The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Bill Nye talks killer clowns, mermaids, pigeon poo, and deadly bicycles

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

Bill Nye joins Rachel, Claire, and Eleanor on the show this week. Facts range from how pigeon poop led to the verification of the big bang to why your brain ignores gorillas and killer clowns lurking right in front of you. 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!  Click here to buy tickets for Weirdest Thing Live on June 14th!  Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Eleanor Cummins: www.twitter.com/elliepsies Claire Maldarelli: www.twitter.com/camaldarelli Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, weirdos. We are back from our midseason hiatus, and it is almost time to hear our first of two very special guest episodes. That's right. You heard it. Two, there's another one after Bill Nye. We're super excited about it. But first, just a quick reminder to grab some tickets for our upcoming live show. It's at caveat in New York City on June 14th. Our first two live shows were totally sold

out and super fun. I highly recommend getting your tickets ASAP. They're only $12 if you get them ahead of time. We'll have links all over our show description, popsight.com, our Twitter, our Facebook. You can just Google caveat, Popside, weirdest thing, and you'll find it. It's super easy, no excuses. Get some now. Okay, that's it. We're back. We love you. We're going to have great episodes. this is the first of many. Enjoy. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and heck 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 Fultman. I'm Claire Mountarelli. I'm Eleanor Cummins. And I'm Bill Nye. Welcome, Bill. It's so weird to be here.

I doubt it may sound weird at all. It's great to see you. Great to see you, too. As always. And Bill, you just had a new podcast start yourself. Yes, science rules. Turn it up loud. Stitcher Midroll.

With my co-host Cory Powell, who's the guy I write books with. He's my editor on the books. Yeah. Corey's great. Another funny, great science dude. I was just listening to the first episode on my way here, and it does rule. Good. There you go.

No, we have very interesting. believe very interesting guests. And so we encourage you to turn it up loud. Well, I'm sure our listeners will check it out. And you have had an interesting career full of weird stuff. So we thought that you would be a perfect guest to come on and share some weird science with us. Sure. Okay. Well, let's get into it. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of factoid. We picked up. in the course of reading, writing, reporting, being one of the most famous science communicators of all time, I guess. And we decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first.

Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene, and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. So when you reconvene, it's sitting around the same table. It's true. It's like you go to chambers and consult your staff. We're actually going to be here for 12 hours, Bill. We need to reach a unanimous consensus, but no, we will still be here. We reconvene emotionally.

Emotionally. We gather ourselves after. Emotional reconvention. Emotivine. I'm working on it. Well, when you've got it, let us know. Claire, why don't you start with your tease? All right.

So your brain can ignore a man in a giant gorilla costume who walks straight in front of you. That is amazing. Yeah. I've seen that. That is amazing. Am I not supposed to comment? Oh, no. We comment liberally.

Claire, can't wait to hear more detail about the gorilla man. Thank you. Will I remember it? Who knows? Eleanor, what's your teeth? The platypus was originally considered a hoax. Yes, that's very reasonable. My favorite hoax.

The monotrim. Indeed. Because they got beaks and claws and then they have venom. It's all there. My fact is about the medical community's panic over the Victoria's, cycling craze. Oh, naturally. Yes. Oh, from a man's point of view, I can imagine that. Also, the head injuries. So my, do I have a tease? Yes. So pigeon droppings led to the verification of the Big Bang. That's a connection. Wow. Wow. You started it, man.

That is a really great tease. However. However, I think we're going to start with platypus. All right. I can take this away. So, yeah, we're all familiar with the platypus today. Know him, love him. What is the plural of platypus? Is it platypie? I was just going to avoid it the whole time. That's very smart.

It's supposed to be octopuses. Right, right. But octopi is so satisfying. So, you know, words change. Definitely. So the platypus, as I will refer to that. Aren't their boy and girl platypipes? Platypuses is probably right, right?

Yeah, it doesn't sound great. It doesn't have a ring to it. So, you know, noem love them. They're poisonous, semi-aquatic, egg-laying mammals. Wait, wait, wait. Are they poisonous or venomous? All right. They're venomous, semi-aquatic egg-laying mammals.

They have a duck bill. An eggling mammal. Eleanor, that's crazy. This is what the people who first discovered them found. They were so freaked out by them. And obviously, when Europeans found them in Australia, in the waters of their colony, they had to believe what they were seeing in front of them. They were like, okay, we're going to process this emotionally.

but they were quite befuddled. And they've seen them swimming around, and they decide to start collecting specimens. And one of... By grabbing them and killing them. Yeah. Stabbing them directly in the back. Did they really? They were like, look at this thing we've ever found before.

Let's stabbing. Yeah. They weren't going to, like, bring it on the boat alive. I think that's very colonial point of view. Yeah. Especially in the good old days. The trophy days. Exactly.

So, you know, early descriptions in the late 17... Their cameras were nothing. No, what were they? Yeah, they didn't have. Sketches, not enough. They didn't have the internet. They had a lot of free time. So in the late 1700s, they were calling them moles, I guess, because they had tiny eyes, which

seems rude. And they were, you know, describing these visible mammary glands. And so professional scientists knew. They just knew that they had to give birth to live young, like all other mammals, if they had mammary glands. And they were just, like, so certain of this. I just knew presumed. Yeah, they were just like, this is obviously how the world works.

