The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Deprogramming the Patriarchy, Metric Pirates, Earwax Types

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

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  -- 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 Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: bit.ly/WeirdestThingILearnedThisWeek If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, email, Tweet, or send this link to a friend: bit.ly/WeirdestThingILearnedThisWeek Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or The Hilton. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and 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 Lauren Young. I'm Angela Sainey. Angela, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be on the show. Listeners, for those of you who aren't familiar, our guest this week, has written multiple, really exceptional books, and one of them, her latest, just came out yesterday. So we definitely would like you to check it out. Angel, would you tell them a little bit about it? Yeah, it's called the patriarchs, the origins of inequality. And it's inspired really by a question. I was repeatedly asked when one of my other books was published many years ago on sex and gender,

which is if men haven't ruled over women forever, then how is it that societies came to look this way? How are we so patriarchal? And whenever people would ask me that, I would never have a good answer because the literature weirdly is so thin on this topic. There's hardly anything written on it. And that inspired this. So for the last three or four years, that's what I've been doing,

is looking to see if we can answer that huge question. Awesome. Well, I know that we're just seeing listeners will really enjoy the Patriarchs and your other books. So weirdos, if you are not familiar, this is your sign to get on that. but for today we're going to talk about just a few especially weird anecdotes from history. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, etc.

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. Lauren, welcome back. Hello. I'm so excited to be back. Yes. So my tease is I'm going to be talking about some earwax facts and the history of extreme earwax removal from picking our ears with gold to specialized cleaning salons. So I'm hoping by the end I'll change your mind about earwax as a gross nuisance. So yeah. Are you hoping to convince me it's not a nuisance?

Yes, I am. Well, I don't know. I'm kind of like split because there's definitely different scenarios where, you know, too much earwax could be a problem. So we'll get into it. I feel like you're going to be answering questions I didn't even know I had. So I'm here for it. My tease is that I am going to talk about how pirates helped keep the U.S. from using the metric system. And it still's causing me trouble today. Angela, what will you be talking about today? I'm going to talk about why it is that in the 80s and 90s, those entire two decades, the proportion of women studying computer science in one of the biggest universities in Armenia never fell below 75%. Ooh.

Whoa. That is fascinating. I want to hear more, but I never make guests go first. So, Lauren, I'm going to make you talk about earwax. Kicking it off with earwax. I'm so excited. Sure, yeah. Okay, I'll start. So I'm clearly very obsessed, obviously, with liquidy substances that we secrete. Last time I was here, I pontificated about mucus.

So now I'm here to make you love earwax. I've always kind of had a weird annoyance obsession with my own earwax, and I wanted to understand why it was the way it was. So it inspired me to write an article, and out of all my stories at Popsie, Earwax has instigated the most responses from readers that I've ever gotten here. Surprise. But I've gotten a number of really personal emails from folks, some who were excited to share their personal earwax. stories, others who still swear by using Q-tips, which I will get into later. And a good number of people who pointed out some really important earwax cleaning facts that I just didn't have time to get to in the piece.

So I thought I'd use this time to continue to wax poetically about earwax. So, yeah, okay. So growing up, my mom would regularly clean my ears. I used to lay down on her lap and she would shine a flashlight down my ear canal. very, very gently, she would scoop and scrape my super goopy liquidy earwax with this specialized bamboo stick that had a little scoop on one end, and these specialized ear rakes are called mimicocchi in Japanese. So ear cleaning in Asian cultures is actually an act of affection, and the practice has been around for at least a thousand years, if not more. You can see these

incredible old drawings and engravings of wives who would clean their husband's ears and mother's who would clean their children's ears with these thin, you know, earpicks. And there are many different types of earpicks in Asian cultures. Some have little down puffs at the end, or some are decorated with little figurines and dolls. I actually still have one. I have it with me right now. You cannot see podcast listeners. But mine has a little doll at the end called a little red Deruma doll.

