The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Ladies Dueling Topless, Eating Every Animal, Birth via Pseudopenis

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

The weirdest things we learned this week range from stripping during duels to stay alive to a man who wanted to eat every animal (for science). Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? Get your tickets to our live show here! 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! Learn more about all of our stories: https://www.popsci.com/weird Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Sara Chodosh: www.twitter.com/schodosh Sophie Bushwick: www.twitter.com/SophieBushwick Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme Music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jason Lederman: www.twitter.com/Lederman --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Start comparing home. hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Bad advice. You talking to me. Kayak. Got that right. Hey, weirdos, Rachel here with just a quick announcement before we get into those weird facts. This Friday, February 1st, is our second ever live show at Caviot in New York City. Tickets are on sale now and they're going really fast. Like, for real, they're going to sell out and you should buy them today.

They're also only 12 bucks, which is a steal. If you didn't make it to our last live show, it's basically exactly like the podcast, but with awesome audiovisual presentations that I have not finished yet, and amazing drinking games that I have not written the rules for yet, lots of other things that we're going to spend the week making perfect for you. So we really hope you'll be there. You can find a link to tickets right in the show notes. And on to the show. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not show those with you?

Welcome to The Weirdest Thing I Learn This Week, a podcast from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feldman. I'm Sarah Chodash. I'm Sophie Bushwick. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story that we picked up while reporting, editing, wasting time on Twitter, you know, being a jerk. journalist. And then we decide which one we absolutely have to hear more about first. 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. Sophie, why don't you start with your teeth? I'm going to talk about

that one time when women dueled naked because of bacteria. Oh, boy. That one time. You know that one time. Great. Sarah, how about you? I'm going to be talking about the only animal that gives birth through its clitoris. Oh, no. I do not like the sound of that. This episode sounds really painful so far. I think I'm going to have a lot of sympathetic boob.

I don't know. All right. Well, mine is about a dude, a Victorian scientist who believed that he should eat as many animals as possible. Same. Wow. What a life goal. I think I really want to hear about the dueling.

That's just amazing. Especially the fact that it relates to bacteria somehow? Yes, it does. It's actually, okay, I don't want to jump ahead of myself, but it was actually ahead of its time. So the case is a duel between the princess Pauline Metternich versus the Countess Kielman Sag and to avoid mispronunciations. I'm just going to refer to them as the princess and the countess from going forward. The time is August 1892 in Verdeuse, the capital of Liechtenstein. You're doing really well so far at this. Thank you. I'm just making it up as I go.

The weapons are swords, and the cause of the duel is a disagreement over flower arrangements for a concert. Wow. Wow. Those must have been really contentious flower arrangements. Honestly, I relate. Well, see, lest you think that this is like a bad motivation or frivolous for some reason, here are a few reasons why men got into duels. Insults, political differences, women. I've seen Hamilton. One guy disliked another guy's clothing.

That was the cause for a duel. An ancestor of Lord Byron got into an argument over whose estate had more birds. Oh, come on. That one is easily solvable. They immediately fought a duel. They didn't even go outside. They fought a duel indoors. over that one. And last but not least, a disagreement over the spelling of a Greek word.

You know, everyone's always like, women shouldn't be in power. They're so emotional. They'll just go to go and the history here. And men go shoot each other over how many birds they have. It's, it's, was dueling just like Twitter? It seems like it's where you went to air all your grievances against all of humankind. Well, I mean, ostensibly, it's an idea that a man can defend his honor or woman, actually. A man or a woman could defend their honor when insulted, and I guess it just prevents the rift from festering and turning into a long-term disagreement. But in practice, it meant that people just, like, killed each other over the dumbest stuff. I mean, dueling is endlessly fascinating.

There's tons of crazy dueling stories that I have to not talk about because otherwise this would be like the dueling podcast. You should start that, though. I really appreciate the gender context, though. Yeah. Like, flowers, not an absurd dual topic. No, no, not in comparison to some of the dumb stuff people doled about. Also, I feel like anyone who has planned, like, a large party with flower arrangements, like, flowers become a weirdly big deal for things like that. They're expensive.

