The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - A Very Weird Christmas Special

Episode Date: December 25, 2019

On this week's special Christmas episode, the weirdest things we learned this week range from a Santa-esque giantess named Gryla and her 13 yule lads to a disease named after a boy called Christmas. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? 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!  Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Sara Chodosh: www.twitter.com/schodosh Claire Maldarelli: www.twitter.com/camaldarelli Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jessica Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into 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 Fultman. I'm Claire Maldarelli. And I'm Sarah Trottosh. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, getting in the holiday spirit.

And we 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. Sarah, what is your tease for your holiday extravaganza? fact. My happy, happy holiday fact is about Christmas disease. Great. I love diseases. Wow. I had to do a disease. It's a happy, happy Christmas. And Claire, how about you? Yes, I will be talking about something I will never do because I hate the cold, which is the polar bear plunge. Wonderful. Thank you. I will be talking about elf on the shelf and how it may be an introduction to dystopian surveillance states for children.

Wow. I think we have to start with Elth on the show. I will say that we know our audience, and I don't think any of our weirdos are tuning in being like, ooh, can't wait for some holiday cheer. You get enough holiday cheer. Elsewhere. Yeah. Do that on your own time.

Go to a cheerier podcast. This is about death and disease. We're giving you things to creep out your family about. at the table later. So, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, bright solstice, etc. Joy to all. Yes. Okay. So joy to all. That was so nice. That's what we should all say. Joy to all, especially if you like murder. So Elf on the Shelf. Earlier, Sarah and I were talking about Elf on the Shelf and how like neither of us had ever really encountered it as children. Yeah. I have not either. It turns out there's a good reason for that. It's a new thing.

No. Okay. See, this is like, it's fun. Elf on the Shelf is just one of those things where, like, people bring it up as if you're definitely supposed to know everything about it. And I don't. I know so who thinks about it. Yeah. So I learned when I was today years old that it's actually from a 2005 book.

Oh. And like maybe there may have been some tradition before that. But like the, like, the elf on the shelf that everybody talks about and that parents buy is actually just from 2005. So the reason we don't know about it is because we are too old who have. been subjected to it as children and too young to have children to subject it to so far. Thank God. No offense to Elf on the Shelf. So I thought maybe it was just like a regional thing.

It was like from these like wholesome Midwestern states. Woo! But no. So from a Vox.com article by Kelsey McKinney, I got some background on Elf on the Shelf. It was a 2005 book about a little elf that would fly back to the North Pole every night to report on your behavior. Oh. And then sneak back into your house. And so it would be in a different spot every day watching you.

God. So this is like the mechanism by which Santa spies on us. Exactly. It is Santa's helper that is spying on you throughout the holiday season. I think there are like recommendations for like how early in the quote holiday season you're supposed to put this elf on its shelf. My mom told me that Santa watches me all year out now. Yeah. I mean, what's the incentive?

You just had to like behave in December. Right. But it's like it's literally watching you and reporting back to Santa. That is so upsetting. there are rules like you you're supposed to find the elf every day but you're not allowed to touch it. Oh, you're supposed to find it. Is he supposed to be hidden?

Because you're supposed to, it's so parents are supposed to hide it because the elf is supposed to be in a new spot every day. That's how the kids are led to believe that it's like a real. Oh, it moved. I see. But you're supposed to find it so that then you like confirm that it's there watching you, but then you're not supposed to touch it and you're supposed to behave yourself because the elf is watching you and could be anywhere at any time.

There's actually, again, from this box-artcom article, there are Pinterest boards dedicated to, like, finding creative hiding spaces to, like, places where your kids will definitely find it, but that it'll be, like, a little bit of a challenge. Of course, that's on Pinterest. Like, in the cutlery drawer. In a drawer, how's he supposed to spy on you from a drawer?

He has supervision. Great question. An elf. Of course, I forgot. So, I mean, you know, one could roll their eyes. at this for several reasons. But there's this idea that's been circulated periodically over the last few years that I find really entertaining, which is that the elf on the shelf is actually like a dangerous

message for us to send to children. And so a lot of this goes back to a study by Dr. Laura Elizabeth Pinto and Dr. Salina Nymoran, where they talk about like why the elf on the shelf is this unique mechanism of play with children. So there's lots of research showing that play and make-believe are like really crucial to forming our personalities and like our sense of right and wrong. We play games with rules to learn how to like interact with other people and like all subscribe to one overarching moral construct, which is an important thing to do as an adult in a society where we don't like murder each other for fun, hopefully. Except on the purge. Yes, exactly.

