The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Olympic Tug-o-War, Leaping Leeches, Card-Carrying Women

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Rose Eveleth joins the show to talk about chromosome testing in the Olympics. Plus, Claire returns to talk elite tug-o-war, and Rachel talks about the leech that can fly. Listen to Rose's new show, Tested: https://link.chtbl.com/js0J2gTx 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 -- 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 Get 20% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST! #honeylovepod Keep track of what’s important with Tile. Visit https://Tile.com today and use code WEIRDEST to get 15% off all Tiles.  Live it up this summer and make progress towards your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in minutes at https://www.chime.com/WEIRDEST 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 tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of

Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feldman. I'm Claire Maldorelli. And I'm Rose Evelyn. Rose, welcome back to the show. And Claire, welcome back. It's been a minute. Thank you. Thanks. To have you both here. And Rose, I understand you have a new show to plug. Why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about it before we roll into talking about weird things. Yes, I do have a show coming out. It is just the first episode has just dropped. It's called Tested. And it is about the, long history and current impact of gender verification policies in sports. So this idea that women need to prove that they're women, that some women competing maybe aren't actually women, and then in the modern version, this idea that some women who are competing have an unfair advantage against other women because their bodies are configured slightly differently. And so here

we're talking not about trans athletes, but about intersex athletes, DSD athletes, things like that. So I traveled all over the world. I went to NAM. Libya, I went to Kenya, I went to Switzerland, I was sort of been traveling and meeting these women. And then also we trace this very long history of these policies where they come from, why they exist, why did we start testing people in 1936? Like what were we worried about? What was the like need for this? And then up into today where these athletes are trying to make it to the Olympics in Paris that are coming up and whether they make it or not. Wow, that sounds really cool. I'm saying I can't wait to check it out because we're recording this in June.

But I'm sure I can preemptively say I loved the first episode. It was so good. I can send you samples of the first three if you want to hear them now. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I will send you examples. I seriously doubt I'm going to need to record a pickup softening my praise. But I would love to hear it. Awesome.

Yeah, that sounds really cool. and I'm really excited to hear maybe a little bit of your research from the process today. So let's get into the show. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about a fact or story that 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 insert you know we don't pick whatever any more joke whatever listeners they know they can write their own um uh clara what's your tease yes so i would like to talk about a forgotten olympic sport that is no longer in the olympics but it might have had the original shoe controversy

we all talk about the Nike or you know marathon shoes controversy but this was the original I think I'm so excited I'm so excited for this yes I'm so excited oh good oh I love it oh yay uh incredible um Claire you I do think you are going to have to go first just because of Rose's reaction but we will get through our other two teases before we're nervous that this is going to disappoint you just for like the ridiculousness of no no no I love it I'm so excited listen you have to stop me because if we get into like weird sports anecdotes, I'll be like, and also. One of my favorite, like, little mini quizzes I've ever done on Murtis thing was when I was like, which of these is a real sport and which is one that I made up? And honestly,

the hardest part of that was making up a thing that I could confirm didn't exist. Yeah, because people will do anything competitively, really. Listen, people will do anything. Rose, what's your tease? This is probably, I was thinking about this. My tease is not going to be a great tease because given what I've already said about my podcast, it's going to be kind of obvious what I'm going to talk about. But my tease is that I want to talk about a test that for 30 years, every single female Olympian had to take that was not a drug test, but was a different kind of test. And if they failed, they had to leave the Olympics.

Oh, well, I am very much looking forward to hearing more. my tease I have I'm actually no I'm not going to say mine is a non-sports related fact anything can be a sport

anything is a sport I think it might be a sports related fact I'm going to talk about something that leeches do that we sure wish they didn't sport for sure

yeah yeah definitely so Claire why don't you kick us off with some Olympics lore and shoe controversy I know you love a shoe cut. I truly do. Yes, I'm so excited. So Olympics are obviously next month. So I'm excited.

I think I'm always surprised. Some people are either in like one camp of hating the Olympics, never wanting to watch them. And then others are like, I need to stay up all night watching every single sport and event. And I'm definitely in that camp. So I'm very good. specific. I'm like there are events that I'm always excited to watch and then like I kind of forget about the Olympics other than that. Though I don't know. Yeah, I feel that. It also, I think, I feel like the host country really sets the tone for me because if I, if I'm delighted by their pageantry and fanfare versus like kind of grossed out by it or just generally unimpressed, that really, that makes a difference. Well, the host country also gets to pick their expo sports in the most recent kind of

set of Olympics. And so they're like this year in France breakdancing is one of the expo sports that France has picked, which is very polarizing. But I am excited for it because they've set it up right under the Eiffel Tower. So they're going to be breakdancing under the Eiffel Tower. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also feel that Rachel, I'm very partial to just the women's specific marathon. Oh, I don't. The men's Olympics, we do not recognize. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like a bunch of my friends are like, here are these great like events in men's track and field that you should watch. And I'm like, I'm only here for the women's sports. I could not care any less. Hard pass. Yeah. So I've been trying to get myself more into other events outside of women's marathon, even though it is really the only sport you need to watch in life. But so it took me. into a very deep dive into the history of all the sports that used to be in the Olympics. And I want to

highlight one today that I just like fell in love with, even though it's a sport that I don't think I ever want to do ever again in my life. But it was just, I just had a ball reading about it in the middle of the night while I was watching the track and field trials in Oregon right now. Yeah, yes. We can talk about those another time. I have a lot of thoughts. I know. I feel like we can just go off topic this whole podcast, and eventually I will get to my fact. So if you look back at the history of the Olympics, there are a lot of forgotten sports that people literally won gold medals for, and the one I want to discuss today is the tug of war. Amazing. So you may remember this event from Field Day in elementary school.

I don't know if y'all had like Field Day, but it was a big deal. Field Day was big at my school. Same. Same. We were a small enough school where I went to elementary and middle school that it really splitting us down the middle really created like two noble houses mentality. Like because it was like 140 people total. and everyone knew each other.

