Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Will? I know you're curious, but I want to see
if you can guess. Do you know why I'm wearing
a tux today? Is it because it's Monday night in Alabama?
That is right? You know I love doing that. But
actually there's an extra special reason, and that's because it's
the forty third annual Part Time Genius Awards. Mango, that
(00:40):
is right?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
How could I forget? But remind the listeners? What are
the Part Time Genius Awards again?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, seeing as this is the forty third time that
we're doing this, I'm surprised anyone is asking at this point.
But the Part Time Genius Awards are our look back
at some of the greatest things to happen last year
and honoring them with our very prestigious prize, starting with
the twoenty twenty four Old Factory Award aka the Golden
Nose Award.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Mag I am on the edge of my seat here,
So who is getting the Golden Nose this year?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, this year, the twenty twenty four Golden Nose goes
to drum Roll please Professor wyn Who at the University
of New South Wales and Sydney for developing a smartphone
sensor called Vibe Milk. Now, Vibe Milk uses your phone
to send vibrations against the milk bottle or carton, and
then it reads and analyzes the freshness. That way, I
(01:34):
can tell you if your milk has gone bad. And
so instead of having to smell your milk or make
everyone in the room smell the milk to see if
it's spoiled, you can just use your phone and save
everyone the trouble. How revolutionary is this manga?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I already love this because my wife Lizzie does this
all the time. She like she smells something awful. She's like, no,
you have to smell this, yeh.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
You smell.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I hate that you just smelling yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah. I'm playing the role of in my family. I
make everyone smell and I'm relentless. I won't stop until
they do smell it. But Vibe milk actually works. So,
as Professor Who put it, quote, you can smell or
taste of milk is off, but that requires opening the
package and doing so exposes it to bacteria and that
accelerates spoilage. So Vibe Milk is non invasive, which means
(02:20):
you can test the freshness of the milk without breaking
the seal. That is really cool, and the ideas that
you can use it at home or even at the
grocery store before you buy the product now. Currently, Vibe
Milk is a ninety eight point four percent accuracy rate
for detecting spoiled milk, and the high tech methods should
help us reduce dairy waste in a pretty big way. Actually,
(02:41):
But that's just the first of a whole bunch of
very important awords we're giving out today, So let's dive in.
(03:08):
Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as
always I'm here with my good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer
and sitting behind that glass holding a conductor's baton and
queuing up a whole bunch of orchestra music to play
us out if we start taking too long, that's our
good Palin producer Dylan Fagan, So mego. I'm glad we're
finally doing this award show.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I know I always get jealous of other places that
give out awards around this top of the year.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Like who are you? Who you think about the Nobels,
the MacArthur Foundation, who else.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, I mean them too. But I also love the
weirder awards, like the Ignobles, the Bulward Lytton Award, which
gives out an award for the worst first sentence in
a novel. But my absolute favorite is the Bookseller Prize
for Oddest Title of the Year. And every year, honestly,
every year I went to see which title wins. Actually,
(03:59):
I'm just gonna pull up the Wikipedia page and read
out a few of my favorites. And these are all
real books, by the way. So in twenty ten, managing
a dental practice the Genghis Khanway. One. In twenty twelve
it was a goblin proofing one's chicken coop, which is
a chestnut obviously. Some other winners include how to Avoid
(04:21):
Huge Ships, bomb Proof your Horse, and one of my
personal favorites, the dirt Hole and its variations. They are
all that great.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
That sounds gross.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, anyway, I am really hoping that we can slip
in some of that, like energy and joy and silliness
into some of these really great innovations we're honoring for
this year's awards.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You know mego, you did forget one, and this was
back in our mental floss days. And I'm not sure
if they were just scared of us being, you know,
litigious or something, which is funny to me thinking about
anybody being scared of us. But I don't know if
you remember that book. It was called Dental Floss for
the Mind. It was like talking all the way around
the idea of the pun mental floss. But you remember
(05:05):
this book, of course I did. I thought it was
hilarious that we had a couple friends send it to us,
just because I still have it on my bookshelf here.
