PodcastScienceEnglishE

Let’s Learn Everything!

by Maximum Fun

New116: LIVE - Auditory Magic & A Second, Definitely Real TopicNovember 5, 2026 · 1 h 7 min

Episodes: 151
Released: every two weeks
Latest episode: Nov 5, 2026

About the podcast

Science communicators Ella Hubber, Tom Lum, and Caroline Roper learn about anything and everything interesting! Each episode they teach each other about a science topic, and learn about a miscellaneous topic. Whether it's bugs on drugs, temporal illusions, or fanfiction, there's so much out there, so let's learn everything! Join our Discord, email us, and follow us everywhere at www.LetsLearnEverything.com

Episodes 151

116: LIVE - Auditory Magic & A Second, Definitely Real Topic
November 5, 20261 h 7 min
What does it mean to perform magic with only sound, and can Ella perform it LIVE at the Bedford Pub in London? And... wait has Tom not prepared a topic?Timestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:03:13) Auditory …
Show notes
What does it mean to perform magic with only sound, and can Ella perform it LIVE at the Bedford Pub in London? And... wait has Tom not prepared a topic?
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:13) Auditory Magic
(00:32:42) The Second Topic
(00:59:39) Outro
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Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
The Science of Cameron, Shepherd’s tone, phantom words, I heard kill the president, I heard Tom sucks, illusions vs magic, magicians are lazy, auditory trick challenge, David we’ve technically never met, you’re just being nice, the cone of confusion, the unreleased magic trick, magic ethics, THEY’RE DOING NUANCE, the game you can win but not this interaction, alluminum foil! you can take plastic straws away from my cold dead hands, America is not real and it can’t hurt me, testimony, never say santa is not real to anyone, no preference, what’s the sexiest number of legs? Taha’s telling on himself, Geology is the hardest science, sounds like science, oh Of Course it’s the sound of two black holes colliding, GAAAAAAARY, 5 dollars and a blue ribbon, Ella’s first prepared review corner.
Sources:
Hearing Research: Unveiling the Mind's Ear
Splice: The Shepard Tone
Diana Deutsch: Phantom Words
Museum of Illisions: Magic and Optical Illusiions
MAGIC Lab: Magic InSIGHT
MAGIC Lab: Social Coginition
Trends In Cognitive Science: Magic for the Blind
Eureka Alert: Are Auditor Magic Tricks Possible?
MAGIC Lab: The Audtiory Trick Challenge
MAGIC Lab: Challenge Winner
Science News: Magical Illusion for the Ears
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Debunking the Santa Myth
Trolley Self Driving Car Survey
LIGO Gravitational Wave Chirp
Husband Calling Contest
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115: LIVE - Eyevolution III & Fat Bear Week
October 22, 202659 min
It's our first ever LIVE SHOW!!! We return to the threequel of eyevolution to look at... eyelids? How interesting could that be? And Caroline teaches us about the competition, the science, and the adorable …
Show notes
It's our first ever LIVE SHOW!!! We return to the threequel of eyevolution to look at... eyelids? How interesting could that be? And Caroline teaches us about the competition, the science, and the adorable bears of fat bear week!
Images we talk about:
(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/115/)
Tom's Topic Reveal Slide
Special Guest
Seal
Bear 480: Otis 1
Bear 480: Otis 2
Bear 480: Otis Comparison
Bear 132 Cub 1
Bear 132 Cub 2
Bear Bracket
Bear 89 Backpack 1
Bear 89 Backpack 2
Bear 89 Backpack 3
Bear 747 Bear Force One 1
Bear 747 Bear Force One 2
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:51) Eyevolution III
(00:28:06) Fat Bear Week
(00:52:01) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
Sources:
The origin of blinking in both mudskippers and tetrapods
Southwest Eye Institue Blinking and Eye Health
Review of Opthamology on Blinking and Tears
Review of Lacrimal Gland from Journal of Opthamology
Advances in Clinical Chemistry: Chapter on Tear Film
Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Seal Tear Ducts
---
Four Paws: Torpor vs Hibernation
North American Bear Centre: Bear Activity and Hibernation
Four Paws: The Brown Bear: Way of Life & Offspring
Explore: Bear of Fat Bear Week
DOI: Everything You Want to Know About Katmai National Park’s Fat Bears
Explore: FBW 2026
BBC: 'Backpack' declared Alaska's Fat Bear Week winner
Wiki: Fat Bear Week
National Park Service: Bears of Katmai
Explore: FBW Hall of Champions
Guardian: Backpack Wins Fat Bear Week
PBS: Gentle Giant Backpack Declared Winner of Alaska's Fat Bear Week
Friends of Bridger Teton: When You Have to Eat All Day – Hyperphagia
FWS: Fat Bear Diet Plan
National Park Service: FBW Past and Present
Wiki: Hibernation
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114: La Brea's Bone Count & Giant Pumpkins
October 8, 20261 h 45 min
How many bones are in the La Brea tar pits? And what can that teach us about life, death, and oil? And what's the point of growing giant vegetables? Well, the pure whimsy of it all, as well as some fascinating …
Show notes
How many bones are in the La Brea tar pits? And what can that teach us about life, death, and oil? And what's the point of growing giant vegetables? Well, the pure whimsy of it all, as well as some fascinating techniques and tales.
Images we talk about:
(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/114/)
Tom's Picture from La Brea
2nd Picture from La Brea
Giant Tomatoes
Giant Carrot
Giant Zucchini
Giant Pumpkin
Eating Pumpkin
Pumpkin Race
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:37) La Brea's Bone Count
(00:49:35) Giant Pumpkins
(01:36:04) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
Good to be back in the bone zone, how many corners does LLE have? wolf skull wall, untangling all the oil words, life uh dies, Coal Oil & Gas, crude oil has over 350 different hydrocarbons, refining oil is just separating different hydrocarbons, the official stance of the podcast is that fossil fuels are cool, hey kids - see what it was like to be in the asphalt’s deathly grip! Kids Yearn for the Tar Pits, La Brea has the bones of Tigers and Lions and Camels, I’m actually an epoch girlie, um actually it’s the La Brea Woman, it’s 10,000 years ago - women can be fossils too, predator traps and carcass domination, the oily stains on bones, fingers crossed the new museum invents new ways to confront my mortality, Summer’s Jumpret response to Michael, what’s y’alls familiarity with vegetables? I have to tell an asparagus story, perhaps Thoreau’s biggest impact was on the large vegetable world, fuck Leaves of Grass - One Big Pumpkin, big pumpkin at the Chicago World’s Fair, we’re going to need a bigger pub, it’s like very slow horse racing, it’s like a drug dealing community, the LLE ruler goes from Big to Fuck Me, seed auctions, the horror that is giant tomatoes, sorry what the fuck is the giant pumpkin common wealth, I love when a number is so preposterous it makes us angry, Ella is disappointed by carrots, pumpkins are an indeterminate plant, pumpkins are nature’s dyson sphere, auxiliary plants are so creepy, the theoretical pumpkin limit is 20,000 pounds, cheating and skullduggery, put me in a giant pumpkin and throw me in the tar pit, pumpkin regatta, I know you meant - no I meant punkin chunkin, you have to completely lack whimsy to not enjoy these guys.
Sources:
La Brea's History
UC Berkley La Brea History
Smithsonian Fossil Fuel Breakdown
NHM Tar Pit Travelogue
SmithsonianMag: Animals Trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits Would Take Months to Sink
UC Berkley La Brea History
IUGS on La Brea
La Brea Camel
The carnivoran fauna of Rancho La Brea: Average or aberrant?
La Brea Carnivore Analysis
Playback Carcass Domination Study
Phys.org La Brea
New York Botanical Garden: Origin of the Giant Pumpkin
Youtube: Giant Veg
Wiki: Giant Pumpkin
BBC: Pumpkin seed bought online for £168
Thompson and Morgan: Pumpkin Payout
Giant Pumpkin Commonwealth
GPC: Newsletter Archive
Thompson and Morgan Blog: How to Grow a Giant Pumpkin
NPR: Why Vegetables Get Freakish In The Land Of The Midnight Sun
BBC: How I grow my giant vegetables to break records
Science News: Here’s how giant pumpkins get so big
LiveScience: Why Pumpkins Can Grow So Large
2016 Paper: The making of giant pumpkins: how selective breeding changed the phloem of Cucurbita maxima from source to sink
Shropshire Star: Pumpkin Controversy
Blog: Beyond the Pond: Growing Giant Pumpkins
BBC: What do giant veg growers eat on Christmas Day?
CTV News: Henry the Polar Bear
SciShow
The Guardian:
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113: Rediscovered Organs & Bird Watching
September 24, 20261 h 54 min
Wait, how are we rediscovering organs in 2026?? Or... are we? Well let's learn about the history and fads of the insides of our bodies! And what is bird watching, why do we all love it, and how casual and …
Show notes
Wait, how are we rediscovering organs in 2026?? Or... are we? Well let's learn about the history and fads of the insides of our bodies! And what is bird watching, why do we all love it, and how casual and competitive can you get with it?
