The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - American Hippo Ranchers, Peacock Vasectomies, Leave Einstein Alone

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Sarah Gailey hops on Weirdest Thing to talk about how hippos almost became extremely American. Plus, Sandra explains why Miami officials are going to perform vasectomies on peacocks, and Rachel gets into the ethics of saving Einstein's brain. 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 Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: bit.ly/WeirdestThingILearnedThisWeek Check out Weirdest Thing on YouTube: bit.ly/WeirdestThingILearnedThisWeekYouTube If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, email, Tweet, or send this link to a friend: bit.ly/WeirdestThingILearnedThisWeek Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water.

The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or The Hilton.com. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. 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 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 Feltman. I'm Sandra Gutierrez. I'm Sarah Galey. Sarah, welcome to the show.

We're so excited to have you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Listeners, Sarah's, they've written some of my favorite books, including the Echo Wife, which like is a book I do not shut up about because it made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me want to maybe do weird science experiments in my ex's basement. I don't know. But Sarah, why don't you tell listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do? So, hi. Yeah, I'm, I am an author of genre fiction across lengths of forms. So I write science fiction, fantasy, and horror of all lengths and styles in comics and in novels and in short stories. Basically, anywhere that people will allow me to write, I do. And I'm just, I'm so thrilled to be here.

I did want to share, because you brought up the Echo Wife, my favorite review of the Echo Wife is the only one that has called it a comedy. And that was, I believe, in popular science magazine. It was a review. That's a compliment. It was a review written by a scientist that said, this is hilarious. And I was, I was deeply complimented because I did want it to be very funny to scientists. Yeah.

Amazing. I thought it had moments of great humor. When I was researching it, I talked to my sister who is a lab scientist. And for my research in conversation with her, I just asked her what irritates you most about the people you work with. And that's where I think I got the best content. Yeah, amazing. A lot of pipette controversy. Yeah, pipe pit pituit controversies are very real.

I only did science as an undergrad. and even I experienced pipette drama. Well, we're so excited to have you on, so let's get into the show. 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 we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, stealing pipettes, 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. Not really anymore. I decided that we're all winners here, but it's fine. I love that for us.

Sandra, what's your tease? Okay. Peacock overpopulation has been a long-lasting problem in Miami, and now one suburban neighborhood is trying to take care of this issue by giving the birds vasectomies. I love that, right? We're going to be talking about verb resectomies. I mean, your strong pitch. Great energy.

Love it. Thank you. Now I have to revise mine because my pitch also involved wild animal vasectomies. Oh, please. The more wild animal vasectomies, the better. Sarah, what's your tease? What does a cocaine empire have in common with the meat question? And how can both be solved by giving megafauna vasectomies?

Wow. I mean, you bid me. You bid me right there. I will admit to listeners that I specifically asked Sarah to be able because I had been thinking about doing something related to this topic for a while. And then when I started researching it, I was like, wait, Sir Gail, I wrote a book about this. This is my chance. So I'm very excited. My tease is that I want to talk about why Einstein's brain got stolen and what scientists' obsession with it can teach us about intelligence and also hubris.

Where's the vasectomies? Yeah, sorry. I mean, listen, there probably could have been some if I had tried hard enough. But I'll explain later. None for Einstein, though, as far as I know. Sandra, why don't you get started? I feel like we should bookend our animal vasectomy stories, and I can just pop in there with some weird brain in a jar stuff.

I will open the vasectomy special of the wordiest thing. Okay, so the last time I was in Miami for something other than a layover was in 1998. Yes, I'm old. Which is probably why I did not know that parts of the city were positively over. Overrun by Peacocks. And when I say overrun, I don't mean to just be dramatic. Pfile have been a problem in Miami-Dade County for years, picking at Tesla, walking loudly before dawn, and terrifying residents with the scratching sounds they make

when they jump on their roofs. Wow. And I would do some ASMR right now, but I mean, I cannot, you know, convey the terrifying, you know, sound of the peacock. Yeah, you know, that's like a, that's a dinosaur attacking your own. Yeah. Absolutely. They're big. Right? We're going to get to that. That's a great segue. So before we do that, by the way, I don't know who needs to hear this, but I didn't know this up until recently. So I'm just going to assume that there are like a lot of people listening to this podcast who don't know it either. Technically speaking, Peacock is the name of the male bird with a flamboyant display of exotic and shiny plumage. This species is called peepile. And the The female of that species is called a pea hen.

Under this logic, pea-fowl babies are called peaches. Which is very cute. And it's also something I think that only someone with a full-on dad humor must have come up with. So before this invasive species ended up running a muck in Miami, they were brought from India and commercialized as exotic yard ornaments in the 1920s and 30s, which is, you know, very fitting. Because peacocks are very, like, crazy swinging 20s, I guess.

Very arduro. Yeah, it's true. The most, like, art deco bird you could have. Absolutely, absolutely. In time, they became more than just a shiny moving garden gnome and turned into a common sight in Coconut Grove, a popular touristic area in the south of Miami. There's even a peacock park there, which, fun fact,

I thought it was named after the bird because, duh, but it turns out it was named after the descendants of one of the first settlers of South Florida, which is a guy named Jack Peacock. No. Terrible coincidence. Yeah, I know. It's insane. And there are like Peacov statues at the park even.

Conspiracy theory starting now. Yes. Thank you. Regardless of the mistaking identity, peacocks have become a sort of symbol of Miami, and they're part of the scenery, they're beautiful, and people absolutely love them. So, what's the problem with them? being everywhere, and this is to Sarah's comment, have you ever seen a peacock? They can grow up to be four feet tall, which is pretty big for a bird. That's only one foot shorter than me.

I mean, yes, it's like, they're huge. We actually sort of like don't realize how big they are, even without the shiny plumage all displayed and all. And even though they strap you with this beautiful shiny plumage, they have sharp beaks and talents, which makes catching them somewhat of a dangerous sport. And also, they're not the brightest. Peacogs are definitely up there in the hymboes of the animal kingdom ranking.

And they're known to peck at, and scratch, dark-colored vehicles because they see their reflection on them and think it's another male. So they attack it. So they destroyed a lot of Teslas out there. Okay. But does that make the bemenace to society?