I feel like we were really primed to be like, blue team and green team, it's going down. Yeah, similar for us, we were blue and white. And for whatever reason, like, you got your team in first grade, and then you were blue for first grade through fifth grade. Yeah, and so I was white. Building team loyalty.

Yes. So everyone did tug of war at Field Day. in elementary school where a bunch of kids just pull as hard as they can and one random kid is like randomly very very strong exclusively at tug of war and just wins it for the entire team. But hear me out now, the Olympics tug of war is quite different. So as a reminder, the Olympics as we know them today are known as the modern Olympic games. and these modern Olympic games have only been going on, surprisingly, since 1896. I mean, that's literally, it's only less than 150, is it?

Yeah, it is less than 150 years. I feel like people, like, focus so much on the fact that there were Olympic games in ancient Greece, that they like kind of, they're like, ah, yes, these ancient and noble games with such a storied history. And it's like, not really. They're like, Edwardian. Well, do you want to know a fun fact about this? Yeah. So Pierre de Couretan, the guy who founded the modern Olympics, right?

He's like this little French guy, giant mustache. And he is now sort of like, everyone's like, oh, this visionary, da-da-da. He had a lot of weird ideas. He also was really into, speaking of another sport that is not really a thing. He really wanted to make a sport or he didn't invent this sport, but he was very invested in trying to make the sport take off, which was fencing on horseback, not jousting, but actual fencing. on horseback. That was like one of his things. I read this. Yes. So he was so obsessed with the modern

Olympics that he actually requested that part of his remains be buried in Athens, even though he like had no connection to Abby. So part of, part of Pierre de Coubertin is in Athens actually, I believe. Wow. Wow. Good for him. You must go visit him. You know what, good for him. A devoted fan. A true devoted fan. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So these modern Olympic games only since 1896 and the Olympic Tug of War actually started just at like the beginning of these modern Olympic Games in 1900. They had a very short streak. Only five Olympic Games had the tug of war. So the last Olympic tug of war ended in 1920. But I will tell you, things went down in those five Olympic games that maybe it had just run its course. It didn't need anymore.

games. So to recap from elementary school, tug of war consists of a rope. I don't know why I needed this recap, but I'm giving it to you all just, you know, to re-picture it in your memory. I don't know if Jan Althe kids have ever played tug of war. I truly, no idea. Kids these days don't even know what tug of war is. I don't know that that's bad.

Please continue, though. So for education purposes, for future generations, there's a rope. And then there's two teams at each end of the rope. And they usually have eight people. I guess if you have a super small school, maybe you only have six. I don't know. But usually it's eight. And then there's like certain markers on the rope.

I believe most cases it's this like red marker. And in the center of like there's like a middle area of the field. And that's where like the sport starts. I don't think I'm describing it well for future generations. It's going to be. terrible. Anyways, you come and they use this podcast to learn about human culture.

It's going to go so horribly wrong. This is our golden record actually. Oh, gosh. I would cry if that be if this podcast became our golden record, then aliens tried to learn tug of war by my description. Yeah, they would get a very strange view of humanity

in general from this show. But like probably better. than they'd probably think we were cooler than we are, generally speaking. Exactly. I'm going with that. Yeah. And then they say start and then you pull. And in elementary school, there's no tactics.

Like I said, there's just some kid who's just really good at pulling and then wins it. But in like the real world, if you were on like tug and field teams, which exist still today, there's all these like various tactics of like when you should. pull and when you should just like, you know, stare down your competition and it's more a mental game than a physical game, which I think is bizarre. I just remember like really hurting my hands because I would always be so nervous because I was like short for always short, but short then too. And I was always in the front and just like freaked me out. And then my hands would start like sweating. I would just like slip the rope. So yeah, bad memories. But anyways, that is the gist.

of tug of war. So now I am going to give you some highlights from the five years at the Olympic tug of war games, and it will culminate in this shoe controversy that I owed to. So the inaugural year is the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, actually, which is surprising because that's where they are coming full circle here. And the Olympic Games in like the 1890s, 96, 1900, 1904, they're kind of like a free for all where they're just like, the more sports, the better, just throw it in. Kind of like field day.

You know, I really think these have parallels here. And like the more athletes, the better. Like, we're trying things out here. We're in our experimental phase. And a bunch of athletes are doing different sports. So, like, track and field, tug of war, tennis, like just go for it. it, whatever you think is your best sport that day, sign up for it. So the United States actually ended up putting a team together, but then they withdrew their team because every person on

their team actually had so many other sports that they had signed up for as well. And they were just like, we just can't put a team of eight together. I'm sorry, they're their tennysoning or they're whatever. So the first gold medal went to a combined team of Sweden and Denmark, they somehow pulled together and they defeated France. I can see that for Sweden and Denmark for sure. And the team, the group of French tug-of-of-warers actually had the first black gold medalist in the history of the modern Olympic Games, which is kind of cool. All right, so that's the 1900 inaugural highlight there. And then we get to the 1904 Olympic Games, which were held in St. Louis, Missouri, which

have a place in my heart because the marathon that year for men was just, it was a show to be seen. A great former episode for people to go back and catch up on. Truly one of my favorites of all time. and the United States dominated that year. They actually entered four teams into the competition, and they won the gold as well as, I believe, silver, and they defeated Greece. And then I think what came in forth was South Africa. Well, I feel like back at this time when, and we did an episode of like a sort of Olympics facts a couple years ago. So I'll definitely make sure we link to that on Popsat.com slash weird on my Patreon so people can.

go back and get all that other Olympics lore. But I think there's still the time when you had to be an amateur, right? So, like, literally, it was like uncouth to be paid. It was illegal. You could not even compete if you're being paid. It was not even just uncouth. It was disallowed. Yeah, it was disallowed.

But I feel like it was disallowed because it was uncouth. They were like, this is just, well, just general principles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so the modern Olympics were founded by Pierre de Coubertin, who partially was founding them because France had lost a war. And he was like, our French people are too weak, our men, our men. Our men are weak and sad.

