The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Creativity is Crumbling, Sarcophagus Juice Sourdough, Mycelium Mutual Aid

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Pattie Gonia joins the show to talk about how secret networks of underground fungi are basically like nature's mutual aid. Plus, Moiya McTier returns to discuss creativity, why it might be crumbling, and how one measures it (spoiler: it is NOT easy). And Rachel explains how scientists used yeast from a melting mummy to bake a loaf of sourdough. 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: Order RIGHT NOW and save up to $20 at https://STORYWORTH.com/weirdest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And when you take away the media hype, what do scientists really say about COVID-19 and global warming? Since 2006, the Skeptoid podcast has been revealing the true science, true history, and true facts behind nearly a thousand of our most popular urban legends and mystery. Each episode of Skeptoid looks at a famous story you know and reveals the part of it you haven't heard. Check out episodes covering mysteries such as popular ghost stories, famous UFO cases, alternative science claims, cryptids and urban legends, or conspiracy theories. Find out why the truth behind these popular legends is even more interesting. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, just search for Skeptoid. That's S-K-E-P-T-O-I-D.

Or visit Skeptoid.com for full transcripts of the entire catalog. Skeptoid, critical analysis of pop phenomena. At popular science, we report and write dozens of science and text 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 Feltman. I'm Moia McTeer. And I am Paddyonia. Patty, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. What a nerd dream. Oh, thank you. Very flattering. Would you tell our listeners who are not familiar with you, though I suspect most of them are, a little bit about yourself? Sure. I am a drag queen. I am an environmentalist. And right now, a very sunburned human being. I need to learn to wear sunscreen. I went on for a height yesterday and the sun did its thing. She's really powerful in our face right now. She is so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. But that's me. It's been a really fun journey and, uh, is right. I think a lot of listeners are probably feeling the world is a crazy world right now. So I'm just trying to do my thing with what I do, with drag, with activism too.

try to make a little bit of difference in this world. Amazing. Well, we're really psyched to have you on. And Moia, welcome back to the show. Thank you. So happy to be back. I love this show. Ah, we love having you.

Would you tell us a little bit about your upcoming book? Very soon. Coming out. Very soon. Yes, I've been working on this for like two and a half, three years almost. It's called Mothers of Invention. It's a history of creativity and, obviously, inventions, written from the perspectives of the muses from Greek mythology,

which is a really fun creative exercise. Oh my gosh. That is amazing. Congrats on your child. Thank you. Thank you. I think it's also quite amusing. Oh.

The puns have started. Yes. They've started and they won't stop. All right. Well, let's roll right into it. So on the weirdest thing I am I this week, we start by each offering up a little tease. about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting,

et cetera, decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was, except we all win. It's Pride Month, so everybody wins. And also always, not just on Pride Month, but especially on Pride Month. Moia, what's your tease? My tease is that Berkeley once did a study that's kind of like the Stanford prison experiment,

but with creativity instead of violence, and we almost lost the records. Wow. They don't want us to know. You're right. You're right. It came out decades later. That we can be creative. It's almost like people in power lie to us.

Crazy. Crazy. Patty, what's your tease? My tease is mycelium, our mutual aid networks. We need to talk about it. I love that. I love that. I can't wait.

My tease is you've heard of mommies with sourdough starters. Now get ready for mummies with sourdough starters. Like I said, the puns won't stop. I'm both intrigued and terrified. Same. Is this going to be like vaginal yeast bread again? Like, what are we doing? We'll see.

You're kind of on the right track. So perhaps I should just dive in less. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Great. So the headline here, just, you know, to get it out of the way, is that someone made sourdough bread using yeast from the designated corpse of Outsi the Iceman. And we're going to talk about that.

