Avsnitt
-
Have you ever wondered if a hit of helium would change the sound of an alligator's bellows? Lucky for us, there are scientists out there who wanted to know.
Show Notes:
BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54197198
Kyoto University Ig Nobel announcement: https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/news/2020-09-29
YouTube resonance to vocalize: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz-plqEyxik
Science: https://www.science.org/content/article/ig-nobel-prizes-reward-research-helium-huffing-alligators-and-knives-made-feces
CNN US: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/18/us/ig-nobel-awards-alligator-helium-scli-scn-intl/index.html
Journal of Experimental Biology: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/218/15/2442/14244/A-Chinese-alligator-in-heliox-formant-frequencies
-
Amy looks into how companies change over time. Start making glass jars, segue into making aerospace technology, and end up only doing metal fabrication. We look at a few other companies too!
Show Notes:
Ball historical timeline: https://www.ball.com/our-company/our-story/history-timeline
Wikipedia on Ball Corp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Corporation
CPR News 2024, Ball Corp sells aerospace division: https://www.cpr.org/2024/02/16/ball-corp-sells-aerospace-division/
HiRISE camera: https://www.ball.com/newswire/article/123308/ball-aerospace-hirise-camera-returns-stunning-images-from-mars
Deep Impact: https://deepimpact.astro.umd.edu/tech/instruments.html
Ball Aerospace and Hubble: https://www.ball.com/newswire/article/123389/ball-aerospace-hubble-space-telescope-science-instruments-shine-a-light-on-the-universes
Dating a Ball jar: https://www.frenchcreekfarmhouse.com/2018/03/how-to-date-ball-mason-jar.html
Mason Jars a history: https://masonjars.com/history-of-ball-jars-html/comment-page-1/
Journey Indiana Youtube, Ball Family Legacy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG1z0D_JJzk
Tiktok youthpastorryan talking companies behaving badly: https://www.tiktok.com/@youthpastorryan/video/7305919108434971947?lang=en
Wikipedia r-Gator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-Gator
Honeywell flight control autopilot: https://aerospace.honeywell.com/us/en/products-and-services/product/hardware-and-systems/cockpit-systems-and-displays/flight-controls-and-autopilots
GE hydro power: https://www.gevernova.com/hydropower/
-
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
Scientists wanted to know if plants scream and tortured tomatoes to find out the answer. Beckett (Trace's youngest spawn) wanted to know, if plants do scream, can our pets hear it and is this why cats knock plants off shelves?
Show Notes:
YouTube sound of Plants "screaming": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-_AGgoJ3VA
Sci News, Plants Emit Ultrasonic Sounds When Stressed, Groundbreaking Study Shows: https://www.sci.news/biology/plant-ultrasonic-sounds-11794.html
How Well do Animals Hear: https://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html
Hidden Hearing, Human hearing ranges: https://www.hiddenhearing.co.uk/hearing-blog/hearing-loss/what-animals-have-better-hearing-than-humans
-
Amy laid the perfect web of "lies"; she lured Trace into an episode about shapeshifting women and then sprang the trap...this episode is about the Joro spider. We talk about the convergence of giant invasive spiders and Japanese mythology.
Show Notes:
Joro Spider (warning, there are spider photos): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/millions-of-joro-spiders-are-moving-up-the-east-coast-heres-what-to-expect/
Wikipedia Joro spider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichonephila_clavata
Wikipedia Jorogumo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jor%C5%8Dgumo
Described and Captioned Media Program: PBS Digital Studios & Monstrum: https://dcmp.org/media/14555-monstrum-jorogumo-the-deadly-spider-woman-from-yokai-lore
(Amy was Right!!!!) Blackarachnia: https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Blackarachnia_(BW)
Selkies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkie
-
How do we define and study the little voice in your head? Is it something you HEAR, hear or is it something you think? For some of us, there's no inner monologue, for others, it's so loud in there, it's hard to participate in the outside world. Trace fell down the research stairs on this one! It's a double header of things we hear and see in our heads. Get ready for anendophasia and aphantasia!
Show Notes:
Inner voice: https://neurosciencenews.com/anendophasia-inner-voice-memory-26107/
Prevention: inner voice: https://www.prevention.com/health/mental-health/a43128717/inner-monologue/
Not everyone has an inner voice: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38728320/
Sister “issue” aphantasia: https://aphantasia.com/what-is-aphantasia/
-
Who knew that a simple combination of oats, water and salt could make for a yearly competition that's lasted for 30 years? We dive into the history of oats in Scotland and the famous Golden Spurtle competition!
Show Notes:
Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship: https://www.goldenspurtle.com/
BBC: World Porridge winner crowned October 2023: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-67053001
Wikipedia World Porridge Making Championship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Porridge_Making_Championship
2023 Golden Spurtle newsletter: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/d871ced870.html#page/1
Bob's Red Mill, Porridge vs Oatmeal: https://www.bobsredmill.com/blog/healthy-living/porridge-vs-oatmeal/
BBC How humble oats have fueled a nation: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20231004-oats-the-humble-grain-that-fuelled-scotland
YouTube Golden Spurtle prep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJhlAaW5uIA
The Guardian No milk, no rolled oats and always add salt: how to make porridge like a champion
Gravy restaurant: https://gravyrestaurant.com/menu/
-
We're heading into the end of summer break so it's time for a mash up of wacky facts. Fake navels, cheetahs in heat, the weenus and MORE. Oh yes, we adore a good internet fact deep dive. Also, Trace does drop the 'shit' word once.
Show Notes:
Amazon fake navels: https://www.amazon.com/Belly-Button-Stickers-Fashion-Longer/dp/B0CC5TZ23P?th=1
SCMP Fake belly button article: https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/gender-diversity/article/3230438/fake-belly-buttons-all-rage-china-women-seek-freedom-dress-and-boost-confidence-some-raise-body
Cleveland Clinic limb lengthening: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/24316-limb-lengthening-surgery
Bears and skunk cabbage: https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Plants-and-Fungi/Skunk-Cabbage
USDA Forest Service yellow skunk cabbage: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/ipnf/learning/?cid=fsm9_019161
Maryland Biodiversity project & skunk cabbage: https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/view/1660
Nude Cruise: https://cruisebare.com/
Ovulation: https://productions-animales.org/article/download/2583/13696?inline=1
Cheetah vocalization FB: https://www.facebook.com/runningwildconservation/videos/listen-to-jordan-making-stutter-bark-sounds-to-shadow-in-the-camp-adjacent-to-hi/484675892467812/
CNN Travel "Bare-adise" https://www.cnn.com/travel/bare-adise-adventure-nude-cruise-miami-2025/index.html
Pee Pants: https://www.jordanluca.com/collections/denim
Complex designer jeans: https://www.complex.com/style/a/alex-ocho/pee-stained-designer-jeans-sell-out
Wenis. Thanks Merriam-Webster (LOL) https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/weenus-weenis-slang-definition-origin
-
It's tiny, inscrutable, made with spider silk, and we really don't know much about the mysteries of it's intricate construction.
Show Notes:
Nat Geo https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/silkhenge-spiders-ecuador-mystery
Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkhenge
Internet archive https://web.archive.org/web/20201108125631/https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/01/09/mystery-picket-fence-in-amazon-explained-2/
Earthtouch news network https://www.earthtouchnews.com/discoveries/discoveries/remember-those-mystery-silkhenge-spiders-now-you-can-watch-them-hatch/
Youtube spiders hatching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unc-g9AHl2Y&t=106s
Linkedin post https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dante-fenolio-ms-ph-d-76833a52_silkhenge-spider-amazon-activity-7147602639663316992-gZY4
Live science https://www.livescience.com/silkhenge-returns-video.html
Live science2 https://www.livescience.com/57401-silkhenge-spiders-hatch-on-video.html
Youttube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unc-g9AHl2Y
iNaturalist https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&q=silkhenge&subview=map
Medicinal leeches: https://media.vwr.com/emdocs/docs/scied/Medicinal_Leeches.pdf
-
In the spring, fish like perch travel through the rivers in the Netherlands to find places to spawn. They used to get stuck behind Weerdsluis lock: waiting for it to open. But not anymore! A virtual doorbell was created to help let the lock keeper know they're there. Hot tip, starting March 3, 2025, you can go to their website to hit the doorbell!!!!
Show Notes:
Visdeurbel!
Youtube: Dutch Wall Fish
Scientific American article: Ring the Dam Doorbell
Ballard Locks fish ladder
Wolfenoot
McGill Office of Science and Safety: Do Fish Drink
-
It's a super long length summertime episode with the sex lives of penguins, periods in space, Humpback whale sex, swearing parrots, terminal velocity poop, & penis size vs. nose size. Buckle up!
Show Notes:
Dr. George Murray Levick (1876–1956): unpublished notes on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin
The Guardian: 'Sexual depravity' of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal
Live Science: Are penguins really monogamous?
Penguin divorce rates
Penguinsinternational.org: Divorcing Penguins
Edinburgh Zoo pebbles for penguins
Popular Science: Menstruation in Space
NPR: TED Radio Hour
Nautilus: Humpback Whales, getting humpy
Happy Whale
Lincolnshire Wildlife Park's swear parrots: FB page with videos
Smithsonian: Parrots, What the Flock?!
The complete sillyness of reindeer poop "science" Instagram: Toiley T Paper
Penis size and Nose size, it's a real scientific paper, we promise: Penile length and circumference: are they related to nose size?
-
Smarter than the mafia, more cunning than a pickpocket in Paris, long-tailed macaques in Bali are all about snatching valuables from tourists and bargaining for tasty snacks.
Show Notes:
Long tailed macaques info from the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center
Sir Attenborough and monkeys
YouTube BBC Video of things getting stolen!!
