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49: Goosebumps, (Not) Alien Pyramids, and Nessie & Cryptids Oct 26, 2023

Show notes

Why do we get goosebumps when we hear nails on a chalkboard? Obviously aliens didn't make the pyramids, but how were they made and what does that teach us about humanity? And what's the story behind nessie and why the queer community loves cryptids?

Things we talk about:
Egyptian painting of using water to pull a statue
Video of modern people pulling a block
The famous Nessie photograph

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:59) Goosebumps
(00:48:43) Not Alien Pyramids
(01:23:13) Nessie and Cryptids
(01:50:50) Outro

We also learn about:

The bumpies you get on your skinnies, the gem trade can be pretty shitty!, Tom read 5 books for this, ahhhh! oh wait have I got goosebumps? the many and few names for goosebumps, piloerection, I just got objective chills, animal goosebumps, famous geologist and pigeon lover Charles Darwin, “I took a stuffed snake to the monkey house”, porcupine piloerection, gustatory stimuli, grima, it’s not ew it’s euggghh, Easy Lovery by Phil collins, Screaming Ape; Loop. the Head Wizard tm, biomimicry, nails on a chalkboard, Scraping Sounds and Disgusting Noises, (SOUNDBITE OF FINGERNAILS ON CHALKBOARD), so is that better or worse? I guess the kids are listening to screeching sounds for music, prehistoric chalkboard monster, ruining Ella’s spooky cold open, 118 pyramids! you’re both racist! when did the ancient aliens theory stated, von Daniken’s racist conspiracy, the racism in believing only wwhite people could make architecture, plumbobs! moving 5000 pound limestone blocks, the genius post ramp system, it took 100 years to realize the painting was showing how to move stuff with water, Gregory Marouard’s demonstration of moving a block, the Nile used to run right by the Giza pyramids, the mundane power of having a lot of people, 20,000 people to build the great pyramids, the oldest papyrus ever found: the diary of merer, the pyramid builders weren’t slaves, the bent pyramid, the plesiosaur, cryptids that turned out to be real like the thylacinem, fake cryptids, cryptid comes from cryptozoology in the 80s, Nessie swimming down the nile, you gotta try Irn Bru, Columba the Monk’s encounter with nessie from the 565 AD, Columba was a dual class monk cleric, Marmaduke’s hoaxes, hippo leg umbrella, the Nessie-sary search, eDNA, you pee you poop you die, eels in the loch, cryptids and the queer community, cyptids are the people’s mythology, token straight scientist friend.

Sources:
The Biology of Fear
Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Porcupine Piloerection
The Psychological study of Emotional Piloerection
Chills in Different Sensory Domains
The emotion of Grima
Scraping Sounds and Disgusting Noises
NPR Chalkboard Transcripts
Psychoacoustics of a Chilling Sound
Psychoacoustics of Chalkboad Squeaking
Anatomy of the Ear
---
Medium Article on the "impossibility" of Giza Pyramids
The great pyramid of Giza
Pseudoarchaeology and the Racism Behind Ancient Aliens
Tools Used in Ancient Egyptian Construction
Ancient Ramps
Using the Nile for blocks
Sliding Friction on Dry and Wet Sand
The Diary of Merer Papyri
---
Cryptozoology Museum: What is Cryptozoology?
National Catholic Register: Story of the Loch Ness Monster
University of Aberdeen: The Picts
Highland Pictish Trail: Pictish Stones
New York Times: Loch Ness Fiction is Stranger than Truth
Loch Ness Sightings Website
Science Focus: eDNA and Loch Ness
The Guardian: eDNA and giant eels
Daily Mail: Psychology of Loch Ness Monster Believers
Nessie is My Girlfriend! Cryptids and Queer People
Vox "How the Babadook became the LGBTQ icon we didn’t know we needed"
Cryptid Queer Icons

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50: 🎂 The Ig Nobel Prize, The 2023 Ig Nobel Winners, and the Ig Nobel Peace Prize Oct 12, 2023

Show notes

For our 2nd anniversary and our 50th episode (which it definitely is, don't check) we cooperatively tackled a topic folks have been asking us to do for ages: The Ig Nobel Prize!

