SciShow Tangents - Testing New Games with Deboki Chakravarti

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

sniff sniff... What is that awful smell? Ah, it's our stinky, old games! I mean, just look at Truth or Fail! It's all covered in mold! Good thing Deboki's here this week to try out some fresh, exciting new games with us!scWant more Deboki? Check her out at https://twitter.com/okidoki_boki to find info on all of the many projects she works on!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy your very own, genuine SciShow Tangents sticker!A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Tom Mosner for helping to make the show possible!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host for this week, Sam Schultz, and joining me, as always, is science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. And our special guest for today, Tangent's editorial assistant, Deboki Chakravarti. Hello. Deboki is currently globetrotting. What are you doing? in Oslo. My husband's visiting at the University of Oslo for the fall semester. So we've been in Norway. We've been a few other European countries, but also we're now at the time of year where there's no sun. Is it really? It's dark all the time?

Or there's some sun. I think we're now maybe hitting the before 4 p.m. sunset, which I don't know what to do with. What time is it there? It is currently 11.15pm. Perfect podcasting time. That's what I would say. This is me at my best peak Deboki performance. So as you know, every week on Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts while trying to stay on topic. Our panelists play for glory and hank bucks which we award as we play and at the end of the episode one of them gets crowned the

winner and that works very well for us it's fun it's goofy but our pool of games that we play is pretty shallow we've got truth or fail and we've got this or that and a lot of our other games that we play sometimes frankly are just variations of this or that. And a lot of our other games that we play sometimes, frankly, are just variations of this or that. And you know what? Those are great games. I feel very called out right now. But this week, we're going to do a little bit of experimenting. The three of us have each brought a brand new game to test out. And if the game works and everyone likes it, we will try rolling it out in our regular rotation of games to see if Hank likes it. Hank might say, no, I don't want to play this game. Hank will play whatever I make him play.

Yeah, Deboki might say, I simply do not want to write this. That's too hard. Or too convoluted. Yeah, not to reveal too much, but Deboki has a lot of uh a lot of power when it comes to what hank does on the show so uh this week in another assault on the norms of sci-show tangents we don't have a theme in order to present the best version of the games we all just picked whatever theme suited them the best but we can't have an episode of tangents

without a traditional science poem so i did write a little something and here it is games games the wonderful treat you play them standing or in a seat the more you play the better you get this applies to jess or to croquette games games i love oh it's croquet isn't it shit that one doesn't work just pretend pretend it's croquette yeah games games i love them all whether on a computer or using a ball. So let's test out some new games, yo, to play on our science trivia show. Excellent. You used yo for, I think, the first time I've ever heard you say that word in your life.

I've never said it before. I don't think you should do it again. No, I'm sorry, everybody. That was once was good enough. Well, without all that out of the way, let's play my game, which I call The Gauntlet. And I'm sure there will be a sound effect now that's like, The Gauntlet. Right, Tuna?

I hope it's something very like puny, like very like, The Gauntlet. No, no. Welcome, the gauntlet. No, no. Welcome to The Gauntlet, the ultimate game of science, knowledge, strategy, and treachery. In The Gauntlet, you and your opponent will face- Two of my least favorite things. Strategy and treachery or science? Is that which one?

Yeah, science is really down there. Yeah, I hate it. Science and treachery. It's Is that which one? Yeah, science is really down there. Science and treachery. It's the worst. In the gauntlet, you and your opponent will face a series of 10 questions of decreasing difficulty. I will take turns asking you the questions in order from 10 to 1. When asked a question, you may choose to either answer or to pass. There's a lot of rules to strap in. If you choose to answer, a correct answer gets you the amount of points equal to the question's

number. So if you answer question 10 correctly, you get 10 points, 9, you get 9 points, and so on. If you answer incorrectly, you will lose points equal to the question's number and your opponent will have the opportunity to steal. If they answer correctly, they get the points. But if they answer incorrectly, they do not lose points. So there's a lot on the line here. I don't know if any of these rules will work. If you pass, your opponent gets asked the next question, which is slightly less difficult. After we've gone through all the questions, the passed questions are asked again and cannot be skipped a second time. So you're locked in if you skip a question. And a warning.