Scientific Reports paper: Cohort dominance rank and “robbing and bartering” among subadult male long-tailed macaques at Uluwatu, Bali
Poor kiddo bitten by a monkey while touring
-
Amy's bringing the BATS. We've got more cool facts about bat communication and how some of them compete for food (it's sonic warfare for sure).
Show Notes:
Episode 214 Sky Puppies Mama fruit bats and their kiddos
Episode 242 Bat Chat 1 A smorgasbord of bat shenanigans
University of Bristol: Bats avoiding collisions in the air
YouTube Lens of Time Roll to minute 5:20 for bat smacks
Science: Bats jam each other's signals just like humans jam cell phones
National Geographic: Bats jam each other's sonar
The Sensory & Movement Ecology Lab @ UCCS
Science: Tiger moths jam bat echolocation!!!
Southwest Research Station
-
Did Trace complain about clickbait titles in this episode? Yes. Did she ALSO use a clickbait title for this very episode? Absolutely. Sea scallops like light and it turns out that works in the favor of fisheries and the environment.
Show Notes:
Oceanconservancy.org: Scallops
Fishtek Marine YouTube on the tech and study. Also their website
Science Daily: University of Exeter paper
University of York: Scientists accidentally discover “scallop discos” as an environmentally friendly fishing method
-
While doing the show notes for this episode, Trace looked into tips and tricks for when you take a vacation and have to drive on the opposite side of the road. The advice? Don't panic and purchase travel insurance LOL. There are so many different historical reasons for how countries chose what side of the road to drive on.
Show Notes:
Lancaster-Philadelphia Turnpike
Somerset Historical Center: The Conestoga Wagon
Windwagon Smith a Disney animated picture from 1961
Wikipedia left and right side
The Economist" Robespierre and driving on the moral side of the road
US Dept. of Transportation Federal Highway Administration: On the Right Side of the Road
UK car glass and their opinion on right side/left side
BBC: A 'thrilling' mission to get the Swedish to change overnight
-
Nothing like rubbing yourself down with snakeskin jerky to keep yourself from getting eaten. Today we check out the parallel evolution of the California ground squirrel and rattlesnakes. It's an olfactory camouflage arms race that on a bad day, ends with someone getting eaten.
Show Notes:
UC Davis: Squirrels Use Snake Scent
Royal Society B: Donning your enemy's cloak: ground squirrels exploit rattlesnake scent to reduce predation risk
Nature: Squirrel Masks Scent with Rattlesnake Skin (Cool video of squirrels in action)
-
Nighttime waking and scattered thoughts are problem solving's evil twin. If you find yourself awake at 3 am obsessing over your problems, remember that stress and hormonal imbalances can really damage the quality of your sleep.
Show Notes:
IFL Science: Why Do We Wake Around 3am And Dwell On Our Fears And Shortcomings?
VeryWellmind.com: Military Sleep method
Science Direct: Molecular Clock
US Southwestern University: Understanding the circadian clocks of individual cells
Wikipedia: Suprachiasmatic nucleus
NIH: Visual impairment and circadian rhythm disorders
The New Yorker: The Woman who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave
Benadryl and Alzheimer's possible link
Transcript:
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk, I'm Trace Kerr
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today I'm gonna continue changing your lives because we've talked about how to up your personal hygiene game. And today I'm gonna tell you about why you wake up at 03:00 a.m. And give you some tips and tricks.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: To stop that from happening.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: I am not a 03:00 a.m. Wake up person, so this will be interesting.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: You're not what it.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: No.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Do you wake up in the night?
[00:00:30] Speaker A: No, I'm not a wake upper.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. Well, Chris and I both are, and I tend to. On a good night, I just wake up once. But oftentimes I will wake up in this somewhere between two and 04:00 a.m.. Time. And so we're both like, why is that happening to us? And some of it is Shelby the cat.
She seems to get the zoomies. So let's back up, too. Greg Murray, professor and director, center for Mental Health in Sweden, Swinburne University of Technology. Swin. Yeah, Swinburne University of Technology.
He's a psychology researcher, and his expertise is in mood and sleep and circadian systems. Oh, and so he talks about this in an article for IFL science. For those of you who don't wake up like trace, it's bad because in the middle of the night, all of the thoughts seem to be. It's never like, I was so good in that meeting today, and I just love these blankets, and it's not that stuff. It's distressing and punitive thoughts, and they're irrational and unproductive. If you are alert enough that you have awoken, usually some people, it might not be that way, but it's definitely the way my brain works. It will worry about everything and anything. Like, I don't know, if we fill the ice cube trays up enough, they're gonna be so hard to get out.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Laying there at 03:00 a.m. Did I lock the front door?
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not my job, so I don't worry about that one. I assume Chris does it. It's not an official division of labor. It's just an observed division of labor.
So we could die in our sleep because I don't check.
Someone could break in and get us, but I'm pretty sure he does. So, yeah.
Back to our bodies at 03:00 a.m. What's going on there? The easiest way for me to think about it is when you get into a boat and you're getting up to speed for a skier, full throttle. Then you sort of even out. And then at 03:00 a.m. You're getting ready to come into the dock. And so you're throttling back. That throttling back is your core body temperature starts to rise. Your sleep drive is reducing because you've had a big chunk of sleep. Your body's like, well, we should dial it back here. Your secretion of melatonin is subsiding. It's peaked. It's done. And your levels of cortisol are so melatonin down, cortisol up, because you're facing the day and your body's gearing up. So it's a very transitional time for your body, which makes a lot of sense. Why some of us like somebody that's not good at a manual transmission car. Maybe that's what's happening with my body.
You have a smooth automatic and I have a 16 year old driving a manual transmission.
Yeah, it's exactly like, oh, I killed it. I'm sorry.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Oh, no. Now here's the question, though. If, because it's probably, like you said, it's a physiological cycle, right? So if you go to bed at 10:00 p.m. Is it, is it like two? If you went to bed at midnight, would it be like three? Does it?
[00:03:30] Speaker B: That's a good question. So here. Here's to answer. I didn't look that up, actually.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Well, I just meant for you, like, do you notice?
[00:03:37] Speaker B: No, I can if I get less sleep. I'm probably sleeping a little longer into the night and I get through till about 05:00 a.m.. Yes. So for me, it does shift a little. If I go to bed real late, I can move it. It still doesn't pay because if I go to bed real late, it's like Friday night and I wanted to sleep till 730 and I'm not going to still.
So that's sad. How is your body doing this? Why? And all of you are like, it's circadian rhythms. And you're right. Ten points. But I thought it's been. I just know the word circadian rhythms and I really don't think a lot about what's happening and how your body has this cycle of preparing you for what's going to happen. It's going to prepare you for activity and for sleep and for eating.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Are you having a thought?
[00:04:25] Speaker A: I am having a thought, but I didn't want to interrupt.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Okay. Do you want to have it now or do you want me to go on?
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Let me have my thought.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: So Chaz and all of the men in his family, as they get older, wake up earlier and earlier.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: He used to be, like, a five. Now he's a four. If he's really stressed out, 330. And here's the thing. If I do wake up, I go, well, I'm awake, but I'm not getting up. And I stubborn myself back to sleep.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: He wakes up and gets up. It's almost freaky. He's awake and he's out of bed, and he's gone, and he starts the day.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: So he's got 16 year old with an automatic transmission with maybe some cognitive things happening there.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And he can't get back to sleep. It's almost like an insomnia sort of issue, except it's that early morning. So that thing where you would wake up at three and go, well, we're committed until five. He goes, I'm just gonna get up.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I will get up, go to the bathroom, try to fall back to sleep, and usually succeed. We're gonna talk about circadian rhythms a little bit, and then I'll talk about what might be happening there.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Ooh.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Fake doctor Amy will address that.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Thank you, fake doctor Amy. You're so smart.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Without any primary sources, it's amazing. Okay. Almost all living organisms do have biological clocks like us, which isn't surprising. But I didn't think of, back then, bacteria and fungi among that and plants. And in humans, our biological clocks coordinate, like I said earlier, our behaviors, like sleeping and mood and eating and cognition, our physiology, like our metabolism and our hormones and our blood pressure and our body temperature. The body clock even coordinates individual cell function, which is wild, like DNA repair and cell cycle. And that allows our body to function all together and work properly as a team. Yeah. So what I didn't realize was that this is at that cellular level, and each cell has its own molecular clock. And the region of the brain that's responsible for all this is the suprachiasmatic nucleus. So we're going to call that the master clock. So I don't have to say that again, because.
And immediately, all the sources I looked at reverted to master clock as well.
But that's what makes all of these parts in our bodies, these all of everything, sync up and connect all of the circadian rhythm like we talked about. You could go in a cave. And, yes, scientists have done this with no environmental cues. Your body will still follow a roughly 24 hours cycle. A little more a little less. Depending on you, it will become desynchronized from the environment. So a blind person could potentially over months and years become very desynchronized if they don't have the visual cues. So they, I believe they have to create cues in other ways for themselves to stay synced.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Right. Cause I was thinking of the gal who was in the cave for 500 days.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: And she did get all like she thought it was less time. Like she didn't think she'd been there that long and it changed her. So she got on her own kind of cycle and everything. But.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Cause you're creating this different because if.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: You'Re 24 hours and 15 minutes, it does. She would be like a day off before too. Awfully long, I feel like.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Right?
