The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Boning Baseball Bats, Rolling Cheese, Playing With Wallpaper Cleaner

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

It's the Season 3 Finale! The weirdest things we learned this week range from breaking bones chasing cheese down a cliff and rubbing baseball bats with cow femurs. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Corinne Iozzio: www.twitter.com/corinneiozo Sara Chodosh: www.twitter.com/schodosh Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jessica Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's code weirdest for 20% off. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or The Hilton.com. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and 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 show those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors

of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Sarah Trodosh. And I'm Corinne Iosio. Welcome, both of you. It has been a while since we had the pleasure of your company. Corinne, now the editor-in-chief of popular science. Not the last time you were on here. It still sounds weird to say it out loud. You're not going to lie.

It's cool, though. I like it. We like it, too. Yes. And Sarah, back stateside after a while, though still thought with us because none of us are together at all, but closer than before. It has been so long I've almost forgotten what you all look like. Oh. So sad. I miss my friends in three dimensions. I feel like I've seen you all in

two dimensions quite a bit, and it's just, oh, I don't like it when all my, all the people are flat. Just living in a two-dimensional world here. Well, weirdos, we have really enjoyed having our fortnightly check-ins with all of you throughout this crisis and our time spent sheltering at home. However, we have decided that this is going to be our last weirdest thing episode for a little while. We're going to take a short break before we gear up for season four. We promise we will make it short. We'll be back sometime this summer. We're talking about maybe doing another live stream show, which went over really well back in, gosh, what was it? Was that March time has no meaning anymore? We also hope to put out a couple of bonus episodes, so please do send us any weird

facts you want to share or questions or comments you have about the show. Nice ones, please. You can send them via Anchor voice message, which you can access from the Anchor app or from the anchor website. You can search for the Popular Science Dashboard and send us a voice message there. And of course, we will still be present on Twitter at Weirdest underscore Thing on our Facebook group, which you can find by searching Weirdest Thing on Facebook and on Instagram. And we will definitely still be chatting, being weird, hanging out with you and coming up with cool new ways for Weirdest Thing to continue to be an awesome community during this weird and a bad way time. So all of that being said, we are. are going to get into this final episode of season three. We're just thing that's been around for two years. Wow, that's amazing. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's make this a good one and then we'll be back

soon. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, Googling cute mask designs, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about. first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Corin, what's your tease? So I want to explain to you all why there are random cow bones in Major League Baseball Clubhouses. Cow bones, you say. Oh, yeah. Bones of a cow. Femers and stuff. Specifically cows, huh? Well, it's not just cows, but often cows. Okay. All right. I think I'm,

I'm more upset that they're only sometimes counts. It's an assortment of bones. But you'll explain that. It's a beggars and choosers thing. We'll get into it. I'll withhold judgment for now. Sarah, what's your tease? My fact today is about how a wallpaper cleaner from the 1930s became one of the most popular American toys ever invented.

Ooh, I know what this is. I'm excited. I don't know everything. Yeah, it's true. But I think I have a guess, but I'm just going to keep it to myself for now. All right. You're a better person than I am current. My tease is that I'm going to talk about a lot of bizarre sports, but primarily I would like to discuss cheese rolling.

Cheese rolling is my favorite thing. I learned about cheese rolling in AP chemistry in high school, my senior year. It was incredible. It's one of my favorite things ever. I'm thrilled to hear what the AP chemistry tie-in was, so we'll definitely have to circle back to that. Circle back like the cheese. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. But our listeners may have noticed that all of our facts are about games and toys and having fun, playing, if you will. And there's a reason for that. Our latest issue of Popular Science magazine is all about play. Corinne, would you like to talk a little bit about this fantastic issue? Absolutely. So yesterday we launched on popsye.com and just widely across the internet, you can find it on all of our social channels, the summer issue,

which is cover to cover about play. It's super fun. And what we're really excited about about this issue is that we're making it available digitally, digitally only to anybody who wants to read it. Well, we all stay safe at home. We're just bringing everybody all the fun we have to give at a time where we all need it like a lot, not a little bit. I know it feels all serious and grim out there, but you got to laugh. You have to enjoy yourself. So that's what we're here to hopefully do for all of you. And this episode is part of that. Absolutely. Yeah. And we're just saying, you know, we have been.

all about finding those moments of joy and things that are weird in a good way throughout this. So we thought it was absolutely appropriate to celebrate this wonderful, fun-packed play issue. So not all of our facts are from the issue, but as we have all been very immersed in all sorts of sports and play and toys, it's no surprise that we picked up some random fact toys along the way. And if you like these, you will definitely enjoy the issue. So check it out. We'll have info in the show notes. And of course on our associated post on popside.com slash weird.

