Pantone-deaf, Naked Mole Rat Perfume, a Berry of Many Names

Alexis Nikole joins the show to talk about the heinous etymology of the juneberry (if that's even it's real name...). Plus, Liz Clayton Fuller returns to explain how birds are behind Pantone, and Rachel details the ins and outs of Naked Mole Rat society -- and what it has to do with their STINK. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tweet at us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to learn more about all of our stories! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to Jess' Twitch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to all of Jess' content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.jesscapricorn.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Jess Boddy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Popular Science: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/PopSci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme music by Billy Cadden: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Rachel Feltman?

  At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  I'm Liz Clayton Fuller.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Alexis Nicole Nelson.

• 0:28Rachel Feltman?

  Welcome to the show.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much.

• 0:33Rachel Feltman?

  So I think a lot of our listeners will know who you are. I will say, telling folks that you were coming on as a guest, I probably got the most excited response I've ever gotten.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Hi, friends.

• 0:45Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah. And I feel the same. But just in case there are folks listening who aren't familiar, would you tell them about your amazing work? Which I really think is so important and you do so well. So yeah, please tell us more.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  So the way I describe my job that my mom hates for me to say is that I professionally eat things off the ground and teach people how to do the same thing without dying. But I guess if I was giving a more serious description, I am an outdoor educator. I specifically focus on education through the lens of foraging, especially for food, sometimes for medicinal. And now my new hyperfixation is also for like fiber plants for clothing. But that's neither here nor there. I am on the lecture circuit, so I lecture at schools and universities. I lead plant walks.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  I begrudgingly am a social media human and I make content for the internet. And now I also have a book coming out. We love physical media.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Yes, we do.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  But we have a good time. I think there's a lot to learn and get excited about when you realize that all of the little plants hiding around you have wonderful little secrets. And then it makes your neighborhood seem cooler and then you take better care of it.

• 2:12Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, yeah, that is so true.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:15Rachel Feltman?

  And Liz, welcome back. It's been a minute. It's so great to have you back on the show.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  It's so nice to be back. I am your resident bird guy back to talk about more bird stuff.

• 2:24Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. All right, well, let's dive right in because I am on the edge of my seat to hear everybody's facts today. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of factor story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, picking stuff off the ground and eating it, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear about first. Then, once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Except there's not actually winter anymore. We had too many three-way ties. It was just a, now we just chit chat.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Everyone wins.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Everyone's a winner.

• 3:03Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, or no one is, but no, it's definitely that everybody's winter. Liz, what's your tease today?

• 3:10Speaker 01

  My tease today is birds are the reason the company Pantone exists.

• 3:16Rachel Feltman?

  Wow.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  I'm intrigued.

• 3:21Rachel Feltman?

  Can't wait to hear more. My tease is you probably already know that I'm obsessed with naked mole rats. Who is it? Now I'm going to talk about how they get their way by being stinky.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, that's inspirational.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, that's aspirational.

• 3:42Rachel Feltman?

  Every new thing I learn about the naked mole rat impresses me more and makes me want to emulate them more. Alexis, what is your tease?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  My tease is the greatest fruit you've never heard of has like 5 million names. And we all know how language works. When something has 5 million names, it's gotta be good.

• 4:04Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Or at least economically important, I guess.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  True.

• 4:12Rachel Feltman?

  It's so funny, it may turn out to be just our last episode, but if not, a few episodes ago, we were talking to Greg Jenner from the show You're Dead to Me. And as an aside, you know, it came up that he's really interested in how some cities have just like one name and that like, that's what everyone calls it. And some cities have many, many names in different languages. And sort of, you know, the various historical and geopolitical things that go into making that the case. And now I'm like, you know, if it's good and fiscally important, maybe it's got more names.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Maybe it's got more names. Maybe there's a, there's a little theory to throw into a past tidbit.

• 4:57Rachel Feltman?

  Well, yeah, let's get started. Liz, why don't you kick us off with birds and Pantone?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  I'm so excited.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yes. So this is kind of a thread that I pulled on because I'm, here's a little backstory. I'm working on my federal duck stamp competition painting in tree right now.

• 5:15Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, so important to me.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm already rooting for you. I hope you win. Do we get to know what, do we get to know what ducks you're depicting?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  You do. I actually have it right here, which is not helpful for the listeners, but I'll give you just a little.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  But for eyes.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  A little peek.

• 5:31Rachel Feltman?

  Beautiful.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  So that's my guy this year. So he is, for the listeners, a blue-winged teal. And I was thinking about bird names and the color teal and the name teal. And I was like, where, like, what is the origin of teal? Like, what, what does that word actually mean? And interestingly enough, the color teal is named after the Eurasian teal, which is a bird. So Eurasian teal came first and they have this beautiful stripe of teal on their head that was so iconic that they named a color after it, which is just like, again, gulls, like naked mole rat, stinky gulls, being so beautiful, a whole color gets named after you. Oh, my God.

• 6:18Rachel Feltman?

  That is the gull, really.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  So I tried to look into if there were any other colors named after birds as sort of directly as that. And the answer was like, not really. Like, there's like robin's egg blue, which like, you know, is very descriptive, but isn't the same as like, wow, there's this perfect color. And it's the, you know, now this is the name of the color. But as I was kind of pulling on that thread, I learned that because of the beauty and the color of birds, this guy, this ornithologist back in the day, Robert Ridgeway. Okay, so a little backstory on Robert, quick lore on Robert. He was the oldest of 10 children.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Dang.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Yep. And so as an eldest as well, I understand why he became like a weird bird artist.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Same, same. It is our job to be the weirdo of the family.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Yes, it's our job and we must carry that torch with pride. So he had all these siblings and his parents encouraged him to draw. And his aunt, whose name was Fanny Gunn. This is not really related to anything, but I just was like, it's just iconic, great name, and I need to share that on the internet.

• 7:32Rachel Feltman?

  Fanny gets your gun.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, Fanny Gunn. I feel sort of disappointed that my kid is already like two and I did not name her Fanny Gunn, but that's okay. Someone else who's listening can take that name and run with it. So they were all big supporters of his art. And when he was 13, which this is like the cutest thing I've ever heard, he did a beautiful, detailed, full-color drawing of some birds that he saw. And he didn't know what they were. So he sent them in the mail to the commissioner of patents and was basically like, sir, do you know what these birds are? Which like, I'm just saying, the internet could never, AI could never. Like, the idea of seeing a bird, doing a painting of it,

• 8:15Speaker 01

  putting it in the mail and like waiting and wondering to know what bird it is. Like, I feel like we all kind of need something like that in our lives. We need less immediate access to the information. We need to earn it a little bit.