You never thought you'd care that much about flowers, but you do. They set the whole aesthetic of the event. Yeah. I get it. I mean, the one I've sympathy with is the spelling disagreement because, like, I wanted to murder someone over, like, a grammar thing before. Yeah. Anyway, we're talking about a disagreement over flower arrangements, and it leads to what is called the first emancipated duel. It's called that because everyone participating is female.

That includes the fighters, their seconds in a duel you have to have seconds. And the organizer is the Baroness Lubinska, again, calling her the Baroness from here on out. And she had a degree in medicine. So this is important because she knew that minor injuries can become serious when a sword or a bullet drives debris and clothing into a wound. And this was really illustrated during the Civil War when a lot of people died from infection. And often an injury that might seem minor led to amputation. Because you have to remember, antibiotics weren't discovered until 1921. So at the time, the idea of germ theory was just getting off the ground. In 1870, Joseph Lister was like, you know, maybe we should try to make surgery

sterile. And people were like, how dare you? But yeah, he pioneered the idea of like, let's try to reduce infection by doing stuff like hand washing and sterilizing our instruments and spraying an antiseptic called carbolic acid while you're operating to try to limit infection. So that was in 1870. This is an 1892. So this is still a pretty novel idea. And the veroness is really ahead of her time. Anyway, so she says, you know, we don't want to get clothing in these wounds.

How about the women strip to the waist? Because there's no men around. They sent the servants to a distance and had them turn their backs. And so the women were like, yeah, we don't want to die over this. We just want to, you know, fight with swords. Wait, sorry, are duels not, who wins a duel? How do you win a duel? Do you have to kill the other person? Apparently not.

It depends. Some duels are duels to first blood. So whoever draws blood first. Some are just, you each fire at each other with pistols once, and then whatever the outcome of that is is decided. It really depends. There is one case. I've read about another duel between women, where they first fought with lances on horseback,

and then with maces and shields. And then after one person, one of the women knocked the other one, her, not her horse down. And she's like, I'm the victor, surrender. And the woman who had been unhorsed ran at her with the sword and knocked her over. Wow, inspiring. Truly inspiring. Never say die.

Oh, my God. So, yeah, it definitely varied, depending on the duel and the century and the context and all that good stuff. I think my view of duels is solely colored by Hamilton. Yeah, absolutely. There are two different songs about it. I know. I know I know about dual commandment. So they go to the dueling ground, they strip to the waist, and they start fighting with swords.

The princess injured the countess's nose, so she drew first blood. She was the victor. However, the countess, they were still in the middle of the fight when this happened, and the countess injured the princess's arm before they put down their swords. So the next part is only alleged, so I'm not sure if it actually happened, but I'm going to tell you about it because there's an apparent quote that I think is a Allegedly the seconds actually cried out and perhaps even fainted at the sight of blood. And so the male servants who were, again, you know, standing out of the way, sort of came running to see what was happening to see if they could help.

And the baroness attacked them with her umbrella while yelling, avert your eyes, avert your eyes, you lustful of wretches. Oh, my God. So, again, I don't know if that took place. I figure if you go to watch a duel, you're assuming you'll see blood. I don't know that they'd be that freaked out. Yeah, that sounds like something a dude. would have made up to like make this top. Right.

As he was telling the salacious tale of this topless duel. Right. I mean, the detail everyone fixates on is the toplessness. But you know what? Neither of the women ended up dying from their injuries because they didn't have crazy infections because of it. The baroness knew what was up. Yeah.

And this is not the only naked duel on the books. Oh, my God. So the first naked duel is actually called the naked duel. It happened in 1806 and it was between men. A former army surgeon and a member of parliament named Humphrey Howarth was playing with Wist, which is a card game, with the Earl of Barrymore. They got into a fight. It's apparently Howarth gave the Earl of Barrymore a black eye and they decided to resolve this with a duel. They mean on a race course to duel and Howarth starts taking off his clothes.