So we know that play is very important. And so Dr. Pinto and Nimoran made the argument that the elf on the shelf is this very unique play scenario where it blurs the distinction between playtime and real life, where the rules that you're following because of the game, you're supposed to follow all the time. You know, the elf is watching you all the time. So even after you've found the elf for the day and moved on with your day, you're still supposed to be following the rules of the elf, which are all of the rules of, like, good behavior, I guess, whatever rules your parents want to blame on Santa instead of on like them not wanting you to leave your crap all over the house. Yeah. It's the elf. It's not us.

Yeah. And you accept that you're not allowed to touch the doll. And you accept that it's always going to be surveilling you. And so the elf is controlling all parameters of the play. The child doesn't get to do any make-believe or learning on their own. The whole game is that they are allowing this doll to dictate their behavior even outside. of playtime. They also think that the doll is real, right? I mean, like,

in normal kids make believe, like, they know they're not, like, whatever the character they think they're playing. Right. But this is, like, the parent creating this construct for them. So there is, like, it's the parent. That's absolutely true. It definitely depends on the kid and the parent, but like... This doesn't even feel like a game.

I'm sure there are a parent... It just feels like a big brother. Yeah, this is just... We're getting there. So there are lots of... I'm sure there are lots of parents who do this with, like, a wink and a nudge that are like, this is just our fun reminder that you have to behave yourself. Oh, okay.

But also, there are definitely little kids who believe this, because they're little kids who believe in Santa Claus. Yeah. And how is it any more ridiculous for them to believe that, oh, my God, I just got really worried that maybe, um, we're about to ruin Santa for people. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, my exes, disclaimer. A little sister believed in Santa for so long. And his parents were just like perpetuating it. They were like, we can't tell her. It's like, she's 13. You got to let her move on. Yeah. 13 is too much.

So Dr. Pinto and Nemoran make the argument that this is reminiscent of the Penocticon. Do you guys know what the Pynopticon is? No. Okay. So it actually features a former weirdest thing legend, Jeremy Bentham, who was the guy who got taxedermied. Oh, gosh, him. Yeah. Oh, my God.

I've seen his taxidermied face. I think. He was the one who's at, he's on display in New York. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I saw him. He was upsetting. Wait, where in New York?

At the MoMA that's not, no, the MET, that's not the Met, the Met Brower. So he also had some upsetting ideas in addition to now being an upsetting stuffed corpse. In the 18th century, he designed a model for a prison where you would have this central tower where a single guard would be inside. Oh, I know this. Yeah. And then it was surrounded by like a circular structure of cells, like a rotunda. Isn't that also the Eastern State pedantiary the way that's? A lot of prisons were like used this as a jumping off point.

and it's kind of debatable whether they actually accomplished the thing that Benham was trying to accomplish. But it became really pervasive in like the way we think about prisons, even if they weren't literally copying his design. But his like ideal, his like platonic prison ideal was that there would just be literally one guard in this one tower. And then you could have hundreds of prisoners surrounding them. But you would backlight the tower so that none of the prisoners could ever tell if the guard was facing them. So at any moment, you could have a guard looking at you, but you would never know. So Bentham argued that in prison with this design, prisoners would just have an incentive to always follow the rules and always behave admirably. What a beautiful dream.

Right. Well, and then in 1979, a lot of people know about the Panopticon not because of Bentham's actual push to get prison. made this way, but because of Foucault talking about the Pinocticon. So philosopher Foucault, who a lot more people know about now that the good place is a wonderful thing. So Foucault argued that this was a good metaphor for like the modern surveillance state. And a lot of people say that like CCTV cameras are essentially the same as the Pinocticon because no one can actually be sitting there monitoring an entire screen of cameras. But they could really all at once. But they could be watching you. So having cameras everywhere, like, and people knowing, you know, those signs that say, like, this store is

monitored, you're incentivized to behave even though you have no proof that anyone is watching you at that time. Because if it's always possible that someone is watching you, maybe you'll just always act like someone is watching you. So people put, like, those protector signs in front of their lawn saying that it's protected by whoever. Yeah, but just the sign is an incentive. Yeah. And you're like, you don't want to be wrong. about calling their bluff. Yeah. This also, sorry to interrupt, but this also reminds me of, okay, you know that quote

in like elementary school classrooms that was like, your character is what you do when no one's watching? I don't think we have that exact quote, but yeah, that's pretty haunting. Yeah. Yeah, I really used to get me. I remember that. Well, and that plays into this idea called penoptic performativity, which is when people are trying to comply so that they pass in spectrality.

but not because they actually care about the rules they're following. So the thing is that even if it works, it creates this kind of moral and philosophical conundrum where it's like, are you actually creating a society of good people or just a society of like scared law-abiding people? And so. I mean, does it matter? Well, that's the big question, Sarah. I was a philosophy major in college. Well, and so then that circles back around to the elf on the shelf.

