There’s more than one way to sterilize a cocaine hippo. Unfortunately, both ways suck.
Popular Science...
What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to Popular Science’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Spotify, YouTube, Apple, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.
FACT: There’s more than one way to sterilize a hippo, but there’s no easy way to sterilize a hippo
If you’re a longtime fan of Pablo Escobar’s hippos, you may have heard that their time is running out. After years of trying to deal with these feral hippos conservatively, the Colombian government recently announced that they’ll have to cull some of them to curb their rampant population growth. An Indian billionaire did recently make a last-minute offer to save the hippos at any cost, but transporting a grown hippo—an incredibly deadly animal that weighs literal tons—is no easy feat, so it’s likely that some, if not all, of the planned culling will still take place.
This is not for lack of trying. Like, seriously: The government really, really tried to avoid killing any hippos. But the years-long effort to sterilize these animals has largely failed, and researchers say we’re running out of time to avoid a population too large to deal with. That got me wondering… what makes it so difficult to sterilize a hippo?
As you’ll learn in this week’s episode, sterilizing a hippo surgically is a difficult, dangerous, and expensive endeavor. And while chemical castration (AKA shooting hippos with birth control darts) might sound simpler, it’s… still difficult, dangerous, and expensive.
For a hippo palate cleanser, I also dive into the herculean effort made to save Fiona the hippo a few years back, which required milking a hippo (a feat never before attempted!) and replicating hippo milk.
FACT: John Steinbeck took part in a failed deep-sea drilling expedition
Featuring Ben Lillie (the co-founder of Caveat, our favorite venue in NYC!)
This week’s episode features special guest Ben Lillie, otherwise known as the keeper of our favorite place to do Weirdest Thing live shows! He spun a yarn about Project Mohole, a failed deep-sea drilling expedition that took place back in the 1960s. The expedition featured a surprising crew member: John Steinbeck, who covered the endeavor for LIFE Magazine in… very Steinbeck-ian fashion.
Ben came across this story while working on a live show all about jargon. You can catch that show live and in-person at Caveat on Wednesday, May 27.
FACT: Joseph Pilates didn’t mean for his workout to get so bougie
Pilates is a super trendy workout modality right now, and it’s gotten a reputation for being pretty elitist. But Joseph Pilates—yes, he was a real guy, and his name was Pilates—didn’t set out to create a workout that looked good on the ‘gram. He didn’t even set out to create a workout that people would spend loads of money on. The former circus performer actually dreamed up the exercises that would become pilates while interned in a prison camp. You can learn more about the reformer’s journey from janky hospital bed to sleek boutique workout equipment in this week’s episode, or by checking out this article I wrote about the history of Pilates.
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