The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Running Naked Through 24 Time Zones, Virgin Births, Corpse Compost

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

The weirdest things we learned range from South Pole streakers getting frostbitten nipples and weenies to pacemakers playing a role in exploding crematoriums. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? 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 buy tickets for Weirdest Thing Live on June 14th!  Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Eleanor Cummins: www.twitter.com/elliepsies Alex Schwartz: www.twitter.com/alexpshorts Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- 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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That is what these salamanders say every time they get pregnant. At popular science, we report and write dozens of science and heck 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 Fultman.

I'm Eleanor Cummins. And I'm Alex Schwartz. Alex, welcome. Thank you. Do you want to briefly introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure. I'm the Popsai intern for the spring. Yeah, really excited to be here.

Awesome. We're excited to have you. So let's get into the show. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by offering up a little tease about some kind of fact that we learned in the course of reading, writing, reporting, wasting time on the internet, et cetera, and then we 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. Eleanor, why don't you start with your teas?

You can now compost a human body legally. What a relief. My days on the lamb are over. Alex, how about your tease? Scientists doing research at the South Pole sprint naked through 24 time zones in the dead of the Antarctic winter. Oh, wow. That's poetry, frankly. My fact is about all the ways a lady can reproduce without the assistance or interference of a male. Inspiring. Truly.

Eleanor, why don't you start? Thank you. So a few years back, living in a few years back, living in a man. in Seattle. I heard about the most Seattle thing of all time. People want to compost other people. That is extremely Seattle. And I've been following it over the years as it sort of evolved. But the basic premise is that, you know, when you die, something has to happen to your body. You can place a nice delicate shroud over a body and bury it, you know, in the earth. You can cremate it. You can dress it up and put it in a box, which is something a lot of people prefer. But someone was like,

you know what, we should find a greener way to do this. So that's since been rebranded as a very sleek startup called Recompose. Great name. Oh my gosh. And it was legalized in May 2019 in Washington State. Amazing. Wow. So that law will go into effect in May 2020, which means they're now gearing up. Their goal is to eventually compost 750 people at any given time in a sort of rotation of soil manufacturing. And there are, as I said, a lot of motivations for this. But the main one, was that the CEO says if you choose this composting process over cremation, which is currently the most popular form of corpse management in the country, you can save one metric ton of carbon per body, which is a pretty big deal when you're thinking about your lifetime emissions and also your post lifetime emissions and really conserving those and being green long after you're dead. So the thing I was curious about was how this process actually works. Making soil is really hard, like compost. is really rough. I admire the people who do it and who turn my orange peels into a viable, reusable product because it is not easy. So apparently recompose starts by putting a body in a steel vessel for one month. And they have these really wild mock-ups that are really fun to look at where it's like all of these vessels in like honeycomb patterns. And like they're like, you know, the room is full of light. Yeah. I remember reading that part of their rebranding was being like,

you're not in a compost heap, you're in an atrium full of light. That's so beautiful. Which is like, you know, it's genuinely nice. Yeah, it's a really good look. And so the idea is like within that vessel, you're surrounded by wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. And these are nutrients that the microbes that are already inside your body and on your skin will use to feed themselves and then heat up to 150 degrees and start baking you. And this is very similar to how. This is very similar to how composting and orange works, where you have this compost pile.

This is a compost pile of one, of course. Very responsible and respectful. But you have this compost pile, and basically, like, the heat is fueling these microbes that can break down and decompose pretty much anything. And if you stand by one in winter, it's kind of, like, standing in front of, like, a really warm fireplace. They're just, like, these molten. They can, like, spontaneously catch on fire, right? Yeah. They're powerful.

Wow. So basically that's what your body would be in. And similar to composting, they also rotate your death vessel so that you're sort of like shaken up and aerated, less, you know, fires or just like gross things happen and you decompose unevenly. So they're really responsible. They seem like they really got this process down. Just laying in a beautiful sunfilled atrium in a bed of wood chips and alfalfa and periodically

having someone nudge me and turn me over. That sounds great. Like, I want to do it now. Yeah. It sounds really relaxing. Yes. They should sell retreats. I totally agree.

And then we can all go to Seattle together. I'll show you around before we take our long alfalfa nap. So, you know, at the end of this process, you come out as soil, which is really cool. People with prion diseases are excluded, as are people with Ebola for the reason that they're trying to manage any potential pathogens in the soil, which makes a lot of sense. That being said, I don't think that even with extradients. extremely clean, pre-verified corpses, you should be growing anything in this. Nothing edible. No. I think maybe a petunia.

