281: Skin in the Game

Summary

Good Job, Brain! Episode 281: Skin in the Game

Released: December 3, 2024
Hosts: Karen, Colin, Dana, Chris

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Episode Overview

This episode takes on the theme of “Skin in the Game,” exploring the concept of skin in a wide array of offbeat trivia topics—ranging from the technology of photography and anthropology to sports equipment, viral advertising trends, and animal physiology. The hosts bring their signature wit and love of weird facts to “skin,” and as always, challenge each other and listeners with trivia questions and stories.

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Quick Bits & Opening Banter

[00:16-04:14]

• Karen shares quirky Guinness World Records by U.S. state, courtesy of listener Kate:
  • Illinois: “Farthest distance walking barefoot on Lego bricks”
  • Iowa: Longest stand-up comedy show (40 hours, 8 minutes)
  • Montana: Largest "festival of testicles"
  • New York: Most shoes removed by a dog in one minute
  • Oregon: Fastest time alphabetizing letters in alphabet soup
• The crew jokes about the oddities and requirements of Guinness records.
• Colin recounts his recent adventure at a live pub quiz, "rusty" but excited.
  • They took second place and won some beer.
  • Special shout-out to host Mary at Two Pitchers Brewing in Oakland.

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Fun Pub Quiz Country Challenge

[04:14-07:09]

• Colin brings a quiz question from his pub night: Name five countries whose names end with the letter "L."
  • Portugal, Brazil guessed quickly, but the full list is:
    • Brazil, Israel, Nepal, Portugal, Senegal

“I really enjoyed that question. It was one of those, like, where it’s tough but easy…after you hear it afterwards.” — Colin [06:38]

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Pop Quiz Hot Shot: Trivial Pursuit Card

[07:09-11:53]

• The team tackles random Trivial Pursuit questions, sharing knowledge and bantering:
  • Geography: The Chrysler Building (Cloud Club)
  • Pop Culture: Jimmy Fallon (introduced first "Lip Sync Battle")
  • Business: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (housing crisis of 2008)
  • Children’s Books: Goodnight Moon
  • Science: LED stands for Light Emitting Diode
  • Sports: Order of Olympic Triathlon events—Swimming, Cycling, Running

Memorable moment:

“I cannot hear the title of that book without hearing the Christopher Walken Goodnight Moon joke from The Simpsons.” — Colin [09:09]

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Main Theme: “Skin in the Game”

[11:53 onward]

1. The Shirley Card: Racism in Photo Technology

[12:38-15:45]

• Karen explains the Shirley Card—used in film photography as a color reference, always featuring a white woman ("Shirley").
• Led to poor-quality photos for people of color; industry only responded when wood and chocolate companies needed better reproduction of darker tones.
• Kodak’s solution was "Kodak Gold" film in the 1990s, more inclusive of various skin tones.

“It’s kind of messed up that it took those two industries to make a change.” — Karen [14:41]

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2. Books Bound in Human Skin

Chris’s Story [15:45-25:47]

• “Ripped from the headlines”: Harvard removed a book with a human skin binding from its library in 2024.
  • The practice (anthropodermic bibliopegy) involved 19th-century physicians binding books in human skin.
  • The “Anthropodermic Book Project” verified the authenticity of such bindings using peptide mass fingerprinting on collagen.
  • Of 51 suspected books, 18 confirmed to be human skin, 14 debunked.
  • Only one book—Narrative of the Life of James Allen (Boston Athenian Library)—was bound with the owner’s consent.
  • Harvard decided to respectfully return the skin to France.

“A book about the human soul deserves to have a human covering.” — French physician, inside the infamous book [17:19] “Don't bind books in human skin, everybody. It's creepy.” — Chris [23:53]

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3. The Spin of “Vegan Leather”

[25:55-34:01 & 35:23-35:27]

• Karen marvels at the marketing spin turning “pleather” and “faux leather” into “vegan leather.”
  • “Vegan leather” was popularized in the 2010s, originally just fake leather (plastic), but now includes plant-based products.
  • Early fake leather: Pressstoff (resin-coated paper) in WWII Germany.
  • Newer leathers are made from apple skins, pineapple fiber (“pineapple leather”), kombucha SCOBY, and mushroom mycelium (“mushroom leather”).
• Karen, a hobbyist cobbler, reports on using and testing pineapple and mushroom leather.

“One of the greatest advertising spins in my lifetime is people calling fake leather ‘vegan leather.’” — Karen [26:02] “It's perfect. It's such a Don Draper Mad Men kind of [move].” — Chris [26:46]

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4. Sports Balls: Leather, Legends, and Lingo

Colin’s Segment [35:27-54:55]

Football’s “Pigskin” Myth

• Early sports balls were animal bladders (sheep or pig), inflated with… human breath—giving rise to the "pigskin" nickname.
• Leather casings eventually became standard.

Which Pro Ball Isn’t Leather?

• Of MLB, NFL, NBA, MLS, only soccer balls (MLS and FIFA) are now entirely synthetic (polyurethane pleather).

Trivia Challenge: FIFA’s First Synthetic Ball

• The world’s first non-leather World Cup soccer ball: 1974’s Telstar Durlast (distinctive black and white pattern).

“If you Google ‘clip art soccer ball,’ 99 out of 100 it’s going to be that black and white style ball.” — Colin [43:02]

Baseball’s Leather Shift

• In 1974, MLB baseballs switched from horsehide (out) to cowhide (in) due to supply/cost issues.
• Historically, baseballs were homemade and expensive—sometimes lasting multiple games.

Disastrous NBA Ball Swap

• In 2006, the NBA introduced a synthetic microfiber ball that was instantly hated and abandoned in two months.

“The players complained...it cut their fingers. The act of dribbling the ball...was so unforgiving.” — Colin [54:05]

• The NBA reverted to leather due to player backlash.

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5. Sharks, Skin, and Sterile Surfaces

Karen’s Segment [55:32-61:49]

• Sharks have “dermal denticles”—tiny scale-like structures—making their skin sleek, hydrodynamic, and resistant to fouling by algae/barnacles (unlike whales or ships).
• The skin’s micro-pattern inspired antibacterial surfaces; “shark skin” patterned catheters reduce hospital UTIs by repelling bacteria.

“The micro-pattern surface of shark skin makes it hard for algae and bacteria to hang on. …catheters [with this pattern] help decrease bacterial infection.” — Karen [60:23]

• Fun callback to an old trivia question: Wasabi in Japan is traditionally grated on dried shark skin for the desired texture.
• Colin adds: many fuzzy fruits (like peaches) have fuzz to deter bugs—not kill, just annoy, creating another kind of “skin defense.”

