Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what Will? What's that Mango?
Speaker 1: So I wasn't sure whether I should share this or not,
Speaker 1: but in the interest of transparency, I'm not just a
Speaker 1: part time genius. I'm also a part time pherologist. A
Speaker 1: part time pherologist. I don't know whether to congratulate you,
Speaker 1: because I don't know what a phroologist does. May go, well,
Speaker 1: you might know it as a pharronologist. Is that something,
Speaker 1: it's still not helping. It's someone who studies lighthouses and
Speaker 1: signal lights. And the term was coined in the eighteen
Speaker 1: forties by an English marine researcher.
Speaker 2: His name was John.
Speaker 1: Purdy, and it's kept alive today by the Association of
Speaker 1: Light house Keepers or the ALK, which despite its name,
Speaker 1: is more for enthusiasts than folks actually living in lighthouses.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'll give it to you. That is pretty cool,
Speaker 2: But I don't remember you talking about lighthouses for do
Speaker 2: you actually really like them? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like whenever we went to beaches
Speaker 1: or places, you'd end up like climbing up a lighthouse,
Speaker 1: and there's something wonderful and romantic about them. They're near
Speaker 1: the sea, they've got great views. But beyond appreciating lighthouses
Speaker 1: for their good looks and the symbolism, rologists are also
Speaker 1: fascinated by things like how lighthouses project light, how they're
Speaker 1: engineered to withstand storms, and also just kind of fun
Speaker 1: as a hobby, right, like taking expeditions to see as
Speaker 1: many of them as you can. In fact, Princess Anne,
Speaker 1: King Charles's sister is a pharologist, and she has visited
Speaker 1: nearly eighty of the two hundred and nine coastal lighthouses
Speaker 1: on the rugged, Scottish and Manxian coasts.
Speaker 2: Wow, so she's only got my quick math one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty nine left to see, right, h Princess Anne,
Speaker 2: if you are listening, get a move on. I'm guessing
Speaker 2: she is listening, so I don't take that too personally. Definitely.
Speaker 1: Now you may be wondering where the word pharology comes from.
Speaker 1: Pharaohs was the ancient Greek word for lighthouse, and it's
Speaker 1: the name of the famous lighthouse in Alexandria. It was
Speaker 1: built in the third century and for a long time
Speaker 1: it was the tallest building on Earth, which is just incredible. Also,
Speaker 1: my favorite pharology fact is that the Association of Lighthouse
Speaker 1: Keepers publishes a quarterly journal and it is called Lamp
Speaker 1: and you know we love lamps. That is just one
Speaker 1: of the weirdest ologies out there. We've got nine of
Speaker 1: them on today's show, so let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 2: Will Pearson and as always I'm here with my good
Speaker 2: friend Mangesh, a ticketter, and over there on the other
Speaker 2: side of that soundproof glass creating a Wikipedia entry for
Speaker 2: vampyrology and he's also drinking a suspiciously viscous red beverage.
Speaker 2: That's our Palin producer, Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1: I love that he needed to wear a cape while
Speaker 1: doing Definitely, it's also bizarre, like why wasn't there already
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia entry for the study of vampires? That feels
Speaker 1: like a real oversight.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess it's the anti vampire prejudice that's out there,
Speaker 2: And thank goodness, Dylan is on the case. So, Mango,
Speaker 2: what makes you want to talk about ologies today?
Speaker 1: So you know, we're both big fans of Ally Ward's
Speaker 1: show Ologies, but absolutely.
Speaker 2: Also back in metal Class.
Speaker 1: We used to do a column called work Study, where
Speaker 1: we'd interview people with incredible and incredibly specific jobs, like
Speaker 1: there was a gentleman who had a PhD in Batman
Speaker 1: and he was often referred to as doctor Batman, or
Speaker 1: the person whose job it was to figure out what
Speaker 1: thickness of glass you need to stop various birds from
Speaker 1: flying through it, which is such a specific job, like
Speaker 1: this is the thickness you need for a wren, this
Speaker 1: is the thickness you need for a seagull. It's you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's something a lot of kids grow
Speaker 1: up thinking they want to be as adults. But ologies
Speaker 1: really are fun.
Speaker 2: They're so fun, and you're right, Alli Word's Ologies show
Speaker 2: is just one of the best podcasts out there, so
Speaker 2: definitely worth the shout out. All right, for my first fact,
Speaker 2: I want to talk about filmatology. Are you familiar with filmatology?
Speaker 2: Is that about like film or phleme? Well, it could
Speaker 2: if you have a cold, But filmatology is all about
Speaker 2: the scientific study of kissing, including the biological, psychological, and
Speaker 2: social aspects of it.