Yeah, a tree. Yeah. Some, a forest. A gardenia. Um, whatever, what have you. My death, gardenia. But definitely, don't be eating out of this soil because humans are pretty gross. We do a lot of really messed up things to our bodies while we're alive.

And basically, I think you could all by guarantee that this soil would probably have some antibiotics. Heavy metals. Heavy metals. Those are in regular soil, too. Someone's like tooth cap? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Feelings.

Whispering souls. On an early episode. Haunted soil. I want a ghost tree. My fiance talks all the time about how he wants to be used to help grow a tree. But he doesn't want like a weeping willow. He wants like a pine tree because he wants his grandchildren to eventually cut down his death tree as a Christmas tree.

That's amazing. I don't know when when he came to this conclusion, but he talks about it not infrequently. But what I was going to say before I remember that about my darling husband to be is that on an earlier episode I talked about the company that sells or at least wants to sell kits to like decompose you with mushrooms.

The mushroom suit. They're also like, please don't eat the mushrooms. We cannot guarantee that they are food-grade mushrooms. Yeah. A new spin on death cap mushrooms. Oh, great. Yeah. Also, just as an aside, mushroom suit, camp.

Why didn't anyone wear that to the mat gala? I ask you. But definitely probably don't eat your grandma tomatoes. Truly heirloom tomatoes. Oh. Heck yes. And, you know, just another thing I thought was interesting, was they specifically talk about in this process about removing pacemakers and other electronic devices,

because not only are we full of pharmaceuticals, but we're also full of all of these other medical things. And just a fun detail, pacemakers, when they have accidentally been left inside people, have caused crematoriums to explode. Well, yeah. Because those things do not bake well. Wow. So, yeah. It's like putting, like, aluminum in the microwave. Yeah, don't do it.

don't try this at home or in your neighborhood crematorium. And the other thing that wasn't clear to me was what happens with your bones. I also have that question. And so the company has, they're very tight-wipped. I have tried to speak with them. One of our writers has tried to speak with them more recently. They're not interested. And they have not been asked about them dry bones and what's happening with them.

So I couldn't get a definitive answer. So I went another route and tried to figure out what regular composting does with bones. And like we all know from personal experience in New York City, if you manage your organic waste properly, you are not allowed to put bones in your compost. They have to go in your trash. Them bones don't go in the compost. Absolutely not. That's the official slogan of the city. Thank you, Mayor de Blasio.

And so, you know, you have to put them in your trash and then they get all smelly and it's terrible. But the reason is because the city says, and I quote, that these bones only degrade in favorable conditions. And soil making is rarely favorable. it's very difficult to control. You would have to add, it seems, specialized microbes if you wanted something to break down like the hardened calcium of a bone. And so you're just not supposed to put them in there.

And there, as I said, is no information from the human composting project, or as they're calling themselves now, recompose about what you do with human bones, but I'm pretty sure the answer is that there's no way that they would break down like within a human lifetime in a normal composting situation.

So maybe they have, have had a major top secret breakthrough and that is their proprietary technology or maybe they just don't know what they're doing with them dry bones and they're finding another solution for them. An interesting question that I post to them via this podcast since they wouldn't respond to us in any other way. But yeah, and I, you know, this is like obviously a trend. People are thinking more about whether their last act on earth is a big screw you to mother nature. Right. Or not. You mentioned the mushroom suits, which I found out that apparently Luke Perry, may God rest his soul, was buried in. Whoa.

Like quite recently. 90210 supports mushroom. Oh my gosh. Suits. But yeah, I've also written about aquamation, which is this thing where you literally just like dissolve a body. And it's based off of this technique that they've been using for decades in lab rats because they're very hard to dispose and you have a ton of them. So you can just like concentrate them in this solution. You can just pour them right down the drain.

It's incredible. And, you know, I think there are going to be new things coming down the line. So it's really exciting. I think my point is that there's never been a better time to die. Wow. Wow. Hell yeah. Yeah, we actually had an article by Nicole Wetzman in our most recent print issue to make it last issue,

which the amount of stuff that goes into the ground with you, if you have like a quote-unquote traditional burial, which, to be frank, is not traditional at all. It is a result of the funeral industrial complex. but there's like this lead box and it often has concrete around it. It's like designed to keep you from decomposing. And then you're embalmed, which has a bunch of chemicals. There have been instances of cemeteries being flooded and like those chemicals getting into the groundwater, which is so icky. I remember talking to a researcher for a previous issue of the magazine and him talking about needing to somebody was being exhumed for some kind of legal purpose, I believe.

