Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
Speaker 1: what do you think it would be? Like, we'll live
Speaker 1: on a square planet? Like you think you've listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of like Lawrence Welk eat a lot of
Speaker 1: cheese steak. Yes to Lawrence Welk, No to cheese steak.
Speaker 1: Cheesteak is kind of a squares food that you gotta admit.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, cheese steak is quite prized
Speaker 1: in some cities are and um and it's really been
Speaker 1: elevated to an art if I can say that as
Speaker 1: a vegetarian, I guess yeah. I mean you turn into
Speaker 1: the food shows and it's like, uh, they just go
Speaker 1: on and on about like every city has their grotesque
Speaker 1: um and too in my opinion, square meet sandwich and
Speaker 1: uh and the people got got for Well you're saying
Speaker 1: a square not hip? Right? Yeah? Like not hip? You know,
Speaker 1: like what are the squares doing? Like what the cool
Speaker 1: kids are all going to the midnight puppet show and
Speaker 1: and then the one of the squares are going to
Speaker 1: their football game. I don't know. Anytime you say squares,
Speaker 1: I just feel like I should be dressed in all
Speaker 1: black and nothing anytime I agree with something that you say,
Speaker 1: which is what I'm going to do. But but now
Speaker 1: we're not We're actually not talking about that kind of
Speaker 1: a square. We're talking about literal square, literal square planet
Speaker 1: like um David cross as is bit which Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: just reminded us of about the Squaggle, where it's a
Speaker 1: it's a product that was apparently officially marketed, like produced marketed,
Speaker 1: and he talked about it in a stand up bit.
Speaker 1: But it's a bagel. It's a real square. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. It's a square bagel, so that it's
Speaker 1: not like rolling. What's the opposite of snapping your fingers
Speaker 1: to disagree? I don't know. That doesn't make sense. I
Speaker 1: don't know I'm saying that that's not going to be
Speaker 1: transmitted by my voice. I guess like lengthy discussions over
Speaker 1: some freestyle jazz. I don't know. But basically, imagine a
Speaker 1: square planet. If you're into comics, then you may know
Speaker 1: that the bizarro world where Bizarrow hails. Okay, and we're
Speaker 1: not talking about a square planet made out of bagels.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a square planet. Like the idea that
Speaker 1: we're gonna talking about today is what if our what
Speaker 1: if our earthwork square? Which is, like I said, Bizarro
Speaker 1: Bizarro Superman familiar with this, right, yes, Sam, he's like Superman,
Speaker 1: except he's like an albino or something. Um and he's
Speaker 1: not really well but he's white. He's like really white
Speaker 1: really and uh and uh and and kind of dumb.
Speaker 1: And it's like you might be familiar with the concept
Speaker 1: with Bizarro Seinfeld to right, right, Yeah, yeah, they they may.
Speaker 1: They referenced this particular comic creation. So, yeah, imagine the
Speaker 1: world that we live on seeing it from space and
Speaker 1: seeing not a sphere but a square, a cube, which
Speaker 1: would be pretty cool. Right. Yeah, It's not possible, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that we can't talk about it because
Speaker 1: lots of let's people have talked about this or dreamed
Speaker 1: what would it be like if our Earth was squared?
Speaker 1: And and actually it gets down to the question of
Speaker 1: why why do we have spheroid like planets and moons? Anyway? Right,
Speaker 1: what's the whole deal with that? To be sun filed
Speaker 1: in about it? What's the deal with the actual formation
Speaker 1: of planets. No, no, no, Like, hey man, why do
Speaker 1: we why don't we have a square for a planet? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'll tell you why. Gravity, my friend. Yes, gravity
Speaker 1: is the key to it all, because at heart we
Speaker 1: have this thing called accretion. Like this is the way
Speaker 1: everything forms. Right. So you know, if you if you
Speaker 1: go back in time before there's a planet, and even
Speaker 1: planet or star, you have a whole lot of little
Speaker 1: bits of dust floating around, and each of those little
Speaker 1: bits of dust, no matter how small, has mass and
Speaker 1: exerts gravity. Okay, so everyone with me. So you have
Speaker 1: dust dust mote number one meets the cosmic dust mote
Speaker 1: number two and they attract to each other. Suddenly they
Speaker 1: have more mass. Then surrounding they have more gravitational pull.
