June 10, 2025 • 32 mins
Today producers Gabe and Mary are opening the top-secret PTG fact vault to share bonus stories from recent episodes, including an international seagull incident, a pioneering artist who painted chickens with eggs, and a novelty space song that must be heard to be believed. Plus: Breaking news about pennies and government puns.
Listen to “The Ballad of Balladonia Night,” the official PTG song of summer 2025, here!
Check out Anita Magsaysay-Ho’s “Catching Chickens” here!
Got a question you’d like us to answer? A rabbit hole you think we should explore? Send an email or voice memo to higeniuses@gmail.com, and we might use it in an upcoming episode.
Padlock photo by Yogesh Pedamkar via Unsplash. Thanks, Yogesh!
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Guess What, Mango? What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Will?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
On average, an episode of Part Time Genius contains nineteen.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Point four facts.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I bet you actually didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I did not know that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Is that true? I'll be honest, I just made it
up now.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
That is unlike the facts and stories we share on
this show, which are carefully, some might say, obsessively researched.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, obviously, I mean that's part of the fun we
have doing what we do, right, researching all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
No, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
But what a lot of people might not realize is
that research often takes us down some very deep, twisty
rabbit holes, and in the interest of not making, you know,
a podcast episode that's three hours long, sometimes we have
to cut stuff where sometimes there's a topic that's just
so interesting we keep thinking about it even after the
episode comes out.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I mean there's also a thing that happens where we
have an idea for an episode and we get super
excited about it, but then it turns out there's like
not quite enough to make it work, but it's still
really fascinating and we have nowhere to share that stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yep, that also happens. And so what all this means
is that at any given moment, we've got a pile
of stories that our listeners haven't heard. And I like
to think of this as a strategic fact reserve. And
so today we're going to give you a peek inside
that vault. So for this episode, Mango and I are
kicking up our heels and we're turning things over to
Gabe and Mary, our producers who help us out with
(01:41):
all of that research. They've got some bonus facts from
earlier episodes, a few updates on some new things that
we've learned, and if they're feeling generous, they might even
give you a little preview of some topics we're working
on for later this year. So sit back, relax, Grab
a drink with a tiny umbrella in it. That's what
Mango and I are doing right now, actually, and let's
dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I
am not Will Pearson, and I'm not here with Mangusha Ticketter. Instead,
i'm producer Gabe and I'm here with producer Mary.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
That's right, and over there in the booth wearing a
mask of his own face. It's our friend and fellow producer,
Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Are you sure that's really Dylan under the mask? How
can we tell?
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Well, he's also wearing a T shirt that says this
really is Dylan, So yeah, a T shirt wouldn't lie.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Right right? Of course I always forget that. But anyway,
I'm pretty excited about today's episode. We have a bunch
of great bonus facts that just didn't fit into an
episode for one reason or another. But before we get
into that, I thought it might be fun to talk
a little bit about some failed episode ideas. You know,
we've made episodes about a lot of really niche and
obscure topics, but sometimes we come up with an idea
(03:12):
that just doesn't work. You know what I'm talking about? Oh?
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I sure do, because a lot of them are mine.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Okay, I can kick this one off.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
So last winter I thought it would be fun to
do a festive Christmas episode, something you know, for the holidays,
something heartwarming. And I found this amazing story about a
guy in England who found a packet of eighty year
old love letters in his chimney that they had been
burnt a little bit, but he could still read them
and it was like he could unfold this old love
(03:41):
story from decades ago. These people were long gone and
it was just really heartwarming and touching. And that made
me think, what about an episode of the most unexpected
Things people have found in chimneys? Right, because you know,
Santa Claus comes down the chimney. I started to look
into it, and it turns out that the vast majority
of unexpected did things people find in their chimneys are corpses.
(04:04):
I mean, you know, sometimes animals, but also sometimes people.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Okay, animal corpses, human corpses, but always corpses.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
It was just so many corpses it started to not
feel very festive.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, that's that's not very Christmas y. Let's see, Yeah,
I had a couple Nine things are usually where things
kind of fall apart. Those nine things pitches. We come
up with a lot of them, and they sound good
at first, but then you dig into it and it's like, no, no, no.
I had nine things to do inside on a beautiful
summer day. So the idea was just kind of like,
let's stick it to the sun and you know, have
(04:36):
fun indoors.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
What is it just like playing video games, watching.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
That's really what it ended up being, was like just
all the normal things you do inside, whether it's nice
out or not. So that fell apart pretty fast. I
also had one that was like nine single species islands,
small islands that are inhabited by cats or only rabbits
or whatever, and you know, looking into it was just
(05:00):
kind of the same story over and over again. Somebody
put a lot of cats on this little uninhabited island
turned it into a tourist attraction. Brinson repeat, It's.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Just people putting animals where they don't.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Belong, Yeah, and then making money off of it.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
It's not quite as depressing as finding corpses in your chimney,
but it's still not a feel good show.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah. Yeah, it was a little thin. But also one idea,
this is going way back to part time Genius one
point zero. We had this brainstorm dock running list of
everybody suggesting topics, and they were never attributed to who
came up with them, whether as Will or Mangesh or
me or somebody else. There was this one that always
stuck out to me. It was just should I take
(05:39):
a daily vitamin? Are you sure?
Speaker 5 (05:42):
This was on the Brainstorm and not someone trying to
message their doctor.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Oh exactly. I was like, okay, this is one hundred
percent Will and yeah. It was just sort of like,
all right, this is something he meant to ask Siri,
and it just like got added to the Brainstorm doc.
But we never did it. Maybe one day.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Well, speaking of things we've never done but might do one,
I have brought this up a few times and I'll
keep bringing it up probably until someone tells me to stop.
And that is a part time genius musical episode.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So we're singing, or it's about musicals.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
I mean, it could be about musicals. That actually would
be really fun. It could be a musical episode about musicals. See,
this is how our brainstorms work, right, one of us
says a dumb thing and then someone makes it smart. No,
I just think it would be fun.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
You know.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
When we did the twenty five Greatest Science Ideas series,
we had our great friend David Nagler write a song
about the Ottaron particle that was discovered at the Large
Hadron Particle Collider, and it was just so fun to
hear this incredibly complicated physics thing explained through song. And
I thought, what if we did more of that. What
if we had Will and Mangesh singing the information instead
(06:43):
of just talking. Mongsh is not a fan of this,
but I have heard, I have heard from a reliable
source that Will has a very good singing voice.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Really, I did not know that.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
That is what my sources tell me.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
So the dream of the part time Genius musical episode
may not be dead.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, fingers crossed all right? Well, speaking of music, not
too long ago, we did an episode about novelty songs,
but there is one story that was left on the
cutting room floor. It was mostly about NASA's Skylab and
how it crashed to the ground. Believe it or not,
in Australian rock group made a novelty song about Skylab
(07:20):
crashing and that's because it landed in Australia. Back in
nineteen seventy three, NASA had just launched the Skylab missions,
which were kind of bridging the gap between the Apollo
and Space Shuttle programs. They sent up this big space station.