Yeah, that sounds like allieship to me. Yeah. I mean, listen, I have absolutely no problem with peacocks destroying Tesla's, but, you know, rich people. As long as I'm not grown up through the Condo Accords, we're fine. Yes, sure. Yeah, yeah, but for these people in this suburban neighborhood in Florida, they're not very, you know, happy. I can understand why they wouldn't appreciate that. And also, also, peacocks can be kind of jerks.

They have their reports of peacocks harassing kids holding food, and they can get very territorial around mating season, which is half of the year. from December to May. That's a long time. So it's not like just, yeah, it's not like a month, right? Well, hot girl semester. Yes, sure. Yes. In their defense, though, peacocks attacks are rare, but not so rare,

that we don't have a name for the pathological fear of peacocks, which is pubophobia, by the way. And finally, to add insult to injury, peacocks poop everywhere? Sure. Their feathers clog AC units, and they are very, very, vocal. Miami residents have been complaining about the birds waking them up in the middle of the

night and interrupting their Zoom called with all the squacking. Up until a few years ago, peacocks lived mostly in coconut grove, but then they moved south to Pine Crest because surprising to no one, construction was destroying their habitat. Pinecrest is an affluent residential suburb, you know, with all the Tesslas. And they have a lot of trees and foliage, so Pfowl love it there. But the problem is not relocation, it's overpopulation. So according to the Miami Herald, one neighborhood reported a population of 250 free roaming birds. Other towns like Longboat Key reported 120 pfowl living among their small community of 8,000 people. Yeah, that's a lot of pfowl per capita.

Yes, exactly. The ratio is pretty crazy. And, you know, there's two reasons for that. What is the weather? Because basically, there's no winter in South Florida. so exotic birds that would otherwise die, thrive in Miami heat. The other factor is regulation. Back in 2001, when Pfowl weren't doing so good, Miami-Dade County passed an ordinance to protect the birds from being killed or captured.

So Floridians can only, like, shoot them away from their property by turning on their sprinklers or something. And you can't just trap and release them in the wild either because peacocks are not native. So all the other alternative would be to trap them and get a sanctuary or zoo to take them in. And those are hard to come by because peacugs are just everywhere. So they're like, you know, we have enough peacocks. Save it for yourself. We're good. We're good on the peacocks.

We're good on the peacocks. We hit quota. Yeah. So maybe the other logical option would have been to temporarily lift or somehow update that 2001 ordinance that protects Pfowl, but Floridians feel very strongly about their birds. For example, back in April, there was outreach in a neighborhood south of pinecress called Plymetta Bay. After 18 Moscovy ducks were humanely euthanized

because they were being aggressive. People were so upset, they held a candidly vigil for the ducks. And I'm not judging because if I live down there, I would have been there for the ducks. And I know you guys would be too. Yeah, it's always, not judging. It's very hard when, an animal from like an ecological standpoint is, you know, a menace.

Being disruptive, basically. I remember one time back when I was at the Washington Post, I covered this study where a guy had, I think I talked about this when Bethany, Berkshire was on talking about methods of getting rid of cane toads and like the flying butt cane toad thing. Go back and listen, folks. It was a great episode. But I covered this study because I was so fascinated that this researcher had like dedicated time to figuring out the most humane way for everyday people to euthanize cane toads because it's a really, there's a genuine need for that in Australia. Yeah, it's a problem. Yeah. Dangerous animals.

And if you like find a bunch of them on your property, you really should get rid of them. So like, what does one do? And he tried a bunch of different things and came to the conclusion that in terms of like safety for the human effort and like minimizing suffering for the animal, freezing them was the way to go. And so many U.S. readers emailed me being like,

why are you sharing this like, not killing animals, research study? And I was like, listen, I feel like if you lived in Australia I had to deal with a bunch of venomous cantoes. You might feel different about this band's research. But it's really, there's a fine line between people being able to accept like, okay, yes, ecologically speaking, this is a pest. And like, come on.

Yeah. It's adorable. And the pest divide is so strong. Like, East Coast people, the way they feel about deer and the way that I feel about deer are complete opposites. I got to visit there, and I saw deer eating apples off someone's tree in their front yard. And I was like, oh, my God, this is so idyllic.

this is so beautiful. And I mentioned, so majestic. Yeah, how nature. And then I mentioned it to someone who lived in the area and I saw the venom enter their eyes. When I said the word deer, I just saw the hatred fill them like the green goblin.

Yeah, but also like it's very hard to draw that line, especially when you're talking about like majestic animals like deer. And in this case also like, you know, the peacocks because they're so beautiful and they're like a symbol of the city and everything. But like they're a problem. And it's, it's fine.

it's fine to address it as a problem, which is what the Miami-Dade residents did, along with complaining to the county commission, which earlier this year changed its strategy from being patient listeners to like, well, why don't you try it approach? And they asked municipalities to submit projects and ideas to control PFO population. And because they do not want to stick their peacocks in huge freezers and get rid of them, I think it's just a very different animal than a cane to. I feel like the math is just really different there.

Cain toes and peacocks, different animals. Yeah. Different here. You know, slightly different. So, yeah, so that's why Pyncrestisectomy Initiative was the second one to be approved. And in case you didn't know, pee fowl live in harrums, which means exactly what you think it means. One male mates with a bunch of peahans. So for every vasectomy you perform, you prevent up to seven females from laying fertilized ass.

So that is efficient, but it's also expensive and labor extensive because you need to start this whole thing by chasing and trapping the males, which is a lot to begin with because, remember, these are big birds. Then you perform the surgery, provide post-up care, and then you rinse and repeat, right? and in populations that can go up to like 120 pfowl, you know, that could take time and it's expensive. So I do wonder, though, if they would have proposed costly dysactomies as a solution if these birds were in as colorful and majestic. But maybe that's just me expecting the worst from people. But, yeah. I think that's probably, that's a very fair question. Also, I do just want to say that from the moment you said these are big birds, I was picturing big bird from Sesame Street for.

for the rest of your talk. I will say that the Latin American equivalent of Big Bird, Avalo, very colorful. Yeah, it's very colorful. It resembles a peacock. So, I mean, it might be. I mean, my favorite episode from my childhood of Sesame Street was V is for vasectomy. Classic.

