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Hey, Wowser fans. It's Guy Roz here.
And before we start the show, have you watched Wow in the World on YouTube?
That's right! You can now watch some of your favorite Tickercast podcasts, like 2 What's in a Wow, Flip and Mozy, Who Went Wow, and Wow in the World.
To start watching today, head to tinkercast .com slash YouTube.
That's tinkercast .com slash YouTube.
That's it. Now, back to the show.
Hey, Grown -ups. Give your loved ones the gift of family gaming fun with the Nintendo Switch System, the home of Mario and friends.
Compete for first place in thrilling high -speed races in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Or try your luck on action -packed game boards and enjoy the fun and funny mini -games of Super Mario Party Jamboree.
And those looking for a wonder -filled adventure can join Mario, Peach, Toad and friends as they explore the whimsical flower kingdom in Super Mario Bros.
Wonder. No matter how you like to play, there's fun for the whole family on Nintendo Switch.
Go to Nintendo .com to learn more and browse the full lineup of Nintendo Switch systems.
Additional accessories may be required for multiplayer mode.
Game systems and some accessories sold separately.
Games rated E for everyone.
However, Wii WOW on the weekend.
WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW
WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW Hold up here.
Okay, here we go. Hi, you've reached Dennis from We Wow on the weekend.
That's me. Do you have a question?
Well, I do too. Lots of them.
And who's gonna answer all my questions?
You? Probably not. But I guess I can answer yours.
Leave me a message.
Hi Dennis, my name's Riley.
I live in Maryland and I love you guys' show.
Aww, thanks. I'm watching it right now, matter of fact.
Well, would you have been told that we're in a crazy age?
So many scuffleries and jumping.
How do you know what Reggie's telling me?
Like, how do you know what he says?
Love you. Bye. Oh, thanks Riley.
And yeah, well, Reggie has a very strong pigeon accent, so it can be difficult to understand sometimes.
I understand him most of the time, except for certain words like, Reggie, say refrigerator.
Rrrr! Ha ha ha! Okay, now say it again with a French accent.
Rrrr! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Okay, now do a robot voice.
Rrrr! Rrrr! Ha ha ha!
Okay, now do your impression of that actor from that movie we like.
Brrrr! Ha ha ha ha!
Rrrr! Stop, stop, stop!
Okay, okay. We need to move on or I'm gonna wet my pants.
Next question. Hi, my name is Jessica.
My question for you is why does my brother always copy me?
Oh! He's six years old and he's so annoying.
Thanks, Dennis. Oh, Jessica, oh no, he's copying you?
That's horrible. Reggie, I do not copy everyone and then shout twins just to try to fit in.
No, I don't. That's a big, big lie.
Reggie, stop doing that.
Next question. Hi, Dennis, have you ever eaten any part of Mindy's gingerbread mansion?
Thanks and say hi to Dennis for me.
Oh, Dennis says hi.
And yes, I have tried eating some of Mindy's gingerbread mansion before and it's not very tasty.
It's mass -produced construction gingerbread which replaces the sugar with adhesive and sawdust.
Well, it tastes like sawdust.
I snuck into her yard and tried to eat some that one time Mindy added on the indoor jumbo sized mini golf course.
Well, it had rained the day before so all the gingerbread walls were stale and slimy.
Yeah, you're right.
The gumdrops tastes good.
Next question. Hi, Dennis.
My name is Jer and I live in Connecticut.
I have a question for you.
Why do you like yourself so much?
Oh, well that's easy.
Cause I'm the best.
Next question. Hi, I'm Reese.
Hi, I'm Lighten. And we're from Southside, Alabama.
We have a question.
How many cups of coffee do you drink in a day?
Great question, Reese and Lighten.
I only drink one cup of coffee a day.
Brewed with fresh single origin beans imported from Peru's Cajamarca region.
Handpicked and sorted, fully washed and sun dried, roasted to perfection and brewed by yours truly.
Rajee, I do too only drink one cup a day.
My cup is big. Well, who cares how big my coffee cup is?
They asked how many cups, not how big your giant coffee cup.
I mean my perfectly normal sized coffee cup that I ordered from cute and custom enormous coffeecups .org.
Well, thanks for your calls everyone.
If you've got a question for me, call and leave me a message.
The number is one eight eight eight seven wow wow.
I just might answer your question on we wow on the weekend.