So remember, this guy's a former army surgeon so he knows that clothing and wounds can cause. infection, even though this is way back in 1806. And so he's like, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to die. I'm going to get naked. And so then there's two. What a perplexing way to start the duel. It's like, all right, it's a duel. Let's go. Take off the clothes. It's a real power move. If the other person doesn't understand why you're doing it. I think he might have explained it or maybe he got there and didn't say a word and just like strip down. Yeah, real power move. I think you're right. But I mean, as a result, so there's a couple different versions, all these, all these stories of duels have so much mythology built up over them because like nudity,

crazy stories. So it's hard to tell exactly what happened. So some accounts say he just stripped to his drawers, others, that he got totally naked. And then what happened was either that they both exchanged shots and missed or that Daryl Moore is like, I'm not going to, you're naked. I'm gotten by and just like pieced out and they didn't have to duel after all. Oh, man. That would have been my strategy for winning a duel.

Yeah, just to see like inexplicably nude to intimidate your opponent. Yeah, same. The idea of toplessness in a duel became this, like, like I said, there's all this mythology built up around it, and you can actually find these Victorian era postcards showing naked or topless women dueling. However, this was not because they were actually dueling. This was not a trend. This was that we think of the Victorians as these buttoned up prudes, but they liked porn.

And so they took pornographic. Oh, yeah. That's true. Love their porn. Yeah. The dirtiest era by far. So the topless fencing is just a manifestation of Victorian love of porn, not of Victorian love of topless fencing. They weren't like it's the most noble form of the art.

Wow. That's incredible. I love everything about that story. As a woman, dueling topless also seems challenging. Like, sports bras weren't invented for so long. There just seems like... It seems painful. Yeah. Well, I did dig up another example of a duel between women where two French women were dueling with pistols, and one of them missed her shot, and the other one hit her in the corset.

And the corset, I think she drew a little bit of blood, but the corset mostly stopped the bullet, so it wasn't a major injury. But it's basically armor. Yeah. I mean, those corsets were intense, so I could see a corset stopping a bullet, which is like, well, maybe they weren't right to take their clothes off. You just had this corset armor on. Just a corset. That's pretty badass. The original superheroes. Wow.

Okay. We're going to take a quick break, but then we'll be back with more facts. All right. We're back. And I'm going to jump in with my fact about a man who just wanted to eat. Hungry. A hungry boy. I can relate.

So William Buckland was no slouch academically. He was an English theologian in the 1800s. He was also a geologist and a paleontologist. He wrote the first full account. of a fossilized dinosaur, which he named a megalosaurus. His work also proved that Kirkdale Cave had been a prehistoric hyena den, for which he was rewarded the Cobley Medal. So, you know, he had a lot of accolades.

But his Wikipedia also has a section labeled, quote, known eccentricities. The best section. Which is always a great sign. So for starters, he insisted on wearing an academic gown while doing fieldwork. Wow. And apparently sometimes lectured outdoors on horseback or if he was lecturing inside, he would like mimic the way dinosaurs move. He would just be like, rah!

So he was known for being like a real, he was like a populizer of science. And a lot of scientists really didn't like this in the same way that when Carl Sagan was becoming popular in like the 70s and 80s, there were a lot of scientists who were like, he's just enough for the attention. And meanwhile, people were like, no, he's getting people to care. about astrophysics. That's kind of what William Buckland was like for paleontology. Charles Darwin thought he was way too vulgar and wacky. He also owned a table inlaid with fossilized dinosaur poop. So, what? Oh, my God. That's amazing. Yeah, I want one. I want him to

be my teacher. I want to, like, go to one of his classes and hear him imitating dinosaurs. I have him walk in on a horse and an animal start imitating T-Rexes. One of his other eccentricities was that he, along with his son Frank, wanted to eat his way through the animal kingdom. Literally, literally just wanted to eat one of every animal. He said, I'll have one of each. Was he just, like, was this a scientific pursuit? Like, he wanted to make notes about them, or was it just like he loved eating? Interestingly enough, it was an academic pursuit in his mind,

and it was also kind of an intersection of his theology and his paleontal. He worked pretty hard to reconcile the Bible with the stuff we were uncovering. You know, Darwin had kind of caused this religious crisis. We've talked in previous episodes about how part of the reason the Victorian era was so bizarre and they did so much weird off-the-wall stuff is that they were kind of having a societal adolescence. They were like, what do we even know? What's true? Is God real?

