Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess What, Mango? What's that?
Speaker 1: Will?
Speaker 3: On average, an episode of Part Time Genius contains nineteen.
Speaker 2: Point four facts.
Speaker 3: I bet you actually didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I did not know that.
Speaker 2: Is that true? I'll be honest, I just made it
Speaker 2: up now.
Speaker 3: That is unlike the facts and stories we share on
Speaker 3: this show, which are carefully, some might say, obsessively researched.
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously, I mean that's part of the fun we
Speaker 1: have doing what we do, right, researching all this stuff.
Speaker 2: No, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: But what a lot of people might not realize is
Speaker 3: that research often takes us down some very deep, twisty
Speaker 3: rabbit holes, and in the interest of not making, you know,
Speaker 3: a podcast episode that's three hours long, sometimes we have
Speaker 3: to cut stuff where sometimes there's a topic that's just
Speaker 3: so interesting we keep thinking about it even after the
Speaker 3: episode comes out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there's also a thing that happens where we
Speaker 1: have an idea for an episode and we get super
Speaker 1: excited about it, but then it turns out there's like
Speaker 1: not quite enough to make it work, but it's still
Speaker 1: really fascinating and we have nowhere to share that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yep, that also happens. And so what all this means
Speaker 3: is that at any given moment, we've got a pile
Speaker 3: of stories that our listeners haven't heard. And I like
Speaker 3: to think of this as a strategic fact reserve. And
Speaker 3: so today we're going to give you a peek inside
Speaker 3: that vault. So for this episode, Mango and I are
Speaker 3: kicking up our heels and we're turning things over to
Speaker 3: Gabe and Mary, our producers who help us out with
Speaker 3: all of that research. They've got some bonus facts from
Speaker 3: earlier episodes, a few updates on some new things that
Speaker 3: we've learned, and if they're feeling generous, they might even
Speaker 3: give you a little preview of some topics we're working
Speaker 3: on for later this year. So sit back, relax, Grab
Speaker 3: a drink with a tiny umbrella in it. That's what
Speaker 3: Mango and I are doing right now, actually, and let's
Speaker 3: dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I
Speaker 2: am not Will Pearson, and I'm not here with Mangusha Ticketter. Instead,
Speaker 2: i'm producer Gabe and I'm here with producer Mary.
Speaker 5: That's right, and over there in the booth wearing a
Speaker 5: mask of his own face. It's our friend and fellow producer,
Speaker 5: Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2: Are you sure that's really Dylan under the mask? How
Speaker 2: can we tell?
Speaker 5: Well, he's also wearing a T shirt that says this
Speaker 5: really is Dylan, So yeah, a T shirt wouldn't lie.
Speaker 2: Right right? Of course I always forget that. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty excited about today's episode. We have a bunch
Speaker 2: of great bonus facts that just didn't fit into an
Speaker 2: episode for one reason or another. But before we get
Speaker 2: into that, I thought it might be fun to talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about some failed episode ideas. You know,
Speaker 2: we've made episodes about a lot of really niche and
Speaker 2: obscure topics, but sometimes we come up with an idea
Speaker 2: that just doesn't work. You know what I'm talking about? Oh?
Speaker 5: I sure do, because a lot of them are mine.
Speaker 4: Okay, I can kick this one off.
Speaker 5: So last winter I thought it would be fun to
Speaker 5: do a festive Christmas episode, something you know, for the holidays,
Speaker 5: something heartwarming. And I found this amazing story about a
Speaker 5: guy in England who found a packet of eighty year
Speaker 5: old love letters in his chimney that they had been
Speaker 5: burnt a little bit, but he could still read them
Speaker 5: and it was like he could unfold this old love
Speaker 5: story from decades ago. These people were long gone and
Speaker 5: it was just really heartwarming and touching. And that made
Speaker 5: me think, what about an episode of the most unexpected
Speaker 5: Things people have found in chimneys? Right, because you know,
Speaker 5: Santa Claus comes down the chimney. I started to look
Speaker 5: into it, and it turns out that the vast majority
Speaker 5: of unexpected did things people find in their chimneys are corpses.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, sometimes animals, but also sometimes people.
Speaker 2: Okay, animal corpses, human corpses, but always corpses.
Speaker 5: It was just so many corpses it started to not
Speaker 5: feel very festive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's not very Christmas y. Let's see, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I had a couple Nine things are usually where things
Speaker 2: kind of fall apart. Those nine things pitches. We come
Speaker 2: up with a lot of them, and they sound good
Speaker 2: at first, but then you dig into it and it's like, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: I had nine things to do inside on a beautiful
Speaker 2: summer day. So the idea was just kind of like,
Speaker 2: let's stick it to the sun and you know, have
Speaker 2: fun indoors.
