What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Pueblo peoples might have moved huge logs for over 60 miles by strapping them to their heads

By Sandra Gutierrez G. 

Researchers always seem to be wondering how ancient civilizations moved big stuff around, but they rarely get the opportunity to try their theories empirically. 

Enter a team of anthropologists and physiologists from the University of Colorado Boulder. In the true spirit of experimental science, they strapped 136-pound logs to their heads to figure out how Pueblo peoples from Chaco Canyon in New Mexico might have carried the timber necessary to build their extraordinary architecture. 

Chaco Canyon was the most important political and ceremonial center for the Ancestral Puebloans. There, they built their famous stone and adobe dwellings along the cliff walls, ritual structures called kivas, as well as semi-circular constructions known as great houses. 

Scientists calculate that 200 thousand timbers were used in the construction of this particular site—but there are no trees anywhere nearby. In 2001, tree-ring experts at the University of Arizona used chemical analyses and discovered that the wood in the Puebloan constructions was sourced from mountain ranges at least 46 miles away—the furthermost, Chuska mountains, are 62 miles away from Chaco Canyon. 

Puebloans had no wheel, no draft animals, nor any other type of modern carriage system that we know of. Plus, archeologists have not found scrape marks on the grounds around Chaco Canyon that would hint at the logs being dragged or pushed. So, logs as big as 16 feet and 190 pounds had to be carried by hand. 

There have been a number of theories but the researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder tested the one proposing that the timbers in the Chacoan constructions were actually moved only by a few people at a time using tumplines: a technique that involves carrying a load on the lower back by strapping it to the head. 

Three of the four authors of this study trained for three months to figure out if the theory was humanly possible and how long would it take them to transport a 132-pound pine timber over 15.5 miles using tumplines made out of nylon webbing and foam padding. 

Considering small breaks every 20 minutes and longer breaks every two and a half miles, researchers completed the test in a total time of 9 hours and 44 minutes, walking at an average speed of 2.8 miles per hour.

So yes, tumplines are a perfectly feasible method of carrying heavy timbers over long distances. Researchers say the tumplines were “surprisingly comfortable” and communication was key to coordinating the walk and avoiding the timber from swaying.

FACT: Wolves can help humans get into fewer car crashes 

By Rachel Feltman

Anyone who’s spent time driving in an even vaguely rural area knows that deer have a preternatural ability to get hit by human cars. In 2021, a study in Wisconsin found an interesting connection between the all-too-common phenomenon of deer collisions and the presence of wild wolves. According to 22 years of data, having wolves around means people hit deer less often. 

You might assume that’s because the wolves ate the deer. After all, deer populations have a tendency to run amok if there aren’t predators keeping them in check. Wolves eating deer could explain a six percent reduction in crashes, according to the study. But the researchers saw a 24 percent drop.

That remaining three-quarters of the impact came from “a landscape of fear.” Wolves tend to follow whatever the clearest path is in a wooded area, like a stream. When humans come in and build up the landscape, that means artificial clearings for things like roads, pipelines, and rail tracks. Deer are known to change their behavior and location to avoid predators. So when wolves are in town, they roam the roadside—and deers stay off the streets. 
The study estimates that wolves save Wisconsin about $10.9 million in losses each year by preventing car crashes, which more than covers what the state pays out to people who lose pets or livestock to wolves, which tends to be the biggest public objection to letting their populations bounce back. The researchers also noted that there were other potential economic benefits they hadn’t calculated, like the lowered risk in lyme disease transmission we see when deer populations are well managed.

FACT: Sometimes articles published in academic journals are totally made up

By Ali Hazelwood

In 1996, NYU physics professor Alan Sokal wrote and submitted a scholarly paper to the journal Social Text. The paper was accepted and published—and after a few weeks Sokal revealed that the paper was a hoax: it was full of nonsense and jargon, and he’d written it to demonstrate the pitfalls of the academic peer-review process.

The post This ancient civilization literally used their heads to move massive logs for miles appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: These insects have a pee-related superpower 

By Rachel Feltman

Glassy-winged sharpshooters aren’t exactly the most lovable bugs. They’ve got wiggly abdomens that they use to make vibrations to communicate when it’s time to mate, bulbous eyes, and red-veined wings. They’re also considered pests: when they and other sharpshooters feed off of grapevines, they leave a bacterium called Xylella fastidiosa behind that causes leaves to yellow and wither with a condition known as Pierce’s disease. That plague can wipe out more than half of a vineyard’s vines in a single outbreak, and is estimated to cost $100 million in lost grapevines and mitigation efforts in California alone. And unlike the blue-green sharpshooter that tends to spread the disease most in Napa and Sonoma counties and along the coast, the glassy-winged sharpshooter, which causes trouble in Southern California, is invasive—it likely came over from its natural habitat in the southeastern US on the back of a nursery plant in the early 1990s. 

But in addition to posing a threat to the wine industry, glassy-winged sharpshooters pose a more immediate threat to any humans who happen to pass by them: The threat of being sprayed with a constant mist of bug urine.

Learn more about the super-powered urinary capabilities of these insects by listening to this week’s episode—or by hopping on over to this article about the prolific pee-ers. 

FACT: A fear of clowns may stem from the makeup itself

By Chelsey B. Coombs

Despite the cultural cache that a fear of clowns holds, and the fact that it’s super common for pop culture to reference it, there hasn’t been much academic research on the fear of clowns.

So the authors of a new study from the International Journal of Mental Health decided to examine the fear of clowns in an international population with the appropriately named “Fear of Clowns Questionnaire,” which was adapted from the “Fear of Spiders Questionnaire.”

Out of 927 participants, 27% said they had a fear of clowns, with 5% saying they were extremely afraid of clowns. More women reported that they were afraid of clowns and they had a more extreme fear of clowns than men, which actually follows a similar pattern in phobias just generally.

The strongest factor the researchers found causing people’s fear of clowns was that a clown’s makeup keeps people guessing at what their actual intentions are. They may have a permanently happy face, but that conceals whether they’re angry or upset, so the authors believe that being unable to know what a clown is really thinking or what they might do puts us on edge.

FACT: In the 18^th Century, toilets were not just for poop

By Melissa Dunphy

We’ve all come across signs in toilets begging us not to flush anything other than waste and sewer-safe toilet paper for fear of clogging or damaging plumbing. But before modern sewer systems, no such rules applied. Colonial Americans who used privy pits—shafts dug into the ground beneath an outhouse—tossed all kinds of trash into the depths along with their sewage. Wine bottles, kitchen waste, unwanted ceramic plates and bowls, old buttons, toys, cannon balls, smoking pipes, waste from cottage industries such as tanning and metalwork, and anything else they needed to get rid of from their households often ended up down the toilet hole, since in addition to lacking sewage pipes, they also lacked the convenience of modern trash collection. If, for example, your horse died while you were too busy to find a better means of disposal, you might simply heave it into the privy instead. It certainly couldn’t have made the smell any worse.

During this time period, specialists known as nightsoil men were paid to manually clean out privies every now and then, but after sewer systems came along, many privies were simply filled in, trash intact. Modern archaeologists especially value these privy pits as rich time capsules that provide fascinating snapshots into the everyday lives of the people who once used them, demonstrating that just about any trash will become treasure if you wait long enough.

The post There’s a good reason why so many adults are scared of clowns appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: A bunch of 18th-century dudes hung out in very hot rooms together in the name of science 

By Rachel Feltman

This story comes from a paper I read about in the Public Domain Review called “Experiments and Observations in a Heated Room,” circa 1774, which sounds like the name of a one-act play, and frankly should have been turned into one. 

The paper, by British physician and scientist Charles Blagden, recounts his experience being invited to the home of the scientist George Fordyce to see the man’s very very hot rooms. 

Fordyce had constructed a series of sealed rooms that were basically saunas, with pipes radiating heat into them and thermometers mounted on the walls. According to Blagden’s paper—and the sequel he published in 1775—he and several other gentlemen worked with Fordyce to test the limits of the human body with regard to heat. 

They started out in a 100 degree Fahrenheit room, which is not particularly impressive. But by the time they finished their second bout of experiments in 1775, they’d worked their way up to 260 degrees.

They made a lot of observations that might seem obvious now. They noticed that, at those higher temperatures, it was actually more comfortable to have clothing on than to be naked, since the heat scorched the skin much more quickly than it actually raised core body temperature. Blagden also noted that they could tolerate higher heat in dryer rooms, and correctly surmised that this was because water carried the heat to the body more efficiently than air, and that sweating—which is more effective when the air has more room to take up moisture and evaporate your sweat—was the key to the body’s heat-destroying powers. He was one of the first western scientists to make this connection, though it’s reasonable to assume that people living in hotter climates had probably figured this out by necessity. Keep in mind that the first thermometers designed to measure human temperature only showed up in the 1600s, and they wouldn’t be part of standard clinical medicine until the 1800s. 

But it is worth pointing out that they were being a bit obtuse about the temperatures previously endured by humankind. In his initial paper, Blagden actually made reference to “the experiments of M. Tillet,”—the botanist and metalworker Mathieu Tillet. In 1760, while trying to figure out how to heat grain enough to kill pests without wrecking the crop, Tillet ran into trouble with his data. He was using a thermometer attached to a long shovel to get the exact temperature inside the sugar-baking ovens he was using, but the temperature went down in the time it took to take it out. The girl tending the oven offered to just walk in and mark the level of the thermometer with a pencil, and told the scientist, at least according to his notes, that she “felt no inconvenience” in the 288 degree furnace. He and his colleague proceeded to basically goof off with a bunch of random items in the oven to see how the heat affected them. Blagden notes that the maid in question endured temperatures of 280 degrees for upwards of 10 minutes, and basically seems to be saying that he thinks girls who work by hot stoves probably get used to working by hot stoves, seemingly as a nod to the very obvious reality that he and his friends did not actually find and test the upper limits of human heat endurance. 

We now know that Blagden was very correct about the importance of moisture in the air: The more humid it is, the less heat we can take before our bodies start breaking down, because we’re not able to dump heat back into the air by way of evaporating sweat. A forecast of 120 degrees in death valley can be as physiologically tolerable as a sub-90 degree day in a swampy area. 

When you see weather reports refer to the “wet bulb” temperature, that’s a measurement of the combo of heat and humidity. Once it gets to 95 F wet bulb, give or take a couple degrees, we’re in trouble. At 100 percent humidity, we can only handle temperatures up to 87 degrees. 

On a lighter note, here’s a quick aside about the guy who built the hot rooms, who was memorialized in a local restaurant guide in the early 1800s for his absolutely bananas diet. 

FACT: When whales die, they create entire cities

By Sabrina Imbler

In 1987, a submersible scanning the seafloor of the Santa Catalina Basin detected something unusually large, 1,240 meters below the surface of the sea. It was a 65-foot-long whale skeleton. The whale had been dead for years, but its remains had become a thriving community on the seafloor, feeding clams, mussels, limpets and snails.

A natural burial for a whale—dying in the ocean and sinking to the seafloor—is called a whale fall. Ecosystems this deep are food limited, and many creatures rely on the constant drizzle of decaying flesh, poop, dust, and snot called marine snow to survive. But a whale fall is like a spontaneous deep-sea banquet that can sustain entire communities for years. Scientists estimate one whale fall is the equivalent of a thousand years of marine snow.

Whale falls are devoured in multiple stages. First, mobile scavengers like sleeper sharks, hagfish, and isopods travel long distances to feast on the carcass. This stage can last for several years until all the soft tissue is chewed away. The next stage is called the enrichment-opportunist stage, where worms, crustaceans, and bacteria feast on the whale nutrients sunken into the surrounding sand. The third, sulfophilic stage, can last for decades. Here, bone-eating Osedax worms and sulfur-oxidizing bacteria break down the fat inside whale bones. The fourth and final stage of a whale fall is called the reef stage, can last somewhat indefinitely. Now, the whale has become hard substrate, where suspension feeders like anemones and sponges can latch on and grow.

Whale falls were much more abundant hundreds of years ago, before whale populations drastically diminished the number of whales sinking to the seafloor. This has likely led to a ripple of extinctions in species that specialize on whale falls and rely on these carcasses to complete their life cycles. One whale researcher suggests about a third of whale fall specialists may have already gone extinct in the North Atlantic, where whaling reduced populations by about 75 percent. It’s only fitting that a creature this awe-inspiring in life would also be so consequential in death.

FACT: Neanderthals couldn’t smell just how stinky they were

By Sara Kiley Watson

You probably have a unique aroma that you can’t smell at all. And in your brain, it’s not that you don’t stink—it’s that you’re so used to your own stink that it doesn’t phase you anymore. In fact your own odor is comfortingly kinda familiar. After all, if you were constantly sniffing yourself, you’d probably have a breakdown from the sensory input of all of the stinks of your microbes, sweat, farts, etc. So–when some of your self produced stink, well, stinks, your nose gets used to it. And really, it’s not just your own stink after a while, eventually you’ll get used to the smell of your pets and family members and favorite foods.

But smelling is unique to all species, and individuals. For a study published in December, scientists looked at 30 different olfactory receptors across the Neanderthal, Denisovian, and ancient homo sapien genomes. They found 11 receptors in the extinct humans that had unique DNA that didn’t appear in humans. 

Via a difference in receptors, Neanderthals had a bit of a superpower. They couldn’t smell body odors as well as their cousins—specifically one neanderthal had a genetic mutation that slimmed their ability to smell androstadienone, a chemical we associate with urine and sweat smells. Considering these guys were living in caves, building complex structures there from around 176,000 years ago, this probably came in handy when it comes to living in a world without deodorant. 

The post Sunken whale carcasses create entire marine cities on the ocean floor appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: 1920s New York City architects hid spires in their buildings to sneakily become the tallest

By John Kennedy

In June 1930, the Empire State Building was ready to claim the title of world’s tallest, but its developers were at least a little bit worried the nearby Chrysler Building would sneakily unveil its final form and snatch the trophy right back.

This will-they-won’t-they suspense epitomized the architectural design slugfest between three (yes three) New York City buildings in the late 20s as they each tried to simply be bigger than all the others. The one you’re least likely to have realized was a part of this contest was 40 Wall Street, now known as the Trump Building. That’s because this 927-foot structure was, at best, only briefly No. 1 before the Chrysler developers secretly built a height-boosting spire inside the main structure and hoisted it into place, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

Naturally, at least a few people working on the Empire State Building a few blocks away were worried the Chrysler architect, William Van Alen, had a similar trick up his sleeve for when their structure finally surpassed Chrysler’s 1,046-foot height. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about New York City’s race to the sky, and the underlying rivalry between former business partners that’s now set in stone and steel.

FACT: A bug that hadn’t been seen in decades showed up at a Walmart—and got identified over Zoom 

By Rachel Feltman

In 2020, Michael Skvarla had the unenviable task of leading an insect identification lab course over Zoom. The director of Penn State’s Insect Identification Lab was partway through describing a bug from his personal collection—one he’d labeled as an “antlion,” which is a dragonfly-like creature known for having predatory larvae most people call doodlebugs—when he froze. He was realizing, on Zoom and in real-time, that this wasn’t an antlion. He told the class they’d reclassify it together, and in a couple minutes they’d come to a shocking conclusion. 

It was actually Polystoechotes punctata, a member of a family of giant lacewing that’s existed for at least 100 million years.

A few quick caveats: Many news outlets referred to the giant lacewing as a “Jurassic-era insect,” but J. Ray Fisher, who works remotely from Fayateville for the University of Missouri and helped Skvarla confirm the insect’s identity, pointed out that this is a bit of a stretch. This is one of about 60 species with an evolutionary lineage that can be traced back to a common ancestor that originated in the Jurassic.

It’s also important to note that the giant lacewing is only “giant” in relation to other lacewings, which are smaller. The specimen Skvarla found has a wingspan of about two inches. 

So, this isn’t some massive bug that’s been missing since the days of the dinosaurs, or even one that’s been missing at all. You can still find it in the western US. But the species has been considered extirpated—that is to say, regionally extinct—in most of the country since 1950. If you look at the map of their recorded sightings, in the 1800s you see a few on the east coast, and in the early 20th century there are a handful around the midwest, but by the mid century the only citings are way out west. It’s not entirely clear why this happened, but most experts say that increased light pollution and invasive species drove them out.

Not only was Skvarla’s specimen from Arkansas—hundreds of miles east of any member of this species found for more than half a century—but he casually scooped it up from the facade of a Walmart in an urban area of Fayetteville. And this was way back in 2012. 

After that thrilling discovery via Zoom, Skvarla analyzed the bug’s DNA to confirm its identity. The big question now is whether there are more of them around. It’s possible that the Ozark mountains have some pockets of hitherto unknown giant lacewing populations. It’s also possible, as Fisher has pointed out to the press, that the bug just hitchhiked on a cross-country Walmart truck. 

FACT: Corpse wax is a thing in Elden Ring and the real world

By Jess Boddy

Last year, the masterpiece of a video game Elden Ring came out. I’ve been streaming it on Twitch basically ever since, and I’m still uncovering lore and secrets—many of which are science adjacent.

Something that the developer of Elden Ring, a company called FromSoftware, is very good at, is world building and lore. They tell these very deep, complex stories just through the environment—first in games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and now with Elden Ring. You’ve gotta explore the worlds they make and read item descriptions to understand what the heck is going on. It’s so rewarding and frankly, really fun to play games like that, kind of unraveling their stories one piece at a time. And Elden Ring is by far the most MASSIVE—there are like 10 different plots in Elden Ring that all kind of spin together in one way or another. And one of those stories has to do with corpse wax.

There’s one area of the game called Leyndell, Royal Capital. As the name suggests, it’s this big city kind of in the middle of the map. And as you explore the city, it’s clear some kind of tragedy went down there. And many of the buildings are totally sealed shut… but around some of the doorways, this orangey yellow, ooey-gooey substance is oozing out. The first time I saw it, I was like… I want to eat this. It looks like when you leave a fruit roll up in the car and it like melts. It looked delicious. Of course, the Elden Ring ooze is probably not delicious, because that was corpse wax. 

In real life, corpse wax is a thing that happens when a body SHOULD decompose, but it has a little too much moisture and very little or no oxygen. That is the perfect formula for a process called saponification to occur. Basically, anaerobic bacteria, the kind that don’t need oxygen to live, will go to town on a corpse’s body fat, and help set off a bunch of chemical reactions that turn that fat into a soapy, waxy substance called adipocere – aka, corpse wax. It starts off all ooey gooey, and then turns hard and brittle. That can actually kind of seal off the corpse, preserving it! Which is kind of an archeologist’s dream!

To hear all about how corpse wax in Elden Ring connects to real-life corpse wax mummies, check out this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing.

The post <em>Elden Ring</em>’s corpse wax is real—sort of appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: We still don’t understand some of the most basic things about the lifecycle of American eels

By Ryan F. Mandelbaum

American and European Eels are species catadromous fish. This means that they live the opposite kind of life from a salmon—eels spend most of their life in freshwater rivers, and then spawn in the ocean. But when their hormones say it’s time to reproduce, they leave their homes in Europe and North America and all migrate to the same place: the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Sargasso Sea is the only sea bordered on all sides by water, so named because of the vast mats of sargassum seaweed floating on its surface. It’s a patch of calm, blue water produced by a gyre of ocean currents spinning clockwise across the Atlantic. It’s an important place for fish and seabirds alike who take refuge in its seaweed, including American and European eels.

Eels start their lives as small, transparent young, called glass eels. For a long time, scientists thought that these glass eels and American/European eels were different species; it wasn’t until 19th century biologist raised the glass eels in tanks that they realized that hey matured into the big yellow-brown adults. But to this day, their lifestyle has remained a mystery—no one has found a European Eel egg or observed one spawning, for example. They just know that the little guys appear in the Sargasso.

We’re starting to learn more about the strange lives of these eels, though. For example, we now know that the adults of both species undertake the epic migration to the sargasso, dissolving their guts in order to conserve energy for the journey and dying after spawning. Scientists detected adult American eels in the Sargasso for the first time in 2015. Another team announced detecting European eels migrating to the Sargasso last year. Both American and European eels are endangered, critically endangered in the case of the latter. They’re especially vulnerable to fishing, plus the damming of the rivers where they spend their lives after spawning. So It’s more important than ever that we understand the ecology of these enigmatic fish.

FACT: ‘Bog butter’ is exactly what it sounds like, and it might just be delicious

By Rachel Feltman 

In 1859, archeologists Edward Clibborn and James O’Laverty published a paper in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology titled, simply, “Bog Butter.” 

“For many years past there have been found, from time to time, in the bogs of Ireland—and especially in those of the North—wooden vessels filled with butter in a hardened state, and quite free from putrefaction,” they wrote. “Specimens of these vessels, generally very much broken, are to be seen in all our museums, but until now we have never met with one in nearly a perfect state.”

But in the County of Derry, they said, they’d found a bog butter vessel in excellent shape. Based on this and other specimens, they wrote, along with what they knew about the history of Irish dairy prep, they now felt confident that the substances and pots had to do with butter churning and cheese making.

This was a huge win for the bog butter enthusiast community: in the 1800s there was simply no way to suss out the molecular makeup of butter-like substances you found buried in bogs. That didn’t stop the study authors from sampling the “yellowish white” substance they found, which they said tasted “somewhat like cheese.” 

Bog butter is now considered one of the more common historical relics one might find in a bog, especially in Ireland. There have been nearly 500 reported specimens found, and the oldest known example is from 3,500 years ago. The most recent dates to as late as the 1800s, so researchers suspect the preservation method persisted in some rural pockets until pretty recently. 

In 2019, researchers used stable carbon isotope analysis on the individual fatty acids in 50 bog butter samples to finally show, definitively, that there was butter in them there bogs. 

So, why did people put butter into bogs? The answer is probably: lots of reasons! Why not put butter into a bog?

Researchers point out that it’s a common and misguided trope for archeologists to try to come up with a single explanation for a practice that spanned thousands of years. And not every bog butter is the same: some are in elaborate wooden vessels that predate the butter inside them by centuries, suggesting a longstanding practice of making and reusing bog butter pots, while others were seemingly dumped in without any protection. But their best guesses for those myriad reasons include protecting or hiding precious resources from enemies and authority figures (at times in Ireland you could literally pay your taxes with butter), offering up said precious dairy to gods or spirits, storing the butter to preserve it, or even using the bog process as a way of creating distinct flavors. 

To find out more about why bogs are freakishly good at preserving food—and how modern scientists went about making bog butter of their own—give this week’s episode a listen. 

FACT: You always get some splashback on you when peeing

By Purbita Saha

Why is peeing into a toilet or urinal so messy? This is actually a big head scratcher in fluid dynamics science. No matter how and where you pee, you’re bound to get a bit of splashback on yourself or your surroundings. This, of course, is amplified if you go no. 1 standing up. The amount of splashback also depends on the trajectory of your stream and the receptacle. Lessening the scatter effect could improve hygiene in public toilets—and make pee-recycling systems more efficient.

Surprisingly, there’s a lot of research on this topic. The Splash Lab, run by engineer Tadd Truscott, has been analyzing the behavior of pee once it rushes out of the human body for more than a decade now. Formerly based at Brigham Young University and now at Utah State University, the team uses giant spray jets and tanks to mimic the act of peeing and trace the splatter pattern of each single drop with high-speed cameras. 

Their takeaway was basically that once pee is airborne, it has a mind of its own. Once it’s traveled a few inches outside the urethra, the stream begins to break up. So, when it finally reaches the inside of a toilet bowl or the back of a urinal, it hits the hard surface as thousands of individual drops. That’s when all hell breaks loose.

Depending on the angle at which you pee, plus how much and how quickly you have to relieve yourself, the force of the droplets will guarantee splashback. Closing in the distance, ideally by sitting on or squatting over the toilet, can blunt the damage. You’ll still get some pee on your netherregions, but your clothes, the seat, the floor, and, god forbid, the ceiling should be protected.

If peeing straight down isn’t an option, get as close to the receptacle as possible. Then, pee at a gently sloping downward angle so that the back of the urinal or toilet bowl still captures the bulk of the splashback. Don’t send the stream down straight into the water or drain: Making contact with another surface can cause the droplets to separate and spread out even more.

Some of the findings from the Splash Lab have helped other researchers innovate streamlined urinal designs. A recent one from the University of Waterloo, nicknamed the “Nautiloo,” is shaped like a mollusc shell with a narrow long channel, raised edges, and a curved bottom to force the pee to stream down rather than break into oodles of droplets. It was also tested for urninators of different heights, which makes a difference. Others have experimented with inserts that mimic desert moss from Mongolia to actually absorb or filter the pee to prevent splashback. But none of these are available for public restrooms or your personal bathroom just yet. So for now, it’s best to suck it up and pop a squat. And then maybe clean up after with a bidet attachment.

The post ‘Bog butter’ is exactly what it sounds like: delicious appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: The Drug Enforcement Administration had to get involved in the first successful cardiac xenotransplantation.

By Sandra Gutierrez G.

Because of tricky logistics, scarcity of viable organs, and various cultural apprehensions, doctors have been looking into xenotransplantation, where animal tissue is implanted into a human body. 

Researchers had been experimenting on baboons for years, and in 2021 a team at NYU successfully transplanted two genetically engineered porcine kidneys into human patients. But in January 2022, Muhammad Mohiuddin and a medical team at the University of Maryland School of Medicine upped the ante by successfully transplanting a pig’s heart for the first time. The patient, 57-year-old David Bennet Senior, unfortunately died two months after the procedure, but the cause of death was unrelated to the porcine heart beating in his chest, which is why the operation was a true medical breakthrough. 

Before the surgery, the pig’s heart soaked in a particular concoction containing a mix of hormones and a very special ingredient—one gram per liter of dissolved cocaine. The solution was developed by Swedish doctor Stig Steen, who gave it the cute name of “brain death cocktail.” In a 2016 paper, Steen showed that the liquid helped stabilize the pig’s heart for up to 24 hours after harvesting, which would theoretically increase the chances of a successful transplant. 

But the recipe behind the brew is proprietary, which means the team at the University of Maryland had to import it from Sweeden, creating a bureaucratic nightmare that forced the Drug Enforcement Administration to get involved.

It’s unclear exactly how this works and what’s the specific role of cocaine in this brew, but working with tissue that stays healthy for longer could be key not only for future xenotransplantations but also to address organ shortages and making it possible to fly in organs from across state lines. 

FACT: Scientists once taught goldfish to drive.

By Rachel Feltman 

About a year ago, researchers in Israel published evidence that goldfish can learn to drive tanks. Fish tanks, that is. 

They started by crafting what they called FOVs—fish operated vehicles, of course—which basically amounted to aquariums secured to motorized wheels. The rig included a little camera hooked up to a Raspberry Pi computer, which pointed down into the water, tracked the movements of the fish inside, and translated them into wheel movements based on a simple algorithm. 

The researchers placed a pink board somewhere in the room, and the fish were given a food pellet the moment their tank-mobile successfully tapped the target. After a few days, the six goldfish—who it feels important to note were named after Pride and Prejudice characters—all learned how to steer their FOVs to the snack zone. They were able to navigate the vehicle from different starting points, and managed to ignore false targets and even recover and redirect when they bumped into walls. Apparently Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley were the best drivers. 

The point was to see whether goldfish have some innate sense of logic when it comes to navigating a space. The purpose of the FOV is just to make it possible for a fish to navigate a non-aquatic space. It doesn’t matter what the fish thinks is happening when it makes the tank move; what matters is that the fish is figuring out the best way to get to an arbitrary target, using extremely non-fish-native wayfinding points, because it knows there will be food there. 

They were even able to approach their targets from a variety of different angles, which suggests that they have some internal representation of the strange world around them. And they got faster over time. 

All of this helps support the idea that the way we navigate space, which we know has to do with parts of our hippocampus that are pretty similar in all vertebrates, has more to do with some innate inner mind mapping that goes on than it does species-specific ways of figuring out an environment. 

A study published in 2019 did genuinely teach rats to drive little cars. The point of that study really was to teach rats to drive, not just propel themselves around in a strange space. The idea was to show whether growing up in so-called enriched environments—cages with multiple levels to climb on and interesting stuff to play with—made rats better able to learn stuff and less likely to be stressed about the novelty. 

FACT: Rodent DNA revealed a black market seal trade.

By Sara Kiley Watson

150 years ago, sealers in New Zealand nearly brought fur seals, also known as Kekeno, to extinction. Nowadays, they are doing much better—the last recorded count shows in 2001 there were 200,000 of the fuzzy cuties bouncing around the rocky shores throughout mainland New Zealand, the Chatham Islands, and the sub-Antarctic islands, as well as parts of Australia. 

The hunting of Kekono began with the Maori people who lived in New Zealand and the Cook Islands pre-colonialism, but things got especially troubling with the arrival of Europeans. By the 1700s, seals were confined to the far south of New Zealand, and by the early 1800s the seal populations were already in dangerous decline and the legality of sealing became more of a legal gray area. 

But, a discovery that lays open some secrets about an illegal seal trade between Asia and New Zealand has only recently unfolded, with the help of tiny detectives—rodents that have stowed away on ships and created populations of two distinct species on the two islands of New Zealand. As it turns out, while one population can be traced back to trade with Europe, another population comes solely from Asia—a region where this seal trade was largely kept off the books. 

The post Goldfish learned to drive tanks on wheels—and that’s not even the best part appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Lubrication is why chocolate feels so good on your tongue

By Chelsey B. Coombs

Most of us aren’t thinking about physics and materials science when we eat chocolate, but there’s a reason chocolate’s melt-in-your-mouth sensation feels so good, and it’s all about lubrication.

In a paper published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces in January 2023, researchers from the University of Leeds created a 3D artificial tongue surface and used techniques from a field of engineering called tribology to better understand the reason for chocolate’s specific mouthfeel. Tribology is basically the study of how surfaces interact with each other while they’re in motion and how friction and lubrication affect them.

What they found is that chocolate releases a fatty film – the lubrication – that mixes with your spit to coat your tongue and mouth. But the really interesting thing is that it’s the fat layer on the outside layer of the chocolate that contributes to chocolate’s mouthfeel and *not* the fat located on the inside of the bar. The researchers hope the research could help food scientists develop multilayered chocolate that’s better for you by reducing the fat on the inside of the chocolate, but keeping it in the outside layer that actually comes into contact with your tongue.

FACT: There’s a German word for a bird with an arrow stuck through its neck 

By Rachel Feltman

In 1822, a white stork flew by a northern German estate with a shocking passenger in tow: it had a two-and-a-half-foot spear sticking through its neck. The wound didn’t seem to have bothered it much, since it had carried the weapon all the way from Africa. 

The bird, which after all that was shot out of the sky and stuffed, was dubbed a pfeilstorch—an arrow stork. Examination of the weapon that impaled it revealed it was made of African wood, and similar in design to weapons used in Central Africa. 

But that wasn’t just shocking because it meant the bird had flown thousands of miles with an arrow through its neck. The very idea that a stork might spend time on another continent was really big news. At that time, at least among Europeans, the fact that birds disappeared for part of the year was considered a total mystery. They didn’t know that the birds were migrating. The appearance of a local bird that carried proof of having recently been on a different continent also provided the best evidence to date that birds migrated.

Not everyone was totally clueless about migration. There are Indigenous folk tales that involve references to migrating geese flying off for the winter, and some Polynesian myths involve birds traveling long distances as well. That makes sense, because many Polynesian explorers were island-hopping themselves. They would have had a better chance of spotting a bird making a seasonal pilgrimage than, say, Aristotle would. 

Aristotle, for what it’s worth, described some short-range migrations around the mediterranean as he observed them, and hypothesized that cranes might go to the edges of the earth to do annual battle with humans who lived there, for some reason. But he also thought that some birds, like swallows, simply hibernated in muddy lake beds, while others turned into entirely different kinds of birds, like caterpillars turning into butterflies. 

These beliefs were still circulating in the late 1600s, which is when a scholar named Charles Morton argued that storks disappeared because they flew to the moon.

One especially fun thing about the pfeilstorch is that folks say some 25 of them have been recorded. I tried to trace that number back to its source, and the furthest I got was a 2003 newsletter, in German, from the University of Rostock, which is the institution that studied and taxidermied that infamous bird in 1822. I als found an english-language review of a German book published in 2005 called “Das Buch von Pfeilstorch,” or the book of the arrow stork, which apparently recounts and summarizes 24 known instances from the last few hundred years. 

We do know that this strange phenomenon has happened more than once, because at least two have been reported at different times in recent history in Israel. 

We now know that the stork’s 4,000 mile or so round-trip migration is actually pretty chill as far as bird migrations go. The Arctic tern flies from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle and back every year, which is nearly 19,000 miles. In 2022, researchers reported what could be the longest non-stop journey for a migratory bird, which was a five-month-old bar-tailed godwit that made it from Alaska to Tasmania—about 8,500 miles—in just 11 days. According to the little solar-powered GPS it was carrying, it did not stop. 

FACT: Ovaries are more regenerative than we thought

By Rachel E. Gross

There’s one fact everyone seems to remember from high school biology: If you have XX chromosomes, you’re born with all the eggs you’ll ever have. Starting around puberty, your ovaries begin pumping those eggs out monthly, and the count starts falling. By the time you hit menopause, you’re down to zero. So I remember being shocked to learn while reporting my book Vagina Obscura that this simple countdown isn’t the whole story. Not even close. We now know that ovaries, like most tissues in the body, harbor stem cells. And those stem cells seem to be able to grow into new eggs.

As you might expect, this change holds serious consequences for how we think of female health and fertility. It also suggests that the ovaries may be less like trickling-away hourglasses, and more like rechargeable batteries.

One surprising reason we’ve started re-examining human ovaries in the first place is thanks to scientists who study sex shifting chickens and their mind-blowing gonads. Chickens have just one ovary—the other one withers away soon after birth—that supplies them with hormones and grows massive eggs on a near-daily basis. That single ovary also has remarkable powers of regeneration. In past experiments where scientists removed it, they learned that it often grew back completely, eggs and all. Sometimes, the bird even grew a new testes!

Often it takes fresh blood and a new lens to move science forward. For half a century, ovarian biologists of the human variety stuck to the truism that women were born with all their eggs, and ovaries degenerated over time. It’s no coincidence that chicken scientists were some of the first to point out that actually, human ovaries, too, might be using their stem cells to regenerate and replenish themselves throughout your lifetime—potentially even past menopause.

The post A stork impaled by a 30-inch spear flew thousands of miles to make it home appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: You can (sort of) blame pirates for your inability to understand temperatures in Celsius 

By Rachel Feltman

As someone who married into a European family, I deal with the persistent absurdity of America’s stubborn use of English measurement more than most. I often wonder how we got to be pretty much the only country that eschews the metric system—the only other nations that haven’t officially adopted it are Liberia and Myanmar—and it turns out that pirates can take at least part of the blame.  

When the US was new and it was time to decide what its official way of doing business was, the idea of standardized measurements, even within a single country, was relatively novel. This is not to say people didn’t measure things before then; the concept of units of measurement has existed since ancient Mesopotamia, if not longer. But for most of human history, those measurements were relatively relative. You needed something to reference when weighing or measuring, and those had to be common objects, like seeds or parts of the human body, which all have variations in size. 

Fast forward to the 1790s, when the founding fathers are trying to figure out how the US will measure things. Luckily for us, France—which had amassed hundreds of confusing and inexact regional units of measurement over the years—was on the cusp of something huge in the wake of its own revolution. 

Tasked with developing a more enlightened system by the National Assembly, the French Academy of Sciences decided to base the system on a natural physical unit: the length of 1/10,000,000 of a quadrant of a great circle of Earth, measured around the poles of the meridian passing through Paris. Figuring that out took a six-year survey led by some of the greatest minds of the day, but they were finally able to ascertain the length of the arc of the meridian from Barcelona to Dunkirk. The new unit was dubbed the metre, from Greek metron, meaning “measure.”

You might think that after all that hard work, the US would have jumped at using such a sensible system—especially given that it came from the French, our revolutionary allies, and was created as a sort of symbol of reason and democracy. But of course we know that didn’t happen.

That’s where pirates came in. Thomas Jefferson did indeed express interest in the new metric system, and France sent a scientist named Joseph Dombey to the US with a standardized copper kilogram weight for reference. Unfortunately, the ship blew off course to the Caribbean, where a bunch of British privateers tasked with causing trouble for enemy merchant ships took him prisoner and tried to ransom him, after he failed to convince them he was actually just a Spanish sailor. He died in captivity, and they auctioned off the contents of his ship. 

The weight didn’t turn up until the 1950s, when someone donated it to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. 

The US ended up sticking with British units, which had evolved out of Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems. Britain would implement the British Imperial system a few decades later, while the US formalized its own version. It’s quite a stretch to say the pirate misadventure was the reason we went with British imperial measurements instead of the flashy new French system, but it certainly didn’t help. 

Loads of countries had adopted the metric system for themselves by the mid-19th century, and international governments were starting to talk about how absurd it was not to have standardized measurements for science and industry. In 1875, 17 different countries, including the US, signed the “treaty of the meter” in Paris and agreed to define all units based on the standard metric bases. In 1893, the US officially adopted metric standards as our own fundamental definitions for measurement units. 

The reason we didn’t switch entirely is that our machines and factories and official documents all revolved around English units, and business entities lobbied against having to make the overhaul. But these days, a lot of companies voluntarily use metric measurements in creating their products to make them easier to sell and use internationally. 

FACT: Your earwax says a lot about you

By Lauren Young

In many Asian cultures, ear cleaning is an act of care and affection that’s been around for centuries. The gentle practice of removing the sticky or flaky stuff in your ear holes is seen as a soothing, loving household ritual depicted in Japan Edo-era woodcut prints and manga of wives who would clean their husbands ears or of mothers who would clean their children’s ears with these thin ear rakes. And these very special soothing moments call for special bamboo ear picks or rakes, called mimikaki in Japanese. There are many different types of ear picks in Asian culture: some had a little down puff or decorative Daruma doll on the opposite end of the curved scoop; others were made of precious metals like gold and silver. Today, a number of Asian countries have ear cleaning salons. But the obsession with removing earwax spans across time and cultures—from the ancient Romans, Europeans in the 16th and early 17th century, and the Vikings. Now we’ve got a variety of modern-day earwax removal kits made of plastic and stainless steel, and sport  little lights and even cameras.

Even though we’re super obsessed with getting rid of it, many ear, nose, and throat doctors say that earwax is best left alone. In fact, your earwax can tell quite a bit about you. For instance, most of us fall into two main groups of earwax types: wet or dry. What type you have links back to your genetics. In 2006 a Nature Genetics study identified a specific gene that was responsible for earwax type, and found that wet earwax was the more dominant trait than dry. The study also explained that wet earwax is more commonly found in populations of European and African descent, while dry earwax is typically prevalent in East Asians (of course, there are exceptions). The scent of your earwax can occasionally tell you about the health of your ear. A change in odor can tip off a otolaryngologist of a potential fungal or bacterial infection, like swimmer’s ear. While earwax generally doesn’t change, an infection can cause the ear to leak a liquidy, smelly discharge. 

Earwax is a defensive lubricant, filled with antibacterial and antifungal proteins that helps keep the ear healthy. As a rule of thumb, ear, nose, and throat doctors recommend not trying to clear out your earwax if it’s bothering you (please, put down those cotton swabs). But too much earwax can be a bad thing. There are instances where earwax should be checked and removed by medical professionals. If you’re experiencing any pain in the inner ear, doctors sometimes need to clear out earwax to take a look at your eardrums to ensure there isn’t any damage. It’s particularly important for people who wear hearing aids or hearing assistive devices to get their ears regularly cleaned to prevent severe impactions. Earwax pushes out of the ear canal on its own. However, the ear molds of hearing devices block this natural movement and can also increase earwax production. As the substance builds up, it can worsen hearing loss or cause conditions like tinnitus. People with hearing aids need to vigilant about cleaning their devices and going in for regular cleaning appointments with their doctors. 

If your ears aren’t already full of earwax facts, you can learn more in an article on PopSci.

FACT: Gender norms in STEM aren’t universal

By Angela Saini

During the 1980s and 1990s, the proportion of women studying computer science in the computer science department of Yerevan State University in the former Soviet republic of Armenia never fell below 75%. When they were writing a paper about this is 2006, the authors even felt they had to point out that “this is not a typo”. Because the Soviet Union encouraged women to work and go to technical colleges, gender norms in STEM are still different in former socialist states.

The post Your earwax contains multitudes—of secrets about your health appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Dinosaur sex might’ve been simpler than we thought

By Dustin Growick

Listen. We’re not quite sure how dinosaurs literally came together to make more dinosaurs…but there are some pretty wild theories out there. Did male T. rexes use their tiny arms to tickle the backs of the females while mating? Probably not. Did giant long-neck sauropods—the largest animals to ever walk the face of the Earth—have to go to “sex lakes” in order to breed? Come on now. One thing we’re pretty sure about—based on modern reptile and bird corollaries—is that dinosaurs had cloacas. What’s a cloaca? Well, it’s kind of like one hole to rule them all, out which comes pee, poop, and the sexytime juices. So, yes, like most modern birds, dinosaurs probably practiced a “cloacal kiss” in order to reproduce. How romantic!

FACT: The Monty Python “silly walk” can be great exercise

By Rachel Feltman

The 2022 holiday issue of the British Medical Journal had a real Christmas cracker of a study: An investigation into the biomechanical implications of the Monty Python “silly walk.”

This actually isn’t the first time the silly walk has shown up in peer-reviewed literature. In 2020, Dartmouth researchers published an analysis of the gaits of the two silly walkers—dubbed Putey and Teabag in the sketch—for the journal Gait and Posture. They basically measured how much variation between steps there was, and unsurprisingly found that both were way more variable than a normal gait, but that Teabag’s was much more so than Putey’s. 

Researchers from the University of Virginia, Arizona State University, and Kansas State University took things a silly step further in this new BMJ paper. They gathered 13 healthy adults and had each of them put on a rig to measure how much oxygen they were taking in, how much energy they were expending, and how intensely they were exerting themselves. Each of them first walked around in a normal gait, then tried to mimic Teabag and Putey. 

The scientists found that while the Putey walk didn’t expend much more energy than a normal stroll, the Teabag walk basically amounted to intense exercise. 

Based on their findings, the researchers say that doing the Teabag silly walk for 11 minutes a day could provide adults with their recommended amount of physical activity. 
Even if someone can’t or doesn’t wish to kick their legs into the air and shuffle strangely for a dozen minutes or so a day, the researchers point out that the key is that the movement is inefficient, from an energy expenditure standpoint. Anything that makes movements less efficient—like traveling in a zigzag—can accomplish the same goal. And since the best physical activity is whatever activity gives you joy to do, a silly walk could sometimes be better than the gym!

FACT: Two ground-shaking discoveries were recently found in old museum cabinets

By Sara Kiley Watson

As someone who doesn’t clean their desk out often enough—do it more often. Especially if you happen to work at a museum. For two museums, the finds in the back of their cupboards were game changing. Researchers found both a hidden lizard relative that holds the key to when squamates originated and the remains of the last Tasmanian tiger on the planet.

When it comes to the lizard, scientists at the Natural History Museum in London originally thought a unique fossil belonged to the Clevosaurus family, a part of the Rhynchocephalia group. These guys only have one living relative, the tuatara of New Zealand, and the oldest fossils go back to the Middle Jurassic, some 238 to 240 million years ago. These guys split from squamates, which includes most of today’s lizards and snakes, way back then. Scientists decided to take a closer look at the fossil, doing x-ray scans and reconstructing the skeleton in 3D, and discovered that this wee lizard has more in common with the ones scampering around your backyard than the unique Tuatara—pushing back lizard evolution as we know it quite a bit before we thought.
The next reason to clean out your old drawers comes from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) in Hobart, Tasmania. And while these remains aren’t millions of years old, they are still a big deal. For 85 years, the remains of the last known Tasmanian tiger or thylacine were missing—until they were found recently in a museum cupboard. This means the well-photographed “last Tasmanian tiger” wasn’t the last one at all.

The post The Monty Python ‘silly walk’ could replace your gym workout appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Dr. Robert White did a primate head transplant—but did he transplant a soul?

By: Brandy Schillace

We tend to give precedence to the brain, and so long as our consciousness remains intact, we are we. But should we have that brain removed from the body that houses it—well, that’s another story. In fact, it’s this story. I tell the incredible story of a “Frankenstein” event, the world’s first successful primate head transplant, but also how this bizarre encounter shaped, and in fact inaugurated, life-saving technologies that still save lives today. The book will also explore a mystery that still begs to be solved: if you make a brain to live outside a body, what becomes of the self? Or as one doctor puts it, “Can you transplant the human SOUL?” And finally, this story will follow a contest every bit as determined as the space race: the Cold War contest between Russia and America to perform the first head transplant in a bid to overcome mortality and to bestow life.

Fact: Koalas have shockingly human fingerprints—but the forensic implications have been greatly exaggerated 

By Rachel Feltman

Let’s start with a supposed ‘fact’ that just isn’t true. Supposedly, back in the 90s, a spate of robberies turned out to have been committed not by a human, but by a koala—because these animals have fingerprints so similar to our own as to confuse police. 

There haven’t actually been any koala capers, as far as the record shows. This seems to have been inspired by the statement of a scientist back in the ‘90s, who pointed out that koala prints could, in theory, confuse police at crime scenes, and he figured someone should probably look into that. And in terms of purely theoretical happenings, he wasn’t wrong: You could absolutely confuse a koala’s fingerprint with a human’s, which is wild when you consider how mysterious fingerprints are to begin with.

Let’s zoom out from koalas for a minute. What exactly is a fingerprint, and why do we have them? 

Our fingerprints are made out of ridged skin that can be found on our hands and the soles of our feet, as well as on several other body parts in different mammals. They come in three major pattern categories called loops, whorls, and arches. But the idea that no two fingerprints are alike comes down to tiny shapes and changes in the characteristics of the lines within those figures, which are known as minutiae. That’s why the forensic reliability of fingerprints is more hotly debated than you might think, given that they’ve been a ubiquitous part of crime scene investigation since the early 1900s. Because the differences in fingerprints come down to loads of tiny little features, it’s very possible for an unscrupulous or biased analyzer to call something a match when it’s actually not. 

But while we can’t actually say with certainty that no two people have ever had the same fingerprints, because that’s more of a statistical question than a biological one, we do know that the amount of tiny variations that are possible in the formation of a fingerprint make it nearly, if not literally, impossible for two individuals to end up with the same set. Identical twins have more similarities between their fingerprints than fraternal twins do, and the similarities increase out from there as relations get more distant, so it’s clear there’s a genetic component. Basically, the general vibe of your fingerprint is quite heritable, but the many minutiae aren’t.

That comes down to how fingerprints form. When a fetus is about seven weeks along, its hands and feet start to form little humps called volar pads. A few weeks later, the fetus starts to grow quickly enough that those bumps just sort of fade back into the palms of its hands and feet. The shifting pressures of growing tissue seem to cause folds to form in the skin, which is how we get our whirls, arches, or loops. And which one you get depends on when, in your fetal development, your volar pads got overtaken by your growing hands and feet. That timing definitely has a genetic component, so families tend to have the same general type of fingerprint. But the formation of minutiae is way more arbitrary, and can be impacted by everything from the viscosity of your amniotic fluid to how much you punched your mom’s kidneys in utero. 

Scientists have yet to land on one concrete explanation for why fingerprints evolved, but their best guesses come down to improving our grip strength by creating friction or making us more sensitive to tactile information—there’s some evidence that the ridges of our fingerprints increase the vibrations we feel when we touch something. One 2009 study suggested that fingerprints might amplify useful vibrations while dampening others to help specialized nerve cells interpret surface texture. When that paper came out, a lot of news outlets crowd about how the “urban legend” that fingerprints existed to improve grip strength had been “debunked,” but that’s far from true. As recently as a couple of years ago, researchers were continuing to explore how these friction ridges might affect our ability to grab things, particularly when our skin is moist due to sweat. Some experts have even pointed out that an improved sense of touch could contribute to better gripping abilities, since it would help you realize when something was slipping out of your grasp, so both benefits could have been involved in fingerprint evolution. 

Let’s get back to our cuddly buddies down under. Back in the 1990s, a biological anthropologist and forensic scientist named Maciej Henneberg who’d recently come to work at the University of Adelaide was working with some koalas at a wildlife refuge when he got to looking at their digits. He was surprised he’d never read or heard anything about their fingerprints, because they looked to him to be quite human-like. He and his colleagues found some recently deceased specimens to scan with an electron microscope, and their study showed that they did indeed have a lot of similarities. 

Fingerprints show up in other primates, but koalas aren’t nearly as closely related to us as chimps and gorillas are. Marsupials branched off from primates more than 70 million years ago. So this seems to be a case of convergent evolution, meaning that what worked for primate fingers also happened to work for koala fingers. Koalas, after all, do a lot of climbing. They’re also very particular about what plants they eat, so tactile sensitivity must be useful. We see this a lot in nature—bat wings and bird wings are super similar, but didn’t actually come from a common ancestor. 

Henneberg never actually set out to catch a koala on the lam, nor did he suggest the police should actually do so. But he did point out that a crime scene could potentially be contaminated by koala prints, and the rest is history. 