• 8:30Rachel Feltman?

  I do have a running bit with my good friend Ryan F. Mandelbaum, who is a bird, a bird person. I frequently send them pictures of actual birds out in the world, being like, what's this bird? And our, I've always described our text communication as dataist in nature. We never know, yeah, we never know how long it's going to take to get a reply. You know, what, what the syntax will be. But then I also have a running bit where I send things that are very clearly not birds. We sent a recording of my child shrieking like a seagull. I said, Ryan, what's this bird? So really, I feel like a really warm kinship to this little boy sent to go.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yes. As, you know what? I'm realizing that I'm, I'm the commissioner of patents for my friends. Like, they send me the birds. That's me. That's a beautiful thing and an honor.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  I also love that he was like, the commissioner of patents, he has to recognize a lot of things.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Right. I read that a couple times and I was like, okay.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  And I'm like, did we put patents on birds and I missed?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  I think he was just like, this guy must know a lot, so I'm gonna reach out to him. Which is amazing. So the commissioner of patents actually very sort of started the snowball for Robert Ridgeway because he forwarded his letter to Spencer Fullerton Baird of the Smithsonian Institute, of course. And so Baird sees the art and he's like, oh, my God, this is like really good. Holy crap. And so he writes him back and he's like, dude, your art's awesome. Your artistic abilities are amazing, but please learn to use the scientific names of birds and for their correspondence.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  So

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Oh, you're so talented.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Robert, yeah, into being a full nerd. He's like,

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  learn the scientific names.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  You're so talented, but you better come correct the next time we speak.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna need you to learn the birds, son, okay?

• 10:43Rachel Feltman?

  He said there are in fact stupid questions.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yes. Basically, he was like, great art, but you know, get good. Okay?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  So So Ridgway and Baird essentially became like pen pals and formed kind of like a mentor mentee relationship. And much later in Robert's life, he was actually appointed as the secretary at the Smithsonian Institute. So he really like, you know, pulled on this thread until he ended up actually at the Smithsonian. So Ridgway, big nerd and artist affectionate. I say that with all the love in my heart. So he is like talking to other ornithologists and other birders and they're all trying to describe birds to each other. And they're like, yeah, that one was blue, but like a dark blue. And this one was brownish. But,

• 11:37Speaker 01

  you know, so they're all sort of struggling to use color language to describe the birds to each other. And Ridgway is like, I've got to do something about this. It's like, I can't let this stand. So he decided to make a color dictionary to help ornithologists communicate about bird colors.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  So his effort to describe the diversity of bird color ends up later inspiring one of the first modern color systems Pantone. But

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  in the beginning, so this is, this is 1886, by the way. I don't think I've given you a timeline yet, but this is where we are. So in 1886, he created and published a nomenclature of colors for naturalists, which categorized 186 colors alongside diagrams of birds. By the way, you can look at this book on the internet on the Smithsonian's website. I have, I recommend you do. It's really delightful. It's so much fun to look at. So the initial book that he made, he and his wife Julia painted these huge pages

• 12:48Speaker 01

  of each color. So every one of the 186 colors he wanted to categorize, he and Julia mixed the colors and painted these huge sheets of it and then cut it into perfect little rectangles and put original swatches of the colors in each of the original books.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  I think there were like 500 books, which is a huge number for a book in 1886.

• 13:14Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  And each of them has these original little swatches of color. And in the books, you can literally see the paint strokes. Like, it is a beautiful thing. And not only can you see the paint strokes, also each color has a name and lists the colors used to mix the color. So it's like, he really, he went all the way in.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  He said, no one is messing up their bird paintings moving forward.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  You have no excuse.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  No one is ever not gonna be able to identify a purple finch again. Like, he's like, I made this mistake and no one else ever will. So in the original book, you know, it's this beautiful work of art. It's absolutely incredible. And he puts it out, people love it. And he says, you know what? That's actually not enough. I'm gonna make another book.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Good.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  So, mm hmm. In 1912, he self-published an expanded version for broader audience. And it was called Color Standards and Color Nomenclature. And that one included, so the first one was 186 colors, this one includes 1,115 colors.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  How were him and Julia's hands?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  So

• 14:37Speaker 02

  after this?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  At this point, he and Julia are not doing the paintings themselves because they have access to like chemical color mixing and printing. Yes, they said, everyone needs to know about more colors, but like, we can't be painting

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Can't be us.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  1,115 sheets of paper and cutting them up into little bits. So that book is also available to view online. It's gorgeous. And a lot of the colors are actually named after birds, like Warbler Green and Jay Blue and things like that. So here's a quick, here's a quick side note for me to get to talk about bird color as I'm talking about, you know, the, the colors that were inspired by birds. Jay Blue in the book is this like beautiful blue, right? But you all may or may not know, listeners and my fellow podcasters, blue jay feathers are not actually blue.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  No, they are not. No, they are not.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  So they are not. So most color in nature comes from pigments that absorb and reflect light. But blue jay feathers create their color through structural tricks. It's called structural color. Lots of birds have this as a part of their sort of like color display. And structural color is microscopic layers and air pockets in the features that scatter blue light back to your eyes and let the rest of the light go through. So you can see a blue jay feather. There's actually, I watched, I watched a guy and like, don't do this at home.

• 16:12Rachel Feltman?

  Don't watch a guy.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Don't watch, don't ever watch a guy.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Never watch a guy.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Never do that again.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Guy watching, done. Bird watching, in.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Yes. That's my personal new goal for life. Never watch a man on the internet again. Period. So if you look at a blue jay feather, sort of like, you know, on the blue jay, you're like, wow, that's blue. But if you take it off of the blue jay, which like, do not.

• 16:39Rachel Feltman?