Speaker 1: They begin to pull in other little bits of of dust,
Speaker 1: and so you end up with this kind of cosmic
Speaker 1: snowball effect where the gravity builds, it accrues more mass,
Speaker 1: and it eventually it gets bigger and bigger and becomes
Speaker 1: a you know, it in literally becomes like a star
Speaker 1: or a planet or some other kind of astral bodies.
Speaker 1: And these are all spherical for a reason because it's
Speaker 1: because at the center that you have a center of mass,
Speaker 1: and it is when we're standing on a planet, the
Speaker 1: mass is more or less the same. No matter where
Speaker 1: you go on the globe. It does differ. There areas
Speaker 1: on the earthware where the the where where gravity is
Speaker 1: stronger but for the or weaker. But for the most
Speaker 1: part you have more or less uniform gravity. So a
Speaker 1: square would not form because a square or a cube
Speaker 1: would not have uniform gravity. Yeah, and it's sort of
Speaker 1: but still I still sort of wonder, like why not
Speaker 1: the shape of a banana or well, I think because
Speaker 1: the square is a very um it's it's the opposite,
Speaker 1: you know, it's uh, it's the squiggle versus the bagel idea.
Speaker 1: It's like the square is very uniform. There's an episode
Speaker 1: of Look Around You season two where they have a
Speaker 1: soccer ball um um or you know in football in
Speaker 1: in Britain and you push a button on it and
Speaker 1: it transforms into a cube so that you can store
Speaker 1: it on a shelf without it rolling off. There's you know,
Speaker 1: it's just something on a very like mathematical basis, like
Speaker 1: the cube is a very ordered what they're both very
Speaker 1: ordered shapes, but but but they're very opposite, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so we can't help but but but
Speaker 1: think of things in terms of their ridiculous opposites, you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, we would look in the mirror. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: what if what if I was a woman instead of
Speaker 1: a man? You know, what if? What if? What if
Speaker 1: that horse flew instead of walked? What if the world
Speaker 1: were a cube instead of a sphere? And uh and
Speaker 1: and when you when you look back at some of
Speaker 1: the things that have been written about this, I mean,
Speaker 1: there have been times where people have made some surprising
Speaker 1: arguments for the existence of cubes in nature. Now, now, granted,
Speaker 1: cubes do can form in nature. Rough cubes conform in nature. Obviously.
Speaker 1: We've all seen blocks of stone that have fallen off
Speaker 1: of something that may be roughly cubicle. You've seen tricksters
Speaker 1: using bubbles to you know, tricks tricks. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: they're bubble artists or something, blowing bubbles and then piecing
Speaker 1: them together in forming that square, that cube at the center.
Speaker 1: So it's not like a natural impossibility. But you see
Speaker 1: fewer of these in nature than you do spheres. Well, geographically, right,
Speaker 1: you tend to see more of the spheres right, certainly
Speaker 1: in the universe. So yeah, I found it really really interesting.
