Glascope.
You're listening to part time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what, Well, what's that mango? So if it weren't for a nineteenth century Scottish scientist, my career right now would be completely different.
And what do you mean by that?
Well, this particular invention is something you hear mentioned at the beginning of all the podcasts I work on these days. Oh, like Kaleidoscope, right, that's right, it's the name of the podcast network I co founded. And it turns out that the kalidoscope was invented by a guy named David Brewster. He was born in the southern Uplands of Scotland and
attended the University of Edinburgh. He actually became a minister at first, but his lifelong passion for science, particularly the science of light, inspired him to study optics, and in eighteen fourteen, while doing an experiment that involved bouncing light between plates of glass, he noticed that if the glass was placed at specific angles, it actually created the striking symmetrical patterns, and he decided to see if he could recreate this effect in different way, so he tried again,
this time beaming all this polarized light across gold and silver plates, and the result was this stunning, colorful array. So he set out to create, in his words, a new optical instrument for creating and exhibiting beautiful forms.
So, if I'm understanding this right, this is really my favorite kind of invention because it sounds like he's not trying to invent something practical, like he just thought these light patterns were pretty, Is that right exactly?
And after a few months of tinkering, he actually built a proto kaleidoscope, and the device had angled mirrors with colored glass fastened around them to cast all these reflections. And the first people to view it were members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and they loved it. But Brewster wasn't done. His final stroke of genius was making the colored glass pieces rotate in order to create all these different shapes and patterns, you know, like the kalidoscopes
we know today. But while the instrument itself might have been a novelty, the principles behind it were actually really advanced. So in eighteen fifty eight, Brewster wrote a book about the science of kalidoscopes, summarizing what he'd learned in the process of making his invention, everything from like the geometry of kaleidoscopic forms to the physics of light, and in chapter sixteen he made a reference to a compound known as ido quinine sulfate, the crystals of which he said
were remarkably good at polarizing light. Almost seventy years later, a Harvard student named Edwin h. Land would read this and get the idea for a new kind of polarizing filter that could be used for photography, and he called it polaroid.
It's amazing, and they think it all began with the minister who just kind of liked pretty colors.
Yeah I know, I mean the idea of this toy turning into a camera, it was just like stunning. But more specifically, it all began in Scotland. And today we're discovering nine surprising facts about the northernmost country in the UK, from a once in a lifetime fossil fine to the shocking truth behind bagpipes. So why don't we dive in?
Heay their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend mengeshat Ticatter and over there in the booth all tuckered out. I'm having walked five hundred miles and that's not it, and then five hundred more. That's our palent producer, Dylan Thing and his dedication. He never ceases to amaze.
It is incredible. You walked to Daton, Ohio and back again just so we could make a ten second reference to the proclaivers bitch. I love, Thank you Dylan for getting us into this Scottish spirit.
All right, well, speaking of impressive physical feats, mango my first fact is also a new item on my bucket list. So I want to bag some Monros.
Is that legal?
Not only is it legal, it's actually encourage mango. So in Monroe is any mountain in Scotland that's over three thousand feet tall? And I was curious how many of these there were. There are two hundred and eighty two Monros in total, and if you make it to the top of one, you've bagged it.
That's what they say.
Now you may be thinking that a Monroe is a scientific term or a word derived from Gaelic, but actually their name for Sir Hugh Monroe, who surveyed and catalog them. This was way back in eighteen ninety one.
Now, first of all, I love this terminology. Bagging a Monroe is ridiculous, a great term. It is ridiculous. But but did this guy just wake up with day decide to make like like a huge list of mountains.
No, it was actually an assignment. He was asked to do it by the editor of the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, and mountain climbing and hillwalking were and of course still are popular past times in Scotland, and that's, of course thanks to the country's rugged terrain. So Monroe had co founded the club a few years earlier, so he was clearly qualified for this. But he had something else going
for him. According to a biography written by the Monroe Society, he was known as a compulsive note taker and quote he flung himself with enthusiasm into everything he undertook. So it seems like a super interesting guy. But although he worked tirelessly to catalog them all, Monroe didn't bag all the Monroes himself. He actually sadly died of pneumonia in nineteen nineteen with only three mountains left on his climbing list.
