July 8, 2025 • 22 mins
Have you ever met a pharologist? Neither have we, but we know Princess Anne is one—she’s a lighthouse expert! Also, apparently there are lighthouse experts! Today Will and Mango explore nine weird and wonderfully specific fields of study, from bell-ringing to bats to the end of the world.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Guess what Will? What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So I wasn't sure whether I should share this or not,
but in the interest of transparency, I'm not just a
part time genius. I'm also a part time pherologist. A
part time pherologist. I don't know whether to congratulate you,
because I don't know what a phroologist does. May go, well,
you might know it as a pharronologist. Is that something,
(00:46):
it's still not helping. It's someone who studies lighthouses and
signal lights. And the term was coined in the eighteen
forties by an English marine researcher.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
His name was John.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Purdy, and it's kept alive today by the Association of
Light house Keepers or the ALK, which despite its name,
is more for enthusiasts than folks actually living in lighthouses.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Okay, well I'll give it to you. That is pretty cool,
But I don't remember you talking about lighthouses for do
you actually really like them? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I mean I feel like whenever we went to beaches
or places, you'd end up like climbing up a lighthouse,
and there's something wonderful and romantic about them. They're near
the sea, they've got great views. But beyond appreciating lighthouses
for their good looks and the symbolism, rologists are also
fascinated by things like how lighthouses project light, how they're
engineered to withstand storms, and also just kind of fun
(01:37):
as a hobby, right, like taking expeditions to see as
many of them as you can. In fact, Princess Anne,
King Charles's sister is a pharologist, and she has visited
nearly eighty of the two hundred and nine coastal lighthouses
on the rugged, Scottish and Manxian coasts.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Wow, so she's only got my quick math one hundred
and twenty nine left to see, right, h Princess Anne,
if you are listening, get a move on. I'm guessing
she is listening, so I don't take that too personally. Definitely.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Now you may be wondering where the word pharology comes from.
Pharaohs was the ancient Greek word for lighthouse, and it's
the name of the famous lighthouse in Alexandria. It was
built in the third century and for a long time
it was the tallest building on Earth, which is just incredible. Also,
my favorite pharology fact is that the Association of Lighthouse
(02:25):
Keepers publishes a quarterly journal and it is called Lamp
and you know we love lamps. That is just one
of the weirdest ologies out there. We've got nine of
them on today's show, so let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm here with my good
friend Mangesh, a ticketter, and over there on the other
side of that soundproof glass creating a Wikipedia entry for
vampyrology and he's also drinking a suspiciously viscous red beverage.
That's our Palin producer, Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I love that he needed to wear a cape while
doing Definitely, it's also bizarre, like why wasn't there already
a Wikipedia entry for the study of vampires? That feels
like a real oversight.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, I guess it's the anti vampire prejudice that's out there,
And thank goodness, Dylan is on the case. So, Mango,
what makes you want to talk about ologies today?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
So you know, we're both big fans of Ally Ward's
show Ologies, but absolutely.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Also back in metal Class.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We used to do a column called work Study, where
we'd interview people with incredible and incredibly specific jobs, like
there was a gentleman who had a PhD in Batman
and he was often referred to as doctor Batman, or
the person whose job it was to figure out what
thickness of glass you need to stop various birds from
flying through it, which is such a specific job, like
(04:09):
this is the thickness you need for a wren, this
is the thickness you need for a seagull. It's you know,
I don't think it's something a lot of kids grow
up thinking they want to be as adults. But ologies
really are fun.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
They're so fun, and you're right, Alli Word's Ologies show
is just one of the best podcasts out there, so
definitely worth the shout out. All right, for my first fact,
I want to talk about filmatology. Are you familiar with filmatology?
Is that about like film or phleme? Well, it could
if you have a cold, But filmatology is all about
the scientific study of kissing, including the biological, psychological, and
(04:45):
social aspects of it.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Somehow, like the study of lighthouses was something I was expecting,
but not the study of kissing, which, just for the record,
I am much more interested in than the study of
the band kiss, which I had so interested in. What
type of things did you learn from this?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, you know, I have to go on a sidetrack here, mango,
because I don't know if you remember this, but as
a kid I used to sneak into my much older
sister's room and go into her closet and look at
her kiss trading cards that she kept in a shoe.
