Episodes

  • 76: The HaLearnDays Spectacular! 2024
    Dec 19 2024
    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 CarRat Car VideoSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!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 EclipsesFrog Song During Eclipse StudyWikipedia: WKRP in Cincinnati “Turkeys Away”Why Can’t Domesticated Turkeys Fly?Eureka Alert: Giraffes Struggle with SlopesThe Emu WarScientific American: 80 million microbes in a KissMicrobiome Journal: Kiss studyNature News: Shared MicrobiomeAIP Wormhole Definition & PaperAstronomy Today on Wormholes2024 Paper: Children’s Belief in Santa Claus and Moral BehaviorSnopes on Michael Myers MaskSnopes on Scream MaskWilliam Shatner interview Entertainment WeeklyIndependant: Scientists Taught Rats to DriveBBC: Rats Taught to Drive Tiny Cars to Lower Their Stress Levels2020 Paper: Enriched environment exposure accelerates rodent driving skillsSpace Shuttle: The First 20 YearsNPR: Ramen Noodle Currency2013 Paper: Taste perception: From The Tongue To The TestisNIH In Brief: How Does Our Sense of Taste Work?1992 NYTimes Article about Cell PhonesCBC Article on the First Text Message
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    1 hr and 44 mins
  • 75: Where are We? & Carrot Propaganda
    Dec 5 2024
    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 MapsHerschel's Milky Way MapWright's Island Universes DrawingThe Image of M31 from 1919First Full Image of EarthThe World Carrot MuseumCarrot Poster 1Carrot Poster 2Disney Carrot CharactersDr CarrotTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:04:44) Where are We?(00:45:11) Carrot Propaganda(01:24:04) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!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 UniverseLibrary of Congress: History of Discovering the Milky WayNASA Archive of The Great DebateHoskin's Amazing "The Great Debate: What Really Happened"Astronomy of Today Book with the Image of the M31 "Nebula"Hubble: The Realm of the NebulaeESA Bio on Edwin HubbleNYTimes Hubble BioScience Friday Article about Henrietta LeavittKragh's Fantastic "Nebulae or Galaxies? The history of a change in astronomical terminology---NHS: Macular HealthAmerican Academy of Opthamology on Vitamin DeficiencyAmerican Optometric Society on Vitamin A Eye HealthHealthline: Are Carrots Good for Your Eyes?Smithsonian Magazine: A WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the DarkWeb Archive: World Carrot MuseumNYT 1940: London Urges Carrot Diet For 'Blackout Blindness'NYT 1942: Blackout Hints -- From a Blackout VeteranNYT 1942: Disney FamilyBBC: How 'Cat's Eyes' helped change the worldBritannica: One Good Fact
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    1 hr and 29 mins
  • Submit Your Q&A Questions!
    Nov 28 2024

    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!

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    4 mins
  • 74: Autumn Leaves & Swearing
    Nov 21 2024
    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 StraitImages we Talk About:Carotenemia HandsTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:03:34) Autumn Leaves(00:53:04) Swearing(01:42:57) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!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 ChangeUSDA: Science of Fall ColorsHarvard Forest: The Biological Significance of Leaf Color Change2022 Paper: The phenomenon of red and yellow autumn leaves: Hypotheses, agreements and disagreements2004 Paper: Plant coloration undermines herbivorous insect camouflageScience Direct: Plant coloration undermines herbivorous insect camouflage2004 Paper: Nature's Swiss Army Knife: The Diverse Protective Roles of Anthocyanins in Leaves2012: Simulated herbivory advances autumn phenology in Acer rubrum2002 Paper: Foliage color contrasts and adaptive fruit color variation in a bird-dispersed plant communityCID: How Climate Change Impacts Leaf PigmentsImage: Heam VS Chlorophyll---Yiddish CurseSwearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English - Geoffrey HughesHoly Shit by Mellisa MohrStapleton et al “The power of swearing: What we know and what we don’t”Study: Swearing as a HypoalgesicStudy: Swearing Makes you Stronger
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    1 hr and 49 mins
  • 73: Linguist Gretchen McCulloch, Latin in Science, and Internet Linguistics
    Nov 7 2024

    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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    Join our Discord!