It's just such a bummer.
That is really tragic, I know, and it means that he doesn't qualify as a completer. That's the official term for people who reach the top of every single Monroe, and that's a lot like that is a lot of climbing, a lot of walking, and so doing so gains you membership into the Monroe Society, which says there are just
over seventy six hundred registered completers. And I'd like to think that Sir Hugh would be especially proud of Jamie Errens, who holds the fastest record from Monroe, completing in a single self propelled round, meaning she didn't use any form of motorized transportation. She bagged the whole list in thirty one days, ten hours, and twenty seven minutes, traveling on foot, by bike, and by sea kayak to reach them all. Now, out of the I can match Jamie's record or even
come closed. But one of these days I'd love to go to Scotland and put at least one Monroe in my back.
I don't want to overdo it one. It feels like that's impressive enough. Yeah, you gotta do it for Sir Hugh. I love it. Also, that's incredible. Jja's that really sunning. Have you been to Scotland before?
I have not.
It's definitely on the list of places I want to get to and you know the coming years, how about you.
We went with my family. My dad organized a trip, which you know, my mom does most of organizing, and so this was a very poorly organized trip and we went to a farmhouse and there are all these generations of family and we basically saw none of Scotland. No one could get coordinated and everyone wanted to do their own thing.
It's but a nice farmhouse, I hope, so beautiful.
I mean, like the land was beautiful. Everyone was so nice. I really want to go back to Scotland, but I've been once. I haven't really seen it, so okay, So back to this. In nineteen eighty four, a Scottish paleontologist named stan Wood made a remarkable discovery in this old limestone quarry and this is in West Lothian. Would by the way, it wasn't a trained scientist. He actually never finished a school and worked at a shipyard and then for
an insurance company. But he became this like really respected diy fossil collector and in fact he eventually amasked such impressive finds that the Royal Museum in Scotland began buying them from him, all of which led to this faithful day in the quarry would actually uncovered the fossil that would turn out to be the oldest known tetrapod, which,
you know, I didn't know what a tetrapod is. It's a class of animals that emerge from the water and involved into familiar things like you know, mammals or amphibians. And the creature he discovered was about like seven inches long. It had four stumpy legs and a lizard like tail, so he nicknamed it Lizzie the Lizard, even though scientists have since pointed out it's a not really lizard, you know, in fact that they don't really know what it is. The best guest seems to be some kind of ancient
relative of the salamander. But even though everyone referred to Lizzie as she, we also don't know whether the critter was a female.
Yeah, it's funny how you can take a fossil which is really just a rock, right, and the minute you give it a name, you start to think of it as this cute creature.
But I don't know.
It just always amuses me. But but anyway, how old is Lizzi?
Exactly?
Well, based on the ages of the rocks in which she was found, everyone's best guess was that Lizzie was around three hundred and thirty one million years old, Right,
it's pretty old. But last year, a University of Texas PhD student and his name is Hector Garza, he decided to get more specific, and so he used this technique called radiometric dating, and Garza found that Lizzie is actually three hundred and forty six million years old, which is a huge deal because that means she lived during Romer's Gap.
Roamers Gap is this mysterious gap in the fossil record that runs from about three hundred and forty five to three hundred and sixty million years ago, And so when you home in on Lizzie's true age, it actually gives scientists this better understanding of when vertebrates emerged from the water and went on the land, and it also gives them a clue about what might have prompted that huge change.
All right, well, my next fact is also about an animal, and it may be less scientifically important, but I dare say it is cuter than a fossil. I'm talking about the Scottish Terrier, or as it's often known.
The Scotti.
Oh like Toto and the Wizard of Oz right well, actually pretty close.
So the dog who played Toto in the old Judy Garland movie was actually a Cairn Terrier. But I'm glad you did bring that up, because there are several terrier breeds that originated in Scotland, including the Cairn, the Sky, the Dandie Denmont which definitely sounds like it's in Scotland, and the West Highland White, but none have captured the public imagination quite like the Scotti, which has become a symbol of its native country.
