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 to Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Uglars. Julie.
Speaker 1: Has the end of the world occurred yet? The apocalypse?
Speaker 1: The Twilight of the Gods? Let me get my calendar out.
Speaker 1: Hold on, Oh, here's my Mayan calendar and it says
Speaker 1: that it will actually occur on December. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: have a little more time to freak out about it
Speaker 1: and for people to publish books about it, and and hey,
Speaker 1: do podcast about it? Right exactly, all right? So here's
Speaker 1: the thing people have always been doing this is we've
Speaker 1: discussed We did a whole episode on on why we're
Speaker 1: in love with the idea of the end of the
Speaker 1: world and how how we just can't get enough of it.
Speaker 1: We love an apocalypse so so for ages we've had
Speaker 1: quacks stepping out and saying I looked at a text,
Speaker 1: or I I stared at the sun, or I or
Speaker 1: I I ate some sort of plant I shouldn't have,
Speaker 1: and now I have inside information on what is going
Speaker 1: to happen to our planet in the next year, And
Speaker 1: would you consider buying this pamphlet right exactly, or in
Speaker 1: the case that we have coming up with a mind
Speaker 1: calendar running out, do you want to book a package
Speaker 1: to say bellies for the end of the world. I'm
Speaker 1: not getting there are end of the world packages U
Speaker 1: in Central America. There are. But but here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This is nothing new. It's been going on for ages,
Speaker 1: and it was definitely going on during the lifetime of
Speaker 1: one Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern science, the
Speaker 1: Englishman who lived from sixteen forty three to seventy seven,
Speaker 1: whose tomb actually makes a statement in Latin, of course,
Speaker 1: about how he was basically the best man that ever lived. Yeah,
Speaker 1: please read that statement because I love it. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's the here's the right up translated mortals rejoice that
Speaker 1: there has existed such and so great an ornament of
Speaker 1: the human race, which which that you gotta admit, even
Speaker 1: for someone like Sir Isaac Newton, who is pretty big
Speaker 1: medicine when it comes to science, that's kind of absurd,
Speaker 1: like like who who is who is deserving of that?
Speaker 1: Maybe Sir Isaac Newton. That's the thing, because because it's
Speaker 1: easy to dismiss him as the gravity and apples guy,
Speaker 1: but when you really start looking at his life, a
Speaker 1: he he accomplished so much, and he was so focused
Speaker 1: and in a little crazy one more than a little crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the mind of this guy is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: And so so he's living, you know, he's doing his thing.
Speaker 1: He's uh, he's just throwing his his considerable intellected at
Speaker 1: various problems that come along as well as the end
Speaker 1: of the world, right right, right, yeah, because he's he's
Speaker 1: going out in the street and this is a dude
Speaker 1: that is uh, you know, he's laying out the laws
Speaker 1: of motion, he's figuring out universal gravity. He's he's laying
Speaker 1: down some of the physical laws that that in our understanding,
Speaker 1: of these physical laws that will allow us to go
Speaker 1: to the moon. Uh, I mean, we're He spoke of
Speaker 1: standing on the shoulders of giants, but he's one of
Speaker 1: the giants that the modern stock could stand upon. And
Speaker 1: so he hears these these louts talking about the end
Speaker 1: of the world and they're talking about how they read
Speaker 1: it in the Bible, and he's like, WHOA hold on
Speaker 1: a second, I know a thing or two about theology.
Speaker 1: I've read the Bible. I've I've i've looked through and
Speaker 1: glimpse the the hidden truths in it. Let me take
Speaker 1: a look at this and I'll get back to you.
Speaker 1: So he goes home, he analyzes the Book of Daniel.
Speaker 1: Daniel Old Testament had these visions of four beasts and
Speaker 1: all and it's and it's great, uh, you know, apocalyptic
Speaker 1: gravy for for people who are into into that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeahah. And so so he looks at it
Speaker 1: and he's like, all right, Uh, I looked at it.
Speaker 1: I looked at the data. I I sort of weaved
Speaker 1: around in the Bible codes. And you don't have anything
Speaker 1: to worry about. The end of the world is not
Speaker 1: happening until at least twenty six maybe after, but not until.
