Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - HTDE: Don't Get in the Fridge, with Jesse Eisenberg

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Ringing in 2025: Mike and Ian knock out a New Year's resolution with the help of filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg, and a listener calls in to settle a high-stakes bet on the sturdiness of honeybees. Also, the world's northernmost towns are in the middle of months-long darkness. To learn how to survive it, we call an astrophysicist who spent six months in complete Antarctic darkness.You can email your burning questions to [e-mail] To Do Everything won't live in this feed forever. If you like what you hear, scoot on over to their very own feed and give them a follow.Both How To Do Everything and Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! are available without sponsor messages for supporters of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me+, who also get bonus episodes of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! featuring exclusive games, behind-the-scenes content, and more. Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org.How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. It is produced by Heena Srivastava. Technical direction from Lorna White.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What's in store for the music, TV, and film industries for 2025? We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Hey, happy new year, you listeners. You, we are rigging in 2025 with a new episode of How to Do Everything, hosted by Wait, Wait producers Mike Danforth and Ian Chilag. Now, this episode, Mike and Ian sit down with actor and filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg, who just so happened to steal my identity about a decade ago.

Whatever, it's fine, I'm clearly over it. I mean, really, I mean, it's fine. It's fine, I don't mind. They have just a few episodes left in this season, so make sure to follow them at their own feed and enjoy the latest How to Do Everything. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian.

Coming up, writer, director, and actor Jesse Eisenberg joins us to answer all of your how-to questions. But first... Hey, Maureen. What can we help you with? Well, let me let me let me take you back. About two weeks ago, sitting out on my back porch with my husband and a girlfriend of mine, Caitlin, and she works for this hyper local honey

place here in Atlanta and she is only about a mile from my house and she accidentally left a key at her office and she just made some offhanded comments it's like oh wouldn't it be so nice if the bees could just fly over my key and I wouldn't have to go get it. Yeah. And so I am thinking immediately, well, this is ludicrous

because it would take an insane amount of bees to do this. So I'm imagining like a lot of bees in this huge mass, like a swarm of bees carrying this key. So I asked her, how many bees do you think this would take? And she's like, oh, well, you know, a house key is small. Like imagine if you could just stick their little feet to the key and then they could all fly up, right?

Then maybe it would only take like seven bees. And I'm thinking, no, this is like a 50 bee situation, like a ton of bees. And every single person I have asked seems to think it would take less than 20 bees. My husband was like five bees, Caitlin says seven. So I've dug my heels in pretty hard and I have come to y'all for some answers. Okay, we have someone on the line

who can definitively answer this question, but we should say, in the time since we talked to Maureen, this question has taken over her friend group. People are placing money bets. We have a range of guesses for what the possible answer is. The stakes are very high. It could tear them all apart. So let's get the answer.

Dr. Treanor, can you start by telling us how you're qualified to answer Maureen's question? Sure. So my name is Kirsten Treanor. I'm a honeybee biologist at the State Institute of Bee Research here at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. Wow. So I spend my whole day working with honeybees. So what do you think, Dr. Traynor? What's the answer? It's not so easy to answer because honeybees normally wouldn't coordinate to move a key. You wouldn't need to get quite a bunch of them to work together. But honeybees do have a really cool behavior that they carry out their dead.

And a honeybee, so one honeybee can pick up another honey bee and care her out of her hive. And a honey bee weighs about a hundred milligrams. Okay. Okay. So if we look at how much a key would weigh, which I looked it up online, it's about 0.25 ounces, which is 6,700 milligrams. So you would need about 67 bees coordinating together to move a house key. 67 bees coordinating together to move a house key. 67 bees? Okay.

When you say that they will fly out their dead, move out the dead, what's the explanation for that behavior? Sure. So a honeybee hive is 20 to 40,000 individuals living together in a hot, humid environment where microbes would normally flourish. And so having decaying dead individuals in your hive is not a wise decision because they have the potential to make the others sick. And so they on a nice warm winter day, when it's warm enough to fly, they will carry out all their dead. And so if it's been snowing, you will actually see a trail of dead bees in front of your hives. And this is a good sign, because it means the colony is still alive and well,

and strong enough to carry out their dead. And it's just with the, with the dead bees, it's one to one. One bee carries one bee. So I'm not sure how you'd get all 67 bees to work together to move one key. That would be another trick. Um, but theoretically it would be about 67 bees. Is there anything that they collaborate on? Yeah, they collaborate on a lot of things.

