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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck. And Ben's here, too, sitting in for Jerry, the illustrious Ben, who's doing his thing really well. That makes the stuff you should know.

Hey, just so the listeners know, I finally met Ben in person.

Oh, yeah. Was there a handoff, Georgia? Oh, yeah.

No, there wasn't a handoff. But I went to that REm tribute show in Athens, and Ben lives in Athens.

Yeah. So tell me about that show. Didn't like Michael Shannon reunite Rem somehow?

Well, Michael Shannon and Jason Narducci got together a band to play some REM tribute shows. Basically playing all of murmur in chronic town and then, like, another 15 early deepish cuts.

Okay.

And in Athens, as happens at the 40 watt in Athens, when there's rem things like that, the boys tend to come out. And that night, all of them came out.

Wow.

And shared a stage for the first time in, like they said, 17 years. But it feels like more than that. But, yeah, it was great.

Boy, that was something. Because 40 watt is not a big venue. It's a tiny black box for everybody who's never been there.

Yeah, a couple of hundred people maybe. But all of them perform. Know, Peter Buck shows up a lot and performs. Bill Berry is starting to come out to perform a little bit every now and then. Mike Mills, if you start singing an R M song in your backyard, he'll probably pop out from behind a tree and ask if you want some backup.

Right.

But Snipe never performed. So when he jumped up, the place was just vibrating, and I was like, it's happening, it's happening. But he didn't perform. He just was very sweet and said, thank you. And they all kind of congregated for a minute and that was it.

But he didn't perform. That's crazy.

No, he didn't sing. I think everyone was just like, it's.

Finally going to happen.

He said, nope, no, but I get it. But it was a great night. And met old Ben.

That's awesome, man. That's a heck of a story.

Yeah.

And it's a great way to kick off our llama episode, frankly, if you ask me.

And I agree, I think, and you know what? I will agree, because when I was very briefly in a band in college, I don't know who had it, but someone in the band knew a friend with a llama farm.

Wow.

Who knew that was coming? So when we would go out to play in this big barn, we would drive through the llamas.

That makes sense, because somebody out in Georgia having a llama farm is so 90s. That is such a 90s thing to do.

Totally. Yeah.

And it's funny because there was an attempt to introduce llamas to the United States well before the, even the 80s, when they kind of became a thing for the first time in the US. All the way back in 1914, the mayor of Buenos Aires tried to give secretary of state William Jennings Brian the gift of a llama. And that's when they would have entered the US the first time. But it turned out that that particular llama had foot and mouth disease, so it wasn't allowed in.

Well, and it's also interesting because llamas, their back and forthness with North America is interesting because they originated in North America on the central Plains, like 40 million years ago. And then about 3 million years ago, they dispersed to South America. They were like, we're heading south. Not for the winter, but perhaps forever.

Permanent vacation. Like Aerosmith.

Exactly. Boy, music rests. Are just flying all over the place.

Sure.

And at the end of the last ICE age, the Cameloids, which we'll see, they're part of the Camelot family, they went extinct in North America, even though that's where they started.

Yeah. So you just kind of touched on something that I think is maybe the fact of the podcast. Llamas are members of the camelit family. They share common ancestor with camels themselves. Hence camels originated in North America. Just mind blowing to me. Like take that central eurasian steps.

Now, were there actual camels here?

Yeah, I believe, yes. I looked it up and I can't remember exactly, so I'm sure I'm getting it dead wrong, but I believe camels themselves did evolve here in North America and crossed over into Eurasia through the Bering land strait. Same with horses.

Wow.

Yeah, I know. So, USA, right? But also Mexico and Canada.

Yeah, sure. We were USA back then, right, exactly. They were domesticated. They're actually one of the oldest domesticated animals in history. In the history of animals. They're in the Andean highlands of Peru. Between four and 5000 years ago, they were domesticated, and then back in the United States they were redomesticated, and that's obviously the only way they exist in the US now.

