Happy birthday to us.
That's right.
Who Smarted turned five years old this month.
How exciting.
That's not all.
Who Smarted also reached 25 million downloads.
And that's because of you, our Smarty Pants listeners.
And to celebrate, we want to give you a gift.
What is this gift, you're wondering?
I'm glad you asked.
If you love Who Smarted, I'm sure you've heard us mention our Who Smarted Plus subscription.
You know, the one that gives you a brand new bonus episode every week.
Plus, every episode of Who Smarted, trusty trivia, and smarty cues ad-free.
Not to mention subscribers, directly support Who Smarted so we can keep making the show for many more years to come.
And to show our appreciation to you, we're offering a 50% discount on our annual subscription.
We've never done this before.
Instead of 3999 for a full year of smarting, you can subscribe to Who Smarted Plus for just 1998, a year.
That's right.
Who Smarted Plus is half off?
Quick quiz, smarty pants.
Is $19.98 a year the same as A, $1.67 a month, B, $0.38 a week, or C, a nickel a day?
Did you say all of the above?
You're right.
Just think of all the time you'll save not listening to ads while enjoying subscriber-only special episodes.
That's got to be worth at least $0.05 a day, right?
Of course, an offer this good can't last forever.
So you must subscribe by November 15th to lock in your 50% off Who Smarted Plus subscription.
Again, that's 50 off our Who Smarted Plus subscription just 1998 for the entire year by November 15th.
To join the celebration, go to our website, whosmarted.com and click birthday subscribe.
This offer is only available directly through our website at whosmarted.com.
Don't worry, you can play your subscription on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcast platform.
But to get the special birthday price you have to go to whosmartedcom and click birthday subscribe in the top menu.
But remember, you only have until November 15th.
So sign up at whosmarted.com today.
And now it's time for Who Smarted?
Hey, smarty pants, I'm about to go on a trip.
Listen to the following sounds and see if you can guess what kind of vehicle I'll be traveling in.
Is it A, a car, B, a boat, C, a train, or D, an airplane?
Attention passengers.
Please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full and upright positions for takeoff.
Did you say an airplane?
That was easy, right?
And when it comes to going long distances, airplanes are one of the most popular ways to travel.
In fact, worldwide, nearly 10 million people board over 100,000 flights every single day.
But have you ever wondered how the airplane was invented?
Or how something so big and heavy can fly at all?
And why do you crave peanuts or potato chips while you're cruising at 30,000 feet?
It's time for another whiff of history and science on... Who Smarted?
Who Smarted?
Who's smart?
Is it you?
Is it me?
Is it science or history?
Listen up, everyone.
We make smarting lots of fun on Who's Smart?
Captain Crew, prepare for landing.
Thank you.
Thank you for flying Smarty Pants Airlines.
Ah, travel.
It's one of my favorite things to do.
I can hop on a plane and be in a completely different country or time zone in a matter of hours.
Once I'm at my destination, I get to see all kinds of cool sights, taste exotic cuisines or just local pizza.
Pizza!
Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.
And I get to visit friends and family around the world.
It's easy to take it for granted, but it's pretty great that you and I get to live in a time where traveling is not only easy but also fun and affordable.
This was not always the case.
Huh?
Way back in 1900, if you wanted to get anywhere, you had to either walk.
So slow.
Boring.
Ride a horse.
He is smelly.
My butt hurts.
Take a boat.
This is taking forever.
I'm getting seasick.
Take a train.
So loud.
So dirty. or hop on a relatively new invention sweeping the planet, the bicycle.
Whee!
But also slow.
However, everything was about to change and it was actually two brothers working in a bike shop who would take traveling to completely new heights.
It's 1900 and Wilbur Wright and his younger brother Orville, have just arrived in the coastal town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
They left behind their own successful bike shop in Dayton Ohio, where they first sold and then started making their own bicycles.
But why Kitty Hawk?
