Speaker 1: Guess what, mango? What's that? Will?
Speaker 2: Did you know there's a polar bear jail in Churchill, Canada?
Speaker 1: So I do know that Churchill is considered the polar
Speaker 1: bear capital of the world because my mom has wanted
Speaker 1: to make a pilgrimage there forever. And I'd also heard
Speaker 1: that people there leave their cars unlocked in case you
Speaker 1: ever need to make like a quick escape from a
Speaker 1: wayward bear. White too serious about that. You can actually
Speaker 1: just hop in a stranger's car and take shelter, which
Speaker 1: is such a weird things. I'm sure you can only
Speaker 1: get so much protection from a crazed bear in a car.
Speaker 1: But tell me about polar bear jail.
Speaker 2: Well, according to the Atlantic, it was built in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two and it has space for twenty eight fuzzy inmates.
Speaker 1: Basically, the town has so.
Speaker 2: Many bears wandering through officials have set up a hotline
Speaker 2: for locals. It's just six seventy five bear. So if
Speaker 2: you see a bear on the outskirts of town, officials
Speaker 2: will come and try to scare it away with whatever
Speaker 2: they can use, whether it's firecrackers or sometimes rubber bullets
Speaker 2: or paintballs, and generally the bears get the hint. But
Speaker 2: if a bear decides he still wants to visit, or worse,
Speaker 2: if a bear starts loitering in places that they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: That's often what juvenile bears will do. That's when the
Speaker 2: threat of jail time kicks in. So the bear patrol
Speaker 2: tries to lure these big delinquents into a giant cylindrical
Speaker 2: trap baited with seal meat, and when the cage snaps shut,
Speaker 2: they truck them off to the polar bear jail. Of course,
Speaker 2: sometimes the bears aren't hungry and they just have to
Speaker 2: use tranquilizers. But the system actually works pretty well.
Speaker 1: So this doesn't sound like due process. But how long
Speaker 1: do these bears get sentenced for?
Speaker 2: Generally it actually is a few months, and they keep
Speaker 2: them there until the weather gets colder or the water
Speaker 2: freezes over, and then the older and hopefully wiser bears
Speaker 2: get sprung back to their old neighborhoods and they'll hopefully
Speaker 2: turn over a new leaf in the process. But that's
Speaker 2: just the first of nine facts on bears we're covering today,
Speaker 2: So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to
Speaker 2: part time genius. I'm Will Pearson. And as always, I'm
Speaker 2: joined by my good friend Mangush hot Ticketer and sitting
Speaker 2: behind the soundproof glass wearing two big lobster claws and
Speaker 2: a shirt that says what does it say? It says
Speaker 2: Sometimes I share. Sometimes I'm a fellyfish. That's our Palin producer,
Speaker 2: Tristan McNeil. What.
Speaker 1: I love that Tristan gets all dressed off as usual,
Speaker 1: But I think we forgot to tell him that we
Speaker 1: were changing the topic from lobsters to bears these things.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. Tristan will update the calendar soon.
Speaker 2: He just looks so sad pinching those lobster claws of
Speaker 2: that mean, do you have at least one lobster fact
Speaker 2: you could share to make him feel little better?
Speaker 1: You know? I don't. Oh, okay, well me either. I
Speaker 1: do have some facts the trick. So I know you
Speaker 1: started with a story on polar bears, but do you
Speaker 1: know there's actually a bear known as a pisly bear.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's also called a groller bear, and basically it's
Speaker 1: a polar bear grizzly bear combination or hybrid, and mostly
Speaker 1: the sort of breeding has occurred in captivity. It produces
Speaker 1: like a really beautiful white bear with light brown patches.
Speaker 1: But Canadian hunters have been finding more and more of
Speaker 1: these pizzlies in the wild, and they think that the
Speaker 1: inner bear romance's trend will continue because of global warming,
Speaker 1: though actually the two bears have actually lived in overlapping
Speaker 1: territories for a while. That's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of either of those, the pizly or
Speaker 2: the grollar bear. So what are these hybrid bears like
Speaker 2: in terms of their behaviors, because those are two pretty
Speaker 2: different types of bears.