You have this potential conundrum, according to researchers like Pinto and Nimoran, where kids are being taught that you should behave a certain way because someone is watching you who might catch you. So on the one hand, you're like, are you actually teaching your kids to behave well for good reasons? which is like are you creating lasting like moral lessons for them or is the only lesson they're learning that like they're not going to get presents if they don't behave well. Yeah, I mean you're definitely not teaching your kid's morality. You're like for sure just teaching them like we could be watching so you better behave for the limited period when the elf on the shelf is on the shelf. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what's so great about Santa because you never see him. But he's supposedly always watching but you never actually see it.

whereas the elf is just like sitting there staring at you all the time. So scary. Here's my question. Like, did either of you believe in Santa? Oh, yeah, for sure. For a time. Did you behave any better because you believed in Santa? Yeah, for sure.

Like before the week before Christmas. So they didn't need Santa. I was super neurotic. I used to think about it all the time. Interesting. Yeah. But I think that's just me. And I always used to leave a note like for Santa.

I guess I did this twice. I remember being like, was I good? and then whoever one of my parents would circle, yes. That's so cute. Oh, my God. Wow. Okay, I always wondered this because, like, my parents were always so wink, wink, nudge that I never really, like, bought into Santa.

So I don't really know what it was like to be, like, behaving better for Santa. I was always just like, ah, Santa's just mom. We definitely transitioned from truly believing to wink, wink, nudge, like, so early. Yeah. Especially because my sister was three years older than me. So if she stopped really believing when she was, like, six, I stopped really believing when I was like three. Yeah.

I definitely remember having a couple conversations with her where I was like, but what if she's wrong? But also like I just behaved myself. I was like not a cool kid. I just told me to do. I was extremely uncool. I just was a goody two shoes. I didn't need Santa.

And then like the other issue that is really fascinating is this idea that a few researchers have brought up over the last few years that by, imposing the elf on the shelf on children, we may be actually like priming them to accept the surveillance state, which like my follow up is like, I don't know if we need any priming to accept the surveillance state. I'm just going to say, like kids talk to their Amazon Alexa's like the surveillance state is here and it is your home assistant. So for listeners who haven't done much thinking about this before, the idea of the, you know, penopticon surveillance state is that all of our data is potentially being monitored all the time. We have these phones that for all

we know could be listening into us. And we have speakers in our home that are definitely on occasion listening into us. And we have governments with varying degrees of ability to legally monitor our activity and varying degrees of possibly doing it anyway. Willingness to bend the rules. Yes. So really, anyone who is living a digital life in any fashion, has to assume there is some amount of, like, people can tell what you're doing. And the question is, is that okay? Is that acceptable?

And also how does that change our behavior? Because it kind of, there's this, like, pervasive argument that if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. But then it's like, who gets to decide what's wrong? These are such great discussion topics for your Christmas get-together when you don't know what to talk to your family about, especially if you see an elf on the fucking shelf. Yeah, exactly. So one thing I want to kind of circle back to you to wrap this up in a Christmasy fashion

is that like it's only really in recent history of the like mainstream Christmas experience that Santa has been like a pretty wholesome, benevolent character. Obviously we know he sees us when we're sleeping. He knows when we're awake, blah, blah, blah. We know we have to be good. but like it's all about whether you get good presents or not. It's not like there's a punishment if you're bad. Except for coal and you're stalking.

Right, but that's just like a lack of present. Yeah. It's not like you're being seriously punished. And the thing is that if you look into other Christmas celebration norms from around the world, especially in places where it's cold and dark and people love scaring their children, that is just not the case. Santa has always been a complex figure who makes. dole out punishment along with reward, or he has helpers to do it for him. I have some examples.

So the classic, of course, is Krampus, who has been the subject of several wonderful dark comedy movies in recent years. He's a German demon who hangs out with Santa. They're friends. That's what a lot of people don't know. And he actually, Santa like sent him out ahead of time for Kronpast to give him a head start because like Santa doesn't want to deal with the bad kids. So he sends crampus ahead and crampus either beats or boils the naughty kids depending on how bad they were. Now, see, that's motivation. This sounds like something made up by Dwight Shrut. Well, yes, my next one is the southwestern German belchnicle.