Speaker 1: So everyone shut up, right, just keep keep walking. Nothing
Speaker 1: nothing to see here. And that is something we thought
Speaker 1: so amazing. Think about this guy is not just the
Speaker 1: common things that we know about him, that he has
Speaker 1: um contributed to society and to mathematics and physics and
Speaker 1: so I want and so forth, but um that this
Speaker 1: guy was obsessive on on all points and he could
Speaker 1: sort of bend the time space continuum seemingly to his will. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know whether or not he was, you know, meditating
Speaker 1: on gravity or perhaps even creating cat flap doors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one's we're not sure on that one, but there's
Speaker 1: there is there. There is the theory that he invented
Speaker 1: the cat flap because he didn't want his cats constantly
Speaker 1: asking to be let into because you know how it is,
Speaker 1: you're in your lab figuring out how the universe works,
Speaker 1: and the cat wants the scratching on the door. You
Speaker 1: let the cat in, and you're like all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're like, all right, you're in. Let me get
Speaker 1: back to work. Then the cat wants out. This is
Speaker 1: important when you're thinking about gravity, right, can not be interrupted? Um?
Speaker 1: And so yeah, he's he's he's working on that, and
Speaker 1: he is making the public feel safer and and re
Speaker 1: forecasting the apocalypse for right. So yeah, here here we
Speaker 1: have the Chuck Norris of science. Yeah. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the Chuck Norris thing because it's like when I was
Speaker 1: reading about it and I was researching it for work,
Speaker 1: you know, his various accomplishments. I kept finding these amazing
Speaker 1: things because I mean, my understanding Newton was a little
Speaker 1: deeper than than the gravity and Apple's guy. But but
Speaker 1: I didn't know about some of these details of the
Speaker 1: man's life, or just or I didn't have a good
Speaker 1: grasp for how his brain worked. But when you when
Speaker 1: you really look at what he did, he does come
Speaker 1: off like this Chuck Norris character, you know, and you're
Speaker 1: reminded of these lists the you know, the the Internet
Speaker 1: lists of the things Chuck Norris has done, like the
Speaker 1: idea that Chuck Norris has counted to infinity twice, or
Speaker 1: that the Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer, but since he's
Speaker 1: never cried, um that you know, we're not able to
Speaker 1: cure cancer, that kind of thing. Um. And you look
Speaker 1: at Newton's life and some of this stuff is is
Speaker 1: that outlandish? It is, in fact, before we get to
Speaker 1: some of the other um, maybe not as widely known
Speaker 1: information and more Chuck Norris information lists talk really quickly
Speaker 1: about what we what we think of when we think
Speaker 1: of Newton. Okay, um, Well, for starters, there is the
Speaker 1: law of universal gravitation. This like basically strikes at the
Speaker 1: heart of how gravity works and how the universe is
Speaker 1: held together by gravity. Now, one thing we we often
Speaker 1: don't remember is that one of the ways that Newton
Speaker 1: expressed this uh in his in his writings, was to
Speaker 1: create a thought experiment in which you had a mountain
Speaker 1: that was higher than the clouds, higher than the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and had a giant cannon on top of an orbital cannon.
Speaker 1: They could fire a cannonball at just the right velocity
Speaker 1: that it would go into orbit around the planet. Like
Speaker 1: that's the way that the man thought. That's what he
Speaker 1: was daydreaming about, right right. Most famously, he he laid
Speaker 1: down the three laws of motion, and these were this
Speaker 1: was six seven and uh and and these will sound
Speaker 1: familiar to everybody. And object will remain at rest or
Speaker 1: or moving in a straight line unless acted upon by
Speaker 1: an external force. When forces applied to an object, it
Speaker 1: will accelerate. So we get force equals mass times acceleration.
