Speaker 1: Do you guys? Is this how you guys record normally?
Speaker 1: You you're remote?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I love in Italy, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm in New York.
Speaker 4: So it's it's a reasonable time difference. And I'm sure
Speaker 4: y'all have found totally.
Speaker 5: Yeah, as you have an Australian guest, then boy howdy right.
Speaker 4: Not for the time difference, for their wild antics, it's.
Speaker 5: For the spiders that come out of the screen.
Speaker 6: Hello, and welcome to Let's Learn Everything, the show where
Speaker 6: we learn about anything and everything interesting. Today, we have
Speaker 6: two very special guests who are going to be asking
Speaker 6: us a size question what, and then we have some
Speaker 6: miscellaneous questions of our own.
Speaker 1: See how they like it.
Speaker 6: My name is Caroline, and I want to tell you
Speaker 6: a little bit about our guests. Separately, we have the
Speaker 6: host of Creature Feature with a background in psychology and
Speaker 6: evolutionary biology, and of course we also have our full
Speaker 6: time Jeopardy champion. Together, they're the hosts of Secretly Incredibly
Speaker 6: Fascinating our neighbors over at Max Fun.
Speaker 5: Hello, thank you so much, it's so excited.
Speaker 4: And my name is Alex Schmidt. And there's my friend
Speaker 4: Katie Golden who doesn't return that's me.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 6: We will hear about that question in a second, but
Speaker 6: of course Ella and Tom also have some questions.
Speaker 7: For our hosts.
Speaker 1: Let's be still here unfortunately.
Speaker 5: My name is Tom and I'll be asking our guest Katie,
Speaker 5: how does your degree in evolutionary biology inform my favorite
Speaker 5: Twitter account, birds Right activist.
Speaker 1: My name is Ella, and I'll be asking our guest Alex,
Speaker 1: how did you bring the buffalo emoji into the world.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, And now this is where both of you
Speaker 5: guys speak in unison.
Speaker 7: Alex and Katie, would you like to share with us?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: We love this show and this seemed like a joyful
Speaker 4: opportunity to look into the question of have birds ever
Speaker 4: been to space?
Speaker 2: Birds?
Speaker 3: Wonderful space.
Speaker 4: There's so many birds on the Earth. Have they made
Speaker 4: it to space or not?
Speaker 5: Just like flying high enough you that was where.
Speaker 6: My brain was just by like flapping up there or
Speaker 6: in a little bird.
Speaker 5: They have the advantage, They've had years of advantage over us.
Speaker 1: That's so true.
Speaker 5: Are you doing birds.
Speaker 3: Hold on tiny bird rockets?
Speaker 4: Yeah, anything off the ground is a home game for them.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 4: It's a it's a home match very easy.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so interested thinking about the because they're flying already,
Speaker 1: so if they're in space, how does that mess with them?
Speaker 5: There's problems.
Speaker 6: Before we answer all of these questions, first off, thank
Speaker 6: you so much for coming on to the show. We're
Speaker 6: so excited to have you both here. We just want
Speaker 6: to know before we begin. Can you tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit about yourself, a little bit about your podcast,
Speaker 6: and also what your backgrounds are, because I know Katie
Speaker 6: you've got is it a degree in psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 6: we want to know about you as well, Alex, so
Speaker 6: tell us all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Katie, First I will settle the degree right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, my degree is in bird astronauts. No, so yeah,
Speaker 3: my degree is in psychology and I studied psychology with
Speaker 3: evolutionary biology. So I really wanted to have a degree
Speaker 3: in animal behavior, but it didn't exist at the time,
Speaker 3: at least at this boy I went to, so I
Speaker 3: kind of just di wied my own learning path. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's so, I really love evolutionary biology and specifically
Speaker 3: animal behavior because I am I'm interested in human psychology
Speaker 3: as well and in the ways in which we are
Speaker 3: similar to animals. That's always fascinated me when we have
Speaker 3: behaviors that you see both in animals and people, and
Speaker 3: I think it's so important to I mean, I think
Speaker 3: sometimes we don't give animals enough credit. We're like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, they have this behavior, but it's probably just
Speaker 3: for some boring evolutionary reasons, like actually, maybe they are playing,
Speaker 3: maybe they are having fun. Maybe they do feel this,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe they do feel compassionate love. And so
Speaker 3: I think that it's really really cool to look at
Speaker 3: behaviors of animals, both very scientifically, but also giving them
Speaker 3: enough credit as conscious beings that they have really complex
Speaker 3: and fun. Like if you see a little elephant and
Speaker 3: it looks like it's playing, maybe it's just having fun.
Speaker 1: Ah, that's a nice thought. I like, wow, so lovely.
Speaker 7: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4: Plus, I just want to see a little elephant all
Speaker 4: the time, you know.
Speaker 3: Now it's a good time to introduce my new soccer
Speaker 3: league baby elephants.
Speaker 7: I would pay good money.
Speaker 1: Actually, we once talked about if elephants are left or
Speaker 1: right handed. So this comes right into all of the
Speaker 1: stuff we love here.
Speaker 6: Which tusk would an elephant use at a ball around?
Speaker 3: I've got to know, Yeah, their trunk swing left or right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Alex Yeah. I. As far as my education,
Speaker 4: my degree was mainly in history, and also then I
Speaker 4: studied a lot of media, different things, and I think
Speaker 4: I got excited about science kind of outside of that.
Speaker 4: And also then my summer job as a teenager and
Speaker 4: then growing from there was as a zoo tour guide,
Speaker 4: So that was probably one of my more scientific activities
Speaker 4: at Brookfield Zoo outside Cogua, Illinois.
Speaker 1: So you've seen the baby elephants playing.
Speaker 5: So you've coached little League.
Speaker 4: I legitimate, I'd say my main job was to show
Speaker 4: people a baby polar bear. Like they would get on
Speaker 4: the tram and they would say, when do we see
Speaker 4: the baby polar bear named Hudson that I've heard about
Speaker 4: in all of Chicago media, And I'd be like later
Speaker 4: and they'd be like, not soon enough. Don't like that,
Speaker 4: so jump off the train.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh my goodness, that's fantastic.
Speaker 4: And then with making our podcast equally incredibly fasting, we
Speaker 4: get to find out about mainly history and science are
Speaker 4: kind of the two styles of story, but it's about
Speaker 4: why things people think are ordinary amazing.
Speaker 2: It's a real joy to get to make it.
Speaker 1: And it's a wonderful podcast. And I imagine we have
Speaker 1: overlap in anyway, definitely, because our topics offen a line.
Speaker 1: In fact, I one of your topics from a while
Speaker 1: ago about period products actually inspired something I did on
Speaker 1: the podcast So lovely. Yeah, So I think if anyone
Speaker 1: hasn't listened to it, they should go straight away after this.
Speaker 3: After this, it's like a big podcasting stew We keep
Speaker 3: adding in ingredients.
Speaker 2: That's so nice and yeah.
Speaker 4: Part of being overjoyed about being relatively new to join
Speaker 4: a maximum fun as being with shows like you guys
Speaker 4: who are so so thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Start, Shall we dive into your questions? So do you
Speaker 7: want to do? You want to say it again?