You know what happens when you presume. Boom. You make a bruges of you and me. Exactly. And Boyd did. So they ignored decades of observation by amateurs and indigenous people who were like, you guys would love to do that. No, we live here. They're laying eggs, man. That's their thing. And scientists were like, that's so cute. And probably the funniest part of all of this is that, you know, when they actually collect their specimen, they send them back to Europe so that they can be logged and described and written more about. And Robert Knox, who was a prominent scientist of the day, was convinced that the first specimens that were sent into Europe were stitched together by people who were just trying to dupe scientists. It seems reasonable. It really does. Yeah.

So in 1823, he wrote of the specimens that they reached England by vessels which had navigated the Indian seas, a circumstance in itself sufficient to rouse the suspicions of the scientific naturalist, aware of the monstrous impostures, which the artful Chinese had so frequently practiced on European adventurers. So he was just like not having it. And according to a few of the accounts I read, he actually tried to cut the platypus specimen apart and find it seams because he was like clearly they've just stitched all of these things together. And he found it very unimpressive. He was like, this is a terrible attempt to fool me. You've done much better in the past. Right.

Like that monkey sewn to a fish to be a mermaid. He was like that was a better fake. P. P. T. F. F. Barnum's Fiji Mermaid. He was young. Monkey sewn to a fish. Yeah. Okay.

It's a lot to look at. I saw a photo this morning around 7 a.m. And I wasn't prepared emotionally. So if you Google it, just know. And so he, of course, couldn't find the scenes. And that first pelt that was sent from Australia that aroused so many suspicions is now actually the holotype for the platypus, which means that it's the first physical specimen on record. And it's what all other members of the species are judged against.

So the platypus. First specimen on record in European circles. Right. Yes. And if you talk to an Aboriginal person, well, yeah, I mean, I got a lot of them. They'd be very unimpressed. by this holotype. And just as an aside, Knox, who clearly was quite xenophobic, was also in the midst of leading a very vast murder network in order to collect anatomical specimens for dissection. Oh, no.

So he was having people murder people so that he could have fresh cadavers. Oh, great. So that's going on in the background. For context. Yeah. But obviously there was reason to be skeptical, not just because the platypus is such a strange animal, but also because, as you mentioned, right, people actually really were trying to. take scientists for all they were worth and get around, you know, these hoaxes that they were circulating. So there was the Fiji mermaid, but there were a lot of animals that really were real

that were swept up in some of this drama and skepticism. There was a platypus. One of the earliest mastodons that was discovered, obviously as a skeleton. When the guy saw it, he exaggerated its size, named it the Missouri Leviathan after a biblical sea monster and like tried to pass it off as this grand animal. And it was grand. A mastodon. own way. But people were very upset about how he had tried to, you know, exaggerate the claims around this thing that was on its own just awesome. And people didn't believe in, I'm not sure how to say this, the Okapai, which is the tiny forest giraffe. They were like, that's not real. That's a lie. Too cute to be real. They were really skeptical of Venus fly traps. Again, like all of these things, I get at a carnivorous plant, hard to wrap your mind around. They need nitrogen.

Yeah. One of the things I thought was most interesting was that Carl Linnaeus himself was really skeptical of the pelican. Because reports were coming back that they would stab themselves and then feed the blood to their offspring. And that's how pelicans grew strong. And so he was like, I don't really believe that that's happening and then question the whole premise of the pelican. Behold the pelican. His beak holds more food than his bellicent. Within his beak, he holds food for a week.

I don't know how in the helicon. Wow. So with a belly and a beak like that, why would you need to feed your young ear blood? Good question. Also, have you ever seen a pelican yawn because they don't look real? So I think they might be made up. I know how often I've heard that sentence. Have you ever seen a pelican yawn?

It like turns their head inside out. It's aggressive. You got to Google it. It's really frightening. Now, when they carry their prey, a fish. They hold it aerodynamically, right? That is to say they hold the fish so as they go through the air it has less drag. Fish is parallel to their body.

And then if the fish has been tallyned, if I can coin the verb, maybe it's a bloody fish. So if you're a naturalist without binoculars or even an iPhone, what would you do? You could draw of incorrect conclusions, perhaps, from specifying. Totally. And so, you know, they were just really, really confused back then and also today. It sounds a lot like 2019. But at least I think we can also agree that the platypus is a very real animal. As is a pelican.

As is a pelican. Absolutely. Okay, we are going to take a quick break before our next fact, but then we'll be right back. Okay, we're back. Claire, why don't you tell us about gorillas? Okay, so this all started in 1999 two Harvard researchers named Dan Simmons and Christopher Chabris conducted an experiment that changed the way we really think about attention. So building off the work of another researcher in the 1970s, a German-born American psychologist,

Ulrich Nacer, who did a similar experiment, though, because this one was videotaped, it reached far more people and kind of went viral for 1999 standards. So in a taped scene, researchers put a group of students in a large room, and half the students wore white shirts and the other half wore black. They were given a set of basketballs to throw around, and halfway through the scene, a man in a giant gorilla costume, likely a graduate student, walks through slowly, reaches his hands in the air, thumps his chest, looks directly in the camera, and walks out of sight. In total, he spends a solid nine seconds on camera. The entire video with the basketballs tossing around plays for a total of 40 seconds. Later on, participants watch this video of the entire scene.