So the bees will cluster in this winter cluster, and that leaves their entrance undefended. And a honeybee hive is, of course, warm and dry and quite cozy. And so field mice, if a beekeeper hasn't put a mouse excluder on the front of their hive, will try and sneak in and chew their way through the comb that's undefended down below. And then come spring when the bees notice, oh, we have an unwanted visitor living in the bottom of our hive, they will sometimes sting that mouse to death and they can't carry it out because it's too big. So they'll remove the parts they can and then they will propelize and entomb

the rest of the mouse, the skeleton, so that it doesn't make the hive sick. Pete Oh, yuck. Jared What? Julie Yeah, they basically mummify anything too big that they can't move. Pete Whoa! Jared How, wait a minute though, you said the parts they can't remove. What parts can they remove? Well, beekeepers have actually tested this. I think in American Bee Journal,

there was actually a beekeeper who had attached mice, dead mice on the bottom of the hive to see how quickly they remove them. And they chew off their fur and anything that they can remove with their mouth parts, they will. But of course the skeleton, they can't break apart, and so that they propylize and entomb. So it's like a little-

So propolis is a- Look, go ahead. A propolis, bees gather from tree buds. It's an antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal substance that plants produce to protect the new buds on the tree. And the bees collect that and will mix it with beeswax and they'll use it as an anti-bacterial doormat and for other things in their hive. Pete Slauson They basically, they make a mouse sanitizer themselves. Dr. Julie Shulman They do. Correct. Pete Slauson Alright. Thank you, Dr. Traynor, for helping

settle this for Maureen. This is fantastic. Dr. Julie Shulman You're very welcome. I hope it's been useful. Happy New Year, everybody. Our mailbox, thanks to you, is overflowing with emails desperate for help. And our resolution, our shared resolution, is to clear it out. So joining us now to answer as many of your questions as we can get to is a very qualified expert. It's Jesse Eisenberg.

He's a writer, director, co-star of the new film, A Real Pain. So Jesse, we thought we'd just throw a bunch of these how-to questions at you, see what you can do for our listeners. Great, okay, great. But I didn't prepare anything, is that okay? That's not a problem.

Yeah, totally. Okay So let's just we'll start off with with this question. This is from Sharon Sharon says she can't resist the urge to over comment in many situations When someone asks her a question, she starts talking but doesn't know when to stop and often finds herself Going on longer than she should and regretting later the things she said. Do you have any advice for Sharon? Yeah, I'm worse. Yeah, my advice would be, God, what would my advice be? No, I mean, you can't take advice from somebody who's far worse at it than you are. Maybe some kind of, I was going to say maybe some kind of self-hatred, so that, you know, you could, it'll stifle you more, but actually self-hatred for me

makes me ramble on further because I'm trying to apologize for the initial thing that I said and then apologize for the apology. So actually, maybe self-love, Sharon, maybe find some self-love and then you won't feel the need to kind of ramble like I am now. Do you, do you Jesse have an experience or a memory of a specific time that woke you up in the middle of the night when you remember like, oh man, why did I keep talking like that? Yes, yes, but that's each night. And, um, uh, yes, it's when I've said something that I worry offended somebody,

what I find myself doing is walking around the streets in New York or biking around the streets in New York or biking around the streets screaming what I said. I once said something that was mean. I was 10 years old and I said a mean thing to somebody else and it just so destroyed me that still I find myself on my bike still yelling the thing. I can't even say it here. It's too traumatic.

It's too late. Because yeah, I felt so embarrassed because it wasn't me. I don't know say it here. It's too traumatic. It's 30 years later. Because, yeah, I felt so embarrassed because it wasn't me. I don't know who it was. I mean, it was me, but it didn't feel like me. Anyway, my wife and I always joke that, you know, each one of us will walk around saying the thing that we feel guilty for saying about 10 years ago, just blurting it out on the street. Wow.

