Speaker 1: Imagine the place where you can escape for a day,
Speaker 1: get immersed in a world of rooms, inspiration and expertise,
Speaker 1: where you can lay in luxury, accommodation and kids cam
Speaker 1: fees from ninety five sets. Tickets are free to everyone
Speaker 1: and include all the attractions you've just imagined a day
Speaker 1: out at the Kia Tikia the Wonderful every Day.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's your old wizard leathery lifeguard Ali Ward, dozing
Speaker 2: under an umbrella while I should be making sure you're
Speaker 2: not drowning. And I'm here for a little slice of
Speaker 2: a minisode for your ologies appetite this week. Why Ward,
Speaker 2: Why Well, this is a shorty around the longest day
Speaker 2: of the year for a few reasons. Number one, I'm
Speaker 2: working on a two part Mars episode for next week
Speaker 2: that's just going to blow your rocket boosters right off.
Speaker 2: And number two, and this is a little crazy and exciting,
Speaker 2: but I'm shooting a brand new science show for a
Speaker 2: very cool network. And I'm shooting like sixteen hour days.
Speaker 2: Like I wake up at five am, rush just at
Speaker 2: get home at eight pm, rush to bed. I have
Speaker 2: been wearing mismatched socks for two weeks, just plucked from
Speaker 2: my clean, lonely socks bag and I'm pretty much like
Speaker 2: snorting way protein instead of having dinner because there's just
Speaker 2: not time. So I'm putting this together to give myself
Speaker 2: a little bit more time to work on next week's
Speaker 2: episode because it's going to be so good, and also
Speaker 2: because y'all, I love summer. I love it so much.
Speaker 2: We just had the longest day of the year. It's
Speaker 2: officially summer. And even as a summer goth in like
Speaker 2: head to toe black secondhand wool garments as a teen,
Speaker 2: I loved summer.
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 2: Cobalt twilight at nine pm, iced tea, sweating on a porch,
Speaker 2: barbecue smoke, family reunions, and bonus points for getting out
Speaker 2: of California to see weird bugs in to hear charming accents.
Speaker 2: I just always loved it. So this week's minnesot is
Speaker 2: all about some obscure summer disciplines and if there are
Speaker 2: any of the peau your interests, tell me, tweet me whatever,
Speaker 2: and maybe I can hunt down an ologists to go
Speaker 2: further into one of these topics. But think of this
Speaker 2: episode like a variety sampler pack, like little cereals, and
Speaker 2: I'll await you're hollering, and maybe we can make one
Speaker 2: or two happen if you really love them. So now
Speaker 2: before we dive in, just a really big thanks to
Speaker 2: all the patrons for making the show possible. I pay
Speaker 2: the wonderful Stephen Ray Morris to edit it. I couldn't
Speaker 2: do it without him, are you? And thank you to
Speaker 2: everyone who decks themselves out in ologies wares from ologiesmerch
Speaker 2: dot com and get yourself a dang tank top for summer,
Speaker 2: or like a twenty dollars T shirt in any color,
Speaker 2: maybe a dad hat to keep the broiling sun off
Speaker 2: of your face. Now it supports the podcast and also
Speaker 2: it helps you find other ologites in the wild, maybe
Speaker 2: for a summer romance. You can also spread the word
Speaker 2: of about the podcast just by tweeting or gramming, or
Speaker 2: you can rate a review. Make sure you're subscribed, because
Speaker 2: sometimes iTunes just will unsubscribe you from things. It happens
Speaker 2: to me all the time. And also, as you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a giant sappy creep and I love reading your
Speaker 2: very sweet reviews. And you know, I didn't know you
Speaker 2: could review vas Stitcher until like yesterday. So for this minisode,
Speaker 2: I'm in a shout out so so so many Sara Saws,
Speaker 2: who wrote if Lynn Manuel's Twitter feed was a science podcast,
Speaker 2: This podcast, which features interviews with ologists in a wide
Speaker 2: variety of fields, is a bright spot in a world
Speaker 2: that can be a bit cynical about expertise and knowledge.