At the beginning, they're instructed to count how many times the players wearing white pass the ball around. The video plays, balls are passed, gorilla man comes on, pounce his chest, walks away. Once it's done, the screen displays, how many passes did you count? And did you see the gorilla? Most participants counted correctly 15 passes, but just half the people saw the gorilla. The others were like, excuse me, what? There was no gorilla, man. That's stupid. That's a joke question.

Exactly. They asked to show the video again, and when they saw the man literally walk slowly across, pound his chest, they were just mystified, unbelieved. So what gives here? This is perhaps the best and most ideal representation of something in psychology and neuroscience called inattentional blindness. I'm sorry, what did you say? Inattentional blindness. That was a hilarious audio irony. A real zinger. And it's essentially where the brain fails to see something that the eye clearly picked up on. In fact, first, the gorilla walks on for nine seconds.

So later on, if you want to count for nine seconds, that's an extremely long period of time to be staring at a screen, relatively speaking. And then second, they did a second experiment later on with children, and they put actual eye trackers on them and had them watch the scene. And the eye trackers actually saw that they saw the gorilla and watched it. But still, those people, those children who watch the gorilla with their eye trackers still said, what the heck, where's the gorilla? I have no idea what you're talking about. And so how does our brain sort of do this? And the idea is that, yes, our eyes see things around us, but those signals get sent up to the brain.

And it's actually the brain's job to process what our eyes see. And so we can't process everything at once. That would be literally impossible. And so our brain narrows in and decides what's important and what's not and only processes what is important. And I would like to note that there's a million examples of this that I was going to describe and then I can describe as we go on. But on my walk over tier, I experience inattentional blindness. We are currently way down in Manhattan and this area, the financial district, is just really impossible to get around and, remember where you're going.

It's really impossible. No one has ever found her way to a studio here. No one. Okay. It's impossible. So I got out of the subway and in typical money all fashion. I just jumped onto my phone onto Google Maps and I was searching and I was walking in the wrong direction and the back in this direction.

So I'm staring directly into my phone and I look up and a construction worker with this ginormous red flag. It's like you can't walk here. And I'm like, oh God. I did not see you. So it happens all the time in everyday life. But from an evolutionary perspective or speaking, it's actually really smart of the brain because if we were to try to focus on everything at once, we first wouldn't get anything done.

And nothing would be done well or to a satisfying standard. And we probably would not have survived if our brains didn't have this mechanism. You're talking about me. You're talking about me. Fine. Bring me on here. Bill, why you've gotten nothing done. So I just think it's amazing what the brain can do.

I have, so here's my problem with that. Because I've done this experiment before, and it's true. Did you see the girl? I did not see the rule. Did you know, you didn't know it was coming? The first time I did it, I didn't. Right. I was lucky enough to have this video played for me when I was too young to know what the experiment was.

Black slate. Yeah. But it doesn't seem like a good evolutionary strategy to ignore a giant gorilla in front of you. Well, he wasn't that giant. Thank you for saying. It's true. Also, I know it was like on a video, but still, it's true. It seems like something that should maybe trigger your attention.

But, you know, I guess we've spent a lot of time not being chased by guerrillas as humans. A lot of psychologists bring up that once people are aware, that something should be coming. So if we were in the woods and we knew to look out for a giant gorilla, we knew to look out. Or even a regular size gorilla. Right. Just correct. Any, just a man-sized gorilla. Any large animal, we would be more attuned to that. And the example that I brought up, and then also a study has done this where they had a clown walk around as people were looking at their phones or talking on their cell phones walking through a busy street and none of them saw the clown. The idea is that we should be looking out for pedestrians, for cars as we're

walking on the street, but we're staring at our phone. So in that case, that's absolutely true. We should. There could be a murderous clown anywhere. In Pasadena, California, when it's time for the Rose Parade, December, the city glues these rubber mats to the street just off the curb that say look up because so many people are on their phones as they cross the street. Yeah. Don't get hit by a car very much

because it's hard to clean the street. Minimize getting hit by a car. The human brain is fascinating. And brains are so good at just drowning out information that's not important. I mean, the way humans stop smelling things that they smell every day, like, you know, the reason people don't

think their breath smells bad. What smell? You got to tune it out. There's too much information, man. You would go crazy. You wouldn't survive, I believe. Right. You would not be able to pay attention to murderous clowns, and they would kill you.

But another thing about murderous clowns in New York. Certain times a day, it's a guy in a clown suit. Where you would find them. It's a guy in a clown suit. Okay, whatever. He's probably working at a theater. It just came from a kid's party. It's true.