I mean it is the one. They call it Scottish terrier.
It's true, that's a fair point. But although the Scotti is an icon now, it's got a pretty humble origin. So historians believe the breed originated with dogs brought over from Europe by the early Celts, and then by the fourteenth century it was common for farmers in the Scottish Islands to have these short legged dogs that they used to hunt rats and foxes and sort of other vermin.
But these folks were pretty busy with day to day survival, so they didn't spend much time writing down the descriptions of dogs or determining if this dog counted as a different breed from that dog.
Sure, I mean, all they cared about was was this dog catching a rat? Right?
One hundred percent?
And you know it actually wasn't until the eighteen hundreds that the Scottish terrier became widely known as this unique type different from other terriers in Scotland. It was sometimes referred to as an Aberdeen terrier, so one theory is that the breed emerged from the Highlands via the city of Aberdeen, which is to the east and any rate. People began compiling these proper breed records in the eighteen hundreds and eventually they held dog shows, which further popularized
the idea of distinct breeds with these desirable traits. Back then, sleek hunting dogs or tiny fluffy toys were all the rage. The Scotti, with its wiry code and muscular chests, just wasn't that appealing at that time, and that all changed in the twentieth century. Scotti clubs and breeders started popping up across Scotland. And across the US actually for that matter, and this former farmhand became known as a wonderful family pet.
Now it's because of their person They've been described as almost human like in their intelligence and their incredible loyalty. In fact, Scotty's were so beloved that they were actually immortalized as a game piece in Monopoly. You remember this, right, yeah, of course? Yeah, and then of course famous owners like Fdr Dwight, the Eisenhower and Humphrey Bogart.
Wow, yeah, I know. I mean when you are next to a top hat and a thimble, I feel like that's when you know you've made it.
It's a big deal. Like it's a big deal.
Yeah all right, Well we have to take a quick break, but when we come back, I'll tell you what it takes to make a Tardan of your own. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to a very Scottish part time genius. If you're enjoying this episode, please share it with friend or leave us a nice review and rating. It helps us out. Okay, well, I want you to close your eyes and imagine a kilt your eyes.
Yeah, definitely.
What does it look like?
Okay, it's long pleated I think made of wool, and of course it's plaid.
Yeah, not bad, but technically you can open your eyes. But technically speaking, the pattern most of US Americans call plaid is tartan. In Scotland, the word plaid refers to a piece of tartan fabric used as a blanket or worn over the shoulder. But right now we're just talking tartan. So Scottish tartan has a long storied history. In the eighteenth century, these patterns became popular as military uniforms, and many clans or families adopted signature tartans of their own.
But the patterns used in Scotland goes back even further. In the nineteen eighties, a scrap of wool tartan fabric was found in a peat bog in glen Afric, and radiocarbon dating suggested it was made in the fourteenth century, and although it was stained by pete, the die analysis showed that its true colors included green and brown stripes
on yellow and red backgrounds. And so I know about the glen Affric tartan because I actually looked it up on the Scottish Registry of Tartans, and I didn't realize this existed before, but it's this incredible database that the country is collected. It's the Official Database of Tartan Designs and it was established by Parliament in two thousand and eight. It contains thousands of searchable tartan patterns.
So how does this actually work? Like, can anybody register a tartan?
Yeah, anyone can, but there are three conditions. So first, that has to meet the government's definition of a tartan, which is quote, a design which is capable of being woven consisting of two or more alternating colored stripes which combine vertically and horizontally to form a repeated checkered pattern. Right, so it just kind of has that plaid like feel. Second, it has to be unique. It can't be the same
as any other registered tartan. And finally, there has to be a clear link between the person registering the tartan and the proposed tartan name. Right, So anyone can do it. Lots of people have, and even corporations, schools, nonprofits have
gotten into this game. I've spent maybe too much time browsing the register, but I found that there are official tartans for the University of Delaware, the Canadian Police College, British Airways, Hello Kitty, the New York Jets, and my favorite, a tartan created by an Ohio man to raise money for cats with cancer.