And he just talked about, like, how seeing what a body looks like in there after a few years, like, you can never be on board for it again. Because it's just, you're just turning into goop, just, like, toxic goop. So, yeah, I am super excited that we are starting to have these more green options. Even cremation is, like, not super environmentally friendly. It releases a lot of CO2. But, yeah, there's one. I know they have, like, the natural. burial, you mentioned the, like, putting the sort of the shroud around a,

right, and like burying them in the, what do they call them? Just like a forest of... Yeah, it's like a green burial, right? Like that, like they have the corner of the market on that phrase. Right. Just like a normal burial. Yeah. Pre, pre-embalming craze burial. Yeah. And then I know there's one town in Colorado where you can get burned on a pyre. That's cool. Yeah. And as far as I know, it's the only place in the U.S. that does that. And you have to be like, You don't have to live there necessarily, but I got this from one of Caitlin Dowdy's book. She's the head of the Order of the Good Death. So she's been on this stick for a long time.

And you have to, like, become a member of the community. Like you can't just, your loved ones can't just show up and be like, please put this body on the pyre. Yeah. I've come so far. It's definitely like a thing you have to express interest in while you're still alive. And it helps a lot if you, like, live there. That's crazy, though, that that's like the only place where you can do that because it's, That's like, you know, the world's third largest religion and the world's, like, fourth largest religion, like you're burned on a pyre.

Right. And in the U.S., they're just like, no, thank you. Like, we find this all unsanitary and we'd prefer that you look like a Victorian zombie for the next five to ten years underground. Yeah. Yeah, it is wild to me thinking about, like, how much we are not allowed to do with our dead. Like, there shouldn't be a law against just, like, burying someone in your backyard. I mean, you know, I get why we have to like check in with authorities first. You can't just, you can't just be like, well, they're gone.

No one will ask about this ever. But once death certificates are issued, you know, just dig a hole. Totally. Isn't there also the egg? I think that might be a prototype, but they send you this giant egg to put the dead body in the fetal position. And then you bury the egg in the ground. and then it turns into a tree. Oh, yeah.

It's like a big seed pod. That's cool. Yeah. My question about the composting, though, is how do they know that it works if it was only just legalized? So they did research at Washington State University. Shout out to my mother's alma mater. Go coogs. And they did, I think, six or seven test subjects and found really good results reportedly.

Okay. Awesome. Awesome story. Yeah. Awesome way to die. Absolutely. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be right back. Okay, we're back.

And I'm going to jump in with my fact. So I actually got the idea for this from our Facebook group. We do have a weirdest thing Facebook group where people just share their love of weird things. It's great. And somebody posted a story about a snake that had a virgin birth. Whoa. You know. Lady snake.

in an enclosure, no dude snakes, suddenly there are babies. Wow, immaculate conception. And the thing is that this is not actually surprising. I have covered several cases of female only reproduction in my time, and this just reminded me of how many cool stories there were to tell. So first things first, it's already been well documented that in plants and a lot of insects, this method of reproduction is super common. Of course, there's asexual reproduction where every individual is just always cloning themselves in some capacity or another. But then there's parthenogenesis, which is when a species does sometimes use sexual reproduction or, like, otherwise should be capable of sexual reproduction. But instead, sometimes the females create their own babies. So it's not

like asexual reproduction where it's like, I have both the male cells and the female cells because gender is a construct. And then they combine them and that makes the baby. Or they like bud. And it's just like, here's my clone. Here's my baby on my arm. But then parthenogenesis, animals that have these haploid cells instead of getting another individual's haploid cell to create the diploid cells. to create the diploid zygote that's going to grow into an embryo, they make the haploid thing become diploid themselves. Or in some cases, it can just stay haploid, and that can be super messy,

because animals are supposed to have a certain number of chromosomes, and having half that many is just no bueno. So like I said, it's pretty common among plants and insects, but there are known cases in lizard, snakes, birds, and sharks. Damn. Yeah, there have been about... tight. Yeah, there have been more than 50 known cases of parthenogenesis invertebrates since 1932 when the first one was recorded. So a lot of the stories you'll hear about in the news are snakes because they're kept in

