Speaker 1: You asked me to find the fourteenth man for your expedition,
Speaker 1: and I chose mister Baggins. Just let anyone say I
Speaker 1: chose the wrong man or the wrong house, and you
Speaker 1: can stop at thirteen and have all the bad luck
Speaker 1: you like, or go back to digging coal. He scowled
Speaker 1: so angrily and glowing that the dwarf huddled back in
Speaker 1: his chair. And when Bilbo tried to open his mouth
Speaker 1: to ask a question, he turned and frowned at him
Speaker 1: and stuck out his bushy eyebrows till Bilbo shut his
Speaker 1: mouth tight and snap, that's right. Let's have no more argument.
Speaker 1: I have chosen mister Baggins, and that ought to be
Speaker 1: enough for all of you. If I say he is
Speaker 1: a burglar, a burglar he is, or will be when
Speaker 1: the time comes. There's a lot more to him than
Speaker 1: you guess, and a deal more than he has any
Speaker 1: idea of himself. You may possibly all live to thank me. Yet,
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind? The production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, are you welcome to stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind? My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and I guess it's obvious that we're back
Speaker 1: in Hobbit territory today. That's right. You know, we did
Speaker 1: an episode, I guess a few months back or several
Speaker 1: months back, I'm not sure which, where we talked about
Speaker 1: the One Ring, we contemplated the metallurgy of the Rings
Speaker 1: of Power and the Lord of the Rings. And in
Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to be returning to Middle Earth.
Speaker 1: We're going to look at everyone's favorite hole dwelling pipe
Speaker 1: smoking six meal a day, eating humanoids, the Hobbit. So
Speaker 1: this year I was going back and reading Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings, and I was about halfway through Fellowship of
Speaker 1: the Ring, and the question entered my mind. And that
Speaker 1: question is are the Hobbits too cute? Are their lives
Speaker 1: just too quaint and too sweet for this story? And
Speaker 1: I thought about it for a minute. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I get a little bit board maybe in
Speaker 1: some of the early chapters of Fellowship where it's going
Speaker 1: on and on about the the quaintness of the Hobbit existence.
Speaker 1: But then I realized, no, I think it really does work. It. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's important for the story because it makes you feel
Speaker 1: the adventure and the pain of the adventure all the more.
Speaker 1: When you get a full feeling for how cozy and
Speaker 1: unadventurous their their prequest lives were. Yeah, it's in a
Speaker 1: fantastic world that just gets more and more fantastic and
Speaker 1: dark and magical the further out you go from the Shire,
Speaker 1: the realm of the Middle Earth that is home to
Speaker 1: the Hobbits, you know, And it makes sense to start
Speaker 1: with something that is quaint, that is normal, that is
Speaker 1: almost you know, painfully British and cozy and uh uh,
Speaker 1: not so much cute, I guess, at least not in
Speaker 1: the original intent. I know, I know, I've read that
Speaker 1: Tolkien did not like the idea of illustrations that made
Speaker 1: the Hobbits look too much like children, because they should
Speaker 1: all look like like small little like middle aged or
Speaker 1: old men imagine. But yeah, you need you need somebody
Speaker 1: ordinary to go on these adventures, to be challenged by
Speaker 1: these adventures. Right, you feel the rain and the hardness
Speaker 1: of the stones under their feet and the threat of
Speaker 1: the Goblin's blade so much more when you've when you've
Speaker 1: seen the world of Tea by the Fire. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then and there's certainly the the species of Middle Earth
Speaker 1: that we can relate to the most. They are, they're
Speaker 1: really they're even more human than the humans or the
Speaker 1: men as Token calls them, uh, that we encounter in
Speaker 1: the story. Essentially the main storytelling reason that the Hobbits
Speaker 1: are central to the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.
Speaker 1: But of course there's more to this as well, more
Speaker 1: to unwrap. And and that's why we chose that particular
Speaker 1: passage from the Hobbit to read at the beginning, because
Speaker 1: in this particular section, basically Gandalf, the gray globetrotting wizard
Speaker 1: that he is, is injecting himself into dwarf and politics
Speaker 1: essentially to rid the world of the last evil dragon
Speaker 1: so that it can't aid the coming war with Saaron. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it's uh, you know, it's it's in a way,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like shady politics, I guess, but it's
Speaker 1: it's certainly yeah, but it's it's it serves a greater good.
Speaker 1: And and but Gandalf is getting a bit frustrated because
Speaker 1: he's he's helping the dwarves out, he's enabling this mission,
Speaker 1: uh to to retake their mountain from smog. And they
Speaker 1: don't want to have thirteen dwarves go on a trip
Speaker 1: that's unlucky. They need another person, and Gandalf says, here
Speaker 1: you go, Here is a Hobbit, here's Bilbo. He's the
Speaker 1: fellow you need. He's a burglar. You're gonna need a burglar.
Speaker 1: And of course the whole time Bilbo is like, I
Speaker 1: can't go on adventure. I can't do that. I don't
Speaker 1: have any of these skills. And the dwarves are agreeing
Speaker 1: with him, and they're saying, oh, he's useless, let's not
Speaker 1: take him. Don't you have something else. Let's just eat
Speaker 1: all his food and move on, right, So you know
Speaker 1: it's you. It's it's easy to to understand the criticism
Speaker 1: because Bilbo does seem rather useless, and he remains rather
Speaker 1: useless feeling for a large portion of the book. Uh
Speaker 1: So it raises the question is there something about the Hobbit?
Speaker 1: Is there something about this species that that that is
Speaker 1: really special? Is there Hobbit exceptionalism that might be exploited?