Yeah, so it was a little confusing to me and I went and hashed it out. Llamas have never existed in the wild. Llama like animals and species that are related to llamas, like the guanacos, they're wild, and if you look up a guanaco, it looks like a wild llama. But llamas were domesticated from the outset. They were bred from guanacos, so they never existed in the wild. And they still don't, which I find fascinating. They were bred out of whole cloth as a domesticated animal. It was never not domesticated. Isn't that cool?

Yeah, it's super cool. And they're specifically bred because they're a beast of burden.

Like the Rolling Stones.

Yeah, man. Another music rap.

I'm going to keep them coming. Okay, you totally should.

Okay. And we'll talk about their beast of burdenness and how it's okay as far as that goes. But they also provided meat, obviously, to herdsmen. They could make candles out of their tallow, their clothing, although it's not quite like it's not as effective, I guess, as alpaca wool. They're still shorn, and we'll talk about that as well. And their hides and things like that. Their poopoo, they could use for fuel. They were a very useful animal.

Yeah, super useful. The only large animal domesticated in the ancient Americas. And they definitely came in handy. They were put to good use. And like we said, they were never a wild animal. They were always bred, so humans always had a hand in how llamas were. And the llamas that are around today, again, they were bred from guanacos. Yeah, guanacos. Right. That's how you'd say that.

Right. It's got to be or Guanaco. I'm not sure.

Right. But some people say that these are separate guanacos and llamas are separate. Other people say, no, they're both members of the subspecies Llama glama.

That. Great.

Right. And then collectively, llamas, guanacos, vacunias and alpacas are collectively known as lamoids, not to be confused with graboids, and that they're still related to camels because they're all originally camelids. There's a lot of differences between them, especially with body shape or body morphology. But as we'll see, they also share a lot of characteristics with camels.

Still.

Camels are from the Americas, by the way.

Totally. But they don't have that hump.

That's one. They're much smaller.

Yeah, they're smaller. They're a little more slender. They do have long legs. They got the long necks. They got those cute little short, waggy tails. Yes, smaller heads. If you look at their face, they have a split upper lip and big pointy ears. And they smile. I feel like we do. Maybe we have a predisposition to highlight animals who smile at us. Sure. I feel like we've done that a lot.

That really hijacks our brain wiring.

Oh, totally. But you look up llama, smile and you're going to see some pretty cute stuff.

Yes. They also have panoramic vision because their eyes are on the sides of their head, so they can see predators from coming a mile away. And what's something interesting about llamas that I didn't know about is they are naturally aggressive toward predators. They don't shy away. If they see, like, a fox or a coyote or something, they go after it and they chase it off, which is pretty cool, as we'll see. It's very useful.

Yeah. Nice defense. Although I took that. Their main defense is, like, to charge at something like that. But it's sort of a lot of bluster because they don't have a lot of defense.

No, it is bluster, but they also have a lot of size on any coyote or any flock. Certainly. I didn't realize how big they can get. A llama gets about 4ft at the shoulder. Pretty tall. It's 1.2 meters. And males can weigh between 304 hundred pounds, which is 135 to 180 kg. That's a hefty, husky little boy there.

Yeah. Females can weigh between 230 and 350. And I saw a video of a guy whose llama busted out on his farm and went after the dog. And it was funny. He wasn't harming the dog, but he was chasing this dog. And they're pretty fast. They're way faster than I thought. They can hit a max speed of 40 miles an hour.

That's insane. Which is just.

Yeah, I've seen them run, but I didn't think it was that fast. It's kind of like when a camel runs. I think it's a little deceiving how fast they are because of their big, Lopey, long legs.

Right.

It doesn't have that intensity of a horse gallop.

Right.

But it helps them run at a predator, or most importantly, run away from a predator.

I mean, 40 miles an hour is really fast. That's like roadrunner fast. Yeah, but imagine the road runner with a furry coat and a big old smile while he's running 40 miles an hour.

What's going on with those feet, too?

So I say we talk about the feet and use it as a cliffhanger to take a break and then come back and talk about how those feet come in handy. How about that?

Wowy wow.