I think part of the reason this sometimes gets shared as an anecdote about actual crime scenes is some rather cheeky reporting on Henneberg’s 1996 study by UK newspaper The Independent, which ran the headline “Koalas make a monkey out of the police.” The story included a local anecdote from 1975, when Hertfordshire police raided several zoos to take prints from a handful of chimps and orangutans. The guy who ordered the exercise said it was because cops used to refer to ambiguous prints as “monkey prints,” so, sure, an idiom is a great reason to go dust chimps for prints, I guess. On the bright side, zookeepers recall the chimps being happy to get the attention. This very strange side quest showed the police force that the prints were very similar, but not actually close enough to human prints to trick a trained eye—which is likely the case with koalas, too. 

I do have to dunk on The Independent circa 1996 for this one line in particular: “The chimp file is likely to be re-examined in the light of new evidence yesterday that criminal investigations in Australia may have been hampered by the presence of koala fingerprints at the scenes of crimes.” That’s based on quite literally nothing said by any of the sources quoted or referenced, and I’m pretty sure it’s what gave people the idea that primates and marsupials were under active investigation.

Fact: Sea sponges sneeze!

By: Sara Kiley Watson

It is sneeze season. And there’s plenty to make you sneeze out there–colds, the flu, allergies, you name it. 

Humans aren’t the only animals that sneeze–elephants, pandas, seals, puppies, and more all get that tickle in their nose sometimes. But not all animals sneeze—sharks for instance have nostrils and everything, but those nostrils don’t link to the back of the throat like humans do, so if they get something stuck up in their smellers they have to just try to shake it out, apparently. Aquatic animals in general don’t have the advantage of using a ton of air to push out every single annoying particle they suck up while swimming about.

However, a new study shows how one aquatic animal, in its own little way, sneezes to get rid of junk that clogs up their internal filter system—sea sponges. 

Sea sponges are some of the oldest creatures out there, with a fossil record dating back approximately 600 million years to the earliest (Precambrian) period of Earth’s history. Sponges don’t have noses, obviously. They instead have all of these tiny pores that suck in stuff from the water around them, which they use as food and nutrients. But just like when you get a whiff of stinky perfume instead of fresh air, sometimes sponges just need to sneeze something out. And sponges can’t move, so if their home all of the sudden becomes really gross, they especially need one hearty achoo. 

How their sneezes work is their little water inlets release mucus slowly over time, which builds up on their little sponge-y surfaces. When that mucus becomes too much, the sponge tissues contract and push the waste-filled snot globs into the water. Visually, it’s like pimples popping themselves, so if that’s your thing then you’ll be a big fan of the sponge sneeze.

The post A sea sponge’s sneeze lasts a very, very long time appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Scientists are feeding poisoned toad butts to predators to save their lives.

By Bethany Brookshire

Cane toads hopped across Australia beginning in the 1930s. Scientists brought them in originally to try to combat the cane grub attacking sugar cane farms. Unfortunately, cane toads weren’t much for cane grub control. Instead, they bred really well and started hopping west. (For the best possible content on this, I recommend this iconic cane toad documentary on YouTube.) In the process, they came to the attention of the local predators. But cane toads are toxic! They have poisonous pads on their shoulders. Predators who ate them quickly found out they had eaten their last meal. Up to 90% of predators would end up dead as cane toads spread west. To save the predators, scientists have started giving naive predators bits of toad before the real ones arrive, hoping to teach the predators that toads are a never food. Some predators get sausages made of toad, others get non-poisonous toad butts. Both are laced with lithium chloride, a substance that doesn’t kill, but does make the animals feel very, very nauseated. The animals that rely on live prey get exposed to baby cane toads, ones too small to kill them outright, but with enough poison to make the predators learn their lessons. So far the toad butts appear to work! Predators exposed to cane toads only decline by about 50% when the big toads arrive. It’s still bad, but not as bad as it could be.

For more on cane toads, and on the other amazing animals that we hate, and why we hate them, check out Bethany Brookshire’s book, Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, wherever fine books are sold. 

FACT: No one actually thought riding a train would make your uterus fly out of your body—but the moral panic was very real.

By Rachel Feltman

A couple years back on Weirdest Thing, I talked about how the invention of the modern bicycle led to all kinds of moral and medical uproar about why women shouldn’t ride them.  And in my recent book, I talk about the history of the term hysteria—which was once a fully serious medical belief that the uterus wandered around the body following exciting smells like some kind of feral rodent, thereby impacting health. 

Both of these stories prompted friends and readers and listeners alike to say “you’ve got to talk about how when trains were first invented, men thought that moving at such speeds would make a woman’s uterus go flying right out of her!!!”

I’ve attempted to do this episode multiple times, but my cursory research efforts have always come up short. I found loads of blog posts and listicles and Reddit comments discussing this historical anecdote, but kept striking out on an actual historical source. As it turns out, there probably isn’t one! 

This specific supposed factoid seems to come from a 2011 interview with a technologist from Intel. And in her defense, the way she paraphrased the historical attitudes around trains was pretty clearly, at least in my reading, meant to be off-the-cuff and a bit hyperbolic. But people really latched onto the idea that Victorian men literally thought organs were getting ripped out of bodies, and it’s gotten repeated as fact over and over. 

The closest thing we actually find to this in the historical literature, though, is an article in the New England Medical Gazette from 1870, where a doctor fussed over the strong vibrations of the bench a woman might sit on while riding a train, and how that might delay a menstrual cycle and/or cause “uterine flexion or dislocation.”

Important context here is that people still believed in the whole hysteria thing, whereby the uterus shifted around the body and caused trouble. A lot of physicians by this point had come up with more modest and reasonable amounts of motion a uterus could undertake, in contrast to their forefathers who had literally thought that thing could go anywhere, but they still thought it was an organ prone to ending up in the wrong spot. So, someone saying this is very different from someone saying they thought trains would send your uterus flying out your vagina. 

That’s not to say that Victorians were chill and reasonable about railway trains (or uteruses). According to papers from the 1860s, which was a few decades after passenger steam trains first became a thing, consumers had been worried about everything from suffocating in tunnels to fainting in the exhaust fumes. When The Lancet solicited research on rail travel in the early 1860s, doctors blamed it for everything from miscarriage to brain congestion. 

In hindsight, we can see the clear rise of a moral panic around railway travel. In the 1860s and 1870s, as train travel became more ubiquitous—even as doctors wrote confidently that fears of asphyxiation and such had been unfounded—there started to be accounts of totally healthy people boarding trains and being driven to violent madness. There was loads of media coverage, which may have made people who were on-edge more prone to having the sort of breakdown they were supposed to have on a train. People also started to write stories about how patients from mental asylums could just pop onto a train and you’d never know, and you’d be stuck with them, which really puts the concept of Uber Pool into sharp perspective. 

There was also a lot of debate over something called Railway Spine, which referred to the long term physical distress reported by survivors of the first passenger train crashes. Railway owners saw this as an obvious sign that folks were faking distress for money, but doctors worried that something about the high speeds of rail—and the resulting force of its collisions—could be creating an illness they’d never seen before. Now it’s easy to characterize these symptoms as traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, or both. But the belief that there was something special about trains that made them particularly dangerous may have 

led to the general sense of panic around them.

Trains were obviously not our first moral panic over technology. Ancient Greek philosophers like Socrates groused about how writing and reading were a slippery slope into laziness and anti-intellectualism, since obviously the natural way to learn new information was to hear it in person and then just remember it perfectly. People thought telephones would electrocute them and keep everyone from leaving their homes. Zippers may have been associated with laziness and moral decay. The printing press would allow for false prophets to print satanic bibles. Reading popular novels would rot young peoples’ brains.

In her 2020 paper “The Sisyphean Cycle of Technology Panics,” Cambridge University experimental psychologist Amy Orben points out that adolescents are often at the center of moral panics around new tech. Orben also points out that we’ve looped scientists into these questions, looking for data-driven answers on how something might impact our youth. But she notes that these studies are almost always flawed—they make generalizations about who uses the tech and how, and assume all people using it will be affected the same way, and generally have a specific negative outcome they’re looking to connect it to. 

FACT: Aye-ayes pick their noses with XXL fingers.

By Lauren Young

The beauty of the aye-aye is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. This species of lemur from Madagascar, Daubentonia madagascariensis, is often known for its visually striking looks—a coat of shaggy, wispy black and gray fur, large bat-like ears used for echolocation, and a pair of bright yellow-orange eyes that seem to piece into your soul. Averaging about 15 inches long and five pounds, they’re one of, if not the largest known nocturnal primate in the world. But perhaps the aye-aye’s most notable feature is its long, spindly fingers. 

Aye-ayes, in general, have very strange hands. For one, biologists discovered in 2020 that they actually have a sixth finger, tiny pseudo-thumb, on each wrist that might have evolved to help the aye-ayes grip branches and climb. The rest of their fingers are noticeably long—the fourth and longest finger accounts for more than two-thirds the length of its hand. If you consider the human hand, a finger with the same proportions would be nearly a foot long. Instead of being cumbersome, these solitary tree dwellers have developed a variety of specialized functions that take full advantage of the long appendages. For instance, they’ll tap their digits along branches and trees and listen in for insect grub with those echolocating ears. When they hear a delectable snack scuttling inside, they’ll use their fingers to scoop out the food. Researchers at the Duke Lemur Center, a leading lemur research and education hub, have also found that the third middle finger—which can be around three inches long—can be used to drink water and eat fruit.  

In November, a study in the Journal of Zoology reported observations of an aye-aye inserting the entire length of its skinny middle finger into its nose, before proceeding to lick it clean of snot. Yum. Study author from the University of Bern, who worked with the Duke Lemur Center, noted that the nose-picking and eating behavior—known scientifically as mucophagy—didn’t seem to be a one-off instance. The researchers also obtained museum specimens of the head and hand of an aye-aye and took CT scans of the nasal cavity, which revealed that the finger could reach all the way down to the throat. 

[Related: There’s no proof picking your nose causes Alzheimer’s]

Only 12 primate species have been observed to pick their nose, whether with fingers or sticks or other tools, the study authors report. This includes humans, gorillas, chimps, and now aye-ayes. It’s still a mystery why exactly the aye-ayes, or any nose-picking animal, eats their boogers. The study authors pointed to past studies that suggest humans may have evolved ingesting boogers to boost the immune system, or that the slimy materials coats our teeth and prevents bacteria from sticking, which might improve oral health. Others have proposed snot could have some sort of nutritional value for animals. But these findings aren’t concrete, and other studies contradict that booger eating is good for you. For instance, other experts suggest that picking your nose in general can spread or introduce harmful bacteria to your nasal cavity.

While the answer might be up in the air, the study does shed light on another trait primates seem to share. Unfortunately, aye-ayes get a bad rap because of their appearance—including that long booger-picking finger. Folklore has said if the aye-aye’s finger points at someone, it’s thought they are marked for death. This has caused aye-ayes to have been killed in the past, and they are an endangered species due to habitat loss. Scientists in Madagascar have found that not all villages and locals have this negative perception of aye-ayes. Some locals have actually found that they could be a beneficial form of pest control because they like to eat bugs that infest sugar cane crops.

The post These long-fingered lemurs pick and eat their boogers, just like humans appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Piss was once a precious commodity 

By Rachel Feltman

For most people, urine is a fluid best flushed away as quickly as possible. But for much of human history, our pee was a powerful tool and an important resource. If you let the substance sit around to ferment and evaporate for a spell, its high ammonia content turns it into an effective cleansing and bleaching agent. It can also be used to produce potassium nitrate, otherwise known as saltpeter, which is a component of gunpowder. 

Known as lant, this fermented pee was clearly important to everyone from laundresses to military leaders. There were even times when governments demanded that people turn their liquid waste over to serve the needs of the many. But for the most part, we don’t know much about how people peddled in lant. We have quite a few more records on folks hired to deal with poop—specifically, the poopsmiths hired to get it away from everyone else. 

Because the use of lant offends our modern sensibilities, there are loads of probably-not-very-true stories about its historical applications. There’s been plenty of internet chatter, for example, about references to “lanted” ale—beer laced with fermented pee. But it seems unlikely this was a real trend, and it’s definitely not one that homebrewers should try to replicate. (Side note: Here’s that Yorkshire dictionary entry I mentioned during the episode.) 

FACT: Snakes have no legs, but they do have two penises

By Sara Kiley Watson

Male snakes have two penises. Actually, it sounds like a decent amount of lizards and things have two penises—squamates, the largest order of reptiles, are actually known for the fact that they have two penises. But the story of the snake’s “hemipenis” is an interesting evolutionary one for certain.

About 150 million years ago, the ancestors of the slithery snakes we now know and love were waddling and walking around on legs. Apparently, snakes still have that leg development ability in their DNA, but the “make legs happen” switch is just turned off. This is because of a gene that researchers call the “Sonic hedgehog” gene, which is responsible for growing limbs. The researchers found that the Sonic hedgehog gene “flickers” briefly in python embryos that are around 24 hours old, and the gene previously hasn’t been spotted in actual slytherin pythons. Essentially, for the first 24 hours of embryonic development, snakes have legs—then a light bulb goes off. 

So what do these legs have to do with snake penises? Well, another study found that in lizards, snakes, birds and mammals alike the development of the genitals is run by the embryonic structure the cloaca—which is pretty much the butt hole. The location of the cloaca, however, is key—in lizards and snakes, it’s right up close to those hind legs (or the hind legs that could’ve been for snakes). Enter the double penis right where those legs could’ve been.

At the end of the day, instead of legs, the male snake got penises in their place. 

FACT: Timothy Dexter was perhaps the luckiest businessman who ever lived

By Annie Rauwerda

Timothy Dexter was a goofy, 18th-century guy who was a wildly successful businessman, seemingly by accident. First he made money off his investment into Continental currency (almost worthless at the time), then by selling bed warmers to the West Indies (which is already warm!) where they were sold very profitably as ladles for the molasses industry. Then, Dexter sent wool mittens there, which Asian merchants bought for export to Siberia. Then he sold coal to Newcastle (where there was a coal mine!!) and happened to profit because the miners went on strike.

All in all, Dexter’s business trajectory is an epic tale. From whale bone hoarding, to faking his own death, and an autobiography without any punctuation, you’ll want to hear all the details in this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing.

The post Snakes may not have legs, but they do have two penises appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Birds are real

By Purbita Saha

This fact might be blatantly obvious to listeners of a famous science podcast, but it’s important to clear the air with all the misinformation flying around the internet. In 2017, a student from Tennessee launched a national campaign called Birds Aren’t Real. He claimed that the CIA replaced every feathered creature, starting with rock pigeons, with drones during the Cold War. Apparently, these well-disguised machines are still used to surveil Americans today.

In recent interviews, the founder of Birds Aren’t Real says his movement calls attention to the harms and pervasiveness of real conspiracy theories, like QAnon. But whether it’s counterprogramming, clever marketing, or a big, fat joke, it’s raised the hackles of people who love and study birds. Avian evolution dates back hundreds of millions of years to a prominent group of dinosaurs that included T. rex, velociraptors, and the possibly flighted Archaeopteryx. Over time, the survivors have taken on diverse forms, shown stunning intelligence, and illuminated many natural phenomena. 

But the best part about birds is that they’re accessible to everyone, everywhere. You don’t have to hike up mountains or paddle out to islands to experience their uniqueness—they will come to you. Giant flocks of passerines, raptors, and more migrate through the US and Eurasia in fall and spring. A tiny ruby-crowned kinglet might stop by on your windowsill (as one did while I was recording this podcast), reminding you that not only are birds real: They’re basically perfect.

FACT: There’s way too much poop on Mount Everest

By Rachel Feltman

Let’s start with some basic stats to put things in perspective. Mount Everest, which sits on the border between Nepal and Tibet, is the highest point on Earth—its summit is 29,031 feet above sea level. That doesn’t actually make it the world’s tallest mountain, to be clear: Mauna Kea on Hawai’i is about three quarters of a mile taller than Everest from tail to snout, as it were, but a big portion of that sits below the surface of the pacific ocean. To make things even more confusing, there’s another mountain that, by certain definitions, could be considered the world’s tallest. Because Earth isn’t a perfect sphere, Ecuador’s Chimborazo mountain happens to sit at just the right bulgy spot below the equator to be particularly far from the planet’s core. The summit measures more than 3,900 miles from the center of the Earth, which is 6,798 feet farther than Everest. But Chimborazo isn’t even the tallest mountain in the Andes by more traditional measurements! But I digress. 

As of July of 2022, around 6,100 people had summited Everest some 11,000 times since the first known success in 1953. It’s also one of just 14 peaks in the world that stretches into what’s known as the “death zone.” At around 26,000 feet, it’s no longer possible for the human body to acclimatize. 

In a 2019 article by Weirdest Thing alum Eleanor Cummins, Pulmonary expert Peter Hackett put it this way: “You’re slowly dying at 18,000 feet, but when you get above 26,000 feet, you start dying much more quickly.” Over the last three decades, the researchers found, success rates among climbers have actually doubled, while the death rate has stayed pretty level. But it’s still super dangerous to climb, and at least 310 people have died trying to make it to the top. Their bodies are still there. 

In addition to the bodies we’ve left on Everest, we’ve left a lot of trash—and poop. Like, a really problematic amount. Every year the Nepali government and an NGO run by the Sherpa people of Tibet work on clearing up the worst of the trash left by 700 or so climbers and the people that support them. It’s difficult to know exactly how much garbage there is, because some of it is basically impossible to get to due to hazardous conditions. One 2015 estimate suggested there’s more than 26,000 pounds of poop left behind each year in total, which says nothing of the ripped-up tents and empty oxygen tanks and all the rest of it. And in January of 2022, groups estimated that at Base Camp 2, there had been more than 17,000 pounds of human poop left behind in just the previous climbing season. 

Rising temperatures mean that there are fewer deep ice crevasses to dump excrement into, by the way, which means it’s more and more likely for feces to contaminate the melting snow that people who live around base camp rely on for drinking water. 

Consider this your friendly reminder that you really shouldn’t leave your poop behind on any mountain, even a chill one. Yes, you can dig a deep hole if you’re not close to a water source, but if you’re on a rocky trail or one that’s really populated, you need to admit to yourself that there simply isn’t room for everyone’s poop. Pack that crap out! 

Fact: In the 1970s, inventors tried to make a Ford Pinto fly

By Corinne Iozzio

In the 150 years Popular Science has been around, few concepts have gotten as much airtime as the flying car. Almost immediately after terrestrial autos hit the roadways, inventors began dreaming of them taking flight—and they never quite stopped. Some ideas seemed better grounded than others. Take, for example, the Mizar: Invented in the early 1970s by a pair of career aerospace engineers, it screamed practicality. At least on the surface. The car, which debuted to much press fanfare, married together a compact model of Ford and a Cessna plane. The driver, the concept went, would simply need to back his car into the tail-end of the craft, lock the two parts together, and get ready to take off. 

Of course, there was a catch—actually several. Not least of which was their car of choice: a Ford Pinto. Now infamous for bursting into flames at even a light tapping of its rear end, the Pinto had yet to make fiery headlines when the Mizar’s inventors tried to launch it into the skies. The Mizar’s true failings, however, laid in its construction. Bolting the car onto a Cessna overtaxed the airframe. And, later reports revealed, the connections between car and plane left a lot to be desired. 
Test flights were rocky, and eventually turned deadly for the Mizar’s intrepid inventors. But the public was captivated by the idea. And, to some degree, we still are. Visions of flying cars today, though, embrace a different kind of practicality—one that doesn’t put everyday drivers in the cockpit.

The post How do we know that birds are real? appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Vampire epidemics are real

By Rachel Feltman

Back in September, there were a lot of headlines and tweets and TikToks about a new archeological finding in Poland. It was the 300-year-old grave of a seemingly wealthy woman in the village of Pien. She was wearing a silk cap and she was buried in a cemetery—signs that she was someone of status—but she was also shackled to the grave by her big toe. And she had a sickle placed over her neck in such a way that, should she try to rise, she would have been decapitated. These sorts of physical booby traps, along with more symbolic bits of protective magic, are generally accepted as signs that the living feared the dead would rise. In other words: They thought this lady was a vampire.

It’s not surprising that people were spooked and intrigued by this story, but it’s worth noting that it’s unlikely this woman did anything truly menacing, let alone anything seemingly supernatural, to inspire those fears. The archeologists who found her noted that she had a very prominently protruding front tooth, which may have been enough to make her a suspicious figure to her neighbors—especially if she was wealthy and independent.

I really appreciated that tooth detail, because it gets at something important about vampire burials—yes, plural, because these happened with some frequency all over the world. According to Stanley Stepanic, an expert on Slavic languages and literature from the University of Virginia, these beliefs and practices were common enough to prompt an official ban on vampire burials in 14th-century Serbian legal codes. And they show up outside of Eastern Europe, too. The thing that tends to unite them is that people saw vampires when they looked at people who were different—especially when they had reason to worry about disease. Other graves found with such signs of superstition have largely been associated with deaths from various plagues.

The so-called Vampire Epidemic of the 18th century, which is when the idea of vampires really entered the zeitgeist and became a downright common explanation for the spread of disease, may have been tied to pellagra, a condition caused by a vitamin B3 deficiency, which would have arisen as more of Europe started to live primarily on corn. (Fun fact, in mesoamerica, where corn originated, people prepared maize in an alkaline solution like ashy water, which made its B3 bioavailable and made it healthy to live on! Europeans apparently did not get the memo.) Before the arrival of corn, diseases like rabies could have helped shape the myths. As for why people became so convinced that the dead were rising, some historians point to the fact that urbanization meant that, for the first time in human history, hundreds or even thousands of corpses were being crammed into cemeteries that sat right next to bustling human settlements, often in simple shrouds due to poverty. That meant people being inadvertently disinterred by scavenging animals or flash flooding was suddenly much more common. Plus, several physicians of the era started spreading the idea that some of the corpses in question weren’t decomposing as quickly as they should, but that probably just had to do with the huge uptick in corpses they had the ability to observe.

The US had its own vampire panic in the 1800s, when an epidemic of tuberculosis in New England got blamed on dead people draining the life out of the relatives they’d left behind. TB tends to spread within households, and it takes a while to cause symptoms and kill you, so people started to figure that the first one to die must be slowly leeching the rest. One of the best documented cases of this was the exhumation of Mercy Brown in Rhode Island in 1892. Mercy was actually the third member of her family to die of consumption, but when the local doctor dug all their corpses up, she was the one who seemed suspiciously intact—because she had literally just died, and she’d been stored in a freezing crypt for two months. To save her brother Edwin, the village burned her heart and liver and mixed them into a tonic for him to drink. It didn’t work. 

While ostentatious vampire burials and rituals are the ones that are most fun to talk about, some people were indeed killed because their neighbors thought they were, quite literally, parasitic monsters. The origin of vampiric panic is closely tied to the origin of blood libel, which is the pervasive belief that Jews ritually murder Christian children and drink their blood. In Medieval Europe, it wasn’t uncommon for Crusaders—or peasants caught up in the fervor of holy war—to target Jewish populations in retaliation for assorted local deaths. You don’t have to look too closely at the 18th, 19th, and early 20th-century vampire stories we know and love to see plenty of antisemetic tropes, either. 

Fact: Even if Bigfoot doesn’t exist now, there’s a legit possibility that it might have once upon a time

By Laura Krantz

Let’s start by saying that there is no scientifically accepted evidence that Bigfoot is out there, roaming around the woods of the Pacific Northwest (or anywhere else for that matter). But there are some scientists who think that there is a very real possibility of Bigfoot.

To be clear, this is conjecture. But there are lots of eyewitness accounts, stories, myths and legends about a big, hairy, ape-like creature that have been handed down over generations – from indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest, and other parts of the US, as well as in other countries—Russia, China, parts of Europe. As anthropologists have pointed out, when stories appear in disparate places, they can be grounded in some fact.

For example, there are all these tales about giant floods from all over the world – in the Bible, the Quran, from ancient Mesopotamia, South America, Australia, India. In recent years, geologists have found evidence that around 10,000 years ago, when Earth was much cooler, enormous dams made of ice broke and caused huge floods. They also found evidence that when large meteors from space hit Earth’s oceans, they caused giant waves and floods. Events like those might have been the reason there are so many stories about floods that have been passed down through generations.

The thought is that this could be true for a Bigfoot as well. It likely isn’t around any longer, but there might have been some sort of creature like this that existed in the distant past and the stories were handed down. After all, humans coexisted with at least 7 other hominid species at one point in time—and those are the ones we know about. Given that the fossil record is incomplete, the possibility of a giant, bipedal ape-like creature isn’t hard to imagine.

Fact: Parasites actually turn animals into zombies

By Lauren Young

If you ever read or watched the late 1990s young adult series Animorphs, you might remember the particularly unsettling alien villain species: the Yeerks. In a ploy to take over the world, the parasitic slug-like creatures would wriggle through the ear canal and meld themselves to the brain of human hosts to control them. While the Yeerks are a work of fiction, there are real-life parasites that exhibit “mind control” abilities. 

These creatures are popularly called “zombie parasites,” as many species often turn their hosts into walking brain-dead organisms. But many parasitologists often refer to this as host manipulation, where a parasite essentially alters the host’s behavior in typically self-destructive ways that ultimately benefits the parasite. There are numerous parasites that use this method for a variety of reasons, such as traveling to a more favorable environment, finding or reaching food, reproducing, or completing part of its life cycle. 

This Halloween episode rounds up some of the most fascinating zombie parasites—including a four foot long worm that forces crickets to drown themselves, bacteria that alters the behavior of rodents to make them less scared of cats, and fungi that take over insects to burst and spread spores. While we might be grossed out (and freaked out by these parasites), you really don’t have to be afraid. For the most part, many of these species won’t ever affect you and they are often host specific. 

Parasitologists, like University of New England’s Tommy Leung, emphasize the importance of parasitic relationships in ecosystems: “There are parasites that are causing a great deal of suffering for people,” Leung told me when I interviewed him for Science Friday. “But they are extremely interesting in their own place.” These field experts learn a lot about evolution and ecological relationships from these very interesting, and really clever, means of survival. While the thought of losing your freewill might seem terrifying, it’s a fascinating trait that parasites have evolved in order to survive and thrive. 

The post Mind-controlling ‘zombie’ parasites are real appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: This skeleton was found with a knife in place of his hand

By Sara Kiley Watson

Inside Longobard cemeteries, really weird stuff can be found—people sharing tombs, jewelry, dogs, headless horses. But the strangest of all is likely the knife-armed man. Researchers who excavated the site in the 1980s and 1990s disccovered a corpse dated back to around the 6th to 8th century AD who had his right forearm amputated, healed, and replaced with a knife. The knife was likely once bound to the remaining stump with leather. 

And this knife wasn’t just for show—studying the arm bones and the knife placement suggests the knife acted as his prosthetic arm, but his teeth and shoulders showed some serious wear and tear from what likely was the act of tightening up his knife stump with his teeth. When it comes to his shoulders, he developed a C-shaped ridge of bone from holding the shoulder in an unnaturally extended position to tighten the prosthesis in his mouth, which only could’ve happened if he was up to this tightening trick pretty often.

The stump healed really well, apparently. Well enough that the man, dubbed T US 380, not only survived but lived for quite some time afterwards—he made it to around his 40s or 50s, which was middle-aged at the time. So not only is the knife armed man a badass, but also a sign that communities have been caring for their disabled members for a really long time.

Fact: The government wanted to create a gay bomb

By Rachel Feltman 

So in 2007, the Ig Nobel Awards—which is a satirical take on the Nobel Prize that highlights research that “makes you laugh, then makes you think—honored a few real heavy hitters. The prize for Medicine went to research we actually talked about on a previous episode of Weirdest Thing, where scientists used sword swallowing to better understand gastrointestinal stuff. Physics honored several studies on how sheets become wrinkled. A Japanese chemist won for her work on extracting vanilla flavoring from cow dung, which isn’t too gross if you remember, from a previous Weirdest Thing episode, that the best natural source of the stuff is beaver anal glands. 

But today we’re talking about the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, which went to The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio for their efforts to develop a chemical weapon capable of making enemy soldiers suddenly irresistible to one another. In short, they tried to make a gay bomb. According to reports of the award ceremony, no one showed up to accept the honor—probably because their research was meant to be a secret. 

Unfortunately, the group responsible for uncovering the existence of the so-called gay bomb is now defunct. The Sunshine Project was an NGO based in the US and Germany that formed in 2000 to expose research on biological and chemical warfare using the Freedom of Information Act. According to the website, which you can still access using the Wayback Machine, the group suspended its operations in February 2008 due to a lack of funding. 

Now, many so-called non-lethal weapons are absolutely horrifying, which is why the folks behind the Sunshine Project found their development so concerning. Weapons that maim and disfigure people are often classified as non-lethal or less-lethal. But that doesn’t mean that some of the military’s ideas, especially the ones that never actually took off, can’t inspire at least a bit of a chuckle. And people chuckled quite a bit in 2005, when the Sunshine Project released a 1994 memo from The Air Force Wright Laboratory called “Harassing, Annoying, and ‘bad guy’ Identifying Chemicals.” 

This paper was basically just a list of spitball ideas—an attempt to create broad categories of chemical weapons that might be worth investigating further. Just to make this abundantly clear: They didn’t have chemicals in hand that could definitely do this stuff. They were focused on listing what kind of outcome you might want a hypothetical weapon to produce, with the idea that finding the right compounds to make it happen would take funding and time. The chemists suggested, for example, that compounds designed to attract biting insects could weaken enemy defenses or even disrupt the food supply, or that certain chemicals could be used to tag so-called “bad guys” for later identification, like those exploding ink packs on clothing tags at the mall. 

Most insidiously, they talked about influencing the behavior of their targets in a way that might cause confusion or damaged morale. You might make your enemy super sensitive to sunlight, for example. The chemists went on to note that a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” option would be to use “strong aphrodaisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”

When the Sunshine Project dropped these papers in 2005, the US military came out saying that none of the proposals contained therein had ever been taken seriously. The Sunshine Project responded by producing evidence that the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate included it on a promotional CD-ROM about its work that got distributed to other US military and government agencies in the year 2000. So, just to be clear, six years after the lab wrote the memo, it was still getting passed around in official channels. 
When this story went mainstream in 2007 thanks to the Ig Nobel Awards, The Guardian reported that researchers had actually asked for $7.5 million to develop the gay bomb. But that doesn’t mean it actually exists. For starters, sexual attraction is deeply complicated, and no cocktail of chemicals can simply flip a switch on someone’s orientation—let alone make them suddenly horny enough to want to get down in a war zone. As someone who just wrote a book about the history of sex, I feel completely confident that if scientists ever found a true aphrodaisiac, gay-making or otherwise, the pharmaceutical industry would slap a patent on it and market it six ways to Sunday. Until that day comes, we’ll just have to settle for viagra.

FACT: Honey bees become robbers when times are rough.

By Chelsey B. Coombs

During early spring before plants have begun blossoming and in the fall when plants are wilting away, some honey bee colonies will actually turn to robbing other, weaker colonies of their hard-earned honey stores–and even kill them in the process. 

Just like a heist movie, the enemy robber bees “case the joint” to scope out their victims’ hive. They fly side to side in what’s called a “casting” pattern to look for back entrances or weak spots in the hive itself so they can sneak in and get the goods. 

They’re also surveilling for the defensive bees of the hive: guards. Those specialized guard bees hang out at the hive entrance to determine whether returning bees are friends or foes based on their smell. They use their antennae to touch the returning bees, bite them and even threaten to sting by grabbing the bee with their legs or mouth and making a sting motion with their abdomens. And sometimes they even sting, killing the potential intruder and themselves. It looks like a fight in The Octagon. Bee researchers have long noted that after a robbery, the poor victims, as one would expect,  increase their defensive behaviors. 

And the perps change their behaviors, too, according to a March 2021 Animal Behaviour study led by Clare Rittschof, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky. Rittschof’s team found that after a robbing, the bully colony increases both their foraging and defense behaviors, even against their own nestmates returning from foraging. 

But their increased defensiveness isn’t due to weird smells that the robbers are bringing back with them from victim hives like it was previously thought. The study looked at the brain gene expression patterns of robbing bees and found they are unusually aggressive. The returning robbers actually provoke aggression from their nestmate guards when they come back to their home hive.

And while the increased defensiveness of the guards seems like it would be bad because it increases the number of colonymates who die, it’s actually advantageous. Because the nectar conditions are so bad, which led the colony to start robbing in the first place, they’re increasing their defensiveness in case a colony comes to rob them, next. 

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Rats can’t vomit and rat poison (probably) can’t kill you—unless it’s old as heck 

By Rachel Feltman

Here’s the thing: Rats can’t vomit. Rodents as a general rule, don’t puke. That’s why most available rat poisons contain chemicals that induce vomiting; the urge to let out a technicolor yawn will save most humans and pets from getting an accidental dose of pesticides, but it doesn’t do diddly squat for a rat. 

Vomiting is a super common evolutionary tactic, and it’s one that makes a lot of sense. When toxins get into our bodies, our bodies try to push them out. It’s simple! It’s elegant! It’s gross! It works! And rodents just… don’t do it. Instead, they have a super intense gag reflex. When rodents taste something unfamiliar or otherwise suspicious, they reflexively and definitively spit it right out. Blech! 

Now that humans have come to understand this strange biological quirk, we’ve come to use it to our advantage in the lab. Scientists are always trying to get better at studying nausea—just look at the puking robots they’ve designed to hurl chunks on command—because our species’ tendency to vomit can have dire consequences. During chemotherapy, for example, the common inability to keep food down can seriously impact a patient’s chance of recovery. The mechanisms that make us more or less likely to throw up are still pretty mysterious, too: some cannabis users, for example, suffer extreme nausea after smoking, even though cannabinoids are frequently used to make other people less queasy. The fact that rats reliably gag—but never actually vomit—makes them a perfect model organism for studying nausea. Scientists can test different ways of mitigating the urge to purge without having piles of puke all over their labs. 

Let’s circle back to the fact that rat poison is designed to use rodents’ evolutionary trick against them. If you’re wondering why rodenticide still shows up in fiction as a tool for doing murder, that’s because we used to make pesticides out of obscenely toxic substances. A century ago, ingesting household pesticide—or even touching it without gloves on, in some cases—could absolutely kill you. While it’s still a good idea to avoid direct contact with pesticides, and it’s very important to keep them away from small children and pets, we’ve fortunately found pest-control compounds that are much less likely to cause us harm in the small doses that kill mice and rats. Plus, now that we know that rats can’t puke, the addition of emetic agents has become a common tactic to make rodenticides safer. 

Fact: The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful telescope ever created

By Swapna Krishna

JWST​is a groundbreaking space observatory that launched on Christmas day last year and is currently orbiting a spot a million miles away from Earth. It’s designed to see deeper into the universe than we’ve ever seen before. Looking out into the cosmos is also a chance to see back in time because light takes so long to reach us — so if we see something a million light-years away, that’s what it looked like a million years ago. JWST, an infrared optimized telescope, is so sensitive it can detect the heat of a bumblebee as far away as the moon. We’re hoping it will be able to see far enough away to detect the first light of the universe after the Big Bang.

Fact: Octopus mothers can self-destruct

By Sara Kiley Watson

Giving birth when you are an octopus is a fate worse than death. After laying her eggs, octopus moms die slowly and dramatically, self-harming until they meet their bitter end. After laying eggs, a female octopus goes from living a normal life and gently caring for the embryos to no longer eating, dropping muscle tone, changing color, and even engaging in acts of self harm (like eating her own body parts). 

Generally the timeline after death looks something like starvation or reduced food intake over time, and in an extreme case, deep-sea octopus Graneledone boreopacifica, brooding can take up to four years and basically the octopus mom guards her eggs as her body slowly withers away. Octopus hummelincki, which have been studied before for this mechanism, typically don’t live longer than 9 months in total and don’t have more than 2 months post-eggs. 

There have been a lot of questions about why this happens. Is it triggered by the lack of food? Or is some kind of ‘self destruct’ built into female octopuses? Back in the 1970’s, psychologist Jerome Wodinsky started to take a deeper look at what kind of signals in the octopus body could be linked to the whole self-destruct idea. And after a somewhat accidental expiriment of getting female octopuses drunk and removing their sex glands, he discovered that minus sex-glands, octopus moms thrive after birth.

Research from this year broke down the chemicals that the optic gland was producing around the time of the octopus mother’s behavioral break. Researchers found three specific pathways light up: The first produces pregnancy steroids pregnenolone and progesterone; the second produces components for bile acids; and the third produces increased levels of cholesterol-precursor 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC).

Elevated 7-DHC levels are linked directly to a human disorder called Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, which can affect mental development and behavior in children. Kind of like octopus moms, people with this disease often struggle with self-injury and aggression. Research on the dramatic end of life of many octopus moms may actually help us better understand other species, like humans.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: The tech that powers E-ZPass comes from Soviet-era spy gadgets.

By Purbita Saha

I live in a New Jersey suburb right next to the Garden State Parkway. I flash my E-ZPass way more than I pump my own gas. So to me, and probably the millions of other drivers in the Eastern US who use this electronic toll system, E-ZPass is a daily essential. And while the technology itself isn’t cool enough for a Weirdest Thing yarn, the story behind it is surprisingly juicy.

According to a 2016 episode of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” the origin of E-ZPass and electronic tollbooths goes back to the invention of RFID transponders. The credit goes to two inventors: a Soviet spy and a NASA rocket scientist. In the 1920s, Russian cellist Leon Theremin was experimenting with microwaves and gases when he realized he could create sounds with different volumes and pitches by simply moving two antennas around. (His instrument was mass produced by RCA, and still has a cult following today.) This caught the attention of Vladimir Lenin, who promoted Theremin to be a representative for Soviet science in Europe and the US. 

When Theremin returned to the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s reign, he was imprisoned for his overseas forays and forced to work for the state. In his new role, he designed a wireless bug powered by the same electromagnetic waves from his instrument to eavedrop on the US ambassador in Moscow. Legend has it that it was hidden in the embassy’s seal throughout World War I.

Fast forward to the 1960s, when Mario Cardullo, a NASA space flight engineer in New York, began fiddling around with primitive versions of RFID shoplifting tags. Cardullo sampled Theremin’s approach by triggering a small transponder with microwaves, but added a memory chip that could hold a bundle of information and share it with a matching receiver. The prototype measured out to about the size of a Galaxy Z Fold4, which was too big for a window or car window. It took a few decades before Cardullo landed his invention in an actual tollbooth (in Scandinavia). It took off in Europe and Asia, and finally started transforming bridges and highways in the US in the 1990s. Today, Cardullo’s dream of decking out the George Washington Bridge with Soviet-spy technology has been realized.

Fact: A bisexual goose raising a family with two black swans isn’t as strange as it sounds.

By Rachel Feltman 

Here’s a fact from my recent book “Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex,” which you can buy as an audiobook narrated by yours truly! So, in the early 90s, a black swan flew into New Zealand’s Waimanu lagoon. Locals dubbed her Henrietta after a wing injury kept her from leaving with the rest of her flock and she took up with a white goose named Thomas. For nearly two decades they were generally seen together, with Thomas protecting Henrietta from dogs and other disturbances. 

Then another black swan showed up, and things got… complicated. Henrietta started spending more of her time with her new gal pal, and Thomas got aggressive toward the swans. Then the newly arrived black swan laid eggs, and Henrietta started caring for them the way you’d expect a papa swan to care for his young. Plot twist: Henrietta had been a boy the whole time! 

Very confusingly, the tour guides who worked at the lagoon where this all went down decided to name the newly-arrived, actually female bird Henrietta, while the artist formerly known as Henrietta got rechristened as Henry. 

The good news is that Thomas didn’t hold a grudge for long, and took on a tertiary parental role once the chicks hatched—and continued to care for all of Henry and Henrietta’s 68 babies over the next six years. Thomas became an icon to tourists from around the world, who were just absolutely charmed by his devotion to the little black swans. He even helped teach them to fly. 

Here’s the coolest part: For Henry and Henrietta, these family arrangements wouldn’t have seemed unusual at all. Research on the species shows that male black swans frequently pair up together, both in captivity and in the wild. They sometimes have chicks by briefly associating with a female black swan before kicking her out, but they’ve also been known to simply overtake an existing nest full of eggs to raise as their own. Henry may have spent the better part of the 90s wondering why his beloved Thomas wasn’t off robbing nests to get their family started! 

Black swans can also set up long-term throuples, where all three birds—two males and one female—participate in mating displays, and the males take turns between mounting the female and parading around protectively. In this setup, where the female isn’t kicked out as soon as her laying is done, the males actually take over caring for the nest so she can immediately go lay some more. 

The New Zealand triad stayed solid until Henry died of old age in 2009, which prompted Henrietta to go looking for more of her kind. Geese and swans can reproduce and create mottled hybrids known as swooses (sweese?), but it seems Thomas just wasn’t Henrietta’s type. 

Ironically, a few years before that, when Thomas finally met a female goose he fancied enough to settle down with, another goose stole the chicks for their own. No word on whether that goose was gay, but I’m pretty sure the BBC would have mentioned that, so we have to assume their motives were less heartwarming. Apparently geese sometimes kidnap goslings from less powerful birds around them to “pad” their broods—literally adding extra babies to the outer edge of the nest, so predators will grab the adoptees instead of the better-protected natural young. Nature isn’t always cute! But while we don’t know the fates of Thomas’s biological chicks, I think we can all agree that he got to experience the joys of fatherhood at least 68 times over. 

When Thomas died in 2018, he was beloved by tourists from all over the world—and, at the age of 40, extremely old in goose-years. Long may he live in our hearts! 

Fact: Louse feeder was a job during WWII, and it was also a part of the resistance against the Nazis.

By Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke 

So, it all starts with typhus. Typhus, specifically epidemic typhus, is an infectious disease caused by a bacterium known as Rickettsia prowazekii. Spread by body lice, it’s understandably a disease that often would rear its head whenever times were tough and lice would flourish. Things like famine, displacement, war—these were generally conditions under which body lice are easily transmitted person to person carrying this little rickettsia and thus spreading typhus.

But just knowing those two things, what causes the disease and how it’s transmitted, simply wasn’t enough to stop the spread of disease. Because even if you have effective treatment for the disease, you won’t be able to get rid of typhus if you can’t clean your clothes in hot water and then not wear them for five days. If you’re on the move during a war or you’re displaced, how are you gonna do that? Prevention was key. And how do you prevent a disease? Vaccines.

Enter: Dr. Rudolf Weigel. Dr. Weigl came up with the brilliant idea to use the lice themselves as the maintenance animal to create a lot of typhus pathogen for vaccine research. But how do you get enough lice to make enough vaccine material? Well, you need a louse colony and a way to feed them. And because lice are so species specific to humans… humans had to supply the food. In the form of blood. Yep, humans were the louse feeders. 

With WWII on the horizon and Nazis being terrified of typhus, they used this fear as an excuse to enact horrific policies. Because typhus wasn’t seen as this universal threat that could impact anyone – the Nazis blamed its spread on Jewish people. 

Under German occupation, Weigl’s institute grew rapidly, where it served as the only means of survival for many Polish people who faced death, starvation, or deportation. Weigl went out of his way to hire hundreds of people as louse-feeders, often Polish intellectuals or Jewish people, people who were under incredible threat from the Nazi occupation. While feeding the lice, people often sat around and chatted, exchanging ideas about philosophy, mathematics, and even actively working in the resistance against German forces.

To find out more, listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing—and check out This Podcast Will Kill You wherever you get podcasts. Plus, you can find out more information about Dr. Weigl in the book The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl by Arthur Allen.

The post A bisexual goose raising a family with two black swans isn’t as strange as it sounds appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: There’s a right and wrong time to eat wild oysters

By Sara Kiley Watson

According to some, oyster season only truly happens when the months of the year have an “R” in them. While the validity of that is contested, it apparently has some deeply seeded roots in the native populations of the southeastern US.

The first part of this myth is based on pretty simple science—oysters in the summer tend to be in their youth phase. They can be fatty, watery, soft, and lack flavor versus a more mature, tasty oyster in chilly months with the firm texture and brine many have come to love. Bacteria like Vibrio parahaemolyticus have caused illnesses in harvesting areas throughout the summer. They can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and the like when someone eats a raw oyster. 

But, humans have been eating oysters for thousands of years before we knew about bacteria. Oyster shells have been found in “shell rings” littered across the coasts of places like South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. These shell rings are circular or semi-circular “middens” of shells, pottery, bones, soil, and other artifacts. Researchers from the Florida Museum found that the islanders living on St Catherine’s were primarily foraging or capturing oysters in the chillier times of year—aka the R months. Why they did this is a bit of a mystery—maybe trial by error of sickness, perhaps merely a tastiness issue. But one of the authors suggests it could also be one of the earliest records of “sustainable harvesting,” because leaving the oysters to spawn in the summer helps guarantee a replenished stock for the next season’s big chow down. 

So, the R month legend has thousands of years of history. But a lot of stuff has happened, technologically, climate-wise, science-knowledge-wise, since the days of the shell ring. Namely, refrigeration. Nowadays, you can get your oysters farmed any time of the year with exposure to hot summer air and water, the big issue when it comes to icky bacteria, under control. But if you’re fishing oysters out of the sound on your own, it is probably best to eat them in cold seasons—for your health and taste.

Fact: Project Plowshare was an ambitious, nuclear fail

By Laura Krantz

In the wake of WWII, the US government was looking for peaceful ways to use atomic power. One of their most ambitious (and insane) programs was called Project Plowshare, which would use nuclear explosives for big public works projects, like building harbors and canals, and extracting natural gas. Here’s a brief and incomplete list of some proposals that were put forth: Widening the Panama Canal, blasting underground aquifers in Arizona to connect them, cutting a road through the California mountains to help build the interstate, and using hydrogen bombs to create a new harbor in Alaska. Not all of these were pipe dreams. In Rulison, Colorado, scientists detonated a nuclear bomb underground in the hopes of freeing natural gas trapped in the rock. It worked but the gas was so contaminated with radioactivity that it couldn’t actually be used. Officials eventually mothballed these public works projects in 1978, although similar ideas still crop up every now and then like the time a former American president—I’ll let you guess which one—repeatedly floated the idea of nuking a hurricane to prevent it from making landfall.

FACT: Erectile dysfunction treatments have a shocking, somewhat contentious origin story 

By Rachel Feltman

This week’s Weirdest Thing fact is one pulled from my recently published book, “Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex.” Here’s a little snippet:

“Giles Brindley is undeniably a man of many and varied talents. In the 1960s, the UK native developed a neuroprosthesis capable of restoring some sight to the blind and casually invented an instrument he dubbed the “logical bassoon.” According to a 2014 profile published in the British Journal of Neurosurgery, he spent his sixties taking up marathons and relay racing; as this book went to print, he was in his nineties and studying the origins of falsetto. Brindley is a polymath if ever there was one. But if he wanted to be most remembered for his life-altering work in prosthetics, his sexagenarian sportsmanship, or his endeavor to create a more perfect bassoon—well, he shouldn’t have flashed a room full of people in Vegas.”

Check out this week’s episode—or grab a physical, digital, or audio copy of “Been There, Done That” (narrated by yours truly)—to hear more about Brindley’s surprisingly scientific flashing incident. 

The post Wild oysters are tastiest in months that end with ‘R’—here’s why appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Echolocation might be a much more common human ‘superpower’ than you think

By Rachel Feltman

In 2015 the NPR podcast Invisibilia did an episode called “How To Become Batman.” That was my first real introduction to Daniel Kish, who’s arguably the most famous human echolocator on the planet. 

Even if you missed that NPR segment, you’ve probably seen viral videos of Kish. He lost his eyes to retinal cancer during infancy, but his ability to navigate the world rivals that of any sighted person. He uses his tongue to make clicking noises, then interprets the sounds and their echoes to give him feedback on the space and objects around him. 

Kish is now famous for teaching other people with visual impairments how to use what he calls “Flash Sonar,” and his prominence has inspired loads of research. And as it turns out, echolocation might be a pretty common superpower. 

According to an analysis by Cambridge psychologists in 2014, the earliest known example of this practice was reported in 1954, when researchers described a child who produced clicking sounds to navigate his neighborhood by bicycle. And it’s actually quite likely that the French philosopher Diderot described something similar in 1749, when he recounted a blind acquaintance who could locate and estimate the positions of objects that didn’t give off their own sound. 

Diderot thought that his friend was taking note of tiny changes in air pressure to his skin. As late as the 1940s, folks were still trying to suss out how that might work, and a lot of the proposed explanations were very woo woo. It was around this time that researchers started to figure out that this was actually an auditory thing; the objects weren’t producing sound, but the people perceiving those objects were. 

In hindsight, it’s obvious that any visually impaired person who has full use of their hearing does this to some extent. When someone uses a mobility tool like a cane, for instance, they’re getting auditory input as well as tactile.

But while many popular portrayals of flash sonar suggest that it relies on an enhanced sense of hearing, the truth is even more fantastic: it’s possible that any human who can hear can also learn to echolocate.  

In 2021, a small study led by researchers at Durham University showed that blind and sighted people alike could learn to effectively use flash sonar in just 10 weeks, amounting to something like 40 to 60 hours of total training. By the end of it, some of them were even better at specific tests of their spatial perception than long-time experts of the technique.

When the average person off the street hears clicks like the ones Kish uses, their brains just hear noise. They react the way they react to the sound of a man clicking his tongue. But something different happens in your brain if you’ve learned to use flash sonar like Kish has. And it’s different between sighted people and blind people. If you can see, parts of your brain associated with auditory processing light up: you’re recognizing that there is information encoded into these clicks, and you’re looking for it with the part of your brain that interprets audio. 

In blind participants, researchers saw those same areas light up. But they also saw parts of the brain associated with visual processing light up. 