Speaker 1: And that is ultimately what Gandalf is leaning on, that
Speaker 1: there's something special about the Hobbits that will help enable,
Speaker 1: you know, first of all, victory and this mission to
Speaker 1: retake the Lonely Mountain, and then ultimately in the quest
Speaker 1: of the Ring that we encounter in the Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings. You know, despite how over the course of
Speaker 1: The Lord of the Rings we see several different Hobbits
Speaker 1: in different ways, at different times, being seduced by the
Speaker 1: power of the Ring, it does seem like Hobbits, more
Speaker 1: than other creatures, are somewhat resistant to it. Like they
Speaker 1: are somehow able to put up more of a fight,
Speaker 1: to be less enticed by the promises of power and
Speaker 1: glory that the Ring entails. Yeah, perhaps leaning into their
Speaker 1: inherent quaintness, right, I mean, ultimately, all any hobbit wants
Speaker 1: is a nice hobbit hole to live in and a
Speaker 1: mug of ale and you know, some some mush rooms
Speaker 1: and eggs and bacon for for one of their many meals.
Speaker 1: I mean, almost any time a man, a human gets
Speaker 1: his hands on the ring, he's like, oh great, yes,
Speaker 1: so we'll slow down for a second here, because there
Speaker 1: may be some people out there. I find it hard
Speaker 1: to believe, but there may be some people who don't
Speaker 1: know what a hobbit is. Well, just to drive it
Speaker 1: home here, the Lord of the Rings the Hobbit. These
Speaker 1: books are our fantasy novels full of elves, and goblins, dragons,
Speaker 1: uh you know, demonic ball rogs, uh, half living ring races,
Speaker 1: and various demigods and wizards. But then we also have
Speaker 1: the quaint hobbits, and typically they fit the following profile.
Speaker 1: They are quote a little people about half our height.
Speaker 1: They walk around barefooted and boast a generous helping of
Speaker 1: hair atop each foot. I was to understand they had
Speaker 1: hair underneath their feet. Is that not right? I think
Speaker 1: you're right as well. We just that the illustrations rarely
Speaker 1: show that that the bottom of the foot hair. I
Speaker 1: think that was my understanding is that they're they're very um.
Speaker 1: They're actually good as burglars because they're very light of
Speaker 1: step and their footfalls are quiet cushioned by this hair.
Speaker 1: They're also known for their hobbit holes. These are fashionable
Speaker 1: underground homes, but they don't always reside in these, despite
Speaker 1: their their overall subterranean tendencies and a likely history of
Speaker 1: borrow habitation and uh oh. A big one, of course,
Speaker 1: is their hunger. They're their appetite. They require some six
Speaker 1: meals a day or what about second breakfast, and then
Speaker 1: they're also at least very good at hiding, which can
Speaker 1: be extrapolated into a skill of burglary. And I guess
Speaker 1: that's that's one argument for what Gandolf is saying, Like,
Speaker 1: here is a species it's naturally good at hiding. So
Speaker 1: given time, by the time you get to the Lonely Mountain,
Speaker 1: Bilbo will either be dead or very good at adventuring
Speaker 1: and the like in a stealthy way, he will have
Speaker 1: leveled up appropriately. But another another way to look at
Speaker 1: it is to look at the specific biological adaptations of
Speaker 1: a hypothetical hobbit species. And so that's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: largely focus on in this episode. And the beautiful thing
Speaker 1: is that we don't have to just make all of
Speaker 1: this up on our own. They're a handful of papers
Speaker 1: that we've been able to refer to, generally of the
Speaker 1: tongue in cheek variety. So we're not talking like hard,
Speaker 1: serious scientific or medical contemplation, but still do get quantitative
Speaker 1: about it. And then you get quantitative and they get
Speaker 1: into the science of like, all right, let's talk about hobbits.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about how much they eat? Would they be healthy?
Speaker 1: Would they be actually capable of walking across the continent
Speaker 1: with a bunch of adventurers. Uh, you know what, are
Speaker 1: they truly this this solid investment that Gandalf the Gray seas.
Speaker 1: That's a mighty good question. I mean, not to cast
Speaker 1: any doubt on Gandalf the Gray's um in a mindset here.
Speaker 1: You know, clearly great wizard. We'd love to have him
Speaker 1: on the show sometime for an interview. But uh, to
Speaker 1: tune into our new podcast series, Gandalf Mindset. It's where
Speaker 1: you learn wizard mindset. Mindset. There's probably way a book
Speaker 1: about that. Don't let them steal your staff. Six easy
Speaker 1: steps to Wizard dominance. I would not be surprised if
Speaker 1: if to find out that a book like that existed.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's start with the with the obvious,
Speaker 1: the dietary constraints of the Hobbit. Now, this is going
Speaker 1: to be one of the main differences you would notice
Speaker 1: in like a physical energy kind of situation with the Hobbits,
Speaker 1: because they never stop eating. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: that has driven home again and again in the books.
Speaker 1: It's always time for a meal. Yeah yeah, and they
Speaker 1: Plus they tend to be a little bit portly, leading
Speaker 1: many a non halfling to question their sedendary lifestyle and
Speaker 1: and and and, as well as their insistence on those
Speaker 1: six daily meals because they go with breakfast, second breakfast,
Speaker 1: eleven seas, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper. How is
Speaker 1: dinner different from supper? Yeah? That that one was the
Speaker 1: hardest for me to figure out, because I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, let me look at my own, you know,
Speaker 1: dietary requirements in my schedule, and and I realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: I usually like breakfast for me is like smoothie and coffee,
Speaker 1: and then second breakfast is like more coffee and like
Speaker 1: an apple or something later on, and then eleven z s.
Speaker 1: I'm I have been known to have like a half
Speaker 1: a peanut butter sandwich, perhaps with more coffee, and then
Speaker 1: I have actual lunch, and then I don't have afternoon tea,
Speaker 1: but I generally have more coffee and perhaps another apple,
Speaker 1: and then dinner I have an evening meal, But supper
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't really come up with a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a possibility for that in my life, like
Speaker 1: unless you count an after dinner drink or a you know,
Speaker 1: a late night snack as a meal. And I don't
Speaker 1: think we were talking about that with Hobbits. I think
Speaker 1: for each of these, with the possible exception of the
Speaker 1: afternoon tea, we're talking about a full blown meal or
Speaker 1: you're closer to Hobbit scheduling than a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Though it sounds like it sounds like you kind of graze. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if I'm working from home and it's
Speaker 1: cold out, then it's just you know, wandering around trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what I can smear peanut butter on um.