I just thought it was a really good one. Okay, so guys, do you ever think about alien vasectomy? because I do. I can't say that I have. I did in my book I wrote like the first the intro was just like 2,000 words about duck penises

but well that's just the form that's what introductions to books are like it's true. Yeah like you need to start your book talking about duck penis like how do you ever do that? I'm realizing now somehow

somehow duck vasectomies never came up well that's embarrassing for you well let me let me tell you about it Rachel, because I'm very excited about avian vasectomies. Funny enough, adiomies are pretty similar to human ones. The anatomy is pretty much the same, but it looks different, you know, for obvious reasons,

because humans are not very much. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm learning so much today. So that means humans are cane toads. Yeah, okay. It's two categories. Two categories. So as a refresher, because, you know, I'm just like laying all the wisdom down here.

for you guys. As a refresher of isactomies, both birds and humans, are simple surgical procedures that often cut and cauterize the vast deference, a couple of tubes connecting the testes to the mating organ, so that sperm can be released during sex. Unlike ducks, geese, swans, and you know it, humans, peacocks don't have a penis. Instead, they have a small bump of erectile tissue on the back wall of their cloica called a papilla, a papilla. I don't know how to pronounce that, but Popula, whatever. It's only a tiny protuberance, but it grows during mating season, and it does the job quite well. Just ask people in Miami. So when you perform a vasectomy on a peacock, again, just like in humans, the bird can continue to act as the dominant male and mate with their

entire harm if they want to. The only difference is that the seminal fluid ejaculates remating will not be able to fertilize any eggs. So everybody wins, including the Tesla owners. up Florida. I have to ask us to edit that entire bit out of this podcast because I got into an argument with my partner the other day. She said, do birds have penises? And I said, you fool, of course, birds have penises and reminded her about duck penises, which we already knew about, and said, so obviously, birds have penises, what's wrong with you that you would think that birds don't have penises? And when you said peacocks don't have penises, I saw my life flash before my eyes. She is going to listen to this. And I'm going to get roasted. That is in fact the focus of

my book is how because I knew about duck penises, I just always kind of thought other birds also had penises. They were just like small. And no, actually, it's only, I want to say it's three percent of all bird species have penises. Yeah. And the rest is like this little. It's like a fingernail sized and they just kind of they, it's just rubbing. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Nothing wrong with that. But yeah, no penises in sight. Me and you, Rachel, we're as one.

Yeah, peacocks made by, like, rubbing their cloacas together. So there's no, like, there's, I feel like there's some sort of penetration, like, a little bit because this thing's sort of like a largest of it. But I'm not entirely sure. Apparently that is enough that they can just, you know, do their thing. Yeah. They do it quite well. They're a lot of peacocks. So it's fine.

So for these surgeries, particularly the peacocks of pinecress will most likely be sedated with isofluorine, which they'll inhale from tiny little air masks designed especially for their beaks. Then the veterinary team will access the bird's reproductive organs through small incisions between the cloaca and the pubic bone or by using endoscopic techniques, which make the procedure slightly less invasive and complicated than a full-on castration. And as far as we know, all on this, very exciting things may be happening right the second.

So we don't know if this is going to solve the peacock problem at Pinecrest or even at Miami-Dade. But research shows that just like what happens in humans and other mammals, aean vasatomies are safe and overall don't have reported negative effects. They don't change breeding behavior, hormonal levels stay the same, the courtship and copulation post-surgery remains on. altered so peacocks should be just fine and also the Tesla owners so everybody wins amazing well I'm so glad that they're they're trying something very curious to see whether a few years from now they're like well that was a lot of money we spent doing all the peacock that's

yeah and this is and this is also a pilot program apparently the governance of this particular village is also helping other villages and other municipalities to do the same. I mean, I bet that it will depend on whether or not this makes the difference. But like it should. It theoretically, it should be enough to sort of control the population of peacocks. So they can keep the peacocks and also like, you know, not have them in a roof like scratching away. I really, after we finish recording, I'm going to go and look up small town papers from this. this area because you've mentioned that people who live in this area love the peacocks but also are complaining about the peacocks which means that the letters to the editor in the small town papers

of this area are going to be so zesty and that's my favorite thing. Oh my god I have not thought about that I should have definitely looked that up but I will I will do the same exercise after this is over. I live in a very tiny town about 4,000 people and our letters to the editor are there's always at least two argumentative letters about steelhead trout in the local paper every week and they get heated and it's just delicious to me. I love mess. I love it. I love that for you. Incredible. Okay, 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? And talking about mood.com, they have an incredible.

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And I'm going to talk about Einstein's brain, Einstein. So I've wanted to talk about Einstein's Noggin for a while, but I decided to finally take the leap because my sort of hometown haunt, the Water Museum, has been in the news. Side note, I know some people are going to be like, why did they should keep saying the name of this museum different ways? It's because I know what an oomelout is. I know that the correct pronunciation of this word is something like water.

However, I grew up in South Jersey where we can't even say all of our consonants. So we called it the mutter museum. So listen, it's all fine. The museum itself says, if you can't pronounce the umlaut. The second best thing is to say it like Scooter, mooter. and I'm like, that's terrible. I don't like that at all. So anyway, it's fine. Just caveat, I know, leave me alone. Okay. But the museum is where medical students, history nerds, and hot golf girls alike go to learn about the history of medicine through the lens of these

like genuinely creepy and genuinely beautiful displays that include soapified corpses, phrenology skull collections, watermelon-sized ovarian cysts, and fetuses with various deadly congenital disorders. And so it's been in the news. I won't go too deep into the current controversy. Also, FYI, we're recording this in August. So there may have been movement of the subject by the time this publishes. But the long and short of it is that this museum that's been collecting and displaying medical paraphernalia and human remains since 1863 is under new management. And a lot of people are freaking out. The museum is run by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, has been for a long time, and the group's new president recently kicked off

an audit of the museum's collections, which on the one hand is definitely good and necessary to do, like most museums, if not all museums in the U.S. and other countries with history of colonialism, it has loads of human remains of unknown, sketchy, or overtly unethical providence. And while parts of the collection have done a pretty good job of like working to humanize and contextualize the people whose remains are on display, other exhibits are like for sure overdue for a revab. And that's not even getting into the stuff that like should probably be returned to sender and dealt with in a more ethical fashion. But according to a lot of devoted fans and some of the folks involved in running the museum, the process of this audit has like not really played out in good faith. There's a lot of scuttlebutt in the local papers about this like totally erasing an identity that the new powers just see as being like tacky and cringe as opposed to really being motivated by a desire to like make the museum more ethical and scientific. For instance, there's been a bunch of back and forth about the fetal remains, which like authorities on the subjects, they were donated with full parental consent who understood they were going to be displayed.

