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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 Chilog. 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 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's made some off-handed 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 and this huge mass, like a swarm of bees carrying this key. So after how many bees do you think this would take?
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 bees 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, Kaitlyn says seven.
I, you know, I 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. Trainer, can you start by telling us how you're qualified to answer Maureen's question? Sure. So my name is Kirsten Trainer. 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. Trainer? What's the answer?
It's not so easy to answer because honeybees normally wouldn't coordinate to move a key. You would 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 honeybee and care here out of her hive.
And honeybee weighs about 100 milligrams. Okay. So if we look at how much a key would weigh, which I looked it up online, it's about .25 ounces, which is 6,700 milligrams. So you would need about 67 bees coordinating together to move a house. 67 bees. Okay. When you say they will fly out, they're dead, move out the dead, what's the explanation of that behavior?
Sure. So honeybee hive is, you know, 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 other 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 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. 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, exclude her 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, ooh, 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 propilize, and in tomb, the rest of the mouse, the skeleton, so that it doesn't make the hive sick.
Oh, yeah. What? Yeah, they basically mummify anything too big that they can't move. Whoa. 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 an 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 removed 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 propilize and tune.
So it's like a little... So propolis is a... Look, go ahead. A propolis bees got gathered 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 antibacterial doormat and for other things in their hive. They basically, they make a mouse sanitizer themselves. They do. Correct.
All right. Thank you, Dr. Trainer, for helping settle this for Maureen. This is fantastic. You're very welcome. I hope it's been useful.
Happy new year. Happy new year. 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 this question. This is from Sharon. Sharon says she can't resist the urge to overcome it in many situations. When someone asks her 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 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 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, screaming what I said. Like, 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 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. Right, so this concept of trying to help this person immediately took a nose dive into making things work. But at least we also brought up trauma for you, so we at least accomplished that. The hours were long, but it doesn't pay anything.
Here's a question from Tyler and this is a 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 received them. So Tyler wants to know 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.
Got it. A noble pursuit and a great aspiration from Thailand. 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. I have such deep shame about my life and so does my wife. My wife is like an amazing, amazing woman who should feel nothing but
great feeling about it. 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 band-aid for the thing that's happening darkly, darkly underneath the skeleton.
I have a little bit of a cynical attitude. However, when I read them and I get rid of 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.
This is touching to me. 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 it. Let me find another question here that is, again, shouldn't have any trauma associated with it. 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? Is your freezer in pretty good shape? I do clean my refrigerator and freezer. 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 it's kind of a meditative practice of yours.
Yes. And I like a clean fridge. I used 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 fun to do, and the slight danger of it with the fridge luck. And so I'm really familiar with the fridge and had to take out shelves, because I did it recreationally for a while.
When you say use as an adult, you would enter a French only in my 20s and 30s. That's right.
And 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 to kind of explore this. So do you just push in the door and it opens or does it, are you ever trapped in there? I've never been trapped. I've never been trapped. But I will say the immediate feeling is claustrophobia and terror. It would seem that that makes sense. 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, but I just want to say you can find out 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, if especially if it's in the guy's beard, just take it. Just take it. They'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. 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 wanna 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 wanna 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.
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 howtoatnpr.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, but 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 went 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. 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, the last six months, and then one night, the 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 this 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, instead of going up and then down, up and down, it's essentially just turning around you.
And over the course of three months, it's just spirals up until its highest elevation and then it's going to spiral down, spiral down 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 of 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 breaches 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 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 going to 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 whether 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 this on a 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, so with 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. 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.
Say that your brain should tell you you're cold, but your body was okay that I just you know said alright let me go back for another role
Well, that does it for this week's show. What'd you learn Ian? Well, I learned that bees will take a go to extreme length 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 Tom's. 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.
How to do everything is produced by Heenys Revostova with technical direction by Lorna White. Our intern is Father Time. Great work, Father Time. Happy New Year, Father Time. 2024 was fantastic. Get us your questions at howto at NPR.org. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thanks. Happy New Year.
Well, I think we got a call. We got a call, Maureen back and give her the news. Okay. I love it. Hello. Hello, Maureen. Hello. Hey, it's Mike and Ian call. How are you? I'm so happy to hear from y'all. And here is Caitlin. Hi, guys. Hey, Caitlin. Well, we have, we have an answer. Okay. Okay. Do you want to restate what your guesses are?
Okay, my original guess was 50 B's. 50 B's. Mine was seven. And Carl's my husband was five. It would take 67 B's to carry a kid. No, definitely. Congratulations, Maureen.
Can I handle this? This is amazing. The best news I've had in a while. Well, Caitlin, you can still lord it over Carl. This is true. I was closer than Carl. And we know someone who guessed three. Yeah. That was much closer than her. Wow. Yeah. I think we were all a little low, except you. Except me. Yeah. My perfection. Now you're just spiking the football, Maureen. Come on, Maureen. I act like you've been there before.
