Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know – "Are Crickets the Future of Food?"

Episode Information

• Title: Are Crickets the Future of Food?
• Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
• Host/Author: iHeartPodcasts
• Release Date: March 1, 2025

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1. Introduction

In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into the intriguing topic of entomophagy—the practice of eating insects—with a particular focus on crickets as a sustainable future food source. The conversation is enriched with personal anecdotes, expert insights, and a deep dive into the environmental and economic implications of adopting crickets into the human diet.

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2. The Need for Sustainable Protein Sources

Chuck Bryant [05:00]:
"Do you want to know about crickets and how you can sustain yourself on them? Well, then, listen to this episode."

The hosts begin by addressing the alarming increase in global meat consumption, noting that per capita meat intake in the developed world has doubled over the past 30 years. This surge is primarily driven by the economic growth of BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), where rising incomes correlate with higher meat consumption.

Josh Clark [06:27]:
"To produce one pound of beef, it requires about 2,400 gallons of water."

They highlight the unsustainable resources required for traditional livestock farming, including vast water usage and significant greenhouse gas emissions—accounting for 51% of global emissions from animal agriculture. Additionally, 56 million acres of U.S. cropland are dedicated to growing animal feed compared to just 4 million acres for human consumption, showcasing the inefficiency of meat-based diets.

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3. The Rise of Cricket Farming

Chuck Bryant [11:10]:
"Kevin Bach Huber is championing the movement of commercial cricket farming in the United States."

Kevin Bach Huber, a pioneer in the U.S. cricket farming industry, is introduced as a key figure advocating for edible insects. After experiencing cricket consumption in Thailand, Bach Huber returned to the U.S. to establish one of the first FDA-approved commercial cricket farms. His efforts are part of a broader movement aiming to transition crickets from animal feed to human consumption.

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4. Environmental Benefits of Crickets

Josh Clark [21:43]:
"Crickets are about 12 times more efficient at converting feed into usable protein than cows."

Crickets offer a highly efficient alternative to traditional livestock. For every kilogram of live cricket weight produced, only 1.7 kilograms of feed are required, compared to 10 kilograms needed for beef production. Moreover, crickets are 80% edible and digestible, significantly reducing waste compared to cows, where only 40% is usable.

Chuck Bryant [22:52]:
"Crickets are cold-blooded, which makes them more efficient at converting food into protein."

The hosts emphasize that crickets' cold-blooded nature enhances their ability to convert feed into protein more effectively, making them an environmentally friendly option for sustainable protein.

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5. Challenges in Cricket Farming

Josh Clark [33:00]:
"The most expensive aspect of cricket farming is the labor force, due to the trial and error involved."

Despite their environmental advantages, cricket farming faces several challenges. The high cost of production is primarily attributed to labor-intensive processes and the nascent state of the industry in the U.S. Additionally, regulatory hurdles, such as restrictions on feeding crickets food waste, limit the potential for scaling operations and reducing costs.

Chuck Bryant [24:02]:
"The dream is to see cricket snacks in grocery stores and menu offerings at hipster restaurants."

Market acceptance remains a significant barrier. While startups like Chirps have made appearances on platforms like Shark Tank, widespread consumer adoption is still in the early stages, with products currently being expensive and less accessible.

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6. Market Acceptance and Culinary Uses

Josh Clark [25:02]:
"I would totally try fried crickets and things. That doesn't gross me out for some reason."

The discussion shifts to consumer perceptions and culinary applications of crickets. While some hosts express openness to trying cricket-based products, others share personal hesitations rooted in cultural norms. Recipes and preparation methods, such as frying with butter, salt, and onions, are discussed to make crickets more palatable to the Western palate.

Chuck Bryant [24:55]:
"Chirps, their cricket-based snack product, made it onto Shark Tank and secured a deal with Mark Cuban."

Products like Chirps, which offer cricket-based snacks, are highlighted as pioneering efforts to introduce crickets into mainstream markets. These products aim to blend traditional snack flavors with sustainable protein sources.

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7. Regulatory Hurdles

Josh Clark [42:47]:
"The FDA now restricts the types of feed that can be used for crickets, complicating the use of food waste as feed."

Regulatory constraints present another hurdle for the cricket farming industry. The FDA's strict guidelines on cricket feed limit the ability to use food waste, a potential method for reducing operational costs and enhancing sustainability through composting.

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8. Future Prospects

Chuck Bryant [44:24]:
"Eating crickets might not become global staples overnight, but gradual integration into snacks and certain cuisines is possible."

Looking ahead, the hosts remain cautiously optimistic about the future of cricket consumption. The potential for home cricket farming kits and increased consumer education could pave the way for broader acceptance. However, achieving cost-effectiveness and overcoming cultural aversions remain critical for widespread adoption.

Josh Clark [43:46]:
"With 100 grams of crickets providing 12.9 grams of protein, crickets are a nutrient-dense option."

Crickets' nutritional profile, rich in protein, vitamins, and minerals, underscores their viability as a sustainable food source. The hosts encourage listeners to explore cricket-based products and consider their environmental benefits.

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Notable Quotes

• Chuck Bryant [05:00]:
  "Do you want to know about crickets and how you can sustain yourself on them? Well, then, listen to this episode."

