Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from house stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, I'm Christian, and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and it's the day after Halloween here in the house
Speaker 1: Stuff Works office. How is your Halloween, guys? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a good one. I had to go hunting
Speaker 1: for like an actual Halloween experience though, because I my
Speaker 1: wife and I got dressed up and we took the
Speaker 1: dogs out for a walk, and no one in like
Speaker 1: a like a mile radius of our house was was
Speaker 1: really celebrating Halloween. You're not saying hunting hunting, well, I
Speaker 1: was hunt You don't seem like a hunt humans. That's
Speaker 1: what you do on Halloween, right, for fine, but not
Speaker 1: hunting them for fun, hunting them in hopes of food exactly.
Speaker 1: And I prefer the ones that are in costumes because
Speaker 1: they taste better. So we had to get in the
Speaker 1: car and drive to a suburban neighborhood where there was
Speaker 1: like full on Halloween going and it was great. Well, well,
Speaker 1: we just went around in our roborhood. UM, my son,
Speaker 1: his his friend, uh, their parents, and we all just
Speaker 1: walked around at the trick or treating thing and there,
Speaker 1: but there was one moment that was there was a
Speaker 1: little bit legitimately creepy. I'll say that that kind of
Speaker 1: goes in with our recent creepy Posta episode. So we
Speaker 1: were finishing up, it was dark, uh you know, one
Speaker 1: or two houses left, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: kids on this particular street that we're trick or treating
Speaker 1: on and one of the kids turns around and he
Speaker 1: points past me, behind my back and says says, he's
Speaker 1: dressed as slender Man. And I look around and there's
Speaker 1: clearly nobody dressed as slender Man. There's like nobody even
Speaker 1: tall enough to be slender Man. And it's like left
Speaker 1: me confused for a second, and I for a brief moment,
Speaker 1: I considered, is he seeing something that only children can see?
Speaker 1: His slender Man back there? And that's actually that would
Speaker 1: make the Slenderman thing even creepier if it was only
Speaker 1: children could see slender Man. But I wanted to question him.
Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance. I was like, like, hey, hey, kid,
Speaker 1: where is slender Man? Point to slender Man. Let's have
Speaker 1: a discussion about this. What hey, Joe, what did you do?
Speaker 1: I stayed home. Rachel and I stayed home. We gave
Speaker 1: out some candy to trig Re treaters. We we reheated
Speaker 1: some leftover chili. Kind of nice Halloween feast, and we
Speaker 1: watched Toby Hooper's Salem's Lot in many series with all
Speaker 1: of the haircuts horror. Yeah, the seventies haircuts unbelievable. That
Speaker 1: movie scared the hell out of me when I first
Speaker 1: saw it, but I was much younger. Yeah, it does
Speaker 1: the scene with the little boy floating up against the window. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the vampires in it are really freaky. Yeah. I I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in forever, but I listened to a
Speaker 1: lot of Halloween mixes yesterday and there was one in
Speaker 1: particular that threw in some samples from the Salem's Lot movie,
Speaker 1: the bit where the showdown between the Master and the priest,
Speaker 1: Barlow and Callahan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man, I would sample
Speaker 1: the heck out of James Mason in that movie because
Speaker 1: he is so smooth. I love how they invert the
Speaker 1: classic monsters familiar, like in the Universal Dracula and well
Speaker 1: all the traditional Draculas. You get the crazy familiar. You
Speaker 1: get Renfield who's out of control, but he's also like
Speaker 1: imprisoned and not very potent as a character. In this one,
Speaker 1: you've got this smooth, suave James Mason and these fancy suits.
Speaker 1: He's basically Captain Nemo outside of the submarine. Hey, I
Speaker 1: got a question. Though, we're talking about Halloween and actually
Speaker 1: October's over, guys, that means that we can't do Halloween
Speaker 1: episodes for another year. That's a bummer, though, you know us,
Speaker 1: if you're a regular listener, we kind of slip some
Speaker 1: Halloween in all year long, and we'll we'll we'll sneak
Speaker 1: it in, I'm sure. But of course we've been talking
Speaker 1: about Halloween for a month and in doing that we
Speaker 1: we managed to yet again let the Ignoble prizes slipped
Speaker 1: past us. So we're gonna make up for that this
Speaker 1: week and also provide maybe a kind of a palate cleanser.
Speaker 1: I guess for anyone who wishes to move on from
Speaker 1: Halloween episodes for a little bit, this will definitely be
Speaker 1: like your silly science uh series of episodes. So let's
Speaker 1: why don't we tell the audience Maybe some of them
Speaker 1: haven't listened to our previous Ignoble episodes, but we generally
Speaker 1: cover them every year. What are they Well, they have
Speaker 1: been awarded since by the publication the Annals of Improbable Research.
Speaker 1: The purpose of the award, according to the editors of
Speaker 1: the publication, is to quote honor achievements that first make
Speaker 1: people laugh, then make them think. And furthermore, they stress
Speaker 1: that the ten prizes aren't necessarily meant to pass judgment
Speaker 1: on the winners. Instead, the official website emphasizes that the
Speaker 1: prizes quote celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur
Speaker 1: people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. And the principal
Speaker 1: individual here and all of this is the editor of
Speaker 1: the of the Anials and Probable Research, Mark Abrams. And
Speaker 1: I would say that that goes along with our mission here,
Speaker 1: and so these kind of work together nicely and that
Speaker 1: like hopefully we give them a little bit of a boost.
Speaker 1: They point out this bizarre research that we can take
Speaker 1: a deeper look at, and we have more time on
Speaker 1: the podcast than they have in their live ceremony to
Speaker 1: actually like dive into the research here. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think one of the big take homes about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it is a it is a reference to the
Speaker 1: Nobel Prizes, where where the like a Nobel Prize, and
Speaker 1: chemistry or biology is a big deal, and it's usually
Speaker 1: a study that is going to have a huge impact
Speaker 1: with the Ignoble Prizes. I think it definitely highlights this
Speaker 1: idea that we have touched on before, science as this
Speaker 1: slime mold making its way through a maze or a labyrinth,
Speaker 1: and and the slime mold of science as it explores
Speaker 1: the world, it is going to explore everywhere. It is
Speaker 1: going to look in every mundane pantry and closet, and
Speaker 1: that is that's one of the things that the the Ignobel
Speaker 1: Prize celebrate, some of these studies that we're going to discuss.
Speaker 1: It's one of those areas where you can say, why
Speaker 1: why did science need to look into that? Why why
Speaker 1: did money and effort and and scientific rigor approach this
Speaker 1: portion of the world. And the answer is, well, because
Speaker 1: science must. Science must go in there. And in some
Speaker 1: of these cases it actually turns out to be important,
Speaker 1: like stuff that seems totally ludicrous, which I don't know
Speaker 1: about you guys, but some of mine seemed totally ludicrous.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and and in fact, like other episodes of
Speaker 1: our show have built off of the entire premise of
Speaker 1: Igno bells, like, for instance, our necrophilia episode. Uh, basically
Speaker 1: we got the jumping point off of that from I
Speaker 1: think it was like an Igno bell from like five
Speaker 1: years ago maybe, yeah. Yeah, And and we were able
Speaker 1: to find a whole ton of information. That's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite episodes. Yeah. I remember after you guys had
Speaker 1: first been talking about doing that, we were in this
Speaker 1: long meeting and at the end of the meeting somebody
Speaker 1: came over to talk to me about something and I
Speaker 1: realized what was on my computer screen was all this
Speaker 1: stuff about duck necrophilia. Yeah. Yeah, I hope they liked it.