Questions and answers to later questions may contain clues to the answers of earlier ones. So there might be like little clues left in. This is complicated, Sam. Yeah. Now prepare to enter the Gauntlet Constellations Edition. Question 10. You can answer or pass question 10. While there are a couple of different accepted sets of constellations in the world,

in the West, the most accepted list of constellations was formalized by the International Astronomical Union in 1922. Within five, how many constellations are on that list? Pass or answer? Pass. Deboki, question nine. Many constellations can trace their actual origins back to folk tradition, but the only reason that we here in modern day know about many of them is because they were all collected in one book, the Amalgast, which is basically a really old textbook of astronomy. Which super old Greek guy wrote the Amalgast in the 2nd century AD?

Pass or answer. 2nd century AD and Greek, you said? Uh-huh. Okay, I'm gonna pass. Question 8. The Greek interpretation of the constellation Gemini is as a set of twins, but they ain't just any old generic set of twins. What

mythological twins are depicted by Gemini? Pass or answer. Romulus and Remus. Oh, I'm so sorry, Sarah. You have lost eight points. Deboki, would you like to try to steal? And I don't lose anything. You don't lose anything for stealing. No. Are Artemis and Apollo twins? I just don't feel like they would be the ones. I'm just going to say Artemis and Apollo. That is incorrect.

Luckily for you, you don't lose any points. The answer is Castor and Pollux, who were Argonauts, the brothers of Helen of Troy, and also the namesakes of the two brightest stars in the constellation. Ah. Deboki. Interesting. Question seven. constellation. Ah, Deboki. Question seven. While some scientists believe the Lascaux cave paintings to contain references to constellations we would recognize today as Orion's belt and Taurus, that view is disputed. Clay tablets from what ancient society are more widely accepted as the earliest evidence of constellations? Pass or answer. Mesopotamamian that's exactly right oh i'm on the board

3000 bc that's seven points for deboki well sari is also on the board but it has negative um question six i would make fun of you but i'm like a stupid answer in the same place no you're a genius a genius. Question six is for Sari. The Big Dipper is not a constellation. It is instead part of the formal constellation Ursa Major. What is the name for this and other observable shapes and patterns in stars that aren't part of formally defined constellations set forth by the IAU? Pass or answer?

Pass. I thought the answer was going to be Ursa Major. I was ready. Devotion. I was in the same boat. So question five. There were 48 constellations named in Ptolemy's Amalgast, but one of them just didn't make the cut when it came time for the IAU to formalize their list of constellations. What constellation named after a legendary ship ended up being struck from that list? Pass or answer. Legendary ship. Mythological ship, I would say more. I'm also very mad at myself

now about earlier. Do you know the answer to an earlier? Sorry. I wouldn't say that. Yeah? No. Okay. I feel like I don't know the name. I feel like I know what the ship is, but I don't know the name of i feel like i know what the ship is but i don't

know what the name of it then you can't answer the question i don't think would you like to pass yeah okay pass okay question four for sari amongst the constellations are the signs of the zodiac which besides being a system of astrology is also the name of a region of the sky that straddles what fairly important path of celestial motion? Path of celestial motion? Yeah. The ecliptic? Oh my gosh, Sarah, you got four points. That's exactly right.

Hell yeah! Yes! Thank you. The Earth's orbit. That's a fancy word. The Earth's orbit around the sun. Deboki. Question three.

What mythological animal is represented by Capricornus, the constellation Capricornus? Like a goat? Uh-huh. And? What other part of it is on there? Oh, the mythological version of a goat. Yeah. Oh, like a, is it a satyr?

