that age. They swim all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean, swim all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Sargasso Sea. That's where they mate. And then their little tiny larva, these little floating plankton, make their way all the way back to Europe again, where they turn into glacials, then elvers, and then swim back up and take their place up the Rhine until they do the same thing. That's a very strange reproductive strategy, but that's what eels do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Eels are like salmon, please.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Yeah. There's a word for it I can't quite bring to mind. I want to say catocephalic. That might be it. But essentially it's. They're born in the ocean, but they live their lives in fresh water.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah. What was that word? I remember seeing it now.

[Josh Clark]

Catocephalic. It's probably wrong, but I'm gonna say that authoritatively.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so today, eels. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Red List, lists them as threatened species. The European eels are critically endangered, and the American, Japanese and New Zealand longfin eels are endangered.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, I'm screaming out. I could see that. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cause they're endangered. And then some of this other stuff to come was a pretty big turn off for me as far as eating them goes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I guess that puts me off of eating eels, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, no pressure, bud. American and European eel populations have dropped by more than 90% since the 1970s. Same with Japanese eel populations. Hydropower turbines and dams is a big reason. We know that they disrupt all sorts of underwater aquatic life, but also overfishing, the loss of wetlands and pollution. So they, you know, the eels that you eat, and this almost got me back on it, they're raised in aquaculture facilities.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

They aren't bred in captivity. Cause it's really hard to do, as obviously that we've seen. Their reproduction is pretty tricky overall.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So if they were to try and do that, they would have to introduce hormones to induce sexual development. Keeping those larvae alive is really difficult in captivity just because of the organic matter that exists in the wild. Like, they really need that stuff. So what they do is they capture those little glass eels in the wild and bring them to the farms to raise them to maturity so you can eat them.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And one of the reasons, maybe the reason that American and European eels have dropped by 90% since the 70s, is that when you're taking these glass eels out of the ocean. Number one, you're preventing that same number of eels from ever growing up to reproduce because they're going to get eaten before they get a chance to. And two, if eels follow any kind of typical evolutionary strategy, they probably have a ton of larvae and a huge percentage of them die off. And the glass eels are the ones that make it. So what you're doing is saying, like, thanks for the surviving larva, everybody. We're going to take them and eat them. So that prevents an entire species from reproducing for the most part. And that's why their stocks have died off from those fisheries.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I don't.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think we skipped the part where, like, didn't they tag eels to. To track them?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's how they found out, rosalind. Right. In 2018. That's how they found out. But yeah, I forgot to mention that part.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's crazy to tag a little eel. Maine, The US State of Maine is the only state that has a glass eel fishing industry. They have licensed, what they're called elvermen, because remember, the elvers is the third to, I guess, the penultimate stage.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

And there are 425 licensed elvermen that can harvest around £7,500 between late March and early June every year. And then they ship it off to Hong Kong.

[Josh Clark]

Very nice. Do you know what the third to last is called?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh. Is there a word for that or are you about to dupe me?

[Josh Clark]

No, this is for real, Chuck. I promise.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. What?

[Josh Clark]

It's anti penultimate, but like a N T E, like antechamber. Anti penultimate.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I like that. That always reminds me, and I think I mentioned this in the Gary Larson episode, the second to the last of the Mohicans cartoon, which is just a big line of indigenous, I guess, Mohicans. And the second to the last of the one in line. Everyone's facing one way and he just turned around and waving and smiling.

[Josh Clark]

How great, man, that guy. You got anything else about eels?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, that's it.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Yeah. If you want to know more about eels, go watch videos about David Byrne and see what books he recommends. You can also visit your local aquarium. You can also go online and visit the website of your local aquarium. There's all sorts of stuff you can do to learn more about eels, and I urge you to. And maybe stop eating them. I'm going to, too. Okay, Chuck?

[Chuck Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

I'm going to stop eating American or European eels, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. No more unagi for us.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's been a While since I had it anyway, so it's not like it's a huge giveaway for me.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, good.

[Josh Clark]

Well, since Chuck agreed that we're both going to give up eel, it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is from Alex, and this is a follow up about the baking soda and coconut oil deodorant from the listener mail. Apparently, Alex is sort of an expert on this, so. Okay, again, you don't, you know, tread carefully whenever you're applying anything to your skin and body.

[Josh Clark]

Can you refresh my memory? I don't remember that. Deodorant.

[Chuck Bryant]

You mean basically like baking soda and coconut oil, if you mix together into a paste, can be a good, like, natural deodorant.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it can also, like, chafe your skin and cause outbreaks if you don't get the. The mix right. Okay, so this is what Alex says. I've been doing this for the better part of 15 years, guys. And have continuously adjusted the recipe to balance what I found to be three main. Odor eliminating effectiveness, skin reaction, and staining of clothing. Baking soda is responsible for the first two and needs to be carefully balanced to be effective enough while not causing a rash. Coconut oil is commonly used to act as a concentration reduction and application medium, but it stains the clothes. I found that cornstarch is excellent at being a neutral alternative. To reduce the concentration of the baking soda, I usually go about equal volumes of the two, then add only enough coconut oil to make a thick paste in a pinch. If I find myself having forgotten to use deodorant, I will moisten my finger and dab it directly in baking soda so that it is only very lightly dusted and then rub that on my armpits. But don't do that too often, guys. You'll end up with unhappy pits. But it's a great backup because most people have a box of baking powder open in the fridge and don't care about fingers in it because it's not there for eating. A girlfriend from another lifetime once told me I should start an armpit empire. And by the way, guys, I'm in Puerto Rico, so if you ever feel like coming to do a show in the tropics, I'd be the first one out telling everyone to buy tickets. And that is Alex.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks a lot, Alex. Can you just see Alex dipping his fingers in some baking soda and rubbing him on his armpit and saying, ah, refreshed.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can just see it.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to be like Alex and give us even more detail about a. Whatever it is, you know, a lot about. We would love that. You can send it to [e-mail]

[Narrator/Host]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. At cvs. It matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night, and we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CV CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At cvs, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So Visit [e-mail] or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location what's up y'?

[Josh Clark]

All?

[Starbucks Advertiser]

Summer's got a different tempo. Everything's a little looser, brighter. One plant turns into another. You hear something, you stay a little longer. Next thing you know, you're somewhere you didn't plan to be. It's those in between moments. That's where the ideas hit. Conversations stretch out. Little memories sneak up on you. And sometimes it's just about what's in your hand. That color, that chill. The new Tropical Butterfly Refresher from Starbucks. Guava and passion fruit flavors with Mango Pineapple flavored pearls. Yeah, that feels like summer before you even taste it. Funny how one small stop becomes the best part of the day. Start your summer rhythm with Starbucks. Try the new Tropical Butterfly Refresher from Starbucks.

[Advertiser Voice]

Dry eyes still feel gritty, rough or tired. With Maibo, eyes can feel Meibo Perfluorohexyloctane Ophthalmic Solution is the only prescription dry eye drop that directly targets the number one cause of dry eye too much tear evaporation. Meibo mimics the way the protective outer layer of a healthy tear film fights evaporation, allowing you to keep more of your own tears. It can help the surface of the eye heal when used consistently as directed so eyes can find relief.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's my bow.

[Advertiser Voice]

Don't use if allergic to Mibo. Remove contacts before using and wait at least 30 minutes before putting them back in. Eye redness and blurred vision may occur. For more info, talk to your eye doctor, call 1-844-MEIBO yeah, or visit meibo.com to find an eye doctor near you. What does treating dry eye differently feel like?

[Chuck Bryant]

Maibo.

[Narrator/Host]

Oh yeah, this is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.