Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, we're going to stuff about your
Speaker 1: my My My name is Robert lamp and my name is
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas. And it's the fall, and a lot of
Speaker 1: things happen every fall. There Halloween, there's pumpkins. Hey, hey rides,
Speaker 1: leaves fall from the trees. Nobel Prizes. Yes, that's a
Speaker 1: big one, especially for anyone who has, uh, who follows science,
Speaker 1: either as a hobby, as a as a passion, as
Speaker 1: a as a job, or all three. If you're us, Uh,
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prize is always a big deal because the Ignoble
Speaker 1: Prizes highlight the absurd, the comical, the the strange within
Speaker 1: the world of legitimate scientific research, generally generally pure reviewed
Speaker 1: scientific research. Sometimes in the world of patents. But it's
Speaker 1: always about let's look at the the individuals who are
Speaker 1: just really dedicated to study and one in scientific study
Speaker 1: in one shaper or another, and some of the strange
Speaker 1: corners they work themselves into. Yeah, it is a play
Speaker 1: on the Nobel Prize. And uh, the it's from Improbable Research,
Speaker 1: which publishes the magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research,
Speaker 1: and the whole point of that, they say, is it's
Speaker 1: there to make you laugh and then make you think
Speaker 1: with as you say, some of these bizarre turns and science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mark Abrams the main dude there. You know, some people
Speaker 1: don't catch the humor of it. They think that it's
Speaker 1: making fun of scientists. But I think most people understand
Speaker 1: that it's it's a celebration of the of the necessary
Speaker 1: absurdity of science. Because you think of science like a
Speaker 1: slime mold. We talked about how slime mold solves a maze.
Speaker 1: It sends out all these tendrils through the maze and
Speaker 1: then just figures out what is the best route, and
Speaker 1: then it goes that way. Uh, And in doing so
Speaker 1: it can you know, decipher the best trade roots across
Speaker 1: the face of the globe. Science is kind of like that.
Speaker 1: Science is all about finding out how things work, how
Speaker 1: things work the best, and and what the world and
Speaker 1: what the universally consists of. But that also means that
Speaker 1: the kindrels of science must sometimes creep into strange areas,
Speaker 1: into sometimes strange dead ends, and sometimes into very important
Speaker 1: areas of study that we are childish about and still
Speaker 1: snicker at. It's true, it does appeal to that, and um,
Speaker 1: I think with the Ignoble, what's interesting about that is
Speaker 1: you see so much creativity and imagination from the researchers
Speaker 1: and the scientists who are working in their respective fields,
Speaker 1: and which you might think is really wrote. They have
Speaker 1: actually sort of peeled back and found very interesting and
Speaker 1: contextualizing it in ways that you might not have ever
Speaker 1: thought of. And what we're talking about here when we
Speaker 1: talk about these prizes is each year Ignoble will honor
Speaker 1: the achievements that of course make you laugh and then
Speaker 1: make you think. In the award tend people these prizes.
Speaker 1: The winners trouble from all over the world at their
Speaker 1: own expense to a gallus ceremony at Harvard where actual
Speaker 1: noble laureates present them with the prize um. This year's
Speaker 1: opera was The Bolonsky Device, a tribute to George and
Speaker 1: Charlotte Blonsky, who in the early sixties invented a machine
Speaker 1: for quote, facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so just sling the kid right out? Is
Speaker 1: that a great visual of what an Ignoble prize can
Speaker 1: be because it's a it's a perfectly logical idea perfectly
Speaker 1: logical theory that doesn't really sit well with people outside
Speaker 1: of the lab. I think, you know, which, we've discussed
Speaker 1: that before, Like it's some of the often the amazing
Speaker 1: thing about scientists is that sometimes the scientific answer just
Speaker 1: is not going to sit well with anybody outside of
Speaker 1: the scientific world, such as, say, uh, creating a spaceship
Speaker 1: that is itself edible, or just figuring out a way
Speaker 1: that astronauts can eat their own poop on a return
Speaker 1: trip from Mars on a very you know, economic scientific level, Yes,
Speaker 1: that makes absolute sense, but then the astro not saying, no,
Speaker 1: we're not doing that well. And in some ways these
Speaker 1: are thought experiments, right, especially the childbirth is probably not
Speaker 1: very pragmatic to be shooting out, you know, a child
Speaker 1: by a centrifugal force. But what kind of proof do
Speaker 1: we have? Do we have scientific proof that it's not
Speaker 1: a good idea? One day that might be the thing, right,
Speaker 1: you have to build on that research, alright, So let's
Speaker 1: highlight a couple of the prizes here, alright. First up,
Speaker 1: the psychology prize. This one went to a team of
Speaker 1: French researchers including Laurette Bague Alman Zaruni, Baptiste Subra, and
Speaker 1: Nidhi or Ba as well as Brad Bushman. And that
Speaker 1: was the I think the USA contingent there. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that was for confirming that people who think that they
Speaker 1: are drunk also think that they are more attractive. And
Speaker 1: of course this is great because if you just ask
Speaker 1: somebody that, hey, do you think drunk people think they're
Speaker 1: more attractive? Of course they do. It's it's a no brainer, right,
Speaker 1: But has it been scientifically proven? Do we know for sure?