Speaker 1: And here's a big one. For every action there is
Speaker 1: an equal and opposite reaction and uh. Which seems all
Speaker 1: very obvious now, but obviously back in the day this
Speaker 1: was scholars used to wrestle with this um. For instance,
Speaker 1: the Greek philosopher Aristotle thought that smoke moved upwards because
Speaker 1: the smoke was mostly air, and therefore was consciously deciding
Speaker 1: to go into the sky to hang out with the
Speaker 1: rest of its air bodies. Um, you know which I
Speaker 1: kind of love. Yeah. Yeah. And then he had other
Speaker 1: people in reneed de carts who still identified God as
Speaker 1: the prime mover behind everything. Newton came down and you know,
Speaker 1: he laid he laid down the loss and these are
Speaker 1: these are the fundamental laws that we we we based
Speaker 1: on modern understanding on. Uh. In addition to that, he
Speaker 1: looked at rainbows and figured out how rainbows worked. Um
Speaker 1: that that the prism or the rain drop was not
Speaker 1: changing or color. It wasn't coloring, but at the time
Speaker 1: they thought that it was like the sun's rays were
Speaker 1: dying the light, right. And from there actually leads to
Speaker 1: his development of the reflecting telescope. Before that, everyone used
Speaker 1: the refracting telescope, which wasn't as powerful it it could.
Speaker 1: It could add various tints of color that weren't weren't
Speaker 1: disruptive to when you're trying to look at um and uh,
Speaker 1: and they were, they were larger. So he comes along,
Speaker 1: he in it. He invents the reflecting telescope because his
Speaker 1: mirrors and uh, and this becomes the standard. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is really cool. This was in your article. Um, your
Speaker 1: article's name again. Uh ten Top ten Isaac Newton inventions.
Speaker 1: A large mirror would capture the image than a small mirror,
Speaker 1: a smaller mirror would bounce it into the viewer's eyes,
Speaker 1: which I think it's really cool. Uh. Not only does
Speaker 1: this method produce a clear image, it also allows for
Speaker 1: a much smaller telescope. So I just think it's cool
Speaker 1: that he had that perspective back then to say, how
Speaker 1: can I improve upon this? You know, let's not refract,
Speaker 1: let's reflect. And he actually grinded the mirrors himself and
Speaker 1: assembled a prototype and then presented it to the Royal
Speaker 1: Society in sixteen seventy. So let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the the other stuff that is just so amazing that
Speaker 1: this guy is sitting around and accomplishing so much um
Speaker 1: in such a small amount time. Really, all right, well
Speaker 1: here's one, all right. So, and again you've got to
Speaker 1: think about Newton's mind. Is it just this obsessive thing,
Speaker 1: this engine that in any kind of data comes its
Speaker 1: way and he has to solve it. He's going to
Speaker 1: figure it out. And he's a bit of a madman too.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little bit about this how how
Speaker 1: it might have affected his perspective. Yeah, he never married.
Speaker 1: He he didn't have much in the way of friends.
Speaker 1: Like this was a man who would have lat himself
Speaker 1: onto a riddle or a puzzle. Like I keep coming
Speaker 1: back that I've mentioned this before, the old idea that
Speaker 1: the vampire you leave a knot out for a really
Speaker 1: complex knot, and it would set there trying to untie
Speaker 1: it until the sun came up. Like that's that's Newton's brain, um,
Speaker 1: and and so like for instance, sixteen sixty five, plague
Speaker 1: has has hit Debonnet plague has hit England, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's a huge problem. And so Newton uh sees it.
Speaker 1: He's o Rick Cambridge and he decides to figure this
Speaker 1: out because it's actually shut down the university, right, and
Speaker 1: that's where he needs to be to think such shut
Speaker 1: down the university for eighteen months, so he's he's got
Speaker 1: some time on his hands, right right, right, So he's like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna fix this. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Math wasn't sufficient at that time for him to study this.
Speaker 1: He needed a school of of mathematics that would allow
Speaker 1: him to calculate problems that involve changing variables, so he
Speaker 1: invented one. He invented calculus. Like, okay, he needed calculus.
