WEBVTT - From the Vault: Tea, Part 3 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:08.000 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.240 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:14.080 it is Saturday. Time to head into the vault for 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:17.000 an older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.640 one originally published February ninth, twenty twenty three, and it's 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:24.480 part three of our series on tea. Pour yourself a cup. 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:30.400 Times for drinking tea in idle moments, when bored with poetry, 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:36.360 thoughts confused, beating time to songs, when music stops, living 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:42.720 in seclusion, enjoying scholarly pastimes, conversing late at night, studying 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:47.720 on a sunny day in the bridal chamber, detaining favored guests, 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:53.199 playing host to scholars or pretty girls, visiting friends returned 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:57.800 from far away in perfect weather, when skies are overcast, 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:04.360 watching boats glide passed on the canal, midst trees and bamboos, 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.920 when flowers bud and birds chat on hot days by 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:15.080 a lotus pond, burning incense in the courtyard after tipsy 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.959 guests have left, when the youngsters have gone out on 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:27.280 visits to secluded temples, when viewing springs and scenic rocks. 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:33.240 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind Production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:39.760 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. This 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:43.640 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that opening 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:47.400 up the episode. There, that's the one last key poem. 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.440 This one is also collected in a History of Tea, 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:52.840 The Life and Times of the World's Favorite Beverage by 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:55.600 Larc Martin, which is one of my sources for these episodes. 0:01:55.880 --> 0:02:00.520 This is a poem by Sue C. Shue, which I 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.440 like it. You know, I guess it's kind of a 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.080 simple format here, but yeah, it's basically saying, you can 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.040 drink tea anytime. Anytime is a great time to drink tea. 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:10.920 But here are some specific examples. 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.639 I guess, pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening. 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:18.240 Yeah. So this is our third and I think this 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.480 will be our final for now episode on tea. I 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:23.480 don't know. It's certainly a topic we could always come 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:26.800 back to. It's a topic we could keep doing. But 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:28.799 then if we delivered to do that, we would be 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:32.280 a tea podcast. And we're not exclusively a tea podcast, 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:35.320 but there are a lot of great looking exclusively tea 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:39.720 related podcasts out there, so certainly feel free to continue 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.640 your tea journey with other shows, and if there's a 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.840 particular topic related to tea that seems like something we 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:49.000 should cover, well, we can always come back and do that. 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:51.480 But if you didn't listen to the first two episodes 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:53.880 on Tea, I highly recommend you go back and listen 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.840 to those. We talked about, Oh, the botany of Tea. 0:02:57.760 --> 0:02:59.760 We talked about a lot of the history of tea 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.919 and conclude the basic Chinese and Japanese history of tea 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.880 in this episode, with a few other bits and pieces 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:10.000 in there. We also talked about tea mythology in the 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.720 first episode. Now before we move on and also get 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:17.240 into some of these interesting tangents, I wanted to clarify 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:20.160 what we said in the last section about the phases 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:22.760 of tea because I think this can get confusing. So 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:25.640 you have kind of like the primitive tea level, where 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:29.560 it would be tea leaves dropped into boiling water, creating 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:32.640 a bitter brew. Then you have this phase one of tea. 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.320 This is where you have leaves dried and pressed into bricks, 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:37.360 and then when you go to make it, you cut 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:39.120 some of that brick off, you put it in water, 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:42.040 and it ends up being kind of coarse and acidic. 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:43.760 But this was kind of like the first phase, the 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:47.920 first era of tea. Then comes Phase two, where the 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:50.480 leaves are steam dried and ground into a fine powder 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.120 whipped into hot water. This is the Mancha style of tea. 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:57.840 It's fresher, it has a fresher, grassier flavor. And then 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:02.520 eventually you get to phase three, have steamed, cut, dried, oxidized, 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:07.480 and sordid and steeped tea that creates basically most of 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:11.400 the modern flavors of tea that we think of today. Now, 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.080 there are plenty of examples that kind of blur the line. 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.599 You can still certainly get brick or cake, et cetera. 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:21.800 Teas that are oxidized. Mancha tees are still used as well. 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.880 So it's don't look at this as just like a 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:30.320 strict evolution of form with past forms completely falling away. 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:32.680 But I think it is a good structure to think 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:34.719 of when we think about the evolution of tea. And 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.000 as far as phase three goes, we will be getting 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:39.120 into that later in this episode. 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.279 Now, Rob, before we do that, you actually inspired me 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.680 to go on a couple of tangents about teapots in 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.240 this episode because while I am not much of a 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:51.480 tea drinker, for many years I did have an intimate 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:55.560 relationship with a tea kettle that lived on my stovetop, 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.520 and most of that relationship was one of strife and agony. 