Speaker 1: That's why it's good to get out of the house.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's hard to figure out how that
Speaker 1: what the difference between uh supper and dinner would be
Speaker 1: for the for the Hobbit, And clearly it points towards
Speaker 1: just the fact that they need more to eat. They
Speaker 1: have just higher dietary requirements than a mere human or
Speaker 1: some other species. So here's the question, based on real
Speaker 1: world biology, is this sort of diet reasonable for a
Speaker 1: creature of the hobbit stature? And unfortunately we have a
Speaker 1: paper to refer to in Christio Meno, Horan and sky
Speaker 1: Rosetti of the University of Leicester Center for Interdisciplinary Science
Speaker 1: weighed in on the issue in their paper Modeling the
Speaker 1: BMR of Species in Middle Earth. So the BMR in question,
Speaker 1: this is the base metabolic rate. This is the number
Speaker 1: of calories that our bodies are very cells need in
Speaker 1: order to function well. And the base part of it
Speaker 1: would be this is not including whatever extra stuff you're doing.
Speaker 1: This is just like to stay alive. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: not just like extra curricular eating, the wandering around the
Speaker 1: house looking for peanut butter sort of thing. So ather
Speaker 1: of words, the researchers set out to gauge the amount
Speaker 1: of energy that a Hobbit's body needs to function at rest,
Speaker 1: and they did this not only for the Hobbits of
Speaker 1: Middle Earth, but also for the fair elves. They did
Speaker 1: this by modeling each fictional race as an actual Mammalian
Speaker 1: Earth species. The European road deer stood in for forest
Speaker 1: dwelling elves, and the Hobbit, being a burrowing hole dwelling people,
Speaker 1: was stuck with the Southwestern pygmy possum. And this is
Speaker 1: what they figured out. They decided that for a hobbit BMR,
Speaker 1: we're looking at one thousand, eight hundred and eighteen point
Speaker 1: seven kilo calories every day. This compared to seventeen h
Speaker 1: two point to killer calories every six days for humans
Speaker 1: or or men in Middle Earth as they're called, and
Speaker 1: then for elves, we're looking at one thousand, four hundred,
Speaker 1: sixteen point five kilo calories. As such, they figured the
Speaker 1: average hobbit would require some six point seven meals per day,
Speaker 1: and uh, indeed that's in keeping with the high hiher
Speaker 1: energy demands for smaller birds and mammals. Now, you might think,
Speaker 1: why would smaller animals on average have greater relative food requirements, right, Like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be bigger animals that would have greater relative
Speaker 1: food requirements. Well, on average, smaller animals do tend to
Speaker 1: have faster metabolisms. There's you know, individual variation, but on average,
Speaker 1: the smaller you are, probably the more energy you burn
Speaker 1: proportional to your body mass. Why would this be? One
Speaker 1: major reason is thermoregulation. So a major part of what
Speaker 1: chemical energy from food does in metabolism is keep the
Speaker 1: body warm. Heat loss from an organism is a function
Speaker 1: of its surface area. So in the past we've talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, one reason for the biological implausibility of like
Speaker 1: Kaiju sized animals like King Kong is that they would
Speaker 1: probably have trouble cooling their bodies they're they're too big.
Speaker 1: They've got too much volume and not enough surface area
Speaker 1: for heat to escape through. Even worse, if you happen
Speaker 1: to be a giant fire breathing dragon like small exactly uh,
Speaker 1: smaller animals that would have exactly the opposite problem. Right.
Speaker 1: Smaller animals have a greater surface area to volume ratio,
Speaker 1: meaning they lose heat faster than larger animals. Think of
Speaker 1: the way that a smaller ice cube melts faster than
Speaker 1: a bigger one. Uh. So they often have to eat
Speaker 1: a lot more relative to their body weight to maintain
Speaker 1: a stable body temperature. Uh. Some very small animals have
Speaker 1: just unbelievable metabolic requirements and can eat huge amounts of
Speaker 1: food relative to their bodies. I was reading a Good
Speaker 1: nat Geo article about this by Liz Langley, and uh,
Speaker 1: it made an interesting point in comparison, so it brings
Speaker 1: up the biggest animal on the earth, the blue whale.
Speaker 1: The blue whale on average eats about four tons of
Speaker 1: krill every day, and that is definitely a lot of food,
Speaker 1: or it sounds like a lot, But the blue whale
Speaker 1: has a body mass of around two hundred tons, so
Speaker 1: on average the whale is only eating about two percent
Speaker 1: worth of its body weight every twenty four hours. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the pigmy shrew of Britain, which only weighs about an ounce,
Speaker 1: can eat about a hundred and twenty five percent of
Speaker 1: its body weight per day. So think about this, It's
Speaker 1: like a one hundred and sixty pound human eight a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five percent of their body weight every day.
Speaker 1: This would be about two hundred pounds worth of food.
Speaker 1: I did some math and if it was all Big Max,
Speaker 1: that's about three hundred and seventy six Big Max a day. Wow,
Speaker 1: just spread out before you. That's that's something they divided
Speaker 1: into six meals. The shrew factoid reminds me of I
Speaker 1: imagine you've seen this because it was on MSTY three
Speaker 1: K back in the day. They did Attack of the
Speaker 1: Killer Shrews. Terrible black and white movie. But I think
Speaker 1: it was like dogs with carpet draped over them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but fun in a way because I think they tried so. Basically,
Speaker 1: the situation was, hey, shrews are these ravenous creek tres,
Speaker 1: but thankfully they're small. If they ever got big, they
Speaker 1: would be the most dangerous predator on the planet. And
Speaker 1: then love and behold that's what happens in this movie. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a great premise, except it it didn't work. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work because if they got bigger, they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the same surface to volume problem. Yeah but but yeah,
Speaker 1: that that reminded me of of that. I think they
Speaker 1: end up like building a tank out of like stuff
Speaker 1: in their cabin too, then survive the trees. It's it's
Speaker 1: a terrible movie, but way better than it should be.
