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Maximum Fun

Science communicators Ella Hubber, Tom Lum, and Caroline Roper learn about anything and everything interesting! Each episode they teach each other about a science topic, and learn about a miscellaneous topic. Whether it's bugs on drugs, temporal illusions, or fanfiction, there's so much out there, so let's learn everything! Join our Discord, email us, and follow us everywhere at www.LetsLearnEverything.com

Let's Learn Everything!

It's the new year! Which means it's time to learn about the most interesting thing... ourselves?? We answer YOUR questions with OUR answers, so learn a bit more about us, science, and the show!

Links we Talk About:
Our Top Songs Playlist
Magnetic Fields Tiny Desk
Anni DiRusso Tiny Desk
Doechii Tiny Desk
Dr.Cal Whale Cancer TikTok

Timestamps:
(00:07:06) Welcome to the Q&A
(00:31:45) Science
(00:52:28) Fun
(01:04:26) Making the Podcast
(01:27:06) Personal
(01:45:55) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

I was in the recording I know how long it took, tick correction corner, Caroline you gotta wrangle us, the ugly stepsister, City the Animation, Superman, playlist linked above, The Mars House, Levinia, Peak, Megabonk, Animal Crossing, Despelote, duck wraps, I’m an anytime burrito fan, falling out of and back in love with sciences, the Vera Rubin Observatory, lysosome mitochondria and ribosome, organelle astrology, AI and carbon pedantry, Ella’s PhD journey, solar system chocolate bar, our horror movie archetypes, experimenting on our cohosts, pride and prejudice romance, centaur anatomy, researcher blogs rock, scheduling and actually starting, what we hate and love about the show, we don’t have to be friends, podcasting is good for the brain actually, dream guests, Caroline runs, the rhythm game search, burnout planning and accepting mistakes and communal burnout watch, collecting magnets and yarn and weird pokemon figures, Dalek on a trampoline, why Tom wears a hat, bingo cards over resolutions, Ella’s getting marri- WELL TOM’S GOING TO MAGIC CON VEGAS BABY.

New Year Q&A 2026

The HaLearnDays are here!! And with it come learning, laughs, and fun facts from us and friends of the show, as well as a few surprise new friends!

Images we Talk About:
Bat Carrying
Bristol Stool Chart
Lego Head Diagram
The Praise the Lord Show

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:08:10) Bats
(00:19:45) Livingston's Body
(00:25:18) Pi & PIE
(00:34:45) Lego Head Passage
(00:44:02) Bird Brains
(00:56:04) Tomatoes
(01:10:35) Alpha-gal
(01:16:27) Rice to Riches
(01:26:37) Mission Impossible & Backmasking
(01:42:29) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

As Hank always says: wah wah wah wah wah, it says that I should complain in the script but I like it, Egg nog is just raw eggs right? redacted is such a beautiful name, rock paper scissors video content, drunk bats slur their echolocation, bats carrying bats, weekend at burniesing Livingston, I’d carry any of you for nine months, Pi and PIE from father and son, do you think J and Gretchen got their gifts at the same store? philology, proto-indo-european, the FART of the lego head, Ella’s heart grows 3 times its size for bacronyms, lego heads pass in about 2 days, chickadees growing and shrinking their brain connections, testing bird barcoding in the chickadome, I wish I could delete part of my brain to watch eternal sunshine again, davinci would have made that flying machine earlier if he had red sauce, tomatl is nahuatl not even proto-indo-european, we can all agree tomatoes smell evil, 150 years before tomatos and pasta combined, alphagal syndrome from ticks, once bitten twice allergic, Tom Scott gifts a can of rice pudding for us to open, allegedly LLE is a money laundering scheme, Mission Impossible morse code, the hidden code in LLE’s theme, Edison was the first to notice backmasking, the Eligibles Car Trouble, here’s to my sweet satan, winners don’t do drugs, raise a cup to our sweet satan.

Sources:

Bats Flying Drunk Paper
NYTimes Tomato History
Smithsonian Mag Tomato History
The Incredible paper: Sixteenth-century tomatoes in Europe: who saw them, what they looked like, and where they came from
Records of Tomato Reactions
Atlas Obscura Backmasking History

More sources will be added soon!