Satyr? Hmm. I think I'm going to have to say that one is wrong, unfortunately. Negative three points for Deboki, Ceri, Capricornus. I don't know what the name for this mythical creature. It's like a goat front half, and then it's a mermaid bottom half. So it's like a girt, mergoat? Yeah, I don't think they actually had it. Girt? On Wikipedia, it just says it's like a girt mergo yeah i don't think they actually had it on wikipedia it just says it's a sea goat so i guess it's a sea goat i feel like a goat encompasses a sea goat

yeah okay but it has a tail yeah that's pretty different if you saw a goat with a fish tail i think you would say now wait a, that's not a goat exactly. Yeah, I would say that's a sea goat. There are some interpretations where it represents the goat whose horn was broken off to create the cornucopia, aka the horn of plenty, but it's a sea goat. Question two is for Sari. Constellations are, of course, made of stars,

and some stars are brighter than other stars. For example, the brightest star in Orion is Rigel. What is the name of the second brightest star in Orion, a name it shares with a very famous ghost? Betelgeuse. Two points for Sari. See, these are the easy ones. I had no idea.

Wow. And question number one. A pretty easy constellation to see is the big old W up there. What is the actual name of the big old W? Is it Cassiopeia? It is. One point for Deboki.

Because I was going to say I don't remember. I don't know. I know Orion and I know the bear and the dipper. That is me too. Those are the only things I can find in the freaking night sky. Okay. Now, back up to question 10. You cannot skip this one and you still lose points if you get it wrong.

Oh my gosh. Okay. While there are a couple of different accepted sets of constellations in the world, in the West, the most accepted list of constellations was formalized by the international astronomical union in 1922 within five how many constellations are on that list okay so there are 13 zodiac plus i'm gonna double that okay 45 45 there are 88 constellations on the list okay so you lose 10 points that That's fine. Okay. I wasn't going to get it. Question nine.

Many constellations can trace their actual origins back to folk tradition, but the only reason we here in modern day know about many of them is because they were all collected in one book, the Amalgast, which was basically a really old textbook of astronomy, which really old Greek guy wrote the Amalgast in the second century AD, Deboki? Ptolemy. Wow, you get nine points.

It's Ptolemy. Wow! Yeah, the last time I was debating it, but I was like, I think he's Egyptian, but then you said it. I gave you a little clue, didn't I? Yeah. So then I tried to keep track

of who was going gonna get this question see that's i've been sitting here like this the whole time like it's me it's me it's me right that's where the treachery comes in huh okay question six for sari the big dipper is not a constellation it is instead part of the formal constellation ursa major what is the name for this and other observable shapes and patterns and stars that aren't part of the formally defined set of IAU constellations? Was there a hint for this one too? There really should

have been and there was a place for me to put one but I didn't and I should have done it in retrospect. I'm really sorry. Constellation within a constellation. A star embryo. Wow. That's beautiful but that's not correct but it should be it should be yeah i like that better an asterism uh is okay i wasn't gonna get that in any universe others of which include the southern cross and they even include informal

names of formal constellations like calling cassiopeia the Big W, like I was doing earlier. That's where the clue should have come in. Or Sagittarius, which some people say is a teapot, which I also mentioned. So I probably should have said it then also. Sorry, Sari. I screwed you over on that one. That's fine. This is a trial run.

But it's making me negatively like the game. Devoki, there were 48 constellations in Ptolemy's Amalgast, but one of them just didn't make the game. To Voki, there were 48 constellations in Ptolemy's Amalgast, but one of them just didn't make the cut. When it came time for the IAU to formalize their list of constellations, what constellation named after a mythological ship ended up being struck from the list?

There was a clue for this one, as Harry pointed out. Wait, you pointed it out? I think I did. I have the answer in my head. I know this one. I should let you guys steal on this part too. I don't know why I wasn't doing that. I'll let Sari steal this one.

Yeah, that would be a good... Isn't it the Argo? Jason's ship? Oh, I was just going to say that. You didn't even try the answer yet. Yeah, I was going to say that. Oh, sorry. Okay, okay. Let Dem going to say that. Oh, sorry. Okay, okay. Let Demoky say it.

