Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clarkner's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. We
Speaker 1: all have um I boogers because this is an early morning, unusual,
Speaker 1: early morning edition of Stuff you Should Know. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the morning edition. We should just talk like this. We
Speaker 1: got on NPR. We got taken to task in its
Speaker 1: nine email from a morning talk show TV show host.
Speaker 1: Did you see it? Uh about the inquisition? Yeah, He's like,
Speaker 1: way to release the inquisition on Ash Wednesdays, kind of
Speaker 1: slapping the face. Five respond I said, actually, it came
Speaker 1: out on fat Tuesday and by sheer coincidence. He's like,
Speaker 1: thanks for the reply, and I responded to him too.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, I wish I was that clever
Speaker 1: who said I had no idea. It's like our our
Speaker 1: medical marijuana episode being our four utter complete coincidence. Guaranteed everybody.
Speaker 1: I think over the course of six hundred plus shows,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have some weird coincidences like that. You know, Yes,
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't know it was Ash Wednesday. I didn't
Speaker 1: either until I went to the mall yesterday evening and
Speaker 1: a third of the people are were walking around with
Speaker 1: charcoal crosses on their forehead. Nice. It's like, I had
Speaker 1: no idea Atlanta had this many Catholics, good going, They're
Speaker 1: everywhere there are Well, I mean that didn't use to
Speaker 1: because you know, I grew u Baptist here and I
Speaker 1: didn't know many Catholics growing up. But well, Atlanta became
Speaker 1: a transplant towns instead, exactly. And I'll tell you about
Speaker 1: another transplant chuck. Possibly life here on Earth from Mars.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, is this your intro? Have you got breaking news? No?
Speaker 1: That was it. Oh do you remember we did an
Speaker 1: episode on UM the Origin of life on Earth? Remember? Uh?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. And one of the possibilities that it
Speaker 1: was from Mars. And one of the um pieces of
Speaker 1: evidence of this possibility was the Alan Hills Rock from Antarctica,
Speaker 1: a Martian meteorite that was discovered in that was studied
Speaker 1: and studied and they thought in basically Bill Clinton said,
Speaker 1: we found evidence of life on Mars. And then they
Speaker 1: studied it again and they were like, maybe not. And
Speaker 1: now they're studying it again they're saying, yeah, it's possible.
Speaker 1: It's very possible that this four point one billion year
Speaker 1: old rock is showing evidence of fossilized nano bacteria. And
Speaker 1: this is all still Bill Clinton saying this. It is
Speaker 1: underwear at home the authority. He's talking to the TV again.
Speaker 1: Nice uh, but yeah, we're gonna do how Mars works.
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks, this one's for you, big space guy. Oh yeah, sure, Okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't know if I was missing something there, like
Speaker 1: he did some movie that didn't know about. No, if
Speaker 1: I said Gary CINESI, this one's for you, there would
Speaker 1: be a mission to Mars reference. I did not see that.
Speaker 1: Mind bogglingly odd and pretty bad. Yeah, I heard, That's
Speaker 1: why I didn't see it. That and Red Planet didn't
Speaker 1: see either. One of those Red Planet I don't know about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that kind of brings us to a point that
Speaker 1: we've long been fascinated with the Red Planet, going back
Speaker 1: to you know, War the Worlds and early science fiction
Speaker 1: and Martians, and Mars has just always captivated us because
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you can see it with a telescope
Speaker 1: and it's not like what's on the other side of
Speaker 1: Venus Venus. Yeah, we don't know much about Venus mystery.
Speaker 1: There are no Venusians that we're afraid will come down
Speaker 1: here and attack us. I think it's Venusians Venetians, which
Speaker 1: is different from Venetians, which are people from Venice, which,
Speaker 1: strangely enough, UM kind of coincides with the guy named
Speaker 1: Giovanni shia Parelli. He might not have been from Venice,
Speaker 1: but that man was definitely from Italy. Do you think,
Speaker 1: yeah he was? Can you say his name for everybody? Chuck?
Speaker 1: Who Givanni? Really? That was good? Man? Have you been
Speaker 1: practicing at all? No? I just don't even want of pasta.
Speaker 1: That's good stuff, man. So Um Shipprelli in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven decided to draw a map of Mars, and his
Speaker 1: conception of Mars, what became the popular conception, if it
Speaker 1: wasn't already UM, was that Mars was a UM, a
Speaker 1: lush planet with civilizations, and he named the regions of
Speaker 1: Mars accordingly, like Elysium, which which UM culture believed that
Speaker 1: that was Heaven. I don't know, I can't remember, man,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard that. We you know, we've discussed it before, Elysium.
Speaker 1: I haven't retained that. UM. Another part was called Utopia Arcadia,
Speaker 1: basically all these different names for paradise reflected the idea
Speaker 1: that Mars was a very similar to Earth, most likely
Speaker 1: inhabited by intelligent beings and um. As proof, uh Sia
Speaker 1: Parelli drew canals that he noticed on the on Mars,
Speaker 1: which suggested that this advanced civilization had dug canals to
Speaker 1: um route water from the polar ice caps, which are
Speaker 1: visible here on Earth, to the central locations where their
Speaker 1: civilizations were get water to the Martians. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: established like what Earthlings thought of Mars for a hundred
Speaker 1: years almost. Yeah. About forty years after that, a US
Speaker 1: astronomer named Percival Lowell Um wrote a book also about Mars,
Speaker 1: where he actually talked about civilizations and h The problem
Speaker 1: was he he wasn't really based on anything. It might
Speaker 1: as well have been science fiction, right, and yet they
Speaker 1: named the Lowell Observatory after him. He was an astronomer,
Speaker 1: so it's not like he was He wasn't just making
Speaker 1: stuff up, but he didn't have like hard evidence. He
Speaker 1: made a lot of stuff up. Okay, he well, he
Speaker 1: interpreted it without any evidence. Yeah, and then wrote a book,
Speaker 1: and that became the impetus for Mars based science fiction. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It really captured folks. And that's when, like I talked about,
Speaker 1: were the world's and uh Edgar Rice Burrows the Princess
Speaker 1: of Mars, and it's just always been just out there
Speaker 1: staring down at it. Yeah, speaking of war the world's.