Images we talk about:
(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/113/)
Clay Liver
Online Terminologia Anatomica
Salivary Glands
Bird Study Skins
A Field guide to Birds Example Page
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:56) Rediscovered Organs
(01:05:15) Bird Watching
(01:50:12) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
Huh?? Mesopotamian organ divination, sheep liver phrenology models, everyone needs to talk about this, Al-Razi’s “Doubts about Galen”, the great ignorance time skip, hmm this dead body must be wrong, the dissection fad, the murder act, you don’t know Burke and Hare?? body snatching and anatomy murder, the vestigial craze, Wiedersheim’s minimal viable person, the problem of naming organs, 20 synonyms of organs, Ella goes feral over the online Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology, our 3-4, hi Dad and Ella’s mom - hope you enjoyed that clitoris joke, our 4th pair of handlebar moustache salivary glands, the interstitium getting reverse pluto’d, labelling an organ is useful but also not the full picture, gen Z loves birding, FUCK YOU JONO WE’RE DOING THE HISTORY, is paleontology birding if you’re looking at sauricia, ornithomancy, where there have been birds - we have watched birds, study skins, hey what if we looked at them alive? in 1901 Edmund Selous discovers bird empathy, “lay down the gun and take up the glasses”, POWs from WWII publishing their findings, slovenly non scientific bird watchers, it’s a hobby with no proper definition, Merline and ObsIdentify and Birder and Ebird and Rare Bird Alert and Birder’s Interface, it’s pokemon! WHO’S THAT bird, “oh my god I actually cannot do this any more”, apps aren’t perfect, twitchers, the New Jersey World Series of Birding, Big Year, the first book specifically for birding, the first big year was just some guy who wrote how many birds he saw one year and told people about it, a big year is a physical and mental trial for glory, it’s for the birds, has their love curdled or have they unlocked a true kind of love? why do we do anything at all? I do love birds but man do I love humans.
Sources:
NIH: Organ Definition
2024 Paper: The Most Ancient Sources of Anatomic Knowledge
2025 Paper: Galen’s Typology of Organs
2013 Paper: The Air of History (Part IV): Great Muslim Physicians Al Rhazes
BBC Bitesize: Medieval Medicine
Wellcome Collection: Getting Under the Skin
2011 Paper: The Study of Anatomy in England From 1700 to the Early 20th Century
Book: Dissecting the Criminal Corpse: Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early Modern England by Hurren ET, Chapter 7.
Wiki: Vestigiality
Britannica: Anatomy
Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2) Official
BearBoat Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2)
Cleveland Clinic: Organs
Wiki: List of Organs
2021 Paper: The tubarial salivary glands: A potential new organ at risk for radiotherapy
Article: The tubarial salivary glands: A newly recognized organ with dental significance
CORDIS: Did scientists just discover a secret organ in your head?
Netherland Cancer Institute: Cancer researchers discover new salivary gland
2021 Paper: The tubarial salivary glands: A potential new organ at risk for radiotherapy
Cleveland Clinic: Interstitium
SciAm: Meet Your Interstitium, a Newfound "Organ"
2024 Paper: A comprehensive analysis of the tubarial glands
2018 Paper: Another new organ! is this a golden age of discovery in anatomy?
BBC: Scientists just discovered the largest ever human organ – and we all have it
Independant: Human brain is actually two separate organs, scientists find
2026 Paper: Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain
2005 Paper: Gastrulation Movements: the Logic and the Nuts and Bolts
Neuroscience News: The Brain Is Two Separate Organs Joined by Evolution
LiveScience: 'Useless' female organ discovered over a century ago may actually support ovaries, study finds
Uni of Colorado: Rediscovering the Rete Ovarii: The “Antennae” of the Ovary
2024 Paper: Rediscovering the Rete Ovarii: the Development, Role, and Function of a Secreting Auxiliary Structure to the Ovary
---
BBC: Why Gen Z Birdwatchers Are Flocking to Reserves
CNN: Why Gen Z is going bonkers for birding
Wikipedia: Ornithomancy
Smithsonian Magazine: How Bird Collecting Evolved Into Bird-Watching
My Bird Buddy: History of Bird Watching
Haikubox: Evolution of Birdwatching
Pitville History: Edmund Selous
British Birds: Best Bird Watching Apps
10000 Birds: Can I rely on Merlin
Science Base: Bird ID Apps
Sussex Wildlife Trust: The Good the Bad and the Middling ID Apps
Reddit: Pokemon Go is Basically Birding
Reddit: Ever Wanted to Catch Em All IRL?
Reddit: Why is Gen Z Suddenly Obsessed with Birdwatching
Youtube: Listers
New Jersey Audubon Society: World Series of Birding
Wikipedia: Big Year
Smithsonian Library and Archive: A Field Guide to Birds
American Bird Association: Big Year Rules
Audubon: The Big Year According to Birders
Birding (American Birding Association): The Next Big Thing
Surfbirds (Wayback Machine): Alaska, The Last Frontier Attu Island
NPR: The Real Birdwatchers Behind Hollywood's 'Big Year'
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
112: Life in Exclusion Zones & Every Single Character
September 10, 20261 h 58 min
What happens to life inside exclusion zones like Chernobyl? Is it good? Bad? Or something much more interesting? And what happens when you try to codify every single character from human language? Well, it …
Show notes
What happens to life inside exclusion zones like Chernobyl? Is it good? Bad? Or something much more interesting? And what happens when you try to codify every single character from human language? Well, it definitely leads to some fascinating linguistic rabbit holes!
Images we talk about:
Przewalski’s horse (yes that’s how it’s spelled)
Frogs
Character U+FDFD
Arabic Text
Decorative U+FDFD's
Tom's Favorite Use of Kashida
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:12) Life in Exclusion Zones
(01:01:48) Every Single Character
(01:52:06) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about: Actually defining it made it creepier, the zone rouge, we an area of Earth uninhabitable from war, chernobyl release over 100 radioactive elements, they really need to name the zone of alienation the zone of doing taxes, the liquidators actually did a good job of stopping the spread, is this a rewilding experiment? Ella deleted emails to poach this topic, Przewalski’s horse (yes that’s how it’s spelled), technically feral vs wild horses, I’ve reached the nuance center of my nuance pop, why isn’t it my job so sample chernobyl frogs, nearly all pine trees near chernobyl were wiped out, “the selective pressures of radiation”, bright birds used up their carotenoids for color, we’re doing nuclear ecological biochemistry, god that was an ugly laugh, maybe its counterintuitive for the small things - no this one sucks, the slow horror of a lack of decomposition, the ecosystem is not rewilded it’s entirely new, the Korean DMZ is like an ecological semi permeable membrane, DMZ ecology research institute, the DMZ has 40% of Korea’s endangered species, it’s a pitstop along the east asian australasian flyway, endangered cranes have bounced back in the DMZ, the DMZ crane watch, the cranes and natterjack toad require human farming to thrive, synonyms of nuance and thrive, Baarter economy standing ovation, conflictful chicken, Unicode is the ISO standard for text on computers, ASCII’s 128 characters is surely enough right? why do you have a period accurate phone? it turns out other cultures want to use the computer, there are 159,801 characters in unicode, the basic multilingual plane sounds like startrek shit and it kind of is, I mean it’s not like it has cuneiform except it does, braille unicode exists for a reason, braille doesn’t just map one to one with letters it also has contractions, contracted braille is a stenography, tweeting more in japanese, 101,996 CJK characters, Max Woolf’s Big List of Naughty Strings, after Mamdani was elected I had to learn how to pronounce the bismillah, “Bismillah is the Przewalski’s Horse of this topic”, I said we shouldn’t dive into the history of a language halfway through a topic but fuck it, LR0’s terrific Arabic typography essay, arabic script can be perfectly justified, “the justification lives inside the words”, Kashidas stretching across a map made it click for Tom, maing the bismillah beautiful, we all just want to make text look cool, the ottoman printing press ban myth, the cursed lost printed quran, oh my god is this the unifying thing, weirdly internet explorer had kashida justification for 1 year? Inshallah you find on the internet what you’re exploring for.
Sources:
Chernobyl Frogs Image
Wikipedia: Exclusion Zones
World Nuclear Association
Wikipedia: Zone Rouge
Explorers Web: Montserrat and its Exclusion Zone
Guardian: UN Buffer Zone in Cyprus
International Atomic Energy Agency: Chernobyl
United Nations Development Programme: Chernobyl Recovery Development
BBC Future: Chernobyl’s Wildlife
Royal Society Proceedings B: The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as a Wildlife Refuge
Wikipedia: Red Forest
Current Biology: Long-term Census Data Reveal Abundant Wildlife Populations at Chernobyl
Science: Chernobyl Hits Birds Hard
Microorganisms: Soil Microbes and Plant-Associated Microbes in Response to Radioactive Pollution
The Conversation: The Mystery of Chernobyl’s Wild Horses
San Diego Zoo: The Last Wild Horse
Animals: Endangered Przewalski’s Horse, Equus przewalskii, Cloned from Historically Cryopreserved Cells
San Diego Zoo: Birth of Cloned Przewalski’s Foal
Korean Konsult: DMZ - Demilitarized Zone
DMZ: The Civilian Control Line (CCL) towns of the Korean Peninsula
Reuters: South Korea to Shift Civilian Restricted Line
South China Morning Post: The Korean DMZ
Guardian: How Wildlife is Thriving in the Korean DMZ
Royal Society Notes and Records: From Warzone to Bioreserve
Zooniverse: DMZ Crane Watch
Biological Conservation: Winter Foraging of Threatened Cranes in the Demilitarized Zone of Korea
Cultural Anthropology: Toward an Anthropology of Landmines
KNews: Nature Thrives in Cyprus’ Forgotten Buffer Zone
UFZ EuMon conference: Monitoring Biodiversity of the Buffer Zone in Cyprus
Satoyama Initiative: The Cyprus Buffer Zone as a Socio-Ecological Landscape
---
UC Berkley Unicode Overview
Unicode's History
Unicode on Braille
RNIB Contracted Braille
Buzzfeed on Japanese Tweets
LR0's Incredible Arabic Type Essay
Design Principles of Kashida Justification: A Unique Technique in Arabic and Persian Mapping
The Lost Quran's Discovery
Kathryn Schwartz's "Did Ottoman Sultans Ban Print?"