Speaker 1: And if you out there haven't listened to the episode,
Speaker 1: you should because it's really really surprisingly not as grim
Speaker 1: as you would think. I mean, it's grim, but it's
Speaker 1: also like really educational, both in terms of the animal
Speaker 1: kingdom but also psychology of human beings. Yeah. It demystifies
Speaker 1: the topic, and I think I managed to do so
Speaker 1: in a non exploited way. So what, And it's a
Speaker 1: great way to get through a meeting, boring meeting, hit
Speaker 1: up the duck necrophilia. So what can we do that
Speaker 1: with today? Oh, we have a we have a host
Speaker 1: of studies here to touch on. There are ten awards, right,
Speaker 1: so this is gonna be part one of a multi
Speaker 1: part episode. Correct, how many episodes? Who knows it might
Speaker 1: be too, It might be three. Well, we'll see how
Speaker 1: it goes. So the approach here, as in previous years,
Speaker 1: is we divided these ten prizes up. We each took
Speaker 1: three of them, and then there was one left over
Speaker 1: and I ended up taking that one just because I
Speaker 1: had one of my other papers turned out to be
Speaker 1: a bit short. Okay, well, it looks like I'm up
Speaker 1: to bat first. All right, what do you have for Joe? Well,
Speaker 1: this would be the Physics Prize this year, which was
Speaker 1: offered to Mark Antoine far Dan for use fluid dynamics.
Speaker 1: You probe the question can a cat be both a
Speaker 1: solid and a liquid? This is a real Shroggger's cat
Speaker 1: slash not scenario, right, Okay, Yeah, I can see that
Speaker 1: the cat's both a liquid and a solid until you
Speaker 1: look at it. Okay, So it's for a paper called
Speaker 1: on the rayology of Cats. So here's an experience I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've all had. You're at a restaurant, you get
Speaker 1: some French fries, you want to put some ketchup on
Speaker 1: your plate. But the ketchup at your table is the
Speaker 1: glass bottle. You know there may be trouble ahead. So
Speaker 1: you turn it up, you unscrew the top, you shake, jiggle,
Speaker 1: tap and all that, but you can't get the stuff
Speaker 1: out of the bottle. It will not flow. You'll have
Speaker 1: had this experience. Yeah, that's when you have to It's
Speaker 1: probably not very polite, but you have to get the
Speaker 1: butter knife. I always take a butter knife. Jam the
Speaker 1: knife in, and you did, but then you'd end up
Speaker 1: feeling like a real animal, which is always a shame
Speaker 1: because I find that the glass bottle of ketchup, you
Speaker 1: tend to encounter it at not the highest level of restaurant,
Speaker 1: because that kind of place is going to have it's
Speaker 1: gonna bring it out to you. And but it's also
Speaker 1: not a super cheap restaurant because otherwise you would have packets,
Speaker 1: or you would have a plastic squeeze bottle, or you
Speaker 1: would have a pump and a little little cups that
Speaker 1: you fill it up with. So it's a nice enough
Speaker 1: restaurant that you feel awkward jabbing of a knife into
Speaker 1: a bottle like an animal, you know, some restaurants take
Speaker 1: those glass bottles and then just refill them at a restaurant.
Speaker 1: For four years while I was in college, that was
Speaker 1: part of the job, was refilling those much cheaper to
Speaker 1: buy in bulk and then just pump it back into
Speaker 1: But in that case, why wouldn't you use a scort bottle? Anyway,
Speaker 1: So if if you have ever had this experience, and
Speaker 1: you've ever wondered why won't the ketchup come out, your
Speaker 1: interest in the subject of yology has been ignited. Reyology
Speaker 1: is the study of how matter flows. So given your
Speaker 1: experience with the ketchup bottles, you can probably guess that
Speaker 1: this is a surprisingly complex field. A lot of variables
Speaker 1: are going to go into how a substance flows under
Speaker 1: various conditions. So you know that one glass catchup bottle
Speaker 1: sort of cleanly evacuates onto your plate, maybe even faster
Speaker 1: than you wanted to, and then the next one, same brand,
Speaker 1: same content, same bottle, just will not budge until you
Speaker 1: jam the knife in. So what makes the difference. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of variables. Temperature is a big one.
Speaker 1: You probably know this from cooking, right, You've got a
Speaker 1: lot of sauces, soups, so they're edible fluids that are
Speaker 1: very runny at a high temperature but almost solid at
Speaker 1: a low temperature. And there are just tons of reology
Speaker 1: characteristics that you can chart exactly how does a flowing
Speaker 1: material react to different types of substrate materials, Like how
Speaker 1: does it flow on glass versus on some other type
Speaker 1: of material, or how does it like how far will
Speaker 1: it bubble up off the lip of a container before
Speaker 1: it overflows? There are all kinds of questions like that.
Speaker 1: So the measurement of a material's ability to flow is
Speaker 1: known as rheometry, And I think this paper technically qualifies
Speaker 1: as a foray into rheometry because it's going to be
Speaker 1: measuring cats and how how well cats flow out of
Speaker 1: catchup bottles. Uh, not quite catchup bottles, but it gets
Speaker 1: surprisingly close. Uh. So reology is actually kind of it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that seems kind of dry at first,
Speaker 1: but it's more interesting the more you think about it.
Speaker 1: The Greek philosopher Heraclitis is famous for this insistence that
Speaker 1: the fundamental nature of the universe is sort of constant change.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the static change, since everything is
Speaker 1: always changing in a way, everything is always the same.
Speaker 1: You've heard that quote that no man ever steps in
Speaker 1: the same river twice. That's attributed to Heraclidas. But another
Speaker 1: way of expressing this idea is the aphorism panta ray,
Speaker 1: which is Greek for everything flows, like we all flow
Speaker 1: down here will flow too, and uh and so everything changes,
Speaker 1: nothing remains still and far. Dwand points out that the
Speaker 1: field of reology is sort of along the same same
Speaker 1: same lines as this idea by Heraclitus. States of matter
Speaker 1: are not fixed features of the universe. They're expressed through
Speaker 1: a matter of time. So eventually forces act on every
Speaker 1: massive particles to make those particles deform or flow in
Speaker 1: some way. Uh. Solid matter tends to deform over time.
Speaker 1: Liquid or gas tends to flow. Gotcha. Okay, yeah, this
Speaker 1: makes sense. So I'm thinking about like we recently talked about,
Speaker 1: like these massive glaciers in uh small Bard, and that
Speaker 1: some of these glaciers have different states inside of themselves,
Speaker 1: so some of them are more liquid and more solid
Speaker 1: than other states, and that causes them to move, the
Speaker 1: entire glacier to move at different paces. This is somewhat related. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's a great example because on a long enough
Speaker 1: time scale, glaciers do flow as well, even though they're
Speaker 1: solid and you can walk on them if you want
Speaker 1: to look over hundreds of years, they're sort of flowing.
Speaker 1: Uh So, a major factor in how things flow or
Speaker 1: resist flow is the state of matter at her. We
Speaker 1: all remember this from you know, elementary school physics. But
Speaker 1: by traditional definition, you've got solids, liquids, and gas. And
Speaker 1: a solid is the state of matter which has both
Speaker 1: a fixed volume it's not going to change in size,
Speaker 1: and a fixed shape it's not going to change in shape.
Speaker 1: Liquid is the state of matter that's got a fixed
Speaker 1: volume but not a fixed shape, and instead it conforms
Speaker 1: to the shape of whatever contains it. And then gas
Speaker 1: doesn't have either one. It doesn't have a fixed shape
Speaker 1: or a fixed volume, but expands to fill whatever container
Speaker 1: it's in. Here's where the cat comes in. Now, being
Speaker 1: an animal, I think you generally assume the cat is
Speaker 1: more or less a solid, right, well, kind of complex.