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:04.440 I really disliked this tea kettle for a number of reasons, 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:09.360 and one of them is as follows, Rob, I'm sure 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:13.120 you've had this experience a million times, whether it's from 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:17.200 a poorly designed or vintage teapot, or I guess from 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:21.400 any vessel containing liquid. You fill it up and you 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.160 go to pour it out into a cup or a bowl, 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:27.040 but instead of pouring in a steady arc where you 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:30.680 aimed it, the liquid coming out of the spout clings 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:34.280 to the underside of the teapot spout and then runs 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:36.839 down the side of the pot and dribbles all over 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:39.320 the table, or the floor or your pants. 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:43.760 I have certainly encountered this before. Fortunately, our current teapot 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.120 doesn't do this, or at least doesn't do this so much. 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:48.920 But I have certainly encountered this before. 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:51.440 The one that I'm thinking of had a very kind 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:57.440 of wide, round, almost pipe like spout, and yeah, it 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:01.480 did this all the time. So this is a phenomenon 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:04.640 that is well known in physics. It actually has a name. 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:08.520 It's called the teapot effect. Though it doesn't just happen 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:12.039 in teapots. It occurs when pouring from all kinds of containers. 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:14.960 I think it is probably one of the most common 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.280 sources of spills and stains around the kitchen, when you know, 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:21.640 when you're trying to pour out of one container and 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.320 it just doesn't pour the way you intended, It doesn't 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.240 arc like you meant it to. Instead, it runs down 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:27.760 the side. 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:32.600 Mm. Yeah, And I think I've certainly encountered this even 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:38.000 more with other pouring vessels, and often it will be 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:40.640 something you know, bright and colorful or sticky that I 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:41.880 really don't want to get everywhere. 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:44.839 I think I was trying to think about situations where 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:49.120 I encounter it the most, and before understanding all of 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:53.280 the underlying physics, the things that occurred to me were 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:57.120 that it happens when you're trying to pour a liquid slowly, 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:02.599 especially out of a container without a a designated pouring lip. 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.360 So like if you're trying to pour liquid, say out 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.120 of a saucepan or out of a drinking glass, that's 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:08.880 dribble city. 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:12.480 Yeah and yeah, especially this will occur, at least in 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:14.800 my experience, where you have to say, like you're gonna 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:17.360 pour orange juice out of an orange juice container, and 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:19.920 the orange juice container has just been opened, it's super 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.960 filled up, you know, so you have this impulse to 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:27.600 want to pour slowly in order to control the juice 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:31.280 which is already almost overflowing. But if you do so, yeah, 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:33.200 you're going to get that dribble more often than not. 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:35.640 You've got to commit and really just slash it in there. 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.960 But why does the dribbling happen? Well, it turns out 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:41.240 the answer is not simple at all, and there have 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:45.840 been fluid dynamics and raiology papers. Reology is the study 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:49.600 of how matter flows, so the flow of fluids or 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:55.000 plastic plastic solids. Reology and fluid dynamics papers on this 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.000 tricky subject, going back at least as far as the 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:02.680 nineteen fifties, there was an investigation of the teapot effect 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:05.960 that in fact even won an Ignobel Prize in nineteen 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:08.600 ninety nine. That you can see how that fits with 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:11.000 their kind of like a quaint, quirky sense of humor, 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:15.240 like oh, teapots, but it looks like A fairly definitive 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:19.440 paper on this question came out in twenty twenty one 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:24.119 and it was by Bernhard Schikel, Robert I. Bowles, and 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:30.400 Giorgio's Passias called developed liquid film passing, a smooth and 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:35.439 wedge shaped trailing edge, small scale analysis and the teapot 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:39.800 effect at large Reynolds numbers. This was published in the 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:43.400 Journal of Fluid Mechanics again twenty twenty one. By the way, 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:45.720 if you scroll through this paper and check out the 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:49.640 diagrams and equations, it's almost hilarious, like you would be 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.959 shocked how complicated this looks. I'm not even going to 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:54.840 pretend that I could make sense of it. Like I 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.200 was trying to look and hack through this paper, I'm like, oh, 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.160 this is hopeless. So instead I found a good article 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.960 summarizing the results that includes an interview with one of 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.640 the lead authors. The article is by Jennifer Woolett for 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:11.040 Ours Technica and this paper so it was a collaboration 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:15.679 between researchers at the Vienna University of Technology and University 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.240 College London, and they say that their paper here is 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.920 a complete theoretical description of the teapot effect, which has 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.640 eluded these researchers for decades. Finally they've got all the 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.679 forces modeled here correctly, so they can fully predict what 