  That's the part to not do.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Don't do that.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  That's actually something I talked about.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Corvids are so good at remembering. That blue jay is gonna be so pissed.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  And they're gonna tell their whole family.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Also, the migratory bird act of 1912 is no joke. Leave them alone.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  That's my, Alexis, that's literally the topic I talked about last time I was on this podcast.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Are you kidding?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  I'm not kidding. I was like, you cannot have bird feathers. I know you want to, but you can't.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Don't do it. If I, I, Liz, we need to be friends because I literally have to bring up the migratory bird act of 1912 at least once a week.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yes, it happens constantly. Yes. People will text me not only pictures of birds, but then they're holding a feather. And I'm like, babe, put that down.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Put it down. That's not yours.

• 17:22Rachel Feltman?

  Put that thing back where it came from.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Also, help me.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, exactly. So I'm sure this, I'm sure this internet man had permission to do this.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  He had a blue jay feather. He's showing how it looks blue in certain light, but when the light passes through it, it looks brown. And then he puts it in a mortar and pestle and he grinds it up.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Yum.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  And that destroys the structure, which makes structural color. So it's just brown. It just becomes totally brown. So anyhow, bird color.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  That is, that's

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Crazy cool.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  If anyone out here is still science fair age and is trying to take home that blue ribbon.

• 18:07Rachel Feltman?

  Wow.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Excellent idea.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  True, absolutely.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. You can even compare it if you, I don't know, maybe ask a museum near you if they have feathers.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yes, or like a zoo, maybe?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Or a zoo. Love that. Love that.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Don't steal feathers from jays.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  They'll tell all of the other jays about you and they gossip.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. And then they'll tell the crows, like corvid family.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Then it'll be a whole problem. Exactly. Exactly. You'll be having to wear a mask every day of your life.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Then the government's gonna get involved, migratory bird act. Like, you know, listen, just don't do it to yourself.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Don't do it.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Okay, so that's my sidebar on Jay Blue. But we're gonna fast forward to the 1950s. Okay. So printers and advertisers are facing sort of the similar color quandary that Ridgway went through, right? Ridgway, Ridgway. And they're like, how do we create colors that are consistent and unique and distinct? We need a system. So essentially, recognizing an unmet need, this guy named Lawrence Herbert bought out the printing company where he was working in 1962 and created the company Pantone from that. And he referenced all

• 19:29Speaker 01

  of these older color guides, including Robert Ridgway's, to sort of establish a color system that was ultimately inspired by the beauty of birds. And we can't really talk about Pantone today without mentioning the color of the year this year, which is white.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  It's called Cloud Dancer, but like, that's

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Boo.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Bullshit.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. I had sky dancers as a kid and they didn't look like that.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  No, they did not. They were way cooler and more colorful.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Way cooler.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Just letting them rip and, oh, man.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  And so many hair tangles.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yes. Absolutely. Yes. But yes, so Cloud Dancer, you know, everything is political and it's impossible to separate the color choice for the color of the year from the like broader cultural context that we are living in and experiencing with a rise of white nationalism and our government being loudly supportive of that. So at best, it's insanely tone deaf and at worst, it's sinister. So not a good color of the year this year, Pantone. Tone deaf. Tone deaf.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Tone deaf.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Tone deaf, indeed.

• 20:44Rachel Feltman?

  Yes, it goes right to the top.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Yep. Pantone deaf, yes.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  So anyhow.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Dang, where was that when this was announced? That should have been, that should have been the headline for everybody.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. But yes, bad color of the year this year, Pantone. But we came a long way to get here and it ultimately started with birds. So that is my, that's my, that's my, my yarn for you today.

• 21:10Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, a great yarn.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Hopefully, it's teal next year.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:16Rachel Feltman?

  We're just like, something, something.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Just something.

• 21:18Rachel Feltman?

  I know they're like, white is all colors at once. Like, okay.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:24Rachel Feltman?

  It's not.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  That's enough.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  That's enough out of you.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Exactly. Cut that out. My thoughts. No, thank you, please.

• 21:35Rachel Feltman?

  All right, we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts.

• 21:49Rachel Feltman?

  Okay, we're back. And so I'm going to talk about how naked mole rat queens,

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Queens.

• 21:54Rachel Feltman?

  Again, queens.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Yes, queen.

• 21:56Rachel Feltman?

  Listeners already know I'm obsessed with how they use smell to get their way. Now, just in case you missed the like full ode to naked mole rats I did apparently many years ago, that was scary when I look back at how long ago that was. Or if you need a refresher, let's like briefly talk about why the naked mole rat is proof that if there is a God, she loves us. And it's also like a real freak.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:21Rachel Feltman?

  I love them and they're nasty and weird.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:24Rachel Feltman?

  So naked mole rats, heterocephalus glaber, are the only mammals whose body can't regulate a steady internal temperature. Their temperature regulation has a lot more in common with cold-blooded animals like reptiles than it does with other rodents. And that's why you often see them kind of squirming around in big squishy, pasty piles. They do a lot of snuggling to stay warm when they're not engaged in bloody dynastic feuds, which I will get into in a bit.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I was gonna compare them to anemic people like myself, but then we got to bloody dynastic feuds. And so we've taken a slight diversion.

• 23:04Rachel Feltman?

  Slight. But you know, just some other things about how bizarre they are. There was a study published a few years ago that showed that naked mole rats can survive oxygen levels that would be, this is a quote, fatal to humans and fatal to laboratory mice and probably to everyone else.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 23:22Rachel Feltman?

  They put them at 5% oxygen, which is less than the atmosphere at the top of Mount Everest. And they thought they would show some signs of distress within 15 minutes. But an hour later, they were fine.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Just chew them.

• 23:34Rachel Feltman?

  And then five hours later, this is a quote from an article in Pops Eye back in 2017, "After five hours, we were convinced that 5% oxygen is not a problem for these guys. So we decided to call it a night, go home and have dinner."

• 23:49Rachel Feltman?

  And when they put them in a container with zero oxygen, they did pass out after five minutes, but then they were like, okay.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Five minutes?

• 23:57Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, it's a long time. And then they were like, okay, put them back to normal. And they like popped, popped back up a few seconds later. There were five.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 24:03Rachel Feltman?

  So that's sinister.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, the ethics of that?

• 24:07Rachel Feltman?

  Complimentary.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Give me pause. But I love what we learned from it.

• 24:11Rachel Feltman?

  Yes, yes, absolutely. It is the kind of animal study that you're like, oh, and why?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  And why?

• 24:19Rachel Feltman?