You were going to say it, so let you say it. No points will be awarded. No points will be awarded for that question. We can share it. We can share the points. Yeah, you each get three points. I'm already more negative than you are positive, so I'm pretty far behind.

Okay, you have officially exited the gauntlet you've answered all questions so at the end of the game sari has negative 12 points and deboki has 17 points you're pretty hard for you to catch up the rest of the show huh sari i think what we should do is probably just keep track of who wins each game and give them one point based on that. What do you think? Yeah. But I do like having 17 points.

It feels pretty good. You earned them. The Mesopotamia answer blew me away. Yeah, that was pretty good. Honestly. All right. And with the end of the gauntlet, we move now to a short break and then we'll be back with a game from

Deboki. Welcome back to the SciShow Tangents special game testing episode. So now it's time for Deboki to present her brand new Tangents game. Deboki, take it away. Okay, so today I am testing out a game called Where's the Lie? And I cannot take credit for this game. The credit actually goes to Sari, who I think you based this game on other similar games. So thank you to the people who came up with the basis for this game and thank you to Sari

for coming up with the actual rules. So I'm going to basically tell you in a few sentences, some kind of science-y story, and it will all be true except for one thing. And it is up to you to figure out what that one thing, that one lie in this story that is otherwise truthful, what that one lie is. So today, in honor of the fact that we are here to experiment, we're doing a bunch of things that are maybe a bad idea, maybe a good idea, We don't know. I'm going to be telling you three stories about experiments that I enjoyed reading about. And some are weird, some are questionable, but they're all true except for one detail in each of these stories.

I have a question. What do you want your sound effect for this game to sound like? What should it sound like? What's a where's the Lie? I feel like it's like a where, like my mind immediately went to Carmen Sandiego. So I don't know that that's a sound effect. It's a theme song. I think this is a theme song kind of game. A little noir. Yeah.

That's the vibe. We're in a bar and I'm telling you a story and you're just not sure if you can trust me. Yeah. Okay, okay. I like that. I like it. You tip your hat,

you're slinging drinks at me and Sam wandering. Pull up strangers, have a science story. Okay, so story number one. There are around 6,500 species of daddy longlegs. And while they all have eight legs,

they're distinct from true spiders because they only use six of their legs to walk around. The extra pair are for feeling out the area around them. Scientists wanted to see how daddy long legs functioned with only six pairs of legs. So they blocked expression of genes encoding leg development in daddy long leg embryos. So that is the story. That was the end. Could any of that be false?

Not just the experiment? Any of it could be. Yeah. Any of it could be made up. I think I know what it is. Do you want to go first? Do you want me to go first? I don't know.

Do you think you know what it is? No. Then you go first. I don't think the scientists blocked. Oh, I guess like we can go back and forth until one of us gets it or until oh okay okay i think so and then you tell us no if yes so there's always somebody getting it right hypothetically unless we're like yeah hypothetically unless we get really stuck on it yeah yeah okay

then i will go first i think it is that they don't use two of their legs for feeling i think two of their legs have turned into chompers of some sort is that right that is not correct oh i was very confident about that okay uh i don't there is an appendage that does work like that but what i understood of their their extra pair of legs is that they're kind of for feeling out the area around that might involve like chomping on stuff too i wouldn't be surprised but i didn't make up that fact at least. Okay. Okay. My guess is the scientists didn't change gene expression in embryos.

They just cut off two of the legs. I like that idea, but no, that is not correct. They didn't change gene expression. I mean, are there like one species of daddy long legs and it's just daddy long legs instead of 6,500? Is that it? No. No.

Shoot. Okay. Are they distinct from true spiders because of something more than their legs? Is it because of like their venom or their body structure? Like they don't have spinnerets? No. You guys have basically done everything but the actual thing.

