Just how complicated can animal mating rituals be, and why did they even evolve them at all? And why is true crime Everywhere, and what can we learn from breaking down what makes it feel so icky? Also see Tom's new Game Show in NYC this Sunday! www.OurFindingsShow.com Things we Talk About: Deathwatch Beetle Red-Winged Blackbird House Finch Lesser Florican Video Dance Analysis Video 1 Dance Analysis Video 2 Cruell Step-Dames Carolina Buddies Murder Ballad Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:04:04) Mating Rituals (01:03:01) True Crime (01:46:08) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: the adorable death watch beetle, the deep sea “ah fuck it - you’re here” approach, of course the man on the podcast thinks reproduction is easy, why are people on hinge so picky, hermaphrodite sea bunnies, there’s plenty of fish in the sea and the sea is fucking huge, sexual ornaments, peacock feathers made Darwin SICK, sexual ornaments to identify you’re doing it with the right species, you can hang your sexual ornaments all year long for other purposes, finch dating shows, carotenoids from skilled foraging make a brighter pigment is an indicator trait, or just go to a tanning salon, going to the gym is the same - false muscles, active at night - gives you a fright - active at day - wants to get laid, wow flies give eye contact during courting - that’s better than a lot of humans, the fly cha cha slide, drosophila simlish, nuptial gifts, Women! Want! Regurgitated Nutrient Liquid! the arms race of jumping birds, the “I’ll have what she’s having theory”, dancing mannequins, intermediate level of asymmetric arm movement, if anything the study shows how comical it is to try to boil down human mating, the famous shirt smelling study, what are you trying to show with a human mating study? we shouldn’t be reductive for human mating or for animal mating either, ascribing the gender binary to worms, there is no one easy tip to dating in nature, a double banger for nuance, early crime tabloids like Illustrated Police News, Jack the Ripper was dubbed by the press after all, the prison chaplain’s broadsides, nature’s cruel step-dames or matchless monsters of the female sex, I can’t stop myself from coming up with names fro these murders, true crime lit was a best seller at public hangings, some broadsides sold 30x more than the news, the unmissable attraction of La Morgue de Paris, American Murder Ballads didn’t need you to be literate, true crime as an indicator of media trends, the vicious cycle of true crime consumption, icky entertainment motivations, working against the wishes of survivors, if only the victim had had our sponsor - simply safe, the commodification of people’s suffering, what stories do we choose not to tell, true crime seems to say there is “right” kind of victim, but true crime isn’t irredeemable.…

Listeners voted for their favorites topics of the past year, so join us as we chat and relearn the best of everything! Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! The best awards in podcasting that feature hosts named Tom, Ella and Caroline, the best cohost award is a tie (for Charlie and Teddy) actually introducing ourselves again, Tom is the hot one and the funny one, everyone loves dinosaurs, satisfying questions I never thought to ask, no one at the Igs knows Tom, the nuanced story of the propoganda of the propaganda, hey they happen to be some great topics we’re talking about, I had to put jokes about how bad we are so that we could compliment each other later, you can go back and discover Ella’s, we love an experimental episode as well as a classic episode, we love the quirky younger sibling of things, the World Games are coming up soon - get hype!…

How many eyes do these animals have, and more importantly what are they doing with them? And how long has copyright piracy been around, and would YOU download a car? Also Ella finally drops her fake british accent. Images we Talk About: Bullfrog Parietal Eye Bumble Bee Ocelli Scallop Eyes Scallop Eye Mirrors The Home Taping is Killing Music Logo Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:04:01) Eyevolution II (00:56:16) Digital Piracy (01:45:06) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: How many jingles does this man have up his sleeve?? 2 eyes or not 2 eyes, what do you need glasses for - to see boobs? why have an odd number of eyes when it’s a BOGO deal developmentally, even more amazing than his eye of agamoto - Dr Strange has 2 camera eyes, “I grow fearful of the untrue eye”, bull frogs can’t doom scroll, the pineal eye is a skylight to the pineal gland, ommatidia means little eye, each compound eye only sees one image from the thousand of ommatidia, this is Caroline’s first eyevolution rodeo - we can’t answer all the questions, now you can be annoying correcting people about bug vision, ocelli are also called little eyes, triangular ocelli flight stabilization, Robobee, ocelli are useful because they’re auxiliary, they’re a fast different readout, there are so many more interesting sci fi choices for eyes, maybe they evolved ocelli to not crash when they see a sexy bug, having zero eyes would be going to far, oh wait nevermind, where we’re going we don’t need eyes, “not the implications”, well I’ll answer one of those questions, what do you need eyes for looking at boobs? YEAH I DO ACTUALLY, he complex eyes like a telescope of scallops, THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE A BRAIN, have we gone too far? the living square mirrors in scallop eyes, no one believed scallop TV would work, fair use and fair dealings, early book sellers were book copiers, authors did not make profits on early copies, Martial was the first person to be reposted on 9gag, the library of alexandria operated like OpenAI, book publishers after the printing press were like Universal Music Group - concerned over their rights - not artists, crown approved ABC books, the mid 1600s is the first use of piracy of intellectual property, ruining vinyl records with the cassette tape skull and crossbones, the 2013 Hugh Jackman Oscars performance, Napster’s origins and Metallica’s not so metal killing of it, Piracy was a technical and social phenomenon, YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A FONT, video game antipiracy that reminds you of the creative mind behind the product, none of this is legal advice, the cost of piracy is easy to calculate but the benefit is impossible to measure. Sources: The Parietal Eye Compound Eyes Holger Krapp's Fantastic Paper on Ocelli 2022 Paper on Ocelli Otacilia Khezu The Scallop's Eyes Scallop TV Ed Yong on Scallop Eyes Piracy sources coming soon! Apologies, but thanks for actually going through the sources! You get a gold star ⭐…

Vote for your favorite topics at LetsLearnEverything.com/bestof before Sunday June 8th!!!