But first we're going to rewind a little bit to remember why we like this random dead guy so much. So in 1991, a pair of German tourists. were hiking in the Uttstall Alps on the Austrian-Italian border. And they were around 10,000 feet and they saw a body. Yikes. And it was pretty striking. You can see photos of this body before it was excavated. Basically, you've got like a torso sticking out of the ice,

looking for all the world, like it's trying to army crawl its way up out of there. Really, really horrific, you know, opening into hell. visual on this glacier. Very video gamey, honestly. Just, I cannot imagine how Helmut and Erica felt when they saw this guy. But they thought they had found

a recently deceased fellow mountaineer. They were like, this guy's family must be looking for him. And they reported it as such. So the cops came. And they tried to break him out of the ice and they failed and the weather sucked. So they took his axe and headed back down to the mountain,

I guess, thinking that maybe they could identify him with this axe. He's not gymley. The cops would soon realize they were entirely out of their element. But at first they were just like, and they came back the next day. Then they failed because they had no helicopter available, yada, yada, yada. The days go on. Meanwhile, this very famous mountaineer, a Reinhold Messner, like the most mountaineeringest

mountaineer of the time. He'd done a lot of mountains. He came by to take a peep, and he was shown a drawing of the axe, which is like, you can see pictures of this and, in fact, buy, you know, recreations of it online, if that's a thing you want to do. And it's, in retrospect, very clearly something from, like, you know, stereotypical caveman times. It's copper. I mean, so not caveman times, copper age. But anyway, you got copper affixed to wood with raw hide. It's very rustic.

I guess one could argue that it was plausibly the work of like some very self-indulgent hipster. Like a fan of the original hipster. Yeah, yeah. But Messner was like, you guys, I'm pretty sure this axe is like really old. Like why are the cops handling this? And so at this point, we're several days after the hikers had, had spotted this guy. And they finally successfully get him out of there.

There's a camera team there, filming this body getting ice picked out, airlifted in a body bag. There was still no archaeologist present. He was actually sent to forensic experts. This was still being treated like this was a recent death. In their defense, this guy was like very well preserved. He still had soft tissue.

But meanwhile, the extraction yielded a bunch more clearly very old stuff, like pieces of hide and a dagger and this piece of wood that we now know was a bow. I mean, I carry that stuff with me all the time. Right, right, yeah. And like, you know, maybe if this happened today, you could be like, this guy probably has some, like, weird niche YouTube stick where he's like paleo man. And he like only. Or making sourdough bread. Yeah, yeah. But finally, an archaeologist gets looped in, and he was immediately, like, I think at first glance, like, this guy is at least 4,000 years old.

And he was like, he's starting to melt. We need to get it back on ISAP. That is as gross as at Salem's, the fact that he was starting to melt. Thankfully, they nip that in the bud. Long story short, we now know that OTSI, I'm terrible at UMLOWs, but that's the best I can do. And it's definitely less wrong than how a lot of people say it. We now know that he only looked so freshly dead because he was naturally mummified in Glacier Ice and he lived and died about 5,300 years ago.

So that's pretty wild. And I did an episode years ago on like all of the different sort of forms of mummification that can happen, including natural mummification. And it is super interesting sort of how random sets of factors can interact with human physiology to result in, you know, what's supposed to be a pretty straightforward decomposition process, just going totally off the rails, you know. And since Utsi is a wet mummy, which means he has tissue, bones, and organs that are well preserved, we've been able to examine him. I say we, scientists. I have not purpose to personally examine him.

Scientists have been able to do tons of studies on him and learn just loads of stuff about him. And since 1998, I mean, they immediately, like, put him back in cold storage after the archaeologist was like, he's melting.

Put him in the freezer. Yeah. He's a wet mummy. Yes, he's a wet mummy. But since 1998, he's been kept in a, like, specially devised cold cell. It is designed to simulate glacier conditions.

And they have like precision temperature scales and they track the humidity. The public gets to see it through a window, but like everything is kept very perfect. And they do have to spray him down with sterile water to keep him moist. It's disgusting. But no offense to him, but I don't like that. He's like that stretched piece of skin like Cassandra. spray. He really is. He really is. Spray bait. Things that we know from the studies that have been done on him over the last, you know, coming up on 30 years, his femur bone was studied and they looked at, you know, the sort of growth that happens in the bone as you age. And they think he was likely around 46. He had dark, medium long hair, which he wore loose. Though he did also have. the genes for male pattern balding.

So maybe a little bit of a riffraff thing going on, but, you know, who can say? Oh, sounds kind of hot. I'm just going to. God bless. His DNA shows, I think, still the earliest evidence we have of Lyme disease. He had an adorable gap in his two front teeth like me. His lungs were damaged from constantly being around open fires, which, you know, is interesting because we, I always really think of, you know, modern sources of pollution and lung damage.