Speaker 1: It's a solid filled with liquids, that's true. Animals are
Speaker 1: kind of bags of juice, right and then, but then cats,
Speaker 1: I haven't read the study, but ever since I saw
Speaker 1: the title, I keep looking at my cat and watching
Speaker 1: her move and she does have like a very flowy
Speaker 1: liquid movement to totally, but it's not I would say
Speaker 1: it comes through less when the cat is moving around
Speaker 1: and walking, and more when the cat is at rest
Speaker 1: in various containers and substrates. So you guys are both
Speaker 1: cat owners, haven't you seen the way a cat will
Speaker 1: sometimes seem to puddle in the bathroom sink or pour
Speaker 1: itself into a basket or box. Oh definitely the baskets
Speaker 1: and box like that seems to be universal. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: My my female cat rowing is she she has an
Speaker 1: ability to, like she's a little overweight, which she has
Speaker 1: an ability to kind of just make her her mounds
Speaker 1: of flesh kind of form around her in a liquid status. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember this. I've seen lots of cats
Speaker 1: that love to just sort of not just get into
Speaker 1: depressions and cavities in various types of containers, but seemed
Speaker 1: to fill them perfectly to every edge like a liquid would.
Speaker 1: So that inspired some people on the internet to make
Speaker 1: posts like cats are liquids, and then far Dan is
Speaker 1: basically like I saw a thing on the internet that
Speaker 1: said cats are liquids, let's find out. So he essentially
Speaker 1: takes a bunch of photos of cats and analyzes them
Speaker 1: using the criteria of reology the same way you'd measure
Speaker 1: I say, a massive ketchup or paint or mud to
Speaker 1: understand the way it flows. A cat in a jar,
Speaker 1: a cat spread across a lot of bars, a cat
Speaker 1: in a basket, And what follows in the paper I
Speaker 1: would say is mostly just a bunch of in jokes
Speaker 1: for yologists, But I do think it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: The results are obviously that cats can have some unique
Speaker 1: reeological properties, combining apparent features of both solids and liquids.
Speaker 1: But wouldn't that be true of basically any mammal Well,
Speaker 1: I mean part fur. Yeah, I think the fur, the
Speaker 1: fur and the sort of soft body is very crucial
Speaker 1: for the cat because probably a little bit solid and
Speaker 1: a little bit liquid. Oh yeah, like, well, my bodies liquid. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we are pretty much blood bags. But I
Speaker 1: would say something about the shape of your body. So
Speaker 1: imagine yourself trying to get into a sink or a
Speaker 1: box or a basket and just fill it the way
Speaker 1: a cat appears to like a liquid. It doesn't seem
Speaker 1: quite as easy for you and me. Right, One of
Speaker 1: the things about cats of course, is that they are
Speaker 1: extremely flexible and uh and and then they have these
Speaker 1: sort of various resting states that they'll go into, these
Speaker 1: kind of uniform uh, you know, resting states. So there's
Speaker 1: there's I like to think of it as you have
Speaker 1: the bread uh shape where the cat you know, kind
Speaker 1: of tucks its legs in and it it's kind of busy,
Speaker 1: kind of cat bush cat loaf, Yeah, the cat or
Speaker 1: a cat loaf, you could call it. There's also the
Speaker 1: bagel in which they curl up, and then there's one
Speaker 1: there's one I think most of them do this, but
Speaker 1: my cat Mo, she definitely does this one where she
Speaker 1: just kind of like lays like she's been hit by
Speaker 1: a truck or something, you know, where it's just just
Speaker 1: completely sprawled out. But all of these they do look
Speaker 1: like different animals in these different shapes, and it's really
Speaker 1: hard to nail down exactly what the shape of their
Speaker 1: body is. Yeah, but my flesh isn't as loosely hanging
Speaker 1: off of my body as it does in my cat's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and cats you feel like you can just move it
Speaker 1: all over the place, and the fur really helps. Also.
Speaker 1: The fur gives the illusion that there's like a much
Speaker 1: more body there than there actually is, and that part
Speaker 1: of the body obviously can be deformed into almost any shape.
Speaker 1: That's why when you give a cat of bath, it
Speaker 1: is like one of the saddest things ever because they're miserable.
Speaker 1: But also they lose this ability you're talking about, right,
Speaker 1: So that's part of the thing. A shaved cat would
Speaker 1: not appear to be a liquid in the same way
Speaker 1: a very furry cat is. But I I think it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty funny in the paper, Like a lot of
Speaker 1: these are obviously a lot of these things, he says
Speaker 1: in the paper are funnier if you are a reeologist
Speaker 1: or you're familiar with all these concepts, but they're still
Speaker 1: pretty funny even to an outsider. Like one is a
Speaker 1: picture of a cat in a basket, and it's a
Speaker 1: very small basket. So picture a large cat in like
Speaker 1: a small French fry basket, and it's it's gathered up
Speaker 1: into the basket, clearly filling it entirely, but puffing out
Speaker 1: over the top and hanging over the sides. And he
Speaker 1: analyzes this photo by saying, quote cat on a super
Speaker 1: philadophobic substrate, showing a high contact angle. Another one, he's
Speaker 1: got a jar turned on its side with the mouth
Speaker 1: facing out, and there is a kitten pretty much completely
Speaker 1: filling the jar, and he says, quote tilted jar experiment
Speaker 1: showing the yield stress of a kitten. So the yield
Speaker 1: stress would be like what kind of stress has to
Speaker 1: be put on a mass of liquid before it flows
Speaker 1: out of a container at a certain angle. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the ketchup in the bottle, A lot of times the
Speaker 1: ketchup will not come out of the bottle because you
Speaker 1: have not adequately met its yield stress in whatever form
Speaker 1: it takes in the bottle. Here we've got the kitten
Speaker 1: will not pour out of this jar because it's yield
Speaker 1: stress has not been met. So while this is funny, right,
Speaker 1: and it's written to be funny, it also seems like
Speaker 1: it's probably important because it illustrates the principles of reology
Speaker 1: in a way that that basically backs up how well
Speaker 1: they work. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I
Speaker 1: would say that this paper seems to me to be
Speaker 1: jokier than most of the other papers were looking at
Speaker 1: this time, Like he actually does do some math in
Speaker 1: the paper and actually applies the reheological principles does real analysis,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly I think, just for the purpose of
Speaker 1: being funny, especially to other reeologists. But I think it matters,
Speaker 1: and he mentions in the paper some ways in which
Speaker 1: it might matter. Like one thing is that cats are
Speaker 1: unlike most other types of liquids you would measure the
Speaker 1: flow of because they are self powered and self moving.
Speaker 1: And there are some analogies here to other things that
Speaker 1: you might actually want to study, like studying the flow
Speaker 1: of self powered materials does matter in a lot of scenarios,
Speaker 1: like studying the movement of large packs or flocks of animals,
Speaker 1: or studying the flow of crowds of humans under various constraints.
