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Proceeded, three, two, one, ignition. and running on a pressure of 90% proportion.
We're in a golden age. So many discoveries that are jumping off the page.
Wow. Right away, Houston. All right, just going to turn these lamps on here.
Ooh! Yeah, that looks good. And that should do it.
Okay, Mindy, I think we've got the mood all right.
All set to welcome Grandma G-Force back home from her week of gentleness training.
Wow. Her diaper house has never felt this calm.
Yeah, even her cat landlord, Colonel Toots Thunderpaw, agrees.
Don't you, Colonel Toots? Okay, so let's see.
Now, what all did we do to make it feel so nice and calm in here?
It's usually pretty chaotic. Well, for one, we replaced all of our flashing strobe lights with warm, soft... energy-saving light bulbs.
Aw, I liked the strobe lights. And then we painted the diaper walls a relaxing, neutral color.
Ooh, is that beige or gray? Actually, it's called greige.
I picked it. And we also added some nature, you know, green plants and flowers.
Wow, they smell good. And speaking of smells, We also cleaned out Colonel Toot's litter box and put out a couple of essential oil diffusers.
Ooh, lavender. We also hung some chimes.
And we created this comfy little zen corner. with a cozy floor cushion, perfect for her to sit in when she needs a place to calm down.
So we made her a timeout corner. Yeah, I guess you could call it that.
Well, I'd say we thought of everything, Guy Raz.
It's gonna be impossible for Grandma G-Force to be anything but gentle when she comes home to her relaxing diaper house.
Can anyone tell me why Grandma G-Force had to go to gentleness training in the first place?
Oh, yeah. Well, if I'm not mistaken, I think it had something to do with getting in trouble for taking a Zamboni of the ice arena and driving it through a construction site.
Uh-huh. She said the construction was in her way.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And she also drove the Zamboni over a bunch of road signs while yelling, don't tell me what to do.
Aha, so a judge ordered her to go to gentleness training to help her handle problems. problems a little more, uh, gently.
So in order to set her up for success, We decided to make her home a place where it's easier for her to feel calm and gentle.
All right, well, I hope it works. I can see Grandma G-Force and Thomas Fingerling through the window right now.
Let me see. Wow, look how calm she looks.
So light on her feet. She's barely even stomping on the pavement.
It's almost like she doesn't want to hurt it or something.
So dumb. gentle, so graceful, like an old wrestling hot pepper smacking ballerina.
All right. When we get to my dapper house, you're gonna give them a bath.
And I'm gonna sing him a song. Oh, I wanna sing him a song.
No! Okay, fine. Wait, it looks like she's holding something.
What is that? Something wrapped in a... Uh, a tiny blanket?
And tucked away in a tiny basket? You're jostling him, finger.
Ooh, it looks like they're walking up to the house now.
Wait, why is Grandma G-Force knocking at her own door?
What in the World Wide Web? Dennis, no. This is not a surprise party.
Ah. Grandma, cheese! Welcome home from gentleness training.
One. Uh, what? I said, line, Fingerling.
Line, right. Uh, let me check the gentleness training manual here.
Uh, the line is... Thank you. It is so lovely to see you.
I do not want to say that. So, how was gentleness training, Grandma G-Force?
Tell us everything. Yeah, did you learn how to not lay the smack down on innocent dentists by running them over with your shopping cart when you're mad at them?
Or how not to stomp on people's flower gardens when the tulips look too cheerful?
Or how to not splash people walking through the mall when you're diving for coins in the fountain and stuffing them into your wrestling unitard?
Even though security keeps asking you to please stop doing that because you're stealing people's wishes?
No, no, and no. No! But what I did learn at gentleness school was how to not break a baby.
Okay? Gently show them the baby, G-Force.
Baby? What baby? Is there a baby in the basket you're holding?
Oh, I love babies. Let me see, let me see, let me see.
Gentle, he sleeps. even though his little googly eyes won't shut.
Here, let's just gently remove the little baby blanket a bit.