Speaker 1: It even says it in this article. It did not
Speaker 1: cause the national panic in night. That's a myth. Did
Speaker 1: you know that? Um? I don't know. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I knew the full stories. Supposedly when h when um
Speaker 1: uh who directed Citizen King? When Orson Wells carried out
Speaker 1: this radio? Yeah, yeah, it's scared everyone, right, it caused
Speaker 1: a panic, people for wild in the streets, committing suicide,
Speaker 1: like doing all sorts of stuff. No, it isn't true. Um.
Speaker 1: Apparently the newspapers got wind of this rumor and played
Speaker 1: it up. And um, the reason they played it up
Speaker 1: was to prove that radio couldn't be trusted as a
Speaker 1: source of news because it was a big competitor to
Speaker 1: newspapers at the time. Have you done Don't Be Dumb
Speaker 1: on that? No? Maybe I will? Can I plug that?
Speaker 1: Go ahead? Josh? As a web series called Don't Be Dumb?
Speaker 1: That is very funny and uh strange and you learned stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like the perfect one to three punch. Weird funny
Speaker 1: and you walk away with some knowledge. Thanks man, And
Speaker 1: everyone likes it that watches it, So we just need
Speaker 1: more people to watch it. Give me the weird sausage fingers.
Speaker 1: Steve McQueen clap. That's that is weird? Oh the director?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he was clapping weird, wouldn't he at the oscar?
Speaker 1: Apparently he and um, the screenwriter who won an oscar
Speaker 1: for that movie for Twelve Years of Slave do not
Speaker 1: like each other over the writing credit. Oh yeah, the
Speaker 1: writer walked right past him, and Steve McQueen didn't even
Speaker 1: turn to look at him as he was walking up
Speaker 1: to get his oscar. I did kind of notice that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: if you read delisted, he rooted it out and found
Speaker 1: out that it was over a writing question credit. Is
Speaker 1: that why he was clapping weirdly? He was showing his
Speaker 1: this thing with sausage weird. Al right, So, um, this
Speaker 1: weird early fascination with Mars, Like I said, we didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of information other than just sort of
Speaker 1: looking at it from earth. Um, And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies that we started in many countries
Speaker 1: started exploring Mars, but we started sending UM orbiters to
Speaker 1: take a closer peak, and then eventually orbiters led to
Speaker 1: landers and rovers and it's been like kind of a
Speaker 1: prime directive of NASA for a while. Yeah, one of them,
Speaker 1: and and it was UM. When they scrapped the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle UM program. I remember NASA was saying like, don't
Speaker 1: worry everybody, We're gonna go to Mars. We're gonna focus
Speaker 1: on Mars. That's why we're not doing the Shuttle anymore. UM.
Speaker 1: And apparently they are. There was just as recently as
Speaker 1: yesterday NASA testified about its budget and UM and they
Speaker 1: were saying, well, we've got a really great thing plan.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get this asteroid. We're gonna maneuver it with
Speaker 1: a robot into lunar orbit so we can go visit
Speaker 1: it later. And the Senators at this hearing basically said boring,
Speaker 1: like yeah, they're like, what's this backup Mars mission listed?
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, well, we're talking about doing a
Speaker 1: man fly by a venus and Mars. The senators are like, Mars, Mars, Mars.
Speaker 1: So it looks like NASA is gonna be forced to
Speaker 1: go to Mars, whether they like it or not. So
Speaker 1: it's still captivating. If it's captivating. The dumb dums in Congress, well,
Speaker 1: they even said, like the asteroid mission, that's not gonna
Speaker 1: spur the public, the public imagination, like going past sending
Speaker 1: a person past Mars, that's what you want to do, NASA.
Speaker 1: And NASA's like, all right, but it's gonna we could
Speaker 1: probably mind the asteroid And the senators I went Mars, Mars, Mars,
Speaker 1: and they all went to a bar afterward. Yeah again, Jim,
Speaker 1: you want to go to Mars. And he was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I guess so. Um, all right, so where
Speaker 1: should we start here? Um, well, let's start with the
Speaker 1: origin of Mars. It seems pretty appropriate. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1: I love how scientists piece together ancient history of the cosmos,
Speaker 1: you know, without having ever sent a geologist there. It's
Speaker 1: all I mean, even before the rovers, it was basically
Speaker 1: all just based on photographs and and and surmising from those.
Speaker 1: Now we've got the Curiosity rover, the third rover up there.
Speaker 1: It's still up there, right, yeah, yeah, or it didn't
Speaker 1: come home, does it? No, it will, It's yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and they were thinking, I think it was a two
Speaker 1: year mission, but it could go longer than that. I
Speaker 1: think it's already gone a little longer than that, because
Speaker 1: I think it went isn't really already. I think it
Speaker 1: went up in late two thousand eleven, So I think
Speaker 1: it's been there a little over two years. Well, good
Speaker 1: going curiosity. I might be wrong. Um. All right, So
Speaker 1: there's basically five things that they surmise happened to four Mars,
Speaker 1: which will will list and then get into in more detail. Um.
Speaker 1: It initially formed from clumping together of little tiny objects
Speaker 1: until it made a big round planet as an accretion disk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like just like Earth, just like Earth. Uh. Then there
Speaker 1: was a lot of meteor bombardment all over the Solar System,
Speaker 1: and Mars was of course affected just like Earth, just
Speaker 1: like Earth. In the Moon, the mantle was very hot
Speaker 1: and pushed through the crust, lifting up portions of it,
Speaker 1: just like And then there were a couple of uh
Speaker 1: they don't know how many, but at least a couple
Speaker 1: of periods of lots of volcanoes going on it, just
Speaker 1: like lava flows. And then finally the planet cooled down
Speaker 1: and the atmosphere thned out to leave this with Mars,
Speaker 1: unlike Earth, right, Uh, and it Mars formation was virtually
Speaker 1: identical of the process that formed Earth. It's about half
Speaker 1: the size, but there in the beginning, as far as
Speaker 1: makeup and the processes that they were undergoing, they were
Speaker 1: virtually identical. Yeah, and being half the size is pretty
Speaker 1: key to uh, why it's not like Earth more um
Speaker 1: one of the reasons. So I guess we should get
Speaker 1: into some more detail about this, huh. I think the
Speaker 1: accretion that you talked about, the small objects about it
Speaker 1: took about a hundred thousand years, and as the gravitational
Speaker 1: field got stronger, it kept pulling in more of this
Speaker 1: stuff and it would crash into the planet and uh
Speaker 1: and get hot basically and just sort of meld together.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, Mars, And that was interesting. I
Speaker 1: looked at why planets around and the reason why it's
Speaker 1: because the gravitational field and the spin. Uh, it's sucking
Speaker 1: everything into the dense core. Yeah, well it's the core.
