July 28, 2011 • 18 mins
Although there's no such thing as a shark in space (yet), sharks have provided invaluable information to NASA. In this episode, Robert and Julie take you from the ocean to outer space as they examine the relationship between NASA, science and sharks.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
this is the magical time of the year because it
is Shark Week, the best time of the year. Yeah,
we've got our Shark Week lights up around the office. Yeah,
(00:24):
we have to look like little sharks. Mandatory consumption of
gummy sharks. Um, nobody's allowed to bring their line. It's
just gummy sharks and tap water for everybody. Really builds
up your constitution. Yep. Yeah. And we we tend to
just go around circles around each other in the break room,
which is fun. So it is. It's an exciting time
(00:44):
and it's also in the lobby. We're not making that
up now, We're not making that up at all. Um.
It actually premieers Sunday, July thirty one on Discovery Channel
for folks who are really excited about sharks, and so
we thought that we would do a little homage to
sharks this week and um and talk about how great
they are. Cool because the week itself was always pretty
(01:07):
awesome growing up because you turn on Discovery and then
they're just like NonStop shark attacks, I was gonna say, ma'am,
and violence no matter where you look, and your parents
can't say anything about it because there's sharks. Yeah, it's
educational yea. And sharks truly are amazing creatures. But the
one you know, that, the one thing you don't think
about as much are sharks in space because it just
(01:28):
seems odd, yeah, or that NASA would it all care
what a shark is up to or how a shark works.
It just seems like these are totally different ends of
the spectrum. Yeah, but as we know, there are definitely
parallels between the Great Blue Ocean and the sky's above us,
right right. Uh, So to that point, we're going to
(01:48):
talk about how sharks have informed NASA and and also
how they have informed other areas of our lives and
uh and why Michael Phelps needs to give us shark
a big hug next time he sees one. Well, yeah,
for starters, there is there's not really need such thing
as a as a space shark. There of course no
sharks flying around in outer space. Um. But but dog, yes,
(02:13):
but not a shark, yes, mummified dog. Right. But as
as for sharks, we we have a wonder for a
long time whether or not the moon affects them, even
if even though there are no sharks on the moon,
people have always wondered, what is the lunar cycle affect
the way sharks behaved? As it can? Can we can
we base their feeding uh uh, preferences of their ferocity
(02:35):
on what the moon is doing? Yeah, that's true. Um.
And we know that a full moon signals breeding and
migratory practices. Um. And it also influences the tides because
the tidle forces add its maximum, so you see a
lot more intense feeding behavior at that time, right. And
in tracking shark movement, scientists have observed large congregations of
sharks during specific lunar cycles as well as intensified feeding habits.
(03:00):
So we've got NASA definitely has its I on sharks.
Yeah and um and this is just one example right there.
There are a lot of things that NASA has been
doing with sharks because some of their technology actually is
very helpful in tracking sharks. And these are yeah, these
are definitely more concrete than well, maybe the maybe the
moon has some sort of influence on their activity. Um.
(03:22):
The the one that really um first of all, as
far as just tracking them goes UM. We we do
use satellites to track sharks because some of these are
are in either they're endangered species or they're just species
we want to learn more about. UM. So we have
two kinds of tracking devices that we attached to the
sharks fins. We have smart position only tags also called spots,
(03:45):
and we have pop up satellite archival tags or pats.
Spots attached to a shark's dorsal fins and upload location
data to a satellite every time the animal surfaces, you know,
so every time it comes up to eat a surfer
or something, or to or to attack, Richard dry fuss
Uh injects in you know, pats. However, record water temperature,
(04:06):
water pressure, and light levels before detaching from the sharks
fins at a set time. So so this just sort
of hangs out with the shark shadows. The shark sees
what the shark is up to and what kind of
environments it's been happening, and then after a certain time
detaches to go report back. Yeah, so whether or not
the shark knows it, it's in business with NASA and
UM aggregating a bunch of data for the pat device
(04:30):
floats back to the surface after it's through, and then
it transmits the data to the satellite. Yeah. Yeah. And
then there's a second method to which I think is
really cool. Um, this is an algorithm. Yes, Now, this
is pretty fascinating because all right, you look up at
the night sky and even I mean even if you're
trained somewhat in astronomy and you can, you know, or
(04:50):
even if you're you can, you know, you can pick
out every constellation and you can point to different star systems.
