The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Q&A: Punkin Chunkin, Mysterious Shipwrecks, Midwestern Scorpions

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

Producer Jess Boddy joins Rachel for a listener voicemail Q&A episode! The weirdest things we learned this week range from dangerous pumpkin launching to an Illinoisan scorpion.  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!  Click here to follow our sibling podcast, Ask Us Anything!  -- Follow our team on Twitter! Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci --- 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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It's Rachel, and I'm here with Jess for a very special episode where we are going to go through some voice memos where listeners shared their thoughts on the show and, of course, some of their own weird facts. We have this for you because we have a very special episode coming out. a week from now? Yeah, I believe, yes. Wild. Yes, a week from now that is pegged to the latest issue of popular science.

If you aren't a subscriber, go to popsight.com and check out the really cool digital subscription options we have for you so that you can get all of the magic of a popular science magazine from the comfort of your home. So next week, we'll be talking about stories in the magazine and the theme. of that magazine. It's going to be very spicy. And that will, in fact, be our last episode of this season. So after that, we will be taking a bit of a break. We'll be back in the fall, and you'll probably hear from us once or twice in the interim. We have some very special surprises in store. But for now, just to get you from one episode to the other and look back

on a fantastic fourth season during a very tumultuous year, we wanted to be a very tumultuous year. We wanted to bring in some listener voices. Now, for listeners who don't know, you can send us a voice memo by going into the Anchor app. Anchor is the platform that we use to distribute the weirdest thing. So through the app, you can send us a voice message about anything you like, preferably nice, friendly, weird, in a good way. You can also do that on the Anchor website by going to the main weirdest thing I learned this week's show.

So as always, I had a lot of voice memos to go through. I am not using all of them. And some of them are a few months old at this point. But we encourage listeners to send in voice memos whenever the spirit calls them to. We love hearing from y'all. Okay. I have a frequent caller up for our first message. Oh.

It's a real fun one. Hi. Tina from Wilmington again. I'm just listening to the thing about the sports and games and cheese rolling, and I had to look up a video and oh my God, that's hysterical. But, and you know, this is a thing. I just assume everybody knows about, but maybe not because I'm from Delaware. And we had a thing up until a couple of years ago, I guess, called Punkin Chunkin, which is exactly what it sounds like. Maybe it started out in Lower Delaware with a couple of guys.

who had some pumpkins and wanted to see how far they could junk them with, you know, catapults and stuff. And it became a whole big thing in Delaware. And then when they moved it to the Dover Downs Raceway and then a couple of other places, and it became an actual thing. The insurance got too high and they had to cancel it and it sucked and everybody hated it. But it's a lot of fun. Bye. Oh my God. I remember Pumpkin Chunkin. I think there was like a HD TV or TLC show about it.

Yeah. So I looked up because I'm familiar with the concept of Punkin Chunkin as listeners know and as our favorite person in Wilmington knows, Tina. I am from the Delaware Valley. So I was familiar with the concept. I've never actually been, which now seems like a shame. Totally. You got to go. I call my parents and be like, why was my cultural experience? stunted. But yeah, it's what it sounds like. You, you know, they are chucking pumpkins, but of course we love rhymes. So it's, you know, your chunken pumpkins. And which also, something about that name, it like makes 100% sense to me as somebody who, you know, in my natural state of being, has a horrendous Delaware Valley accent, which is a beast all of its own. And so whatever, looking it up, people were like, well, it's called pumpkin chunken because they wanted to make it rhyme.

And I'm like, it's more than that. Like, you could, if you told somebody from the Delaware Valley to repeat the words pumpkin chucking over and over, they probably would eventually start saying pumpkin chunken. Totally. It's only natural. Only natural. Anyway, so it's what it sounds like. It involves catapults, Trebue Chays, human power. There are all these different categories you can be in.

Really large, elaborate setups. And yeah, not unlike cheese rolling, Punk and Chunkin has been plagued by the threat of injury lawsuits, which is why it actually briefly moved to Illinois, I think, just for one year. That's what I was, you know, I was like, this feels Midwestern as well. I was like, you know, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So sometime a few years ago, they moved it to Illinois.

Also, they were health and injury risks, so they brought it to me in Illinois? Why did they choose Illinois? Apparently the insurance situation was better. And also, Illinois grows a lot of pumpkins, so that was also part of the logic. Also, they really needed, like, wide open spaces, which they do have in Delaware, but apparently not with the same laissez-faire attitude. But it seems like the turnout was low. and so the event is like trying to find a new East Coast home. Everything I can find seems like the future of Punkin' Chunkin is up in the air.

