You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what Will? What's that Mango?
So I wasn't sure whether I should share this or not, but in the interest of transparency, I'm not just a part time genius. I'm also a part time pherologist. A part time pherologist. I don't know whether to congratulate you, because I don't know what a phroologist does. May go, well, you might know it as a pharronologist. Is that something, it's still not helping. It's someone who studies lighthouses and
signal lights. And the term was coined in the eighteen forties by an English marine researcher.
His name was John.
Purdy, and it's kept alive today by the Association of Light house Keepers or the ALK, which despite its name, is more for enthusiasts than folks actually living in lighthouses.
Okay, well I'll give it to you. That is pretty cool, But I don't remember you talking about lighthouses for do you actually really like them? Yeah?
I mean I feel like whenever we went to beaches or places, you'd end up like climbing up a lighthouse, and there's something wonderful and romantic about them. They're near the sea, they've got great views. But beyond appreciating lighthouses for their good looks and the symbolism, rologists are also fascinated by things like how lighthouses project light, how they're engineered to withstand storms, and also just kind of fun as a hobby, right, like taking expeditions to see as
many of them as you can. In fact, Princess Anne, King Charles's sister is a pharologist, and she has visited nearly eighty of the two hundred and nine coastal lighthouses on the rugged, Scottish and Manxian coasts.
Wow, so she's only got my quick math one hundred and twenty nine left to see, right, h Princess Anne, if you are listening, get a move on. I'm guessing she is listening, so I don't take that too personally. Definitely.
Now you may be wondering where the word pharology comes from. Pharaohs was the ancient Greek word for lighthouse, and it's the name of the famous lighthouse in Alexandria. It was built in the third century and for a long time it was the tallest building on Earth, which is just incredible. Also, my favorite pharology fact is that the Association of Lighthouse Keepers publishes a quarterly journal and it is called Lamp and you know we love lamps. That is just one
of the weirdest ologies out there. We've got nine of them on today's show, so let's dive in.
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm here with my good friend Mangesh, a ticketter, and over there on the other side of that soundproof glass creating a Wikipedia entry for vampyrology and he's also drinking a suspiciously viscous red beverage. That's our Palin producer, Dylan Fagan.
I love that he needed to wear a cape while doing Definitely, it's also bizarre, like why wasn't there already a Wikipedia entry for the study of vampires? That feels like a real oversight.
Well, I guess it's the anti vampire prejudice that's out there, And thank goodness, Dylan is on the case. So, Mango, what makes you want to talk about ologies today?
So you know, we're both big fans of Ally Ward's show Ologies, but absolutely.
Also back in metal Class.
We used to do a column called work Study, where we'd interview people with incredible and incredibly specific jobs, like there was a gentleman who had a PhD in Batman and he was often referred to as doctor Batman, or the person whose job it was to figure out what thickness of glass you need to stop various birds from flying through it, which is such a specific job, like this is the thickness you need for a wren, this
is the thickness you need for a seagull. It's you know, I don't think it's something a lot of kids grow up thinking they want to be as adults. But ologies really are fun.
They're so fun, and you're right, Alli Word's Ologies show is just one of the best podcasts out there, so definitely worth the shout out. All right, for my first fact, I want to talk about filmatology. Are you familiar with filmatology? Is that about like film or phleme? Well, it could if you have a cold, But filmatology is all about the scientific study of kissing, including the biological, psychological, and social aspects of it.
Somehow, like the study of lighthouses was something I was expecting, but not the study of kissing, which, just for the record, I am much more interested in than the study of the band kiss, which I had so interested in. What type of things did you learn from this?
Well, you know, I have to go on a sidetrack here, mango, because I don't know if you remember this, but as a kid I used to sneak into my much older sister's room and go into her closet and look at her kiss trading cards that she kept in a shoe. Maass kiss the band again, So pretty funny. Anyway, back to kissing here, did you know that lips actually have the thinnest layer of skin on the human body, and along with that very thin layer of skin, are more
nerve endings than any other single part of the body. Now, this is according to the American Journal of Medicine, and it states that lips can be two hundred times more sensitive than our fingers. She might explain why little kids put everything to their mouths. I am so glad that my kids have outgrown that face. Yes, yeah, no, it genuinely is the worst and grossest phase. But anyway, filmatology
has taught us a lot about ourselves. For example, the nose plays a big role in kissing, even subconsciously, it's how we assess a partner's pheromones. And it turns out that kissing might actually save your life and put money in your wallet, which is intriguing. But one study shows that men who kiss their partners before leaving for the day were less likely to get in car accidents and more likely to be in a higher income bracket. So with that in mind, pucker up, everybody. I like that.