Maass kiss the band again, So pretty funny. Anyway, back
to kissing here, did you know that lips actually have
(05:22):
the thinnest layer of skin on the human body, and
along with that very thin layer of skin, are more
nerve endings than any other single part of the body. Now,
this is according to the American Journal of Medicine, and
it states that lips can be two hundred times more
sensitive than our fingers. She might explain why little kids
put everything to their mouths. I am so glad that
(05:44):
my kids have outgrown that face. Yes, yeah, no, it
genuinely is the worst and grossest phase. But anyway, filmatology
has taught us a lot about ourselves. For example, the
nose plays a big role in kissing, even subconsciously, it's
how we assess a partner's pheromones. And it turns out
that kissing might actually save your life and put money
in your wallet, which is intriguing. But one study shows
(06:07):
that men who kiss their partners before leaving for the
day were less likely to get in car accidents and
more likely to be in a higher income bracket. So
with that in mind, pucker up, everybody. I like that.
It's a real life hack. That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Well, this next feel of study might interestill In with
all his vampire love over there. I'm talking about chiropterology,
which means the study of bats, so in the animal kingdom,
bats are part of the order Chiroptera, which is a
combination of a Greek where it's for hand and wing,
and Chiropterologists usually have backgrounds in wildlife biology, and while
(06:45):
their work can involve exciting trips to remote caves and
national parks, they also spend a lot of time in
attics and barns and bunkers because you know that's where
bats love to hide, and because bats tend to come
out at night as well. Research and use telephoto lenses
and infrared cameras to track their movements and population size.
(07:05):
They also trap bats using harmless mesh nets so that
they can mark them with tracking devices or take blood samples.
But the best part of this ology is that it
is not as niche as you think. And that's because
there are more than fourteen hundred species of bats, and
they represent about twenty percent of all the mammals on Earth.
It's the second most diverse group of animals after rodents,
(07:28):
and bats might actually hold the key to longer life. Wow,
fourteen hundred species, that's wild and you'd say potentially life saman.
I actually just think of bats as carrying these viruses
that make us sick. Yeah, and they do that as well.
But there's a lot more to bat biology. You know.
What's interesting is that usually small animals have these short lifespans,
like rats, which have tons of offspring, but they also
(07:50):
tend to die young. Bats just have one baby a year,
and they live a really long time. The oldest bat
on record was more than forty years old. Wow, And
we actually don't know why yet. But if all these
scientists can help figure it out, we might learn how
we can live longer too. Also, speaking of bats, I
have two other weird things. One is, I didn't realize this,
(08:12):
but of course they do. They've got belly buttons, which
is really interesting to me.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Glad you remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
But the second thing is this all made me remind
me of my son when he was in daycare. He
came back with this nursery rhyme, and I was curious
if you'd never heard it. It goes, uh, bat bat,
come under my hat and I'll give you a slice
of bacon, and when I bake, I'll give you cake.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
If I'm not mistaken, I'm sort of feeling like Henry
may have made this up? Is that? Did he really
come home saying this?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So we sent her to a daycare and they were like,
you know, we teach them all the traditional American nursery rhymes,
and these very sweet Polish women and they looked it
up and I guess it's a traditional English nursery rhymes.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
No way, So there wasn't just made up. I thought
for sure. I thought it was certainly made up. But
it's real, all right. Well, your chiropterologist's friends might just
find themselves bumping up against the next group of ologists.
These are campinologists, and so are these people who study camping. Nope,
that was my first guest when I saw it as well.
But campinologists like bats are often found in bell towers.
(09:18):
It's actually the study of bells and bell ringing. So
bell towers or campaniles, these first showed up and it
lay around four hundred CE, and they spread across Europe
and into the UK, and they lost popularity when Henry
the Eighth dissolved almost all the monasteries in England so
that he could marry Anne Bolin, shortly before he had
(09:38):
her head chopped off so he could marry somebody else.
Of course, we've heard the stories here. That was a
tough time for giant bell's Mango. That's the thing we forget.
We hear about all the women, but we forget to
focus on the bell. But I got it the bells too. Yeah,
I mean, you know it's it was. It was a
rough time, but luckily for the bells, they had a
resurgence in the sixteen hundred and that's when people began
(10:01):
to see bell ringing really as kind of an art.
Now you can't play normal music on tower bells. It
takes a few seconds for each bell to swing around,
so to create this pleasing flow of sound, people began
ringing bells one after the other, and to make it
more interesting, they created these sequences using bells tuned to
different pitches. Now this is known as change ringing, and
(10:24):
the patterns that bells followed are actually called methods. So
say you have a tower with six bells, numbered in order,
with one being the lightest and six being the heaviest.
