Speaker 1: Guess what will? What's that? Mango? So have you heard
Speaker 1: of this experiment from Albany Medical College where they tried
Speaker 1: to figure out whether rats like jazz or classical music more?
Speaker 1: I don't know how I haven't heard about this because
Speaker 1: it seems like a really important experiment, and actually I
Speaker 1: have to meet I am curious so so so which
Speaker 1: one do they like? More? So? The scientists played for
Speaker 1: a lease on loop for ninety minutes, and then they'd
Speaker 1: switched to Miles Davis and his song four, So they
Speaker 1: just go from Ford for at least to four. And
Speaker 1: of course they discovered that the rats like silence better
Speaker 1: than continuous music. But when they had to choose, the
Speaker 1: rats like Beethoven more than hard bop. And I guess
Speaker 1: that makes sense. If we're talking about on repeat and
Speaker 1: they're having to hear this over and over, I guess
Speaker 1: it's a little more soothing, right, Yeah. But the experimenters
Speaker 1: weren't done then, so I have no idea why they
Speaker 1: did this. They injected the rats with cocaine after this
Speaker 1: for seven straight days, and once the rats had this
Speaker 1: cocaine just racing through their system, they couldn't get enough.
Speaker 1: Miles Davis also makes sense fairly. Science tells us that
Speaker 1: coked up rats really love jazz. But there's a whole
Speaker 1: world of questionable science experiments, from the weird to the
Speaker 1: funny to the seriously ill advised. And that's what today's
Speaker 1: show is all about. Let's dig in a their 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: and on the other side of the soundproof glass, putting
Speaker 1: his good name on the line for the sake of
Speaker 1: science conducting what is we assume the first ever scientific
Speaker 1: attempt to bring a potato back to life. That's our
Speaker 1: friend and producer Tristan McNeil, a potato back to life. Mano,
Speaker 1: this is big science. I saw the potatoes, I saw
Speaker 1: the labco I had no idea what was going on there.
Speaker 1: I think that's what the defibrillator is for. And you
Speaker 1: might be wondering how you can tell the difference between
Speaker 1: a live and a dead potato. Well, those are all
Speaker 1: heavy questions, and hopefully Tristan's work will help shed some
Speaker 1: light on just a few of those. It may be
Speaker 1: two over our heads. We'll see most of what Tristan
Speaker 1: does is But anyway, I know this experiment sounds ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but honestly, everything on today's show sounds a little ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So we'll dig into some of the weirdest, most questionable
Speaker 1: science experiments in history. Now, Mango, I know, for a
Speaker 1: while as a kid you wanted to be a scientist,
Speaker 1: and I've heard you talk about some of the experiments
Speaker 1: you conducted. So did you come up with any terrible
Speaker 1: experiments along the way? So many? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: my dad's a scientist, and he's a good one. So
Speaker 1: we test things and I tell him about inventions, ideas
Speaker 1: for inventions I had, Like I had an idea for
Speaker 1: a d microwave, and the whole idea was that, like
Speaker 1: you could cool down a hot bagel fast. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you tell me like why it would or wouldn't work,
Speaker 1: or what I'd have to think about. But I think
Speaker 1: the biggest failure I had as a kid was in
Speaker 1: second grade and my friends and I were at the
Speaker 1: bus stop and we always wanted a day off from school,
Speaker 1: you know, especially when the weather was nice, because you
Speaker 1: want to stay home and play and whatever. So I
Speaker 1: hatched this amazing scheme, like our our friend Kristen had
Speaker 1: access to a ton of gum for some reason, and
Speaker 1: I knew that gum on the ground is sticky when
Speaker 1: you step on it. And I don't remember how we
Speaker 1: calculated this out, but there were drawings and some terrible
Speaker 1: math involved, but we figured that if we could get
Speaker 1: a big enough wad of sticky gum in the right place,
Speaker 1: the school bus tire would probably stick to it and
Speaker 1: get stuck there for the day and we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to go to school. I really want to hear that
Speaker 1: this worked, but I'm going to guess that maybe this
Speaker 1: didn't work. Yeah, of course not. I mean, my calculations
Speaker 1: were off, I guess. And but the plan was like
Speaker 1: so elaborate. We we planned about it, we talked about it,
Speaker 1: We made this giant wad of gum, and then we
Speaker 1: placed it in what we thought was going to be
Speaker 1: the perfect spot. And then the school bus tire didn't
Speaker 1: even roll over and so super anti climatic, and we
Speaker 1: sort of like deflatedly walked onto the school bus. But uh,
Speaker 1: now that I think about, the gum was also care free,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't really like a sticky type of gum.
Speaker 1: That was your problem because care Free was it's sugarless, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean you go to war with the gum
Speaker 1: you have and it was not a great day for science.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, today's show is all about odds science experiments,
Speaker 1: and just because their bizarre doesn't mean we should automatically
Speaker 1: discount them. In fact, I was reading this article by
Speaker 1: Alex Boss and he wrote a great book about odds
Speaker 1: science experiments, and there's a section where Alex explains why
Speaker 1: he first got into weird projects and and why he
Speaker 1: believes they should still be thought of as worthwhile. So
Speaker 1: I just want to read a bit from this. So
Speaker 1: here's what he says. I confess I had no profound
Speaker 1: intellectual motive at first. I simply found them fascinating. They
Speaker 1: filled me with disbelief, astonishment, discussed, and best of all laughter.
Speaker 1: But with hindsight, perhaps there is a deeper message. These
Speaker 1: experiments are not the work of cranks. All were performed
Speaker 1: by honest, hard working scientists who were not prepared to
Speaker 1: accept a common sense explanation of how the world works.
