Bette Midler and the Salamander, How Marathon Swimmers Pee, D+D is Good for Your Brain

The wonderful Ryan Mandelbaum is BACK to discuss their latest animalian interest: salamanders in New York City! Laura also explains how peeing while swimming a marathon is shockingly complicated, and Rachel gets into why Dungeons and Dragons is therapeutic for your noggin. Go check out Ryan's newsletter! https://ryanmandelbirder.substack.com/ 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 -- 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 Get this new customer offer and your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at https://MINTMOBILE.com/WEIRDEST 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 1:28Rachel 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. I'm Laura Bisus.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  I'm Ryan Mandelbaum.

• 1:52Rachel Feltman?

  Ryan, welcome back to the show. It's been a minute.

• 1:56Speaker 04

  It's been too long, but it's so good to be here. Hi.

• 1:59Rachel Feltman?

  And my excuse for bringing you back on the show is that you have a wonderful new book out. Would you tell our listeners a little bit about it?

• 2:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. So though I was once a physics writer and still am in my daytime, I've pivoted hard into going outside.

• 2:17Rachel Feltman?

  Touching grass. Into outside.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I, you know, been doing this for quite a while now. And so I wrote this book, Wild NYC: Experience the Nature in and Around New York City, written by myself and illustrated by the wonderful Chelsea Beck. It is a romp through New York City that incorporates a natural history, as well as over 130 species accounts of the different animals we have here, and then 18 guided field trips. And boy, I'm really excited about it. It's got some of my pictures, Chelsea's illustrations, some archival stuff. It's really cool.

• 2:53Rachel Feltman?

  And at least one page on cruising, which I think is genuinely wonderful for a book about New York City parks and wildlife. And also just a great, great selling point for the book, I think. I feel like it tells people, you know, what kind of vibe they're gonna get.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Well, everybody should know that this episode is being recorded on June 30. Happy Pride. It is still Pride.

• 3:16Rachel Feltman?

  Happy Pride.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  I believe this may be one of the few, if not the only, nature guides that mention cruising. But indeed, it's there. I think it's an important thing to call out. I really wanted to encapsulate what it's like to be a nature observer in New York City in a way that felt, you know, inclusive and real, like what you actually experienced. So I'm really proud of that and the rest of the book.

• 3:42Rachel Feltman?

  Amazing. Well, It's beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful book. Highly recommend that folks get it. And if you want to learn a little bit more about the book and what might be in it before you add to cart, I also did an episode of Science Quickly with Ryan about their book, and it features a video of us going around the park and Ryan pointing at interesting things with their binoculars and me pretending I can also see them. Sometimes I could also see them. But I spend less time with binoculars. So honestly, sometimes I was just like, oh, yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  You should all know that one time, like three or four years ago, I took Rachel and Oliver to a sewage treatment plant in upstate New York to see a seagull. And it was really fun.

• 4:29Rachel Feltman?

  I was excited. Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was awesome.

• 4:34Rachel Feltman?

  All right, well, let's get into the show. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, being outside, etc. Decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more 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. But not really, we just, you know, sort of end the show, and that's okay, too. Laura, what's your tease?

• 5:06Speaker 05

  Marathon swimmers pee a lot.

• 5:10Rachel Feltman?

  And you would know as a resident marathon swimmer.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  Fact, I would know. This one's a little bit autobiographical, so it'll be fun to get into.

• 5:18Rachel Feltman?

  Wow, I love that. Ryan, what's your tease?

• 5:21Speaker 04

  In 2004, a biologist, after 60 years, rediscovered a salamander in New York City's, quote, "most damaged, most cluttered," end quote, park.

• 5:32Rachel Feltman?

  Wow. That's New York, baby.

• 5:37Rachel Feltman?

  My tease is that I actually have two short facts today, which I hardly ever do. I didn't plan it that way, but then I was like, this is gonna be pretty short. I have this other thing I want to mention, too. So anyway, my two facts, definitely super related. One, why do sharks play dead? And two, why is Dungeons and Dragons good for your brain?

• 6:01Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 6:01Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 6:02Speaker 05

  Wasn't expecting that.

• 6:03Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, like I said, really, you know, inside us, there are two wolves. One is shark, one is playing D and D. And if you're lucky, sometimes the shark also plays D and D. Uh, Laura, why don't we start with you?

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Sure. So, yes, as Rachel hinted, I am pop size, pop size resident marathon swimmer. So doing this segment's a little bit different from my normal fare, kind of more personal. Yeah, when I'm not sitting at my desk, reading and finding these wonderful facts for you all and doing my other day job. My chosen sport is open water marathon swimming. I grew up as a kid doing competitive pool swimming and decided no event was long enough and I would much rather be swimming in the ocean than in a chlorinated box.

• 6:50Rachel Feltman?

  Can't relate to that. Though I, when I did a swim team first as a little child at, at an outdoor summer pool and then at my, and then at my extremely unathletic college where we competed against such heavy hitters of the Culinary Institute of America.

• 7:09Speaker 05

  My sister's alma mater.

• 7:11Rachel Feltman?

  Well, if she was on the swim team.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  No, she was not.

• 7:14Rachel Feltman?

  Well, that, yeah, almost no one was. I actually filled in the CIA's pool with concrete over the break without telling them they were gonna do that. So then we lost one of our major competitors. But anyway, I was always, my strength was always doing the, barely doing the events that other people would simply refuse to do or always get DQ'd from. When I was a little kid, it was Butterfly and I could barely not get disqualified, which was a huge deal for like a six or seven year old.

• 7:44Rachel Feltman?

  And then in college, I would do the like 100s and 200s, not well, but just because like, if you finished, you'd probably get third because no one else wanted to be there. So anyway, that's, but I do not want to swim for longer than I have to.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  No, it's, yeah, I very dramatically quit pool swimming. I did not, I was like, I'm not doing this yet. I really did not like it for many reasons. And one of them was, you know, again, like it took away from my beach time. Like I just wanted to be in the saltwater and I always used to be like, I wish there was an ocean swim team. And it only, you know, it took several years. I didn't necess, I didn't really find this until I was 22, but you know, eventually it found me.

• 8:28Rachel Feltman?