The first sequence you might ring would be one to
three four five six. Next you swap the order by
one and ring two one four three sixty five, and
then you reverse the middle numbers and ring two four,
(10:46):
one six three five. Are you following this? Spango? This
is all very simple. So the examples of common method
changes are called plane bob, reverse Catebory, grand Shire, and
double Oxford. These are just some various names. So now
you're basically an expert on bell ry.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I really it sounds so complicated. I do like the names,
but it's complicated.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
It is complicated, and to that point, it's as much
math it as music. So campinologists use factorials to figure
out how many different sequences are possible. So for our
six bell tower, there are actually seven hundred and twenty
possible permutations. Now you remember factorials from high school, right,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Barely, Like a factorial LI of six is like six
times five tons, four times three times two tons one right?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Hey, plus mango still got it? And all right, Well,
here's a final fun campinology fact for you. For whom
the bell tolls isn't just a better title than for
whom the bell rings. It actually turns out that tolling
and ringing aren't the same thing. THENGO I didn't know this.
I don't know if you knew this, but it was
we're not doing this episode for this fact. You can
(11:53):
ring as many bells that you like, and you can
ring them as fast as you like. But a toll
involves just one bell, typically striking at a gloomy pace
to mark an event like a funeral. I wonder if
Ernest Hemingway knew that or he just thought it sounded better.
You know, it's a good question. I have a feeling
he might have known this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Yeah, So our next ology is a pseud of science,
but it's still worth learning about. And it's cryptozoology, which
is the study of mythical creatures or cryptids. Although cryptozoologists
would describe it that way. They actually call it, quote
the study of unknown, legendary or extinct animals whose present
existence is disputed or unsubstantiated.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I'm going to have to say that sounds fans here.
Then you know, we read about monsters. Yeah, and mainstream
science does look down on it, of course. But oddly enough,
cryptozoology was started by a pair of proper zoologists. This
was Bernard Huelman's and Ivan T. Sanderson, and this was
in the fifties and sixties. They published text claiming that
(12:56):
creatures like Yetty's and the Lockedest Monster might be based
in reality. And so in.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Particular, Humelman's was inspired by an earlier Dutch zoologist who
theorized that reports of giant sea serpents may have been
quote a large unidentified species of seal. But the amazing
thing is cryptozoology has led to some real discoveries. So
in twenty eighteen a Danish expedition went to Lake t
(13:22):
Lee and this is in the Republic of Congo, and
they went there to search for a mythical water reptile
from Bantu mythology. They didn't find the creature, but they
did discover a new species of algae. Also, a zoologist
named Darren Nash studied the description of cryptids over time,
and he found that alleged sea monsters like the one
in Lockness evolved along with real research, so they went
(13:45):
from being described as snakelike to adding the idea that
they had long necks like a dinosaur diplosaurus after the
event of like you know, dino science in the eighteen hundreds.
And that means, I guess the next logic step is
for someone to decide that Dessi is actually an AI robot.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
That's good stuff. All right, we have to take a
quick ad break, but when we come back, we're going
to talk about outer space and of course your front lawn,
so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to part time Genius.
(14:31):
We're talking about nine weird and wonderful ologies. Now, this
next one might sound like a pseudoscience, like cripazoology, but
it's not so. According to NASA, astrobiology is this study
of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life throughout the universe.
Is that the search for extraterrestrial lift, I mean, that's
part of it, but to actually understand the possibility of
(14:54):
life elsewhere in the universe, you have to study the
one planet we know supports life, of course, our very
owner Earth. In fact, a lot of astrobology research takes
place in the Atacama Desert in South America because its
terrain is known for sort of approximating Mars, and NASA's
astrobology team began in the nineteen sixties with what was
(15:14):
called the Viking Program, which was the first mission to
land on Mars and look around for signs of life there.
But these days astrobology has gone way beyond Mars. So Enceladus,
which was a satellite of Saturn, is particularly promising as
a place to study because it has jets of ice
particles coming from its south pole. So astrobologists think the
(15:36):
ice comes from a reservoir under the surface. There may
be hot rocks below the reservoir, and that could mean that,
along with the messane and other gases that are detected there,
Enceladus has everything needed to actually create life.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
That's amazing, and it's also so funny to talk about
other planets south poles like m I only think there's
one south pole, just one, just this Earth's promise. I
seem to have all right, anyway, one thing that Earth
has that Enceladus doesn't have, I'm guessing is grass. And
if you want to know more about grass, which I
(16:12):
know you do, you have to take up agristology. This
ology gets its name from the Greek agros, which means field.
