The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Bette Midler and the Salamander, How Marathon Swimmers Pee, D+D is Good for Your Brain

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

The wonderful Ryan Mandelbaum is BACK to discuss their latest animalian interest: salamanders in New York City! Laura also explains how peeing while swimming a marathon is shockingly complicated, and Rachel gets into why Dungeons and Dragons is therapeutic for your noggin. Go check out Ryan's newsletter! https://ryanmandelbirder.substack.com/ 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 Get this new customer offer and your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at https://MINTMOBILE.com/WEIRDEST Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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See homedepot.com slash price match for details. 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 Feldman. I'm Laura Bysis. I'm Ryan. Ryan, welcome back to the show. It's been a minute. It's been too long, but it's so good to be here. Hi. And my excuse for bringing

you back on the show is that you have a wonderful new book out. Would you tell our listeners a little bit about it? Yeah, sure. So though I was once a physics writer and still am in my daytime, I've pivoted hard into going outside. Touching grass. Into outside. Yeah. So I, you know, I've been doing this for quite a while now. And so I wrote this book, Wild NYC,

experienced the nature in and around New York City, written by myself and illustrated by the wonderful Chelsea Beck. It is a romp through New York City that incorporates a natural history, as well as over 130 species accounts of the different animals we have here. and then 18 guided field trips. And boy, I'm really excited about it. It's got some of my pictures, Chelsea's illustrations, some archival stuff.

It's really cool. And at least one page on cruising, which I think is genuinely wonderful for a book about New York City parks and wildlife. And also just a great selling point for the book, I think. I feel like it tells people what kind of vibe they're going to get. Well, everybody should know that this episode is being recorded on June 30th. Happy pride. It is still pride. Happy pride. I believe this may be one of the few,

if not the only nature guides that mention cruising. But indeed, it's there. I think it's an important thing to call out. I really wanted to encapsulate what it's like to be a nature observer in New York City in a way that felt, you know, inclusive and and real, like what you actually experience. So I'm really proud of that and the rest of the book. Amazing. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful book. Highly recommend that folks get it.

And if you want to learn a little bit more about the book and what might be in it before you add to cart, I also did an episode of Science Quickly with Ryan about their book, and it features a video of us going around the park and Ryan pointing at interesting things with their binoculars and me pretending I can also see them. Sometimes I could also feel, but I spend less time with binoculars. So honestly, sometimes I was just like, oh, yeah. You should all know that one time, like three or four years ago, I took Rachel and Oliver to a sewage treatment plant in upstate New York to see a seagull.

And it was really fun. I was excited. Yeah. Yeah, it was awesome. All right. Well, 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, being outside, et cetera. 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. But not really. We just, you know, sort of end the show, and that's okay, too. Laura, what's your tease? Marathon swimmers pee a lot. And you would know is our resident marathon swimmer. Fact, I would know. This one's a little bit autobiographical, so it'll be fun to get into.

Wow, I love that. Ryan, what's your tease? In 2004, a biologist, after 60 years, rediscovered a salamander in New York City's, quote, most damaged, most cluttered, end quote, park. Wow. That's New York, baby. Yay. My tease is that I actually have two short facts today, which I hardly ever do.

I didn't play it that way, but then I was like, this is going to be pretty short. I have this other thing I want to mention too. So anyway, my two facts, definitely super related. One, why do sharks play dead? And two, why is Dungeons and Dragons good for your brain? Whoa. Yeah. I wasn't expecting that.

Yeah. Like I said, really, you know, inside us there are two wolves. One is shark, one is playing D&D. And if you're lucky, sometimes the shark also plays D&D. Laura, why don't we start with you? Sure. So, yes, as Rachel hinted, I am pop-size resident marathon swimmer. So doing this segment's a little bit different from my normal fare, kind of more personal.

when I'm not sitting at my desk reading and finding these wonderful facts for you all and doing my other day job, my chosen sport is open water marathon swimming. I grew up as a kid doing competitive pool swimming and decided no event was long enough and I would much rather be swimming in the ocean than in a chlorinated box. Can't relate to that. When I did a swim team first as a little child at an outdoor. summer pool and then at my and then at my extremely unathletic college where we competed against such heavy hitters at the Culinary Institute of America. My sister's alma mater.

Well, if she was on the swim team. No, she was not. Well, that, yeah, almost no one was. I actually filled in the CIA's pool with concrete over the break without telling them they were going to do that. So then we lost one of our major competitors. But anyway, I was always, my strength was always doing the, barely doing the events that other people would simply refuse to do or always get

de-kewed from. When I was a little kid, it was butterfly, and I could barely not get disqualified, which was a huge deal for like a six or seven-year-old. And then in college, I would do the like 100s and 200s. Not well, but just because like if you finished, you'd probably get third because no one else wanted to be there. So anyway, that's, but I do not want to swim for longer that I have to. No, it's, yeah, I very dramatically quit pool swimming.

I did not. I was like, not doing this yet. I really did not like it for many reasons. And one of them was, you know, again, like it took away from my beach time. Like, I just wanted to be in the saltwater. And I always used to be like, I wish there was an ocean swim team. And it only, you know, it took several years. I didn't necessarily, I didn't really find this until I was 22, but, you know, eventually it found me.