The journal Frontiers for Young Minds, which writes up scientific findings for young kids to read about, had a great way of explaining this. Imagine your brain is full of train lines. You’ve got your NYC subway and your metro north regional rail and Amtrak and you need the right ticket to get on each one. Sight and hearing are similar in that they take input from the world—light waves and sound waves—and convert them into electrical signals that your brain then interprets. But they run on different rail lines. So, research on so-called human echolocation shows us that if you’re not using your visual processing centers, your brain can reroute different traffic there. Imagine if suddenly your weekly subway ticket was good for Amtrak, too.

Why do we care? Because anything that involves getting your brain to do things differently than it’s always done them is easier when you’re a kid: you’ve done less. The brain is still actively forming and building those transit lines. So there’s reason to believe that giving blind children the freedom to explore the world around them will set them up to be able to navigate that world without limitations as they get older. 

That’s an important lesson for all parents, because research shows that having the ability to undertake risky, dangerous play in the safest possible settings is key to developing confidence and critical thinking skills and self preservation. Even letting kids experiment with being kind of mean is an important way to let them develop a moral code, as opposed to just being afraid of everything.

As Daniel Kish puts it: Running into a pole is a drag, but never being allowed to run into a pole is a disaster.

FACT: A madcap crew is trying to make pogo into an extreme sport

By Corinne Iozzio

The concept of a souped-up pogo stick goes almost as far back as the first pogos in the US. Inventors adapted the spring-loaded toys with propellers, even gas engines. But it wasn’t until the last couple decades that any such over-engineered stick—the latest use air pressurized two times the level of a car tire to send jumpers skyward—caught on. The reason? A generation of pogo jumpers hellbent on turning bouncing ten-plus feet aloft into the next BMX, skateboarding, or snowboarding.

Welcome to the world of extreme pogo, where athletes push the limits of physics to bust out midair tricks so wild they may just succeed in bouncing right into the spotlight. The road to every year’s Pogopalooza—their championship event, which has been going on since 2004—has been paved with cracked kneecaps, broken bones, split muscles, and even reconstructive surgery. But it’s also marked by incredible feats like 12-foot leaps, backlips, and combo stunts that sling pogoers upside-down, sideways, and pretty much everywhere in between.

FACT: Female African elephants are dropping their tusks to get the upper hand on poachers.

By Purbita Saha

In the past decade, biologists and rangers in several African countries, including Mozambique, Zambia, and Kenya, have noticed more tuskless elephants being born in national and wildlife parks. Oddly, all of the animals have been female. Last year, researchers finally put it together. 

In the late 1900s, poaching was rampant in several parts of Africa. Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, for example, saw near-extermination in all its big mammal populations during a harrowing civil war. Today, herds of African bush elephants roam the park again, thanks in part to constant security and a crackdown on ivory sales. But hunters have still left an imprint on the genetic makeup of the animals. DNA analysis of several tuskless elephants shows that the individuals have a mutation on the same marker that helps grow incisor teeth in humans. The mutation kills male offspring, but is passed down among females, leading to a pattern of tusklessness. In Gorongosa, experts think the trait could affect up to 60 percent of the population if it continues across generations.

It’s still not clear if losing tusks to avoid poachers hurts the affected elephants’ survival in the long term. The mammals use the lengthy ivory accessories to dig up food, defend territory, and fight off predators. Elephants born without them might have low-nutrition diets or issues finding a mate. Either way, the rapid rate of adaptation in the African bush elephant is truly stunning—and shows that wildlife are fighting tooth and nail to make it with all the changes humans have made to the world. Read more examples, reported by Jason Bittle, in the fall “Daredevil” issue of Popular Science.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Human echolocation is real—and you might be able to do it appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: An intentional detonation of some 6,000 pounds of gunpowder was showcased on PopSci‘s 1915 cover.

By Rachel Feltman

One of PopSci’s most popular vintage covers is for our November 1931 issue. It features a painting by Edgar F. Wittmack that appears to show a man watching a volcanic eruption in progress. He’s wearing a headset and talking into a microphone, and he’s tinkering with a contraption that looks like a xylophone. Is it some kind of old-timey soundboard he’s using to broadcast the news of this spectacular natural disaster? No. It’s actually a detonator that he’s using to cause the eruption.

In fact, the event this cover commemorates wasn’t a true eruption at all. It shows the intentional detonation of some 6,000 pounds of gunpowder inside the crater at the summit of Lassen Peak in California.

Why? More like why not, which was kind of the spirit of PopSci back in those days. I found this story while helping to set up our new Popular Science merch shop, which features museum-quality prints of our favorite vintage covers (along with a few throwback logo t-shirts) to celebrate our 150th anniversary. Digging through the articles that served to explain the beautiful, often fantastical images that graced our magazines throughout the 20th century yielded quite a few quaintly outlandish and misguided historical experiments.

Here’s what we know about this particular “scientific” scene: Lassen Peak’s last real eruption started on May 30, 1914 with a small phreatic eruption, which according to the US Geological Society is a steam-driven explosion that occurs when water beneath the ground or on the surface is heated by magma, lava, hot rocks, or new volcanic deposits. Those materials can reach temperatures higher than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing water to boil away so quickly it makes a burst of steam.

That little flurry of activity near the peak’s summit kicked off a year of more than 150 additional explosions, which around May of 1915 shifted into lava flows, avalanches, and mudflows full of volcanic debris known as lahars. That kerfuffle culminated in a pyroclastic flow—which is the kind of chaotic, fast-moving spew of lava people think of when they hear “eruption”—on May 22. The eruption column reached around 5.5 miles into the air above the summit and devastated the land for several miles around, and fine ash reportedly fell as far as 300 miles away. There continued to be intermittent small eruptions for around two more years, but Lassen’s been quiet ever since.

Except for this one time.

I actually had a pretty hard time finding info on the 1931 spectacle outside of the pages of PopSci itself, presumably because the National Park Service would rather forget it. But according to a blog on Lassen County’s history run by local Tim Purdy, the explosion was devised as a celebration by one L.W. Collins, who became Lassen Volcanic National Park’s first superintendent in 1922. According to Purdy, Collins’ plans for a giant park dedication in 1931 were “widely criticized,” but that didn’t stop him from arranging for a big pyrotechnics show.

Edgar F. Wittmack’s iconic oil painting for Popular Science recalls the event in much more splendor than it probably deserves. According to Purdy’s blog, the wind actually blew the smoke away so quickly that there was basically no danger of mistaking the boom for a real eruption—though folks did say it looked pretty.

Fact: We kept using asbestos in everything after we knew it was deadly.

By Purbita Saha

Asbestos might have a dark and dangerous legacy, but for centuries, people thought it was miraculous–including several Popular Science writers through the ages. Archaeologists have detected traces of it in Macedonian funeral shrouds, classic Byzantine wall paintings, ancient Greek clothing, and early Inuit lantern wicks.

But what’s so great about asbestos? It all comes down to its chemical composition. The mineral comes from six different silicate compounds found in serpentine and igneous rocks. After it’s mined and broken up, it forms the kind of white fibrous material that you might imagine in a crumbling classroom ceiling. And of course, they’re also fireproof. Asbestos has a melting point of 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, and is easy to manipulate into various structures, too, which made it such a darling in manufacturing. Once industrialization exploded across the world, asbestos was being added to everything from house shingles to baby blankets to firefighter uniforms.

As asbestos’s popularity grew, so did concerns over its effects on people’s health. Some of the earliest medical studies on factory workers showed that the fibers could embed in organ tissues, causing lung scarring, inflammation, and worse. Today, we know that asbestos exposure is a major cause of mesothelioma, especially in firefighters. As a result, most manufacturers and contractors have stopped using the material—though it still isn’t fully banned in the US. (The Environmental Protection Agency is working on that, again.)

Fact: What if we’re all ‘moon crab guys’?

By Corinne Iozzio

“Do beavers rule on Mars?” has long been regarded among the PopSci staff as the most laughably absurd of our archival bylines. For certain, its author, Thomas Elway, didn’t think the buck-toothed dam builders were supreme regents of the Red Planet. What he did think, however, was it was a thought exercise worth having. Given what planetary scientists knew about the fourth planet from the Sun in May 1830—that its temperatures were extreme, its sunlight faint, its gravity minimal, and its oxygen supply nearly nonexistent—Elway’s aim was to help readers understand what life there might look like. Of course he didn’t mean a literal Earth beaver, but instead a monstrous creature with massive eyes, a burly chest, and a lankier form.

It’s all very…logical? Until it’s not. There are obviously many holes to poke in the idea, but there is at least one major sticking point: Elway asserts that life on Mars never evolved past this point because the planet had never experienced the mass extinction of an ice age. We now know that to be very incorrect; in fact, researchers at Colgate University in 2021 showed evidence that Mars had been through a dozen such swings. As if the bubble-chested beaver idea hadn’t already been sufficiently popped.

This wasn’t Elway’s only such flight of fancy. In December 1929, he posed mutant grabs as a possible explanation for some shifty activity observed on the surface of the moon. Absurd though they may seem to modern eyes, it’s hard to judge his ideas too harshly. Elway’s fantastic beasts can be seen as a type of hard science fiction: visions whose ideas, technology, and landscapes are consistent with our own known reality.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post Martian beavers, intentional explosions, and other weird facts from 150 years of PopSci appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Scientists and high-society ladies once used radiation to grow mutant flowers and veggies 

By Rachel Feltman

Most folks know that during World War II, the Manhattan Project figured out how to harness nuclear chain reactions to commit unspeakably horrifying acts of mass-murder and war. But in the early 1900s, when we were just starting to understand radioactivity, nuclear science had a much more fantastical and optimistic following. This led to plenty of dangerous and misguided nonsense, like irradiated slippers designed to glow in the dark, but also a general sense that understanding physics would give us unlimited energy and unlimited food—that it could make resources so abundant that utopia simply had to follow. Part of that research involved using x-rays to try to induce helpful mutations in plants like peanuts. Radiation can break down the bonds that keep DNA together, causing cancers when cells start reproducing out of control or radiation burns when they start dying. But DNA damage in sex cells can also get passed on to offspring, and result in literally any kind of physiological change. 

All those rosy utopian avenues for using nuclear physics were put on hold so the US could make a terrible bomb, which we did. But the Manhattan Project did keep at least half an eye on radioactive plants. They understood that radioactive fallout was going to fundamentally alter the ecosystem of any place where bombs were tested or dropped. 

Enter gamma ray gardens, where scientists would essentially plunk a tube of radioactive material (usually the isotope cobalt-60) into the center of a field. They’d plant various crops in a kind of pizza pie configuration of concentric circles. Eventually the isotope rod would get dropped into a bunker that shielded the surface from its gamma rays, and scientists could safely go check on their spoils. 

Gamma rays have an even smaller wavelength than x-rays—they’re something you can only get after you split into an atom—and they can shoot through basically anything like a bullet. So, surprise surprise, the plants right next to the radiation center would die. Some of the closest ones to survive would grow tumors. But somewhere farther out in the circle, you’d start to see plants that were just…a little different than what you’d planted. Maybe they’d grow especially tall, or have especially high fruit yields, or produce an unusual variety of colors in each flower.

That became very interesting to the US government during the cold war; politicians wanted to prove to the world that there was a bright side to the whole nuclear weapon thing. There were a bunch of initiatives designed to get nuclear physics into our everyday lives in a helpful and morally palatable fashion, and one of them was using those gamma gardens to create exciting and useful new plant varietals. 

Researchers would start by trying to spot any potentially useful adaptations that cropped up thanks to irradiation. Then they’d take the mutant plant and try to improve on it; they might cross-breed with something else, or irradiate a second or third or fourth generation of it, for example. At each stage they would store some seeds, so that when they found something really neat—either for aesthetic or agricultural purposes—they could get those nuclear plants out to the public. 

Even folks without any interest in nuclear science interacted with some of these plants, and we still do today. The Rio Star grapefruit, which is now very common, is just one example, which was bred in an atomic garden to have very dark flesh and sweet juice. Most of the world’s mint oil comes from a peppermint cultivar called “Todd’s Mitcham,” which is resistant to certain fungi, and was bred at Brookhaven National Lab’s gamma garden. There are more than 3,000 registered plants that got to be the way they are because of radiation. 

But some civilians wanted to get an even closer look at this exciting new science. One of the most famous was an oral surgeon named CJ Speas, who shot seeds up with radiation in a backyard bunker and sold them across the world. This provided a hint of the same mystery of a gamma garden without having to bury cobalt-60 in your own backyard; you never knew what kind of mutation the seed might have taken on until you planted it. 

One of Speas’ most prolific overseas distributors was a British woman named Muriel Howorth. She also started the Atomic Gardening Society, which did things like put on interpretive dance performances to explain how nuclear physics worked. 

Some countries still use gamma gardens to find new and better plant varietals, but more targeted genetic engineering has made the practice pretty obsolete. While post-war proponents talked about irradiation as if it jump-started the process of evolution, it actually only jump starts the process of mutation. For more info on this strange era of botany, listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing! 

FACT: Pain is subjective—but that doesn’t make it any less painful

By Leigh Cowart

Every time you experience pain, the brain cooks it up fresh, which sometimes means mistaking a snake bite for a pointy stick. Pain is, simply and maddeningly, always subjective. There’s no machine in existence today that could peer inside your head and quantify the exact amount of pain you’re in. There’s just no standard experience of pain! When you have pain, the brain takes into account your surroundings, emotional state, expectation, arousal, and a slew of other factors to calibrate and deliver the aversive sensation we know so well. But this doesn’t mean pain isn’t real, quite the contrary: the experience of pain is as real as the brains that provide the suffering itself. And I would know. Even my scientific understanding of the trickster capsaicin could not save me from sobbing through the exquisite burn of Dante’s gazpacho when I ate the world’s hottest pepper. For more agony in the name of science, tune into this edition of The Weirdest Thing and check out my book, “Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose.“

FACT: Puppies get emo, too

By Sara Kiley Watson

Ever wonder why your seemingly perfect pup turned into a total menace over night right before their first birthdays? It might just be teen angst.

Until fairly recently, there’s not been a whole lot of proof that animals that aren’t human undergo the same kind of parental-mind-boggling teen drama during puberty. Especially when it comes to the animals that we really see as our own babies. That is, until a study came out in 2020 about teenage puppies going through shockingly similar dramatic changes in attitude—especially towards their parents. A team of British researchers worked with the charity Guide Dogs to see if around doggy puberty, around six to nine months, and substantial behavioral differences were spotted. 

The team of researchers took two different groups of pups, all German shepherds, golden retrievers, labrador retrievers or crosses of these breeds. The first group was around five months old, still in their bouncy baby phase where their human parents are the light of their lives, much like kids before hormones start running amok. The second group was at eight months—peak of potentially grouchy teen angst era. They took these two teams of dogs and did the classic “sit” command. At five months, pups responded pretty well to their parents telling them to sit, and not so much a stranger. But by eight months, this reverses—a teenage pup will more gladly sit when some random person asks them to, but when it comes to mom or dad, they’ll be more angsty about it.

Considering, however, that we can’t really give up our teens for adoption when they are driving us up the wall, folks do have the ability to rehome their dogs if they start acting out of control—even if it is just their hormones making them a little grumpier than usual. So if your pup is acting out a little more than usual, remember how you were when you were going through puberty, because growing up can certainly be ruff for man’s best friend. 

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post Nuclear war inspired peacetime ‘gamma gardens’ for growing mutant plants appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is about all things messy—providing just a quick taste of the sorts of stories you’ll find in the latest issue of Popular Science. We’re now a digital-only magazine, which means you can access it right here and now.

FACT: A kitchen scrubber changed marine biology

By: Corinne Iozzio

True story: About a decade ago, the Clorox company discontinued a kitchen scrubber and sent the world of marine science into a tailspin. The scrubber in question was a poofy orange-red-yellow ball called the Tuffy, and for years marine biologist had been using this cleaning-aisle product as a collection medium for plankton—specifically mussel larvae. Counting these populations gives scientists a means to glimpse the health of the ocean. They’d been doing this since the 1980s, when an Oregon State marine biology professor named Bruce Menge happened up the wonder-collection-medium while wandering grocery aisles. As feature contributor Ryan Bradley writes in the Messy issue, without the Tuffy to rely on, marine scientists worldwide were left to scramble, buying Tuffys in bulk, second-hand, or even developing ways to reuse the scrubbers. But, as it turns out, even when the Tuffy supply runs dry, this special li’l scrubber is still making its mark.

Fact: Chocolate rivers make for terrible cleanup 

By Purbita Saha

A chocolate spill might sound like the stuff of dreams, but for one tiny hamlet in Germany, it created an infrastructure nightmare. In December of 2018, the DreiMeister Chocolate Factory in Westönnen dumped nearly 2,000 pounds of liquid cocoa on public streets after a malfunction on one of its storage tanks. The confection quickly hardened in the chilly weather (chocolate has a higher freezing point than water), forming a bumpy shell on top of the pavement. Firefighters from nearby towns had to chip away at the chocolate with shovels, and even resorted to burning it off with blowtorches. 

A month later, a tanker truck spilled 3,500 gallons of melted chocolate across an interstate in Flagstaff, Arizona. This time the chocolate retained its sludge-like consistency, allowing public safety workers to suck it up with hoses. It all goes to show how tricky the substance is to handle. In the kitchen chocolate requires a slow-heating and -cooling process called tempering. This is mainly because of its molecular structure: Cocoa butter can form six different crystals based on how it’s manipulated. The shiny, snappy kind that bakers aspire to is called Beta V. Of course, cooking methods will differ based on if you’re using dark, milk, or white chocolate and what other goodies you’re folding in. And as host Rachel Feltman shares in the podcast, chocolate fountains present a whole different chemistry challenge (and mess).

FACT: Pooping in space used to be so messy and difficult that free-floating turds were not uncommon 

By Rachel Feltman

While recently researching the conundrum of dealing with Irritable Bowel Syndrome while traveling through space, I was reminded of one of my favorite pieces of NASA lore: The free-flying turd incident. 

In May of 1969, with humanity just on the cusp of our first lunar landing, three NASA astronauts set off on Apollon 10 to orbit the moon. And then someone pooped. 

Pooping in space is complicated, even with modern technology and know-how. In 1969, the process of emptying one’s bowels in orbit was even trickier. See, astronauts had to adhere plastic baggies to their rear-ends using a bit of adhesive, then use their own hands to make sure poops actually made a safe landing in the intended receptacle. Without gravity, after all, there was no natural force acting to separate their BMs from their butts. 

But this process left plenty of room for user error. And on Apollo 10, the result was a free-floating turd—several, in fact. Don’t believe me? You can see for yourself: Each awkward incident got recorded on the official mission transcript (as did the many inevitable arguments about who’d created the floater in question). 

For more on the saga of the Apollo 10 turds, listen to this week’s episode. To learn more about how modern astronauts handle poop problems, check out our article about how NASA handles space diarrhea. And for dozens of other tales of messes both historical and recent, check out the latest digital issue of Popular Science.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post The inside scoop on Apollo 10’s infamous floating turd appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: The first international vaccine campaign in history used young orphans as human refrigerators 

By Rachel Feltman

There are stories you expect to be uncontroversially positive and stories you expect to be irredeemably negative. The Balmis Expedition defies such binary categorization. On the one hand, it’s the tale of the first international effort to get vaccines into arms all over the world—an instance of a monarch choosing to put resources toward improving public health and eradicating a horrific disease. On the other hand, it involves young orphans—toddlers, in some cases—being crowded onto ships and sent around the world to serve as human incubators. But even those two polarities risk oversimplifying this moment in history.

By the 1700s, smallpox was a horrific fact of life, killing an estimated 400,000 people throughout Europe each year. But things were even worse in the Americas, which had been exposed to smallpox by Spanish invaders starting in the 1500s. It’s thought to have contributed to the downfall of the Incas and Aztecs, as the disease was almost always fatal to indigenous populations. 

King Charles IV of Spain had lost several family members to smallpox and seen several of the survivors scarred significantly by virolation, which as I talked about on a past episode of Weirdest Thing, was the practice of purposefully infecting people with smallpox scabs or pus that had been weakened with steam or some other method. Because virolation actually infected you with smallpox, albeit often a weaker case than you’d catch naturally, you still got sick and had pus-filled lesions. 

That changed in the 1790s, when Edward Jenner tested pus from cowpox blisters as a less dangerous form of inoculation, thereby inventing vaccines as we know them. He tested it in 1796 on his gardener’s son, which is a bit of a foreshadowing. 

In 1803, King Charles announced his intention to provide free vaccination to the masses in the Spanish colonies—and to leave each region with the resources and knowledge necessary to continue their own vaccination programs in the future. Royal physician Francisco Javier de Balmis, who had spent time in Mexico researching botany and folk medicine, led the charge. 

The hitch: Pus could stay usable on a piece of cloth or pressed between glass and sealed with wax for a journey of a few days, but what then? Some suggested bringing cows on board and slowly giving them cowpox one by one. But cows are loud, messy, and large—so Balmis went with 22 Spanish orphans between the age of 3 and 9 instead. Two boys would be infected with cowpox, and just before their pustules healed over, their pus would be used to inoculate another pair, and so on. The group made it to the Americas just in time to use one final remaining pustule—and to replenish their chain of children by renting some from local families. 

By the time the expedition finished, some 300,000 people in the Canaries, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, the Philippines and China had received the vaccine for free. 

FACT: Legends are strange things. But the legend of the poop knife is especially so.

By Sara Kiley Watson

Wade Davis, a Canadian anthropologist sometimes called the “real-life Indiana Jones,” is passionate about telling stories about the Inuit and their relationship with their icy homeland. But one of his stories is especially iconic. He wrote of a mysterious Inuit tale in one of his books, called Shadows in the Sun, back in 1998. This tale of survival goes as such, and I quote:w

“There is a well known account of an old Inuit man who refused to move into a settlement. Over the objections of his family, he made plans to stay on the ice. To stop him, they took away all of his tools. So in the midst of a winter gale, he stepped out of their igloo, defecated, and honed the feces into a frozen blade, which he sharpened with a spray of saliva. With the knife he killed a dog. Using its rib cage as a sled and its hide to harness another dog, he disappeared into the darkness.”

On its own, the story is bizarre enough, but in the past few years it’s taken on a new, more scientific life. Enter a group of scientists who said “hmmm let’s actually test this whole poop knife theory.” So they did—and really, really committed. The Kent State researchers created their own replica of the Inuit diet to create authentic poop, then molded said poop into knife shapes to see if Davis’s story would hold up in real life.

Using the poop knives that were frozen at brutally cold temperatures, they attempted to slice and dice a pig hide—but the knives left melty skid marks instead of serious dashes, meaning murdering a dog with ice cold poop is likely more myth than miracle.

And if testing the legend wasn’t enough, it spurred a discussion of whether or not we should take these kinds of tales at their face value. But whatever way you spin it, making a knife out of your own feces is definitely a tale to be told, even if the resulting weapon is pretty crappy.

But what about the boys? While historical records do suggest that Balmis intended for them to have wonderful lives in Mexico City—better lives than they could have had in Spain—but what information we have about them suggests that didn’t pan out. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more. 

FACT: Bird tongues are way stranger than you think

By Lauren Young

There’s a lot of reasons why I am enamored with birds—I’ve waxed poetic about their stunning plumage and unique vision, silly mating dances, and food hoarding tendencies. So, the story for my Weirdest Thing debut fittingly ties around a peculiar, perhaps overlooked, feature of our avian friends: Their tongues. 

Birders and scientists can glean a lot from the tongue of a bird, from feeding tactics to the anatomy of ancient extinct birds. Tongues can be so distinct that they can help identify different species, if you so happen to catch a lucky peek. Bird tongues come in a diversity of shapes, sizes, and structures, which each supply birds with an array of fascinating (and weird) behaviors. Some tongues are short and thick, some are frayed and barbed, some are pronged at the tip, while others are long and narrow—like certain woodpecker species. 

Woodpeckers are well-known high-speed drillers, but many species have a remarkably long tongue within that chisel-like beak. These rope-like, fleshy extensions can grow to a third the length of its body, while others even have tongues that reach up to 5 inches past the tip of the bill.  

You might be wondering, like I was, where does all that tongue… go? It turns out that woodpeckers tuck their tongues all nice and snug around the top of their skulls, and poke it through the nasal cavities.

If you think this floppy, long tongue would be cumbersome, think again: its length serves a number of functional advantages. In some species, like the Northern Flicker woodpecker, a sticky mucus coats around the tongue to help collect grub, like ants down in an anthill. Other woodpecker species use their tongues to get to hard-to-reach prey in their freshly burrowed trees. 

Additionally, the long tongue is actually one way a woodpecker doesn’t get bad whiplash. By wrapping around the skull, the tongue actually acts a bit like a cushion for the brain and helps support the woodpecker as it pecks into trees, as writer Rebecca Heisman explains for the American Bird Conservancy. (Read the full paper published in PLOS ONE.) Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about how the woodpecker keeps on being its best headbanger self.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

The post Why young orphans were once used as human refrigerators appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Madame CJ Walker’s “Wonderful Hair Grower” was a better, smarter version of dandruff shampoo

By Purbita Saha

There’s no denying that Madame CJ Walker was a genius. The self-taught chemist and self-made entrepreneur was born to two formerly enslaved Louisianans in 1867. At a young age, she took on a job as a laundress, which exposed her to harsh cleansers that made her hair fall out.

Hair loss was a common issue among Black women in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Pharmaceuticals like Johnson & Johnson tried to hawk relaxers and shampoos to them, but Walker knew that their formulas wouldn’t work. Instead, she found inspiration in the budding industry of Black hair care products, and became a door-to-door salesperson for one such company. After just a few months on the job, she came up with her own line of products.

Walker’s inventiveness didn’t apply so much to her mixtures (the main ingredients were petrolatum and sulfur, which are a staple in dandruff treatments), but rather her emphasis on the haircare process. Black families didn’t have reliable access to clean water, so the business maven made sure to incorporate washing and scalp massaging into her regrowth solution. Of course, she was also a savvy marketer: She and her family set up shipping hubs at US rail hubs and took their sales overseas to Caribbean countries. By the time of her death in 1919, she was the first female millionaire in America who hadn’t inherited her wealth. 

Black women still disproportionately struggle with conditions like alopecia today. But Walker’s legacy has helped us learn about the importance of personalizing hair care and the science around it.

Fact: A lightbulb that hangs in a fire station in Livermore, California has been glowing for more than a century.

By Claire Maldarelli  

If you’ve ever had to replace a lightbulb in the middle of the night, you know the frustration that comes along with the fact that lightbulbs don’t last forever. Except for maybe one. In a fire station in Livermore, California, a lightbulb has been glowing for more than one hundred years. A few decades ago, after an investigation by a local journalist, a team of scientists dated the bulb to the early twentieth century. And to this day, scientists who’ve studied the bulb have yet to understand why it’s still working. 

Here’s what they do know. The bulb was made by a company called the Shelby Electric Company, which, a century ago, was known for creating some of the best products around. A part of the company’s success in making such incredible lightbulbs was the way they created the filament. It was constructed of a plastic cellulose material, which would become pure carbon when baked at the right temperature. In this process it would become nearly as hard as a diamond. 

There are many Shelby lightbulbs that have remained glowing for decades. However, most eventually stopped working. So what has kept this lightbulb in Livermore, California? Listen to this week’s episode to find out. And, if you want to see the bulb shining you can check out its live webcam here. 

FACT: Giant spiders and tiny frogs sometimes become roommates 

By Rachel Feltman

I recently saw one of those not-necessarily-reputable screenshots that tout supposed science facts claiming that there are spiders and frogs that link up as best friends—paired, of course, with an absolutely adorable picture. I simply had to investigate. 

Thankfully, this delightful fact is true, though whether it’s fair to call these arachnid-and-amphibian pairs “best friends” is an open question. It’s probably more accurate to call them business partners, because it seems likely it’s a relationship they both benefit from, or what we call “mutualism” in the world of biology. 

This has been seen most often in microhylids, a family of nearly 700, generally tiny frog species. Just to give you an idea, a real whopper of a microhylid species might grow to be about 3.5 inches long. Many of them are smaller than an inch. 

Since the late 20th century, scientists have found several species of microhylids that seem to commune with giant spiders. In 1989, for example, researchers found a dotted humming frog in Peru sharing a burrow with a local tarantula, despite the fact that the spider was large enough to eat the tiny amphibian, and was in fact known to munch on similar frogs. 

Young spiders were occasionally seen picking up the dotted humming frogs and tasting them before putting them back down, which could hint at how the two species came to coexist in such a strange way: It’s now thought that many microchylids have toxins in their skin that make them unpalatable to certain species of spiders. Because the spiders have learned not to eat these species, those lucky frogs have learned that hanging out around tarantulas is safe. 

But why would they do it? Well, because if you share a room with a giant spider, that spider is going to attack anything that tries to attack you—after all, it can’t be sure the predator isn’t going to attempt to run off with some arachnid eggs.  

Some researchers have proposed that while the frog benefits from the spider’s presence, the spider only tolerates the frog or ignores it. But others have suggested that there could be something in it for the spider, too. Frogs eat parasites and tiny creatures like ants that are too small for a tarantula to get their mouthparts around, but that can attack and eat a spider’s eggs. So while the tarantula is basically a bodyguard, the frog is basically a babysitter. 

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

The post Why some tiny frogs have tarantulas as bodyguards appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’d have an even weirder answer if you’d listened to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, and PocketCasts every Wednesday, and it’s your new favorite source for the weirdest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

Check out our second episode below, and keep scrolling for more info about the facts contained therein.

Fact: Sometimes your brain just tells you that you’re dead

By Eleanor Cummins

Most people make it through the day without questioning whether or not they’re… alive. And if they did pose the question, they’d find a million comforting answers waiting for them, from the physical (do you move? metabolize? grow?) to the philosophical (“I think, therefore I am”). But all of this goes out the window, it seems, for people with Cotard’s delusion.

Every few years doctors report an encounter with a patient convinced they are dead. First defined by the French neurologist Jules Cotard in 1882, people suffering from the delusion become convinced that they are skin and bones and perhaps actively putrefying. They report the desire to be among other dead people. They lose their appetites—corpses, after all, don’t need to eat.

To this day, no one is certain what causes the delusion. Some propose an organic issue in the brain, which is likely the case with Capgras delusion, where people believe their loved ones have been replaced with look-alikes. Scientists believe a disruption between facial recognition skills and emotions causes this condition. But some experts think Cotard’s delusion is purely psychological. Regardless of its origins, the case studies of Cotard’s delusion—from Mademoiselle X in the 1880s onward—were certainly the weirdest thing I learned this week month.

Fact: Animals can adopt babies of other species

By Rachel Feltman

Yes, okay, you think of your pet dog as your own furry, slobbery baby. But you also know it’s not literally the fruit of your loins. Right?

We can’t know whether this pair of albatross that adopted a chick of another species are loving pet owners, compassionate foster parents, or just extremely confused. But however it happened—and whatever their motivations are—the Short-tailed birds definitely hatched a Black-footed baby, and they seem to be doing a fine job of raising it.

My favorite potential explanation for these alternative family arrangements is that it’s better for a species to be gullible than to occasionally reject their own offspring. What’s the harm in occasionally coddling a member of another species by accident, when the alternative is to be so wary of the chicks in your nest that you might thwart your own evolutionary imperative by kicking one of your kids to the curb? This does occasionally backfire; cuckoos have evolved to lay their eggs in random nests, and birds that don’t know better will devote all their time and resources to the big ol’ bruiser of a cuckoo baby they’re saddled with (after it kills their true offspring).

Related: yes, animals of different species can totally have sex. It happens all the time. It’s a long story.

Fact: The first celebrity diet was basically salt and vinegar chips

By Claire Maldarelli

The Internet is full of dietary advice. Want to lose 10 pounds in 10 days? Quit carbs altogether? Avoid added sugar like the plague? Each nutritional plan is backed up by websites promising scientific evidence (though there usually isn’t any). And almost every diet has at least one celebrity endorsing the trend and claiming it changed their life.

Last week, I was researching healthy diets for this story on lifestyle factors that lead to a longer life. I quickly went down a rabbit hole of the history of diets, and it made me wonder: Who actually was the first celebrity dieter?

While it’s impossible to know for sure, my research led me to Lord Byron, an English poet who lived from 1788 to 1824. The writer attended Cambridge University, and during his time at school, historians claim that Byron was extremely vain. With a crushing fear of becoming overweight, Byron subsisted on a combination of soda water and biscuits. For a little variety, he’d occasionally eat potatoes covered in vinegar.

Byron was likely thinking only of himself, but it turns out he had a profound effect on the other young poets of his day—many of them turned to the same diet or variations thereof, like eating vinegar and rice. They all sought that same pale and thin look that Byron wore with such pride.

But, reality check: Carbs drenched in vinegar do not a nutritious diet make. As we’ve previously reported, vinegar has few, if any, health benefits. And while potatoes are a healthier food than low-carb trends might have you believe, you’d have to eat a lot of them to get all the vitamins and nutrients you need to stay well. As cool as celebrities are, they are probably not the best people to take dieting advice from.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: The first celebrity diet, confused albatrosses, and delusions of death appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Brussels sprouts tasted very different decades ago

By: Sara Kiley Watson

It seems like everyone these days has a new favorite side dish—brussel sprouts. Whether they’re fried up and dusted with parmesan or roasted with crumbles of bacon, these little cabbages seem hotter than ever. But, just a few years ago, these little leafy greens were hardly the apple of America’s eye. They tended to be more of a staple in Europe, and even then they tended to be served boiled.

That’s because, up until recently, the breeding of brussel sprouts allowed for the bitter taste, provided by a chemical called glucosinolates, that have an important role in plant self-defense, to really shine through. On top of the cooking method of boiling them up, this chemical made them more of an ick than a yum for lots of folks (in fact, a 2008 poll showed that brussel sprouts were America’s most hated vegetable). 

But in the 90’s, a Dutch scientist figured out that there was a way to make sprouts less bitter, and therefore much more appealing to the masses. By breeding a hybrid of the sturdy (yet bitter) modern stock with older and milder varieties, the company now known as Syngenta put a sprout out into the world that was delicious, healthy, and didn’t reek so much of sulfur when cooked. And people, especially young people, responded—the tiny cabbages they detested as children suddenly, and mysteriously, became a new delicacy. 
Only a few years ago, there were only about 2,500 acres of brussels sprouts planted across the country—nowadays folks can’t get enough. As of 2019, there are 10,000 acres of sprouts in the US with more fields being planted in Mexico. This comeback is best served crispy with a side of garlic aioli, if you ask me.

FACT: There’s an island so full of snakes that humans can’t go there

By Rachel Feltman

Ilha da Queimada Grande, a stretch of land some 106 acres-big off the coast of São Paulo, Brazil is technically called “island of the big burn.” Sounds cheery, no? But its unofficial name is even more ominous: Snake Island. 

Estimates used to suggest there were as many as 5 snakes per square meter on Queimada Grande, but an actual survey by ecologists a few years back turned up a more reasonable 1 snake per square meter.

And those snakes? They’re not very chill. Queimada’s primary full time residents are extremely venomous pit vipers called Bothrops insularis, or golden lanceheads. Snake Island is infamous for being off-limits to humans, save for occasional trips by the Brazilian navy—to check in on the local lighthouse—and a small number of approved scientific expeditions. 

There are some really gruesome legends from folks over on the mainland, including that the last people who lived on Ilha da Queimada Grande—the family of the person who ran the lighthouse right before the government decided to automate in 1920—were literally stalked and killed by a gang of vipers, like something out of a Syfy channel original movie. That’s probably just a macabre rumor, but the snakes are definitely capable of taking you out. We know that their closest relatives on the mainland can absolutely kill humans, and chemical analysis suggests the golden lancehead’s venom is more potent and faster-acting. 

But while those urban legends are impossible to confirm, these freaky snakes do have a really intriguing backstory. Around 11,000 years ago, when sea levels were rising due to melting ice sheets after the last glacial maximum, the ocean cut off a strip of land from the rest of Brazil—Queimada Grande. 

That shift trapped some number of snakes in the genus Bothrops, which is a type of venomous pit viper found in the South and Central Americas, in a new home—one with, as far as scientists can tell, no natural predators, at least against adults. It’s just some frogs, some bugs, some lizards, some birds, and a whole bunch of vipers. 

So, on the one hand, there was nothing keeping these slithering predators from reproducing like crazy, which is how you end up with a snake per square meter. On the other hand, they didn’t have a lot of great food sources—juveniles could live on millipedes and such, but the biggest prey available to adults would be birds. That poses a bit of a problem. Birds are not easy prey for a snake like the golden lancehead, which lacks a prehensile tail for skillfully navigating trees. Most snakes in this Bothrops genus hunt by biting their prey once, letting it go, and then stalking it to attack again as it weakens. A bird doesn’t have to be able to get very far to get out of a snake’s easy reach, and certainly isn’t easy to track with chemical trails like terrestrial prey. 

Instead, it seems the snakes that thrived on this island were the ones able to keep prey in their mouths after that first bite. If that’s how you’re trying to hunt, extremely potent venom certainly doesn’t hurt your chances. 

Despite their scary countenance, golden lanceheads are actually critically endangered. Snake Island is their only native habitat, and deforestation on the mainland has decreased the number of migratory birds, threatening their main food source. There’s also, naturally, a lot of inbreeding that could start to cause problems as the gene pool shrinks. And, of course, because humans are awful, there’s quite a lucrative poaching market for these vipers, simply because they’re rare. 

There are several golden lanceheads in captivity throughout the state of São Paulo, if you want to visit without breaking the law and, let’s be real, probably dying. 

FACT: The ape language studies of the 1970s imploded — and changed the way we study animal communication

By: Arielle Duhaime-Ross

In the 1960s and 1970s, a handful of psychologists attempted to teach American sign language to Great Apes — most notably to chimps and one very well-known gorilla named Koko. The experiments made many of these animals and their trainers famous, but ultimately the work was engulfed in controversy. One scientist in particular, Herbert Terrace, claimed that none of these apes had learned this human language — even the ape he’d trained himself, Nim Chimpsky. Years later, these experiments were also critiqued for not having involved many animal trainers who were actually fluent in American Sign Language.

Today, the story of Koko the gorilla and Nim Chimpsky is a cautionary tale for scientists hoping to study animal communication. And the field has moved beyond the idea of teaching non-human animals a human language — focusing instead on animal cognition and how animals communicate in their own ways.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

The post This noxious island is so full of snakes, people can’t even visit appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. Season one of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. You’ve got just enough time to binge the whole bunch before our second season arrives early next year.

Check out our surprise holiday episode below:

Fact: The treadmill was originally designed as a way to occupy and employ prisoners.

By Claire Maldarelli

January is a rough time for staying in shape. In at least half the world, the days are as short as they are cold. But, at least for me, working out indoors can be even worse. Case in point: The treadmill. Some gym rats swear by the device, but I see the machine as pure torture. For me, the mental frustration of running in place is far worse than the numbing chill the cold air brings.

As it turns out, that psychological distress is not far from what the exercise machine was originally designed for.

In 1818, a prominent civil engineer named William Cubitt was working as a millwright designing, building, and fixing mills. At that time, he apparently became increasingly interested in the “welfare” of prisoners. So, he took it upon himself to reconfigure a mill such that it required human movement to keep it going, which is how it got the name treadmill.

The device was essentially a giant hollow cylinder with an iron frame around it, with wooden steps built around that frame—far more similar to today’s stairmasters. Forty prisoners at a time would climb up on the steps and as they did so, the mill would turn. The faster the wheel turned, the more rapidly the prisoners would have to keep climbing. It was mainly used to crush grains such as corn.

It was quickly adopted by all the major gallows in the United Kingdom and soon came to the United States as well. The U.S. abolished its use first, and Great Britain followed with the Prisoner’s Act of 1898.

Fast forward to 1968, when aerobic exercise was quickly becoming recognized as the key ingredient to staying healthy. A man named William Staub redesigned the existing treadmill to fit inside people’s homes and appeal to the masses, not just the obsessed athlete. His treadmill was called the PaceMaster 600 and didn’t look all that different from the fancy treadmills of today.

So, the next time you step on the treadmill master this new year, remember that you, unlike the first users of the device, always have the option of stepping off. Hopefully that alone will keep you going—or get you to run outside.

Fact: The origin of sparkling wine isn’t all about Dom Perignon

By Rachel Feltman

When most people ponder the origin story of the bubbles in their New Year’s Eve flutes, they’ll hear the story of a 17th-century monk named Dom Perignon. But while Perignon certainly started the Champagne fever in France, fizzy wine likely didn’t begin in his monastery: Three decades earlier a British scholar had published observations on “sparkling” wines—the first recorded use of that word to describe the beverage—he’d seen produced around England. Sorry, Dom.

Even after Champagne took off in France, it wasn’t like the wine we know today for quite some time. For starters, it was extremely sweet—sweeter than most dessert wines you’ll find today, in sharp contrast to the dry flavors we expect from the classiest modern bottles. It was also either cloudy or kind of flat: the second fermentation process that gives sparkling wine its bubbles also leaves a lot of yeast trapped in the bottle, and they form cloudy detritus as they die. The easiest way to deal with this, for decades of production, was to simply pour the wine from one bottle to another before selling it, skimming out the offending fungi. But all this agitation meant the wine would sparkle quite a bit less upon its second uncorking. The solution came from a widow named Madame Clicquot, a trailblazing entrepreneur in a time when few French women had anything to do with business. She and her colleagues came up with the idea of riddling: wine gets its second fermentation on a special rack that allows the bottles to tilt, and winemakers periodically agitate them slightly before setting them back down at a slightly-more-extreme angle. At the end of the process, the yeast has all been coaxed to sit in a single layer at the very top of the bottle. This means you can simply uncork the wine and skim the sediment, then seal it back up—instead of shaking your delicate product around as you filter it from one bottle to another. There are some wineries where this still happens by hand.

For a bonus fact about why the heck we watch a ball drop every New Year’s Eve, listen to this week’s episode (embedded above).

Calendar power hour

By Eleanor Cummins

You could say we’re publishing this special episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week on Christmas Day, December 25, 2018. But you could just as rightly say we’re publishing it on December 26, 2018—if you’re on the other side of the international dateline. Or on December 12, 2018 if you’re in imperial Russia and still using the Julian calendar. Or on December 25, 106 if you’re somehow accessing the internet from North Korea (hello!) and count in Juche years. In anticipation of our transition to 2019, I decided to look into what a year really is, and how it’s changed from ancient Rome to 1920s Greece to today. Find out more on Weirdest Thing!

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Check out the weirdest New Year’s Eve facts we could find appeared first on Popular Science.

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With millions of podcasts streaming online these days, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of variety in the audio-storytelling space. That’s why it’s sometimes better to stick with what you know, like PopSci’s two hit shows, “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week” and “Ask Us Anything.” Not convinced? We put our best episodes from this year into a fun, listenable list—and included other science podcasts we adore to help get you hooked. Bottoms up.

The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week

Moose crash test dummies, famous ferrets, and deadly planets

This wonderful episode features science author Mary Roach, who joined the show to talk about her new book FUZZ: When Nature Breaks the Law. Her fact, which comes straight from the book, is all about why (and how) researchers created moose crash test dummies.

Ancient brain surgeons, the crows have eyes, and why radiators are so annoying

Actor and famous Schitt’s Creek impersonator Michael Judson Berry joined this episode, and it was a downright blast. Listen to Berry impersonate many members of the Rose family and learn all about why we’ve always drilled holes in heads, how radiators saved people during outbreaks, and why crows are, terrifyingly, even smarter than we thought.

Haunted vaginas, fairy floss, and books made of human skin

Halloween episodes of Weirdest Thing are always bangers, and this one is no exception. We learned that ectoplasm is real, but it’s not really the pink or green gooey slime we imagine. More dramatically, the material has been linked to a lot of scams and scandals through history.

Art crime doesn’t pay, canines cooking meat, and eggs done wrong

The comedian (and downright wonderful human) Josh Gondelman made this episode a giggly delight. From unsolved art heists to dogs cooking their humans dinner, this one’s a must-listen.

Science meets magic, high-tech murders, and bees

Jonathan Sims from the riveting horror fiction podcast the Magnus Archives joined the Weirdest Thing for this special recording. The group spun a (true!) story about the first murder reported via telegraph, discussed whether bees can tell time, and blurred the lines between science and magic.

Q&A: Punkin chunkin, mysterious shipwrecks, and midwestern scorpions

In the break between Season 4 and Season 5, host Rachel Feltman and producer Jess Boddy hopped on Zoom to listen to some listener voicemails. What ensued was, as always, wonderful and weird—but to Boddy’s delight, somehow Midwestern-themed. (Did you know scorpions live in Illinois?) The episode is a refreshing change of pace from the typical show format.

See the full list of Weirdest Thing episodes here.

Ask Us Anything

How can you safely send nude photos?

Guest-hosted by Associate DIY Editor Sandra Gutierrez G., the first episode of “Ask Us Anything” Season 2 was juicy and informative. From metadata to camera angles, Gutierrez explains everything you need to know about sending a steamy pic in the safest way possible.

What did dinosaurs taste like?

This is one of those questions that you might never consider—but once you hear it being asked, you’ll be ravenous for the answer. DIY Editor John Kennedy gets into the grisly details of how dinos might have tasted if you tossed them on the grill.

Why can’t we see more colors?

Most humans see the world in a generally consistent way. But other animals see even more colors than we can—so what’s the deal? Is it possible for us to perceive these “invisible” colors too? Science Editor Claire Maldarelli explains what is (and isn’t) possible.

See the full list of Ask Us Anything episodes here.

Other best science podcast episodes

The Outdoor Life Podcast: The mysterious chronic Lyme disease nightmare

Our sister magazine Outdoor Life launched their new podcast this year and took several deep dives on hot topics in the hunting and fishing worlds. This episode focusing on the latest research on chronic Lyme disease, however, felt relatable to a lot of people.

Flash Forward: What is the future of gender?

Former PopSci contributor Rose Eveleth’s podcast is a perennial go-to for our staff. This year’s gender episode really stood out to us, largely because of how it built off a thought experiment Eveleth ran six years ago. A lot has changed in gender science and policies since then, but at the same time, a lot of misunderstandings and questions remain.

Donut Podcasts: How these electric vehicles sparked the Tesla

Another sister publication of ours, Donut Media recently turned its popular YouTube channel into a freewheeling podcasting space. Their episode on the classic tech that fuels modern EVs was fascinating, especially with all the battery-powered trucks and sports cars that were unveiled this year.

For the Wild: Moral landscapes amidst changing ecologies

Indigenous science keeps growing in stature as a way to seek solutions against climate change, extinction, and other environmental problems. This episode, featuring Cal State University East Bay professor and biodiversity expert Enrique Salmón, combines philosophy, chemistry, and deep analysis to help humans rejigger their role in the natural world. It has the power to change minds and practices.

Apple News Today: Does blood hold the key to the fountain of youth?

PopSci writer Kat McGowan chatted about her magazine feature on reverse aging on one of Apple’s premiere podcasts. Listen to her dissect the sensational research that neurobiologists from Harvard and Stanford have been tinkering with for decades. What is fact and what is still fantasy at this point?

Radiolab: Elements

Here’s a nerd fest that you won’t want to miss. WNYC’s “Radiolab” stole our hearts with an entire episode dedicated to illuminating the more obscure parts of the periodic table through poetry, musical theater, and old-fashioned yarn spinning. Turns out, livermorium rhymes pretty well with zirconium.

The post Our favorite science podcast episodes of 2021 appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Bees can make a special kind of honey using spotted lanternfly poop 

By Rachel Feltman

Even if you love slurping down a cup of hot tea just full of the stuff, you might not really know what honey is. Bees often make this sweet goop out of nectar from flowers, but any super-sugary liquid will do in a pinch. In 2012, for example, some French bees got into a candy factory’s waste vats and produced blue and green honey from the sticky syrup. 

And sometimes, if we’re very lucky, bees will make honey using the waste emissions of other insects—including the invasive spotted lanternfly. 

The spotted lanternfly, which is a heartbreakingly beautiful and absolutely ecologically devastating little leaf-hopper native to China, was first seen in Pennsylvania in September of 2014. They feed on dozens of species of plants, including food crops, and can cause a lot of damage. In addition to all the nibbling, they also secrete a sticky waste—basically poop or pee—called honeydew, which tends to attract molds that kill the affected plants. Far from being picky eaters, bees have been known to sup on this sweet stuff and produce honey from it (the resulting product is also, confusingly, called honeydew). 

FACT: Super-heated falcon poop can help explain the origins of rocks and life on Earth.

By Lauren Leffer

In 2016 on Mt. Rasvumchorr in Russia, researchers discovered naturally occurring deposits of a substance known as Tinnunculite. The compound is a pale, carbon-based mineral that comes in a variety of colors. It’s also the byproduct of birds pooping near burning coal. When falcon feces reacts with hot gasses, it turns from biodegradable to solid-as-a-rock. And this relatively recent entry to the official list of minerals is also a wild example of how minerals and life co-evolved on Earth.

When you think of evolution, maybe you think of natural selection, Galapagos finches, Darwin, or DNA. But according to mineralogist Robert Hazen, rocks evolve too. Hazen’s hypothesis of “mineral evolution” posits that we have as many living things on earth as we do, in part, because of the presence of minerals. And, that we have so many different minerals because of living things.