So agristology is the field of studying fields.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And one of the biggest pioneers in this field of
fields was an American botanist named Mary Agnes Chase. She
was born in eighteen sixty nine in Illinois, a place
with a lot of grass. And even though her formal
education never went past elementary school, she took all these
botany classes and began working as an illustrator for the USDA.
(16:45):
Now her mentor was the botanist Albert Hitchcock, who is
not Alfred Hitchcock, and they co authored important works about
grasses of North America and the West Indies.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
What an unfortunate name like. Can you imagine how many
times people were disappointed when they thought they were going
to meet it. Alfred Hitchcock at a party in house
was like, no, no, no, this is Albert Hitchcock, the guy
who studies grass.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
It is amazing, but we can't lose focus on Mary
Agnes Chase, who was a committed feminist too. She was
a suffragist and a member of the Silent Sentinels, which
was this group that led protests outside the White House,
and her activism and her gender really impacted her career.
At one point, Hitchcock, Albert Hitchcock, tried to readirect some
(17:30):
of his own research grant money to her, and this
official at the Smithsonian refused the offer, saying, quote, I
doubt the advisability of engaging the services of a woman
for the purpose. But Chase actually paved the way for
other female agristologists, making connections with and mentoring women all
around the world and in what can only be described
(17:51):
as poetic justice. In nineteen fifty eight, she was named
an Honorary Fellow of the Smithsonian. Yeah, I'm glad she
finally got her do all right. So our next ology
is relogy, or the study of flow, and so to
learn more about this, I spent some time with Helen Joyner,
aka Reologist on sabbatical. This is a channel on YouTube,
(18:13):
and specifically she's a food reologist. So the flow of food, Like,
what's that mean? It's like you know, making nutella have
the right amount of give when you dig a knife
into the jar, or making natural peanut butter stir together
before you know your arm tires out, and all things
that we can identify with This definitely makes me want
some new tell of just saying that peanut butter.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Definitely. But you know, perhaps the most important thing I
learned from watching Joiner's channel is that relogy can't measure texture.
That's because texture is more qualitative. It can only be
described by your experience of it. There are proxies for texture,
like yield stress, which is how easily a knife cuts
into something. So higher yield stress means higher viscosity, which
(18:58):
often feels better in our mouths. So is relogy just
about foods, No, not at all. Like Joiner has super
long hair, and as she explains, realogy can also explain
why dry hair is harder to style than wet hair.
So dry hair is frictionless and slips over itself, and
the height and friction of wet hair doesn't slip, and
(19:19):
so it stays in place where you put it, like
in braids or a faux hawk or whatever you want
to do with it.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
It's really fascinating that there's a whole field of order
to just how things flow right, It's amazing. Okay, So
it's time for our last ology, literally, and this is eschatology,
which is the study of the end of the world.
And the good news is it's more about studying different
stories and theories about the end of the world than
it is of facts that might indicate the world is ending.
(19:47):
I like that you describe that as good news. I mean,
that still sounds a little depressing to me. I mean,
it could be. And there are two main types of
eschatological stories. So there's linear cosmology aka the kind with
a single end point, and cyclical cosmology aka the kind
that brings about rebirth through regeneration. So Western fates typically
engage in the first kind of ending, and Eastern religions
(20:10):
like Hinduism and Buddhism fall into the latter category, where
the world starts all over again, either in whole or
for each soul. So I mean, I guess you would
say this is more social science than kind of science science. Yeah,
it seems that way, but that's not exactly the case.
There's also a branch of eschatology that gets more literal,
and this uses principles of astrophysics to approximate how much
(20:33):
time the Earth has before it stops sustaining human life
or if a meteor hits. And so these include really
fun theories like the big rip, the Big crunch, the
Big bounce, and the Big freeze, which I don't know
why they all have to have big in them, but
what they.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Do that's pretty wild. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So I'm going to give you this week's trophy because
our producer Mary was so excited about your bell ringing fact,
and you know she and you talked about it earlier.
She actually went out and hung out with some bell
ringers this week and learned to do math with bells
at a tall height. So yeah, it is really fun.
And she said the community is incredible and she is
(21:15):
going to come on here and talk about it at
some point.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Wow, that is so fun. All right, Well, thank you.
It is an honor, and thank you Mary. So that
does it for today's episode. If you like what you heard,
please subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us
a nice rating and review while you're at it. This
episode was written by Lizzie Jacobs, an amateur peanut butter reologist.
Thanks so much, Lizzie, and I'll be back next week.