We don't pay attention. attention to anything here. Yeah. Well, we pay attention to a few things. We're all intentionally blind to everyone else's insanity. But in this one example, intentional blindness. But seriously, if you were hiking the Appalachian Trail, Appalachian Trail, and there was a clown, murderous or not, you would probably notice him or her, but in New York, oh, it's a guy in a clowns. Well, they have the office. I paraphrase, but let me ask you this. May I please ask you this? Oh, you may. Claire. Is it a question of degree? Like, are there, degrees of guerrilla noticement.

It's either you notice it or you don't. Because if you've noticed it once, it's not like someone's like, oh, yeah, I think I saw a strange animal in that scene. It's like if you notice the gorilla or if you don't. And that's a big question that researchers are using to figure out what that connection is in the brain. Is it a sort of really quick memory loss problem? Or is it that we just don't send that signal to the area of our brain that then processes

the information. And so they think that it's not this memory loss that they used to think earlier, that we see the gorilla, but we quickly forget about it because we're attending to something else. We think we actually just don't, the signal just doesn't get sent to the area of our brain that processes the information we see. I would be shocked, shocked, shocked, I tell you, if it's not your expectation that drives it all.

Like, I tell people all the time, I have a gift. I can look at something and not see it. I can be looking right at something and not see it. That's a joke. But if I'm looking for a tool in the top drawer, the tool chest, it's right there in front of me. But if it's a different orientation or it's got greasy last time and it looks a little different, I don't notice it. It's just amazing how you cannot notice things. But then we notice a lot of other stuff, don't we?

Yeah. Brains are weird. I should use mine. Should give it a trust. We all should. Okay, we're going to take another quick break, and then we're back with more facts. Okay, we're back. And I'm going to jump in with my fact, which is about biking.

I'm currently training for a 545-mile charity ride. So I think about bikes a lot, seven. So how many is that a day? It varies, but like the longest day is like 110. So I did 95 this weekend. It was cool. It was casual. What kind of bike do you?

Actually, my fiancé and I write a tandem. Oh, wow. So we're doing it on tandem. Are you the stoker? I am the stoker. And he's the captain. Yeah. He steers.

I have stronger quads. Look around. Oh, yeah. Do you practice standing and all that? Yeah. Yeah. Have I saved up conversations so that you guys don't get forward. This has been my advice all along.

Yeah, Claire thinks we should not speak to each other from now until we had to California for the ride so that we don't get tired of each other's company, which is probably not a bit. bad idea. So, yes, I've been biking a lot lately thinking about bikes. And I came across a really interesting anecdote about the history of cycling. And first, a little bit of background. So the first bike, the first thing that looked a lot like a bike, arguably, was an 1818 called the dandy horse or the running machine from Carl von Dreyes. Okay, that's not fair. Humans are the running machine. So basically the rider pushed themselves along with their feet. It was like the Fred Flintstone version of a bike.

Two wheels. Yeah. Bicycle with two wheels, but no pedals or chain. Yeah. So your feet touched the ground. And it didn't have steering or brakes. It didn't have steering. No.

It was really just a thing to throw yourself on after pushing with your feet. It seems like the slightest would be very difficult to keep it going in any direction. Yes. So not popular to not become a widespread mode of transport or recreation. In 1870, there was the penny farthing that classic. That's 60 years later. Yeah. That's a long time to be.

There were some intermediaries, but the penny farthing was the moment when people could actually like ride the thing. So the farthing is the big wheel and the pennies the little wheel. That's where the coins based on the relative size of British coins. Yes. So that was like more accessible to people, but still like a silly way to get around. And also like still didn't have brakes. Bikes didn't have brakes for a very long time. It was in 1885 that John Kemp Starley invented the safety bicycle, otherwise known as a bicycle that actually had two wheels of the same size, a chain.

I think it still didn't necessarily have brakes at that time. But like, you just throw yourself off at the end. Yeah, pretty much. That's how I ride a bike. Like rollerblades. You just kind of hope for the best. Yeah, exactly. That's what I do.

The safety bicycle. Your fiancé handles the brakes, right? It's true. Yeah. I don't have to worry about it. Oh, so the front, oh, obviously. Well, you want to keep your balance. You want to contribute.

And it's true that, like, if he breaks really hard, it does kind of feel like I'm going to shoot off the bike sometimes. And then I'm like, Oliver. And it's great. Is that his name? Yeah. Good. That's good.

That's just what I shout. what I'm stressed. So the safety bicycle meant that it actually was like an efficient mode of transportation and it was safer. Safeer. Also was safe enough that it actually made sense to do it

for fun. And then in the 90s, Bloomer's became popular for women riders. Yes, the 1890s. Bloomer's were very popular in the 90s. I would know as a 90s kid. But bikes like roller skates and I could do a whole episode about the history of roller skates,

I'm very passionate about. But suffice to say, they were also becoming popular around this time. And both of them were very scandalous because it gave young people an excuse to hang out unchaperoned. Oh. And also gave women an excuse to wear either bloomers, which were much more practical. Or, like, there was all of this moral uproar about, like, women would roller skate and they would fall and their skirts might, you know, flip up a little bit. Cool. God for God for best.

