WORT 89.9FM Madison

The Rats of the Air

This week on Mel & Floyd: It’s the Ruby & Pants “Mel & Floyd Summer Replacement Show” replacement show!; Pledge drive wrap-up; Compulsive handshaking; High blood pressure in ducks at the Union; Brain pruning in pregnancy?; Another Nixon tidbit; Sterilizations up in states banning abortion; Nazi motherhood medals; Cat hot-wires car?; High altitude microbes; Monkey names; And other random topics; Subscribe to the Mel & Floyd Podcast on itunes and never miss another episode [Unless the power goes off again] – It’s FREE!; Passersby were amazed at the unusually large amounts of blood. Photo courtesy Stephen Mabbs on Unsplash

Broadcast on:: 20 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

I feel good I knew that I wouldn't have I feel good I knew that I wouldn't have So good, so good I got to hear I feel nice A sugar and spine I feel nice A sugar and spine So nice, so nice I got to hear Well, good afternoon and welcome to Mel and Floyd, the summer replacement show Mel is somewhere Floyd is on assignment with us as always as a man who knows everything and I'm Ruby How about that? How about that? Yeah, you're just a man who knows everything So I do know where Mel is too, he's in Kansas City Everything's up to date in Kansas City, I don't know if you know that You even have a move in picture show I've heard they have a skyscraper, seven stories high They've gone about as far as they can go Yes, sir They've gone about as far as they can go So we managed to exceed our goal Which means that Our coordinator for these pledge drives A she who must be a bade Will not be whipping us this time So it's true So it's true It's true It's true It's true It's true It's true It's true It's true So we managed to It's true Yeah, we had an incredible Everyone was incredibly generous But we had one in particular Very generous donor right at the end of the show last week Ludicously generous And the other thing I just want to say is Ruby, after listening to the program we just listened to You do feel a little bit like an a-hole coming on Trying to be funny, but you know I got to say one of the things that we do hear from people a lot And we appreciate this And I hope that's what we're trying to do here Is there's so much stuff that if you're a serious person Really can get you down And so what we try to do is maybe leaven that a little bit With a little of the The teahis, the giggles The teahis, I know, it's hard to It's hard to have a teahi and not feel like you're somehow being unfair to things But we got to live in the world too And just one thing I want to mention Before we, you know, get into our News items for the week We did fall short You know, Mel and Floyd did great with our fundraising We reached our goal, surpassed our goal But overall the station did fall a little bit short On our goal for the fall And that's okay because we have a couple folks who are Generously willing to match any donations that come this week So we're till end of the week Your donations will be matched up until the 22nd So if you make a donation today for $50 it counts for a hundred So yeah, it's a good time to be I heard somebody fledged during SD show Yeah, we had three people donate during SD show So WORTFM.org We don't have phone answers But we will take your money online Yeah, so go to WORTFM.org And there's a big button there, you can press And, you know, I'm sure you're giving money to your favorite candidates And things like that, but they don't need it right now They're doing fine, don't worry about that But, on the other hand, we do need it And definitely, there's no doubt about it So pony up the dough, that's what we say Pony up the dough, how have you been? I haven't asked you how you were, I've seen you in the studio for a couple of minutes Well, you know, I gotta tell you, I was a little sleepy And I was just kind of like, I came in and I was like, "Oh, oh" But you know what, I have the wake up juice here in my hand It's made from beans I don't know if you've ever had any of it, but it's working wonders with me right now So yeah, they need a little wake up juice A little wake up juice made with beans Freshly brewed here at the station It's one of the best things about WORTFM, I opinion, is the fresh coffee constantly Yeah, and our phone answer out front there, she was so receptionist Laney, yeah, she's so sweet and she came in I said thank you, that was very sweet of you Her response was, I think she didn't want, she didn't want to accept a compliment She said she was restless, so me [laughter] Which I get [laughter] She just wanted to keep busy [laughter] So anyway, well how have you been? We just kind of, you know, ships passing in the night, I mean, what have you been up to recently? What have I been up to recently? Um I am just living my life, making it through September somehow [laughter] And yeah, I've got tickets to go see a show at the American Player Theatre today Oh, lovely So I'm looking forward to that What is playing at the American Player Theatre? Let's do a little promotion there It's called, well, I don't know that you can buy tickets, it's the last thing I've ever done Oh, well let's talk about that [laughter] We're supposed to do permission on the radio But the show is called "The Ring Around the Moon" And I don't know anything about it, I'm just along for the ride Yeah Really good watching, I'll take that out [laughter] A little extra stay to remember on the collar Yeah, that's probably, yeah, sometimes Uh, yeah, okay, well, what am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing I guess we're going to, oh, I know one thing So let me just pull this out So we got a little message Are we allowed to talk about this? Yes, we are It was announced yesterday Yeah, we got a little message from The Best of Madison, Madison Magazine's Best of Madison 2024 And they sent you and me and Mel and God knows who else Oh, Floyd? Uh, yeah, this little message that says "Pop in to pick up your complimentary Best of Madison award certificates" So Mel and Floyd, you know, we used to win awards Through the Isthmus polling And when we moved to the Best of Madison We thought, well, maybe that isn't quite our demographic But apparently we're moving up in that one, too So I don't know where we are right now, whether we're We can announce where we place them Oh, can we? Are we number two? We are number two Oh, my goodness, we are Yeah, so we got second place behind Jonathan and Kitty You know, Jonathan and Kitty, I ran into Kitty One time at the