Speaker 1: You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2: What's that mango? So you know what's funny? You know
Speaker 2: what's funny. Your headband is funny. But sorry it interrupt
Speaker 2: Go ahead.
Speaker 1: Well, we've been friends for a little over twenty five
Speaker 1: years now.
Speaker 2: I think we actually known each other for twenty seven
Speaker 2: years now, if I'm not mistake, but I said friend, right, gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 1: But think of all the fun things that have happened
Speaker 1: in the last twenty five years, right, Like this's the
Speaker 1: launch of the iPod, thousands of songs in your pocket.
Speaker 1: Social media exploited with Facebook. People started dancing Gungnam style
Speaker 1: and we're taught how to duggy for some reason. There's
Speaker 1: planking and photos that became a fad, and Lady Gaga
Speaker 1: wore a meat dress to the MTV video War.
Speaker 2: I think that summed it up. I think you actually
Speaker 2: covered everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean we also had a block president,
Speaker 1: our first black president, gay marriage became legal, and people
Speaker 1: challenge each other with ice buckets. But for me, everything
Speaker 1: really starts with that meat dress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and don't forget we launched a little magazine from
Speaker 2: our drm room called Mental Flaws way back in the
Speaker 2: year two thousand. Yeah, I can't believe.
Speaker 1: It's been almost twenty five years since that first issue
Speaker 1: hit newsstands. But this week's super special edition of Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius is all about celebrating this last quarter century.
Speaker 1: Every day this week, we're gonna be counting down the
Speaker 1: twenty five greatest science ideas of the past twenty five years,
Speaker 1: and we are sending out lots of fun prizes to
Speaker 1: our listeners too.
Speaker 2: But I've just got one question for you, mego, why
Speaker 2: are you wearing a velord tracksuit and a homemade headband? Again,
Speaker 2: I don't really understand what's happening.
Speaker 1: Here because I am pump Oh got it, Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 2: Will Pearson, and of course I'm here with my friend
Speaker 2: Mangesh hot Ticketter and over there attending to what I
Speaker 2: thought was a Bob Ross chia pet but is actually
Speaker 2: a vintage, discontinued Albert Einstein chia pet. Is our pal
Speaker 2: and producer Dylan Fagan and Mengo. I think Einstein with
Speaker 2: sprouts for his hair is exactly the energy we're trying
Speaker 2: to pull for this week's twenty five list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Well, so I kind of want to
Speaker 1: start by having you tell our listeners about how we
Speaker 1: became friends, because I was definitely trivia obsessed as a kid.
Speaker 1: I think I've mentioned that when cable came to my
Speaker 1: neighborhood in third grade, my friends and I were obsessed
Speaker 1: with doubledare and every day in the summer we would
Speaker 1: practice drilling each other with trivia questions and setting up
Speaker 1: these challenges all over our houses and the creek in
Speaker 1: the backyard, and you know, we're just trying to get
Speaker 1: ourselves physically prepped for this thing. We want to be
Speaker 1: ready in case a producer just called us up to
Speaker 1: be on the show. Yeah, but you were obviously obsessed
Speaker 1: with lists. I was very much obsessed with lists. I
Speaker 1: think this started when I was probably eleven or twelve
Speaker 1: years old.
Speaker 2: I just love making lists. They all started as pretty basic.
Speaker 2: It's like, here's my list of presidents, here's my list
Speaker 2: of state capitals. And then it got a little weirder
Speaker 2: over the years. It was like, here's a list of
Speaker 2: my favorite left handed artists and favorite you know books
Speaker 2: with more than four hundred pages or whatever it might
Speaker 2: have been. It was just fun to keep lists, and
Speaker 2: people would ask like, why do you do this, and
Speaker 2: I didn't really know the answer, other than it just
Speaker 2: felt good to collect this information, you know, and to
Speaker 2: just know this information, So anyway was what I did.
Speaker 1: I love it, and so when we started Mental Fluss,
Speaker 1: we were definitely list obsessed. And one of my favorite
Speaker 1: annual things that we do was we would declare the
Speaker 1: most important books of the last twenty five years for
Speaker 1: the most important music of the last time five years
Speaker 1: of TV shows, And the lists were always so fun
Speaker 1: and totally unexpected. You came away just appreciating all these
Speaker 1: other amazing things. I don't know about you, but I
Speaker 1: think for me, part of the reason I wanted to
Speaker 1: do a big science list this week was because right now,
Speaker 1: you know, there's so much talk about AI and gene
Speaker 1: therapies and those kind of dominate the headlines. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I also love the weird, fun inventions and and kind
Speaker 1: of the joy of Obama at the Science Fair shooting
Speaker 1: rockets and things. And you know, science is obviously nerdy,
Speaker 1: but it's also cool and weird and fun, and I
Speaker 1: thought it would be just really fun to celebrate it.
Speaker 2: That sounds good, but I feel like before we dive in,
Speaker 2: we really have to talk about the process and everything
Speaker 2: that goes into how we choose a list like this.
