The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Astronaut Farts, Deadly Dancing Plagues, A Shocking Art Scam

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

The weirdest things we learned this week range from NASA's fears of fart-induced explosions to groups of people who died from dancing. 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 Eleanor Cummins: www.twitter.com/elliepsies Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jason Lederman: www.twitter.com/Lederman --- 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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Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or The Hilton. 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. Hey, weirdos. You may remember that we recently shared part one of our live show with you. Well, guess what? Now there's a part two. This is from our most recent live event at Caviot in New York City on February 1st. It was awesome. We loved it. So we're really psyched to share the second half of it with you. But we would be even more

psyched if you joined us next time. We're going to have another live show in the near future, so stay tuned for more details soon. If you don't remember our little listening notes from live show part one or you didn't listen to it, which is a huge mistake, please go back and listen to it. Here's the deal. So you may hear people shout, drink, and it's because there was a drinking game. You can play the drinking game too if you want if you're above the age of 21 and you are not currently operating a vehicle. We'll put the rules on popsai.com slash weird. And speaking of popsight.com, slash weird, that's also where you can find posts or links to all of the visual aids that we reference, because we understand that you are, in fact, listening to a podcast and not watching a show.

So without further ado, here's part two of the weirdest thing I learned this week's latest live show. Enjoy. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and text stories every week. And while most of the fun facts we learn end up in our articles, there are a lot of other weird facts that just end up on the cutting room floor. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to The Weirdest Thing I Learn this week, a podcast from the editors of popular science. I'm Rachel Feldman. I'm Eleanor Cummins. And I'm Claire Maldarelli. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease of some kind of story we came across while reading, writing, editing, you know, being reporters. It's what we do. We work a popular science.

We're very interesting people. And then we decide which one we just ask. absolutely have to hear more about first. And 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. So, Claire, how would you like to start with your tease? Yes, there is no teasing this one. In the late 1960s, NASA was convinced that human flatulence posed a fire hazard in space. Okay, checks out.

Sounds like the NASA we know and love. Eleanor, what's your tease? I would like to talk tonight about a series of deadly medieval dancing plagues. Wow. It's not funny. At our last live show, I took home the weirdest thing, Crown, for a story about a lady scammer named Mary Toft who gave birth to rabbits. And tonight I have the story of yet another lady scammer from his history. history and I would like to share that with y'all. But I think we need to start with dancing plagues

because I think maybe I put that first on the PowerPoint. So I guess we'll find out. There was recently a Vanity Fair article that was talking about this thing that you may have heard of that's going on with the Cuban embassy. So the American consulate in Havana has had this really weird phenomenon where all of these people who work there have been saying that they are getting long-term traumatic brain damage from some unidentified pulsing sound. And it's something we don't know a lot about. I'm not here tonight to answer all of the questions that I know just arose. But there are a lot of theories and people are working through it.

But this Vanity Fair article was like, let's be honest, it's just another case of mass hysteria. And I was like, what is just another case of mass hysteria mean? And what could this possibly, what could be going on? I started as we often do with Wikipedia, and it's a little-known website with a great resource. And I was sort of reading around, and basically, you know, from a kind of definitional perspective, mass hysteria is like this phenomenon of like collective fear where physical symptoms or like lived experiences that you're certain you have are stimulated by something that's like not physically real, right? like you think that you have some disease,

but there's nothing that anyone can tell is wrong with your body or things of that nature. Story of my life. Yes. And so I also found this incredible list, though, of dozens of cases stretching back to the 1500s of all of these kinds of situations. So here's a sampler to wet your appetite.

First, we have the mad gasser of Mattoon, which is just really fun to say, and we'll come back to him later. We have the Seattle windshield pitting epidemic of 1954. We have that recent Emirates, white where all those people thought that they were dying, but really only like 10 people were sick, and then everyone just got really scared. And we also have a little known event called the Salem Witch Trials. But I wanted to talk about the first item on that chronological list,

which is the dancing plague of 1518. So fun. Here we have a beautiful engraving. So it's a balmy July in 1518 in the Holy Roman Empire. And our protagonist is a woman named Frautrophia. And according to reports, she began, quote, a fervent dancing. vigil in a street and over the course of about a month some 400 people joined her in her dancing vigil all against their will mind you and they danced so hard they started dying of exhaustion heat stroke and heart attacks so for a while people were trying to find some like physical explanation of what could possibly be going on and a lot of people were like well clearly they must have all just had like poisoned rye and they

were just all like acting out their sort of like spastic death, you know, dance. And, but as a bunch of, you know, actual doctors have pointed out, that's not really how toxins work. And also, they don't usually cause you to have a spastic death dance for a month. So what most modern historians and doctors agree is that this was a psychological phenomenon, an event of mass hysteria, and it was likely precipitated by environmental catastrophe. So I have to backtrack a little bit because this. was not the first dancing plague. According to this