Willy Street Fair And there was a streak where we were beating them And she said, "Can't you guys let us win?" So, we're doing that, Kitty I told her at the time, we're trying to be as bad as we can For some reason, people still like us I don't understand But good, I'm glad they did And he said, completely She shouldn't lose Like, yeah, right, we're too weak But anyway, so I'm going to pop by there And I'm going to get, apparently there's a little pop-up kiosk Located there, and I'm going to go grab that And then we're going to go see that That gal that's running for the democratic nomination She's going to be at some place here We're going to go see what she's up to She's pretty good at debates at any rate, so I don't know what else That's exciting Yeah, that'll be fun, it'll be one of 50 million We should probably get up and leave early just to Yeah She's probably going to start talking about windmills or something That seems to be what they do Those candidates, I don't know I'm excited to hear your report next week And how it went, I feel like You might be staying around for a while, having an exciting, you know, 45 minutes and then Yeah, well, I'm bad for, like, shaking hands with politicians They're probably going to, Secret Service probably have to gun me down Because I just am like, I'm like a hand-seeking missile And I've shaken hands with some of the top ones Yeah, who have you shaken hands? Well, I've actually shaken hands with both Bill Clinton and Al Gore Oh, wow Because I'm an old guy, right, so that was around when they were running for office And I loved it at the time because the handshakes were so palpably different Like, Clinton had this big, flabby hand He kind of enclosed, I'm kind of skinny hands, he kind of enclosed my hand And I could feel him sucking the love out of my body Hey buddy, how's it going? You're going to the anger And then right after him was Al Gore, of course, he was running for Vice President And he would do this thing where he would just stick out his fingers Like two fingers and just kind of half shake your hand and look over your head And I thought, that guy's not even going nowhere It was like, it was I actually, a roommate that I had at the time and I actually went back in the day To the Clinton inauguration Because at that time, there had not been a Democratic president since, well, for 12 years And of course, Clinton was the most conservative Democrat since Grover Cleveland, right? But still, it wasn't a Republican, you know? So I went with my roommate at the time and he went to be with his friends Who were protesting the inauguration And I just went and thought, well, great, we don't have a Republican So that was my attitude at the time, you know? But anyway, yeah, so that was kind of fun You can get, if you contact your congressperson, which I guess for most of our listeners would be Mark Pocan They do have, you can get tickets, I mean, you can't get close, but you can get a little spot that's relatively close So they apparently have a number of tickets, I don't know if he's doing that right now I don't want to create problems for Mark Pocan's office, but they do have that ability I think there's many ways to get tickets for this event One of the volunteers here at war, it was saying that she put her and her wife on, like, three different lists Like, any way that she was able to get an invite to the event By the way, companion and I are going to be in Washington, D.C. during the inauguration So whoever it ends up being, you know, it's going to be his majesty Or whether it's going to be, you know, going to be Kamala We'll be there in one, it's going to be wild, whatever happens, right? If it turns out that he's in charge, then I'm going to be there probably doing something else Are you going for something different? Yeah, and we're just going to overlap with it, yeah That's going to be received Remind me to send you with a recorder either way I was there one year during the million family march, I remember that many years ago now And it was so funny, I just thought I'd wander over to see what's going on It was one of my favorite stories is I was going to the street corner And there was a guy next to me, a really large, large man And he was obviously one of the fruit of Islam guys Because he was wearing the suit and the little red tie, little bow tie Because the nation of Islam had organized the group Black Muslims had organized this million family march And he had a little mini-me version, his little son, he was so adorable And they were saying they're both wearing their little suits with their little bow ties And little mini-me fruit of Islam kids started to walk out into the intersection before the light changed And the dad looked down at him and said no, now you have to wait for the little white guy Meaning the guy on the thing, and the kid turned on and honestly looked up at me It's like I know it's a crazy world, but I didn't realize I got to wait for him to cross me right here And I was just like this puzzled look I just remember, I was like one of three white people at the scene But he just like looked at me like oh that's the way it works And I was like this is too funny Maybe it's more of like let's cloak ourselves in this guy's white privilege The car's not going to hit him, so once he starts walking The kid might have figured that out, I mean he looked like he was about four or five But you know, he's probably already figuring it out But of course the dad met the little guy on the side And he just looked at me Anyway, so yeah we'll be there And as a former president once said it'll be wild, whatever happens so But yeah, but today, so that's happening from What is it I guess this afternoon of Kamala and her crew will be there And you probably heard that she got, I don't know what I make of this I mean some people think it's great, you know it shows you her wide appeal or whatever But I get a little unnerved one, 111 stalwarts of the GOP And saying they're kind of up for her Really? I don't know, that's exactly a character, you know, endorsement there She was just, Oprah has endorsed her And she was just did it Well the all wise Oprah, yeah, okay Yeah, it has done a, did an event with Oprah I think over this last week Yeah, which? You know during COVID, when I, they tell you to wash your hands You sing happy birthday twice, did you know that? Yeah, what do you, what did you sing? I always sing happy birthday dear Oprah And I was explaining that to someone and they said, do you have to say Oprah when you say that? Yeah, you do, you have to say happy birthday dear, you know, Oprah, happy birthday to you That's how I've incorporated Oprah into my life That's great, it's just always her birthday It's always her birthday, every day is Oprah's birthday Several times a day, exactly Did you, the Wisconsin appeals court has taken up the case of RFK junior on the ballot And this is, you know, comes right before apps and TV outlets get mailed out, so Yeah, he really wants to get off the ballot He really wants to They figured out that he's gonna take from Trump You think so? Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, you think so? I'm sorry, my irony, I have an irony deficiency to say I gotta take my tablets like this I mean, I can understand, you know, having now that he's back to Trump, why he would want to be off the ballot But also, I think, like, having more than two candidates on the ballot is kind of important, you know? Well, it's Wisconsin who probably get the barrier vote The all-important forest county barrier vote, so, you know That goes right into a really good story I have this week Really? It's like we planned it It's like we planned it A 12-year-old boy fatally shot a black bear who was mauling his father during the war Well, they were hunting bears Oh, okay In western Wisconsin, so they had They were hunting bears and they had Shot but not killed a bear, and about 20 minutes later, they came across the bear again And the bear charged the father and then the son shot him And I said, "This is why we don't shoot bears" Yeah, well, you've probably seen that, so the bumper stickers support the right to arm bears And that's the very reason, right? It would be a fair fight, then, you know? Yeah, come on, good. Any rate There was an editorial in the New York Times today From the governor of Ohio Oh, yeah And he was talking, Republican, but governor of Ohio And he was talking about, you know, how great the people who live in Springfield, Ohio are And how valuable they are to the economy And how, you know, a well-regulated, friendly people And they're here legally and everything And the thing that got me about it was He made it very clear that he was still voting for the Republican candidate for president After all of that, even though it just floored me When I was reading, of course, some of the things that they've said One lie on top of another But yeah, they're still amplifying these stories And, of course, the giant orange one has said he's going to go to Springfield, that will be fun But Governor DeWine, he's a Republican, but he's not a MAGA Republican He said that these rumors that were spread online, of course, were all false And he knows from personal experience Interestingly enough, he and his wife are actually from Springfield, Ohio Wow, you know, after that whole thing There's been a string of bomb threats to schools and public buildings And NPR has a headline this from yesterday Saying that some Haitians are considering leaving Yeah, great job, everybody Yeah, good job Well, also, of course, in addition to the crazy stuff that former President Trump is saying About the folks in Springfield, he's also been Calling, he's escalating his calls to investigate and prosecute election officials that are corrupt He says if he wins, he's going to look into all these people that stood in the way, apparently, of his greatness And democracy experts are really worried because he's talking about Ordering his justice department to basically go after Who knows, I mean, it could be very small people I mean, this is the thing, this is the problem in a purported Democratic Republic You've got huge differences in wealth and so on The reason why that's a problem is because they can exhaust the court systems forever You know, pulling in, you know, musk's money or whoever it is, you know A peel after a peel? Yeah, right, so yeah, he's thinking already that we're going to be doing that if he gets elected This is, you know, typical of, unfortunately, other struggling nations But it's something that, you know, hasn't been quite so overt in this country And we're sort of struggling here now again between the shadow between democracy and authoritarianism But whatever, half the people still these greats So what do you do with that? Hey, we got an online pledge Excellent Which, as I remind everyone, is getting double today And it's from our friend Chris who says, "Good news, no urine in this lab" Bad news I can report that the studios, urine free for a change too, so that's really good Bad news, no ether And the lab is in Waukesha I have a flaming bag of poo and looking for a Scotty's porch I shook the hand of Bill, and Bill, Al and Ada too Oh, really? Yeah I never met Ada Yeah, I remember the year she was running, Ada Deere, I assume you were referring to Yeah, I remember the year she was running, was that 92? Yeah, I think so Yeah, I think so, yeah, right, yeah Rest in peace, Ada Deere, we lost her this year, I think Yeah, that's right, that's right, yep, yep Oh, so I don't know, it's eugh Human beings don't like unresolved things I mean, that's why you constantly see these poles, you can't just say "Well, let's wait and see what happens in seven weeks or whatever, that's impossible" I want to know who's going to win right now Right now, they've done studies where people, if they're given a choice of having to wait for a while Or like, shock themselves in a laboratory experiment They will just shock themselves, you know, like, I can't wait another five minutes I kind of feel like I'm not exactly in that I just, again, I try to distract myself with other things that seem important There's a new analysis of the origin of COVID-19 that's being done by scientists in Britain, did you hear about this? The story was published in the Thursday edition of the journal Cell I know that you subscribed to that regularly, so yeah And it looked at 800 samples of genetic material from Chinese workers Collected on January 1st, 2020 from the Hunan seafood market And again, they're pretty sure that this is coming from animals Scientists suspect infected animals are first brought to the Wuhan market in late November of 2019 And they're still trying to figure out sort of which guys it is Is it a raccoon dog? Is it a civic cat? Is it a bamboo rat? I like how they all, they can't just be dogs, cats and rats, they're raccoon dogs This is the fancy version, folks, and the bamboo rats, I love the idea of bamboo rats, I really do So they're looking into this that they found some populations of animals Which