Speaker 1: Looking back to four, there was a Swiss astronomer by
Speaker 1: the name of Aren't a r N d T. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is like the only name he was attributed in
Speaker 1: this particular chair. But Aren't Yeah, and he made the
Speaker 1: headlines back in the day when he claimed to have
Speaker 1: discovered a very curious planet in the orbit beyond Neptune,
Speaker 1: a cubicle planet. Even in eighteen a four astronomers knew
Speaker 1: better there was. There was a New York Times article
Speaker 1: titled the Cubicle Planet, November sixte edition. The the author
Speaker 1: talked to a physicist by the name of Dr Theodore
Speaker 1: Van Kirk. It's it's a great article because it's this
Speaker 1: is the Gilded Age of newspapers, so it's extremely long,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's written in the style of like
Speaker 1: and then the writer asked, and then he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: good boy, let me explain it to you, and and
Speaker 1: and and so like the first debt is the professor
Speaker 1: just saying this is complete whuie, this this is just
Speaker 1: I'm not yeah, he says who he and he's He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna dignify such an idea. But then
Speaker 1: he goes on to say, oh, but this is what
Speaker 1: it would be like, you know, because because at the heart,
Speaker 1: that's the cool thing about thinking about a cubicle planet
Speaker 1: is that, um it it illustrates some of the things
Speaker 1: that we take for granted about life on an actual
Speaker 1: spherical world. Yeah, so what would a cube shape Earth
Speaker 1: look like? You know, would it? Would it? Is this
Speaker 1: some sort of like parallel universe where Picasso just exist
Speaker 1: and well for and then this cubical form. Well, the
Speaker 1: important thing to realize is the way center of gravity
Speaker 1: affects everything. Again, um gravity more or less uniform across
Speaker 1: the planet because the center of the Earth is always
Speaker 1: directly beneath your feet. No matter where you're standing. You
Speaker 1: can point down at the space between your feet and say,
Speaker 1: if I were to go straight down from you know,
Speaker 1: straight down towards the center of gravity, I would hit
Speaker 1: the core of the No matter where you were, gravitation
Speaker 1: is um it's always going to point roughly towards the center,
Speaker 1: right right. So imagine you're facing once one square one
Speaker 1: side of the six sides of the queue. If you
Speaker 1: were standing the exact center of that it would be
Speaker 1: like on Earth because the center is directly below you.
Speaker 1: You're standing standing straight up, You're standing straight up on
Speaker 1: the Okay, So let's say you're out near an edge.
Speaker 1: If you're out here an edge, you would be technically
Speaker 1: you may be standing straight up on that particular side,
Speaker 1: on that particular plane, but it would feel like you
Speaker 1: were standing on a hill because the exact center, the
Speaker 1: center of the planet's mass, is not directly beneath your feet. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get the idea of this. So you've
Speaker 1: got the you've got these six sides, and it's almost
Speaker 1: it would almost feel like it's forming a bowl right right,
Speaker 1: Like like, let's say again, you're standing at the center
Speaker 1: of one of the six sides, okay, and then you're
Speaker 1: gonna walk towards the edge. The closer you came to
Speaker 1: the edge, the more it would feel like you were
Speaker 1: walking up the side of a mountain. Only if you
Speaker 1: were to actually reach the very edge and stand on
Speaker 1: the edge, would it feel like Earth would Only then
Speaker 1: would the center of the planet's gravity be directly beneath you. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating. There's some This question was posed
Speaker 1: to ask mathematician slash physicists. These are the guys that
Speaker 1: show up at Burning Man, So take this for what
Speaker 1: you will. But they had some very interesting thoughts about this,
Speaker 1: and they said that Earth would take the form of
Speaker 1: a vast barren expanse of rock directly exposed to space.
Speaker 1: And if you were standing on the edge of a
Speaker 1: face and look back toward the center, you'd be able
Speaker 1: to clearly see the round bubble of air and water
Speaker 1: extending above the flat surface with the poles in the
Speaker 1: center of the two faces. Then then two of those
Speaker 1: bubble seas that were created. Right, wait, are these the
Speaker 1: cornels as physicist? No, this is different. This is why
Speaker 1: I say these are These are the guys that show
Speaker 1: up at Burning Man. And they have a tent. Actually
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, and it says ask uh.
Speaker 1: Mathematicians are asking a physicist, right, they're one of each.