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Recast: Ella on That's Absurd, Please Elaborate
August 27, 20261 h 6 min
Due to some house woes, we're recasting Ella's excellent appearance on That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, where they actually solve a meme and invent Pee Day. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! …
Show notes
Due to some house woes, we're recasting Ella's excellent appearance on That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, where they actually solve a meme and invent Pee Day.
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
111: Astronaut Cady Coleman, Life in Space, and What Astronauts Learn
August 13, 20261 h 30 min
What does an astronaut actually learn in training? And what surprises them about having to live in space? Well, fortunately astronaut Cady Coleman is here to answer these and many more of our questions!! See us …
Show notes
What does an astronaut actually learn in training? And what surprises them about having to live in space? Well, fortunately astronaut Cady Coleman is here to answer these and many more of our questions!!
See us live in London! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE
See Tom live in NYC! OurFindingsShow.com
Images we talk about:
Cady's Background Image
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:03) Astronaut Training and Space Life
(01:10:42) Space Suits
(01:23:45) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about: Astronaut school, “the mission is exploration and only a part of it is human spaceflight”, the telerobotic surgery was real, living in NEEMO, Cady learned to remove a gallbladder, “what is it that I have to remember is not being simulated well?”, oh the telerobotic surgery was happening under water, it’s about sharing what you’re learning at the same time, spending 11 days underwater, bedrest studies in hawaii are actually a toll and a service, communication is key even in space, trust us space food is going to get old, not every day of training is remove 10 gallbladders, putting yourself in the picture humanizes it, which way is up? sleep flashes from cosmic rays, liquid sensors in our neck make you pee when you lie down and reduce blood volume in space, you can’t cough to hide your pee on the ISS, the future of the ISS, astronaut feet facts, Paolo and Cady’s toenail system, learning to fly in zero g, “you learn to live in 3 dimensions”, losing things in zero g sucks, CO2 buildup for the group photo, not washing clothes upset the balance, it’s all about fluid physics, “it’s all about interfaces between solids and liquids - and up in space it’s the biggest game in town”, peeing in space is easier than camping, how you determine your space order with feet, the domino effect of space suit sizes, your space suit is your space ship, IT’S LESS MATERIAL, there are people who are still waiting their turn, “how do you make sure these voices are heard when their presence is not missed?”, how to work for change collaboratively, you shouldn’t have to work so hard to participate, “oh that’s going on the website Cady”, one small step for you and one big step for democracy.
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110: Horsepower & Makeup
July 30, 20261 h 47 min
What even is horsepower? Is it a silly unit of measurement, or actually an underrated marvel?? And how old is makeup? Why do we do it? And what historic looks can you steal for your next night out? What are the …
Show notes
What even is horsepower? Is it a silly unit of measurement, or actually an underrated marvel?? And how old is makeup? Why do we do it? And what historic looks can you steal for your next night out?
What are the flaws in scientific publishing, who's responsible, and how can we fix it?
ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE
Images we talk about:
Papyrus Image
Fish Palette
Patch Portrait
Painting of Two Ladies
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:15) Horsepower
(00:48:26) Makeup
(01:39:07) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about: I’m taking horse pills to get their powers, we can answer questions without getting klaxonned, abbreviated for french reasons, the meter is 1 ten millionth the distance from the north to south pole, I’m going to be talking about power “oh god”, power is the movement of a mass over time, you’ll notice nowhere in that definition did I mention horses, James perfects the steam engine, you can’t just say “hey this engine will get us to the industrial revoltuion” you have to sell it in horses, come up with your own unit of power dweeb, a horse can produce 15 horsepower, you’re about to have a lot more nickels, there was a metric and imperial horsepower, all the international names for hosepower, watt SI unit is on first base? the father son and the holy ghost of electronics (the amp, volt, and watt), we didn’t have a unified unit for power before horsepower, Thomas Edison measured lightbulb efficacy by horsepower, IT WASN’T AN IRONIC CHOICE IT WAS CAUSE AND EFFECT, this isn’t a podcast it’s a slumber party, Caroline and Ella’s metallic blue eyeliner/facepaint, webster’s definition is somehow too broad and too narrow, prehistoric pigemtns may have been body paint, Ella’s surprisingly informative ancient egyptian ASMR video, from kohl to green malachite, caroline hiding the sexy bits of the papyrus from us, this makes my tummy hurt, fish palettes, ancient greek prostitues were required to wear lipstick, modern man or ro-man, a woman buys lotions and perfumes with cheating in mind, Elizabeth I’s lead and vinegar makeup, painting on fake veins, plucking hairs to match the queen’s forhead, the optical illusion dot, Caroline’s favorite fad: beauty patches, it’s so wild how excluded darker complexions are in the market when this topic started in ancient egypt, perhaps makeup imitates the moment of an orgasm, im inventing new sexism: men are blurry, we finally just asked women why they wear makeup, wearing makeup because we have to vs we want to, for other or ourselves, the ro-manosphere.
Sources:
History of the SI Units
History of Imperial Units
The Fan-Tastic paper: The Origin of the Horsepower Unit
James' Encyclopedia Britannica Biography
Horserpower From a Horse Paper
Siemen's Address for the Watt Unit
Edison Papers Measuring Lightbulbs in Horsepower
NOAA Lightning Stats
---
Merriam Webster
Makeup Definition
Blog: Bodypainting
Why Do We Do That? Makeup
Archeology Journal: Prehistoric Body Painting- 2000
Independant: 300000 year old body art
Smithsonian: Evidence of Fur and Leather Clothing, Among World’s Oldest, Found in Moroccan Cave
2017 Paper: Painted in red: In search of alternative explanations for EuropeanPalaeolithic cave art
Britannica: Makeup
Blog: History of Makeup
Wiki: Beauty and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt
NHM Utah: Makeup in Ancient Egypt
Blog: Ancient Egyptian make-up
Book: Ovid on Cosmetics
University of Kent: The Painful Art of Being a Roman Woman
Wiki: Cosmetics in Ancient Rome
The Guardian: Medieval Christian Misogyny Shapes How We Judge Women Today, Says Scholar
Royal Museums Greenwich: Elizabeth I: Fashion and Beauty
DMDA: You Must Get a Patch
Auction Listing: Portrait of two ladies. Patch marks to their faces
Wiki: Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies
Smithsonian: Make-up
Preston Park: The History of Victorian Makeup
YouGov: One in Six Women Wear Makeup at the Gym
YouGov: How Often - and why - American Women wear makeup
YouGov: One in Twenty British Men Now Wear Makeup
2022 Paper: The contrasting effects of body image and self-esteem in the makeup usage
Blog: Why Do We Chase The Post-O Glow?
2015 Paper: Facial coloration tracks changes in women's estradiol
2015 Paper: Cosmetics Alter Biologically-Based Factors of Beauty: Evidence from Facial Contrast
ABC News: Makeup Makes Women Seem More Competent, Study Says
2024 Paper: The Influence of Makeup on Individual Self-Identity: An Exploratory Study
2016 Paper: Does make-up make you feel smarter? The “lipstick effect” extended to academic achievement
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109: Scientific Publishing
July 16, 20261 h 18 min
What are the flaws in scientific publishing, who's responsible, and how can we fix it? ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:47) Scientific Publishing …
Show notes
What are the flaws in scientific publishing, who's responsible, and how can we fix it?
ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:47) Scientific Publishing Part I
(00:35:57) Scientific Publishing Part II
(01:13:07) Outro
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Join our Discord!
We also learn about: We almost do the same grim joke, the live show will have 50% more hosts than this, before publications there were societies and books and letters, in 1665 a Henry Oldenburg of the royal society starts “Philosophical Transactions”, the longest continuous journal (ignoring the time Olderburg was put in a tower for criticizing the king), the discovery of Jupiter’s red spot and also a deformed calf, Newton’s Optics was published in Philosophical Transactions first, Science has bad SEO, the doubling time of papers is 14 years since the 1950s, Ella’s peer review process, errors can be missed and biases affected, not paying reviewers is a bug that’s labelled as a feature, government funded research can still be privately owned, we’ve all agreed “processing fee” just means bullshit, there’s some things I don’t want to be “fun”, Elsevier has a 38% profit margin while Alphabet’s is 32%, editorial resignations in protest, I’m excited to add Robert Maxwell to my Arya Stark list of people, Maxwell died on his yes-that-Ghislaine-Maxwell Yacht, the scheme to buyout scientists for their papers, cover upfront costs - own copyright - flood with new journals - reap the subscription costs, “jesus wept”, retractions are growing by about 20% each year, I’m buying Ella a dictionary so she can learn what “fun” means, fool me 239 time shame on me, paper mills, predatory journals are pay to win, the Chinese restaurant metaphor keeps staying accurate, no it’s not nature our journal is nurture, is this finally rock bottom? the public review curate model, the pros and cons of preprints, diamond open access, the nelson memo, “I think the Ghislaine Mawell death yacht is fun”.
Sources:
Royal Society: History of Scientific Journals
Royal Society: Philosophical Transactions The Early Years
Royal Society: Philosophical Transactions Issue 1
University College London: A History of Scientific Journals
Philosophical Transactions A: Newton Shows the Light
Royal Society Notes and Records: 350 Years of Scientific Periodicals
Broad Research Communication Lab: Peer Review - a Historical Perspective
Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications: Growth Rates of Modern Science
JSTOR: The History of Peer Review is More Interesting Than You Think
British Journal of Biomedical Science: The Peer Review Process: Past, Present, and Future
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine: Peer Review: A Flawed Process at the Heart of Science and Journals
The Conversation: Academic Publishing is a Multibillion Dollar Industry
New Scientists: Time to Break Academic Publishing’s Stranglehold on Research
The Lancet: Should Peer Reviewers Be Paid?
