WeWow on the Weekend

Hey WowsR fams, Mindy here, and before we start the show, guess what? You can join me every Friday for two What's in a Wow people who wow edition. In this Getting to Know You game show, I'll be visited by some of the world's most fascinating people to get the wows and the what's of their lives. From cartoonist and graphic novelist Rana Telgemeier of the Smile series to everyday extraordinary kids just like you. And that's not all. With this new season of Two What's in a Wow, there are now two ways to wow. What am I talking about? Well first, you can listen to episodes right here in our Wow and the World podcast feed. Or… and this is a big Or. Yeah, you're right Reg. That doesn't have the same ring to it. Okay, now where was I? Or… Yeah, as always you can listen to new episodes in your favorite podcast player or you can watch these episodes with your eyeballs on YouTube. I know, I should comb my hair or something. We are so excited for you to listen and watch our new season of Two What's in a Wow, People Who Wow Edition starting this Friday. So make sure you're subscribed to our podcast feed and our Wow Tube channel on YouTube so you don't miss out. That's Two What's in a Wow, People Who Wow Edition coming this Friday. And now a quick ad break and then we'll get on with the show. And then we… oh wait, no I said laughing twice. Ah, whatever. We Wow on the weekend. We Wow on the weekend. We Wow on the weekend. Cause this is what we do on the weekend. Hello and welcome to We Wow on the weekend. I'm your host Dennis. And here's my co-host Reggie the Giant Pigeon. Say hi Reggie. Hey Reggie, look what I found. It's my old yearbook from boarding school. My cherished days at Count Montague's school for nosy little children. The most wonderful moments of my young life. Oh look, there's my picture. Yeah, I look different without a mustache. Maybe I should draw one on Lil' Ome. There we go. Ha ha ha, that's better. Oh and there's my favorite teacher, Professor Von Sneakson. She was amazing. She taught my favorite subject, history of snooping. Yeah, history of snooping was like all the gossip from olden times. You would not believe the drama in feudal Japan. Who was your favorite teacher Reggie? Mr. Featherstein, what did he teach? Oh wow, I didn't know you took biochemistry. Well I just want to say thanks to all the teachers out there for teaching us how to eavesdrop on our neighbors. Right, and for teaching us about science and biochemistry and stuff. Okay, that's enough of that. Let's get to our first segment, reading reviewsies. I'm reading reviewsies for me and for yousies. We've got us some doo-zies, so let's read reviewsies. Zies, this is the part where people write us comments on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever and I print a bunch out and read them aloud. And our first reviewsy is from... Reggie! Look at these! It's a whole bunch of ideas for what to name my goldfish. Yeah, remember? I got a goldfish and then I didn't know what to name it. Oh my poor little goldfish swimming around without a name for weeks. But we're going to give you a name right now, little fishy. How's that sound? Yay! Let's do it! What's the name? What's the name? What's the name of the fish? Okay, in no particular order, here are some of the names that my devoted listeners think would be amazing for my fish. First we got Fizzy. Oh, that's cute. Then we got Goldy, Bubbles, Guppy, which is also cute. And then there's Mango, Pancake, Sashimi. Sashimi? What's that? Sushi? No! We're not going to eat this fish, Reggie. It's a pet. We're not naming it after Sushi. And then we got Goldy, Golden, another Goldy, Goldy McGoldface, another Goldy, Gold, Gold, Goldy McNuggets. And then we've got Bob, Reg, Reg, George, Gilbert, another Bob, Pearl, Aurora, Sunrise, Fins, Static Fish, Mr. Shiny Scales, Flying, Big Chungus, another Bubbles, and then this one's just a bunch of fish emojis. Okay, and then finally we have Dennis Jr., Golden Dennis, and Bob. Wow! Our listeners really brought their naming A game. Except for Static Fish, not sure what that one's about. Reggie, there are so many great names, but I only have one Goldfish. Yeah, I guess I could go out and adopt like 30 or 40 more Goldfish so we could use all the names. But then how would I tell them apart? This is a real crisis, Reggie! A crisis! Okay, you're right. Deep breath. We can do this. Oh, that's a great idea, Reggie. There are some names that a lot of listeners suggested, like Goldy. Yeah, and like Bob. Okay, Goldy or Bob. Goldy or Bob. Well, both are equally beautiful names for a Goldfish, Reggie. Okay, how about Goldy Bob? Yeah, it's perfect. What do you think, Goldy Bob? She likes it. Yeah, I think it's a girl. Are you a girl, Goldy Bob? Make bubble noises if you're a girl. Yay! Okay, thanks for all the fish names, listeners. And remember, if you leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I just might rate it on Wee-Wah on the