I guess it's reasonable that they don't like to put a lot of small children in the open ocean. Fact. That's probably good for safety. I mean, now, like, there are some, like, 11 and 12-year-olds. Like, as the sport has grown recently, younger and younger kids are kind of getting into it. But, yeah, it was not something, you know, super available. But, again, I loved it. Like, I wanted to be in the, you know, we were kind of foils for, of each other. Like I needed to be in the, you know, I would spend, you know, as much time as possible in the ocean when I was a kid. So yeah, I found marathon swimming, which technically is any event

over 6.2 miles or 10K in a river, lake, ocean, any body of water that is not that lovely concrete box we call a pool. Oh, no. Yeah. So there's, again, so there's, there are a lot of, when I tell people this, I met with tons of questions, so I'm happy to answer any of those. But before we go into those, I'll just give like a little bit of a background about the sports history, because it has some pretty, pretty deep roots in ancient Greece. I know I sound like a professor going, you know, it's a warm summer evening in ancient Greece, but just bear with me. It has kind of a cool, some cool roots. In ancient mythology, hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, lived in a high tower over a body

of water called the Hellespont. This is the body of water that separates Europe from Asia. Hero, she lived on the European side, and a young man from the Asian side named Leander swam to her every night so that they could be together. I'm gonna say it that way. To guide his journey, he used a lamp that Hero lit at the top of the tower as his guide.

However, as most of these stories end, one stormy night when Hero's lamp burned out, Leander lost his way and drowned in the straight. Sad. Sad. Now, inspired by Leander, the poet Lord Byron, also swam the hell of Spont. He was such a wimpy little dude. We've talked about his celebrity diet.

He only ate potatoes and vinegar. Which, as somebody who's eaten, we're going to go into food later. I can tell you from experience, do not eat potatoes before swim. Everybody's body is different, but oh my gosh, I did sweet potato fries once. It was awful. Don't do it. But it must have helped propel him across the Hellespont because he actually did it on his second attempt in 1810.

And they became the first known people other than these mythological figures to achieve this feat. And every year on August 30th, so coming up in a few months, people swim this roughly 2.8 miles across the Hellespont. I've never done that, but that seems like it would. be very cool just because of how rooted in history it is. Yeah. Because it, you know, and then the, kind of like with the Olympics, you know, where you have

your roots in ancient Greece and then a modern movement several centuries later, the modern birth of marathon swimming technically occurred in 1875. That's when a man named Matthew Webb became the first person to successfully swim across the English Channel from between France and England. It's about 21 miles across depending upon the course. And in 1926, Gertrude Ederley, personal hero of mine, also a fellow person with Roots in New Jersey and New York, she became the first woman and sixth person ever to swim the channel in 1926. There was actually a great movie that came out last year that I covered for Popside called Young Woman in the Sea,

starring Daisy Ridley. Highly recommend that if you hear this and you decide I want to learn more about this sport for people who are just maybe have a few screws loose. it's on Disney Plus. And recently, as recently as 2008, a 10K marathon swim was also added to the Olympic slate after several years of lobbying. Yeah, I remember there was a lot of discussion about where that was going to be during the Paris Olympics because of the poop water.

The poop water situation. That is, poop water comes up every year during, every Olympic quad. You're going to hear, oh, no, what do we do about the poop water? That could be a whole other. segment right there. But yeah, technically, while, you know, while wild swimming obviously is very old, it is the 10K and open water part itself is a fairly new addition to like the modern Olympic movement. And unlike pool swimming or something like basketball, the rules do all kind of depend on the organization running the event. I typically do swims that are sanctioned

and observed by a group called the Marathon Swimming Federation. And that means in order to be ratified as a swim. Traditional attire. So no wetsuit or anything that provides buoyancy or warmth and no rest periods on a boat or kayak. So basically, um, that is, wait, pause just one quick second. Go. Go. Yes. Traditional attire. I'm thinking britches. I'm thinking corsets. I'm thinking. Totally. Yeah. How traditional. How traditional. Brilliant question. Because yes, for a swimmer who hears traditional attire, they do not go courses, courses and bridges, but for the, yeah. No, it means more like, you know, for men, it's like a traditional speedo and for women, it's like, you can, you can wear a bikini. Gertrudeetterly famously made her own bikini years before they were marketed, or just like a

traditional one piece. Mostly, it can't be a wetsuit or something that gives you added warmth and buoyancy. Some, even some like regular bathing suits give you like a little bit of a lift. So just kind of in an effort to keep the sport pure. If you watch the Olympic 10K, they're in tech suits. So anything that kind of has like newer textiles, same with triathletes, they'll wear wetsuits. And people will swim in mixed events where like some people are in swimsuits and other people are in tech suits, but they usually are slated differently because now I would say you

don't need a wet suit to do well. But a lot of, you know, a lot of people prefer to swim in a wetsuit and anything that'll get you in the water and get you competing. is fine. But for a lot of sums, like if you're going to do the English Channel, sorry, you can't wear a wetsuit and have it, you know, and have your name be added to that intrepid list. What did Lord Byron wear? Um, I think he was nude. Um, I'll have to back to you on that. Nothing and I was kind of joking, but that is his vibe. He would be like, I am the

beautiful young Leander. Now there's the next movie that needs to happen. I would, I'd like to produce that. Um, yeah, I think and, and, I think, and, I, I think, and, Even Matthew, like a lot of, a lot of the early pioneers to the sport did swim O'Natural, which go, again, anything that gets you in my view, I don't like to keep the sport, anything that will get you in the water and get you across that's safe and is not hurting anybody. You do it. Come on. So these events also vary in distance.

Well, I said, you know, 6.2 miles or 10K, that's kind of the minimum. And that's kind of where we get into some of this more physical preparation that you do involving, you know, making sure you know how to pee in the water. Because you have to be able to spend hours in the water in order to do some of these longer channel swims. My longest was the 28.5 mile swim around Manhattan. And that took about nine hours. I had a lot of, I did it the same day as the annual jet ski invasion. Was that on purpose? No, no, it was actually supposed to be the day before, but there was a huge thunderstorm like that morning that I was supposed to swim.