Speaker 1: And this is sort of me extrapolating, because I think
Speaker 1: that would also come into some different kinds of fields
Speaker 1: other than reyology. There's probably, you know, such a thing
Speaker 1: as just studying crowd dynamics. But but hold on, I
Speaker 1: got an idea of how this connects. Okay, So remember
Speaker 1: that movie World War Z with the zombies like zombie
Speaker 1: flow basically, yeah, exactly, like the zombies like came together
Speaker 1: as like a hive mind and could like didn't. There's
Speaker 1: even one point where like I think they turned into
Speaker 1: a hand or something something dumb like that, Right, They
Speaker 1: formed structures kind of like firing'st you're talking about the movie,
Speaker 1: the movie, not the book at all. Yeah. Uh, well
Speaker 1: they would climb walls by piling themselves up against the
Speaker 1: wall and then scaling over. Yeah, exactly. And so you
Speaker 1: could Let's say you were one of the c g
Speaker 1: I operators on that film and you needed to figure
Speaker 1: out how they would flow. You could probably use the
Speaker 1: principles of reyology applied based on something like on crowd dynamics. Yeah. Possibly, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I would say that crowd dynamics, studying the
Speaker 1: flow of crowds and other self powered uh types of
Speaker 1: flow could have real consequences, and say designing environments. For example,
Speaker 1: crowd crush and trampling are real things that happen when
Speaker 1: you get a bunch of people together in a place
Speaker 1: and they start flowing in a non optimal an entire
Speaker 1: brain stuff episode on the science of crowd crushing. And
Speaker 1: so I think maybe like understanding self directed flow of
Speaker 1: bio materials, whether it's a single animal or lots of
Speaker 1: animals acting as a pack, could help us better maybe
Speaker 1: maybe better design public spaces to accommodate sudden human crowd
Speaker 1: flow without leading to tragedies. So cases where say a
Speaker 1: large group of people are screaming and flowing out of
Speaker 1: a movie theater, and also cases where the blob is
Speaker 1: flowing out of the same movie theater after them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Both both of these would be opportunities for reology of
Speaker 1: the blob would be a great paper. That's what this
Speaker 1: guy should right next. I bet somebody has done that
Speaker 1: out there. I bet that's one of those things you
Speaker 1: could find. But to your point about just raising awareness
Speaker 1: of reality, I think that's a great acent point on
Speaker 1: this show. I do not believe we have ever discussed
Speaker 1: reeology before, and here we are discussing it. Well, I
Speaker 1: think we should commit now we should try to find
Speaker 1: at least one really truly interesting yology topic to cover
Speaker 1: within the next year. Okay, yeah, maybe the blob. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick breaking. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we will jump into another two thousand seventeen ignoble winning study. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, Robert, what do you have for us? Alright,
Speaker 1: so this one, this was actually the first one that
Speaker 1: I I snagged from from this year's offerings because it
Speaker 1: is a paper that I have covered before. Kind of
Speaker 1: ad nausea because there is a stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind podcast episode. I believe that touches on this. There
Speaker 1: was a video and I'm pretty sure I did a
Speaker 1: blog post as well. Oh I remember this, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The title of the paper is female penis, male vagina
Speaker 1: and their correlated evolution in a have insect. And this
Speaker 1: was a Current Biology paper paper from two thousand and fourteen.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, first of all, for our listeners, there's
Speaker 1: an image that's inserted here in our notes for Robert's referencing.
Speaker 1: Insert is a good Yeah. It is very difficult to
Speaker 1: tell what is happening here, but it is also very
Speaker 1: easy to imagine what is happening here. It's just these
Speaker 1: uh oregan like structures flowing into and out of each
Speaker 1: other with a male and female symbol on them. It
Speaker 1: looks somewhat insectile, or maybe there's just hair on everything.
Speaker 1: I can't tell. Oh it is it is a cronenberg
Speaker 1: Ee world. This image attempts u this with so basically
Speaker 1: the reason that this the study was highlighted previously, the
Speaker 1: reason it want to ignoble UH this year is because
Speaker 1: it concerns sex the sex swapped world of cave bugs,
Speaker 1: which I think we can all get behind. Um. So specifically,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Brazilian cave insects of the neo Trogla genus.
Speaker 1: We're talking four to sink distinct species here, and they
Speaker 1: mark the first documented example of an animal with sex
Speaker 1: reversed genitalia. So as this as detailed in the Cell
Speaker 1: pressed journal Current Biology, the females quote insert an elaborate
Speaker 1: penis like organ into the males much reduced vagina like
Speaker 1: opening during forty to seventy hour long love making marathons.
Speaker 1: So to clarify, would this mean that's the male still
Speaker 1: makes sperm cells, correct, and the female still makes egg cells,
Speaker 1: but they bring them into contact by the female inserting
Speaker 1: an organ into the male to retrieve the sperm cells
Speaker 1: from inside. Exactly. It's a different like formation essentially, but
Speaker 1: it's but it's unique, is the thing, Like, there are
Speaker 1: no other examples of of a a sex or gender
Speaker 1: swapping like this robust right, yeah, and this is I
Speaker 1: mean that's forty to seventy hours. I mean sting would
Speaker 1: probably be embarrassed looking at us. Well, these cave bugs.
Speaker 1: The thing is of that the sting is a lover.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think love making is a bit anthropomorphic
Speaker 1: when you're talking about h I kind of agree, yeah,
Speaker 1: because the insect world is pretty brutal, and the love
Speaker 1: making world of really the love making world of a
Speaker 1: lot of organisms is fairly brutal. Uh. And is the
Speaker 1: I love how we've just landed on love making instead
Speaker 1: of mating. I don't know, you know, it just sounds
Speaker 1: more romantic, right, I guess so? So um, But there's more,
Speaker 1: There's there's more. There's some more brutal details here. As
Speaker 1: the team of Brazilian and Japanese researchers discovered, the female
Speaker 1: inserts her phaalic gynosome into the mail and then the
Speaker 1: sex organ inflates, hooking a bevy of spines into the
Speaker 1: male's body to anchor the two insects together. Now, this
Speaker 1: is not the only organism with penis spines. No. In fact,
Speaker 1: there there's evidence that human ancestors have had penis spines
Speaker 1: and harmedid other hominids have had penis spines before. And
Speaker 1: I believe there is some genetic data you can point to. Robert,
Speaker 1: tell me a little more about penis spines. I think
Speaker 1: I'm woefully under educated here, all right, So, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like basically like a cactus penis. I guess you could
Speaker 1: describe it as a because basically there's sort of a
Speaker 1: reproductive arms race in many organisms, and this is where
Speaker 1: spines may serve to stimulate or anchor, uh, the organism
Speaker 1: into place, and or it may serve in sexual conflict.
Speaker 1: Now I think you're probably out there thinking, like, what,
Speaker 1: so some insects have penis spines. That's it, right, No,
Speaker 1: I mean like mammals have penis spines, like cats have
Speaker 1: pens have like penis spines. Kind of right. Yeah, humans
Speaker 1: should wake up every day and just be thankful that,
Speaker 1: you know, for a number of things, But one of
Speaker 1: the things on the list should be that we don't
Speaker 1: have to contend with penis spines um in this case
Speaker 1: of the the cave insect. Of the researchers think that
Speaker 1: it may have other functions aside from just anchoring it
Speaker 1: into place. It might have a role in genital stimulation
Speaker 1: or or in or quote, in inflicting harm. So it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to figure out that it's like
Speaker 1: the brundle fly told us. So there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as insect politics. It's all it. And so wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that like this could be a sex organ or a
Speaker 1: defensive or offensive weapon, well only in so far as
Speaker 1: it plays into the the the war, the continual battle
Speaker 1: of sexual reproduction. Yeah, when whenever I've read about this
Speaker 1: in the past, it's been a biological, uh, survival mechanism,
Speaker 1: I guess. And it's this is horrible from an ethical
Speaker 1: standpoint of humans, right, But the idea is that the
Speaker 1: one without the penis barbs can't get away if they
Speaker 1: do not want to mate with the one with the
Speaker 1: penis barbs. Once the barbs are attached, they're kind of stuck, right,
Speaker 1: So I think that's what you mean by the inflicting harm,
Speaker 1: right that it's it's sort of along the lines of, uh,
Speaker 1: if those are human beings, we would be referring to
Speaker 1: this as like a masochistic act. Now, the the gynosome
Speaker 1: in this case, it again, it does not deposit material
Speaker 1: like a male penis. There's no semen coming out of it,
Speaker 1: there's no sperm deposit. Instead, this gynosome it receives sperm
Speaker 1: as well as capsules of nourishment, sort of a gift
Speaker 1: or a bribe to encourage lots of mating. That we
Speaker 1: see this in a number of different um insects, typically
Speaker 1: the spiders too, like they are the spiders that create
Speaker 1: a wrapped up gifts. The males bring them to the
Speaker 1: females to encourage mating, though sometimes they bring them something
Speaker 1: empty to trick them. So this is essentially like an
Speaker 1: inverted vagina dentata, you can think of it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the would it be inverted, would it be an
Speaker 1: extroverted vagina dentata? Maybe that's yeah, that's probably the correct terminology.