Okay, wait. I get this point. Well, the only sentence, the only part of it that I can see that we haven't talked about, did the scientists just not care how they function with only six legs and never do any experiments about it? with only six legs and never do any experiments about it? No, so the thing is, the scientists weren't seeking to find out what would happen if they only had a six-legged daddy long legs. They wanted to see what would happen if they disrupted the development of these genes. And what was interesting is that they didn't lose legs, they just had shorter legs. So they actually, their six walking legs became shorter,

so they kind of, you know, they became daddy short legs. But they're actually, their extra pair of legs were still long. So that set of legs seemed to actually be regulated by some other set of genes. So unfortunately, I will say that the daddy short leg embryos, they didn't do very well. The ones that hatched died before adulthood. But this was, yeah, the scientists were just really curious about what would happen. And they saw that, yeah, you get short legs. But so the arms stay the same length. Like, so does that imply that they are at this point different appendages than the legs? So it suggests that they're regulated by a different set of genes than the other genes.

So they basically, they were comparing the genomes of these daddy long legs to other insects to figure out, hey, what genes do we think are responsible for controlling leg development? And they found hawk's genes, which are well known for body part development. So they think that there is actually another set of hawk, like another hawk's gene that's controlling this specific set of legs. It was interesting because those shorter legs actually became like less flexible and they more resembled that kind of, um, that more eating kind of egg legs, I guess. The chompers I was talking about earlier. Yeah, I think so. I think that's what they, what they were resembling more. Um, they, they like had fewer joints and stuff. So yeah, there's a lot of weird things going on. All right. I like this so far. It's like fact checking. This is fun.

So you guys are ready for round number two? Uh-huh. Yes. An 1896 edition of the Florida Agriculturist reported upon the circumstances that led to a new treatment for rheumatism. A drunk man had been walking along Daytona Beach when he found a dead whale and decided to step into its carcass. When he came out several hours later,

he reported that he'd been cured of rheumatism, inspiring others to seek the treatment. I've heard this story before. I haven't. I'm really glad to bring it to your attention, Sari. You go first, Sari. I don't think it's rheumatism. I think it's another like topical, like more topical skin ailment.

Maybe it's like eczema or something else, but not rheumatism is what is my guess is. That is incorrect. Daytona Beach, eh? I guess that is in Florida. So that seems, that seems, I'm not sure. Maybe he wasn't drunk. Maybe he was just a, just a guy. Just a guy.

No, he was, he was apparently drunk, according to the stories. Shoot, okay. My guess is he didn't come out several hours later he just like jumped in the carcass jumped out and was like i'm cured again i love the image but no that is not correct i'm pretty sure that he accidentally ended up in this whale and did not get in it on purpose is that what it is uh from my understanding of the story, he did purposely get into the whale. Okay.

I mean, he was drunk, so you could argue how much did he know. Did he eat the carcass instead? Was he like, mm, dead whale. I'm drunk and hungry. I mean, he could have. As far as I know,

that has not been a part of the story I wouldn't be surprised I feel like if you were drunk and you had stepped into a big whale you'd be like yeah why not let's try it what could happen

here's my last thought he didn't inspire anyone else to seek the treatment nobody else ever tried it you were actually so much closer on one of your earlier guesses and then you dismissed it um should i just go ahead and say it since i said it yeah i think so i think it's the beach oh that was a lot yeah so basically what happened so it was a story in the 1896 edition of the Florida Agriculturist. I did not make that up. But the drunk man was in Australia.

And that's where supposedly he was walking along the beach with friends. And he just decided, I'm going to step into his carcass. His friends were like, whatever. And they just left him. They were like, we're not dealing with this. Which I do feel like if my friend was at that point, like I am either like going to be supremely loyal or supremely disloyal. There's like no in between. Like I might just leave you at that point.

