Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio. Guess what, Well,
Speaker 1: what's that Mango? So this is something I certainly haven't
Speaker 1: thought about that often, but it is much harder to
Speaker 1: balance on a bike that isn't moving compared to one
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to know you haven't thought about it that often,
Speaker 2: but it is actually strange when you think about it,
Speaker 2: like you think it would be harder to balance on
Speaker 2: something that's whipping along in like ten fifteen miles an hour.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, And it turns out the difficulty is mostly
Speaker 1: due to the fact that a bike only has two
Speaker 1: points of contact with the ground, like the thin parts
Speaker 1: of the front and back wheel, and typically you need
Speaker 1: three contact points with the ground to create a good
Speaker 1: base of support, and four is actually I deal with
Speaker 1: like a table or a bed. But what bikes lack
Speaker 1: and static stability, they actually make up for in dynamic stability,
Speaker 1: which is the ability to remain stable while moving forward.
Speaker 1: And it works because a rider can maneuver the bike's
Speaker 1: points of support, or in other words, the rider can
Speaker 1: reposition the wheels as needed to keep everything nice and
Speaker 1: balanced from one moment to the next. And the best
Speaker 1: part is riders usually steer like this without even realizing
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Like, that's how subtle these micro adjustments are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was actually going to say, I never feel
Speaker 2: like I'm that focused on, you know, like the handlebars
Speaker 2: when I'm out riding a bike. It's just one of
Speaker 2: those things where your brain goes into autopilot and you
Speaker 2: really just respond without thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's one thing I realized this week.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things about bikes we don't
Speaker 1: really think about, from how we ride them, to where
Speaker 1: they came from, to what they have to do with
Speaker 1: horses deaths. So that's what I thought we could tackle today,
Speaker 1: all the weird questions about bikes we never think to ask.
Speaker 1: And this is usually where I suggest we dive right in.
Speaker 1: But since today it's all about bikes, why don't we
Speaker 1: put on our helmets and roll out instead.
Speaker 2: Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 2: Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 2: friend mangesh hot Ticketter on the other side of the
Speaker 2: soundproof glass. He's been doing this all morning, and I
Speaker 2: gotta be honest, it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: He's saying there.
Speaker 2: Popping yet another wheelie his office chair. That's the world's
Speaker 2: most impressive producer on one of these wheelie chairs, Lowel Berlante. So, Mango,
Speaker 2: are you much of a bike er? I don't think
Speaker 2: I've ever seen you ride a bike before.
Speaker 1: I know. It's funny, you know what I was when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, Like I used to have this
Speaker 1: little BMX and I'd ride it around the neighborhood into
Speaker 1: the country store we had in our town and to
Speaker 1: get candy and whatever. But you know, when I hit
Speaker 1: sixth or seventh grade, like my dad got super to
Speaker 1: safety all of a sudden, and he put this long
Speaker 1: plastic stick on the back of our bike that had
Speaker 1: this orange flag at the top of it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he made us wear helmets. And suddenly it was like,
Speaker 1: I'm good, I think I can walk from here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you ride around much? Oh?
Speaker 2: I rode to school every single day. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: was that kid. You know, we were the first generation
Speaker 2: where some parents started making kids wear helmets, you know,
Speaker 2: So I wore a helmet every day. But yeah, we
Speaker 2: were definitely like these days kids don't think that much
Speaker 2: about it. But but yeah, it was a little cooler.
Speaker 2: They do a look cooler. Yeah, it's a very big
Speaker 2: difference day. Some of them have those mohawk helmets, which
Speaker 2: are just so jealous of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, the helmets really are so much cooler
Speaker 1: with the mohawks. But let's get off my hesitation about
Speaker 1: bikes because I still don't really ride that much, and
Speaker 1: talk about a different weird story that bikes were invented
Speaker 1: because of volcano killed all the horses.