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And so can you imagine coming out of that and trying to sync back up with the natural world? I wonder how long it took for her to feel like she could fit in the world again. That would be weird.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be interesting.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: So she probably did feel physically better. So that master clock in our bodies will integrate both what's happening in your body and what's happening around you. And so it integrates that light and dark and temperature changes for us to pull all of that together so that we aren't all slightly wonky from the clock.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Well, yeah. And then we're putting this artificial schedule on there so that we all go to work at the same time or we all make it to the party at the same time and.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's an interesting thing. I have found that I feel like I should go to bed at 930 but I'm really probably my better sleep. Nights are when I'm falling asleep around 1030 as long as I get enough sleep. So that's been an interesting, since I've read this, I've been kind of looking at my own habits and I'm finding maybe I should shift a little.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: You're like, oh, no, I'm doing this all wrong.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Maybe. Yes, I was doing some things right, but. And for some of us, we actually have restless and wakeful periods throughout the night for many of us, because y'all know about REM cycles and those are happening. And so you have that where you're closer to the surface, then you go back down and we're just not aware of that potentially. So then you throw a little bit of stress and it's easy for you to have that a thought flit through that brings you to alertness and that is the enemy here. And unsurprisingly, this increased during the pandemic. So for those of you who do have that moment of that stressful thought that snaps you out of it, it probably got worse in the pandemic because stress impacts so much, and insomnia will create some hypervigilance, and so you'll jolt awake and PSA here. Public service announcement. I am told that insomnia does respond well to psychological treatments, if you can afford it.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Ah, well, I will say, like, Beckett has some issues with insomnia. And the big thing from, you know, the people who were like, okay, here's how you can try to fix this. Was not laying in bed awake.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: So, you know, we had this high school kid at the time who was up just wandering around the house.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Only for 20 minutes, though, because they're restarting the bedtime clock.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Yep. In the middle of the night, wandering around doing stuff. Cause they're like, I'm not tired. I'm not supposed to lay there. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna trust.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: The process, but could you please not cook onions and garlic? Thanks.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So the author says your mind is partly right when it concludes, the problem is unsolvable at 03:00 a.m. Because you really don't have the skills to deal with it when you're in that situation. So. And our brain isn't looking for a solution at 03:00 a.m.. Too. They cite, he says, science calls it problem solving. Evil twin is worry that nighttime. So it's the flip side. This is like in those documentaries where they flip the picture and it's a black and white reversed image. That's what we need here.
So what can you do about this? Because you're so. If you're prone to this, it just happens to you. But you do have a little bit of control. And there are. There's a ton of stuff on the Internet, and some of it, most of them. The biggest thing that I read that I hadn't really heard a lot of is that these things can all work, but you need to practice something for a while before your brain learns it, and it becomes quicker and more natural. There is a military trick that I read that pilots and soldiers do because they have to get the sleep where they can. And so they need to be able to fall asleep in weird places quickly. And they do one of those. Have you ever done one of those body inventories where you sit in a comfortable place and you think about major muscle groups and you tense them, and then you loosen them. And so you have that experience of holding it tightly and then completely relaxing it. And so they start from the top of their head, and they imagine it really tight, and then they loosen it up, and they make it feel warm and pleasant, and they just move through their body.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Somebody's gonna crash their car. Stop it. Stop it.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
So if you get to do some sort of guided meditation like that, they're delightful. And so soldiers will teach themselves to do that. But the article said it's a practice that takes some learning. But once your brain has that pattern, it will be like, oh, we're doing this. Okay. And it shuts you down again.
So that's good. And finding a way to get rid of that worry. Buddhist informed mindfulness is another one that popped up quite a bit. The self is a fiction, and the fiction is the source of all distress.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Wow, we got deep fast.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: So much. And they were careful to point out, sometimes meditation doesn't work. Sometimes it does. You might, it might not hit for you.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: That's true. When I'm anxious, meditation does not help. I just stew in my own. It's like you put me in a pot of boiling water, and I'm just in there bubbling away, going, oh, wow, now I'm really thinking about everything. This is great.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So please don't torture yourself with meditation if that's not working for you. It might be a practice you could develop during overtime hours or. Yeah. When the stakes are high, though, it reverses it for me. So for my personal practice is to get my book out and try to restart the bedtime routine in my brain. It's like a hard reboot.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Oh, there you go.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: And that actually works pretty well for me. Once I got a kindle with the nice screen that doesn't hurt your brain.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Of course, then I can remember. Okay, so if you wake up and you're reading and then you start to fall asleep and you drop it and it hits the floor, and then, like, boom. Okay, now I'm awake again. That was great.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: Yes, yes. That startle response, that is the worst part of this. If you can find some way to work through that startle and short circuit it. One of the tips that I also had never read but I hadn't heard of, they say it's important to convince yourself during daylight hours that you want to avoid catastrophic thinking. So kind of prepping yourself in the daytime that I'm going to be thinking about calm things and reminding yourself what your plan is and how long you plan to lay there versus getting up or doing your next thing. I like that thought, but I haven't.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Heard you now talk about. Because a lot of this is chemistry. Is people snacking on melatonin?
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Some of those things. They're great. They do indeed do what they say they do, but then your body is like, oh, we have an external source. High five, buddy. I'm gonna let that process go. So then it will take a while for your body to realize, oh, this is me again. All right, I have to do what? So, Chris and I have that talk, and I have heard that antihistamines at bedtime, we call it riding the pink dragon, because it becomes so very needed and it's hard to let go of.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: It's like, ooh, let's brush our teeth and do Benadryl shots.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: No, exactly. Yes. Because they're sowing links to Alzheimer's with that. So if you can find an alternative that would be healthier for you.
I hate to throw out healthy out there at people, but that one is literally, potentially problematic.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: There we go. So, sleep cycles. That's why you wake up. The boat's throttling back.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: I have too much cortisol.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: I can't sleep. I'm just gonna run around upstairs for a minute. I'll be right back.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: I'm feeling stressed out. This is how I cope with my insomnia.
I guess Becca could have been running around the house, and they were in high school. That would have been a real pain. Yeah.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
And now I wonder, for people that work night shifts or just naturally, like, I. This is not my sleep wake cycle. I would like to sleep at other times. I wonder if their body is integrating environmental cues less.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Either that, or, as I think I was doing some reading about this, because both of my kids do a night shift, and they're just more inclined to be awake then and asleep at a different time.
They weren't. They also, neither of them were nappers, so I think maybe they've just been weird since. It's my fault. It's my fault.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: So there you go.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: It's a genetic thing there. Their internal cues don't tell them they need naps.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: I don't know. They're a mess. The master clock broken.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: All it takes is one part.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: So, hopefully, it has been interesting knowing some of these things like that, that startle aspect. And so if I feel myself drifting awake now at that time of night, I will be very intentional about what I think about to try not to have that. When are you going to do your taxes, thought, because it's all over once that hits.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Yeah. No doom spiraling.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: It's 03:00 in the morning.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'll report back in six months.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: That sounds good. So if you were listening to this and it's the middle of the night and you want to relax and just drift off, learning about ants being kneecapped or how to wipe your butt properly, ask your smart speaker. But whisper, because whoever you're sleeping nearby, they don't want to wake up. Ask your smart speaker to play brain junk podcast. Or you can listen anywhere. You listen to podcasts like subscribe, review, catch us on YouTube, buy some merch. You know. You know what to do. We've been here. We've done this. You're tired.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Don't hit the merch store until it's daylight hours. Please.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't want that bright blue screen?
[00:18:02] Speaker B: No.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Amy and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know, and I guarantee you will not be bored. Now roll over. Use the cold side of the pillow. Go back to sleep.
-
2024 is the 100th anniversary of Band-aids. But before they were the little strips in cool tins, they came in a roll you could cut to size.
Show Notes:
Johnson & Johnson history of Band-aids
Wikipedia: Band-aid history
Disposable America
The Atlantic: The Story of the Black Band-aid
TruColour Bandages
Transcript:
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And I do have a cold.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: But today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about band aids.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: I want to know many things. Did you buy picturey ones for your children, or were you kind of scroogey?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Here's the thing. I kind of felt like the picturey ones didn't have enough of the nick.
I'm a fan of the fabricy ones because I feel like they stay on better.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Yeah, but.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Okay, so, 2024, I just figured this out when I was doing research, is the 100th anniversary of the eponymous bandaid.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Oh, so they've had them since the 20s?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Yes.
I went to the Johnson and Johnson website for the history of the bandaid, and I stayed for a bandaid quiz.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: You can do a band. That's fun. I'll do any quiz.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Same. I got 90%. But I may have done some research and also cheated.
I had already been looking into it, and then I took the quiz, and I was like, I'm so smart. No, it was all but way back in the late 19 hundreds when you.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: And I were young.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah, way back then, a million years ago, back with the mammoth. You could buy bandaids in a tin.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Yes, you can again. Now they're, like $5 more than regular bandaids.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: I haven't seen that with the flip top lid.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: I walk down that row, I'm not even there for bandaids. I'm there for whatever else is in that row, and I'm like, I probably need four tins of these fancy bandaids.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: I don't know. But, I mean, that tin, it was just the right size to fit in, like, a shirt pocket. When I was a kid, you had, like, fishing supplies in there. It's almost like the cookie tin. That's actually a sewing kit.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yes, exactly.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: The number of times you could open that bandaid tin and it would not be bandaids was about 50 50.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yes. Gum. If it's nicely in there. Yeah.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Okay, so the story of the bandaid. Let me take you back.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Take me back.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Back in 1920, Josephine Knight Dixon. Now, Johnson and Johnson says she was accident prone around the kitchen. I feel like she was a woman in the kitchen getting burns and cuts. That just happens.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Because the kitchen was a lot more dangerous in the. Yeah.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Keep her away from the knives. But back then, we didn't have bandaids, so she would just wrap her fingers in a bit of spare fabric that she had lying know, and it would come untied and it would get dirty. So she told her husband about this issue, and he was a cotton buyer for Johnson Johnson. And the cotton that they were buying, they were using that to make gauze.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: And they had been making that for a while. Well, so he was. Okay, let's. Let's make a solution to this problem. So he brought a bunch of samples home. I like to think that he just kind of went into a supply closet and was like, let's take a little bit of this. A little bit.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Some sticky notes, a few paperclips, a red stapler.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Don't look in my handy dandy leather briefcase. There's nothing in there. But Earl. That was his name. Earl brought a bunch of samples home. Three inch wide surgical tape and cotton gauze.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: So surgical tape already existed, then? Yes, it did. Okay.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Although it was three inches wide, so it was almost like an ace bandage kind of size.
