August 21, 2024 • 28 mins
From SpongeBob's sweet origin story to the Japanese business suits that are perfect for catching waves, Will and Mango explore the greatest facts from the world of surfing.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
So one of the great things about working from home
is that you can slip away from a stressful day
or big meetings and get a little exercise. I know
you like to run. I like to play tennis when
I can get away. But I was wondering about people
who relax by doing more extreme sports. Like if you
want to go surfing in the middle of the day
and hit the waves, but then get on a zoom
right after, how do you do that without looking like
(00:35):
a mess? So I was doing some research and I
think I found an answer with this Japanese wetsuit. It's
a one hundred percent waterproof bodysuit that also doubles as
a business suit.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So does it actually look like a business suit or
is it just like a regular wetsuit with some sort
of jacket on top or something like that.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's like a regular two piece suit and it's got
a button up shirt, except everything is super stretchy. It's
to repell in. I've actually got a picture for you.
I'm gonna click it over and send it to you.
Right now.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
That is actually pretty awesome. It actually looks pretty sick.
I mean the pants look a little tighter than you
typically want them. I know you like your tight. I
like them, yeah, but otherwise honestly not bad.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah. And even the accessories or waterproof, so you can
go for a waterproof necktie or a waterproof bow tie,
because we deserve nice things and it is nice to
have options.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It's true. I actually think this would be one case
where I would go with the bow tie, because yeah,
you don't want the like necktie slaping you in the
face as you're going through this. But I'm curious to know, like,
how did this business, you know, like these formal wetsuits
come about.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Apparently it's a collaboration between Quicksilver in Japan and this
Tokyo based ad firm, and the goal was to figure
out a way to get former surfers back into the sport.
Surfing is hugely popular in Japan, but ninety percent of
young surfers give it up once they get day jobs.
So the hope was that if salarymen can have some
way that they can get in the ocean but then
(01:56):
get to the office right after, sort of like from
the board to the boardroom, they can slip surfing back
into their lives.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
And has this worked?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Okay, all right, well it.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Is a much better gimmick than it is officeware. But
stumbling into this outfit made me think about how much
I've always wanted to do a surfing episode, even though
I am not a surfer. I thought we should get
one out before the summer is done. So why don't
we grab our boards and dive in?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
All right, Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:45):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on the other side
of my computer screen hanging ten on his ironing board.
He's got creative here, Mango. That's our friend and super
producer Dylan Fagan. And for any concern listeners out there,
and I know you're off concern with the stunts that
Dylan is pulling, you should know that the ironing board
is not extended. It's flat on the floor and he's
(03:06):
balancing on top of it. I think he wants to
be protective of, you know, his his dainty ankles. This
is a fun fact about super producer Dylan. Very concerned
about it, So, Mango, this topic has kind of been
sitting in the queue for a long time for us,
and I'm curious, why have you been wanting to do
a show on surfing?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
You know, I'm not exactly sure. I think it's because
surfing is one of those things I want to do
so badly. You know, it is so beautiful and calming,
and I love watching people surf. But also I'm absolutely
never going to do it. You know. Actually this last year,
my friend got married in Hawaii and I'd never been,
and there was an afternoon where we caught up on
a beach and we just watched people surf for like hours,
(03:48):
and it was mesmerizing. And it's just unbelievable how long
people can go for it, and they really know how
to surf. It's stunning.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I agree, But what's stopping you from trying?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Well, I am not a great swimmer, and I don't
see a lot of surfing and Floa. I actually knew that.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I just wanted you to have to say that.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
But also it just feels so dangerous. I mean, it
is maybe irrational, but I read this surf memoir. It's
called Barbarian Days, and it's by William Finn again, this
New Yorker writer, and it's beautiful, but there's this scene
where the author goes to some remote place near Fiji
and the ocean is in this area and it's filled
with super venomous water snakes. But because the waves are
(04:26):
so good, he just keeps surfing. And you know, between
water snakes and sharks and the way his skin tears
up on coral, I just think I'll stick to tennis. Yeah,
but I still do like facts about surfing. And I'm
curious where you want to start today.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Actually, before we jump into that, I'm not trying to
delay us anymore from surfing, but it made me think
about this. Have you actually seen these photos of Swiss
people commuting home from work by floating on the Rhine?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
If you see these, it is unbelievable. Like those images
were all over TikTok this summer and it kind of
looks magical.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
It really does. So I guess in Basil, Switzerland, they've
got these little cabins for changing and their showers along
the route, and basically commuters will strip down, throw their
belongings in these waterproof floating bags. They're shaped like fish,
and then they just float home much as this. Yeah,
it's so cool and it feels like such a nice
way to end every summer workday. Think about this if
(05:18):
every day instead of going and getting on the train
or whatever we're doing to get home, to be able
to do that. And that's just an aside, but I
thought it was worth sharing here. But why don't we
start by talking about some of the early accounts of surfing.
I know, we like to go back to the very
beginning on so many of these things. But the first
European riding about surfing comes from a man named Charles Clerk.
(05:38):
He served as a ship's officer on one of Captain
Cook's voyages through the Pacific. This was back in seventeen
seventy eight, and Cook and his crew became the first
known Europeans to visit the Hawaiian Islands, so they were
basically the first outsiders to witness surfing. So he writes
about this in his journal, and Clerk recounted watching these
islanders mount boards that were six to eight feet so
(06:00):
actually along the lines of what you would see today
two feet wide, and he says, quote, in the shape
of one of our bone paper cutters, you know, bone
paper cutters right.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I also can't imagine how wild it must have been
to see people just on these like planks, just cruising
past you. It feels insane.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, that's pretty cool. And so he wrote, they basically
get on these boards and then quote go round the
best going boats we had in the space of a
very few minutes. So he was definitely impressed. But my
favorite account of surfing comes about one hundred years later,
Mark Twain writes about the phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Mark Twain went to Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
He did, He did go to Hawaiian So he writes
about this and his travel memoir called Roughing It. And
he also did a bunch of correspondents for the Sacramento
Union when he traveled through Hawaii and wrote about everything
from missionaries to sugar operations to local lore. But what's
funny is that he documents surfing and calls it surf bathing.