Speaker 1: One of the things I remember about it is the
Speaker 1: way that like the dogs that they've got dressed up
Speaker 1: to be the shrews really act like dogs, and you
Speaker 1: just see them kind of like trotting around at people
Speaker 1: like dogs do, and it's cute. They're supposed to be
Speaker 1: these menacing monsters, but like they're clearly happy to see
Speaker 1: the people on set. And it's not just that like
Speaker 1: this one species, the pygmy shure of Britain, is is like,
Speaker 1: you know, freakish, Like even the common trew needs to
Speaker 1: eat every two to three hours and has to consume
Speaker 1: an average of like of its body weight ere days.
Speaker 1: This is fairly common among very small organisms. They need
Speaker 1: to eat a lot of food relative to their body size,
Speaker 1: and again that's just the base metabolic rate. That's not
Speaker 1: to mention other necessary expenditures for say, creatures that engage
Speaker 1: in very energy intensive activities. One great example here is hummingbirds.
Speaker 1: So they're very small, they have big thermoregulation requirements, but
Speaker 1: they also have huge caloric requirements from physical activity. They've
Speaker 1: got to stay in the air. I mean, think about
Speaker 1: how much energy it takes to keep vehicles in the air.
Speaker 1: Uh So, they use these rapid wing beats that require
Speaker 1: their heart to beat about twelve hundred times a minute,
Speaker 1: maybe like twenty beats per second. Sometimes that's that's a lot. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so they do. They are just constantly having to feed,
Speaker 1: and then if they can't, if you have it's like
Speaker 1: I imagine most if you have seen the various documentaries
Speaker 1: that show how the like. In some cases they'll just
Speaker 1: have to shut their bodies down. They have to go
Speaker 1: in a kind of suspended animation at times. But on
Speaker 1: an average day, a hummingbird will often have to eat
Speaker 1: roughly twice its body weight and nectar. Uh So, I
Speaker 1: was trying to think would hobbits have any such requirements
Speaker 1: based on activity? You can see why having smaller bodies
Speaker 1: that have a higher surface area of volume ratio. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I can't really think of any activities that are
Speaker 1: along the lines of the hummingbirds. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: much energy it takes to smoke pipeweed or to like
Speaker 1: eat tea cakes and gossip about other families. But maybe
Speaker 1: there's something going on there. I wonder if blowing rings
Speaker 1: of pipe weed smoke might actually be a highly energy
Speaker 1: intensive activity. Well, some of them are farmers, you do
Speaker 1: remember farmer maggot. Okay, so that's a lot of work.
Speaker 1: A lot of work goes into that. And then there
Speaker 1: there are at least tales of of warring Hobbits in
Speaker 1: the past. Which one it was that is said to
Speaker 1: have actually ridden a horse and battle to Goblin and
Speaker 1: in a pass skirmish. So there are exceptions, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, the typical hobbit life that when visions
Speaker 1: does entail a lot of sitting around and reflecting. I
Speaker 1: guess another option is, what if there's something going on
Speaker 1: in the hobbit brain that makes their their nervous system
Speaker 1: very energy intensive. Yeah, so maybe they're like secret ment
Speaker 1: ats like the hobbit. The fact that they can you know,
Speaker 1: remember so much gossip about the other families in the shire.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it takes a huge amount of mental energy
Speaker 1: to constantly resist the call to adventure. Yeah, or they
Speaker 1: they do worry a lot, like what what if they're
Speaker 1: they're high energy cognitive powers are used exclusively to worrying
Speaker 1: about where their next meal is going to come from?
Speaker 1: And and uh and and how tiresome the journey is. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to continue this discussion and we're gonna start
Speaker 1: talking about some some elven bread. Than alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So there's an interesting follow up to this article we
Speaker 1: were talking about with the base metabolic rate. Again, that
Speaker 1: was from the author's Chris Show amount of Horran and
Speaker 1: sky Rosetti. Well, they followed it up with another paper
Speaker 1: simply walking into more door. How much limbus would the
Speaker 1: Fellowship have needed? So Limbus, as you might remember, is
Speaker 1: the special travel bread of the elves that helps sustain
Speaker 1: our adventurers. It's wrapped in leaves. It's brown on the
Speaker 1: outside and sweet and white on the inside, and it
Speaker 1: and it never spoils. It's just always perfect. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe even a little bit warm. It's Galadriel
Speaker 1: that gives them the limbus, right, I think so, And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's supposed to be great stuff. I aways imagine
Speaker 1: it is being like a scone, you know, like a
Speaker 1: really good scone. Like they're just living exclusively off scones
Speaker 1: on this journey. So it becomes one of the key
Speaker 1: provisions that they eat a lot on these on the
Speaker 1: journey and the Lord of the Rings, so naturally the
Speaker 1: authors wanted to know how much of this one would
Speaker 1: need to sustain all nine members of the Fellowship of
Speaker 1: the Ring on a ninety two day quest across the continent. Well,
Speaker 1: they concluded that a single Hobbit would require seventy six
Speaker 1: pieces of Elvin limbus bread to march all the way
Speaker 1: to Mount Doom. That amount, that's seventy six pieces of
Speaker 1: limbus compared with ninety nine for a dwarf, sixty for
Speaker 1: an elf in seventy one for humans. As such, the
Speaker 1: nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring, they concluded,
Speaker 1: would require six hundred and seventy five pieces of limbus,
Speaker 1: with three hundred and four pieces allotted to the four
Speaker 1: Hobbit members. Uh Gimili alone would need ninety nine pieces
Speaker 1: of limbus. Well, now I know they didn't get that
Speaker 1: much limbus. I think they would have said something. I
Speaker 1: remember they talked about how you know, you eat one
Speaker 1: bite of limbus in your full for you know a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the other thing it is. It is magic, and
Speaker 1: that that's the underlying footnote on all of these discussions. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is ultimately magical bread and so forth. Therefore it
Speaker 1: has its own rules. But still it's it's this. It's
Speaker 1: a neat it's a neat consideration here. Now, of course
Speaker 1: it's probably a little bit dry. I always imagine it
Speaker 1: being a little dry, So you're gonna need something to
Speaker 1: wash it all down with. You're gonna need some some water.
