Honey: Nature's Wonder Sugar

Honey is an amazing thing. Just ask any bee. They make a ton of it. So much that humans get what bees can't use and that's a lot of honey. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:06Josh Clark?

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• 1:40Speaker 02

  All right, everybody. Chuck here wrapping up our Think Spring playlist with number 10, All About Honey. Honey, colon, nature's wonder sugar. And if you think you knew a thing or two about honey, think again, because this is some honey-centric goodness, and you're going to learn a lot of stuff that you never knew about honey. For instance, you can put it on toast with butter, and it's delicious. So I hope everyone enjoys Honey, Nature's Wonder Sugar.

• 2:14Speaker 04

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, Jerry's here, barely, and this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 2:32Speaker 05

  Well, we should explain what that means. It's very ambiguous and strange, though.

• 2:36Josh Clark?

  Should we, though?

• 2:39Speaker 05

  Jerry had a poor internet connection and was a few minutes late. That's it. She's barely here.

• 2:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Mystery solved. Joke killed.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  It feels tenuous, too.

• 2:48Josh Clark?

  That she's just barely hanging on by her fingernails?

• 2:51Speaker 05

  Well, no, I think, I don't know, that internet connection just sounded dodgy.

• 2:54Josh Clark?

  That's what I'm saying. She came in like, Houston, we have a problem.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  You know that internet connection sound?

• 3:01Josh Clark?

  Right. Sounds like Apollo 13.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  I'm pretty excited about this one.

• 3:06Josh Clark?

  Me too. I even ate some honey for lunch today.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  I had a little dab at brekkie, which I don't usually eat, but I ate another toast with a spun honey spread.

• 3:19Josh Clark?

  Good for you, man. So spun honey, are you talking about the creamed honey? Is that what I'm hearing now?

• 3:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, creamed spun, or I think there's one more word for it, but we always called it spun honey growing up. And boy, is it good. And guess what? It is just as healthful, has just as many healthful properties as regular honey. It doesn't spinning it, or the process of getting it to that state, doesn't change it at all.

• 3:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's like honey in a different format. Like if you had a really great song, like,

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  "Play that funky music, white boy," and you had it on 8-track, but you also had it on record. It's the same song, it's just in two different formats, right?

• 4:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:01Josh Clark?

  Same thing.

• 4:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, I like that.

• 4:03Josh Clark?

  I really dislike that song, though.

• 4:05Speaker 05

  I really do too, actually.

• 4:06Josh Clark?

  Um, although I have a great memory of it. Uh, I guess sometime around Piedmont Park, it must have been St. Patrick's Day. This like car full of dudes came up, they were wearing like green wigs and everything. They were ready to throw down for St. Patrick's Day. And they were blaring that song and like everybody in the car was singing it, having like the best time. And then

• 4:29Speaker 05

  Right on the money.

• 4:30Josh Clark?

  It totally was. And then as they got out of the car, all of them are like, just like boogying down the street still, like going to the bar. And one of them like stopped it kind of and like turned around and, and made eye contact with me. It was, I think, good, he'll be embarrassed for the rest of his life about that. I didn't even stare him down. He just, he initiated that embarrassing situation.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  So you, you could tell he felt some shame because you were just looking at him?

• 4:55Josh Clark?

  A little bit, and again, not staring them down. You know me, I'll stare somebody down, but not these guys. This was, this was, he initiated it.

• 5:03Speaker 05

  But hey, good for them. I bet they had a blast.

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  So honey, I think is what we were originally talking about, right?

• 5:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. And the Grabster helped us with this one, and this was, uh, my commission. Because Emily is very much into, uh, you know, she's gotten very much into her herbs and growing herbs and

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  And spices.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  Natural remedies and things, and honey is a big part of that. Uh, and although we are not beekeeping yet, that could be on the docket for us.

• 5:29Josh Clark?

  I hope so, man. I think beekeeping is one of the neatest things you can do. I'll bet it's so relaxing.

• 5:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, uh, she's, she's interested in it and, uh, so that, that might happen.

• 5:40Josh Clark?

  Tell me how it goes, if she does it.

• 5:42Speaker 05

  I will.

• 5:42Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'll follow up.

• 5:44Josh Clark?

  Um, we've actually done an entire episode on beekeeping.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:48Josh Clark?

  It was one of our best, if you ask me, certainly our most homespun episode by far. Um, so we're not going to talk too much about beekeeping, but you pretty much can't discuss honey without also talking at least a little bit about beekeeping. It's so beekeeping adjacent that it would be weird to not mention it. But I, I just want to say, if you have not heard our beekeeping episode, or you haven't heard it in a while, go listen to it because it's a really, really good app.

• 6:13Speaker 05

  Did we do bees and beekeeping?

• 6:16Josh Clark?

  Yes. Yeah, we've done bees, beekeeping, now honey.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, and one of our TV show episodes was about bees.

• 6:23Josh Clark?

  It was.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  One of the sillier episodes, I think.

• 6:26Josh Clark?

  It was. I wrote that episode.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's probably what was silly. I think you had a good eye for the absurd for that show.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot.

• 6:35Speaker 05

  And I mean that in a complimentary way.

• 6:37Josh Clark?

  Oh, I took it that way.

• 6:38Speaker 05

  Okay, I love absurdist comedy, and you nailed it.

• 6:41Josh Clark?

  So, let's talk a little bit about honey. Ed helped us with this one, I think you just said. And I think he did about the best, most clinical description of honey that you could possibly come up with.

• 6:54Speaker 05

  Where's that? Was that like his definition?

• 6:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, he talks about basically what honey is and how it's made.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  Oh, so you're just saying, start from, take it from the top?

• 7:04Josh Clark?

  Basically. But I thought the way he did it was like, here's, it's totally unambiguous.

• 7:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  Completely understandable.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  Agreed.

• 7:11Josh Clark?

  And it's just, it's a good descriptor of honey and how it's made.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is, this is good stuff by the Grabster. So, yeah, a bit of a refresher, though, but we all know that bees like to fly around to different flowers and stick their face in them and dance all over them and do kind of fun things. And there is a sugary liquid called nectar in flowering plants, and bees are wild about the stuff for a lot of reasons. One reason is like, you know, sometimes they just drink it, like, they want to save that stuff in what's called their crop or their honey stomach to bring back to the hive. That's their main job. But when they're out there working all day, they're also like, let me take a little bit of this sweet stuff down for me.

