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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!

Is pointing rude? I'm sure it's a simple question with a simple answer that won't completely break our brains in rethinking all we take for granted about gesture. Also, what is Lauren’s holy grail lost media of gesture studies?

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:01) Is Pointing Rude?
(00:48:11) Questions for Lauren
(01:25:26) Outro

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

Diverse but incredibly niche interests is the sweet spot, studying the holes in emoji, Tom wasn’t a rude pointer child like Ella, the Disney point, when you point you don’t direct to the end of your finger - you psychically project forward, dogs and horses are great points - cats not so much, we are the only primate that points in the wild, you likely pointed before you spoke, ITS CALLED THE INDEX FINGER BECAUSE IT POINTS LIKE AN INDEX, non index pointing, “that is one lens through which we could consider this”, lip pointing in Encanto, travel guides will simplify to pointing is rude because it’s complex and nuanced where it’s rude, we haven’t even gotten to rainbows, taboos for pointing at specific things, who dude watch where you’re pointing it’s threatening, what if hypothetically a host just went to japan and pointed a lot, Japan is often on the linguistics bingo card, pointing is the pronoun system in ASL, spacial pronoun tracking, you can be a better pointer than someone, gesture and speech have different strengths, Tom’s gestures are more honest than his words to his cohosts, pointing was some of the earliest emoji, “medieval illuminated manuscript marginalia creators would be disappointed with you Ella”, the finger pointing came before the arrow, “we had hands before we had writing”, gesture studies is still new and very interdisciplinary, the way you study gesture is every way, you gesture bigger in loud environments, computers are good at reading hands but not hands in context, the only thing Tom can correct Lauren on is that it was Just Dance not DDR, gesture is ephemeral to study, a huge reason we have gesture study now is video exists, the holy grail lost tapes of gesture, using gesture studies to prove the nazis wrong, are gestures are both for you and the person you’re talking to, I’m not analyzing your gestures if what you’re saying is interesting, metaphorical gesture space, we move ideas around like little apples, you’ll never be able to watch a ted talk again, the archery V myth, exploiting the ambiguity of gesture, we’ve been gesturing with communicating for so long and only reading and writing so recently - so of course we yearn for emoji, “we’re adding the body straight back in the moment we get the chance to”, the rate of literacy is weird, Lauren insisted no emotion on the head shake emoji because it’s not universally negative, sign language has gesture, for the Aymara language the future is behind you - i cant see whats going to happen, iconic resources, cognitive linguistics is obsessed with our meat puppets, we all experience the same gravity and that influences how we think, part of the joy is being the meat puppet.

91: Lauren Gawne, Is Pointing Rude, and Gestures Studies

How strange are octopuses really? We're going to be debunking some claims, then rebunking them with some real, amazing facts about our fellow earthlings. And what the history of the paralympics? What can we learn from its attempts and its failures and its importance in sports?

See Tom's Science Game Show in NYC!

Things we Talk About:
Octopus Virus Diagram
Snail Nervous System Diagram
Octopus Maze Image
Video of Octopus Opening a Jar
Video of Octopus Camouflage
Paralympics Ad

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:56) Octopuses
(00:55:08) The Paralympics
(01:41:44) Outro

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about: Censoring octopussy, 3 science communicators get rabid over a dubious study, octopi are so smart they could only have come about from fertilized eggs aboard an asteroid, cephalopods evolved a central nervous system independently with ganglia, the “head” of an octopus is where there other organs are, octopi don't have 5 brains but they do have a lot of distributed neurons, each sucker is a finger-nose-tongue that can make decisions on its own, octopi have terrible hand eye coordination but can learn to be better at it, Ella thinks “man this would be a great topic for the podcast”, octopi are aliens in the metaphorical sense - and maybe it’s a bad metaphor, I’m not a playing I’m developing flexible behavioral strategies, octopuses play pully downy rather than keepy uppy, the criteria of play, we thought Ella was going to compliment Tom but of course that wasn’t it, octopus cities have populations between 2 and 11, Ella’s gerrymandering octopus city, its more about shared resources and cheaper rent than grand designs, octopus color changing is way more than just pixel cells, but… octopuses are colorblind, their sucker opsins sense color and send directly to chromatophores, octopuses can know a color without seeing it, these are amazing earthling behaviors, Ella was looking for a simple un-nuanced not heavy misc topic, the first Stoke Manderville games, fuck you we’re doing our games on the same day, the organizer of that first game had uhhhhh bad views on disabled people, the Paralypics grew really fast because there was a huge demand for it, Ella loves murderball, goalball and boccia are Paralympic unique sports, the classification system of the Paralympics, the work that goes into the classification system and the flaws and harms it can sometimes have on the athletes, as human as it is to run fast it’s human to cheat, the Spanish ID baseball scandal halted ID sports for 10 years, how the Paralympics and the public views the Paralympians, Ella unfortunately doesn’t solve ableism by the end of the topic, I hear enough of Tom on the show already.

