Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness (2022) s01e01 Episode Script

That bug's in your house.
You better kill it!
No, no, no. Not so fast.
Are you sure you wanna do that?
That bug messed with the wrong queen!
Parent Nature made that little creature.
Are you sure you're gonna smash him?
I've always thought bugs
were absolutely hideous.
I mean, just hittin' the windshield,
comin' out from behind a wall,
creepin' and crawlin' all over the place
when I'm not trying to be
creeped and crawled all over.
That bug is gonna mate
and make more bugs,
and then you're gonna be
covered in bugs for the rest of your life.
Is that what you want
while you're trying to get some Zs?
My first instinct when I see a bug
is to smash it!
But what gives me the right
to kill this little baby insect?
Is it because my dad told me
when I was, like, seven that ants are
actually intruders
in our home so they must be killed?
Then I realized,
are they gorgeous?
Is there a symmetry that exists in a bug
that I don't really see anywhere else?
They can actually be stunning,
there's sacred geometry.
In the way that there's sacred geometry
in yoga, there's sacred geometry in bugs.
There's colors. There's beauty.
Do they love each other,
or kill each other?
Do the girls eat the boys
after they do it? Do they have, like,
80 million kids at once or just one?
What's going on?
What I want to know is,
are bugs gorgeous or gross?
-They're gorgeous!
-Gross!
-Gorgeous!
-Gross!
-Gorgeous! La la la la la la la la
-Gross, gross, gross, gross, gross!
I'm gonna have to
take matters into my own hands.
How are ya, honey?
-Jonathan!
-I'm so excited to see you!
I have an insatiable thirst
for knowledge of bugs.
So I know my first call is going to
be to entomologist Dr. Jessica Ware.
-Lots of insects like to live in plants.
-Let's go.
An entomologist is a scientist who has
a special focus on the study of insects.
Once we have insects,
we take our pooters
It's whatever you called it.
You said it, not me.
There's a tube at the bottom.
If you suck up insects--
I'm not understanding
why we have to suck them up.
Well, some of them
are so small that if you were to
try and pick them up with your hands,
or your fingers, you would smush 'em.
-Is that normal?
Oh, I got it!
It's incredible that, that you do this.
But, like, why is it important
that we, like, study literal insects?
Well, I mean,
insects are the wave of the future.
They teach us about different ways
that we could fly, medicine.
What could they teach us about,
you know, biodiversity or climate change?
And they're kind of
the future of our food.
A very little space is required
to have a bunch of protein and fat
and nutritious food
when you rear insects for entomophagy,
compared to, like, having cows
take up huge pastures and such.
So we need to, like,
figure out what insects are out there.
You might think, in Central Park,
that everything is known,
but that's not true. I mean,
even just like in the last ten years
they've found new species of centipedes,
new species of insects,
right here in Central Park.
We have a lot of them
already in the museum,
that are already pinned and preserved.
Wait, you have like,
tons of preserved baby insects?
Yeah, we have like 23 million specimens.
So, let's go, Dr. Jessica Ware! Ah!
I'm so excited.
Yeah, seeing this, the name, the sign,
the arch, it always gets me excited too.
Even though I've been
coming in these doors for years.
Ah. To your office we go.
No offense to sixth-grade field trips,
but this is not your average
sixth-grade field trip, honey.
We've got an all-access pass,
and she's got secrets to show us.
And yet they do.
The male mates with the female,
and he wants to make
sure that she uses his sperm.
But she can store sperm in her abdomen.
He wants to try and
scrape out all that sperm storage.
-She's got a refrigerator in her tum-tum.
-She's got--
His secondary penis actually is
like a scoop or like a scraper.
And he basically scrapes out
the previous male's sperm.
And then he ejaculates
that second sperm into her.
I don't know why it's such a
visceral reaction to you saying ejaculate.
So if you look,
it looks like two little hooks.
-No! No!
-I know. He'll scoop.
Yeah, it's scoopy time.
Each of these cabinets is full of drawers,
and the drawers are full of insects.
All insects have a head, then they have
a thorax, and then they have an abdomen.
And then they all have six legs.
And that's what separates them
from things like spiders,
or other arachnids, they have eight legs.
And they're actually part
of this larger group called Hexapoda,
because it means six legs.
Ah. But what about bugs?
So, all bugs are insects,
but not all insects are bugs.
So bugs are just one order within insects.
