The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Boob Backwash, Nighttime Radio Secrets, 10 Toes Down on Tommy

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Sarah Dern and Emma Gommetz join Rachel this week to talk a trio of extra weird things. We've got babies spitting backwash into the boob, radio's biggest op being literal "night", and a gender-bending squirrel beloved by military veterans named Tommy Tucker. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tweet at us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to learn more about all of our stories! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to Jess' Twitch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to all of Jess' content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.jesscapricorn.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Jess Boddy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Popular Science: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/PopSci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme music by Billy Cadden: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thanks to our Sponsors Listeners of our show get an additional 35% discount when they go to https://SMILESET.com/weirdest Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at https://MINTMOBILE.com/weirdest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if doctors could detect Alzheimer's before symptoms appear or treat cancer with unprecedented precision? On the new season of Tomorrow's Cure, the chart topping and 2025 Amby Award finalist podcast from Mayo Clinic, we explore how breakthroughs like these are already reshaping the future of healthcare. I'm Lindsay Siever, the new host of Tomorrow's Cure. And this season, I'm joined by leading physicians, researchers, and Mayo Clinic experts exploring everything from AI-powered diagnostics to precision cancer treatments. Follow tomorrow's cure, wherever you get your podcasts. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week.

And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of popular science. I'm Rachel Fultman. And I'm Emma. And I'm Sarah Dern. Sarah and Emma, welcome to the show.

It's so great to have you both. Thank you so much for having us. I'm so excited. Me too. So it's been a while since we had two people who are separate individuals, not here, together, as a pair, who are both having their first appearance ever on Weirdest Thing, which is very exciting. Emma, why do we start with a little bit about who you are, what your deal is? You do some really cool stuff that I would love our listeners to know about.

Wow, yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah, I'm a newsletter editor at Scientific American. Before that, I was a digital producer at the show Science Friday. And I also love to do experimental theater in the city. We haven't talked about that yet, and we must. Yeah, that's, those tend to be like my three things. like on my website and whatever.

Well, something for a later date. And yeah, listeners, this is your periodic reminder. I also host Science Quickly at Scientific American. You should check it out. It's great. Speaking of other shows, you should check out. Sarah, welcome. Would you tell our listeners about you?

Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Sarah Dern. I'm an editor at Popular Science, where I edit our Ask Us Anything column, which is basically exactly what it sounds like. readers send us their weirdest, most wonderfully random questions, and then we track down the answers. So things like, how do airplane toilets work? Why are most people right-handed? Were there ever

venomous dinosaurs? I also get to host Popular Sciences Ask Us Anything Podcasts where we spend about 15 minutes obsessing over one gloriously weird question from the week with scientists and experts. So, yeah, essentially I get paid to fall down internet rabbit, holes. Yes. That is that is the job that I'm here to do. Aren't we all? Hopefully we all. I loved to ask us anything, you know, back when it was started a few years ago and listeners, you might remember I did a few episodes. I think we even dropped some episodes in the feed, which hopefully we'll do again sometime soon. But yeah, I'm really psyched that it that it's back up. And there's definitely another great spot to hear weird.

interesting things if you're a weird curious person, which of course, all of our listeners are. So I hope everybody will go re-emerse themselves and ask us anything. Yes, please, please go listen. It's a fun kind of shorter format than this. And it's, it's a fun ride. Yeah, absolutely. So let's dive in to this rabbit hole today. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a tease about some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, writing.

reporting, 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, except there's no winner anymore. Haven't been for a long time. We don't do that anymore. It's fine.

Should I rewrite the whole intro? No, because at this point, it's a bit. The listeners can decide who their personal winner was. Exactly. And I'd not tell us. Exactly. Leave it in the comments. Feel free to scream within your heart, inside your heart.

heart about who the winner is. Emma, would you share your tease for your story this episode? Yeah, my tease is that eclipses affect radio communication. What? Eclipse's effect radio communication? What's going on with that? The moon. She crazy. Respect her. Sarah, what's your tease? Okay, so my tease is that during World War II, the U.S. government enlisted the help of a dress wearing squirrel. His name was Tommy Tucker, and he even did radio appearances with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wow. Tommy.