Speaker 2: So before we jump in, do you want to start
Speaker 2: by giving a little rationale of how we chose all
Speaker 2: of these things?
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally so, Gabe, Mary, our friend Lucas Riley. They
Speaker 1: helped us look up a whole bunch of ideas and
Speaker 1: then we pare them down to things that truly delighted
Speaker 1: or impressed us. Ideally both of those things. And then
Speaker 1: you and I picked a bunch and researched some more.
Speaker 1: And now's the fun part where we get to like
Speaker 1: take turns presenting the ideas. Plus we are sending part
Speaker 1: time genius certificates to all of the winners, which they
Speaker 1: can put on their.
Speaker 2: Refrigerators, all of the winners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also atomic fireballs, the most sciencey candy we
Speaker 1: could find in honor of this week's Signs special.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny that we're choosing fireballs because, as
Speaker 2: my kids know, I love fireballs. So we have this
Speaker 2: special cabinet at our house just outside the kitchen called
Speaker 2: the Center of Excellence, and it's basically where all of
Speaker 2: my candy obsessions get to be stored because I'll fall
Speaker 2: in love with the candy. We were at a great
Speaker 2: sushi restaurant and I love the little treats they bring
Speaker 2: you at the end of it, and I decided I
Speaker 2: needed to order those in bulk. I ordered some atomic
Speaker 2: fireballs in bulk, and then I move on to the
Speaker 2: next thing, but we just keep them in that collection.
Speaker 2: So it's a big prize, and we're giving out prizes
Speaker 2: on our insta all week as well.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so Mary is running contest for us all
Speaker 1: week and has a bunch of ridiculous swag to send out.
Speaker 1: She and the person who manages our social media, our
Speaker 1: friend Calypso. So after you listen, head over to our
Speaker 1: Instagram handle at part Time Genius and go win some stuff.
Speaker 1: Were to send it out, but that is way too
Speaker 1: much set up. Let's just get into.
Speaker 2: It all right, Okay, So don't let the number fool you.
Speaker 2: Our list is kicking off with an innovation that happens
Speaker 2: to tackle one of the biggest problems in all of society,
Speaker 2: and that is how to get ketchup out of a bottle. Now,
Speaker 2: as we all know, there is nothing more frustrating than
Speaker 2: holding a ketchup bottle at a forty five degree angle
Speaker 2: over your food, shaking it vigorously and having absolutely nothing
Speaker 2: come out. And for years there were only two solutions.
Speaker 2: People would jam a knife in a bottle. I feel
Speaker 2: like you don't see that as much anymore, remember jamming
Speaker 2: as a kid. I feel like people just would put
Speaker 2: that knife in there and then give it a stir
Speaker 2: and they hope the ketchup would start flowing. Also, there's
Speaker 2: the smack the number trick, where people figured out that
Speaker 2: if you give the number fifty seven on the side
Speaker 2: of a glass bottle of hinds a nice wallap, it
Speaker 2: would get the ketchup moving. But of course the problem
Speaker 2: with both of those is that you could end up
Speaker 2: with way too much ketchup on your fries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a ketchup conundrum that we've all experienced.
Speaker 2: It's exactly right, and one of the biggest leaps forward
Speaker 2: for all of humanity and our quest board an appropriate
Speaker 2: amount of ketchup was the upside down ketchup bottle.
Speaker 1: Right, so you are obviously talking about the ketchup bottles
Speaker 1: where the dispenser is on the bottom and it's sitting
Speaker 1: on there and the gravity is just kind of pulling
Speaker 1: it down.
Speaker 2: Right, that's exactly right. That bottle, or rather the valve
Speaker 2: in it, was invented by a gentleman named Paul Brown. Now,
Speaker 2: his idea wasn't specifically for ketchup. He just thought a
Speaker 2: better valve would work for most liquids, from dish detergent
Speaker 2: to hand sanitizers to whatever it may be. This is
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties, so Paul Brown had this dream,
Speaker 2: but he really struggled to make it a reality. He
Speaker 2: made one hundred and eleven different prototypes, Wow, maxed out
Speaker 2: a bunch of credit cards, borrowed money from his folks
Speaker 2: to you know, make a better valve for dispensing liquid.
Speaker 2: And while trying to make this valve, like, what was
Speaker 2: he trying to solve for exactly Well, he realized that
Speaker 2: to make a better squeeze bottle, you wanted the nozzle
Speaker 2: to open when you place pressure on it, but then
Speaker 2: you need it to completely close up when the pressure
Speaker 2: is removed, so there's no accidental leaking from this Anyway,
Speaker 2: After years of failures, his one hundred and twelfth prototype work,
Speaker 2: and once he'd perfected his valve, everyone came calling in,
Speaker 2: including NASA, who saw I used for the valve in
Speaker 2: space and was trying to make leak proof cups for astronauts.
