Brain Junk

We've decided the Hoatzin is Brain Junk's new mascot! It's the weirdest, cow poop smelling, leaf-burping bird from the Andes.

We adore them.

image: Pixabay, Herbert Bieser

Show notes:

Video of climbing baby Hoatzin: Youtube

Current Biology: Hoatzin quick guide

Earth Planet Youtube

It's October 1910 and the first attempt to cross the Atlantic in an airship is all ready to go. They've got a crew of six, a fancy new radio, and a...cat. We'll give you three guesses as to which of those things were NOT supposed to be on the airship.

image: Library of Congress

Show Notes:

Smithsonian Nation Air and Space Museum go here for pictures of: Kiddo the cat

Need some in-depth detail on the airship America, including diagrams and examples of how the crew slept? Check out this Airships.net article!

Back in 1881, two young towns in Eastern Washington wanted to be the county seat in newly created Spokane county. Spokane vs. Cheney had rich businessmen turning out to vote. What happened next is still hotly contested (depending which city's historical society you ask).

Show notes:

Historylink.org by Jim Kershner: Armed Cheney citizens forcibly remove the county seat from Spokane Falls to Cheney on March 21, 1881

Spokane Historical by Drew Goodman: Fight for the Spokane County Seat

Wikipedia in-depth history of Spokane

Short Spokane history timeline from Discoveryrobots.org and their references

We've plucked a bunch of random facts from the junk drawer! Tree rings, platypusary, and death by salt are just a few of the super cool facts curated for your ears!

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Show Notes:

Funny thing, Trace used articles from C&EN news but some of those articles aren't available to the "general public". We've got links to other sources covering the information!

Platypusary: Blend of platypus +‎ nursery, coined by Australian naturalist Henry Burrell (1873–1945), the first person who succeeded in constructing a functioning platypusary.

Blue Honey

Chrysippus may have died from laughing at his own joke: Wikipedia

Assassins' teapot: YouTube

Old old water and one crazy scientist

Like how old? over a million years YIKES

Toxic foods

Medical News Today and just how much salt is too much

Stradivarius in C&EN news

Osmoregulation and bull sharks: You might've swum in a lake with one!

More bull sharks!

Flipping over penguins, NOT

A huge reason you have a touch screen on your smart phone is because of a pigeon and a bomb? Let's talk about WWII pigeon pilots!

Show Notes:

TikTok pigeon pilot footage

NIST history report on pigeons and invention

Wikipedia: Project Pigeon

Napkins! While recording this episode, we discovered that economic class influences what you use to wipe your face way more than we thought. You might use paper or cloth or maybe no napkin at all, but whatever you use, the history behind the napkin is fascinating.

image: pixabay

Show Notes:

Atlas Obscura: A Brief History of Napkins, From Soft Dough to Paper

Wikipedia on napkins

Culinaria: The Origin of the Fork

Chih pha: The Chinese napkin

We talk about which is better environmentally, paper napkins or cloth. It seems like cloth might be better. Sorry paper napkin stans.

An oak gall might look like an apple growing on the bottom of a leaf, but it's really a snug home for baby oak gall wasps. Turns out, a gall is more than just a baby-bug playpen. Oak galls have been used for thousands of years to make ink. And, these teeny wasps are part of the reason why Alfred Kinsey had the chops to create his Kinsey scale of human sexuality.

image by: manfredrichter on pixabay

image below: The Ellesmere Chaucer, a beautifully decorated manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, was created between approximately 1400 and 1410, using iron gall ink for the text lettering. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Show Notes:

Instagram example of a gall

Davey Insect and Disease Research Center on oak galls

Making Ink from Oak Galls from The Huntington museum in California

Wikipedia on making oak gall ink (support Wikipedia if you can, they are a valuable resource)

UK's Royal Horticultural Society on oak galls and wasps

American Museum of Natural History: Kinsey's wasps

Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County (Trace adores this museum!) Oak Wasp Galls article

If you thought a person always has only one male parent and one female parent, well...you'd be wrong. Most of the time the two parent thing is the rule, but occasionally it is possible, mostly in a lab, to have a child with three genetic contributors.

Show Notes: (It's a good thing this isn't on paper 'cause there are tons of notes this time)

228: Why Don't We Lay Eggs? We talk about how viruses change who we are.

LiveScience: What is the maximum number of biological parents an organism can have?

Genome Biology and Evolution from Oxford Academic: Genome Expression Balance in a Triploid Trihybrid Vertebrate 

Nature: First UK children born using three-person IVF: what scientists want to know

Famous internet cat might not be a chimera but rather an example of mosaicism. Gotta love a chromosomal triploid

NIH National Library of Medicine and the possibility of having "multiple parents": Mitochondrial Replacement Techniques: Ethical, Social, and Policy Considerations.