Tommy. Tommy. I know we've, like now I'm, we've done a couple of things about weird, weird squirrels and presidents on this show. Really? Is there more than one? Oh. I only know Tommy. There was a, there was a.

some there was like a pet squirrel situation. I had a whole episode with Grant O'Brien and Lily Do from Dropout where I ended up just doing a weird quiz for them about, I guess it was, the idea was that it was all like historical gossip, but it ended up having a lot of stuff about weird presidential pets. There were some squirrels there. So anyway, I'm like, maybe Tommy's briefly appeared on the show before, but I'm excited to hear more about him. He's definitely deserving.

of a full episode. Oh, for sure. My tease is that I want to talk about why breastfeeding babies literally shoot their saliva back into your boobs. Hey, that's crazy. That's just just calling that out. What? I was thinking about the video you did for Mother's Day about this horrifying mom facts when I was doing this one. I would say they were scary baby facts. That's true. Moms of superheroes and babies is very terrifying. Thank you.

Yeah. No, that is valid. So I'll jump in with this. This fact is the first one in a while that's come from my husband Oliver, and he sent me this. And I was like, I already know this. Obviously, you know me when I found out I was having a child and was going to be trying to breastfeed them.

I obviously read all the literature. But he keeps being like, this is such a good fact. You should share it. And I'm like, you're not wrong. I just don't want like every episode to be about how I have a new baby. But he's right. It's a really good fact. So thank you, Oliver.

So I will say, I know lately I've had a bad habit of doing a fact and being like, besides this fact, here's everything interesting I'll learn about the subject today. But I am going to start with a little breakdown of human breast milk because it really is a very weird thing. and it really is a super food. But then before I get into that, I need a brief aside, because I'm going to say that, yes, there's a lot of research on the incredible benefits of breast milk. And it's great to have as much of a baby's early food be breast milk as possible.

However, health and wellness are extremely multifactorial. And for babies who are, you know, generally in good situations with caregivers who are doing their best, we're not talking about massive margins of difference in outcome. And then even when we're talking about that, we're talking about averages across a population. So yes, it's true that any amount of breastfeeding or donor breast milk you can manage for a kid is worth pursuing. But if no amount of that is possible because like no one in your family lactates or your kid is allergic to human breast milk, which is extremely rare, but possible.

Much more common is that your kid's body decides you shouldn't be eating dairy for some reason, which is what happened to me. But again, this can happen. You may need to stop for the sake of your physical or mental health. That is really fine and potentially even the best choice for the baby, not just for you. Breast milk is amazing, but it's hard to say what, you know, sort of magical incremental improvement in your child's life might have occurred if they got a few more months of antibodies and fats and whatnot from breast milk as opposed to formula. And it's a lot easier to say what is going wrong because you are a miserable self-life.

dilating sleep-deprived, bleeding nippled zombie? So like, breast milk is a superfood, but so is kale, and I'm currently avoiding that due to the exploding poop parasite. So, you know, be kind to yourself. Formula is an incredible innovation. And if you're feeding your kid, you're doing great. So with all that said, yeah, it's good. Now, keeping that front of mind, I am going to say breast milk, incredible, 10 out of 10, in a world of very unintelligent designs that evolution has given us like, oh boy, great work here, except for the whole me not being allowed to eat cheese for like an indefinite period of time and no one can tell me when that's going to be over.

I do have complaints about that being a thing that can happen, but otherwise it's really cool. So how does it work? Inside the breast, there are these lobes made up of alveoli, which sounds too much like ravioli, but it's a bunch of, they look like a bunch of grapes and they're full of these specialized cells called lactocytes. and they're surrounded by blood capillaries.

And everything that goes into breast milk diffuses from the blood right into the lactocytes. And then they secrete it out into those lobes that I talked about. And then there are the milk ducks, which are these really teeny tiny pathways that the milk travels down. And when the nerves in the areola, which is the dark circle around the nipple, get stimulated, then the 20 or so pores in the nipple secrete milk. It's a really cool system and it's all triggered by this very complex hormone, you know, ebb and flow. The composition of milk actually changes in the hours and days and weeks after giving birth to continue being functionally a perfect food for the baby in question.

Though caveat, you need to have enough vitamins and calories and water, so much water, more water than you ever thought you would need for your body to have the stuff it needs to make that. So feed yourself and drink so much water. Other cool things about breast milk, your diet, it is a myth that like eating farty foods makes your baby fart. Justice for girls who eat cabbage, okay? But diet does impact the taste of breast milk. And research suggests that it helps babies develop their palate, which is cool. Did researchers have to taste a bunch of breast milk?

There was at least one study in the 70s where they did like have a tasting panel, you know, examine some breast milk. There is also a dropout.tv video where Jordan blind taste tests some breast milk and correctly identifies which of her friends produced each one, which, you know, very impressive. The human body is so incredible. Yeah, the human body is incredible. But yeah, no, it's giving this baby information about sort of the world they're coming up into, which is very cool. And speaking of sharing that information, breast milk also carries a lot of microbes and even antibodies for stuff that a baby has recently encountered. Research shows that immune factors in breast milk go up when a baby is sick, even if the person feeding them is not sick themselves. So the big question is, how does the boob know?