Speaker 2: Right, of course. No, Actually, I think you're going to
Speaker 2: have to explain this one because I have no idea
Speaker 2: what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So today we tend to think of bikes mostly as
Speaker 1: recreational items, but their invention was actually a matter of necessity,
Speaker 1: so it was a weird, tragic necessity. Here's what happened.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifteen, a volcano named Mount Tambora erupted on
Speaker 1: an island in Indonesia, and that eruption was and still is,
Speaker 1: the largest eruption in recorded history. It was so bad
Speaker 1: that the blast all but wiped out the island's inhabitants,
Speaker 1: and to make matters worse, the neighboring islands became so
Speaker 1: choked with ash and smoke that tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: people died from famine and disease in the months that followed.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The effects were even more widespread
Speaker 1: than just that area. In fact, they were worldwide, and
Speaker 1: such a massive amount of ash and sulfur dioxide had
Speaker 1: been shot up into the atmosphere that actually blocked sunlight
Speaker 1: and disrupted weather patterns all over the world for a
Speaker 1: full three years.
Speaker 2: Wow. So this was one of those massive eruptions. It
Speaker 2: actually affected the Earth's climate, the whole Earth's climate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it did so. The average global temperature actually dropped
Speaker 1: almost a full degree after the blast, and while that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound huge, it was enough to make eighteen sixteen
Speaker 1: the coldest year on record since the fourteen hundreds. It
Speaker 1: was so bad that historians now referred to eighteen sixteen
Speaker 1: as the year without Summer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a pretty depressing label for a year. But
Speaker 2: all right, Well, what happened next?
Speaker 1: I guess the temperature drop and the lack of sunlight
Speaker 1: actually led to all kinds of global problems like versus froze,
Speaker 1: crops failed, disease broke out, and lots and lots of
Speaker 1: people and animals starved to death and In fact, there
Speaker 1: was so little food in Europe that the vast majority
Speaker 1: of horses and draft animals wound up being slaughtered and
Speaker 1: eaten by their owners who were themselves starving. And it
Speaker 1: was bleak and tragic, obviously, But you know, if there's
Speaker 1: any bright side to it, it's that two great creations
Speaker 1: were inspired by this dreary atmosphere, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel
Speaker 1: and Baron Carl von Dreys's early bicycle.
Speaker 2: Ye know, I'm tempted. I've got a couple good frankensteinfachts
Speaker 2: that I'm ready to share with you for some reason,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to be disciplined. Let's stick to the
Speaker 2: bike for today, I think. So.
Speaker 1: In Germany, this guy Andres worked both as an inventor
Speaker 1: and also as a forestry master for the government, and
Speaker 1: this meant that he had to travel between the different
Speaker 1: parts of the forest that he was in charge of,
Speaker 1: which became pretty difficult once all the horses in the
Speaker 1: region had been eaten. So basically Von Dreis needed this reliable,
Speaker 1: horseless way to get around, and the solution he came
Speaker 1: up with was this two wheeled running machine or lout machine,
Speaker 1: as he called it. His device had no pedals, and
Speaker 1: as the name implies, the riders would actually have to
Speaker 1: run to propel it, kicking off the ground with their feet,
Speaker 1: kind of like you might on a scooter. Aside from
Speaker 1: the lack of pedals, though, the design looked pretty close
Speaker 1: to what we're used to today. It's got kind of
Speaker 1: like the two in line wheels, a seed, a pair
Speaker 1: of handlebars, so fairly similar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it almost makes me think of like those
Speaker 2: little balanced bikes that toddlers use, right.
Speaker 1: Totally, So it was exactly one of those kind of
Speaker 1: this protobike and Andre's Pattens's design in eighteen eighteen, and
Speaker 1: soon after that other manufacturers in England and France begin
Speaker 1: putting their own spins on the invention. So France comes
Speaker 1: up with a pretty cool name for the version, it's
Speaker 1: called a velocipede. England goes the other way. They call
Speaker 1: their bikes dandy horses.
