The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Sucked into a Bottle, the Ultimate Exercise Hack, the Statue of Liberty’s Big Secret

Episode Date: September 12, 2018

The weirdest things we learned this week range from turning the Statue of Liberty into a battery to a man whose penis was sucked into a bottle with an explosion. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? Buy tickets to our live show in NYC! www.popsci.com/wtlive The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/weirdest_thing #weirdestthingpod Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Claire Maldarelli: www.twitter.com/camaldarelli Mary Beth Griggs: www.twitter.com/MaryBethGriggs Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme Music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jason Lederman: www.twitter.com/Lederman --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Hey, if you're listening to this podcast for the second time, which I hope you are because it's totally worth it. You might notice we added it an extra line because one of our listeners pointed out a tiny wording mistake on Twitter. So we decided to fix it because we love facts. Enjoy. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and text stories every week. And while a lot of the fun facts we stumble across make it into our articles, there are lots of other 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 Maldarelli. I'm Mary Beth Griggs.

So this Friday, September 14th at 6.30 p.m. We have our first ever live show at caveat in New York City. Tickets are limited and they're only 12 bucks, so definitely grab some while they're still available. You can get them at Popside.com slash WT Live. That's Popsi.com slash WT Live. We're going to have some fun prizes, audience participation, uncensored, weird. So please be there. And with that, on to the show. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up,

a little tease about some kind of factor story we found while reporting, reading, writing, editing, being interesting, inquisitive people. And we vote on 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. Mary Beth, why don't you start with your tease? We've got a medical mystery this week from the 18th. hundreds that involves a person's private parts and chemistry.

Great. Wonderful. Claire, how about you? Sometimes when you're working out, it is better to swish and spit out your Gatorade than to drink it. Intriguing. All right. My tease is that there was a time when we accidentally turned the Statue of Liberty into a battery. Oh, my gosh.

It sounds either really dumb or really brilliant. I'm fascinating. Most things are. I mean, I think a medical mystery is always a good way to start. Yeah, I want to hear of Mary Beths. Oh, dear. All right, all right. So we're going to get right into it.

And so I found this. I look at a lot of books in the course of my job. There are tons of books that come across my desk, and they're all very fascinating and relating to science. And one of the ones that recently came across is going to come out in October this year. It's called The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiositys from the History of Medicine by Thomas Morris. And it is filled with all of these incredibly odd case studies. And as I was going through, I noticed that they're all just glorious.

I mean, from the title, you can tell exploding teeth is going to be something I want to know more about. Great title. It really is. And so then I started going through, and I found this one case study that was written up in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1849 by Dr. Azariah Shipman, who was a surgeon from Syracuse in New York. And this is back in the time when doctors still did house calls. And so at one point, he got an urgent message that he needed to come to the house of this young man. and he kind of wasn't expecting to see what he saw, which was the man with a pint bottle stuck to his penis.

Oh, what? No one expects that. No one expects that. His penis was completely inside of the glass bottle. How narrow of a neck girl is that? Very narrow. Very narrow. This was not a wide opening at all.

It was apparently had an opening of three-fourths of an inch in diameter, only, which is not big. So, yeah. Interesting. So why would you choose that bottle? Well, and see, like, aren't there a better one? Why would you choose that bottle to insert your penis? It's a good question. Why would you do this?

And it was alarming, and most people, like most people, the doctor was wondering, why, why? Just why? Why did this happen? This seems very odd, but the patient was not willing to tell him why at the time. because he had a glass bottle affixed to his penis. I imagine that's quite distressing. He was incredibly distressed. And, you know, in the article, he writes,

seeing no hopes of getting an explanation in his present predicament, and after endeavoring to pull the penis out with my fingers without success, I see it a large knife lying on the table, and with the back of it, I struck a blow on the neck of the bottle, shivering it to Adams and liberating the penis in an instant. Shivering it to Adams. And liberating the penis. It's really is beautiful.

And it's incredible. All case studies should please be written like this in the future. All doctors listening take note. And apparently it turned out that this this man's member was not only, you know, stuck in a bottle. That wasn't quite the only problem. It was also looked, appeared singed. Oh no. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Which is not good. The doctor at this point having, you know, released the penis from its prison. From its prison. Yes.