Yeah. So it was, they were part of the feminist movement for. sure. And indeed, this woman named Annie Cohen Kipchowski, I just learned this morning. She was a Jewish immigrant mother of three, and she was the first person to bike around the world in 1894. She did not literally bike the entire way, but she spent 15 months with a bike, biking a lot and getting herself around the world. How did she make a living or what have you? So this was, someone had like made a bet. I believe in a newspaper. And so she wanted to win that $10,000, which of course was a huge amount of money at that time. Yeah.

And she was just like, why not me? And she didn't really ride bikes, but then again, most people didn't. She was as prepared as anyone. And she started out like really on the wrong bike for it. It was like really heavy. She was doing it in a corset. And she almost gave up, but then someone, I think a bike company sponsored her. A corset seems like that.

Yeah, exactly. Kind of a drag. By the end of it, she was wearing men's bike clothes, which the newspapers did not like. of them were like, is she even a woman? Because she's in pants. So it doesn't make sense to us. So, and there was a lot of anti-Semitism at that time. So, yeah, she was, like, considered a revolutionary, and she just wanted to win a bunch of money. To support her three kids. Yeah, exactly. Motivated. So all of this is to say that there was a lot of, like, moral panic about cycling, especially when it came to women. And that's where we get into the medical

community's response to bikes. There was something called. called bicycle face. Bicycle face. Bicycle face, which is... I love learning new diseases. Which is what many doctors said would happen to women who cycled. This is like tennis elbow. Right.

Except that's your face. Bicycle face. But only women, not men. Well, they said it could happen to anyone but that women were more susceptible. And also, it would be worse for women because... And what happens with bicycle? So they said that the over-exertion and the upright position and the unconscious effort to maintain one's balance produced a weary and exhausted bicycle face. So they basically were like, you know how you look when you exercise?

Your face might get stuck that way. No. That was the whole idea. They just said like your face gets flushed. You have a clenched jaw. Your eyes bulge. And they were like, the more you bike, the more likely it is that you'll have permanent bicycle face. trying to get ladies to stick around.

They had no time for them. They got on their bikes and left. Exactly. That was literally what was happening. So there were a lot of suffragists and bloomers on bikes. And they did not like that, the medical establishment. As if trying to maintain balance in a corset wasn't already hard enough. Exactly.

So at this conference in 1894, and this anecdote is from The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth by Thomas Morris, which is a great book of weird medical case studies that we've talked about a couple times before. the penis stuck in a bottle episode. Classic. Classic episode. Oh, yeah. Whoa. Sounds very troubling.

Yes, and it was. This story comes from that book. Thanks, Thomas Morris. So at a conference in 1894, where one doctor was arguing that female cycling wasn't dangerous, he still had a lot of sexist stuff, but he was like, bicycle face. Come on. I'm skeptical. Yeah.

Another guy named George Herschel was arguing that a cyclist's heart. Every cyclist's heart was a ticking time bomb. Oh. And he liked cycling, but he said that cycling was causing heart disease, that there was an epidemic of heart disease due to the cycling craze. Well, you're not supposed to nowadays, I don't know what you and your fiancé do, but don't smoke cigarettes while you're riding. It helps. Yeah. But I think we did in the good old day.

It's true. Probably a lot of cyclists were smoking quite a lot. at that time. He basically said that people would get so excited by like the biking craze. There was all this peer pressure to bike and it was so fashionable that they would just over-exert themselves. But seriously, imagine learning to ride a bike as a grown-up. Yeah. That would be tricky.

It would be. That's not what happened to me, but I imagine it would be like, heck. It's like people trying to learn to swim late in life. It's difficult. This is where I whisper that, I can't ride a bike. Really? Really. It's cool.

No, you should try it. Don't you want to be an empowered, liberated woman? Well, you can just go get places. Or do you want bicycle faces? That's why I never learned. You should try it. I'm just changing it back to me. I'm a long time cycles.

I've gotten great joy out of bicycling. You should try it. I have tried it. I fear it. Well, that's good. You should have respect for it. No, it's good to have respect for it because you go much faster than you go even when you're running as hard as you can. And so direct trauma with tree is bad.

Oh, yeah. Direct trauma with pothole is potentially fraught. And, yeah, Herschel thought that people really needed to fear cycling. He said that going up a hill was like the worst thing you could do for your heart. He was like people don't stop and recover. He said, you know, it feels like you just have a few more pedals to the top. And in a few moments, damage has been done to the heart from which it perhaps cannot recover. He put it perhaps in there.

He said of races involving hills, nothing more suicidal or more certain to produce heart disease can possibly be imagined. Oh, wow. Oh, give me a minute. Yeah. He also told cyclists to avoid cola and coca concoctions, otherwise known as caffeine and cocaine, which at the time were in Coca-Cola, as well as other little teachers. Is he invested in Pepsi or something? Dr. Pepper? Yeah, Pepsi only on bite.

