Grownups, Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Wow in the World early and ad-free right now.
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or Wondery Kids Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Hey, Wowzer fans, Mindy here.
And before we start the show, I got to 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!
Thank you. away upon that breath, up, up, up, gently twirling amongst the moonbeams.
Oh, look, the moon waves to you knowingly like an old neighbor.
Wave back now.
Hello, moon.
Hello, to the bathroom, brush my teeth.
Time to get dressed.
Call my buddy Guy Raz to make sure he's awake.
Dial, dial, dial, dial, dial.
Uh, hello? the night you call it the middle of the night i call it three o'clock in the morning and you know what day it is um i don't know is it your birthday nope is it my birthday nope oh no is it reggie's taekwondo and tap dancing recital is that today what That's not even until next month.
Oh, by the way, I signed you up to be the stage mom.
But I'm not even... Guy Raz, today is Thumb Wars Day at the Knuckle Hut.
Guy Raz, you there?
Did I lose you?
What?
Mindy, I'm going back to bed.
What?
No, there's no time.
We need to get there early if we want good seats.
Grandma G-Force is competing.
Wait, Grandma G-Force is a professional...
Thumb wrestler.
Among other things, yes.
Well, I guess I gotta see this.
What time are we leaving, Mindy?
Oh, well, I'm ready now.
Of course you are.
All right.
Well, I still need to brush my teeth.
Do my calisthenics routine.
The five Tibetans my juice cleanse my morning meditation.
I've gotta get dressed.
Wait, don't get dressed.
What?
I've got something perfect picked out for you to wear.
Mindy, I'm not... Be right over.
I'm coming!
I'm coming!
Ta-da!
What are you wearing?
I made us thumb war costumes out of foam.
You're dressed as a giant foam hand?
Well, a giant foam right hand.
You're going to be the giant foam left hand.
Here!
Oh, no.
No, no.
No way.
I am not.
Now, let me just pull it over your head here.
Ah!
Mindy!
Hold your breath.
Could you stop wiggling so much?
Hey, still, I'm gonna... Here we go.
There.
Aw, don't you look cute.
Where's my full-length mirror?
Mindy, I have no peripheral vision in this thing.
Oh, be careful when you turn around and walk.
You might... Everything over.
Okay.
Oh, hey, you know, Mindy, now that I see myself in the mirror, I don't look half bad.
Guy Raz, you look like a high five.
Did you just body slam me?
What was that for?
I gave you a full body hand suit to hand suit high five.
Why do I feel like this is going to be the longest day of my life?
Oh, well, probably because it's going to be the longest day of your life.
Oh, right.
Starting at 3 a.m.
Oh, ready to go?
Nope.
Reggie!
Reggie, did you swoop in here wearing a sleeping mask?
Oh, no.
He's been doing that a lot lately.
Doing what?
Sleep sailing through the air.
Is that safe?
Yes, of course it's not safe, Guy Raz.
Now just gently tickle him awake, okay?
Okay.
Wake up, Reggie.
Early bird gets the worm.
Good morning, Reg.
We need you to give us a quick ride to the knuckle hut.
Yes, you can make a pit stop at the seed shack once you drop us off.
What on earth are we wearing?
Oh, these are just giant foam hand suits that I made for us.
I made them for Grandma G-Force's thumb war today.
A high five?
Oh, no.
Sure, Guy Raz loves a good high five.
Wow, Guy Raz, you must be as light as a feather.
He just knocked me over with his talon.
Oh, Reggie says high five.
Let's just go, Mindy.
After you.
Hey, guys, give me a boost and then I'll turn around and pull you up.
It's hard to move in this giant foam hand suit.
Okay.
Thanks, buddy.
Okay, your turn.
Okay, all set?
No.
Did you say go?
No!
Okey-doke.
Here we go!
Thanks, Reg.
You want to stick around?
Oh, early bird special at the seed shack.
Okay, just head back over here when you're finished.
Wait, the knuckle hut is a diner?
Yeah, it's been here since the 1950s.
And what's that creepy hand statue coming out of the ground?
Oh, so that's a giant sculpture modeled after the left hand of the original owner, Thomas Fingerling.
In fact, it's an exact replica, insides and all.
Some say that when he cracked his knuckles, you could hear it from 40 miles away.
Yeesh.
You want to go inside?
The diner?
Yeah, I'm starving.
I wonder if they've got some fermented mung beans.
We'll get to the diner later.
First, I think we need to find out what's going on inside that hand.
You want to go inside that giant hand?
Uh-huh.