And he cut a piece about 18 inches long, and he laid the gauze, a strip of it, down the middle. So if you imagine this long rectangle with the gauze down the middle of it, and then he put a fabric layer on top of that and rolled the whole thing up because the fabric layer would keep the sticky bits from sticking to themselves.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: And then, voila. She could unroll this roll a little bit and cut off a strip the size that she needed to put on a cut.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: So his big roll was like a racing stripe all the way down. But then she cut off. It would look like our traditional band aids.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Crafty, right?
[00:04:13] Speaker B: And it worked great. She loved it. And so Earl was like, I got to tell my boss about this.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: And so he took it to his boss, showed him, and he was like, you're right. This should be a thing. And so then they took it to pharmacists, and it was not popular.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Oh, really? What?
[00:04:31] Speaker B: They only sold $3,000 worth of these rolled bandaids, these bandages, the first year they were out. And Johnson and Johnson was like, people didn't understand what it was that they could be buying.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yes. This is the story of Fabrize, where people didn't know they needed it until Fabrize explained they needed it.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Wait, I smell.
So they put out ads that detailed how to use this rolled up bandage. They educated pharmacists and the traveling salesmen who were out telling people, this is what it is. This is how it works. See, for your accident prone wife in the kitchen, this would be great. So they went from $3,000 in sales in 1921 to 1924. And the precut bandage, we all know, today. So between 1921 and 1924, it was just the big chunk. And then somebody was like, hey, how about we just cut these into bite sized pieces?
[00:05:29] Speaker A: I'm thinking, like, wax paper would work really well for a backing.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: And I think it's one of these things where we had World War I and people were doing a lot of medical stuff, and then they figured out, oh, there were ways to keep these things clean and sterile and in that fancy little tin.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Because the tin would stay dry. Yeah.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: So you could whack your thumb with an axe while chopping wood. And bandaid.
But then bandaids went on, like, in 1968, they went to the moon on Apollo eight. Oh, that's fun, right? In 1975, there was a bandaid commercial, and I'm wondering if you can complete the jingle. I'm stuck on bandaid brand because bandaid stuck on me.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Yes.
I knew it before. I'm like, I know that jingle. That is the jingle of my childhood. And I can see the commercial right now. Happy children with a finger in the air.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Yes. In the bathtub. Bandaids still sticking. There was even a commercial where they would stick bandaids to a dry egg and then lower it into boiling water. I couldn't remember that. I could remember the kids with bandaids on, but not the boiling water egg.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't remember the boiling water. One adult, me, would be like, yeah, that's awesome, kid. Me, would be like, why are we boiling the bandaids?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yes. And then they just kind of cruised along. In 2017, they had an innovation for touch screen friendly bandaids.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Oh, yes. I have had a pointer finger.
Someone cut it with a knife a couple of times.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Ouch.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: And it becomes very difficult to do life now without a pointer. Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Or the thumb. Like, if my right thumb has a bandaid on it, it's like, you can just send me out to pasture, push me into traffic. I can't use my thumb on my phone.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: No, you're out with your middle finger and then doing everything. Speech to text.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Oh, no, I don't do that. Speech to text. I'm not capable. You do it. You do speech to text, like a boss.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I do it everywhere too, and my children are mortified by it.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Especially bandaids are cool, period.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It can be awkward. Back to bandaids.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Okay, so we're going a little out of order because my timeline is out of order. 1994 was the end, although clearly not now. But it was the end of the tin bandaid container.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Sad.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: I know. But now they're retro, so we'll bring them back. 2000, the billionth bandaid was produced.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Oh, wow. I can see that. I use a lot of them.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
Okay, so I'm going to take a slightly different turn here. It wasn't until 2021 that bandaid, Johnson and Johnson Bandaid brand made bandaids that were not just for white skin.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Yes. And not even white skinned. It's like weird, putty colored people. None of us are. There's nobody in the world that's actually bandaid colored.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: No, not really. But, I mean, you're closer.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: You're closer.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: If you're on the.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: For sure. It's in the shade range. It's not scale. Yeah.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: When asked about it over the years, they'd say, well, there's too many shades. What can we do? So in 1995, they did come up with a clear bandaid. And I remember those. They don't stick very well.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: They're sweaty and weird. Yeah.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Because they're kind of plasticky.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I like the idea. It was a good thought.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: It was a good thought. I read an atlantic article. They quote a 66 year old black woman named Orndu Johnson. She said of ads at the time, she told her kids, the bandages said flesh color. And I'd explain, that's not your flesh. The band Aids were even a point of contention with the Black Panthers. There's this cartoon of a man in, like, a leather jacket, and he's got this white band aid on his head, and it was like, look at this. They can't even make us bandaids.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Wow. That goes back ways then.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: It goes back a long ways now. They make them in a variety of tones. And there are a lot of other companies that make bandaids since, like, the mid 80s that have stickable bandages in a variety of shades. But often bandaids like the Johnson and Johnson brand are cheaper just because of market share. There are so many of them. Yes, but they turned it around. 2021. Good job.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Good.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Because we had neon bandaids way before anyone with brown skin could have a bandaid that matched them.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Oh, the neon Band aid. That's right.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: I'm glad that that is more accessible and less expensive now.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Me too. Yeah, me too. So that is the story of I'm stuck on band Aid brand because band Aids are stuck on me.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: I love that. That's a little piece of childhood. I sling band aids like I'm daddy Warbucks. Everybody can have band Aids. I'm not Scroogey at all. And fancy ones go for it. If that says I love you or you're going to be okay. You have it.
It's a charming story, right? Oh.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: He was thinking of his wife, who kept chopping off her fingers. But we made band aids.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: My aunt has one of the really old tins out at the lake, and it still contains band Aids. And there are several in there that are very vintage that we all ignore because we know those aren't going to stick. So it's a little time capsule.
Yeah.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: When I told Chaz they haven't made them since 1995, he stood there for a little bit, and he was like, how old are all the tins I have in my fishing gear? And I was like, old buddy.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Probably antique old, because they're our childhood tins. Oh, my goodness. Do you know what else I wanted as a child with tins? Is the lip gloss in a tin. And I did conquer that. I got those. And then you realize that's not that great. It's a little bit difficult. What do you do with the residue on your finger? Do you find a dry spot and rub it on? I don't know.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Yeah. But those lip smacker, little tiny tins, they would click open.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: And you want to talk about the original fidget toy.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Oh, those were so good.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: We've just given a small gift, a small sensory gift to every gen xer right now. So there you go. The other thing. And this is another one for me. I so longed for secrets. Those tins were the coolest. And they had commercials. And I'm like, those are so tidy. Look at the little things. And they're so great. And so I think my dad had a cold, and it was a real cold, not like us kids. And he actually needed a cough drop. And at some point, mom bought them. And I remember trying them, and they were not good. So gross. Oh, yeah. Never mind. I would like some Smiths or Ludens again, please.
Things and tins. Thank you for giving us the lowdown on bandaids. You're welcome. You can drop a line.
[email protected] always find us on Facebook and Instagram. Message us there. Pop up a fun thing. We're there. We're watching.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: That sounds ominous.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Yeah, like big brother. And we're expecting you to, like and subscribe.
Smash that button, please.
But please do wherever you, you know, the smart speaker thing.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: And YouTube.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Yes, YouTube. Find us on YouTube. You can just start up at work and listen if your boss is cool with that. All right, trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything. You never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored.
-
From poker to games played to pass the time, those 52 cards are so ubiquitous it's hard to figure just when we started using them. We go all the way back to ancient China for a possible origin of cards.
images: Cloisters Deck from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and and example of cards from today from pixabay
Show Notes:
The strange coincidence of the Instagram guy & 52 card decks
Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Cloisters Playing Cards
Atlas Obscura: Playing cards around the world and through the ages
JSTOR: an excerpt from The Game of Leaves: An Inquiry into the Origin of Chinese Playing Cards
Wikipedia: Chinese Playing Cards
Transcript:
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hey there. Trace here. So Amy and I have a couple projects coming up over the next couple months. She's taking some classes. She's got to do homework. I've got some projects, a fiction podcast that I'm working on writing, and a novel that I'm working on editing. And we need a little more space, a little more time. So we're not stopping brain junk. Absolutely not. We love it too much to quit. But we are going to move to every two weeks instead of every week. So that means this week is an episode, and then we won't have another episode until April 2. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't get your brain junk fixed. We got lots of old episodes. You can head over to YouTube for the really old episodes. I'm slowly uploading more. We're not going anywhere. We're just going to dial it back a little bit for a little while. So enjoy this episode. Yeah, we'll see you in two weeks.
Welcome to Brain junk. I'm Trace Kerr.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to talk about everything you never knew you wanted to know about playing cards.
Are you a card family? Like old school? Not like games, but the traditional four suit deck.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we are. Well, you know, it's funny because I grew up as a card family. Chaz did not grow up as a card family. They were a scrabble family. And I have converted him to the crazy eights and the Kings in the know, the old people card games.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Now, I have never played kings in the corner. My family is a rummy family. I think there's some cribbage in there, too, with the little pegs. Children were not allowed to touch that. I think it was an adult escape game because they played it out at the lake and they're like, shouldn't you guys be swimming? Grandpa's out watching go swim, so I need to learn to play that one.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Well, I can teach you how to play cribbage. Chaz and I play cribbage all the time. Neither of my children like to play cards, which is funny. It began and ended with us. That's it. We're done.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Now.