But anyway, I am all into the silliness and all
the great innovations and everything that we're talking about today.
So where do you want to start?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
How about we start with this year's Aerodynamics Prize, which
we are also dubbing the When Hippopotamus's Fly Award, and
this goes out to John Hutchinson from the UK's Royal
Veterinary College. And this year Hutchinson realized that when a
hippo is running at full tilt, the hippo is actually
airborne for fifteen percent of that time. Oh wow, Now
(05:46):
this is important research because hippos are apparently very hard
creatures to study because one, they are mostly lulling about
in the water during the day most days. But also
you do not want to run into a hippo at
night when they tend to go on land, and that's
because they are incredibly skittish creatures. A full grown male
can weigh up to nearly ten thousand pounds and they
(06:06):
will run you over. Also, they have terrifying teeth.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
They do have terrifying teeth, which everyone in our generation
would know from playing Hungry Hungry Hippos, which also happens
to be the game that probably made my heart race
more than any game out there. But anyway, it's funny
because the animals are so goofy looking that I just
assumed they were kind of gentle and sweet. You know,
you'd look at them and you'd think so.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yeah. I actually thought hippos were sweet too, mostly because
I have this old story in my head from Victorian
times about Obayes the hippo. I'm sure we've mentioned this
on the show before, but back in the eighteen hundreds,
they brought this hippo from Africa to London and it
was like the first time a hippo had been in
Europe since ancient Rome and actually the first time one
(06:49):
had been in England since prehistoric times, and it was
like an immediate sensation, so people cued up for hours
at the London Zoo just to get a glimpse of
the creature. It actually made about twenty eight million pounds
in today's currency because like people were just waiting to
see it, and there was like a real hippo mania.
Now Obsha been trained to do some basic dance moves
(07:11):
like a promenade and a pivot and some other things,
and there was a poka composed for him. The hippo
was so famous that Charles Dickens was jealous of it.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Like anywayzing all.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Of that made me think hippos were sweet, but in
fact hippos actually killed over five hundred people a year,
which makes them the deadliest land mammal, more dangerous than
grizzly bears or big cats. Isn't that insane?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, that's pra It sort of reminds me of the
Eddie Izzard bit where he's like, you kill enough people
and it almost starts to be impressives.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
But back to hippos taking flight, because hippo behavior makes
it hard to monitor them. Hippos haven't been studied that much,
but Hutchinson and his team realized that they could actually
visit the animals and watch their movements at a local
resort in North Yorkshire. It's called Flamingo Land, and then
his team did all this painstaking frame by frame analysis
of watching hippos run, and as Hutchinson told The Guardian quote,
(08:08):
it is mind numbing. It's one of the things in
my work that I hate the most. It is really boring, agonizing.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
But what he learned is that while hippo's only trot,
which means like their diagonal pairs of legs are moving
and touching the ground at the same time.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That kind of feels like, what is this like the
sport race walking like they've always got a foot on
the ground or something.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, that's what everyone thought, except they would be disqualified
because when they're moving at top speeds, the trot turns
into flight as the hippos go airborne for zero point
three second bursts. And that said, from what I can tell,
the hippos are only like a few inches off the ground,
so it's not like you're going to see an air
bud style movie about hippos anytime soon, but it was
still pretty wonderful.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, well that is fantastic art.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Well.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
For our third award, we are diving into the category
of medicine. Now, there were a ton of exciting and
important discoveries in medicine this year, including there's just a
few that we took note of, the first pig kidney transplant,
where a genetically modified pig kidney was put into a
living human. You had a new tiny catheter that removes
blood clots from the brain, which is incredible for stroke patients.