And it's basically like the whole. at the end of the stick. But ear cleaning was valued so much that some earpicks were made out of precious metals like gold and silver. And in Japan, people see ear cleaning as kind of an intimate ritual because, you know, your ear canal is quite sensitive and it's a kind of vulnerable act to be doing that to allow someone else to dig around in there. Definitely intimate. Yes. So you'll see it a lot in like anime and different manga and stuff. But today, actually, there's a number of Asian countries that you can find specialized ear cleaning salons where professionals will use a variety of ear cleaning tools to clean out your ears. I'm half Japanese, but I had no idea about this really cool,

fascinating long history that Asian cultures have with ear cleaning. But this obsession with removing earwax is very universal. And it can be seen throughout history. The ancient Romans created specialized ear tweezers, Europeans in the 16th and early 17th century. who thought earwax caused deafness. They made these metal picks and spoons, which I don't know of like 100% this is correct, but some of my research indicated that they also used those picks to scrape off plaque from their teeth.

So interesting, multifunctional tool. And the Vikings cleaned their areas with picks of gold. So there's now today we've got like a variety of modern earwax removal kits and I won't get into all of them in detail, but they're mostly today like plastic, stainless steel. Some have little lights on them and even little cameras. But even though we're super, super obsessed with getting rid of our earwax, many ear nose and throat doctors say it's best if we leave it alone. And in fact, your earwax can tell us a lot about ourselves. The contents are quite unique to each person.

So real quick, like biology on earwax. Earwax contains three main ingredients, oil, sweat, and dead skin cells. And the percentage of each varies from person to person, and they are key to making up your very unique own personalized earwax. So the skin in our ears grow constantly. And when the dead skin cells shed, they migrate from the inside to the outside of the ear with the help of all that sweat and oil. And the sweat is secreted from opacrine.

hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, opacrine glands, which are also found in the groin, armpits, and nipples. And as you might guess, it's largely responsible for the distinct lovely aroma that you might find with your earwax. And so the oil comes from sebaceous glands around the hair follicles in the outer canal, and how much oil those glands produce plays a role in the viscosity and the texture and consistency of your earwax. So it's kind of similar to obviously the rest of our skin. You might have a greater abundance of oil glands than other people or your glands may be super productive. Like I have relatively oily skin. So I have a feeling it plays a role into the type of earwax that I have, which I will get into.

So scientists think that oil production plays a big factor in the type of earwax we have, which obviously it ranges from dry and flaky to the. that, you know, thick, buttery, lovely liquidy consistency that some people have. I'm like, I don't, I really don't know why buttery is what really took me over the edge, but go on. Syrippy, I could use so many words. I mean, like researching this and talking to doctors describing the earwax consistency was probably one of the best things ever.

I did not, I made me rethink the way. that I describe my own earwax. But anyway, so, but that being said, most all of us kind of fall into two main camps, the wet or the dry earwax. Dry earwax tends to be lighter shades of yellow and gray. Wet earwax is often darker, gold, or brown. And all this depends on your genetics.

And there are a bunch of studies about this. And it all kind of started back in 2006 with a nature genetic study. The researchers identified that there's this one specific gene that's responsible for the earwax type that we have. And they found that wet earwax was actually the more dominant trait than dry. And they also explained that wet earwax is common in population such as those of European and African descent, while dry earwax is more prevalent in East Asians. But this was very peculiar to me because I am East Asian and I've always had very sticky, gooey, wet earwax.

And so it always, and mine always gets on everything. I won't get into, like, the problems that I have with cleaning my earbuds all the time, my headphones, whatever. But it was really interesting to me because my mom and my sister have really dry earwax. But my dad has wet earwax. So it's very likely that I probably got it from him. But I always found that very interesting because I've read some of these studies and they all say, like, typically this is what happens. But they're clearly outliers. And so some researchers have tried to use the genetics of earwax to explain migration patterns and even evolutionary advantages if one type is perhaps better than the other in terms of health or some sort of fitness gain.

But the evidence there is relatively thin. A 2011 study did show some associations with earwax type and climate. So wet earwax being more common in warmer areas, well, dry. was favored in cooler climates. So I did want to get a little bit into earwax odor because this was also something that was bothering me because my earwax is kind of smelly and gross. Generally, wet earwax is, does have a stronger odor, and that apparently is also tied to your genes.