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of more important questions in
Speaker 1: the history of of the human race that have come
Speaker 1: up where someone says, of course, this is the way
Speaker 1: it works. Of course, the Earth is the center of
Speaker 1: the universe. Of course the Sun is the center of
Speaker 1: the universe. But when you apply the light of science
Speaker 1: to it, then you get the real answer, um or
Speaker 1: you get the evolution of a real answer. So in
Speaker 1: the first study carried out in the bar, they found
Speaker 1: that the more alcoholic drinks customers consumed, the more attractive
Speaker 1: they thought they were. Okay, that's but in Steady too,
Speaker 1: they took ninety four non student participants and they put
Speaker 1: them in a bogus taste test study they were given
Speaker 1: either an alcoholic beverage or a nonalcoholic beverage, with half
Speaker 1: of each group believing they had consumed alcohol alcohol and
Speaker 1: half believing that they had not, so they had a
Speaker 1: balanced pacebo effect. So, after consuming the beverages, they delivered
Speaker 1: a speech and rated how attractive, bright, original, and funny
Speaker 1: they thought they were. And they videotape these speeches and
Speaker 1: they were rated by a team of twenty two independent judges.
Speaker 1: Would they find those people thought they were brilliant and
Speaker 1: even if they weren't drunk, is all they had to
Speaker 1: do was think that they were drunk, and they instantly
Speaker 1: thought that they were, uh like greater than they actually are.
Speaker 1: I think this is important information, right for everybody who
Speaker 1: is going out there and going to have a couple
Speaker 1: of drinks and then perhaps do something that is important
Speaker 1: to their livelihood. Perhaps maybe you should reconsider the drinks.
Speaker 1: Maybe what you're about to do isn't quite as great
Speaker 1: as you think. It's also interesting, um, you know, bringing
Speaker 1: up the idea that even a non alcoholic beverage one
Speaker 1: have the same effect. Um, And perhaps you can shed
Speaker 1: some light in this from your own experience, since you
Speaker 1: you gave up drinking. Uh, but I assume you still
Speaker 1: find yourselves having a drink, a non alcoholic drink, maybe
Speaker 1: in the in the the company of individuals who are drinking,
Speaker 1: or or sort of fill that space in the in
Speaker 1: the ritual. Because I can think of a time or
Speaker 1: two where I've had something non alcoholic and that either
Speaker 1: the setting was right or or the company was right,
Speaker 1: that I really kind of felt as if I had
Speaker 1: been drinking alcohol. Well, I think it boils down to
Speaker 1: mirror neurons, because if someone is sitting across from you
Speaker 1: and and they're feeling a little bit loosened up, they've
Speaker 1: had a drink or two and they began to laugh
Speaker 1: a lot, then of course you're going to engage in
Speaker 1: the same activity. So it's very easy, I think, to
Speaker 1: take on those sort of physical things for yourself. You
Speaker 1: begin to fall into the cultural script that has been
Speaker 1: provided to you. Yea. What I love about this study
Speaker 1: is the title, which is called Beauty is in the
Speaker 1: Eye of the Beer Holder. Oh that's great. Yeah, It's
Speaker 1: almost like they knew they were going to get ignoble. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some I I tend to prefer the ones that are
Speaker 1: just really like rigidly scientific and you get the idea
Speaker 1: that they're completely oblivious to how ridiculous it might sound
Speaker 1: to an outsider. It's got like five prepositions and words long.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the Joint Prize in Biology
Speaker 1: and Astronomy now. Marie Dack, Emily Baird, Eric Warrant, Marcus Byrne,
Speaker 1: and Clark Schultz received this prize for discovering that when
Speaker 1: dung beaetles get lost, that they can navigate their way
Speaker 1: home by looking at the milky Way. This at first glance,
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like I mean, it seems like a sort
Speaker 1: of amazing boy. Yeah, okay, what are you talking about here?