But the current administration keeps talking about them as being like somehow distasteful and inappropriate inherently. And so a lot of people are a little anxious about that. They're like, who is that pandering to? Like, what is that about? and unfortunately too, the pushback to the audit has gotten the attention of some folks who want this to be a story about like the PC police ruining an American institution. Meanwhile, the fans who most of whom are like queer anarchist goss are like horrified by that and are like, no, we just want them to do a better audit that's good. And so the conversation's gotten very muddled. And hopefully the folks in charge will keep their promise of, first of all, getting people of color,

indigenous people, people with disabilities, chronically ill, and members of other communities who are potentially impacted by the less sensitive and well-handled aspects of this museum or hurt or exploited, that they'll actually invite them in and get them to weigh in on what should be done, which they've said they're going to do. And hopefully they'll use, you know, a scalpel instead of a meat cleaver to refine these exhibits. I'll link to a few pieces about this on Popside.com slash weird. But I found a really great piece about it by Rifa Lerer, who is a disabled artist and writer who teaches medical humanities at Northwestern University, sure with us in art in America.

and it really, really gets at the heart of why places like the mutter, like, need to reckon with their pasts and change for the better, but also expresses some really thoughtful criticism of the ways the people in charge have been talking about the museum's current vibe. And, like, it paints a great picture of what the mutter could become that, like, I'm positive that most of the fans who are freaking out would be thrilled with. there's kind of this tension right now where the people who are in charge of the audit are kind of talking about the idea of this stuff being on display as inherently gross in a way that's like also kind of ableist. So it's like it's a very complicated question. And a lot of people who adore this museum or at least like see that it can be this really awesome, like, beacon of knowledge and intrigue for people whose bodies were always othered and marginalized and ignored by Sybbs, that, like, it could become even better and cooler.

So, anyway, that's why I was thinking about Einstein's brain, because it's one of the more ethically dubious, but most commonly praised specimens at the museum. And in fact, I saw some, like, online spectators of this controversy basically saying, like, how could you possibly say that this museum should be shut down? For God's sake, they have Einstein's brain on display. And I was like, little do you know, sir. So here I am to make you feel bad about it. And I'm. First things first. Albertine's brain was straight up stolen. He wanted to be cremated, very clear on this.

And when he died of an aortic aneurysm in Princeton, New Jersey in 1955, the pathologist who presided over his autopsy, Thomas Harvey, was like, surely not. And he just like splunked his brain out of his skull and kept it. Now, people are right. That's so bad to do. That's right. Yeah. Like there's no way. That's absolutely insane.

There's no way while you're doing that that you can tell yourself this isn't a big deal. Right. Yeah. Like, yeah, I'm just going to take this. No one's going to miss it. Yeah. You know, just put it in a jar. It's not like his cause of death required going into the brain case.

Is this not something you could do as an afterthought. Like, he really decided to do this. And so much of the stuff that's written about this incident, there's like, as an aside, in his defense, hospitals did this all the time. And I'm like, yeah, and it was bad. I need hospitals. Not everything hospitals do is fine. So Einstein's son, Hans Albert, found out. And apparently Harvey then convinced him retroactively that like the scientific value of his father's brain was such to the creature. meeting it would be a tragedy and Hans was like okay as long as scientific research on it is published in reputable journals um he must have had a plan for this conversation too because it's not like you can like when you say that the son found out it's not like it's a thing you have to really investigate to discover it's like how come this corpse has no top of the skull

anymore and the inside empty and it sounds like the thing lid was open. What happened is that the person who was kind of like legally overseeing Einstein's estate was there for the autopsy and was like, sure, I guess you're right. He probably didn't mean the brain. And then after they had cremated him and they had this like private ceremony somewhere along the Delaware River, as Einstein wanted to scatter the ashes, then apparently Hans Albert found out that the brain had not been part of it. So, I'm kind of like, maybe you would have had a different answer if there had still been time to like put the brain back with the rest of him.

Right, right. There was not much he could do at that point. So it's not great, guys. That's the bottom line. And despite Harvey's big talk about using Einstein's brain to like unlock the secrets of genius, it mostly just got carried around the country for the next like 30, 40 odd years. Harvey was not a neuroscientist or neurosurgeon. He actually did not remain a doctor for that much longer afterwards.

It sounds like he failed a boards exam at some point. The ethics portion. Which is not to dunk on him for like his, medical skills. I have no idea. Maybe he was an excellent pathologist, but he sure was a little, he had sticky fingers. So.

But yeah, the first. point is he was not at all qualified to do the kind of work that he was arguing really needed to be done with this brain. But it seems like he really saw this as being his ticket to become a really important clinician and research scientist. So, so gross. Yeah. Yeah. So he lost his job at Princeton Hospital, not sure why, was not related to the brain. Again, at the time, everyone was like, Yeah, sure, you know, you take out the organs that might be cool and you save them. So then he spent some time in Philadelphia and there he had somebody dissect the brain into a bunch of blocks, mounted a bunch of pieces on thousands of slides.

And then he proceeded to just like kind of travel around doing different jobs around the Midwest. Occasionally he would give some universities, some slivers of brain to study. but it was only sorry I got to pull up the timeline of this and another this is just so Catholic this is so reliquary it's so like you get an

your sliver of the Einstein brain Christ's nostril I was thinking more of like hey my my mom sent me in meat pie do you want a slice like I'm not that I eat it you know all so like you know I might as well just share it Yeah this is just me trying to give people

zucchini that I grew in my garden all summer Exactly Yes, yes. I don't want it to go to base. Yeah, so in 1978, Stephen Levy, the science and technology reporter, basically his boss was like, you should go do some investigating and track down Einstein's brain. Nobody knows where that went. And he found Thomas Harvey in Wichita County as this.

And apparently he was like, hey, so I'm writing a story about Einstein's brain. And Levy says he said to him, I really can't help you with that. And then after they got to talking, he was like, okay, okay. And he, like, goes off in the corner and, like, moves a beer cooler and takes out a box of cider, except in the box of cider are jars with Einstein's braid in it. No. You shitting me? That is bomb-down. That's not cider at all.

