HTDE: Crickets and Clowns

Summary

Podcast Summary: "HTDE: Crickets and Clowns"

Podcast: Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
Date: March 18, 2026
Hosts: Mike & Ian
Guests: Biologist Marlene Zook, Clowns International Egg Register’s Julie Proctor

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Overview

In this episode, Mike and Ian delve into two quirky topics: unraveling the surprising science behind using cricket chirps to estimate temperature, and exploring the colorful tradition of the Clowns International Egg Register—a unique way for clowns to "trademark" their makeup. Filled with playful humor, curious questions, and fascinating guests, the hosts bridge natural history and clowning culture while pondering the oddities of science, law, and language.

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Main Discussion Points

1. Cricket Chirps & Temperature Estimation

• Introduction to the "Cricket Formula"

  • Originates from over 100 years ago, attributed to a researcher named Dolbear.
  • “If you count the number of cricket chirps in 15 seconds and you add 40, you end up with the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.” (Marlene Zook, 01:20)

• Scientific Basis and Limitations

  • Works only under specific circumstances:
    • Accurate for tree crickets (not the more common field crickets).
    • Limited, as the formula depends heavily on species and temperature range: “It actually only works under a very, very, very limited set of circumstances.” (Zook, 01:48)
  • Crickets are exothermic: their bodily functions—including chirping rate—directly reflect ambient temperature.
  • Field crickets’ variable chirp rates make the formula unreliable for them.

• Fun Exploration of Cricket Life

  • Tree crickets live in shrubs and tall grass, are green and “lovely” with “lacy looking wings.” (Zook, 04:15)

  • “Much more glamorous looking than the field crickets, which…like I said, were my study subject.” (Zook, 04:34)

  • Q: Could tree crickets tell the temperature of a pizza oven?
    A: They’d die before chirping. “If you wanted to eat the crickets, it would work because they would crispen up.” (Zook, 05:18)

    Memorable Quote:
    “Tree cricket sounds amazing. It's good looking. It tells you the temperature and apparently it's a great source of protein.” (Host, 05:27)

• The Strange Sex Lives of Crickets

  • Males attract females with song, and offer part of their bodies as "nuptial gifts"—nutritious glands females eat during mating.
  • “It's kind of like cannibalism combined with music.” (Zook, 05:48)
  • Some katydid gifts can reach “30% of his body weight...imagine you’d have to manufacture something out of your own body that weighed like 50 pounds, which you had to give to your date before she would have sex with you.” (Zook, 06:48)
  • Hosts tie the nuptial gift concept to engagement ring traditions: “It works out similar to...three months salary should be the price of the engagement ring.” (Host, 07:35)

• Playful Listener Challenge

  • Listeners are invited to count cricket chirps hidden throughout the episode, apply the formula, and email the calculated "temperature" for a chance to win a T-shirt. (08:07–08:50)

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2. Name Punctuation Predicaments

• Listener Mail: The Saga of ‘Autumn’s’ Apostrophe (10:08–12:43)
  • Listeners write in creative solutions to Autumn’s challenge of having an apostrophe in her legal first name:
    • Use double apostrophes, turning it into "Autumn''s"
    • Invert punctuation, creating a new mark like an "upside down semicolon"
    • Shift the possessive to her middle name (“Autumn’s Hope’s bicycle”)
    • Use superscript (“Autumn²”)
    • Replace the apostrophe with a quotation mark ("Autumn’s”)
  • Amusing consensus: Most creative fixes either look like a typo or an energy drink.
  • Listener Jeffrey simply pleads, "Please, please fix your episode. My head is exploding." (Jeffrey, 12:43)

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3. Clown Makeup “Trademark” with the Egg Register

• History of the Clowns International Egg Register
  • Created nearly 100 years ago by Stan Bolt, an accountant and circus enthusiast, to document clown face designs on eggs (13:17–13:43).
  • Each clown’s makeup—captured with 360-degree photos and fabric samples—is painted onto a ceramic or real egg, cataloged by number.
• Purpose: Face as Intellectual Property
  • “Do clowns think of it as a way to kind of claim their look and kind of trademark it?” (Host, 14:55)
  • “That's why they take so long to get their eggs, because they don't know which one…they want to stick with.” (Julie Proctor, 15:02)
• Expansion to Drag Culture
  • Now expanded to capture drag queens’ unique makeup on eggs as well.
    • “They have their own unique look…why not?…they would love to be immortalized somewhere in a museum.” (Proctor, 15:34–15:44)
  • New golden register for drag queen eggs, “with loads of high heeled shoes on the front.”
• Notable Detail:
  • The tradition preserves not only clown makeup, but comedic history, and helps performers claim visual identity.