What is it about harmonies in music that just sounds so good? Can science (and our amazing musical guest David Bennet) help us get to the bottom of it? Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:06:24) Why do we like Harmony? (00:56:10) Our Music Theory Questions (01:24:04) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: Listening to Carly Rae Jepsen academically, the musical expert said Caroline has good music taste, I’m down hereeeeee, harmony is just the interaction of any two notes, Tom thinks about high school choir harmony all the time, even babies like harmony, even the oldest flutes have the same holes in them, octaves are so similar we call them the same note, watchmojo ranking of intervals, Carly Rae Jepsen - It Has Many Notes!, a spicy dissonant interval can be good in moderation - like a spicy seasoning in food, Tom is just grinning getting to ask these music questions, we invited you as a guest and you bring this dissonance to our home?? the messy sounding tones match to messy looking ratios, why can we even distinguish pitch? we use pitch in communication so much, animal sounds are the only things that make pitch, animals can recognize intervals, we call bird song song - but to them it’s probably more like language, it sounds cheesy - but in every human voice there’s a harmony, we’re asking the question backwards - we needed to understand harmony to be able to decipher a pitch, hearing the difference between notes IN YOUR HEAD, what we hear in our head is different than the world around us, harmonies are audio cheesecake - something we evolved to enjoy pumped to the max, “we can make cheesecake with our mouths”, cheesecake is just molecules, did you not have to learn human evolution in music school? oh my guilty pleasures are Tchaikovsky’s later works, Ella humble bragging about her spotify wrapped, this is going to come off as hostile but hasn’t enough already been said about the Beatles, how different generations experience the Beatles, more like DavidLegoStopMotion, it took 5 years after a dissertation on how to have a career as a musician on youtube, try song ideas and listen to them later, music theory is Descriptive not Prescriptive, liking technical music, the only way you’ll practice is if you enjoy it, the dopamine hit from the cheesecake of practice, can you send that advice to my mom 10 years ago, but you did practice… yeah, teenagers are good at learning instruments because they have free time, start learning music with the music that you love, learning sheet music at the same time as playing is like learning to write as you’re learning to speak, you learn to write after you’ve practiced speaking for years, you’re full of good ideas David who knew.…

Can trees talk to each other? And how does that personifying metaphor square with the actual science behind it? And what can we learn from the stories of art on trading cards throughout history? Images we Talk About: Trade Cards 3 Modern Trading Cards Yuka Morii's Cards Terror Hyalopterus Lemure Preposterous Proportions Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:08) Tree Talk (00:52:16) Trading Card Art (01:33:47) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! The answer is yes maybe sometimes and no, talking tree folklore, communication as transferring information, The Secret Life of Trees, Caroline WAS vegan, plants feel pain - GOOD, tree self defense, secondary metabollites, you got me AND Ella to write that down, tannin defense mechanism, volatile organic compounds, giraffes avoiding nearby leaves after eating, maybe trees are eavesdropping, mycorrhizal networks, could it be diffusion or a baby tree suckling on its mother, do a stanford prisoner experiment for trees, that tree is giving mother, mother trees - altruistic fungi - and the perils of plant personification, literally talking to trees, your first priority shouldn’t be to not be boring - maybe second, respect for the organisms that are fundamentally unlike us - their unfathomable lives, the modern boom of trading cards, trade cards, mass produced color images were cool and novel, how many credits for that chromo? absurd advertising from the 1800s, anthropomorphic fruits and veggies were all the rage, trade cards were a microcosm of marketing-invention-and collecting, Ella’s baseball impression, looking at a mainstream sport through the nerdiest lens imaginable, cigarette baseball cards, Doug McWilliams photographed 8% of all major league baseball players, oh right photography is an art, and so is building relationships with players, cards began to stand on their own, Richard Garfield wanted baseball cards for nerds, Magic and Pokemon credit their artists - but YuGiOh does not, Yuka Morii’s sculpture cards, Adam Rex’s Terror, Richard Thomas’ Hyalopterous Lemure, Julie Baroh flipping off her classmates, companies screwing over artists, it’s still art in spite of being a piece of cardboard. Sources: 2010 Paper: Explaining evolution of plant communication by airborne signals New York Times: The Social Life of Forests Book: The Secret Life Of Plants National Geographic: Plants can talk. Yes, really. Here’s how. 2025 Pape: Shrub anti-herbivore defenses exhibit non-linear and varied responses to increased herbivore density 1990 Paper: Acacia Tree Kills Antelope Book: Ethylene in Plant Biology BBC News: Plants send SOS signal to insects TED ED: Can Plants Talk to Each Other? 