Speaker 4: What is it just like playing video games, watching.
Speaker 2: That's really what it ended up being, was like just
Speaker 2: all the normal things you do inside, whether it's nice
Speaker 2: out or not. So that fell apart pretty fast. I
Speaker 2: also had one that was like nine single species islands,
Speaker 2: small islands that are inhabited by cats or only rabbits
Speaker 2: or whatever, and you know, looking into it was just
Speaker 2: kind of the same story over and over again. Somebody
Speaker 2: put a lot of cats on this little uninhabited island
Speaker 2: turned it into a tourist attraction. Brinson repeat, It's.
Speaker 4: Just people putting animals where they don't.
Speaker 2: Belong, Yeah, and then making money off of it.
Speaker 5: It's not quite as depressing as finding corpses in your chimney,
Speaker 5: but it's still not a feel good show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it was a little thin. But also one idea,
Speaker 2: this is going way back to part time Genius one
Speaker 2: point zero. We had this brainstorm dock running list of
Speaker 2: everybody suggesting topics, and they were never attributed to who
Speaker 2: came up with them, whether as Will or Mangesh or
Speaker 2: me or somebody else. There was this one that always
Speaker 2: stuck out to me. It was just should I take
Speaker 2: a daily vitamin? Are you sure?
Speaker 5: This was on the Brainstorm and not someone trying to
Speaker 5: message their doctor.
Speaker 2: Oh exactly. I was like, okay, this is one hundred
Speaker 2: percent Will and yeah. It was just sort of like,
Speaker 2: all right, this is something he meant to ask Siri,
Speaker 2: and it just like got added to the Brainstorm doc.
Speaker 2: But we never did it. Maybe one day.
Speaker 5: Well, speaking of things we've never done but might do one,
Speaker 5: I have brought this up a few times and I'll
Speaker 5: keep bringing it up probably until someone tells me to stop.
Speaker 5: And that is a part time genius musical episode.
Speaker 2: So we're singing, or it's about musicals.
Speaker 5: I mean, it could be about musicals. That actually would
Speaker 5: be really fun. It could be a musical episode about musicals. See,
Speaker 5: this is how our brainstorms work, right, one of us
Speaker 5: says a dumb thing and then someone makes it smart. No,
Speaker 5: I just think it would be fun.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: When we did the twenty five Greatest Science Ideas series,
Speaker 5: we had our great friend David Nagler write a song
Speaker 5: about the Ottaron particle that was discovered at the Large
Speaker 5: Hadron Particle Collider, and it was just so fun to
Speaker 5: hear this incredibly complicated physics thing explained through song. And
Speaker 5: I thought, what if we did more of that. What
Speaker 5: if we had Will and Mangesh singing the information instead
Speaker 5: of just talking. Mongsh is not a fan of this,
Speaker 5: but I have heard, I have heard from a reliable
Speaker 5: source that Will has a very good singing voice.
Speaker 2: Really, I did not know that.
Speaker 4: That is what my sources tell me.
Speaker 5: So the dream of the part time Genius musical episode
Speaker 5: may not be dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fingers crossed all right? Well, speaking of music, not
Speaker 2: too long ago, we did an episode about novelty songs,
Speaker 2: but there is one story that was left on the
Speaker 2: cutting room floor. It was mostly about NASA's Skylab and
Speaker 2: how it crashed to the ground. Believe it or not,
Speaker 2: in Australian rock group made a novelty song about Skylab
Speaker 2: crashing and that's because it landed in Australia. Back in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, NASA had just launched the Skylab missions,
Speaker 2: which were kind of bridging the gap between the Apollo
Speaker 2: and Space Shuttle programs. They sent up this big space station.
Speaker 2: It weighed more than eighty tons and it was built
Speaker 2: to sustain a three person crew for an extended period
Speaker 2: of time, and NASA wanted to use this for three
Speaker 2: Skylab missions with three different crews of three astronauts each time.
Speaker 2: So they did these three missions, and the station still
Speaker 2: had plenty of supplies left on board, and NASA had
Speaker 2: already begun planning for a fourth mission. But that's not
Speaker 2: really how things shook out. The space station orbit began
Speaker 2: to decay much earlier than anticipated, and the increased amount
Speaker 2: of drag on Skylab caused it to lose altitude and
Speaker 2: it re entered or its atmosphere a full four years
Speaker 2: ahead of schedule. It ended up crashing into the Indian Ocean,
Speaker 2: and all this debris kind of rained down on this
Speaker 2: rural part of Western Australia.