• 7:54Josh Clark?

  I wonder if there's any bees out there, seriously, that have like a bit of a problem with nectar.

• 8:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, it goes from one for me, three for you, to three for me, one for you?

• 8:04Josh Clark?

  Kind of. I wonder if there's some that like just kind of drink it more than others. There's gotta be.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Maybe, sure.

• 8:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, yes, but for the most part, when they're out there harvesting and foraging for nectar, they're using their crop, a honey stomach. Which they can store, I think, a thousand flowers worth of nectar in? That is a lot, a lot of nectar. Which is weird because I saw that it can grow to about 100 times its size. So 100 times its initial size, holding a thousand flowers worth of nectar. That's just a, that's a very efficient organ. And it just sits there. It's not doing anything. It's not digesting. It's just basically for carrying back to the hive.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  By the way, I had the most amazing dad joke that I failed to tell.

• 8:54Josh Clark?

  What was it?

• 8:55Speaker 05

  Should I tell it now?

• 8:56Josh Clark?

  Of course.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  When you said it, it just popped into my head. That's why, that's why I know that I'm just on the way down. Comedically.

• 9:04Josh Clark?

  Well, that means the podcast is on the way down too.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 9:08Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 9:08Speaker 05

  Uh, you were talking about the bees having the problem with drinking too much honey.

• 9:12Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:13Speaker 05

  I said, well, you know, they could always just go to a BB meeting.

• 9:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, boy. That was good. That wasn't bad. That was a really good one.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  I don't know. All right. Well, I would love to hear from people. Terrible or borderline genius?

• 9:26Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, I'm registering the first vote and I'm going to say somewhere in the middle of those two.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  I was about to say there's no in-between, but of course there is.

• 9:34Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 9:35Speaker 05

  All right. So you, where'd you leave off with eating pollen?

• 9:37Josh Clark?

  That they take the nectar back to their, their, their nest, their hive.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  Oh, okay. Well, then I'll chime in here with the pollen part.

• 9:44Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 9:45Speaker 05

  Uh, bees are obviously accidentally transferring this pollen. But you know, some of this pollen is getting eaten and mixed in with that honey too. Uh, because they love it because it's got protein and fat. And so what you end up with, when you go back to the hive, is a gut or crop or a honey stomach full of this nectar, a little bit of pollen. There's probably like just dust and things from the air. And they start puking it up into each other's mouths, chewing on it some, puking it around, transferring it to one another until it's ready for storage.

• 10:21Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 10:22Speaker 05

  Which sounds gross.

• 10:23Josh Clark?

  It is, but Ed makes a really good point here that, um, they're not actually, it's not actually bee vomit. Honey's not bee vomit. Now, I've said that before. So I think I'm kind of being inadvertently taken to task by Ed. Because again,

• 10:37Speaker 05

  Oh, did you really?

• 10:37Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, definitely. I've said that every chance I've ever had. But the, again, the bee crop, the honey crop is not digesting. So what they're regurgitating is virtually the same thing that's going in. So it's not really puke. It's just something else. But yes, they are transferring it from mouth to mouth. And as each bee takes another mouthful of nectar and then passes it around, they're chewing it for a little bit. And one of the things they're doing is absorbing some of the moisture inside. They're also mixing in their own enzymes. And what they're doing in that sense, they're transforming nectar into honey.

• 11:17Josh Clark?

  So honey is a mixture of bee enzymes, flower nectar, pollen, and that's dehydrated and combines to form brand new compounds. And that's, that's what honey is.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. And as we'll see, there, there can be other things in there because it's nature. And these are sort of messy, although beautiful processes. So as we'll, as you'll see, when we talk about like completely raw and filtered honey, there may be some bee legs in there.

• 11:47Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  And some other little bee, but there may be a piece of a wing. Because, you know, this is just how things go out there in the wild.

• 11:54Josh Clark?

  And sometimes some bees have really bad days.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  Yes, that's when they go to the bee bee meetings.

• 12:01Josh Clark?

  So there's, there's another way that what we've been talking about is blossom honey. What most people think of when they think of honey. There's actually one other way to make honey. And do you remember in our ant episode where ants are ranchers of aphids? And the aphids suck the, the juice out of plants and produce honeydew? Well, bees go find that honeydew in some cases and can actually make honey from the sap of the stems, leaves and like bark of trees and other plants. And they basically harvest that like they harvest nectar from flowers. And so there's a, there's an entirely different way to produce honey that comes straight from the plant, not even from the flowers. And that's called honeydew honey.

• 12:43Speaker 05

  Honeydew honey. Have you ever had that?

• 12:45Josh Clark?

  I don't think I have. I was looking it up to see like what some types of honeydew honey are. And I couldn't find many and nothing that I found sounded like anything I've had before.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  Okay. We should point out that not all bees produce honey, obviously. There are a lot of different species of bees and we went over those in great detail in the bee episode. But the honeybee is from the genus apis. And there are some other bees that do make honey, but like the chief honeybee is the Western honeybee. This is the stud when it comes to making great honey. This is the one we domesticated. This is the one that makes so much honey. They have enough for them. They have enough for us. And everybody is happy, basically, which is one of the

• 13:36Speaker 05

  things I love about beekeeping. It seems like one of the, geez, few things where we extract something from nature for ourselves where there's enough to go around. And if you do it in the right way, it doesn't harm the thing that gave it to you.

• 13:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that is kind of a beautiful thing about it. And as we'll see, the fact that honey exists is kind of miraculous. And that's just kind of like the cherry on the top, Chuck, that we can harvest honey without harming or the bees or taking some of their head stash for us. Like, they just make a little extra for us and we can take that. I think it's wonderful, too.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  So, yeah, you know, you mentioned we have a whole episode on beekeeping, but as a short refresher, this has been happening for a long time. They were, people were collecting honey, you know, in the Mesolithic period. So there are like cave drawings that depict this stuff. So we've always liked the honey as humans. And then, you know, there's a belief that it may have just, like beekeeping may have happened by accident, when a hive maybe set up in a jar or basket or something that was outside at somebody's place and they went, hey, wait a minute, like this awesome honey is now in this jar on my back porch. Like, I wonder if we could do this, like intentionally and do it on purpose. And

• 14:59Speaker 05

  they kind of just started doing it. That's what the thought is, at least.