You have to admit, a really clear night sky can
be really confusing because there's just so many stars and
you're just you know, trying to make sense of it all.
You cannot see them from Nakodaye all of them, right,
So NASA, of course has developed an algorithm to help
to track this that can know that can allow a
(05:12):
computer to look at the sky and identify what's going
on based on this, um, you know, to to to
the lame and seemingly chaotic array of stars. Yeah. And
this was originally created by Edward J. Groth, and he
was using this to try to map the intimidating star
fields Hubble would uncover falling it's launching. So just so
(05:36):
everybody understands the context there. But again there's this correlation
with stars and with sharks. Yeah, because the whole the
whole deal is, we're really interested in whale sharks, you know,
we want to know which ones which, what are they doing.
This is species that we would like to to stick
around for a while and we would like to learn
more about them. But how do you tell them apart? Right? Um, Well,
(05:57):
it turns out that the spots on their their their bodies,
especially prominent on their heads and their their head region. Uh,
they're all different. These are like the fingerprints of a
of a whale shark, so it's unique to each one, right,
But to the naked eye, it doesn't make any sense.
It's just like, oh, there's another giant fish with spots
(06:18):
on its head. But we can actually use the same program,
the same algorithm that's that's intended to make sense of
the night sky, and it can make sense of the
spots on a whale shark and actually identify individual whale
sharks to the point where just random divers who encounter
a whale shark can take a picture of it and
(06:38):
then they can send it in Um. To the Echocean,
which is e E C O C E a n
Echo Ocean Whale Shark Photo Identification Laboratory, and they're able
to through this through these users submitted to photos keep
tabs on, um, you know, close to two thousand whale
sharks around the world, which is really cool because it's
(06:59):
very much a public project as well. Yeah. Um. And
also the algorithm has been adapted to track the animals
North American populations as well, Yeah, using the unique whisker
markings on their muzzles. Yeah, so that's that's from NASA actually. Um.
So it's really interesting that they are trying to learn
about the stars and they were able to use this
(07:20):
to try to learn a little bit more about our
own environment. Right. And it's another great page from the
whole book of of space technology, improving life or improving
research on the planet itself, you know, hand me down technology,
but but very useful. This is another interesting NASA connection
that was a surprise to me but actually has to
(07:42):
do with Julia Child. Julia Child, Yeah, the famed chef TV,
one of the first but to just wonderful spirited woman
who who assured the American Palette into the twentieth century.
The reason really that we have to suffer through all
these more annoying TV chef today on various reality shows. Right, possibly, yes,
(08:03):
except she was nice. She was she was nice, and
she she Calaroche Booth Vignon that was awful. But you know,
she she has a lot of that she contributed to
our society. But people I think are pretty familiar with
the fact that she was a spy of sorts um
and this is from NPRS. The lady was a spy.
Julia Child worked for the OSS, which is a precursor
(08:26):
to the CIA. It was assigned to solve a problem
for the U s Naval forces during World War Two.
Sharks would bump into explosives that were placed underwater, setting
them off and warning the German U boats that they
were intended to sink. So they asked her to work
on a recipe as it were, of shark repellent and
(08:47):
um and together they all cooked up the shark repellent
and that was used to cope the explosives. So the
shark repellent recipe was then later used to protect astronauts
and space capsules landed in shark infested waters. Yeah, because
especially like the Apollopope program and everything. Um, you know,
they're returning to earthen the capsule capsule is landing in
(09:07):
the open ocean um in many cases, and you would
rather you're highly trained astronauts not get eaten by a
shark immediately. No, no, no, not after all that training.