Speaker 2: Which, yeah, one name is definitely cooler than the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean, I guess it's a tribute to
Speaker 1: their horses, which you know they'd eaten. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: long before the pedalist bikes made their way straightside as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at the timeline, one of
Speaker 2: the things that's funny is that it takes about another
Speaker 2: seventy years to go from these balanced bikes to the
Speaker 2: you know, like the gear and chain models with pedals.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that is well, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think part of the delay was that people were not
Speaker 2: at all convinced that it was possible to balance on
Speaker 2: a two wheeled bike, you know, while pedaling, and not
Speaker 2: just fall over. And so it's exactly what you were
Speaker 2: talking about at the top of the show. But a
Speaker 2: few decades of innovation eventually got us there. This was
Speaker 2: by the eighteen nineties, and the truth is, the basic
Speaker 2: form of the bike has stayed pretty much the same
Speaker 2: ever since then. But even with better bikes and growing popularity,
Speaker 2: the cyclist of the era still had a huge obstacle
Speaker 2: ahead of them, the main one being that all the
Speaker 2: roads pretty much everywhere were terrible. So they were unpaved, uneven,
Speaker 2: littered with holes, and easily turned into mud. So, as
Speaker 2: one New York Times article put it, the country roads
Speaker 2: where a Martian spring a sahara in summer, frozen stiff
Speaker 2: and later autumn, and a swamp wherever there was thought
Speaker 2: in winter, and so the urban roads weren't really that
Speaker 2: much better. I mean, they were often covered in wood
Speaker 2: planks at least, which made riding a little bit smoother,
Speaker 2: but still you'd sometimes have cyclists riding on the sidewalk
Speaker 2: just to get a break from this rough ride, and
Speaker 2: so this inevitably led to accidents where pedestrians would get
Speaker 2: knocked over, and then people would complain that bikes should
Speaker 2: be banned entirely. So it was a tough time to
Speaker 2: be a bike fan or a wheelman as they were
Speaker 2: called back then.
Speaker 1: How did things get better for bikers then?
Speaker 2: Well, instead of giving up, these cyclists formed advocacy groups,
Speaker 2: including the League of American Wheelmen, and they began advocating
Speaker 2: for paved roads throughout the country. There are more than
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand of these people that joined the cause,
Speaker 2: and due to the success of their grassroots efforts, the
Speaker 2: nation got its first paved roads in eighteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: So it's really no stretch to say that the early
Speaker 2: work of these cyclists literally paved the way for the
Speaker 2: national highway system. I had been waiting so long to
Speaker 2: be able to say that literally paved alay.
Speaker 1: That's pretty odd. Incredible both the fact and you're punning.
Speaker 1: But since we're giving the real men their due, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the real women of the
Speaker 1: day as well. Because as big as the bike craze
Speaker 1: was in general, from a cultural perspective, it was probably
Speaker 1: most significant to women. Before the bike came along in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, women had been expected to travel either
Speaker 1: on foot or on horseback or in a carriage. They
Speaker 1: were usually accompanied by a chaperone of some kind, and
Speaker 1: they rarely got to travel at speeds any faster than
Speaker 1: a leisurely trot. The bike changed all of that by
Speaker 1: giving women the chance to travel with a whole new
Speaker 1: level of independence. It completely flipped the table on this
Speaker 1: old fashioned view of women as the frails, slow going
Speaker 1: gentler sex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I feel like I can finish the story
Speaker 2: because I would imagine that newfound freedom was met with
Speaker 2: complete approval from the public and no backlash. Kind of
Speaker 2: changed everything for the better forever.
Speaker 1: Right of course, so you know, there had to be detractors,
Speaker 1: and many of them were saying that being able to
Speaker 1: travel free and unsupervised might somehow corrupt the women's morals.
Speaker 1: In fact, that there was even a business that crop
Speaker 1: up to help guard against this threat. It was called
Speaker 1: the Cyclist Chaperone Association, and according to its ad the
Speaker 1: company provided gentlewomen of good social position to conduct ladies
Speaker 1: on bicycle excursions and tours so nervous husbands could be
Speaker 1: put to ease. But you know, it wasn't just these
Speaker 1: husbands who were worried. Newspaper columnists all over the country
Speaker 1: were also baffled by the sudden appearance of wheelwomen. And
Speaker 1: here's what the confused editors at the San Francisco Call
Speaker 1: wrote in eighteen ninety five. Quote, it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: much where one individual young lady is going on her wheels.