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Notable Quotes

• "It was one of those, like, where it’s tough but easy… after you hear it afterwards." — Colin, on the country-ending-in-L question [06:38]
• "Don’t bind books in human skin, everybody. It’s creepy." — Chris [23:53]
• "Vegan leather is one of the greatest advertising/marketing spins I got to live through." — Karen [26:02]
• "The micro-pattern surface of shark skin makes it hard for algae and bacteria to hang on." — Karen [59:01]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |----------|---------------------------------------------| | 00:16 | Guinness World Records quick trivia | | 04:14 | Pub quiz: countries ending in 'L' | | 07:09 | Trivial Pursuit Hot Shot segment | | 12:38 | The Shirley Card & racial bias in film | | 15:45 | Books bound in human skin | | 25:55 | Vegan leather: history and innovation | | 35:27 | “Pigskin”: Myths & sports ball trivia | | 43:02 | Soccer ball design & materials | | 46:20 | MLB leather switch: horsehide to cowhide | | 52:31 | NBA’s synthetic ball fiasco | | 55:32 | Shark skin: anatomy, antibacterial tech | | 61:49 | Peach fuzz as bug deterrent (mini fact) |

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Tone and Style

The episode is delivered in Good Job, Brain!'s signature style: clever, irreverent, pun-filled, and packed with the kind of fascinating facts, odd history, and rapid-fire quizzes that trivia fans adore. The hosts bounce ideas off each other with plenty of laughter, maintaining a welcoming and inclusive energy.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

• You’ll walk away knowing why “vegan leather” is more marketing than material, just how many books are really bound in human skin, why fuzzy peaches are more petty than poisonous, and how the smallest structures in shark skin could make our hospitals safer.
• You’ll also come armed with quiz-night gold on the evolution of sports equipment.
• Most importantly, you’ll have fun trivia ammo for your next social gathering (or weird fact needed to bother your friends).

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Find more episodes and information at: goodjobbrain.com

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

[B]

Hello lavishly luscious lemony listeners. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 281 and of course I am your humble host, Karen and. And we are your poignant poindexters. Poising for points while eating poi pointlessly among poinsettias.

[A]

I am Colin.

[C]

And I'm Chris.

[A]

And please do not eat the poinsettias. Yes. Do not eat the poinsettias. Yes.

[B]

Speaking of poi, if I sound weird it is because I currently have food poisoning ice. But the show must go on.

[C]

You didn't put that into the intro.

[B]

The. The trivia. The trivia must flow and. And boy do I have a quick bits of trivia for you. This is from our lopetrotters community, our fan club. On Facebook, Kate shared this amazing list. Amazing list of weirdest Guinness World Records set in each each US state. And Washington DC. I'm not going to go through all 50, but let me just call out some highlights. Illinois, farthest distance walking barefoot on Lego bricks.

[A]

Ouch.

[B]

Iowa, longest standup comedy show by an individual. I looked this up. The show was. It was 40 hours and 8 minutes long by a gentleman. A stand up comedian, David Scott. Montana has the largest festival of testicles.

[A]

Oh, the. The festival. Yeah.

[B]

Is it called? It should be called.

[A]

It should if it is a festival.

[B]

Excelsior, New York. Most shoes removed by a dog in one minute.

[C]

Removed from what?

[B]

Real feet or like dummy feet?

[A]

Yes. Were they volunteers? Is this just like random passersby? Yeah. Like are they cooperating with the dog? Yeah, yeah.

[C]

It's just like freestyle.

[A]

Yeah, that's street. Street mode versus. Yeah.

[B]

Oregon. Fastest time for alphabetizing letters in Alphabet soup.

[C]

Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, that sounds messy.

[B]

You can find more of these really silly weird Guinness records native to each state.

[A]

I guess this is the trade off we get for them. You know, no longer doing like most cigarettes smoked at once and heaviest pet, you know and things like that. It's. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. They stop the ones that have potential harm. It's like you're. If you're stepping on LEGO bricks. Yeah. You're doing that to yourself. Right?

[C]

Most stories fallen by a toddler.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

We can go for seven.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, well, thank you, Kate. That was a very, very good list.

[A]

Well, piggybacking off of that this week, you guys, I did something I have not done in a. May have been a long time since you guys have done this too is I Went and did a little something called pub quiz at an actual. On a Wednesday night in the dark. Yeah, I made my. I made my way out to an actual pub quiz at an actual bar. It was great. It has been a number of years, I think, at this point.

[B]

Oh, natural.

[A]

Yeah, it was, it was. You know, we were a little rusty there getting back out, I'm sure. Yeah, it was a lot of fun, though. It was, it was good. Got the juices flowing.

[B]

Do you guys win?

[A]

We took second place, I'm proud to say. Okay, good. Yeah, we took second place and we won some beer. It was a great night. Had a lot of fun. Big thanks to trivia host Mary at Two Pitchers Brewing in Oakland. Enjoyed it. I, in fact, enjoyed it so much that I brought a question back with me from this quiz that I had to share with you guys. This is a really good one. So, you know, it's one of those nights. Nights where we had a few of the, like, oh, we've heard this one before in pub quiz. We had a few that were just totally new. I liked this one a lot. I could see this one popping up again. So I wanted to share with you. All right, I'm gonna. This is a country name based question. All right. Okay, I'll put you guys on the clock here. We'll add a little. We'll add a little element of danger maybe, or fun to it and get. Get a little writing implement ready. I want you to tell me all five countries with names that end in the letter L. Five countries, names ending in the letter L. And this is where all of our minds just immediately go blank. Cannot even remember a single country. It's like, well, I know America, I know Canada. I'll give you a small hint. Maybe they're all single. Single word. No, like the something in there in their common names at least. Karen doing some sort of song, no doubt.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Two, one. Oh, time is up.

[B]

You guys were talking. I was trying to sing the whole song in my head.

[A]

Sorry. That's why we were doing that. All right, what do we got? What do we got? Maybe. Maybe between the two of you.

[C]

Immediately wrote down Portugal and Brazil.

[A]

Huh?

[C]

And then stopped.

[B]

I got to Portugal and Brazil.

[A]

All right, all right. We. We at our team, I. I will admit we got to three pretty fast. Four pretty fast. And then we were sweating for the fifth one with even. With even. With five of us there. Here are in alphabetical order, the five countries with names ending in the letter L. Brazil.

[C]

Got that one.

[A]

Israel.

[C]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[A]

Nepal.

[B]

Oh, it's so easy now.

[A]

I know, I know, I know, I know. Portugal, as you both mentioned, and Senegal. Oh, okay, sure. Brazil, Israel, Nepal, Portugal. Senegal. Yes. So I really enjoyed that question. Yeah, that was. It was. It was one of those, like, where it's tough but easy. You know what I mean? And like after you hear it afterwards.

[C]

And it's like, oh, of course. It was so easy.