But yeah, he basically was like nothing that makes you even more likely to over-exert yourself. He told riders to stop as soon as they felt short of breath, which is a terrible way to exercise. He also said that allowing children to ride long distances on a bike, he said, we are carrying out a physiological experiment, which, although possibly of interest from a scientific standpoint, must be utterly unjustifiable. He just sounds like he's out of shape. Yeah, well, and the thing is that in the Victorian era, there was generally just a sense that exercise could turn dangerous really quickly. I mean, the concept of a modern gym was really new at the time. And the connection between working out and health didn't really solidify until the 20th century. I mean, most people were either doing hard labor for their livelihood or they were trying to be, like, delicate and do as little labor as possible.

So the idea of people of means or even just people who didn't have to work literally all the time. even middle class people. The idea of them choosing to go out and do something that made them sweaty was new. And like, yes, the young people were having a lot of fun going to roller rinks. Yes, exactly, doing unshaparone roller skating and stuff. For people of this doctor's generation, it was all like a little suspect. And, you know, if you were a person of means who had never in your life like done any physical activity that made you made your heart rate raise, I'm sure it felt like you were dying. So he really, really thought this was going to be a huge problem. Of course, now we know cycling is great for your cardiovascular health. It's the best. Easier on your joints

than running. So it's a great choice for. Plus you go places. That's what always appealed to me about bicycling. You can go really fast. There's tremendous distances without, you know, that's the most efficient machine known, they say. A human on a bicycle. Much more efficient than the original dandy horse. But in order for it to work, you need the so-called right-of-way. You need a smooth surface. Yes.

And the mountain biking's a fad and everything, but it's... No, it is. But it's not... You can't get the kind of speeds you get on a paved road. Yeah. I mean, except downhill. I know. I've been to Whistler in Canada.

And they turn the ski area into a drive a very heavy bicycle off a... cliff. That sounds terrifying. It's cool. There's guys who go 40 miles an hour down that thing. But on these modern bicycles, you can ride off of a picnic table. I did it. Just right off a picnic table and keep your balance because the front forks have so much travel.

Boi-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-yo-yo-yo-you. You're a real evil-conneval. Yeah, but it's just didn't have, it's not my thing. Not for me. I'm a road guy. If you guys want to become cyclists, you have to toughen. you're doing this. You have to toughen your butt.

It's true. That is the hardest part. And what's the other thing you have to toughen, in my opinion? My opinion. Your neck. You have to toughen your neck. That's true. If you just ride, and the other one I think about, you know, I lived in the Northwest,

for a long time, is backpacking. You can toughen your shoulders when you're carrying a heavy load. You don't just put on 80 pounds. I don't know why my shoulders hurt. I'm going to go back to RIA and get new and more pat. You just, you have to strengthen it. Let's go with strengthen. The Victorians would have just been like.

No butt muscle. I'm out of breath. You will die. I can never do this again. I'm going to have my man-servant carry. Thanks for now. Okay. We're going to take one more quick break, and then it's time for Bill's fact.

Oh, my gosh. Hey, weirdos. Hope you're enjoying this episode of the weirdest thing I learned this week. I want to tell you about another Popside podcast that you might enjoy. It's called Techathlon. Tech, A-T-T-H-L-O-N. Every Monday, the Popsie Tech team will join me, Jason Letterman, to tell you all about the week's latest tech news through games,

trivia and competitions that you can play along with. It's a crew of Popsize staffers you already know and love, and we would love to be in your podcast feed. Subscribe to Techathl, wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. That's Tech, A-T-H-L-O-N. Now, back to the weirdest thing I learned this week. Okay, we're back, and Bill, we're so excited to hear about Pigeon Poop. I hope it's exciting enough.

So Anzio Pensius and Bob Robert Wilson, we're going to use an antenna to study the radio signatures of objects in the sky. And by that I mean it's like light, but at a much longer wavelength. And you could detect it with this very big antenna. So just nominally, you guys, if you're of a certain age, the television with rabbit ears, metal antennas sticking up, detects one frequency. The television with the loop detects a higher frequency. And that's a so-called quarter-wave, antenna, quarter-wave dipole antenna, two wires antenna.

Well, to get what they were listening for, this thing is now it's a national historic landmark in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. This huge thing they called a horn, because I guess if you half close your brain, it kind of resembles an ancient horn made from a Rams antler or something. a big metal, hollow aluminum gizmo on two big gimbals, one that enabled it to turn to rotate from west to east and the other that made the whole thing rotate around north-south-east-west. Build this huge thing. It's part of Bell Labs, which was a mythic organization. Back in the good old days, Bell Labs. So they set this thing up and there was this hiss, this radio frequency hiss. And I met Bob, as it call him, doing a show called The Hundred Greatest Discoveries, and he told the story, and the producer got the guide, got Robert Wilson to fire the thing up. These huge vacuum tubes used to run these big electric motors, which hadn't been turned on in a long time.

But he told the story. So this hiss, pss, in radio frequency, and they couldn't figure it out. And they thought at one point it was pigeon droppings in the giant horn, aluminum. odd shaped horn in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. And they went, these are, you know, scientists who are supposed to be working at their desks, thinking deep thoughts, cosmologists,

you know, making mathematical models of the universe. But they're out there on their hands and knees up on ladders, scraping the pigeon dropping down. But the hiss was still there. Oh. And he'd heard a story or he'd heard a talk from a guy of Princeton. He called him up on the phone. I don't know if you remember this technology.