It's a generational thing in my family because my grandpa was a military fella for a long time, and so it was an officer's. It's a clubby thing. They would have card night. And so that filtered down into my parents play, and we play. Chris didn't play as much, but the kids liked it when they could start playing with the grandparents, and Allie especially, can win.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: See, now, what you have to do is you get your children, because, like Beckett's person, cam likes to play cards, and so you just have to make sure. You have to be like, are you nice to my child? Do you like to play, know, whatever the family thing is?
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Yeah. When it's boring and rainy, what will we be doing?
So Chris saw a video on Instagram and immediately sent it to me, knowing it was all about cards. He's like, knew I would enjoy it. The content creator. What do we call Instagram, people? The guy on Instagram, he was really good with cards and was smoothly shuffling the deck and laying them out and talking about the origin of cards, the standard modern deck that we use. So he said the 52 cards represent 52 weeks in a year. I was with him there. The black and red are the darkness of night, and the lightness of day are the two colors. 13 cards pursuit ace through king. For those who don't get into a deck very often, they say that's the 13 weeks of each season, and all of that adds up to 364, which is one day shy of a year. So you throw in a joker, and you get two jokers for leap year. This is the symbolism and the meaning of the cards.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Now, is he the only one saying this?
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Or that is when he got to the joker thing. I'm like, I have never in my life seen a deck with only one joker.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Right?
[00:03:59] Speaker B: I'm like, so I'm like, I believed you until that moment because it lines up so nicely.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: It does.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah. However, there is a great big butt here.
Those of you who have ever seen or touched a card deck or watched a movie with cards will note that they are paper. The troublesome nature of paper products historically is that they disintegrate very easily and the ink fades. And so there are card historians and scholars who say, this is a terrific story. It totally might be true, but we have no primary sources, and you really can't put any stock in that. Don't bet on any of that, because they just can't prove it. That is a bit of a disappointment, but we can't know because of all these things. So I'm going to tell you some of those things cards originate. I was curious. I thought they might be older than they are, and they certainly could be, but historians start seeing evidence of them between the 9th and 13th centuries, depending on who you consult and how loosely they define that. What is cards?
[00:05:08] Speaker A: That classic, that classic card kind of thing, the suits and everything.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Would recognize as. And there are lots of permutations, as you might guess, that culturally and locationally, they're just all different. One scholar said the amount of things, basic things that nobody knows about playing cards is astounding.
He says the playing cards are impressively undocumented. Like, nice. But I think that speaks to the nature of they are a thing of the people in many ways, because you can sit and spend ten minutes and make a deck of cards that's usable. So historically, bored people probably did that. So origins, this is an asian origin. It did make its way over to Europe, but the first sightings are in Asia. And again, it's one of those things that's like, yeah, probably this is what happened. But the documentation is scarce. They generally assume China, Persia, India is where they came from, and that they probably came over during the Crusades, where people were mingling, different cultures were mingling. This is the episode, by the way, that I told you was my favorite because I was going to be extremely broad and very, like, I don't know, that's just the whole episode, so I'm super excited about it.
All I'm going to tell you guys for the next five minutes is maybe it's hard to say, oh, do you want to go? I have a little side road in my notes right here. There's chinese game called Yezigay, which translate to Game of leaves. And I didn't look up a pronunciation, so that's probably wrong. But it's the first game to use playing cards that they can kind of say, yeah, this is truly a card game. And their references to it being played as early as the study found that there is no indication that the leaves actually referred to playing cards. And so this is this documented thing. It's the first card game. And then in 2009, somebody went poking around. They're like, are you guys sure this is cards? Because the leaves, they might actually have been the pages from the game's instruction books. Oh, no. So the game may have used dice, as chinese games of the time often did. So nobody even seems to have even suggested that the game may have been a card game until the 15th century, which is right around the time that playing cards started to take off. So there was a lot of. I think this is a card game, right? Yes. It's like a game of telephone.
So the earliest unambiguous record of playing cards was a police record from 1294. A couple of gamblers in Shendong, China, were arrested, and their cards and the printing blocks for those cards were confiscated. So that's fun.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: You know, I feel like about as soon as people developed language, they figured out games of too. You know, rocks, stones, dice, cards. I'm sure that all came along very quickly.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: And I can see dice games prevailing. Yes. Because you could create them from a lot of materials, and they could rumble around in your pocket and get wet.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: And then you could just break them out and play.
I know. So here's the question. The invention of a table is that when you have cards, you set it on a rock.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Table and card, same time period.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: It's OG and grog. And they made it. Yeah. There are card size parchment deck that dates around the 13th century in a couple of museums, including the cure collection of islamic art in Dallas. But it's not known for sure that they're actual playing cards. They might have been like some guy's grocery list or some other kind of notes on card sized things. So they totally could be cards. And as we've just talked about, I really do think they probably had cards much earlier than that. And then there comes the sandwich. Problem is a taco. A sandwich is a hot dog. A sandwich is a title game, a card game. Those are card shaped things. How thick does it have to become before it's not a card game? So this is also a disputed thing among historians, which I did not go very far down that road.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: They're like mahjong.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Yes, that's exactly the one.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Not a card game. That's a domino's game. Right?
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Yeah. But is it like a rectangle and a square?
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: So there's great disputes hotly contended at the playing card conventions.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: I was just thinking in some sort of historical, archaeological thing, and two guys with glasses and lanyards throw down over dominoes versus cards.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
So you start seeing formalized decks of playing cards. There is the cloister deck from the late 15th century, and it is in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. And they were able to identify that and date it. And it has 52 cards, four suits, numbers and face cards. So a true, what we modern people would say. I could play cards with that. Yes.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Oh, but you know what? They're ovals.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Yeah. The shapes, over time, a little changey. I think squares and rectangles are easiest, but decorative cards.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: But there's a few other decks that are of a similar vintage, and we'd recognize them as cards. So that oval shape. At first, cards were primarily for the rich. What we would formally say are cards. I suspect, again, other people had cards, but a beautiful hand painted deck with continuity and recognizable rules and traditions of this is what this king will look like were around before Gutenberg, but they were hand painted and might be really elaborate and used exotic dies and beautiful designs, but they require a lot less variation than a book. So you could whip a deck out quicker than you could do a book.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Well, looking at the cloisters deck that you mentioned, yes, 52 cards, and they're oval shaped. But the suits aren't like, what we would think of as suits.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: No. It could be hunting dogs. It could be acorns, stags like fishing lures.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Oh, is that what those are? Because one kind of looks like a whisk, one looks like a girl in a bonnet. I'm like, what am I even looking at?
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Yeah. The cloister duck in particular. They say hunty dog stags, lures, or that that might be of that era, were fairly common in other parts of Europe. You would see representations of the ruling families like a fleurtely in France. So at first, it was just four distinct suits, but they could be whatever you wanted. You could have squirrels and acorns and chipmunks and sunflower seeds, whatever your jam is and that you're willing to illustrate.
But, of course, as we talked about something else, where pedestrianism, as people begin to communicate and cultures flow together more frequently, standardization occurs, and that happened earlier for cards. By the end of the 15th century, printing presses are starting to be a thing, and so cards were more available, and then you want some continuity so that you all can play the same game. So that's kind of when the standard design and layout began to occur. And there were four prominent schools of card decks, the german, the Swiss, the French, and the Latin. But we've landed on the french deck, which has largely edged out the german deck. So those were the two longest contenders. It sounded like.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Oh, different designs, different regional. Oh. And so then there was a battle. Okay. And the French won. Of course they did.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
So that's what I know about playing cards now a lot more than I used to. My grandma used to have little, small decks that were, like, one by two inches, and I've got one that's shaped like a surfboard.
One of the little decks had Mickey Mouse, and they're probably pretty old because they're older than me.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: We got a new set. Actually, Chaz got a new set of two packs of cards from a company called fan effinf and birds. They are wildly inappropriate. They have bird drawings and then lots of swear words. I'll have a link in the show notes, they're delightful. Although my mom was over and he was like, let's play crazy eights. And I was like, not with that deck. Not with that deck.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Grab a comfortable deck that we've broken in.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Let's get the ones that we've picked up for free from the casino that have been decommissioned. Those are good.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: My parents. Our favorite deck growing up was plastic, but one of the corners had broken it off and my mom attached it back with rubber cement or something, which was amazing that it stuck. So you always just sort of politely ignored that. So and so had the eight of spades or whatever it was. I was even going to say eight of spades. That's so funny. I don't know if I'm making that up or if that's really what it was.
So that's a fast, broad flyover of broad card ideas.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: I'm disappointed that the fellow's Instagram explanation, those things where it's like, why does this fit together so well?
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And he could be right. He can just never win because he cannot until we find a primary source. That's like, yes, he's right.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it's conjecture. And conjecture is fun. We love it.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: He's winning Instagram on that one. We all believed him.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: That's true. It's like 2 million people can't be wrong. Yes, you can. Check your sources.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Well, thank you for your reviews and comments. If you'd like to hear more episodes, ask your smart speaker to play brain junk. Also, we've put ourselves on YouTube, so if you like to watch an anime and listen to a podcast and do homework all at the same time on multiple monitors, you can do that now.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Amy and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know, and I guarantee you will not be bored.
-
Call them slippahs, flip flops, chanclas, slops, plakkies, slaps, pantofles, or thongs...whatever word you choose says a lot about your age and what part of the world you grew up in. We came up with this episode topic as kind of a joke. Turns out there's way more about to know about these summer shoes than we thought.
