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57: Don't Lose Your Head! and Constructed Languages Feb 29, 2024

Show notes

Losing your head isn't good, but what actually happens, and what can it tell us about animals, ethics, and bad science? And what is a constructed language, when does it fail, and when can it be use to make great... art? As they say, Ni Lernu Ĉion!

Content Warning that today's science topic can be a bit grim, so if you want, you can skip ahead to 54:54

Things we Talk About:
Mike The Chicken
Sea Slug Moving
The Narmer Palette

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:36) Don't Lose Your Head!
(00:54:55) Constructed Languages
(01:36:55) Outro

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We also learn about:

Pretty clear cut or chopped, did we need to write this down? why do you die when you lose your head? let’s start with a deep philosophical question: are we our brains? Tom clearly doesn’t know Mike the chicken, Mike was the original pitch for Charlotte’s Web, mooching some slugs, The Mystery of the Beheading of Elysia Marginata, capital punishment comes from beheadings, the guillotine could behead 20 people per hour, “the most gentle of lethal methods”, …do you guys not have the death penalty? ethics of rat euthanasia, Canavero’s bogus self published head transplants, like the language you’re speaking RIGHT NOW, Auxiliary Engineered and Artistic Languages, Tom falls into Ella’s Esperanto trap, Esperanto was banned and persecuted, the benefit of Esperanto is it has no culture, English is a language of exceptions, 1850 to 1920 people were going WILD constructing languages, none of us had heard of Volapük, “a language without umlauts sounds monotonous, harsh, and boring”, the language wars, a priest and an eye doctor trying to solve the tower of babel, Esperanto has “dipthongs - ugly!”, “rattling an hard bony R”, Artlang POP QUIZ, for Tolkeins the languages came first, english is a tapestry of languages and artlangs can convey that, the use of purposefully meaningless artlangs, soo soo! NOOT NOOT! boyhowdy! nonsense languages have universality, citing the pingu fan wiki, is penguinese more universal than esperanto??? Toki Pona, newspeak, “and that brings us strangely and sharply to the end of the topic”, appreciating real turtles and robot turtles.

Sources:

BBC: The Chicken That Lived For 18 Months Without a Head
Britannica: How Mike the Chicken Survived Without a Head
Scientific America: Fact or Fiction?: A Cockroach Can Live without Its Head
New York Times: Meet the Sea Slugs That Chop Off Their Heads and Grow New Bodies
NewsWeek: Did Anne Boleyn Really Speak After She Was Beheaded? Here's the Science
American Historical Association: Narmer Palette
2023 Paper: "The Most Gentle of Lethal Methods": The Question of Retained Consciousness Following Decapitation
1975 Paper: EEG Evaluation of Humaneness of Asphyxia and Decapitation Euthanasia of the Laboratory Rat
2013 Paper: Electroencephalographic Evaluation of Decapitation of the Anaesthetized Rat
2011 Paper: Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness and the ‘Wave of Death’
1991 Paper: Pain Perception in Decapitated Rat Brain
New Scientist: Head transplant carried out on monkey, claims maverick surgeon
2019 Paper: First Human Head Transplantation: Surgically Challenging, Ethically Controversial and Historically Tempting
The Guardian: First Full Body Transplant is Two Years Away, Surgeon Claims
The Telegraph: First Head Transplant Successfully Carried Out on Monkey, Claims Surgeon
Vice: Head Transplant Surgeon Claims Human Brain Transplants Are 'Technically Feasible'
2017 Paper: Surgical, eEthical, and Psychosocial Considerations in Human Head Transplantation
---
Constructed languages:
Francois Rabelais
International Auxiliary Languages
Esperanto
Esperanto 2: electric boogaloo
Native Esperanto Speakers
Why Learn Esperanto:
English language exceptions
Creating new words in Esperanto
Volapük
Trüth, Beaüty, and Volapük
Quenya
Quenya Course
Klingon Language Institute
TGIF in Simlish
How Simlish was Created
Penguinese
Penguinese example
Animalese
Animalese example
Polygon on Animalese
Toki Pona:
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
Experimental languages
Newspeak
Newspeak Dictionary

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56: Are We Still Evolving? & Famous First Messages Feb 15, 2024

Show notes

How have human beings evolved, and how could we evolve in the future? And what are some famous first messages, and what can we learn from looking at them?