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:35.400 happens with a t spout of various designs pouring in 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.080 different ways. And they say the teapot effect has to 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:44.600 include inertial, viscous, and capillary forces. So it turns out 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:48.680 one of the major factors influencing whether the liquid dribbles 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:51.319 or not is as you and I both intuited from 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:56.480 our experience flow rate. To people who have less experience 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:59.400 in the kitchen, I think this might sound counterintuitive because, 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:01.480 as you know, you were saying, rob, a lot of 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.559 times when you're trying to be careful and not spill something, 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:09.920 your instinct is to pour slowly because pouring slowly seems 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.880 like it's the careful option, right. Yeah, But as matches 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:17.440 our experience at a higher flow rate, when liquid is 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:21.000 coming out of the teapot or container faster, this actually 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.400 makes the pouring action less likely to end up dribbling. 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:26.640 That is how you are more likely to get the 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:30.040 arc you're intending. It's actually once you start trying to 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:34.720 pour slowly, the dribbling becomes more likely. So you know, 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:36.720 you can imagine all kinds of scenarios here, like if 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.800 you're trying to pour something out slowly, to carefully measure 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.000 a volume of liquid into another container like a measuring cup, 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:46.880 or maybe you were trying to pour something in a 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:50.720 slow stream to risk and emulsify it. You've seen people 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:52.120 doing that. They dribble all the time. 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:55.959 Oh yeah, and then I'm thinking, especially like making cocktails 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.000 and measuring out the various components. This is why the 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:00.440 sides of your bottles are sticky. 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:06.280 Yeah, so fast steady pouring dribbles less. The design of 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.680 the lip of the teapot or pouring container also matters. 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:12.240 There were some French physicists who wrote a paper on 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.559 this in twenty ten, and they suggested that you could 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.120 fight the teapot effect by making the lip of the 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:23.040 spout as thin and as sharp ended as possible, so 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:27.040 like round lips are more likely to dribble. And apparently 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.160 it would also help to coat the end of the 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:32.600 spout in water repellent material so that the liquid or 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:35.640 water based liquid doesn't want to cling to the underside 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.719 of the lip. And this seems to be because the 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:41.760 dribbling is partially the result of what the researchers call 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:46.760 a hydrocapillary effect. Basically, whenever you start to pour water 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:50.960 based liquid out of a container, drops will form on 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:54.600 the underside of the lip of the edge you're pouring 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.320 from the like the spout of a teapot, So you 0:11:57.360 --> 0:11:59.200 know the water's coming out of the spout, but then 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:01.760 on the under side of that spout there's going to 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:05.040 be some droplet formation, and the rate at which you 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.160 pour determines how big those drops on the underside of 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.320 the lip get. A high flow rate keeps them small, 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:14.960 but a slow pouring allows the drops on the underside 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:18.280 to become larger. And once those drops reach a certain 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:21.360 critical size, once they get big enough, they actually start 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.320 to grab hold of the water or tea or whatever 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.360 that's coming out of the spout and redirect its flow 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:30.360 down the side of the container instead of the arc 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.080 that you're aiming for. Now, there was a thing that 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:35.400 I was thinking about. This is another design feature that 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:38.880 I didn't see mentioned in this summary or in any 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:40.679 of the papers I was looking at, but it's one 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:44.000 that I've seen in some kettle designs, and it's a 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:49.240 teapot spout, they can have an upward arcing curve right 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:52.160 before the opening of the spout. For example, you see 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:54.840 this on some gooseneck kettles. Rob, I've got an example 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:56.560 for you to look at here if you scroll down, 0:12:57.320 --> 0:12:58.679 if you try to picture it, it's kind of a 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:02.600 curving swan neck shape. I don't know why I said, Swannik. 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:07.559 They're literally called goose necks. The curving shape where if 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.520 you imagine it in pouring position and you're trying to 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.480 think how the liquid would have to travel to run 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:16.880 down the bottom of the spout, it would literally have 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:19.800 to go sort of uphill first before it would be 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:21.840 able to run down the spout. And I think this 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:26.120 also helps it not do that. One last thing that 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:28.600 I thought was pretty interesting, So they had to model 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:32.600 all these forces that determine whether or not liquid dribbles 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:36.720 when it's coming out. Again. Those forces included an inertial, viscous, 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.600 and capillary forces, but there was actually a very little 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:44.920 role for gravity. Gravity does not play a major role 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.280 in causing the teapot effect, meaning that teapots will still 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:52.400 dribble on the Moon or in other low gravity environments. 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.360 That reminds me. I was looking around for this episode. 