So what should we start with? God. I mean, I want to start with the cheese rolling if I'm being completely honest. I know. I kind of, I feel like we need to do that. It has to happen. Okay. So I want to start just because in the process of looking more into cheese rolling,

I found so many bizarre sports. So I wanted to start with a little game if you guys are up for that. Yes. So we have played two facts and a lie on the show before where I say three supposed facts, one of which is not a fact. And you have to guess which is the lie. And so I've done that with sports. So I've come up with a lot of dumb fake sports.

And I'm so immersed in the world of bizarre sport that I don't really have a good sense. of whether I kept mine realistic or not. I've lost all sense of what's reasonable because I have spent all morning reading about really, really strange things that people do for fun. So this is going to be what it is and I will read it and you will have fun. Okay. We will have fun. Yes.

It is demanded of us. Let's do it. We have several rounds of two sports in the life. Okay. Which of these sports is not a sport? Also, I should say the sports I made up, I did Google to make sure they weren't real, but like, I in no way guarantee that no one has ever done this thing I made up for fun. Okay. So two sports and a lie. Underwater wrestling, where competitors at hustle in a swimming pool while wearing fins and masks. Underwater video game championships where competitors aim to race through game levels before they have to come up for air. Or underwater ice hockey, where you go under the surface of a frozen lake and play hockey, but upside down, with the puck sliding along the bottom while you hold your breath and try not to die. All of those sound fake. There's no way two of

those are real. I think, wait, one of these is fake or two are fake? Yes, one is fake. One is fake. I think the hockey is fake because I don't think the physics of that quite work. Well, Corinne, in fact, the ice hockey is real. Wow. Can I guess? Can I guess? Yes. Okay, I think it's the wrestling. Wrestling is also real. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What?

It's the video games? I guess electronics. That does make sense now that I think about it. But it does seem like the least crazy of those three, right? Okay, we're off to a great start. But yeah, underwater wrestling, I think it originally came out of like USSR military training because you have to learn how to like deal with combatants or just like flailing people you're trying to rescue in the water, but then they turned it into a game, and now it is a

competition that people do for fun. And underwater ice hockey is exactly what it sounds like. Not to be confused with underwater hockey, which is much safer and which you play on the floor of the pool with a heavy puck. I assume the puck for underwater ice hockey is quite light. I also assume it's not a very widespread game because, wow, it's insane. All right. And now we have another round. Bog snorkeling where you put on fins and kick your way through a water-filled trench in a peep bog. Toe wrestling, which is exactly what it sounds like. Or competitive squash lifting where you have to not only grow a giant vegetable yourself, but then you have to deadlift it.

That one's definitely real. I can feel it. Says the power lifter. Well, I don't know. I could, I would do that. I would compete. If it's not real, I would compete in it. Even so. Wow. This is so hard.

I'm really glad it's hard because, like I said, I lost all sense of what was a believable sport. Okay, I'm going to say toe wrestling's a lie. So actually, the lie is competitive squash lifting. No. It's a great idea. And I hope someone steals it from me. Or Sarah, maybe you and I should just get that started.

We should. That is like, that feels like a peak, like state fair event, you know? I've grown this 200-pound squash and now I will deadlift it. I would love that. But yeah, unfortunately toe wrestling is real. It became a thing in the 70s. And so is bog smircling. Great fun. Okay. Which of these is a lie? Baby hurting where dogs are trained to wrangle small children like their sheep. wife carrying where male competitors race through an obstacle course with a female teammate holding onto their back or kick volleyball, which is just like volleyball, but you can use everything but your hands and arms to keep the ball off the ground. I'm going with baby hurting. You are correct. Baby hurting is not a sport. It's just a cute thing people do on YouTube. Oh, God. Destined to become a sport, no doubt.