  I guess it's reasonable that they don't like to put a lot of small children in the open ocean.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  That's probably good for safety. I mean, now like there are some like 11 and 12 year olds. Like it's as the sport has grown recently, younger and younger kids are kind of getting into it. But yeah, it was not something, you know, super available. But again, I loved it. Like I wanted to be in the, I, you know, we were kind of foils for of each other. Like I, I needed to be in the, you know, I would spend, you know, as much time as possible in the ocean when I was a kid. Um, so yeah, I found marathon swimming, which technically is any event over 6.2 miles or 10 K in a river, lake, ocean, any body of water that is not that lovely concrete box we call a pool.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. So there's again, so there's, there are a lot of, when I tell people this, um, I met with tons of questions. Um, so I'm happy to answer any of those, but before we go into those, I'll just give like a little bit of a background. About the sports history, um, cause it has some pretty, uh, pretty deep roots in ancient Greece. I know I sound like a professor going, you know, it's a warm summer evening in ancient Greece, but just bear with me. It has kind of a cool, uh, some, some cool roots. In ancient mythology, Hero, the priestess of Aphrodite, lived in a high tower over a body of water called the Hellespont. Uh, this is the body of water that separates Europe from Asia.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  Hero, she lived on the European side and a young man from the Asian side named Leander swam to her every night so that they could be together. Gonna say it that way.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  To guide him, to guide his journey, he used a lamp that Hero lit at the top of the tower as his guide. However, as most of these stories end, one stormy night when Hero's lamp burned out, Leander lost his way and drowned in the strait.

• 10:25Rachel Feltman?

  Sad.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  Sad. Now, inspired by Leander, the poet Lord Byron also swam the Hellespont.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  He was such a, a, a wimpy little dude. He, we've talked about his celebrity diet. He only ate potatoes and vinegar. Which, as somebody who's eaten, we can go into, we're gonna go into food later, I can tell you from experience, do not eat potatoes before a swim. Everybody's body is different, but oh my gosh, I did sweet potato fries once. It was awful. Don't do it. But it must have helped propel him across the Hellespont because he actually did it on his second attempt in 1810. And they became the first known people other than these mythological figures to achieve this feat. And every year on August 30th, so coming up in a few months,

• 11:15Speaker 05

  people swim this roughly 2.8 miles across the Hellespont. I've never done that, but that seems like it would be very cool, just because of the, how rooted in history it is.

• 11:25Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  Cause it, you know, and then the, um, kind of like with the Olympics, you know, where you have your roots in ancient Greece and then a modern movement, um, several centuries later, the modern birth of marathon swimming technically occurred in 1875. That's when a man named Matthew Webb became the first person to successfully swim across the English Channel from, uh, between France and England. Um, it's about 21 miles across depending upon the course. And in 1926, Gertrude Ederly, personal hero of mine, um, also a fellow person with roots in New Jersey and New York. Um, she became the first woman and sixth person ever to swim the Channel in 1926. There was actually a great movie that came out last year that I covered for Pops Eye called Young Woman in the Sea starring Daisy

• 12:10Speaker 05

  Ridley. Um, highly recommend that if you hear this and you decide I want to learn more about this sport for people who are just maybe have a few screws loose. Um, it's on Disney Plus. And, um, recently, as recently as 2008, a 10K marathon swim was also added to the Olympic slate, um, after several years of lobbying.

• 12:30Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, I remember there was a lot of discussion about where that was gonna be, uh,

• 12:35Speaker 05

  Every year.

• 12:36Rachel Feltman?

  During the Paris Olympics because of the, the poop water, the poop water situation.

• 12:39Speaker 05

  That is, poop water comes up every, every year during, every Olympic quad, you're gonna hear, oh no, what do we do about the poop water? Um, that could be a whole other segment.

• 12:50Speaker 05

  But yeah, while, you know, while wild swimming obviously is very old, it is of the 10K and open water part itself is a fairly new addition to like the modern Olympic movement. And unlike pool swimming or something like basketball, the rules do all kind of depend on the organization running the event. I typically do swims that are sanctioned and observed by a group called the Marathon Swimming Federation. And that means in order to be ratified as a swim, traditional attire, so no wet suit or anything that provides buoyancy or warmth, and no rest periods on a boat or kayak. So basically, that is-

• 13:27Speaker 04

  Wait, pause just one quick second.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  Go, go, yes.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Traditional attire. I'm thinking breeches. I'm thinking corsets. I'm thinking something totally- Yeah, how traditional.

• 13:38Speaker 05

  Brilliant question, because yes, for a swimmer who hears traditional attire, they do not go corsets and breeches, but for the, yeah, no, it means more like, you know, for men, it's like a traditional speedo. And for women, it's like, you can, you can wear a bikini. Gertrude Utterly famously made her own bikini years before they were marketed. Or just like a traditional one piece. Mostly, it can't be a wet suit or something that gives you added warmth and buoyancy. Some, even some like regular bathing suits give you like a little bit of a lift. So just kind of in an effort to keep the sport pure. If you watch the Olympic 10K, they're in tech suits. So anything that kind of has like

• 14:19Speaker 05

  newer textiles, same with triathletes, they'll wear wet suits. And people will swim in mixed events where like some people are in swimsuits and other people are in tech suits, but they usually are slated differently because, now, I, I, I would say you don't need a wet suit to do well. But a lot of, you know, a lot of people prefer to swim in a wet suit and anything that'll get you in the water and get you competing is fine. But for a lot of swims, like if you're gonna do the English Channel, sorry, you can't wear a wet suit and have it, you know, and have your name be added to that intrepid list.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  What did Lord Byron wear?

• 14:52Speaker 05

  Um, I think he was nude.

• 14:54Rachel Feltman?

  Um, I was gonna say nothing and I was kind of joking, but that is his vibe. He would be like, I am the beautiful young Leander.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  Now there's the next movie that needs to happen. Oh, I would, I would, I'd like to produce that. Yeah, I think, and even Matthew, like a lot of, a lot of the early pioneers to the sport did swim au naturel, which go, again, anything that gets you in my, in my view, I don't like to gatekeep the sport. Anything that will get you in the water and get you across that's safe and is not hurting anybody, you, you do it. Come on. Um, so these events also vary in distance. Well, I, I said, you know, six point two miles or 10 K. That's kind of the, that's kind of the minimum. Um, and that's kind of where we get into some of this more physical preparation that you do. Um, in involving, you know, making sure you know how to pee in the water.

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Uh, cause you have to be able to spend hours in the water in order to do some of these longer channel swims. Um, my longest was the 28.5 mile swim around Manhattan. And that took about nine hours. Um, I had a lot of, I did it the same day as the annual, um, jet ski invasion.

• 16:06Rachel Feltman?

  Was that on purpose?