It was at a whaling station near the in the town of Eden. And like people, it wasn't necessarily super popular. A curator for the Australian National Maritime museum said that the treatment was probably you know not like something that gained a lot of followers but i guess it was popular enough that a hotel was built in eden for patients to like wait in until a dead whale showed up um at which point they would get stinking yeah i mean if they were just waiting there like for the whale then maybe it's okay i don't know if they returned there after they were done with their whale treatment um but yeah there was a

hotel apparently did it work no it didn't work right no there's no basis for it i mean like anecdotally i have no idea what like happened in his experience he was i i don't know that I would trust a drunk person to explain their rheumatism cure, but... Okay. So now for the last story. In 2019, a fisherman working off of the coast of Cornwall was asked to add a light to his fishing pot to see how it would affect the amount of lobster they caught. But when they went to check their pot, the fishermen didn't find any lobsters because the whole pot was crowded with scallops, even though they usually only caught around five scallops per year in that area with unlit pots. Heck, they weren't scallops. They were something else. They were, in fact, scallops.

Maybe the fishermen found lobsters and scallops, so the scallops didn't crowd it out. It was just like full of all kinds of seafood, lobsters, scallops, crabs, et cetera. Yeah. Yes. I don't even know how to do that. You're correct. Cause I've been waiting to get a correct answer, but yeah, that's the one. Sorry. That came out so much meaner than I thought it would. Yeah, so in 2019, a fisherman was asked to add a single white light to their fishing pot, and there was a surprisingly large number of scallops in their haul. Usually, they would catch around five scallops per year, but with their lit-up pot, they saw about a 1,400-fold increase in scallop counts over a month, but there was no increase or decrease in the

number of lobsters they caught, which was pretty exciting too because they could then catch them both. And so because of this result, scientists actually decided to see if these results would hold with more testing. This was one person reporting anecdotally. This is not the whale guy. So they gave more fishing boats pots with LED lights in them. And they found that the lit up pots just attracted a bunch of scallops without reducing the number of crabs or lobsters that the fishermen were catching, which means that this might be a low impact way to fish for scallops. So we're done with the game. We have a tie. You guys have each scored a point. We have a tie. You guys have each scored a point.

So I have a trivia question to break this tie. The Orlan spacesuit was originally designed to be part of the Soviet L-3 lunar landing program in the 1960s, and later iterations have since been used on the ISS. In 2006, an astronaut was trying to figure out what to do with a disused Orland spacesuit, so he settled on an experiment. He released it from the station with a transmitter, three batteries, and some sensors for engineers to track it as it began to orbit the globe. Suitsat, as it was called, was released from the station on February 3, 2006. How many days later did it burn up over the Earth's atmosphere?

It lasted for 10 years so 3 600 days or whatever is that right i'm gonna guess like 60 days like two months tops and then it degraded yeah sari's a lot closer it was 216 days that's still a pretty long time. Yeah. Yeah, I know it is. So Deboki has one point. Sari has one point. All right, now it is time for our final game, which is Sari's Game Sari.

Would you please introduce us to your game? This is a game that I'm tentatively calling Mouth Sounds. Okay. The sound effect for Mouth Sounds should be really goofy. It should be like, boing the energy i'm going for is i'm gonna make it's a silly it's a silly game i would say um and here's how it works unlike a lot of our games i'm gonna front load the science

and give you a description of something like an animal behavior or a mysterious weather phenomenon. You don't really got to think that hard. But after I give the description, you have to use your mouth to guess what the thing sounds like by making a noise. And the person who makes the closest noise to the thing that I'm describing gets a point. I think this will be very funny and a great use of the audio medium and we'll see how it goes. I'm very excited. Round one. We can't stick a microphone in space to record sounds because there aren't enough molecules floating around to transmit the sound waves, but we can record other data and translate the amplitude and frequency of recorded waves onto

volume and pitch. So when NASA's Juno space probe got close to Jupiter on June 24th, 2016, where it was sent to gather data, there were some measurements of electron density that translated into some cool spacey noises. There was a region of plasma oscillations where there was around one electron per cubic centimeter. It's not dense compared to all the air around us on Earth, but because we're in space, that's relatively chaotic and solar wind is blowing all over the place. These plasma

oscillations translate into a high-pitched wobbly sound. But as Juno flew through these plasma oscillations, it hit a region where the solar wind butts up against Jupiter's magnetosphere called the cosmic bow shock. And there, the plasma gets around 100 times less dense. So this is basically the same phenomenon as a sonic boom in the Earth's atmosphere where particles get compressed and send pressure waves radiating outward. So what do you think Juno flying through

Jupiter's bow shock sounds like? I think I did this for Hear Ye, Hear Ye when I did it a long time ago, maybe. Did you? I think I did this for Hear Ye, Hear Ye when I did it a long time ago. Maybe. Did you? I think so, but I cannot remember at all. I think it was like. And then nothing.