No. No. And when Stephen Levy was like, so why? I still have this. Nobody's published on it. What didn't you promise? Like extra piggy swear that if you were going to take this, it was going to be because people were going to publish research on it. And he kind of waffled and it was clear.

At least, you know, Stephen Levy presents this very clear narrative of Thomas Harvey still really holding on to hope that he was going to find a collaborator who was going to like help him do the groundbreaking research. research on this brain. So it wasn't until 1985, 30 years after Einstein's death, that the first study came out on his brain. And it was someone at UCLA who had been given one of these slivers that are being. Stocking stuffer. Yeah, yeah.

A piece of the meat pie. Yeah. Oh, no. And I, so I have a few. no one's given me a piece of anybody's brain and I'm kind of feeling left out at this point. Yeah. Maybe someone should think about pieces of brain as like party fevers for weddings. Like those tiny jars that they sell were like, oh, thanks for coming to our wedding. Here's like a piece of brain for somebody.

That's so romantic. You say it for the first anniversary. I know. You have a piece of my mind with you now. So a few years ago, a researcher basically. did like a poster for a conference where he like systematically broke down what was wrong with all of the studies that have come out claiming to have found some difference in Einstein's brain because there've been a few since 1985. So just like to go over a few of them quick, like in

that original 1985 report, which didn't like involve Harvey as a collaborator. So he did finally find that person who was willing to like have his name on the paper. They said that Broadman Area 39, which is a place where the temporal parietal and occipital lobes meet, had a significantly smaller neuron to glee ratio than in the same area as 11 control brains. But the control group was not very well controlled. The brains came from people age 47 to 80 and Einstein died at 76. So that's like a pretty, you would want to be looking at other like 76 to 80, five-year-old brains, you know. And also those brains were fresh.

This is the thing that keeps coming up is that people starting in 1985 were like, okay, now we're really going to get down to it and study this brain. And it was 30 years old. So there's just all this stuff where it's like, it's been in a beer cooler. like so and also the researcher who broke these down which I'll link to on pops out.com slash weird was also like cell counting is always subjective and the researchers involved knew which tissue was Einstein so like that's inherently you know come on a bias. Then 1996 Harvey partnered with another scientist and they were counting neurons in Broadman area 9, which is part of the frontal cortex, along with five controls. And they found no difference in

the number or size of neurons. But Einstein's tissue was thinner than controls. Again, like it's an old piece of brain meat. But listen, they were like, okay, it's thinner. So the neurons were more densely packed. So the cell to cell messages were traveling over shorted distances. So that meant faster processing speed. So he was thinking faster. And this is. just so that's like so speculative that's based on nothing so first of all it's like questionable that they even found a significant physical difference but then a lot of these studies make such leaps to be like ergo and we just we can't do that this is a very jerky to stake comparison yeah yeah exactly yeah it's an old prune like you can't you can't

get a lot of information from like a brain that's already 30 years old and it's like crinkly and stuff. And everyone doing these studies knows that. They just really want it to not be true because they really want to find some special special brain boy secret in Einstein's brain. In 1999, this one was actually published in The Lancet. Uh-l-la, Hans would have been so happy. And this one, they flipped at old photographs of the brain from the pathology report, like before

it was cut up. So that's like, okay, you got a picture from 30 years ago. And they use that to claim that Einstein had an abnormal folding pattern in his parietal lobe. Come on. And like, again, it's like it's really questionable that they would actually be able to make definitive conclusions about these structures using the pictures. and the research were pointing out Einstein wasn't actually a great mathematician. He was a great physicist, which is not the same thing. If he had wanted to do math, he would have done math.

But, you know, it's all the same, I guess, if you're just somebody who wants to poke at brain pictures and come to conclusions. This is great to me because they're just like studying skull bumps, but from the inside. It's so true. Oh, he had an enlarged note associated with theft and vice. It's like, okay. It's so similar. And yeah, like, you know, at this point, I think it's not controversial to say, like, no one successfully found anything significantly different about Einstein's brain.

But for a few years, there really were, people were very, like, credulously talking about this. and, you know, brains differ so much from person to person that the idea that you could take five brains and even say, oh, because this one's different, that means it's a really special different brain. You would need to look at so many brains to make that conclusion, first of all. And so it's like such a subjective thing. It's really, you know, the sample has degraded. and also just like there's this bias and you see in so many of these studies there's no attempt to get around the bias like they're not not at all blinding the fact that like this tissue is Einstein's and listen that's like absolutely going to skew results when you're looking at something this subjective and also one of the only things that we can say pretty definitively about Einstein's brain is that it was a little on the small side and I love that because again not a very It matters. Brains are...

It just sounds like such a waste, dude. Like, you went through all the trouble of, like, stealing a brain, which is a felony. Like, like, let's start there. And then you just, like, stuck it, like, stick it in, like, a beer cooler for 30 years. You ruined the sample. And then, like, all of this happens. But, like, again, like, you already went through the trouble. Like, you might have as well just do the thing, I guess.

I don't know. Yeah, it's very frustrating. And. Yeah. It's also, you know, they're, sorry, my thought just totally flew out of my head. A pathologist stole it. Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome timing. Actually, I have a friend who's a pathologist and we dated for a while and it was while he was working as an organ harvester. And so there were a lot of jokes about him stealing my heart. Aw. And now you've given him a piece of your mom. mind. Yes, true. There were a lot of, in practice, it was a lot of him being like, if I don't tuck you back, it's because my hands are covered in blood. I was like, this is great. One of my dearest friends, truly, truly I did not get axed by this person. So anyway, I, you know,

when we talk about brain structure, I think it, there was this idea still persisting, you know, when these studies were being done in the 80s and 90s, that like the brain is like, you know, it's what makes us us and it's like it is what it is. And that's what makes us us. But like actually our brains change so much during your lives. I mean, like I have PTSD. It literally changed my brain.

I mean, I don't have an MRI from before and after. But there's lots of research now on the fact that experiences and trauma, physical or emotional, like makes your brain literally change. and different parts of it get better or worse at talking to each other. And, like, physically, you know, structures can start to change. So there's also this really great point to make where it's like, even if Einstein's brain did turn out to be different from the average persons, like, if we were able to study enough brains and his sample was in good enough shape, like, it still wouldn't prove

that's what made him so smart. It might be that the way he thought about things, the, like, intellectual exercises he engaged in and the way he lived his life, like made some funky stuff happen, which I think is such a cool way to flip things around. And yeah, just to hammer home, like, this is definitely a specimen of dubious ethics. He literally told the friend who was writing his biography creamate me so that like no one comes to worship my bones because he, thought it was so weird and messed up that people idolized him. Wow.