Speaker 1: It may be she's going to the park, or to
Speaker 1: the store for a dozen hairpins, or to get a dollar,
Speaker 1: or to get a doily pattern of somebody, or a
Speaker 1: recipe for removing tens and freckles. Right right, of course,
Speaker 1: let that be as it may. What the interested public
Speaker 1: wishes to know is where are all the women on
Speaker 1: wheels going? You know, just one woman on an aaron
Speaker 1: for I guess a freckle cream is the type of
Speaker 1: thing you can excuse. But dozens of them traveling without
Speaker 1: knowing where the going is something to rail against. And
Speaker 1: the truth is, the outcry against women riding bikes did
Speaker 1: get pretty serious. So female cyclists were frequently harassed as
Speaker 1: they rode. Men and women would both taunt the riders,
Speaker 1: demanding they go home where they belong. Some women were
Speaker 1: banned from public places where male cyclists were permitted, and
Speaker 1: in the worst cases, the female cyclists were actually assaulted
Speaker 1: with rocks and bricks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like there's a lot more
Speaker 2: at play here than just not wanting women to ride bikes, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, And I do want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what exactly was fueling that outrage, including
Speaker 1: the role bikes played in the women's suffrage movement. But
Speaker 1: before we get into that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
Speaker 2: all the unexpected ways that bicycles changed the world. All right, mego,
Speaker 2: So before the break, you were saying that all the
Speaker 2: public outcry in the early twentieth century wasn't just about
Speaker 2: the bike's women were.
Speaker 1: Riding, right, Yeah, So the outrage was also partly about
Speaker 1: what women wore while riding bikes, So long skirts and
Speaker 1: dresses posed as a safety risk for female cyclists because
Speaker 1: they could get caught in the bike chains and spokes.
Speaker 1: And in light of this, the modest fashion of the
Speaker 1: Victorian age, it all started to give way and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, women were, I guess, taking up the
Speaker 1: scandalous practice of wearing ankle bearing bloomers in public. This
Speaker 1: was an appalling development for some people, and in fact,
Speaker 1: one US newspaper referred to the bloomers as a gateway garment. Man.
Speaker 2: I mean it starts with wearing bloomers, but the next thing,
Speaker 2: you know, like she's moved on to book learning, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's just dangerous, I know. And when you think about it,
Speaker 1: all that kind of criticism really just proved the level
Speaker 1: of cultural impact the women's movement was having. And probably
Speaker 1: the best example of that is the bicycle actually became
Speaker 1: a symbol of women's rights. This was both with Susan B.
Speaker 1: Anthony and Elizabeth Katie Stanton's credited as saying that women
Speaker 1: were quote riding the suffrage on the bicycle.
Speaker 2: I mean that was literally the case, though, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: suffragettes relied on bikes when they were out campaigning for
Speaker 2: the vote. They might not have won nearly as much
Speaker 2: support as they did without bikes to help them reach
Speaker 2: all these people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. In fact, The Atlantic ran this great
Speaker 1: article a few years ago about just how much of
Speaker 1: a game changer bikes were for women. It closes on
Speaker 1: this really beautiful sentiment that I wanted to share. It's
Speaker 1: from the author, Adrian Lefrance, and this is what she writes. Quote,
Speaker 1: Imagine what it must have felt like in an age
Speaker 1: when American women were still decades from the right to
Speaker 1: vote and inundated with men's opinions about their ankles for
Speaker 1: a women to go outside, hop on her bicycle, and
Speaker 1: ride as fast as she could wherever she wanted, leaving
Speaker 1: the rest of the world wondering where she might go next.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, maybe she's out looking for freckle cream.
Speaker 2: But maybe she's not. It's still really a mystery about it.
Speaker 2: But all right, let's talk about another public good that
Speaker 2: bikes are good for, which is they make perfect ambulances
Speaker 2: for ingested cities. So one of the first people to
Speaker 2: demonstrate just how effective a bike ambulance unit could be
Speaker 2: was this guy named Tom Lynch. And so what's interesting
Speaker 2: is that Lynch is a pro BMX rid turned London
Speaker 2: Ambulance driver. This really isn't that long ago. This was
Speaker 2: back in the eighties and nineties. Lynch was basically the
Speaker 2: Tony Hawk of BMX, but as he got a little
Speaker 2: bit older, he wanted what he considered, you know, a
Speaker 2: normal job, and for Lynch that meant training with the
Speaker 2: London Ambulance Service and becoming a licensed EMT, which he
Speaker 2: did in nineteen ninety four. But the more time Tom
Speaker 2: spent stuck in traffic on his way to a call,
Speaker 2: the more frustrated he became. So he often told his
Speaker 2: colleagues how much faster they'd be able to respond to
Speaker 2: calls if only they could use bikes instead of vans.