For an example that goes beyond guano, there’s “The Great Oxygenation Event.” Before there was life, our atmosphere had no oxygen in it. Oxygen molecules are key to a whole suite of chemical reactions, and without it, not much was happening in the mineral record. But suddenly, microscopic organisms called cyanobacteria emerged, multiplied, photosynthesized, and produced enough oxygen gas to create thousands of new minerals. There are lots and lots of ways (big and small) that living things and rocks are altering each other’s environments and determining each other’s future. In Hazen’s own words, “we need to understand minerals to give us the story of our planet.”

FACT: A doctor tried to cure gluten intolerance with ONLY bananas

By Sara Chodosh

Avid listeners of the show might remember that I have celiac disease, which depending on who you’re talking to is either a legit reason not to eat gluten or “just a fad.” I know a lot about the disease both through having it and through writing about it for PopSci, but even I didn’t know about this week’s fact until really recently.
Banana babies are not, despite what Google says, tiny frozen bananas covered in chocolate (though they look delicious). They’re babies and small children who were fed a diet chock full of bananas in an effort to cure them of celiac. Did it work? No. You don’t have to listen to the episode to figure that out. But is it a wild tale anyway? Absolutely.

In August, Atlas Obscura reported that Philadelphia beekeepers had harvested the sticky results of this bee-and-lanternfly collab. Check out their story for more on the accidental discovery of an intriguing new type of honey, and listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing to learn more about how bees can go on misadventures that lead to toxic, spicy, and even hallucinogenic honey. 

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

The post Spotted lanternfly goo is surprisingly tasty appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is about all things tasty—providing just a quick taste of the sorts of stories you’ll find in the latest issue of Popular Science. We’re now a digital-only magazine, which means you can access it right here and now.

FACT: A study ‘proved’ White Castle is good for you

By Corinne Iozzio

The hamburger business was having a hard time in the 1930s. Sales were way down after a wave of public attention around unsavory, unappetizing, and downright unhygienic practices are meat processing facilities came to light in the decades following the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Among the hardest hit was White Castle founder Edgar Waldo “Billy” Ingram. Despite PR campaigns designed to tout the cleanliness of the production of his famous sliders, Ingram was struggling to tempt the public. So, he decided to get science on his side. He recruited a physiological chemist named Jesse McClendon to design a study to prove the healthfulness of a burger-based diet. The study McClendon completed had a single person eat an entire Crave Case a day (that’s 10 sliders per meal, three meals a day), totaling approximately 4,500 calories. When the single participant survived the month-long burger binge with no immediately apparent ill effects, Ingram was emboldened to launch a campaign touting his menu as not only not bad for you, but were an essential part of building a healthy body. This run of ads was, of course, not unique in an era when scant oversight gave advertisers leeway to trumpet the bodily benefits of everything from junk food to cigarettes. Today, a vast catalog of research into the impacts of fast food on health soundly refutes Ingram’s claims, but chains continue to market “healthy” menu items like plant-based burgers just the same. 

FACT: We might all be cooking up invasive bloodsuckers by 2030

By Purbita Saha

Okay, that year is slightly arbitrary. But the fact remains: Americans should start eating sea lampreys before they decimate all the wildlife in the Great Lakes. The hellish-looking species is native to the Atlantic Ocean (though there is some debate over their origins), and has been making its way inland in the Midwest since the 1800s with the help of canal systems. Today, their population in the region totals in the tens of millions, which is bad news for Great Lakes fish and anglers. Sea lampreys, you see, are voracious predators that latch onto larger prey with sharp, circular suckers. They bore through the scales of their catch, then drain all the blood and bodily fluids out for a nourishing meal. Note: They don’t attack humans.

Wildlife agencies in Michigan and other Great Lakes states have launched lamprey task forces to control the invasive species. But nothing has worked well enough to slow the invasion. So, biologists and chefs are getting creative by encouraging people to eat the fish as many Europeans do. (It’s even rumored that King Henry I died from glutting on boiled lamprey.) The barrier to entry, of course, is the creature’s hideous exterior. If Americans can learn that taste is more than skin-deep, lamprey—and other destructive exotics, like periwinkles, Japanese knotweed, and wild boar—could serve as a reliable and sustainable food source.

FACT: Competitive meat judging is a real sport—and it’s even stranger than it sounds

By Rachel Feltman

First things first: There are people—loads of people—who consider competitive meat judging to be a sport. But while you might reasonably assume that a meat judging competition would be about who raises and slaughters the best livestock, it’s actually about who does the best job of judging random meat. Dating back to at least 1926, when it was introduced at the International Livestock Exposition in Chicago, the noble pursuit of competitive meat judging is all about knowing everything there is to know about beef, lamb, and pork carcasses. 

Competitive meat judging’s highest stakes are in the intercollegiate circuit, where a number of schools send students on a whirlwind tour of the nation’s most hallowed meat lockers to prove their stuff. It’s not easy: Competitors spend hours on their feet in frigid rooms, trying their best to evaluate qualities like the size of a cut of meat, its degree of fat marbling, and the age of the animal it came from using nothing but visual cues. 
Fans and alums argue that those strange and tense conditions help breed top-notch critical thinking skills in competitors—some of whom, unsurprisingly, go on to do the same kind of meat analysis in a professional capacity. For more info on the strange world of competitive meat judging, check out this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

The post Inside the cutthroat world of competitive meat judging appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: You used to be able to die “by planet”

By Sara Chodosh

I’ve spent more time than most looking at death statistics. It’s kind of an occupational hazard of being both a health/science person and a data person. I am generally used to them being both quite depressing and pretty mundane—in the modern era in the US the vast majority of deaths are from cancer and heart disease, followed by accidents and respiratory issues. Elsewhere in the world it’s less mundane but much more depressing (read: lots of deaths due to preventable diseases that we largely don’t suffer from in high-income countries). 

So it was something of a pleasant surprise to come across “The Diseases, and Casualties this year being 1632” (strange comma included). I think because the causes of death listed here—Affrighted, Made away themselves, Suddenly—are so removed from how we quantify death today this whole list kind of comes across as funny, or at least amusing. And really what’s ultimately most amusing is the total lack of understanding of disease. “Suddenly” is not an acceptable item on a death certificate in the 21st century because even if someone did drop dead suddenly we could do an autopsy to figure out what actually happened. A stroke, perhaps, or a heart attack. But in the 17th and 18th centuries you just…died. You often did so at home or maybe at work, and the person who came to pick up your body for burial probably knew about as much about why you died as did the person who saw you die in the first place, which is to say: not a lot. 

Of course the more I dug into this list the less funny it became. Death is death, and the more you think about what life was actually like for these people the sadder the whole thing gets. I highly recommend reading the paper I found explaining all the terms—it’s a fascinating look at birth and death, and at how much has changed in just a few hundred years. And we could all probably use a reminder right now of how much better life is today than it used to be.

FACT: This ferret named Felicia is a scientific hero

By Rachel Feltman

Some listeners may recall that in 2016, the Large Hadron Collider, which is a big ol’ particle collider in Switzerland, shut down because of a weasel. There was a massive power outage that turned out to be the result of a small mammal now thought to be a marten weasel, which chewed through some power lines and sadly died, but not before taking the LHC with it, albeit temporarily. 

Animals are not infrequent sources of trouble in these facilities. In 2009, a soggy baguette caused an electrical short at the LHC, and the prevailing theory is that a passing bird dropped it down into the equipment. In 2006, a Fermilab newsletter even recounted an only somewhat facetious report of a “coordinated attack” on the facility by a family of raccoons. 

But speaking of Fermilab, and back to ferrets, I want to talk about a more positive animal interaction at a particle collider.

So, in the early 70s, back when Fermilab was still called the National Accelerator Laboratory, engineers couldn’t get the particles up to the necessary speed without the magnets inside shorting out. Eventually, they figured out that tiny metal shavings left behind by the construction of the tube were interfering. 

But how do you clean out a ring-shaped tube that stretches for something like four miles? 

They found their solution in Felicia, the smallest available ferret from a fur farm in Minnesota, and purchased her for $35. For more on how she helped change the particle physics game, listen to this week’s episode.

FACT: Swedish scientists once crafted a crash test dummy shaped like a moose

By Mary Roach

When to swerve, and when to hit? Most drivers now know that when it comes to deer, the safest thing to do is to simply collide with the unfortunate animal. But when large animals like moose and camels come into play, the potential consequences of a run-in become much more dire—and the choice to swerve becomes the smarter option. For more on the scientific investigation into moose jaywalkers, check out the latest episode of Weirdest Thing—and my latest book, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. 

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

The post Death ‘by planet’ was surprisingly common in the 1600s appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode features special guest Dallas Taylor—he’s a sound engineer and the host of Twenty Thousand Hertz. Make sure to check it out!

FACT: At least one very unlucky astronaut claims he had an allergic reaction to lunar dust

By Sara Chodosh

Lunar dust is, at least according to some NASA experts, the number one challenge facing missions to the moon. That may be hard to believe, but only if you know nothing about moon dust. Here’s the 411: it’s both wildly sharp and incredibly powdery, which turns out to be a terrible combination. 

Even worse is that you can—maybe, possibly—be allergic to it. There’s not exactly a large sample size of people who have ever breathed in moon dust, but at least two people have had what appears to be an allergic reaction to it. Cruelly, the first was a geologist who flew on Apollo 17, only to arrive on the moon and realize he was allergic to the very thing he studied. There’s a beautiful kind of poetry to that, I think. 

You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out some of the wilder facts about lunar dust, but I’ll leave you with this tease: astronauts and miners have a lot more in common than you’d think.

FACT: An Ancient Egyptian statue supposedly sung at dawn

By Rachel Feltman

The Colossi of Memnon were built near what’s now Luxor around 1350 BCE, and they originally stood guard over the palatial memorial grounds of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Depicting Amenhotep in the style of Osiris, the statues stood 26 feet high and were carved from a single block of quartzite sandstone that came from hundreds of miles away.

The temple and other structures around the complex didn’t last very long: around 1200 BC, an earthquake did away with everything but the Colossi. In 27 BC, another earthquake hit and shattered the northern Colossus, collapsing it from the waist up and cracking the lower half.

But the legacy of the Colossi was actually just getting started. Around the time of the BCE to AD switch, the Greek historian Strabo reported that one of the Colossi was known to sing.

This phenomenon—which occurred only at the break of dawn—sparked a tourist craze, and visitors left ancient Yelp reviews in the form of graffiti on the statue’s base. Julia Balbilla, a Roman noble who visited in 130 A.D., wrote a poem on the statue’s leg comparing the sound to “ringing bronze.” Others described it as sounding like a broken harp or lyre string.

Many of the visitors to the site suspected some kind of supernatural significance to the sound, especially since it always happened at the same time of day—as dawn broke—but wasn’t otherwise consistent. People put a lot of stock in whether the statue sang on the day they visited.

But the best guess for how this “singing” occurred comes from what we know about when the Colossus stopped singing.

In either 196 or 199, the Roman emperor Septimus Severus visited the site and heard nothing. In an attempt to curry favor with whatever power controlled the singing statue, he supposedly paid for a repair job on it. We know that the sound stopped for good around this time. The best theory: cracks in the stone had previously collected dew, creating sonic vibrations as morning temperatures rose and warmed the liquid. Ironically, when Severus had those cracks repaired, he shut the singing up for good.

We’ll never know for certain whether the Colossus really sang, how it managed to carry a tune, or why it stopped. You can find out more about mysterious sounds that science has yet to solve here.

FACT: Animal sounds make surprising cameos in movies and TV shows

By Dallas Taylor

When you think of the roar of a T. rex, what sound comes to mind? A tiny puppy squeal? No? Well, you may be surprised to learn that the sound designers of Jurassic Park mixed that very noise into a slew of other animal yips and yaps to create the iconic dinosaur’s bellow. On this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing, we get into the use of real-world animal sounds for creating everything from the purr of an engine to the sci-fi whoosh of a TIE fighter. Stick around for one particularly surprising fact about Netflix’s signature sound (spoiler alert: it involves a goat).

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post Imagine traveling to the moon only to realize you’re allergic to it. One astronaut did. appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our next NYC live show on June 14.

This week’s episode features an extra weird, very special guest: Bill Nye the Science Guy. Take a listen below (or wherever you like to get your podcasts) and keep scrolling for more info on some of the stories we shared. And don’t forget to check out Bill’s brand new podcast, Science Rules!

Fact: Your brain can ignore a lot—including a person in a giant gorilla costume directly in front of you.

By Claire Maldarelli

In 1999, two Harvard experimental psychologists—Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris—conducted an experiment that changed the way we think about attention.

In a 40-second-long taped scene, the two researchers placed a group of students in a large room. Half wore white shirts and the other half wore black. The psychologists also gave them a set of basketballs to throw around. Halfway through their play, a person in a gorilla costume walked straight through the ball tossing. Once they reached the middle of the room, right in front of the people passing the balls around, they pounded their chest and looked directly into the camera before slowly walking out of sight. In total, the costumed individual spent a solid nine seconds on camera. You can watch the video here.

Later on, the researchers asked study subjects to watch a video of the scene. At the tape’s onset, they were instructed to count how many times the players wearing white passed the ball around. The video played, balls were tossed, a gorilla walked across and pounded its chest. The screen then posed two questions to the viewers: “How many passes did you count?” (the correct answer was 15) and “Did you see the gorilla?”

Most participants correctly guessed the passes, but just half saw the gorilla. The others were completely shocked.

How can someone fail to notice someone in a gorilla suit walking directly in their line of sight? Surprisingly, it’s pretty easy. This is perhaps the best and most ideal representation of something called inattentional blindness, where the brain fails to notice something that the eye has clearly picked up on. In fact, in later replicate studies and analyses the researchers used eye trackers to follow exactly what the participants were looking at. Their eyes did indeed lock on the gorilla; it’s not as if they were so focused on the balls that they failed to look at the strange interloper. So why did they claim they didn’t see it? That’s because seeing something with your eyes is only half the battle. Your brain must still register, interpret, and remember those signals.

Listen to this week’s episode to see how you could also have missed the giant ape in the room, and what else you’re probably failing to see in everyday life.

Fact: Pigeon droppings helped confirm the existence of The Big Bang

By Bill Nye

Here’s a real weird one for you: when scientists first detected the background radiation left over from The Big Bang, they thought the signal was coming from pigeon droppings scattered over the antenna. You’ve got to scrape a few pigeon poops if you want to solve the mysteries of the cosmos. Now if only some bird excrement could help us figure out what came before The Big Bang. Whoa.

Fact: Doctors used to worry that cycling would hurt your heart (and make you ugly)

By Rachel Feltman

I’m about to set out on a 545-mile bike ride for charity, so I’ve been thinking about cycling an awful lot lately. Imagine my delight when, while perusing the very Weirdest-Thing-friendly works of Thomas Morris, I found a story about the physician who thought bikes posed a serious health hazard. At a conference in 1894, George Herschell argued that every cyclist’s heart was a ticking time bomb. He claimed to love the sport himself, but was certain that the craze was causing heart disease. Of races involving hills, he said: “Nothing more suicidal, or more certain to produce heart disease, can possibly be imagined.” He claimed a few moments of over-exertion on a bike would do damage to the heart “from which it perhaps cannot recover.”

His advice? Riders should cease and desist with the cycling as soon as they felt at all out of breath. This was in line with a general sense of distrust around exercise in the Victorian era. Of course, now we know you’re not really getting a hard workout in if you’re not at least a little out of breath, and we also know that (at least for most people) biking is excellent for cardiovascular health.

Herschell would no doubt be appalled by my plans to spend seven straight days on a bike (yes, really—you can donate if you want to encourage this insanity!) but other physicians would have discouraged me for a different reason: bike face. Listen to the podcast to hear about the health scare doctors used to try to keep young women off the streets.

Fact: The platypus was originally considered a hoax

By Eleanor Cummins

Platypuses are venomous, semi-aquatic, egg-laying mammals with duck bills, otter feet, and beaver tails. So it’s no wonder the first Europeans to hear about them didn’t believe they were real. Robert Knox, a prominent scientist of the day, was thoroughly convinced the first specimen sent from the Australian coast was a Chinese hoax. Some say he even went looking for the seams in this allegedly fraudulent work of taxidermy. (Of course, there were none.) But the reasons for skepticism extend beyond the platypus’ strange morphology. On this week’s episode, I talk about a few of the very real nature scams circulating in the 18th and 19th centuries, including P.T. Barnum’s nightmare-inducing “Feejee Mermaid,” the lies circling the pelican, and the overstated case of the mastodon.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. Want to see us get weird in person? Grab tickets to our live show: it’s June 14 in NYC.

The post Bill Nye talks killer clowns, mermaids, pigeon poo, and deadly bicycles appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Doctors used to bind books in human skin 

By Rachel Feltman

For most of us, the idea of everyday objects being made out of human skin is something we associate with horror movies, or maybe with historical monsters like the Nazis. But recent research shows that there was a time when doing so was considered pretty normal.

The Anthropodermic Book Project started up a few years ago to investigate supposed instances of anthropodermic bibliopegy, or books bound in human skin. So far the team has identified 50 supposed skin books, and have tested 31 of them using peptide mass fingerprinting, which is a technique that analyzes the amino acids in the collagen of a skin sample. Of those 31 books, 13 have turned out to be made of some non-human animal leather, but 18 of them have been confirmed as human. And these weren’t found in the homes of serial killers and war criminals. They were mostly medical texts bound by physicians during the 19th century.

For more information on these historical monstrosities, listen to this week’s episode. And be sure to check out “Dark Archives” by Megan Rosenbloom, which is a fascinating new book that goes into the subject in depth. 

If you learn nothing else, know this: You almost certainly wouldn’t be able to tell a human-bound book apart from one wrapped in cow or pig skin by sight, feel, or smell. So if you ever find yourself in the possession of a medical textbook from the 1800s, well… you get the idea. 

FACT: Ectoplasm is real, but it’s not what you think it is

By Sara Chodosh

Ectoplasm is something I associate, perhaps strangely, with Ghostbusters. I don’t think they even use the word “ectoplasm” in the movie, but my mental image of it is still the green slime from Slimer. So during this episode I want you to know one thing: “real” “ectoplasm” (both words really do need to be in quotation marks) is nothing like Slimer’s slime. Instead, it’s something much more ordinary and surprising, though you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out why. 

There is actually real ectoplasm, no quotation marks required, which is the outer layer of foraminifera, a class of single-celled organisms that live in the ocean and use their ectoplasm to catch food. That type is not nearly spooky or weird enough for a podcast episode, though, so the stuff I’m talking about this week is of the type that spiritualist mediums claimed to produce from various orifices in the early to mid 20th centuries. And yes, I do mean “various.” 

FACT: Cotton candy was invented by a dentist

By Claire Maldarelli

I’m pretty confident that if you ask any modern dentist today, they’d tell you that cotton candy isn’t all that great for your teeth. So it might come as a surprise then, that what Americans know today as cotton candy was indeed created by a dentist. William James Morrison, born in 1860, was a prominent dentist from Nashville, Tennessee, who along with a fellow Nashville-based friend, John C. Wharton created a device called the “fairy floss.” While it hardly resembles what any dentist would deem flossing (perhaps the opposite, even), the device became wildly popular and was exhibited at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, otherwise known as the St. Louis World’s Fair. To learn more about how the machine and product evolved—and for four more just as fun facts about candy—listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing! 

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

The post How sexy Victorian mediums tricked scientists into believing in ectoplasm appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Trading blood could actually make you “young” again

By Corinne Iozzio

Scientists have long thought that blood has the power to reshape us—to make an old person feel young, an ill person well again, and an agitated person find calm. Some of the earliest experiments to test this notion, though, did not have stellar results. When Robert Lower developed a crude transfusion technique that he tested on dogs, the donating puppers didn’t survive. But he and other physicians in the mid-1600s felt they were onto something; more specifically, they wanted to know if “calm” blood could help quiet mental illness. To avoid a dead donor they instead transfused their patients with lamb’s blood. In 1667, a pair of public experiments—one in London and one in Paris—were relatively successful, according to the scientists’ own accounts, at least. But the first Parisian infusion, scientific historian Holly Tucker recounts in her book Blood Work, raised some, uh, red flags; the subject had what we now know was a normal immune response to such an incursion. The patient’s eventual death, though suspicious, spurred the government and eventually the pope to put the kibosh on the whole bloody business.

Here’s the thing, though: As Kat McGowan reports in the new issue of PopSci, these experiments were, in fact, onto something. Over the last couple decades, a growing body of research has found that a sustained commingling of blood supplies—so-called parabiosis—can reverse the signs of aging in lab mice. What remains is to figure out precisely what in the blood is spurring those changes and put that into a manageable form like a shot or a pill—no blood trading, necessary.

FACT: Candyland wouldn’t exist without polio

By Rachel Feltman

Polio is one of those diseases that most of us are lucky enough to not have to worry about. Jonas Salk created an extremely effective vaccine for it that was released in 1955, and cases dropped by 85 to 90 percent within just two years of that initial rollout. We haven’t had a case of polio with US origins since 1979, and the last time the virus was brought into the country to spread here was 1993. That’s not because polio has disappeared; it’s because our vaccination rates are so high.

Because of that, it’s easy for us to forget that in the 1950s, polio was a devastating and terrifying disease in the US. In around 1 percent of infections, polio attacks the central nervous system and can lead to permanent paralysis of different parts of the body. Young children are at especially high risk of contracting the virus. 

The height of the US polio epidemic was in the 1950s, just before Salk’s vaccine came out, and there was no cure and no understanding of how to prevent it. Something like 15,000 people were being paralyzed each year in the US alone. With no sense of what would actually help their kids avoid polio, a lot of parents spent the early 50s making kids stay indoors all summer, when transmission rates would peak. It was a really scary time—and a boring one.
Enter Eleanor Abbott, a school teacher from San Diego. We don’t know much about her, but we know she contracted polio herself in 1948. And sometime during or after her recovery, she designed Candyland. It’s colorful, it’s simple, and the game mechanic is literally about taking a stroll—which is pretty poignant when you realize she designed it primarily for bedridden kids recovering from illness. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about Abbott’s story—and other surprising origins of beloved American board games.

FACT: You can’t raise a baby chimpanzee like a tiny human

By Purbita Saha

Brave psychology couple Winthrop and Luella Kellogg gave this experiment a go in the 1930s—and though it led to some fascinating results, it didn’t pan out too well overall. Winthrop, who ran an animal-stimuli lab at Indiana State University and then Florida State University, was intrigued by the case of two “wolf children” in India whose feral instincts stuck with them for life. He wanted to dig into the question: How much can an infant’s environment change its behavior and development?

Winthrop couldn’t quite test his hypothesis on a young human, so he and his wife took in a 7-month-old captive chimpanzee from Cuba to raise alongside their 10-month-old son, Donald. Gua, as the ape was called, received the same care and attention as her “sibling” and was tested daily for a long list of metrics. While she never learned to speak or babble like a person, her physical growth and motor skills progressed quickly—on par with other chimps in captivity. Donald, on the other hand, began imitating Gua’s barks and onomatopoeia, which may have been one reason the experiment ended in just six months.

The Kellogg’s documented their whole endeavor in their book, The Ape and the Child. There’s also a silent documentary that’s mostly available online.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post What scientists learned when they tried to raise a chimp with a human baby appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode features special guest Josh Gondelman, writer and co-Executive Producer for Desus & Mero on Showtime. Be sure to check out his podcast Make My Day if you don’t already listen!

FACT: This dog went ‘extinct’ once we stopped needing it to help us cook our meat

By Rachel Feltman

Yes, a dog was once genetically engineered to serve as a kitchen appliance.

Back when open fires were our best way of cooking things, the spit was invaluable. As early as the 1st century BC, people were sticking meat onto spits so they could turn and cook them evenly instead of like literally setting one half of a carcass on fire while the other stayed raw. But for hundreds of years, that meant someone had to physically turn the spit. In Medieval kitchens, this was a job for the lowest of lowly servant boys, who would be called the “spit boy” or “spit jack.” 

The first mention of the turnspit dog, also called the vernepator cur or canis vertigus (dizzy dog), was in 1576, where it was referred to as the turnespete. But most of what we know about them was written down in the 1800s, near the end of what was apparently centuries of regular use. The long story short here is that people bred terrier-like dogs to have relatively long bodies and short, crooked legs, and to be very strong and high-energy. Their bodies were designed to fit easily into these treadmills that powered various kitchen aids, but primarily the roasting spit. They would run and run and run all day to keep the meat turning.

[Related: Why corgi mixes look like adorable munchkin versions of other dogs]

Unfortunately, this job totally sucked for the dogs for all the reasons it had sucked for humans. According to at least one historian, it was an encounter with a New York hotel’s turnspit dogs in the 1850s that inspired Henry Berg to found the ASPCA.

Turnspit dogs weren’t completely relegated to the kitchen—the lords and ladies of the house would use them as living foot-warmers at church on Sundays, and Queen Victoria is said to have kept several of them as pets. But they were generally considered ugly and mean, probably because people kept making them run on hot treadmills that smelled like meat, so once they became obsolete as kitchen utensils—which happened over the course of the 19th century and as we entered the 20th, when various automated roasting spits became more accessible—they quickly disappeared. 

They’re considered “extinct” now, but dog breeds can’t really go extinct—they’re not distinct species. It’s kind of like how cabbage, kale, broccoli, kohlrabi, Brussel sprouts, and a whole bunch of other plants are all one species: if we stopped eating cabbage, it wouldn’t really be “extinct,” and the makings of cabbage would still exist in the DNA of the other varietals. Similarly, any “extinct” dog breed is just one where we don’t have proof that a pure descendant of that exact lineage is still around. All we have left of the turnspit dog are its many cousins in the canine world—and one seemingly beloved pet vernepator forever preserved with questionable taxidermy skills. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more!

FACT: An unsolved art heist is still memorialized with empty frames on the museum walls

By Josh Gondelman

In 1990, hundreds of millions of dollars of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (on St. Patrick’s Day, obviously). Because of stipulations made when the museum was founded, several frames remain hanging on the wall where paintings were cut out of them. This robbery, and the subsequent attempts to crack the case, are detailed in the Boston Globe/WBUR podcast Last Seen. The heist remains unsolved to this day, much to the disappointment of people who watched This Is A Robbery on Netflix thinking that the documentary’s producers would reveal a conclusion.

FACT: Chickens deserve our respect and praise

By Sara Chodosh

It doesn’t seem possible that chickens should be able to produce so many eggs. Modern domestic chickens (there are wild varieties called junglefowl) are egg-laying machines—some average more than 300 eggs per year, which is nearly one a day.

Just from a sheer physics standpoint, that is a gnarly amount of matter to convert from food to egg each day, not to mention passing through a hole in your body. Yikes!

So it’s only natural that sometimes they get it wrong.

In this week’s episode I talk all about the ways in which egg-laying can go awry, and boy are there a lot of them. A few highlights: wrinkly eggs, tiny eggs, and sandpaper-y ones, too.

My main egg fact for the episode, though, is about the absolute worst way things can go wrong: when chickens “lay” an egg inside their body. Somehow this also relates to a hormonal implant given to ferrets, but you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out how.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post This dog was genetically engineered to be a kitchen appliance appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This post has been updated. It was originally published on January 15, 2020.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: The chainsaw was originally developed to aid in difficult childbirths

By Claire Maldarelli

When you picture a chainsaw, the typical uses that come to mind usually have to do with wood (and, you know, chopping it). But why were chainsaws invented, really? It might surprise you that the device’s origin lands about as far away from a lumber yard as you can get: The creators of the chainsaw were two Scottish surgeons named John Aitken and James Jeffray. And they developed their gnarly and dangerous device to help them do their jobs—cutting human bone and flesh.

Even under the best possible circumstances, giving birth is not what most would call a pleasant experience. But in the 18th century, prior to the development of anesthesia and other modern surgical tools, delivery could turn incredibly dangerous with little warning. When babies came out feet-first or their bodies were otherwise trapped in the birth canal, doctors would have to widen the pelvic area by cutting into the cartilage and bone. Aitken and Jeffray found that a sharp knife just didn’t do the trick in a timely fashion, so, somewhat shockingly, they created a chainsaw as a more precise and humane option.

The resulting procedure was known as a symphysiotomy, and thankfully it is no longer in use today. What’s left is the chainsaw, which is now kept well away from surgical wards. Thank goodness.

FACT: You owe your favorite fitness tracker to a man who diligently weighed his own poop

By Rachel Feltman

The next time you finish a workout and glance down at your Apple Watch for instant gratification, thank 16th-century Italian physician Santorio Santorio. He may not have pioneered the practice of counting steps, but he did something even more important to our understanding of self-quantification: He sat down. A lot. For a long time. For the better part of 30 years, in fact.

Santorio dedicated his career to improving our ability to measure important data points, especially as they pertained to health. In a world of physicians who thought you only needed to balance your humors in order to be well, Santorio wanted to know exactly how much phlegm was going into the equation. To that end, he built himself a special balancing chair designed to keep tabs on his weight at all hours.

By weighing himself at multiple points throughout the day—just after waking up; while sitting around doing nothing; before, during, and after eating; after having sex; before and after urinating or defecating—Santorio developed medicine’s first knowledge of the basal metabolic rate. Today we know that most of the calories we need to eat to survive go straight to fueling our organs. Barring seriously strenuous exercise, the calories we burn by moving around are relatively few.

Santorio didn’t have a perfect understanding of this, but his endless weigh-ins did help him land on the basic concept. Why? Because he needed an explanation for his missing poop. Listen to this week’s episode to find out more.

FACT: Some animals seem to have complete control over when they get pregnant

By Sara Chodosh

Pregnancy in general is a whirlwind of experiences in which your body starts doing things it’s never done before—and it can feel a little out of control. But it turns out a lot of animals have a surprising amount of control over their pregnancy. And that starts with choosing when to get preggers in the first place.

I talk a lot in the podcast about why an animal would want to plan when to give birth, but one thing that didn’t make it into the episode is the fact that a number of species can get inseminated while still suckling their babies, then get pregnant after those babies are weaned. A lot of human mothers think that they experience the same thing—that as long as they’re breastfeeding, they can’t conceive again. But that’s a total myth. It’s true that breastfeeding can affect your fertility, and so some women can have unprotected sex without much risk of pregnancy. But it’s also true that plenty of women are absolutely able to get pregnant even while regularly nursing—and that every year, tons of people end up having their second kid earlier than planned because they didn’t realize that fact. So, consider this your fair warning, and check out this week’s episode to hear about the animals who have a way better handle on the whole conception thing than humans do. For more stories about weird animal baby-making, listen to our previous episode about virgin births (yes, they’re a thing).

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Why were chainsaws invented? To help with childbirth. appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: A special sex hat saved peregrine falcons from extinction

By Sara Chodosh

Most of us are probably squeamish about talking in too much detail about animals’ sex lives. The associations with bestiality, I guess? Whatever it is, the vast majority of us are grossed out by it. I think that’s why I harbor such an undying appreciation for the folks who go into animal husbandry. They’re just so committed to learning about something that other people would rather not even think about: how to get a particular species off.

Enter: falconers.

Falconers are incredibly committed to their birds, so much so that a small group of them banded together in the 1960s to try to figure out how best to collect semen from (and then artificially inseminate) peregrine falcons. The species was dying out—it was their only option. Fortunately, a falconer named Lester Boyd came to the rescue. No longer did teams of two (or three) have to manually ejaculate birds of prey. Now they could use a copulation hat instead.

You’ll have to listen to the episode for the full details, but afterward, I highly recommend you watch this video of a falcon copulation expert getting a male peregrine falcon to ejaculate on his hat. The noises alone are truly incredible.

Fact: It’s legal to buy human bones, and business is booming on Instagram

By Rachel Feltman

Today’s fact comes from an excerpt of Skeleton Keys, a fantastic new book about all things bone by Brian Switek.

The fact that #HumanBones is a thing isn’t altogether that surprising; people are bound to encounter skulls and even fully-articulated skeletons if they go to cool enough museums and tourist destinations. But what about #HumanBonesForSale? Or perhaps #RealHumanSkull? These links aren’t taking you to some seedy dark web underbelly, friends: artists and collectors openly sell and trade human bones on Insta. Find out more about how this works—and why you should really, really think twice (or thrice, even) before buying human bones of your own—in this week’s episode, and in Brian’s book.

Fact: Our muscles jerk us awake so we don’t fall out of trees and die

By Claire Maldarelli

A few years ago, I noticed something strange as I tried to fall asleep: Just as I was about to reach a deep slumber, my muscles would twitch. Each night, it would happen a few times, never in the same area, until I finally fell asleep. I didn’t think much of it, and it even went away for a year or two. Recently, though, the twitching has returned. This time, I felt like I needed to get the final answer. So I did what any health reporter would do: I skipped the doctor and went straight for the medical literature.

As it turns out, I’m super normal. Human bodies are weird. And, unsurprisingly, much of our physiological functioning is still a great mystery to the medical community.

What I was experiencing is what medicine has dubbed a hypnic jerk or, more precisely, a “normal startle jerk.” Exactly as I had experienced, they are sudden contractions of one or more body segments occurring mostly as people fall asleep. They are sporadic and can affect anyone at any age. In fact, some studies suggest they affect between 60 and 70 percent of the general population.

As common as this phenomenon is in the general population, researchers haven’t quite pinned down what makes our muscles flutter. One theory claims it’s a simple act of nerves misfiring as they transition from awake to sleep mode. Another says that it’s a protective reflex: The brain mistakes total muscle relaxation as a free-fall and sends our muscles into action. A related idea from researchers at the University of Colorado takes that theory one step further. It could be, they say, an evolutionary mechanism. In their paper entitled “The effects of the tree-to-ground sleep transition in the evolution of cognition in early Homo,” the researchers surmised that it could be a way for primates to ensure they didn’t literally fall out of trees as they fell asleep. Those awakened by a muscle twitch could readjust themselves and make sure they were in a safe place before their brains and muscles kicked off for the night.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Falcon sex hats and buying human skulls on Instagram appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is about all things hot—providing just a quick taste of the sorts of stories you’ll find in the latest issue of Popular Science. We’re now a digital-only magazine, which means you can access it right here and now.

FACT: Some skyscrapers are so shiny they turn into death rays

By Corinne Iozzio

In 2013, a London skyscraper known as the “Walkie Talkie” building made its mark on its neighborhood in an unusual way: Sunlight bouncing off the topmost floors of the bulbous facade melted cars on the street below. At the peak of its shine, the ray emitted 15 times as much solar radiation as would usually be found on the ground—enough to hurt any humans unlucky enough to cross its path.

Strangely, though, this was not the first time the so-called Fryscraper’s architect had set a town alight; the Vdara hotel in Las Vegas had, only a few years earlier, reflected rays so powerful they singed guests’ hair on the pool deck below. This was such a persistent problem that the hotel installed an army of giant umbrellas to shield swimmers and sunbathers. The Walkie Talkie now has a shield in place to provide a similar fix.

Many other buildings dotted around the globe have spurred similarly scorching scenes. Computer-assisted models have since revealed just how dangerous these rays can be, spurring physicists to sound alarms about the reflectivity of our modern structures—and implore architects to design buildings that sweat the exterior temperature as much as the interior one.

FACT: The sun will not explode in the year 2057

By Purbita Saha

Here’s some good news: We still have another five billion years before the sun runs out of hydrogen and sets us and our planetary neighbors on fire. That gives us a little more time than the sci-fi movie Sunshine predicted, and a couple of millennia to understand how stars truly meet their ends.

Astronomers have a pretty good guess at how the sun will burn out, based on the trajectories of yellow dwarves in other solar systems. But not all stars follow the same destiny. An energy analysis of distant galaxy NGC 6946 reveals that the red supergiant at its heart barely exploded as it completed its death spiral. Instead, it sort of just vanished and formed a gaping black hole, leaving its celestial neighbors intact. 

Experts are wondering if the red supergiant Betelguese will go out the same way. The grizzled star was looking dim in the night sky last year, but recent findings hint that it may have been due to a dust cloud, not impending nuclear doom. Tracking its fate and modeling more stellar scenarios could give us more insight on how our—and existence as we know it—will end.

FACT: If you love hot tubs, thank the Jacuzzis

By Rachel Feltman

When I set out to learn the history of the hot tub, the first, like, five pages of google search results were all from companies that sell them, which is absolutely my least favorite genre of history article. But then I found this amazing Atlas Obscura article from 2015 by Rich Paulas. You’ll have to listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing to get the full scoop on my deep dive into the history of hydrotherapy—from the Ancient Romans, to bougie old resorts, to literal torture devices, to a bygone vestige of swinger culture, and finally to the fancy wellness aids we know and love today. But if you don’t learn anything else, know this: Jacuzzi isn’t just a product name. It’s also a surname. And the Jacuzzi family had a pretty prolific run as inventors during the first half of the 20th century. The next time you find yourself luxuriating in a whirlpool, take a moment to say salute to the Italian brothers who made your soak possible.

Plus: Click here for tips and tricks on how to take the absolute best and most relaxing bath ever.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post Some skyscrapers are so shiny they turn into death rays appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: The winner of the 1960 Olympic marathon did the whole race barefoot

By Claire Maldarelli 

Running shoe technology has come a long way in the last 100 years. Companies have added arch support, ridged soles designed to minimize shin splints, and, most recently, literal carbon-fiber plates sandwiched between an energy-returning ultra-lightweight midsole. All of this research and investment is meant to help athletes run their best races, and while world record times, particularly in the marathon, have come down with the advent of higher-tech shoes, sneakers aren’t everything. Case-in-point: Abebe Bikila and his barefoot Olympic triumph. 

Bikila was a last minute addition to the Ethiopian marathon squad at the 1960 Summer Olympic games in Rome. According to a documentary on the Olympics YouTube channel, a few days before he was set to leave for the big games, his shoes fell apart. Despite a long search, he couldn’t find a pair comfortable enough for him to race 26.2 miles in.

[Related: Science helped me run my first marathon in 3 hours and 21 minutes]

Instead of settling for a mediocre pair of kicks, he ran arguably the most important run of his life barefoot—and won. In doing so, he became the first Black African to win an Olympic Gold medal. This all goes to show that while technology can help an athlete succeed, it doesn’t always make or break a race. That’s one of the things about sports—you can’t predict everything that will happen on the day of the event. Listen to this week’s episode to hear how Bikila pulled off such an incredible fee(a)t.

FACT: The early-modern Olympics were a mess of bizarre sports and inconsistent rules

By Rachel Feltman

Before we get into the madness that used to count as an Olympic event, let’s start with a bit of historical context. The Olympics are at least around 3,000 years old—that’s when we know the Ancient Greeks held several major sporting festivals, one of which took place every four years at Olympia—but they didn’t exist from the year 400 to the year 1859. The ancient games tapered off during the Roman empire, and it was only in 1859 that Greece started holding modern Olympiads in Athens. The first international games took place in Athens in 1896, not long after the International Olympic Committee first formed.

The winter games weren’t a thing until 1924, and in general, it took a few decades for the Olympics to look anything like the events we hold today. Olympians had to provide their own lodging until 1932, for instance, so at those first games, most international competitors were people who happened to be in the host country for some other reason—like diplomats. Also, only amateurs were allowed to compete, and rules were kind of all over the place. 

For those first few Olympic games, and especially the second iteration—Paris 1900—countries just inserted events that they expected locals to do well in, which led to some very weird competitions. Motor boating, pigeon shooting, pistol dueling, and croquet were all featured in the 1900 games, to name just a few of the wildest examples. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about when and how the Olympics became the tightly-run ship they are today.

FACT: The Olympics used to give out medals for art and poetry

By Sara Chodosh

When I found out that there used to be Olympic medals for art, I honestly thought I must have misheard or misunderstood the podcast I was listening to. Or maybe that there was some technicality that I was missing—surely they couldn’t have done this. 

But it’s true: there used to be Olympic medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and music. 

There’s still kind of an artistic component to the Olympics today, in that there’s always a new logo design and some kind of overall aesthetic that ties the event together. There’s usually a public installation of the Olympic rings or some such event, and often the host city keeps that structure in place for years afterward. But the Olympics have changed so much in the past century that it now boggles the mind to consider holding a painting contest as part of the festivities.

There’s lots to admire about Olympic athletes—their commitment, their ambition, their skill—but in the end, the Olympics are an athletic endeavor. And the modern Olympics, in particular, are an event largely designed to make the organizers very wealthy, despite rules against paying the athletes who actually participate. Sorry to be a downer! Listen to the episode for far more fun facts and to learn how all of this somehow relates to Michael Jordan.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post How Abebe Bikila won the Olympic marathon without shoes appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’d have an even weirder answer if you’d listened to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week will issue new episodes to iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, and PocketCasts every Wednesday, and it’s your new favorite source for the weirdest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

Check out our inaugural episode here below, and keep scrolling for more info about the facts contained therein.

Fact: Thomas Jefferson was super into sloths

From Sara Chodosh

I unearthed this fact while researching a story about how humans might have hunted giant sloths. These beings were eight feet tall, had thick hides, and despite being on the slow side would have been quite hard to kill.

The actual study was pretty straightforward: Archaeologists found human footprints embedded within sloth tracks, and it seemed like the sloths were taking evasive action whenever there were humans tracking them (isolated sloth prints go in a roughly straight line, whereas those with human tracks on top show signs of sharp turns).

To spice up my stories, I try to find tangential facts, so of course I started researching giant sloths on Wikipedia. You always have to make sure those facts are true, but it can be a great starting point—it’s crowdsourced, so people often add these incredible bits of information that you might not find in a standard academic paper. That’s where I read that there’s a giant sloth species named for Thomas Jefferson, and as soon as I started researching I found enough amazing material to write a whole separate post. None of that made it into the final story, but it made for the perfect Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week!

If you want to read on, here’s some more information about the actual sloth, why Jefferson even cared about paleontology in the first place, and why he hoped Lewis and Clark would find gigantic creatures when they journeyed out West. You can even read the original letter that Jefferson wrote to the American Philosophical Society about the sloth bones, in which he mistakes them for a giant cat’s skeleton.

Fact: Butts are so spicy

From Rachel Feltman

Honestly, where do I begin? This week’s facts started with the creation of the Scoville Heat Unit scale (which we use to rank pepper hotness) and ended with the 18th century equivalent of Urban Dictionary. The main takeaways:

Chili peppers taste spicy because they excite the same pain receptors that evolved to protect us from exposure to heat. And yes, those receptors are also in your anus. You need them on every mucus membrane! Do you want to accidentally get fire up your butt? I don’t think so. But it’s unfortunate for us that plants have evolved to take advantage of this necessary pain receptor. And it’s unfortunate for those plants that, in spite of their ingenious method for appearing unappetizing to our sensitive palates, humans keep popping peppers anyway.

No one has a single, definite answer for why humans keep eating painful peppers like a bunch of fools, but one of my favorite notions is the concept of “benign masochism.” We might seek out things that feel dangerous even though they aren’t in order to enjoy the thrill of overcoming adversity—or perhaps to help prepare us for truly dangerous situations in the future.

We wouldn’t have our scale for ranking chili peppers if grad students hadn’t been forced to drink sugar water spiked with capsaicin, the chemical that gives peppers their heat. Capsaicin isn’t the only spicy chemical! Gingerol gives ginger its pungency. People used to put ginger oil in horse butts to make them act livelier. According to Wikipedia, live eels were often used to this terrible end.

But wait! We tracked down Wikipedia’s source. It’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published by Francis Grose in 1785 (and again in 1788). He also defines such phrases as “ars musica” (which means “a bum fiddle,” leaving me with nothing but questions). I do not doubt that this book existed and said what Wikipedia claims it said, but I want to believe that Francis Grose made up the bit about putting live eels in horse butts. Surely it was just a bawdy flam he heard from some hicksius doxius or pickthank!

Fact: Eleanor Roosevelt put her baby in a cage

The weirdest thing I learned last week? There were a few brief decades around the turn of the 20th century where baby cages were all the rage in the United States. Based on a pediatrician’s recommendation that parents “air” their infants, city slickers starved for space crafted chicken wire and other materials into cages, anchored them to their apartment windows, and placed their naked babies out for a good, ol’ fashioned, healthy breeze. For more on baby cages, listen to our podcast, or check out this photo-loaded story from Mashable, or this roundup of the worst inventions ever from Time. (Baby cages makes it in the top 20).

If you enjoyed the podcast, leave us a review on iTunes. See you next week, weirdos!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Giant sloths, caged babies, and spicy horse butts appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Viagra might be a secret weapon against period cramps

By Purbita Saha

Sildenafil has only been on the market since the late ‘90s. In its brief history it’s helped tens of millions of people and made billions for Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies.

But Viagra (the brand-specific name for the drug) wasn’t always meant to treat erectile dysfunction. It works all over the body, relaxing the muscles and dilating blood vessels, which could either lead to a boner or help with a slew of other conditions. The first clinical trials involving sildenafil were actually for angina and hypertension. Throughout the course of those studies, the attending nurses discovered that the pill had some… conspicuous side effects on people with penises.

[Related: How a Victorian heart medicine became a gay sex drug]

The drugmakers saw a major money making opportunity and changed the drug’s focus. That’s a story plenty of folks have heard before. But what’s less known is that the medication also had soothing effects on study subjects experiencing pain from uterine cramping. A more recent clinical trial, run by Penn State University and the National Institute of Health from 2007 to 2011, followed up on this neglected result. It only included 25 participants, with a few receiving Viagra and a few receiving a placebo, so we have to take them with a grain of salt. But those patients did indeed experience massive relief from primary dysmenorrhea, a.k.a. period cramps, within just four hours. (It’s important to note they got the dose vaginally, not orally, which may have maximized the effectiveness and minimized other side effects.)

Those findings were reported almost eight years ago now, and for some reason there hasn’t been much research or buzz around Viagra and period cramps since. Which might point to a larger pattern in medicine—that there just isn’t a big appetite when it comes to understanding and treating reproductive issues that don’t have to do with penises.

FACT: Cats once dropped out of planes to help fight an army of rats

By Sara Kiley Watson

Weird stories tend to keep getting weirder over time—and the true-story turned urban-legend tale of public health officials who parachuted cats to a remote island to prevent a resurgence of the plague has certainly acquired some mythical add-ons over the years. 

Basically, back in the 1950s, Borneo was having a bit of a mosquito problem. What was customary in the day (and still is in some places), was to knock out those nasty biting bugs with DDT. This thorough spritzing had some unexpected consequences, including that enough predatory creatures died off to cause a massive upswing in thatch-eating caterpillars. But the real problem was that cats kept keeling over.

To regain control over a now precariously poised situation for potentially disease-carrying and predator-free rats, the British Royal Air Force allegedly dropped 20 cats over the island in parachuted baskets to “wage war on rats which were threatening crops.”

Over time, the story has picked up multiple spins. Some sources claim that thousands of yowling cats were involved, while others say that the plague had already broken out amongst the people living there. The most popular fabrication is that this is a story of biomagnification. Listen to this week’s episode to separate feline fact from fiction.

[Related: You’re probably petting your cat wrong]

FACT: In the future we might be able to breathe through our butts

By Rachel Feltman

On one of the very first episodes of Weirdest Thing, I did a whole exhaustive history of something called a smoke enema. You’ll have to go back and listen if you want all the grim details, but the gist is that throughout history and until the early 1800s, people sometimes tried to resuscitate, revive, or otherwise treat ailing humans by blowing smoke up their anuses. 

Now, I’m not quite issuing a correction here. I’m not retracting my fantastic smoke enema expose. But I’m here to say that, while I wish it weren’t so, there may have been more to the idea than I thought back when that old episode aired. In May, researchers released a study that showed at least some mammals—mice and pigs, to be precise—can be saved from suffocation with the help of oxygen-rich enemas. 

Lead researcher Takanori Takebe, of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, was inspired by non-mammalian animals that we already know can absorb oxygen through their intestines. Sea cucumbers, for example, suck water through these branching tubes just inside their anuses, expelling the liquid and absorbing the oxygen. There are also fish called loaches that, in addition to breathing through gills like most fish, can pop their heads out of the water to get gulps of air through their mouth, which are then absorbed by their intestines since they have no lungs.

So, it wasn’t totally far-fetched to think mammals might be able to get oxygen from their rear ends, but we obviously don’t just breathe through our butts every time we go swimming or anything as simple as that. Listen to this week’s episode to hear how Takebe and his team managed to turn a bunch of hypoxic mice and pigs into happy and healthy butt-breathers.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post Viagra could have been a groundbreaking cure for period cramps appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, and PocketCasts every Wednesday, and it’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

Fact: Smoke enemas were part of the first real effort to resuscitate drowning victims

By Rachel Feltman

Until the 1700s, Western doctors didn’t generally try to revive patients who seemed to be dead. Drowning victims, for example, were out of luck if someone happened to pull them out of the water before they were quite thoroughly deceased: Touching an unknown body was taboo, given that it might be the corpse of a criminal or someone who’d committed suicide, and in many places a failed effort to resuscitate someone on your property could leave you liable to pay for their funeral. Mouth-to-mouth had some proponents in the medical world, but it was considered vulgar.

Enter London’s Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned (which is now the Royal Humane Society), a group that paid big bucks to folks with proof that they’d successfully implemented one of the premiere resuscitation methods of the day. And yes, one of those methods was a smoke enema: The idea was to warm and stimulate the body, and perhaps gently encourage the lungs to fill, by blowing tobacco smoke down someone’s throat or up their rear end.

You could improvise with a pipe (which was not a great idea in general, but was especially problematic in treating cholera patients—another popular use for tobacco enemas, according to medical literature), but a setup with bellows and various attachment was more professional. In fact, the aforementioned society had kits with this setup—pictured at the top of this article—placed around waterways like the Thames. They allegedly worked a few times.