It keeps the hot stuff hot and the cold stuff cold. How does it know? enter this thing called retrograde duct flow, aka baby backwash. It's really funny. I've seen several articles about this and discussions about it on like run it and stuff where they're like, oh my gosh, once you learn it, you can't unknow it. Yikes. And I'm like, it's really, sorry, in the world of like gross body stuff that happens when you

get pregnant and give birth to a child and then like take care of that child and all of inputs and outputs. Like, I don't, this doesn't freak me out too much. If it does, that's valid. If it freaks you out, that's okay. But it is happening. We do know that this happens. So when an infant suckles, they're using their tongue to create a vacuum to just like hoover milk out of the ducks. But that suckling also creates negative pressure that like pulls some milk and saliva back into the nipple. We first saw this on ultrasound and then it was confirmed. in MRI studies and actually side note, I will link

on Popside.com slash weird to a 2020 study with a really adorable image of a baby getting their hearing protection like swaddled onto their head before a real-time MRI. Probably the coziest MRI in existence since they were nursing through it.

But they did have to protect those baby ears. And we know that this results in an exchange of microbes because that's how Thresh happens. Thresh is one of the sort of like horrifying complaints that a breastfeeding person can have. And it happens because a baby has yeast overgrowth in their mouth and then that infects the breast. Thankfully, very treatable, but like a very unpleasant situation. And apparently this was a thing back when, back in the day

when syphilis was rampant in Europe. This was a big problem for wet nurses because like they'd nurse some rich lady's baby and the baby would have congenital syphilis. And then the wet nurse would get sick, which could send us down a whole sidebar about the use of animal wet nurses for human babies. But I will show restraint for today. That's going to be a different episode. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I've just, so many boxes have been unopened so far. I have so many questions. I've like not sure when to talk. Oh, I mean, please, jump in. Do you have questions? I am happy to try to answer that. Sorry. So you can't eat cheese because of breast? I was about to ask, like, why. Yeah. So there's a thing where a lot of babies have basically a reaction to cow milk proteins or soy or

egg weight are also ones that come up. So the breast milk doesn't like directly transfer your food to the baby, which is why eating farty foods doesn't make your baby farty. And in fact, there is like a protective mechanism where the way the milk is structured, it keeps certain proteins that the baby might react to from like actually coming into contact with their gut during the digestion process. But it's not perfect. And sometimes a baby will react to some of those food proteins that are in the mom's milk that have made their way into the milk by way of the mom's blood from what the mom has been

eating. And my kid, it's not a dire situation. it's not like a serious allergic reaction. That can happen is way less common, but can happen and is, you know, a very serious issue. In my case, it just, you know, turns my kid into even more of a little uptruck machine than baseline. And it was unpleasant enough for him and for us that it was worth it for me to try eliminating dairy. And unfortunately, that does have an impact. So, yeah, you know, at some point, we will.

We'll reintroduce it, but for now, that's just my cross to bear is that I am avoiding most dairy so that my kid will be less puky, letting a man tell me what to eat. Never thought I'd see the day, but here we are. Wow. I didn't even know that was a thing. And I'm. Yeah. I had to eat so much cheese when it's done. I hope you gorge on dairy when the time.

You know. And it was kind of good because as somebody with a chronic illness and a lot of sort of vague problems, eliminating dairy is one of those things that people periodically suggest is maybe it's going to fix your entire life. And I'm here to report, it didn't. So I've got to feel good. Hey. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So would have loved it if finally being forced to give up cheese had made my body just be right. But no. So looking forward to getting back into butter one day in the future. But yeah, no, there are, and like I said, very, very rare, but there are babies who just have an allergic reaction to breast milk itself. So, you know, they have to be on formula. I think there is some debate about, you know, how often things that are sort of diagnosed as and treated as the baby reacting to the breast milk are actually, you know, there's something that the breastfeeding parent is eating. but elimination diets are hard and, you know, potentially triggering and potentially bad for your health

in any circumstance, you know, least of all when you have to ingest a bunch of extra calories to be nursing. So it's just not always feasible. And sometimes switching to a formula that the baby, you know, tolerates well is just a good solution. In my case, we actually figured out that this was happening when we tried to start incorporating some formula because he was just such a hungry, hungry hippo. But unfortunately, the level of dairy in the formula then, like, made him so puky that we were like, uh-oh, maybe we need to investigate this. And, you know, we, here we are. Wow. What a journey. It is, it's a journey. It's a journey. It's a journey. Okay. But, Okay, you're going to tell us more about a spit-up into the boob.