Speaker 1: It's probably not, by the way. Also, vegina dentata is
Speaker 1: something that we've covered on the show separately, that that
Speaker 1: that that was a joke that's not actual like biology.
Speaker 1: I guess that you would say it's kind of aversion
Speaker 1: I believe diverted. Yeah, it was like turning the turning
Speaker 1: out of a pocket, and yeah, that's exactly what I
Speaker 1: was thinking of. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's very complicated
Speaker 1: to try and sort of fit the the tetris equation
Speaker 1: here in one's mind, genital tetris. Now that that act
Speaker 1: of gift giving that we're talking about the nourishment. The
Speaker 1: researchers have argued here that this is likely what drove
Speaker 1: the evolutionary development of the female penis. The dinosame here
Speaker 1: to begin with, again getting into this phallic arms race. Now,
Speaker 1: why is it funny? I think that's pretty obvious because
Speaker 1: it is a study that involves sex and the idea
Speaker 1: of a female organism penetrating a male organism. So sex
Speaker 1: t Yes, basically, that's that's it. It's it's beenign violation.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, as long as you're not one of the
Speaker 1: male cave fugs, right yeah, but but yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: basically just a a funny sex headline, right, but it
Speaker 1: is still important. It's u it's I think it's such
Speaker 1: a startling rever hursal of everything we've come to expect
Speaker 1: from sexual reproduction. And as their researchers point out, the
Speaker 1: reversal here is in the quote rapid evolution and diversification
Speaker 1: unquote of genitalia. So male genitalia is usually the one
Speaker 1: to develop quote coercive adaptations, while female genitalia remains relatively simple. Plus,
Speaker 1: it's the females doing the competition here for males and
Speaker 1: their seminal gifts. So the biological reversal results in a
Speaker 1: very robust behavioral reversal. So perhaps with this particular species,
Speaker 1: there's more females than males, or there's some kind of
Speaker 1: a I don't know if sociological is the right term,
Speaker 1: but there's a there's a set up in which like
Speaker 1: they have to compete for the the attention of the
Speaker 1: males in order to reproduce. Well, it sounds like the
Speaker 1: females would be the ones doing the courtship activities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's interesting to to look at that. It's
Speaker 1: like to say that the biological reversal and then that
Speaker 1: reverses the behavior as well. Uh. I really like this
Speaker 1: because I think flipping things around like this, it shows
Speaker 1: us that sexual reproduction is all about just the combination
Speaker 1: of these two things and the form those things take,
Speaker 1: and all the behavior and culture associated with it is
Speaker 1: merely a product of natural selection. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting
Speaker 1: and it makes me sort of think, like where's it
Speaker 1: going as well, not just with insects, but with like
Speaker 1: all species. You know, although for the most part, I
Speaker 1: mean for the last like millions some odd years, most
Speaker 1: of our species have stayed the same reproductive wise, but
Speaker 1: things can change well, and it especially when we start
Speaker 1: changing ourselves. It's also one of those studies that just
Speaker 1: raises the possibility like what if what if things had
Speaker 1: gone the other way? What if we were in a
Speaker 1: world where the vast majority almost all organisms that engage
Speaker 1: in sexual reproduction entailed at the female penetration of the
Speaker 1: male and uh and we were looking at a weird
Speaker 1: cave bug that did the opposite, right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does put it all into perspective. Yeah, alright, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and we come back. We
Speaker 1: have one more study here for you from the two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen Igno Bells. Thank you, Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna take us from inverted genitals to an
Speaker 1: entirely different place. This is the Peace Prize for the
Speaker 1: Igno Bells this year. Uh and it revolves around the
Speaker 1: Dijury Do you guys familiar with the dijury do? Oh? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm actually can our producer Alex insert the sound of
Speaker 1: a Dijury do in here so that our audience kind
Speaker 1: of gets an idea of what we're talking about. No, wait,
Speaker 1: that was a digury don't. Here we go, and if
Speaker 1: nothing else, I think everybody should recognize that sound from
Speaker 1: any like Australian exploitation film or something mystical. Now, was
Speaker 1: there a bunch of digury do and howling three the marsupials?
Speaker 1: I feel like there was. I mean, if there wasn't
Speaker 1: it was that was a colossal failure on their part. Well,
Speaker 1: if there was, those marsupials would sleep better than most people.
Speaker 1: No way. Yeah, we've got some facts here. Folks did
Speaker 1: red playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnea syndrome
Speaker 1: in a randomized control trial. That is the paper that
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you about today. The essential idea here
Speaker 1: is they demonstrated that regular playing of the dig Rey
Speaker 1: Do is an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnea and snoring.
Speaker 1: So do either you guys snore? Do you have sleep apnea?
Speaker 1: I don't have apnea. My dad does, but I snore
Speaker 1: a decent amount I have. I have relatives who have
Speaker 1: snoring issues. But yeah, I don't have it myself. So
Speaker 1: have you ever thought to yourself, like, what if I
Speaker 1: just played the Digrey Do a little bit more? Would
Speaker 1: that make it better? Science says yes. So this is
Speaker 1: the the play that like you're playing the DIGITALI do
Speaker 1: music to settle down for the evening. Are you listening
Speaker 1: to it or you just have having it in your life.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even have to be right before you go
Speaker 1: to bed. Explain Okay, So these researchers, they took twenty
Speaker 1: five patients who had apnea or hypopnia in an index
Speaker 1: between fifteen and thirty. That's you know, a measurement system
Speaker 1: that they use for like how bad these conditions can get. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they had them do did red lessons for four
Speaker 1: months and the participants played did you red for about
Speaker 1: six days a week for about twenty five point three
Speaker 1: minutes a day, and it's significantly improved both there and
Speaker 1: their partners. Sleep disturbances. Now we might wonder, like what's
Speaker 1: the biological function here, like what is going on? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: sleep disorders of this type, they're caused by the collapse
Speaker 1: of the upper airway. So the most effective intervention is
Speaker 1: usually what's called positive airway pressure therapy. So that's like
Speaker 1: when you see people who have the masks, they go
Speaker 1: to sleep with positive pressure. Yeah. To be honest, like
Speaker 1: when I have sinus problems, what I end up doing
Speaker 1: is just pushing on my my sinuses round my nose.
Speaker 1: I think it's a similar effect, but this is obviously
Speaker 1: like more methodical than what I'm doing. Okay. Uh. For
Speaker 1: some patients though, that's not suitable, so they need other interventions.
