Hey, Wowzer fams, Mindy here.
And before we start the show, surprise!
If you are a member of our World Organization of Wowzers, allow me to introduce our mystery member t-shirts.
Grownups.
When you add a mystery t-shirt to your new membership order, we will randomly select one of our wow t-shirt designs and add it to your welcome kit.
It could be a design featuring Reggie, Dennis, or something totally bonker balls.
Reggie, I can't tell them which t-shirt they're going to get because that would ruin the surprise.
And there are even more surprises for our WOW members throughout the year.
Like our quarterly pitch and droppings being delivered in your mailbox from Reggie.
Plus birthday cards and access to members only events like listening parties.
Plus, every membership helps to support our podcasts and Tinkercast mission to spread wow to families and teachers around the world for free.
For grown-ups to sign up for a full year of WOW, visit Tinkercast.com slash WOW.
And for an extra element of surprise, don't forget to add a mystery t-shirt to your welcome kit.
Once again, that's Tinkercast.com slash WOW.
That's it, and now let's get back to the show.
Proceed in 3, 2, 1.
I don't know what you've been told, but we're in a golden age.
So many discoveries that are jumping off the page.
Wild in the world.
Wild in the world.
Wild in the world.
Wild in the world.
Wild in the world.
Wild in the world.
Wild in the world.
I better go out there and see what's going on.
Maybe it's an emergency.
Dennis, are you hearing the sounds coming out of Mindy's gingerbread mansion?
You think everything's okay in there?
Oh, I'm sure everything's fine, Guy Raz.
Three, two, three.
That was good, Melinda, but let's take it again.
Only this time, try to do it like I taught you.
I am trying, but this baseball stadium organ just won't cooperate.
See?
Well, that's because you've got bits of ham wedged between the keys.
Oh, I was looking for that ham.
Yes!
Take it from the top.
One, two, three.
Two, two, three.
Oh wow, that sounds a little better.
Mindy must have finally removed the ham from the keys of her baseball stadium organ.
Mindy plays the organ?
Well, she's taking lessons.
Okay, how's this?
Am I doing it right?
Huh.
What is it gonna take to get a wolf to blow that house down?
Yeah, it sounds like there's a demonic baseball game going on in there.
Hi, Tommy.
Hi, Granny G. Hi, Mom.
Ooh, what you got there?
Grandma G-Force, what are you doing with arms full of glass shards?
This is the window from my diaper house.
And that cheese curdling sound coming out of that candy house broke it.
And you...
Carried the shards of it over here.
Yeah, I can't believe Mindy's organ playing can break glass.
Well, apparently Mindy is having an organ lesson, but I'm not sure it's going so well.
Melinda, you have got to practice, more practice practice, practice.
Oh, I
Oh, no.
Okay, okay, Melinda.
That will be quite enough for today, I think.
Thank you.
Oh, man.
Now, please, practice before our next lesson and keep the keys free of ham.
Yes, ma'am.
I mean, sir.
Well, I'm going to go up there and eat that pipe piano ham.
Ooh, I was thinking the same thing.
Ew.
Oh, excuse me.
I didn't know Melinda was expecting company.
She's not.
Who's Melinda?
Are you the fellow responsible for all that racket up there?
My name is Professor Cadenza and I am a world-renowned pipe organ instructor with over 20 years of experience in the world of.
I beg your pardon.
Well, what G-Force means is that you must have a head full of ham if you think you can teach Mandy how to play that thing.
Why, I never!
If you'll excuse me, I must be going.
I'm giving a lesson to a very talented and dedicated baby.
Goodbye.
Bye!
Well, don't let the door crumble on you on the way out.
What's going on with that guy?
I think he's mad because Mindy's so bad.
Ooh, nailed it.
You know, maybe we should go upstairs to Mindy's music room and check on her.
Follow me, everyone.
Okay.
Well, okay, as long as the hammer's up there, I guess.
Knock, knock.
Surprise!
It's us.
Dennis?
Guy Raz?
Grandma G-Force?
Thomas Fingerling?
What?
What are you doing here?
We've come to put that instrument you're torturing out of its misery.
You mean my baseball stadium organ?
Stand back, Cindy.
I'm going to throw that thing out the window.
And then set it on fire.
What?
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
What if all Mindy needed to make this organ sound like a musical instrument was practice?
Practice?
I do not know what that is.
Practice?
