Part-Time Genius

but they shouldn't eat them because of diabetes. Yeah, and bingo. I'm glad we've settled that, and I am so happy to welcome a couple of blue devils, Will and Mango. They are full time geniuses who started the website Mental Floss, and now they brought their talents to How Stuff Works with the new podcast Part Time Genius. Will and Mango, Thanks for coming on. But you guys are full time geniuses. I mean right, I mean I suppose if you combine

our powers, maybe we're each part time geniuses. Combiner powers were less than one genius. That's right. I think that's probably true. I don't think so, just based on your body of work, starting with mental Floss, which you guys started while you were still in college, right, Yeah, we were. We were students together at Duke. We were good friends there, and it really started out of a series of conversations where we, you know, would talk about all the things

that we wanted to know. We've come back from classes of things that we we learned, and we we realized that people like to feel smart, they just also like to be entertained. And so that was our goal in creating Mental Floss, was how do you take this body of knowledge that people really want to know and find a way to make it entertaining. Yeah. I mean, the whole idea was to take all culture and treated like

pop culture. But it's one of the amazing things that happens when you're in your twenties and your naive and cocky and you think like, oh, I see a magazine. I can make a magazine. When you guys were younger, were you the two were you in class that the folks that maybe would correct your instructors or professors. Uh No,

I don't think that's really either of us. In fact, that that's kind of the spirit it that we tried to infuse in both in Mental flaws and now here at how stuff works and in part time genius that there's a playfulness to it, but there's always we try to have a sweet spiritedness to what we were doing. So it's not really about one upping anybody or correcting anybody. It's about sharing and all of these interesting things together.

And I think that's great because I think today we see a lot of this one upmanship, especially on social media with somebody who posts something and everybody wants to tell them why the wrong and post facts, just like in general with culture today and learning, you know, I think that this is the most connected generation ever. Do you feel like people take advantage of it? Though? Uh well, I mean just before that, I mean I think it

isn't just about like one upmanship on social media. I think it's also just like this constant pressure to be interesting all the time, right, Like like you have to like show photos that are interesting, you have to share facts that are interesting, you have to show people that you're reading articles. And I think there's just like so much pressure and not enough time to just kind of be boring. Yeah, I always want to be the Facebook. The Facebook me is so awesome. If I would say

him all the time, I would wow everybody. But I mean, obviously there are these amazing things that are brought about by the Internet, right like the fact that like whatever you're into that, you know, years ago, you'd just be sort of the lone weirdo in your town. And now that you can find like a million people that are connected to that same idea and and and really foster like friendships and you know, relationships and and build off ideas. I think that's all sort of amazing. Do you, guys

um in general with with with knowledge today? Do you feel that people were seeking it out more like, you know, just based on how how you how you guys, you know, operating, you take a lot of a lot of stuff from from listeners. Do you feel like people are trying to get smarter because sometimes it seems like people are just getting dumber. Well, it might go in both directions. Yeah, I mean sometimes I wonder the uh, the same thing.

But I definitely think there is something to this idea of you know, being a nerve or a geek or wanting to learn all the things that you can that is very much a part of the popular discussion and of pop culture these days. So I mean, you look at our pop culture heroes these days, of anybody from you know, celebrating the Mark Zuckerberg's of the world two shows like Big Bang Theory or whatever it may be.

I do. I do think there is a a large percentage of the population that really values the idea of of knowing a lot of interesting information. Do you ever feel like you're losing room in your heads for everything because you you deal with so many facts? Yeah, I don't. I mean, like people always say, like you must be great at trivial pursuit or jeopardy or whatever, but I'm

terrible at retaining facts. Like I'm great at being enthusiastic about facts I know at the moment, you know, but but but I am horrible at holding onto this information. So when people stop and ask you for a random fact, you do you have like go twos that you tell them. Not always, I mean, I think for us it's it's also a matter of that excitement around learning something new.