Speaker 1: And here, according to yet another paper, this time from
Speaker 1: Catherine Barrage, the conclusion is that they wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: able to carry all of their water with them on
Speaker 1: the journey. She points out that there's no agreed upon
Speaker 1: method to calculate water requirements for adult humans, but surface
Speaker 1: area of the individual is typically invoked, and she concludes
Speaker 1: that one hobbit would have would have required two point
Speaker 1: four leaders per day. And when you extrapolate that to
Speaker 1: all the days of the journey, you're encountering an amount
Speaker 1: of water that would be impossible for a Hobbit to
Speaker 1: carry for itself. Now you, aside from Sam mentioning some
Speaker 1: concern over water on their travels, I don't remember them
Speaker 1: really detailing a lot of their woes. Getting potable water
Speaker 1: is good because I guess surely there would have been
Speaker 1: some other ways to get drinking water on the way,
Speaker 1: like when they visited this place or another, Occasionally there's
Speaker 1: going to be a stream of of moving water that
Speaker 1: they can trust. I don't recall them ever being concerned
Speaker 1: about like getting giardia from drinking water out of the
Speaker 1: stream or something. Yeah, it would have been a different
Speaker 1: book of all the Hobbits just constantly had dysenteria the
Speaker 1: whole way to Mortal Lord of the Diarrhea. Okay, so
Speaker 1: here's a Here's here's another fun wrinkle in all of this.
Speaker 1: Token rights meals didn't come quite as often as Bilbo
Speaker 1: would have liked them, but still he began to feel
Speaker 1: that adventures were not so bad after all. So Bilbo
Speaker 1: continually complains about being hungry and tired, but he makes do,
Speaker 1: and he digs into a wide variety of foods during
Speaker 1: the journey. Uh. This is this is one of the
Speaker 1: pleasures of a lot of books, really, but especially in
Speaker 1: the Hobbit. It's like all these foods that he encountered,
Speaker 1: they're not that diverse, but there, but every he eats
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting things, you know, like they meet
Speaker 1: up with a vegetarian wear bear and he serves them
Speaker 1: cream and honey, you know, yeah, yeah, or um you know,
Speaker 1: or there, or they're scavenging sorrel and berries in the
Speaker 1: mountain wilds and then making do with that, you know.
Speaker 1: So he may have wanted bacon and eggs and mushrooms
Speaker 1: like any normal Hobbit, of of taste and means, but
Speaker 1: means of course, but he was able to get by
Speaker 1: on all of these various foods. So I think we
Speaker 1: can conclude from that possibly that you know, Hobbits, like
Speaker 1: other highly adaptive organisms, benefit from a varied omnivorous diet.
Speaker 1: So even though they require quite a few calories, they're
Speaker 1: able to get them in a variety of ways. I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of the primal state to which we see the
Speaker 1: Hobbit Snegel reduced in Lord of the Rings sneegel like
Speaker 1: a gollum. You know, he's the sneaky, opportunistic creature that
Speaker 1: hunts that scavenge scavenges. He'll eat anything he can get
Speaker 1: his hands on, even though he prefers meat. Yeah, he'll well,
Speaker 1: he likes fish. He in the movies at least I
Speaker 1: don't recall the scene in the books, but he uh
Speaker 1: you know what's taters precious. He does not seem to
Speaker 1: be a fan of the carbs. He could be what
Speaker 1: happens to a hobbit on the paleo diet. Yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: of course. One thing we have to remember about about
Speaker 1: Sneckel is that he's been living underground for a long
Speaker 1: time and he's basically evolved into this more subterranean form,
Speaker 1: and he's eating he has the sort of diet you
Speaker 1: would expect from like a mostly subterranean creature, Like he's
Speaker 1: having to eat just a bunch of fish, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: ioas fish whatever you can find, the occasional goblin that
Speaker 1: he can murder in a passageway. But he does have
Speaker 1: that beach bod is very skinny relative to the other hobbits.
Speaker 1: It's true, he's in some ways, he's in better shape um,
Speaker 1: and of course he has this one fitness secret that
Speaker 1: drives people crazy. And then of course it's the One Ring, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nutritionists hate him. Click here to find his one secret. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's It's often overlooked the fitness advantages of the of
Speaker 1: the One Ring and the various rings of power, because
Speaker 1: the Nascal we're all in pretty good shape as well,
Speaker 1: you know, regardless of their they're possibly you know, incorporeal
Speaker 1: form and unliving status and soulless nature. Now to speak
Speaker 1: more about the biological effects of the One Ring, that
Speaker 1: reminds me I was thinking about how the Hobbit fits
Speaker 1: into theories about basal metabolic rate versus lifespan, because we
Speaker 1: know the Ring does something to lifespan. Hobbits live a
Speaker 1: long time, Bilbo Baggins live to the old age of
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty one, but that is apparently due
Speaker 1: to the unnatural life extending powers of the One Ring. Right,
Speaker 1: That's one of the things the Ring supposedly does. It
Speaker 1: helps you live a long time or maybe even indefinitely.