Speaker 1: It didn't exist. He made it. Math was insufficient for
Speaker 1: his needs, so he just created his own, his new
Speaker 1: school of it. So normous, right, Um, again, we're talking
Speaker 1: about calculations concerning the angle of cannonballs and a ship's
Speaker 1: rate of acceleration. And that's just so that it could
Speaker 1: fuel his daydreaming, right right, right, yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: allow him to understand what was happening in the world.
Speaker 1: He was like, like, I'm having trouble understanding how this
Speaker 1: is spreading, how this is working. Um, Math, you're not
Speaker 1: helping me. I'm going to have to do all the
Speaker 1: work for you. And so he created calculus. It's the
Speaker 1: father of calculus. It should also be noted that German
Speaker 1: mathematician got Free Leadness independently developed calculus around the same time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually sort of. What has compounded this this question about
Speaker 1: question mark about who created calculus is the fact that
Speaker 1: Newton was really private, um, and some would even say secret,
Speaker 1: and he didn't publish a lot. He might have written
Speaker 1: down quite a few things and presented them in various
Speaker 1: academic institutions, but he wasn't someone who was sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, gunning to get published and get and become
Speaker 1: known for something. And in fact, some of the things
Speaker 1: that he obsessed about and wrote about certainly didn't really
Speaker 1: enter the public eye. Told quite a while later and
Speaker 1: we're kind of a dirty secret for for a bit,
Speaker 1: Are you talking about alchemy? I am talking about alchemy. Yes, yes, alchemy,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed I think we discussed this in the
Speaker 1: Frankenstein podcast a bit. This is, of course the the
Speaker 1: old typically thought of as medieval bastardization of chemistry and
Speaker 1: occultism and philosophy and trickery, and just you know that
Speaker 1: there is there's chemistry bound up in it, but there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of mess I mean kind of like,
Speaker 1: just to to be uh, not very kind about it,
Speaker 1: it's basically taking a pile of dog crap and spinning
Speaker 1: into gold, right, or turning one's urine into gold and
Speaker 1: accidentally discovering phosphorus, that kind of thing. Right. The thing is,
Speaker 1: though there was a lot of real chemistry there, there
Speaker 1: was some there was some real science going on in
Speaker 1: the world of alchemy. And if you were interested in
Speaker 1: in the chemistry of the world, this was for the
Speaker 1: most part the only game in town. Um and as
Speaker 1: far as the west goes. So, so of course he
Speaker 1: studied it. And uh. And the thing is that alchemy
Speaker 1: only became this sort of dirty word later in his
Speaker 1: life and after his death. And and also he was
Speaker 1: not afraid of looking into something that was kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: And he I mean, he really believed that there was
Speaker 1: there was hidden truth to be found in alchemy. Well
Speaker 1: and during his time to wasn't an alchemy punishable by law? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it became so, right, So it's something that he kind
Speaker 1: of squirreled away because obviously he didn't want to um
Speaker 1: to have any sort of negative repercussions from it. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the nineteen thirties when I believe that
Speaker 1: was a auction house that's someone found a huge bomb
Speaker 1: volume of his writings and it was discovered to the
Speaker 1: extent to which he had dedicated really his life to alchemy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that he was serious, like it wasn't just a
Speaker 1: this is all nonsense, but I'm kind of interested in
Speaker 1: the chemistry. No, he was trying to create the Philosopher's Stone.
Speaker 1: Yet the Philosopher's Stone, Uh, it's exact description varies from
Speaker 1: texts at texts, but it's clearly like a man made
Speaker 1: stone or a man made a lixir. Uh, And it
Speaker 1: has this power of universal transmutation, so it can turn
Speaker 1: lead into stone, it can cure illnesses that can transform
Speaker 1: a headless cow into a swarm of bees, or allow
Speaker 1: you to throw some wizard semen um, you know, in
Speaker 1: a jar and add a few other ingredients and make
Speaker 1: a homunculous Yeah. So it's uh, it's like the the
Speaker 1: ultimate power. And that's that's why he was interested in it,
Speaker 1: because ideally this would give him power over life and death. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know, it turns out that he is really
Speaker 1: interested in this mystical realm, and so the idea something
Speaker 1: people have said. Some historians have looked back at the
Speaker 1: way his mind works and said, you know, he may
Speaker 1: not have been able to discuss um the laws of
Speaker 1: motion or discover them, name them um if he didn't
Speaker 1: have this particular mystical bent, because he's thinking about the
Speaker 1: forces of the universe, right and trying to harness them.
