Speaker 1: Guess what, mango? What's that will? So I was away
Speaker 1: earlier in the week, but I hear you guys had
Speaker 1: a big snow day here in Atlanta. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: We stayed home from the office, my kids drove me bonkers,
Speaker 1: and of course it didn't snow at all. Yeah. That's uh,
Speaker 1: that's life in the South. I hope you get used
Speaker 1: to it, but you know, I still feel like we
Speaker 1: should do this week's nine Things in honor of snow.
Speaker 1: So I've got a fact to kick us off here.
Speaker 1: Did you know that in March Syracuse actually tried to
Speaker 1: ban snow. There was this record snowfall that season. I
Speaker 1: think it was like a hundred and sixty something inches,
Speaker 1: and so the city council this was a great idea
Speaker 1: that unanimously approved this resolution to outlast snowfall in the
Speaker 1: city of Syracuse until December of the following year. I
Speaker 1: like that. So obviously they're like holding it off until
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve, which is great. But did it work not
Speaker 1: at all. In fact, Mother Nature wasn't in a listening
Speaker 1: mood and its snow two days later. But it did
Speaker 1: give the citizens something to smile about, you know, during
Speaker 1: this really tough winter season. And so that's just the
Speaker 1: first of nine facts about snow. Let's dig in. Hey
Speaker 1: their podcast listeners, Welcome to part time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: Man Guesh Ticketer and on the other side of the
Speaker 1: soundproof glass, sitting with a snowman preparedness kid on his desk.
Speaker 1: I was curious what this thing was. I'd look at
Speaker 1: it before we came in the studio. It's it's just
Speaker 1: like a ziplog bag with a carrot and some pieces
Speaker 1: of coal and I think like a corn cob pipe
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, Tristan is always prepared. Yeah, just you
Speaker 1: just you take it and you just wait to stick
Speaker 1: it in a snow man. And so that's from our
Speaker 1: good pal and our producer, Tristan McNeil to Mago. I
Speaker 1: know you're disappointed it didn't snow more, but at least
Speaker 1: we've got a show full of wintry facts. So so
Speaker 1: what do you want to start with? So I've got
Speaker 1: a pretty good one. Um. Have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: yacki gossim? And I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong. I
Speaker 1: have not heard of it, but I am certain you're
Speaker 1: pronouncing it wrong. Yeah. So it's a massive Japanese snowball
Speaker 1: fight that's apparently similar to Capture the Flag, but it's
Speaker 1: played in three minute rounds and it's two teams of
Speaker 1: seven people. You actually get ninety pre made snowballs for
Speaker 1: each team to start, and then players get eliminated when
Speaker 1: they get hit by the snowballs. The other thing that's
Speaker 1: weird about it is that the players wear helmets to
Speaker 1: protect their heads. And while I am generally wharrey of
Speaker 1: playing any game that requires you to wear a helmet
Speaker 1: with a face mask, this one looks really fun. So
Speaker 1: I'm kind of ready for it to be an Olympic sport.
Speaker 1: That does sound so fun, But I love that it
Speaker 1: must be so rough that they have to wear helmets
Speaker 1: with face masks. All right, well, speaking of dangerous snowball fights,
Speaker 1: because I've got one here. I learned about this from
Speaker 1: the British show q I that you and I have
Speaker 1: talked about several times before. But it's actually a snowball
Speaker 1: fight that you know, a parent might use as an
Speaker 1: example of why you shouldn't participate in a snowball fight.
Speaker 1: So back in fifteen forty six, a general named Francois
Speaker 1: de Bourbon got into this snowball fight and it got
Speaker 1: pretty rowdy, and so he ducked under a window to
Speaker 1: get a breather from it all, and someone then threw
Speaker 1: a linen chest out of their window. It landed on
Speaker 1: his head, and he unfortunately died a few days later.
Speaker 1: So you know, kids, you've got to be really careful.
Speaker 1: This is a pretty good lesson about what can happen
Speaker 1: in snowball fight. I'm not trying that really applies to
Speaker 1: most snowball fights, but I don't know. So here's a
Speaker 1: fact about snowman. Did you know that Michelangelo used to
Speaker 1: carve in snow? So this is from Jake Rosen at
Speaker 1: Metal Flass. But early in Michelangelo's career he had a
Speaker 1: patriot named Piero da Medici, you know, from the Medici family.
Speaker 1: But Medici really didn't know what he wanted the young
Speaker 1: artist to do for him, so mostly he kind of
Speaker 1: used him as the like personal shopper or interior decorator.
