90: Octopuses & The Paralympics

How strange are octopuses really? We're going to be debunking some claims, then rebunking them with some real, amazing facts about our fellow earthlings. And what the history of the paralympics? What can we learn from its attempts and its failures and its importance in sports?

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Things we Talk About: Octopus Virus Diagram Snail Nervous System Diagram Octopus Maze Image Video of Octopus Opening a Jar Video of Octopus Camouflage Paralympics Ad

Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:56) Octopuses (00:55:08) The Paralympics (01:41:44) Outro

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We also learn about: Censoring octopussy, 3 science communicators get rabid over a dubious study, octopi are so smart they could only have come about from fertilized eggs aboard an asteroid, cephalopods evolved a central nervous system independently with ganglia, the “head” of an octopus is where there other organs are, octopi don't have 5 brains but they do have a lot of distributed neurons, each sucker is a finger-nose-tongue that can make decisions on its own, octopi have terrible hand eye coordination but can learn to be better at it, Ella thinks “man this would be a great topic for the podcast”, octopi are aliens in the metaphorical sense - and maybe it’s a bad metaphor, I’m not a playing I’m developing flexible behavioral strategies, octopuses play pully downy rather than keepy uppy, the criteria of play, we thought Ella was going to compliment Tom but of course that wasn’t it, octopus cities have populations between 2 and 11, Ella’s gerrymandering octopus city, its more about shared resources and cheaper rent than grand designs, octopus color changing is way more than just pixel cells, but… octopuses are colorblind, their sucker opsins sense color and send directly to chromatophores, octopuses can know a color without seeing it, these are amazing earthling behaviors, Ella was looking for a simple un-nuanced not heavy misc topic, the first Stoke Manderville games, fuck you we’re doing our games on the same day, the organizer of that first game had uhhhhh bad views on disabled people, the Paralypics grew really fast because there was a huge demand for it, Ella loves murderball, goalball and boccia are Paralympic unique sports, the classification system of the Paralympics, the work that goes into the classification system and the flaws and harms it can sometimes have on the athletes, as human as it is to run fast it’s human to cheat, the Spanish ID baseball scandal halted ID sports for 10 years, how the Paralympics and the public views the Paralympians, Ella unfortunately doesn’t solve ableism by the end of the topic, I hear enough of Tom on the show already.

Sources: The Infamous Octopuses from Space Paper Live Science: Octopi are Not Aliens SciAm: Are Octopuses Smart? Octopus Neuroecology How Octopuses Control their Body Discover Mag: Octopus Intelligence The Amazing Octopus Maze Study OPB: Octopus Intelligence Convergent Evolution of Brains Experimental Evidence for Spatial Learning in Octopuses SciAm: The Mind of an Octopus Octopus Problem Solving Play in Octopuses Octopus City Study BBC: Octopus City Neural Control of Cephalopod Camouflage Octopus Camouflag Study Octopus Aging and Evolution Paper --- Sage: Deaf History of Sport Olympedia: George Eyser Wiki: George Eyser Olympics: Oliver Halassy Paralympic.org: History International Wheelchair & Amputee Sports Federation: Paralympic Games 1960 - 1992 Paralympic.org: Paralympic Games BBC: Stoke Mandeville Games Paralympic.org: Who We Are Paralympic.org: Paris 2024 Sports Washington Post: Wheelchair Rugby Top End Sports: Discountinued Paralympic Sports SBS News: Sports that Don't Have an Olympic Equivalent Olmypics: Boccia Paralympic.org: Classification BBC Inside Science: Classification BAA.org: Parathletics Divisions BBC: Tully Kearney Paralympics GB: Classification BBC: Spain ID Basketball and ID in Paralympics The Conversation: When Paralympic Atheletes Fake the Extent of their Disability Vice: Spain ID Basketball (translanted) The Conversation: Why somne Disabled People are Critical of the Paralympics Dis(Empowering) Paralymoics Histories by Danielle Peers Guardian: Channel 4 Superhuman Ad Guardian: Channel 4 New Ad Blog: Paralympics, Good or Bad for Disabled People