So remember I said that they share a lot in common still with camels, both of them. Neither one of them are hooved animals. Camels have two toes and so do llamas. Camels have toenails in the front, but they don't use those for walking. On the bottom of the feet of llamas and camels are soft pads, very leathery and soft that are not hooves, which means that when they're walking on like rocks and mountains and stuff like that, they can actually kind of grip those rocks with their feet and their split two toes, which makes them very sure footed, which again, made them very useful in the Andes, which, again, leads us to a message break.

All right, we'll be right back.

On McCartney, a life and lyrics. You can hear the stories behind iconic tracks from Paul McCartney's career, like hey.

Jude, the movement you need is on your shoulder.

The movement you need is on your shoulder. Now I thought that was me just blocking in. And when I played it to John and Yoko in my music home on my psychedelic piano, I'm sitting facing this way and they're standing behind me almost on my shoulder, and they're listening. And I'm so pleased with myself. I'm playing with this new song.

Listen to Paul McCartney dissect the people, experiences, and art behind his songwriting. Hear McCartney, a life in lyrics on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to.

Podcasts.

All that sitting and swiping our backs hurt, our eyeballs sting. That's our bodies adapting to our technology, but we can do something about it.

We saw amazing effects.

I really felt like the cloud in my brain kind of dissipated. There's no turning back from me.

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So, Chuck, I think we kind of started to set it up pretty nicely. Llamas are sure footed, to say the least.

That's right. One of the benefits of being unhoofed, or maybe even anti hoof. I've never talked to a llama.

They've got no problem with hooved, hooved animals. They're fine with it.

All right, so they're not anti hoof, but like you said, that makes them very sure footed. But it doesn't tear up the side of a mountain like a hoof dude does, because they got a little give there.

Yeah. So if you want to walk around and not accidentally start off a rock slide, bring a llama instead of, like, a cow.

It's a good point. I mentioned we would talk about whether or not they were good beasts of burden. They're okay. A llama that's about 250 can carry a load. That's 100 to 135 pounds. Maybe 15 miles, maybe 20 miles in a day. That's not bad at all. It's no ox or horse. But if you've got a lightish load and you're going not the furthest distance, then you can do a lot worse than a llama.

It's true. They couldn't carry a human. They couldn't pull a machine. And I saw it spelled out that even if the Inca, who really put the llama to good use, had discovered the wheel, the llama still wouldn't have been able to be attached to anything bigger than probably like a wheelbarrow size type thing. They just don't have that strength. But they are good pack animals in that they can carry a lot of weight, just not like human weight. So if you have a ton of stuff, say you're mining silver, pre colombian contact, you got a silver mine set up at Potosi. You need a lot of llamas. And apparently there was a spanish observer, didn't catch their name, who visited Patosi, which is a really important silver mine in what's now Bolivia, and found that the Inca were employing what they guessed to be about 300,000 llamas, transporting the silver ore from the mine to be refined.

Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of llamas. And again, if each one of those can carry over 100 pounds, then they're moving some silver for sure.

Sure. And it probably goes without saying, but you could also delight your child as long as your child's under 100 pounds and let them ride the llama, too. They could have done that.

Sure. I'm sure. There was an incan birthday party at some point where a kid rode a llama.

That's right.

They're also, as far as being up there in the high dryness, they have a very high thirst tolerance, which is super handy. Obviously has a lot to do with their camelness. They have a lot of endurance. They can eat a lot of different kinds of shrubbery, which is great. And their blood has a really unusually high amount of hemoglobin. And as we all know, that protein is going to carry oxygen from the lungs throughout your body. So that's an animal that's basically built to survive a high elevation where it's dry and where there's lots of sort of dry grasses and shrubs to eat.

So as animals themselves, without the human touch of being used as pack animals, just if you have some llamas hanging out with one another. I can't believe how I just put that. They are gregarious, which means they need social groups. You don't really want to have just a single llama. I even saw just a couple of llamas, you want to have a handful because they have specific ways of living. And typically llama family group will have a single male and a handful of females, and then whatever offspring were born by those females that year.