  Which, you know, we're not going to dig too deep into that today, but the, the ability itself has something of a sinister edge to it, I would say. Why you need that naked mole rats. Honestly, I kind of feel like, I mean, they do live underground. And I also, they do like, get into these snuggly, cold-blooded piles. I'm like, maybe they just like, need to be able to deal with being smothered all the time.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Like, if you're in the bottom of the pile, maybe you're not getting a lot of oxygen.

• 24:48Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. You know, scientists, something to think about. I don't know. They also don't seem to experience pain in the way that we understand it. They don't react to injuries that it seems like they should react to. They also don't, they don't like seem to have the instinct to treat an injured area as if it's like sensitive. They don't baby it, you know, in other words, they, they're just like, whatever.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Tough guys.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  So maybe they're like bloody dynastic feuds are just like fun times.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe that's just a pillow fight for them.

• 25:21Rachel Feltman?

  Maybe to them, it's like totally chill until one of them is dead. And then they're like, hmm.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  I missed this part of Kim Possible. I mean, Rufus was tumbling a lot.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Didn't, didn't tell us all this.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 25:32Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, basically, of any mammals that, that had been studied as of, you know, when, when I last looked it up, and I think probably still, they have the least sensitive pain receptors. Yeah. So there's all of that. They also, they, they get studied a lot for both aging research and cancer research, because they're basically impervious to cancer in a way that is very unusual for mammals. And then also they, you know, there's some research on whether they, they like age in the way that we would expect mammals to age. They do definitely like age and die. They're not like the freaky immortal jellyfish guy. But it's like, there's maybe some interesting stuff going on with them.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I wouldn't be surprised.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Someone find their chalmers at the end of, at the end of their genes, stat. What's going on?

• 26:20Rachel Feltman?

  There's sort of like, there are very few things you could tell me scientists have discovered about naked mole rats that I wouldn't at least be tempted to believe. They're just very weird.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  It's giving, that's what peak performance looks like?

• 26:34Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah, sorry.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 26:37Rachel Feltman?

  It's one of those like, they really are like, you know, I'm saying all the time, both on weirdest thing and like in my book and, you know, whatever, like, like humans are not the pinnacle of anything. Like, evolution is not carrying, carrying us to a goal. It's just, we are, it's stuff is happening and some of us are surviving. And that's, that's continuing to happen. And those things are compounding. And I feel like naked mole rats are one of those things where it's like, unfortunately, this might be the pinnacle of evolution.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:08Rachel Feltman?

  You can't tell me they're not doing really well for themselves.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  That's kind of amazing. Maybe I want to be a naked mole rat.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm kind of like, humans were sort of like working towards a self-destruction situation. And naked mole rats are just down here like chilling, not feeling pain, being stinky, cuddling.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  All the good things about life. They're surviving in low oxygen levels.

• 27:36Rachel Feltman?

  They're on my vision board.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Like, let me, let me in the, in the colony, please.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Please.

• 27:42Rachel Feltman?

  Well, so speaking of the colony and getting into the aspects of them that are weird, that are relevant to the new research we're going to talk about. So they're what scientists call eusocial animals. That literally translates to good or true social. It's the highest level of sociality. Basically, adults live in groups and care for their young cooperatively. And only certain individuals produce those young. Ants and bees are more famous examples because eusociality is mostly seen among insects. It's that sort of like, super organized hive or colony, where you've, you've got like ranks of individuals and it all seems to just sort of like, happen that way. And like, they, they're programmed to like, have that

• 28:24Rachel Feltman?

  society. And they interrelate to each other in that very complex way that seems to be like a well-oiled machine.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  We're amazing.

• 28:33Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, exactly. And there are only two mammalian species that are considered truly eusocial. Both of them are mole rat. The other one is the DeMarland mole rat, which looks a lot like a naked mole rat, except not naked.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  The clothed mole rat.

• 28:53Rachel Feltman?

  The clothed mole rat.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  They have little outfits?

• 28:55Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Little top hat?

• 28:58Rachel Feltman?

  So honestly, if you thought that the skin folds were the thing that made the naked mole rat look kind of terrifying, you should take a look at the DeMarland mole rat because they're very different. But like, those beady little eyes of giant incisors on like a weirdly skinny hamster, also unsettling.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 29:17Rachel Feltman?

  They're not, they're still not cute.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  And I'm learning.

• 29:23Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, I was, I was really taken aback at how still freaky they look with hair. So.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Because it's like, it makes less sense. Like, when they're naked, you're like, yeah, you should look like that.

• 29:36Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  I just love how with their.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Have a top hat. They have a little white spot on their head. That's their little top hat.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  And I love how with the way their teeth are oriented, they always look like they are mid-scream.

• 29:47Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. Oh, yes. That's an important part of it. But yeah, so, so there are these weird eusocial mammals, a very bizarre thing, which obviously fascinate scientists to no end. And, yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  I kind of love him. He's kind of growing on me.

• 30:06Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. Oh, I mean, same as like, I also kind of love naked mole rats, even though objectively, they're really horrifying looking. And I'm sure, given enough time, the clothed mole rat will also grow its way into my heart. Yeah, they're organized in a hierarchy that's like loosely correlated with their size. You've got your like workers and foragers, you know, sort of the equivalent of those like worker bees.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Shout out to foragers.

• 30:33Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Shout out to foragers.

• 30:35Rachel Feltman?

  It's important work. They're the base of the pyramid.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. Everyone's got to eat. Rouse.

• 30:41Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  You gotta eat.

• 30:42Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. And then they've got, some were like, like soldiers in the middle. And then the socially speaking, the highest ranked are the, sorry. And then socially speaking, the, the higher ranks, you know, there's the breeding male, and then there's the queen, who is the, the only breeding female, similar to what you would see in a, in a bee colony. And yeah, one thing, one thing that I just learned in prepping for this, which is fascinating and hilarious to me, is that you can, their ranks are so defined that you can actually sort them using a very simple dominance test. You just put two of them and have them meet in a tunnel. And then whichever one yields, you know, is the lower ranked of the pair.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 31:27Rachel Feltman?

  They're just like, oh.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Pardon me?

• 31:31Rachel Feltman?

  I guess if they're the same rank, maybe they just do the thing where they like step to either side of the hallway repeatedly. Yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  And then they're in a dance battle.

• 31:38Rachel Feltman?

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  That's incredible. I'm envisioning them with like tiny arms, like yielding like a you, you know?