• Josh Clark [06:27]:
  "To produce one pound of beef, it requires about 2,400 gallons of water."

• Josh Clark [21:43]:
  "Crickets are about 12 times more efficient at converting feed into usable protein than cows."

• Josh Clark [33:00]:
  "The most expensive aspect of cricket farming is the labor force, due to the trial and error involved."

• Chuck Bryant [44:24]:
  "Eating crickets might not become global staples overnight, but gradual integration into snacks and certain cuisines is possible."

---

Conclusion

The Stuff You Should Know episode "Are Crickets the Future of Food?" offers a comprehensive exploration of entomophagy, emphasizing crickets as a sustainable and efficient protein source. While crickets present numerous environmental and economic advantages over traditional livestock, challenges such as market acceptance, regulatory limitations, and production costs must be addressed. The hosts provide a balanced view, highlighting both the potential and the obstacles in integrating crickets into the Western diet. As the conversation progresses, it becomes evident that while crickets may not replace beef or chicken overnight, they hold significant promise as part of a diversified and sustainable food system.

For more information and to stay updated on future discussions, listeners are encouraged to visit StuffYouShouldKnow.com.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Jerry the Wiz]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Hi everyone. I hope you're having a great weekend so far. Do you want to know about crickets and how you can sustain yourself on them? Well, then, listen to this episode. Are crickets the future of Food? And this is from September 7, 2017. I hope you enjoy it all over again. Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh W. Chuck Clark. There's Charles Malcolm Bryant, and there's Jerry the Wiz. Rolling.

[Chuck Bryant]

That sounds like an Aaron Cooper poster gone bad.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Already.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. We'll have like the swirly face, like the weird people in Jacob's Ladder.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's funny, we had a office visitor a couple weeks ago, and I don't think you were here. In fact, I know you weren't here because you would have been in here, right? But there was a. There's our great stepbrothers. You know, the movie Stepbrothers. For those of you out here, out there, there's a promo of John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell with as like, with an Olin Mills type, you know, posed photograph. And Aaron Cooper, our buddy from Kansas who does our great Photoshop stuff, made us into. I was John C. Reilly and you were Will Ferrell. And the guy came in and was looking around and was like, oh, man, these are great. And he went, look at that. And he went, that looks like. I don't know, it looks like it could be like something like the movie Stepbrother or something. Oh, that's exactly what it is.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I tried to make him not feel bad.

[Josh Clark]

That was nice of you. That was very gracious of you as a host.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like, he didn't quite zone in on all of them or us.

[Josh Clark]

I gotcha. He should have, like, clapped loudly beside his ear.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man. I had a little scary thing today.

[Josh Clark]

What happened?

[Chuck Bryant]

If I may, this is kind of part psa. This has nothing to do with cricket farming.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

But we're getting our. Our basement waterproofed because for 13 years it's been leaking water, like, really bad. So much so that we have mold now.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. Black mold.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. And, oh, no, we're also getting mold remediation done at the same time, man. So needless to say, that's a fun, fun way to spend a lot of money. Um, but I come home today and my carbon monoxide alarm is going off because these yahoos are using a gas powered concrete saw in our basement.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it's like full on saying, you know, get out of the house. And my animals are in there, so.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, and I just happened to go home after I went to a coffee shop to study because I needed to grab something. But, like, I literally could have come home to dead animals, man. And dead workmen in the basement.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, those guys, too.

[Emily]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

I'll bet they're not the sharpest tacks in the box anymore.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was weird, man. And they were down there. I mean, not only did they not have on so much as a dust mask for the gas, but, like, concrete dust is really dangerous too.

[Josh Clark]

They're like, I don't care. I've got Obamacare.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was so weird, man. And just it freaked me out to the point where Emily, she wanted to, like, fire the guy. He wasn't even there. Like the, you know, the foreman or.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Owner of the company.

[Josh Clark]

Subs were there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And she wanted to be like, man, if he doesn't understand that this is dangerous. And he said, you know, open up your windows. It'll be clear in 15 minutes. And it took two hours for that alarm to stop going off.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, my gosh. Wow. That is really scary.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was really bad, man. I was out on my deck basically for the rest of the morning until I came in with my dogs and my cat in a crate, man.

[Josh Clark]

That's like how some people commit suicide.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know.

[Josh Clark]

You know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And these guys are just doing it gratis for you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was. We. Yeah. Anyway, so I'm slightly shaken.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'll bet. I'm glad you made It. Man, you look good. You look okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thank you.

[Josh Clark]

You look healthy. Your pallor isn't gaunt. I think you're. You're okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I just got to calm down here. The sound of the crickets on our miniature cricket farm here are soothing me.

[Josh Clark]

At least I know they put me to sleep.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm glad we set that up.