And I know that, you know, sort of more rustic heating and cooking methods in the home in other countries are a huge source of lung damage. But I don't really think about, like, you know, people 5,000 years ago sitting around fires outside, that adding up over time. But yeah, we know that he ate a lot of game, a lot of grains and plants. really cool research has has gone on to study this guy. Also, speaking of the research on him, plot twist, he was murdered. So the police being there was actually kind of apropos. He was involved. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he deserved it. Like, obviously we sort of have a bias to, he's sort of a hero of our story. But he was involved in hand-to-hand combat a few days before his death. He has like a nasty cut on his hand that I guess has all the making

of a defensive wound. So he could fight? Yeah, yeah, he could fight. Maybe not very well. But he won't have to get out of that scrap. But then he took a Flynn arrowhead to his shoulder and that severed an artery. He also had a head wound, but it's quite likely that the bleed from the arrowhead is what took him out. So that's just a brief overview of like why we are obsessed with this ice man.

He just, it was such a weird, random situation that he, he just, he was. He's preserved as well as he is, and we've been able to learn so much from him. This latest study on him comes from Italian researchers who were just broadly looking at the microbes, both ancient and modern, that can still be found in his body. And they found that there are bacteria and yeast that have persisted in his tissue, which isn't super surprising. We know that there are microbes that thrive at low temperature, so it makes sense that those are continuing to thrive as far as.

in cold storage. And they found some interesting stuff. I won't dig too deep into it. But the big takeaway for me, you know, in terms of weird stuff, is that in his gut they found four yeast that can survive sub-zero temperature. Like four types of yeast or four? Yeah, four. Okay. They found four yeast. Yeah. And we know that these only live in really cold conditions. So they think that they came, they entered his body after he died, like from the glacier, or at least that's the theory. Now, the evidence they're using to say that these microbes are old, like as in they got into his body right after he died and have been there since, as opposed to like they somehow got into his cold storage room is based on the amount of DNA damage they see. they think that they are that old.

There are definitely lots of microbes in him that are just from his environment now, including the sterile water he gets spritzed with because nothing is entirely sterile. But what's great is that the scientists involved were like, well, obviously we have yeast, we should make bread. And it did not work at first. One of the researchers, Mohamed Saren, he said, that the yeast basically hadn't adapted to the environment of flour. I mean, first it had adapted to living on a glacier and then it had adapted to being in this

guy's very cold body. So they sort of had to give it a long period of creating a sourdough starter where the yeast was exposed to flour and then kind of leaving it be and then adding more yeast. So they really gave the yeast time to be living and grown in there and getting around to the idea that maybe flour was delicious and eventually they did they they brought their sourdough starter to life I think very relatable for many people you know coaxing babying your sour dough starter and they were able to make what they say was some really good dough with it though this researcher did say he's never baked bread before and it showed so the result

definitely had room for improvement but they hope to he hopes to collaborate with with somebody you know more from the bread space in the future so that they can that can really do this. Of course, this is the main point of the experiment. It's not even really a point of the experiment. It was kind of a footnote, but I just found it delightful. And, you know, yes, these microbial samples did come from like the skin, gut, and juice from when he started melting that one time. So that's gross.

Yeah, that's a terrible sequence of words. Yeah. But I will say they like grew, they took that and grew yeast in the lab. So just for any listeners who've like never, never been in a lab setic talking about yeast, talking about microbes, there is quite a bit of removal. We're not talking about dumping mummy juice into a bowl of flour and calling it a day. But yeah, you know, we've learned such kooky stuff from him. And scientists are going to keep learning new things from him. I mean, just one example is that when they first found this body in 1991 and they were treating it as a normal cadaver, they used this chemical called phenol to stop fungus from growing in the body.

And basically, some of the yeast in him was able to eat fennel instead of the fennel stopping it from growing. So they're very interested in whether that means that the yeast could be used to break down that chemical in environments where it's a content. contaminant. So yeah, that's really it. They made bread. Would I eat the mummy bread? They made bread and they broke bread. They yeah. I don't know if I'd eat the mummy bread. I like to believe that I would. But like if faced with it, I might have some qualms. But yeah. I mean, if it would depend on how it smells. If it smells like mummy, I'm probably, well, I still might eat it just just for the novelty of it. Just to say. Right. Just to say that you've eaten it. What is the most interesting thing you all have eaten lately? Oh, good question.