Okay. So, but as a kind of therapy, that doesn't work, I guess, because it still sticks with you. Okay. So, but as a, as a kind of therapy that doesn't work, I guess, because you still, it still sticks with you. Right. So this concept of trying to help this person immediately took a nose dive into making things worse. But at least we, we also brought up trauma for you. So we at least accomplished that. Like the hours are long, but it doesn't pay anything. Here's a question from Tyler, and this is holiday related. Tyler is, every year sends out Christmas cards, but worries the great effort that they put

into the Christmas cards is not appreciated by the people who receive them. So Tyler wants to know the minimum effort they can make in those Christmas cards. I guess the minimum effort they can make in those Christmas cards. I guess the minimum thing they can say to make people feel thought of without doing too much work. Hmm. Got it. A noble pursuit and great aspiration from Tyler. You know, I don't know, I have these kind of very ambivalent feelings about receiving Christmas cards from families where they all talk about the things they did this year. Yeah. I'm like, I have such deep shame about my life and so does my wife, who's like a, my wife is like an amazing, amazing woman who should feel nothing but great feelings about herself.

And yet both of us just kind of marvel at the confidence that families have by putting these things out. And I'm such a cynical person. So I assume when I'm getting these cards with their family achievements, I'm assuming this is a family that's about to get a divorce because this must be a bandaid for the thing that's happening darkly, darkly underneath the skeleton. Okay. So I have a little bit of a cynical attitude.

However, when I read them and I kind of get rid of like this my cynical knee jerk reaction, I find that to be actually quite sweet and lovely that the family is creating this kind of sweet tradition. So this is all to say to Tyler that actually maybe people are appreciating it more than you suspect. You've come to the conclusion that they don't but I guess I would investigate that more. Okay. There's something there. This is touching to me. I mean, I feel like two thirds of our questions so far have circled back to just finding self-love. Exactly. Unexpectedly, and at the same time, I haven't slept in 24 hours,

so perhaps that's where I am right now. All right, let me try, let me find another question here that is, again, shouldn't have any trauma associated with it. Okay. This is from a listener named Reagan. How do I get the mildew smell out of jeans? Do you have any good laundry hacks? Sure. I mean, as a person who kind of struggles every day to just get out of bed, no, I'm kidding. Wait, how do I get the mildew smell out of jeans? I don't know. Don't people freeze their jeans? I don't know what that does. But maybe give it a whirl and then baking soda. Let me ask you this question.

How clean, again, this is not meant to be a personal question, but do you regularly clean your refrigerator and freezer? Like, is your freezer in pretty good shape? I do clean my refrigerator and freezer. I, yeah, I just like cleaning my house so much. I don't know, it gives me actually a sense of control and freezer. I, yeah, I just like cleaning my house so much. I don't know, it gives me actually a sense of control and comfort and I just love it so much.

And after my kid goes to sleep, I clean the house and my wife is happy with me. And so it has all these wonderful ripple effects. And to that point, I clean the refrigerator and it's just a very comforting part of my day. Yeah. Okay. So it's a way to, it's kind of a meditative practice of yours.

Yes. And I like a clean fridge. Yeah. I used to do a really dumb thing, which is that I would take out everything in the fridge, including the shelves and go inside of fridges. And I really liked it. I liked that small space and I liked that it was kind of like fun to do and and the slight danger of it could with the fridge you know lock and so I am I'm really familiar

with the fridge and had to take out shelves and you know because I'm I did it recreationally for a while I when you say use as an adult you would enter yes French only in my 20s and 30s, that's right. The flexibility required. I had big fridges. It's incredibly fun and for people listening, it's incredibly fun. Do it with another person, put all the stuff on the counter and get in that fridge. Hey, just interrupting the interview real quick to say absolutely do not get in that fridge. That is a terrible idea. Whatever you do, don't get in that fridge. I just have, we just have to kind of

explore this. So do you just push and the door and it opens or does it, are you ever trapped in there? I've never been trapped. Okay. I've never been trapped, but I will say there the immediate feeling is, is, is claustrophobia and terror. It would seem that that would that makes sense. That's that that fits. But it answers a question we've long held, which is, does the light turn off when you close the fridge? And I know the answer to that. I don't want to reveal it today. Yeah. But I just want to say you can find out. Okay. If you go in. Good. out. Okay. If you go in, good. Can we do one more? Is that all right? This is from E Wayne Williams,

call him Wayne. Wayne wants to know advice about telling someone they have food in their facial hair. Wayne was traumatized 30 years ago by seeing someone with a ramen noodle flapping around in their mustache and didn't know what to say. Okay, I have a great solution for this. My wife thinks it's odd but lovable, but I am just constantly picking food out of her teeth. I just reach my dirty paws into her mouth and take that spinach. And I find there's something very sweet and affectionate of just, especially if it's in the guy's beard, just take it. Just take it. It'll be appreciative.