Speaker 2: No one else thought much of this idea, but Tom
Speaker 2: kept pushing it until finally, in nineteen ninety nine, Tom
Speaker 2: got permission to launch a trial version of the Ambulance
Speaker 2: Cycle Responsive Unit or CRU, which is just a great idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. You finally just kind of wore
Speaker 1: everyone down by talking about it all this time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah. Anyway, Tom used his connections in the
Speaker 2: bike industry to make sure all the top gear was
Speaker 2: on hand for his big trial run and He loaded
Speaker 2: up his bikes with all sorts of customized equipment, including
Speaker 2: a siren, special medic bags, and there was this fifty
Speaker 2: pound defibrillator, which are much lighter these days of course.
Speaker 1: And so you know, he set up the system like
Speaker 1: what are his metrics for success? Lay like, what's the
Speaker 1: goal of this? Exactly?
Speaker 2: Well, basically to be able to successfully answer nine to
Speaker 2: nine to nine calls in the West of London. And
Speaker 2: if you asked Tom, he says that he could tell
Speaker 2: early on that the new approach was definitely going to work.
Speaker 2: He told one interviewer, I was based around the West
Speaker 2: End and the calls were coming in and I was
Speaker 2: doing my best to ease pressure on the ambulance cruise.
Speaker 2: I would race the incidents, flying past traffic, cycling where
Speaker 2: motor vehicles couldn't go, and getting to patients quickly. I
Speaker 2: went to five incidents within one hour. I treated patients,
Speaker 2: canceled the ambulances and used other medical centers as opposed
Speaker 2: to the accident and emergency. And that last part is
Speaker 2: really the key in all of this, Like the bike
Speaker 2: EMT's free up ambulances to respond to the calls that
Speaker 2: actually require hospital treatment, not just the on site care. Yeah,
Speaker 2: super interesting. And one group that benefits from this big
Speaker 2: time is their heart attack victims, like where every second
Speaker 2: you're not breathing counts so much and so it really
Speaker 2: helped a ton on that front.
Speaker 1: So where does this cycle crew operate? Is it mainly
Speaker 1: like a London thing or has it expanded?
Speaker 2: No, the unit Tom found that is now composed of
Speaker 2: several teams that operate all over London. More than one
Speaker 2: hundred paramedics and trained volunteers are involved. But other similar
Speaker 2: teams have started popping up in major cities across Europe,
Speaker 2: some of the US, even China and Japan. So each
Speaker 2: of those cycle response teams now responds to thousands of
Speaker 2: calls every year. And it's all because a big hearted
Speaker 2: bmx or just couldn't stand being stuck in traffic.
Speaker 1: I love that. Well. I know we wanted to circle
Speaker 1: back and talk about the neuroscience behind biking, but that
Speaker 1: was such a feel good story. I just want to
Speaker 1: bask him the glow for a minute. Why don't we
Speaker 1: take another quick break and then we can jump right
Speaker 1: back in. Welcome back to part time Genius. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so today's show is clearly all about bicycles. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: I have to tell you about something amazing I found
Speaker 1: out about this week, and it's all about unicycles.
Speaker 2: M you know, this is a bike episode, so I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that's a little Frankenstein fack no unicycle and
Speaker 2: Loell is definitely shaking his head. But I actually because
Speaker 2: he's doing that, I kind of like breaking Loll's rules.
Speaker 1: So if you insist, let's hear the story. Okay, So
Speaker 1: here's my fact. Unicycles have basically become a cornerstone of
Speaker 1: Japan's educational curriculum.
Speaker 2: Is Japan like really into clowns or something? I've just
Speaker 2: somehow never noticed this. How did that happen?
