Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Mango here. With summer winding down, we
Speaker 1: are taking a little break, but we will be back
Speaker 1: with brand new episodes starting September ninth, and we have
Speaker 1: been working hard on so many fun episodes this summer.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait for you to listen to them. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, we are re airing our countdown of the
Speaker 1: twenty five greatest science ideas of the past twenty five years.
Speaker 1: This list was so joyous to make. Mary and Gabe
Speaker 1: did all this extra research for it. We pulled in
Speaker 1: contributors for various places. We got incredible songs written for
Speaker 1: the show. The whole thing is bizarre and delightful and
Speaker 1: fascinating and joyous, and honestly, I just hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: it half as much as we enjoyed making it. Let's
Speaker 1: dig in. You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production
Speaker 1: of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2: What's that? Mango?
Speaker 1: So what's funny?
Speaker 2: You know what's funny? Your headband is funny? But sorry
Speaker 2: it interrupt 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 years.
Speaker 2: Now if I'm not mistake, Ye, 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, the
Speaker 1: launch of the iPod, thousands of songs in your pocket.
Speaker 1: Social media exploded 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 black 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 back in the year
Speaker 2: two thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I can't believe it's been almost twenty five years
Speaker 1: since that first issue hit newsstands. But this week's super
Speaker 1: special edition of Part Time Genius is all about celebrating
Speaker 1: this last quarter century. Every day this week, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be counting down the twenty five greatest science ideas of
Speaker 1: the past twenty five years, and we are sending out
Speaker 1: lots of fun prizes to our listeners too.
Speaker 2: But I've just got one question for you, mego, why
Speaker 2: are you wearing a Valor tracksuit and a homemade headband? Again,
Speaker 2: I don't really understand what's happening.
Speaker 1: Here because I am pomp Oh got it? Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time genius Pearson.
Speaker 2: And of course I'm here with my friend Mangush hot
Speaker 2: ticketter and over there tending to what I thought was
Speaker 2: a Bob Ross chia pet but is actually a vintage,
Speaker 2: discontinued Albert Einstein chia pet is our pal and producer
Speaker 2: Dylan Fagan and Mango. I think Einstein with sprouts for
Speaker 2: his hair is exactly the energy we're trying to pull
Speaker 2: 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. But you were obviously obsessed with lists.
Speaker 2: I was very much obsessed with liss. I think this
Speaker 2: started when I was probably eleven or twelve 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 twenty 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 kind of
Speaker 1: the joy of Obama at the Science Fair shooting rockets
Speaker 1: and things, And you know, science is obviously nerdy, but
Speaker 1: it's also cool and weird and fun, and I thought
Speaker 1: 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 refrigerators.
Speaker 2: 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 first who manages are social media our
Speaker 1: friend Calypso, so after you listen, head over to our
Speaker 1: Instagram at part time Genius and go win some stuff.
Speaker 1: Wet 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. You remember
Speaker 2: chaing as a kid. I feel like people just would
Speaker 2: put 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 canon 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 1: And while trying to make this valve, like, what was
Speaker 1: he trying to solve for exactly, well, he realized.
Speaker 2: That to make a better squeeze bottle, you wanted the
Speaker 2: nozzle to open when you place pressure on it, but
Speaker 2: then you need it to completely close up when the
Speaker 2: pressure 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, including NASA,
Speaker 2: who saw I use for the valve in space and
Speaker 2: was trying to make leak proof cups for astronauts.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Shampoo bottlers who wanted a more convenient bottle for their
Speaker 2: 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 ketchup revolution. They started
Speaker 2: this ad campaign about the quote waiting Man, where a
Speaker 2: guy is just sitting and holding a glass Ketchup bottle
Speaker 2: vertically over his meal and nothing is moving or happening
Speaker 2: for like twenty seconds, and then his wife 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 actually true, and that's part of the reason the
Speaker 2: world loves ketchup so much. But back to Brown. According
Speaker 2: to the patent professor, this is a website on inventors
Speaker 2: and patents. Today, about seventy five percent of Hinz bottles
Speaker 2: that are sold are upside down squeeze bottles. Now, it
Speaker 2: wasn't long before Brown paid off his credit cards and
Speaker 2: paid his parents back.