It weighed more than eighty tons and it was built
to sustain a three person crew for an extended period
(07:40):
of time, and NASA wanted to use this for three
Skylab missions with three different crews of three astronauts each time.
So they did these three missions, and the station still
had plenty of supplies left on board, and NASA had
already begun planning for a fourth mission. But that's not
really how things shook out. The space station orbit began
(08:01):
to decay much earlier than anticipated, and the increased amount
of drag on Skylab caused it to lose altitude and
it re entered or its atmosphere a full four years
ahead of schedule. It ended up crashing into the Indian Ocean,
and all this debris kind of rained down on this
rural part of Western Australia.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
How did that become a novelty song?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
There was a hotel in this tiny town called Balladonia.
It was pelted with debris, and actually President Jimmy Carter
called up and apologized to the hotel owners. He's like,
I'm so sorry this happened.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Can you imagine getting that phone call?
Speaker 5 (08:39):
I know, right, mister President, you need to come over
here and clean up your space debris right now.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah. Well, well that's another funny thing is there was
another small town called Esperance, and they were so like
put off by all this wreckage, like raining down in
their jurisdiction. That they actually hit the US State Department
with a four hundred dollars fine for literary awesome. The government,
to its shane did not fit the bill.
Speaker 5 (09:05):
Wait, so we still owe Australia four hundred dollars for littering.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, actually, in two thousand and nine, a California DJ
named Scott Barley he finally like righted this wrong by
collecting donations from his listeners and then he cut the
town a check.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Well, so it's all a musical. It was a DJ.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
This is all a musical story, okay, all right, So
I got to know, how did this turn into a
novelty song?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
So after all this debris rains down on this hotel
in Balladonia and President Carter calls to apologize. Balladonia was
kind of, you know, on the world stage after that,
and it became a popular tourist destination. Of course, they
had collected the debris that fell there and kind of
put it on display. This Australian rock group called Family
capitalized on it wrote a song titled the Ballad of
(09:51):
a Balladonia Night aka the Skylab Song, and it became
the year's summer anthem in Australia.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Do you happen to have a c of this that
we can listen to?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
You know, Mary, I'm glad you brought that up because
I do.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Nice Jamie Bam Oh the sky Wow.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
That was incredible. That may be my song of the
summer here in twenty twenty five. I am so glad
I know about this. Now let's bring it back all right, Well,
this is not music related, but it is art related.
A few weeks ago we had the author Cy Montgomery
on the show to talk about her book What the
Chicken Knows, really really great book.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
I read it, did some research about chickens, and then
I kind of kept doing research about chickens even after
we had finished preparing for the interview. I started wondering
about chickens in art. And by that, Gabe, I do
not mean chickens who make art, although I'm sure that
is a thing, and.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That's another episode, yep.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
I was more interested in the idea of chickens represented
in art. Surely people have represented chickens in visual arts,
and guess what they have. There's a mural in Poland
that is a picture of a woman holding a chicken,
and it's apparently based on a famous Polish children's story
about a hen that tries to run away from home
and its owner who goes after it. I believe it's
(11:29):
called Madame Chicken is the name of the mural. But
my favorite was a painting by the Filipino artist Anita
Megsi Si Ho, and it's called Catching Chickens and this
is beautiful. It is a picture of women with chickens
all around their feet and they're dancing, they're holding baskets,
they're scooping up the chickens. It's just so joyous, and
(11:49):
there's so much movement and light in the painting you
just kind of want to climb into it. And so
I'd never heard of this artist before, so I started
looking into her, and Anita MgSi Si Hoe was this
credible pioneer of modern art in the Philippines. She was
a twentieth century painter at a time when there were
not a lot of prominent women painters working in the Philippines.
My favorite detail about her is that she had five children.
(12:12):
Her family moved around constantly because of her husband's job.
In spite of that, wherever she went, she was sure
to set up a little work area where she could
keep painting, and so she was incredibly prolific, and today
she's regarded as one of the giants of modern art
in the Philippines. But here it gets even better. She
was known for working in egg tempera.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
What what is that?
Speaker 5 (12:35):
It's basically a pigment that is mixed with egg yolk
as a binder. It's very very difficult to work with
because it dries really quickly. You have to work in
very small sections, and it's much harder to control the
consistency compared to something like oil paint. But the big
benefit of egg tempera is that it has this luminous,
lifelike quality. A lot of Renaissance art actually was painted
(12:56):
in egg tempera, especially things on panels, like wooden things.
It sticks to the wood very well, kind of like glue,
and it gives this inner glow, this life to the image.
And unlike oil, egg tempera colors don't change over time.
They're very color fast.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
That's amazing. Why don't all artists use that?
Speaker 5 (13:12):
Like I said, it's very tricky to work with, but
I just I love that. This book about chickens sent
me on this journey through chicken art, all the way
through this incredible artist who I'd never heard of and
is now probably one of my favorite artists. And now
this paint Egg tempera that I had never heard of.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, and I'm glad you got to share that. I'm
glad we found an outlet for it because I'm going
to look her up too, and I bet a lot
of listeners will as well.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Yeah, we'll put a link in the show notes.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
Okay, have you got another fact for us that didn't
make it into an episode?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I do. Yeah. So we recently did an Inside Baseball episode.
I am not a baseball fan, but I am a
huge fan of all the baseball traditions, the lore, the
organ music, the snacks, all of that kind of stuff.
I'm also just a big fan of very strange baseball stories.
And there was one that we just didn't have room for,
so it ended up on the cutting room floor. It
(14:02):
happened back in nineteen eighty three, and it was when
Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield was arrested for accidentally killing a seagull.
So this happened during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays,
and this was at the team's exhibition stadium in Canada.
And a little background here. Toronto's population of ring build
seagulls had risen dramatically that year and had gone from
(14:25):
ten thousand gulls to nearly two hundred thousand. Why and
I don't know why I couldn't find that out.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
If anyone in Toronto knows about this seagull population issue,
please please let us.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Know, please, what was going on that year. So anyway,
because the ballpark was located like just offshore of Lake Ontario,
the birds would often flock there in droves, and occasionally
one of the gulls would land like right on the field,
and fans would cheer and laugh, and the players would
get a little annoyed. But you know, whatever, it happened.
But on this one night in August of nineteen eighty three,
(14:59):
there was this particular seagull who landed on the field
early in the game and he just stayed there. Some
people thought he might be sick. They said, he didn't
really look very well, he looked a little shaky, and
he just like didn't move an inch. So at the
top of the fifth inning he's sitting there right on
the field. The Yankees took the field. They started doing
their practice throws and that kind of stuff, and after
(15:22):
warming up in the outfield, Winfield threw the ball that
he had been using back towards the dugout and accidentally
struck the seagull in the neck and it died instantly.