Check out our new merch! Hats! Posters! Mugs!

Images and Videos we talk about:
The Levitating Frog Video
The Best of Miss Sweetie Poo
Ocean Mixing Anchovy Diagram
The Grabbing Tentacle Robot Video
Necrobotic Spider Diagram
Necrobotic Spider Video
The Juke 8
Daisuke Practicing his Speech

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:08:18) The Ig Nobel Prize
(00:45:00) The 2023 Ig Nobel Winners
(01:28:36) The Ig Nobel Peace Prize
(01:59:09) Outro

We also learn about:

Tom does an evil scientist laugh at Atto Seconds, Ella watch hours of Ig ceremonies, honoring achievements that make people laugh then think, the rotating category, six people have turned down the Nobel, comedy? with a question mark? trying to purposefully win an Ig is like recreating The Room, Limburger cheese, Andre Geim loves his Ig as much as his Nobel, “if people don’t have a very good sense of humor, they are usually not very good scientists either”, Roy Glauber the keeper of the broom ALSO WON A NOBEL, “all they wanted to ask about was that damn broom”, the 24/7 Lectures, Mandelbrot goading miss sweetie poo, Ella’s Favorite Ig-ventions, partially unboiling an egg on stage, Chernobyl Bra Face Masks, that laughing and crying human emotion, cadaver nose hairs with surprisingly few nose hair variations, we all stan replication, Tom’s dad was robbed of the Ig, boring teachers, backwards speakers, maybe their neurons work backwards, the taste of rocks, the trick condition, electric taste, sexism in the stanford toilet, statistically significant anchovy boning affecting the water column, the fish kama sutra, how can i turn that dead spider into a robot? necrobotics is surprisingly easy, anti peace prizes, Pauling’s Nobel burn on Teller, Tom gets recognized, Lal Bihari’s schemes to become undead, “Lal bihari died in 1976 but he is feeling much better”, MAMAAAA OOOoooOOOH, sweet caroline, working as a waitress, karaoke means empty orchestra, Shigeichi Negishi’s first machine, Inoue’s Juke 8 origin story, Inoue is up there with Jonas Salk for not patenting Karaoke, Inoue’s Ig Nobel standing ovation, I’m not going to cry, I just started crying what the fuck, don't tell Ella but Toms my favorite, sometimes three ding dongs can make a podcast

Sources:

About the Ig Nobels
Marc Abrahams articles
Andrew Geim
Limburger Cheese
Keeper of the Broom
Miss Sweetie Poo
Best of Miss Sweetie Poo
Wired Article: A Gala for Weird Science
Mark Hosteetler
2019 Awards - Very Fun Watch
2015 Awards - Even more Fun
24/7 Lectures
Past winners
Michigan Driving Law
The Blaster
Bra Gas Mask
---
Nose Hairs
Crowd Effects of Looking Up
Bored Students and Teachers
Ars Technica on the Igs
Brain Patterns of Speaking Backwards
Eating Fossils
Jamais Vu and Semantic Satiation
Electric Chopsticks
The Stanford Toilet
Ocean Mixing from Spawning Fish
Necrobotic Spider Grippers
---
Marc Abrahams Nobel Thoughts Interview with Linus Pauling
Stanley Cohen Nobel Thoughts Interview
NYTimes on Lal Bihari
Lal Bihari's Ig Nobel Ceremony
Matt Alt on Shigeichi Negishi's First Karaoke Machine for Kotaku
Daisuke Inoue's Story told for Topic Magazine
Time Magazine on Daisuke Inoue
Daisuke Inoue's Ig Nobel Ceremony

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48: Wikipedia w/ Annie Rauwerda, The First Boring Number, and Perpetual Stew Sep 28, 2023

Show notes

We all use Wikipedia, but how did it come to be? What's the first number to not have a Wikipedia page, and what does that say about math and humans? And what on Earth is Perpetual Stew?

Follow Annie and Depths of Wikipedia on Instagam/Twitter/Tiktok!