Yeah, exactly. And you'll see why in a minute. If you are the head of the family, if you are the male leading that group, you're going to be pretty territorial. You're going to defend your family. If a competing male comes in there that doesn't have a family that's like, hey, I might like to take yours. They will be pretty aggressive toward that, even though they're not super aggressive animals, drive them out of there and say, go back to your bachelor pad. And by bachelor pad, we mean the group of males that don't have families that all just seemingly hang out together and play guards.

Yeah, there's another thing, too, that is really just loving about llamas. They actually will adopt and protect other species of animals. Remember how I said they're naturally aggressive toward predators? They'll actually defend other kinds of animals that they consider part of their group on, say, like a farm or a ranch from predators.

Yeah, I saw that they would adopt sheep, and I wonder, I mean, they'll probably do this with all the animals, but I wonder if it's because the sheep in the face at least, and there are some similarities there, I think.

Or the llamas are familiar with the whole ba ram you message that allows you into the sheep family.

Or maybe it was a particularly interested male llama who saw that sheep and was like, hey, shouty, you want to join our family?

Yeah. For some reason, I'm disturbed by that.

You probably should be. They communicate with each other mainly through body language. Their posture can kind of tell you a lot. Their ears apparently are going to indicate their mood. They don't make a lot of noise. Llamas are pretty quiet if you have a llama farm, but they will vocalize if there are predators around and little mummies and babies can at one another, like back and forth, kind of sing to each other, and it's very sweet.

Did you watch that YouTube I sent you?

Oh, you know I did.

So there's a YouTube. I can't remember the exact name, but just look up llama. I think it'll come up. But there's a baby llama drinking from a bottle, and the mom's standing by watching and the baby's just humming while it's drinking, and the mom hums back a little bit. It's really sweet.

It's pretty great. And they are gentle for the most part, but they are a little bit stubborn too, because if you put too much weight on them, if you're not treating them right, then they're just like, I'm just going to have a sit in, basically. They won't budge, they won't move, they will spit at you, they might hiss or kick at you, and they're just like, no, llamas don't play that game, homie.

All that behavior is shared in common with camels, too. Camels are also one other thing about the vocalizations. You said when they warn of predators, I looked that up too, and it sounds like a fork being scraped across a metal plate.

Yeah, it's pretty aggressively annoying.

Yeah, that's what it is. It doesn't scare them off, it just annoys them away.

They're like, fine, jeez.

So we said that the family groups consist of the offspring that were born that year. That's because the young, the little babies, get to hang out with the moms, who are very attentive of them for that first year. And then after that, the dominant male chases the baby off after its first birthday. For a couple of reasons. It makes sense. So number one, if it's a boy, it doesn't want to have to fight over the females with the boy, but if it's a girl, it doesn't want to have a girl around that it might mate with and kind of taper the gene pool a little bit.

Right.

So it makes sense biologically and genetically for the dominant male to just chase off female and male young.

Yeah, totally. They have a gestation period about eleven months. They only have one little BB at a time. And the male has. They have a little harem around them because they're polygamous. They will mate with all the females in their family that will accept that. And it's an induced ovulation. So once they do that thing, they're going to release an egg within about a day or a day and a half after mating.

Yeah, I'm just withholding any jokes. So did you say that they just ate for eleven months?

Yeah.

Okay. And their offspring are called crea.

Yeah. And they're like any smallish, long legged mammal, a little 18 to 20 pound llama. Standing for the first time within that first hour is just something that everyone just needs to make part of their life.

Yeah, for sure. And after that first hour that they stand, they can expect to live about 15 years from that moment on average, as far as lifespan is concerned.

Yeah, not bad.

Speaking of little baby llamas being born, there's a movie I watched recently, another a 24 knock it out of the park movie called Lamb. Have you seen it?

I haven't seen it. I think I know the one with. What's her name?

Rumi.

Yeah.

What's her last name? I want to say mapiece, but it's.

I think it's rapise.

Rapise?

I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce it, but I haven't seen it. But there's almost no way to talk about it without spoiling it. Right?

