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41: Eyevolution, Eliminating Mosquitos, and Bagged Milk w/ Sabrina Cruz Jun 08, 2023

Show notes

What are some of the wildest ways that eyes have evolved? What would happen if we got rid of all mosquitos, and how would we even do it? And how on Earth did some Canadians come to love bagged milk?

Images we talk about:
The Picture Tom had on his Dorm Wall
The Sheep Video

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:15) Eyevolution
(00:44:03) Eliminating Mosquitos
(01:18:11) Bagged Milk
(01:41:18) Outro

We also learn about:

Ella you’ve made it! it’s bagged milk all the way down, organs of extreme perfection and complication, misquoting Darwin, this is cliche because this is where this came from, Darwin’s clickbait, Eyevolution 2 Eyelectric BoogEyeloo, eye diagrams on Tom’s dorm wall, octopi are aliens, we are the ones with backward photoreceptors, you’re perfect just the way you are, horizontal and vertical pupils, cats have built in sunglasses, taller animals have rounder pupils, using the blur gradient for depth perception most, birds have circular pupils, compensatory cyclovergence in goats, horror writers have rotating goat eyes, w shaped pupils in cuttlefish, heart shaped pupils, frog pupils are a mystery, “I ought to conquer the cold shudder”, it’s just 1 mosquito species or 3,000, mosquitos are on every continent, vegetarian mosquitos, blood drinking mosquitos only drink blood to reproduce, I thought we were capri suns, *joke about women here*, palette, no plant requires mosquito pollination, the mosquito fish, mosquitos are delectable… uh… for fish, does every entomologist eat bugs, dark clouds of arctic mosquitos, cleaning pools just lacks that wow factor, mosquitos annoy caribou to death, the ecosystem would hiccup and move on, the invisible hand of mosquitos, nearly half of all people ever to live have been killed by mosquito disease, extirpation, the classic sterile insect technique has been used since the 1950s, you are the third person I’ve known whose had to sex fruit flies, “Ella’s Virgins”, filling mosquitos with good bacteria, spider venom fungus to brutally kill mosquitos, why are you here Sabrina, casual Ella lore drop about living in Canada, milk with the skin on, you don’t raw dog the milk bag, a heavy cold hacky sack, metric system looking pretty sexy, the metrication of Canada, this new fancy bag milk technology, too much marketing brain, demetricating, DIY bag milk, Sabrina’s got big misc energy.

Sources:
The Origin of Species
Serb & Eernisse on Cephalopod Eyes
David Holmes on the "Weird Wiring" of our Eyes
Labin & Ribak One Theory Why Our Eyes are Wired Backwards
The Amazing Meta-Analysis of Pupil Shape from Banks et al.
NPR Interview of Eye Researchers
W Shaped Pupil of Cuttlefish
Pupil Diversity in Frogs
Darwin's Leter to Asa
---
Ecology: A world without Mosquitoes
What would happen if we eliminated the worlds mosquitoes
The different types of mosquitoes
Malaria Facts
Irradiated mosquitoes
GM Mosquitoes
World Mosquito Program
Mosquito Killing Fungus
---
CBC on Selling Milk in Bags
Metrication - A Guide for Consumers (1974)
Report on Canadian Metrication Progress
CBC on Canada's Bagged Milk History

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40: Mitochondrial Eve, Climate Change CRISPR, and Telephone Music May 31, 2023

Show notes

Who is the most recent human we all share our DNA with? How can CRISPR be used to help the climate crisis? And what do telephones have to do with music?

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:22) Mitochondrial Eve
(00:39:21) Climate Change CRISPR
(01:14:15) Telephone Music
(01:47:15) Outro

Images we talk about:

Early Headphone Advertisement

We also learn about: Dartboard topics, Most recent common female ancestor, that’s actually the topic! endosymbiotically engulfing mitochondria, every animal now has this little friend, a fly gets caught in a photocopier and now we can’t live without it, mitochondrial DNA is only passed down the female line, mitochondrial DNA mutates once every 8,000 years, mitochondrial eve may have existed 150,000 years ago, eve wasn’t alone but she was our common ancestor, the eve of sperm whales was only 10,000 years ago, for squids it was 35,000 years, “won’t somebody think of the men”, Y Chromosomal Adam may have come from 210,000 years ago, concestor, simulating the concestor in a simulation, it’s not really a family tree it’s a messy web that we can draw a triangle around, GMOs vs Gene Editing, cool rad interspersed short palindromic repeats, tell them about how repairs happen! just some extracurricular learning, tom guesses cow farts in one, fartless cows without editing the cows themselves, we could eat less meet or just genome edit our way out of this, blue ribbon cow fart judge, is this a bandaid? making plants work harder to absorb CO2, photosynthesis labor laws, it’s not just “eat more carbon” it’s also grow deeper roots, “adapting the world to suit our misuse, rather than trying to improve our own behavior”, who needs pesticides when you have ugly plants, the scientific community is carefully thinking about these things, head phones, switchboard operators, that’s so gool, tom puts the podcast on hold, the devil invented hold music, hold music and temporal perception. no music makes time slow down, the fans of hold music, Tim Carleton’s stereo mistake “yeah… sorry about that”, the vocal encoder, mmm whatcha say, “it is the identity of our artistic project”, Ella’s Sherlock ringtone, Dark Blue, a book about making ringtones, 346 certified gold ringtones, Beyonce is the ringtone queen, ringtone podcasts, can only hope we’re causing as many people bodily harm as possible