captivity a lot and there are also some cases of sharks in captivity. One of the most well-known instances are domesticated turkeys often can reproduce through parthenotinosis, which I did not know until today. That is honestly shocking. Yeah, so they can lay on fertilized eggs that then grow into turkeys. Now, in most cases, like if you took just a random selection of domesticated turkeys and waited for some of them to reproduce by parthenogenesis, most of those resulting turkeys would, like, die really young. They do not do well. But if you selectively breed for the ones that survive, there have been cases where people have, like, created flocks of turkeys that just lay more eggs and make more turkeys. Oh my gosh. So apparently the male

that are born have smaller testes. So, you know, not everyone's a winner. But no mammals have been known to do this naturally, though there have been some experiments that have made it happen in the lab. And on the human side of things, you know, in the last couple of decades, researchers have figured out how to make this happen at the cellular level, like turn an egg cell into stem cells that are fully functional cells, not just a sex cell with half the chromosomes it needs. So that has a lot of applications for creating stem cell therapies, and also people get very excited in thinking about ways that people, you know, if there are couples that both produce sperm or both produce eggs, that a doctor could turn one of their sex cells into the opposite sex cells

so that then they could combine. Oh, wow. And, of course, we have not done that yet, but it is something. that gets talked about a lot every few years. There will be some promising step and everybody gets very excited. If a turkey can do it, we can figure this out. Definitely. Absolutely. There are cases of eggs in humans sometimes like try to start growing into an embryo. So this was in 1995 and I'm referencing a new scientist article about the study called The Boy Whose Blood Has No Father. Oh, what? Find me up.

Yeah. So a lot of our listeners are probably already familiar with the idea of chimeras where humans and other animals can have different DNA in different cells of their bodies. It can be a result of absorbing a fraternal twin and having some of their DNA be in certain parts of your body that have used those cells instead of your own. It can be the result of just like general wonkiness we don't understand yet, making babies is probably a lot less sperm slams into egg and everything unfolds from there than we have long assumed. I mean, as I have previously talked about, we used to think that sperm had tiny men inside. So imagine what we've come a long way. Yeah, imagine what we'll think of our current understanding of reproduction in 100 years. So yes, humans can, in rare cases, though we're not actually sure exactly how rare have like maybe your skin cells have different DNA from the rest of

your body and it won't be like radically different it would be like you have your siblings skin which is still weird oh my god so in this case doctors figured out that this young boy his white blood cells did not match the rest of him so this boy that was referred to as fd he was to as fd he was three years old, and he was being tested. He was pretty healthy, but he had some learning difficulties and asymmetric face features. And in testing him, geneticists realized that FD's white blood cells had, like, the marks of femaleness on the chromosomes. They couldn't find the Y in the X, Y, in the cells. And so their first thought was it may just be a chromosomality where, you know, you get, like, an extra X kind of lobbed on to the Y, but like, no, there was no Y at all.

And so then they were like, well, let's look at some other cells from his body. And they saw that his skin had different DNA from his blood. And so, of course, the first thought was like, oh, so we're going to find that this is like his siblings' blood. It's a sister that never was. But instead, it was identical to his mother's genome. Wow. The DNA in his white blood cells came entirely from his mother. And as far as I know, this is the only time this particular scenario has been spotted.

But they think that what happened is that an unfertilized egg started the process of self-activation that usually leads to a teratoma. But that really quickly afterward, like while it was still just barely divided, a sperm fertilized it. Hot damn. Wow. Wow. Wonders of life. As the embryo was developing, there were, like, extra genes, and, like, some of the cells were growing into certain tissues. But the self-activated egg cells would have grown slower, they think, and in some cases, wouldn't have been able to get jobs done at all.

So, for the most part, the fertilized egg cells took over. But, yeah, it's just so cool. And especially cool because he was, at least according to this report, like pretty fine, which is amazing and made the researchers wonder how rare this actually is. How many of us? There could literally be thousands. They actually said they were like, you know, one of the things that's unusual about him is that his face is asymmetric. And they were like, maybe that's because the cells grow slower. So like he actually has these slower growing parthenogenic cells on one side of his face. Then, of course, outside experts were like lots of people have asymmetric faces.