Speaker 1: The researchers involved in this experiment they had heard just
Speaker 1: heard from a Digredo instructor. He said, hey, um, my
Speaker 1: students and I we've had a complete reduction in our
Speaker 1: snoring and we're not sleepy during the daytime after we've
Speaker 1: been practicing digre Do for several months. And they thought,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, is this because digre do is training
Speaker 1: the muscles in their upper airways? So okay. They set
Speaker 1: up this methodology and they recruited patients at study centers
Speaker 1: in Switzerland. Then they randomized these patients into an intervention
Speaker 1: group and a control group. And then they excluded candidates
Speaker 1: who are currently trying out that positive airway pressure therapy
Speaker 1: and any drugs that act on the central nervousism, as
Speaker 1: well as anybody who was trying to lose weight or
Speaker 1: way too much or drank too much alcohol, as all
Speaker 1: these things could be contributing factors. The patients in the
Speaker 1: intervention group took the dig red classes and they learned
Speaker 1: the following things. I've never played a Digury do before,
Speaker 1: so I didn't this was new to me. Uh. Circular
Speaker 1: breathing is a technique that enables you to maintain sound
Speaker 1: for a long period of time by inhaling through your
Speaker 1: nose while maintaining airflow through the instrument itself and use
Speaker 1: your cheeks as bellows. Okay, so this is like the
Speaker 1: first kind of important part of this, and then the
Speaker 1: second is to optimize the complex interaction between your lips,
Speaker 1: your vocal tract, and the circular breathing I just mentioned,
Speaker 1: so that the vibration in the upper airway is more
Speaker 1: readily transmitted down to the lower airway. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: one thing to keep in mind here is that with
Speaker 1: dig redo music, you don't hear a bunch of a staccata.
Speaker 1: You don't hear you don't heart, you hear long droning tone.
Speaker 1: It's sustained. Yeah, yeah, exactly, which I imagine also helps
Speaker 1: contribute to this. Right now, I've got a question, are
Speaker 1: there any drone or doom metal bands that incorporate digury
Speaker 1: Do they have to be there have to be I'm
Speaker 1: almost positive there is. Yeah, And but do you think
Speaker 1: they're from Australia or somewhere else? I don't know. You
Speaker 1: get into an interesting area where it would be like
Speaker 1: a like a an aboriginal uh subset of drone music,
Speaker 1: kind of like traditional drawne music, like what happens when
Speaker 1: you run a digury do through an R and JAMP.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to admit, like most sun Oh
Speaker 1: records sound like they have digitally do in the background anyways.
Speaker 1: But so here's the thing, how do you measure this? Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out there's several indexes to measure the effect
Speaker 1: on sleep, and so they brought these patients in, they
Speaker 1: gave them these indexes as surveys, and then they used
Speaker 1: cardio respiratory sleep studies on them, and finally they gave
Speaker 1: the patients just a generic health and quality of life
Speaker 1: survey just to find out, you know, what's all going on,
Speaker 1: making sure everything's working the right way. They found this
Speaker 1: The patient's quality of sleep actually didn't differ significantly between
Speaker 1: the people who played Didjury Do and the people who didn't,
Speaker 1: but their partners reported less sleep disturbance. They also observed
Speaker 1: a significant effect of the digury Do playing on apnea
Speaker 1: or hypopnia. Uh. And so actually when they compared this
Speaker 1: to the positive airway pressure therapy, they found they're similar,
Speaker 1: but the dijury Do has a slightly smaller effect. But essentially,
Speaker 1: like if you're out there and you're listening and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a problem for me, maybe you have to
Speaker 1: wear one of those masks at night or something like that,
Speaker 1: Maybe play digury do instead, Like you know what it
Speaker 1: reminds me of, Well, we would say, obviously, following your
Speaker 1: doctor's recommendation, but yeah, give dijury do a try. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do do both well and then imagine how well you
Speaker 1: sleep if you do. One of the great things about
Speaker 1: the digury Do that I've I've picked up on is
Speaker 1: that even if you don't play it, or you never
Speaker 1: play it, uh, it still looks great propped up in
Speaker 1: a corner. Always. Discussion started, well, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: how this reminds me of. This leads us back to cats.
Speaker 1: We've done some research into cats before on this and
Speaker 1: on brain stuff, talking about cat purring and the function
Speaker 1: of cat purring as like a method of healing both
Speaker 1: the cat and maybe people who are on the cat
Speaker 1: or like the cats laying on or something like that.
Speaker 1: So the digury Do kind of made me think the
Speaker 1: same thing, like, there's something there's an act of the
Speaker 1: vibration that's that's working on here. But obviously also they're
Speaker 1: building up actual muscles and responses inside the respiratory system.
Speaker 1: So why is it funny? Well, because the sound and
Speaker 1: the look of the instrument is abusing. Everybody giggles at
Speaker 1: the dig re Do, right, because but why is it important?
Speaker 1: This is an actual thing that can relieve a disorder
Speaker 1: that many people suffer from. You know, most people would
Speaker 1: go that's a ridiculous thing. Why would we Why would
Speaker 1: re research that? If the dig rey Do instructors said hey,
Speaker 1: this may actually have some benefits to your pati most
Speaker 1: people would just go, oh yeah, sure, that's anecdotal. But
Speaker 1: they did the research and they found out that it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. Well it comes back around the idea
Speaker 1: of of science as the slime mold. You know, opening
Speaker 1: every cabinet and even the cabinets that seem a bit
Speaker 1: silly that we seem reluctant to, you know, to to
Speaker 1: to give much credence to the science, is going to
Speaker 1: look in there and see if there's anything worth happening.
Speaker 1: You know, this makes me think we could do probably
Speaker 1: whole episodes on the medical science of wind instruments, Like
Speaker 1: we gotta go from this to bagpipe long right, you
Speaker 1: know the the inverse is that a condition like I'm
Speaker 1: suffering from bagpipeline. Oh man. So you're a bagpipe player
Speaker 1: and you maybe it's actually not funny because this is
Speaker 1: literally killed people. But yeah, bagpipe along is a thing
Speaker 1: that where your bagpipe becomes infested with fungus without you
Speaker 1: realizing because you're continually, yeah, as you as you're continually
Speaker 1: experiencing this constricted airflow through this fungus filled cavity, you
Speaker 1: are feeding all of these these horrible particles into your
Speaker 1: lungs and people don't realize what's going on, and it
Speaker 1: can kill you. Oh man, that sounds like a great
Speaker 1: idea for an episode. Not to be a downer, guys,
Speaker 1: remember that they can help people. Good ay mate. If
Speaker 1: you play bagpipes, also play the digit do I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think that they reverse the conditions. But you'll
Speaker 1: feel better about one thing while you're feeling worse about
Speaker 1: the other. Al Right, we actually have one more before
Speaker 1: we close out this installment of our two thousand seventeen
Speaker 1: Ignobell series, and it is the fluid dynamics prize that
Speaker 1: sounds exciting. Wait, we already did fluid dynamics with those
Speaker 1: cats somehow. I guess rayology is slightly different than fluid dynamics,
Speaker 1: or maybe fluid dynamics is a is a larger subset category.