wonderful dancing plague review article in the journal The Lancet, there was one on Christmas Eve in 1021, where they began quote, a ring dance of sin. And it did not end until exhausted and repentant. They fell into a deep sleep. Some

never awoke. So, yes. And then in 1247, not to be outdone, 200 Germans danced impiously on a bridge until it collapsed and they all drowned. It's all very footloose, but death. Each of these incidents, it turns out, was precipitated by some horrible event,

like a famine or a flood. From that Lancet article, they were talking about the 1518 dancing plague, and they said, this is a great quote. The people of Straussburg and its environs were similarly experiencing acute distress in 1518 after a succession of appalling harvest, the highest grain prices for over a generation, the advent of syphilis,

and the recurrence of such old killers as leprosy in the plague. Even by the grueling standards of the Middle Ages, they were bitterly harsh years. I think, here's my footloose slide. I think that we can all relate. So dancing plagues actually disappeared in the 1600s alongside really intense supernatural beliefs. And what this leads people to conclude about mass hysteria

is that while it's a really common sort of innately human possibility that we could all, you know, right now here, engage in mass hysteria. that it sort of changes according to the era that you live in. And so it's something where you really have to believe and it has to work in your belief system and your understanding of the world that this is how you should be responding to a threat.

And so this is where the madgasser of Mattoon, my close friend, comes in. It's a case where literally dozens of people in Illinois all swore, yes, a state, all swore that that this man was gassing their town and that they'd seen him doing it and that they were like suffering from the repercussions of him gassing this community

but there was no evidence and it was quickly dismissed by authorities but I think that what's interesting is this was happening in the 1940s and this was when gassing was a thing that was on people's minds for very real reasons and I think similarly again I'm not here to solve the Cuban embassy situation but I think that you know there's this it's this idea that this mass hysteria I think really reflects our concerns about technology and it's advanced right now. And so there are a lot of explanations for why this might happen. You know, it could be something where it sort of operates like a placebo effect, right?

Where we all are very influenced by each other. We're very like social creatures. And so you might, you know, easily feel something that another person kind of shares with you. But I prefer to think of this as some of the original events precipitated by FOMO. so thank you all right we're going to take a quick break and then we will be right back and we're back and Claire

I believe you have some astronaut farts to tell us about why yes I do as humanity continues to each inch further and further into space for longer and longer periods of time we are becoming increasingly concerned about the dangers of space travel on our bodies just this past week in popular science we published an article

titled, Space Changes Your Brain in Bigger Ways Than We Thought. And it's true. It does. There is still so much we need to learn about how our bodies adapt to life in space, especially now that we're planning more long-term space flights. However, we have come a long way. Consider this 1969 paper entitled Intestinal Hydrogen and Methane of Men Fed, space diet. What led to this study? Don't worry, I found out. Apparently, NASA had some serious concerns about whether or not the normal amount of flatulants admitted by astronauts when eating

space food would be a fire hazard on space flights. From the paper, I quote, intestinal bacteria formed two gases, hydrogen H2, and methane, CH4, that could constitute a fire hazard in a closed chamber. Now, this was in the late 1960s after the Apollo missions and in the middle of the Gemini missions. And during the Apollo missions, astronauts didn't have the most, I guess you would say, appetizing meals. That's beef and vegetables.

Just a tube of beef. Yeah. Love it. They would squeeze it out and eat it. Astronauts. Are you appalled? Sounds like it. complained somewhat about the lack of appetizing diets.

So for the Gemini missions, they decided to add some variety. Whoa. This meal, as you see here, if you couldn't tell, is a beef sandwich, strawberry cereal cubes. I don't know what cereal cubes are. Peaches and beef and gravy. Astronauts used a water gun to recons with food and scissors to open. Which one's which? Unknown.

So as I was reading this, I was picturing. Now, I didn't know how it went down. I hadn't finished my research yet. I was just picturing like a bunch of NASA dudes all huddled together in like a tiny war room planning the mission. And they're all like eating takeout. And then all of a sudden they all farted. And they were all like, shoot, guys. What about farts?

Have we considered farts? Are they dangerous in space? Sadly, this is not how it all went down. The two scientists that NASA went on to hire for the job were two highly respected researchers at the time. The first was a really prominent Calais Berkeley nutrition researcher named Doris Calloway, who was among the first to study the dietary needs of healthy people,

and also the specific dietary needs of menstruating and pregnant women. Super cool woman. Look her up. up. And the second was a guy named Edwin L. Murphy, also at Cal, and an advisor for the United States Department of Agriculture. His research work included but not limited to, quote, the effect of antibiotic drugs on the volume and composition of intestinal gas from beans and determination of lactose intolerance by breath analysis. This was actually quite innovative at the time. According to an NPR article, Murphy was apparently a guest speaker at a 1964 conference on nutrition in space and related waste problems.