Speaker 4: It's have birds ever been to space?
Speaker 3: Space birds? Wonderful space birds.
Speaker 1: We have a theme for the episode.
Speaker 5: So this is just a yes or no question, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, it's just yes, so yes, yes.
Speaker 7: I want to say yes.
Speaker 6: But maybe, like I know Tom joked about it, but
Speaker 6: I know that some birds can fly very very hard.
Speaker 6: I wonder how that's the answer.
Speaker 5: So my thought is, like I haven't seen a video
Speaker 5: of a bird on the is s like bothering an astronaut,
Speaker 5: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the last time we talked about this, when we
Speaker 1: talked about space babies, like and I covered some animals
Speaker 1: a bit worn in space. Tommy didn't know that a
Speaker 1: bunch of animals. I've never heard of birds being space,
Speaker 1: But I also hadn't heard of frogs or jellyfish or flies.
Speaker 6: But you know, I also wonder what counts as space,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 5: And what counts as bird.
Speaker 7: I got to You've gotta enlighten us maybe.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I want to start peeling this one apart.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is we mainly found about human space missions
Speaker 4: bringing them to space, and then also looked briefly into
Speaker 4: can't like canned birds just fly themselves up there without
Speaker 4: our help? Like do they have to wait for the
Speaker 4: bus to leave you?
Speaker 5: I'm so glad we all share the same brain sell.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but also, why would you take a bird into space?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: That is a better question.
Speaker 6: Are you trying to see if a bird can fly
Speaker 6: in space?
Speaker 1: That's such a good question. Canibir fly in space? Caliber
Speaker 1: Are we going to answer that? Am I get ahead
Speaker 1: of myself? I'm getting excited?
Speaker 4: Yeah, apparently the super short answer is they can't fly
Speaker 4: in the vacuum of space and they can kind of
Speaker 4: flap around in a space station and.
Speaker 3: It's extremely funny, very very funny.
Speaker 1: Do we have a video? Do you have a link
Speaker 1: to this?
Speaker 2: There is one brief video.
Speaker 5: Should we approach this question maybe more straightforward?
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. I'm so excited. Do you have a
Speaker 1: Do you have an order? You want to go through things?
Speaker 1: Because we will follow your order. You just have to
Speaker 1: tell you just have to guide us through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do.
Speaker 4: Let's do a quick summary of birds and space missions.
Speaker 4: Because it turns out, no, they can't fly themselves to space.
Speaker 4: It's just too high. Unfortunately, they can't just go there themselves.
Speaker 1: I'm not that surprised by that answer.
Speaker 6: I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed.
Speaker 3: Have they really tried before yet? Like, have we asked birds?
Speaker 3: Maybe they just haven't tried.
Speaker 1: They're just not trying hard enough.
Speaker 5: There's like, hey, there's no chips, there's no French fries
Speaker 5: up in space. So what am I going to do?
Speaker 3: If we dangle some French fries off the space station?
Speaker 3: Wood birds fly.
Speaker 1: The space Yeah, if you put some chips, some chippy's
Speaker 1: on a space rocket. A seagull would definitely try, because
Speaker 1: they will try anything for chips. Do we know, incidentally,
Speaker 1: how highed bird has ever been able to fly up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's do that because it turns out, you know,
Speaker 4: no birds can reach space from Earth. Apparently, NASA says
Speaker 4: there's a boundary called the Carman line kar M A
Speaker 4: N which is sort of the official boundary from the
Speaker 4: atmosphere to which is one hundred kilometers up or about
Speaker 4: sixty two miles.
Speaker 2: Okay, wow, and birds.
Speaker 4: Can't really go that high. But apparently the highest flying
Speaker 4: bird species is Repel's griffon vulture. Yes, which is an
Speaker 4: African vulture species that can go about as high as
Speaker 4: passenger jets.
Speaker 5: Totally wow.
Speaker 4: And we partly know that because one went into the engine.
Speaker 2: Of one unfortunately, so that was a way of measuring it.
Speaker 5: But they are the way to find out.
Speaker 3: Let's assign the blame appropriately, the engine ate the bird.
Speaker 3: Bird pudding really sad because these are actually critically endangered birds.
Speaker 3: And I love, I love a vulture. They are really
Speaker 3: amazing birds and they I think they sometimes creep people
Speaker 3: out because they have those bald heads, but those bald
Speaker 3: faces are really important when they are eating carrion. Because
Speaker 3: they actually like to be clean. They don't want to
Speaker 3: be really nasty. So having that bald face makes it's
Speaker 3: a lot easier to dive into some carrion and it
Speaker 3: doesn't get stuck in their feathers. So yeah, they're actually
Speaker 3: quite clean birds.
Speaker 5: That's amazing. I had never thought about that before.
Speaker 1: And I would recommend anyone listening to go and look
Speaker 1: at a picture of a baby vulture a vulture chick,
Speaker 1: because they are so adorable. Yeah, look like they're wearing
Speaker 1: little fur coats.
Speaker 3: They are so cute. They're like they're voguing the whole time.
Speaker 3: Put them on the runway.
Speaker 1: It is high fashion.
Speaker 7: They are cute.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they're extraordinarily high flying. That that bird can
Speaker 4: get up to heights a bit over thirty six thousand
Speaker 4: feet wow, ten kilometers up, which is you know, very high,
Speaker 4: but nowhere in near space.
Speaker 1: So quite quite a bit shorter than space.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because space is one hundred kilometers.
Speaker 3: They have a special adaptation of their blood that it's
Speaker 3: a protein adaptation that makes their blood much more efficient
Speaker 3: and transporting oxygen, and that's how they can survive such
Speaker 3: a high altitude, which is you know, really fantastic.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me.
Speaker 1: That's so incredible, so cool, you might say, secretly incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 8: Okay, this could be in some creature feature having a
Speaker 8: maximum amount of fun right now, Well.
Speaker 3: Let's learn everything about it.
Speaker 5: Huh, my brother, my brother?
Speaker 9: No, okay, okay, I'm I'm just amazed that like these
Speaker 9: adaptations are I don't know they like I'm imagining like
Speaker 9: a cyclist when they do like blood doping, and then like,
Speaker 9: that's amazing.
Speaker 2: That's nuts.
Speaker 3: Got a blood dope with vulture blood. Don't do it. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I guess I have to say, don't do it. They're endangered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, and you shouldn't do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you'll cycle much faster, but then you'll keep stapping
Speaker 4: to feed.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not good.
Speaker 3: Much.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so that's it. Turns out birds can't fly
Speaker 4: themselves there. They have to ride our ships if they
Speaker 4: want to go to space.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's sad, but I understand birds. It's okay, we're
Speaker 6: putting too much pressure on them already.
Speaker 1: It's fine. So I guess the next step is putting
Speaker 1: them on ships for some reason? And how often are
Speaker 1: we doing that and why? And how do they hope?
Speaker 6: My next thought is like, are we taking like chickens
Speaker 6: into space to lay eggs?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, do they do? Have they had chicks in space
Speaker 1: of eggs hatched in space?
Speaker 7: Space babies?
