Speaker 1: Guess what, mango?
Speaker 2: What's that will?
Speaker 3: I was away earlier in the week, but I hear
Speaker 3: you guys had a big snow day here in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. We stayed home from the office, my
Speaker 2: kids drove me bonkers, and of course it didn't snow
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's life in the South.
Speaker 3: I hope you get used to it, but you know,
Speaker 3: I still feel like we should do this week's nine
Speaker 3: Things in honor of snow. So I've got a fact
Speaker 3: to kick us off here. Did you know that on
Speaker 3: March thirtieth of nineteen ninety two, Syracuse actually tried to
Speaker 3: ban snow. There was this record snowfall that season. I
Speaker 3: think it was like one hundred and sixty something inches,
Speaker 3: and so the city council this was a great idea.
Speaker 3: They unanimously approved this resolution to outlaw snowfall in the
Speaker 3: city of Syracuse until December twenty fourth of the following year.
Speaker 2: I like that. So obviously they're like holding it off
Speaker 2: until Christmas Eve, which is great.
Speaker 1: But did it work not at all.
Speaker 3: In fact, Mother Nature wasn't in a listening mood, and
Speaker 3: it snowed two days later. But it did give the
Speaker 3: citizens something to smile about, you know, during this really
Speaker 3: tough winter season. And so that's just the first of
Speaker 3: nine facts about snow.
Speaker 1: Let's dig in.
Speaker 3: Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 3: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 3: friend Mangesha Ticketer and on the other side of the
Speaker 3: soundproof glass sitting with a snowman preparedness kid on his desk.
Speaker 3: I was curious what this thing was, so I had
Speaker 3: to look at it before we came in the studio.
Speaker 3: It's just like a ziploc bag with a carrot and
Speaker 3: some pieces of coal and I think like a corn
Speaker 3: cob pipe in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tristan's always prepared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just you just you take it and you just
Speaker 3: wait to stick it in a snowman. And so that's
Speaker 3: from our good pal and our producer, Tristan McNeil to mego,
Speaker 3: I know you're disappointed it didn't snow more, but at
Speaker 3: least we've got a show full of wintry facts.
Speaker 1: So what do you want to start with?
Speaker 2: So I've got a pretty good one. Have you ever
Speaker 2: heard of Yaki Gossen? And I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong.
Speaker 1: I have not heard of it, but I am certain
Speaker 1: you're pronouncing it wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's a massive Japanese snowball fight that's apparently
Speaker 2: similar to Capture the Flag, but it's played in three
Speaker 2: minute rounds and it's two teams of seven people. You
Speaker 2: actually get ninety pre made snowballs for each team to start,
Speaker 2: and then players get eliminated when they get hit by
Speaker 2: the snowballs. The other thing that's weird about it is
Speaker 2: that the players wear helmets to protect their heads. And
Speaker 2: while I am generally wary of playing any game that
Speaker 2: requires you to wear a helmet with a face mask,
Speaker 2: this one looks really fun, so I'm kind of ready
Speaker 2: for it to be an Olympic sport.
Speaker 3: That does sound so fun, But I love that it
Speaker 3: must be so rough that they have to wear helmets
Speaker 3: with face masks. All right, well, speaking of dangerous snowball fights,
Speaker 3: because I've got one here. I learned about this from
Speaker 3: the British show QI that you and I have talked
Speaker 3: about several times before. But it's actually a snowball fight
Speaker 3: that you know, a parent might use as an example
Speaker 3: of why you shouldn't participate in a snowball fight.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: So back in fifteen forty six, a general named Francois
Speaker 3: de Bourbon got into this snowball fight and it got
Speaker 3: pretty rowdy, and so he ducked under a window to
Speaker 3: get a breather from it all, and someone then threw
Speaker 3: a linen chest out of their window. It landed on
Speaker 3: his head, and he unfortunately died a few days later.
Speaker 3: So you know, kids, you gotta be really careful. This
Speaker 3: is a pretty good lesson about what can happen in
Speaker 3: snowball fight.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that really applies to most snowball fights,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. So here's a fact about snowman.
Speaker 2: Did you know that Michelangelo used to carve in snow?
Speaker 2: So this is from Jake Rosen at Mental Floss. But
Speaker 2: early in Michelangelo's career he had a patroon named Piero
Speaker 2: de Medici, you know, from the Medici family. But Medici
Speaker 2: really didn't know what he wanted the young artist to
Speaker 2: do for him, so mostly he kind of used him
Speaker 2: as this like personal shopper or interior decorator. He kind
Speaker 2: of like picked out works of art for him. And
Speaker 2: then one day, when it snowed, he got this great
Speaker 2: idea and decided to task Michelangelo with making him a snowman.
