The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - A New Green, THIS IS MY EVEREST, Chickens Influencing Cats

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Actor and creator of the Brat Apple Dance, Kelley Heyer, joins the show! The squad talks about a BRAND NEW green color, cheating at climbing Mt. Everest, and a sneaky trick to make cats less allergenic. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tweet at us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to learn more about all of our stories! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to Jess' Twitch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Jess Boddy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Popular Science: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/PopSci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme music by Billy Cadden: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thanks to our sponsors! Go to ⁠https://Quince.com/weirdest⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 -day returns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it interesting. to our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of popular science. I'm Rachel Feldman. And I'm Lauren Leffer. And I'm Kelly Hire. Kelly, welcome to this show. Thank you for having me, you guys. I'm so excited to be here. We're so excited to have you. Could you tell our listeners who you are, what you did, what you've done? Yes, I'm an actor and content

creator here in New York City. I'm probably most known for creating the Apple Dance on TikTok, which was a big part of Brat Summer and that whole album. You can also find me on TV in various procedural TV shows. And you used to be able to find me off Broadway with Rachel. We did theater together so many years ago. It's true. It was great. We were in a one act with the Shrill Collective. Off, off, off, but, you know, it was pretty, it was still in Midtown. Yeah, and also it was a great show. It was really good. The playwright was Jess Hanovich, correct? Yes. I think I still, I have one of her plays, and I've done it in like scene steady classes before. Like, I love her work. So everyone should go on new play exchange and check her out. I'm promoting someone else, not myself, but here we are.

So on the way to San Juan this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, writing, reporting. etc. And decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Lauren, what's your tease? Oh, okay. So my tease is it's going to end up being very bratsummer appropriate, but we won't get there yet. Anyway, there is a secret color that only five people have ever seen. Ooh, mysterious. Well, and this is great because I remember seeing headlines about this, but then also I looked no further. I was like, that's not on my business. Keep scrolling. I don't need to know. Yeah, if the color was secret, then it's not a secret for me.

But no, I'm going to force the knowledge into your brain now. That's great. I mean, I'm ready. I'm ready to learn. Kelly, what's your tease? My tease is that chickens could be the solution to curing cat allergies in humans. Ooh, we love a chicken fact here at weirdest thing. Well, my tease is what does Xenon girl of the 21st century have to do with climbing Mount Everest. Turns out something. She has something to do with that. Can you imagine if you just said nothing? Yeah.

In this essay, I will. She actually says nothing to do with it. Giving nothing. Give us nothing, Zinon. Lauren, why don't you start us off with secret new colors? Awesome. Yes, can do. Totally prepared for that.

Definitely always expect to go first. Yeah, so like I said, there's a new color. It was previously undetectable to humans. It's now been made visible, although only to a very small number of study participants. And we're going to get into what it is, why it is, how they did it. But first, I want to tell you that the color's name is Olo, just so I don't have to keep saying new color over and over again. Olo, it's kind of a beautiful word. It's got some good. I feel like naming a new color, that's a lot of pressure because it's like naming a new beetle. That happens every day, you know. Yeah, but new colors, that's rare. Yeah. You don't often name a new color unless you're like pantone, but they're bad at naming colors. But like, okay, I feel like a lot of colors kind of have names that don't quite suit what they actually are.

That's true. I've heard a lot of people say that they disagree that Chartreuse is a green. Like it sounds like it shouldn't be. It sounds like it should be like magenta maybe. Anyway. They called it Olo. Puse, perfectly named. What is?

Puse. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's a pusey color. Yeah. Puse is a color that is created by like making the, like if you're puking, you have to make the sound puse and you in fact create something that is that color. But Olo was named in kind of like a more technical way, but agreed that it's kind of a high, high pressure situation to come up with a new color name. And so they fell back on this thing that I'll explain in a minute. But before we get to that, I wanted to also tell you that the tech.

that makes OLO possible is called the Oz vision system, which is this very nice nod to reaching proverbially somewhere over the rainbow. It's a very solid science pun. There's all sorts of great word choices in this study, which I usually don't say, but it's a very beautifully written scientific study. It came out on April. It'll be linked in the show description, I imagine. But we're here to talk about colors, not words. So getting back to it, not only is Olo new, but the way that it's made possible is an entirely new method of displaying and creating color perception. And to understand how and why it's different, like what the Oz visual system does, we kind of got to understand the basics of standard human color perception. So who here has heard that humans have three

types of cone cells? Me, probably. I don't think about it a lot. Awesome. Great. Well, well done, class. Yeah. So we have these three different types. of photoreceptor cells that perceive color in our eyes. They're often called cone cells. They're classified as short, medium, and long cones, which doesn't necessarily relate to the shape of the cells, but instead like the type of light wavelengths they respond to. So short or S-type cells, they respond to shorter wavelengths of light.