Pardon the putt that was totally accidental. Oh, Rachel. But it is in peril. And yes, just to your point, it was on various TV channels. Apparently it was on the science channel, which is a great reminder that the science channel has never really been about science. Sorry. Oh, boy. It was also on Discovery for a while.

there was like a MythBusters themed show around it with the MythBusters squad. Because people just love watching pumpkins get chunked. How can you not? Yeah. The banner at the top of the official Punkin Chunkin'in website currently says, quote, pumpkins will always fly no matter the pandemic, just in a non-traditional manner. I love that. It's like, please scream inside your heart.

Yes, exactly. Please punk and chunk in a non-traditional manner. So, I mean, look, it sounds like this is probably really dangerous, but it also sounds like people have had a lot of fun with it. So I hope it gets to live to see another day. It seems like it's brought a lot of people joy. Yes, fingers crossed. Next up, we have a call from Max.

Hi, so my name is Max. I'm from Oklahoma. I really, really love your partner. My sister actually bought me merch last Christmas, and if you came here, we would go see you. We would actually drive if we could to New York, but that's along the way, and she has a child. Anyways, I was watching BuzzFeed Unsolved, Supernatural, and they're at this lighthouse, and this story came up of a dude who dropped a cat off of, like, the top flighthouse with a parachute, and it lived, and it reminded me of the bears that they put in the same.

the ejector seats. I looked it up. There was a couple articles. Don't know how much truth there is to it, but it's a fun anecdotal story. Drop it in a casual conversation. I love your podcast, as I said. Thanks for doing what you do. You guys are pretty cool. Thanks, man. I loved the delivery of that so much. Yeah, I loved it. And thank you, Max. Thanks for listening. Don't drive all the way to New York. We're not worth it, but hopefully we'll get to hang out one day. So I look this up. I also have to say that the Bears and Injector Seats episode, which is years old at this point,

it's one of our earliest episodes, people bring it up all the time. Real classic from OG Weirdest Thing, co-host, Mary Beth Griggs, Long May She Rain as the queen of bears flying out of play. planes. So, yeah, I looked this up, and unfortunately the closest thing to a reliable source I could find was the official website of the St. Augustine Lighthouse, which is the Florida Beacon where this was supposed to have taken place. But they kind of, the way it was on the website, it felt very much like an apocryphal story. Like, I don't. Sure. They didn't cite their sources. Yeah. But so it was allegedly, like, I think around the early 1900s, it played host to a very dubious experiment

conducted by a boy named Cracker Daniels using his sister Wilma's cat. So, while I don't have more information than that, I do have a few takeaways. You should not test out homemade parachutes on living things. That's what eggs are for. You should not do experiments on your sister's cat. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, you should not name your son Cracker. That's so true. Apologies to anyone nice who goes by Cracker.

I'm sure there's at least one person in the world who does, but unfortunately, you're the namesake of a boy famous for throwing a cat off of a lighthouse. What a story. Yeah, truly. But yeah, it makes me think of like, well, we did recently have a story about cats getting airdropped to help with the plague. Yeah. So this, yeah, Max's message is honestly more than a year old. So Max, if you have any follow-up thoughts on that cat story, please let us know.

Now we have one from Eleanor. Not that Eleanor, different Eleanor. Hi, Weirdest Thing. My name's Eleanor, and I'm calling from London in the... the UK. I just listened to a show about the rocks in Death Valley and how they seemingly move on their own. And a news article from NPR just popped up in my feed about glacial mice. So glacial mice are strange little balls of moss that move across glaciers in seeming like herd group movements, the same speed and same directions, of course.

And they were first described in the 1950s by an Icelandic scientist, and he called them Yokomis, which means glacial mice. I thought it was a cool coincidence and they seem really fun. Anyway, thanks for your podcast. Bye. Oh my gosh. She had the perfect accent to say so many of those words. Yes, agreed.