2015 Paper: Inter-plant communication through mycorrhizal networks mediates complex adaptive behaviour in plant communities 1997 Paper: Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field 2008 Paper: Hydraulic redistribution of water from Pinus ponderosa trees to seedlings: evidence for an ectomycorrhizal pathway Scientific America: Do Trees Really Support Each Other through a Network of Fungi? 2023 Paper: Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests 2024 Paper: Mother trees, Altruistic Fungi, and the Perils of Plant Personification Facts or Fairy Tales? Peter Wohlleben and the Hidden Life of Trees Video: Project gives 200-year-old Dublin tree ‘a voice’ [Scientific America: The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading](The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading | Scientific American) Article: The World’s First Talking Tree Helps Young People Reconnect with Nature Smithsonian: Do Trees Talk to Each Other? --- Cornell University on History of Trade Cards History of Chromolithography American Antiquarian Society on Trade Cards PBS on Trade Cards Baseball Card Photography History Doug McWilliams via Baseball Hall of Fame Doug McWilliams Interview with SABR Doug McWilliams NYTimes Interview Richard Garfield on Magic's Creation Yuka Morii's Pokemon Card Art Magic Artist Julie Baroh's Interview Magic Artist Donato Giancola's Points Against Artist Policies Magic Artist Melissa Benson's Artist Advice…

What is the most boring element, and just how boring could it possibly be? Turns out: VERY! And how can we decipher what Shakespeare sounded like, and who among us can lay claim to his accent? Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:52) The Most Boring Element (00:48:53) Solving Shakespeare's Accent (01:26:37) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We’re not going for the easy sappy answer, what makes something boring? all the oxygen stans updating wikipedia, the most boring is obviously bohrium, thulium is used in lasers and x-rays, about 24 grams of astatine per planet, shout out Sir Martin Poliakoff, the 4 elements that came from pitchblende, Caroline stop anthropomorphizing protactinium, the isotope brevium, you could have been called abracadabra and instead your legal name is Actinium’s dad, wow what a fascinating [Rn]5f 26d7s2 ground state electron configuration! give me more random letters and numbers Tom! protactinium is there if your smoke detector is old, the global ocean conveyor belt, THC (Thermal Haline Circulation), that’s the ocean bit- anyway here’s something completely different about protactinium, paleoclimatology sounds a lot like protactinium, Ella realizes the turn, HE DID IT, whoa Caroline doing thumbs up to climate change, they’re de-extincting William Shakespeare, where better to waste my time pursuing this than Let’s Learn Everything, shakespeare is typically performed in received pronunciation, wait this is secretly a UK vs US topic! I’m surprised it took you 3 years to figure out we just keep you for your American accent, Americans have vestigial roticity, the universal beauty of two dudes yapping, what a strange elitism to claim to have Elizabethan English, Appalachian claims of shakespearean accents as a way to boost image, if you want to know what people sounded like back then… look at what people wrote about it! more one to one spellings like “philome” for film, we can deduce the accent from rhymes and puns, I loov this topic, Tom’s accent gets miscalibrated, an open midback is really stylish these days, open mid back unrounded vowel, Ella can move your tongue with her mind, I see why this gameshow didn’t make it to television, don’t wast a reem on a droom, the Rorscach test of the Original Pronunciation created by David and Ben Crystal, flecks of every dialect, “it’s a sound that reminds people of the accent of their home, and so they ten to listen more with their heart than their head”, “American English simply isn’t good enough for Shakespeare”, the Sundry Boroughs of New York baby! the language of Shakespeare is dead but alive in English everywhere, Shakespeare was meant to be played for the public - so it should be spoken like the public, Shakespeare's accent belongs to all of us! Sources: Amazing paper from Nature Chemistry: "The Most Boring Chemical Element" HPS on Protactinium Los Alamos Laboratory on Protactinium Periodic Videos on Protactinium Mining Website on Protactinium's History Britannica on Pitchblende Nature Chemistry: "Peculiar Protactinium" NOAA on the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt NOAA on Plankton EOS on Protactinium for Paleoclimatology Protactinium/Thorium in Paleoclimatology