Speaker 1: So guys are wandering up to be a burning man
Speaker 1: and going like, dude, what if? What if? Like a cube?
Speaker 1: It was cube and it was completely pupiled by a
Speaker 1: bunch of Picasso's and they were fragmented faces, and one
Speaker 1: of the areolas was on his ear. That's that's what
Speaker 1: they're asking. So that's why I say take it, take
Speaker 1: it what you will out of this. But I do
Speaker 1: think it's really you're standing on the edge, you're looking down,
Speaker 1: and you're seeing the seeing the bubble of the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: right Okay, So that in and of itself is pretty
Speaker 1: cool to imagine, and that you're you're on this the
Speaker 1: face of the square and you're seeing this atmosphere because
Speaker 1: right now we can't we don't perceive that right well,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't be able to perceive it. And then uh,
Speaker 1: these bubble seas would create solid ice cot ice cap blocks, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that this would be an entirely weird area that
Speaker 1: that life probably wouldn't be supported in um but if
Speaker 1: it were, it would it would be in this ring
Speaker 1: around the shore of those bubbles bubble seas that were created,
Speaker 1: and the leaning tower of piece would be straight. And
Speaker 1: actually a Dr Karen L. Masters, who was coming in
Speaker 1: on Cornel's Aaska Physicist page, she pretty much backs this up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's got some good mouth. Yeah, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to bore everybody with the numbers, but she conscious the
Speaker 1: numbers and says, yeah, based on the way the atmosphere
Speaker 1: works on the Earth we actually live on. If the
Speaker 1: Earth were impossibly a cube, the edges of the cube
Speaker 1: would be Titanic mountains just jutting far above the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: They would be space mountains in a very atmosphere. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And the oceans would be uh, would be pooled at
Speaker 1: the center of the six square planes. So each side.
Speaker 1: If you think of this cubical planet as a dice,
Speaker 1: each face of the die would be like a one
Speaker 1: when that one would be an ocean. Yeah. Um. And
Speaker 1: then and then you have to also take into account
Speaker 1: how weather and seasons work. What is a pretty complex system,
Speaker 1: and gravity is one of the key players. And gravity
Speaker 1: holds the atmosphere to the Earth, and again it holds
Speaker 1: it uniformly, so in the shape of this cube. That's
Speaker 1: when you have the mountainous edges piercing above the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But then rotation also plays a role because you have
Speaker 1: alternating periods of night and day of heat and cool
Speaker 1: that end up stirring the atmosphere into motion. And then
Speaker 1: a number of other geological and gravitational factors complicated even
Speaker 1: more untill you have this vast and largely unpredictable system.
Speaker 1: But climates would basically depend on exactly how it's rotating,
Speaker 1: because there's you know, a sphere is only going to
Speaker 1: rotate pretty much. I mean, it's it's a it's a sphere.
Speaker 1: Everything is is more or less uniform. So if it's
Speaker 1: rotating up and down side the side, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: This position is still gonna look the same shape wise.
Speaker 1: Whereas a cube, how is that going to rotate? Is
Speaker 1: it gonna be like if I were to lay a
Speaker 1: dice down on the table and just rotated it around.
Speaker 1: Is one of the six sides gonna face face down
Speaker 1: or yeah? Or is it gonna be on edge? Is
Speaker 1: if I were to take a die and spin it
Speaker 1: like a top on the table. Now if I were
Speaker 1: just if it we're gonna rotate like like you spin
Speaker 1: it on the top of the table, you would have
Speaker 1: more or less uniform coverage from the sun. But if
Speaker 1: it were like a die setting on the table, you
Speaker 1: would have like an entire the entire top and bottom
Speaker 1: uh squares, The entire top and bottom planes would be
Speaker 1: like our north and south pole, and then everything else
Speaker 1: would be like like the equator, So it would be similar.
Speaker 1: Then in terms of our weather, Yeah, except weirder because
Speaker 1: you would have like you'd have six six sides six sections.
