What are the most EXTREME lifeforms on Earth, and how are they surprisingly important to study? And what is the long yet recent history of astrology, and why do we reach for it?

Things we Talk About:
The Seal Stream
Sea lion running
Paper Clipping: Female Astrologer
Paper Clipping: Suffragette Books
Paper Clipping: WW2 and Astrology
Paper Clipping: Pimms Ad

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:23) Extremophiles
(00:57:55) Astrology
(01:43:59) Outro

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We also learn about: 

We?ve put tardigrades through every red bull task imaginable but they?re NOT extremophiles, extremotolerant vs extremophiles that thrive, thermophiles at 122 celsius, anglophiles, what would it suck to experience, psychrophiles, acidophiles and alkaliphiles, hypobarophiles experiencing 500x our pressure, oligatroph, polyextromophiles, life has found a way in so many extreme places, the chernobyl black mold, not just growing towards radiation but eating Hot Particles, fungi have survived harsh radiation in the Earth?s past, melanin lets the fungi handle and perceive radiation safely, it?s similar to photosynthesis though in the same way a tsunami is similar to a glass of water, conan the bacterium can live inside nuclear reactors, DNA redundancy, krill that makes antifreeze proteins, osmoconfromers, acidophile taken to a lab and finally thriving at .7 ph, it?s also hard as hell to capture and study and keep these extremophiles alive, extremophiles gave us PCR, we also us extremophile e coli, bioremediation is what I took when I failed bio and was tutored by an extremophile, we have so much to do-actually that was pretty funny, bioplastics, what extreomophiles teach us about astrobiology, letting some bacteria chill on the outside of the ISS for 3 years, damn girl you?re making me re-evaluate the limits of life, our nuanced and conflicting feeling on astrology, yay we get to read our horoscopes- wait fuck why am I happy about that? babylonian horoscopes, star charts for things like seasons actually were right, the Enuma Anu Enlil collection of omens, what?s your mother?s maiden name and pincode horoscope,  the legacy of the endless pig, uh oh we?re having fun talking about horoscopes, medieval astrology in the royal court and the sciences, before we knew about the earth going around the sun the stars explained the seasons, in the 1700s astrology was seen as a sham, of course royal watching tabloids bring about astrology 2.0, scraping the bottom of the barrel for anything to say about princess margaret, globe conflict 2 electric boogaloo, a pims advert is a rich text, the horoscope test, god the people yearn for therapy, the barnum effect, zodiacs are part of our culture - so something to connect with, the correlation of uncertainty and horoscope popularity, how to manage uncertainty without horoscopes, video games offer a structure and challenge and reward that can help people cope with hard times.

Sources:
NOAA: What is an Extremophile?
Life: Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments
Nature: Life in Extreme Environments
PMC: Genomics of an extreme psychrophile, Psychromonas ingrahamii
The Biologist: Eating Gamme Rays for Breakfast
Research Gate: A Case Study of Strains Inhabiting Chernobyl Reactor No. 4
Chemical Communications: : The Incredible Cell Membrane Adaptations of Extremophiles to Harsh Environments
Life: Extremophiles and Extremophilic Behaviour
Biotechnology Advances: Structural Features of Thermozynes
Science: Conan the Baterium
Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews: Oxidative Stress Resistance in Deinococcus radiodurans
Polar Biology: Cold Resistance the Krill Euphausia superba
Extremophiles: Picrophilus oshimae
Life: Biotechniological Applications of Extremophile Research
Wiki: Thermos aquaticus
Frontiers in Microbiology: DNA Polymerases as Useful Reagents for Biotechnology
PNAS: Microbial Growth at Hyperaccelerations up to 403,627 × g
Frontiers in Microbiology: Extremophiles and the Limits of Life in a Planetary Context
Journal of Indian Institute of Science: Bioprospecting Extremophiles for Astrobiology
NASA: Astrobiology
Frontiers in Microbiology: DNA Damage and Survival Time Course of Deinococcal Cell Pellets During 3 Years of Exposure to Outer Space
New Scientist: Radiation Resistant Bacteria Could Survive Journey From Earth to Mars

---

2013 Paper: The Solar Eclipse Omen Texts from En?ma Anu Enlil
National Geographic: History of Horocopes
My Modern Met: Mystical History of Astrology
British Newspaper Archive 
BBC: Who Actually Writes Horoscopes
2020 Paper: The Man Behind the Horoscope Column- R H Naylor
2005 Paper: A History of Astrology Part I: Origins to the Romans
The Guardian: How Astrology Paved the Way for Predictive Analytics
BBC: Is Astrology Backed By Science?
2022: Even The Stars Think That I Am Superior
BBC: Is There Any Science in Astrology?
Scientific American: Is Astrology Real? Here?s What Science Says
McGill University: How Astrology Escaped the Pull of Science
BBC: The Anxieties and Apps Fuelling the Astrology Boom

http://www.LetsLearnEverything.com/q

It's time to submit your questions for our annual Q&A episode!

What, when, where, why, and how... do we sneeze? There's a surprising amount of mystery to the thing we do all the time, and a lot to learn about! And how many parables and metaphors that we use are actually true? Let's actually dig in to the research and bust some myths!! I mean... break some... falsehoods!!

Images we Talk About:
The Rat Diagram
Caseids
Diplodocus Bones
Plane Diagram
Moai Walking

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:26) Sneezing
(00:57:55) Parable Mythbusters
(01:43:59) Outro

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We also learn about: 

Caroline was inspired by being sick,  theories of sneezing, sneezing in the odyssey, Aristotle said burping and farting are not divine, 25 sextillion molecules in every breath, it?s a wonder we?re not sneezing all the time, sneezing only goes to your brain stem, a sneeze can send particles 8 meters, what ion channel? last year we made sneezless mice, le petite mort and le petit orgasm, the incredible mid-sneeze mouse diagram, we?re gonna talk about - ghoooosts, A.C.H.O.O or the photic sneeze reflex, our explanations for sneezing reflect our understanding of science at the time, snatiation, S.N.A.T.I.A.T.I.O.N, sneezing from getting horny, pee chills, a sneeze is just a more obvious indicator that wires get crossed, diagnostic sneeze testing, finding the first sneezing animal, the earliest diaphgram, chickens sneeze, African wild dogs voting by sneeze, dolphins chuffing, bugs aren?t part of the sneeze club, unlike the mythbusters we won?t be blowing up cars, okay maybe a few, if you put a frog into boiling water it won?t jump out it will die, boiling frogs in search of the soul, the climate change metaphor works for brain dead leaders, the survivorship bias meme plane, the image is fictitious but Abraham Wald is even cooler, America?s Bletchley - The Statistical Research Group, some people believe the heads had bodies, oh my god they did, the walking Moai, the deforestation happened before the people, invasive rats without a natural predator, pretending we?re surprised about colonialism being the culprit, we didn?t need to do carbon dating to find some of these answers guys.

Sources:
1990 Paper: The History of Sneezing
2013 Paper: The Omen of Sneezing
2009 Paper: Sneeze reflex: Facts and fiction
Smithsonian: Why Do We Sneeze?
National Geographic: The Air You Breathe Is Full of Surprises
Wiki: Sneeze
2025 Paper: The Sneeze Reflex in Physiological and Pathological states: a mini review
2024 Paper: Mouse Sneezing Study
Nature: Cough or sneeze? How the brain knows what to unleash
Scientific American: Looking at the Sun Can Trigger a Sneeze
2010 Paper: When the Sun Prickles Your Nose: An EEG Study Identifying Neural Bases of Photic Sneezing
ScienceLine: Why Do People Sneeze When They Look at the Sun?
OMIM: Gastric Sneezing
2009 Paper: Arousal and Sneezing
2017 Article: An Ancient Origin for the Diaphragm
2022 Paper: Lung Evolution in Vertebrates and the Water-to-Land Transition
National Geographic: Animal Sneezing
National Geographic: African Wild Dogs Vote by Sneeze
Oceanbites: Sneeze, Cough, Chuff: Respiratory Irritation in Dolphins
Natural History Museum: Hagfishes
Smithsonian: 14 Fun Facts About Hagfish
Sci-Show- Aquatic Sneezing
2022 Paper: Sponges Sneeze
2022 Paper: Dinosaur Sickness
National Geographic: First Dinosaur Found with a Respiratory Disease
---
Atlantic on The Boiling Frog
Know Your Meme: Survivorship Bias Plane
Cameron Moll Blog Post about Original Drawing
Abraham Wald's Plane Statistic Memorandum
Terry Hunt's Incredible "Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island"
The Walking Moai Paper

How have animals adapted to the digging lifestyle, and can that help us explain the Devil's Corkscrew? And what are the various ways movies can be censored across the world, and what does that tell us about the world itself?

Images we Talk About:
The Devil's Corkscrew
Mole Skeleton Comparison
Mole Digging Video
Monitor Lizard Burrow
Monitor Lizard Burrows

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:30) Fossoriality
(00:52:58) Movie Censorship
(01:36:53) Outro

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We also learn about: 

Daemonelix or the Devil?s Corkscrew, well Tom I hope one of your facts beats Ella?s giant sloth fact, only nerds know the word fossorial, why dig is easy - how dig is harder, mole skeletons are hyper specialized, moles are herd to catch and keep, I dig holes for me, is that couscous? the silica gel of pasta, x-ray videos of moles digging in couscous, devil?s corkscrew deja vu, first and deepest lizard burough, one of the most stable egg environments for an 8 month incubation, it turns out helixes are more common than we thought, Put! Lizards! In! Couscous! Peter Jackson?s braindead, video nastys, wow blaming media for crime we?ve never heard that before, video nastys were an easy ban because politicans didnt care about them, a microcosm of the moral panics of the time, the military entertainment complex, the US doesn?t have any outright movie bans? but they do have the hayes code, self censorship, no picture show lower the moral standard of those who see it, the commercial influence on self censorship, charlie shackleton?s paint drying film, poilitical movie bans reflect real alliances and tensions, denmark?s only ever banned the disney skeleton dance, Denmark?s freedom of speech is what the US thinks it is, don?t be mean to the military uwu, only 34 foreign films can be shown in china every year, the censorship is coming from inside the house, a Bohemian Rhapsody without mention of sexuality, Tilda Swinton played an asian character to get around mentioning Tibet, World War Z was changed even though it never aired in China, why are you making me defend these bad movies, censorship is as strong as the weakest link in the chain that?s profitable, ?it?s all just crazy and some food for thought, thank youuu?

Sources:
NPCA on the Devil's Corkscrew
Smithsonian Mag Devil's Corkscrew
Mole Forlimb Morphology
Mole Senses Paper
Fossorial Ventilatory Response
Mole Rat Lung Comparison Paper
NWF Mole Facts
NYTimes Mole Motion
Yi Fen Lin Mole Walking Paper
Yi Fen Lin Mole Burrowing Paper
Deep Nesting in a Lizard: Deja Vu Devil's Corkscrew: First Helical Reptile Burrow and Deepest Vertebrate Nest.
Helical Burrows Across the Animal Kingdom Paper
---
BBFC: Video Nasties
Wiki: Video Nasty
BFI: Unspooling the Video Nasties
Wiki: Film Censorship in the United States
Guardian: Top Gun for Hire
Wiki: List of films banned in the United States
Screen Online: Hayes Code
Vice: Why I?m Making British Film Censors Watch Paint Dry
Wiki: Paint Drying
Wiki: List of Banned Films
BBC: Cambodia Bans Thai Movies
BBC: Russia Bans Death of Stalin
Reuters: Lightyear Banned
Wiki: The Skeleton Dance
EBSCO: History of Censorship in Denmark
English Translation of the Danish Constitution
Wiki: Denmark Motion Picture Content Rating System
Variety: Foreign Titles Squeezed in China Film Market
Harvard: Disney censorship in China
Pen: Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing

It's the podcast's birthday!! So Tom has a few ideas he wants to pitch to Caroline and Ella... but first! Ella and Caroline finally revisit the topics they promised! What are the WILD stories behind the race to discover new elements, and what are the real nuancy nuances of craftivism?

Images we Talk About:
William Morris' Print
Terrero's Hankie
Hankie Given to Terrero
Madres de Plaza de Mayo
Pussyhat
Tom's Gifts

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:43) Superheavy Elements 2
(01:17:58) Craftivism 2
(02:01:28) Tom?s List

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We also learn about: How do we prove this is real, we pinky promise, a refresher in the form of a pop quiz, we didn?t make the elements - except for some we did make, is the gift plutonium? we never thought we?d have another element heavier - and then you happened! the quizkids element reveal, the increasing specificity of Stan?s Apartmentium, just keep adding and smashing its just math - really expensive math, the long island ice tea of nuclear materials is in the bomb, scraping new elements off the filters of flying through a mushroom cloud, the edge of the periodic table was a cold war battle field, the feuds of the transfermium wars, perhaps sodium seaborgate, while they were bickering over naming Germany discovered 5 new elements, it?s like a railgun you nerd, linear vs circular accelerators, it?s like hotwheels tracks, we could?ve designed this! ?how can we differently smash this stuff??, I?m hype about a filter, only Victor Ninov could run GOOSY, ?the most audacious fraud in scientific history?, lying about discovering an element and then discovering it before people catch on to the lie, 3 elements wasn?t enough, Oganessian co discovered 14 elements - the most of anyone, I mean really we all co-discovered this topic, ?we hit this wall of super heavy elements being bastards?, Goosy 2 Electric Goosyloo, you?re smashing billions of particles per second over months to hopefully get 1 atom, calcium beam of milk, the theoretical island of stability, superstable superheavy elements, disappointment on the horizon, domestic arts for political and social change, I sure wish someone had done research into this nuance, oh fuck that was supposed to be me! the arts and crafts movement was activism for crafts not crafts for activism, fucking up golf courses for women?s suffrage, some suffragettes didn?t want to include working class women, imprisoned women were given sewing needles to reform but they just made incredible protest art, Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a sense of solidarity through craft, lets tonally tokyo drift this episode baby, comparing and contrasting with the pussy hat, craft ins and yarn bombing, craftivism defies expectations and engages community, ?appealing? activism, craftivism is a piece of the puzzle not the whole solution, it?s a useful tool in the toolkit, Hoisin Duck Wrap - Irn Bru - Yogurt, Tom gets a tattoo and regrets it, stopping by Tom Scott?s spinoff podcast show, Tom?s gifts, putting it to the test who?s the strongest cohost, the podcast can officially hop!

Sources:

Kit Chapman's "Super Heavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table"
Ella's Superheavy Documentary
---
Britannica: Arts and Crafts Movement
Textile Society of America: The benefits and pitfalls of craftivism
Museum of English Rural lift: Suffrage and the Sewing Machine
American Golfer 1912: The British Suffragettes Attack Golf Courses
Textile Society of America: The Political Stitch: Voicing Resistance in a Suffrage Textile
The Thread Blog: Historical Craftivism: From Suffragettes to Gandhi to Argentina
The Association of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo
Learning for Justice: Madres de Plaza de Mayo
V&A: The Pussyhat
The Morning Crafter Blog: Craftivism: Empowerment, Resistance, and Activism Through History
Book: How To Be A Craftivist by Sarah Corbett
2022 Paper: Negotiating the Art of Protest through Craftivism
2017 Paper: KNIT + RESIST: placing the Pussyhat Project in the context of craft activism
2018 Paper: Knitting Activism, Knitting Gender, Knitting Race
J. Feliz: An Open Letter to the Craftivism Movement
BBC: Police to get broader powers to restrict repeated protests

We know ghosts aren't real, but what is real is the way our brains make us imagine the creepy things that go bump in the night. What about our psychology makes it so easy to be spooked? And we've all heard of costumes and pumpkin carving, but what are the weirdest old Halloween traditions, and what can we take into our own traditions?

Things we Talk About:
Mooney Faces
Games for Halloween
Snap Dragon Video 1
Snap Dragon Video 2
Caramel Pronunciation Map
Mischief Night Map
Cabbage Card 1
Cabbage Card 2
The Bobbing for Apples Video

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:36) Paranormal Psychology
(01:03:06) Defunct Halloween Traditions
(01:36:21) Outro

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We also learn about: Skeleton Shattering Science Topic, anomalistic psychology is the science of ghost busting, NOT parapsychology, the first step to a ghost is someone who believe in ghosts, following the format of ghost hunting shows, spooky believers are often predisposed pattern recognizers, the Australian sheep goat scale, suggestion not priming, creepyness via agent detection, a haunted house is evolutionarily designed to be spooky to us, the scary feedback loop, no infrasound does not vibrate your eyeballs,  pattern recognizing apophenia, it?s a wonder humans aren?t scared all the time, it?s actually good we don?t consciously perceive every single thing, wait the static says subscribe to the podcast?? I think she?s saying her hips DO lie, the yeti, hiring a magician on halloween, Ella?s pattern recognizing brain can sense Tom?s bit voice, all the names Halloween goes by, Samhain was basically new years eve, Mary Blain?s Games for Halloween and her caveat, Silent Supper or Reverse Dinner, don?t play snap dragon, imagine risking third degree burns for a RAISIN, the heat map of words for the night before Halloween, mischief night or Halloweeneen, youth honor day, the worst boy police, did you pull a bisexual cabbage? why is everything so romantic?? silent supper seems cute until you?re sprinting over a fence and smashing a window, bobbing for apples is FERAL, our tradition of a spooky episode.

Sources:

2021 Paper- Super-natural fears
2022 Paper- Believing is seeing: The link between paranormal beliefs and perceiving signal in noise
Psychology Today: Why Some People See Ghosts But Others Never Do
2018 Paper: The Australian sheep-goat scale: An evaluation of factor structure and convergent validity
Wiki- Australian Sheep-Goat Scale
2003 Paper- An investigation into alleged ?hauntings?
1997 Paper- Context-Induced Paranormal Experiences: Support for Houran and Lange's Model of Haunting Phenomena
2010 Paper- It's still bending: Verbal suggestion and alleged psychokinetic ability
Smithsonian Magazine- On the Science of Creepiness
2016 Paper- On the nature of creepiness
2022 Paper- Why Some People See, Hear, Or Feel ?Ghosts?
2020 Paper- Things That Go Bump in the Literature: An Environmental Appraisal of ?Haunted Houses?
2009 Paper- The ?Haunt? project: An attempt to build a ?haunted? room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound
BBC- The science behind seeing ghosts
2022 Paper- Paranormal experiences, sensory-processing sensitivity, and the priming of pareidolia
2014 Paper- Auditory Pareidolia
Michael Nees Interview with The Conversation
Digicult: Joe Banks: Rorschach Audio
---
Smithsonian Mag Halloween Traditions
Mary E. Blain's Games for Halloween
Midwest Folklore: Silent Supper
Journal of the Folklore Institute: Silent Supper
Atlas Obscura: Silent Supper
NYTimes Dialect Quiz
Smithsonian Mag: Mischief Night
Smithsonian Mag: Old Halloween Pranks
Atlantic: Halloween Pranks and the Worst Boy Police
Robert Burns Halloween Poem
NJ.com Mischief Night
NPR Apples & Halloween

Wait... ELLA is doing a math topic?? Not only that but she finds the beauty in searching for answers among the toughest math problems. Then, friend of the show Ellen Weatherford takes us through a tour of video game controllers. My favorite is the- wait how did we end up talking about World War 2??

Images we Talk About:
Tesseract Gif
Tennis for Two Controllers
Magnavox Odyssey
Game.com

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:05) Unsolved Math Problems
(00:54:47) Video Game Controllers
(01:46:42) Outro

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We also learn about: 

Today Caroline is played by Tom and Tom is played by Ellen, I?ll fall on the bad british accent sword for our guests, Ellen speed runs failing math, famous bad lawyer Fermat, I?m learning about math?? from Ella??? Ellen?s Last Theorem: lentil?s cure cancer, ?mathematics like any science requires advancements and research and discovery?, basic math starts as early as mesopotamia, a brief history of mathematics, I gotta make math to describe this apple, math begets math, new ways to solve old problems, is this problem hard or will it take thousands of years to solve, the oldest unsolved math problem is 2000 years old, you?re scientifically wrong that all numbers are perfect, we know of 52 perfect numbers, merseene primes and perfect numbers, we don?t know if odd perfect numbers exist, Hilbert?s 23 unsolved math problems, it?s not the answers to the questions - its the tools built to solve them, new list just dropped - the millenium prize problems, the million dollar prize doesn?t account for inflation, the power of an interesting question, multidimensional play-doh, bumblebee - the tesseract! the poincare conjecture had only not been solved in the third dimension, perelman turns down the fields medal, they can offer a million cause if you solve it you?re only thinking about play-doh and 10 dimensions, is the mellenium prize problematic? eh, after researching a lot? the Riemann hypothesis actually probably won?t break cryptography, pure mathematics deserves the benefit of the doubt for its purpose, go forth with Ella?s blessing, new Ella loves math and libertarianism, I don?t know if the convergent evolution argument for controllers holds up in court, Ellen?s radical definition of a game, I don?t think the gate should be closed but don?t push me through it, the murky search for the first video game, Birdy the Brain - the Tic Tac Toe machine, controllers transmit human intention into a computer, some of the first controllers used dials, I was going to say the manhattan project as a joke, a brief and unexpected nuclear disarment detour, Higinbotham doesn?t like being remembered for tennis for two, Space War! the Magnavox Odyssey, some controllers were tabletop not handheld, Atari stole pong, the anatomy of a controller, stolen valor for logitech controllers piloting submarines, kids and parents learning to use controllers, Ella thought RT and RB meant top and bottom, rumble is purely for experience not input, the game.com had the first touch screen, a urinal controlled driving game, interviewing resident elderly expert Donna Jones.

Sources:
MacTutor: Pierre Fermat Biography
Wiki: Fermat's Last Theorem
MacTutor: History of Mathematics
Simon Fraser University: A Brief History of Mathematics
Medium:The Oldest Unsolved Problem in Math
Pillars Taylor University: Odd Perfect Numbers
Royal Society: David Hilbert
Simons Foundation: Hilbert?s Problems
Clay Institute: The Millennium Prize Problems
Nature News: Maths 'Nobel' Prize Declined By Russian recluse
Anatoly Vershik: Thoughts on the Clay Millennium Prizes
BBC In Our Time: The Poincare Conjecture
Medium: The Poincaré Conjecture
[BBC News: Russian Maths Genius Perelman Urged to Take $1m Prize](BBC News - Russian maths genius Perelman urged to take $1m prize)
Clay Mathematics Institute: Riemann Hypothesis
---
Probably the Oldest Interactive Electronic Game - Jeremy Norman?s History of Information
?Bertie the Brain Still Lives? - Popular Mechanics
?Tennis for Two ? A Pioneer in the Video Game Industry? - GameSpeak Mag
?Who was Willy Higinbotham?? - Federation of American Scientists
?Spacewar!? - Museum of Play
?The Magnavox Odyssey: The Forgotten Pioneer of Gaming Consoles? - Slashgear
Bad Game Hall of Fame
?Place to pee: new Belgian urinal-based video game? - Ars Technica
?Sega Begins Sales of Urine-Powered 'Toylet' Videogame? - Wired
Perifit Care, Original Kegel Exerciser

What does chemistry have to do with computers? Well it might just be the best way to understand what's actually going on inside a CPU! And how could there have been a moon hoax back in 1835? Well it involves cosmic pluralism and Edgar Allen Poe so buckle up!

Images we Talk About:
Vaccuum Tubes in Computers
The First Integrated Circuit
Another early Integrated Circuit Prototype
People Etching a Circuit Mask
TED How are Microchips Made Video
Etching from the Great Moon Hoax

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:23) The Chemistry of Computers
(01:04:27) The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
(01:49:15) Outro

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We also learn about: 

BOOOO, a first time interview for this podcast, tom tries to define an integrated circuit, semiconductors, being mid at conducting is vital, silicon silica and silicone, quartz is one of the most abundant minerals and it?s just silica, the metalloids, transistors are so important but so vague, Caroline and Ella were not expecting a trans rights joke, for once of your jokes deserved more appreciation, the quest to make the smallest switch, semiconductors or on the edge of flipping between conductive or not, vacuum bulbs, The Tyranny of Numbers, photo-lithography, etching shrinking then stenciling a circuit, then computers would help make computers, Moore?s predictions of the future of computing, wait did you just explain Moore?s Law? my new graphics card comes with a new unified theory of physics, transistors are now the width of a few strands of DNA, quantum troubles, relying on moor?s law can stifly creativity, but also making transistor?s smaller is interesting science! Ella & Caroline never thought they?d understand computers like this, it?s almost like they?re going to announce they?re discovering aliens, cosmic pluralism, Sir William Herschel discovered Tom?s Anus, we were in a way disproving life on other planets, Gruithuisen sees roads on the moon, ?the power of imagination on the man is large?, alien theories sold papers, Edgar Allen Poe?s SciCom satire, quoth the lunarian - nevermore, the daily drops escalated the and on the fifth day we got moon racism, the etchings of lunar life, lets get bibles and colonialism on the moon baby, Richard Adams Locke is the true author, Herschel was on a research trip while this was going down, it sounds like we?re the perfect team for a hoax, aside from being a critique of science communication it also made bank and made the sun the most bought newspaper in the world, Locke?s non denial denial, selling property on the moon, this changed journalistic standards, the occasional hoax actually isn?t okay but fine, Herschel actually thinks it?s hilarious, Locke X Poe collab balloon hoax, this sparked a trend of science fiction.

Sources:
Cornell History of Semiconductors
Euro Physics News 100 Years of Semiconductor Science
Royal Society of Chemistry on Silicon
PBS History of Transistors
PBS Invention of the Integrated Circuit
IEEE Historhy of the Integrated Circuit
Moore's Original Paper: Cramming more Components onto Integrated Circuits
UPenn: Is Moore's Law Really Dead?
MIT: The Death of Moore's Law
---
Wiki: Lunar Pareidolia 
Book- The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination
Wiki- Anaxagoras 
Futurism: Franz von Paula Gruithuisen's Venus Science Fiction
Smithsonian Blog- The Great Moon Hoax
Library of Congress: Blogs 
Paper- The "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835
Linda Hall Library: Richard Adams Locke
Britannica: The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
Library of Congress: Blogs : Belief, Legend, and the Great Moon Hoax
Library of Congress: The Sun (New York) 1833-1916
Internet Archive: Great Moon Hoax Papers
Edgar Allen Poe Society: Richard Adams Locke

Is pointing rude? I'm sure it's a simple question with a simple answer that won't completely break our brains in rethinking all we take for granted about gesture. Also, what is Lauren?s holy grail lost media of gesture studies?

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:01) Is Pointing Rude?
(00:48:11) Questions for Lauren
(01:25:26) Outro

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We also learn about: 

Diverse but incredibly niche interests is the sweet spot, studying the holes in emoji, Tom wasn?t a rude pointer child like Ella, the Disney point, when you point you don?t direct to the end of your finger - you psychically project forward, dogs and horses are great points - cats not so much, we are the only primate that points in the wild, you likely pointed before you spoke, ITS CALLED THE INDEX FINGER BECAUSE IT POINTS LIKE AN INDEX, non index pointing, ?that is one lens through which we could consider this?, lip pointing in Encanto, travel guides will simplify to pointing is rude because it?s complex and nuanced where it?s rude, we haven?t even gotten to rainbows, taboos for pointing at specific things, who dude watch where you?re pointing it?s threatening, what if hypothetically a host just went to japan and pointed a lot, Japan is often on the linguistics bingo card, pointing is the pronoun system in ASL, spacial pronoun tracking, you can be a better pointer than someone, gesture and speech have different strengths, Tom?s gestures are more honest than his words to his cohosts, pointing was some of the earliest emoji, ?medieval illuminated manuscript marginalia creators would be disappointed with you Ella?, the finger pointing came before the arrow, ?we had hands before we had writing?, gesture studies is still new and very interdisciplinary, the way you study gesture is every way, you gesture bigger in loud environments, computers are good at reading hands but not hands in context, the only thing Tom can correct Lauren on is that it was Just Dance not DDR, gesture is ephemeral to study, a huge reason we have gesture study now is video exists, the holy grail lost tapes of gesture, using gesture studies to prove the nazis wrong, are gestures are both for you and the person you?re talking to, I?m not analyzing your gestures if what you?re saying is interesting, metaphorical gesture space, we move ideas around like little apples, you?ll never be able to watch a ted talk again, the archery V myth, exploiting the ambiguity of gesture, we?ve been gesturing with communicating for so long and only reading and writing so recently - so of course we yearn for emoji, ?we?re adding the body straight back in the moment we get the chance to?, the rate of literacy is weird, Lauren insisted no emotion on the head shake emoji because it?s not universally negative, sign language has gesture, for the Aymara language the future is behind you - i cant see whats going to happen, iconic resources, cognitive linguistics is obsessed with our meat puppets, we all experience the same gravity and that influences how we think, part of the joy is being the meat puppet.

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?

See Tom's Science Game Show in NYC!

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

Blood! We all have it, but how much do we know about it? And more importantly, what was the journey of understanding to get there? And just how deep can the history of these peculiar percussion instruments go? Well we'll be criss-crossing across the planet today to find out!

Images we Talk About:
The Quijada
Son Jarocho Quijada Video
The Clapper
The Clapper in Performance

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:35) Understanding Blood
(00:49:38) Peculiar Percussion
(01:24:41) Outro

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We also learn about: 5 liters of blood over 60,000 miles, humoral theory, phlegm - yellow bile - black bile - blood, I?m from house sanguine - our fire is strongest in our season of spring, humoral theory was around for 1500 YEARS, blood letting, a leeches detour just for Caroline, very few leeches actually suck blood, the exportation of leeches for blood letting made them endangered, we nearly killed the leeches in nearly killing us, leeches are sometimes used today after reconstructive surgery for their enzymes, Nafis? circulatory system would not be believed for 400 YEARS, these time skips are killing me, Harvey was ALSO NOT BELIEVED, we stan Harvey cause he got witches acquitted, the government and church?s ban on blood transfusions, 1818 was the first recorded successful transfusion, 1658 Jan Swammerdam first saw ?oval particles? but this was 7 years before the word ?cell? was used, pop quiz on what the parts of blood do, don?t draw your blood while driving, blue and green blood in crustaceans and leeches, antigens and antibodies, ?I hope this will be of some use to mankind?, sodium citrate helped blood stay fresh for transfusion, god medicine fucking rules, we reinvented humors with blood personality types, the humors are stored on the antigens obviously, ?do you know what my blood type is, for no reason, I?m fine, it?s a podcast thing?, Tom has a slumdog millionaire moment because he was working on another video, there are 48 recognized blood groups each with dozens of antigens, having your own bloodtype means having your own bespoke horoscope, we?re averaging one blood group discovered a year, the journey of understanding blood is the journey of science, it?s hard to tell if rocks were used for a cup song routine, Caroline & Ella fall in love with the quijada, it?s a literal death rattle, ?play my bones when I die?, make a jawbone that won?t break, the much sillier vibraslap can still sound good, vibraslap on All Along the Watchtower, the whip/clapper/slap stick, comedia dell?arte, the slap stick was a literal stick to make a slap sound, the christmas rise in slapsticks, the armenia alchemist Avedis Zildjian, since we were working with metal we went listen to this taaah tah tah taaah, a perfeclty clear cymbal is just a bell, a cymbal is crafted chaos to sound good, mmm this wine is very trash but not pingy, now we know Ella?s partner wasn?t just making shit up about cymbal sounds, confirming our sources for this wild Zildjian story, what do you think about this instrument?? I can?t stop making chocolate cymbals! Ringo made people want to drum, finding out Sabian is from the Zildjian family is like finding out Wendy?s last name is McDonald, a percussionist can literally touch history from all across the world, it?s about the reviews we don?t read.

Sources:
Science Museum: Blood
J Thromb Haemost: Discovery of the Cardiovascular System
Contagion - CURIOSity Digital Collections: Humoral Theory
MedicineNet: Is Bloodletting Still Used Today?
Fresh Water Habitats Press Release: Medicinal Leech Breeding
The New Yorker: The History of Blood
NCBI Book: The ABO Blood groups
Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science: The Discovery of Blood Cells
Red Cross Blood Services: History Of Blood Transfusions 1628 To Now
NCBI Bookshelf: Blood and the Cells it Contains
The Conversation: Essays on blood: why do we actually have it?
Blood at 70: its roots in the history of hematology and its birth
PMC: A Brief History of Human Blood Groups
Japan Experience: Blood Types in Japan
The Conversation: More Blood Types than you Think
CBS News: New Blood Type
The Conversation: Gwada-negative
---
Kabeleh Bah Playing the Quijada
Salsa Blanca on the Quijada
John Jeremiah Sullivan on the Quijada
Son Jarocho Quijada Video
History of the Vibraslap
Boston Symphony Orchestra on Shostakovich?s Cello Concerto No 2
Britannica on Slapstick's Etymology
The AMNH's Slap Stick
The Cymbal Test Video
NPR on Zildjian's History
NYT on Zildjian's History

Chances are you know what a placebo is, but... how does it really work? And what can its evolution teach us about science, medicine, and ethics? And how much art can fit a tiny postage stamp? Well enough to fill a whole history of debate, drama, and ducks.

Images we Talk About:
Drafts of England's First Stamp
Sydney Views Stamp
The Train Stamp
2025 Duck Stamp Winners
McBroom's Spite Duck

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:20) The Evolution of Placebos
(00:57:13) Postage Stamp Art
(01:41:17) Outro

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We also learn about: 

The word placebo has escaped academic containment, fake mourners saying ?I will please the lord?, placebo paint on birds wings, placebo as sham, The Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism, not that kind of animal magnetism, placebo as psychology, is this going to be a running bit, defining placebo not in reference to something else, ?a person?s psychological response to being treated?, things like healing through time or pressure to answer are Not placebo effects, placebo effects are tricky to study, animals can get the placebo effect, goo goo ga ga am I in the contwal gwoup? conditioning rats that a smell means reduced pain, the internal and external factors of placebo, the placebo effect is actually doing things in your brain, of course we talked about that before on episode TWENTY EIGHT, Ella loves brain action, you can consciously fail a placebo but unconsciously pass it, the nocebo effect, it may be just in your head but your head is a lot of things, the murky ethics of placebos, doctors are mostly prescribing harmless placebos when patients ask for one, Caroline & Ella?s sleeping pill and recovery position placebos, HOLY SHIT PLACEBO EVOLVED INTO CHARIZARD HELL YEAH, some placebos work when you tell people it?s a placebo, placebo pills take 2 twice daily, wait is this actually just about the importance of transparent and accessible and trustworthy medical care?? the American Philatelic Society, Tom used stamps as stickers, Ella?s friend?s giant mimic stamp, the public was aroused by post office reform - not just us! every contestant of the first stamp contest was revoked, it took 4 artists to design the first stamp, no monarch stamps unless they?re hot, the Universal Postal Union is the second oldest international organization, the absolutely HATED train stamp, philatelic propaganda, Operation Cornflakes, the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee?s incredible process, so you?re saying we can?t make an Iraq War stamp, so you?re saying the UK can make a 9/11 stamp, stamps are of the most visible pieces of art, the duck stamp is the only art competition sponsored by the government,  the super bowl of wild life art, are you a celebrity if oyu haven?t won a DEGOT? stamp advisors with reduction glasses, duck stamp royalty, Broome?s incredible spite art, stamps didn?t have to be art - but we?re glad they are.

Sources:
The Americal Philatelic Society
The Postal Museum London: The Penny Black
Swiss National Museum: Stamps
Wiki: Postage Stamp Design
Linns Stamps: New South Wales Pictorial Stamp
Smithsonian Postal Museum: International Philately
Universal Posta Union
2011 Book: Book of History of the Postage Stamps of the United States of America
US Postal Service: Creating U.S. Postage Stamps
The Postal Museum London: Stamp Design
WWT: Duck Stamps
Scientific America: The Duck Stamp
Fish and Wildlife Service: 2024 Duck Stamp Winner
Million Dollar Duck Video- Taylor and McBroom Rivalry
New York Times: Rising to Glory on the Wings of Ducks
Print Magazine: The Extraordinary Design Journey of a Stamp?From Quasi-Secret Society to Perforated Perfection
Image: The First Stamp Design Evolution
Image: 1869 Pictorial Stamp- 3 Cent Train Stamp
2024 Duck Stamp Entries
Image: McBroom: Comrade Tim Taylor
---
Etymology of Placebos & Placebo History
Placebo Review
Wikipedia Placebo in History
Beecher's The Powerful Placebo
The Powerful Placebo: Fact or Fiction?
Nature Overview: Placebo - Honesty Fakery
Textbook Chapter: Placebo Analgesia in Rodents
The Neuroscience of Placebo Effects
Benedetti's Great 2 Placebos Experiment
NPR on Prescribing Placebos
Guardian on Prescribing Placebos
Kaptchuk's Great Open Label Placebo Study
Finniss et al. Placebo Review

Just how complicated can animal mating rituals be, and why did they even evolve them at all? And why is true crime Everywhere, and what can we learn from breaking down what makes it feel so icky?

Also see Tom's new Game Show in NYC this Sunday! www.OurFindingsShow.com

Things we Talk About:
Deathwatch Beetle
Red-Winged Blackbird
House Finch
Lesser Florican Video
Dance Analysis Video 1
Dance Analysis Video 2
Cruell Step-Dames
Carolina Buddies Murder Ballad

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:04) Mating Rituals
(01:03:01) True Crime
(01:46:08) Outro

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We also learn about: the adorable death watch beetle, the deep sea ?ah fuck it - you?re here? approach, of course the man on the podcast thinks reproduction is easy, why are people on hinge so picky, hermaphrodite sea bunnies, there?s plenty of fish in the sea and the sea is fucking huge, sexual ornaments, peacock feathers made Darwin SICK, sexual ornaments to identify you?re doing it with the right species, you can hang your sexual ornaments all year long for other purposes, finch dating shows, carotenoids from skilled foraging make a brighter pigment is an indicator trait, or just go to a tanning salon, going to the gym is the same - false muscles, active at night - gives you a fright - active at day - wants to get laid, wow flies give eye contact during courting - that?s better than a lot of humans, the fly cha cha slide, drosophila simlish, nuptial gifts, Women! Want! Regurgitated Nutrient Liquid! the arms race of jumping birds, the ?I?ll have what she?s having theory?, dancing mannequins, intermediate level of asymmetric arm movement, if anything the study shows how comical it is to try to boil down human mating, the famous shirt smelling study, what are you trying to show with a human mating study? we shouldn?t be reductive for human mating or for animal mating either, ascribing the gender binary to worms, there is no one easy tip to dating in nature, a double banger for nuance, early crime tabloids like Illustrated Police News, Jack the Ripper was dubbed by the press after all, the prison chaplain?s broadsides, nature?s cruel step-dames or matchless monsters of the female sex, I can?t stop myself from coming up with names fro these murders, true crime lit was a best seller at public hangings, some broadsides sold 30x more than the news, the unmissable attraction of La Morgue de Paris, American Murder Ballads didn?t need you to be literate, true crime as an indicator of media trends, the vicious cycle of true crime consumption, icky entertainment motivations, working against the wishes of survivors, if only the victim had had our sponsor - simply safe, the commodification of people?s suffering, what stories do we choose not to tell, true crime seems to say there is ?right? kind of victim, but true crime isn?t irredeemable.

Sources:
Combermere Abbey: A Hard Day?s Night For The Beetles
Padi: Sea Bunny
Sea Slug Courtship and Reproduction
1978 Paper: Ultraviolet reflection and its behavioral role in the courtship of the sulfur butterflies 
1972 Paper: The Role of the Epaulets in the Red-Winged Blackbird, (Agelaius phoeniceus) Social System
Audubon: Are Brightly Colored Males Really the Best Mates?
Scientific America: Why are male birds more colorful than female birds?
National Science Foundation: Bright colors in the animal kingdom: Why some use them to impress and others to intimidate
2019 Paper: Facial masculinity does not appear to be a condition-dependent male ornament and does not reflect MHC heterozygosity in humans
Yale News: Yale study reveals mating tip for bird species: You should be dancing
The Guardian: Dinosaurs performed dances to woo mates, according to new evidence
Northumbria University: Study identifies high quality female dance movements
1995: MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans
2023 Paper: Do humans agree on which body odors are attractive, similar to the agreement observed when rating faces and voices?
2017 Paper: Humans as a model species for sexual selection research
2009 Paper: Dance dance attribution: exploring the relationship between dance and attractiveness in intial perceptions 
2020 Paper: Mutual mate choice and its benefits for both sexes
---
Podcast.co: How Many True Crime Podcasts
Crime Reads: The Rise of the True Crime Podcaster
JSTOR: The Bloody History of the True Crime Genre
Henry Goodcole: Nature?s Cruel Steppe Dames
NYT: The Bloody History of True Crime Lit
Wellcome Collection: Paris Morgue
JSTOR: The Paris Morgue Provided Ghoulish Entertainment
JSTOR: The Murder Ballad Was the Original True Crime Podcast
Psychology Today: Why the True Crime Audience Is Predominantly Female
SAGE article: Why women are drawn to tales of rape, murder and serial killers
NYT: Is Our True-Crime Obsession Doing More Harm Than Good?
Gawker: True Crime is Rottnig Our Brains
TIME: The Human Cost of Binge-Watching True Crime Series
Reclamation: The Fascination With All That is Morbid and Macabre
Binghamton University: True Crime Adaptations and How the Public Surveils
University of Oregon: The true crime genre is popular, but is it ethical?

Listeners voted for their favorites topics of the past year, so join us as we chat and relearn the best of everything!

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The best awards in podcasting that feature hosts named Tom, Ella and Caroline, the best cohost award is a tie (for Charlie and Teddy) actually introducing ourselves again, Tom is the hot one and the funny one, everyone loves dinosaurs, satisfying questions I never thought to ask, no one at the Igs knows Tom, the nuanced story of the propoganda of the propaganda, hey they happen to be some great topics we?re talking about, I had to put jokes about how bad we are so that we could compliment each other later, you can go back and discover Ella?s, we love an experimental episode as well as a classic episode, we love the quirky younger sibling of things, the World Games are coming up soon - get hype!

How many eyes do these animals have, and more importantly what are they doing with them? And how long has copyright piracy been around, and would YOU download a car? Also Ella finally drops her fake british accent.

Images we Talk About:
Bullfrog Parietal Eye
Bumble Bee Ocelli
Scallop Eyes
Scallop Eye Mirrors
The Home Taping is Killing Music Logo

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:01) Eyevolution II
(00:56:16) Digital Piracy
(01:45:06) Outro

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We also learn about: 

How many jingles does this man have up his sleeve?? 2 eyes or not 2 eyes, what do you need glasses for - to see boobs? why have an odd number of eyes when it?s a BOGO deal developmentally, even more amazing than his eye of agamoto - Dr Strange has 2 camera eyes, ?I grow fearful of the untrue eye?, bull frogs can?t doom scroll, the pineal eye is a skylight to the pineal gland, ommatidia means little eye, each compound eye only sees one image from the thousand of ommatidia, this is Caroline?s first eyevolution rodeo - we can?t answer all the questions, now you can be annoying correcting people about bug vision, ocelli are also called little eyes, triangular ocelli flight stabilization, Robobee, ocelli are useful because they?re auxiliary, they?re a fast different readout, there are so many more interesting sci fi choices for eyes, maybe they evolved ocelli to not crash when they see a sexy bug, having zero eyes would be going to far, oh wait nevermind, where we?re going we don?t need eyes, ?not the implications?, well I?ll answer one of those questions, what do you need eyes for looking at boobs? YEAH I DO ACTUALLY, he complex eyes like a telescope of scallops, THEY DON?T EVEN HAVE A BRAIN, have we gone too far? the living square mirrors in scallop eyes, no one believed scallop TV would work, fair use and fair dealings, early book sellers were book copiers, authors did not make profits on early copies, Martial was the first person to be reposted on 9gag, the library of alexandria operated like OpenAI, book publishers after the printing press were like Universal Music Group - concerned over their rights - not artists, crown approved ABC books, the mid 1600s is the first use of piracy of intellectual property, ruining vinyl records with the cassette tape skull and crossbones, the 2013 Hugh Jackman Oscars performance, Napster?s origins and Metallica?s not so metal killing of it, Piracy was a technical and social phenomenon, YOU WOULDN?T STEAL A FONT, video game antipiracy that reminds you of the creative mind behind the product, none of this is legal advice, the cost of piracy is easy to calculate but the benefit is impossible to measure.

Sources:
The Parietal Eye
Compound Eyes
Holger Krapp's Fantastic Paper on Ocelli
2022 Paper on Ocelli
Otacilia Khezu
The Scallop's Eyes
Scallop TV
Ed Yong on Scallop Eyes
---
Book: In Stock or Special Order
Coda: A Short History of Book Piracy
Book: A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects
Bob Leggitt: The Threat of the Audio Cassette
2025 Paper: Digital Piracy
2009 Abstract: Understanding Online Piracy: The Truth about Illegal File Sharing
The Guardian: Going for a song: the hidden history of music piracy
Frontier Economics: Will piracy make us walk the plank?
Viaaccess: The evolving attitudes of Millennials and Generation Z to video piracy
Huck: Piracy in the UK: the failed war on illegal content
Video- Piracy, It's a Crime
Image- Home Taping Kills Music
BBC: Getting inside a downloader's head
Slate: Goodbye to Piracy
Youtube Video: Mary Spender- The Birth of Music Piracy
Britannica: intellectual-property law
PlagatismToday: How a Reverse Copyright Filled the Library of Alexandria
Wiki: Napster
2010: Digital piracy among consumers in a developing economy: A comparison of multiple theory-based models
Forbes: The Unwilling Digital Pirate: A Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity

Vote for your favorite topics at LetsLearnEverything.com/bestof before Sunday June 8th!!!

What is it about harmonies in music that just sounds so good? Can science (and our amazing musical guest David Bennet) help us get to the bottom of it?

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:24) Why do we like Harmony?
(00:56:10) Our Music Theory Questions
(01:24:04) Outro

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We also learn about: 

Listening to Carly Rae Jepsen academically, the musical expert said Caroline has good music taste, I?m down hereeeeee, harmony is just the interaction of any two notes, Tom thinks about high school choir harmony all the time, even babies like harmony, even the oldest flutes have the same holes in them, octaves are so similar we call them the same note, watchmojo ranking of intervals, Carly Rae Jepsen - It Has Many Notes!, a spicy dissonant interval can be good in moderation - like a spicy seasoning in food, Tom is just grinning getting to ask these music questions, we invited you as a guest and you bring this dissonance to our home?? the messy sounding tones match to messy looking ratios, why can we even distinguish pitch? we use pitch in communication so much, animal sounds are the only things that make pitch, animals can recognize intervals, we call bird song song - but to them it?s probably more like language, it sounds cheesy - but in every human voice there?s a harmony, we?re asking the question backwards - we needed to understand harmony to be able to decipher a pitch, hearing the difference between notes IN YOUR HEAD, what we hear in our head is different than the world around us, harmonies are audio cheesecake - something we evolved to enjoy pumped to the max, ?we can make cheesecake with our mouths?, cheesecake is just molecules, did you not have to learn human evolution in music school? oh my guilty pleasures are Tchaikovsky?s later works, Ella humble bragging about her spotify wrapped, this is going to come off as hostile but hasn?t enough already been said about the Beatles, how different generations experience the Beatles, more like DavidLegoStopMotion, it took 5 years after a dissertation on how to have a career as a musician on youtube, try song ideas and listen to them later, music theory is Descriptive not Prescriptive, liking technical music, the only way you?ll practice is if you enjoy it, the dopamine hit from the cheesecake of practice, can you send that advice to my mom 10 years ago, but you did practice? yeah, teenagers are good at learning instruments because they have free time, start learning music with the music that you love, learning sheet music at the same time as playing is like learning to write as you?re learning to speak, you learn to write after you?ve practiced speaking for years, you?re full of good ideas David who knew.

Can trees talk to each other? And how does that personifying metaphor square with the actual science behind it? And what can we learn from the stories of art on trading cards throughout history?

Images we Talk About:  
Trade Cards
3 Modern Trading Cards
Yuka Morii's Cards
Terror
Hyalopterus Lemure
Preposterous Proportions

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:08) Tree Talk
(00:52:16) Trading Card Art
(01:33:47) Outro

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The answer is yes maybe sometimes and no, talking tree folklore, communication as transferring information, The Secret Life of Trees, Caroline WAS vegan, plants feel pain - GOOD, tree self defense, secondary metabollites, you got me AND Ella to write that down, tannin defense mechanism, volatile organic compounds, giraffes avoiding nearby leaves after eating, maybe trees are eavesdropping, mycorrhizal networks, could it be diffusion or a baby tree suckling on its mother, do a stanford prisoner experiment for trees, that tree is giving mother, mother trees - altruistic fungi - and the perils of plant personification, literally talking to trees, your first priority shouldn?t be to not be boring - maybe second, respect for the organisms that are fundamentally unlike us - their unfathomable lives, the modern boom of trading cards, trade cards, mass produced color images were cool and novel, how many credits for that chromo?  absurd advertising from the 1800s, anthropomorphic fruits and veggies were all the rage, trade cards were a microcosm of marketing-invention-and collecting, Ella?s baseball impression, looking at a mainstream sport through the nerdiest lens imaginable, cigarette baseball cards, Doug McWilliams photographed 8% of all major league baseball players, oh right photography is an art, and so is building relationships with players, cards began to stand on their own, Richard Garfield wanted baseball cards for nerds, Magic and Pokemon credit their artists - but YuGiOh does not, Yuka Morii?s sculpture cards, Adam Rex?s Terror, Richard Thomas? Hyalopterous Lemure, Julie Baroh flipping off her classmates, companies screwing over artists, it?s still art in spite of being a piece of cardboard.

Sources:
2010 Paper: Explaining evolution of plant communication by airborne signals
New York Times: The Social Life of Forests
Book: The Secret Life Of Plants
National Geographic: Plants can talk. Yes, really. Here?s how.
2025 Pape: Shrub anti-herbivore defenses exhibit non-linear and varied responses to increased herbivore density
1990 Paper: Acacia Tree Kills Antelope
Book: Ethylene in Plant Biology
BBC News: Plants send SOS signal to insects
TED ED: Can Plants Talk to Each Other?
2015 Paper: Inter-plant communication through mycorrhizal networks mediates complex adaptive behaviour in plant communities
1997 Paper: Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field
2008 Paper: Hydraulic redistribution of water from Pinus ponderosa trees to seedlings: evidence for an ectomycorrhizal pathway
Scientific America: Do Trees Really Support Each Other through a Network of Fungi?
2023 Paper: Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests
2024 Paper: Mother trees, Altruistic Fungi, and the Perils of Plant Personification
Facts or Fairy Tales? Peter Wohlleben and the Hidden Life of Trees
Video: Project gives 200-year-old Dublin tree ?a voice?
[Scientific America: The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading](The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading | Scientific American)
Article: The World?s First Talking Tree Helps Young People Reconnect with Nature
Smithsonian: Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
---
Cornell University on History of Trade Cards
History of Chromolithography
American Antiquarian Society on Trade Cards
PBS on Trade Cards
Baseball Card Photography History
Doug McWilliams via Baseball Hall of Fame
Doug McWilliams Interview with SABR
Doug McWilliams NYTimes Interview
Richard Garfield on Magic's Creation
Yuka Morii's Pokemon Card Art
Magic Artist Julie Baroh's Interview
Magic Artist Donato Giancola's Points Against Artist Policies
Magic Artist Melissa Benson's Artist Advice

What is the most boring element, and just how boring could it possibly be? Turns out: VERY! And how can we decipher what Shakespeare sounded like, and who among us can lay claim to his accent?

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:52) The Most Boring Element
(00:48:53) Solving Shakespeare's Accent
(01:26:37) Outro

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We?re not going for the easy sappy answer, what makes something boring? all the oxygen stans updating wikipedia, the most boring is obviously bohrium, thulium is used in lasers and x-rays, about 24 grams of astatine per planet, shout out Sir Martin Poliakoff, the 4 elements that came from pitchblende, Caroline stop anthropomorphizing protactinium, the isotope brevium, you could have been called abracadabra and instead your legal name is Actinium?s dad, wow what a fascinating [Rn]5f 26d7s2 ground state electron configuration! give me more random letters and numbers Tom! protactinium is there if your smoke detector is old, the global ocean conveyor belt, THC (Thermal Haline Circulation), that?s the ocean bit- anyway here?s something completely different about protactinium, paleoclimatology sounds a lot like protactinium, Ella realizes the turn, HE DID IT, whoa Caroline doing thumbs up to climate change, they?re de-extincting William Shakespeare, where better to waste my time pursuing this than Let?s Learn Everything, shakespeare is typically performed in received pronunciation, wait this is secretly a UK vs US topic! I?m surprised it took you 3 years to figure out we just keep you for your American accent, Americans have vestigial roticity, the universal beauty of two dudes yapping, what a strange elitism to claim to have Elizabethan English, Appalachian claims of shakespearean accents as a way to boost image, if you want to know what people sounded like back then? look at what people wrote about it! more one to one spellings like ?philome? for film, we can deduce the accent from rhymes and puns, I loov this topic, Tom?s accent gets miscalibrated, an open midback is really stylish these days, open mid back unrounded vowel, Ella can move your tongue with her mind, I see why this gameshow didn?t make it to television, don?t wast a reem on a droom, the Rorscach test of the Original Pronunciation created by David and Ben Crystal, flecks of every dialect, ?it?s a sound that reminds people of the accent of their home, and so they ten to listen more with their heart than their head?, ?American English simply isn?t good enough for Shakespeare?, the Sundry Boroughs of New York baby! the language of Shakespeare is dead but alive in English everywhere, Shakespeare was meant to be played for the public - so it should be spoken like the public, Shakespeare's accent belongs to all of us!

Sources:
Amazing paper from Nature Chemistry: "The Most Boring Chemical Element"
HPS on Protactinium
Los Alamos Laboratory on Protactinium
Periodic Videos on Protactinium
Mining Website on Protactinium's History
Britannica on Pitchblende
Nature Chemistry: "Peculiar Protactinium"
NOAA on the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt
NOAA on Plankton
EOS on Protactinium for Paleoclimatology
Protactinium/Thorium in Paleoclimatology Textbook
Carbonbrief's Climate Tipping Points
Thorium Protactinium Dating
Yu, Francois, and Bacon's first paper on Protactinium Ocean Current Dating
---
Wiki: British colonisation of the Americas
Wiki: Early Modern English
History of English: Early Modern English
BBC: How Americans preserved British English
The Historical Linguist Blog: American English ? The language of Shakespeare?
Dialect Blog: Shakespearean vs. Modern English
National Geographic: Tangier Island
BBC: The Tiny Island with a British accent
Language Myths Book
David Crystal?s Original Pronunciation evidence
Paper: Early Modern English Phonology
Oxford Dictionary: Early modern English: grammar, pronunciation, and spelling
University of Toronto: Early Modern English Phonology
NPR: How Did the Bard Really Sound
Youtube: Shakespeare: Original pronunciation

What laws are there to worry about in the moon? And what does space law teach us about Earth law? And what can we learn about societies throughout history from the lens of stuffing dead animals?

Images we Talk About:
Orbiting Space Debris
Fallen Space Debris
Hanging Christian Crocodile
Hanging Christian Crocodile

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:02) International Space Law
(01:03:25) Taxidermy
(01:46:48) Outro

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about: The splash zone of intro to astronomy, space NCIS, the bedrock of 1967 outer space treaty, the first earthling in space (2 tortoises), countries are responsible for their damage and no WMDs, that big tangible moon in the sky, unprecedented lunar traffic this year, potential water ice on the moon could be the next big space race, there?s no moon water regulation, no nation can own the moon, buuuut can an individual - former ventriloquest and used car salesman own the moon?? god don?t call it ?untapped resources on the moon?, you can?t own the moon but can you own its resources, there?s a legal officer for the UN officer of outer space affairs! we can allll frack the moon (except no one signed the treaty anyway), we can?t even agree to share moon resources One Day, only ?safe and sustainable? space mining allowed, it doesn?t have to be legally binding to make countries want to follow it, a radio telescope on the far side of the moon would be SICK, sorry about all the space junk us 3 put up there, 90 metric tons of re-entry, suing nasa over space debris, if it launched from florida and hit florida it?s actually local state space law, satellite light pollution, satellites don?t die they just crash into a farm upstate, starlink burnt 120 satellites in 1 month alone, there?s no laws about safely deorbiting - no one has to do this, how we treat space is a microcosm of how we treat earth, space law is real, why can?t we bring our optimism from space back to earth instead of the other way around? Ella?s mouse doing drugs, the art of skin arranging, apologies to our ancient Egyptian listeners, the various techniques of Egyptian preservation, arresting from decay, Frederik Ruysch?s wet specimens, crocodiles make a lot of sense for the first taxidermy cause they?re big and leathery - anyway it was hanging in a church?, Tom loses his mind about A SECOND TAXIDERMIED CROCODILE IN A CHURCH, a croc that?s at least from 1623, The Great Italian Taxidermy Crocodile Road Trip, about one third of the british population went to the 1851 great exhibition, the telescope and taxidermy exhibition sounds like a trap for Caroline and Ella, ?whimsy and anthropomorphism in taxidermy of the Victorian era?, anthropomorphic taxidermy was considered grotesque, taxidermy didn?t die we just stuffed it back up, environment taxidermy requires knowing an animal inside and out (pun intended), the degrees of ethical taxidermy, ethical is not a binary, it depends on your personal code of ethics, taxidermy as a lens of moral feelings through history.

Sources:
UNOOSA: Outer Space Treaty
UN: International Space Law Explained
Royal Museums Greenwich: Who Owns the Moon?
Lunar Embassy: Buy Some Moon
Politico: Who Owns the Moon
Guardian: Moon Resources
Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Moon Resources
NASA Moon Mining Contracts
Business Insider: Mining Disrupting Science on the Moon
NASA Artemis Accords
ESA Space Environment Statistics
SpaceWatch: Satellites
Natural History Museum: Space Junk
Guardian: Florida Family Sues NASA
Scientific American: Samantha Lawler, Space X Debirs
Journal of Space Safety Engineering: Uncontrolled Re-entry
UNOSSA: United Nations 2007 Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines
ESA Space Environment Report 2024
Rolling Stone: Space Trash
FCC: Deorbiting Satellites Rule
Scientific American: Space Junk Polluting Stratosphere
---
Britannica: Taxidermy
2019 Paper: Animal Bodies between Wonder and Natural History
BBC: Ancient Egyptian mummification 'recipe' revealed
Book: Practical Taxidermy
2020 Paper: The Animal Body As Medium: Taxidermy And European Expansion, 1775?1865
Museum of Idaho: A brief, Gross History of Taxidermy
Atlas Obscura: Crocodile at the Santuario Madonna delle Lacrime Immacolate
University of Dayton: Crocodile Hunting in the Marian Library
Wandering Italy: Grazie, Italy and the Crocodile Church
2006 Paper: The History of Taxidermy: Clues for Preservation
Journal of Antiques and Collectables: Taxidermy: Exploring one of the Most Complicated Collectibles
The Royal Parks: The Great Exhibition of 1851
2012 Thesis: The Shock Proved Fatal: Whimsy and Anthropomorphism in Taxidermy of the Victorian Era, 1851-1899
Cardiff University: Frequently Asked Questions in Taxidermy
Smithsonian: Why Taxidermy Is Being Revived for the 21st Century
Horniman Museum: Ethical Taxidermy
Guardian: Inside the Female-Led World of Ethical Taxidermy
Sussex Wildlife Trust: Putting the Ethical in Taxidermy

Welcome to the (preview for the) Lab Rat Games! The GAME show where we compete to learn anything and everything interesting! We love putting games into our topics, so what happens when we make a whole show of them, with each of us hosting their own section! Plus! We're joined by friend of the show and competitive chaos combatant, Sabrina Cruz!

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How can scientist's unravel the mystery of what dinosaurs ate? Well the clues are right in front of our eyes, or should I say their teeth! And poop! And listener you may already know what a podcast is, but how did proto-podcasts in a chicken coop give us the DNA for what we love, and how did podcasts even happen?

Images we Talk About:
First Iguanadon Tooth
Puffer Fish Teeth
Fish Teeths
Incisivosaurus
Saurolophus
Dinosaur Stomach Contents Fossil
Ham Comic
Sybil's Baby's Radio Rebut

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro?
(00:04:33) Dinosaur Diet Detectives?
(01:00:51) Support our Show!?
(01:04:27) Proto-Podcasts
?(02:02:49) Bonus Content!
?(02:07:24) Outro

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We also learn about: Deep Dive Discovering Dino Diets, dinosaur time, imagining us discovering a new animal, well we know it doesn?t eat nerds, Ella describes teeth perfectly - ?is that what you meant to say Tom??, the mouth is the first stomach, we found the teeth of the first herbivorous dinosaur before the body - and before we had the word for dinosaur, cinderella/goldilocks teeth, dental microwear, food print, the topography of a grasshopper?s mandible, teeth can be more indicative than stomach content, maybe you just tried in and out for the first time when you got captured by aliens, dinosaur teeth are the old coins of ancient civilizations, egg eating oviraptors, it?s not just us but experts that are confused about oviraptaurs teeth, reconstructing the crime scene of a bit mark, this case has been closed for 70 million years! the tarbosaurus seems to have separated the chicken leg to make eating easier, a tyrannosaur leaving a tooth in the scene of the crime, they not only got bit but lived to tell the tale, this proves tyranosaurs hunted living animals - and weren?t just scavengers, hard foods stay in the stomach longer, some dinosaurs used Gastrolith rocks as stomach teeth, rocks natures teeth, Bromalite can be regurgitalite or coprolite, 580 million year old worm poop, we didn?t think grass was that old then we found it in dinosaur poop,  we put dinosaur poop in a particle accelerator, we?re not looking at poop - we?re constructing the foodchain of dinosaurs, an ancient egyptian podcast, podcasting is NOT an oral tradition, the chicken coop boys, Sybil?s Little Ham Radio Show 20 years before a woman on proper radio, the Titanic sinking sped along radio restrictions, Tom skipped over the cassette before because its science impact was small but its misc impact was huge, explaining cassette tapes at a high frequency so it doesn?t hurt old people to hear, Lou Otten, the syrian cassette archive, mixtapes, Caroline?s family mix CDs, Tom?s custom Jack?s Mannequin Mix CDs, Pacific Horticulture Magazine being delighted that someone?s interested, Tom?s Magic Corner, I knew it was some journalist doing their thing, apple didn?t come up with podcasting - not even the name, journey back to 1999, the dream of RSS, what?s that facebook shaped cloud on the horizon? the dream of hosting your own feed, somehow podcast RSS survived, podcasts are the Horshoecrab of the internet, ?wherever you get podcasts? is amazing, The Lab Rat Games!

Sources:

NHM London: Iguanodon Teeth
NHM London: Beyond Jurassic World- What We Really Know About Dinosaurs and How
NHM London: The Seven Greatest Dinosaur Discoveries of the Last 200 Years
British Ecological Society: What do Grasshoppers Eat?
Phys.Org: Cutting Edge Teeth Study
NPR: Dental Detectives: What Fossil Teeth Reveal About Ancestral Human Diets
University of Tokyo: Dinosaur Teeth Reveal What They Didn?t Eat
BBC: Dinosaur Teeth Reveal Feeding Habits
Incisivosaurus
2022 Paper: Incisivosaura Bite Force
University of Pennsilvania: What Fossils Tell Us About the Dining Habits of Dinosaurs
NHM London: Dinosaur Eating Habit Insights from Stegosaurus stenops
2010 Paper: New information on scavenging and selective feeding behaviour of tyrannosaurids
Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings
2012 Paper: Physical evidence of predatory behavior in Tyrannosaurus rex
Save Our Seas: What Tools do Biologists use to Tell What is on the Menu for Wild Animals?
Scientific America: Tyrannosaur?s Stomach Contents Have Been Found for the First Time
2023 Paper: Exceptionally preserved stomach contents of a young tyrannosaurid reveal an ontogenetic dietary shift in an iconic extinct predator
SN Explores: Fossil Stomach Reveals a Dinosaur?s Last Meal
NHM London: Coprolite
The Bristol Dinosaur Project: The Grass Divide
NPR: Over 500 Fossilized Poops Show How Dinosaurs Came to Rule the Earth
American Museum of Natural History: How Does Studying Dinosaurs Benefit Humanity?
---
MET on Memory Boards and Luba Oral Traditions
OED Broadcast Etymology
The Chicken Coop Ham Radio
Sybil's Little Hame Radio Program
NYTimes on Titanic's Impact on Radio Law
Library of Congress on Recorded Radio
NPR On Lout Otten and the Cassette Tape
Wired on Cassette History
NPR on the Syrian Cassette Archive
Berkeley Audio Tape Retrospective
Carl Malamud on Asynchronous Internet Radio
The Earliest Mention of Podcasts in the Guardian
Two-Bit History on the History of RSS
Kevin Werbach's Vision of the Future of RSS and the Internet
TechCrunch: Rest in Peace RSS

It?s not MaxFunDrive without a wild kickoff spectacular! Former real-life VJ and host of MTV's Spring Break 1999, Dave Holmes, takes your favorite MaxFun hosts through some wacky ?90s- and Spring Break-themed mini games!!

Featuring: Dave Holmes, Jeremy Bent, Oscar Montoya, Dimitry Pompée, Tom Lum, Ellen Weatherford, Alex Schmidt, Brenda Snell, Drea Clark, Alonso Duralde, Dan McCoy, Jordan Morris, Manolo Moreno, Ella Hubber, Caroline Roper, Ella McLeod, John-Luke Roberts, Justin McElroy, Clint McElroy, Mike Cabellon, Sierra Katow, Hal Lublin, Danielle Radford, John Moe, Christian Dueñas, Christian Duguay.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:22) Tom, Ellen, Alex, and Brenda Trivia
(00:32:47) Tom, Ellen, Manolo, and Jeremy on Party Animals
(00:46:34) Caroline, Ella, Ella, and John-Luke on British Spring Break

Host of Um Actually and nerd of many domains Ify Nwadiwe joins us as Tom helps him deconstruct the infamous Peasant Railgun from D&D. Could it actually work? And can we come up with something even more powerful using real science? We also dig into nerdery old and new, and see if Ify can convince Ella and Caroline to embrace their home country's greatest export: Warhammer.

Images we Talk About:
A Real Railgun Firing

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:05) The Peasant Railgun
(00:43:07) Q&A/Nerding Out
(01:12:19) Outro

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We also learn about: After this black hole research I do appreciate my family more! we?re here to game, what is a peasant? stealing science experiments for DnD campaigns, Caroline and Ella are delighted to learn the Peasant Railgun for the first time, convincing peasants to hands across america, pandering to the audience telling them their smart, My Monster Manual is On the Origin of Species, a peasant message system/computer, let people accelerate things to the speed of light! I shouldn?t let my players do WHAT, and remember kids DONT use a bong because it gets you SO HIGH, I?m reading between the lines Gary would want us to do this, the real rail gun, UM ACTUALLY ITS A PEASANT COIL GUN, rail guns are more common in fiction, the strength of a rail gun tears itself apart and creates a fireball, Ify would make each peasant in the line roll, if your players try to make the railgun say yes then show them the picture, the peasants have the means of production and destruction - they should unionize, the fastest manmade object, the manhole cover isnt the fastest object recorded, mission to touch the sun, gravity slingshot, it?s not the mass of the planet its the orbit, its not a magnet - its a magnet on a bullettrain, DMs watch out for artificer space programs, the duke of musk keeps stealing our government funding, Morgan you?re welcome to play beyblades with Ify any time, marrying bratz and digimon, England?s main export is Warhammer, can Ify convince Ella to play Warhammer, should we do a separate zoom just talking about nerd stuff? online writing forums, audio books are real books, be mean in magic, playing DnD on stage vs at home, playing true to your character.

Sources:
First Edition D&D Player's Handbook
Knight's Digest on Peasant Railgun Origins
Earliest Peasant Railgun Mention
PCGamer on D&D 2024 Dungeon Master Guide Update
IEEE Early Railgun Research
Vice "This Is Why the Navy Can?t Have Nice Railguns"
USC on Railgun Feasability
Popular Science Interview on Railgun Test
JPL Chart of Fastest Objects
CNET on Parker Solar Probe
NASA Gravity Assist Primer

Why is math both so easy and so hard for our brains, and how can the psychology of horses, babies, and mathematicians help answer that? And what wild journey did Sudoku take to become the popular puzzle that Ella adores?

Things we Talk About:
The Video of a Child Learning to Count
The Melencolia Painting

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:59) The Psychology of Math
(01:00:35) Sudoku
(01:44:59) Outro

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We also learn about: the Wonderful student, it?s not you - it?s math, ?I did biology for a reason?, children can want a lot of complex things, it?s harder in the UK cause its Maths plural, Caroline & Ella?s math journeys, charlie solves the Riemann hypothesis, the horse the myth the legend - clever hans, clever hans was drafted into the military AS A MATHEMATICIAN, real horse math! so many animals seem to have Number Sense, counting is hard for kids, multiplication isn?t counting - it?s memorization and other strategies, Caroline doesn?t have a great Mental Blackboard, kick flipping a chair in our minds to brag to Caroline, overlapping waves, hot or not for equations, hahaha a taylor expansion?? in Lp?? ridiculous! there is no one math organ in the brain, don?t give up on math, ?I don?t treat math as a monolith (I think statistics is the worst math)?, that surprises me because sudoko?s amazing and you?re wrong, the ancient mystical turtle?s magic square, a mathematical warding spell, ?once something is proved true, it is eternally true?, HOW DID ELLA NOT REALIZE THIS WAS A MATH TOPIC, magic squares are unsolved, math divination, wow this is a math?s topic huh, maths in art, Melancholia, the magic square on La Sagrada Familia, wait Magic Squares AREN?T the precursor to sudoku?? I don?t know this child, if not sudoku why sudoku shaped? the Latin square originated in Korea before Euler, my parents are older than sudoku, it was originally called Number Place, even though we call it Sudoku - in Japan it?s often called Number Place for trademark reasons, the 2004 sudoku boom, sudoku is an infectious meme, this topic took so long (because Ella took sudoku breaks), figuring out the question of unique puzzles, so many ways to think about a square, advanced sudoku techniques, x-wing and swordfish, sudoku championships, of course Ella found speed running in this topic, Sudoku doesn?t seem to cure cognitive decline - but it?s also just fun to do! a beautiful sudoku poem, it?s how we learn and it?s calming - a little win, ?I feel like I need to lie down?, let us know if you know the difference between 3 apples and 4 apples.

Sources:
Perfect Pitch Study
Feigenson et al. Core System of Number
The Clever Hans Phenomenon Revisited
NYTimes Berlin's Wonderful Horse
Actual Horse Number Sense Study
Number Sense in Animals
Rat Brain Number Sense Study
NPR Why Big Numbers Break our Brains
Erikson Institute Video of Child Counting
The Development of Mathematical Cognition
Math Expert Brain Activity Study
The Beauty of Math Study
University of MAryland on Math Brain Activity
Keith Devlin Stanford Talk
Katie Steckles: What Do Mathematicians Do All Day?
---
Wikipedia: Magic Square
Royal Institution: Magic Square
University of Cambridge: Magic Square
Magic Squares in Islamic Mathematics
Wiki: Sudoku
The Guardian: History of Sudoku
The Science of Sudoku by BY JEAN-PAUL DELAHAYE
Paper: There Is No 16-Clue Sudoku
Advanced Sudoku Techniques:
Wiki: World Sudoku Championships
Sudoku.com: The Fastest Sudoku Player
Sudoku.com: 4 Reasons that Sudoku is the Perfect Puzzle Game
Working Memory
BBC: Puzzle Slolving and Cognitive Decline
Sudoku 15 year study
Global Council on Brain Health Report
Sudoku Mental Fortitude

Why is the common fruit fly the perfect model organism, and the reason for 6 Nobel Prizes?? And what is the british fascination around the meal deal, lunchtime, and the sandwich?

Images we Talk About:

Map of the Fruit Fly Brain
Rat My Meal Deal
The Sandwich Factory

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:57) Drosophila Melanogaster
(00:49:46) The British Meal Deal
(01:37:48) Outro

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We also learn about: Ella?s former favorite fun fact, are 6 nobel prizes more impressive than long sperm? we need to pause, bolas, Ella?s Virgins, Dew Loving Black Belly, Dros Mel are human commensals - they migrated with us, ?they?re undemanding guests?, first life intentionally put into space, maybe Jeff Goldblum became a fly so seamlessly because they share 60% of their DNA, Tom?s great Jeff Goldblum impression, they share a lot of disease related genes, Thomas Morgan - The Lord of the Flies, Morgan knew about genetics but not DNA yet, genetic redundancy, a fly geneticist?s swiss army knife, the varied list of nobel wins, are they cancelled? wait actually? guess that fly gene, ?the inside jokes are becoming outside jokes?, the golden wild west era of the fruit fly may be over - but not all science, the beautiful fruit fly brain, we COULD end by talking about how this little organism has been so belovedly studied and helpful, Dros Mel has a mini bachelorette organ, the great british everything, is this a sincere answer? rating meal deals, fluctuations of lunch elitism, a beaver and a noonshine, capitalism made workers hours longer - workers rights made lunch, lunch was given by and for women, the earl of sandwich was too much of a gamer, we can?t re-litigate the cube rule, the ?daring? true story of the sandwich, the sandwich storry isn?t about invention it?s about class, food elitism fads, ella invents soup in a tube, 1980s the first pre-packaged sandwich, units of sandwich (UOS), it?s almost like getting separated from the means of production?, the british sandwich association, take your lunch break! you won?t remember doing an extra bit of work - you?ll remember spending time with folks and making a bomb ass sandwich, short lunch breaks make meal deals make sense, drosophola and meal deals cancelled on this episode,

Sources:
Paper: Drosophila - Model Organism of Choice
Paper: Innate Immune Responses of Drosophila melanogaster Are Altered by Spaceflight
NASA: Fruit Flies in Space
Paper: Drosophila ? A Versatile Model in Biology & Medicine
Paper: The Secret Lives of Drosophila Flies
Guardian Article on Drosophila
Paper: Where are Drosphila From
Paper: Gal4 Swiss Army Knife
Nobel Prize: Drosophila
NPR: Fruit Fly Names
Nature News: Troublesome Names Get the Boot
Paper: Fly Brain Map
Fly Brain Image
UKRI: Fruit Fly Neuron Map
Paper Drosophila Sperm Storage
---
Tribune: How Capitalism Stole Your Lunch
Rate My Meal Deal Instagram
BBC: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner: Have We Always Eaten Them?
BBC: Sandwich Celebrates 250th Anniversary of the Sandwich
The Guardian: How The Sandwich Consumed Britain
Greencore: ConvenienceFood
Report: The Sandwich Factory
University of Manchester: What is the Environmental Impact of Your Lunch-Time Sandwich?
Scottish Government: Shopping Behaviours and Meal Deals - Consumer Behaviours: Evidence Brief
The Guardian: Yoghurts in the Meal Deal
Financial Times: The Freddo
BBC: Freddo
Hubbub: Reuse Systems Unpacked
Tesco: The Nations Favourite Meal Deal
The Independant: The Nations Favourite Meal Deal

What can we learn from the most modern - but overlooked form of pollution? And can mistakes in art be something actually... good?

Images we Talk About:
Navajo Rug Ch'ihónít?i
Ramses II Statue
Ecce Homo
The Original Ecce Homo
3 Versions of Ecce Homo
Lincoln Memorial Mistake

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:25) Light Pollution
(00:48:06) Mistaeks
(01:37:02) Outro

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We also learn about: Auctioning topics, the origins of pollution, pollution is old but light pollution is from the 1960s, the great stink, the biggest light polluter is the sun, old gas street lights used to be more like beacons than lights, the world?s getting 10% brighter each year, 80% of North American can?t see the milky way, Light Trespass, Sky Glow, light pollution makes telescopes worse, Tom?s parents hearing him scream WHY IS THERE BREAST MILK, the strange lights after the 1994 LA earthquake, amateur astronomers are vital to astronomy, light trapped moths, a 1917 study on lighthouses and bird migration, birds waking up 5 hours earlier, turtles also use moonlight navigation, just move your telescope and evolve your species it?s not our fault, ?he glistens you philistine?, the big beautiful glow worm woman in the sky, street lights are like sugar light to plants, light pollution isn?t the biggest issue - but that can make it easy to ignore - and it has some easy wins! it?s solvable at the community level, Tom?s buoyancy broken hand mistake, oops I mixed up my therapy and podcast topic list, the beatles anomalies list, Michelangelo?s beautiful complaint letter poem, we are our own worst critic, the ASMR mistake was just an anomaly, Kintsugi, ?it treats breakage as a part of the object?s history rather than an error or a failure to be covered up?, what?s the japanese word for mud covered boots, only god can make perfect fun facts, Ch'ihónít?i, releasing the thoughts from an object - a way out, the journey of Caroline?s darned jumper, how can you tell an old mistake was a mistake? hieroglyphic typos, oh shit control ankh control ankh, revealing an ancient mistake by mistake, Philadelphia isn?t real it can?t hurt you, the Jesus that was? made an anomaly by Gloria Gimenez, the misremembered story of Ecce Homo, art is this emotional roller coaster, wow don?t take Tom?s summary Caroline, Lincoln memorial myths, 1000 years from now a museum in Neo Egypt will carve out the lincoln memorial fix, I know a great art restoration person in spain if you need one, most mistakes are just forgotten, you need mistakes to learn, the mistake of starting this podcast, verbal kintsugi, anomalous jesus, we didn?t learn today that Ella was a contrarian.

Sources:

Britannica: Light Pollution
2020 Paper: A Chronology of Global Air Quality
Wikipedia: The Great Stink
NHM London: Increasing Light Pollution is Drowning out the Stars
2023 Paper: Light Pollution is Skyrocketing
Scientific America: Light Pollution is Dimming Our View of the Sky
2009 Paper: Missing the Dark: Health Effects of Light Pollution
National Parks Service: Connect with the Galaxy: A case for turning out the lights
CAPE 2023: What are the Effects of Artifical Light on Human Health? An Evidence Brief 
2019 Paper: Effects of Light at Night on Laboratory Animals and Research Outcomes
1918 Paper: The Destruction of Birds at the Lighthouses on the Coast of California
2021 Paper: Characteristics of Light Pollution ? A case study of Warsaw (Poland) and Fukuoka (Japan)
1973 Paper: Light Pollution 
BBC: How light pollution disrupts plants' senses
Dark Sky: Solutions to Light Pollution

---

The Beatles Anomalies List
Michelangelo's "Poem"
Kintsugi
Jill Ahlberg Yohe's Incredible Paper on Ch?ihónít?i
Penn Museum's Ramses II
Ancient Egyptian Literacy
NYTimes on Ecce Homo
The Guardian Ecce Homo Critique
The Art History of Ecce Homo
AP on Ecce Homo a Year Later

As we plan out the new year, please enjoy a recast of one of my (Tom's) favorite guest appearances on Spellbound and Gagged, hosted by the wonderful friend of the show Ellen Weatherford!

It's the start of the new year which means a bunch of new questions submitted by YOU! What are our favorite words from the podcast? What's it like to scrap a topic? Would we still love each other if we were worms?

Things we Talk About:
Contrapoints' Twilight Video
Jenny Nicholson's Star Wars Hotel Video
Shaun's Channel
China's Artifical Sun
XOXO 2024 Videos

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:07:42) Part 1
(01:13:53) Part 2
(01:54:30) Outro

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We also learn about: west our weawy heads, this year we had long topics and a good spread of topics, Jono?s Q&A themes 2.0, next year I?m doing a topic on Caroline, we can neither confirm nor deny it?s the dex we know, Challengers Zone of Interest is the new Barbenheimer, games that show your personality, ahh eating your own poop has been on my list for forever, the use of pseudoscience, Caroline?s favorite word from the podcast is Quantum thanks to Tom (awww), Tom?s favorite is Kleptoparasitism, just ?Light? as a topic, can we sweep Ella off her math?s feet, say hi to us! we clicked with Gretchen TOO well, the format change has been great! someone thought that with the format change one person would just not be there, next year one topic - then zero - then negative topics, Ella?s super secret question section, Head and Shoulders made these lovely locks, being non binary, Ella still collects squashed pennies, learning outside the podcast, you are a clown, actually it turns out we don?t need comedy in this show - huh, tiktok is like matches and podcast are logs, tiktok vs youtube vs podcasts, oh people are listening to this, waiting for the other fun to drop, how we resolved learning everything, 2026 is gonna be a banging year, Ella?s 2 Star review of the year.

It's the HaLearn Days!! We've gathered a whole bunch of fun facts from each other and from friends of the show to share the gift of laughter and learning!

Images we Talk About:
The Rat Car
Rat Car Video

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:07:57) Part 1
(00:59:11) Part 2
(01:37:06) Outro  

We also learn about: The Christmas Brussel Sprout Tradition, put christ back in halearn days, Where the Dog Ran, eclipses are more of a ?huh?? moment, you might hear a frog during an eclipse - or more likely a science communicator, the turkey helicopter truth is stranger than fiction, giraffes can?t walk up anything steeper than 20 degrees, topography is important for giraffe reserves, the emu wars, Anatidaephobia, gotta define intimate, I eat and talk with tongue, our most liked tweet was from a jetlag hat, there?s nothing in the rules that says a wormhole can?t exist and a dog can?t play basketball, we got a rejection on our preprint from St Nicholas, Michel Foucault?s Elf on a Shelf, the scale of believability, when we stopped believing in santa, ?Santa knows I can?t speak german?, the child psychology of Santa, William Shatner?s Halloween mask, Sleierton?s Betty Boop ghost mask, Tom finds out he?s driving a rat experiment car, the yuletide tradition of rats, rats would rather drive longer route to get food, alright ?Tom Lum?, rice crispies and taco sauce, bingo bingo prison industrial complex! it?s very human to want to have tasty food, the places I would least like to have taste receptors, taste receptors and buds are different, we just discovered them on our tongues first and called them taste receptors, really our tongue has testicle and urethra receptors, screen-based phones, electronic purgatory, we will all get old, and as we say on the podcast: every year another vagina, should all our fun facts be forgot and never brought to mind, we?ll raise a cup of kindness yet, for everything.

Sources:
Minute Physics video on Animals during Eclipses
Frog Song During Eclipse Study
Wikipedia: WKRP in Cincinnati ?Turkeys Away?
Why Can?t Domesticated Turkeys Fly?
Eureka Alert: Giraffes Struggle with Slopes
The Emu War
Scientific American: 80 million microbes in a Kiss
Microbiome Journal: Kiss study
Nature News: Shared Microbiome
AIP Wormhole Definition & Paper
Astronomy Today on Wormholes
2024 Paper: Children?s Belief in Santa Claus and Moral Behavior
Snopes on Michael Myers Mask
Snopes on Scream Mask
William Shatner interview Entertainment Weekly
Independant: Scientists Taught Rats to Drive
BBC: Rats Taught to Drive Tiny Cars to Lower Their Stress Levels
2020 Paper: Enriched environment exposure accelerates rodent driving skills
Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years
NPR: Ramen Noodle Currency
2013 Paper: Taste perception: From The Tongue To The Testis
NIH In Brief: How Does Our Sense of Taste Work?
1992 NYTimes Article about Cell Phones
CBC Article on the First Text Message

Where are we in the universe? And what can we learn from all the hilariously wrong guesses and bad maps that got us there? And just how much carrot propaganda was there? Well, we'll see a lot of posters and a few myths to debunk!

Images we Talk About:
Dunn's Earth & Moon Maps
Herschel's Milky Way Map
Wright's Island Universes Drawing
The Image of M31 from 1919
First Full Image of Earth
The World Carrot Museum
Carrot Poster 1
Carrot Poster 2
Disney Carrot Characters
Dr Carrot

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:44) Where are We?
(00:45:11) Carrot Propaganda
(01:24:04) Outro

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We also learn about: we?re allowed to make up topics I guess, Samuel Dunn?s map of the Earth and moon, subtle thematic forshadowing, galactocentrism, the awkward teenage years of science, every human could see the milky way, the backbone of night, the milky origins of galaxy, Herschel?s heliocentric drawing of the milky way, Cosmic Pride, the zone of avoidance, island universes is multiverses for the middle ages, the great or not so great debate, can you debate something more interesting like moo deng, M31 the little cloud, the person whose telescope proceeds him: Edwin Hubble, ?here is the letter that has destroyed my universe?, years of fighting over terminology, the World Carrot Museum, the moment this turned from a distraction into a topic, we do actually need vitamin A for night vision and eye health, you can only get vitamin A from meat? and vegetables? and fruits, the blackouts in WWII, carrots to help drivers be safer in the dark, incredible  podcasts - they help you see in the blackout, Cat Eyes Cunningham, no official document shows intentionally hiding radar with carrot vision, the myth happened organically, ?the war could be won on the kitchen front?, Walt Disney designed carrot mascots, if you don?t think food is political I have some posters to show you.

Sources:

Yale History of the Center of the Universe
Library of Congress: History of Discovering the Milky Way
NASA Archive of The Great Debate
Hoskin's Amazing "The Great Debate: What Really Happened"
Astronomy of Today Book with the Image of the M31 "Nebula"
Hubble: The Realm of the Nebulae
ESA Bio on Edwin Hubble
NYTimes Hubble Bio
Science Friday Article about Henrietta Leavitt
Kragh's Fantastic "Nebulae or Galaxies? The history of a change in astronomical terminology

---

NHS: Macular Health
American Academy of Opthamology on Vitamin Deficiency
American Optometric Society on Vitamin A Eye Health
Healthline: Are Carrots Good for Your Eyes?
Smithsonian Magazine: A WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the Dark
Web Archive: World Carrot Museum
NYT 1940: London Urges Carrot Diet For 'Blackout Blindness'
NYT 1942: Blackout Hints -- From a Blackout Veteran
NYT 1942: Disney Family
BBC: How 'Cat's Eyes' helped change the world
Britannica: One Good Fact

It's everyone's favorite holiday: the day we ask you to submit your Q&A questions!!

Go to www.LetsLearnEverything.com/questions and submit your questions about truly anything at all from the science to the serious to the silly!

Why do leaves change color? No... like really?  Like, show-me-the-scientific-literature-really? After all how mysterious could the answer be? And holy frick we're finally doing a topic on swearing!! What are the eras of swearing, and what is swearing actually good for? 

Listen to our episode of Escape this Podcast: Oceananigans pt. 3 - The Bering-toss Strait

Images we Talk About:
Carotenemia Hands

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:34) Autumn Leaves
(00:53:04) Swearing
(01:42:57) Outro

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Congrats to Kelly & Zach on the book prize! We should write a book, chilli peppers are spicy cause mammals digest them before pooping them out, magnesium makes leaves green, it?s worth it to drop leaves because when they do work they?re so efficient, man trees are interesting, carotenemia, ?yeah so if you want an unnecessary amount of detail??, Caroline has an answer for all our questions, anthocyanins, red leaves could be aposematic, finding one explanation for a color doesn?t mean we know for sure, Tom calls the climate change turn, warmer weather keeps leaves greener in autumn (good) but there?s less sunlight to use it (bad), animals use autumn leaf colors to help with migration, wont someone think of the leaf peepers, I don?t know/we don?t know, this might be too much swearing - thats a threat and a promise, the versatility of fuck, ?fuck is good?, may all your teeth fall out except one to give you a toothache, Ella read a book for this of all topics, ?hmm? fuck cunt shit??, determining a historic swear is like jazz - it?s the swear words you don?t see, stop trying to make clit a thing, Ella was totally right to put a swear warning at the top, the nuance of gender roles in ancient rome, Fuck has a beautiful equality to it, shitepokes and windfuckers, cunt used to be just a regular word for vulva, medieval ages didn?t care about shit? literally, the journey of swearing makes dull history exciting, UK US Australia swearing differences, if Ella?s dad saind cunt that?s naughty - if Tom?s dad said it they?d need to have a conversation, our swearing histories, why do we keep swearing? swearing has social benefits, swearing is intimate! swearing for emphasis and believability, we swear without thinking and yet it?s so socially complex, swearing activates different parts of the brain, the ?fuck? region of our brain and the fuck region of our brain are closer than we thought, screaming neutral words as a control, swearing is why Ella is the strongest host, we still don?t know Why swearing is so powerful for us, tell us your favorite swears! review corner breaks the fourth wall.

Sources:
Cleaveland Clinic : Can Eating Too Many Carrots Turn Your Skin Orange?
Harvard Forest: The Process of Leaf Color Change
USDA: Science of Fall Colors
Harvard Forest: The Biological Significance of Leaf Color Change
2022 Paper: The phenomenon of red and yellow autumn leaves: Hypotheses, agreements and disagreements
2004 Paper: Plant coloration undermines herbivorous insect camouflage
Science Direct: Plant coloration undermines herbivorous insect camouflage
2004 Paper: Nature's Swiss Army Knife: The Diverse Protective Roles of Anthocyanins in Leaves
2012: Simulated herbivory advances autumn phenology in Acer rubrum
2002 Paper: Foliage color contrasts and adaptive fruit color variation in a bird-dispersed plant community
CID: How Climate Change Impacts Leaf Pigments
Image: Heam VS Chlorophyll
---
Yiddish Curse
Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English - Geoffrey Hughes
Holy Shit by Mellisa Mohr
Stapleton et al ?The power of swearing: What we know and what we don?t?
Study: Swearing as a Hypoalgesic
Study: Swearing Makes you Stronger

Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch of Lingthusiasm joins us to casually answer all of our pressing linguistics questions with the most mind blowing facts.  Why does science use so much dang latin, and what is so unique about internet linguistics?

Images we Talk About:
Gretchen's Favorite Frogs

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:10:58) Latin in Science
(00:54:49) Misc & Internet Linguistics
(01:22:46) Outro

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We also learn about: Words that change the state of the universe, a promise is a kind of magic, ?people ask me how i make a living doing linguistics and it?s very simple actually? just make podcast wagers, the language of space, space pidgin language, ?that?s a great hypothesis and it?s actually hte opposite of that? sometimes the answer is imperialism! English is being used in science now how Latin was back then, the vulgate bible was latin to reach more people even the ?vulgar?, you?re cousins a scribe learning latin - what are you doing a podcast? ?Writing is a Technology?, writings only been invented like 4 times, writing originated as reciepts and lists, the A is an upside down ox, why invent a new letter when that means having to change the printing press - just double letter! you access computing through programming and programming is linked to language, we don?t know whether the first language was spoken or signed, french linguists once banned the discussion of the origin of language bcause it was deemed ?fruitless?, it?s wild we could retrofit our brains to read and write at all, changing, linguistically accurate sesame street, ?Who would know aught of art must learn, act, and then take his ease?,  Ella you have goregous tripthongs, nice try Gretchen but our 69th episode was a few back, the Mini frogs, isn?t a linguistic podcast niche? you?re saying that to me in a language, Gretchen loses her words and makes perfect sense, Gretchen went back in time to give herself this mystery book, you don?t have to be the version of yourself you imagined when you were twelve, Linguistics loves undergrad researchers to explain the youths, there?s always new linguistics to study, the kids are changing language- and that?s so fascinating, linguists and polyglots are related but not the same, what makes internet language Uniquely internety, is it really internet lingo or just AAE, the internet made people write a lot more than they used to, informal and unmediated writing is uniquely internet linguistics, people have wanted a sarcasm punctuation since at least 1575, emoji are a form of gesture, postcards were sometimes numbered like twitter threads, Gretchen did Sooo much research into the literature of sarcasm, the potential for misunderstanding is the point of sarcasm, ?sarcasm is this linguistic trustfall?, pushing the boundaries of what a language can be, Solresol the musical conlang, language is everything - rainbows are language, whitespace programming language,

Cryptids may be spooky, but what about the spooky animals that turned out to be... real?? And what makes a good spooky story? Could it be something secretly... heartwarming??

Timestamps:
(00:07:15) Intro
(00:04:21) Former Cryptids
(00:54:25) The Art of Spooky Stories
(01:52:33) Outro

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We also learn about: Caroline have you never met a vampire? that was from episode number Four Three, what?s spookier than having to be known, Ella met Tom the true Cryptid, the cryptid museum was research, formerly the cryptic mascot: the Okapi, komodo dragons inspired king kong, 60 iron tipped teeth (like beavers), dragon virgin birth, yes queen life finds a way, squid squads on the hunt, only photographed in 2004, 20 years ago - don?t say that, 8 fully controllable giant tentacles, ?I?m learning!? as it drags you down to the bottom of the ocean, save the whales because we need them on our team for the kraken wars, you know what?s not a cryptid? western hegemony, the head of a fox and the tail of a monkey, so many names for the jackalope across the world, are jackalopes cancer??? the Jackalope and HPV vaccine are zero degress of separation away, Ella writes a sappy ending for Tom, Ella watched The Ring at 6, being retold Evangelion in an art class, a meteor made of vampires, King?s 3 kind of scary, ?don?t you like to feel the shivers??, evangelical horror, Zhiguai - accounts of the strange, a story of a beautiful harp player, creepypastas, Ella formaly apologize for her cocktober misstep, ?I see you sluts out there and I don?t want to do you any disservice, two sentence horror, the artistry of Telling a scary story, maybe the real spooky story was the friends we made along the way who were dead the whole time.

Sources
Guardian: Komodo Dragons
ESA Journals: The Okapi of the Apadana
BBC: Facts About Komodo Dragons
Scientific American: Iron Tipped Teeth
New Yorker: The Squid Hunter
BBC Science Focus: Giant Squid
Wiki: Giant Squid
On the Track of Unknown Animals
The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell
PBS: Fantastic Creatures
Evolutionary Anthropology: Discovering Gorilla
Cambridge University Press: Hanno and Gorillae
Nature: The First Description of a Kangaroo
National Geographic: The Myth of the Komodo Dragon?s Dirty Mouth
Shope OG paper
Royal Society Paper: Shope Papilloma Virus
The Scientist: On the Trail of the Jackalope
---
NYTimes Story on Exxon and Climate Change
A History of Horror
Timothy Beal Paper on Evangelical Horror
Pliny The Elder's Ghost Story
Liu Ming Ming on Zhiguai
The Story of Liang
Gan Bao In Search of the Supernatural
Retelling Urban Legends Study
SCP Antimemetics Division
JSTOR Daily on Alvin Schwartz's Process
CRR Library on Alvin Schwartz Language Arts Interview

For our birthday this year, we've each gifted a topic for one another! For Caroline, an environmental hot take: can invasive species ever be... good? For Tom, an entire topic about one of his favorite hobbies: rock climbing! And for Ella, interviews from the Ig Nobel Laureates this year.

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:09:04) Good Invasive Species
(00:46:31) Rock Climbing
(01:18:05) Ig Nobel Interviews
(02:01:14) Outro

We also learn about: In podcast years we?re 60, Ella?s party hat, what?s your favorite color and least favorite invasive species, it?s my birthday also, the zebra mussel, Humanity: ?Hubris et Brevi Perspicacia?, canetoads that can?t even reach the beatles, maybe Ella is biased being part of the largest invasive species: the brits, not all non-native species are invasive, the neutral long island wall lizards, should I stan or cancel the grass? you can?t get rid of the nonnative birds in hawaii without killing the native plants, knowing beneficial non-native species helps us triage the real problems, Caroline?s thesis was on this??? a traditional LLE answer: It?s Complicated, Tom simply screams, duck roll, GTA IV Trailer, songs when he was born, but how does this involve scientology? what makes us human, Live from the Ig Nobels, ?Don?t Die?, sometimes you need to remember to breathe, ?I mostly just watch clips on Lateral?, Blue Zones, Dr Saul Newman?s Poem, Skinner?s pigeon guided missiles somehow missed Ella, minority report for pigeons, ?I?m from New York Most of the Times?, vortex energy capture, The Water Swims the Fish took years, a long winded way to say just keep swimming, the silly in the science, Tom rips up Caroline?s gift.

Sources:
Canal & River Trust: Zebra Mussles
National Museum Australia Cane Toads in Australia
Wikipedia: Beavers in Patagonia
Scientific American: Hawaiian Birds
The Conversation: Some ?invasive species? can help native ecosystems thrive.
The Hawaii VINE project
Hofstra University: Italian Wall Lizards
Trends in Ecology and Evolution: Valuing the contributions of non-native species to people and nature
Brown University Press Release
Brown Daily Herald: Rebuttal
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Rock Climbing sources coming soon!
---
Ig Nobel Ceremony 2024
Max Planck Institue on Blue Zones
UCL on Saul Newman's Work
Pre-print of Saul Newman's Paper
Smithsonian Mag on the Pigeon Project
NIH on Operant Conditioning
APA Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century Survey
Julie Vargas Queens University Belfast Interview
Jimmy Liao's Dead Trout Paper

What's actually going on in the center of the Earth, and just how interesting and useful could it be?  And how did the now ubiquitous Planned Obsolescence start with... bicycles??

Images we Talk About:
An Early Bicycle
Bilhert's Animations

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:06) The Core
(00:58:24) Planned Obsolescence
(01:45:52) Outro

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We also learn about: Core Memories, we live on the zest of a lemon, there?s something neapolitan icecreamy about the Earth, Bridgmanite is 38% of the Earth, The Iron Catastrophe sounds metal as hell, an audio journey to the center of the Earth, ?Eat My Ass Out Radiolab?, Earth?s Internal Heat Budget is half original energy and half nuclear, the Earth won?t cool down for at least another 10 years,  the American Miscellaneous Society?s Project Mohole, in 20 years we dug 12 km and escaped the solar system, when you don?t have earthquakes- use grenades! the shadow in the center of the Earth, Inge Lehmann kicks ass, ?the master of a black art?, the inner core wobbles, the core is grainy and grows faster under Indonesia, the 2 most magical things: cold beer and hand warmers, the Inner Core Nucleation Paradox, ?how wonderful that we have been met with a paradox, now we have some hope of making progress? - Niels Bohr, the Earth?s magnetic dynamo, Planetary Habitability is uh pretty important, everyone say thank you to the core, the innermost inner core, sometimes the one you?re looking for has been right below you this whole time, Tom falls hook line and sinker for a sudden 175 page bicycle paper, the first bikes without pedals or steering, the boneshaker, older men used tricycles, only the rich and adventurous used bikes, the safety iphone, you?re still using a bike 8? 10% of ads had a bicycle, Bernard London coined phrase the phrase 100 years ago, Planned Obsolescence was a legal proposal, contrived durability, there?s so many flavors and they all suck, e-waste, fast fashion is a vicious cycle, please I?m so full no more obsolescence words, car scrapping, why can we only help the planet when we also make a ton of money too, I?ve never seen someone so excited over Right to Repair, what do you mean you didn?t check every country??s legal system? 

Source
SEG Wiki on the Layers of the Earth
Forbes: Bridgmanite
?Six ?Must-Have? Minerals for Life?s Emergence?
Olsen Lecture on the Iron Catastrophe
Bureaeu of Economic Geology on Mohole & Kola
Science Article on Bridgmanite
Britannica on Richard Dixon Oldham
AMNH's Wonderful Article on Inge Lehmann & Earthquakes
Don Anderson Paper Review of the Inner Core
Smithsonian Mag on Inge Lehmann
Excellent Review from Harvard on Lehmann's Groundbreaking Paper
Geological Society of America on Super Rotation
Scientific American on Core Slowing
Space on Core Growth
University of Leeds on the Inner Core Nucleation Paradox
Scientific American on Core Paradox
2023 Paper on the Innermost Inner Core
---
Science Direct: Planned Obsolescence
1984 Paper: An Economic Theory of Planned Obsolescence
1998 Paper: The Most Benevolent Machine: A Historical Assessment of Cycles in Canada
2023: A Deep Dive Into Addressing Obsolescence in Product Design: A Review
IndieAuto: 1960's VW Ad
PERC: Planned Obsolescence: The Good and the Bad
BBC: How The Right to Repair Might Change Technology
The Guardian: Planned Obsolescence: The Outrage of Our Electronic Waste Mountain
CBS News: Apple is Sending Out Payments to iPhone Owners iImpacted by "Batterygate." Here's what they are getting.
The Evening Standard: Apple Battery Lawsuit
Iberdrola: Planned obsolescence
UNITAR: Global e-Waste Monitor 2024
BBC: E-waste: Five Billion Phones to be Thrown Away in 2022
European Parliament: The Impact of Textile Production and Waste on the Environment (Infographics)
The Atlantic: The Neurological Pleasures of Fast Fashion
Britannica: Fast Fashion
Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Fashion and the Circular Economy
WRAP: 2022 Press Release
WRAO: 2022 Report
NatGeo: Fast Fashion Goes to Die in the World's Largest Fog Desert.
UK Parliament: Vehicle scrappage schemes
Cars Lost Forever In The 2009 Scrappage Scheme
BBC: 2030 petrol ban
2019 Paper: Consumer Responses to Planned Obsolescence
Right to Repair EU
European Parliament: Right to Repair
BHS: Sewing Skills

Longtime inspiration and friend of the show Hank Green joins us for a very special episode!  How do colonial organisms with just one queen avoid incest? How many Ig Nobels have gone to sex science? Can the team figure out the identity of the Reverse Platypus? When was the first dick grafitti, and could the story actually be... wholesome???

Watch: The video of the unexpected moment

Images we talk about:
MRI of Sex
Rat Pants Diagram
The Phallodeum Image
Venus of Hohle Fels
The Debatable Dick
Hadrian's Wall Dick Graffiti
Vindolanda's SECVNDINVS Dick
The Vindolanda Dick
Nikasitimos's Dick

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:40) How Not to Colonial Incest
(00:20:52) Ig Nobel Sex Studies
(00:39:07) The Reverse Platypus
(01:06:31) The First Dick Graffiti
(01:33:10) Hank Questions
(01:53:44) Outro

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We also learn about:

Emmy award winning standup comedian Hank Green, the fellowship of the ning, the literal birds and the bees, the icelandic ant geneology app, icelandians are my favorite colonial organism, breeding flight, slay queen - happy pride everyone it?s when we?re recording this, sperm storage, queens have a life's worth of sperm and eggs inside them, Spermathica that?s my word of the day, the termite queen stores the sperm inside a king, ?he?s not my boyfriend he?s my sperm storage unit?, naked mole rats may do incest but they dont have cancer! the answer is ?all of the strategies somewhere?, after all reproduction is The Thing in evolution, the ribbed condom won all the prizes that year, any topic can be a sex topic if you try hard enough, I think the ancient greeks proved a gay bomb would make them more powerful, MRI Porn is a new fetish, we should study sex more, sex makes you want to pee, whatever you?re doing pee right now, The Sex Live of Pantsed Rats, would rats be sexier if they wore pants like this or this, our google history is fucked, polyester testicle sling contraception, The Awesome Polyester Scrotum Cup Club, if you?re creative they?re all sex numbers, shark live birth is metal, teamwork - what is this the lateral podcast? Jules Howard presents Duck Vagina VR, ?if it?s Caecilians I?m going to be so mad?, Bizarre Beasts gave Tom a heart attack, the Reproduction DLC, Caroline falls in love with Caecilians, ?they come in blue!?, all that matters is How Do They Bone! lots of non mammals give live births sharks to snakes to aphids,  phallodeum: penis day! ?we had to make a whole new peen word!?, phallodeum photo watermark, I haven?t looked at every caecilian penis okay! ?can you make it into cheeeese thoooough?, we?ve invented a new fetish and a new delicacy, Caecillians and Sicillians have a lot in common, why are not talking about this more! ?it?s not surprisingly, maybe I?m just very smart!?, 40,000 year old genital sculptures, Venus Hohle Fels, the debated dick, ah the conclusive slit! ?it?s like looking for a face in a cloud?, the penis test is whether it would be confiscated in school, penis art vs penis graffiti, how many penises on Hadrian?s wall, almost one dick per mile, time to penis, ?are you ready for your next penis?, Secundinus deez nuts, when Nick and Tim have sex so good they carve about it on a wall, ?little special moments all over the world?, Pompeii sex graffiti, eventually this will be historic! we bully Hank into following Caroline, competing on TikTok is hard and also it?s broken, Hank derails us with a mouth coil, Hank?s science journey, counting clams for the science fair, people like seeing real science, Thanks Hank!

Sources:
List of Ig Nobel Prizes
MRI Genitals Study
Vice: MRI Sex Study
Rats Having Sex in Little Outfits Study
The Rat Study but Humans
Sex Improves Breathing Study
---
NatGeo Caecilian Overview
Textbook Caecilian Overview
Excellent Caecilian Reproduction Review
Extensive Paper on the Phalodeum
Various Non-mammal Milks
The Recent Study on Caecilian Milk
NYTimes Interview on Caecilian Milk
---
2009 Paper: A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian of Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany
Smithsonian Magazine: The Cave Art Debate
New Atlas: Scientists Clash Over World's Oldest Penis Carving
2023 Paper- Symbolic innovation at the onset of the Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia shown by the personal ornaments from Tolbor-21 (Mongolia)
IFL Science: Ancient Roman Penis Graffiti Shows Humans Will Never Change
BBC News: Lewd Roman Insult Found on Stone Near Hadrian's Wall
The Guardian: 2,500-Year-Old Erotic Graffiti Found in Unlikely Setting on Aegean Island

It's an infamous pseudoscience, but what haven't we learned from the rise and fall of Phrenology? And Lego are ubiquitous, which means there's a lot to learn and a lot of nuance for our love of these stackable bricks.

Things we Talk About:
The Phrenology Pamphelet
The Lego Cullen House
Lego Seismometer
CERN Lego Device
The Brick Experiment Channel

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:32) Phrenology
(00:56:34) Lego
(01:38:25) Outro

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We also learn about: Get the lego phrenology set now! just listing all the lego sets, academic racism, the head wasn?t always so important, the Cardiocentric Hypothesis, Minds Behind the Brain, ancient egyptians just tossed the brain, Aristotle thought the brain was a radiator to keep the heart from overheating, the brain doesn't Look like it does anything, Galen suggested the brain might be important actually, sperm for brains, Caroline enjoys tricking us by saying a person?s good ideas first, Cephelocentric Hypothesis, mapping the brain in the 1600s, NOT related to the frenulum, buzz feed phrenology quizzes, flexing your brain so hard it breaks your skull, Tom is proven to be not funny, our desire for personality tests and fortune telling, travelling phrenology salesmen, there shouldn?t be medical celebrities, phrenology was a passion of the elites, reading an actualy travelling phrenology sheet, ?differently bumped?, edibnugrh fringe was a lot less fun when it was the phrenology capital, we checked and it?s actually mozambique have the best brains - just gotta take the L on this one, Marie Jean Pierre Flourens kicked ass and helped kill Phrenology with real science, it comes in like a fad and leaves like a fad, I only liked phrenology before it was cool, the scammers are making our racism look bad! we?re not harsh enough about phrenology, ?repoliticizing? phrenology, when it?s built its just one thing but when its pieces it can be anything, shirtless lego jacob, 20,000 lego sets, Play Well - Le go, after enough fires lets just stop using wood, stud and tube design, the lego To Kill a Mockingbird set, mindstorm was ahead of its time, Caroline?s got their lego driver?s license from legoland, lego nerd culture, adults without kids spend more, ?transbranding?, Ella had to read so much corporate jargon but it?s impossible to not talk about their business strategies , lego seismograph outside the eras tour, CERN lego, their story is better than ours dad, instructions for a lego skin cell printer, LEGO: expensive for toys - cheap for science equipment! David Aguilla?s prosthetic project, Tracey Williams? Lego Lost at Sea project, plastic?s resilience is a positive and a negative, lego replay and reuse, this is a trust test of nuance and both things being true at the same time.

Sources:
Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries by Stanley Finger
The University of Queensland: Understanding the Brain: A Brief hHistory
Brain Beats Heart: A Cross-Cultural Reflection
Merriam Webster: Phrenology
The Antlantic: The Shape of Your Head and the Shape of Your Mind
Britannica: Phrenology
Smithsonian Insider: Study Finds Facial Structure of Men and Women Has Become More Similar Over Time
2005 Paper: The Reliability of Sex Determination of Skeletons From Forensic Context in the Balkans
The Guardian: Archaeology?s Sexual Revolution
2018 Paper: An Empirical, 21st Century Evaluation of Phrenology
Carnegie Mellon University: Phrenology
2021 Paper: Phrenology and the Average Person, 1840?1940
The University of Edinburgh: Phrenology and Edinburgh
Gina Rippon: When Bigger Isn?t Always Better: How History Got The Female Brain Wrong
Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill on Sexual Equality
The Guardian: Django Unchained and the racist science of phrenology
2007 Paper: Marie Jean Pierre Flourens (1794?1867): An Extraordinary Scientist of His Time
---
Lego Twilight Cullen House
Brick Architect: Number of Lego Bricks
Brickset: Number of Lego Sets
Brick Economy Most Valuable
Brick Economy Most Expensive
Wikipedia: Legoland
Lego History Chapter by Lars Konzack
Lego Mindstorms Wikipedia
What is Transmedia? Article
Lego and Transmedia Research
Lego And ?Transbranding? Blogpost
Lego Seismometer Kit
Lego Seismometer Youtube Clip
Guardian Article: David Aguilar Lego Prostheses
Hand Solo Youtube Channel
Lego Table From CERN
Article on Other Lego Scientific Tools!
Cardiff University: Lego Bioprinter
Lego 3D Printer Paper
Lego Inventions Video (Pancake Flipper and Super 8 Projector)
Lego T-Rex Sculpture
Lego Every Day Stuff Ideas
Lego Lost at Sea Twitter
Lego Shark Tweet
Tracey Williams Book: Adrift: Lego Lost at Sea
Tokio Express Crash Context Article
Tracey Williams: Lego at Sea Paper
Statista Lego CO2 Emissions
Lego: 99% Outside Emissions
Lego Replay Initiative
BBC: Lego from Recycled Plastic 2018
Wired: Lego from Recycled Plastic 2024

While we're sending Tom "Well Wissage" and a speedy recovery, enjoy Ella & Caroline on this tremendous episode of one of our sibling shows on the network, Secretly Incredibly Fascinating!

You may have heard Epigenetics used as a buzzword, but what is it really? Is it something we know about, something still new, or... both? And what in the world are the World Games, and what makes them better than the Olympics?

Links we Talk About:
Ella's SciShow Video on X Chromosome Diseases
Sport Casting
Fin Swimming
Haudenosaunee Flag
Christopher Root's Incredible Paper on the Colonization of Lacrosse
The Adorable NYMuseum Haudenosaunee Video

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:21) Epigenetics
(00:57:40) The World Games
(01:50:54) Outro

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We also learn about: Ella passes her driving exam Tom?s not bitter about John Oliver, what is y?alls familialarity, epi- meaning on top of, epigentics are like tabs or blacked out text in the book of your DNA, epigentics stop your brain from turning into bone, oh did other people help Rosalind Franklin with the double helix? bases and double helixes and histones, literally blocking DNA from being read, epigentics are less cyberpunk and more exercise is good for you, epigentics is why you go blind from masturbating, it?s simpler in animals, ?I?ve been here the whole time!?, ?you?re enough Tom?, 2 X chromosomes means you have an extra, X Inactivation, Calico Cats are Genetic Mosaics, your epigentic markers are like your browsing cookies: you clear them before giving them to someone, are pollinators plant cucks? Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance, is it nature or nurture? generational trauma doesn?t have to be epigenetic to be real, inherited cherry blossom mouse sensitivity, the effects are subtle, Ella might have a high epigenetic age from her rock and roll lifestyle, this is so new there?s so much we don?t know, the epigenetic advice: healthy diet and exercise, how different could the world games be? casting for sport, wait did you hear me say break dancing is this a bit, the worst SEO for a name ever, Rugby 7s started at the World Games, the World Games are as old as Beyoncé, let?s do our own thing we?ll definitely be more popular than the olympics, tried at the hague? we sure did! at the least the World Games are being honest about it being a bumpy ride, the ?Memorandum of Understanding? reads like a parenting agreement, grouping by sport not nation, the curse of hosting the olympics, reviving forgotten sports like Tug of War, wait who was first?? guys come on have some respect for yourself! breaking records with fins, shark skin suits aren?t biomimicry, tech doping, fin swimming and barebow archery, murderball is an official world game sport, the NYTimes officially called lacrosse ?frat boy? sport, mile long hundred person lacrosse, of course sports are spiritually healing, colonizing lacrosse,  Haudenosaunee - the people of the long house, Tom cut it with the sad voice tell us what happened, ?we wouldn?t be here without their medicine game? they need to be there?,  we?ll have to see if the olympics accept the Haudenosaunee, if your games are as old as beyonce you dont have to worry about breaking tradition, ?nothing is silly, everything should be respected and held up?, Ella goes OFF and takes over the topic.

Sources:
Chromosome Structure
Aboud et al. What Is Epigenetics?
Nature: Types of Epigenetic Modifications
Study on Exercise and Epigenetics
Nature: Diet and Epigenetics
Macdonald: Epigenetic Imprinting
Nature: When Imprinting goes wrong
Basta & Pandya: The Beautiful X Chromosome
Getting the Right Amount of X
Review on X Inactivation
Calico Cat X Chromosome Inctivation
PBS: Lamarckian Evolution
Cell: Transgeneration Epigenetic Inheritence
How Epigenetics are Wiped Clean
Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance Prisoners of War Study
TEI Dutch Famine Study
TEI Study Children of Holocaust Survivers
TEI Cherry Blossom Mice Study
Epigenetic Clock Review
---
Casting Federation Records
World Games Website: About
1993 World Games at The Hague
The Olympic "Memorandum of Understanding"
Reporting on the First World Games
World Games President Interview about Wheelchair Rugby
NYTimes on Indigenous Lacrosse
Onondaga Nation on Lacrosse
Chocktaw Nation on Lacrosse
Christopher Root's Incredible Paper on the Colonization of Lacrosse
Haudenosaunee History
NPR on Haudenosaunee Players at the Olympics

It's a word we say all the time but... what IS a species? How has it been used in the past, and could the different answers all be right?  And how does voting work in the UK?  It starts with voting for knights, and could hopefully end in the future with something even better.

Images we Talk About:
Ella's Zoom Moustache

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:23) What is a Species?
(01:01:54) UK Voting
(01:50:46) Outro

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We also learn about: Jenny Lec, the definition we know is wrong, has anyone taken my title On The Origin of Species? This is my favorite! Oh shit?  generic and specific, thinking of species as logical units, Kingdom Phylum Friends Acquaintances Work Friends Genus Species, the anime dewey decimal system, dark fungi, the cognitive dissonance of science at the time, even Darwin didn?t have a good definition of species, 1942 is when the common species definition was popularized, Biological - Evolutionary - Genetic definition of species, species gerrymandering, there is only 1 species of giraffe but should there be 4? policy first science, you don?t need hard definitions to do amazing things, nature is constantly doing kickflips over our no skateboarding signs, you really put your whole polizzy into naming that hybrid, a ring of banging around the himalayans, ring species in actuality look like a biblically accurate angel, let?s just ask what definitions scientists use, you can?t tell if fossils ever fucked, we only knew about human neandrethal interbreeding since 2010, what?s so wrong with having multiple species definitions? there?s a lot to biology! in between ?there?s one answer? and ?there?s no answers? is ?there?s many answers?, Lizzy Poll, you can just call an election early?? in the UK you just vote for your member of parliament, it?s actually really weird to have a separate vote for president, every 2 steps forward is brought 1 step back by ?the monster raving loony party?, Elmo think women no need to vote, the house senate and president, coalitions, tea cups with electoral college members on them, electing knights in the first parliament in 1264, bloc voting lets you pick your top favorites, Cromwell was the first Footloose, we had discovered quantum physics before women could vote, First Past the Post was only establish in 1948 in the UK, what are the positives of First Past the Post and cockroaches? please let us loose to bash FPTP, tactical voting, Australia has a version of Ranked Choice, Tom finally gets to wax poetic about Ranked Choice Voting, france?s 2 round voting, if the definition of species should match the task why not the type of voting system? the 2011 voting reform attempt, it?s been the foundation of this country for generation, try ranked choice voting on smaller scales and locally, Ella falls in love with herself, happy hour gender confusion

Sources
Carl Zimmer for NYT "What is a Species Really?"
Aristotle's Use of Species and Genus
Queiroz on Ernst Mayer and Species Definitions
Montana State on Linneus and Species Definitions
Dark Fungi
Ernst Mayer's Modern Excellent "Systematics And The Origin Of Species"
Paper Debating Darwin's Definition of Species
Bird Interbreeding
Scientific American on Wolf Species
The Greenish Warbler Broken Ring Species
Stankowski and Ravinet's Amazing "Quantifying the use of Species Concepts"
NHM "Are Neandrethals the Same Species as Us"
---
Sky News: General Election Explained
UK Parliament: Voting Systems in the UK
Electoral Reform Party: How Long Have We Used First Past the Post?
2019 Paper: Electoral Systems and Electoral Reform in Historical Perspective by David Klemperer
Parliament UK: Magna Carta
PDF: UK Parliament and the Monarchy
UK Parliament: Women get the Vote
BBC: Voting System in the UK
UK Parliament: Proportional Representation
The Guardian: ?Disproportionate? UK Election Results Boost Calls to Ditch First Past the Post
The Conversation: The Conservatives May Regret Campaigning to Keep First Past the Post in 2011

After much deliberation, the academy (listeners of the podcast) has voted on the best topics from the past year! If this is your first episode, you'll get a sampling of our favorite moments of science and sillyness, and if you're a long time listener, you'll hear some behind the scenes thoughts about the topics, as well as... a secret teaser at the very end??

Images we Talk About:
The Jacobin Pigeon
The Pouter Pigeon

Timestamps:
(00:04:37) Intro
(00:03:59) Part 1
(00:55:00) Part 2
(01:51:28) Outro

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We also learn about: you gotta listen to the best ofs for the rock paper scissors drama, I?m not sure if Ella remembers our names, it?s not the same joke it?s a Call Back, superseding my superseded theories, Tom?s jokes are like the rain - you walk on through and hope it stops quickly, it gets Jalapeno business, I miss Comedy, Ella claimed review corner but keeps forgetting it, the art of topic writing is explaining but also what not to explain, our favorite topics of each others, wrote down the idea for public domain day the year before, Tom goofs up the La La Land Joke, ohh did you just finish episode 50? maybe, thanks everyone for the nice messages, Mum! ?those stupid awards?, they?re all great episodes, we learned who in our family listens to our show, you guys wanna learn about ants??

What happens when a star collapses to a point of near infinite gravity? And just how hard could that be to actually... find? And why do we love tattoos so much, and how long have human beings across the world been loving them too?

Check out Tom's first long form video that's finally out!
Images we Talk About:
The Crab Nebula
First Image of a Black Hole
Photo of OUR Black Hole, Sagiratius A
Ancient Siberian Tattoo

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:47) Black Holes 101
(00:57:51) Tattoos
(01:43:53) Outro

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We also learn about: black holes are massive (mass) but not massive (size), nothing can escape a black hole, supermassive black hole by muse, the closest black hole is 1000 light years away so we don?t need to worry about them too much, matter can?t escape the Plunging Region, does your McDonald also have black holes? stellar evolution, ?they?re just big gassy balls doing nuclear fusion?, the fusion in a star pushes against the gravity keeping it in equilibrium, Caroline?s fear of the sun expanding, stellar corpse, a neutron star is just made of neutrons - that can?t be right, if you add too much flour (mass) this will turn into an atomic bomb (black hole), stop saying massive and start saying voluptuous to avoid confusion, one in every thousand stars could be a blac khole, ?surely that?s not sustainable? ?have I got news for you about the future of all things?, theorizing a black hole in 1783, we only get the word Black Hole in 1964, betting on Signus X1, finding black holes by nearby objects? bright hot death screams, it took 2 years to process the black hole image, sorry I think it looks like a butthole, Sagitarius A - our galaxies butthole, deslicious spaghettification, we?re all being spaghettified, I?m being raviolified here! where do you go in a black hole? into a topic for another day, ?tom saw the topic on me?, no inheritance until you tattoo me onto your butt, Caroline got a tattoo to honor pigeons, the above skin - the skin - and the below skin, phagocytosis, microphages contain and become the tattoo! ?the art is your immune system? and we only knew this in 2018, Ötzi the Iceman had 57 tattoos, ella regrets letting us guess what tattoos he had, ritualistic and therapeutic tattoos, egyptian women tattoos, old preserved siberian tattoo, the painted picts, Tattoo comes from the Tahitian word Tatau, famed tattoo afficianado Charles Darwin, the meaning of polynesian tattoos, sailor tattoos were inspired by polynesians but adapted to things meaningful to them, sailor tattoos were like sailing achievements, shark repeller tattoos, ancient greek tattoos were literally ?skin-stigmas?, stigma affects culture and culture affects stigma in a feedback loop, ?true on all accounts for my case?, gender norms in tattoos,  ?ooh another means by which to put down women don?t mind if I do?, biases in the workplace,?it?s literally only skindeep?, tattoos are so personal and human of course you can?t assume or speak to all of them, they?re an art and they?re universal across cultures.

Sources:

NASA: Black Holes
Science News Explores: What are black holes?
Gravitational Collapse Overview
Goddard Space Flight Centre: The Life Cycles of Stars: How Supernovae Are Formed
Britannica: End States of Stars
Britannica: Evolution of High Mass Stars
Britannica: Origin of Chemical Elements
BBC Bitesize: The Lifecycle of Stars (GCSE Resource)
NASA: Neutron Stars Are Weird
Science News Explores: A Short History of Black Holes
Astronomy: A Brief History of Black Holes
Lind Hall Library: John Michell
American Museum of Natural History: The Country Parson Who Conceived of Black Holes
University of Chicago: Black Holes Explained
Astronomy: Cygnus X-1- The Black Hole that Started it All
Event Horizon Telescope: Astronomers Reveal First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of Our Galaxy
1978 Article: A Supermassive Object in Galaxy M87
Space.Com: Where do Black Holes Lead To?
SYFY: How Worried Should We Be About Black Holes?
Podcast: The Guardians Science Weekly- White Holes
Image Source: NASA First Image of a Black Hole
Image Source: Event Horizon Telescope: FIrst Image of Black Hole at the Centre of the Milyway
---
Pew Research: How Many People Have Tattoos?
The Science of Tattoos
Mouse Tail Tattoo Study
Wellcome Collection: A Brief History of Tattoos
Smithsonian: More History
Japan?s Tattooing History
Maori Tattoos
Polynesian tattoos
Pazyryk Tattoos (Very Cool)
First Female MP to Wear Moko
Sailor Tattoos
Broussard & Harton's Amazing Tattoo Stigma Study

How fast can a regular human accelerate from 0-60? How can you learn to love roller-coasters? And is there a terrifying experience Ella's done that even Tom Scott hasn't?? After having us on his show for so long, it's finally time for Tom Scott to join us on our show!

Videos we Talk About:
Tom Scott's Amazing Roller Coaster Video
Tom Scott's Failed Video Video

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:15) Human Acceleration
(00:50:03) Roller-coasters and Failed Videos
(01:18:05) Outro

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We also learn about: herding cats and children, Thanks for the compliment you can leave now, UK metric is a mess, milk is just a blur cause it?s PastYourEyes, both Tom?s can?t be like this, stopping the angular velocity pedants, what?s so hard about orbital mechanics it?s not rocket science, this is a question full of "um actually"s, the longest second of Tom Scott?s life in the Mythen car, ?would you do it again? ?oh in a heartbeat?, just frame cars as IRL speedrunning, ?oh my god she got sub 1 second?, please prove me wrong so I can ride it, steam catapulting a plane, the Nevis Catapult might win if you believe the hype, all politely saying roller coasters, ?roller coaster nerds are like train nerds but worse?, running coasters at 100%, calibrating the weights of cars, British politeness way under-markets stealth, ?I?ve done something Tom Scott hasn?t done???, the experimental Nürburgring coaster that only operated for 4 days, Do-Dodonpa the ?rattly bastard? that broke bones, dragsters going 0-60 in half a second stunned us to silence, you could buy the nitro X2 for less than a tesla but you do get to drive a tesla more than twice, ?I reserve the right to turn this into a video essay?, our roller coaster journeys, dread and expectation, Ella loves the fear, ?this is the worst thing I?ve ever done, YES?, LLE live episode on a roller coaster, Dick & Dom in da Bungalow sounds like a parody of something british, only americans will remember Raccoon Barrel from the Barrell Brothers! ?It has been a metaphor which is possibly the highest priase I can give something like that?, making a video about failed videos ?you only get to pull that trick once?, Tom?s one shot Netherlands drone video, ?it was a Look How Clever I Am video?, ideally it?s both clever content and cleverly shot, ?the content has to be worth it?, it?s like OKGO - matching content with production, the ratchet of quality, ?the frustration I feel is a compliment to David?, ?i left everything on the table?, 3 of us just mimed sword swallowing, "not a great mime"

It's Pride and Poll-jedice!  For pride month we have some pride merch including an amazing design by Caroline, with proceeds going to Pride in Stem!  Also, toss in your vote to defend the honor of your favorite topic for the next Best Of Everything episode!

All of this is at LetsLearnEverything.com

What can we learn by mimicking animals in nature, and more importantly, what can we learn about the nuance behind the buzzword of biomimicry?  And just how many wild facts are hidden in a simple chess set?

Images we Talk About:
One of the Oldest Shatranj Sets

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:26) Biomimicry
(00:50:25) Chess Chess Evolution
(01:33:41) Outro

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We also learn about: So nice to have a topic taken, biomemetics, the spider grabber is more like bio-stealing, ?nature is a giant pool of ideas?, ?nature is the OG and does it best, organism level, lily leaf umbrella, who remembers davinci? none of his flying machines even worked, a quick lesson on flying, biomimcry was only coines in the 1950s and only become trendy in the 90s, gecko feet, spinning the biomimicry slot machine, sheep wool antidepressants, a biomimicry quiz, oh right we want fewer train sonic booms, whale flipper tubercles, whale power turbines, Ella biomimics Caroline, termite AC, destroying nature to recreate nature, biomimicry 3.8, the ickyness of corporate biomimicry, we?re an organic sustainable biomemetic podcast, a person after our hearts critizing a ted talk, you can biomimic like davinci or the wright brothers, nature is not infallible, pitching our own biomimetic ideas, bumble bees saying oops, ripple, chess chess evolution you know like that game, can?t stop thinking about those anal beads, everything Caroline?s learned about chess is against their will, Tom learns about himself by talking about chess camp, scachs d?amor was so nerdy, the hornets nest of chess historians, chess comes from the indo-persian area, borders are weird why do I need so many modifiers to describe this area, calling it a horsey is more historically accurate, a chariot makes so much more sense than a castle moving across the board, oh wait does no one else call this piece a religious figure? the knight has been unchanged for 1300 years, the chad knight vs the virgin bishop, we codified white goes first after discovering quantum physics, do you want to play a game of king? Your king is in king, shah mat - the king is dead, people say check because ?I won?t let you do the silly thing, we?re gonna keep playing for a little bit?, checkered comes from chess not the other way around, cheque -> exchequer -> checkered -> chess -> shah, why aren?t we talking about this more! Ella?s very good biomimicry review corner 

Sources:

Biomimicry as a Sustainable Design Methodology
How Biomimicry is Inspiring Human Innovation
Types of Biomimicry
History of Biomimicry
Velcro
Biomimicry in Flight and Wing Design
NASA Wing Morphing
NASA Successfully Tests Shape-Changing Wing
Japanese Bullet Train
Whale Turbines
WhalePower
Soft Tobotics
Tentacle Robot
The Planned City of Lavasa
Eastgate Centre
Biomimicry 3.8
The Limitations of Biomimentic Architecture
The Ripple Device
Mosquito Inspired Needles
---
Davidson's Incredible "A Short History of Chess"
Scachs Damor
The Beginnings of Chess
Oldest Shatranj Set
The MET "Chessmen and Chess"
Wired: The Game of Chess had Patch Notes Too
White and Black in Chess
The MET "Shah Mat!"
gov.uk on The Exchequer
Encyclopedia Britannica Chess History

How much real science is there to the Mandela Effect, and how much should we be worried about our faulty memories?  And what's the science and history behind our long love for house plants?

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:31) False Memories
(00:57:30) House Plants
(01:37:47) Outro

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Yes Ella my favorite host of Let?s Learn Everything, Fiona Broome - Paranormal Researcher, Ella is shocked to learn the Mandela Effect was a conspiracy first, repressed memories, the McMcartin Preschool Trial again, the concept of memories at all is bonkers, we shoudl do more experiments, flashbulb memories aren?t as ?unchanging as the slumbering rhinegold?, the original study didn?t even check if the memories were accurate they just assumed, flash bulb memories only Feel more accurate, the concept of false memories can make people believe in the mandela effect MORE, don?t have an existential crisis, rebunking your memories, most memory recalls aren?t adversarial like mandeal effect questions, Metamemory effects, just like memory isn?t so simple false memories aren?t so simple either, ?I wish I hadn?t said yay when you said racism?, does anyone remember the 2 president Obamas? we gave false memories to bees, having false memories makes bees MORE complex not less, false memories aren?t flaws they?re just part of memory, classic meatbrain, ?my brain is a beautiful and complex thing?, movies can exist, The Four Legged Chairs, the art of putting a plant into a pot, egyptians used plants for a ton of stuff, portable plants, gillyflowers for bad breath and paying rent, peppercorn payment, (ayyy), Wes Anderson?s The Winter Hotel for Plants, renting plants for a party, the illegal orchid trade, plant hunters, pteridomania, the World War 2 potted plant boom, the millenial urge to care for plants is more of a historic urge, guilting your cohosts into talking about your plants, you?d need 10 potted plant per square foot in the home to clean the air, just imagine yourself as a Sim you need art and plants, hot or not for plants, there aren?t really huge health benefits from plants, it feels like studies are asking ?why do we like plants so much???, just enjoy plants for the sake of enjoying them, office plants are nice but I feel like work life balance will do better for my health, I just think they?re neat! 

Sources:
Snopes: The Mandela Effect
The Wiley Handbook on The Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory
Ethan Watters: The Forgotten Lessons of the Recovered Memory Movement
The False Memory Syndrome: Experimental studies and comparison to confabulations
The Fallibility of Memory in Judicial Processes
UCLA Med on Memory
Implanting False Memories
Hirst and Phelps Amazing Review of Flashbulb Memories
Predicting Confidence in Flashbulb Memories (re: Michael Jackson)
Fiona Broome: The Mandela Effect is Not False Memories
False memory and COVID-19: How people fall for fake news about COVID-19 in digital contexts
BBC on Mandela Effect
False Memory in Bees Study
Analysis of False Bee Memory Study
Don Hertzfeldt On Memory
---
National Museums Liverpool: Gardens in Ancient Egypt
Britannica: Houseplants
National Trust: A Potted History of Houseplants
Horticultural Reviews, Volume 31, The Foliage Plant Industry
Grace and Thorn: The History of Houseplants
Cobham Museum: Windlesham- Peppercorn Payment
The Plant Runner: A History of Houseplants
The Scotsman: Our Fascination With Indoor Potted Plants has a Long and Colourful History
Architectural Digest: The Most Iconic Houseplant Trends Through the Decades
The Guardian: Indoor Plant Sales Boom, Reflecting Urbanisation and Design Trends
The Telegraph: Houseplant Sales Soar
2019 Paper: Potted Plants Do Not Improve Indoor Air Quality: A Review and Analysis of Reported VOC Removal Efficiencies
University of Reading: Owning Houseplants Can Boost Your Mental Health ? Here?s How to Pick the Right One
2022 Paper: The Appearance of Indoor Plants and their Effect on People's Perceptions of Indoor Air Puality and Subjective Well-Being
RHS: Houseplants: To Support Human Health
2022 Paper: Effects of Indoor Plants on Human Functions: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analyses
BBC: Are Your Houseplants Bad for the Environment?

What happens when the largest living animal becomes the largest dead animal?  Just how complex could a dead whale be?  And what are the differences, flaws, and nuances of the jury system, and can we be studying it better?

Images we Talk About:
The Zombie Worm

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:59) Whale Fall Ecology
(00:52:52) Jury Duty
(01:32:41) Outro

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We also learn about: A bucket of mice, when whales die the people who love them will miss them, a jury of your cohosts will decide if your topic is boring, Tom stretching his arms to measure a 34 meter long whale, marine snow and whale falls, gettin ghastly gassy, a new mussel told us to go check out the whale fall, whales are mortal, deep sea mussel delicacy, how hard could it be to find a whale over 70% of the earth?s surface? let?s just wait for the carcass to come to us? wait actually?? welcome to our automatic zoo of dead things on the beach brought to you by the crown, sinking beached whale carcasses, the 3 stages of whale fall, Denial/Mobile Scavenger Phase can take 2 years, scavengers eat about one (1) Caroline of whale per day, Enrichment Opportunist Phase, Sulfophilic Phase, 7% of a whale is bone lipid, a sulfur bacteria carpet. did we walk into Caroline?s trap? This final phase can last 100 years! It?s not a trap if I?m asking you a question! 690,000 whale falls at any time, never in my wildest dreams would i be so lucky as to know the 12km distance from fall to fall statistic, whaling is deforestation for bacteria, Osedax or the zombie worm or the bone devourer or snot flower, there?s Drama in this whale fall ecosystem, dinosaur fall ecosystems, fossilized bones with fossilized deep sea snails, we got picked to talk about jury duty, UK US differences, a 900 day trial, there?s something wrong with Ella, the US is the only country to have so many civil juries, this topic has become a US UK debate, only the US requires unanimity, juror selection bias, racially diverse juries do a better job, I wish we could be surprised peremptory challenge is biased against women, oops it?s a british colinization topic, you could literally say too many asians, semi-jural systems, is this a philosophy topic about human nature?? our various biases, the confirmation bias against tom?s bad jokes, can we study jury bias? there hasn?t been any research on live jury deliberation.

Sources:
NatGeo: Dead whales are washing up on the East Coast.
NHM: Whale Fall: What Happens When Whales Die?
Review of the Impact of Whale Fall on Biodiversity in Deep-Sea Ecosystems (2022)
The Discovery of a Natural Whale Fall in the Antarctic Deep Sea (2013)
NPR: What Happens After A Whale Dies?
Scientific American: Life at the Bottom: The Prolific Afterlife of Whales
Fish Food in the Deep Sea: Revisiting the Role of Large Food-Falls (2014)
NatGeo: Making a Home on Plesiosaurs
Chemosynthesis-Based Sssociations on Cretaceous Plesiosaurid Carcasses (2008)
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Cornell Law: What is Jury Duty?
Jury Law UK
Magna Carta
538: Jury Duty is Rare
Jury Service in the UK
Juror Exemptions and Exclusions USA
Differences between US and UK Legal Systems
Jury Duty in UK vs USA
UK Civil Case Info
"Justifying Prohibited
Peremptory Challenges (2007)"
Jury Under Fire: Jury Selection Can Effectively Identify Biased Jurors
NACDL: Bias in Jury Selection
EJI: History of Bias in Jury Selection
Comparison of Juries in Democratic Countries (2007)
Jury Trial in different countries
World Jury Sytems: Exporting the English Jury System (2000)
Monash Law: Do we need juries?
Cognitive and Human Factors in Legal Layperson Decision Making: Sources of bias in Juror Decision Making (2022)
Thomas Lecture on Jury Bias
The Curious Case of the Jury-Shaped Hole (2023)

What are all these rocks hurtling through space? Do we need to worry about them, and what can we learn from them? And what are guitar tabs, why don't people take them seriously, and why does Tom love them so dang much?

Videos we Talk About:
Osiris Boop Gif

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:54) Near Earth Objects
(00:56:58) Guitar Tabs
(01:47:55) Outro

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Join our Discord!

e|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------| B|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------| G|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------| D|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
A|---------------2-|-----------4-6-4-|-----------6-7-0-|-----------6-7---| E|-0---------2-4---|-----------------|-----------------|---------------0-|

(tabs via lucamashup)

e|----------------
B|----------------
G|----------------
D|-8888-10-10-333-
A|-8888-10-10-333-
E|-6666-8--8--111-

We also learn about:

I thought you were just going to just teach us guitar, still on course to learn everything in a few months! everyone?s favorite part: semantics and exceptions, Tom is a perfectly unmovable object, it?s doxxing myself if people know I?m the center of the universe, the great attractor was my nickname in high school, ?naturally occurring objects traveling through our solar system which are smaller than planets and aren?t moons?, you must be 1 meter tall to be an asteroid, asteroids are metally comets are icy, a song of rock and metal dust and ice, asteroid/comet -> meteoroid -> meteor -> meteorite, 1.3 million known asteroids and only 3,800 comets in our solar system, within 50 million km it becomes a near earth object, obviously we?re all thinking about the Tunguska asteroid asteroid, 80 million trees felled and it didn?t even hit the Earth, one of the oldest meteors we know is from 2 billion years ago, the vredefort dome, 2 billion year old nuclear weapon testing??? the only time the earth makes Shatter Cones is meteors and nuclear explosions, if the meteor had hit the water it might not have been so catastrophic for dinosaurs, but it was going 20 kilometers per SECOND, a force 10,000 times the world nuclear arsenal, the crater has to be DISCOVERED, what does it mean for 50% of species to go extinct, the asteroid also vaporized the ground and water, impact winter, stopping photosynthesis kicks out the base of the foodchain, the meteor that broke the camel?s back, land animals over 25kg went extinct, there were a few lucky ducks, LLE Meteor Insurance, as long as Aerosmith is alive we?re fine, Asteroid Watch via the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, people listening 100 years from now hope you don?t have any asteroids (sucks to suck), Planetary Defense Coordination Office, Double Asteroid Redirct Mission, I cheered when we smashed into that asteroid, activating asteroids, asteroids are loose remaining legos from the formation of the solar system, OSIRIS-REx sample return, a kid named Bennu, tom loses his mind at the video of Osiris booping Bennu, personifying Rex, OSIRIS APEX, Apophis will be closer than some satellites, POV Apophis shots, Astroid Quakes, ?cute is a weird way to describe a spacecraft touching an asteroid?, casual Caroline classical guitar lore drop, Tom learns guitar by accident, ?too bad I picked this up so late?, Ella?s youtube ukulele era, don?t stop believing, tabs aren?t shittier sheet music, Van Halen didn?t invent tabs, tabs feel modern but also obvious, just because words are more efficient doesn?t mean diagrams aren?t useful, I?m just trying to play Don?t Stop Believing I have to worry about context? Guqin tablature dates to the 7th century! music has a lot of racism, rockin out those lute tabs, I knew this was secretly a font topic! monospace fonts revitalized tabs, sheet music software is garbage, god did not want me to use LaTeX they wanted me to use my mortal hands, OLGA, reading Beyonce tabs is not the same as listening to Beyonce, Paul McCartney?s the one who plays Blackbird wrong, let the philosophy professor enjoy his guitar! why punish the people who love your work, tabs are in a gray zone still, ultimate-guitar has a monopoly, the gray zone may benefit publishers, thanks swifties, Thomas Chesney?s tab research, it?s not a million miles away but it?s not right, ooh this song?s so commercially viable! Polphia?s tabs, Pinegrove?s tabs released before the songs, Tom?s guitar tabs, being a part of someone?s music journey in a little way, this could have been a guitar tab podcast, a cozy review corner.

Sources:
The Structure of the Milky Way
The Great Attractor
Nasa on Orbital Debris
Asteroids vs Comets vs Meteors
Nasa on Asteroids
Notable Asteroid Impacts
Tunguska Event
Atomic Asteroid Blasts
Vredefort Impact Structure
NASA on the Dinosaur Extincting Asteroid
NHM: Why did the dinosaurs die out?
Near Earth Objects
DART
Asteroid Watch
Asteroid Watch Dashboard
DART results
Nasa Data on Bennu
OSIRIS REx Touch Down
Bennu Sample Analysis
Nasa Data on Apophis
ESA's Possible RAMSES Mission
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NPR on Online Tabs
Van Halen Tab Interview
Mick Goodrick's The Advancing Guitarist
Yang Yuanzheng on Ancient Guqin Tablature
Solitary Orchid on the Guqin
Tantacrul's Critique of Sheet Music Software
Laura Gary's Amazing Legal Analysis of Tabs
Paul McCartney on Blackbird
NYTimes on Guitar Tab Legal Troubles
Ultimate-Guitars Licensing
Chesney's Paper Studying Guitar Tab Authors
Polyphia Tabs
Pinegrove Tabs NPR Interview
Tom's Habanero Tabs
Newspeak Dictionary