Speaker 1: Sometimes such single mindedness leads to brilliant discoveries. At other
Speaker 1: times it can end up closer to madness. Unfortunately, there's
Speaker 1: no way of knowing in advance where the journey will lead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's certainly something to keep in mind as
Speaker 1: we go along. But while it might be true that
Speaker 1: none of the people that Alex talked about were crackpots,
Speaker 1: some of the ones I want to talk about definitely work.
Speaker 1: So this includes the first guy we've gone on the list,
Speaker 1: a Renaissance era physician and alchemist named Paracelsus. Now Parasulsis
Speaker 1: is known for doing some of the earliest research in
Speaker 1: toxicology and also psychotherapy, which are I guess both weird
Speaker 1: in their own right, but without doubt his strongest claim
Speaker 1: to theme was his account of how to grow your
Speaker 1: own homunculous. To grow your own homunculous, mega can grow
Speaker 1: your own I do want to confess I'm a little
Speaker 1: rusty on my pseudoscience lingo from what you said the right. So, so,
Speaker 1: what exactly is a humunculous. It's a mythological creature. Apparently,
Speaker 1: parasols Is believed in all sorts of those, including giants
Speaker 1: and wood nymphs. But homunculus was basically like a tiny
Speaker 1: living human the size of a doll or something and
Speaker 1: Paracelsis actually claimed to have made his own, which he
Speaker 1: said was about a foot tall. Right, And you said
Speaker 1: this man was a doctor, right, Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was easier to get into medical school back then. Some
Speaker 1: people thought he was a medical genius. Others thought he
Speaker 1: was more of this loud mouth drunk type. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: the truth was somewhere in between. But these are actually
Speaker 1: the instructions Paracelsus has laid out to create your own
Speaker 1: little homunculus. So here we go. Let the seat of
Speaker 1: a man by itself be putrified in a gored glass
Speaker 1: and sealed up in horse done for the space of
Speaker 1: forty days, until so long as it begins to be alive,
Speaker 1: move and stir. After this time, it will be something
Speaker 1: like a man, yet transparent and without a body. Now,
Speaker 1: after this, if it be every day warily, imprudently nourished
Speaker 1: and fed with man's blood, and be kept for the
Speaker 1: ace of forty weeks and a constant equal heat of
Speaker 1: horse dung, it will become a true and living infant.
Speaker 1: You know what, just hearing this, it kind of makes
Speaker 1: me want to go back and watch those old s
Speaker 1: n L skits where Steve Martin played the medieval barber,
Speaker 1: because it sounds like pretty similar advice. And you know,
Speaker 1: I admire paracelsis ingenuity, and obviously at the time they
Speaker 1: had a much different set of knowledge. But I feel
Speaker 1: like it might be smarter for the human race to
Speaker 1: stick with the you know, the old fashioned horse dung
Speaker 1: freeway to make a true and living infant. But anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, word of crazy experiments like this and these
Speaker 1: medical fallacies, they got passed around a lot during the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages and even into the Renaissance. So much so,
Speaker 1: in fact, that a physician philosopher named Sir Thomas Brown
Speaker 1: actually put together a massive list of these widely believed
Speaker 1: tall tales, and he referred to these as vulgar errors.
Speaker 1: So Brown would go around testing all these absurd claims
Speaker 1: in order to disprove them once and for all. So,
Speaker 1: for example, one weird idea that it's bred in the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds was that you could an accurate weather vane
Speaker 1: just by hanging a dead kingfisher bird from a string.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. I love art and crafts projects.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that didn't end wilda well. Apparently he found
Speaker 1: himself a dead kingfisher one day, and he hung it
Speaker 1: up from a beam outside, and much to his dismay,
Speaker 1: the bird just sort of dangled and seemed to sway
Speaker 1: at random, you know, as you'd expect from a corpse
Speaker 1: of a dead bird. But you know, being this man
Speaker 1: of science, Brown knew he couldn't definitively disprove this claim
Speaker 1: with just a single dead kingfisher, So he got another one,
Speaker 1: strung it up next to the first, and watched his
Speaker 1: both birds spun aimlessly in different directions. So with that,
Speaker 1: with that degree of science, Mango Brown was able to
Speaker 1: say conclusively that dead kingfishers are a poor way to
Speaker 1: determine win direction. So forget trying. This is just not
Speaker 1: gonna work. I do like that it took uh, just
Speaker 1: two dead birds to put a stop to this idea.
Speaker 1: But you know, no one else had thought of this,
Speaker 1: and I feel sorry for like whatever poor salesman at
Speaker 1: the market had stocked up on baskets of kingfishers, and
Speaker 1: I guess like Brown just ruined his entire business model.
Speaker 1: That's all there. And other interesting cat I came across
Speaker 1: was this guy named Johann Conrad Dipple, and he was
Speaker 1: this German scientist in the late sixteen hundreds who had
Speaker 1: actually been born in the real Castle Frankenstein, which is
Speaker 1: kind of amazing. And of course he had a lot
Speaker 1: of ideas. Probably his least bizarre achievement was that he
Speaker 1: developed one of the world's first synthetic pigments, in fact,
Speaker 1: the first. It's a dye called Prussian blue that's still
Speaker 1: in use today. Yeah, I've heard of Prussian blue. But
Speaker 1: I think you said least bizarre achievements. So what was
Speaker 1: his most bizarre achievement? Yeah, I did because I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about Dipple's oil. It was supposed to be
Speaker 1: kind of a life extending potion, but was in reality
Speaker 1: just this like terrible, disgusting slurry made from a mix
Speaker 1: of random animal bones and hides. It's too bad. I'm
Speaker 1: curious that did he sell a lot of dipples oil.
