Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that gets stuck in your head and hopefully not an orifice.

I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me is...

I'm Aaron, and this week I got new networking equipment which is cool. Also, “my wifi is down” is officially the new “I was stuck in traffic.”

I’m sure you have all heard by now about the Ever Given super freighter being stuck sideways into the Suez canal. In case you haven’t, on March 23 shipping traffic through Egypt’s Suez Canal was grounded to a halt after a large vessel called the “Ever Given” got stuck in the passageway. You have probably seen the memes all over the internet or have heard jokes about how one backhoe worked tirelessly alone to help extricate the ship from the shore. Luckily the ship was finally flushed this past Monday. Either way, it really got me thinking of being stuck, stuck on what to write, stuck in my house, stuck in the arm with my last covid shot. So today I bring you stories of stuck, fastened fascinations, and cemented comedies. So glue yourself to your seat and let's have some fun.

Stone Vagina

Our story starts in the quaint German town of Tübingen, home to a research university and plenty of campus “art.” The art in question is from a Peruvian artist Fernando de la Jara, Pi-Chacán is a 32-ton sculpture made out of red Veronese marble meant to signify "the gateway to the world". The sculpture's name is from the native Peruvian Quechuan language. According to de la Jara, the word chacán means "place where the action of water has tunneled through a large rock or a mountain", or alternatively "lovemaking". Pi is both a Greek character and a mathematical symbol, π, that looks similar to a door or a vulva. Now, why vulva? Well, I probably should have mentioned but the statue is of a huge stone vagina. By itself, it is a very interesting piece but it wasn’t until June of 2014 when an American student (why did it have to be us) studying abroad in Germany came across the striking anatomical depiction and decided to pose for pictures with it along with some friends. Like many exchange students, stupid decisions were made and the best angle for the shot was determined to be inside the genitalia, a sentence I have never before written. The student quickly realized that without the soft cartilage bones babies have he would have trouble extricating himself from the stone canal and thus was hopelessly stuck. 22 firefighters came to help remove the boy. It must have been a slow day, and it was reported that firefighters turned midwives were able to remove the student "by hand and without the application of tools." A c-section would have been hell by the sounds of it. The mayor of Tübingen told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that he struggled to imagine how the accident could have happened, "even when considering the most extreme adolescent fantasies. To reward such a masterly achievement with the use of 22 firefighters almost pains my soul."

The last laugh was had by the artist, De la Jara. He said he was working to create a sculpture even a blind person could appreciate by using different textures and appealing to the tactile senses. “It’s not only visual,” he said. “It’s not only with the eyes.” Basically, de la Jara intended for people to check out the sculpture up close. “The principal part of the work isn’t outside.” So the American might not have been totally off-base, a small consolation for the sheer scale of his embarrassment. “It’s participatory art,” de la Jara said. “It should be entered.” It’s just that, since the sculpture was installed in 2001, no one’s actually gotten stuck. “I believe [he got caught] because he had a lack of coordination” de la Jara said. “Or maybe it was a lack of sensibility.” “It might also be a little bit the fault of the work,” he added. De la Jara quipped that it was almost as if the sculpture had taken reveng...