(06:58):
And here's how he describes it. He says, quote, at
the right moment, the native would fling his board upon
its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here
he would come whizzing by like a bombshell. It did
not seem that a lightning express train could shoot along
at a more hair lifting speed, so it's pretty cool
to watch. I think he might have been exaggerating just
a tiny bit. But what's even better is that Twain
(07:20):
actually gives surfing a tries, so he was a little
more brave than the two of us. And he goes
on to write, I tried surf bathing once subsequently, but
made a failure of it. I got the board placed
right and at the right moment, too, but I missed
the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three
quarters of a second without any cargo, and I struck
the bottom at about the same time with a couple
(07:43):
of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever
master the art of surf bathing thoroughly. Pretty great story there.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Well, I feel like surf bathing makes it sound like
a gentler sport does, so it feels like you should
do that every day. I know you're a much better
swimmer than I am because your your grandma was like
an Olympic swimmer, right.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
She might have claimed that she was an Olympic swimmer,
but she did teach us alt to swim.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Thanks mamma. So I had no idea that Mark Twain
wrote any of this stuff. And I actually just read James.
Have you heard the book?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I'm actually about halfway through it. It is fantastic book.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Good and honestly like reading about Huck Finn from Jim's
perspective made me want to go back and read more
Mark Dwain, and I actually feel like now I've got
to start with this travel bit more.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah. By the way, as a side note, you know
who recommended James. One of our fantastic podcasters, Danny Shapiro,
does Family Secrets. I always asked her what books are
you obsessing over? And it was that book.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Sorry for thee Yeah, I love it for over. My
next fact, I want to talk about how surfing started
as an equal opportunity family activity. And this goes back
to its inception. So surfing and Hawaii and other Polynesian
islands was a communal activity and it's really wonderful. So
like men, women, children, like people of every social class
did this. And in fact, the oldest known surfboard belonged
(09:01):
to a woman. It dates back to the sixteen hundreds
and it was found in the burial cave of a
princess on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I feel like, whenever you hear about surf history in America,
it usually starts with that surf legend Duke something or
other bringing it to the mainland in the early nineteen hundreds.
It was definitely not a story with a woman.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah. So the truth is that Hawaii's surf culture was
derailed for a period in the nineteenth century thanks to
American missionaries. They disapproved of just about every aspect of surfing,
from the mixed gender nature of it to the fact
that you had to be nearly naked to do it well.
So the sport kind of fell by the wayside in Hawaii,
especially among women. But that started to change at the
(09:41):
turn of the century when Californians were introduced to the
sport by male Hawaiian surfers, and that includes Duke Anamuku,
who I know I'm butchering that we're talking about. But
that said, female surfers never went away completely. And around
the same time that surfing made its American day. And
so this is in the eighteen nineties, Hawaii's princess was
(10:04):
busy demonstrating the sport in England, and she did it
in this grand fashion. She surfed the English channel. There's
a document at the British Surfing Museum that has a
great description of it, and it says, quote, the tall
foreign dignitaries stood erect on a thin board with her
hair blowing in the wind as she rode the Chili waters.
It was such an impressive sight that some of the
(10:25):
British nobility to decide to take up surfing, and before
you knew it, the sport had this foothold on a
whole new continent.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
That's amazing. Actually, you know, in my research I found
some of the early pictures of the brit surfing or
surf riding as they used to call it, and they
used coffin lids instead of surfboards because they just weren't
proper boards available. It's so crazy to see what people
used to surf on. Look at this photo here, like
you can see these are just pulled straight from They're
(10:51):
either pulled straight from a coffin or they are lids
that have not yet been put on a coffin lids.
Maybe that's what it is. But anyways, speaking of female surfers,
did you know that in the sixties TV surfer Gidget
was based on a real person.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I love that you're bringing up Gidget like anyone remembers.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, buddy remembers Gidget in the time before we were alive.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, I think you're gonna have to explain it.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Well, obviously she's not a household name anymore. But in
the late nineteen fifties and early sixties, Gidget was the
most famous surfer of them all. Sandra d played her
in the nineteen fifty nine movie, and then other actresses
took over for the role and the sequels, you know,
sequels like Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Gidget Goes to Rome,
so you know, the usual classics. But then in the
(11:37):
mid sixties, Gidget got a TV spinoff starring Sally Field.
So we are talking about like pretty big actresses here,
which very occasionally used to air on TV when when
I was a kid.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, I actually vaguely, vaguely remember that. And you know,
I'm guessing this was during the height of the surf craze,
when the beach Boys had all those songs on the air.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, I mean, Gidget was the first of those Hollywood
beach party films that you think of that were so
huge in the nineteen sixties. But one thing that set
Gidget apart is that the character was actually based on
a real surfer. Her name was Kathy Kohner and in
nineteen fifty six, she was a fifteen year old girl
growing up in the suburbs of Malibu. So that summer
she learned to surf by trading peanut butter sandwiches to
(12:19):
local surfers in exchange of using their surfboards.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Is not cool.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I love how creative that is.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
That's amazing. And I love that like a peanut butter
sandwich can get your ride on a surfboard. Though, that's
so great.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I love a peanut butter sandwich like I would totally
trade my board for one. So by the end of
the summer she was hooked and kept telling her dad
about it, and at one point Kathy told them she
wanted to write a book about her surfing experiences, but
her dad, being a writer himself, offered to write it
for her. So a year later, the first of five
Ya novels about a surfed crazed girl named Gidget hit
(12:52):
the shelves and it quickly became this national bestseller and
within no time they sold the film rights.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
It's so cool, that's fun. But if a real name's Kathy.
Why does she get named Gidget?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Well, apparently that's the nickname that those older Malibu surfers
gave her. It's a combination of girl and midget, which
of course is problematic today. But some of the other
characters in the book had better nicknames, like Gidget's longtime
love interest was named moon Doggie, which I think is
actually pretty cool and maybe problematic for other reasons. Haven't
thought about it yet, but on account of his fondness
(13:26):
for surfing by moonlight, which I think is kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Well, you know, I just assumed gidget was a surf
term because there's so many of those that, you know,
you have no idea what they mean, and I thought
it would be fun, actually if I gave you a
bit of a surf vocabulary quiz, just in case the
next time you meet a surfer and your Google Translate
doesn't work, you know, you actually have some surfing vocabulary
to lean on.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So the first one is doggy door. Do you know
what a doggy door is? To a surfer?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Use it in a sentence?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
I thought he was a goner, but then he found
that doggy door.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Okay, I'm guessing it's a little like a little gap
in the wave or something like.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, exactly, So a doggy door is a small exit
hole of surfer finds to get out of the barrel
of a wave.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
All right, so one for one, all right?