Speaker 1: Imagine it must have been a big hit with the
Speaker 1: local villagers there. Yeah, you'd think so, but not so much.
Speaker 1: In fact, Dipple was eventually run out of town because
Speaker 1: of all these rumors that started circulating about what he
Speaker 1: was really doing in his lab. Like one of the
Speaker 1: rumors claimed that Dipple was a grave robber and that
Speaker 1: he'd once tried to move a soul from one corpse
Speaker 1: to another using just a funnel, a hose and a
Speaker 1: bit of lubricants. You need the lubricant to get it through.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think we can both agree that that's
Speaker 1: a bit of the suspect signs there. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess so I could see where they were going with that.
Speaker 1: But but I do see what you mean about him
Speaker 1: being a mad scientist, all right, But if you don't mind,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to transition away from the total
Speaker 1: crackpots and start talking about some of the scientists who
Speaker 1: are maybe I don't know, just a little misguided instead.
Speaker 1: And thankfully, I think I have the perfect person to
Speaker 1: help us make that leap, because he really does tow
Speaker 1: this line between those two types. And his name was
Speaker 1: Stubborn's Firth. Isn't that a great name. It just seems
Speaker 1: like somebody that would tow those lines full Stubbens. But
Speaker 1: in the early nineteenth century he was training to be
Speaker 1: a doctor in Philadelphia, and during this time Stubbins began
Speaker 1: studying the effects of yellow fever, and that was, of
Speaker 1: course a disease that had laid ways to the area's
Speaker 1: population just a few years before this, and he had
Speaker 1: noticed that the fever hardest hit in the summer months,
Speaker 1: and then it would disappear almost entirely by wintertime, and
Speaker 1: so this led him to the conclusion that all these
Speaker 1: widely held opinions about yellow fever being contagious were completely false.
Speaker 1: So to him, it seemed much more likely that yellow
Speaker 1: fever was brought on by excessive heat and food and noise,
Speaker 1: and all of these things were much more abundant in
Speaker 1: the summer than they were in the winter. I like
Speaker 1: the idea of just a lot of noise causing yellow fever.
Speaker 1: It does sound like this guy's heart was in the
Speaker 1: right place. Like, I know, this doesn't feel like a
Speaker 1: sound theory, But what goes on from here? Well, this
Speaker 1: is where Stubborns needed proof on this. So so the
Speaker 1: doctor and training began a series of self experiments to
Speaker 1: show that no matter how often he was exposed to
Speaker 1: yellow fever, he would never catch it. And not being
Speaker 1: the kind of guy to do anything halfway, Stubbors decided
Speaker 1: that his best chance to ensure he was properly exposed
Speaker 1: to the disease was to use This was the quote
Speaker 1: from this notebook, fresh black Vomit from Yellow fever patients.
Speaker 1: So this is already disgusting and I'm pretty grossed out,
Speaker 1: but I do have to ask, like, what do you
Speaker 1: mean by he used it? He used to how well
Speaker 1: in all sorts of ways, and this actually gets even
Speaker 1: more disgusting. But here the way. So first he tried
Speaker 1: to make small cuts on his arms, and then he
Speaker 1: would pour some of this vomit into his wounds. Next
Speaker 1: he DAPs some of the mess directly into his eyes.
Speaker 1: Then he heated some in a skillet and inhaled the fumes.
Speaker 1: And then lastly, as if those things weren't gross enough,
Speaker 1: he just went for it. And I'm not joking. I
Speaker 1: think you saw this coming. He just chugged some of
Speaker 1: the stuff, which makes me feel sick just hearing it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, Stubbns never got sick, which, of course,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how he would know that he
Speaker 1: didn't get sick, because I can't imagine doing any of
Speaker 1: these things and not vomiting yourself. But he took this
Speaker 1: all as proof for his theory, so I don't understand
Speaker 1: how any of that's possible. Like I thought yellow fever
Speaker 1: was contagious, so it definitely has. I mean, it's highly contagious.
Speaker 1: But as we know, the disease needs to come into
Speaker 1: direct contact with the blood stream in order to cause
Speaker 1: that infection. And that's likely why Stubborns observed so many
Speaker 1: more cases of yellow fever in the summer. There were
Speaker 1: just more mosquitoes around to spread the disease. So I
Speaker 1: get that, But why didn't Stubborns get sick when he
Speaker 1: was cutting himself in you know, like exposing that stuff
Speaker 1: to his cuts, And I mean that that had to
Speaker 1: get in his blood stream right, Well, normally yes, But
Speaker 1: as it turned out in this case, most of the
Speaker 1: patients whose samples he used were in the late stages
Speaker 1: of yellow fever, and by that point they were actually
Speaker 1: no longer contagious. Though of course, you know Stubborns didn't
Speaker 1: know this. Well, I mean, i'd say we're firmly in
Speaker 1: the realm of misguided experiments after that one. So I'm
Speaker 1: actually gonna keep the ball rolling with what I hope
Speaker 1: will be something of a palate cleanser. And this is
Speaker 1: this crazy study I found out about mating instincts of turkeys.
Speaker 1: I like how you're calling mating instincts of turkeys a
Speaker 1: a palette, but tell me more here. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: turkey and moves bush. So wild turkeys are notoriously difficult
Speaker 1: to hunt, which is why human hunters often resort to
Speaker 1: these lifelike decoy models of female turkeys. They use these
Speaker 1: to lure the bigger male birds to them, and the
Speaker 1: males don't seem to mind or even notice the difference.