Sources:
The Infamous Octopuses from Space Paper
Live Science: Octopi are Not Aliens
SciAm: Are Octopuses Smart?
Octopus Neuroecology
How Octopuses Control their Body
Discover Mag: Octopus Intelligence
The Amazing Octopus Maze Study
OPB: Octopus Intelligence
Convergent Evolution of Brains
Experimental Evidence for Spatial Learning in Octopuses
SciAm: The Mind of an Octopus
Octopus Problem Solving
Play in Octopuses
Octopus City Study
BBC: Octopus City
Neural Control of Cephalopod Camouflage
Octopus Camouflag Study
Octopus Aging and Evolution Paper
---
Sage: Deaf History of Sport
Olympedia: George Eyser
Wiki: George Eyser
Olympics: Oliver Halassy 
Paralympic.org: History 
International Wheelchair & Amputee Sports Federation: Paralympic Games 1960 - 1992
Paralympic.org: Paralympic Games
BBC: Stoke Mandeville Games
Paralympic.org: Who We Are
Paralympic.org: Paris 2024 Sports
Washington Post: Wheelchair Rugby 
Top End Sports: Discountinued Paralympic Sports
SBS News: Sports that Don't Have an Olympic Equivalent
Olmypics: Boccia
Paralympic.org: Classification
BBC Inside Science: Classification
BAA.org: Parathletics Divisions
BBC: Tully Kearney 
Paralympics GB: Classification
BBC: Spain ID Basketball and ID in Paralympics
The Conversation: When Paralympic Atheletes Fake the Extent of their Disability
Vice: Spain ID Basketball (translanted)
The Conversation: Why somne Disabled People are Critical of the Paralympics 
Dis(Empowering) Paralymoics Histories by Danielle Peers
Guardian: Channel 4 Superhuman Ad
Guardian: Channel 4 New Ad
Blog: Paralympics, Good or Bad for Disabled People

90: Octopuses & The Paralympics

Blood! We all have it, but how much do we know about it? And more importantly, what was the journey of understanding to get there? And just how deep can the history of these peculiar percussion instruments go? Well we'll be criss-crossing across the planet today to find out!

Images we Talk About:
The Quijada
Son Jarocho Quijada Video
The Clapper
The Clapper in Performance

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:35) Understanding Blood
(00:49:38) Peculiar Percussion
(01:24:41) Outro