Think blues and purples. Long, L-type cells respond to long wavelengths of light, so reds, oranges. And then in the middle, you have medium cells, M-type cones, that respond mostly to green wavelengths of light. It's combinations of activity from all three of these different photoreceptor cell types in response to light that enable us to differentiate somewhere around like one million distinct hues.

And when I say us, I mean, most people, people who are not colorblind, people who aren't tetrochromats, which is like a very rare thing in humans. But most people see about one million different colors because we have the three types of photoreceptors. Critically, though, these photoreceptor ranges, you can, think of them like three little bell curves, they overlap. And that middle range is entirely overlapping with the short and long range as well. So there is no wavelength of light that only stimulates our medium cone cell receptor cells. Does that make sense? I feel like that was like

a whole lot all it wants. Yeah, great. So basically, none of us have ever experienced any of the colors that correspond to just our M cells reacting to light. And all of these theorists, colors, they're well within like the actual visible light spectrum, but our brains and eyes just aren't tuned to perceive them. And so that's where Oz comes in because these five study participants, they have experienced pure M cell activation or something very, very close to it. That's because Oz isn't just displaying some light. It's very specifically targeting cone cells with lasers on an individual basis. Back to like why this color is called Olo, it refers to the colors theoretical coordinates in color space.

So zero on the short wavelength axis, one in the middle axis, zero in the long range zone. Zero one, zero. It looks a lot like OLO. Hence, OLO. I'm seeing the nods of recognition. But like, we're kind of already getting to this, but a big part of why so few people have seen Olo is that it takes a lot of effort to allow any one person to get a glimpse because the first step to perceiving it requires having your own unique retina mapped out.

to the cellular level. Because there's no wavelength of light that is naturally just going to stimulate those M-cone cells, you got to start by taking a look at someone's retina and pointing out where every single one of those M-cone cells is, categorizing them, labeling them. And then once that's done, you sit very, very still, you bite onto a bar so that your head doesn't move. And that, yeah, it's all very like, Crimes of the Future, Kronenberg kind of thinking about, like, your eyes are like very open. This pre-programmed machine shoots, it is an eye safe laser, but it shoots a laser in a very rapid zigzag pattern and it only activates when it kind of crosses over where those M cells are from your retinal map. And it has to do all of this other wild technical stuff

at the same time. It has to correct for like the very minute movements that we can't control, even like cellular motion that happens in our eyes. It's kind of bonkers technology. Like they have these maps, they have these lasers that can target one cell at a time, they have these computer systems that can correct for like the teeniest tiniest, tiniest, motion in real time. A neuroscientist, Jay Knights, who was not part of the study, kept calling it a quote, technological tour de force when I talked with him. He was like so jazzed on it. But to kind of just summarize here, normally when we see color, it's certain wavelengths of light bouncing off an object or it's a screen displaying pixels of light combining into

perceivable shades. But Oz doesn't do any of that. It literally just shoots a laser at individual cells in your eye to make those cells activate so that our brains perceive a color. And theoretically, it can show us all sorts of different colors with just a single wavelength of laser light, because it doesn't matter what the wavelength is. It just matters what combination of cells are being targeted. So that's how they do it, but I'm kind of, you know, back to what we talked about in the beginning. What does Olo sound like it might look like? You know, the question everyone is, is wondering, I'm sure is like, what does it look like? And obviously, and unfortunately, I've not mapped out each one of your retinas and I'm not sitting in a lab in UC Berkeley, so I can't show you Olo,

but I can tell you how all of the study participants described it uniformly. They said it was an incredibly unnaturally intense green. So I just want to say very Brat Summer Part 2 appropriate. Yeah, so it's very, very, very green, although it seems to be closer to kind of like a teal than a Chartreuse. Some of the participants described it as a very saturated blue-green color. So kind of imagine like teal or aqua plus plus plus plus plus. Ren Eng, a computer scientist at Berkeley and one of the study authors, he was actually among the participants. They included some of the researchers in the group that had the retina scanned. And he told me, quote, it's very nameable, it's very perceivable, but it's just beyond any natural color. He kind of compared the experience of

Olo to the first time he saw a green laser pointer. And, you know, if you've ever seen a laser pointer in that moment, you kind of think, wow, that's a really green, green, or that's a really red, red. And he said Olo is just kind of the first and only thing he's ever seen that trumped that experience of looking at a laser point of light. And the researchers gave the test subjects all sorts of kind of verification test to double check that what they were seeing was really new. And one of them, which was probably the most important, was asking them to color match OLO to a different green in the normal human repertoire. So they chose a teal color that is like well within what humans can normally see.