I had a grasshopper tacos two days ago. Oh, nice. Oh, those are delicious. It was actually very good. Yeah, they have a nice, like, grassy, nutty flavor. People say that. And if you're skeptical, it's like, okay. But then they really do have a nice grassy nutty flavor.

It was very nice. It's like a flower in things. Yeah. The flavor is gone by then. But I would try it. Yes. It's like, I think it's so interesting how we don't eat more bugs. They, we really have been eating bugs that this person we're talking about was eating bugs, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. There was actually a study came out recently. I haven't gone deep into it. But it was essentially like our ancient ancestors ate. bugs, probably mostly not on purpose. It was like, yeah, same. Anyone who's ever ridden a bike, knows what you're talking about. But yeah, you know, I think we're going to keep learning a bunch of new stuff from this Iceman and hopefully making a bunch of new fermented food products from him

too, because why not? It's Aussie kombucha next. Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, it's like, you know, it's so meta because it's like hipster on hipster. He was the the original hipster, you know, his axe. And now, you know, hipsters are going to take it and make some cultured, perfect breakfast food with it. It'll be great. You know, avocado toast, ain't seen mummy bread yet. Wow.

So true. So true. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts. Start your Alienware journey with the streamlined Alienware 15. They designed this machine to refine the essentials, creating a more focused gaming laptop for players who demand quality without the clutter. They designed a brilliant 15.3-inch 16.5 hertz display seamlessly into a portable 15-inch body. You get a larger immersive window into

your game that still travels easily wherever your mission takes you. Inside, an Intel Core 7 processor drives high performance during every session. It delivers the speed and responsiveness you need to keep your game smooth and seamless. They wrapped all of this in our signature, durable alienware design to handle any journey and look good doing it. This is the alienware experience distilled into one iconic machine. Visit alienware.ca slash alienware 15 today. Start your alienware journey with the streamlined Alienware 15. We design this machine to refine the essentials, creating a more focused gaming laptop for players

who demand quality without the clutter. We engineered a brilliant 15.3-inch 165 hertz display seamlessly into a portable 15-inch body. You get a larger, immersive window into your game that still travels easily wherever your mission takes you. Inside, an Intel Core 7 processor drives high performance during every session. It delivers the speed and responsiveness you need to keep your game smooth and seamless. We wrapped all this in our signature, durable alienware design to handle any journey and look good doing it. This is the Alienware experience distilled into one iconic machine. Visit alienware.ca slash Alienware15 today.

Okay, we're back. And actually, before we get into Moy's fact, I have to say that that story has been doing the rounds, the Oatsy Bread Thig, but I got it thanks to our listener, Aaron Shanley. So thank you so much for sending it to me. I really appreciate that you thought of me when you saw that story. Lister's, you can always send me stories at rachelopopside.com. I love it. Moia, tell me about the Stanford Prison Experiment, but fun, but fun. Good? Yeah, well, I think there was probably

a little bit of tension involved in it. There's a controversial part of the study I'll talk about, but this study happened at UC Berkeley in the Institute of Personality and Assessment and Research. Sorry, the Institute of Personality, Assessment, and Research, which was founded in 1949. but was then renamed to have more of a focus on social research in 1992. But back in the 40s and 50s, it was directed by Dr. Donald McKinnon, who was a personality assessor who during World War II was responsible for screening people for, quote, jobs in irregular warfare. So he was basically responsible for choosing spies in World War II. And then they brought him on to direct this personality assessment institute.

And he was swept up in this new wave, this trend of carrying about personality and creativity in the 1950s because of concerns about mechanization and automization, which I think people are still feeling concerns like that right now. But it was really fresh in the 1950s. So people wanted to study creativity. And Donald McKinnon put together a few different studies through IPAR. He had a few colleagues with him because he was not a psychologist himself. So he was working with a psychologist named Frank Barron, who was developing his own creativity tests where he asked people to assess art. And if they liked more simple art versus more nuanced and abstract art, then that would

tell Frank Barron how creative these people were super biased. Like a terrible creativity test. But that was his side work. He did more legitimate work with IPAR. So they had this landmark study. McKinnon was really interested in studying experts in creative fields, bringing them together and observing them in context, because he believed that creativity was a function of your environment and your context. Also a function of what expertise you have and your home life growing up and all of that stuff. But he wanted to observe it in real time.

