Penguin Poop, Duck Necrophilia, and Bra Gas Masks: The Most Ridiculous Ig Nobel Prizes in Science History

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome my brilliant weirdos to the Strange History Podcast, where

0:05 Speaker 1: the facts are strange, the truth is stranger, and today

0:09 Speaker 1: science gets a pie in the face in the name

0:13 Speaker 1: of progress. Today we're diving into the absurd, delightful, and

0:18 Speaker 1: occasionally foul smelling world of the Ignobel Prizes, where real

0:22 Speaker 1: scientific research is honored not for changing the world, but

0:26 Speaker 1: for making us laugh first and then think so. Grab

0:29 Speaker 1: your safety goggles, your emotional support guinea pig, and possibly

0:34 Speaker 1: a nose plug, because some of these winners go way

0:36 Speaker 1: beyond the bounds of polite company. What the heck are

0:40 Speaker 1: the Ignobel Prizes? The Ignobel Prizes, that's ig as an ignoble,

0:46 Speaker 1: not igs like your friend's weird dog. We're founded in

0:49 Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one by Mark Abrahams, editor of the Annals

0:53 Speaker 1: of Improbable Research. This journal specializes in the odd, the overlooked,

0:58 Speaker 1: and the you did what side of academia. Mark's vision

1:03 Speaker 1: celebrate the kind of research that cannot or should not

1:06 Speaker 1: be reproduced. Held every year at Harvard University, the ceremony

1:12 Speaker 1: is a glorious spectacle. Actual Nobel Prize winners hand out

1:17 Speaker 1: the ig Nobels and yes, they do so with a

1:20 Speaker 1: straight face most of the time. The theme achievements that

1:25 Speaker 1: first make people laugh and then make them think it's

1:29 Speaker 1: like the Oscars, if the Oscars involved live paper, airplane attacks,

1:34 Speaker 1: and people dressed as bacteria. There's even a time limit

1:38 Speaker 1: enforced by an eight year old girl nicknamed Miss Sweety Pooh,

1:42 Speaker 1: whose job is to walk on stage and say please stop,

1:45 Speaker 1: I'm bored until the speaker does indeed stop. She is

1:51 Speaker 1: arguably the most powerful person in academia. The very first

1:56 Speaker 1: IgGs nineteen ninety one. Let's rewind to the very first

2:00 Speaker 1: ceremony in nineteen ninety one. Here are some of the

2:03 Speaker 1: pioneers of weird science. Peace Prize awarded to Edward Teller,

2:08 Speaker 1: the father of the hydrogen bomb, for his lifelong work

2:11 Speaker 1: in making the world a safer place. Yes with hydrogen bombs.

2:15 Speaker 1: That joke writes itself. Biology for studying the homosexual necrophilia

2:22 Speaker 1: in ducks. More on that later. Spoiler alert, This duck

2:26 Speaker 1: was not okay. Chemistry Jacques Bonviniste for his paper on

2:31 Speaker 1: water memory, essentially claiming that water can remember substances once

2:37 Speaker 1: dissolved in it, even after they're gone, a study that

2:41 Speaker 1: the Scientific world deemed so dubious. The paper's co authors

2:45 Speaker 1: included doctor H. Two O and Professor Aqualung. Thus, the

2:50 Speaker 1: ignobels were born, part satire, part celebration, and all madness.

2:56 Speaker 1: The glorious winners, and what the heck they did? Now,

3:00 Speaker 1: let's zoom in on the greatest hits. These aren't just odd,

3:04 Speaker 1: they're gloriously specific, occasionally disgusting, and once or twice deeply inspiring.

3:12 Speaker 1: Two thousand and five Fluid Dynamics and Penguins Physics Prize

3:19 Speaker 1: awarded to a team from the University of Minnesota for

3:22 Speaker 1: studying why penguins don't poop on their feet. They used

3:26 Speaker 1: fluid dynamics equations to calculate the force needed for a

3:29 Speaker 1: penguin to launch its feces in an arc boiler, its

3:33 Speaker 1: projectile penguin poop people, and yes, they published it in

3:37 Speaker 1: polar Biology. No penguins were embarrassed in the process. Twenty ten,

3:44 Speaker 1: the Do it Yourself gas Mask Public Health Prize given

3:48 Speaker 1: to Elena Bodnar, who invented a bra that transforms into

3:52 Speaker 1: two gas masks, one for you, one for a friend.

3:56 Speaker 1: Because nothing says romantic evening like being ready for chemical warfare.

4:01 Speaker 1: Fun fact. She demonstrated this on stage by whipping off

4:05 Speaker 1: the braw of a mannequin and slapping it onto a

4:07 Speaker 1: Nobel laureate's face. That's history, folks. Twenty fourteen Rats and

4:14 Speaker 1: Pants Psychology Prize. Scientists trained people to recognize, just from

4:19 Speaker 1: photographs whether a person was lying while they held a

4:23 Speaker 1: hotter cold pack under their arm. Apparently, body heat influences

4:28 Speaker 1: trustworthiness detection, because when someone says, hey, can you lie

4:33 Speaker 1: for me, your armpits should be at a comfortable room temperature.