Yes, yeah. Spit-up makes it sound like throw. We're talking about too many different kinds of bodily functions. That's what happens if you have a baby. It's all just, all-spits. It's all everywhere all the time. Yeah. So there was this study on mice to sort of look into whether this baby backwash is

what is giving the breastfeeding parents body information about what antibodies to produce. Fortunately, mouse pups also backwash while nursing, so that, you know, facilitates these studies. And they basically exposed mice to a couple of different viruses and did a bunch of different configurations of like switching pups and moms around and other stuff to eliminate various means by which antibodies could be getting introduced into a mama mouse's body. And they were able to show that the backwash saliva during nursing was the mechanism by which this was how to have. happening that was leading to this uptick in the antibodies in the milk that was being produced. Now, there's also this pathway that scientists study where the breastfeeding parents' gut

is creating, you know, all of the antibodies it tends to create and that it's reacting to fluids from the baby that don't necessarily come in during breastfeeding, that, you know, the babies produce a lot of fluids and you get exposed to them. Obviously, there's communication happening between the lactating person's body and the baby's body in more ways than one. You know, probably both of these pathways are happening and are important. However, there is evidence that breast milk straight from the breast as opposed to pumped has the most diverse microbiome. So, you know, does kind of suggest that there's some, you know, important sort of cellular communication happening here. Now, to be clear, not only do I now pump because I have to work, gross, but I actually

exclusively pumped for the first few weeks of my kid's life and then have always primarily pumped since then. I had an emergency C-section. It was a whole doozy. And then my kid got really spoiled in the NICU. And so he was like an adorable little idiot about latching for a long time despite grueling effort and a lot of outside intervention. So if you're listening to this and feeling bad about yourself because you pump, are

you saying I should feel bad about myself? No, I don't think you want me to feel bad. So be nice to yourself. We should all feel bad about ourselves. Okay. That's something that's really important we know. It's true. I have other things to feel bad about myself. But yeah, that's what we know right now about this sort of baby backwash thing. It's crazy. It's just sort of another example of how wild the human body is. And I'm I think this was under research for a long time, and now they're researchers who are looking much more closely, and so I'm excited to see what more that will learn. But yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot personally because we are currently on the daycare speed

run of childhood illnesses. And yeah, I will say even as somebody who, you know, had to pump instead of physically breastfeeding, I have always tried to like get a as much as I can and, you know, now even more so. And I'm sort of, I sort of treat it as like, you know, letting him get his notes into the kitchen. Like, like I, you know, I would like him to be able to request his, his menu for the day. And yeah, I think it's like, it's as much as I think it's so important to that people understand that fed is best and that like parents need to be healthy and well and well rested in order for kids to be good and all set. You know, I also think it's great to sort of reframe these discussions of like how

amazingly beneficial, you know, X, Y, or Z is as being like, okay, so then what support can people get to incorporate some of that, you know, doesn't have to be all or nothing. And a lot of things when we talk about parenting and especially giving birth to a child and, you know, being that caregiver role, I think there's a lot of like all or nothing conversations and people get very dogmatic and very like defensive. And maybe we should just all revel in how amazing it is that this baby backwash exists. Think about what we can learn from the fact that this mechanism exists. and like how scientists can harness that to like benefit babies that aren't on the boob all the time. Yeah, that's just what I think. I don't know.

But yeah, that's my fact about the backwash. I've been so sick. Oh, no. Wait, I have a question about the backwash. Yeah, please. Not to like immediately put a value judgment on anything, but I'm worried I miss something about it. Is the backwash like considered good or bad or is the fact that it simply exists? So it is almost certainly good.

Yay. The mouse study was basically, you know, trying to show that this sort of uptick in antibodies we see that is definitely good because that's like when people talk about breast milk having on these antibodies and it like protecting a baby while their immune system is still on the come up that we're like, how does the body know? We know where there's antibodies come from. They come from the body making the milk. But, like I said, it can also be a transfer pathway for pathogens, but so can everything else.

You're cleaning this baby's poop. So, yeah, I think I would say that it seems to be a net good. That's so cool. That reminds me of, like, how the taste testers were able to correctly identify whose breast milk it was. It's like, I feel like there are so many senses that consciously you don't pick up on that you have. And I think it's so neat that, like, your breast and the baby's mouth, or like having their own separate conversation, like without either knowing about it.

Yeah. No, I read this when I was researching for this. I read this essay in The Stranger that I'll link to you in our article for the episode on Popside.com slash weird where she said like it's my, the milk is like telling my baby a story about the world that the baby has come into and like what it needs to be in that world, you know.