But yeah, as problematic as white caring is as a sport, including its origins, which probably have to do with like pillaging, it is like, it's hard for the female competitor too. You got to hold on as your host like trudges through mud and stuff. So how are they carried? Like over the back? It's usually like a fireman's carry. So they're kind of shoulders. Well, I think actually traditionally it was like a fireman's carry and now the most successful competitors are like. the female competitor kind of like knapsacks it. They're like holding on very tight, which is why I say that the so-called wives who do not have to be legally married to their partners should get more credit in the wife carrying. It looks pretty difficult to stay holding on to that sweaty man while he climbs things. Okay. What is the lie? Rabbit show jumping, which is like horse jumping, but with rabbits on leashes. The great jumpathon, which is a marathon-length race conducted back and forth inside of of one of those giant trampoline gyms or cycle ball, which is like soccer but played on bicycles.

None of these can be real. I know. It's, um, is cycle ball fake? I was going to say cycle ball too. No, cycle ball is real. Oh my God. Man, I'm not doing well at this game. The great jubbathot is a thick I made up.

Wow. Rabbit show jumping. That feels so real. Rabbit show jumping is Swedish. So, wow, now that was so big ups to our parent company and the rabbit jumping in the Swedes. I'm going to start Bonhear's official rabbit jumping team. I will bring us much glory. Okay. What if these is fake. The man versus horse marathon, which is a 22 mile race where man is pitted against horse. Shin kicking, a 17th century English martial art where contestants attempt to knock each other to

the ground with nothing but kicks to the shin, or the bricklayers bane, where competitors pick up scattered bricks as they race of 5K, adding them to their packs as they run, and get points both for the speed they race and the height of the stack they can make at the end. Oh, my God. The brick one, maybe? Yeah, I don't want to speak for me. I made that up. Oh, good, good, okay.

Shin kicking is real. Shin kicking felt so real. I'm sure you could hear my air quotes around English martial art. But that is how it is described online. As soon as he said 17th century English martial art, I was like, for sure English men in the 17th century invented that martial art. Kick in the shins. Okay, here's the last one. And then we will actually talk about cheese rolling, I promise.

Mutton busting, which is like bull riding at a rodeo. But instead of a bull, it's a sheep and the competitors are all tiny children. extreme ironing, which is where people take ironing boards to the most remote and dangerous places they can think of and then they stop and they iron something. Or chess boxing, which is where competitors alternate between rounds of chess and boxing. Okay, I know that chess boxing is real because I went down that rabbit hole when I was researching for a weirdest thing episode two years ago. Wow. I'm going to take that one out. It's a coin toss, Sarah.

What do you think? Oh my God, I'm going to go with the ironing. So this one was a trap. They are all real. Oh, my God. Ironing? How are you supposed to iron like in the middle of a forest? Do you carry like a generator?

People will like, I mean, I guess they bring like battery powered irons. I don't know. They bring a Jenny with them. Yeah. But as people like going up, they'll like climb a mountain and then like iron, they'll iron while skydiving. It's the cheekiest sport on this list of sports. It's the one that takes itself the least seriously, I have to say. I went on one date once with a guy who had been a childhood mutton busting star,

and they take that very seriously. Yeah, that does feel like a true state fair event of some kind. Well, thank you for playing. And now we can talk about cheese rolling, which is my favorite bizarre sport, and which I've been familiar with for a long time because of neopets. the wonderful website that so many millennials spent their childhoods on. I forgot about cheese rolling in Neopets. Right.

You can buy a wheel of cheese from an array of options and you hope to have it roll down a hill unimpeded in 60 seconds or less. You don't get to watch the cheese. The game just tells you whether the cheese made it down or not. And you can like every few meters, it'll allow you to give a command like dive, right or hold cheese steady. So it's not the most dynamic game. You didn't even win NeoPoints. You just won the cheese you already bought and the resale value on the cheese is sucked. So it was not a great game. But I found it strangely compelling. You know that thing where like mathematically you're not that much older than people, but there is all of a sudden a very clear divide. And I have no

idea what anything you just said is. Well, Neopets was just a game that was kind of like Animal Crossing before Animal Crossing. Okay. You just like, you had these virtual pets in a fantasy world. And it all, it was a very capitalist society, meo pets. It was all about making Neo-Points. But it was before the days where kids had to like make their parents like buy them credits for a game. It was, it was a very money-driven system, but it was all fake money. So I got to watch with horror as the online game ecosystem switched over to kids having to like steal their parents credit cards for things. I just earned Neo points by merit and by spinning the fairy wheel. So please. Okay. Thank you for that. I just needed, I needed a little minute to understand what was happening.