I'm not going to. But I'm just going to say I'm going to encourage you to please see it as soon as possible. It's so good. And I started to watch it in subtitles, and then I realized they weren't talking that much. And when they were talking, it was kind of distracting from the visuals, which are just lovely. So I actually watched most of the movie in Icelandic. And you can tell from the conversations and the context, generally what they're talking about. Oh, that's funny enough that I don't feel like I missed anything from the movie. I probably missed some very subtle things here or there. But I got the broad strokes for sure. But I think I'll probably go back and watch it with the subtitles to see what I missed. But however you watch it, just watch it. It's so good.

Yeah, it was on my list and I kind of forgot about it. I know what the deal is. I just hope it's not a case where I'm talking about a part and you're like, yeah, that's when blank happens. And I'm like, no, that's not at all what happens. You weren't reading the subtitles right, exactly. It's actually far more disturbing and sad.

It's possible. It is an a 24 movie.

Yeah.

So I just wanted to shout out lamb because it was good.

Yeah, I can't wait.

Should we take a second break here now and then come back and talk about how valuable llama Fleece has been?

Yeah, let's do that. And we'll talk about that llama fleece right after this.

On McCartney of Life and lyrics, you can hear the stories behind iconic tracks from Paul McCartney's career. Like, hey Jude.

The movement you need is on your shoulder now. I thought that was me just blocking in. And when I played it to John and Yoko in my music home on my psychedelic piano, I'm sitting facing this way and they're standing behind me, almost on my shoulder, and they're listening, and I'm so pleased with myself. I'm playing with this new song.

Listen to Paul McCartney dissect the people, experiences, and art behind his songwriting. Hear McCartney, a life in lyrics on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All that sitting and swiping our backs hurt, our eyeballs sting. That's our bodies adapting to our technology, but we can do something about it.

We saw amazing effects.

I really felt like the cloud in my brain kind of dissipated. There's no turning back from me.

Make 2024 the year you put your health before your inbox and take the body electric challenge. Listen to body electric from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you want to level up your marketing and business knowledge, then look no further than the marketing school podcast hosted by Neil Patel and yours truly, Eric sue. It is the number one marketing podcast in the United States and number 15 on business in the United States. And it has amazing guests such as Alex Hormosi, Leila Hormosi, Cody Sanchez. We pull in these amazing interviews with other people that are not only great marketers, but actual operators. And the icing on the cake is Neil and myself. We're also operators as well. So we share learnings from the trenches. We share secrets that we otherwise wouldn't be sharing with other people. And we also share other advantages that will help you get ahead of your competition. So all you have to do is listen to marketing school every weekday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, well, quickly, before we talk about llama Fleece, I kind of forgot until I started researching this that there's a book series for kids called Llama Llama.

Okay.

And boy, oh, boy, did I have to read a lot of llama llama for those first few years. Yeah, I totally forgot about it. But now I'm like, oh, my God, Ruby had, like, I feel like 20 of those llama llama books.

Is it, like, about a llama that solves mysteries?

No, it didn't solve mysteries, and I'm trying to remember the thrust of it. I think it's just about a llama that's, like, always getting in trouble and stuff.

Oh, yeah, that kind of llama.

Like every children's book.

Sure.

But we were going to talk about fleece. Their fleece is pretty good. They get shared about every two years. They don't produce the most fleece in the world, you get about six and a half to seven and a half pounds of fiber every two years. And like I said, it's not like that wool of the alpaca that makes for such a wonderful, warm experience.

Yeah. It's also not like cashmere, which everybody knows it's the gold standard for soft wool and fleece. Right. But I was reading an article by a historian named Emily walked. Sorry. W a K l I D, from Boise state, uh, who wrote a piece on the conversation about llamas and the natural history of llamas. And apparently one of the things that the Inca used to do was bury llamas sacrificially and ritually on land that they were claiming as their own. They're like, we're the ones with the llamas. Because I don't know if we said this or not, they were never exported outside of the incan empire until after the Spanish came. So the Inca had like, a lock on the llama. So they would bury llamas, mummify them, and bury them on land that they were claiming as part of their territory. And so, like 1000 years later, archeologists and anthropologists came along and dug these llama up. And what they found is that these incredibly well preserved llamas actually used to have fleece that was on par with cashmere and that it just got lost over time as the Spanish came along and were like, we have cashmere, we're just going to eat these llama instead.