Textbook Carbonbrief's Climate Tipping Points Thorium Protactinium Dating Yu, Francois, and Bacon's first paper on Protactinium Ocean Current Dating --- Wiki: British colonisation of the Americas Wiki: Early Modern English History of English: Early Modern English BBC: How Americans preserved British English The Historical Linguist Blog: American English – The language of Shakespeare? Dialect Blog: Shakespearean vs. Modern English National Geographic: Tangier Island BBC: The Tiny Island with a British accent Language Myths Book David Crystal’s Original Pronunciation evidence Paper: Early Modern English Phonology Oxford Dictionary: Early modern English: grammar, pronunciation, and spelling University of Toronto: Early Modern English Phonology NPR: How Did the Bard Really Sound Youtube: Shakespeare: Original pronunciation…

What laws are there to worry about in the moon? And what does space law teach us about Earth law? And what can we learn about societies throughout history from the lens of stuffing dead animals? Images we Talk About: Orbiting Space Debris Fallen Space Debris Hanging Christian Crocodile Hanging Christian Crocodile Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:02) International Space Law (01:03:25) Taxidermy (01:46:48) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: The splash zone of intro to astronomy, space NCIS, the bedrock of 1967 outer space treaty, the first earthling in space (2 tortoises), countries are responsible for their damage and no WMDs, that big tangible moon in the sky, unprecedented lunar traffic this year, potential water ice on the moon could be the next big space race, there’s no moon water regulation, no nation can own the moon, buuuut can an individual - former ventriloquest and used car salesman own the moon?? god don’t call it “untapped resources on the moon”, you can’t own the moon but can you own its resources, there’s a legal officer for the UN officer of outer space affairs! we can allll frack the moon (except no one signed the treaty anyway), we can’t even agree to share moon resources One Day, only “safe and sustainable” space mining allowed, it doesn’t have to be legally binding to make countries want to follow it, a radio telescope on the far side of the moon would be SICK, sorry about all the space junk us 3 put up there, 90 metric tons of re-entry, suing nasa over space debris, if it launched from florida and hit florida it’s actually local state space law, satellite light pollution, satellites don’t die they just crash into a farm upstate, starlink burnt 120 satellites in 1 month alone, there’s no laws about safely deorbiting - no one has to do this, how we treat space is a microcosm of how we treat earth, space law is real, why can’t we bring our optimism from space back to earth instead of the other way around? Ella’s mouse doing drugs, the art of skin arranging, apologies to our ancient Egyptian listeners, the various techniques of Egyptian preservation, arresting from decay, Frederik Ruysch’s wet specimens, crocodiles make a lot of sense for the first taxidermy cause they’re big and leathery - anyway it was hanging in a church…, Tom loses his mind about A SECOND TAXIDERMIED CROCODILE IN A CHURCH, a croc that’s at least from 1623, The Great Italian Taxidermy Crocodile Road Trip, about one third of the british population went to the 1851 great exhibition, the telescope and taxidermy exhibition sounds like a trap for Caroline and Ella, “whimsy and anthropomorphism in taxidermy of the Victorian era”, anthropomorphic taxidermy was considered grotesque, taxidermy didn’t die we just stuffed it back up, environment taxidermy requires knowing an animal inside and out (pun intended), the degrees of ethical taxidermy, ethical is not a binary, it depends on your personal code of ethics, taxidermy as a lens of moral feelings through history. Sources: UNOOSA: Outer Space Treaty UN: International Space Law Explained Royal Museums Greenwich: Who Owns the Moon? Lunar Embassy: Buy Some Moon Politico: Who Owns the Moon Guardian: Moon Resources Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Moon Resources NASA Moon Mining Contracts Business Insider: Mining Disrupting Science on the Moon NASA Artemis Accords ESA Space Environment Statistics SpaceWatch: Satellites Natural History Museum: Space Junk Guardian: Florida Family Sues NASA Scientific American: Samantha Lawler, Space X Debirs Journal of Space Safety Engineering: Uncontrolled Re-entry UNOSSA: United Nations 2007 Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines ESA Space Environment Report 2024 Rolling Stone: Space Trash FCC: Deorbiting Satellites Rule Scientific American: Space Junk Polluting Stratosphere --- Britannica: Taxidermy 2019 Paper: Animal Bodies between Wonder and Natural History BBC: Ancient Egyptian mummification 'recipe' revealed Book: Practical Taxidermy 2020 Paper: The Animal Body As Medium: Taxidermy And European Expansion, 1775–1865 Museum of Idaho: A brief, Gross History of Taxidermy Atlas Obscura: Crocodile at the Santuario Madonna delle Lacrime Immacolate University of Dayton: Crocodile Hunting in the Marian Library Wandering Italy: Grazie, Italy and the Crocodile Church 2006 Paper: The History of Taxidermy: Clues for Preservation Journal of Antiques and Collectables: Taxidermy: Exploring one of the Most Complicated Collectibles The Royal Parks: The Great Exhibition of 1851 2012 Thesis: The Shock Proved Fatal: Whimsy and Anthropomorphism in Taxidermy of the Victorian Era, 1851-1899 Cardiff University: Frequently Asked Questions in Taxidermy Smithsonian: Why Taxidermy Is Being Revived for the 21st Century Horniman Museum: Ethical Taxidermy Guardian: Inside the Female-Led World of Ethical Taxidermy Sussex Wildlife Trust: Putting the Ethical in Taxidermy…