Sources:
No, a Mitochondrial “Eve” Is Not the First Female in a Species
Origin of Mitochondria
Biologos: Mitochondrial Eve and Y Chromosome Adam
Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution
All About Mitochondrial Eve: An Interview with Rebecca Cann
Molecular Clock
Haplogroups
Giant Squid Mitochondrial Eve
Sequencing Y Chromosomes Resolves Discrepancy in Time to Common Ancestor of Males Versus Females
The 'extremely ancient' chromosome
Most Recent common ancestor
---
National Human Genome Research Institue: What is genome editing?
GOV.UK: Plans to unlock power of gene editing unveiled
Nature: History of Agricultural Biotechnology: How Crop Development has Evolved
Synthego: History of Genetic Engineering and the Rise of Genome Editing Tools
BROAD Institute: Questions and Answers about CRISPR
2021 Paper: Application of Gene Editing for Climate Change in Agriculture
Innovature: Gene Editing Is A Key To Environmental Sustainability
2021 Paper: EU policy must change to reflect the potential of gene editing for addressing climate change
2019 Paper: Application of genetic modification and genome editing for developing climate-smart banana
UC Davis: Can CRISPR Cut Methane Emissions From Cow Guts?
Article: Biotech company claims genetic selection can cut methane emissions in cattle
2017 Paper: Is Editing the Genome for Climate Change Adaptation Ethically Justifiable?
Cut and Paste - Francis Crick Institude
---
Headphone History from Smithsonian Mag
Hold Music Technicalities from NPR
The Influence of Music on Temporal Perceptions in an on-hold Waiting Situation
This American Life Hold Music Episode
Tim Carleton's Opus No 1 from The Atlantic
Opus No 1 in Mono and Carleton's Comment
Vocal Encoder Patent
Logic Manual on Vocoder History
Daft Punk Vocoder Interview
Book on Ring Tones
CNN Ring Tone Interviews from 2006
RIAA Gold & Platinum Ringtones
CNN on Phone Music

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Tom-nical Difficulties: Back in a Week! (And the week after that!) May 25, 2023

Show notes

Tom threw out his voice screaming about the new Zelda game (not actually) so we're delaying the next episode. But! We're not shifting the release schedule so the next episode will still come out the Thursday after!

In the meantime, check out the episode of Veritasium that Tom researched and wrote!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMQbHMgK2rw

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39: The Pill, The 2 Highest Points on Earth, and Period Products May 11, 2023

Show notes

What are the myths and facts around the hormonal birth control pill? Why are there two highest points on Earth, and does that teach us about our planet? And what are all the ways period products affect the world we live in?

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:04) The Pill
(00:52:01) The 2 Highest Points on Earth
(01:28:28) Period Products
(01:49:10) Outro

We also learn about: Now that’s a rabbithole I can go down, taking half the pill makes you bi, LLE now played in health classes across the nation, the Ebers papyrus, they weren’t just using contraception they were communicating it, ancient Egyptian RAs, can’t get pregnant when you’re dead from mercury poisoning, the witch bull, bundling is the x games of abstinence, Tom definitely knows how the pill works, it’s not that men don’t know about women’s health it’s that women have to know about men’s health too, 1827 we discover the egg, 1843 confirmed conception happens when sperm enters the egg, the worlds fair of contraception, the American Birth Control League, Ella has a revelation, if I were a contraception and you took me I’d be an oral contraception, the original pill was 66x stronger to try to prove it was effective, bogus bad faith birth control studies, don’t well me, the Earth is squished because it spins, Team Everest vs Team Chimborazo, what the fuck is sea level, NERD I KNOW YOU’RE DOING MATH, nonbinary sex ed is just learning about mountains, 8,000 meters above Church, the air-sea interface, the metonic cycle of 19 years, carrying sea level, that’s what Tom gets for planning a joke, the geoid, a slide from Everest to Chimborazo, the death zone, our third ancient Egypt reference, Hypatia throws a pad, i got you a 100 rock that’s what you need right? the black hole of period history, you can’t abstinence periods, if you’ve used a sanitary belt join the discord! using WWII bandages, menstrual products vs the environment, the menstrual cup recommended by 3/3 members of the podcast, period poverty, the pink tax and the tampon tax, menstrual contact “turns new wine sour” “hives of bees die”, the stigma and cost of menstrual products, efforts to reduce period poverty, sniping review corner.