And then it was quiet. Great entry into the contest. Devoki. I'll just go with a boom, boom, boom. Kind of like a bump. Like it's bumping into a thing. It feels like it would be a higher pitched bumping. Like a boom, boom, boom.

But I don't. Ooh. I like that. I can see that. I'll go with that. I loved both of those Sam is definitely closer and we will play the noise for you now

that's exactly what I did. That was the bow shock. Good job, both of you. Thank you for playing along. Next sound. When researchers want to study marine bioacoustics, they shove a specialized underwater microphone called a hydrophone under the surface of the ocean and see what they pick up. Across several months in fall

2014 and spring 2015, a team from the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, which is a partnership between OSU and the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, used robot gliders equipped with hydrophones to record a bunch of audio around the Mariana Trench. And during 54 of those glider dives, they picked up a total of 436 instances of a weird sound that they called the Western Pacific Biotwang. It's hard to know without more information, but they think this unusual sound is made by a kind of baleen whale for communication, probably not for mating.

Mink whales are relatively small and mysterious to us because they live in most oceans but don't often go to the surface. So one way we distinguish populations between them are their unique calls. North Pacific ones make a boing sound, Atlantic ones make a low frequency pulse train, and dwarf mink whales near Australia make a weird lasery noise nicknamed the Star Wars sound. And the researcher' best guess is that the Western Pacific bio-twang is another regional mink whale call.

So what do you think the Western Pacific bio-twang sounds like? I'm just going to go for like a kind of sound. That doesn't sound very twangy though, does it? I think it's got to be a little more twangy. What's twangy like? Hey, y'all.

You got to put a twang on it. Yeah. Those whales go. That's what they do. Oh, it's kind of both of what we did. It's kind of both. Yeah. did. It's kind of both. Yeah. I'm going to give it to...

I'm going to give it to Deboki because I feel like you got the end bit a little bit more than Sam. Sam, you both got the... But then I think Deboki, you got more at the last little... The ending. That weird creak.

The up-speak, the whale up-speak. Uh-huh. For round three, the final round. There are so many weird bird sounds and so many ornithologists and citizen scientists working to catalog their various calls, so it was hard to just choose one to test in this game. One of the most fun bird calls I found in my initial sweep was the mating call of the male American bittern. These birds are brown and white and kind of chunky, and they live and migrate in swamps across a decent swath of North America. To make sure their wooing is heard far and wide through the dense swampy reeds, they have an unusual adaptation

that scientists don't fully understand. It seems like they inflate their esophagus with air, open and close their beaks, and contort their bodies to make a low, loud, booming noise with their vocal organ, which is called a series. This call is repeated a handful of times at once, and then they take a break.

And it's so distinctive that the American bittern has earned nicknames like Thunder Pumper, Water Belcher, and Mire Drum. So what do you think the male American Bittern's mating call sounds like? Okay, I'll go first this time. I think they go, hey, hey, hey. I really hope that's how they sound.

I guess I'm going to go more of a Huh. Huh. Huh. What if they go, Hey. Huh. Just like the whales.

Yeah. This is hard because you both did. I think to Boki is slightly closer because I think it's closer to a huh than a hey, but you'll listen to it and you'll see. That's them? That's them. Whoa.

They sound so weird. Yeah, that's bizarre. Yeah, a lot of ornithologists describe it as like a pump auga or a pumper lunk because it sounds like a water droplet. Yeah. That's my game. Congratulations to Boki on your good mouth sounds. What a fun game. I will take this victory.