So their architect study happened in 1958 in over one cold January weekend. They brought 124 architects to the Berkeley campus and had them stay on site for a whole weekend and do a bunch of different tests. Of those 124 architects, 40 of them were the top architects in the field at the time, or like around California at the time. They got IMPA. I don't know how much you know about architecture, but IAMPAY designed the Louvre Pyramid. Starkitect. Yes, yes. He designed the Louvre Pyramid and the National Gallery of Art. in D.C., so he was a huge deal. Lewis Khan designed the National Parliament House in Bangladesh,

and Iro Sauranen designed the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, which is popular for bands of Percy Jackson. And so many more rock star architects, and they all agreed to come for this live-in assessment. The other 84 architects were lesser known. They were people who had worked with those 40, or just random architects chosen from around the area. This is the season of traders I need. Yes. Exactly. Architect traders.

You know, I would love to see Alan coming giving all of these personality tests. Oh, my gosh. Perfect. Yes. I would watch 20 seasons of that stat. So they ran so many tests on these architects. They did some personality assessments, including other people's personality assessments like the Myers-Briggs. So they were really interested in seeing if the architects

were more thinking versus feeling and more introverted versus extroverted because they were really interested in seeing if there was a connection between how social a person is, how pro-social a person is, and how creative they are. Turns out there wasn't much of a connection. But they did that personality assessment. They did a test called the Mosaic Construction Test where they asked people, they just gave them a bunch of clay tiles and said, design a mosaic grid that you think looks pretty. And then they scored the creativity of the grids. And the person who got the highest score on that test was Iro Saronin who just put a whole grid of white tiles. And he was like, I like that it looks so simple. It's so clean. Wow. He should be an artist. So highest. You know what,

he should. I wonder if anyone's never told him. They did this line drawing test where the participants had to, they had two pre-drawn lines at some angle to each other, and they had to come up with little cartoons to connect those lines and then quick captions for them. But they only had 10 minutes to do like 16 of them. So they had to do it quick. They were asked ethics problems and weird hypothetical scenarios. So they were asked, what would you do if a client hired you for a job that went against your ethics? And then they graded the architects on that. They were also asked to solve the third arm problem. So if human beings suddenly grew a third arm, where would it be and how would it be used?

Oh my gosh. It's like if a dog wore pants. Yes. Like this or like this. Yes. Same question. They're essentially asking all these architects like, what a dog wear pants? Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Is water wet? And figuring out whether or not they're creative based on those answers. They also did, sorry, go. I was just going to say, where do you guys think the third arm would be? Hmm. I think middle of back to scratch butt. Hmm. Yeah, and back, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's really smart because sort of, I mean, I'm hyper-mobile, so I actually can reach pretty much all parts of my back. But my understanding is reaching behind you for things is sort of, the limit of the human arm in a lot of respects. So maybe like back of head down, down toward that. I know, I know. Scratching butt is pretty good. I think it should just, our arm should be a tail.

Can I just say, I think there's a lot of resident evil creatures that embody all of these things you guys are describing. So if you need inspiration, there it is. I know what our Halloween costumes are going to be this. here. What a power group costume that would be. Just the third arm problem. I hate gay Halloween. Well, I'll see you all in October for our group costume. In case some of those tests seem kind of biased to you in terms of how can you possibly assess that for creativity. They also did a little bit more objective things. They had a conformity test where they asked each participant to estimate the

distance to an object. And then they showed some participants other people's answers to see if they would be swayed by other people. Because if you are supposed to be really creative, then you should probably be less swayed by other people's performance and opinions around you. The controversial part of this test was they had all of the architects rank each other and themselves in terms of their creativity. Literally traitors. And there was a clear winner, Iro Saren-N, the one who did all of the white tiles, he won in the group creativity popularity contest. So good for him.

They did a bunch of these tests, and then they never published their results from this study. The records were put in boxes and just stored away in some Berkeley closet somewhere until, I guess, the 20 teens, when an author Pierre Luigi Sereno decided to write a book about this study. He'd heard whispers of it. And he found the records and then he published this book called The Creative Architect in 2016. And now we have this great story, but they didn't stop there with the architects. The I-PAR Institute went on to study groups of writers, including Truman Capote and Norman Mailer.