This is a world where we eat kimchi and that's good. And this is a world where people get the flu. And that is what it is. And there was something, oh, there was another aspect in there that I've just remembering now. I think there's research showing that if you eat animal protein at any time in your life and then become vegetarian, there's research that there are still like particular amino acids or some other cellular aspect. but I will link to this essay that will show up in your breast milk. So it's like there's stuff from your deep past, deep in the lore that your breast milk is communicating to the baby, which again, just so wild. And I'm like, I don't know, my lore is not all good.

But we'll do what we can. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts. Okay, we're back. And Emma, let's talk about eclipses. what's the moon up to? What does she do? Yeah. So I found out, so I was doing some reporting on the 2024 eclipse. I was like doing a newsletter for it. I was excited. And I go to NASA's website to look into like, oh, like maybe

there's some clips related citizen science. And I saw that there was this project about ham radio and like ham radio operators. And I was like, what do you mean by that? Like what would ham radio operators have to do with? Other than chit chat about the eclipse. Yeah, with like, like the behaviors of the moon, like that confused me. So I looked into it and I discovered that like NASA as well as like other, you know, universities and organizations are looking into how eclipses affect radio because eclipses affect this layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere irregularly. And the best way to figure out how is by testing how radio signals, maybe not the best way,

but one way to figure out how is that to test how radio signals bounce off of the ionosphere. And so the kind of intro to this, which I also didn't know, which is crazy, is that nighttime affects radio signals. Just the night. Yes, the night. I don't know why like Batman came into my brain. I'm just like Batman's around. The radio is weird. Exactly.

Exactly. Well, okay, so turns out that AM radio, it operates on a specific frequency, a medium frequency, I think is what it is, where at night it travels much farther. And so it's a local radio situation during the day, but then at night, when the ionosphere is diminished, and we'll talk about what that means in a second, those radio waves can travel significantly farther. And so at night, if you're careful, you can tune in and listen to like, AM radio stations from a.m. radio stations from a.m. the country. Like nighttime does have this special feeling where like you're driving in a car and you turn on a radio station. You're like, why have I never heard this before? Like, where am I right now? That's real. That is because of physics. Wow. Yeah. And so they actually, A.m. radio stations, most of them have agreed to not broadcast at night and only some of them can broadcast at night so that they don't like jam each other's signals because there's so many signals coming from so many places that night. So the question. What is the ionosphere? Yes.

The question is, what is the ionosphere? Amazing. Look at that. Is a layer of charged particles in our atmosphere. Well, they're charged during the day because the sun's radiation, it's like blasting radiation at the atmosphere and knocking electrons off of particles, causing these charged ions to be floating around in the atmosphere, which is what radio signals either bounce off of,

depending on the type of frequency, or are absorbed by. So the lower most layer of the ionosphere, it's called the D layer, absorbs a lot of radio waves getting hit at it. And so at night, some of, at night the D layer is diminished because the sun is no longer charging this layer by like throwing radiation at it. And so it just sort of disappears and it's not very charged. and then the radio waves will not be absorbed, but rather bounced off of upper layers of the ionosphere and then travel farther. So now you must be wondering, well, if an eclipse shows up, like, wouldn't that cause radio to be more active and not less?

This is the thing that scientists are trying to understand because they did a study in 2017 from that total solar eclipse over the United States trying to understand this. And they found that when the eclipse goes over, the D layer is kind of more dissipated. And radio waves at the frequency of 7 megahertz were actually much more powerful during totality, while 14 megahertz at the totality of the eclipse were significantly less powerful. And normally they totally work at that time. So it's kind of not as simple as like, oh yeah, like during eclipses, radio waves are more active, just like at night.

Like, no, like the ionosphere has like multiple layers. She's mysterious. So mysterious. I've used the, I've heard the word bumpy used by some scientists about this. because it's not like you're, it's this like smooth, consistent layer, like you're bumping something up against like a glass dome. It has like some texture to it that is especially accentuated during a solar eclipse because then there's like the first like cool scarf. The moon is none of our business. I don't mean that seriously, listeners, obviously I really want us

to do science about the moon. But from like a, you know, a girly perspective, she, none of our business. Yeah. The moon is so spiritual and causes so much beautiful chaos. Yeah. So basically, this citizen science project is getting, like, there are these rare opportunities where a total eclipse will pass over the United States. And we get all the fun ham radio people from all over the country.

And they try to receive signals and send signals out from all over the country. And then they collect all of that data and then put it in a paper and say, like, okay, these are the frequencies that we're working. these are the frequencies that were kind of out at the time. And then from there you can say like, okay, I think this is kind of about the behavior. This is what's going on with the behavior of the ionosphere. Also, solar flares can affect the ionosphere.