At said conference, he boldly suggested that the ideal astronaut should be someone who is, quote, totally flattice-free. He went on to explain logically that astronauts in outer space are typically locked in small capsules without an escape valve, and so logically, the hydrogen and methane that their bodies excrete gets locked in as well. Again, no escape valve. Methane in particular, he cautioned, is highly flammable, and so in order to reduce the risk of sudden spacefire via post-dinner fart, he suggested to NASA to find astronauts whose farts did not emit methane. NASA was intrigued.

So, in 1968, he and Calloway teamed up to publish a pair of back-to-back groundbreaking studies, the first, quote, the use of expired air to measure intestinal gas formation. That set the stage. He gave participants an experimental bean meal. Simultaneously, he jerry-rigged a rectal catheter attached to a measurement collection device, And over the course of a few hours long period, he measured not only the precise amount of gas, but also the exact breakdown of what they were letting loose. It turned out, likely because of differences in intestinal bacteria,

which seems like some of the earliest microbiome studies, that half the study population did indeed produce no methane. This, he claimed, was what he had been going on about in the original meeting. These were the people meant for space. His and Calloway's next experiment was a bit more specific. They gave half the participants in a bland-style diet, similar to the Apollo diet, and half the participants, the Gemini version. Again, they measured the amount of and type of flatulence.

The verdict? Participants produced more gas on the Gemini diet versus the bland one. From the paper, maximum potential daily H-2 and CH4 per man were 730,000, and 382 milleries respectively. For the bland diet, that number was a mere 80 milliliters and 222 milliliters. And they note, volumes would be larger at reduced spacecraft and suit pressures. In total humans, they concluded produced a surprising amount of gas. So much so that all parties involved, including NASA, came to the conclusion that we should all be concerned about space farts.

In other words, their worst fears had been realized. Plutulants could pose a fire hazard in space. This was a real concern. As far as I could find, though, this is as far as my research took me because there were no studies after this. NASA was apparently concerned but then just dropped it because as far as they were concerned, they took no action, space travel pressed on, in-flight meals were upgraded.

Orangeade, cashews, trail mix, crackers. All I see are farts, honestly. Fiber. Fiber produces farts. There's no question on the NAS application now that asks whether you fart, and if so, what specific type of gas comes out? I checked.

Further, the amount of gas they produced in all the studies was within the normal range for humans. As I was researching this topic, I found that people tend to overestimate the power of their farts. One study noted that one of the more common reasons people seek out gastroenterologists is because they believe they are extreme farders and need a flatulence remedy. The first thing a gastroenterologist will do is tell the patient to spend a day or two counting the number of farts they have had per day and come back to the,

them with the exact answer at the next visit. It turns out that people were, quote, unquote, extremely compliant with this and always came back with an exact answer. The answer they gave, also in the study, was almost always within the normal amount. People are generally surprised at the amount of flatulence they have per day. Studies show that the normal average amount is 361 milliliters with a normal range of 42 to 1,000 millimeters, and passing it at a rate between 7 and 14 times a day is completely normal. And it's true that everything that causes flatulence, beans, cruciferous, veggies,

anything that's good for you, are all super healthy and good for your body. So perhaps as a society we should all embrace our gas instead of fighting it. Even Hippocrates has supposedly been quoted as saying passing gas is necessary for well-being. So, concluding facts, humans fart a lot. That's a good thing. It will not cause a fire in space. Thank you. Okay, we are going to take one more quick break and then be back with one more quick fact. And we're back. And it's time to wrap up the show with my fact. This is a story about art history, chemistry, and hubris. So we begin in the late 1700. because for once this is not a story about how wacky the Victorians got.

And enter one Benjamin West, sometimes known as the American Raphael. He was a painter of historical scenes who served as president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, which was a big deal because he was American, and they were not about that in general. And he and his peers were really punch-drunk on like the heady days of the tail-end of the Enlightenment when everything could be explained by logic and reason, and little did they know that in a few decades, their descendants would be holding seances

and eating mummies for their health. Check out our episode about medical cannibalism. Because all things could be solved with the power of a white man's brain, West and his colleagues at the Academy were on a constant quest to figure out why the Renaissance masters had a certain genusayqua

that they could just not imitate. Tishin was often cited as an example of this. is known for, among many things, this cute picture of me and my fiancé. Yeah. So there was like a richness to the colors. There was like a sort of glow. And they were sure this must be the result of some straightforward technique that had been lost to time. So for reference, this was like Benjamin West trying to do that in general.