With a new episode and in the meantime from Dylan Gay,
(21:39):
Mary Mango and Me thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pierce and Me Mongish
Heatikler and research by our good pal 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 Norvell and Ali Perry, with
(22:16):
social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and
Viny Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Guess what Will? What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So I wasn't sure whether I should share this or not,
but in the interest of transparency, I'm not just a
part time genius. I'm also a part time pherologist. A
part time pherologist. I don't know whether to congratulate you,
because I don't know what a phroologist does. May go, well,
you might know it as a pharronologist. Is that something,
(00:46):
it's still not helping. It's someone who studies lighthouses and
signal lights. And the term was coined in the eighteen
forties by an English marine researcher.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
His name was John.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Purdy, and it's kept alive today by the Association of
Light house Keepers or the ALK, which despite its name,
is more for enthusiasts than folks actually living in lighthouses.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Okay, well I'll give it to you. That is pretty cool,
But I don't remember you talking about lighthouses for do
you actually really like them? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I mean I feel like whenever we went to beaches
or places, you'd end up like climbing up a lighthouse,
and there's something wonderful and romantic about them. They're near
the sea, they've got great views. But beyond appreciating lighthouses
for their good looks and the symbolism, rologists are also
fascinated by things like how lighthouses project light, how they're
engineered to withstand storms, and also just kind of fun
(01:37):
as a hobby, right, like taking expeditions to see as
many of them as you can. In fact, Princess Anne,
King Charles's sister is a pharologist, and she has visited
nearly eighty of the two hundred and nine coastal lighthouses
on the rugged, Scottish and Manxian coasts.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Wow, so she's only got my quick math one hundred
and twenty nine left to see, right, h Princess Anne,
if you are listening, get a move on. I'm guessing
she is listening, so I don't take that too personally. Definitely.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Now you may be wondering where the word pharology comes from.
Pharaohs was the ancient Greek word for lighthouse, and it's
the name of the famous lighthouse in Alexandria. It was
built in the third century and for a long time
it was the tallest building on Earth, which is just incredible. Also,
my favorite pharology fact is that the Association of Lighthouse
(02:25):
Keepers publishes a quarterly journal and it is called Lamp
and you know we love lamps. That is just one
of the weirdest ologies out there. We've got nine of
them on today's show, so let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm here with my good
friend Mangesh, a ticketter, and over there on the other
side of that soundproof glass creating a Wikipedia entry for
vampyrology and he's also drinking a suspiciously viscous red beverage.
That's our Palin producer, Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I love that he needed to wear a cape while
doing Definitely, it's also bizarre, like why wasn't there already
a Wikipedia entry for the study of vampires? That feels
like a real oversight.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, I guess it's the anti vampire prejudice that's out there,
And thank goodness, Dylan is on the case. So, Mango,
what makes you want to talk about ologies today?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
So you know, we're both big fans of Ally Ward's
show Ologies, but absolutely.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Also back in metal Class.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We used to do a column called work Study, where
we'd interview people with incredible and incredibly specific jobs, like
there was a gentleman who had a PhD in Batman
and he was often referred to as doctor Batman, or
the person whose job it was to figure out what
thickness of glass you need to stop various birds from
flying through it, which is such a specific job, like
(04:09):
this is the thickness you need for a wren, this
is the thickness you need for a seagull. It's you know,
I don't think it's something a lot of kids grow
up thinking they want to be as adults. But ologies
really are fun.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
They're so fun, and you're right, Alli Word's Ologies show
is just one of the best podcasts out there, so
definitely worth the shout out. All right, for my first fact,
I want to talk about filmatology. Are you familiar with filmatology?
Is that about like film or phleme? Well, it could
if you have a cold, But filmatology is all about
the scientific study of kissing, including the biological, psychological, and
(04:45):
social aspects of it.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Somehow, like the study of lighthouses was something I was expecting,
but not the study of kissing, which, just for the record,
I am much more interested in than the study of
the band kiss, which I had so interested in. What
type of things did you learn from this?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, you know, I have to go on a sidetrack here, mango,
because I don't know if you remember this, but as
a kid I used to sneak into my much older
sister's room and go into her closet and look at
her kiss trading cards that she kept in a shoe.