Say, Wilbur, the oceanside dunes here at Kitty Hawk are the perfect place for our new experiments.
Quite right, little brother.
The regular breezes and soft sandy landing surfaces should be perfect for our studies in how to build a flying machine.
That's right.
The Wright brothers put bike-making aside in order to experiment with machines that flew.
They first conducted tests with kites before experimenting with gliders, which are like planes, only without engines.
Then, after three years of trial and error mostly error look out they were finally ready to move on to something much bigger.
An airplane.
Orville, I think this design with wooden propellers and a gasoline engine might finally take flight.
I agree, big brother.
We've had nothing but failure the past few weeks, but that extra fabric used to increase the stiffness of the wings might be the key we've been missing.
All right then, Orville.
You take the controls of the aircraft while I run alongside to balance the fragile machine as you glide down the guiding rail.
And then... The sky's the limit.
And they were right.
On the morning of December 17th 1903, the Wright Flyer 1 soared into the air, traveling an incredible distance of 120 feet.
But while that's not even half the distance of a football field...
It was a start.
Our first flight only lasted 12 seconds.
Yes, but if we keep at it, big brother, I know we can do better.
20 seconds?
Try 20 minutes.
Well, the Wright brothers were wrong.
On a following flight, they were able to keep their plane airborne for 40 minutes.
And once the Wright brothers showed it was possible to build a heavier-than-air machine that could take flight and stay in flight, other inventors around the world began designing their own airplanes.
This included Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont, whose aircraft flew 197 feet in 1906.
Soon, engineers and inventors were building planes based on these breakthrough designs, including a man in Seattle named William Boeing, whose company would go on to build some of the most popular planes ever made.
In fact, if you've ever flown on an airplane within the United States, say from New York to Miami or Chicago to Houston, there's a 90 chance it was on a Boeing airplane.
Hey, Smarty Pants, what do you think these early airplanes were made of?
Well, today's airplanes are made of titanium, steel, and aluminum.
Early airplanes were made of wood, wire and fabric, since designers believed they needed the lightest materials possible to stay in the air.
The planes were also small, and the only people who could fit inside were the pilot and co-pilot, and sometimes a few bags of mail.
But in the 1920s, William Boeing thought the future of travel was in the air, and he began experimenting with a radical new idea.
Planes with cabins for passengers.
He put two seats on one of his early designs, and it was really scary for the passengers.
This ride is really bumpy and cold and there's nothing to eat or drink, which might not be a bad thing, because there's no bathroom.
While today's air travel is relatively fun and comfortable, back then it was neither, and people were not interested in flying.
Then, in 1927, something happened to change everything.
This is Chet Nickerson reporting live from Paris, where Charles Lindbergh's plane, the Spirit of St.
Louis has just landed, making Lindbergh the first person to successfully fly across the Atlantic Ocean nonstop.
Oh, what a day for air travel.
What a day for humanity.
What a day for croissants.
Mmm, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
Delicious!
Lindbergh's flight was the number one news story across the globe, proving that airplane travel was safe and effective.
Soon, people everywhere wanted to fly in planes.
Two years after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, the number of annual airplane passengers went from a few thousand to over 173000.
This led to the birth of commercial airline companies like Delta, American, and United.
Thank you for flying Smarty Pants Airlines.
Over the years, plane makers began to switch from wood and wire designs to all-metal aircraft.
While many thought this idea was crazy, I'm not getting in that metal tube.
It's way too heavy to fly.
Engineers discovered the design of the wings, coupled with the power and speed of the engines, allowed heavier objects to take flight and stay airborne.
Here, I'll let this airplane designer explain.
A plane's engines are designed to move it forward at high speed.
We call that thrust.
Thrust makes air flow rapidly over specially curved wings, which pushes the air downward, generating an upward force, called lift, that is strong enough to overcome the plane's weight and keep it in the sky.