But a change in odor, actually, can be a really helpful symptom in identifying a potential infection. And speaking to clinicians doing research for this article actually helped me out recently. I actually had an ear infection and this story was really helpful. So a doctor, Henry O, he's a ear, nose and throat doctor at Seattle Children's Hospital. He explained to me that odor can change when you have an ear infection like swimmer's ear or a fungal infection. So I was doing the bad thing and sticking a Q-tip in my ear, and noticed afterwards that my earwax was turned into this really gross putrid smell. It was almost like smelly, sweaty socks. It was disgusting. And in severe cases, it actually turns out like a ruptured eardrum or a serious head injury.

Your earwax can change smell, and it could also change into like a liquidy pus, sometimes referred to as runny ears. My infection also turned it into like a runny liquid. situation. I did see a doctor and they did say that I had some sort of minor bacterial ear infection and I got it cleared up with ear drops but comes to show that your earwax is helpful. It can tell you things. But all that said, earwax, I know like it gets a bad reputation in the sense that it could be a nuisance and stuff. And it is true for some folks, earwax can be a problem. I actually got some really great feedback from people who wear hearing aids and hearing assistive devices. As one person pointed out to me, they put stuff and they have to put something into their ear every day.

And those ear molds can actually compact the earwax and cause severe buildups. And so they have to really go and be super vigilant about cleaning and going to doctor's appointments and checking up on their, basically their earwax and their hearing aid devices. is. So while earwax is like super important, you need to have the right amount for protection. Wearing hearing aids and, you know, assistive devices can actually increase earwax production. So having something in your ear also prevents it from naturally cleaning out on its own because earwax kind of naturally pushes itself out of the ear canal. And accumulating all that earwax can cause hearing impairments. It could also cause conditions like tinnitus, which is a, um,

constant ringing in the ear. Too much can also be bad for the hearing aid devices themselves. So it can lead to hearing aid feedback and the sound being blocked and poor fit, things like that. So doctors recommend to be gentle when you're cleaning your devices using specific cloths and brushes and also going to the doctor. But they also advise to if you're really experiencing bad compactions, still don't use those Q-tips. That I know I know that I'm I got a lot of responses from people who swear by Q-tips, and I get it. It's super, super tempting to reach and for a Q-tip if something's, like, really itchy. But generally, what happens is when you put a Q-tip in your ear,

it just ends up pushing more of the earwax deeper into your ears, and it can cause a worse build-up. And besides, earwax actually is a super helpful line of defense. It has antibacterial and antifungal properties. it can help prevent infections. So really, it's really great. Just try not to remove it if you don't need to remove it. That's what all the doctors told me.

Even though I have like, yeah, my own tool to like, you know, it's so tempting not to like itch down in your ears. But anyways, now that you have all these earwax facts, I hope that you have like a deeper appreciation of what it is all about. And I know I do. This has definitely changed my perspective on earwax. So. Oh, my God.

I didn't want to say. Yeah. There's a lot to unpack there. I, you know, I know the adage is like, don't put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear canal. Yes. That is like the, that is the piece of advice. Dr. O, he's a, he works a lot with children.

He's like, that is the common thing that he always has to tell the kids. I mean, I was always told. this is what my mom told us when we were growing up is put some warm olive oil inside your ears and then cover it with a bit of cotton wall until it's not leaking out of your ears and then just leave it for a while. That is the way to do it. I guess that's how she did it when she was growing up in India. Yeah.

No, I find it interesting like all the different remedies that people have that people swear by. And it's hard to say like what exactly is best practice. I mean, you know, I feel like the doctors were mostly like, don't do anything unless, like, you absolutely, like, if you absolutely do, just come see us. But I do think it's really fascinating, learning about all these different perspectives from different cultures. Like, yeah, similarly, like, all the time when I grew up, like, we would always clean our ears. And I never thought anything about it. So, yeah, it's really interesting stuff. I love it.

Well, we're going to take a quick break. and then we'll be back with some more facts. Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more, and you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code weirdest.

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guarantee, and like I said, you can get 20% off with code weirdest. I'm eyeing mood.com's Delta 9-THC butter cream caramels because in addition to not being able to have THC, I also can't have dairy right now. So the idea of having a caramel that also me out and sends you to Dreamland sounds very nice. And speaking of fun edibles, mood.com has Delta 9-THC freezer pops. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now with code weirdest. That's code weirdest for 20% off. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more.

Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. All right, we're back. And Angela, tell me about this computer science fact of really boggling statistic. I can't wait to hear more. Well, I'll give you some background first. So when I was researching my book, one of the things I wanted to look at was attempts to overturn patriarchy and how that worked and whether it's even possible. And in the 20th century, of course,

one of the biggest revolutionary surges against male domination, if you like, was the founding of the Soviet Union, right from the beginning when the revolution in Russia happened, gender equality, it wasn't kind of completely woven in, but it was woven into the extent where Russia became the very first country in the world to, very first state to legalize abortion. That was in 1920. And it very quickly brought in measures to make sure that women worked, that they had all the childcare that they needed or, you know, all the support that they needed in terms of other work getting done. That wasn't always super successful, but certainly in, as the Soviet state expanded and the number of socialist states increased, that principle of, you know, women working

and doing the same work as men became so hardwired into how people lived in the 20th century that by the 80s and 90s, it was just taken for granted that this is what you did, that women could go to technical colleges, that they could become, certainly doctors. I mean, so many doctors, and even today all over the world, the majority of medical professionals are women, but engineers, that they could be accountants, that they could basically do the same jobs that men were doing. And that means that in former socialist states,

they have this legacy of women, doing technical subjects that really doesn't exist anywhere else in the world to the same degree. It's really remarkable. And even now, if you go to the Czech Republic or you go to Bulgaria or something, they will say, you know, there's this common perception that it's not weird, for example, for a woman to be an engineer or a woman to do mathematics at university. So anyway, so I was researching all of this. And that is not in any way to put any kind of gloss on the horrible or thorough.

authoritarian nature of the Soviet regime. It was horrible in so many ways. And there were many reasons why it ended, not least, because that promise of women's equality wasn't completely delivered. And, you know, the burden of work at home wasn't ever completely shared. But I came across this paper when I was doing my research. And the paper is titled, I've got it here in front of me, gender gap in computer science does not exist in one former Soviet Republic,

results of a study. And it's a study done by these two computer scientists, Hasmic and Stefan, who work in the US in California. And what fascinated them, this was published in 2006, what fascinated them was that in the US, it was so rare for women to do computer science. But, I mean, I studied engineering myself, and I know when I was at university, this was in England, that there were a vanishingly low number of us women in the engineering department. And they found it bizarre as well that in the states there were all these measures to try and attract women and girls into STEM subjects when they knew that in Armenia, which if you're not familiar with the country, is a kind of Central Asian Republic in the Caucasus.

It's between Azerbaijan on one side, Georgia, Turkey. So it's kind of straddling Asia and Europe. And in that country, in one of the biggest state universities, Yarravan State University, for the entire 90s and 80s, so two decades, the percentage of women who took computer science in that university never fell below 75%. And this was so, they knew how remarkable. all this would sound to people.

So they even put in brackets after that, this is not a typo. Because they didn't believe, they knew that people wouldn't believe them when they wrote this. And so they tried to kind of figure out why it is that in the US, you don't have these numbers.

In Armenia, you do have these numbers. And they did a survey, so they went to Armenia and they asked all these students, what is the reason for this? Why are women doing this? And what they found was that, number one, women were not at all.

discouraged from going into computer science. It was seen as something that women did as well as men. It was not seen as a particularly male subject. Engineering was a bit different. It was still kind of in people's imagination seen as something men did rather than women. But computer science did not have those stereotypes attached to it at all. So that was one reason. It was seen as a kind of high status route to a really good job. And that was important for both. men and women in the choices that they were making professionally. So for all these reasons, very simple kind of mundane reasons, nothing particularly remarkable, but all rooted in the history, the 20th century history of how women started going to technical

colleges and started having to do the same work as men because the socialist states expected it of women and how that changed gender norms in that entire sway. of the world, which we don't really, I think, in the West know that much about. We're not taught that history. When we talk about women in STEM, we assume that it's a global problem, but it's really not. If you look at the map of how, for example, the proportion of women researchers all over the world, it's actually very different. In South America, for instance, there are parts of South America in which a majority of

researchers are women, and certainly in former socialist states, like I said, It is very common for, number one, it's very normal. It's, you know, it's assumed that women will work. There's actually a stigma associated with not working, even now, many years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But more than that, there's this expectation that women should be able to do the same kind of work as men. Yeah.