Dressed like giant hands?
Yes.
But don't you want to at least say hi to your Grandma G-Force first?
No.
But she's your grandma.
Guy Raz, Grandma G-Force isn't even going to get here until 14 hours from now.
The thumb war starts at like 8 p.m.
Mindy, you dragged me here at 3 a.m.?
Follow me, Guy Raz.
Waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle.
Is it just you, Guy Raz, or am I sweating?
You know, you'd think foam would be a little more breathable than this.
Okay, brace yourself, Guy Raz, because I'm going to open the door on this giant, creepy hand.
Hello?
Anyone in this hand?
Mindy, why is it so dark inside here?
Wait, are those real bones?
27 bones, to be exact.
What?
Who said that?
My name, young lady, is Thomas Fingerling.
Welcome to my hand.
You're still alive?
Eh, more or less.
I see you two are dressed in the traditional hand suit.
Ooh, is this some sort of high-density open-cell polyurethane?
Thank you for noticing.
Made them myself.
Um, see...
My name is Mindy, and this here is my little buddy Guy Raz.
And we came out this way to see my grandma G-Force compete in the Knuckle Hut's annual thumb war.
But then we couldn't help but notice this giant hand replica sculpture thingy and we thought we'd stop in to check it out.
Well, that's right, curious of you.
I don't get too many visitors around these days.
Not since the invention of the... internet superhighway!
Ugh, the interwebs, am I right?
Wait, what?
Long ago, knuckle-cracking enthusiasts from around the globe would come to witness my signature popping nook chuck performance.
Your what?
He said his signature popping nook chuck.
I heard what he said, Guy Raz.
So, Thomas Fingerling, what happened exactly?
Well, like I said, once the internet came, along with their WWWs and their Netscape Navigators, people moved on to other forms of so-called entertainment.
You're saying that people used to come here to watch you crack your knuckles for entertainment?
Don't sass me, young lady.
And yes, but all these yahoos and dot com bubbles came along and took my audience.
Now it's all MewTube videos of Cats and hamburger buns or what have you.
Oh yeah, did you see the one where the cat was wearing a little blueberry pancake beret and roller skating past the Eiffel Tower in Paris?
You gotta see this.
Here, I'll pull it up on my phone.
You are not gonna believe this.
It is so cute.
So let me get this straight.
What you're saying, Mr Fingerling, is that knuckle cracking isn't drawing the same crowds that it was back in the 1950s.
Yeah, so no one is super impressed by knuckle cracking anymore?
I'm afraid not, young lady.
Hey, who you calling a lady?
Well, Mr. Fingerling, we're here now.
Maybe you can show us around your giant hand replica and we can talk knuckles for a while.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
And maybe for the grand finale, you can perform your signature popping nut chuck for us.
Well, I suppose I still got a little pop left in the old nuts.
That would be amazing.
Woo-hoo!
Yay!
Woo-hoo! to be awesome!
All right, all right.
Let's see here.
We got two tickets to the tour, plus the IMAX video, a refillable sippy cup and the Nuck Chuck performance.
That'll be $75.92.
Oh, hey!
92!
That's my age.
I'm sorry.
Did you say?
92 years young, by gum.
No, I mean the price of tickets.
$75?
I got this, Guy Raz.
Hey, where'd you get my wallet?
And A little sleight of hand trick I've been working on.
20, 40, 60, 75 dollars.
Here you go, Thomas Fingerling.
Two tickets, please.
Thank you for your business.
And, well, gosh, I'm just so happy.
No one's stopped by here in over 30 years.
Between you and me, people tend to find this place a little bit creepy.
So, uh, where do we begin?
Oh, I suppose...
Bose, wherever you want.
Feel free to have a look around.
I'll just be napping up in the thumb over there.
Napping?
What about the tour?
Gadzooks!
What do you think this is, a haberdashery?
It's self-guided.
Now you two kids have fun.
Self-guided?
Seventy-five bucks?
Don't worry, Guy Raz.
I got this.
The last time you said that, you stole my wallet, Mindy.
No, really.
Half the reason I even wanted to visit the inside of this weird hand sculpture anyway is because I just read this new research on knuckles and I wanted to get a close-up experience of what it's like when we crack them.
You dragged me all the way out here, for So to begin the tour.
Guy Raz, I'd like for you to pull my finger.
Oh, no.
Pull my finger, Guy Raz.
Nope.
Pull it.
Ugh, fine.
Whoops!
Mindy!
Sorry, wrong finger.
Here, try this one.