It's a sweet moment between two people. We never touch enough. And you know what? We could use some self-love. There we go. We've done it. We've done it. Yeah.

I'd like to create a theme at the beginning of this game I never played before. I can carry it through. Well, Jesse, thank you so much for all your help today. This is an absolute honor, and I'm so happy that you guys are doing this show. For anyone listening who's heard what Jesse has to say, we want to tell you, please don't get in your fridge. Don't go in there. It is one of our founding principles as a podcast.

We want to bring you quality programming, and we want you never to get inside a refrigerator. That's right. That's right. It's dangerous. It's cold. Jesse Eisenberg is a, he's great. You love his movies. Terrific director.

He's terrible at suggesting places to go inside. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial. In life, you plan for many important things like weddings, retirement, and your children's education. A celebration of life is really no different. Planning and paying for your celebration of life in advance protects your loved ones and gives you the peace of mind you deserve. It's truly one of the best gifts you can give your family.

Dignity Memorial will help you take care of every detail with professionalism and compassion. For additional information, visit DignityMemorial.com. The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you. Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes, and home prices, the S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever, follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again.

Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR. This message comes from the Kresge Foundation. Established 100 years ago, the Kresge Foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America. A century of impact, a future of opportunity. More at Kresge.org. Do you make resolutions in January? We do.

Specifically, we make pop culture resolutions. We also check in on what we resolved to do this last year. Did we catch up on all those classic movies or finally write that novel? Find out on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Hey, if you have a question you'd like us to answer, you can send it to us. We have one show left. What episode left to answer your questions, send them to us at howto at npr.org. One episode left this season, we will be coming back after our break. So if your question was how do I save this pinnacle of podcasting? How do I save this show? It's going away.

That question is unnecessary. Don't worry about it. We're already coming back. It's been solved. But any other question, send it to us at howto at npr.org. And if you're still considering it, please don't get in the fridge. The northernmost town in Alaska, a town full of refrigerators you should never climb into. That town is in the middle of two months of darkness. The sun set there on November 18th and it won't come up again until January 22nd. We were curious what it's like to live in that kind of darkness and to see if somebody who's done it might have some tips to help. Denis Barcats is an astrophysicist who wintered over in Antarctica. Denis, can you tell us what your experience was like?

Sure. I guess the easiest way to put it is that in 2006, I earned a year's worth of salary in one day and one night. All right. So that's one way to put it. And essentially, I did that by wintering over at the South Pole, which means you get one day that last six months, and then one night that last six months. What is the feeling on that last 24 hours of daylight

when you know you're about to enter this six month without ever seeing the sun? So, I mean, that's a good question, but the reality is that because the transition is so smooth, it's such a smooth transition from daylight to darkness. Here you're used to the transition being rapid, right? When the sun sets, it's dark and it's getting darker and it's really quick. At the South Pole, you have to realize that that transition, instead of being over the course of one hour, it's over the course of one month. I hadn't even fathomed that, that there would be this month where every, I guess day is the wrong word, but every 24 hours, it's a little darker than it was before

until finally it's black. Exactly. Yeah. Because the sun, when it's up, Exactly, yeah because the Sun when it's up right instead of going up and then down up and then down it's essentially just turning around you and over the course of three months it just spirals up until its highest elevation and then it's going to spiral down spiral down you know until March 21st and on March 21st if it's not cloudy it eventually crosses that line of the horizon and all right well good luck six months of darkness I

didn't realize this but no planes will risk landing in the dark in Antarctica so I guess at the very end of that daylight period those six months the last plane takes off and you do not have a choice. You cannot after two months decide, you know, I can't take this anymore. It's even a little bit worse than that because the planes don't wait for the dark periods. The planes are really limited by the temperature at the South Pole. So the last plane will leave around February 10 and will not come back until the first

week of November or when the temperature gets above 50 degrees, minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit. You see, I made that mistake. At the South Pole, because the temperature never reaches zero, we don't even say, oh, it's minus 40, minus 50. We say, oh, it's 50. Because everybody knows it's minus 50, right? Oh, wow. And so in reality, although the night's time, the winter night's time is six months, obviously,