Speaker 1: Four be equator land and two would be um Arctic
Speaker 1: or antarctic land. So it'd be like you're rolling. If
Speaker 1: you were to then roll it on the table, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I have a two and six chance that I'll roll
Speaker 1: snow and a four and six chance that I'll roll
Speaker 1: the crazy vacation. Well, and that's what I was just
Speaker 1: thinking too. All of a sudden, your wind patterns are
Speaker 1: going to be completely different because what feels like wind
Speaker 1: coming out us right now across our localized area, if
Speaker 1: if you are at an extreme point, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that the wind would act in a very different way
Speaker 1: because it's one of the things about the way that
Speaker 1: the wind works on Earth is you have a global
Speaker 1: system where what's happening on one side of the globe
Speaker 1: affects the other because you have you have heat here,
Speaker 1: cool here. It's all one system. But in this scenario,
Speaker 1: we have the space mountains the edges of the cube,
Speaker 1: so each face will have its own atmosphere basically, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's cut off from the other atmospheres. So
Speaker 1: it would have its own isolated weather So each side
Speaker 1: of the die would have its own weather system, would
Speaker 1: have its own biosquare too, right, because you would have
Speaker 1: completely if you did have some sort of life form
Speaker 1: in there, that's rightly different from one. That's another thing
Speaker 1: that factor, because the emergence of life on Earth had
Speaker 1: a huge role in the amount of oxygen. So what
Speaker 1: would that be like for the north and south section?
Speaker 1: We would you even have life emerged there? If they
Speaker 1: were lifeless planes of extreme cold? You know, what would
Speaker 1: the atmosphere be like? Maybe they wouldn't have breathable atmosphere.
Speaker 1: You might have different, vastly or slightly different atmospheres depending
Speaker 1: on which side of the die you were visiting. And
Speaker 1: that's what what these burning man, the physicism mathematician actually
Speaker 1: brought that up. They said, if the biospheres are bio squares,
Speaker 1: took different routes in terms of these isolated regions, you
Speaker 1: could have a nitrogen oxygen atmosphere on some faces like
Speaker 1: we have, and a hydrogen nitrogen carbon dioxide atmosphere on others,
Speaker 1: kind of like our old atmosphere for a billion years ago, right,
Speaker 1: So that's crazy, And then what would cheesteaks be like
Speaker 1: in each of these zones vastly different. What would what
Speaker 1: would warfare be like between the six zones? I mean
Speaker 1: there's I'm surely somebody has written a book about politics
Speaker 1: of a of a cubicle world. That would be yea
Speaker 1: like who who becomes the master of that world? Right?
Speaker 1: And why how long does it take you to even
Speaker 1: discover other faces of the cube? Because you've got to
Speaker 1: be capable of climbing a space mountain or drilling through it, right,
Speaker 1: unless there are naturally occurring tunnels that can be taken.
Speaker 1: I like the I like the tunnel route. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: what does that do to your perception too? Right, especially
Speaker 1: if you can see the bubble of the atmosphere? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the interesting thing is we're talking about this earlier.
Speaker 1: Even though we live like everyone, I doubt we have
Speaker 1: any flat landers out there listening to this who think
Speaker 1: that we live on a flat world and the ocean's
Speaker 1: empty off and uh and drip off into the void,
Speaker 1: or that we live in a discworld. If you're up there,
Speaker 1: tell us of your time traveling secrets. Do do tell
Speaker 1: us if if you do, you do hold that opinion.