Speaker 1 (14:13):
How about a gremmy?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I have no idea, give it to me in another sentence?
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Sure, I won my game of scrabble by using the
word remy.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
That is, that is not helpful at all. So what
is a gremmy?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I guess? I also have said a grammy is almost
the same as a grommet. Okayou have been helpful?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Not still figure it out?
Speaker 1 (14:34):
A grommet is a young surfer, and amy is an
inexperienced surfer of any age. So you'd rather be called
a grommet than a grammy, I guess, But neither is
a term of endearment, right. How about a kahuna?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Uh? I feel like you hear the phrase big kahooner.
You obviously hear the phrase bic kohoon a lot, and
it's it's always around like Polynesian culture. So maybe this
is a village chief or something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it's pretty close, okay. A kahuna is apparently a
wizard or a magician, and it can also be a
wise man or a shaman. So you can see how
a kahuna becomes kind of a wizard of surfing on
the waves.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So, and the last one I'm going to give you,
what is a mushburger?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Well, I know, when you finish surfing or playing in
the water or anything like that, you're definitely very hungry.
So would this be like the sandwiches and chow that
you scarf down after riding the waves and they're may
be all wet from the ocean or sandy. I don't know.
I'm trying here.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I love that idea. I do feel like Mushburgers would
be a great name for a franchise. But a mushburger
is actually a slow and fat wave.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Okay, yeah, I get that, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I like the name. So anyway, now that you know
all the surf slang, why don't we take a quick break.
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're hearing some
of our favorite facts about the fine art of surfing
(16:06):
and will I think it's your turn to go next?
Speaker 2 (16:09):
All right, Well, you felt like my my facts about
gidget were a little dated and so I'm going to
dip into some pop culture that a few more people
have heard of, and it's a little show called SpongeBob SquarePants.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Not familiar. Not familiar?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Okay, fact, Yeah, that's pretty great. This does remind me,
as a side note, about the time where you told
me that you were introduced to Hall and Oates, when
you were literally introduced to Hall and Oates at that event,
and I was like, how did this happen? How are
we here? And you were not familiar with their body
of works. Sorry to call you out here, but it
(16:45):
just wasn't play. That's pretty well. I didn't realize that
the SpongeBob creator, Stephen Hillenberg, was actually a lifelong surfer
and a marine biologist, And this comes from a friend
of his named Biddle Doo, who wrote a piece about
him in The New Yorker. But apparently when Hillenburg wasn't surfing,
he was beachcombing and sketching shells and sea life. Anyway,
(17:08):
Duke tells this story that he and Hillenburg and a
group of friends all used to go to these camping
beach trips and they would go once a year on
these trips, and one year they were at this bonfire
in Baja, and Hillenburg passes around his journal with an
idea that he has. Now apparently by this time, he's
already made an educational comic book about sea life. He's
won awards for this, he's done grad school and animation,
(17:32):
won awards for that too, and so he's on this
path to doing something with marine life and animation. But
he opens his book and tells everyone he's going to
write a cartoon about a sea sponge, and nobody gets it, right,
I mean, you can imagine how people are, like, okay,
and you know, obviously a sea sponge is like this lifeless,
inanimate blob of a thing, and they're like, really a sponge,
(17:54):
Like is this really what you're going to do? And
he tries to tell them that that's actually the gag,
that it's going to be about a kitchen sponge who
lives in a tide pool and has all these other
funny sea creature friends, but no one can see it.
And while they all assume he's going to be successful,
they just don't think this is the idea.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I mean, it is funny to think of, right, like
the idea that someone told me they were going to
make a cartoon about a sponge, Like, there's no way
I think that's gonna be.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I mean, it's it's it's genius now, but I totally agree. Anyway,
you cut to a few decades later and SpongeBob is
the biggest cartoon on earth, but even the people at
Nickelodeon don't quite understand success. And when the author goes
to reunite with Hilenburg, he wants to ask him how
is it that a sponge managed to capture all these kids' hearts?
(18:40):
But Hillenburg at this time actually has als and he
doesn't surf anymore, and he can barely get words out,
but he's, you know, still surprisingly sunny, and he still
goes to the office every day. So Duke goes with him.
And when Duke talks to one of Hillenburg's co writers
about what makes the show so captivating, this is what
he says. He says, SpongeBob is not cool, he's not aspirational.
(19:04):
He just wants to go to work and be happy.
There's this innocence to him and he sees the good
and a horrible person. So it's like a pretty great
quote there. And apparently Hillenberg's entire goal was to concentrate
on simple stories taken from real life experiences. A yearbook
picture gone wrong, how a good joke overtold can go wrong.
(19:24):
And he's really trying to make a show. That was
funny and earnest, but he had a moral compass about it.
But the sweet guy who just wanted to see the
best in people and go to work every day, it
seems he was just making a show about himself. And so,
as Duke Biddle writes, quote, we all love goofy optimists
who don't care what the cool kids think. And that
(19:44):
was Stephen Hillenberg.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh I love that. Awesome. That's really sweet. So my
next fact has none of that charm. But it's interesting, awesome.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
That was a little little emotional, So it's time to
move on to something less charming.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
It's about how researchers are putting surfers to monitoring the
world's oceans. And so you might have heard global warming
is doing a real number on the oceans, creatures who
call it home, or having a hard time with migration
and reproduction, all these other things. And so to really
tackle a problem, we still need to amass a lot
more data in information, and that's where the surfers come in.