Speaker 1: For the most part. They're actually perfectly content to mate
Speaker 1: with these phony birds. And that behavior is actually what
Speaker 1: caught the attention of these two researchers at the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania. Oh wow, so we're back in Pennsylvania again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a hotbed of science. But anyway, these guys that
Speaker 1: you pen started wondering what was the minimal stimulus for
Speaker 1: exciting a turkey, and so to figure that out, they
Speaker 1: decided to gradually remove parts from a decoy turkey until
Speaker 1: the male inevitably lost interests. So first they removed the
Speaker 1: tail and the tail feathers, and then the feet and
Speaker 1: lastly the wings. But despite all of these missing appendages,
Speaker 1: the males were still eager to meete with the decoy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they just love the personnel. And
Speaker 1: eventually the researchers were down to just ahead on a stick,
Speaker 1: and the strangest far is that the mail try keys
Speaker 1: were still interested. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. I have to
Speaker 1: admit I feel slightly scandalized and more than a little
Speaker 1: concerned about what the good people of Pennsylvania are doing
Speaker 1: with their time. All in the name of science, I guess.
Speaker 1: But alright, well, since you open the seal on weird
Speaker 1: animal studies, there's one I've been dying to tell you about. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. You're listening to
Speaker 1: part Time Genius, and we're talking about some of the
Speaker 1: strangest experiments in the history of science. Now for better
Speaker 1: Whereas many of the weirdest projects do tend to involve
Speaker 1: animal test subjects, but rather than focusing on the more
Speaker 1: upsetting ones where animals come to harm, instead, I want
Speaker 1: to tell you the story of a young boy and
Speaker 1: his adopted chimpanzee sister. And yes, I said it, his
Speaker 1: adopted sister. Now, probably the most troubling aspect of this
Speaker 1: one is that the boy's father decided to carry out
Speaker 1: his experiment using his own son. But don't worry before
Speaker 1: I tell you about this, the boy makes it through unharmed,
Speaker 1: or at least more or less unharmed anyway. The father's
Speaker 1: name was Winthrop Kellogg, and he was a psychologist who
Speaker 1: wondered what would happen if an animal was raised by
Speaker 1: humans as a human. This was in the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: so if you think about the time, then this is
Speaker 1: when you know the Tarzan books were all the rage,
Speaker 1: and there are also several real life accounts of feral
Speaker 1: children who had been raised by animals, and so Kellogg
Speaker 1: was inspired by these stories and he wanted to test
Speaker 1: the opposite case, like, if an animal was raised as
Speaker 1: a human, would it eventually act like a human too?
Speaker 1: Oh so it's like a bizarro jungle book or like
Speaker 1: the reverse of a Mowgli situation. Yeah. So So that
Speaker 1: in Kellogg brought home a seven month old female champion
Speaker 1: zee named Gua, and he and his wife, who must
Speaker 1: have been this extremely patient woman, started raising the alongside
Speaker 1: their ten month old son Donald. And the Kelloggs treated
Speaker 1: their two kids exactly the same. Donald and Gua were
Speaker 1: allowed to play together, they ate together. They also took
Speaker 1: part in regular tests to track their development. For example,
Speaker 1: there was this one cookie test where the Kelloggs hung
Speaker 1: a cookie from a string in the middle of the room,
Speaker 1: and then they timed how long it took the boy
Speaker 1: and the chimp to reach it. Okay, so I mean
Speaker 1: he was pitting a chimp against a baby, so the
Speaker 1: chip mop the floor with him, not surprising, it was
Speaker 1: no contest. In fact, Want typically outperformed Donald on just
Speaker 1: about all the tests they took, except some of the
Speaker 1: ones that involved language acquisition. So I know this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be like a non upsetting study, but constantly
Speaker 1: losing to a chimp couldn't have been good for a
Speaker 1: kid's self esteem, right, probably not, But you know, one
Speaker 1: downside did become clear about nine months into the experiment,
Speaker 1: and and that was that baby Donald's own language skills
Speaker 1: were not as far along as they should have been.
Speaker 1: And looking back on this, that's probably not such a
Speaker 1: big surprise. But it he sometimes did better than Gua
Speaker 1: on their language based test, it really wasn't by much,
Speaker 1: and so it started to look like, rather than Donald
Speaker 1: having a humanizing effect on Gua, he was actually starting
Speaker 1: to adapt some to her way instead. And the deciding
Speaker 1: moment came one day when Donald let his parents know
Speaker 1: how hungry he was by imitating the barking sounds that
Speaker 1: Gua was making whenever she wanted. So when the Kellogg's
Speaker 1: heard the food bark coming from their human son, they
Speaker 1: decided then it was time to pull the plug on
Speaker 1: the experiment. But I like that it took that much
Speaker 1: to get them to realize maybe it wasn't a great idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like a smart move. But strangely enough, the
Speaker 1: Kellogg's weren't the only scientists parents to use their own
Speaker 1: kids as test subjects. So I was reading about this
Speaker 1: other psychologist from the nineteen thirties named Clarence Luba, and
Speaker 1: he used his own kids to determine if people learned
Speaker 1: to laugh when tickled or if it's an innate response.