Guardian: Is the Staggeringly Profitable Business of Scientific Publishing Bad for Science? (Robert Maxwell Longread)
Research Professional News: Elsevier Profit
Guardian: George Monbiot on Academic Publishers
Retraction Watch: Statistics and Computing Resignation
Guardian: The Murky Life of Robert Maxwell
Journal of the Academy of Public Health: The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward
EBSCO Research: Publish or Perish Paradox
University of Technology Sydney: The ‘Publish or Perish’ Mentality is Undermining Science
Retraction Watch: COVID Retractions
Retraction Watch: Most Cited
Retraction Watch: Retractions by Nobel Prize Winners
Retraction Watch: Most Retractions
British Medical Journal: Boldt the Great Pretender
Nato Strategic Communication Centre: Disinformation and Scholarly Communications
The Conversation: Paper Mills
Toxicologic Pathology: Predatory Journals: What They Are and How to Avoid Them
The Lancet: Lessons From the Influx of Preprints During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic
The Conversation: Diamond Open Access
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)
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108: Quicksand and Other Childhood Worries & The Undying Game of Pinball
July 2, 20261 h 60 min
We all thought quicksand would be a bigger deal than it is, but what is the science behind them and all the other worries I had as a kid? And how does pinball reflect the changing cultures of our time, and …
Show notes
We all thought quicksand would be a bigger deal than it is, but what is the science behind them and all the other worries I had as a kid? And how does pinball reflect the changing cultures of our time, and could now be the best era of pinball?
ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE
Things we Talk About:
Bagatelle
Redgrave's Pinball
Humpty Dumpty
Beat Time
Lambeth & Sarceni's Amazing Pinball Talk at Magfest
David Barber's Magfest Pinball Panel
Technology Connection's Great Pinball Breakdown
PinballMap.com
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:22) Quicksand and Other Childhood Worries
(01:05:22) The Undying Game of Pinball
(01:55:32) Outro
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Join our Discord!
We also learn about: Ella’s spoon collection is much more important than our live show, the never ending story, quicksand was in 3% of in the 1960s, the problem with gen z is they’re not afraid of quicksand, quicksand is reverse oobleck (sheer-thinning), the settled sand at the bottom requires the force of lifting a car, quicksand is unfortunate physics circumstances burying you, 11th century quicksand art in the Bayeux Tapestry (also Haley’s comet), we’re less dense than quicksand so you’d float at your waist, you could listen to this podcast twice while hanging out in quicksand, Ella cried so much she couldn’t cross the piranha plank, piranha fear is President Roosevelt’s fault, you know you’re making fun of a ten year old child right now, my main takeaway was what a cogent president he was, piranhas reloading their teeth, piranhas have 10x the relative bite force to size of a crocodile, piranhas aren’t carnivores - they’re opportunistic omnivores and a skittish prey species, the cow just walking out of the piranhas, it’s like two truths and a lie but all three are true, ARE WE DOING SPIDERS GEORG, spiders have acute mechanoceptors, tarantulas aren’t just hairy for fun, debunking the Lisa Birgit Holst debunking, a 50 spiders salute for georg, Beans Britain is a statistical outlier and should not be counted, spiders georg as a stats teaching tool, spiders georg was NOT an outlier, the moment Tom and pinball fell in love, we’ve been throwing balls at pins since ancient Egypt, indoor parlor games were for the aristocracy, fixing the pins to the table with bagatelle, the depression sparked the start of pinball’s craze, evolving their legs back, truly pinball is what caused the depression, pinball was the avocado toast of the time, pinballs were literally turned into billy clubs and bullets, pinball was banned for 34 years in new york city, the historic humpty dumpty machine first gave us flippers in 1947, pinball was cooler than porn, the bootles, it’s games sex and games AGAIN - but this time it’s bad, Suzanne Ciani’s digital design for Xenon, guess the pinball cabinet from the sound, the sopranos’ profanity filter, NBA fastbreak isn’t a basketball themed pinball - you are playing basketball, Dave demonstrating a Tap Pass, pinball is the most open it’s ever been, finding cabinets is a somehow even nerdier version of birdwatching, oh nooo don’t send me pictures of pinball cabinets.
Sources:
2021 Fibromyalgia Acupuncture Review
Wildland Trekking: Is Quicksand Real?
EBSCO: Non Newtonian Fluid
Wiki: Shear Thinning
Slate: The Rise and Fall of Quicksand
Getty: Bayeux Tapestry Quicksand Scene
BBC Future: Can Quicksand Suck You to Your Death?
Nature Comms: Liquefaction of Quicksand Under Stress
Europhysics News: Quicksand!
National Geographic: Quicksand
Greater Cleveland Aquarium: How a President Propagated a Myth
Zootaxa: Molecular Systematics of Serrasalmidae
Nature Scientific Reports: Extreme Jaw Forces of Living and Extinct Piranhas
University of Washington News: Piranha Fish Swap Old Teeth
Evolution and Development: Heterodonty and Dental Replacement in Piranhas
BBC: Piranha 'less deadly than feared'
Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment: Attacks on Humans by the Piranha Serrasalmus rhombeus in Suriname
The Harvard Gazette: Piranha Lab
BBC: Do People Really Swallow Spiders in their Sleep
Snopes: Do People Swallow Eight Spiders Per Year?
Scientific American: Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep |
Springer Nature: The Vibrational Sense of Spiders
Wiki: Fried Spider
r/HelloInternet Reddit: Lisa Birgit Holst Doesn't Exist
Snopes: Lisa Birgit Holst
Tumblr: Spiders Georg
Wiki: Spiders Georg
Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics: View of How Many Spiders Would Spiders Georg Have To Eat?
Medium: The Spiders Georg Problem
---
Lambeth & Sarceni's Amazing Pinball Talk at Magfest
David Barber's Magfest Pinball Panel
Clive Thompson for Smithsonian Mag on Pinball
National Museum of American History on Pinball and Bagatelle
Montague Redgrave's Pinball Patent
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on Pinball and Gambling
Technology Connection's Great Pinball Breakdown
Suzanne Ciani's Audio Design for Xenon
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
Second London Live Show! 1pm Sunday Oct 18th!
June 29, 20264 min
We've added a SECOND live show in London, and it's a Sunday matinee! See all the details at LetsLearnEverything.com/live Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at …
Show notes
We've added a SECOND live show in London, and it's a Sunday matinee! See all the details at LetsLearnEverything.com/live
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
107: The Sci Guys, Acupuncture, and THAT Dolphin Story
June 18, 20261 h 25 min
Corry and Luke from the Sci Guys podcast join us, at last completing elaborate 4 year scheme to have them on! We learn about whether acupuncture is bullshit, and learn a bit more about That famous dolphin …
Show notes
Corry and Luke from the Sci Guys podcast join us, at last completing elaborate 4 year scheme to have them on! We learn about whether acupuncture is bullshit, and learn a bit more about That famous dolphin story. We also talk shop about mistakes, debunking, and curiosity!
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:10:51) Acupuncture
(00:32:27) THAT Dolphin Story
(00:54:20) Mistakes & Debunking
(01:21:10) Outro
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Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
I’m biggly judging, the only thing I love more than science is a weird bit, Caroline’s 4 year plan to get in a zoom call with these bozos, kind of feels like you came to the top of the mountain and came down to meet us, Brian Cox does Not follow Tom, I know something that will fix Ella’s connection, the corry-luke scale, the peripheral nervous system, free opiod receptors, endogynous, different kind of needles for that opiod, fake accupuncture, treating sever hiccups, min-maxing heroin, it’s tricky to study pain, maybe therapy works more than accupuncture, by the way I don’t need you to share everything, dolphins weren’t so great at finding land mines, I’ll just leave some dead air, an open bar for editting, the sensory deprivation tank, you’re paying for this open bar Tom, I won’t tell you the name of the paper but I will tell you about lisa simpson, was really hoping the apartment would have a dolphinarium, now do your duolingo, this was all to communicate with aliens, Tom tries to have a teachable moment, well someone was certainly “arriving”, raising a chimp as a human, Bunny’s backlash, weird studies, language is complicated and we don’t even think about it so we underestimate it, did we not all read coco transcripts in college - oh i guess not, Corry’s corona mistake, double checking even when we know someone’s wrong, can you believe there are podcasts where people try to learn everything? a meta message not about being right but about science, QI’s mistake rate, the science debunking complex can get toxic, when we debunk it’s not with antagonism but curiosity, the mould effect saga, I think what you were trying to say correy is that it’s important to foster curiosity.
Sources:
Harvard Medical School, Science of Acupuncture
Review: Is Acupuncture Placebo?
Review: Acupuncture for Fibromyalgia Treatment
Guardian: NASA's Dolphin Project
Atlantic: Margaret Lovatt's Dolphin Experiment
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The Best of Everything 2026
June 4, 20261 h 60 min
It's the Best of Everything! The episode where we look at the topics that YOU thought were our best from the past year, and chat some behind the scenes about them! It's a great place to start and a great time …
Show notes
It's the Best of Everything! The episode where we look at the topics that YOU thought were our best from the past year, and chat some behind the scenes about them! It's a great place to start and a great time to brush up on things you may have forgotten.
Images we Talk About:
Etching from the Great Moon Hoax
Bumble Bee Ocelli
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:51) The Vitamin Saga
(00:20:55) Why is the Sky Blue?
(00:33:19) Speech Disfluency
(00:53:11) The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
(01:09:07) Superheavy Elements II
(01:27:33) Eyevolution II
(01:45:17) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
You wouldn’t marry a husband, oh here comes the vitamin guy, you think we’ll still have history, you missed a spot, literally having to ask for extra time, we don’t learn like computers - relearning is normal, the I’ve just turned 30 pilgramage to Japan, I’ve ruined the algorithm, oh YAY, excited for marriages and reality fracture, 30 seconds of laughter.