Fans began booing Windfield, you know, assuming that he had
done this on purpose. They were, I guess it was
like rubber ball night at the stadium or something. They
were throwing rubber balls at him, and so, you know,
(15:43):
a moment later, I think it was, the bat boy
runs onto the field, covers the dead gull with a
towel and like carries it off, you know, and every
just really heartbreaking. Right in the middle of the game.
They continued to play, you know, as normal, and the
Yankees actually went on to win three to one. But
once it was over, Winfield went back to the clubhouse
(16:04):
and was approached by Canadian police. They put him under
arrest for killing a ring builled seagull, which, as it
turned out, was a protected bird under Canadian law.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
It wasn't just any seagull, it.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Was nationally protected species. They took him down to Toronto's
police station. He was charged with causing the unnecessary suffering
of an animal that carried a five hundred dollars fine
and up to six months in prison. In a nice
show of goodwill, the Blue Jays general manager paid the
five hundred dollars bond to get Winfield released. So he
(16:37):
got out and was supposed to come back like a
week later to stand trial. But in the meantime a
bird autopsy was conducted.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
They actually they kept the bird. They kept the body.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yes, the police collected it from the Toronto Humane Society
and sent it to the University of Golf in Ontario
for a full autopsy. While they're looking the bird over,
the charge were eventually dropped. Winfield had talked to the reporters.
He made it clear this was an accident. I did
not mean to kill the seagull. So they dropped the
(17:09):
charges and that ended up being the right decision because
once the autopsy report came back, it turned out that
everyone had been correct. The bird was quite unwell. The
report concluded that although the bird did die from blunt
force trauma, it almost certainly would have died anyway within
like a week, so to show there were no hard feelings,
Winfield returned to Toronto. He went back a few months later,
(17:31):
he did a charity dinner and he even brought a
special painting that he had commissioned to be auctioned off.
It depicted a seagull standing in front of a red
maple leaf, with two other goals flying over the shore
of a lake, and at the bottom there was an
inscription that read to the Canadian people committed to the
preservation of their values and resources.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
That is incredible, and again it goes back to.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Bird Art, Bird Art. There we go, all right, we need.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
To take a quick break, but when we come back,
we have more bonus facts, including a statue that's been
through a lot and some buildings that are getting cooler
thanks to a very old technology.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm Gabe and I'm
here with Mary and we're opening the fact vault today
to share some of the things that didn't make it
into our regular episodes. So, Mary, what's your next cutting
room floor fact?
Speaker 5 (18:33):
Okay, so we have an episode about climate resilience, which
is of course the ways in which people around the
world are using technology, engineering and general ingenuity to protect
themselves and their homes and their communities from climate change.
And I found this fact that I think about all
the time because I have a plant pot in my apartment.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Do you have a plant pot in your apartment?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
I have pots with plants in them. Is that different? No? No?
Speaker 4 (18:58):
No, A pot that you put a plant in?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Oh? Perfect, Yeah, I got them.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
They're often made of terra cotta, which is that sort
of orangish beige material that is really good for plants.
And one of the reasons it's good for plants is
that it's absorbent. It absorbs and holds water, and that's
also why it's great for cooling. Tarracotta has been used
for thousands of years in India to keep water cool
because when you fill up in terracotta jug with water,
a certain percentage of that water gets absorbed and then
(19:24):
it evaporates. As it evaporates, it keeps the remaining water
in the jug cool. So people have been doing this
in lieu of refrigeration for a long time. Recently, an
architecture studio in New Delhi came up with a way
to use terracotta to cool buildings. They had a client
who was a manufacturer and they had these diesel generators
that were creating a lot of heat in the building,
(19:45):
and it was making things too hot for the workers.
And if we were just trying to combat that with
air conditioning, it would cost a ton of money and
be really bad for the environment.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
So what they did was they manufactured eight hundred big
tubes of terracotta that they arranged around a stainless steel framework,
and then they pumped recycled water over the terra cotta.
As the water evaporated out of this terracotta structure, it
sent cool air out and around the area and actually
brought the temperature down by several degrees, making it more
(20:16):
comfortable for people who are working there. So they've actually
been able to replicate this in dozens of buildings around India,
mostly commercial spaces, but also schools, even airports.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So again I have to ask, just like with the
egg tempera, why doesn't everybody use this?
Speaker 5 (20:32):
It takes up a lot of room, right, It's a
larger installation. It's not like a compact little thing, and
you know, you need engineering techniques that maybe people aren't
willing to invest in everywhere. But I'm glad you asked,
because some people have been experimenting with this idea. Even more,
some engineering students in India have built a terracotta air conditioner,
which is a smaller unit where a fan sucks in
(20:54):
air and then blows that air over damp terracotta right,
because again, the evaporation is just like a cooling system,
and they've been able to bring air down in a
room by almost three degrees fahnheit, which isn't a lot,
but if it's really hot, that three degrees can make
a big difference. Absolutely, So, Gabe, you've got one more
extra fact, let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So we did an episode not too long ago in
our travelogue series about the nation of Denmark, and that's
one of the places I actually have been able to visit.
I got to go there a few years ago toward
Copenhagen myself, and there is one city attraction that I
just couldn't quite fit into the script, but I really
wanted to talk about it. It is the Little Mermaid
(21:36):
statue that sits in Copenhagen Harbor. It's been there for
over a century at this point, and it has been
through a lot during that time.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
The Little Mermaid, who is the author.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Hans Christian Anderson right, of course. Yeah, famous Danish writer
Little Mermaid, the Ugly duck Lane Thumbelina, Little match Girl. Yeah,
kind of a national treasure of Denmark. And so this
statue was actually unveiled in nineteen thirteen. It was a
gift from a Danish brewer named Carl Jacobsen. He gave
it to the city of Copenhagen after falling in love
(22:10):
with the character of the Little Mermaid after watching a
ballet performance at the Royal Danish Theater, and so he
commissioned a sculptor named Edward Erickson to create this three
hundred and eighty five pound bronze sculpture of the title character.
He wanted the ballet dancer who played the Little Mermaid
to pose for it, but she refused to pose in
(22:31):
the nude, and so instead the sculptor enlisted his wife,
and so they put this four hundred pound bronze sculpture
on a granite rock in the Copenhagen Harbor and it's
been there ever since. And along the way it's been
a frequent target of vandalism by really like all sorts
of different protest groups. So his poor Mermaid has been
(22:53):
decapitated twice, covered in paint and graffiti. Multiple times, she
had an arm sawn on off. At one point she
was painted red as part of an anti whaling protest.