Speaker 1: I know fluid dynamics is. Certainly it's an area that
Speaker 1: always intrigues me because for starters that they do have
Speaker 1: a at least one huge conference a year, and you
Speaker 1: see a lot of cool papers coming out of it,
Speaker 1: and it ranges tremendously because, for instance, one of the
Speaker 1: best fluid dynamic papers and the most enthralling that I
Speaker 1: came across, was a paper that dealt with how uh
Speaker 1: nuclear fallout moves through a metropolitan environment, you know, with
Speaker 1: like flows of radioactive material hitting buildings like cascading up
Speaker 1: buildings and so forth, and how we might be able
Speaker 1: to to map the flow of these materials. Yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: I got a fun footnote to that. The most expensive
Speaker 1: book in the world is a book that was written
Speaker 1: by Leonardo da Vinci and it's owned by Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: and it's about fluid dynamics, and it's written backwards. You
Speaker 1: have to you have to read mirror to left. It's well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's written so that you have to use a mirror
Speaker 1: to actually read it. Wow. Yeah, it's impressive. Well you
Speaker 1: should ask Bill Gates sometime. Yah. Sounds point and the
Speaker 1: whole things actually standing on well you know. But but
Speaker 1: one of the great things about fluid dynamics is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it certainly touches on some some rather grandiose topics, but
Speaker 1: it also is just everywhere around us. Like I I
Speaker 1: have not looked up a study about this, but every
Speaker 1: time I'm making a smoothie in the morning in the blender,
Speaker 1: I think about fluid dynamics. Somebody out there has surely
Speaker 1: applied some serious scientific thinking to what's going on with
Speaker 1: my blender, Like how how the stuff blends or in
Speaker 1: many cases doesn't blend. How you end up with that
Speaker 1: section of smoothie on the top that's doing nothing while
Speaker 1: the bottom part is swirling around. I would imagine they
Speaker 1: need a better blender or whatever. Those like chains are
Speaker 1: like those smoothie kings, the one we have here and
Speaker 1: with the big square looking they must have like scientists
Speaker 1: on their teams whose whole job is to figure out
Speaker 1: like how well these things can come up through straws.
Speaker 1: I've read about this. I think the best solution is
Speaker 1: to stick your hand down in there while it's going. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that's what I was thinking. You were going with the
Speaker 1: cat thing. Don't follow my advice, folks. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: this particular study is titled A Study of the Coffee
Speaker 1: Spilling Phenomena in the Impulse Regime. So are we in
Speaker 1: the low impulse regime right now? I think we're in
Speaker 1: the high impulsori. I love that that phrase of the
Speaker 1: low impulse regime sounds like a band. I would be
Speaker 1: really into it. It sounds like something Captain Piccard would say.
Speaker 1: So basically, this paper asked the question, from a fluid
Speaker 1: dynamic standpoint, why does spillage occur with coffee also with wine?
Speaker 1: And how might we limit it? This is the great
Speaker 1: thing about the papers. It touches on a universal experience.
Speaker 1: I am the guy who inevitably always spills coffee on themselves.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is A trail of brown
Speaker 1: look like. And to the point where my wife like
Speaker 1: knows when I've bought coffee and have been driving in
Speaker 1: the car because she's just like, there's coffee stains everywhere.
Speaker 1: What is wrong with you? I eat like a raccoon,
Speaker 1: and apparently with coffee, I just like throw the cup
Speaker 1: at my face. I guess I don't know, but yeah,
Speaker 1: even just like when it has a lid on it
Speaker 1: and I move it around, it somehow gets everywhere. This
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite features of classic animation. If
Speaker 1: you watch old Disney movies, they're always depicting cups of
Speaker 1: liquids sloshing around crazily while people are consuming them. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about, Like people swinging a beer
Speaker 1: stein or a wine glass or something like that, and
Speaker 1: it's just splashing and slashing all over the place. When
Speaker 1: that kind of movement tends to uh, it tends to
Speaker 1: be everywhere in these old cartoons, like the people are
Speaker 1: kind of slashing back and forth. The action is kind
Speaker 1: of slashing. I guess animation historians have probably have a
Speaker 1: have some terminology to throw behind them. Yeah. I would
Speaker 1: imagine it has something to do with like the form
Speaker 1: at the time that like the animators and illustrators are
Speaker 1: probably trying to figure out how best to render liquid
Speaker 1: in cartoon format, same as like with c G. I
Speaker 1: like when it's super impressive how great water is rendered.
Speaker 1: I guess part of what I'm thinking of is that
Speaker 1: it's always like in classic animation, actions and the themes
Speaker 1: they signify or exaggerated. Like if you watch old Disney movies,
Speaker 1: whenever somebody's drinking some thing, usually it's in some kind
Speaker 1: of feast scene that's signaling gluttony or something like that.
Speaker 1: And so there's all this depiction of excess, and maybe
Speaker 1: the slashing is one aspect of that. I immediately thought
Speaker 1: of Fantasia and Mickey carrying. So this particular paper is
Speaker 1: a South Korean paper and it was published in Achievements
Speaker 1: in the Life Sciences, and it's by you On Han
Speaker 1: from two thousand sixteen. And I'm not going to summarize
Speaker 1: a lot of the paper because a lot of the
Speaker 1: paper is just sort of breaking it down in from
Speaker 1: a fluid, dynamic standpoint, what's happening with a slashing cup
Speaker 1: of coffee or a slashing goblet of wine. But the
Speaker 1: fun part is that this article doesn't just doesn't just
Speaker 1: describe what's happening. It presents solutions. So wait, you're telling
Speaker 1: me I might have some solutions from my coffee problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that when you when we're done with this section,
Speaker 1: you will have new ideas to implement in your coffee consumption.
Speaker 1: And you're handling of a coffee mug apart from sippy cups. Um, basically, well,
Speaker 1: they get there in a way. There's sort of the
Speaker 1: cipy cup. They do recommend you could you could hold
Speaker 1: the coffee mug with a like a small plate on
Speaker 1: top of it, just cover the coffee mug. That seems obvious.
Speaker 1: You don't a scientist to point that out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe if we didn't have an open container of liquid,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have to deal with sloshing. But I assume
Speaker 1: solutions than that. They well, we'll see if you think
Speaker 1: they're better. Uh, here's a quote from the paper. Moreover,
Speaker 1: we showed that either walking backwards or holding the cup
Speaker 1: the cup with a claw hand posture lead to significant
Speaker 1: changes in the driving force frequency spectrum, suggesting a method
Speaker 1: to suppress residents. So one of the ideas here is, yes,
Speaker 1: simply walk backwards with your coffee mug. But the other
Speaker 1: is that I have a feel like I would spell
Speaker 1: even more with that, but okay, I'm listening. The other
Speaker 1: is to have your make a claw with your hand
Speaker 1: and hold the coffee mug top down, not bottom up,
Speaker 1: so you're holding your coffee like you're some sort of
Speaker 1: like a cartoon vampire carrying it around from the top.
Speaker 1: Crane game. Yeah, it's like the crane game where instead
Speaker 1: of grabbing a bunch of like cheap stuffed animals, you're
Speaker 1: grabbing a single coffee mug. I know this is a
Speaker 1: better method. It makes you look kind of stupid, but
Speaker 1: it is a better method according to the scientific data. Now.