Yeah. And it's crazy. And I guess just the reason they didn't remain that way is because they left the area and went somewhere else.

No, they were no longer bred so selectively for their fleece, they were more bred to be meat bearing.

I got you. Well, I know that while they were meat bearing for the Incas that they were highly revered. It wasn't just like, hey, we're going to raise and kill this animal. They were very much revered in their sort of cultural and spiritual beliefs. And while they did sacrifice them along with alpacas, they ate the meat at big, important community celebrations. They would do it to honor the gods, specifically the rain gods, I think. And they would sacrifice and bury them along with jewelry and stuff like that.

Yeah. So they also, today you can see llamas dressed up in pretty ribbons and hats, little cute little hats in parades in areas like Bolivia. And it's just been carried down over the generations. They're still very traditionally revered. Right. There's an explanation that apparently some kinds of llama herders or llama farmers in the Andes still consider llamas basically a conduit to the spirits of the mountains. The wamani is what they're called. And that the llama don't actually belong to these humans. They're just kind of tending the llama. They're taking care of the llama. And so they engage in all these rituals which on their face sound really bizarre. Like marrying llamas, right?

Oh, man, that's so cute.

It is cute. So they will take llamas and they'll be like, you're going to marry Esther over here, right, Fred? And so Fred and Esther are made to get married and I guess they lay down in a marriage bed or something like that. And all this sounds, like, so weird. And of course, it's just spiritual and mystical. So it kind of has this just bizarre cast to it. But I love it when this happens, when a custom turns out to have a practical reason behind it. The llamas that go along with this are like, yeah, I'm going to lay down this marriage bed with Esther. This is fun. They prove themselves to be more docile. So those are the ones who are less likely to be slaughtered for meat or oil or tallow for candles. They're going to be kept around and they're going to breed more and more so that the llamas in this flock become more and more docile generation to generation.

Yeah. Amazing. And I guess that's why we have the sort of sweet, smiley, gregarious friends that we have now, right?

Exactly. You would not have wanted to meet a llama from 5000 years ago.

No.

You'd black your eye.

Big trouble.

Yeah. One more thing about the wool and the fleece, though, chuck, is while it is much coarser, although surprisingly light, apparently the hairs themselves are hollow. They're working on getting it back to something akin to cashmere. It's just going to take a very long time. But they've kind of gone back to the traditional caregiving that they had. Pre Spanish. Awesome.

What is cashmere even? Isn't it some kind of goat?

It's a goat.

Okay. But like a special goat, right?

Well, yeah, if it has cashmere, it's pretty special and expensive. That's an expensive goat.

But what I meant is this is not just any old goat has cashmere, right?

No. I don't know the kind of goat. It might be a cashmere goat. It probably isn't. I will look it up while you talk. How about that?

Okay, sure. Because most of the goats I pet, I love them, but their hair feels like it's a horse brush or something.

Right. And their eyes make them look like emissaries of Satan himself. It's true. That sideways slit eye is very evil looking.

Did you think that before the Vavitch movie or did you even see that?

The what movie? Oh, the witch.

The witch.

God, I love. Yeah. Yeah, I've always thought that.

Okay, for sure. That certainly reinforced it, though.

Oh, yeah. It didn't do the goat population any favors with me.

No. What was the name of that guy? He had a great name in the movie. I can't remember.

The dad?

No, the, like, it was like something. Something like ugly Sam. But it wasn't ugly Sam.

It was like Black Billy or something.

Evil. Black evil Bart, Bluebeard. No, that's not it. I don't know. People are screaming at their black Philip. Black Philip, was that it?

Black Phillip was it? And in a double whammy of quick research, the cashmere goat is called the cashmere goat.