weekend. Five stars or more, please. Big cause, Reggie. We need to look good for Goldy Bob. Isn't that right, Goldy Bob? Okay, next up is 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 listening to Wow in the World Season 3, Episode 10, called One Plus Two Equals Three. Just ask a bee. The scientific buzz on bees and math. Oh, I love bees. What do you mean? Of course I love bees. Well, yes, I hate bugs because they're icky and crawly and slimy and gross. But bees are the best kind of bugs because they pollinate all the flowers, including my prize-winning azaleas. I don't even want to think about what would happen to my prize-winning azaleas if there weren't any bees around to pollinate them. Oh, Reggie! Don't even say it. Okay, here we go. And, wait. Wee-Wah will be right back. Grownups, this message is for you. That's it. Now back to the show. Wow in the world. Well, you'll be left in the dust and the sestax fire. You're a sunflower. You're a sunflower. Every time I'm leaving on you, you don't make it easy. No, no, you don't make it. Hey, Guy Rossi! Oh, hi, Mindy. What are you doing out here in the community garden so early? You know what they say. Yep, the early worm gets the bird. Then it can't eat it because it doesn't have teeth. Uh, I hadn't heard that one. So what are you doing out here anyway? I was just doing some math exercises. Uh, math exercises? Yeah? In the sunflower patch of a community garden. I know! Isn't it perfect? I'll tell you what I'm doing here. I am collecting sunflower seeds for a new energy bar recipe that Reggie and I are working on. Energy bar? Oh yeah, there's a big opportunity in the energy bar for birds industry. Thinking of starting a little business. Oh yeah? What's that? Energy bars for birds. We're going to shove a bunch of sunflower seeds inside each bar. Call them paleo. Birds going paleo. I know! Genius, right? Reggie came up with the idea to turn this concept for bird energy bars into a business after he had been listening to episode after episode of this one podcast called How I Bird This? Have you heard of it? Can't say I have. Oh yeah, it's nuts. It features all of these birds and all the cool stuff that they've built. Like, um, like bird houses that you can rent out to other birds for a night? Huh. And then there was this one episode of this bird-owned company called Wurbler Parker where you can get these flying goggles to try on at home and if you don't like them, send them back. Uh, that's uh... Anywho, you should totally check out the show. It's called How I Bird This. I think you're really going to like the host. In fact, you kind of remind me of him. Guy Ross, where are you going? Wait up! You never explained why you were in the middle of all these sunflowers doing math exercises. Or what those exercises even are. That's right. See you later. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Guy Ross, I know that look anywhere. You are up to something. Uh huh. Guy Ross, were you in here doing a scientific investigation without me? Well, what makes you think that? Well, for starters, you're wearing the handy-dandy 5D sensory hat-D. Oh, this thing I didn't even notice. I just grabbed the first hat I could find as I walked out the door. Uh... You know, with the strong sunlight, always better to be extra cautious. Extra cautious? My math, Guy Ross, you are totally up to something. Hi, Mindy. Hi, Guy. Hi, Dennis. Hi, Dennis. Whatcha doing? Oh, you know, we were just about to, uh... Search for the Fibonacci sequence. Yeah, see? Nothing too exciting. But what? Oh, you two Liberace had a lot of sequence. You shouldn't have to search for them. I mean, unless he was walking around here back in the 70s and some loose sequence fell from one of his exotic costumes and into the yard. Hi, interesting. Well, I'm actually talking about a mathematical concept known as the Fibonacci sequence, where each number in the sequence is the sum of the two numbers before it. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I understood none of that. Now my brain hurts, so I'm gonna go lay down. Okay, well, thanks, Dennis. Bye. Yeah, peace out, Dennis. Oh, that was close. Okay. Gairaz, what is going on? First, I find you in the community garden. You're standing in the midst of all of these sunflowers. Then you say that you're here to do math exercises. Plus, you're wearing a full lab coat and the handy-dandy 5D sensory hat-D. And now there's something about sequins and nachos? No, no, Mindy. Not nachos. The Fibonacci sequence. Though I do have to say I made a pretty mean batch of kale and tofu cheese nachos last night. You gotta try them next time I make them. Yeah, I think I'll take a pass. So you were saying something about Fibonacci? Well, Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician who lived more than 800 years ago in the city of Pisa. Oh, like where the Leaning Tower of Pisa is? Exactly. Wait, do you still have that Leaning Tower of Pisa Jell-O sculpture