But so, yeah, there's an annual jet ski invasion. And actually, it happened this past weekend and there were a couple people swimming around Manhattan that had to handle it. Not fun. Don't recommend it. But it's what happens. But nine hours is actually fairly short compared to some others. Some people have gone over 24. They have to, you know, you have to be ready to, it's not like a one in a splash.

dash or even like a 5K, you have to be ready to spend a lot of time in the water. To do that, again, you just keep swimming, to quote, do worry, a lot of physical training. There's obviously, you know, you don't just get in the water and do this. This takes months of preparation and lots of you ratchet up your events, you know, you start with a mile and then you bring it up to a 5K and then you bring, you know, and it'll, all of that training kind of varies person to person. And in order to sustain this, you have to do what we call for. feeds and that is eating. Most people do every 30 minutes, but again, it does kind of vary by like

your individual preference and metabolism. And these have to be done in the water while treading or sometimes laying on your back like an otter. I've done that, which is kind of fun. Because remember, you can't touch the boat or kayak. You can't like get up there and like down some gator, get up on the boat, down some gatorade and jump back in. So you kind of have to learn how to do that as well. And then again, as we know, what goes in must come out. So you pee a lot because most feeds for the sake of time and to make sure that you're staying hydrated are water-based. Like I've used a carbohydrate mix with some flavor tablets, except at hour five, I always have peanut butter Eminem's as a nice little treat. My kayaker is like shaking them at me like I'm a dog, which I reacted to very nicely because that's always my favorite.

it. And now to do, so yeah, you're drinking a lot of water. You'd already probably had at least, I mean, 64 plus ounces, you know, before just so that way you're nice and hydrated that morning, you're going to need to pee. And one of the things you need to practice not in the pool is how to pee while swimming. Stopping every single time that you need to pee can waste a lot of valuable time, especially if you're one of those swimmers who's maybe trying to break a record or if you're in a more competitive race. For people like me that just want to complete this swim alive and in one piece, it also just kind of prolongs the eventual torture that will happen.

And you can kind of do this by relaxing your lower body as much as you can. And everybody has different tricks, but I'll sometimes in a weird, like, meditative way, like talk to some, you know, family members of mine that are no longer with us and just be like, okay, grandma, I need some help here. Like, I need to, grandma, please help me pee, please help me pee. And something like that, honestly, will work. I've also thought about dolphins and being like, okay, if a dolphin, I want to be a dolphin. Like, pee like a dolphin, pee like a dolphin.

So again, everybody has different, little different tactics that they use to make sure that they can pee on a swim because it is a matter. It is very serious if you're not. You have to learn how to be very open with your body and basically alert your kayaker and your crew if you are peeing. because they need to, it's part of your well-being. It's like part of the wellness check that they do every 30 minutes because it can really hurt your kidneys if you're not. For number two, it's more mixed. I've never done that, but I've heard anecdotal evidence of that happening,

but sometimes it indicates some sort of gastrointestinal distress. Sure. Because of the poop water. Because of the, hey, that doesn't happen for hours, hours later. But what if you practiced the day before in the poop water? Right. Right, yeah, exactly. Or just you may have picked up something.

If you're traveling for a swim, you may have picked up something on the plane. But what's interesting with that other option is as you kind of, as you train and do this more, you kind of learn about your digestive system and how long things take to go through. So you can kind of time when you eat your pre-event meal so that you can expel it before you hit the water. My pre-event meal is always a ton of oatmeal with berries and a lot of, you know, but again, everybody's is sort of different. So, yeah, you basically have to make sure that, you know, basically making sure that every bit of water that you're drinking is coming out because it's not like, because when you're in,

it's not like, oh, I'm in the water, so it's magically coming out of my pores. No, it needs to come out the old-fashioned way. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I threw a lot there. So any other, yeah, it's often. Do you do long swims? So I've been on a little bit of an extended break.

I did, I've, it's because of COVID and because of a lot of, you know, just other life changes, I haven't had the time to commit to it the way that I did in my 20s. So I'm slowly getting back into it. I have a couple of long swims that I'd really like to do. I can generally do one or two a year just because they're a little expensive and they're time consuming. Like that's all, all you can kind of, you can focus on that and work. and that's about it.

Yeah. So it'll, and it also, yeah, it's also, yeah, it's also, it really, it takes up so much space in your brain. Like all you're thinking about is the event. Yeah. Do you have any. Waters? Oh, sorry.

You phrase me. I mean, I have a lot of interesting questions percolating in here. But the one thing I, I want to know like, so this is clearly like a destination thing for people as well, right? Oh, yeah. So what are some places? What are like, what's the Mount Everest of swimming? So there is, the English channel is still number one just because, again, historically,

that's what restarted kind of the modern movement. So that's definitely the, like, that's definitely the Everest. Actually, more people have climbed Everest than have swam the channel ever, which is kind of crazy to think about because climbing Everest seems so much more difficult to me, but that's also because this is what I do. But also the Catalina Channel in California, that's a very popular one. That's from Catalina Island to the mainland. The swim around Manhattan gets people from all over the world.

just because it's a pretty cool one that you can, again, you can, if you learn the geography, you know where you are. It's really cool to swim. It's called the 20 bridges swim because you technically swim under 20 bridges. The Gibraltar Strait, anything between continents. Those are pretty big. There's, there's something called the Ocean Seven swim. I don't know all seven off the top of my hand, but I believe it's in like seven different straits and whatnot. There's several in New Zealand. So it really, again, it's very, it's a destination thing, but it's all So, like, if you're on the East Coast or West Coast or, you know, that you can find local events, too, that are just as much fun to, like, get you up to those bigger events. Cool.

Yeah. Yeah. What are your, like, like, swims that you really want to do? I'd like to do the Hellespont. I'd like to swim around Ocean City, New Jersey. That's the one that's kind of been, like, tantalizingly in front of me. Sure. It's home.

But, you know, that requires, you know, getting a boat and a lot of logistical things. And I just have not been ready to kind of organize. But that would be really, really fun. My favorite swim was Battery Park to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. That was, that's also considered home. My mom and sister were on the beach and two friends were on the beach waiting for me at that one. And it just like, it felt really good. just again to be able to leave the city and see it disappear, you know, and not on a boat.

It was, you know, me getting myself, me getting myself there. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. How do you get around these like shipping lanes when you're doing that? Fun. So you have a boat and a kayak with you. It's not like you're just jumping in and doing this for fun.