(09:18):
And of course there's a new category of weight loss
drugs that will help things like prevent diabetes and heart
attacks along with just helping people get slim. So lots
of things to choose from. But for this year's first
ever twenty twenty four Medicine Award aka the No Pain,
No Gain Award, we're giving it to Live in a Shank,
(09:39):
Tom and Fedai and Christian Bush. So I'm probably getting
those names wrong, but the spirit is there for their
advances in placebos science. Now we aren't the only ones
to recognize the trio. They also won the Ignoble Prize
earlier this year, which you mentioned, but placebos are a
fascinating thing. So the fact that you can give someone
(10:00):
pills or saline injections and somehow trick their brain and
body into acting like they've receive real medicine has always
been fascinating to me. And I didn't realize this, but
the American Medical Association actually considers it ethical to use
placebos to enhance healing. Huh. And that's partially because placebos
have been shown to be effective in pain management and
(10:21):
signaling to the body that medicine is on the way.
But the reason we're giving this trio of Swiss, German
and Belgian scientists the award this year is because they
showed that they can actually make placebos more effective by
having the placebo cause side effects.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
That is so weird. So how did they figure this out?
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Well, this reporting comes from New Scientists, the magazine to
Know You and I are both fans of. But in
the study, the trio got seventy seven volunteers to test
a nasal spray that they claimed contain the painkiller fentanyl. Now,
first they had people use the nasal spray. Then they
applied a hot object to this subject's skin and ask
them to raise the pain but there was actually no
(11:02):
fentanyl in the study. The scientists used two different placebos
for the nasal spray. One had capsation in it, the
spicy compound found in chili peppers, and one didn't. So
the capsation spray triggered a little burning sensation when people
sniffed it, which made them think that it was the
side effect of fentanyl. Anyway, people who took the capsation
(11:22):
placebo felt less pain in the trials, hence the conclusion
that placebos are more effective when they cause side effects.
But what's funny is that this new knowledge might actually
be used on real drugs, because if you had a
very slight side effect to establish drugs, you can actually
increase the treatment expectations in people's minds and up the effectiveness.
(11:44):
I just thought this was so interesting. That is wild.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
That's really crazy that you'd add a side effect to
a real drug. Yeah, yeah, wow, that's amazing. So we're
on to Award number four, which is twenty twenty four's
Best Villain aka the Mister Clean Award. Now, to be clear,
(12:09):
we are not in the habit on the show rewarding
criminal behavior, but thirty six year old Damon Voinilovich made
a name for himself this year when he broke into
a house in Wales. He broke in, he did a
bunch of laundry, cleaning and chores, and then drank some
wine and left. And according to a BBC article, Voilovitch
actually tigied and swept the place. Did the laundry and
(12:30):
hung it out to dry, mopped the floors, placed groceries
in the fridge, refilled the bird feeders, emptied the recycling bin,
put gardening tools away in the shed, whatter the plants,
put new toothbrush heads on the toothbrushes, and cooked a
meal for the homeowner, which he set out next to
a bottle of wine, a glass and a bottle opener
with a note for them to enjoy it. During this
(12:51):
breaking and entering, he also helped himself to some wine
and food, which I guess feels fair now. Apparently, two
weeks later he was caught in someone's hot tub after
he showered in their outdoor shower and washed up, and
he was about to head inside. After all this, jacuzziing
to start his tidying process. Unfortunately, part of the reason
he's been doing this is because he was unhoused and
(13:12):
out of work. But of course that's not a reason
to break into a stranger's house and start cleaning it
for them. So the people who saw him call the cops,
and he's actually currently serving twenty two months in jail.
But we are hoping that once he's out, all the
good press and maybe even this very important award will
help him find some quick work.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah. I bet he's feeling a whole lot better after
winning this award. But I would happily give someone a
good bottle of wine if they did all my laundry
and came and then mopped our floors for us.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Oh my god, I'd give them two bottles of wine.