Images we talk about:
Sloane's Gap
nostalgia.wikipedia.com

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:07:33) The History of Wikipedia
(00:50:16) The First Boring Number
(01:12:09) Wikimania and Perpetual Stew
(01:50:38) Outro

We also learn about: there’s more Wikipedia languages than google translate, Grendel would have loved Blackpink, how often do we think about the roman empire, the first encyclopedia was very wrong, all men think about is present Rome! Pliny’s child piss ab wrinkle cure, fortune did not favor the bold according to Pliny the younger, the encyclopedia Britannica, getting lazy on the later letter installments, door to door encyclopedia salesmen, Annie’s Mom’s excitement for the new encyclopedia, Encarta the forgotten digital encyclopedia, welcome to the 90s baby, webrings, soft core porn is the carcinization of the web, Jimmy Wale’s “Guy Oriented Search Engine” Bomis.com, the failed boring Nupedia, the wiki prefix from a Hawaiian bus, Cunningham’s Law, Wikipedia’s Bro culture, nostalgia.wikipedia.com, no search or sources on old wikipedia, it’s not easy but people were making this encyclopedia, this human element has always been a part of encyclopedias, Jimmy Wales got his admin privilages revoked by the community, the interesting number paradox, Ramanujan’s Taxi Cab Numbers, the OEIS sequence database, Sloane’s Gap, 20,067 sitting alone at lunch, a surprising recent number update, the notability standard of numbers, the highest negative number to not have a page is only negative 3!!! come to the dark side of the zero, the Wikimania, Annie is Taylor Swift at Wikimania, Ella’s years long Wikipedia War, Annie’s neuroscience journey, Annie’s Perpetual Stew, a stew love.

Sources:

Andrew Lih's Book "The Wikipedia Revolution"
Pliny the Elder's Encyclopedia with Sun Shade Feet People
History of the Encyclopedia Britannica
The Encarta Encyclopedia
The "Decline" of Wikipedia
Jimmy Wales Guy Raz Interview
---
Scientific American The Most Boring Number
Ramanujan's Taxi Cab Numbers
The OEIS
Sloane's Gap Paper
The Notability Requirements for Number Pages
---
Wikimania
NYTimes on Perpetual Stew

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47: The Abyssopelagic Zone, The Crystal Healing Boom, and Time Capsules Sep 14, 2023

Show notes

What lies below the depths of the sea... and why should we stop being so afraid of it? Okay we know crystals can't heal you, but could they actually do... something? And why are time capsules more complicated than you'd think, and why should we love them anyway?

Images/Videos we talk about:
New Yorker Comic about the Deep Sea
The Phantom Jellyfish (warning for Thalassophobia)
The Venus Flow Basket Sponge

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:04) The Abyssopelagic Zone
(00:54:21) The Crystal Healing Boom
(01:26:19) Time Capsules
(01:54:18) Outro

We also learn about: The Zones of the Ocean, the midnight zone, the hadal zone in the trenches, Tom forgets that water freezes, cold water and thermal vents, pompeii worm’s bacterial jacket, chemosynthesis, the deep see adaptation alarm, pisolite, it’s a myth that more people have been to space than the bottom of the ocean, the challenger deep, deep sea and moon exploration were happening around the same time, we actually DO know more about the sea than the moon, the abyssal plains is half the planet… but people don’t care, thalassophobia, there are no amateur deep sea explorers, the enigmitization of the deep sea, deep sea gigantism, why not visit the deep and eat delicious foot long shrimp, phantom jellyfish, venus flower baskets symbiosis is WILD, 500 sea pigs facing in the same direction, the burglar alarm atolla jellyfish, artificial E Jelly lure, gelatinous little guys, “i thought that bit was gonna be way better than it was”, lateral line, the cusk eel is the deepest fish, whales dive deeper to send messages farther, marine snow, Ella pulls a Caroline, deep sea nodule mining, we can still like things and not believe in them scientifically, crystals DON'T date to ancient Egypt, amethyst hangover cure, to be fair they didn’t even know what crystals were, bad economic or healthcare pressures may push folks to crystals, crystals do actually have vibrational properties just not those kinds! the piezoelectric effect, quartz watches and pickups, paranormal powers placebo or priming, a great psych experiment where no one had to take LSD, we love a repeatable study, the real benefits of crystals from placebo and community, confirmation bias is powerful and good, actually harmful crystals, don’t give babies crystals for teething, gems are just shiny, you can ship of theseus the voyager topic from every time we mention it, foundation deposits weren’t exactly time capsule but were cool, leaving notes in houses, Time Capsules are optimistic and kind of silly, the dissappointed norweigan time capsule kids, deciding what to put in a capsule is really really tricky, what is sublime and what is trivial? taking a picture of a polroid, the interesting complications of time capsules, the time travel fever, “artificial special collections”, Tom’s own time capsule from 6th grade, good teachers are so good. Caroline’s gonna cry again!