Mindy, I'm not... Okay, I'll do it.
Watch and learn.
Ah, did you snap it off, Mindy?
Nope.
That was the sound of me cracking my knuckle.
Here, want me to do it again?
No, I... Okay.
Mindy, I'm not sure it's supposed to sound like that.
So, you might be wondering to yourself, Mindy, what makes our knuckles crack like that?
Uh...
Mindy, what makes our knuckles crack like that?
Walk with me, Guy Raz, as we climb that super tall ladder over there to the pointer finger.
And there we will find the answer.
Are you sure that ladder is safe to climb?
Yes, of course I'm not sure it's safe to climb, Guy Raz.
You go first.
Ugh.
Climb, climb, climb, climb, climb, climb, climb.
Whoa.
Look at that, Mindy.
Look where the bones of the finger meet the rest of the hand.
That's the knuckle.
And there's a little lake inside of it.
Oh, yeah.
That's the lake of synovial fluid.
Want to take a dip?
I don't think that's a good idea, Mindy.
There's a sign here that says this lake is full of gas.
Yep.
This lake of synovial fluid is full of tiny gas bubbles mostly made up of carbon dioxide.
But what's the purpose of the fluid in the first place?
Well, why don't you press that button over there and see what happens?
I don't know.
Guy Raz, the sign says press me and see what happens.
Okay.
Whoa.
Whoa.
The finger is moving, Mindy, and we're moving with it.
Guy Raz?
Check it out, the synovial lake of fluid is keeping the finger bones from grinding on each other.
Wow.
Now let's see what this lever does.
Maybe the finger bones are pulling away from each other.
Stop cranking, stop cranking.
Okay, now watch that pressure gauge to your right.
It appears that when the bones pull away from each other, there's a sudden drop in pressure in the middle of the knuckle or joint.
Yeah, and look, With the pressure drop, the gases are coming together and making new bubbles.
Mindy.
Mindy, could the popping of these bubbles be what's causing the popping sound in our knuckles?
Well, that's what some scientists thought for a long time.
But?
But other scientists were like, no dice.
Clearly the pop comes from the way the bubbles are formed.
And then they went back and forth on this for like a hundred years.
And you know Mindy, I once read that some of the earliest research on knuckle cracking, dating back to the 1900s, showed that not all joints were crackable.
Oh, yeah.
And that once you pop, you can't stop until you wait for at least 20 minutes first.
You can't pop the same knuckle more than once in a 20-minute period?
See for yourself what i mean.
So, mindy.
Earlier you'd mentioned some new research on knuckle cracking.
Oh yeah.
So this pair of researchers from the echo polytechnique in france.
They made a mathematical model to find out the truth of what's been causing the pop.
A mathematical model, yeah.
So basically they made this math video game that simulated what happens when our knuckles crack.
A mathematical video game.
That's my kind of video game.
And in this video game, they had a model of a knuckle with a bubble in it.
And then they cracked it over and over, and over and over again, listening carefully to the sound it made and how loud that sound was.
And then I'm guessing they compared that sound with the sound of actual people cracking their knuckles.
You got it.
They compared the sounds in this mathematical video game knuckle with the sounds of their own knuckles and the knuckles of a bunch of volunteers.
That must have sounded like a knuckle-popping party. imagine it.
And if I'm wrong, I don't want to be right.
So what did they find?
Well, what they found is that when they popped the bubbles on the video game, the bubbles made pretty much the same sounds as the popping knuckles make in real life.
So it is the popping of the bubbles after all.
Well, not so fast.
See, they also found that when the bubbles only started to collapse like less than halfway, but not pop completely, they still made the same sound.
So what does that mean?
So what this means is that the popping could have something to do with the way the bubbles are formed after all.
So I guess it's back to the knuckle hut for these researchers.
Speaking of knuckle hut, it's probably about time for Grandma G-Force's thumb war to begin.
I thought that wasn't for another 14 hours or so.
Guess time for Lies when you're popping these guys.
Mindy, stop.
You're going to give yourself arthritis.
Fake news.
What?
Who said that?
Kaira's Thomas Fingerling is right.
Huh?
Arthritis is a disease that keeps people's joints from working in the way they're supposed to.
And people with arthritis in their hands can have swelling or pain or stiffness in their joints and knuckles.
Yes, but?
But no studies have been able to show any connections between arthritis... and knuckle cracking.
Which means it's finger popping time.
It's what?
Let's head up to the Thumb War at the Knuckle Hut.
I've been preparing a grand finale you'll never forget.