There are plenty of explanations. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking things about how this penis got into this glass bottle. But the actual story is so much more interesting. So, the Dr. Shipman writes,

now for the explanation. And just to paraphrase, this was a young man who was very interested in chemistry. And so he had this bottle in his room. And what the bottle had once been used for was to store naphtha, which is like a crude oil and potassium. Okay. Okay. So the young man woke up in the middle of the night and did not want to leave his room to go to the outhouse. I'm understandable. These are outhouse days. Yeah, these are outhouse days. This is pre-indore plumbing.

And so he just picked up a glass bottle that he found and started peeing into it. Now, the problem is that this bottle contained, still contained little bits of potassium. Potassium and water do not mix well. And so the doctor writes of the occurrence, the first jet of urine was followed by an explosive sound and a flash of fire. and quick as thought the penis was drawn into the bottle with a force and tenacity which held it firmly as if in a vice. Oh my God. Force and tenacity. Yes.

So the potassium burning as potassium is wont to do when it comes in contact with oxygen or with water, which is why it is stored in oil to begin with in order to keep it away from moisture. Having come in contact with the urine, it immediately burned up all of the gas. that was within the bottle and created a vacuum, which just, you know, sucked this guy's penis right in. Wow. Yeah, which is wild. That sounds so painful.

Yeah. And apparently it was. They had to like continue with treatment for a little while. And the doctor was so fascinated by this that he actually decided to perform the experiment himself just to see if it was reproducible, not using his penis. Thank heaven. but he used a little bit of potassium, a little bit of the naphtho, which is the oil, and put him in a pint bottle and then just kind of like threw some urine into it

and held his finger over the stopper to see what would happen. And his finger also got just completely sucked into the bottle. This is not an experiment you should try at home. Everyone, please don't do that. I beg you. But that was part of what was so fascinating. to me about this study is why did this guy have potassium in his room? Right. Like, this seems so weird. And so I started looking into it. I found out that potassium actually had only been isolated

as a metal in 1807. So not that long before this had occurred. And people were starting to experiment with it and figure out what it was. I found an article from one of the early American scientific journals that talked about, you know, well, are there other ways that we can maybe keep potassium intact without using this crude oil? And this guy goes on to describe like how he manages to keep potassium safe in a sealed glass jar. But it's this really bizarre process that kind of took a lot of work to do. And so, you know, I'm still really interested in this, and I did not find a satisfactory answer as to why this young man, probably a student of some sort, managed to or had this in his bedroom. And so if there are any historians out there who might know,

I would really love to hear your input. But this is, this was a time when, I mean, even in this, this scientific article, they didn't understand that moisture would necessarily cause potassium to ignite. They were like, no, there are other cases where if you hit it with a hammer, then it will cause it to burn incredibly. There were just lots and lots of theories out there. And so that was something that people were still looking into at the time. I'm wondering if that was part of it. But clearly he kind of knew how to store it properly.

but just not all the time. So did this case study kind of help them understand potassium's properties better? Like I wouldn't go that far, but I'm sure that like. There was no groundbreaking science being made that night. No, this was just a very unfortunate incident that is also very, very delightful and interesting. And I do. I really like the way that this doctor wrote up this case study. I think it was kind of delightful and fascinating.

And I was looking into the doctor himself more too. And it turns out he was a surgeon. He was kind of renowned for being a very good surgeon at the time. So, I mean, this kid really lucked out, having him come by and have a sense of humor about the entire thing. Wait, so was it in the middle of the night, too? Or did he, like, wait until morning to be like, right? He was called in great haste to a young gentleman. Who could have been middle of a woman.

Yeah. Yeah. Who was in a most ludicrous and yet painful condition. I bet. Which is just glorious. Yeah. So I think that it was really interesting that this guy was able to write so intelligently and maybe help other doctors in the area that might have come across similar injuries to patients. I wonder if there ever was another.

I'm so curious. Like one time only case studies. That's what I love about case studies though, is that like most of them, the whole point is that like this thing that happened is really weird. It's probably the only time it's happened. Maybe it'll happen to someone else. So you might want to know about it. I'm really like jealous of this book concept because it's such a good idea. Because if you look through history, there are so many weird and hilarious and disturbing case studies.