• 15:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they think that originally, maybe some of the earliest, earliest artificial hives were some sort of clay pot or something that they repurposed for that. Sometimes maybe they came across a hive and they're like, this is pretty firmly attached to the stick. I'm just gonna take the whole stick home with me.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  I hope.

• 15:21Josh Clark?

  Farm it like that, you know? Yeah, there's, there's regardless, at some point, somebody probably just stumbled upon this. And then in very short order, it started to spread. They think that beekeeping at least goes back about 5,000 years ago. There's evidence of it in Egypt, the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. And then China, about 800 years after that, evidence of beekeeping starts up. And you would guess the people of China and the people of Mesopotamia may not have been in contact at the same time or at that time. So it's really possible that beekeeping just kind of independently

• 16:02Josh Clark?

  grew up or evolved in different societies and cultures around the world independently.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it was something because you're using like clay jars and things like you were saying, you didn't need to forge metal. It wasn't super expensive. It was something that

• 16:18Speaker 05

  there was a low barrier to entry, I guess, is what you would say these days.

• 16:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, totally.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  So, and it was really delicious. And as we'll soon find out, super beneficial. So it became a big deal.

• 16:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of the earliest artificial hives is still pretty much the symbol for a beehive. If you look at any A. A. Milne Winnie the Pooh illustrations.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:43Josh Clark?

  Like it's called, it's, it's basically a cone, a basket-y cone turned upside down. So you take an ice cream cone, turn it upside down on the ice cream part, make it kind of bubbly. And there you go. That's a skep.

• 16:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's great. And that's why where you get your beehive hairdo is named after these things. And, you know, things just advanced from there. And we'll talk a little bit about that later, but I say we take a break now.

• 17:09Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  And then talk about what's in honey and what makes it so good for us.

• 17:13Josh Clark?

  Sounds good.

• 17:27Speaker 06

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• 17:39Josh Clark?

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• 18:42Josh Clark?

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• 20:48Speaker 02

  Okay, so the question of what is in honey is very easy to answer because it's almost all sugar. There is some water in there, although, you know, like we mentioned, part of the process of getting to the honey state is to remove as much moisture as possible. But you still need some moisture. So it's, you know, something that you can squirt out of a plastic bear.

• 21:13Josh Clark?

  Sure. Which you can later make a bong out of.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  I think most everyone that was in college when True Romance came out probably tried that.

• 21:22Josh Clark?

  Totally. And by the way, so long sixth grade classes that were just listening to this episode.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  Poor teacher who just ran to the front of the class.

• 21:31Josh Clark?

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  I'm sorry.

• 21:34Josh Clark?

  What's a bong?

• 21:36Speaker 05

  Um, was that Ralph Wiggum?

• 21:38Josh Clark?

  It was, it was a pretty good one.

• 21:41Speaker 05

  So it's mostly sugar and it's, believe it or not, it's mostly simple sugar. Fructose and glucose, there are some complex sugars, but that's not to say just because honey is mainly just sugar and simple sugar, that it's not complex because it really is.

• 21:58Josh Clark?

  It is super complex. It's again, the word miraculous just keeps springing to mind.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:03Josh Clark?

  And I'm definitely not one of those intelligent design people. I just think honey is something really special though. And so like, yes, it does have the simple sugars. It has very complex sugars. Let me throw out a couple of these names just to kind of blow your mind.

• 22:16Speaker 05

  Did you practice? All right.

• 22:17Josh Clark?

  Uh, there's maltopentaos.

• 22:20Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 22:21Josh Clark?

  I didn't add the extra T in there. I wanted to so bad. Galactos, that's an amazing name. There's also isomaltotrios.

• 22:30Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 22:30Josh Clark?

  These are not your average everyday sugars like fructose and glucose, both of which are found in honey, but that's just the sugars. And again, the simple sugars combined with other enzymes in the bees' mouths to create these much more sophisticated sugars, some of which have like actual protective health properties we've found, but that's just the sugars. There's also amino acids, enzymes, polyphenols, flavonoids. And when you start looking at all of the different things that pop up in honey, that's in honey, and you look at each one individually and you look them up, you will find that they do all sorts of amazing things. And when you put all of it together, you just can't help but step back and say, honey is miraculous.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  Yeah. And let's have a spoonful.

• 23:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. That's the second thought that follows.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  Uh, it is, it has, in fact, you mentioned amino acids. It has all nine, all nine essential amino acids, uh, which are the ones that we need that we don't make in our own body. So we have to eat them. Um, it is, and we'll get to the healthy stuff in like 12 seconds, but we do need to mention that one of the other great things about honey is that it's, I don't know about lasts forever, maybe. I know they pulled honey out of like Egyptian tombs and reconstituted it to where it was fine. So maybe it does last forever, but it is acidic. It has antibacterial properties. So that means honey will last you a long, long time. And if you find an old, hard, you know, lump of honey in a jar in your house that you forgot about,

• 24:04Speaker 05

  you can probably make that honey awesome again with very little effort.

• 24:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Supposedly what you do is you just throw it in that jar and you take that jar and you put it in like a bath of very hot tap water. Do not heat it up on the stove. Just put it in hot tap water and very slowly that, that um, chunk of honey will turn back into liquid gold, AKA honey.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's, uh, there's a lot of mixed messaging around um, honey being toxic. If it's heated, um, beyond a certain point.

• 24:33Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 24:33Speaker 05

  Uh, because the, you know, there, there's ancient wisdom that says it becomes toxic. Other people these days say, no, it doesn't. So I was like, you know, I mean, surely there's a study about this and I didn't really find one. I found one about lab rats and the honey heated with ghee. But that wasn't only honey.

• 24:54Josh Clark?

  That sounds kinda good.

• 24:55Speaker 05

  And I, but I don't know if I just didn't have time to find the study because it seems like a simple enough thing to research. Like you heat the honey.

• 25:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  And, and feed it to a monkey and see if it dies.

• 25:11Josh Clark?

  So.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  I'm kidding, by the way.

• 25:13Josh Clark?

