Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio.
Guess what, Mango?
What's that?
Well, so I've been looking into underground bunkers this week and that this was just on a whim. It was not because of any real world events.
You know.
I just get curious about stuff, and it turns out that living underground is actually a ton of work.
So what do you mean by that? Exactly?
All right, Well just just think about it. So first you've got to excavate and build the foundation for this place.
Then you've got to add electrical.
Wiring and plumbing, a septic system, air filtration, backup generators. Like doomsday preppers put a lot of work into this sort of thing.
You know. Honestly, I feel like I'm too lazy to really prep for more than like a day or two. And I remember looking up emergency prep foods once. This is before Sandy happened, and instead of finding anything practical, like, I went into this rabbit hole trying to find the funniest one, and my favorite was something called PB and J in a can.
You know, I think when people hear that, their instinct is to try to claim that that sounds gross. I want to admit it actually sounds like maybe that could be good. I'd probably I'm just hungry right now, but I would probably try it.
I know, Like I thought it would be this dehydrated like PBNJ that you heat up and it magically seems fresh again. But instead it was this tin can with this old hot dog roll stuffed inside and two packets of peanut butter and jelly. They just smear on yourself. So it was honestly so unepetizing. When I found out what it was, I tried to order a few to give out a Christmas.
You said, you smear it on yourself? Oh you like you do this smears? God, Okay, I'll say this is just got got really weird. But I feel like you and I clearly aren't cut out for prepping, which is why I found, you know, the service for people like us. It's called Vivos, and they've spent the last decade setting up dozens of these subterranean shelters all over the world.
And here's the thing.
Most of these shelters aren't privately owned, so instead they're actually part of a membership program where customers pay annual dues in exchange for a guaranteed spot in the closest vivos bunker and so that way, like if disaster strikes, members can take shelter at a moment's notice.
I like it. So it's like a we work for doomsday.
I think that's their tagline exactly. And their website lists out a bunch of scenarios this co living space might be great for. So here are some of them, for a magnetic pull shift, a super volcano, or even a social meltdown.
Which sounds like they're advertising to like a very specific clientele, right, like if you're living with Kanye West and need some space from his social media all towns, this is perfect for you. But it really does.
Sound expensive to Yeah, it is definitely pricey.
So a spot in an eighty person bunker will set you back about thirty five thousand dollars and that's actually way more than I would have even guessed on this. But with the threat of super volcanoes, maybe this is a good investment. I don't know, but all my research made me wonder what other mysteries are hiding under our feet, from hidden cities to weird creatures. There's this whole secret world to explore down there. So strap on your headlamp
and let's dig in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter. And on the other side of his computer screen waving a pick axe like he is ready for a gold rush. That's our friend and producer Loell. I'm not sure if I'm following this one exactly, but he's really waving it aggressively.
I do love how even in a quarantine, Lowell.
Comes through with the process. It's so good.
But you know, I do have a little housekeeping to start this off. Since we started off the show again, we've gotten really really nice notes. People have been leaving reviews that are super kind and writing to our Instagram and Facebook, and honestly it's really heartwarming. It makes me so happy. So thank you so much for listening. I
also have an apology. I mentioned this previously, but one of our readers, Charles wrote in this great correction about the comic book character the Red Bee, and so I sent him some honey in these cute little like bear bombs, thinking it's on topic, and then it turns out he's a beekeeper and the last thing he needs is honey. Yeah, so I miscalculated on that front. I'm sorry, Charles.
I like the idea that he's just going to work his way into every episode. We're just going to take turns thanking him and then apologizing and then thanking him.
So yeah, good way to go.
But I'd say the bigger thing is that last week we announced the very first ever part time Genius Grant, and this is huge news because we've never done this on the show before. We're going to give out six dollars to the person who sends us the best ridiculous invention they come up with. We've had a handful of suggestions, but I can't stress how prestigious this is. It's truly an honor. So send us your inventions via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever.
Just tag us in it and we'll look for it, and then next week we'll announce who's won the big money.
It's a big one.
I'd actually forgotten that we committed to that six dollars, so I need to need to focus this week. So just so we're clear, parents aren't the only ones with ridiculous invention ideas. Kids are welcome to you know, winning a part time Genius grant is going to look so great on your college applications. Get your parents' permission to submit these, But we'd love to hear from you, so send in your ideas. But all right, enough of that,
it's time to get back to today's idea. This week we're talking about great things hidden underground, and we are of course joined by our favorite researcher, pal Gabeluesier.