A fly is Diptera,
which is one of the orders.
Odonata, which is my beloved dragonflies
and damselflies, that's an order.
And then Hemiptera,
which includes cicadas,
are the bugs,
they're called the "true bugs."
This is a termite.
You can see how tiny
the actual termites are
in here. They're teeny tiny creatures
that have different castes.
So there's reproductive castes,
which are the ones that mate,
which are king and queen.
And then there's soldiers
and there's workers.
The queen is this.
That's a termite?
Yeah. Her little
teeny-tiny head is right there.
She mates with the king,
she gets the sperm,
she stores sperm,
and then she just becomes an egg factory.
And this is her body
stretched full of eggs.
And all she can do
is lay there and just pump out eggs.
She can no longer feed,
she can no longer groom herself,
so the workers have to care for her.
They have to groom her,
they have to feed her.
And if an intruder comes,
they actually will drag her away
to a place of safety.
That's really cool.
Yeah, that's what I study
in my lab, is female reproduction
'cause I feel like it's been like all
penis, penis, penis,
penis, penis for like 200 years.
But there's all these cool
in-- internal anatomy that females have,
you know,
for mate choice, or for sperm selection.
They can, like, secrete stuff
that would kill some sperm and not others.
Like, females actually
have a lot of control
-That's fascinating.
-but it's just been overlooked.
That, I think, is actually really
incredible when you think about it.
'Cause females were literally not, like,
welcomed into, like, institutions to study
in the rates that men were, like,
for hundreds and hundreds of years.
And then depending on your race,
that's like a whole other thing.
In grad school, I was
the only Black woman in my program.
When I was a post-doc, I was
the only Black woman in my program.
When I got my first job as a professor,
I was the only Black woman
professor in my department.
And now I'm the first
Black curator here at the American Museum.
I feel like, there are jobs, come join us.
You know, I feel like-- I wish, I wish
we weren't always just
being the first, you know what I mean?
Now we need some seconds, we need thirds,
we need fourths, we need, like
I did think in your story,
like, it was gonna,
like, I thought you were
gonna be like, "And now, there's tons--"
But no, that was like,
that was not, it wasn't what--
This is a huge
universe to explore and to learn about.
Studying entomology
allows you to unwrap the mysteries
of 400 million years. They've
been around a lot longer than we were.
I want to see a living,
shunting, breathing insect.
-Do you wanna go to my office?
-Yes.
This is a leaf insect,
which is in the order Phasmatodea.
And they have this
behavior to try and look like a leaf.
Some of them look like sticks.
They will sway, to look like a leaf,
kind of swaying in the wind.
Oh, look at her,
just blowing in the wind.
Ha. She's trying to
fool you into making you think
that she's just a
swaying leaf, nothing to see here, folks.
Gorgeous!
Okay, this is a millipede.
-And this millipede is actually
-Boy, oh
not an insect, it's a myriapod.
They just kind of crawl and explore.
See, she's starting to warm up.
She's feeling you.
Ooh! It's shitting on me!
I can say I've been
shat on by a millipede.
Gross!
It did.
Feels like water, mixed with poopy,
mixed with my worst fears.
It's okay, it's your friend. It's,
it's, it's like, um, like a friendly poop.
It's fine, I'm fine.
You know how when
you thought that your colorist
and your hairstylist
were the same person? No!
And it's the same thing
with insects and spiders.
So, I want to meet an arachnologist,
which is someone who studies spiders.
Are you afraid of spiders in any way, or
Well, I'm not the president
of the fan club. But I'm on my way.
Maybe like, like is ten
the most comfortable?
-Yeah.
-I'm probably like a three.
-Okay, I'm gonna work on bringing that up.
-Okay. I love your haircut.
Thank you.
So right in the window there
-Oh!
-I have two garden spiders.
Oh my gosh, look at her.
And they both, like, built little webbies?
-Yeah! Want to feel what an egg sac
-Oh, yes.
-Oh yes.
-is like?
Just feel the
egg sacs with my-- Remember now
-That's an egg sac?
-a spider made this
by herself, with her silk.
Touch it, it's very soft.
Spider sacs feel strong like steel wool,
but soft like a baby cotton.
It is the most interesting texture
I have ever felt.
The green color is a
combination of-- The spider makes it,
but they, they're getting the
raw ingredients from the food they eat.
So, mostly insects. It's camouflage.