But it is funny, and it was always strange in our experience at mental flaws that people would almost expect that we had memorized, you know, when we were doing a print magazine at the time. Every page in the the issue, and they'd be like, Oh, I loved that fact on the you know, the article on turtles on page fifty four. You remember that one. You're like, oh, crap,

what is this thing that they're bringing up? But uh, but you know, we see so many every day, and that's part of the fun of this is that every week it feels like there are new things or new facts that we're learning that kind of become the favorite. Right then it's not like the obvious facts like I'll go to an episode, I'm like, wow, dog shows, Okay, let me listen to that. You know, I know this is a trite question in a way, but how do

you get your ideas? Are they all generated from from listeners users, or just you know, were you just walking down the street one day and go it seems like something we should tackle. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a mix of that. There's certainly some input from from listeners that that we find, but I think it's also

just being curious people. And when you're reading an article and you see sort of a weird footnote and and that propels you on this idea of like, you know, why why are bulldogs and competitions when they look so you know, ugly, you know, or you know, like all all these things that are just strange footnotes that that suddenly propelled new ideas, and I think that's where a lot of the ideas come from. I want to ask

you guys about some facts, just to see. I'm gonna I didn't see, I'm doing just what you said not to do. I'm gonna. I wannaky. I have three things. I wonder if you can give me a fact on on each just if you can't, you can't, But let's see. How about a fact about farts? You got anything good? Yeah? I mean, I know there was a guy, a scientist. I think he was like a German scientist a couple of years ago who released a chocolate that was supposed

to make your farts smell better. And and and I just that, like you know, now they make silver line underwear to to um, you know, prevent your farts from smelling. It is pretty amazing. My second favorite thing is sandwiches. Any facts on sam which is for me that is

so strange. We can we will have some good sandwich facts for you in the not too distant future, because we've been doing these bonus episodes each week about nine facts, and there's actually one in the works that we're going to put together that is, uh uh nine facts about about sandwich is how to build a better sandwich. I think part of it was based off the fact that we, uh, we read this fact that an astronaut smuggled a corn beef sandwich into space on NASA and and it caused

this massive controversy and congressional debate. And so there's like in the congressional record all these people arguing about whether or not you can take a corn beef sandwich into space, which is kind of amazing. I can't wait. I love I love sandwiches, everything about them. Okay, one last thing to kind of segue into stuff I want to talk about, any any good fact on on podcasting. I mean, I can tell you that this is not really a fact.

But part of the reason that we went into we get the question as to why we would transition into podcasting is that, you know, one of the eight things about what happened at Mental Philoss was we built this huge audience. It was twenty something million people by the time we left, and yet what we really missed was

that more intimate interaction with our listeners. And there was something amazing that's happening in podcasting right now which does feel so intimate, and this ability to interact directly with an audience that we noticed was going on and while we were so eager to jump into this space, and so we've been looking for any ways that we can to foster that, and so we've created things like seven Fact Hotline that's a one eight four four pt genius that our listeners can can call in and tell us

a fun fact that they know about a certain subject, will have contest. It is still seven right. Yeah. We we debated whether it should be a twenty two seven fact hot line, but we decided to splurge and go all the way and it is a committed seven fact

hot line. It's pretty amazing. I mean, I I think as we started this podcast, we're also looking at old ideas that maybe we could translate to podcasts, and so we're looking at old game shows, We're looking at various uh, you know, foreign shows and whatever, and we realized one YouTube show that would never translate is UH, a Japanese TV program where a girl runs up a hill. It's a five minute program, and every week there's a different girl and a different hill. And for some reason that

doesn't translate to podcasts. We've been we've been racking our brains. We tried. We spent what three or four weeks really trying to figure out how this could translate into podcasting. It just doesn't work. I guess you could mike her and and like the sound of her breathing and going up because people were into that. They like breathing and whispering in all kinds of things. Are so they do. I don't get it, but it's true they do. What