you made that one time? Don't you remember? You ate it! That's right. I did eat it. Anyway, Fibonacci was particularly interested in patterns. I love patterns. Plads, stripes, polka dots, paisley? Well, not exactly those patterns. More like patterns that he noticed in nature. Giuseppe, Leonardo come quickly. You must look at this apple. What? What is it? They read the delicious? It is delicious, but look at what happens when I slice it across its hemisphere. You see? It is right here. I just see the inside of an apple. Ah, but you see at the center there is a star. And? And that star has five points. It's a part of a sequence. Don't you see? Everything in nature is connected to the sequence. Fibonacci, I'm afraid I don't understand. Well, if I take the number zero and add the number one, what do I get? Well, of course you will get the one because the one plus zero is one. That is correct. So, now let's say I take another one and I add it to one. Easy. One plus one is two. Now, what happens when I add two and one? Well, two plus one is three. Where is this going Fibonacci? Aha! And now it gets interesting. What if I add three and two? Three plus two is five. And that is the Fibonacci sequence. You start with a number and then you add it to the number before it and you get a new number. Fibonacci, I'm still not following. Well, it's like this. Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four, fifty-five, eighty-nine. Can you catch my drift? Of course! Each number is the number you get when you add up to two numbers before it. And Leonardo, you can find these numbers represented in things like flowers, in pine cones, even inside the human body. Huh. So this guy, the Binacci, who sounds awfully familiar, figured out that there's a mathematical pattern in almost every part of nature? Well, yeah. And in fact, Mindy, that's why I'm in the sunflower patch. Okay, so how do we find the Fibonacci sequence in a sunflower? Ah, well that's precisely what I'm going to try and find out using my handy-dandy 5D sensory hat D. Of course! Because the 5D sensory hat D helps to magnify or increase all your senses. So that way... That way I'll be able to see the parts of the sunflower really well and I won't need a magnifying glass. Well, good thing I brought along my own 5D sensory hat D. I'll just get it out of my adventure toolkit here. Put it on. Now, let's go find some Fibonacci numbers. Alright, let's see here. Look at this beautiful sunflower, just a perfect specimen of a flower. And look how many petals this sunflower has. One, two, three, four, fifty-five. I've counted fifty-five petals. That's it! A Fibonacci number. Fifty-five is a Fibonacci number. What in the wow, Gairaz, it is bonker balls that we can find math all around us all the time. 24-7. Get away! Ouch! Ah! Um, Mindy, watch out for that bee. It seems a little aggressive. Ah, get away from me! Bee, stop being all up in my bee's mask! Shoo! Shoo me, shoo! Hey, this is my flower. I was here first. Uh, Mindy, who just said that? I think it was the bee? Hang on, hang on a minute. I think the handy-dandy 5D sensory hat is giving us super power hearing right now. As I said, this is my flower. Get lost. What in the... Uh, oh, uh, well, Mr. Bee, uh, sorry, we didn't realize you were here first. We were just searching for some mathematics in nature and we didn't intend to disturb you. Well, you did disturb me. I'm just minding my own buzzness and you humans are droning on and on like drones. Why don't you buzz off? Uh, Mr. Bee, uh, are you trying to tell us something? Wait a minute, Guy Ross. I think we may have heard his little bee feelings. Mindy, what in the world are you talking about? You know what? Let's just ask the bee, okay? Um, excuse me, hi, little bee. Um, what are you doing right now? I was doing my homework. Math homework. To be exact. Math homework? Wait a minute, what is going on? Guy Ross, this is that study I was going to tell you about. What study? The new study I read about in the journal Science Advances. Well, what's it about? You ready for it? Yeah. It's amazing. Okay. This one's really gonna blow your mind. Alright, spin it out. I'm so excited to tell you. Mindy, just tell me. Bee's can do math. Bee's can do math? What's the matter? Never seen a bee count to zero before? Here, Guy Ross, you gotta check out this study for yourself. I even brought along the journal with me. Heads up! Oh! Huh. Mindy, this is amazing. Tell me about it. So we've known for a long time that doing math requires a certain combination of brain power mixed with a scoop of memory. And scientists have known that some animals like chimps, ravens, even spiders can understand basic math. Yeah, but some scientists at the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia wanted to find out if bees could also understand basic math. Like addition and subtraction. Like one plus two or three minus one. Exactly. So one of the scientists named Scarlett Howard decided to see