4:37 Speaker 1: Twenty twenty one The Sound of Cat Meows and Human

4:41 Speaker 1: Emotion Biology Prize for analyzing variations in cat vocalizations. Essentially

4:49 Speaker 1: why your cat sounds so smug when you come home late.

4:52 Speaker 1: Researchers cataloged feline tones like demanding meow, slightly judging me how,

4:57 Speaker 1: and if I were bigger, I'd kill you. Their work

5:01 Speaker 1: confirms what we've always known. Cats are tiny, furry psychopaths

5:06 Speaker 1: with excellent pitch control. Ducks, necrophilia and scientific immortality. We

5:13 Speaker 1: can't not talk about one of the most infamous winners

5:15 Speaker 1: of all time two thousand and three, homosexual necrophilia in

5:20 Speaker 1: the Mallard Duck Dutch researcher Keys Mullicker was sitting in

5:24 Speaker 1: his office at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum when he

5:28 Speaker 1: heard a loud thud. A mail duck had just flown

5:31 Speaker 1: into the glass and died. Moments later, a second mail

5:35 Speaker 1: duck landed and mounted the corpse for seventy five minutes.

5:41 Speaker 1: Mullachar did what any good scientist would do. He documented

5:45 Speaker 1: the whole thing, then published a peer reviewed paper titled

5:48 Speaker 1: the first Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Duck.

5:52 Speaker 1: He won the Ignobel Prize in Biology in two thousand

5:55 Speaker 1: and three, gave a ted talk, and turned the duck

5:58 Speaker 1: into a museum exhibit. He even hosts Dead Duck Day

6:02 Speaker 1: every June fifth, complete with rethlaying, poetry, readings, and yes,

6:06 Speaker 1: a commemorative duck. Sometimes science is elegant, other times it's

6:11 Speaker 1: just duck necrophilia. Segment five, Why it all matters? Yes, really,

6:17 Speaker 1: Look it's easy to laugh at the ig nobels. That's

6:20 Speaker 1: literally the point, but hidden behind the absurdity are serious truths.

6:25 Speaker 1: The Penguin Poop Study helps with understanding avian health and

6:29 Speaker 1: fluid dynamics. The gas mask bra real utility and emergencies.

6:34 Speaker 1: The cat vocalizations improves human animal interaction, the duck thing

6:39 Speaker 1: a chilling reminder of the importance of glass safety and architecture,

6:44 Speaker 1: and duck consent. The ig Nobel Prizes remind us that

6:49 Speaker 1: curiosity has no boundaries. Science isn't just lab coats and

6:53 Speaker 1: cancer research. It's also about asking the questions no one

6:57 Speaker 1: else dares to, Questions like can you levitate a frog

7:00 Speaker 1: with magnets? Yes? Two thousand Physics Prize. Does country music

7:06 Speaker 1: make people more likely to commit suicide? Yes? A nineteen

7:10 Speaker 1: ninety four winner, Though correlation is not causation. Friends, what

7:17 Speaker 1: happens if you give viagrata hamster's experiencing jet lag? Spoiler?

7:21 Speaker 1: They adjust faster two thousand and seven Medicine Prize. Embrace

7:25 Speaker 1: the weird. So next time you're scrolling through a boring

7:28 Speaker 1: newsfeed or watching a very serious documentary, remember somewhere out there,

7:34 Speaker 1: a scientist is watching a hamster on a treadmill, a

7:37 Speaker 1: duck in heat, or a rat wearing pants and saying this,

7:42 Speaker 1: this is science, and maybe they're changing the world, or

7:47 Speaker 1: at least winning an Ignobel Prize. More glorious winners, and

7:52 Speaker 1: what the heck they did? Let's dive deeper into the

7:55 Speaker 1: annals of bizarre scientific glory, where every discovery raises eyebrows

8:00 Speaker 1: and lower's expectations of human dignity. Nineteen ninety six The

8:06 Speaker 1: Woo Woo Tooth Fairy Anthropology Prize awarded to researchers who

8:11 Speaker 1: traveled to four different countries to determine whether children in

8:14 Speaker 1: various cultures believe the tooth fairy is male, female, or

8:18 Speaker 1: some kind of undefined being. Findings included everything from a

8:23 Speaker 1: tiny flying woman to a mouse in Argentina el Reton

8:28 Speaker 1: Perez sneaks in and takes your teeth. So yes, the

8:32 Speaker 1: anthropological community now has data on how humans mythologize tiny

8:37 Speaker 1: dental thieves. Two thousand Lying Liars and the lie Detectors

8:41 Speaker 1: who Love Them Psychology Prize presented to David Dunning and

8:45 Speaker 1: Justin Krueger, who discovered the Dunning Krueger effect, the phenomenon

8:50 Speaker 1: where people who are bad at something are often too

8:53 Speaker 1: incompetent to realize it. In short, the less you know,

8:57 Speaker 1: the more confident you are. If you've ever been at

9:01 Speaker 1: a family dinner, you've seen this effect in action. Nineteen

9:05 Speaker 1: ninety five The Great Doodoo Disaster Literature Prize awarded to

9:11 Speaker 1: the editors of the IEE Journal of Robotics and Automation

9:15 Speaker 1: for publishing research titled Automatic Detection and Removal of Objectionable

9:20 Speaker 1: Information from Dirty Text. Spoiler, it was not about offensive language.