[Josh Clark]

That was pretty good. That was one of our better segues, sadly enough.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. We are talking crickets, aren't we?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. We covered entomophagy. I meant to look up when, but it was. Seems like a long time ago.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's eating bugs and insects. But this is focusing specifically on crickets, because by all accounts, they seem like sort of the. Our best bet at trying to get something like this going in America. For real?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they're. I mean, they're pretty easy to raise. They don't require much space. You can set up your own cricket farm at home. And really, we should say the point of all this, the whole reason anybody would want people to start raising crickets at home is because the. Well, the. The earth is about to collapse and our food supply is in. In real danger. Right. So I've got some stats for you, Chuck. Okay, so meat consumption per capita has increased into the developed world. Actually, it's doubled in the last 30 years.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

And that's thanks in no small part to the rise of the bric countries. Brazil, Russia, India and China, who have huge, massive populations. And as they entered capitalist. The capitalist global economy have generally become enriched. And the more money they have, the more meat a civilization tends to consume, at least these days. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So that doesn't seem bad in and of itself until you look into what kind of resources it takes to actually raise meat. So you ready for this one?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. I'm afraid.

[Josh Clark]

To produce one pound of meat, that's a half a kilo, basically, of beef. Beef, sorry. Yeah. It requires about 2,400 gallons of water.

[Chuck Bryant]

I've heard stuff like that before, which.

[Josh Clark]

Is, like, absolutely nuts, even when you consider that not only are you watering the cow, you're also watering the crops that you feed to the cow. So there's double water consumption. But one of the reasons cattle. Beef requires so much water is because you only consume 40% of the cow. So 60% of the water is going to sustain parts of the cow you're not even eating. Right. So there's a lot of wasted water, even if your water delivery system is 100% efficient. Right. Yeah, that's just water. 51% of the greenhouse gases that are emitted on planet Earth come from animal agriculture. 51%. And 1/3 of the world's adequate or high quality cropland has been lost to erosion or pollution in the last 40 years. Now, that's a huge problem whether we are all vegetarians or not, because we're talking crop land. But we use way more cropland to feed our livestock than we do to feed ourselves. Right. Something like 56 million acres of land are used to grow crops in the United States to feed animals. 4 million are used to grow crops for human consumption. So there's a lot, a lot of resources that are used up just from meat based diets. Right. A lot of people say, well, just go to plant based diets. And other people say, you can't get enough protein from plant based diets. Which apparently is not true. From, from what I'm seeing, other people are saying, fine, you want some protein? I got something for you. And it's crickets.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm kind of, well, not surprised. But it goes to show you the population boom if meat consumption has increased that much in the face of probably more vegetarianism and veganism than ever before too, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that's kind of heartening. Like if, if there does seem to be. If. I guess if, if societies follow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'd like we should. I mean, we've been dancing around doing episodes on vegetarianism and veganism for a while, so we should probably tackle that at some point.

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm kind of curious about the history because it seems like in the, like probably since the onset of America until. And then I'm just, I'm talking off my, at the top of my head here, but until probably the 90s, it seemed like everybody was just like, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat.

[Josh Clark]

Well, there's a. I mean, it's definitely associated with wealth. Right. If you can afford to eat a nice steak, kind of indicates you have a certain amount of status in your society. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, like the 50s, it seems like they would eat steak for lunch.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I can't imagine like a steak for lunch that seems so indulgent.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think it is, you know. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, yeah, just give me a, give me the 20 ounce ribeye for lunch.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's just, I don't know, I can't imagine that. But. And three martinis.

[Josh Clark]

I don't argue with that part. That is pretty indulgent. Three martinis and a 20 ounce ribeye for lunch.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, that was Don Draper, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I never saw that show.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know.

[Josh Clark]

I never saw it.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's available.

[Josh Clark]

Where is it? Out there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

I thought they erased it all.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they did.

[Josh Clark]

They said, that's it. It's done. Didn't he go become a lumberjack at the end?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, he did not.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Oh, that's Dexter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man. I know we talked about the ending of that show.

[Josh Clark]

Crazy. I actually never saw the end of that one. Oh, you just told me about it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I think you still owe it to yourself just to watch the finale.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

So this dude, Kevin, how would you pronounce that?

[Josh Clark]

Bach Huber.

[Chuck Bryant]

B A, C, H. Which is fine. That's clearly Bach. And H U, B, R. You just don't often see two H's side by side.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

So anyway, Kevin Bachuber. Nice. Is a dude that is kind of championing. Well, not kind of very much championing this movement. In 2007, he went to Thailand and tasted crickets. Deep fried crickets. And he's from California. And he was like, hey, this is really good.

[Josh Clark]

He said, far out.

[Chuck Bryant]

They've been doing this in Thailand since the late 90s. The king established a big growing program for crickets and cricket farms. Education in schools. Like, you know, this is a good way to get protein in your diet. And he said, I think this is the direction America should go. And I'm going to get in on the money side of it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like the farming of it.

[Josh Clark]

Apparently, it's a $20 million industry already.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not bad.