So there was a lot of like interest in magic and in a bunch of- Spiritualism, right? Yeah, spiritualism. And they got like kind of offensively obsessed with different cultures. And I think, you know, just like looking for answers. Some problematic ways, much like teenagers today. Yeah. They were all like going to Hot Topic and buying some appropriative t-shirt.

So, yeah, William Buckland was one of the people who was like retaining his faith and trying to like reconcile that. He actually was one of the people who was like, well, Genesis is actually just referring to two separate creation events. It's not saying it happened in seven days. It's saying, like, this all happened in seven days. And then many, many years later, God created man, because they were finding the fossil record that it was like very clearly not a thing that had all occurred in seven days. So all of this is to say that William Buckland was often thinking about theology and paleontology in the same breath. He loved animals. He loved learning about them. He

He loved studying their fossils. He, like, had a bunch of bizarre pets, and he, like, trained monkeys. He did all of this stuff with animals that a lot of scientists thought was kind of, like, silly and uncouth. But he just loved them. He believed that animals were, like, precious. He was advocating for animal rights in a way that was, like, not really considered by most people at the time. He at least thought we should treat them humanely. And he also believed that animals had been created for the enrichment. both spiritually and nutritionally, of man, because of his religious beliefs. So he was like, yeah, God made all the animals. So a lot of them must be for eating. And he also was looking at kind of, you know, population booms and there were, you know, huge wealth disparities. And he was like, maybe there are more animals we should be eating. So the part of it was that was he, was he including like, insects in his survey of animals? Yes. He was. He was ahead of his time. He really was ahead of his time.

But he also, he tried to get this concept of zoophagy, which is just literally eating animals off the ground, but he meant like we should be studying animals by eating them. So I think from what I understand, he was arguing that like when you're studying an animal, you like look at it, you look at his bones, you look at what it looks like when it's alive, you look at what its babies like, you know, fitting it into the tree of life. And he was like, you should probably taste it too. Wow. I mean, that is very complete of him.

Right. It's not like, honestly, totally off the wall. It is unnecessary. Just going above and beyond. Yeah. So he ate a lot in his time. He would have these suarez where he would serve various animals, which at the time, it was pretty common for people to have different.

parties with a whole point was that you were eating something exotic and weird, which still happens today. But he would have these, and it was part of his mission to try every animal. So there are records of all different stories you would have. Guests would be served. Plates of boiled elephant trunk, porpoises, giraffe, rhinoceros, various sea slugs and earwigs. Oh, God. Apparently, he really didn't like either of those two. And he tried various flies, and he didn't think they were very good. He wanted to try, like, every species, or was he just looking at general categories?

Oh, every species. Oh, my God. He wanted to do the full Noah's Ark, as it were. He ate mice on toast. He would eat it all. And his son also joined in as he grew up and became, you know, a scientist in his own right. He joined the family legacy of eating weird animals. How did he get his hands on all of these?

because today you can buy, you know, it's much easier to get access to weird animals, and also it's much easier to travel. You can just fly to these places. But like, was he getting people to send them back? Yeah, so I think some of it was his connections as like a naturalist. You know, if he knew someone who was going on an expedition, you could be like, bring you back some of that. Yeah. Just like literally whatever you find, bring it back something I need it. But there's one great example, which may be apocryphal, that a local zoo their panther had died. And he was like, dig it up. Oh.

So that they could cut him some panther meat. He said it wasn't very good. But that's probably because it was... It was buried. Why? I mean, did he ever get sick from this? Like, eating meat that's been buried and rotting in the ground for a little while? Can't be good. Yeah, I didn't see anything about him getting sick. Again, it's possible he did not actually eat a rotting panther. But there had lots of stories. He was also like this zany guy who loved practical jokes. So there are all these stories about things he did in the name of tasting

new stuff that may or may not be true. Like, on the one hand, they may be true because he was so willing to just do crazy stuff. On the other hand, they might be false because he might have just been pretending to do crazy stuff. So a few examples. There was one story that he was visiting a cathedral, and there was a local legend that fresh saints' blood would come out on the floor. It was supposed to be, you know, a local miracle. And so, He just like licked the ground. But he was like, nope, it's bat pee. Wow.