Speaker 2: Wow shampoo bottlers who wanted a more convenient bottle for
Speaker 2: their soaps and shampoos also came calling on him as well,
Speaker 2: and eventually, after he pitched it to Hines, they saw
Speaker 2: his innovation as part of a catch up revolution. They
Speaker 2: started this ad campaign about the quote waiting man, where
Speaker 2: a guy is just sitting and holding a glass ketchup
Speaker 2: bottle vertically over his meal and nothing is moving or
Speaker 2: happening for like twenty seconds, and then is why comes over,
Speaker 2: squeezes the perfect amount of ketchup onto his food and
Speaker 2: solves the problem in a second. And the ad slogan
Speaker 2: was quote no weight, no mess, no anticipation.
Speaker 1: It is so funny that as a society we are
Speaker 1: so impatient that we need our ketchup immediately. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just a condiment.
Speaker 2: I don't know why you're you really don't get it.
Speaker 2: It's super important that we get it quickly. But I
Speaker 2: was actually thinking this too, to be honest, until I
Speaker 2: read this Malcolm Gladwell piece on ketchup, and this was
Speaker 2: a piece that he wrote for The New Yorker, and
Speaker 2: in it he quotes a food professor who calls ketchup
Speaker 2: the Esperanto of cuisine because it's one of the few
Speaker 2: foods that satisfies your cravings for salty, sweet, sour, bitter,
Speaker 2: and dow mommy all at once. If you think about it,
Speaker 2: that's that's actually true, and that's part of the reason
Speaker 2: the world loves ketchup so much. But back to Brown.
Speaker 2: According to the patent professor, this is a website on
Speaker 2: inventors and patents. Today, about seventy five percent of Hinz
Speaker 2: bottles that are sold are upside down squeeze bottles now,
Speaker 2: And it wasn't long before Brown paid off his credit
Speaker 2: cards and paid his parents back. Of course, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, I do love this, but this invention is from
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, right, so like it doesn't quite make
Speaker 1: the twenty five year cut off.
Speaker 2: Lit. I thought you were going to call me out
Speaker 2: for that, but I'm actually not done yet. So all
Speaker 2: of those lay the groundwork for the quote problem of ketchup.
Speaker 1: Look at me being impatient.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're doing that. But even though Paul Brown Squeeze
Speaker 2: bottle valve helped us get much more ketchup out of bottles,
Speaker 2: the truth is it's hard to get the last bits
Speaker 2: of ketchup out of there, and that means there's a
Speaker 2: lot of food wasts. But that's where some grad students
Speaker 2: from MIT came in. In twenty twelve, that is, within
Speaker 2: the last twenty five years here a PhD candidate named
Speaker 2: Dave Smith and a team of mechanical engineers and nanotechnologists
Speaker 2: at MIT's Varnacy Research Group had been working on various
Speaker 2: lubricants and coatings to solve various issues. So they were
Speaker 2: tackling things like how to coat an oil or gas
Speaker 2: line so that there's no clogs, or how to cote
Speaker 2: a windshield so that the water doesn't collect on it
Speaker 2: and is more easily pushed off by your wipers. But
Speaker 2: then they started wondering what would happen if they applied
Speaker 2: some of their technology to consumer packaging. I think the
Speaker 2: idea started with the frustration of getting honey out of
Speaker 2: a bottle, you know, because there's still so much in
Speaker 2: there at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's obviously annoying, but why were they
Speaker 1: putting all this technology towards food bottles.
Speaker 2: Well, according to Fast Company, that's one of the questions
Speaker 2: they got asked the most. And the answer is that
Speaker 2: the market for bottles and I'm just talking sauce bottles
Speaker 2: here is a seventeen billion dollar market and if you
Speaker 2: could solve food waste there, you could basically save a
Speaker 2: million tons of food from being thrown out every single year.
Speaker 1: That's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they created this coating called liquid glide, and
Speaker 2: it's really miraculous. Like if you watch the videos, the
Speaker 2: Ketchup flows out of the bottle almost like a liquid
Speaker 2: with nothing left in the bottle. As Professor Krippa Varnasi
Speaker 2: puts it, there's this fundamental friction constraint called no slip
Speaker 2: boundary condition between a liquid and a solid. And so
Speaker 2: because they basically created a new surface for the liquid
Speaker 2: to move on, you can get the product to slide
Speaker 2: across the surface. And so he continues describing this. He
Speaker 2: says that, Aha, moment that we could get around a
Speaker 2: fundamental constraint of fluid dynamics.
Speaker 1: That's really cool that they can take this like uncooperative
Speaker 1: fluid like Ketchup and just make a glide out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all the applications for this are actually pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: It isn't just ketchup or honey that it affects suddenly,
Speaker 2: Like you can get toothpaste out of a tube more effectively,
Speaker 2: which makes that recyclable. You can use variations on medical
Speaker 2: devices to get essential fluids out of bags like. It's
Speaker 2: really remarkable.
Speaker 1: I love that. So, of course, congratulations, doctor Varnossi and
Speaker 1: team will be sending you a part time genius certificate
Speaker 1: for your achievement and a handful of atomic fireballs for
Speaker 1: your important work.
Speaker 2: Such a great price, right.
