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