Oh, of course.

And it just so turns out that black Phillip was a cashmere goat.

Well, look at this. It's all coming full circle.

That last part was a lie.

Oh, black Phillip isn't.

He was not a cashmere goat. No.

Oh, jeez, man, that's a weird thing to trick me over.

You just got pummeled all over the. Huh?

I did. All right, so let's move on then, because this, to me, we kind of saved the best for last. As far as llamas are great. We love them. They smile, they spit. They'll carry some stuff for you. You can go visit mitta and pet those long necks, for sure. They're wonderful, but they are some of the most valuable research animals around and research animals that you can take very good care of because all they need are just, like, small samples of their blood for this stuff.

Yeah. And the reason why is because they're after llama antibodies. Just like we have antibodies that attack or they tag, they destroy. They say, hey, go get this virus or this bacteria cell over here. Antibodies fight foreign invaders in your body. Well, being mammals and being alive, llamas have the same thing. They have antibodies, too, but theirs are very specific, apparently, llamas and sharks. And I can't remember, there might have been something else that has these very specific antibodies that are way tinier, way simpler, and way more stable than the super fruity, highfalutin complex antibodies that we produce. And that makes them extraordinarily valuable because they can target viruses and diseases that human antibodies can't.

Yeah, the camels was the other one, no surprise.

But sharks, that just kind of came out of nowhere.

Yeah, but you know what? I'm pretty sure we'd mentioned that at some point in an episode.

I remember the horseshoe crab blood used to detect some, like used in some medical test, but I don't remember the shark.

Maybe in one of our ill advised videos from the old days, I'm not sure. But, yeah, the llamas, they have the antibodies that are formed in only two long chains as opposed to the four chain antibodies that most mammals have. And this structure has really paid dividends in a lot of ways. And one of the biggest ones has been to neutralize specifically HIV and specifically all 60 HIV strains that they've tested. Those llamas have antibodies that can work together and just neutralize that stuff.

Yeah, and here's why the antibodies are smaller. Well, actually, I've seen it both ways, but I think the antibodies that scientists create based on llama antibodies are called nanobodies because they're very, very small. But being small, they can connect to receptor sites on viruses that have very, very small receptors. And humans have these large, clumsy antibodies that just kind of slap around on the outside of the virus cell and don't do anything. They can't attach to it, they can't attack it. They can't keep it from connecting with the cell. The llama antibodies can. And HIV happens to be one of those viruses with the very tiny receptor sites that a llama antibody just goes up to and says, you're with me now.

Yeah, for sure. Also with potentially COVID-19 it is similar to HIV in the way that the nanobodies from the llama can bind super tightly to that CoV two virus. And you may be able to think a llama one day for COVID progress.

Yeah, for sure. I think they've already found. Because COVID is like SARS. That's right. It's also closely related to MERs. I think they found that that can be used for that as well. It's so weird. They've also figured out how to use these llama antibodies as biological warfare detectors, too, because they don't just work on viruses, they work on bacteria as well, and other biological, foreign invaders.

Yeah, I mean, it's remarkable. So scientists for a while now have been working on devices. They're biosensors, so they're obviously part biological that can detect, like, the very first hints of something bad going down biologically, which is what you want. You want super early detection. And these sensors are made up of antibodies. And in the past, they were human cloned antibodies called immunoglobin G. So I little G, big G. And that's what they use. So the idea is that somebody would launch, like, a cholera bomb or a smallpox bomb or something like that.

That'd be so bad.

It would be really bad. And all of a sudden, you have this biosensor that can immediately detect that. And the llama biosensors work way better than the other ones.

Yeah. The human ones work in concept, and I believe in actuality, too. But they're so fragile because human antibodies are fragile because they're complex, because they have, like, heavy chains connected to light chains. They're just really fragile. They don't hold up well in harsh environments. They just totally fall apart at 150 degrees, 65 degrees Celsius or more. They're expensive. They are very expensive to reproduce, because, again, they're super complicated. And all of the stuff that llama antibodies are not, compared to human antibodies, make it that much more valuable and precious in applications like this, because they're simpler, they are sturdier, and they are hardier, too. They can survive in much harsher environments. So it's like we figured out this concept of using antibodies to detect biological warfare in the air the moment it's launched. But we've replaced these kind of shody antibodies, the human antibodies, with much sturdier, more reliable antibodies. So we actually can do this now?

Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. And you and I are not big fans of animal research or using animals in research like this, but from everything I saw, this was, like, a pretty decent scenario where these llamas are treated very well. They are in captivity anyway, right, as a species, and they're drawing just small amounts of blood from these llamas to build this huge library. I think they have more than a billion different. They're called. I wouldn't even know how to say that. SD abs, single domain antibodies, basically. And it seems like a win win.

For sure, because they're so good at drawing blood that the llamas don't even stop smiling.

Right.

One other thing I saw, if you ever see a llama with its ears turned forward and maybe even leaning forward a little bit, that llama is curious. It wants to know what's going on. It wants to meet you. It wants to hang.

Know if I'm not mistaken, Ruby went to a kid's birthday party where you can have farm animals on site, and I'm pretty sure there was a llama there.

Yeah, I'm sure there was. Ever since the 80s, they became like a common thing in the United States. Yeah. For my 35th birthday party, Yumi had a petting zoo, including a llama there.

I was there, my friend.

Did you ride the horse?

I didn't ride the horse, but I ate some. I mean, if I may reveal your catered food, is that okay?

Yeah.

You guys had McDonald's, and I just remember humongous trays of stacked cheeseburgers and trays of french fries, and it was a great, great party.

You forgot the taco bell tacos on another tray.

Oh, I don't even know if I saw those.

Yeah, there was McDonald's cheeseburgers and taco Bell tacos. And we even borrowed the trays. We asked him if we could borrow some trays and we actually took them back after the party.

That seemed like 100 years ago.

It was maybe 150.

Man, so long ago. It's good times, though.

Yes. Good times had by all. We just had one altogether, talking about llamas. And if you want to know more about llamas, go out and meet one. And since I said that it's time for listener mail.

Instead of listener mail, we're going to take this opportunity to reinforce that we are going out on tour this year.

Oh, boy.

And this is it. These are all the cities we're doing for the year. We rarely have them all locked in this early, so we're pretty excited. But May 29, 30th and 31st will be in Medford, Mass. Outside of Boston, then down to DC, and then back up to New York City. Finally at town hall there.

Right?

And then what about August, August 7, eigth and 9th will be in Chicago, then Minneapolis. Once again, we're so happy to be back there. And we're super excited to add Indianapolis to our list of cities that we've never been to.

Yes. And then what?

And then we're going to wind it all down in September back in Durham, North Carolina, at the Carolina Theater there on September 5.

Such a lovely place.

It was great. And then closing it out in Atlanta once again on September 7. And you can go to our website, go to these venue websites to get tickets. And as a reminder, please make sure you are only at venue websites because a lot of times it'll just say stuff you should know. Tickets. Oh, here they are. $180. That sounds expensive. If you ever see tickets that are more than like, I think the highest ever is like $60 or something, maybe 65. Some places for like, front row for.

Face value, add like, some of those ticket vendors add a bunch of stuff, but the face value shouldn't be more than that, right?

Yeah. So if you see a ticket for more than that, then that means you're not on the right website.

Or if you're required to pay only in cryptocurrency, you might want to go to a different website too.

But we're super excited. It's a great show and we can't wait to see everybody.

Yeah, come on out, everybody. If we may toot our own horns, it is loads of fun for us and it seems based on how people respond for the audience as well.

Yeah.

Oh yes. You can go to Linktree Sysk or you can go to stuffyushino.com and there's all of the links and stuff like that to all the ticket sites, and they're on sale now, so we'll see everybody for the rest of the year.

Yeah. And now how do we end the show? I don't even remember.

Oh yeah. If you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, not to ask about parking or anything like that at any of the venues, you can email us at stuffpodcast@iHeartRadio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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