So then you can take a look. Wait, the baby blanket is a pancake?
Hush, boy. Gonna wake him up. There he is.
Oh, look at him. So cute, I could just scramble.
I mean, snuggle him up. Do not do that. And he's got your shell, Granny G.
Well, I guess he does. Uh, I'm sorry, is that...
An egg? Not just any old egg rice. This here is Agbert Benedict Cumberhatch III.
He's a wealthy baby. Ah, prosperous family.
Yeah, that sounds rich. Old money. Regal.
He was born weighing 1.75 pounds. five ounces, and exactly five and a half centimeters long.
I adopted him at gentleness school. Why?
But also why? I don't know. I was forced to do it.
Wait. Wait a minute. I think I know the answer to this.
You do? I do. This egg baby must have been given to Grandma G-Force as a test to see how gentle she can be.
I don't get it. Yeah, me neither. Well, eggs are very fragile, right?
And the only thing protecting what's inside from the rest of the world is a thin shell.
Wow. And to know if Grandma G-Force's gentleness training actually worked or not, she was probably given this egg baby as a test. a test to see how long she could go without breaking it.
And that... The judge down at the court says I gotta keep this egg alive for a whole week or else I gotta go back and learn how to be gentle all over. over again.
Well, I would just like to say that little Egbert here is the cutest little egg I have ever seen.
Can he do any tricks? Here, let me pick them up and then drop them on the table there so you you can watch them roll over. to see him roll over?
Gee, Forrest, you can't drop sweet baby Egbert on the table.
You gotta... Hold them upright and support the neck.
Don't you not know nothin' about Egg Baby's Fingerling?
You gotta put it to sleep on its side when you drop it, else or it'll open. and all its guts are gonna spill out all over the place.
Everyone knows that an egg baby is strongest on the top of its head and its little bottom there.
So if you're gonna drop it on the table, that's the only way you wanna do it.
Straight up and down. A vertical drop of the baby.
False. You do not know nothing about dropping eggs.
Baby's fingerling, how about as I drop you on your head like a... Okay!
Okay, okay. No one in this diaper house is dropping anyone or anything. thing on its head.
We're keeping our hands to ourselves and focusing on not breaking Grandma G-Force's egg baby, okay?
Yes, ma'am! and they quit yelling. You're gonna wake up Yeah!
Keep the volume down! Yeah! It seems to me like the gentleness training is beginning to wear off.
Yes. Mindy, I have a question. Quiet. What did I say about volume?
Oh, sorry. Mindy, I have a question. Yes, Dennis.
When I was a young schoolboy, teacher had us drop eggs out of the window when who's ever eggs survived got rewarded by getting to take the egg home and hide it under their bed pillow until eight months later when mother finds it because it's rotting and smells Like a dead rat.
Okay, that is not a question, Dennis. But that does actually remind me of something.
Yeah? Yeah, when I was in school, we used to experiment. with dropping eggs by wrapping them in all sorts of things like cotton balls and Wads of tape and bubble wrap, even a banana peel.
Why? Well, because. It was an experiment to help us learn about physics, you know, Things like gravity and force and impact and how things fall.
And also engineering by designing ways to protect the eggs from breaking when they fell.
And experimenting like this helped us to learn.
Or we could learn by just dropping Eggbert here on his little egg head.
What? and watch his little gut spill out all over the everywheres.
The rules are you always drop a baby on its side.
Everybody already know that. Come here, Eggbert.
Wait! What? This just reminded me of a new study I just read in the scientific journal Physics Communications.
You should not be reading people's journals, Mindy.
That is private. No, no, hear me out. You see, these researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or...
MIT had a big wonder. They wondered whether an egg is less likely to break if it lands standing up on its head or lying down on its side when it falls.
Really? What were the results? Well, I could tell you...
What? But I'd rather show you. Mindy, you're not going to.
Now, where's little Egbert? Let's see. Uh, where'd he go?
Oh, no! He's missing! That's strange. He was just here.