Sources:
Paper: The history of contraception: From ancient egyptians to the "morning after"
NYT: In Ancient Times, Flowers and Fennel For Family Planning
NHS: Sex and contraception after birth
The Bull of Innocent VIII
Mercury Policy MIT: History Of Mercury Use in Products and Processes
Book: Encyclopedia of Motherhood, Volume 1
Paper: Resisting Reproduction: Reconsidering Slave Contraception in the Old South
UN: Contraceptive Use by Method
PBS: The Timeline of the Pill
Vox: Where The Pill is Free
Planned Parenthood: History of the Pill
Paper: Return to fertility following discontinuation of oral contraceptives
Paper: “They Destroy the Reproductive System”: Exploring the Belief that Modern Contraceptive Use Causes Infertility
The Guardian: Contraceptive Pill 'Can Lead Women to Choose Wrong Partner'
Paper: MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives
Paper: The impact of combined oral contraceptives on ocular tissues: a review of ocular effects
Paper: Oral contraceptive use in women changes preferences for male facial masculinity and is associated with partner facial masculinity
Paper: Relationship Satisfaction and Outcome in Women Who Meet Their Partner While Using Oral Contraception
---
NOAA on the Tallest Mountain
Nat Geo on Sea Level
Britannica Definition of Sea Level
Bradshaw's History of English Levelling
NOAA on the Metonic Cycle
Vox on the GeoPolitics of Surveying
NOAA's New Datum for 2025
GIS Geography on the Geoid
ESRI on the Geoid
Everest's Death Zone
Scientific American on the Geoid
Ciro Pabon on the Practicality of Sea Level
---
Menstruation Products in the Science Museum
History of The Tampon
The Evolution of Menstrual Products
Enviromenstrual Fact Sheet
Which Period Products Are Best for the Environment?
The Tampon Tax: Everything You Need to Know
Tampon Tax Abolished
Action Aid: Period Poverty

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38: Ellen Weatherford, Can Fish Drown, and Real Pokemon Apr 27, 2023

Show notes

Special guest Ellen Weatherford joins us to ask: just how interesting can water and fish be? And are there any pokemon inspired by strange but real animals?

Check out Ellen's podcasts "Just the Zoo of Us" and "Spellbound and Gagged"

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: defining fish, “just be cool about it”, defining drowning, Ellen and Caroline teach Tom and Ella about where water oxygen comes from, history of breathing, where we’re going we don’t need bones, christmas tree worm, osmoregulation and ion gradients i love it and i wish i understood it better, keeping a salt backpack, gills and lungs, “sorry for the crisis”, I’ve been sleeping on fish, mmmmm actually gonna evolve back to the water, can I get a return on these lungs? but what we’re talking about is drowning. cold water more oxygen, arapaima, ding ding ding drowning yay! thousand mile dead zones, only some sharks need to move to breathe, Ram Ventilation vs Buccal Pumping at Coachella, buccal vs buckle, asmr buccal pumping, tuna need to swim or drown, letting arapaima rest in your arms, learning to love fish, Spiders and Commitment, alligators vs manatees, singing a B flat for gators, alligator snapping turtle, bringing Ellen to party, Wooper and Clodsire, the iberian ribbed newt, obliterating your future husband with a Whimsicott.

Sources:
WHO Definition of Drowning
Origin of Gills
2022 Gill Ion Regulation Paper
Evolution of Lungs
Lung Conversion to Swim Bladders
How Fish Deal with Salinity
Salmon Osmoregulation
Bullshark Osmoregulation
Cold Water Holds more Oxygen
Hypoxia Adaptations in the Amazon Rainforest
Air Breathing Arapaima
Gill Remodeling
Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone
Hypoxia Task Force
Tuna Ram Ventilation

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37: Loving Toxicity, Future Warnings, and Better Burials Apr 13, 2023

Show notes

Is there more to learn than to fear from toxic animals? How would we warn future humans about present dangers? And what are better ways for us to be buried?

