Strange News: The Man Who Used an Eel to Cure Constipation

Strange news is back!

In this episode, we’re reading three bizarre news stories from around the world while picking up plenty of useful English vocabulary along the way. A flight from New Jersey to Mallorca gets turned around because of a suspicious Bluetooth device name, Uber reveals the strangest items passengers have left behind in their cars, and a man in China attempts a highly questionable cure for constipation involving a live eel.

Along the way, you’ll learn expressions like pull a U-turn, offbeat, roll out, poke fun at, catch a break, and more.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

On this episode of English with Dane, we're reading some strange news articles from around the world. We're gonna pick up a bunch of new vocabulary while witnessing just how weird people can get. We're going to talk about how a teenager ruined a flight from New Jersey to Mallorca, causing a nine-hour delay. We're gonna talk about the strangest objects left behind in Ubers, and we're gonna finish it off with a bizarre attempt from a Chinese man to cure his constipation. Yup, it's that kind of day. So let's do it. You are listening to episode 51 of season two of English with Dane. Hit it! Alright, our first story took place on a flight from New Jersey to Mallorca. I didn't know you could get a direct flight to Mallorca from New Jersey, but here we are. Let's read this first headline because it's pretty ridiculous. It says, United Airlines flight diverted over Bluetooth device name. A United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey to Palma de Mallorca, Spain pulled a U-turn late Saturday over what appears to have been a suspiciously named Bluetooth device on board. Flight tracking data shows that the flight which should have landed, que tendría cavera de Rizado, which should have landed in Spain after a nearly eight-hour flight, instead returned to Newark after four hours and 24 minutes in the air. United Airlines told NPR via email that the flight turned around, quote, to address a potential security concern. Multiple posts on social media from self-identified passengers indicate that the problem was a Bluetooth device on board the plane. Several of those passengers posted photos or videos of them on board the flight or in the airport with timestamps that match the flight's actual schedule. Audio from air traffic control sheds a little more light on the situation. One voice on the recording asked what had happened with the flight, which had recently landed back in Newark and remained on the tarmac. Real quick, to shed light on something means to provide more information, evidence, or give more of an explanation about something. In Spanish, we would just say like aclarar algo or arrojar luz sobre algo too. So the audio shed a little more light on the situation. Let's keep going. Quote, there's a security detail out there. Someone had a Bluetooth speaker and they named it a certain four-letter word, end quote, another voice responded. So they have to inspect the whole aircraft, including the cargo area, and passengers have to evacuate. That's crazy, the first voice replied. Four-letter word in this case doesn't appear to refer to a curse word, but rather a different four-letter word that triggered airline security procedures. There is an active Bluetooth network labeled BOM. One self-identified passenger wrote on TikTok. She shared a video of herself drinking sangria geotagged to Palma de Mallorca after the flight finally arrived. So basically, you know it's legit, let's say, because it was someone from the flight. Another Reddit post of someone who claimed to be the spouse, of the passenger similarly reported that the word in question was bomb and that the device was a teenager's speaker, Sueltavoz. The flight eventually reboarded and landed in Palma de Mallorca at 3 47 p.m. local time on Sunday, about nine and a half hours late. Wow. I would be so angry if we had to get off the plane or deboard, as they say in the industry, in El Mundillo in the industry, if I had to deboard because some teenager thought it would be funny to name his or her speaker device bomb. Imagine you're flying with your family, with your kids, and you end up getting to your destination, Terminas irrandot, you end up getting to your destination more than nine hours late. Insane. But before we move on, there was an interesting use of the word pull. It was just at the beginning of the article. It said, a United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey to Palma de Mallorca, Spain pulled a U-turn late Saturday over what appears to be a blah blah blah blah blah suspiciously named Bluetooth device. Yes. To pull a U-turn. In this case, to pull means to execute, right? Realizar, I guess. To execute. They executed a U-turn. So to pull a U-turn is a collocation. You could say that they made a U-turn, that they did a