(20:19):
So apparently scientists are outfitting volunteer surfers with a special
board mounted sensor called a smart fan Phi N and
then dispatching them to surf spots around the world to
do what they do best.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
You mean to shred the NAR. Actually, while you were
saying that, I was googling some other surfing term. I
feel like I said it convincingly that.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, so while they're shredding the NAR, they're also collecting
data on the temperature, slidity, and acidity of the surrounding waters,
and once compiled, scientists will be able to compare those
readings and get a better understanding of how the ocean's
chemistry is changing over time and what it might look
like in the future, which I think is awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I mean, I can see how this helps the scientists,
but honestly, like what's in it for the surfers, because
I for serious surfers or enthusiasts, I could see how
mounting additional gear would you know, get in the way
or down.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, the researchers behind the project thought of that, and
according to one of them, this is what they said. Quote,
we built some extra technology into the smart fin that
will compel surfers to use it for their own selfish reasons,
to know where and when waves are good and to
tract their own surfing performance. So you know, the idea
is that all this technology can actually be performance enhancing
(21:33):
and the hope is that everyone wins.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
All right, Well, here is a quick one. So we've
talked a lot about human surfers today, which I guess
makes sense. But other animals have also taken up surfing,
though none more successfully than the yellow bellied sea snakes.
Are you familiar with the yellow bellads seas? Its original
home was in the ocean waters of Southeast Asia, but
the snakes have since been found near Hawaii or Mexico,
(21:58):
even an island in the Indian Ocean, and for decades
a big mystery among biologists was how these tiny snakes
managed to turn up in tropical waters all over the world.
I mean, these guys weigh like three to seven ounces
or about two feet long, so that's like the weight
of your namesake mango, the mango, and about the length
of a baguette. You can tell I'm hungry here I'm
going with these. So the question is how are they
(22:21):
crossing the globe?
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's a long way for
a baget to swim, right, But I'm guessing the answer
is surfing exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So the theory that's been kicking around since the nineteen seventies,
after the time of Gidget, of course, But in twenty sixteen,
researchers were able to model this path for c snakes
using a computer program that simulates ocean currents. So basically,
they took ten thousand virtual snakes, they released them from
twenty eight different points on the map, and then they
(22:53):
track the path of each group to see where the
currents would take them. And you know, wouldn't you know it,
the pass led straight to where this snakes have been
found in the real world. And here's the wildest part.
If the models are accurate, that means that the snakes
are clocking distances of nearly six thousand miles or more
over the course of their three and a half year lifespans.
(23:13):
And for perspective, that would be farther than any other
snake species has traveled. It's actually closer to the travel
range of something like a whale. And because the yellow
bellied snakes can hold their breath underwater, for this astounding
period of three and a half hours. It actually seems
plausible that they surf the waves over from Asia. That's
just crazy to me.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Three and a half hours underwater is nuts. You know,
when you said you were doing something on animals, I
was expecting something about surfing dogs, you know, because they
have the first image competition in hunting and beach But
I'm kind of glad you owned with snakes instead.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Thank you, Thank you got to keep people on your toes.
So what is your very last fact of the day.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
So I think one of the things we often associate
with surfing is surf music, right, whether that's when the
beach boys who didn't really surf, or things that are
a little harder, like the surf rock that plays in
the beginning of Pulp Fiction, which, for anyone who hasn't
heard it, sort of like pulsing instrumental guitar and heavy
reverb and it's in the opening credits of the movie. Anyway,
(24:11):
when I was looking at surf music, I found this
article on the New Yorker that I thought was fascinating,
and it's titled Dick Dale, the inventor of surf rock,
was a Lebanese American kid from Boston.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
I love it. I mean, that's like how Hawaiian pizza
was invented in Canada by a Greek person, A big,
big fan by the way, the Hawaiian pizza.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So Dick Dale's the musician who actually plays that pulp
fiction song, which is called messr Lou I guess. Apparently
the musician was born to a family of Lebanese immigrants
and his birth name was Richard Monsieur, and he gets
a guitar as a kid, but is obsessed with percussion.
He loves big band music, so he likes like Buddy Rich,
(24:51):
Dean Krupa and all. That's a big part of why
his music is so rhythmic and so percussive. But in
high school, his family does move out to California and
he begins to surf and kind of the same way
that early skateboarders. I don't know if you've seen these videos,
but if you've seen like Dogtown and z Boys, the
skateboarders are trying to mimic surfing by reaching down to
(25:12):
touch the pavement and they're skimming it with their hands
like its water. And early surf musicians are also trying
to figure out how do you recreate that feeling of
surfing with music. So Amanda Petrecich, who wrote that article
that The New Yorker puts it this way. Quote though
it is tempting to fold in bands like the Beach Boys,
who often sang about surfing, surf rock was wet and
(25:32):
gnarly and unconcerned with romance or sweetness. The important part
was successfully evincing the sensation of riding atop a rushing
crust of water, and to capture something about that experience,
which was both tense and glorious. Its biggest question was
how do we make this thing sound the way that
thing feels, combining recklessness with grace. Anyway, because he is
(25:55):
obsessed with percussion, and because he grew up listening to
Arabic music and Greek rebetico music, which is sort of
like the rebel folk music, He's using scales and tones
that are unfamiliar, and he pumps up the reverb on
these quick percussive notes and amplifies it at what Amanda
Petrosuch says is an indecent volume, and he ends up
creating the sound of surf music which quickly sweeps the nation.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I like that that is that's a good story, all right. Well,
since I picked last week's winner, I feel like this
week you'd get to do the honors.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Well, I was fifty to fifty. Dylan also won last
week's TROPHI, so I don't think we can give it
to him. But because you did that Mark Twain anecdote,
and also SpongeBob, SpongeBob is pretty great, I think I've
got to give it to you.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
I feel like I deserved it this week. Yeah, thank you.
I appreciate that. Well, that's it for today's Part Time Genius.
I do want to thank Gabe Lucy. It's been a
little while he's done so many episodes in the past
with us, but Gabe did most of the research for
this week's episode, and as Mango mentioned, we've been sitting
on some of these links and stories for a while
and it's fun to finally be doing the show regularly
(26:57):
enough that we remembered we needed to put it out there.
So this was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Anyway, we'll be back with a brand new episode next week.
