Testing Soil with 2000 Pairs of Underwear

SPEAKER_1 (0:08)

You're listening to Strange by Nature, your guide to the strange, weird, unbelievable and improbable wonders of the natural world.

Kirk Mona (0:23)

Hello, everyone, and thanks for being here today. I'm Kirk Mona, and joining me are Rachel Gimza and Victoria Thompson. We're all naturalists who together have scoured the world for weird and wonderful wonders, just to please your mammalian brain's desire for novelty. Isn't that nice? Let's do this.

Hey, everyone, welcome to yet another episode of Strange by Nature. Yay! So excited to be here.

SPEAKER_1 (0:50)

Here we are.

Kirk Mona (0:51)

The whole gang is together, and that includes all of you in the audience. We're very happy to have you here.

So I want to tell you that we're going to jump right into things. And scientists came up with a real attention-grabbing way of doing science recently.

Rachel Gimza (1:09)

They do that quite often.

Kirk Mona (1:11)

What the group I want to talk about today did is they bought 2,000 pairs of white men's brief style underwear. Oh no. And did something with them. Okay.

Rachel Gimza (1:23)

I have a clarifying question before you continue. Were they used or unused?

Kirk Mona (1:31)

Well, I just said they bought 2,000 pairs. So I'm going to hope they're new. Those are brand new.

Phenomenal. Freaky, freaky question.

Rachel Gimza (1:41)

Hey, it's a good question. Those are two different studies.

Kirk Mona (1:46)

You can buy used underwear online, I guess. Yeah.

Victoria Thompson (1:48)

I'm wondering where you're imagining, Rachel, that they would buy that many pairs of used underwear.

Rachel Gimza (1:55)

I don't know. You could ask probably college students. Most of the time, they would sell things. They get things.

Kirk Mona (2:01)

Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting.

Rachel Gimza (2:03)

When I was in college, you could sell your plasma. And I know you still can.

Kirk Mona (2:09)

It's so far from underwear.

Victoria Thompson (2:10)

You still can.

Rachel Gimza (2:10)

It is so far from underwear, but it's less of an issue for to sell your underwear than to sell your plasma.

Victoria Thompson (2:20)

Okay.

Kirk Mona (2:21)

Wow. Okay. Well, anyways, this is fresh underwear. Let's get back on track here. What I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna have the two of you guess what they did with them. And I'm gonna give you, this is multiple choice.

Rachel Gimza (2:32)

Oh, thank God. Because there's a lot.

Kirk Mona (2:35)

Here's your choices. But it has to be related to-

Rachel Gimza (2:37)

Surrender flag.

Victoria Thompson (2:38)

Something in nature. Eventually, we're gonna get there, right?

Kirk Mona (2:42)

A. Hang them off the ends of flexible poles as windsocks, and then observed how they changed the behavior of herring gulls on a windy beach.

Victoria Thompson (2:52)

Oh, okay.

Kirk Mona (2:53)

Did they B.

Give them to volunteers to bury in their yards so they can study decomposition rates using a standard item? Or did they C. Use them as giant petri dishes to study the growth habits of crotch fungus from around the world?

Rachel Gimza (3:10)

I wanted to be A.

Kirk Mona (3:11)

I choose C.

Rachel Gimza (3:12)

I choose A. I wanted to be A. That's so much nicer than crotch fungus. Oh my gosh. Y'all made fun of me and you bring up crotch fungus? Like, come on.

Again, then it would make sense if it was used underwear. I stand by my clarifier.

Kirk Mona (3:33)

It was used after they had given it out to volunteers, but it was new when they bought it. However, I'm afraid it is not studying crotch fungus.

It is also afraid not using them as windsocks to see how they change the behavior of gulls. It was having volunteers bury them in their yards.

Rachel Gimza (3:53)

I'm not burying underwear in my yard.

Kirk Mona (3:56)

Well, this is strange but true. The correct answer was B. They actually handed them out to volunteers to bury in their yards so they could study decomposition using a standard item. Now, that sounds pretty crazy, but I think it's actually pretty brilliant. I mean, it is.

Victoria Thompson (4:10)

It's cheap.

Rachel Gimza (4:11)

It's cheap. I understand.

Who volunteers?

Kirk Mona (4:14)

Well, there are cheaper things that they could have used, too.

Rachel Gimza (4:17)

Who volunteers to bury underwear in their yard for science?

Kirk Mona (4:20)

Turns out 1,400 people. But we'll get to that.

So the thing is, you say it's cheaper. It's pretty cheap. They easily could have handed out like 2,000 squares of white cotton. True. Or basically like a handkerchief.

Rachel Gimza (4:34)