Welcome to the (preview for the) Lab Rat Games! The GAME show where we compete to learn anything and everything interesting! We love putting games into our topics, so what happens when we make a whole show of them, with each of us hosting their own section! Plus! We're joined by friend of the show and competitive chaos combatant, Sabrina Cruz! Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord!…

How can scientist's unravel the mystery of what dinosaurs ate? Well the clues are right in front of our eyes, or should I say their teeth! And poop! And listener you may already know what a podcast is, but how did proto-podcasts in a chicken coop give us the DNA for what we love, and how did podcasts even happen? Images we Talk About: First Iguanadon Tooth Puffer Fish Teeth Fish Teeths Incisivosaurus Saurolophus Dinosaur Stomach Contents Fossil Ham Comic Sybil's Baby's Radio Rebut Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:04:33) Dinosaur Diet Detectives (01:00:51) Support our Show! (01:04:27) Proto-Podcasts (02:02:49) Bonus Content! (02:07:24) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: Deep Dive Discovering Dino Diets, dinosaur time, imagining us discovering a new animal, well we know it doesn’t eat nerds, Ella describes teeth perfectly - “is that what you meant to say Tom?”, the mouth is the first stomach, we found the teeth of the first herbivorous dinosaur before the body - and before we had the word for dinosaur, cinderella/goldilocks teeth, dental microwear, food print, the topography of a grasshopper’s mandible, teeth can be more indicative than stomach content, maybe you just tried in and out for the first time when you got captured by aliens, dinosaur teeth are the old coins of ancient civilizations, egg eating oviraptors, it’s not just us but experts that are confused about oviraptaurs teeth, reconstructing the crime scene of a bit mark, this case has been closed for 70 million years! the tarbosaurus seems to have separated the chicken leg to make eating easier, a tyrannosaur leaving a tooth in the scene of the crime, they not only got bit but lived to tell the tale, this proves tyranosaurs hunted living animals - and weren’t just scavengers, hard foods stay in the stomach longer, some dinosaurs used Gastrolith rocks as stomach teeth, rocks natures teeth, Bromalite can be regurgitalite or coprolite, 580 million year old worm poop, we didn’t think grass was that old then we found it in dinosaur poop, we put dinosaur poop in a particle accelerator, we’re not looking at poop - we’re constructing the foodchain of dinosaurs, an ancient egyptian podcast, podcasting is NOT an oral tradition, the chicken coop boys, Sybil’s Little Ham Radio Show 20 years before a woman on proper radio, the Titanic sinking sped along radio restrictions, Tom skipped over the cassette before because its science impact was small but its misc impact was huge, explaining cassette tapes at a high frequency so it doesn’t hurt old people to hear, Lou Otten, the syrian cassette archive, mixtapes, Caroline’s family mix CDs, Tom’s custom Jack’s Mannequin Mix CDs, Pacific Horticulture Magazine being delighted that someone’s interested, Tom’s Magic Corner, I knew it was some journalist doing their thing, apple didn’t come up with podcasting - not even the name, journey back to 1999, the dream of RSS, what’s that facebook shaped cloud on the horizon? the dream of hosting your own feed, somehow podcast RSS survived, podcasts are the Horshoecrab of the internet, “wherever you get podcasts” is amazing, The Lab Rat Games! Sources: NHM London: Iguanodon Teeth NHM London: Beyond Jurassic World- What We Really Know About Dinosaurs and How NHM London: The Seven Greatest Dinosaur Discoveries of the Last 200 Years British Ecological Society: What do Grasshoppers Eat? Phys.Org: Cutting Edge Teeth Study NPR: Dental Detectives: What Fossil Teeth Reveal About Ancestral Human Diets University of Tokyo: Dinosaur Teeth Reveal What They Didn’t Eat BBC: Dinosaur Teeth Reveal Feeding Habits Incisivosaurus 2022 Paper: Incisivosaura Bite Force University of Pennsilvania: What Fossils Tell Us About the Dining Habits of Dinosaurs NHM London: Dinosaur Eating Habit Insights from Stegosaurus stenops 2010 Paper: New information on scavenging and selective feeding behaviour of