But in the meantime, from Mango, Dylan, Mary, and myself,
thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongashtikler
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 Norvel and Ali Perry, with social
(27:44):
media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Nara 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 know another
You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
So one of the great things about working from home
is that you can slip away from a stressful day
or big meetings and get a little exercise. I know
you like to run. I like to play tennis when
I can get away. But I was wondering about people
who relax by doing more extreme sports. Like if you
want to go surfing in the middle of the day
and hit the waves, but then get on a zoom
right after, how do you do that without looking like
(00:35):
a mess? So I was doing some research and I
think I found an answer with this Japanese wetsuit. It's
a one hundred percent waterproof bodysuit that also doubles as
a business suit.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So does it actually look like a business suit or
is it just like a regular wetsuit with some sort
of jacket on top or something like that.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's like a regular two piece suit and it's got
a button up shirt, except everything is super stretchy. It's
to repell in. I've actually got a picture for you.
I'm gonna click it over and send it to you.
Right now.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
That is actually pretty awesome. It actually looks pretty sick.
I mean the pants look a little tighter than you
typically want them. I know you like your tight. I
like them, yeah, but otherwise honestly not bad.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah. And even the accessories or waterproof, so you can
go for a waterproof necktie or a waterproof bow tie,
because we deserve nice things and it is nice to
have options.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It's true. I actually think this would be one case
where I would go with the bow tie, because yeah,
you don't want the like necktie slaping you in the
face as you're going through this. But I'm curious to know, like,
how did this business, you know, like these formal wetsuits
come about.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Apparently it's a collaboration between Quicksilver in Japan and this
Tokyo based ad firm, and the goal was to figure
out a way to get former surfers back into the sport.
Surfing is hugely popular in Japan, but ninety percent of
young surfers give it up once they get day jobs.
So the hope was that if salarymen can have some
way that they can get in the ocean but then
(01:56):
get to the office right after, sort of like from
the board to the boardroom, they can slip surfing back
into their lives.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
And has this worked?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Okay, all right, well it.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Is a much better gimmick than it is officeware. But
stumbling into this outfit made me think about how much
I've always wanted to do a surfing episode, even though
I am not a surfer. I thought we should get
one out before the summer is done. So why don't
we grab our boards and dive in?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
All right, Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:45):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on the other side
of my computer screen hanging ten on his ironing board.
He's got creative here, Mango. That's our friend and super
producer Dylan Fagan. And for any concern listeners out there,
and I know you're off concern with the stunts that
Dylan is pulling, you should know that the ironing board
is not extended. It's flat on the floor and he's
(03:06):
balancing on top of it. I think he wants to
be protective of, you know, his his dainty ankles. This
is a fun fact about super producer Dylan. Very concerned
about it, So, Mango, this topic has kind of been
sitting in the queue for a long time for us,
and I'm curious, why have you been wanting to do
a show on surfing?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
You know, I'm not exactly sure. I think it's because
surfing is one of those things I want to do
so badly. You know, it is so beautiful and calming,
and I love watching people surf. But also I'm absolutely
never going to do it. You know. Actually this last year,
my friend got married in Hawaii and I'd never been,
and there was an afternoon where we caught up on
a beach and we just watched people surf for like hours,
(03:48):
and it was mesmerizing. And it's just unbelievable how long
people can go for it, and they really know how
to surf. It's stunning.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I agree, But what's stopping you from trying?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Well, I am not a great swimmer, and I don't
see a lot of surfing and Floa. I actually knew that.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I just wanted you to have to say that.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
But also it just feels so dangerous. I mean, it
is maybe irrational, but I read this surf memoir. It's
called Barbarian Days, and it's by William Finn again, this
New Yorker writer, and it's beautiful, but there's this scene
where the author goes to some remote place near Fiji
and the ocean is in this area and it's filled
with super venomous water snakes. But because the waves are
(04:26):
so good, he just keeps surfing. And you know, between
water snakes and sharks and the way his skin tears
up on coral, I just think I'll stick to tennis. Yeah,
but I still do like facts about surfing. And I'm
curious where you want to start today.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Actually, before we jump into that, I'm not trying to
delay us anymore from surfing, but it made me think
about this. Have you actually seen these photos of Swiss
people commuting home from work by floating on the Rhine?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
If you see these, it is unbelievable. Like those images
were all over TikTok this summer and it kind of
looks magical.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
It really does. So I guess in Basil, Switzerland, they've
got these little cabins for changing and their showers along
the route, and basically commuters will strip down, throw their
belongings in these waterproof floating bags. They're shaped like fish,
and then they just float home much as this. Yeah,
it's so cool and it feels like such a nice
way to end every summer workday. Think about this if
(05:18):
every day instead of going and getting on the train
or whatever we're doing to get home, to be able
to do that. And that's just an aside, but I
thought it was worth sharing here. But why don't we
start by talking about some of the early accounts of surfing.
I know, we like to go back to the very
beginning on so many of these things. But the first
European riding about surfing comes from a man named Charles Clerk.
(05:38):
He served as a ship's officer on one of Captain
Cook's voyages through the Pacific. This was back in seventeen
seventy eight, and Cook and his crew became the first
known Europeans to visit the Hawaiian Islands, so they were
basically the first outsiders to witness surfing. So he writes
about this in his journal, and Clerk recounted watching these
islanders mount boards that were six to eight feet so
(06:00):
actually along the lines of what you would see today
two feet wide, and he says, quote, in the shape
of one of our bone paper cutters, you know, bone
paper cutters right.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I also can't imagine how wild it must have been
to see people just on these like planks, just cruising
past you. It feels insane.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, that's pretty cool. And so he wrote, they basically
get on these boards and then quote go round the
best going boats we had in the space of a
very few minutes. So he was definitely impressed. But my
favorite account of surfing comes about one hundred years later,
Mark Twain writes about the phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Mark Twain went to Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
He did, He did go to Hawaiian So he writes
about this and his travel memoir called Roughing It. And
he also did a bunch of correspondents for the Sacramento
Union when he traveled through Hawaii and wrote about everything
from missionaries to sugar operations to local lore. But what's
funny is that he documents surfing and calls it surf bathing.