It's a real life hack. That's right.
Well, this next feel of study might interestill In with
all his vampire love over there. I'm talking about chiropterology, which means the study of bats, so in the animal kingdom, bats are part of the order Chiroptera, which is a combination of a Greek where it's for hand and wing, and Chiropterologists usually have backgrounds in wildlife biology, and while their work can involve exciting trips to remote caves and national parks, they also spend a lot of time in attics and barns and bunkers because you know that's where
bats love to hide, and because bats tend to come out at night as well. Research and use telephoto lenses and infrared cameras to track their movements and population size. They also trap bats using harmless mesh nets so that they can mark them with tracking devices or take blood samples. But the best part of this ology is that it
is not as niche as you think. And that's because there are more than fourteen hundred species of bats, and they represent about twenty percent of all the mammals on Earth. It's the second most diverse group of animals after rodents, and bats might actually hold the key to longer life. Wow, fourteen hundred species, that's wild and you'd say potentially life saman. I actually just think of bats as carrying these viruses that make us sick. Yeah, and they do that as well.
But there's a lot more to bat biology. You know. What's interesting is that usually small animals have these short lifespans, like rats, which have tons of offspring, but they also tend to die young. Bats just have one baby a year, and they live a really long time. The oldest bat on record was more than forty years old. Wow, And we actually don't know why yet. But if all these scientists can help figure it out, we might learn how we can live longer too. Also, speaking of bats, I
have two other weird things. One is, I didn't realize this, but of course they do. They've got belly buttons, which is really interesting to me.
Glad you remember that. Yeah.
But the second thing is this all made me remind me of my son when he was in daycare. He came back with this nursery rhyme, and I was curious if you'd never heard it. It goes, uh, bat bat, come under my hat and I'll give you a slice of bacon, and when I bake, I'll give you cake.
If I'm not mistaken, I'm sort of feeling like Henry may have made this up? Is that? Did he really come home saying this?
So we sent her to a daycare and they were like, you know, we teach them all the traditional American nursery rhymes, and these very sweet Polish women and they looked it up and I guess it's a traditional English nursery rhymes.
No way, So there wasn't just made up. I thought for sure. I thought it was certainly made up. But it's real, all right. Well, your chiropterologist's friends might just find themselves bumping up against the next group of ologists. These are campinologists, and so are these people who study camping. Nope, that was my first guest when I saw it as well. But campinologists like bats are often found in bell towers.
It's actually the study of bells and bell ringing. So bell towers or campaniles, these first showed up and it lay around four hundred CE, and they spread across Europe and into the UK, and they lost popularity when Henry the Eighth dissolved almost all the monasteries in England so that he could marry Anne Bolin, shortly before he had her head chopped off so he could marry somebody else. Of course, we've heard the stories here. That was a
tough time for giant bell's Mango. That's the thing we forget. We hear about all the women, but we forget to focus on the bell. But I got it the bells too. Yeah, I mean, you know it's it was. It was a rough time, but luckily for the bells, they had a resurgence in the sixteen hundred and that's when people began to see bell ringing really as kind of an art.
Now you can't play normal music on tower bells. It takes a few seconds for each bell to swing around, so to create this pleasing flow of sound, people began ringing bells one after the other, and to make it more interesting, they created these sequences using bells tuned to different pitches. Now this is known as change ringing, and
the patterns that bells followed are actually called methods. So say you have a tower with six bells, numbered in order, with one being the lightest and six being the heaviest. The first sequence you might ring would be one to three four five six. Next you swap the order by one and ring two one four three sixty five, and then you reverse the middle numbers and ring two four, one six three five. Are you following this? Spango? This
is all very simple. So the examples of common method changes are called plane bob, reverse Catebory, grand Shire, and double Oxford. These are just some various names. So now you're basically an expert on bell ry.