A lot. So, but yeah, I found this really boring game, strangely compelling. And the real sport is quite different, but no less perplexing. The Cooper's Hill cheese rolling and wake is held every spring on Cooper's Hill in England. And it sounds really simple. You roll a wheel of cheese down a hill and try to catch it. But it's so much more interesting than that. For starters, the nine-pound cheese wheel can hit speeds of 70,

miles per hour. And then there's the fact that the 650 or so foot hill is quite steep and very craggly and often muddy. So it's incredibly dangerous to chase a nine pound wheel of cheese going at 70 miles per hour. Where did this come from? Why does it happen? We don't know. We know it was already an old tradition by 1826, which is when it enters the written record in a message written to the town Cryer, I guess, to announce your old cheese wheel roll. And it definitely, like, alluded to it it being a story tradition by then. So we know it's quite old. I found a bunch of articles saying it may have started as a way of maintaining grazing rights for the commons, but no one ever explains how or why cheese rolling is involved in grazing rights. Other theories hold that it's the

evolution of some pagan ritual, but that version of the story is equally vague. But, also kind of seems more plausible to me. So the sport is incredibly dangerous. I really can't stress that enough. It is assumed that several people will leave for the hospital from this event. In 2008, there was an article in the Sydney Herald. You might wonder why. It's because competitors come from all over the world, and Australia is no exception.

And this article described the sport as, quote, 20 young men chasing cheese off a cliff and tumbling 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital. The article writer actually competed himself, and he said that looking down the hill was like looking down a black diamond ski slope with no snow. And so they line the course with giant hay bales to keep cheese from clobbering spectators, because it would be like getting hit in the face with a bowling ball. And they also, like the local rugby team will volunteer to stand at the bar.

bottom of the hill and like catch people as they hit the finish line. According to one local paper I found, the highest injury toll in recent years occurred in 1997 when 33 competitors were treated for everything from splinters to broken bones. And in 2005, races were delayed as ambulances delivered victims to the local hospital before returning to wait for the next batch of casualties. So because of all this, the event was officially canceled in 20, 2010. Until then, it was held by like the county. But it's been held unofficially ever since because the people want their cheese rolling. You can't take cheese rolling away from the people. You really can't. Though even the cheese rollers did postpone the game this year in May due to

the pandemic. So kudos to the cheese rollers. A wildly irresponsible bunch for being responsible about this one thing. The first few unofficial races actually used fake foam cheeses to make it safer, which totally changed the gameplay because in theory you're trying to chase the cheese. You're trying to catch it. But the winner, usually historically, has always been the person who just crosses the finish line first because the cheese always beats people to the finish line. It's going at 70 miles per hour.

So once you have this lighter foam cheese, it was like more. bouncing back and forth down the hill and the person who caught it actually wasn't even at the front of the race. He just happened to intercept the cheese. However, it now seems based on videos of how the cheese rolls down, like real cheese is probably used again. But explicit discussion of said cheese is kind of vague online, which is understandable because the police keep telling the cheese makers that they might be liable for injuries. Wow. And that's everything I have to say about cheese rolling because there really isn't anything more to it than that. But I find it fascinating. And I think the history and variety of human sport is a fascinating subject. And we do

get into that in the play issue. We do not talk about cheese rolling in the play issue. Tragically. I can't believe we didn't include it. But Sarah, I am really curious about how it came up in your AP Chem class. Yes. I'm so intrigued by what the connection was there. Yeah, so actually, now that I think about it, it was our junior year because at my high school, if you took an AP class, like most of them are for seniors. And once your AP test was done, they were basically just like, if you're a senior, like, just stop coming. Like, we don't care anymore.

Just you're not going to do anything. And so anyone who was like a junior in the AP classes had to stay, but they would like, the teachers would like make up some activity, like a fun activity for. you to do from the time of the test until the end of the school year. So my AP chemistry teacher had us like get into groups and do these like like basically fun little projects that had to do tangentially with chemistry. And so my groups was about the chemistry of cheese making. As I recall, we attempted to make ricotta cheese, which went quite badly. Oh, no. That's like the easiest cheese. It is the easiest cheese. We still, I think we tried to do it like without a thermometer.