Speaker 1: If you never lose it, though that your life becomes
Speaker 1: reduced to a hollow echo of what it once was. Right,
Speaker 1: And as we mentioned in the last episode about the Ring,
Speaker 1: the ring will lose you if it no longer needs you,
Speaker 1: So basically it just has the option of keeping its
Speaker 1: host alive for an extended period of time if it
Speaker 1: if it aids the ring right. But even without the Ring,
Speaker 1: Hobbits seem to live for a long time. The ringless
Speaker 1: Hobbit old Took live to the ripe old age of
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty, just one year less than Bilbo,
Speaker 1: without any kind of special magic that we know of.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's normal for Hobbits to live to about hundred
Speaker 1: uh if if the Hobbit were a real species on Earth,
Speaker 1: that would be towards the longest end of the lifespan spectrum.
Speaker 1: I think it said at some point in Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings that Hobbits tend to come of age in
Speaker 1: their thirties. So you might say that, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that that's like puberty or something for Hobbits. So
Speaker 1: so not just like actually get their life together in
Speaker 1: their theorties, it actually like go through puberty at that point. Well,
Speaker 1: I I don't know. I mean, he doesn't say puberty,
Speaker 1: that's when they come of age. I assume that's what
Speaker 1: that means there's something like the tweens of the Hobbit
Speaker 1: world are in their twenties probably, But the long lifespan
Speaker 1: of Hobbits is another place where you might look at
Speaker 1: the Hobbit and say, Okay, this seems to conflict with
Speaker 1: stuff we know about Earth biology, because when you look
Speaker 1: at the animals on Earth, especially you look at the mammals,
Speaker 1: it can certainly seem like the longest lived animals tend
Speaker 1: to be large and the small ones tend to have
Speaker 1: short lives. Like you know, mice and rats can live
Speaker 1: for just a couple of years, Whales can live for
Speaker 1: a very very long time. If you expand that to
Speaker 1: vertebrates more generally, you know, I think the longest lived
Speaker 1: vertebrate that I know of is the greenland shark, which
Speaker 1: can live hundreds of years. Four hundred years I think
Speaker 1: was an estimate on on one recently. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: tends to be a little bit larger. In the twentieth century, actually,
Speaker 1: there was a popular theory in biology that made this connection.
Speaker 1: It connected aging and lifespan to metabolism. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: known as the rate of living theory, and essentially it
Speaker 1: said that animals with a slower metabolism that burn energy
Speaker 1: more slowly will tend to live longer because expending energy
Speaker 1: literally ages you. Uh, So animals with higher dietary requirements,
Speaker 1: faster heart rates, faster metabolism, etcetera, will have shorter lives
Speaker 1: under this hypothesis. There are even some humans who who
Speaker 1: seem to at least intuitively believe some version of this theory. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've I have seen them quoted on this indeed. But
Speaker 1: but a side effect of this, of course would be
Speaker 1: the animals with smaller bodies, because they tend to have
Speaker 1: faster metabolisms like we were talking about earlier, will also
Speaker 1: on average have shorter lives, and so at a glance,
Speaker 1: that does seem to line up with the animal world. Right. So,
Speaker 1: this theory, first proposed in the early nineteen twenties, is
Speaker 1: often associated primarily with early work done by an American
Speaker 1: biologist named Raymond Pearl, and it really did seem plausible
Speaker 1: for a while, but eventually it was undercut by evidence.
Speaker 1: So you had early studies of animal lifespans that sort
Speaker 1: of seemed to support it, but then later studies with
Speaker 1: more detailed data sets and better analysis didn't actually find
Speaker 1: a broad correlation between metabolism and lifespan. For example, birds
Speaker 1: tend to have higher metabolisms than than mammals of about
Speaker 1: the same size, yet on average, the birds tend to
Speaker 1: live longer. So even though we can find a lot
Speaker 1: of examples of smaller animals that have short lives and
Speaker 1: larger animals that have long lives, it turns out the
Speaker 1: correlation doesn't hold up. The better your analysis is, I
Speaker 1: was reading about another study that undercut the rate of
Speaker 1: living hypothesis by looking at metabolic manipulations within the same species.
Speaker 1: So the very short version is you have rats in
Speaker 1: two different conditions. One set of rats lives in a
Speaker 1: world of twenty two degrees celsius or seventy one degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: the nice warm world, and then there's another group of
Speaker 1: rats that lives at ten degrees celsius or fifty degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: So obviously the group living in colder conditions has to
Speaker 1: burn more energy to maintain body temperature, so by rate
Speaker 1: of living logic, you would expect them to die younger,
Speaker 1: but they didn't. The study found that the the rodents
Speaker 1: and the two conditions lived the same average lifespan, so
Speaker 1: the rate of living hypothesis is no longer thought to
Speaker 1: be correct, and it represents no threat whatsoever to the
Speaker 1: plausibility of Hobbits. Excellent. All right, On that note, we're
Speaker 1: going to take one more break and hopefully they'll be
Speaker 1: an ad for Limbus in here. We've been trying to
Speaker 1: get Limbus as a sponsor for a while, but we'll
Speaker 1: see how it goes. Anyway, one more break and then
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Alright, we're back. You know what's
Speaker 1: great is dipping your limbus in a nice bowl of
Speaker 1: brown Yeah. I don't know. I always figured it was
Speaker 1: it's just dessert, Like it's dessert all the time. Maybe
Speaker 1: they just well that I read it originally as a kid,
Speaker 1: so at the time, I'm like, yeah, it's like this,
Speaker 1: it's like short bread all day, every day. Ever been
Speaker 1: into short bread? I don't even like it as dessert. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not a Hobbit. They maybe they're more
Speaker 1: into it, or elves. Maybe the elves themselves have, you know,
Speaker 1: different tolerance for sweets. What's the Middle Earth species that
Speaker 1: really likes like pickles? That's that's I think it's probably Hobbits. Again,
Speaker 1: I feel like Hobbits can be totally into pickles. I