She's been covered in graffiti with messages like in twenty
twenty somebody tagged her with a kind of confusing inscription,
(23:13):
dubbing her a racist fish. And people don't really know,
you know what any of this has to do with
the Little Mermaid or with Hans Christian Anderson. He hasn't
really been accused of racism or anything in his works.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
Does Copenhagen just keep fixing the statue? Do they just
keep going out there and cleaning off the graffiti and
replacing the head and all of this.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, again and again they've had the retrieve her body
parts from the water, scrub or clean. Actually, when I
was there, this was I think twenty twenty three, you
could still see the faded letters of racist fish. It's
all leaving a mark, unfortunately. But the thing that makes
it extra sad for me is if you are familiar
with Hans Christian Andersen's version of this story, and not
(23:54):
just the Disney one, you know that the Mermaid and
the story had a pretty rough time too, it's a
much darker tail. She has her tongue cut out. The
Prince does not choose her in the end. So it's
just a little extra tragic when you look at what
the character has been through to see that sort of
repeated on the statue. So if anyone's listening in Copenhagen,
(24:15):
please stop, please a little Mournee has been through enough.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
She's been through enough.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
All right, Well, I would like to turn now to
an update from an episode that came out not too
long ago, and it was nine extremely Valuable Facts about Pennies.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Do you remember that episode?
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, I love that one, Okay.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
In that episode, of course, we talked about the fact
that there is a move to get rid of the
penny in the United States, and that's actually been going on.
Several presidents have brought that up. It's come up time
and time again. But now there is officially a bill
that has been introduced in the United States Senate to
formally eliminate the penny. And this is a bipartisan bill
brought by Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mike Lee of
(24:52):
Utah and Gabe. They have called it the makes Sense
not Sense act o that's worse. In the press release
announcing this act, Merkley said, and I quote, it's the
opposite of common sense for taxpayers dollars to fund wasteful
spending like producing pennies.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Wow, they doubled down on that. They were so proud
of it.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
I would like to introduce a bill to eliminate lazy
punning by elected officials. It does not serve our country,
It does not send a good message to our children.
Puns are fine, but God put in a little more
effort than that.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I second thought, with a brave stance, Mary.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
If I ever run for office, that's going to be
That's gonna be my one and only platform.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
All right?
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Should we tell people some teasers about some things that
we are working on right now that they can look
forward to.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Should we do that? Should we be that generous?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah? Should we pull back the curtain a little bit?
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I think we should because Will and Mango are sipping
tropical drinks and a hammock, I believe, and we're here,
so let's do what we want. I know you're working
on an episode that we're very excited about. You want
to tell us a little bit about it.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
We had a listener suggests that we do an episode
all about three D printing, and I'm happy to say
that is in the works. I think a lot of
people still treat it as a new emerging technology, but
really it came about back in the eighties and it's
not just a printing plastic anymore. We've moved on from
there and there's some fun historical connections that we're going
(26:16):
to get into in that episode. So definitely look forward
to that one.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Oh that's great.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Well, I can tell you I am really excited about
an episode we have coming up that's all about puppets.
Puppets have an incredible rich history. I mean, it's obviously
Sesame Street the Muppets, we all know them, we all
love them, but puppets have a long history in many
civilizations and cultures around the world, used for theater, for politics,
all kinds of things. It's a very I mean, it's
one of those episodes that I feel like could easily
(26:43):
become an hour long. It won't, don't worry. But there's
so much to talk about. And I'm particularly excited because
I do have a friend who is really passionate about puppetry,
and she builds and makes puppets for performances that are incredible,
and she's done them for science education, she's used them
for all all kinds of things. So just personally, I
am excited to be able to send a friend an
(27:03):
episode that's going to be right up her alley.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
And I think that happens a lot with this show.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
People find a topic and they know someone who's really
into that one topic, and they send them that episode.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah, and I'm really looking forward to that one too,
really really interesting stuff. And I know normally we end
an episode with a fact off, but we've had a
lot of facts today, So why don't we head down
to the rec center for some recommendations instead? What do
you say?
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Sounds good.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
That? So my recommendation for today is that listeners reacquaint
themselves with the Looney Tunes. A lot of people don't
know that in this year, twenty twenty five, there was
a new theatrical Looney Tunes movie. I did not know
that it already came and went from theaters. It was
(27:54):
called The Day the Earth Blew Up, starring Daffy Duck
and Porky Pig. This was a hand drawn, beach er
length film. It didn't have a lot of advertising. It
came and went, but critics loved it, animators love it,
and I believe it's available on streaming now, so people
should check that out. And also there's a new Blu
Ray collection, the Classic Looney Tunes. It's a collection of
(28:17):
I think about forty or so of the shorts that
have been newly restored, never released on Blu Ray before.
The Looney Tunes are fun for people really of all ages.
That's something I think a lot of people forget. They
were shown in front of movies back in the day.
Looney Tunes laid in front of everything, whether you were seeing,
you know, a romantic comedy or a horror movie or whatever,
(28:37):
and everybody in the audience laughed. Maybe recreate those pre
shows at home. Watch a Looney Tunes before you start
a movie. You know you're watching a movie from nineteen
thirty nine, Watch a Looney Tunes it was made that
same year. Or you can go about its thematically too.
If you're watching a Western, watch something with Yosemite Sam
or Wiley Coyote or something like that. Yeah, it sounds storky,
(28:57):
sounds nerdy, and it is, but it's also a lot of.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
I mean this is part time genius. I think everyone
is okay with nerdy.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
A lot of who things here?
Speaker 5 (29:04):
Help me if they're not, they're not listening at this point.
I love that, Gabe, Thank you for that recommendation. We
watch a lot of movies in my house, so that's
a really great idea.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
All right, Mary, what did you want to recommend?
Speaker 5 (29:13):
This did come up in the Novelty Songs episode that
you mentioned earlier, which is a study showing that our
brains crave novelty. It's not good for us to be
doing and hearing and seeing the same thing over and
over and over. So some way to shake that up
is actually really good for us. So I'm going to
recommend It's not a product, it's not a service. It's
just a thing you can do, and that is taking
(29:35):
a different route to your destination every time. So we
all have places that we go on a regular basis.
You go to the grocery store, you go to your gym,
you go to your kid's school, you go to your workplace,
whatever it is, if possible, take a different route there
every time. So I live in New York City. I
walk everywhere, and there are places that I have to
walk all the time. And my plan is when I
(29:56):
am leaving my apartment, I know where I have to go,
and instead of going the same way, I'll go down
one block and then over another, and then kind of
down a few more blocks and then over and then
down and over.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
I'll zigzag around the grid.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
The reason I do it is because it makes you
more aware of what's going on.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
You notice things.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
You see a plant in a window that you never
noticed before, You noticed a business that you hadn't seen.
And even when I'm not consciously aware that I am
seeing different things, I often feel more alert when I'm
doing it, you know, because you can just go on autopilot.
It's very easy to go on autopilot. And I find
that when I am making an effort to go a
different way every time, I actually feel more in tune
(30:37):
with my own brain.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
I love that mix it up a little bit, boost
your brain.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
I mean, obviously, if you're in a rush and you
know you got the shortest route, do that. But if
you have a little time and you have the ability,
given your commute, pick a different route. You know, at
the end of the fact off someone usually gets a trophy.