So they're going to kind of help you navigate. There was one point on the swim from Battery Park to Sandy Hook where they had to delay my feed. extra 15 minutes because there was a tanker incoming. And I could tell something was, and I was getting pissed. Like I was like, I want my food now. Why am I not eating? Like this has been too long and it was because they needed me to keep swimming and they didn't want me. So you have a lot, luckily, when you, when you're doing this in a safe and organized way, they are paying attention to that all the time. The Coast Guard approves this, approves your permit. They know that you're out there so you'll get plenty of heads up. And then they'll, they can always like retack you around

that shipping traffic. But yeah, I had to wait. I had to go like 45 minutes instead of a half an hour just because there was a lovely tanker coming. And oh, I felt it. I, you know, when my kayaker final lived at me, you know, to eat, I was like, okay, about time. And then he told me why. And I was like, all right, fine. I take back all of the mean things I said about you in my head because I was legitimately getting angry. Wow. That's super cool. Looking forward to hearing more as you, you know, continue to get back into the sport.

Thanks. Yeah, there's a lot of science in it. And that's probably another reason I was drawn to it. You know, again, it's wind, tides, navigation, peeing, digestive system, protecting your skin from the sun. So, yeah, it's, it'll be fun to, it'll be fun to kind of look at through that lens. Yeah. How do you protect your skin from the sun? Because that is, you're wet for a long time.

You are. I use dacetin. like the diaper cream because it is just chock full of zinc oxide. Basically, you need to put something as, you need to put as much zinc oxide. You need a physical barrier. Yeah, that makes sense. A physical barrier that's even like higher grade than, and won't rub off as easy as like your highest zinc oxide sunscreen.

So I look and smell great after this. Yeah. Amazing. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts. Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and a lot more.

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First, my tiniest fact, which is kind of more of a plug for my other podcast than a fact per se. But I host the show Science Quickly for Scientific American. and when this episode airs, we'll have recently had an episode come out that I'm really proud of. It's the first long-form episode that I've reported, written totally myself. Often our long-form episodes are me, you know, teeing up and presenting the work of some incredible person. So this is all about the psychology of Dungeons and Dragons, and the reason I, well, I'll be honest, the real reason I was inspired to do it

was because I thought D-20, Dimension 20 is having a Madison Square Garden show. I bet they're going to be doing a bunch of PR. This is our chance to get Brennan LeMulligan on the show. And indeed, we did. He is featured prominently in the episode. We did it, Joe. But I also, you know, the reason,

my justification for it being on a science podcast was that I had seen several studies come out on mental health and D&D. And I was like, it's so cool that I know of multiple studies in the last few years in what I imagine has previously been a pretty scant area of research. And yeah, basically, you know, a lot of people who like D&D, whether that's watching or listening to actual play or actually playing or both know that it really surged in popularity during lockdown. Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast, which is where D&D comes from. It's where D&D babies are made. They actually saw a 30% jump in D&D-related sales in, I think in 2020 specifically. And that's not surprising. There were already a ton of digital tools for playing D&D, so it was something

very easy to set up remotely. And it's a great way to socialize and also like adds routine back into your life. So not at all surprising that it got so much more popular. But that surge in popularity has very demonstrably inspired a surge in research. You know, if you look from like 1974 when the game was released until 2020, I did the math on Google Scholar and it was like a couple dozen studies a year would come out that had anything to do with D&D. And now it's like hundreds of studies have come out of here. What were those studies?

Was it all on, was it all kind of like psychology and mental health base? Was it like what kind of studies were we looking at? Like what scientific disciplines? Yeah, I mean, it's mostly psychology. And I think one other big difference is that, well, I didn't do an exhaustive look at those few studies that existed previously.

The academics I talked to said that, you know, a lot of the research that existed before, especially in sort of the 70s, 80s, early 90s, was very much about negatives associated with D&D, like, you know, sort of pathologizing, you know, let's be real. They were doing studies on autistic boys who were not diagnosed and saying, they play D&D. And, you know, there was also the whole satanic panic with D&D, so I think there was probably some scholarly research on that because like what a fascinating topic to do scholarly research on. And then maybe there was like five new species of slug and one new gene named after D&D starts. That's so real.

I bet there was a, I bet from like the late 90s to the early odds. That was the primary references to Dungeons and Dragons in the literature. But yeah, now a lot of the research that's coming out is looking at specifically, you know, D&D's benefits to mental health. There are a small but growing number of studies showing that D&D helps on all of these mental health metrics. And there's also a growing body of research on using D&D therapeutically in specific populations. There's a lot of attention on people on the autism spectrum using D&D therapeutically, but it's also being studied and used to do.

just by clinicians who are already convinced of the benefits for people managing PTSD symptoms, managing anxiety, all sorts of stuff. So that's really my fact there is just, wow, D&D, good for the body, mind, and soul and scientists are taking notice. And there's a video I did for science quickly at Scientific American where I am dressed as an elf. I can't overstate that. Wow. So you should go check that out.

As someone who's never played, may I ask a dumb question? No dumb questions. No, that's right. How dare I? What about it makes it, like, you know, thumbnail bullet points. Like, what about, is it, is it the connection? Is it world building? Is it, like, what are just some of the reasons why this game in particular helps?

Yeah. So I get into this a lot more in the episode at, science quickly, obviously. But it's something researchers are still working on studying specifically, but everyone sort of has an intuitive answer already, because obviously the researchers and clinicians working with D&D are people who like tabletop role-playing games. And I should add pretty much everything we're talking about almost certainly applies to tabletop role-playing games in general, of which there are many that aren't D&D, but D&D is by far the most popular. So if you're going to study one, it tends to be D&D.