And so, like, there's all of these different factors space-wise that affect this thing. And I think the craziest part of it is that, like, we need radio. We're using it all the time. And I think it's crazy that this piece of infrastructure that's used for like both entertainment but also like signaling to like prevent ships from crashing into like shore and stuff is sort of kind of dependent on like what the sun is up to that day like I I think that that's shocking yeah I mean ways that we like sorry no no I'm just thinking

about Sweden like you know where like in winter it's night all the time like yeah do they not like like what happens then like all the a.m. radio channels it's like in the summer they have like 60 in the winter they have like two because they can't compete. That's a really good question. Maybe they have fewer or they have like a stronger coordination. This is what the international telecommunications union does. I'm so obsessed with them. Like I continue to be so shocked at how like systems that I really thought we could put on autopilot are like not on auto. pilot at all. Like a little sneak peek to like a story I've been working on for months for Siam, but like we low key don't know what time it is. What? Time is the average of like hundreds

of clocks across the earth that all like work together to stay coordinated. But like all machines, like clocks will slowly like kind of break down or become less accurate over time. Just like your clock at home, even like the fancy laser clocks do this. And so like we have to be so vigilant and like on these clocks about like whether or not they're coordinated. What do the like what does the ITU think about this? Like what does the sense that's like the, it's called the BIPM, but they're basically the people that are like the time lords internationally. Like they're the ones who tell us what time it was and that helps us coordinate our clocks for later. Sorry, I'm just talking about time now. I don't know what. I'm just thinking, this reminds me of that.

Wow. I just, do you guys watch the Loki TV show? Because it's literally about like the timekeepers and stuff. And now I'm just thinking that they're real people. Oh, Loki. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Yeah. That's all real. We also have the radio people who are like, hey, like, let's see what's going on with radio today. And then from there, figure out what's going on in the atmosphere. And geographically, as you were just saying, Sarah, like, this matters so much. Like, where you are when there's a solar storm, where you are, when there's an eclipse, where you are, like, latitude-wise will be affecting it. Like, it's crazy that we're, like, harnessing such a chaotic system for our communication.

Yeah. What does the ionosphere do? Like, what does it, what purpose does it serve? Do we know? You know, I don't want to speak on that because I haven't looked it up. So I'm not going to make something up. I've just decided you're the expert on all things, atmosphere, radio. It's a part of the atmosphere.

Hey. Great. Love it. Love it. Yeah. I feel like this way, like being a science journalist who is a very, a very curious person, but there is a limit to my understanding of like, like, there's just pieces of physics that I'll just never really be able to write about because I'm just like, what I don't under,

what does it mean? Yeah, I love asking physicist questions that are just like, so before you get into the details, like, what is, like if I were, if somebody from the street asked you what it was. Imagine I'm a five-year-old day. I read the paper. Just summarize it for me if you could. If you were in front of a high school classroom, How would you go about talking?

Yeah, for sure. It's also why, like, because some scientists really can't turn off science speak. Some are really good at it, but some I'm just like, I'll have asked those questions and I'm still like, whoa, we are so far gone from what a five-year-old can understand. I live for that because I feel like, I really love seeing an interview subject who's like a buttoned up scientist,

like when it reaches them that, like, I truly don't know. Like I feel like I see them like their gears change. It's fun because I think it makes them reconsider like broadly like what it is they're doing and what the mission is. And it's kind of fun to talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. I've seen that moment too where you're like just clearly still lost asking more questions that are just the same question and they're just sort of like, oh, she doesn't know. Yeah. If you Google this like you are going to find like, A lot of numbers, a lot of different types of radio waves, a lot of megahertz, like, what's the difference between ham radio and FM radio and AM radio and all this?

Like, there's a lot, a lot of jargon in here that blessedly Nathaniel Frizzle, who is a scientist studying this helped me through. He has this PowerPoint that's like specifically for a journalist who asked me. And he was like, so here's the picture. And he was describing it. You get it? And I was like, thank you, King. Like, it's very nice.

Wow. Bless him. What a name, too. Oh, yeah. That's a really good name. I hope I pronounce it correctly if you're listening to Nathaniel. I'm sorry. All right. We're going to take one more quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19 speaker AKG surround audio system.

This city demands agility and Optic delivers with precision. To make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility, Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Okay, we're back.

And Sarah, let's talk about a very special little squirrel. Oh my God, please. Tommy. I'm obsessed with him so much. It's not healthy. But yeah, okay, so we were doing this, Ask Us Anything episode about squirrels, specifically about how they're somehow able to find thousands.