Speaker 1: I mean, this sounds more pleasant than being pitted against
Speaker 1: the chimp. But I mean, if you're going to use
Speaker 1: your own kids as test subjects, at least don't be
Speaker 1: creepy about it, you know. Yeah, I mean I guess
Speaker 1: the is on your definition of creepy. Because Luba decided
Speaker 1: that he shouldn't laugh or show a happy expression while
Speaker 1: he was tickling his kids because that might ruin the experiment. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea is that they might mimic his
Speaker 1: behavior or use it to infer the proper response is
Speaker 1: to laugh when tickled. So just to prevent that, Luba
Speaker 1: actually banned all unauthorized tickling in his household and he
Speaker 1: institute these clinical daily tickling sessions instead. And during these
Speaker 1: designated tickling times, uh, Luba would hide his facial expressions
Speaker 1: behind a mask and then joylessly tickle his son. Oh,
Speaker 1: I take it back, man, this is the creepiest thing
Speaker 1: I've ever heard me or tickling sessions. That's just I
Speaker 1: don't know, maga, It's just like deeply unnerving. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: Luba even took this measured approach to how he tickled
Speaker 1: his son, like first he started with a light tickle
Speaker 1: and then he would like tickle more enthusiastically, and he
Speaker 1: always did the same order like he um. I think
Speaker 1: he started under the armpits and then went to the
Speaker 1: ribs and then chin, neck, knees, feet, and uh. He
Speaker 1: kept this up for a full seven months, and then
Speaker 1: after that he repeated the experiment for another seven months
Speaker 1: with his daughter when she was born. This is just
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear about this one anymore because
Speaker 1: I I guess I am curious, though, So what were
Speaker 1: Louba's results. Well, in both cases, as you might guess,
Speaker 1: he found that his kids spontaneously laughed when tickled, even
Speaker 1: though they had never been shown that behavior before. So
Speaker 1: it would seem that laughing when tickled really is an
Speaker 1: innate response, and it only took weirding out a couple
Speaker 1: of his own toddlers to figure that out. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess it's worth it in the name of science, except
Speaker 1: not at all. That is so creepy. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: since we're getting into this kind of psychological territory, I
Speaker 1: have to mention a series of studies carried out by
Speaker 1: Dr You and Cameron, and these were in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties. Cameron was convinced that the brain could
Speaker 1: be reprogrammed by imposing new thought patterns on it, and
Speaker 1: his hope was that the method could be used to
Speaker 1: help patients with schizophrenia achieve a more clear and maybe
Speaker 1: positive way of thinking. So the way it was supposed
Speaker 1: to work was that the patients would wear a pair
Speaker 1: of headphones and then they would listen to these audio
Speaker 1: messages that were played over and over, sometimes for days
Speaker 1: or or even weeks at a time, and this was
Speaker 1: something Cameron called psychic driving, because the idea was that
Speaker 1: repeated messages would be driven gradually into the patient's psyche.
Speaker 1: And the press gave the method a different name, though
Speaker 1: they actually called it beneficial brainwashing, which I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess sounds like good branding at least. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a bit of an oxymoron of a name. But
Speaker 1: it didn't deter Cameron, so for over a decade he
Speaker 1: tested his method on hundreds of unwitting patients, many of
Speaker 1: whom didn't even have schizophrenia. In fact, even people with
Speaker 1: minor ailments would sometimes check into the clinic where Cameron worked,
Speaker 1: and before they knew it, they were drugged, strapped to
Speaker 1: a bed, and forced to listen to loop recordings of
Speaker 1: these aspirational messages. I mean, it's actually crazy to think
Speaker 1: about some of these things. Yeah, it's terrifying. So what
Speaker 1: kind of messages were they made to listen to. Well,
Speaker 1: they were mostly your typical positive enforcement kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, like they would say things like people like
Speaker 1: you and need you, and and you have confidence in yourself.
Speaker 1: It sounds a little bit Stewart small exactly. Well, but
Speaker 1: one time, though, Cameron put his patients into a drug
Speaker 1: induced sleep and then made them listen to the message
Speaker 1: that said, when you see a piece of paper, you
Speaker 1: want to pick it up. That's all that's said. Then,
Speaker 1: once all the patients had woken up, Cameron drove them
Speaker 1: one by one to a gymnasium where a single piece
Speaker 1: of paper was waiting for them on the floor of
Speaker 1: the gym, and, according to report Cameron later wrote about
Speaker 1: the experiment, most of the patients, without any prompting, spontaneously
Speaker 1: walked over and picked up the paper. Such a dumix, man,
Speaker 1: it feels like like you should test it with, like
Speaker 1: putting a piece of paper and a puppy in a box.
Speaker 1: Right right, that's a good one. You should be a scientist,
Speaker 1: right Well, I basically am. But it doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: Cameron also had like the full consent of his patients.
Speaker 1: I mean, did his operations get shut quickly like once
Speaker 1: people caught onto what was happening. Well you would think so,
Speaker 1: but actually when the CIA found out what Cameron had
Speaker 1: been up to, it actually started funding his experiments in secret,
Speaker 1: and this move ultimately backfired. Though there was a group
Speaker 1: of Cameron's former patients that decided to sue the CIA
Speaker 1: actually for supporting his work. I see. I eventually settled
Speaker 1: the matter out of court and Cameron was forced to
Speaker 1: concede that his brainwatching experiments, as as he called it,
Speaker 1: had been what did he say said, a ten year
Speaker 1: trip down the wrong road. I guess that's one way
Speaker 1: to put it. Yeah, I guess it's putting it lightly.
Speaker 1: But cameron story actually reminds me of another psychologist who
Speaker 1: tried to change the thought patterns with weird repeated messages
Speaker 1: and it didn't go as planned as you might have guessed.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you about that in a minute, but
Speaker 1: first we got to take another quick break. Okay, mano,
Speaker 1: let's hear it. What's the strange subliminal science project that
Speaker 1: you wanted to tell us about? Sure, so, I'm actually
Speaker 1: gonna set the mood for this one. So the years
Speaker 1: nineteen for you two. You're sleep in a cabin at
Speaker 1: a summer camp in upstate New York. On all sides
Speaker 1: of you or other teenage boys also sleeping, and just
Speaker 1: a few feet away there's a man standing alone in
Speaker 1: the darkness. He speaks out loud to his unconscious audience.