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4. Historical Oddities & Episode Reflection

• Both interview topics “started with someone saying hundreds of years ago…” (Host, 16:18)
• Hosts comment on the cyclical nature of history:
  • “The past is prologue.”
  • “Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.” (16:42–16:48)
• Memorable Moment:
  • Discovery of a 1926 news snippet proposing to put a wristwatch on the Statue of Liberty:
    • “I’m just worried she doesn’t know what time it is.” (Host, 18:04)
    • “The problem with the Statue of Liberty: she was always late.” (Host, 18:20)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the cricket formula’s limitations:

  • “It actually only works under a very, very, very limited set of circumstances.” (Marlene Zook, 01:48)
  • “It doesn’t work for [field crickets] because their chirp rate is more variable. It only works for one kind of cricket.” (Zook, 03:41)

• On cricket reproduction:

  • “So it's kind of like cannibalism combined with music, which is like what we would all strive for.” (Zook, 05:48)
  • “Imagine you’d have to manufacture something out of your own body that weighed like 50 pounds, which you had to give to your date before she would have sex with you.” (Zook, 06:48)

• On clown “trademark” via eggs:

  • “That's why they take so long to get their eggs, because they don't know which one…they want to stick with.” (Julie Proctor, 15:02)
  • “Each egg gets numbered and put into a register.” (Proctor, 15:46)

• On historical parallels:

  • “Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.” (Host, 16:48)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• 01:20 – Cricket formula explained by Marlene Zook
• 04:15 – Tree crickets: habitat and beauty
• 05:18 – Comic discussion: crickets as pizza oven thermometers
• 05:48 – Nuptial gifts & bizarre cricket mating rituals
• 08:07 – Listener challenge: count the cricket chirps
• 10:08–12:43 – Listener emails about the apostrophe dilemma
• 13:11 – Julie Proctor on clown egg registry
• 15:34 – Registry expands to include drag queen eggs
• 17:06 – “On this day in history” segment with whimsical discoveries

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Tone & Style

• Warm, witty, and inquisitive banter between Mike, Ian, and their guests.
• Blends scientific curiosity with offbeat humor and a touch of historical reverence.
• Audience engagement via playful challenges and mailbag readouts.

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For First-Time Listeners

This episode is a perfect blend of eccentric science and whimsical culture. Whether you’re curious about estimating temperature by listening to insects or’re fascinated by the curious rituals of clowns and trademark law, you’ll walk away entertained—and a little smarter about the world’s smaller, stranger wonders.

Transcript

[A]

This message comes from Capital One Commercial Bank. Access comprehensive solutions from a top commercial bank that prioritizes your needs today and goals for tomorrow. Learn [e-mail] Commercial Member FDIC.

[B]

Hey, everybody, it's Peter. And once again, we're featuring a new episode of how to Do Everything in this feed. So this week, Mike and Ian talk with top experts in their fields to unpack some of life's greatest mysteries. Mysteries like do I need a coat to go outside today? The answer in today's episode might be the life hack you've been waiting for. If you are enjoying how to Do Everything, be sure to follow the show in their own feed. It's called how to Do Everything. It's easy to find and thanks for listening.

[C]

This is how to Do Everything. I'm Mike.

[D]

And I'm Ian. On today's show, some advice for the many of you who may be considering a career in clowning and trademark law.

[C]

But first, the first day of spring is this Friday. The temperatures are. It's getting warmer. Let's say you find yourself outside on a hot day, your phone is dead and you don't have a thermometer.

[D]

Can you imagine going outside without a thermometer?

[E]

Who are we?

[D]

There is a trick to without a thermometer, tell the exact temperature outside when it's warm enough. Biologist Marlene Zook is online. Marlene, can you tell us about it?

[E]

Sure. Over 100 years ago, someone named Dull Bear came up with way to calculate mathematically the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit by counting the number of chirps you hear a cricket making in 15 seconds. And the formula is that if you count the number of chirps in 15 seconds and you add 40, you end up with the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. The problem is that like a lot of things, it actually only works under a very, very, very limited set of circumstances.

[D]

Okay, so the idea is I find a cricket. If it chirps 12 times in 15 seconds, then I add 40, I would know it is 52 degrees Fahrenheit.

[E]

You would? You would?

[D]

Okay.

[C]

It feels like if it's summer, it shouldn't be. It should be warmer than 52 degrees outside.