[Josh Clark]

No, it isn't. And we should say that Bach Huber was. Is one of several people who are into this. The idea of cricket farming. Commercial cricket farming. Yeah. And he's definitely One of the OGs, for sure. His business was the first to get approval to sell crickets as food in the United States. He got FDA approval because the cricket industry actually is kind of old. Well, it's not too old, but I saw anywhere between 50 and 70 years old in the US and they're raised to, say, feed fish for commercial fish farming or to grind up as a protein supplement for livestock feed. So people have been raising crickets for a while or to feed to, like, reptiles, to sell them to pet stores.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So there was an established infrastructure of cricket farming, but the making the transition from selling it to feed to cows or fish or snakes to selling it to people to eat directly, that's. That was a big step. And Bach Huber was the first one to take it in the US I should just say the reason I point out he's just one of many is because this House Stuff Works article was basically like, here's my report on Kevin Bachuber's TED Talk, sort of, you know. Yeah, I think just. He definitely deserves credit because he's leading the charge, but so are other people as well. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's woven throughout this thing, though.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you know, if you listen to the entomophagy episode. Ephesode.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

We pointed out then, and it bears repeating that America is new to this, but I think it was like Canada, the United States and Western Europe are literally the only places on Earth that don't consume insects as a regular part of their diet these days.

[Josh Clark]

So this article kind of says the standard 80% of the world regularly consumes insects as part of their diet. I saw that there's a Food and Agriculture Organization. The UN Organization report said something. It was more like about a third of the population. So rather than 80%, maybe like 30 to 35%, which is still significant.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's a big difference.

[Josh Clark]

It is. And in the west specifically, the idea of eating bugs is not. It's not commonplace. Right. And I actually saw a pretty good explanation for why, like 13 of the 14 large livestock animals that are domesticated are found in Eurasia and made their way over to the Americas.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And those things, those animals provide not just meat, but also things like milk, clothing, everything, basically. So since, since these, what you would call Western countries had access to these domesticated animals, they never needed bugs as a food source.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then secondly, since they were raising domesticated animals, by definition, they had a sedentary agricultural lifestyle, which meant that their exposure to bugs was bugs as pests.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So not only were bugs not edible, they were something that were just undesirable on. On their face.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, sure.

[Josh Clark]

So that led to the. It closed the door on bugs being eaten by Westerners. And so that. That came to be filled by a sense of disgust, which is a basic human emotion, but it's the only one that's culturally bound, which means you learn what is disgusting from your. From your cultural group.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

But that also means you can unlearn it too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, if big cricket has anything to do with it. Why don't we take a quick break and we're going to come back and talk about a UN report that kind of changed a lot of things about four years ago.

[Will]

Hey, Will, do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days?

[Emily]

Constantly. I'm like, ah, there's so much science, I can't keep track of it all.

[Will]

Then it's a good thing. Our podcast, Part Time Genius is counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years.

[Emily]

That's right, Mango. We're talking animals in a paper called.

[Will]

Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans. This was actually the title of the paper. They all discovered that much like humans, chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces.

[Josh Clark]

Got it.

[Will]

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[Emily]

He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stop. Stimulate insulin producing cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster.

[Will]

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[Emily]

We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the Part Time Genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years, starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so I promised you a UN report. 2013. There was a big kind of sea change. I don't know about sea change.

[Josh Clark]

It was the beginning.

[Chuck Bryant]

Beginning of a sea change. They issued a report called Edible Insects Colonial Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security. And it was basically just championing entomophagy and all the benefits that surround it, like how nutrient dense crickets and other insects are. The fact that it's socially sustainable, economically viable and friendly, environmentally friendly. And it kind of, you know, kind of paints it as like, hey, this, this is the future. Or could be part of the future at least of getting protein into, you know, Americans.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And the, the report itself didn't focus exclusively on crickets, but crickets feature prominently in the report.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're the star.

[Josh Clark]

It was about bugs in general and eating bugs in general. And it was, it made a pretty big splash. I remember when it came out, like, it really hit the news cycle pretty hard. But it also caught the attention of that Bach Cuber guy who said, all right, I'm going to, I think I'm going to get into this. Because he'd already been exposed to eating crickets in Thailand. And then that when that UN report came out, he, I think, began his startup here in the states of his commercial cricket farm startup.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's funny, they had put in this article that it was the most popular document in the history of the un.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't see that anywhere. I think that was. He said that at his TED Report.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But yeah, it definitely made a splash, I'll give him that for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he spoke at a TedX, Youngstown, Ohio, because that's where he's based. That's where his company is.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I guess he. He just made up his own TEDx, probably.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so let's talk about crickets. Well, all insects in particular are very rich in protein, like we've talked about. They have a lot of healthy fats.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

A lot of zinc, a lot of iron, a lot of calcium. And there's something called, I guess, efficient animals. Well, yeah, I mean, this is when vegetarians and vegans are like, these kind of terms make their skin crawl. I'm sure. But the kind of efficiency you get out of raising and killing and eating an animal is on a spectrum. And, you know, from cows, like you talked about, it's probably the worst, I would guess, don't you think?

[Josh Clark]

Right, right. The animal itself is efficient at converting food that you feed it into stuff that you can get from it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So like you said, not a lot of the cow is used to eat.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's like 40% of a cow is. Is edible and digestible.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I think the chicken is about the most efficient animal protein right now.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But nothing like crickets.

[Josh Clark]

So there's two different things here. Right. So you've got efficiency in nutrient conversion, which is, say, like, if you eat an apple, you can convert, you know, x amount of the energy available in the apple into, you know, energy for yourself. Metabolism. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And poop.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Yeah, but poop is waste. So that stuff wouldn't count toward efficiency. It would actually subtract from your efficiency and lower your efficiency. If you ate an apple and used every bit of it and it produced zero poop, you would have 100% efficiently converted that apple into useful energy. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that'd be a weird apple.