Gabe, what do you have for us?
All right?
So when I think of weird things underground, one of the first that comes to mind are cicadas. I actually have some fond memories of these guys from when I was a kid in southern Maryland. Which it's kind of strange because cicadas are you know, gross monster bugs, which is not all that endearing. But the sound they make is so distinct. It's this ominous kind of drone. It almost sounds like something sizzling.
I feel like you have to do the sound game, you guys, Okay, fuck me on the spot. I don't know, it's like.
Nailed it.
They do much better than that. That's how stuff sizzles as.
I don't know anyway, Cicadas, you know, they were basically the soundtrack of my summers growing up. But there was one summer in particular, and this is where my fact comes in where the cicada noise got cranked up to eleven. And this was in the summer of ninety nine, which is the year that the Brood five cicad came to town. And I know brood five, It like makes them sound pretty tough, like these are like like your gang of
cicadas or something. But basically they're a species of cicadas known as periodical cicadas, and basically, instead of emerging every summer to lay their eggs, these ones only come to the surface once every seventeen years. So whenever that rolls around, the regions where these guys live are flooded with swarms of cicadas and they cause this enormous racket for a
month and a half. And during that time they lay some eggs, molt some exoskeletons, and then they all die and they're offspring burrowback underground for the next seventeen years.
I mean, that is an amazing life cycle when you think about it, but it's also kind of confusing, like why stay underground for seventeen years instead of just one.
Yeah. Well, the short answer is we don't really know. Like scientists think, maybe it's because it puts their life cycle out of sync with predators, so you know, it gives them a chance of survival. But that's just a guess. All we know is that every seventeen years it gets really really loud in the summer and millions of these bugs all come out and party.
That sounds terrible, but I like that you started with animals because I also wanted to talk about one, and that's the star nosed mole. If you haven't seen one of these, picture like a regular mole, but instead of the usual snout, they have this like weird pink star shaped dependent you're on the front. And when I used to see this in like children's dictionaries, I always thought it was a mistake. It kind of looked like almost like when a cigar explodes in an old cartoon.
Yeah, it actually kind of looks like somebody forgot to add a head to it and instead they just like glued a squid to its face as a prank. Like It's pretty disgusting but also kind of cool looking.
Yeah, I mean, you kind of understand why they want to stay underground, and that star nose is actually really functional. It contains one hundred thousand nerve fibers which help it sense it's that's y And just for reference, that's five times more touch sensors than we have in our entire hand. And they're all crammed into this nose that's smaller than like the tip of your pinky. So the mole makes
good use of them. It's basically blind, and it hunts by bobbing that star up and down as it plows through soil, so it's touching twelve different places all at once. And the tactic is so effective that the star nosed mole actually holds the record as the world's fastest eater. It can actually find and devour an insect in a quarter of a second.
That's pretty cool, all right. Well, since you two have given underground wildlife it's due. I feel like I should talk about the plant version of the Internet. So instead of using wires and satellites to communicate, plants use fungal threads called mycelia, and it's pretty crucial to their survival. So take the phantom orchid for example. These plants actually lack chlorophyll which means they can't create their own energy through you know, photosynthesis, which we all remember from our
elementary school years, like other plants use. So to get around this hang up, the orchid engages in a strange three way partnership and involves an underground fungus and a nearby tree species. Now it sounds a little kinkier than it actually is, trust me on this one. But the roots of both the orchid and the tree are connected to the miceilia beneath the soil, and it's through this middleman that the tree is able to transfer carbon to the orchid, which is of course what it needs.
That's pretty incredible, but it also sounds a little too altruistic. What's in it for the trees to share its resources?
I mean share might not be the right word in this case, and it's probably more accurate to say the plant is stealing the tree's carbon.
But it's still pretty cool.
Fair enough. But I think you said plants actually communicate through this net as well.
Yeah, this is pretty interesting. So a good example is there's this bean plant that sends out a chemical signal whenever it's under attack by a fits and when this happens, other bean plants in the area will pick up the distress signal through the mycelia net.
Even though they aren't under.
Attack themselves, they'll actually activate their anti apid defenses.
This is so cool.
So the question is are the bean plants intentionally sending signals to warn their neighbors or are the neighboring plants just sort of like eavesdropping to see if there are aphids in the area. And technically the jury is still out on this, but I do like the idea of plants having each other's backs.