[E]

There you go. Yes, that is precisely the point. So the reason that you could use a cricket chirping is that crickets, like all insects, are what are called exothermic, which is a more correct term than cold blooded, which means that they get their heat from the temperature outside. And so when it's warmer, all of their body functions move faster and when it's cooler, all of their body functions move slower. That includes chirping, which requires muscles to move and nerves to fire. And that all happens faster when it's warmer. So there's more chirps per 15 seconds or per minute or per whatever when it's warmer. And so you'd get a higher number. And then the adding 40 is just something that Dull Bear seems to have figured out through, I guess, trial and error.

[D]

So in a. In a certain temperature range, a certain warm temperature range, the formula works, Right?

[E]

And that's a good, really good point. The second caveat is that this was done for something called a tree cricket, which happens to have a very stable chirp rate. It doesn't work for field crickets, which are the black ones that are on the ground, which I studied for many years.

[C]

Sure.

[E]

So it doesn't work for. It doesn't work for those because their chirp rate is more variable. It only works for one kind of cricket.

[C]

Okay, that's it. Wait, so are they.

[E]

It's a pretty limited, like, life hack. I really wouldn't recommend it as a way to, like, I'm gonna go out in wilderness without a thermometer. I don't know why you need to know the temperature anyway, but if you did, that would be kind of a limited thing.

[C]

Are these, these tree crickets, are they the kind of thing that you maybe don't see, but you hear chirping in the trees? Okay, so then if.

[E]

Let's call tree. They're called tree crickets, but so it's not so much. They're not in, like, way up in the canopy. They're. They'll be in, like, tall, like in shrubs or in, you know, tall forbs or something like that. But they're not calling from the ground generally. They're actually. They're very beautiful. They're very beautiful. All listeners should immediately go and Google tree cricket. They're lovely. They're green. They have beautiful sort of lacy looking wings. I think they're much more glamorous looking than the field crickets, which, like I said, were my study subject for many years.

[C]

That's a pretty low bar. Come on. Right.

[E]

I think tree crickets are pretty gorgeous. I really do.

[C]

Do you think, Marlene, if I was able to secure some tree crickets and I wanted to put them near, like, a pizza o where I was gonna be making pizza that night, could they tell me the temperature of the oven and whether or not it was ready for me to bake a pizza in it?

[D]

Pizza cooks at about 500.

[E]

They would die first. Alas. You would have crispy. If you wanted to eat the crickets, it would work because they would crispen up.

[C]

Oh, that's true. Okay.

[D]

Tree cricket sounds amazing. It's good looking. It tells you the temperature and apparently it's a great source of protein.

[E]

It's a great topping potentially. Yeah. They also have super interesting sex lives, but you probably don't really want to get into that.

[C]

Give us the elevator pitch on how freaky they are.

[E]

So the males call and they put their wings up perpendicular to their body, and that attracts a female. And the females come and they chew on this gland on the back of the male's wings, which is nutritious. And so they're chomping away while the male is calling. And that gives the female some nutrition, that helps her lay her eggs. So it's kind of like cannibalism combined with music, which is like what we would all strive for. Right.

[C]

Wait, what happens? What happens to the male cricket then? Afterwards?

[E]

He's kind of tired.

[C]

Okay. But he's not dead.

[E]

No. So this is not like mantids where she chews his head off kind of. No.

[C]

Okay. Okay.

[E]

I'm glad you pursued that. I'm glad you pursued that because you don't want people coming away from this thinking that. Oh, but also they're really ghoulish. They're not ghoulish. It's just that they have this thing called nuptial gifts.

[C]

They're hungry.

[D]

They have this thing called. What? Nuptial. What?

[E]

Oh, it's called a nuptial gift. Lots of singing insects produce them. In some katydids, the nuptial gift is produced by the male and he sort of secretes it as part of mating and it can weigh up to 30% of his body weight. I often point out that. Okay, now, so let's, you know, looking at the audience. So imagine that, you know, your average guy is going to weigh 150 pounds. So imagine that you'd have to manufacture something out of your own body that weighed like 50 pounds, which you had to give to your date before she would have sex with you.

[C]

Wow.

[E]

That usually just quiet everybody. Yeah, it usually quiets everybody down.

[C]

Yeah, it should.

[D]

I mean, it works out similar to, what is it, three months salary should be the price of the engagement ring.

[E]

Oh, I never thought about making that connection. Yeah, that's very interesting. I never thought about that. Yeah, maybe they got the three months from thinking about Katie did. I always wondered where they got that number yeah.

[C]

Three months salary is equivalent to £50 of secretions that you need to gather.