Speaker 1: I know, Robert, you haven't seen the new season of
Speaker 1: Twin Peaks. Joe, you have, right. No, actually, okay, so
Speaker 1: neither of you going to don't spoil it. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say it. There is a character named Dougie in it,
Speaker 1: and Dougie holds coffee in the claw method, but he
Speaker 1: does two handed claw where he grabs it from the
Speaker 1: side and he holds it with both of his hands
Speaker 1: are clawed and he holds onto it tightly like that. Man,
Speaker 1: I have a totally different idea of the claw hold,
Speaker 1: and it comes from my day's serving in restaurants. Where
Speaker 1: the claw was. How you fit three water glasses in
Speaker 1: the same hand. You've got this clutch, but it's underneath, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from the bottom where they each like they fit between
Speaker 1: the first finger and that. Well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: describe all that, but yeah, you can get three water
Speaker 1: glasses in one hand if you use the claw. What
Speaker 1: was the spillage like with that? Not too much? Actually, okay,
Speaker 1: it might have hit on a similar property. But that's
Speaker 1: the other thing that comes to mind. In the service industry,
Speaker 1: you can't really use the top down claw method to
Speaker 1: bring someone their coffee at a restaurant. They're going to
Speaker 1: think you're yeah, they're gonna say, take that back. You're
Speaker 1: you're basically sticking your hand in my beverage. But it
Speaker 1: looks like here that they have come up with a
Speaker 1: design that could fix that problem. Yes, let's carry it
Speaker 1: in your mouth and then spit it out into the
Speaker 1: cup at the table. Well, at least it would be closed, right,
Speaker 1: and then you're prepared for a wonderful cinematic response to
Speaker 1: any jokes that that the customer may may share. But now,
Speaker 1: in addition to providing new ways to carry existing coffee mugs,
Speaker 1: this study does present an alternate coffee cup design. Quote.
Speaker 1: It is evident that a decrease in the radius of
Speaker 1: the cup can significantly increase the resonance frequency by dividing
Speaker 1: the cup into smaller cylindrical cells. So there's like, how
Speaker 1: this looks. It's like a coffee cup, but it looks
Speaker 1: like it's got a bunch of like syringes with the
Speaker 1: top sawed off inside of Its possible to drink out of.
Speaker 1: It looks impossible to drink off. It looks a bit
Speaker 1: silly for sure, I mean straw. Yeah, basically the picture
Speaker 1: looks like a glass like cocktail tumbler, and inside it
Speaker 1: there are all of these glass vials. It's packed with
Speaker 1: test tubes. So imagine if you drink your coffee out
Speaker 1: of a bunch of test tubes that have been lashed together,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a single broad drinking vest. I mean,
Speaker 1: what this looks like is you'd be sipping out of
Speaker 1: the bottom two test tubes and the rest would just
Speaker 1: be pouring into your eyes. Yeah, exactly what. You couldn't
Speaker 1: throw it back, and that's for sure, and it would
Speaker 1: be really you would have to mix your cream and
Speaker 1: sugar in a different cup. Entirely before you even pour it.
Speaker 1: The thing that gets me about this, really, both of
Speaker 1: these suggestions, both the coffee cup design and the coffee
Speaker 1: mug handling UH method, is that what if these what
Speaker 1: if this is the way? What if these are the
Speaker 1: changes we need for a better system of drinking and
Speaker 1: carrying coffee around. But we're ultimately going to just be
Speaker 1: too vain to to change, because, yes, drinking out of
Speaker 1: this bizarre contraption that looks like a bunch of test
Speaker 1: tubes look silly. Carrying your coffee mug around with a
Speaker 1: claw hole looks silly, and but there are other things
Speaker 1: that we've seen in life where the sillier looking method
Speaker 1: is more successful and we don't do it because it
Speaker 1: looks silly. I'm gonna offer a really stupid method, but
Speaker 1: it's my method. I pretty much never spilled my coffee
Speaker 1: because I never fill my cup more than two thirds
Speaker 1: of the way, well, because I don't want to get
Speaker 1: the fear. But the thing is, Joe, I I have
Speaker 1: there's been so many times where I've been coming in
Speaker 1: from my front porch, So I work on my front
Speaker 1: porch a lot. What I'm teleworking and I always have
Speaker 1: a coffee mug with me, and sometimes the coffee mug
Speaker 1: you know it's down to the last little bit, but
Speaker 1: you can still, trust me, you can still slash the
Speaker 1: heck out of a cup of coffee when you have
Speaker 1: less than a fourth of a cup. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you're like trying to grab hold of a child or
Speaker 1: something like, yeah, or if you you know, you you
Speaker 1: have a laptop and you have the coffee mug of
Speaker 1: the laptop. But the thing that this reminded me of,
Speaker 1: and I am not a sports person at all, but
Speaker 1: but I heard it was either a radio lab or
Speaker 1: this American Lonfe episode in the last several years about
Speaker 1: the granny shot in basketball about how this is the
Speaker 1: most effective way to make a free throw. So describe
Speaker 1: the granny shot. The granny shot is the it's generally
Speaker 1: associated with if you don't know how to bowl, or
Speaker 1: you don't know how to throw a basketball, you simply
Speaker 1: hold it in your hands and you just you sort
Speaker 1: of stand legs apart, legs of kimbo. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: just dangle it down there between your legs and then
Speaker 1: throw it up underhanded, underhanded, a double handed, underhand throw
Speaker 1: with legs of kimbo so you're saying that people using
Speaker 1: this method to get a higher frequency percentage of shots
Speaker 1: than people who don't use it. Yeah. Basically, the idea
Speaker 1: is that it's been proven that this is the most
Speaker 1: effective method even in the really especially in the NBA.
Speaker 1: UM and those who utilize this method um make more
Speaker 1: free throws. But it's pretty rare that you'll see this
Speaker 1: during a game because it looks stupid. Yeah, because there's
Speaker 1: this idea that if you throw the ball that way,
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing, that it it has
Speaker 1: less than next to it. Even if it's more effective,
Speaker 1: even if it could ultimately, you know, make a difference
Speaker 1: in winning games, it's still something. It's a line that
Speaker 1: most basketball players are not willing to cross. Sounds like
Speaker 1: there's a window for somebody to come in and moneyball
Speaker 1: all this thing. I guess, Yeah, but but I wonder
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I just use moneyball as a verb like
Speaker 1: I'm some ad executive. Well, let's quickly pivot away from
Speaker 1: that and we'll move back to the Yeah. But but
Speaker 1: it it raises the question, what again, what if this
Speaker 1: is the best way, this is the scientifically verified way
Speaker 1: to drink coffee and We're just all going to ignore
Speaker 1: it as we've been ignoring it because, like I said this,
Speaker 1: this this came out last year and nothing has changed.
Speaker 1: Now that it's getting it's making the rounds with the
Speaker 1: Ignoble prizes, is it more likely that people will listen
Speaker 1: to it? Will you? Will there be like one person
Speaker 1: in a given workplace that embraces the crazy test tube
Speaker 1: filled the coffee mug. If those tubes were available on
Speaker 1: the market and they weren't like prohibitively expensive, I'd give
Speaker 1: it a shot. Yeah, maybe we should. We could, we
Speaker 1: could be an experiment. Well, maybe listeners out there will
Speaker 1: try it themselves. If you don't try the test tube
Speaker 1: oriented coffee mug been, try the top down claw method
Speaker 1: of holding the cup and let us know how it goes.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. Four down, um,
Speaker 1: six to go. Yeah, So follow us on our next
Speaker 1: episode about Ignobles. We're gonna release this right one after
Speaker 1: the other, sequentially, I believe, is how they say it.
Speaker 1: But you know what, if you've got any questions for
Speaker 1: us about coffee mug or weird insect genitalia or how
Speaker 1: you make liquid cats, where can they get in touch
Speaker 1: with us? Joe, Well, you can go to stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com, where you've got everything we do,
Speaker 1: including Robert's excellent blog posts. He'll do some space music,
Speaker 1: he'll do some monsters. I don't know we're gonna get
Speaker 1: any monsters in November. Surely we will, even though we've
Speaker 1: just Yeah, surely I can find a monster too to
Speaker 1: throw in the November mix. But that's, of course where
Speaker 1: you can get all of our podcasts. But also you
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Speaker 1: Arro