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 5 liters of blood over 60,000 miles, humoral theory, phlegm - yellow bile - black bile - blood, I’m from house sanguine - our fire is strongest in our season of spring, humoral theory was around for 1500 YEARS, blood letting, a leeches detour just for Caroline, very few leeches actually suck blood, the exportation of leeches for blood letting made them endangered, we nearly killed the leeches in nearly killing us, leeches are sometimes used today after reconstructive surgery for their enzymes, Nafis’ circulatory system would not be believed for 400 YEARS, these time skips are killing me, Harvey was ALSO NOT BELIEVED, we stan Harvey cause he got witches acquitted, the government and church’s ban on blood transfusions, 1818 was the first recorded successful transfusion, 1658 Jan Swammerdam first saw “oval particles” but this was 7 years before the word “cell” was used, pop quiz on what the parts of blood do, don’t draw your blood while driving, blue and green blood in crustaceans and leeches, antigens and antibodies, “I hope this will be of some use to mankind”, sodium citrate helped blood stay fresh for transfusion, god medicine fucking rules, we reinvented humors with blood personality types, the humors are stored on the antigens obviously, “do you know what my blood type is, for no reason, I’m fine, it’s a podcast thing”, Tom has a slumdog millionaire moment because he was working on another video, there are 48 recognized blood groups each with dozens of antigens, having your own bloodtype means having your own bespoke horoscope, we’re averaging one blood group discovered a year, the journey of understanding blood is the journey of science, it’s hard to tell if rocks were used for a cup song routine, Caroline & Ella fall in love with the quijada, it’s a literal death rattle, “play my bones when I die”, make a jawbone that won’t break, the much sillier vibraslap can still sound good, vibraslap on All Along the Watchtower, the whip/clapper/slap stick, comedia dell’arte, the slap stick was a literal stick to make a slap sound, the christmas rise in slapsticks, the armenia alchemist Avedis Zildjian, since we were working with metal we went listen to this taaah tah tah taaah, a perfeclty clear cymbal is just a bell, a cymbal is crafted chaos to sound good, mmm this wine is very trash but not pingy, now we know Ella’s partner wasn’t just making shit up about cymbal sounds, confirming our sources for this wild Zildjian story, what do you think about this instrument?? I can’t stop making chocolate cymbals! Ringo made people want to drum, finding out Sabian is from the Zildjian family is like finding out Wendy’s last name is McDonald, a percussionist can literally touch history from all across the world, it’s about the reviews we don’t read.

Sources:
Science Museum: Blood
J Thromb Haemost: Discovery of the Cardiovascular System
Contagion - CURIOSity Digital Collections: Humoral Theory
MedicineNet: Is Bloodletting Still Used Today?
Fresh Water Habitats Press Release: Medicinal Leech Breeding
The New Yorker: The History of Blood
NCBI Book: The ABO Blood groups
Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science: The Discovery of Blood Cells
Red Cross Blood Services: History Of Blood Transfusions 1628 To Now
NCBI Bookshelf: Blood and the Cells it Contains
The Conversation: Essays on blood: why do we actually have it?
Blood at 70: its roots in the history of hematology and its birth
PMC: A Brief History of Human Blood Groups
Japan Experience: Blood Types in Japan
The Conversation: More Blood Types than you Think
CBS News: New Blood Type
The Conversation: Gwada-negative
---
Kabeleh Bah Playing the Quijada
Salsa Blanca on the Quijada
John Jeremiah Sullivan on the Quijada
Son Jarocho Quijada Video
History of the Vibraslap
Boston Symphony Orchestra on Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 2
Britannica on Slapstick's Etymology
The AMNH's Slap Stick
The Cymbal Test Video
NPR on Zildjian's History
NYT on Zildjian's History

89: Understanding Blood & Peculiar Percussion

Chances are you know what a placebo is, but... how does it really work? And what can its evolution teach us about science, medicine, and ethics? And how much art can fit a tiny postage stamp? Well enough to fill a whole history of debate, drama, and ducks.

Images we Talk About:
Drafts of England's First Stamp
Sydney Views Stamp
The Train Stamp
2025 Duck Stamp Winners
McBroom's Spite Duck

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:20) The Evolution of Placebos
(00:57:13) Postage Stamp Art
(01:41:17) Outro

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Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

