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Hey there, it's Ian and Mike. We want to speak directly to Bark Miaou Katchup. Bark, Miał, Ketchup. Bark Miaou Ketchup, recently, you left us a review on Apple podcast, and we would like to thank you for this kind review.

But Bark Miaou Ketchup, you say, and I quote, You lost a star for me for not having access to older episodes in Apple podcast anymore. And Bark, Miał, Ketchup, we don't know why they're gone either.

Yeah, it's a mystery to us as well, Bark Me Out Ketchup. It might be because we no longer have the license for the music in them. We never did. It might be Because in almost all of those episodes, we made fun of NPR One, and NPR didn't like that. So we don't know. The good news is we are reissuing old episodes here with new music every other week. And here's today's.

One small thing. You're going to hear the voices and names of our former producers, Nadia Wilson and Candice Mitelkhan. Don't be confused, but that's who that is. It's Nadia and Candice, our old producers.

I don't think you would be confused, but we're telling you that. So don't run screaming from the podcast when you hear the voice of someone named Nadia or Candice.

But I thought it was Mike and Ian.

Noam Sobel is a neurobiologist at the Weitzmann Institute of Science in Israel. And a few years back, he wanted to research what tears were good for. Do they have a purpose?

For example, did they have a chemical signal in them? It's a difficult thing to study for a few reasons.

I should point out here that our initial study, at least, suffered from a really unfortunate gender bias. This happened because we started off by publishing, just putting up posters in our campus and in a neighboring campus saying that we need volunteers who can cry with ease because we need to obtain tears for our research. This led to about 70 women volunteers and one man, basically. It's just a cultural thing. Men don't very readily admit to crying and typically will not come to a lab and cry for an experiment, and women will. We ended up with women tears, and that's what we were working with for a long time.

When you made the call for volunteers and you had just the one male respond, did you do anything with that guy, or did you just let him go?

Yeah, he couldn't cry. He couldn't? Not in the way we need. He couldn't generate tears for us in any quantity.

So they kept this bias in mind, and they got the tears they could from their volunteers, and they found something pretty interesting.

To our surprise, we found that exposure to these odorless tears, so just sniffing them, rather than radically reduced levels of testosterone. So if you sniff this thing within about half an hour, you'll have about a 20% reduction in testosterone, which is dramatic.

Do you have an interpretation of what the advantage of that is that female tears would lower testosterone?

Here I want to pull away even from necessarily female tears. What I think is being signaled is related to aggression. What I think the signal that tears are carrying is a stop aggression signal. This is consistent with what, in fact, has since been discovered in rodents. If you expose adult male mice to juvenile mouse tears, they reduce their sexual aggression towards the juvenile mice.

Can I just say I had no idea that rodents that mice cried?

Well, so yeah, there are other examples. The blind mole rat, for example. So the blind mole rat will cover itself in its own tears, and this will protect it from aggressive behavior towards it by conspecifics. So In a way, if I can use the way I like to think about this, tears serve as a chemical blanket protecting the animal against aggression.

So you're doing this research where you're required to get tears from people.

From donors, yeah.

How do you make them cry?

Typically, what we do is we ask these volunteers, Okay, do you have any film segment that makes you cry. Typically, people who are really good criers, they'll have that. They'll tell you, Oh, yeah, sure. There's this scene and so and so where I always cry like crazy. We're the neurobiology lab with probably the largest collection of sad films in the world. The volunteers watch these films in isolation and hopefully cry and then collect their tears. That's basically how it worked. But now we're shifting to toddler tiers, and there we're using a whole different approach.

What's the approach?

Well, we've entered into a collaboration with this national system where basically we approach mothers in the waiting room and offer them to participate in return for a toy for their child. Basically, we just go into the room with them when they go to be vaccinated. If they cry, assuming they cry, we wipe their cheek simplistically with a special cloth that goes into a special device and goes right into liquid nitrogen. And with this, we're building a tear bank.

Based on your research, Noam, is there one scene that is particularly cryworthy?

Yeah. The scene in the movie Champed, where a- This is a bit of a spoiler alert here, but this is for a movie that was made in 1979.

I feel like we can go forward comfortably.

