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Hey, Wowzer fans, Mindy here.
And before we start the show, I gotta let you know that this November, with a special new episode featuring our friends at Circle Round and Terrestrials on Radiolab for Kids,
And don't miss when Elmo from Sesame Street stops by Wow in the World to make us all belly laugh on November 24th.
Oh, but that's not all, Reg.
On December 1st, we are sharing our 250th episode of Wow in the World with all of you.
We think this one is going to be music to your ears.
Literally.
Did I mention it's a musical?
And if you're a member of the World Organization of Wowzers...
Oh boy, do I have a surprise for you.
You can listen to our 250th episode early with me and other members from around the world on Saturday, November 22nd, at 7 pm.
Eastern.
That's right, we are throwing another listening party.
Join us as we dance along to our new songs.
React to the episode with other members in the chat and more.
Grownups.
If you want your wowzer to join this members-only listening party, you can sign up to become a member today at Tinkercastcom.
Slash wow.
Already a member?
Well, you can find the link and password to join the event when you sign in at Tinkercastcom.
Slash wow.
That's it.
It's going to be a November to remember.
But for now, let's get on with the show.
Woo!
9,900 feet.
9,950 feet.
And... 10,000.
Ha-ha!
We made it.
10,000 feet below sea level.
Wow, the ocean is incredible this far down.
I mean, just look at the... Wait a minute.
What is that?
What?
Right there.
Get a little closer.
It looks like... It looks like... An elephant tusk.
Gasp.
But that's impossible.
We're 150 miles from shore.
And 10,000 feet deep.
Exactly.
How on earth could there be an elephant tusk all the way out here?
Huh.
I don't know.
But I do know someone who might.
Quickly, help me get a sample.
Copy that.
But who would know why this elephant tusk is at the bottom of the ocean?
And on top of that, the ink ribbon was also bone dry.
Uh, Mindy?
Ah, man, I got this caramel all over my hands.
So sticky.
Anyway, as I was saying, it took me 15 minutes to realize that my cartridge release lever was jammed.
Uh-huh.
I tell you, I thought I might have to throw away the whole typewriter.
Oh, no.
Get it, Mindy.
Your hands are all sticky with caramel.
No, no, no.
No, no.
I got it.
I got it.
Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk.
Opening door with foot.
There we go.
Oh, my gosh.
Uh, hello.
I have a special delivery here for Mindy.
Great.
Would you please sign here for me?
Oh, yeah.
Uh, one little problem.
My hands are kind of sticky, so you think you could just uh stick the pen in my mouth for me to sign.
Um, okay.
Gross.
Here we go, then.
Thank you.
Um, I, um, three, one.
Ha!
There you go.
Thanks.
Um, here's your package.
Oh, uh, still got sticky hands, so maybe just stick it in my mouth.
This is weird.
There we are.
Blakey!
You're welcome.
Hey, where'd you get a new drawer?
Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk.
Get away!
Kick!
Ah!
Gross!
Mindy, what is this?
I don't know.
Open it up and find out.
I gotta go wash my hands.
All right.
Let's see here.
It looks like there's a letter in here, Mindy.
Read it out loud!
Okay.
Let's see here.
Dear Detectives Mindy and Guy Raz.
Hey, that's us!
We come to you with a mystery.
Ooh, I love mysteries.
Keep reading!
Okay.
Our story starts way back in 2019, when myself and a colleague of mine from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute were out doing some deep sea exploring.
We were on the lookout for gelatinous zooplankton when something even more exotic and unusual grabbed our attention that stick out of the fronts of elephants' faces.
Well, that's what it says here, Mindy.
What would an elephant tusk be doing at the bottom of the ocean?
I have no idea.
Well, maybe they have an idea.
Keep reading.
OK, let's see here.
We have no idea how this tusk arrived here.
Aw, man.
Or how long it's been here for.
It's a total mystery.
Mystery, huh?
Well, that's where we come in, Guy Raz.
That's where you come in.
What?
We've provided with this letter a sample of the tusk that we were able to recover on our initial excavation.
Huh.
I didn't see that.
Well, maybe it's down there at the bottom of the envelope.
Here, let me see that thing.
Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it.
What?
We were hoping, with your past experience with the case of the missing salmon and the unveiling of Static Man, that perhaps you would have more luck figuring out how this tusk ended up 150 miles off the coast and 10000 feet underwater.
Yours sincerely, your friends at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
Yeah.
So, what do you say, partner?
You up for another mystery-solving adventure?
You bet, Mindy.