  But the thing is, Chuck, is you raised something that came up for me later on that I'll just put here. Like, the stuff we do to animals is unconscionable. A hundred years from now, our cohort is going to be looked at as just so barbaric. And one of the things that kind of raised my hackles was, as we'll see later on, one of the things they think honey can help with is neurological disorders or mental imbalances. And they test that stuff on rats. And one of the things they found was that in rats, it recovers hopeless behavior. Sorry, in mice that have undergone restraint stress for 21 days. And I was like, restraint stress doesn't sound very good. What is that?

• 25:57Josh Clark?

  They put the mouse in a tube where it can't move any of its limbs or body or anything.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  Jeez.

• 26:04Josh Clark?

  And they kept it there for 21 days. And you think, being put in a tube as a human being for 21 days where you couldn't move? Like, I can barely breathe just saying that out loud, right? That's 21 human days. Imagine what 21 days is in the length of a mouse's life. And then, by the way, after they studied the mouse after taking it out of the tube, they probably killed it shortly after that. So that mouse's entire life was spent under restraint stress in a tube. And this is just one of the myriad things that we do to animals. And the more I just kind of come across this stuff casually mentioned in this really dry clinical tone in peer-reviewed papers, the more I'm just like, this is, I don't know that we can justify this.

• 26:48Josh Clark?

  And yes, we've come up with so many amazing things to help humanity along. But I really think we should be, we should be allocating a significant amount of our research efforts to figuring out how to not use animals to come up with those same amazing breakthroughs. Because it's just wrong. It's cruel and wrong. And there's, there's really basically no justification for it in the greater scheme of things. And that's my soapbox.

• 27:15Speaker 05

  I think that's your first soapbox moment of 2023.

• 27:18Josh Clark?

  Oh, it definitely is now that you mention it. Sure.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  All right, that means we're going to toast some Amaro.

• 27:24Josh Clark?

  Clink.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  That is good for your body as well.

• 27:28Josh Clark?

  Uh huh. What's your Amaro that you like?

• 27:30Speaker 05

  Congratulations. You know, I got a few of them. That's going to be a future, like very near future topic, by the way.

• 27:35Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay, cool.

• 27:35Speaker 05

  Because I've gotten very into Amaro.

• 27:37Josh Clark?

  Mine is Montenegro.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  Montenegro is fantastic.

• 27:41Josh Clark?

  Amaro Montenegro is so good. And it's really good to mix cocktails with, too.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  It sure is. A little bourbon and some Amaro or some rye and Amaro.

• 27:48Josh Clark?

  Little bit of that. It'll fix it.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  Delicious.

• 27:50Josh Clark?

  It'll fix a mouse that's been in restraint stress for 21 days right up.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  Some orange bitters, a little shake of that.

• 27:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's good stuff. Even just also Chuck, by the way, just a little bit of Amaro Montenegro, like I think an ounce of that and some good seltzer is really good on its own, too.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  That's a digest thief and a half.

• 28:11Josh Clark?

  It definitely is.

• 28:13Speaker 05

  That's great. You know, recently I went to LA just for the day to see our friend Ben Harrison.

• 28:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 05

  And our friend and booking agent Josh Lindgren and our, my friend Adam Pranica, you'd love Adam. You just haven't hung out with him much, but we went to Musso and Frank. And I'll just say this, and I haven't been drinking much lately, but we had a day. And we're way too drunk to be in Musso and Frank.

• 28:38Josh Clark?

  I could tell from your Instagram posts from it.

• 28:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:41Josh Clark?

  I was like, Chuck looks really happy in these photos.

• 28:44Speaker 05

  This great big meal and drinks and all this stuff at one of the oldest restaurants in Hollywood. And at the very end, Ben Harrison just shouts out, is that it? We were like, yes, nothing else. And Ben went, four Amaros.

• 28:58Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah?

• 28:59Speaker 05

  So that's how we ended our meal.

• 29:00Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 29:02Speaker 05

  Which is busts up with a hangover. So let's not blow all of our knowledge on Amaro right here.

• 29:06Josh Clark?

  Well put, Chuck.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  Jerk. All right. So health qualities of honey is where we left off 10 minutes ago. There are lots of health benefits and there are lots of studies that back this up, which is great. There are medicinal uses that have been academically studied and verified. So this isn't like, you know, witchy hokum or woo woo stuff like that. Honey is really, really good for you. And we've known this for a long time. And one of the things that honey is great for is if you have allergies. If you, they did studies where they looked over the course of a couple of months during allergy season. And it had significant reductions in what's called rhinitis.

• 29:49Josh Clark?

  Rhinitis.

• 29:49Speaker 05

  Rhinitis, which is, you know, stuffy nose, sneezing, allergic sort of qualities.

• 29:55Josh Clark?

  Fear of rhinocerai.

• 29:58Speaker 05

  And this was like quite a bit of honey. I think it was one gram of honey per kilogram of body weight.

• 30:04Josh Clark?

  A lot of honey.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  It's a lot of honey, but it works and, you know, it's better than some dumb allergy medication.

• 30:10Josh Clark?

  So you remember our immunotherapy episode from very early on? We talked a lot about eating honey to get over allergies and it totally makes sense because you're exposing yourself to the local pollen. That's why people who say this actually works to get yourself over allergies say it won't, it won't work unless you are eating local honey, meaning like within 20 or I think 30 miles of where you live because you, you're exposing yourself little by little to that pollen and your body's like, oh, this is, this stuff's not that bad. We won't give you any more allergies.

• 30:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. And there's a lot of reasons to eat local honey and eat locally, period. Not the least of which is that's just how it was for gazillion years. You ate what was near you because you couldn't get anywhere else. And that's just sort of the better way to eat.

• 30:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I've really gotten into green grapes lately. They're just so good and they're so good for you. You just always have like a bowl of them out and we just

• 31:06Speaker 05

  I love green grapes.

• 31:07Josh Clark?

  Left grape season and the stuff that's out now is just, it's so bad. It's just like you put in your mouth and there's no like pop to it. It just mushes and I'm like, this is not any good. Yeah, it is like an eyeball. It's really, it's like a rotten eyeball basically.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 31:25Josh Clark?

  I'm, I'm off of grapes. I'm trying to find a grape replacement until they come back in season.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  Grape replacement is not a bad band name. Actually, it is a bad band name, but I could see someone naming their band that.