• 31:48Rachel Feltman?

  And so, yeah, similar to queen bees, you know, the most dominant mole rat lady is basically competes for that role and then has the right to bear the colony's young. While everyone else does everything else.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Honestly, I'd be like, let her.

• 32:06Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Go off, queen.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:11Rachel Feltman?

  And yeah, this can result in some very bloody dynastic battles. Back in 2018, the Smithsonian National Zoo actually had a long drawn out battle for queendom. There's a quote from DCus back then of a zookeeper saying, yeah, they've been fighting and killing each other. They have mole rat wars. We're hoping things will calm down a little now.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, did they like, put up like a screen, like dynastic battle happening? Come back later.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Come back later.

• 32:42Rachel Feltman?

  And I think they probably did. Like, honestly, I think they did.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 32:46Rachel Feltman?

  Because, yeah, their adult brood went from.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  I'm like actually crying. I am laughing so much.

• 32:53Rachel Feltman?

  Their adult breed went from seventeen to thirteen over the course of a few months because there was so much fighting.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  This is giving like Watership Down.

• 33:02Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  This is all it's feeling. It's giving Lord of the Flies. If we're gonna be isolated in here, we gotta figure some things out.

• 33:13Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. And so like back in 2018, when, when this happened at the zoo, it played out in the way that zookeepers and researchers had grown to expect it to play out, which is that the females who were kind of like largest and seemed most likely to become queen, like fought with each other quite a bit and also like started trying to get pregnant the fastest. And the unsurprisingly, the biggest lady won. And so back when I did my deep dive on naked mole rats back in like 2018 or whatever it was, which is, ah, anyway, scientists knew

• 33:54Rachel Feltman?

  that non-breeding females in the colonies like were infertile. They had sexual organs that appeared prepubescent. And then if you took them out of the colony, that would kickstart their puberty. So they knew that this was a thing that like, there could literally only be one queen.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  You can only be one.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  There can be only one.

• 34:11Rachel Feltman?

  But they didn't know what mechanism might actually prevent fertility in non-queens, which is where the new research comes in.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  The stinky?

• 34:20Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, it seems like the answer is the stinky.

• 34:25Rachel Feltman?

  Producing the mammalian version of like Fairbones, like a queen bee uses.

• 34:31Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, she's a perfume girly. She's into those niche scents.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Mmm, bakomak.

• 34:43Rachel Feltman?

  So yeah, to figure this out, I know, I love it. And the research is, is really fascinating. So they, they analyzed 351, I think, naked mole rats, a bunch of different ages, ranks, reproductive states, just a swath of naked mole rat culture. And they, they held little absorbent plastic tubes near them for half an hour each so that they could like waft their odors.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  As one does.

• 35:06Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  As a mole rat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:08Rachel Feltman?

  I really am. I'm, I can't wait for like Alchemia to release their naked mole rat scent. But they put those through a mass spectrometer. They found about a hundred distinct chemical compounds. Not surprising that scent is very important to them because they are blind and very good at smelling stuff. They have 1,200 olfactory receptor genes, which is, I think mice only have about a thousand and humans only have a few hundred. So they're very smelly guys. And so that wasn't surprising. But they did find that there was a, a common thread where queens all had this chemical isopropyl myristate, which was basically undetectable in other naked mole rats. And it seemed to peak during ovulation. So they were like,

• 35:52Rachel Feltman?

  hmm, this does seem to probably be related to reproduction. Also, fun fact from new scientists reporting on this, which I will link to at popsite.com/ weird. This compound is generally considered odorless from human perspectives, but the researchers think that maybe is not the case. It's used as a solvent and moisturizer in a lot of cosmetics. And the study author said that some of his colleagues who shared lab space swore they could smell it when it was present in the lab. So it might just be that it's like subtle and some people can't smell it. But now that it's present in so many products, maybe some people have learned to recognize it. TBD has not been studied yet. But yes, naked mole rats can

• 36:33Rachel Feltman?

  definitely smell it. They, they show that it activated cells that respond to smell and stimulated their little olfactory bulbs. And

• 36:42Speaker 01

  It's so wild to think that like using your lotion, if you like went to the mole rat colony, you just make all the lady mole rats infertile.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Immediately.

• 36:53Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  I'm the queen.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:58Rachel Feltman?

  You can make yourself smell like a naked mole rat queen every day.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Like, I might buy that lotion.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. If that was the way it was being marketed, unfortunately, I think they would have me.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm kind of bought in.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Where's that Kickstarter?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:16Rachel Feltman?

  I'm, I'm opening a tab to start it right after this call.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  I'm in.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  We're gonna be your first supporters.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:23Rachel Feltman?

  So in testing how they reacted to it, first they found that it did seem to be dependent on rank. They used a T-shaped maze and they placed the, the smelly queen molecule on one side. And when they put like quite high ranking females on the other, like ones that could theoretically become queen if a queen were to be, you know, deposed, she avoided it. So they were like, oh, maybe they have an instinct to like avoid the queen because they're sort of, you know, her potential competitors. Whereas, you know, other, other animals in the colony are like, I'm beneath her notice. I don't have to worry.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Don't worry about me, man.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Just passing through.

• 38:08Rachel Feltman?

  And then when they sprayed it in cages, basically they took non-breeding females and, you know, took them out of the colony, put them in cages with males. And when they sprayed those cages with this compound, there were no pregnancies. And in the cages where they did not spray this compound, almost all the females got pregnant. So it does seem to be that the presence of this chemical, you know, helps to send the message that nobody else needs to be making babies.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Cut that out.

• 38:38Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 38:40Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  It's like the birth control, like, like patch for mole rats.

• 38:47Rachel Feltman?

  She's got you covered. Yeah. They found it boosts levels of prolactin, which reduces fertility and lowered progesterone, which promotes fertility. And so another part of the experiment, they decided to remove the queen, which would usually lead to like one of those bloody scrambles for succession we talked about. But they sprayed this chemical so that from an olfactory point of view, she was still there. And everyone hung out very peacefully until they stopped the spray. And then they were like, you know,

• 39:15Speaker 01

  New queen.

• 39:16Rachel Feltman?

  Open season. Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  It's me now.

• 39:19Rachel Feltman?

  That also sort of, I mean, many people in articles about this, you know, like it's sort of a creepy sci-fi thing where there's a, a spray that makes you peaceful. It's not like there was a whole sci-fi franchise, franchise spinoff movie with that as a plot point.