But that's my limit. So what award should we give
out next?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
All right, well, I feel like it's time to go
to the financial side of things, So how about we
give out the twenty twenty four Economics Award aka for
the Birds Award, And this goes to the owner of
Cheesy Toast Shack in Saint Andrew's, Scotland, where they've come
up with a novel financial product called Seagull Insurance. Basically,
(14:08):
the Cheesy Toast Shack is swarming with goals and they're
very aggressive and very good at swooping down and nabbing food.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
So I was actually at the beach last summer in
Maine and I was walking out with a bunch of
food from the stall for my family, like you know,
carrying burgers and fries and whatever, and this seagull swooped
down and just sold some fries for me, and I
was both horrified and also so impressed, Like it moves
quickly and it snatched it so precisely. I was almost like,
(14:38):
well done. You know, it's really amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, it really is. And you're right, I agree, terrifying
when that happens, but you obviously know what it's like
to lose food to a seagull. But apparently whenever it
happened at the cheesy toast shack, the mom and pop
business felt bad for the victims, so they'd give them
free replacement food. And it starts to add up. You
can imagine if it's happening all the time. So they
tried a bunch of things to keep the goals away.
(15:03):
They played the bird calls of predator birds like hawks,
and they did this over like the loud speaker there,
and they tried flying kite shaped like the predator birds
to scare the seagulls away. None of it worked, and
so finally they came up with this novel solution of
offering seagull insurance for an extra pound on top of
the six seventy five for a cheese toast meal or
(15:24):
is boring one put it peace of mind for a
piece of sandwich.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I like the well, congratulations to the cheesytoast shack. It
is well deserved. Okay, So next up we have the
twenty twenty four Pieace Prize aka the Tough as Snails Award,
which goes to entomologist doctor Valerie Corone from France for
her efforts to improve human snail relations. Now I actually
had no idea about this, but in Australia, invasive species
(15:49):
of Mediterranean snails are a really destructive force that should
cost the grain and cereal industries about one hundred and
seventy million dollars in damages per year.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Oh a lot of money. So what are the snails
actually doing?
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Well? They definitely eat the crops, but they also leave
mucus on plants, which contaminates them and deters other animals
from eating them, which actually throws off the ecosystem. But
the biggest problem comes to the fact that the snails
climb up these tall crops right about the same time
they're supposed to be harvested, and then the snails go
into a hibernation. So all of these snail shells end
(16:22):
up getting into the harvesting machinery, which gems up the
machinery and it just throws everything off.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
The only thing I'm confused about here is remind me,
why are we giving out a peace prize here?
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah. So, doctor Coron, along with the help of a
few other labs, figured out how to deter the snails.
And the first thing is that everyone thought snails were
color blind, and they are, but it turns out that
they're actually really attracted to the color red for some reason,
which means that farmers can put red steaks or fake
red stalks into the ground and lure the snails away
(16:53):
from their prize crops and then collect all these pests. Also,
Coron and the team discovered that snails are held by garlic.
Maybe because it feels like foreshadowing to end up, Cooke
does es cargo, But between some garlic seasoning and painting
the farm red, the two discoveries actually should help farmers
out and make for better snail human relations.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Okay, you brought it around. I like that snail human
relations the Peace Prize, all right, Well, the next award
also involves food, but in a very different way. And
I know we really don't like to get political on
this show, but this next award is for international law.
Now it goes to Superior Judge Craig Bobet of Allen County, Indiana.
(17:34):
But I've got to say this is probably the most
controversial judgment to come out of Indiana since eighteen ninety seven,
when the so called Indiana Pie Bill proposed to change
the value of pie in the state from three point
one four five, nine, two six to a simpler three point.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Two, which obviously doesn't work for math, or engineering or
anything else. So what is this new controversial judgment from Indiana?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
All right, now, I hope you're sitting down for that.
But it's that tacos and burritos should be considered sandwiches. Sandwiches, man.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
No. I mean, I know that there's so much controversy
over whether a hot dog is a sandwich, but I
have never heard anyone debate whether a taco is a sandwich. No, first, well,
do you think it's a sandwich? I'm not sure where
I stand on this.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
No, I mean my feelings are that that that tacos
are just kind of their own thing. We have a
hard time just acknowledging that sometimes things are their own thing.
You know, that's my philosophy and life. I'm gonna get
a t shirt. Sometimes things are their own thing. I
like the tacos are not. They're just not a sandwich.