Isn't-- like, what, like
medical advantages could silk have?
It's very strong.
It's also pretty stretchy.
People are already using
spider silk as
like a little, tiny scaffold,
to regrow nerves,
and regrow other kinds of cells.
It doesn't elicit an immune response.
-It doesn't elicit an immune response?
-No it doesn't. Right, so--
So when you put spider silk in us
Yeah, we don't-- It doesn't-- We don't
get a, inflammation. It's, it's benign.
-Holy moly!
-It's a lot of,
a lot of applications that way.
And a lot of applications in term--
terms of making maybe new kinds
of high-performance textiles.
Gorgeous!
I don't know if you've realized this, but
you've been standing next to black widows.
No, I didn't know.
So that's what's in these containers.
These are black widows.
I have, literally, chills.
You can actually
feel how strong the silk is. Try and
-Just try--
-It's moving.
I'll keep my eye on her.
Oh my God. I'm scared. Okay.
Black widow silk is one of
-the strongest silks.
-It feels really strong.
It's one of the strongest
silks. She's trying to show you her belly.
-Can you see the red?
-Oh, wow. Oh yes.
She does that
when she's threatened?
No, actually
right now she's not threatened. She's just
trying to get away and say,
"Let me, let me go find a dark spot."
You have nerves of steel.
I have chills all over my triceps. Like,
I'm fascinated, but I am still scared.
But I do think that you got me
from like a three to an eight.
-Yay!
-Thank you so much, Cheryl!
Welcome to the first ever
GCTV Bug Gala. I'm Jonathan Van Ness.
-I'm Monét X Change.
-What's happening tonight?
I am so excited. Listen, bugs
from all over the world, they're flying in
left, right, and center,
to show us their fabulous exoskeletons.
-So let's find out who came to slay.
-And who came to wing it.
Oh! I think we have another insect here,
the diabolical ironclad beetle.
This little beetle has one
of the toughest exoskeletons on Earth.
-You know who this is?
-Girl tell me, 'cause I don't.
This is the hellfire black widow.
The spider sac on this spider,
just such a gorgeous satchel.
It's the bag of the season.
She uses it to carry her babies.
I would use it to carry my lip gloss.
-Who do we have next?
It's a Asian giant hornet! Run!
If there is one thing
I learned from arachnologist
Dr. Cheryl Hayashi, it's that
I need to be more comfortable
around spiders and insects.
And like everything in New York,
there's a guy in Staten Island
who has just what I need.
Frank?
Come on up.
I found it.
-How are ya?
-You found it. Hi.
I've heard so much about you.
You've got quite the reputation
as being, like, a renowned bug expert.
So basically, you were a fireman.
-Retired.
-Yes, queen.
Did you realize when you were putting out
fires that you'd be obsessed with insects?
-No, I--
-Obsessed with bugs?
I, I, I realized that when
I was about seven years old.
-Seven, so it predated your career.
-Yes.
So tell me what you do.
What I did after I retired
from the fire department is
I went into the whole
New York Insect Zoo business.
Anything that revolved
around insects, people would call me.
Whether it's doing a video shoot
or a TV show or going to schools,
setting up museum exhibits.
Isn't your mission kind of like
trying to make people like me less
scare-scare of the bug-bugs?
Yeah, I don't want to
scare somebody with a spider.
I want them to say,
"Wow, that's really cool."
"I'm not gonna step on one
next time it's in my house."
-It's education.
-Yeah. Educate me.
Who are the stars
of the show? Who do we have to meet?
Is that a centipede?
-This is a centipede.
-So it's poisonous?
-Venomous.
-Venomous.
Yeah. Poison is something you eat.
Venom is something injected.
-Oh.
-Mmm, yeah, so
What do you feed it?
Uh, this one could eat
small mice,
-large cockroaches.
-Shut up.
Gross!
This is a praying mantis.
How sweet and gorgeous.
Now, praying mantis
hatch from an egg.
They look like themselves,
but teeny.
-Is this a boy or a girl?
-Yes. That's a girl.
Oh good, so she probably--
She's not gonna die after she has sex.
No, uh no, she won't,
but the male probably will.
Everyone knows that whole, like--
It's not a wives' tale.
Girl praying mantises really do kill the
boy, because it's that strategy, it's
smart to eat the protein when
you first get pregnant or whatever?
Right. There's a couple theories
on protein for the developing eggs.
That was great.
Want to go get a bite to eat?