The word placebo has escaped academic containment, fake mourners saying “I will please the lord”, placebo paint on birds wings, placebo as sham, The Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism, not that kind of animal magnetism, placebo as psychology, is this going to be a running bit, defining placebo not in reference to something else, “a person’s psychological response to being treated”, things like healing through time or pressure to answer are Not placebo effects, placebo effects are tricky to study, animals can get the placebo effect, goo goo ga ga am I in the contwal gwoup? conditioning rats that a smell means reduced pain, the internal and external factors of placebo, the placebo effect is actually doing things in your brain, of course we talked about that before on episode TWENTY EIGHT, Ella loves brain action, you can consciously fail a placebo but unconsciously pass it, the nocebo effect, it may be just in your head but your head is a lot of things, the murky ethics of placebos, doctors are mostly prescribing harmless placebos when patients ask for one, Caroline & Ella’s sleeping pill and recovery position placebos, HOLY SHIT PLACEBO EVOLVED INTO CHARIZARD HELL YEAH, some placebos work when you tell people it’s a placebo, placebo pills take 2 twice daily, wait is this actually just about the importance of transparent and accessible and trustworthy medical care?? the American Philatelic Society, Tom used stamps as stickers, Ella’s friend’s giant mimic stamp, the public was aroused by post office reform - not just us! every contestant of the first stamp contest was revoked, it took 4 artists to design the first stamp, no monarch stamps unless they’re hot, the Universal Postal Union is the second oldest international organization, the absolutely HATED train stamp, philatelic propaganda, Operation Cornflakes, the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee’s incredible process, so you’re saying we can’t make an Iraq War stamp, so you’re saying the UK can make a 9/11 stamp, stamps are of the most visible pieces of art, the duck stamp is the only art competition sponsored by the government, the super bowl of wild life art, are you a celebrity if oyu haven’t won a DEGOT? stamp advisors with reduction glasses, duck stamp royalty, Broome’s incredible spite art, stamps didn’t have to be art - but we’re glad they are.

Sources:
The Americal Philatelic Society
The Postal Museum London: The Penny Black
Swiss National Museum: Stamps
Wiki: Postage Stamp Design
Linns Stamps: New South Wales Pictorial Stamp
Smithsonian Postal Museum: International Philately
Universal Posta Union
2011 Book: Book of History of the Postage Stamps of the United States of America
US Postal Service: Creating U.S. Postage Stamps
The Postal Museum London: Stamp Design
WWT: Duck Stamps
Scientific America: The Duck Stamp
Fish and Wildlife Service: 2024 Duck Stamp Winner
Million Dollar Duck Video- Taylor and McBroom Rivalry
New York Times: Rising to Glory on the Wings of Ducks
Print Magazine: The Extraordinary Design Journey of a Stamp—From Quasi-Secret Society to Perforated Perfection
Image: The First Stamp Design Evolution
Image: 1869 Pictorial Stamp- 3 Cent Train Stamp
2024 Duck Stamp Entries
Image: McBroom: Comrade Tim Taylor
---
Etymology of Placebos & Placebo History
Placebo Review
Wikipedia Placebo in History
Beecher's The Powerful Placebo
The Powerful Placebo: Fact or Fiction?
Nature Overview: Placebo - Honesty Fakery
Textbook Chapter: Placebo Analgesia in Rodents
The Neuroscience of Placebo Effects
Benedetti's Great 2 Placebos Experiment
NPR on Prescribing Placebos
Guardian on Prescribing Placebos
Kaptchuk's Great Open Label Placebo Study
Finniss et al. Placebo Review

88: The Evolution of the Placebo & Postage Stamp Art

Just how complicated can animal mating rituals be, and why did they even evolve them at all? And why is true crime Everywhere, and what can we learn from breaking down what makes it feel so icky?

Also see Tom's new Game Show in NYC this Sunday! www.OurFindingsShow.com

Things we Talk About:
Deathwatch Beetle
Red-Winged Blackbird
House Finch
Lesser Florican Video
Dance Analysis Video 1
Dance Analysis Video 2
Cruell Step-Dames
Carolina Buddies Murder Ballad