Speaker 5: I guess Another question is which birds?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Right, yeah, this question topics really turned around where
Speaker 1: we're just like bombarding you with loads of questions.
Speaker 2: This is this is everything I wondered.
Speaker 4: And yeah, the super short version is it's pretty close
Speaker 4: to that chickens and eggs curiosity. There are two countries
Speaker 4: that have tried to put some form of eggs or
Speaker 4: birds in space. It was first and starting in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy nine, they tried to bring the Japanese quail species
Speaker 4: bring their eggs up.
Speaker 5: So we really lost the space race, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2: We lost.
Speaker 4: We beat them to the moon and they were like,
Speaker 4: how do we counter birds?
Speaker 2: And the other.
Speaker 4: Program is the US and with chicken eggs that was
Speaker 4: the bird we picked in the US.
Speaker 1: So we did start with eggs.
Speaker 3: Space farming I think was the goal.
Speaker 1: Space farming, I like that was the Russian's goal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeh see, if we could get a sustainable food
Speaker 3: source in space with delicious quails, whoa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, Joe, I guess that's kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: It seems preemptive to start with the chickens and not
Speaker 1: just like some kind of vegetable, you know, who.
Speaker 6: Needs grains to feed the chicken. Well, we could just
Speaker 6: take the chicken straight up there, right, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know why they didn't already have them in
Speaker 3: nugget form, but.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 4: That's such a space age way to get that food
Speaker 4: up there, right, like fish sticks and stuff, but all
Speaker 4: the finest frozen dinner approaches to meats do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, great, like when you go to the museum when
Speaker 5: you got the freeze dried full chicken.
Speaker 3: I guess that they thought that if they could see
Speaker 3: if these birds could reproduce and lay eggs in space,
Speaker 3: then you just keep the birds there, maybe feed them
Speaker 3: space grain and then just kind of the bird floats
Speaker 3: around and then pops out an egg and then you've
Speaker 3: got space breakfast yummy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because that's that's pretty much what the Russians wanted
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 1: And it's so it doesn't sound like it was success
Speaker 1: based on your tone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was.
Speaker 4: It was successful ish, which is neat. It turns out
Speaker 4: like both programs wanted to see what happens if you
Speaker 4: fertilize eggs on Earth, bring them to space, and then
Speaker 4: either hatch them there or study them there and hatch
Speaker 4: them back on Earth. And the Russians successfully hatched quails
Speaker 4: in space. Wow, and then American chicken eggs hatched back
Speaker 4: on Earth successfully.
Speaker 1: To this, I can't believe I missed this in the
Speaker 1: Space Babies episode.
Speaker 2: This is and that episode is amazing.
Speaker 4: By the way this was. It was very helpful for
Speaker 4: putting this together.
Speaker 2: So they.
Speaker 1: How did they adapt in space and back online?
Speaker 4: Surely that would be poorly basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the things we found is that rats
Speaker 1: couldn't really tell up from down very well. They got
Speaker 1: confused by gravity.
Speaker 3: So yeah, they couldn't. I mean, we have this wonderful video.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Alex if you want to, if you
Speaker 3: want to explain it, but it's my actually my favorite
Speaker 3: video of all time now of these little quails trying
Speaker 3: to fly in space.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I don't know what's best for showing out
Speaker 4: to listeners, but it's a British narrator and it's on YouTube.
Speaker 2: I don't know who produced it, probably the BBC, but it's.
Speaker 4: About a minute of quails on board the mir space
Speaker 4: station around nineteen ninety because they were hatched on Mirror
Speaker 4: by the I think still Soviets, the Soviet Union hadn't
Speaker 4: ended yet.
Speaker 5: Let's have a look you we'll throw this in the
Speaker 5: show notes.
Speaker 4: They hatch and they kind of flap and bounce around,
Speaker 4: and there's one cosmonaut sort of poking it with his.
Speaker 2: Finger, like booping it in with micro gravity. It's a
Speaker 2: good time. It's up there. I feel like an animal video.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Everyone is completely open mouthed and a gape.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of hands that faces.
Speaker 1: This is Amaze's great. Okay, so just just describe it.
Speaker 1: There is this tiny, tiny little quail chick and it's
Speaker 1: very slowly earning over and zero g and now, oh no,
Speaker 1: and now and now it's exactly that's the perfect music.
Speaker 1: And now they're kind of spinning really fast in the air,
Speaker 1: flapping and not going anywhere. Oh the biggest quail can
Speaker 1: slightly fly.
Speaker 7: Around, flies a strong wad.
Speaker 1: They look disorientated.
Speaker 5: How was no one not talking about this every moment
Speaker 5: of every single day. We have this footage.
Speaker 1: That's an excellent video. This video only has twenty three
Speaker 1: thousand views. I know everyone should have seen this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, turn off.
Speaker 4: I don't know, mister beast, I don't everything against them.
Speaker 4: This is the YouTube video you should see, is the point. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm watching it again.
Speaker 1: This is so this video of everyone I know. If
Speaker 1: I cannot post it to our social media, yeah, so
Speaker 1: people can look because it's wonderful and it'll be in
Speaker 1: the show notes.
Speaker 5: I'm also just fully blown away that they successfully did that.
Speaker 5: That's wild that they hatched in space and we're hanging out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Were they able to find out anything? Do they have
Speaker 1: anything developmentally wrong? Were they okay?
Speaker 4: They I couldn't find great information on what happened to
Speaker 4: the quails when they were returned to the Earth, but
Speaker 4: a blog I found that a few of them returned
Speaker 4: and they had weird body structure from the lack of
Speaker 4: gravity and died pretty quickly, So it seems like they
Speaker 4: don't do well back on the Earth.
Speaker 2: From this situation.
Speaker 5: I also heard that they had like a huge sense
Speaker 5: of ONWI after having seen the badness of our existence
Speaker 5: from the perspective of only a god and then returning
Speaker 5: to Earth.
Speaker 4: I think about that somewhere.
Speaker 1: It was okay that one was that's quite good.
Speaker 7: No, no, no, don't.
Speaker 2: Left the station.
Speaker 1: Here we go because they That is one of the
Speaker 1: hypotheses about if if human birth in space is that
Speaker 1: bone formation would be really bad because of the low
Speaker 1: like you have really low density bones and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: like you know, you get when a child is born,
Speaker 1: their skull isn't like fully fused and all of this.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily need gravity, but it all kind of
Speaker 1: plays into it. So maybe they had like bad bone structure. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: poor babies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems like they were like okay while they
Speaker 4: were still in space bones wise, but then when you
Speaker 4: put on that Earth gravity on it afterward. It's It's
Speaker 4: funny because the first American chicken who hatched on Earth
Speaker 4: after the space trip seemed to be generally fine because
Speaker 4: they just lived on Earth for a full time.
Speaker 1: So I get, yeah, they need to develop on Earth
Speaker 1: maybe to get all of the benefits.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, behaviorally they struggled, right, Alex, They couldn't really mate
Speaker 3: in space normally.
Speaker 1: Oh and she could have formed the chloacal kiss.
Speaker 3: Nope, which is, to be fair, quite an acrobatic stunt.