But the great thing about the rec center is we're
all winners here, right.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, that's right, So congratulations everybody that's going to do
it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe on your
favorite podcast platform and follow us on Instagram at part
Time Genius, Will and Mango will be back next week
with a brand new episode, and in the meantime, from Mary,
Dylan and Me, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongaschatikler
and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the Wonderful of Dylan
Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive
produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with
(31:51):
social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and
Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Guess What, Mango? What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Will?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
On average, an episode of Part Time Genius contains nineteen.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Point four facts.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I bet you actually didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I did not know that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Is that true? I'll be honest, I just made it
up now.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
That is unlike the facts and stories we share on
this show, which are carefully, some might say, obsessively researched.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, obviously, I mean that's part of the fun we
have doing what we do, right, researching all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
No, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
But what a lot of people might not realize is
that research often takes us down some very deep, twisty
rabbit holes, and in the interest of not making, you know,
a podcast episode that's three hours long, sometimes we have
to cut stuff where sometimes there's a topic that's just
so interesting we keep thinking about it even after the
episode comes out.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I mean there's also a thing that happens where we
have an idea for an episode and we get super
excited about it, but then it turns out there's like
not quite enough to make it work, but it's still
really fascinating and we have nowhere to share that stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yep, that also happens. And so what all this means
is that at any given moment, we've got a pile
of stories that our listeners haven't heard. And I like
to think of this as a strategic fact reserve. And
so today we're going to give you a peek inside
that vault. So for this episode, Mango and I are
kicking up our heels and we're turning things over to
Gabe and Mary, our producers who help us out with
(01:41):
all of that research. They've got some bonus facts from
earlier episodes, a few updates on some new things that
we've learned, and if they're feeling generous, they might even
give you a little preview of some topics we're working
on for later this year. So sit back, relax, Grab
a drink with a tiny umbrella in it. That's what
Mango and I are doing right now, actually, and let's
dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I
am not Will Pearson, and I'm not here with Mangusha Ticketter. Instead,
i'm producer Gabe and I'm here with producer Mary.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
That's right, and over there in the booth wearing a
mask of his own face. It's our friend and fellow producer,
Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Are you sure that's really Dylan under the mask? How
can we tell?
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Well, he's also wearing a T shirt that says this
really is Dylan, So yeah, a T shirt wouldn't lie.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Right right? Of course I always forget that. But anyway,
I'm pretty excited about today's episode. We have a bunch
of great bonus facts that just didn't fit into an
episode for one reason or another. But before we get
into that, I thought it might be fun to talk
a little bit about some failed episode ideas. You know,
we've made episodes about a lot of really niche and
obscure topics, but sometimes we come up with an idea
(03:12):
that just doesn't work. You know what I'm talking about? Oh?
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I sure do, because a lot of them are mine.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Okay, I can kick this one off.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
So last winter I thought it would be fun to
do a festive Christmas episode, something you know, for the holidays,
something heartwarming. And I found this amazing story about a
guy in England who found a packet of eighty year
old love letters in his chimney that they had been
burnt a little bit, but he could still read them
and it was like he could unfold this old love
(03:41):
story from decades ago. These people were long gone and
it was just really heartwarming and touching. And that made
me think, what about an episode of the most unexpected
Things people have found in chimneys? Right, because you know,
Santa Claus comes down the chimney. I started to look
into it, and it turns out that the vast majority
of unexpected did things people find in their chimneys are corpses.
(04:04):
I mean, you know, sometimes animals, but also sometimes people.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Okay, animal corpses, human corpses, but always corpses.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
It was just so many corpses it started to not
feel very festive.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, that's that's not very Christmas y. Let's see, Yeah,
I had a couple Nine things are usually where things
kind of fall apart. Those nine things pitches. We come
up with a lot of them, and they sound good
at first, but then you dig into it and it's like, no, no, no.
I had nine things to do inside on a beautiful
summer day. So the idea was just kind of like,
let's stick it to the sun and you know, have
(04:36):
fun indoors.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
What is it just like playing video games, watching.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
That's really what it ended up being, was like just
all the normal things you do inside, whether it's nice
out or not. So that fell apart pretty fast. I
also had one that was like nine single species islands,
small islands that are inhabited by cats or only rabbits
or whatever, and you know, looking into it was just
(05:00):
kind of the same story over and over again. Somebody
put a lot of cats on this little uninhabited island
turned it into a tourist attraction. Brinson repeat, It's.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Just people putting animals where they don't.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Belong, Yeah, and then making money off of it.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
It's not quite as depressing as finding corpses in your chimney,
but it's still not a feel good show.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah. Yeah, it was a little thin. But also one idea,
this is going way back to part time Genius one
point zero. We had this brainstorm dock running list of
everybody suggesting topics, and they were never attributed to who
came up with them, whether as Will or Mangesh or
me or somebody else. There was this one that always
stuck out to me. It was just should I take
(05:39):
a daily vitamin? Are you sure?
Speaker 5 (05:42):
This was on the Brainstorm and not someone trying to
message their doctor.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Oh exactly. I was like, okay, this is one hundred
percent Will and yeah. It was just sort of like,
all right, this is something he meant to ask Siri,
and it just like got added to the Brainstorm doc.
But we never did it. Maybe one day.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Well, speaking of things we've never done but might do one,
I have brought this up a few times and I'll
keep bringing it up probably until someone tells me to stop.
And that is a part time genius musical episode.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So we're singing, or it's about musicals.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
I mean, it could be about musicals. That actually would
be really fun. It could be a musical episode about musicals. See,
this is how our brainstorms work, right, one of us
says a dumb thing and then someone makes it smart. No,
I just think it would be fun.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
You know.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
When we did the twenty five Greatest Science Ideas series,
we had our great friend David Nagler write a song
about the Ottaron particle that was discovered at the Large
Hadron Particle Collider, and it was just so fun to
hear this incredibly complicated physics thing explained through song. And
I thought, what if we did more of that. What
if we had Will and Mangesh singing the information instead
(06:43):
of just talking. Mongsh is not a fan of this,
but I have heard, I have heard from a reliable
source that Will has a very good singing voice.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Really, I did not know that.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
That is what my sources tell me.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
So the dream of the part time Genius musical episode
may not be dead.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, fingers crossed all right? Well, speaking of music, not
too long ago, we did an episode about novelty songs,
but there is one story that was left on the
cutting room floor. It was mostly about NASA's Skylab and
how it crashed to the ground. Believe it or not,
in Australian rock group made a novelty song about Skylab
(07:20):
crashing and that's because it landed in Australia. Back in
nineteen seventy three, NASA had just launched the Skylab missions,
which were kind of bridging the gap between the Apollo
and Space Shuttle programs. They sent up this big space station.
It weighed more than eighty tons and it was built
to sustain a three person crew for an extended period
(07:40):
of time, and NASA wanted to use this for three
Skylab missions with three different crews of three astronauts each time.
