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Savvy Minds Entertainment, Seattle, WA (2026)

06/01/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 05/31/26 - 06/06/26:

A few weeks ago I asked what the letters of TASER stood for, so I figured why not talk about the history of it. The use of non-lethal weapons in law enforcement began years before the TASER, when police would use mace or cattle prods for crowd control. This proved to be either ineffective or a brutal method with lasting effects and was met with severe public opposition, leading President Lyndon Johnson to order a study of a suitable replacement. There had been previous ideas for a “human” cattle prod but none that came to fruition. The first viable option was conceived in the late ‘60’s when NASA engineer Jack Cover found inspiration from a story about a man who walked into an electric fence and was incapacitated without any lingering injuries. The development of the first TASER took over five years and was completed in 1974. As a child, Cover was a fan of a series of sci-fi adventure novels featuring a young inventor named Tom Swift. The character was a teenager who always found himself in harrowing situations sometimes needing his inventions to save himself and others. One of these was in the 1911 novel, Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. His rifle fired electric bolts and could be adjusted to different levels of voltage. This was the impetus for Cover’s own version and he even used the initials of the novel’s name for his new device, (T)om (S)wift and His (E)lectric (R)ifle, the TSER. He originally referred to it just by its letters, but decided to add the “A” to simplify the pronunciation. The first model, the TF-76, was shaped like a flashlight and fired two wire projectiles creating an electrical circuit on impact. The propulsion was created by gunpowder which led to limitations in the device’s marketability. Since the TASER used gunpowder, the ATF designated it a Title II firearm which comes with strict regulations. This led to poor sales and a reputation for being a novelty. It wasn’t until 1993, when Cover collaborated with brothers Rick and Tom Smith that a new version of the TASER was designed. The significant change was the introduction of compressed air to fire the projectiles, removing the need for gunpowder allowing the redesignation of the device and improving its availability. The new model also included drive-stun mode where direct contact with the assailant could be achieved instead of having to use the projectiles. Despite the improvements, Air Taser International, now Axon, nearly went bankrupt but the device eventually got the attention of law enforcement agencies and there are now nearly one million TASERS in use today.

This week’s bonus question:

The first model of TASER, the TF-86, was marketed under this product name?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

05/24/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 05/24/26 - 05/30/26:

Cinematic character Rose Dewitt-Bukater said this “was called the ship of dreams, and it was…it really was.” That ship was the Titanic, but I’m not here to talk about the Titanic. I’m here to talk about what could likely be called “the ship of nightmares”, the Queen Mary. At the time when the Titanic was built, it was the largest and most advanced ship of any other. About 24 years later however, the RMS Queen Mary was launched. It was longer, wider and taller than the Titanic. Although it operated in about the same area of the North Atlantic, it fortunately didn’t suffer the same fate. The Queen Mary ran from 1936 to 1967, its last voyage on October 31st brought it to its current location in Long Beach, California. Over the next three years, the ship went under a massive $31 million dollar renovation and opened for public tours in 1971, followed by the hotel in 1972. Stories of death aboard the Queen Mary ran rampant with an estimated 50 incidents over its sailing history. Most of these are attributed to accidents among the crew, but as with any true stories there are rumors to go along with them. Reports of grisly murders, unexplained deaths, and the drowning of a young girl in the ship’s pool were told, although these are not included in any actual recorded events. In the 1980’s, the idea that the ship may be haunted began to surface, possibly due to the ship’s employees spreading those rumors to bolster its popularity. Disney got involved in the early 1990’s by planning a theme park called Port Disney that was to be built around the ship, using it as the focal point. They had their own tours aboard the Queen Mary, which included one called Haunted Passages, where tourists were brought to different areas of the ship that were the supposed sites of some of these “deaths”. Within two years the project failed and Port Disney was scrapped. Despite this failure, the Queen Mary has been a popular tourist destination since it opened, surviving a few closures and many ownership changes. There are still tours and shops that perpetuate the haunted aspect of the ship, including the Paranormal Ship Walk, Haunted Encounters, Graveyard Tours and even Jackie’s Spirit Shoppe.