Speaker 1: Of course, I mean, I do love this, but this
Speaker 1: invention is from the nineteen nineties, right, so like it
Speaker 1: doesn't quite make the twenty five year cut off list.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to call me out for that,
Speaker 2: but I'm actually not done yet. So all of those
Speaker 2: 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 waste. 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 much
Speaker 2: in 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 Krippavaranasi puts it,
Speaker 2: there's this fundamental friction constraint called the no slip boundary
Speaker 2: condition between a liquid and a solid. And so because
Speaker 2: they basically created a new surface for the liquid to
Speaker 2: move on, you can get the product to slide across
Speaker 2: the surface. And so he continues describing this. He says that, Aha,
Speaker 2: moment meant we could get around a fundamental constraint of
Speaker 2: fluid dynamics.
Speaker 1: That's really cool that they can take the 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 is it 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, and such a great price. So sitting
Speaker 1: at number twenty four is a pretty whimsical invention that
Speaker 1: maybe means more to me than it means to you.
Speaker 1: It is a floating hot tub boat invented in Finland
Speaker 1: called the hot tug, which sounds a little dirty, but
Speaker 1: this floating tub is actually really wonderful.
Speaker 2: And there's this story about why you like hot tub
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing I mean to be clear, I do like
Speaker 1: hot tubs in the appropriate context. My friend Dave is
Speaker 1: a hot tub behind his place in Idaho, and you
Speaker 1: can sit out there when it's snowing and look at
Speaker 1: the Grand Tetons behind you, and that is incredible. But
Speaker 1: also there was one time when I was on a
Speaker 1: work trip and I showed up at a hotel room
Speaker 1: in a dicey neighborhood that had been booked for me,
Speaker 1: and there was a giant hot tub in the middle
Speaker 1: of the hotel room, and that was less appealing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see maybe avoiding.
Speaker 1: That, but as you might know, I hate cold water.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason is that when I was
Speaker 1: on my study of broad Trip, and this is so
Speaker 1: many years ago in Tivet, we were hunting for this
Speaker 1: anthropological evidence of a semi nomadic civilization, and there hadn't
Speaker 1: been 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 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: crossed 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, oh,
Speaker 1: and then getting up to my knees and being like,
Speaker 1: I've 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.
Speaker 3: And that's where the 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 tooth liter eight seater jacuzzi boat. And according
Speaker 1: to an interview with the New York Post, Jabrun actually
Speaker 1: 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 landscape. Like imagine being in one of
Speaker 1: these off the coast of Alaska or in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of de Bruyn's dream too. Right now,
Speaker 1: the hot tubs are a cost prohibitive. They run about
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand to twenty thousand dollars. But his hope is
Speaker 1: that national parks and cities will buy fleets of these
Speaker 1: 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, right,
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. There are
Speaker 2: actually a ton of anti nodding gadgets out there, but
Speaker 2: Robert Matthews developed a mathematical theory which has an incredibly
Speaker 2: simple answer. According to his loop conjecture, one of the
Speaker 2: easiest things you can do is clip the ends of
Speaker 2: a chord together to form a loop. Based on his
Speaker 2: mathematical models, forming a simple loop produces a tenfold reduction
Speaker 2: in the risk of knots forming in the headphone court.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Well, what's also sweet about his theory is
Speaker 2: that Matthews organized something called the British Not Experiment, where,
Speaker 2: according to Science Daily, kids at schools across the country
Speaker 2: looked at this phenomena with quote various cord thickness, rigidity
Speaker 2: and other 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 cells 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.
Speaker 2: Problems 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.
Speaker 2: Any of that.
Speaker 3: Let's take 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 mango. 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 sent and for me, like a
Speaker 1: whiff of jasmine takes me to my grandmother's backyard and
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
Speaker 1: soup whinny he thinks.