Absolutely. Glacier sounds so much better than Glacier. Thank you so much for calling in, Eleanor. So, yes, Glacier mice are really fun. And we did write about this on Popside.com, too, when the study you're referring to came out. And what I love about them is that they're still pretty mysterious. You know, there's been a lot of buzz about them. And there are these moss balls that just, like, seem to have a little.

of their own in a really cool way. And yes, there are lots of potential explanations that have to do with, like, the way the ice melts or the way the wind blows. But one thing I really liked from a pop-sized article about the glacier mice is that the researchers pointed out that people tend to think of glaciers as being, like, dead things, like just a hunk of ice. But the glacier mice are a great reminder that they are very thriving ecosystems. They have tens of invertebrates and like various bugs and probably birds that eat those bugs.

So when we talk about- That's such a cool idea. Yeah, yeah. And so when we talk about glaciers melting, which like glaciers around the world get thinner by a foot and a half every year on average, you know, we're talking about all the cool stuff that lived there, much of which we don't understand or barely understand has disappeared or has lost his home. So we got to figure out the glacier mice stat and also keep their homes from melting away. Of course the glacier mice are not living things, but there are surely many microbes that live on them or feed on them, little bugs. So. They sound so cute. They remind me of like, in my mind I'm picturing like those marimo moss balls. Yeah, totally.

Which are also very cute for similar reasons. But yeah, you have to save the glacier mice. Exactly. Okay, now we have a two-parter. Hi, I'm Jason, and my fact today is that we still aren't sure what caused one of the most famous shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. And I'm, of course, talking about the Edmund Fitzgerald, which left from Superior Wisconsin on November 10, 1975, into a stormy lake. They had been traveling with the Anderson, another ship for most of the journey. And the Anderson's captain reported that the Fitzgerald had had a few issues, but kept reassuring them that they were going to be fine.

And the last transmission from the Fitzgerald was that they were, quote, holding her own. And then they disappeared from the Andersen's radar for seven minutes. No distress call or anything, but they were just gone. And we know where the ship is. It's near Whitefish Point, and it's broken in half on the floor of the lake, and half of it is also upside down. And we don't know why. And Anchor's going to cut me off, but I have a little more. So hold on.

Hi, Jason again. So I want to talk about some of the theories about why the Edmund Fitzgerald sank. So some of them blamed the crew that they hadn't kept up on routine maintenance, that they hadn't done some latches correctly, and it had caused the ship to loose buoyancy. There is an idea that it may have wrecked the hall a little bit going over a shoal. The captain of the Anderson thinks it has something to do with some supermassive waves that hit the Anderson first and had been heading in the direction of the Fitzgerald. And also unrelated fact, Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about this shipwreck,

and he mentions the saying that Lake Superior doesn't give up her dead, which is a thing, because Lake Superior is so cold year-round that it suppresses the bacteria that causes bodies to decompose, so bodies just to sink like a rock and don't decompose really on the bottom of the lake. Oh my God. That's so creepy and cool. I love that. Yeah. And I don't have any facts to add to that because, Jace, that was incredibly thorough for a two-minute synopsis. Thank you so much. What I do have to add to that is just that I feel like this is one of my only opportunities to express that I've really creeped out by the Great Lakes. Yes. Which I don't know.

Is that a silly thing? But I've only been to Lake Michigan and I went on a boat on Lake Michigan. And I grew up on the East Coast in a place with lots of little lakes and the ocean. And those are two different things. And something about Lake Michigan like broke my brain, made me very uncomfortable. It's funny. Like, to me it seems normal because I've grown up in Illinois. totally um but our you know former popsized staffer eleanor cummins recently visited me in

chicago where i live now and i took her to the lake front to see like michigan in the city and her brain was also broken she was like you can't see the other side like where does it go yeah exactly it's like i don't know like maybe it's like um just so expansive and you you kind of you mean we don't know what's in the ocean but you kind of understand what's like nearby when you go in the ocean, but I don't know. Is it because like the Great Lakes feel more of like a black box or something like that? Yeah, I guess so. It's because like it is just, it doesn't fit into a category that my brain is comfortable

with. And as we talk about in nursings a lot, our brains love categories. Yeah. And the idea that a giant ship could be just like lost at the bottom of a lake. Right. Right. That does not confuse you. Yeah.

Also the fact about the lake being so cold that bodies tend to just like freeze at the bottom. Yeah. Yeah, didn't love that. It really really creeps me out. I want a new version of the Titanic, but with this ship. Yes, that sounds good. I'd watch it. Yeah, it'd be great.