And I don't even have a great defense for it
other than just saying that they're tacos.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
How about you, Yeah, they seem like tacos to me too. Yeah,
they're tacos. Are tacos, So tacos lad tacos. That's always
what I say. And and honestly, you know, I get it.
I'm not the judge here, and that's the very brave
man and legal scholar, the honorable Craig Bobay.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Now you might be wondering why it is that Judge
Bobe had to rule on this important issue, and this
story goes back to a Fort Wayne strip mall where
a local joint called the Famous Taco opened up there. Now,
the Famous Taco had the blessings of the developer, but
apparently there was an agreement with the local condo association
that only made to order sandwich restaurants could open in
(19:23):
the Strip Mall, so you could put a subway there,
but fast food places like McDonald's, RB's, and Wendy's weren't
allowed to set up shop. So for Famous Taco to
continue serving food there, the Planning Commission insisted that there
would need to be an amendment to the Strip Mall's
prior agreement with the condo association. But Judge Bobe stepped
up and he declared the taco and the burrito are
(19:45):
Mexican style sandwiches, paiding the way forward for other sandwich
esque food shops to open up, including places that serve euros,
bond me or even Kati role. So actually, I kind
of get it, and I got to give it to
them for the creativity on this.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
I love that in Indiana now you can legally say
I want a sandwich for lunch and someone will respond
what kind of sandwich? And you be perfectly within your
ris to say a taco sandwich.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Talk it is. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a
good point, all right. So what's the next award I'm
hoping it's not quite as controversial as that.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
I think it's time to do the twenty twenty four
Botany Award. But before we get to that, let's take
a quick break.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're giving out
the forty third annual Part Time Genius Awards.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, forty third. It's amazing that we've been doing this
for this long, but it's historic, very important, and I
was about to announce the twenty twenty four Botany Award.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I cannot wait for this one, Mango. So so who's
it going to.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Well, this year's Bondani Award aka the You Light Up
My Life Award goes to Keith Wood, Karen Sarkisian and
Ilia Jampolski from the firm Light Bio, and they came
up with a way to make petunias gently glow in
the dark. Now, over fifteen years ago at Metal Class
I'm not sure if you remember this, but we talked
(21:20):
to this chef who's the head chef at this restaurant
called Moto, and he was trying to make a glow
in the dark tomato plant.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
The idea was that you could grow tomato plants in
your house. But by tweaking the genetics, the tomatoes would
actually act as gentle night lights. And it was such
a cool idea. But I also remember we were, like,
you know, confused whether or not we'd feel comfortable eating
a glow in the dark tomato. You know, it's a
change of mindset anyway. Scientists have been trying to make
(21:47):
glow in the dark plants for a while, mostly by
inserting the luciferase gene from fireflies into plants, which can work,
but in the past the plants have only glowed under
a black light, or they've needed expensive specialized food to
make them glow. But with this so called firefly petunia
that the scientists have come up with, they actually used
(22:08):
a group of genes from some bioluminescent mushrooms. Now, according
to Scientific American quote, the fungus feeds its light emitting
reaction with the molecule caffeic acid, which terrestrial plants also
happen to make. By inserting the mushroom genes into the petunia,
researchers made it possible for the plant to produce enzymes
that can convert cafaic acid into the light emitting molecule
(22:30):
lucifern and then recycle it back into caffaic acid, enabling
sustained BIOLUMINESCIN. So basically, as long as you water the
plants and you give it enough sunlight, it'll grow and
glow for you.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
That is actually amazing. I will be honest, I wasn't
actually that excited about this award before you talked about it,
but now now it's one of my favorites so far.
So what does it look like exactly?