Sources:

The Deep Ocean: Life in the Abyss
The Abyssal Zone
How Do Animals Survive in the Deep Ocean?
Chemosynthesis
We Know More About the Moon
We Know More About the Moon 2
Gene Feldman
Fear and loathing of the deep ocean: why don't people care about the deep sea?
"Venus Flower Basket "
Eye in the Sea
How We Found the Giant Squid
Human Impact
Species in the CCZ
---
The Guardian: American Anxiety Drives A Crystal Boom
Oprah Daily: Healing Crystals
Stanford: Understanding People's Obsession with Crystals
Time: Do Crystals Work
Livescience: Crystal Healing
OED: Amethyst
Robert Boyle: An Essay About the Origine & Virtues of Gems
1981 Paper: Piezoelectric Effects in Quartz-Rich Rocks
Piezoelectricity and Its Applications
2008 Paper: Prescribing “placebo treatments”: results of national survey of US internists and rheumatologists
The New England Journal of Medicine: Why Unconventional Medicine?
2010 Paper: Mystical Stones in Oncology: Crystal Healing Power or Perfect Nonsense?
Stanford Medicine: Patient Mindset Matters in Healing and Deserves More Study
Forbes Health: Healing Crystals
Nationwide Children's: The Dangers of Amber Teething Necklaces
IGS: Gemstone Toxicity Table
---
William E Jarvis Paper on Time Capsules
Egyptian Foundation Deposits
Matt Novak Interview on Time Capsules
Boring Norwegian Time Capsule
Atlantic's "The Paradox of Time Capsules"
History of Westinghouse Time Capsule
The Book Inside the Westinghouse Time Capsule
Science Reporting on the Westinghouse Time Capsule
The Local Michigain Time Capsule

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46: Lawn Loathing, Spelling Psammophile, and Guinness World Records Aug 31, 2023

Show notes

Why are lawns so bad, and what could we grow instead? How much can we learn from an esoteric word like Psammophile? And why is the Guinness Book of World Records wonderful and terrible at the same time?

Images/Videos we talk about:
Snakes in Sand
The Jerboa/Kangaroo Rat/Kangaroo Mouse

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:44) Lawn Loathing
(00:45:55) Spelling Psammophile
(01:19:26) Guinness World Records
(01:50:38) Outro

We also learn about: lawn enjoyer (derogatory), there are 6x more lawn than corn in the US, how we developed our lawn fetish in the 17th century, the pesticide and fertilizer boom after WWII, the more money and knowledge you have the worse lawns get for the environment, runoff powered sargassum seaweed, 30% of drinking water used for lawns, lawns aren’t even the best greenery for your mental health, “your granny cant push the lawnmower around” okay I don’t want her too! astroturf is even worse, when the sun engulfs the earth all that will remain is our plastic lawns, the no-mow-movement, the alternative lawn movement, make an animal crossing lawn! Ella and Caroline fail the spelling bee, what makes a word tricky, 3 letter words are the trickiest, Ella steals the word, ventifacts, sand actually holds water better, granular physics in a scorpion paper, sidewinder snakes drifting while doing the worm, snake scale fingerprint, ecomorphological convergence, the adorable Jerboa or Kangaroo Rat are in Dune unchanged, Jerboas can kick sand onto traps, foot drumming, “the rats would rather drum than fight”, sandy fungi, our childhood obsessions with Guinness records, people are weird! the origin of the Guinness World Records, I’ll prove to them who’s the fastest bird! the eccentric fact finding twin brothers, may we hope to turn heat into light”, the 4 types of Guinness world record, marketing records, the analog to digital downfall, over half of the top 100 brands have records, Guinness is a native advertising company, brands really need empowering, laundering governments apolitcally, most lightning strikes to a person, a good record makes you wonder