• 39:37Rachel Feltman?

  But yeah, they also, the, the study was primarily looking at sort of like scent in general. And they found that scent signature is also really important for peasants and commoners. Different colonies carry different like bouquets of chemical compounds.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Different stinky.

• 39:56Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, different stinky. And when mole rats from different colonies were put together, they spent an average of 40 seconds sniffing each other to suss each other out.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  They're like, who the hell are you?

• 40:06Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. And if they decided they were strangers, if they smelled strange, they would in fact usually try to come to them. Yeah. But disabling their sense of smell also disabled their violent xenophobia, which must be nice.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Is that, is that the secret?

• 40:21Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, is there, is there something here?

• 40:25Speaker 02

  I know. I'm like, I'm feeling like we're, we're inching up to something applicable.

• 40:31Rachel Feltman?

  Not today, but maybe one day.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  What do we get to spray the violent xenophobes with?

• 40:38Rachel Feltman?

  Just a spray bottle like a bad cat.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yes.

• 40:43Rachel Feltman?

  But yeah, but one, one other thing before I'm done talking about naked mole rats, unfortunately for today. Another recent study, basically was asking, you know, okay, so we know that they have these very violent turnovers. Not surprising that they're up for that, given that they like, don't feel pain. But basically asking the question like, okay, so this is a stable evolutionary strategy for them because, you know, in this colony mindset, they're all investing in this one very controlled group of offspring. So it's like very stable for them as opposed to resources being scattered around. But like, it can't always be the,

• 41:25Rachel Feltman?

  the most stable option to have just one person doing all the reproduction. And like, do they have any mechanisms for things going a different way? And so this study, speaking of vaguely sinister animal research, they basically induced-

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Was it a man on the internet?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Always.

• 41:48Rachel Feltman?

  But they basically induced temporarily artificial environmental stressors on a colony, like relentless, slow burn apocalypse scenario. And under those very specific conditions where it was like, there is generational environmental strife here, things are not good. They saw that when they moved them to a new location and that was like the final straw, the queen was like not reproducing well anymore. Instead of a bloody fight, several of her daughters started breeding and even had some overlapping pregnancies without violence. And then one of them just kind of inched ahead and was like reproducing more. She became queen and the others like gradually stopped reproducing and fell back

• 42:32Rachel Feltman?

  into these other roles. So while this was a very artificially induced situation, it was still just like, they didn't tell them to do this. It was the natural behavior of the naked mole rats. So it does indicate that they, they have the versatility to be more chill if that's what's good for the sake of the survival of the colony, but they'd rather not.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  They'd be like, no, we're duking it out. Let's go.

• 42:59Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  How were they, were they just shaking the colony every day? Everyday earthquakes?

• 43:07Rachel Feltman?

  So I didn't go into the methods. I'm sure a lot of it was about like food and water availability, maybe, maybe some temperature stuff. Though again, they're like hardy.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. They're like, I don't need oxygen or food.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Or food. I don't need any of you. I just need snuggles.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Rachel, do they have like litters of babies?

• 43:29Rachel Feltman?

  They do. And here's another horrifying fact about them.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:33Rachel Feltman?

  So when the zookeepers in DC were talking about the naked mole rat who had come out ahead, they were like, well, her first litter was three pups, which is modest, but she's going to get pregnant again really quickly. And as progressive pregnancies stretch out her spine, she'll be able to carry many more babies at once. So that is a thing about them, that they.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Mole rat body horror. That's crazy.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Ah, I also don't like that her body's like, ah, perfect. More baby.

• 44:09Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  All according to my plans.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Oh, nature, you're so scary.

• 44:16Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, nature is so scary. Naked mole rat, one of the scarier nature, considering that they like, don't bother us. They're, they're around, they're scrubbing around there in the dark, up to no good. I respect them.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  I love that they just have a sort of feudal society going on.

• 44:35Rachel Feltman?

  They do. But like, so it's sort of like a, like a socialist feudal society. They're all getting what they need.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. And they, and they get it together when the times call for it.

• 44:48Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, but I can't wait to hear what more we learn about the naked mole rat in the future, because again, every new fact I learn about them makes me more uncomfortable, more impressed. I love them. I love them so much.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  That's a good fact right there. One that makes you uncomfortable and impressed. Like, also, I just love that we're still learning so many things. Like, we think we know so much, but there's so much to learn.

• 45:15Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  So cool.

• 45:18Rachel Feltman?

  All right, we're going to take one more break and then we'll be back with one more fact.

• 45:30Rachel Feltman?

  All right, we're back. And tell me about this, this fruit, this berry, Alexa. I want to know more.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, it's not quite as exciting as crushed bird feathers.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Or the political bloody squabbles of one naked mole rat. But I am here to talk about one of my favorite fruits that you, unless you're Canadian, probably haven't heard of.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Shout out to Canada. And the craziest thing about it is it is probably growing very close to you because people love using it as a street tree. And that is going to be the fruits of the trees in the Amalankier genus. And you might be saying, okay, nerd, can you give me like the real people name of this fruit? And my answer for you is it's complicated.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  So we, many of us have heard that story where it's like, oh, the Inuit have many words for snow and snowy conditions because when something is so important, so prevalent in your society, you tend to have a lot of words to describe it. I think that that speaks to how important this fruit is because without fail, every single time that I talk about it on the internet, I will get a handful of people being like, but you didn't say that it also goes by this name that my community calls it actually. And I'll be like, yeah, because I don't have 10 minutes, guys.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Because we'd literally be here five ever.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Um, actually, it's called this.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  No, I get, um, actually on those videos more than anything, especially by the Canadians. They're just like, don't you know, it's our opportunity to be better than the Americans. And you know what? Good for you, Canada. Shout out to the Canadians who are listening.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, you already have that, Canada. Like, do you need this too?