Speaker 4: How did that become a novelty song?
Speaker 2: There was a hotel in this tiny town called Balladonia.
Speaker 2: It was pelted with debris, and actually President Jimmy Carter
Speaker 2: called up and apologized to the hotel owners. He's like,
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry this happened.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine getting that phone call?
Speaker 5: I know, right, mister President, you need to come over
Speaker 5: here and clean up your space debris right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, well that's another funny thing is there was
Speaker 2: another small town called Esperance, and they were so like
Speaker 2: put off by all this wreckage, like raining down in
Speaker 2: their jurisdiction. That they actually hit the US State Department
Speaker 2: with a four hundred dollars fine for literary awesome. The government,
Speaker 2: to its shane did not fit the bill.
Speaker 5: Wait, so we still owe Australia four hundred dollars for littering.
Speaker 2: Well, actually, in two thousand and nine, a California DJ
Speaker 2: named Scott Barley he finally like righted this wrong by
Speaker 2: collecting donations from his listeners and then he cut the
Speaker 2: town a check.
Speaker 4: Well, so it's all a musical. It was a DJ.
Speaker 5: This is all a musical story, okay, all right, So
Speaker 5: I got to know, how did this turn into a
Speaker 5: novelty song?
Speaker 2: So after all this debris rains down on this hotel
Speaker 2: in Balladonia and President Carter calls to apologize. Balladonia was
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, on the world stage after that,
Speaker 2: and it became a popular tourist destination. Of course, they
Speaker 2: had collected the debris that fell there and kind of
Speaker 2: put it on display. This Australian rock group called Family
Speaker 2: capitalized on it wrote a song titled the Ballad of
Speaker 2: a Balladonia Night aka the Skylab Song, and it became
Speaker 2: the year's summer anthem in Australia.
Speaker 4: Do you happen to have a c of this that
Speaker 4: we can listen to?
Speaker 2: You know, Mary, I'm glad you brought that up because
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 4: Nice Jamie Bam Oh the sky Wow.
Speaker 5: That was incredible. That may be my song of the
Speaker 5: summer here in twenty twenty five. I am so glad
Speaker 5: I know about this. Now let's bring it back all right, Well,
Speaker 5: this is not music related, but it is art related.
Speaker 5: A few weeks ago we had the author Cy Montgomery
Speaker 5: on the show to talk about her book What the
Speaker 5: Chicken Knows, really really great book.
Speaker 4: I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: I read it, did some research about chickens, and then
Speaker 5: I kind of kept doing research about chickens even after
Speaker 5: we had finished preparing for the interview. I started wondering
Speaker 5: about chickens in art. And by that, Gabe, I do
Speaker 5: not mean chickens who make art, although I'm sure that
Speaker 5: is a thing, and.
Speaker 2: That's another episode, yep.
Speaker 5: I was more interested in the idea of chickens represented
Speaker 5: in art. Surely people have represented chickens in visual arts,
Speaker 5: and guess what they have. There's a mural in Poland
Speaker 5: that is a picture of a woman holding a chicken,
Speaker 5: and it's apparently based on a famous Polish children's story
Speaker 5: about a hen that tries to run away from home
Speaker 5: and its owner who goes after it. I believe it's
Speaker 5: called Madame Chicken is the name of the mural. But
Speaker 5: my favorite was a painting by the Filipino artist Anita
Speaker 5: Megsi Si Ho, and it's called Catching Chickens and this
Speaker 5: is beautiful. It is a picture of women with chickens
Speaker 5: all around their feet and they're dancing, they're holding baskets,
Speaker 5: they're scooping up the chickens. It's just so joyous, and
Speaker 5: there's so much movement and light in the painting you
Speaker 5: just kind of want to climb into it. And so
Speaker 5: I'd never heard of this artist before, so I started
Speaker 5: looking into her, and Anita MgSi Si Hoe was this
Speaker 5: credible pioneer of modern art in the Philippines. She was
Speaker 5: a twentieth century painter at a time when there were
Speaker 5: not a lot of prominent women painters working in the Philippines.
Speaker 5: My favorite detail about her is that she had five children.
Speaker 5: Her family moved around constantly because of her husband's job.
Speaker 5: In spite of that, wherever she went, she was sure
Speaker 5: to set up a little work area where she could
Speaker 5: keep painting, and so she was incredibly prolific, and today
Speaker 5: she's regarded as one of the giants of modern art
Speaker 5: in the Philippines. But here it gets even better. She
Speaker 5: was known for working in egg tempera.