Speaker 1: He kind of like picked out works of art for him.
Speaker 1: And then one day, when it snowed, he got this
Speaker 1: great idea and decided to task Michelangelo with making him
Speaker 1: a snowman, and obviously, like Micgelangelow's skills are so great.
Speaker 1: But uh um, there are no detailed images of how
Speaker 1: this snowman looked, except that it is on the historical
Speaker 1: record that it looked, quote very beautiful. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, here's a quick one about building a snowman.
Speaker 1: Did you realize that building one can actually be a
Speaker 1: pretty good workout? And Pop Sugar looked into this and
Speaker 1: they found that building a snowman for an hour will
Speaker 1: burn about two and eighty five calories. You can have
Speaker 1: a snowball fight and that burns about three hundred nineteen calories.
Speaker 1: And then if you spend that full hour, you know,
Speaker 1: just an hour making a snow angel, you can burn
Speaker 1: two hundred and fourteen calories, which is about what you'd
Speaker 1: burn if you walked uphill for an hour, I mean,
Speaker 1: an hour of making snow angel sounds like total torture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're probably right. So you know, I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of Calvin Hobbson. One of my favorite themes in the
Speaker 1: strip is when Calvin builds all these hilarious and horrific
Speaker 1: snowmen in his front yard and it's often too the
Speaker 1: horror of his parents. But according to the History of Snowmen,
Speaker 1: which is this wonderful book, um, this was actually a
Speaker 1: popular activity in the nineteen hundreds. Apparently snowmen were often
Speaker 1: used as like a comic stand in for violence and uh.
Speaker 1: Illustrations from the early nineteen hundreds show them being javelin
Speaker 1: with brooms or run through with Toboggan's. M All right, well,
Speaker 1: here's a weird snow fact I had no idea about.
Speaker 1: Did you know that there was a heavy snow the
Speaker 1: day before JFK's inauguration and really heavy winds too, and
Speaker 1: all of this was threatening the presidential parade from actually
Speaker 1: being able to happen. So in steps the Army Corps
Speaker 1: of Engineers. They worked through the night to clear the path.
Speaker 1: They moved something like fourteen hundred cars from the inaugural route,
Speaker 1: and they got to use, you know, in addition to
Speaker 1: sanders and plows and all the usual stuff. Something that
Speaker 1: I got excited to read about, they actually got to
Speaker 1: use flame throwers to get rid of the snow. How
Speaker 1: much fun would that be? And so in the morning
Speaker 1: sent hundred boy scouts pitched in to help them finish
Speaker 1: the job, and of course the roads were clear in
Speaker 1: time for the inauguration. That's really sweet and I've never
Speaker 1: heard that. So here's a fun tip I never expected
Speaker 1: to use. In two thousand ten, the Ignoble Prize for
Speaker 1: Physics went to this team from New Zealand at the
Speaker 1: University of Otago, and they showed that quote. On ice
Speaker 1: footpaths in the wintertime, people slip and fall less often
Speaker 1: if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
Speaker 1: What a helpful fact there, Mango. Thanks for Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can wear your socks a shoe condom. That's right, that's right. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of really productive science, you know that old saying
Speaker 1: about no two snowflakes looking alike. Apparently it's not exactly true.
Speaker 1: The New York Times reports that a scientist named Kenneth
Speaker 1: liebric that the California Institute of Technology he grows twins
Speaker 1: snowflakes in a lab. And according to the article, it's
Speaker 1: not so much as snowflakes original structure, but it's the
Speaker 1: path that it takes through the atmosphere, you know, all
Speaker 1: the twists and turns and volatility, and that's what makes
Speaker 1: it unique. But in the lab, it's a pretty different story.
Speaker 1: The Libricks process takes in between fifteen minutes to an
Speaker 1: hour or so to grow a pair of snowflakes, but
Speaker 1: he defends his idea of making flakes that look alike,
Speaker 1: and as he puts it, we haven't violated any laws
Speaker 1: of physics. We just found a loophole. That's pretty cool
Speaker 1: and it's amazing that you can grow a pair of
Speaker 1: snowflakes in the in the lab. But it also kind
Speaker 1: of makes me feel less special. Oh well, man, go
Speaker 1: I don't want you to feel less special. So you
Speaker 1: know what, I think the really useless fact that you
Speaker 1: gave about the sock over the shoe, that that maybe
Speaker 1: that gives you the prize today. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you today's fact off trophy. I like using sympathy
Speaker 1: as a way to get you to give me the trophy. Finally,
Speaker 1: so thank you and thank you guys for listening. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with a full length episode tomorrow. M