tyrannosaurids Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings 2012 Paper: Physical evidence of predatory behavior in Tyrannosaurus rex Save Our Seas: What Tools do Biologists use to Tell What is on the Menu for Wild Animals? Scientific America: Tyrannosaur’s Stomach Contents Have Been Found for the First Time 2023 Paper: Exceptionally preserved stomach contents of a young tyrannosaurid reveal an ontogenetic dietary shift in an iconic extinct predator SN Explores: Fossil Stomach Reveals a Dinosaur’s Last Meal NHM London: Coprolite The Bristol Dinosaur Project: The Grass Divide NPR: Over 500 Fossilized Poops Show How Dinosaurs Came to Rule the Earth American Museum of Natural History: How Does Studying Dinosaurs Benefit Humanity? --- MET on Memory Boards and Luba Oral Traditions OED Broadcast Etymology The Chicken Coop Ham Radio Sybil's Little Hame Radio Program NYTimes on Titanic's Impact on Radio Law Library of Congress on Recorded Radio NPR On Lout Otten and the Cassette Tape Wired on Cassette History NPR on the Syrian Cassette Archive Berkeley Audio Tape Retrospective Carl Malamud on Asynchronous Internet Radio The Earliest Mention of Podcasts in the Guardian Two-Bit History on the History of RSS Kevin Werbach's Vision of the Future of RSS and the Internet TechCrunch: Rest in Peace RSS…

It’s not MaxFunDrive without a wild kickoff spectacular! Former real-life VJ and host of MTV's Spring Break 1999, Dave Holmes, takes your favorite MaxFun hosts through some wacky ‘90s- and Spring Break-themed mini games!! Featuring: Dave Holmes, Jeremy Bent, Oscar Montoya, Dimitry Pompée, Tom Lum, Ellen Weatherford, Alex Schmidt, Brenda Snell, Drea Clark, Alonso Duralde, Dan McCoy, Jordan Morris, Manolo Moreno, Ella Hubber, Caroline Roper, Ella McLeod, John-Luke Roberts, Justin McElroy, Clint McElroy, Mike Cabellon, Sierra Katow, Hal Lublin, Danielle Radford, John Moe, Christian Dueñas, Christian Duguay. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:22) Tom, Ellen, Alex, and Brenda Trivia (00:32:47) Tom, Ellen, Manolo, and Jeremy on Party Animals (00:46:34) Caroline, Ella, Ella, and John-Luke on British Spring Break…

Host of Um Actually and nerd of many domains Ify Nwadiwe joins us as Tom helps him deconstruct the infamous Peasant Railgun from D&D. Could it actually work? And can we come up with something even more powerful using real science? We also dig into nerdery old and new, and see if Ify can convince Ella and Caroline to embrace their home country's greatest export: Warhammer. Images we Talk About: A Real Railgun Firing Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:06:05) The Peasant Railgun (00:43:07) Q&A/Nerding Out (01:12:19) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: After this black hole research I do appreciate my family more! we’re here to game, what is a peasant? stealing science experiments for DnD campaigns, Caroline and Ella are delighted to learn the Peasant Railgun for the first time, convincing peasants to hands across america, pandering to the audience telling them their smart, My Monster Manual is On the Origin of Species, a peasant message system/computer, let people accelerate things to the speed of light! I shouldn’t let my players do WHAT, and remember kids DONT use a bong because it gets you SO HIGH, I’m reading between the lines Gary would want us to do this, the real rail gun, UM ACTUALLY ITS A PEASANT COIL GUN, rail guns are more common in fiction, the strength of a rail gun tears itself apart and creates a fireball, Ify would make each peasant in the line roll, if your players try to make the railgun say yes then show them the picture, the peasants have the means of production and destruction - they should unionize, the fastest manmade object, the manhole cover isnt the fastest object recorded, mission to touch the sun, gravity slingshot, it’s not the mass of the planet its the orbit, its not a magnet - its a magnet on a bullettrain, DMs watch out for artificer space programs, the duke of musk keeps stealing our government funding, Morgan you’re welcome to play beyblades with Ify any time, marrying bratz and digimon, England’s main export is Warhammer, can Ify convince Ella to play Warhammer, should we do a separate zoom just talking about nerd stuff? online writing forums, audio books are real books, be mean in magic, playing DnD on stage vs at home, playing true to your character. Sources: First Edition D&D Player's Handbook Knight's Digest on Peasant Railgun Origins Earliest Peasant Railgun Mention PCGamer on D&D 2024 Dungeon Master Guide Update IEEE Early Railgun Research Vice "This Is Why the Navy Can’t Have Nice Railguns" USC on Railgun Feasability Popular Science Interview on Railgun Test JPL Chart of Fastest Objects CNET on Parker Solar Probe NASA Gravity Assist Primer…