Sources:

Scientific American: The American Obsession with Lawns
BBC: Should People Get Rid of Their Garden Lawns?
Gardens Illustrated: The History of Lawns
Psychology Today: The Strange Pstchology of the American Lawn
The Guardian: Lawns Are Such A Yawn
JSTOR: Your Green Lawn is Harming the Environment
2015 Paper: Lawn as a cultural and ecological phenomenon: A conceptual framework for transdisciplinary research
2020 Paper: Lawns in Cities: From a Globalised Urban Green Space Phenomenon to Sustainable Nature-Based Solutions
2005 Paper: Mapping and modeling the biogeochemical cycling of turf grasses in the United States
NSF: Are Our Lawns Biological Deserts?
2023 Paper: Rewilding in Miniature: Suburban Meadows Can Improve Soil Microbial Biodiversity and Soil Health
Scientific American: How Fertilizers Harm Earth More Than Help Your Lawn
2017 Paper: Is All Urban Green Space the Same? A Comparison of the Health Benefits of Trees and Grass in New York City
The Guardian: Turf It Out: Is It Time to Say Goodbye to Artificial Grass?
PlantLife: No Mow May
BBC: No Mow May Blamed for Rise in Hedgehog Injuries
University of Cambridge: Can An Iconic Meadow Seed Wider Change?
---
538 Article on Spelling Bee Data
Joseph White on Word Selection Process
The Wikipedia Page for Psammophile
Amazing Paper on Psammophile Ecology and Scorpions
Energy Cost of Walking/Running on Sand
NYTimes on Sidewinder Snakes
Sidewinder Ecology
Sidewinder Microscopic Scale Differences
Jerboa Evasiveness
Jerboa Foot Drumming
Kangaroo Rat Ecology
Psammophile Fungi
---
3 Months on a RollerCoaster
Imogen West Knights Guardian Article
Vox Article
Planet Money Podcast: Is Record Breaking Broken
Guinness Marketing
In the Interest of Fairness
Turkmenistan Controversy
Guinness response to John Oliver
Find Guinness Records Here

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45: Superseded Science, why is TB Still a Thing, and the Radium Girls Aug 17, 2023

Show notes

What previous scientific theories would turn into the ones we know today, and what can they teach us? Why is Tuberculosis still a thing in the modern age? And who were the Radium girls, and what did they give us?

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We also learn about:

Oh Fuck Tom and Ella and Caroline, theory vs pseudoscience, scientific glow up, the LLE game show theme, any time Tom isn’t talking he’s doing a little dance, preformationism, tiny growing dinosaur gametes, miasma, spontaneous generation, the amber effect, Darwin couldn’t sleep thinking about geology, what a nerd, the expanding earth, every theory can be explained by little expanding dinosaurs, Marie Tharp’s “Girl Talk, revisiting Vulcan, planet mnemonics, Ella snipes the answer, an actual Einstein name drop, Einstein was so excited to think he could solve the mercury problem, my topic superseded yours, what is Tuberculosis, TB is at least 9,000 years old, when TB was romanticized (by the wealthy), “how interesting he looks in dying”, TOM STOP DANCING!, people think this is a disease of old but it’s not, antibacterial resistance could be as big a threat as climate change, 1 Billion people have latent TB, the real enemy once again is capitalism, novel’s rapid test, there’s no Return on Investment with TB research, unless you patent the cure, J&J COULD SELL IT FOR A QUARTER AND STILL MAKE A PROFIT, only 40,000 people have received bedaquiline in 11 years, evergreening a patent is Sinister, amnesty period of science in the misc topic, even with nobel prizes scientists didn't realize how dangerous this stuff was, the Curies are buried in led coffins, Curie’s legacy is “literally untouchable”, Will It Radium? Radium Schokolade, it’s rejuvenating! radium quackery, radium silk, the government said it MUST have radium if you’re advertising it does, alpha radiation mostly hurts when ingested, glowing radium dust dresses, surely THIS is how they got poisoned right?? touching the brush to the lips was a cost saving measure, radiation poisoning sucks, the US radium corp claimed the women were just suffering from syphilis, hiding scientific investigations, the radium girls fight against capitalism and make labor history, radium girls lead to an international nuclear treaty, but they still sold radium tonics! Byers’ photograph helped ban radithol, the podcast make you old.

Sources:
Wikipedias list of Superseded Theories
Miasma
Spontaneous Generation
Thomas Browne's Origins of Electricity
Excerpt on Amber from Yamamoto's "The Pull Of History"
Scientific American on Darwin's Geology
Cathy Barton on Expanding Earth Theory
Marie Tharp
How Le Verrier came to Believe in Vulcan
Royal Society: The Eclipse that Verified Einstein
Nat Geo & Thomas Levenson on Vulcan and Einstein
---
TB Pathology
Tuberculosis: A Fashionable Disease?
9000 Year Old TB
The Other Pandemic
Treating TB
Diagnosing TB
Novel Chegou
Bedaquiline Approval
Bedaquiline Efficacy
Bedaquiline Cost
Bedaquiline patent
---
Science Museum Group: The Radium Girls
Britannica: Radium
Britannica: Marie Curie
Nobel Prize: Marie Curie Physics awards
Nobel Prize: Marie Curie- Overview
The Atlantic: How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer
Nature Chemistry: The Realities of Radium
CNN: When Beauty Products Were Radioactive
Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity: Radithor
Britannica: Radium Girls
Library of Congress Blogs: Radium Girls
The Radium Girls Websit
Inside Hook: Radium Girls Legacy
NPR: Radium Girls Legacy

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44: Katie Goldin & Alex Schmidt, Space Birds, and the Bison Emoji 🦬 Aug 03, 2023

Show notes

Special guests Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin from Secretly Incredibly Fascinating and Creature Feature answer: Have birds ever been to space? Why does Katie love birds so much? And how did Alex bring about the bison emoji to everyone's phones?

Things we Talk About:

The Quails in Space video we watched over and over

The Club Winged Manakin's "Call"

Katie's Snoopy Comics

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:07:13) Space Birds
(00:38:46) Birds & Bison Emoji
(00:54:59) Outro

We also learn about:

Birds have home field advantage here, DIY animal behavior major, baby elephant soccer coach, a big podcast stew, why can’t birds just fly to space, we all share one brain cell, the Karman line, Ruppell's griffon vulture once flew into a jet engine, or rather the engine ate the bird, vultures are actually clean birds, high altitude vultures have blood adaptations, don’t dope vulture blood, USA lost the birds in space race, space farming, cloacal docking with the ISS, the quails in space video breaks us, who will teach the first generation of space quails? Chernobyl birds, stop doing unjustified wars and send chernobyl birds to space, Chix in Space, Katie wants to put a hummingbird in space, Canadian goose alien, Katie’s childhood Wile E Cayoe trap, birds relatable alien adorably arrogant dinosaurs, club winged manakin stridulation calls, Alex’s 18 page bison proposal, bird aliens return to the feet of a bison emoji statue, how Katie met Alex, Katie’s Peanuts comics, all great friendships start with an amazing bit.

Sources:
Audubon: The Amazing Story of the Cold War Space-Egg Race
Audubon's Initially Mistaken Blog on Space Birds
Smithsonian on Bird Flight Height
Smithsonian Zoo on Ruppell's Griffon Vulture
Nasa on the Edge of Space
Cornell Bird Lab on Japanese Quail

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43: Gravitational Waves, The Loneliest Animal, and Graffiti Jul 20, 2023

Show notes

How long have we been searching for Gravitational Waves? What is the loneliest animal, and what does it mean to be lonely? And what really makes graffiti... graffiti?

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:26) Gravitational Waves
(00:41:01) The Loneliest Animal
(01:14:17) Graffiti
(01:45:21) Outro

We also learn about:

Invisible ripples in spacetime that move at the speed of light and squeeze and stretch spacetime, Aristotle would have lost his mind at gravitational waves, Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravity is bends in spacetime, Einstein’s 1915 prediction, gravitational waves are stupid… unless? pulsars are cosmic lighthouses, binary pulsars are two bowling balls dropped in a lake that we think are big enough to ripple to our shore, Einstein predicted them and then we found them, I found a math drawing in space, LIGO finding gravitational waves 100 years after Einstein’s theory, thank you Yano, gravitational waves click with Caroline, LIGO can measure 1/10,000th the width of a proton, measuring the collision of 2 black holes 1.3 billion years ago, International Pulsar Timing Array, the hum of the universe, the background hum of hundreds of thousands of black holes merging, hypothetical one dimensional cosmic strings, i thought you said this was silly, have you ever been alone in a crowded room, "I want to know what loneliness is to you Ella”, the elusive snow leopard, “just tell me how snow leopards fuck Caroline”, lonely ants live 11 times shorter, giving mirrors to make cows less lonely, the song of the Kauai Oo, lonesome George sold out, Albert the Albatross’s theme song, Albie the Albatross, finding 52 Blue the whale from declassified hydrophones, capitalism isolates animals too! are we projecting and processing loneliness onto conservation, Tom’s contractual Carly Rae Jepsen mention, graffiti used to only mean ancient graffiti, farts for the old man, I am Hiyya! Lysias is Handsome, is graffiti art? Kilroy was here, Faulkner wants to write a Kilroy was here, remember the writer and the reader and me, transient and permanent graffiti, NYC Subway Graffiti, “How did they do that?!”, graffiti as high art, Ivan + Hayley, local graffiti, Taki 183, Warren Robinett’s Atari graffiti, fuck you I was here

Sources:
LIGO: What are gravitational waves?
The History of Gravitational Waves
Pulsars
What is LIGO
LIGO 2015 Discovery
Cosmic Chirps
NANOGrav
International Pulsar Timing Array
Pulsar Timing Arrays
The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set
Cosmic Strings
---
Snow Leopard Trust
2022 Paper: Neurobiology of Loneliness, Isolation, and Loss: Integrating Human and Animal Perspectives
2015 Paper: Social Isolation Causes Mortality by Disrupting Energy Homeostasis in Ants
2019 Paper: Can Access to an Automated Grooming Brush and/or a Mirror Reduce Stress of Dairy Cows Kept in Social Isolation?
Forbes: Companion Parrots May Be Less Lonely When They Phone Their Feathered Friends
Galapagos Conservancy: Lonesome George
Smithsonian: Spix’s Macaw
The Call of the Kauai Oo
BBC: No Romance for Lovesick Albatross
RSPB: The Black-browed Albatross, Albie, at RSPB Bempton Cliffs
The Guardian: Albie the Albatross
NOS: Why Do Whales Make Sounds?
Smithsonian: Maybe the World’s Loneliest Whale Isn’t So Isolated, After All
The Guardian: The Search for the Loneliest Whale in the World
PBS: Ship Noises Mute the Songs of Humpback Whales
2018 Paper: Change in Singing Behavior of Humpback Whales Caused by Shipping Noise
---
UCL Jeanine Ancelet on History of Graffiti
Penn Museum on Mayan Graffiti
ASOR on Ancient Near East Graffiti
Smithsonian Mag on Pompeii Graffiti
IAS on the Athenodoros Graffiti
Boston College Pompeii Graffiti Translation
Museum of Cycladic Art
Tim O Gorman on Kilroy
William Falkner at UVA Q&A Transcript
History of American Graffiti Authors on PBS
Colosseum Graffiti
Harvard International Review on Banksy
NYT Interview with Taki183
Adam Clayton's Letter to Atari
Robinett on Adventure Easter Egg
Wired Interview with Robinett

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42: Gender Complexity, Mars Water Deja Vu, and Pigeons Jul 06, 2023

Show notes

How complicated is trying to scientifically study gender? Why does it feel like water get discovered on Mars every other month? And what's so great about these pigeons I see everywhere?

Images we talk about:
The Brain Gender Chart
The Jacobin Pigeon
The Pouter Pigeon

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Join our Discord!

