November 7, 2025

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. What’s up with how much chicken we eat, here’s what to drink when you’re feeling under the weather, and Duran Duran has the doc talk  😎

But first our weekly poll!

The average American consumes roughly 100 pounds of chicken per year, considerably more than any other animal-based protein, prompting some to wonder what it is about chickens that the human palette just can’t seem to resist.

Research points to several possible reasons, including the chicken’s origins and the fact that they were domesticated in a way four thousand years ago that made them a prime candidate to be our forever food.

One of the reasons is hard to put into better words than those of James Felton at IFLScience: “chickens are slow and fairly stupid, while humans are intelligent and also lazy.”

Chickens realistically won’t fly away when humans attempt to catch them. They’re still hard to catch (just ask Rocky Balboa), but they’ll stick around for dinner.

Their domestication sometime between 2,000 BC and 1,600 BC gave them a head start in terms of access. They provide eggs and are extremely easy to breed compared to other birds we’ve eaten along the way.

They also taste better than other birds, rounding out several reasons that—unfortunately for roosters and hens everywhere—make them a perfect dietary match for protein-seeking humans.

When you’re lying in bed sick as a dog the conventional wisdom is to load up on ginger ale for the ginger, orange juice for vitamin C, or maybe Gatorade to get your fix of electrolytes. These aren’t bad options, but they aren’t the number one option.

You can probably guess what is.

“I believe that the most important thing to drink when you’re sick is water,” says Mariam Zakhary, DO, sports medicine physician and the clinical advisor at Ikon Recovery Center.

“When you’re sick, whether it be from a cold, the flu, allergies, or a different infection, your body experiences severe fluid loss and has an increased metabolic demand to fight off the illness. Staying hydrated is essential since it prevents dehydration, which can have a negative impact on recovery.”

The other beverages listed above may help with certain symptoms, but also contain ingredients that could exacerbate dehydration, including sugar and sodium. Hydrating is among the most important actions we can take when feeling under the weather.

“Dehydration can thicken mucus and impair circulation, making it harder for your immune cells to reach infection sites and clear any bacteria or viruses that may be causing infection," says Dr. Zakhary.

Researchers with the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX) travelled to Allan Hills in East Antarctica to dig for ancient ice, camping out for months at a time as they drilled away.

Normally, ancient ice can’t be found without digging around 6,500 feet beneath the surface. Because of the windy chill of Allan Hills, the COLDEX researchers were able to find ice cores just 300-500 feet beneath the surface, some of which had air bubbles from millions of years ago.

Using laser spectroscopy, they were able to analyze the water isotopes in some of the samples’ melt water, including one piece of “dirty basal” ice that actually had next to no gas in it.

They determined this particular ice could have been more than six million years old, allowing for the extrapolated reconstruction of what earth’s climate was like in the region at the time (where it got very cold, very fast after prolonged warmth).

“Given that it’s gas-free, it’s likely refrozen liquid water,” said Sarah Shackleton, study lead author and a geophysicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “We’ve speculated about what it represents and what it can tell us about the past conditions at this site, but it’s still somewhat of a mystery.”

We’re in the golden age of biopics of legacy musicians who’ve basically done it all and are being offered blank checks from Hollywood to tell their stories on the silver screen.

That’s not necessarily the case with Duran Duran, though, and bassist John Taylor had a few things to say on the topic recently.

"I think the problem is, with Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman, they were focused on one guy, one creative genius, and everything kind of worked around that," he told Metro.

"With us, if you go all the way back to the band that exploded in the ’80s, you’ve got five guys. So it becomes almost more like an Ocean’s 11, and it’s about the interplay between five. I think that’s a little bit more complex."

Taylor admits the phone has indeed been ringing and he’s “seen a few scripts.”

As it stands, there are no plans for any such film to be made, and the band will continue abiding by its rule of playing at least one show every six weeks, a superstition about needing to “feed their muse,” and to make sure they aren’t forgotten.

"You take a year off and the phone will stop ringing after a few months," Taylor noted.  "And by the end of the year, they just won’t think of you. You’ll have been replaced."

Let’s mix it up

Happy Friday, Staker! It’s time for another round of trivia à carte 🥳 

We’ve got a set of 10 random questions—the only thing connected them is that they’ll make sense if you were born in the ’60s. So walk on down memory lane with today’s trivia!

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Monday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder!*