That study was led by Frank Barron. They also studied mathematicians and research scientists. There was a woman who was part of the group named Ravenna Nelson who studied creativity in women. and started a longitudinal study of graduates from Mills College, which is a women's college, and looking at them over a long time to see what we can learn about creativity and personality as people age, which is awesome. And these results from the I-PAR studies agree with results from other creativity studies that have happened.

They say that, well, they actually did focus a little bit on the early lives of the architects and the other creatives, and they found that there's. there's typically a distant and possibly strange relationship between a creative person and their parents. They also found a high sense of self or a high obsession with self-image, either very healthy or very not healthy. But they did find that creative people tend to have skills that in the 1950s were considered more feminine. So they're more self-aware, they're more open-minded, they're more flexible and less rigid in their thinking. and other creativity studies outside of IPAR have also found no strong relation between IQ and creativity. So, you know, IQ tests have their own baggage associated with them, but still there doesn't seem to be a hard association, a hard correlation between intelligence and creativity.

They find that the best ways to foster and nurture creativity are to have a lot of unstructured playtime, a lot of time to get bored. and think and a lot of a good balance between collaboration, so like interacting with other people and getting inspiration for new ideas and time alone to reflect on your experiences and thoughts. Yeah. And so since then, there have been a few other creativity tests that have been developed. The gold standard for creativity tests these days is called the Torrance test, developed by Ellis Paul Torrance and first given in 1950. the same year as the architect study. It was originally given to school children in Minnesota

and was a way to assess their divergent thinking, which is similar to creativity, but not exactly the same. It's, you know, do you think like your fellow students or do you think differently from your fellow students? And one of the most interesting parts of that test, to me, anyway, is the unusual uses test. This was developed by a psychologist, J.P. Guilford in the 30s or 40.

and it asks you to look at an item and think of as many different uses for that item aside from the obvious as possible. So if I show you a brick, how many uses can you think of for this brick? It could be a paperweight. It could be something to test the acceleration due to gravity as you fall from the leaning tower of Pisa. I'm on the spot, so I can't think of any other things right now. I would get a low score on this test. But that is how they would assess it. Or they would ask a story question, what would happen if what happens after the cow jumps over the moon?

They would ask these children. And we've been doing this test since 1958. It was upgraded in 1984. And then people were like, oh, no, this really is the best creativity test we have. And so we've been running this test for the last several decades. And up until the 90s, scores on that test were increasing, as well as scores on IQ tests were increasing. But starting in the 90s, a researcher named Kyeonghi Kim

found that there's a creativity crisis. Since the 90s, our Torrance test scores have been decreasing, even though the IQ test scores continue to increase. And so in 2011, Kyeonghi Kim wrote a paper called the Creativity Crisis, and that That is what I wanted to address in my book is the idea that humanity's relationship to creativity is crumbling.

That's why we have this, you know, reboot issue where everything's a reboot or a prequel. That's why it's harder to find good music or good movies. It's harder to, as a creative person, break into new industries unless you're already famous, like on social media. It's why people are using AI. It's why people are, yeah, just struggling a lot when it comes to creativity. and the death of expertise. So that kind of ended on a low note with the study.

But in the book, I end on a high note and show how we can get back to this more healthy relationship with creativity. And it's not just about using less AI. Like there are actually other things. Yes, use less AI. But there are other things you can do. Well, tell us some. I want to hear.

Yeah. So my main piece of advice is to kind of decouple yourself personally from the, responsibility of creating. In the past, like thousands of years ago, we wouldn't call a person a genius. We would say they had a genius, this external thing. Yeah. And now it's like we've mushed the two and it's created a lot of problems. So I have stopped thinking of myself as the creative origin.

I now think of, you know, it's the external sources of inspiration. It doesn't have to be an invisible muse spirit thing, but there are external sources of inspiration and I feel so much better when I can't when I have writers block because you know it's just that the external sources of inspiration haven't come to me yet and there's other work I need to do to coax them to me. Wow. I love that. I'm so excited for your book. Thank you. I'm so excited for your book too. I feel like I'm going to learn a lot about you know what can apply to drag world too because I think for me as a drag artist so much of it is like letting letting the people in front of me flow through me. I don't see it as my genius. I see it as part of this collective

whole and I get to pull pieces from the universe from people in front of me from from different songs from different art pieces and make this little quilt. But I don't think of it as the responsibility on me. And so what you said about a person, you know, having genius really, I think could make for a lot better art in this world too because for me, my favorite art is art that reflects the moment, reflects other people. And I think right now we have a lot of art that reflects ego in this world and a lot of art that reflects AI, obviously, because it's made by AI. And I think that art that reflects where we are at and what we're collectively feeling is going to be some of the most needed and rare things on Earth. That was so beautiful. Yes.