And we need to like encourage sporting activity. And so he founds this modern Olympics and whatever. And so the point of this was to basically like try and encourage and prepare civilians for war. And so the idea was like, you know, it is not even just uncouth, but like, like, that's not the point of the games. And also just like professional athletics was kind of not a thing so much, especially in like, you know, running. That hasn't been, I mean, that's like still almost not a thing to like get paid to run unless you're like, you know, at a certain level. But it was in there's a, there's a, I went to the Olympics archive for this project that I'm working on. So I was in Switzerland and like going

through all these papers. And there are like thousands of pages of papers of people debating amateurism rules and like how important they are and why they matter. And like even if someone, they, they, would use these rules to punish people they didn't like. So, for example, women would sometimes be given things when they started competing. So like, you know, a present. And Avery Brundage, who's kind of this like notable sports figure at the time, a really bad dude in many ways, hates women, also loves Nazis, was the person who basically helped make sure that the US went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the Nazi Olympics. But he was very obsessed with these being amateurs. And so he would constantly be trying to, like, ban athletes for getting these

prizes and presents and stuff. And someone photographed this one athlete, Babe Diedrickson, this woman in a car. She didn't know what was going on. She was just, like, photographed in a car. And then they used it in an ad. And he tried to, like, ban her from the Olympics because that was, like, being a paid spokesperson. So there's all sorts of, like, interesting history about amateurism. Sorry. I go. Yeah. No, that is super interesting. So the sidebar I started. Sorry. No, no, no, no, no. Thank you so much. But the point I was going to circle to was because everyone was an amateur, it was the deck was always really stacked for the home, the hosting country because that you had the most chance of people wandering in to do sports if it was located in their home country. So I'm not surprised that when it was in St. Louis, we absolutely obliterated at Tug of War. Yes. I feel like I would try to walk on to some random team if this was the 1900s dressed as a man or no, actually women Rose, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think women were allowed starting in 1900. It's just that there was only for like a select number of sports. Yeah, it was two events in the 1900. The first time women are allowed in track and field is 1928. And then from there it's kind of it's hard because there's no like one people are like when were women allowed in the Olympics. And it's kind of this like trickle, right? Because they're really don't want to let women in. And so they let them in in things that are feminine, like tennis

and like swimming, which are considered at the time feminine sports. You had people competing in the Olympics and tennis wearing actual corsets and having to take them off at the end and being like bloody because they're like literally being stabbed by their own corsets. Really metal stuff. And then in 1928, they allow women to run on track and field. And it is a nightmare disaster because is women run, particularly the 800 meters in 1928, run the 800 meters, look tired afterwards. Because the 800 is like a really brutal race. That was my race. It is like a not fun race.

And one of them kind of like sits down on the ground. Like if you've ever watched literally any running, even at field day, like people, this is like a very normal thing. Like right, people look tired, put their hands over their heads, you know, whatever. And the newspaper accounts after this are like, women collapse on the field, like have to be reviating. Like, there's all of this, like, fake, essentially, like, not, not correct reporting about one of the headlines is, like, sobbing girls. And it's like just this, like, this is spun into this thing where it's like, oh, my God, this is clearly too much for women. Track and field was always really considered the most manly of all of the sports in the Olympics. And so the idea of women competing was really intolerable to a lot of people.

And particularly women who, like, looked like they were trying hard. And so they actually tried to, after the 1928 Olympics, ban all women from athletics again. or track and field again for everything. And they wound up having this long back and forth, deciding not to do that, but they did ban the 800 until 1960. The first time women ran again in the 800 meters was 1960 at the Olympics. That's wild. That is so late. Yeah. Wow. Wait, and then also wasn't the marathon, I think, was either 1980 or 84 to. I think it was 84. Yeah. I'd have to check that. But yeah, it's late. Late. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, women are delicate flowers and their uteruses might fall out. Literally, literally, especially when you hit

mild 26, you know, mile 25 fine, 26 baths. Exactly. Yep, no, that's 100% what happens. It's science. Okay, so back to the 19, all right, we're on 1908, I think, tug of war here. And here's, this is where we get to the controversy. You know, it's seeming like way less interesting now. I would just talk about women's track and field all day long, but I swear this, I swear my My fact is interesting. So the 1908 Limbaugh Games, they're held in London, and there are like tons of people, tons of countries wanting to join in on the tug of war teams. So there are eight pulling members, they called them, and Great Britain sweeps the race.

They win gold, silver, and bronze. and they have, like you said, that like anyone can kind of like join in from their country. So the teams from Great Britain were represented by the Liverpool Police. They won the bronze medal against Sweden. And then the London police forces of the city of London Police and Metropolitan Police both got their teams to the final. And the gold medal was actually won by the City of London Police. And they came in uniform, as you do, if you are the police, I guess. You actually just arrest the other team.

That's the play. Exactly. And other people, spectators and members of other pulling teams, notice that the footwear worn by the Liverpool police team were, quote, wearing enormous shoes so heavy, in fact, that it was only with great effort that they could lift their feet from the ground. Oh, my goodness. They claimed that they came in uniform and they were wearing their regulation police footwear. And despite the rules banning, quote, prepared boots or shoes with any protruding nails, they were just wearing the shoes. the shoes that they wear every day as a police officer. And it was like this huge controversy and

all the other teams that did not win the race were all asking for them to have their shoes be evaluated by multiple members of the Olympic Committee and for them to get their gold medal removed because of these shoes. In the end, it was a unanimous vote by the Olympic Committee that the Liverpool police team shoes were, first, the correct shoes that they wear every day. It was part of their uniform. And second, that it was allowed for them to wear while doing the Olympic tug of war. I don't know what science went into this. decision. There was not a lot of information on the specifics of the Liverpool Police Department shoes and also the specifics of what you should be wearing while you are doing the Olympic

tug of war aside from not wearing giant nails put into your shoes to keep your foot on the ground. But everyone was really, like, riled up by all of this tug-of-war non-nonsense. And the Liverpool team was so happy, but they were also really annoyed that the other teams were questioning their shoes. And it was in particular this one American team. And they offered to do a rematch in bare feet just to prove their ability to tug a rope. and the American team supposedly, according to this one article, declined. So they won fair and square with their clunky police officer shoes. Wow.