Speaker 1: The gravitational field behaves like it's coming from the center,
Speaker 1: and everything else thinks it's coming from the center. So
Speaker 1: the only way to get everything is close to the center.
Speaker 1: As possible is to make a sphere like obviously, if
Speaker 1: you had a square, that would be a corner that's
Speaker 1: not as close as other parts. It would be a
Speaker 1: creepy planet like a cube. Yeah, but I wondered, you know,
Speaker 1: or why doesn't it look like an asteroid. Let's say,
Speaker 1: but asteroids don't have the kind of gravitational force to
Speaker 1: draw everything in like that to form that sphere. It's
Speaker 1: called isotactic adjustment. Yeah. I just thought, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: all these things are perfectly round. We're not perfectly around.
Speaker 1: I want more pyramids. Shake planets would be kind of cool. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so that was the acretion. And now you
Speaker 1: have gas being released from cooling after the core and
Speaker 1: mantle and crust have formed in this hot ball. Right,
Speaker 1: and as the as the gases are being released in
Speaker 1: the hot ball, um, they are forming this atmosphere. They're
Speaker 1: supporting an atmosphere there floating out and um kind of
Speaker 1: hanging around. Yeah yeah, yeah, and um, so you've got
Speaker 1: an atmosphere in place. You have a molten core, you
Speaker 1: have a after mantle, and then a crusts that formed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, as that that softer mantle and the molten
Speaker 1: core press up you have volcanic activity, yeah, which releases
Speaker 1: even more heat and gas, which makes the atmosphere even thicker.
Speaker 1: And at this point they think that there is a
Speaker 1: period of um water presence on Mars where it was raining.
Speaker 1: So then after you've got a primitive atmosphere. And then
Speaker 1: as it says in the article by Craig, he's a
Speaker 1: great writer for us, Yeah, PhD, that's right. Uh he
Speaker 1: said March March couldn't catch a break, which was pretty accurate,
Speaker 1: and it was pounded by meteors in the Solar system,
Speaker 1: forming craters and basins and all sorts of interesting land forms.
Speaker 1: And you know, the same thing happened here, but we
Speaker 1: had like water and things like that too, cause erosion
Speaker 1: and fill it, fill it in. On the Moon there
Speaker 1: isn't anything like that, so you still see those craters.
Speaker 1: And but the same thing happened on Mars. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: actually there was water on Mars um that bombardment in
Speaker 1: the that caused the magma to come up out of
Speaker 1: the core of of Mars, creating volcanic activity and shifts
Speaker 1: in the mantle and the crust um all released hot
Speaker 1: gas into the Martian atmosphere, which thickened it and increased
Speaker 1: its temperature, which led to rain, yes, rain, flooding, erosion.
Speaker 1: So there was like a period at least for a
Speaker 1: little while of um the presence of water on Mars.
Speaker 1: There still is, dude, the presence of unfrozen flowing water.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's not flowing water right as of September
Speaker 1: of last year, they found water in the dirt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty exciting to pint for cubic foot. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but it's a spoiler. Sorry, actually it can't be a spoiler.
Speaker 1: That happened in the bast right, Yeah, but if if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard of it anyeh, all right, uh so
Speaker 1: then Craig likens to Mars at this point is a
Speaker 1: soft boiled egg and as the eggshell is cooling, uh,
Speaker 1: the the yoke is gonna start busting through the mantle.
Speaker 1: And that's like on Earth is what is going to
Speaker 1: form things like volcanoes. And again those volcanoes and that
Speaker 1: activity led to that atmosphere in the periods of rain
Speaker 1: and flooding and erosion. Olympus Mons, Yeah, that's a good
Speaker 1: pixie songs. That a pixie song for a dream of
Speaker 1: the Olympus. Mons. Nice. Yeah, I don't think I need
Speaker 1: that one. What's that on? Uh okay? Uh? Olympus Mons
Speaker 1: is the largest volcano there and it's like it makes
Speaker 1: Mountain Evers look like a mole hill. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, it's the largest point in the known Solar system,
Speaker 1: the highest point. Yeah, yeah, the tallest. Um. Remember our
Speaker 1: myth busting episode where we showed that Mount Everest wasn't
Speaker 1: the tallest mountain. It's mounta loa Um on Earth. Mounta
Speaker 1: looa is um something like I think it's six miles
Speaker 1: from the ocean floor. Uh, yes, there rises sick nice
Speaker 1: chuck and um. It's a hundred and forty miles wide
Speaker 1: at its base. That's a big mountain on Earth. On Mars,
Speaker 1: which is again half the size of Earth in diameter,
Speaker 1: Olympus Mons is sixteen miles tall. And that's not from
Speaker 1: an ocean floor either. Yeah, you know, because there is
Speaker 1: no ocean on Marks exactly. But if you want to
Speaker 1: see something cool, type in Mars, what would Mars look
Speaker 1: like with ocean and people have done like um simulations
Speaker 1: of it. It looks really neat, like vacation worthy, like
Speaker 1: you would want to go there to vacam He's like
Speaker 1: a sunny beach with it looks like Earth but with
Speaker 1: weird continents. Um. And then it's three seventy miles across
Speaker 1: Olympus mons is. That's large. It's big. And they have
Speaker 1: like pictures if you google it, Uh, compare it to
Speaker 1: Everest and it just dwarfs it. That's right. And you
Speaker 1: can see pictures of it too, you know, they snapped
Speaker 1: photos of it. It's pretty impressive. It's large volcano which
Speaker 1: eventually went dormant. All the volcanoes on Mars went dormant
Speaker 1: somewhere possibly about three billion years ago. And um, as
Speaker 1: the volcanoes went dormant, the the the heat was released. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mars had no more heat to give from its core um,
Speaker 1: which meant the atmosphere wasn't being fed any longer, so
Speaker 1: it thin, which led to a drop in temperatures. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And how we mentioned earlier, how the fact that it
Speaker 1: was smaller than Earth is one reason why it's not
Speaker 1: more like Earth. That's the reason it cooled so fast,
Speaker 1: like Earth wouldn't have cooled nearly as fast, no, huh.