The scene in the movie Champ, where a champ dies in the hands of four-year-old son who's crying, is very effective. It's used by many labs to study emotion, by the way, not only by us. Really? Yeah. I think that that movie gets more views in labs than in theaters.

Okay, none of us here have seen the champ, but I feel like we should give this a try.

In order to do that, we're going to also bring in our official taste tester, Peter Sagel. He's going to join us as we watch this scene from the champ.

Nadia is going to join us, too. This is the end of the movie. John Voight plays this boxer who's made this comeback. He's about to die.

He's a single dad. He fights to earn money for his kid. He's just He's on a fight, and now he looks terrible.

Yeah, and here it goes.

Oh, no. That's little Ricky Schroeder. Is that John Voight? Yeah, he looks terrible. Well, he has just been beaten up. There's no way a young John Voight would look something like Angelina Jolie, right? You can see it. Did you see that? Yeah, a little bit.

We can help it. Wake him up. Wake him.

We're all here, sir. Please wake him up.

Oh, jeez.

No, no. I don't want to. I want you.

Come on, jeez. Give him an iPad or something to distract him.

I think that's the end of the movie.

That's how it ends. That's the end of the movie. That was basically roll credits at this point.

Okay, so did anybody cry?

I noticed. I did. Yeah, Dan Ford's wiping something away from his face.

Yeah, your eyes are red. Oh, yeah. So did you get close to crying? No. Nadia?

I think I got a little misty after he had been saying champ for maybe a minute and a half.

It does go on.

It really does. It felt like it was beating me down. Yeah.

I might have, maybe I would have had an emotional reaction. I've seen the whole movie if I'd known who these people were. Because that's just generic child sad over death I can't handle that, though.

I know. It's child in peril. It's too much.

See, actually, here's the thing, and this might be relevant. How old are your kids?

I don't think I can answer that.

Because I'm going to start crying. Oh, we see that. Is that right? Mike's Your children are younger than... Your oldest is like 12 now?

Yeah. Oh, my God.

Yeah, look at him. Look at him go. I'm going to speak clinically about Mike as he weeps. I know this from experience. When your children are young, you cannot tolerate. It's like you cannot tolerate any depictions of children in peril or children in pain. It cannot be done. It cannot be done.

I have never seen you like this.

That's not true. Seeing Mike upset is making me more upset than the movie. Really?

I didn't know he had a heart.

Did you know? Too much. I've seen it once, but I've never seen it. I've never seen it quite like this.

Because this doesn't work. It's terrible.

You have a tear. You actually have a tear.

He does.

Well, I guess it works.

Since there's four of us here, only one of us wept, can we say it has a success rate of 25 %?

I think that. Yeah, sure. We went from pop culture happy hour to story core. We were talking about who was in the movie, and then one of us cried.

I cried every time during pop culture happy hour.

Yeah, it's very affecting.

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Hey there, this is Felix Contreras, one of the co-hosts of AltLatino, the podcast from NPR Music, where we discuss Latinx culture, music, and heritage with the artist that created.

Listen now to the AltLatino podcast from NPR.

Hey, Latoya, what can we help you with?

So the other day I was in the car and I spend a lot of time in my car. And so when I need a quick snack, my go-to snack is French fries. And sometimes I want to save them for when I get home. But how do you keep your French fries crispy and fresh and warm without eating them immediately in the car?

This, I believe, is one of the great struggles of modern life. Yes.

They get soggy or cold and hard, and you can't eat them anymore.

I can't think of a food that has a greater chasm between its fresh form and its later form.

Right. It only takes me five minutes sometimes to get home, but they're always ruined.

Wow. What fries do you get?

I get the Chick-fil-A Waffle fries.

Okay. Waffle fries, I feel like, I don't know, I feel like those are especially bad after a certain... That once that window closes, it feels like there's just no going back with those fries.

It's true.

All right, Latoya, we're going to look into this. It's a serious problem.

It is. I think a lot of people could benefit from this answer.

I feel like if we solve this, our work as a show is done. That is the everything that four years ago we set out to figure out.

It just lights out production down, curtains closed. Okay.

Okay, Latoya, I think we have somebody who can help you. On the line with this now is Dan Souza from America's Test Kitchen.