Speaker 1: Anyways, I'm looking at that video and how they were
Speaker 1: rotating wildly out of control. I can't imagine them aligning
Speaker 1: themselves very well to rub but right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is now thinking of every Space Mission movie
Speaker 4: where they try to dock the two ships, it's.
Speaker 3: Just I guess thinking of two thousand and one a
Speaker 3: space odysty but it's birds.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm watching the video again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, apparently the quails were not interested in mating, and
Speaker 4: they weren't really able to consume food very well, and
Speaker 4: the cosmonauts had to strap them in the little harnesses
Speaker 4: to make them secured in position enough to receive food
Speaker 4: and eat it.
Speaker 3: Tiny bird space high chairs.
Speaker 1: There's something It is sad to think of it. There's
Speaker 1: always something I find adorable. And when you have to
Speaker 1: make tiny implementation for animals in science, like what we
Speaker 1: learn about they made a tiny rat straight jacket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tiny b helmets.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: But it's cute, very very cute. I wonder even if
Speaker 3: they were able to manage the like say, you could
Speaker 3: have some kind of I don't know, motor control in space,
Speaker 3: they probably didn't even know who to mate with because
Speaker 3: if they didn't imprint on an adult quail, I don't
Speaker 3: see how they have known like to like, I think
Speaker 3: they would have seen the astronauts as who they should
Speaker 3: mate with and then maybe start humping. You know. Ah,
Speaker 3: I don't know who the cosmonauts were, but because there
Speaker 3: was actually a study on earth quails where they imprinted
Speaker 3: them on an albino variant of quails, and they pretty
Speaker 3: much across the word. All the ones that were imprinted
Speaker 3: on this albino quail only wanted to mate with albino quails,
Speaker 3: which is a problem because they're very rare.
Speaker 7: Interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize the imprinting instinct was so strong. Wow,
Speaker 1: like mating reasons.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's also so interesting because like that's such a
Speaker 5: sci fi concept and such a like psychology concept of
Speaker 5: like the first generation of humans born entirely in space.
Speaker 5: But you can then also apply that to animals where
Speaker 5: it's like you will need like this transitory generation that's
Speaker 5: an in between and then you can have like the
Speaker 5: first generation. It's just so I hadn't thought about that
Speaker 5: aspect of this whole process. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: We'll need we'll need like tiny VR headsets for birds
Speaker 3: to teach them about.
Speaker 5: Maybe the sci fi books write themselves.
Speaker 4: The bird matrix and the educational video like, so you're
Speaker 4: a quail, what life is?
Speaker 3: You may be noticing your body is going through changes.
Speaker 3: Let's talk feathers.
Speaker 1: Love very good.
Speaker 7: That is fun ta stick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it took a Russians a while to like
Speaker 4: execute this successfully. They tried to do it for the
Speaker 4: first time in nineteen seventy nine, but they think that
Speaker 4: the eggs they sent up then received too much radiation
Speaker 4: and too high of temperatures because one hatched wasn't really
Speaker 4: like a successful quail even by space standards. But like
Speaker 4: what like one source I found said that they were
Speaker 4: born without heads, like very strange, horrible situation around. But
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety they successfully hatched like actual quails.
Speaker 5: I say, nineteen ninety yeah, yeah, that is so recent.
Speaker 6: But also it took them like such a long time
Speaker 6: to get to that point, from like unsuccessful to figuring it.
Speaker 5: Out right, Yeah, that's eleven years, Yeah, trying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a study kind of ongoing right now where
Speaker 1: they're taking freeze dried sperm into space to test if
Speaker 1: there's radiation damage to it, to.
Speaker 3: See if we could human sperm or.
Speaker 1: I think they started with mouse sperm, but I think
Speaker 1: they're going to do human sperm as well, or they're
Speaker 1: in the process, so and they thought it was actually fine.
Speaker 1: So maybe there's something different about birds, maybe because in
Speaker 1: the egg they're less protected from radiation or something along
Speaker 1: those lines.
Speaker 3: I mean, eggshells are pretty thin, so they I mean
Speaker 3: there's like sometimes eggs have certain coloration that helps protect
Speaker 3: them from like sun U V raysed here on Earth.
Speaker 3: But we're also protected by our atmosphere, which you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's like kind of like you can wear sunscreen
Speaker 3: down on Earth and that protects you from the radiation.
Speaker 3: But once you're outside of the atmosphere, like I think
Speaker 3: astronauts have a special room on the space station that
Speaker 3: they like have to hide in when there's a big
Speaker 3: wave of radiation that comes from the sun. So it's
Speaker 3: a I don't think the thin shell of an egg
Speaker 3: would be enough to protect it from that level of radiation.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing is bird egg sunscreen as a
Speaker 1: mark it.
Speaker 5: Then it's so so refreshing to hear three words that
Speaker 5: have never been put together language. I was thinking, like
Speaker 5: an egg carton that is like has like NASA on
Speaker 5: it as like gold foil all over.
Speaker 3: That might work foil, I think would always work. I
Speaker 3: don't know much about foil or how it could stop radiation,
Speaker 3: but I'm gonna say yes, space foil.
Speaker 4: When in doubt, go shiny, you know, just.
Speaker 3: It is the higher tech.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, science science.
Speaker 3: I mean it is interesting because there's actually so there
Speaker 3: are birds living in the Chernobyl exclusion Zone get out
Speaker 3: of that. I have actually adapted to the high levels
Speaker 3: of I mean a slightly different type of radiation obviously
Speaker 3: not from the Sun but from the nuclear whoopsie daisy.
Speaker 3: But they they actually have evolved to have higher levels
Speaker 3: of antioxidants and that helps protect them from the radiation.
Speaker 3: And it actually, in some ways it can make them
Speaker 3: even healthier because like they have a lot of antioxidants,
Speaker 3: so that can help in other ways. You know, antioxidants
Speaker 3: will fight against free radicals, which is like when you
Speaker 3: have radiation, it knocks atoms loose, that can you know,
Speaker 3: little particles loose, and then that knocks into like your
Speaker 3: DNA and then causes problems. And so the antioxidants actually
Speaker 3: can like bind to these like take up these free
Speaker 3: electrons and then prevent that DNA damage. So these birds
Speaker 3: have developed more of these antioxidants. So I wonder if
Speaker 3: given enough time, if space birds would develop that.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking that probably happened over many, many generations.
Speaker 1: They kind of developed that, not immunity, but that, yeah,
Speaker 1: benefit adaptation.
Speaker 6: But I wonder if you took the antioxidant rich birds
Speaker 6: I'm sent them into space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Let's let's send the chernobyl burs to space.
Speaker 3: We should send chernobyl birds to space. Why hasn't anyone done.
Speaker 5: This on screen? For noble bird space? That's amazing.
Speaker 1: So do we have any other examples?
Speaker 7: Are they the main two?
Speaker 4: It's really these two programs like the apparent, and it's
Speaker 4: also experiments that apparently pretty much stopped after the early
Speaker 4: nineties because in the Russian case, they decided that this
Speaker 4: basically proved quails didn't work as a food source for
Speaker 4: a long year's long space mission. Because part of the
Speaker 4: hope was can we just breed quail as we go
Speaker 4: to Mars or the outer reaches of the galaxy? I guess,
Speaker 4: and they said no, the quail are too weird in space.