This week’s bonus question:

Created by Disney for the Haunted Passages tour, this room, which had special effects installed in it, is considered the most haunted room on the Queen Mary?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

05/18/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 05/17/26 - 05/23/26:

Normally I try to share topics that are educational and certainly more lighthearted than this one, but when I wrote a question about this individual a few weeks ago, I was reminded of how crazy that time was. Paul Keller, a really lovely human being. I didn’t remember his name at first, but it quickly came back to me after researching his despicable deeds. For those of you who were in the area then, you know what I’m talking about. For the rest of you who weren’t around, here’s the story. Paul Kenneth Keller was born in Everett, grew up in Lynnwood and showed behavioral issues from an early age. He suffered from hyperactivity that was linked to a near death situation during his birth which may have led to his behavior. He engaged in shoplifting, abusing his siblings and other children and he obviously had an unhealthy fascination with fire, once setting fire to a neighboring vacant house at the age of 8 or 9. As Keller grew older, he was involved in other incidents of arson, but none led to his arrest. He also had a heavy interest in firefighting, collecting paraphernalia and listening to his emergency scanner to find out where fires were occurring. He would often hang out with the firefighters and even tried to join the local volunteers but was denied twice. Despite all of his proclivities, he was active in the church and visited elderly and ill parishioners, which seems very ironic considering forthcoming events. Keller had been taking medication to control his behavior, but had decided to stop using it. In the following years, he married, divorced and suffered bankruptcy. As a result, his mental state began to unravel, leading to abuse of alcohol and drugs and increased fits of rage. It finally came to a breaking point in August 1992 when he began his six-month long spree of arson. He attacked houses, businesses, and churches but also retirement homes, including the Four Freedoms House in September 1992 which resulted in the deaths of three elderly women. Keller was elusive, leaving very little behind for investigators to go on. He even mocked the firefighters, knowing the ins and outs of their whereabouts and response time. Eventually, a witness gave a partial description of Keller and coupled with a behavioral profile, Keller’s father, George, believed it was his son and contacted the authorities. After around-the-clock surveillance, the police arrested Paul on February 6th, 1993. It was estimated that he had set over a hundred fires but confessed to setting 76 of them. In court, he was convicted of only 32 of the fires plus the murders of the three women leading to 107 years in prison, eligible for parole in 2079 at the age of 113. For his help in the capture of his son, George Keller received $25,000 which he donated to his church, Trinity Lutheran, who had been a victim of his son’s arson. Paul Keller is serving his sentence at the correctional facility in Monroe.

This week’s bonus question:

Due to his elusiveness, investigators gave Paul Keller this nickname?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

05/10/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 05/10/26 - 05/16/26:

Besides all things marine, another of my favorite bonus topics is space. Recently I wrote about Earth’s atmosphere, but this week we’re going way out there, all the way to the planet named for the Roman god of agriculture and wealth, Saturn. Obviously the most distinguishing feature of it are those large rings surrounding it, we’ll get to those shortly. Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system which is probably why it was mentioned in early recorded history. In 1610, Galileo noticed something different about Saturn, but wasn’t able to identify what it was. He didn’t have a proper telescope to discern the rings and his theories were that it was irregularly shaped or that there were moons close to it that gave it that appearance. In the mid-1650’s a more advanced telescope was invented by Dutch physicist, Christiaan Huygens, who was then able to see that an unattached “ring” existed around the planet. As the decades and then centuries went on it was determined that there were multiple rings and they were named in the order they were discovered, from A to G. Since the brighter rings were easier to see they were named first and as space travel became possible other rings were identified, the last one, G, not until 1980. This has led to an out of sequence naming, the order outward from the planet is D, C, B, A, F, G and E. The rings are made almost entirely of water ice with trace amounts of other minerals, space dust, and silicates. Not every ring has the same composition which gives them differing colors. Despite looking solid, the rings consist of individual chunks of ice, most of them are small grains like sand and others the size of mountains. Although their widths differ greatly, from 20 miles to 75,000 miles, the average height of each ring is surprisingly only about 30 miles. The total distance from Saturn of the rings and the spaces between them is around 272,000 miles. Now you know the rough composition and sizes of the rings but the question that has divided the science world is how the rings were created in the first place. The original theories were that the rings were part of the formation of Saturn itself, but in more recent studies they believe the rings are much younger and were likely formed either from the collision of two icy moons or a moon or moons that were ripped apart by Saturn’s gravitational forces. Sadly, the rings are quickly disappearing at a continuous rate that may be faster than originally estimated. So, if you’re around in 100 - 300 million years, space will look a little different then.