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106: The Polygraph & Dentistry History
May 21, 20261 h 58 min
You may know the polygraph is junk science, but what is the real science of lying and what wild turns did the polygraph take to get to today? And how old is dentistry? If ancient cave men didn't brush why do I …
Show notes
You may know the polygraph is junk science, but what is the real science of lying and what wild turns did the polygraph take to get to today? And how old is dentistry? If ancient cave men didn't brush why do I have to? Well it turns out for good reason, and some fascinating dental science.
ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE
Images we Talk About:
Mackenzie's First Polygraph
Ancient Teeth Image
Dentistry Tool 1
Dentistry Tool 2
Dentistry Tool 3
Dentistry Tool 4
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:38) The Polygraph
(01:00:33) Dentistry History
(01:49:19) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
Go to https://surfshark.com/learneverything or use code LEARNEVERYTHING at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!
We also learn about: 2 truths and a lie, the jeremy kyle show, the first lie from the devil to eve (or when children first lie), the official stance of the podcast is lying is good and cool, deontic reasoning and theory of mind, flexible and explicit TOM, Ella aces the Sally-Anne test, discovering new advanced levels of lying, lying is normal for kids it’s not evil, lying is complex… but what if it wasn’t and we could just know, James Mackenzie’s original polygraph, the polygraph actually worked (just not for lying but for cardiology), sphygmomanometers, proto-feminist William Marston, back then just thinking women had a theory of mind made you a proto feminist, Tom falls down the rabbit hole of Marston’s feminism, what’s the difference between a lie you believe and the truth, Marston is the first to bring the polygraph to court in Frye vs the United States, the polygraphs turns into a one band band machine, Marston invented wonder woman and the lasso of truth, table the feminism of wonder woman another time, if corporations are people they should all go to therapy, polygraphs are still a 2 billion dollar industry, police firefighters and paramedics still take polygraphs, Caroline pre-empts the but, a polygraph is not a machine you need the interpreter, lying is useful, it’s fun to lie so who’s your favorite co-host, wow we can bond over private healthcare, dentistry asmr, tooth decay is from bacteria acid, stone age morocco acorn sweets, you can blame agriculture for cavities, fossilized plaque can give us an oral history, determining women did a job from paint in teeth, fuck I drank the paint water at least no one will know, did you say we were kissing the rats or was that my inner monologue, would you like to read the tooth worm poem? how could this possibly get to a tooth worm, most of recorded human history we believed in tooth worms, the earliest example of dentistry was a week ago, sorry it changed a week ago, an ancient beeswax filling, a 59,000 year old tooth hole, what’s a worse hyphenate than barber-surgeon, blacksmith barbers, traveling tooth pullers, so many jobs I’m glad don’t exist, a medieval dentist clown is literally someone’s worst nightmare, victorian job questionnaire, What The Eff is That, dental tools that look like weapons made in a dream, I didn’t realize until we got into this how much I hate teeth! the truth of my soul is private in Germany,
Sources:
The Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children
Marjorie Rhodes NPR
Social and Cognitive Correlates of Children's Lying Behavior
Review of Theory of Mind in Chilren
James Mackenzie's "The Study of the Pulse"
Mark Harris' Great Wired Piece on Polygraphs
Matthew Brown's Deep Dive into Marston's Feminism
JAAPL Frye v. United States
Cornell Law Frye Standard
Harvard center for Law Brain and Behavior on the Polygraph
Scientific American on Lying
---
National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research
National Library of Medicine: Microbiology of Dental Decay and Periodontal Disease
2014 Paper: Earliest evidence for caries and exploitation of starchy plant foods in Pleistocene hunter-gatherers from Morocco
SciAm: Oral Mystery: Are Agriculture and Rats Responsible for Tooth Decay?
NHGRI: Digging into the past to uncover the cause of our cavities
Wiki: Tooth Worm
Smithsonian: 6,500-Year Old Beeswax May Be Oldest Known Dental Filling
NewScientist: Oldest dental filling is found in a Stone Age tooth
The Guardian: Neanderthals Used Stone Drills to Treat Cavities 59,000 Years Ago, Tooth Suggests
Wiki: Barber Surgeon
Bath Medical Museum: Teeth Pullers and Denture Makers
2007 Paper: The Tooth Puller
2025 Paper: Pierre Fauchard
Science Museum: Dental Pelican
Science Museum: Dental Pelican for Tooth Pulling
Science Museum: Dental Key
BBC: When Blacksmiths Were Dentists
Science Museum: Dental drill
Science Museum: Syringe
Spear: A Brief History of Dental Anesthesia
Blog: The Gruesome History of Dental Implants
BBC: The Dentures Made From the Teeth of Dead Soldiers at Waterloo
Science Museum: Shade Guide
Blog: What Are Dentures Made Of?
Dentists Act 1878
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Vote for the Best Of Everything! LetsLearnEverything.com/vote
May 20, 20263 min
It's that time of year to vote for the Best Of Everything! https://www.letslearneverything.com/vote Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
105: The Marine Carnivore Question & Collecting
May 7, 20261 h 59 min
Are there more carnivores in the ocean than land? Yes! But... why? And what does that teach us about how we study ecosystems? And what constitutes a collection? Well it goes way back in time, and can cover …
Show notes
Are there more carnivores in the ocean than land? Yes! But... why? And what does that teach us about how we study ecosystems? And what constitutes a collection? Well it goes way back in time, and can cover anything and everything interesting, and maybe even teach us about ourselves and each other.
Images we Talk About:
Giraffe
Biomass Pyramid 1
Biomass Pyramid 2
Dolphin
Tiger
Purple Otter Skull
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:30) The Marine Carnivore Conundrum
(00:56:33) Collecting
(01:51:34) Outro
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Join our Discord!
We also learn about: Oh yeah that topic’s gonna hit, only 5% of fish are herbivorous compared to 30% of terrestrial animals, zoopharmacognosy, carnivora is not all carnivores and not exclusively carnivores, hypercarnivores eat 70% or more meat, polar bears are some of the most carnivorous animals we know of, grizzly bears only eat 10% meat, osteophagia, suckin on bone, trophic levels, Ella’s clearly an apex predator but are all humans, trying to beat the trophic level high score, let us know your level in the discord, average trophic levels, humans are 2.2 on average, trophic jorg, lopsided biomass pyramids, there are simply less plant diversity in the oceans, land predators hunt animals with at least 45% of their body size whereas whales do .01%, oh yeah aquatic animals don’t have paws or storage, aquatic carnivores have homodont dentition, trophic cascades, sea urchins can turn otter bones purple, hunter collector society, don’t pre-empt my question, the earliest collection we know of is from 105,000 years ago, shell collectors were just like me fr, coin collecting was a hobby of kings, a quick detour for the worst pope, but maybe Pope Boniface VIII is just like me for real, I like collecting 50 and 100 dollar bills actually, the wunderkamer or cabinets of curiosities, the industrial revolution ignited collecting, Americans turned British spoons into collecting, Ella’s love spoon, say the line Ella, this is really a “what’s wrong with Ella” topic, Edward Wharton-Tigar’s cigarette card collection and incredible quotes, David Attenburough convinced him not to take his cards with him into the 8th ring of hell, you’ve activated my trap card, magpies don’t collect shiny things and may have neophobia, animal collection, the cursed bug katamari, it’s like if I collected cards with boobs AND HE JUST LIKE ME FR, pack rat brain activation, a pack rat piss detour, amberat, collections represent our ability to abstract and think of the future, and that’s why I should get another spoon, Freud’s toilet hypothesis for collecting, Baudrillard on collecting, collecting builds yourself, They Collect What? baggers, I now collect banana friends.
Sources:
So, once again there are actually too many sources to fit here, it literally won't let us put them all here hahaha so please find the sources at https://www.letslearneverything.com/105-sources
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
Preview: Frogs & Improv
April 30, 202658 min
Caroline's Frogs campaign and our improv class were some of our favorite bonus episodes we've done, so we wanted to share a sample of what they sound like! If your interest is piqued, you can hear the rest AND …
Show notes
Caroline's Frogs campaign and our improv class were some of our favorite bonus episodes we've done, so we wanted to share a sample of what they sound like!
If your interest is piqued, you can hear the rest AND support the show at www.LetsLearnEverything.com/join
Sources:
JSTOR: Portmaneau Origins
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MaxFunDrive Bonus: Tom's Casters on Casters
April 27, 202623 min
Folks we're halfway through the MaxFunDrive! And to keep the celebration we have Tom chatting behinds the scenes with other Max Fun hosts! For all the details about MFD perks, the livestream, and how to support …
Show notes
Folks we're halfway through the MaxFunDrive! And to keep the celebration we have Tom chatting behinds the scenes with other Max Fun hosts!
For all the details about MFD perks, the livestream, and how to support the show, go to LetsLearnEverything.com!
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:26) Casters on Casters
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
104: The Anthropocene Argument & Sound Effects
April 23, 20262 h 26 min
What is the Anthropocene? No really, who came up with it, when does it start, and why does that matter? Well it involves nuance, scientific beef, and a surprising amount of freaky little guys. And we all know …
Show notes
What is the Anthropocene? No really, who came up with it, when does it start, and why does that matter? Well it involves nuance, scientific beef, and a surprising amount of freaky little guys. And we all know of some sound effects we love, but what is their history, where are the weird places they've shown up, and what can they teach us about art?