[E]

I'm sure that's how the jewelry companies came up with that.

[D]

Marlene Zook's new book actually came out yesterday is Outsider how the Creatures at the Margins of Our Lives have the Most To Teach Us. You know what we should do? We should play with this idea. Yes, I think we should. For the rest of this episode, we should hide a bunch of cricket chirps and you listening. You can count them. It's gonna be longer than 15 seconds the rest of the episode. But yeah, count the cricket chirps from now until the end of the episode. Add 40. Email [e-mail] the temperature you came up with. Whoever is right first will send you a T shirt.

[C]

Yeah, we have T shirts. I think we have a couple from. How old are these T shirts at this point? They're pretty old.

[D]

Yeah, they're in Roman numerals.

[A]

This Message comes from Capital One, presenting sponsor of the 2026 Tiny Desk Contest. NPR Music's annual Tiny Desk Contest called on musicians from all corners of the country to submit an original song performed behind a desk. The lucky winner will play a Tiny Desk concert and headline a tour with NPR Music this summer. While the judges are busy reviewing the entries, you can follow along and choose your favorites. Explore a variety of original talent with videos performed everywhere from bedrooms to staircases to rooftops. See where this year's entries will take [e-mail] tinydeskcontest and travel even further with the Capital One Venture X card, offering premium benefits like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit, plus earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com for details.

[D]

Hey, if you've got a question for us, you can send it to us@howtopr. Or also you can just tell us really anything you want in our email box. And that is something that we've. I would say we've been deluged.

[C]

That's true.

[D]

In the past week with emails that we would like to talk about.

[C]

Yeah, we, we do read all of your emails and we got a bunch of emails from people responding to our last episode which involved our listener autumns.

[D]

Autumns, you may remember, is spelled like the season apostrophe S. The apostrophe is part of her name on her birth certificate and it has caused her countless heartache and difficulty.

[C]

Primarily, we should say, around punctuation. We don't know anything else about her life. That's causing her heartache or any strife. It's mostly just punctuation.

[D]

Many of you wrote in with solutions. We just want to read a few of them.

[C]

Josh suggests just doing two. It looks like two apostrophes and the S, which looks like you have a quotation mark. So it's Autumn quotation mark S. This

[D]

is a wild one.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

Laurie Ann wrote in and said, I think we should adopt an upside down semicolon. So it's an apostrophe with a dot underneath.

[C]

Oh.

[D]

To go in the middle of her name like she says it would be like a second level possessive.

[C]

That's interesting. I do think that all of this stuff, if we're introducing a new symbol, it's just going to look like a mistake.

[D]

Most of the solutions. That is the problem for Autumns.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Most of them just look like typos.

[C]

This is from Janine, they say. I think the solution is in her two legal given names. Autumn's Hope.

[D]

That's her middle name.

[C]

That's her middle name, is lovely and can easily be Autumn's hopes as needed. So you just. You add the apostrophe s to the middle name.

[D]

Yeah. So whose bicycle is that? That's Autumn's Hope's bicycle.

[C]

Seems good.

[D]

Ted suggests putting a. Making it Autumn squared. So the little superscript 2s.

[C]

That's actually. I like that. That's good.

[D]

Solves the punctuation problem. It also makes her name look like an energy drink.

[C]

This is another one from Peg. Same thing. Autumn's quotation mark S. That to me feels like that's gaining some momentum and I actually think that might be what we need.

[D]

Yeah. Look, here's another one. Hensel also recommends the quotation mark in place of the apostrophe.

[C]

That's good. Yeah. What do we get?

[A]

4.

[D]

4 that make the same suggestion. Autumn's. I think this is Autumn's solution.

[C]

And finally, we did get this note from Jeffrey. It just says, please, please fix your episode. My head is exploding.

[D]

When a person becomes a clown, maybe you're becoming a clown. You need a way to claim your particular look, the makeup. You've come up with your whole thing, and there is a way to make it yours.

[C]

You do this by joining the Clowns International Egg Register.

[D]

Julie Proctor is in charge of the register. Julie, can you explain to us how this works?

[F]

Okay, so nearly 100 years ago, a guy called Stan Bolt was a clown or circus enthusiast. He wasn't a clown himself, but he just loved it. He was actually an accountant, I believe, and he decided that he was going to have a collection of all the different faces, and he realized that there were different faces and he. And he registered them on eggs. So there's a story of how it all began.

[D]

So, sorry, we're very new to this. So he was interested in clowns, and he would put their specific clown makeup faces on eggs so he could remember them and have something.