if she could train bees to add and subtract. This is amazing, Mindy. It says here that Dr. Howard made a special enclosure or bee house shaped like the letter Y. Yeah, and if the bee went to one arm of the Y, it would taste delicious, sweet sugar water. But if the bee went to the other arm of the Y, it would taste bitter water made with something called quinine. The researchers then decided to put five different shapes on a piece of paper that the bees could see as they entered the bee house. And each shape was blue. Blue represented addition. In other words, each time the bees would see blue shapes, they were supposed to add another shape to the picture. So when the bee flew into the bee house and saw two blue triangles, it would have to decide what two plus one is. Which of course is three. Right. And so at that point, the bee would have to either fly to a picture of three triangles. Which would be the right answer. Or a picture with one triangle. Which would be the wrong answer. And of course, if the bee picked the right answer, it got sugar water. And look, Gaira's, they did the same experiment with yellow shapes, but the color yellow was supposed to represent subtraction. So every time a bee saw two yellow triangles, it had to find the answer with one yellow triangle. Because of course, two minus one is one. Right. But here's the crazy thing. After about three hours of training the bees and trying to understand math, the researchers started to mix it up. Sometimes the problems were five minus one or four plus one or three minus one or plus one. Which is slightly more complex. Yeah. And what the researchers noticed was that after three or four hours of training, the bees were getting the answer right on the first try, 70% of the time. Wow, that's like being right seven out of ten times. That's amazing. Totally. So what this means is that maybe even creatures with teeny tiny brains can understand and perform basic math. Hey, I may be a bee, a little brain, but your behavior downright stings. Oh, sorry, little bee. Yes, sorry. We had no idea you were out here doing math, just like us. Ha! You're over there counting to three and I'm beezy calculating the beeswax efficiency of the hexagonal prismatic honeycomb. And I'm very bee-hined. Now, chew. Wait, did he just say... Oh, sure. We were just on our way anyway. Yeah, we were just going to collect some sunflower seeds for my bird paleobars. And Gaira's looking at the recipe here. It looks like we're going to need 4,181 seeds. Hey, that's a Fibonacci number. 2,584 plus 1,597. Wow. Or if we're really ambitious, we can collect, say, 6,765 sunflower seeds. Another Fibonacci! 2,584 plus 4,181. Or if we wanted to, we could just go back to my house and make some Fibonacchos. I got it. How about we take 89 tortilla chips, add 21 jalapenos, 13 olives, 55 grams of beans, and we bake it on an anvil. Wow! That was so cool! I knew bees were helpful, but I didn't know they were so smart. Yeah, they probably had a really good math teacher. No, I don't think they got A pluses, Reggie. They got bees! Get it? The grays were all bees? Cause they're bees? Whatever, I'm hilarious. Okay, let's wrap up the show. Thanks to all you listeners out there for tuning in to We Wow on the weekend! If you have a question for me, call and leave me a message at 1-888-7-WOW-WOW. That's 1-888-7-WOW-WOW. I just might answer your question on We Wow on the weekend! Okay, should we do the goodbye song? Here we go. That's the end of the show. I need to go and think of more hilarious jokes about bees. But I'll do another show tomorrow! But for now, that's the end of the show. Eat, eat, bye! Before we get into the credits for today's episode, we want to give some special shoutouts and say a huge thank you to some of the Wowsers whose families are powering the Wow this year. We broke the names up into two batches, and here is our first batch of names. We are so grateful for your support. Teddy, Silas and Emmett from Arizona. Jason from Texas. Eli and Nolan from Texas. Luke and Noel from North Carolina. Ilan from California. Emmett and Adler from Kansas. John, Katie, Ethan and Amelia from Pennsylvania. Nezla and Yaqub from Kuwait. Evelyn, Ramona and Cabatha from Nevada. John R from Wisconsin. Emery and Ila from California. Caroline from Massachusetts. Ian and Declan from Washington. Elena and Lucia from Maryland. Parker from Texas. Albert and Lulu from Brighton, England. Hayden, Hazel and Allie from Pennsylvania. Magnus from the District of Columbia. William and Allie from Virginia. Brendan, Jessica, David and Michael from Ohio. Bailey, Macy and Hank from South Carolina. James from Washington. Peter, Teddy and Leo from Minnesota. Paul from Rhode Island. Nuri from Washington. Violet and Will from California. Audrey and Ethan from Virginia. Alex H from Tennessee. James and Madison from Utah. And Happy Birthday to Otis from Minnesota. From the bottom of our hearts. And the tops of our brains. Thank you.