You know, that lion looks like a stuffed animal. Those babies just look mad. It was not the same. It was not the same. And they were sure there was some kind of hack they just didn't know about that the Renaissance Masters had used. So luckily, a father-daughter duo came along with an answer. Enter Anne Jemima Provost. Some sources I found say she was just 17 when all of this happened.

She had manuscripts that she said were copied from a secret tone that had been given to her grandfather or something and then lost it at a fire. She had the secrets of the Venetians, the Romans, the Dutch, you name it, she could paint it. And she was a woman shrouded in mythos. Her father reportedly told members of the academy that he had tried to get her to pick like a sensible career path like needlepoint. But she had been so committed to uncovering the secrets of Renaissance art, literally committed on two occasions, he said, for mental derangement, that he had no choice but to let her follow her glory. passion, painting miniatures that no one gave a shit about, while teaching rich and famous men how to

paint good and get more rich and more famous. So, Ed Jemima Provost was more than just a good artist. She was also a top-notch scammer. Yes, a lady scammer. So she and her father offered notes from their secret manuscript, and she even tutored West one-on-one in her methods. And they did this for free, which meant that he couldn't really talk about what they were doing without being. accused of stealing their work, which was very smart because meanwhile his prestige, everyone knew he was working with them, made it really easy for them to sell the methods to other members of the Academy for 10 guineas a pop. And they were all signing what were essentially NDAs saying that they wouldn't talk about it until a total of 60 people were involved. So it was a pyramid scheme.

And yeah, if you haven't guessed it, even the art technique itself was a big old scammeroo. Modern scholars believe it involved the application of a dark red foundation layer, then the use of linseed oil as a pigment binder, and then something they called a Titian shade, which was made by mixing ivory black and either Prussian, Hungarian, or Antwerp blue. The thing is, Prussian blue wasn't invented until 1704. So it was decidedly not a renaissance secret, and Benjamin West was a big dumb-dum. He did famously reveal at least one painting proudly made with Provis' methods.

It's his first version of Cicero discovering the Tomb of Archimedes. And this is fun because there's a lot to unpack here, because this painting recounts the legendary moment when Cicero, in all his great wisdom, chastised those who had let the tomb of the great Archimedes fall to ruin. He came forth and unveiled it and said, here it was, lost to history, you bozos, and I have found it. So Benjamin West thought he was doing that for art. And when he unveiled it, everyone was like, that's not Renaissance art, that's just tacky.

And, you know, it looks, I can't really see what's horribly wrong with it. But if you look at how he repainted it later, you can't. see how different it was from the actual popular art of the day. It was like really garish and it was just trying too hard. And everyone was like, you got conned. To be fair, it's better than that lion. Yes, it is, I think his lessons with And Jemima actually taught him a lot. Yeah, something's going on. She clearly was the best artist among them. So Antimima Provost and her dad avoided jail probably due to general embarrassment. Nobody wanted to draw this out any more than it had to be. But that doesn't mean it wasn't drawn out because the way I came across the story was actually at the National Gallery

in an exhibit about political cartoons and the history of cartooning. And this was a really popular like tabloid cartoon subject of the day because people love watching rich people do dumb stuff and get conned enter fire fest so um this is the only image i could actually find of her which is in this uh cartoon and i mean i could spend like half an hour which i won't do um going through all of the stuff baked into here but just suffice to say it was a really thorough burn everyone in the art academy is singled out he really drops specifics no one is left unshamed um it's the best art so far. Yeah, yeah, it's very impressive. So there

she is, and Jemima, that's the only image I can find of her. There's a donkey eating paint. I don't know what that symbolizes, but my understanding, my understanding based on people who know is that this, everything in here means something. It's very impressive. So let's assume the donkey eating the paint is

a profound piece of commentary. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, usually on weirdest thing, there is some kind of science, And you may be wondering what the science angle was here. And the thing is that I kind of got into it, hoping that I could talk about what actually made the Renaissance

Masters paintings look so singular. I assume there would be some chemistry answer. But the real answer would have really pissed off Benjamin West because they were just really fucking good. That's the end of the story. All right. What was the weirdest thing we learned in this second? second half of this week.

Was it Lady Art Scammer? Okay, it's, you know, I already won one, so it's fine, whatever. Was it dancing hysteria? Or was it astronaut farts? The farts. It's always

the farts. It's always the farts. Claire wins. 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 merch, including Weirdest Thing t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at Popside.threadlist.com. The show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, and our editor, Jason Letterman. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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