So to recap, the engines move the plane forward while the wings move it upward.
Thrust plus lift equals flight.
Can I get some more peanuts, please?
Once metal airplanes proved to work, it opened the gates for planes to not only get bigger and faster, but also more comfortable and therefore more popular, ushering in what became known as the golden age of air travel.
Welcome aboard the spacious cabin.
Attractively decorated, air-conditioned, but draft-free.
Delicious food adds to the enjoyment.
It's prepared in four simultaneously operating galleys, where dishes can be cooked in five-minute ovens.
Look, Wilbur, they have food on aeroplanes now.
What will they think of next, Orville?
There's been countless jokes about the quality and lack of quantity of airline food.
But did you ever stop to wonder why people get so hungry for certain foods like peanuts, chips and candy when they're flying?
Because they're bored.
Because they're trapped inside a flying metal tube?
Nope.
It's got to do with your nose.
And we'll tell you all about it right after this break.
This show is sponsored by Wayfair.
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Whosmarted is brought to you by Squarespace.
Now, you know I'm good about creating new adventures and episodes of Whosmarted, but you don't know that I procrastinate on other stuff, like a website for one of our new projects.
Oops.
When the website builder Squarespace reached out about sponsoring Whosmarted, I decided to test it out.
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That's squarespace.com slash smarted code smarted.
And now back to Who Smarted?
If you've ever been on an airplane, have you ever noticed that you or the people around you seem to crave certain foods?
In particular peanuts pretzels, chips and cookies seem to be very popular snacks for those flying the friendly skies.
What do you think, Wright Brothers?
I think it's because salty food tastes better when you're high up in the air.
I think it's because you get thirstier while flying.
Tastes better.
Thirstier.
Stop, stop.
In a way, you're both right.
Of course.
We're the Wright Brothers.
No, I meant both your answers are right.
In a 2010 study, scientists revealed that airline passengers' taste of salty and sweet foods is dulled by around 30 when you're in flight.
So, to balance out your weakening taste buds, you crave foods that are high in salt or sugar.
That's why, when the snack cart comes rolling down the aisle, many people go for options they might not typically want, while on the ground.
Salted nuts, chips, pretzels, or sugary cookies and soda.
But why do our tastes for salty and sweet things get dulled while flying?
Good question.
As planes climb higher into the sky, the air pressure and humidity levels inside the cabin drop.
Even though today's planes have pressurized cabins, The atmosphere is still significantly drier and the air pressure is much lower than on the ground.
So the combination of dry air and low pressure dry out your mouth and nose, reducing your sense of smell, which plays a key role in how you detect flavor and taste.
The dry air also makes you dehydrated or really really thirsty, which is why you should drink plenty of water when flying.
Out of this world.
Yes.
Oh, and speaking of out of this world, did you guys know that your invention not only led to big passenger planes and even military fighter jets, but also spaceships?
What in the world is a spaceship?
Well, it's basically a plane that flies out of this world and into space.
Back in the 1960s, at the height of people's love for airline travel, engineers around the world were racing to figure out how to take the principles of air travel and convert them into a rocket ship that could launch humans into space and onto the moon, which was accomplished a little over 65 years after your famous first flight.
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
So in a way, you Wright brothers didn't just fly the first piloted engine-powered airplane.
You created a whole new way for us to explore the universe.
We're going to need a lot of peanuts.
And cookies.
Where is that flight attendant?
A high-flying shout-out to Nico and Maggie in Portland, Oregon.
You said you love the characters and all the smarty sounds.
Well, so do we.
Thanks for smarting with us, smarty friends.
This episode Airplanes, was written by Jason Williams and voiced by.
Our associate producer is Max Kamaski.
The theme song is by Brian Baggage Handler Suarez, with lyrics written and performed by Adam Tex Davis.
Who Smarted? was created and produced by Adam Tex Davis and Jerry Colbert.
This is an Atomic Entertainment production.