Images we Talk About:
The International Chronostratigraphic Chart
Opabinia
Graptolite
Sound Effect Rooms
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:37) The Anthropocene
(01:21:57) Sound Effects
(02:16:15) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about: The human dominated geological time frame, this is actually a geology topic, let’s get our rocks off, the geological timescale, clues in the rock layers, the geologic calendar, the international chronostraographic chart, Eons Eras Periods Epochs Ages, GSSPs are physical places, a long cambrian tangent, the burgess shale was a rare cambrian preserver, trilobites are the alpha male body plan, opabinia had 5 eyes and one claw, hallucigenia actually makes Tom recoil, index fossils, Ella just loves these little freaks, Ella literally has a graptolite fossil, the SPICE extinction, title drop halfway through the topic, wait nvm we have to talk about the holocene, in 2024 they declined the anthropocene proposal, are we covering the anthropocene or the 24 years of its proposal? Jan Zalasiewicz ignobel lick, heavily acronymized science beef, a person dabbing is the anthropocene GSSP (or fossilized air bubbles in ice), Jan vs Jan, maybe the anthropocene is just an Event, insects are the canary in the mass extinction coal mine but they’re also not in the record, humans make up a third of the mass of large vertebrates - and the rest are mostly things we eat, a t-rex wishes to be the most abundant species and a monkeys paw curls, chicken bones in the fossil record, we’ve pushed back the next ice age 50,000 years, don’t clip me dabbing at nuclear weapons, when does the anthropocene start? 1952 with the plutonium shift, there was a most popular album at the start of the anthropocene, era dates are changed all the time, a spicy retirement letter, did you ask him about the email - I mean I did, rocks are political, we’re not in the anthropocene but let’s see what happens, make this design juicier please, sound effects can be realistic or symbolic, the siren whistle slip sound, the real sound of bald eagles, sound effects are treated more like a commodity than an art and a history, we don’t know if ancient mesopotamians beatboxed, Ella shredded so hard on the thundersheet she bled, sound effect started in plays, shakespeare and kabuki pioneered realistic and symbolic sound effects, tsuke, the first radio sound effects from the 1921 world series broadcast from Jersey, the walking surfaces at the BBC, 1920s sound effect rooms, sound effect records, who would buy this? ME!! what do you mean you survived the great depression traveling america for sound effects, 2 headed turntables designed for vinyl sound effect DJs, Jack Foley, the Bristol Old Vic thunder machine’s audio tricks, stealing John Dennis’ thunder, canning laughter from the Red Skelton show, this isn’t a real game, fine it was a good game and I win, recreating pacman with waves, pacman’s noise is so icon it created an onomatopoeia, Ben Burtt also loved the lightsaber, that was a great buzz, sound effects are both the truth and a lie, freesound.org, male_thijs_loud_scream.aiff
Sources:
Folks, we have so many show notes and sources that we literally hit the character limit, which is a first!
So please find the sources at https://www.letslearneverything.com/104-sources
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
MaxFunDrive Kickoff! Ella's Casters on Casters
April 20, 202626 min
IT'S THE MAX FUN DRIVE!!! We kickoff with a crossover "Casters on Casters" with Ella chatting behinds the scenes with other Max Fun hosts! For all the details about MFD perks, the livestream, and how to support …
Show notes
IT'S THE MAX FUN DRIVE!!! We kickoff with a crossover "Casters on Casters" with Ella chatting behinds the scenes with other Max Fun hosts!
For all the details about MFD perks, the livestream, and how to support the show, go to LetsLearnEverything.com!
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:40) Casters on Casters
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
103: Sage The Bad Naturalist & The Frog Mushroom Mystery
April 9, 20261 h 23 min
Why aren't mushroom animals? Why is this mushroom growing out of a frog?? WHAT KIND OF MUSHROOM IS TOAD?!?! Well Sage the Bad Naturalist is here to answer all our festering fungus questions! Things we Talk …
Show notes
Why aren't mushroom animals? Why is this mushroom growing out of a frog?? WHAT KIND OF MUSHROOM IS TOAD?!?! Well Sage the Bad Naturalist is here to answer all our festering fungus questions!
Things we Talk About:
Sponge Lifecycle
Fungus Lifecycle
Mushroom Growing out of Frog
Bunashimeji Mushroom
Blewit Mushroom
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:50) Why Aren't Fungi Animals
(00:24:55) This is Planet Chitin
(00:30:01) The Frog Mushroom Mystery
(00:52:47) Questions for Sage
(01:19:16) Outro
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Join our Discord!
We also learn about: Maybe some day I’ll get to be on this podcast, don’t ask scicomm dad! fungal anatomy, mushrooms are just the short lived fruiting body, fungi don’t have seeds or leaves or photosynthesize, Fungi were just the weird plant for a while - just Jerry, fungi don’t have vasculature their more spongy, fungi are genetically closer to animals so why didn’t Jerry come to our family? coral are animals, coral and fungal reproduction cycles, you’re going to learn so much in this one Tom, “that’s cant be the reason why”, consequences of the divergence aren’t the reason - the divergence is the reason, we should have been wrong more right!, this is planet chitin, dark fungi, fungus is made of bug, oh we’ve found the thing that actually makes me want to throw up on the podcast, protect our chitinous brethren, the mystery of the mushroom growing out of a frog, sage’s frog theory whiteboard, no one has ever seen this before, first time we’ve seen it does not mean first time it’s happened, mucusy coincidence, the return of amphibian chytrid fungus, the scientists have moved on but Sage hasn’t, botanical anarchy, slowly dropping out of grad school, odd jobs, its fucked up that make up affects views, Toad is a bunashimeji, remember toad with legs is made of bugs, blewits are underrated, drawing on the artist’s conk mushroom.
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102: The Vitamin Saga & The Evolution of Fairies
March 26, 20261 h 55 min
Why are there so many vitamins, what even IS a vitamin?? Well Tom finally understands, and takes us on a tour through their infuriating past. And how did the cheerful fairy we know and love today, evolve into …
Show notes
Why are there so many vitamins, what even IS a vitamin?? Well Tom finally understands, and takes us on a tour through their infuriating past. And how did the cheerful fairy we know and love today, evolve into its current form? Well we'll only tell if you can answer our riddles three and- or you can just listen to the episode.
Things we Talk About:
James Lind Scurvy Painting
The Various Vitamin Bs
Vitamin Map
Brownie
First Fairy Image
Cicely Mary Barker Fairies
Cottingley Fairies 1
Cottingley Fairies 2
Illusion Spinners
Bitterbloom Bearer
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:05) The Vitamin Saga
(00:57:54) The Evolution of Fairies
(01:48:20) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about: Will vitamin c cure me or murder me? more people died of scurvy than combat on the seas, Lind’s biblical scurvy experiment painting, vitamin Pee, maybe oranges are the fifth humor, beri beri, the gelatin comission, come onnn man it’s the 1800s give me a break, we know proteins carbs fats and minerals but something’s missing, STUDY MINERALS THEY SAID - YOU’LL WIN A NOBEL PRIZE THEY SAID, vital amines but they’re not amines, wait are vitamins like fish?? drop the e just vitamin, *mymymymy* all the vitamins are completely different?, some vitamins only exist for a few picoseconds in a supercollider, a bunch of vitamins got pluto’d, Vitamins are like a title, vitamer, VITAMIN D IS A HORMONE, wait maybe hormones are vitamins too, we haven’t talked about how vitamins work because they do Too Many Things, “we’re trying our best but sometimes our best isn’t good enough”, lifting the shadow of death, fitnessgirl250 actually has a PhD, food science is an applied science, the LLE supplement has all the dropped vitamins, vitamins are perfect for capitalism, there is not silver bullet, you can’t supplement your way into a healthy life, an appearance from she/her Caroline, the rainbow magic fairy books, we support evil fairies, the fickle house brownies, realizing fairytales are fairy tales, both high and low class could blame fairies, dressing boys as girls to protect them from the fae, booktok loves hot Rumpelstiltskin, American leprechaun traps, fae - fatah - the fates, when did fairies evolve wings, distinguishing from angels through insectification, fairies may have shrunk to be less threatening, Tom doesn’t know what a panto is, Victorians established the modern fairy, fairies went from robbing cribs to being trapped in the nursery, Cicely Mary Barker’s flower fairies, the collectability of fairies, 350 fairy books in 5 years, the Cottingley fairy hoax, fairies went from being about protecting sons to empowering girls, spelling fairy or faerie, Evyn Fong’s insectoid fairies, the review corner riddle, weaponizing review corner to talk to us.
Semba: The Discover of the Vitamins
Royal Museums Greenwich: Scurvey
Science History Institute: Scurvey
Beriberi Review through Chinese Medical Literature
Drummond's Naming of Vitamins
Nobel Laureats in the History of Vitamins
Semba: On the Discovery of Vitamin A
SciAm: What Vitamins Really Do
---
Wiki: Parī (Peris)
JER Journal: Peri and Persian Mythology
Book: A Dictionary of English Folklore
BBC: Fairies, Leprechauns and Changelings: Ireland's Darkest Folklore
Blog: Fairy versus Faerie, and other names for the Fae
Harvard University: The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
This Is Gendered: The Fairy
Blog: An Overview of How Faeries Were Portrayed During Different Literary Periods
Edinburgh University: A Need for Belief: The Victorians and Fairies.
Book: Trolls: From Scandinavia to Dam Dolls, Tolkien, and Harry Potter
BBC: When Britain was Gripped by 'Fairy Mania'
Blog: The Surprising Magic of Bad Books
Oxford English Dictionary: Fairy
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101: Why is the Sky Blue & Speech Disfluency
March 12, 20261 h 46 min
For episode 101, we're challenging ourselves to make a technically family friendly, swear free episode! Why is the sky blue? Well it turns out it took a lot of science to understand why! And what is speech …
Show notes
For episode 101, we're challenging ourselves to make a technically family friendly, swear free episode! Why is the sky blue? Well it turns out it took a lot of science to understand why! And what is speech disfluency? Well it's like... um... you'll see!
