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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!

We've added a SECOND live show in London, and it's a Sunday matinee! See all the details at LetsLearnEverything.com/live

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Second London Live Show! 1pm Sunday Oct 18th!

Corry and Luke from the Sci Guys podcast join us, at last completing elaborate 4 year scheme to have them on! We learn about whether acupuncture is bullshit, and learn a bit more about That famous dolphin story. We also talk shop about mistakes, debunking, and curiosity!

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:10:51) Acupuncture

 (00:32:27) THAT Dolphin Story

 (00:54:20) Mistakes & Debunking

 (01:21:10) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

I’m biggly judging, the only thing I love more than science is a weird bit, Caroline’s 4 year plan to get in a zoom call with these bozos, kind of feels like you came to the top of the mountain and came down to meet us, Brian Cox does Not follow Tom, I know something that will fix Ella’s connection, the corry-luke scale, the peripheral nervous system, free opiod receptors, endogynous, different kind of needles for that opiod, fake accupuncture, treating sever hiccups, min-maxing heroin, it’s tricky to study pain, maybe therapy works more than accupuncture, by the way I don’t need you to share everything, dolphins weren’t so great at finding land mines, I’ll just leave some dead air, an open bar for editting, the sensory deprivation tank, you’re paying for this open bar Tom, I won’t tell you the name of the paper but I will tell you about lisa simpson, was really hoping the apartment would have a dolphinarium, now do your duolingo, this was all to communicate with aliens, Tom tries to have a teachable moment, well someone was certainly “arriving”, raising a chimp as a human, Bunny’s backlash, weird studies, language is complicated and we don’t even think about it so we underestimate it, did we not all read coco transcripts in college - oh i guess not, Corry’s corona mistake, double checking even when we know someone’s wrong, can you believe there are podcasts where people try to learn everything? a meta message not about being right but about science, QI’s mistake rate, the science debunking complex can get toxic, when we debunk it’s not with antagonism but curiosity, the mould effect saga, I think what you were trying to say correy is that it’s important to foster curiosity.

Sources:
Harvard Medical School, Science of Acupuncture
Review: Is Acupuncture Placebo?
Review: Acupuncture for Fibromyalgia Treatment
Guardian: NASA's Dolphin Project
Atlantic: Margaret Lovatt's Dolphin Experiment

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107: Sci Guys, Acupuncture, and THAT Dolphin Story

It's the Best of Everything! The episode where we look at the topics that YOU thought were our best from the past year, and chat some behind the scenes about them! It's a great place to start and a great time to brush up on things you may have forgotten.

Images we Talk About: 
Etching from the Great Moon Hoax
Bumble Bee Ocelli

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:03:51) The Vitamin Saga

 (00:20:55) Why is the Sky Blue?

 (00:33:19) Speech Disfluency

 (00:53:11) The Great Moon Hoax of 1835

 (01:09:07) Superheavy Elements II

 (01:27:33) Eyevolution II

 (01:45:17) Outro 

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

You wouldn’t marry a husband, oh here comes the vitamin guy, you think we’ll still have history, you missed a spot, literally having to ask for extra time, we don’t learn like computers - relearning is normal, the I’ve just turned 30 pilgramage to Japan, I’ve ruined the algorithm, oh YAY, excited for marriages and reality fracture, 30 seconds of laughter.

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

The Best of Everything 2026

You may know the polygraph is junk science, but what is the real science of lying and what wild turns did the polygraph take to get to today? And how old is dentistry? If ancient cave men didn't brush why do I have to? Well it turns out for good reason, and some fascinating dental science.

ALSO SEE US LIVE IN LONDON!!! LETSLEARNEVERYTHING.COM/LIVE

Images we Talk About: 
Mackenzie's First Polygraph
Ancient Teeth Image
Dentistry Tool 1
Dentistry Tool 2
Dentistry Tool 3
Dentistry Tool 4

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:06:38) The Polygraph

 (01:00:33) Dentistry History

 (01:49:19) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

Go to https://surfshark.com/learneverything or use code LEARNEVERYTHING at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