It is absolutely incredible. I mean, and one of the ones that he talks about in here, just to give you a teaser of some of the other ones, you know, it's about a miraculous cure of the Prussian swallow knife, which is, you know, one of the first instances where they actually did surgery in the abdomen because someone had swallowed a six inch long knife and they were managed to get it out and then sew him back up and have him live a normal life. And this was, you know, back in the 1600s, which, whoa, is very long ago for abdominal surgery. A six-inch long knife, though, it's like, that's not by accident. No, it wasn't. He was apparently trying to shove the hilt down his throat to make himself throw up after drinking too much. He survived. He survived.

He survived at all. I mean, I think that this is very nice, as bizarre as this medical mystery is, I'm very pleased with myself because, one died. It's a happy story. It's a happy story. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then we will be back with more weird facts. At Outdoor Life magazine, we've never been easy on the gear we test, which is precisely why you can trust the gear we make. Introducing GuideLife, Performance, products, and apparel designed with the editors of Outdoor Life.

Made for backpackers, campers, hunters, and anyone who enjoys the outdoors. And like any great adventure, this one starts at base camp. The collection includes tents, lanterns, duffles, sleeping bags and pads, and more. Available now on Amazon and olgidlife.com. We're back, and now Claire is going to share her exercise-related fact with us. Woo-hoo. I've had a lot of exercise facts lately. So my next one at the live show is not an exercise fact, just so you know. Buy tickets.

Buy tickets. It's a very exciting fact. But this one is also very exciting. As you might know from listening to prior episodes, I've been training for a marathon, the Chicago Marathon, which is in a month. Very scary. So now that I'm kind of like later on into my training, I've been doing like more long runs. And so what goes with those long runs is taking in those like sort of gel packets that's like

really quick carbohydrates that you need to like sustain that amount of effort for so long, but I've been running into like a little bit of trouble in which I just vomit back up all of the gels. So I looked into this a little bit, like best practices on how to take these gels. And it turns out that a lot of runners or like anyone who just jogs for fun has a lot of these GI problems. And the reason for that is because when you're running, you divert your blood away from your like GI track and towards like your cardiovascular system and your muscle.

obviously makes sense, but unfortunate for your stomach. As I was looking at all these best ways to take gels and whatnot, I came across this study that looked at if you simply drink or take in Gatorade, swish it around in your mouth and then spit it back out, it actually still gives you these performance effects. And I was like, what? I have found my answer. I don't have to swallow it.

If that surprises you, it definitely surprised the researchers too. But it turns out that they actually have known about this for about 15 years. This is a study that came out in 2004. And what they did was they basically took cyclists, and it was like seven cyclists and two were, or seven men cyclists and two women cyclists. and they put them through this hour-long exercise. And during the exercise, it was all the same exercise, and they were sort of at the same, like, performance levels.

So during the exercise, after they had finished 12% of that exercise, they would give half the people water and half the people this carbohydrate substance called maltodextrin, which actually isn't sweet at all, but it's just, like, really quick carbs. And they would tell them to swish it around in their mouth for five seconds and then spit it back out. And then they would see their performance at the end.

And it turns out that the people that swished around the Gatorade type drink or the maltodextrin, rather, actually performed 2% better than the people that just swished around the water in their mouth. And they were like, what? This doesn't make any sense. So they did a follow-up study. They were like, well, how does this work? like you obviously need to actually take in the glucose or the carbohydrates in order to get the

effect. And so they did a really similar study, but instead they actually like gave the people an IV and they put in like the carbohydrate glucose solution through an IV so that your body like has it really readily available. And that actually didn't produce that 2% effect. Wow. Increased effect. So they were like, wow, this is crazy. So it turns out that this is crazy.

So it turns out that this is actually like a perfect example of the brain's ability to limit you in terms of like how much you can do. So your body, a lot of exercise physiologists say that your body is actually way more capable of performing activities beyond what you think. So after if you've ever like run or Rachel, I know you're doing a really long cycling event soon. It's true. Boxing or what have you. After a certain amount of time, your brain is just like. okay, I have had enough, like I'm done exercising, I need to stop. And at that point, you actually have like a lot left in you.