Speaker 1: don't remember specifically if if there was ever mentioned of
Speaker 1: hobbit seating pickles, but I bet they like pickles. Dude,
Speaker 1: you should try dwarf and century eggs, all right. So,
Speaker 1: if we're to entertain the idea that Hobbits as a
Speaker 1: species factor so heavily into the struggle for Middle Earth,
Speaker 1: based in part on their biology, it raises this question
Speaker 1: how suited are the various other species or or races
Speaker 1: as they're sometimes called, especially due to you know, this
Speaker 1: is another fantasy as well, Like in Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: you talk about the different races even though you're essentially
Speaker 1: talking about different species. Um So, so you know, how
Speaker 1: do these other various species stack up in the struggle
Speaker 1: for global dominance just based on their biology? And it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think about this because while Homo sapiens came
Speaker 1: into contact with the likes of the Neanderthals, Middle Earth
Speaker 1: is an entirely different situation because you have multiple species
Speaker 1: of similar cognitive and technological abilities coming into contact with
Speaker 1: each other, warring against each other, forming factions, and and
Speaker 1: granted some of the players involved, our magical beings others
Speaker 1: are artificial creations, and others still or essentially demigods. But
Speaker 1: we're we're talking a world full of humans, elves, dwarfs, hobbits, goblins, orcs, trolls, giants, dragons,
Speaker 1: and then various animals with human level intelligence such as
Speaker 1: the eagles, just to name a few. The deciding factor, however,
Speaker 1: might just come down to sunlight, what which which? Isn't
Speaker 1: that surprising, right, because sunlight is good, darkness bad. This
Speaker 1: is the basic dichotomy of of our of our fantasy
Speaker 1: and our myth make But but, but let's think back
Speaker 1: to the hobbits omnivorous diet and its subterranean tendencies, because
Speaker 1: I want to talk about briefly about a fun little
Speaker 1: paper that you can find in full in PDF form
Speaker 1: on online if you want to read it for yourself,
Speaker 1: by Dr Joseph A. Hopkinson and and his son Nicholas S.
Speaker 1: Hopkinson uh and. This was published in the Medical Journal
Speaker 1: of Australia paper The hobbit An Unexpected Deficiency and uh
Speaker 1: And what they end up arguing is that their very diet,
Speaker 1: the very diet of the hobbit um, would be key
Speaker 1: to elevating their vitamin D levels. So vitamin D, as
Speaker 1: I think we've discussed on the show before, is crucial
Speaker 1: for skeletal health and the immune system, with deficiency symptoms
Speaker 1: ranging from stuff like depression and weakness to increased bone fragility. Uh,
Speaker 1: none of those are things you want while adventuring on
Speaker 1: a great quest to save the world, right or to
Speaker 1: conquer it. Either way, you want to want to look
Speaker 1: at it. You don't want to be depressed and weak
Speaker 1: and possibly more susceptible to bone breaks. Now a note here,
Speaker 1: oily fish are a great place to get your vitamin
Speaker 1: D if you're not getting it from the sun. So
Speaker 1: advantage to sniegel here. Oh that's right, he loves them wriggling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't know, do we see him eating oily fish?
Speaker 1: Is he getting start to I don't know how oily
Speaker 1: the subterranean fish of the Misty Mountains happened to be.
Speaker 1: But but maybe he's getting the occasional like ten of
Speaker 1: sardines from the goblins anyway. Uh, he loves a good
Speaker 1: mahi mahi. So anyway, Bilbo's diverse diet and willingness to
Speaker 1: travel long distances in the sun, according to the Hopkinson's
Speaker 1: not only boost his vitamin D intake, but also makes
Speaker 1: the Hobbit species one of Middle Earth's top vitamin D consumers.
Speaker 1: So they assigned major Middle Earth species and individuals a
Speaker 1: vitamin D score between zero and four. Hobbits, men, and
Speaker 1: high elves they topped the list that they get fours
Speaker 1: across the board. Dwarves scored to three gallum score or
Speaker 1: Sniegel scored a lowly one. And then the evil species
Speaker 1: of Middle Earth, the dragons, the goblins, and the trolls,
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming they're they're they're putting the works in
Speaker 1: with the goblins here since they're essentially the same species.
Speaker 1: All of them scored zeros. Right, because these are basically
Speaker 1: entirely indoor underground species right right, or they live in
Speaker 1: in darkness and read I mean more door itself. Right
Speaker 1: is is often depicted and described as being like clothed,
Speaker 1: you know, shielded from the sun by the volcanic ashes
Speaker 1: of Mount Doom. Right, it is a realm of darkness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know Tolkien said that he did not write these
Speaker 1: books as allegory, but yeah, I wonder if where was
Speaker 1: he really just trying to get his kids to go outside.
Speaker 1: It's like you know, you live your whole life inside
Speaker 1: you become a bad goblin like me. Well yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's I mean that critique has been applied to
Speaker 1: his work before. Right. The idea that like Mordor is
Speaker 1: industrialism and uh and modernity and and the shire is
Speaker 1: the you know, is that the rural countryside in traditional
Speaker 1: ways of England. Right, So anyway, moral attributes and marshall
Speaker 1: prowess are also going to play a factor, they argue.
Speaker 1: But they think that vitamin D consumption might be a
Speaker 1: key predictor for victory in mid Earth and uh. And
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that Dr Hopkinson uh knew what he
Speaker 1: knows what he's talking about with vitamin D. He previously
Speaker 1: studied the effects of vitamin D and people with lung disease.
Speaker 1: As a result, he's not a fan of all the
Speaker 1: smoking that goes on, especially with the Hobbits and the
Speaker 1: wizarding folk like Gandalf. Uh that would not be be
Speaker 1: good for their overall health. But still no, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I was reading. According to Sauron, uh, smoking has not
Speaker 1: been definitively linked with any negative health effects. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you can trust Sauron on that one, um so anyway,
Speaker 1: the lie? Why would he lie? It's a great deceiver, right,
Speaker 1: You're forgetting his prior forms. You're only thinking about the
Speaker 1: all seeing eye, and you think that just because he
Speaker 1: has an all seeing eye, he's privy to all truth.