do you love most about podcasting? I mean to me, it's it actually is kind of what I loved about magazines too before. It was that you could sort of peek into a conversation between smart people and and that's that sort of intimacy is like a both this fireside chat type feel where you know, you can just be a fly on the wall and this is great, um, you know, debate or whatever is going on. But at the same time there's this real intimacy and I like

that a lot, and it gives us a chance. You know, what we were doing at Mental Floss was usually a very quick kind of tidbit oriented type look at any subject, and we love doing that. We still love doing that. What we've had the opportunity to do now with podcasting, though, is to take a single big question, you know, will we ever live without sleep? Something along those lines, um

or how can we build a better prison? Whatever it might be, and do a bit of a deeper dive and there are some fun, you know, quick facts in there. But at the same time, it gives us a chance to sit back a little bit and have a more

in depth, kind of meandering sometimes conversation around these things. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it's funny that you can take a topic like bananas, which shouldn't be interesting, and then do like half an hour bananas and and like that you can sort of lull someone into being interested in something they really shouldn't be interested in. Is is really fun for us. One of the things I

enjoy about watching podcasting booming. I've been in the business about ten years, and it's just the last year or two I feel like it's it's really catching on, especially with millennials. I teach at university and there's a lot of kids into podcasting right now. It makes me happy because when you look at something like How Stuff Works, this is a place about teaching and about learning and about knowing new things, and it's one of the biggest

players in the podcast space. So I think it says a lot about the people who listen to podcasts and and that you know just what you what. I think your fundamental belief is that people do want to learn and and expand their minds well, and one of the most fun parts for me. I I completely agree with what you've said, But part of why we came to How Stuff Works was not just that they've built this audience that's listening to new episodes, but to your point

about people really being excited about learning. A big part of How Stuff Works success is getting people hooked into these topics and then a just binge. The number of people that we hear from here at How Stuff Works, especially about the long standing, most popular shows of something like stuff you Should Know or stuff you missed in history classes, people jump into these and then they write in, you know, emails or call in to talk about how they've you know, spent the past few weeks binging on

all of the back episodes. And you're talking about a show like stuff. You should know that this year they'll publish their one thousandth episode and people fall in love with it. Yeah. I remember seeing something on Facebook about someone who's listened to the Catalog three times and it's stunning. But I was gonna say what one thing is about

the connectedness question in the beginning. I mean, I think that what used to happen on the web, especially early on, was kind of amazing, right, Like you would we would get into the comments section and discuss with commenters, and you'd have this sort of really wonderful, friendly conversation. And

that's no longer an option anymore. Right, There's so many trolls, there's so much negativity, and I feel like podcasts feel a little like that early Internet to me again, where where it there's this sort of like um, really positive spirit and and um connection and intimacy that I think used to exist on the online and doesn't quite exist in the same way anymore. There's hope, there's hope for society. Well, there's hope for this next segment. I like to call

three killer questions. I'm gonna ask you guys three questions, and uh, I want to see what your answers are The first one goes back to a topic that I mentioned earlier. This is one of my favorite questions and most people don't like it, but I don't care. Um, if you were sandwich per personified, so not your favorite sandwich, but if you were one personified, what sandwich would you be? I think peanut butter and jelly is so overlooked and

but it's actually sort of a masterpiece. I was going to go peanut butter as well, but peanut butter banana with honey, right, a little bit of sweetness there, which some may disagree with. Elvis loves you, el This loves me. Yeah, but I can't. I can't not include peanut butter. And I could live off of peanut butter if if I was made to live off of one food item, that would be But I think I'd go with the peanut

butter banana and the honey. And I'm gonna need forty five minutes to come up with why, so I'll get back to you on that. So what was the first piece of technology that that totally changed your life? My dad, for some reason, had bought a Texas instrument computer when I was a kid, so before they made calculators, they used to make computers, and uh, I loved it. I think, um, you know, in some ways, that's how I embraced technology.