We also learn about: 2 truths and a lie, the jeremy kyle show, the first lie from the devil to eve (or when children first lie), the official stance of the podcast is lying is good and cool, deontic reasoning and theory of mind, flexible and explicit TOM, Ella aces the Sally-Anne test, discovering new advanced levels of lying, lying is normal for kids it’s not evil, lying is complex… but what if it wasn’t and we could just know, James Mackenzie’s original polygraph, the polygraph actually worked (just not for lying but for cardiology), sphygmomanometers, proto-feminist William Marston, back then just thinking women had a theory of mind made you a proto feminist, Tom falls down the rabbit hole of Marston’s feminism, what’s the difference between a lie you believe and the truth, Marston is the first to bring the polygraph to court in Frye vs the United States, the polygraphs turns into a one band band machine, Marston invented wonder woman and the lasso of truth, table the feminism of wonder woman another time, if corporations are people they should all go to therapy, polygraphs are still a 2 billion dollar industry, police firefighters and paramedics still take polygraphs, Caroline pre-empts the but, a polygraph is not a machine you need the interpreter, lying is useful, it’s fun to lie so who’s your favorite co-host, wow we can bond over private healthcare, dentistry asmr, tooth decay is from bacteria acid, stone age morocco acorn sweets, you can blame agriculture for cavities, fossilized plaque can give us an oral history, determining women did a job from paint in teeth, fuck I drank the paint water at least no one will know, did you say we were kissing the rats or was that my inner monologue, would you like to read the tooth worm poem? how could this possibly get to a tooth worm, most of recorded human history we believed in tooth worms, the earliest example of dentistry was a week ago, sorry it changed a week ago, an ancient beeswax filling, a 59,000 year old tooth hole, what’s a worse hyphenate than barber-surgeon, blacksmith barbers, traveling tooth pullers, so many jobs I’m glad don’t exist, a medieval dentist clown is literally someone’s worst nightmare, victorian job questionnaire, What The Eff is That, dental tools that look like weapons made in a dream, I didn’t realize until we got into this how much I hate teeth! the truth of my soul is private in Germany,

Sources:
The Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children
Marjorie Rhodes NPR
Social and Cognitive Correlates of Children's Lying Behavior
Review of Theory of Mind in Chilren
James Mackenzie's "The Study of the Pulse"
Mark Harris' Great Wired Piece on Polygraphs
Matthew Brown's Deep Dive into Marston's Feminism
JAAPL Frye v. United States
Cornell Law Frye Standard
Harvard center for Law Brain and Behavior on the Polygraph
Scientific American on Lying

 ---
National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research
National Library of Medicine: Microbiology of Dental Decay and Periodontal Disease
2014 Paper: Earliest evidence for caries and exploitation of starchy plant foods in Pleistocene hunter-gatherers from Morocco
SciAm: Oral Mystery: Are Agriculture and Rats Responsible for Tooth Decay?
NHGRI: Digging into the past to uncover the cause of our cavities
Wiki: Tooth Worm
Smithsonian: 6,500-Year Old Beeswax May Be Oldest Known Dental Filling
NewScientist: Oldest dental filling is found in a Stone Age tooth
The Guardian: Neanderthals Used Stone Drills to Treat Cavities 59,000 Years Ago, Tooth Suggests
Wiki: Barber Surgeon
Bath Medical Museum: Teeth Pullers and Denture Makers
2007 Paper: The Tooth Puller
2025 Paper: Pierre Fauchard
Science Museum: Dental Pelican 
Science Museum: Dental Pelican for Tooth Pulling
Science Museum: Dental Key
BBC: When Blacksmiths Were Dentists
Science Museum: Dental drill
Science Museum: Syringe
Spear: A Brief History of Dental Anesthesia
Blog: The Gruesome History of Dental Implants
BBC: The Dentures Made From the Teeth of Dead Soldiers at Waterloo
Science Museum: Shade Guide 
Blog: What Are Dentures Made Of?
Dentists Act 1878

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

106: The Polygraph & Dentistry History

It's that time of year to vote for the Best Of Everything!

https://www.letslearneverything.com/vote

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Vote for the Best Of Everything! LetsLearnEverything.com/vote

Are there more carnivores in the ocean than land? Yes! But... why? And what does that teach us about how we study ecosystems? And what constitutes a collection? Well it goes way back in time, and can cover anything and everything interesting, and maybe even teach us about ourselves and each other.

Images we Talk About:
Giraffe
Biomass Pyramid 1
Biomass Pyramid 2
Dolphin
Tiger
Purple Otter Skull

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:03:30) The Marine Carnivore Conundrum

 (00:56:33) Collecting

 (01:51:34) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: Oh yeah that topic’s gonna hit, only 5% of fish are herbivorous compared to 30% of terrestrial animals, zoopharmacognosy, carnivora is not all carnivores and not exclusively carnivores, hypercarnivores eat 70% or more meat, polar bears are some of the most carnivorous animals we know of, grizzly bears only eat 10% meat, osteophagia, suckin on bone, trophic levels, Ella’s clearly an apex predator but are all humans, trying to beat the trophic level high score, let us know your level in the discord, average trophic levels, humans are 2.2 on average, trophic jorg, lopsided biomass pyramids, there are simply less plant diversity in the oceans, land predators hunt animals with at least 45% of their body size whereas whales do .01%, oh yeah aquatic animals don’t have paws or storage, aquatic carnivores have homodont dentition, trophic cascades, sea urchins can turn otter bones purple, hunter collector society, don’t pre-empt my question, the earliest collection we know of is from 105,000 years ago, shell collectors were just like me fr, coin collecting was a hobby of kings, a quick detour for the worst pope, but maybe Pope Boniface VIII is just like me for real, I like collecting 50 and 100 dollar bills actually, the wunderkamer or cabinets of curiosities, the industrial revolution ignited collecting, Americans turned British spoons into collecting, Ella’s love spoon, say the line Ella, this is really a “what’s wrong with Ella” topic, Edward Wharton-Tigar’s cigarette card collection and incredible quotes, David Attenburough convinced him not to take his cards with him into the 8th ring of hell, you’ve activated my trap card, magpies don’t collect shiny things and may have neophobia, animal collection, the cursed bug katamari, it’s like if I collected cards with boobs AND HE JUST LIKE ME FR, pack rat brain activation, a pack rat piss detour, amberat, collections represent our ability to abstract and think of the future, and that’s why I should get another spoon, Freud’s toilet hypothesis for collecting, Baudrillard on collecting, collecting builds yourself, They Collect What? baggers, I now collect banana friends.