So they did these three missions, and the station still
had plenty of supplies left on board, and NASA had
already begun planning for a fourth mission. But that's not
really how things shook out. The space station orbit began
(08:01):
to decay much earlier than anticipated, and the increased amount
of drag on Skylab caused it to lose altitude and
it re entered or its atmosphere a full four years
ahead of schedule. It ended up crashing into the Indian Ocean,
and all this debris kind of rained down on this
rural part of Western Australia.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
How did that become a novelty song?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
There was a hotel in this tiny town called Balladonia.
It was pelted with debris, and actually President Jimmy Carter
called up and apologized to the hotel owners. He's like,
I'm so sorry this happened.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Can you imagine getting that phone call?
Speaker 5 (08:39):
I know, right, mister President, you need to come over
here and clean up your space debris right now.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah. Well, well that's another funny thing is there was
another small town called Esperance, and they were so like
put off by all this wreckage, like raining down in
their jurisdiction. That they actually hit the US State Department
with a four hundred dollars fine for literary awesome. The government,
to its shane did not fit the bill.
Speaker 5 (09:05):
Wait, so we still owe Australia four hundred dollars for littering.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, actually, in two thousand and nine, a California DJ
named Scott Barley he finally like righted this wrong by
collecting donations from his listeners and then he cut the
town a check.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Well, so it's all a musical. It was a DJ.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
This is all a musical story, okay, all right, So
I got to know, how did this turn into a
novelty song?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
So after all this debris rains down on this hotel
in Balladonia and President Carter calls to apologize. Balladonia was
kind of, you know, on the world stage after that,
and it became a popular tourist destination. Of course, they
had collected the debris that fell there and kind of
put it on display. This Australian rock group called Family
capitalized on it wrote a song titled the Ballad of
(09:51):
a Balladonia Night aka the Skylab Song, and it became
the year's summer anthem in Australia.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Do you happen to have a c of this that
we can listen to?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
You know, Mary, I'm glad you brought that up because
I do.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Nice Jamie Bam Oh the sky Wow.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
That was incredible. That may be my song of the
summer here in twenty twenty five. I am so glad
I know about this. Now let's bring it back all right, Well,
this is not music related, but it is art related.
A few weeks ago we had the author Cy Montgomery
on the show to talk about her book What the
Chicken Knows, really really great book.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
I read it, did some research about chickens, and then
I kind of kept doing research about chickens even after
we had finished preparing for the interview. I started wondering
about chickens in art. And by that, Gabe, I do
not mean chickens who make art, although I'm sure that
is a thing, and.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That's another episode, yep.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
I was more interested in the idea of chickens represented
in art. Surely people have represented chickens in visual arts,
and guess what they have. There's a mural in Poland
that is a picture of a woman holding a chicken,
and it's apparently based on a famous Polish children's story
about a hen that tries to run away from home
and its owner who goes after it. I believe it's
(11:29):
called Madame Chicken is the name of the mural. But
my favorite was a painting by the Filipino artist Anita
Megsi Si Ho, and it's called Catching Chickens and this
is beautiful. It is a picture of women with chickens
all around their feet and they're dancing, they're holding baskets,
they're scooping up the chickens. It's just so joyous, and
(11:49):
there's so much movement and light in the painting you
just kind of want to climb into it. And so
I'd never heard of this artist before, so I started
looking into her, and Anita MgSi Si Hoe was this
credible pioneer of modern art in the Philippines. She was
a twentieth century painter at a time when there were
not a lot of prominent women painters working in the Philippines.
My favorite detail about her is that she had five children.
(12:12):
Her family moved around constantly because of her husband's job.
In spite of that, wherever she went, she was sure
to set up a little work area where she could
keep painting, and so she was incredibly prolific, and today
she's regarded as one of the giants of modern art
in the Philippines. But here it gets even better. She
was known for working in egg tempera.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
What what is that?
Speaker 5 (12:35):
It's basically a pigment that is mixed with egg yolk
as a binder. It's very very difficult to work with
because it dries really quickly. You have to work in
very small sections, and it's much harder to control the
consistency compared to something like oil paint. But the big
benefit of egg tempera is that it has this luminous,
lifelike quality. A lot of Renaissance art actually was painted
(12:56):
in egg tempera, especially things on panels, like wooden things.
It sticks to the wood very well, kind of like glue,
and it gives this inner glow, this life to the image.
And unlike oil, egg tempera colors don't change over time.
They're very color fast.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
That's amazing. Why don't all artists use that?
Speaker 5 (13:12):
Like I said, it's very tricky to work with, but
I just I love that. This book about chickens sent
me on this journey through chicken art, all the way
through this incredible artist who I'd never heard of and
is now probably one of my favorite artists. And now
this paint Egg tempera that I had never heard of.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, and I'm glad you got to share that. I'm
glad we found an outlet for it because I'm going
to look her up too, and I bet a lot
of listeners will as well.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Yeah, we'll put a link in the show notes.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
Okay, have you got another fact for us that didn't
make it into an episode?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I do. Yeah. So we recently did an Inside Baseball episode.
I am not a baseball fan, but I am a
huge fan of all the baseball traditions, the lore, the
organ music, the snacks, all of that kind of stuff.
I'm also just a big fan of very strange baseball stories.
And there was one that we just didn't have room for,
so it ended up on the cutting room floor. It
(14:02):
happened back in nineteen eighty three, and it was when
Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield was arrested for accidentally killing a seagull.
So this happened during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays,
and this was at the team's exhibition stadium in Canada.
And a little background here. Toronto's population of ring build
seagulls had risen dramatically that year and had gone from
(14:25):
ten thousand gulls to nearly two hundred thousand. Why and
I don't know why I couldn't find that out.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
If anyone in Toronto knows about this seagull population issue,
please please let us.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Know, please, what was going on that year. So anyway,
because the ballpark was located like just offshore of Lake Ontario,
the birds would often flock there in droves, and occasionally
one of the gulls would land like right on the field,
and fans would cheer and laugh, and the players would
get a little annoyed. But you know, whatever, it happened.
But on this one night in August of nineteen eighty three,
(14:59):
there was this particular seagull who landed on the field
early in the game and he just stayed there. Some
people thought he might be sick. They said, he didn't
really look very well, he looked a little shaky, and
he just like didn't move an inch. So at the
top of the fifth inning he's sitting there right on
the field. The Yankees took the field. They started doing
their practice throws and that kind of stuff, and after
(15:22):
warming up in the outfield, Winfield threw the ball that
he had been using back towards the dugout and accidentally
struck the seagull in the neck and it died instantly.
Fans began booing Windfield, you know, assuming that he had
done this on purpose. They were, I guess it was
like rubber ball night at the stadium or something. They
were throwing rubber balls at him, and so, you know,
(15:43):
a moment later, I think it was, the bat boy
runs onto the field, covers the dead gull with a
towel and like carries it off, you know, and every
just really heartbreaking. Right in the middle of the game.