Speaker 2: What what is that?
Speaker 5: It's basically a pigment that is mixed with egg yolk
Speaker 5: as a binder. It's very very difficult to work with
Speaker 5: because it dries really quickly. You have to work in
Speaker 5: very small sections, and it's much harder to control the
Speaker 5: consistency compared to something like oil paint. But the big
Speaker 5: benefit of egg tempera is that it has this luminous,
Speaker 5: lifelike quality. A lot of Renaissance art actually was painted
Speaker 5: in egg tempera, especially things on panels, like wooden things.
Speaker 5: It sticks to the wood very well, kind of like glue,
Speaker 5: and it gives this inner glow, this life to the image.
Speaker 5: And unlike oil, egg tempera colors don't change over time.
Speaker 5: They're very color fast.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Why don't all artists use that?
Speaker 5: Like I said, it's very tricky to work with, but
Speaker 5: I just I love that. This book about chickens sent
Speaker 5: me on this journey through chicken art, all the way
Speaker 5: through this incredible artist who I'd never heard of and
Speaker 5: is now probably one of my favorite artists. And now
Speaker 5: this paint Egg tempera that I had never heard of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm glad you got to share that. I'm
Speaker 2: glad we found an outlet for it because I'm going
Speaker 2: to look her up too, and I bet a lot
Speaker 2: of listeners will as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll put a link in the show notes.
Speaker 5: Okay, have you got another fact for us that didn't
Speaker 5: make it into an episode?
Speaker 2: I do. Yeah. So we recently did an Inside Baseball episode.
Speaker 2: I am not a baseball fan, but I am a
Speaker 2: huge fan of all the baseball traditions, the lore, the
Speaker 2: organ music, the snacks, all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm also just a big fan of very strange baseball stories.
Speaker 2: And there was one that we just didn't have room for,
Speaker 2: so it ended up on the cutting room floor. It
Speaker 2: happened back in nineteen eighty three, and it was when
Speaker 2: Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield was arrested for accidentally killing a seagull.
Speaker 2: So this happened during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays,
Speaker 2: and this was at the team's exhibition stadium in Canada.
Speaker 2: And a little background here. Toronto's population of ring build
Speaker 2: seagulls had risen dramatically that year and had gone from
Speaker 2: ten thousand gulls to nearly two hundred thousand. Why and
Speaker 2: I don't know why I couldn't find that out.
Speaker 5: If anyone in Toronto knows about this seagull population issue,
Speaker 5: please please let us.
Speaker 2: Know, please, what was going on that year. So anyway,
Speaker 2: because the ballpark was located like just offshore of Lake Ontario,
Speaker 2: the birds would often flock there in droves, and occasionally
Speaker 2: one of the gulls would land like right on the field,
Speaker 2: and fans would cheer and laugh, and the players would
Speaker 2: get a little annoyed. But you know, whatever, it happened.
Speaker 2: But on this one night in August of nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: there was this particular seagull who landed on the field
Speaker 2: early in the game and he just stayed there. Some
Speaker 2: people thought he might be sick. They said, he didn't
Speaker 2: really look very well, he looked a little shaky, and
Speaker 2: he just like didn't move an inch. So at the
Speaker 2: top of the fifth inning he's sitting there right on
Speaker 2: the field. The Yankees took the field. They started doing
Speaker 2: their practice throws and that kind of stuff, and after
Speaker 2: warming up in the outfield, Winfield threw the ball that
Speaker 2: he had been using back towards the dugout and accidentally
Speaker 2: struck the seagull in the neck and it died instantly.
Speaker 2: Fans began booing Windfield, you know, assuming that he had
Speaker 2: done this on purpose. They were, I guess it was
Speaker 2: like rubber ball night at the stadium or something. They
Speaker 2: were throwing rubber balls at him, and so, you know,
Speaker 2: a moment later, I think it was, the bat boy
Speaker 2: runs onto the field, covers the dead gull with a
Speaker 2: towel and like carries it off, you know, and every
Speaker 2: just really heartbreaking. Right in the middle of the game.
Speaker 2: They continued to play, you know, as normal, and the
Speaker 2: Yankees actually went on to win three to one. But
Speaker 2: once it was over, Winfield went back to the clubhouse
Speaker 2: and was approached by Canadian police. They put him under
Speaker 2: arrest for killing a ring builled seagull, which, as it
Speaker 2: turned out, was a protected bird under Canadian law.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just any seagull, it.