Speaker 1: And um, it also kept a magnetic field going thanks
Speaker 1: to its molten core. Mars did not any longer, so
Speaker 1: you got a thin atmosphere, cold temperatures. Um the atmosphere
Speaker 1: that was there started freezing and falling two Mars and
Speaker 1: was stored as ice. Any water that was already on
Speaker 1: the planet's surface turned into perma frost, and um Mars
Speaker 1: became it underwent what's called the Great desiccation event, where
Speaker 1: it became a barren, deserted, desert planet. Yeah. Before that,
Speaker 1: these were this kind of happened in cycles for a while,
Speaker 1: like the volcanic action, and then the gas is being
Speaker 1: released in like major flooding from water, until like you said,
Speaker 1: eventually it's the cold, not hot, but cold, dusty place
Speaker 1: that we love today. Yeah. And what's um interesting is
Speaker 1: that Earth and Mars were so similar as they formed
Speaker 1: and about at the same time, about three billion years ago,
Speaker 1: Mars underwent the Great Desiccation event and Earth underwent the
Speaker 1: Great Oxygenation event, which gave rise to all life here
Speaker 1: on Earth, the appearance of algae, which created a breathable
Speaker 1: atmosphere almost at about the same time, So they totally
Speaker 1: diverged in two different paths that around the same time.
Speaker 1: I wonder if the main reason was because of its size. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cooling another Earth. Yes, it's interesting. Had it been
Speaker 1: the exact same size, who knows, maybe we'd be like
Speaker 1: going there and back right now, right on vacation. Like,
Speaker 1: how was a good one for Colin Farrell? Did you
Speaker 1: see the remake? No? Although I heard the Robo Cup
Speaker 1: remake was like surprisingly good, I haven't expecting that. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it either. Yeah, that's what I'll definitely wait
Speaker 1: for TV for that one. You know, Uh, you really
Speaker 1: don't care about seeing that one, not even DVD like TV. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't watch dvs. Okay, I'm streaming like the rest
Speaker 1: of the modern world, not even a laser disk. Uh.
Speaker 1: Should we talk about what it's like there? Yeah, on
Speaker 1: the surface, yes, the surface of mars Um. Scientists have
Speaker 1: divided it into three major parts, the southern highlands, the
Speaker 1: northern plains, and the polar regions, which we already said
Speaker 1: you can actually see from Earth polar ice caps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like her. But the ice caps are made of
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, so it's dry ice ice caps, and then
Speaker 1: underneath there's water ice. So the southern highlands are vast.
Speaker 1: I love our morning shows. It's always a little more
Speaker 1: like laid back. I feel like yeah, like I'm sleepy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not riddle with anxieties yet. No, that comes on
Speaker 1: about noon. Yeah, I haven't had enough coffee yet. So
Speaker 1: you've got your Southern Highlands, and like I said, they
Speaker 1: are extensive and vast and uh, it is elevated. It's
Speaker 1: not the highest part of Mars and heavily cratered and
Speaker 1: again the highest part of the solar system, right, because
Speaker 1: that's where Olympus Mons is, that's right in the southern region,
Speaker 1: the Southern Highlands. Uh. And they scientists think it's ancient
Speaker 1: um these highlands because of the craters, because the cratering
Speaker 1: happened close to four billion years ago and that was
Speaker 1: just meteors kind of just pounding the solar system all
Speaker 1: over the place. So the Southern Highlands are high and
Speaker 1: then there's a very um pronounced drop of several kilometers
Speaker 1: down to the um northern plains, which are low lying regions.
Speaker 1: There are a lot like the season the moon um.
Speaker 1: But they do feature raised areas plateaus a couple of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cinder cones. Yeah, well, the cinder cones are on
Speaker 1: the plateaus. I think basically the mantle bulged up through
Speaker 1: the crust is thinner in the northern region, and the
Speaker 1: mantle just pushed up and formed like continent sized plateaus
Speaker 1: um that are called crustal upwarps. That's a great word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kept thinking I was reading it wrong. Nope, crystal upwarps. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the these crystal upwarps, there's two of them. One
Speaker 1: is smaller, it's Elysium remembered Paradise, that's right, and the
Speaker 1: other one is called Tarsus arcs uh. In the Northern
Speaker 1: Hemisphere is divided into eastern and western hemispheres. Tharsis is
Speaker 1: in the west and Elysium is in the east. Yes,
Speaker 1: celestial names are so cool, it really are. You know,
Speaker 1: what do we have on Earth? New Jersey not thar No,
Speaker 1: start a campaign to rename New Jersey Tharsis um and
Speaker 1: then like the main city could be Tharci City, which
Speaker 1: sounds super futuristic, and in fact it's Newark. Every citizen
Speaker 1: has issued is sparkly silver jumps. Oh uh, so you've
Speaker 1: called out Olympus. Mons is the highest point that is
Speaker 1: where in the It's in the Stars region, which this
Speaker 1: article is confusing because it mentions the Sarsest reason region
Speaker 1: in the southern um the hemisphere and in the northern hemisphere. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I looked all over the place to find definitively
Speaker 1: where it is. And I think the discrepancy comes from
Speaker 1: the fact that it's equatorial. Okay, it's pretty close to
Speaker 1: the equator Olympus Mons definitely is. So maybe it's both right,
Speaker 1: But it's about at that point, um that the uh,
Speaker 1: the highlands drop off into the northern plains. That's right.
Speaker 1: And Uh, in Tharcis you have some pretty impressive canyons um,
Speaker 1: a system called the Vallis Marineris, and it makes the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon look like a tiny little hole in the ground.