Wow, that's why.
If you're curious, that pattern is ten black and blue to mimic the coat and eyes of his late companion JD. The Siamese cat.
Oh that's kind of sweet. But actually, now that you say this, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Yeah, definitely I want a part time genius tartan.
I don't even know what we would do with it, but it just seems like such an amazing thing to have. I would just in fact, I think I need two of them.
Yeah. Well, I mean if Hello Kitty got one, I feel like we should.
That's a that's a fair point, all right.
My next fact involves another symbol of Scotland, but there's no registry for this one. That's because it's a mythical creature. And this is, of course the unicorn.
You know, I noticed that when I was doing my research. There's a unicorn on the Scottish coat of arms, but I'm not exactly sure why that's true.
Yeah, I mean, unicorns are obviously great. We need to stop for a moment just to acknowledge.
That unicorns twenty seconds of silence to just think about how great they are.
Recognize the unicorn. But also it has to do with history. So in Celtic mythology, unicorns symbolized strength, purity and of course innocence, and in art and in legends, unicorns are depicted as independent and difficult to capture, and that's probably why in the twelfth century, King William the First added a unicorn to the Scottish Royal coat of arms. Now, as the years rolled on, unicorn legends grew in the Middle Ages, people believe that only a king could capture one.
So it's no surprise that in the early fourteen hundreds Scotland's King James the Second kept the unicorn symbolism going and from then on the Scottish throne and the unicorns were inextricably linked. Now the country's next kings, these were
James's three, four and five super original. They went unicorn crazy, putting the reachers on coins, seals, other emblems, and eventually the Scottish Royal coat of arms included a shield supported by not one, but two unicorns who were draped in gold chains at least until the Union of Crowns in
sixteen oh three. That's when King James the sixth became the King of England and Ireland as well as Scotland, and at that time one of the unicorns was replaced by a lion to represent England, of course, so today you'll find unicorn imagery all over Scotland, and every April ninth, Scott's along with the rest of the world, celebrate a National Unicorn Day, which is coming up soon.
So funny. If I was looking for a unicorn or a lion, I feel like the last two places I would go are Scotland, and that's probably fair. So while we're on the subject of sty wait, I got to.
Ask you, where where do you think you would go to look for a unicorn? Exactly?
It's a good question.
I don't know.
I feel I think maybe there are parts of Scott's got than like the Islis Sky or something that you might go to.
But I don't know.
I don't know where unicorn's natural habitats should be, but I'm not sure of Scotland's fair. So while we're on the subject of Scottish heritage, let's turn our attention to language. After English, the most widely spoken language in Scotland is Scots. In fact, across the UK more people speak Scots than Welsh or Gaelic. You may know some yourself, like if you've ever called a small child a we baarn, that's Scots. Or if you've ever sung all leanth sign that is also Scots.
You know, I have sung all lanth sign, but I've never thought about what those words actually mean.
Right, You learned something like this as a kid.
You just kind of go along with it and you just keep saying and don't really think about it.
Yeah, or you just like mumble along to the lyrics as other people are singing it on New exactly. Apparently it's Scott's for the good old days.
Of course it even sounds like old.
Yeah, the old and the old, right. But you know, that's one challenge. The Scots language is actually face because modern Scots share some similarity and overlap with English, and a lot of people even in Scotland don't recognize that it is a language. It's often referred to as a dialect of English, and in a twenty ten survey of Scottish adults, sixty four percent of the people agreed with the statement I don't really think scots is a language,
it's more of a way of speaking. And while most respondents felt Scott's was an important part of national identity, twenty six percent of people equated it with slang, saying it doesn't sound nice or proper. Now. I actually read a study from twenty twenty two that looked at perceptions of language, and it concluded that people are more likely to consider a language legitimate if it's unrelated to other languages, if it's written, and if it's spoken widely, as opposed
to in a limited geographic area. You know, Scotts only passes one of those tests.
Oh it's so interesting and also admittedly kind of sad.