[Josh Clark]

It would be. It'd be a magic apple, and you wouldn't need a poop chute, but instead you do, because there is no Such thing as 100% efficiency in any animal. Right. But some are better than others, like you were saying. And with a cricket, it's something like they're like 12 times more efficient at converting food into usable energy or stored, in this case, stored protein. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So for every kilogram of live cricket weight, which is a pretty substantial amount of crickets, but. But kilogram to kilogram, or pound to pound, it just takes 1.7 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of live crickets. Not bad for a cow. It takes 10kg of feed to produce 1kg of beef. Very inefficient. By comparison. So if you take the fact that it doesn't take much feed to produce a biomass of crickets and that crickets are 80% edible and digestible compared to the cows, 40% edible and digestible, then you really have a. If you're just going pound to pound or kilogram to kilogram and much more nutrient dense, much more efficient and then therefore much less, much less wasteful animal that you could eat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. A lot of that has to do with the fact that crickets are cold blooded. So they're very much more efficient at converting that feed into protein. And crickets aren't even the most efficient insects.

[Josh Clark]

No, no.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not sure which one is actually.

[Josh Clark]

I think mealworms are pretty efficient.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh yeah, you just said that because you're eating a mealworm.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Well, I have a mealworm farm I was going to ask you to buy in on.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh really? All right.

[Josh Clark]

In my pocket. See?

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that a mealworm farm in your pocket?

[Josh Clark]

It is my pocket mulch.

[Chuck Bryant]

So like we mentioned, Mr. Bach Ruba is if he's not German, he should.

[Josh Clark]

Be Kevin Bach Ruber. I think he's, he's Irish German.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe it's spelled KVN though. So we're just inserting vowels for him.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Like D, N, C, E. What's that? It's this band.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Probably a young person's band.

[Josh Clark]

I believe so.

[Chuck Bryant]

No wonder. I don't know. But he is one. I think they're about. And this has probably changed even since this is written about 25 or so cricket startup farms here in the United States.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I couldn't find the current number.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, let's just say at least 25.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Although I'll bet they go under pretty quick.

[Chuck Bryant]

You think so?

[Josh Clark]

I could see, I could see losing your shirt on cricket farming right now. It's so. It's just so early and the market is so not there and the stuff they're producing is so expensive.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well. And their output right now is still really small in the early years here. But you know, the dream for, for him and all these cricket farmers is that one day it will. It will. I don't think they have designs that will ever be like in some parts of the world where it's on every menu and every restaurant. But they would certainly like to see cricket snacks in grocery stores and menu offerings and some, some of the more wacky hipster restaurants.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

At least.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Did you, do you watch Shark Tank?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you know I do.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. So did you see the one with Rose Wang and Laura desario.

[Chuck Bryant]

I've seen them all.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so you saw the one with chirps, their snack. They're cricket based snack product chirps. I want to try it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I do too. I'm not like, I'm not an adventurous eater, as you know, but I would totally try fried crickets and things. That doesn't gross me out for some reason.

[Josh Clark]

No, I, I, and I would try it as well. And do you, I don't know if you remember or not, but when we did that locust thing for Science Channel, it's like the second time it's come up this month. Weirdly enough. They made fried locusts and I refused to eat them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And it wasn't because I was grossed out. It was because I was sure that I was going to have some sort of weird allergic reaction to them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, right.

[Josh Clark]

And I would have had, yeah, yeah. And I would have had to have been like, you know, life, flighted somewhere to a hospital and would have missed my flight home. That is the only reason I didn't eat them. It had nothing to do with disgust. But in that UN report, they address allergies and they said that it's actually exceedingly rare that somebody has an allergic reaction to an arthropod or to an insect, I should say. But the reason why I thought so is because, yeah, I had, had, I like a shrimp blow up once.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And I just was not about to roll the dice on that. Not for what Science Channel was paying us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I think it's very funny that you, I remember your shrimp, your shrimp years in that you had an allergic reaction to shrimp, but you wanted to eat shrimp so bad, you started to eat shrimp a little bit just to see if you could eat shrimp.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Shrimp chips.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Which use real shrimp powder. It's like a, I think Japanese or Korean or Chinese delicacy.

[Chuck Bryant]

But now you can eat shrimp, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I did immunotherapy and now I'm fine. I can eat shrimp all day long.

[Chuck Bryant]

I just love that you were so dedicated to eating shrimp.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I love shrimp, man. Good shrimp, like seasoned with old bay. Just simple stuff. Oh man. So good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Uh, this is a great time to bring up one of my big pet peeves.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know that cooking with shrimp heads and tails on increases the flavor quite a bit.

[Josh Clark]

Does it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Okay. Which is why they do it. Um, but it's one thing if you get an appetizer with like the, the, the, like a prawn with the head left on or something.

[Josh Clark]

Uh huh.

[Chuck Bryant]

But if you like, I get pasta dishes sometimes.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That have like heads and tails on them.

[Josh Clark]

If there's a fork involved, you don't want to have to put your fork down and take the head and tail off.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, like you literally have to dig them out of the pasta, take the head and tail off, and then put them back in your food.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is just. I don't get why restaurants do that. Like maybe cook it in there and then take it off for us.

