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This Podcast Will Kill You

Ep 117 Bedbugs: Bug-bitten and bedeviled

This Podcast Will Kill You

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Health & Fitness, Science

4.817.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2023

⏱️ 93 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This just might be our itchiest episode yet, and for that we sincerely apologize. But it might also be one of our most fascinating and fun episodes yet, and for that we are proud. Whether or not you have personal experience with bedbugs, the mere mention of these vampiric critters is often enough to inspire skin-crawling horror in us all. But in this episode, we also make a case for their appreciation. How can you not admire (from a distance, of course), their incredible ability to go for months or even a year without feeding? Or that their saliva contains all kinds of proteins that slow blood clotting or dilate our blood vessels? Or that the ubiquity of these bugs during the Industrial Revolution drove massive changes in furniture design? From the biology of a bedbug bite to the impressively long history of these blood-feeding arthropods, we present the story of bedbugs in more detail than you ever knew you wanted (and trust us, you do).

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is exactly right.

0:06.0

Many put their hope in Dr. Serhat.

0:09.0

His company was worth half a billion dollars.

0:11.0

His research promised groundbreaking treatments for

0:14.3

HIV and cancer, but the brilliant doctor was hiding a secret. You can listen to

0:20.0

Dr Death, bad magic, exclusively an ad free by subscribing to Wendry Plus in the Wendry app.

0:27.2

What a night have I passed, not being able to get to sleep from animals crawling continually all over my poor dear person. If once I had

0:36.3

got to sleep, I would then have defied them, but it was not practicable. But what were these animals?

0:43.0

Why to know that I looked this morning at the bed's head,

0:46.0

and behold I saw some hundreds of bugs on their March home,

0:51.0

full of prey, I dare say, Though bugs do not like me in general, I suppose

0:56.0

an overabundance of population had created a famine, for I was bit in three different places, all three on a very tender part which I shall forbear mentioning

1:06.0

in which we Britain think is the best part of a bullock to make a stake of.

1:10.0

At five this morning I left Capua, glad to get out of such a dirty hole.

1:15.8

However, I deserved it for going to bed last night without looking.

1:19.4

Whereas had I proceeded in my customary manner, laying myself down on a board, bench, or table, I should

1:25.9

have slept like a hero, but Naples had made me luxurious, and this night was I repaid for it.

1:39.2

I slept for it. I slept mercifully, not well but some. On looking, however, at my fair hand in the morning as it lay outside the bedclothes, I perceived it to be all, what shall I say, elevated into inequalities,

1:47.6

significant of much. My pretty neck too, especially the part of it Babby used to like to kiss, was all bitten

1:54.8

infamously.

1:56.4

I went this morning while a man was taking down my bedstead to look for the bugs, which

2:00.7

were worse last night, of course, having found what a rare creature they had got to eat and

...

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