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Part-Time Genius

Why Did Venus Flytraps Develop a Taste for Meat?

Part-Time Genius

iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope

Society & Culture

4.52K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From plants that eat rats and frogs, to the strange reason bats curl up in pitcher plants, Will and Mango explore the eerie world of carnivorous plants. 

This episode originally aired on November 9, 2018.

Got a question you’d like us to answer? A rabbit hole you think we should explore? Email higeniuses@gmail.com or leave us a message at (302) 405-5925.

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Photo by Andi Superkern via Unsplash. Thanks, Andi!

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:04.0

What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.

0:08.5

Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?

0:15.1

Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.

0:18.5

From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi.

0:23.9

What difference at this point does it make?

0:27.4

Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:36.4

Guess what, Mango?

0:38.1

What's that, Will?

0:40.6

So did you ever have a Venus fly trap as a kid?

0:42.3

I did not.

0:47.4

I mean, my cousins, Rochni and Rohan, who are so cool, they had one.

0:51.0

Yeah, all the cool kids had one.

0:51.7

It's true.

0:54.5

You know, I think one of the things I remember most about it was how impossible it was to convince my friends not to keep making it closed up like this one that I had.

1:00.4

And it was just something too satisfying about, I don't know, like taking a pencil or something like that

1:05.4

and triggering it to close up. Yeah, I feel like every kid who's been around one is guilty of

1:10.3

like trying to feed it something

1:11.3

they shouldn't. Well, and I was recently reminded of a little display of these carnivorous plants that

1:17.0

one of our teachers had put out in front of her classroom. This was back in third grade. And,

1:21.1

you know, there was some Venus fly traps, some pitcher plants, of course, a few others. And it was weird

1:27.0

how problematic this display became,

...

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