• 16:08Speaker 05

  No, no, it was actually supposed to be the day before, but there was a huge thunderstorm like that morning that I was supposed to swim. But, uh, so yeah, there's an annual jet ski invasion. And actually it happened this past weekend and there were a couple of people swimming around Manhattan that had to handle it. Um, not fun, don't recommend it, but yeah, it's what happens. Um, and but nine hours is actually fairly short compared to some others. Some people have gone over 24, they have to, you know, you have to be ready to, it's not like a one, a splash and dash, or even like a 5K. Um, you have to be ready to spend a lot of time in the water. Um, to do that, you, again, you, you just keep swimming to quote Dory, you, a lot of physical training. There's obviously, you know, you don't just get in the water and do this.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  This takes months of preparation and lots of, you ratchet up your events. You know, you start with a mile and then you bring it up to a 5K and then you bring, you know, and it'll, all of that training kind of varies person to person. And in order to sustain this, you have to do what we call feeds and that is eating. Most people do every thirty minutes, but again, it does kind of vary by like your individual preference and metabolism. And these have to be done in the water while treading or sometimes laying on your back like an otter. I've done that, which is kind of fun. Cause remember you can't touch the boat or kayak. You can't like get up there and like down some gator, get up on the boat, down some Gatorade and jump back in. So you kind of have to learn how to do that as well. And then again, as we know, what goes in must come out.

• 17:37Speaker 05

  So you pee a lot because most feeds for the sake of time and to make sure that you're staying hydrated are water based. Like I used, I, I've used a carbohydrate mix with some flavor tablets, except at hour five, I always have peanut butter M and M's as a nice little treat. My kayaker is like shaking them at me like I'm a dog. Reacted to very nicely because that's always my favorite.

• 18:03Speaker 05

  And now to, to, so yeah, you're drinking a lot of water. You'd already probably had at least, I mean, sixty-four plus ounces, you know, before, just so that way you're nice and hydrated that morning, you're going to need to pee. And one of the things you need to practice not in the pool is how to pee while swimming. Stopping every single time that you need to pee can waste a lot of valuable time, especially if you're one of those swimmers who's maybe trying to break a record or if you're in a more competitive race. For people like me that just want to complete the swim alive and in one piece, it also just kind of prolongs the, the eventual torture that will happen. And you can kind of do this by relaxing your lower body as much as you can.

• 18:46Speaker 05

  And everybody has different tricks, but like I'll sometimes in a weird like meditative way, like talk to some, you know, family members of mine that are no longer with us and just be like, okay, grandma, I need some help here. Like I need to grandma, please help me pee, please help me pee. And something like that honestly will work. I've also thought about dolphins and being like, okay, if a dolphin, I want to be a dolphin, like pee like a dolphin, pee like a dolphin. So again, everybody has different. Little different tactics that they use to make sure that they can pee on a swim because it is a matter, it is, it is very serious if you're not. Um, you have to learn how to be very open with your body and basically alert your kayaker and your crew if you are peeing.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  Um, because they need to, it's part of your wellbeing. It's like part of the wellness check that they do every 30 minutes, um, cause it can really hurt your kidneys if you're not. Uh, for number two, it's more mixed. Um, I've never done that, but I've heard anecdotal evidence of that happening, but sometimes it indicates some sort of gastrointestinal distress.

• 19:51Rachel Feltman?

  Sure. Cause of the poop water.

• 19:53Speaker 05

  Cause of the, cause of the, hey, that doesn't happen for hours, hours later.

• 19:57Rachel Feltman?

  But what if you practiced the day before the poop water?

• 19:59Speaker 05

  And it, right, that could, yeah, exactly. That, or just you may have picked up something, if, if you're traveling for a swim, you may have picked up something on the plane. Um, but what's interesting with that other, um, option is as you kind of, as you train and do this more, you kind of learn about your digestive system and how long things take to go through. So you can kind of time, time when you eat your pre-event meal so that you can expel it before you hit the water.

• 20:28Rachel Feltman?

  Hmm.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  Um, my pre-event meal is always a ton of oatmeal, um, with berries and a lot of, you know, it, but again, everybody's is sort of different. So, yeah. You basically have to make sure that, you know, basically making sure that every bit of water that you're drinking is coming out because it's not like, because when you're in, it's not like, oh, I'm in the water. So it's magically coming out of my pores. No, it needs to come out the old fashioned way.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I threw a lot there. So any other, uh, yeah.

• 21:00Rachel Feltman?

  How often do you do long swims?

• 21:03Speaker 05

  So I've been on a little bit of an extended break. I did, um, I've, it's because of COVID and because of a lot of, you know, just other life changes. I haven't had the time to commit to it the way that I did in my twenties. So I'm slowly getting back into it. I have a couple of long swims that I'd really like to do. I can generally do one or two a year, just because they're a little expensive and they're time consuming. Like that's all. All you can kind of, you can, I can focus on that and work and that's about it. Yeah. So it'll end, you know, and it also, yeah, it's also, it really, it takes up so much space in your brain. Like all you're thinking about is the event. Yeah.

• 21:36Rachel Feltman?

  Do you have any like? Oh, sorry.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm, I mean, I have a lot of interesting questions percolating here. But the one thing I, I want to know, like, so this is clearly like a destination thing for people as well, right?

• 21:47Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  What are some places, what are like, what's the Mount Everest of, of swimming?

• 21:52Speaker 05

  So there is, the, the English Channel is still number one, just because again, historically, that's what restarted kind of the modern movement. So that's definitely the, like, if you, that's definitely the Everest. Actually, more people have climbed Everest than have swam the channel ever, which is kind of crazy to think about. Cause climbing Everest seems so much more difficult to me, but that's also because this is what I do. But also the Catalina Channel in California, that's a very popular one. That's from Catalina Island to the mainland. The swim around Manhattan gets people from all over the world, just because it's a pretty cool one that you can, again, you, you can, if you learn the geography, you know where you are. It's really cool to swim. It's called the 20 Bridges Swim because you technically swim under 20 bridges.

• 22:38Speaker 05

  The Gibraltar Strait, anything between continents, those are pretty big. There are, there's, there's something called the Ocean 7 Swim. I don't know all seven off the top of my head, but I believe it's in like seven different straits and whatnot. There are several in New Zealand. So it really, again, it's, it's very, it's a destination thing, but it's also like, if you're on the East Coast, not, or West Coast, or, you know, that you can find local events too, that are just as much fun to like, get you up to those bigger events.

• 23:07Rachel Feltman?

  Cool.

• 23:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:09Rachel Feltman?

  What are your like swims that you really want to do?

• 23:14Speaker 05

  I'd like to do the Hellespont. I'd like to swim around Ocean City, New Jersey. That's, that's the one that's kind of been like tantalizingly in front of me.

• 23:24Rachel Feltman?

  Sure.

• 23:24Speaker 05

  You know, it's, it's home, it's, but you know, that requires, you know, getting a boat and a lot of logistic, logistical things that I just have not been ready to, been ready to kind of, to kind of organize. But that would be really, really fun. My favorite swim was Battery Park to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. That was. That's also considered home. Um, my mom and sister were on the beach and, um, and two friends were on the beach, uh, waiting for me at that one. And it just like, it felt really good. Just again, to be able to like, leave the city and see it disappear, you know, and not on a boat. It was, you know, me getting myself, me getting myself there. So. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  How do you get around these like shipping lanes when you're doing that?