99: The HaLearnDays! 2025

What are the most EXTREME lifeforms on Earth, and how are they surprisingly important to study? And what is the long yet recent history of astrology, and why do we reach for it?

Things we Talk About:
The Seal Stream
Sea lion running
Paper Clipping: Female Astrologer
Paper Clipping: Suffragette Books
Paper Clipping: WW2 and Astrology
Paper Clipping: Pimms Ad

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:23) Extremophiles
(00:57:55) Astrology
(01:43:59) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

We’ve put tardigrades through every red bull task imaginable but they’re NOT extremophiles, extremotolerant vs extremophiles that thrive, thermophiles at 122 celsius, anglophiles, what would it suck to experience, psychrophiles, acidophiles and alkaliphiles, hypobarophiles experiencing 500x our pressure, oligatroph, polyextromophiles, life has found a way in so many extreme places, the chernobyl black mold, not just growing towards radiation but eating Hot Particles, fungi have survived harsh radiation in the Earth’s past, melanin lets the fungi handle and perceive radiation safely, it’s similar to photosynthesis though in the same way a tsunami is similar to a glass of water, conan the bacterium can live inside nuclear reactors, DNA redundancy, krill that makes antifreeze proteins, osmoconfromers, acidophile taken to a lab and finally thriving at .7 ph, it’s also hard as hell to capture and study and keep these extremophiles alive, extremophiles gave us PCR, we also us extremophile e coli, bioremediation is what I took when I failed bio and was tutored by an extremophile, we have so much to do-actually that was pretty funny, bioplastics, what extreomophiles teach us about astrobiology, letting some bacteria chill on the outside of the ISS for 3 years, damn girl you’re making me re-evaluate the limits of life, our nuanced and conflicting feeling on astrology, yay we get to read our horoscopes- wait fuck why am I happy about that? babylonian horoscopes, star charts for things like seasons actually were right, the Enuma Anu Enlil collection of omens, what’s your mother’s maiden name and pincode horoscope, the legacy of the endless pig, uh oh we’re having fun talking about horoscopes, medieval astrology in the royal court and the sciences, before we knew about the earth going around the sun the stars explained the seasons, in the 1700s astrology was seen as a sham, of course royal watching tabloids bring about astrology 2.0, scraping the bottom of the barrel for anything to say about princess margaret, globe conflict 2 electric boogaloo, a pims advert is a rich text, the horoscope test, god the people yearn for therapy, the barnum effect, zodiacs are part of our culture - so something to connect with, the correlation of uncertainty and horoscope popularity, how to manage uncertainty without horoscopes, video games offer a structure and challenge and reward that can help people cope with hard times.

Sources:
NOAA: What is an Extremophile?
Life: Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments
Nature: Life in Extreme Environments
PMC: Genomics of an extreme psychrophile, Psychromonas ingrahamii
The Biologist: Eating Gamme Rays for Breakfast
Research Gate: A Case Study of Strains Inhabiting Chernobyl Reactor No. 4
Chemical Communications: : The Incredible Cell Membrane Adaptations of Extremophiles to Harsh Environments
Life: Extremophiles and Extremophilic Behaviour
Biotechnology Advances: Structural Features of Thermozynes
Science: Conan the Baterium
Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews: Oxidative Stress Resistance in Deinococcus radiodurans
Polar Biology: Cold Resistance the Krill Euphausia superba
Extremophiles: Picrophilus oshimae
Life: Biotechniological Applications of Extremophile Research
Wiki: Thermos aquaticus
Frontiers in Microbiology: DNA Polymerases as Useful Reagents for Biotechnology
PNAS: Microbial Growth at Hyperaccelerations up to 403,627 × g
Frontiers in Microbiology: Extremophiles and the Limits of Life in a Planetary Context
Journal of Indian Institute of Science: Bioprospecting Extremophiles for Astrobiology
NASA: Astrobiology
Frontiers in Microbiology: DNA Damage and Survival Time Course of Deinococcal Cell Pellets During 3 Years of Exposure to Outer Space
New Scientist: Radiation Resistant Bacteria Could Survive Journey From Earth to Mars