[Josh Clark]

So I ran across a reason probably why.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, let's hear it.

[Josh Clark]

There's something called chitin, which makes up the exoskeleton of. Of bugs, but it also makes up the shells of crustaceans as well. And chitin, supposedly, if you don't have an allergic reaction to it, chitin is apparently good for. It's. It's said to be good for weight loss. Yeah, Digestion. It aids in digestion, allegedly. And I think it has something to do with your blood pressure too. And in other countries, non, non, non Western countries, I think they prescribe chitin quite a bit as like a dietary supplement. And I saw one study that said, yeah, it had a little bit of an effect, a little more than placebo, but not clinically significant. But it was just one study. So I'm curious if chitin actually does have an effect, but it's possible they're saying you should eat the whole thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, that's what I was gonna say.

[Josh Clark]

All the shell.

[Chuck Bryant]

What?

[Josh Clark]

I mean, I don't know. They could also just be a fat, lazy chef, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, I'll eat a soft shell crab till the cows come home, but I'm not eating a shrimp tail.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it sounds gross.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it's just not like they don't soften up enough, you know?

[Josh Clark]

But if you think about it though, if you're eating a fried cricket or something, you're eating the whole thing, shell and all. Antenna.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, but I throw that in the soft shell crab zone.

[Josh Clark]

So you eat the shell of the soft shell crab?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. That's what it is.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know that I've ever had soft shell crab.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, my friend.

[Josh Clark]

Is that like a blue crab?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I think it's a special kind of crab.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that has Parents must love it very much.

[Chuck Bryant]

I might be wrong. I think it's a special kind of crab. And then you prepare it with the shell. But I think the shell is soft to begin with, though. I don't think it's just from cooking. But like spider roll is one of my favorite sushi rolls. That's soft shell crab.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Yeah, I thought that was crab, like spelled with a K. Like fake crab.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, that like the little legs are coming out of the end and everything. That's why they call it a spider roll because it looks like little spider legs.

[Josh Clark]

And I'll try that.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then like a soft shell crab sandwich is. I mean, you open the bun and there's just like this crab staring at you.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Going. How's it going?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Josh Clark]

You're gonna eat me in a second, aren't you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I'm getting hungry now.

[Josh Clark]

You want to take a break real quick?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, quickly before we just should mention that they did get a deal on Shark Tank.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

With Mark Cuban for chirps, right?

[Josh Clark]

We're contractually obligated to mention Mark Cuban.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. We get our kickback coming.

[Josh Clark]

I, I would try chirps for sure. If the chirps people are out there listening and you want to send us some chirps, I will try them up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Alright, so let's take that break.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Will]

Hey, Will, do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days?

[Emily]

Constantly. I'm like, ah, there's so much science, I can't keep track of it all.

[Will]

Then it's a good thing. Our podcast Part Time Genius is counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years.

[Emily]

That's right, Mango. We're talking animals.

[Will]

In a paper called quote, chickens prefer beautiful humans. This was actually the title of the paper. They all discovered that much like humans, chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces.

[Josh Clark]

Got it.

[Will]

We're talking medical miracles.

[Emily]

He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin producing cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster.

[Will]

There's no way to make that not sound crazy.

[Emily]

We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the Part Time Genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years, starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

So Chuck, we said, I think I said that one of the things that's holding this industry back right now is that the, it's so expensive. The, the products they're making. There's something called cricket flour, which is ground up cricket meal. Basically a protein powder made from crickets. Right. And it's it's anywhere from like $35 to $50 a pound for it. Yeah, it's very expensive, a lot of money. But it's really ironic because crickets require so much less space and food and water and electricity. It's apparently the labor force that is the most expensive thing of any commercial cricket farm because it's just hard to find people who can do that. Even though it's not exactly hard, it's just there's a lot of trial and error going on. So from what I saw, it's the labor force that's, that's eating up most of the revenue or profits from cricket farming.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, finding all those tiny people, those three inch people.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's not easy.

[Josh Clark]

But there are startups also that are, that are trying to sell like home cricket kits too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because that's part of the whole idea where if you're going to get people to supplement their diet, well, just let them grow them at home too.

[Chuck Bryant]

So should we talk a little bit about this, the farming?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So crickets live about seven weeks. I mean that right there shows you a big difference between that and like the beef industry.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So during that seven week life cycle they, they have three different environments that they reside in and they basically live and hang out on what they call cricket high rises, which are little egg cartons.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I saw that they have tried all sorts of different material and they keep going back to egg cartons. For some reason. Crickets just love hanging out on egg cartons.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, who doesn't? And what they eat is because I was kind of wondering that they eat grain based feed, organic grain based feed, fruits and vegetables. And they, some of them will reach that breeding stage, some won't. And if they do, they're going to lay a lot of eggs, like you know, several thousand eggs a mommy cricket will lay in her lifetime.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So many eggs in fact, that they, that they typically just throw most of them out. Like they'll keep some to grow a new generation from, but there's just so many that are just tossed out because they don't have the capacity yet to grow them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So that, you know, they're, I think Bach Huber put it like he could be drowning in eggs if he's not careful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Drowning in cricket eggs. He probably wakes up every night sweating recurring dreams.