• 31:34Josh Clark?

  That seems like a side project band name.

• 31:37Speaker 05

  Right. Okay. What about inflammation? That's, you know, inflammation, we've talked a lot about. That's. It's not the root cause of every problem humans have, but inflammation is one of the leading causes of a lot of problems that humans have.

• 31:51Josh Clark?

  Definitely. I think we need to do an episode on that.

• 31:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally.

• 31:54Josh Clark?

  But yeah, I mean, it's behind cardiovascular issues. Your blood pressure might be high. You might have gut problems, arthritis, some types of cancer, and it's your body basically mounting this immune response that is overblown, and so you're suffering as a result, and it has all these terrible effects. Well, the flavonoids that I mentioned are, there's a ton of flavonoids, like 30 different flavonoids found in basically all types of honey, just to varying degrees, depending on what flowers it came from, and they are antioxidants. We've talked about antioxidants and whether or not they actually work or not. The jury's still kind of out, but there

• 32:35Josh Clark?

  are some things that flavonoids do that are like, this is just demonstrably effective. One of the things they do is go to the genes that produce inflammatory proteins and say, nope, not today. You just rest easy. Stop making those things. So they block expression of inflammatory proteins. That's just one of the things that you can find in honey.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, a pretty big one, if you ask me.

• 33:00Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  If you want kind of one of the king daddies of healthful honeys, you've probably heard of manuka honey. It seems to have, I don't know about exploded, but it seems to have really garnered a lot more popularity, garnered popularity? Whatever, you know what I'm saying?

• 33:19Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 33:20Speaker 05

  In more recent years, partially because of marketing and PR, but partially because manuka honey is really good for you. This is a monofloral honey, which means, as we'll talk about a bit more later, that it comes from a single flower, as much as possible, from New Zealand, and it's got a pretty short period in which this flower flowers. And that makes it a more rare honey. That makes it more expensive, of course. But manuka honey kind of does all the things that honey does times, you know, with a plus afterward.

• 33:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, supposedly the active ingredient for manuka honey's antimicrobial properties is methiglyoxal. It's a word as ugly as it sounds spelled out, but it has about 100 times the amount that other types of honey have. And that's one of the reasons why they're, everybody's so bully on manuka honey. I think the other reason is because it is very rare. The manuka shrub grows in fairly remote, isolated regions of New Zealand, so it's hard to get. And that means it's very expensive, so you can sell it for a lot of money. So anything you can say is manuka honey, you can kind of hype, but there does seem to be some, some actual like reality behind the hype.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, like there, there are people who do this and uh, who just like take a spoonful of manuka honey every day as if they're taking their vitamins in the morning or something like that.

• 34:46Josh Clark?

  For sure. And there's another one that's kind of come up recently that has been rivaling manuka's tuulang honey. It grows in Malaysia. The thing is, manuka honey is a monofloral honey, as we'll see, it's just made from the manuka, the flowers of the manuka shrub. Tuulang is called jungle honey. Like it's just made from whatever's flowering in Malaysia. But supposedly the flowers that are growing in the jungles of Malaysia have a lot of amazing properties too. Because people are saying this tuulang, it's the hot new product and so long manuka, you're so over and done with.

• 35:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, jungle honey's a good song title.

• 35:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  Or maybe I'm just thinking jungle boogie.

• 35:27Josh Clark?

  No, jungle honey, sounds good. You put honey with any other word and it's going to make it more appealing, I think, for sure.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  I love the word jungle. It's one of my favorites.

• 35:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you said earlier you were starting your honey file. And I was like, you should call all files your honey file.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Maybe I will. Uh, honey is also good topically. Um, you can put honey, especially something like manuka honey on a skinned knee or something like that, uh, cuts, any kind of stubborn wounds, it's gonna help out with. Um, they've done meta-studies on putting honey on topically, and a lot of these were, uh, it seems like from studies on diabetic foot wounds. This is what Ed found. But, you know, it healed faster, uh, there was less inflammation. Apparently it can reduce nasty odors. And even in diabetic foot wounds helped reduce the need for amputation.

• 36:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, apparently that's with just about any honey you could use for wound healing, not just manuka.

• 36:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:30Josh Clark?

  I saw a paper that said, actually, you might not wanna use manuka because that methoglioxal is something that might actually prevent, um, a diabetic foot ulcer from healing because it's so potent. It might actually like kill off like the, this, the new cells that are trying to form.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 36:48Josh Clark?

  But other honey has been shown, and is honey in general, that it actually does help heal diabetic foot ulcers and really any kind of wound. But the reason they say diabetic ulcers is because they have so much trouble healing because there's so little circulation being led to that wound site that it just basically just persists. And if you slather some honey on there, you can say, goodbye stubborn wound, goodbye.

• 37:14Speaker 05

  Uh, we already talked about blood pressure some, but we should note that some of the studies, uh, have found that it reduces hypertension in women and not men. And that's not to say that it can't in men, but it's in, you know, Ed points this out very astutely that honey is just, there's a lot of studies and meta-studies and things, but, you know, it's something that bees make in nature, uh, and that humans collect. So they aren't always the most consistent results when it comes to studies. And there's so many varieties and so many kinds of bees and where they live, and then the flowers that they're pollinating and getting that nectar from, that it's, uh, just because a study says something, it doesn't mean like that's the end, full stop.

• 37:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one way or the other. Like, didn't find this property actually helpful or did. There just needs to be more study and like, yes, they need to refine the, the study of honey, which I think we're in the, in the midst of.

• 38:12Speaker 05

  Like right now in this podcast?

• 38:13Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. We're helping move it along, I think.

• 38:16Speaker 05

  What about cancer?

• 38:17Josh Clark?

  Cancer is another one. They think that, um, basically there's, there's properties in honey that, um, create apoptosis, which is programmed cell death. And that they help target cancer tumors to, um, to go ahead and, and die. Just die, die, die tumor. Um, and that's basically how chemotherapy works in a lot of ways. So yes, it does seem to have some sort of effect on cancer. I saw that, um, not only has it, has it been shown to work, uh, in the lab, like in, in cell lines of cancer cells, but that it's, it's had some clinical, um, results as well. But apparently when they go after cancer cells, there's something that's called blebbing.