Speaker 1: I don't know that there are any countries that are
Speaker 1: still really into In Japan's case, the real apeeal is
Speaker 1: that unicycling can be a good way to teach and
Speaker 1: improve both motor skills and balance, and the idea to
Speaker 1: use unicycles in schools with the result of a series
Speaker 1: of studies done in Japan in the nineteen eighties, I
Speaker 1: guess researchers found that children who learned to ride a
Speaker 1: unicycle were more successful at school and in their home
Speaker 1: lives than children who didn't.
Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting. So did they figure out why that
Speaker 2: would be the case?
Speaker 1: I guess the leading theory is that it's because the
Speaker 1: high level of concentration that it takes to ride a
Speaker 1: unicycle like that kind of focus engages a different area
Speaker 1: of the brain than other physical activities, including biking.
Speaker 2: So, based on these findings, Japanese schools started teaching kids
Speaker 2: to ride unicycles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess the Ministry of Education added unicycling to
Speaker 1: the p curriculum in all of the country's elementary schools.
Speaker 1: But Japan's schools aren't the only place you actually find this. Today,
Speaker 1: there are unicycle programs in schools across the US, and
Speaker 1: more and more educators are starting to see unicycles as
Speaker 1: a tool not just for brain development, but for character development.
Speaker 1: So you think about people like the psychologist and Angela
Speaker 1: Duckworth who talks about like the most important metric for
Speaker 1: a person's successes is grit, because that's kind of what
Speaker 1: makes you keep trying when you fail instead of giving up.
Speaker 1: So riding a unicycle is so unnatural and so awkward
Speaker 1: and hard that the kids in these programs fall off
Speaker 1: dozens of times before they finally start to get it,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of like thought to reinforce that perseverance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of that famous Samuel
Speaker 2: Beckett quote. I think it was try again, fail again,
Speaker 2: fail better, but away. Speaking of well known phrases, you
Speaker 2: know the old cliche about how once you've learned to
Speaker 2: ride a bike, you never forget right. Sure, well, it
Speaker 2: was always a strange saying to me because it seemed
Speaker 2: to imply that riding a bike is super simple, like
Speaker 2: you could pick it up anytime in life and just
Speaker 2: nail it without practice. But the truth is that riding
Speaker 2: a bike is incredibly complex as a task. So, according
Speaker 2: to the author and world class endurance athlete Christopher Bergland,
Speaker 2: riding a bike quote requires seamless coordination, dexter, and an
Speaker 2: intuitive ability to subconsciously calculate algorithms that take into the
Speaker 2: account the forces of gravity, velocity, and momentum. Makes me
Speaker 2: feel so smart that it can ride a bike? No,
Speaker 2: and then I'm doing all of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, as we talked about at the top,
Speaker 1: there's a lot that goes into it that we don't
Speaker 1: even think about. So in that sense, it's not that
Speaker 1: riding a bike is actually easy. It's more that our
Speaker 1: brains process all this information so efficiently that riding a
Speaker 1: bike seems easy to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But here's the thing, like, despite all that
Speaker 2: hard work from our brains, it turns out that we
Speaker 2: can absolutely still forget how to ride a bicycle.
Speaker 1: So not only is it cliche, it's also inaccurate.
Speaker 2: It is definitely inaccurate. And we know that partly because
Speaker 2: of this oddball experiment that a guy named Destin Sandlin
Speaker 2: did a few years back. We of course worked with
Speaker 2: Deston some when we were at Mental Flaws, But he
Speaker 2: has this this show called Smarter every Day. It's a
Speaker 2: channel on YouTube, super popular channel, and if you haven't
Speaker 2: seen the video, it's called Backwards Brain Bicycle. And the
Speaker 2: gist of it is that Deston took a bicycle and
Speaker 2: basically inverted the steering direction of the handlebars, So if
Speaker 2: you turn the handlebars right, the front wheel would go
Speaker 2: left and vice versa. So in that scenario, all the
Speaker 2: automatic motor skills that a person develops from years of
Speaker 2: riding a regular bicycle, all of a sudden those are
Speaker 2: just worthless. And the effect is that anyone who tries
Speaker 2: to ride the backwards brain bike pretty much tips over
Speaker 2: or falls off the bike before they've even gone two feet.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Deston spent months riding only this backwards bike, and
Speaker 2: little by little he slowly got used to the inverted
Speaker 2: steering of it all.