Speaker 1: It is three hundred and seventy miles wide and twenty
Speaker 1: six thousand, four hundred feet deep. Not to slay the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, but if you've ever been there, imagine something
Speaker 1: dwarfing that even, right. And again, Mars is half the
Speaker 1: size of Earth, right, and it doesn't even just dwarf
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon. It's bigger than the Mariana Trench, which
Speaker 1: is eighty miles long, so it's a good foul and
Speaker 1: miles longer than the Marianna Trench. And the Mariana Trench
Speaker 1: is forty three miles wide. The Vallis Marineris is seventy
Speaker 1: miles wide. Yeah, that's nuts. Yeah, so it's a big
Speaker 1: old trench, Like you can't even comprehend that kind of
Speaker 1: size when you're standing there. No, I imagine when you're
Speaker 1: in it. You can't see the edges or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So you're just of course you can't be in it
Speaker 1: because you know, people can't go to Mars. But you know,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean, we will eventually. You think
Speaker 1: Elon Musk predicts he will retire and die and be
Speaker 1: buried on Mars. That's what he's he said. It's not
Speaker 1: a certainty, but it's a possibility. But that's his goal. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1: Well he's got the dough to make it happen, I guess,
Speaker 1: and the vision, Like you say the same thing, but
Speaker 1: you've just got the vision, you don't have the billions
Speaker 1: of dollars. And it's not even my vision. I'm just
Speaker 1: reporting what Elon Musk said. You know, oh, I thought
Speaker 1: you wanted to do that as well. Now go to Mars.
Speaker 1: You want to get shot out of a cannon? I
Speaker 1: would I abandoned that a long time ago. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: what's the new plan cremated, yeah, distributed with Umi. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's nice. She's really calmed you down. She's like, first,
Speaker 1: first things first, this canniball thing, right, it's gotta go.
Speaker 1: Um the polar regions you can see from Earth, like
Speaker 1: we said, and it is surrounded by a bunch of dunes,
Speaker 1: and they are like, I think you said it was
Speaker 1: frozen carbon dioxide. Right, So it's not like the ice
Speaker 1: we have here on Earth. No, it's well, we have
Speaker 1: it here on Earth, dry ice. Well yeah, but just
Speaker 1: it's not our polar ice cap, right, and like Earth,
Speaker 1: depending on the season, the ice caps are gonna change
Speaker 1: shape in the summertime. The CEO two from the northern caps,
Speaker 1: uh melt away and and there's water ice below that,
Speaker 1: so not dry ice as they call it in Spanish
Speaker 1: agua ice. And that's why apparently we sent the phoenix there. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were like, send that thing up there and dig
Speaker 1: down into the frozen dirt and let's see what it's
Speaker 1: made up of. Right, And they found water. They found uh,
Speaker 1: two pints. Phoenix didn't find it. Phoenix found like found
Speaker 1: uh that the Martian soil is filled with perchlorate, which
Speaker 1: is a big problem for Mars missions. Yeah, that's like
Speaker 1: very bad for human beings. It's extremely toxic. Gets a
Speaker 1: thyroid toxin has a very quick effect um as a
Speaker 1: developmental effect on infants and um photuses, So reproducing on
Speaker 1: Mars would be a big problem. And even in adults,
Speaker 1: it has a big effect on your thyroid, which affects
Speaker 1: your hormone production function UM. And it's everywhere. It's in
Speaker 1: the light Martian dust and Mars has tons of dust
Speaker 1: storms that enveloped the whole planet, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: for like weeks at a time. Yeah, and there there's
Speaker 1: per chlorice in those dust storms, so it would get everywhere.
Speaker 1: So they just found out like a couple of months
Speaker 1: ago that this is everywhere and it's going to be
Speaker 1: a huge challenge to Mars missions in the future. But
Speaker 1: they're saying, now that we know about it, we can
Speaker 1: design around it. Yeah, it just seems so uninhabitable, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if our lifetime we're gonna see it
Speaker 1: a manned mission. Maybe we'll definitely see a fly by. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a man fly by. Yeah, Okay, you and Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: we will That's not even just me. Elon Musk in
Speaker 1: the Senate. Okay, yeah, Mars Mark, they're all so excited,
Speaker 1: So Chucker's up next. We're gonna talk about the interior
Speaker 1: of Mars, because it's what's on the inside that counts.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna do that after these messages. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking about Mars's interior, And to
Speaker 1: talk about mars interior is really boring unless you compared
Speaker 1: to Earth, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is cool. So let's compare to Earth. The Earth's
Speaker 1: core is um has a radius of about from the
Speaker 1: center to the surface, and is made up of iron
Speaker 1: in two parts, the solid core and the liquid outer core,
Speaker 1: and the interplay between those two creates Earth's magnetic field,
Speaker 1: which allows for the northern lights. Oh yeah, encompasses. What else? Ah,
Speaker 1: that's about it. Okay, Mars's core radius is only about
Speaker 1: nine um and between nine miles, and it is probably
Speaker 1: made up also of iron, but throwing some sulfur, maybe
Speaker 1: a little oxygen, and they believe. Uh, I don't I
Speaker 1: didn't get this. He said it may be made up
Speaker 1: maybe maybe malten but it's unlikely, so they still don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess and they think that. The reason they don't
Speaker 1: think that it's molten though, is because Mars has a
Speaker 1: very weak magnetic field. Um, but maybe not always. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably had a strong magnetic field and the and
Speaker 1: before the great desiccation event um, but now it doesn't have.