That's so interesting. And you're right. It's not an aspect of history or of, gender politics that that we learn about in the U.S. I remember a few years ago covering a study that just looked at what numerical grade in a mathematics course students would see as like a sign that they belonged in that mathematics course that like they should continue studying math and science. And if I'm remembering correctly, I'll look for this and link to it on popsyd.com slash weird. But it was like somewhere around seventh grade, female students in the U.S.

started to have higher and higher thresholds where it was like, you know, it basically amounted to like once they were in college, female students tended to think that if they got less than a B in a calculus class, for example. that that meant they didn't have an aptitude for math and science and male students on average. It was like if they passed, they were like, I have enough aptitude for math and science, which I found so relatable because while I am very happy with the course my career took, you know, marrying the writing and the science, part of the reason why I didn't pursue a higher degree in the sciences was that I was like, oh my gosh, I got a C plus in chemistry.

like take take this girl out of commission she can't do this at all meanwhile like there were definitely people in my class probably most of the male who came even closer to not passing than me and are you know computer scientists right now like I said I'm happy with how things turned out but it's I I do hope that it changes for yeah it was exactly the same when I decided to study engineering I think I was the only girl in my year at school that did that. And I was topping my year, but there were loads of boys who were kind of middling or below who thought, oh, I'll study engineering as well. I really thought that you had to be excellent at something before you could do it. And definitely the bar for certain subjects was different depending on gender.

And that's why I find it so fascinating to look at these kind of cross-cultural studies, the different. ways in which all over the world people think about what's appropriate for men and women is not consistent at all. And certainly in the US, the US which has some of the worst rates of women in STEM. Part of the reason for that is that there were concerted efforts after the Second World War to create this idea that a woman's place was in the home. You know, before the war, there were actually very high rates of women going to university. It plunged after the Second World War, after men came back, from fighting and it was thought that it was not a woman's place to take a man's job.

And so they were pushed back into the home. And also because of that Cold War tension between the Soviet Union and the US, the US would often look to the Soviet Union, look at women working and say, and say, we don't want to be associated with that. Because if we were to follow that kind of model, then it would be a kind of admission that maybe that system is better than our system. They studied that in detail. There was actually all these interviews done with people who had left Soviet Russia.

And they would ask them loads of questions about gender because they were fascinated in the 1950s. Could it possibly be the case that American women might look to the Soviets and think, we want that? And there was this fear that they might, you know, desire that kind of life, that kind of equality that they saw in the Soviet Union. And I think that was part of the reason that they pulled away even further from the cause of equality because gender equality was seen as something that was a socialist cause rather than something that was intrinsically American. Right. And to be American became associated with being this kind of domesticated housewife. Oh my gosh, that's so interesting.

Makes me very excited to read your book. Same. Yeah, no, I agree. with just like broadening the scope of our understanding of science and gender across cultures. I find it because I think that's, yeah, we're taught like a very narrow view. So I think that's just fascinating. I didn't know all that. Yeah, I definitely learned a lot while I was writing this.

And actually the way I got into it was I remember visiting Prague. This was, oh, this is well before the pandemic, so maybe five, six years ago. and I was having lunch with two gender scholars and I was complaining, I was with my husband and we were both complaining about how hard it was to get affordable childcare. It was a perennial problem that all parents face. And they just laughed and they said,

you know, we used to have all the childcare we wanted, perfect, you know, completely affordable. And now the differences that women are asking to be able to stay at home. So the feminist battle in the Czech Republic was completely different. The history of it was completely different from the one that we were fighting, for example, in the UK or in other Western countries. And it kind of gave me an insight into just how different those trajectories were over the 20th century. Yeah. It's all so much more complex than most of us are taught.

Yes. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill, four-burner gas grill on special buy for only $199. And entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $49. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot.