Okay. That's the one. Which was featured on the office by Dwight Chute, who decided to determine whether his co-workers had been impish or admirable over the last year. But Belznichel is one of the like combination Santa characters. I guess he's like your economy character if you don't have time to make your kids believe in like five different Santa helpers. So this is like a southwestern German Santa figure that carries a sack of goodies but also a switch to beat bad children. I love that German efficiency.

Yeah, yeah. And in Iceland, we had Greila, a giantess with a band of sons called the Yule Lads, which is the scariest thing I've ever heard. It's like Santa Khan. Oh, my God. The 13 Yule Lads and the Yule Lads were just like bestievous. They would just like mess around with everybody's stuff. It was kind of like, um. She sounds better than Santa though.

Right. Except Grilla would show up at Christmas to throw naughty children into a sack and boil them alive. There was a lot of the sack was often used for catching the children and boiling. Wow. I'm going to dress up as Grela for Halloween. How many Yule lads do I need? 13. 13.

All right. That'll be a little hard. In some of the myths, there's also. also a cat that eats children that's part of... I already have a cat. She's very grumpy. That's fine. I can do this.

Then also in Germany and Austria, there was Frau Purchsta, who would slit your belly open if you'd been bad. Oh, gosh. And replace your organs with garbage. Okay. All right. That's fun. That's awful, but somewhat creative. And so, like, what are all these places that have in common?

They're all places where fairy tales were designed to make children follow rules. they were kind of like the OG elf on the shelf. So a lot of people love to point out that like Disneyified fairy tales are so much lighter than the ones that the Brothers Grimm wrote down when they famously collected a bunch of the folklore that had existed for years and years and years. But the Brothers Grim actually made the fairy tales nicer. They were darker before then. Part of what they did to help popularize them was to tone them down a little bit. And in a lot of the regions I have just listed, namely Germany, but other countries as well, you know, dark, cold places where you need your children to behave in the winter when there's not a lot of food and people need to just like shut up and do their jobs. They, you know, would tell fairy tales with really like scary figures that would like get you if you were bad.

The moral of like every fairy tale was like, and this is what happens when you don't do what's really. right. And so it was really like a creating this impending sense of potential retribution for children. So all of this is to say that the elf on the shelf may be new, but the idea of a scary Christmas anti-hero who might boil you alive if you don't behave is not new at all. And maybe we just need to come up with better ways of getting our kids to pick up their laundry. I don't know. Wow. I'm going to teach my kids about Grela. Grela and her 13-year. Or I'll just do all of them, just see which one stick. Well, in some areas, they would have like the, like, Santa's companions. They would actually have

like more than one. Wow. The whole cast of characters. Yeah. Yeah. And there are, there are more, but those were just some highlights for me. All of the people who might boil you, beat you, replace your organs with trash if you misbehaved. Love frauperpta. She's the best. No, I am a big fan of gruella. Also, just like crampus. I love that crampus is friends with Santa. That's the thing that was news to me. I love crampus for people don't know. Very like horned devil-looking, you know, Norse Satan man.

What does Santa even see in him? Well, Santa's like, I know I can only give gifts to the good, kids, but it would just be great if by the time I rolled in only good kids were left, it would make my job easier. Kramus is a good friend. Yeah, I think that's the moral of the story. Yeah, exactly. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with some more facts.

Okay, we're back. And Claire, why don't you tell us about polar bear plunges? Yes, I would love to tell you about polar bear plunges. Winter is one of my favorite hating topics or topics to hate on. All right. So every year on New Year's Day, people from all over the world I found do the, in my opinion, most bizarre and crazy act, they get naked or close to naked and jump into the most nearby lake or ocean into the freezing water. Have you guys ever done it? I've never done like a full polar bear punch, but on swim team it was our tradition that when at the first snow, like the first real snow.

you went outside in your bathing suit and you had to like roll down this hill outside in the snow in your bathing suit then you got to run back in jump in the pool it felt really warm wait is that true really yeah it's absolutely true in high school or in middle school or I can't believe they made kids do that I would opt out it was great I don't mind the cult okay that's cool it's exhilarating Claire yeah you get a rush of adrenaline that is what I found yeah so they call it the polar bear plunge it's super popular and I would never do it and I really do think of myself as a tough person I like to run a lot and do like cool crazy things, but I loathe the cold weather. I probably just need to like put warmer clothes on. I recently bought a really warm winter jacket. That's- Make it better. Don't you feel cozy? Yeah, it guarantees me up to negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I got it on Black Friday. I'm really proud. But yeah, so this has always like bewildered me why people do this. Like why would you ever like instead of waking up on New Year's day and sitting in bed and watching Netflix or whatever your favorite activity is, you go outside and go into freezing cold water with a bunch of your friends. So I looked for the origins of the polar bear plunge and I found some cool interesting things that apparently there are these two like groups in the United States that both think they are the original polar bear plungers.