Images we Talk About:
Telegram
First Record Image
Second Record Image
Other Record Images

Tom's Ingenuity Comic

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:15) Are We Still Evolving?
(00:52:00) Famous First Messages
(01:38:17) Outro

We also learn about:

DANGER BOO BOO, Ella has her own discord?? homo sapiens were 300,000 years ago but humans were 2.5 million, homo sapiens coexisted with 8 other human species, homo habilis was chilling for a million years, the homo hunger games, neanderthals had sewing needles and clothing, they seem so human because they are, maybe it was our chins, it’s hard enough not to anthropomorphize other animals let alone other humans, humans were the same height 40,000 years ago, humans may have lost height from being shit at farming, we have smaller brains but that doesn’t mean we’re less smart, natural selection & mutation & gene flow & gene drift, the iphone gave us smaller jaws, melanin is about synthesizing that sweet sweet vitamin D, we have evolved the adaptation of diversity, physical appearance is mostly just vitamin D and warmth - that’s it, it’s not good genes vs bad genes, microevolution, “instead of a mass of clones, we are already starting to see a glorious riot of variations”, this is all speculation, “we’re very unpredictable”, hello world! I learned it by watching you!! shouting and switching places, Tom live writes fanfic, purpose & imagination & inspiration, no YOU hang up, WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT, hey is your daughter okay? tone poems, Ella bled for her art in *checks notes* We Will Rock You, the dynamic range of the alpine symphony, if found please return littered golden record to Earth, ooh criteria! images on the record are COPYRIGHTED, who knows if they’ll be in the public domain by the time aliens get it, the beauty of the calibration circle, pulsar map, Ella’s not inspired, Caroline inspires Ella a bit, mixing up the golden plaque and golden record, MIR LENIN SSSR, DISREGARD PREVIOUS MESSAGE USA FOREVER

Sources:
Homo Habilis
Natural History Museum on The Origin of Our Species
Other Human Species
The Guardian on Neanderthals
Why were homo sapians the winners?
How have we changed?
When did we become fully human?
Factors Driving Evolution
Factors Driving Evolution 2
The Role of Geography in Human Adaptation
Early Human Height Estimation
Genetic Drift
Has Human Evolution Topped?
What will humans look like in 1 million years
Sickle Cell Anemia
Scientific American No, humans have not stopped evolving
---
All Wikipedia's Hello World Programs
Bell's Journals from Library of Congress
Wired on First Phone Call
First Telegram from Library of Congress
First Test Compacy Disc
Stephen Johnson What is a Tone Poem?
Houston Symphony on Strauss's Tone Poems
Boston Sympohony Orchestra on Alpine Symphony
NASA on Voyager Record
NASA on Pioneer Plaque
First MIR Message to Space
Ray Tomlinson's First Email

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55: Evolving Electricity & What's "Women's Work"? Feb 01, 2024

Show notes

How did eels evolve electricity? And when is "women's work" neither women's nor work?

Images we Talk About:
Socks
More Socks
Thimble
Bag
Crochet Art

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:26) Evolving Electricity
(00:51:13) "Women's Work"
(01:38:46) Outro

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about:

Happy moisturizer to all who celebrate, Ella’s just here for moral support, when did they put batteries in eels, someone's just statically charging these eels, what did we call electric eels before electricity? why would we think lightning and a fish are the same thing? the necrotizing torpedo and the torpor eel, Aristotle was a shite time traveler, “in all of humanity, if people think they can pout it up their asshole they will”, Allessandro Volta what a convenient name, electric fish gave us the battery not the other way around, the electric organ, when did electricity evolve? electric organ discharge, electrogenesis, it’s not an eel! get in line with the other animals that need their names fixed, 90% of an eel is electric organ, what does it feel like? turning fish to stone, shocks can function like a neurotoxin, the electric doublet can make fish twitch, Ella has a revelation, the physics is the biology, it’s all electric baby, magnetic animals 2 electric boogaloo, the domestic arts, This Woman’s Work, it was never always women’s work, old socks, but what does this have to do with men?? Ella predicts the British stealing a sock, male knitting guilds, knitting fishermen makes perfect sense, knitting was “compatible” with many kinds of life, mechanized knitting made it feminized, of course it’s always intersectionality, you know what’s appropriate for a woman is to do this thing we don’t need anymore, being demoted as an art form, “male art vs female craft”, Caroline’s just doing this topic to show their crochet is art, weaponizing the male ego to bring back knitting, bequeathing a valuable and symbolic thimble, Tom gets emotional over a salacious thimble, if that’s not art what is, also I can't believe you actually read all these thanks

Sources:
The Amazing Paper: The Torpedo Effect in Medicine
Atlantic on Electric Eels
Aristotle on Electric Eels
Greg Gbur on Electric Eels and Physics
Piccolino's Great Paper on the History of Volta's Experimentation
National Zoo Electric Eel Facts
NYTimes on Electric Eel Shocks
Tremendous Eel Behavior Writeup from Kenneth Catania
Reuters on Electric Eel Evolution
Science Paper on Electric Eel Evolution
Amber Plante on Electric Cells
Electric Bacteria
---
Melissa Hilliard Potter Talk
V&A: The history of hand-knitting
The Crafty Gentleman: The History of Knitting
This Is Gendered: Knitting
"2012 Paper: Knitting as Dissent: Female Resistance in America Since the
Revolutionary War"
Cooper Hewitt: A Revolution In Stockings
Brooklyn Museum: Women’s Work
Art Margins: Recrafting Futures: Feminist Practices of Material Engagement
V&A Blog: ‘A Stitch in Time: Home Sewing Before 1900’
NGV: The Power of ‘Women’s Work’: Craftivism
PBS: Stitch by Stitch, A Brief History of Knitting and Activism
University of Bath: #BreakTheBias: Is knitting a feminist issue?
Harpy: The Art of Embroidery
2014 Paper: Craftivism: The Role of Feminism in Craft Activism
The Daily Utah Chronical: Lien: Female Rebellion and Why Craft Matters
2016 Paper: Quiet Activism and the New Amateur

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Recast: LLE on Creature Feature - The Bird Pee Technique Jan 18, 2024

Show notes

While we take our January break we're rebroadcasting our appearance on Creature Feature! Katie pulled out some of the wildest facts for us, so enjoy, thanks for your patience, and see y'all in 2 weeks!

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New Year Q&A Jan 04, 2024

Show notes

It's our annual Q&A episode where we look back on 2023 and answer your questions to learn about our process, our favorite things, and each other!

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about: Ella gets on the album, Dodie is very frog people music, pigeons fruit flies and sloths, our favorite topics of each others, black holes and microscopes and extinct animals, there’s one whole picture of Ella and Caroline, I need more than 5 seconds of this lady, Nessie Krampus and the Jersey Devil, Who the Hell is Edgar? the cursed 2nd spot in Eurovision, just do it! build a portfolio and experience and find local stuff in your area, alergic reaction to Tom’s joke, Australian Ella, card games, moved to tears by taskmaster, Skip & Loafer and Frieren, Baldur’s Gate is a 10/10, Caroline can read?? Under the Whispering Door and Life isn’t Binary, struggling through house of leaves, DRCL, Barbie and Evil Dead, i hate the sandpaper slide, field common questions, people do actually want to know about methodology, questions that are best answered by a different question, getting your own field explained to you, our school journeys, different kinds of learning, programming decision anxiety, getting to code for a thing you care about helps you learn, FUN! we’re actually ahead of schedule to learn everything, attacking Tom from different angles, seagul-gate, Ella producing with Jono in the studio, listening to Story Break at Lunch, let’s just say the Eras tour is going to be very interesting this year, putting it into the aether, if you want to change something you’ll do it tomorrow, the mellotron and babatone, distance, fun.