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Okay, we're back. And I'm going to share my fact, which is about why the U.S. doesn't use the metric system, though it kind of does. But why only kind of? As someone who is married into a European family, in addition to hearing a lot of rants about the lack of free child care, et cetera, in the U.S., I also deal with a, a, the persistent absurdity of America's stubborn use of English measurement more than most people. No, I have not yet internalized what Celsius really means, but I'm getting there. And I sure do get a lot of crap for it. In the defense of America's founding fathers, which is not a phrase, we often say on the weirdest thing I learned this week, when the nation was new and it was time to decide what its official way of doing business was in all aspects. The idea of standardized measurements, as we know them now, even within a single country, was relatively new.

Now, this is not to say that people didn't measure things. We've been measuring things since ancient Mesopotamia, if not longer. And of course, in what is now the U.S., many indigenous groups had systems of measurement dating back thousands of years. But for most of human history, those measurements were relatively relative because people needed something to reference when they were weighing or measuring something. And those had to be common objects like a particular kind of seed or a particular part of the human body. And of course, while some of those are pretty uniform, they're not exactly the same. And some have quite extreme variations in size. Like units of measurements that were based on the length of someone's forearm are pretty mind-boggling, given the variability in forearms.

But also, you know, it's important to keep in mind that really standardized measurements only became useful once we started doing like particular types of industry. and transport, and for most of human history, it was quite serviceable to be like, yeah, I mean, the length of an arm, it's going to be roughly arm length. And then that's how you know how long the wall needs to be. But yeah, the idea of saying, like, this is a unit that exists solely to define a measurement, and we all agree on exactly what that unit is down to the decimal, that was pretty new,

Because it was extremely ambitious and, like I said, not actually super important up until that point. So, yeah, up into the 18th century, units were only standardized really if like multiple parties agreed to agree on a unit, generally to make trade easier. You know, multiple countries might kind of agree that they were going to use these standardized units when they were doing. trade. And you also started to see individual scientists create like weights so that they could make more exact calculations to like reproduce experiments. And in general, it was often scientists saying like we really have to get a handle on this measurement thing. Like we need to agree on how to proceed. So that's some background. And so now it's the 1790s and it's time to figure out how the USA we'll measure things. And luckily, France was on the cusp of something huge in the wake of its

revolution. The country had at that point amassed literally hundreds, like close to a thousand of confusing and inexact regional units of measurement over the years. And in 1791, the National Assembly tasked the French Academy of Sciences with coming up with something that was like rational and enlightened and, you know, shaking off their backwards past with the metric system. So they decided that they were going to base it on a natural physical unit because they wanted it to be sensible. They wanted to finally create a unit of measure that, like, was based on something universal.

And so they decided on using the length of one, ten, millionth of a quadrant of a great circle of earth measured around the poles of the meridian passing through Paris. Very arbitrary, but a thing you can measure. And figuring that out, by the way, took a six-year survey involving some of the greatest minds of the day, but they were finally able to ascertain the length of the arc of the meridian from Barcelona to Dunkirk. And they use that to calculate a unit called the meter, meaning measure from the Greek metron. And they finally had it, this rational unit. You might think that after all of that hard work, the U.S. would have like jumped at using

such a sensible system, especially because it came from the French, you know, our revolutionary allies. And it was also kind of created as a sort of like symbol of reason and democracy and like rejecting the old backwards, wades, et cetera. But of course, we know that that didn't happen. And this is where piracy comes in. So Thomas Jefferson, unsurprisingly, given his close ties with France, did indeed express interest in this new metric system. And France sent a scientist named Joseph Dombay to the U.S. And he was carrying a standardized one kilogram copper weight for reference, though at the time the unit was called a grave named after gravity. Unfortunately, the ship blew off course to the Caribbean, and once it was there, a bunch of