Why is math both so easy and so hard for our brains, and how can the psychology of horses, babies, and mathematicians help answer that? And what wild journey did Sudoku take to become the popular puzzle that Ella adores? Things we Talk About: The Video of a Child Learning to Count The Melencolia Painting Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:04:59) The Psychology of Math (01:00:35) Sudoku (01:44:59) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: the Wonderful student, it’s not you - it’s math, “I did biology for a reason”, children can want a lot of complex things, it’s harder in the UK cause its Maths plural, Caroline & Ella’s math journeys, charlie solves the Riemann hypothesis, the horse the myth the legend - clever hans, clever hans was drafted into the military AS A MATHEMATICIAN, real horse math! so many animals seem to have Number Sense, counting is hard for kids, multiplication isn’t counting - it’s memorization and other strategies, Caroline doesn’t have a great Mental Blackboard, kick flipping a chair in our minds to brag to Caroline, overlapping waves, hot or not for equations, hahaha a taylor expansion?? in Lp?? ridiculous! there is no one math organ in the brain, don’t give up on math, “I don’t treat math as a monolith (I think statistics is the worst math)”, that surprises me because sudoko’s amazing and you’re wrong, the ancient mystical turtle’s magic square, a mathematical warding spell, “once something is proved true, it is eternally true”, HOW DID ELLA NOT REALIZE THIS WAS A MATH TOPIC, magic squares are unsolved, math divination, wow this is a math’s topic huh, maths in art, Melancholia, the magic square on La Sagrada Familia, wait Magic Squares AREN’T the precursor to sudoku?? I don’t know this child, if not sudoku why sudoku shaped? the Latin square originated in Korea before Euler, my parents are older than sudoku, it was originally called Number Place, even though we call it Sudoku - in Japan it’s often called Number Place for trademark reasons, the 2004 sudoku boom, sudoku is an infectious meme, this topic took so long (because Ella took sudoku breaks), figuring out the question of unique puzzles, so many ways to think about a square, advanced sudoku techniques, x-wing and swordfish, sudoku championships, of course Ella found speed running in this topic, Sudoku doesn’t seem to cure cognitive decline - but it’s also just fun to do! a beautiful sudoku poem, it’s how we learn and it’s calming - a little win, “I feel like I need to lie down”, let us know if you know the difference between 3 apples and 4 apples. Sources: Perfect Pitch Study Feigenson et al. Core System of Number The Clever Hans Phenomenon Revisited NYTimes Berlin's Wonderful Horse Actual Horse Number Sense Study Number Sense in Animals Rat Brain Number Sense Study NPR Why Big Numbers Break our Brains Erikson Institute Video of Child Counting The Development of Mathematical Cognition Math Expert Brain Activity Study The Beauty of Math Study University of MAryland on Math Brain Activity Keith Devlin Stanford Talk Katie Steckles: What Do Mathematicians Do All Day? --- Wikipedia: Magic Square Royal Institution: Magic Square University of Cambridge: Magic Square Magic Squares in Islamic Mathematics Wiki: Sudoku The Guardian: History of Sudoku The Science of Sudoku by BY JEAN-PAUL DELAHAYE Paper: There Is No 16-Clue Sudoku Advanced Sudoku Techniques: Wiki: World Sudoku Championships Sudoku.com: The Fastest Sudoku Player Sudoku.com: 4 Reasons that Sudoku is the Perfect Puzzle Game Working Memory BBC: Puzzle Slolving and Cognitive Decline Sudoku 15 year study Global Council on Brain Health Report Sudoku Mental Fortitude…

Why is the common fruit fly the perfect model organism, and the reason for 6 Nobel Prizes?? And what is the british fascination around the meal deal, lunchtime, and the sandwich? Images we Talk About: Map of the Fruit Fly Brain Rat My Meal Deal The Sandwich Factory Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:57) Drosophila Melanogaster (00:49:46) The British Meal Deal (01:37:48) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: Ella’s former favorite fun fact, are 6 nobel prizes more impressive than long sperm? we need to pause, bolas, Ella’s Virgins, Dew Loving Black Belly, Dros Mel are human commensals - they migrated with us, “they’re undemanding guests”, first life intentionally put into space, maybe Jeff Goldblum became a fly so seamlessly because they share 60% of their DNA, Tom’s great Jeff Goldblum impression, they share a lot of disease related genes, Thomas Morgan - The Lord of the Flies, Morgan knew about genetics but not DNA yet, genetic redundancy, a fly geneticist’s swiss army knife, the varied list of nobel wins, are they cancelled? wait actually? guess that fly gene, “the inside jokes are becoming outside jokes”, the golden wild west era of the fruit fly may be over - but not all science, the beautiful fruit fly brain, we COULD end by talking about how this little organism has been so belovedly studied and helpful, Dros Mel has a mini bachelorette organ, the great british everything, is this a sincere answer? rating meal deals, fluctuations of lunch elitism, a beaver and a noonshine, capitalism made workers hours longer - workers rights made lunch, lunch was given by and for women, the earl of