U-turn, but for some reason to pull a U-turn sounds nice. Well, the reason is because we're used to it, estamos acostumbrados, because it's a collocation. So next time you want to tell someone to make a U-turn, use pull. So you pull a U-turn when you get a chance. We use pull for other things too. Like you pull a prank on someone, for example. You pull a stunt, too. Stunt is one of those words that doesn't have a great translation in Spanish. At least I can't think of one. A stunt is a surprising, unusual, or difficult or risky, a very attention-grabbing action, often done to impress people or to attract publicity or create a reaction, like a publicity stunt, for example. I honestly have no idea how to translate it to Spanish, so if you know how to translate it, please leave a comment. Alright, next story. The headline says Uber releases list of strangest lost and found items. Dentures, butterflies, dishwasher. So phones, wallets, and keys are among the items most commonly forgotten in the backs of Ubers, the rail hailing company says. But what about dentures or a wedding gown? It turns out, resulta, it turns out people forget lots of weird and off-beat items, according to the company's annual Lost and Found Index released on Tuesday. Even down to, if not the kitchen sink, a kitchen sink faucet at Grifo. It's the tenth year Uber has released the list of lost items. Among the trends this year, more riders were leaving behind laboo boos, the widely popular collectible toys, as well as fitness and workout-oriented items, vapes and e-cigarettes, and strangely enough, teeth. Other off-beat items include human hair, a Donnie Osmond group picture, a package of live butterflies, what? And a dishwasher. Uber says it's rolling out changes or it's deploying changes to its app to help customers more easily retrieve missing items. The new feature allows customers to report lost items on the app and request a return trip from their driver to have the item returned. The new feature is available now in California, Texas, Pennsylvania, DC, Georgia, Minnesota, and Massachusetts. The company plans to roll it out nationwide by the end of the year. To roll out means to introduce, to launch, or make something available, okay, usually gradually or according to a plan, to a rollout plan. I guess it's like lanzar, but also like desplegar too. They have a list of the 50 strangest items, and there are a few on this list that are pretty insane. I'm just gonna go through my favorite ones. The first one is breast milk. Hey, it happens. You're tired from being a new mom or dad. I get it. Ankle monitor. If you're unfamiliar, an ankle monitor is that thing you wear on your ankle, right in El Tobillo, when you have been released from prison but still require monitoring, or maybe you are under house arrest or you are awaiting trial, etc. This next one though, 420 donuts. 420. Not not a dozen or two, four hundred and twenty. I'm sure some police officers somewhere are very angry. Live fish is the next one that caught my eye. Wow. Live fish. Also on this list, a package of live butterflies. I hope they were okay, both the fish and the butterflies. A dishwasher was also left behind. So somebody really wasn't paying attention. Then two wedding gowns, Poneki. Two wedding gowns. Not ideal. Somebody maybe ruined a wedding somewhere. We use the word gown, by the way, spelled G-O-W-N for like a formal dress. You can say a wedding dress too, no worries. But gown is a word you'll encounter for sure. We say hospital gown too, even though it's not formal or elegant. You would never say a hospital dress, you would say a hospital gown. Somebody also left pelvis implants? What? I don't even know what that is. Also, 20 pounds of duck sausage, just so specific. Also on this list, a child's prosthetic eye. A child's prosthetic eye, I hope they got it back. And a sleep apnea machine. I get it. Well, weirdly enough, weirdly enough, I get all of them. Sometimes we're just thinking about something else, we're having a stressful day, and our brains betray us. And a nuance, um matis, a nuance with this term is that it's usually neutral or positive. Okay, it's neutral or positive. It's not a negative thing. It's kind of like saying quirky, right? Maybe someone has an off-beat sense of humor, or maybe someone is just off-beat, like eccentric, let's say. Let's keep going and check out one more strange news story. This one is really bizarre, I'm warning you. It took place in China where traditional medicine is a big deal. For a lot of people, traditional or ancient remedies are still the way forward, and that's what this is about, although taken to an extreme, of course. So let's take a deep breath and read the headline. It says Eel, no cure for constipation. South China man learns the hard way. A screenshot from a CT scan shows a dead eel in the colon tract of a man who inserted it into his rectum, hoping to relieve his constipation.