A class like American too. Yeah, totally. So there's like the popular one, which is the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, and they are known as the original polar bear plungers, and they are known as the original polar bear plungers, and they say that they took their, they say that they formed their group in 1903, and they took their first plunge on New Year's day. They still plunge at other times of the day or of the year, more on that later, but they took their first New Year's Day plunge in 1904, and it was documented in local media because just like now back then, if you didn't post it, it didn't happen.

So it's been documented. But another swimming group in Boston might actually have been the first, even though they like seem to not really care that much. They're just like, whatever, we just like to plunge. That's very New York versus Boston, too. Boston's like, eh, whatever. So according to Boston's local news accounts, this, like, winter swimming was just this, like, popular thing to do in South Boston. And it started as early as 1865.

And a group of locals started a club that's sometimes known as the L Street Swimmers. And the L Street Swimmers are mentioned in a local newspaper in Boston that they took their first polar bear plunge on New Year's in 1904 as well. So it's either a tie or they had. been doing it from 1865, but just never were like, we need to tell about this. They didn't mean the attention. Yeah, exactly. So I kind of like these L Street swimmer is a little bit better. But one surprises me most about all of these, like these two teams.

And then everyone else who does it in America is that it's not like they just do it on New years. They do it multiple times throughout the year. And the Coney Island Polar Bear Club actually does it every single, like, some hardcore members do it every single Sunday. It's like a Sunday ritual. Wow, that's a lot of plunging. Yeah. And they do it because they think that there's these sort of like health benefits from it. So the L Street swimmers, even though they didn't really seem to like the press, there's some like really cool stuff about them. So according to newspaper accounts, they swam in South Boston,

usually swam nude or with minimal clothing, and they claimed that swimming and tanning were beneficial to the heart skin and circulation and credited the practice with miraculous cures. The belief that winter swimming strengthens the immune system has persisted into the 21st century. And that's definitely true, and they think that it was sort of introduced

by European immigrants who also believe that cold water plunges, followed by saunas or steam baths, were good for one's health. I just don't think that's true. And there really hasn't been that many good studies on this. But when I was looking back at this stuff, apparently I've written so many articles in the past, you know, several years that I wrote about this.

And I didn't even realize I did. So I have all these cool, interesting health facts about the polar bear plunge. From past you. From past me. What a gift. Right. The gift that keeps giving. So essentially what happens to your body when you go into when you plunge?

I guess is the word. It's an awkward verb. Yeah, totally. So this was about this article from December 2016 was about how, like, you could, because I'm so into like diseases and death, apparently, that like it's really actually dangerous sometimes to do this like polar bear plunge that so many people do it on New years who don't routinely, haven't done it before, that it can actually like be detrimental to your health.

And so just like going through the anatomy of what. happens. First, your body sort of goes into like cold shock, which is this involuntary response. Like, you have no control over it. So it causes you to inhale, like, gasping breaths. Because, like, as soon as you, like, jump into the water, you're just in such shock that you'll, like, take a deep breath. If you do that while you're underwater, you can literally, like, take in water into your lungs and drown. So there's one bad thing that can happen. And then if you survive that, then the cold shock response is followed by the diving reflex. which is actually kind of cool.

Extremely cold water causes the blood vessels in the body to constrict, and this helps to maintain heat on the outer part of the body, but also makes it hard for the heart to pump blood to internal organs. In the moment, your body starts to force blood from the limbs to the heart and brain to ensure that vital organs get the blood they need. So that's cool. Is that like any part of the theory of why it might be good for you, that it's your, like, changing your blood flow?

Yeah, totally getting to that. Not really, but we are getting there. Okay, but so this can actually be dangerous, though, because this increases the workload on the heart and people who, like, some people might have, like, even if they're healthy individuals, they may have, like, underlying heart conditions that they don't know about,

and then it can be detrimental. Even so, people do it every year. So the question I posed this researcher, Joseph Herrera, the director of sports medicine at Mount Sinai Medical School, and I was like, why do people, still do it. And essentially he said that as you jump in, your body releases like all this adrenaline, just like what you were saying before. Yeah, in response to the shock of plunging into

cold water. So the rush is like definitely real, but there are just no health benefits from doing it other than you feel really good. And then you jump out of the cold water and think that the cold weather that you're now standing in, which is probably 30 degrees or 20 degrees, is so much warmer than what you just jumped in. And so you're like, I feel this like rush of adrenaline and I'm now warm because I'm not no longer in freezing cold water. I'm just in freezing cold air because that's a lot better. So in conclusion, yes, it's fun for some people. But I feel like I still just, I would never get an adrenaline rush. And maybe this is something that's like, fundamentally wrong with me.