Speaker 1: When they think that if it is molten, it's not,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot to it. Okay, Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Around the Earth, score is softer mantle like toothpaste, and
Speaker 1: it's way less dense than it is iron and magnesium silicate,
Speaker 1: about eight hundred miles thick. And that's when you see
Speaker 1: a volcano and lava flowing from a volcano, that's where
Speaker 1: that's coming from. Well, it comes from the magma through
Speaker 1: there the liquid all right, wasn't it I think? So
Speaker 1: we did a podcast on volcanos. Remember that was a
Speaker 1: good one, the volcano one. I was worried about it,
Speaker 1: and Chuck, the mantle pushing up through the through the
Speaker 1: surface accounts for those crustal uplifts, up up warps, up warps.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right. Um. And here on Earth we have
Speaker 1: things like volcanoes, active volcanoes and earthquakes, and they're largely
Speaker 1: due to if not exclusively due to um the fact
Speaker 1: that we have continental plates like the crust of Earth,
Speaker 1: which Mars also has a crust, but Earth's crust is
Speaker 1: broken up into these plates that drift and move around
Speaker 1: slowly and rub up against one another. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: where the fault lines exist. And along those fault lines
Speaker 1: you have volcanoes and earthquakes. Mars, that's not the case
Speaker 1: as a crust, but it's not broken into place. It's solid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty interesting, and that's why there's
Speaker 1: no active volcanoes right now for one reason. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And we while we're talking about Mars, well we probably
Speaker 1: should have mentioned it on the surface, but it's a
Speaker 1: neat little tidbit if you ask me, do you know
Speaker 1: why Mars is rust colored? Uh? No, because it's coated
Speaker 1: in rusty. Yeah, it's exodised iron in the soil, which
Speaker 1: makes it rusted. It's a rusty old planet, a rusty, dusty, cold, windy,
Speaker 1: uninhabitable perhaps planet. And again, the reason why it's probably
Speaker 1: uninhabitable is it lacks an atmosphere, or it practically lacks
Speaker 1: an atmosphere. There is a very thin one still. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we can compare that to Earth. To um,
Speaker 1: March's atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. On Earth, it's less
Speaker 1: than one percent, Like you could just stop right there. Toxic,
Speaker 1: a lot less nitrogen two point seven percent compared to Earth.
Speaker 1: Not much oxygen at all, only point one three that's
Speaker 1: a big factor's toxic again and um about one as
Speaker 1: much water vapor is on Earth. Yeah, you need that
Speaker 1: too inhospitable, which is why they there are proposals to
Speaker 1: seed Mars to terraform it. Yeah, basically going and like
Speaker 1: artificially stimulate an atmosphere to form so that in ten
Speaker 1: thousand and fifty hundred thousand years it could conceivably be habitable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we we did a show on that too. It
Speaker 1: is all coming together. It's a long term plan, but sure,
Speaker 1: which means we'll never do it. Elon muskwill maybe his grandchildren.
Speaker 1: Uh So. The atmospheric pressure in Mars is interesting too.
Speaker 1: It's super low and super cold, and that's why there
Speaker 1: is no water liquid flowing, because it's either going to
Speaker 1: freeze or evaporate. They can't just exist as water these days. Nope.
Speaker 1: But like we said, possibly probably did at one point.
Speaker 1: So you've got a thin atmosphere, which means a lot
Speaker 1: of um solar radiation is not blocked, is not reflected um,
Speaker 1: which means that you have very wild swings in daily
Speaker 1: average temperature on Mars. Because Mars does have a day,
Speaker 1: it does rotate, and actually it rotates it about the
Speaker 1: same rate as Earth. The Mars salt which is short
Speaker 1: for solar day, it's just about forty three minutes longer
Speaker 1: than um Earth's day. Yeah, but because it's further out
Speaker 1: away from the Sun, it's orbit around the Sun takes longer.
Speaker 1: So it's year is about twice as long as a
Speaker 1: year on Earth six hundred and eighty six point nine
Speaker 1: eight Earth days, which means the seasons lasts longer, which
Speaker 1: makes them more extreme as we'll see. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: talked about the temperature fluctuation. It's almost a hundred degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit on a daily basis. The difference in temperature that's enormous. Again,
Speaker 1: not very friendly for us humans. Now, well, we'll figure
Speaker 1: it out. You have to pack a big suitcase, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to pack your your thong as well as
Speaker 1: your Arctic explore You could just wear a thong under
Speaker 1: your Earth coast there, it's the key to Mars. Where
Speaker 1: layers pack big where layers. But like you said, there
Speaker 1: are seasons in the spring and early summer, the sun
Speaker 1: heats up the atmosphere and the dust lifts up and
Speaker 1: and makes it even hotter once that dust is in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, and it basically is what causes those big
Speaker 1: dust storms we're talking about. Yeah, the dust. The dust
Speaker 1: particles get suspended and invite more heat, which suspends more
Speaker 1: particles than um. It creates wind there winds. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: just like here on Earth, it creates convection cells, which
Speaker 1: creates wind. And as those wind speeds whip up, because
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is thinner, you have to have higher speeds
Speaker 1: because the wind has less to push against air to
Speaker 1: push against, so it takes higher speed winds. But once
Speaker 1: they do hit something like a hundred and twenty miles
Speaker 1: an hour, the entire planet can become enveloped in a
Speaker 1: dust storm that can last months. That's crazy. And again
Speaker 1: it's not just dust. It's dust with one of the
Speaker 1: more toxic compounds known to humanity in every bit of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not gonna blow off a Mars robe or
Speaker 1: these things. You know, way like in the tons, yes,
Speaker 1: one ton, one ton. And actually what's strange is the
Speaker 1: dust storms, it says are beneficial because they will blow
Speaker 1: the any um Martian dirt caked on the solar panels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense too, or maybe it might reveal something
Speaker 1: yeah that wasn't there before, like a pyramid. That'd be
Speaker 1: pretty cool, Chuck. I want to talk about water on Mars,
Speaker 1: but first let's um do a message break and we're back.
Speaker 1: So I guess let's get to the water part um.
Speaker 1: That was NASA's direct to follow the water for many
Speaker 1: years and still is really because they think they're in holds.
Speaker 1: The key to the big question is there possibilities of
Speaker 1: having life on Mars? Is there life? Was their life
Speaker 1: on Mars? And we're not talking about Martians unfortunately, we're
Speaker 1: talking about maybe bacteria, which could be Martians. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it lives on Mars, it's Martian. I guess it's
Speaker 1: a good point. Everybody just basically needs to lower the
Speaker 1: bar for their expectations of what a Martian is. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Instead of little green men,
Speaker 1: it's bacteria and um. When this article was written, it
Speaker 1: was pre curiosity, but it's just a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: curiosity confirmed, uh that there is water present in the soil,
Speaker 1: and they think it's everywhere. Yeah, it's basically the soil
Speaker 1: has a very big leaching property, yeah, where it absorbs
Speaker 1: water from the atmosphere and locks it in there, so
Speaker 1: that if if we went up there, we could extract
Speaker 1: um about like I said, two pints of water from
Speaker 1: every cubic foot of soil that's mine. It's pretty It
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Again, though, we have that per chlorate problem.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere. It would get in the water, and one
Speaker 1: of the ways that it transfers to humans and becomes
Speaker 1: toxic is through drinking water, so we'd have to deal
Speaker 1: with that. But ironically, the thing about par chlorate being there,
Speaker 1: it's also used in solid rocket fuel here on Earth.