Wow. And now more than 100 years later, we've got giant shoes back on track in the marathon. I could talk about that forever. Has anyone considered running in a police uniform? Has that been, you know. That's the key. That's the key. Running the marathon in 1908 style Liverpool Police Department uniform, regulation shoes. I think that's it. I think I think I think we've cracked it. Yeah. Yeah. Nike thinks they know, but I think I think we got it. Incredible. Yeah.

So then nothing more eventful. 1912, 1916, actually Olympics were canceled because of a world war going on. And then the 1920 games is when Tug of War saw its last time to shine. And they really just crack down on all these quote unquote sports that were happening at the Olympics. And I think they removed some like 33 sports along. with and tug of war was one of them. So in my heart, it's, it's definitely still an Olympic sport. And if I were to go back to elementary school and do the tug of war, I would ask for police officers shoes to wear because I think that they're best for the job. But yeah, I think it is,

it is very sad that there is no longer the tug of war because I think a lot of people would watch it. And it's very reminiscent. Like sometimes I think I'm surprised that people don't like the Olympics because they are very like reminiscent of like elementary school, middle school fun and like the types of sports that we played. And tug of tug of war was definitely one of them. So maybe if we brought back tug of war, more people would be into watching the Olympics that the Olympic haters would be no longer Olympic haters. Absolutely. Other fun facts about tug of war that I learned just really quickly and then I'll wrap it up. It is good exercise.

However, it is not without injury risk. I'm just going to leave it there. Fingers were harmed in horrible ways. And I'm going to end there. Ouch. Yeah. Can I share one tug of war related fact about. about the Olympics and talk before.

Yes, please. So I don't know how familiar you are. Obviously, one of the my favorite things about the Olympics is, A, the sports I like, but then also like sports I would literally never watch otherwise. I am now watching because it's on the Olympics, right? So like archery or like whatever else. And I'm like, sure, yeah, I'll watch that. Like it's on.

One of those sports for many people where they've never heard of it before, but it's on the Olympics, is the modern pentathlon. And I don't know how much you all know about the modern pentathlon, but it is invented by Pierre de Coupertain, this guy. And the premise of the modern pentathlon, it is five events. So it's running, swimming, shooting, riding a horse, and fencing. And everything a well-rounded individual needs to be able to do. Well, so the reason it's those five sports.

It's like they pulled out of a hat and they were like, we're going to pick five things to do here. But there is logic. There is logic here. The reason it's those five sports is that it is, again, founded by the founder of the modern Olympics. It is the five things that a French infantryman would need. if he had to escape behind enemy lines. So fencing, running, swimming across the channel, stealing a horse so you don't actually know the horse.

It is not your horse. It is a horse you have just met. And then what did I miss? Shooting. And so those are the five sports because it's like, aha, you are in the war. And so I don't know how many of you followed this. Maybe you saw headlines about this from the last Olympics in Tokyo where there was a scandal in the modern pentathlon around the horse.

I don't know if you saw the horse punching incident maybe as like a headline. It sounds vaguely familiar. Yeah. So why don't I remember this? What happens is, so it is a cumulative time, right? So you're doing all these events and you kind of like, you know, you've accumulated time over the course of they've tried to tighten it up because it was like a many day thing. And it's hard to get people to watch something that spans many days, right? Like we don't have a lot of attention span.

So because the horses are random horses that these people have never met again because they are ostensibly stealing this horse and then doing something with them. And so this woman came into the horse, the equestrian portion. She was way, way, way ahead of everybody else. She gets on her horse and the horse is like, no, I'm not. I don't want to be here. I don't like this. And it is hard to make a very large animal do something. It does not want to do, especially when that thing is like jump over.

Like the horse was clearly just like absolutely not. And this woman does not react well to this. She starts freaking out because she can see her lead slipping. away, right? She's in first. And they do have a crop that they're allowed to use, but she starts like really like wailing on this horse in a way that is like not fun to watch where you're like, okay, this is like this is actually just animal abuse at this point. She starts screaming and crying. Her coach reaches across the barrier and punches the horse. Which of course, like again, the horse is not going to respond. This is not going to work. Like this is not the way you get a

horse to do things. Anyway, I believe she winds up coming in third or something like that. But it's a big scandal because everyone's like, you know, horse innocent, stop punching horses. And this is not great because modern pentathlon is not a popular sport, as you all know. And this is like the one time it's in the headlines and it's for like animal cruelty. And so the sport is like, oh God, trying to figure out what to do. And this has been a long-running conversation about what to do about the horses because unlike in equestrian of other varieties where you own this horse and you have spent like lots of months. money, like thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, right, to like keep this horse happy. Because these horses are not really anybody's, I mean, they are someone's horses, but they're not

sort of in that same vein. There's been a long conversation about people showing up to competitions for modern pentathlon and like the horses being in like kind of bad shape. And it's like, where did these horses come from? There was an event where there were like horses with like open soars on their legs. People were like, what are you doing here? We don't love this. And so a lot of modern pentathletes have been pushing for like changes to the horse portion of the event. And so after. the Tokyo incident, the leaders of modern pentathlon, who are like ancient Frenchmen, were like, we hear you, we're going to do something about it. And everyone was like, great,

finally, they're going to make some changes. You know, there have been all these suggested changes where it's like, you could meet the horse the day before and like build a little bit of rapport with it. You know, it could be your horse, like whatever it is. Instead, they come out and they say, actually, we are eliminating the horse portion completely. However, it is still a pentathlon. So they have to replace the horse portion with something. And they really want it to be something that is within the spirit of like, we're escaping behind enemy from behind enemy lines. So tug of war was considered as one of the potential, like, things to use. The problem is that they can't do anything that has Olympic recognition already.