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:04) Mating Rituals
(01:03:01) True Crime
(01:46:08) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: the adorable death watch beetle, the deep sea “ah fuck it - you’re here” approach, of course the man on the podcast thinks reproduction is easy, why are people on hinge so picky, hermaphrodite sea bunnies, there’s plenty of fish in the sea and the sea is fucking huge, sexual ornaments, peacock feathers made Darwin SICK, sexual ornaments to identify you’re doing it with the right species, you can hang your sexual ornaments all year long for other purposes, finch dating shows, carotenoids from skilled foraging make a brighter pigment is an indicator trait, or just go to a tanning salon, going to the gym is the same - false muscles, active at night - gives you a fright - active at day - wants to get laid, wow flies give eye contact during courting - that’s better than a lot of humans, the fly cha cha slide, drosophila simlish, nuptial gifts, Women! Want! Regurgitated Nutrient Liquid! the arms race of jumping birds, the “I’ll have what she’s having theory”, dancing mannequins, intermediate level of asymmetric arm movement, if anything the study shows how comical it is to try to boil down human mating, the famous shirt smelling study, what are you trying to show with a human mating study? we shouldn’t be reductive for human mating or for animal mating either, ascribing the gender binary to worms, there is no one easy tip to dating in nature, a double banger for nuance, early crime tabloids like Illustrated Police News, Jack the Ripper was dubbed by the press after all, the prison chaplain’s broadsides, nature’s cruel step-dames or matchless monsters of the female sex, I can’t stop myself from coming up with names fro these murders, true crime lit was a best seller at public hangings, some broadsides sold 30x more than the news, the unmissable attraction of La Morgue de Paris, American Murder Ballads didn’t need you to be literate, true crime as an indicator of media trends, the vicious cycle of true crime consumption, icky entertainment motivations, working against the wishes of survivors, if only the victim had had our sponsor - simply safe, the commodification of people’s suffering, what stories do we choose not to tell, true crime seems to say there is “right” kind of victim, but true crime isn’t irredeemable.

Sources:
Combermere Abbey: A Hard Day’s Night For The Beetles
Padi: Sea Bunny
Sea Slug Courtship and Reproduction
1978 Paper: Ultraviolet reflection and its behavioral role in the courtship of the sulfur butterflies 
1972 Paper: The Role of the Epaulets in the Red-Winged Blackbird, (Agelaius phoeniceus) Social System
Audubon: Are Brightly Colored Males Really the Best Mates?
Scientific America: Why are male birds more colorful than female birds?
National Science Foundation: Bright colors in the animal kingdom: Why some use them to impress and others to intimidate
2019 Paper: Facial masculinity does not appear to be a condition-dependent male ornament and does not reflect MHC heterozygosity in humans
Yale News: Yale study reveals mating tip for bird species: You should be dancing
The Guardian: Dinosaurs performed dances to woo mates, according to new evidence
Northumbria University: Study identifies high quality female dance movements
1995: MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans
2023 Paper: Do humans agree on which body odors are attractive, similar to the agreement observed when rating faces and voices?
2017 Paper: Humans as a model species for sexual selection research
2009 Paper: Dance dance attribution: exploring the relationship between dance and attractiveness in intial perceptions 
2020 Paper: Mutual mate choice and its benefits for both sexes
---
Podcast.co: How Many True Crime Podcasts
Crime Reads: The Rise of the True Crime Podcaster
JSTOR: The Bloody History of the True Crime Genre
Henry Goodcole: Nature’s Cruel Steppe Dames
NYT: The Bloody History of True Crime Lit
Wellcome Collection: Paris Morgue
JSTOR: The Paris Morgue Provided Ghoulish Entertainment
JSTOR: The Murder Ballad Was the Original True Crime Podcast
Psychology Today: Why the True Crime Audience Is Predominantly Female
SAGE article: Why women are drawn to tales of rape, murder and serial killers
NYT: Is Our True-Crime Obsession Doing More Harm Than Good?
Gawker: True Crime is Rottnig Our Brains
TIME: The Human Cost of Binge-Watching True Crime Series
Reclamation: The Fascination With All That is Morbid and Macabre
Binghamton University: True Crime Adaptations and How the Public Surveils
University of Oregon: The true crime genre is popular, but is it ethical?

87: Mating Rituals & True Crime

Listeners voted for their favorites topics of the past year, so join us as we chat and relearn the best of everything!

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Join our Discord!

The best awards in podcasting that feature hosts named Tom, Ella and Caroline, the best cohost award is a tie (for Charlie and Teddy) actually introducing ourselves again, Tom is the hot one and the funny one, everyone loves dinosaurs, satisfying questions I never thought to ask, no one at the Igs knows Tom, the nuanced story of the propoganda of the propaganda, hey they happen to be some great topics we’re talking about, I had to put jokes about how bad we are so that we could compliment each other later, you can go back and discover Ella’s, we love an experimental episode as well as a classic episode, we love the quirky younger sibling of things, the World Games are coming up soon - get hype!