Speaker 1: So I think that's really interesting and thinking about that
Speaker 1: when you think about Newton, he wrote more than one
Speaker 1: million words on the subject of alchemy, which is amazing
Speaker 1: much more than he ever dedicated to um, you know,
Speaker 1: his stalwart uh science. Of course, you could look at
Speaker 1: it in this sense that science for Newton was a
Speaker 1: problem that he was not that he was eventually able
Speaker 1: to untie in many cases. Alchemy ultimately proves that not
Speaker 1: that never completely untied for him. So it was probably
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where you just keep writing and
Speaker 1: writing about it because you're never going to reach that
Speaker 1: point with alchemy that you're like, all right, philosopher's stone
Speaker 1: case closed, now, let me move on to something else, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the same thing as we discussed in this doom
Speaker 1: Stay stuff. He was interested in theology. He was interested
Speaker 1: in discovering the coded secrets of the Bible, the wisdom
Speaker 1: of the ancients. And you can set there all day
Speaker 1: looking for these secret codes, and you're just gonna end
Speaker 1: up writing more and more words about it because you're
Speaker 1: not gonna find you're not gonna uncover this this hidden
Speaker 1: equation in the in biblical text, and you're not going
Speaker 1: to find it in alchemy either. But don't tell that
Speaker 1: to Dan Brown. Well, no, he did find the hidden
Speaker 1: the hidden equations. But that's right. It had to do
Speaker 1: with the publishing dollars. Um. Yeah, that's his own kind
Speaker 1: of alchemy. But you know, and we will talk a
Speaker 1: bit more about his sort of obsessive quest for religion,
Speaker 1: thinking about religion and uh in the Bible. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, I really want to talk about how
Speaker 1: he was fighting crime in Melton money, all right, sir
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton crime finder. And this was an area that
Speaker 1: I before I was researching in this for work, I
Speaker 1: I really didn't know anything about this this corner of
Speaker 1: his life. Well, he was a bit of a politician,
Speaker 1: although kind of a backseat politician. I guess you could say, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have to you have to go back to
Speaker 1: England's financial system is in full blown crisis mode. Okay Um,
Speaker 1: the currencyat consisting entirely of silver coins, and the silver
Speaker 1: was often worth more than the value stamped on it
Speaker 1: due to the economic situation. So people start We're often
Speaker 1: melting the chok coins down or chipping the silver from
Speaker 1: the edges and selling them to France. So pretty soon
Speaker 1: the coinage just looks like crap. It's mangled. People have
Speaker 1: been melting this stuff down, They've been chipping off the corners.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine at the counter someone goes into
Speaker 1: a store to buy something around this time and they're
Speaker 1: just dumping just a handful of mangled bits of silver
Speaker 1: and counterfeit mangled bits of silver, because how difficult is
Speaker 1: it to counterfeit a mangled lump of of shiny metal?
Speaker 1: Right when I was just thinking, like, think of the
Speaker 1: US dollar and just maybe the only thing that's left
Speaker 1: is the eye and the pyramid and presenting that. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's going to be a lot easier to to say,
Speaker 1: you know, to sort of put together something that looks
Speaker 1: like money. Right, So the powers that be they know
Speaker 1: Newton is a is a smart cookie. Uh. They have
Speaker 1: an idea that he's the kind of guy that likes
Speaker 1: to throw himself at a at a problem. Probably looks
Speaker 1: good to throw Newton at a at a problem. I'd
Speaker 1: like to think of them all sitting around a table,
Speaker 1: all all wearing black and and saying we need to
Speaker 1: bring Newton in, yeah, or or they have the Newton
Speaker 1: signal on the on the roof, um and uh. And
Speaker 1: it's also worth noting that, you know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: counterfeiting a little here, and alchemy has in uh in
Speaker 1: many places been tied to to counterfeiting because alchemy often
Speaker 1: involved the creation of dies and uh, and since it
Speaker 1: couldn't actually change something one medal into another, you could,
Speaker 1: it did involve sometimes the technique of creating like fool's
Speaker 1: gold or disguising one medal as another. Um. But but
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of incidental. They so they bring Newton
Speaker 1: in and and and it's largely ceremonial. Nobody really expects
Speaker 1: Newton to solve the problems, and they gave him a
Speaker 1: real title, right, Like, yeah, and so what does Newton do?