[A]

But. All right, well, that was just a little nugget I brought back, so. Yeah. Again, thank you to trivia host Mary for letting me steal your question there. We enjoyed it.

[B]

All right, without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, Pop quiz Hot shot.

[A]

Here.

[B]

I have a random Trivial Pursuit card. You guys have your barnyard buzzers. Let's answer six questions from this card. Wet our pallets. Here we go.

[A]

Let's do it.

[B]

Blue wedge. For geography, which iconic New York skyscraper used to house the Cloud Club? A three story club and speakeasy. That. I think that was a ruse.

[C]

I did it. I did it earlier. I just. I should have. Yeah, Chris, the Empire State Building.

[A]

No, no, Colin, the Chrysler Building.

[B]

It is the other one.

[C]

You know, I should have. I should have realized, like, too easy. Yeah.

[B]

Pink wedge for pop culture. Which talk show host introduced the first Lip Sync Battle?

[A]

Talk show. The first. Okay, Chris.

[C]

Jimmy Fallon.

[B]

Correct. Jimmy. Yeah, it was like a. Like a fun segment and now turned into a show hosted by LL Cool J. Oh, this is a pretty recent card. All right, yellow wedge. What are the cutesy sounding names of the two government backed lending giants embroidered in the housing market crisis of 2008?

[C]

Oh, geez.

[B]

Oh, Chris.

[C]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

[B]

Yes, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Cutesy names. Purple wedge. Which book about a bunny's Bedtime was ranked third on Time magazine's 100 Best Children's Book of all time?

[A]

Colin, is that Good Night Moon?

[B]

Good Night Moon. The Christopher Walken version.

[A]

I. I. Children, I cannot hear the title of that book without hearing the Christopher Walken Goodnight Moon joke from. Yes, from the Simpsons. My. I. My daughter has that book. I read it to her. I don't read it her in the Christopher Walken voice. I could. I should. Yeah. I mean, maybe I did. One time. Good Night Moon.

[B]

Green wedge for science and nature. What does LED stand for in LED lights?

[A]

Colin, that is a light emitting diode.

[B]

Correct. And final question here. Orange wedge. What are the three events in the order they happen in an Olympic triathlon?

[C]

Oh, gee.

[A]

Oh, this is a Karen question. That's no fair Right. All right, so just go for it, Chris.

[B]

Think about exhaustion and energy.

[A]

All right?

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

So it's running and then swimming and bicycling.

[B]

It is. Well, I mean, I haven't flipped over. It should be swimming, cycling, and then running. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Swimming, cycling, swimming, running, cycling, running. I knew, I knew swimming wasn't last. I knew it wasn't last because I remember seeing them, like, hurriedly changing out of their swim into the next. I couldn't remember. Is it okay?

[B]

Yeah, swimming's probably the hardest or, you know, so you want to, like, put it in earlier, you know, when people have a lot of energy. That's a good way to remember it last because then people will like my drown or you might get tired and it's a little bit more dangerous.

[A]

You've done. You've done one, right, Karen?

[B]

No. I volunteered at many, though, because my husband used to do triathlons. I'd wait for him, but then I was like, oh, you know, I'll start volunteering. So I'd volunteer and they would give me the shift of the person who would help peel off sweatsuits off of the swimmers as they come. Come to shore.

[C]

Huh.

[B]

I've seen so many. You know, Montana has the, what festival testicles. That was like me, triathlons. Helping people because they don't care. They just want to get it out.

[A]

Like every second, every second counts.

[B]

So, like, they don't have room or time to feel shame or. Or be embarrassed. I'm just literally ripping the wet suits off like, like a banana, you know, just feeling.

[A]

And they're like feeling a banana, like, whoops.

[B]

You know, I'd see some things like, pop out.

[A]

Hey, good luck.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. We're a community. Yeah.

[C]

The funny thing is they, they told the. The previous 50 volunteers. They try to get them to like, no, obviously not. And then you come in and they're.

[A]

Like, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

Anyways, no problem.

[B]

Yes, sir. All right, Good job, brains. So this week's topic, I chose the topic. It is skin, Skin, Skin, skin. And I think I was like, brainstorming. I was like, oh, we can talk about like, epidermis packaging outer coating, that kind of stuff. And I was inspired because I. A lot of people send me, like, trivia tiktoks or like trivia reels and stuff. And one of the really interesting ones I saw was, have you guys heard of the Shirley card?

[A]

The what?

[B]

The Shirley card.

[A]

No, I don't think so.

[B]

Used in photography. So, like in old school photography, before Digital photography, you had chemically processed film. Right. And so the Shirley card is a registration reference that you would hold it up to the camera and it's a. It's a portrait of a person with a bunch of color blocks.

[A]

I have seen this.

[B]

Yes. And as you develop the film, you're trying to match the actual Shirley card so that colors and your lighting.

[A]

Right. It's a reference processing.

[B]

And the Shirley card is named after Shirley and she's a white lady. And the film captures a certain range of light and color optimized for this Shirley card for people who are lighter skinned. And so there's been decades and decades of people of color where their photos don't turn out that great because it's becomes really dark and you can't really see features and stuff. People have been bringing it up to Kodak and other film companies. Be like, hey, there must be another way. Like, we have all the chemicals.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Can we just have a film that's inclusive to a lot of people or allows lighting and different processes so that the people of darker tones or anything in darker tones can show up a little bit better and photograph better. Yeah. Especially a lot of kids school photos. And Kodak didn't really do anything until two key industries complained. One industry is the furniture industry because they have to photograph wood in the catalogs to show furniture like walnut or cherry.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The film doesn't capture the difference in. In the different wood, the darker wood panels. And the other industry is chocolate. You know, you have all these print ads and also like film. Commercial ads. And milk chocolate looks the same. Like dirt.

[A]

It's all just this narrow range of. Yes.

[B]

Because the film only develops a narrow range. And so those two industries were like Kodak. We really need to improve this process so that we can sell more furniture, wood and chocolate. It's kind of messed up that, that it took those two industries to make a change.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And kodak in the 90s, finally, big deal. I think we lived through this. Kodak Gold. Remember Kodak Gold? That was like such a big deal.

[A]

I do film.

[B]

Yeah. And that was. That was the film that was more inclusive. Yes.

[A]

I just remembered as a branding name I didn't know anything about.

[B]

Yeah. We were kids. We didn't know what. What film was for what. But yeah, Kodak Gold was. Was the change. So that inspired today's topic of skin. So this week we've got skin in the game.

[C]

All right, I have a story for you guys that is ripped from the headlines, ripped from the recent headlines. Recent headlines. Yes, there was action on this this year, just earlier this year, March 2024, headline in the New York Times, Harvard removes binding of human skin from book in its library.

[A]

Oh my goodness.

[C]

Maybe you heard this one before. So as soon as you said this is the topic, I just thought of this because I'm like, oh, I read this story. Yeah, Harvard removes binding of human skin from.