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54: The HaLearnDay Extravaganza! 2023 Dec 21, 2023

Show notes

It's the HaLearnDays! The time of year when we share gifts of fun facts from us and friends of the show!

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about:

I wish Katie and Alex were real, pooping every 20 minutes, a human creates 320 pounds of poop a year, when I think about dangerous, “when I think of dangerous bird boop”, cube pooped saves on the poly count, poopin and pleasin, Watching the Sky and Thinking a Thought, smuggling instruments to space, sonic boooooms, this is obviously a Caroline gift, The National Christmas Tree Association, liberals want you to burn your christmas trees, the ACTA is very different from the NCTA, bury me with my artificial tree in a cemetery under an artificial lawn, rudely scrutinizing a gift from Hank, Caroline’s read The Grinch who Re-tabulated a Fact they Got, $25 Barns & Noble Gift Card, Caroline and Ella negotiate money from Tom, identifying unwrapped baked goods in Japan, hot cross buns and melanoma, Ella Laterals us, British Scorpios can’t give blood in the US, we all definitely remember Ella was born in Germany, “destroying” cows, Janet pulled out all the stops with the science, vibrissae, wash bears, Ella ones up her fly sperm fact with Kangaroo Vaginas, whaaat’s the deal with the third vagina, false cloaca, kangaroos can house 3 kids at the same time, Ella’s in her kangaroo vagina era, our first favorite Tom piss on pity, running over Christ Tarrant’s foot, plougs and shootouts, should all our fun facts be forgot and days of old lang syne.

Sources:

Goose Poop
Goose Poop 2 Electric Boogaloo
How much do human poop?
Why do geese poop so much?
Wombat Poop
Guiness World Records on First Song in Space
Pavel Popovych
Nasa Wakeup Calls History
Smithsonian Mag on Schirra & Stafford
Harmonica from Gemini
Cleo's Video on Supersonic Flight
Soil Association: Real VS Fake
Washington Post: Are Real or Artificial Christmas Trees Better for the Environment?
NOAA Sperm Whale Info
UN FAO Data on Human Seafood Consumption
Lower Estimate of Whale Population
Higher Estimate of Whale Population
Sabrina's RomCom Video
People: When Harry Met Sally
New Yorker: The Pastry AI That Learned to Fight Cancer
Varsity: What do Bread and Cancer Cells Have in Common?
FDA Blood Donation Ban
UTexas on Raccoon Brains
Raccoon Brains Compared to Other Animals
PGC on Raccoons
1963 Paper on Dabbling
Kangaroos have 3 vaginas
Bob the Fish Video Essay on ITV Telethon
Barbara Lisicki "The Day we Pissed on Pity"
NDACA on the Block Telethon Protest
Disabled People's Archive on Block Telethon

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53: Making Superheavy Elements, and Celebrating Public Domain Day Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

What are the superheavy elements, and how did we make them? And what is public domain day, and why is next year's going to be so interesting?

Things we Talk About:

The Mickey Mouse Curve

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:17) Superheavy Elements
(00:37:41) Public Domain Day
(01:19:19) Outro

We also learn about:

It’s like we’re in school again, ordering the periodic table before discovering the electron, Mendelev didn't even like electrons, the nucleus is an atomic juggling act, atomic high jinks, the Fermi paradox, the Fermi problem, the number of piano tuners in Chicago, smashing elements into new ones, that’s why it’s called nuclear physics, receiving a Nobel and then fleeing Italy then learning your Nobel was wrong, accidentally discovering nuclear fission instead, we all so Barbie we knew this was leading to bombs, uranium neptunium plutonium, nobody cared because they didn’t want to draw attention to this during WORLD WAR 2, how does this keep happening i thought i was smart, the radioactive avengers, metropolis, I only scream about ice cream for anticapitalist purposes, none of this is legal advice, you know the patent stealing guy Edison, trademarks patents and copyright, JK Rowling patented a new kind of transphobia, the US constitution mentions copyright, the Micky Mouse Curve, even Bobel winning economists agree copyright extension is bad, happy hbomberguy video day, YouTube sucks at Fair Use, Mr Boop, Night of the Living Dead on Wikipedia, we’re IP pilled, SO MANY DISNEY MOVIES ARE BASED ON PUBLIC DOMAIN STORIES, it’s not open season on Mickey, “he can be naughty”, canine enthusiasm is unprotectable by copyright, Pride and Prejudice but Mr Darcy is a Vape God, Frank Capra is proud that It’s a Wonderful Life grew in the public domain, “battle lines will have to be drawn”, which two elements would YOU smoosh together?

Sources:
Superheavy by Kit Chapman
How to read the periodic table
Fermi Paradox
Fermi Problem
Timeline of chemical element discoveries
---
Jennifer Jenkins' Amazing Post on Public Domain Day
Jennifer Jenkins Duke Law Article on Public Domain Day
US Patent and Trademark Office on Definitions
JK Rowling is a Terf
More JK Rowling is a Terf
Association of Research Libraries on Copyright Timeline
NYTimes on Mickey Mouse Entering Public Domain
The Mickey Mouse Curve
Economists Argument Against Copyright Extension
Variety's Review of Steamboat Willie
Nebula Founder Dave Wiskus on Fair Use
EFF on Public Domain
Verge on Enola Holmes Copyright
Argument Presented Against Enola Holmes
The Public Domain Review
Florence Welch Gatsby Musical
Dick Cody Heese Video
BBC: It's a Wonderful Life's Public Domain Journey
Wallace McLean's First Email about Public Domain Day
Karyn Temple on Public Dommain

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Submit Your Q&A Questions! Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

Submit your questions for our end of year Q&A episode at letslearneverything.com/question or in our discord!

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52: Amy Westervelt, Carbon Capture, and the Cartoonishly Evil Atlas Network Nov 23, 2023

Show notes

Investigative journalist Amy Westervelt from Drilled asks us: what is carbon capture and is it good or bad or... complicated? What is the Atlas Network and why are they comically evil dark avengers of the climate world? And how do you go from recording a podcast in your car to creating an award winning podcast network?

🎤 See Tom perform comedy in Brooklyn for Earth Alliance! 🎤

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:14) Carbon Capture
(00:39:05) The Atlas Network/Podcasting
(01:08:25) Outro

We also learn about:

Emailing the local radio station “Would you like an over-aged intern”, Ella’s a climate change fan, natural carbon capture, compressed carbon is a lot more dangerous than it sounds, fracking with captured carbon, “there’s a lot of creative math happening”, direct air capture, carbon capture needs to happen WITH decarbonization, warming waters make crabs produce neurotoxins, unfreezing zombie viruses, a silver lining to the climate catastrophe is the worm broth, moving the goalposts to 2050, historian of past futures, people used to think fridges were weird, are we just giving up on eating slightly less meat, greenwashing, if you’re an oil company everything looks like a pipeline or a combustion engine, direct air capture is actually cool! even if I have 0 silver bullets I can kill a werewolf with 100 brass bullets, Anthony Fisher battery farming turtles origin story, reader’s digest version of Friedrich Hayek, having an evil meeting in a chicken battery farm, now they’re cooking with gas, Margaret Thatcher’s cameo, “what a horrible avengers this has been”, THEY LITERALLY INVENTED THE OVERTON WINDOW, they’re a real life conspiracy theory, Amy gets in a debate, “I have a very difficult mother so tense conversations, I’m good at them”, narratives in climate not just look at my chart! podcasts can communicate the people hidden in stories, producing a podcast in a car, “I want people to come away really pissed off”