Ah me too, all right, Well, moving on from something potentially sweet to something decidedly not sweet, let me tell you a little about fat birds. I hate that you picked fat bergs as a topic there, so the time has come though, because I thought at least a few of our listeners out there would get a kick out of this, and maybe will too, we'll see. But fat birds are pretty much what they sound like. It's an iceberg,
but made out of fat instead of ice. And another difference is that fat birds don't form in the open ocean. They form underground, primarily in the pipe and sewers of cities. And that's because fat birds aren't made from just any fat. They're made from the fats and oils that we wash down our drains each day, so we're talking about everything
from cooking oil to hair grease to body wash. All of that gunk eventually collects in the pipes beneath our streets and it solidifies into a massive chunk of debris aka a fat bird.
Fat bird.
That would be you know, gross enough on its own, but the reality is even worse because everything we flush down the toilet is also fair game for the fat birds.
It's just such a great word.
I just feel like we should all chant fat berg, fat bird.
You were saying, fat bird.
I think, all right, anyway, that's right, because unfortunately it means a lot of bathroom trash that we have no business flushing in the first place, like dental floss, wet wipes and prophylactics.
All of that.
Results in a big tangle that's really tough to deal with. And if these fat bergs are left unchecked, they can actually grow so large that one can clog an entire sewer pipe, slowing water flow, causing widespread backups of sewage. It's not pretty. And when it gets to that point, there aren't a lot of ways to deal with this, Like you either blast it with a power washer or you chip away at it with a pickaxe.
Yeah you hear that, loll it is your time to shine with that pickax.
So I am curious, even though I'm grossed off with this, how big can these get? Like I'm almost afraid.
To ask, Yeah, they can get like disturbingly big. The largest one to date was found beneath London back in twenty seventeen, and it was over eight hundred and twenty feet long and weighed more than one hundred and thirty tons.
Oh wow, it's hard to wrap.
Your head around just how massive that is. But for reference, that's nearly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty and a little over half the weight, so way way too big for a sewer. And keep in mind like New York City spends roughly five million per year combating fat bergs, so even the smaller ones are a huge problem.
Now, I do feel like we should clarify because I know we've been laughing a little bit about the name fat burg but I feel like we should go on record and say that the PTG family here we are firmly in the anti fat Burgs camp on like some of those other podcasts out there, But listeners, please do your part and don't feed the fat Burgs. All right, we'll be back with more after a break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking about all the strange
stuff that you could but probably won't find underground. And I think, Mango, I think you're up next.
What do you have?
We've talked about living underground, so let's talk about working underg And there's a weird new opportunity in Sweden where it doesn't even matter what you're doing down there. There's this job available. It's a new position. The only requirement is for the employee to clock in at the Korswagen train station, which is currently under I guess it's under
construction beneath Gothenburg, Sweden. And really that's it. According to the job description quote, the position holds no duties or responsibilities besides the fact that the work should be carried out at Korswagen. Whatever the employee chooses to do constitutes the worst.
Seriously, like that sounds amazing. There's got to be a catch there.
Right, There's actually no catch. It's a legit job offer. It's complete with a competitive starting salary, annual wage, increases, paid vacation, even a pension. And the best part is you get to enjoy the job for the rest of your life if you want it. The people behind the project call it eternal employment. You might be wondering who's behind the project. It's the work of these artists, Simon
Golden and Jacob Senabee. They partnered with the Swedish Transit Authority and they raised about six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the project. So the idea is to grow that initial sum through investments and use it to pay one employee for as long as they choose to work there, and if they ever want to retire or you know, just not hang out underground this train station all day, then they can simply leave and a new employee will
be chosen to take their place. It's a super strange idea, but if it sounds like the job for you, then there's good news because anyone in the world is free to apply. The only hitches that you have to wait a few years. The applications won't be accepted until twenty twenty five, which is a few months before the station is set to open.
I guess that gives people plenty of time to get that resume ready. But all right, well, if people are going to live underground and work underground, you are definitely going to need a way to relax underground, something that we don't often think about when we're thinking about constructing these sorts of things. But if you're looking for inspiration, you could always take a page from a group of
French cenophiles and host your own underground movie theater. So to give you some context, there are about two one hundred miles of stone tunnels beneath the Moparness neighborhood in Paris.
Now.
Those tunnels are a product of the city's ancient stone quarries, and they also serve as the final resting place for more than six million Parisians. That's basically because they're catacombs, and even though they're not open to the public, people have been frequenting these things. Now, back in two thousand and four, the French police discovered a four hundred square
foot cavern. Now this is about sixty feet underground, and it had been turned into this amphitheater, complete with a full size movie screen, projection equipment and a wide selection of films. There were even twenty or so seats carved directly into the stone itself.