For me, it was, um, it was the home computer that we bought back when you know, people were first buying home computers and they cost like two thousand dollars and now these would just be about the processing power of a basic calculator. But the reason that it was life changing for me was because we signed up for Prodigy, right and it was before you could even really you didn't realize. You were kind of surfing the web. You'd have to click on like do I want travel? Do

I want sports? Do I? But the reason that it was was changing for me was because I would log on every single night that the Lakers had a game, and I would download the box score and print it out, and I kept these files of this and that really was one of the early times of like needing to collect and know a certain body of information. And so it was like how many points did a C Green score tonight? Or how many rebounds? How many points did

Byron Scott have tonight? And it was something so wonderful about this collection of knowledge and that suddenly you just saw the potential of enormous amounts of information being available and accessible. I didn't know to call it online at the time, but that's essentially what it was. It was this body of information that you could get without having to, you know, go to the library or find your local newspaper,

which wouldn't have had that as well. I remember sitting and having the TV on but watching the computer to see when exactly the Philly score would update by once score, you know, and we're just like waiting, waiting, waiting, and then like cheered when it went off. You know, it's just so ridiculous. It's a good thing we're not nerdy. I know, I feel dumb because I think all I when I first got online was boobs. That's all I look for. I don't know what you're talking about. I

would have never Yeah, that's that online these days. We actually, as a side note, we had an advisor which we cannot name, years ago, who actually pulled us aside one day and he was and and somebody had made a joke about getting emails with you know, stuff about viagra and porn or whatever. And this guy was probably in his seventies or so, and he kind of pulled the society was like, I don't get these emails about porn, like how where do you get porn on the internet?

And so having to pull this seventies something you're old a side and be like, all right, man, here's how you want to find more? And I guess online we've heard, we don't know from personal experience, but we've heard this is how people are doing it these days. How about podcast you binge? What's the last one you binged on? We've we've both been really into a song exploder, right, yeah,

song exploders and edible podcast. Um, I really love and this is one obviously that's way up there that everybody sees. But I just think what The New York Times is doing with the Daily is just brilliant. I love the fact that they decided, rather than doing a recap of the day's news, to pick one topic and go deep. Um. I just think they do a fabulous, fabulous job with UH. With that, I really did like the most recent UH

season of Revisionist History. I thought it was a really really interesting thing and then it just for sheer entertainment, Like I don't think you can beat the comedic quality and yet sweetness and simultaneous rawness of something like two Dope Queens. I think they're just so funny and I I could just listen to them talk about nothing or their crushes or whatever it is forever. But um, that's

been part of the fun of this. I mean, we're listening to dozens and dozens of new podcasts every single every single week, and then of course the ones here that brought us to How Stuff Works. You know, we were big you know stuff you should know fans, and all of the other shows that they have here are just so much fun to listen to. Well, the podcast is Part Time Genius. I love it. If you wanna like binge while you're looking online, you can also binge

on their Facebook page. Lots of stuff on there as well. Any other things you want to tell people, how to get hold of you, or anything at all, No, I think just check out Part Time Genius. We've done recent episodes on how to build a better prison, on which country has the best education system, on the coal a

Wars between Coke and pepsi, and many others. But we love to dive into history and to science and a pop culture, and as you said earlier, find those facts that you're not going to find in every other history book or resource that you might read. We like to dig a little deeper to find some of those better ones. Guys, thanks for coming on the second episode of Access Podcast. Hey Maddie, congratulations to you and thanks for doing this show. Can't wait to hear the other episodes. That was so

much fun them. Yeah, they were cool, they were really smart guys. Now Z is in the studio. She is my uber producer and each week she goes out and checks out some podcasts that I may not have gotten to or maybe one I haven't heard for a while, and tells us about them. Uh this week though, there's

a focus to what you found, right. Yeah. So since the part time genius guys are on How Stuff Works and they have really kick ass programming and podcasts, I thought we'd stick to three more How Stuff Works podcasts. They have a lot of podcasts, really good ones too. I remember were only two they had How Stuff Works and then I think stuff you should Know in History class might have been from the second ones. But I remember when we when we first put them on Stitcher,