Sources:

So, once again there are actually too many sources to fit here, it literally won't let us put them all here hahaha so please find the sources at https://www.letslearneverything.com/105-sources

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

105: The Marine Carnivore Question & Collecting

Caroline's Frogs campaign and our improv class were some of our favorite bonus episodes we've done, so we wanted to share a sample of what they sound like!

If your interest is piqued, you can hear the rest AND support the show at www.LetsLearnEverything.com/join

Sources:
JSTOR: Portmaneau Origins

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Preview: Frogs & Improv

Folks we're halfway through the MaxFunDrive! And to keep the celebration we have Tom chatting behinds the scenes with other Max Fun hosts!

For all the details about MFD perks, the livestream, and how to support the show, go to LetsLearnEverything.com!

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:01:26) Casters on Casters

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

MaxFunDrive Bonus: Tom's Casters on Casters

What is the Anthropocene? No really, who came up with it, when does it start, and why does that matter? Well it involves nuance, scientific beef, and a surprising amount of freaky little guys. And we all know of some sound effects we love, but what is their history, where are the weird places they've shown up, and what can they teach us about art?

Images we Talk About:
The International Chronostratigraphic Chart
Opabinia
Graptolite
Sound Effect Rooms
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:05:37) The Anthropocene

 (01:21:57) Sound Effects

 (02:16:15) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: The human dominated geological time frame, this is actually a geology topic, let’s get our rocks off, the geological timescale, clues in the rock layers, the geologic calendar, the international chronostraographic chart, Eons Eras Periods Epochs Ages, GSSPs are physical places, a long cambrian tangent, the burgess shale was a rare cambrian preserver, trilobites are the alpha male body plan, opabinia had 5 eyes and one claw, hallucigenia actually makes Tom recoil, index fossils, Ella just loves these little freaks, Ella literally has a graptolite fossil, the SPICE extinction, title drop halfway through the topic, wait nvm we have to talk about the holocene, in 2024 they declined the anthropocene proposal, are we covering the anthropocene or the 24 years of its proposal? Jan Zalasiewicz ignobel lick, heavily acronymized science beef, a person dabbing is the anthropocene GSSP (or fossilized air bubbles in ice), Jan vs Jan, maybe the anthropocene is just an Event, insects are the canary in the mass extinction coal mine but they’re also not in the record, humans make up a third of the mass of large vertebrates - and the rest are mostly things we eat, a t-rex wishes to be the most abundant species and a monkeys paw curls, chicken bones in the fossil record, we’ve pushed back the next ice age 50,000 years, don’t clip me dabbing at nuclear weapons, when does the anthropocene start? 1952 with the plutonium shift, there was a most popular album at the start of the anthropocene, era dates are changed all the time, a spicy retirement letter, did you ask him about the email - I mean I did, rocks are political, we’re not in the anthropocene but let’s see what happens, make this design juicier please, sound effects can be realistic or symbolic, the siren whistle slip sound, the real sound of bald eagles, sound effects are treated more like a commodity than an art and a history, we don’t know if ancient mesopotamians beatboxed, Ella shredded so hard on the thundersheet she bled, sound effect started in plays, shakespeare and kabuki pioneered realistic and symbolic sound effects, tsuke, the first radio sound effects from the 1921 world series broadcast from Jersey, the walking surfaces at the BBC, 1920s sound effect rooms, sound effect records, who would buy this? ME!! what do you mean you survived the great depression traveling america for sound effects, 2 headed turntables designed for vinyl sound effect DJs, Jack Foley, the Bristol Old Vic thunder machine’s audio tricks, stealing John Dennis’ thunder, canning laughter from the Red Skelton show, this isn’t a real game, fine it was a good game and I win, recreating pacman with waves, pacman’s noise is so icon it created an onomatopoeia, Ben Burtt also loved the lightsaber, that was a great buzz, sound effects are both the truth and a lie, freesound.org, male_thijs_loud_scream.aiff

Sources:

 Folks, we have so many show notes and sources that we literally hit the character limit, which is a first!

 So please find the sources at https://www.letslearneverything.com/104-sources

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

104: The Anthropocene Argument & Sound Effects

IT'S THE MAX FUN DRIVE!!! We kickoff with a crossover "Casters on Casters" with Ella chatting behinds the scenes with other Max Fun hosts!

For all the details about MFD perks, the livestream, and how to support the show, go to LetsLearnEverything.com!

 

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Intro

 (00:01:40) Casters on Casters

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinlearn

Second London Live Show! 1pm Sunday Oct 18th!

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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