[Josh Clark]

He probably really does wake up every night from the cricket chirping.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I never really thought about that. That must be nice actually.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it can be.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they like hot, humid environments, or at least warm depending on Your definition of hot? It's hot to me, 85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit with about a 40% humidity level.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the whole process, from soup to nuts or from eggs to chirps is about 56 days.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, roughly. Yeah. And if you. You can do this yourself at home, you just need basically two terrariums. You need to put them near heat because that is substantial. 85 to 95 degrees is hot. Way hotter than you're going to keep your house. So you do need, like a heat lamp of some sort. And you need water, a source of water, too. Those are the two most important things with raising crickets. And the reason you have two terrariums is because in the one where you have like the 30 initial crickets, say you're going to put a dish of soil and that's where they're going to lay their eggs. You want to check the soil every day for eggs. And when you find eggs, you take that little soil dish out and put it in the other terrarium, and then that's where the eggs are going to grow and hatch. And when the crickets hatch, they're fully formed. There's no larval stage. Right. They don't go from like a maggot into a cricket. They're fully formed. They're just much smaller. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And according to Aristotle, it's about around here, or maybe within the next, like, week or so, that they're the most delicious.

[Chuck Bryant]

Aristotle?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Aristotle wrote in his Historia Animalium, actually, he was writing about cicadas that they're better when they're before their last molt. So I guess that wouldn't apply to crickets. No, it would, because they molt.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do they?

[Josh Clark]

They do molt. He also said that females taste best after copulation because they are full of.

[Chuck Bryant]

Eggs after Aristotle has copulated.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Or after the cricket, instead of a cigarette, you just eat a pregnant female cicada.

[Chuck Bryant]

Try this baby.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It'll knock your socks off.

[Chuck Bryant]

I bet Aristotle pillow talk with something.

[Josh Clark]

Else, you know, or just be like, yeah. And he just keeps going on and on about cicadas.

[Chuck Bryant]

So harvesting. I mean, there's no way around it. At some point, like any live thing that you're raising, you're going to have to kill it. And instead of like what we see on factory farms with cows and pigs, what you do on a cricket farm is you cool them down and then freeze them. And so what happens is they. They get cold, they start to get a little chilly, their temperature drops and they go into what's called the diapause, sort of a hibernation like state. And then pretty much after that they go, it is sure as chilly in here. And then they're gone. And frozen.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Apparently they eventually freeze solid. So they spend about 24 hours in the freezer and then they're ready to be sold.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Either ground into say like a powder or baked into a fried snack or sold to somebody else, but that's that. And I was like, do they wake up then? If you, if you heat them up in a pan but apparently after 24 hours and they're frozen solid, they're. They're dead.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But to them it's just like going to sleep forever.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. What I kind of wonder, when I was reading this, I was like, how do vegans and vegetarians feel about eating insects?

[Josh Clark]

Supposedly it does not count as vegetarian.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it depends on who you ask. I didn't get any. Like there is no official rule book.

[Josh Clark]

There's not.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think so.

[Josh Clark]

I'm surprised.

[Chuck Bryant]

But basically I just went to a bunch of vegan vegetarian websites and looked to see what people said and it kind of ranged from, well, sure, I'll eat insects and this is a much better way to get protein in your body than animals, to where other people said, no, it's a living thing, not going to eat it. I get all the protein I need from plants. If you're eating something a live animal, then you're not a vegan or a vegetarian.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I saw crickets referred to as many livestock, all one word.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I mean they are a live, they're a living animal for sure. So I guess it's a personal choice. It sounds like, yeah, just like, you know, vegetarians eat fish sometimes too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, that'd be a pescatarian, right?

[Josh Clark]

I guess. But I've met plenty of vegetarians that are like, I'm vegetarian and I eat fish, leave me alone.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's when you go, technically you're a pescatarian. And then you get punched in the face.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So eating crickets, Some people say it's sort of nutty. Some people say it's a little sweet, like sweet corn. I'm. I would like to know for myself. I wish we could have gotten our hand on some chirps beforehand.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But maybe we can follow up in the future.

[Josh Clark]

We need a big bowl of chirps right here.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like we did with the Soylent. Yeah, with the Soylent.

[Josh Clark]

Soylent.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll do a follow up.

[Josh Clark]

Soylent.

[Chuck Bryant]

So there's this Lady Daniella Martin, and she has a travel show and, well, it's an insect cooking and travel show called Girl Meets Bug. Very cute. And we should say the chirps ladies called crickets. The gateway bug, I thought was kind of funny and punny. And Daniela says that she started eating crickets and kind of became fascinated with insects in general when she was in Mexico and Yucatan and kind of became, I don't think obsessed, but just super interested in this as a, as her protein of choice and said, you know, I started cooking them up with the little, a little butter, little onion, little salt and like with anything. If you put it in a pan with some butter and onion and salt, maybe a little garlic, it's probably going to taste pretty darn good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You could cook almost anything with butter, salt and onions and you're fine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Even when you hear stories of these creepy cannibal people. Oh, yeah, they usually like, cook it in butter.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

With a little salt and onion and garlic.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think that one guy who advertised on like Craigslist, he did. Well, he, yeah, he sauteed with. Yeah. Onion, you're right. Penis, I think it was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Say what he ate penis.