And they were like, here's this color. Here's Olo. How would you make Olo look like this color? And they gave them a little dial to kind of control light additions. And all of the participants, they added a ton of white light. to OLO to kind of wash it out and make it look more like something that is normally visible. And so if all of this sounds like a huge amount of work for a limited payoff, just like building this intensely technical machine and programming computers

and developing artificial intelligence software to track eye movement, that's because the point of this machine and research isn't just to give us a single cool new color. It's kind of to have a whole different way of studying and understanding color, So Ing and his colleagues, they've already started trying to use this method to temporarily reverse human color blindness to understand better like how how human perception is limited by the cones in our eyes. So in human color blindness, generally the issue is that instead of having three active cell cone types, people only have two. So they can see some colors, but not the entire expanded million color repertoire that most people can see. And if you have Oz, then in theory, you can make an artificial third cone type just by activating cells in a specific pattern. You can use this laser and say, like, we're separating out this subset.

We're going to treat them like the type of cone cell you're missing. And then you can potentially get people to see in the full visual spectrum. This would obviously not be like a full time, 100% cure to color blindness because you would have to be hooked up to this very restrictive machine. That's the size of an entire lab to see it. but would still be really cool. And just like going back in time in science, side note, in 2009, Jay Neitz, who I quoted earlier and a bunch of other neuroscientists, they used gene therapy to try and cure colorblindness in monkeys.

And so they introduced cells into the eye that could act as kind of a third color receptor. And it seemed to work, but they ran up against this problem after the study was published, where people really questioned, like, how do you know that they were seeing, new color. The monkeys cannot tell you what it is that they're seeing. With Oz and with Olo and human subjects, like, we could use similar techniques to activate or simulate the concept of additional photoreceptors, and we could ask people, like, please tell us what you're seeing. It would answer a lot of questions about visual perception, about neuroscience, and outside of just the research realm, down the line with way more precision and tech-imprisoned.

improvements. Oz could maybe even enable people to see like millions of more colors than we can currently. I mentioned this idea of tetrachromacy. There's a bunch of animals, so some types of birds, fish, insects, crustaceans. You may have heard of like mantis shrimp. All sorts of animals have more than three cone cell types. And so they perceive the world in this like version of technicolor we can't even imagine. But if, oh, if Oz is precise enough, then we might actually be able to artificially create additional cone cell types and completely bust open like our world of color possibilities. And if they somehow condense this giant lab size machine down into a visual display system that's like portable and scalable, then, you know, maybe we could have

like hypercolor visual reality goggles. But that's really far off hypothetical in the future. Right now we're still in the like, odds can show you a small patch of a single color. visible for a few seconds at a time stage because if you blink, it disappears and it has to reset. Yeah. So new color, super crazy, hypergreen, and all of these potential possibilities down the line. But it's worth saying that kind of already Oz is starting to answer some really longstanding questions in neuroscience and visual perception. So there's that stereotypical college stoner debate of whether or not the blue I see is the blue you see, kind of that basic ever-present unresolved question. of how subjective color perception is.

And with Olo, we kind of have an initial answer to that question because this was a color that participants in the study had never been able to physically see before, and they all describe it basically the same. It's an exceptionally intense green or blue-green. And they all modified it with that white light in the same way to get it to match another color that they all recognized. So they all knew it was something different from the normal repertoire.

They all describe it the same way, and they all correct it the same way. So there is something innate about how we perceive color that does seem to truly be shared across all people, which means if we got to that zone where Oz was showing us like all sorts of new potential colors in the millions and millions of new hues space, then probably we'd all be seeing something pretty similar.

I usually have like a cool joke or line to wrap it up, but I just think it's wild. I just think that I would pay a lot of money, that I don't have to see Olo. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts. Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and a lot more.

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There are honestly not a lot of things that I'm staunchly opposed to that I'm like, listen, that sucks. Don't do it. Like, you know, turfs, billionaires. Climbing Mount Everest though, I don't like it. So you can check out our episode about poopsicles from May 2023 if you want to know more about that. But the TLDR is that climbing that mountain is wildly dangerous, no matter how much training you do. It results in a huge amount of poop and garbage. And as a result, it's polluting the main source of fresh water for like a billion people. But yeah, with Everest, people are always so focused on whether they can do it, that they don't stop to think about why on earth they would do it. And that's my real problem.

If you like the challenge of climbing a mountain, you know, climb one that you can climb without help because that's really hard and impressive. Like, consider Kilimanjaro. It's really hard to climb. Only, like, 65% of people who try to climb it make it. And you're, like, 50 times less likely to die than climbing Mount Everest. And most of that risk vanishes if you spend the recommended length of time acclimating. So, like, just consider other things you can do that also expose you to the majesty of the earth and, you know, doing hard things and whatever. But anyway, that's me.

On to Xenon. So in addition to being a very spunk. Disney character who is very close to my heart. Xenon is also a noble gas and in late May four British climbers basically did a speed run of Everest and they say Xenon gas helped them do it. So when I saw this headline, I hated it. I thought, why? And so I leave my girl out of it. Yeah, exactly. And I had to learn more. Why would you do that? So just to give you a sense of how wild what these guys did is people usually spend around two months climbing Mount Everest because they've just spent a lot of time climbing up to different base camps and then going back down.