Speaker 1: Again and again he mechanically recites the same one phrase,
Speaker 1: my fingernails taste terribly bitter. My fingernails taste terribly bitter.
Speaker 1: Oh man, go, I gotta stop at these. You found
Speaker 1: this weird experiments? Are you sure this is a science
Speaker 1: story and not just a horror story? You're creeping me
Speaker 1: out today? I know from from what I can tell
Speaker 1: you really was in the name of the science. Uh.
Speaker 1: This guy's name was um Dr Lawrence Lesson, and that
Speaker 1: night in the cabin he was actually conducting the sleep
Speaker 1: learning experiment. So all of the boys have actually been
Speaker 1: diagnosed with chronic nail biting, and the hope was that
Speaker 1: they could be cured by you know, these nocturnal messaging.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm trying to think about this. So you
Speaker 1: said this was in the forties, and so I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of how he would have delivered these messages. So,
Speaker 1: so did Lesson have to like creep over them and
Speaker 1: repeat this phrase, you know, all night long to them?
Speaker 1: That just seems so weird. I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: he could have used a phonograph or something like that, right, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it adds to the story. But Lesson actually
Speaker 1: did start the study using a recorded message and he
Speaker 1: played it like three hundred times a night for the kids.
Speaker 1: But he had to take the task over himself when
Speaker 1: his phonograph broke and it actually broke down five weeks
Speaker 1: into his experiment. Five weeks? How long was this study
Speaker 1: is supposed to last the whole summer? Apparently, like can
Speaker 1: you actually imagine these boys coming back to school and
Speaker 1: the first day and and uh and they have to
Speaker 1: answer these questions for the classmates about how they spent
Speaker 1: their summers and and you know, other kids would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I went to Hawaii or you know, I went to
Speaker 1: my grandparents and they're like, I spent eight weeks in
Speaker 1: a cabin with some weirdo telling me how bad my
Speaker 1: fing your nail days. Oh my gosh. So so I
Speaker 1: do have to know. I mean, that sounds terrible, But
Speaker 1: was the experiment of success, like did the kids stop
Speaker 1: biting their nails? Kind of? I mean, at the end
Speaker 1: of the summer, Lession determined that the boys had been cured,
Speaker 1: which made it seem like his sleep learning techniques had
Speaker 1: some real merit. But unfortunately, other researchers looked into it,
Speaker 1: and they tested his method and you know, one study
Speaker 1: in ninety six track participants brain activity to make sure
Speaker 1: they were totally asleep before playing this anti nail binding message,
Speaker 1: and in that case, like the unconscious messaging didn't have
Speaker 1: any effect at all. So the whole idea was that,
Speaker 1: you know, those had probably kicked the habit because they
Speaker 1: were still someone awake during those readings. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I guess beneficial brainwashing really does work. That's uh, that's
Speaker 1: interesting and weird. You know, one kind of weird experiment
Speaker 1: we haven't talked much about today are the government funded
Speaker 1: kind of experiments. And you know, we did cover some
Speaker 1: of these back in our episode on Bizarre government investments.
Speaker 1: But I came across another one this week, and it's
Speaker 1: just too good to share. And it's called Bird's Eye bomb,
Speaker 1: and it was developed during World War two by the
Speaker 1: famous psychologist and behavior's named BF Skinner. Now, the idea
Speaker 1: here amounted to what was basically a pigeon guided missile.
Speaker 1: And when you know what, the inspiration came to Skinner
Speaker 1: one day when he was watching a nearby flock of pigeons.
Speaker 1: As he later wrote of this sense and and he says,
Speaker 1: suddenly I saw them as devices with excellent vision and
Speaker 1: extraordinary maneuverability, could they not guide a missile? So? I mean,
Speaker 1: who hasn't seen a flock of pigeons and thought that?
Speaker 1: I have a little confused that, Like, how exactly is
Speaker 1: this supposed to work? All right? Well, Skinner trained the
Speaker 1: pigeons to peck carefully at chosen images, like an enemy
Speaker 1: battleship for example. And you know, once the birds had
Speaker 1: committed these targets to memory, Skinner would put them in
Speaker 1: these custom made missile nose cones. And so the makeshift
Speaker 1: cockpit included a little plastic screen and they used mirrors
Speaker 1: for this, and then there would be an image of
Speaker 1: the missile's flight path that could be projected onto it.
Speaker 1: So by pecking at the screen, the pigeons were able
Speaker 1: to alter the coordinates and basically by doing this, they
Speaker 1: would steer it toward a specific target. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's both ingenious and insane. And you know, this idea
Speaker 1: of like kama kaze pigeons sounds so ridiculous, But I mean,
Speaker 1: is there anybody it could really work? So? Surprisingly, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, preliminary tests proved the pigeons were top notch
Speaker 1: pilots and plenty of scientists endorsed the project in light
Speaker 1: of those early results, but in the end, the military
Speaker 1: just couldn't stomach the thought of funding such a silly
Speaker 1: sounding project. So the cut Skinner's funding completely in October
Speaker 1: of four. And it's just a shame because Top Gun
Speaker 1: could have been a totally different movie if you think
Speaker 1: about it. I know, the animated Disney movie Top Gun
Speaker 1: would have been Okay, So you know you sneaked in
Speaker 1: another animal based study, and so I'm going to do
Speaker 1: the same and tell you about this fateful experiment that
Speaker 1: sent the first humble tart de grade to space. All Right,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen tartar grades and the news
Speaker 1: or reported on a lot in recent years. But remind
Speaker 1: me of what that is because it rings a bell
Speaker 1: as an animal, but it also just sounds like something
Speaker 1: that might be from like Doctor Who or something. M Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: targe grades are these microscopic, eight legged potato looking things.