    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,

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    1 hr and 26 mins
  • 72: Former Cryptids & The Art of a Scary Story
    Oct 24 2024
    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) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!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.SourcesGuardian: Komodo DragonsESA Journals: The Okapi of the ApadanaBBC: Facts About Komodo DragonsScientific American: Iron Tipped TeethNew Yorker: The Squid HunterBBC Science Focus: Giant SquidWiki: Giant SquidOn the Track of Unknown AnimalsThe Strange Adventures of Andrew BattellPBS: Fantastic CreaturesEvolutionary Anthropology: Discovering GorillaCambridge University Press: Hanno and GorillaeNature: The First Description of a KangarooNational Geographic: The Myth of the Komodo Dragon’s Dirty MouthShope OG paperRoyal Society Paper: Shope Papilloma VirusThe Scientist: On the Trail of the Jackalope---NYTimes Story on Exxon and Climate ChangeA History of HorrorTimothy Beal Paper on Evangelical HorrorPliny The Elder's Ghost StoryLiu Ming Ming on ZhiguaiThe Story of LiangGan Bao In Search of the SupernaturalRetelling Urban Legends StudySCP Antimemetics DivisionJSTOR Daily on Alvin Schwartz's ProcessCRR Library on Alvin Schwartz Language Arts Interview
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    1 hr and 57 mins
  • 71: 🎂 Good Invasive Species, Rock Climbing, and Ig Interviews
    Oct 10 2024

    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.

    Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

    Join our Discord!

    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
    ---
    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

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    2 hrs and 6 mins
  • 70: The Core of the Earth & Planned Obsolescence
    Sep 26 2024
    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 BicycleBilhert's AnimationsTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:05:06) The Core(00:58:24) Planned Obsolescence(01:45:52) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!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? SourceSEG Wiki on the Layers of the EarthForbes: Bridgmanite“Six ‘Must-Have’ Minerals for Life’s Emergence”Olsen Lecture on the Iron CatastropheBureaeu of Economic Geology on Mohole & KolaScience Article on BridgmaniteBritannica on Richard Dixon OldhamAMNH's Wonderful Article on Inge Lehmann & EarthquakesDon Anderson Paper Review of the Inner CoreSmithsonian Mag on Inge LehmannExcellent Review from Harvard on Lehmann's Groundbreaking PaperGeological Society of America on Super RotationScientific American on Core SlowingSpace on Core GrowthUniversity of Leeds on the Inner Core Nucleation ParadoxScientific American on Core Paradox2023 Paper on the Innermost Inner Core---Science Direct: Planned Obsolescence1984 Paper: An Economic Theory of Planned Obsolescence1998 Paper: The Most Benevolent Machine: A Historical Assessment of Cycles in Canada2023: A Deep Dive Into Addressing Obsolescence in Product Design: A ReviewIndieAuto: 1960's VW AdPERC: Planned Obsolescence: The Good and the BadBBC: How The Right to Repair Might Change TechnologyThe Guardian: Planned Obsolescence: The Outrage of Our Electronic Waste MountainCBS News: Apple is Sending Out Payments to iPhone Owners iImpacted by "Batterygate." Here's what they are getting.The Evening Standard: Apple Battery LawsuitIberdrola: Planned obsolescenceUNITAR: Global e-Waste Monitor 2024BBC: E-waste: Five Billion Phones to be Thrown Away in 2022European Parliament: The Impact of Textile Production and Waste on the Environment (Infographics)The Atlantic: The Neurological Pleasures of Fast FashionBritannica: Fast FashionEllen MacArthur Foundation: Fashion and the Circular EconomyWRAP: 2022 Press ReleaseWRAO: 2022 ReportNatGeo: Fast Fashion Goes to Die in the World's Largest Fog Desert.UK Parliament: Vehicle scrappage schemesCars Lost Forever In The 2009 Scrappage SchemeBBC: 2030 petrol ban2019 Paper: Consumer Responses to Planned ObsolescenceRight to Repair EUEuropean Parliament: Right to RepairBHS: Sewing Skills
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    1 hr and 52 mins