Images we Talk About:
Green Flash
Sunset
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:43) Why is the Sky Blue
(00:54:28) Speech Disfluency
(01:40:45) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about: it’s like playing mozart for children, mystery spires, atmospheric optics is responsible for all the bangers, they didn’t have a word for blue but they could perceive it, davinci and newton were on the right track, and thus the liberal lie of the greenhouse effect was born, Tyndell was just trying to clean an air sample and saw it turn blue, Baron’s used to be useful at least, Tom’s mind gets rocked by Rayleigh scattering, why isn’t the sky purple, When was the sky blue? the great oxidation event, sky is atmosphere, why is the sun so tiny OH ITS FAR AWAY, Ella pulled a Tom at the intro, Ella’s filler montage, no swearing no fillers challenge, there’s no fillers in the speech we watch on TV and movies, we actually um-dope our podcast in post, people used filler words in the past too, it’s found in poems and the earliest recorded sounds, the valley girl like, natural language corpuses, the 2 genders are uh and um, fillers in other languages, parasite words, uh is almost universal, the function of filler, backchanneling, measuring um reaction times, a visit from Gretchen, um is like a swiss army knife, like as quotation marks or hedging, right *slaps knees*, the power of saying something which technically means nothing.
StellarNet: A Brief History of the Sky’s Blueness
Blog: The bizarre myth that Ancient Greeks couldn't see blue
2023 Paper: Revisiting the question “Why is the sky blue?”
Wiki- John Tyndall
The Conversation: John Tyndall: the forgotten co‑founder of climate science
Wiki: Rayleigh Scattering
NASA: The Electromagnetic Spectrum
Scientific American: Mirages
IFL Science: Orange Sky
The Great Oxidation Event: How Cyanobacteria Changed Life
Royal Museums Greenwich: Why Is The Sky Blue
Mars in a Box: Martian Sunsets
---
Wikipedia: Filler (linguistics)
Thought Co: Definitions and Examples of Filler Words
The Register: Why Do We Say Um?
Paper: Listeners' Uses of Um and Uh in Speech Comprehension
New York Times: So, Um, How Do You, Like, Stop Using Filler Words?
University of Colorado Paper: We, um, have, like, a problem
Guardian: Why Do People Say Like So Much?
NPR: Why Do We Say Um So Much?
BBC: Teen Slang
Paper: Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders
Cambridge: Hidden Use of Fillers
The British National Corpus 2014
Language Hat: The Mystery of Fillers
The Atlantic : “Men Say 'Uh' and Women Say 'Um'”
Language Log: Men and Women’s Use of Words
JStor: Filler Words and Floor Holders
THE CALIFORNIA STORY 1906 By Thomas A. Edison
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Out Sick Recast: SciShow Tangents w/ Tom!
February 26, 202653 min
Tom & Ella are out sick! So enjoy this recast of when Tom was healthy and on SciShow Tangents! OR enjoy our 2 hours on the Project 4 Awesome livestream, basically a video podcast! OR check out all our other …
Show notes
Tom & Ella are out sick! So enjoy this recast of when Tom was healthy and on SciShow Tangents!
OR enjoy our 2 hours on the Project 4 Awesome livestream, basically a video podcast!
OR check out all our other stuff at https://www.LetsLearnEverything.com/
Thanks for your patience y'all! - Tom, Ella, & Caroline
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100: Everything
February 12, 20262 h 17 min
You asked, and we finally answered, today we are Finally, actually learning everything! Something that is definitely possible and easy to do. Caroline covers infinity, which can include basically anything, Ella …
Show notes
You asked, and we finally answered, today we are Finally, actually learning everything! Something that is definitely possible and easy to do. Caroline covers infinity, which can include basically anything, Ella covers what everything is made of, and Tom does the rest! Simple, right?
Images we Talk About:
Cantor's Diagonal Argument
The Bullet Cluster

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:28) Infinity
(00:49:09) What's Everything Made Of?
(01:29:52) Everything Else
(02:08:54) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
Infinity is the amount I love you guys - oh I made such a noise of disgust, my infinity could beat your infinity, quoting The Fault in Our Stars, ancient Greeks had a horror for the infinite, Euclid refused to use infinity, we have no physical proof that any item can be infinite, turning water into wine and counting to infinity, next time someone says I love you infinity plus one call them a number annihilator, pre-scowling, we ask Caroline a million questions about sets, sets offer a new language for math, “actually Ella they use the word transfinite”, Caroline rage baits Ella, Ella loves Cantor’s diagonal argument but people at the time HATED it, Cantor was a “corrupter of youth”, the universe is everything, god dammit is there more than matter, pigeons and pizza and Ella’s giant gengar plush are made of quarks and leptons, ordinary matter is just 5% of the universe, 26.8% is dark matter and the rest is dark energy, dark energy and matter are not interchangeable - dark just means we can’t observe them, your MOM is massive, 1933 dark matter is theorized to make the math work, dark matter is not a theory it is an observation of missing mass, the differing mass of the bullet cluster, halos of dark matter around galaxies, red shift in every direction, don’t @ me about the accelerated expansion of the universe, dark energy is the mysterious force that keeps the universe expanding, heat death or re-contraction, dark matter and dark energy are warring siblings trying to pull everything together and apart and we’re stuck in the middle, list of all wikipedia pages, OH NO IT’S INTERESTING, monk stuff, the exclamation mark came during the humanist era of the renaissance, oh no we printed the ironic bible! inverted exclamation marks, exclamation mark haters, old comics had exclamation marks for periods! Making Beowulf Scream, Lo! per my last email, our show didn’t start with an exclamation mark - it snuck its way into being beloved, no one is sure how the exclamation mark ended up in programming languages, DO anthropomorphize the exclamation mark, please don’t be disappointed we didn’t stop the podcast, We Didn't Stop the Podcast.
We Didn't Stop the Podcast Lyrics
Sources:
Wikipedia: Infinity Symbol
Wikipedia: Infinity
Polytechnique: A (Very) Brief History of Infinity
Britannica: Infinity
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Infinity
1983 Paper: The Realization of Infinity: On the Philosophy of John M. Anderson
Scientific American: Some Mathematicians Don’t Believe in Infinity
2017 Paper: Actual and Potential Infinity
Schechter: Potential versus Completed Infinity
Medium: Infinity Isn’t Just a Number — It’s a Mind-Bending Universe of Paradoxes
Youtube: minutephysics
Youtube: Jim Fowler
Blog: The Math of Dr Who #4.2
---
Etymonline: Etymology of Everything
Wikipedia: Everything
NASA: What is the Universe?
EBSCO: Leptons
Harvard: What is the Univer Made Of?
ESA: What is the Unvierse Made Of?
Astrobites: ΛCDM
NASA: Building Blocks
ESA: Dark Matter and Dark Energy
Angela Collier: Dark Matter is Not a Theory
NASA: Dark Matter
Forbes: Who Really Discovered Dark Matter
Harvad: Dark Energy and Dark Matter
NASA: Bullet Cluster
ESA: Gravitaional Lensing
ESA: Redshift
ESA: Comsic Microwave Background
---
Wikipedia List of All Pages
Florence Hazrat's "An Admirable Point: a Brief History of the Exclamation Point"
Florence Hazrat Interview
The Irony Mark
Stan Lee on Comic Book Exclamation Marks
Marvel End of Exclamation Mark Announcement
Making Beowulf Scream
History of Factorial
Figuring out the Origin of ! in Computer Science
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99.5: Iszi Lawrence, Getting to Ancient Egyptian Heaven, and Storytelling
January 29, 20261 h 15 min
The author, historian, and person of many fascinations Iszi Lawrence teaches us how to get into ancient Egyptian heaven! Plus we learn about a bit of everything else from dinosaurs to medieval almond …
Show notes
The author, historian, and person of many fascinations Iszi Lawrence teaches us how to get into ancient Egyptian heaven! Plus we learn about a bit of everything else from dinosaurs to medieval almond milk!
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:14) Getting Into Ancient Egyptian Heaven
(00:45:31) Questions for Iszi
(01:08:59) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
Images we talk about:
Anurognathus
The Tring Tiles
We also learn about: Todays question is how to take on two attackers, “I really recommend violence if you have neurodiversity”, Ma’at, getting into the Egyptian afterlife is an escape room, why Egypt was geographically perfect, I’m going to put a mastaba on my mastaba, there were ancient Egyptian archaeologists of ancient Egypt, you don’t think with your brain that’s weird, Allan’s mummified body in the King’s College London library, the mummification industry, dodgy ibis mummy dealers, pyramids were a giant sign that said “ROB ME IM RICH”, King tut also packed too much underwear, Anubis guides you through a video game level of challenges, the hall of two truths and a lie, weighing your heart in court, Ammit has the head of crccodile body of a tiger legs of a hippo my perfect woman, your heart has to way no more and no less than a feather, the scarab is a pay to win heart silencer, pubs were public houses when you brewed too much beer and it was women’s work! almond milk was around during the medieval times, we are story brained and we pay attention to the weird things not the boring ones, he showed me his whip scorpion, nanotyrannus, why do you like dinosaurs - why do you like eating? Anurognathus, toddlers comes from drunken walking, sad means not sober, the suffragette jiu jitsu dojo, the tring tiles was teen jesus.
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
Recast: Escape This Podcast - Oceananigans
January 15, 20261 h 51 min
While we take some time to rest and plan out the new year, enjoy our episode of Escape This Podcast as the three of us use cleverness and chaos to solve this escape room!Timestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:01:05) …
Show notes
While we take some time to rest and plan out the new year, enjoy our episode of Escape This Podcast as the three of us use cleverness and chaos to solve this escape room!