Speaker 1: Somehow, like the study of lighthouses was something I was expecting,
Speaker 1: but not the study of kissing, which, just for the record,
Speaker 1: I am much more interested in than the study of
Speaker 1: the band kiss, which I had so interested in. What
Speaker 1: type of things did you learn from this?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I have to go on a sidetrack here, mango,
Speaker 2: because I don't know if you remember this, but as
Speaker 2: a kid I used to sneak into my much older
Speaker 2: sister's room and go into her closet and look at
Speaker 2: her kiss trading cards that she kept in a shoe.
Speaker 2: Maass kiss the band again, So pretty funny. Anyway, back
Speaker 2: to kissing here, did you know that lips actually have
Speaker 2: the thinnest layer of skin on the human body, and
Speaker 2: along with that very thin layer of skin, are more
Speaker 2: nerve endings than any other single part of the body. Now,
Speaker 2: this is according to the American Journal of Medicine, and
Speaker 2: it states that lips can be two hundred times more
Speaker 2: sensitive than our fingers. She might explain why little kids
Speaker 2: put everything to their mouths. I am so glad that
Speaker 2: my kids have outgrown that face. Yes, yeah, no, it
Speaker 2: genuinely is the worst and grossest phase. But anyway, filmatology
Speaker 2: has taught us a lot about ourselves. For example, the
Speaker 2: nose plays a big role in kissing, even subconsciously, it's
Speaker 2: how we assess a partner's pheromones. And it turns out
Speaker 2: that kissing might actually save your life and put money
Speaker 2: in your wallet, which is intriguing. But one study shows
Speaker 2: that men who kiss their partners before leaving for the
Speaker 2: day were less likely to get in car accidents and
Speaker 2: more likely to be in a higher income bracket. So
Speaker 2: with that in mind, pucker up, everybody. I like that.
Speaker 2: It's a real life hack. That's right.
Speaker 1: Well, this next feel of study might interestill In with
Speaker 1: all his vampire love over there. I'm talking about chiropterology,
Speaker 1: which means the study of bats, so in the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: bats are part of the order Chiroptera, which is a
Speaker 1: combination of a Greek where it's for hand and wing,
Speaker 1: and Chiropterologists usually have backgrounds in wildlife biology, and while
Speaker 1: their work can involve exciting trips to remote caves and
Speaker 1: national parks, they also spend a lot of time in
Speaker 1: attics and barns and bunkers because you know that's where
Speaker 1: bats love to hide, and because bats tend to come
Speaker 1: out at night as well. Research and use telephoto lenses
Speaker 1: and infrared cameras to track their movements and population size.
Speaker 1: They also trap bats using harmless mesh nets so that
Speaker 1: they can mark them with tracking devices or take blood samples.
Speaker 1: But the best part of this ology is that it
Speaker 1: is not as niche as you think. And that's because
Speaker 1: there are more than fourteen hundred species of bats, and
Speaker 1: they represent about twenty percent of all the mammals on Earth.
Speaker 1: It's the second most diverse group of animals after rodents,
Speaker 1: and bats might actually hold the key to longer life. Wow,
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred species, that's wild and you'd say potentially life saman.
Speaker 1: I actually just think of bats as carrying these viruses
Speaker 1: that make us sick. Yeah, and they do that as well.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot more to bat biology. You know.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is that usually small animals have these short lifespans,
Speaker 1: like rats, which have tons of offspring, but they also
Speaker 1: tend to die young. Bats just have one baby a year,
Speaker 1: and they live a really long time. The oldest bat
Speaker 1: on record was more than forty years old. Wow, And
Speaker 1: we actually don't know why yet. But if all these
Speaker 1: scientists can help figure it out, we might learn how
Speaker 1: we can live longer too. Also, speaking of bats, I
Speaker 1: have two other weird things. One is, I didn't realize this,
Speaker 1: but of course they do. They've got belly buttons, which
Speaker 1: is really interesting to me.
Speaker 2: Glad you remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the second thing is this all made me remind
Speaker 1: me of my son when he was in daycare. He
Speaker 1: came back with this nursery rhyme, and I was curious
Speaker 1: if you'd never heard it. It goes, uh, bat bat,
Speaker 1: come under my hat and I'll give you a slice
Speaker 1: of bacon, and when I bake, I'll give you cake.
Speaker 2: If I'm not mistaken, I'm sort of feeling like Henry
Speaker 2: may have made this up? Is that? Did he really
Speaker 2: come home saying this?
Speaker 1: So we sent her to a daycare and they were like,
Speaker 1: you know, we teach them all the traditional American nursery rhymes,
Speaker 1: and these very sweet Polish women and they looked it
Speaker 1: up and I guess it's a traditional English nursery rhymes.