It's upsetting that he knew that immediately. But did he ever try human? Wow. Perfect segue, Sophie. I'm so glad to ask. So another story about him that may or may not be true in many different ways is that he once attended a party where someone was showing off what was supposedly the mummified heart of King Louis the same. 16th. At that time, the monarchies organs were often, like, preserved as relics and precious curiosities. And so supposedly this thing that had trunked down to, like, the size of a walnut

was the mummified heart of King Louis XVIth. And according to legend, William Buckland said, I've eaten many strange things, but I've never eaten the heart of a king before, and then he ate it. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So the whole thing, just like pops in his mouth. Yep. It's just a little minus a little moose. So again, it's possible that this is a prank he orchestrated. It's possible that someone was playing a prank on him and he took the bait. Either way, it's brilliant.

Right. It's also possible that he fully intended to consume the heart of Louis XVIth, but that this relic was a fake because a lot of things being passed around at Victorian parties were not what they were supposed to be. So it's possible that he really intended to do this, believed he did, the whole room believed he did, but he was actually swallowing, like, you know, a dried up cat kidney or something. Who knows? I kind of like the idea of him being like he knew that everybody had this concept of him as this totally wacky guy who is eating all these crazy animals.

So he set up this prank with his friend that he was going to just like eat human flesh in front of them. I think there's got to be a better way to obtain human flesh if you're really determined to eat it. I'm kind of surprised that he didn't go for more of a scientific approach to eating human flesh. Maybe he did. And we just don't know. It overlaps neatly with the sort of like guys stealing bodies to sell them to medical students. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. He could have easily gotten his hands on some person. Oh, yeah. For sure. So we'll never know. He has a reputation for being a really jovial guy. So somebody could definitely write a grade A. musical about his quest to eat human flesh.

I hope to God, that is Lenman Mel Miranda's next project. Oh my God, that would be amazing. We'll go mull on that one for a minute. And then we'll be back for Sarah's fact. Weirdos, looking for awesome popular science merch, we've got you covered at popsye. threadless.com. Pick up t-shirts, notebooks, tote bags, mugs, and other great swag with iconic vintage covers or modern designs.

Plus, check out our podcast store and rep your favorite Popsie shows. like the weirdest thing I learned this week. All that and more at popseye.threadlist.com. That's P-O-P-S-C-I-threadlist.com. Okay, and we're back, and Sarah is going to tell us a tale about clitorious birth. Oh, no. So spotted hyenas are pretty incredible. They have one of the only, like, truly matriarchal societies, especially in the mammalian world.

and it is in part because they give birth through their clitorises. You have to respect that. You do. If you saw that, you would be like, wow. Okay. Spotted hyenas have a thing called a pseudo-penis, which is a thing that a number of species have, squirrel monkeys, some lemurs, only juvenile fossaes. They then shrink back, but just for a little while, they have a pseudo-penus. They also have a clitoris bone, like some animals have a penis bone, which is wild.

But spotted hyenas are the only ones where it's like more like a pseudopinus in that they pee through it. Okay. And they also have sex through it. It is an all in one deal, whereas most other, all of the other ones that have pseudopinuses, like it's basically just unenlarged clitoris. Right. If you've never taken developmental biology before, clitoris and a penis are pretty much the exact same tissue. It just, it starts out when you're a fetus. and as one little flesh grouping,

and then depending on the hormones that are present and differentiates into either a clitoris or a penis. And in hyenas, at the very end of the pregnancy, they get a boost of androgen that gets passed on to the fetus. So the males come out like abnormally aggressive when they're young, but in the females, it just causes the clitoris to grow into what resembles a penis so much that when biologists were first studying hyenas,

they actually thought that maybe they were hermaphrodites because they could not differentiate the males from the females. Like it looks also like they have a scrotum and everything, like just fully a pseudoc penis. Yeah. It is absolutely wild. But the fact that hyenas use theirs to have sex means that the females have to cooperate. So like they don't have any vaginal opening. They have a vagina. It is just like inside. And so the pseudopinus is how they have sex also. which is a little confusing. Wow. Is it fair for us to call any of these things, any of these words? We know so little about how sex and biology work.