---

2013 Paper: The Solar Eclipse Omen Texts from Enūma Anu Enlil
National Geographic: History of Horocopes
My Modern Met: Mystical History of Astrology
British Newspaper Archive 
BBC: Who Actually Writes Horoscopes
2020 Paper: The Man Behind the Horoscope Column- R H Naylor
2005 Paper: A History of Astrology Part I: Origins to the Romans
The Guardian: How Astrology Paved the Way for Predictive Analytics
BBC: Is Astrology Backed By Science?
2022: Even The Stars Think That I Am Superior
BBC: Is There Any Science in Astrology?
Scientific American: Is Astrology Real? Here’s What Science Says
McGill University: How Astrology Escaped the Pull of Science
BBC: The Anxieties and Apps Fuelling the Astrology Boom

98: Extremophiles & Astrology

http://www.LetsLearnEverything.com/q

It's time to submit your questions for our annual Q&A episode!

Submit your Q&A Questions!

What, when, where, why, and how... do we sneeze? There's a surprising amount of mystery to the thing we do all the time, and a lot to learn about! And how many parables and metaphors that we use are actually true? Let's actually dig in to the research and bust some myths!! I mean... break some... falsehoods!!

Images we Talk About:
The Rat Diagram
Caseids
Diplodocus Bones
Plane Diagram
Moai Walking

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:26) Sneezing
(00:57:55) Parable Mythbusters
(01:43:59) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

Caroline was inspired by being sick, theories of sneezing, sneezing in the odyssey, Aristotle said burping and farting are not divine, 25 sextillion molecules in every breath, it’s a wonder we’re not sneezing all the time, sneezing only goes to your brain stem, a sneeze can send particles 8 meters, what ion channel? last year we made sneezless mice, le petite mort and le petit orgasm, the incredible mid-sneeze mouse diagram, we’re gonna talk about - ghoooosts, A.C.H.O.O or the photic sneeze reflex, our explanations for sneezing reflect our understanding of science at the time, snatiation, S.N.A.T.I.A.T.I.O.N, sneezing from getting horny, pee chills, a sneeze is just a more obvious indicator that wires get crossed, diagnostic sneeze testing, finding the first sneezing animal, the earliest diaphgram, chickens sneeze, African wild dogs voting by sneeze, dolphins chuffing, bugs aren’t part of the sneeze club, unlike the mythbusters we won’t be blowing up cars, okay maybe a few, if you put a frog into boiling water it won’t jump out it will die, boiling frogs in search of the soul, the climate change metaphor works for brain dead leaders, the survivorship bias meme plane, the image is fictitious but Abraham Wald is even cooler, America’s Bletchley - The Statistical Research Group, some people believe the heads had bodies, oh my god they did, the walking Moai, the deforestation happened before the people, invasive rats without a natural predator, pretending we’re surprised about colonialism being the culprit, we didn’t need to do carbon dating to find some of these answers guys.

Sources:
1990 Paper: The History of Sneezing
2013 Paper: The Omen of Sneezing
2009 Paper: Sneeze reflex: Facts and fiction
Smithsonian: Why Do We Sneeze?
National Geographic: The Air You Breathe Is Full of Surprises
Wiki: Sneeze
2025 Paper: The Sneeze Reflex in Physiological and Pathological states: a mini review
2024 Paper: Mouse Sneezing Study
Nature: Cough or sneeze? How the brain knows what to unleash
Scientific American: Looking at the Sun Can Trigger a Sneeze
2010 Paper: When the Sun Prickles Your Nose: An EEG Study Identifying Neural Bases of Photic Sneezing
ScienceLine: Why Do People Sneeze When They Look at the Sun?
OMIM: Gastric Sneezing
2009 Paper: Arousal and Sneezing
2017 Article: An Ancient Origin for the Diaphragm
2022 Paper: Lung Evolution in Vertebrates and the Water-to-Land Transition
National Geographic: Animal Sneezing
National Geographic: African Wild Dogs Vote by Sneeze
Oceanbites: Sneeze, Cough, Chuff: Respiratory Irritation in Dolphins
Natural History Museum: Hagfishes
Smithsonian: 14 Fun Facts About Hagfish
Sci-Show- Aquatic Sneezing
2022 Paper: Sponges Sneeze
2022 Paper: Dinosaur Sickness
National Geographic: First Dinosaur Found with a Respiratory Disease
---
Atlantic on The Boiling Frog
Know Your Meme: Survivorship Bias Plane
Cameron Moll Blog Post about Original Drawing
Abraham Wald's Plane Statistic Memorandum
Terry Hunt's Incredible "Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island"
The Walking Moai Paper