Speaker 1: So, sitting at number twenty four is a pretty whimsical
Speaker 1: invention that maybe means more to me than it means
Speaker 1: to you. It is a floating hot tub boat invented
Speaker 1: in Finland called the hot tug, which sounds a little dirty,
Speaker 1: but this loading tub is actually really wonderful.
Speaker 2: And there's this story about why you like hot tubs
Speaker 2: so much. I'm guessing I mean, to.
Speaker 1: Be clear, I do like hot tubs in the appropriate context.
Speaker 1: My friend Dave is a hot tub behind his place
Speaker 1: in Idaho, and you can sit out there when it's
Speaker 1: snowing and look at the Grand Tetons behind you, and
Speaker 1: that is incredible. But also there was one time when
Speaker 1: I was on a work trip and I showed up
Speaker 1: at a hotel room in a dicey neighborhood that had
Speaker 1: been booked for me, and there was a giant hot
Speaker 1: tub in the middle of the hotel room, and that
Speaker 1: was less appeeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see maybe avoiding that.
Speaker 1: But as you might know, I hate cold water. And
Speaker 1: part of the reason is that when I was on
Speaker 1: my study of broad trip, and this is so many
Speaker 1: years ago in Tibet, we were hunting for this anthropological
Speaker 1: evidence of a semi nomadic civilization, and there hadn't been
Speaker 1: a lot of study done in this region of Tibet.
Speaker 1: It was pretty pristine and hard for academics to get
Speaker 1: to anyway, my friends and I saw these hots that
Speaker 1: were set up across this little river, and we knew
Speaker 1: we wanted to get to it, and there was a
Speaker 1: bridge about two hours up one way and one hour
Speaker 1: down the other way, and so my friends were like,
Speaker 1: we should probably just cross this river. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: there was snow on the ground at the time and
Speaker 1: the water was ice cold, and we didn't want to
Speaker 1: get our clothes wet, so basically we got naked and
Speaker 1: cross this thing so we'd have dry clothes on the
Speaker 1: other side. And I just remember getting up to my
Speaker 1: ankles and being like, I've never been this cold, and
Speaker 1: then getting up to my knees and being like I've
Speaker 1: never been this cold, and then getting to my waist.
Speaker 1: But the current was also crazy strong, and I almost
Speaker 1: slipped out some moss and somehow caught myself with the
Speaker 1: stick and it was miserable. But I just remember being
Speaker 1: so cold for so long, and the worst part was
Speaker 1: the huts weren't any big discovery, so it was just
Speaker 1: like a normal settlement. But I was very angry, and
Speaker 1: since then I don't really go in cold water, but
Speaker 1: I will go in hot water, and that's where the
Speaker 1: hot tug comes in.
Speaker 2: Wow, I'm with you on the cold water. I don't
Speaker 2: understand people that can do the cold plunge thing. It's
Speaker 2: just I don't get it. But anyway, tell me more
Speaker 2: about this invention.
Speaker 1: So it is the brainchild of a Dutch furniture designer.
Speaker 1: His name is Frank de Bruyne. And it's not just
Speaker 1: a barrel with heat under it. So this thing is
Speaker 1: a beautiful two thousand liter eight seater jacuzzi boat. And
Speaker 1: according to an interview with the New York Post, Jabrun
Speaker 1: actually grew up on a barge where his parents were skippers,
Speaker 1: and he'd always loved campfires and nature and looking up
Speaker 1: at the stars. And at some point he wondered, like,
Speaker 1: what if you could have a mobile hot tub, like
Speaker 1: not just something that was parked in your backyard, but
Speaker 1: something that would allow you to float out wherever you were,
Speaker 1: and that could be on a lake or a fjord.
Speaker 1: And so he created this boat with an electric motor,
Speaker 1: so it is entirely quiet for the nature aspect, but
Speaker 1: the hot tub contraption is also entirely stable, so you
Speaker 1: can sit in the hot tub and then stand up
Speaker 1: and dive off the side into like a crisp, refreshing
Speaker 1: lake and you won't tip anything over. To me, it
Speaker 1: feels like a really beautiful way to float your way
Speaker 1: through a cold land escape. Like imagine being in one
Speaker 1: of these off the coast of Alaska or in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest, And that's kind of de Bruyn's dream too.
Speaker 1: Right now, the hot tubs are cost prohibitive. They run
Speaker 1: about fifteen thousand to twenty thousand dollars. But his hope
Speaker 1: is that national parks and cities will buy fleets of
Speaker 1: these things and then rent them out to people like me,
Speaker 1: you know, tourists who hate the cold but love nature.
Speaker 2: That sounds pretty awesome. I'm on board, Mango. The next
Speaker 2: one for me is a discovery that deals with one
Speaker 2: of my biggest pet peeves. Tangled headphones and chords so frustrating.
Speaker 2: And this comes from a British scientist named Robert Matthews
Speaker 2: from Aston University. So over the years, people have tried
Speaker 2: to deal with knots in tons of ways. You can
Speaker 2: very carefully coil up chords using special reels. They're actually
Speaker 2: a ton of anti nodding gadgets out there. But Robert
Speaker 2: Matthews developed a mathematical theory which has an incredibly simple answer.