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.760 I briefly looked into drinking tea in orbit, and I 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:02.920 did find anything that I was really compelled to include here. 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:06.800 But I did see some footage of an astronaut having 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:12.079 their tea with chopsticks, like eating the little floating globs 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.599 of tea. Oh I see out of the atmosphere with 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:15.760 their chopsticks. 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.680 Yeah, just grabbing like so, I guess with the surface tension, 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.600 it's like a little blob of tea floating and then 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:23.680 you like put the chopsticks in it and it sticks 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:37.000 to them. Yeah, yeah, Okay, So that's the physical teapot tangent. 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.160 What about the philosophical teapot tangent. Well, I thought it 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:44.160 would be interesting to very briefly talk about Russell's teapot, 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:46.960 one of the most famous teapots in the world. It's 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:50.640 not a physical artifact. It is a thought experiment used 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:56.080 by Bertrand Russell to explain a certain form of skeptical reasoning, 0:14:56.120 --> 0:15:00.000 specifically in his case, to support his lack of bully 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.000 in God, though I think it could be applied to 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:05.480 other scenarios. Now, I want to front load a caveat 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:08.680 and say that some theistic philosophers think they have good 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:13.240 arguments for why Russell's teapot analogy does not or should 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.320 not apply to beliefs about God. But even if you 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:18.640 are inclined to agree with those critics, I think the 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.000 teapot is useful to think about for a more general 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:25.520 analogy for different types of beliefs that we hold in 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:30.280 claims that we make. So very brief biographical background. Bertrand 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:34.800 Russell lived from eighteen seventy two to nineteen seventy He 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.560 was a famous British philosopher and public intellectual who was 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.320 incredibly influential in a number of different fields. So he 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.680 was pre eminent in his academic fields of logic and 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:49.200 analytic philosophy, but he was also a big cultural figure 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:52.560 in Britain and an advocate for political causes such as 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:58.440 anti imperialism, socialism and nuclear disarmament. But Russell was also 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:03.280 infamous for being non religious. In nineteen fifty two, he 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:06.000 was asked to write an essay for a London magazine 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:09.720 called Illustrated, which came to be called is There a God? 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:12.920 And I think the essay was actually scrapped and not 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.880 published in the originally intended venue, but Russell expanded upon 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:20.760 it later and released it. And in the essay Russell 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:24.000 uses the analogy of a teapot floating in space to 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.760 explain his doubts about the existence of God. So I'm 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:29.400 going to read from his essay here, and then we 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:33.200 can we can analyze a little bit. So Russell says, 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.800 many Orthodox people speak as though it were the business 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:42.240 of skeptics to disprove received dogmas, rather than of dogmatists 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.520 to prove them. This is, of course a mistake. If 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:48.360 I were to suggest that between Earth and Mars there 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:51.760 is a China teapot revolving around the Sun in an 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:55.600 elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion, 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:58.840 provided I were careful to add that the teapot is 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:02.480 too small to be real even by our most powerful telescopes. 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:05.040 But if I were to go on to say that, 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:10.080 since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:12.600 on the part of human reason to doubt it, I 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:16.159 should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:19.000 the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:22.920 books taught as sacred truth, every Sunday and instilled into 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.119 the minds of children at school. Hesitation to believe in 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:30.000 its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:32.840 the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:37.720 enlightened age, or of the inquisitor at an earlier time. Now, 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.240 to take a moment to be fair to Russell's critics, 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:42.680 I think they make some I'm not sure what I 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:46.120 think about this, some potentially good points about the belief 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.000 in the teapot not actually being analogous to belief in 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:54.159 an omnipotent creator God, because they say, for example, the 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.600 teapot is an object in the world that could only 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:00.719 plausibly have come to orbit the Sun if humans had 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.240 put it there, which we would probably know about if 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:06.359 it had happened. Meanwhile, God would not be an object 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:09.240 in the world, but like the creator of the world, 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.679 or somehow standing outside the world. And therefore, according to 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:16.119 these theistic philosophers, the existence of God is like a 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:20.080 proposition that is just not analogous to the existence of 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:23.080 any physical object or entity that you could search for 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.240 in physical space. So I think a good way of 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.439 phrasing this objection is that they're saying, well, belief in 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:32.120 God is not a claim about something that exists in 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.399 the universe, but rather a claim about the way the 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:39.000 universe is. I'm not going to try to adjudicate that 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:42.159 particular dispute about whether Russell is right that this is 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:44.680 a good analogy for religious beliefs in God or whether 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.200 the critics are right that it is not. But