have some probability of transmitting the coronavirus to humans So, not some giant conspiracy, I'm sorry, I know we all love the giant conspiracy The lab conspiracy and such I think raccoon dog, that just sounds good I like that too, I wonder what the, I should look this up I wonder if you can buy one of those, not to eat I want the non-edible ones, please, thank you very much Alex and I, they're lucks and I, oh they're cute Are they? Oh yeah, I highly recommend Lucky they're adorable, look at those things, and delicious looking They kind of look like a badger, honestly, but like fluffier and friendlier Yeah, well anything's friendly than a badger Oh, that's true, badgers are, yeah, go be a drs Alex and I just watched, there's a show called Ape Crazy, yeah, Ape Crazy Ape Crazy? On HBO, and a long story short, owning apes is probably a bad idea Oh yeah, you know, I was reading a book about Soviet space dogs And your answer is, of course you were, obviously And they tried to use monkeys, Americans used monkeys And the Russians were much smarter, because they were sort of like, monkeys are too much like people They're fidgety, they were constantly pulling the little things off of them That they were like to monitor their signs and so on, and so they said "No, no, we're not going to do that, dogs, dogs are the way to go" And they did lose one of the dogs, of course, they lost like a But after that, they were like heroes, and when they came back Because they wanted to see that they could bring it back too, if you're going to send humans up, you'd like to be able to come back Nicely, yeah, depends on who it is But they gave the dogs medals, you know, they were like heroes of socialist labor or something like that And then they would make like stamps and all these different things And so I was out in California few years ago, and there was a hall, a hallway In a museum of oil paintings of the various Soviet space dogs, they were amazing, really great But don't use monkeys, you don't want to use monkeys, too much like people, and that's always a bad idea The show is called "Chimp Crazy", not "Eat Crazy", "Chimp Crazy" They're really cute, like, they're cute until you start thinking about how much we are to them And it's not like not cool to keep them in a cage, and not safe to not Usually when I go to the zoo, like I was at the Brookfield Zoo one time, my general rule is Stay away from the cages where the animal is masturbating, so Usually not looking at the monkeys, sorry, that's just me If you're a primate in a cage, what are you going to be doing? No, I get it, but that's exactly why I don't want to see it See, this is my thing about zoos, anything that can be bored, don't put it in a zoo Because there's some things that they just don't get bored, you know, that's not within their range But other things they do get bored, and don't put those things in cages There's a pygmy hippopotamus in Thailand, in a Thailand zoo that's going viral right now Those things are adorable Yeah, that's really it It's like there's a cute hippo, or pygmy hippo And when they say pygmy hippo, they mean full size, it's a thousand pounds, right? They do seem smaller, like maybe like more pig size But it's caused so much of a disturbance that there are like thousands of people coming every day To see this pygmy hippo, her name is moodang And people are taking pictures They want to get these pictures of her But she's only active for like 20 minutes a day, and then she sleeps the rest of the day They've had to put up signs, they're like don't splash her, throw sticks at her, let her sleep Take a picture of her Now who are the annoying monkeys, right? I think I told you that I have these friends that do seal rescue in Hawaii Oh yeah? And that's the biggest thing that they do, they seal rescue things, they're these monk seals And they need to come up on the shore to sleep, unlike some sea mammals They're not able to kind of like turn off half the brain at a time or something They didn't quite get to that level evolutionarily, so they actually have to come up and sleep on the shore And just like with us, if we don't get enough sleep, they're all kind of fritzy and weird So the biggest problem they have is people coming up and like hey, look at that It's like can you clever little hairless ape, like keep your paws to yourself So we've seen some of the most amazing things, I went out with one of my friends to do this And so what they do is when they, there's a whole team of people, mostly retired people who have the time to do this And they will call in and say oh, there's a sighting on such and such beach And then you go over there and then you stake out a little place around it so that no people won't get closer A little playpen? A little playpen, yeah, little stakes in the ground and the sand and little ropes and no one And people will do the most bizarre things, so like walking over it and then you're like Hey, did you see the rope? I was like no (laughter) Like how did you go over it then? It was like wide steps, the funniest one was the woman that my friend Charlie says to her It's like hey, you know, really you should let the, they're being nice It's public education, so you should really let the seal sleep And Warren said the seal cassette it was okay (laughter) And we're like, no, we talked about the seal and it said you're a total liar (laughter) What do you say to somebody that says the seal said it was okay? (laughter) You know, I have such an internal desire to hug a seal, but then fear of authority I get it, that's what you gotta do, you can't do it You kind of respect the thing, it's like kids The worst thing you can do to a kid is treat it like just a big doll Kids hate that, I mean you really do It's like hey, come kiss grandma It's like let me decide if I'm gonna kiss grandma (laughter) So I think we're gonna do that with kids, we should do it with seals I did say to my one friend, I said, you know, this should be about loving the seals Night hating the humans and his response was, I can do both at once (laughter) It's really, it's so fair (laughter) Hey, the White House, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in particular Is looking into bank mergers, the Biden administration And it's final months are trying to make sure they get a lot of done before, you know, God knows what's gonna happen next So they're increasing antitrust scrutiny of the banking industry And so on Tuesday, the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation voted three to two, so right