Speaker 1: Do we know much about them? Well, you know, some
Speaker 1: hybrids can't mate, but these are definitely not sterile. They
Speaker 1: can continue to mate, which is pretty interesting. They actually
Speaker 1: tend to take on the polar bears hunting skills, so
Speaker 1: they can be aggressive and pretty skilled hunters, but they're
Speaker 1: not actually as good at swimming as purebred polars. So
Speaker 1: you know, polar bears can actually swim for one hundred
Speaker 1: miles continuously, and they can't go that far. But in
Speaker 1: the long run, scientists actually think these pizzlies will probably
Speaker 1: be successful by mating more and more with grizzly bears
Speaker 1: than polar bears. And that's just because the numbers favor that,
Speaker 1: and also how the environment seems to be going. What
Speaker 1: is interesting, though, this isn't the only hybrid species that
Speaker 1: comes out of climate change. Pacific Standard magazine has ridden
Speaker 1: that luga whales are mating with narwals to create nar lugas.
Speaker 1: At the very least fun to say, I mean, that
Speaker 1: definitely sounds made up.
Speaker 2: I think I was probably in my twenties before somebody
Speaker 2: convinced me that nar wals were actually.
Speaker 1: A real thing. Anyway, So these nar lugas, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: I do think it's funny when you get these names
Speaker 2: like ligers and beefalows. They're kind of fun to say,
Speaker 2: but there are some that are just terrible, like jag
Speaker 2: lions and dog wolves, which honestly just feels lazy to me.
Speaker 2: All Right, So here's a strange one, and it sounds
Speaker 2: like an urban legend, but.
Speaker 1: It's actually true.
Speaker 2: There was this man in China who bought two puppies
Speaker 2: on the border of China and Vietnam, and then he
Speaker 2: took them home. I guess they looked like little black chowchows,
Speaker 2: and so he fed them and he groomed them, and
Speaker 2: then things.
Speaker 1: Started to get a little weird. They wanted more and
Speaker 1: more food.
Speaker 2: They started feasting on his chickens, and then they grew
Speaker 2: to one hundred pounds. But he only fully realized he'd
Speaker 2: been duped when he read a government flyer about bear safety,
Speaker 2: and then he recognized the animals in the picture. It
Speaker 2: became pretty clear to him that he was actually the
Speaker 2: proud owner of two Asian.
Speaker 1: Black bear cups.
Speaker 2: So now they live in a sanctuary where they get
Speaker 2: to eat more than just dog food, thankfully.
Speaker 1: That's pretty funny. Actually, this is super weird, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure I've told you this before, but my grandfather was
Speaker 1: in the forestry service, and one day when he was
Speaker 1: on tour, he found these three bear cubs whose mother
Speaker 1: had been shot. I think the mom of bear couldn't
Speaker 1: give milk, so she was aggressive in attacking the town.
Speaker 1: But he and his colleagues found these bears, so he
Speaker 1: brought one of them back with him. And the story
Speaker 1: was that my mom had a pet bear for a
Speaker 1: little bit until they good place in the sanctuary. And
Speaker 1: so like my mom is unafraid of any animal. But
Speaker 1: the funny part, and the thing we always used to
Speaker 1: tease my grandmother about, was like how did she let
Speaker 1: a pet bear in the house, And she always just
Speaker 1: said like she thought it was a dog, And I
Speaker 1: guess there must be some sort of resemblers. She was
Speaker 1: just like willfully ignoring the fact that my grandfather would
Speaker 1: bring these ridiculous baby animals home for the whiter That
Speaker 1: is great, but my fact. So since we're talking about Cubs,
Speaker 1: here's the fact about the Chicago Cubs and how they
Speaker 1: got their name. So you know, even though I'm not
Speaker 1: a huge baseball fan, I do love the strange team
Speaker 1: names that stick around for a little bits of time.
Speaker 1: Like in Brooklyn, the baseball team was called the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Bridegrooms for a season, and I guess this is because
Speaker 1: like a number of them all got married in one
Speaker 1: season and that's just the nickname they took on. Similarly,
Speaker 1: the Cubs used to be called the White Stockings, which
Speaker 1: you know isn't particularly useful since they also have the
Speaker 1: White Sox in Chicago. And then they lost their manager
Speaker 1: whose contract wasn't renewed, I guess, and the team went
Speaker 1: by the name the Chicago Orphan, So I know it's
Speaker 1: ad and they were horrible because obviously teams aren't great
Speaker 1: when they don't have managers, right, But then they started
Speaker 1: rebuilding the team with these super talented players, but all
Speaker 1: of them were really really young, and that's how they
Speaker 1: got the name the Cubs. You know, it wasn't like
Speaker 1: the super formal name. Apparently, there's the site Wrigley Ivy
Speaker 1: and it says that young players were commonly called cubs
Speaker 1: or cults or you know, other young animal names. But
Speaker 1: then this typesetter in Chicago may have accidentally like capitalized
Speaker 1: the description in print, and that nickname stuck.