You shouldn't do it without a thermometer. It's very hard. And I think in the process of trying to find videos about cheese to serve as like B roll for our presentation, we found cheese rolling. And I just thought it was such an insane endeavor to look at this like, like we, I assume we'll post a video on popsight.com because truly it's incredible to watch grown men and women, I think, but possibly only men are foolish enough to do it. Like line up at the top of truly a cliff. It's so steep they can't even really stand on it. And then they roll cheese down. Like, no one is ever going to beat the cheese to the bottom. So it's just, it's insane from start to finish.

And yet, yet there is always the hope that one might beat the cheese. Yeah. Also, I have a note on the male versus female competitors thing. So for now, the races are mostly male, but there is a ladies race. And at least according to that article in the Sydney Herald and a couple of other articles I read, the women's race, almost everyone competes by sliding down, like, like scuttering down on their butts because it is like, that's the smart way to do it. It's a very steep hill. And it is pure machismo hubris that makes one think that the best

way to win is just barreling down. People literally knock themselves unconscious. The guy who won in 2019 was like, this is so much better than last year when I knocked myself. out. It's wild. I mean, because when you're running downhill, I can't condone it. Yeah, it's just how do you not go completely ass over elbow? Yeah, I have a friend of a friend who does like downhill mountain foot races, so literally just running as fast as you can down a mountain. And I was like, how do you not fall and break your ankle?

And the answer was a lot of people do. So yeah, you know, why do we do? anything. I mean, all sports are a little ridiculous in the end, right? Cheese rolling. Why do we do anything? I mean, they're all fundamentally made up, so, yeah. That's true. The sports I made up for my quiz should exist. Not all of them should, but the squash one definitely should. Yeah, for sure. I will be trying to start that sport. All right, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with more fun facts. Okay, we're back. And Corinne, why don't you tell us about some bones?

Ah, yes. Yes, some bones. So I'm going to start with something that I know is just going to completely blow everybody's minds. And it's with the notion that baseball players are some pretty superstitious dudes. I recall Jess doing a whole segment about baseball superstitions. Yes. And, you know, it touches things like curses, but it goes down to, in-game rituals, before game rituals, but also just stuff that they do with their equipment. And there's probably, obviously, no more hallowed piece of equipment in baseball than the bat that a player uses. And picking a bat is a pretty big deal. Some players, like there's one guy who played for the Kansas City Royals for a long time who only swung one bat reportedly, his

entire professional career. But some people just go completely bat crazy. There was a Seattle Marriter named Brett Boone, who reportedly had something or somewhere around 200 bats in the clubhouse with him. So you pick your bat, you pick your 200 bats. But once players have their bat, they are, to varying degrees, meticulous about the care and maintenance and breaking in of their bats. And there's a whole wide range of things that they do, which we will get into later. But in the history of the game, there is one bat maintenance tradition that really seems to have stuck around. And it is something called bone rubbing. No, I know.

I know. We'll just take a minute and let that sit in. We'll get all the adolescent jokes out of our brains really quickly. Okay. It's really important for your baseball bat maintenance. Yes. Okay. Do lots of bone rubbing.

Okay. Whatever you say. What this means is that players and sometimes equipment managers will take a big old bone, very often a cow femur, sometimes a pork hawk or something like that, and they will rub it along the barrel of the bat. Now, players still do this. There's an article in the Washington Post about a cow femur that was in the Washington Nationals Clubhouse. Babe Ruth did it. Mickey Mantle did it. there's actually a somewhat famous photo of Joe DiMaggio pressing his Louisville slugger against

what appears to be a cow femur. And yes, of course, there isn't always a good reason why an athlete will do something where their rituals come from, but there is a little bit of a reason behind why someone would do this. And the idea is that rubbing the exterior of the bat compresses, the outermost cells of the wood, and it helps flatten out and smooth the surface. So if you've boned a bat thoroughly and correctly, it actually almost looks like it has a semi-gloss finish on it. Oh, interesting. So I couldn't really figure out when anybody started doing this or why,

but it seems to have something to do with the fact that early on baseball bats were made almost exclusively out of ash, which isn't the hardest wood in the world. It is, it's hard. It's not like you're swinging balsa wood or something like that. But the surface of it, when you take it off the lathe, you end up with all of these little microcuts and fissures and things like that. And they basically make the surface of the bat less hard, but also more vulnerable to breakage over time. So by boning the bat and smoothing out those outer layers, the notion is that you're going to have a harder hitting surface, which is great for that wonderful pop sound, but also those big, big home run hits. And you're also just going to hopefully increase the longevity of the bat. Now, of course, I went to go see if there was science behind any of this.