Things we mention:
WIPP Mock Up Images

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about:

This ant can kill 1 million elephants, haven’t found a venomous mushroom… yet, a lot of my friends are toxic frogs, nom nom nom I eat poison, don’t touch shit, from none to death, the schmidt sting index, I want the data not the sting, what schmidts data was actually saying, some toxins don’t correlate with pain or lethality, venomous mammals are have in common that they’re disregarded, shrews beareth a cruel mind, arguably venomous slow lorises, expanding our definition of toxicity, letting tom load a joke, protecting the future from caroline’s savage burns, the waste isolation pilot plant, 573 known extinct languages, I can haz nuclear waste? skull and crossbones, cubed morphines, “this place is a message…this place is not a place of honor”, landscape of thorns, forboding blocks, it’s giving kiki, taking a photo on a spike for the gram, nucelar priesthood, ray cats, “they didnt really care what we said i think”, understanding our past to connect to our future, just leave a dvd of the mummy, we’ve been burying people for 120,000 years, inventing oven crypts in the 1800s, gotta workshop the name oven crypt, “I want to be in a big bone pit”, lots of places resuse plots, just walking past a pile of tombstones! blasting our relatives into the stratosphere, natural burials, fungus coffins, water cremation.

Sources:
Poison, Venom, Toxungens
Atlas Obscura Schmidt Sting Index
NPR Justin Schmidt Interview
First Sting Index Paper: Hemolytic Activities of Stinging Insect Venoms
Evolution of Stings and Sociality
NYTimes Interview with Schmidt
Venomous Mammals: A Review
Nekaris Paper on Loris Bites Between Each Other
Loris Venom for Communication
Loris Venom for Cobra Mimicry
Shrew Spit Tames Cancer Cells
Justin Schmidt Obituary
---
The US Energy Department Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
EPA What is Transuranic Radioactive Waste?
Understanding Extinct Languages: When and Why They Die Off
Jolly Roger
Pirates, Poison, and Professors: A Look at the Skull and Crossbones Symbol
Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
Summary of WIPP Team A report with images
Vice: How to Warn the Future About Toxic Waste
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository
Nevada Attorney General: The Fight Against Yucca Mountain
The Ray Cat Solution
---
BBC: Death Rituals in the Animal Kingdom
BBC: What Happens When We Run Out of Space to Bury the Dead
BBC: The World is Running Out of Burial Space
A Thought Experiment by J. Harrington
Forbes: Rising to Heaven
Dawn: South Africa's Graveyard Generation Mourns
IOL: What About the Ancestors
Paper: The environmental pollution caused by cemeteries and cremations: A review
EA: The Grave Issue of Pollution From Cemeteries
Sending Your Ashes to Spaces
Smithsonian: What is Water Cremation
Ask A Mortician
Ask A Mortician: Water Cremation
Ask A Mortician: Green Burial Options

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Technical Difficulties: Back Next Week! Apr 06, 2023

Show notes

Apologies all, Ella's computer kicked the bucket, so we'll be back next week with a fresh episode!

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36: Scientific Language Models, The Smell of Space, and Forgotten Olympic Events Mar 23, 2023

Show notes

IT'S THE MAX FUN DRIVE!!!

See our Game Night Livestream Monday March 27th at 5pm EST!

Get cool drive rewards and listen to our special bonus episode!

Can Large Language Models be used for good in scientific fields? Could space smell... good? And what olympic events have we tried, abandoned, and completely forgotten about?

Things we mention:
Compulsory Figures

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!

We also learn about:

Using ChatGPT to break up with your partner, it’s all very dry, you have to know the knowledge going in, LLMs are tools not databases, ChatGPT as a co-author, authorship carries accountability, Galactica was only public for 3 days, you can’t use galactica anymore happy??? racist protien AI, Protien and Chemistry Language Models are amazing, transparency with AI, the Bloom Project, ChatGPT emotionally ends the episode early, be funnier, in space no one can smell you smell, Venus smells like eggs, Tom volunteers to smell space, how smell works, don’t breathe if you’re driving, olfactory epithelium, 40 million olfactory neurons. a 40 million piece slimy jigsaw in my nose, asmr smells, 1 atom per cubic centimeter in space, Tim Peake’s answer, the smell of static, getting a refund for Tim’s answer, making ozone in space, sexy dying stars, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon, your grill makes star smell, raspberries at the center of our universe, a number so big it makes you laugh, the IRAM telescope, one of the largest interstellar molecules, I’ll show you Tim Peake! I was looking for amino acids but now I know what the black hole cloud might smell like, combining all the smells into a cocktail, who knows what the rest of space smells like! No, I’m going to fight you Caroline, Koribos wins the entire Olympics, the rise in wells, ancient pump up music, armor racing a car with 4 minds of its own, the 5 month long Olympics, putting the figure in figure skating, dueling flash mob, the wonder of demonstration sports, goal ball, Olympic tiktoking, hurting Caroline and Ella with the art Olympics, write fanfiction for us, at least they had standards to not give medals, that’s my dad on a bike! trying can be more poetic than poetry.