• 24:08Speaker 05

  Fun. Um, so you have a boat and a kayak with you. It's not like you're just jumping in and doing this for fun. So they're going to kind of help you navigate. There was one point on the swim from Battery Park to Sandy Hook where they had to delay my feed an extra 15 minutes because there was a tanker incoming. And I could tell something was, and I was getting pissed. Like I was like, I, I want my food now. Why am I not eating? Like this, this has been too long. And it was because they needed me to keep swimming and they didn't want me. So you have a lot, luckily, um, when you, when you're doing this in a safe and organized way, they are paying attention to that all the time. The coast guard approves this, approves your permit. They know that you're out there. So you'll get plenty of heads up.

• 24:53Speaker 05

  Um, and then they'll, they can always like re-tack you around that shipping traffic. But yeah, I had to wait. I had to go like 45 minutes instead of a half an hour, just because there was a lovely tanker coming and oh, I felt it. I, you know, when, when they, when my kayaker finally looked at me, you know, to eat, I was like, okay, about time. And then he told me why. And I was like, all right, fine. I take back all of the mean things I said about you in my head because I was legitimately getting hangry.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Wow. Well, that's super cool. Looking forward to hearing more as you, you know, continue to get back into the sport. Thanks. Yeah, there's a lot of science in it. And that's probably another reason I was drawn to it. You know, again, it's wind, tides, navigation, peeing, digestive system, protecting your skin from the sun. So it, yeah, it's, Yeah. It's, it'll be fun to, it'll be fun to kind of look at through that lens as I. Yeah. How do you protect your skin from the sun? Cause that is, you're, you're wet for a long time. You are. Uh, I use Desitin, like the diaper cream, cause it is just chock full of zinc oxide. Basically you need to put something as, you need to put as much zinc oxide.

• 25:46Speaker 05

  You needed a physical, physical barrier. Yeah. A, a physical barrier. That's even like higher grade than, and not won't rub off as easy as like your highest zinc oxide sunscreen. So I look and smell great after this. Yeah.

• 26:10Rachel Feltman?

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

• 26:19Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 27:49Rachel Feltman?

  Okay, we're back. And I'll jump into my two little facts. First, my tiniest fact, which is kind of more of a plug for my other podcast than a fact per se, but I host the show Science Quickly for Scientific American. And when this episode airs, we'll have recently had an episode come out that I'm really proud of. It's the first long-form episode that I've like reported, written totally myself.

• 28:20Rachel Feltman?

  Often our long form episodes are me, you know, teeing up and presenting the work of some incredible person. So this is all about the psychology of Dungeons and Dragons. And the reason I, well, I'll be honest, the real reason I was inspired to do it was because I thought D20, Dimension 20 is having a Madison Square Garden show. I bet they're going to be doing a bunch of PR. This is our chance to get Brendan Lee Mulligan on the show. And indeed, we did. He is featured prominently in the episode. We did it, Joe. But I also, you know, the reason, my justification for it, being on a science podcast, was that I

• 29:05Rachel Feltman?

  had seen several studies come out on mental health and D and D. And I was like, it's so cool that I know of multiple studies in the last few years in what I imagine has previously been a pretty scant area of research. And yeah, basically, you know, a lot of people who like D and D, whether that's, you know, watching or listening to actual play, or actually playing, or both, know that it really surged in popularity during lockdown. Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast, which is where D and D comes from, it's where

• 29:45Rachel Feltman?

  D and D babies are made. They actually saw a 30% jump in D and D related sales in, I think in 2020 specifically. And that's not surprising. There were already a ton of digital tools for playing D and D. So it was something very easy to set up remotely. And it's a great way to socialize and also like adds routine back into your life. So not at all surprising that it got so much more popular. But that surge in popularity has very demonstrably inspired a surge in research. You know, if you look from like 1974, when the game was released until 2020, I did the math on Google Scholar and it was like,

• 30:26Rachel Feltman?

  A couple dozen studies a year would come out that had anything to do with D and D. And now it's like hundreds of studies have come out a year.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  What, what were those studies? Was it all on, was it all kind of like psychology and mental health based? Was it like, what kind of studies were we looking at? Like what? Yeah. Like what scientific disciplines?

• 30:44Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. I mean, it's mostly psychology and I think, um, you know, one other big difference is that, well, I didn't do an exhaustive look at those few studies that existed previously. The academics I talked to said that, you know, a lot of the research that existed before, especially in sort of the seventies, eighties, early nineties, uh, was very much um, about negatives associated with D and D. Like, um, you know, sort of pathologizing. Um, you know, let's be real, they, they were, they were doing studies on autistic boys who were not diagnosed and saying, they play D and D. Um, and you know, there was also the whole satanic panic with D and D. So I think there was probably some scholarly

• 31:27Rachel Feltman?

  research on that. Cause like, what a fascinating topic to do scholarly research on. But.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  And then maybe there was like five new species of slug and then like one new gene named after D and D.

• 31:38Rachel Feltman?

  This is so real. I bet there was a, I bet from like the late nineties to the early aughts, that was the primary, uh, references to Dungeons and Dragons in the literature. But, um, yeah, now a lot of the research that's coming out is looking at, uh, specifically, you know, D and D's benefits to mental health. There are a small but growing number of studies, uh, showing that, um, D and D, you know, helps on all of these mental health, health metrics. Uh, and there's also a growing body of research on, uh, using D and D therapeutically, um, in specific populations. Uh, there's a lot of attention, um, on people in the

• 32:21Rachel Feltman?

  autism spectrum, um, using D and D therapeutically, but it's also being studied and used, you know, just by clinicians who are already convinced of the benefits, um, for, you know, people managing PTSD symptoms, managing anxiety, um, all sorts of stuff. So.

• 32:39Rachel Feltman?

  That's really my fact there is just wow, D and D, good for the body, mind and soul. And scientists are taking notice. And there's a video I did for Science Quickly, a Scientific American, where I am dressed as an elf. I can't overstate that. So you should go check that out.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  As someone who's never played, may I ask a dumb question?

• 33:05Rachel Feltman?

  No dumb questions, but go ahead.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  How dare I? What about it makes it like, you know, thumbnail bullet points? Like, what about, is it, is it like, is it the connection? Is it, is it world building? Is it like, what are just some of the reasons why this game in particular helps?