[A]

I have read about books like this. I did not know Harv had one.

[C]

Until recently had one. So the New York Times story, this is what it says. For years, The Volume, a 19th century French treatise on the human soul was brought out for show and tell and sometimes, according to library lore, used to haze new employees. Now how do you get. How do you acquire for your library a book bound in human skin? So this. And, and you're wondering, well, how do you know it.

[B]

It is human skin.

[C]

How do you know it's human skin? So this particular book, this book was called De Destine de la, or the Destiny of Souls. Now this was a book that was, you know, 19th century French book. Not all copies of this were bound in human skin. It wasn't like a special, like a.

[A]

Pre order bonus, the collector pack.

[C]

This was just a guy, a doctor, a doctor in France had bought just a regular copy of this book and apparently for some reason he. There was a woman in the psychiatric hospital, I guess where he was working who had died and he removed the skin from her corpse and made a new binding for the book with the skin and wrote a note inside the book that said, says a book about the human soul deserves to have a human covering. Oh, now you might say, wow, that sounds extremely creepy and probably wrong. And like. So Harvard did eventually agree that they, they probably shouldn't just have this sitting on their shelf. But I should point out that the. This book is covered in human skin. You know, story was really kind of just a story because they weren't really able to absolutely determine whether or not the binding really was made out of human skin until. Until 2014. And in 2014, there was a group of scientists called the Anthropodermic Book Project. The Anthropodermic Book Project, Scientists studying books that are purportedly covered in human skin came up with a new method of determining once and for all if a book that was, you know, alleged to be bound in human skin was indeed bound in human skin. So it kind of leads to the question that Karen already asked. Assuming that you've got a book on your shelf and you start thinking to yourself, this, this binding feels a Little bit like human skin. You know, how would I actually.

[A]

Yeah. How would I set about.

[C]

So, number one, and this is something that people have done for a while, is you could look at it like, are there hair follicles on your book? That could be a clue. So let's say your book kind of has some follicular actioning happening on the COVID of your book. You can now you can look at. You could look at the pattern of those follicles to see if it matches like a human pattern versus, like the, like a pig or a cow. Because remember, there's lots of books out there that are bound in the skin of animals, Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

But this is imprecise because you're stretching the skin out to put it on the.

[B]

Treat the leather a lot.

[C]

Yeah. So it's hard to. It's hard to look at the patterns and say, well, this is what it was before it was, you know. Okay, so maybe that's, you know, maybe that's something you could do, but it's not going to really get you the answer. DNA testing. So.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Okay. You could try it. But DNA degrades over time. And also if a bunch of people have been touching this book all over time, they're getting their own DNA all over it. So you do your DNA test and it's like, oh, this, this tested for. This tested for human DNA. But that's just because your hands were all over. Yeah, it's like, oh, it's my DNA. It's covered in my skin. So what the Anthropodermic book project did was they. They decided that they needed to use a technique that is called peptide mass fingerprinting. I want to be really clear. I am too stupid to understand what that means, but essentially what they're doing is they're taking something. They take a sample out of the book cover that of something that does not degrade nearly as much as DNA, which is collagen, which are like some of the actual like, like proteins that are still there, and they. They break it apart. Look at the amino acids, and they look at the patterns of amino acids, and those end up being unique to each species.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

So that. That will give you a definitive answer. Now, the Anthropodermic book project does note the limitations of doing peptide mass fingerprinting, which is, it's. It doesn't give you as much information as, like, DNA would. Doesn't tell you who this person's family might have been, where they might have been from, you know, the male, female, whatever. Like, all that Kind of stuff. All it really tells you is we can nail it down. This was a human. So so far, this project, which was. Was active actually up through early this year, and it's. It's kind of on temporary hiatus now, but they. They have heard of. They've sort of documented 51 books out there in the world in human skin. And so far, they've determined that 14 of those 51 are actually bogus. We're not covered in human skin.

[A]

Are bogus.

[C]

But Are bogus. Are bogus. We're not. We're covered in some other animal skin and not covered in human skin, even though they were said to have been. But 18 of them. Yes. It actually were probably the most famous of these books and very. What's unique about this book is that it's the only one that's known about so far that was actually bound with the consent of the person whose skin.

[A]

Okay, that was a question. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

So there's a book, it's in the Boston Athenian Library. It's called Narrative of the Life of James Allen. It is the memoirs of a guy named James Allen, who was a robber, he was a highwayman, and he wrote down all of his crimes and deeds and stuff like that. And then he requested, please bind this in my skin. They were like, yeah, sure. Wow.

[B]

I mean, it'd be really weird if they got someone else's skin.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. No, it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't his skin versus somebody else's, but they did use his. So you can actually go see that in the Boston Athenium. And then. Okay, so what happened? We're getting to the end here. What happened to the copy of De Destination in the Harvard Library? Harvard eventually realized that, first of all, I mean, you know, hazing employees with it, probably not a great idea. And it's just really not a good idea for this. Like, we shouldn't be dealing with human remains in this way, Especially when those remains were sort of taken very much without consent of somebody. They are. They have now removed the binding from the book, and they are with authorities in France basically to. They're. They're going to respectfully dispose, you know, or respectfully bring those. The human remains back to France.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay, here is what they're gonna do. So don't bind books in human skin, everybody. It's creepy.

[A]

Wow. Extraordinarily creepy. Extraordinarily.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. It's just so. It's just like, oh, well, you know, a doctor, you know, he did this, and it's like, why would you do that.

[A]

You're not supposed to. I want to do that. I want to know. And maybe buried somewhere in these articles is the chain of custody from this doctor to Harvard's library.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was.

[C]

It ended up in the collection of a. Of a rare book collector who I think then donated, like, the whole thing to the Harvard Library. They. They said that some of these might have been done across. Criminal was executed, but before that, they had to confess and write down all of their crimes, and then it was found with their skin as, like, further punishment or something. You used to do some weird stuff back in the day, man.

[A]

Yeah, man.

[C]

I don't know what I expected. I'm like, I'm. I'm gonna start researching the phenomenon of books bound in human skin. Turns out a lot of these stories are really off putting.

[B]

It's like, it makes me think of, like, Harry Potter, restricted area of the library kind of deal where it's right.

[A]

Or like a I'm gonna bind someone's soul. Or I've heard that, like, Aleister Crowley had books like, you know, covered in human skin. It's just like always sort of a cult or a cult adjacent.

[B]

Tales from the Crypt.

[C]

Yeah, probably. They probably realized that you could sell them one and whatever book as long as you told him it was in human skin, you know, so it'd be like, oh, Alistair, I got another one for you. It's definitely human skin. It's great that this project, this group of scientists is actually figuring out, like, hey, how can we, like, verify that, separate out the bogus from the real here? But the fact that they found more real than fake at this point, of all the things that they've tested, is really pretty fascinating.