Speaker 2: Was nationally protected species. They took him down to Toronto's
Speaker 2: police station. He was charged with causing the unnecessary suffering
Speaker 2: of an animal that carried a five hundred dollars fine
Speaker 2: and up to six months in prison. In a nice
Speaker 2: show of goodwill, the Blue Jays general manager paid the
Speaker 2: five hundred dollars bond to get Winfield released. So he
Speaker 2: got out and was supposed to come back like a
Speaker 2: week later to stand trial. But in the meantime a
Speaker 2: bird autopsy was conducted.
Speaker 5: They actually they kept the bird. They kept the body.
Speaker 2: Yes, the police collected it from the Toronto Humane Society
Speaker 2: and sent it to the University of Golf in Ontario
Speaker 2: for a full autopsy. While they're looking the bird over,
Speaker 2: the charge were eventually dropped. Winfield had talked to the reporters.
Speaker 2: He made it clear this was an accident. I did
Speaker 2: not mean to kill the seagull. So they dropped the
Speaker 2: charges and that ended up being the right decision because
Speaker 2: once the autopsy report came back, it turned out that
Speaker 2: everyone had been correct. The bird was quite unwell. The
Speaker 2: report concluded that although the bird did die from blunt
Speaker 2: force trauma, it almost certainly would have died anyway within
Speaker 2: like a week, so to show there were no hard feelings,
Speaker 2: Winfield returned to Toronto. He went back a few months later,
Speaker 2: he did a charity dinner and he even brought a
Speaker 2: special painting that he had commissioned to be auctioned off.
Speaker 2: It depicted a seagull standing in front of a red
Speaker 2: maple leaf, with two other goals flying over the shore
Speaker 2: of a lake, and at the bottom there was an
Speaker 2: inscription that read to the Canadian people committed to the
Speaker 2: preservation of their values and resources.
Speaker 5: That is incredible, and again it goes back to.
Speaker 2: Bird Art, Bird Art. There we go, all right, we need.
Speaker 5: To take a quick break, but when we come back,
Speaker 5: we have more bonus facts, including a statue that's been
Speaker 5: through a lot and some buildings that are getting cooler
Speaker 5: thanks to a very old technology.
Speaker 4: Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm Gabe and I'm
Speaker 2: here with Mary and we're opening the fact vault today
Speaker 2: to share some of the things that didn't make it
Speaker 2: into our regular episodes. So, Mary, what's your next cutting
Speaker 2: room floor fact?
Speaker 5: Okay, so we have an episode about climate resilience, which
Speaker 5: is of course the ways in which people around the
Speaker 5: world are using technology, engineering and general ingenuity to protect
Speaker 5: themselves and their homes and their communities from climate change.
Speaker 5: And I found this fact that I think about all
Speaker 5: the time because I have a plant pot in my apartment.
Speaker 4: Do you have a plant pot in your apartment?
Speaker 2: I have pots with plants in them. Is that different? No? No?
Speaker 4: No, A pot that you put a plant in?
Speaker 2: Oh? Perfect, Yeah, I got them.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: They're often made of terra cotta, which is that sort
Speaker 5: of orangish beige material that is really good for plants.
Speaker 5: And one of the reasons it's good for plants is
Speaker 5: that it's absorbent. It absorbs and holds water, and that's
Speaker 5: also why it's great for cooling. Tarracotta has been used
Speaker 5: for thousands of years in India to keep water cool
Speaker 5: because when you fill up in terracotta jug with water,
Speaker 5: a certain percentage of that water gets absorbed and then
Speaker 5: it evaporates. As it evaporates, it keeps the remaining water
Speaker 5: in the jug cool. So people have been doing this
Speaker 5: in lieu of refrigeration for a long time. Recently, an
Speaker 5: architecture studio in New Delhi came up with a way
Speaker 5: to use terracotta to cool buildings. They had a client
Speaker 5: who was a manufacturer and they had these diesel generators
Speaker 5: that were creating a lot of heat in the building,
Speaker 5: and it was making things too hot for the workers.
Speaker 5: And if we were just trying to combat that with
Speaker 5: air conditioning, it would cost a ton of money and
Speaker 5: be really bad for the environment.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: So what they did was they manufactured eight hundred big
Speaker 5: tubes of terracotta that they arranged around a stainless steel framework,
Speaker 5: and then they pumped recycled water over the terra cotta.