Maass kiss the band again, So pretty funny. Anyway, back
to kissing here, did you know that lips actually have
(05:22):
the thinnest layer of skin on the human body, and
along with that very thin layer of skin, are more
nerve endings than any other single part of the body. Now,
this is according to the American Journal of Medicine, and
it states that lips can be two hundred times more
sensitive than our fingers. She might explain why little kids
put everything to their mouths. I am so glad that
(05:44):
my kids have outgrown that face. Yes, yeah, no, it
genuinely is the worst and grossest phase. But anyway, filmatology
has taught us a lot about ourselves. For example, the
nose plays a big role in kissing, even subconsciously, it's
how we assess a partner's pheromones. And it turns out
that kissing might actually save your life and put money
in your wallet, which is intriguing. But one study shows
(06:07):
that men who kiss their partners before leaving for the
day were less likely to get in car accidents and
more likely to be in a higher income bracket. So
with that in mind, pucker up, everybody. I like that.
It's a real life hack. That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Well, this next feel of study might interestill In with
all his vampire love over there. I'm talking about chiropterology,
which means the study of bats, so in the animal kingdom,
bats are part of the order Chiroptera, which is a
combination of a Greek where it's for hand and wing,
and Chiropterologists usually have backgrounds in wildlife biology, and while
(06:45):
their work can involve exciting trips to remote caves and
national parks, they also spend a lot of time in
attics and barns and bunkers because you know that's where
bats love to hide, and because bats tend to come
out at night as well. Research and use telephoto lenses
and infrared cameras to track their movements and population size.
(07:05):
They also trap bats using harmless mesh nets so that
they can mark them with tracking devices or take blood samples.
But the best part of this ology is that it
is not as niche as you think. And that's because
there are more than fourteen hundred species of bats, and
they represent about twenty percent of all the mammals on Earth.
It's the second most diverse group of animals after rodents,
(07:28):
and bats might actually hold the key to longer life. Wow,
fourteen hundred species, that's wild and you'd say potentially life saman.
I actually just think of bats as carrying these viruses
that make us sick. Yeah, and they do that as well.
But there's a lot more to bat biology. You know.
What's interesting is that usually small animals have these short lifespans,
like rats, which have tons of offspring, but they also
(07:50):
tend to die young. Bats just have one baby a year,
and they live a really long time. The oldest bat
on record was more than forty years old. Wow, And
we actually don't know why yet. But if all these
scientists can help figure it out, we might learn how
we can live longer too. Also, speaking of bats, I
have two other weird things. One is, I didn't realize this,
(08:12):
but of course they do. They've got belly buttons, which
is really interesting to me.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Glad you remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
But the second thing is this all made me remind
me of my son when he was in daycare. He
came back with this nursery rhyme, and I was curious
if you'd never heard it. It goes, uh, bat bat,
come under my hat and I'll give you a slice
of bacon, and when I bake, I'll give you cake.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
If I'm not mistaken, I'm sort of feeling like Henry
may have made this up? Is that? Did he really
come home saying this?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So we sent her to a daycare and they were like,
you know, we teach them all the traditional American nursery rhymes,
and these very sweet Polish women and they looked it
up and I guess it's a traditional English nursery rhymes.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
No way, So there wasn't just made up. I thought
for sure. I thought it was certainly made up. But
it's real, all right. Well, your chiropterologist's friends might just
find themselves bumping up against the next group of ologists.
These are campinologists, and so are these people who study camping. Nope,
that was my first guest when I saw it as well.
But campinologists like bats are often found in bell towers.
(09:18):
It's actually the study of bells and bell ringing. So
bell towers or campaniles, these first showed up and it
lay around four hundred CE, and they spread across Europe
and into the UK, and they lost popularity when Henry
the Eighth dissolved almost all the monasteries in England so
that he could marry Anne Bolin, shortly before he had
(09:38):
her head chopped off so he could marry somebody else.
Of course, we've heard the stories here. That was a
tough time for giant bell's Mango. That's the thing we forget.
We hear about all the women, but we forget to
focus on the bell. But I got it the bells too. Yeah,
I mean, you know it's it was. It was a
rough time, but luckily for the bells, they had a
resurgence in the sixteen hundred and that's when people began
(10:01):
to see bell ringing really as kind of an art.
Now you can't play normal music on tower bells. It
takes a few seconds for each bell to swing around,
so to create this pleasing flow of sound, people began
ringing bells one after the other, and to make it
more interesting, they created these sequences using bells tuned to
different pitches. Now this is known as change ringing, and
(10:24):
the patterns that bells followed are actually called methods. So
say you have a tower with six bells, numbered in order,
with one being the lightest and six being the heaviest.