And so when I think about people going to the Mudder Museum and like gazing, Sarah, I think it's a great comparison to like compare them to like Catholic relics. And I don't think it's like bad for people to do that. But it's it's food for thought that, you know, human remains are. are not neutral historical specimens and we really need to get better at talking about how we use them and like how we acquire them. So yeah, I hope that over in Philadelphia, they figure that out. I think they have a real opportunity to like be sort of, you know, best in class in terms of reckoning with that sort of thing. And if you're there and you see Einstein's brain, just take a moment to think about

the fact that he wants you to leash him low. He wants to be in the Delaware River. Leave a staying alone. So that's my story. Well, okay, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot. Powered by Verizon for $25 a month. Taxes and fees included. Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month for one year on the Visible plan. Using the code Fresh Start.

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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 show will get a $75 sponsor 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, um, Sarah, I don't even, I don't even know where to begin. I don't know how to, how to tears up. I just want to hear it. I'll just jump right in. Um, I don't know, I don't know if this is something we can keep in here, but I'm going to drop it in any way. And if you need to remove it for copyright reasons, that's totally fine. Um, before I start, I just want to

note that when I first wrote, the book of mine that, um, caused Rachel to, um, invite me onto the podcast. I had not yet read or heard of John Muleleum's adivist essay from 2013, titled American Hippopodomist, but I do want to say I visited his piece alongside my original source material to refresh myself on some of the fighter details of what I'm about to share with you. And if you finish listening to this podcast and you want more granular detail, Mulem's writing is really excellent on this subject. Okay, so I'm just going to set the scene for us real quick. It's 1910 in the United States of America. The Oreo cookie and the zipper have not yet been invented, but they are on the horizon.

And we have two big problems, okay? Just two. Everything else is going great. Problem number one is a meat shortage. The meat shortage in the United States at this time is a very real issue. We simply don't have enough grazing area for the animals that we consume. as part of our common national diet. This is due to overgrazing, one of the many agriculturally short-sighted issues that would eventually lead to the ecological calamity known as the dust bowl.

This meat shortage is a hot button issue. It is referred to as the meat question, and the question is how the hell are we going to feed everybody? It's a question that fuels a lot of political campaigns of the day. you may have heard of the popular 1920s and 30s campaign slogan, a chicken in every pot, which is attributed a lot of different places, but the kind of commonality of that rhetoric reflects how stressed people are about where they're going to source meat for their diets.

Also fueled a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric that has even leached into conversations we have in hindsight about the meat question today. The question kind of got turned from, how are we going to feed everybody to? How are we going to feed those people who keep coming over here? Of course, blame the immigrants. Yeah, it's our national pastime.

You know, it's like baseball, apple pie, jingoistic rhetoric, and anti-immigrant. Got to love America. Yeah, we're waving flags over the Zoom right now. So that's problem number one. And you may remember we had a second problem. And that problem was the invasive water hyacinth. The water hyacinth is a flower. It is very pretty and purple.

And extremely good at propagating. This flower is actually known as the terror of Bengal for how invasive it is. Water hyacinths grow, as you may have guessed from context clues, in the water. They float on the surface of the water and they grow these big, beautiful leaves and delicate, very pretty purple flower. They propagate both underwater via runners and over the water with seeds that can remain viable for up to 30 years in all kinds of adverse conditions. Water hyacinths double their size in about two weeks when they're growing. They can reproduce by a factor of 100 in under a month. I googled pictures and one of the ones that came up is somewhere in India where literally a whole body of water is just flower.

They're very pretty, but seems like probably not what you want in your body of water. Exactly. It's the cane toad of freshwater flora. And they grow in these big tangley patches. They like get their roots and rudders kind of connected together. And when they grow in those big patches, they remove oxygen from the water. They prevent sunlight from reaching other plants that grow under the surface. They drop tons of the dead plant matter to the floor of the waterway that they're on where it rots and produces ammonia and kills everything. They kill fish. They kill other plants. And mowing them down doesn't help because they reproduce under the water via runners. So it's kind of like if you grow mint in your garden and you try and trim it and it just sprouts back up everywhere. Using

oil or tarps to force them under the water to try and kind of drown them. Doesn't have. help because they produce bulbs beneath the water when they're submerged and then those bulbs make more water hyacinth. Oh my God. I would I would suggest people who kill plants to like just adopt one of these and just like let them grow. They won't be they won't be feeling that frustrated about killing plants after it. But they might you know have a problem with their water and stuff, you know. Exactly. It's a very popular freshwater backyard pond plant for this exact reason. So water high Hyacinths are not native to the U.S. They were brought to the U.S.

at a New Orleans Centennial World's Fair, also called the Cotton Centennial in 1884, and distributed as gifts by the Japanese delegation to that fair. People loved them and started putting them in their yards and gardens, just like peacocks. You know, this is pretty, this is nice. And the hyacons got into the Mississippi River. Oh, no.

And the Mississippi River is a pretty important one in the United States, especially at this time in the late 1800s, early 1900s. It's a vital waterway for trade and tourism. And the water hyacinths started choking off the Mississippi River and its deltas, growing so quickly and in such large amounts that boats could not get through and fish were dying in huge quantities. It was a major ecological crisis. So these are the two problems facing the United States of America in 1910. And it's okay because we have problem solvers ready in the wings to fix this issue. Frederick Russell Burnham had this idea. And it was an idea that he nurtured for a long time and told a lot of people about it worked really hard on.

and his idea was to import hippopotamuses from Africa and set them loose in the swamp lands of the Gulf Coast to raise them for food. Oh, no. Oh, no. Someone who knows the story of the lawyazco bar, like, I know how this ends. This is not good. I'm glad you mentioned that. We will come back to him later. Of course. Burnham was a gold rush guy. He was a miner who had a tendency to chase a profit. He was kind of like a crypto bro of his day. He kept chasing get rich quick schemes.

He had a Tesla. Yeah, definitely a Tesla owner and a peacock complainer. Maybe not a long-term thinker. And he wanted to see America turn into a nation of hippo ranchers. anyone who's involved in gold rushes would be very familiar with the dynamics of a land grab, which is also a great American tradition. We love saying, hey, this area that's inhabited by native people is empty. White American citizens go and grab some of it for yourself.