[B]

Whoa.

[C]

That's it, everybody. Have a good night.

[B]

Human skin counts as real leather. I want to talk a little bit about fake leather.

[C]

Oh, sure. Okay. Yeah. A good alternative.

[B]

Good alternative. Can I be bold to say that I think one of the greatest advertising slash marketing spins I got to live through in my lifetime is people calling fake leather vegan leather. Oh, that is the most amazing.

[A]

Yes, masterful.

[B]

A massive spin.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, it's up there with chocolate diamonds.

[B]

Yeah, chocolate diamonds. Oh, my God. Yes, these are flawed diamonds. They're brown and ugly. No, they're chocolate diamonds.

[C]

Oh, I'll take five.

[B]

Vegan leather.

[C]

Yeah, I love it.

[B]

It's perfect. It's like. It's like such a Don Draper Mad Men kind of.

[A]

Yes, absolutely.

[B]

Before it was called vegan leather in the 90s, we called it pleather.

[A]

Pleather I remember. Yeah, pleather.

[B]

It's leather, but it's made out of plastic. It's a lot cheaper. And then before that in the 80s, it was like faux leather. Faux, you remember faux was written like French words, faux leather. But vegan leather, the, the term became popularized more in the 2000 and tens. It was used as early as, like even before the 2000s. For a long time. Vegan leather is referencing pleather, is referencing fake plastic leather. That is vegan leather. Right. There's no animals killed in this, but. But it's made out of plastic.

[A]

Yeah. It really calls your attention to the plastic part.

[B]

Let's talk about fake leather for a moment. Like many things on Good Job Brain, a lot of inventions had their start or had their moment during World War II. World War II in Germany, they had something called Prestoff. Prestoff. It was layers of paper that they would dip in resin and treat with resin. And it's amazing because I saw pictures of things from like the 1900s. It looks like leather. And they used it for a lot of things. Anything that you would use leather that's not like wear and tear, that it actually looks incredible. And so Germany made a lot of things with pressed off, except for clothes because it can't withstand their wear and tear.

[C]

That's the wear and tear. Yeah.

[B]

So. So even before plastic there was fake leather and it was made out of paper. And obviously as the whole world got into plastics, of course people are like, hey, let's take plastic, let's press on texture of leather. And then, oh, it's, it's leather now. It's.

[A]

No one will know.

[B]

No one will know. And it's so cheap. You know, when something was described as vegan leather, most likely they're referring to plastic leather. But now vegan leather, the term is a much bigger umbrella. Thanks to all the advancement in technology in producing plant based alternative leather without a great dependency on plastic. It is wild. People are trying to make leather out of everything. Apple skins, you know, all the apple skins that are discarded. A lot of like produce waste.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And they would compress it and it's like plant pulp felt.

[A]

It is naturally. Yeah. Resilient and naturally tough. Okay.

[B]

Yeah. Fibrous. And then they would stamp on the leather texture and be like, aha, look, it's apple leather. Pineapple leather. One of the big problems with pineapple production or pineapple consumption is we only eat the fruit, the tops of the plants and a lot of the leaves are just discarded. There's no use for them. Until there is pineapple leather, where they take all this plant matter, you know, treat it, compress it, make into a flat thing, press on the leather texture, and all of a sudden it's a pineapple leather. I actually have a sample pack of pineapple leather. It's pretty cool. I would say a lot of these plant based leathers, it's kind of like, like felt a little bit foamy, a little bit bouncy with like a texture on it. And then there is also, get this. This to me is kind of weird. Scoby leather. Scoby leather. It is kombucha tea growth that sits on top as a kombucha is brewed. It is this weird ghost like, but also sensual piece of rubber. Organic, alien, slimy, rubbery mucus top. It's the culture. It's the culture. Scoby. They call it leather, but it really is. It's not that strong. It disintegrates real fast. But there is a race, guys, for mushroom leather.

[A]

I was gonna ask you if there's.

[B]

Yeah, mycelium leather. It's mycelium mushroom. It's mushroom that they can direct and grow. When I talked about like apple leather or pineapple leather, it's all plant matter that's essentially compressed and squished into like a piece of fabric. With mushroom leather, you can have it grow 3D, you can have it. It doesn't have to be one flat sheet. You can have.

[A]

Throw me a jacket. Like.

[B]

Yes, they can technically do that.

[A]

Incredible.

[B]

All this is so interesting to me because, like, it feels like we're at an 8th grade science fair. You know, the ideas are just kind of out there. They're super creative. What else are they gonna make into into leather? But yes, that is my update on. On vegan leather. The best spin in the world.

[A]

I really did not know that it had progressed past just branding. Yeah. Honestly, like, oh, God. Now. So I have a question with any of these. Like, this is a dumb question, Karen, and I apologize, but could you eat it? Like, could I eat the mushroom leather or is it. It's just been treated and it's not. I mean, I know it's. I know it's not fit for human consumption. I mean, you know, in the general sense, it's.

[B]

It's like you eating those, like, corn straws. You can eat it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And it will eventually digest. I think it depends. You can definitely eat Scoby leather. That's. But that's disgusting.

[A]

Sign me up.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if listeners know, I make sure shoes from scratch. Like I make sneakers from scratch. I'm. I'm a cobbler. So like, we use a lot of leather.

[A]

Is that why you have the pineapple leather?

[B]

That's why I have the pineapple leather. And guess what? While I'm doing this research, I bought some mushroom leather. Leather's coming in. I'm gonna check it out. I'll keep everybody updated on mushroom leather. I'm very excited. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Factor. The leaves are falling, the kids are schooling, and there's pumpkin in our lattes. That's right. Summer's changing in the fall and brings big change into our routine as well. My oldest kid just started kindergarten, so shout out to all the COVID babies who are also starting kindergarten this year. Finding the time to cook can be tough as I'm adjusting to this brand new schedule. That's why I factor in my back pocket, but not literally my back pocket. They're in my fridge. Their chef prepped dietitian approved meals make it easy to eat healthy no matter how hectic the season gets. So eat [e-mail] GoodJob 50 off and use the code GoodJob 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year. That's code [e-mail] for 50% off your first box and free breakfast for one year. Get delicious ready to eat meals delivered with factor offers only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase.

[C]

Hey.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by IXL Learning, an online learning program that enriches the homeschool curriculum that offers subjects in science, math, English, language arts, social studies and more. Entrusted by 15 million students worldwide, back to school looks different when you're a homeschooling family. Whether you're continuing a rhythm or shaking things up with a brand new curriculum, it's a perfect time for reset. IXL is a simple way to bring structure, confidence and progress to your homeschool routine. If you're listening to this podcast, then you know how the right framing can make any bit of knowledge more memorable and more meaningful. Iexcel makes it easy to keep learning engaging with interactive content, games, videos, awards and moments of celebration. So make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now and good job. Brain listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixl.com goodjobbrain visit ixl.com goodjobBrain to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.