A Midwestern version. Yeah, I was going to say, everyone will have a Midwestern accent. It's perfect. Perfect. Yeah, I can't think of any other Midwestern jokes at this time, but it'll be good. All right. Next up, we have a fun one about birding. Hey, weirdos. So I've been hunkering down in Vermont for the last three months and I've since learned a plethora of cool bird facts. But this one is by far the cutest. Okay, so I found

an article on birdwatchingdaily.com about a study that was aiming to learn more about how noise pollution affects the nesting patterns of songbirds. During this study, researchers discovered a male bluebird feeding and caring for four baby tree swallows. Apparently, the bluebird had previously nested in that box, so the researchers theorized that when tree swallows took it over, he got confused and just continued coming to that box to care for the young. The female's tree swallow was still coming back to care for her own babies, and she and the male bluebird would often be, quote-unquote, home at the same time,

but the male bluebird seemed to pay no mind and continued to care for the baby tree swallows like they were his own. Thanks for listening. I hope the story of the interspecies parenting warmed your heart a little bit in these less than heartwarming times. Love the podcast. Aw, that was nice. It was very heartwarming. Also, this, like several of the messages I played are from last summer.

So if people are talking about being at home for months at a time, it's because they were and they should have been. Hopefully, the listener who sent this, who did not share their name, hopefully they are, you know, out and about again, having a good time. of birds in places other than just their backyard. The thing it made me think of is that, you know, well, so I did talk on a previous episode about like interspecies adoption among various birds. So I think it is like not totally uncommon. But there are, of course, species that do this on purpose. Like the brown-headed cowbird is a very famous brood parasite.

Right. They place their eggs one by one in host nests. And actually, I didn't realize it was this extreme. They have at least 221 different hosts that they will place their eggs with. Oh, wow. Yeah. And they just leave the confused foster parent to pick up the slack. Apparently, in general, birds are not the best at, like, identifying which bird babies are theirs and which are just extras.

Oh, I didn't even think about. that. Yeah, well, which is interesting because, like, you know, with some species you have, like, it's really, it's really easy for the parent to decide the baby isn't their own, you know, if it, like, smells wrong, et cetera. So it's kind of like the opposite evolutionary tactic to be, like, better safe than sorry, better feed them all. And yeah, this bluebird, so cute. The researchers were like, surely he's going to notice, like the mom is here all the time, but he just kept doing the work. He kept cleaning up after them, feeding them. Yeah, very, very better safe and sorry attitude being like, I don't remember these chicks being mine, but just in case. Yeah, I respect it.

Yeah. All right. Here's a short one from Brianna. Hi, guys. I have a weird question for you. It's hotly debated in my household. Do you fold or scrunch your toilet paper before you wipe? Oh, we've talked about this. Well, we talked about like the is wiping good to be. Yeah, right. You can over wipe. But I thought it was so funny because several years ago,

I went to like the Sharman Research Labs. And we have an episode that's me kind of recounting some the highlights of that, but there's also a video on popsai.com. If you search, like, Popsai, Charmin, fake poop, you'll find the video. Yeah, it's a good video. Many demonstrations.

I had fun. Yeah, I got to do all of their, like, their funny product testing demonstrations. And one of those demos, which I think is in the video, is they did their like user behavior survey, which is usually in private, but I had to do

both in front of our colleague Jason, but also in front of a bunch of Sharman people I'd met several hours before. And it has questions about like, what's your angle of approach? I remember this. They have you like take some toilet paper and they're like, just pantomime what you would do on the toilet so that we can know what your habits are. And I was so flustered. And I really was like, I don't know. But once I was out of there and I was. I thought about it. I am definitely a scruncher. I don't fold toilet paper. I, you know, I go for a wad. Yeah, I'm trying to think, I think I am like a folder, kind of. When I grab the toilet paper,

I kind of wrap it around my fingers and then it's like kind of folded. It's like flat. Oh, that is kind of what I do. But then I think I kind of take that and I take that and I sort of scrunch. Okay. Maybe I keep mine more flat than that. I don't know. I feel like this is a gray area. Yeah, it is for sure. I think, I think Charmin presented me with a false dichotomy. Absolutely. Kill the binary. Next up, we have a couple from Terese. Hi, my name is Terese. I've been saving up some fun facts that I wanted to share with you guys. So forgive me if I spam your inbox with some messages. Here's my first one.