Speaker 1: It is one of those things like I actually saw
Speaker 1: a clip of someone riding in and thinking like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I could like think around that challenge. It doesn't seem
Speaker 1: that difficult, but clearly it is. So it is confusing though.
Speaker 1: It feels like this isn't so much about forgetting how
Speaker 1: to ride a bike, it's more kind of learning how
Speaker 1: to ride a different kind of bike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that part is true, But that's where
Speaker 2: this gets weird because when Deston tried to switch back
Speaker 2: to riding a normal bicycle, he couldn't do it. Like,
Speaker 2: he fell over again and again until finally something clicked
Speaker 2: in his brain and he was able to ride his
Speaker 2: bike again. So the takeaway is that you can indeed
Speaker 2: forget how to ride a bicycle, but the good news
Speaker 2: is that if you practice, you'll probably be able to
Speaker 2: relearn the automatic motor skill pretty quickly the next time around.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, since we're talking about the logistics, and
Speaker 1: science of bicycling. I think it's only right that we
Speaker 1: spend a minute on what's probably the biggest mystery in
Speaker 1: the whole field, and that is, of course, how did
Speaker 1: they get Kermit to ride a bike in the Muppet Movie?
Speaker 2: Totally, that is the biggest mystery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for anyone listening. If you don't know, we'veeeing him
Speaker 1: talking about pauses, go watch the Muppet movie, the entire
Speaker 1: Muppet movie, and then come back.
Speaker 2: I can watch the whole thing.
Speaker 1: We'll wait. In the beginning of the flick, Kermit's riding
Speaker 1: his bike across town, and in the context of the story,
Speaker 1: it's this incredibly simple moment, right, But when you watch it,
Speaker 1: it's pretty mind blowing, partially because they keep zooming in
Speaker 1: on his feet, like you know on some level that
Speaker 1: Kermit is a puppet and that he's being controlled by
Speaker 1: Jim Henson or what I off the screen, but you
Speaker 1: can see Kermit's whole body and you can see his
Speaker 1: feet actually turning the pedals, and this blue audiences away.
Speaker 1: When they first saw it back in the seventies, the
Speaker 1: Muppets had actually never been seen in the real world
Speaker 1: like this before. They had always been tethered to a
Speaker 1: stage or studio. But what's interesting is the technology that
Speaker 1: made it happen was also very simple. There's no audio, animatronics,
Speaker 1: there's no green screen, none of that. Instead, the Kermit
Speaker 1: in the scene is just a regular marionette with nearly
Speaker 1: invisible strings attached to his body and limbs. The other
Speaker 1: ends of the strings are connected to a camera crane
Speaker 1: that's suspended above him out of shot, so as the
Speaker 1: bike moved forward, the crane would move along with it,
Speaker 1: and Kermit and his bike would stay upright and balanced,
Speaker 1: which is super simple. But according to the puppeteer Dave Goles,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the original approach. The crew had actually assembled
Speaker 1: what he said quote was a very sophisticated bicycle rig
Speaker 1: that was made from a little radio controlled car that
Speaker 1: was mounted in the bike between the front and rear wheels,
Speaker 1: but it actually broke before the shoe, so they ended
Speaker 1: up rejiggering it with three strings from a camera crane.
Speaker 1: It is also possibly Kermit's best line in the world,
Speaker 1: or at least my favorite Kurmit line. And what's that
Speaker 1: He almost gets to his accident with his giant construction
Speaker 1: equipment and his bike gets demolished, and you'd think he's toast,
Speaker 1: but then you realize he's jumped out of the way,
Speaker 1: and he says, that's pretty dangerous building a road in
Speaker 1: the middle of the street. If frogs couldn't hop, I'd
Speaker 1: be gone with a shwin. A terrible fun but also
Speaker 1: one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: I could keep shaking my head for the rest of
Speaker 2: the episode, but instead, why don't we jump straight into
Speaker 2: the fact off?