unknown 11:51

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

I feel like it's not the first story about a man inserting something into his rectum that we've had on this show. I don't know why these stories seem to follow me and find me. A man in South China's Guandong province almost lost his life after inserting a live eel into his rectum in the hope of relieving his constipation. The 50-year-old man in Dongguan, who has long suffered from constipation, had heard, Abyao Ido, had heard that an eel can help bowel movements, reported the online news video platform KanCan on Sunday. Instead of relieving the man's constipation, the 40-centimeter long eel perforated his digestive tract, causing severe bacterial contamination and a sigmoid colon rupture. Yikes. When he was admitted to the hospital, he had been experiencing, he had been experiencing abdominal distension for five days and septic shock. Doctors immediately performed a laparotomy that saved his life. If you don't know what a laparotomy is, it's a surgical procedure in which a surgeon makes an incision in the abdomen just to gain access, let's say, to the organs inside. Let's keep going. If the operation hadn't been done soon, si no se hubiera realizado, if it hadn't been done soon, the possibility of death was very high, said the man's doctor. The eel was dead by the time it was removed during surgery, and the man has already recovered. This isn't the first case of fish sliding inside a person's rectum. On June 2nd, an African carp was found in the stomach of a young man in Guandong who claimed, Gafri Mo, who claimed that the fish slid into his rectum when he accidentally sat on it. Okay. Yeah, let's not do that anymore. That makes me think of back in the day when people used leeches, sanguijuelas, leeches con doble e leeches to treat different ailments or different maladies. Anyway, a quick phrase I wanted to explain was to poke fun at someone. Poke spelled P-O-K-E. So to poke fun at someone, yo que usamos at there, okay, to poke fun at someone means to make jokes about someone in a playful and usually harmless way. Apparently, China is one of the world's largest producers and consumers of eel, and recent research found that more than 99% of the eels consumed globally belong to threatened species, with consumption heavily concentrated in East Asia, especially China, Japan, and South Korea. So it's not enough for these eels that they are endangered and even critically endangered, but they are also inserted into people now to help with constipation. Man, these eels can't catch a break. To catch a break means to finally have some good luck after a bad period of luck or difficulty or frustration. You would use it if several bad or frustrating things happen to you in a row. You would say, Man, I can't catch a break. Or I just can't catch a break lately. In China there are several animal products, let's say, that are used in traditional medicine that don't really have any benefits when studied scientifically. I looked into it, lo buske, lo investigué, I looked into it, and they use things like tiger bone to make wine and also to make powder, polvo, powder that is thought to help with arthritis, pain, and general weakness. But again, there's no evidence that it actually works. Rhino horn is a classic example too. Another endangered animal that is often poached or hunted illegally, that is often poached and sold on the black market and the not-so-black market to treat things like fevers. And then there's the whole pangolin thing. Pangolins are in critical danger of becoming extinct. And there are eight species, eight different species, and they're all critically endangered, it seems. So pangolin scales, las escamas, pangolin scales are used to promote lactation and improve circulation in the body, but it turns out that their scales are just made of keratin, which is what our fingernails are made of, and there's no evidence to support these so-called health claims. And of course, we know about shark fin and turtle soup and these things too. I also looked into TCM more, which stands for traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM, and I should say that TCM is not synonymous with exploiting endangered species, and there is a big movement among traditional Chinese medicine practitioners that denounce this practice. So I just wanted to say that. Okay, it feels like I'm ranting now a bit, so let's stop here. So that's it for this episode of English with Dane. I hope you got something from it. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, share it with someone who would also enjoy it. And don't forget to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you listen and give it a five-star rating if you haven't. Let's get English with Dane to reach more people. Alright, talk soon, later.