Yeah. My first thought was same. But it's possible this is not the only time it's happened. I mean, if it happened once, it's probably happened a bunch of times that we don't know about. Maybe it almost always ends in miscarriages. You know, maybe it almost always goes so smoothly that we never find out about it. Maybe both. So that is absolutely the weirdest thing I learned this week.

and I hope FD is still doing great. I think he should be, oh, he's the same age as me. Oh my God. Are you listening? Wow. You have the coolest genes I've ever heard of, FD. Your blood is like awesome. We want your blood.

So I have just one more thing to end on, which is, sorry, I actually have two more things to end on. I have a couple more things before we wrap up. As awesome as parthenogenesis is, it's not like, the only weird way that animals can reproduce that is not your traditional, like, has sex with opposite sex, baby. So one cool thing is that whenever sharks, and I think snakes too, whenever they have an instance of parthenogenesis, the zookeepers or researchers will always do a lot of work looking back at when they last had contact with a male because they can store sperm for a really

long time. Sperm pouch. Yeah. Or there may be like special ducks near their. Sperm ducked. Yeah. So in 2012, a captive brown-handed bamboo shark in California, she gave birth. And they knew it had been about three and a half years since she had made it at least

because from that point on, she had been in an enclosure with only female sharks. And so they were like, well, that's too long. to be sperm storage. It must be a virgin birth. But then they tested the offspring and they were like, oh, no, this definitely came from a boy shark and a girl shark. There was a boy shark involved. It's really amazing to me that there are animals that can just be like, this isn't a good time for me? Yeah. Did they contact the father for their child support? You know, three and a half years later, like, who even knows? So it's actually apparently really common for this species to like mate from July to September and then wait until the following

July through February to lay eggs and fertilize them. And yeah, it just comes down to like when there are enough resources, when it's safe, when the shark feels like it's a good time for her to be a mom. Then she empties out or ducked. And goes to town. Yeah. And with parthenogenesis too, it's often thought that the reason we see it relatively often in captivity is because it's triggered by stress.

Right. And also like maybe just being without males is a trigger to some of these animals. There's only one way to find out. So, yeah, I mean, it obviously has its tradeoffs, its pros and cons, to reproduce without male input. You have less genetic diversity. If you're in a group of animals and they're all female and they're just reproducing parthenogenically. they're not going to be getting new genes. So if something comes through that is devastating to that population of genes, they're out of luck.

If you're introducing new genes every generation, you're more likely to have a good mix where, like, somebody's going to survive. That's why sexual reproduction exists. And if you're doing prithenogenesis, you're not getting that. However, if you already have a genome that works in the specific environment you're in, you don't have to worry about any genes that make that less good getting in. So, like, if a snake is in a little enclosure, she doesn't have to worry about, like, whether her genes are good for that zoo enclosure. They're good. She's fine.

And also, there are no resources wasted on males. So, like, aphids will go through periods of the populations being totally female and using parthenogenesis because, like, it's less mouths to feed, basically. That is so cool. Okay, so the very last thing is that there's something called kleptogenesis, which is my fave. Which is where Winona writer steal. Just kidding, don't put that in there, free Winona. Literally free her. We're going to steal the Declaration of Independence.

That is what these salamanders say every time they get pregnant. So there are these salamanders. I covered a study on them back in 2017. I'll link to the article in our podcast post on popside.com. And they're all female, these salamanders. And they mate with salamanders of other species. And then they steal their genes. Now, the obvious question is,

isn't that just what sexual reproduction is, you know, you mate and then you take their genes? But the salamanders don't just smash sex cells together and make a baby. they seem to be able to pick and choose which genes they use from the male species they mate with. And so, like, they'll mate with multiple males from different species within their genus. And then eventually, whenever they feel, they will produce offspring. And those offspring can have, like, five times as many genes as the average salamander or, like, three times as many genes or the same number of genes.

and any little pieces can come from these other species in the same genus. Literal designer babies. Wow. Salamander edition. And they're really not clear on like, obviously the salamander isn't like flipping through a catalog. No, they're just shoplifting. Exactly. But, you know, there is something choosing is the wrong word.

But there's some kind of process. A mechanism. That makes this mix occur. and maybe it's totally random, but there's probably some kind of mechanism involved. And it's just wild. So all of these salamanders share mitochondrial DNA because that's passed down straight from the mother. And so they're all just like, from a maternal standpoint, they would just be clones. But they will then have hybrids made up of the DNA of a variety of species.

So let's say a mama salamander. She might have a couple of genomes herself worth of DNA, and maybe she's like got four genomes from male salamander she's mated with, all from different species. And so she might make offspring just from her own genes. She might ignore those stolen genes that she has. She might use only one of the stolen genes. She, you have no way of knowing. She can just create whatever little salamander her body chooses. And that's wild.