Speaker 3: They don't do well, and they're so cute.
Speaker 1: Yeah there is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a species called Japanese quail. I hadn't seen
Speaker 4: it before, but it's all over East Asia.
Speaker 2: It's very cute, it's great.
Speaker 4: And then the American experiment was mainly just to see
Speaker 4: what happens to chicken eggs in space. It wasn't like
Speaker 4: a long term, far attempt. But the first main attempt
Speaker 4: was unfortunately a dozen fertilized chicken eggs sent up in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty six on the Challenger space Shuttle mission. So
Speaker 4: it exploded and that that ends. Oh that's right, unfortunate,
Speaker 4: but they and then in nineteen eighty nine they sent
Speaker 4: thirty two fertilized chicken eggs on the space Shell Discovery.
Speaker 4: It was called the Chicken Embryo Development in Space Experiment
Speaker 4: or short chicks in Space nuts Like they made a
Speaker 4: fun little acron.
Speaker 3: Theirds love their acronyms.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, that's that's a good one, though.
Speaker 7: God I'm annoyed at that one. That one's really good.
Speaker 4: Yeah you say so.
Speaker 5: That's also such a room full of male astronauts. Oh yeah,
Speaker 5: kicksen space.
Speaker 3: Like you're there alone, you're not you're not allowed to frightenize.
Speaker 3: Chicken's going to start to look a little sexy.
Speaker 5: That's how they trick the astronauts. They're like, no, on
Speaker 5: this mission, there's got to be chicks in space. I
Speaker 5: guess it was really naive of me to think that
Speaker 5: this wouldn't have been a food program. But I'm curious, Katie,
Speaker 5: especially with your some of your bird knowledge, what bird
Speaker 5: you would like to have seen in space or are
Speaker 5: curious about.
Speaker 3: I'd love to see a hummingbird in space because they wow.
Speaker 3: Their method of movement is very different from other birds,
Speaker 3: their flight movement. I wonder if they would have more success.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 3: They they have a very specific kind of thing where
Speaker 3: their wings create these little vortices, and there is air
Speaker 3: in the space station. Now, I don't think a hummingbird
Speaker 3: would do well in the vacuum of space, but on
Speaker 3: a space station, I'm wondering if there's enough sort of
Speaker 3: ambient air that they could generate their own little sort
Speaker 3: of controlled vord. But I'm not sure if they would
Speaker 3: do well because they are very sensitive little creatures and
Speaker 3: they need to have food pretty constantly, so they would
Speaker 3: need to have some way to feed them pretty regularly,
Speaker 3: and they're so delicate. But yeah, I would if I'd
Speaker 3: be very interested to see if hummingbirds have more success
Speaker 3: flying in space.
Speaker 1: That's that would be very interesting. I'd like to put
Speaker 1: up my suggestion as a Canada goose, is that.
Speaker 5: Just because you don't want them on Earth, you want them.
Speaker 1: Because I would love to see that the chaos that
Speaker 1: would ensue if.
Speaker 6: You don't want for any reason other than just the
Speaker 6: chaos of it.
Speaker 7: I love that.
Speaker 1: I think the sheer anger in them will cause them
Speaker 1: to be successful in space.
Speaker 3: And again imagining two thousand and one a Space Odyssey,
Speaker 3: but Hal is played by an angry Canada goose.
Speaker 5: Yes, Katie, I'm imagining. I'm imagining aliens though. It's just
Speaker 5: like the craning neck of the goose, like looking around
Speaker 5: corners and being like.
Speaker 2: What if it was?
Speaker 3: What if it was?
Speaker 5: That?
Speaker 4: Like iss politics stuff where it's like, I mean, Canada
Speaker 4: built the iron. We have to let them sound a goose, right,
Speaker 4: they build these.
Speaker 2: That's how it works. It's just you put in, you
Speaker 2: get out.
Speaker 5: You know, it's only fair.
Speaker 1: This is such a specific question. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know the answer. Did the could the birds make noise?
Speaker 1: The chickens they clucking normally? I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I great question.
Speaker 4: No idea yeah, I think it's the only hatched ones
Speaker 4: up there are the quails, So we don't know about
Speaker 4: chicken noises in space.
Speaker 3: They should technically be able to. They might again if
Speaker 3: they don't have the learning process. I mean, it would
Speaker 3: be very interesting because I'm sure they could make some noise.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much. Quails don't have that complex
Speaker 3: of songs. Their songs would probably be off because they
Speaker 3: have nothing to kind of learn from, like their calls,
Speaker 3: not really songs, more like these calls. If you tried
Speaker 3: to put a songbird in space with no sort of
Speaker 3: not a lot of learning, it would be very interesting.
Speaker 3: I think that that'ud be another thing. I'd like to
Speaker 3: see sort of songbirds in space and to study sort
Speaker 3: of there. Yeah, although there's plenty, there's plenty of like
Speaker 3: ways to isolate songbirds on Earth and study how messed
Speaker 3: up we could get those songs to be.
Speaker 1: But it's not cool unless it's in space space exactly.
Speaker 4: I have imagining they don't have parents to learn from.
Speaker 4: But then astronaut Chris Hadfield starts playing the guitar and
Speaker 4: the bird just joins it, and everyone's heart melts.
Speaker 5: You know, they just learn a lot David Bowie.
Speaker 4: With the American chickens. So they it's it's partly interesting
Speaker 4: with the radiation. This this Discovery mission orbited Earth for
Speaker 4: five days, went around eighty times, and then nothing hatched
Speaker 4: in space. But when they returned, we did hatch a chicken,
Speaker 4: and apparently they named the chicken Kentucky and then as
Speaker 4: like a gag, well not as a gag, they let
Speaker 4: it live at the Louisville Zoo in Louisville, Kentucky, but
Speaker 4: as a gag they put up signage that said they
Speaker 4: were the original recipe of space chickens, which is like
Speaker 4: a KFC references who don't know American fast food, but
Speaker 4: that's when.
Speaker 5: They get them so tasty.
Speaker 7: Yeah that's cruel. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3: This chicken should be a space hero and instead we're
Speaker 3: going like, yeah, we bread and eat your family, right,
Speaker 3: delicious spices.
Speaker 4: Like the mission was just for science and then you
Speaker 4: know we did bits about frying Mamma Earth, you know,
Speaker 4: crazy silly, and the.
Speaker 1: Chicken was fine. Yeah, there was no they were just
Speaker 1: they carried on. They didn't die early or anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems like the radiation didn't mess them up terribly.
Speaker 4: And yeah, they got to grow up truth gravity. So
Speaker 4: there's nothing at least in the main source. Here is
Speaker 4: an amazing piece from Audubon, but they add and other stuff.
Speaker 4: There's no word of any problems.
Speaker 7: Yeah, wow, goodness.