I listened to your sneezing episode some time ago. I think it's the one where people sneeze when they're full. And that one immediately made me think of how I burp when specifically I'm full of liquid, so like I drank too much, and then I move really suddenly. I went down a rabbit hole of what causes hiccups. And apparently it's really just anything that causes your diaphragm to spasm, whether it's capsaicin, like one of my close friends who hiccups, when you eat something really spicy or laughing too much like my sister or being full like me.

I don't really know if this is a fun fact, but just thought I'd share because I know you guys are just as interested in the weirdness of the human body as I am, if not more. Yeah, so it is true that irritating your diaphragm makes you hiccup. Also, me and my sister both hiccup whenever we eat carrots. What? Yeah, I've Googled it a few times. Every few years I Google it being like, has someone finally cracked this? And there are, like, other people talking about it, so I don't think it's an uncommon trigger. for hiccups, but the explanations are all like, you're just eating them too fast, so they're

irritating your diaphragm or like, because they're crunchy and you're like, because they're crunchy, you're swallowing more air with them, but I don't quite get that. Yeah. I feel like it would be true for so many foods. Right. Yeah. And it's carrots specifically, they make me hiccups so bad. So I would love for someone to solve this for me one day.

There's a woman on TikTok that I follow who, well, it's slightly different, but she has an allergy to carrots. And so she is like eating a small bit of carrot every day to like reduce her allergy, which. Yes, I have seen her. Yes, she's floating around. But that made me think of her. And it seems like, you know, obviously don't try this at home and talk to your doctor. But it seems like she has been able to like diminish her allergic reaction a little bit. Yeah, it's definitely something that it's like,

I think it's great to try if you have a really mild, like, non-fatal allergy. Yeah. And obviously, if you have a more serious allergy, you should absolutely talk to your doctor before ingesting any small amounts of things. But that is basically how, like, allergy therapy works. It's just very small doses getting bigger. Yeah. So if it's something where you know you don't have anywhere close to a fatal reaction, and it does have to really be like, your reaction is really minor. because unfortunately, allergies can get suddenly more severe, so it's like you don't want to mess around with like, yeah, you don't want to mess around. Talk to your doctor.

Yeah, that's dangerous territory. Yeah. But I applaud, you know, her tenacity to eat carrots of all things. Yeah. All right, here's another one from Teresa. Hi. So I went down another rabbit hole recently, and this time the rabbit hole was unique greetings. So I know hands. Handshakes have been kind of taboo recently ever since the rise of COVID, but did you know that there are other greetings such as sticking out your tongue in Tibet or pressing your face against a loved one's cheek or neck and taking a deep breath in Greenland or pressing your forehead and nose against someone else's forehead and nose in New Zealand. Additionally, my family is from the Philippines and there if you're greeting someone that's a generation above you or older, you press the knuckles of one of their hands to your forehead. Okay, I promise this is my last voice message of the day. Thank you guys for listening. I love you guys, and I love this podcast. Aw, I love her.

Thank you so much, Therese. Yeah, all those greetings are so, like, intimate and nice compared to the handshake. Yeah, totally. And I did a little bit of research because I was, like, greetings around the world is such an interesting topic. What do I have to say about it? And one thing is that it's commonly said that handshakes originated in ancient Greece or ancient Rome when people would like clasp arms to show that they weren't hiding weapons up their sleeves or behind their backs. That gets shared a lot. I haven't read a primary source for it, but then again, I haven't done a deep dive on like ancient Greek writing specifically about shaking hands.

Sure. But historians generally think that it became popular as like a catch-all greeting, the way we use it today, when 18th century American Quakers wanted something more egalitarian than like bowing and curtseying and that kind of thing. Which is like more recent than I would have thought. Me too. It also makes sense because like how many, when you think about just like how people interacted with each other, like touching strangers was not much of a thing in like. early modern history. Ancient history, I don't know. Maybe they touch strangers all the time. I also read in a National Geographic article, which if you want to look it up, is called, Why Do We Touch Strangers So Much? It talked about a 2015 study in Israel that suggested that it's

really common for humans to sniff their hands after they shake hands. Presumably very subtly and unconsciously, of course. I think it's probably just like, you know, you're more likely to bring your hand up to your face. But that makes it seem like we might be getting some sort of like chemical signal exchange the same way of like dogs sniff each other's butts, which I just find really hilarious. Oh my God, that's really funny. Now I'm going to be hyper aware of that too. Not that I'm sure I'll ever shake somebody's hand again, to be honest, but...