I agree with me. I can't wait to read your book. When does the book come out? It comes out August 18th, and I'd be so happy to send you a copy. Oh my gosh, please send me a copy. I can't wait to read. Yay. I love this. All right, we're going to take one more quick break, and then we'll be back with one more fact.

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about mycelium, please. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Here's this little fact that I'm learning a lot about lately. We're going to dive deep down this rabbit hole into soil, okay? Mycelium are some of the best teachers we have for mutual aid networks. And I think we've heard a lot about mycelium lately in the news. We've heard a lot about mutual aid lately because of the news. So some news about mycelium first.

We're hearing a lot about them because, shocker, nature is the best architect. nature is the best engineer. And we're using mycelium now in things like insulation, even breaking down plastics, replacing plastics as an alternative plastic. We have mycelium cellulose, which can be textile fibers. I'm actually working on a drag outfit right now using this mycelium cellulose textile fiber. So I'm very excited. It's going to be fun. This is also a billion dollar market. I don't love to talk about capitalism, but mycelium are even important to capitalism these days. So, you know, it's definitely trending in the news.

And, you know, the growth is driven by being a biodegradable packaging, an alternative protein, an alternative textile. But now let's talk mutual aid. So, you know, we see mutual aid everywhere. I think for me as an activist, a community organizer, mutual aid is really at the root of my work, pun intended, because we're seeing local communities step up and provide the support we need for each other as our government, politicians, social networks, and systems are failing us. And, you know, we see this in nature too in mycelium's networks. In forests, when other systems fail,

they rely on mycelium, which is this kind of underground mutual aid network. And it's quite literal, a mutual aid network. And mycelium, for those that don't know, are thread-like fungal networks running through soil that connect trees and plants across an entire forest. And a lot of scientists have nicknamed it the Wood Wide Web, which is its underground system where resources actually move to where they're needed. So trees use these fungal networks to share carbon, to share nitrogen and water. And a big established tree can funnel sugars to struggling seedlings in the shade. Other trees have even been shown to direct more resources to their own kin, but also just to neighbors in need in general. It's redistribution. It's not hoarding.

and dying trees have been observed dumping their resources into the network on the way out as a last act of passing everything they have to the community. So this is like, it's estate planning, but make it generous, you know? So what do they do? It's mycelium are the ultimate connectors. They're the ultimate care workers. And they really have shown me a lot in my activism to often provide the care or the need behind the scenes that doesn't get the spotlight. You know, I think we have this connotation of activists or mutual aid workers of people on the front lines of these movements when really it's a lot of caregivers, bridge builders, you know, even people that are providing like actual like first aid to people. It's a lot of these roles behind the scenes.

You know, there's no one more important to my nonprofit than our accountant. And our accountant is not seen at all. So for me, this is really inspiring because mycelium show me that every, you know, every. has a role and that oftentimes the least visible things are the most important. And I think that's something that I'm learning a lot from that. I think we can all take away right now is that everyone has a role to play. We don't need a thousand people doing it perfectly. We need a million and one people doing it imperfectly and we need people using who they are

and what they're good at to take action that they and only they can take. And I think that's what mycelium do all the time. So they get back to it. And they look so cool doing it. So I kind of went on my BS there for a second, but I want to get it back to the mycelium. So mycelium don't photosynthesize. They trade with plants. They say, you give me sugar and I'll give you minerals and water.

I'm better at finding it. And so it's this genuine exchange economy built on reciprocity rather than extraction, which I also think we could learn a lot from right now. Mycelium are also great recyclers. They are decomposers that break down dead matter and return nutrients to the soil. so new life can grow. Nothing is wasted. Death feeds the next generation. And so it's almost like composting as this sacred civic duty. And, you know, it's interesting, this kind of full circle moment to the mummy, but we're seeing how much like back then, you know, dead bodies, something that

was dead used to provide life for the next generation. And now we just pump it full of formaldehyde. We put it in this box where things can't reach it. I think truly it's this ultimate last act of disconnection that models so much of what capitalism and society teaches us is the more disconnected we are, the more we can extract from things. I could go down this roble hole for forever, but it's very interesting to think about. So, you know, I think my ceiling for me, they route around damage. They cut a path in the network and it reroutes, like a system with no single point of failure, no boss. It's a decentralized. It's leaderless.