Speaker 1: He throws on a diskise, Yeah, heads out into the
Speaker 1: mean streets of London, like down into like just the
Speaker 1: poverty and crime ridden alleys, and he starts hanging out
Speaker 1: with the counterfeiters. And then of course he has them
Speaker 1: arrested and subsequently executed, because it was a major offense
Speaker 1: in those days to counterfeit currency. But yeah, like how
Speaker 1: amazing is that? I mean, he's essentially the Batman of
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, right in the sixteen seventeen hundreds, He's
Speaker 1: he's wearing the skies, going out there fighting crime, then
Speaker 1: coming back to his scientific layer and developing um, uh,
Speaker 1: milled edges for coins. And these are if you if
Speaker 1: you get a quarter out you find or any coin
Speaker 1: where you look at the edges and if you see
Speaker 1: little lines, those are milled edges. And the idea here
Speaker 1: is you're gonna if you're gonna clip the lane and
Speaker 1: try and sell the silver to France. Um, it's going
Speaker 1: to be very noticeable and then you'll be arrested and
Speaker 1: possibly executed. Of course. The the other part of that
Speaker 1: is that it took him a year to create that
Speaker 1: particular currency, right, and um, I mean the conies on
Speaker 1: this guy he gathered up well not just he but
Speaker 1: uh you know, I'm sure he advocated this and they
Speaker 1: adopted it, but they gathered up all of the currency
Speaker 1: and melted it down. So then he could then spend
Speaker 1: like eighteen hours a day, you know, working on this
Speaker 1: problem and creating a new currency. Yeah, he was like
Speaker 1: money is canceled for the next year or so and
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna have new money. I hope everybody's
Speaker 1: cool with that, which sounds like it probably wasn't as
Speaker 1: big of a problem as it would seem like today,
Speaker 1: because um, you know it was the economy was a
Speaker 1: mess anyway, and there was a lot of rioting before
Speaker 1: this even happens, So I mean, wow, yeah, he but
Speaker 1: he he reorganized the the mint, uh, their system of
Speaker 1: creating the coins. Like he went in there and he
Speaker 1: just kicked button the factories and the next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you have this new model and standard of what a
Speaker 1: coin is, you know, all in the day's work, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I like to I just made this part out,
Speaker 1: But I like to joke too that he put his
Speaker 1: own scowling face on each coin to h to convince
Speaker 1: people that counterfeit. Counterfeiting was a bad idea. He probably
Speaker 1: did put some sort of code in there, for sure.
Speaker 1: And let's talk about that, um, And specifically, let's talk
Speaker 1: about whether or not he may have been suffering from
Speaker 1: mercury poisoning. Yes, so, so how would he have been
Speaker 1: pro poisoned by mercury? Are we suspecting that someone? No? Actually,
Speaker 1: because he was using mercury quite a bit, um. And
Speaker 1: we know that he had a couple of very serious
Speaker 1: mental breakdowns in the sixteen nineties, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of had fevered writings from him, would send letters
Speaker 1: to his friends. Didn't make any sense. We already know
Speaker 1: that he was an obsessive guy UM and that he
Speaker 1: was trying to find hidden meeting in the Bible. He
Speaker 1: learned Hebrews spent half of his life really devoting himself
Speaker 1: to trying to figure this out. So there's this idea
Speaker 1: that his sleeplessness, his digestive upset, his loss of memory,
Speaker 1: his paranoid delusions could have been mercury poisoning. Because we know,
Speaker 1: and this is from the chemistry chronicles Newton's Hair by
Speaker 1: Mark f Lesnie Uh. They know that that from a
Speaker 1: hair sample that he had a high amount of mercury
Speaker 1: in his system, and that he attempted to extract mercury
Speaker 1: from various medals during his alchemy UM. And and again
Speaker 1: we know that he spent a good deal of time
Speaker 1: trying to work his magic on this in dealing with
Speaker 1: with with mercury. So it's very possible that Um, at
Speaker 1: least some of his obsessive nature, not so much as
Speaker 1: obsessive nature, but some of him sort of going off kilter,
Speaker 1: could have been delusions that were inspired by mercury poisoning.