Why does everyone keep saying that?
Because, Mindy, if you want to remember the lessons that your organ instructor is teaching you...
You're going to have to practice and practice and practice some more.
But I'm too lazy to practice, Guy Raz.
Practicing is just not fun.
I want to be good at playing the baseball stadium organ now.
Yeah, my ears want that too.
Why can't learning how to play the baseball stadium organ just be easy?
Yeah, Guy.
Why can't learning to play the baseball stadium organ just be easy?
Because if it was easy, then everyone would be playing the baseball stadium organ.
Oh, actually, that sounds really fun.
No.
Mindy, what if I told you there was a scientific argument for why practice is important?
Scientific argument?
Okay, now you got my attention, Guy Raz.
No, no, no, let him speak.
Go on, Guy Raz.
Okay, so I just read this really interesting study in the scientific journal Nature.
It was a study conducted by researchers from UCLA in California and Rockefeller University in New York.
Huh?
Grandma G-Force, do you mind?
I'm trying to tell a story here.
And I'm trying to play this brass tutor.
Sounding great, Granny G. Go on, Guy Raz.
So, as I was saying, these researchers wanted to better understand what happens in the brain when we practice something again and again, and again.
Uh-huh.
And they specifically wanted to know how practice affects the brain's ability to remember and process information.
Ah, the working memory.
Exactly.
Huh?
Thomas Fingerling, what are you doing?
Nothing.
I was just trying to tune this old banjo over here.
Here we go.
Hey, Fingerling, let's do a duet.
Okie dokie.
Cool.
So, Guy Raz, for the researchers to learn how practice affects the brain's ability to remember stuff, they must have had to conduct an experiment or something right.
Exactly.
And for this experiment, they trained mice to smell.
Big whoop.
I can do that.
That's true.
She does smell.
Fingerling.
Like a flower.
Oh, you too.
A corpse flower.
What?
Oh, that's a bad smell.
Ahem.
Sorry, guys.
Sorry.
Go ahead, Guy Raz.
Give us the story.
So to begin this experiment, the researchers first spent two weeks training mice to recognize and remember several different scents in a specific order.
Oh, well, I'm a wee little mouse, and mm-mm-mm, I smell scum.
Sewer gas and a hint of rotten eggs.
And I'm a little mouse too.
A really cute one.
But that ain't rotten eggs you're smelling.
Excuse me.
Squeak, squeak.
And while the mice were practicing their smelling, the researchers studied their brains with a very special and very powerful microscope.
Okay, you mice.
I'm just going to hook this super duper super powered microscope up to your tiny little brains here.
This microscope was so powerful that it could observe the activity of up to 73000 neurons at a time.
And neurons are brain cells that help to send messages, right?
Exactly.
And what they found was fascinating.
Oh, wow.
This is fascinating.
What did the researchers find, Guy Raz?
Well, they found that when the mice were first learning to identify their smells in order Flowers.
Cookies.
The neurons were a bit random, just sort of all over the place.
So basically, their brains' neurons were going bonker balls?
Well, yeah, I guess you could say that.
But what happened as the weeks went on and the mice continued to practice their smelling?
Well, something amazing happened.
Something wow.
Flowers again.
Cookies.
I remember that one.
And, yep, shrimp cocktail.
Shrimp cocktail.
Well, they discovered that as the mice continued to practice and get better at remembering their smells in the correct order, their neurons stopped going bonker balls and began to organize themselves.
Wait a minute, Guy Raz.
This evidence would suggest that... Oh no!
Oh yes, Mindy.
Practice makes permanent.
Ah!
Bunker balls!
The more they practiced, the better they were at remembering the correct order of the smells.
Rotten eggs.
I'm the best at this.
Flowers.
Cookies.
And let me guess, shrimp cocktails.
Flowers, cookies, shrimp cocktails.
Oh, oh wow.
Well, too bad it won't work for me.
I'm not a mouse.
Neither are we.
I just play a mouse on TV.
Well actually Mindy, the reason scientists often study the activity in mice brains is because mice have brains that are very similar to human brains.
That's right, Guy Raz.
I'm a scientific researcher, and I know things.
And I can tell you that mice brains are structured and work a bit like human brains.
Only they're cuter.
What?
And smaller.
They're like teeny tiny human brains that you can fit in your pocket.
Which makes them a pretty good model for understanding how our human brains work.
Oh, cool.