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:38) Gender Complexity
(00:42:27) Mars Water Deja Vu
(01:18:16) Pigeons
(01:38:21) Outro

We also learn about:

Caroline snipes Tom’s joke, let’s talk about sex, “I do it and I have one”, sex is a bimodal distribution, defining sex is like defining a tree, have you ever had a gender that… that…, women men girls and boys, gender as separate from sex, Money’s awful gender experiment, sample size: David, why haven’t they just tried… talking to people? Hasbro lobbying Big Hormone pink and blue brains have a lot of overlap, news of mars water is like news of the first gay Disney character, we found a full britta filter on mars, the first water on mars theory, Herschel thought people lived in the sun, all the things we’ve sent to mars, the “““first””” evidence of water on mars, “““recent””” water on mars, saying we found water on mars makes it sound like we’re tackling the same problem over and over, we’re learning all kinds of stuff about mars, yes there’s water on mars but first let’s define water, gender neutral martians, “sublimate” makes Caroline happy, there is sometimes and maybe water on mars, there definitely used to be water on mars, martian time periods, stop personifying mars Caroline, “the planet Vulcan’; the astronomers still watching intently”, the precovery of Pluto 15 years before its discovery, the rock dove became the pigeon, pigeons were domesticated multiple times, pigeons may be the first domesticated bird, 350 breeds of domesticated pigeons, met gala pigeon looks, endurance pigeons flying for 22 hours, homing pigeon navigation, reddit quotes, the pigeon origins of Reuters, these are kinds of jokes you can support with your donation, listener submitted comeback, world war pigeons, 36 Dickin Medals went to pigeons, feral domestic pigeons, pigeons are better pets than parrots, stress egg laying, Darwin loved pigeons.

Sources:
Sex and Gender by Archer and Lloyd, 2002.
A Brief History of ‘Gender’
Nature or Nurture: The Case of the Boy Who Became a Girl
PEW: On Gender Differences, No Consensus on Nature vs. Nurture
2008 Paper: The Nature and Nurture of Gender
1993 Paper: Physical attractiveness of boys with gender identity disorder
2019 Paper: Neurobiology of gender identity and sexual orientation
Cleveland Clinic: Androgens
2022 paper: Brain Sex in Transgender Women Is Shifted towards Gender Identity
2020 Paper: Brain Sex Differences Related to Gender Identity Development: Genes or Hormones?
2020 Paper: Neuroscience and Sex/Gender: Looking Back and Forward
PBS: Map of Gender Diverse Cultures
Article: Indigenous Tribes Embraced Gender Fluidity Prior to Colonisation
MIT: Gender Pay Gap
STEM Women: The Gender Pay Gap in STEM
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Early Mars Ovservations and the Canals
William Herschel on Mars to the Royal Society
Basalla on Herschel's Sun People Theory
Lowell to Nature on Life on Mars
Lowell's Mars Canal Obsession
List of Mars Missions
Vox's Mars Water Article
Nasa 2015 Press Release
Nasa 2017 Walk Back Press Release
NYTimes 2015 Water on Mars
NYTimes 2018 Lake on Mars
Space.com 2022 Water could be Magma
"Recent" Water Found on Mars
Ask a Nasa Scientist "Is There Water on Mars"
Stability of the Liquid Water Phase on Mars
Nasa on Mars In Depth
Smithsonian Magazine Water on Mars
NYTimes Planet Vulcan Reporting 1876
The Precovery of Pluto
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Wendall Levi: Pigeon Guy
Jacobin Pigeon
Pouter Pigeon
Squabs
Gilbert & Shapiro: Pigeon Domestication
Domestic Pigeons Paper
Why Pigeons, Not Parrots

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Best Of Everything! Jun 19, 2023

Show notes

It's our first Best Of episode! We sat down to listen to and talk about the topics YOU told us were your favorites!

Temporal Illusions! Eurovision! Dodos, and so much more!

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We also learn about:

The handsome Dr. Ella Hubber, if a friend recommended this to you they’re amazing and didn’t start that orphanage fire, declaring Tom’s love for Carly in the first episode, the first “Comedy”, Tom’s Eurovision indoctrination, the grim Holiday Episode, *aggressively podcasts at man*, seeing Tom’s wheels spinning, Let’s Go To Therapy Together!

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