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Hey, Wowzer fans, Mindy here.
And before we start the show, I gotta 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!
Wee wow on the weekend.
Wee wow on the weekend.
Cause this is what we do on the weekend.
Talking, laughing, me and Reggie.
Singing, laughing, and then we, oh wait, no, I said laughing twice.
Uh, whatever.
Wee wow on the weekend.
Wee wow on the weekend.
Wee wow on the weekend.
Cause this is what we do.
Welcome to Wee Wow on the Weekend.
I'm your host, Dennis.
And that's Reggie, my co-host.
Actually, yeah, what does the co and co-host mean?
Cold-blooded?
Are you a cold-blooded host, Reggie?
Oh, pigeons aren't cold-blooded?
Well, what animals are cold-blooded?
Lizards and snakes?
Ew!
No, I don't want to talk about that.
Let's move on and answer questions from my devoted listeners.
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.
Our devoted listeners who are mostly listening to me.
Anyway, let's do the Q&A segment.
The Q&A segment.
All right, let's just get the old answering machine pulled up here.
Okay, here we go.
You've reached Dennis from WeWow on the weekend.
That's me.
Do you have a question?
Well, I do, too.
Lots of them.
And who's going to answer all my questions?
You?
Probably not.
But I guess I can answer yours.
Leave me a message.
Hi, Dennis.
My name is Riley.
I live in Maryland, and I love you guys' show.
Aw, thanks.
I'm watching it right now.
Matter of fact, what you've been told is...
How do you know what Reggie tells you?
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, um, Reggie, say refrigerator.
Ha ha ha!
Okay, now say it again with a French accent.
Okay, now do a robot voice.
Okay, now do your impression of that actor from that movie we like.
Stop, stop, stop.
Okay, okay.
We need to move on or I'm gonna wet my pants.
Next question.
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 Dentist for me.
Oh, Dentist 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.
Yeah, 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 taste good.
Next question.
Hi, Dennis.
My name is Garrett, and I live in Connecticut.
I have a question for you.
Why do you like yourself so much?
Oh, well, that's easy, because I'm the best.
Next question.
Hi, I'm Reese.
Hi, I'm Leighton, 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 Leighton.
I only drink one cup of coffee a day, brewed with fresh single-origin beans imported from Peru's Cajamarca region, hand-picked and sorted, fully washed and sun-dried, roasted to perfection and brewed by yours truly.
Reggie, 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 cuteandcustomenormouscoffeecupsorg.
Well, thanks for your calls, everyone.
If you've got a question for me, call and leave me a message.
The number is 1-888-7-WOW-WOW.
I just might answer your question on Wee 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 going to 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.
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 Raz won't come to my piano recitals.
Dogs breathin', rats breathin', insects that sting.
These are among my least favorite things.
Cow breathin', horse breathin', hippopotamus breathin', alligator breathin'.
Okay, fine.
I mostly just don't like it when things breathe on me.
Right.
Let's listen to the episode.
Okay, here we go.
And play.
Wee Wow will be right back.
Grown-ups, this message is for you.
Hey, grown-ups.
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 wowser learn about their world through play plus you can hear exclusive audio content from me and guy ross to help your wowser discover even more wows grown-ups give the gift of wow and wonder this holiday season with our latest wow in the world toys designed with your That's it.
Now back to the show.
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 them a little bite.
Yeah, they are really going for it.
You must taste delicious, Guy Raz.
What?
Wait.
Oh, are you? ranch dressing.
No, I just put on the sunscreen that you had in your bag.
Oh, yeah.
Um, so that was ranch.
Uh, 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, Guy Raz.
It's like they're repulsed by me or something.
Like I'm not good enough for them.
Yeah, 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 don't.
This is really weird, Mindy.
Anywho, I've learned a lot from this experiment.
Like 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.
Uh.
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 mosquitoes 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.
Wow.
No need to hold your breath, Guy Raz.
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 like 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 passed 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 knees 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?
Uh-huh.
Twins like you and me.
Uh, we're not Twins?
Yeah, but I mean, we look exactly alike.
Uh, no.
If you cross your eyes?
Nope.
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 twins?
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, 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'd cook up.
And it gets better.
What?
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 these 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.
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 Raz.
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.
Yay!
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 Parent Trap.
Oh, good idea.
We should watch Parent 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.
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