But basically, in a nutshell, without spoiling my whole other episode that people should go listen to, D&D is a game that involves tons of social interaction, but structured social interaction, which seems probably where a lot of the benefits for people who find it helpful for building communication skills comes from, because it sort of creates this very safe space to have social interactions in. The fact that the DM or Dungeonmaster is crafting a story specifically for your group means that there's a lot of room for people to grapple with and explore topics, whether conversational topics or sort of like, you know, cultural themes that they want to explore. And I also had one researcher tell me, you know, it might just be that it combines all of the benefits of a bunch of different kinds of hobbies. It's sort of like if you were doing theater, group therapy, and I don't know, puzzles at once. There's just, it's a lot of different, a lot of different parts of your brain when you're,

when you're playing D&D. But yeah, that's one of the things that the researchers I talk to are like, they're doing more targeted studies to, you know, try to see what it is that's helpful so that, you know, that can be sort of amped up in a clinical setting. That's weird. I mean, I would like to see how it differs from other. games in terms of the research simply because this, now don't, I don't want to get all evolutionary psychology on us, but like, I don't know, it feels like sitting around and telling stories

and playing pretend is like one of the oldest human hobbies. Absolutely. It feels like normal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. And I mean, I think that's like, I think most researchers who are in this space would say that's

almost certainly a huge part of it, that like we don't really have a lot of avenues these days for people to just like sit down and tell stories together. I mean, obviously this depends on your friend group, but it's like maybe you gossip all the time in a very pro-social way. There we go. But yeah, a lot of us don't like sit down by the fire and telling stories much anymore in D&D can, you know, bring some of that back in a very cool way. Also, it's just really fun. It can be whatever you want. It doesn't have to be orcs and elves.

And I mean, like, there's nothing wrong with that. But, like, I think a lot of people don't realize that it doesn't have to be a, like, high fantasy campaign. It can be any story, set anywhere. And it's not as complicated as it looks either. That's what makes me afraid of any game is, you know, those memes that are like, my brain when somebody starts to explain. That is true. When somebody does start explaining a new board game to me, I do go into a fugue state. But I always eventually pick it up.

I just like, I don't want. want any part of learning how to do it. All right. Well, okay, so that was my mini fact. And then I have another short thing to share, which is that scientists are trying to figure out why sharks play dead. Not all sharks play dead, but a lot of sharks play dead. This is a freeze response called tonic immobility.

And yeah, it's basically, it's very similar to like what possums do when they infamously play dead. They just go limp. They're like on their backs, sort of in a trance. And this can be triggered within seconds and can last for like 15 minutes. It's really bizarre looking, especially because, you know, while not all sharks are very intense predators, we do kind of, you know, when you think shark, you tend to think like Great White, and you don't think of a great white lying on its back being kind of like, uh. But they do that. They do that. And what triggers it?

The biggest thing seems to be when they're knocked upside down, like when they're on their backs. But you can also, you can kind of sometimes researchers who want to utilize this tonic immobility to handle sharks safely. Apparently there are some sharks where if you just kind of like grasp the side of their face and start to turn them, they'll just be like, what? I'm done. Bye.

Yeah, exactly. And it's perplexing, right? Because you can understand why a possum plays dead. There are lots of things that might eat a possum and they're not, I mean, they're pretty scrappy. I wouldn't want to get in a fight with a possum. But like, you know, possum versus bear, we know who's going to win. So appearing dead and unappetizing valid play, though less useful for fighting off. cars, which is a big problem with possum. Apparently they're dead when a car comes after them. And then they are dead. But with a shark, you're like, OK, they do have animals that they have to worry about, like orcas, which are apparently sometimes called the wolves of the sea, because they're such smart, intense predators. They're really, the unorca will really fuck you up, honestly.

But yeah, for the most part, the sharks are the predators. like, why do we see this behavior? There are some circumstances in other animals where there's something called, I think it's aggressive mimicry, which is basically when a predator sort of acts like a prey in terms of how meek they're being to trick other animals and to coming up to them so that they can eat them.

But again, the shark will do this for like 15 minutes. It doesn't seem to be serving any kind of hunting purpose. And again, a shark doesn't need this trick to hunt. They're pretty good. at swimming up to things and biting them. And so that seems unlikely. Some researchers, this came up a lot. I think it's a pretty common hypothesis that there's some kind of reproductive benefit

that because male sharks will sometimes invert females when they mate with them, that tonic immobility might be to sort of like make that all calm. But like that also, I'll get into why they don't think that is. And then the sort of third possibility is just like sensory overload response, which is that exactly what it looks like, they're just like, nope, I can't. Goodbye. Which I find very relatable. I like that reason.

I also go and experience tonic and mobility during sensory overload. So in this new study, researchers did something cool to do. to try to analyze this. They tested a bunch of species of sharks, rays, and chimera, which are the shark relative, commonly called a ghost shark. I love ghost sharks. They're freaky little guys. And they figured out which of them experienced tonic immobility when gently turned upside down underwater, and which didn't. And seven species did, six did not. I don't have the list of which were which. And they took those findings and kind of compared them to an evolutionary, map to sort of try to trace back when and where this behavior might have evolved or might

have disappeared from the group with trying to find sort of evidence for one of those three possible explanations. And then we're like, okay, we already actually know that there's no good evidence that sharks benefit when they freeze if they're being attacked. It's actually kind of like the worst thing that can happen to a shark when they're being attacked. Apparently sometimes orcas will like ram into them to nudge them over. And then once they're immobilized, the orcas will not just attack them, but specifically go for their livers, which seem to be the orca's favorite part of the shark. Yeah. Yeah. So really like, it's just bad for the shark when it happens. There's no no upside. And there also have been

instances of researchers saw an orca get a shark to tip over and then just like watch it suffocate because it's gills. This doesn't happen always. Many sharks have this immobility and then flip over and go back on their way, but it can mess with their gill function. So yeah, it seems really clear there's no obvious benefit in terms of like them going about their daily lives. The researchers also don't buy the reproductive hypothesis.