Yes, me as well. If I do, I'll be thinking about that. Yeah, honestly, I'm kind of glad the handshake is gone. Yeah, well, it's very risky from a disease transmission standpoint and very boring from a socialization standpoint. So it's like hugs or nothing, you know? Yeah. If we're not on the level to hug, let's just like nod at each other. That's fine.

Okay. Next we have one from Mandy. Hi, weirdest thing. I'm listening to your episode where you're talking about seasickness. And I had a couple of follow-up questions because I'm an aerialist. And so we spin really fast a lot of the time. And it made me really curious because when we do things, for example, like Spanish Web, where you're spinning really, really fast against a counterspin, the advice that we often give is to not focus on anything specific. And it made me curious when you're talking about the difference between like focusing on something and that vestibular feedback from your body.

Like it sounds like maybe that's good advice, but is that good advice? like is there better advice out there for that situation which like maybe just aerialists and sailors find their way into and like extreme video game fanatics apparently too and also my second question is the idea that you just get used to it like what is the physical process of that does anyone know okay that's really cool yeah I love that um also aerialists are so cool I'm very jealous of your skills Mandy. So I'll admit, this is not a super, like, scientifically research answer, but I did some research. And we do know that dizziness has to do with the disconnect between what your eyes are seeing and what your brain thinks they should be seeing. So when you move around, spin around specifically, the fluid in your inner ear slashes around, and it hits all of these very tiny hairs inside your inner ear.

and it's actually the movement of those hairs that tells your brain you're moving. So when you're going really fast and you stop suddenly the liquid slashes for long enough to move some hairs that shouldn't be moving, and that tells your brain you're spinning even though you're still. Oh. So from what I can tell, both spotting where you like pick one spot and you look at it, even if that means you have to like whip your head around periodically, that can help. by minimizing the amount of fluid that's moving in the first place. So like your head is staying still except for that brief moment when you have to pivot it to keep looking at the thing, which means

less overall movement and more time for your head to adjust than if your head's just whipping around in circles. The other strategy, as Mandy pointed out, is to let your eyes go totally out of focus and not look at anything at all. I couldn't, yeah, I could. Yeah, I could. couldn't find any research on this, but the folks who recommend it tend to suggest that it might minimize your brain's confusion by just like not giving it jumpy visual signals and just kind of like getting your brain to tune out the visual signals entirely. So I don't know. I would love if anybody is aware of kind of more in-depth research on that, definitely send it our way. And finally, I'll just say it totally makes sense that you could get used to being dizzy because

brains can get used to just about any kind of sensory input. You get used to the smells of your own body. You get used to like persistent tones in the background noise of your life. You get used to like constant body aches and so much more. So if you gradually build up the speed and length of your spins, which like most good airless will be doing as they learn to be good aerialists, your brain will learn to put less stock in what the hairs in your ears are saying. So you're basically just like telling your brain to trust that less. Yeah, I love that actually. I love how our brains are just so adaptable.

They are. They are so adaptable. Okay, we have just a few more. Here we have one from Laurel. Hi again. This is Laurel in Seattle. The weirdest thing I learned this week is that Illinois has a native scorpion. I'll say that again. What? Illinois has scorpions. The striped bark scorpion is common in places like the deserts of the southwest, but I was surprised to learn that it's a native species in Illinois and Missouri too. Shout out to my friend Mason at Ozark Koala for this truly wild fact. And I wanted to ask, are there other unexpected wild creatures lurking in our backyards? Thanks for all you do, Pop-Sai crew.

Wow, simply loving all of the Illinois facts. Yeah, with this a surprise to you, I heard an exclamation. I did not know this, but it also seems like if it's also in Missouri, it might be like a southern Illinois scorpion. That makes sense. Which is a very different ball game than up north. Right. I'm fascinated. I would love to know more.

Yeah. So first of all, I want to say Laurel, every time Laurel said the message, it sounds like a professional podcaster is calling it. Yes. I love their voice. Excellent work. But yeah, so this is true, but like don't panic. They're rarely more than three inches. long. They're hardly ever fatal. They mostly spend, like, their days hiding under bark,

and they're not as common in Illinois as they are in more desert areas. So, like, very unlikely to encounter one. It's very unlikely to be particularly bad if you do. I mean, it might be unpleasant. But, yeah, and to Laurel's point, there are many things lurking in your backyard that you do not realize they're there. So proceed with caution. I don't know. I'd be down to, like, be caught by surprise by a scorpion. That sounds like exhilarating experience. Yeah, it's true. When handled with caution, I would say. Of course. Yes. Very much so. It reminds me of, I will have to check this, but I think it's true that there was an episode if I want to say Peppa Pig or some similar show. That was all about how you shouldn't be afraid of spiders

and spiders are more afraid of you than you are of them. Like, you know, don't be scared. and they actually, they didn't air it in Australia because there are so many spiders that can kill you. You should be afraid of those spiders. Yeah, they were like, this is dangerous information for children in Australia. Oh, my God. So, you know, it's all relative. But the scorpions in Illinois unlikely to cause you any problems.