now there's a majority of Democrats on there For putting more stringent guidelines in place for evaluating bank deals So, also on Tuesday, the Justice Department withdrew from a framework Which established way back under Clinton, remember him, the most conservative Democrats? (laughter) We were just talking about it Yeah, just talking about it Which were a little too loose And so the Assistant Attorney General who's in charge of these things, Purch by the name of Jonathan Cantor, said that the 95 rules which predate the rise of financial technology need modernizing So they're gonna modernize some of the rules, they're gonna be on the lookout For unsavory and monopolistic mergers, so Yeah, that's a good idea, every 30 years, we look at your rules Yeah, I mean, in the meantime, the financial carnage has been created Well, that's fine, little of this little of that (laughter) They've got a couple people who went online and had their donations doubled So shout out to Eric, who's a new donor, and Jonathan Wow, that's great I know Did they mention anything about themselves? Well, Eric got a long-sleeve shirt, and the "I Hear Voices" shirt Made 100...oh, I shouldn't say that amount Don't say the amount But that's the amount that you have to donate to get the shirts Yeah, it's that amount It's that amount Whatever, go online and find out for yourself Like Smell and Floyd as his number one show And then Jonathan went online and got the road trip cooler And likes her infinite variety, blues, crews, and black back to the country Again, all those donations get doubled this week Just until the 22nd And remember, feel free if you're pledging to the station You can pledge during this show, it doesn't mean you like the show necessarily You don't even have to put that in there But because the money all goes to the same place Yeah, it doesn't matter And we don't get any great glory one way or the other given the amounts I mean, if you want to pledge, you're happy to be listening right now I still remember the first time I pledged I was listening to WRT, it was two in the morning I was counting the money at the restaurant I was the night manager I was counting the money at the restaurant And there were some guys and they were playing some really good SCA music And I was just listening and counting the money And they said, "Hey, nobody's listening, but you are!" And I thought, "Yeah, I am!" So I pledged to do it in the morning, you know? And it was good music and I was enjoying it And nobody else was pledging, so You know, if you just had to be listening, sitting there listening And maybe you've never heard Mel and Floyd before, I never went to again But you know, you can still pledge to WRT It's cool, because we're not Mel and Floyd, we're Ruby and Pants That's a good point Yeah, we can just speak and do whatever we want Screw those guys I know, I think it's funny that we announced the best radio duo And it's not Mel or Floyd today Yeah, exactly Exactly It's the backups Hey, you'll be probably unhappy to hear this But the company that built the Titanic finally announced bankruptcy That's true, Harlan and Wolf, it's the British holding company That built the Titanic, you know, the ship that went down over a hundred years ago The unsinkable ship that sank The unsinkable ship that sank You know, it took a long time going through the court system But the bankruptcy proceedings are fine, no They had been doing pretty well for quite a while In Britain, you know, the companies last longer than they do in the United States They're not quite as cutthroat as our great American hyper-capitalism So they had managed to exist as a company for many years after the fiasco associated with the RMS Titanic And done pretty well But the shipbuilding company, which is 163 years old And cited in Belfast in Ireland, of course They had been doing relatively well, but of course new technology And larger funding needs and made things problematic for them So they got in over their heads and slowly started to go down Deck by deck And finally they sank out of the way That's pretty good Hey, we got to take a quick break and play some announcements But I just wanted to thank our mindless minion DQ To make sure that those of you who are listening to the show in the future Are able to hear it, he does all our file management, gets the show up On the website and on all your favorite podcast feeds So thank you, mindless minion DQ You bet Do I think good coming up in the second half? Nope, not a thing I got a story about these really cool goals Who are kind of like pirates What are they? Goals? Birds? Oh, oh, oh, goals, yeah Oh, oh, oh, oh, goals, yeah Oh, wow, pirate goals Pirate goals? That sounds very good I'm going to stay around just to listen to that Alright, we'll be right back And we're back Let's have a little reproductive rights round up here Oh, do we have them back? Well, little things are happening all over the country Because now, of course, it's down at the state level A lot of this stuff And you may have heard, but I just want to remind everybody That the Missouri Supreme Court rejected a bid to strike a question on the November ballot So there's a question on the ballot In November, in the state of Missouri That will ask voters whether or not they want to establish a right to abortion in the state constitution And there was an attempt, basically, to get that off the ballot So, of course, you don't want people voting on things But the seven-member court handed down a one-page ruling Less than three hours before the state's deadline for printing ballots So this is like, this makes a great movie, right? You can see them all rushing into the chamber And people nervously wiping their brows and so on The ruling kept off several days of legal maneuvering And of course, the state Republicans made a last-ditch effort to stop the ballot amendment So don't give the people what they want, for goodness' sakes Yeah, it's like, okay, if you are taking it off the ballot You know which way it's going to go, right? Yeah, exactly, but the Supreme Court said of Missouri He said, no, you can't do that, it's on the ballot Also, in North Dakota, another surprise, again The North Dakota judge overturned the state's near total abortion ban On Thursday, saying that the state's constitution protected a woman's right to choose abortion Until the fetus was viable And, of course, this has been appealed By the Attorney General of the state, a person by the name of Drew Grigley, who's a Republican But what it means is that until the