That's just that that would be a big bummer. And
the Soviets were very interested in this as well. I
read a like a nineteen seventies something NASA report on
the Soviet interest and shark repell and there was you know,
there's a lot of interest and a lot of tests
(09:29):
and a lot of sort of oh, I don't know
if it works, so maybe it works enough, And generally
it would decided that it at least did worked, it
worked enough to use it, you know, like it was
better than nothing. Say, there was no other alternatives, so
no other alternates. Um, so, actually sharks have taught us
a lot, and definitely through bio mimicry as well. Yeah,
not just lessons in how to avoid them and how
(09:52):
to keep them from eating us, but yeah, we can
look at the shark and say, hey, that is an
excellent design. What can we learn from this evolution home design. Yeah,
and it turns out that their skin is of particular
interest first because it's able to move through water really quickly, right,
and second because it keeps bacteria at a minimum. Yeah.
(10:13):
The skin itself has these consists of these tiny tooth
like scales that prevents small eddies and vortices from forming,
which can slow you down. So it's it's so Speedo
was instantly interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and this is so cool
because they what they discovered is that that friction is
different over different parts of the shark's body. So the
skin on the shark, the texture changes to better manage
(10:37):
the flow of water. Huh. Yeah. And Speedo of course
was like, oh hey, we could apply this, we can
make some money off of this. Yeah. And it was
actually when this first made the rounds and the news,
there were some people that were like, is this really
fair that people can wait because they was, you know,
shaving some considerable time if you were wearing like a
full shark skin body suit. Where I think at the
(10:58):
actual name that this Peto product is a fast skin
one word, um, and I don't know, there's so there's
I can kind of get some of that argument, you know,
it's like can if they're they're improving their performance purely
through this awesome outfit. I mean maybe maybe I'm just
putting this out and maybe all competitive swimming should be
done naked, because then it's well, you know, Greek Olympic style. Yeah,
(11:22):
Olympic style. Okay, So I mean I would definitely think
that viewership would go up. Yeah, yeah, Um, it's a possibility.
I don't know. Maybe if they you know, to to
get around the TV sensors, maybe that they just dyed
the water like a real murky color and then it
would be you know, instantly, you know, covering any potential nudity.
They would show up right, you know, just to to
(11:42):
ratch it up the fun factor. They could put sharks
in the water while the naked swimmers. Yeah, but no,
I mean they really the suit I think made a
big difference. It's a three percent improvement in swimming speed
due to the original shark skin suit, which likely contributed
to the fact of the swimming medals one in the
(12:02):
two thousand Olympics were one by athletes wearing speedos fast
skin suits. Um and then also those some of the
swimmers broke thirteen of fifteen world records. That's that's I mean,
when you're talking about a tenth of a second here,
I mean that is that's that's that's a huge difference
in this sport. Um So Speedo has made further amount
of occasions of fat skin suit based on continued research
(12:25):
and it now has something like a four percent reduction
in friction. Well and the sharks of course getting no credit,
yeah none, yeah, yeah for you guys. Um, we've we've
used but we've also used the sharks skin technology for
other things. Um, we've been able to use this technology
to create a fast traveling ship holes that also deter
(12:46):
the attachment of underwater organisms, you know, like whatnot. And
m Australia's Biopower Systems has been working on a really
cool shark inspired innovation. Uh. The company hopes to anchor
mechanical fins based on you know, the shark's body in
the middle of sea currents in order to generate hydro
electric power. So it's kind of like a wind meal,
(13:07):
except yeah, in the ocean, and it looks like a
giant you know, whale, giant shark fit that is going
to scare the pants off of someone. It's just in
a boat having a nice leisurely day on the ocean,
or or scare the fast skin body suit off of
someone happens to you can just go over for the
naked thing here. Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll chew on that. Yeah,
(13:30):
we'll just leave on the naked note. Yea to chew
on that while we do a quick break, and we'll
be back right after that. This presentation is brought to
you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow and we're back all right.