They say that males tend to have the same amount of tonic immobility as females. And also just like the idea that female sharks would evolve to be vulnerable to forced mating. They don't really buy that. And then the sensory overload idea is like totally untested and unverified. So it could still be true. But basically these researchers using their evolutionary mapping, They have come to the conclusion that this feature is plesomorphic, meaning it was an ancestral trait, but many species lost the behavior as they evolved because it was useless

or even harmful. But a few, it just skirted by. It was grandfathered in. It hasn't gone away. And we talk about this all the time. This is such a classic tale in evolution, where it's like, don't ask, why they do this, ask why they haven't stopped doing this. And the answer is just sort of, eh, it hasn't killed enough of them.

And yeah, just to hammer home, they're thinking that like this really is an old thing that maybe had a use once or maybe just happened randomly and like definitely doesn't have a use anymore is that across different groups of sharks and their relatives, they think that tonic immobility has disappeared at least five different times. So we can see it disappearing from different branches of their lineage because it's not helpful. It's just evolutionary baggage. And yeah, that's where the whole story. Like I said, this is a short fact because this is one small study.

And there's a lot for researchers to learn about sharks playing dead. But I just love the idea of these goofy little guys floating on their backs and being, you know, that happening just because there hasn't been a compelling enough evolutionary reason for them to stop. My toxic trait is definitely when I see pictures of that. I know that they are wild animals. We should not engage with wild animals, but I still want to kind of like pet their bellies like a dog. I just, it's, it's understandable, understandable.

I feel like sharks are very cat-coded, so if they were anything like my own daughter, she hate when you do that. But it's funny because they don't have claws so they can't do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah. Love those slimy boys. Well, now I should tell people in New York City, if you ever have a run in with a shark, just flip them over. Yeah, just flip them over.

Don't punch for the gills. And no, I've never seen a shark on a swim. I'm knocking wood. Yeah, that's good. I'm actually more afraid of orca. You know, I wouldn't, you know, honestly, I'm more afraid of orca. Yeah, you should be. Yeah.

They can be vindictive. Now, all those wild creatures deserve to live wild and free. It's their home. It's their home. Yep. If they want to take a bite, I would too if you walked into the door. So maybe not a bite. I might grab my field hockey stick.

So fair. All right. We're going to take one more break and then we'll be back with one more fact. Peak pollination season and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority. data speeds. That's why I chose GoogleFi wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing. Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore GoogleFi Wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. Google Fi Wireless is not

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Okay, we're back. And Ryan, tell me about a salamander? Is it a salamander? It's a salamander. Great. Yay. So I've gotten big into salamanders this year. So hot right now.

I feel like every year there's another thing outside that you're like, I got in big into, you had a rock era, you had a moth era. Oh, folks who follow me on Instagram will know that I actually just this past week got really into micro snails. I'm like really excited about them. And I almost made my fact about like two millimeter land snails, but I, I, I, I, couldn't get my act together. I actually almost did a snail related fact today, which would have been wild, but we'll talk about it offline. So you should know that salamanders are not common in New York City,

even the most common salamander in the eastern United States, which also happens to be probably the most common animal by mass in the eastern United States, is only in like a couple of areas kind of in the outer perimeter of the city. But Manhattan, especially not really in Brooklyn, a couple parts of Queens. But I'm always surprised that they're there at all. I don't know why. They seem like such sweet, delicate babies. Yeah.

And I associate lizards with tropicalness. Yeah. Oh, well, that's your, that's, that we got to start this fact at the beginning. I know. I know. So salamanders are actually a group of animals that evolve, like the center of salamander diversity is the Appalachian Mountains. So they're like a temperate forest like, they were invented for the temperate forest. I mean, there are dozens of species of salmonds.

salamanders there. New York probably has 18, I think, species of salamander in the state, but if you go to North Carolina, I mean, there's like mountains that act like islands, that there's just like the only place to find this salamander species is this one mountain. So they're super well adapted, you know, maybe what they do is, you know, a lot of them, at least are burrowing deep into the ground so that they can overcome the effects of frost. So they're quite, you know, and a lot of them are also like vernal pool specialists. So their whole thing is that, you know, during the spring rains, these kind of temporary wetlands emerge in the east, especially in kind of like formerly glaciated areas with kettle ponds.

And then there's no fish in those temporary wetlands because they're temporary. And so salamanders will evolve to be able to live in them. So people may have heard the spotted salamander. Again, this redbacked salamander. They are specialists of these habitats. The one that I am going to be talking about, though, is different. So this one is, it's crazy. So you already agree.

You were all on the same page. They're like shouldn't really be salamanders in New York City anyway. So then we're good now. And so, but, you know, it wasn't always that way, right? Like New York prior to, you know, European colonization is a very biodiverse place. Sure. The center, you know, biodiversity hotspot. And it still has an incredible amount of biodiversity, just not really with salamanders.

And so, you know, in the 18, in the early 19th century, you know, somebody described a salamander that lived in the New York area. And it's still to this day, kind of like a well-known commonish salamander that lives throughout the eastern United States. especially on like little rocky seeps that come out of cliffs. So they kind of hang out in the leaf litter and in little like, you know, cool areas. But these places just have streams coming out of cracks in the rock. So in 1942, a naturalist who was the Jewish child of refugees coming from Germany during the World War II, they settled in uptown Manhattan. And so they he would regularly go out on these salamander collecting trips.

And he really liked him. He would go across the river. this guy, Carl Gans, go to New Jersey and collect there. But in this park near his house called Highbridge Park, he found this population of the dusky salamander, the northern dusky salamander. It's, you know, in terms of salamanders, it's not the prettiest one. Oh, no.