Yes, thousands of nuts they've buried months later. I would be so bad as a squirrel. I can't find my keys most of the time. But anyways, so yeah, it turns out squirrels are like way smarter than we give them credit for. They use memory, smell, they use visual landmarks. They'll even like steal each other's food. Scientists like to call it pilfering. So if you want the full story on squirrel stealing nuts from other squirrels,

and their little nut-horting strategies. Definitely go listen to the Ask Us Anything episode all about it. But while I was researching for that episode, I accidentally stumbled across what I think is perhaps the greatest squirrel story maybe ever told. I don't know. There's apparently a lot of animals that have come on the show. So here's my entry for the category.

May I introduce a real American hero, the Eastern Gray Squirrel Tommy Tucker. So Tommy Story begins just a few. few months after the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, a little girl found him as a baby after he had fallen out of a hickory tree on her walk to school. And so she takes him home and feeds him more milk. And she even made him a little bed inside of this red wool hat because what else do you do with a squirrel, I guess? And eventually her family moves away. So she gives Tommy to her neighbor Zadie Bullis. And Zadie apparently looked at the squirrel and was like,

I'm going to make you a star kid. So she starts making Tommy tiny little outfits and not just one. Like Tommy has hundreds of handmade costumes. There was a coat and hat for going to the market. He had fancy dresses for company, a Red Cross nurse uniform for visiting hospitals, little tiny hats, pearls, the whole thing. And one of my favorite,

details is that Life magazine actually addressed Tommy's fashion choices in a 1944 profile. They did a whole profile all about Tommy. In the story they wrote, though Tommy is a male squirrel, he has to wear feminine clothes because his tail interferes with his wearing of pants, which I just, you know, boys can absolutely wear dresses, but just love that they had to explain to their readers. Like, before anyone writes as a letter, here's the deal. So yes, he wore dresses, even though he was a man. So anyway. They had to address the gender warriors in 1947.

I know, I know. They had to address people on the front lines of the gender wars. It was early days, you know. Yeah. Yeah, but Tommy, so Tommy like quickly becomes a sort of local celebrity. He's a celebrity around Washington. Everyone knows of this squirrel because Zadie would take him everywhere. She would carry him on her arm while running errands.

He'd visit grocery stores, bakeries, florists, hospitals, schools. He did it all. He was a very man about town squirrel. He even... He was her emotional support squirrel. Yeah. Yeah, he was her emotional support squirrel. Yeah.

I had a friend in acting school who had an emotional support bearded dragon, and I wish I was making that up. No, I believe that 100%. Yeah. Was it Chris Fleming? Did you go to school with Christopher? It was another fabulous friend, but that is very Chris Fleming behavior. You're right.

Who is Chris? Just a comedian who does, makes a lot of jokes about lizards. Google Chris Fleming immediately after we record this. Oh, really, not just a comedian, like really important to me, but. A genius. A genius of our age in terms of body. Does he have a bearded dragon? I don't know that he actually owns any lizard.

but he jokes a lot about how his comedy is very popular with women who had lizards. He was trying to describe like what his vibe was. He was like, yeah, like my comedy is popular among women who own lizards. And when he had. I feel like Zadie and him would definitely, I mean, like squirrel is different to lizard, but I feel like energetically there is some synergy there. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

And when Chris Fleming had a fantastic cameo on the wonderful show, Widows Bay, which is one of my favorite shows in recent memory, there was a lizard present. Cool, cool, cool. Did they do that before he gave this interview or after? Oh, after. Like, was it a reaction? I sincerely hope that it was a reference to his demographic, but. Amazing.

That's crucial. Yeah. Okay. We'll definitely Google Chris. Thank you for the wreck. Back in 1944, though. So yeah, so Tommy even wrote, I'm using like air quotes here because he was, you know, a squirrel, his own autobiography. It was called the true story of Tommy Tucker, which was supposedly dictated to Zadie, which is amazing.

But anyway, so pretty soon Tommy is, you know, this bona fide celebrity with around 30,000. members in his official fan club that would get like mailed newsletters. So Emma, if you were back in the 40s, maybe, maybe this could be your gig. I would have been what I was doing for sure. I would have really loved to join you. Just like be around. Yeah. Yeah, but Tommy basically decides he's going to do his part for the war effort, you know, being the good American squirrel that he is. and the U.S. Treasury Department actually builds him a tiny custom booth, where Tommy, dressed in red, white and blue, satin, promotes the sale of war bonds. He travels around the country by train.