That allows you to acclimate the altitude while also giving your body time to recover at a lower altitude. You can shave a week off on either end by taking a helicopter to and from the first base camp because otherwise it's about a week to hike to the base camp from, you know, civilization, which is kind of a controversial move, as I'll explain more later. There's a lot of controversy around getting help to climb Mount Everest. I think that controversy exists for the wrong reasons, but I do think climbing that Everest should be controversial. It's like there's controversy over like only the real ones do it from face.

It's like, do they really climb on Everest? Yeah. Oh, you had help from a helicopter. You're not a real hiker. It used to be controversial to even take supplemental oxygen, which now is like wild. to think about because you are so likely to die if you don't have supplemental oxygen. But yeah, people need to be like, doesn't really count if you can like breathe. This is like, this is just like toxic masculinity embodied.

Like, it really is. Men will literally like, man, you brought up Mount Everest instead of going to therapy. Oh, man. You're such a pussy. You brought oxygen with you. Yeah. Please. I don't need that.

So these four dudes who like do seem like they're probably fine dudes who were raising money for charity that supports veterans. But you know what? You can also do that by like running a long way. Or even just a 5K. Yeah, it's true. You don't even have to do that much hard stuff. People will let you support veterans by running a 5K.

But anyway, they did the whole thing in just five days. They essentially skipped the whole process of bouncing between base camps to acclimate. They were, they left London and got back to London, having climbed Mount Everest in the middle, in seven days. So this is really, like, wild. That's crazy. Yeah, wanting to do this, accomplishing this, absolutely nuts. And it costs a lot of money. It costs, I think the figure they named was like 170,000 euros.

Could they have just directly donated that to the veteran cost? Wow. What an interesting point, Lauren. I guess it depends how much money they raised, but just say it. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how much they raised, but it was very expensive. And climbing Mount Everest in general is expensive. Like, it's at least tens of thousands of dollars and very quickly gets more expensive.

The more support you get and the faster you want to do it. But anyway, these guys did it real fast, and you might be wondering how, in addition to why. But there are companies now that offer express trips to the summit. One of them is Furttnbach Adventures, which is involved in this story, and I will get back to that later. They promise a three-week, they call it a flash trip from home to summit. They do this first of all by using a helicopter to skip the track to base camp. Like I said, that's kind of increasingly common. I wouldn't say that most people do that because it obviously adds expense.

And again, people are kind of like, did you really come out of ever said? But a lot of people now, I think, do use a helicopter to skip that first week. And they also have a much shorter, like, acclimation process. They don't get into details on their website about exactly how long you spend at every base camp or what the sort of back-and-forth protocol is. But the key is that people use these very specialized hypoxic tents at night for about two months before they set out. So these are sealed tents that simulate a low-oxygen environment. You see them a lot with athletes who are either going to compete at altitude.

Actually, you know, some roller derby players who win championships was in Denver, which was like a wild thing to do because Denver's a mile high city and everybody came there and had to play roller derby at a championship level. So there were people who were trading in altitude tents. But the way most normal people do that if they do it at all is to like go to some specialized, you know, little gym facility that has a little tent with a bike in it that you can like go on the exercise bike and be in low altitude. A lot of elite athletes have their own, and they'll actually train in them just so that it becomes easier to do their sport and physical activity at low altitude. Because training at high altitude or just low oxygen that's meant to simulate high altitude, it gets the body to adapt to having less oxygen. It produces more oxygen-carrying red blood cells and hemoglobin. And so once you have more red blood cells and hemoglobin, you're basically getting more bang from your buck in terms of using the oxygen you breathe. to power your muscles.

So, first of all, it helps you train to do stuff at higher altitudes without, like, passing out, being sick, being miserable. But again, if you're just staying in a low altitude, that training can then kind of give you, like, a little bit of, like, superpowers because you're suddenly, suddenly we got, like, extra oxygen in your blood. It's very controversial because some people say it's basically doping. Other people's note that it can be used to mask more sort of explicit doping. because it's naturally boosting red blood cells.

So, but anyway, these four climbers apparently started sleeping in their low oxygen tense back in January. So that's a lot longer than people usually do for a trip up Everest. Plus, they also exercised in hypoxic conditions as well. They said that was pretty miserable, unsurprisingly. They were like, we haven't had any deep sleep since January. You keep waking up short of breath every couple of hours. and it like adds up. You're like, you're not sleeping well.

Your brain is getting enough oxygen. It's like giving yourself sleep apnea. Yeah, I thought of that because I use a CPAP. And my sleep apnea isn't severe. So like even without my CPAP, I'm not like literally choking. But even so, I was like, I wouldn't relish having sleep apnea untreated for several months. Well, it also. And this is way worse.