Sources:
Mississippi Carbon Capture Accident
IPCC Carbon Capture Report
Latest IPCC Report
Nature: "Carbon dioxide removal is an ineffective time machine"
The New Report on when we’ll Cross the 1.5 Degree Threshold
Thawed Zombie Bug Viruses
Revived Worm Broth
Drilled on The Atlas Network

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51: Carcinization, The Animal Algorithm Mystery, and The Many Lemming Lies w/ Ellen Weatherford Nov 09, 2023

Show notes

Are we really all destined to turn into crabs? Why are there so many animal algorithms, and are they all legit? And just how many times have we been wrong about the lemming?

Things we talk about:
All the Crabs Caroline mentions
The Big List of Animal Algorithms
Boid Video

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:03) Carcinization
(00:42:00) The Animal Algorithm Mystery
(01:25:46) The Many Lemming Lies
(01:45:35) Outro

We also learn about: Endless forms most crab-like, the 2020 meme boom of carcinization, what is the extent of the carcinization crisis, watch it buddy you already got eight legs, hamburger style arthropod, BOY CAN I CAROLINE I'M GLAD YOU ASKED, it’s like CNN and Fox agreeing on something, crabs have ten legs my dude, vikavolt, crabs and false crabs and true Christians, its all human labels at the end of the day, crab shapes have evolved at least 5 times, the king, masked, coconut, and hermit crab, Ellen’s thinking like a crab, the leaf eating mangrove crab, the crab shape is good for many niches, guard your tasty bits, decarcinization, we should try decarcinizating our market share, I am THE crab researcher and y’all need to calm down, convergent evolution is like video game controller design, the Brazilian Aardvark, Ellen’s uncovering of this dark underbelly, this algorithm list is just a list of sleeper activation words, what is a metaheuristic swarm optimization algorithm? Craig Reynold’s Boids, the lateral line system, “ants aren’t smart, any colonies are”, multidimensional ants, coatis moving in the jth dimension, this is all super niche you can’t use multidimensional ants for every problem, no articles are talking about this this is Defunctland niche, Groth and the 2 Fairies, lots of these papers are not at all based on real biology, “cats do not form swarms”, the bee marriage algorithm is actually good! research for research’s sake is okay, lower your pitchforks but keep your pitchforks at the ready, things are shitty starting out i mean we named everything crabs, political cartoonists went wild for lemmings, we’ve been making shit up about lemmings for year, lemmings falling from the sky, Ole Worm’s pet coati, Popular Science’s lemmings returning to Lemuria, lemming population booms, lemmings are good swimmers, a truck full of the wrong species of lemmings, ALBERTA IS LAND LOCKED, lemmings are fight or fight, lemmings don’t explode, let’s unlearn everything about lemmings

Sources:

TheConversation: Carcinization
Know Your Meme: Carcinization
NPR: Would Aliens Look Like Us?
PBS Eons: Carcinization Video
Natural History Museum: Convergent Evolution
2017 Paper: The Evolution of Eyes: Major Steps.
2019 Paper: A Phylogenomic Framework, Evolutionary Timeline and Genomic Resources for Comparative Studies of Decapod Crustaceans
2021 Paper- How to Become a Crab: Phenotypic Constraints on a Recurring Body Plan
Conservancy.org: The mangrove Tree Crab
Scientific America: Carcinization
1997 Paper: Carcinization in the Anomura - Fact or Fiction?
PopSci: Carcinization
---
The Coati Algorithm Paper
List of Animal Algorithms
Craig Reynold's Boid Paper
Boids in Film
Ant Colony Optimization
Southwest Airlines' Ant Algorithm
The Amazing Review from Tzanetos & Dounias
---
Lemmings from the Sky
Ole Worm
The Museum Wormianum
Popular Science's Lemuria Claims
Snopes on Disney's Lemming Film
More on Diseny's Lemming Film