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. Come on now. So I will start with its most basic name, most basic common English name, which is the name that I grew up calling it, which is Juneberry. It is also the name that is the easiest to explain because its berries are ripe in the month of June.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yep. I love a name that says what it is.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Exactly. Because we don't always get those. Scientists just be naming things after themselves. Nine times out of 10.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Birds, prime example of that. So many birds named after old white dudes and their homies.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Wilson Snipe, who are you, Wilson?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  You are not a snipe. Take your name off of him.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Release the bird.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  His name is Jeben. He doesn't know you.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  So we have Juneberries. And so growing up, I'm like, ah, yes, Juneberries. Makes perfect sense. Start popping them in your mouth around like the first, second week of June. Unfortunately, now as where I live has moved up in growing zones and as we have inched closer to climate calamity, unfortunately, we now should maybe be calling them end of May berries. But that, that's really going to be throwing things all up in the air. We don't want to confuse people. Juneberries. Now, the first thing that's going to happen if you say Juneberry to someone who lives on the western side of the country is they're

• 49:28Speaker 02

  going to be like, that's not that fruit's name. Its name is Serviceberry. And you'll go, hmm, Serviceberry. That's interesting. I wonder why it has that name. And a liar will pop up out of nowhere.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  And they don't even know that they're lying. And that's, that's sometimes the worst kind of liar. And they'll say, it's because when they flower, it's right around the time when the ground has thawed enough after winter to be able to continue funeral services. So you can start putting people in the ground again, which does make me go, oh, right, when the ground hard froze. I do guess it would be pretty hard to put people in the ground.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  True. I did just have that exact thought. Like, yeah, that seems tough.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm like, oh dang, I do guess you've got to just let people like chill, quite literally, until you can be putting them back in the ground. And so for years, I also was a liar. And I parroted this story about this alternate name. And then I met my friend and mentor and also critically acclaimed foraging book writer Sam Fair. And he pulled me aside and said, did you know that's wrong?

• 50:51Speaker 02

  And I said, I did not. Tell me everything. So Service is actually a really bad, like Americanized pronunciation of the genus Sorbus, which is European and is the mountain ash or rowan trees. They are both in the rose family. They both have the little crown butt ends, as many rose family fruits do. And so when people, people, qualimists got here, they were just like Sorbus Berry.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Yep. That's who that is. And it just slowly became Serviceberry.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Just like a game of telephone, essentially.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. Exactly. And we just kept it. We just kept it. And we just have to be okay with that. Serviceberry by and large is the name that you are going to find for members of the Amalankier genus in the most places in North America. But then a Canadian will come knocking on your door and say, hey,

• 52:09Speaker 02

  we have that fruit and that's not what we call it here. And you'll say, okay, Canadian, tell me your story about the Amalankier genus. And they will say, oh, that's a Saskatoon, don't you know?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  And then you'll say, that's not a berry. That's the name of a city. In Saskatchewan, what are you talking about? And they'll say, we literally named the city after the fruit.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 52:37Rachel Feltman?

  Wow, the big apple.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  The big apple, the big Saskatoon.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Saskatoon.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  It comes from a Cree word for the Saskatoon fruit.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  It was a very important foodstuff for the Cree, usually one of the earlier fruits you'd be getting in the growing season. And it was important enough that, yeah, we just named, we named the city Saskatoon.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  The actual Cree word is much longer, and I will not embarrass myself or disrespect the Cree language by trying to pronounce the original word. But I implore, I implore all of you to do an internet search.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  And make yourself smarter and wiser. Now, at this point, you're like, okay, so this fruit's got a lot of names, but I feel like we've gotten them all covered. Wrong.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Incorrect, because then someone from specifically southeastern Ohio will show up and say, actually, I should have shown up before, because I have to do with the last one. We just call it Sarvis.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Sarvis?

• 53:54Speaker 02

  We, we just call it Sarvis. And you'll say, oh, okay. And they're like, yeah, it's Sorbus, but wrong.

• 54:00Rachel Feltman?

  The missing link. Because I was sitting there being like, imagining the horrible American accent that had turned Sor- Sorbus and Service. And there it is.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  And there it is.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Sarbus.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Sarbus.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Sarbus. I'm from Tennessee, and I feel like Sarbus sounds like us.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  I mean, southeastern Ohio, we're in the foothills of the Appalachia Mountains. Very much like culturally have things in common, more so with Appalachia than the rest of Ohio. And so there you have Sarvis, which, yes, is the, the Australopithecus missing link

• 54:46Speaker 02

  between Sorbus and service berries. And so then you'll be like, oh, okay, so that, and then someone from Newfoundland will kick down your door. You don't have a door anymore.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  And they'll be like, that there is a chuckly pear.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Chuckly?

• 55:05Speaker 02

  A chuckly pear?

• 55:10Speaker 02

  So this was the one, I, I've known all of these other ones for a while. Chuckly pear was the one that I was like, no, I actually have to do some deep diving for this one. Because what in the heck is a chuckly?

• 55:21Speaker 01

  What is a chuckly?

• 55:23Rachel Feltman?

  And it, it don't look like a pear.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  It don't look like a pear. It looked like a bloob.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  It looked like a bloob, but on long stems in bunches.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  So I found out that chuckly is an old Neuf colloquial term for like, strong Nazi wood.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Which service berries do tend to have. They have, they have pretty strong wood, useful for a lot of different things. And I'm sure that in an area like Neuf, where the seasons are shorter, and maybe you're not always getting the big tall majestic trees to be cutting things out of. A use, it is a useful plant for more than just the fruit reasons. It's also useful for the wood that it is offering. And pear, they're like, it's like a pear. It's, it's really not.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Have they ever seen a pear?

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Well, now, they are closely related. They are cousins. Pears are also in the rose family. They also have that cute little like blossom end star butts, like apples and like service berries.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  And if you find some pear species, they do, I mean, the Bradford pear fruits, if we want to talk about a very stinky pear. We want to talk about a pear that everyone wants to fight.

• 56:53Rachel Feltman?

  I looked up wild pear, and I'm seeing some, like, I can

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:57Rachel Feltman?

  at least understand where this came from.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  It makes a bit more sense when you're not thinking of the like, bodacious.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Right, the grocery store pear, the like engineered pear.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're not talking about an Anjou.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  We're talking about one of their ancestors. So you're like, oh, my gosh, okay, chuckly pear.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Chuckly pear.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Adding that one to the list.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  I should have been counting.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  And then someone from New England will be like, that's a sugar plum.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Sugar plum like the fairy?