It's so hard to imagine that being sleep deprived for months on end is like how you your body to peak Everest climbing condition. You might not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. Yeah, and it's just me like gasping for air in my bed. So it's like, it's similar to marathon running where it's like, listen, you can decide this is what you want to do with your body and that's so valid, but we need to address the fact that this is actively bad for your body. Like this is not, there is a lot of fitness you can do that is actively good for your body,

and this ain't it, man. you're doing this for other reasons. So, yeah, Furttbach, whose company I mentioned earlier, he actually approached these guys about the idea of also using xenon. Like I said, it's a noble gas. It was first discovered in the 1880s. It was used as anesthetic for a while, but I think mostly for cost reasons. That's not really done much anymore.

And it has been shown to increase the production of a protein called erythropoetine. EPO is what we call it. And it's produced by the kidneys when your oxygen levels get low. And EPO helps fight off hypoxia by increasing the red blood cells and hemoglobin, so your blood can carry more oxygen. And at high altitudes, we increase our EPO through that process I talked about that makes climbing Everest take such a long time, where it's like you go up to a base camp, you go down to a lower base camp, you go up to the higher base camp.

So when you're training to be at a higher altitude, what you're essentially doing is getting your body to make more EPO. But the end game you want is your blood has more oxygen. There have been like some small studies and a lot of anecdotal observations from people like Furttnbach saying that Xenon can, you know, sort of supercharge you during the Everest climb. And especially at really high altitudes, like the death zone, which is. is the part of the Everest summit climb where it's like just walking and staying alive is hard. And yeah, the idea behind those small studies and observations is that it's increasing your EPO. And there is some evidence that it increases your EPO.

There's not a lot of evidence at all that that like accomplishes you being less likely to die climbing Everest. There's just sort of a gap in the research there. There is this anesthesiologist in Germany who works with Ferdinbach on this who believes Xenon, perhaps more importantly than the EPO thing, has protective effects on organ tissue at high altitudes, including the brain. So they were kind of arguing, like, sure, we don't know for certain that it helps you climb better without getting altitude sickness, but if there's a chance that it's like

protecting brain death while you're hypoxic, it's worth it. course, like inhaling most gases, there are potential downsides to inhaling xenon in high quantities. It does, you know, this was done under the, this was done under the supervision of an anesthesiologist that German guy talked about. He won't give details, but apparently the climbers were put under a light sedation, and then they were given a seven aesthetic concentration of xenon. In one go, it was less than an hour, and they basically timed it to sort of try to maximize the effects based on those small studies and anecdotal reports where I think it was like something like 10 days before they were going to be at the summit. And their hope was that it was going to help protect the brain and help prevent edema. And of course, you know, these guys did successfully, like I said, totally speed run Everest, which is absolutely bonkers. But there's no way of knowing how much the xenon may have helped.

And actually, the climbing and mountaineering federation put out a statement a few months ago that, like, based on the current available literature, there's no evidence that breathing in xenon improves performance in the mountains. And of course, inappropriate use can be dangerous. And that, like, yes, a single inhalation of it does increase the release of EPO. But that doesn't seem to be sustained, and we don't know that it actually changes the red blood cells in the way that we want to increase oxygen. So, like, we don't really know anything about how it actually impacts performance. And the World Anti-Doping Agency does prohibit the use of xenon.

There isn't a, like, sports federation that regulates climbing, because it's sort of more of a gentleman's pursuit, you know. but the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation is like, it's stupid, don't do it. And it is very controversial in general. You know, reading news stories about this, there were a lot of quotes from people in the mountaineering world being like, well, if they feel proud of having done that, good for them. And, you know, there are all these naysayers who are like, it's cheating.

You know, it shouldn't really count. And then they also say spending less time in Nepal. means local guides and industry, get less tourism money, and that's bad too. The guys who are pro-Zenon are like, actually, shorter summits mean less garbage and pollution, which is a huge problem. But then me, I'm like, literally, why do we even have to do this? It's not the xenon, that's the problem. But I do, you know, reading this, I did worry that, you know, sort of the last thing we need is for companies to be able to bolster

their marketing claims about like making climbing Everest easier and faster because it's already hugely popular and like too many people are doing it and it's not good for the mountain in the area and so I don't love anything that makes it seem easier to schedule or fit into your you know fit into your busy life as like a software billionaire or that like it you're less likely to die because you have more oxygen in your blood, because it's still really dangerous and, again, really bad for the mountain. So, yeah, I continue to be a real buzzkill who thinks people should just stop climbing Mount Everest.

I'm all for human endeavor for the sake of human endeavor, but we already did it. A lot of people have climbed Mount Everest, and maybe you thinking you also have to climb it is just ego and not actually about the majesty of the human endeavor. So do something else that no one's ever done before. That's my take. Yeah, just the original. And I'll go to therapy. Had any of these four guys ever previously summited Everest, like on a normal timeline?