G-Force, where's the egg? He's under my butt.
What? You're sitting on the egg? Oh, I get it.
Like a babysitter. Chief Force, get off the egg.
You're not a chicken. I do not. know why chickens is the only ones that gets to sit on the edge okay grandma g force Please pass me the egg, baby.
Fine. Ugh. But don't break it, or else I gotta go back to gentleness school.
Here you go, little egg bird. Thank you.
So as I was saying, the researchers at MIT wanted to find out if a false egg is less likely to break when it lands on its top or bottom, or on its side.
Wait a minute, Mindy. I think I read this too.
Is this the one where the researchers gathered 200 eggs and then crushed some of them in a device that allowed them to see the exact amount of force they needed to crack their shells?
Yes, that's the one. And to study this, when they put the eggs in the device, some on their sides, and some standing straight up.
Tragic loss of so many innocent egg babies.
It's okay, after the experiment, the researchers fed the broken egg babies to their dogs.
True story. Okay, let's redo the experiment.
Give me a little leg burp here. I'll put him in a headlock.
What? For science! Well, we don't need to perform that part of the experiment, Grandma Geforce.
We don't? No. The researchers discovered that it didn't matter whether the eggs were laying down on their sides or sitting straight up. the amount of force needed to crack their shells was all the same.
So, me and G-Force were both right? Well, I guess you could say you were both right, and you were also...
Also both wrong. I do not know how to feel about that.
So, the next step of this experiment was to drop the eggs.
And they dropped some of the eggs from teeny tiny heights, like only eight millimeters or so.
Hello? Okay, are you ready, Egbert? I'm just gonna drop you from a teeny tiny...
Hi. Oh, careful now, Mandy. Ready? One, two, three, and drop.
Hooray! Okay, now give them here, Fingerling.
Where's the little pancake? Boinky. Here you are, Egbert.
Let's get you all wrapped up like a little breakfast baby.
So, Mindy. Did all the eggs that were dropped from the teeny tiny heights survive?
Is the trick just not to drop them too far?
Actually, Dennis, some of the eggs dropped from the teeny tiny heights did break.
What? You could have broke my baby Egbert while I got him.
Now, GeForce, be gentle. Well, okay. Uh, the line is, please do not break my egg.
Thank you. Please do not break my baby Egbert.
Else I'll throw your TV into a river. Actually, Grandma G-Force, Mindy knew exactly what she was doing.
She wasn't going to break baby Egbert. Whatever.
How did Mindy know she wasn't going to break baby Egbert?
What happened next in the science experiment?
Well, next, the researchers dropped more eggs, but this time from much higher heights.
And some survived? Well, not exactly. Ah, how many broke?
Whoa, heavens! They all broke? No matter which way they landed?
Exactly. it didn't matter whether the eggs landed on their sides or on their pointy tops or bottoms.
From too high of a height, all the eggs broke.
There. How come some of the eggs dropped from the teeny tiny heights survived?
Well, that's a great question, Dennis. Thank you.
The researchers wondered the same thing, so they went back and looked at video footage of all the eggs that survived the teeny tiny drop.
And when they played back the video in slow motion, that the surviving eggs mostly shared one very important thing in common.
They all like the same movies? What? No.
Oh. What they discovered Was that almost all of the surviving eggs?
Yes! There were eggs that had fallen. Yeah! were eggs that had fallen on their sides.
Oh, yeah. I was right. I'm the best at dropping eggs and taking names.
Well, Mandy and Mr. Rozzy... You better have yourselves a good explanation for this.
Actually, we do, or the researchers who study this do at least.
See, what they found when they took a slow, close-up look at the eggs as they fell was that when the fog If falling eggs hit the hard surface, the ones that landed on their sides would bend a little bit. even squish a bit in order to absorb or soften the impact.
But when the eggs landed on their pointy or round ends, The shell at those points was much more stiff, less likely to bend and squish, and more likely to crack.
That reminds me of that time Fingerling and me fell out the window.
You did? It was a low window. And a drive-thru restaurant.