Speaker 1: But now we we all know that the Earth is
Speaker 1: spherical and that we're standing on a plane that wraps
Speaker 1: around on itself, but we still have the experience. We
Speaker 1: still more or less feel like we're on a flat
Speaker 1: world because we can't we we can't see the curvature
Speaker 1: of the Earth. We can't poke our head out above
Speaker 1: the atmosphere or anything like that, so we would still
Speaker 1: experience the cube world more or less the same. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and even as we approach those mountains, they would
Speaker 1: feel like mountains. So I can easily imagine like a
Speaker 1: map of a cubicle planet made by inhabitants of a
Speaker 1: cubical planet, like they well, you know, if they didn't
Speaker 1: know about the other sides, they would just see the
Speaker 1: world as, oh, well, we live in the valley and
Speaker 1: the mountains rise up on either side of us, and
Speaker 1: beyond the mountains is who knows. Well, instead of having
Speaker 1: a flat or of theory, perhaps it would be like
Speaker 1: the triangular earth theory, right, because you can't quite wrap
Speaker 1: your head around it. Alright, We're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and then we're gonna get back to all this,
Speaker 1: So hanging there for one second. This podcast is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Intel the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel at Intel. We believe Curiosity is the spark
Speaker 1: which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
Speaker 1: explore the answers to life's questions. And we're back. So
Speaker 1: let's get that to gravity and why why the Earth
Speaker 1: will never be a cube or it could never have
Speaker 1: become a cube? Well particular Earth. Well, it comes down
Speaker 1: to a creatum starts Earth. You know again, like is
Speaker 1: all these particles come in, there's gonna be one to another.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be You're gonna have the center of gravity
Speaker 1: pulling things in and applying and pulling things in more
Speaker 1: or less uniformly. So like a cube just wouldn't form.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could conceivably a significantly advanced civilization could
Speaker 1: build a giant planet sized cube. But still it's going
Speaker 1: to warp. Right still, it's gonna warp because you're going
Speaker 1: to have that uniform of gravity pulling in. It's gonna
Speaker 1: like things are gonna conform. That's this is what I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting that the weight of the material begins
Speaker 1: to overwhelm the strength of that material and then the
Speaker 1: planet is pulled into a sphere. So you can't help
Speaker 1: that the force from rotation actually like squashing it into
Speaker 1: a sphere alike or spheroid nature is going to abhor
Speaker 1: a giant cube because the sphere is the uniform forces
Speaker 1: at work. Yeah, And just an example of this, one
Speaker 1: of the two moons of Mars Phobos. It's not large
Speaker 1: enough to produce enough gravity to become a proper sphere.
Speaker 1: So you look at that and you see that it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's sort of like egg shaped, but then
Speaker 1: it has this gigantic crater on one side. It's called
Speaker 1: the Stickney crater, and it kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: fish that's been punched in the mouth and you just
Speaker 1: can see you like, oh, this mean that's just never
Speaker 1: going to quite become like a billiard ball here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like think of this all right, Say here at the park,
Speaker 1: right and say let's say, I don't know, Lady Gaga
Speaker 1: shows up too, and she just starts performing in the
Speaker 1: center of the park and everybody's interested in so they're
Speaker 1: going to gather around to see her. Only so many
Speaker 1: people can fit in any given space. So and as
Speaker 1: the crowd gathers around her, which shape do you think
Speaker 1: they're going to take? Do you think it's gonna roughly
Speaker 1: be spherical or roughly be a big square. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be spherical or at least roughly. So it's gonna because
Speaker 1: people are gonna be drawn in towards the center of attention,
Speaker 1: and in our universe, the center of attention is always gravity.
Speaker 1: I feel like you have a secret agenda to insert
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga in as many podcasts as possible. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a good reference. I mean, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things you get Lady Gaga is performing in the park.
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd go see what it was about. I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just clocking it. Lamb. Okay, well, we we've
Speaker 1: shown that she showed up in studies before. There's that
Speaker 1: Psychology Today paper that made some arguments about decision making
Speaker 1: and Lady Gaga. So yeah, yeah, about motivational forces and
Speaker 1: how you should probably align yourself with Lady Gaga. Rather,
Speaker 1: I really need to do some searches and find out
Speaker 1: how many peer of view papers have been Lady gagat paced.