You just, your brain is just like telling your muscles to stop. So what this did was essentially when you swish around the carbohydrates in your mouth, you have receptors in your mouth that are like triggered by carbohydrate. And so once that happens, then that sends a signal to your brain. And then your brain says, oh, I have fuel coming. let me let my body exercise more. Whoa. And so it sends all these, like a neuromuscular thing where it sends signals through your neurons

to your muscles to fire faster. Wow. And these like receptors in your mouth aren't also found in your stomach. Because what's happening in your stomach, once the carbohydrates are in there, then they sort of just like digest and then get sent to your muscles. But in your mouth, it's just directly sent up to your brain. So that's why it didn't work with the IV because it's about tricking your brain, not about the fuel actually being available. Exactly. And so that's sort of like the second part of this study. They were like, okay, and this brings me to like my marathon, if this could work for the marathon.

It actually doesn't work through your IV because they did it for an hour long. So this was only cycling for an hour. And during that hour, the amount of carbohydrates your body can take in and then use is so negligible that even if you were to take it in, like right when you start exercising, you wouldn't be able to use that energy source until well over an hour later. So when they put the IV in, they were like, we know this shouldn't work, but we'll confirm it. So they've repeated this experiment many, many times just to sort of figure out what's going on. And they've came up with a bunch of cool things from it. So if you're planning to use this swish method, I have like the lowdown on it now. The shortest amount of time that this swishing method provides an advantage is 30 minutes. So anything before that, it's sort of just such a short amount of time to exercise that your brain won't shut down and you probably won't get the effects.

that there have been some recent studies that I haven't really, that I don't want to like confirm just because they've been so small and in small journals, but there are a couple that say that it even works for a sprint. So people doing like six seconds sprints even if they swished around, they might have this effect. So it's actually a really quick effect, but the studies were small. And the strongest effects were seen in people who had fasted from the night before. So these were like morning runners or morning cyclists who had not eaten breakfast and hadn't

eaten since dinner the night before versus people who, who had eaten breakfast like an hour before they performed their exercise. The ones that had fasted experienced an even greater effect from the swish method versus the ones that had eaten their breakfast. So if you feel like you can sustain yourself without breakfast that morning and want to swish, like to be the best. But lastly, and sadly for me, it only works up until two hours. So basically your body is able to store enough.

carbohydrates for about an average person two hours at which point you essentially like bong where you just don't have any more energy left in your body isn't used to burning fat that quickly and so you kind of just like literally run out of energy and so if you tried to do that switch method it just it simply wouldn't work oh my god you're not planning on running uh under two two hour marathon unfortunately no one in the world has done that yet but i can Could be the first. There you go. Simply because I don't want to swallow gels.

The power of the switch. So if you are planning to use this swish method during your marathon, which I'm really excited to try, okay, this is my plan based on all of my research. You should do it in the first hour because, again, the first hour, you're not able to use the carbohydrates. And then once that first hour is up, then you should start taking in the gels, which I'm really trying hard to not vomit them up. I actually found a cool one that is seeming to work for me, so that's good.

Keep using the gels every 45 minutes, and then once you hit the 30 minutes, you have about 30 minutes left in the race, then you should restart your swish method because any carbohydrates you take in then, your muscles won't get them yet until after the race is over. So there's just no point to taking them in. So that's when the swish method I think is going to be crucial for me, and I'm really excited to try it. Oh, my gosh. This is such an adventure. I love it.

And I heard that even, like, really professional elite runners use this method. So if you watch, like, the New York City Marathon, the Chicago won any of them, and you're looking at the elites, and you see, like, those bottles that they grab, like, throughout the race, if you find, if you see the last one that they grab, a lot of them actually won't drink it. They'll swish it around and spit it out. So much spit. Running is so gross. It really is. It's like literally the grossest sport.

Well, if you're watching the Chicago Marathon, stay out of Claire's spit zone. Oh my gosh, we're so excited for you. Thank you. Okay, we're going to take one more quick break, and then we will be back with one more fact. It's really easy to get confused by all of the tech news flying around the internet.

On last week in tech, The Popular Science Tech team explains everything and tells you how all of these stories affect your daily life. New episodes post every Monday on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, and pretty much anywhere else you can listen to podcasts. We'll talk to you then. All right, we're back. And my fact is about New York City, the location of our live show on Friday the 14th. Buy tickets. So, yeah, my fact is about the Statue of Liberty.

and there is some science here, some great chemistry, in fact. But first, I want to address something, which was really shocking to me. You guys, where did the Statue of Liberty come from? Why do we have it? It was a gift from France. Right, it was a gift from France in the United States, right? That's what we all learn in school. Well, that's not really true.