Speaker 2: It's highly informative, a great resource for finding out more
Speaker 2: about all kinds of fields, and inspires me to work hard,
Speaker 2: learn more, and not be afraid to start by asking
Speaker 2: a dumb question. Thank you so much. What a comparison, dude,
Speaker 2: So thank you for leaving those reviews. I read them
Speaker 2: and they make me so happy on days when I'm
Speaker 2: tired and I have not washed my hair, which is
Speaker 2: a lot of the days. Okay, ayist toology. Is this
Speaker 2: a real word? No, it's not. It's an entirely fictitious word.
Speaker 2: I just made up using the Latin aista, meaning summer,
Speaker 2: the study of summer. It doesn't exist, so straight out
Speaker 2: of the gate, I just served you up a big,
Speaker 2: heaping bag of horse shit, and I'm sorry. Another word
Speaker 2: I considered fabricating that doesn't exist, and I looked it
Speaker 2: up is hydro polemology. That would be a great word
Speaker 2: for this episode because it would mean the study of
Speaker 2: water fighting. Okay, just in trying to find out if
Speaker 2: that was a real word, it led me down this
Speaker 2: rabbit hole. Is there a study of water fights? Please
Speaker 2: say there is. There's not. But I did find out
Speaker 2: that in Poland they have it tradition called wet Monday,
Speaker 2: and it involves soaking each other just mercilessly. Now, according
Speaker 2: to Wikipedia, boys throw water over girls and then they
Speaker 2: spank them with pussy willows, or they sneak into girls'
Speaker 2: homes at daybreak and throw containers of water over them
Speaker 2: while they're still in bed, and then the screaming girls
Speaker 2: would often be dragged to a nearby river or pond
Speaker 2: for another drenching. Sometimes a girl would be carried out
Speaker 2: still in her bed before bed and girl were thrown
Speaker 2: into the water. Particularly attractive girls could be expected to
Speaker 2: be soaked repeatedly during the day. This somewhat horrific and
Speaker 2: very soggy tradition is known as smigus dingis and evidently,
Speaker 2: and thankfully it seems to have evolved into a more
Speaker 2: OMNo sexual affair involving little boys and girls soaking each
Speaker 2: other and according to my getting sucked into a YouTube
Speaker 2: vortex of adults running from other adults, slashing buckets in
Speaker 2: the street, and children armed like tiny hydro militias super
Speaker 2: soaking the fuck out of each other. It's a pretty
Speaker 2: popular thing. So I was looking at YouTube videos of
Speaker 2: all these weird Polish water fights, and then it led
Speaker 2: me to remember if a hydro polymologist was a job.
Speaker 2: I have interviewed literally the top master of this field,
Speaker 2: and I totally forgot about it. So this season on
Speaker 2: Innovation Nation for CBS, I flew to Atlanta to meet
Speaker 2: a guy named Lonnie Johnson. He is a mechanical and
Speaker 2: nuclear engineer. He worked for the Air Force and NASA's
Speaker 2: Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He worked on the Galileo mission to Jupiter,
Speaker 2: the Saturn Cassini mission, the Mars Observer project. He's like
Speaker 2: a serial inventor, total genius. He has been since his youth.
Speaker 2: But among his creations the super soaker. He invented the
Speaker 2: super soaker. So one day in the early eighties he thought,
Speaker 2: I want if my daughter could just smoke these neighborhood
Speaker 2: jabbronis in a water fight, and when your dad is
Speaker 2: a rocket scientist, what results is a PBC pipe water
Speaker 2: gun with an empty Pepsi two liter as a fuel tank.
Speaker 2: He tried it in his bathroom. It shot across the
Speaker 2: room and he was like, well, dang, I believe I've
Speaker 2: invented something very legendary. And so a few patents and
Speaker 2: like decades later, the dude has made very minimum seventy
Speaker 2: three million dollars off of this invention. How many patents
Speaker 2: do you have?
Speaker 1: Over one hundred patents.
Speaker 4: Overall hundred, so this is just a tiny fraction of them.
Speaker 1: There was some engineering involved in putting this whole scene together,
Speaker 1: but you know, compared to a spacecraft, is pretty simple.