Speaker 1: But he's still a liar. Worm Tongue said it too,
Speaker 1: He said that this is anti pipeweed alarmism. Alright, So
Speaker 1: taking all of this into account, we can look at
Speaker 1: the Hobbit and we say the Hobbit ultimately offers us
Speaker 1: a high metabolism creature with a very diet able to
Speaker 1: march across Middle Earths varied ecosystems and eat whatever they
Speaker 1: can find within, you know, reason, in order to maintain
Speaker 1: their vitamin D levels and therefore contribute to the victory
Speaker 1: of good over evil in Middle Earth. I buy it now, Robert.
Speaker 1: I've got to ask what what got you looking for
Speaker 1: Hobbit papers? I know somehow you must have set out
Speaker 1: on this journey. Well this, this happens a lot where
Speaker 1: something will enter my head and I'll think, well, let's
Speaker 1: see if their papers about the Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 1: Let's see if people are mentioning, you know, because sometimes
Speaker 1: it's you'll find examples where where authors of even very
Speaker 1: very serious uh scientific papers will just at least for
Speaker 1: fun reference, say a particular myth or a particular uh
Speaker 1: you know, the line from Shakespeare. So sometimes you have
Speaker 1: like that level of treatment or it's a pun in
Speaker 1: the title of that's frequently used in the title of
Speaker 1: a scientific study. But but then you have these this
Speaker 1: level of study as well, which which I think is great.
Speaker 1: You know, again, very tongue in cheek. All of these
Speaker 1: were written at least in part to entertain uh. And
Speaker 1: the vitamin D paper specific especially has like a fun
Speaker 1: little illustration in it as well, so it was very
Speaker 1: much I think it was part of like a Christmas
Speaker 1: uh special that they put out where they have a
Speaker 1: lot of tongue in cheap papers. Uh. But it's it's
Speaker 1: also I think these are all fun because, especially for
Speaker 1: a show like ours, we might normally not really discuss
Speaker 1: vitamin D deficiency on the show at length, but this
Speaker 1: gives us a reason to get into it and and
Speaker 1: kind of an angle that makes it more interesting than
Speaker 1: it might otherwise be. And and it's of course it's
Speaker 1: a it's an important topic as well, right because it
Speaker 1: comes down to human health. Like one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that the Hopkinson's arguing in their paper
Speaker 1: is that, you know, ultimately, if we're to draw some
Speaker 1: sort of conclusion from all of this, it's that we
Speaker 1: all need to consider having a more very diet and
Speaker 1: uh getting out in the sun, um, you know, with
Speaker 1: proper protection of course, if concerning the rays of the sun,
Speaker 1: but you know, get your vitamin D, have a very
Speaker 1: diet and stay active and it's going to benefit you.
Speaker 1: And also stay away from that those hobbit pipes and
Speaker 1: those wizarding pipes because it's no good for you. But
Speaker 1: this is just one This is just one angle on
Speaker 1: Middle Earth and science. I'm sure there are numerous other
Speaker 1: articles out there that that that go after a different
Speaker 1: angle of Tolkien's work and work some science on it.
Speaker 1: So maybe we'll be able to come back in a
Speaker 1: future episode and discuss some other corner of Middle Earth.
Speaker 1: I had the idea that we could do an episode
Speaker 1: about inns. I'm not sure what we we'd figure it out.
Speaker 1: We have to play the episode at half speed. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we could totally do an episode on it's getting into
Speaker 1: the like the movements of plants and uh uh you know,
Speaker 1: trees that quote unquote walk uh. I mean there are
Speaker 1: examples that are that are pretty fascinating and and really
Speaker 1: when you start, when you essentially consider that that plants
Speaker 1: are are living at this different time frame than this
Speaker 1: different rate than animals. You know, when you start, you know,
Speaker 1: speeding things up, you you see some amazing movements on
Speaker 1: the part of of trees and vines and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I think there would be something to discuss with
Speaker 1: INNS if we wanted to come back to that, or
Speaker 1: or getting into the whole in in a way we
Speaker 1: wouldn't wave. We wouldn't want to cover this in an
Speaker 1: episode on NS. This really deserves its own episode. But
Speaker 1: just the idea of plant intelligence, plant communication, there's some
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating theories out there, especially on plant communication. That's
Speaker 1: a that is a topic I'd like to come back to.
Speaker 1: You know, I've thought before like what types of plants
Speaker 1: would evolve intelligence if they ever did, And I think
Speaker 1: maybe it would have to be carnivorous plants, right like
Speaker 1: venus fly traps, because they'd have they have a movement mechanism.
Speaker 1: The movement mechanism is something that could be exploited over
Speaker 1: time and evolution as a manipulation mechanism, which in turn
Speaker 1: maybe prioritizes UH strategies for manipulation of objects. Yeah. There,
Speaker 1: you basically rights itself. You'll have to come back and
Speaker 1: talk about inns sometime, all right. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, we recommend do so. Again. We did
Speaker 1: a previous episode titled The One Ring that gets into
Speaker 1: metallurgy and what, basically asking the question what could the
Speaker 1: One Ring have potentially been made of if it were
Speaker 1: to have the various attributes that are described in the
Speaker 1: books and the films. UH. It's a fun, a fun
Speaker 1: back and forth, So check that one out if you want.
Speaker 1: If you want to find that episode, or any episode,
Speaker 1: you can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot
Speaker 1: com and that will shoot you over to the I
Speaker 1: heart listing for our show. But you can find Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind wherever you get your podcasts, wherever
Speaker 1: that happens to be. Just make sure you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
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