I really it sounds so complicated. I do like the names, but it's complicated.
It is complicated, and to that point, it's as much math it as music. So campinologists use factorials to figure out how many different sequences are possible. So for our six bell tower, there are actually seven hundred and twenty possible permutations. Now you remember factorials from high school, right, I mean.
Barely, Like a factorial LI of six is like six times five tons, four times three times two tons one right?
Hey, plus mango still got it? And all right, Well, here's a final fun campinology fact for you. For whom the bell tolls isn't just a better title than for whom the bell rings. It actually turns out that tolling and ringing aren't the same thing. THENGO I didn't know this. I don't know if you knew this, but it was we're not doing this episode for this fact. You can ring as many bells that you like, and you can
ring them as fast as you like. But a toll involves just one bell, typically striking at a gloomy pace to mark an event like a funeral. I wonder if Ernest Hemingway knew that or he just thought it sounded better. You know, it's a good question. I have a feeling he might have known this. Yeah.
Yeah, So our next ology is a pseud of science, but it's still worth learning about. And it's cryptozoology, which is the study of mythical creatures or cryptids. Although cryptozoologists would describe it that way. They actually call it, quote the study of unknown, legendary or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated.
I'm going to have to say that sounds fans here. Then you know, we read about monsters. Yeah, and mainstream science does look down on it, of course. But oddly enough, cryptozoology was started by a pair of proper zoologists. This was Bernard Huelman's and Ivan T. Sanderson, and this was in the fifties and sixties. They published text claiming that creatures like Yetty's and the Lockedest Monster might be based in reality. And so in.
Particular, Humelman's was inspired by an earlier Dutch zoologist who theorized that reports of giant sea serpents may have been quote a large unidentified species of seal. But the amazing thing is cryptozoology has led to some real discoveries. So in twenty eighteen a Danish expedition went to Lake t Lee and this is in the Republic of Congo, and they went there to search for a mythical water reptile from Bantu mythology. They didn't find the creature, but they
did discover a new species of algae. Also, a zoologist named Darren Nash studied the description of cryptids over time, and he found that alleged sea monsters like the one in Lockness evolved along with real research, so they went from being described as snakelike to adding the idea that they had long necks like a dinosaur diplosaurus after the event of like you know, dino science in the eighteen hundreds.
And that means, I guess the next logic step is for someone to decide that Dessi is actually an AI robot.
That's good stuff. All right, we have to take a quick ad break, but when we come back, we're going to talk about outer space and of course your front lawn, so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to part time Genius. We're talking about nine weird and wonderful ologies. Now, this next one might sound like a pseudoscience, like cripazoology, but it's not so. According to NASA, astrobiology is this study of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life throughout the universe.
Is that the search for extraterrestrial lift, I mean, that's part of it, but to actually understand the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, you have to study the one planet we know supports life, of course, our very
owner Earth. In fact, a lot of astrobology research takes place in the Atacama Desert in South America because its terrain is known for sort of approximating Mars, and NASA's astrobology team began in the nineteen sixties with what was called the Viking Program, which was the first mission to land on Mars and look around for signs of life there.
But these days astrobology has gone way beyond Mars. So Enceladus, which was a satellite of Saturn, is particularly promising as a place to study because it has jets of ice particles coming from its south pole. So astrobologists think the ice comes from a reservoir under the surface. There may be hot rocks below the reservoir, and that could mean that, along with the messane and other gases that are detected there, Enceladus has everything needed to actually create life.
That's amazing, and it's also so funny to talk about other planets south poles like m I only think there's one south pole, just one, just this Earth's promise. I seem to have all right, anyway, one thing that Earth has that Enceladus doesn't have, I'm guessing is grass. And if you want to know more about grass, which I know you do, you have to take up agristology. This ology gets its name from the Greek agros, which means field. So agristology is the field of studying fields.
Is that right? Yeah?