[Josh Clark]

Like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

He did. Man, that was a very disturbing case.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So she says crisping them in the oven is another. Besides, you know, grinding them into powder, cooking them up, like broiling them in the oven. Don't overcook it. Well, olive oil, garlic, salt, throw them in about 250 for about 15 minutes and a little sea salt on top maybe, and you're going to have a crunchy, delicious, nutrient rich snack.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And you want to clean them off too, if you're cooking them from raw, because, I mean, they're bugs. That's. It's something you want to do.

[Chuck Bryant]

What do you do, just like wash them in a colander?

[Josh Clark]

I guess so. Yeah. But I think, like, if they're already prepared, you're probably okay. Because one of the big things that, that, that like Bockhuber did by getting FDA approval, like, now you can't just raise crickets on just anything. Like, they have to be fed food that is okay for humans to eat too, which is something that the cricket farming industry is running up against. Because one of the big things proponents are saying is like, man, you could raise crickets if you had large scale cricket farms. You could raise crickets on food waste. And if you, if you, if you do that, not only are you like raising your crickets, you're also getting rid of food waste. You're composting basically. Right. Yeah, composting. That's the way to say it. But apparently the FDA is like, now, you can't feed things food. Waste your nut job, you're going to eat it eventually.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So there's big rules against it, but I think they're trying to chip away at that as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I remember being alarmed when I briefly worked in the chicken industry when I found out that a lot of chicken feed is made from chickens.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Not. Not. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's not right.

[Josh Clark]

So I saw in, I think, Popular Science, they had a little nutrition facts thing for crickets. It's so cute. They said for 100 grams of crickets, you're looking at about 120, 121 calories.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

You've got about five and a half grams of carbs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

12.9 grams of protein. That is substantial.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

75.8 milligrams of calcium.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And nine and a half milligrams of iron. That's also pretty substantial. Just from 100 grams, I think they estimate that's about 20 to 22 crickets.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like a handful and a half.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

That is. That's pretty good. And. And the idea that if you are just raising crickets yourself, you can feed them your own kitchen waste.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then eat the crickets yourself. There's also. Right, Right. There's also very low barriers to entry into cricket farming. So if you're. If you're not a wealthy person and you need to make some extra money, you could conceivably raise crickets yourself and then sell them at market, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like podcasting.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Exactly. I think that's it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

All right, well, that's cricket farming. Everybody. Go make it happen. And in the meantime, you can look up this article on howstuffworks.com and since I said that, it's time for a listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm going to call this Kevin Spacy's Accent Explained. Oh, and before I read this, there is a House of Cards spoiler.

[Josh Clark]

Spoiler.

[Chuck Bryant]

So alert to that. Hey, guys, just listen to the episode on accents. I'm happy you brought up Kevin Spacy's accent from House of Cards, because I have a theory. Spacy plays a character, Frank Underwood, who grew up poor in Gaffney, South Carolina, but then went on to the Citadel in Charleston and created a Persona that eventually lands him president. His accent does not sound like a bad attempt at the R. Less old money Charleston accent, but I think it fits the character. Instead of a Twangy R full accent that he'd have from Gaffney. Spacey's playing Frank Underwood, who was playing someone with noble Southern roots, and that's why it sounds fake. Am I giving Kevin Spacey too much credit? Possibly, but being from Greenville, South Carolina, enjoyed dissecting his Carolina accent. Actually, I don't have much of an accent myself, except with words like lawyer and oil. Jerry just left because my brother, who's 10 years older, trained it out of me when I was very young. He said he didn't want people to underestimate my intelligence because of our accent. He would correct me every time I would say things like turn the lights on instead of turn the lights on or naked instead of naked. Yeah, if you're saying naked, smack them.

[Josh Clark]

With a length of dry bamboo and say again. Say it again.

[Chuck Bryant]

I sort of wish I sounded more like the rest of my family, but what a considerate thing for my big brother to have done when he was a teenager.

[Josh Clark]

Seriously.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that is from Mary Jean Murphy.

[Josh Clark]

That was pretty great. Mary Jean, your brother is a little social engineer, isn't he?

[Chuck Bryant]

I like that.

[Josh Clark]

And thank you also for the spoiler about Kevin Spacey becoming president on House of Cards. If you want to get in touch with us like she did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastowstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the Web StuffYou Should Know.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Emily]

You listen to your favorite shows.

[Will]

Hey, Will, do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days?

[Emily]

Constantly. I'm like, ah, there's so much science, I can't keep track of it all.

[Will]

Then it's a good thing. Our podcast Part Time Genius is counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years.

[Emily]

That's right, Mango. We're talking animals in a paper called.

[Will]

Quote, chickens prefer beautiful humans. This was actually the title of the paper. They all discovered that, much like humans, chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces.

[Josh Clark]

Got it.

[Will]

We're talking medical miracles.

[Emily]

He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin producing cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster.

[Will]

There's no way to make that not sound crazy.

[Emily]

We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the part time Genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years, starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.