Speaker 2: No way, So there wasn't just made up. I thought
Speaker 2: for sure. I thought it was certainly made up. But
Speaker 2: it's real, all right. Well, your chiropterologist's friends might just
Speaker 2: find themselves bumping up against the next group of ologists.
Speaker 2: These are campinologists, and so are these people who study camping. Nope,
Speaker 2: that was my first guest when I saw it as well.
Speaker 2: But campinologists like bats are often found in bell towers.
Speaker 2: It's actually the study of bells and bell ringing. So
Speaker 2: bell towers or campaniles, these first showed up and it
Speaker 2: lay around four hundred CE, and they spread across Europe
Speaker 2: and into the UK, and they lost popularity when Henry
Speaker 2: the Eighth dissolved almost all the monasteries in England so
Speaker 2: that he could marry Anne Bolin, shortly before he had
Speaker 2: her head chopped off so he could marry somebody else.
Speaker 2: Of course, we've heard the stories here. That was a
Speaker 2: tough time for giant bell's Mango. That's the thing we forget.
Speaker 2: We hear about all the women, but we forget to
Speaker 2: focus on the bell. But I got it the bells too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know it's it was. It was a
Speaker 2: rough time, but luckily for the bells, they had a
Speaker 2: resurgence in the sixteen hundred and that's when people began
Speaker 2: to see bell ringing really as kind of an art.
Speaker 2: Now you can't play normal music on tower bells. It
Speaker 2: takes a few seconds for each bell to swing around,
Speaker 2: so to create this pleasing flow of sound, people began
Speaker 2: ringing bells one after the other, and to make it
Speaker 2: more interesting, they created these sequences using bells tuned to
Speaker 2: different pitches. Now this is known as change ringing, and
Speaker 2: the patterns that bells followed are actually called methods. So
Speaker 2: say you have a tower with six bells, numbered in order,
Speaker 2: with one being the lightest and six being the heaviest.
Speaker 2: The first sequence you might ring would be one to
Speaker 2: three four five six. Next you swap the order by
Speaker 2: one and ring two one four three sixty five, and
Speaker 2: then you reverse the middle numbers and ring two four,
Speaker 2: one six three five. Are you following this? Spango? This
Speaker 2: is all very simple. So the examples of common method
Speaker 2: changes are called plane bob, reverse Catebory, grand Shire, and
Speaker 2: double Oxford. These are just some various names. So now
Speaker 2: you're basically an expert on bell ry.
Speaker 1: I really it sounds so complicated. I do like the names,
Speaker 1: but it's complicated.
Speaker 2: It is complicated, and to that point, it's as much
Speaker 2: math it as music. So campinologists use factorials to figure
Speaker 2: out how many different sequences are possible. So for our
Speaker 2: six bell tower, there are actually seven hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: possible permutations. Now you remember factorials from high school, right,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Barely, Like a factorial LI of six is like six
Speaker 1: times five tons, four times three times two tons one right?
Speaker 2: Hey, plus mango still got it? And all right, Well,
Speaker 2: here's a final fun campinology fact for you. For whom
Speaker 2: the bell tolls isn't just a better title than for
Speaker 2: whom the bell rings. It actually turns out that tolling
Speaker 2: and ringing aren't the same thing. THENGO I didn't know this.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you knew this, but it was
Speaker 2: we're not doing this episode for this fact. You can
Speaker 2: ring as many bells that you like, and you can
Speaker 2: ring them as fast as you like. But a toll
Speaker 2: involves just one bell, typically striking at a gloomy pace
Speaker 2: to mark an event like a funeral. I wonder if
Speaker 2: Ernest Hemingway knew that or he just thought it sounded better.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a good question. I have a feeling
Speaker 2: he might have known this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So our next ology is a pseud of science,
Speaker 1: but it's still worth learning about. And it's cryptozoology, which
Speaker 1: is the study of mythical creatures or cryptids. Although cryptozoologists
Speaker 1: would describe it that way. They actually call it, quote
Speaker 1: the study of unknown, legendary or extinct animals whose present
Speaker 1: existence is disputed or unsubstantiated.
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to say that sounds fans here.
Speaker 2: Then you know, we read about monsters. Yeah, and mainstream
Speaker 2: science does look down on it, of course. But oddly enough,
Speaker 2: cryptozoology was started by a pair of proper zoologists. This
Speaker 2: was Bernard Huelman's and Ivan T. Sanderson, and this was
Speaker 2: in the fifties and sixties. They published text claiming that
Speaker 2: creatures like Yetty's and the Lockedest Monster might be based
Speaker 2: in reality. And so in.