I don't believe so. They had like experience in the special forces. So they were like, they had done types of climbing and rugged things. But no, I don't think any of them were repeat summators. Yeah, I just, I'm not sure that I understand why we're all of a sudden, like, we actually have to optimize this thing that's supposed to be so incredibly difficult and figure out, although I am kind of like in theory in favor of like the cheaters Olympics. Like I think there should be a separate Olympics that just allows people to do whatever they want. And actually I say that, but I do think there's someone like in the Trump

administration who's actually vying for that to be a real thing. But I just like at some point, like, why not just take the helicopter all the way to the top of the mountain? Like why why not just like wave to the summit from a plane passing overhead? Like at what point are you? Honestly. Also, I think the air's too thin. I think helicopter go down. Okay, that's fair. Honestly, not sure. But also, like, you know, that begs the question, why do you want to be up there?

If it's too, there's not enough oxygen for a helicopter. But, yeah, I totally agree that it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that we should be looking for ways to optimize. And, you know, maybe those anti-oxygen tank people were right. Maybe it's been a slippery slope. But I mean, I think it's like, slippery slip. Exactly what you were saying earlier. It's definitely like a masculinity thing, you know, like men when they have a beautiful family and money in the bank, I'm going to speed run Mount Everest. Like, what is that?

Yeah. I don't know if you guys are also on a cave diver critique. TikTok. Cave diving. Very niche. But people are just talking about how it's like. Yeah. It's like a very selfish activity that predominantly men do.

to sort of say that they've achieved these, like, great human feats of strength or endurance or whatever. But in reality, they're kind of just being stupid and selfish. Yeah. Okay. So I did dunk on the Everest climbers, but I was, like, a really big caver in college. And I have made some, like, uniquely silly decisions in caves involving water. So I can't dunk on the cave divers too hard. But at least in those instances.

What was your motivation? to like be perceived as cool, I think. Well, no. Okay. I'm going to be nicer to myself, my like younger self and say that caving is like really incredible. You get to see a whole new part of the world that you never see otherwise. Like subsurface is neat.

There are all sorts of like fossils down there. You can like in a lot of cases I had friends who were mapping who were like literally going places that no human had ever gone before. There are ethical questions about whether or not. not that's a good idea with white nose and stuff, but they were all very careful. But why was I doing it personally? I think service level, yes, it was very cool. But also I had a lot of friends doing it and peer pressure is like a very real thing. And I wanted everyone to like me. I'm like very vulnerable on Mike all of a sudden. And I guess I'm not like a 45 year old man with a family.

Yes, exactly. I've been underground once. It was like on a family trip like to some cave. And this was, I don't know, maybe I was 10, which was during my peak. natural disaster fear age obsession you know like I was always on that hurricane watch tsunami watch earthquake I was just like wow I think I like learned about death you know and was like wow I could die at any moment but the the tour guide is taking us under and he points to a corner and he's like that's extra oxygen and safety supplies in case there's a cave in and my little brain went nope immediately no we do not want to be underground shut this down now.

We're not going underground ever again. Love being on the surface. But it's really valid. I think there's a big difference between being a caver who occasionally engages with water in caves and like being a thrilled chasing cave diver. I have squeezed through like passages. I don't want no, Lauren.

No, it's okay. We're good. I'll keep it to myself. I'm so happy for you, but I don't want to. I don't know that. I think places know who you should go, Rachel. And I love that for you. And I will say one more time that these guys were veterans raising money for charity,

like, really seem like as far as dudes who have the opportunity to climb Everest go, like probably pretty good dudes. So no shade to them specifically except that why are we doing this just in a general. We live in a society. and I understand what circumstances made them want to do this, but I just feel like maybe we should stop wanting to do this. To emphasize, to bring together your two points about pollution and risk, like a lot of the pollution people are climbing over on Everest is like just literally bodies, right?

Yeah, there are a lot of bodies, including ones that it's like, to some extent, if you die on Everest, you're very, you are in a very lucky subset of people if someone on clocks that you died and where they're not going to bring your body back down. That is not something that is feasible to use resources on, especially given how dangerous the areas where people tend to die are. And yeah, a lot of the bodies that are there, it's like sometimes people guess who they are. It's all very macabre to me on the episode where I talked more about the just sort of pollution issues on Matt Everest.

A lot of it was me being like, and everyone's just fine with all of the, bodies. I'm a spooky gal, but that seems, that's a bit much for me. People use them as like landmarks. Rachel, can I ask, earlier when you started this segment, you said you talked about a poopsicle on Mount Everest. Is that in reference to a guy who like freed himself from ice with frozen poop? Is this, is that what you're talking about? No, but we have talked about the poop knife. We've talked about poop knives on here before. Because I, I saw, a drag show that was poop knife guy. Like that was like a drag of him.

Oh, okay, but he wasn't. You said poopsicole. No, he wasn't. No, no, no. It was like this drag queen. And before she went on, she had the host like read the history of poop knife guy and like the controversy around him and then did a full drag show and fully pulled a tinfoil poop knife thing out of her butt.

Incredible. Like, and did a whole number. So you said poop knife and I was just like poopsicle. And I was like, hang on. Did we see the same thing? Did I see this? I wish. And drag and you saw the study.