Speaker 5: As the water evaporated out of this terracotta structure, it
Speaker 5: sent cool air out and around the area and actually
Speaker 5: brought the temperature down by several degrees, making it more
Speaker 5: comfortable for people who are working there. So they've actually
Speaker 5: been able to replicate this in dozens of buildings around India,
Speaker 5: mostly commercial spaces, but also schools, even airports.
Speaker 2: So again I have to ask, just like with the
Speaker 2: egg tempera, why doesn't everybody use this?
Speaker 5: It takes up a lot of room, right, It's a
Speaker 5: larger installation. It's not like a compact little thing, and
Speaker 5: you know, you need engineering techniques that maybe people aren't
Speaker 5: willing to invest in everywhere. But I'm glad you asked,
Speaker 5: because some people have been experimenting with this idea. Even more,
Speaker 5: some engineering students in India have built a terracotta air conditioner,
Speaker 5: which is a smaller unit where a fan sucks in
Speaker 5: air and then blows that air over damp terracotta right,
Speaker 5: because again, the evaporation is just like a cooling system,
Speaker 5: and they've been able to bring air down in a
Speaker 5: room by almost three degrees fahnheit, which isn't a lot,
Speaker 5: but if it's really hot, that three degrees can make
Speaker 5: a big difference. Absolutely, So, Gabe, you've got one more
Speaker 5: extra fact, let's hear it.
Speaker 2: So we did an episode not too long ago in
Speaker 2: our travelogue series about the nation of Denmark, and that's
Speaker 2: one of the places I actually have been able to visit.
Speaker 2: I got to go there a few years ago toward
Speaker 2: Copenhagen myself, and there is one city attraction that I
Speaker 2: just couldn't quite fit into the script, but I really
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about it. It is the Little Mermaid
Speaker 2: statue that sits in Copenhagen Harbor. It's been there for
Speaker 2: over a century at this point, and it has been
Speaker 2: through a lot during that time.
Speaker 4: The Little Mermaid, who is the author.
Speaker 2: Hans Christian Anderson right, of course. Yeah, famous Danish writer
Speaker 2: Little Mermaid, the Ugly duck Lane Thumbelina, Little match Girl. Yeah,
Speaker 2: kind of a national treasure of Denmark. And so this
Speaker 2: statue was actually unveiled in nineteen thirteen. It was a
Speaker 2: gift from a Danish brewer named Carl Jacobsen. He gave
Speaker 2: it to the city of Copenhagen after falling in love
Speaker 2: with the character of the Little Mermaid after watching a
Speaker 2: ballet performance at the Royal Danish Theater, and so he
Speaker 2: commissioned a sculptor named Edward Erickson to create this three
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty five pound bronze sculpture of the title character.
Speaker 2: He wanted the ballet dancer who played the Little Mermaid
Speaker 2: to pose for it, but she refused to pose in
Speaker 2: the nude, and so instead the sculptor enlisted his wife,
Speaker 2: and so they put this four hundred pound bronze sculpture
Speaker 2: on a granite rock in the Copenhagen Harbor and it's
Speaker 2: been there ever since. And along the way it's been
Speaker 2: a frequent target of vandalism by really like all sorts
Speaker 2: of different protest groups. So his poor Mermaid has been
Speaker 2: decapitated twice, covered in paint and graffiti. Multiple times, she
Speaker 2: had an arm sawn on off. At one point she
Speaker 2: was painted red as part of an anti whaling protest.
Speaker 2: She's been covered in graffiti with messages like in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty somebody tagged her with a kind of confusing inscription,
Speaker 2: dubbing her a racist fish. And people don't really know,
Speaker 2: you know what any of this has to do with
Speaker 2: the Little Mermaid or with Hans Christian Anderson. He hasn't
Speaker 2: really been accused of racism or anything in his works.
Speaker 5: Does Copenhagen just keep fixing the statue? Do they just
Speaker 5: keep going out there and cleaning off the graffiti and
Speaker 5: replacing the head and all of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again and again they've had the retrieve her body
Speaker 2: parts from the water, scrub or clean. Actually, when I
Speaker 2: was there, this was I think twenty twenty three, you
Speaker 2: could still see the faded letters of racist fish. It's
Speaker 2: all leaving a mark, unfortunately. But the thing that makes
Speaker 2: it extra sad for me is if you are familiar
Speaker 2: with Hans Christian Andersen's version of this story, and not
Speaker 2: just the Disney one, you know that the Mermaid and
Speaker 2: the story had a pretty rough time too, it's a
Speaker 2: much darker tail. She has her tongue cut out. The
Speaker 2: Prince does not choose her in the end. So it's
Speaker 2: just a little extra tragic when you look at what
Speaker 2: the character has been through to see that sort of
Speaker 2: repeated on the statue. So if anyone's listening in Copenhagen,
Speaker 2: please stop, please a little Mournee has been through enough.