(13:50):
I know you got some email there, Yeah, it's time
for a little listener mail. We actually quite a bit
um the other podcast we recorded this week with the
electronic music one, which went a little along. Starting to
get to to read some of the wonderful comments and
emails were received from everyone, but I have a handful here. First,
let's hear from j from Arkansas at Ja writes them. Hi,
(14:12):
Robert and Julie, longtime listening, huge fan of your podcasting blog.
I appreciate you covering the method of loki uh. This
of course was discussed in our Memory power eliso UM.
I have found it unusually helpful and extremely entertaining. I
can definitely identify with Julie's comment on how the very
premise of how this method works causes her to conjure
up dreamlike situations, which of course make them more memorable.
(14:33):
I am a very visual person and have adopted this
memory approach almost daily since listening to your podcast. I
have used it to memorize the original Thirteen Colonies, numerous
shopping lists, and also to wow friends by memorizing lists
of twenty plus random words in a very short period
of time. Most recently, I have used this method to
memorize all of the U S presidents in order. There
(14:54):
were definitely some colorful images generated to memorize that list.
Uh and he gives the example of puke cannon for
Buchanan and a tea glass that continually refills itself for fillmore.
Thanks again and keep up a great work. Well, that
was awesome to hear somebody take the method of Looky
the Memory Palace and start ramming it into their life
(15:17):
on a basis. Yeah, I'm still using it myself. Yeah yeah,
would you use it for last some appointments that I
needed to make? Uh? So yeah? Cool? Um. Here is
another listener email, and this is from Molly. Molly right
in and says, hey, guys, just finished listening to your
Space Religion podcast. Interesting. My immediate thoughts when you mentioned
(15:37):
designing a religion Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Hyland. Granted,
this is kind of the opposite of what you mentioned
in this case of Martian who is really human but
raised as a Martian by Martians, comes to Earth and
designs a religion. Here excellent book if you haven't read it.
Interesting thought provoking ideas about the nature and need of
religion and the nature of humans at any rate. I
(15:59):
gave the pot guest loved the mentions of my favorite books,
music movies, for instance, a shout out to Doune in
this one. Um, and then she also mentioned Robert Anton
Wilson as being particularly interesting along these lines. Uh so, yeah,
I have actually not read Stranger in the Strange Line.
It's it's definitely on the list, but your summer reading
list maybe I don't know. My reading list is out
(16:21):
of control. Yeah, I've seen that stack of books in
your dusk But but no, I was really, uh really
pleased with some of the feedback we got on this
because we actually we didn't get any like crazy grumpy
feedback from I think anyone, like everybody that has something
to say. It was you all along the lines of oh,
I think I think you know space and religion means this.
I think it means that, and several people wrote in
with the examples of of space religions from science fiction.
(16:44):
I think somebody on Twitter mentioned the religion that shows
up in the Warhammer forty thousand universe, which is uh
a gaming tabletop gaming kind of universe. But there's definitely
a lot of a lot of ideas that are brought
together in that regarding what a science fiction interplanetary species
religion would consist of. Um. So it was a pleasure
(17:07):
to hear all that. Yeah, and I think that we
are fortunate to have such a thoughtful audience with a
lot of moxie. I might add moxie mind blowers out there.
I'm gonna read just one quick one here before we close,
And this is from James responding to our Funnier Dive podcast,
which we also we receive a lot of cool stuff
um later later, but that he just wanted to throw
(17:29):
in some some quick funny words and he said, supple
pork loin, I love that one and toot. So he
also said that anything with loin in it is going
to be pretty funny tender loin loincloth, and and yeah
it's it's a funny shop, pork shop. Yeah. All right.
(17:50):
So there you have it. If you have anything you
would like to add, anything you would like to share
with us, you can find us on Twitter and Facebook.