Speaker 2: So if hydro polomology were a thing, Lonnie Johnson would
Speaker 2: have another honorary degree, so says Dad Word FN podcast. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that concludes the portion on fictitious ologies involving summer
Speaker 2: onto some actual summer ologies, as discussed in the Fologies
Speaker 2: episode in October. Aque Carpetologist knows all kinds of secret
Speaker 2: shit about pumpkins, but also about melons. Were you to
Speaker 2: encounter a melon specialist, like perhaps Zulinge, one of Shanghai's
Speaker 2: top professional watermelon experts, you could say, cue, crepatologist, tell
Speaker 2: me your melon thumping secrets. So apparently one thing to
Speaker 2: look for when you're picking a watermelonna. I'm gonna dish
Speaker 2: out some watermelon secrets. Okay, are you ready? Okay? You
Speaker 2: have to look for the patch on the underbelly of
Speaker 2: the melon. This is the light patch where it's been
Speaker 2: in contact with the ground. That patch should be creamy
Speaker 2: yellow in color. The lighter and white air it is,
Speaker 2: it means it's not quite ripe yet. I didn't know that. Also,
Speaker 2: it should feel heavy for its size. And you know
Speaker 2: when you thump a melon in the store and you
Speaker 2: do it just to look cool before you make off
Speaker 2: with it to the checkstand, and you're like, I don't
Speaker 2: know why I did that. I don't even know what
Speaker 2: I'm listening for. I don't know what I'm doing. Okay.
Speaker 2: According to cucrebetologists, it should have a dull, really hollow sound. Now,
Speaker 2: another thing you can do is just buy from a
Speaker 2: farmer's market and say, hey, you're a farmer, just pick
Speaker 2: me a good melon. Also, seedless watermelons were invented by
Speaker 2: a Midwestern plant specialist named ri Oj Eigsti, and nobody
Speaker 2: wanted them for decades. He was like, I.
Speaker 5: Invented a seedless watermelon. Cute goals enjoy spitting seeds at
Speaker 5: each other. The fuck these seedless melons are? It's at folks, idiots.
Speaker 2: He kept pedaling them and pedaling them, and then finally
Speaker 2: they began taking off in like the nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 2: according to an interview with him in the Chicago Tribune,
Speaker 2: which was conducted in his nineties, he saw seedless watermelons
Speaker 2: flourishing in a supermarket and he said to himself, Huh,
Speaker 2: after all these years, it feels pretty good. And there's
Speaker 2: something in my soul that's like so happy that the
Speaker 2: seedless watermelon specialists got to see his invention really take off,
Speaker 2: because it was decades of him being like, how can
Speaker 2: you not want to see this watermelon? What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2: We all want them. Also, don't toss those rhines, folks.
Speaker 2: According to watermelon dot org, which is a website, you
Speaker 2: can cut them up and then you can add them
Speaker 2: to stir frize and eat them. You can also pickle
Speaker 2: the rines. So at your next barbecue, just walk around
Speaker 2: with an empty pillowcase and start loading up on everyone's
Speaker 2: chewed up casticides and be like yemmers I'm gonna brin
Speaker 2: this up and dine on it in several months. You
Speaker 2: have my blessings. Speaking of barbecues, let's talk pyrotechnology. Wait, pyrotechnics,
Speaker 2: isn't that? Is that fireworks? God? I hope. So when
Speaker 2: I started researching this episode, I was like, what if
Speaker 2: I had a pyrotechnologist on to talk about the bombs
Speaker 2: bursting in air and the Fourth of July displays and
Speaker 2: baseball games and sky booms and such. But I found
Speaker 2: out that fireworks people are technically pyrotechnicians, not pyrotechnologists, So
Speaker 2: firework talk will be limited to Uncle Ali telling you
Speaker 2: don't blow your goddamn hands off this summer. Okay, just
Speaker 2: be careful and if you're drunk, let someone else explode stuff.
Speaker 2: Just sit back and watch. Don't say I never helped you.
Speaker 2: Pyrotechnologists are actually anthropologists who study chillin and grilling, barbecues,
Speaker 2: cooking with fire. But wait, what is a barbecue and
Speaker 2: why can't I spell it right? Well? It comes from
Speaker 2: the Spanish for barbicoa, which is derived from a Caribbean
Speaker 2: word meaning a rack made of sticks. Those were used
Speaker 2: for either sleeping on like a cot or for smoking meat.
Speaker 2: Or fish above a fire. There you go. I think
Speaker 2: Americans added the qu at the end, and you can
Speaker 2: spell it either way. But let's be honest, all caps BBQ.
Speaker 2: It's the easiest. No one wants to fuck around with
Speaker 2: the Is there a C and also a Q in
Speaker 2: it to spell it bbq? I don't care. Also, there
Speaker 2: is a heated, fiery debate on the edemology of barbecue.