97: Sneezing & Parable MythBusters

How have animals adapted to the digging lifestyle, and can that help us explain the Devil's Corkscrew? And what are the various ways movies can be censored across the world, and what does that tell us about the world itself?

Images we Talk About:
The Devil's Corkscrew
Mole Skeleton Comparison
Mole Digging Video
Monitor Lizard Burrow
Monitor Lizard Burrows

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:30) Fossoriality
(00:52:58) Movie Censorship
(01:36:53) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

Daemonelix or the Devil’s Corkscrew, well Tom I hope one of your facts beats Ella’s giant sloth fact, only nerds know the word fossorial, why dig is easy - how dig is harder, mole skeletons are hyper specialized, moles are herd to catch and keep, I dig holes for me, is that couscous? the silica gel of pasta, x-ray videos of moles digging in couscous, devil’s corkscrew deja vu, first and deepest lizard burough, one of the most stable egg environments for an 8 month incubation, it turns out helixes are more common than we thought, Put! Lizards! In! Couscous! Peter Jackson’s braindead, video nastys, wow blaming media for crime we’ve never heard that before, video nastys were an easy ban because politicans didnt care about them, a microcosm of the moral panics of the time, the military entertainment complex, the US doesn’t have any outright movie bans… but they do have the hayes code, self censorship, no picture show lower the moral standard of those who see it, the commercial influence on self censorship, charlie shackleton’s paint drying film, poilitical movie bans reflect real alliances and tensions, denmark’s only ever banned the disney skeleton dance, Denmark’s freedom of speech is what the US thinks it is, don’t be mean to the military uwu, only 34 foreign films can be shown in china every year, the censorship is coming from inside the house, a Bohemian Rhapsody without mention of sexuality, Tilda Swinton played an asian character to get around mentioning Tibet, World War Z was changed even though it never aired in China, why are you making me defend these bad movies, censorship is as strong as the weakest link in the chain that’s profitable, “it’s all just crazy and some food for thought, thank youuu”

Sources:
NPCA on the Devil's Corkscrew
Smithsonian Mag Devil's Corkscrew
Mole Forlimb Morphology
Mole Senses Paper
Fossorial Ventilatory Response
Mole Rat Lung Comparison Paper
NWF Mole Facts
NYTimes Mole Motion
Yi Fen Lin Mole Walking Paper
Yi Fen Lin Mole Burrowing Paper
Deep Nesting in a Lizard: Deja Vu Devil's Corkscrew: First Helical Reptile Burrow and Deepest Vertebrate Nest.
Helical Burrows Across the Animal Kingdom Paper
---
BBFC: Video Nasties
Wiki: Video Nasty
BFI: Unspooling the Video Nasties
Wiki: Film Censorship in the United States
Guardian: Top Gun for Hire
Wiki: List of films banned in the United States
Screen Online: Hayes Code
Vice: Why I’m Making British Film Censors Watch Paint Dry
Wiki: Paint Drying
Wiki: List of Banned Films
BBC: Cambodia Bans Thai Movies
BBC: Russia Bans Death of Stalin
Reuters: Lightyear Banned
Wiki: The Skeleton Dance
EBSCO: History of Censorship in Denmark
English Translation of the Danish Constitution
Wiki: Denmark Motion Picture Content Rating System
Variety: Foreign Titles Squeezed in China Film Market
Harvard: Disney censorship in China
Pen: Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing

96: Fossoriality & Movie Censorship

It's the podcast's birthday!! So Tom has a few ideas he wants to pitch to Caroline and Ella... but first! Ella and Caroline finally revisit the topics they promised! What are the WILD stories behind the race to discover new elements, and what are the real nuancy nuances of craftivism?