How about we just dine in?
Pink-toed tarantulas.
Look at her toes.
Oh yeah, those are cute.
She's got ballet slippers, honey.
She's giving you ballet.
-These are very docile.
-They are?
Yeah, this-- the pink toes are great.
If you wanna let her
walk on your hand it's fine.
Okay, I'll do it.
I feel like chills all over.
I feel, just like a general sense of
nervousness and unease in my tum-tum.
See?
They did this on America's
Next Top Model once and it was fine.
Hmm.
Can you get him?
Can you get him? Hmm, hmm.
Yeah, yeah. All right.
Oh my God.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
That thing's just been
open this whole time.
Yeah. Yeah, it's alright.
The way Frank is so
passionate about bugs and insects,
makes me appreciate
how interesting and detailed
these beautiful creatures are.
So the next time
we think about stomping on a bug,
let's think about
casting them in a movie instead.
I don't know if you know this
about me, but I am an author.
I am a host.
I am a figure skating expert.
I'm also a human who's about
to direct their first feature film.
Let's get some bugs on set really quick.
Priest, your motivation
is right where I need it to be.
These two, I need you to feel the tension.
-Are they gonna kill each other?
-No.
Okay. Sound speeding and action.
That looks great.
Send in the other woman.
Remember what your motivation is, Priest.
Leaf, we need more passion. Beautiful.
Cut! That was perfect.
That's a wrap. We got it.
-Excellent!
-Uh!
From the producers of
How to Lose a Fly in Ten Days,
My Best Friend's Webbing,
and My Cousin Vinegaroon.
She was trying to get
to the church on time,
and she was looking
for a reason to "leaf."
But could two bugs from
opposite sides of the garden make it work?
Bugs Actually.
Streaming now on Netflies.
As gorgeous as bugs are,
they can also be massive pests.
Like when my dad put the fear
of Jesus into me about invasive species.
They can wreak havoc on crops,
on our homes, on safety.
So, I've gotta learn about
what we're doing to stop 'em.
-Hi, how are you?
-How are you, Jonathan?
-So wonderful to see you.
-So what happens in here?
Our mission is
to raise beneficial insects.
For biological control of other insects.
-Beneficial insects.
-Insects.
-For biological control.
-Right.
We have what's--
invasive bugs from other countries.
One is the Mexican bean beetle.
Which is a problematic little beetle here.
And we have a very tiny wasp from India
that we use to feed
on the Mexican bean beetle.
When we release that into the
environment, it helps the farmers out.
And, and it's
so tiny that a Dixie cup
only filled this much,
will do like four acres.
We just let them go,
and they do their business.
Bugs and insects will kill each other!
This New Jersey Agriculture Department
is like Dexter for bugs.
What happens in here?
-These plants look devastated.
-They are.
This is a nice healthy bean plant.
This was what that
looked like one day ago.
Those things did this?
Yes!
I'm growing these so that
I can grow the bug that kills them,
my beneficial wasp.
So I have a bunch more larvae.
-Okay.
-Dump them in here.
Now we need to get
some of our wasp friends.
How do you do that
without them flying everywhere?
We have this bug vacuum.
Is that a pooter?
It is like a pooter except it's electric.
-So do you want to collect them?
-Yeah, I'll suck it through.
-Looks good. Excellent job.
-Do you wanna release them? Okay.
-Yes.
-Yeah, right there. Excellent.
-Like that? Okay.
Let's close it.
They're gonna go jump on them.
So now they're gonna sting,
and then in a couple days,
we'll be able to collect mummies.
This is like Game of Thrones.
These Indian wasps, have they
been really effective in beating back
the presence of the Mexican bean beetle?
They're doing an excellent job.
Initially, there was a large
bean beetle problem in New Jersey,
and now, no more pesticides
need to be applied in New Jersey
to control bean beetle. Like,
these guys are what we're using instead.
Yes, food health!
Gorgeous!
Did you know food prices,
water accessibility, greenhouse gases,
would all be benefited
by more insect eating
in the general population.
This place is incredible.
This is this really nice chef.
He makes all sorts of different
insect-gorgeous-edible food
and I'm really kind of nervous,
but really excited to be here trying it.
Yeah.
I'm going to be embarking on a new journey
of trying to eat insects.
And I have some trepidation about that,
and I need someone who's an expert.