• 33:23Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, so I get into this a lot more in the episode at Science Quickly, obviously. But, you know, it's something researchers are still working on studying specifically. But everyone sort of has an intuitive answer already. Because obviously, the researchers and clinicians working with D and D are people who like tabletop role playing games. And I should add, pretty much everything we're talking about almost certainly applies to tabletop role playing games in general, of which there are many that aren't D and D. But D and D is by far the most popular. So if you're gonna study one, it tends to be D and D. But basically, in a nutshell, without spoiling my whole other episode that people should

• 34:02Rachel Feltman?

  go listen to, D and D is a game that involves tons of social interaction, but structured social interaction, which seems probably where a lot of the benefits for people who find it helpful for building communication skills comes from, because it sort of creates this like very safe space to have social interactions in. The fact that the, the DM or Dungeon Master is crafting a story specifically for your group means that there's a lot of room for people to grapple with and explore topics, whether conversational topics or sort of like, you know, cultural themes that they,

• 34:46Rachel Feltman?

  they want to explore. And I also had one researcher tell me, you know, it might just be that it combines. All of the benefits of a bunch of different kinds of hobbies. It's sort of like if you were doing theater, group therapy, and I don't know, puzzles at once. There's just, it's a lot of different, a lot of different parts of your brain when you're, when you're playing D and D. But yeah, that's one of the things that the researchers I talked to are like, they're, they're doing more targeted studies to, you know, try to see what it is that's helpful so that, you know, that can be sort of amped up in a clinical setting.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  That's weird. I mean, I would like to see how it differs from other games in terms of the research, simply because this, now, don't, I don't want to get all evolutionary psychology on us, but like, I don't know, it feels like sitting around and telling stories and playing pretend is like one of the oldest human hobbies.

• 35:39Rachel Feltman?

  Absolutely.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  It feels like normal. Yeah.

• 35:41Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah. No, and I mean, I think that's like, I think most researchers who are in this space would say that's almost certainly a huge part of it, that like, we don't really have a lot of avenues these days for people to just like, sit down and tell stories together. I mean, obviously this depends on your, your friend group, and it's like, maybe you gossip all the time in a very pro-social way.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  There we go.

• 36:06Rachel Feltman?

  But yeah, a lot of us don't like, sit down by the fire telling stories much anymore, and D and D can, you know, bring some of that back in a very cool way.

• 36:16Rachel Feltman?

  Also, it's just really fun. It can be whatever you want. It doesn't have to be orcs and elves. I mean, like, there, there's nothing wrong with that, but like, I think a lot of people don't realize that it doesn't have to be a, like, high fantasy campaign. It can be any story, set anywhere. It's not as complicated as it looks either.

• 36:35Speaker 05

  That's what makes me afraid of any game, is, you know, I, you know, those memes that are like, "My brain when somebody starts to explain..."

• 36:42Rachel Feltman?

  That is true. When somebody does start explaining a new board game to me, I do go into a fugue state, but I always eventually pick it up. I just like, I don't want any part of learning how to do it.

• 36:56Rachel Feltman?

  Well, okay, so that was my mini fact, and then I have another short thing to share, which is that scientists are trying to figure out why sharks play dead. Not all sharks play dead, but a lot of sharks play dead. This is a freeze response called tonic immobility. And yeah, it's basically, it's very similar to like what opossums do when they infamously play dead. They just go limp, they're like on their backs, sort of in a trance. And this can be triggered within seconds and can last for like 15 minutes.

• 37:36Rachel Feltman?

  It's really bizarre looking, especially because, you know, while not all sharks are very intense predators, we do kind of, you know, when you think shark, you tend to think like great white, and you don't think of a great white lying on its back being kind of like, ugh. But they do that, they do that. And what triggers it, like, the biggest thing seems to be when they're knocked upside down, like when they're on their backs. But you can also, you can kind of, sometimes researchers who want to utilize this tonic immobility, you know, to handle sharks safely, apparently there are some sharks where if you just kind of like grasp the side of their face and like start to turn them, they'll just be like, whoop, I'm done. Bye.

• 38:20Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, exactly. And it's perplexing, right? Because you can understand why a opossum plays dead. There are lots of things that might eat a opossum and they're not, I mean, they're pretty scrappy, I wouldn't want to get in a fight with a opossum, but like, you know, opossum versus bear, we know who's gonna win. So, appearing dead and unappetizing, valid, valid play. Though, less useful for fighting off cars, which is a big problem with opossums, apparently they will play dead when a car comes after them, and then they are dead. But with a shark, you're like, okay, they do have animals that they have to worry about,

• 39:04Rachel Feltman?

  like orcas, which are apparently sometimes called the wolves of the sea because they're such smart So unfair. Intense predators. They're really, an orca will really [__] you up, honestly. But yeah, for the most part, the sharks are the predators. Like, why do we see this behavior? There are some circumstances in other animals where there's something called, I think it's aggressive mimicry, which is basically when a predator sort of acts like a prey in terms of like how meek they're being to trick other animals into coming up to them so that they can eat them. But again, the shark will like do this for like 15 minutes. It doesn't seem to be serving any kind of hunting purpose. And again, a shark doesn't need this trick to hunt. They're pretty good.

• 39:49Rachel Feltman?

  They're pretty, they're pretty At swimming up to things and biting them. [laughing] And so that seems unlikely. Some researchers, this came up a lot. I think it's a pretty common hypothesis that there's some kind of reproductive benefit that because male sharks will sometimes invert females when they mate with them, that like tonic immobility might be to sort of like make that all calmer. But like that also, I'll get into why they don't think that is. And then the sort of third possibility is just like sensory overload response, which is that, which is exactly what it looks like. They're just like, nope, I can't.

• 40:34Rachel Feltman?

  I'm out. Goodbye. Which I find very relatable. I like that reason. I also, I also go and experience tonic immobility during sensory overload. So in this new study, researchers did something cool to try to analyze this. They tested a bunch of species of shark's rays and chimera, which are the shark relative, commonly called a ghost shark. Love ghost sharks. They're freaky little guys. And they figured out which of them experienced tonic immobility when gently turned upside down underwater and which didn't. And seven species did, six did not. I don't have the list of which were which,

• 41:15Rachel Feltman?

  but, and they took those findings and kind of compared them to an evolutionary map to sort of try to Trace back when and where this behavior might have evolved or might have disappeared from the group with, you know, trying to find sort of evidence for one of those three possible explanations. And then we're like, okay, we already actually know that there's no good evidence that sharks benefit when they freeze if they're being attacked. It's actually kind of like the worst thing that can happen to a shark when they're being attacked. Apparently, sometimes orcas will like ram into them to nudge them over.

• 41:55Rachel Feltman?

  And then, once they're, you know, immobilized, the orcas will not just attack them, but specifically go for their livers, which seem to be the orca's favorite part of the shark. Trysting. Yeah, yeah. So really, like, it's just bad for the shark when it happens. There's no, no upside. And there also have been instances of researchers saw an orca get a shark to tip over and then just like watch it suffocate because its gills. This doesn't happen always. Many sharks have this immobility and then flip over and go back on their way, but it can mess with their, their gill function.

