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Speaker 1: Deep in the back of your mind. You've always had

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Speaker 1: the feeling that there's something strange about reality. There is

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Speaker 1: here annoyed death, much nanopartic, mechanical messiahs, punch evolution. On

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Speaker 1: our award winning science podcast Stuffable Your Mind, we examine

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Speaker 1: neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and our trans human future.

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Speaker 1: New episodes come out Tuesdays and Thursdays on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify,

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Speaker 1: and anywhere you get your podcast. Welcome to How Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren vog Obama, a researcher

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Speaker 1: and writer here at How Stuff Works. Every week, I'm

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Speaker 1: bringing you three stories from our team about the weird

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Speaker 1: and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture.

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Speaker 1: This week, we look back at the life of the

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Speaker 1: inflammatory evangelist, cartoonist Jack Check, and unrelated we look forward

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Speaker 1: to a potential future of tiny personal assistant robots crawling

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Speaker 1: all over our clothes. Yes, but first, staff editor Christopher

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Speaker 1: Hassiotas brings us another story from our freelance writer Jesslyn Shields.

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Speaker 1: Thank this story is about water. It's pretty important to

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Speaker 1: us humans, so why didn't we evolve the ability to

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Speaker 1: smell it as well as other animals do. We humans

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Speaker 1: have done pretty well for ourselves evolutionarily speaking. Check out

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Speaker 1: this sweet empire we've built that renders every other organism

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Speaker 1: on Earth second class citizen. With our winning combo of dexterity, intellect, endurance,

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Speaker 1: and a scrappy can do attitude, we've managed to meet

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Speaker 1: all of our material needs and then some. But although

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Speaker 1: humans are physiologically tricked out in a lot of ways,

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Speaker 1: many other animals have evolved capabilities we don't have, for example,

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Speaker 1: sniffing out sources of drinkable water. Now, considering that relative

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Speaker 1: to the rest of the animals, we humans have excessively

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Speaker 1: high water requirements, doesn't it seem like it would be

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Speaker 1: of great evolutionary advantage to be able to smell fresh water.

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Speaker 1: So if dogs, elephants, and vulture seem to be able

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Speaker 1: to smell water, why can't we what's a fragile, thirsty,

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Speaker 1: hairless primate lost in the wild to do. Before we

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Speaker 1: get too far down this rabbit hole, let's be clear

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Speaker 1: about two things. One, science has always characterized the human

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Speaker 1: olfactory sense as being just okay. And although we might

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Speaker 1: be able to differentiate between one trillion different individual odors.

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Speaker 1: As new research out of Rockefeller University suggests, it's true

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Speaker 1: that modern humans don't use our noses to understand the

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Speaker 1: world to the same degree as other animals. And two

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Speaker 1: water is odorless. It's essential to almost every complex organism

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Speaker 1: on Earth. But it's just a couple of hydrogen atoms

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Speaker 1: stuck with covalent bonds onto an oxygen atom. There's nothing

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Speaker 1: smelly going on there in terms of the component parts.

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Speaker 1: So if we can't smell water itself, what can we smell.

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Speaker 1: Let's take a second to turn to something American environmentalist

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Speaker 1: Edward Abbey wrote in his memoir Desert Solitaire, a season

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Speaker 1: in the Wilderness. Abby said, long enough in the desert,

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Speaker 1: a man, like other animals, can learn to smell water,

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Speaker 1: can learn at least the smell of things associated with water,

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Speaker 1: the unique and heartening odor of the cottonwood tree, for example,

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Speaker 1: which in the canyon lands is the tree of life.

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Speaker 1: Because although plane H two O has no scent, chemically

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Speaker 1: pure water also basically never even occurs in nature. You've

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Speaker 1: got to make that stuff in a lab. So when

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Speaker 1: other animals sniff out a potable water source, it's not

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Speaker 1: really the water itself they're smelling. It might be a

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Speaker 1: water loving cottonwood tree, for example, or the other stuff

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Speaker 1: in or around or otherwise associated with the presence of

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Speaker 1: fresh water chemicals, bacteria, algae, plant matter, or minerals for instance.

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Speaker 1: Dr Cara Hoover is an anthropologist at the University of Alaska,

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Speaker 1: Fairbanks who specializes in the evolution of human smell. She

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Speaker 1: says that humans class one olfactory receptor genes, which detect

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Speaker 1: waterborne odors, are switched off, meaning that we, like all

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Speaker 1: other terrestrial animals, can smell volatile file compounds rather than

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Speaker 1: water itself, so instead of using our noses, we use

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Speaker 1: our brains. Were perfectly capable of detecting a nearby swimming

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Speaker 1: pool when we smell chlorine, and we can pick up

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Speaker 1: on the sulfuric odor of a hot spring or that

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Speaker 1: weird mineral rich dead fish thing the ocean's got going on.