Speaker 1: Particular, Humelman's was inspired by an earlier Dutch zoologist who
Speaker 1: theorized that reports of giant sea serpents may have been
Speaker 1: quote a large unidentified species of seal. But the amazing
Speaker 1: thing is cryptozoology has led to some real discoveries. So
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen a Danish expedition went to Lake t
Speaker 1: Lee and this is in the Republic of Congo, and
Speaker 1: they went there to search for a mythical water reptile
Speaker 1: from Bantu mythology. They didn't find the creature, but they
Speaker 1: did discover a new species of algae. Also, a zoologist
Speaker 1: named Darren Nash studied the description of cryptids over time,
Speaker 1: and he found that alleged sea monsters like the one
Speaker 1: in Lockness evolved along with real research, so they went
Speaker 1: from being described as snakelike to adding the idea that
Speaker 1: they had long necks like a dinosaur diplosaurus after the
Speaker 1: event of like you know, dino science in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: And that means, I guess the next logic step is
Speaker 1: for someone to decide that Dessi is actually an AI robot.
Speaker 2: That's good stuff. All right, we have to take a
Speaker 2: quick ad break, but when we come back, we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about outer space and of course your front lawn,
Speaker 2: so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to part time Genius.
Speaker 2: We're talking about nine weird and wonderful ologies. Now, this
Speaker 2: next one might sound like a pseudoscience, like cripazoology, but
Speaker 2: it's not so. According to NASA, astrobiology is this study
Speaker 2: of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life throughout the universe.
Speaker 2: Is that the search for extraterrestrial lift, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: part of it, but to actually understand the possibility of
Speaker 2: life elsewhere in the universe, you have to study the
Speaker 2: one planet we know supports life, of course, our very
Speaker 2: owner Earth. In fact, a lot of astrobology research takes
Speaker 2: place in the Atacama Desert in South America because its
Speaker 2: terrain is known for sort of approximating Mars, and NASA's
Speaker 2: astrobology team began in the nineteen sixties with what was
Speaker 2: called the Viking Program, which was the first mission to
Speaker 2: land on Mars and look around for signs of life there.
Speaker 2: But these days astrobology has gone way beyond Mars. So Enceladus,
Speaker 2: which was a satellite of Saturn, is particularly promising as
Speaker 2: a place to study because it has jets of ice
Speaker 2: particles coming from its south pole. So astrobologists think the
Speaker 2: ice comes from a reservoir under the surface. There may
Speaker 2: be hot rocks below the reservoir, and that could mean that,
Speaker 2: along with the messane and other gases that are detected there,
Speaker 2: Enceladus has everything needed to actually create life.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, and it's also so funny to talk about
Speaker 1: other planets south poles like m I only think there's
Speaker 1: one south pole, just one, just this Earth's promise. I
Speaker 1: seem to have all right, anyway, one thing that Earth
Speaker 1: has that Enceladus doesn't have, I'm guessing is grass. And
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about grass, which I
Speaker 1: know you do, you have to take up agristology. This
Speaker 1: ology gets its name from the Greek agros, which means field.
Speaker 1: So agristology is the field of studying fields.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest pioneers in this field of
Speaker 1: fields was an American botanist named Mary Agnes Chase. She
Speaker 1: was born in eighteen sixty nine in Illinois, a place
Speaker 1: with a lot of grass. And even though her formal
Speaker 1: education never went past elementary school, she took all these
Speaker 1: botany classes and began working as an illustrator for the USDA.
Speaker 1: Now her mentor was the botanist Albert Hitchcock, who is
Speaker 1: not Alfred Hitchcock, and they co authored important works about
Speaker 1: grasses of North America and the West Indies.
Speaker 2: What an unfortunate name like. Can you imagine how many
Speaker 2: times people were disappointed when they thought they were going
Speaker 2: to meet it. Alfred Hitchcock at a party in house
Speaker 2: was like, no, no, no, this is Albert Hitchcock, the guy
Speaker 2: who studies grass.
Speaker 1: It is amazing, but we can't lose focus on Mary
Speaker 1: Agnes Chase, who was a committed feminist too. She was
Speaker 1: a suffragist and a member of the Silent Sentinels, which
Speaker 1: was this group that led protests outside the White House,
Speaker 1: and her activism and her gender really impacted her career.