Okay, that takes care of that.
All right, let's move on to a little segment I like to call Inside Tinkercast Studios.
Inside Tinkercast Studios.
This is the part where we revisit an episode of one of my favorite Tinkercast shows.
And today we're gonna listen to a story from Wow in the World season one, episode 15 called Mosquitoes and Stinky Socks.
Oh no, bugs and smelly feet are among my least favorite things.
Yes, I've even written a song about it.
And it goes a little something like this.
Jim sucks with sandals and loud motorcycles when guy robs won't come to my piano recitals.
Dogs breath in, rats breath in, insects that sting.
These are among my least favorite things.
Cow breath in, horse breath in, hippopotamus breath in, alligator breath in.
Okay, fine. I mostly just don't like it when things breathe on me.
Fine, let's listen to the episode.
Okay, here we go. And play.
We will, we'll be right back.
Grownups, this message is for you.
That's it, now back to the show.
Wow in the world. Get away from me.
Whoa… Skiraws, why do you keep slapping yourself in the face?!
Mindy, these mosquitoes are trying to eat me alive!
Aw, well that just means they're hungry.
Give em a little bite.
Yeah, they are really going for it.
You must taste delicious, Skiraws!
What?! Wait, shh, shh, shh… Oh, are you wearing ranch dressing?
No, I just put on the sunscreen that you had in your bag.
Oh, yeah, um, so that was ranch.
But the label on it said it… No, it's a long story.
Well if they're biting me because I taste delicious, why aren't they biting you?
I mean, you're covered in cheese?
Wait, why are you covered in cheese?
Oh, well it's actually part of a little experiment I'm conducting.
Oh no… See, I never get bitten by mosquitoes.
Ouch. Well, consider yourself lucky, Mindy.
Lucky? I take offense to it, Skiraws.
It's like they're… Like they're repulsed by me or something.
Like I'm not good enough for them.
I don't see a problem here.
I mean, just look at them with you.
So yeah, you're covered in salad dressing.
But even if you weren't, those mosquitoes just still wouldn't be able to get enough of you.
And this is why you covered yourself from head to toe in slices of American cheese?
Well I just thought maybe if I could just make myself taste more delicious, then maybe the mosquitoes would come, you know?
No, I… I don't. This is really weird, Mindy.
Anywho, I've learned a lot from this experiment.
Like… Like, uh, mosquitoes don't eat cheese?
No. Like, be yourself.
Don't try to change who you are just to attract a bunch of mosquitoes.
And maybe it's not about the taste at all.
See, there's this scientist, Professor James Logan, and he's a medical entomologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Oh yeah, a medical entomologist, a scientist who studies how insects like mosquitoes affect human health.
Exactly, and as a medical entomologist, Professor Logan wants to find out once and for all what makes mosquitoes so attracted to some humans, like you, and not at all attracted to other humans.
Like you. You don't have to rub it in.
Okay, sorry. Anywho, there have been a bunch of studies that have shown that mosquitoes may be attracted to things that smell or look a certain way, or people who sweat more, or people with higher body temperatures, and even women who are pregnant with babies.
Because pregnant women usually have a higher body temperature, right?
Yeah, and because they're generally among a group of people who breathe out more carbon dioxide than others.
Interesting. You know, we've talked a lot about carbon dioxide and how it comes from things like cars that burn gasoline to keep them going, or when we burn coal to generate electricity for our homes.
Right, but our human bodies also release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every time we breathe out.
No need to hold your breath, guy -roz.
It's perfectly normal for humans to breathe carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In fact, we breathe it in, too, along with oxygen.
But when we breathe out, we release more carbon dioxide than we do oxygen.
So back to the mosquitoes.
How would they know if one human is releasing more carbon dioxide than another?
I mean, carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless gas.
Okay, well, female mosquitoes have these little sensors called CPA neurons, and they help them to detect carbon dioxide.
Wow. And researchers have also discovered that there seems to be a connection between mosquitoes and large and tall people.
Because I guess, well, large and tall people would give off more carbon dioxide.
Yeah, and they have more body surface area, so they breathe in more of it, which means they also breathe out more of it.
Well, if we know all of this, then what's the mystery that this medical entomologist, Professor Logan, is trying to solve?
Okay, so Professor Logan has this hunch that there might be more to why mosquitoes attack some people, but not others.