appeal goes through the judge's order Allows abortion to be legal in North Dakota Of course, there's only one, well, I don't think there's any, actually I don't think there are any abortion clinics left in the state That's right, because the one that was there moved to Minnesota But still, on the point of the legality of it, at least temporarily, it's in place there Also, I want to mention that the new labor government of Great Britain has changed Their rules, with respect to abortion clinics, which, of course, are available in the United Kingdom They have new measures that prohibit protests within 150 meters That's about 500 feet of clinics or hospitals that offer abortion services And also make it illegal to hand out anti-abortion leaflets in that buffer zone So basically, England and Wales allow abortion to be permitted up to 24 weeks of pregnancy And what they consider to be safeguards, it must be approved by two doctors And, of course, it has to be carried out under their National Health Service But considering the alternative here in the U.S., that sounds pretty good How big is the buffer zone again? Again, 500 feet Okay It's not great, but it's not very 500 feet, not that much, feet But it's still better than the alternatives Yeah, absolutely I was telling you about these pirate goals Birders are flocking to Wisconsin Point in Superior for the annual Jager Fest Jager Fest It's German, there's no reason why you should know that Please I will say I was trying to look up a pronouncer for Jager, but I instead watched a lot of videos Jager just means hunter Okay Anyway, these are parasitic Jagers We're also known as Arctic Skas in Europe And they are goals that attack other birds And get them to give up whatever they have just swallowed So essentially, they're going after seagulls, fly after seagulls They're doing this mostly in the air Just like hit them over and over until the seagull drops, whatever they ate Oh, lovely Apparently, there's thousands of them that go to this area in Superior every year And this is the weekend, so Oh, excellent You know, when we were in Finland a few years ago, the gulls there in Helsinki, they will Basically, they'll just take the food right out of your hand You'll just eat in the sandwich, and they just come swooping right down And it was kind of sad because I saw a situation happen in a park Where there were so many gulls clustered around people's feet There was a bicyclist that was going through, and he couldn't swerve in time And he accidentally hit one of the things, and I think it may have broke it or injured its wing And not a person looked up I was like, "Oh no, what happened with the gull?" and they're all like, "Pfft, what a rube, you know?" The rats of the air You know, I just I'll have to look up and see if I can find which podcast this is, but I was just listening to podcasts Maybe it was on Radio Lab, I'm not sure, I'll look it up They were saying that, you know, sequels are They're declining in population And they're a type of Animal that, you know, is incredibly adaptable And they shouldn't be decreasing in population, right? If something's decreasing in population with the gulls It's not that like one of their food sources is going down It's that like something more drastic is happening And so with this population you're seeing a decline And you're also seeing more of the like shy, quiet, more like the less urban gulls are declining also So you're getting the skulls that are like involved with people And really seeing as the rats of the sky So, I don't know, seagulls Could be, they're eating too much human food I remember they did a study many years ago down at the Memorial Union Of the ducks, because the ducks that are along the shoreline And they all had like high blood pressure They were like, you know, pre-diabetic and things like that Because people give them like potato chips and things It's like, you know, don't give the duck a lot of salt This is not a good idea Hey, going on to another topic here that's related a little bit New research, this is, you know, pregnancy is not an easy thing And it really isn't And a new study that was published in Nature Neuroscience on Monday It adds to this picture by documenting MRI's brain changes They're using MRIs to look at brain changes In one woman's pregnancy, they did 26 brain scans with this individual 4 before pregnancy, 15 during and 7 afterwards And they found some pretty dramatic and a little unnerving things As a result, although the subject was unaware of any symptoms Or changes that affected the brain Well, how would you tell, you know, you're doing it from your own inside, right? I think I'm paying attention Okay, who's paying attention or whether you're paying attention? But she exhibited profound differences by the ninth week of gestation 80% of 400 brain areas showed decreases in gray matter volume And cortical thickness In other words, the brain was pruning itself in various ways Picking itself somewhat simpler Some areas shrank by as much as 4% as a result of this pregnancy The senior author of this study, a woman by the name of Emily Jacobs Who's a neuroscience at UC Santa Barbara said that Pregnancy brain trinkage may not be a bad thing Because it enables the brain to become more focused Yeah, right, nice save But, I mean, she's right about one thing This often happens in puberty as well, infancy You're all over the map with everything And then you're kind of like certain things You're not using those avenues anymore And so there's no reason to have them around But the volume loss persisted two years postpartum Suggesting that pregnancy hormones actually prompt permanent etchings in the brain So the brain changes And that change stains around for a couple years after delivery Man, I feel like I Don't think I can afford it No, I don't have that much brain Now we're going to lose It's Pete and I got a fear who's never going to survive I do like the excuse, right? I do like the "oh, sorry, pregnancy brain" Like you can pull up this article It's better than gin brain, come on In the total scheme of things I will say I like the grace that happened post-COVID When you were able to be like, oh, sorry, brain fog It's not a nice experience brain fog But it is nice to have an excuse that people are like, oh, okay I'll give you a little grace about that That's what President Biden should have used Anyway, I'll use that as a reason to consider whether or not I'm going to have children Because if I need the excuse to be a little forgetful I think we mentioned