the time when you are isolated, when you don't have a contact is a little over, is a little nine months, it's close to nine months. And so that last plane leaving, you're right, is a really big moment. And I remember it super clearly because when that last plane leaves, you're like, did I really make the right choice? This right life choice that I'm making? Thinking about this town in Alaska and other towns that are entering this period

where the sun is not gonna come up, did you come up with certain techniques or ideas of how to handle it that we might want to pass on to people there? I mean so I felt like I needed newness. Things were always routine right? It's the same weather, it's cold, dark, and windy, same people, the same buildings, the same everything. And so anything that sounded quirky or new or fun, I would just say, all right, let's give it a try. One quirky thing we read about is the 300 Club.

Are you in the 300 Club? Yeah, I am, of course, right? The 300 Club, do you want me to explain what the 300 Club is? Yes, please. What we do is we, when the temperature outside drops below minus 100 Fahrenheit, what we do is we have a sauna, which is a really nice thing. We have a sauna, we push the sauna temperature to plus 200

Fahrenheit. And so then you go in the sauna and you warm up and you warm up and you get your body really, really warm. And you have to mention you do this without any clothes on. You get the sauna really, really warm on. And when you think you can't stand it anymore, because plus 200 Fahrenheit is quite warm, but when you think you can't stand it anymore, you wait another five minutes until you get your body temperature really warm. And then just with shoes on, because you really can't step on ice without anything,

just with shoes on with everything else, no clothes, you go outside. And so you go from plus 200 to minus 100, and that's 300 degrees Fahrenheit difference, therefore the 300 club. And you go outside and you might think, well, you guys are crazy, that must be terrible, you must be really cold. And that's the amazing thing. Your body has an amount of heat capacity, so it actually accumulated heat. And to my own exhilarating surprise, I went outside and you actually don't feel cold. Wow.

And for three, four minutes, you can actually walk around outside. Don't run, because if you run, you're gonna breathe in really cold air and burn your lungs. So you walk gently outside, don't run. Because if you run, you're gonna breathe in really cold air and burn your lungs. So you walk gently outside and so your brain is telling you something is wrong. You should be cold and yet your body is okay. And to me it was actually so incredible and so mind-bending to say that your brain should tell you you're cold but your body was okay. That I just, you know, said all right let me go back for another roll. I just did it a second time. Well, that does it for this week's show. What'd you learn, Ian?

Well, I learned that bees will take, go to extreme lengths to get a mouse out of their hive. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense because gross. You know, you hear about people who have a mouse in their house, and so they get a cat to take care of it. Yeah, sure. Sounds like you could also just fill your home with bees. You'd bring in a beehive in your house. Honestly, you don't even need the hive. You could just have the loose bees,

and that way they're ready to strike. Oh, the classic honey trap. I mean, there's, you know, Tom and Jerry, except it's actually 60,000 Toms. Yeah, yeah. Who are willing to sacrifice their own lives to get this mouse out of there. That is not as funny of a cartoon. Yeah, especially when the bees start tearing off parts of the mouse to remove it.

Again, only the parts they can carry. to remove it. Again, only the parts they can carry. How to Do Everything is produced by Henes Ravostava with technical direction by Lorna White. Our intern is Father Time. Great work, Father Time. Happy New Year. Well, I think we got to call, we got to call Maureen back and get her the news. Okay. I love it. Hello? Hello, Maureen. Hello. Hey, it's Mike and Ian calling. How are you? I'm so happy to hear from y'all.

And here is Caitlin. Hi, guys. Hey there. Hey, Caitlin. Well, we have an answer. Hey! Okay. Okay.

Do you want to restate what your guesses are? Okay, my original guess was 50 bees. 50 bees. Mine was seven. And Carl's, my husband's was five. It would take 67 bees to carry. Congratulations, Maureen. I can't handle this. This is amazing. This is the best news I've had in a while. Well, Caitlin, you still, you can still lord it over Carl who-

This is true. I was closer than Carl and we know someone who guessed three. Yeah. I was much closer than her. Wow. Yeah. I think we were all a little low except you. Except me? It's my perfection. Now you're just spiking the football, Maureen. Come on, Maureen. act like you've been there before. Don't go in the fridge.