Tobacco fell out of fashion (at least as a medical treatment) in 1811, when English scientist Ben Brodie confirmed that nicotine caused harm to the cardiovascular system. Why we kept smoking it for fun is a great question.

The history of resuscitation turned up a few other interesting nuggets. For starters, there were other intriguing (and stupid) methods. One involved flopping a patient over a barrel and rolling it back and forth:

This was kind of a precursor to CPR, but it also meant banging a patient’s head around while you tried to revive them. Not ideal!

Speaking of less-than-ideal resuscitation efforts, you can listen to the podcast to hear the thrilling saga of Anne Greene, a woman hanged in 1650 but revived some hours later. Doctors were thorough in their notes about this strange occurrence, so papers on the incident provide an amazing window into medical practices of the day.

Fact: The products you use rely on sneaky sound design to manipulate your emotions

By Sara Chodosh

I didn’t think an academic paper with the title “The psychology of condiments” would lead me to a fact about Clinique mascara, but yet again the world of marketing psychology has surprised me. This week my fact was about how many prototypes Clinique made for one of their luxury mascaras—not of the mascara itself or even of the brush, but of the cap mechanism. (And by the way, shoutout to this 2012 Wall Street Journal article by Ellen Byron for many of the facts I shared this week).

They wanted their mascara to sound high quality, and it turns out humans associate deeper sounds with a more luxurious product. Even though it changed nothing about the actual quality of the mascara, changing the slope of the twist-top cap to produce a soft, low click apparently gave the impression of quality.

The same is true of lighters, whose caps can be designed to make a more pleasing clicking tone, and of apparently every other product that you buy.

Of course, it also goes the other way: Sometimes companies get sounds wrong and wreck an otherwise perfect product. Just look at SunChips. They attempted to roll out a new, compostable bag that was eco-friendly, visually pleasing, and also made one of the most obnoxious crinkling noises I’ve ever heard. It seemed preposterously loud:

People hated the sound so much, SunChips had to discontinue the new packaging almost immediately.

If product designers are doing it right, though, you shouldn’t even be consciously aware of all the fine-tuning that happened before something hit the shelves. In fact, as the researchers of that condiment paper point out, the color of the Heinz baked beans can was designed to mesh well with the color of the beans themselves. Data shows that if you like the look of the packaging, you often think the product tastes better. This is why high-end, artisanal product companies invest so much in their packaging. And incidentally, even though Heinz is the most popular brand of ketchup by far, in blind taste tests it often ranks near the bottom. A study like that would lead many to believe that Heinz simply isn’t worth it. If it doesn’t really taste the best, why buy it? But the author of the paper pointed out something I hadn’t considered before: if the Heinz packaging makes you perceive it as better-tasting than it “really” is, what does it matter? It still tastes better.

Fact: In 1957, a volcanic eruption left a lighthouse stranded away from the sea

By Mary Beth Griggs

I was on vacation the week before we recorded this podcast, so the weirdest thing I learned this week was more like the weirdest thing I saw last week. I was in the Azores, a small archipelago of islands in the Atlantic featuring wild, stunning landscapes unmistakably shaped by volcanic eruptions.

In 1957, a billowing cloud emerged from the waves near the coast of Faial, one of the nine major islands in the Azores. The mixture of steam, gas, and small rock particles originated from an underwater eruption just off the coast, near a lighthouse. That eruption lasted 13 months resulting in ash buried houses, agricultural fields, and the first floor of that poor lighthouse. In the process, it created over a square mile of new land and effectively moved the coast.

Wind and waves eventually re-claimed most of that new land, but about 20 percent of it is still visible, along with the lighthouse, which is now part of a interpretation center at the site and sits decidedly inland. The eruption re-shaped the island in more ways than one, also changing the demographics of the island, and of parts of the United States. Thanks to legislation pushed through by a very famous senator (listen to the podcast to hear who it was) thousands of refugees from the island emigrated to New England.

As a bonus, I briefly talk about what was essentially my runner up for the weirdest thing I saw last week—the inside of lava tubes. Formed by lava flowing downslope, many islands in the Azores are strewn with them. Inside the ones that I visited, the floor is (cooled) lava, and the walls are coated with still-unidentified bacterial growths that glitter like silver or gold in the light of a headlamp, like something straight out of Annihilation. In short: volcanoes, they’re pretty awesome.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: smoke enemas, sneaky sound design, and stranded lighthouses appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode features special guest Jonathan Sims. Best known around these parts for writing and starring in Rachel’s favorite audio drama series, he’s also the author of “Thirteen Storeys” and a tabletop game designer.

FACT: Bees can get jet lag (and probably know everything)

By Sara Chodosh

If you’ve seen the viral TikTok video about how bees perceive time, my apologies in advance—you’ll already know a lot of the information I dive into on this episode. If you haven’t, boy oh boy do I have a story for you. 

You might think that it’s obvious that any animal, not just bees, experiences the passage of time. But that’s mainly because, well, we can’t really imagine what it would be like to not perceive time. Scientists don’t care, though. Just because we have trouble imagining it doesn’t mean it’s not true, and by default we assume that less complex animals—like bees—don’t perceive time. Which is how some biologists ended up flying a nest of bees across the Atlantic Ocean, and then again across the US. 

You’ll have to tune in to the episode to hear the full story, as well as to find out what bees and humans have in common, time perception-wise. And as a special bonus, you’ll also get to hear about the UK’s truly bizarre beekeeping laws.

[Related: Bee theft is almost a perfect crime—but there’s a new sheriff in town]

FACT: Steam trains were once cutting-edge getaway vehicles for criminals—but the telegraph stopped them in their tracks

By Rachel Feltman

Around six or seven in the evening on January 1, 1845, Sarah Hart’s neighbor heard sounds of groaning and distress from her Salt Hill cottage—and saw a man known to be a frequent visitor leave the house. When the neighbor went in to check on her, she found Sarah almost unconscious and foaming at the mouth, and Hart soon died. It seemed clear she’d been murdered. But when locals rushed off to catch the man who’d last seen her alive, they just managed to see him boarding the train back to London. None of them knew his real name, and could only vaguely describe him—so unless they somehow beat the train to the city to alert the constable there, all hope of catching the culprit was lost. 

Luckily the Slough station was equipped with the absolute cutting edge of technology: a brand new telegraph machine. 

Listen to this week’s episode to hear about how John Tawell—a man “in the garb of a kwaker with a great coat—became the first criminal caught thanks to electronic communication.

This is generally considered one of the first murders involving hydrogen cyanide, which had only been discovered in 1782 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele; it’s also sometimes said to be the first known instance of a murderer using a steam train as a getaway vehicle. But it is definitely, absolutely the first case of a criminal being caught thanks to a telegraph—and electronic communications in general—and the media sensation no doubt contributed to the technology’s adoption around the world. Tune in to hear the whole sordid tale.

FACT: Sir Isaac Newton was a keen alchemist

By Jonathan Sims

Widely remembered as one of the fathers of modern science and credited with foundational discoveries in gravity, calculous, motion, light (and even the invention of a new type of telescope), Isaac Newton is considered one of the greatest minds in history with good reason. He also tried to use the power of God and Magic to turn base metal into gold.

Alchemy remains one of most fascinating fields of study ever devised, a mixture of actual chemical experimentation and religious mysticism tied up in so much secrecy and possible charlatanism that it’s impossible to truly say exactly what any of it meant. It remains a compelling example of how the modern division between scientific enquiry and religious or spiritual exploration was not always the case.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

The post What’s stranger than bees telling time? How we learned that they can. appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, and PocketCasts every Wednesday, and it’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

Fact: Rich people ate other people—for their health—until very recently

By Eleanor Cummins

By and large, humans eating humans is frowned upon. But from the Middle Ages to the Victorian period, Europeans ate parts of other people. A lot. Medical cannibalism was the fairly-common practice of consuming human fat, blood, and (in Victorian England specifically) mummies to cure sickness and fortify their corporeal forms. Fat and blood pudding were widely considered panaceas. But any body part—especially if the corpse was newly dead and, therefore, more likely to contain “vital spirits”—was fair game.

The practice peaked in sometime in the 1600s, which is when King Charles II was drinking “the King’s drops,” a mix of human skull and alcohol. But interest in buying medical cannibalism products continued into the Victorian era which is, well, not that long ago. And some modern-day billionaires still kind of want your young, healthy blood. We might not use human fat in routine painkillers any more, but some things (gruesomely) never change.

Fact: A 12-century German nun likely wrote the first description of the female orgasm

By Rachel Feltman

My fact-finding mission this week began with inspiration from a new piece of music composed by J.L Marlor. So let’s start with that:

My sister Chelsea Feltman (who performs the piece above) commissioned it after falling in love with a letter by astronomer Caroline Herschel. She was a talented astronomer who lived in her brother’s shadow, as so many women did until recent years. She reflects on the forgotten women of science in her letter.

One of the forgotten heroes she references caught my eye: Herschel claims that Hildegard of Bingen, a German nun born at the turn of the 12th century, suggested a heliocentric solar system hundreds of years before Nicolaus Copernicus got credit for it. I’d heard about Hildegard before—she experienced so-called visions now thought to be migraines, and produced countless works of exquisite music, along with writings on medicine and astronomy—but this factoid was new to me. Was it true?

The answer is… well, probably not. But it’s hard to say. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear more, but you can read more about the text I reference (the stuff that could maybe possibly be about heliocentrism and/or universal gravitation) here.

Hildegard had such a wild life that I had to leave a few facts on the cutting room floor. My favorites: Once she’d taken over as magistra of her monastery, Hildegard told the Abott she’d received a vision telling her to pack up all the nuns and move to Rupertsberg. When he refused, she took ill and was unable to move—no matter what anyone tried—which she said was a sign from god. The abbot himself tried and failed to wrench her out of bed, at which point he relented and let the nuns move out. This wiley spirit didn’t leave her as she aged. In her 80s, she defied the pope by burying an excommunicated friend (who she said had repented before death) in the Rupertsberg cemetery. When the pope told her she had to disinter the friend, she instead removed all markings from the grave in order to hide it. She then petitioned until the pope changed his mind, and died not long after.

While Hildegard’s astronomical writings are the subject of debate, she’s also known for making impressive conclusions in medicine. She seems to have had some idea that boiling water could prevent disease, and she also appears to be one of the first people to connect syphilis to its sexual transmission. And of course, as we explain in the podcast, she provided a remarkably thorough description of a female orgasm.

Fact: A family in South Carolina has been recording the weather every day since 1893 on behalf of the federal government

By Sara Chodosh

One of my favorite things about being a science writer is that you get to interact with people who are just so passionate about their field of study. I know that sounds simple, but it’s such a joy to talk to people who love what they do, especially if it’s something that most people find boring. I think the climate is one of those things. The folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who spend their time tracking and analyzing climate data are crucial to our understanding of how the planet is changing. Someone has to be responsible for that process, and those someones also happen to run a fabulous blog called Beyond the Data. It’s literally just interesting things they stumble across in their research or find intriguing. I’m an avid reader.

Anyway, that’s how I found this week’s fact, which isn’t so much weird as it is heartwarming. There was a blog post about how Thomas Jefferson and the telegraph helped create a system of weather stations now known as COOP. I already knew about the COOP system, but I hadn’t fully appreciated how much of our climate data—dating back all the way to the early- to mid-1800s—gets recorded by volunteers. COOP stations have basic measuring equipment that allows the volunteers to record temperature, precipitation, pressure, and so on, which they do every day. Even back in 1895, there were at least 2,000 people running COOP stations all over the U.S., including in areas that weren’t officially states yet.

Some of those volunteers passed down the responsibility of running the station to their children or nieces or nephews, with the result that there are a handful of families that have been recording the weather on behalf of the federal government for 125 years. And it’s only because of them that we have such a thorough record of how every part of our country has changed climatologically. All hail the volunteers!

Got a weird fact you’d like to share with us? Check out The Weirdest Thing on Facebook. And as always, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. Stay weird!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: wild weather, Victorian cannibalism, and the female orgasm (as told by a 12th-century nun) appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is all about the surprisingly weird world of play: Bog snorkeling, cheese rolling, baseball bat boning, and so much more. We’re celebrating our latest magazine issue, which is available as a digital-only edition for anyone who wants to read it. It’s all about the ways humans (and animals) have fun, and you can check it out for yourself right now. Here’s some more info on the weird facts we highlighted on this week’s episode:

FACT: Baseball players have a surprisingly scientific reason for their superstitious “bat boning”

By Corinne Iozzio

All professional sports are packed with storied superstitions, but baseball really knocks it out of the park when it comes to strange traditions. As Jess Boddy explained on a previous episode of Weirdest Thing, this sport just seems particularly prone to superstitious tricks and bizarre myths. In the latest issue of Popular Science, which you can access right now from your phone, tablet, or computer, we examined some of the science and tech that goes into crafting a high-quality baseball bat. And somewhat to our surprise, that led us to what seemed like an extremely unscientific practice: Boning. No, not that kind of boning.

As we soon learned, baseball players historically used big bones (often cow femurs) to rub down their wooden bats. It might sound like some sort of attempt at dark magic, but at the time, giving your bat a good bone did have some effect on its performance. The force and friction helped compress the soft wood of the bat, and hitting with a harder surface means a ball will go farther. Compressing a bat also keeps it from wearing out and splintering.

However, as we explain on this week’s episode, modern-day boning practices aren’t quite as logical. Listen to Weirdest Thing to learn more.

FACT: Your favorite childhood toy (and sometimes snack) started out as a wallpaper cleaner

By Sara Chodosh

I was never a Play-Doh eater, but the fact that it’s basically just salt, water, and flour always made me think it must have vaguely culinary origins. Maybe some parents had given their kids a ball of poorly-made pie dough to play with, only to find it served as an excellent distraction. Or maybe a child “helping” with some baking figured out that a thick, floury paste made for a super-pliable toy superior to tough modeling clay.

But it turns out Play-Doh’s origins are far more utilitarian, and far less obviously child-safe: It began as a wallpaper cleaner. This is a product we don’t have a lot of use for today, but when you heated your house with a coal stove and your walls were covered in actual paper (unlike modern wallpaper, which is made with types of plastic), you really needed something to help lift all the black dust off your walls that wouldn’t turn paper soggy. That substance was Play-Doh—or, more accurately, a mixture of flour, salt, water, and boric acid that would later become Play-Doh. You’ll have to listen to the episode for all the details, but suffice to say we have one forward-thinking woman in particular to thank for this member of the Toy Hall of Fame.

FACT: Cheese rolling, bog snorkeling, and underwater ice hockey are all real sports

By Rachel Feltman

If working on the latest issue of PopSci taught me anything, it’s that people have come up with some seriously weird ways of goofing off. You can peruse the digital edition of the magazine for stories about folks who enjoy doing ultra-marathons in dark, freezing conditions and grown men who obsessively craft and race tiny pinewood derby cars. We also explore the concept of “Dark Play,” which finally explains, once and for all, why you loved to drown your sims in their swimming pools.

With that inspiration in mind, I decided to spend this week’s episode taking a closer look at one of my favorite bizarre recreational pastimes: Competitive cheese rolling.

The Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake is held every spring in Cooper’s Hill, England. It sounds simple enough: You roll a wheel of cheese down a hill and try to catch it. But that 9-pound wheel o’ cheese can hit speeds of 70 mph, turning it into a dangerous projectile capable of knocking you down (or out) like a bouncing bowling ball. Then there’s the fact that the 650-or-so-foot hill where the event takes place is quite steep and uneven, making it incredibly dangerous to run straight down.

The speed of the cheese and the perilous nature of the slope means that competitors don’t actually catch their prey; instead, the winner is whoever makes it down to the bottom of the hill first. But the sport isn’t just absurd. It’s also incredibly dangerous. In 2008, an article in the Sydney Herald—written because competitors come from all over the world, with Australia being no exception—described the event as “20 young men chasing a cheese off a cliff and tumbling 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital.”

You can find out more about this fascinating event and its controversial history in this week’s episode. And because cheese rolling just wasn’t weird enough on its own, I also share a long list of strange but true sports from around the world. Toe wrestling, anyone?

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Why baseball players ‘bone’ their bats appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Doctors used to smell and even taste urine to diagnose all sorts of diseases

By Rachel Feltman

Doctors often take urine samples to diagnose their patients. But before we had modern lab tests, physicians would have to visually examine, smell, and even taste their patients’ pee to analyze it. In this week’s episode, I get into the fascinating (and sometimes gross) details of uroscopy, or the clinical examination of urine. The practice dates back thousands of years, and persisted until pretty recently. Of course, every medical therapy has its detractors. Naysayers were particularly turned off by the fact that diagnosing diseases based on urine color had a low barrier to entry, which is to say that just about anyone could get their hands on a diagnostic color wheel and start charging for medical services. This led to some pee-related quackery, and one famous paper went so far as to refer to urine as “a harlot and a liar.”

See also: uromancy. Yes, people really tried to tell fortunes—and hunt down witches—using pee. History is a weird place.

Tune in to hear all this and more, including a rundown of all the different colors your urine can be and what those colors mean. Purple urine bag syndrome is my personal favorite, though I wouldn’t recommend having it.

Fact: Cats and cochlear implants have something in common

By Jason Lederman

The cat telephone might just be the weirdest fact I’ve found yet for this podcast. In 1929, a professor at Princeton named Ernest Glen Wever, along with his research assistant Charles William Bray, wanted to learn how sound travels across the auditory nerve. Naturally, they figured the best way to do this was to turn a living cat into a working telephone.

I’ll save you the gory details in this post, but the work was pretty fascinating, albeit morbid. And their results proved that analog sounds could be converted into digital files, laying the groundwork for cochlear implants.

I also discuss the difference between hearing aids and cochlear implants, as well as what hearing with a cochlear implant sounds like (the clip starts at 3:40).

I may not have won on this week’s episode, but I still feel like the cat telephone is the weirdest thing I learned this week, and maybe ever in my entire life.

Fact: A math problem that stumped at least 1,000 mathematicians has an incredibly simple answer

By Claire Maldarelli

In a 1990 issue of Parade magazine, columnist Marilyn Vos Savant published a brain teaser known as the Monty Hall Problem. It was based on a similar problem presented in the 1970s game show, Let’s Make A Deal.

Once published—with answer key included—it caused such an uproar that almost 1,000 mathematicians from universities across the country called and wrote in to tell her she was wrong. Spoiler: She was absolutely correct.

Here’s how it went: Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door (let’s call it door number one) and the host, who knows what’s behind them each, opens another door (number two). This one has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door number three?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice from one to three?

Most people think it would not be to their advantage to switch. Listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing to understand why that’s wrong, why you should always switch, and why despite knowing they should switch, most people still won’t.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: doctors drinking pee and telephones made of cats appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is extra special: It’s the first half of our latest live show, which happened on October 31 at Caveat in NYC. As mentioned at the top of this week’s episode, you may hear hosts or audience members shouting “drink!” This is because we were playing a drinking game, which you’re welcome to recreate on your own time (assuming you’re of legal age and not driving while you listen). Check the bottom of this post for rules. And if you want to see us live in your city, help us out by completing this quick listener survey!

FACT: Harry Styles might be a witch

By Jess Boddy

Witch season hit its peak back in the mid-17th century. Thousands of people were accused of witchcraft, many of whom were exiled, drowned, stoned, or burned at the stake. Plenty of people in power used this extreme state of paranoia to oust unwanted people from their communities by flagging them as witches. To do so, they hired witch finders like Matthew Hopkins.

Hopkins, previously an unsuccessful lawyer, made a decent chunk of change this way—so much so that he bestowed the title “witch-finder general” upon himself. He’d use pretty much any physical anomaly he could find to diagnose someone as a witch, including something he called the witches’ teat. This, he argued, was where witches’ imps or familiars would come to suckle and gain power. As studies in medical journals later noted, these teats were often just dermatological quirks like moles—or extra nipples.

By some estimates, one in 200,000 people are born in the United States with an extra (or “supernumerary”) nipple. There are even six different classes of extra nipples, and they can take the form of an entire breast growing out of your leg, or a modest nipple on the bottom of your foot. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear more about the dastardly witch-finder general, how extra nipples form, and a short list of celebs with extra nipples! (Harry Styles has two!)

FACT: Madame Tussaud’s wax figures began as a macabre royalist hobby

By Eleanor Cummins

Madame Tussauds was actually a person, and a bada** one at that. She was born Anna Maria “Marie” Grosholtz in 1760. Marie started training in wax modeling when she was very young; she took her first cast—of the dying writer Voltaire—at age 17. But the French Revolution changed her life forever. Upon being released from prison (she herself was almost executed as a royalist sympathizer!), Marie saw an opportunity to make wax casts of dead royals, including Marie Antoinette. In this special live episode of Weirdest Thing, I talk about how, in this time of bloodshed and political upheaval, the international entertainment brand Madame Tussauds was born. (Featuring a special guest appearance by Beyonce.)

FACT: Frankenstein’s mom-ster doesn’t get enough credit

By Rachel Feltman

Most people know Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein,” but I for one had some misconceptions about her. I’d been taught in school that she wrote that seminal classic as a horror story about technology, because she didn’t trust science and all its flashy modern gizmos. THIS IS ALL A LIE. World, meet the real Mary Shelley: The nerdy goth girlfriend we never even knew we had.

Essentially raised by an absentee anarchist, a pile of feminist philosophy books, and a tombstone (not kidding), Mary Godwin shocked even her liberal father’s sensibilities when she ran off with a married father-of-one named Percy Shelley. They were still unmarried when they took a summer vacation to Geneva with their young son, Godwin’s step-sister Claire, and Claire’s on-again-off-again squeeze Lord Byron (also present was John Polidori, Byron’s personal physician, who was presumably there to monitor his totally bizarre diet). But this was no ordinary summer vacay: It was 1816, widely known as the “year without a summer” due to atmospheric disturbances caused by the eruption of Mount Tamboro in Indonesia, and the spooky, gloomy vibe was just perfect for writing ghost stories. That’s where Mary Godwin (soon to become Mary Shelley) wrote her masterpiece.

In our most recent live show, I dug deep into the weird and angsty childhood that created Mary Shelley’s unique sensibilities as a writer. Check out the podcast for more info on a writer who was ahead of her time in more ways than one (and who definitely kept what she thought was her late husband’s heart in a drawer for years).

Drinking game rules!

Take a drink of your fabulous and refreshing beverage of choice whenever:

• A cast member says the word “weird” or “spooky”
• Rachel makes a joke about the fact that we obviously planned the live show in advance even though the podcast is totally spontaneous we swear
• Someone in the audience is audibly appalled (or just appallingly audible)
• Body horror or otherwise excessive mention of viscera
• You feel like it

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And if you want to see us live in your city, help us out by completing this quick listener survey!

The post The historical significance of Harry Styles’ nipples, explained appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: A jaunty foreskin trend may have influenced religious circumcision

By Rachel Feltman

While researching weird historical sex stuff (as one does) and trying to determine whether or not Prince Albert really had a penis piercing (he probably didn’t) I came across the fascinating phenomenon of the kynodesmē, which is Greek for “dog tie.” In Ancient Greece and Rome it was common—trendy, even—for young people with penises to grasp the ends of their foreskins, pull them up over the glans, and use pieces of sticky paper or strips of string or leather to fasten them shut. In doing so, they essentially bundled the glans of the penis snugly into a little goodie bag, ensuring it wouldn’t peek out to say hello while they were playing sports (or just plain playing) in the buff.

The preference for foreskin over the rest of the external sex organ seems to have mostly been due to cultural attitudes around sex and penises at the time. We discussed this a bit on a recent episode of Weirdest Thing, but to make a long story short, size was not everything in Ancient Greece. In fact, a smaller penis was considered a sign of self-control and intellect, while a large one—especially if it didn’t have a foreskin to hide demurely inside of—was a sign of barbarism.

One of the most famous examples of the practice is shown in the ancient bronze sculpture known as “The Boxer,” where the penis is not just secured within the foreskin, but tucked and tied up out of the way. But there are many pieces of art and historical texts referencing this practice (and the related use of metal pins to keep foreskin shut over the penis) in non-athletes. It seems to have been quite popular among male singers and performers, who were likely leaning into the belief that ejaculation diminished their artistic abilities.

According to some scholars, this trend even influenced the act of religious circumcision. According to a 2007 paper in Reproductive Health Matters, Jewish circumcision up until around 300 BCE required just the removal of the very tip of the foreskin. This meant Hebrew athletes traveling to Greece to compete could, as they say, do as the Athenians did: They gathered up their not-so-diminished foreskins and tied their penises up in little bundles. This allegedly didn’t go over well with religious authorities at home, especially since the young men often came back with foreskins stretched out by the practice—undoing the visual evidence of their religious practice. Supposedly, this lead to a demand that more foreskin come off during the bris.

FACT: Luxury department stores once sold rhino poop at a huge mark-up

By Ellen Airhart, host of the podcast Plant Crimes

Elephants and rhinoceroses are popular zoo attractions. But for a long time, they’ve provided a service beyond entertainment and education. Many city zoos have sold animal manure as “Zoo Doo,” “ComPOOst,” “Elepoo,” or “Zoo Poopy Doo” to city composting programs, farmers, and even Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. In this episode of Weirdest Thing, I dive into the stinky history of poop, every zoo’s least endangered resources. Excrement from herbivores, such as elephants, rhinos, camels, and giraffes make the best compost. Carnivore poop could contain diseases, and regulators ask managers to incinerate insect poop to prevent any concealed eggs from escaping the enclosures. Some zoos, however, employ rhinoceros beetles to roll other animal’s poop into easily packable balls. However they decide to sell and market the poop, zoos have turned what could be an annoying mess into useful fertilizer.

FACT: Dimples are a defect, but people want them anyway

By Eleanor Cummins

You hate to say it but… a dimple is a birth defect. Specifically, it’s a genetically-determined depression in what should be a smooth face muscle. Lots of people have dimples—and even more want them. In many cultures, they’re considered attractive (perhaps because so many of us idolize the chubby cheeks of youth). The desire for dimpling is so strong that in the 1930s, a woman named Isabella Gilbert of Rochester, New York, invented and marketed machine to give women dimples. It probably didn’t work and it definitely hurt a lot.

On this episode of Weirdest Thing, we poke a little deeper.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Ancient athletes did something truly shocking with their genitals appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is extra special: It’s the second half of our latest live show, which happened on October 31 at Caveat in NYC. As mentioned at the top of this week’s episode, you may hear hosts or audience members shouting “drink!” This is because we were playing a drinking game, which you’re welcome to recreate on your own time (assuming you’re of legal age and not driving while you listen). Check the bottom of this post for rules. And if you want to see us live in your city, help us out by completing this quick listener survey!

FACT: Ben Franklin invented an instrument that some thought could drive people insane

By Rachel Feltman

Anyone who’s been watching HBO’s new “Watchmen” series has already heard of Mesmerism. By total coincidence, I happened to bring up the creepy character Franz Mesmer in our latest live show. Mesmer—who’s where the word “mesmerizing” comes from—was a German doctor during the 18th and early 19th century. He invented the concept of “animal magnetism,” otherwise known as “Mesmerism,” which essentially boiled down to the belief that something—some sort of life force—flowed through all living things. By tuning into that flow and altering it, Mesmer believed, one could control the health (and mind) of any human subject. Most of his therapies and experiments centered around spiritualized versions of what we now might consider hypnotherapy.

Mesmer’s experiments were pretty quickly side-eyed by mainstream medical practitioners, and while Mesmerism had a decent following through the mid-1800s, it didn’t have a great reputation. So when Mesmer decided the glass harmonica (also often called the armonica) produced the perfect music to accompany his bizarre hypnotic sessions, the popular instrument actually suffered from the association. This may have contributed to the ethereal armonica’s downfall, helping to fuel rumors that it so affected human nerves it could drive someone playing or even listening to it to insanity—or even an early grave.

Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about Ben Franklin’s armonica. Franklin elevated the ancient musical water glasses made famous by Sandra Bullock into a delicate instrument beloved by composers like Mozart, who composed the piece in the video below (played by Dennis James, who pretty much single-handedly brought the instrument back to life in the 1980s).

Was the armonica’s disappearance due to its mesmerizing powers? Its high levels of lead? Its fragility? The fickle preferences of German art critics? All this and more in this week’s episode of the show, which you’ll find at the top of the post. Just try not to let us hypnotize you on your commute.

(If you’re curious to see the Fantasmagoria illustration mentioned in the episode, you can find it here.)

FACT: People ate people due to an etymological error

By guest host Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Medical cannibalism has already featured prevalently on the show, but in this week’s episode I take a deeper dive into the specifics of mummy consumption. Namely, the fact that people ate mummies—the ancient, mummified, stolen remains of other human people—because someone somewhere misunderstood what a word meant. Find out more by listening to the live show!

FACT: The 1904 Olympic marathon included doping with rat poison, hitch-hiking to the finish, and several near-death experiences

By Claire Maldarelli

I was just a few days out from competing in the New York Marathon when we recorded this live show, so the spookiest stories I could come up with were all about one thing: running. But trust me—back in the olden days of modern marathoning, races got plenty scary.

I’ll set the stage. In 1896, the Greeks decided to bring back and modernize the Olympic games, and they decided to include marathons—running for 26.2 miles. Now it’s 1904, and even though the sport of running as we know it is still in its infancy, a motley crew of male athletes both amateur and elite have gathered to undertake the endurance race in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s August, it’s hot, and there’s a single self-service water station (in the form of a well that may or may not have given runners the runs, depending on who you ask) right in the middle of the course.

Listen in to hear the entire saga—from champions intentionally doping with rat poison, to men literally tearing off their pants, to a would-be cheater rolling to the finish line in a taxi.

Luckily our understanding of the human body has come a long way, and marathons today are approached a lot more scientifically. Check out the tricks I learned while prepping for my first marathon—no rat poison required.

Drinking game rules!

Take a drink of your fabulous and refreshing beverage of choice whenever:

• A cast member says the word “weird” or “spooky”
• Rachel makes a joke about the fact that we obviously planned the live show in advance even though the podcast is totally spontaneous we swear
• Someone in the audience is audibly appalled (or just appallingly audible)
• Body horror or otherwise excessive mention of viscera
• Ryan finds an excuse to mention birds
• You feel like it

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And if you want to see us live in your city, help us out by completing this quick listener survey!

The post Ben Franklin invented a mesmerizing instrument with a deadly reputation appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: You may have a mysterious pouch inside of you

By Purbita Saha

All weird medical stories seem to lead back to Mary Toft, but this one covers plenty of ground long after 18th-century scientists debunked the mother of rabbits’ bewildering birthing tale. Originally discovered by James Douglas, a Scottish midwife and “physician extraordinary” to the sitting queen of England, the Pouch of Douglas remains a mysterious, little-known cranny in the female body to this day.

My own enlightenment on this wonderfully fluid space (sometimes called a cul-de-sac or an infinitesimal void) came from an unusual source: Australian standup comedian Hannah Gadsby. I won’t get into how she landed on the topic—all I know is that I couldn’t stop Googling it after security handed my phone back after the show. What I learned is that the Pouch of Douglas acts like a buffer for the female nether organs. It’s wedged between the uterus and the colon, so when either of those parts move and squish around, they have some space to slide past each other without sparking conflict.

Beyond that, there isn’t much medical research on the Pouch of Douglas. Studies in the past decade or two show that it could shed clues on really painful reproductive conditions like ectopic pregnancies and endometriosis. But until its uses are better understood, I’m happy to think of it as a built-in fanny pack that expands to hold all the secrets that my body unconsciously collects over the years.

FACT: We’re pretty sure knuckle-cracking doesn’t cause arthritis—thanks to one very dedicated cracker

By Claire Maldarelli

You’ve probably heard it from at least one well-meaning parent or teacher: Don’t crack your knuckles or you’ll end up with gnarled, arthritic hands. When I was growing up, my sister would drive my mom crazy by cracking every possible knuckle in spite of this advice. The threat of arthritis couldn’t stop her from enjoying those sweet pops.

It might not shock you to learn this connection is completely unfounded. One of the largest studies on the subject to date, published back in 1990 in The Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, looked at 300 healthy people of whom 74 called themselves habitual knuckle crackers. The rates of arthritis were exactly the same between them and the non-knuckle crackers.

Other, smaller studies over the years have come to similar conclusions. However, none of these studies have anything on Donald Unger. Listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest thing to learn more about the most dedicated knuckle-cracker of all time. Trust me: He lives up to the hype.

FACT: For decades, the hottest thing a woman could do was die

By Rachel Feltman

Things got very weird after the French Revolution (one example: there were balls open only to the grown children of people who’d been guillotined where dancers wore mourning clothes and pretended to roll their heads around violently), and through some combination of the glorification of aristocratic women sitting in their underclothes waiting to die, the simplification of fashion due to laws immediately following the war, and the absurd subcultures of grieving and traumatized young right people, it became very popular to wear extremely thin dresses regardless of weather. Enter the myth of “Muslin Disease,” which I discovered while perusing a list of supposedly deadly fashion trends. Women were so enamored of clingy dresses, the story goes, that they dunked their paper-thin muslin gowns in water to make them totally transparent. Apparently, contemporary physicians blamed the damp fashion trend for outbreaks of consumption, the unpleasant and often fatal disease we now know as Tuberculosis.

It turns out this probably wasn’t a real trend among European teens (though their clothing choices got plenty weird) but it did get me thinking about a very real trend that existed at the time: Making yourself look as close to death as possible.

Numerous scholars have opined on the era of “consumptive chic,” when the symptoms of TB—pale skin, protruding bones, bright eyes, and pink cheeks—were considered the height of beauty and fashion. Edgar Allen Poe waxed poetic on his young wives’ (plural—he married two different women with consumption, because he had a type) coughing of blood and wane appearance; Charlotte Bronte referred to the disease that would kill both her sisters as “flattering”; Weirdest Thing favorite Lord Byron bemoaned his misfortune at not dying slowly of consumption, which he was sure would make him even more popular with the ladies than his strict diet of vinegar and crackers. Until researchers finally identified the bacterium that causes TB, it was considered an aristocratic and elegant disease—one that women were more likely to get if they were beautiful, and one that made women suffering from it even more lovely by the standards of the day. This bizarre feedback loop had women poisoning themselves with arsenic (to lighten their skin) and belladonna (to dilate their pupils) in the hopes of emulating symptoms of a disease that was actively killing many of their friends and family.

But it’s not hard to see why a frail woman held so much societal appeal. A woman on the verge of dying was easy to control—and if she happened to be dying in a way that made her fit mainstream beauty standards, well, all the better. Check out this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing for more on the evolution of consumptive chic.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post There’s a secret room in the basement of the female body appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is about all things chill and serene—providing just a quick taste of the sorts of stories you’ll find in the latest issue of Popular Science. We’re now a digital-only magazine, which means you can access it right here and now.

FACT: Pee and ginger ale are both useless against motion sickness

By Purbita Saha

Humans have been trying to understand and combat motion sickness for millennia. In 2017, a trio of neurobiologists from Munich looked at classic texts like the The Odyssey and Siku Quanshu and found different descriptions of nausea and dizziness relating to ship, cart, and even camel travel. Entire battles were lost because warriors got too sick on the open seas. But no matter what, each culture connected the ailment to different body parts: The Greeks and Romans blamed their stomachs, while the Chinese blamed their livers and their brains. These are all technically correct, though the true root of motion sickness is in your cerebrum. When fixed on a target like an enemy fort or a TikTok sea shanty, your eyes think that you’re at rest while your vestibular system, located in your inner ear, tells your body that it’s moving. This mismatch grows even stronger if you hit choppy waves or stop-and-go traffic.

Because ancient people didn’t understand the cause of motion sickness, they used some pretty out-there remedies to try and cure it. Some would rub wormwood, wine vinegar, olive oil, and mint on their noses, or drink raindrops off the end of bamboo shoots. Others used poisonous plants like hellebore to clear out the stomach, and even drank pee from young children.

[Related: Video games can cause motion sickness—here’s how to fight it]

Today we know that the best way to fight the churn is to just get used to the turbulence, whether it be in hyper-realistic video games or on a birding boat trip. Modern medicine has also given us histamine-fighting solutions like dramamine and scopoline, but you can also try vetted prophylactics like soup crackers and apple slices. Just don’t chug a can of ginger ale—your stomach will have a tough time breaking down the sugars, and you’ll probably end up blowing chunks anyway.

FACT: Some animals really do sleep with one eye open

By Corinne Iozzio

In 2007, a group of researchers studying the movements and habits of sperm whales off the coast of Chile happened upon a pod of the ocean giants snoozing. Though their posture was odd—noses pointed straight up as their bodies bobbed lazily like corks—that wasn’t what surprised the crew.

As their crafts approached, the cetaceans remained stock still. That inaction upended what we thought we knew about how many marine mammals rest; as far as scientists had known thus far, some species of dolphins, whales, and seals literally sleep with one eye open. Called unihemispheric sleep, this wakeful rest is largely a survival tool, one that allows the animals to surface to breathe, keep an eye on their pods, and maintain lookout for potential threats. Trying to understand and map this ability to half clock out, also observed in some bird species, reveals the complex interplay happening in our noggins when we slumber. And subsequent studies trying to see if the same nocturnal limbo happens in humans also tip just how little we know about what counts as a good night’s sleep either at home or in the wild.

FACT: Humans might be worse for wildlife than toxic radiation is

By Rachel Feltman

Almost exactly 35 years ago, on April 26 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant became the site of the worst nuclear disaster the world had ever seen, or (thankfully) has seen since. While the accident itself only directly killed two people and led to the deaths of several dozen others due to acute radiation poisoning, the lowest existing estimates based on scientific models suggest that at least 9,000 people will ultimately die of conditions tied to radiation exposure due to the accident. 

In the immediate aftermath, a 19-mile radius surrounding the Chernobyl plant was roped off and evacuated, but the so-called Exclusion Zone would eventually be expanded to cover around 1,000 square miles of Ukraine, with some 350,000 people permanently relocated. 

Animals stuck in those highly contaminated areas obviously did not do well. If radiation that high doesn’t kill you outright, it can damage your DNA in a way that leads to all sorts of mutations in your offspring, not to mention all the cancers it can cause. So, it was generally assumed that the exclusion zone would devoid of life before too long.

But starting in the late 80s, researchers keeping tabs on local critters started to see them bounce back. And now some animals actually seem to be better off in the Exclusion Zone than they would be in surrounding areas. Radiation is dangerous at high levels—and in parts of the Exclusion Zone, it could still kill you quite quickly. But based on what we’ve seen in the Chernobyl Exclusion zone, the removal of human activity and interference might be enough to balance out a wee bit of toxicity.

You can learn more about the thriving wildlife of the Exclusion Zone in the latest issue of Popular Science. Click here to subscribe!

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to check out the latest issue of Popular Science, on digital newsstands now.

The post People used to drink a very specific kind of urine to treat motion sickness appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: The Elf on the Shelf is more nefarious than you might think

By Rachel Feltman

References to (and parodies of) the elf on the shelf are ubiquitous on social media this time of year. Here’s a short introduction: Based on a character from a 2005 children’s book, this little elvish doll is designed to help keep kids in line around the holiday season. The gist is that parents convince their kids that the figure magically poofs back to the North Pole nightly to report on behavior so Santa can make his naughty and nice list.

But a 2015 paper casts this practice in an incredibly creepy light. The specific qualities of the shelved elf—the fact that kids aren’t allowed to touch it or engage with it, but must follow its rules of behavior at all times for fear it might be surveilling them—don’t foster morality or respect in small children, the study authors argue. Instead, the scenario merely introduces wide-eyed tots to the idea that they should always behave as if someone were watching them—someone who doesn’t just think less of them or judge them based on their actions, but someone who could have them punished.

To explain why that totally sucks, I bring us back to a previous topic of discussion on Weirdest Thing: Jeremy Bentham, the man you probably know for spending his afterlife as a creepy stuffed doll. When he wasn’t making plans to be taxidermied, he also designed some deeply disturbing prison concepts—and they still inform the way surveillance works today. My story also features an Icelandic giantess who wreaks Christmas havoc with the help of her 13 Yule Lads (and a cat), but you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out how the great Gryla factors in.

FACT: Polar bear plunges are dumb

By Claire Maldarelli

It sounds like a dumb idea: In the middle of winter, strip down into your bathing suit and leap into ice-cold ocean water. Yet every year, hundreds of thrill-seekers around the world take part in this New Year’s Day ritual. In fact, Coney Island has an entire club—the Polar Bear Club—devoted to the sport, hosting the plunge multiple times a year. But the human body isn’t designed to dive into freezing water, which is why the activity can actually be dangerous if you go in with zero preparation. Check out this article for tips on how to plunge safely, if you really must. And listen to this week’s episode to hear how the whole thing got started.

FACT: Christmas disease is a thing, but it will not fill you with holiday cheer

By Sara Chodosh

When I started looking for Christmas-related topics on Google Scholar, I was hoping for something cheery and joyful—or at least something actually about Christmas. Instead I found Christmas disease, an ailment not marked by excessive cheer or red noses but by … well, I won’t spoil the surprise. Suffice to say there’s a lot of death in this episode.

BONUS: Torturous treadmills, champagne and balls, and the history of time itself

Need more Weirdest Thing to get you through the holidays? Check out our 2018 special, which features thrilling facts on the sadistic origins of your least favorite exercise machine, the infamous Times Square ball, the science of bubbly wine, and the history of modern calendars.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Elf on the Shelf and Krampus are more alike than you think appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week reaches Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like this article, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode breaks our usual format to dive deep into a recent package in our print magazine written by Eleanor Cummins—all about the mysterious, internet-driven phenomenon known as ASMR. Take a listen, and keep reading for a few select facts from the story.

FACT: We’re just starting to understand ASMR

Since it was first referenced in a 2007 forum post called “weird sensation feels good,” autonomous sensory meridian response has taken the internet by storm. The phenomenon, wherein certain sounds and other sensory stimuli produce a feeling of calm (or even physical shivers of pleasure), has spawned more than 13 million YouTube videos dedicated to inducing the effect in viewers. But the first scientific paper on ASMR wasn’t published until 2015. In fact, researchers working on the topic say that the sensation’s association with sensual videos and internet discussions made it hard for their studies to gain serious traction.

FACT: ASMR didn’t get its name from scientists

The name “autonomous sensory meridian response” was coined by a cybersecurity professional named Jennifer Allen, who formed a Facebook page for fellow enthusiasts in 2010. “Meridian” replaces the sexual connotation of the commonly used “brain orgasm” with a more abstract reference to some developmental peak, while the rest of the phrase describes tingles in vaguely clinical terms.

FACT: ASMR has an evil twin called misophonia

Misophonia is an intense aversion to certain sounds, and it can be so severe as to interfere with everyday life. But even though ASMR and misophonia seem like polar opposites, they often share common triggers: You might not be surprised to hear that the sound of a turning page makes some people happy, but it also triggers misophonic rage in others. And while most people could understand a distaste for the sound of a person chewing gummy candy, some folks who experience ASMR long to hear those wet mouth noises. Preliminary research suggests having one of these two conditions might make you more likely to have the other, and unlocking ASMR’s mysteries could help researchers find a way to give misophonics a bit of relief.

For more on ASMR and misophonia, check out this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing and grab a copy of our latest issue, on newsstands now. You can check out the ASMR feature online here.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Listen to this shiver-inducing introduction to the science of ASMR appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode features special guest James Harkin, head researcher for the TV show “QI” and cohost of No Such Thing As A Fish. James joined us in the studio while visiting NYC for NSTAAF’s latest tour to share the fascinating history of radium mania—the craze that had us turning everything from slippers to health tonics radioactive. For more info on the horrific aftermath of this trend, check out this article about the so-called Radium Girls.

FACT: Sweden has a long and complicated relationship with its favorite beverage

By Rachel Feltman

Coffee is a cornerstone of modern Swedish culture, influencing the country’s language and even workplace norms. In fact, Swedes rank among the top coffee consumers in the entire world. But this wasn’t always so—and not just because coffee comes from a plant originally grown in Ethiopia. Long after this stimulating bean found its way to Scandinavian shores, Swedish monarchs struggled to keep coffee from gaining a foothold.

Starting with a high tax on coffee and tea in 1746, King Adolph Frederick spent his life periodically implementing outright bans against caffeinated beverages. Likely motivations included a desire to protect the popularity of beer—which could be produced locally—xenophobia and racism against coffee’s earliest adopters, and a dislike of the sort of intellectual rabble-rousers who took to gathering in cafes. But as is so often the case, Frederick and his fellow coffee-haters hid behind a thin veneer of scientific respectability: The bans were often said to protect citizens from the drink’s deleterious effects.

That brings us to a story oft-referenced, but rarely cited. According to legend, Adolph’s son King Gustav III sought to make his father’s flip-flopping coffee bans stick by devising a sick experiment. He stayed the execution of two men sentenced to death, the story goes, under the condition that one drink copious amounts of coffee daily and the other stick to the same quantity of tea. Some versions of the tale say this “clinical trial” involved identical twins, which would be quite the advanced choice, scientifically (and would represent one extremely delinquent family), so I think it’s safe to say that detail at least is fabricated. Everyone sharing the story seems to agree that Gustav’s plan backfired, with the study subjects both living into their 80′s (long after the king himself perished) and the tea-drinker dying first.

In trying to confirm this story, I found several books that referenced it—and many articles that cited these books as sources. But where did the books themselves pick up records of the tale? That’s totally unclear. So while this story is a fun reminder that cherry-picking data to serve your own agenda will usually backfire, it’s also a fun reminder that books are rarely fact checked—and should never serve as your primary research source! Show me those sweet citations, nerds.

As for the verdict on coffee, it’s definitely not going to kill you, and might even do your body good. But caffeine is another story, so don’t overdo it.

FACT: Queen Nefertiti influenced (deadly) eye makeup trends in the 1920s

By Jessica Boddy

I was extremely jazzed when Glossier released their new eyeliner a few weeks ago. After picking some up and working on how to perfect my cateye technique, I began to wonder how many others throughout history have struggled with crafting precise, symmetrical lines around their eyes. How long has eyeliner been around, anyway?

It turns out, people were lining their eyes all the way back in Ancient Egypt. Essentially everyone—man or woman, rich or poor—used a dark, smudgy substance called kohl to do so. And it did more than just beautify Egyptians. Modern studies show it may have helped reflect the sun’s rays and repel dangerous bacteria.

When an egyptologist unearthed Queen Nefertiti’s bust in 1912, it sported her own signature eyeliner look, and she became an early influencer. Americans were obsessed with Nefertiti and King Tut, whose tomb was dug up shortly after. The 1920s were often known as Tut-mania, and trends of the decade had Egyptian influences. This, combined with makeup’s necessity in the emergent film industry, pushed wearing eyeliner, lipstick, and other products into the mainstream.

But such products were totally unregulated at the time—and some people went blind and even died before the FDA began (barely) regulating them. Listen to this week’s episode to hear some of the horror stories that ensued.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff) and fill out our new listener survey to help us bring our live shows on the road. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Did a Swedish king really try to ban coffee with a deadly scientific experiment? appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: You can now (legally) compost a human

By Eleanor Cummins

For years, activists in Seattle, Washington lobbied for the right to compost humans. Instead of preserving your dead body with toxic chemicals or cremating it in one last giant poof of carbon, Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose argued we should instead turn ourselves into life-giving soil. Unfortunately, that wasn’t exactly legal—a lot of things you could potentially do with dead bodies aren’t. But in May 2019, the Washington state legislature made headlines around the world when it legalized the process. Come May of 2020, you, too, can be composted. Hurrah!

That doesn’t mean all our pressing decomp questions are answered. The company’s website has many serene renderings of what this facility would look like—a lot of plants and sun-drenched reflection spaces and honeycomb containers full of dead people. But how the process actually works is unclear. (Something about a steel vessel and unnamed microbes.) If we look at the way composting other forms has worked in the past, we turn up the biggest question of all: What will they do with dem dry bones?

Fact: Virgin births happen surprisingly often

By Rachel Feltman

It’s a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl, boy and girl make babies, boy goes away, girl just keeps having babies, sperm-be-damned. Parthenogenesis is rare, but well documented in reptiles and fish: female animals that are designed to reproduce sexually can, in some cases, create offspring that are basically their own clones. Most of the cases that make headlines are in snakes and sharks, because they’re frequently kept in captivity. If a snake spends a solid chunk of her reproductive years in a tank alone—or with only other female snakes—she’s probably much more likely to pull the parthenogenesis move than she would be in the wild.

The evolutionary benefit of this is pretty clear once you think about it. If resources are scarce and the population drops, parthenogenesis can help the species squeeze out one more generation in the hope of outlasting environmental hardships. The lack of genetic diversity can become a problem given more than one generation of this sort of propagation, but it serves animals just fine as a stop-gap. There are weird twists on this method, too, like the “kleptogenetic” salamanders that steal genes from other species instead of using the more traditional form of sex cell combination. And if a truly parthenogenetic birth is too much work, some animals can simply store sperm for years and years at a time, using it only when resources are favorable for their future pups. In 2015, a captive shark in California set a sperm storage record of 45 months.

So could a so-called virgin birth occur in humans? True parthenogenesis has never been recorded in a mammal, and when our sex cells try to turn into embryos without outside assistance things very quickly go awry. But in at least one case that we know of, that sort of process did help make a baby. Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about this strange case study.

Scientists are working to turn stem cells into sperms and eggs, which could theoretically allow two same-sex to have a biological child together. They’ve already done the deed in mice!