They continued to play, you know, as normal, and the
Yankees actually went on to win three to one. But
once it was over, Winfield went back to the clubhouse
(16:04):
and was approached by Canadian police. They put him under
arrest for killing a ring builled seagull, which, as it
turned out, was a protected bird under Canadian law.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
It wasn't just any seagull, it.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Was nationally protected species. They took him down to Toronto's
police station. He was charged with causing the unnecessary suffering
of an animal that carried a five hundred dollars fine
and up to six months in prison. In a nice
show of goodwill, the Blue Jays general manager paid the
five hundred dollars bond to get Winfield released. So he
(16:37):
got out and was supposed to come back like a
week later to stand trial. But in the meantime a
bird autopsy was conducted.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
They actually they kept the bird. They kept the body.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yes, the police collected it from the Toronto Humane Society
and sent it to the University of Golf in Ontario
for a full autopsy. While they're looking the bird over,
the charge were eventually dropped. Winfield had talked to the reporters.
He made it clear this was an accident. I did
not mean to kill the seagull. So they dropped the
(17:09):
charges and that ended up being the right decision because
once the autopsy report came back, it turned out that
everyone had been correct. The bird was quite unwell. The
report concluded that although the bird did die from blunt
force trauma, it almost certainly would have died anyway within
like a week, so to show there were no hard feelings,
Winfield returned to Toronto. He went back a few months later,
(17:31):
he did a charity dinner and he even brought a
special painting that he had commissioned to be auctioned off.
It depicted a seagull standing in front of a red
maple leaf, with two other goals flying over the shore
of a lake, and at the bottom there was an
inscription that read to the Canadian people committed to the
preservation of their values and resources.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
That is incredible, and again it goes back to.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Bird Art, Bird Art. There we go, all right, we need.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
To take a quick break, but when we come back,
we have more bonus facts, including a statue that's been
through a lot and some buildings that are getting cooler
thanks to a very old technology.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm Gabe and I'm
here with Mary and we're opening the fact vault today
to share some of the things that didn't make it
into our regular episodes. So, Mary, what's your next cutting
room floor fact?
Speaker 5 (18:33):
Okay, so we have an episode about climate resilience, which
is of course the ways in which people around the
world are using technology, engineering and general ingenuity to protect
themselves and their homes and their communities from climate change.
And I found this fact that I think about all
the time because I have a plant pot in my apartment.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Do you have a plant pot in your apartment?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
I have pots with plants in them. Is that different? No? No?
Speaker 4 (18:58):
No, A pot that you put a plant in?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Oh? Perfect, Yeah, I got them.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
They're often made of terra cotta, which is that sort
of orangish beige material that is really good for plants.
And one of the reasons it's good for plants is
that it's absorbent. It absorbs and holds water, and that's
also why it's great for cooling. Tarracotta has been used
for thousands of years in India to keep water cool
because when you fill up in terracotta jug with water,
a certain percentage of that water gets absorbed and then
(19:24):
it evaporates. As it evaporates, it keeps the remaining water
in the jug cool. So people have been doing this
in lieu of refrigeration for a long time. Recently, an
architecture studio in New Delhi came up with a way
to use terracotta to cool buildings. They had a client
who was a manufacturer and they had these diesel generators
that were creating a lot of heat in the building,
(19:45):
and it was making things too hot for the workers.
And if we were just trying to combat that with
air conditioning, it would cost a ton of money and
be really bad for the environment.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
So what they did was they manufactured eight hundred big
tubes of terracotta that they arranged around a stainless steel framework,
and then they pumped recycled water over the terra cotta.
As the water evaporated out of this terracotta structure, it
sent cool air out and around the area and actually
brought the temperature down by several degrees, making it more
(20:16):
comfortable for people who are working there. So they've actually
been able to replicate this in dozens of buildings around India,
mostly commercial spaces, but also schools, even airports.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So again I have to ask, just like with the
egg tempera, why doesn't everybody use this?
Speaker 5 (20:32):
It takes up a lot of room, right, It's a
larger installation. It's not like a compact little thing, and
you know, you need engineering techniques that maybe people aren't
willing to invest in everywhere. But I'm glad you asked,
because some people have been experimenting with this idea. Even more,
some engineering students in India have built a terracotta air conditioner,
which is a smaller unit where a fan sucks in
(20:54):
air and then blows that air over damp terracotta right,
because again, the evaporation is just like a cooling system,
and they've been able to bring air down in a
room by almost three degrees fahnheit, which isn't a lot,
but if it's really hot, that three degrees can make
a big difference. Absolutely, So, Gabe, you've got one more
extra fact, let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So we did an episode not too long ago in
our travelogue series about the nation of Denmark, and that's
one of the places I actually have been able to visit.
I got to go there a few years ago toward
Copenhagen myself, and there is one city attraction that I
just couldn't quite fit into the script, but I really
wanted to talk about it. It is the Little Mermaid
(21:36):
statue that sits in Copenhagen Harbor. It's been there for
over a century at this point, and it has been
through a lot during that time.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
The Little Mermaid, who is the author.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Hans Christian Anderson right, of course. Yeah, famous Danish writer
Little Mermaid, the Ugly duck Lane Thumbelina, Little match Girl. Yeah,
kind of a national treasure of Denmark. And so this
statue was actually unveiled in nineteen thirteen. It was a
gift from a Danish brewer named Carl Jacobsen. He gave
it to the city of Copenhagen after falling in love
(22:10):
with the character of the Little Mermaid after watching a
ballet performance at the Royal Danish Theater, and so he
commissioned a sculptor named Edward Erickson to create this three
hundred and eighty five pound bronze sculpture of the title character.
He wanted the ballet dancer who played the Little Mermaid
to pose for it, but she refused to pose in
(22:31):
the nude, and so instead the sculptor enlisted his wife,
and so they put this four hundred pound bronze sculpture
on a granite rock in the Copenhagen Harbor and it's
been there ever since. And along the way it's been
a frequent target of vandalism by really like all sorts
of different protest groups. So his poor Mermaid has been
(22:53):
decapitated twice, covered in paint and graffiti. Multiple times, she
had an arm sawn on off. At one point she
was painted red as part of an anti whaling protest.
She's been covered in graffiti with messages like in twenty
twenty somebody tagged her with a kind of confusing inscription,
(23:13):
dubbing her a racist fish. And people don't really know,
you know what any of this has to do with
the Little Mermaid or with Hans Christian Anderson. He hasn't
really been accused of racism or anything in his works.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
Does Copenhagen just keep fixing the statue? Do they just
keep going out there and cleaning off the graffiti and
replacing the head and all of this.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, again and again they've had the retrieve her body
parts from the water, scrub or clean. Actually, when I
was there, this was I think twenty twenty three, you
could still see the faded letters of racist fish. It's
all leaving a mark, unfortunately. But the thing that makes
it extra sad for me is if you are familiar
with Hans Christian Andersen's version of this story, and not
(23:54):
just the Disney one, you know that the Mermaid and
the story had a pretty rough time too, it's a
much darker tail. She has her tongue cut out. The
Prince does not choose her in the end. So it's
just a little extra tragic when you look at what
the character has been through to see that sort of
repeated on the statue. So if anyone's listening in Copenhagen,
(24:15):
please stop, please a little Mournee has been through enough.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
She's been through enough.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
All right, Well, I would like to turn now to
an update from an episode that came out not too
long ago, and it was nine extremely Valuable Facts about Pennies.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Do you remember that episode?