Okay, well, and that means that after playing all three of our games, Deboki ultimately has won the episode. Hooray, Deboki! Yay, Deboki! Whenever I come on, I feel like I need to get as many points as I can because I'm not going to get them for a while. Okay, so finally to wrap it up real quick. Did we like any of these games? Let's start with my game, The Gauntlet. What do we think?

It was fun. It was stressful. Yeah, I think there's something to tweak with the rules a little bit, but it was very fun. All right, next up, Deboki's game, Where's the Lie? I think this game was fun. I think it could use a warmer or colder aspect to it to like hone in. Like if every time you give a clue or something, that's like, well, it's kind of about the spiders, like the biology of the spider. Or it's kind of about like the place or something like that. Yeah.

I thought you presented it in a really fun way where whenever we would call out something that ended up being right, like that was an opportunity to learn instead of just like, oh, you're wrong. Yeah. So it was good to have a conversation. But yes, I think it was harder than I thought to find the lie. Yeah. I think I was also trying out different types of lies in each of them to see. Yeah. I think for me, the geography lie, that like, this, that wasn't actually Florida.

That was when I was kind of like, oh, well, screw you, Devoki. And the other two were like, okay, that's acceptable. Yeah. And finally, Sarah's game, Mouth Sounds. Great title, first of all. So good. Yeah. I love a subjective game.

The hardest part of this game was trying to make it educational. I thought you did a really good job in how you presented it to her. love a subjective game the hardest part of this game was trying to make it educational i thought you did a really good job in how you presented it to where it wasn't just like here's facts now make a noise it's like here are the facts here's how they shape the noise that you are going to try to imitate so i thought that was pretty cool well if you out there listening have any thoughts on any of these games or ideas for other games we can try please let us know follow us on twitter at scishow tangents or join the scishow tangents patreon to get access to our discord and tell us there devoki thank you so much for being with us today do you have anything to plug you do lots of so much stuff what do you

where else can we find you um you can listen to things that i write and sometimes say on journey to the microcosmos you can also listen to me on the Tiny Matters podcast with my co-host Sam Jones, where we talk about cool science things. And I think those are the main ones. Yep. Tiny Matters and Journey to the Microcosmos. And secretly in every episode of SciShow Tangents,

Taboki is here. I'm always here. Bleeding us. If you like the show and you want to help us out, it's real easy to do that first you can go to patreon.com slash scishow tangents to become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes and we have a tier where you can get a special in episode shout out and

that is the tier that patron john pollock subscribed at thank you john second leave us a review wherever you listen it's super helpful and it helps us know what you think about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Tell people about us. Tell people about us. Great. We're getting worse and worse at it every episode. Thank you for joining us. I have been Sam Schultz. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Debuky Chakrabarty. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by me, Sam Schultz. Our editor is Seth Blixman. Our story editor is Alex Billow. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakrabarty. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our

executive producers are Caitlin Hoffmeister and Hank Green, and we couldn't make this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But, one more thing. Not exactly a science fact per se but i meant to mention poop deck in my game but you two ding dongs messed up the argo answer so that i didn't get to say it but the argo constellation was split into three smaller constellations because it was like huge and took up the whole sky. And so, and so they were like,

you can't have a constellation this big. So they split the constellation Argus, I think is what it was called into three constellations, the Carina, the Vela and the pupus or the keel sails and poop deck, which is fun. It's fun word to say, but I thought I would talk a little bit about what the poop deck is.

So, you know, the back of like an old ship, like on a pirate ship, there's that like taller part where the captain lives? On top of that, that's the poop deck. And the word poop in this context comes from the Latin word pupus, which is just a Latin word for that part of the ship. As for the word poop, meaning what comes out of butts, well, you'll just have to wait for Sari's definition in our episode about poop that we somehow have never done an episode about poop. So I'm adding it to the schedule right now. How have we not done a poop episode?

We did butts, but we've got to save poop for a special occasion. Yeah, our next. That's going to be a mouth sounds episode. Yeah.