Selects: Gobble Gobble: Turkeys!

Josh Clark (0:00)

Hey, everybody, it's Josh, and I realized that we're releasing this Select on Turkeys from 2020, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. We're doing that in case you listen to this episode and rethink eating turkey. I know it did that to me, although I can tell you six years on that it didn't turn out that I stopped eating turkey. I just feel worse when I eat it than I did before the episode.

At any rate, it turns out that turkeys are actually pretty fascinating animals in myriad ways. Yes, 30,000 ways.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and I hope the next couple of weeks leading up to Thanksgiving are nice and homey for you. And to our dear, dear friends in Canada, a belated Happy Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_2 (0:47)

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

Josh Clark (0:57)

Gobble, gobble, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerome Rowland. Couldn't come up with anything at the last second.

Chuck Bryant (1:07)

It's all right.

Josh Clark (1:08)

And this is Stuff You Should Know about turkeys. Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (1:12)

So I need to just apologize at the beginning of this episode because I could not help, and I know I will not be able to help myself from making Vernon, Florida, references.

The great, great documentary from Errol Morris, one of the prominent about the citizens of Vernon, Florida, in the 1980s, an inland Florida panhandle small town. And one of the lead characters in that documentary was Mr. Henry Shipes. He was a turkey hunter. And all he does is talk about turkey hunting. And I know it by heart. Me and all my friends know it by heart. And we quoted a lot, so it's really, really hard not to just talk like Henry Shipes. So I'll try not to, because it's so random that 99.9% of the people, it won't be worth it for like the 100 people that will think that's the best thing ever.

Josh Clark (2:04)

I don't know, man. I've found over the years that it's good to cater to those people sometimes too, you know?

Chuck Bryant (2:10)

I might throw in an occasional. And I'll explain what I'm talking about maybe. But we do need to thank the Humane Society for what the bulk of this research came from this really great, great, great article that someone, a nameless person at the Humane Society, put together from a list of great, great sources. So I was surprised to see something so thorough. It was really great.

Josh Clark (2:31)

It was written by the mysterious Tom T. He was really in favor of turkeys, suspiciously.

Chuck Bryant (2:40)

And this is Thanksgiving Day, too, so we also need to apologize for, we're not trying to guilt you or anything like that. Maybe don't listen to this one for a week.

Josh Clark (2:49)

I will say though, Chuck, like I'm not eating turkey anymore after this, and it's really kind of a pain because turkey's my favorite. My favorite meat of all time is turkey.

Chuck Bryant (2:57)

I know. I'm sorry then.

It is tough. I knew turkeys were pretty cool and pretty smart, but it is tough to read this stuff and still slice into that bird.

Josh Clark (3:08)

Well, it's funny to hear that they are smart because they have such a great reputation for being just totally stupid. But it turns out that that's really not right at all. It's at best a human misinterpretation, maybe at worst a cynical justification for eating them.

But one of the first things that will remark about turkeys right out of the gate that a lot of people don't know, is that Ben Franklin was more in favor of turkeys as America's national emblem, as far as birds go, than he was the bald eagle.

He had a big problem with the fact that eagles don't necessarily hunt as much as they bully other birds for whatever they just hunted. He said that the eagle does not get his living honestly. He steals from the fishhawk and is too lazy to fish for himself. The turkey, however, is much more respectable, a true original native, and a turkey would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guard who should presume to invade his farmyard. And after researching turkeys, I dare say he was probably right about that.

Chuck Bryant (4:14)

Yeah, and the other thing that I'm surprised he didn't mention was, and also by the way, male turkeys during the breeding season, literally their head and neck turns red, white and blue.

Josh Clark (4:24)