Science. Science, you say. Science in the baseball. Code hood a thunk. So we reached out, and when I say we, I actually mean our former intern, Molly Glick, at my urging when we first discovered this practice, reached out to a dude named Sam Lloyd, who runs the sports science lab at Washington State University. And they test all kinds of sports equipment there, but it's where baseball bats and balls and all manner of equipment go to get rated. They have all of this really cool advanced physics looking into how all these things work. And if they're safe and if they meet the standards of the sport. So, Professor Lloyd says, the effects are small and complex. Wood is porous, so increasing the density would also increase strength. By this argument, boning would make the bat stronger. Boning that increases surface hardness might delay flaking a little. Boning that increases surface damage might encourage flaking.

So what's important to realize here is that you can bone a bat incorrectly and make problems worse. So you've got to be really careful. You always want to bone carefully. Always bone carefully. It's just sound life advice, for sure. Because if you end up making these cracks worse, then moisture gets in. And moisture plus wood equals bigger cracks and all kinds of other bad things. Now, when has a lack of certainty ever stopped a baseball player from doing anything,

let alone baseball bat manufacturers from capitalizing on the, notions that people have and the lore surrounding their bats. So decades ago, Louisville Slugger marketed baseball bats that were stamped bone rubbed, but eventually they changed the moniker to powerized. And big bat manufacturers today, including a Louisiana company named Marucci that we talk about in the play issue, still can have actually built boning into their production lines and used it as a tool to help sell the bats. And a lot of them are still doing it manually, but again, you have to be careful when you're doing things like this manually because you can screw it up. So now naturally, people try to automate it. Rawlings owns a patent for a bat bone

rubbing robot. And their contraption uses computerized controls to carefully rotate the bat and apply even pressure from the bone across the bat surface. A few years ago, Louisville Slugger launched a new line called the MLB Prime, whose finishing stages hearken back to bone rubbing but aren't exactly bone rubbing. They basically have created a really intense polisher that applies something around 500 pounds of pressure to compress the grain and flatten the hitting surface. This is a good point for me to point out that it's, doesn't actually have to be a bone. I was just going to say, are they for real still using like

a legit bone? Because that just seems like not the optimal tool. So it doesn't have to be a bone. It just needs to be something that's harder than the bat itself. So if a bone's not available, people use the edge of a sink or a toilet. People have been seen using... You got to toilet your bat. I mean, if I'm not going to bone my bat, I'm going to use it on the crapper. Um, It really just, it can even actually be a wood that's harder than the wood of the bat. All that matters is that it's harder than the surface you're trying to compress. But here's the really crazy part that this is a thing that's still happening is that players don't even use predominantly ash bats anymore. They've pretty much all switched over to maple, which is a much harder wood to begin with.

So if you're concerned about increasing the surface hardness. and we're already using a harder wood, then does it really still even matter? Of course, again, when has that stopped anyone? Baseball lore dies super hard. And I mean, we could go down a whole other rabbit hole talking about the differences between maple bats and ash bats and how everybody switching to maple bats is really Barry Bond's fault

because he was using a maple bat when he broke the home run record. He was also using steroids, but we don't really need to talk about that right now. But it was definitely the maple bat. It was 100%. 100%. So but of course he started this trend and everybody switched to maple. And because of the grain structure of maple, those bats break differently than ash bats, but in a very dangerous shrapnel, like eye gouging kind of way.

So Major League Baseball commissioned a study and they basically said, we used to think that we had to hit the edge grain of a bat, which is where the grains of a wood look like tiny little layers. It turns out with a maple bat you want to hit it on the face grain, which is the oval part. So now that they've basically reoriented the way people are holding maple bats, they're a lot less dangerous. And it turns out it's easier to get maple because there was a pest called the Emerald Ash Borer that really decimated the ash trees, which people pretty much started using just because they basically grew like weeds and they were everywhere. But anyway, that's the Maple Bat digression. but again, you're never going to stop players from doing what they do. So I just wanted to close with a quick sampling of other stuff

that players have been known to do to their bats in order to increase their performance. All of these things are totally legal, by the way. The rules of Major League Baseball only stipulate that a bat has to be solid wood and of a certain length and that the pine tar, which is the stuff that you, or anything that you put on the grip, can't extend past a certain point. and anything you want to do to the surface of it that doesn't leave any sort of really icky residue or anything like that is totally legit. So here we go. Obviously, players love and adore their bats.