Oh my God. But I just have never, like, gotten a rush from being exposed to cold anything. Like, even I think, like, sometimes, like, iceies or, like, really cold ice cream is just, like, a shock to the system. And I'm just like, it really stresses me out. So I hope that there's, like, other people out there like me. I feel like you have a cold hypersensitivity. Maybe.

I don't know. I don't know why I'm asking like you have done this. I feel like also the adrenaline is partly in making yourself do something that you know is going to be uncomfortable. Yeah. Which I actually think you would be familiar with, like as an athlete that that would be, I totally understand the cold thing. But for me, that's what it is. It's like, ah, we're all going to go do this thing and it's going to be like kind of painful, but then it'll feel good afterwards. Like, that's the appeal for me.

Not that I would actually want to get up on New Year's Day and do this, but that was the, the appeal for me. That's definitely a good appeal. I don't know. I guess I feel like during like running, I know eventually it's going to be painful, but then I guess I do get like adrenaline from running. I don't know why I don't get it from the cold. I don't know. Maybe it's just like if your, if cold is like really unpleasant to you, I understand why it would be just like not. Because also like when you exercise, you get lots of other good ones. It just overrides the adrenaline from the cold plunge. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think it will ever be for me. But it turns out he told. He told, he told, he me that like the way to minimize your danger, so like, I don't know, pro tips, I guess,

if you want to do the polar bear plunge on New Year's this year and you also want to minimize your risk of death and injury, you can practice it beforehand because your body sort of like gets adapted to being outside in the cold, kind of like basically what you're saying, that it's not as much of like a shock to the system and like those responses are sort of like dulled as you do it more and more. So the people that are actually in these polar bear clubs that do it, do it every single Sunday or whatever, have way less of a risk of having anything happen to them when they do it on New Year's Day. But it's just the people that are like, oh, I'm just going to do this for super fun times just, you know, on New Year's are the ones that are most at risk. Also, I just like wonder, like, what is, like, what's the appeal?

Like, why on New Year's do we feel like we need to, like, restart by, like, jumping into freezing cold water? Because the New Year is when you start all your unpleasant commitments. I'll lose weight. I'll eat healthier. I'll go to the gym. Yeah. So this year, I'll be the kind of person who can make myself jump into cold water. And also, you know, pick up all these other habits.

That's true. That's a good point. I don't think that will work for me. There's almost zero correlation. Oh, yeah. But, okay, so I'll just end this, like, fun fact they had and pass around. Hopefully I'll feel to post it. this on the internet as well. This is from their newspaper post and it definitely looks like an OG

like Instagram post from 1904. This is the L Street Swimmers in Boston prepping to it's great. Those sure are a lot of very pale men. Very pale white men, which is frustrating because the L. Street Swimmers didn't allow women at first into their club until I believe like 10 years after they started so it's all men wow there's some real revealing bathing suits here yeah I see some well I mean some yeah no there's plenty of bare butts because like the true like the real way to do it was to go in naked yeah it was like kind of you're like being baby how many polar bears do you see wearing bathing suits that's true it's a great point there's a lot of what resemble g-strings in here this is happy holidays exactly

I think moral of the story. Yeah. Or just don't polar bear plans. Just do something else. See your friend's butts in other contexts. Yeah. It doesn't have to be the polar their fun. Okay. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact. Okay and we're back. And Sarah,

you have some disease and death for us, I believe. I do. The story of Christmas disease begins with a brief history of royal deaths. Oh, good. Starting with poor little Prince Friedrich in 1873, who, much to the chagrin of like every parent who ever warned you not to climb on a chair, was climbing on a chair next to an open window when he fell out of it.

Oh, no. Oh, my God. Classic. Yeah, died hours later of a brain hemorrhage at age two. Horrifying. In March of 1884, Prince Leopold, thankfully a little older, he was 30, slipped and fell at his villa in Cannes, died of a brain hemorrhage hours later. Prince Heinrich of Prussia also climbing. on a chair. Stumbled, hit his head, died of a brain hemorrhage, 1904. Oh my God. It's the brain hemorrhage that's getting me. Lord. I'm sorry, why are they climbing on chairs? Because they were

little. There were a couple. He was four. I'm sure you climbed on chairs when you were little Jess. Didn't you ever like climb on a chair? And your parents were like, don't climb in a chair. You'll fall and hit your head. I probably fell and hit my head because I can't remember. Lord Mountbatten died of hip, of not hip complications, complications from a hip surgery. April 1922. Then between 1928 and 1938,

Prince Rupert, Infante Alfonso, and Infante Gonzalez all got into car accidents and died from internal bleeding. And then

maybe the strangest one of all. In 1945, Prince Voldemar, I'm sure I'm not saying that right, he was German,

and his wife were retreating from the invading Russian army, and he needed a sudden blood transfusion.