• 39:01Josh Clark?

  And blebbing is where, um, a cell gets pulled away, like its membrane gets pulled away from the cytoskeleton. And there's like a bulge. And at that point, um, you have what's called blebbing and that cell is in very big trouble. So honey goes after cancer cells and makes them bleb.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  Well, you know how I knew it would be something that makes you in trouble?

• 39:26Josh Clark?

  What?

• 39:26Speaker 05

  Is that it's called blebbing?

• 39:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:28Speaker 05

  That can't, that can't be good.

• 39:29Josh Clark?

  No. Oh my God, I'm blebbing. That's not a good sign.

• 39:33Speaker 05

  No one would ever say, oh, that's fantastic. Good for you.

• 39:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Hi, bleb.

• 39:37Speaker 05

  Right. Uh, you mentioned neurological problems earlier a little bit. Um, obviously this can be a whole host of things, but they have found, and this is another, you know, area that there needs to be a lot more testing. Uh, but the clinical trials have shown some pretty good results in things like, uh, you know, depression, uh, dementia, any kind of age-related like mental neurological deterioration, basically. Uh, but even things like convulsions. Uh, they did, there was one study in some, uh, some senior, um, adults that where they had a placebo control group, uh, which had a about 400% greater incidence of dementia.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Then the group that took a daily tablespoon of honey.

• 40:19Josh Clark?

  That is astounding.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  That's huge. Yeah.

• 40:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah. That's the kind of study where it's like, no, that's the end. Nobody else needs to do any more research. Just everybody eat a tablespoon of honey. And that's actually, that raises a good question that a lot of people have. It's like, wait a minute. Honey is a sweetener. Yes, it's natural, but it's got tons of sugar in it. So is it really okay to eat a tablespoon of honey a day? And the answer is, in the West especially, you, you should, yes, go ahead and eat a tablespoon of honey a day. But make sure that what you're doing is exchanging the added sugars that you're eating in your diet normally for that tablespoon. Don't just add it to your normal diet. Figure out where you can cut down some sugar and use honey instead.

• 41:03Josh Clark?

  And yes, you will probably be much better off in the long run because sugar's really not good for us in all.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  That's great. I think we take our second break here. We come back and we talk about honeycombs, grades of honey. Uh, we still got a lot to go over, so let's get to it.

• 41:44Josh Clark?

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• 43:58Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, this suddenly turned into a short stuff. Go.

• 44:02Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, we can talk about the honeycomb briefly. Again, that's in our beekeeping episode, in our bee episode, and with a lot of detail. But basically, you know, this, the honeycomb is like that hexagonal cell structure that you see inside the hive, made of that wax that the bees produce. And they, you know, they, they make cells for storing honey or for housing that queen and the brood. But the important thing as far as the honeycomb goes is that humans came along as far as beekeeping is concerned and said, you know, let me, let me build the frame of your house for you and you can come in and add the detail. So we started making these, you know, what would you call it? Like a form?

• 44:48Josh Clark?

  A substrate.

• 44:49Speaker 05

  Ooh, look at you. Which gives the bees a little bit of a head start. And then, you know, the honey is in there. They extract that honey in a centrifuge. Leaves that honeycomb intact. Although you can get that natural honey. If you've seen it in the store with that, or maybe at a farmer's market, local farmer's market with a honeycomb floating in that honey. You can eat that stuff. It's wax, it's not going to hurt you.

• 45:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 45:19Speaker 05

  And it probably makes you feel like Martha Stewart or something.

• 45:22Josh Clark?

  It makes my teeth feel gritty, so I don't like it. But I do know that it is edible for sure.

• 45:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:27Josh Clark?

  One of the things I saw Chuck, though, I was like, well, wait a minute. If beekeepers are like making basically fully formed honeycombs for the bees to use. This is going to produce some soft lazy bees. But it turns out there's actually a really good reason to do this. And that is that when bees produce their own wax, they have to eat honey to produce the wax. And they consume six pounds of honey to make one pound of wax. So by giving them the wax to begin with, you're saving all of that extra honey. They're just going to keep making that honey and you're going to get more for it.

• 46:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, maybe that's one of the reasons we had that surplus.

• 46:05Josh Clark?

  Probably, I would think so. Yeah, if you're keeping bees and you're not giving them preformed beeswax cells, you're a chump.

• 46:15Speaker 05

  There are lots of different ways to rate or grade honey. We're going to go over a lot of those now. One of which is how much it's processed. We talked about right out of the hive. It's going to have some bead legs and pieces of wing and some yeast in there, some bacteria, some pollen, maybe some dust, some honey crystals. You know, you generally want to, I'm sure there are purists that just love that stuff. But if you're selling it in a store, you probably want to remove some of that or a lot of that to make it a food product. The other reason why is because if there's something floating in your honey, that just gives the honey a solid thing in there to crystallize around. And generally, the honey buying public.

• 47:02Speaker 05

  Crystallization is like, uh, that I don't want to buy that honey.

• 47:05Josh Clark?

  I saw that that was mostly Americans that have an aversion to crystallized honey.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  That doesn't surprise me.

• 47:10Josh Clark?

  And it's because we think that it's gone bad somehow. And again, yeah. All it is, is like, yeah, there's been some crystallization of the sugars. And all you have to do is put it in a nice tap water bath and it'll go back. But yes, you can just totally eat crystallized honey. There's no problem with it whatsoever. But because they know they're consumers, honey producers are like, we got to get the solids out of there. So basically, any honey you buy in the United States is going to have at least undergone macro filtering, what the USDA calls straining. And what that produces is raw honey. It's just they're getting out the biggest of the big solids. But then that's it. There's no more filtration whatsoever and it's it's raw honey.

• 47:52Josh Clark?

  Which is a bit of a misnomer because every honey type that isn't pasteurized and pasteurized honey is just one small subset. Every other type of honey is technically raw honey. It's not been heated. There's nothing that's been killed off and it's all still raw. But I think what they're basically using the word raw for is like rustic honey.

• 48:13Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah, I agree. You mentioned pasteurization. We might as well talk about that. I looked it up. I was like, why, why would you pasteurize honey? Because you typically think of pasteurization for more of like a dairy product. It's basically just, there is no reason to do it that I found other than making it look and like pour out of the bottle or jar or whatever more freely. It's smoother, apparently. It's going to alter the flavor, obviously, because you're heating this honey up. But that's, that's the only thing I found why you would pasteurize honey.