sandwich was too much of a gamer, we can’t re-litigate the cube rule, the “daring” true story of the sandwich, the sandwich storry isn’t about invention it’s about class, food elitism fads, ella invents soup in a tube, 1980s the first pre-packaged sandwich, units of sandwich (UOS), it’s almost like getting separated from the means of production…, the british sandwich association, take your lunch break! you won’t remember doing an extra bit of work - you’ll remember spending time with folks and making a bomb ass sandwich, short lunch breaks make meal deals make sense, drosophola and meal deals cancelled on this episode, Sources: Paper: Drosophila - Model Organism of Choice Paper: Innate Immune Responses of Drosophila melanogaster Are Altered by Spaceflight NASA: Fruit Flies in Space Paper: Drosophila – A Versatile Model in Biology & Medicine Paper: The Secret Lives of Drosophila Flies Guardian Article on Drosophila Paper: Where are Drosphila From Paper: Gal4 Swiss Army Knife Nobel Prize: Drosophila NPR: Fruit Fly Names Nature News: Troublesome Names Get the Boot Paper: Fly Brain Map Fly Brain Image UKRI: Fruit Fly Neuron Map Paper Drosophila Sperm Storage Meal Deal Sources Coming Soon!…

What can we learn from the most modern - but overlooked form of pollution? And can mistakes in art be something actually... good? Images we Talk About: Navajo Rug Ch'ihónít’i Ramses II Statue Ecce Homo The Original Ecce Homo 3 Versions of Ecce Homo Lincoln Memorial Mistake Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:25) Light Pollution (00:48:06) Mistaeks (01:37:02) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: Auctioning topics, the origins of pollution, pollution is old but light pollution is from the 1960s, the great stink, the biggest light polluter is the sun, old gas street lights used to be more like beacons than lights, the world’s getting 10% brighter each year, 80% of North American can’t see the milky way, Light Trespass, Sky Glow, light pollution makes telescopes worse, Tom’s parents hearing him scream WHY IS THERE BREAST MILK, the strange lights after the 1994 LA earthquake, amateur astronomers are vital to astronomy, light trapped moths, a 1917 study on lighthouses and bird migration, birds waking up 5 hours earlier, turtles also use moonlight navigation, just move your telescope and evolve your species it’s not our fault, “he glistens you philistine”, the big beautiful glow worm woman in the sky, street lights are like sugar light to plants, light pollution isn’t the biggest issue - but that can make it easy to ignore - and it has some easy wins! it’s solvable at the community level, Tom’s buoyancy broken hand mistake, oops I mixed up my therapy and podcast topic list, the beatles anomalies list, Michelangelo’s beautiful complaint letter poem, we are our own worst critic, the ASMR mistake was just an anomaly, Kintsugi, “it treats breakage as a part of the object’s history rather than an error or a failure to be covered up”, what’s the japanese word for mud covered boots, only god can make perfect fun facts, Ch'ihónít’i, releasing the thoughts from an object - a way out, the journey of Caroline’s darned jumper, how can you tell an old mistake was a mistake? hieroglyphic typos, oh shit control ankh control ankh, revealing an ancient mistake by mistake, Philadelphia isn’t real it can’t hurt you, the Jesus that was… made an anomaly by Gloria Gimenez, the misremembered story of Ecce Homo, art is this emotional roller coaster, wow don’t take Tom’s summary Caroline, Lincoln memorial myths, 1000 years from now a museum in Neo Egypt will carve out the lincoln memorial fix, I know a great art restoration person in spain if you need one, most mistakes are just forgotten, you need mistakes to learn, the mistake of starting this podcast, verbal kintsugi, anomalous jesus, we didn’t learn today that Ella was a contrarian. Sources: Britannica: Light Pollution 2020 Paper: A Chronology of Global Air Quality Wikipedia: The Great Stink NHM London: Increasing Light Pollution is Drowning out the Stars 2023 Paper: Light Pollution is Skyrocketing Scientific America: Light Pollution is Dimming Our View of the Sky 2009 Paper: Missing the Dark: Health Effects of Light Pollution National Parks Service: Connect with the Galaxy: A case for turning out the lights CAPE 2023: What are the Effects of Artifical Light on Human Health? An Evidence Brief 2019 Paper: Effects of Light at Night on Laboratory Animals and Research Outcomes 1918 Paper: The Destruction of Birds at the Lighthouses on the Coast of California 2021 Paper: Characteristics of Light Pollution – A case study of Warsaw (Poland) and Fukuoka (Japan) 1973 Paper: Light Pollution BBC: How light pollution disrupts plants' senses Dark Sky: Solutions to Light Pollution --- The Beatles Anomalies List Michelangelo's "Poem" Kintsugi Jill Ahlberg Yohe's Incredible Paper on Ch’ihónít’i Penn Museum's Ramses II Ancient Egyptian Literacy NYTimes on Ecce Homo The Guardian Ecce Homo Critique The Art History of Ecce Homo AP on Ecce Homo a Year Later…