Images we Talk About:
William Morris' Print
Terrero's Hankie
Hankie Given to Terrero
Madres de Plaza de Mayo
Pussyhat
Tom's Gifts

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:43) Superheavy Elements 2
(01:17:58) Craftivism 2
(02:01:28) Tom’s List

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: How do we prove this is real, we pinky promise, a refresher in the form of a pop quiz, we didn’t make the elements - except for some we did make, is the gift plutonium? we never thought we’d have another element heavier - and then you happened! the quizkids element reveal, the increasing specificity of Stan’s Apartmentium, just keep adding and smashing its just math - really expensive math, the long island ice tea of nuclear materials is in the bomb, scraping new elements off the filters of flying through a mushroom cloud, the edge of the periodic table was a cold war battle field, the feuds of the transfermium wars, perhaps sodium seaborgate, while they were bickering over naming Germany discovered 5 new elements, it’s like a railgun you nerd, linear vs circular accelerators, it’s like hotwheels tracks, we could’ve designed this! “how can we differently smash this stuff?”, I’m hype about a filter, only Victor Ninov could run GOOSY, “the most audacious fraud in scientific history”, lying about discovering an element and then discovering it before people catch on to the lie, 3 elements wasn’t enough, Oganessian co discovered 14 elements - the most of anyone, I mean really we all co-discovered this topic, “we hit this wall of super heavy elements being bastards”, Goosy 2 Electric Goosyloo, you’re smashing billions of particles per second over months to hopefully get 1 atom, calcium beam of milk, the theoretical island of stability, superstable superheavy elements, disappointment on the horizon, domestic arts for political and social change, I sure wish someone had done research into this nuance, oh fuck that was supposed to be me! the arts and crafts movement was activism for crafts not crafts for activism, fucking up golf courses for women’s suffrage, some suffragettes didn’t want to include working class women, imprisoned women were given sewing needles to reform but they just made incredible protest art, Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a sense of solidarity through craft, lets tonally tokyo drift this episode baby, comparing and contrasting with the pussy hat, craft ins and yarn bombing, craftivism defies expectations and engages community, “appealing” activism, craftivism is a piece of the puzzle not the whole solution, it’s a useful tool in the toolkit, Hoisin Duck Wrap - Irn Bru - Yogurt, Tom gets a tattoo and regrets it, stopping by Tom Scott’s spinoff podcast show, Tom’s gifts, putting it to the test who’s the strongest cohost, the podcast can officially hop!

Sources:

Kit Chapman's "Super Heavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table"
Ella's Superheavy Documentary
---
Britannica: Arts and Crafts Movement
Textile Society of America: The benefits and pitfalls of craftivism
Museum of English Rural lift: Suffrage and the Sewing Machine
American Golfer 1912: The British Suffragettes Attack Golf Courses
Textile Society of America: The Political Stitch: Voicing Resistance in a Suffrage Textile
The Thread Blog: Historical Craftivism: From Suffragettes to Gandhi to Argentina
The Association of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo
Learning for Justice: Madres de Plaza de Mayo
V&A: The Pussyhat
The Morning Crafter Blog: Craftivism: Empowerment, Resistance, and Activism Through History
Book: How To Be A Craftivist by Sarah Corbett
2022 Paper: Negotiating the Art of Protest through Craftivism
2017 Paper: KNIT + RESIST: placing the Pussyhat Project in the context of craft activism
2018 Paper: Knitting Activism, Knitting Gender, Knitting Race
J. Feliz: An Open Letter to the Craftivism Movement
BBC: Police to get broader powers to restrict repeated protests

95: 🎂 Superheavy Elements 2, Craftivism 2, and Tom's List

We know ghosts aren't real, but what is real is the way our brains make us imagine the creepy things that go bump in the night. What about our psychology makes it so easy to be spooked? And we've all heard of costumes and pumpkin carving, but what are the weirdest old Halloween traditions, and what can we take into our own traditions?