So it could be an Olympic sport on its own right. So it can't be like, because people are like, okay, just do like rock climbing or cycling or whatever. But they're like, no, no, those already exist. And we can't like take them apparently. I'm not sure why, but that was like the decision. And so there was this long list that they came up with that was a. all absurd, including things like sports that I actually think do not exist, but some man just

saw on a Google one time, like, pillow fighting was one of the suggestions of like a sport. That sounds like a Monty Python sketch about warfare. And so here was my pitch. I was like, I have a solution. I have the solution for you guys. Mechanical bull riding, clearly is what they should do, right? Like, no animal cruelty, fun to watch, cheap, easy. Everyone, like, you can basically convert the skills, right? Like what I, I feel like this is an obvious solution. They did not respond to any of my emails when I sent them this idea. And they instead replaced it with a competitive obstacle course racing. Oh, so like parkoury kind of, yeah, like or like American Ninja Warriory kind of stuff. And then there was a big additional scandal because it turns out, and because these men are ancient French

men, they don't know how to scrub the internet of criminal history and or like evidence of fraud. And so it turns out that the guy who runs the organization for competitive obstacle course racing who has been trying to get Olympic recognition is also on the board of the modern pentathlon. And everyone was like, what are we doing here, guys? Anyway, so they did not do chug of war, but they could have. And I think that would have been good. But my pitch is still mechanical ball riding. Imagine being, I mean, I'm sure, obviously modern pentathlon isn't one of those sports that's like you, it's your livelihood, right? Like I, it's probably people who are either independently wealthy or have day jobs.

But imagine being really into the pentathlon and then them being like, horses out, American Ninja Warrior in. And like that's what that's a very different skill set. Yeah. Well, a lot of athletes are really mad, right? Because they're like, these people have trained to, ride horses. And many, so most modern pentathletes come from either swimming or running. And then they're like, okay, I'm good at this. I can learn these other skills, right? Like, so most modern pentathletes

are not great at fencing. They're not great at shooting. But swimming is really actually the event that is like the hardest to pick up and get like good at actually. And so you have all these people who have like spent a lot of money in training to get good at riding horses who are now being told that like psych obstacle horses. And they're like, what? Yeah, that would make me extremely angry. People are Very mad. Very mad. Oh, fascinating. Anyway, the last fun fact about modern metathlon is that the man who runs the organization that governs modern pentathlon is older, has been the leader of that organization for longer than the current reigning gold medalist has been alive. Wow, for real.

Yeah. Well, that's just, he knows so much, you know. He just knows so, yeah, that's so true. He knows so much. He's seen a lot. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break.

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And I'm going to talk about leeches. Before I talk about leeches, actually, and what they do or don't do, I'm going to go back to the 14th century. When this guy named Ibn Bhutata, he was kind of the OG travel writer. Very interested in this guy. I just started reading up on him. He was born in Tangier around the start of the 14th century. and he trained as a judge, which was kind of the family line of work. But then one day as a young man, he was headed to Egypt, presumably to learn some more

judging skills or to work as a judge. And he just really caught the travel bug, and he made it his life's mission to, quote, never travel any road a second time. And it's important to note, this is the 1300s. People didn't travel for fun. I was going to say there aren't that many roads. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's true.

It's true. He ran a real risk of running out of roads. But yeah, like really just, I must emphasize, you know, even compared to like the 1700s, the 1600s, like the 1300s, like the 1300s, people were not traveling for leisure. Maybe they would be part of like a delegation. and of course there were many utilitarian reasons to travel even very long distances. But the traveling for pleasure just not really a thing. I'm sure some kings went to places and were like, I had a good time there. But like, again, just not.

There wasn't much of a travel culture. And this guy was into it. During the pandemic, like the heat of the pandemic, like 2020, I was like ranting to my mom, saying like, oh, I just miss traveling. And this was literally her response. She was like, you know, in the olden days, people didn't travel. I mean, she's not wrong, but this guy. This guy did.

You should call your mom back and be like, actually, mom. Yeah, actually. Yeah, actually. So, yeah, he became famous, not just for being a guy who like went places for fun, which was pretty notable at the time. but he also wrote about his trips. And his biggest book, which was just called like Travels, I think, it recounted about 75,000 miles in trips covering almost all the Muslim countries of the day and many neighboring non-Muslim

countries. And while we can't know for sure that he went every single place he said he went, there is like a lot of corroborating evidence for a lot of it. So it is generally thought that like this guy really did. and just traips around the world. He went on a lot of adventures, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. This is a quote, while he did not discover new or unknown lands

and his contribution to scientific geography was minimal, the documentary value of his work has given it lasting historical and geographical significance. He met at least 60 rulers and many viziers, governors, and other dignitaries. In his book, he mentioned more than 2,000 persons who were known to him personally or whose tombs he visited, and the majority of those people are identifiable by independent sources, and there are surprisingly few errors in names or dates in his material.

So really fascinating figure, but the reason I learned about him today is because the scientific community took issue with at least one of Batuta's travel tips, which was his warning about the dangers of flying leeches. flying leeches. Flying leeches. Flying. As opposed to just the regular leeches? Yeah, yeah. That does seem worse. Yeah, exactly. So in the 1300s, he went to Salon, which is now Sri Lanka. And this is a quote, he said, of course, translated. Here we saw the flying leech, which they call Zulu. It is found on the trees and weeds near the water and leaps to the person who happens to pass by it. At whichever part of the body, the leech settles, great quantities of blood gushed from it. To meet its onslaught, people provide themselves with lemons, whose juice

being poured over it, the leech falls off. It is said that a certain pilgrim passed by a place whence leeches sprang, what a phrase, whence leeches sprang at him and settled on his body. He bore it patiently and no lemon juice was poured with the result that his blood gushed forth and he died, which it's not where I expected that sentence to go. Yeah, I was really thinking they were he was going to like, yeah, right. And then the leech got tired of left. No. No, he just died.

This was him, you know, recounting a story that was probably apocryphal. But apparently this guy who got leached to death got a cave named after him. No word on how leachy the cave was. But apparently, fast forward to the 19th century and scholars think this is nonsense. They were sure that leeches just fell onto people from the trees if leeches were, you know, falling upon people at all. And it's been the subject of some debate ever since then. Like, apparently it's like one of the most contentious things about leeches among leech people. Wait, whether they can fly, whether there are flying leashes.