Speaker 2: And obviously, like mclangelo's skills are so great, but there
Speaker 2: are no detailed images of how the snowman looked, except
Speaker 2: that it is on the historical record that it looked
Speaker 2: quote very beautiful.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, here's a quick one about building a snowman.
Speaker 3: Did you realize that building one can actually be a
Speaker 3: pretty good workout? And Pop Sugar looked into this and
Speaker 3: they found that building a snowman for an hour will
Speaker 3: burn about two hundred and eighty five calories. You can
Speaker 3: have a snowball fight and that burns about three hundred
Speaker 3: and nineteen calories. And then if you spend that full hour,
Speaker 3: you know, just an hour making a snow angel, you
Speaker 3: can burn two hundred and fourteen calories, which is about
Speaker 3: what you'd burn if you walked uphill for an hour.
Speaker 2: I mean an hour of making snow angel. Sounds like
Speaker 2: total torture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're probably right.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm a huge fan of Calvin Hobbson.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite themes in the strip is when
Speaker 2: Calvin builds all these hilarious and horrific snowmen in his
Speaker 2: front yard, and it's often to the horror of his parents.
Speaker 2: But according to the History of Snowmen, which is this
Speaker 2: wonderful book, this was actually a popular activity in the
Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds. Apparently snowmen were often used as like a
Speaker 2: comic stand in for violence, and illustrations from the early
Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds show them being javelin with brooms or run
Speaker 2: through with toboggans.
Speaker 3: All right, well, here's a weird snowffact I had no
Speaker 3: idea about. Did you know that there was a heavy
Speaker 3: snow the day before JFK's inauguration and really heavy winds too,
Speaker 3: and all of this was threatening the presidential parade from
Speaker 3: actually being able to happen. So in steps the Army
Speaker 3: Corps of Engineers. They worked through the night to clear
Speaker 3: the path. They moved something like fourteen hundred cars from
Speaker 3: the inaugural route, and they got to use, you know,
Speaker 3: in addition to sanders and plows and all the usual stuff.
Speaker 3: Something that I got excited to read about, they actually
Speaker 3: got to use flamethrowers to get rid of the snow.
Speaker 1: How much fun would that be?
Speaker 2: So fun?
Speaker 3: And so in the morning, seventeen hundred boy Scouts pitched
Speaker 3: in to help them finish the job, and of course
Speaker 3: the roads were clear in time for the inauguration.
Speaker 2: That's really sweet and I never heard that. So here's
Speaker 2: a fun tip I never expected to use. In twenty ten,
Speaker 2: the Ignobel Prize for physics went to this team from
Speaker 2: New Zealand at the University of Otago, and they showed
Speaker 2: that quote. On ice footpaths in the wintertime, people slip
Speaker 2: and fall less often if they wear socks on the
Speaker 2: outside of their shoes.
Speaker 1: What a helpful fact there, Mango, thanks for.
Speaker 2: Having Yeah, you can wear your sock as a shoe condom.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of really productive science, you know that old
Speaker 3: saying about no two snowflakes looking alike. Apparently it's not
Speaker 3: exactly true. The New York Times reports that a scientist
Speaker 3: named Kenneth Liebrick at the California Institute of Technology. He
Speaker 3: grows twins snowflakes in a lab and according to the article,
Speaker 3: it's not so much as snowflakes original structure, but it's
Speaker 3: the path that it takes through the atmosphere. You know,
Speaker 3: all the twists and turns and volatility, and that's what
Speaker 3: makes it unique. But in the lab it's a pretty
Speaker 3: different story. So Libric's process takes in between fifteen minutes
Speaker 3: to an hour or so to grow a pair of snowflakes,
Speaker 3: but he defends his idea of making flakes that look alike.
Speaker 3: And as he puts it, we haven't violated any laws
Speaker 3: of physics. We just found a loophole.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool and it's amazing that you can grow
Speaker 2: a pair of snowflakes in the lab, but it also
Speaker 2: kind of makes me feel less special.
Speaker 1: Oh well, man, I don't want you to feel less special.
Speaker 3: So you know what, I think the really useless fact
Speaker 3: that you gave about the sock over the shoe, that
Speaker 3: maybe that gives you the prize today.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to give you today's fact off trophy.
Speaker 2: I like using sympathy as a way to get you
Speaker 2: to give me the trophy. Finally, so thank you.
Speaker 3: And thank you guys for listening. We'll be back with
Speaker 3: a full length episode tomorrow.
Speaker 2: M