Okay, now we have a message from Alan. Dear Claire and Eleanor and Rachel. I absolutely love your show. I've been listening since about January, and you keep me company on my drive to and from work every day. I sometimes share some of your stuff with my coworkers, but not everybody is interested in hearing about tobacco smoke, and a must, Tesla's weird relationship with a pigeon, or some of the strange things that Amos do. However, I really do love your show, and if I could figure out a way to rate you with my Android phone, I would. I'd give you 10 stars instead of the regular five. Keep up the good work. I can't wait

to hear more and stay safe out there with COVID. Thanks. Bye. Oh my goodness. Thanks, Alan. Thanks for listening. Thanks for, you know, sharing weird facts with your coworkers. I love to hear that. I also, listening to this again, I was like, did we have this on a previous voice memo episode? I don't think so. But if we did, I don't care. Yeah. Because I like it very much. All right. Just a couple more.

We have a quick message from Nathaniel. Hi, this is Nathaniel. I just was listening to your most recent episode about art crimes. And I realized as I was listening to the story that I had just recently watched a Netflix special on this exact topic called This is a Robbery. So you guys should really check that out. It's super cool. Nathaniel, thank you. In fact, that episode featuring special guest Josh Gondelman was recorded like a week before that documentary came out. And I got an email from Josh being like, oh no.

Yeah, I remember that. But we reassured him that people would still be excited to learn about it on weirdest thing. And I have actually yet to check out the documentary. No, that's not true. Well, my husband watched it. So I saw like five minutes of it as I was on my way to something else. You know what? My dad watched it and I also saw five minutes of it as I was doing.

There we go. We are both five minutes smarter about art crime. Absolutely. But yeah, thanks for giving us a heads up, Nathaniel. And now we have one more message. Hi. My name is Maria Viatis and I am from Louisville, Kentucky. I wanted to tell you guys about something my dad told me.

I'm not sure if it's true or not. But he said that in Lima, Kentucky, they wanted to build a statue like the statue of liberty. They wanted to have a woman with a crown of flames. So when they wrote that on the plans for the sculptor, they put a crown of yama, which is the Spanish word for flame. Unfortunately, it is also the word for the animal, a llama.

So when the sculptor made it, they received it back, and it was a woman with a llama on her head. And it still exists. It is an amazing sculpture. But I just thought that was a very interesting way to go about it. Anyway, I love the podcast. Thank you so much. Bye. Thank you so much for sending this in.

And I was briefly very confused because Maria misspoke and said Lima, Kentucky. And I was like, this story. makes very little sense if it takes place in Kentucky. It turns out it is, it takes place in Peru where it makes more sense. I was like, I didn't know there was a Lima, Kentucky. But we misspeak all the time, and it is only thanks to Jess's expert editing that y'all don't hear it. So no shame at all. So, yeah, at least according to several sources, including Lonely Planet, this is true.

And it allegedly happened because in addition to that homophone game, confusion. South America is, of course, full of llamas, especially Peru. So they were like, yeah, that makes sense that they would want a llama on her head. It's a beautiful statue, and it looks very regal in spite of, you know, not being exactly what they ordered, allegedly. And I really appreciate it because, as long-time listeners might know, my college mascot is the llama. So go llamas. All right, well, that is it for this week. And as I said before, we'll be back next week with a very special episode about all things hot for our latest issue of popular science. Of course, feel free to send in your own voice memos on the Anchor app or via Anchor's website whenever you want to say hello or send us a fact of your own. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon. 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 now. And if you like what you hear, please read and review us on Apple Podcasts. It helps other weirdos find the show. For more information on the stories you heard in this episode, come find us at popsye.com slash weird. You can buy our merch, including weirdest thing, t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at popsai.threadless.com. The show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, with editing and audio engineering by Jess Bode. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden.

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