We are Blow the Mind on both of those feet,
and you can also drop us a line at blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(18:12):
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
this is the magical time of the year because it
is Shark Week, the best time of the year. Yeah,
we've got our Shark Week lights up around the office. Yeah,
(00:24):
we have to look like little sharks. Mandatory consumption of
gummy sharks. Um, nobody's allowed to bring their line. It's
just gummy sharks and tap water for everybody. Really builds
up your constitution. Yep. Yeah. And we we tend to
just go around circles around each other in the break room,
which is fun. So it is. It's an exciting time
(00:44):
and it's also in the lobby. We're not making that
up now, We're not making that up at all. Um.
It actually premieers Sunday, July thirty one on Discovery Channel
for folks who are really excited about sharks, and so
we thought that we would do a little homage to
sharks this week and um and talk about how great
they are. Cool because the week itself was always pretty
(01:07):
awesome growing up because you turn on Discovery and then
they're just like NonStop shark attacks, I was gonna say, ma'am,
and violence no matter where you look, and your parents
can't say anything about it because there's sharks. Yeah, it's
educational yea. And sharks truly are amazing creatures. But the
one you know, that, the one thing you don't think
about as much are sharks in space because it just
(01:28):
seems odd, yeah, or that NASA would it all care
what a shark is up to or how a shark works.
It just seems like these are totally different ends of
the spectrum. Yeah, but as we know, there are definitely
parallels between the Great Blue Ocean and the sky's above us,
right right. Uh, So to that point, we're going to
(01:48):
talk about how sharks have informed NASA and and also
how they have informed other areas of our lives and
uh and why Michael Phelps needs to give us shark
a big hug next time he sees one. Well, yeah,
for starters, there is there's not really need such thing
as a as a space shark. There of course no
sharks flying around in outer space. Um. But but dog, yes,
(02:13):
but not a shark, yes, mummified dog. Right. But as
as for sharks, we we have a wonder for a
long time whether or not the moon affects them, even
if even though there are no sharks on the moon,
people have always wondered, what is the lunar cycle affect
the way sharks behaved? As it can? Can we can
we base their feeding uh uh, preferences of their ferocity
(02:35):
on what the moon is doing? Yeah, that's true. Um.
And we know that a full moon signals breeding and
migratory practices. Um. And it also influences the tides because
the tidle forces add its maximum, so you see a
lot more intense feeding behavior at that time, right. And
in tracking shark movement, scientists have observed large congregations of
sharks during specific lunar cycles as well as intensified feeding habits.
(03:00):
So we've got NASA definitely has its I on sharks.
Yeah and um and this is just one example right there.
There are a lot of things that NASA has been
doing with sharks because some of their technology actually is
very helpful in tracking sharks. And these are yeah, these
are definitely more concrete than well, maybe the maybe the
moon has some sort of influence on their activity. Um.
(03:22):
The the one that really um first of all, as
far as just tracking them goes UM. We we do
use satellites to track sharks because some of these are
are in either they're endangered species or they're just species
we want to learn more about. UM. So we have
two kinds of tracking devices that we attached to the
sharks fins. We have smart position only tags also called spots,
(03:45):
and we have pop up satellite archival tags or pats.
Spots attached to a shark's dorsal fins and upload location
data to a satellite every time the animal surfaces, you know,
so every time it comes up to eat a surfer
or something, or to or to attack, Richard dry fuss
Uh injects in you know, pats. However, record water temperature,
(04:06):
water pressure, and light levels before detaching from the sharks
fins at a set time. So so this just sort
of hangs out with the shark shadows. The shark sees
what the shark is up to and what kind of
environments it's been happening, and then after a certain time
detaches to go report back. Yeah, so whether or not
the shark knows it, it's in business with NASA and
UM aggregating a bunch of data for the pat device
(04:30):
floats back to the surface after it's through, and then
it transmits the data to the satellite. Yeah. Yeah. And
then there's a second method to which I think is
really cool. Um, this is an algorithm. Yes, Now, this
is pretty fascinating because all right, you look up at
the night sky and even I mean even if you're
trained somewhat in astronomy and you can, you know, or
(04:50):
even if you're you can, you know, you can pick
out every constellation and you can point to different star systems.