Salamanders, you know, there's some, like, some of them are like poison dart frog coated. I mean, they're like yellow, black spots, blue, white and black. There's tons of beautiful salamanders. This one's kind of brown. But it's cute. It's cute. And it's got a bullhead. It's kind of, you know, mean-looking. And so he found them in these cliffside seeps coming out of Highbridge Park, which, you know, I guess if in this 1940, I'd still be surprised that they were there because it was post the Industrial Revolution. But he found them there. And then this well-known New York City naturalists,

John Kieran, when he, you know, he did tons of work looking around the city. This was like a hobby for him and he said the dusky salamanders were probably the most common salamander within the city limits. Now, that's not true anymore. Go away. Yeah, John Kieran, you know, great guy, wrote a great book, did an amazing work, but like, I don't know where he got that idea. You know, like even back then, they're very, they're kind of range restricted. They really just prefer these kind of rocky things. So, and then 60 years passed by, and we do not hear from the dusky salamanders of high Bridge Park, Manhattan, again, you know, they're still in places where they should be, you know,

Northeast, Staten Island. So that's it, Staten Island, and then that's all we know about Desky Salamanders in New York City. When Ellen Pehack, who is working for the New York City Parks' Natural Resources Group, she gets hired essentially to do wildlife biology work, to take surveys and understand what kinds of animals are living in New York City. And so part of that job that she's doing is essentially looking through old records and trying to see what's around and then trying to see what's there. And so she's digging through these records and outcomes,

Carl Gans's 1945 paper about this, you know, dusty salamander in Manhattan. And she's like, all right, where, Highbridge Park. Uh oh, so record scratch, freeze frame, High Bridge Park. So Highbridge Park is, is, you know, it's really quite a nice park on its surface, right? It's this kind of New York has this dramatic ice age history.

So it's got these, you know, rocky cliffs and, you know, kind of rugged terrain. And it's right over the East River. So it's like a very beautiful park. If you've ever seen the movie in the Heights, the pool scene was shot there. There you go. So not beautiful, I mean, and like, you know,

culturally important. But now kind of in the night, right after really Gans visited. And then even really after, after Kieran wrote his book about, or wrote his book and talked about it, a Highbridge Park kind of, let's say declined. You know, basically since the 1940s,

you know, Daddy Robert Moses came through and like decided to pave the Harlem River Drive along the eastern border of the park. So it kind of took away some of the like beautiful river access that people had this park. And then, you know, the city went into a financial crisis in the 1970s and the parks department have a lot of money and the parks all kind of got a little neglected and highbridge park was like

the worst one like uh you know i even remember growing up in new york city well right touching new york city but let's just say growing up in new york city um my parents would be like don't go to that one and it's like kind of a well-known thing i don't know and like i thought that this was just me my you know that i was like all right you know somebody told me i wasn't supposed to go to highbridge park i don't remember why and then i was doing research for this um this story that i wrote on my newsletter that i am reading you, talking to you about right now. And it turns out that, no, it was like kind of well known in the late 20th century. You did not go to Highbridge Park.

And it's not like, you know, like I don't want to say anything about, you know, whatever, but it was kind of this typical New York City horror stories. You know, every newspaper would write about, you know, crack cocaine, homelessness, gang violence, prostitution. That was like, all that stuff. And it was all in Highbridge Park. Henry J. Stern, a beleaguered New York City Parks Commissioner. We can talk about him later.

Not the best one, but, you know, figured. He referred to Highbridge Park as the city's most damaged, most cluttered park in, you know, when he was the commissioner, I guess, in the 90s. So we're not a good one. And then I have one more Highbridge Park anecdote, which is that apparently in the 80s, you know, they wanted to lead this cleanup and make sure that the park, you know, see this, bring it back, you know, clean up the litter. And it took like two or three days for the park after the cleanup to just look exactly the same. same as it had prior. No. So, you know.

Or Highbridge. Or Highbridge Park. But Bet Midler comes along in the late 90s. What? That's right. Surprise Bet Midler cameo. In comes Bet Midler in the 90s. And I don't remember, I don't have the details in my article about why she did this.

I just, you know, because with mine was about the salamander, Bet Midler. But she was a fan of Highbridge Park. And so she kind of led this campaign at the start of the 20th century, kind of by Then New York City Parks was regaining its budget. People were more excited about the parks, you know, and Ben Midler helped with this parks cleanup. And so we come back to 2005 when Ellen Pick is here, and she is now a biologist who's here to study wildlife in New York City,

and she finds this paper that says, these salamanders were in Highbridge Park in 1942. Nobody's seen them since. And, you know, it's not really a surprise that nobody has seen them since, given what I told you. But of course, she was like, well, I have to see if they're still there. And so she went to these rocky seeps

on the side of the Highbridge Park, exactly where the paper describes. And pretty quickly, she finds three populations of dusky salamanders are still there in 2005, living in these seeps. And they're just slithering along, hanging out under the rocks. And so 20 years later, I'm not going to divulge

too much because this is sort of like you don't want to go trampling around. This is now sensitive wildlife habitat, but I went there with a salamander friend. And indeed, there is still at least one dusky salamander still there because I saw it. So really cool. And now, you know, I will say that I had a lot of questions about this. And in my first kind of go around researching this story, I found a paper that said that, you know, this is a very isolated population of dusky salamanders, right? Like they're not anywhere else on Manhattan Island.

And then if you go to Staten Island, that's the closest population. But on Staten Island, they have mechanisms to disperse because the habitat's more connected. And throughout the eastern United States, they would have a little bit more mechanisms to disperse. But in Manhattan, they don't really have that. They just have Highbridge Park. They have three little groups of them on three little rocky seeps, and that's it. And so, you know, they definitely observe kind of the genetic effects of isolation on this population, that there's, you know, less genetic diversity.