Speaker 1: It is very cool. Yeah, I mean, obviously the moon
Speaker 1: is big money when it comes to night time navigation
Speaker 1: out there in the animal world. It's just that everything,
Speaker 1: it seems can can use the moon for some form
Speaker 1: of navigation. But previously only birds, seals, and humans were
Speaker 1: known to use the stars to navigate, I mean that
Speaker 1: were to orient themselves. So that's privileged territory. So the
Speaker 1: idea that hey, the lowly dung beetle is using this
Speaker 1: technique as well, it's amazing. What I like to imagine
Speaker 1: is that you know, these dung beetles, they actually like
Speaker 1: to run straight lines, by the way, And what I
Speaker 1: like to imagine is that when they find a pile
Speaker 1: of droppings, which they then roll into a small ball,
Speaker 1: and they start pushing it away from the other dung
Speaker 1: beetles that might try to eat it, I like to
Speaker 1: measure them just getting on top of that ball and
Speaker 1: staring up at the milky Way. I'll dowy eyed, and
Speaker 1: I want that to be a Pixar movie and it
Speaker 1: should be right um. But I think it's very cool
Speaker 1: because it was thought that they were taking cues from
Speaker 1: from the sun and the moon um. But it was
Speaker 1: their capacity to maintain course even on clear moonless nights
Speaker 1: that got researchers thinking that it perhaps was something else
Speaker 1: that could have been the stars. So lead researcher Marie
Speaker 1: doc She took the insects into the Johannesburg Planetarium, where
Speaker 1: she could control the type of star fields beetle might
Speaker 1: see overhead so they get their own little planetarium show.
Speaker 1: She put them in a container with blackened walls to
Speaker 1: make sure the animals were not using other information from
Speaker 1: and marks on the horizon, which in the wild might
Speaker 1: be trees, for example, and she found that the Beatles
Speaker 1: performed best when confronted with a perfect starry sky projected
Speaker 1: onto the planetarium dome, although even in other conditions they
Speaker 1: could still find their way. Pretty cool, Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's the finding represents the first convincing demonstration for the
Speaker 1: use of starry sky orientation in insects um and and
Speaker 1: provides the first documented use of the Milky Way for
Speaker 1: orientation in the animal kingdom. So that's pretty amazing. I
Speaker 1: actually was pretty I thought it was amazing because we've
Speaker 1: talked about navigation so much in how mysterious it is,
Speaker 1: particularly when we talk about birds or butterflies, and now
Speaker 1: you've got dune deals and on the game give a
Speaker 1: Give a dune beetle is due. Indeed, all right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna roll through three more of our favorites from
Speaker 1: the two thousand thirteen Ignoble Prizes, all sorts of Google
Speaker 1: and amazing things are gonna happen in those studies. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back by the way micro cosmas Um. When that
Speaker 1: film first came out, all the DVD or VHS covers
Speaker 1: for it had this praying man it's wearing sunglasses on it,
Speaker 1: which totally misrepresented the entire picture. Like they were trying
Speaker 1: to play up the like like it was a bug's
Speaker 1: life or something like it's some sort of cute insects story,
Speaker 1: and it's not. It's a It's just a beautifully shot
Speaker 1: insight into the world, the violent, the weird, and beautiful
Speaker 1: world of insects. Praying man says, do wear right? Not
Speaker 1: at all? Oh I don't. You should probably check into that, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll fact check this, all right, all right, now we're back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the two thousand thirteen Ignoble Prize winners,
Speaker 1: and we're we're not going through all of them. We're
Speaker 1: just covering some of our favorites. You can check out
Speaker 1: the rest at the Improbable Research website and we highly
Speaker 1: suggest to do that. The next prize, we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss Safety Engineering Prize, and this one went to the
Speaker 1: late Gustano Pizzo Um from the US for a nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two patent for an amazing invention that I'm just
Speaker 1: floored that we haven't used that we have that we
Speaker 1: don't see in every airplane. I love this invention because
Speaker 1: on some level I think it appeals to the eight
Speaker 1: year olds and all of us as well as the
Speaker 1: Bond fans. Yes, there's a little James Bond at this
Speaker 1: and a little like it's like an ACME invention from
Speaker 1: the road Runner car. Yes. Yes, um. It is actually
Speaker 1: an electro mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers. The system
Speaker 1: drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package,
Speaker 1: then drops the hijacker through the airplane specially installed bomb
Speaker 1: bay doors, through which he is parachuted to the ground, where,
Speaker 1: of course police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on ski jets, I think yeah. And there was an
Speaker 1: illustration with the patent. I mean the patents you know,
Speaker 1: public the public domain, you can you can find it online. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and the the illustrations are wonderful because you see
Speaker 1: the individual, you see him jettison, you see him in
Speaker 1: the little package with the with the parachute, and and
Speaker 1: you're totally right. On one hand, it's it's very James Bond.