Things we Talk About:
Mooney Faces
Games for Halloween
Snap Dragon Video 1
Snap Dragon Video 2
Caramel Pronunciation Map
Mischief Night Map
Cabbage Card 1
Cabbage Card 2
The Bobbing for Apples Video

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:36) Paranormal Psychology
(01:03:06) Defunct Halloween Traditions
(01:36:21) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: Skeleton Shattering Science Topic, anomalistic psychology is the science of ghost busting, NOT parapsychology, the first step to a ghost is someone who believe in ghosts, following the format of ghost hunting shows, spooky believers are often predisposed pattern recognizers, the Australian sheep goat scale, suggestion not priming, creepyness via agent detection, a haunted house is evolutionarily designed to be spooky to us, the scary feedback loop, no infrasound does not vibrate your eyeballs, pattern recognizing apophenia, it’s a wonder humans aren’t scared all the time, it’s actually good we don’t consciously perceive every single thing, wait the static says subscribe to the podcast?? I think she’s saying her hips DO lie, the yeti, hiring a magician on halloween, Ella’s pattern recognizing brain can sense Tom’s bit voice, all the names Halloween goes by, Samhain was basically new years eve, Mary Blain’s Games for Halloween and her caveat, Silent Supper or Reverse Dinner, don’t play snap dragon, imagine risking third degree burns for a RAISIN, the heat map of words for the night before Halloween, mischief night or Halloweeneen, youth honor day, the worst boy police, did you pull a bisexual cabbage? why is everything so romantic?? silent supper seems cute until you’re sprinting over a fence and smashing a window, bobbing for apples is FERAL, our tradition of a spooky episode.

Sources:

2021 Paper- Super-natural fears
2022 Paper- Believing is seeing: The link between paranormal beliefs and perceiving signal in noise
Psychology Today: Why Some People See Ghosts But Others Never Do
2018 Paper: The Australian sheep-goat scale: An evaluation of factor structure and convergent validity
Wiki- Australian Sheep-Goat Scale
2003 Paper- An investigation into alleged ‘hauntings’
1997 Paper- Context-Induced Paranormal Experiences: Support for Houran and Lange's Model of Haunting Phenomena
2010 Paper- It's still bending: Verbal suggestion and alleged psychokinetic ability
Smithsonian Magazine- On the Science of Creepiness
2016 Paper- On the nature of creepiness
2022 Paper- Why Some People See, Hear, Or Feel “Ghosts”
2020 Paper- Things That Go Bump in the Literature: An Environmental Appraisal of “Haunted Houses”
2009 Paper- The “Haunt” project: An attempt to build a “haunted” room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound
BBC- The science behind seeing ghosts
2022 Paper- Paranormal experiences, sensory-processing sensitivity, and the priming of pareidolia
2014 Paper- Auditory Pareidolia
Michael Nees Interview with The Conversation
Digicult: Joe Banks: Rorschach Audio
---
Smithsonian Mag Halloween Traditions
Mary E. Blain's Games for Halloween
Midwest Folklore: Silent Supper
Journal of the Folklore Institute: Silent Supper
Atlas Obscura: Silent Supper
NYTimes Dialect Quiz
Smithsonian Mag: Mischief Night
Smithsonian Mag: Old Halloween Pranks
Atlantic: Halloween Pranks and the Worst Boy Police
Robert Burns Halloween Poem
NJ.com Mischief Night
NPR Apples & Halloween

94: Paranormal Psychology & Defunct Halloween Traditions

Wait... ELLA is doing a math topic?? Not only that but she finds the beauty in searching for answers among the toughest math problems. Then, friend of the show Ellen Weatherford takes us through a tour of video game controllers. My favorite is the- wait how did we end up talking about World War 2??

Images we Talk About:
Tesseract Gif
Tennis for Two Controllers
Magnavox Odyssey
Game.com

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:05) Unsolved Math Problems
(00:54:47) Video Game Controllers
(01:46:42) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