Speaker 2: The first time it was recorded in English was in
Speaker 2: sixteen sixty one by Edmund Hickeringill, who was a British
Speaker 2: churchman with a shady history who was describing cannibalism in Jamaica.
Speaker 2: He wrote, samos slain and the flesh full with barbicue,
Speaker 2: wood and eat but barbecue historian, and yes that his job.
Speaker 2: Andrew Warniz wrote a whole book on the colonist and
Speaker 2: racist origins of the word and says that hickering Gill
Speaker 2: was full of shit and he was making up tales,
Speaker 2: and that barbecue is one of America's oldest and most
Speaker 2: beloved traditions. So, going back in time a bit, humans
Speaker 2: first started to learn about fire control, maybe as far
Speaker 2: back as one point seven million years ago, but they
Speaker 2: were really getting good at it about one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five thousand years ago. There's the hotly talked about
Speaker 2: cooking hypothesis. Now, this is a hypothesis that credits charring
Speaker 2: otherwise inedible starchy food with humans' ability to grow these
Speaker 2: bigger glucose hogs known as our brains. I mean, when
Speaker 2: was the last time you ate a raw potato and
Speaker 2: slayed it? Word with friends like never think about it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Another thing to mole over while waiting for your melon
Speaker 2: ryins to pickle is why historically have women been expected
Speaker 2: to cook but men handle the outdoor grilling? What the fuck?
Speaker 2: I tried to look for an answer, and I found
Speaker 2: that a cultural anthropologist, Richard Swater, has written such a
Speaker 2: book about many psychological societal mysteries on different continents. This
Speaker 2: book is aptly titled why do Men Barbecue? I found
Speaker 2: this after googling the phrase why do men barbecue? And
Speaker 2: if I ever read that book, I'll report back. But
Speaker 2: the consensus on the web, and I did look it up,
Speaker 2: is because much of outdoor grilling just involves standing around
Speaker 2: looking busy while other people are inside fussing over jello
Speaker 2: and macaroni salad and icing down fruit platters, and also
Speaker 2: you only have to do it for one season out
Speaker 2: of the year, so you're like, sure, I'll be a
Speaker 2: girl master. If you were to ask Yale researchers about pyrotechnology,
Speaker 2: not only would the archaeologists talk about cooking relics, but
Speaker 2: they would also point you to periods of time when
Speaker 2: we really started to make firework for us. We were
Speaker 2: glazing vessels, we were hardening weaponry, we were doing metallurgy things.
Speaker 2: So pyrotechnology so many directions to go. So when you're
Speaker 2: outside this summer gazing into a campfire, just think there
Speaker 2: are people who have been indoors writing books about your hairy,
Speaker 2: scared relatives gazing into a campfire. One last ology on
Speaker 2: the topic of fiery summer evenings lamp puridology. What the
Speaker 2: hell is that? Ward, It's the study of fireflies, which
Speaker 2: are not flies at all. They're rather beetles with super
Speaker 2: magic butts. Do you call them fireflies or lightning books?
Speaker 2: You probably just all muttered aloud on the subway or
Speaker 2: a jogging path or into your knitting lightning pace bugs,
Speaker 2: peenie wallies. Okay. What One researcher, Bert Vox, who was
Speaker 2: a linguistics professor at the University of Cambridge pulled ten
Speaker 2: thousand Americans and found that around forty percent say both
Speaker 2: words interchangeably, thirty percent just say firefly, and almost thirty
Speaker 2: percent say lightning bug. Meanwhile, point two percent, this is
Speaker 2: only two people and a whole study of ten thousand,
Speaker 2: call these glowing summer cuties peeny wallies. I did not
Speaker 2: know that was a term, but next time I see one,
Speaker 2: I do know that it will be formally addressed as
Speaker 2: your honor Captain Peenie Wally.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Growing up in California, I didn't encounter a peenie Wally
Speaker 2: until I visited the East Coast of my twenties, and
Speaker 2: I freaked out. I jumped around a lawn. I was
Speaker 2: chasing them like I was four. So apparently the West Coast,
Speaker 2: and oddly just Massachusetts says firefly, the South says lightning bugs.