He appears on national radio broadcasts alongside President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He poses for Life magazine in all of his many outfits. These photos exist. They're in. We did a story. about Tommy Tucker on popular science, so definitely you need to see the photos. He's in a pink dress. It's incredible. Treasury officials are writing Tommy fan mail telling him he's become a very famous squirrel indeed. That's a direct quote, which is just such a wonderfully bizarre sentence that someone

genuinely typed in a government office. That's love it. Incredible. So Tommy's archives also include letters from little kids and even soldiers that fought overseas during World War II. One army air force sergeant wrote that his bomber crew carried Tommy's photograph with them on missions. He wrote, when we look at your picture, it gives us so much more confidence so we can do the job we have to do, which is like, okay. It's like, it's like very sweet. I just love the idea that these men were like,

you know, flying in these little cold planes and had a photo of Tommy Tucker the squirrel and a pink dress on their dashboard. I'm wondering if he did any like pin up. I'm just so blown way. Like American soldiers in World War II were like, I love this gender bending squirrel. I love him. Like that's so awesome. I know.

It's so great. They're just like, it just like warms my. heart because it's like such a ridiculous story but this part of it actually like makes me really like so it's just so sweet it's like these young guys who just wanted to look at this cute photo of a squirrel weather like dropping bombs it's crazy it's such a crazy thing okay okay so yes like it's ridiculous squirrel wearing tiny dresses but people living through world war two like tommy became this reminder of home and you know just like he made everyone smile because like how could he not?

They didn't have the internet for memes. They needed to get them mailed. Mailed! And printed in Life magazine. The memes, though, if Tommy was around today, would be incredible. Like, I feel like, yeah. And we do think, like, I don't know, when we were researching this story a bit, there is, like, you know, like, in general, don't adopt a wild squirrel, like, bad idea. Like, let's just say that for everyone.

But it seemed like Tommy had, you know, because he of the circumstances of he was abandoned by his family, basically, his options, he was probably going to perish if left. So instead, he had this kind of wonderfully weird life as a public figure. So after the war, Tommy retired from public life and traveled around the country with the bullises until he died during a sightseeing trip to the Grand Canyon in 1949. Did he die because something happened to him? No, no. He just like natural causes.

Okay. Yeah, no, he's okay. Like, I mean, he wasn't okay. In the past 10 minutes, like, when you said that he died, like, my heart actually dropped. I was like, oh, my God, what happened to him? But he got America through World War II, which was his purpose, you know? Totally. But yeah, so the bullises actually had him taxidermied with his little arms stretched out in front of him so he could still continue to change his outfits because she made so many.

I don't know how I feel about that. Yeah, it gets weird. It gets weird. Sure. And his wardrobe letters and all the press clippings and Tommy, the taxidermied squirrel, are all living today in the Smithsonian archives. And today he's typically wearing his tiny pink satin dress in a little pearl necklace. If you look at the story on Pops Eye, it's the main lead image of him. That's his kind of his look. But yeah, that's kind of, that's Tommy.

And shout out to Amy Crawford, who is the journalist who wrote up the story on our site about this that I edited. it's it was incredible I'm I love him this was like months ago this was oh my god it was in December that we published it so I still I still think about Tommy uh wow that's wholesome we used to we used to have wholesome things that we shared isn't it you know I started this story being like okay like whatever a cute squirrel who killed Like now I'm really in. Like, I'm 10 toes down on Tommy at the moment. So thank you, Sarah.

Oh, I'm so glad. I love to introduce him to you guys. There's a photo of him, like, at the hospital because he would, like, Zady would bring him to the hospital to, like, visit sick children. And he would, like, make sick children, like, happy because he was a squirrel and a dress all dressed up. Yeah. That's just nice.

It's nice. It's just nice. It's just nice. It's just a friendly squirrel and a dress. Don't we all just want nice things, guys? I feel like esoteric experiences are so important when you're going through something hard. Like they shake you a real experience of a squirrel entering your hospital room. Yeah.

You know, I'm thinking like some of those people are probably still alive. Like there are grandpas and great grandpas right now being like, when I was young and I was sick in the hospital, I had a squirrel come visit me. He was a real star, you know? Wow. Oh. Apologies for doing like a weird mid-Atlantic accent for grandpa. Never apologize for doing a weird mid-Atlantic accent on this show.

Great. Wow. Wonderful story. Both incredible segments. Thank you so much for coming on. This was so much fun. Yes. Thank you.

This was so fun. Thank you so much, Rachel. And listeners, don't forget to check. out, ask us anything. And of course, my show at Scientific American Science quickly. And don't forget to sign up for Scientific Americans newsletters. Yay! Woohoo! The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bode, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions,

suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos.