Throwback Thursday: Evolution's Secret Playbook | Sam Tatam

Let's start with a question tip. Do you ever use Velcro in your life? Uh, pretty much all the time, Kurt. Yeah. Why why do you ask?

Well, do you know how the idea for Velcro came about? I think I'm supposed to say that I sort of do, but I sort of don't. Um uh but I'm guessing that you probably have done some research or you wrote about this and you're gonna you're just tell me just tell me ah Tim you are always so perceptive always so perceptive on this all right so in 1941 go way back to the the world in 1941 Jorgees de Mestral was taking his dog for a walk through the woods and upon returning home de Mestral noticed that the dog was covered in burrs those thorny sticky things that you know you try to pull apart Get off your pant legs, or in this case, get off of the dog's fur, and you can't do it because they just stick and they're they're so clingy, right?

So Demestro was an amateur inventor and he was just curious by nature. So he examined those burrs that he found on his dog underneath a microscope. And what he saw there intrigued him and it inspired him so much that he would spend the next 14 years attempting to duplicate what he saw under the microscope before introducing Velcro to the world in 1955. That is a truly fascinating story, I have to admit.

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