Scientists.
I already knew that.
So what you're trying to tell me, Guy Raz, is that with practice, our neurons, or brain cells, can change and get better at doing tasks like remembering things.
Yes.
Dennis, I'm the narrator.
Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.
So, in the spirit of anything for science, do you think that maybe by practicing your organ you'll begin to remember the correct notes and?
And give my ears a break
Yeah, because you sound real bad.
Anything for science?
Okay, fine.
Anything for science.
Guy Raz, hand me my sheet music, please.
Here you go.
Okay, here goes nothing.
On the count of three.
One.
Two.
Three.
Please, everyone be patient.
I'm trying to practice.
Sorry, maybe.
Okay.
Hey, did you all hear that?
It's a miracle.
It's working, Guy Raz.
The more she practices, the more she remembers the right notes to the song.
Well, I can't hear nothing.
I got my fingers in my ears.
Did you hear that?
I did it.
All that practice is making permanent memories in my brains.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Let me do it again.
Ah, soccer balls.
I thought I had it.
Just keep practicing, Mindy.
And remember, practice makes permanent.
Okay, here we go again.
One, two, three, two, two, three.
Huzzah!
Wow in the World will be right back.
Grown-ups, this message is for you.
That's it.
Back to the show.
Hi, thanks for calling Wow in the World.
It's officially Summer of Wow time.
When you hear the beep, record your Summer of Wow moment.
Hi, my name is Josephine and I'm from Austin, Texas.
And my summer memory is when I went to college up here.
I went on a spaceship that was 100 feet in the air.
Bye.
Love you, too.
And say hi to Dennis.
Ahoy there.
I know you're static, man.
What?
No, I'm not static, man.
We just look alike and sound alike.
And baby Dennis.
Hee hee.
And Thomas Singleton from Grandma G's Boys.
Top.
Wow.
And Snow Cat.
My name is Nathaniel.
I live in Washington DC and every year we do a summer reading challenge and go to the pool and it's really fun.
My name is Olivia and my summer of wealth is that I went to Washington DC and I went to the White House.
Say hi to Dennis.
Hi.
Reggie and everyone on the show.
Oh, cool, dude.
Oh, yeah.
Bye.
Hi, Meninga and Roz.
My name is Eleanor and my Summer of Wow is going to Southwest Michigan and spending the weekend with my mom and my sister at the lake.
Please say hi to Dennis.
Hi there.
Reggie.
Thomas Fingerling.
Marley.
Grandma G-Force.
Oh, yeah.
And my favorite, the sleigh cat.
Bye.
Hi, Mindy and Guy Ross.
I live in Santa Barbara, California.
And my summer of wow moment was getting to hang out with my little brother and going to the Nickelodeon water park.
Say hi to Reggie, Dennis...
Grandma G-Force, and Thomas Fingerling for me.
Oh, nice.
Bye, love your show.
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 Tyler Thole with help from our supervising producer, Jed Anderson.
You can also hear Jed Anderson in the voices of Dennis Thomas Fingerling, Reggie and many of the other silly characters that you hear on our show.
And Lizzie Freilich can also be heard as some of the silly characters 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 Kit Ballinger, Rebecca Caban, Dr Natasha Crandall, Kenny Curtis, Kristen Yang, Thuy Mac, Erica Medina, Henry Moskal, Jody Nussbaum, Ali Paksima, Linda Rothenberg, Steph Sosa, Joanna Weber, Anna Zagorski and all of the other tinkerers at Tinkercast HQ.
And to keep the wow rolling after you finish this episode, visit us at Tinkercast.com.
There you can become a member of the World Organization of Wowzers to get year-round mailings and weekly activities.
Shop our wow shop.
Get tickets for upcoming events, find our best-selling books and learn about some of the other amazing podcasts from Tinkercast.
Grownups, you can follow Wow in the World on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Wow in the World.
And our email address is hello at Tinkercast dot com.
And if you're a kid with a big wow to share with us, call us at 1-888-7WOW-WOW for a chance to be featured at the end of our show or an upcoming episode of Two.
What's in a Wow?
Thanks again for listening.
We're here every Monday or you can check out Two What's in a Wow every Friday right here in the Wow in the World podcast feed.
And don't forget, we wow on the weekend with Dennis, Saturday and Sunday.
Keep on wowing!
Wow in the World was made by Tinkercast and sent to you by Wondery.