And it might have to do with something called genetics.
Genetics, huh? So like the human characteristics pass down from grandparents to parents to kids.
Yeah, exactly. So every human being looks a certain way, talks a certain way, and even walks a certain way, in part because of the genetic code inside our bodies.
Yeah, kind of like how you sound exactly like your mom when you laugh.
Yeah, and how you sneeze exactly like your dad.
I do? Uh, yeah. Okay, so what would give Professor Logan the idea that genetics could have something to do with which humans mosquitoes prefer?
Well, this is where it gets interesting.
Go on. The answer is twins.
Twins? Twins, like you and me.
We're not twins. Yeah, but I mean, we look exactly alike.
No. If you cross your eyes.
Noop. Okay, so about two years ago, Professor Logan and some other researchers gathered about 40 sets of twins.
Half of them were identical.
So the kind of twins that look almost exactly alike?
Right, and half of them were non -identical.
Meaning that they did not necessarily look alike.
Yep. But why twins?
Why not just two siblings, one brother, one sister?
Well, there's been other research that's shown that identical twins actually smell more alike than non -identical twins or regular siblings, and this has to do with the fact that they're genetically more alike.
And the way they smell matters because?
The way they smell matters because, like I said earlier, smell is believed to be one of the things that attracts mosquitoes to certain people.
Got it. So when these researchers experimented with these sets of twins, what did they find out?
They found out that if mosquitoes were attracted to one identical twin, they were more likely to also be attracted to the other identical twin.
And what about in the non -identical twins?
Well, in the non -identical twins, there didn't seem to be a real connection between their twinsiness and how badly the mosquitoes wanted to eat them.
And since identical twins are closer genetically than other siblings or family members, does Professor Logan suspect that there's a certain part of our genetic code that makes some people taste and even smell better to mosquitoes than others?
Yes, but it's still not clear exactly what that gene is, but Professor Logan and some scientist pals plan to conduct an experiment to help them get closer to the answer.
And what's the experiment?
I was hoping you'd ask that.
Because it's a crazy experiment.
Well, if you think it's crazy, Mindy.
These scientists will gather pairs of stinky socks from 100 sets of identical and non -identical twins from the UK and Gambia.
This is starting to smell like a scheme you cook up.
And it gets better.
The scientists will then throw these stinky socks into a wind tunnel with a bunch of mosquitoes.
Wait, wait, why a wind tunnel?
To blow around the stink.
I told you this was a crazy experiment.
Yeah, so what do they hope to find out?
Well, first the scientists plan to figure out which of these stinky socks the mosquitoes like best, and then they'll study what it was about those socks that attracted the mosquitoes to them in the first place.
And what kind of things will they study?
So they plan to study the chemical combinations or the recipe that makes up the stink.
And what about the genetics that you mentioned earlier?
Well, they also plan to study how the DNA of the two groups of twins affect how attracted the mosquitoes are to the socks.
And by DNA you mean the microscopic bits in the human body that we get from our parents and grandparents and great -grandparents that are found in our cells and together make up our genetic code.
Exactly. So if these scientists are able to figure out what it is that makes some humans so tasty to mosquitoes, will they also be able to find a way to make people like me less tasty?
Well, that's the idea, Guy Roz.
I mean, if we could figure this out, scientists might be able to make a pill or another type of medicine that we could take to help keep the mosquitoes off of us, especially in places around the world where the mosquitoes carry bad diseases.
Wow, so this stinky sock in a wind tunnel experiment could actually save lives.
And not only that, but it might also help us to find out which groups of people, based on their genes, are most likely to become mosquito munch.
Well, whatever that group is, I'm pretty sure I'm in it, Mindy.
Hey, that was so cool!
I didn't even really mind that it was about bugs and gross socks!
And what about the thing where mosquitoes were attracted to identical twins the same amount?
I know! I'm practically twins with like, everyone.
Reggie, what if I have a real twin out there somewhere and like, we got separated when we were babies?
Yeah, just like Parrot Trap!
Oh, good idea. We should watch Parrot Trap later.
All right, let's wrap up the show.
That's the end of the show.
Give me a call if you're my long lost twin and I'll do another show tomorrow.
But for now, that's the end of the show.
Bye! Grown -ups, if you like Wow in the World, you can listen early and ad -free right now on Wondery Plus.
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