The Best of Everything 2025

How many eyes do these animals have, and more importantly what are they doing with them? And how long has copyright piracy been around, and would YOU download a car? Also Ella finally drops her fake british accent.

Images we Talk About:
Bullfrog Parietal Eye
Bumble Bee Ocelli
Scallop Eyes
Scallop Eye Mirrors
The Home Taping is Killing Music Logo

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:01) Eyevolution II
(00:56:16) Digital Piracy
(01:45:06) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

How many jingles does this man have up his sleeve?? 2 eyes or not 2 eyes, what do you need glasses for - to see boobs? why have an odd number of eyes when it’s a BOGO deal developmentally, even more amazing than his eye of agamoto - Dr Strange has 2 camera eyes, “I grow fearful of the untrue eye”, bull frogs can’t doom scroll, the pineal eye is a skylight to the pineal gland, ommatidia means little eye, each compound eye only sees one image from the thousand of ommatidia, this is Caroline’s first eyevolution rodeo - we can’t answer all the questions, now you can be annoying correcting people about bug vision, ocelli are also called little eyes, triangular ocelli flight stabilization, Robobee, ocelli are useful because they’re auxiliary, they’re a fast different readout, there are so many more interesting sci fi choices for eyes, maybe they evolved ocelli to not crash when they see a sexy bug, having zero eyes would be going to far, oh wait nevermind, where we’re going we don’t need eyes, “not the implications”, well I’ll answer one of those questions, what do you need eyes for looking at boobs? YEAH I DO ACTUALLY, he complex eyes like a telescope of scallops, THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE A BRAIN, have we gone too far? the living square mirrors in scallop eyes, no one believed scallop TV would work, fair use and fair dealings, early book sellers were book copiers, authors did not make profits on early copies, Martial was the first person to be reposted on 9gag, the library of alexandria operated like OpenAI, book publishers after the printing press were like Universal Music Group - concerned over their rights - not artists, crown approved ABC books, the mid 1600s is the first use of piracy of intellectual property, ruining vinyl records with the cassette tape skull and crossbones, the 2013 Hugh Jackman Oscars performance, Napster’s origins and Metallica’s not so metal killing of it, Piracy was a technical and social phenomenon, YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A FONT, video game antipiracy that reminds you of the creative mind behind the product, none of this is legal advice, the cost of piracy is easy to calculate but the benefit is impossible to measure.

Sources:
The Parietal Eye
Compound Eyes
Holger Krapp's Fantastic Paper on Ocelli
2022 Paper on Ocelli
Otacilia Khezu
The Scallop's Eyes
Scallop TV
Ed Yong on Scallop Eyes
---
Book: In Stock or Special Order
Coda: A Short History of Book Piracy
Book: A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects
Bob Leggitt: The Threat of the Audio Cassette
2025 Paper: Digital Piracy
2009 Abstract: Understanding Online Piracy: The Truth about Illegal File Sharing
The Guardian: Going for a song: the hidden history of music piracy
Frontier Economics: Will piracy make us walk the plank?
Viaaccess: The evolving attitudes of Millennials and Generation Z to video piracy
Huck: Piracy in the UK: the failed war on illegal content
Video- Piracy, It's a Crime
Image- Home Taping Kills Music
BBC: Getting inside a downloader's head
Slate: Goodbye to Piracy
Youtube Video: Mary Spender- The Birth of Music Piracy
Britannica: intellectual-property law
PlagatismToday: How a Reverse Copyright Filled the Library of Alexandria
Wiki: Napster
2010: Digital piracy among consumers in a developing economy: A comparison of multiple theory-based models
Forbes: The Unwilling Digital Pirate: A Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity

86: Eyevolution 2 Eyelectric Boogeyeloo & Digital Piracy w/ Sabrina Cruz

Vote for your favorite topics at LetsLearnEverything.com/bestof before Sunday June 8th!!!

Vote for the Best Of Everything 2025!

What is it about harmonies in music that just sounds so good? Can science (and our amazing musical guest David Bennet) help us get to the bottom of it?