So my very dear friend,
who I'm also a gigantic fan of,
Padma Lakshmi, is going to
come with me to try some
insects.
Hello, guys!
-How are you?
-Hi!
-Padma Lakshmi, this is chef Joseph Yoon.
-Hi!
Look at all this stuff.
What are they?
Insect products.
All of these have
such wildly different flavors.
Would you like to start
sampling some stuff?
-Or would you like to wait?
-I want to eat, honey.
-So, I do have shots.
-Okay, we're starting out on the deep end.
-We really are.
And, and we can take our time with this.
So it's mezcal and black ants,
which have a kind of
a fermented, citrusy tangy flavor.
-Cheers, guys.
-Oh my God. We're doing it.
-Wow, Padma. It really is.
-It's good.
It does have a nice citrusy after-moment.
So ants taste citrusy
because of the-- What is it?
The formic acid.
-A defense mechanism.
-Formic acid.
Yeah.
The first time I ate a lot of bugs,
I felt something different,
like my body was processing this
-new, different protein.
-B-12.
B-12 is definitely one of them.
There's a
ton of B-12 and antioxidants.
Oh my God, I love B-12 and antioxidants.
We're trying to think
of ways to reimagine food.
-We are destigmatizing eating insects.
-Yes!
This is a cream of
mushroom cricket soup.
Crickets have a very nutty flavor.
So I'd pair it with
something nutty like mushrooms.
-Have you eaten insects before?
-Yes, I have.
I kind of thought you did.
I was trying to figure out what you're
-Yes, I've had, um, ant larvae in Mexico.
-Oh, yeah.
I will eat or wear anything once.
-Honestly.
Can I say, I don't even like mushrooms,
and I like this soup? This is delicious.
This super worm here, we have--
I have some spoons here if you wanna
-Are these freeze-dried?
-These are slow-roasted.
I have to say that is so much more
enjoyable than I thought it was gonna be.
It tastes like eating
those little crunch nuts at the bar.
-Gross!
-Gorgeous!
This might be
a wonderful palate-cleanser.
Yogurt, honey, bee pollen,
-honey-crisp apples, and extra bugginess.
-Okay, I'm doing it.
A little bit more honey on there,
so I can just
If eating our insect food samples
was The Weakest Link,
the one who I would have to say goodbye to
is definitely the
apple yogurt honey fritters.
The texture is crunchy,
with an aftertaste of legs,
that borders on edible glass.
You really hooked up
the crickets on that one.
We have chili honey locust guacamole
and tortilla chips.
-We are gonna fry up the locusts.
-Oh, my.
Can we just give it up
for Padma's hair though?
It just blow-dries everything into waves.
I love you guys,
I'm taking you everywhere with me.
-Padma, would you chop them up? Yes.
-May I?
Like, professional kitchen.
Padma just absolutely killing it.
We got some red chili peppers,
some Korean green peppers.
Fresh ground black pepper in here.
I love fresh
ground black pepper! Wow.
Mmm.
-Very good.
-Yum!
A lot of this just needs more awareness,
I feel, and more education.
Because right now,
people don't really
-know how to think about it.
-Mm-hmm.
What it takes
to produce insects, it is so little.
Take a pound of meat,
like a pound of dry meat, right?
It takes anywhere from
1,700 to 2,500 gallons of water.
So if you're splitting
a steak with your husband,
you've just used 2,500 gallons of water.
Versus cricket protein,
it's, it's just one gallon per pound.
That is jaw-dropping.
Padma and Chef Yoon are teaching me what
I've really been learning this whole time,
which is that we only really
know a small fraction about insects.
We could incorporate and
interact so much more with insects
on a daily basis that would
really benefit the world around us.
You know, I don't say this often,
but I was really out of line.
Bugs are absolutely gorgeous.
I know that you're trying to say that
to make me feel better from earlier,
but I actually think they might be a
little bit gross. I think you were right.
What I learned from
this whole experience is just magical.
Bugs are gorgeous and gross.
We can try to harness their power
to make it easier
for us to exist on the Earth,
use less resources, and also make food
more accessible to everyone, everywhere.
I love what I'm hearing here.
You're both right.
Yes, they can be rude.
But they can be gorgeous.
But really, the defining issue here is,
it's not our exoskeleton that counts,
it's what's inside!
Yay!
That is everything!
Yes, insects!
Please don't let
there be another cockroach in this bed.
No bugs were harmed
in the making of this movie.