[C]

You're listening to Good. Good job Brain. Smooth puzzles, Smart trivia. Good job, brain.

[B]

And we're back. And this week we're talking about skin.

[A]

Okay, if I were to ask you to come toss around the pigskin with me. What am I asking you to do?

[B]

Play football?

[A]

Yeah, I'm asking you to come throw around a good old fashioned North American gridiron football with me. We call it the pigskin colloquially. Question for you. Oh, are footballs made out of pigston? Yes or no?

[C]

No.

[A]

No, you're correct. They are not in fact made out of or the external casing of pigstin. Were footballs ever made out of pigstin?

[B]

I've been made out of everything.

[C]

I don't, I don't think they were. I, I, I, I think they were like an inflated bladder or something like that.

[B]

Oh, I think of like chichirones and I don't feel like it can like, I mean, I don't know if it can like withstand a lot of, you know, wear and tear.

[A]

I mean, they're not frying the football, to be clear. You know, it's, I mean, someone probably has, Somebody, somebody on this planet of ours has probably fried a football. I shouldn't, I shouldn't say that. No, no, footballs, at least as we know them, were not made out of pig skin. They are not made out of pig skin. But as, as you alluded to there, the first inflatable sports balls of any kind that we would reasonably call a sports ball were really nothing more than inflated animal bladders. No. Yeah. I mean, going back, I'm talking, you know, a few hundred years here, but if you wanted a, a, a roundish thing to, you know, use as a sporting object, you could stuff something, right, you know, with feathers or, you know, sawdust or rags or whatever. But if you wanted something inflatable, you had no other option but an actual animal bladder. Yeah. And indeed, the idea of what passed for a ball standards were a lot looser pre sphered. It didn't, it's, it's sphere ish. That's right. It's, it's generally sphere ish enough. But yeah, it's, it's not much more complicated than an animal bladder. You clean it up a bit, maybe you tie it, you tie a knot in the, in the open parts and you, you blow it up. You put your lips right up on that sheep bladder or what what have you and just. And blow it up. A very common choice for this type of bladder was a sheep's bladder. Especially if you're in older communities, farming communities, you would have.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Fairly ready access to animal bladders. Right?

[C]

Yeah. What else are you gonna do with it?

[A]

Yeah, exactly. What else are you gonna do with the sheep bladder?

[C]

Right, but it's just sort of like, you think I can blow this up?

[B]

Yeah, you do it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, no, you do. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Let me see how big I can get it. Yeah, keep going, keep going. Everyone around cheering you on. Pig bladders, however, were another choice for this type of ball. So. So you can, you can sort of see the line from pig bladders into calling a North American style football the pig skin. There were some steps in between, to be very clear. There was, thankfully for those who had to inflate them by the time of the mid-1850s, the. The rubber bladder had had basically started to take over.

[C]

The vegan bladder.

[A]

The vegan bladder. Thank you, Chris. But they still call it a bladder. And you know, I mean, again, it's like, it's almost one of those things that we don't even. Maybe some of us don't even think about. But you have an inflatable ball today and you still call the inner part a bladder, Right? They did, of course, cotton on pretty quickly to the idea that, you know what, this thing would be a lot more durable if it had a coating of some kind on the outside. So proto modern sports ball would be an inflatable bladder, maybe animal, maybe rubber, covered in leather. Durability. You could stitch it, get it a little bit more spherical. This has largely stayed the same even for non inflatable balls. If it's, if it's got a. A hide of some kind on there, very good chance it is in fact leather. I have a question for you guys of the major American professional ball sports leagues. Okay. Okay. Ball sports, team sports, which. Which is the only sport that today uses a non leather ball.

[B]

We're not counting hockey as a ball sport.

[A]

I. Hockey is not.

[C]

Definitely not a ball.

[A]

Not a ball sport.

[B]

I feel like the basketball is.

[C]

Okay, all right.

[A]

Karen says NBA.

[C]

Yeah, okay, yeah, I'll probably have to go with Karen on that one.

[A]

No, no. In fact, is it leather? It is leather, as is American football, as is the baseball used in major league baseball. Obviously not inflated, but it is soccer. Association football. Soccer, yeah, has. That's right. Mls. Not just mls, but really all of the premier pro leagues around the world. Like the premier League, other Top leagues, FIFA World cup matches, they all have moved to a fully synthetic ball. That's right. It's usually polyurethane leather pleather. That's right. And they're usually made of, you know, many outer panels. There's. They'll seal together in very complicated patterns. They're super aerodynamic. Did, of course, used to be leather for many, many, many, many years. Leather over a bladder. I have a closest to the mark question here for you guys. What year was the first non leather ball used in a FIFA World Cup?

[B]

Okay. I'm thinking, like, it's got to be, like, signifying, like, now we're in the modern age of FIFA, and hence we got a modern ball.

[C]

Everything became modern. I would say we're in the mid-1990s.

[B]

Oh, that's good.

[C]

1997.

[B]

I'll say 2000.

[A]

Okay. All right. Chris is closer. You guys are both a little off the mark.

[C]

It's what, 1954?

[A]

I like the way you're thinking though, Karen. Like, you. You were. You were onto it. I think you were just. Maybe just a couple decades too late. Yeah. So the first non leather ball used in the FIFA World cup was 1974.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And this was the dur. Last. Not dura last. The der. Last version of the Telstar model ball. I know you guys know what the Telstar model soccer ball is. The Telstar model soccer ball has the distinctive black and white pattern. 12 black pentagons, 20 white hexagons. That ball was very famously debuted in 1970. The original Telstar ball made of leather at the 1970 FIFA World Cup. And I don't think there's an example of a. A sports ball pattern that locked in the global consciousness any more than that design does.

[B]

Like, was it not black and white before?

[A]

Nope, absolutely not. The. The 1970 ball. You're absolutely right. It was a modern era. The. The new age. Everything was, was, was changing technology. The name of that Telstar ball from 1970 was named after the Telstar communications satellite. This was the illusion of the ball.

[B]

Name we're ushering in.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. And. And the Telstar satellite, which had gone up the decade before was, I mean, literally world changing technology. Like, this is what allowed real time satellite transmissions and live TV and communications. And so people. People were aware of what the Telstar satellite looked like. And if you Google it, as you can, as you probably are, you'll see the Telstar satellite. It kind of looks black and white, you know, patchwork sort of sphere.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And that was the name of The Telstar ball that like has to this day, if you Google clip art, soccer ball 90, 99 out of 100, it's going to be that black and white style ball. That's right. So FIFA pretty much every year will debut a new ball style, new pattern color, the panel shape and construction changes, the materials change, but that classic look has basically been fixed. That's right. So four years later, after the original Telstar. Yeah. Adidas rolled out the. The first entirely polyurethane coated ball with the. The der last Telstar. 1974. 1974 was a big year for changes in leather and balls. If you'll stay with me here on this thread. In 1974, Major League Baseball, baseball made a change in the leather used for official baseballs for one point each. What type of leather did they switch from?