Speaker 2: But that's it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I didn't know anything about this. And apparently
Speaker 4: Audubon research shit because they did a Q and A
Speaker 4: in twenty seventeen where somebody asked them of birds and
Speaker 4: busness space and they just said no, And then people
Speaker 4: brought up this stuff and they were like, no, there
Speaker 4: is actually this like little secret, weird history of a
Speaker 4: few birds in space.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 6: That is so interesting and I'm so curious to see
Speaker 6: what the future holds for birds going into space. I'm
Speaker 6: sure it's not the last time that we're going to
Speaker 6: try and bring them up.
Speaker 1: So that is yeah, so much fun. So NASA and
Speaker 1: whatever the Russian space was it called, please take our
Speaker 1: birds into consideration.
Speaker 5: We know you're listening. Yeah, we know your Max Fun supporters.
Speaker 5: We'd like to order one hummingbird and one Canada goose please.
Speaker 4: Yeah, be sure to link that Babies and Space episode
Speaker 4: you hoped that in case people haven't heard it, like
Speaker 4: that cockroach story especially.
Speaker 2: Wow, amazing, won't spoil it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming onto our podcast and plugging off
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 3: This is how we get invited back.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what it was about them. I
Speaker 1: just love them so much.
Speaker 5: So the first question I want to ask our guests
Speaker 5: was to ask Katie how her background in science influences
Speaker 5: her Twitter account birds Rights Activists, which at first I
Speaker 5: said mostly as a joke, but now having heard all
Speaker 5: of these bird facts. Oh, and I also should say
Speaker 5: fanning out a little bit. Because I was very late
Speaker 5: to Twitter. One of the first Twitter accounts I ever
Speaker 5: followed was birds Rights Activists, and so when I made
Speaker 5: that connection, I lost my mind. But you know, it
Speaker 5: is very interesting and I feel like, you know, me
Speaker 5: and Ella and Caroline have a similar path of like
Speaker 5: from science into the science comedy world. And I'm curious
Speaker 5: how much of that both like informs how you do
Speaker 5: creative stuff, and how much of it do you actually
Speaker 5: get to like use your some of those factoids in
Speaker 5: that science brain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I would say, actually, I've always loved birds.
Speaker 3: When I was really little, I would chase after them
Speaker 3: because I thought if I could like grab one, I
Speaker 3: could convince it to be my friend. I thought I
Speaker 3: just needed to listen to reason. So my mom would
Speaker 3: watch me just like run around the yard trying to
Speaker 3: chase after birds. I once tried to make a little
Speaker 3: like Wiley coyote trap, where it was a box, a
Speaker 3: shoe box and a little stick and string, and I
Speaker 3: just like sat there. Nothing happened, but I sat there
Speaker 3: for a good ten minutes.
Speaker 2: I did love that Wiley's story. I love that so much.
Speaker 7: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 5: And then you tried dressing up as like a female bird,
Speaker 5: and then yeah.
Speaker 3: I think there's something. They're so cute, but they're also
Speaker 3: oh so alien, and I love that they are literally
Speaker 3: little dinosaurs. They're the only living dinosaur and they when
Speaker 3: you see like an ostrich or a rea or a cassowary,
Speaker 3: you can really see these are dinosaurs. These are modern dinosaurs,
Speaker 3: which I love that about them, But they are also
Speaker 3: really there's something so funny about their behavior where they
Speaker 3: just are so self obsessed and wonderful.
Speaker 7: And I.
Speaker 3: And there's something so kind of unapologetically ostentatious about birds,
Speaker 3: the male birds of so many species, just flaunting their
Speaker 3: beauty doing all these things. They're like the most I
Speaker 3: don't know. They're they're the most adorably arrogant species of animals,
Speaker 3: and so I think that their personalities are always really
Speaker 3: interesting to me, and I've always been fascinated by it,
Speaker 3: and it's probably that's part of the reason I probably
Speaker 3: was interested in animals in general. And so yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean I think, oh, I never really specifically studied bird behavior.
Speaker 3: It was just like sort of general evolutionary biology, general psychology,
Speaker 3: but I would. I would go bird watching a lot,
Speaker 3: and I just I think that they're Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 3: the they're alien enough from us, very different from mammals,
Speaker 3: that it is really fascinating to me to see so
Speaker 3: many of these behaviors that I empathize with, like really
Speaker 3: wanting to look pretty and you know, like cocking your
Speaker 3: head all the time, like a am I pretty? Tell
Speaker 3: me I'm pretty?
Speaker 1: Katie. Just a little add on question to that, do
Speaker 1: you have a favorite bird song?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a really good question. Gosh, I mean, my
Speaker 3: favorite this is not really a bird's song, this is
Speaker 3: a bird call. But my favorite sort of juxtaposition of
Speaker 3: a bird called to what the bird looks like is peacocks,
Speaker 3: because peacocks are these beautiful elegant birds and then they
Speaker 3: do their call and just like that you could ever hear.
Speaker 10: But yeah, I mean there are I think my favorite,
Speaker 10: my favorite sort of fact about like a bird song
Speaker 10: or birds sound is that there are these birds called
Speaker 10: the club wing mannequins, and they are the only bird
Speaker 10: to do a thing called stridulation, which is how you
Speaker 10: put a lot of insects produce sound using stridulations where
Speaker 10: you actually rub two body parts together, usually one has
Speaker 10: some bridges against it.
Speaker 5: That's how crickets right.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly like crickets cicadas, and it can produce this
Speaker 3: really loud sound. And club wing mannequins I'll use these
Speaker 3: modified weathers and wings and rub these together very rapidly
Speaker 3: to create this like really interesting. It sounds like they're
Speaker 3: using their voice though it sounds like a like like
Speaker 3: and it sounds beautiful and it's like but this is
Speaker 3: actually produced through stridulation. And they are so committed to
Speaker 3: the bit that there cannot fly good, like they have
Speaker 3: sacrificed being able to fly really well, like they can fly,
Speaker 3: but they're really clumsy and really awkward, and it's it's
Speaker 3: just amazing, and I love I love that they are
Speaker 3: so such divas that they're like, I don't need to
Speaker 3: fly good, I just need to sound good.
Speaker 1: That I posted a video of the sound they make.
Speaker 1: What that sounds just like it's that's so credible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just like it's singing. But no, it's just rubbing
Speaker 3: than feathers together.
Speaker 5: It's like it sounds almost like a like a foam vibrating,
Speaker 5: very high pitched wild.
Speaker 1: That's so weird.
Speaker 4: And the physical movement is such a like speedy up
Speaker 4: and down and it looks like when a character is
Speaker 4: dancing and a children's computer animated movie. It has very
Speaker 4: the movie sing energy.
Speaker 2: You know, like it's Yeah, I just.
Speaker 3: I love the rizz of birds, the world's best rizzarned.
Speaker 3: It's a new I think it's a gen Z thing,
Speaker 3: zoomer thing. They say. They say riz all the time.
Speaker 3: I'm so old, but.
Speaker 1: Carolines Caroline's resident gen Z.
Speaker 3: So riz am I allowed to say riz as a millennial?
Speaker 5: Yes, go for it, okay, especially about birds.
Speaker 6: Maybe just don't text it, just say it.