What? Did we steal it? So, I was just mad. would love that. Not exactly. No. It wasn't like France was like, wow, America, we love you so much. Here's a giant copper lady. In actuality, this sculptor named Frederick August Bartoldi. He was working on a project for the Egyptian government called Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia that was going to be at the entrance of the Suez Canal. And it was a huge lighthouse in the form

of an ancient Egyptian woman, which sounds familiar, doesn't it? Huh? So Frederick wanted to get the dang thing built, and it fell through in Egypt. So he basically just started going around to America, pitching this as like a gesture of French and American friendship and trying to raise money for it. But it was Americans who came up with the money. So after this huge campaign, yes, you could say that France gifted us the statue, but only after the artist really pushed for me. making this a popular idea. And Americans still had to come up with the money for the pedestal,

which seems a little un-gift-like. But boy, boy did we rally to raise that money. More specifically, boy did the guy who designed the Statue of Liberty rally for us to raise that money. We basically got, like, re-gifted the Statue of Liberty. We have been lied to. There's more. It was,

the fundraising has kind of stalled out. And then Joseph Pulitzer, the famous publisher of the New York world, he announced a drive to raise $100,000, which is like $2.3 million today. And he pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount. And it really captured the imagination

of people all over New York and the country. A young girl alone in the world, this is a quote, donated, quote, 60 cents, the result of self-denial. Okay. Yeah. Another dollar was given by the, quote, lonely and very aged woman. There was a home for alcoholics in New York that came up with $15.

There were donation boxes and bars and saloons. There was a kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa that mailed $1.35 over. So they were able to finish this. but I just want to make it clear that this thing that we've always been told was given to us by France to celebrate the centennial of our amazing democracy was actually a regifted statue that was initially designed for Egypt that a newspaper man invested in for the clicks essentially. Oh my God. Which really feels like a kind of metaphor for American exceptionalism in a nutshell to me.

Oh, God. Oh, and this is from the National Gallery of Art, the last non-science thing I will share, that really just seemed scathing to me. Quote, the Statue of Liberty secured Bartoldi of fame, perhaps disproportionate to his artistic talent. Oh, my God. But commensurate with his ambition, drive, and showmanship

in the promotion of great artistic undertaking. Wow. Wow, that is a burn. Yeah. From the National Gallery. of art. Thanks, guys. Okay. So that, you know, changed my life, but there's a reason why I was reading about the Statue of Liberty, which was this cool science story I heard this week. Most people know the Statue of Liberty is made of copper. How she got her lovely green patina because the copper oxidizes. But what does that mean? Well, she's not like a solid statue carved out of stone.

The outer layer is just a layer of copper that's about as thick as like one and a half pennies. So really thin. And with something that size that's that thin, if you just stood her up, she'd crumple. She would not be able to support her own stature. So what's actually inside is an internal iron skeleton, which was designed at least in part by Gustav Eiffel of Tower fame. It was before the Tower. He was just starting out, I guess.

So they built all of that, both the frame and the lady in France, put it together to prove that it could go together, took it apart, shipped it to New York and put it back together here, which was in the 1800s. Then, in the 1930s, the National Park Service took over maintenance, but there were more pressing concerns around the 1930s and the decades following. So it wasn't until the 1980s that they were doing some like in-depth maintenance on the Statue of Liberty. And they were like, you know, she's been sprayed by the wind and sea. She like her crown has like stabbed through her shoulder. It's time for us to revamp her. But this is a quote from a New York Times story that came out in 1985 from Edward Cohen, who was one of the consulting engineers. We found it wasn't just a matter of cosmetics.

We couldn't just buy her a new dress and dab on some makeup. We had to fix her internal problems, which is maybe one of the most misogynistic quotes I've ever heard about a statue, but I'm sure he meant well. So the problems they found when they started looking closely was that that frame was made of iron. The outer shell is made of copper. And iron and copper have a galvanic reaction when there's moisture present,

which basically means they form a battery. The water, which tends to have salt in it, is acting as an electrolyte, allowing electrons to break free from the iron. And then the resulting ions have the ability to travel through that water to the copper. So it's resulting in this kind of constant series of electron swaps. You know, the copper is getting more and more positive. The iron is getting more and more negative. And that carries a voltage.