Speaker 4: She's been through enough.
Speaker 5: All right, Well, I would like to turn now to
Speaker 5: an update from an episode that came out not too
Speaker 5: long ago, and it was nine extremely Valuable Facts about Pennies.
Speaker 4: Do you remember that episode?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that one, Okay.
Speaker 5: In that episode, of course, we talked about the fact
Speaker 5: that there is a move to get rid of the
Speaker 5: penny in the United States, and that's actually been going on.
Speaker 5: Several presidents have brought that up. It's come up time
Speaker 5: and time again. But now there is officially a bill
Speaker 5: that has been introduced in the United States Senate to
Speaker 5: formally eliminate the penny. And this is a bipartisan bill
Speaker 5: brought by Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mike Lee of
Speaker 5: Utah and Gabe. They have called it the makes Sense
Speaker 5: not Sense act o that's worse. In the press release
Speaker 5: announcing this act, Merkley said, and I quote, it's the
Speaker 5: opposite of common sense for taxpayers dollars to fund wasteful
Speaker 5: spending like producing pennies.
Speaker 2: Wow, they doubled down on that. They were so proud
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 5: I would like to introduce a bill to eliminate lazy
Speaker 5: punning by elected officials. It does not serve our country,
Speaker 5: It does not send a good message to our children.
Speaker 5: Puns are fine, but God put in a little more
Speaker 5: effort than that.
Speaker 2: I second thought, with a brave stance, Mary.
Speaker 5: If I ever run for office, that's going to be
Speaker 5: That's gonna be my one and only platform.
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 5: Should we tell people some teasers about some things that
Speaker 5: we are working on right now that they can look
Speaker 5: forward to.
Speaker 4: Should we do that? Should we be that generous?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Should we pull back the curtain a little bit?
Speaker 5: I think we should because Will and Mango are sipping
Speaker 5: tropical drinks and a hammock, I believe, and we're here,
Speaker 5: so let's do what we want. I know you're working
Speaker 5: on an episode that we're very excited about. You want
Speaker 5: to tell us a little bit about it.
Speaker 2: We had a listener suggests that we do an episode
Speaker 2: all about three D printing, and I'm happy to say
Speaker 2: that is in the works. I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people still treat it as a new emerging technology, but
Speaker 2: really it came about back in the eighties and it's
Speaker 2: not just a printing plastic anymore. We've moved on from
Speaker 2: there and there's some fun historical connections that we're going
Speaker 2: to get into in that episode. So definitely look forward
Speaker 2: to that one.
Speaker 4: Oh that's great.
Speaker 5: Well, I can tell you I am really excited about
Speaker 5: an episode we have coming up that's all about puppets.
Speaker 5: Puppets have an incredible rich history. I mean, it's obviously
Speaker 5: Sesame Street the Muppets, we all know them, we all
Speaker 5: love them, but puppets have a long history in many
Speaker 5: civilizations and cultures around the world, used for theater, for politics,
Speaker 5: all kinds of things. It's a very I mean, it's
Speaker 5: one of those episodes that I feel like could easily
Speaker 5: become an hour long. It won't, don't worry. But there's
Speaker 5: so much to talk about. And I'm particularly excited because
Speaker 5: I do have a friend who is really passionate about puppetry,
Speaker 5: and she builds and makes puppets for performances that are incredible,
Speaker 5: and she's done them for science education, she's used them
Speaker 5: for all all kinds of things. So just personally, I
Speaker 5: am excited to be able to send a friend an
Speaker 5: episode that's going to be right up her alley.
Speaker 4: And I think that happens a lot with this show.
Speaker 5: People find a topic and they know someone who's really
Speaker 5: into that one topic, and they send them that episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm really looking forward to that one too,
Speaker 2: really really interesting stuff. And I know normally we end
Speaker 2: an episode with a fact off, but we've had a
Speaker 2: lot of facts today, So why don't we head down
Speaker 2: to the rec center for some recommendations instead? What do
Speaker 2: you say?
Speaker 4: Sounds good.