What was the song? What was the song that went with that performance? I wish I could remember. And it's like killing me that I can't. It was, I think, the Halloween show. Shout out to Switch and Play in Gowanus in New York City. If you're in the area, you should go. They do a show once a month.

But I do remember the same show. There was a lot of nosferatu drag and blood and guts and horror as well as poop knife, I guess, which is also pretty horrifying, one could say. See, that's a thing you can decide to do that no one's ever done before and is hard. And no one's going to die and you're not going to pollute a billion people's water supply. That's my Everest. That's my Everest. The best, like, quintessential weird New York, it wasn't a drag show, it was a burlesco with a lot of drag that I ever went to was a homestruck. runner-themed burlesque show.

Oh, that's niche. Which was incredible across the board. But the one that really stuck with me was somebody as Strong Sad did a strip to brick by Penfolds. A Strong Bad? Strong Bad. Strong Bad was also there. Okay. Got it.

And the King of Town. And the Poopsmith. Anyway, it was a really great show. If I am forever, that was a highlight of living in New York for me. That's what it's all about. out, baby. That's why we pay these rents. All right, we're going to take one more quick break and then be back with one more fact. No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice.

He asks co-pilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs to help him see if he can afford it. Co-pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now, Hank has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365 copilot.com slash work. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this shell will get a $75

sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Okay, we're back. And Kelly, cats, chickens, what's going on? Okay, so most humans that are allergic to cats are actually allergic to a specific

protein in their saliva. And I think that might be already kind of known to people with cat allergies. Like, oh, it's like a fun fact, you know. you're allergic to the saliva. But it's a specific protein. And so did you know that if a chicken is exposed to a cat, so say a chicken and a cat, like share a barn together or whatever, chickens produce an antibody that can neutralize the allergy protein in cats.

So chickens make this antibody, and then they pass the antibody along to their eggs, you know. So if you feed a cat, that egg from the egg from the, the chicken that was exposed to the antibody, that created the antibody, the cat will then eat that egg and then neutralize its own allergen, like in its body. I know that was like such a convoluted circle of like chicken egg cat, like what came first. But yeah, it's, there's a way that, so a little disclaimer, the study that this came from was partially funded by Purina Petfood. And so it might be some like bias in there. But people are working on creating. cat food that contains eggs from a chicken that was exposed to a cat so that cats can eat it.

And then they're like their allergy goes away, like the allergy that humans have to that cat. Yeah, I just think that's like so crazy. And also huge disclaimer, please no one go feed your cat an egg right now, especially with bird flu being so dangerous to cats. Not the time to introduce farm fresh eggs into your cat's diet. at the time to like start co-housing your chickens with your pet cat. Also that. Exactly.

At first when you said if like a chicken encounters a cat and I was like, oh, God, that would be so terrible for the chicken. And then I was like, I can't believe I forgot barn cats. Like I literally grew up around farms, like many chickens encounter cats and they're casual about it. Though I don't think they like tend to become friends. But I can, yeah. I can picture kind of like the spinoff like viral dodo store.

like this chicken and this cat cure your allergies and our best friends and hang out together all the time. Oh, for sure there are out there chickens and cats are best friends because everything under the sun has happened. Yeah, so those chicken and cats that are best friend, then the chicken's body is like,

ooh, what is this like icky protein from this other animal? Let me neutralize it, pass it along to my eggs. And then if the cat, it's such a weird cycle because if the cat eats the egg from the neutralized chicken that the cat was exposed to, then the cat no longer carries like that active allergen antigen. Wow.

Is it permanent or did they have to keep eating the eggs? So in this study, it wasn't quite clear because I think the study didn't go on long enough for like, I don't know, to say that. I'm looking at my like other like, I have all the sciencey names for the specific allergen protein. It's like FL, F-E-L-D-1 or something like that. It was a 26-week study in like a controlled environment and it seemed like the cats like held if they like kept like being exposed to like food or whatever, then they remained like non-allergenic. Is that the word to humans? And I think it's really cool because there are so many people who I know that like they love cats but they just are so, so allergic to

you know and so the fact that the solution might just be to alter your cat's food a little bit and then they're like more safe to be around those humans I think is so cool totally no I mean I really hope that this pans out because I'm only I'm not super allergic to cats like I grew up with cats I've had a cat as an adult I love cats and dogs but like both of them I'm like a little allergic to it's not enough that I'm like oh I can't pet your cat but it is like every time I go from not living in a house with pets to being in a house with pets, I am like, unfortunately, I am forced to admit to myself that my sinuses are different than they were a few days ago. So it's like, it would be, I'm sort of just like, it would be great to just sort of take the

edge off, you know? I don't even need it to be 100%. I think it's, it's wild that, like, it's not that there's a way to make, because all the allergy treatments are like human targeted. Like, we're going to make you react less to this. You're going to get allergy shots or you're going to take Benadryl and be sleepy all the time. But this is like we're just kind of eliminating the allergy. Yeah, I guess it's like, you know, the saliva's coming out of the cat. So like what's, let's neutralize it at the source of the saliva, which is the cat itself. Yeah.