Speaker 2: According to his loop conjecture, one of the easiest things
Speaker 2: you can do is clip the ends of a chord
Speaker 2: together to form a loop. Based on his mathematical models,
Speaker 2: forming a simple loop produces a tenfold reduction in the
Speaker 2: risk of knots forming in the headphone course. That's amazing,
Speaker 2: But what's also sweet about his theory is that Matthews
Speaker 2: organized something called the British not Experiment, where, according to
Speaker 2: Science Daily, kids at schools across the country looked at
Speaker 2: this phenomena with quote various cord thickness, rigidity, and other
Speaker 2: parameters likely to affect nodding risk.
Speaker 1: I mean, tangled chords are definitely one of my biggest
Speaker 1: pet peeves, and every year I try so many different
Speaker 1: ways to make sure that my Christmas lights don't get
Speaker 1: tangled or chords don't get tangled. And I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of fascinated by this idea that if you just loop
Speaker 1: the chords, it solves the issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Matthews points out that even though it feels
Speaker 2: trivial in nature, quote, the phenomena of spontaneous nodding is
Speaker 2: of great significance in other areas, including polymer chemistry and
Speaker 2: molecular biology. Like if you consider there's over a meter
Speaker 2: of DNA crammed into every one of our selves, and
Speaker 2: any knots can dramatically increase the risk of genetic malfunction,
Speaker 2: you can see how there might be some really interesting
Speaker 2: applications there, Like Matthew's points to some anti cancer drugs
Speaker 2: that work by affecting not formation. And cancer cells, and
Speaker 2: he's hoping that the loop conjecture can lead to new
Speaker 2: approaches in drug design.
Speaker 1: That's amazing that you can tackle something that's annoying like
Speaker 1: headphones and it solves genetic problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something almost as important like cancer.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, well that is pretty awesome. I know we've
Speaker 1: got lots more to cover, from space perfumes to bird esthetics,
Speaker 1: but before we get to any of that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
Speaker 2: twenty five great science ideas over the last twenty five years.
Speaker 2: And I forgot Mengo. What number are we on? All right,
Speaker 2: number twenty two? So Mango, what do you have next?
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the sense of smell, because when
Speaker 1: it comes to memory and emotion, there is no sense
Speaker 1: quite as powerful as scent. And for me, like a
Speaker 1: whiff of jasmine takes me to my grandmother's backyard and India,
Speaker 1: there's a certain wet grass and pavement smell that reminds
Speaker 1: me of monsoons and also spring in Delaware. Yeah, also
Speaker 1: lemon pledge weirdly reminds me of when my sister and
Speaker 1: I used to have to dust wood furniture every Saturday
Speaker 1: after cartoons. So are there any distinctive sense that you
Speaker 1: can think of.
Speaker 2: It's funny that you mentioned your grandmother. I feel like
Speaker 2: everybody who you know had the benefit of being able
Speaker 2: to go to a grandmother's house has a certain scent there.
Speaker 2: For me, it was the smell of bacon, because my
Speaker 2: granddad cooked bacon every single morning of his life, and
Speaker 2: so whenever you walk into that house, you're just like bacon.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: Mike Myers always talks about like how it smells like soup,
Speaker 1: whinny he thinks.
Speaker 2: About old people. This is a little better than that.
Speaker 1: So our next guest knows a lot about scent. It's
Speaker 1: what he does for a living. And our pal Mary
Speaker 1: actually got him on the phone.
Speaker 3: I'm Steve Pierce. I've worked in the flame room fragrance
Speaker 3: industry for more than forty years in various roles and
Speaker 3: now a consult for some companies in that industry. I'm
Speaker 3: a bit of a jack of all trades, to be honest.
Speaker 1: So Steve has a degree and applied biochemistry and says
Speaker 1: he's been interested in smells since he was a kid.
Speaker 1: So back in the early two thousands, he was approached
Speaker 1: by a museum curator who wanted to make an exhibit
Speaker 1: about impossible smells, like smells that were so fleeting or
Speaker 1: so far in the past that no one's been able
Speaker 1: to experience them. And one of the impossible smells he
Speaker 1: developed for this exhibit was the scent of the Mere
Speaker 1: Space Station as it fell back to Earth. The exhibit
Speaker 1: was a huge hit and people were fascinated.
Speaker 3: It made a bit of a splash. It was on
Speaker 3: TV all the rest of it. And it was a
Speaker 3: few months after that that I got this call from
Speaker 3: someone at NASA. He explained his role as having to
Speaker 3: smell every single component that went into the Space Shuttle
Speaker 3: to make sure that when astronauts were up there, there
Speaker 3: was nothing that was going to create an off an
Speaker 3: unpleasant environment for them to live and work in.
Speaker 2: So I'm trying to imagine this guy's work day, like
Speaker 2: he walked around sniffing rocket parts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess something like that, And I guess he
Speaker 1: told Steve that NASA had a smell problem.