Today Caroline is played by Tom and Tom is played by Ellen, I’ll fall on the bad british accent sword for our guests, Ellen speed runs failing math, famous bad lawyer Fermat, I’m learning about math?? from Ella??? Ellen’s Last Theorem: lentil’s cure cancer, “mathematics like any science requires advancements and research and discovery”, basic math starts as early as mesopotamia, a brief history of mathematics, I gotta make math to describe this apple, math begets math, new ways to solve old problems, is this problem hard or will it take thousands of years to solve, the oldest unsolved math problem is 2000 years old, you’re scientifically wrong that all numbers are perfect, we know of 52 perfect numbers, merseene primes and perfect numbers, we don’t know if odd perfect numbers exist, Hilbert’s 23 unsolved math problems, it’s not the answers to the questions - its the tools built to solve them, new list just dropped - the millenium prize problems, the million dollar prize doesn’t account for inflation, the power of an interesting question, multidimensional play-doh, bumblebee - the tesseract! the poincare conjecture had only not been solved in the third dimension, perelman turns down the fields medal, they can offer a million cause if you solve it you’re only thinking about play-doh and 10 dimensions, is the mellenium prize problematic? eh, after researching a lot… the Riemann hypothesis actually probably won’t break cryptography, pure mathematics deserves the benefit of the doubt for its purpose, go forth with Ella’s blessing, new Ella loves math and libertarianism, I don’t know if the convergent evolution argument for controllers holds up in court, Ellen’s radical definition of a game, I don’t think the gate should be closed but don’t push me through it, the murky search for the first video game, Birdy the Brain - the Tic Tac Toe machine, controllers transmit human intention into a computer, some of the first controllers used dials, I was going to say the manhattan project as a joke, a brief and unexpected nuclear disarment detour, Higinbotham doesn’t like being remembered for tennis for two, Space War! the Magnavox Odyssey, some controllers were tabletop not handheld, Atari stole pong, the anatomy of a controller, stolen valor for logitech controllers piloting submarines, kids and parents learning to use controllers, Ella thought RT and RB meant top and bottom, rumble is purely for experience not input, the game.com had the first touch screen, a urinal controlled driving game, interviewing resident elderly expert Donna Jones.

Sources:
MacTutor: Pierre Fermat Biography
Wiki: Fermat's Last Theorem
MacTutor: History of Mathematics
Simon Fraser University: A Brief History of Mathematics
Medium:The Oldest Unsolved Problem in Math
Pillars Taylor University: Odd Perfect Numbers
Royal Society: David Hilbert
Simons Foundation: Hilbert’s Problems
Clay Institute: The Millennium Prize Problems
Nature News: Maths 'Nobel' Prize Declined By Russian recluse
Anatoly Vershik: Thoughts on the Clay Millennium Prizes
BBC In Our Time: The Poincare Conjecture
Medium: The Poincaré Conjecture
[BBC News: Russian Maths Genius Perelman Urged to Take $1m Prize](BBC News - Russian maths genius Perelman urged to take $1m prize)
Clay Mathematics Institute: Riemann Hypothesis
---
Probably the Oldest Interactive Electronic Game - Jeremy Norman’s History of Information
“Bertie the Brain Still Lives” - Popular Mechanics
“Tennis for Two – A Pioneer in the Video Game Industry” - GameSpeak Mag
“Who was Willy Higinbotham?” - Federation of American Scientists
“Spacewar!” - Museum of Play
“The Magnavox Odyssey: The Forgotten Pioneer of Gaming Consoles” - Slashgear
Bad Game Hall of Fame
“Place to pee: new Belgian urinal-based video game” - Ars Technica
“Sega Begins Sales of Urine-Powered 'Toylet' Videogame” - Wired
Perifit Care, Original Kegel Exerciser

93: Unsolved Math Problems & Video Game Controllers w/ Ellen Weatherford

What does chemistry have to do with computers? Well it might just be the best way to understand what's actually going on inside a CPU! And how could there have been a moon hoax back in 1835? Well it involves cosmic pluralism and Edgar Allen Poe so buckle up!