Speaker 2: I do like this idea that a team could have
Speaker 2: a different name every couple of years, just based on
Speaker 2: something the team's been up to, or like this idea
Speaker 2: of they all got married so they were the bride groups.
Speaker 2: But actually I looked up to Chicago Bears and I've
Speaker 2: got a quick one about the Super Bowls shuffle. So
Speaker 2: did you realize it was nominated for a Grammy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is such a novelty song and it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine any critics actually liking it.
Speaker 2: Well, the strangest part is that it was beat out
Speaker 2: by Prints and the Revolution's k Thank goodness, it was
Speaker 2: beat out. If it had beaten that song, that's ridiculous
Speaker 2: and it's crazy to think that they were even in
Speaker 2: the same category. But one other thing I didn't realize,
Speaker 2: but the year the Bears won the Super Bowl was
Speaker 2: also the year of the Challenger disaster, and that happened
Speaker 2: around the same time. So the team actually never got
Speaker 2: to visit the White House for understandable reasons. But they
Speaker 2: did eventually get to go when fellow Chicago and Barack
Speaker 2: Obama invited the team to the White House twenty five
Speaker 2: years later.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is crazy that they had to wait
Speaker 1: twenty five years for the kind of amazing that it happened. Well,
Speaker 1: since we've moved into sports and pop culture, there's a
Speaker 1: Fozzy Bear fact. I was trying to slip into the
Speaker 1: Sesame Street episode. We did a couple episodes back, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it because he's more of a muppet.
Speaker 2: Is the fact that you keep sending me Fazzy Bear
Speaker 2: jokes from Twitter?
Speaker 1: Is that what your fact is? I mean, they're so corny. Actually,
Speaker 1: have you seen that Mike Probiculi a special where he
Speaker 1: talks about the one time he had to follow Fozzy
Speaker 1: Bear on a comedy tour, Like Fozzy Bear opened for
Speaker 1: him and he said it was so so difficult because
Speaker 1: you know, any bad joke Fozzy tells he's loved because
Speaker 1: of his Waka walka walka, the audience just eats it
Speaker 1: up and he's a friendly a hard act to follow up.
Speaker 1: But the one thing I was gonna say was that
Speaker 1: on the original Muppet Show, the gag was that Fazzy
Speaker 1: Bear would tell jokes that were so bad that he'd
Speaker 1: then get no reaction and he gets so upset that
Speaker 1: he'd get depressed or even start to cry. And you know,
Speaker 1: that sounds funny in theory, but apparently the audiences didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do, like, they mostly just felt bad
Speaker 1: for him, and it made the segments really, really awkward.
Speaker 1: So when Henson and Frank Oz were retooling the character,
Speaker 1: they played down the sympathy aspects and just made him
Speaker 1: this sort of eternally optimistic, diluted bear who you know
Speaker 1: still gets tomatoes and tomato soup thrown at him, but
Speaker 1: he believes he's crushing it on stage every time. Also,
Speaker 1: they friendly retooled his eyebrows in the process because they
Speaker 1: used to make Fazzy Bear frown more, you know, when
Speaker 1: he was getting upset, right and they had this apparatus
Speaker 1: built in the puppet that frank Oz could like pull
Speaker 1: so that the eyebrows shifted down, but then the hat
Speaker 1: mostly covered them up and they retool the character, so
Speaker 1: then they drop that element.
Speaker 2: Huh, all right, so I'm going to try to bring
Speaker 2: this back to real bears.
Speaker 1: Nothing gets fozzy.
Speaker 2: He's great, But I actually like reading about all the
Speaker 2: unusual skills that they have. They have this incredible sense
Speaker 2: of smell, and this is how extreme it gets. So
Speaker 2: they're seven times better at smelling than a bloodhound. A
Speaker 2: polar bear can actually smell seals from twenty miles away,
Speaker 2: and can smell a seal under the ice through its
Speaker 2: breathing hole from a mile Awaybelievable, it really is. And
Speaker 2: so they're also pretty crafty. This is according to metal Flaws.
Speaker 2: They will roll rocks into a bear trap in order
Speaker 2: to set them off. But the most intriguing thing to
Speaker 2: me was that bears are apparently good at math. Now
Speaker 2: this comes from nat Geo, and it says bears actually
Speaker 2: have the largest brain of any carnivore, and scientists wanted
Speaker 2: to find out whether they could count, so they set
Speaker 2: up these side by side touch screens where bears would
Speaker 2: have to paw or touch their nose to this with
Speaker 2: more dots on them, And when they picked the screen
Speaker 2: with more dots, they got a little treat. Apparently bears
Speaker 2: are very motivated by trees. And as scientists kept varying
Speaker 2: the size and the colors of the dots, you know,
Speaker 2: there might have been fifteen tiny dots on one screen
Speaker 2: and twelve on another, these genius bears kept picking the
Speaker 2: right one. In fact, the biggest problem with the study
Speaker 2: ended up being that all the bears wanted to participate
Speaker 2: at the same time, and the scientists didn't have enough
Speaker 2: testing stations for them. You know, like I said, they
Speaker 2: are very motivated by treats.