Speaker 3: They had astronauts returning to Earth who'd gone for a
Speaker 3: vehicular walk outside. So they'd gone outside to service satellites
Speaker 3: and do all the things they do, and then when
Speaker 3: they got back inside, they were going through the airlock
Speaker 3: and they'd repressurized, take their suit helmet off, and then
Speaker 3: they got hit by this smell. And a number of
Speaker 3: them came back and said, look, we went through all
Speaker 3: this training about fitness, about psychology here, about how to
Speaker 3: fly things, how to service satellites, how to walk as
Speaker 3: they nobody warned us about this smell.
Speaker 2: Never would have thought that space had a smell. Apparently
Speaker 2: NASA hadn't either, So they asked Steve if you could
Speaker 2: recreate the scent of space for training purposes, and he
Speaker 2: was like, sure, I'll give it a try. So NASA
Speaker 2: put him in touch with some astronauts so he could
Speaker 2: get a first hand account of the space smell.
Speaker 3: They were pretty consistent in terms of it, focusing on
Speaker 3: things like hot metal. They said fried steak, but I
Speaker 3: kind of think that was when maybe they were near
Speaker 3: a barbecue which was hot metal, and they were associating
Speaker 3: the fried steak and the hot metal. And one of
Speaker 3: them described it as the scent of the hot metal
Speaker 3: when he was welding on his motorbike as a young
Speaker 3: man and things like this. So that was the description
Speaker 3: that I had to go for and try and recreate
Speaker 3: that in a safe way that could be used during
Speaker 3: the training.
Speaker 1: So around the same time, some other papers came out
Speaker 1: that offered all these hypotheses about what space smell like
Speaker 1: based on beectroscopic analysis, and two of the notes that
Speaker 1: got mentioned were raspberries and rum, which I've read about
Speaker 1: and it sounds really nice. But Steve didn't buy it.
Speaker 1: None of the astronauts he'd interviewed mentioned any of those scents,
Speaker 1: so he stuck to his brief of hot metal and meat.
Speaker 1: And the more he thought about it, the more it
Speaker 1: made sense because when the astronauts were outside, their suits
Speaker 1: were bombarded by high velocity particles and solar wind, so
Speaker 1: when they came back inside, they detected the odor left
Speaker 1: by all that energy.
Speaker 2: So we managed to recreate the smell for NASA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it took a couple of months, but
Speaker 1: he did. And unfortunately, in the time he was working,
Speaker 1: his NASA contact had retired or maybe been laid off,
Speaker 1: like to this day Steven in shore, which all he
Speaker 1: knew was that he called NASA to say, hey, I've
Speaker 1: got your space smell, and NASA was like, we don't
Speaker 1: know where you're talking about, man.
Speaker 3: I couldn't find anyone else to want to take it forward,
Speaker 3: so it was a bit disappointing to have done that
Speaker 3: work and then not be able to see it put
Speaker 3: to use. So I kind of parked it.
Speaker 1: The story might have ended there, but the BBC happened
Speaker 1: to visit Steve's lab for a report on fragrance and flavors.
Speaker 1: The reporter asked if he'd worked on anything particularly unusual,
Speaker 1: and Steve said, well, as a matter of fact, I
Speaker 1: made the scent of space for NASA, and that turned
Speaker 1: into the kicker of the piece, and then another media
Speaker 1: storm erupted, so the news traveled to this side of
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and Steve was contacted by an American education
Speaker 1: advocate who wanted to leverage the scent to raise money
Speaker 1: for STEM programs. Right, this is awesome. So the initial
Speaker 1: goal was something like, let's sell two thousand dollars of
Speaker 1: this perfume, and in the end the project raised over
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand dollars on kickstar.
Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1: And the idea was that for every bottle someone bought,
Speaker 1: a bottle would get sent to a school. But this
Speaker 1: meant a new challenge for Steve.
Speaker 3: Before, I wasn't worried about skin contact and things like that.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking people would smell it. No, that
Speaker 3: would be the end of it. Now I had to
Speaker 3: go back to the drawing board and reformulate it to
Speaker 3: make sure it was completely safe in case anybody accidentally
Speaker 3: sprayed it in their eye or swallowed it, or make
Speaker 3: sure there were no allergens in there and so on.
Speaker 1: So what's more, Steve had actually developed a second space scent.
Speaker 1: He met the astronaut Charles Duke at a conference, and
Speaker 1: Duke could actually walk down the Moon with the Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven crew, So naturally Steve wanted to know what that
Speaker 1: had smelled like.
Speaker 3: And of course he's, well, of course you can't smell
Speaker 3: anything through the suit, and he's having a joke and
Speaker 3: all that, But then he says, when you get inside
Speaker 3: and you're covered in this fine dust, he starts explaining
Speaker 3: to everyone about it. Takes his helmet off, he says,
Speaker 3: and all you can smell is this smell of the moon,
Speaker 3: he says. And everyone thinks it smells of cheese and
Speaker 3: makes all these jokes about it, but he says, it
Speaker 3: smells like spent gunpowder.