You have to admit, a really clear night sky can
be really confusing because there's just so many stars and
you're just you know, trying to make sense of it all.
You cannot see them from Nakodaye all of them, right,
So NASA, of course has developed an algorithm to help
to track this that can know that can allow a
(05:12):
computer to look at the sky and identify what's going
on based on this, um, you know, to to to
the lame and seemingly chaotic array of stars. Yeah. And
this was originally created by Edward J. Groth, and he
was using this to try to map the intimidating star
fields Hubble would uncover falling it's launching. So just so
(05:36):
everybody understands the context there. But again there's this correlation
with stars and with sharks. Yeah, because the whole the
whole deal is, we're really interested in whale sharks, you know,
we want to know which ones which, what are they doing.
This is species that we would like to to stick
around for a while and we would like to learn
more about them. But how do you tell them apart? Right? Um, Well,
(05:57):
it turns out that the spots on their their their bodies,
especially prominent on their heads and their their head region. Uh,
they're all different. These are like the fingerprints of a
of a whale shark, so it's unique to each one, right,
But to the naked eye, it doesn't make any sense.
It's just like, oh, there's another giant fish with spots
(06:18):
on its head. But we can actually use the same program,
the same algorithm that's that's intended to make sense of
the night sky, and it can make sense of the
spots on a whale shark and actually identify individual whale
sharks to the point where just random divers who encounter
a whale shark can take a picture of it and
(06:38):
then they can send it in Um. To the Echocean,
which is e E C O C E a n
Echo Ocean Whale Shark Photo Identification Laboratory, and they're able
to through this through these users submitted to photos keep
tabs on, um, you know, close to two thousand whale
sharks around the world, which is really cool because it's
(06:59):
very much a public project as well. Yeah. Um. And
also the algorithm has been adapted to track the animals
North American populations as well, Yeah, using the unique whisker
markings on their muzzles. Yeah, so that's that's from NASA actually. Um.
So it's really interesting that they are trying to learn
about the stars and they were able to use this
(07:20):
to try to learn a little bit more about our
own environment. Right. And it's another great page from the
whole book of of space technology, improving life or improving
research on the planet itself, you know, hand me down technology,
but but very useful. This is another interesting NASA connection
that was a surprise to me but actually has to
(07:42):
do with Julia Child. Julia Child, Yeah, the famed chef TV,
one of the first but to just wonderful spirited woman
who who assured the American Palette into the twentieth century.
The reason really that we have to suffer through all
these more annoying TV chef today on various reality shows. Right, possibly, yes,
(08:03):
except she was nice. She was she was nice, and
she she Calaroche Booth Vignon that was awful. But you know,
she she has a lot of that she contributed to
our society. But people I think are pretty familiar with
the fact that she was a spy of sorts um
and this is from NPRS. The lady was a spy.
Julia Child worked for the OSS, which is a precursor
(08:26):
to the CIA. It was assigned to solve a problem
for the U s Naval forces during World War Two.
Sharks would bump into explosives that were placed underwater, setting
them off and warning the German U boats that they
were intended to sink. So they asked her to work
on a recipe as it were, of shark repellent and
(08:47):
um and together they all cooked up the shark repellent
and that was used to cope the explosives. So the
shark repellent recipe was then later used to protect astronauts
and space capsules landed in shark infested waters. Yeah, because
especially like the Apollopope program and everything. Um, you know,
they're returning to earthen the capsule capsule is landing in
(09:07):
the open ocean um in many cases, and you would
rather you're highly trained astronauts not get eaten by a
shark immediately. No, no, no, not after all that training.