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Speaker 1: Another reason humans might not smell sources of water as

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Speaker 1: well as other animals is because we need so much

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Speaker 1: of it, and that's due to the way we regulate

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Speaker 1: body temperature through sweat walking exclusively on two feet, an

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Speaker 1: evolutionary change that happened between four and seven million years ago,

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Speaker 1: came with some physiological shifts that drastically raised our water requirements.

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Speaker 1: According to Dr Hoover, one major shift as we evolved

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Speaker 1: to be bipedal has to do with our ratio of

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Speaker 1: ecrine to apocrine glands. Modern humans have way more ecrine

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Speaker 1: glands than any other mammal. These are the glands that

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Speaker 1: release water and to a lesser extent, sodium from our

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Speaker 1: bodies when we sweat. Shedding water through ecrine glands is

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Speaker 1: less energetically costly than shedding neutral through apocrine glands. Our

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Speaker 1: shift in glands is one reason doctor Hoover points out

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Speaker 1: the humans will always beat a horse in a long

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Speaker 1: distance race as long as there's water available for us

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Speaker 1: to drink. Hoover suggests that as our brains evolved, our

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Speaker 1: ancestors began to know where nearby water sources were using

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Speaker 1: cognitive maps of their home territory and regular travel routes,

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Speaker 1: rather than needing to smell around for it each time

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Speaker 1: anew and as our cognitive abilities evolved, that meant being

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Speaker 1: able to link visual and auditory clues to infer the

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Speaker 1: presence of drinkable water rather than prove it with smell.

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Speaker 1: Maybe that next watering hole, after all, could be found

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Speaker 1: by just following an elephant around for a while. Who

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Speaker 1: needs a good nose when you've got brains. Next up,

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Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland reports on a prototype of wearable

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Speaker 1: devices that roam freely over your body in exactly the

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Speaker 1: way that you're smart watch and smartphone do not. Last week,

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Speaker 1: engineers from M I T and Stanford demonstrated some new

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Speaker 1: robots at the a c M User Interface, Software and

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Speaker 1: Technology Conference in Tokyo. They call the robots Rova Bowls,

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Speaker 1: and they say they can move freely on unmodified clothing. Yes,

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Speaker 1: that's right. These robots can cling to your shirt and

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Speaker 1: crawl around on you. They hold themselves in place with

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Speaker 1: magnetic wheels. You wear one set of wheels under your

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Speaker 1: shirt and the robots snaps into place on the other

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Speaker 1: side of the fabric. The Rovo bolt can then amble

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Speaker 1: across your torso at a leisurely pace. After watching video

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Speaker 1: of the bots in action, I'd have to say they

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Speaker 1: look equally cute and creepy. The magnetic wheels mean the

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Speaker 1: robots can move vertically across surfaces. They can travel up

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Speaker 1: and down arms, and the robots are untethered. All of

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Speaker 1: their power, computation and communication systems are self contained. The

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Speaker 1: engineers hoped to build ROVA bowls that have enough juice

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Speaker 1: to power thirty minutes of movement or eight hours of

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Speaker 1: operation without movement in the future. Once the robot detects

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Speaker 1: it is running low on power, it can navigate to

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Speaker 1: a charging port. The engineers showed off robots with actuators

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Speaker 1: capable of giving haptic feedback to a user, sort of

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Speaker 1: like the way your phone vibrates when it gets a notification.

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Speaker 1: Other robots snapped together to create an LED name tag,

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Speaker 1: demonstrating the modular capabilities of the rovables. The engineers don't

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Speaker 1: intend to market this generation of robots. Instead, the rovabols

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Speaker 1: are a proof of concept. They illustrate what might be

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Speaker 1: possible with wearable robots in the future. Imagine that you

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Speaker 1: have dozens of tiny robots on your clothing. Each robot

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Speaker 1: is about a square centimeter in size and weighs so

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Speaker 1: little that you don't even notice them. The robots can

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Speaker 1: move across clothing, navigating autonomously to different areas of the

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Speaker 1: body for different applications. For example, your day could start

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Speaker 1: with a jog around the neighborhood. Your robots would position

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Speaker 1: themselves to monitor your activity, heart rate, and respiratory status.

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Speaker 1: After your run, you settled down to a cup of coffee,

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Speaker 1: and the robots assembol on your wrist, forming a screen

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Speaker 1: that displays today's top headlines. At work, robots tap you

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Speaker 1: on the shoulder to alert you that an upcoming meeting

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Speaker 1: is about to begin. We're not there yet. The engineers

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Speaker 1: have identified challenges we must overcome to create practical rovables.