Show Notes:
Wikipedia on the history of flip flops
The Paduka
Kanye West being weird as usual with diamond studded flips
Satra: History of the flip flop
Forbes: This Brand Reinvented Flip-Flops (And Made Them A Sustainable Product)
Business Wire: Global Flip Flops Market to Reach $28.5 Billion by 2030, Fueled by Work-from-Home Trend and Growing Demand in Developing Countries - ResearchAndMarkets.com
Obama first US President photoed in slippahs
Guinness account on X: Andre Ortolf running in flip flops
Longest flip flop throw
Flip Flops History and Production Process
Harper's Bazaar
YouTube: Mexican Moms play chancla or no chancla
Washington Post Flip Flop vs Thongs
recycled rubber flops
Transcript:
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Trace Kerr.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to be discussing everything you never knew you wanted to know about flip flops.
Flip flop.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Or is it thongs? And then all the gen Z's cringed.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: I know. And it is the very first thing I think of every time you say flip flops. For the longest time, I remember the first time somebody corrected my wrong term use. They're like, oh. And I'm like, oh, all right. So the flip flop, for me, the quintessential flip flop, is the black sole, the rainbow striped straps. Oh, I love those things. My aunts had them out at the lake, and they were the coolest.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: I was just trying to think. I once had flip flops that I wore to camp on an overnight. And I can remember that the middle bit tore out of the bottom of the shoe.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: You suffered for 36 hours was limping.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Along with one flip flop. Oh, it was traumatic.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Yes. Everybody's like, we could fix that with tape.
No, you can't. It's just gone. It's over. What adult let you do?
[00:01:13] Speaker A: You know, I bet you they had told me to wear something else, but I was like, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I'm eight.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah, we have that discussion in our house now, and I'm like, you just have to bring it with you because I said so. There you go.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: I like that.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Exactly. So do you want to tell us about that term switch, or do you want me to tell you about what we call them now around the world? Oh, let's do the term switch.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah, let's start with that term switch. So Japan. Japan started it all with the zori zori.
And we had Usgis coming back from World War II calling it a thong over the strap because that's the strap that went between the toes. That is technically a thong. And I mean, flip flops have been around forever. Egypt, way back, people. It's a flat thing. You put a strap, you keep it on your foot.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, like 4000 bc old.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Yeah, forever, but. Okay, so the thong, it's coming back with the gis. As a kiddo in the seattle, we called them thongs.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Yes. Me too. Here in spokaloo.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And then there was a ton of speculation when and why we switched to using flip flop. But according to Heddles, which was a magazine, an article that I was reading starting in the late 60s, depending on where you lived, they were called flip flops or thongs. But once we had the strappy underwear called a thong with the strap that goes between your butt cheeks. Super cozy, super comfy. Once we had that, they were like, okay, we can't call these sandals that anymore.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: It ruined it for everyone.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: They really did. But there's this hilarious story that I read in the Washington Post of a nurse in 2008 who was muttering about where her thongs were, and all the 20 something nurses were just laughing hysterically because they thought she'd lost her underwear.
No, they didn't.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Awesome. I read something that they still call them thongs in Australia, but also sometimes pluggers.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: I also saw pluggers, and that just makes me laugh so hard, and I don't know why it's a funny.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Wear my pluggers down to the market. Okay.
They also call them slops or plaqueies. Plakies is what they call it in Zimbabwe.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Ooh. I liked in Hawaii, they wrote it out that they call them slippers.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yes, I did too. And they also call them slippers in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago. They're cinelas in the Philippines, chapal in India. And that's traditionally a leather one. So that's the good ones in India.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Got it. And then you can't talk about flip flops and not mention the chunkla.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: Yes. That's next on my list. I'm like, that's a good one.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Right?
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Because as soon as you search that term, because I started looking up the terms just to be sure, it was a flip flop. And you know what the first image was, right?
[00:04:21] Speaker A: A woman throwing her chocolate at one of her children.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah. The woman with the flip flop in her hand by her head and a threatening look on her face, and they're all over.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: One of my favorite TikToks is it's a guy that says, I trust my wife. And then he's sitting around with things on his head, and she is hurling her chunkla at this thing. Like, she knocks an apple off his head. She knocks a trash can off his head, and he's never looking. It's death defying feats of. They fly very accurately.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: It's kind of got the physics of the flip flop and the form down. Yes, I like that.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: I do too.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: It's one of those weird hobbies. An unexpected skill.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah. There was even a YouTube video. And I'll have this in the notes of mexican moms. They were playing this game. It was three of them called chocolate or no chocolate. And they were asking them questions like, if your kid forgets to turn off the beans, chunkla or no chunkla.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Chunkla. Wasting food.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: And I got to tell you, one of those moms, I pity her children because she held that. She had it in her hand. She was waving it aggressively the whole time.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: And did she have a nice beefy one? Because there are the $1 ones that are almost as skinny as the pedicure flip flops. And then there's, like, choco makes some. And those choco soles are hefty.
That's what I have.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah, the really thick ones. Chaz stole my flip flops.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: That's an egregious sin.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Well, I mean. Okay, so they tell you with flip flops. Plantar fasciitis.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Oh, they're not great.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: No. And it was killing my feet. And these were so are. These were a little fancy. I'd gotten them as a gift, and they had on the strap on the thong.
Running chocolate labs.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Oh, I love that. So cute.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: And so I would occasionally wear them. Well, then Chaz was, like, sliding into them to go out into the backyard, sliding into them to go get the mail. Suddenly they don't belong to me anymore.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Once they do something that's a little dusty and sweaty and you're looking in there and you're like, that's not my foot dust.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: No. Yeah. I think he's on his fourth iteration of the Labrador flip flop.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: That's happy.
I like that. Can we talk about where the strap is?
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Modern day. I suspect we've all kind of rolled toward between the first and second toes.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah, right there. Smack in the. Okay. Yeah.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Roman sandals, second and third toes. No, thank you. But here's the real crime against people. The Mesopotamians were doing it between the third and fourth toe. So not the pinky. The one right before that. Gross. I'm trying to feel it right now, and it's terrible.
So touch your pinky and then the two next to it.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I kind of feel the same way about that. And, yes, I know a lot of the world does. Like, a fancy sock with a flip flop. And I'm happy for you, but, like, Chaz will just have regular socks and.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Then just cram his foot into the o.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: And I'm like, I have too much autism for.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: No, no, thank you.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: It gives me trouble every time I see him do it.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Yes. You can't not feel what that's like and feel worried about his feet.
Here's another sensory thing that would be very troubling to me in India. And again, I'm sorry I didn't look up dates. This might be a thing. Still, they have a style with a toe knob, instead of the thong between the toes, it comes up from the footbed of the sandal in what we now would consider the traditional between the big toe and the first toe, the first littler toe. But it's a knob, so you just have to hang on with your toes.
Yeah.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Those are called paducas, toe peg sandals.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: It's like a wooden knob between your.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Kind of cool. They look neat, but I feel worried about how it would feel.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Well, okay, but here's the thing, though.
You were saying a knob, and I was thinking, like, there was a cup that went over your big toe, and I was like, well, that sounds terrible.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: That sounds even worse.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: But though, the wooden knob, if you were wearing them, it would get nice and smooth.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Maybe that's true. Yes.
And if they were crafted well, that's true.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: I'm thinking of. I mean, it's so funny how the flip flop has been traditionally considered, like, a lower class shoe. It's the working man's shoe. Right.
But then I came across in 2022, Harper's Bazaar. Everyone at fashion week was wearing flip flops.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Oh, yes. But they were probably. Were they fancy leather?
[00:09:22] Speaker A: No. Here's the thing. No, it's spring 2023 show. So this is in the fall for spring, right?
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: All these fancy people, designer clothes, the velvets, the this, the that, and then plain black flip flops.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Like the dollar store kind.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah. They looked like ankles down, basic flip flop.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Like they're headed to the pool.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And apparently it caused quite a stir. People were going, is this casual? Are we descending into chaos? What is happening? Yeah.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Can you imagine the very high fashion always suited up people?
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
Although then there were people saying, but know, we want to be cozy. We want to be comfy now. And there were, like, people in the audience. There was a bunch of kerfuffle because I think Kanye had himself some diamond studded flip flops. I mean, there were people that were taking know really far the other direction, but most of the models on the Runway, it did look like somebody just ran down to JCPenney and was like.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Okay, I need this in sizes seven and eight. I need 30 pairs, please.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Put them in the back.
That's interesting that they made such a splash. I'm quite certain that there's a croc flip flop, and that's probably selling very well right now.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Croc, flip flop.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Like crocs. The croc. The croc.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: I'm quite sure that there's a flip flop.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: It's so plasticky looking.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
You all probably know this, but leather and rawhide were traditional materials. You do see wood in places like India. They use rice straw, or did traditionally in China and Japan, which that makes a lot of sense because that's a secondary use for a product that they have. Sisal plant, which makes twine in South America, also made flip flops and yucca plant in Mexico. So it's one of those nice, very versatile. If you've got any kind of reasonably robust plant fiber and some weaving skills, you can have a great pair of flip flops.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Well, and I'm feeling like as you're talking about that recycled tire.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, those are cool looking.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Weren't there some recycled tire flip flops?
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Wasn't that, like, a big deal too expensive for me? And I like a good expensive shoe.
Maybe not. Maybe I'm remembering that wrong. If I looked at it in high school, everything was too expensive then.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: That's true. I just think it's funny because I know you walking around your crocs going, I love an expensive shoe. And I'm like, do you, though?
[00:12:05] Speaker B: But I wore those a lot in the pandemic early on. And I also have plantar fasciitis, but have taken good care of my feet over the years, so it doesn't trouble me very much. And I flared it up like crazy in the pandemic. Chris did, too. So I don't currently own any.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Oh, that's sad.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: It's a little sad.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: How can you not love a shoe that you can stick things in, a shoe that you can put into, what do you call it, sport mode when you put the strap over your heel?
All right, so what else do we know about flip flops?
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Well, we covered.
They had that logical migration to the US in World War II, which we talked about.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: I can remember it was a huge scandal in middle school if somebody wore them to school.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Yeah. How could you evacuate in a fire drill in flip flops? No.
Grade school office lady, me would totally shut that down.
I wouldn't make you call your mom, but I would definitely tell you not to do it the next day in an emergency.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: You need shoes with a real soul.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: That's right. You need to be able to walk quickly and not lose your shoe and stub your toe.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Do you have anything else about them that we need to know before we slap our way? By the way, they say New Jersey, they call them slaps. My mom grew up in New Jersey. I have never heard her call a pair of flip flops slaps.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: So that must be a very regional yeah. Very small area. They call kitten heeled flip flops. Kit flops. It's terrible. Kitten heel.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Okay, sorry. Kitten heeled flip flops.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Apparently it's a late 2010s thing. Kit flops.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: I'm not seeing no kit flops for you. Oh, no.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a terrible idea all around. It defeats the entire purpose of the wonderful flip flop. But it is a very two thousand and ten s. Look.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: It is. It's just this little tiny. It looks like an AI image.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Yes. Like AI is trying to draw foot.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Yeah, you said casual spring sandal and it was like. I don't know. These two things seem to go together.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: It has three big toes and. Yeah. So Kit Flops. That's terrible. I do have other fun things.
We have to talk about famous people and flip flops, of course. First president to wear flip flops in public.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Kennedy.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Barack Obama. Of course.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Obama.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Now, I wouldn't be surprised to hear Kennedy because they're a beachy kind of family.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: You know, he's got a cold glass of something and meeting a woman he's not supposed to be and he's wearing flip flops on his way to the boat.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: Yes.
Global sales. Flip flops are big money. There is an Atlanta based company, flip flop shops, and they claim that the shoes were responsible for a $20 billion industry. $20 billion for flip flops.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: It's like the economy of a small country.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Yes. And that was one of the articles I read. Business wire had a thing saying it's a little bit difficult to quantify because so many people make them and they're like a part of that company's business. But in 2006 was the first time flip flop sales exceeded sneaker sales.
Crazy.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Wow. I wonder then. Well, we probably don't have data yet, but over the pandemic.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. That has to have gone exploded again.
Yes. Do you want to do some world records?
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Philip Conroy. Longest flip flop throw, 111ft, 22 inches. So that he threw at the length of two and a half semi trailers or like two Hollywood signs.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: Okay, I'm sorry, but somebody's abuela somewhere in Mexico, you know, she can throw it farther than that.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: No one's watching that. Shaking her head and going.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: No one's ever asked her how far she can throw that thing.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: No, he was in Spain in 2012 for this. Okay. Yeah. Fastest 100 meters flip flop run. And I just want to give you a moment to feel your feet right now and tell them it's okay. We're not doing that to you. You can uncrinkle Andre Ortolf did it in 13.88 seconds. So that's actually really fast.
So that wouldn't be terrible for very long. But I don't know. That's still terrible.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: I would have a blowout and end up in the hospital.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: I was thinking about them like, what brand was he wearing? We know that's a sturdy flip flop because my chocos. Those things will be with me till the apocalypse. They are great. But I don't think you could run in those without injuring yourself because they are a beefy flip flop. I don't know. You'd have to have some serious strength in your foot and toes to hold that still. And someone did it at a half marathon. And by the way, if you'd like to make this attempt, you must be 16 years or older, according to the Guinness World Book of Records. Don't try this 15 year olds.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Somebody ran 13 miles in flip flops.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Kenneth Chiopka did in 2023 in Canada. In Canada?
Yeah.
He did it in 1 hour 21 minutes and 8 seconds.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Why would you do that?
[00:17:38] Speaker B: And now you're wondering, did somebody try a marathon? Yes, they did. Alastair Kelty did it in 337 32. So his mileage would be like an 8.29 minutes mile, which is still absolutely nuts in flip flops. 26 is it .2 miles? 8.2 minutes mile?
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: For three and a half hours.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: I'm just thinking of. Because there are people that do it barefoot. Right. They're all about me in contact with the ground.
I'm just thinking of. I hold pencils too tight. Okay. And I'm thinking of. I know I hold flip flops when I do wear them far too tight. I'm not just letting them.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: They're not flopping around.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: No, I'm squeezing my toes.
I'm thinking of the blisters across the top of your foot.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: That would be wild. And between your toes. Oh my gosh.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: You just have a raw mess on top. And blisters.
There's even a record for rope skips wearing a flip flops. That also seems wildly perilous.
It's 230 if you want to know, and attempt that one.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Wow. It's like double dutch flip flop ambulance ride. Perfect.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: But it's only 1 minute of agony. So it's over after the 1 minute mark. It's probably over sooner because you've broken your patella because you fell down.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Oh God.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: The record person did not.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Well, yeah, no, clearly. I do remember as a child getting blisters in between my toes from flip flops.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Yeah. There's always a period in April or may where you have that break in period and they hurt a little.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Not anymore because I wear Sneakers. And that's it. Because I have elderly feet and I don't want to talk about it.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: They need a little hug from your insole all the time. They do.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Wow. Have we flipped all the flop? Is there more to be flipped?
[00:19:42] Speaker B: I have never run that distance. And so I don't know experientially, but chafing is a noted concern for distance runners. Yeah, that alone has to be miserable.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: I like how you're like, I have never gone that far because I'm not crazy.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: That's right. I am a sensible person. Yes. So that's it. That's my last one.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Wow. Well, I mean, this came up as a joke because I was like, hey, let's do another random thing. I don't know, flip flops. Da da. This thing, that thing. And you were like, that sounds great.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Although started looking at political reversals and like, this is a little thin on the ground. These aren't funny.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: So you messaged me, and you're like, do you have any topics? And I was like, the history of the flip flop. Why we wear flip flops?
[00:20:33] Speaker B: You were like, oh, flooded with relief. I'm like, oh, good.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that one would have been a little dry. And it would have been funny if.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: You'Re like, and they used to be called thongs, and I'm like, in 1978 when so and so said they were going to vote one way, and then they voted another, a whole industry collapsed.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Wait a second. What are we talking about?
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: We planned these so good.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Yeah, we got it together before that happened.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: No, I think that would have been good.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: It could have been quite funny.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: The shortest episode we've ever made.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Well, thank you for your reviews and comments. We're all over the place. We're on Instagram, we're on Facebook. You can watch.
Well, kind of watch. You can watch a little screen with a little moving waveform on it if you want to go to YouTube.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: That is pleasant.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: It is pleasant. And the color that I picked, actually, the color that Beckett picked told me look good. That I went, I don't know, and then I did it. And I do like, it looks like a fire.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pleasant.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: So it's very nice. Go check it out. Have a listen.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Are you still releasing the episodes? This is classics.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: It's all the classics. I have a few that I've skipped because either I couldn't stand the test of time.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Or I couldn't find a copy. I have a couple that I don't know. I went new computer.
Midway through, some things got lost. I know. Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: It's like the Halloween decorations in the box with Christmas stuff. You're going to find it in 20 years and be like, that's where you guys went.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: These are great flooriography. I had no idea you were here at the bottom of this hard drive.
But when you're not doing that, you can ask your smart speaker to play brain junk. You can go to our website, brainjunkpodcast.com and check out some merch. Get a cool cup. I'm currently drinking tea out of the non newtonian fluid cup because I'm getting over.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Are you drinking hot tea in that?
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's glass.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: I guess there's no reason not to. But that's not what that's for.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: You don't get to tell me how to use my cup.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Please go put it down and get a mug. A proper tea vessel.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: I refuse.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Oh, you rogue. I love it.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Next I'm going to tell you I microwaved it. I didn't. But like.
Amy and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored.
-
It's easy to believe that a snake might be a deadly mimic. But butterflies that start life as carnivorous caterpillars? Oh heck yeah!
Show Notes:
YouTube BBC: Ants Adopt a Caterpillar
YouTube Entomological Society of America: Ants and Blues
The Pattern of Social Parasitism in Maculinea teleius Butterfly Is Driven by the Size and Spatial Distribution of the Host Ant Nests
Entomology Today: Carnivorous Caterpillars Fool Ants by Sounding like Queens
PLOS One: Variation in Butterfly Larval Acoustics as a Strategy to Infiltrate and Exploit Host Ant Colony Resources
Scientific American: Actual audio of the caterpillar mimicking an ant
Avian deception using an elaborate caudal lure in Pseudocerastes urarachnoides (Serpentes: Viperidae)
Herpetological.org Pseudocerastes urarachnoides: the ambush specialist (great pictures of the viper!)
Discover: Meet the Snake
Transcript:
00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about deadly animal mimics.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: I want to know a lot about that.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Well, I have two. It's double header. I can't make up my mind about subjects lately and I'm just going to mash it together.
[00:00:21] Speaker C: Bonus.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: So the first one, I'm going to give you a little scenario. You have a child pretending to be a queen, infiltrating a city, deceiving soldiers into taking care of her, all the while eating the real queen's children.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Oh, my word.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: That sounds like a marvel plot.
[00:00:40] Speaker C: It does, right?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Horror movie, Sci-Fi it's not. It's the real life of the large blue butterfly caterpillar.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: I was sure we were going down an ant road.
[00:00:50] Speaker C: Well, wow.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Kind of.