Images we Talk About:
Vaccuum Tubes in Computers
The First Integrated Circuit
Another early Integrated Circuit Prototype
People Etching a Circuit Mask
TED How are Microchips Made Video
Etching from the Great Moon Hoax

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:23) The Chemistry of Computers
(01:04:27) The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
(01:49:15) Outro

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We also learn about: 

BOOOO, a first time interview for this podcast, tom tries to define an integrated circuit, semiconductors, being mid at conducting is vital, silicon silica and silicone, quartz is one of the most abundant minerals and it’s just silica, the metalloids, transistors are so important but so vague, Caroline and Ella were not expecting a trans rights joke, for once of your jokes deserved more appreciation, the quest to make the smallest switch, semiconductors or on the edge of flipping between conductive or not, vacuum bulbs, The Tyranny of Numbers, photo-lithography, etching shrinking then stenciling a circuit, then computers would help make computers, Moore’s predictions of the future of computing, wait did you just explain Moore’s Law? my new graphics card comes with a new unified theory of physics, transistors are now the width of a few strands of DNA, quantum troubles, relying on moor’s law can stifly creativity, but also making transistor’s smaller is interesting science! Ella & Caroline never thought they’d understand computers like this, it’s almost like they’re going to announce they’re discovering aliens, cosmic pluralism, Sir William Herschel discovered Tom’s Anus, we were in a way disproving life on other planets, Gruithuisen sees roads on the moon, “the power of imagination on the man is large”, alien theories sold papers, Edgar Allen Poe’s SciCom satire, quoth the lunarian - nevermore, the daily drops escalated the and on the fifth day we got moon racism, the etchings of lunar life, lets get bibles and colonialism on the moon baby, Richard Adams Locke is the true author, Herschel was on a research trip while this was going down, it sounds like we’re the perfect team for a hoax, aside from being a critique of science communication it also made bank and made the sun the most bought newspaper in the world, Locke’s non denial denial, selling property on the moon, this changed journalistic standards, the occasional hoax actually isn’t okay but fine, Herschel actually thinks it’s hilarious, Locke X Poe collab balloon hoax, this sparked a trend of science fiction.

Sources:
Cornell History of Semiconductors
Euro Physics News 100 Years of Semiconductor Science
Royal Society of Chemistry on Silicon
PBS History of Transistors
PBS Invention of the Integrated Circuit
IEEE Historhy of the Integrated Circuit
Moore's Original Paper: Cramming more Components onto Integrated Circuits
UPenn: Is Moore's Law Really Dead?
MIT: The Death of Moore's Law
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Wiki: Lunar Pareidolia 
Book- The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination
Wiki- Anaxagoras 
Futurism: Franz von Paula Gruithuisen's Venus Science Fiction
Smithsonian Blog- The Great Moon Hoax
Library of Congress: Blogs 
Paper- The "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835
Linda Hall Library: Richard Adams Locke
Britannica: The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
Library of Congress: Blogs : Belief, Legend, and the Great Moon Hoax
Library of Congress: The Sun (New York) 1833-1916
Internet Archive: Great Moon Hoax Papers
Edgar Allen Poe Society: Richard Adams Locke

92: The Chemistry of Computers & The Great Moon Hoax of 1835

What is the Turing Test, what has it become, and what can we learn from it? How many of Ella's weird bodily quirks do you have? And how did the pub quiz come about? 

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about: the imitation game, performative gender, the alignment problem, It’s not blade runner, artifical stupidity, have you heard about eugene goostman?! the alignment problem, CAPTTTTCAHA, archival OCR, thank Turing for Duo Lingo TikToks, Timnit Gebru, Robert Miles, the sociological and economic alignment problem, Ella Syndrome, learn to roll your tongue or else! Artistotle can’t roll his tongue, ACHOO, acronyms were a mistake, spare tendons, what is your earwax texture? the one person who liked Han dynasty tests, unlucky 13, TV quizes, what if we did that? Jay's virtual pub quiz. Jay's virtual pub quiz.

Sources: 

Stanford Philosophy Turing Test Page

Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Turing Test 50 Year Retrospective

Robert Miles

Eugene Goostman

CAPTCHA Paper

reCAPTCHA Interview

CAPTCHA Difficulty

Google's reCAPTCHA Policy

Github Copilot's Alignment Problem Paper

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Photic Sneezing

Tongue Rolling

Palarmis Longus

Armpit Smell

Cilanto Taste

23 and Me Cilantro

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A History of Quizzing

History of the Quiz

BBC Quizzing

Pub Quiz History

Quizzism Book

International Spelling Bee

Jay's Virtual Pub Quiz

15: What the Turing Test Became, Ella's Bodily Quirks, and Pub Quizes

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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