It's resilient. And now here's the fun part. There's been a lot of research lately about just how queer fungi and mycelium are. Can I pop off, please? Happy pride. Okay, happy MF pride, everybody. Okay, so here's where it's fun. So many mycelium blow up the two-sex model entirely.

They are split gill funguses. And this is where I'm going to struggle to pronounce things. but they are the schizofilum commune that is what it's called. In the schizofilum commune, they have more than 2,300 mating types and sexes, not to tens of thousands. Gender binary, never heard of her, you know, truly. And these mating types are determined by genes. And basically any type can pair with almost any other type that is in its own.

So the dating pool isn't the opposite sex. It's almost everyone. So it's radically inclusive by design. And, you know, these mycelium also resist tidy categories in general. They are constantly becoming something so new and so different from what they are that scientists can't categorize them. And mycelium aren't quite plant. They're not quite animal. They're their own kingdom entirely, which is something that I just learned.

And so they blur boundaries we treat is fixed. And they thrive precisely because they don't fit into boxes. And when two compatible fungi or mycelium meet, they confuse their networks and share nuclei, merging into something collaborative rather than staying separate competing individuals. So their identity is fluid, it's communal, it's shared. So the big takeaway for me is mycelium point to one lesson, which is that the most resilient systems in nature aren't just built on competition and rigid roles. They're built on connection, reciprocity, flexibility.

And the forest don't thrive on lone genius trees. It survives on the strength of the network underneath. So I'm learning a lot about the way I want to go about fighting for what I care about and taking care of what I love via mycelium lately. How about y'all? Wow. I love that so much. I've always been a big mycology nerd.

But yeah, it's really, that is such a beautiful way to think about it. Also, you both had such lovely philosophical notes to end nod, and mine was about mummy to spread. But that's okay. You stand the gamut today. Yes. That was yummy in a different way. Exactly.

Yumbing in a different way. Yeah. No, mycelium are like pretty much the more you learn about fungi, the more you're like, I think they are actually the, you know, if we want to talk about like the highest evolution, you know, I've talked a lot about the fact that humans are not the pitiful of anything, evolutionarily speaking. We certainly are not. We're not even crabs.

No, we are not even crabs. But I'm like, you know, if you were going to say something as the pitiful of evolution, it would probably be some kind of fungus because they, they're, they're. weird. They're out there doing their own thing and they are helping each other out too. Do you want to hear my theory? I think that mycelium are aliens on planet Earth. I think they're here to somewhere else. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. I'd buy it. Totally. Yeah. Pantsber me is a thing. Yes. They're their own little thing. Why not believe in the magic of aliens? Mycelium are aliens to me. Yeah. I love that they spread out so far.

far. It's one of, one of the largest living organisms is a mycelial network. And it, to me, I think that's the closest I ever come to how people feel when they think about how big the universe is when I think about how big some mycelial networks are. Totally. I think that's such a really beautiful way to also just show how interconnected we all are as people. We just can't see it or comprehend it yet. I want a lot more science and research on how much we are all interconnected through the water we share, through the bacteria we share, through the yeast we share, you know, like I think we have more in common with each other than we realize. And I think that could really help some policy and political breakthroughs if we saw our commonalities more

than our differences. So true. Patty, would you remind our listeners where they can go find you online. Yes, you can find me all over social media, just Patty, P-A-T-T-T-I-E, G-O-N-I-A. But more than the internet, I'd love to see you in real life. We're constantly doing free group hikes around the U.S. Also doing a climate drag show that we tour across the U.S. So if there's a chance to see each other in real life, that is what I would love to do, is to get offline and spend some time IRL. Spoken like a true performer with the people. It's more fun. I hate the internet these days. It's the worst. So I'm just like, can we please just push people into real world communities as much as possible? I think that's going to help. Nice. Absolutely. And Moia, would you remind our listeners what your book is called so they can go pre-order it?

Please. Thank you. It's called Mothers of Invention, a history of creativity from the Greek muses. And you can find that wherever or on my website, Moia McTier. com. 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.