Well, I feel like it's only a matter of time before there are very expensive, like crisper cats where it's like they've, they've, they've sniffed out the protein that makes them allergenic. already like hypoallergenic cats. I have... There are hypoallergenic cats and dogs, and my understanding is that mostly that's fake. Like there is some extent to which you can breed them to make, like, less dander, et cetera. But a lot of breeds that are billed as hypoallergenic, it's like, if someone has a really bad allergy, they're still going to be allergic to that dog. Yeah, especially if the allergy is the saliva.

Yeah. If the allergy is the saliva, then it's like, well, how are you going to breed out saliva from these cats and dogs? Perfect solution. Hairless cat. I know somebody with a hairless cat. And, you know, it's creepy cute, but it's still cute. Like, that little skin baby. It's the thing. Okay. It's the thing with hairless cats, though, if the allergens in the saliva, is it just that they don't groom as much? So they're not, like, licking themselves and getting the dander all over the place? That's such a good point because as I was saying it, I was like, but it's not in the dame. But I think probably it's like the... Wait, sorry, what is dander? Do we know what dendr?

You know, like, dandruff? Dandruff? Like, of course, like, watch me, like, say this, like, I know it. And then someone's listening is like, that's wrong. No, but I do think that's true. But it's, like, skin flaky or, like, like, skin stuff. Yeah, dander is dead skin cells. Okay, but that is...

You're right. Dander is dead skin cells shed by animals. But that's not what causes the allergy. It's the saliva. Not all the time. So there are some people who are like actually allergic to like the dander, but more often humans are like allergic to cat fur because that cat fur has been like licked a million times by the cat with this like specific protein in it. So I do think this is hairless cat owners please correct me. I am I am humbly proffering this this information that may be incorrect. But I do think that the person I know with a hairless cat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat. the cat. I think they don't, I think they don't have the instinct to do so much licking when they don't have fur. So that's what I was going to say. Are they cold all the time? Yes, as a big cat fan. Oh yeah, they need sweaters and hats. Yeah. I almost, almost got a hairless cat. I'm really happy. I adopted my

second cat tiny and I love her. But my first cat mooncake is very fluffy. And so I thought it was just really funny. She's a hairful cat. Like all hair cat and no hair cat. But hairless cats, like basically because there's no hair to catch the oils that their skin makes, you have to bathe them so regularly and you also have to slather them in coconut oil because they can also get like dry because there's nothing catching the oils. They're pretty like they're in my opinion, I love hairless cats. I love all cats. They're a little icky because they're like dirty and like dusty. They're like delicate babies. They got to be oiled up. Oh my God. It's like we're always humans are always creating like the versions of animals like just animals born to suffer. Like

Pugs can't breathe. Hairless cats can't, like, retain their skin moisture. I don't think that's right. I think similarly to Everest, we should ask not just how, but why. Why? For why? To what end? Yeah.

Well, hopefully, you know, this allergen food stuff makes them headway, and we can start making fluffy boys hypoallergenic. Exactly. And of course, like, you know, maybe this is just the times we're living in, but I'm like, it would be really cool if the food could be like available and accessible and cheap. But watch them charge an extra like $50 to put like crushed up chicken egg, you know, exactly. But potentially some very cool advancements being made in the allergy space. What happens if a person eats the egg? Does it do anything?

So I was trying to look up that as well. And I also got this study. like this study and this fact from my sister who's getting a PhD. Shout out to Miley, love her, genius of the family, soon to be doctor. And I was asking that too because I wasn't seeing it in this study. And she, in her scientific opinion, she thinks it's unlikely that it would go, like, that the circle would work that way. But the study did not feed exposed chicken eggs to humans. And I think it's, it has to do specifically with. like the antibodies between the chicken and cat. Very cool.

It's so wild that you can like expose proteins to other proteins and it like changes how they form. Yeah. Like prion diseases are just like proteins that make other proteins start folding wrong and this is I guess maybe like a positive version of that. Totally. Yeah. Cool.

You guys do so much longer. It's so much thorough studies and I was just like. Oh no. Chicken cat egg? No, this was great. What a great episode. Kelly, thank you so much for coming on to join us. Would you remind our listeners where they can find you?

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. You guys can find me on TikTok and Instagram at Kelly Hire. I'm always sort of doing something or other around the city. And of course, I make regular content on there and you can keep up with my acting work. But yeah, just find me on social media. Say hi. say you saw me on, you heard me on weirdest thing and you can, I don't know, correct me on my facts or whatever.

I love, I read all my DMs. Probably not good, but I do read it. So get in the DMs if you got something. Yeah, you're giving the audience too much power. No, I mean, I'll delete them. I'll just like delete them. Yeah, fair enough. That's a good attitude to have.

It's not like they wash over me, but. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman. along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos.

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