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:05) The Escape Room
(01:20:19) Puzzle Talk Back
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
Images we talk about:
The Spa Controls
The Spa Sign
Ring Toss
The Spa Sign with Sun
The Full Room Write Up
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
New Year Q&A 2026
January 1, 20261 h 49 min
It's the new year! Which means it's time to learn about the most interesting thing... ourselves?? We answer YOUR questions with OUR answers, so learn a bit more about us, science, and the show!Links we Talk …
Show notes
It's the new year! Which means it's time to learn about the most interesting thing... ourselves?? We answer YOUR questions with OUR answers, so learn a bit more about us, science, and the show!
Links we Talk About:
Our Top Songs Playlist
Magnetic Fields Tiny Desk
Anni DiRusso Tiny Desk
Doechii Tiny Desk
Dr.Cal Whale Cancer TikTok
Timestamps:
(00:07:06) Welcome to the Q&A
(00:31:45) Science
(00:52:28) Fun
(01:04:26) Making the Podcast
(01:27:06) Personal
(01:45:55) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
I was in the recording I know how long it took, tick correction corner, Caroline you gotta wrangle us, the ugly stepsister, City the Animation, Superman, playlist linked above, The Mars House, Levinia, Peak, Megabonk, Animal Crossing, Despelote, duck wraps, I’m an anytime burrito fan, falling out of and back in love with sciences, the Vera Rubin Observatory, lysosome mitochondria and ribosome, organelle astrology, AI and carbon pedantry, Ella’s PhD journey, solar system chocolate bar, our horror movie archetypes, experimenting on our cohosts, pride and prejudice romance, centaur anatomy, researcher blogs rock, scheduling and actually starting, what we hate and love about the show, we don’t have to be friends, podcasting is good for the brain actually, dream guests, Caroline runs, the rhythm game search, burnout planning and accepting mistakes and communal burnout watch, collecting magnets and yarn and weird pokemon figures, Dalek on a trampoline, why Tom wears a hat, bingo cards over resolutions, Ella’s getting marri- WELL TOM’S GOING TO MAGIC CON VEGAS BABY.
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
99: The HaLearnDays! 2025
December 18, 20251 h 48 min
The HaLearnDays are here!! And with it come learning, laughs, and fun facts from us and friends of the show, as well as a few surprise new friends!Images we Talk About:Bat CarryingBristol Stool ChartLego Head …
Show notes
The HaLearnDays are here!! And with it come learning, laughs, and fun facts from us and friends of the show, as well as a few surprise new friends!
Images we Talk About:
Bat Carrying
Bristol Stool Chart
Lego Head Diagram
The Praise the Lord Show
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:08:10) Bats
(00:19:45) Livingston's Body
(00:25:18) Pi & PIE
(00:34:45) Lego Head Passage
(00:44:02) Bird Brains
(00:56:04) Tomatoes
(01:10:35) Alpha-gal
(01:16:27) Rice to Riches
(01:26:37) Mission Impossible & Backmasking
(01:42:29) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
As Hank always says: wah wah wah wah wah, it says that I should complain in the script but I like it, Egg nog is just raw eggs right? redacted is such a beautiful name, rock paper scissors video content, drunk bats slur their echolocation, bats carrying bats, weekend at burniesing Livingston, I’d carry any of you for nine months, Pi and PIE from father and son, do you think J and Gretchen got their gifts at the same store? philology, proto-indo-european, the FART of the lego head, Ella’s heart grows 3 times its size for bacronyms, lego heads pass in about 2 days, chickadees growing and shrinking their brain connections, testing bird barcoding in the chickadome, I wish I could delete part of my brain to watch eternal sunshine again, davinci would have made that flying machine earlier if he had red sauce, tomatl is nahuatl not even proto-indo-european, we can all agree tomatoes smell evil, 150 years before tomatos and pasta combined, alphagal syndrome from ticks, once bitten twice allergic, Tom Scott gifts a can of rice pudding for us to open, allegedly LLE is a money laundering scheme, Mission Impossible morse code, the hidden code in LLE’s theme, Edison was the first to notice backmasking, the Eligibles Car Trouble, here’s to my sweet satan, winners don’t do drugs, raise a cup to our sweet satan.
Sources:
Bats Flying Drunk Paper
NYTimes Tomato History
Smithsonian Mag Tomato History
The Incredible paper: Sixteenth-century tomatoes in Europe: who saw them, what they looked like, and where they came from
Records of Tomato Reactions
Atlas Obscura Backmasking History
More sources will be added soon!
Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn
98: Extremophiles & Astrology
December 4, 20252 h 3 min
What are the most EXTREME lifeforms on Earth, and how are they surprisingly important to study? And what is the long yet recent history of astrology, and why do we reach for it?Things we Talk About:The Seal …
Show notes
What are the most EXTREME lifeforms on Earth, and how are they surprisingly important to study? And what is the long yet recent history of astrology, and why do we reach for it?
Things we Talk About:
The Seal Stream
Sea lion running
Paper Clipping: Female Astrologer
Paper Clipping: Suffragette Books
Paper Clipping: WW2 and Astrology
Paper Clipping: Pimms Ad
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:23) Extremophiles
(00:57:55) Astrology
(01:43:59) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Join our Discord!
We also learn about:
We’ve put tardigrades through every red bull task imaginable but they’re NOT extremophiles, extremotolerant vs extremophiles that thrive, thermophiles at 122 celsius, anglophiles, what would it suck to experience, psychrophiles, acidophiles and alkaliphiles, hypobarophiles experiencing 500x our pressure, oligatroph, polyextromophiles, life has found a way in so many extreme places, the chernobyl black mold, not just growing towards radiation but eating Hot Particles, fungi have survived harsh radiation in the Earth’s past, melanin lets the fungi handle and perceive radiation safely, it’s similar to photosynthesis though in the same way a tsunami is similar to a glass of water, conan the bacterium can live inside nuclear reactors, DNA redundancy, krill that makes antifreeze proteins, osmoconfromers, acidophile taken to a lab and finally thriving at .7 ph, it’s also hard as hell to capture and study and keep these extremophiles alive, extremophiles gave us PCR, we also us extremophile e coli, bioremediation is what I took when I failed bio and was tutored by an extremophile, we have so much to do-actually that was pretty funny, bioplastics, what extreomophiles teach us about astrobiology, letting some bacteria chill on the outside of the ISS for 3 years, damn girl you’re making me re-evaluate the limits of life, our nuanced and conflicting feeling on astrology, yay we get to read our horoscopes- wait fuck why am I happy about that? babylonian horoscopes, star charts for things like seasons actually were right, the Enuma Anu Enlil collection of omens, what’s your mother’s maiden name and pincode horoscope, the legacy of the endless pig, uh oh we’re having fun talking about horoscopes, medieval astrology in the royal court and the sciences, before we knew about the earth going around the sun the stars explained the seasons, in the 1700s astrology was seen as a sham, of course royal watching tabloids bring about astrology 2.0, scraping the bottom of the barrel for anything to say about princess margaret, globe conflict 2 electric boogaloo, a pims advert is a rich text, the horoscope test, god the people yearn for therapy, the barnum effect, zodiacs are part of our culture - so something to connect with, the correlation of uncertainty and horoscope popularity, how to manage uncertainty without horoscopes, video games offer a structure and challenge and reward that can help people cope with hard times.
Sources:
NOAA: What is an Extremophile?
Life: Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments
Nature: Life in Extreme Environments
PMC: Genomics of an extreme psychrophile, Psychromonas ingrahamii
The Biologist: Eating Gamme Rays for Breakfast
Research Gate: A Case Study of Strains Inhabiting Chernobyl Reactor No. 4
Chemical Communications: : The Incredible Cell Membrane Adaptations of Extremophiles to Harsh Environments
Life: Extremophiles and Extremophilic Behaviour
Biotechnology Advances: Structural Features of Thermozynes
Science: Conan the Baterium
Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews: Oxidative Stress Resistance in Deinococcus radiodurans
Polar Biology: Cold Resistance the Krill Euphausia superba
Extremophiles: Picrophilus oshimae
Life: Biotechniological Applications of Extremophile Research
Wiki: Thermos aquaticus
Frontiers in Microbiology: DNA Polymerases as Useful Reagents for Biotechnology
PNAS: Microbial Growth at Hyperaccelerations up to 403,627 × g
Frontiers in Microbiology: Extremophiles and the Limits of Life in a Planetary Context
Journal of Indian Institute of Science: Bioprospecting Extremophiles for Astrobiology
NASA: Astrobiology
Frontiers in Microbiology: DNA Damage and Survival Time Course of Deinococcal Cell Pellets During 3 Years of Exposure to Outer Space
New Scientist: Radiation Resistant Bacteria Could Survive Journey From Earth to Mars
---
2013 Paper: The Solar Eclipse Omen Texts from Enūma Anu Enlil
National Geographic: History of Horocopes
My Modern Met: Mystical History of Astrology
British Newspaper Archive
BBC: Who Actually Writes Horoscopes
2020 Paper: The Man Behind the Horoscope Column- R H Naylor
2005 Paper: A History of Astrology Part I: Origins to the Romans
The Guardian: How Astrology Paved the Way for Predictive Analytics
BBC: Is Astrology Backed By Science?
2022: Even The Stars Think That I Am Superior
BBC: Is There Any Science in Astrology?
Scientific American: Is Astrology Real? Here’s What Science Says
McGill University: How Astrology Escaped the Pull of Science
BBC: The Anxieties and Apps Fuelling the Astrology Boom
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