It was a landline. They realized that what they had detected was the so-called microwave background radiation. So mathematically, after Hubble and Lamar had discovered that the universe was expanding, this led to the proposal that there had been a big bang, that everything that we know and can measure and can be aware of was somehow concentrated into what would be, for lack of, a better expression, an infinitely small. space and even space itself would be in this space. And the whole thing expanded very rapidly, rapidly in geologic terms, to what the universe that we know today. And so along with that, as the energy is released from the Big Bang and all the stars and planets and you and I are formed, it was mathematically suggested that there would be this glow, an afterglow of the Big Bang in microwave frequencies. And microwave frequencies, everybody, are about

the width of the wavelengths about the width of your hand. And that wavelength, if you're scoring along with, this happens to be suitable for rattling water molecules. The polarity, the plus and minusness of water molecules is susceptible to getting twisted by microwaves.

Anyway, they discovered the big, they proved that the big bang happened and the background glow was there by accident. And they each got a Nobel Prize in in physics for that. It's just an amazing thing. They were, this has stodgone it. And they're checking all the wires and re-soddering stuff and checking the connectors.

What is going on? They're scraping pigeon tubes. I just don't understand this. We scrape the pigeon stuff out. What is going on? And then they realized that they had detected, that they pointed it at New York City. They had the same frequency. They pointed it off into the distance.

They pointed it at the ocean. They pointed it straight up. And the background glow is everywhere. And it's just an amazing thing. And so you only get a Nobel Prize, everybody, for a discovery. So you don't get a Nobel Prize for a theory. And so whoever the people, or the people, rather, who had theorized the background glow, the microwave background radiation, didn't prove it. So they didn't get the Nobel Prize.

The guys who discovered it did. And they discovered it kind of like I accidentally did. He was quite charming. But firing up this old machine, man, these old. So you guys, you know, we all take dimmer switches or dimmer, light dimmers for granted. And they work with solid state electronics, transistors that break the wave of generated electricity into little bits, little pieces. And so you take the same piece of the wave, same piece of the wave, same piece of the wave, same piece of the wave, same piece of the wave, it dims the light rather than taking the whole wave, whole wave. This is Bill's interpretation.

Audio. It's not, I'll do my whale sounds next. So they didn't have that technology in those days. So they had these big vacuum tubes. These would be things that control the flow of electrons using a filament heated up to glow orange hot. And electrons flow off it when they control it with a grid like a window screen in this thing. And it was about these vacuum tubes were about as high as a table, maybe more than three feet long in English units, a meter long. And they glow hot.

and it was really a sophisticated thing. And then they got this hiss. Damn it, what is going on? Pigeon poop. Yeah, and then they found that it was the microwave background. Do, do, do, do. And so everybody said, what happened before the Big Bang? Nobody knows, people.

That's what we want to figure out. I want you, listeners out there, to discover what happened in the Big Bang. I mean, before the Big Bang, if that's even a question to ask, are there other universes? Like, dude, I don't know. But the discovery of the microwave background was part of the story of us. Wow. So is the moral of the story never assume pigeon poop? Always clean your pigeon.

Actually, that's how you win a Nobel Prize writing in there. Actually, the pigeon poop probably didn't make any difference. It was detecting the hiss regardless. Right. Pooplessly. Don't just assume it's pigeon poop. Yeah. Don't go jump into the club.

Stop blaming pigeons. Which is the moral of every one of our episodes. For that. You can blame pigeons for a whole bunch of other stuff, but not that. Microwave background radio. Yeah, we had a piece in the magazine a while back that was about the theories about what came before the Big Bay. And we ended up actually illustrating them like blacklight posters because it was such a, like, impossible to wrap our heads around. Oh, you mean, it's like so out there. Yeah. Like, dude.

Yeah. Like, so I had this experience. Yeah. It's like that. And, you know, every day I look at the poster and it's like different. One day it's like Elvis. Another day it's like Vegas Elvis. It's like, oh my God.

So it really is a profound thing. And by way of example, I think about my grandparents who, when they were born, they had no knowledge or not even any awareness, any clue that time is affected by what we generally call relativity or theory of relativity. Well, now everybody's mobile phone depends on both. You were using your mobile phone to cross the street today with the guy with the flag, the gorilla with the flag. It relies on both special relativity, the speed of spacecraft relative to the Earth surface, and general relativity, the speed of clocks, or the rate at which clocks tick as affected by the gravity of the Earth. It depends on both. So my parents, my grandparents, live through all of that. nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, and mobile phones that depend on relativity.

So just think when people your age, the ladies on this podcast people are somewhat younger than I am, when people your age figure out what dark energy is or dark matter is. The practical applications could be profound and amazing, then you all take them for granted. And we take relativity for granted now. but it was discovered in my grandparents' lifetime. It was realized in my parents' lifetime. And now I just grew up with it.