[B]

From?

[A]

And what type of leather did they switch to? A change that has stayed in place through today. I'm looking for the names of two animals here.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. One type, one type of animal leather out the door. Another type of animal leather come on board.

[B]

I wonder if there's like a weird old old timey saying, you know, like, hey, let's throw some.

[A]

Let's toss the old head blank skin around. Right. I, I will tell you, neither of the animals is cat. Yeah. It is not. It is not cat. They were not making baseballs out of cat leather in 1973. No.

[C]

No.

[A]

All right, potential two points on the board here.

[C]

Yeah. Right.

[A]

These are both decidedly non vegan leathers. All right, answers up. Karen has written donkey to cow. Chris has written cow to sheep. Karen is the closest with one point in the correct slot. Up until 1974, four baseballs for major League Baseball were manufactured from horse hide.

[C]

Oh, that's what I almost did it.

[A]

It was in fact a basically a shortage of horsehide. It was the amount that Major League Baseball needed to produce its baseballs and the amount available, it started to become just a cost and a resourcing issue. Yeah. So they switched to the much more plentiful cowhide. If you're a baseball fan, there is a whole, whole history about live ball eras, dead ball eras. You know, the ball is juiced. You know, this is, it's a conspiracy. We're not even going to touch that more than we need to. But a lot of people blamed a drop in home runs after that season on the switch from horsehide to cowhide baseballs. As a, as a little bit of a side here. This could be a whole segment in itself. I had to restrain myself but if you research history of the actual ball used for Major League Baseball, it is. It's truly, truly bananas. In the early days of baseball, the balls were, by and large homemade. They were essentially the pitcher for each team would make his own balls sound.

[C]

Totally safe and not exploitable at all.

[A]

Totally separate from the fact that they are not in any way durable. I mean, they would be coming apart, literally coming apart at the seams by the end of a game. Sometimes every pitcher would make his balls the way he liked it a little bit differently. Right. And some of them were a little bit livelier and some of them were a little bit deader. Oh, absolutely crafty. It's amazing to me that the general construction was even remotely standardized. But they were all essentially the same gist of an idea of like a rubber. A rubber core. Rubber of some kind or rubber bouncy core wrapped in yarn or string of some kind, and then that. And then that wrapped in leather that you would stitch up best you could and try and keep the whole thing together over the course of a game. Really was not until. Until, like the mid-1850s that that baseballers at the professional level decided, we gotta kind of standardize this. Like, we gotta agree on a general size and weight. Yeah. One of the more prominent voices pushing for high quality standards was a extremely famous at the time pitcher by the name of Albert Spalding or A.G. spalding. And if that name sounds familiar, yes, it is indeed the same Spalding as in Spalding Sporting Goods. Yes. He. He capitalized on his great fame as a pitcher to start his own sporting goods company. He was the one. I'm getting a little excited here. I have to calm down. I learned that Spalding, he was the one who started the trend of wearing a baseball glove. This is how. This is how unrefined the game was even as late as the 1860s or 70s. Like, yeah, some pitchers would wear a glove on their catching hand. Some wouldn't, you know, it's kind of, you know, sort of maybe a little bit of a macho thing.

[C]

Some would try to catch the ball with their mouth, you know, you know, hey, whatever.

[A]

Whatever you got to do. So he wasn't. He wasn't the first one to wear a glove, but. But he was the one who made it a thing. Like he was popular enough and skilled enough that people would emulate him. Yeah, it's incredible.

[C]

Amazing.

[A]

It was also a cost savings measure to standardize the balls, too. I was reading a little bit about this, that. That in, like, late 1800s, early 1900s, money. The cost of a baseball then would be roughly equivalent to a hundred dollars or more. Yeah, the club owners and managers were extremely stingy with the balls.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And if you go to a basketball game today, right? And you know, every now and then the ball will bounce into the stands, you know, and the players come over like, hey, toss the ball back, you know, and you give ball back. Like that's what they would do in the baseball games back in those days. Like any ball that would go in the stands, like, hey, we need the ball back, we got to finish the game with it. It was not unheard of for a ball to last all of one game into the next game until it just became so unusable they had to replace it for another ball.

[B]

Just take it for granted. They're just like giving kids baseballs, you know, like throwing around these days.

[A]

Days. I read that MLB rules today say that teams are required to have a minimum of 156 baseballs at the ready. And like, if you watch, if you watch a professional major league baseball game today, if a ball goes in the dirt, out of play, ball gets like a little bit of a scraper scuff out of play. Pitcher doesn't like it out of play, you know, catcher doesn't like it out of play.

[B]

And it's like disposable.

[A]

They are practically disposable. They really are. Yeah. So we will move on to the last of the major American professional league ball sport, which is basketball. Basketballs at the professional level are made of cowhide. And specifically it is a panel style ball. They're no longer stitched together. So when I say a panel style ball, meaning it is cut and shaped panels of leather wrapped around the sphere. And then the seams are, you know, glued down together.

[B]

Throws me off because they a, they're bumpy. And then they have like the black grooves on them. It feels, it feels synthetic.

[A]

You know, the bumps are stamped on. Karen. So you were talking about the fake leather stamping that goes on to the vegan leather.

[B]

You got the bump stamp.

[A]

This is true for footballs as well. The, the grain or the pebble on them is actually, actually stamped on with hundreds or thousands of pounds of force by a. Yeah, pebbling machine. All right, last question. In 2006, the NBA endured a near mutiny from its star players after doing what to the official ball? After making what change?

[B]

Whoa, wait, the ball changed or the.

[A]

Players did something change changed? The, the league said, here is the ball for the 2006 season. It was different in what way?

[B]

Oh, interesting. And they're like, we don't like it.

[A]

They. They had to go back after just a little bit more than two months.

[B]

I'm gonna say.

[A]

Players hated it. Hated it, hated it.

[B]

A color change.

[A]

Oh, okay. Good guess, good guess.

[C]

They. They make it slightly smaller, take the bumps out also.

[A]

Good guess. Ooh, good guess. Make it, make the, make it the smoothie. Smoothie, right? No, no. I feel bad springing this answer on you guys given what transpired earlier, but what they did is they changed it to a synthetic material ball. So leading up to the 2006 season, it had always been leather for years and years, decades and decades. And they, the league wanted to be very forward thinking, modern. They switched to a, a microfiber synthetic material that, like, it had the same color. You know, I mean, that. But that was about where the similarities ended. The players complained that among many other things, it cut their fingers. They said that the act of, of holding and dribbling the ball as much as they do the synthetic microfiber material was so unforgiving. Steve Nash, star player at the time, he said he had like bloody fingertips from playing with the ball.

