At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week.

And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty

of weird facts that we just keep around the office.

So we figured, why not share those with you?

Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science.

I'm Rachel Feldman.

I'm Sarah Kylie Watson, and I'm Lee Coward.

Lee, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Listeners for those of you who don't know, Lee is one of my favorite science writers

and the author of an incredible new book.

Lee, would you like to tell us a little bit about that?

Oh, yeah.

My book, Heart So Good, The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose, is about all of the ways

that humans consent to suffer for fun.

When we think about massacism, we think about like BDSM and sex and 50 shades, but actually

opting into a verse of experiences is very human and very normal.

So the book covers everything from hot peppers to polar plunges to ballet dancers, ultramarathons,

all of this deliberate suffering.

And it asks, what the f*** are we doing this for?

And what do we get out of it?

Why is this such a thing?

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