Speaker 1: So we would need it to get to Mars, but
Speaker 1: once we got to Mars, we wouldn't want to have it. Interesting,
Speaker 1: that is very ironic. Thanks. So you're talking, Chuck about
Speaker 1: how water could consuerably lead to life on Mars. We
Speaker 1: it's vital to life. It's one of the um vital
Speaker 1: parts of life. I can't remember the term for him.
Speaker 1: Not a building block, one of the essential some things
Speaker 1: for life component. Yes, yeah, I think that is it
Speaker 1: essential component for life. We worked that out together. This
Speaker 1: has been a condition and no, no, Now they found
Speaker 1: water on Mars and confirmed that it is there, and
Speaker 1: they knew all along that there was water ice on Mars. Um.
Speaker 1: It makes that Martian rock from four billion years ago
Speaker 1: seem all the more likely that it is displaying evidence
Speaker 1: of fossilized microbes. Yeah. And they used to think that
Speaker 1: there was methane UH in the atmosphere or trace amounts,
Speaker 1: but I think that has been debunked now with upon
Speaker 1: further research. Yeah. Yeah, because again when this article was written,
Speaker 1: it sounds like they thought it was still like they
Speaker 1: still head detective methane and they didn't know whether it
Speaker 1: was from of biological or chemical origin. Yeah. More recent
Speaker 1: studies UM as of October two thousand twelve, UM, they
Speaker 1: analyzed the atmosphere UH for methane six times and basically
Speaker 1: found no more than one point three parts per billion.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's not good for evidence of life. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's about one six as much as they had previously estimated.
Speaker 1: And they thought, well, maybe it went somewhere, you know,
Speaker 1: and and they NASA said, now it wouldn't um. It
Speaker 1: would have been super exciting, but it's methane doesn't distribute
Speaker 1: and leave like that that quickly, like it would still
Speaker 1: be around. So unfortunately, no methane. Speaking of methane um
Speaker 1: as evidence of like remember our termite episode, somebody wrote
Speaker 1: in to say, did you know termites or like a
Speaker 1: huge contributor of methane to on Earth. They're the second
Speaker 1: largest contributor of methane after five stock. Yeah. Wow, even
Speaker 1: beating out humans. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, because we shoot
Speaker 1: a lot of ducks, we humans, some of us termites,
Speaker 1: flatulent insects. Uh so. Bacteria um Martian soil has been
Speaker 1: known to be like formally chemically active, but maybe not biologically,
Speaker 1: but it is possible, maybe because they have a good
Speaker 1: example in Greenland. UM they found bacteria that was dormant
Speaker 1: for a hundred and twenty thousand years frozen in the ice,
Speaker 1: and when they unfroze it, it started multiplying again in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the apocalypse. Yeah, that's kind of creepy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like it's not stopping. Possibly in the polarized keps
Speaker 1: on Mars maybe that's going on too. Yeah, we just
Speaker 1: don't know. Yet Yeah, they think that. Um it is
Speaker 1: very possible that you could take some of them, the
Speaker 1: extreme A file bacteria, ones that live like in um
Speaker 1: volcanic events undersea and things like that, and transplant them
Speaker 1: too Mars and some of them would survive, especially mineral
Speaker 1: thriving um bacteria ones that like eat minerals. You could
Speaker 1: put them on Mars and they would they would do okay.
Speaker 1: Possibly well spaceships like if we could possibly bring our
Speaker 1: own bacteria there by accident as well, you know, just
Speaker 1: from like I think the International Space Station had E.
Speaker 1: Colid in it. Yeah, and possibly Lee Jonella. There's disease
Speaker 1: on the I S I YEA or the I S S.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a like a movie waiting to happen. Sure,
Speaker 1: I guess we sort of did that with Outland. Was there?
Speaker 1: Was it a disease a disease? It was just a
Speaker 1: cop chasing a bad guy again. I wonder if it
Speaker 1: holds up. I doubt it. Yeah, if it held up,
Speaker 1: it'd be alien like. It would still be in the rotation.
Speaker 1: But Outline doesn't play on cable very often that it
Speaker 1: really doesn't. That is pretty good evidence too. I remember
Speaker 1: the Outland Mad magazine. Um I didn't have that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good one. Um So, Chuck. You remember
Speaker 1: we were talking about way back how the UM Viking
Speaker 1: and UM Mariner and Mars orbiters provided this evidence that
Speaker 1: Mars was just a dead, barren planet and really undermine
Speaker 1: the idea that there was possibly life there and that
Speaker 1: it was lush. Well, it all so provided some conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists pretty solid evidence that there was or is some
Speaker 1: sort of civilization on Mars, because yeah, Viking one in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies six produced a photo that looked a whole
Speaker 1: lot like a Feronic type face, like the face on Mark.
Speaker 1: Pretty clearly a face if you look at it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was two miles from head to toe, from tip
Speaker 1: to to bottom. So it wasn't like Jesus on a
Speaker 1: piece of toast. No, I mean, it looked like it
Speaker 1: looked like a artificially constructed monument, a face of a monument.
Speaker 1: Maybe when that had toppled, it was now just poking
Speaker 1: out from the Martian soul soil. Um So they looked,
Speaker 1: uh closer in, but there's a lot of cloud cover,
Speaker 1: so they got kind of a garbled look. And they
Speaker 1: looked again more recently maybe two thousand eight or two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, And it's very clearly just a mesa. That's disappointing.
Speaker 1: It is, especially like when you look at that original yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: when you look at the Viking one photo. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like a top old statue head. Yeah it does.