Speaker 1: So here's a quick one. I remember from an article
Speaker 1: we did in Mental plus years ago. But apparently bikes
Speaker 1: had a huge effect on romance and specifically long distance courtships. So,
Speaker 1: according to Julie Winterbottom, when the prices on bikes dropped
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties, suddenly it opened up this whole
Speaker 1: new world of dating, like people could finally date outside
Speaker 1: their family's friend circles or their churches or parishes. And
Speaker 1: it was the first time this has kind of happened.
Speaker 1: And according to British geneticist Steve Jones, this widening of
Speaker 1: the gene pool had a huge impact on humanity. In fact,
Speaker 1: he calls the bicycle quote the most important event in
Speaker 1: recent human evolution.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a big claim. All right, well, I've found
Speaker 2: this amazing NPR interview with a guy named Daniel Kish
Speaker 2: who is blind but not only rides a bike, he
Speaker 2: rides it through traffic. So basically he uses echolocation, which
Speaker 2: we've talked about several times in previous episodes. So he
Speaker 2: clicks his tongue and uses the reverberations to create spatial
Speaker 2: awareness of buildings and vehicles and other things around him.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's pretty remarkable, but he doesn't really see
Speaker 2: it that way, as he told reporters. Quote, when a
Speaker 2: sighted child gets hurt, we consider it to be unfortunate,
Speaker 2: Kish says, when a blind child gets hurt, we consider
Speaker 2: it to be tragic. It's a double standard that disadvantages
Speaker 2: a blind child, he says, which you know, I guess
Speaker 2: that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So here's one about an Italian cyclist named Alfredo Binda.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of this guy? I have not.
Speaker 1: So apparently he was just dominant in the sport and
Speaker 1: at winning the Giro, which I guess is the tour
Speaker 1: of Italy that they have. He won it over and
Speaker 1: over in nineteen twenty five, nineteen twenty seven, twenty eight,
Speaker 1: twenty nine. And so this is like Italy's version of
Speaker 1: the Tour de France, and it was good for the
Speaker 1: newspaper business initially, right, like he's this like underdog, his hero.
Speaker 1: Then he keeps winning, and his wins become bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger and so regular that the paper's sales start declining.
Speaker 1: So the organizers actually offered to pay him the equivalent
Speaker 1: of the winning sum not to race.
Speaker 2: So did he accept it?
Speaker 1: He did, I guess he quickly calculated that he could
Speaker 1: buy two more houses with the winnings, so he took
Speaker 1: the money and used it for this great investment. But
Speaker 1: he did come back to win the race again a
Speaker 1: few years later.
Speaker 2: Oh that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's funny that you brought
Speaker 2: up Italian cyclists, because I've got another Italian I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about. This is Gino Bartali, who won the
Speaker 2: twur Defrance in nineteen thirty eight. But then he made
Speaker 2: the surprising move of not dedicating his win to Mussolini. Instead,
Speaker 2: he decided to work for the resistance, so he helped
Speaker 2: Jews escape the country by stuffing counterfeit identity papers into
Speaker 2: his handlebars and his bike frame. Basically, he would fill
Speaker 2: up the insides of his bike with papers and then
Speaker 2: go on these long training runs in order to deliver them.
Speaker 2: And if he was ever stopped for a police search,
Speaker 2: he was famous enough that he'd ask the cops not
Speaker 2: to mess with his perfectly calibrated bicycle. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was the perfect cover. It's just brilliant. According to an
Speaker 2: article in Mental Flaws, by the time he eventually went
Speaker 2: into hiding, quote, he had cycled thousands of miles to
Speaker 2: help hundreds escape.
Speaker 1: That is a great story and I think you just
Speaker 1: earned yourself the trophy with that one. Although I might
Speaker 1: pay you not to compete the next time a round.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll consider it if I can buy a house.
Speaker 2: But all right, well, thank you to the bicycle for
Speaker 2: givings better dating options, freedom for women, and the greatest
Speaker 2: joke the Muppets ever told. That's going to do it
Speaker 2: for today's Part Time Genius for myself, Mango, Gabe, and Lowell.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back soon with
Speaker 2: another episode. Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite show.