And one of the biggest pioneers in this field of fields was an American botanist named Mary Agnes Chase. She was born in eighteen sixty nine in Illinois, a place with a lot of grass. And even though her formal education never went past elementary school, she took all these botany classes and began working as an illustrator for the USDA.
Now her mentor was the botanist Albert Hitchcock, who is not Alfred Hitchcock, and they co authored important works about grasses of North America and the West Indies.
What an unfortunate name like. Can you imagine how many times people were disappointed when they thought they were going to meet it. Alfred Hitchcock at a party in house was like, no, no, no, this is Albert Hitchcock, the guy who studies grass.
It is amazing, but we can't lose focus on Mary Agnes Chase, who was a committed feminist too. She was a suffragist and a member of the Silent Sentinels, which was this group that led protests outside the White House, and her activism and her gender really impacted her career.
At one point, Hitchcock, Albert Hitchcock, tried to readirect some of his own research grant money to her, and this official at the Smithsonian refused the offer, saying, quote, I doubt the advisability of engaging the services of a woman for the purpose. But Chase actually paved the way for other female agristologists, making connections with and mentoring women all around the world and in what can only be described as poetic justice. In nineteen fifty eight, she was named
an Honorary Fellow of the Smithsonian. Yeah, I'm glad she finally got her do all right. So our next ology is relogy, or the study of flow, and so to learn more about this, I spent some time with Helen Joyner, aka Reologist on sabbatical. This is a channel on YouTube, and specifically she's a food reologist. So the flow of food, Like,
what's that mean? It's like you know, making nutella have the right amount of give when you dig a knife into the jar, or making natural peanut butter stir together before you know your arm tires out, and all things that we can identify with This definitely makes me want some new tell of just saying that peanut butter.
Definitely. But you know, perhaps the most important thing I learned from watching Joiner's channel is that relogy can't measure texture. That's because texture is more qualitative. It can only be described by your experience of it. There are proxies for texture, like yield stress, which is how easily a knife cuts into something. So higher yield stress means higher viscosity, which often feels better in our mouths. So is relogy just
about foods, No, not at all. Like Joiner has super long hair, and as she explains, realogy can also explain why dry hair is harder to style than wet hair. So dry hair is frictionless and slips over itself, and the height and friction of wet hair doesn't slip, and so it stays in place where you put it, like in braids or a faux hawk or whatever you want to do with it.
It's really fascinating that there's a whole field of order to just how things flow right, It's amazing. Okay, So it's time for our last ology, literally, and this is eschatology, which is the study of the end of the world. And the good news is it's more about studying different stories and theories about the end of the world than it is of facts that might indicate the world is ending. I like that you describe that as good news. I mean, that still sounds a little depressing to me. I mean,
it could be. And there are two main types of eschatological stories. So there's linear cosmology aka the kind with a single end point, and cyclical cosmology aka the kind that brings about rebirth through regeneration. So Western fates typically engage in the first kind of ending, and Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism fall into the latter category, where the world starts all over again, either in whole or for each soul. So I mean, I guess you would
say this is more social science than kind of science science. Yeah, it seems that way, but that's not exactly the case. There's also a branch of eschatology that gets more literal, and this uses principles of astrophysics to approximate how much time the Earth has before it stops sustaining human life
or if a meteor hits. And so these include really fun theories like the big rip, the Big crunch, the Big bounce, and the Big freeze, which I don't know why they all have to have big in them, but what they.
Do that's pretty wild. Yeah.
So I'm going to give you this week's trophy because our producer Mary was so excited about your bell ringing fact, and you know she and you talked about it earlier. She actually went out and hung out with some bell ringers this week and learned to do math with bells at a tall height. So yeah, it is really fun. And she said the community is incredible and she is going to come on here and talk about it at some point.
Wow, that is so fun. All right, Well, thank you. It is an honor, and thank you Mary. So that does it for today's episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a nice rating and review while you're at it. This episode was written by Lizzie Jacobs, an amateur peanut butter reologist. Thanks so much, Lizzie, and I'll be back next week. With a new episode and in the meantime from Dylan Gay, Mary Mango and Me thank you so much for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pierce and Me Mongish Heatikler and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and
Viny Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.