Speaker 1: So the scent of Space and the Scent of the
Speaker 1: Moon became available through this kickstarter. And now Steve does
Speaker 1: want to make it very clear that he is not
Speaker 1: involved in any of the logistics for fulfillment with this
Speaker 1: Space scent product. He just made vats of the stuff
Speaker 1: and had it shift to a distributor. But he is
Speaker 1: really happy about all the bottles that made their way
Speaker 1: to schools and STEM programs, And he told us one
Speaker 1: of his proudest moments was meeting a dad whose son
Speaker 1: had really severe learning disabilities, but he was fascinated by
Speaker 1: space and being able to smell it made it come
Speaker 1: to life in this incredible, vivid way.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so cool. I do have to ask my
Speaker 2: go have you smelled this stuff? And if so, is
Speaker 2: it good?
Speaker 1: I don't think the word is good, like maybe interesting, fascinating, meaty.
Speaker 1: I looked up out to Space on perfume review website
Speaker 1: and a lot of people complained that it didn't smell
Speaker 1: like something you'd wear, which makes sense because that wasn't
Speaker 1: the intention. But what's really interesting is several reviewers mentioned
Speaker 1: that the scent made them feel a sense of loneliness
Speaker 1: or dispair and so we actually asked Steve about this.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have used words like despair and loneliness. I
Speaker 3: can understand if people are putting that concept of the
Speaker 3: fragrance alongside the fact that you're in an airless and
Speaker 3: void of space and you're weightless. If it manages to
Speaker 3: conjure up those feelings, I can understand why they might
Speaker 3: describe it as that. There's definitely a meaty element to it.
Speaker 3: It is quite harsh and metallic as well. I would
Speaker 3: have said I would have described it as that. The
Speaker 3: other image I had was if you've ever been the
Speaker 3: electrical sparks and you get that blue flash and there's
Speaker 3: that sense of burning although nothing's burning, it's almost like
Speaker 3: the ozone in the air that's created in that high
Speaker 3: energy impact. Those were the kind of images I was
Speaker 3: trying to recreate. I never set out to make anyone
Speaker 3: feel despair, but you know what, when you're working on
Speaker 3: these things on your own and you're sometimes coming up
Speaker 3: against a bit of a block and trying to improve it,
Speaker 3: sometimes that can feel pretty lonely as well.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's the next challenge for a fragrance scientist
Speaker 1: like Steve, like figure out a way to bottle the
Speaker 1: scent of loneliness along with one that makes you feel
Speaker 1: maybe more like you're surrounded by people you love.
Speaker 2: That's a great idea.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I'm sure everyone's wondering, Okay, how can I get
Speaker 1: a whiff of this? Well, we manage to get our
Speaker 1: hands on a bottle of the Space scent and a
Speaker 1: bottle of the Moon scent, and.
Speaker 2: We squirted it on a fire mall.
Speaker 1: So we are giving them away today on our Instagram.
Speaker 1: So go check it out at part time Genius to
Speaker 1: see how you can win.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna apply. So for anyone who's suffered from jet lag,
Speaker 2: you know how hard it can be to try to
Speaker 2: get your body clock to shift time zones. It is
Speaker 2: really not a pleasant process. But for a bunch of hamsters,
Speaker 2: at least one thing has helped, taking viagra. You can
Speaker 2: see any of this coming to do jet lag, Hamsters, viagra?
Speaker 2: Can you work those into the sentence? It's like the
Speaker 2: weirdest success, Mad Live success.
Speaker 1: So why were they giving viagra to hamster?
Speaker 2: What else would you give them? Mango? But anyway, it's
Speaker 2: really only in small doses. So, as the Smithsonian points out,
Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety eight, when viagra was first approved by
Speaker 2: the FDA. Scientists have found all sorts of other uses
Speaker 2: for the drug, including for flowers. Actually, so if you
Speaker 2: crush viagra into a vase, it can help your fresh
Speaker 2: cut flowers last longer. It's also good for treating blood pressure,
Speaker 2: and in two thousand and seven, a trio of Argentinian
Speaker 2: scientists figured out that injecting a small amount of viagra
Speaker 2: into a hamster will help cure it of jet lag.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course it has to be a small dose, right,
Speaker 1: These are hamster. These are also scientists, so they could
Speaker 1: do whatever, but anyway. But it's basically enough viagra to
Speaker 1: affect them, but not enough to get them aroused or
Speaker 1: anything like that.
Speaker 2: But back to the jet lag. Normally, humans tend to
Speaker 2: take a full day to adjust for an hour of change,
Speaker 2: So if you travel to Singapore from New York, it'll
Speaker 2: take your body about twelve days to fully adjust to
Speaker 2: that time change. But with viagra, the hamsters were covered
Speaker 2: in about half of that period. And do we know
Speaker 2: why this is Well, according to the Smithsonian quote, they
Speaker 2: believe even happened because the drug raises levels of a
Speaker 2: molecule called cyclic guanascene monophosphate in the body. cGMP is
Speaker 2: the molecule that expands blood vessels, which helps with getting
Speaker 2: men excited. That's how it works from that purpose. But
Speaker 2: cGMP also speeds up the body's internal clock, which is
Speaker 2: how it combats jet lag. Anyway, the most fascinating thing
Speaker 2: about this study, or to me at least, was that
Speaker 2: the viagra only worked when hamsters were traveling east. Like,
Speaker 2: the viagra helped if you adjusted the time zone from
Speaker 2: New York to London, but if you had them going west,
Speaker 2: it basically had no effect. I heard viagra's the same way, So.