9:26 Speaker 1: It was about cleaning poop off robots. I repeat. They

9:30 Speaker 1: wrote an academic paper about robotic poop cleanup and accidentally

9:34 Speaker 1: made it sound like a censorship manifesto. Twenty sixteen. Do

9:40 Speaker 1: brains hurt when you overthink Medicine? Prize? Researchers discovered that

9:45 Speaker 1: if you see someone scratching themselves, you might start feeling

9:48 Speaker 1: itchy and scratch yourself too, a phenomenon known as contagious itch.

9:54 Speaker 1: It's science's way of saying yes, empathy exists, but mostly

9:59 Speaker 1: for rashes. Twenty fifteen The Science of Kissing with Math

10:05 Speaker 1: Mathematics Prize. A team of mathematicians created a formula to

10:10 Speaker 1: determine whether it's possible for one hundred people to simultaneously

10:14 Speaker 1: kiss each other without awkward overlap. The answer only if

10:19 Speaker 1: you're extremely coordinated and very flexible. Also, it only works

10:23 Speaker 1: on paper, so not that helpful at parties. Two thousand

10:28 Speaker 1: and one. The belly button lint Detective Biology Prize awarded

10:33 Speaker 1: to Carl Kruselnikki of Australia, who spent years analyzing what

10:37 Speaker 1: belly button lint is made of and why it's usually blue.

10:42 Speaker 1: He discovered it's a mix of body hair, direction, shirt fabric,

10:45 Speaker 1: and dead skin. He also surveyed four thy eight hundred people.

10:50 Speaker 1: So next time someone tells you your thesis idea is

10:52 Speaker 1: too weird, think of Karl and his lint lab. Twenty

10:56 Speaker 1: eleven Toilet Seat Physics Physics Prize to scientists who studied

11:02 Speaker 1: why and how men sometimes missed the toilet bowl based

11:06 Speaker 1: on the fluid mechanics of urination. Turns out turbulence, trajectory,

11:11 Speaker 1: and distance all factor in the phrase splash zone now

11:16 Speaker 1: has an uncomfortable scientific context. Their conclusion, more seated peeing

11:21 Speaker 1: fewer lawsuits. Twenty twenty Shouting inside your Own Head Psychology

11:29 Speaker 1: Prize given to researchers who tried to determine if narcissists

11:33 Speaker 1: are more likely to interrupt people in conversation. Answer yes,

11:37 Speaker 1: but wait, there's more. They also analyzed whether narcissists interrupt

11:43 Speaker 1: more when talking to other narcissists. It's like watching two

11:47 Speaker 1: mirrors shout at each other. Twenty thirteen Smelling your Way

11:53 Speaker 1: to a Diagnosis Medicine Prize given to a team that

11:57 Speaker 1: discovered identical twins cannot be told to part by their farts,

12:01 Speaker 1: but people can distinguish farts from strangers. They also created

12:05 Speaker 1: a fart smelling machine to collect the data. The machine's

12:09 Speaker 1: name the Flatuent's Intensity Detector. Of course, funding remains a mystery.

12:15 Speaker 1: Twenty eighteen Cannibalistic Calories Nutrition Prize. A researcher tried to

12:22 Speaker 1: calculate how many calories you'd get from eating a human being,

12:25 Speaker 1: not promoting cannibalism, just comparing prehistoric diets. Turns out we're

12:31 Speaker 1: not that calorically efficient. If you're stranded with friends, maybe

12:35 Speaker 1: look for berries instead. Honorable mention, Hall of Infamy. These

12:40 Speaker 1: didn't win full prizes, but they deserve a quick shout

12:43 Speaker 1: out from the weird Wings of Science. A researcher who

12:47 Speaker 1: published a study called why woodpeckers don't get headaches? Answer

12:53 Speaker 1: their skulls act like shock absorbers, and also maybe they

12:57 Speaker 1: do get headaches, we just can't add. A team that

13:01 Speaker 1: measured the pressure inside penguin anuses during defecation That was

13:05 Speaker 1: actually a separate Penguin poop paper. You can't make this

13:09 Speaker 1: stuff up. A British team that built a mechanical scrotum

13:12 Speaker 1: to simulate the swing of a human testicle while running

13:17 Speaker 1: science calls it kinematic modeling. We call it don't ask

13:21 Speaker 1: what's in the lab fridge. Thanks for joining me on

13:24 Speaker 1: this beautifully weird ride. If you like the episode, share

13:29 Speaker 1: it with your smartest and strangest friends, the ones who

13:32 Speaker 1: definitely turned their bra into a gas mask without blinking.

13:36 Speaker 1: And remember, in the words of Mark Abraham's, if you

13:40 Speaker 1: didn't laugh, you didn't understand it. Stay strange, my friends,