I love that. Like a patchwork. Are they genetically different enough to classify as a different species? That is a great question. So the researcher I talked to about this back in 2017 was like, yeah, this is a perfect example of why the traditional definition of species is kind of made up. So a lot of us are taught in school that a species is an animal that can successfully reproduce within its own group. That is a species. But we know that hybrids can exist.

and in certain cases they can even be fertile and go on to create more hybrids. Ligers. Tigons. Mules. Yeah. Oh my. And so we know that that isn't actually how it works. And then there are animals like this where this species is kind of like, it's like a lack of species.

It is just a constantly. More ghosts. It is just like a constantly changing. side species. So each individual salamander, if you looked at its DNA, it's a hybrid. But this whole lineage of salamanders just persists by creating new hybrids. So like, what is that? Is it a species?

Well, words are made up. And that's it. That's the kleptanogenesis, the parthenogenesis, the boy with his mother's blood. Oh. That was lit. That is such a cool title. I want that to be made into a movie. My blood has no father.

It sounds like something you would say at a really dramatic point. You have no bloodline. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back. Okay, we're back. And Alex, it is time to hear about researchers naked in the snow. Are they naked? Did I make that part up?

So they're pretty much, they're naked where it counts. Okay. Whoa. So I've been working on a story about Antarctica and I came across some very chilling information about what life is like at the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station, which is the U.S.'s base at the South Pole. We're the only country to have a sort of permanent structure at the South Pole, which has its own hegemonic ramifications because that's the point where all the different claims on Antarctica meet. But that's a completely different

road to go to it. So Antarctica as a whole is just like really fascinating to me, because Because on the surface, it seems just kind of like a, it's just like snow everywhere and penguins and very tame and cute and ice and stuff. But there's actually some pretty weird stuff that happens there. So like they have rocket powered planes. They have underground neutrino detectors. And they have ATMs at the edge of the world. So there's a lot of strange stuff that goes on down there. But one of the strangest things is it's sort of a ritual called the 300 Club.

So this is where presumably very bored. scientists experience a temperature change of 300 degrees Fahrenheit by sitting in a sauna and then stepping outside in the middle of winter. No, thank you. So to provide a little more context, the South Pole Station is basically this futuristic elevated building. It's about 100 yards from the actual pole itself. It houses about 150 people during the Antarctic summer, which goes from November to February,

and then 50 people during the Antarctic winter, which goes between March and October. So during the winter, the sun does not peak above the horizon. It is dark for eight months straight. And you can't leave because it is so cold that planes cannot take off or land because their jet fuel freeze. So these scientists are basically just stuck in this frozen wasteland for over half a year studying astrophysics or atmospheric patterns, whatever. And they endure what I can only imagine is seasonal effective disorder on steroids. Yeah. So they get up to some tomfoolery, we could say.

That's good. I think that's probably for the best. Yeah, it's probably for the best. Well, maybe not this particular activity. So around late July or early August, that's when the southernmost point on planet Earth experiences its coldest days of the year. So the average temperature during this time is around negative 60 degrees Fahrenheit. with no wind chill.

That's just the temperature. But sometimes that number can drop below negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, boy. Negative 100 degrees. So that's the actual recorded temperature at the South Pole without wind chill. As a Floridian, this literally gives me chills right now. Elin R does not look happy. I don't like this concept.

So anyways, when they, you know, scientists have a little bit of warning when this is going to happen and they sort of plan for it. And when it does happen, a group of very, very brave souls will prepare to join the 300 Club. Or stupid. I'm not calling you stupid. Do whatever you feel. So they get, so the station, the South Pole station, has its very own sauna because they need to have some kind of place to lit off steam, I guess. And they set the temperature to around 200 degrees. And when I first read about that, I was like, is that a legit temperature for sauna?

and it is apparently the maximum temperature of most saunas is 212 degrees Fahrenheit. So the scientists will sit in this sauna for pretty much as long as they can bear it, like sweating their brains out. And then they make a run for it through the frigid night. They run 100 yards to the South Pole wearing nothing, but they call them bunny boots. So these are like government-issued snow boots. But other than that, they're completely in the nude.