Speaker 1: They look like little monster potatoes. Sometimes they were called
Speaker 1: water bears or moss piglets, and you can actually find
Speaker 1: them in just about every habitat on Earth. You can
Speaker 1: find them on like mountaintops, rainforest, the bottom of lags
Speaker 1: even even in Antarctica, which is pretty incredible. But you know,
Speaker 1: speaking of doctor who, because you mentioned it, the team
Speaker 1: behind the study must have been fans, because they actually
Speaker 1: named their experiment targe grades in space or tartis. Actually,
Speaker 1: I just pulled up a picture and they do look
Speaker 1: both cute and freaky, and it's crazy that they're only
Speaker 1: like a millimeter big. But so you said, we shot
Speaker 1: these things into space for some reason, Yeah, a team
Speaker 1: of European researchers wanted to test just how resilient these
Speaker 1: tartar grades really are, because you can probably tell from
Speaker 1: that list of habitats that you know, they're hardy creatures
Speaker 1: and they can survive temperatures as low as negative three
Speaker 1: twenty eight degrees fahrenheit or as high as three hundred
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. They can also stand up to pressures as
Speaker 1: powerful as six thousand times that of the Earth's atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and they can even survive doses of radiation that are
Speaker 1: thousands of times stronger than it would take to kill
Speaker 1: a humans. So clearly they're super tough creatures, and it
Speaker 1: actually turns out there so tough they can even survive
Speaker 1: exposure to the vacuum of outer space. Wow. So so
Speaker 1: researchers just flew a bunch of these what you what
Speaker 1: do you call them? I like the name of moss picklets.
Speaker 1: I think that was my favorite. So they flew these
Speaker 1: things into space and just like chuck them out the
Speaker 1: airlock or what Yeah, I mean the the approach was
Speaker 1: a little more nuanced than that. So first they dehydrated
Speaker 1: the targerets and uh, you know, that makes them enter
Speaker 1: this state of hibernation where all their metabolic activity drops
Speaker 1: to about point one percent of normal levels. And then
Speaker 1: once they're in this protective state, the researchers exposed one
Speaker 1: group of water bears to the acumum space and another
Speaker 1: to both the vacuum space and this immense radiation from
Speaker 1: the Sun. And after full ten days of this, right
Speaker 1: ten days, the target grades were brought back to Earth
Speaker 1: and rehydrated, and amazingly, sixty percent of the targe grades
Speaker 1: exposed only to outer space survived, and even among the
Speaker 1: ones who were also exposed to solar radiation, a handful
Speaker 1: were successfully revived. And the craziest part, some of these
Speaker 1: even went on to produce healthy offspring. So those things
Speaker 1: are pretty much unstoppable. But you know, I actually have
Speaker 1: my own weird space experiment to share, and I happen
Speaker 1: to think it blows yours away. Man, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to get heads up on this. And this. This comes
Speaker 1: from when a two man crew took the Gemini three
Speaker 1: on a several trips around the Earth's orbit, and one
Speaker 1: of the astronauts on that mission, John Young, was apparently
Speaker 1: not a fan of the kind of the standard food
Speaker 1: from a tube that NASA was typically providing them, because
Speaker 1: once the pair reached orbit, Young revealed that he had
Speaker 1: smuggled aboard a contraband corned beef sandwich in to his
Speaker 1: back pocket. I mean, I love the story. I know
Speaker 1: the story, but I'm not really sure you can call
Speaker 1: it an experiment. I mean it sounds more like a
Speaker 1: great anecdote about a hungry astronaut. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: Go actually, let let me help me read this transcript.
Speaker 1: I've got this for you. I want you to help
Speaker 1: me out here and you'll see what I mean by this.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna be John Young, and you're going to
Speaker 1: be Gus Grissome, the co pilot. Are you ready to
Speaker 1: do this? Yeah, I've got the script here go, go
Speaker 1: for it. It's your line. First, What is it a
Speaker 1: corn beef sandwich? Where did that come from? I brought
Speaker 1: it with me. Let's see how it tastes, smells, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the whole. The whole incident lasted like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, including the time I know, but it was
Speaker 1: worth it because you know, there was thirty seconds, and
Speaker 1: that included the time it took the nibble the sandwich
Speaker 1: before Young tucked it back into his flight suit. But see,
Speaker 1: they wanted to see what it tasted like. That's the experiment.
Speaker 1: Does a corn beef sandwich taste and smell the same
Speaker 1: in space as it does on Earth? And Young suffered
Speaker 1: for his science too. After the mission. He was sternly
Speaker 1: chastised by his superiors at NASA, though I guess they
Speaker 1: didn't come down on too hard because he was still
Speaker 1: permitted to land on the Moon as part of the
Speaker 1: Apollo sixteen mission. Well, I am glad that an illicit
Speaker 1: sandwich incident didn't cost him his career. Well all right, Well,
Speaker 1: I can tell from the smoke coming out of Tristan's
Speaker 1: potato that we're running short on time. I do have
Speaker 1: a few more weird experiments I wanted to cover, though, well,
Speaker 1: thankfully that's exactly what the factops. BOYD, why don't we
Speaker 1: start with an experiment by the Swedish playwright August Strenberg.
Speaker 1: Strendberg wasn't a scientist, but he certainly had some ideas,
Speaker 1: and one of those was his belief that plants had
Speaker 1: nervous systems and for some reason botanist had just overlooked it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he was determined to show everyone that plants could feel things.
Speaker 1: So during his walks around town, he would take out
Speaker 1: some morphine and you know the way we all carry morphine,
Speaker 1: I guess in our back pockets, so that he would
Speaker 1: inject whatever he saw to see how it would react.