• 42:37Rachel Feltman?

  So yeah, it seems really clear there's no obvious benefit in terms of like them going about their daily lives. The researchers also don't buy the reproductive hypothesis. They say that males tend to have the same amount of tonic immobility as females. And also, just like the idea that female sharks would evolve to like be vulnerable to forced mating, they don't really buy that. And then the sensory overload idea has been like, is like totally untested and unverified. So it could still be true. But basically, these researchers, using their evolutionary mapping, they have come to

• 43:14Rachel Feltman?

  the conclusion that this feature is plethiomorphic, meaning it was an ancestral trait, but many species lost the behavior as they evolved because it was useless or even harmful. But a few, it just... It just skirted by, you know, it was grandfathered in, it hasn't gone away. And, you know, we talk about this all the time. This is such a classic tale in evolution where it's like, don't ask why they do this, ask why they haven't stopped doing this. And the answer is just sort of eh, it hasn't, it hasn't killed enough of them. And yeah, just to hammer home their thinking that like this really is an old thing that

• 43:58Rachel Feltman?

  maybe had a use once, or maybe just happened randomly and like definitely doesn't have a use anymore, is that across different groups of sharks and their relatives, they think that tonic immobility has disappeared at least five different times. So like, we can, so we can see it disappearing from different branches of their lineage because it's not helpful. It's just evolutionary baggage. And yeah, that's sort of the whole story. Like I said, this is a short fact because this is one small study and there's still a lot for researchers to learn about sharks playing dead. But I just love the idea of these goofy little guys floating on their backs and being, you know, that happening

• 44:40Rachel Feltman?

  just because there hasn't been a compelling enough evolutionary reason for them to stop.

• 44:46Speaker 05

  My toxic trait is definitely when I see pictures of that, I know that they are wild animals, we should not engage with wild animals, but I still want to kind of like pet their bellies like a dog. I just, it's, it's.

• 44:59Rachel Feltman?

  Understandable, understandable.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  I feel like sharks are very cat coded. So if they were anything like my own daughter, she hate when you do that. But it's funny because they don't have claws, so they can't do anything about it.

• 45:16Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. Love those slimy boys.

• 45:20Speaker 04

  Well, now I should tell people in New York City, if you ever have a run in with a shark, just flip them over.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, just flip that guy over. Don't hunt for the gills. And no, I've never seen a shark on a swim. I'm not going to wood. Yeah.

• 45:32Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  I'm actually more afraid of orca. You know, I wouldn't, you know, honestly, I'm more afraid of orca.

• 45:37Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, you should, you should be.

• 45:40Rachel Feltman?

  They can, they can be vindictive. Now, everything, all those wild creatures deserve to live wild and free.

• 45:48Speaker 05

  It's their home.

• 45:48Rachel Feltman?

  It's their home.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  Yep, yep. If they want to take a bite, I would too if you walked into my door. So maybe not a bite. I might grab my field hockey stick, but yeah.

• 45:59Rachel Feltman?

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

• 46:08Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 47:07Rachel Feltman?

  Okay, we're back. And Ryan, tell me about salamander? Is it a salamander?

• 47:14Speaker 04

  It's a salamander.

• 47:15Rachel Feltman?

  Great.

• 47:15Speaker 05

  Yay.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  So I've gotten big into salamanders this year.

• 47:20Rachel Feltman?

  So hot right now. I feel like every year, there's another thing outside that you're like, I got in big into, you had a rock era, you had a moth era.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  Oh, folks who follow me on Instagram will know that I actually, just this past week, got really into micro snails. I'm like really excited about them. And I almost made my fact about like two millimeter land snails, but I couldn't get my act together.

• 47:43Rachel Feltman?

  I actually almost did a snail related fact today, which would have been wild, but we'll talk about it offline.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  So you should know that salamanders are not common in New York City. Even the most common salamander in the eastern United States, which also happens to be the probably the most common animal by mass in the eastern United States, is only in like a couple of areas, kind of in the outer perimeter of the city. But Manhattan, especially not, not really in Brooklyn, a couple parts of Queens.

• 48:11Rachel Feltman?

  But I'm always surprised that they're there at all. I don't know why. They seem like such sweet, delicate babies. Yeah. And I associate lizards with tropicalness. Yeah. So.

• 48:22Speaker 04

  Oh, well, that's your, that's, that, we gotta start this fact at the beginning.

• 48:26Rachel Feltman?

  I know.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  So salamanders are actually a group of animals that evolved, like, the center of salamander diversity is the Appalachian Mountains. So they're like a temperate forests, like, they were invented for the temperate forests. I mean, there are dozens of species of salamanders there. New York probably has 18, I think, species of salamander in the state. But if you go to North Carolina, I mean, there's like mountains that act like islands, that there's just like, the only place to find this salamander species is this one mountain. So they're super well-adapted, you know. Maybe what they do is, you know, a lot of them at least are burrowing deep into the ground so that they can overcome the effects of frost. So they're quite, you know, and, and a lot of them are also like vernal pool specialists. So their whole thing is that, you know, during the spring rains, these kind of temporary

• 49:09Speaker 04

  wetlands emerge in the east, especially in kind of like formerly glaciated areas with kettle ponds. And then there's no fish in those temporary wetlands because they're temporary, and so salamanders will evolve to be able to live in them. So people may have heard the spotted salamander, again, this red-backed salamander, they are, you know, specialists of these habitats. The one that I am going to be talking about, though, is different. So this one is, it's, it's crazy. So you already, great, you, you were all on the same page, they're like, shouldn't really be salamanders in New York City, anyway. So then we're, we're good now. And so, but, you know, it wasn't always that way, right? Like, New York, prior to, you know, European colonization, is a very biodiverse place, a center, you know, biodiversity hotspot, and it still has an incredible amount of biodiversity,

• 49:53Speaker 04

  just not really with salamanders. And so, you know, in the 18, in the early 19th century... Uh, you know, somebody described a salamander that lived in the New York area. And it's still to this day, kind of like a well-known, common-ish salamander that lives throughout the eastern United States, especially on like little rocky seeps that come out of cliffs. So they kind of hang out in the leaf litter and in little like, you know, cool areas. But these places just have streams coming out of cracks in the rock. So in 1942, a naturalist who was the Jewish child of refugees coming from Germany during the World War II, they settled in Uptown Manhattan. And so they, he would regularly

• 50:36Speaker 04

  go out on these salamander collecting trips and he really liked them. He would go across the river, this guy Carl Gans, go to New Jersey and collect there. But in this park near his house called High Bridge Park, he found this population of the dusky salamander, the northern dusky salamander. It's, you know, in terms of salamanders, it's not the prettiest one. It's kind of like-

• 50:57Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, no.