What do you mean? I had relativity in high school. So Albert Einstein, you know, sitting around, he just said, well, what if the thing we keep constant is the speed of light and not time? But in our everyday experience, time passes at a constant rate. You can't even, it's just, you can't imagine

the speed of time changing. Yeah. Even if time flies. I know, I know. But it's profound. Just think what the future holds. Yeah, it's crazy to think about what concept people will take for granted in like high school science 100 years from now. If the planet can still hold people on it.

If we still teach science. So there's that. So I just remind of it. The Earth's going to be here no matter what humans do. Right. What we want to do is preserve environments for me for humans. Yes, hopefully. All right.

So what was the weirdest thing you learned on the show today, Bill? The idea that it's an evolutionary advantage to tune out. Yeah. I think that's cool. That one is really cool. And bicycle face. With respect, that is so weird. Bicycle face.

It is. Thank you. I take that as a compliment. But it has to do, I guess, with you guys know Jane Austen? Yeah. I mean, personally. Yeah. But this idea that.

If you're successful, you didn't get any exercise. And now, if you're the CEO of some Silicon Valley something, rather, you're expected to be at the gym at 5 a.m. of course. And you talk to each other about your personal records and all that. Sure. Yeah. Well, what was your time on the marathon? And you do it all without eating. Really?

Oh, yeah. They're all super into reinventing eating disorders as biohacking. That's the cool thing with. In Silicon Valley? Yeah, yeah. So I thought it was all about sushi. and brown rice. I think now it's just that you get the one piece of sushi a day.

Oh, so. So talking again, finally, about my podcast science rules on Stitcher Midrull, turn it up loud. We had the guy on near Barzely who studies longevity. Yeah. And apparently the only thing that he's been really found in common with these people that live to be over 100 is they, every way. week, not on purpose, but they sort of skip a meal. They go 16 hours without eating. And this is the only thing he can figure, you know, interviewing them, what do you do, what do you

eat? How did you live so long? What's your deal? That's the only thing he can find. But when you're a bicycling, man, you've got to freaking eat. Yeah, I eat. Yeah, you can't, no, you can't bicycle. I love food.

That's why I love biking. Well, but you know, you guys use the word bunk. You don't want to bunk. Yeah. Yeah. Or you run out of glycogen, then you just can't go. You're just pushing, your brain is pushing the legs and they just ain't going. Have you ever bonged, Bill?

No comment. And that's why, you know, bananas are worshipped by bicyclists and stuff. So you can see I'm fine now. And if you're listening on the podcast, you can hear, I'm fine now. But back when I was crazy, I rode Seattle to Portland, I think I did five of those. That's 200 miles on a day. That's a very popular ride, the STP, Seattle to Portland, Oregon. But I also rode the Cannonball 300.

So it's 300 U.S. miles in a day. So you leave at 3 in the morning. You leave at 3 in the morning. And if you don't finish by midnight, what happens, Rachel? You don't get a T-shirt. Wow. Okay. Why do it in the front of that?

I would just lay down and die. What's the point? So you ride and ride and you toughen your neck and your butt. And, you know, this is what you do. So I finished third overall, but I finished first unsupport. So there's no team bill at the rest stops. And these guys had bananas on broomsticks. Right.

So it's a grab and go. There was a tandem. It's a husband and wife team. And they guys would hand them bananas on a broomstick. Like, that's pretty hardcore. Yeah. All right. But I would stop at the Ellensburg deli mart and the Ritzville, Texaco.

Just if you want to try it. These are all my childhood haunts. Crazy. Ritzville? Mm-hmm. Are you serious? Yeah. Stopping at Perkins.

Really? Are you from Eastern Washington? I'm from the Tri-Cities. Oh, my God. So for the Tri-City, speaking of relativity is where the name, which city were you? Well, okay, so yeah, I grew up in Pascal mostly. But so, but then Hanford, you may have heard of

Hanford where they invented plutonium and they made the hydrogen bomb. The Hanford teams are called the bombers. Yeah. And their symbol is a mushroom class. That's cute. So people don't realize Washington State is two states.

Would you agree? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So Western Washington is Bill Gates and Microsoft and Starbucks and Jeff Bezos and Amazon and Boeing. And sushi. And coffee on every corner. And Eastern Washington's a prairie. And they're literally tumbleweeds.

And so you're riding your bike. It's 100 degrees Fahrenheit on this cannonball 300. And a tumbleweed goes in front of you. And you go, well. I'm not going to make it. All right. I digressed. It's so unusual.

So I think Claire's the winner this week for a man in a girl a suit. Bill, thank you so much for joining us. Hold on a second. Are we sure it was a man in the gorilla suit? That's true. True. Very good point. The grad student in a girl suit.

It was almost surely a grad student, though not 100% confirmed. So, you know, Chris Chabris, if you're listening. please tell me who was in the gorilla suit. I would love to know. Or maybe this is the kind of person that likes to remain anonymous. Oh, true. True. But then we'll respect his or her privacy.

Absolutely. If we know that it was a grad student. Yeah. Because they work for free. Bill, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you guys. It's really fun. We had a great time.

It's so weird. Everybody check out science rules. Turn it up loud. 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 popsy.

Dotlest.com. Our show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Faltman, and our editors, Jess Bodey and 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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