How cool is this?
That is super cool. It's like a secret movie club. It's like, yeah, literal underground cinema.
That's right, that's right.
I mean, do you know, I'm really curious, like, do you know what kind of stuff they were watching down there?
I couldn't find any exact titles, but the reports I saw were that there were a bunch of like fifties noir movies and some recent thrillers. And the police did say that none of the films were obscene or banned or anything like that, but that's not to say there wasn't anything nefarious going on. According to this article in Gizmoto, the police also found quote three thousand square feet of subterranean galleries strung with lights, wired for phones, and live
with pirated electricity. The officers uncovered a bar, a lounge, a workshop, and a dining corner complete with its own couscous maker.
I feel like illegal couscous is the tastiest you.
Know it as you know it is.
That was my favorite part actually, But the creepiest part is that when the police came back three days later, all the phone and electricity lines had been cut, and there was a note on the floor that just said, don't try to find us.
I mean, isn't that spooky?
Wow?
But that's where I thought the story would have ended. But apparently, years later someone claimed credit for the Secrets Cinema. The perpetrators turned out to be a group of urban explorers who started mapping this underground network for fun, and they liked it so much that once they were done with the maps, they started looking for new ways to spend time down there, so they built themselves a movie theater.
I mean, you gotta stay busy, you know.
And it's true.
Actually I have another fact here, another movie fact. Mine's a little different though. It turns out the salt mines in Kansas are full of old movie reels.
Why is that?
Yeah, I mean it's mostly because it's such a stable environment down there, like for storing the films. The temperature stays right around forty five degrees and twenty five percent humidity. It's pretty much perfect. And obviously, you know, weather isn't a factor down there either, because some of these facilities are more than six hundred feet below ground and That's important because at warmer temperatures, celluloid film will actually start
to rot. They call it vinegar syndrome, and it's because the decaying film gives off a really strong vinegar smell apparently.
So is it just old celluloid movies that's in these vaults or do they store new films there too?
Yeah, it's a mix of both. Nowadays, there are tons of the early celluloid classics like The Wizard of Oz Gone with the Wind. Most of the Looney Tunes from the forties and fifties are down there too, which is pretty cool. Later, though, movies shot on film are also there, like the original Star Wars is down there. But it's not just films either. Studios also use the salt mines to store props and memorabilia, like George Clooney's batsuit is a Batman costume. It's down there.
Oh way, I'd actually forgotten that he played Batman.
Yeah, I think the studio probably wants to forget that too, but I'm pretty sure that's why the suit is hidden down there. But ye. All right, Well, my last fact of the day here. I thought i'd keep it simple and tell you a little about the deepest hole that has ever been dug. It's called the Super Deep Borehole, and it was drilled into the surface of the Cola
Peninsula in Russia during the nineteen seventies and eighties. So after twenty years of drilling, the hole reached its maximum depth, which is forty thousand, two hundred and thirty feet or roughly seven and a half miles underground.
I mean that sounds insanely deep, but refresh my memory. How close to the center of the Earth is that?
Oh, it's nowhere close to the center there there, but it's still pretty cool. So the Earth's core is almost four thousand miles below us, so seven and a half miles is barely half the distance to the Earth's mantle. But that's the deepest we've ever managed to get in terms of true vertical depth. So that's the deepest hole drilled by machine. But if you're looking for the deepest hole ever dug by hand, that honor goes to the
Wooding Dean Well near Brighton in the United Kingdom. It's one thy two hundred and eighty five feet deep, so almost exactly as deep as the Empire State Building is tall. So this well was dug over a four year period during the mid eighteen hundreds, and it was a long way down just to get some water.
You know. Yeah, I really like all the New York references. The Fatberg was as big as like three Statue of Liberties, the fire State building here. But you know, I think I'm gonna call this one and give it to Will because I really like that plant Internet fact. I think that one kind of blew me away.
Gave you cool with that, oh totally, plus the underground movie theater.
Will takes it. Yeah, I'll take it. I appreciate it.
I feel like I'm I think I'm two for two now and it feels pretty good. I'm gonna be honest with you guys. All right, Well that we'll do it for today's Part Time Genius for Mango, Gabe Loll and myself. Thank you so much for listening, Stay inside and send those bad invention ideas for that whopping six dollars. We'll be back soon.
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