So, according to the plus one 2014 paper, this is the title. Variation in butterfly larval acoustics as a strategy to infiltrate and exploit host ant colony resources.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Ooh, that's quite the title.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: It's so much title. There are about 10,000 different buggy critters out there faking their way into ant hills to snack on ants.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: That's a lot.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Poor ants. I know there's a lot of them.
[00:01:23] Speaker C: But that's not an excuse. There's so many.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: We could eat a couple.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: It'll be fine.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Okay, you're right. That's true.
[00:01:34] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Of all of these butterflies in the matulina family, they're super cute. They're little blue butterflies. The one I'm going to talk about today in particular, mimics the calls of ant queens or lost grubs to trick their way into an ant dinner.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Or would it be a caterpillar dinner? Caterpillars eating the ants.
[00:01:55] Speaker D: Caterpillar dinner.
[00:01:56] Speaker C: Probably a caterpillar dinner. Yeah.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: It's not girl dinner, that's for sure. It's ants. It's not a charcuterie board of fun. Little.
Yeah, I know. Just. Oh, it gets so much better. Just stay with me. So your large blue butterflies, they're native all over eastern western Europe. They lay their eggs on host plants. It goes through four sheds called in stars. So when a caterpillar hatches its teeny tiny and then it eats until its skin doesn't fit anymore, it sheds the skin like it's taking off its sleeping bag of body. And then new one. Okay, so it does that four times, getting bigger. After that fourth shed, it gets a craving for something different.
[00:02:39] Speaker C: Ants protein.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: It's big now it's so good.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: It builds muscle. I'm on a cut. I'm getting bigger.
So the caterpillars, they start falling on the ground and calling out. They're vocalizing a little song that sounds like a queen ant in distress.
[00:02:56] Speaker C: Oh, wild. Really? Yeah, those fakers.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: So you got these fleshy pink caterpillars with scraggly little hairs. They look gross.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: And they're on the ground, and they're making this vocalization, and frantic ant workers are running out. They pick up the caterpillar, and they take it back to the nest.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Okay, so they've tricked it that far.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:21] Speaker C: The ants aren't like, hey, you don't look like we expected you. Well, I know.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: It's like, it doesn't look a thing like an ant.
[00:03:28] Speaker C: Not at all.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: But then, remember, ants will also, if they smell like a dead ant, they will pick a live ant up and throw it on the trash heap.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Maybe they're not paying the best attention, but. So they take this caterpillar, which kind of looks like a grub, back to the ant hill, and some get tucked in with the grubs, and then they just get fed by the ants. And then also, they're eating ants.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Some they treat like a queen ant and feed the caterpillar, and then she's also just, like, snacking on the other grubs around her while no one's looking.
[00:04:02] Speaker C: Look over there. Oh, no.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Munch, munch, munch.
[00:04:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: And then over fall and winter, they eat enough ants that they get bigger, and then they make a cocoon. The cocoon is not bothered. It just lays there.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Stays warm.
[00:04:20] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: And then in the spring, they hatch out and crawl out of the ant colony and go off to start the whole system again.
[00:04:26] Speaker C: Wow.
I can't imagine when it starts to build its cocoon and the other ants.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Are like, you know, guys, this might not actually be our queen.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Well, and see, I actually went and found a video because I thought, okay, so it's making noises and they're feeding it, but a cocoon is not. It doesn't seem to be alive. Why wouldn't they pick that up and take it out? And it just lays there in the dirt off to the side.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: They've been desensitized to the smell or something. I don't know. Somebody has to write a grant to.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Find that out, why it doesn't get taken away. And interestingly, we do have a blue butterfly in North America, the Miami blue. It's native to Florida, and that caterpillar instead of getting taken back to the ant hill, it has this little. It almost looks like a butt antenna that sticks up, and it makes a sweet drink for the ants.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Oh.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: And so you'll see it pop up and the ants like, oh, yes, thank you. And kind of combs the stuff off and eats it. And so it's so delicious. Carpenter ants will protect their walking snack machine caterpillars from other creatures.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: Wow, this is like the white van.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: With, would you like some candy? And they're like, yes, we would.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: And we will defend you.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Keep all the other children away from it.
[00:05:46] Speaker C: Yeah. Wow.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Questionable judgment. Natural things. Come on, right?
[00:05:52] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: So in that video, you see carpenter ants just running up on other bugs and just beating them up and ripping them off the plant. And the caterpillar is like, would you like a snack?
[00:06:01] Speaker D: How about now?
[00:06:02] Speaker C: Thank you. Yeah.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: So that's our butterfly caterpillar. Mimic animal.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: I like that. That makes me feel better about the.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Questionable decisions that we humans make from time to time. Like, the natural community is not immune to it.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Well, this would be like a five year old in a playground sounding like you and your children, bringing the child home and treating it like you.
[00:06:27] Speaker C: Yeah, that'd be weird.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Wallet ate.
[00:06:29] Speaker C: Chris, why did you bring that man in a bathrobe home?
No, that's mom.
Oh, man.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Well, okay, so going in a different direction, we're going to talk about the iranian spider tailed viper.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: That sounds interesting.
[00:06:48] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: So I sent you a YouTube video.
[00:06:51] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Now you can watch it.
[00:06:53] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: It's going to happen.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: And I want you to tell people what you see, because it is horrific. This will also be in the show notes. Don't worry, you can play along with the show.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Okay. I'm seeing a little spider cruising around.
[00:07:05] Speaker C: Oh.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: On a spiky tailed thing. And suddenly it's turned.
[00:07:09] Speaker C: No.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: So tail wagging makes it resemble a moving spider.
[00:07:13] Speaker C: Yikes.
That's unexpected.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Suddenly there's a bird, and I wasn't seeing at all what I thought I was.
[00:07:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: You don't see that snake at all.
[00:07:25] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh. No.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Because it's in rocks. And so you just see rocks and this little spider crawling around an outcropping that's a little spiky. And it totally looks like a spider. And the motion it does is weird. And so then this bird is like, ooh, spider. I'm having that. And it is not having that. The snake is having the bird. So heads up. That's what happens at the end of this.
[00:07:50] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh.
[00:07:52] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: So that spider looking thing is called a caudal C-A-U-D-A-L lure. That's fancy science talk for when a tale evolves into a horror show.
[00:08:02] Speaker C: Yes. Wow.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: This viper, this snake, his butt looks like a spider. And not just a tiny bit, not a little.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: I was quite sure that the snake was going to pop out and eat the spider, and that is not what went down at all.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: Even though you told me the name.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Of this snake, my eyes told me another thing.
[00:08:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Because it's kind of gray granite looking rock. This snake is kind of short and fat with one of those big diamondy heads, and you cannot see it at all. And then the spider on the, well, the tail, the spider is kind of a brown color.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: It's enough different.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: That's wild.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: And the motion, the motion very much fooled my brain.
[00:08:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: What I don't like about spiders is the movement. I have trouble. I've watched so many videos of this snake tail squinting my eyes. It's like if I squint, it's not going to be as scary. I don't know. It's dumb, but it works for me. So there is an actual desert spider, and it has a really long, distended body. It's almost scorpion like. And this snake tail.
[00:09:07] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: There's slight variations from snake to snake in the bits that look like legs and the swollen abdomen of a spider. But it's remarkable, even down to the color, how similar this lure is on its tail. And the tail wiggle thing to attract the prey isn't unusual. There are a lot of different animals, snakes and other critters that will wiggle their tail, but it's usually a wiggle like a worm. This is a swirling, trailing motion.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: It actually looks like a spider on the rock. It's terrible.
[00:09:38] Speaker C: It's horrible.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Hate it. And this snake is a fairly recent find, at least by.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: Because they blended in so well. I know, right?
[00:09:48] Speaker B: The first one was found, quote unquote, in the 1970s.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: And, yeah, in 2006, it was dubbed its own species, pseudosorastes uraknoids, fake horned with spider like tail.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: It's a very direct name.
[00:10:07] Speaker D: Sums it up.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: In 2008, scientists. Okay, so this was the great. So one they had found several years back. When they opened it up, it had a bird in its stomach, and they thought, well, okay, yeah, we see the spider tail. But was that a one off? Yeah.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: Was that bird limping?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Was it a coincidence they captured a few snakes because they wanted to know if that had been a fluke? They put the captured snakes in enclosures.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: With birds, and they watched their population drop.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Right, exactly. Spider tail goes into action. Several birds became instant meals trying to attack the spider.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: And then the snake is like, thank you. I viewed this as aversive initially, but this is amazing. Thank you.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: I didn't like the bag that you shoved me into, but this is delicious.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I like the yellow ones. Can we get more yellow ones?
[00:10:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: So there's not much more to say about the spider butt snake. It's creepy. Definitely. Go take a look at the video. It's remarkable how they do not show up at all. Yeah, it's weird nature. Get it off me.
[00:11:14] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: That's our next t shirt.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: Speaking of t shirts, at the merch.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Store, you can get a brain junk t shirt, and you can get a non newtonian fluid glass. It can hold other types of fluids.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: But I was like, wait, it's a glass? That's a liquid?
[00:11:33] Speaker D: That's a glass.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Well, that's a mindbender.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: You could fill it with non newtonian fluids, but they don't flow well, so at least not like, Oreo filling doesn't flow in that form. All right, we're, of course, on social media. Brain Junk podcast. Hey, we're on YouTube. What's our handle on YouTube, Trace?
[00:11:52] Speaker B: It's Brain junk podcast.
[00:11:53] Speaker C: I'm shocked. I know, right?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: But YouTube.com. Go find brain junk. Brain Junk podcast. We're there.
All right, Trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know, and I guarantee you will not be bored.
- Visa fler