This week’s bonus question:

Launched in 1997, the space probe that studied Saturn before burning up in 2017 was named for this Italian-French astronomer who was the first to note its multiple rings in 1675?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

05/04/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 05/03/26 - 05/09/26:

The midwest of the United States is home to a massive geological secret that is nearly completely hidden from view. Depending on who you ask, there is a roughly 1,200 to 1,900 mile horseshoe-shaped scar that starts in Kansas, runs north to Michigan and perhaps all the way down to Alabama. About 1.1 billion years ago, tectonic movement triggered extreme volcanic activity that eventually created the Midcontinent Rift (MCR). It was believed to be over 200 miles wide and filled with lava estimated at a couple hundred to thousands of feet deep. Had the growth of the rift continued it would have most likely ripped North America in half and created a new body of water between them. 15-22 million years later, however, the rift surprisingly stopped advancing, over the course of about 100,000 years. In recent studies, it has been theorized that a continental collision event on the eastern coast was responsible for this. The lava that created the rift cooled and solidified into basalt which led to the repair of the geological scar. Over millions of years, layers of sedimentary deposits filled most of the rift covering the majority of evidence that it had even existed. Not all of the rift was repaired though. In the upper portion of it, it created the basin of what would become Lake Superior. That basin would later be filled by glacial meltwaters. The area around Lake Superior is also where you will find remnants of the rift with large deposits of exposed basalt and a high amount of natural resources including shale, copper, nickel, among others. Despite being over a billion years old, the initial discovery of the rift didn’t occur until the 1950’s. At first, scientists found an anomaly of gravity and magnetic levels that appeared higher in the upper midwest. Within the next few decades they were able to map out the rough outline of the rift and from 2004 to 2015, they employed an array of 400 seismographs, gathering data for two years before relocating them elsewhere. Instead of recording earthquake data, scientists were able to essentially produce images of the Earth’s interior allowing for further understanding of the Midcontinent Rift.

This week’s bonus question:

The continental collision event on the eastern coast of North America, that is thought to have been both the cause and the cure of the MCR, is known by this name?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

04/27/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 04/26/26 - 05/02/26:

For those of you who have been reading my bonus topics for the last few years, you know I like to talk about animals, particularly marine animals as evident by my octopus post a few weeks ago. This week is no different, it’s the clownfish. While Finding Nemo brought the clownfish to a new audience, it’s been long known that they have a symbiotic relationship with sea anemones. It was a mystery for scientists of how it was possible, but in recent years they discovered that the sting of the anemones te****les is related to the sugars that are found on the surface of different organisms. That sugar is called sialic acid. When clownfish are born, they have a higher level of this sugar, but after interaction with the anemones their sugar levels lower and they are able to coexist with the anemone without getting stung. Low levels of the sugar exist on the anemone as well, occurring as a mucus on the surface of both organisms. The symbiosis isn’t just chemical, they also protect each other from predators. Clownfish hide within the te****les of the anemone while defending the anemone from potential threats. Probably the most amazing thing about clownfish though is their genetics. They are usually found in small groups of about three to five, and since clownfish are always born male, there obviously has to be a female to continue the progeny. The largest male will mate with the current female until she dies or is no longer a part of the group. At this point, he will become the female which takes a couple of weeks to months for the change to occur. This happens as a result of protandrous sequential hermaphroditism. Clownfish are born with recessive female traits that are dormant until it is necessary for them to change. I gotta think that Finding Nemo would have been a way different movie if they had focused on that.

This week’s bonus question:

Not surprisingly, the clownfish is also known by this name?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

04/20/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 04/19/26 - 04/25/26:

Space, the final frontier. Ok, so this isn’t about space technically, but it is about Earth’s atmosphere that eventually reaches space. The Earth’s atmosphere consists of five layers. The innermost or lowest layer is called the troposphere. This is where nearly all of the weather phenomena occur and obviously there is a large range in temperatures around the globe dropping to around -60 F at the edge of the layer called the tropopause. Oddly enough, the second layer, the stratosphere, “warms up” to a balmy 5 F at its outer edge, which I’m sure you can deduce is called the stratopause. The mesosphere is the third layer and the temperature plummets to about -150 F the further out it goes. The fifth and outer layer is the exosphere where cosmic radiation is rampant, so the particles found out there are full of stored kinetic energy. This is capable of producing temperatures up to nearly 2,000 degrees, but because this layer is nearly a vacuum it doesn’t convert to thermal energy and instead it’s near absolute zero, kinda cold. Now you may have noticed that I skipped the fourth layer, the thermosphere. Based on its name alone, it suggests that it might be warmer there and it is, much warmer, sort of. Located within the entire thermosphere and partially in the bordering atmospheric layers is the ionosphere where solar radiation charges the atoms, molecules and other particles. This is important in global communication, so this is where many of Earth’s satellites are found and also the International Space Station. The solar radiation creates extremely high temperatures up to about 4,000 degrees, but because the atmospheric gas levels are so low the heat can’t be felt. In fact, a thermometer might register what would be freezing temperatures on Earth. The thermosphere is also where the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis occur. It’s kind of amazing how a distant layer of our atmosphere has so much importance with life on Earth.

This week’s bonus question:

The thermosphere is considered to be the beginning of outer space designated by this line found near the lower end of the layer?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

04/12/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 04/12/26 - 04/18/26:

I was watching an old episode of Jeopardy the other night and there was an entire category about journalist Nellie Bly. A whole category? Now I know why. I’ve heard her name but never knew the remarkable career and life that she led. Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in 1864, she suffered a tragedy at an early age when her father passed away leaving her family with financial hardships. Years later, she enrolled in college, but further financial constraints forced her to drop out after the first year. Her brief career in journalism began when she was 20 years old. She wrote a criticizing response to a Pittsburgh newspaper article that vilified women in the workplace which went on to say that they were best at “having children and keeping house”. She rebutted by defending women and stating that there should be more opportunities for them drawing off her own experiences with poverty. This got the attention of the newspaper’s editor who hired her to write similar articles. This is where she pioneered undercover work that came to be called, “stunt journalism”. In order to conceal her identity, she took the pseudonym, Nellie Bly, the title of a popular song. She wrote several articles for the Pittsburgh Dispatch about the adversities faced by women, particularly in the workplace. This was exposed in greater detail after a series of articles Bly wrote while posing as a worker at several different factories. These described the poor conditions and treatment that women received there. Factory owners soon found out and put pressure on the newspaper to stop her. Bly was then relegated to writing about minor subjects like fashion, society and gardening. She became disenamored with her new position and after a six-month stint in Mexico she decided to leave. Bly moved to New York City in hopes of continuing her journalism career, but as a woman, she found it difficult to find work. She eventually convinced the New York World to hire her which led to the biggest story of her career. She decided to take on the risky task of investigating reports of neglect and harsh conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. In order to do so, she practiced acting like she was insane and after checking into a boarding house, she pretended to lose her mind and was subsequently arrested. She was so convincing that the psychology experts agreed that she needed to be institutionalized. She was sent to Blackwell’s Island where she was able to witness the atrocities that occurred and reported that the conditions there were enough to make anybody go insane and that she thought several of the patients may have been as normal as she was. Ten days later she was released from the asylum in an arrangement by her editor. As a result of her expose, a grand jury investigation led to increased funding, dismissal of negligent staff, legislative reforms and the release of many patients. The success of this series of articles was later made into a book and made Nellie one the most well-known journalists in the world. Just two years later, she embarked on an adventure after reading Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. She wanted to re-enact the route from the novel and though not traveling by balloon, she did make the trip by train and boat and circumnavigated the globe in 72 days. This endeavor helped cement her legacy in journalism even more. Surprisingly, she left it all behind after marrying millionaire businessman, Robert Seaman. She became president of Iron Clad Manufacturing and during her time there she patented several inventions still in use today. After her husband’s death in 1904, she took over operations and introduced new benefits to the employees which took a toll on the company’s revenue. The business failed and she returned to journalism. She found her way to Europe where she reported on World War I, continued to fight against injustices against women and passed away from pneumonia in 1922 at the age of 57.