• 57:34Speaker 02

  And I'm like, do we need to call Tchaikovsky? Like, what? What are we doing? What's happening? Where did this one come from? And then they're like, oh, it's just because it's sweet.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  It's just because it's sweet. And it looks a little bit like a small plum.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  It kind of purpleish, yeah.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  And I guess, once again, plums and all of the stone fruits are in the rose family.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Rose family, I'm learning, is massive.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Oh, she is that girl when it comes to some of our favorite fruits.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Here, there, and everywhere. And if you look at the flowers of all of these different plants, it, it makes sense.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  They, I'm thinking about it, and they are very, I can see it.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, the five petals, the very similar reproductive systems at the center. It, it makes sense. And so now I'm going to take a moment and go through my notes to make sure that I didn't miss the additional ones, because the last thing that I want to do, oh, I did. Okay, okay. No, I missed an important one, too. One that I should have brought up even earlier.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Who's coming into our house this time?

• 58:47Speaker 02

  It's more New Englanders. It's the, it's the mass holes of which I am descended, so I'm, I'm allowed to use that term. That's our word.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  And they're like, that's shad bush.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  What bush?

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Shad bush.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Shad.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Yes, shad, like Chad, but with an S.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Shad.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Like, like the, like the beefy man or the country, but with an S.

• 59:17Rachel Feltman?

  Sure, yeah.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Who's shad and why does he have a bush?

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Exactly. That is the very question that I had. And they'll be like, what do you mean, who's shad? Where do you live? What, what does your family do? Shad, like the fish that we eat. And I'll be like, oh, yeah, yeah, there is a fish called Chad. Now that I take a step back, but what does it have to do with the bush? Where, the bush doesn't even like growing that, that close to water. So what are we talking about? And they'll say, you fool, slap, slap. It flowers when the shad run in early spring. You silly, silly goose.

• 1:00:02Rachel Feltman?

  Circling back.

• 1:00:05Rachel Feltman?

  The seasonal timing names.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  The seasonal time of names.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  And so it will also sometimes be called shad bush, or the weirder shad blow.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't, I'm not, and I will say right now.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  That one.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  If anyone wants to write in and explain why shad blow is interchangeable.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Season of the blow, like, we need answers.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  The shad, they're just blowing through the streams. They're just blowing through the streams.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  And finally, last but not least, you have the genus name itself, Amalankier. If you're familiar with the binomial nomenclature of many things, you may be thinking to yourself, that don't sound like Latin. And you would be correct. It is not Latin. It actually is taken from Provencal, the very small dialect in the southeastern part of France, which directly comes from the original, like, Ga, like Gaul language, back when France was Gaul,

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  and the Romans shook their fists at them from a distance for being barbarians. And in the original Gaul language, the very similar word to Amalankier means little apple.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  He's just a little apple, you guys. He's just a little guy.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  And that is the tale of the Juneberry Sarvis Serviceberry Sugar Plum Shad Bush Shad Blow Chocly Pear.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Which, and I didn't even get to mention this, is absolutely delicious. It's one of my favorite foods.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Heck, yeah.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  They taste like an apple and a blueberry and an almond had a baby.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Because the seeds inside are edible and almond-y almond also in the apple, also in the rose family.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:24Rachel Feltman?

  She does it all.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  She really does it all. Almonds are just the kernels inside of a pit of a stone fruit.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Incredible. Wow.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  And all of those guys are all related to Sweet, Sweet Juneberry, one of my favorite snacks. It does happen to have its own chapter in my book with some of my favorite recipes in it. But honestly, usually the issue that we have is the fruit making at home to be cooked into anything. Because we'll be gathering and we'll be like, two for my mouth and one for the jar.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  And one for the jar. We are planting our own in our backyard to hopefully help mitigate this issue.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  And I can't wait to put their name tags on them. I want it to be a little scroll.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  It's gonna be like a string. Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Yes. That you can pull out and it just gives you all of them and a little sentence about why.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Oh, incredible.

• 1:03:23Rachel Feltman?

  I love that.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  So there, a little etymo- a little etymology and yeah, little, little botany.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  For your day.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  Also, the birds be loving serviceberry.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  You gotta get your hands on these berries. I always tell people, go onto iNaturalist and type in Amalanqueer into the search bar and be shocked at how many of them are in your area.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:50Rachel Feltman?

  I bet.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  People love them as street trees. They are very resilient guys.

• 1:03:55Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, no, there are for sure some around here and I just, you know, I'm somebody who pays some attention to things I can forage and that just isn't, isn't one that I knew I should be eating.

• 1:04:08Rachel Feltman?

  I grew up in a part of South Jersey that is really Appalachian and listening to this, I was like so shocked that this was not a thing that we ate and talked about, but I think it's because we, I was so deep in blueberry country, a lot of pride about blueberries, but I think that just dominated the conversation.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're close to like the Pine Barony areas, it's absolutely gonna be a blueberry to cranberry conversation for you guys, 100%. But you do also have a handful of Amalanqueer species as well.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:04:42Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, very exciting.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I wanna plant one now for me and the birds.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Do, oh my gosh, and you will be duking it out with the birds. The cedar waxwings.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  The cedar waxwings will start camping in them, like the week before the fruits are fully ripe.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  And they'll just be like, listen, we're unemployed. We got all day.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  We got all day, you'll never beat us to all of these.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  And you know what? That's okay with me.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Exactly. Me too.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  They can have them.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  I love sharing with the birds. It's always a good time.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  The robins, they'll be so cute about it, just bobbing along. But it's, the walrums at least will eat a full berry. The cedar waxwings will just poke a piece out and be like, eh.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:29Rachel Feltman?

  That's the way it feels.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  They're nibblers. Yes.

• 1:05:33Rachel Feltman?

  Then I think I can take the fruit and then I find that it's already been gone.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Yes. Not the best.

• 1:05:43Rachel Feltman?

  Well, Alexis, that was a wonderful fact and makes me very excited for your book. Would you remind our listeners what it's called so they can go preorder it and get it and read it for themselves?

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  My book is called Happy Snacking, Don't Die. Those are the two things that I want you to do. If you're gonna follow any of the suggestions and rules for safety in this book, it would be to snack happy and also do not die.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Good rules.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  We love being alive in this household.

• 1:06:14Rachel Feltman?

  Yes. We, I, we try to in this household.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  We try. And my fiance's an attorney and so he loves when I remind people, don't die.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  He's like, good job.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  He's like, I don't know, she explicitly told you, don't die, so I don't.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  You're legally obligated to not die.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, weirdos.