They kiss them, they bring them to church to have them blessed, they snuggle with them in bed, they store them in climate-controlled humodores, they treat them with alcohol and tobacco juice with motor oil. One minor league or one time even rubbed his with Jack in the box sauce. and it ended a slump, so then his whole team started doing it. Oh, my God. And of course, because why not? You're using a cowbone. Why not rub it down with some manure? And I actually saw one report.

Yes, delicious, delightful, yummy. One player even took his pet to the doctor and had it injected with cortisone. I can't answer. I have no answer for that, Sarah. I have an unrelated question. That's totally fine. I am out of weird things. I mean, I'm not out of weird things that people do with that, but that's where I'm going to cut this off.

Okay. So has anyone written a book or movie where a player becomes obsessed with, like, rubbing his bat with the bones of his enemies? Oh, my God. That's brilliant. Like, another human. Like, maybe, yeah. Oh, my God. Like, the bat absorbs their powers.

Right. Or at least he thinks so. Because, I mean, if somebody thinks that Jack of the Buck sauce gave their bat special powers, I in no way believe that there has never been a baseball player who is like, I need some human bones for my bat. I bet it's happened before. Wow. That's like a dark, dark version of Bull Durham that I think I want to see now. I think so.

They do mention bone rubbing in The Natural, which is a movie with Robert Redford. It's based on a book. I forgot about that. He's talking about his bat named Wonderboy. he's describing an exquisite detail all of the things that he did when he made this bat. And he said, and I boned it so it wouldn't chip, which out of context is something. And I boned it. Wow.

Amazing. Endless jokes. Thank you for all of that. I'm really proud of how I didn't laugh the entire time. There was no giggling. None. We're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with Sarah's fact. Okay, we're back.

And Sarah, you have a wall cleaner with a fun twist. Indeed. Indeed, I do. So we've got to start by rewinding to the 1920s. And just reminding everyone that in the 20s, oil heating had really only just become like a viable way to heat your house, which means that most people are using coal furnaces, which is a little bit crazy that it was only in the 20s that people were still using coal inside of their homes. And the thing about coal, you might know, is that it produces a lot of soot. And the soot gets everywhere. It just floats around in the air and then it likes to settle on things. And that's

especially a problem. Like if you were not very well off, you probably didn't have, like if you were rich, you maybe had one coal heater for your whole house. But if you were not so well off, you maybe had like a little furnace in every room. So that's a lot of sit. And it creates a pretty decent market for cleaning products to get that soot off of your walls, especially because back then you probably had wallpaper, and wallpaper back then was made of paper. And you can't really wash paper very easily. So it was pretty hard to get all that soot off of your walls. So that brings us to 1933, which is when Kroger grocery stores. I did not realize that Kroger was this old, but Kroger grocery stores asked the Kutal, K-U-T-O-L products company, which was Cincinnati-based.

A products company. A products, you know, the Kut-L products company. Yeah, they made soap and other cleaning products. I'm not sure why it wasn't the Kut-all cleaning company or something like that. But Kroger asked Kut-all to make them some kind of product to get the sit off of wallpaper. and that task fell to Cleo and Noah McVicker, who were brothers working at the same company. And what they came up with was basically flour, water, salt, boric acid, and mineral oil. And they mix these things into kind of a dough.

And that seemed to do the job surprisingly well. I'm not really sure how they ended up with like what's basically like almost dough to make pie dough. but instead of butter, it's boric acid. But it was a good thing for Cutall because they were not doing well at the time. And when they invented this wallpaper cleaner, it actually sold incredibly well and like saved the business. So Cutall made a comeback. And they sold this cleaner like prolifically until about the 1950s. And then they ran into kind of a problem, which was that after World War II, oil and gas heaters became way more popular. So people weren't using coal and they didn't have soot in their houses, which was a great thing for the people, but not great for Cutall. Also, wallpaper stopped

being actual paper. They invented vinyl wallpaper. I did not know that a lot of wallpaper today is vinyl, but apparently it is. And it's very easy to wash because it's basically just like a thin sheet of plastic. So you can wash it and rub it and it's not going to fall apart like regular paper. So now Cuttle has another problem, which is that basically the only product that they sell really well is essentially irrelevant. And by 1955, the company is like going under, headed for bankruptcy. And Joseph McFicker, who was Cleo's son, is like desperately trying to turn the business around. They basically stop manufacturing the wallpaper cleaner altogether because nobody has any use for it anymore. And then one day, Joe's sister-in-law, K. Zufel, I'm not really sure,