I'll go grab my detective hat.
Yes, and I'll go grab our trench coats.
Meet me at Grandma G-Force's house in 15 minutes.
Grandma G-Force's house?
Why there?
I'll explain when we get there.
Partner?
Oh, hey, Mindy.
Good to see you.
Nope, that's not it.
Good to see you again, Detective.
No.
Good to see you again, Detective Guy Raz.
Oh, yeah, that's it.
Mindy, do we have to do the detective voices the whole time?
It really hurt my throat last time we did it.
Fine, but you do have to keep your trench coat on.
Okay, deal.
All right, let's see if Grandma G-Force is home.
Knock, knock, knock.
Uh, why are we here again?
Because we need to read the DNA code inside this tusk, and Grandma G-Force has the only DNA testing machine in the whole neighborhood.
Wait, what?
Oh, DNA is the coding that's inside of every living thing.
No, no, I mean, didn't I give you a DNA testing machine for your birthday last year?
Uh... You didn't re-gift it, did you?
Uh, no?
Mindy?
Oh, hi.
Catch.
Hi, Grandma G-Force.
Hi, Grandma G-Force.
Nice to see you.
What do you two want?
Yeah, um, do you remember that DNA testing kit that I gave you last year?
Yeah, I remember saying, what am I supposed to do with this?
And then I don't remember what you said after that.
Yeah, well, I kind of need it back now because we're trying to solve a mystery.
Yeah, we're trying to solve a mystery.
Oh, a mystery.
Well, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, well, I think I may have tossed it out there in this garage.
Follow me.
Okay.
Garage, garage.
Hey, isn't that your name, boy?
Me?
What?
No, my name's Guy Raz, not Garage.
Well, I don't hear no difference.
Yeah, once you hear it, you kind of can't unhear it.
Okay, now stand back while I try to open this thing.
Oh, bats.
Get back in there.
Oh, Well, let's just take a little look-see here.
See what we got.
This place is a real mess.
I don't know how we're ever going to find this DNA testing kit.
Yeah.
Oh, look at that.
My very first pair of nunchucks back when I was just a little baby.
Grandpa G-Force, what are these?
Oh, wow, that's just my old collection of wrestling calendars.
Wrestling calendars?
1864?
Grandma G-Force, how old are you exactly?
Hey, why?
Oh, look, here it is.
One DNA toaster.
I think you mean a DNA tester.
That's what I said.
Well, what are we waiting for, Detective Mindy?
Let's see what this tusk is made of.
All right.
Okay.
Pretty sure I still remember how this DNA tester works.
Okay.
Let's see here.
The elephant tusk goes in here.
And maybe I'm supposed to hit this button?
Nope.
Nope.
That's not it.
That's not it.
Okay.
Maybe it's this one.
One does nothing.
Move over, young blood, and let Grandma G-Force take the wheel.
Uh, OK.
And end line.
Huh.
What does it say, Grandma G-Force?
Yeah, what does it say?
Well, it's saying that this ain't no elephant tusk.
It's not?
Well, then what is it?
It's mammoth.
Mammoth?
Mammoth?
Like those big hairy elephants from the Ice Age?
Actually, Guyron, Because mammoths were related to elephants, but not the same species.
Oh, kind of like how dogs and wolves are related, but not the same species.
Exactly.
Sort of like we humans and chimpanzees.
Well, speaking of chimpanzees, get a load of these.
Results.
Huh.
It says here Mindy, that not only does this tusk belong to a mammoth, it seems to be more than one hundredth, A thousand years old.
Huh.
So a little bit before the end of the Paleolithic era.
Exactly.
Around the time human beings started to migrate out of Africa.
And more importantly, when continents like Asia and America were connected by huge ice sheets.
Of course.
The Ice Age.
Uh-huh.
Detective Guy Raz, I think I may have a hypothesis.
Well, don't do it in here.
The bathroom's in the house.
No, no, Grandma G-Force.
A hypothesis is a scientific guess.
And you have a hypothesis as to how this tusk got to the bottom of the ocean?
Yeah.
Okay, hear me out.
Story time.
It's about 100,000 years ago.
Massive ice sheets cover the oceans.
Go on.
And a herd of woolly mammoths are migrating across what is now the Pacific Ocean.
OK.
And then, suddenly, one of the mammoths falls sick and dies.
Oh, no.
Well, that took a turn.
Over the next several thousand years, the ice sheets begin to melt and the remains of that mammoth sink to the ocean floor.
Until 100000 years later, present day, the ancestors of some primitive apes.