Speaker 1: Now here's another possibility. He actually succeeded in creating the
Speaker 1: Philosopher's Stone became an immortal, used homunculous technology to clone himself,
Speaker 1: which involved mercury, and that is what is actually buried
Speaker 1: at Westminster and that is what they got the hair
Speaker 1: sample for. And he's been he's been locked up in
Speaker 1: his lab ever since, his secret lab, of course, working
Speaker 1: on how to prevent apocalypse. Okay, so if he's a
Speaker 1: homunculous now no, no, no, he created the homunculous and
Speaker 1: that's what was buried. Oh right right, I mean undoubtedly
Speaker 1: he would have Homunculi working for him now as his age,
Speaker 1: an army of yeah manculi of course. Um, this sounds
Speaker 1: like a pretty uh pat answer to the mysteries of Newton. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to see if they'll let me add
Speaker 1: that page to the article that they will They probably will. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I make a pretty strong case. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: It turns out though again his his his devotion to
Speaker 1: religion in the Bible could have had something to do
Speaker 1: with his own, um personal biography which he viewed himself. Again,
Speaker 1: this is from that paper Chemistry chronicles quote a Christian
Speaker 1: opposit it and adhere to the then prescribed Aryan heresy
Speaker 1: that Christ was not divine. Newton still took very seriously
Speaker 1: his own birth on Christmas Day. He felt that it
Speaker 1: gave him a level of prophetic reasonable responsibility, that, if
Speaker 1: not equal to Christ, was certainly cut from the same cloth,
Speaker 1: and that it was his own particular role from the
Speaker 1: start to reveal God's universal laws to all humankind or
Speaker 1: to justify God's waste a man. Right, yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. Wow. So and and you know, actually that's interesting,
Speaker 1: Like maybe we should get be more into the idea
Speaker 1: of celebrating Sir Isaac Newton like Christmas, like you just
Speaker 1: completely like retool the holiday, you know, where the tree
Speaker 1: is all Newton based instead of like a major scene. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about this poopoo platter of religions before,
Speaker 1: in which we I think we were going to call
Speaker 1: it saganism after Carl second, right, and everybody wears turtlenecks.
Speaker 1: Why not, why not to celebrate Sir Isaac Newton on
Speaker 1: Christmas Day? Yeah, just a celebration of physics, alchemy, crime fighting, um,
Speaker 1: and possibly cat doors depending on where you fall on
Speaker 1: that particular controversy. Right, And I can see it now,
Speaker 1: like the rainbow is a is a sort of logo
Speaker 1: for this holiday. Uh, everybody constructs these sort of paper
Speaker 1: mache rainbows in their houses instead of Christmas trees. I'm
Speaker 1: up for it. Yeah. Well, hey, if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about Sir Isasing Newton in his life, you
Speaker 1: can check out that article that I wrote on the
Speaker 1: ten inventions of Sir Isaza Newton. Just searched for that
Speaker 1: on the House Stuff Works homepage. Also how Isaac Newton worked.
Speaker 1: We have a great article about that. And uh and
Speaker 1: if you really want to know more about the the
Speaker 1: alchemy to uh do uh, just do a quick search
Speaker 1: for Newton alchemy and Nova because pbs is nova has
Speaker 1: a rich website with a lot of resources about what
Speaker 1: we know about his alchemyical side. Indeed, does that mean
Speaker 1: that we should roll out robot get some mail? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get the robot out here, share some mail with us.