Speaker 4: Okay, Okay, Oh, I have some apology text to send okay, And.
Speaker 5: I got two guests with a ton of raise.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I have a question for Alex Now. So
Speaker 1: back in one of our episodes, Tom did a breakdown
Speaker 1: of emoji things, the history of emojis. It was wonderful,
Speaker 1: and he did mention that you came up with the
Speaker 1: buffalo emojis, but basically, yeah, in my head, I doesn't.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how does someone I know came up with
Speaker 1: an emoji that people use? Like that's wild to me?
Speaker 1: What's that? What?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 5: And well, I also want to say, this is something
Speaker 5: that I actively didn't have time to include in that episode,
Speaker 5: was like the process of like making like how a
Speaker 5: bill becomes a bill, how an emoji becomes an emoji?
Speaker 5: And so I'm I and I did that purposefully because
Speaker 5: I knew one day we'd have you on.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's all pay it off.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was a really wonderful experience that it turns out
Speaker 4: anyone in the public can propose an emoji. It's not
Speaker 4: gate enough to only specific people. And it oddly had
Speaker 4: a lot to do with podcasting, Like I heard an
Speaker 4: episode of It's called Welcome to Macintosh by Mark Bramhill,
Speaker 4: but then they featured it on ninety nine percent Invisible,
Speaker 4: hosted by Roman Mars, who at least one person on
Speaker 4: the show does an amazing impression.
Speaker 2: On there we go ed.
Speaker 4: And so they talked about him proposing the person in
Speaker 4: lotus position emoji and all the genders of that. And
Speaker 4: it turns out there's this nonprofit called unicode that's basically
Speaker 4: made of volunteers from all the big tech companies. And
Speaker 4: so if you go to them, write up a proposal
Speaker 4: and go through at least one round of back and
Speaker 4: forth with them, which was my experience, and also they
Speaker 4: were super friendly, super nice, but you basically need to
Speaker 4: make a convincing proposal. I think mine was like eighteen
Speaker 4: pages of why this.
Speaker 2: Should be an emotion?
Speaker 4: What no, I'm sorry, and parts of it were big
Speaker 4: pictures of graphs. It's cool, you know, but but yeah,
Speaker 4: once you basically convince them that it's a symbol that
Speaker 4: would have lasting usefulness, they will say yes or no
Speaker 4: and do it. And so I got to get the
Speaker 4: bison emoji.
Speaker 1: Set up a bison sorry not buffalo.
Speaker 5: We talked about in the in the episode, how like
Speaker 5: these are ostensibly permanent, like they're in once they're in
Speaker 5: the code that they don't want to like reverse that.
Speaker 5: So this like longstanding, this has been sure eighteen pages
Speaker 5: to convince that's so, that's.
Speaker 1: Such a legacy. That's an amazing legacy.
Speaker 6: To why like eighteen pages worth of things to say?
Speaker 1: Yeah, could do you have an example of some of
Speaker 1: the kind of arguments you made? Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I learned in the process that you know,
Speaker 4: I knew there was a North American bison. I learned
Speaker 4: there's a European bison as well. It's mostly in kind
Speaker 4: of Poland and Belarus, sort of in eastern Europe and
Speaker 4: forests there, and it used to have a bigger range,
Speaker 4: but just human population growth pushed it out, and so
Speaker 4: I was like, it's an international symbol. This means various
Speaker 4: things to various cultures. And then and like Buffalo is
Speaker 4: the common American name for it, and so the city
Speaker 4: of Buffalo, New York, and a lot of different things
Speaker 4: like that were helpful, and I think I think I
Speaker 4: also picked on some other already included emoji. I was like,
Speaker 4: there's already two kinds of camel, how can there be
Speaker 4: no bison? You know that you kind of look at
Speaker 4: the existing keyboard and growing shade.
Speaker 3: How dare those camels?
Speaker 1: That's so cool?
Speaker 4: And it was a whole I ended up making a
Speaker 4: mini podcast about it because there were also a lot
Speaker 4: of kind of personally things and elements related to it.
Speaker 4: Katie guests on the mini podcast, and it was wonderful
Speaker 4: interest a part about how bison are cool, but it
Speaker 4: was also partly that my dad really loved bison. And
Speaker 4: he also worked at a place in Illinois where there's
Speaker 4: like a particle accelerator, and then on top of the
Speaker 4: particle accelerator, they have prairie that's being restored in some bisons.
Speaker 4: We would go see those and stuff. But like, after
Speaker 4: he passed away, I thought about, what's.
Speaker 2: The thing I can do?
Speaker 4: And that was the thing I could do was an emojic.
Speaker 1: That's so so Also, I hope that was a line
Speaker 1: in the proposal. My dad really liked.
Speaker 11: Them idea, But yeah, it would it would be funny
Speaker 11: if I revealed that, like Unicode super interested in Dad's
Speaker 11: They want to know tell them about your dad.
Speaker 5: The secret you've got submit on Father's Day. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: thinking for a bonus episode now, each of us should
Speaker 5: write a paper on an emoji that we could propose.
Speaker 1: You want me to write a paper for a bonus episode?
Speaker 1: A symbol?
Speaker 7: I don't think so Tom.
Speaker 1: Let's learn everything. Discord users come and tell us what
Speaker 1: proposal that's and everything you should write as for an emoji,
Speaker 1: and we can do it together.
Speaker 5: The double middle finger emoji. I'm trying to think, like,
Speaker 5: what's us, what's our?
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it is like before I did it and
Speaker 4: heard about it, I really thought there would be some
Speaker 4: kind of like you need to no computers or you
Speaker 4: need to work in a tech.
Speaker 5: Husband to stop me.
Speaker 4: But you can just do it and and there's public
Speaker 4: guidelines for how to do it.
Speaker 5: That's wild.
Speaker 1: I love.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I feel like I want to go and read
Speaker 6: the public guidelines just to see.
Speaker 1: I feel like I want to try now, but I
Speaker 1: can't give anything.
Speaker 5: We're interesting. You guys want to write a paper for
Speaker 5: a sound like fort.
Speaker 3: But there must be so many proposals for emoji. It's
Speaker 3: amazing that your your emoji got selected and will be
Speaker 3: looked at by future archaeologists trying to decode our hieroglyphics
Speaker 3: of the twenty first century.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's such a good way to look at when
Speaker 6: the bison are an extinct, that'll be what remains whoa.
Speaker 3: When it's aliens, But those aliens turn out to be
Speaker 3: birds that we shot off into space and who have all.
Speaker 4: It's all coming together, it's all one thing.
Speaker 3: Come back to Earth and they're like, God, damn it,
Speaker 3: you blew it all the hell.
Speaker 5: Dirty. It's just a giant bison emoji. For some reason,
Speaker 5: I don't know how just work. One question I do
Speaker 5: want to ask is because y'all have been on and
Speaker 5: hosted and started and guested on just a slew of podcasts,
Speaker 5: and I'm just curious how your podcast journey, how how happened? How?
Speaker 5: How how do how do you do?
Speaker 7: And how do you come together?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go ahead.
Speaker 1: So I'll tell the story. Don't worry.