Not whether they can fly, whether they can jump. I should have. Oh, okay. I'm imagining wings. They definitely can't fly, but whether they can jump from the trees. They can leap. I see. I see.

Yeah. Okay. Leaping leeches. Leaping leeches. Got it. And yeah, I saw one researcher quoted saying, like, is this the kind of thing? Scientists debate in bars? Yeah, totally.

I think absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. In 1968, there was a study that said, in spite of, Folktales to the contrary. Land leeches do not jump from vegetation onto their prey. Very confident. Which makes it surprising that in 2017, this conservation biologist on her first major field research trip took a casual cell phone video of a leaping leech. So this is a researcher named Dr. May Fami. And she told science news that she thought she was bringing home a neat little video. of a leech doing something it always does. She does work with leeches. That's why she was there

filming a leech. But she uses them to basically analyze their blood to track endangered animals in Madagascar. So she collects a bunch of leeches and then analyzes the DNA in their guts to see what animals they've been feeding on, which is a really nifty way of seeing what animals are living in those forests. So really cool work. But She was in this very specific place where she was around leeches all the time, but wasn't specifically studying what leeches do. So she was like, oh, yeah, I guess leeches jump. Nobody told me that. And then she came home and showed colleagues and they were like, is that leach jumping?

And she ended up getting some collaborators and going back in 2023 to get more footage. And she says that basically once she started walking around, the area in just a couple of minutes she encountered a leech doing this. So it seems like maybe it's not that unusual. So in this 2017 phone video, you see this upright leech and it like sways and makes a move toward the edge of the leaf and then it like kind of kind of throws itself into the air of the edge or does it, which leads us to the real meat of this debate, which is what constitutes a jump. Oh. This takes us to the Olympics.

Yeah, exactly. It's a sport. It's a sport. It's a sport. Yes. Yes. So in the videos, like, you see the leeches. They're like bending their body, like a spring being pulled back.

And then they're rigid as they go forward. They, the researchers say they do not seem to have mastered landing. Rude. It's a graceful jump, but a hard land. is how they described it in the paper. And so the question is like, is this falling or jumping? And what's the difference? And why do we care?

Turns out, you know, people who study leeches care a lot because there are invertebrates that jump, but it is like less common than in the vertebrate world. And a lot of it comes down to like, well, what is the vertebrates? the mechanism we mean when we say a jump. So the researchers behind this paper, they're like, we're proposing that a jump is an intentional movement that muscularly propels the organism outward and or upward, which I think is fair. I think that's a fair definition of a jump. And they believe that it is fair to say the leeches are doing this in this video, that basically these leeches and this is a specific, one specific species of leaves,

from Madagascar. So it wouldn't be the same leach described by our friend the travel writer, who was in Sri Lanka at the time. But there are 800 or so named leech species. Most of them are in the water. Really? 800? Yeah. Most of those are water-based, but then there are some land leeches. but they like inch along the ground in a very wormy way, except they, they also like really, they like stick pretty firmly when they like plant one end of themselves down. So it's a very inchworm motion, but also sort of reminds me of when, I don't know, those like pens that had suction cups on the ends of them that were popular in the 90s.

like they sort of like they sort of like fix themselves the ground and then like inch along it's like a drag yeah yeah exactly and um they say like one of the key things is that like they sort of seem to like pull themselves back to maybe get this like intentional energetic potential but they're very like straight and rigid in the air when they take off. And they're like, that's not how they inch forward on the ground. So if we were just seeing them like try to take an inch forward and instead go off the edge of a leaf, it would look different. So, yeah, they think it's like some people are comparing it to how cobras and other snakes kind of strike. And you can see the videos. I will definitely link to them on Pops out of

like beard. Yeah, I want to see those on my Patreon. Yeah, they're great. I definitely recommend it. It's freaky. I don't love it. But it's. But it's. I don't want to see it in person. I just want to see it in the video. Yes. I think that is the correct way I think about it. There are a couple of responses to the jump. One researcher said it was a clear jump, in quotes.

Another said, this is clearly an email response, hmm, with three Ms and three exclamation points, which I respect. And she was like, it's something between. falling, controlled aerial descent, and a directed launch. I honestly cannot tell whether that's a jump or not, which is fair. Wait, what's the difference between a directed launch and a jump? Because that feels like just a fancy, annoying science word for jump. I would have to agree.

Well, and I think, again, there's a reason why in this paper, they're like, here's what we propose a jump means. And it's wild that that has to be part of the paper. Like, listen to settled at. I love you, but sometimes it's not it, right? Like just let it be a joke. There doesn't need to be this complicated. And we know it when we say it. It's a jump.

Yeah. That's a jump. That's a jump. Yeah. I would give that a clear if like that's a sport and that's a jump and that is a gold medal. I am into it. 10 out of 10. Agreed.

And yeah, there are researchers who are like this isn't, this wouldn't be altogether surprising. Unlike earthworms, we just have like a third set of muscles. in comparison to earthworms so that they have like extra body support, which is how they can, they like that thing where they like cling to the leaves and they like, move themselves up and they sway. Yeah. Which reminds me of, um, in the little mermaid, the poor unfortunate souls. Yeah.

That's what it reminds me of. I don't, I don't love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they've, they've evolved to basically like stand there swaying around sniffing out your bloods. Listen, I would be a lured. I would be trapped. I'd be like, ooh, what is that?

And that's how I get a fucking leech. Totally. Yeah. So, yeah. Of course, most leeches are the ones in water. So even if it's common for land leeches to leap, most of us don't have to worry about that. I will say, you know, if you feel the need to be worried about things that can suck your blood, ticks really wily. They will climb right up your body.