And Burnham's idea was to take the so-called useless land of the marshes and swamps on the Gulf Coast and turn them into useful land for ranching. this idea was not unpopular. He gave talks about it. One assumes kind of anywhere he went that he could catch someone's ear. Like I'm picturing him sitting down next to me in a bar and I'm trying to read my book and have a little glass of wine. And he's like, hey, hey, hey. And it really caught on the paper of record advertised futures of Lake Pig or Lake Cow Bacon.

and there were a lot of conversations about how delicious this would be. Burnham was so into this idea that he and his pals managed to raise $50,000, which in today's money in 2023 translates to about $1.6 million to try and make this happen. Theodore Roosevelt was kind of into it. Of course he was. Yeah, I was going to say that. He just wanted to like be riding a hippo into battle. Yeah, nobody loved killing animals as much as Theater Roosevelt loves killing animals.

Absolutely that. His vision was kind of to turn, again, quote unquote, useless American land preserves into big game hunting preserves where you could go and shoot a hippopotamus with your blunderbuss. Unfortunately, that didn't work out for a number of reasons. But Burnham's dream didn't die because that's America, baby. You have a dream? And you can make it everyone's problem. He met a congressman, a congressman named Robert Broussard. Robert Broussard was a congressman from Louisiana.

He was a real politicians, politician. Like, he was just, he was great at doing politics, which sometimes translates into great at representing the people who are your constituents and sometimes translates into great at making someone else's dream, everyone's problem. And Broussard, being from Louisiana, was very invested in the issue of water, hyacinths in the river deltas. His constituents were making quite a lot of noise about how this was impacting their ability to live and trade. And so Broussard heard this hippo idea, and he thought, we can kill two eco-liquist. issues with one

gigantic animal. He introduced Bill H.R. 23261 into Congress, also known as the Hippo Bill. It was a bill that would allow for the importation of so-called useful animals

from other countries, including hippos, camels, antelopes, giraffes, zebras. Oh, they had a lot, like an entire safari in their hats when they planned those, basically. Absolutely. I think this guy just saw every animal and went, I want to eat that. And he tried to make it happen by law. He introduced this bill and said, if we introduce these hippos into the waterways, the hippos will eat the water hyacinth. They will hoover up all these invasive plants and then we will eat the hippos and then everyone's

problems are gone, except one presumes the hippos who would have like a significant problem introduced into their lives. Yes. They brought in so-called experts to testify about how smoothly this would all go, including a guy named Fritz Duques who talked about how tame and meek hippos are. Oh, no, boy. You're in for surprise. How many hippos that he met. He said that you can lead them around on leashes, that they are sweet and kind, that children can adopt them as pets. Oh, no. Oh, no. He basically, if you've ever heard of the engineering concept of the hypothetical spherical cow, that's pretty much how he described hippos to Congress. So as my very astute host have pointed out, that's not based in fact. So here's some information about hippos for our listeners if you don't already know.

A hippo is a killing machine. Yes. They can weigh up to five tons, which is about the same weight as the ambulance you'll need to ride in if you ever meet one in the wild. A hippo has tusks about the length of your forearm, sometimes longer. They can run up to 30 kilometers per hour over land. And the way they locomote in the water is not by swimming. it's by sprinting along the riverbed. I don't know about you, but I can't do either of those things.

Definitely not. They cause between 500 and 3,000 deaths per year, which is an especially high number when you consider where their populations are concentrated. Hippos are not concentrated in areas that are highly populated by human beings. Right, yeah. So, you know, when you consider like the, you know, the disparity between, reporting on like deaths caused by vending machines falling on people versus deaths caused by airplane crashes. You have to consider the context that fewer people are getting into airplanes than

standing your vending machines. And when you consider how likely people are to come into contact with hippos, 500 to 3,000 deaths per year is... Yeah, it's a high mortality rate in every human hippo encounter. It's basically, if you see a hippo, you'll die. Pretty much. Yeah. I recently spoke to an Antarctic researcher who told me that if you see a polar bear and you're not within touching distance of very strong shelter, you should assume that you're already dead because the polar bear has been seeing you for long enough to decide that you are non-threatening enough for it to see you. Oh, my gosh.

That's a nice thought to have. Hippos are similar except there's no situation in which a hippo will think I shouldn't let that. that person see me because they are not threatened by anything. You may be wondering how do these hippos cause deaths if they're so sweet and docile? Are they just accidentally rolling over onto their friends during a snubble party? No. Hippos are not carnivorous. They are obligate herbivores, but they still eat meat, even though it makes their bodies quite sick. There's, I have personally spoken to tons of researchers who have witnessed in the wild hippos just eating cross-avers. They're Oh my God. And you may wonder why. And the answer is because they like it, because they have

formed a dark pact with some kind of nefarious demon to be the meanest animals on the planet. They will chase you. This isn't a situation where you have to go and antagonize the hippo like a rattlesnake. They will chase you down in my work as a research assistant studying megafauna in 2016. I heard the story from a man who was chased up a tree by a hippopotamus who then used its massive bulk to knock the tree down in order to get to him. I also spoke with... I am speechless. I also spoke with a guide who gives tours in Africa who said, yeah, I take people across this river and there's in one part of the river it kind of gets wide and there's hippos that hang out on one side and there's crocodiles that hang out on the other side.

And I always tell people if something happens to our boat and you end up in the water and you can't get back on the boat and you have to swim toward one of those shores, swim toward the crocodiles because you are less likely to die. Oh my gosh. That is a lot. So that's some information about hippos

for you to think about when you're trying to fall asleep tonight. Now, here's other information about hippos that I said we would circle back to and I did not lie. They, I'm just going to take us on a little detour to Colombia. Now, in Colombia, you may have heard of this small businessman and entrepreneur named Pablo Escobar, who was interested in manufacturing and distribution of controversial substances. He had a ton of money and he had a lot of property, including in a state in hacienda, Nepal, that had a zoo on it full of exotic animals. It was about 250 kilometers northwest of Bogota.