Sources:

How ChatGPT works
What ChatGPT and Generative AI Mean for Science – Nature
Nature Biomedical Engineering Paper
ChatGPT: Five Prioroties for Research – Nature
Specialised LLMs – Toward Data Science
Galactica Only Survived Three Days
Med-BERT
NVIDIA Blog on Biology LLMs
Bloom: the Open LLM
---
TedEd: How Does Smell Work?
Tim Peak- What Space Smells Like
Australian Academy of Science
Increased complexity in Interstellar Chemistry 2009
NASA: Comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Space: Comet 67P
Smithsonian: Asteroid 162173 Ryugu
Scientific America: Four Great Scents From Outer Space
---
Hippias' History of Olympics
Hugh Lee's Paper on the First Recorded Olympics
MET: Ancient Olympics
IOC: Chariot Racing
Official Record of Early Olympics Games
LA Times: Compulsory Figures
Skating Scene: Compulsory Figures
WSJ: Compulsory Figures
Ellyn Kestnbaum's Culture on Ice
Royal Armories: Dueling at the Olympics
Gliding at he Olympics
IOC: Horse Skijoring
Goalball Origins
Smithsonian Mag: Art at the Olym
O Sport Poem

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Recast: Just The Zoo Of Us: Rats w/ Let's Learn Everything! Mar 16, 2023

Show notes

Today we're rebroadcasting our appearance on Just the Zoo of Us as we prepare for an episode coming NEXT week for the MaxFunDrive! On this episode we combine our shows formats to bring you a full Topic, Question, and misc, all about one of the most misunderstood, intelligent, and rascally animals: the rat!

Join Tom at a MaxFunDrive Meetup!
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

35: Don't DeExtinct the Dodo, Humans vs Computers, and Art Forgery Mar 02, 2023

Show notes

Is it really possible to bring back the Dodo, and what even really happened in the first place? Are there any games left that humans can beat computers at, and why might that be okay? And what can art forgery tell us about art and the art world?

Images/Videos we Mention:
The TinkerToy Tic Tac Toe Computer
The Rock Paper Scissors Robot

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!

We also learn about:

The Cherished Dodo, tinction, what does a dodo taste i mean look like, dodo art telephone, only 1 full skeleton, actualy lots of things die this way, invasive species also killed the dodo, Alice in Wonderland’s trendsetting the Dodo, Caroline’s clearly a Dodo person, Dodo DNA, Jurassic Park was a Documentary, I hope to die in a funny way, bringing the Bucardo back, the first De-extinction, and the first Double Extinction, DNA vaults, the nicobar pigeon, Cloacas are “Fun” according to Ella, let’s reintroduce the Dodos too why not, “bring a little bit of magic back to the mauritious”, ancient egyptian tic tac toe, the Shannon Number, The Mechanical Turk, TuroChamp, Chess was the Drosophila of AI, bad AI predictions, Deep Blue vs Kasparov, The Googolplex of Go games, Dr Fill the Crowssword AI, 100% Rock Papers Scissor Win Rate, Poker AI, this really cool game called Superluminauts, what’s “unfair” in AI? the power of art comes from yourself, the art of forgery, Han van Meegeren, Dodo in Gearl with a Pearl Earring we all make the same dumb joke, new Vermeer, don’t arrest me it’s just a forgery, there could still be Elmyr de Hory forgeries, F is for Fake, “if my work hangs in a museum long enough, it becomes real”, Tom makes a totally normal and not embaressing mixup of Van Gogh and DaVinci, how to spot a forgery, carbon dating forgeries, just look at it closely, identifying craquelure, mass spectrometry, so much of this is just about money, Salvator Mundi Ship of Theseus, were these reviews forged? Go check! the laughing people

Sources:

NHM: Dodo De-Extinction Announcement Causes Debate

NatGeo: The Dodo is Dead! Long Live the Dodo

Smithsonian: Article on Colossal Biosciences

Colossal Biosciences: The Dodo

Nature: What Would it Take to Bring Back the Dodo

The Atlantic: Article on the Dodo

NatGeo: First Extinct Clone Created

NHM: Frozen Banks

TedTalk: De-Extinction

Britannica: Gene Editing

Video on CRISPR