[C]

Yeah.

[F]

Just purely for his own pleasure, he kept them. Then he numbered them. Being an accountant, I suppose you would. And he wrote them in a book, a ledger, as you would.

[C]

Okay.

[F]

So. And that's. That's just where it began. It was just. It was a bit of a hobby to start off with. And then more and more clowns discovered this and they asked. They asked him, can I be one of those eggs? And that's really how it began.

[C]

Yeah. So that basically became an encyclopedia of all of the different clowns out in the world that we knew. Basically a record of all the clowns.

[E]

Yep.

[F]

So I get sent a picture of the clowns. Well, several pictures. I need to see the whole 360 degree circumference and also pieces of the costume. So I get little. Little bits of fabric or whatever, and I create the base as well, which would be part of their costume and paint.

[D]

The egg is the registry. Sort of. Do clowns think of it as a way to kind of claim their look and kind of trademark it? Yeah.

[F]

That's why they take so long to get their eggs, because they don't know which one that they want to stick with.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

Can you show us what. Can you show us the most recent egg?

[F]

Yeah.

[D]

Oh, all right.

[F]

So these are the clown eggs. I've done some of them. And if you see Figgle back next to the drag queens.

[C]

Oh, sure. Yeah.

[D]

Oh. So, Julie, you have. This has been done with clowns for almost 100 years. You have now started using the eggs so that drag queens can register their makeup as well.

[F]

Well, they have their own unique look. All of them.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[F]

So why not? It seemed to me that. And they would love to be immortalized somewhere in a museum.

[C]

Why not?

[D]

Yeah.

[F]

So. And each egg gets numbered and put. And put into a register. I've got my register here that I started with the clip with fig. Drag queen eggs. It's. It's just. It's golden and it's got loads of high heeled shoes on the front, you know, so it kind of looks a little bit special, but that's quite new. That's actually a new thing. So I haven't pushed that too much at the moment because I'm painting lots of eggs.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Well, Julie, thank you so much for talking to us about this.

[F]

That's okay.

[E]

That's okay.

[C]

Well, that does it for this week's show. What'd you learn?

[D]

Ian, you know what I noticed is that. So we had an interview with Marlene, who told us about the crickets, and with the interview with Julie told us about the clowns. Two very different subjects.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

They both started with someone saying hundreds of years ago. Or they both started by talking about hundreds of years ago.

[C]

Huh. What do you take from that? What does it make you think?

[D]

I don't know. I mean, I think it means that you and I believe that the past is prologue.

[C]

Sure.

[D]

I think you and I are always saying to each other that those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.

[C]

Yeah, that's. I guess that's true.

[D]

Also, I was thinking maybe let's. So right now, It's. It's. It's March 18th.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

I just want to look up what happened on this day in history a hundred years ago.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

I don't. I don't know, but I'm looking it up. So that's March 18, 1926.

[C]

March 18, 1926.

[D]

It says here that river pirates raided a pier but missed out on the loot they ransacked. And this is in the New York Times from March 18, 1926. They overpowered eight people, ransacked an office, and then vanished in an unlighted motorboat.

[C]

Oh, here we go. A hundred years ago, on this date, the Assistant Secretary of War, person named Hanford McNider, rejected, get this. A New York watchmaker's offer to design and install a wristwatch on the Statue of Liberty. So just think, 100 years ago, a guy went to the Assistant Secretary of War, and he was like, Mr. Secretary, I have an idea for that statue out on Ellis Island.

[D]

You just imagine he's just looking out off the southern tip of Manhattan, just looking at the Statue of Liberty, thinking, it's so beautiful. It's such a beautiful icon welcoming immigrants to America. I'm just worried she doesn't know what time it is.

[C]

That's the problem with the Statue of Liberty. She was always late. She was always late to stuff.

[D]

How to Do Everything is produced by Skyler Swenson with technical direction from Moreno White.

[C]

Once again, you can get us your questions. Send them to [e-mail] I'm Ian. I'm Mike.

[D]

Thanks. Thanks.

[G]

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[A]

Capital One Commercial Bank. Access comprehensive solutions from a top commercial bank that prioritizes your needs today and goals for tomorrow. Learn [e-mail] Commercial Member FDIC this message comes from Rosetta Stone. If you have travel coming up, like a spring break or summer vacation, imagine arriving actually understanding the language. Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years, with millions of users and 25 languages to choose from. Ready to start learning a new language this spring? Visit Rosetta Stone.com NPR today to explore Rosetta Stone and choose the language that's right for you.