British privateers who were basically pirates paid by the British Navy to cause trouble for enemy merchant ships, they took him prisoner, though apparently he did first try to disguise himself as a Spanish sailor and convince them that he was an unimportant man from Spain. But they were unconvinced and tried to ransom him. But unfortunately, he died in captivity and they auctioned off the contents of the ship. The little weight allegedly turned up in the 1950s when a descendant of the guy who'd bought it from the pirates donated it to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. We don't know for sure that it's definitely the weight, but it is the right age and is the same kind of object. So it is quite possible. But the point is that Thomas Jefferson

did not receive it. The U.S. ended up sticking with British units, which had evolved out of Anglo-Sactan and Roman systems, which was really just a formalized version of the whole like stick your arm out and see how long it is thing, which you can tell from the names of our units, like foot and yard. And basically, you know, this is a oversimplified summary, but over time, monarchs and parliaments had stepped in to like formalize and make more exact those lengths and weights. So by the time the U.S. adopted them, there were like, you know, pieces of stick that represented what a foot was supposed to be. And the U.S. like further cemented exact references for what those units were. While the British,

would end up implementing the British imperial system a few decades later, which is when they literally created rods and were like, this piece of stick is, you know, a foot. It's quite a stretch to say that the pirate misadventure was the reason we went with English system. But it certainly didn't help. And I have seen a couple of historians be like, if Thomas Jefferson had been able to like,

go in to government gatherings and, like, hold up this shiny copper unit and pitch the French metric system. Maybe it would have worked, but he didn't get to do that. And then France actually went back and forth on its units for a while, unsurprising, given all of the kind of political and cultural zigzagging they went through after the revolution. but by the mid-19th century, a lot of countries had adopted the metric system. Again, they were just like, it's based on a real thing. It has exact decimal points.

It's irrational. And international governments were starting to talk about how absurd it was that we didn't have standardized measurements for science and industry. So in 1875, 17 different countries, including the U.S., signed the Treaty of the Meter in Paris, which basically agreed that whatever unit you used for your own business within the country, you would define it based on the standard metric basis.

So it meant that you had to know how many millimeters an inch was, et cetera, and that had to be written down and made concrete somewhere. And then in 1893, the U.S. actually officially adopted metric standards as our own fundamental definitions for measurement, units. So why didn't we just switch to metric? Well, today the only countries that haven't officially adopted the metric system are the USA, Liberia, and Myanmar. And yeah, it's very, very few. I will say I came across an extremely passionate blog post on the National Institute of Standards and Technology website that argued, like, that this factoid is so misleading. And I was

like, oh, is it not true? It is true. But they, it's like spiritually misleading because, and this is a quote, becoming metric is not a one-time event, but a process that happens over time. Every international economy is positioned somewhere along a continuum moving toward increased SI use. And they point out, the U.S. was one of those first countries to sign the treaty of the meter. So really, in all the ways that matter, we have adopted the metric system. We're not backwards. We just also love inches and miles for no reason. I was going to say, I was like, are we just like super stubborn? But this is so interesting. I think that is kind of. Part of it. Yeah. So the reason we didn't switch entirely back when it was like still early days and it

was very clear that metric was going to be what we all used to communicate, is that like, our machines and factories and official documents all revolved around English units. And so it's generally implied that like business entities lobbied against making like an official overhaul. But what's interesting is that these days, a lot of industrial parties are voluntarily using metric measurements when they create their products because fitting those standards and following them makes them easier to sell and use internationally. So like if you're producing sheets of lumber and you're measuring them out based on inches, it's just going to be really silly for most construction companies around the world. So at this point, I think you could argue that the main

hurdle to shifting our everyday measurements in the U.S. over to metric is cultural pride and stubbornness, but that capitalism might now actually push us that way even further anyhow. Or we'll get to a point where we like use Fahrenheit and miles and pounds when they come up in our daily lives because like those speeds and lengths and temperatures and weights feel like really intuitive and hard to change. And again, we're very stubborn. But then it's like, Will each generation get more and more used to measuring like pieces of lumber and bags of rice at the store in metric? Because those are part of like international commerce. I think things will probably only get more complicated is what I'm saying.

And then just to cap things off, I found a few fun, unusual units of measurement that I just thought I would share. I might, you know, give a title and see if, see if anybody can guess. So does anybody know how, what a Scoville heat unit is physically? No one did. Jess knows. Just nodding, previously. So just so Jess doesn't have to come on Mike, I will say, it is the degree of dilution in sugar water of a, of a given chili peppers extract when a panel of five tasters can no longer detect heat.