Speaker 1: All right, here's one for Crystal. Crystal rites then, and
Speaker 1: Crystal actually wrote in with with a number of thoughts
Speaker 1: on some past episodes. I'm going to read what she said,
Speaker 1: um about our our episode that we did about a
Speaker 1: world without Men, about the men going extinct, and she says, uh,
Speaker 1: for the past six years I've been self employed in
Speaker 1: such ways that I work infinitely with families. I've seen
Speaker 1: many different kinds of families and lifestyle, and I have
Speaker 1: come to the following conclusion about men and women. Okay,
Speaker 1: she says, this is this is their opinion. Without women,
Speaker 1: men are somehow quite not quite fully developed adults, although
Speaker 1: they are perfectly happy in their lives at that point,
Speaker 1: men need women to take that last step into adulthood.
Speaker 1: And then she says, without men, women are fully functional adults,
Speaker 1: but don't pursue happiness, letting responsibilities overshadow it. Women need
Speaker 1: men to be reminded to value happiness for its own
Speaker 1: sake and hence to be happy. Obviously, this only applies
Speaker 1: to heterosexual relationships. I haven't had a large enough sample
Speaker 1: size of homosexual marriages to make any hypothesis. Yet I
Speaker 1: think any humans somehow evolved past men women would keep
Speaker 1: them around to remind us happiness should be sought after.
Speaker 1: I love the podcast, Thanks Robert, Julie and everyone else
Speaker 1: who makes it happen. Well. I think it's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: In the podcast, we talked about whether or not men
Speaker 1: might go extinct and whether the world will be better
Speaker 1: for a particular reason, you know, not just us making
Speaker 1: that up, but yeah, yeah, whether and you know what,
Speaker 1: it would be a unless violent world, more of a
Speaker 1: light world, a prettier world. Huh. Well, and you know how,
Speaker 1: you know how I always feel about it, like, I
Speaker 1: think that's interesting. I think that she talked about it
Speaker 1: being a cultural norm. So for me, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when when we talk about women and we um we
Speaker 1: talked about them being the better angels of our nature,
Speaker 1: always feel like that sort of makes women even more
Speaker 1: one dimensional. Yeah, I gotta say, I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: that we're not great. I'm just saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: taking that other side of it is not giving you know,
Speaker 1: full complexity to women out there. I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair. Right. So again it should be
Speaker 1: noted Newton didn't have any time for him. Yeah, can't
Speaker 1: time for cats, So cat flaps, Yeah, possibly possibly cats
Speaker 1: and dogs. Though Tho's is weird because there people are
Speaker 1: divided on the whole pet issue. There are some people
Speaker 1: who say, yeah, he definitely kept a cat, he kept
Speaker 1: a dog. Some there are some stories that say that
Speaker 1: he had a dog named diamond In. There were all
Speaker 1: sorts of lacky adventures, and then other people were like,
Speaker 1: Newton had no dogs or cats, so I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, we just don't know for sure. Well, also,
Speaker 1: pet ownership was a very different thing tacum out there, right, so, um,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that he was going to target and
Speaker 1: probably getting them cute little halloween os. Yeah, Diamond wasn't
Speaker 1: setting in his lap wearing a little sweater mounted things.
Speaker 1: So alright, So hey, if you have anything you would
Speaker 1: like to share about, well, about Sir Rising Newton, about alchemy,
Speaker 1: about the idea that he's still out there in his
Speaker 1: layer and Homunculi perform as every bidding as he tries
Speaker 1: to prevent the end of the world. In um, let
Speaker 1: us know. We'd love to hear from you. You can
Speaker 1: always find us on the social media platforms. We were
Speaker 1: on Facebook as stuff to Blow Your Mind, and we
Speaker 1: are on Twitter as blow the Mind, and you can
Speaker 1: always drop us a line at blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: how staff works dot com. Be sure to check out
Speaker 1: our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
Speaker 1: staff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
Speaker 1: perplexing possibilities of tomorrow