• 50:58Speaker 04

  Salamanders, you know, there's some, they're like, some of them are like poison dark frog coated. I mean, they're like yellow, black spots, blue, white and black. There's tons of beautiful salamanders. This one's kind of brown, but it's cute. It's cute. And it's got a bull head. It's kind of, you know, mean looking. And so he found them in these cliffside seeps coming out of High Bridge Park, which, you know, I guess if it's 1940, I'd still be surprised that they were there because it was post the Industrial Revolution. But he found them there. And then this well-known New York City naturalist, John Kirin, when he, you know, he's did tons of work looking around the city. This was like a hobby for him. And he said the dusky salamanders were probably the most

• 51:39Speaker 04

  common salamander within the city limits. Now, that's, that's not true anymore. So, you know-

• 51:47Rachel Feltman?

  Go away.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. John Kirin, you know, great guy, wrote a great book, did amazing work, but like, I don't know where he got that idea. You know, like even back then, they're very, they're kind of range restricted. They really just prefer these kind of rocky things. So- And then 60 years pass by and we do not hear from the dusky salamanders of High Bridge Park, Manhattan again. You know, they're still in places where they should be, you know, northeast Staten Island. So that's it's Staten Island. And then that's all we know about dusky salamanders in New York City. When Ellen Pehec, who is working for the New York City Parks's Natural Resources Group, she gets hired essentially to do wildlife biology work, to take a take surveys and understand what kinds of animals are living

• 52:28Speaker 04

  in New York City. And so part of that job that she's doing is essentially looking through old records and trying to see what's around and then trying to see what's there. And so she's digging through these records and out comes Carl Gans's 1945 paper about this, you know, dusky salamander in Manhattan. And she's like, all right, well, we're High Bridge Park. Uh oh. So, record scratch, freeze frame, High Bridge Park. So, High Bridge Park is, is, you know, it's really quite a nice park on its surface, right? It's these kind of, New York has this dramatic Ice Age history. So it's got these, you know, rocky cliffs and, you know, kind of rugged terrain and it's right over the East River. So it's

• 53:12Speaker 04

  like a very beautiful park.

• 53:14Speaker 05

  If you've ever seen the movie In the Heights, the pool scene was shot there.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  There you go. So not beautiful. I mean, and like, you know, culturally important. But now, kind of in the night, right after really Gans visited, and then even really after, after Kiran wrote his book about, or wrote his book and talked about it, High Bridge Park kind of, let's say declined. You know, basically since the 1940s, you know, Daddy Robert Moses came through and like, decided to pave the Harlem River Drive along the eastern border of the park. So it kind of took away some of the like beautiful river access that people had this park. And then, you know, the city went into a financial crisis in the 1970s and the Parks

• 54:02Speaker 04

  Department didn't have a lot of money and the parks all kind of got a little neglected. And Hybridge Park was like the worst one. Like, you know, I even remember growing up in New York City, well, right, touching New York City, but let's just say growing up in New York City. My parents would be like, "Don't go to that one." And it's just like kind of a well-known thing. I don't know. And like, I thought that this was just me, you know, that I was like, "All right, you know, somebody told me I wasn't supposed to go to Hybridge Park. I don't remember why." And then I was doing research for this, this story that I wrote on my newsletter that I am reading you, talking to you about right now. And it turns out that, no, it was like, kind of well-known in the late 20th century. You did not go to Hybridge Park. And it's not like, you know, like, I don't want to say anything about, you know, whatever, but it was kind of this typical New York City

• 54:45Speaker 04

  horror stories. You know, there was the news, every newspaper would write about, you know, crack cocaine, homelessness, gang violence, prostitution. That was like, all that stuff. And it was all in Hybridge Park. Henry J. Stern, a beleaguered New York City Parks Commissioner, like, we can talk about him later. Not a, not the best one, but, you know. He referred to Hybridge Park as the city's most damaged, most cluttered park in, you know, when he was the Commissioner, I guess, in the 90s. So, we're not a good one. And then I have one more Hybridge Park anecdote, which is that apparently in the 80s, you know, they wanted to lead this cleanup and make sure that the park, you know, "Bring it back, you know, clean up the litter." And it took like, two or three days for the

• 55:28Speaker 04

  park after the cleanup to just look exactly the same as it had prior. No. So, you know. Or Hybridge. Or Hybridge Park. But, Bette Midler comes along in the late 90s. What? That's right. Surprise Bette Midler cameo. In comes Bette Midler in the 90s. And I, I don't remember, I don't have the details in my article about why she did this. I just, you know, because mine was about the salamander, Bette Midler. But she was a fan of Hybridge Park. And so she kind of led this campaign at the start of the 20th century. Kind of by then, New York City Parks was regaining its budget. People were more excited about the parks, you know, and... And Ben Midler helped with this parks cleanup.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  And so we come back to 2005 when Ellen Pick is here and she is now a biologist who's here to study wildlife in New York City and she finds this paper that says these salamanders were in Hybridge Park in 1942. Nobody's seen them since and you know, it's not really a surprise that nobody has seen them since, given what I told you. But of course she was like, well, I have to see if they're still there. And so she went to these, you know, rocky seeps on the side of the Hybridge Park, exactly where the paper describes. And pretty quickly she finds three populations of dusky salamanders are still there in 2005, living in these seeps. And they're just slithering along, hanging out under the rocks.

• 56:54Speaker 04

  And so, you know, 20 years later, I'm not going to divulge too much because this is sort of like, you don't want to go trampling around. This is now sensitive wildlife habitat, but I went there with a salamander friend. And indeed, there is still at least one dusky salamander still there because I saw it. So really cool. And now, you know, I will say that I had a lot of questions about this. And in my first kind of go around researching this story, I found a paper that said that, you know, this is a very isolated population of dusky salamanders. Right? Like they're not anywhere else on Manhattan Island. And then if you go to Staten Island, that's the closest population. But on Staten Island, they have mechanisms to disperse because the habitat's more connected. And throughout the eastern United States, they would have a little bit more mechanisms to disperse. But in Manhattan, they don't really have that. They just have Hybridge Park.

• 57:39Speaker 04

  They have three little, you know, groups of them on three little rocky seeps and that's it. And so, you know, they definitely observed kind of the genetic effects of isolation on this population. That it, there's, you know, less genetic diversity. There's certainly got to be some inbreeding. And so I figured that that could be the like, that could be it. Like, oh no, you're going to just wink out. But I spoke to Ellen about this. I was so excited that I had, I did two posts about this story because it was so cool. So I did a Q and A with her and she was like, yeah. We found that, you know, we observed the genetic diversity being kinda low. But, you know, in fact, there's probably, they probably weren't actually dispersing very much even 10,000 years ago, right?