either way, 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:49.800 I think it is a useful thought experiment in a 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:52.600 more general sense because it reminds us not to be 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:59.040 taken in easily by unfalsifiable claims. And there's another thought 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:01.720 experiment right along these lines that we've talked about on 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:03.840 the show before. You might if you listened for a while, 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.960 you might remember it, the thought experiment by Carl Sagan, 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:11.400 The invisible Dragon in his garage. So Carl Sagan says, hey, 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.680 I've got a dragon that lives in my garage. And 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:17.520 if you doubt this, you might say, well, okay, take 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:19.679 me to your garage. I want to see it. And 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:21.640 then Sagan says, no, no, no, no, no, you got 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:24.880 it all wrong. It's an invisible dragon, so you shouldn't 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:26.480 expect to be able to see it. I mean, you 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:28.480 can look but you're not going to see it. It 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:32.080 is there, though, and then you could say, well, okay, 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.600 then let's walk around in your garage, you know, with 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.159 our hands outstretched and feel around for it until we 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:41.360 finally come upon this dragon's invisible scaly back, and once 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.240 again Sagan can say, no, no, hold on. It is 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:48.040 also an incorporeal dragon. It is made of spirit matter, 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:51.080 not solid matter, so you shouldn't expect to be able 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:53.720 to touch it, you know, that wouldn't disprove it that 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:56.120 you can't feel it, And then you could go through 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.320 more stages. I think he says that it's you might suggest, well, 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:02.520 what if we use like an infrared heat detector, and 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:05.320 then he could say, no, no, it's a dragon that does 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:07.919 not produce any heat, and so on and so on. 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:11.520 You can go moving the goalposts of detection always backwards, 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:14.040 so that there's no way to really check and see 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.880 if the dragon is really there. I think the main 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.119 point of both of these analogies, Russell's teapot and Carl 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.840 Sagan's invisible Dragon, is that people can always try to 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:27.840 get you to believe things by shifting the obligation of 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:32.040 evidence onto you for doubting the existence, rather than assuming 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:36.200 that obligation themselves for claiming the existence. So it's the 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.719 attitude of if I say X is true and you 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:42.800 can't disprove it, you must accept it. And this is 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:46.359 made doubly dangerous by like the rebuke of all potential 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.760 investigatory tests. So in the case of Carl Sagan's dragon, 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:52.640 that's like, oh no, no, no, it's invisible and you can't 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:56.080 touch it and it wouldn't show up on infrared. But 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:58.520 in the case of Russell's teapot analogy, it's that, well, 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:01.320 the teapot is too small with any of our telescopes, 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:04.120 but I tell you it is there. And the point 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:07.280 of both of these analogies is essentially I say X, 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:10.280 if you can't disprove it, you must accept it. Is 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:13.320 not a legitimate way to reason because that type of 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:15.879 argument could be it could be used to force you 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.840 to believe in a teapot orbiting the sun or an 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:23.080 invisible dragon in the garage. Reasonable claims are based on evidence, 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:28.520 and most importantly, they are falsifiable. They entail certain physical predictions, 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:31.080 like you should be able to see what I'm talking 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:33.760 about if you look here, or you should be able 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:36.280 to detect you know, the heat signature of the dragon 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:39.760 if you look here, and if those predictions turn it false, 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:41.399 the belief is probably false. 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:44.560 Yeah, And so to your point like that, one of 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:46.919 the big applications here, of course, is with like conspiracy 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:49.919 thinking today, where there are plenty of examples of this 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:54.000 where it'll be some you know, ultimately kind of ridiculous 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:58.760 or outrageous or perhaps supernatural claim and then it's presented 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:02.520 as if it is on us disprove this, when really 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:05.040 that's not the way it goes. And I think you 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:07.240 see a more or I tend to see a more 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:12.080 rational approach to this with some of the impossible or 0:22:12.160 --> 0:22:15.439 currently impossible to prove hypotheses so that we've discussed on 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:19.160 the show before, like say the bicameral mind hypothesis or 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.120 the stone ape hypothesis, like these are both I think 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:27.960 examples of very thought provoking ideas that cannot be proved 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.520 or disproved, at least not currently. And I also don't 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:38.600 see the major advocates of these hypotheses demanding that scientists 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:41.960 disprove them like they seem to they understand how Russell's 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:44.399 teapot or the invisible dragon works here and they know 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:47.760 that it's on them to make the argument and provide 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:49.120 the proof if there is such a thing. 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:52.000 Yes, I mean, I think it's fair to play around 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:56.760 in speculative territory, but to always be hyper conscious to 0:22:57.119 --> 0:23:00.480 signal and remind yourself and remind others that that's what 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:04.000 you're doing. We're playing around in speculative territory, rather than 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:07.400