Speaker 1: And I think it reminds me of of you to
Speaker 1: a kill where Christopher Walkin was the was the villain
Speaker 1: and he was in a blimp and I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: there's a trap door in that blimp for jettison um
Speaker 1: members of his team that we're falling out of line.
Speaker 1: But you know, this is we're talking about a commercial
Speaker 1: flight here. We don't want people to just fall to
Speaker 1: their death and want them to fall safely on a
Speaker 1: parachute so that the police can apprehend them. Well, and
Speaker 1: you know, in theory, it is a great idea, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it makes a kind of like simple sense. You know,
Speaker 1: that's just in the execution, right, because you have to
Speaker 1: make sure that the person is standing in the right
Speaker 1: area and that you know, he doesn't inadvertently or she
Speaker 1: you never know, uh tossed you down and you who
Speaker 1: are not the person who's trying the hijack the plane
Speaker 1: or in you know, jettison down to the police. So
Speaker 1: again it's just a matter of logistics here. But I
Speaker 1: do really like this, Yeah, I wish on some level
Speaker 1: that it would be pragmatic enough that you can actually
Speaker 1: use all Right. Up next the Archaeology Prize, and this
Speaker 1: one went to Brian Crandall and Peter Stall the Forum
Speaker 1: from us the Ladder from Kennedy, us UH for observing
Speaker 1: how the bones of swallowed dead shrews dissolved inside the
Speaker 1: human digestive system. Now, the the the answer is in
Speaker 1: the in the study there because obviously this is a
Speaker 1: study about um humans swallowing the bones of a dead
Speaker 1: shrew and then later fishing through the fecal matter to
Speaker 1: see how it turned out. Yeah, the shrew was parboiled
Speaker 1: and then of course swallowed whole without any sort of chewing,
Speaker 1: and then carefully examined during the ex script ory period
Speaker 1: in which would have correlated from when it would arrive
Speaker 1: in that excretion. Uh so, Yeah, they wanted to see
Speaker 1: how the bones would dissolve inside the human digesticism. But
Speaker 1: why you ask why, because they wanted to see how,
Speaker 1: or rather help archaeologist to turn whether small animal bones
Speaker 1: found a historic sites signified that the animals have been
Speaker 1: eaten or died naturally, So that the question is important,
Speaker 1: like having the answer to this helps us make sense
Speaker 1: of so many archaeological sites and finds around the world.
Speaker 1: But the in order to answer it, they took a
Speaker 1: very straightforward approach and to the outside viewer perhaps an
Speaker 1: undignified um investigation. But that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you want to you want an answer to a
Speaker 1: question that sometimes there was a very simple, straightforward way
Speaker 1: to do it. Yeah, you could go through some sort
Speaker 1: of complex chemical process that mimic the digestion of the
Speaker 1: human body. You could essentially build a cloaca bot to
Speaker 1: digest this, uh, this tiny rodent for you, or you
Speaker 1: could just do what makes sense. You could just you
Speaker 1: could just say, screw it, I'm going to swallow this
Speaker 1: creature and then I'm going to poop it out, and
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna see and I'm gonna have my answer,
Speaker 1: and and I'm not gonna need all this ridiculous funding
Speaker 1: to do it. Now, if I remember correctly, this was
Speaker 1: featured in Mary Richard's Gulp and Um. At the time
Speaker 1: of her writing that, I believed that it wasn't revealed
Speaker 1: whether it was Crandell or Stall who actually swallowed the
Speaker 1: shrew because they didn't want people to focus on who
Speaker 1: was combing through their poo to try to find the bones.
Speaker 1: They wanted people to focus on how it was actually digested.