• 48:51Josh Clark?

  I saw that, you know, honey has all these antimicrobial, antiviral properties. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as bacteria in honey or there's no such thing as mold spores in honey. And mold in particular can cause honey to ferment slightly. Again, nothing wrong with that. It's totally fine. You basically have a free little mini shot of mead right there in your, in your honey. But people don't like that kind of thing. So I think pasteurizing it kills off any of those potential microbes or yeast or mold or anything.

• 49:20Speaker 05

  I met a hippie once and I think.

• 49:25Speaker 05

  West Virginia that made his own mead. I think I might have told this story before, but he gave me some mead.

• 49:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, somebody mailed us mead years and years and years ago. It's the only mead I've ever had in my life.

• 49:35Speaker 05

  I'm not a fan.

• 49:36Josh Clark?

  It was, it was fine. Yeah, it's not something I could drink regularly or anything like that. But yeah, if I were in West Virginia, wearing nothing but a pair of overalls, I could probably drink a little mead.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  He's a nice guy, despite the fact that he was a fish fan.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  I'm getting killed for knocking fish, by the way.

• 49:54Josh Clark?

  Just keep it up, though. It doesn't matter.

• 49:58Speaker 05

  Well, you know what's funny is all the people that have written in are trying to talk me into liking fish.

• 50:02Josh Clark?

  Right. They're like, surely you clearly haven't listened to fish and you don't know what you're talking about.

• 50:06Speaker 05

  It's, they do it. It's all almost verbatim. It's funny. It's almost like they had talking points they shared. But I know fish fans wouldn't share talking points. It's not the fish way.

• 50:16Josh Clark?

  No way.

• 50:18Speaker 05

  Back to the filtering. We're jumping back to the other USDA designation, which is filtered honey. And that is basically just more filtering. The filters are finer and it's gonna remove almost all those solids that you're gonna see. And it probably does require some heating because to get through those filters, you gotta have it a little more viscous or less viscous.

• 50:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, a little bit. But if you're ultra-filtering, not only do you have to warm it up, you combine it with a lot of water.

• 50:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:48Josh Clark?

  Because you're pushing it through not, not quite reverse osmosis membranes, but something not too far off where it is getting everything out of the honey. So much so, the USDA says, this isn't honey. You can't call it honey, honey.

• 51:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 51:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So there, there's another way to basically achieve the same end without blasting it through a ultra-filtered membrane. And that's using diatomaceous earth. And diatoms are fossilized microalgae with silica shells. And this is the shells left over. And they're super tiny, but they pick up even tinier particles. They are attracted to them. They get stuck in the shells. And then you filter out the diatoms. And then you've also filtered out the stuff even further. So you don't have to use quite as fine a filter because the diatoms have sucked up all the stuff that would have passed through that filter that's catching the diatoms. Does that make sense?

• 51:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's pretty amazing. You might remember diatomaceous earth from our cockroach episode.

• 51:49Josh Clark?

  Hmm.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  Cause that's the stuff that you can spread around that they eat that kills them from the inside out.

• 51:54Josh Clark?

  It also dries fleas out, too. If you have a flea problem, you can

• 51:58Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:58Josh Clark?

  Spread diatomaceous earth on your carpet and it will help.

• 52:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've been through that. Uh, we talked about spun honey already.

• 52:06Josh Clark?

  Hmm.

• 52:06Speaker 05

  And just want to reiterate that spun honey, or creamed honey, or whipped honey, it's all the same thing and it's still, doesn't lose any of those helpful properties. Uh, you can also rate honey by color, of course.

• 52:18Josh Clark?

  Hmm.

• 52:18Speaker 05

  Um, you know, honey has a great range of color and they, you know, technically it's called optical density, uh, but what they use the, the Pufund color scale.

• 52:29Josh Clark?

  I think it's just fun. No, really, like Pfister, the fabulous faucet with a funny name?

• 52:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I always say Pfister just because I think it's fun.

• 52:37Josh Clark?

  Okay, well then, yes, this would definitely be fun.

• 52:40Speaker 05

  And this is a scale from zero, which is water white, all the way to 114 and above, which is dark amber.

• 52:48Josh Clark?

  Very nice.

• 52:49Speaker 05

  Uh, and then what's the deal with organic honey?

• 52:51Josh Clark?

  So, organic honey is a different type of classification. Any of the stuff we've talked about, ultra-filtered, pasteurized, raw, micro-filtered, creamed, all of that stuff could also be organic honey, basically as long as the, the organic techniques that the USDA requires were used to, um, create the honey. And also on the plants that the bees are harvesting, uh, nectar from.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 53:17Josh Clark?

  So that's it. So I, from what I can tell, based on all this information, grade A raw organic honey is probably top of the pops for anybody.

• 53:27Speaker 05

  Top of the pops. And then when it comes to flavors, uh, this is where we get into sort of the last piece. We mentioned, uh, monofloral, uh, the other end of the spectrum would be multifloral.

• 53:37Josh Clark?

  Hmm.

• 53:38Speaker 05

  And that is just simply what these bees are flowering, uh, on, or what they're, what kind of flowers they're dancing with.

• 53:45Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 53:46Speaker 05

  Uh, if they're dancing with one flower and, you know, Ed points out, bees are bees, so it may be hard to make sure that's the only thing, but

• 53:53Josh Clark?

  They're very promiscuous.

• 53:55Speaker 05

  They are. Uh, if it's labeled monofloral honey, that probably means that they have, uh, this, a farm has planted a very, very large area of one thing, so it's really likely that the bee is eating almost all of that.

• 54:08Josh Clark?

  Hmm.

• 54:08Speaker 05

  Or you can, like the wildfire honey, it's just multiflorals, like, hey, whatever's in the area, have at it. Uh, there can be different flavors, but it's not exactly like there are notes of things. It's not like if you eat orange blossom honey, it tastes like you squirted orange in it, but there will be like notes of citrus and things like that.

• 54:28Josh Clark?