Fact: Researchers at the South Pole sprint naked through 24 time zones in the dead of the Antarctic winter

By Alex Schwartz

Here’s some very chilling information about what life is like at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. On the surface, Antarctica seems like a very tame continent sprinkled with groups of scientists diligently carrying out experiments—and penguins. But there’s also some pretty weird stuff going on down there: rocket-powered planes, underground neutrino detectors, and ATMs at the edge of the world, just to name a few.

But one of the strangest things in Antarctica is a ritual of sorts called the 300 Club, where presumably very bored scientists experience a temperature change of 300 degrees by sitting in a sauna… and then stepping outside. Okay, not just stepping: they make a run 100-yard run in temperatures of -100F or colder (and that’s before wind chill) to circle the ceremonial South Pole, crossing through all 24 timezones in the process. They only wear snow boots, because sweat from the sauna would make any underwear freeze right to their skin. Dangerous? Definitely. Stupid? Probably. Delightful? Well, it certainly delighted us. Check out this week’s episode to hear more about the researchers who make this daring run—and what can happen to their nipples in the process.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: virgin births, composted humans, and naked South Pole scientists appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Nazi physicians wanted their soldiers to eat warm camel poop

By Sara Chodosh

We don’t often picture burly soldiers crouching over with painful diarrhea, but the reality is that a massive number of them are—both right now and for centuries past. It was only in World War I that battlefield deaths exceeded those caused by disease, and far more of those than you might think are from diarrhea. Even today, Navy SEALS have attested that diarrhea is a common and serious hazard.

If this surprises you, try thinking of soldiers as travelers, and thinking of travelers as people who are suddenly exposed to new bacteria and pathogens they’re unfamiliar with. Soldiers get the runs for mostly the same reasons that other globetrotters do, just at higher rates since they tend to be visiting places with poor sanitary infrastructure.

This holds as true today as it was in World War II (albeit with better drugs in 2019)—and the Nazis were no exception.

Dysentery was a major inconvenience at best and a killer at worst, especially in North Africa, except for the local Bedouin fighters who never seemed to be ill for long. Their secret? Camel poop.

You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out how this remedy worked, but I’ll give you a hint: the answer probably isn’t what you’re expecting. I thought for sure I knew what was going on here at first glance—I was wrong.

Fact: Early pregnancy tests may have introduced a devastating fungal plague

By Rachel Feltman

Ever since a recent episode where I talked about doctors drinking pee for diagnostic purposes and charlatans using it to divine the future, I’ve been thinking about the history of more reputable piss-prophecy. There’s one modern use of urine that combines its ancient draw as both a medical and a spiritual tool: pregnancy tests.

We’ve come a long way since the earliest known use of pregnancy tests, which took place in Ancient Egypt and involved peeing on grain. But don’t roll your eyes too hard: According to one modern study, this method actually worked pretty well—or better than guessing, anyway. References to the practice show up as late as the 17th century. That’s not surprising given how long it took for anything resembling a modern pregnancy test to hit the scene. It didn’t happen until the 1920s, and it took a lot more fuss than just peeing on some grain. Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about the horny rats, dead rabbits, and potentially pathogen-carrying frogs that served to deliver news of pregnancy in the decades leading up to the first pee-on-a-stick style test.

Fact: Pregnancy can permanently alter the size of your feet

By Claire Maldarelli

A few weeks ago my mother told me something that I found strange. After getting her a pair of shoes and guessing on her size, she told me that she used to be a size 5 but now, after having two kids, is a size 6. “Your feet grow during pregnancy,” she said when I looked at her in confusion. “Everyone knows that.”

But does everyone know that? I definitely didn’t know that, and I’m a health editor and a hypochondriac.

It turns out that it’s absolutely true: Many people note a slight increase in shoe size after pregnancy. Researchers think this shift in plantar size is the result of a combination of added pressure on the musculoskeletal system and a surge in a hormone called relaxin (yes, that’s what it’s actually called). During pregnancy, the body’s production of relaxin is as much as 10-times greater than it is normally. The aptly named hormone is secreted by the ovaries and placenta, and its main job is to relax the ligaments in the pelvis and soften and widen the cervix.

But relaxin doesn’t just make ligaments in the pelvic area chill out; it relaxes just about every ligament in the body, including the feet. Combine that with the increased weight of a growing baby and the body it takes to support it, and the end result is a relaxing of the foot’s arch. That elongates the foot, making it bigger. That’s what researchers currently believe to be the cause, anyway. As we discuss on the podcast, there’s still a lot of research to be done on this phenomenon—and it’s probably not at the top of anyone’s list.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Nazis ate camel poop and pregnancy tests spread a fungal plague appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is a recording of our latest live event at Caveat in New York City. Don’t worry, we’ll have another one soon. We can’t share all of our silly powerpoint visual aids in this article, but you’ll find the rules to the referenced drinking game at the bottom of this post! Enjoy the show:

Fact: Naked mole rats will inherit the earth

By Rachel Feltman

Summarizing my live fact is simple, because it was based on an existing PopSci article. Check out some breathtaking facts about an animal you likely don’t give nearly enough credit. Spoiler alert: naked mole rat queens use their poop to keep underlings from getting pregnant. How? You’ll have to listen to learn!

Fact: Prior to the Industrial Revolution, humans had two sleeps a night

By Claire Maldarelli

For the past few months, I’ve been waking up at nearly the exact same time every night: 2 a.m. Conversing with friends, I learned that plenty of people have experienced this same issue. But when I turned to the medical literature, I found something even more bizarre: Apparently, prior to the 18th Century, us humans used to split our night’s rest into two phases. One started shortly after dusk and ended at midnight, and we followed it with another that began at 2 a.m. and ended just after daybreak.

If you are following the timing, that left about two hours free in the middle of the night. By analyzing books, medical and court documents, and other texts from the time, historians have surmised that people indeed slept in two phases, and spent the middle bit of the night essentially having a blast. They socialized, read, drank, and some even worked. At least some scholars said it was the ideal time to have sex if you wanted to conceive. It seemed like a great time to be alive—and awake.

This bi-phasal sleeping pattern wasn’t reserved for the rich, and it wasn’t just something that people did during a time of leisure. It was the norm. Listen to the rest of this week’s episode to understand more about first sleep and second sleep, why it quickly ceased, and why, maybe, this sleeping system should be making a comeback.

Fact: Baby sharks chow down on the same birds that live in your backyard

By special guest Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Baby sharks don’t just blow up the internet with viral earworms. They also eat. And according to a recent study involving lots of baby shark puke, juveniles in the Gulf often eat birds. Not birds that are known for spending time around water, like ducks or pelicans—but the same kinds of birds that live in your backyard. Find out more on this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing, and check out my article about the study over at Gizmodo.

Drinking game rules

Take a drink of your fabulous and refreshing beverage of choice whenever:

• Someone makes a pun (two drinks if it gets a groan!)

• Rachel makes a joke about the fact that we obviously planned the live show in advance even though the podcast is totally spontaneous we swear

• Unexpected butts

• Someone in the audience is audibly appalled (or just appallingly audible)

• A cast member says the word “Weird”

• Ryan finds an excuse to bring up birds

• Body horror or otherwise excessive mention of viscera

• If we try to declare a tie you have to finish your drink, so you’d better cheer loud for your fave

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Two sleeps are better than one appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Uranium glass was all the rage

By Eleanor Cummins

This is one of those facts that I can’t stop talking about. I’ve managed to shoehorn it into stories about Iranian nuclear weapons and Game of Thrones dragonglass. But there’s no end to my fascination with uranium glass, which somehow managed to be a household staple for centuries!

As you probably already know, uranium is a naturally radioactive heavy metal that nuclear scientists enrich into atomic weapons and power plants. But starting in the 1830s, with the Austrian manufacturer Reidel, entrepreneurs began using uranium to add new colors to their glass products. Specifically, a color that could generously be called green apple, or maybe just “radioactive glow,” but more honestly is best describe as “urine-ish.”

The style took off, and remained popular for almost 100 years, meaning plates and decorative bowls and cups capable of setting off a Geiger counter could be found in most kitchens. (Fortunately, the radioactivity was pretty negligible.) Even after its big heyday, it eventually evolved into something called “vaseline glass,” which had a milky flair. And the basic principle was reproduced for everyone’s favorite 20th-century ceramic: fiestaware!

For more of this strange history—and some tips on making it rich in the glass collectibles market—listen to the latest episode of Weirdest Thing.

Fact: A Victorian heart medication turned into a gay sex drug

By Rachel Feltman

All props to Alex Schwartz for this week’s facts, which I learned in the course of editing his fantastic Pride Month feature on the history of poppers. You can read it yourself or listen to this week’s show to find out more, but here are a few highlights: Yes, poppers—now a quintessential character in the past and present of gay culture—started out as a heart medicine in the Victorian era. One scientist even brought samples to conferences to let his colleagues take a whiff of the woosh-inducing chemical for themselves. And intriguingly, poppers were briefly blamed by many for the AIDS crisis—even though their use likely lowers risk of HIV transmission.

Fact: Doctors really wanted milk infusions to be a thing

By Marion Renault

We should be really grateful for the gift of clean, human blood when we receive modern transfusions. In the 1600s (and the centuries that followed), physicians injected animals and humans with everything from milk to urine, beer, sheep’s blood, saline solutions, and perfluorochemicals (a group of polymers similar to Teflon).

In the late 1800s, after about 200 years of messy, often-unsuccessful infusions of human blood—as well as of lamb, sheep, and calf blood—physicians deemed such exchanges undependable (we still didn’t know about blood types or blood-borne diseases or how to keep blood supplies from coagulating). “For a short time, milk seemed to be the panacea,” notes one medical historian.

The first milk transfusions took place in the midst of the 1854 cholera epidemic when a pair of doctors brought a cow into a Toronto hospital and pumped the animal’s milk into their own patients (don’t worry, the milk was passed through gauze and kept in a warm bowl). More doctor followed suit. A Dr. T.G. Thomas transfused milk into a woman suffering from severe uterine hemorrhage. Dr. William Pepper remained optimistic about the procedure even when his patients complained of headache, fever, and renal issues after their bovine infusions. Dr. J.S. Prout suggested a medical-legal use for milk transfusions, proposing they might prolong life to allow “the victim of an assault to identify his assailant.”

Dr. Joseph Howe of New York City was an especially adamant explorer of the procedure. In 1873, he injected 1.5 ounces of goat’s milk into a tuberculosis patient who was soon racked by vertigo, chest pain, and uncontrollable eye movement. Naturally, Howe doubled the dose; the patient promptly died. You can hear more about his egregious experiments on this week’s episode.

Strangely, a century and a half have passed since Dr. Howe’s futile milk experiments and there is still no safe, effective blood substitute approved in the United States or Europe. For now, artificial blood remains a holy grail of trauma medicine. Efforts to synthesize the substance have been—wait for it—in vein.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Victorian sex drugs and deadly milk injections appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Frogs wore tiny taffeta pants to help scientists figure out where babies came from

By Eleanor Cummins

Each year, 1 to 2 percent of all births in the United States began with in vitro fertilization. IVF is a simplified term for a whole host of reproductive technologies that allow scientists to inseminate an egg in the lab, and then implant those fertilized eggs into a womb.

On this episode of Weirdest Thing, I wound back the tape a few years to the time of Lazzaro Spallanzani, an 18th-century Italian priest-scientist. In 1768, he began researching the theory of “spontaneous generation” in earnest. Spallanzani believed that the human egg contained all the necessary ingredients to produce life on its own at a time when many scientists believed the opposite—that sperm cells contained tiny little men just waiting to grow. Both groups were totally wrong, and Spallanzani showed why in a delightful experiment involving these high-fashion frogs.

But Spallanzani didn’t believe his own findings. Even though he conducted one of the first successful in vitro fertilizations ever recorded he remained convinced that his ovist theories were correct. Fortunately, it didn’t matter what Spallanzani believed—only what he proved. More than 300 years later, in 1978, the first human baby conceived through IVF was born.

Fact: DNA analysis supposedly confirmed this decorative gourd was full of royal blood—then proved it wasn’t

By Rachel Feltman

Now that we’re in a world where we can sequence the genome of pretty much anything we want to, whenever we want to, it’s easy to forget just how far our use of genetic analysis has come in a very short span of time. Case in point: A pyrographically decorated gourd, dated to the days of the French Revolution, allegedly stuffed with a handkerchief dipped in the blood of King Louis XVI upon his beheading. The gourd—covered in whimsical war portraits and intricate handwriting burned into the dried skin—is a sight to behold. It certainly puts my tiny pumpkins from Trader Joe’s to shame. But does it really contain the blood of a beheaded king?

When the Italian family who’d owned this precious gourd for ages turned the specimen over to geneticists in 2010, they seemed to finally get an answer: Researchers concluded that the dried blood contained within was old enough to be genuine, and that it belonged to a blue-eyed man. A follow-up study took DNA from the mummified head of Henri IV, who ruled France two centuries before Louis XVI, and claimed to show the remains shared a genetic heritage through their paternal line. Voila, the world concluded: That gourd has royal blood.

Alas, twas not to be. In 2014, researchers armed with a much more comprehensive suite of genetic tests determined that the bleeder in question was actually brown-eyed, probably not particularly tall (as Louis XVI was), and didn’t seem to have the right ancestry to be a member of the French royal family. Mon dieu!

As I explain in this week’s episode of the show, we still can’t be entirely sure that this magnificent decorative blood gourd isn’t crusted with the bodily fluids of King Louis XVI. And that uncertainty is a reminder of just how much we still have to learn about the DNA that makes us who we are.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our extra-special-and-spooky Halloween live show!

The post Frogs in tiny taffeta shorts paved the way for human in-vitro fertilization appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our next NYC live show THIS FRIDAY, June 14.

Fact: Coyotes eat more cats than you might expect

By Rachel Feltman

A recent study by the National Park Service found that 20% of the average urban coyotes’ diet is made up of cats. (How do they know, you ask? Poop. The answer is always poop.) When I read those findings, I realized how little I actually knew about coyotes. It turns out they’re way more common than I’d thought, and they’re not likely to stop popping up in cities anytime soon.

You can listen to the episode for more details, but the researchers’ main takeaway for worried cat owners was this: the coyote scat they studied often had fruit from ornamental trees present along with domesticated cat remains, leading them to suspect that the predators are attracted to yards with lots of yummy plants to eat. Just as you probably keep your garbage cans neat and tidy to avoid attracting scavengers, you should limit the number of edible things in your yard that are just for show. And if you’ve got some honest-to-goodness food growing on the lawn, protect it with a fence. Don’t turn your backyard into an all-you-can-eat buffet and then have the nerve to complain when your cat ends up as dessert.

Still worried? Well, the truth is that your cats shouldn’t be outside in the first place. They pose much more of a threat to the ecosystem than coyotes do.

Fact: BBQ chicken pizza shares a surprising origin story with a supposedly magic salad

By Jake Bittle

This is the story of Ed LaDou, the chef behind BBQ chicken pizza. While today they’re probably more evocative of fast-casual mall food than high-class pizza, LaDou’s creative pies actually originated in the swanky world of Los Angeles’ 1980s dining scene. But as fascinating as that trajectory is, LaDou’s most intriguing invention is a lot more simple: it’s a salad. The salad, as it’s referred to on Caioti Pizza Cafe’s menu. What’s so special about it? Nothing much—except that countless people swear it sent them into labor. This belief has been passed from parent-to-parent for more than two decades, and there’s absolutely no way to prove it works. But as we explain in this week’s episode, there may actually be a somewhat reasonable mechanism behind it. Don’t go rushing off to California to hasten your baby’s arrival, though; the science on natural methods of labor induction is decidedly undecided.

Fact: Scientists aren’t sure if your hair can turn white from shock

By Eleanor Cummins

When I was in India over the winter holiday, I visited the Taj Mahal. The building itself is spectacular, but so is the story behind it: In 1631, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died in childbirth. So he decided to build her the greatest tomb the world has ever known—and that’s the Taj Mahal. But the weirdest thing about the story is that, according to legend, Shah Jahan, who was only 39 or 40 at the time, had his hair turn white from grief, almost overnight.

I wanted to know if that was true.

Synergistically, my mom sent me a link to a great 2016 article in The Atlantic about the phenomenon of “canities subita,” or overnight hair whitening. Turns out, it’s an extremely contested condition. Even if you watch your own hair whiten overnight (as Anne Jolis, the author of this piece, actually did) it doesn’t matter. To be a verified case of canities subita, a doctor has to watch that process happen in real time.

But that hasn’t stopped accounts of canities subita—some more reputable than others—from peppering the historical record. The first recorded case comes from the Talmud, written in 83 AD. Apparently, both Marie Antoninette and Mary Queen of Scots went gray right before the chopping block. And in 1902, the British Medical Journal published a case study on a 22-year-old woman who witnessed someone being murdered, then experienced amenorrhea (she stopped menstruating) and… wait for it…. Half of her pubic hairs turned white, while the other half remained black.

In this episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, I share these legends, conspiracy theories, and alternative explanations. But as so often happens with medical mysteries, for now, it’s up to you to decide for yourself if grief can really trigger ghostly hairs.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. Want to see us get weird in person? Grab tickets to our live show: it’s June 14 in NYC.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: labor-inducing salads and cat-eating coyotes appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is a recording of the second half of our latest live event at Caveat in New York City. Don’t worry, we’ll have another one soon. We can’t share all of our silly powerpoint visual aids in this article, but you’ll find the rules to the referenced drinking game at the bottom of this post! Enjoy the show:

Fact: Chickens are cannibals. Eyeglasses can help.

By Jessica Boddy

In the year 1842, Queen Victoria became obsessed with big and beautiful Shanghai chickens. She built them an aviary and spent afternoons there sipping tea. She bred them and sent precious eggs to her relatives throughout Europe. And just as it happened with Christmas trees and white wedding dresses, the Queen brought another one of her passions into the zeitgeist.

This chicken obsession, dubbed “hen fever,” quickly spread from Europe to America. Bostonians held an annual poultry show, where “hen men” (I swear that’s a real term and not a questionable subreddit) showcased their carefully bred chicken lineages. Soon enough, chickens became so popular that Americans would spend $1 on a single egg, or $120 for a pair of chickens. Today, that’s the equivalent of $30 per egg and $3,600 for two birds. Yeesh!

Eventually, chicken eggs became commonplace on American breakfast plates. Farmers began building coops and housing more and more chickens to keep up with demand. But to their horror, they realized stressed-out, overcrowded chickens were cannibalizing one another!

While improving living conditions does lessen cannibalism, some inventors also turned to eyeglasses to reduce bloodshed. The specs worked by blocking or disguising the sight of blood, which can enrage unhappy hens. One inventor even created rose-colored contact lenses.

For more juicy details on hen fever, and to find out how farmers keep their coops cannibal-free these days, give this week’s episode a listen.

Fact: Goldfish gulping used to be a competitive sport

By Corinne Iozzio

In 1939, spurred by a $10 bribe from his friends, Harvard freshmen Lorthorp Withington Jr. downed a live guppy—and got his picture in LIFE magazine, to boot. So began the great swimmer-swallowing craze of the late 1930s. Kids across the country began battling it out in an absurd game of one-upmanship, in which a student at Clark University eventually would down some 86 goldies. The shenanigans even bred an official governing body, the Intercollegiate Goldfish Gulping Association, which stated that in order for one of these “meals” to count the fish must be at least 3 inches long and must also remain in the competitor’s stomach for at least 12 hours.

The fad died within a year, but YouTube is still littered with its effects. Steve-O, of Jackass fame, attempted to complete the so-called “Goldfish Challenge” only to cough up the pair of guppies—still alive—moments later. Many folks continue to swallow live pets today. In one particularly gruesome case, a high-as-hell Dutch man downed a pet catfish, which became lodged in his gullet and required hospitalization to extract.

Wasted or not, this is all quite unpleasant for the humans involved, but it’s also a pretty brutal end for a pet fish. Our throats squeeze food on its way down, and even a stomach full of water is too hot for a little swimmer to breathe. There’s also a lotta acid down there, and digestive enzymes specifically formulated to break down protein. At best, a goldfish probably has just a few minutes to escape before all hope is lost.

Fact: There was once a man whose life-long, literally insatiable hunger drove him to do terrible things (including, allegedly, eating a toddler)

By Rachel Feltman

The story of the man now known only as Tarrare is tragic, mysterious, and impossible to confirm—but according to doctors of his day, there is at least some truth to the tale of this horrifically hungry boy.

Born in rural France in the late 18th Century, Tarrare was reportedly a pretty normal-looking man. Well, relatively normal. He had an unusually wide mouth, stained teeth, and pale, sagging skin (kind of like a blonde, French Babadook, I can only assume) and while his frame was of a typical size for his age, his belly frequently became grossly distended. Why? Because he ate… everything. Some even claimed he’d been kicked out of his childhood home for eating more than his parents could provide.

This voracious character’s short life had many twists and turns. He was a street performer, a soldier, and, very briefly, a spy—one who ate military secrets and then pooped them out on demand. Unfortunately, while Tarrare was fantastic at eating things and did an awful lot of defecating in his time, he turned out to be terrible at espionage. So instead of being remembered as a superhuman war hero, his biggest claim to fame is that—while hospitalized in search of a cure for his appetite—he may have resorted to munching on medicinal poultices, stray animals, blood, human corpses, rotting garbage, and perhaps even a live toddler. Most of the things that doctors wrote about Tarrare are probably embellished or even totally fabricated. But on this week’s episode, I get into the fascinating and horrifying details—and some possible explanations for the hunger that ruined Tarrare’s life.

Drinking game rules

Take a drink of your fabulous and refreshing beverage of choice whenever:

• Someone makes a pun (two drinks if it gets a groan!)

• Rachel makes a joke about the fact that we obviously planned the live show in advance even though the podcast is totally spontaneous we swear

• Unexpected butts

• Someone in the audience is audibly appalled (or just appallingly audible)

• A cast member says the word “Weird”

• Body horror or otherwise excessive mention of viscera

• If we try to declare a tie you have to finish your drink, so you’d better cheer loud for your fave

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: College students swallowed guppies for sport and chickens wore glasses appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week, Helen Zaltman of The Allusionst, a fabulous linguistics podcast that you should really already be listening to, stopped by to talk to us about the history of the word bisexual—or perhaps bisexuous? You’ll have to listen to find out. It’s a wild romp all the way through, and includes both bisexual oysters and space stations.

Here’s episode five!

Fact: The word “moron” was once a clinical term—and it has a dark history

By Rachel Feltman

My hometown is a weird place: Vineland, NJ is a failed temperance Utopia and allegedly the site of the first use of “not guilty by reason of temporary insanity” in a murder case. But on this week’s episode I focus on a particularly disturbing aspect of the city’s history—and one that I used to hear tossed around as a joke. Vineland is where the word “moron” was invented, which sounds hilarious when you’re 12 but is a lot less funny when you find out how many Nazis were involved.

Founded in 1888, The New Jersey Home for the Education and Care of Feebleminded Children was, in some ways, incredibly progressive and well-intentioned. It was one of the first publicly-funded institutions for assisting people with developmental disabilities, and residents learned to read and master trades that could allow them to live more independently.

But at the turn of the century, most mainstream medical professionals in America were absolutely ravenous for the field of eugenics—the idea that humans could breed certain traits into or out of existence by promoting “fit” individuals and limiting the reproduction of the “unfit.” Doctors and researchers in Vineland were no exception. And during his time as the institution’s director, Henry H. Goddard produced reams of shoddy “research” in support of eugenics that had a direct influence on Nazi ideology. One of his most famous works was cited as evidence of the power of eugenics for years to come. As I explain on this week’s episode, it wasn’t just dangerous—it was also totally made up.

The American eugenics movement has come up a few times on Weirdest Thing: It featured prominently in my story about sideshow babies and, somewhat surprisingly, came up when we talked about Ben Franklin’s love of sitting around his house in the nude. The same pseudoscience that would fuel genocide in Nazi Germany was first popularized in the U.S., and it wasn’t on the fringes. People thought it was rational and irrefutable. Eugenics was completely mainstream. We shouldn’t let ourselves forget just how easy it is to normalize something dangerous and untrue, especially with the help of “science” cobbled together with a specific narrative in mind.

Fact: we repeatedly discovered and then lost the cure for scurvy over hundreds of years

By Sara Chodosh

I was re-reading this fantastic story about how wrong we are about the nature of obesity when, right in the opening paragraphs, I was hit by a revelation I’d been hit by before: for a couple hundred years, plenty of people knew how to cure scurvy, and yet hundreds of thousands of sailors died from it anyway. It’s one of those fact that I was sure must be right, because it’s so outlandish that no one would make it up. And yet…I don’t know, it just didn’t seem possible.

Scurvy is a horrifying ailment—you essentially decompose from the inside out—but it’s also a pretty simple disease. It’s just a lack of vitamin C. Being one of the essential nutrients that our bodies can’t synthesize, we have to get vitamin C from our food. We don’t need much (and certainly not the massive quantities you’re told to take for a cold, which by the way don’t actually do much at all), and it’s really a testament to how easy it is to get sufficient quantities that scurvy is associated almost exclusively with sailors. Vitamin C breaks down pretty quickly, so you have to get it from fresh meat or produce, two things that run scare on ships out at sea for months at a time.

Back in the Age of Exploration, basically every ship had scurvy. Up to half of a crew could be expected to die from it. And like I said, it’s a gruesome death, so you’d think that the second anyone figured out how to stave it off the news would spread. Yet the miracle of lemons and oranges, or even just fresh meat, seems to have eluded most ship captains for hundreds of years, even as multiple men in various navies figured it out in isolation.

You’ll have to listen to the episode to learn exactly why this whole thing happened—and how we eventually solved scurvy for good, mostly by accident. It’s somehow full of even more twists than I ever expected.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our extra-special-and-spooky Halloween live show!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: the origin of moron, forgotten scurvy cures, and bisexual space stations appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Today’s episode is our season 2 finale, and it’s one of our best yet! Now is the perfect time to binge all your old Weirdest Thing favorites. We’ll be back again in a few weeks.

Fact: America’s first celebrity athletes were competitive endurance walkers

By Claire Maldarelli

Modern-day Americans often express their love of sports with downright rabid displays of fandom. We design gear for the express purpose of tailgating, we build giant playing fields, and we bedeck ourselves in pricy memorabilia. But the big American sports craze of the mid-19th century had no stadiums, balls, bats, or helmets. It was called Pedestrianism, and it involved walking. A lot of walking.

The United States was fresh off the Industrial Revolution and experiencing a mass pivot to urban living. With many families leaving behind farming and other physical labors for factory work, leisure time was suddenly on the schedule. Many city residents took to walking as a free means of recreation. Some extremely ambitious folks took that one step further, turning meandering strolls into endurance competitions.

Competitive walking, as it was colloquially known, became the most popular pastime of the 1870s and 1880s. This gave America its first celebrity athletes, with spectators cheering their favorite walkers through feats of the feet. An elite competitor might walk for 30 days without breaks other than for sleep, or battle to complete the most laps around a horse track in 24-hours straight.

Journalist Matthew Algeo wrote an entire book about the rise and fall of this slow-and-steady sport, which he argues created our culture of fandom as we now know it: “This sport, known as pedestrianism, spawned America’s first celebrity athletes. The forerunners of LeBron James and Tiger Woods, Dan O’Leary was as famous as President Chester Arthur himself.”

In this week’s episode, I dive into the origins and rules (or lack thereof) of competitive walking. Side note: If you want to weigh in on our heated butt-related debate, take a look at the image we’re referencing right here.

Fact: The history of butter sculpture is feminist AF

By Rachel Feltman

If you’re not familiar with the concept of butter sculpture, I am thrilled to introduce you to this strange bit of Americana. And I have the perfect example to serve as your introduction to the noble art:

I don't know who needs to hear this but there's a commemorative Apollo 11 butter sculpture in Ohio https://t.co/FfxjgdzuHY/ pic.twitter.com/7nbwxJfaZQ

— Rachel "The Yellow Dart" Feltman (@RachelFeltman) July 23, 2019

Delicious.

Being reminded that this delightful midwestern pastime exists made me wonder about its history. Modern butter artistes work in the confines of refrigerated rooms, but the folksiness of the practice smacks of something that must have been born before the age of electricity. Like, butter sculpture must have evolved in a world where people didn’t have TV screens to stare at, right? It’s sculpting, but with butter. That’s a 19th-century invention if ever I heard one. That opened up a whole series of questions, mainly about how the first butter carvers kept their coveted creations from curdling into a melted mess immediately upon completion.

It turns out the history of this art form is as rich as full-fat dairy, and it all goes back to a woman from Arkansas named Caroline Shawk Brooks. Brooks was an amateur sculptor and a shrewd businesswoman. For starters, she worked with food, a domestic enough medium that she seemed far less threatening than other female artists of the time. She also leaned into a folksy, midwestern image, wearing ruffled aprons as she toured the country and speaking often about her life back home on the range—a wise move, as the Industrial Revolution had many Americans romanticizing the fading culture of family farms. She also tapped into an existing trend of using foodstuffs to build creative displays, which agricultural states used to advertise their bounty (and products for sale) at big fairs and expositions.

In addition to figuring out how to make a living as a female sculptor in the 19th century, Shawk Brooks was talented—and people in the art world recognized her as such. And, perhaps most incredibly, she toured the world with heaps and heaps of butter without the help of modern refrigeration. Her most famous creation traveled with her for six months before she decided to preserve it in plaster. Find out more—including why she continued to use butter in every piece of her art even after moving on to more traditional materials—in this week’s episode!

Fact: Algae giveth and algae taketh away

By Eleanor Cummins

Algae has always had a penchant for producing over-the-top crazy fast. But things are getting worse thanks to industrial agriculture and, now, climate change. Excess artificial fertilizer often runs off into nearby streams and oceans, feeding the voracious organisms. And climate change is warming the ocean’s temperature, which allows algae to thrive. That’s why we’re constantly bombarded with lakeside warnings to avoid algal blooms, and news stories about whales and manatees dying in red tides.

But in her new book Slime, author Ruth Kassinger offers up a different side of seaweed: a natural marvel that has fought tirelessly for its own survival—and helped humans live better in the process. In this episode, I talk about all the surprising industrial uses of algae, from Twinkies to wastewater filtration, and explain just how much our species owes this primordial ooze.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. We’ll be back with more episodes soon!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Feminist butter sculptures and America’s first favorite pastime appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our next NYC live show on June 14.

This week’s episode features an extra weird, very special guest: Wendy Zukerman, host of the Science Vs podcast. Take a listen below (or wherever you like to get your podcasts) and keep scrolling for more info on some of the stories we shared. And don’t forget to take a listen to Wendy’s full Science Vs episode on the placebo effect.

Fact: Tomatoes took a long time to take off in the U.S. because of werewolves

By Rachel Feltman

A few weeks ago I was reading a book and came across a brief, throwaway reference to the long period during which Americans were afraid of tomatoes. I’d heard this before, but decided it was worth investigating further. As it turns out, a lot of the lore around colonial fear of tomatoes is probably made up. But that doesn’t mean tomatoes didn’t have a dicey entry into American cuisine.

Let’s start with the reasonable stuff: tomatoes are in the nightshade family, which means they’re related to—and bear some resemblance to—belladona and mandrakes. Both of these plants produce compounds that are decidedly not great for you (though that hasn’t stopped humans from putting their essence on their eyeballs). British cultivators wrote that the plant was probably poisonous, or at least not good for you, due to its family legacy. This is a fair concern to have about a previously unknown fruit.

But 15th-century Spanish cooks had quickly adopted the fruit after seeing it used in colonies in its native South America, and Italian chefs picked up on the trend after a delay that mostly had to do with hygienic fears (tomatoes, hanging low to the ground, seemed by nature to be suspiciously dirty to aristocrats). British people knew this. They knew people in Spain and Italy were enjoying plump tomatoes without dropping dead. This cognitive disconnect has inspired the description of a phenomenon called the tomato effect: when someone can see that something is working, but believes it’s ineffective because reality conflicts with their current understanding of how the problem works.

Now for the even less reasonable stuff: another reason the distrust of tomatoes persisted in the American colonies is their association with witchcraft and the occult. I won’t spoil the rest: check out this week’s episode to hear more.

Fact: You can pop your neck and cause a stroke (but you probably won’t)

By Eleanor Cummins

It seems to happen all the time: Someone innocently cracks their neck, only to realize they’ve had a stroke.

But I pop my neck a lot, and have no plans to stop, so I wanted to know what the risks really were.

When you pop a joint, what you’re hearing is tiny bubbles of air forming and rapidly collapsing in the fluid between those joins. It seems fairly innocuous, because in most cases it is. Doctors are confident it doesn’t cause arthritis in your knuckles, despite what your grandma says. But your neck is a much more sensitive area.

It turns out that manipulating your neck in any way puts you at an increased risk of stroke or ischemic attack. And “manipulation” can range from something as small as turning your head one day to look for oncoming cars to allowing your chiropractor to just let it rip. What happens is, the artery at the back of your neck rips open. When your artery tries to heal itself, it will form blood clots, which can dislodge and wind up in your brain, causing a stroke.

But the risk is super small. The odds of experiencing an arterial tear from any source are about 1 in 100,000. The odds of a simple pop of the neck causing this are probably even smaller, though we can’t say for sure. Because that’s the most important part of this: All the information we have, and it’s minimal, is merely correlational. It’s possible, for example, that chiropractors aren’t causing strokes by popping patients’ necks, but rather popping the necks of patients who came in because they were already stroking, and thought the chiropractor might be able to fix their headache.

It’s probably a good idea to cool it with the neck popping when possible. Chiropractors themselves are changing the way they pop, to reduce pressure on the neck. But next time you see this strange phenomenon in the news, I just want my fellow poppers to know there’s no immediate reason to freak out.

The post The weirdest thing we learned this week: werewolf tomatoes and overdosing on placebos with Wendy Zukerman appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. Don’t forget to snag tickets to our extra-special-and-spooky Halloween live show!

Fact: Face blindness could affect as many as one in 50 people.

By Rachel Feltman

I’ve always been bad at recognizing people, but it wasn’t until a few key incidents in my adulthood that I realized I was really bad at recognizing people.

In this week’s segment, I give a brief history of our very-much-still-evolving understanding of prosopagnosia, otherwise known as face blindness. Scientists are still figuring out exactly how and why some brains are clinically bad at recognizing or recalling facial features, but one thing is already clear: The condition is much more common than previously assumed. And as I explain to my co-hosts, not all cases on the face blindness spectrum are as extreme as the sort of tales you’d read about in an Oliver Sacks book. You can learn more about prosopagnosia here.

Fact: A colorful chemistry demonstration has injured more than 70 kids and teachers since 2011

By special guest and frequent PopSci contributor Kat Eschner

The rainbow flame demonstration is intended to show students the colors you can achieve when different metals salts are exposed to flame. If you’ve seen the first episode of Breaking Bad, you’ve seen a version of it. They all go pretty much like this:

But as I learned while reporting a story about fireworks for an upcoming issue of Popular Science, these bright displays have a dark side. Chemical and Engineering News estimates the demonstrations have caused 72 classroom injuries since 2011. And lots of people got injured before that, too. The issue is methanol, which can combust at room temperature. As I explain in this week’s episode, the experiment can cause serious harm or even death if performed carelessly.

Experts say it’s possible to dazzle your students with a flaming rainbow without putting them in peril, but following proper lab protocol is crucial—and ethanol is a much safer choice of solvent.

Fact: Watermelon snow puzzled explorers for centuries

By Eleanor Cummins

This week I talk about the history of watermelon snow, which sounds (and sometimes looks) way more delicious than it really is. This pleasantly pink precipitation may look like a nice summery (f)rosé, but it’s actually colored by photosynthetic algae. Learn more about this fascinating phenomenon—with a quick aside from Rachel to talk about Antarctica’s gruesome “blood falls”—on this week’s episode.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our extra-special-and-spooky Halloween live show!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Deadly rainbows, face blindness, and mysterious pink snow appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode features special guest Arielle Duhaime-Ross, who until recently served as Climate Correspondent on HBO’s Vice News Tonight. She’s now the host of Reset, a tech podcast from Vox launching October 15. Arielle joined us to tell the tragic and troubling tale of the creatures most of us call buffalo, which fell prey to the government’s targeted attacks on Native Americans and now exists in a strange state of not-quite-extinction. To learn more, check out this story on the bison’s plight from a recent issue of PopSci.

Without further ado, here’s episode three:

FACT: The history of capitalism has a lot to do with people pooping literal rocks

By Rachel Feltman

Most people have heard the phrase caveat emptor—Latin for “let the buyer beware.” Basically, this is the legal principle that unless someone includes a warranty or guarantee when they sell something, their buyer should not assume the product will do everything it’s supposed to. Luckily, that’s not how it works in most parts of the world these days. But in 1603, a man named Lopus learned the hard way that caveat emptor was indeed the law of the land. He sued Chandelor the goldsmith for selling him a magical poop rock under false pretenses—for the modern equivalent of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars—and lost. Not only did he not get his money back, but poor Lopus became part of an oft-cited legal precedent. About a magic poop rock. That’s pretty crappy.

Even though Chandelor, as a goldsmith, inherently knew way more about precious rocks than Lopus did, the court decided that it was totally fine for him to say he was selling a magical bezoar even if he’d never confirmed it had healing powers. These hard chunks of indigestible material—still often plucked from Asian porcupines for traditional medicine in modern times—were said to cure all manner of health problems, including deadly poisonings. When the poop rock in question failed to cure whatever it was that ailed Lopus, he decided it must be a fake. That wasn’t really anyone’s problem but Lopus’s, according to the verdict: As long as Chandelor never promised in writing that the bezoar was definitely real and would definitely work, anything he wanted to fib about in the course of his sales pitch was totally fair game. The onus was on Lopus, as the buyer, to assume that Chandelor would over-promise.

Is it a fair policy? No, of course not. But as commerce started to expand beyond the scope of small villages and close-knit communities, caveat emptor kept common law courts from being flooded with loads of consumer complaints. Let’s all be glad we live in an era of 30-day return policies—and medical treatments that don’t involve magical poop rocks.

FACT: Going out with wet hair won’t give you a cold

By Claire Maldarelli

Doctors and researchers have obsessed over the origins of the common cold for centuries. But we have yet to nail down any real cures. There are simply too many varieties of the rhinovirus. As such, folklore surrounding what causes the common cold persists. Who hasn’t been told at least once in their lives that standing outside in the cold with wet hair would give you a cold?

It turns out that there’s a scientific origin (sort of) for this supposed truism and it all starts with Louis Pasteur and some chickens. Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about him, and them, the common cold, as well as a research institution in England that paid people to get the common cold and walk around outside in their wet swimsuits for hours afterwards. You’ll never think about mucus in the same way again.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our extra-special-and-spooky Halloween live show!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Pooping magic rocks, how we ruined bison, and lies you’ve been told about the common cold appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode features special guest Dr. Jennifer Gunter. She’s an OB/GYN and New York Times contributor known for obliterating myths about sexual health on Twitter and elsewhere. Dr. Gunter stopped by our studio to chat about her new book, “The Vagina Bible,” and share some of the fascinating facts she learned while writing it—and a new theory about the evolution of the hymen that she put together along the way.

Without further ado, here’s episode two:

Fact: Corpses may be on the move

By Rachel Feltman

Special thanks to Olena Tkach, who posted an article about this study in the show’s sort-of-secret Facebook group! According to the press release Olena shared, scientists staring at footage from a body farm had discovered that corpses CONTINUE MOVING long after death. Like, long after. We’re talking weeks. Months!

I decided this was a weird thing worth learning more about, so I tracked down the actual study in question. It’s up to you whether this is fortunate or unfortunate, but scientists haven’t exactly proven that our flesh-husks keep grooving once we’re in the grave.

The study, led by a medical student named Alyson Wilson working at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER), actually set out to determine whether tracking decomposition with a ’round-the-clock bodycam would yield better data than the more typical practice of checking on a corpse once or twice a day. Like all body farms (yes, there are several) AFTER exists to help scientists, doctors, and members of law enforcement better understand the way our flesh and bones decay. Dropping a donated cadaver in a particular setting and tracking its progress yields valuable data. Until AFTER opened, pretty much all the info we had on human decomposition came from facilities in the northern hemisphere. Researchers had no way of knowing, for example, that bodies left outdoors in Sydney tend to mummify instead of rotting regardless of the time of year.

Taking a photo of a dead guy every 30 minutes for six months isn’t a very sexy experiment, and the findings—while valuable for forensic scientists—wouldn’t thrill most members of the general public (it turns out popping over for a daily check-in with your cadaver yields the same quality of data as a morbid webcam can). That’s why most of the articles about this new paper aren’t actually about the paper at all: they’re about the fact that Wilson saw her subject move. Arms reportedly moved from laying down beside the body to stretching out laterally, then back down again. This probably happened pretty slowly, and could presumably be the result of dried-out ligaments shrinking and snapping.

Because the researchers have yet to publish the corpse-mobility data for other scientists to evaluate, that’s about as much as we know for now. It’s likely that Wilson and her colleagues will be back with more information (and a new paper built around it) soon. Until then, we can say this: according to researchers at Australia’s first body farm, we won’t even get to sleep when we’re dead.

Fact: Birth control’s placebo pill week was created—in part—to make the Pope happy

By Claire Maldarelli

The hormonal birth control pill has now been around for roughly 50 years. Many of its original formulations included a week-long run of sugar pills at the end of each pack, which meant users would bleed once a month to mimic an average 28-day menstrual cycle. Many modern brands still include this placebo week. But here’s the thing: Those bleeding days aren’t real periods. They are simply the body’s reaction to withdrawal from artificial hormones, and, most importantly, they aren’t necessary. Many users simply move on to the next pill pack when their three weeks of hormonal pills are up, and there’s no indication that this causes any harm.

So why do the placebo pills exist? Back in the early days of birth control’s conception, one of its champions—a doctor and devout Catholic named John Rock—was desperate for the Pope to approve of its use. So he designed the medication to mimic a “natural cycle,” spinning the pill as a way to regulate menstrual bleeding and fertility instead of halting ovulation. At the time, the only birth control the church accepted was the rhythm method, where individuals had to monitor their menstrual cycle to make sure they abstained from sex while fertile. Even with modern-day apps and other technological assistance, this kind of fertility tracking is incredibly difficult for most people. The pill, Rock suggested, was merely a way to “regulate” these finicky and hard-to-track periods so that Catholics could reliably know when they should abstain. The problem, of course, was that the pill prevented ovulation and menstruation. That’s where the week of sugar pills—and the resulting not-actually-a-period-bleed—came into play.

Rock’s plan totally failed, but the week-long dummy pills stayed. Listen to this week’s episode to hear the rest of the story.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our extra-special-and-spooky Halloween live show!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: moving corpses, birth control placebos, and the story behind the hymen appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

We’re thrilled to be back for our third season, and even more thrilled to hang out with you on Halloween. We’ll be at Caveat in New York City for another fantastically weird live show on October 31. Get your tickets soon, because our shows sell out so fast it’s spooky. Without further ado, here’s season three:

Fact: Trying to get your 10,000 steps in? Too bad that’s totally made up.

By Claire Maldarelli

We internalize so many rules passed on by our parents, teachers, doctors, and friends in the hopes of being healthy: Brush your teeth for two minutes twice a day, get eight hours of sleep, eat three meals a day—don’t ever skip breakfast—and, of course, get 10,000 steps a day.

We are so used to hearing these pillars of daily living that many of us never question their accuracy. Well, it turns out that making sure you brush each individual tooth is more important than hitting the two-minute mark and breakfast isn’t for everyone (though the eight hours of sleep thing still holds up). So those of us addicted to our fitness trackers would be wise to stop and ask whether 10,000 steps is really a good benchmark to hit.

I am currently training for a marathon, and on my days off, I rarely, if ever, hit those heroic 10K strides. But even the American Heart Association recommends it. Concerned that I could be setting myself up for athletic failure and perhaps even jeopardizing my health (dramatic, I know!) I decided to track down the scientific studies that first turned public health experts and doctors on to this golden number. As it turns out, there weren’t any—except for some recent research, all published after wellness wonks got fixated on 10,000 steps, asking whether the idea holds any merit. Instead of evidence, all I found was one very clever marketing campaign. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more.

Fact: Eleanor Roosevelt’s death is a medical mystery for the ages

By Eleanor Cummins

In 1960, doctors diagnosed Eleanor Roosevelt with aplastic anemia. The rare and, at the time, untreatable condition meant her bone marrow wasn’t producing enough red blood cells. But Roosevelt, known as the “First Lady of the World,” was determined to keep up with her work. She continued traveling the world until 1962, when she was too sick to continue. Wracked with fevers and a hacking cough, she went in and out of the hospital. Her doctors treated her anemia with a steroid and, suspecting she may also have tuberculosis, two different antibiotics. Upon her death on November 7, 1962, their autopsy report showed some surprising findings, which continued to arise decades later, when medical historian B.H. Lerner published his review of the case in 2000. To hear how the mystery unfolded, listen to the latest episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week.

Fact: There’s secret fake poop being used to perfect your toilet paper

Rachel Feltman

A few months ago I got an email I couldn’t possibly ignore: it was an invitation to visit the Procter & Gamble labs in Cincinnati and see all the secret tests that go into making a roll of toilet paper. Oh, and the fake poop. They also promised to show me their hitherto unseen fake poop.

As a long-time poop science enthusiast, I couldn’t get my butt to Ohio fast enough. And you better believe I learned a lot about paper, plushness, robots, balloon butts, and artificial BMs. Check out the inside poop scoop for yourself in this week’s episode and the video above.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on Apple—it really does help other weirdos find the show, because of algorithms and stuff). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets to our extra-special-and-spooky Halloween live show!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: 10k steps a day is totally made up and Charmin knows exactly how you poop appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: The banana was introduced to the United States as a luxury item, wrapped in tin foil, and eaten with a knife and fork.

By Claire Maldarelli

Everyone is entitled to their own dietary preferences, but my favorite fruit, by far, is the banana. It comes with its own biodegradable wrapping, it’s easy on the stomach, and it even has gut-healthy fiber.

Today, bananas can be purchased at any grocery store, by the bundle, often for only a few dollars. In fact, they are so ubiquitous in the American diet today that we have a popular bread recipe that calls for unused, overripe bananas.

But it wasn’t always this way. The banana, which finds its roots in the rainforests of Southeast Asia and might have even been cultivated as early as 1,000 BCE, was an unknown exotic fruit to the American people. That is, until the 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, America held the Centennial International Exhibition in the city of Philadelphia. This multi-month long extravaganza later became the first official World’s Fair in the United States. Held on the fairgrounds along the Schuylkill River in the Fairmount neighborhood of the city of brotherly love, the international celebration, which went on for seven months straight and attracted nearly 10 million visitors, was also a kind of modern-day consumer electronics showcase. New innovations were placed on display for the first time for the public to see. These included the telephone, the typewriter, and even Heinz Ketchup and Hires Root Beer.

A bit down the road was a 40-acre display of tropical plants. And there, for the first time, adventure-seeking Americans could purchase individual bananas, wrapped in tinfoil, served with a knife and for, for 10 cents—which at the time was about an hour’s wage worth of work. Listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing for the rest of how the banana became one of America’s most popular fruits.

Fact: New York City should really be called ‘The Big Oyster’

By Eleanor Cummins

Last month, when New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio announced he would invest $10 billion in fortifying the Financial District at the tip of Manhattan, including efforts to expand the East River waterfront by 500 feet to prevent against climate-related sea level rise and extreme weather, I was reminded of this sprawling metropolis’s original defense: oysters.

As Mark Kurlansky describes in his incredible underwater odyssey The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, this town’s original currency was oysters. The Lenape people, Native Americans who lived on the land before European colonists drove them out, left enormous oyster middens around the city— that’s actually how Pearl Street got its name. In New Amsterdam, which was later renamed New York, oysters were harvested en masse and eaten by the billions. They were thick and deep like coral reefs, protecting Long Island from the ocean and filtering the brackish waters of the city’s riverside harbors. At one point, experts estimate, there were more than 3 trillion of the little bivalves in these waters.

But, within a century or two, humans destroyed these naturally resilient populations, reducing them to a fraction of their former bounty. In this episode of Weirdest Thing, I talk about what caused the oysters to disappear—and the efforts to bring them back.

Fact: A group of scientists once gave rats a sexual fetish for tiny jackets

By Rachel Feltman

What does it mean to have atypical sexual preferences? In the ’60s, the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) had a section on “deviations” that included basically everything but heterosexual intercourse between cisgender people. By the ’80s, scientists got a little less backwards by talking about “paraphilic disorders”—what most people mean when they talk about fetishes. But the “conditions” they discussed included things as innocuous as enjoying dirty phone calls. Many of the so-called disorders were far from rare, and even many of the most unusual were totally harmless among consenting adults.

These days psychiatry only considers a paraphilia a disorder if it causes you or someone else harm or distress, and we’re starting to recognize that human sexuality is a lot more varied and fluid than we used to assume. Foot fetishes, for instance, are actually pretty common—and there may be a reason for that locked in our actual, physical brain. In this week’s episode I talk about how our thinking on these matters has evolved, and how a bunch of scientists once turned lab rats into enthusiastic jacket fetishists.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Rats with fetishes and America’s first banana appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Monkeys know how to use money (and also how to trade it for sex)

By Rachel Feltman

The first thing you need to know is that monkeys—not apes, our super-close evolutionary cousins, but capuchins like Marcel from Friends—understand money. Several studies have demonstrated that they easily pick up the concept of trading specific tokens for different things they value (read: marshmallows and grapes). They can figure out how to seek out good deals and how to respond to supply and demand, and they’ll try their hands at gambling. According to a 2005 study on the subject, they’ll even learn to sell sexual favors. On this week’s episode, I dive into a few controversial conclusions scientists have come to about prostitution in the animal world. You’ll never look at Marcel quite the same way.