The first sequence you might ring would be one to
three four five six. Next you swap the order by
one and ring two one four three sixty five, and
then you reverse the middle numbers and ring two four,
(10:46):
one six three five. Are you following this? Spango? This
is all very simple. So the examples of common method
changes are called plane bob, reverse Catebory, grand Shire, and
double Oxford. These are just some various names. So now
you're basically an expert on bell ry.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I really it sounds so complicated. I do like the names,
but it's complicated.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
It is complicated, and to that point, it's as much
math it as music. So campinologists use factorials to figure
out how many different sequences are possible. So for our
six bell tower, there are actually seven hundred and twenty
possible permutations. Now you remember factorials from high school, right,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Barely, Like a factorial LI of six is like six
times five tons, four times three times two tons one right?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Hey, plus mango still got it? And all right, Well,
here's a final fun campinology fact for you. For whom
the bell tolls isn't just a better title than for
whom the bell rings. It actually turns out that tolling
and ringing aren't the same thing. THENGO I didn't know this.
I don't know if you knew this, but it was
we're not doing this episode for this fact. You can
(11:53):
ring as many bells that you like, and you can
ring them as fast as you like. But a toll
involves just one bell, typically striking at a gloomy pace
to mark an event like a funeral. I wonder if
Ernest Hemingway knew that or he just thought it sounded better.
You know, it's a good question. I have a feeling
he might have known this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Yeah, So our next ology is a pseud of science,
but it's still worth learning about. And it's cryptozoology, which
is the study of mythical creatures or cryptids. Although cryptozoologists
would describe it that way. They actually call it, quote
the study of unknown, legendary or extinct animals whose present
existence is disputed or unsubstantiated.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I'm going to have to say that sounds fans here.
Then you know, we read about monsters. Yeah, and mainstream
science does look down on it, of course. But oddly enough,
cryptozoology was started by a pair of proper zoologists. This
was Bernard Huelman's and Ivan T. Sanderson, and this was
in the fifties and sixties. They published text claiming that
(12:56):
creatures like Yetty's and the Lockedest Monster might be based
in reality. And so in.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Particular, Humelman's was inspired by an earlier Dutch zoologist who
theorized that reports of giant sea serpents may have been
quote a large unidentified species of seal. But the amazing
thing is cryptozoology has led to some real discoveries. So
in twenty eighteen a Danish expedition went to Lake t
(13:22):
Lee and this is in the Republic of Congo, and
they went there to search for a mythical water reptile
from Bantu mythology. They didn't find the creature, but they
did discover a new species of algae. Also, a zoologist
named Darren Nash studied the description of cryptids over time,
and he found that alleged sea monsters like the one
in Lockness evolved along with real research, so they went
(13:45):
from being described as snakelike to adding the idea that
they had long necks like a dinosaur diplosaurus after the
event of like you know, dino science in the eighteen hundreds.
And that means, I guess the next logic step is
for someone to decide that Dessi is actually an AI robot.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
That's good stuff. All right, we have to take a
quick ad break, but when we come back, we're going
to talk about outer space and of course your front lawn,
so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to part time Genius.
(14:31):
We're talking about nine weird and wonderful ologies. Now, this
next one might sound like a pseudoscience, like cripazoology, but
it's not so. According to NASA, astrobiology is this study
of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life throughout the universe.
Is that the search for extraterrestrial lift, I mean, that's
part of it, but to actually understand the possibility of
(14:54):
life elsewhere in the universe, you have to study the
one planet we know supports life, of course, our very
owner Earth. In fact, a lot of astrobology research takes
place in the Atacama Desert in South America because its
terrain is known for sort of approximating Mars, and NASA's
astrobology team began in the nineteen sixties with what was
(15:14):
called the Viking Program, which was the first mission to
land on Mars and look around for signs of life there.
But these days astrobology has gone way beyond Mars. So Enceladus,
which was a satellite of Saturn, is particularly promising as
a place to study because it has jets of ice
particles coming from its south pole. So astrobologists think the
(15:36):
ice comes from a reservoir under the surface. There may
be hot rocks below the reservoir, and that could mean that,
along with the messane and other gases that are detected there,
Enceladus has everything needed to actually create life.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
That's amazing, and it's also so funny to talk about
other planets south poles like m I only think there's
one south pole, just one, just this Earth's promise. I
seem to have all right, anyway, one thing that Earth
has that Enceladus doesn't have, I'm guessing is grass. And
if you want to know more about grass, which I
(16:12):
know you do, you have to take up agristology. This
ology gets its name from the Greek agros, which means field.
So agristology is the field of studying fields.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And one of the biggest pioneers in this field of
fields was an American botanist named Mary Agnes Chase. She
was born in eighteen sixty nine in Illinois, a place
with a lot of grass. And even though her formal
education never went past elementary school, she took all these
botany classes and began working as an illustrator for the USDA.