And it was also degrading the iron. scaffolding that was holding up the statue. So it wasn't at like a critical point yet. It's not like people who had who had been visiting her were in danger of the statue collapsing, but it was not great and not sustainable. So the question is like, why did they do this? And we know that they knew those two metals shouldn't be touching because they found traces of asbestos and leather insulation on the saddles, but those had deteriorated.

surprise and about 50% of the iron bars were corroded. Wow. Oh, no. Yeah. So they, and of course as the beams weakened and bent, they were allowing in more water, which was exacerbating the problem. So they replaced the damaged beams with stainless steel, and they actually used Teflon to separate them from the copper, which, you know, has kind of a longer shelf

life than some leather and asbestos. Than asbestos. They took the asbestos out of the Statue of Liberty. It was a very long renovation project. She, for a while, who knows how long, was a battery. I found one article saying that it was about a quarter of a vault that she was generating. Wow. So hook your electronics up.

Yeah, those weren't the only problems with the Statue of Liberty, by the way. That was just the most pressing concern. But there was also like a headed shoulder misalignment that looking back, they think was just kind of always there and no one had cared. It was probably because before Gustav Eiffel was the engineer, another engineer had worked on the head and shoulders and had then died, unfortunately, and Gustav had swept in young upstart that he was.

I don't know that he was young. I just know it was before the Eiffel Tower. Anyway, he was not Eiffel Tower years old. And so basically these, the shoulders, and head area just like didn't really match the engineering of the rest of the statue. So it was just misaligned, full stop, and they had to fix that in the 1980s. I love that in putting this giant statue in New York City, nobody cared that you're just kind of slapping two disparate statues together.

As I said earlier, loose framework in the statue's head, probably caused by all. all of that corroded iron, meant it tilted to the right and punctured her arm. So they also had to fix that. Wait, so her head was falling off? Essentially. Yeah, there were just general structural issues. I don't think any of it was like super visibly noticeable. It's not like her head was falling off, but there was enough of a shift.

the head would have fallen off eventually. She was nearly headless. Yes. Nearly headless, literally. Liberty. So does the Statute of Liberty have to go through

lifelong maintenance? Like, is she on life support right now? Because I think it's insane, like the amount of effort we go into to fix, like, fix statues and stuff. Like I know, like, the, what's that thing in New Hampshire, like the man on the mountain?

Like, they just went through so much effort to, like, keep his nose on. and fix it, eventually, it just, like, fell down. So I wonder what, like, the Statue of Liberty's, like, lifespan is. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what her, like, annual beauty regiment is. I will find that and put it in our write-up on popside.com. I do know that to aid in future maintenance efforts, and this is back in 1985, the American Society of Civil Engineers, donated a set of three-dimensional computer drawings

to the National Park Service. So cutting edge. This article actually says the computer drawings, known as CAD for computerated design, will replace the original drawings of the statue that were destroyed in a fire in Paris at the turn of the century. So basically there was just like a large gap in our information about the statue

and our care of it. So kudos to these engineers in 1985 who actually figured out what was inside the statue of liberty, which up until then had kind of just been a mystery. They just kept slap and paint on her and being like, you seem fine. Well, it just put some makeup on you. That sounds like a lot of medicine related to women, so. That's true.

So many metaphors in this fact. That's crazy. It's sad that not as much voltage comes out of it. Like you can't actually charge things. It's true. They should have put in charging ports. Yeah. That would have been real forward thinking in 1985.

You could potentially see the battery from the battery in New York. Ooh. Whoa. Whoa. But yeah, no. And unfortunately, we cannot have our Lady Liberty giving off voltage and also not rotting inside. So she just has to stand in her own power, as it were. That's lovely.

That is lovely. So what was the weirdest thing we learned this week? Oh, Lady Liberty for me. I am blown away. Yeah, but yours was a penis in a bottle. I know. It's just think a penis stuck in a bottle. And a vacuum.

A middle of the night. So I appreciate. your support, but I think the winner is clear. Agreed. Yay. Spare a thought for, as Thomas Morris says in his book, spare a thought for the poor guy. Serious.

I felt bad for him this whole time. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever you're listening right now. And if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes. It helps other weirdos find the show. You can buy our merch,

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