That's just that that would be a big bummer. And
the Soviets were very interested in this as well. I
read a like a nineteen seventies something NASA report on
the Soviet interest and shark repell and there was you know,
there's a lot of interest and a lot of tests
(09:29):
and a lot of sort of oh, I don't know
if it works, so maybe it works enough, And generally
it would decided that it at least did worked, it
worked enough to use it, you know, like it was
better than nothing. Say, there was no other alternatives, so
no other alternates. Um, so, actually sharks have taught us
a lot, and definitely through bio mimicry as well. Yeah,
not just lessons in how to avoid them and how
(09:52):
to keep them from eating us, but yeah, we can
look at the shark and say, hey, that is an
excellent design. What can we learn from this evolution home design. Yeah,
and it turns out that their skin is of particular
interest first because it's able to move through water really quickly, right,
and second because it keeps bacteria at a minimum. Yeah.
(10:13):
The skin itself has these consists of these tiny tooth
like scales that prevents small eddies and vortices from forming,
which can slow you down. So it's it's so Speedo
was instantly interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and this is so cool
because they what they discovered is that that friction is
different over different parts of the shark's body. So the
skin on the shark, the texture changes to better manage
(10:37):
the flow of water. Huh. Yeah. And Speedo of course
was like, oh hey, we could apply this, we can
make some money off of this. Yeah. And it was
actually when this first made the rounds and the news,
there were some people that were like, is this really
fair that people can wait because they was, you know,
shaving some considerable time if you were wearing like a
full shark skin body suit. Where I think at the
(10:58):
actual name that this Peto product is a fast skin
one word, um, and I don't know, there's so there's
I can kind of get some of that argument, you know,
it's like can if they're they're improving their performance purely
through this awesome outfit. I mean maybe maybe I'm just
putting this out and maybe all competitive swimming should be
done naked, because then it's well, you know, Greek Olympic style. Yeah,
(11:22):
Olympic style. Okay, So I mean I would definitely think
that viewership would go up. Yeah, yeah, Um, it's a possibility.
I don't know. Maybe if they you know, to to
get around the TV sensors, maybe that they just dyed
the water like a real murky color and then it
would be you know, instantly, you know, covering any potential nudity.
They would show up right, you know, just to to
(11:42):
ratch it up the fun factor. They could put sharks
in the water while the naked swimmers. Yeah, but no,
I mean they really the suit I think made a
big difference. It's a three percent improvement in swimming speed
due to the original shark skin suit, which likely contributed
to the fact of the swimming medals one in the
(12:02):
two thousand Olympics were one by athletes wearing speedos fast
skin suits. Um and then also those some of the
swimmers broke thirteen of fifteen world records. That's that's I mean,
when you're talking about a tenth of a second here,
I mean that is that's that's that's a huge difference
in this sport. Um So Speedo has made further amount
of occasions of fat skin suit based on continued research
(12:25):
and it now has something like a four percent reduction
in friction. Well and the sharks of course getting no credit,
yeah none, yeah, yeah for you guys. Um, we've we've
used but we've also used the sharks skin technology for
other things. Um, we've been able to use this technology
to create a fast traveling ship holes that also deter
(12:46):
the attachment of underwater organisms, you know, like whatnot. And
m Australia's Biopower Systems has been working on a really
cool shark inspired innovation. Uh. The company hopes to anchor
mechanical fins based on you know, the shark's body in
the middle of sea currents in order to generate hydro
electric power. So it's kind of like a wind meal,
(13:07):
except yeah, in the ocean, and it looks like a
giant you know, whale, giant shark fit that is going
to scare the pants off of someone. It's just in
a boat having a nice leisurely day on the ocean,
or or scare the fast skin body suit off of
someone happens to you can just go over for the
naked thing here. Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll chew on that. Yeah,
(13:30):
we'll just leave on the naked note. Yea to chew
on that while we do a quick break, and we'll
be back right after that. This presentation is brought to
you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow and we're back all right.