Speaker 1: It actually factored into that terrible movie um Mission to Mars, Wow,
Speaker 1: which I saw with hippie rob By the way. Really yea,
Speaker 1: was that is the last time you saw him? It
Speaker 1: was among that he just walked into the woods after that.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that? That was Brian to Palmer, wasn't it. I
Speaker 1: think it might have been so disappointing. I mean it
Speaker 1: had an all circust Gary Sinise, don Cheetle. I think
Speaker 1: Bill Paxton maybe I don't think it's Pullman, but I
Speaker 1: might be confusing Bill Paxton from Apolar thirteen. Anyway, it
Speaker 1: didn't pan out very well. But do you got anything else? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know why this article doesn't mention if Mars
Speaker 1: has two moons, phobos and demos. Yeah, they didn't get
Speaker 1: into that at all. No, um and uh, Mars popped
Speaker 1: up and pops up and pop culture a lot. There's
Speaker 1: um the Mars Volta the band. Yeah. Uh. David Bowie
Speaker 1: had a song called Life on Mars, one of the
Speaker 1: great songs. The Misfits had the greatest Mars song, Teenagers
Speaker 1: from Mars. That's a great song. Yeah. Oh, what's his name?
Speaker 1: Jared Leto right thirty seconds to Mars. Yeah, they're going
Speaker 1: on tour right after his Oscar Win. I had never
Speaker 1: heard any of his music until the other day. I
Speaker 1: was like, what are they like? And Emily tried to
Speaker 1: describe it. Then she just played a song. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not my bag, mine anything, but good for him. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they're like huge internationally. Yeah, he's got gout.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? I did not know that he
Speaker 1: needs to lay off the path? No, I think he um.
Speaker 1: I think it was had to do with his weight
Speaker 1: gain and loss for the John Lennon um the Mark
Speaker 1: David Chapman movie. He did, Oh really, Yeah, he got
Speaker 1: all fat to play Mark David Chapman and like got
Speaker 1: all skinny again. I think got gout because of it,
Speaker 1: and then got even skinnier to play Rayon in Dallas
Speaker 1: Biberus Club. Dude, have you seen it? Yes? How thin
Speaker 1: can two people get? They were pretty thin, like the
Speaker 1: two of them together make me. And there's gotta be
Speaker 1: like that. There's gotta be a safe way to lose
Speaker 1: and regain weight. Yeah, but I'll bet there's not very
Speaker 1: many safe ways to gain wait to make yourself look pudgy, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, and then to lose it again. I'll bet
Speaker 1: when it's been done, Like from DeNiro to fat mac
Speaker 1: On always sunny. I think they say they just eat
Speaker 1: like lots of garbage and just pile it on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not I'll beat at all now. But you know
Speaker 1: that's one of my pet peeves. When you take a
Speaker 1: fit person in like the game thirty pounds for a
Speaker 1: movie and it it's like, you don't look like a
Speaker 1: fatter person and you look like a fit person who
Speaker 1: like has a distended belly. You know, it takes years
Speaker 1: to get this look. You know you gotta work at it,
Speaker 1: sculpt this. Yeah, um, okay, you got anything else? I
Speaker 1: got nothing else. I think this is better than the sun.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. As far as our our celestial episodes go
Speaker 1: far less physics that we had to deal with. We
Speaker 1: haven't done the moon straight up? Have we? I think
Speaker 1: we have? Have we? Jerry? Have we done the moon.
Speaker 1: I think we did because we talked about its origin,
Speaker 1: whether it was calved, whether it was a separate decreation.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure we've done the moon. All right, we'll
Speaker 1: look it up. It is getting bad. We need we
Speaker 1: need to get a list together. Yeah, we do, so
Speaker 1: we quit boring everyone with this. Yeah, you'd think we'd
Speaker 1: edited out, but we just don't. Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about Mars, you can type that word
Speaker 1: into the search bar how stuff works dot com. And uh,
Speaker 1: since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Uh, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this um your theory on eating what
Speaker 1: you crave? Did you see this email? No? Um, just
Speaker 1: listen to the Salt podcast. Dudes, and Josh posture that
Speaker 1: you could get along just fine eating only what you crave.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how serious he was, though fairly serious,
Speaker 1: fairly okay, I'll agree that if it depends on whether
Speaker 1: I'm right, I'll agree that a hundred and fifty years
Speaker 1: ago this may have been pretty viable. These days, it's
Speaker 1: a different story. There's a lot of evidence that points
Speaker 1: to food manufacturers actually designing junk foods that make you
Speaker 1: crave more of them. Mainly sugar and fat heavy foods.
Speaker 1: There's one great book in particular called Good Calories, Bad
Speaker 1: Calories by Gary Tobbs, basically tells the story of how
Speaker 1: a lot of what the f d A and U
Speaker 1: s d A recommends as wrong and how it got
Speaker 1: that way. For instance, the guy who conducted the Seven
Speaker 1: Countries study, which is what caused the government to say
Speaker 1: fat will kill you, simply throughout data that contradicted the
Speaker 1: result he was looking for. Throwing the fact that corn
Speaker 1: is subsidized and super cheap, we have the recipe for
Speaker 1: an obese, misinformed population that's addicted to sugar. Has been
Speaker 1: fed terribly wrong information and about health for a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've learned recently, like you're supposed to have fats, and
Speaker 1: there are good fats and there are bad fats, but
Speaker 1: like low fat is a not a good way to go,
Speaker 1: and it has been kind of foisted on us, foisted
Speaker 1: you like the venue. That word, and that is from
Speaker 1: Steve Baum, the bomber in what he calls good Old
Speaker 1: New Jersey or as we calls Parsis. Is he from
Speaker 1: Tharsus City, that is steep Bomb. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he's from Tharsus City or not, but he's from somewhere
Speaker 1: in There is a really good article about um, how
Speaker 1: food scientists engineer foods to make us crave them is
Speaker 1: on the New York Times. It was a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago by a guy named Michael Moss. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in your defense, I don't think you were. I think
Speaker 1: you meant it more along the lines of craving real
Speaker 1: foods and not in a surely I'm craving ben and
Speaker 1: Jerry's or pretzels, right. No. I meant like, like craving
Speaker 1: a steak or something like that, not ignoring that and
Speaker 1: going with, you know, ahead of lettuce Um. I can't
Speaker 1: find the name of that article, but it's a Michael
Speaker 1: Moss article and it's from the New York Times, and dude,
Speaker 1: it is good. It's one of those really extensive long
Speaker 1: form ones that like should be long form because there's
Speaker 1: just so much great information in it opening. So look
Speaker 1: it up, everybody. It will open your eyes. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with Chucking Me, you
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: stuff podcasts at Discovery dot com. Check out our YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck. It's pretty fun, and also be sure
Speaker 1: to hang out on our website Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff Works dot com. M hm hm