They run around the pole to hit all 24. time zones on Earth since they all intersect at the South Pole. And they bolt back inside to thaw back in the sauna, usually with the aid of some alcohol. So in recent years, participants have actually had the option to wear neck gaiters to cover their throats and keep their lungs from freezing because when you breathe in air that is negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit, your lungs can freeze if there's a lot of fluid in them. So that's fun. But other than that, the challenge is fully in the nude, it's actually better not to wear underwear in the freezing conditions. Right, it'll freeze onto you.

It will freeze on to you. It will freeze on to you because you've been sweating so much from the sauna. Oh, man. So. Yeah, I agree with Eleanor's facial expression. I mean, it's kind of between a rock in a hard place, but I would prefer to not have frozen underwear personally. But this also means that the experience can lead to some very unfortunate incidences of frostbite in places that no human would ever want to get frostbite.

So there was an article in the Atlantic a couple years ago about this ritual. And Chris Perry, who has done the challenge many times, was a researcher down there. He was quoted in this article. He remembered a couple who did the challenge one year. He says, quote, they both suffered some minor frostbite. She on her nipples and he on the tip of his weenie. If I never hear the phrase. Tip of the weenie to this weenie again.

I think I was more just taken aback. had such a gutteral reaction to the use of the word weenie rather than what he was actually describing. Yeah, absolutely. And he said it again. He said like a couple other people got frostbites on their weanies. And I was like, why? Even if you don't feel comfortable referring to genitals by their proper Christian names.

Like, if you've watched your colleague get frostbite, you owe them the dignity of referring to it as a penis. Although what is it at that point? She got frostbite on her. Legi jigs. So I looked up how long it takes to get frostbite at different temperatures, and of course, I don't know why I did this, because there's no information readily available on Antarctic conditions of negative 100 degrees. However, at a wind chill of negative 98 degrees, I saw on a chart that frostbite on exposed skin can occur within five minutes. So I can only expect that at a raw temperature of negative 98 degrees or lower, the time would be even faster to get frostbite. So suffice it to say that if you are a slow runner, this is not the challenge for you.

And as a person who has no physical stamina or speed and is famously from Florida, this would be the best way to torture me, probably. And so I was curious how this low-key hazing started. It is definitely. I would call it high-key hazing. It's high-key hazing. I don't think anyone's pressured to do it, but, you know, when you're down there. I wouldn't want to be the chump who didn't do it.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. But if you stayed inside your weenie would thank you. It definitely would. So this hazing started in probably 1959, a few years after the U.S. had permanently set up shop at the South Pole in a much more rinky-dink facility than it is now. Meteorologist Howard Redifer created the 200 Club. So it was basically the same deal except the sauna back then was a lot less sophisticated because it was literally made by the scientists who were spending the winter there.

so it could only get up to, I think, 100 degrees. But Redifer did give certificates to people who completed his challenge, and the exclusive Antarctic fraternity has continued through today. Wow. This is why we have to get more women in science. For real. It's true. Look at everything we can promise them.

You may get frostbite on your nipples. And also you'll be trapped in Antarctica. Go to Antarctica. You'll be trapped for eight months with a bunch of guys who think it's fun to almost get frostbite on their penises. Weenies. Weenies. Redacted.

Wees. Redacted. Please use the proper name. Yeah, I, like, I personally love the, like, whole hot, cold Nordic spa thing. So I feel like I would be really tempted to try this, but 300 yards is crazy. I would want to just, like, hop out into the snow and directly back inside. Yeah. But I think that would be a super satisfying experience.

It would, like, really get the blood pumping. It would still be like a little dangerous. But yeah, I just, the running out, you know, weenies akimbo. Great phrase, great phrase. I can't abide that. You do get a patch to sew on to your Antarctic fur jacket. Not yet to cover the part that fell off. Oh, gosh.

Well, wow, this is fascinating. I definitely am thrilled for the researchers. in Antarctica that they have a sauna because there's so little to do. And it's so cold. I would need the sauna, like, even if after a day of working in clothes outside. Yeah, absolutely. I would need to just thaw periodically throughout the day. When you told me you were going to talk about saunas in Antarctica, I did not expect this.

What was the weirdest thing we learned this week? A woman who had a baby without... With different blood. Yeah, with her blood. Damn. Never will recover for that close second. Weenies akimbo. Great. So I'm going to, you know, take credit for that as like a win and a half for me.

I think that's fair. Alex, excellent work on your inaugural weirdest thing fact. Thank you. Quite weird. Thank you guys so much for having me. 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.

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