So I find that really funny because it requires this qualitative panel to create a quantitative heat measurement. There's a jiffy. That is the duration of one tick of a computer system's timer interrupt, which is, you. usually about 0.01 seconds, but it is not always uniform. Oh my God, that's a word that we use. I know. In Britain all the time, we say, you know, I'll be there in a jiffy. Totally. I didn't realize it was an actual amount. Do we know which one came first? I would assume the one related to computers came later. But I don't know. Maybe there is a more archaic thing that was called a jiffy first.

Now, a moment is actually also an actual unit of measurement. Similarly, so during medieval times, it equaled a certain amount of movement of a shadow on a sundial. So that varied, of course, but it was like around 90 seconds. I love that, that a moment was a concrete, well, not concrete, but a relative amount of time that people talked about. There's a Morgan, not a person, but for the German and Dutch word for mourning. And that's the approximate amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in the morning hours of the day. So I guess before noon. And in Ireland, up until the 19th century, there were many farmers who measured fields in units of cow's grass,

which meant the amount of land it took to produce enough grass to support. one cow. I just cover more. Oh that's very logical. Yeah that one makes sense to me. Yeah it really does. It feels like as logical as like a light ear right it's like yeah and it's very useful. It's a it's a very straightforward that you need to know how many cows you can support. Absolutely. There's a micromort that is a unit of risk measuring a one in a million probability of death. And then my favorite is, and this is in computer and data science, a nibble. And that is one half of a bite.

Oh. That's so cute. I think I heard that one. That's cute. Yeah, that is very cute. Anyway, that's all I have on measurements. I love that. My takeaway is that, unfortunately, I think our combined use of metric in English in the U.S.

is only going to get more chaotic. But, you know, as long as more and more people start to internalize the metric measurements for things, I think will be good. I think it's really, really does a disservice to American kids to make centimeters and kilograms seem so secondary. And at least, I mean, I grew up in a weird rural area. So this might not have been typical even in the early 90s elsewhere. But I really remember like metric being taught with kind of a sneer. Like this is, this isn't how we do it here. We do it different in America.

And I, you know, that's so silly. It's really, really silly. I've always wondered why, I mean, because we only just moved here a year and a half ago. And I feel like I've gone the other way now. I've gone from having to use metric to having to use pounds, which has been very tricky for me because you can't really go shopping unless you're aware of what a pound is. You'll end up with completely the wrong quantities. Otherwise, it's taken me a while to figure that one out.

But also there's little things like on documents, the order. of usually in the UK we do date month year. Right. And here you do month date year, which is so frustrating and annoying. It is. Because I get confused all the time. And light switches, I've learned, flick the opposite way here than in the UK. Really?

Yeah, which is also tricky to first figure out. There's little things like that. And I remember asking someone once, why is it all opposite? it feels like, you know, everything's opposite. And they said it was just to piss British people off. I honestly think that's probably true. No, and I, you know, when my in-laws talk about, you know, temperature, I feel like what comes up the most is Celsius versus Fahrenheit?

Because understandably, people who were raised in Celsius are like, it's so much easier to remember. Like it actually relates to what you talk about temperature for, you know, the freezing point and the boiling point are so easy to remember. And I get that. I do. And because it's not what I grew up with, it is excruciating for me. But I'm working on it.

It's easier to learn Celsius than to learn Fahrenheit, though. I still haven't got my head around Fahrenheit. Right. Well, Fahrenheit is based on nothing. So, like, it's very fair. It makes no sense. Well, thank you so much for coming on. What was the weirdest thing we learned this week?

Anyone, anyone have a, I mean, I really love the computer science statistic because we do so much of like flattening and generalizing sort of the history of those kinds of gender issues and so many other cultural issues. And I think it's so cool to just look at how things have gone differently in different places. So thank you so much for sharing that, Angela. And would you remind our listeners where they can find your book? My book, The Patriarchs, should be in all good bookstores now. And I'll be signing copies for the Strand Bookstore in New York if you happen to be there anytime. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Faltman, along with Jess Bodie, 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. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. for citizens back.