And there was research a few years ago that. that static electricity can, like, pull them probably a few centimeters. Yeah. So it hasn't been tested in the field yet, but, like, lab experiments showed that, like, statically charged rabbit fur and other similar materials had enough cling to, like, yank little, what kind of ticks? castor bean ticks across little gaps of air and they say like humans probably have enough charge

to theoretically pull ticks several centimeters but the truth is you don't need a tick to be able to fly several centimeters through the air for it to like get on you even if you think

you have not touched a thing that ticks could be on but you know be mindful of that do tick checks you probably won't get attacked by a jumping leech and if you do it's fine

just pull it off. Actually, the researcher I was talking about... Don't just sit there and bear it like that guy. Yeah, don't just bear it. But you won't die. The researcher I was talking about said she would take a leech bite over a mosquito bite any day. Really? Yeah. Wow. I guess because like a leech bite won't itch like a mosquito bite will. Yeah, I don't think so. It just hurts. Does it hurt? I assume it hurts. You just lose a tiny bit of blood. I don't think it hurts. I don't think it hurts. They have like anesthetic in them. Yeah. Yeah, I think they're evil in that way. Listen, I feel like I need to Google leeches a lot after this.

Yeah, listen. Leeches deserve more attention. And hopefully they will get it thanks to this 14th century travel writer didn't manage to get them their due. But maybe these conservation biologists will. I feel like those kinds of old documents are either like fully made. made up where they're like, this is an animal I definitely saw. And it's 100% just like a made up thing that they drew out of their imagination.

Or definitely right. And we've been saying that it's wrong the whole time. And now we're like rediscovering. And there's no in between. There's nobody in between those two things. Absolutely true. Okay. We're going to take a quick break.

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prioritization during times of high network usage. Okay, we're back. And Rose, let's talk about bad tests. I assume they're bad. Yeah, I think it's fair to say they're bad. Or at least they were used for purposes that they were not really designed for. So my fact is that between 1968 and 1999, every single woman, so that's 30 years, every single woman who competed in the Olympics in every event had to take a chromosome test

to verify that they were actually women. And if they passed, they got given a little card, like your video membership card. You're like a library card. You're a card carrying female. And they had to bring them. They were called certificates of femininity. And they had to bring them with them to every event if they wanted to compete.

And if you didn't have it, you couldn't compete. We actually talked to somebody who forgot her card at home one time and was not allowed to compete because, like, she might secretly be a man. And it's just this like wild thing. And so this is a period of time, you know, 1968 to 1999 where this is happening. But there's a really long history of sex testing. So as I've mentioned earlier, women first and really centers around track and field. It happens at all events for a long time, but it kind of comes from and then sticks around in track and field for reasons we can get into if you're interested.

It's sort of an interesting sort of question. But women run on the track in the Olympics in 1928. I mentioned, there's like absolute chaos. Everyone's like, oh my God, this is horrible. Women are going to die. They're going to not be able to have children because this is whatever. But the men who watched this were also really worried about a couple of other things. And one of them was they were worried that men were going to dress up as women and pretend to be women to win medals. Sometimes now you'll hear stories about this having happened. As far as I'm aware, based on all of my research and at this point I've now spent like 10 years researching this story. This has never

happened actually, at least not at the elite level. Like I have no idea of like some rec club, like whatever, but like at the Olympic level at the elite level, it is not a thing that has ever happened. There are very famous stories of women having to dress up as men in order to be able to compete, right? Like because they were banned from competing, right? The Vassam Marathon, there's other examples of this. But there is no example, as far as I'm aware, no ever documented case of a man, what they called masquerading male, a man dressing up as a woman to compete in women's sports. But in the 1920s and 30s, they were worried about that. They were also worried that women who competed in sports might actually turn into men because of competing

in sports, because of doing sports. And there's this really interesting thing at that period of time because now we have this idea that I think is actually interesting to interrogate. And I think a lot of like, you know, trans folks are maybe pushing back on this idea. But the idea that like sex and gender are like completely different, right? You can have your sex and your gender are like not connected. Obviously that's like not really totally true. Your body does impact how you feel about yourself and otherwise gender affirming care like wouldn't be a thing. But at the time in the 30s, that was a, not a thing at all. Like they had no, there was no sort of distinction between those things. But also right now we talk about sex in this kind of sort of scientific way of like some combination

of your chromosomes, your anatomy, you know, a variety, your secondary sex characteristics, all of these things. There's like a checklist of seven different sort of things we talk about. At the time, they didn't know anything about chromosome. The idea of sex chromosomes was not discovered, like they didn't have that conception. And they had this thing instead, which ironically is actually somewhat closer to like a true understanding of how sex biology works, which is that it's a spectrum, right? And it's not like a clear binary. But they had this idea called balance theory, which was that basically every person is born with some percent male and some percent femalness about them. And if you could be like a 90 percent woman, you could be a

65 percent woman, you could be a 75 percent man. And if you do certain things, you could actually sort of shift that balance in your body and like change your sex essentially. And so you see this worry that like these women who are showing up on the track clearly are like borderline cases, was a word that was a phrase that was used. Clearly, they were like kind of on the borderline between men and women in this balance theory idea. And if you, if that you allow them to compete and like exert themselves and be competitive and kind of do all these things, they're actually going to tip over and like turn into men. It was like a very real fear that these people had, which is a really interesting thing to be afraid of. And not a thing that was happening.

But it's also really interesting because if you look in the newspapers at the time, you'll actually see a lot of really interesting cases of trans people, essentially. They probably wouldn't call themselves that because that wasn't like a term that was used, but who will say, because they have this idea that something can kind of bump you over, it was not that uncommon in like local newspapers for someone to be like, I got really sick and then I woke up and now I'm a woman and like, yeah, and everyone was like, okay, that's totally a thing that could happen and that's fine. And like it was like totally fine and normal. And we were like better about trans people in the 1920s than we where we are now in some ways, which is cool and not depressing in any way. Anyway, so they had this

idea that this could happen. And so 1928 women come onto the track and they're like, oh, God, this is a nightmare. These women are not really women. These women are maybe going to turn into men. And then you have two examples of essentially athletes who compete as women and then transition later. And they're used as examples of like, see, this is what we're talking about. Right. like they competed and then they transitioned. And so in 1936, there is a rule put on the books for track and field that says that basically any athlete who seems suspicious. And they're very vague about what that would mean, what does suspicion mean?