Speaker 1: And in case you're wondering, uh, the digestive action of
Speaker 1: either Crandell or Stall obliterated everything but twenty eight bones
Speaker 1: out of one d and thirty one, Way to go,
Speaker 1: Way to Go digestive stem. All right, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at one last study here, and this one is
Speaker 1: the Public Health Prize, and this one comes to us
Speaker 1: from high Land. And I have said we we left
Speaker 1: this one because you have to leave the penis for last. Really, yes,
Speaker 1: because this study had to do with medical techniques for
Speaker 1: penile reattachment after amputations, often by jealous lives um techniques
Speaker 1: which they recommended except in cases where the amputated penis
Speaker 1: had been partially eaten by a duck. Now, yeah, I
Speaker 1: need to explain this, and I'm I'm just gonna pull
Speaker 1: directly from Mark Abrams article that came out in The
Speaker 1: Guardian last year titled why Thai women cut off their
Speaker 1: husband's penises. He points out that quote it became fashionable
Speaker 1: in the decade after nineteen seventy for the humiliated Thai
Speaker 1: wife to wait until her philandering husband fell asleep so
Speaker 1: that she could quickly sever his penis with a kitchen knife.
Speaker 1: A traditional tie home is elevated on pilings and the
Speaker 1: windows are open to allow for ventilation. The area under
Speaker 1: the houses home is the home of the family, pigs, chickens,
Speaker 1: and ducks. Thus it is quite usual that an amputated
Speaker 1: penis is tossed out of an open window where it
Speaker 1: may be captured by a duck. Then Abrams goes on
Speaker 1: to say, the report explains for readers in other countries.
Speaker 1: Quote the Tai saying I better get home or the
Speaker 1: ducks will have something to eat is therefore a common
Speaker 1: joke and immediately understood at all levels of society. So
Speaker 1: in case anybody is visiting Thailand and you happen to
Speaker 1: be able to hear this phrase, now you have a
Speaker 1: context for it. Yes, So, yeah, I guess there was
Speaker 1: a prominent nineteen seventy three case in which a woman
Speaker 1: sliced off her husband's penis, and then during the seventies
Speaker 1: so were like something like a hundred other Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it got a tremendous amount of coverage
Speaker 1: at the time because it is it's you know, as
Speaker 1: we know in the West, um, case like this happens,
Speaker 1: the media is just gonna eat it up. Um, no
Speaker 1: pun intended, and uh, and so it's it's in the
Speaker 1: public mindset, and and so you begin to see other
Speaker 1: cases popping up. That's right. That was the great bob
Speaker 1: at Escapade in the US. And I believe that penis
Speaker 1: was flung out a car window, yes, but was apprehended
Speaker 1: before a duck could inter s and it also was reattached.
Speaker 1: It was so basically this whole, the whole stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: the study makes it in because on one hand, it
Speaker 1: involves the penis and therefore is inherently funny. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then it also is weird and uh and and ties
Speaker 1: in this uh, this epidemic of of of peno amputation,
Speaker 1: and it involves ducks, and ducks are inherently funny as well.
Speaker 1: Even though at the bottom line, even bad philandering husbands
Speaker 1: uh probably don't deserve to have their their penises cut off.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna. And I imagine too that um, I
Speaker 1: don't have obviously the plumbing, but I would want there
Speaker 1: to be quite a bit of study where a man
Speaker 1: who's whose penis was cut off and had to be
Speaker 1: reattached to make sure that it was done properly. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's an injury that is going to
Speaker 1: occur in the course of of human events, and it's
Speaker 1: better that we do have techniques on hand, that we
Speaker 1: do know the best means by which to reattach it
Speaker 1: if possible. So it's it's a study that at once
Speaker 1: is highly helpful and great and it's wonderful that the
Speaker 1: research has contributed to our scientific understanding with it. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, there are a number of inherently
Speaker 1: giggle inducing qualities to it. And that's why we love Ignoble, right,
Speaker 1: because you get pretty much everything, yeah, from dung beetles
Speaker 1: to penises. Yeah, from studies that are that just seem
Speaker 1: to sort of fill in one tiny corner of our
Speaker 1: scientific understanding or things that or studies that are they
Speaker 1: are actually highly important but still induced snickers. So there
Speaker 1: you have another Ignable Price ceremony has come and gone.
Speaker 1: We've highlighted some of the ones we like. You can
Speaker 1: check out the rest online at the Improbable Research website.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, all of those guys that put that
Speaker 1: the magazine out of the PDF and it's always tremendous
Speaker 1: fund to leave through it. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want to chat without about it, if you want to
Speaker 1: share your favorites from this year's of award winners, or
Speaker 1: you have some past favorites that you still snicker about,
Speaker 1: let us know about it. You can find us in
Speaker 1: all the usual places. Our mothership is stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com, where you'll find all our videos,
Speaker 1: all our blog posts, our podcasts. Yes, even the episodes
Speaker 1: of the podcast that are not available on iTunes or
Speaker 1: wherever you like to get your podcast, you will find
Speaker 1: them on the website, and you can always drop us
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