Weird Things

WT: Not The Chocolate Cookies


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The episode opens with a long biology digression about what makes two animals similar or different, using turtles and tortoises as a lead-in to hyraxes and elephants. Andrew explains that hyraxes are the closest living relative to elephants, and the hosts discuss surprising shared traits such as elongated teeth, long gestation for a small animal, and social behavior. They also note that sea cows/manatees may be even closer genetically, though the hyrax is the more surprising example. The conversation then moves through speculative Jurassic Park prequel material, including John Hammond's early funding efforts and the tiny-elephant display from the novel, before turning to CubeSat advertising proposals and the backlash they could provoke. Later topics include Tom Cruise filming in space, the value of practical effects over pure CGI, personalized or interactive media experiments, Meta's Quest Pro and AR/VR tradeoffs, and a set of game/software picks. Key topics How evolutionary relatives can look radically different: The hosts use turtles/tortoises and then hyraxes/elephants to show that appearance can be misleading when judging relatedness. Andrew explicitly frames the point as two animals being very similar on some features while being very different in appearance, yet closely related genetically. Hyrax biology and elephant-like traits: They discuss hyrax gestation, internal testicles, social structure, warning sounds, and elongated teeth compared with elephant tusks. The epis
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Weird ThingsBy Andrew Mayne

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