this on the show last week, but there was a tape that came to the fore this last week That said that Nixon, President Nixon, almost a little over 50 years ago In a conversation he had with his minions in the White House Even though he had a public policy of being very firmly anti-marawanna Privately, I did not think it was that dangerous and expressed this view on more than one occasion What I was amused by, and I knew this would happen almost instantly There are tons of Nixon smoking weed memes out there I sent one to Mel We used to exchange little images and jokes and stuff during the week And I sent one to Mel because I knew there would be one Nixon token up, sure enough, there's a few And we should get that printed up largely for the studio I think that would be a perfect Melon Floyd t-shirt if we wanted to have like individualized premiums that we gave out during pledge drives Hey, did you know the Wisconsin DNR will pay you for bushels of red pine cones? Really? Yeah, so it's part of their reforesting project They need people to collect red pine cones so they don't really have enough staff to do it So they're incentivizing it? Yeah, they pay $150 per bushel Which I don't know what a bushel is, but seems like a pretty good rate It's four pecs Cleared it all up for me I love you, a bushel and a pec dude This is the thing about growing up in Kentucky, you know all kinds of crazy stuff A bushel and a pec and a hug around the neck That's the song I got tears in my ears from standing on my head crying crying since you've been gone By Doris Day? Oh, you're gonna play it? I'm gonna play it Yeah, let's do it I didn't realize Doris Day sang it I gotta make sure there's no ads Oh, that's gonna be I also make sure they're not like doing a brain scan over here It looks like we can't play it because we have an ad blocker on and YouTube says it's a violation of YouTube's terms and services Oh, we have an ad blocker on, okay Yeah, good for us Good for us Anyway, so you just have to rely on what you just said Well, of course, I heard it with a country, you know I've got a little, you know, how I love you, a bushel and a pec a bushel and a pec and a hug around the neck My favorite country song when I was a kid was when my mother taught me was I was looking back to see if you were looking back to see if I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me That's a really good one Yeah, I know When I was about 10, I thought that was the greatest song I've ever written It's the whole reflexivity of it, just made it hysterically funny Oh, let's see Oh, by the way, and one more abortion rights related story A new study published last week found an increase in the use of tubal sterilization In which women have their fallopian tubes tied or removed to permanently prevent pregnancy One of my sisters did this And what's interesting is it's increased in the six months after The 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade So all of these white nationalists are thinking We need more white babies or whatever they're thinking That motivates them for this craziness People are outsmarting them, apparently It's basically, it was most pronounced in states And here's the, here's the other shoe dropping In those states that effectively ban abortion sterilization drove 39% By December of 2022 The study suggests that the Dobbs decision affected not just abortion access But, and this is from a Associate Professor of Reproductive Sciences at Columbia It also is affecting the decisions that women are making about contraception as well This is a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association You think that's next? Do you think tube tying and contraception is what's going to be next Or on the cutting room floor people are going to attack? It's an evolutionary struggle I mean, it's just kind of like, you know, you do this I get a, you know, point counter point Maybe, maybe That's a very good, I didn't even thought of that Or maybe that's an excellent point That's an excellent point Well, yeah, I mean, you said it's like, you know, maybe less babies are being born Which goes against the point of why people maybe wanted Or maybe that why people want abortion illegal But it's also, it's like fundamentally about controlling people into their bodies Oh, yeah, of course This feels like one of those things Maybe you have to get like a, have a real, a real, in parentheses or in quotations I had a friend Patricia many years ago who was really good and very interesting historian and archivist And she had a collection and this is going to sound bizarre everybody And you just got to know where she's coming from here She had a collection of little metals that the Nazis gave out for motherhood They would give you these little iron crosses that were on these very feminine little things You could put her on your neck And if you had like 12 kids, you got a little, like a little iron cross You know, Bermuda height, you know, from motherhood I mean, duh Are we surprised? No, we're not surprised, of course not So that's, she was, she thought that was a There was something like morbidly fascinating for about things like that And of course here we are today, morbidly fascinated A totally left field story There was a cat that was lost in Yellowstone I guess a family was on vacation to Yellowstone They were originally from California and it got spooked and ran into the, to the old wooded area And they had a leave without it, two months later it was found in California It traveled 900 miles Until someone scanned its microchip and contacted the owners Wow Two months and 900 miles Wow I think, I think it stole a car Or a hop on a train, something like that, you know? Hot wire in a car That's what Scamp would do The cat's name was Rainbow Spelled R-A-Y-N-E Space-B-E-A-U Rainbow Made it all the way home Excellent Good for your regularly spelled rainbow Oh dear lord Hey, here's something to think about You know, have you ever seen a scorpion? You must have seen scorpions I've seen a scorpion, they're horrible Have you ever been sunk by one? Yeah, we had a friend who was stung by one one time It was his backpack, we were coming back from Arizona And it just kind of popped out And we got the specimen right away Because companion just kind of like stomped on it Stomp that critter flat But, you know, you can stomp them flat But you know, 400 million years ago They were a lot bigger, it turns out They were effectively as big as sharks Back in the day And they were called sea scorpions And they were able