In 1993, the American DEA killed Pablo Escobar and then did what the U.S. government does best, which is to say did not make a plan at all for how to handle a situation responsibly. Not my hippos, not my problem. Yeah. Yeah, we just came to make a mess. the DEA busted the compound and released a

bunch of the zoo animals into the Colombian jungle, including the hippos, just assuming that they would die. Some of these animals did get redistributed to zoos, but the ones that couldn't be placed or quote unquote couldn't be placed that people just didn't feel like dealing with

were assumed, you know, okay, they're not going to survive in this environment, but jokes on you because the hippos did not die. They instead have taken over the waterways of Columbia. They started out as just a few hippos. As of early this year when I last checked, their numbers had bloomed to around 150

throughout Colombia's largest river basin and had been cited up to 400 kilometers away from Hacienda, Nepal, where they kind of first entered the world. Basically. There's a lot of conversation about how to deal with these hippos. They are not, I would say they're probably less welcome than the peacocks in Florida at this point. They fill the water with poop.

They poop quite a lot and don't go places that they're not hanging out into poop. Like I leave my office chair and go to my bathroom. But if I was a hippo, I would just stay right here, baby, keep on working. And their poop kills the fish. In the water, they also attack boats that are trying to pass through what they consider their territory, which can vary depending on what time of year it is and how horny they are. So they essentially choke off waterways for trade and tourism, in short, causing all the same problems as the invasive water hyacinth, but with a slightly higher mortality rate. I did promise. But there is some local pride about them too, right?

Like they're, I've definitely seen like some people are like, but don't kill them. I mean, hippos. They are charismatic megafauna, I think, until you get up close with them. Yeah, fair enough. I feel it's like a similar like case of like the Stalkal syndrome that the Floridians are having with the peacocks, I guess. Like, oh, look, they're nice. They look sort of cute if you see them from afar.

It's true. Probably how people feel about getting rid of the hippos is directly proportional to whether they have had a close encounter with a. Hi, I would have totally, yes. And I did promise that this would include vasectomy's one proposed solution is capture and sterilization of the hippos. Unfortunately, this is quite a bit harder to do

than with neighborhood cats because hippos are incredibly difficult to tranquilize. They're huge and difficult to transport and there's not a huge knowledge base on performing hippovesectomies. So as of right now, people are kind of at a loss for what to do. So now you have all this context about hippos. And now you can recall that we had a congressional bill proposing that we should do to the United States and the Mississippi River, Delpas,

what the American DEA did to the major rivers. in Colombia, bring in hippos and try to ranch them, which, as we know from previous boom and bust land grab endeavors in the United States, doesn't end with a ton of super responsible ecological management. The end result would certainly be that our waterways would be populated by these hippos, and the Mississippi River, and, frankly, any connecting waterway within 30 miles over land would have hippopotamite in it. Now, this bill was introduced. It was argued. People were very enthusiastic about it. It did not, as you may have noticed, pass. Oh, thank God. However, this bill failed. Surprised. This bill failed in part due to a lot of other

things that were happening in the country at the time that sort of took people's attention and money, but also in part due to testimony from a couple of people who had been to Africa and seen how aggressive and hard to kill. I have seen one hippo. I have been actually close to one and it did not go well. However, the bill only died by one vote. Oh, my God. It came within one vote of passing Congress and going to the Senate.

Really makes you think about what could have been. if only somebody had written a book about that. If only somebody would write Pulp Western about what could happen if that bill had come to pass and a bunch of gay cowboys were tasked with fixing the problem.

And that's where we are today. Sadly, not being slaughtered by hippopotamai every time we try to get from one side of the country to the other. Oh, bummer. It's too bad. It's so,

It's so crazy to think that there was like one vote away. Like one vote. Like had somebody like thought like, oh my God, I might as well just go to the bathroom and they had missed the vote. We might have hippopotamists like all around us right now. Like that could be like a cost of death in the U.S., which is insane. One presumes that a time traveler from a different future we could have had managed to find their way back and clutch a congressman by the lapels and say, don't do it. Don't do it. vote no. Just hold your pee for a little while. Just vote and then you go. It's going to be fine.

I kept thinking of when I was researching for my book, I read this very old medical paper on syphilis. And it had this quote that is stuck with me and I think of it all the time, which is syphilis is not a respecter of persons, which is a spin on one translation of a Bible verse that's like God does not respect to a. individual person. It's like, you know, things, things happen and it's not like God is smiting you. Anyway, I've always loved the phrase syphilis is not a respecter of person. And it pops in my head whenever something is really not a respecter of a person. So I really just kept thinking, hippos are not a respecter of person. Most definitely are really not. No. Absolutely not. Hippos. Hi, hippos do not respect the sanctity or integrity of human life in any way. And I also love that you brought up the Pablo hippo problem because I talked about that

ages ago on Roodish thing and really focused on this one study about how like maybe there was a silver lining because maybe they were filling the ecological niche left behind by these like now extinct megafauna. And I've been thinking about doing a follow up to say like that that's off the table. too many hippos turns out too many hippos for that to even be a potential upside so uh yeah back to back to the drawing board on uh upsides for this this hippo issue um wow what a great mix of stories today i love it i mean i had a great time and i just keep thinking about the hippopotami yeah yeah no i'm I'm going to be thinking about those murder pigs that almost became American cuisine for a long time.

You know, if I may use the incredibly dense neurons in one tiny corner of my brain that will be on a slide someday real quick, I do think that we could solve the peacock problem by introducing hippos into Florida's small towns. That would make a lot of sense. There's already like a lot of water waste. You know, the hippos would love it. And the Teslas, the Teslas would love it too. Teslas and hippos are natural allies. I think we should do it. The old lady who swallowed a fly, that is a tomb of ecological brilliance.

Absolutely. That's an instructive text. Yeah. I sleep with it under my pillow. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on. Would you remind our listeners, what some of your books are called and where they can find you, including the hippo one. I think that would be a good one for people to be able to find.

My hippo book is called American Hippo. It is a Pulp Western collection of two novellas and a couple of short stories about the America that could have been had this bill passed. I have also written The Echo Wife, Just Like Home and Magic for Liars, which you can find anywhere books are sold. And I believe just as this is coming out, a collection of my original comic series with Leanna Kangas titled, Know Your Station, about slaughtering billionaires on a space station, will be released again everywhere books are sold. And you can find me on the non-dying social media platforms under my name, Sarah Galey. And you can also find everything you could possibly want to know about my work at sarahaily.com. Amazing. 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. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week.

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