Speaker 2: But I want to find team Peniwally and see if
Speaker 2: those two people know each other. They must, right, So
Speaker 2: a few fun limp paradology tidbits. Firefly, larva, love to
Speaker 2: eat snails, love them, It's weird, It's French. So how
Speaker 2: do they make their butts glow? Well, they have a
Speaker 2: light organ in their lower half. Think of it like
Speaker 2: a glow crotch, and oxygen combines with calcium and ATP,
Speaker 2: which carries energy to cells. Plus this luminescent chemical, it's
Speaker 2: called luciferin. Also, luciferin sounds evil as hell literally, and
Speaker 2: that's because it means light bringer, which the biblical lucifer
Speaker 2: was named for. And I guess how lucifer became Satan
Speaker 2: biblically may have been because of a translation error with
Speaker 2: the Hebrew word meaning howl. But honestly, I just spent
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes on so many websites trying to figure this out,
Speaker 2: so biblical scholars correct me on this. I don't know
Speaker 2: why Satan is called lucifer, but luciferin it's not evil.
Speaker 2: It's just a raver crotch on a horny beetle flashing
Speaker 2: it to say, hey, are you my species, because let's
Speaker 2: get it on and make snail eating babies. But I guess,
Speaker 2: in a kind of evil fact, some female fireflies mimic
Speaker 2: the mating flashes of another species and then they lure
Speaker 2: randy beetle dudes and they eat them. They're like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, we should totally get together. I would love
Speaker 2: to date you, and then they just eat them with
Speaker 2: their faces. Now. According to Wikipedia, the species is referred
Speaker 2: to as the theem fatale of fireflies, which seems a
Speaker 2: little overly dramatic, but I'll take it so with that.
Speaker 2: It doesn't take a ssarchologist, who is a person who
Speaker 2: studies the muscular and fleshy parts of the body to
Speaker 2: tell you to go put on some spandex underpants and
Speaker 2: engage in hydro polemological warfare. Then maybe cool off with
Speaker 2: a cue cur batological snack before you feast on pyrotechnologically
Speaker 2: prepared cuisine. It's summer, you deserve it, So let me
Speaker 2: know if you want to hear more about any of
Speaker 2: these topics. I'll see who I can track down. And
Speaker 2: thank you for having a mini listen to this eeny
Speaker 2: peenie wally of an episode, and I'll be back next
Speaker 2: week with tons of Martian gossip. Thank you Stephen Ray
Speaker 2: Morris for tossing this together just hours before it goes
Speaker 2: up to Aaron Talbert and Hannahlippo for being incredible admins
Speaker 2: to the jolly group of very curious folks on the
Speaker 2: Ologies podcast Facebook group. Get yourself some summer gear. If
Speaker 2: you want at Ologiesmarch dot com, tag it ologies Merch
Speaker 2: in your online posts so I can repost you on
Speaker 2: merch Mondays. And thank you Shannon Feltus and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 2: for running that merch site. Thank you, as always to
Speaker 2: the beloved summer mustachioed Stephen Ray Morris for editing. The
Speaker 2: theme song was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of
Speaker 2: the very vacation y named band Islands. And please remember
Speaker 2: to ask all kinds of smart people all kinds of
Speaker 2: seemingly stupid questions because they secretly love it. If you're
Speaker 2: at a barbecue with someone, talk to them about beetle butts. Also,
Speaker 2: speaking of secrets, I can proudly say this is like
Speaker 2: a little bit of a humble bag that I've never
Speaker 2: peed in a pool. I was utterly shocked. I did
Speaker 2: an informal poll among friends, and most people seem to
Speaker 2: pee in pools, even hot tubs. I was like, really, really,
Speaker 2: you guys, I love you, but I can we not
Speaker 2: pee in them? I don't know, apparently it's not that
Speaker 2: bad for you. But also like, mmm, times are tough
Speaker 2: out there, guys. Let's be kind to each other. Let's
Speaker 2: not pee in the water that goes in each other's
Speaker 2: mouths unless it's consensual. Okay either way, I love lots
Speaker 2: ask smart people to questions.
Speaker 4: Bye bye acadermatology, homeology, cryptozoology, lithology and technology, meteorology, bartology, nathology, zeriology.
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Speaker 1: Is immersed in a world of rooms, inspiration and expertise
Speaker 1: where you can lay in luxury, accommodation and kids cam
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