(13:50):
I know you got some email there, Yeah, it's time
for a little listener mail. We actually quite a bit
um the other podcast we recorded this week with the
electronic music one, which went a little along. Starting to
get to to read some of the wonderful comments and
emails were received from everyone, but I have a handful here. First,
let's hear from j from Arkansas at Ja writes them. Hi,
(14:12):
Robert and Julie, longtime listening, huge fan of your podcasting blog.
I appreciate you covering the method of loki uh. This
of course was discussed in our Memory power eliso UM.
I have found it unusually helpful and extremely entertaining. I
can definitely identify with Julie's comment on how the very
premise of how this method works causes her to conjure
up dreamlike situations, which of course make them more memorable.
(14:33):
I am a very visual person and have adopted this
memory approach almost daily since listening to your podcast. I
have used it to memorize the original Thirteen Colonies, numerous
shopping lists, and also to wow friends by memorizing lists
of twenty plus random words in a very short period
of time. Most recently, I have used this method to
memorize all of the U S presidents in order. There
(14:54):
were definitely some colorful images generated to memorize that list.
Uh and he gives the example of puke cannon for
Buchanan and a tea glass that continually refills itself for fillmore.
Thanks again and keep up a great work. Well, that
was awesome to hear somebody take the method of Looky
the Memory Palace and start ramming it into their life
(15:17):
on a basis. Yeah, I'm still using it myself. Yeah yeah,
would you use it for last some appointments that I
needed to make? Uh? So yeah? Cool? Um. Here is
another listener email, and this is from Molly. Molly right
in and says, hey, guys, just finished listening to your
Space Religion podcast. Interesting. My immediate thoughts when you mentioned
(15:37):
designing a religion Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Hyland. Granted,
this is kind of the opposite of what you mentioned
in this case of Martian who is really human but
raised as a Martian by Martians, comes to Earth and
designs a religion. Here excellent book if you haven't read it.
Interesting thought provoking ideas about the nature and need of
religion and the nature of humans at any rate. I
(15:59):
gave the pot guest loved the mentions of my favorite books,
music movies, for instance, a shout out to Doune in
this one. Um, and then she also mentioned Robert Anton
Wilson as being particularly interesting along these lines. Uh so, yeah,
I have actually not read Stranger in the Strange Line.
It's it's definitely on the list, but your summer reading
list maybe I don't know. My reading list is out
(16:21):
of control. Yeah, I've seen that stack of books in
your dusk But but no, I was really, uh really
pleased with some of the feedback we got on this
because we actually we didn't get any like crazy grumpy
feedback from I think anyone, like everybody that has something
to say. It was you all along the lines of oh,
I think I think you know space and religion means this.
I think it means that, and several people wrote in
with the examples of of space religions from science fiction.
(16:44):
I think somebody on Twitter mentioned the religion that shows
up in the Warhammer forty thousand universe, which is uh
a gaming tabletop gaming kind of universe. But there's definitely
a lot of a lot of ideas that are brought
together in that regarding what a science fiction interplanetary species
religion would consist of. Um. So it was a pleasure
(17:07):
to hear all that. Yeah, and I think that we
are fortunate to have such a thoughtful audience with a
lot of moxie. I might add moxie mind blowers out there.
I'm gonna read just one quick one here before we close,
And this is from James responding to our Funnier Dive podcast,
which we also we receive a lot of cool stuff
um later later, but that he just wanted to throw
(17:29):
in some some quick funny words and he said, supple
pork loin, I love that one and toot. So he
also said that anything with loin in it is going
to be pretty funny tender loin loincloth, and and yeah
it's it's a funny shop, pork shop. Yeah. All right.
(17:50):
So there you have it. If you have anything you
would like to add, anything you would like to share
with us, you can find us on Twitter and Facebook.
We are Blow the Mind on both of those feet,
and you can also drop us a line at blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(18:12):
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.