Speaker 2: About old people. This was 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 4: I'm Steve Pierce. I've worked in the flame room fragrance
Speaker 4: industry for more than four years in various roles, and
Speaker 4: now a consult for some companies in that industry. I'm
Speaker 4: 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 4: It made a bit of a splash. It was on
Speaker 4: TV all the rest of it. And it was a
Speaker 4: few months after that that I got this call from
Speaker 4: someone at NASA. He explained his role as having to
Speaker 4: smell every single component that went into the Space Shuttle
Speaker 4: to make sure that when astronauts were up there, there
Speaker 4: was nothing that was going to create enough an unpleasant
Speaker 4: 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 4: They'd had astronauts returning to Earth who'd gone for a
Speaker 4: veh killer walk outside. So they'd gone outside to service
Speaker 4: satellites and do all the things they do, and then
Speaker 4: when they got back inside, they were going through the
Speaker 4: airlock and they'd repressurized, take their suit helmet off, and
Speaker 4: then they got hit by this smell. And a number
Speaker 4: of them came back and said, look, we went through
Speaker 4: all this training about fitness, about psychology here, about how
Speaker 4: to fly things, how to service satellites, how to walk
Speaker 4: in space. Nobody warned us about this smell.
Speaker 1: Never would have thought that space had a smell. Apparently
Speaker 1: NASA hadn't either, so they asked Steve if you could
Speaker 1: recreate the scent of space for training purposes, and he
Speaker 1: was like, sure, I'll give you try. So NASA put
Speaker 1: him in touch with some astronauts so he could get
Speaker 1: a first hand account of the space smell.
Speaker 4: They were pretty consistent in terms of it focusing on
Speaker 4: things like hot metal. They said fried steak, but I
Speaker 4: kind of think that was when maybe they were near
Speaker 4: a barbecue which was hot metal, and they were associating
Speaker 4: the fried steak and the hot metal. And one of
Speaker 4: them described it as the scent of the hot metal
Speaker 4: when he was welding on his motorbike as a young
Speaker 4: man and things like this. So that was the description
Speaker 4: that I had to go for and try and recreate
Speaker 4: that in a safe way that could be used during
Speaker 4: the training.
Speaker 1: So around the same time, some other papers came out
Speaker 1: that offered all these hypotheses about what space smelled like
Speaker 1: based on bectroscopic 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. So we managed to recreate the
Speaker 1: smell for NASA. Yeah, I mean, it took a couple
Speaker 1: of months, but he did. And unfortunately, in the time
Speaker 1: he was working, his NASA contact had retired or maybe
Speaker 1: been laid off, like to this day. Steve's in shore,
Speaker 1: which all he knew was that he called NASA to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got your space smell, and NASA was like, we
Speaker 1: don't know where you're talking about. Man.
Speaker 4: I couldn't find anyone else to want to take it forward.
Speaker 4: So it was a bit disappointing to have done that
Speaker 4: work and then not be able to see it put
Speaker 4: 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 flavor.
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 Kickstarter.
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 4: Before, I wasn't worried about skin contact and things like that.
Speaker 4: I was just thinking people would smell it. No, that
Speaker 4: would be the end of it. Now I had to
Speaker 4: go back to the drawing board and reformulate it to
Speaker 4: make sure it was completely safe in case anybody accidentally
Speaker 4: sprayed it in their eye or swallowed it, or make
Speaker 4: sure there were no out legends 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 had actually walked on the Moon with the Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven crew, So naturally Steve wanted to know what that
Speaker 1: had smelled like.
Speaker 4: And of course he's, well, of course you can't smell
Speaker 4: anything through the suit, and he's having a joke and
Speaker 4: all that, but then he says, when you get inside
Speaker 4: and you're covered in this fine dust, he starts explaining
Speaker 4: to everyone about it, takes his helmet off, he says,
Speaker 4: and all you can smell is this smell of the moon,
Speaker 4: he says. And everyone thinks he smells of cheese and
Speaker 4: makes all these jokes about it, but he says, it
Speaker 4: 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 that 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, Maybe interesting, fascinating, meaty.