Speaker 5: You ran into each other at a bookstore and you
Speaker 5: like you crashed into each other and you're helping each
Speaker 5: other pick up books and you're like, oh this is
Speaker 5: on animals, Oh this is on history, And then.
Speaker 3: We kept going No, you go ahead, now, yous.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The secret is politeness, you know, but I a lot
Speaker 4: of it is probably We both worked at a website
Speaker 4: called cracked dot com. That is, it's not really good anymore,
Speaker 4: but like I got there through doing social media stuff
Speaker 4: and making gifts and editing, writing like a lot of
Speaker 4: other things I was doing. And then they had a
Speaker 4: podcast and contributed to that, and and then got to
Speaker 4: host a podcast for them for a while. And so
Speaker 4: the start of it was basically working at comedy websites
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then I got to meet Katie there because
Speaker 4: they especially I remember when she was like getting hired, especially,
Speaker 4: somebody said that the pro bird rights person might be
Speaker 4: willing to work here. It would be amazing if we
Speaker 4: could might be willing they possibly get their help with things.
Speaker 1: You know, I just I want you to continue, but
Speaker 1: I just have to just very quickly highlight that you said, Jiff,
Speaker 1: and that's very upsetting to me. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's a whole thing. But yeah, you put it
Speaker 2: in post.
Speaker 5: Don't worry.
Speaker 1: We're a strong gift team here.
Speaker 7: So I really are. I think this does mean that
Speaker 7: you're not allowed to come back.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, can renounce your ways and and and see can.
Speaker 3: We please the show again? Have you guys heard of
Speaker 3: a show called Let's Learn Everything Everything? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was just saying about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I say, give it's really good. They're all really charming.
Speaker 5: Okay, all right, but.
Speaker 1: Watch yourself Okay, you can say a bit longer. Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: I completely interrupted you.
Speaker 3: I think Alex, I think we bonded initially over our
Speaker 3: mutual respect for Peanuts comics.
Speaker 2: That's real.
Speaker 3: And I would draw a sort of dark version of
Speaker 3: Peanuts just to just to get Alex's because he was
Speaker 3: such a Peanuts appreciator. So I did a version where
Speaker 3: Snoopy just was a huge bully.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I think that we started collaborating more after that and
Speaker 3: eventually podcasting.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, I'm like humongous fan of Peanuts and Snoopy,
Speaker 4: And there there might be slight typing sounds in me
Speaker 4: right now because I'm looking for the tweet where there's
Speaker 4: a bunch of Keys comics.
Speaker 2: But they're great.
Speaker 4: It's it's Snoopy being a dark figure like he kind
Speaker 4: of is in the real strips, where just he just
Speaker 4: pushes Charlie Brown around.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll put a link. We'll put a link to
Speaker 1: that in the in the show notes so you can
Speaker 1: go and look at Keys.
Speaker 5: All great friendships start with an amazing bite.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it doesn't start with politeness being a bully.
Speaker 1: Our relationship three of us definitely didn't stop with politeness
Speaker 1: so correct? Yeah, shall we do?
Speaker 6: She doesn't plugs and shout outs yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, are you going so high?
Speaker 3: Any keep going up and up and up.
Speaker 4: Like I just did positive gestures. So I think that
Speaker 4: forced Caroline to keep speaking.
Speaker 5: And one more for the dogs listening.
Speaker 6: Thank you both so so much before we go, plug yourselves,
Speaker 6: plug your podcast?
Speaker 7: Where can the people find you?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: Have you heard of this podcast called amazing host invites
Speaker 3: genius gifts, top top quality for sure.
Speaker 1: Actually plug yourself actually, and we're.
Speaker 4: So excited to be on maximum fun with y'all ed
Speaker 4: and making secretly incredibly fascinating false can search the words
Speaker 4: secretly in their app. It's the red one that comes up,
Speaker 4: but it's it's a joy to make it. And then
Speaker 4: Katie's amazing podcast on her own is creature feature about
Speaker 4: animals and science and more about animals.
Speaker 3: Not always in space though, yeah, sometimes on Earth most
Speaker 3: of the time, actually.
Speaker 6: On unfortunately disappoint that's disappointing, isn't it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so boring, so boring once even on Earth, a
Speaker 4: bunch of worms and stuff.
Speaker 5: Actually, there is one pretty good podcast that is hosted
Speaker 5: on Earth, actually, yeah, which is we Won't Say You
Speaker 5: have to listen to all three of them to.
Speaker 3: Find out it's a secret.
Speaker 5: Incredibly fascinating. Oh my god.
Speaker 6: Okay, okay, and are there any socials I would like
Speaker 6: to plug as well for the two of you, yeah.
Speaker 2: Pro bird rights, but but also.
Speaker 4: Alex Schmitzstagram on Instagram and I have not really ramped
Speaker 4: up on TikTok much yet, but Alex SCHMDDI on TikTok
Speaker 4: and then it's siff pod on everything for the pretty secret.
Speaker 4: Incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 5: You have some great risk on there, such rizz.
Speaker 2: Manage it so I can handle it, you know. Geez.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm also on the Blue Sky I know. I
Speaker 3: love bird tweets on there, so I had some invite
Speaker 3: cords if you guys, I'm going on here.
Speaker 1: John and Carolina just approaching the camera very slowly and menacingly.
Speaker 5: I would like to add, but yeah, thank you truly,
Speaker 5: thank y'all so so so much, learned the time, and
Speaker 5: also had a bunch of chaotic fund This is a delight.
Speaker 5: You'll are amazing.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love the chaos of this episode.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful. Thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having us wonderful.
Speaker 6: So on this episode we have learned all about the
Speaker 6: birds that have gone into space. They can't fly there,
Speaker 6: but humans have taken there and they have done some
Speaker 6: weird things trying to fly around in there.
Speaker 7: We have learnt.
Speaker 6: About Katie's background in birds, the lover of birds, the
Speaker 6: trying to trap birds, how that allowed to her amazing
Speaker 6: Twitter account, and also learned about the process the eighteen
Speaker 6: page longation to get the bus to be an emoji.
Speaker 6: Join us next time, where we will learn about.
Speaker 5: Every day.
Speaker 1: Let's Learn Everything is a maximum fun podcast hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by Ella Hubber, Tom Land, and Caroline Broker, with
Speaker 1: editing and music by the wonderful and talented Tom Land.
Speaker 6: Join us next time, where we will learn and we
Speaker 6: all say it about.
Speaker 1: We will say it ready, everything. We will say everything, everything, everything,
Speaker 1: the worst one we've ever done again. We should start
Speaker 1: telling people that in advance before we get to that point.
Speaker 1: This has happened almost every time we've had a guest,
Speaker 1: We're like, We're like, it's happening, and everyone's and the
Speaker 1: guests are all like, what's happened.
Speaker 2: I just didn't think of myself as getting able to
Speaker 2: do it, you know, so that's right.
Speaker 3: I have permission. Am I a part of things? Or
Speaker 3: am I not a part of things?
Speaker 1: You're always oppose things.
Speaker 5: Maximum Fun a worker owned network of artists owned shows
Speaker 5: supported directly by you.