Yeah, I agree, I mean it's funny, right, Like, if you think about it, there's so many similarities between like French and Italian, or Spanish and Portuguese. Right, there are plenty words that are mutually intelligible, but no one would suggest that they aren't distinct languages.
So their efforts to encourage the use of Scott's.
Yeah, there are. It's part of Scotland's national curriculum and in twenty fifteen, the Scottish government released a Scots Language Policy in which it pledged to promote the use of Scots. The Scottish Book Trust has also done a lot to support Scott's language, education and literature, and speaking of which, there's a growing number of modern Scottish authors writing in Scots.
That includes Irvine Welsh, who you might remember from Trainspotting, but also James Kellman, Emma Gray, Alan Bassett and a whole lot more.
Actually, yeah, I was rapidly trying to look up how to say that's great news in Scots and I didn't quite get there.
So I'll just say that's great news.
I'm pretty sure everyone i'll understand.
All right.
So for my last fact, I'm going to tell you about the googa hunters of Nests.
First year bagn Monrose and now you're hunting gougas.
This is the best. This has been my favorite. This is fantastic. Now I'm not hunting googas. In fact, no one does, except for ten men from Ness. It's this remote community and the northernmost tip of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Now, in recent years the population of nests has dwindled to about thirteen hundred as young people leave to find jobs elsewhere. Now, meanwhile, some urban newcomers have moved in looking for a less hectic lifestyle.
That means the social fabric is changing pretty quickly and locals are trying to preserve their traditions. Now, the most famous tradition in Ness.
Is the annual Googa hunting.
Googa is a Gaelic word referring to a juvenile seabird called a ganet. In every August, ten men from Nests sail a rough stretch of the Northern Atlantic to a tiny uninhabited island. There they haul their gear up steep cliffs and set up camp and these ancient stone huts. And no one knows for sure how old these huts are, but the Ness men have hunted google on this island since the fifteen hundreds and maybe even earlier than that.
You know, I didn't realize it was still legal to hunt these sort of like wild sea birds.
It's actually not, but in this case, UK law makes an exception for the googa hunt because of its cultural significance here. And you know, the hunt hasn't changed much over the years. The men don't use guns or traps. Instead, they use these long poles to grab the googas by the necks, and then they use rocks to deliver a
blow to the head, killing the birds almost instantly. Now the carcasses are cleaned, they're salted, they're stacked along these cliffs until it's time to sail back, and so when the hunters arrive home, they're greeted at the docks by friends and family. They're all eager to claim their share of the spoils. Googa is actually a local delicacy, boiled
and then served with potatoes and a glass of milk. It's, of course in acquired taste, and it sounds sort of weird to think about all this combination here, but one report I read described it as a cross between rotten leather and fishy beef.
So once you hear that, you're like.
I'm all in on this, but definitely totally, But fans say it's closer to to like salted mackerel.
Either way.
The days of google feast on nests maybe coming to a close. So after an outbreak of avian flu, the twenty twenty two hunt was canceled, and last year Scotland's Conservation Agency reduced the harvest from two thousand birds to five hundred. But the biggest threat is actually political. Opponents of the hunt say it's cruel and barbaric, and a petition calling for its end was sent to Parliament with eighty five thousand signatures, So a lot of people behind this.
Yeah, I mean there's always that tension right between tradition and what feels barbaric, like killing birds with rocks feels a little awful.
Yeah, no, that's true. But you know, as supporters have pointed out, the reality of factory farm poultry isn't great either, right, and things like feazen and partridge shooting have been popular past times for the UK's upper class for century. But it's a real concern, as is the matter of conservation.
So where does this stand today?
Well, as of this recording, this is still TBD. The petition remains open but won't be considered until after the Scottish Parliament election in May.
Well, I'm curious to see what happens. Well, it is time for our final fact well, and I thought we'd kick it off with some music, So I'm going to have you take a listen here.
Oh man, that's great.
I feel like I'm standing on a Scottish more, you know, with the wind and my hair, you know, pretending I have hair this wind in there.
Like I think I can remember what that feels like.