(06:58):
And here's how he describes it. He says, quote, at
the right moment, the native would fling his board upon
its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here
he would come whizzing by like a bombshell. It did
not seem that a lightning express train could shoot along
at a more hair lifting speed, so it's pretty cool
to watch. I think he might have been exaggerating just
a tiny bit. But what's even better is that Twain
(07:20):
actually gives surfing a tries, so he was a little
more brave than the two of us. And he goes
on to write, I tried surf bathing once subsequently, but
made a failure of it. I got the board placed
right and at the right moment, too, but I missed
the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three
quarters of a second without any cargo, and I struck
the bottom at about the same time with a couple
(07:43):
of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever
master the art of surf bathing thoroughly. Pretty great story there.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Well, I feel like surf bathing makes it sound like
a gentler sport does, so it feels like you should
do that every day. I know you're a much better
swimmer than I am because your your grandma was like
an Olympic swimmer, right.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
She might have claimed that she was an Olympic swimmer,
but she did teach us alt to swim.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Thanks mamma. So I had no idea that Mark Twain
wrote any of this stuff. And I actually just read James.
Have you heard the book?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I'm actually about halfway through it. It is fantastic book.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Good and honestly like reading about Huck Finn from Jim's
perspective made me want to go back and read more
Mark Dwain, and I actually feel like now I've got
to start with this travel bit more.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah. By the way, as a side note, you know
who recommended James. One of our fantastic podcasters, Danny Shapiro,
does Family Secrets. I always asked her what books are
you obsessing over? And it was that book.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Sorry for thee Yeah, I love it for over. My
next fact, I want to talk about how surfing started
as an equal opportunity family activity. And this goes back
to its inception. So surfing and Hawaii and other Polynesian
islands was a communal activity and it's really wonderful. So
like men, women, children, like people of every social class
did this. And in fact, the oldest known surfboard belonged
(09:01):
to a woman. It dates back to the sixteen hundreds
and it was found in the burial cave of a
princess on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I feel like, whenever you hear about surf history in America,
it usually starts with that surf legend Duke something or
other bringing it to the mainland in the early nineteen hundreds.
It was definitely not a story with a woman.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah. So the truth is that Hawaii's surf culture was
derailed for a period in the nineteenth century thanks to
American missionaries. They disapproved of just about every aspect of surfing,
from the mixed gender nature of it to the fact
that you had to be nearly naked to do it well.
So the sport kind of fell by the wayside in Hawaii,
especially among women. But that started to change at the
(09:41):
turn of the century when Californians were introduced to the
sport by male Hawaiian surfers, and that includes Duke Anamuku,
who I know I'm butchering that we're talking about. But
that said, female surfers never went away completely. And around
the same time that surfing made its American day. And
so this is in the eighteen nineties, Hawaii's princess was
(10:04):
busy demonstrating the sport in England, and she did it
in this grand fashion. She surfed the English channel. There's
a document at the British Surfing Museum that has a
great description of it, and it says, quote, the tall
foreign dignitaries stood erect on a thin board with her
hair blowing in the wind as she rode the Chili waters.
It was such an impressive sight that some of the
(10:25):
British nobility to decide to take up surfing, and before
you knew it, the sport had this foothold on a
whole new continent.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
That's amazing. Actually, you know, in my research I found
some of the early pictures of the brit surfing or
surf riding as they used to call it, and they
used coffin lids instead of surfboards because they just weren't
proper boards available. It's so crazy to see what people
used to surf on. Look at this photo here, like
you can see these are just pulled straight from They're
(10:51):
either pulled straight from a coffin or they are lids
that have not yet been put on a coffin lids.
Maybe that's what it is. But anyways, speaking of female surfers,
did you know that in the sixties TV surfer Gidget
was based on a real person.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I love that you're bringing up Gidget like anyone remembers.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, buddy remembers Gidget in the time before we were alive.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, I think you're gonna have to explain it.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Well, obviously she's not a household name anymore. But in
the late nineteen fifties and early sixties, Gidget was the
most famous surfer of them all. Sandra d played her
in the nineteen fifty nine movie, and then other actresses
took over for the role and the sequels, you know,
sequels like Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Gidget Goes to Rome,
so you know, the usual classics. But then in the
(11:37):
mid sixties, Gidget got a TV spinoff starring Sally Field.
So we are talking about like pretty big actresses here,
which very occasionally used to air on TV when when
I was a kid.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, I actually vaguely, vaguely remember that. And you know,
I'm guessing this was during the height of the surf craze,
when the beach Boys had all those songs on the air.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, I mean, Gidget was the first of those Hollywood
beach party films that you think of that were so
huge in the nineteen sixties. But one thing that set
Gidget apart is that the character was actually based on
a real surfer. Her name was Kathy Kohner and in
nineteen fifty six, she was a fifteen year old girl
growing up in the suburbs of Malibu. So that summer
she learned to surf by trading peanut butter sandwiches to
(12:19):
local surfers in exchange of using their surfboards.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Is not cool.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I love how creative that is.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
That's amazing. And I love that like a peanut butter
sandwich can get your ride on a surfboard. Though, that's
so great.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I love a peanut butter sandwich like I would totally
trade my board for one. So by the end of
the summer she was hooked and kept telling her dad
about it, and at one point Kathy told them she
wanted to write a book about her surfing experiences, but
her dad, being a writer himself, offered to write it
for her. So a year later, the first of five
Ya novels about a surfed crazed girl named Gidget hit
(12:52):
the shelves and it quickly became this national bestseller and
within no time they sold the film rights.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
It's so cool, that's fun. But if a real name's Kathy.
Why does she get named Gidget?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Well, apparently that's the nickname that those older Malibu surfers
gave her. It's a combination of girl and midget, which
of course is problematic today. But some of the other
characters in the book had better nicknames, like Gidget's longtime
love interest was named moon Doggie, which I think is
actually pretty cool and maybe problematic for other reasons. Haven't
thought about it yet, but on account of his fondness
(13:26):
for surfing by moonlight, which I think is kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Well, you know, I just assumed gidget was a surf
term because there's so many of those that, you know,
you have no idea what they mean, and I thought
it would be fun, actually if I gave you a
bit of a surf vocabulary quiz, just in case the
next time you meet a surfer and your Google Translate
doesn't work, you know, you actually have some surfing vocabulary
to lean on.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So the first one is doggy door. Do you know
what a doggy door is? To a surfer?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Use it in a sentence?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
I thought he was a goner, but then he found
that doggy door.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Okay, I'm guessing it's a little like a little gap
in the wave or something like.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, exactly, So a doggy door is a small exit
hole of surfer finds to get out of the barrel
of a wave.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
All right, so one for one, all right?