This week’s bonus question:

Nellie Bly uncovered atrocities at the Blackwell Asylum while working for New York World which was led by this famous newspaper publisher?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

04/05/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 04/05/26 - 04/11/26:

The octopus may not necessarily be considered a unique animal compared to some of the bizarre creatures in nature, but there is more to it than you may think. As you know, octopuses have gelatinous bodies (outside of their chitin beak used for eating) allowing them to fit in extremely small spaces that don’t seem possible. Also well known is that they have the ability to excrete an inky substance as a defense against predators. This is produced from two different glands that mix a melanin based ink with a mucus. What may not be as well known is their internal structure. Let’s start with the fact that they have three hearts. The two branchial hearts are used to pump blood through their gills which supplies it with oxygen and then sent back to the central heart for distribution through the rest of its body. Unlike humans whose blood contains iron giving it its red color, octopus blood contains a copper protein which makes it blue. When oxygen is released in its body however, the blood will appear clear or pale. It also has nine brains that include a central brain and eight ganglion brains, one for each te****le. The central brain is circular, resembling a doughnut that surrounds the esophagus. Of its 500 million neurons, only 180 are found in the central brain, while the rest are dispersed in the eight “mini-brains” and the te****les. This gives the octopus the ability to move each te****le independently from the central brain. The ganglion brains can also communicate with each other without involving the central brain. Now, let’s talk about sexy time, bow chicka wow wow. Since they lack any external genitalia, male octopuses use a specialized te****le as a deliverer of s***m to the female. They can taste what they’re looking for through touch and once they find their destination, which is actually located behind the female’s eyes, (talked about being f***** in the head!) they send a s***m sac down to complete the deal. There is so much more interesting stuff about the octopus that I can’t cover in enough detail for this short topic so check it out for yourself, pretty fascinating creature.

This week’s bonus question:

This is the name of the specialized male te****le used for reproduction in octopus?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

03/29/2026

Bonus topic for the week of 03/29/26 - 04/04/26:

One of my final questions last week was about the multi-sport athlete, Jim Thorpe. In today’s sports, with all the superstars, their big personalities and equally big salaries, it’s easy for people to forget about the athletes that came before them. As I said in the question he is “often considered the greatest athlete in history” and for good reason. Let’s look at his life and accomplishments. He was a member of the Sac and Fox tribe born in Indian Territory, which eventually became Oklahoma. His birthdate has been debated, but it’s believed that he was born in late May, of 1887 or 1888. He began to show his athletic prowess at an early age, learning to hunt and trap and allegedly to swim and ride horses at the age of three. Thorpe had a troubling childhood, losing his twin brother at the age of nine and his mother two years later. This may have led to his history of truancy and after years of different boarding schools, he ended up in Pennsylvania's Carlisle School where he found sports. As the story goes, he first observed some classmates attempting the high jump and decided that he’d like to try it. Dressed in his work clothes of overalls and a buttoned shirt, he cleared the bar at 5’ 9”, outperforming the other jumpers and setting a school record. This caught the attention of the school’s coach who got him to try out for the track and football team. On the football team, he played several positions including kicker, punter, running back and defensive back. Not only was he great at football, he also did well in lacrosse, basketball, boxing, hockey, swimming and won a ballroom dancing competition. After five years at Carlisle, he left to play minor league baseball for two seasons, but returned in 1911 and resumed his athletic dominance. He led his football team to what would later become known as an NCAA Championship, including a win over future president Dwight Eisenhower, who mentioned Thorpe in a 1961 speech saying, “He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any football player I ever saw”. Although football may have been his forte, he also excelled at track and field, so much so that he represented the U.S. at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics despite not having participated in any event for several years. He won both the pentathlon and the decathlon easily while wearing mismatched shoes since his had been stolen. When he was awarded his medals, King Gustav of Sweden said to him, “You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world”. In early 1913, however, it was reported that Thorpe had played minor league baseball and his medals were stripped from him because at the time only amateur athletes could be in the Olympics. That same year, he signed with the MLB team, the New York Giants. He played sporadically over the years for a few different teams both major and minor leagues until 1922. He also played professional football from 1913 until 1928, most notably for the Canton Bulldogs, who became part of the newly formed NFL in 1920. He retired from professional sports in 1928 and went on to do a variety of jobs including a doorman, ditchdigger and even appeared as an extra in over 70 movies. He passed away in 1953 in his mid-60’s. Fortunately in 1983, 30 years after his death, the IOC restored his Olympic standing and his medals.

This week’s bonus question:

This coach at Carlisle School, instrumental in Jim Thorpe’s athletic career, is very well known in youth sports?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point

Savvy Minds Entertainment

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