Fact: Redheads need more anesthetic at the dentist

By Claire Maldarelli

As a redhead, I am constantly told strange myths about my hair color. But there’s one I was told recently that triggered my curiosity: “You must have trouble at the dentist.” This acquaintance explained that they’d heard I wouldn’t respond as well to lidocaine as those without red hair. And it turns out there’s research to back this factoid up.

Red hair is one of the rarest hair colors, gracing just two percent of the global population. To gain this auburn hue, a person usually inherits a mutation in the MC1R gene, which is responsible for pigmentation. It typically gives way to the production of a substance called pheomelanin, which results in red hair and fair skin.

But that same gene is also responsible for how the body responds to pain. In a 2004 study, researchers found that redheads, on average, needed about 20 percent more general anesthesia than people with blonde or dark hair coloring. A 2005 study also found that redheads need more lidocaine for dental procedures than their non-redhead counterparts.

Unfortunately, the key mechanism through which the MC1R gene influences pain perception is still not entirely clear. Understanding these mechanisms could help researchers better treat pain in people with red hair, but could also help researchers better understand why everyone experiences pain differently—and how to better manage pain in everyone.

Fact: Your brain can trick you into having to pee

By Jason Lederman

Have you ever been on the way home and noticed an intense need to use the bathroom? Like, you’re putting the key in the door and you suddenly have to pee more than you have in your entire life? Well, it turns out there’s a term for this: latchkey urgency (or if you have a little leak, latchkey urgency incontinence).

I found this topic thanks to Mel Magazine (via Reddit). It turns out the average person should use a restroom 6-8 times a day, which means the bladder takes about 3-4 hours to fill up; by needing to go more often than that, latchkey urgency is technically an overactive bladder condition. It can result from a physical issue like a weak pelvic floor, or a Pavlovian response from just being near your bathroom. But don’t worry, there are ways to train your brain and bladder to reduce latchkey urgency. The UK’s National Health Service has some good tips, as does Shape. And if you think your pelvic floor could use a workout, check out our guide to keeping it in shape.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Animal prostitution and Pavlovian pee responses appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: New Zealand was once chock-full of oddities, including a 12-foot-tall bird

By Eleanor Cummins

I love New Zealand (or the idea of it, anyway—I have yet to go). Lorde is my favorite musician. The Breaker-Upperers and What We Do In the Shadows are two of my favorite movies. I’ve spent a year perfecting my impression of a Kiwi accent. And then there is the wildlife.

It’s often said that “birds occupied every niche” in New Zealand, which means that eagles were apex predators instead of lions, 12-foot-tall birds called moa were grazers instead of deer, and kiwis served as grub-eaters in lieu of badgers. Some of the creatures mentioned are exceedingly large—according to a principle called island gigantism—and others atypically small—due to the inverse phenomenon of insular dwarfism. Every avian was truly majestic.

The trouble is, the moa and many other unusual species went extinct 600 years ago, and the island nation’s existing animal species are still threatened. According to the World Wildlife Foundation, some 4,000 native New Zealand species are at risk today.

Fact: There’s at least one deer out there that’s eaten human flesh

By Rachel Feltman

We talk about dead bodies a lot on Weirdest Thing. We’ve covered the ins and outs of what happens to bodies once they’re donated to science (spoiler: sometimes they end up in post-mortem yoga studios). We’ve talked about art made out of dead babies, art made out of tattooed skin, and art made out of human skulls (for sale on Instagram, no less). We’ve talked about the plot to turn George Washington into a zombie. We’ve covered the process of mummifying yourself to death and the process of letting mushrooms eat your moldering flesh. We’ve talked about taxidermied people. We’ve even talked about a condition that makes you believe you’re already dead. These are just the examples I can remember.

Anyway, on this week’s episode I take us to a body farm—a facility where scientists watch donated corpses decompose to help improve forensics—and share one of our most delightful body horror stories to date. It’s true: scientists caught a deer munching on human remains. Fortunately (and despite the existence of a condition often referred to as ‘zombie deer’ disease) there’s no risk of Bambi turning into a flesh-hungry predator; the skittish critters probably just snack on skeletons as the opportunity arises, as a sort of supplement to their herbivorous diet.

(As promised in the episode, here are other freaky forensic case studies: death by indoor lightning and mysteriously warm corpses.)

If you’re interested in donating your body to this kind of research, you can find more information on the website of your closest facility. Here are instructions for the University of Tennesee’s donation program.

Fact: One of the rarest elements in the universe is inside Euro banknotes

By Sara Chodosh

Counterfeit anything is fascinating, but I think there’s something especially wild about counterfeit money. Maybe it’s that we’re so motivated to catch counterfeiters because what we consider “real” money is only real in that a government has decided that this is what money looks like. Currencies are just pieces of paper (or plastic or metal) that we’ve all agreed have a specific value. If you can make such a good fake that 99 percent of people are fooled, you’ve kind-of-sort-of made real money—you can use it to buy things, so it has value. Until someone catches on, at which point it becomes worthless in an instant. And in the end, there’s something kind of silly about the idea that some pieces of paper get to have value and others don’t.

Modern counterfeiters are now often so good that the bills they create are virtually indistinguishable from genuine money. There are only a handful of experts who can differentiate between so-called superdollars and real hundred-dollar bills. That’s impressive in and of itself. Today’s currencies have a plethora of anti-forgery devices built into them, including the one I talk about on the podcast today: incorporating rare elements into the bills. There are lots of fascinating ways to fake money (Frank Abagnale Jr., the man made famous by the movie Catch Me If You Can, wrote a fascinating book about how he managed to deceive so many people into taking his forged bills), but I think this one is the coolest from a scientific perspective. I won’t spoil my segment here, though, so tune into the pod to learn about why rare elements are such an effective way to prevent forgeries.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Blood-thirsty Bambi and 12-foot-tall birds appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: You can mummify yourself to death

By Rachel Feltman

A recent trip to Northern Germany—and the bog bodies at Schleswig-Holstein Landesmuseum—got me thinking about mummification in general. I knew how Ancient Egyptians did it, and I knew that bodies could wind up mummified without outside help, but how exactly does the whole process work?

Well, it turns out I had a lot to learn even about Ancient Egyptian mummification, which may have been quite different from the laborious process most of us learn about in school (at least sometimes). According to notes from Herodotus, folks on a budget would do things like shoot special oils up corpse anuses to liquify their internal organs and let the results just ooze on out. A more middle-class crowd might inject those substances directly into the abdomen and put a rectal plug in place, to save the drainage for a more subtle evacuation after the corpse had dried out. These reports are not without controversy, but one thing is clear: there was no one way of mummifying a body, even in the culture most famous for creating quintessential mummies.

On this week’s episode of the show, I also talk about how mummies can form naturally, along with one of my eeriest facts to date: it’s possible to mummify yourself to death, and there are folks who’ve done it.

Fact: It’s time to rethink who qualified as a “scientist”

By Eleanor Cummins

What makes someone a scientist? Today, you might answer “a Ph.D.” Not true, but an understandable assumption. But before there was a prescribed route to academic success, things were even more subjective—and recognition was typically restricted to men. On Weirdest Thing, we’ve talked a lot about women whose scientific contributions weren’t appreciated in their lifetime, like Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval nun with some serious insights into the cosmos, and Caroline Herschel, a creative mathematician.

I wanted to add a few more into the mix: Harriett Tubman, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, but also a nurse and naturalist; and Madam C.J. Walker, the founder of a hair care empire, and an industrial chemist by any other name. Though the records are sometimes spotty, historians Dianne Glave (author of Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage) and A’Leia Bundles (a historian and Walker’s descendant) helped me piece together what we know about these women’s serious skills.

Fact: There’s military tech all over Disney World

By Corinne Iozzio

To celebrate my first trip to Disney World as an adult, I decided to be a total buzzkill. I’d heard a few years back that the same special effects studio that builds everything from the Pirates of the Caribbean and the cars from, uh, Cars also does pretty good business as a military contractor. Garner Holt Productions builds lifelike, expressive animatronics for the Infantry Immersion Trainer at Camp Pendleton—a fake village featuring a mix of everyday folk repairing bicycles and potential enemy combatants that trainees must assess and navigate.

The company’s uncannily expressive robotic Abe Lincoln bust (seriously just watch this video), which is based on the same tech as the stunt combatants, made a lot of headlines in 2017. And, it turns out, past Disney-owned Abes were similarly impressive—always on the bleeding edge of what theme-park tech can do.

So, I started to wonder: How much theme-park tech is actually military tech in disguise? The answer is a childhood-dream-exploding “maybe more than you would think or want.” The birds in the Enchanted Tiki Room? Controlled by a nuclear-missile guidance system. The 0-60mph in 2.8 seconds launch on the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios? An adapted version of the system now rockets fighters off of aircraft carriers.

The military even wanted old Walt to adapt the mechanisms in the very first animatronic Abe into a type of Iron Man suit. (Walt said “no,” by the way.) I may never think of the House of Mouse in quite the same way again.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: you can mummify yourself to death and Disney is full of military tech appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Medical students used to be jerks, and one time they got into a fist fight with feminists over a dead terrier

By Rachel Feltman

While researching several historical balloon riots (yes, really) I came across a list of bizarre riots from throughout history. And one of them sent me on a wild historical ride: The Brown Dog Affair.

In 1903, William Bayless—an English physiologist, and part of the duo that first discovered and named hormones—was cutting open a live dog. This was a pretty common occurrence at the time; the 19th century had led to all sorts of new medical findings, but we didn’t yet have the imaging techniques we needed to take a closer look at the organs we wanted to investigate. Researchers like Bayless used vivisection to seek answers from non-human animals.

But that day in 1903 led to a movement that united the working class and suffragettes (who were not particularly buddy buddy at the time, to be clear) against medical students all over England. Lizzy Lind af Hageby and Leisa Katherine Schartau, Swedish feminists and anti-vivisection activists who were studying at the London School of Medicine for Women, sat in on Bayless’s lecture and took notes. Their notes included a few disturbing details: medical students laughed and caroused about the dog’s condition, the animal allegedly twitched and vocalized in pain, and a future Nobel euthanized the dog not with ether, but by stabbing it in the heart.

Eventually this incident led to outrage, which led to riots. As we discuss in the podcast, the totally rabid response on both sides represented an explosion of the existing class and gender tensions at the time.

You can check out the two statues dedicated to this slain mutt here.

Fact: People used to put animals on trial

By Eleanor Cummins

Europeans used to love putting animals on trial. Long before “rat” was a slang word for an informant, there were actual rodents on the witness stand. Usually, they were accused of eating the crops or gardens of some powerful human. Like any good citizen, they too had to account for their crimes in a court of law. Rats weren’t the only animals to stand on trial: Pigs that plowed into people and donkeys implicated in bestiality were also run through the criminal justice system. Depending on whether it was a church-led spectacle or a secular trial, judges delivered punishments ranging from excommunication (animals being God’s creatures and therefore also Catholic) to the death penalty.

Today, these medieval-to-early-modern shenanigans seem rather outlandish. Even at the time, they were clearly entertaining, as many more animal trials have made their way into historical lore than actually seem to have taken place. But there are some contemporary parallels. For example, some environmental activists are trying to get officials to grant Lake Eerie, a body of water, personhood, in order to extend its legal rights.

Fact: Eating an apple a day was originally an act of rebellion. Now it’s just marketing.

By Claire Maldarelli

It’s the cliché that we all hate: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. It almost sounds far too catchy to be true, right? Maybe.

As a health editor, I am particularly fond of dispelling any myths surrounding what is truly healthy for our bodies and what is really just a marketing term used to sell us things. As it turns out, this exact phrase dates back to the late 1960s. The original saying, which first appeared in publication in 1866, went like this: “Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread.”

According to some historians, the phrase came about at a time when doctors didn’t exactly have the best track record for curing patients. We were much further away than we are now from understanding what actually caused diseases, infections, and other ailments—and our surgeries were still pretty gruesome. So the original phrase didn’t come from doctors, but rather from us patients, as a way to, so to speak, rebel against the medical establishment.

Flash forward to today, and the phrase has morphed, somewhat, into a public health campaign to keep us “healthy,” and is often even used by doctors themselves! But does it actually have any real merit? Can eating an apple every single day make us particularly healthy? Because of the phrase’s popularity, there actually have been a couple studies on this. Listen to this week’s episode to get the verdict.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: animals used to stand trial and apples kept doctors from killing you appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Poodle cuts are crazy practical

By Eleanor Cummins

Poodle haircuts get a bad rap. There are vaguely French and, at least to modern eyes, totally frivolous. The American Kennel Club describes the breed as “proud” and reminds casual admirers that the dog’s fur orbs are not pompoms, but pompons, thank you very much.

But poodles weren’t always a symbol of vanity or luxury. They were once hard-working water dogs; they pranced right into icy lakes and freezing rivers to retrieve the game their masters shot down from the sky. They even had a working-class name: in Germany, the breed’s country of origin, they were basically known as “puddle hounds.” And while the mythos around purebred dogs and their coiffures is always contested, it seems the strange grooming practice that evolved around the poodle was similarly practical: poodles drowned under the full weight of their coats, but froze to death when entirely sheared. What to do?

In this episode of The Weirdest Thing, I talked about the shaggy solution to this problem, and other tidbits I picked up while attending the 2019 Westminster Dog Show.

Fact: A surgeon tested out materials for fake hips in his own thigh

By Rob Verger

If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of people who’ll receive an artificial hip, you’ll be getting a modern prosthesis that will (hopefully!) help your body work better. But wind back the clock to the mid-20th century and you’ll learn that both the implants and the procedure have come a very long way since doctors first started figuring them out. Motivated by a curiosity to learn more about the science and tech behind an artificial hip I received last year, I took a deep dive into the history of these synthetic joints.

One pioneering surgeon stands out in his quest to figure out how to create an artificial hip: John Charnley, who worked in a former tuberculosis hospital in Wrightington, England. In the early 1960s, he replaced elderly patients’ hips by doing two things: swapping the tops of their femurs with a metal prosthesis that he cemented into the thigh bone, and giving them a new socket for it to fit into. But he made the socket out of Teflon, which wore down quickly and created debris particles (which you don’t want in your body). Those early hips were failures. When he found a promising alternative, he did what any sensible surgeon would: stuck a piece of it in his own thigh for nine months to see what would happen. Find out more on this week’s show!

Fact: There was a huge pigeon race disaster in 1997

By Rachel Feltman

Yes, pigeon racing was and is a thing. But we’re not here to discuss your run-of-the-mill, hundred-thousand dollar racing pigeon. We’re here to talk about Champion Whitetail, the pigeon that holds the record for the slowest pigeon race of all time. Champion may not have flown at top speed—it took him five years to fly a few hundred miles—but he did survive against some terrible odds. See, Champion flew in a race now frequently referred to as the Great Pigeon Race Disaster of 1997, wherein 40,000 out of 60,000 competitors seemingly vanished. The mystery of that missing flock remains unsolved, but there are a few compelling theories we discuss in this week’s episode.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: 40,000 vanishing pigeons and the science of poodle haircuts appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is extra special: it’s the first half of our second live show, which happened on February 1 at Caveat in NYC. As mentioned at the top of this week’s episode, you may hear hosts or audience members shouting “drink!” This is because we were playing a drinking game, which you’re welcome to recreate on your own time (assuming you’re of legal age and not driving while you listen). Take a drink of your fabulous and refreshing beverage of choice whenever:

• Someone makes a pun (two drinks if it gets a groan!)

• Rachel makes a joke about the fact that we obviously planned the live show in advance even though the podcast is totally spontaneous we swear

• Jason makes an appearance

• Someone in the audience is audibly appalled (or just appallingly audible)

• A cast member says the word “Weird”

• Eleanor finds an excuse to bring up taxidermy

• Rachel finds an excuse to mention her fiancé or cat

• Anyone finds an excuse to bring up some kind of body horror or otherwise excessive mention of viscera

• If we try to declare a tie you have to finish your drink, so you’d better cheer loud for your fave

Fact: Dancing plagues were once very common

By Eleanor Cummins

The human mind is nothing like a steel trap at all. It’s a real mess between your ears, making us all susceptible to logical fallacies, heuristic shortcuts, and misinformation. Perhaps the weirdest thing that can happen to our highly-social brains is “mass hysteria,” which occurs when large groups of people physically manifest a disease that, biologically, there is no evidence for.

The list of reported mass hysteria cases is long. (I know, because I read through all of them.) They include a windshield pitting epidemic in Seattle, something called the “2016 clown sightings,” and even that quarantine on an Emirates flight last year, when it seemed like a hundred passenger had suddenly all contracted a major illness.

But far and away the strangest cases were a series of medieval dancing plagues. Vigilantly documented by John Waller in his comprehensive 2009 Lancet article “A forgotten plague: making sense of dancing mania,” these incidents resulted in hundreds of people dancing, often until they died, in the belief they had somehow all contracted the same disease. There was one in 1021 (that’s the one Waller called “a ring dance of sin”), and again in 1247, and again in 1518. Then, just as quickly as they appeared, dancing plagues died out.

In this live episode, I talk about the evolution of mass hysteria, and the ways they capitalize on our deepest and most culturally-specific fears. While you listen, don’t forget to really soak up the dramatic engraving at the top of this post.

Fact: A teenage girl scammed the Royal Academy of Arts real good

By Rachel Feltman

This is a story about art history, chemistry, and hubris. We begin in the late 1700s, when Benjamin West—known as the “American Raphael,” a painter of historical scenes who served as president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London—got some art lessons from a girl named Ann Jemima Provis. Along with her father, Provis was hawking painting tutorials based on a journal given to her by a late relative, which she claimed contained the secret Rennaisance masters used to create their incredible art. See, West and his contemporaries were desperate for there to be a secret—some kind of chemical concoction or light-bending way of layering paint—because if not, that meant they just weren’t as good as icons like the great Titian. (Side note: here’s that Titian painting I mention in the show—he really captured my fiance’s beard perfectly!)

Find out more about how Ann Jemima Provis’ con went down—and what the real secret behind Renaissance art turned out to be—in this week’s episode. Here she is, resplendent in her scammery, in the only image I was able to find of her. It happens to be a tabloid cartoon made to mock the men she conned. What an icon.

If you’re wondering just how silly Benjamin West looked when he unveiled the painting described during this week’s episode, here it is. Compare it to the redo he released a few years later painted in the actual style of his day, and you’ll understand why his peers all made fun of him. And here’s a painting he did of an extremely goofy lion and a slobbering horse just to add insult to injury.

Fact: NASA once worried that astronaut farts would pose a fire hazard in space

By Claire Maldarelli

While human beings haven’t made it to Mars yet, we have—without a doubt—come a long way in our understanding of space travel. Don’t believe me? Consider this study. It’s called, “Intestinal hydrogen and methane of men fed space diet”, but its name doesn’t give it the weird science credit it deserves. However, just a brief skim of the first line of the abstract—Intestinal bacteria form two gases, hydrogen (H2) and methane (CH4), that could constitute a fire hazard in a closed chamber—gives a hint at the research goals: NASA had serious concerns about whether or not the normal amount of flatulence emitted by astronauts when eating space food would be a fire hazard on space flights.

The study was conducted in the late 1960s, after the Apollo missions and in the middle of the Gemini program. The in-flight food Apollo astronauts ate was rather unappetizing. (See this picture for reference.) NASA had big plans for upgrading its menu service for the Gemini flights, but first, they needed to answer a big question: Would the newly improved space grub cause enough flatulence that it would pose a fire hazard? As one outside researcher cautioned to NASA, astronauts in outer space are typically locked in small capsules without an escape valve and so, logically, the hydrogen and methane—the two most common gases in all human farts—that the astronauts excrete get locked in as well.

Spoiler alert: Many studies and farts later, there has never been a space capsule explosion caused by human flatulence.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: starting fires with astronaut farts and dancing yourself to death appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Benjamin Franklin liked to sit around naked

By Rachel Feltman

Air bathing is exactly what it sounds like: It’s like bathing, but with air. Of course, one could also refer to air bathing as “sitting around in the nude,” and they definitely wouldn’t be wrong. One famous proponent of this practice was none other than Benjamin Franklin. Here’s a paper on the subject written in the early 1900s, featuring excerpts from the founding father’s pro-nude-naptime letters.

I hoped to uncover the true health benefits of sitting around sans clothing—there’s no good research on the subject, by the way—but as I discuss in this week’s episode of the show, I came across a surprising twist. And yes: just like the last surprising twist I found, it involves Nazis. They’re everywhere! Go figure. You can read more about Joe Knowles, whose time spent living naked and alone (allegedly) in the wilderness showcases the creepy rhetoric of the American eugenics movement, in this Boston Magazine retrospective. I also mention his hilariously laudatory book on the so-called experiment, which you can peruse for yourself for tidbits about how exposure to the elements would help American men maintain the strength of the race. And if that connection to eugenics and Nazism is still a little too subtle for you, read up on how the Nazi party co-opted the tenants of the nudist movement (while disavowing anything as liberal as actually running around nude) here.

To end on the lightest possible note (sorry!) here is a photo I found of Eugen Sandow, largely considered the father of modern bodybuilding. Knowles, pictured above, claims his measurements were comparable to the famous athlete’s stats after his stint in the woods. This will make you laugh.

FACT: Vampires are compulsive counters (and other bizarre vampire facts)

By Jessica Boddy

I recently caught up with a former history professor of mine, Theodora Kelly Trimble from the University of Pittsburgh, and she reminded me of a rather grim figure from the 16th and 17th centuries: Elizabeth Bathory. Bathory was a Hungarian countess who was quite possibly the most deadly serial killer of all time—she’s thought to have tortured and killed over 600 young women. Her murders were rather gory, and some saw her bathing in the blood of her victims, an act thought to preserve her youth and beauty. This led people to believe that she was a vampire. (She was even born in Transylvania!) Bathory was tried and charged for her crimes, and as punishment, the Hungarian people built a wall to barricade her into her castle’s tower. There was a little slot for air and food to pass through, but other than that, she could not leave.

Researching this got me thinking about just how weird the culture surrounding vampire lore is, so I decided to check out my notes from Kelly’s class (which was about vampire myths throughout history and across cultures). Among my favorite facts is a classic vampire burial technique: sprinkle poppy seeds on a supposed vampire’s grave, and he or she will never come to hunt you. This is because vampires are, supposedly, compulsive counters, and would spend all night counting the poppy seeds you left. I also brushed up on porphyria, a disease that causes sun sensitivity and receding gums, making its sufferers look very pale and have very large teeth. Though not overly common today, porphyria was thought to occur more in individuals who repeatedly married within their families—like, for instance, in small villages in the valleys of Transylvania.

FACT: Cutting up hot peppers can give you a condition called jalapeño hands

By Claire Maldarelli

A while back, as I was catching up with my sister over the phone, she mentioned to me something odd: Shortly after cutting up hot peppers for a recipe, her thumb started burning and wouldn’t stop. After googling her symptoms, she found that, in fact, this is a not-so-uncommon condition that in the medical literature goes by many names, including but not limited to: hot pepper hands, jalapeño hands, jalapeño thumb, and Hunan hand syndrome.

As a health editor and self-proclaimed hypochondriac, I was surprised and interested (a disease I had never heard of!). Turns out, the culprit is capsaicin, a chemical compound found in the fruit of plants within the capsicum family, including red chili peppers, jalapeños, and habaneros. This colorless and odorless compound binds to pain receptors, triggering the sensation of intense heat or burning. But I won’t ruin all the surprises that come with jalapeño hands. Listen to this week’s episode for more about this bizarre reaction to hot peppers, how to treat it, some crazy case studies, and of course, some hot pepper cutting best practices to prevent the burn.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: counting vampires and nudist founding fathers appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

This week’s episode is extra special: it’s the first half of our second live show, which happened on February 1 at Caveat in NYC. As mentioned at the top of this week’s episode, you may hear hosts or audience members shouting “drink!” This is because we were playing a drinking game, which you’re welcome to recreate on your own time (assuming you’re of legal age and not driving while you listen). Take a drink of your fabulous and refreshing beverage of choice whenever:

• Someone makes a pun (two drinks if it gets a groan!)

• Rachel makes a joke about the fact that we obviously planned the live show in advance even though the podcast is totally spontaneous we swear

• Jason makes an appearance

• Someone in the audience is audibly appalled (or just appallingly audible)

• A cast member says the word “Weird”

• Eleanor finds an excuse to bring up taxidermy

• Rachel finds an excuse to mention her fiancé or cat

• Anyone finds an excuse to bring up some kind of body horror or otherwise excessive mention of viscera

• If we try to declare a tie you have to finish your drink, so you’d better cheer loud for your fave

Fact: Balloon riots were not uncommon (and were sometimes fatal)

By Rachel Feltman

Hot-air and gas ballooning was always a lofty affair: legend has it that Marie Antoinette was present for the first demonstration of the technology in 1783, along with some 130,000 french citizens. The basket contained a sheep, a duck, and a rooster, and apparently, they all behaved themselves until landing in the woods. The same cannot be said for human spectators of the air ballooning sport. In our latest live show, I highlighted not one, not two, but three historical balloon riots. The first, which has picked up a lot of mythos over the years, is outlined stupendously in this article by Dr. Brett Holman of Melbourne (and hilariously by me in our podcast, which you’ve hopefully already listened to). The second, which you may have heard of—it’s known as the great balloon riot, after all—is memorialized in this fantastic image.

It also inspired some truly stupendous media coverage at the time.

The third balloon riot I turned up (quite unexpectedly) in the course of my research is the least famous and most upsetting of the bunch. This is from a newspaper clipping that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on December 19, 1856. The article describes the court proceedings surrounding the death of a young boy named Thomas Downs. He’d gone to see a balloon ascent that turned into a riot when a bunch of sailors tugged down the balloon and set it on fire. As this occurred two years before the the first riot I describe in the show and eight years before the most famous incident, it’s clear that humankind learned nothing from the tragic demise of young Downs. It’s also clear that Victorians were whacky.

Fact: Baseball fans are obsessed with curses and will do almost anything to break them (like delivering a bloody goat’s head in a cake box)

By Jessica Boddy

One rainy April afternoon in 2013, an unknown person delivered an unidentified package in a white cake box to Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. When security opened it up, it did not contain cake, but rather a severed goat’s head. There was no note left with the noggin, but it was immediately apparent why someone decided to do this. It was because of a curse.

The Cubs were cursed by a local tavern-owner in 1945 after Wrigley staff refused to let him and his pet goat enter the stadium for a game. He hexed the team, saying the Cubs would never win another World Series. Desperate for their team to win, fans engaged in many goat-related antics—like a head in a box—to try to break the curse, which was eventually lifted in 2016 when the Cubs won a championship.

The weirdest part is, the Cubs aren’t really out of the ordinary when it comes to curses in baseball. A black cat once crossed a dugout and incited the team’s crumble, and another time a player hit a bird with a pitch. A biblical swarm of midges has descended upon Yankee Stadium. The Red Sox, too, were under the spell of a decades-long curse—fans even hired an exorcist to purify Fenway Park, the team’s stadium. Baseball fans on the whole have a flair for the supernatural, especially when compared to fans of most other professional sports. I decided to investigate why this might be. The answer has to do with America’s love of conspiracy (take the Salem witch trials and the moon landing for instance), crowd psychology, and plain old mathematics.

Fact: The Champawat tigress was the most man-eatingest animal of all time

By Eleanor Cummins

In a new book, No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History, author Dane Hucklebridge details the surprisingly methodical and incredibly blood machinations of a single Bengal “tigress.” Between 1900 to 1907, the Champawat man-eater stalked humans living in the villages of southern Nepal and, because tigers know no borders, eventually northern India. Along her route, she killed 435 people, making her perhaps the most murderous non-human animal in recorded history. As part of the Weirdest Thing live show, I talked about her behavior, her species, and the life of the British Indian Army service member and noted cat hunter Jim Corbett who finally caught up with her. Plus, enjoy experiencing an ad for Calvin Klein’s Obsession cologne, a scent that was used to lure and capture a tiger in more recent history.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: hot air balloon riots and the man-eatingest tiger appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: For decades you could pay to gawk at premature babies on the boardwalk

By Rachel Feltman

This week’s fact is inspired by my favorite episode of The Memory Palace which you should absolutely listen to. The episode mentions a sideshow attraction at Coney Island where folks paid a few cents to look at sick infants. I’ve been fascinated by this story ever since, and when I saw that a book on the subject by Dawn Raffel came out just last year, I decided it was time to do some digging and share it with you all.

For most of human history, babies born too early to thrive either lived or died depending on what their families were willing and able to do to help them breathe, eat, and keep warm. There were actually incubators for birds long before anyone thought to make them for humans (that’s how a Parisian doctor got the idea in the mid-1800s). And even once human incubators existed, most hospitals couldn’t be bothered. Premature babies were largely considered too weak to bother with.

That didn’t make sense to Martin Arthur Couney, a Jewish German immigrant who’d put up a couple of exhibitions on incubator technology in Europe. He took advantage of the lively sideshow culture in 19th-century America to basically turn neonatal intensive care units into paid attractions. His facilities were clean, tightly run, and cutting edge, and he didn’t charge parents a dime (tourists, however, were charged a quarter). Meanwhile, most hospitals didn’t offer anything to help premature infants. One former patient recalled that her father, told she would surely die, bundled her in a blanket and took a cab to Coney Island so Couney might save her. Such was the case with many infants—and Couney saved at least 6,500 of them. You can see loads of photos of the spectacle here.

It wasn’t all good news, though: Couney’s work inspired copycats with much lower standards of care (more on that here. But perhaps more disturbing is the backlash he faced. People—including physicians—argued that premature babies were “deficient” and that saving them would damage the gene pool. The fact that Couney faced the criticism of the American eugenics movement is a chilling reminder of just how recently the country supported proud proclamations of such disturbing and hateful beliefs.

Fact: All hail the rust god

By Eleanor Cummins

Today, most people hearing the word “rust” start running for a tetanus shot. But for most of human history, the real menace was stem rust. The agricultural blight has been causing famines for thousands of years, turning promising green leaves into inedible silvered chuff. That’s why the Romans had a special day dedicated to appeasing the rust god, Robigus. Each year, in April, the Robigalia festival directors would sacrifice tawny-colored animals (i.e. ruddy-furred pups and not-so-sly foxes), cutting their entrails out of their bodies, while also dancing and singing. Today, agricultural scientists are just as worried about rust, but instead of a bloody bacchanal, they’re, you know, genetically-modifying crops.

Fact: There’s a medical condition that causes people to sneeze when they eat a lot

By Claire Maldarelli

Us humans typically sneeze because of some irritation in our nasal passages. Things like pollen or grass can initiate this automatic and nearly-impossible-to-stop reaction.

But there are other things that trigger a sneeze—staring at bright lights and eating large meals, for instance.

Sneezing when the sun gets in your eyes is not common, but it’s not entirely uncommon either. It’s a simple autosomal dominant genetic mutation, and we’ve known about it for over 30 years. In fact, if you take a 23andMe test, it will tell you if you are a sun sneezer or not.

But for the rest of the podcast, I discuss sun sneezing’s little-known and far stranger cousin: Postprandial sneezing. Also caused by a single, autosomal dominant gene, the condition is characterized by episodes of sneezing triggered by a full stomach.

The instance was first reported in a 1989 study in the Journal of Medical Genetics. Perhaps in an attempt to raise awareness and thereby improve understanding of the trait’s frequency in humans, the condition was nicknamed SNATIATION. Listen to the rest of this week’s podcast to learn what that acronym stands for (it’s worth it, I promise), how scientists think the condition might work, and what the worst time of the year is for all those who live with postprandial sneezing.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: strange sneezes and how sideshows saved 6,500 babies appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: This man bit bulls by the lip

By Eleanor Cummins

Don’t mess with Texas…’s native son Bill Pickett. The legendary cow-puncher, who lived from 1870 to 1932, invented his own rodeo event. Today it’s called steer wrestling and involves leaping off your horse mid-charge, grabbing hold of a steer, and wrenching its horn until it’s forced to lay down in the arena dirt (more on that later). But back then this singular sport was known as “bulldogging,” because Pickett’s preferred method for leveling cows was to leap off his horse mid-charge, grab hold of the steer, and then bite it on the lip.

I first learned about bulldogging last Thanksgiving, on a visit to the Texas Bullock State History Museum, which was showing a temporary attraction called “Rodeo! The Exhibit.” There were rhinestones and cowboys, but what really stuck out to me was the incredible blend of cultures that grew into rodeo, from the Spanish colonists to the native cow herders. The contributions of the fearless Mr. Pickett, who was himself the child of recently-emancipated slaves, reflect this vibrant, troublesome, incredible history better than anything else.

Oh—and the dirt. Arena dirt, as I wrote in an article for popsci dot com, can totally make or break a rodeo.

Now giddyup!

Fact: A 30-foot-tall wave of molasses destroyed Boston’s North End in 1919

By Jessica Boddy

In the early 20th century, a hulking, somewhat ominous molasses storage tank loomed over Boston. It was notoriously leaky—local children would often collect stray molasses drippings in a pail and bring the sweet stuff home to their families. And on a warm January day in 1919, disaster finally struck: the tank burst and 2.5 million gallons of warm, sticky molasses escaped, forming a 30-foot wave that traveled at 35 miles per hour. This molasses tsunami flattened buildings, knocked out the steel supports for an elevated train, killed 21 people, and injured more than 100. Many bodies were found during the cleanup, which took months and involved salt water, saws, and industrial-strength brooms. Local Bostonians today say you can still smell molasses on a hot day in the north end, an entire century later.

Fact: This 1911 physician promised a pretty widow the world—or at least a new finger

By Rachel Feltman

Finger transplantation is not something you hear about a lot, and for good reason: it’s not generally necessary and it’s always extremely difficult. The first successful hand transplant didn’t even occur until 1999, which was after two apparent triumphs that ended in tragedy (you can hear more about that in this week’s episode).

But back in 1911—more than a decade before the discovery of antibiotics, not to mention the super-powerful immunosuppressant drugs it takes to keep a body from violently rejecting someone else’s organ or appendage—newspapers started putting out calls for finger donors. A doctor sought to appease a young widow troubled over the loss of her index finger by finding her a new one, and she was willing to pay. He was under the impression that someone could ship the digit over in the mail. This was, to put it lightly, a really whacky idea.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: deadly molasses and the best way to battle cattle appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Fact: Women once stripped off their tops before dueling to avoid infection

By Sophie Bushwick

In August 1892, in Verduz, Lichtenstein, Princess Pauline Metternich and the Countess Kielmannsegg disagreed over flower arrangements for a concert. They decided the only way to resolve their argument was with bloodshed.

This may seem like a frivolous excuse for a potentially deadly sword fight, but at the time, men often dueled over similarly superficial matters. Sure, they fought over honor and political differences once in a while. However, they also clashed over dislike of one another’s clothing, who was a better scholar of Greek and Latin, and whose estate had more birds.

This was not the first duel between women—so-called petticoat duels had gone on for hundreds of years. In 1552, two Neapolitan noblewomen fought with multiple weapons, wielding lances on armored horses before moving on to maces and shields, and finally swords. In 17th-century Bordeaux, France, two sisters dueled over whose husband was better and one ended up killing the other with a slingshot. The first recorded English duel between women didn’t occur until 1792 (when Mrs. Elphinstone said Lady Almeria Braddock was 61 years old, contradicting the latter’s claim to be less than 30, Braddock had no choice but to challenge her).

However, our 1892 clash stands out from the history of petticoat duels because it was the first “emancipated” one: All participants were female, including the combatants, their seconds, and the organizer. That organizer, the Baroness Lubinska, had a degree in medicine—and she knew that minor injuries can become serious when swords or bullets drive clothing into the wound, causing infections. To avoid this, she suggested that the participants strip to the waist before baring steel.

At the time, germ theory was relatively new—it was only in 1870 that Joseph Lister, “the father of antiseptic surgery,” suggested that sterile conditions might prevent infections. (Despite pushback from the establishment, he pioneered methods like hand-washing and sterilizing instruments before starting to cut.) However, people had known for a while that getting debris into wounds is a recipe for disaster. In fact, the baroness’ suggestion had a precedent: In 1806’s “Naked Duel,” Member of Parliament and former army surgeon Humphrey Howarth stripped down to avoid infection before grabbing his pistol, and technically, his ploy succeeded: His opponent refused to engage with a nude combatant.

Because the 1892 engagement was an emancipated duel, no men were present. So the combatants disrobed and began. First the princess injured the countess’s nose, then the countess pierced the princess’s shoulder. Because this was a duel to the first blood, the princess won the encounter. And neither fighter’s wounds killed them.

Fact: Hyenas give birth through their clitorises

By Sara Chodosh

Spotted hyenas are one of the very few creatures on Earth to sport a pseudo-penis, and theirs is the pseudo-penis-est of them all. Whereas some other mammals—like squirrel monkeys, binturong, and lemurs—have what is essentially a very large clitoris, hyena pseudo-penises are multi-functional. They just don’t use theirs to mate, they also use it to pee and give birth.

I actually knew all of this before researching this week’s fact. What I didn’t know is all of the practicalities that come as a result of having an extremely long clitoris.

See, hyenas have gotten a bad rap for being creepy, gross scavengers—I’m lookin’ at you, The Lion King— but the reality is that they’re amazing creatures. They don’t even scavenge for most of their food. And whereas lions somehow manage to have a society where females do all the work while the males still get to have sex with whoever they want, hyenas have evolved a truly matriarchal society, all because of their clitoris. Since they have no vaginal opening like most mammals do, sex requires the female’s cooperation. That means male hyenas have to woo any female they want to mate with, and so they invest a lot of time developing relationships with the ladies in their pack.

Of course, the females still do most of the work. But at least in hyena society when they cooperate in hunting and child-rearing they also get to retain their power.

Fact: This scientists sought to better understand animals by eating them all

By Rachel Feltman

William Buckland was no slouch: the English theologen was also a geologist and paleontologist. He wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus. His work proved that Kirkdale Cave had been a prehistoric hyena den, for which he was awarded the Copley Medal.

But his wikipedia has a section labeled “known eccentricities” which is always a great sign. For starters, he insisted on wearing an academic gown while doing field work and apparently sometimes lectured outdoors on horseback. He also owned a table inlaid with fossilized dinosaur poop.

He also, along with his son Frank, wanted to eat his way through the animal kingdom. And not just because he was an adventurous eater (though he definitely was—he once had a zoo dig up a recently deceased panther so he could try a couple of steaks). He was also a champion of zoöphagy: the study of animals through their consumption. In one rather famous (and perhaps apocryphal) tale, this voracious appetite for knowledge led Buckland to commit an act of cannibalism that… somehow manages to be even more gross than you’d expect. Listen to this week’s podcast to find out more.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets for our live show on February 1 in NYC.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: ladies dueling topless and pseudopenis birth canals appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. And if you like what you hear, join us for our next live show on February 1 in New York City. Tickets are on sale now, and they’re going fast.

Fact: “The United States versus Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca Cola” led to one of the first human studies on caffeine

By Claire Maldarelli

I failed to follow through with a winter break goal of mine: Reduce the amount of caffeine I drink. So one night, while hyped up on my afternoon coffee, I started researching the physiological effects of caffeine—and came across this strangely titled lawsuit from 1916. I needed to know more.

Back in the early 1900s, when the U.S. had just passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, the government was cracking down on companies making misleading or false claims about their products. A man named Harvey Washington Wiley was appointed to head up the newly created Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and it seems he had it out for both Coca-Cola and caffeine in general. His largest qualm was that while physicians were fuzzy on how caffeine affected even a full-grown human body, the products were marketed to children as young as four.

His insistence on getting caffeine out of the Coca Cola formula led the United States to seize 40 barrels and 20 kegs of the top secret syrup and led to the first human studies ever done on caffeine. They were so well done that they are still often cited today for their top-notch methodology—and their results.

Fact: People used to use birds as candles

By Rachel Feltman

So, this story starts with some flaming birds. Up until the end of the 1800s, sailors in Scotland’s Orkney and Shetland Islands lit their way through dark nights by shoving wicks into dead birds. This is not as wild as it sounds: an oil lamp is just some kind of wick suspended in an oily or fatty substance that will burn when the wick is lit. Stormy petrels—the similarity to the word petroleum is coincidental, their name either comes from St. Peter or is a mangled form of an Old-English expression we don’t use anymore—are fat little birds that produce oil in their digestive tracts. They eat really fatty diets and have to fly long distances over the ocean for mating and nesting, and it seems like they store a bunch of oil in their stomachs as a source of energy they can tap into before burning their body fat. In this way, a stormy petrel isn’t so unlike a bowl of oil—and sailors took advantage by treating them as such. You can find some of them preserved in museums. Here’s one:

Listen to this week’s podcast for some more facts about the days when artificial light was so rudimentary it seemed smart to turn birds into candles.

Fact: The price of beaver butt is on the rise

By Corinne Iozzio

Every couple years, the internet freaks out about a very specific food scare. A new product, or food-blog post, or celebrity-chef sound byte warns credulous consumers that the vanilla-flavored treats they love so dear get their essence from the hindquarters of beavers. The source of this “natural vanilla flavor” is a substance called castoreum, a berry-and-vanilla-tinged secretion from the dam-makers’ perennial glands; beavers use the sweet-smelling-and-sticky stuff to mark their territory and help ensure their coats wick water. The outrage that comes with each castoreum Google pop, however, is largely without merit: Though flavor scientists used the secretion to tinge beverages and sweets through the mid-century (and medicinal uses date back millennia), its use has plummeted over past few decades. But, strangely, the price of castoreum is on the rise—in fact, it’s outpacing the cost of beaver pelts. It’s cropping up in small-batch bourbon, in some vape juices, and even in Etsy stores. Could your fro-yo be far behind?

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets for our live show on February 1 in NYC.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: the sweetest-smelling butts, flaming birds, and 40 barrels of coke appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. And if you like what you hear, join us for our next live show on February 1 in New York City. Tickets are on sale now, and they’re going fast.

Fact: Dozens of feet have washed up in the Pacific Northwest—and no one knows why

By Eleanor Cummins

Forget Bigfoot. These regular, human-sized feet are the scariest thing in the Pacific Northwest. On the far left coast of the United States, in the waters between northern Washington state and southern British Columbia, Canada, 21 severed feet and counting have surfaced on local beaches. Some are left, some are right; some belong to women, some to men. Some have really intact skeletons inside, some contain mush. The shoes are pretty universally ugly—and finding one is a terrifying, emotional experience. But after a decade of regular podiatric terror, we still haven’t pinpointed exactly where these feet are coming from, and the most reasonable answer is the least satisfying. Listen to this week’s show to learn more.

Fact: The ability to touch your toes has little to do with your athleticism

By Claire Maldarelli

As a middle schooler, one of my life goals was mastering the Presidential Fitness Award—an accolade given to those who passed a series of gym-class tests including pull-ups, running a mile, and, among other things, the sit and reach: A flexibility test in which one sits with their legs outstretched in a V position and reaches their fingertips as far past their ankles as they can manage. That’s where things went sour for me. I could never reach quite far enough to be a presidential fitness scholar.

It turns out that I’m not alone. I reached out to Jeffrey Jenkins, who is a physiologist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. And he shed some light on what actually determines a person’s ability to touch their toes.

As Jenkins explained to me, the three biggest factors that contribute to successfully touching your toes are the flexibility of your hamstrings, the range of motion of your hip joints, and the relative length of your arms and your torso to your legs. To a certain degree, you also need to have a flexible spine. The thing is, not all of these are under your control, nor do they determine how healthy or physically fit you are. Having the right combo of these physical characteristics only does one thing: Help you win meaningless achievements like the Presidential Fitness Award.

But if you’re determined to inch closer to touching your toes, listen to the podcast for some special tips.

Fact: Surgery used to be so dangerous that an operation on one patient could kill multiple people

By Rachel Feltman

Lovers of internet trivia and Wikipedia-fueled lore may be familiar with the tale of Robert Liston: according to some medical historians, this 19th-century surgeon once completed a surgical procedure with a 300 percent mortality rate. One patient walked in and three corpses were rolled out. It’s a shocking tale, to be sure, but I couldn’t help but wonder—was it too gruesomely good to be true?

Here’s the supposed story: Liston, renowned as a remarkably fast surgeon (which was basically the only thing a surgeon had going for them, in the days before anesthesia) was performing an amputation. In his rush to severe the limb as swiftly as possible, he also happened to slice off the fingers of his unfortunate assistant. This, as I explain in the episode, is totally plausible. Then, the story goes, both the patient and the surgical assistant got gangrene and died. That’s two fatalities for the price of one! And again, as I explain in the podcast, this is totally believable and probably happened more than once. The third death is the fishiest: according to legend, one of the many people observing the procedure got the (literal) shock of his life when Liston, covered in blood and leg-meat and severed fingers, accidentally snagged the man’s jacket with his knife. I couldn’t find any primary source for this oft-referenced death by fright-induced heart failure, but that isn’t to say I think it’s impossible. After all, how would you react if you watched a surgeon cut his colleague’s hand off and then thought he was turning on you?

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes (yes, even if you don’t listen to us on iTunes—it really helps other weirdos find the show). You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to snag tickets for our live show on February 1 in NYC.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: killer surgeons and mysterious floating feet appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Below is the script for the video above. If you want, give it a watch. If you want the info without the sound, read on. Also, while we have you, why don’t you subscribe to Popular Science on YouTube?

For those looking to weird out their aunts and uncles, her are 12 strange facts from Season 1 of the Popular Science podcast, The Weirdest Thing I Learned this Week.

1. The world’s first underwater film is of a man fighting a shark. It took two attempts because the first shark fight happened just off-camera. To lure the shark to the fight, a dead horse was lowered upside down into the ocean for bait.

2. From the mid-1600s until the mid-1800s, many scientists believed in preformationism—the idea that all living things grow out of smaller versions of themselves. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered wriggling sperm cells in 1677, and he believed that within them were fully formed men.

3. Like Marvel’s Wolverine, the Iberian Ribbed Newt turns its own body into a weapon. It shoves its ribcage forward along its spine so that the sharp ends of its ribs poke out through the skin. As if bristling with bony needles wasn’t enough, it also starts secreting a poison that coats its skin and the ends of the points, delivering a deadly dose to smaller critters.

1. Ketchup must meet strict standards in order to be labeled Grade A. Grade A ketchup must score at least 85 points on the USDA’s 100-point scale. It has four criteria: flavor, color, consistency, and defects.

2. The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham wanted to be taxidermied after his death. Unfortunately for Bentham, the taxidermy process doesn’t work particularly well on humans. His skeleton below the neck was padded with hay and dressed in his own clothes and seated in his favorite chair. But the mummification process left his head discolored and lacking expression. So a wax head was placed on his bones and the whole thing, which is called an “auto-icon,” is kept in a closet at the University College London, where it can still be seen today.

And what came of his real head? It was, for a time, displayed as a part of the auto-icon. But after multiple thefts by students, it was locked away and it’s no longer available to be seen by the public.

1. In the town of Taos, New Mexico, many residents hear a faint sound that scientists have been unable to identify. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also has its own list of unidentified deep ocean sounds.

2. To test the safety of an airplane ejector seat today, you’d use a sophisticated crash-test dummy with lots of sensors. In 1960, however, the U.S. Air Force used a drugged black bear that weighed the same as a human pilot.

3. The highest paid performer in France in the late 1800s was Joseph Pujol. He was a flatulist, or professional farter, who went by the name Le Pétomane. That translates in English to “the fartomaniac,” or “the fartiste.”

1. Some animals just can’t be domesticated. Zebras are notoriously stubborn and had to develop defenses to deal with lions, cheetahs, and other African predators. Individual zebras can be tamed though, as Lionel Walter Rothschild did. He famously drove a carriage pulled by zebras past Buckingham Palace.

2. After the battle of Shiloh during the U.S. Civil War, some soldiers were found with wounds that glowed in the dark. The condition—dubbed “Angel’s Glow”—corresponded with faster-healing injuries. It took until 2001 to prove it was caused by bacteria. The research was done by two high school students.

3. There are almost no straight lines in the construction of the Parthenon. If there were, its angles would not appear straight to the human eye.

4. Some of the first attempts to resuscitate drowning victims involved giving them smoke enemas. The idea was to warm and stimulate the body—and perhaps gently encourage the lungs to fill—by blowing tobacco smoke down someone’s throat…or up their rear end.

For more weird facts and the science behind them, listen to The Weirdest Thing It Learned This Week wherever you get your podcasts! And don’t forget—subscribe to Popular Science on YouTube!

The post 12 weird science facts to share with your family this holiday appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. Check it out:

Fact: Fetuses can turn to stone—and stay inside their mothers for decades

By Rachel Feltman

A few years ago, a 75-year-old Moroccan woman named Zahra Aboutalib went to the hospital with abdominal pain. Scans revealed a strange mass, and eventually, doctors figured out the shocking source of her pain: a baby she conceived 46 years before. You can learn more about Aboutalib’s incredible ordeal in this documentary about her, but as shocking as her condition was, she isn’t alone: There are some 300 cases of lithopedions, or stone babies, in the historical record. They’re actually described in medical literature as early as the 10th century.