Speaker 1 (14:13):
How about a gremmy?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I have no idea, give it to me in another sentence?
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Sure, I won my game of scrabble by using the
word remy.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
That is, that is not helpful at all. So what
is a gremmy?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I guess? I also have said a grammy is almost
the same as a grommet. Okayou have been helpful?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Not still figure it out?
Speaker 1 (14:34):
A grommet is a young surfer, and amy is an
inexperienced surfer of any age. So you'd rather be called
a grommet than a grammy, I guess, But neither is
a term of endearment, right. How about a kahuna?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Uh? I feel like you hear the phrase big kahooner.
You obviously hear the phrase bic kohoon a lot, and
it's it's always around like Polynesian culture. So maybe this
is a village chief or something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it's pretty close, okay. A kahuna is apparently a
wizard or a magician, and it can also be a
wise man or a shaman. So you can see how
a kahuna becomes kind of a wizard of surfing on
the waves.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So, and the last one I'm going to give you,
what is a mushburger?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Well, I know, when you finish surfing or playing in
the water or anything like that, you're definitely very hungry.
So would this be like the sandwiches and chow that
you scarf down after riding the waves and they're may
be all wet from the ocean or sandy. I don't know.
I'm trying here.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I love that idea. I do feel like Mushburgers would
be a great name for a franchise. But a mushburger
is actually a slow and fat wave.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Okay, yeah, I get that, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I like the name. So anyway, now that you know
all the surf slang, why don't we take a quick break.
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're hearing some
of our favorite facts about the fine art of surfing
(16:06):
and will I think it's your turn to go next?
Speaker 2 (16:09):
All right, Well, you felt like my my facts about
gidget were a little dated and so I'm going to
dip into some pop culture that a few more people
have heard of, and it's a little show called SpongeBob SquarePants.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Not familiar. Not familiar?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Okay, fact, Yeah, that's pretty great. This does remind me,
as a side note, about the time where you told
me that you were introduced to Hall and Oates, when
you were literally introduced to Hall and Oates at that event,
and I was like, how did this happen? How are
we here? And you were not familiar with their body
of works. Sorry to call you out here, but it
(16:45):
just wasn't play. That's pretty well. I didn't realize that
the SpongeBob creator, Stephen Hillenberg, was actually a lifelong surfer
and a marine biologist, And this comes from a friend
of his named Biddle Doo, who wrote a piece about
him in The New Yorker. But apparently when Hillenburg wasn't surfing,
he was beachcombing and sketching shells and sea life. Anyway,
(17:08):
Duke tells this story that he and Hillenburg and a
group of friends all used to go to these camping
beach trips and they would go once a year on
these trips, and one year they were at this bonfire
in Baja, and Hillenburg passes around his journal with an
idea that he has. Now apparently by this time, he's
already made an educational comic book about sea life. He's
won awards for this, he's done grad school and animation,
(17:32):
won awards for that too, and so he's on this
path to doing something with marine life and animation. But
he opens his book and tells everyone he's going to
write a cartoon about a sea sponge, and nobody gets it, right,
I mean, you can imagine how people are, like, okay,
and you know, obviously a sea sponge is like this lifeless,
inanimate blob of a thing, and they're like, really a sponge,
(17:54):
Like is this really what you're going to do? And
he tries to tell them that that's actually the gag,
that it's going to be about a kitchen sponge who
lives in a tide pool and has all these other
funny sea creature friends, but no one can see it.
And while they all assume he's going to be successful,
they just don't think this is the idea.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I mean, it is funny to think of, right, like
the idea that someone told me they were going to
make a cartoon about a sponge, Like, there's no way
I think that's gonna be.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I mean, it's it's it's genius now, but I totally agree. Anyway,
you cut to a few decades later and SpongeBob is
the biggest cartoon on earth, but even the people at
Nickelodeon don't quite understand success. And when the author goes
to reunite with Hilenburg, he wants to ask him how
is it that a sponge managed to capture all these kids' hearts?
(18:40):
But Hillenburg at this time actually has als and he
doesn't surf anymore, and he can barely get words out,
but he's, you know, still surprisingly sunny, and he still
goes to the office every day. So Duke goes with him.
And when Duke talks to one of Hillenburg's co writers
about what makes the show so captivating, this is what
he says. He says, SpongeBob is not cool, he's not aspirational.
(19:04):
He just wants to go to work and be happy.
There's this innocence to him and he sees the good
and a horrible person. So it's like a pretty great
quote there. And apparently Hillenberg's entire goal was to concentrate
on simple stories taken from real life experiences. A yearbook
picture gone wrong, how a good joke overtold can go wrong.
(19:24):
And he's really trying to make a show. That was
funny and earnest, but he had a moral compass about it.
But the sweet guy who just wanted to see the
best in people and go to work every day, it
seems he was just making a show about himself. And so,
as Duke Biddle writes, quote, we all love goofy optimists
who don't care what the cool kids think. And that
(19:44):
was Stephen Hillenberg.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh I love that. Awesome. That's really sweet. So my
next fact has none of that charm. But it's interesting, awesome.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
That was a little little emotional, So it's time to
move on to something less charming.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
It's about how researchers are putting surfers to monitoring the
world's oceans. And so you might have heard global warming
is doing a real number on the oceans, creatures who
call it home, or having a hard time with migration
and reproduction, all these other things. And so to really
tackle a problem, we still need to amass a lot
more data in information, and that's where the surfers come in.