Like, what are we talking about? That any athlete that's deemed suspicious can be examined by some man, probably, to make sure to confirm that she's a woman. And we have examples of this happening sort of on a case-by-case basis, a challenge basis. And then in the 1960s, 1966, the governing body of track and field decides, actually, it's not a great policy to have this weird case-by-case thing. Like, we shouldn't be doing this based on suspicion, which, okay, sure. But instead of just being like, maybe we should just not have a policy in which we're examining

women to see if they're women, they were like, no, no. We must examine all of them every single one. And so from 1966 to 1968, you have the period that's known as the nude parades period or the peak and poke tests where every single woman who competed was taken into a room, asked to get naked and examined to make sure that their body looked right in some way and was female. And those women got cards. We talked to a couple people who had to do this. In 1968, that was shockingly, very unpopular amongst the athletes. I know. And I think the sporting bodies were like, okay, we know we can't like keep doing, like this is not a tenable, like long-term solution.

But also in the 1960s, you have like genetics mania kind of really taking over, right? You have people being very excited, this idea that like your genes determine every single thing about you and like, you know, whatever. And they have discovered not quite really understood what human sex chromosomes were, but there is a Canadian scientist who was looking at cat cells under the microscope. And he was like, huh, there's this weird little dark dot in the nucleus of some of these cells. And he realized that only female cats had the dots and male cats didn't. He had no idea what the dots were, to be clear. He just saw them under the microscope. It turns out now we know that if you have two X chromosomes, one of them becomes inactive

and basically just like becomes a little dark blob in the nucleus. And so what he was seeing was an inactive X chromosome. But he did not know that. And in fact, he for a long time maintained that it was something else. And finally, towards the end of his career was like convinced that he was wrong this whole time. And these are called Barbodies, much to his chagrin. He actually really hated that this was named after him. And he would repeatedly be like, please stop calling them that.

I do not want them to be in the bar body. And here we are. Like still, you know, he doesn't really get a choice apparently. And so from 68 onward, they test every single woman to see if they have this little dot. And later on, they do, in the last couple of years, they do a PCR test. And this is ostensibly to weed out masquerading males, right? Men who might be trying to compete as women or women who are like somehow not really women. But again, like, it's never really defined.

Like, no one ever says, like, what they're actually talking about. But every Olympics, there were a handful of women who would show up, take this test, and learn that they might have X, Y, mosaicism, or X, X, Y, or, like, they just don't, they don't pass the test, right? These women who are failing this test and are being told by this random man they have just met. They've flown across the world, right? They're at the Olympics. They're ready to compete. And they're told by some person they've just met that, like, actually you failed this test. You're not really a woman and you have to leave if you can't compete, which is just like an unreal thing to even think about having happened to you.

We don't know how many women this happened to because there was basically no record kept of it. And in some ways, you know, there's privacy issues and you don't necessarily want to just have like a list of all the women who've like, quote unquote, failed these tests. But mostly it was because what happened was that they were told that if you're an elite athlete, you show up with the Olympics, you kind of know who you're competing against. And so if someone suddenly doesn't compete, it's like a little bit like, oh, this is kind of weird. Like where did, you know, you know who you're going to run against. And so these women were basically told to fake an injury. And they would often, they would sometimes even put them in a cast or something and like pretend like they had gotten injured and then basically just disappear from the sport completely. And this goes on for, again, 30 years of this, where we really don't know how many women, you know, had this happen.

It was definitely a handful, at least at every Olympics. We know that. And there was this group of scientists who actually work really hard for this 30-year period to try and get this stopped. Because if you're a researcher and you know anything about this, you're like, wait a minute. Like, this doesn't make any sense, right? Like, this test is not telling us, like, you know. And they eventually do convince the IAAF, which is. the International Amateur Athletic Federation, which is the track and field governing body, now known as World

Athletics, to drop it in 1992. And then in 99, the IOC finally drops the test. And it's very exciting. And so this is this sort of wild period of time where you have, again, every single woman at the Olympics, before they were allowed to do anything, had to go to the gender verification tent and, like, go through this test and wait. And some of them were really nervous that they were going to fail, like they'd heard people out people failing. Many of them knew someone who failed. I talked. to one woman who was so nervous that she was going to fail, particularly in like the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s, you have a lot of women who are interested in sports who are told that there is something wrong with them. They're like a tomboy. And like now I think, you know, women's sports

is having a moment, which is very exciting and we like love to see it. But like, that was not a thing for many years. And it was very weird if you really wanted to compete at the elite level. And so because these women had often been told that there was probably something wrong with them, they'd go into this test and be like, well, maybe, like, maybe there is. Like, maybe that this, you know, thing is going to happen. Um, we talked to one woman who actually paid for a private test before she left for the Olympics because she was so afraid she might fail it at the Olympics. She didn't. She, she passed it. But, um, but yeah, it's this period of time that I remember when I was first researching this story when I learned that like, you know, hundreds of

women, right, have this experience of having to go and do this. And I had no idea. Like, I'm a sports fan. Like, I cover women's sports. I love women's sports. And I had never heard of that before. And I was like, what? Like, what are we doing? Like, why are we doing this? Today, those policies are not, it's not a blanket test. It's not every single person. We're sort of back to suspicion-based testing, which is its own problem and has its own

sort of consequences. But that is my fact. My other fun fact is a backup fact that I was like, if I don't want to talk about that, which is sort of dark, is that in 1928, the Pope did try to stop the Olympics from letting women compete the women compete in the games. He like, wrote all these things being like, as the Pope, I don't think this should happen. And everyone was like, cool, man. Wait, really?

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. We needed an episode on this. Yeah. There's some really funny headlines where it's like, like, Pope tries to stop women like at the Olympics. And you're like, what are you doing, my guy? So that's my fact. That is a fun fact.

Wow. I thought is so interesting. It makes me very excited to listen to your show and learn more. Would you remind listeners what is called and where they can find it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's called Tested. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, as they say. It is actually in two

different potential places. You can find tested as its own feed from the CBC Canadian Broadcast Company. And then it is also being released through NPR's Embedded, which is an investigative series that NPR does. So lots of options for how you can listen to it. Awesome. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Thaltman, along with Jess Bodey, who also served. as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff.

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