Dan, everybody has faced this problem. Is there a way to solve it?

All right. I think it's a really interesting question because normally Basically, as soon as I get the French fries in the car from the drive-through, I'm eating them. I don't usually run into that problem, but I have a couple of ideas. One is a way to maintain proper texture during the drive home, and the other is once get home, if you haven't done that, how to fix it. On the ride home, what your biggest enemy with French fries is that they cool down and all the starch in there traps the water and they end up being not creamy and they're not crispy really at that point. The second enemy is moisture. If you wrap them up really tight to keep them warm, you trap all that steam, and that's going to sag out your crust. In the car, the solution, so if you've got that nice cardboard sleeve from McDonald's or whatever, what I would do is I I'd punch some holes in the bottom of the container, maybe five or six holes in the bottom of the container. Then I would hold the open part to the car vent and just turn the heat up as high as possible, the fan as high as possible, and I would just hold it there during the entire ride home.

What you're doing there is you're blasting them with hot air, which is going to keep the moisture at bay. It's going to wick that away. It's also going to keep them hot so they won't cool down. I haven't tested this out, but I'm pretty confident that that would keep them in ideal shape if you have a long ride home.

That sounds promising. I also like the idea that it would... I think that's the best way to spread the delicious smell of French fries throughout the vehicle.

Yeah, exactly. I originally got the idea as just an air freshener move, but you had a benefit of the fries being really good, too. That's my best bet. If you live in Miami and you're doing this in the summer, you have to really love French fries to want to do it. But in Chicago in the winter, that's going to be a nice thing anyway. That's my solution for en route. If you get home and you haven't done that and they're cold or you forgot about them, it's actually really pretty simple to get them back to their former glory. You don't have to heat up your oven, you don't have to get a ton of oil going. For a large McDonald's French fries, about 6 ounces of fries. If you have a 12-inch nonstick skillet, just look it with about a teaspoon of oil and bring it up until it's really hot, almost smoking. Throw all the fries in in a single layer and cook them for about 2-3 minutes, just tossing it every now and then. Then onto paper towel, blot some of that oil, see the salt again if you want, and then you're eating.

So five minutes or so, and you can be back to French fry glory at that point.

You've tried this method?

Yes. This is a test kitchen approved method, believe it or not. Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, that was some testing that actually went on here. We finally solved the big French fry overheating issue.

So, Dan, LaToya, I think, prefers Waffle fries.

Oh, boy.

How does that change things?

Waffle fries? Man, I haven't had Waffle fries in a long time. I never get them out, I don't think. I I think in the car, same solution, I think it should be fine. And I actually think in the skillet, it's probably going to be even easier because you're going to have less Waffle fries for the same weight or the same package size. So even just like, flipping those one by one probably wouldn't be a deal. They may not toss as well in the skillet as like shoestring. But yeah, I would say you'd still be able to use that method, though. I don't think we tested with Waffle fries. That's out there. That's the wild card right there. I go off for a rest.

Well, Dan, thanks so much for helping out LaToya.

Hey, I'm happy to help her out. I hope it works well for her.

You can check out Dan's new website, cookscience. Com. That's Coox. C-o-o-k-s-s-s-i-e-s. Com.

All right, I think we should test out this method with the heater. We're going to get some McDonald's French fries and go to Mike's car. You'll know we're there when we start speaking in hush tones.

Okay, here we go. I'm turning into the Rock and Roll McDonald's. Drive through. Oh, wait. No, wait. Wait. What is it? No, this is... Oh, that's the parking?

How does that make sense?

This segment's really about the French fries, not about how the parking lot is designed.

All right, so.

I think you should get two large fries so that we can have a control fry and a test fry.

Two large fries. Do you want anything else? Jalapeno McChicken?

Do you want to hear a joke?

Yeah.

Why did the jalapeno put on a sweater? Because it was a little chilly.

Okay. But I do feel like we're here. You might as well get something.

Yeah, you don't see a lot of McDonald's, so it's a rare chance to try their food.

Do you want to try a pumpkin spice latte?

No.

Me neither.

The line here at the drive-through has made this segment already longer than I was expecting.