There's certainly got to be some inbreeding. And so I figured that that could be the like, that could, be it. Like, oh, no, you're going to just wink out. But I spoke to Ellen about this. I was so excited that I had, I did two posts about this story because it was so cool. So I did a Q&A with her and she was like, yeah, we found that. You know, we observed the genetic diversity being kind of low. But, you know, in fact, there's probably, they probably weren't actually dispersing very much even 10,000 years ago, right? Like, the closest appropriate habitat would be Inwood Hill Park. For those who don't know Manhattan geography, Highbridge Park is on the eastern side and the

East River in like the 190s, and then Inwood Hill Park is northwest on the Hudson River. You know, they're not far from each other, but between them, there wouldn't have been appropriate habitat. You know, they would have drained into different rivers. There wasn't really a way for the salamanders to travel between the parks. So they were always kind of just there, three little populations of them, probably Ice Age holdovers, just stuck there in Highbridge Park. past 10,000 years, and Ellen was like,

you know, probably be there for another 10,000 years if we don't screw it up. And so, of course, I was like, well, if the genetics aren't a threat, then what are we worried about with them? And she was like, well, actually, of course, in the past 20 years, one of those populations disappeared, and they couldn't figure out why.

And they still don't really know why, but it was probably something like super innocuous. Like they probably, like, fixed a drain pipe and then, like, water, like, slightly re-routed over the top of this cliff. And it was a little salamander Apocalypse. Yeah, and it was like kind of, and I was like, oh, the garbage. And she was like, they don't care about the garbage. That's good. You know, for salamander newbies, like the way you

find salamanders is you like go, you know, kind of walk through the woods and then carefully and gently flip things over and then you find a salamander underneath them sometimes. And so, you know, you could potentially have gone to Highbridge Park in the 1980s and done this and flipped over like beer cans and car parts and had dusky salamanders hiding underneath them. And so, yes, indeed, that is, it's just like the habitat restoration is really what is the thing that we need to do to keep them around and hopefully keep them around for a really long time. And I will say, you know, there's a kind of a positive and negative here, right? Because of course, like, it's weird that this salamander remained in this kind of deserted neglect park for 60 years and nobody noticed. But actually it was probably, now this is me speculating, but it was probably the neglect that actually kept the salamander.

are safe the whole time. Because now that we're interested in this park and, you know, what if we wanted to clean up the park? What if we wanted to like build something nice or make it really exciting for people? What if they wanted a mountain bike trail? I think there's already a mountain bike trail there, but something different.

What if they wanted a concessions or bathrooms or something, you know, everybody, there's such a beautiful park in a beautiful neighborhood. People want to come to it. Then that is, that is actually the concern now, especially because the thing that messes with the salamanders is just like sediment in the water. So if you like dump some dirty water on their little cliffside houses,

then the population would have the potential wink out. But it does seem that a couple of the populations are still there and kicking. But it's a hard one, right? Because I obviously want everybody to know about these wonderful salamanders, and I want to show the world because it's so cool. But you can't, you shouldn't go. Just be happy to know they're there. So it's, and this is something that we think about a lot with wildlife.

As a birder, I'm, you know, birds were my predominant entry. point into wildlife. And you know, you have really hard conversations with people, especially once you're very experienced where you're like, I found this bird and I'm not going to tell you about it. And it's like, I'm not, you're going to look at it and it's going to die. You know, I'm glad it's there.

I'm glad I found it. You know, my friend and I, yeah, like long conversation, but how do we do this right? Don't disturb the habitat, only kind of at the edges of the habitats. We're not in the core where they're supposed to be. And you know, and this is how it works. But you know, cross your first. fingers. Ellen said that given the current setup, there is, you know, these are now well known

to be living there by folks who work at the city and hopefully we continue to cherish the fact that we have this, you know, salamander. The only place that this species is found in New York City is Staten Island where it belongs and then one single park in Manhattan. Wow. When you mentioned the only, the other population being in Staten Island, now maybe this is because of the Metbitt Midler reference, my brain instantly went to, oh, is this going to take a fiddler on the roof? Are we going to be matchmaking salamander populations from Staten Island and Manhattan? So I'm glad that their diversity is hanging on. I'm glad you brought that up because I also, of course, is a question I asked Ellen.

I was like, well, we have this population, you know, this population, eastern United States, normal common salamander, and then this little group with genetic diversity low. And they said that actually reintroductions can be pretty bad for amphibians because the chance of moving, you know, sort of microbes or illness or something can be pretty, you know, and it would be, it would decimate a population of like a couple of salamanders living on a rock. Yeah. Yeah. Easy to decimate the population when it's a couple guys on a rock.

Yeah. Wow. I love that. It was great. And listeners can find so many more stories about wildlife in the city in your book. Would you remind them what it's called? My book is called Wild NYC, Experience the Nature in and Around New York City by Ryan Mandelbaum, illustrated by Chelsea Beck, and the salamander story, I believe in some little blurb incarnation about the more common salamander, which is more common in the city, does get a mention. I have so many more salamander stories.

Because because there's only like four species of salamander in New York City, and like all of them are holding on for ridiculous reasons. Like there's this Brooklyn and Greenwood Semit. Like there's only two places to find Eastern Redback Salamander in Brooklyn, which is one like Greenwood Cemetery for some reason in a place that's like totally been transformed from anything it would have been back in the day. And the other one is like, oh, a well-known actresses backyard for some reason. I don't know why they're there. I like that you said well-known actresses. That's the speculation is going now.

I won't. It's not Bed Midler. And I won't. Just because she's like quite a she's a really awesome forest in New York City Nature conservation stuff. So, you know, listeners who know about nature in New York City know who she is. But it's fine. It doesn't matter.

She's great movies and she has salamanders in her backyard. Wow. I love that for her. Written all about this on my newsletter. A. I'm walking here. So if you're interested, A.E. Y, Y, P.m., Wachin, No G. Here, New York City.

We'll put a link in the show notes. And obviously that is not a well SEO optimized at all. No, but it's delightful. And soon all I'll be thinking about is microsnails. So you caught me at the perfect moment. Well, we'll have to have you on soon to talk about the microsnails. But thanks so much for coming by. This was great.

Thanks for having me. 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, extraordinary. 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. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals, because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every eye.

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