Our scientists arrive in an underwater machine, dig up a sample of those remains and mail them here to us, Guy Raz.
Wow.
Wow.
Pretty good hypothesis, Mindy.
Yeah, I know.
I just don't know how we're going to prove it, though.
Well, if we were able to get a larger sample of this mammoth tusk, maybe we'd be able to find out a little more about this mammoth's life and what sort of conditions it lived in.
Huh.
Well, what do you mean?
Well, it all has to do with how mammoth tusks grow.
How tusks grow?
Yeah.
You see, they grow in layers, getting a new layer each year.
Kind of like stacking ice cream cones on top of each other until you've got a big tower of ice cream cones.
Or like how you can tell the age of a tree by counting its rings.
Huh.
So you can tell the age of a mammoth by counting the rings in its tusk?
Not only that Mindy, but depending on the size and shape of the layers, scientists can also tell whether a mammoth had produced offspring.
Aw, so like if it had a lot of little mammoth babies.
Uh-huh.
And they can even tell what kind of food the mammoths were eating during certain years and where they were eating it.
Wow, that's a lot of information in one mammoth tusk.
Uh-huh.
Well, Detective Guy Raz, I think I know where we have to go next.
Where?
We gotta get the rest of that mammoth tusk.
But Mindy, it's at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
How on earth are we gonna get there?
Uh, basically the same way we get everywhere else, Guy Raz?
Oh, right.
You know it.
The Wow Machine!
And I plugged all the holes up with marshmallows just yesterday.
So basically, it's waterproof.
Uh-huh.
Come on, Detective Guy Raz.
Anything for the investigation?
Anything for the investigation.
Booyah!
See you later, Grandma G-Force.
We've got a mystery to solve.
What?
Oh, you two still here?
Bye, Grandma G-Force.
Oh, see you later, garage.
Do you hear that, Guy Raz?
Yeah, what is it?
Bendy!
Guy Raz!
Dennis?
Oh, man.
Hold on.
I need to catch my breath.
You okay?
Why are you sort of breath?
Well, I had to run all the way over here From my driveway.
And... Wait a minute.
Don't you live like two houses away from here, Dennis?
Yeah, it's like a hundred feet or something.
And why did you have to get over here so fast?
What's so important?
What's so important is this.
What is that?
It's a letter.
You wrote me a letter, Dennis?
No, I intercepted a letter for you.
What are you talking about, Dennis?
Well, I saw a delivery man trying to deliver this letter to your gingerbread house, Mindy.
Oh, mansion, gingerbread mansion.
Right, whatever.
And the delivery man wouldn't leave the letter without a signature.
So I signed your name for you.
You forged my signature, Dennis?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Oh, wait, yes.
Yes, I forged it.
Dennis!
Look, do you want the letter or not?
Well, of course I want the letter.
Here, let me see that.
That's what I thought.
Well, I better get back home.
Mother wants dinner soon, and those pizza rolls aren't going to microwave themselves.
Am I right, guys?
All right.
Reading, reading, reading, reading.
Oh, man.
What is it?
It's written by those same researchers who wrote to us earlier today.
And what did they say?
Well, it turns out they had the same bright idea that we did.
That they could get more information about the mammoth's life if they were able to study the whole tusk.
Yeah, and so they headed back out to where they originally found that piece of the tusk in hopes of finding the rest of it to bring back and study too.
The same tiny sample that we just ran through Grandma G-Force's DNA testing machine.
Uh-huh.
So, how did it go?
Well, let's see here.
Reading, reading, reading, reading...
It was a total success.
That's great news, Mindy.
Yeah, it says here that they first took a whole bunch of pictures of the tusk to create a 3D model.
You know, just in case something happened to it when they dug it out.
Ah, you mean they made a digital copy.
Yeah, and once they made that 3D digital copy, they used a pair of robotic hands attached to the front of a submarine to carefully dislodge the mammoth tusk and bring it back up to the surface, where they were able to do all of those tests and experiments you were just talking about.
Wow, and what do they find?
Well, it says here that they're still going through the results, but it appears that the hypothesis that we came up with seems to be correct.
You mean our hypothesis that the owner of this mammoth tusk was migrating on packed ice when it died and then, once the ice melted, its remains drifted to the bottom of the ocean.
Basically, although these scientists think that this particular mammoth might not have died 150 miles off the coast.
But instead they think that maybe its bones might have been pushed around by the current for a few thousand years and then just kind of settled where they found it.
Well, Detective Guy Raz?
Nope, that's not my detective voice.