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Yeah, so the plant is white during the day, but
it glows this faint green at night. And you can
actually buy the plant for about thirty dollars, which feels
like a lovely thing to have, like lining your garden
path or whatever for the summer nights or whatever. But
what's interesting is that the scientists picked petunias for a
very specific reason. The plants aren't native and they aren't
an invasive species, so there is very little risk of
(23:17):
the petunia's modified genes spreading to native plants or disrupting
any ecosystems.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
That's very cool and very smart. All right, Well, it
is time for the twenty twenty four Fashion Award aka
the Wild Style Award, which I know you've been waiting
for Mango.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, this one is always one of my favorites.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I know.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
In the past we've given it to the makers of
the eighties style tracksuits for chickens, which is obviously a
good look for any chicken. Also, we gave it to
one of the Japanese designers who made the baby mop,
which is a onesie with the dust mop stitch to
the bottom of it so that babies who are crawling
around your floor can pitch in on housework and learn
responsibility and a healthy work ethic. But it's very curious
(23:58):
to see what we've got plucked for the Serious Fashion Award.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I'd forgotten about the baby mop. If you don't have
to somebody coming in your house and stealing your wine
and cleaning your floors, you can just use a baby
but true, all right, But this year's award goes to
artists Sarah Ross and her design for Archasuits. Now, the
designs which she created a while back, just came to
our attention this last year and their response to the
(24:22):
hostile architecture in cities. And this is something that we've
talked about before, but hostile architecture includes things like benches
that have bars, on them for every seat so that
the unhoused people can't sleep easily on them, or slope
surfaces and big planners in public spaces to prevent sitting
or skateboarding anyway. This defensive style of architecture is basically
(24:44):
targeted at populations that don't have homes and make it
uncomfortable for them to rest there. So Ross decided to
make some leisure whear to counter this. Her Arcasuits are
four absurdly designed leisure suits that have fins, sloped backs,
and other cushionny pieces to fill in the negative space
so that you can sleep comfortably on a bench or
(25:05):
on a slope, or even help you sit comfortably against
a fence. Actually, I'm just gonna show you a pick,
because these things are pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Oh, these are brilliant. Actually, it's really really fun so funny,
and they look ludicrous, but I love that you can
just like lie down on a bench with them. It's
absolutely and I actually love how it's calling attention to
the ways we think about public spaces and think about
our neighbors as well. That's really wonderful.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Oh totally. I mean the design feels very humane, so
our esteemed prize committee thought she deserved a prize. But
here's the thing, Mango, We've actually only got one more award.
So do you want to do the honors?
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Oh? I would love to. So being a podcast, of course,
we've got to give out an audio award aka the
Lift Every Voice Award.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
All right, and who's it going to?
Speaker 1 (25:53):
So the twenty twenty four Audio Award goes to an
assistant professor of bio engineering at the University of California Law,
Los Angeles. His name is Jun Chen, and he invented
a tiny throat patch that can help people speak without
vocal cords.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Oh wow, that's incredible. So how did he come up
with the idea?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
So apparently, Professor Chen was lecturing at the university for
a few hours, his voice began to wear out, and
he started thinking about how to solve this problem, not
only for people like him, but for people who can't speak,
and that led him and his colleagues to invent a
little patch that you can stick on your throat. The
patch uses AI to decode and translate muscle movements into speech,
(26:33):
and amazingly, it doesn't need a battery to work because
it uses the muscle movements to generate electricity. And I
learned all about this from the site Oddity Central, but
I really really love it.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
It's amazing, like what a little patch can do.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, apparently, when it's been tested in the lab, the
algorithm is about ninety five percent accurate at decoding a
person's speech, both when the person is speaking aloud but
also when they're pronouncing words voicelessly, which is just super cool. Anyway,
there's still more designing to do before this hits the market,
but you know, it's this very thin, very small, multi
(27:08):
layered patch and it is really incredible.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, you know, we finished with a couple of really
inspiring ones. I love that, And what a great way
to end with a contraption that gives the voiceless voice.
So that is it for our forty third annual Part
Time Genius Awards. You can catch us later this week
with a new episode, and if you want to read
more about these incredible innovations and stories, be sure to
visit us on Instagram on our handle part Time Genius.
(27:34):
But from Dylan, Mary, Gabe, Mango and me, thank you
so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me mongs
Chatikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social
(28:17):
media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.