Speaker 1: Well, we've still got two more bear factors you get too,
Speaker 1: But before we do, let's take a quick break. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Part time Genius. So, you know, Will, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about that story you told about that dude
Speaker 1: who bought two dogs and they turned out to be bears,
Speaker 1: and it reminded me of this great story about Lord
Speaker 1: Iron at college. Apparently, the rule at Cambridge was that
Speaker 1: you couldn't have dogs on campus, and Byron was so
Speaker 1: irritated that he decided to like skirt the rules, and
Speaker 1: he decided to go out and get himself a bear,
Speaker 1: like a team bear. And there were, of course no
Speaker 1: explicit rules about having a bear on campus, so I
Speaker 1: guess he got away with it, and he'd actually frequently
Speaker 1: walk it around campus on a leash. But the funniest
Speaker 1: part is that people kept asking him what are you
Speaker 1: going to do with that bear? And his standard reply
Speaker 1: was he was going to try to get him enrolled
Speaker 1: at the school and have him sit for a Fellowshit.
Speaker 1: Apparently that part of the plan never all came through. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty crazy. So is that what you're using for
Speaker 1: your last fact? Actually, I've got another one I want
Speaker 1: to use, So I actually think this is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: And I realized this when I was reading a Berenstein
Speaker 1: Bear's book about Easter to my daughter. And as I
Speaker 1: was reading it, I realized it was less about the
Speaker 1: chocolate bunnies and an Easter icon, and there was a
Speaker 1: little more overt religion in there than I was expecting.
Speaker 1: You know, it was more explicit than I'd remembered, and
Speaker 1: I guess I was a little confused because I started wondering, like,
Speaker 1: had the Berenstein Bears always been talking about religion like
Speaker 1: jars of clay, and I just hadn't picked up on it,
Speaker 1: you know. And I've been confused about this stuff in
Speaker 1: the past two like not growing up Christian. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that Asthla and Line the Witch in the Wardrobe
Speaker 1: was supposed to be christ until one of my best
Speaker 1: friends pointed out to me. Or I remember finding Archie
Speaker 1: comics online and there's this one where Archie gets religious
Speaker 1: and he converts a hippie. Really, yeah, it was because
Speaker 1: the comic got licensed to a Christian publisher for a bit. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I was curious that the Berenstein Bears had like some
Speaker 1: sort of similar agreement. But it turns out that it's
Speaker 1: Jen and Stan Berenstein's son Michael, who's been inserting more
Speaker 1: religious titles in the mix. And apparently when Stan passed away,
Speaker 1: Michael actually stepped in to help his mom keep writing books,
Speaker 1: and he'd apparently made his name by writing Christian theme
Speaker 1: books for about thirty years. So, according to mental class,
Speaker 1: when you see a title like the Berenstein Bears Show
Speaker 1: God's Love, the Berenstein Bears say their prayers or the
Speaker 1: Bear Bears go to Sunday School. That generally indicates he's
Speaker 1: the one who wrote it. Huh, that's interesting. All right.
Speaker 2: Well, since we're sticking with fictional bears here, I'm going
Speaker 2: to join you with a Paddington fact. So did you
Speaker 2: know that Paddington was originally written to be from Africa?
Speaker 1: I mean, the only recent thing I know about Hackington
Speaker 1: was a he switched from eating marmalade to marmite sandwiches
Speaker 1: for this ad campaign, and people were pissed. I bet
Speaker 1: they were. They felt like Pangton was a sellout. Yeah, seriously,
Speaker 1: I mean I knew that Pangington's from Darkest Peru, but
Speaker 1: why was he from Africa before that?
Speaker 2: Well, this was a last minute adjustment and it was
Speaker 2: pointed out to author Michael Bond that bears don't really
Speaker 2: live in Africa, so he pivoted to Darkest Peru and
Speaker 2: that's where he based his creature on this spectacled bear.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I liked a lot of these bear facts.
Speaker 1: I've got to say my favorite was that bears can
Speaker 1: do math problems. I think you're going to take the
Speaker 1: trophy this week. All right, Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: It's an honor, and thank you guys for listening. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with a full length episode tomorrow. The