Speaker 1: At one point, Hitchcock, Albert Hitchcock, tried to readirect some
Speaker 1: of his own research grant money to her, and this
Speaker 1: official at the Smithsonian refused the offer, saying, quote, I
Speaker 1: doubt the advisability of engaging the services of a woman
Speaker 1: for the purpose. But Chase actually paved the way for
Speaker 1: other female agristologists, making connections with and mentoring women all
Speaker 1: around the world and in what can only be described
Speaker 1: as poetic justice. In nineteen fifty eight, she was named
Speaker 1: an Honorary Fellow of the Smithsonian. Yeah, I'm glad she
Speaker 1: finally got her do all right. So our next ology
Speaker 1: is relogy, or the study of flow, and so to
Speaker 1: learn more about this, I spent some time with Helen Joyner,
Speaker 1: aka Reologist on sabbatical. This is a channel on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and specifically she's a food reologist. So the flow of food, Like,
Speaker 1: what's that mean? It's like you know, making nutella have
Speaker 1: the right amount of give when you dig a knife
Speaker 1: into the jar, or making natural peanut butter stir together
Speaker 1: before you know your arm tires out, and all things
Speaker 1: that we can identify with This definitely makes me want
Speaker 1: some new tell of just saying that peanut butter.
Speaker 2: Definitely. But you know, perhaps the most important thing I
Speaker 2: learned from watching Joiner's channel is that relogy can't measure texture.
Speaker 2: That's because texture is more qualitative. It can only be
Speaker 2: described by your experience of it. There are proxies for texture,
Speaker 2: like yield stress, which is how easily a knife cuts
Speaker 2: into something. So higher yield stress means higher viscosity, which
Speaker 2: often feels better in our mouths. So is relogy just
Speaker 2: about foods, No, not at all. Like Joiner has super
Speaker 2: long hair, and as she explains, realogy can also explain
Speaker 2: why dry hair is harder to style than wet hair.
Speaker 2: So dry hair is frictionless and slips over itself, and
Speaker 2: the height and friction of wet hair doesn't slip, and
Speaker 2: so it stays in place where you put it, like
Speaker 2: in braids or a faux hawk or whatever you want
Speaker 2: to do with it.
Speaker 1: It's really fascinating that there's a whole field of order
Speaker 1: to just how things flow right, It's amazing. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it's time for our last ology, literally, and this is eschatology,
Speaker 1: which is the study of the end of the world.
Speaker 1: And the good news is it's more about studying different
Speaker 1: stories and theories about the end of the world than
Speaker 1: it is of facts that might indicate the world is ending.
Speaker 1: I like that you describe that as good news. I mean,
Speaker 1: that still sounds a little depressing to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it could be. And there are two main types of
Speaker 1: eschatological stories. So there's linear cosmology aka the kind with
Speaker 1: a single end point, and cyclical cosmology aka the kind
Speaker 1: that brings about rebirth through regeneration. So Western fates typically
Speaker 1: engage in the first kind of ending, and Eastern religions
Speaker 1: like Hinduism and Buddhism fall into the latter category, where
Speaker 1: the world starts all over again, either in whole or
Speaker 1: for each soul. So I mean, I guess you would
Speaker 1: say this is more social science than kind of science science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems that way, but that's not exactly the case.
Speaker 1: There's also a branch of eschatology that gets more literal,
Speaker 1: and this uses principles of astrophysics to approximate how much
Speaker 1: time the Earth has before it stops sustaining human life
Speaker 1: or if a meteor hits. And so these include really
Speaker 1: fun theories like the big rip, the Big crunch, the
Speaker 1: Big bounce, and the Big freeze, which I don't know
Speaker 1: why they all have to have big in them, but
Speaker 1: what they.
Speaker 2: Do that's pretty wild. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to give you this week's trophy because
Speaker 1: our producer Mary was so excited about your bell ringing fact,
Speaker 1: and you know she and you talked about it earlier.
Speaker 1: She actually went out and hung out with some bell
Speaker 1: ringers this week and learned to do math with bells
Speaker 1: at a tall height. So yeah, it is really fun.
Speaker 1: And she said the community is incredible and she is
Speaker 1: going to come on here and talk about it at
Speaker 1: some point.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is so fun. All right, Well, thank you.
Speaker 2: It is an honor, and thank you Mary. So that
Speaker 2: does it for today's episode. If you like what you heard,
Speaker 2: please subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us
Speaker 2: a nice rating and review while you're at it. This
Speaker 2: episode was written by Lizzie Jacobs, an amateur peanut butter reologist.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Lizzie, and I'll be back next week.
Speaker 2: With a new episode and in the meantime from Dylan Gay,
Speaker 2: Mary Mango and Me thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pierce and Me Mongish
Speaker 1: Heatikler and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan
Speaker 1: Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive
Speaker 1: produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with
Speaker 1: social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and
Speaker 1: Viny Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.