Yeah, well you should not, because what you just heard was a clip from a Slovak folklore fest. Well the instrument was a guide or Slovak bagpipe.
You know you wait until the end of this episode to tell me that bagpipes aren't Scottish.
We always save the most surprising for last, right, But it's true. Bagpipes are a truly global instrument. You'll hear them across Europe, North Africa, parts of Asia, the Balkans, even the Middle East. It is hard to pinpoint exactly when and where they were invented, but the idea of attaching a bag or a reservoir of air to a set of pipes goes back to ancient times. In fact, archaeologists in Turkey found a Bronze Age carving of what
appears to be an early bagpipe. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had bagpipes as well, and as the Roman Empire expanded, bagpipes followed, which is how they came to Britain. Now along the way the instrument evolved. They added drones, which are those pipes at the top that hold a single tone, and also chants, which allow pipers to play
melodies by opening our closing holes. The first confirmed reference to Scottish bagpipes, however, dates back to thirteen ninety six, and this is from an account of a clan battle which mentions the presence of war pipes. And for the next several centuries, bagpipes played a huge role in Scottish warfare. They're not the easiest instrument to march into battle with, but they are definitely loud, so they are ideal for
signaling troops forward, raising morale and frankly intimidating opponents. By the late sixteenth centuries, Scotland had created the bagpipe most of us know today the Great Highland bagpipe. It's got two tenor drones, one bass drone and a chanter. Great Highland pipers actually accompany British troops on the front lines of World War One and World War Two? Do you know that?
Whoa Can you imagine just like standing there in a trench playing a bagpipe while these bullets are flying all around you so strong sometimes like the parts of war, like this are just so bizarre.
It is insane to imagine. And it's actually estimated that about one thousand pipers died in World War One, and part way through World War I to the frontline, piping was banned to reduce these fatalities. But there's actually a
famous story about one exception. So during D Day, a Scottish commander named Simon Fraser asked his piper, Bill Millen, to play as the troops charged onto the beach, and Millan pointed out that the War Office had forbade this kind of thing, to which Fraser replied, that's the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish and that does not apply. So Millan marched along the beach playing his pipes under a hail of German fire, and both he and Fraser lived to tell the tale. Is that incredible?
Yeah, that definitely is an incredible story. And for that, Mango, and for all the time you spent digging through the official Tartan register, I decided at that moment, right then, right here, you deserve today's trophy.
Well I will take it. I don't know if you knew this, but on my tennis team in high school, one of our best players used to play the bagpipes and would play them during practice and warm ups to annoy other teams.
Oh, that's actually pretty great.
One of those one of those instruments that sounds amazing from like a football field.
The way and you get a little.
Closer, You're like, that's a little that's a little close. But I do have to say I'm a little disappointed we haven't heard a real Scottish bagpipe.
You know, I had a feeling you might say that, so I came prepared. Here you go. That is the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and Annual performance held outside Edinburgh Castle.
That's amazing.
What a great way to close out the episode. You know, maybe one day we can go see it in person wearing the Part Time Genius tartan.
I can see it now.
I'd love that. But before we go, remember to follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky. We're at Part Time Genius. If you have a question or idea for the show, please write us an email at High Geniuses at gmail dot com. That's Hi, Geniuses at gmail dot com. We always love hearing from you. Now. We'll be back with another new episode next week. But in the meantime from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and myself. Thank you so much for listening. Part Time
Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. It is hosted by my good pal Will Pearson, who I've known for almost three decades now. That is insane to me. I'm the other co host, Mangeshatikular aka Mango. Our producer is Mary Phillips Sandy. She's actually a super producer. I'm going to fix that in post. Our writer is Gabe Lucyer, who I've also known for like a decade at this point,
maybe more. Dylan Fagan is in the booth. He is always dressed up, always cheering us on, and always ready to hit record and then mix the show after he does a great job. I also want to shout out the executive producers from iHeart my good pals Katrina and Norvel and Ali Perry. We have social media support from Calypso rallis if you like our videos, that is all
Calypso's handiwork. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or tune in wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's it from us here at part time Genius, thank you so much for listening.