Speaker 2: That? So my recommendation for today is that listeners reacquaint
Speaker 2: themselves with the Looney Tunes. A lot of people don't
Speaker 2: know that in this year, twenty twenty five, there was
Speaker 2: a new theatrical Looney Tunes movie. I did not know
Speaker 2: that it already came and went from theaters. It was
Speaker 2: called The Day the Earth Blew Up, starring Daffy Duck
Speaker 2: and Porky Pig. This was a hand drawn, beach er
Speaker 2: length film. It didn't have a lot of advertising. It
Speaker 2: came and went, but critics loved it, animators love it,
Speaker 2: and I believe it's available on streaming now, so people
Speaker 2: should check that out. And also there's a new Blu
Speaker 2: Ray collection, the Classic Looney Tunes. It's a collection of
Speaker 2: I think about forty or so of the shorts that
Speaker 2: have been newly restored, never released on Blu Ray before.
Speaker 2: The Looney Tunes are fun for people really of all ages.
Speaker 2: That's something I think a lot of people forget. They
Speaker 2: were shown in front of movies back in the day.
Speaker 2: Looney Tunes laid in front of everything, whether you were seeing,
Speaker 2: you know, a romantic comedy or a horror movie or whatever,
Speaker 2: and everybody in the audience laughed. Maybe recreate those pre
Speaker 2: shows at home. Watch a Looney Tunes before you start
Speaker 2: a movie. You know you're watching a movie from nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine, Watch a Looney Tunes it was made that
Speaker 2: same year. Or you can go about its thematically too.
Speaker 2: If you're watching a Western, watch something with Yosemite Sam
Speaker 2: or Wiley Coyote or something like that. Yeah, it sounds storky,
Speaker 2: sounds nerdy, and it is, but it's also a lot of.
Speaker 5: I mean this is part time genius. I think everyone
Speaker 5: is okay with nerdy.
Speaker 2: A lot of who things here?
Speaker 5: Help me if they're not, they're not listening at this point.
Speaker 5: I love that, Gabe, Thank you for that recommendation. We
Speaker 5: watch a lot of movies in my house, so that's
Speaker 5: a really great idea.
Speaker 2: All right, Mary, what did you want to recommend?
Speaker 5: This did come up in the Novelty Songs episode that
Speaker 5: you mentioned earlier, which is a study showing that our
Speaker 5: brains crave novelty. It's not good for us to be
Speaker 5: doing and hearing and seeing the same thing over and
Speaker 5: over and over. So some way to shake that up
Speaker 5: is actually really good for us. So I'm going to
Speaker 5: recommend It's not a product, it's not a service. It's
Speaker 5: just a thing you can do, and that is taking
Speaker 5: a different route to your destination every time. So we
Speaker 5: all have places that we go on a regular basis.
Speaker 5: You go to the grocery store, you go to your gym,
Speaker 5: you go to your kid's school, you go to your workplace,
Speaker 5: whatever it is, if possible, take a different route there
Speaker 5: every time. So I live in New York City. I
Speaker 5: walk everywhere, and there are places that I have to
Speaker 5: walk all the time. And my plan is when I
Speaker 5: am leaving my apartment, I know where I have to go,
Speaker 5: and instead of going the same way, I'll go down
Speaker 5: one block and then over another, and then kind of
Speaker 5: down a few more blocks and then over and then
Speaker 5: down and over.
Speaker 4: I'll zigzag around the grid.
Speaker 5: The reason I do it is because it makes you
Speaker 5: more aware of what's going on.
Speaker 4: You notice things.
Speaker 5: You see a plant in a window that you never
Speaker 5: noticed before, You noticed a business that you hadn't seen.
Speaker 5: And even when I'm not consciously aware that I am
Speaker 5: seeing different things, I often feel more alert when I'm
Speaker 5: doing it, you know, because you can just go on autopilot.
Speaker 5: It's very easy to go on autopilot. And I find
Speaker 5: that when I am making an effort to go a
Speaker 5: different way every time, I actually feel more in tune
Speaker 5: with my own brain.
Speaker 2: I love that mix it up a little bit, boost
Speaker 2: your brain.
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously, if you're in a rush and you
Speaker 5: know you got the shortest route, do that. But if
Speaker 5: you have a little time and you have the ability,
Speaker 5: given your commute, pick a different route. You know, at
Speaker 5: the end of the fact off someone usually gets a trophy.
Speaker 5: But the great thing about the rec center is we're
Speaker 5: all winners here, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, So congratulations everybody that's going to do
Speaker 2: it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe on your
Speaker 2: favorite podcast platform and follow us on Instagram at part
Speaker 2: Time Genius, Will and Mango will be back next week
Speaker 2: with a brand new episode, and in the meantime, from Mary,
Speaker 2: Dylan 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 Pearson and Me Mongaschatikler
Speaker 1: and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was engineered and produced by the Wonderful of 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: Viney 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.