Speaker 1: I looked up Out of Space on a perfume review
Speaker 1: website and a lot of people complained that it didn't
Speaker 1: smell like something you'd wear, which makes sense because that
Speaker 1: wasn't the intention. But what's really interesting is several reviewers
Speaker 1: mentioned that the scent made them feel a sense of
Speaker 1: loneliness or dispace there, and so we actually asked Steve
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have used words like despair and loneliness, but
Speaker 4: I can understand if people are putting that concept of
Speaker 4: the fragrance alongside the fact that you're in an airless
Speaker 4: void of space and you're weightless. If he manages to
Speaker 4: conjure up those feelings, I can understand why they might
Speaker 4: describe it is that there's definitely a meaty element to it.
Speaker 4: It is quite harsh and metallic as well. I would
Speaker 4: have said, I would have described it as that. The
Speaker 4: other image I had was if you've ever been the
Speaker 4: electrical sparks and that you get that blue flash and
Speaker 4: there's that sense of burning although nothing's burning. It's almost
Speaker 4: like the ozone in the air that's created in that
Speaker 4: high energy impact. Those were the kind of images I
Speaker 4: was trying to recreate. I never set out to make
Speaker 4: anyone feel despair, but you know what, when you're working
Speaker 4: on these things on your own and you're sometimes coming
Speaker 4: up against a bit of a block and trying to
Speaker 4: improve it, 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.
Speaker 3: 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: And we squirted it on a firelall.
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 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 onto the sentence?
Speaker 1: It's like the weirdest success Mad Live success. So why
Speaker 1: 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 Argentinean
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.
Speaker 2: These are also scientists, so they could do whatever. But anyway,
Speaker 2: but it's basically enough viagra to affect them, but not
Speaker 2: enough to get them aroused or anything like that. But
Speaker 2: back to the jet lag. Normally, humans tend to take
Speaker 2: 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 it 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: Those sesame Street numbers never get to me, and at
Speaker 1: number twenty, we're going to cover one of the most
Speaker 1: important scientific discoveries of our time, according to me, which
Speaker 1: is why chickens like Denzel Washington more than you, more.
Speaker 2: Than I like Denzel Washington, or they like Denzel more
Speaker 2: than they like me.
Speaker 1: They like Denzel more than they liked Okay, God can
Speaker 1: me they.
Speaker 2: Preferred making sure I didn't know if that was part
Speaker 2: of 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 chickens
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 alarm 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.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels fair. But in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: in a paper called quote Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans. This
Speaker 1: is actually the title of scientist Stefano Ghirlanda Listenlote, Jensen
Speaker 1: and Magnus Anquist. Don't worry, it'll be spelled properly on
Speaker 1: the certificates. They all discovered that much like humans, chickens
Speaker 1: are attracted to symmetrical faces, and in the experiment, chickens
Speaker 1: pecked more at screens with symmetrical faces, and these results
Speaker 1: actually match the results of humans who were asked to
Speaker 1: choose between the same faces. According to Nat Geo. The
Speaker 1: study was limited in that it only tested a small
Speaker 1: number of chickens and humans, but the results may suggest
Speaker 1: the mutual admiration for symmetry is rooted in the nervous system.
Speaker 1: Isn't that awesome? So it's not really based on cultural influences,
Speaker 1: 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 me. But well,
Speaker 2: we'll see. And actually, you know what, you know, I
Speaker 2: have chickens and chickens that lay different colored eggs.
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 1: 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 swipe's left. I think that's a good way
Speaker 1: to end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that is that is definitely the way to
Speaker 2: end that. We have reached the end of day one
Speaker 2: in our countdown of the twenty five best science ideas
Speaker 2: from the past twenty five years. Now, remember we got
Speaker 2: four more days to go, so be sure to tune
Speaker 2: in all week. Don't forget to enter today's giveaway on
Speaker 2: our Instagram at part Time Genius and Mengo. What's the
Speaker 2: 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 researched by our good
Speaker 1: pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced
Speaker 1: by the wonderful of 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 buy any Shory. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.