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Speaker 1: They include miniaturizing components, improving pathfinding and navigation capabilities, and

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Speaker 1: extending battery life. But it could be our futures will

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Speaker 1: involve being covered by tiny, helpful, supremely creepy robots. YEA. Finally,

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Speaker 1: this week, my fellow writer Christian Saker explores the life

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Speaker 1: of Jack Chick, who passed away last weekend. He's a

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Speaker 1: man who's infamous for offending everyone from Catholics to Freemasons

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Speaker 1: to dungeons and dragons players, and he did it all

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Speaker 1: with comic books. Maybe you haven't heard of Jack Chick,

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Speaker 1: but you've probably seen as work before. Often handed out

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Speaker 1: on street corners, subways, and busses, they're cheaply printed fire

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Speaker 1: and Brimstone comics that criticize the immorality of rock music,

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Speaker 1: role playing games, Halloween, and even the religious beliefs of Catholics, Jews, Muslims,

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Speaker 1: and Mormons, called Chip tracks. Over five hundred million copies

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Speaker 1: of these pamphlets have been printed in more than a

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Speaker 1: hundred languages, making Chick the world's most published living author

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Speaker 1: until now. According to the Los Angeles Times, Chick died

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Speaker 1: on October at the age of ninety two. Chick Tracks

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Speaker 1: are basically morality plays in comic book format, combining traditional

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Speaker 1: evangelism with conspiracy theories. Stories like Dark Dungeons contributed greatly

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Speaker 1: to the Satanic panic of the nineteen eighties, claiming that

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Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons lad to witchcraft and suicide. Chick produced

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Speaker 1: the comics out of his Rancho Cucamonga based company, Chick Publications,

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Speaker 1: for over five decades. It's most followed a simple story formula.

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Speaker 1: Someone sins, but when they faced damnation in the pits

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Speaker 1: of hell, they looked for a possible redemption in Christianity.

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Speaker 1: These kind of religious reform pamphlets were done in the

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Speaker 1: tradition of writers like Jonathan Swift, and Thomas Payne. Going

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Speaker 1: back to the sixteen forties. Chick said the idea to

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Speaker 1: use comics, which he referred to as his secret weapon,

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Speaker 1: came from a missionary radio broadcaster who told him that

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Speaker 1: Chinese spies had observed American children's obsession with horror comics.

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Speaker 1: This led to Beijing's government printing millions in cartoon propaganda

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Speaker 1: to win their public over to communism. A shy man

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Speaker 1: who feared public speaking, Chick hoped to use comics in

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Speaker 1: the same manner, but to defeat the devil instead of

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Speaker 1: bolstering the proletariat. Despite his enthusiasm for receiving hate mail,

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Speaker 1: Chick himself acknowledged that many people wished him harm, so

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Speaker 1: he avoided the public, ran his business out of a

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Speaker 1: p o box, barely did interview us, and never allowed

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Speaker 1: himself to be photographed Until now. Some rumored Chick had

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Speaker 1: already died or possibly never existed in the first place,

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Speaker 1: and was just a pseudonym for multiple cartoonists. According to

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Speaker 1: his biography on the Chick Publications website, he was born

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Speaker 1: in Los Angeles in nineteen four, served in the army,

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Speaker 1: and was married after World War Two. Unable to find

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Speaker 1: a publisher for his first tracks, Chick self published in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, using eight hundred dollars he borrowed from

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Speaker 1: a credit union. His comics popularity with missionaries, collectors, and

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Speaker 1: clergy led to him founding his own company in nineteen seventy.

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Speaker 1: In a two thousand three article for Los Angeles magazine,

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Speaker 1: Robert Edo reported that Chick's company made almost three million

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Speaker 1: dollars in sales that year to churches and youth groups.

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Speaker 1: Chick once said he wanted his books to scare the

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Speaker 1: hell out of you. In a posting on the Chick

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Speaker 1: Tracks Facebook page, the company promised to continue with Chick's method, vision,

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Speaker 1: and purpose. That's our show for this week. Thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. And hey, if you're listening

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Speaker 1: on the day that this episode comes out, Happy Halloween,

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Speaker 1: all you horror fans. Google Monster Science and watch Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb's take on the evolutionary biology of movie monsters and

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Speaker 1: a cameo from me as a ghostly girl. If you're

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Speaker 1: not subscribed to this podcast yet, do that thing and

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Speaker 1: send us links to anything you'd like to hear us cover,

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Speaker 1: plus your favorite horror story or movie. Because I plan

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Speaker 1: to keep celebrating Halloween. For the next well ever, you

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Speaker 1: can send me an email at now podcast at house,

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Speaker 1: to works dot com, and of course, for lots more

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Speaker 1: stories like these, head on over to our home planet,

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Speaker 1: Now dot House to works dot com,