Speaker 1: That is wilds Well, I've got another discovery about animals,
Speaker 1: but before we get to that, let's take one last break.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're counting down
Speaker 2: the twenty five greatest science ideas of the past twenty
Speaker 2: five years. All right, mango, we are all the way too.
Speaker 1: Why those sesame street numbers never get old to me?
Speaker 1: And at number twenty, we're going to cover one of
Speaker 1: the most important scientific discoveries of our time, according to me,
Speaker 1: which is why chickens like Denzel Washington more than you.
Speaker 2: More than I like Denzel Washington, or they like Denzel
Speaker 2: more than they like me.
Speaker 1: They like Denzel more than they liked Okay, god, okn me,
Speaker 1: they preferred Denze.
Speaker 2: Making sure I didn't know if I was part of
Speaker 2: this study.
Speaker 1: Now, over the years, there have been lots of discoveries
Speaker 1: about chickens. We know that the color of a chicken's
Speaker 1: eggs often coincides with the color of the bird's ear lobes.
Speaker 1: We know that today's chickens descended from the red jungle
Speaker 1: fowl of Southeast Asia about eight thousand years ago, and
Speaker 1: they were probably first domesticated not for meat, but as
Speaker 1: early alarms systems like watchdogs, but birds right, bird dogs?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But perhaps most importantly, chickens can tell other chickens apart,
Speaker 1: and studies have shown they can easily identify up to
Speaker 1: thirty other chickens at a chicken party, but once the
Speaker 1: numbers get to about one hundred, they get more confused.
Speaker 1: They can't keep tracked. I mean, it's like people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels fair. But in two thousand and two, in
Speaker 1: a paper called quote Chickens prefer beautiful humans. This is
Speaker 1: actually the title of the scientist Stefano Ghirlanda Listen, Loote
Speaker 1: Jensen and Magnus Anquist. Don't worry, it'll be spelled properly
Speaker 1: on the certificates. They all discovered that much like humans,
Speaker 1: chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces, and in the experiment,
Speaker 1: chickens pecked more at screens with symmetrical faces, and these
Speaker 1: results actually match the results of humans who were asked
Speaker 1: to choose between the same faces. According to nat GEO,
Speaker 1: the study was limited in that only tests did a
Speaker 1: small number of chickens and humans, but the results may
Speaker 1: suggest the mutual admiration for symmetry is rooted in the
Speaker 1: nervous system. Isn't that awesome? So it's not really based
Speaker 1: on cultural influences, but it's triggered by something in the brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you said this was only a small number
Speaker 2: of chickens, so I'm still not quite on board with
Speaker 2: the idea that they like Denzel more than you. But
Speaker 2: we'll see. And actually, you know what, you know, I
Speaker 2: have chickens and chickens that lay different colored eggs. Huh.
Speaker 2: I did not know that chickens had ear lobes, much
Speaker 2: less ear lobes that you could use to detect what
Speaker 2: sort of eggs they would lay. But anyway, it's all
Speaker 2: super fascinating. So back to this idea of the chickens
Speaker 2: preferring symmetrical faces. Do we know the evolutionary reason for that? Like,
Speaker 2: why do humans and chickens prefer these faces?
Speaker 1: We don't know yet. But nat Geo did have a
Speaker 1: fun kicker to the piece. They wrote, quote, what could
Speaker 1: be more humiliating than a chicken who sees your Tinder
Speaker 1: profile and swipes left? I think that's a good way
Speaker 1: to answer.
Speaker 2: So that is definitely. We have reached the end of
Speaker 2: day one in our countdown of the twenty five best
Speaker 2: science ideas from the past twenty five years. Now, remember
Speaker 2: we got four more days to go, so be sure
Speaker 2: to tune in all week. Don't forget to enter today's
Speaker 2: giveaway on our Instagram at part time Genius and Mengo.
Speaker 2: What's the teas up for tomorrow?
Speaker 1: So we have got stories about lobsters, dolphins and bike helmets.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the trio, although unfortunately none of these involve
Speaker 1: lobsters and dolphins wearing bike helmets. But it's still going
Speaker 1: to be fun, I promise. Anyway, that's it for today's
Speaker 1: episode from Gabe, Dylan, Mary, Will and myself. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
Speaker 1: of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and Me Mongays Chatikler, and research by our good
Speaker 1: pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's EPISO was engineered and produced
Speaker 1: by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
Speaker 1: and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
Speaker 1: Trustee Dara Potts and Vinny Shorey. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.