• 58:22Speaker 04

  Like, the closest appropriate habitat would be Inwood Hill Park. For those who don't know Manhattan geography, High Bridge Park is on the eastern side, on the East River, on like the 190s. And then Inwood Hill Park is northwest on the Hudson River. You know, they're not far from each other, but between them, there wouldn't have been appropriate habitat. You know, they would have drained into different rivers. There wasn't really a way for the salamanders to travel between the parks. So, they were always kinda just there, three little populations of them, probably Ice Age holdovers, just stuck there in High Bridge Park. Past 10,000 years, and Ellen was like, yep, you know, probably be there for another 10,000 years if we don't screw it up. And so, of course, I was like, well, if the genetics aren't a threat, then what are we worried about with them?

• 59:04Speaker 04

  And she was like, well, actually, of course, in the past 20 years, one of those populations disappeared. And they couldn't figure out why, and they still don't really know why, but it was probably something like, super innocuous. Like, they probably like, fixed a drain pipe, and then like, water like, slightly rerouted over the top of this cliff.

• 59:22Rachel Feltman?

  And it was a little salamander apocalypse.

• 59:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it was like, kinda, and I was like, oh, the garbage? And she was like, they don't care about the garbage.

• 59:31Rachel Feltman?

  That's good.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  You know, for salamander newbies, like, the way you find salamanders is you like, go, you know, kinda walk through the woods, and then carefully and gently flip things over, and then you find a salamander underneath them sometimes. And so, you know, you could potentially have gone to High Bridge Park in the 1980s, and done this, and flipped over like, beer cans and car parts, and had dusky salamanders hiding underneath them. And so, yes, indeed, that is, it's just like, the habitat restoration is really what is the thing that we need to do to keep them around, and hopefully keep them around for a really long time. And I will say, you know, there's a kind of a positive and negative here, right? Because, of course, like-

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  It's weird that this salamander remained in this kind of deserted neglect park for 60 years and nobody noticed. But actually, it was probably, now, this is me speculating, but it was probably the neglect that actually kept the salamanders safe the whole time.

• 1:00:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  Because now that we're interested in this park and, you know, what if we wanted to clean up the park? What if we wanted to, like, build something nice or make it really exciting for people? What if they wanted a mountain bike trail? Or I think there's already a mountain bike trail there, but something different. What if they wanted concessions or bathrooms or some, you know, everybody, there's such a beautiful park and a beautiful neighborhood, people want to come to it. Then that is, that is actually the concern now, especially because the thing that messes with the salamanders is just like sediment in the water. So if you like dump some dirty water on their little cliffside houses, then the population would have the potential to wink out. But it does seem that, you know, a couple of the populations are still there and kicking. But it's a hard one, right? Because like, I obviously want everybody to know about these wonderful salamanders, and I

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  want to show the world because it's so cool. But you can't, you shouldn't go. Like, just be happy to know they're there. So it's, and this is something that we think about a lot with wildlife. As a birder, I'm, you know, birds were my predominant entry point into wildlife. And, you know, you have really hard conversations with people, especially once you're very experienced, where you're like, I found this bird and I'm not going to tell you about it. And it's like, I'm not, you're going to look at it and it's going to die. You know, or you're gonna, you know, I'm glad it's there. I'm glad I found it. You know, I, my friend and I, we had like a long conversation, but how do we do this right? Don't disturb the habitat, only kind of at the edges of the habitats, so we're not in the core of where they're supposed to be. And, you know, and this is

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  how it works. But, you know, cross your fingers, Ellen said that, given the current setup, there is, you know, these are now well-known to be living there by the folks who work at the city, and hopefully, we continue to cherish the fact that we have this, you know, salamander. The only place that this species is found in New York City is Staten Island, where it belongs, and then one single park in Manhattan.

• 1:02:11Speaker 05

  Wow. When you mentioned the only, the other population being in Staten Island, now, maybe this is because of the Bette Midler reference, my brain instantly went to, oh, is this going to take a fiddler on the roof? Are we going to be matchmaking salamander populations from Staten Island and Manhattan? But...

• 1:02:29Rachel Feltman?

  So I'm glad that their diversity is hanging on.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  I'm glad you brought that up because I also, of course, is a question I asked Ellen. I was like, well, we have these pop, you know, this population, Eastern United States, normal common salamander, and then this little group with genetic diversity low. And they said that actually reintroductions can be pretty bad for amphibians because the chance of moving my, you know, sort of microbes or illness or something can be pretty, you know, and it would be, it would decimate a population of like a couple salamanders living on a rock.

• 1:02:58Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, easy to decimate the population when it's a couple guys on a rock.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Rachel Feltman?

  Wow, I love that. It was great. And listeners can find so many more stories about wildlife in the city in your book. Would you remind them what it's called?

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  My book is called Wild NYC: Experience the Nature in and Around New York City by Ryan Mandelbaum, illustrated by Chelsea Beck. And the salamander story, I believe, in some little blurb incarnation about the more common salamander, which is more common in the city, does get a mention. I have so many more salamander stories, like, for some, because there's only like four species of salamander in New York City, and like, all of them are holding on for ridiculous reasons. Like, there's this Brooklyn and Greenwood Cemetery, like, there's only two places to find eastern redback salamander in Brooklyn, which is one, like Greenwood Cemetery, in a, for some reason, in a place that's like, totally been transformed from anything it would have been back in the day. And the other one is like, oh, a well-known actress's

• 1:04:00Speaker 04

  backyard, for some reason. I don't know why they're there, but she's-

• 1:04:04Rachel Feltman?

  I like that you said, well-known actresses. That, that's, the speculation is going now.

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  I won't, it's not Bette Midler, and I won't-

• 1:04:12Rachel Feltman?

  No.

• 1:04:13Speaker 04

  Just because she's like, quite a, she's, she's a really awesome force in New York City nature conservation stuff. So, you know, listeners who know about nature in New York City know who she is. But it's fine. It doesn't matter. She does great movies and she has salamanders in her backyard.

• 1:04:28Rachel Feltman?

  Wow, I love that for her.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  Written all about this on my newsletter, Ayy, I'm walking here. So if you're interested, Ayy, I apostrophe M, walk in, no G, here, in New York City.

• 1:04:39Rachel Feltman?

  We'll put a link in the show notes.

• 1:04:42Speaker 04

  And obviously that is not a well SEO optimized at all.

• 1:04:46Rachel Feltman?

  No, but it's delightful.

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  And soon all I'll be thinking about is micro snails. So you caught me at the perfect moment.

• 1:04:53Rachel Feltman?

  Well, we'll have to have you on soon to talk about the micro snails, but thanks so much for coming by. This was great.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:05:01Rachel Feltman?

  The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Faltman, 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.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:06:03Speaker 06

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset and new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy to layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.