(16:45):
Now her mentor was the botanist Albert Hitchcock, who is
not Alfred Hitchcock, and they co authored important works about
grasses of North America and the West Indies.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
What an unfortunate name like. Can you imagine how many
times people were disappointed when they thought they were going
to meet it. Alfred Hitchcock at a party in house
was like, no, no, no, this is Albert Hitchcock, the guy
who studies grass.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
It is amazing, but we can't lose focus on Mary
Agnes Chase, who was a committed feminist too. She was
a suffragist and a member of the Silent Sentinels, which
was this group that led protests outside the White House,
and her activism and her gender really impacted her career.
At one point, Hitchcock, Albert Hitchcock, tried to readirect some
(17:30):
of his own research grant money to her, and this
official at the Smithsonian refused the offer, saying, quote, I
doubt the advisability of engaging the services of a woman
for the purpose. But Chase actually paved the way for
other female agristologists, making connections with and mentoring women all
around the world and in what can only be described
(17:51):
as poetic justice. In nineteen fifty eight, she was named
an Honorary Fellow of the Smithsonian. Yeah, I'm glad she
finally got her do all right. So our next ology
is relogy, or the study of flow, and so to
learn more about this, I spent some time with Helen Joyner,
aka Reologist on sabbatical. This is a channel on YouTube,
(18:13):
and specifically she's a food reologist. So the flow of food, Like,
what's that mean? It's like you know, making nutella have
the right amount of give when you dig a knife
into the jar, or making natural peanut butter stir together
before you know your arm tires out, and all things
that we can identify with This definitely makes me want
some new tell of just saying that peanut butter.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Definitely. But you know, perhaps the most important thing I
learned from watching Joiner's channel is that relogy can't measure texture.
That's because texture is more qualitative. It can only be
described by your experience of it. There are proxies for texture,
like yield stress, which is how easily a knife cuts
into something. So higher yield stress means higher viscosity, which
(18:58):
often feels better in our mouths. So is relogy just
about foods, No, not at all. Like Joiner has super
long hair, and as she explains, realogy can also explain
why dry hair is harder to style than wet hair.
So dry hair is frictionless and slips over itself, and
the height and friction of wet hair doesn't slip, and
(19:19):
so it stays in place where you put it, like
in braids or a faux hawk or whatever you want
to do with it.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
It's really fascinating that there's a whole field of order
to just how things flow right, It's amazing. Okay, So
it's time for our last ology, literally, and this is eschatology,
which is the study of the end of the world.
And the good news is it's more about studying different
stories and theories about the end of the world than
it is of facts that might indicate the world is ending.
(19:47):
I like that you describe that as good news. I mean,
that still sounds a little depressing to me. I mean,
it could be. And there are two main types of
eschatological stories. So there's linear cosmology aka the kind with
a single end point, and cyclical cosmology aka the kind
that brings about rebirth through regeneration. So Western fates typically
engage in the first kind of ending, and Eastern religions
(20:10):
like Hinduism and Buddhism fall into the latter category, where
the world starts all over again, either in whole or
for each soul. So I mean, I guess you would
say this is more social science than kind of science science. Yeah,
it seems that way, but that's not exactly the case.
There's also a branch of eschatology that gets more literal,
and this uses principles of astrophysics to approximate how much
(20:33):
time the Earth has before it stops sustaining human life
or if a meteor hits. And so these include really
fun theories like the big rip, the Big crunch, the
Big bounce, and the Big freeze, which I don't know
why they all have to have big in them, but
what they.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Do that's pretty wild. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So I'm going to give you this week's trophy because
our producer Mary was so excited about your bell ringing fact,
and you know she and you talked about it earlier.
She actually went out and hung out with some bell
ringers this week and learned to do math with bells
at a tall height. So yeah, it is really fun.
And she said the community is incredible and she is
(21:15):
going to come on here and talk about it at
some point.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Wow, that is so fun. All right, Well, thank you.
It is an honor, and thank you Mary. So that
does it for today's episode. If you like what you heard,
please subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us
a nice rating and review while you're at it. This
episode was written by Lizzie Jacobs, an amateur peanut butter reologist.
Thanks so much, Lizzie, and I'll be back next week.
With a new episode and in the meantime from Dylan Gay,
(21:39):
Mary Mango and Me thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pierce and Me Mongish
Heatikler and research by our good pal 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 Norvell and Ali Perry, with
(22:16):
social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and
Viny Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
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Mangesh Hattikudur
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