Your signature popping nunchuck.
Oh, boy.
After you, Mr. Fingerling.
Oh, why, thank you, kind sir.
Hey, who you calling sir?
Just keep on moving, Mindy.
You calling me sir?
I'm a lady.
Whoa, this is thumb-believable.
This is a diner.
By the way, do you think we have time for me to order an einkorn and quinoa salad?
No time for that, Guy Raz.
Look, Grandma G-Force and her competitor are already in the ring.
Mindy, that's a corner booth in the diner.
I'm going to go put our names in for that table once they're finished with this whole thumb war thing.
Grandma G-Force, hi!
Grandma G-Force, it's me, Mindy, your granddaughter Mindy.
Hi, Grandma G-Force.
Look over here.
Over here, Grandma G-Force.
I don't think she can hear you, Mindy.
She looks like she's really in the zone.
Say, where did thumb wrestling come from anyway?
Oh, glad you asked.
As the legend would have it, it all started in the year 1936.
When a young lad who went by the name Julian Koenig got bored one day at summer camp.
And?
And that's it.
That's the legend.
Huh.
Our contestants for this round of Thumb Wars are Grandma G-Force and Thumbelina versus Sir Alexander Curley and the Thumber Takers.
Wait, but why are there four contestants?
Oh, that's because the Thumbs have their own wrestling names.
And faces.
And tiny hats.
What?
The rules for this match are as follows.
Number one, elbows must be kept on the table at all times.
And number two, fingernails must be trimmed to tiny nubs.
Yikes!
Sixty seconds are on the clock.
It's time for the Wild Thumb War showdown to throw down!
Or, I love it.
Wow in the World will be right back.
Grownups, this message is for you.
Hey, grownups.
It's Mindy and Guy Raz 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 wowzer learn about their world through play.
Plus, 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.
Hi, thanks for calling Wow in the World.
After the beep, get ready to record.
Hi, Mindy, Guy, Ron, and Reggie.
My name is Hannah.
I'm 11 years old, and I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina.
My Wow in the World is that Uranus rotates unlike any other planet in our solar system.
Scientists think that Uranus was hit by a meteor to tilt it over, and that's why Uranus was hit counterclockwise like a wheel.
I love your show.
Bye.
My name's Alex and I'm four years old and I am from Hyman Park, New Jersey, and my realm of the world is that black hole can burn.
And I would live in Hawaii.
And my wow in the world is that you can see the eruption from the big island all the way from outer space.
Aloha.
Hi, my name is Edie, and I'm from Mount Lake Terrace.
And my wow in the world is that clouded leopards are the oldest cat species alive.
Hi, Mindy.
Hi, Guy Raz.
My name is Maya.
I'm six years old, and I live in Southern California.
My wow in the world is that nitrogen gas is what makes the sky blue.
I love your show.
Have a funny day.
Bye.
Hey, Mindy.
Hey, Guy Raz.
Hey, Reggie.
I'm Leo from Salt Lake City, Utah.
And my wow in the world is that scientists believe cats learned hissing from snakes.
Love your show.
Bye.
Hi.
My name is Emily.
I'm from Austin, Texas.
And I'm six years old.
And my wow in the world is that the ancient Egyptians thought that the brain was of importance.
Hi, my name is Ben and I live in New York City.
And I am six years old.
And my wow in the world is that the sink was made of one piece of limestone.
Bye.
I love your show.
End of messages.
And if you want to keep the conversation going, check out some of the questions we've posted on this episode at our website, wowintheworldcom.
And grownups.
There you can find more details on how your kids can become part of the World Organization of Wowzers.
Lots of cool perks, exclusive t-shirts, autographed pictures of us and a bunch of other cool stuff wowintheworldcom.
Our show is produced by Jed Anderson.
Say hello, Jed.
Hello.
With help from Thomas Van Kalken, Chelsea Erson, and Jessica Bode.
Meredith Halpern-Ranzer is the big boss.
Our theme song was composed and performed by The Pop-Ups.
You can find more of their awesome all-ages music at thepopups.com.
And parents and teachers.
If you want to send us an email, our address is hello at wowintheworldcom.
Grownups, you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at WowInTheWorld.
And if you want to be featured at the end of the show, call us up and tell us your wow in the world.
Our phone number is 1-888-7WOWWOW.
That's 1-888-7WOWWOW.
And if you haven't already done so, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or however you get your podcasts.
Leave us a few stars and a review and be sure to tell a friend about the show.
Until next time, keep on wowing.
Wow in the world.
And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