It is mind-blowing. It is just, it is wild. It also feels like it's in its own category of thing. And we also, we probably should call it a pseudokinus. I was just going to say, it's not, that makes it sound like it's like a wannabe penis, but it sounds much cooler than a penis. Yeah, it is. Penises can't give birth to babies.

So, yeah, since. females have to cooperate. It means that the males have to develop relationships with female hyenas instead of just recklessly having sex with whoever they want. So researchers have done studies in the field and found that females hyenas prefer males that are friendly and older females prefer males that they've known for years. And so the males put in all this time to develop all these relationships with the ladies in the tribe. Wow. That's very heartwarming. Yeah. I'm also still not over the having to give birth through the clitoris yet. Yeah, so, like, the big advantage to the female hyena is that it's a majorical society.

So, like, the most, the highest-ranking male is ranked below the lowest-ranking female. And the males, when they're, like, three and a half, I think, have to go out and find another clan. But, oh, the other upside is that there's a lot more genetic diversity in hyenas, because if you have, like, a pride of lions where there's one, basically one male who has sex with almost all of the females, you end up with a pride where all of the babies came from one guy. Right. But since females get pregnant and then can't have another baby for a while, it means that there's more mixing between more females and more males. The big downside is that childbirth is absolutely terrifying.

Unlike him, others. Yeah, it's horrifying no matter what. So 60% of first births are still born because the process of birthing a hyena baby means that they start off in the uterus. And then as they travel down the birth canal, the placenta and the umbilical cord aren't long enough for it to still be attached when the baby comes out. So it has to detach very early in the process. But then it takes a very long time to get through the pseudopinus because it has to tear open

because it's a reasonably large baby. They're like fairly precocial. They don't. But it takes so long for it to, tear and the whole process is so long that most of the babies suffocate when they come out. I'm just like, oh, God, this is terrible. It's absolutely horrifying. Sometimes if the ripping process is especially awful, the mother can actually die during childbirth, which is really terrible. So I'm not sure whether the females win in the end. It seems pretty

terrible. But, you know, matriarchist society is good. I found this whole thing so upsetting to Every time you say like ripping and tearing, I just cringe. I mean, the reality is the like human birth. Lots of women. Oh, yeah, lots of ripping and tearing. Yeah, lots of ripping and tearing that just no one tells you about. Lots of pooping. Lots of pooping.

Everyone poops when they should have a vomiting. Yeah. Yeah. Vomiting? When you're an intense pain and. Birth is a living nightmare. Yes. And a miracle.

It's the most beautiful, upsetting thing that any of us ever go through. But at least. we don't give birth through the clitoris. Oh, God. Would it be worth it to have a society run by women? That's the real question. Well, what if we just had the society of hyenas, but we gave birth, like,

what's an animal that has a really easy time giving birth? Because humans giving birth is not, like, a walk in the park. A lot of them seem, I mean, I don't know. I guess a lot of animals do it not painlessly, but fairly quickly. How is it for kangaroos? Because since their babies, like, gets a hang out in a pouch for a while, you know, pandas, I think, have such a... Pandas come out so tiny, I think sometimes they don't even, like, don't think, I think that process is pretty painless because they are giant and their babies are like a jelly bean size.

Oh my God, that's perfect. So there's no way that. Society of hyenas, the birth breasts of pandas. Done. Or a society love pandas. Just we all hang out and eat bamboo and roll around and look cute. Spend all our time eating. I'd love that.

And pooping. That's my dream. Same. Paradise. Wow. What a fantastic. and terrifying story. But was it the weirdest thing we learned this week? What was the weirdest thing we learned? I think it may have been the eating all the animals. Really? Yeah. Wow. I think it might

have been for me the hyena clitoris is. See, for me, it was topless dueling. So I guess, like a three-way tie. It is a three-way tie. Amazing. Momentous day. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms. So subscribe wherever you're listening right now. And if you like what you hear, please rate in Rubios on iTunes. It helps other Weirdos find the show. You can buy our merch, including Weirdest Thing t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at popsye. Dotlest.com.

The show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, and our editor, Jason Letterman. Our theme music is by Billy Cannon. 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 book. because we're built for what you're building fit for your ambition for citizens bank. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.

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