Speaker 1: I think we should just do a podcast on Lady Gaga.
Speaker 1: Let's just get that out of the way. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I hope the Gaga explanation here work. I mean that
Speaker 1: because that's basically you know why nobody would would stand
Speaker 1: at the edge of that cube if they could be
Speaker 1: closer to the actions by standing a little more to
Speaker 1: the left of the right, Like, why would they? Why
Speaker 1: would they form it? They wouldn't because they want to
Speaker 1: see what's happening. We want to be closer to the action.
Speaker 1: They're being pulled towards her right, so she wants them
Speaker 1: to be pulled toward her. Yeah, so that's basically why
Speaker 1: we we can't have a cubicle planet. But it's it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to think about it, and and we may it
Speaker 1: may be overlooking some some key ramifications here. So by
Speaker 1: all means, for sure we are. Yeah. So by all means,
Speaker 1: if we missed anything, or if you have any crazy
Speaker 1: thoughts about how anything would work on a cubicle planet,
Speaker 1: you should let us know, just as some other people
Speaker 1: have let us know about things via listener mail. And
Speaker 1: I have a whole stack of them here. Let me
Speaker 1: go through and read a couple of them. Jackie writes
Speaker 1: in and says, Hey, they're listening to the Bees Versus
Speaker 1: Wasts episode and listening to your comments on how bees
Speaker 1: would make a bad and non aggressive mascot. Um. I
Speaker 1: can go one better when it comes to unthreatening mascots,
Speaker 1: the Pretzels. My high school in Freeport, Illinois is the
Speaker 1: proud home of the Freeport Pretzels, apparently named after a
Speaker 1: beer and pretzel making company that used to be located
Speaker 1: in town. I just thought you might be amused by this.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the brilliant podcast. I just can only hope
Speaker 1: that those are the big, soft, puffy pretzels instead of
Speaker 1: a little crunchy wan. Yeah, doesn't make it even better. Well,
Speaker 1: It's what I love about that too, is that the
Speaker 1: company is not even there. They're no longer tied. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's a major sponsor or a major economic
Speaker 1: force in the area. They just remember the pretzel factory
Speaker 1: that was, so they're still the fighting press and that's
Speaker 1: what they do. I'm going to remember the Pretzels, public
Speaker 1: their work, and how does that mascot costume work. You'd
Speaker 1: have to be super twisted to say I'm thinking like
Speaker 1: to slay retiree. We also heard from a listener by
Speaker 1: the name of Carlo and Carlo Retzin and says, greetings
Speaker 1: from sunny Dominican Republic. It's pretty awesome. I am relatively
Speaker 1: new to your podcast just a few months now and
Speaker 1: want to congratulate you on your excellent work, very interesting
Speaker 1: and diverse subject matter, approach, creative. But I find myself
Speaker 1: not listening to my radio on driving to and from
Speaker 1: work now as I'm usually glued to your show as
Speaker 1: well as stuff you should know, I must admit regarding
Speaker 1: this podcast, I believe an interesting example of socially accepted
Speaker 1: liars and lying are actors. When you think about it,
Speaker 1: they might just be the most admired professional liars around.
Speaker 1: Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Well, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting because you know, we we talked about
Speaker 1: lying liars and how lying is in a way like
Speaker 1: reshaping reality and creating a false reality in which the
Speaker 1: participant and the listener is is a part of. And yeah,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent that the theater, somebody gets up
Speaker 1: on the stage and they just start lying their butt off. Well,
Speaker 1: and I remember when we were talking to Dr Ellen Arkin,
Speaker 1: professor at George Tech and Robotics, and he was talking
Speaker 1: about his decepticonic Believes. I don't know if that's like
Speaker 1: the real name for the bo I think that was
Speaker 1: the ternament ended up being on their own arm by
Speaker 1: the media, you know, science journalists, but you know they're
Speaker 1: they're trying to figure out how to program lying and deception.
Speaker 1: And he was talking about how we are constantly self
Speaker 1: deceiving and how and I was thinking about the actors.
Speaker 1: He was saying, why do we pay good Funny to
Speaker 1: go to a theater and see these pixels projected on
Speaker 1: a screen just so that it moves us in somewhere
Speaker 1: brings up some sort of emotions. So yeah, absolutely, the
Speaker 1: actor's biggest players out there and we pay them to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We heard from a listener by the name of Jim
Speaker 1: who wrote in with a Higgers guy to the Galaxy
Speaker 1: reference on the whole I Don't Eat the Panda episode
Speaker 1: about our relationship between animals and food. They pointed out
Speaker 1: that there is a quadruped in the books that basically
Speaker 1: it's a cow that's been genetically engineered to want to
Speaker 1: be eaten and to verbalize this desire. Because therefore the
Speaker 1: cow wants to be eaten, we're just giving into its
Speaker 1: wishes by eating it. In therefore it's moral, which ends
Speaker 1: the whole problem right there. Boom. Yeah, I love an
Speaker 1: elegant but ridiculous answer, you know, to a to a
Speaker 1: quandrit And certainly that's that's kind of like that's what
Speaker 1: his Checkers guy is all about. We also heard from
Speaker 1: a list of my Name with John John writes and
Speaker 1: says and your Don't Eat the Panda podcast today, you
Speaker 1: found it hard to grasp that people could raise monkeys
Speaker 1: as pets and still eat monkeys as food. It is
Speaker 1: really not much different than having fish in your fish
Speaker 1: tank or birds in your bird cage and still eating
Speaker 1: fish or chicken without giving it much or maybe for
Speaker 1: Julie the vegetarian, having a chia pet but still eating
Speaker 1: chia seeds. How do you what do you have to
Speaker 1: say to that man? I gave this up at his
Speaker 1: only timing out. It was so hard for me etho
Speaker 1: seeds and then look over and see the innocent chia
Speaker 1: pet sprouting forth. Yeah, I just at first I started
Speaker 1: turning it to the window so it couldn't see me
Speaker 1: eating its seeds, and eventually I just had to take
Speaker 1: it out of my diet. Yeah, well you don't see
Speaker 1: as men anymore because said like the chia pet has
Speaker 1: been hunted near to the point of extinction, so except
Speaker 1: for in variety stores. Yeah near you. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that Turner has a big reserve of them up
Speaker 1: the north. But it's but it's only a matter of
Speaker 1: time until he opens that new chain. It's like a
Speaker 1: chia pet salad store. It's gonna be like super Crackers
Speaker 1: or something. Super Salad. Now, super Salad is the real one.
Speaker 1: Super Crackers is the one from Party Gap. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be that. Um so hey. We also received a
Speaker 1: lot of other emails, and we seem to be getting
Speaker 1: more and more of them, to the point where I
Speaker 1: can't really keep up with uh. I mean, we tried
Speaker 1: to respond to a lot of these, but are we
Speaker 1: are getting a lot of them these days. But bear
Speaker 1: in mind that that we definitely read them all, even
Speaker 1: if we don't get to read them on the air,
Speaker 1: or if we don't if we don't, actually we'll get there.
Speaker 1: I can touch with you. Yeah, yeah, but but they
Speaker 1: are greatly appreciated. And the other way to interact with
Speaker 1: us is of course to find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can find us on both of those as blow
Speaker 1: the mind, and we update those feeds all the time
Speaker 1: with all sorts of cool stuff, so check it out.
Speaker 1: It really do send us an email because we will
Speaker 1: read it and it certainly helps us. Uh inform us
Speaker 1: the sort of topics that we want to cover for you,
Speaker 1: and we always love to hear what you guys want
Speaker 1: to know about next, so send us an email at
Speaker 1: Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
Speaker 1: the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
Speaker 1: the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.