(20:19):
So apparently scientists are outfitting volunteer surfers with a special
board mounted sensor called a smart fan Phi N and
then dispatching them to surf spots around the world to
do what they do best.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
You mean to shred the NAR. Actually, while you were
saying that, I was googling some other surfing term. I
feel like I said it convincingly that.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, so while they're shredding the NAR, they're also collecting
data on the temperature, slidity, and acidity of the surrounding waters,
and once compiled, scientists will be able to compare those
readings and get a better understanding of how the ocean's
chemistry is changing over time and what it might look
like in the future, which I think is awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I mean, I can see how this helps the scientists,
but honestly, like what's in it for the surfers, because
I for serious surfers or enthusiasts, I could see how
mounting additional gear would you know, get in the way
or down.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, the researchers behind the project thought of that, and
according to one of them, this is what they said. Quote,
we built some extra technology into the smart fin that
will compel surfers to use it for their own selfish reasons,
to know where and when waves are good and to
tract their own surfing performance. So you know, the idea
is that all this technology can actually be performance enhancing
(21:33):
and the hope is that everyone wins.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
All right, Well, here is a quick one. So we've
talked a lot about human surfers today, which I guess
makes sense. But other animals have also taken up surfing,
though none more successfully than the yellow bellied sea snakes.
Are you familiar with the yellow bellads seas? Its original
home was in the ocean waters of Southeast Asia, but
the snakes have since been found near Hawaii or Mexico,
(21:58):
even an island in the Indian Ocean, and for decades
a big mystery among biologists was how these tiny snakes
managed to turn up in tropical waters all over the world.
I mean, these guys weigh like three to seven ounces
or about two feet long, so that's like the weight
of your namesake mango, the mango, and about the length
of a baguette. You can tell I'm hungry here I'm
going with these. So the question is how are they
(22:21):
crossing the globe?
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's a long way for
a baget to swim, right, But I'm guessing the answer
is surfing exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So the theory that's been kicking around since the nineteen seventies,
after the time of Gidget, of course, But in twenty sixteen,
researchers were able to model this path for c snakes
using a computer program that simulates ocean currents. So basically,
they took ten thousand virtual snakes, they released them from
twenty eight different points on the map, and then they
(22:53):
track the path of each group to see where the
currents would take them. And you know, wouldn't you know it,
the pass led straight to where this snakes have been
found in the real world. And here's the wildest part.
If the models are accurate, that means that the snakes
are clocking distances of nearly six thousand miles or more
over the course of their three and a half year lifespans.
(23:13):
And for perspective, that would be farther than any other
snake species has traveled. It's actually closer to the travel
range of something like a whale. And because the yellow
bellied snakes can hold their breath underwater, for this astounding
period of three and a half hours. It actually seems
plausible that they surf the waves over from Asia. That's
just crazy to me.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Three and a half hours underwater is nuts. You know,
when you said you were doing something on animals, I
was expecting something about surfing dogs, you know, because they
have the first image competition in hunting and beach But
I'm kind of glad you owned with snakes instead.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Thank you, Thank you got to keep people on your toes.
So what is your very last fact of the day.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
So I think one of the things we often associate
with surfing is surf music, right, whether that's when the
beach boys who didn't really surf, or things that are
a little harder, like the surf rock that plays in
the beginning of Pulp Fiction, which, for anyone who hasn't
heard it, sort of like pulsing instrumental guitar and heavy
reverb and it's in the opening credits of the movie. Anyway,
(24:11):
when I was looking at surf music, I found this
article on the New Yorker that I thought was fascinating,
and it's titled Dick Dale, the inventor of surf rock,
was a Lebanese American kid from Boston.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
I love it. I mean, that's like how Hawaiian pizza
was invented in Canada by a Greek person, A big,
big fan by the way, the Hawaiian pizza.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So Dick Dale's the musician who actually plays that pulp
fiction song, which is called messr Lou I guess. Apparently
the musician was born to a family of Lebanese immigrants
and his birth name was Richard Monsieur, and he gets
a guitar as a kid, but is obsessed with percussion.
He loves big band music, so he likes like Buddy Rich,
(24:51):
Dean Krupa and all. That's a big part of why
his music is so rhythmic and so percussive. But in
high school, his family does move out to California and
he begins to surf and kind of the same way
that early skateboarders. I don't know if you've seen these videos,
but if you've seen like Dogtown and z Boys, the
skateboarders are trying to mimic surfing by reaching down to
(25:12):
touch the pavement and they're skimming it with their hands
like its water. And early surf musicians are also trying
to figure out how do you recreate that feeling of
surfing with music. So Amanda Petrecich, who wrote that article
that The New Yorker puts it this way. Quote though
it is tempting to fold in bands like the Beach Boys,
who often sang about surfing, surf rock was wet and
(25:32):
gnarly and unconcerned with romance or sweetness. The important part
was successfully evincing the sensation of riding atop a rushing
crust of water, and to capture something about that experience,
which was both tense and glorious. Its biggest question was
how do we make this thing sound the way that
thing feels, combining recklessness with grace. Anyway, because he is
(25:55):
obsessed with percussion, and because he grew up listening to
Arabic music and Greek rebetico music, which is sort of
like the rebel folk music, He's using scales and tones
that are unfamiliar, and he pumps up the reverb on
these quick percussive notes and amplifies it at what Amanda
Petrosuch says is an indecent volume, and he ends up
creating the sound of surf music which quickly sweeps the nation.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I like that that is that's a good story, all right. Well,
since I picked last week's winner, I feel like this
week you'd get to do the honors.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Well, I was fifty to fifty. Dylan also won last
week's TROPHI, so I don't think we can give it
to him. But because you did that Mark Twain anecdote,
and also SpongeBob, SpongeBob is pretty great, I think I've
got to give it to you.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
I feel like I deserved it this week. Yeah, thank you.
I appreciate that. Well, that's it for today's Part Time Genius.
I do want to thank Gabe Lucy. It's been a
little while he's done so many episodes in the past
with us, but Gabe did most of the research for
this week's episode, and as Mango mentioned, we've been sitting
on some of these links and stories for a while
and it's fun to finally be doing the show regularly
(26:57):
enough that we remembered we needed to put it out there.
So this was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Anyway, we'll be back with a brand new episode next week.
But in the meantime, from Mango, Dylan, Mary, and myself,
thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongashtikler
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 Norvel and Ali Perry, with social
(27:44):
media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Nara 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 know another
Part-Time Genius News
Host
Will and Mango
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