to, you know, cross oceans And do all sorts of things That we don't normally think that arthropods could do But they did, they had huge claws Big old beefy exoskeleton Strong pair of legs, or set of legs rather For swimming And some of the bigger sea scorpions They kind of ruled the seas That was their deal, they were They were large and in charge But apparently, for some strange reason The fossil records of these critters Called Eurypterids It peaked around the Salurian period You remember the Salurian period That was about 444 million years ago And then they started to die out After that, nobody's quite exactly sure why And today we just have these little guys It's the fallen, kind of fallen from glory It's a result, you know But I'm happy with it Yeah, yeah, that sounds horrifying There's plenty of reasons not to go into the ocean And that would have been Sea scorpions Sea scorpions seems like a big note A big note Hey, the B-Cycle Which is owned by Wisconsin-based track Is being sold to a national company Called the Bicycle Transit System Which will become the largest The largest docked bike share provider In the U.S. after this This acquisition of B-Cycle So, a new owner Very nice I like the B-Cycles, I like to run on them Yeah, yeah, yeah I don't have to take care of a bike And they're electric And I go a little faster I have a mountain bike that I have not ridden in ages It's just sitting there doing nothing Resting? Of course, with me, a mountain bike When I bought it, I said Could you put some fenders on it? And the guy's like, "Okay" I said, "Could you put a bell on it?" He's like, "Alright, would you like a little pig basket on the front too?" Yes, please! How did you know? You put daisies on it I love it when you like Work with people in that kind of like You know, retail environment And they're funny too, you know, like they're funny back I just love it Hey, there was a new study that showed that A 10,000 feet up, scientists still found hundreds of microbes Oh my gosh They did a, on just Monday of this last week The researchers reported that on flights over Japan At altitudes as high as 10,000 feet They were able to catch Many hundreds, in fact, of different types of bacteria and fungi And the team estimated that the microbes had flown over 1200 miles When they had been captured So that cat thinks it's getting around According to Xavier Rodo, who was a computational ecologist I didn't even know there was such a thing At the Barcelona, or Barcelona Institute for Global Health He said, "A third of the bacteria and slightly more of the fungi Can be considered potential human pathogens" Oh my God So there's a bunch of stuff and it's all high altitude microbes And basically it can kind of filter out into the ground Makes the whole idea of like catching snowflakes on your tongue sound A lot less appetizing The idea for the flights originated from Dr. Rodo's research There's a mysterious condition known as Kawasaki disease And it causes fevers, rashes, and sometimes deadly heart attacks And they often wondered where it came from Well, apparently the sky comes from the sky Yeah So, umbrellas and all weather, that's my new rule I've been putting off purchasing my hazmat suit This was the time Time has come How do you feel about Target? Are you a Target shopper? Are you like one of those people who gets really excited about going to Target? I don't get excited I've bought some things, they're lamps and pillows and things like that Well, an eight-year-old Ohio girl took her family's SUV On a solo trip to Target This does not sound like it ended well Ah, fine Apparently the only thing she hit was a mailbox And she made it to Target And was inside the store shopping How old was she again? Eight You think they can't target Target folks? They start young apparently He really wanted to get the new Stanley or whatever Kids are buying these days I just had this image of her with her nose just peeking up over the steering wheel barely Well, that's one thing about kids I mean, I have a baby sister who's like 12 years younger than me And I remember she wanted to do everything the adults did Many people say that's non-Western cultures You often have the kids follow you around And they learn everything by just watching you and doing things that you do So she's probably watched mom do that an awful lot to be my guest She's like it's time for some retail therapy I'm headed to Target Exactly Things are getting a little difficult at home Oh, let's see if I got any Get a final story for us Oh, let's talk about marmosets Ooh, we love marmosets They're a little South American monkey And like many little South American monkeys They use a ray of chirps and whistles and trills And so on to defend their territory You know, say they've got Found some food, warn of danger, whatever But apparently there's a little name for each marmoset They have these little whistle-like calls to communicate to one another But when they do this and they are not within eyesight of each other They kind of let each other know who the author of it is And so these scientists This was somebody at Colorado State University Did an extensive study and found out that There are actually kind of signature marmoset names That they add to their communications to one another When they can't see each other This can't get us adorable It's like spall [laughter] Exactly People, it's amazing! That's cute! I like it! [laughter] Well... [music] [music] [music] And a hug around the neck A bushy [music] That boy's from Ohio, he's heard this song, he knows it A bushy land a back, thank you Jaguar Alright buddy, high five, yeah, alright [laughter] It's even creepier than rocket biker [laughter] Bucker up and kiss grandma [laughter] No tongue grandma [laughter] That just walked off the street, gave us $50 Whoa, we've got an in-person physical off the street donation And cash, love that Very nice We are, we've got to go, we've got to declare the weekend [squeaking] The weekend! Pants, it was nice to see you, nice to hang out Great to see you Yeah, I'd like hanging out with you on air Yeah, we do [laughter] Alright everyone, thanks for tuning in Mel will be back next week And thanks for... With Tails to tell Yeah, thanks for all the donations Thanks for voting for Melon Floyd as your favorite radio duo Up next, we have the real Jaguar Cause it is your favorite radio station The LRT, 89.9 FM, Madison I want to thank, real quick, Eric and Michael And Eric and Jonathan and Chris Who made donations during the show Thanks everyone [music]