Speaker 1: And one day he was arrested for injecting an apple
Speaker 1: with the drug. But when he explained he was just
Speaker 1: trying to get the apple high in the name of science,
Speaker 1: the officer figured he was just a sweet lunatic and
Speaker 1: not someone trying to go around poisoning the city and
Speaker 1: let him go. So, you know, I've always heard that
Speaker 1: thing about how a soul weighs twenty one grahams, which
Speaker 1: is odd, like, why does that have to be in
Speaker 1: the metric system we live in America about it, right,
Speaker 1: which should be like three of announced. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: was curious where the idea came from, and apparently it
Speaker 1: goes back to to this Massachusetts doctors, this guy named
Speaker 1: Duncan McDougal, and so this actually comes from Discover magazine.
Speaker 1: But to figure it out, McDougall made this bed fitted
Speaker 1: with scales, and then he convinced a bunch of terminally
Speaker 1: ill patients and this is pretty crazy that they should
Speaker 1: make it their literal deathbed. And then he was actually
Speaker 1: pretty meticulous about it. So this is from the magazine quote.
Speaker 1: He recorded not only each patient's exact time of death,
Speaker 1: but also his total time on the bed, as well
Speaker 1: as any changes in weight that occurred around the moment
Speaker 1: of expiration. He even factored losses of bodily fluids like
Speaker 1: sweat and urine and gases like oxygen and nitrogen into
Speaker 1: his calculations. Of course, you know the conclusion right like
Speaker 1: after the soul escaped the body, the people weighed twenty
Speaker 1: one grams less. Okay, I've got one about a guy
Speaker 1: named Hitting Brand, and he really wanted to get wealthy,
Speaker 1: and he believed he had a Scrooge McDuck wade to
Speaker 1: kind of get there, and that was through p Now.
Speaker 1: In sixteen sixty nine, the German alchemist apparently had stalked
Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred gallons worth of urine in his basement.
Speaker 1: That is just so weird, but growth he was convinced
Speaker 1: he could spin it into goal. Of course he couldn't,
Speaker 1: but his experiments did lead to one interesting discovery. After
Speaker 1: boiling one sample, he noticed a bit of unusual glowing liquid,
Speaker 1: which is how he ended up discovering phosphorus. Oh that's amazing.
Speaker 1: So you'll be happy to know that I didn't just
Speaker 1: look up what turkeys are attracted to. I also looked
Speaker 1: into chick in preferences. And according to one study, chickens
Speaker 1: don't like ugly people. And basically the scientist Dr Stefano
Speaker 1: Garlanda at the Zoology Institution of Stockholm University, he was
Speaker 1: trying trying to understand whether physical attraction is inherited due
Speaker 1: to genes or learned. So he tested it the way
Speaker 1: any of us would. He took some I guess libidinous chickens,
Speaker 1: and these birds were just hot to trot or what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were definitely quote excited and and uh. He showed
Speaker 1: them photos of people to see which ones they wanted
Speaker 1: to meet with and which ones they had picked. So
Speaker 1: care Landa took photos of thirty five males and females
Speaker 1: and these are humans, and they mashed them into these
Speaker 1: digital picks of these very average looking people and male
Speaker 1: birds mostly pecked photos of women. Hens mostly pecked photos
Speaker 1: of men. And then Geir Landa gave them this other task. Right,
Speaker 1: He created another set of more faces, and this time
Speaker 1: he asked college students to rate the faces on attractiveness.
Speaker 1: So percent of the time the chickens actually pecked the
Speaker 1: more attractive face. Oh wow, that's that's pretty interesting. Or well,
Speaker 1: here's the story I learned from cracked, and it asked
Speaker 1: the important question what happens when you get leeches drunk?
Speaker 1: You know, we've all wondered this. The idea was that
Speaker 1: you can actually improve the rate that leeches sucked blood
Speaker 1: if you can just get them a little bit loose beforehand.
Speaker 1: So researchers from Norway dipped a bunch of leeches in
Speaker 1: guinness and also smeared some in garlic and others in
Speaker 1: sour cream. Such a weird experiment, and I'm guessing it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the leeches drinking during this experiment, So what happened, Well,
Speaker 1: the drunk leeches are not good at sucking blood. I
Speaker 1: don't know why this would come as a surprise to anybody.
Speaker 1: They just kind of wiggled and couldn't focus. They fell
Speaker 1: off the arms, which is just I wish I had
Speaker 1: a video of this experiment because it just sounds so weird.
Speaker 1: The sour cream leeches fared better with slightly better sucking abilities,
Speaker 1: and the garlic coated leeches, like any good vampire, garlic
Speaker 1: was their kryptonite. They actually died. That's pretty amazing, and
Speaker 1: I'm actually glad we started with rats on cocaine and
Speaker 1: ended with leech is on a bender because science is
Speaker 1: great and drunken science might even be better. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you today's uh today's trophy. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: it's an honor. Now. I'm sure there's so many great experiments.
Speaker 1: There were many we couldn't include that we had looked into,
Speaker 1: but we'd love to hear from you. If there are
Speaker 1: ones that you guys want us to hear about, feel
Speaker 1: free to email us. Part Time Genius at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. You can also call us on our
Speaker 1: seven fact hot line that's one eight four four pt
Speaker 1: Genius or has always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: But thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
Speaker 1: the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan
Speaker 1: McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
Speaker 1: song and does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
Speaker 1: does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesiers our lead researcher,
Speaker 1: with support from the Research Army, including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Speaker 1: Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves Jeff Cook gets the
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
Speaker 1: what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
Speaker 1: really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
Speaker 1: a good review for us. We do. We forget Jason Jason,
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