there was just a just one or two couple. Well, they've grown. But two of the ones that you mentioned are on my list that good. They're the old time favorites. Well, go ahead, tell me about the first one. So the first one, it was my actually introduction to How Stuff Works and I've been listening to them for a while. Um, it's stuff you should know. And this title says it all. It's just about how everyday things in your life work. Um, there's a funny one like how frogs work if you

ever wanted to know that. Their new episode is how Giraffes work. They're pretty interesting. They're pretty interesting. And then the how police body cameras work, and just like interesting stuff like that. It's great. Yeah, so stuff you should know. For many many millennia, human dum dums referred to these animals as camel leopards, right with a tidy little hyphen in between the two to really show that they had clearly a camel and a leopard had gotten it on

at some point, right and created the giraffe. That's fun, you know. And I think the one thing about these podcasts with How Stuff Works is is the host. You know, they have a passion for learning and knowledge, just like Will and Mango did. And you hear you here in every episode. Yeah, and I think that's contagious. And yeah, it was. That's why they've been around so long. What else you got? So? Next one, stuff you missed in

history class? I know, so am I. And it's just when I started listening, these are things I've never learned, they said, like they're just popular. They're not as popular history lessons as what we would learn in high school or in middle school like that. So if you're a history nerd, stuff you missed in history class, it's a killer. So The Right Brothers shows the outer Banks of North Carolina as their testing ground because the constant wind helped

with the lift. They first refined the gliders that they were working on until they were satisfied with their aerodynamics, and then they turned their attention to power, developing a lightweight gasoline engine UH and a propeller. The end result was the six pound eleven point eight one horsepower Flyer, which they tried to use for a powered controlled flight with a person on board on December fourteenth, nine O three. All right, here's a little history trivia for you. What

was Dolly Madison's favorite ice cream mint chocolate chip? Do you know who Dolly Madison was Yeah, well I don't say yeah. I asked this to our staff are in it. It's San Francisco college graduates, and of them didn't even know who Dolly Madison was. They said, Dolly Madison the porn star. Oh no, James Madison's wife. Yeah, save the picture of oyster oyster. That was her favorite ice cream oyster.

I would actually be down for that. And I believe I might have heard that on stuff you should learn what et So the last one is stuff to blow your mind, And these are just really interesting and cool topics like psychology of tattoos and the science of LSD and why we laugh at scary movies. So if you just want to nerd out and just like have those fun facts that when you're at a party and stuff, stuff to blow your mind, So yeah, strap in because

that's the other thing. We're going to get into a real basic primer for you on what LSD is, what's the difference between LSD and psilocybin, and then we'll roll into the Leary experience. I liked to nerd out on on this kind of stuff, but it is it. I feel sad though, when I've got a really good piece of knowledge and nobody cares and gets wasted. Yeah, on the wrong crowd. It's such a bummer. Yeah, the people we work with aretening. Yeah, get a book, Get a book.

Watch the History Channel. It's Ally Madison. Believe that well, Zee, thank you so much for coming in and kipping us up on on those podcasts. By the way, they can all be found right here on I Heart Radio, so go check them out. You can find them on all your platforms, but we like it when you listen to them on my heart. Hey, everybody that's gonna do it for the show, Thanks for listening. Access Podcast is produced

artwork by Dalton Runberg. Music composed by Casey to Go one of the people who did Not Know Who Don't post. Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Don Parker, and Katie Wilcox at I Heart Radio. Follow us on Facebook Access Podcast and we now have a Twitter and Instagram and we need followers because there's nothing more sad than having like ten followers. It is really really sad. I like to get at least fifty likes on a picture, you guys, Yeah, please follow her follow up so you'll put up a

picture of herself. Yeah, there you go, Yeah, I do really cool Instagram stories, so go check those out at access podcast one for Twitter because some jerk got access podcast ten years ago and used it once so mad, but you can find us on Instagram at access podcast and please go download the I Heart Radio app, go to podcasts, listen, share, and tell your friends thanks.