It's unfortunate.

Hi, can I get two large French fries What size is the Coke? Small.

And a small dye Coke. Okay. Is that real? Yeah, that's it.

When you want to, thank you.

Thanks. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Okay. All right. Thanks. Okay, so the thing to do, we're going to poke the holes as instructed and then turn on the heater. Okay. We're a few minutes in now. I am suffering.

This is terrible. It's really hot in here. Plus, I think we're in the wrong lane. Okay. Oh, my God. That is so hot.

I can see it. Here, you have heated seats. I'm going to go ahead and turn them on, too. It's feel, though. So you can see I have, as instructed, I have the the container right up against the vent. You can feel the holes in the bottom. See if you feel the heat coming through.

Yeah, it's very hot. Definitely. It's very hot there. Oh, yeah.

Look at me. Look at my face. I'm dripping sweat.

What happened?

There are two questions I realized that we're going to answer. One, does this work? Two, if it works, is it worth the human cost?

I don't think it is. I mean, if you're really hungry, then yes, it is. It is worth it. But I just think, oh, this is... Look at this. I am now rubbing my eyes because I am covered in sweat. I'm not crying. I'm just sweating.

We've had sweat and tears so far in this episode.

Yeah. I guess we need to cut somebody. We need blood. We need to go get Peter.

Well, the next segment is somebody asked, How do I stab?

Okay.

Mike just went right through a crosswalk just to get us out of this car sooner. I think really no jury would convict us.

I think that's the thing to remember. Whenever you're frustrated by the driver in front of you doing something erratic, it could be that they're just trying to keep their fries fresh and that they're boiling inside their car, that it's 100 degrees and they have one hand holding hot French fries up to an air vent.

Okay, so Candice and Nadia should be here somewhere.

There they are. So let's do this. The freshest possible French fries.

Okay, it's so hot in here. Hold the mic. It's so hot. Okay. So these are the treated ones? Okay. Go.

Oh, they're really good. Yeah. I think they taste like they should. It tastes like fresh out of the McDonald's fryer. Yeah.

Okay. Now, here are the ones that were just sitting in the bag.

Oh, I can already feel the soggy. They're soggier. Yeah? Yeah, they actually are.

I'm so glad because this has been a nightmare being in this car.

They're all so harder. I mean, they're still really good. Yeah? But, yeah, they're soggier and a little more, if it's possible, also cardboardier.

They're a little...

Yeah, they feel harder, not as... I'm going to go for crispy fresh. Yeah, I much prefer the treated ones. The treated ones have kept the grease as well. You can taste the grease.

The ones using the method are definitely crispier than the ones that were just left in the bag. I think Latoya has got to try this. I don't think it's going to make for safe driving, though.

No, you need a partner and a high tolerance for pain.

I think if you have some clothing that will keep you cool.

Snap yourself an ice pack.

Like an ice pack, exactly. If you have an ice pack you can sit on, that will make this bearable. But yeah, those fries, it works. Well, that does it for this week's show. What did you learn, Ian?

I learned that we are not alone in crying, that actually mice and other animals cry, too.

Yeah. Do you think Mickey Mouse cries?

I'm sure. Yeah.

Do you think so? What we see is just the positive, just the fun stuff, the adventures.

That's like Mickey's Facebook page. It's just the good stuff. There's a world of pain there that he goes through. Things are not good with many.

Well, that's what I'm wondering if there's a little bit of overcompensation. It's like, I just want to say 10 years ago, I made the greatest decision ever when I married my best friend. He's like, Okay, you're overselling it, Mickey. Yeah.

Your friends are what? You have a dog, a duck. You don't know anybody who's like you. All alone. There's nobody that can understand you. He's a germaphobe. Yeah.

He's got gloves on. Yeah. I don't shake. I just do fist bumps.

How to Do Everything is produced by Nadia Wilson and Candice Matel.

Hey, Candice. Our intern this week is Tyler. Tyler came in and he diagnosed all our diseased plants. Turns out we're not very good at plants. Sorry about that, Tyler.

Get us your questions at howto@mpr.

Org. You can visit our website, howtodoeverything.

Org. I'm in. And I'm Mike. Thanks.

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