A fingerling over here landed stiff as a board.
And G-Force went all floppy. That's right I did.
All floppy. Just scanning guts. Then what happened?
Did one of you handle the fall better than the other?
Well, it wasn't so bad, except for when all my bones crunched up and popped out of my body.
What? But not me. Not all floppy boneless G-Force.
I just bounced a little. and went right back to fall out of that window again.
Oh, that's right. You did. Well, what you describe with your bodies is the same thing that these scientists discovered with their eggs. egg drop experiment.
When something or someone falls, the more stiff and rigid it is, the more likely it is to break.
Whereas the more flexible something is, the less likely it is to break.
In other words, for us humans, if we find ourselves falling, It's best to let our knees and elbows and bendy parts bend to better absorb the impact of the fall. because being too stiff and rigid could cause some serious bone breakage.
Or poppage. Well, okay, that settles it.
The best way to keep an egg baby from cracking its guts out is to land it on its side.
Well, more often than not, anyway. And only from very short distances.
Well, that's wonderful. Who's ready to throw baby Egbert off the roof?
Okay, fine, we'll just throw fingerling off the roof.
Only if you put me back together again. Okay, Mindy.
Better go start your ice cream truck. Somebody is going back to gentleness training.
Who? Wow in the World will be right back.
Grownups, this message is for you. That's it.
Back to the show. Hi! Thanks for calling WoW in the World!
After the beep, get ready to record! Hello Mindy, I'm Guy Ross.
My name is Victor. I'm seven years old. I live in France, and my...
Well, in the world, there are earthquakes every day, but they are so small that we can't even feel them.
Hi, my name is Kylie and I'm six years old.
I live in Silver Spring, Maryland And my wow in the world is that giant clams have... hundreds of little tiny pinhole eyes around the edge of their shell.
The eyes can detect shadows and light for danger.
Bye-bye. Hi, my name is Killian and I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina.
My biggest wow is that deserts don't have to be hot. that the largest desert in the world is Antarctica.
Hi, Mindy and Guy Ross. My name is Lily and I am from Allentown, Pennsylvania.
And my law of the world is gravity. Did you know that gravity Gravity is why the planets are round.
Hi, my name is Parker, and I'm from Santa Barbara, California.
And I'm eight years old. And my vow in the world is that a shrimp's heart is located in its head.
Bye. Say hi to Reggie for me. Hi, Kairos and Mindy.
My name is Sienna and I'm 10 years old and I'm from Davis, California.
My super cool scientific fact is that snails can sleep for three entire years.
That's a long nap. Bye, Guy Raz and Mindy.
I love your show. Hi, Mindy and Guy Raz.
Hey, Dennis. Hi there. My name is Sahana and I am seven years old and I live in Fairfax Station, Virginia.
My wow is that if you could drive straight up it would take about an hour to drive to space I love your show End of messages.
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Once again, that's Tinkercast.com. Wow in the World is written by Mindy Thomas and Tom Van Kelken. with contributions from me, Guy Raz.
Original sound design and music editing is done by Tyler Thull, with help from our senior production director, Jed Anderson.
You can also hear Jed Anderson in the voices of Dennis, Thomas Fingerling, Reggie, 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 the popups.com special thanks to our team including kit ballinger rebecca caban dr natasha crandall Kenny Curtis, Kristen Yang, Thuy Mac, Erica Medina, Henry Moskal, Jodi Nussbaum, Ali Paksima,
Linda Rothenberg, Steph Sosa, Anna Zagorski, and all of the other tinkerers at Tinkercast HQ.
Grownups, you can follow WOW in the World on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at wowintheworld And our email address is hello at Tinkercast.com.
Thanks for listening. Find episodes of Wow in the World every Monday to What's in a Wow every Friday.
And we wow on the weekends with Dennis every Saturday and Sunday right here in the Wow in the World podcast feed.
Until then, keep on wowing. Wow in the World was made by Tinkercast and sent to you by Wondery.