Well, Detective Guy Raz, it looks like we have another mystery solved.
Nice work, partner.
Thanks, Mindy.
Say, we should write back to these researchers and congratulate them on their find.
Oh, yeah.
Good idea, Guy Raz.
On my brand new typewriter.
I just got the keys oiled Mindy, and the new lever release is Oh, this letter is going to look so good.
Wow in the World will be right back.
Grown-ups, this message is for you. grown-ups it's mindy and guy ross here from wow in the world mindy and i have some brand new wow in the world toys out in the world just in time for the holidays made for the kids who love science and for the ones who don't yet from our 100 experiments that wow kit to the telescope and astronomy kit our wow in the world toys help your wowser learn about their world through play play You can hear exclusive audio content from me and Guy Raz to help your wowzer discover even more wows.
Grownups.
Give the gift of wow and wonder this holiday season with our latest Wow in the World toys designed with your curious wowzer in mind.
You can shop our Wow in the World toys at Tinkercast.com slash toys.
That's Tinkercast.com slash toys.
My name is Mac, and I live in Louisville, Kentucky, and I'm nine.
And my wow in the world is that babies have more bones than grown adults.
Isn't that so cool?
Hi, Mindy and Guy Raz.
My name's Ava, and I'm from New York.
And my wow in my world is that roller coaster rides can cause your internal organs to move around in your body.
Say hi to Grandma G-Force, Reggie, and Dennis for me.
Say what?
Howdy.
Hello, my name is Felix and I live in Idaho.
I'm seven years old and giant panda bears poop 40 pounds per day.
That's my wow.
And say hello to Dennis with P.S.
He is static man.
Yes.
Hi, my name is Guy Ross.
My name is Quacking from Rockville, Maryland.
And my wow is the slingshot spider. could accelerate a hundred times faster than a cheetah.
Hi, I'm Annika, and I'm nine years old.
I live in Dallas, Texas, and my wow is that a chef's hat, called a toque, has a hundred soles.
These are supposed to represent all the ways to cook an egg.
Say hi to Grandma G-Force.
Ah, hush puppies.
Reggie.
And Thomas Fingerling.
Ah, heavens.
Oh yeah, and Dennis.
Hi there.
Stop pooping.
My name is Henry.
I live in Oklahoma.
My wow is that... Did you know that fossils from an older time period live deeper inside the Earth?
Okay, thanks.
Bye.
Hi, Mindy and Kairos.
My name is Iggy, and I am six years old from Libertyville.
My wow is that there is 195 countries in the world, including Vatican City and the state of Palestine, which are observer states.
Bye, Mindy and Guy Raz.
I love you so.
Hello, my name is Gia.
I live in Korea.
Am I wrong in the world that octopuses can change color?
Say hi to Gamma G-Force.
Oh, isn't that nice?
I promise I'm going.
And read it for me.
And please, Gamma G-Force, don't say say what.
Say what?
Gee, first.
Oh, sorry.
Hi, my name is Sinan, and I'm from Brooklyn, New York.
And my wow is that avocados are toxic to most birds.
Say hi to everyone for me.
Bye.
Be careful out there, Reggie.
End of messages.
Wow in the World is written by Mindy Thomas and Tom Van Kalken with help from me, Guy Raz.
Original sound design and music editing is done by our senior producer Jed Anderson and Tyler Thull.
You can also hear Jed Anderson in the voices of Dennis Thomas Fingerling, Reggie and and many of the other silly characters you hear on our show.
Jessica Bode keeps our facts straight as our fact checker and Meredith Halpern-Ranzer powers the wow at Tinkercast.
Our theme song was composed and performed by three-time Grammy nominees, The Pop-Ups.
Find them at thepopups.com.
Special thanks to the rest of our team of tinkerers, including Anna Zagorski, Rebecca Caban, Kit Ballinger and Henry Moskal.
To keep the wows rolling, visit us at tinkercast.com.
There you can learn more about becoming an official member of the World Organization of Wowzers.
Learn more about upcoming events.
Shop our shop and pick up a copy of our new number one New York Times bestselling book, The How and Wow of the Human Body.
Grownups, you can follow Wow in the World on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Wow in the World.
And our email address is hello.wow. at Tinkercast.com.
And if you're a kid with a big wow to share with us, call us at 1-888-7-WOW-WOW for a chance to be featured at the end of our show or an upcoming episode of Two What's and a Wow.
Thanks again for listening and until next time, be fun wowing!
Wow in the world was made by Tinkercast. and sent to you by Wondery.