  I actually saw on a site of different types of honey that they warn you that if your orange blossom honey smells like orange fragrance, then you've got some sort of fake honey that it's being counterfeited in some way. It's not like that. Like you said, it's notes, but orange blossom honey has citrusy notes. Pumpkin blossom honey has pumpkin-y notes.

• 54:49Josh Clark?

  I think sour wood is herbal and woodsy. Or no, that's, um, what is that Chuck? Linden, Linden honey, herbal and woodsy. Eucalyptus honey has like a slight menthol note to it. Buckwheat honey, I don't think I've ever had it, but it's almost like black in color. It's definitely the dark amber side of the Puffun scale. But it also has like, kind of like a slight bitter note to it too. I want to try it. It sounds almost like torturous, but I would still try it. I'll try basically any honey at least once.

• 55:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. And there are all kinds of great honey, sort of like flavored honeys and the honey is still in it. So it's still great for you and delicious, but like bourbon honeys and like sort of spicy chili pepper honey and stuff like that. All sorts of delicious things out there. One of our favorite things to do is go to the, uh, our local farm co-op and get that local honey. And, you know, it costs a little bit more, but like they're doing the right thing. And not like Will Ferrell and LeBron James. Did you see that?

• 55:52Josh Clark?

  Did they get into honey?

• 55:54Speaker 05

  They are. Actually, it's a pretty cool thing. Uh, they partnered along with some other celebrities with a, uh, a company called Flamingo Estate, uh, which is listed here as an urban farm and lifestyle brand.

• 56:06Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 56:07Speaker 05

  Sells, you know, all kinds of stuff.

• 56:09Josh Clark?

  Sells urban straw hats.

• 56:12Speaker 05

  But they serve curated farm boxes, but what they've done is I think they've gone to some of these celebrities who have large properties and said, hey, how'd you like your own honey? We can make, we can keep bees on your property and it will be called Will Ferrell honey and it'll cost $250 a jar.

• 56:31Josh Clark?

  No.

• 56:32Speaker 05

  Uh, but it goes to charity.

• 56:34Josh Clark?

  Okay. They pulled it out at the end there. You know where they should go is the Magnum's Estate. He has big avocado farms and apparently.

• 56:43Speaker 05

  PI?

• 56:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And apparently avocado honey is a thing too.

• 56:47Speaker 05

  Okay. Interesting.

• 56:49Josh Clark?

  Before we end this, Chuck, if you'll indulge me, I just wanted to rattle off the properties that have been found among some of the compounds that you find in honey.

• 56:59Speaker 05

  Let's hear it.

• 56:59Josh Clark?

  If you'll indulge me. You ready?

• 57:01Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:02Josh Clark?

  That these compounds found in honey are shown to possess these properties: antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-neoplastic, antimicrobial, anticoarcinogen, anti-arrhythmic, anti-leishmanial, anti-thrombotic, anti-mutagenic, mutagenic, anti-nosusceptive, antimicrobial, anti-proliferative, and immune-boosting properties, not to mention that it's hypocholesteremic, cardioprotective, antihypertensive, hepatoprotective, hypoglycemic, and neuroprotective, nephroprotective,

• 57:42Josh Clark?

  gastroprotective, so on, so forth, and it can improve sperm count and their motility and protects against vaginal and uterine atrophy, plus it improves the normal estrus cycle.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 57:55Josh Clark?

  Isn't that amazing?

• 57:57Speaker 05

  That's amazing. Did you say Antichrist in there?

• 58:00Josh Clark?

  I think so. It's miraculous, but in like the reverse manner.

• 58:05Speaker 05

  Uh-huh.

• 58:06Josh Clark?

  Uh, you got anything else?

• 58:08Speaker 05

  I have nothing else.

• 58:10Josh Clark?

  I don't either, and that means of course, everybody, it's time for listener mail.

• 58:16Speaker 05

  I'm gonna make this one very short because I just wanted to shout out that we got a, I got an email from, well, we got one from our old buddy Aaron Mizell, who helps head up the Stuff You Should Know 5K.

• 58:33Josh Clark?

  I'm glad you thought of this.

• 58:36Speaker 05

  But Aaron, I think, was trying to locate this English professor that taught my Shakespeare class.

• 58:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 05

  I don't think she landed on it, but someone else did.

• 58:45Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 58:45Speaker 05

  And said, was it Dr. Vance? And I was like, oh, it totally was. As soon as I heard the name, I remembered. And I believe Aaron, though, or now I feel bad because I can't remember if it was Aaron or the other person who wrote in, was still in touch with Dr. Vance, got in touch with him and said, hey, Chuck took your classes. You may have even taken some classes from Vance. Who knows? Do you remember?

• 59:11Josh Clark?

  Me? No, I didn't.

• 59:13Speaker 05

  Okay. Well, I guess so. I was an English major, so I was always over there.

• 59:18Speaker 05

  But Dr. Vance sent in an email, which I haven't responded to, but I'm gonna do that today. It said, Chuck, can't tell you how honored I was by your remarks on the podcast. I thank you so very much. All is well here. Loving retirement, traveling, grandchildren. And here's my website in case you want to see what I've been publishing. And I think everyone should go check it out. It's mystery, thrillers, literary horror, humors, romance, historical fiction.

• 59:45Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 59:45Speaker 05

  All kinds of fun stuff. And you can find all this at AuthorJohnVance.com.

• 59:51Josh Clark?

  Very nice. That was short and Chuck appropriately sweet for this episode.

• 59:56Speaker 05

  Good stuff.

• 59:57Josh Clark?

  That was nice, man. Got a pat on your head from your old, your old English teacher.

• 1:00:01Speaker 05

  He was the best, man. Had a, you know, one of the few college professors who really impacted me.

• 1:00:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like Robin Williams.

• 1:00:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. Don't get that joke.

• 1:00:11Josh Clark?

  You don't?

• 1:00:12Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:00:13Josh Clark?

  From?

• 1:00:14Speaker 05

  Oh, Dead Poets.

• 1:00:15Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:00:17Josh Clark?

  Thank you for saying that because I was about to say from, oh, Captain, my captain.

• 1:00:21Speaker 05

  It's a working title.

• 1:00:23Josh Clark?

  So if you want to be like Dr. Vance and let us know how retirement's going for you, you can wrap it up in an email, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to [email protected].

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 1:00:52Josh Clark?

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