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, I love that one, Okay.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
In that episode, of course, we talked about the fact
that there is a move to get rid of the
penny in the United States, and that's actually been going on.
Several presidents have brought that up. It's come up time
and time again. But now there is officially a bill
that has been introduced in the United States Senate to
formally eliminate the penny. And this is a bipartisan bill
brought by Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mike Lee of
(24:52):
Utah and Gabe. They have called it the makes Sense
not Sense act o that's worse. In the press release
announcing this act, Merkley said, and I quote, it's the
opposite of common sense for taxpayers dollars to fund wasteful
spending like producing pennies.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Wow, they doubled down on that. They were so proud
of it.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
I would like to introduce a bill to eliminate lazy
punning by elected officials. It does not serve our country,
It does not send a good message to our children.
Puns are fine, but God put in a little more
effort than that.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I second thought, with a brave stance, Mary.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
If I ever run for office, that's going to be
That's gonna be my one and only platform.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
All right?
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Should we tell people some teasers about some things that
we are working on right now that they can look
forward to.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Should we do that? Should we be that generous?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah? Should we pull back the curtain a little bit?
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I think we should because Will and Mango are sipping
tropical drinks and a hammock, I believe, and we're here,
so let's do what we want. I know you're working
on an episode that we're very excited about. You want
to tell us a little bit about it.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
We had a listener suggests that we do an episode
all about three D printing, and I'm happy to say
that is in the works. I think a lot of
people still treat it as a new emerging technology, but
really it came about back in the eighties and it's
not just a printing plastic anymore. We've moved on from
there and there's some fun historical connections that we're going
(26:16):
to get into in that episode. So definitely look forward
to that one.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Oh that's great.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Well, I can tell you I am really excited about
an episode we have coming up that's all about puppets.
Puppets have an incredible rich history. I mean, it's obviously
Sesame Street the Muppets, we all know them, we all
love them, but puppets have a long history in many
civilizations and cultures around the world, used for theater, for politics,
all kinds of things. It's a very I mean, it's
one of those episodes that I feel like could easily
(26:43):
become an hour long. It won't, don't worry. But there's
so much to talk about. And I'm particularly excited because
I do have a friend who is really passionate about puppetry,
and she builds and makes puppets for performances that are incredible,
and she's done them for science education, she's used them
for all all kinds of things. So just personally, I
am excited to be able to send a friend an
(27:03):
episode that's going to be right up her alley.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
And I think that happens a lot with this show.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
People find a topic and they know someone who's really
into that one topic, and they send them that episode.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah, and I'm really looking forward to that one too,
really really interesting stuff. And I know normally we end
an episode with a fact off, but we've had a
lot of facts today, So why don't we head down
to the rec center for some recommendations instead? What do
you say?
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Sounds good.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
That? So my recommendation for today is that listeners reacquaint
themselves with the Looney Tunes. A lot of people don't
know that in this year, twenty twenty five, there was
a new theatrical Looney Tunes movie. I did not know
that it already came and went from theaters. It was
(27:54):
called The Day the Earth Blew Up, starring Daffy Duck
and Porky Pig. This was a hand drawn, beach er
length film. It didn't have a lot of advertising. It
came and went, but critics loved it, animators love it,
and I believe it's available on streaming now, so people
should check that out. And also there's a new Blu
Ray collection, the Classic Looney Tunes. It's a collection of
(28:17):
I think about forty or so of the shorts that
have been newly restored, never released on Blu Ray before.
The Looney Tunes are fun for people really of all ages.
That's something I think a lot of people forget. They
were shown in front of movies back in the day.
Looney Tunes laid in front of everything, whether you were seeing,
you know, a romantic comedy or a horror movie or whatever,
(28:37):
and everybody in the audience laughed. Maybe recreate those pre
shows at home. Watch a Looney Tunes before you start
a movie. You know you're watching a movie from nineteen
thirty nine, Watch a Looney Tunes it was made that
same year. Or you can go about its thematically too.
If you're watching a Western, watch something with Yosemite Sam
or Wiley Coyote or something like that. Yeah, it sounds storky,
(28:57):
sounds nerdy, and it is, but it's also a lot of.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
I mean this is part time genius. I think everyone
is okay with nerdy.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
A lot of who things here?
Speaker 5 (29:04):
Help me if they're not, they're not listening at this point.
I love that, Gabe, Thank you for that recommendation. We
watch a lot of movies in my house, so that's
a really great idea.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
All right, Mary, what did you want to recommend?
Speaker 5 (29:13):
This did come up in the Novelty Songs episode that
you mentioned earlier, which is a study showing that our
brains crave novelty. It's not good for us to be
doing and hearing and seeing the same thing over and
over and over. So some way to shake that up
is actually really good for us. So I'm going to
recommend It's not a product, it's not a service. It's
just a thing you can do, and that is taking
(29:35):
a different route to your destination every time. So we
all have places that we go on a regular basis.
You go to the grocery store, you go to your gym,
you go to your kid's school, you go to your workplace,
whatever it is, if possible, take a different route there
every time. So I live in New York City. I
walk everywhere, and there are places that I have to
walk all the time. And my plan is when I
(29:56):
am leaving my apartment, I know where I have to go,
and instead of going the same way, I'll go down
one block and then over another, and then kind of
down a few more blocks and then over and then
down and over.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
I'll zigzag around the grid.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
The reason I do it is because it makes you
more aware of what's going on.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
You notice things.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
You see a plant in a window that you never
noticed before, You noticed a business that you hadn't seen.
And even when I'm not consciously aware that I am
seeing different things, I often feel more alert when I'm
doing it, you know, because you can just go on autopilot.
It's very easy to go on autopilot. And I find
that when I am making an effort to go a
different way every time, I actually feel more in tune
(30:37):
with my own brain.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
I love that mix it up a little bit, boost
your brain.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
I mean, obviously, if you're in a rush and you
know you got the shortest route, do that. But if
you have a little time and you have the ability,
given your commute, pick a different route. You know, at
the end of the fact off someone usually gets a trophy.
But the great thing about the rec center is we're
all winners here, right.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, that's right, So congratulations everybody that's going to do
it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe on your
favorite podcast platform and follow us on Instagram at part
Time Genius, Will and Mango will be back next week
with a brand new episode, and in the meantime, from Mary,
Dylan and Me, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongaschatikler
and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the Wonderful of Dylan
Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive
produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with
(31:51):
social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and
Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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