asked, had he ever thought about using the wallpaper cleaner as a children? children's toy because Kay was a nursery school teacher and apparently she'd seen an article in like a local newspaper about using this doughy substance as a kind of modeling clay. I couldn't, I searched for this article. I could not find it. I don't know what person suggested a cleaning product as something that children should play with. I mean, it was the better living through chemistry days. Yeah, people were very trusting. play with anything. Yeah. So I don't know if the person who wrote that original article knew, like, that the dough was safe or not, but Kay, being related to the owners of Cudall, I actually knew that it was, like, probably fine. And she tried it out with her little students, and they

freaking loved it. So she convinced Joe to come to her classroom and see how much all these kids enjoyed playing with it, even though it was just like a white, doughy ball of mush. And since he had literally nothing better to do with his company, he was like, well, we're going to pivot to just making this dough, but we're going to take out the boric acid, which is the cleansing agent. So it's basically now just water, flour, and salt, very safe for children to be playing with. And then in 1956, he created the Rainbow Crafts Company as a subsidiary of cut all products, and they started making Play-Doh. Wow. It's Play-Doh. hard to guess I know a dough-like substance.

Joe wanted to call it rainbow modeling compound, which really speaks to... One a dork. Yeah. That just converts right into a snappy TV jingle. Yeah. I think the McVickers were a very literal people, the Cutall Products Company modeling compound. But fortunately, Kay and her husband knew better and came up with the name Play-Doh, which was a lot more kid-friendly. So it started coming out in the 1950s.

It was originally available in just like red, yellow, and blue and like really only being marketed to kids in the greater Cincinnati area because it was like a pretty small company. And then Joe was able to convince Bob Keishan. I'm sure I'm not saying that correctly either. But you might know him as Captain Kangaroo. I don't know him as Captain Kangaroo because that was before my time. I'm vaguely familiar with him as Captain Kangaroo. Yeah, I knew of Captain Kangaroo, but if I'm being honest, I thought he was a kangaroo, for sure, which makes sense, you know, Captain Crunch, Captain Kangaroo, they felt related somehow in my head. Anyway, Captain Gangaroo was a kid's show that ran on CBS from 1955 to 1984, if you don't know that, like I did not.

But he convinced Captain Kangaroo to play with Plato on his TV show, and now they had this massive national audience, and all of a sudden, Rainbow Crafts has, like, they could barely keep up with the demeanor. for their Play-Doh. And like the rest is history. In the 60s, they invented the fun factory where you could like extrude like little spaghetti shapes and stuff like that. And they ruined carpets everywhere. They did. They did. And Plato became like basically ubiquitous. They got bought by General Mills in 1972 and then Hasbro brought them in 1991. And they still make it today. And it's like almost exactly the same formulation. It's pretty much just flower, water, insults and it's uh it's in the national toy hall of fame which i didn't know was a thing but it got inducted in 1998 and that's the story of plato well we've all learned a lot what was the weirdest thing

we learned this week i mean all the boning stuff for me was the bone i learned so much about the boning the boning was fun for sure but i feel like i think for me it was it had to be one of the sports because like I already knew that baseball players were ridiculous and so many of the sports world for you of underwater ice hockey and toe wrestling I mean the things people will come up with and just decide like this is going to be a game now this stupid thing that we just came up with right now this is a game forever yeah like yeah and all you have to do is keep insisting that it's fun and people should gather and do it and before you know it you have a Wikipedia page about how your stupid thing is a sport. That's my understanding of toe wrestling.

Yeah. Like, shin kicking. Like, so my vote is, again, for like the weird sports that Rachel didn't make up, which includes the aggregate of the cheese rolling and all of the other true facts. I guess this is like the podcast voting equivalent of a sub-tweet. But yeah, there's just some utterly bizarre stuff in there that cannot go unacknowledged. Yeah, I agree. Well, I'm, I'm glad you enjoyed it. And weirdos, we will be back very soon with season four for you. In the meantime, send us your voice memos, talk to us on Facebook and Twitter, and stay safe, happy, well, and weird. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. 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,

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