He made it all the way to Bavaria from the Czech Republic, but the next day, the American Army invaded towards the end of the war, diverted all the medical resources to treat concentration camp victims,

and Prince Voldemar couldn't get his transfusion that he needed and he died. Bad timing, yep. Cerebral timing, a little hard to have sympathy for him, but still, it's unfortunate. But the thing all these men have in common is that they were all related to Queen Victoria. Her daughters, Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice, married royals from other countries, and then those children married other royals from other countries, and the result is that they spread a rare genetic mutation that causes Christmas disease, which we now know as hemophilia B. Oh, fun.

Isn't it? So hemophilia, if you don't know, it's actually like sort of a group of disorders where you basically don't have specific blood factors. They are literally called factors, and your blood doesn't clot properly, which means that small accidents like falling off of chairs. I see. And the fairly minor car accidents that those other men died of can cause you to bleed out oftentimes in your brain because that is fatal.

Yeah, because our brain hemorrhage is usually like really rare. They are because you have to hit your head really hard usually. Unless you have hemophilia. And then unfortunately, back in the day you found out by dying. But yeah, hemophilia, there's like, there are three types, but really there's two main types, A and B, but they're both inherited by a genetic mutation on the X chromosome. So women having two X chromosomes are only ever carriers. They don't ever have like a severe form of hemophilia because the gene, the functioning gene on your other X chromosome makes

enough of the clotting factor and you don't just have one clotting factor. You have several. So women are carriers like Queen Victoria, but only men get the serious form that kills you because they only have one X chromosome. So in the 19th and 20 centuries, we didn't know it as Christmas disease. They called it the royal disease because all these royals died famously. But like several physicians had definitely figured out sort of the general idea because it's such an intense phenotype. Like probably half of the men in your family die from really seemingly small accidents or they bleed really easily like every time they get a cut. They just like can't stop bleeding seemingly. So there were like several other

families who were not royal who various physicians figured out but didn't have like the resources to understand that it was necessarily genetic or like why it was only the men we actually only figured out that the the royals had hemophilia B because some of Alexei Romanov's bones got analyzed there was some DNA left over and so they were able to determine that it was actually hemophilia B specifically previously it was like always just theorized that they all had this form of hemophilia. And they think that Queen Victoria, like, got a spontaneous mutation. Like, her father didn't have it. And it's really unlikely that her mother had an affair with a man who had it. What an iconic last. Yeah. So she just, like, literally, she just got

this random mutation. And then because she was royal, she just, like, happened and passed it to all these people from all these different countries. It was wild. Also, because she had a lot of kids. Yeah, they just, because they ripped him out. They sure loved each other. Yeah. She popped him out all the time. Which is very impressive, considering she was a queen and did a lot. That's what always gets to me about Victoria. They had like, what, 14 kids?

14. I want to say 14. God. And like he also died fairly young. He was like in his 40s. So granted, like her childbearing years were probably just about over anyway. But like they didn't get a lot of extra time. A lot of childbearing years.

Yeah, she was like an active queen. She was not just like a figurehead. And I'm just like she was pregnant all the time. Yeah, I mean, 14 kids, you have to be pregnant. Talk about leaning in. That's all. She really did her part. It's all to say.

She really did her part to just like send hebophilia all across the continent. Okay, it is actually nine children, but it's nine children in the span of like 17 years. So she was still popping them out pretty fast. Yeah. I maintain that like for a woman. overseeing an empire dubious as that may be as a career choice. It's just a lot. Yeah.

I can't imagine being pregnant for a decade, and that was my only job. Just to be pregnant. Now none of the royals seem to have it. It seems to have died out. So that's somewhat good news for... By falling off of chairs. Yeah. I mean, true, though, because some of the people I was researching died in their 30s or, like, even in their 20s or,

tragically as small children. So like if you die before you pass it on, dies out with you. What happens if you have it like nowadays are there treatments for it? Great question. Not that I think I have it or anything. You would really really know, I promise. I would know. You would know I'm pretty sure I was tested for him. Pretty positive. But also like you would know because men and your family would have definitely definitely had problems. Like you would know. Okay, I would know. You would know, I promise. Thank you. Okay. So hemophilia got sort of named and identified in in the early 1800s, but they didn't recognize it as two, really three, but the third is like, it's, it's not the same, it's so rare. It didn't get identified as separate diseases until the 1940s and 50s, which is where the Christmas thing comes in.