[B]

Did they not test this?

[A]

They did not test it with the pros, if you can believe it or not. Karen. They did some trial runs in lower level play. They never tested it. Did not get the approval from the NBA players themselves and kind of just sprung it on them. They hated it. There were players who were like sabotaging the balls. Players were hiding them. Players were practicing with the old leather balls, but then having to play with the new ones because they hated them so much. And the pressure just got to be too much that the league relented and threw their hands up and said, we're sorry we messed up. We should not have done this this way. And they went back to leather balls and they haven't looked back since then. It will probably be another generation before they even try this again. They'll have to wait until the memories have all faded.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So that is a little bit a smattering of trivia and questions about our country's sports. Sports balls. Yeah. Sports balls.

[C]

Wow.

[D]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for. For you. Whether you prefer talking in person on the phone or using the award winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits Your needs like a good neighbor. State farm is there.

[B]

Okay, I have our last segment here. I'm not going to mince words, y'. All. I got a segment here about two things. We like it's sharks and pee, but not. But not what. It's not what you're thinking. So. So for new listeners, I am somewhat of a semi professional shark enthusiast. I am an author of a, of a shark facts book called Joss Some shark Quizzes. You know, hey, let's all picture a shark, okay? Like the full animal.

[C]

Very easy.

[B]

Very, very easy.

[A]

Done.

[C]

Very.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

How would you describe what you see? How would you describe.

[C]

It's got the, like a fish with like a triangle on its back and then the mouth is open and there's lots of big teeth inside and it's like.

[B]

Yes, a lot of triangles.

[C]

Lots of triangles. Triangle on the back, triangle mouth. Yeah.

[B]

Probably like a very sleek, aerodynamic form with fins, you know, murder teeth.

[A]

Yeah. Like a dangerous dolphin.

[B]

Like a dangerous dolphin. Yeah. So here's something that I, I didn't really realize until I did this research. Do you remember in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the Davy Jones Locker one, there's that cursed pirate crew, right? They're cursed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Davy Jones is like a, you know, like an octopus. And then people on the crew are starting to kind of morph into like sea creatures.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

They're becoming crusty with barnacles on their face and seaweed and algae and enemy. When you think about a lot of other sea creatures like tortoises and whales, you know that they swim around and there's like barnacles on their underside. There's sometimes like seaweed or other creatures kind of attached to their skin. There's like algae. And sharks are remarkably clean.

[C]

Very clean. Yeah.

[B]

The crustiness, by the way, it's known as bio fouling. Bio fouling. You imagine like old ships and like the bottom of buoys is totally barnacles.

[A]

And muscles round and muscly. Yeah.

[B]

And sharks are super sleek and clean and this is such a unique characteristic. Unique enough to maybe change our lives. So shark skin is actually made up of tiny, tiny little, little scales called dermal denticles. If you get to pet a shark, you're not going to pet a shark. But like when the shark is moving in the forward direction, it's very smooth. It reduces drag and friction, makes them like move very quickly in the water. And then when you stroke in the opposite direction, like against the grain, it feels like sandpaper. Like, like, like a grater almost. And Chris, you had a question a few seasons ago. It was, what special flavor of KitKat has a piece of shark skin photographed on the box?

[A]

Oh, yes. And.

[B]

And it was the wasabi flavored Kit Kat. Because in Japan, traditional wasabi is graded against a piece of dried shark skin.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

Sharks do have scales. They just don't look like what we think of fish scales. They're individual little tiny diamond scales. And as sharks grow from baby sharks to adult sharks, the scales don't grow bigger. The scales stay tiny. They just grow more of the scales.

[C]

Scales.

[B]

They don't scale.

[A]

They don't scale up.

[B]

Scales don't scale up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

A man named Anthony Brennan, a professor, found out that this micro pattern surface of shark skin makes it hard for algae and bacteria to hang on to. This is why sharks seem really clear compared to your old buoys or like your, your whale with barnacles and weird growth all over it because the skin surface makes it hard for the bacteria to hold onto instead of killing. The bacteria don't even give them the chance to, like, settle.

[A]

Yeah. They can't get a foothold at all. Right.

[B]

If this is the case, what if humans could replicate and manufacture this surface? Could that reduce germs and bacteria from traveling and transferring? And turns out the answer is yes, they were able to do exactly that in catheters. Catheters, apparatus to help you deal with your pee if you're in the hospital and can't go to the bathroom. Because in hospitals and like, nursing homes, a lot of the infections from uti, from urinary tract infections, from catheters. And so there are catheters in this shark skin pattern.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

That helps decrease the amount of bacterial infection because the bacteria, they can't stay on the surface. It's wild.

[A]

That is really cool.

[B]

From shark to pee.

[A]

That reminds me of something that I read recently. But you're talking about how, like, the shape or the microscopic features of the shark skin repelling pests. I read that the reason they believe that fuzzy fruits. Right. Like, like peaches. Right. Okay. You know, like, why do they have the fuzz on there? You know, it's like, what, why, what evolutionary purpose does the fuzz serve on a peach? Right. I mean, it's like if the peach falls off the tree, it's not like that little extra bit of cushioning is gonna save it. From a, you know, a plant evolutionary perspective, why is it worth it to the plant to invest the energy in growing Lidli's tiny little fuzzy hairs all over there? I read that it annoys insects that insects don't like walking on that surface because it's uncomfortable. It's, it's, it's some. It's either awkward enough or uncomfortable enough that it dissuades enough insect and bug pests from crawling on the fruit that it's worth it to the fuzzy fruit to grow that little peach fuzz on the outside. I thought, that's really interesting. It's just very small scale kind of defense.

[B]

It's petty.

[A]

Yeah. It's like, yeah, go find a, go find a pair. Go find someone else to bother. Yeah.

[C]

Oh, I'm, I'm poisonous to insects. I'm just slightly annoying.

[B]

All right. And that's our show. Thank you all for joining me and thank you listeners for listening in. Hope you learned stuff about peach, about annoying peach fuzz, about books bound in human skin. Wow, what a spectrum.

[A]

What a range.

[B]

About mushroom leather and about sports balls. You can find us on all major podcast apps and on our website, goodjobbrain.com this podcast is part of Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to other shows like Pulse of the Planet, who Arted and Nature Nerds. And we'll see you next week.

[C]

Bye.

[A]

And Doug, here we have the limu.

[C]

Emu in its natural habitat, helping people.

[A]

Customize their car in insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[C]

Cut the camera.

[A]

They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings Ferry unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.