It’s sporty (science) summer: Cutting edge monitoring of sweat, and how decades of labiaplasty inspired a new bike saddle

Tiny Matters

This summer is a sports fan’s dream! Beyond some major soccer tournaments, Paris 2024 kicks off at the end of July. If you think about it, sports are science in motion, which means that buried in incredible athletic feats is a lot of data about how athlete bodies are using and responding to chemistry, biology and physics. That data is helping scientists design new or better tools for athletes.
Today, in honor of this very sporty summer, Sam and Deboki delve into how scientists go about developing the equipment that helps move athletes, and how that equipment is holding importance for the medical field as well, for instance in diagnosing cystic fibrosis in infants. Sam and Deboki will also cover the creative experiments one scientist did to design a better bike saddle for female pro cyclists, who endured decades of intense injuries that ultimately required many to undergo labiaplasties, until American racing cyclist Alison Tetrick came along and said “enough is enough.” Title IX may have revolutionized female sports participation, but until more recently building gender-specific sports equipment from the ground up was unheard of.

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Chapters

1. It’s sporty (science) summer: Cutting edge monitoring of sweat, and how decades of labiaplasty inspired a new bike saddle (00:00:00)

2. Paris 2024 is almost upon us! (00:01:01)

3. What sports wearables are missing (00:03:00)

4. Sports wearables to keep factory workers safe or even test babies for cystic fibrosis (00:09:25)

5. There is a lot of misinformation surrounding female athlete health (00:13:43)

6. Designing Gender-Specific Sports Equipment (00:16:13)

7. Decades of labiaplasties invokes enough anger to inspire the redesign of the bike saddle (00:18:04)

8. Tiny show and tell: Dubious mosquito repellants and how a chance social media encounter could uncover an ancient language (00:25:47)