It has nothing to do with Christmas the holiday. What? Nothing. It was named for a boy named Stephen Christmas. What? I want my last name to be Christmas. I know. His name is Stephen Christmas.

He is a two-year-old at the time. and he got taken to the hospital for sick children, which has long been my favorite hospital name. I know. That used to be so popular. The hospital for sick children. I love it. And yeah, his blood led to the discovery that hemophilia B was distinct

because they used to have this test basically where if you had like a suspected hemophiliac patient, you could take the sample of their blood and add like no normal blood. And if the clotting time decreases, like if it clots faster, then you know that they have some form of hemophiliate. hemophilia. But with Christmas, Mr. Christmas, and six other... And six others who were identified in this academic article, they found that you could add hemophiliac blood samples to each other, and the clotting time sped up. And that was because hemophilia B and hemophilia A, you're deficient in two different clotting factors.

So if you combine them, you end up with a set, a complete set of clotting factors. So we're for a while there was not any kind of treatment you basically just like had to be very careful with yourself tried not to fall yeah and you like needed to get regular transfusions because you were like liable to lose blood a lot but in the 60s and 70s we discovered a way to isolate the clotting factors and so you can now treat hemophilia by having like regular injections of the factors so you can't make people produce them on their own yet like there's gene therapy investigation about that but but you can now get regular injections of it. Unfortunately, in the 70s and 80s, there were a lot of hemophiliacs who got infected with hepatitis C and HIV from contaminated blood products because we didn't know we should be testing for those things. Unfortunately, that includes Stephen Christmas. He ended up dying of AIDS because he got HIV from a blood transfusion. I know. It's a little tragic, but Merry Christmas from the weirdest thing contest. Wow. I didn't think we were going to circle back to the AIDS crisis, but...

No. That's your little Christmas surprise. Here we are. I don't know I'm saying Christmas so much. Two of us are Jewish. But... Well, I am from an interfaith household, so we had like a Hanukkah Bush. We do Christmas, yeah. Because I do both. Like, I do Hanukkah and Christmas. Yeah, we do both as well. But just not really committing to either. That's cute. I like it. Yeah. It's nice. Was it like a living bush? No, it's just a Christmas. Christmas mystery. We would just call it our Hanukkah bush. Oh, I love that. We just had minoras, which are a little less exciting. It's really, doing both is really ideal.

It's great, because also you really extend that, like, this year is not ideal because Hanukkah falls right before, like, basically over Christmas. Right. In many years, you just get to extend the gift giving. Yeah. Well, and the thing is, like, Hanukkah is really not a big deal as a holiday, which, like, any Jew will tell you, but it's been kind of slotted in as, like, a pseudo Christmas because of like how commercial Christmas is and how it's everywhere. Like kids need their presents. So you got to you got to make that work. But. Plus lotkas. Right. Lottas excellent. But the thing is that it's like it's not much of a holiday. So really it's ideal to do both at once. It is. It's great. You get your deli donuts and

your lot because but you also have like a real present holiday which Hanukkah is not. Real holiday with real presents. Yeah. They're both good. Yeah. Any holiday is good. And like I think it's really wonderful how many holidays there are that fall around this time because of our like desperate need to celebrate in the middle of the dark and the cold. Yeah, by plunging into the ocean.

Yeah, it's true. Claire is still scarred. Well, weirdos, however you are spending this holiday, whether you are celebrating one or several, religious occasions, or if you're just buying presents, if you're just eating Chinese food, if you're just watching Netflix, if you're jumping into some cold water, we hope you have a wonderful season and a great new year. We are going to take a little bit of a hiatus after this bonus episode. We will be back on January 15th. We will have some great episodes for you. The season is far from over, and you have a lot to look forward to you. Thank you so much for

sticking with us so far. And as always, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. If you want to get in touch, you can leave us a voice message. You can leave us a Apple review. We would love that. That would be a super great Chris Micah present to us. And we'll see you soon. Thanks for listening. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms. So subscribe wherever you're listening now. And if you like what you hear, please rate and review us on iTunes. It helps other weirdos find the show. You can buy our including Weirdest Thing t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at popside.threadlist.com. Our show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Faltman, and our editors,

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