A stone fetus sounds kind of terrifying, but the phenomenon is actually rather amazing. This generally occurs when an abdominal ectopic pregnancy—a fetus growing inside the abdominal cavity instead of within the uterus—is not reabsorbed by the hosting body, but instead treated as a foreign invader and covered with a calciferous substance. The result is a fetus covered in a protective layer quite literally as hard as rock. Patients like Aboutalib can go for years or decades ignoring the resulting mass, and some of them have even had healthy children while continuing to carry the lithopedion.

Fact: Listen up, Marvel—this newt is basically Wolverine

By Mary Beth Griggs

Meet the Iberian Ribbed Newt. Sure, it looks cute, but behind that adorable amphibian face is a consummate survivor. And if you try to threaten its life, this relative of the salamander will go to great lengths to take you down with it.

When threatened, it turns its own body into a weapon, shoving its ribcage forward along its spine so that the sharp ends of its ribs poke out through the skin. As if bristling with bony needles wasn’t enough, it also starts secreting a poison that coats its skin and the ends of those points, delivering a deadly dose to smaller critters.

But that’s not the coolest thing. When it finds a moment of peace, the newt relaxes its ribcage back into the normal position—and the wounds heal themselves right back up, making this amphibian a real-life Wolverine.

FACT: This guy (maybe? probably?) died by autopsy

By Eleanor Cummins

Washington Irving Bishop lived fast and died young. Born into an occult-loving family in 1855, he became a famous “thought-reader,” traveling around under the stage name “The Mentalist.” His performances were only heightened by his penchant for passing out—often on stage, in the middle of a performance. In these strange trances—called “cataleptic fits”—he would become immobile, and stop responding to any stimuli. Naturally, he carried around a card in his pocket that said something to the effect of, “I may look dead, but I swear I’m not, so please don’t autopsy me.”

Unfortunately, his warnings were not heeded. During an infamous performance in 1889, he slipped twice into such a trance. And he failed to emerge from the second—at least not in a timely enough fashion for the doctors of the day, who autopsied him the next morning.

Today, Bishop’s body is interred among other prominent 19th-century characters at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. His tombstone, while degraded by rain and sun, is notably emblazoned with the words “THE MARTYR” and an accompanying statement from his mother, who believed for the rest of her life her son had been killed by his autopsy.

FACT: Some people hear illusive explosive sounds before falling asleep.

By Claire Maldarelli

I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of unidentified sounds. That includes ones like the Taos Hum, where a percentage of residents in the town of Taos, New Mexico hear a faint sound that scientists have been unable to identify the source of. There’s also NOAA’s list of unidentified deep ocean sounds, only some of which have been solved. So for this week’s Halloween episode, I went down a Wikipedia spiral into unidentified sounds to emerge with this phrase: “Exploding Head Syndrome.”

The condition, as strange as it sounds, is completely legitimate. By piecing together case reports from over the years, doctors have figured out that people with the syndrome hear a sound akin to an explosion as they are falling asleep or waking up. While it doesn’t cause any pain, the condition is associated, in many cases, with enough fear and terror to send some sufferers to the emergency room.

In this week’s episode, I explore the origins of the condition, why it’s definitely real, and why some doctors believe it’s far more common than is reflected in the medical literature. I am definitely a hypochondriac, but I also definitely think I’ve experienced exploding head syndrome. Have you?

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. We’re about to go on a short hiatus while we prep for our second season, but keep an eye on your podcast feed for bonus episodes—and announcements about our next live show!

The post The spookiest things we learned this week appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. Check it out:

Fact: The history of fonts gets surprisingly dramatic

By Eleanor Cummins

Fonts, when they’re good, aren’t particularly noticeable. They’re mostly there to deliver information, not detract from it. But every once in a while, a font finds itself at the epicenter of a controversy much bigger than itself. This week, I talked about the simmering history of a font called Fraktur, which came to be identified with the German people—and later the Nazi Party. We also discuss the still-popular font Futura, which emerged in Germany in the 1920s; the hope of a memory-boosting font; and, of course, that haunting Avatar logo.

Fact: Bubble wrap was originally intended as a wallpaper

By Sophie Bushwick

Back in 1957, trend-setters were papering their walls with unusual textures and materials like bamboo and vinyl. Two engineers decided to add their own contribution: a 3D wallpaper made from plastic and air.

In a garage in New Jersey, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes first tried sealing two shower curtains together with bubbles trapped between. Eventually, they developed a machine to simplify the process. In 1960, they founded the Sealed Air Corporation to keep pumping out those squishy bubbles.

What they didn’t figure out was a good application for their new product. When bubble-wrap wallpaper failed to take off, the team tried marketing it as greenhouse insulation. Although it worked pretty well, they didn’t find many buyers. Finally, marketer Frederick W. Bowers began pitching the new invention as a packaging material.

His first client: IBM. The technology giant had just released the 1401, one of the first mass-produced business computers. To protect the delicate machine in transit, the company needed some sort of buffer, and air bubbles worked great. Finally, the product had found its calling.

In 1993, Fielding and Chavannes earned a spot in the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. Today, their company still makes bubble wrap—each year, it produces enough to wrap around the equator 10 times—even though it makes most of its income from food-packaging materials. This video shows how the process works:

Fact: Glowing bacteria may have saved soldiers’ lives

By Jason Lederman

Big thanks to Derek Roberts and Valerie Franek from our Facebook group for helping me to find this fact!

The battle of Shiloh was a bloody one; more than 16,000 Civil War soldiers were wounded and more than 3,000 died. It took medics two full days to reach all of the wounded, and oh, yeah, some of them had injuries that glowed in the dark. Medics called it “angel’s glow,” because the wounds healed faster and cleaner than those without the strange phenomenon.

The mystery wasn’t solved for more than 100 years, until 17-year-old Bill Martin heard about the glowing wounds while visiting the battle site. After talking to his mom, Phyllis (who happened to be a microbiologist with the USDA, Martin and his friend Jon Curtis began a series of experiments to determine if the glowing could have been caused by a bacteria in the soil. After researching which weather and soil conditions at Shiloh could be hospitable to bacteria that glow in the dark, their work proved successful, except that the bacteria they were studying, Photorhabdus luminescens, couldn’t survive in the heat of the human body. But because it was April in Tennessee, it was cold: soldiers waiting two days for medical attention likely had hypothermia. This would have cooled the bodies enough for the angel’s glow to persist. And unlike many pathogens that turn simple wounds deadly, this particular microbe likely sped up the healing process.

Another medical mystery solved, thanks to brilliant moms and curious teens!

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: glowing Civil War soldiers and historic font battles appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

This week’s episode is another extra special one: it’s the second half of our first-ever live show, which happened on September 14 at Caveat in NYC. We’re already cooking up plans for another one in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled for more info!

Fact: An 18th-century lady scammer convinced the royal physician she was giving birth to rabbits

By Rachel Feltman

In September of 1726, Mary Toft had a baby. A rabbit baby. More specifically, she labored and seem to give birth to a jumble of bloody animal parts. This was her fourth child. She claimed she’d chased down a rabbit for supper while several weeks pregnant, and thought of nothing since. When her assisting neighbor spread the news of the strange birth, the local midwife John Howard took notice.

“[Mary is] of a very stupid and sullen Temper,” he later wrote. But boy did she keep on giving birth to rabbits! Here’s an illustration of the act, though in real life the rabbits were not exactly leaping out of her in good health.

King George I apparently took keen interest in this strange event and sent his court anatomist Nathaniel St. Andre to check it out. St. Andre, for the record, does not have a reputation for having been a good doctor. And true to form, he essentially walked in ready to believe the tale. Mary was laboring on her 15th bunny when he arrived, and based on the quivering of her abdomen he determined that the rabbits were leaping out of her right fallopian tube. They came out dead and in pieces because of her uterus crushing them (because that’s how childbirth works).

You can hear more about Mary’s story in the podcast, or read up on her here. Here is a triumphant image of her that I think serves her glorious memory well.

Fact: The Parthenon is a giant optical illusion.

By Claire Maldarelli

If you’ve ever looked at pictures of the Parthenon (or seen it in person) and were awed at the incredible ability of the architects to construct a near perfect structure with pencil straight columns and flat floors, you aren’t alone. Throughout history, historians have taken keen interest in how these ancient builders were able to pull off such a hefty feat without the use of modern equipment or technology.

As it turns out, they found, the key to making something perfect to the human eye is to make it imperfect. The Parthenon is perhaps one of the best examples of this. The same quirks of the brain that divided the internet into yanny and laurel and blue and gold dress believers, were employed in creating this ancient structure.

When examined closely, researchers have found, the Parthenon contains almost no straight lines or right angles. And yet, when you look at it—especially from a distance—no matter what the angle, the building looks essentially perfect: Each column straight as a razor’s edge. Holding down a perfectly box-like top. Listen to this week’s episode and uncover all the (so-far-known) optical illusions that lay hidden in this 5th Century B.C. structure.

Fact: An all-too-real work of taxidermy

By Eleanor Cummins

“Arab Courier Attacked by Lions” was an instant sensation. The dramatic work of taxidermy was crafted for the Paris Exposition in 1867 by the famed Verreaux Brothers, Jules and Edouard, whose works at the time were among the prides of Paris. Sources report some 50 million people stopped by the months-long festival of innovation specifically to see this. Where stuffed birds were typically restrained, and mounted game sat isolated above a fireplace, this piece told a story. But the story was a little spookier—or, rather, a little more ethically fraught—than anyone initially expected. At the live show, we explored 150 years of revelations about this stuffed camel, his upholstered lions attackers, and, most importantly, one overlooked human skull.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: birthing rabbits, gruesome taxidermy, and the Parthenon’s best-kept secret appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. Check it out:

Fact: Yes, you can absorb your twin—your whole twin—in the womb

By Eleanor Cummins

One of the things at which PopSci truly excels, at least in my opinion, is investigating old wives’ tales. I mean, we literally just published a piece on whether or not it’s bad to crack your knuckles. (Spoiler: it’s not.) Though it’s not on this Wikipedia-sanctioned list of legit old wives’ tales, I think it’s fair to say that telling people they ate their twin in the womb is one of the popular medical-ish superstitions we have today. A new wives tale, if you will.

The evidence of this trend is everywhere, from Aunt Voula talking about the teeth in the mole on the back of her neck in My Big Fat Greek Wedding to running back Marshawn Lynch’s mother claiming her son’s incredible strength comes from absorbing his twin in the womb. But is it real? Can this even happen? How? When? And what does it mean for the surviving twin?

In this episode, I talk about “vanishing twin syndrome,” the “fetus in fetu” phenomenon, and the biological reasons neither of these are helpful to a football player.

Fact: Americans used to eat milk full of chalk, formaldehyde, and calf brains

By Rachel Feltman

Lots of people complain about all the difficult-to-pronounce, non-food food that’s in our food, but most of us also know that food used to be full of, like, really egregiously non-food food. We’re talking candies colored with poisonous metals (which we discussed a few episodes back in relation to deadly wallpaper). We’re talking backyard leaves ground up and sold as green tea. In 1882, Massachusetts regulators testing ground cloves found that literally 100 percent of the stuff on the market was fake—it was mostly burned seashells. Canadian officials found the same was true of dry mustard. Basically, any ground spice was more likely to be charcoal or literal dust than an actual spice. One New York spice-maker bought 5,000 pounds of coconut shells a year. Ketchup, as we discussed in our episode on condiment grading standards, was often made from discarded pumpkin skin dyed red and pepped up with vinegar and cayenne or paprika.

How did we finally get around to keeping poison out of our food? I discuss the answer in this week’s episode with the help of a new book called “The Poison Squad” by Deborah Blum. Spoiler alert: we had to force unpaid volunteers to eat a bunch of borax.

Fact: There is one scientist honored with both a Nobel Prize and an Ig Nobel Prize

By Jason Lederman

The only man to win both a Nobel Prize and an Ig Nobel Prize (an award given to “research that makes you laugh and then makes you think”) is Dr. Andre Geim. Geim won the Nobel Physics Prize in 2010, just six years after conducting research on the material graphene (a very short time—even Geim didn’t expect to win that soon). What’s so special about graphene? In a Q&A with Nature, Geim describes it as “the thinnest possible material you can imagine. It also has the largest surface-to-weight ratio: with one gram of graphene you can cover several football pitches (in Manchester, you know, we measure surface area in football pitches). It’s also the strongest material ever measured; it’s the stiffest material we know; it’s the most stretchable crystal. That’s not the full list of superlatives, but it’s pretty impressive.”

What did a scientist brilliant enough to win the most esteemed prize in physics do to win an Ig Nobel? He levitated a frog with magnets.

In Sarah Lewis’ book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, Geim describes his now-famous experiment. He doesn’t remember why he did it, but he poured water directly onto a fully-powered electromagnet. The water turned to tiny spheres, apparently defying gravity.

Geim says he has spent 10% of his professional career doing what he calls “Friday Night Experiments,” trying random stuff just to see what would happen. Levitating the frog was one of these experiments, as was the beginning of his work with graphene—to remove the graphene from graphite, he used scotch tape and a pencil.

Is Geim worried about what his peers think of his frog experiment? Not really. As he told Lewis, “In my experience, if people don’t have a sense of humor, they are usually not very good scientists either.” Read more about Geim’s research and see other levitated objects here

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: eating your own twin, embalmed milk, and levitating frogs appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. Check it out:

Fact: Ice was once a hot commodity

By Eleanor Cummins

In 2018, ice is everywhere. You can make it yourself by putting a tray of water into the freezer. Or you can find one of those special fridges with an in-unit ice machine and wait for the cold stuff to simply plop out into your cup. But ice used to be much, much harder to get your hands on—and in the era before A/C, it was desperately desired. That’s why, for much of the 19th century and into the 20th, ice was the cold, hard heart of an international economy called the “frozen water trade.”

How did it work? In New England and other northerly regions, ice would be cut up from frozen lakes or brought down from mountain peaks. It would be insulated (though 90 percent was still somehow lost) and transported by ship, and later, in some places, by ice, around the globe. Boom towns arose on the banks of frosty rivers, the hardy carvers besieged by frostbite and knee injuries. Ever wonder what those singing Swedes were doing in the opening sequence of Frozen? They were carving ice. In the dead of winter. (Probably to be shipped to India!)

Today, when an unchilled beverage is a rare offense and there’s so much ice to go around we can do YouTube-d dunk challenges, the frozen water industry has a twinge of ridiculousness. But for Frederic Tudor, the industry’s founder, the Ice King himself, the man who was (probably) the first to say, “Stop, collaborate, and listen, ice is back with my brand new invention,” it was the foundation a fortune.

Fact: These robots are hopping around an asteroid and sending pictures home

By Mary Beth Griggs

When I got to write about this amazing picture I was instantly charmed by its photographer: a hopping robot currently bouncing around on another world like a tiny, majestic mechanical bunny rabbit.

Rover 1B—and its twin, Rover 1B—are part of the Japanese Hayabusa-II mission. They’re currently leaping around on the surface of the crystal-shaped asteroid Ryugu taking pictures and temperature measurements. They’re autonomous, which means they decide where and when to jump. But why jump? It turns out that because the gravity on asteroids is so low, rolling wheels would just send rovers floating off into space. So instead, internal motors push the little Roomba-like bots into the area above the asteroid and send them gliding for 15 minutes, taking them about 50 feet from their last position.

This is especially exciting for Japan, which had a rover planned for its first asteroid-visiting mission, Hayabusa, back in 2005. Sadly, the rover was released from the spacecraft and tumbled off into space. (If you click on that link, the rover is circled in yellow, floating away).

The current mission to Ryugu is just getting started. A more-powerful lander was just released to the surface today and while it won’t hop around as much as the rovers, it will still be able to right itself on the asteroid surface.

Fact: Octopuses on MDMA are way better than sheep on meth

By Rachel Feltman

After editing an article about a truly delightful study about how octopuses act on ecstasy, I found myself wondering what other research on critters and recreational drugs I could dig up. I found one example that intrigued me and another that totally horrified me! We’ll start with the bad news: back in 2010, researchers (funded in part by Taser International) shocked a bunch of methamphetamine-addled sheep to show that tasers don’t pose life-threatening risks to human drug users. Some animal research is important, and some is arguably harmless (those octopuses, for example, just got very huggy and then went back to normal), but this study definitely made me squirm.

On a less disturbing note, I was excited to learn that those super-meme-able photos of spider webs made under the influence are actually exactly what the internet advertises them to be. But does a spider’s inability to weave a normal web while hopped up on caffeine mean that drinking coffee is bad for your workflow? Not exactly.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Sheep on meth, hopping space robots, and the economy of “Frozen” appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

This week’s episode is extra special: it’s the first half of our first-ever live show, which happened on September 14 at Caveat in NYC. We’re already cooking up plans for another one in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled for more info!

FACT: This cheese is so gnarly it’s literally illegal

By Rachel Feltman on behalf of Sara Chodosh, who is on a well-deserved vacation!

Consider how many disgusting, potentially dangerous foods are totally legal to eat: fermented, actively rotting shark meat, super-deadly pufferfish, and newly-severed, super-wiggly octopus legs capable of choking you on their way down. So an illegal cheese must be pretty intense, right? Right.

Enter casu marzu, a traditional Sardinian cheese made of sheep’s milk—and maggots. Lots of maggots. Casu marzu starts out as your standard wheel of pecorino, but mongers leave it sitting outside to allow the cheese fly Piophila casei to fill it with eggs. A fly can lay hundreds of eggs in a single go, so it doesn’t take much to impregnate the entire wheel with wriggling larvae. Those larvae eat the cheese, and their digestive juices break it down into a softer, creamier product than the original.

It apparently tastes pretty good, but you can’t choose to indulge sans-maggot: if the larvae are dead, it’s considered spoiled. You can, however, suffocate them in a baggie right before indulging.

The European Union has banned the dish for hygiene reasons, but plenty of Sardinians still enjoy it. It might sound gross to the uninitiated, but as Sara pointed out at the live show, this is really the same process as all cheesemaking, only on a visible scale. Or favorite cheeses are all the result of microbial organisms eating and digesting the original milk product—the larvae that turn pecorino into casu marzu aren’t all that different. But they are a lot more squirmy.

FACT: Butter burns like hellfire

By Mary Beth Griggs

I wasn’t going to tell you all about the Great Butter Fire that blazed in Madison, Wisconsin in 1991.

I was going to talk about the Norwegian goat cheese fire that burned for five days and closed a tunnel in the northern Norwegian town of Tysfjord for several weeks. The blaze of glory that is 27 tons of goat cheese burning on a truck is absolutely an image one wants to carry in their imagination forever. Then I started looking into other dairy disasters, and I found this mesmerizingly delightful 2011 segment produced by News-3 Madison, WISC-TV, about the massive fire that tore through a cold storage facility in Wisconsin in 1991: literal rivers of butter, hot dogs exploding, a fire that burned for eight nights, and a “deep fryer of fire” as correspondent David Douglas reported. Without a doubt, this was the weirdest thing I learned this week.

Fact: We have an exploited Canadian to thank for our practice of punching holes in cows

By Rachel Feltman

On June 6, 1822, Alexis St. Martin—an 18-year-old French Canadian working for the American Fur Company in the Michigan Territory—received a life-changing musket wound. Shot accidentally from behind, he lost bits of muscle and rib as large as his hand. The duck-shot lacerated his lungs and diaphragm and punched right through his stomach. In short, he was not in a good way. But when local doctor William Beaumont tended to his wounds, the physician saw a unique opportunity—because although St. Martin otherwise returned to decent health, the wound in his stomach healed around an open hole that peered right into his stomach. Here’s what that looked like:

Scientists didn’t know much about human digestion at the time, so Beaumont purposefully took St. Martin on as a servant so that he could set about doing experiments (including, but not limited to, licking his stomach). Beaumont did publish a lot of interesting stuff during the course of their long, complex, and indisputably exploitative relationship (illustrated here, as referenced during the live show), but some recent studies suggest that Beaumont’s fixation on his patient may have also inspired his contemporaries to spend more time physically examining the ill folks under their care.

And to bring this back around to dairy, here’s one more thing about St. Martin’s injuries: It definitely inspired us to put holes in cows. You can read more about that strange process here.

*If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: holes in people (and cows), illegal cheese, and the world’s worst dairy disaster appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

And if you’re in the NYC area, you can come join us for an extra-weird live show on September 14.

Fact: If you pee into the wrong kind of bottle, it can suck your penis inside

By Mary Beth Griggs

There are currently 174 books on and around my desk. I counted. This is wild, but it is not the weirdest thing I learned this week. That honor goes to a delightfully horrifying anecdote found in one of those 174 books. In The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth: And Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine Thomas Morris recounts some of the strangest medical cases in history. (The book is available on November 13. Do yourself a favor and preorder it so that you can gross everyone out at Thanksgiving.)

One of those cases is the unfortunate 1849 incident a local doctor detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine (paywall) “Novel Effects of Potassium—Foreign Bodies in the Urethra—Catalepsy.” He was called “in great haste” to a young man with a pint bottle stuck on his penis. But wait! It’s not what you think.

Once the good doctor neatly smashed the glass off this poor dude’s member, he found out the reason for the unfortunate predicament. Turns out the guy needed to pee in the middle of the night, and grabbed the closest glass container he could find. Sadly for him, it contained small amounts of potassium, which does not react well with water (or urine). See a video of the reaction between potassium and water below, and listen to the podcast to find out how this story turned out. (Also, I would love to know what experiments this guy was doing with potassium in his bedroom in 1849—if anyone knows, let us know!)

Fact: Swishing a sports drink and then spitting it out increases your exercise performance

By Claire Maldarelli

For the past two months, I’ve been training for the Chicago marathon, which I will run on October 7. This is my first marathon and the longest race I’ve ever trained for. The hardest part of my training thus far is not the weekly mileage, but rather the art of hydration and carbohydrate replenishing. Gels, Gatorade, and essentially anything but plain old H₂O seems to upset my digestive tract—and the same is true, to some degree, for more than half of all distance runners.

In my never-ending quest for the best way to hydrate, I came across this study: Researchers had 7 male and 2 female cyclists perform an intense, hour-long exercise session on two different days. On day one, all they did was perform the workout. But for the second session, during the same workout, the researchers gave half a drink containing the processed carbohydrate maltodextrin. The other half had plain water. The subjects spit out the beverages after swishing them around in their mouths for five seconds. In the end, the ones who swished and spat the maltodextrin solution had a significant performance improvement compared to the water swishers, who had none. In fact, the carb swishers improved an average of 2.9 percent, which is far from insignificant when every second or minute counts.

But why? All they did was swish a carbohydrate solution and spit it out. And there’s no way our bodies can absorb any of the sugar that way—that’s been studied.

So what caused the improvement? It turns out this is a perfect example of the strong influence our brains have on our exercise limits. Our mouths have receptors that recognize carbohydrates. Swishing the carbohydrate solution triggers those receptors, which then send a signal to the brain telling it that calories are coming. The brain, relieved, signals the muscles that they can keep moving.

Since that time, researchers have repeated the study dozens and dozens of times, tweaking the amount of carbohydrate in the rinse, the amount of time it stays in the mouth, and the amount and kind of exercise the athletes are doing, and they all come to the same conclusion: The swish works. If you are planning on using the swish method, listen to the podcast for some research-based best practices—and my master marathon hydration plan.

Fact: Everything I ever knew about the Statue of Liberty was a lie (and we turned her into a battery)

By Rachel Feltman

Researching my fact led me on a wild ride through the history of one of our nation’s most iconic statues, and you’ll have to listen to the podcast to learn what non-sciencey secrets I uncovered. But the fact that started my journey is all about chemistry: in the 1980s, when the National Parks Service decided to stop slapping paint on the Statue of Liberty and actually give her a real tune-up, they discovered she was breaking down inside. But the cause of the erosion is the really fascinating part: the famous copper shell of the statue is super thin, but an iron frame inside holds her up. Unfortunately, iron and copper have what’s called a galvanic reaction when exposed to moisture. The water (which had salt in it) was acting as an electrolyte, allowing electrons to break free and giving the resulting iron ions the ability to move on through to the copper. The resulting series of electron swaps carries a voltage—about a quarter of a volt, in this case.

According to a New York Times article from 1985, engineers fixed the problem by swapping the eroded frames for new steel pieces, and they used Teflon coating to ensure the disparate metals wouldn’t touch again. The American Society of Civil Engineers even donated a set of CAD schematics to the National Park Service, which replaced original drawings lost in Paris back in the early 1900s. It seems wild to think we went through so many years not really bothering to care what was going on under the Statue of Liberty’s thin copper surface, but at least she joined the 20th century instead of collapsing.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to grab tickets to our live show on September 14. We’d feel weird doing it without you.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: Lady Liberty’s big secret, the ultimate exercise hack, and a penis in a bottle appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

FACT: There’s a disease called fatal insomnia—and it’s even worse than it sounds

By Sara Chodosh

In 1991, Michael Corke was a normal high school music teacher. By 1993, he was one of the few examples of what happens to a person when they simply cannot sleep. He was also, unfortunately, deceased.

Corke died of a rare disease called fatal insomnia, which essentially breaks down the thalamus and prevents that brain region from sending the signal that it’s time for lights out. Without that signal, he and everyone else who’s ever been recorded as having the disease cannot sleep. At all. This is somewhat hard to imagine because we all say things like “I couldn’t sleep last night” when what we mean is “I had trouble sleeping” or “I slept badly.” People with fatal insomnia start out this way. But eventually, they reach a point where they literally never fall asleep, even for a second. The closest they get is hallucinating, which is the result of their brains attempting to dream while they’re still awake.

There are more details in the podcast and even more in the book where I found this fact, Why We Sleep by neuroscientist Matthew Walker. I cannot recommend the book enough. It’s wonderfully written, dives deep into the science (he even has a bibliography in each chapter!), and makes a compelling case for prioritizing sleep in your life. Yes, it taught me about deadly insomnia, which is definitely the kind of thing that could keep you up at night. But the book convinced me to commit to getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis—and I had no idea what I was missing.

FACT: Some of our most precious beaches are made of poo

By Eleanor Cummins

The bumphead parrotfish surely ranks among the ocean’s ugliest creatures. These dome-headed, demon-eyed creatures digest coral and turn it into the white sand beaches we all know, love, and pay tons of money to visit. Check it out:

But even more amazing is their poop-to-bodyweight ratio. Bumpheads are enormous for fish, weighing in as high as 100 pounds. But their, er, organic output is even more sizeable, as they can poop more than 211 pounds of coral in a year. This got me wondering, how much do humans defecate? (320 pounds a year.) Or Asian elephants? (As much as 300 pounds a day, or more than 100,000 pounds a year.) A cow? A bunny? A chicken? I don’t know about you, but I think numbers like these really poop things into perspective.

Fact: The NYPD has not one, but two official beekeepers

By Rachel Feltman

Twitter was buzzing last week when a swarm of honeybees—tens of thousands of them, in fact—huddled up for a wee rest on top of a Times Square hot dog stand. But the wriggling masses of pollinators weren’t even the main attraction: most folks were tweeting about the fact that the NYPD sent a beekeeper over to vacuum the insects up.

I decided to find out more.

First things first: Yes, the NYPD has a beekeeper on call. They actually have two at the moment. I was unable to find any other police department with a beekeeper (please let us know if your town has one!) but that makes sense. See, honeybees aren’t particularly dangerous, even when they gather in great numbers. And since they’re most likely to sting you when you interfere with their hive, they’re especially benign when found far afield (like, for example, on a hot dog stand). But they can be a public danger in areas that are too crowded and/or hectic for humans to stay out of their business. In other words, a honeybee is unlikely to attack you—but if you stumble face-first into a big ol’ pile of them, bad things are bound to happen. In the hustle and bustle of New York City, swarms are more likely to pose a threat than they would in a sleepier town. So when an alarming number of them touch down in a busy area, the NYPD wants to know about it.

You’ve heard of the A-team…now meet the Bee-team ?! As sworn police officers and NYPD beekeepers, Officers Mays & Lauriano keep the city safe one swarm at a time. Learn more about how @NYPDBees handle these sticky ? situations around NYC! pic.twitter.com/Rm4QJfbTHv

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) August 29, 2018

As far as I could tell, the first sort-of-official NYPD beekeeper was Anthony Planakis, known as “Tony Bees.” He’s a fourth-generation beekeeper and a former cop, and when a hive-related problem cropped up in Harlem in 1995, his sergeant sent him out to handle the job. He spent 20 years as the NYPD’s go-to bee expert, but several other officers with recreational beekeeping experience have stepped up since then.

One more thing: ever wondered what the most painful place to get a bee sting is? According to one study, the “penis shaft” only comes in third place. You’ll have to give the podcast a listen to hear more.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to grab tickets to our live show on September 14. We’d feel weird doing it without you.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: deadly insomnia, the prettiest poop, and emergency beekeepers appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

And if you’re in the NYC area, you can come join us for an extra-weird live show on September 14.

Fact: A Dutch anatomist build artistic scenes using baby skeletons and body parts—and the Russian Tsar loved them

By Mary Beth Griggs

Frederik Ruysch was a Dutch anatomist and botanist fascinated with embalming. As we discussed in this week’s episode, his professional career as a surgeon and obstetrician in Amsterdam gave him access to a lot of bodies, and in his spare time he made huge efforts to embalm humans and other animals in fanciful ways—to preserve their anatomy for future study, and give people a better idea of how the natural world (including humans) worked. Some amazing drawings of his work can be found here.

He injected arteries with a liquid red wax after death. The technique not only gave the bodies a more lifelike appearance but also made it possible for early anatomists to trace tiny blood vessels that would otherwise have gotten lost. He created a museum where he could display his elaborate embalming jars, allowing the public to come in and see his growing collection.

Why pose dead people in weird ways? To keep people interested, Ruysh says: “First of all, I do it to allay the distaste of people who are naturally inclined to be dismayed by the sight of corpses.”

His daughter Rachel helped him with the preparation of the embalming jars while she was young, but she went on to become a widely acclaimed artist, famous for her stunning floral paintings.

The jars become so acclaimed that Peter the Great visited the collection in 1697. In 1717, the Russian Tsar bought the entire collection and moved it back to St. Petersburg’s Kunstkamera museum.

Remarkably, some of his specimens still exist there today, hundreds of years after their creation. Fair warning, some of them are very disturbing, but if you want to take a peek, you can look here.

Fact: The sun once went so berzerk that telegraphs kept running without their batteries

By Rachel Feltman

On September 1, 1859, British astronomer Richard Carrington just barely caught sight of a huge solar storm shooting plasma from the sun. The surprise, he said, left him “somewhat flurried.” And he wasn’t the only one shaken up by the incident: the so-called Carrington Event proved to be the most powerful solar storm in at least 500 years. Folks saw aurorae as far south as the tropics, with daylight-bright skies full of red, green, and purple hues rousing them from sleep before dawn. Scientists have studied records from that time in an attempt to determine how severe solar weather affects human health, but haven’t gotten many answers.

We still know surprisingly little about the sun (though there are great advances now being made in the study of solar weather, and the Parker Solar Probe is speeding toward the light to tell us more) but we know that a Carrington-scale event today would cause a lot of technological chaos. The burst of high-energy plasma from the sun would cost millions of dollars in satellite damage alone and leave GPS and possibly electrical grids crippled all over the world. In 1859, however, there were no GPS systems to fail—there was just the telegraph, and it was only about 20 years old.

That’s where we get our coolest Carrington anecdote: there are many reports of telegraph operators getting shocked by overloaded batteries in the wake of the sun’s temper tantrum, and some even caught on fire. A quick fix was to disconnect the battery and shut the system down. But in several cities, operators reported that their telegraph wires kept on transmitting while totally disconnected from any power source. The electrical charge in the air was so great that the machines kept running.

Fact: George Washington may have died because he had too many doctors—but they did consider bringing him back

By Anna Brooks

What killed George Washington? Most say a throat infection, but others say his doctors did—by accident, of course. On a chilly December night in 1799, the former president was indeed suffering from a terrible throat cold. This was probably worsened by his refusal to change out of freezing wet clothes after he got caught in a sleet storm that day (apparently, being on time for dinner was more important than avoiding a chill).

Back in those days, a doctor’s first line of treatment was usually bloodletting, a medical therapy Washington was supposedly very fond of. But when five to seven pints of blood are drained from your body (which is said to be the case after dear George caught cold), you’re not likely to survive. And George Washington didn’t. Most of us are brimming with around 10 pints of blood, although it depends on your weight and height. George Washington was a very large man, but even he wasn’t resilient enough to survive after losing around half his blood supply.

Bloodletting may seem a little counterintuitive these days, but for thousands of years it was a popular medical treatment. Doctors believed illnesses lived in the blood, and so extracting the infectious fluid was the most logical solution. A very dizzy Marie Antoinette received the treatment while she was giving birth—doctors and the queen herself deemed it a success, although apparently at the same time this was happening, someone opened a window to let some fresh air into the room. After having a seizure, Charles II, the king of England in 1685, was also treated by bloodletting. Over the course of three days, he supposedly had almost all of the blood in his body drained. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t make it.

Our poor George Washington met a similar fate, although one of his “best friends on Earth” (that’s according to the friend, anyway) couldn’t accept the tragedy and had a plan to bring George back from the dead. But even the doctors who almost drained the former president dry agreed that wasn’t a very good idea.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to grab tickets to our live show on September 14. We’d feel weird doing it without you.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: baby skeleton art, zombie presidents, and solar-powered telegraphs appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

Fact: The more fit you are, the more you might sweat during exercise

By Claire Maldarelli

Sweat gets a bad rap. In today’s society, profusely sweating upon the sight of the sun or within five minutes of working out doesn’t usually, or ever, garner the jealousy or envy from bystanders in the same way someone with oversized muscles or six pack abs does. But why not?

With August’s heat in full swing, in this episode, I sought to answer a suspicion I’ve had for sometime: That being more physically fit might actually make you sweat more. In doing so, I also make the case for praising sweat. This physiological adaptation is the most effective method we have for keeping our body temperatures from rising to dangerous levels either during while we are exercising, lounging at the beach, simply walking outside on a summer’s day.

There are many factors that determine how much one individual sweats, and, like any other human trait, there are some people that simply sweat more than others. On average, men tend to sweat more than women. Scientists figured this out by putting a similar group of fit men and women on a stationary bike for the same amount of time and effort. The researchers measured the number of sweat glands that were active and how much sweat each person produced. In the end, the fit men sweat more than the fit women not because they had more active sweat glands at any given time, but simply because their sweat glands produced more sweat. On that note, the number of sweat glands any one person has can range from two million to four million, and researchers have found that those who are deemed “heavy sweaters” more sweat glands than average and ones that are more sensitive to nerve stimuli.

There’s far more sweat facts like this to be heard on the podcast, including when everyone starts to sweat less as well as the answer to my long-sought after question. But the main point is that sweat is great because it keeps us not just comfortable, but alive. So why shun a physiological attribute that keeps you from dying? Heavy sweaters should be envied, not mocked.

Fact: Dogs are banned from Antarctica. And they should be happy about it.

By Lexi Krupp

Antarctica is the world’s largest preserve, “devoted to peace and science,” encompassing more area than the United States and Mexico combined. And that peaceful frozen dessert is also devoid of dogs. That’s because an international treaty banned plants and animals not native to the landmass (barring humans) in the 1990s, fearing disturbance to wildlife and the introduction of disease.

But before their ban, dogs had a pretty unhappy time on the continent. The first big moment in Antarctic dog history was when a Norwegian team of explorers set off to reach the South Pole in 1911. They couldn’t have made it without the aid of their sled dogs, but at a price. The journey began with 52 dogs, but the group came back with just 11, eating most of the pack along the way. Only the lead dog made it back to Norway, where he lived as a king, fathering a litter of puppies and feasting off free slabs of meat from the local butcher.

Perhaps the most impressive story from Antarctica of dog loyalty and unconditional love happened over the winter of 1958. A Japanese research team brought 15 Sakhalin huskies to help them establish a research station on an island off the coast. Stationed there for a year, the first group planned to leave, to be replaced by a second batch of scientists. With the arrival of a large storm, the researchers had to flee the island by helicopter, leaving their dogs behind, tied up with a few days’ worth of food. But the second group never made it, unable to reach the island by boat. The Japanese expedition had to wait an entire year before they returned. At the base, they found two of the original dogs waiting for them, overjoyed to see people after surviving the Antarctic winter on their own.

Fact: There was once a committee to get Americans to eat more organ meats (and it worked!)

By Sara Chodosh

I have apparently gained a reputation in the PopSci office as “the organ meats person” because when I mentioned them in a meeting everyone commented that I should “finally talk about them on the podcast because I love them so much.” My family has always had chopped liver at various holidays and my aunt taught me that the chef’s treat during Thanksgiving meal prep is cooking up the innards in plenty of butter and salt. So yeah, I like organ means. I didn’t know anything about the push to get Americans to eat more of them until I read The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg. The book is full of weird tidbits like that so I definitely recommend it.

I also didn’t know until I started digging into this for the pod that brains are mostly safe to eat. I’ve been scarred somewhat by terrifying stories about prion diseases like mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob, and I thought that most animal brains were risky. It’s true that multiple mammals—cows, sheep, goats, even cats—can carry prions, so for that reason I might steer clear just in case, but the reality is that the incidence is very low.

If you’re looking to start your organ meat adventure, I highly recommend liver (try paté!) or sweetbreads. Try them at a nice restaurant where they’ll be able to cook them properly, plus you won’t have the gross factor of handling the organs yourself. Enjoy!

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: eating organs, celebrating sweat, and banning dogs appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

Fact: One intrepid zoologist once rode a carriage pulled by zebras past Buckingham Palace

By Rachel Feltman

Everybody wants a pet fox, as evidenced by the longtail success of the PopSci article “Can I have a pet fox?” So I was tickled when Neel V. Patel pitched this update on fox domestication genes. Reading up on the domesticated foxes that, some 40 generations in, have turned positively puppy-like, I started to wonder: what determines whether or not we can domesticate an animal?

No Weirdest Thing fact-finding mission is complete without a weird internet rabbit hole, and I found mine in Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild of Tring. The zoology enthusiast is famous for his contributions to collections of preserved animal specimens all over the world, but he’s also famous for riding a carriage pulled by zebras past Buckingham Palace. But despite Rothschild’s impressive efforts to tame the striped creatures, they staunchly refuse to be domesticated.

Fact: In late-18th- and early-19th-century England, people really enjoyed inhaling laughing gas

By: Sophie Bushwick

In 1798, Humphry Davy, a young poet and aspiring physician, became the supervisor of the newly-established Bristol Pneumatic Medical Institute, a center for medical treatment and research. Davy quickly realized that the Institute’s regimens were not based on actual trials or experiments, so he embarked on a course of research into various inhalable gases. His first subject: himself.

After undergoing fainting fits, nausea, and a near-death experience with carbon monoxide, Davy eventually decided nitrous oxide, N₂O, would be the safest substance to test on himself and others. It was also the most fun. “This gas raised my pulse, made me dance about the laboratory as a madman, and has kept my spirits in a glow ever since,” Davy wrote. Thanks to reactions like this, people would eventually dub the substance laughing gas.

Davy loved inhaling nitrous oxide; during one period he breathed it up to three or four times a day. He wrote poetry under the influence (“On Breathing Nitrous Oxide”), experimented with combining alcohol and N₂O (apparently it reduced his hangover), and spent some time saturating his lungs in a portable gas chamber.

In addition to self-experimentation, Davy tested other subjects, pioneering a blind experimental method. Without telling volunteers whether they were inhaling nitrous oxide or plain air, he recorded their physical reactions and asked how they felt. He also gave gas to his friends, including female acquaintances (which gave rise to rumors that this substance made women hysterical and removed their inhibitions) and the poets Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Many of them enjoyed the experience as much as Davy did; Southey wrote, “It has made me laugh and tingle in every toe and finger-tip.”

Although Davy realized nitrous oxide could make a person lose consciousness and then revive without ill effects, he didn’t leap to applying laughing gas as an anesthetic during surgery. (It wasn’t used this way until 1844, after Davy’s death.) But he did publish the results of his detailed experiments—to mixed reactions. The popular press, and political cartoonists, lampooned his work, implying that nitrous oxide induced not only hilarity, but also sexual debauchery.

However, this negative press did not damage Davy’s career. He went on to make his name as a famous chemist, using electricity to isolate seven elements, including potassium and calcium, for the first time. As an inventor, he also created a new lamp that miners could use safely underground. And he continued to write poetry.

The oldest instruments are all bone flutes

By Eleanor Cummins

That sound you’re hearing is the haunting music of the Divje Babe flute, which many experts consider to be one of the oldest known instruments on Earth. Dating back to a Slovenian cave some 43,000 years ago, the flute is crafted from a cave bear femur. (Unless it’s just teeth marks from a hungry cave bear murderer, as other archaeologists suggest.) Listening to its spooky tune, I accidentally unlocked an ancient curse, and tumbled down a rabbit hole about the origins of music. While little is known about why we sing, scat, or play the tuba, one thing’s for sure: humans love turning bones into flutes.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: bone flutes, zebra carriages, and laughing gas parties appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster.

And if you’re in the NYC area, you can come join us for an extra-weird live show on September 14. More details coming soon, so keep an eye on our Facebook group!

Fact: Stew from a polar bear liver will kill you in a most gruesome way

By Lexi Krupp

When early Arctic explorers managed to kill a polar bear and cook up its organs, they were in for a nasty surprise. After the meal, several of the crew grew sick, unable to sleep, suffering from pounding headaches and sick to their stomachs. The next day, the skin of several men started to peel off their body, first in patches, then from head to foot. The men died with their flesh exposed to the frigid air.

When medical researchers got their hands on a polar bear from an expedition to Greenland in the 1940s, they found the bear’s liver was bursting with Vitamin A, nearly 60 times higher than the amount found in a human. We all need a certain amount of Vitamin A to keep our bodies healthy, but our systems can only handle so much. Too much of the vitamin over months or years would damage our livers and increase the pressure on our brains. A massive overload all at once would swiftly kill us—but not before making all of our skin peel off.

Fact: Our obsession with chlorinated water bubbled over in 1989

By Eleanor Cummins

True crime stories are everywhere, from hit podcasts like Criminal and Serial to must-watch Netflix series like Making a Murderer. And yet, every single one of these series has overlooked the Chlorine Five. Until now.

The story goes like this: In Wildwood Crest, New Jersey in 1989, there was an outbreak of fecal coliform bacteria. The public health authority closed down several beaches, because swimming in poop, at least in high enough concentrations, is downright dangerous. But a group of local business owners weren’t having it. So according to the initial report from The New York Times, they lugged chlorine tablets to the beach and dumped about 100 gallons worth of chlorine into the Atlantic Ocean, before someone stopped them.

The chemical dump and subsequent court appearance made national news at the time. But the incident, which one chemical historian sees as a watershed moment in the “summer love affair between chlorine and swimming,” has largely been forgotten. As New York City ramps up a new project to chlorinate a contaminated waterway, it’s as good a time as ever to revisit the Chlorine Five, and the perils and promise of this popular chemical.

Fact: Your airport might house a secret toilet—a secret drug toilet

By Rachel Feltman

John F. Kennedy International Airport has a special toilet sequestered away from prying eyes. But no matter how many jet-lagged tourists are holding up the line of the public commode, you should be glad you’re not visiting the less-trafficked facilities. Because to get there, you have to show signs that you may be trafficking drugs—in your stomach.

Yes, JFK (and an unknown number of other airports and prisons) have toilets specially designed to fish packets of cocaine and heroine out of your poop.

“Everything they pass goes into … a hermetically sealed agitation unit with a viewing panel,”John Baker, managing director of Drugloo UK Ltd, told the CBC of his company’s “Drugbuggy Ranger” in 2016. “Water and detergent sprays come into the agitation area, basically blow away all the debris. So you’re left with whatever item you’re looking for which is all nice and clean and smells kind of pleasant.”

Once someone swallows or stuffs drugs into their person (you can learn everything—and I mean everything—you ever wanted to know about that process right here) waiting for the illicit substances to reemerge is a dangerous game. Hosts will generally do things like live on broth and take anti-diarrheal medication to keep things from passing too quickly, but that can mean days or weeks spent waiting at the other end. Even impatient law enforcement can’t speed things along with laxatives; any sudden bowl movement could cause packets to rupture, which would be very, very bad—most packets contain above-lethal doses, and a body can carry hundreds.

In most cases, suspects spend a couple weeks doing their business (either in special toilets or in bedpans for unlucky individuals to sort through manually) before x-rays confirm their entire haul is safely excreted. Of course, there are outliers: one young man recently went 47 days in captivity without pooping, and refused medical treatment until officers released him. He was later brought back in on related charges, but his keepers said they felt an ethical obligation to make sure he pooped first. Don’t try to follow his example: it is rare, but quite possible, to die from constipation-related conditions. Your bowel can perforate and lead to infections in the abdominal cavity, or the sheer pressure of your fecal buildup can put you into cardiac arrest.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop. And don’t forget to grab tickets to our live show on September 14. We’d feel weird doing it without you.

The post The weirdest things we learned this week: skin-peeling soup, secret drug toilets, and a chlorinated ocean appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

While you’re here, don’t forget to snag tickets to our next (virtual) live event, which is happening on September 15!

FACT: Spiders love to live in cars, but maybe not for the reasons you’ve heard

By Sara Chodosh

I don’t know much of anything about cars, but I do know that they’re not supposed to have spiders. So when I first heard the story about how Mazda6 sedans were apparently overrun with yellow sac spiders to the point of requiring a recall of more than 100,000 vehicles, I kind of accepted it at face value. 

Then I realized that I do actually know some things about spiders (a heck of lot more than I know about cars), and it seemed odd that an arachnid would be attracted to the smell of gasoline—the commonly cited reason behind Mazda’s fuel tank issue. Sure, some people love the scent, but why would a spider? As I explain in the episode, the olfactory explanation doesn’t actually pass the sniff test—which led me to wonder why a particular vehicle might experience widespread yellow sac infestations.

The major complicating factor here is that spiders are everywhere. Seriously. You don’t realize how many spiders are in and around your house right now. While the oft-repeated “fact” that you’re never more than three feet away from an arachnid is not technically true, that’s only because the world is such a heterogeneous place—you might be a few hundred feet away from the nearest spider if you’re in a mall parking lot, but there may be multiple critters within a few inches of you if you’re standing in the grass! The main takeaway is that spiders can be really tiny, there are lots of them in the world, and there’s bound to be at least one kind of eight-legged creepy crawler that enjoys living in any given environment—your car included. But don’t freak out: Spiders are generally helpful creatures.

You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out the strange journey I went on to track down the answer. For now, I’ll say that this was a big exercise in how a great story can become so pervasive that it seems true.

FACT: Racism and weather science once collided to kill thousands of people

By Kendra-Pierre Louis, Reporter for the new podcast How to Save a Planet

In September of 1900, a hurricane hit the bustling island city of Galveston, Texas and killed at least 10,000 people. As the deadliest natural disaster in US history, the storm gets plenty of attention—but most people present it as an unavoidable tragedy. No one knew it was coming, lots of people died, and these days we can do better.

But you don’t have to look too closely into the Galveston storm to realize those deaths were, in fact, completely avoidable. The city’s residents could have been told about the hurricane far enough in advance to evacuate, thanks to Cuban Jesuit priest and meteorologist Father Benito Viñes. He and the other priests at his observatory were particularly adept at reading the clouds for storm intensity and trajectory, and he tried to warn Texans about the incoming threat. But the US Weather Bureau had an aggressive policy of squashing Cuban forecasts—which they saw as backwards, unscientific, and liable to incite unnecessary panic.

FACT: The N95 mask was inspired by a bra cup—and the woman who designed it is also behind the greatest snack food ever invented

By Rachel Feltman

I’d like to talk about ribbons, bras, and N95 masks.

Born in Manhattan in 1917 to a pair of poor Jewish immigrants from Russia, Sara Finkelstein was a real 20th-century thinkfluencer right from the start. In her two decades as Decorating Editor for House Beautiful, she helped pioneer such concepts as the “family room” and living with a roommate to split expenses.

But her real impact started in the late 50s, when she set off on her own as a design consultant. Now going as “Sara Little”—she was 4′11″ and had frequently been called “Little Sara” in the early years of her career—she helped dozens of companies design and market products that people would actually find useful. That was more radical at the time than you might think: Up until that point, most mass-market products were designed based on what retailers said they wanted, not based on what consumers said they needed. Her accomplishments are astonishing, and we probably don’t know about most of the products she worked on. A few highlights:

1. She’s responsible for the first successful boxed chocolate cake sold in England, because she figured out that American cake products were flopping due to the differences between “cake” and “pudding.”
2. For Corning, she used materials developed for ballistic missiles to create freezer-to-oven-to-countertop dishes. She also developed the ergonomic lid tops that are so ubiquitous today—allegedly by watching how tigers grasped their prey.
3. She reportedly convinced a cosmetics company to sell matte makeup products after getting very interested in Geisha culture in Japan.
4. She once went to various prisons to interview professional lock-picks to help her design a better lock.
5. She helped create both Bacos, aka bacon bits, and Bugles, aka the greatest snack of all time.

But these days, Sara Little Turnbull (the professional name she adopted upon marrying in her late 40s) is best known for her influence over a now-ubiquitous product: The N95 mask. In this week’s episode, I dive into the myths—and fantastic truths—of her journey from working with gift wrap ribbons to reinventing the face mask. I’m ready to write the TV show about Turnbull’s fabulous career at absolutely any time.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

The post Your car is probably full of spiders appeared first on Popular Science.

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