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:24) Why do we like Harmony?
(00:56:10) Our Music Theory Questions
(01:24:04) Outro

Support us with a Max Fun Membership!

Join our Discord!

We also learn about: 

Listening to Carly Rae Jepsen academically, the musical expert said Caroline has good music taste, I’m down hereeeeee, harmony is just the interaction of any two notes, Tom thinks about high school choir harmony all the time, even babies like harmony, even the oldest flutes have the same holes in them, octaves are so similar we call them the same note, watchmojo ranking of intervals, Carly Rae Jepsen - It Has Many Notes!, a spicy dissonant interval can be good in moderation - like a spicy seasoning in food, Tom is just grinning getting to ask these music questions, we invited you as a guest and you bring this dissonance to our home?? the messy sounding tones match to messy looking ratios, why can we even distinguish pitch? we use pitch in communication so much, animal sounds are the only things that make pitch, animals can recognize intervals, we call bird song song - but to them it’s probably more like language, it sounds cheesy - but in every human voice there’s a harmony, we’re asking the question backwards - we needed to understand harmony to be able to decipher a pitch, hearing the difference between notes IN YOUR HEAD, what we hear in our head is different than the world around us, harmonies are audio cheesecake - something we evolved to enjoy pumped to the max, “we can make cheesecake with our mouths”, cheesecake is just molecules, did you not have to learn human evolution in music school? oh my guilty pleasures are Tchaikovsky’s later works, Ella humble bragging about her spotify wrapped, this is going to come off as hostile but hasn’t enough already been said about the Beatles, how different generations experience the Beatles, more like DavidLegoStopMotion, it took 5 years after a dissertation on how to have a career as a musician on youtube, try song ideas and listen to them later, music theory is Descriptive not Prescriptive, liking technical music, the only way you’ll practice is if you enjoy it, the dopamine hit from the cheesecake of practice, can you send that advice to my mom 10 years ago, but you did practice… yeah, teenagers are good at learning instruments because they have free time, start learning music with the music that you love, learning sheet music at the same time as playing is like learning to write as you’re learning to speak, you learn to write after you’ve practiced speaking for years, you’re full of good ideas David who knew.

85: David Bennett & Why Humans Like Harmony in Music

Can trees talk to each other? And how does that personifying metaphor square with the actual science behind it? And what can we learn from the stories of art on trading cards throughout history?

Images we Talk About: 
Trade Cards
3 Modern Trading Cards
Yuka Morii's Cards
Terror
Hyalopterus Lemure
Preposterous Proportions

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:08) Tree Talk
(00:52:16) Trading Card Art
(01:33:47) Outro

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The answer is yes maybe sometimes and no, talking tree folklore, communication as transferring information, The Secret Life of Trees, Caroline WAS vegan, plants feel pain - GOOD, tree self defense, secondary metabollites, you got me AND Ella to write that down, tannin defense mechanism, volatile organic compounds, giraffes avoiding nearby leaves after eating, maybe trees are eavesdropping, mycorrhizal networks, could it be diffusion or a baby tree suckling on its mother, do a stanford prisoner experiment for trees, that tree is giving mother, mother trees - altruistic fungi - and the perils of plant personification, literally talking to trees, your first priority shouldn’t be to not be boring - maybe second, respect for the organisms that are fundamentally unlike us - their unfathomable lives, the modern boom of trading cards, trade cards, mass produced color images were cool and novel, how many credits for that chromo? absurd advertising from the 1800s, anthropomorphic fruits and veggies were all the rage, trade cards were a microcosm of marketing-invention-and collecting, Ella’s baseball impression, looking at a mainstream sport through the nerdiest lens imaginable, cigarette baseball cards, Doug McWilliams photographed 8% of all major league baseball players, oh right photography is an art, and so is building relationships with players, cards began to stand on their own, Richard Garfield wanted baseball cards for nerds, Magic and Pokemon credit their artists - but YuGiOh does not, Yuka Morii’s sculpture cards, Adam Rex’s Terror, Richard Thomas’ Hyalopterous Lemure, Julie Baroh flipping off her classmates, companies screwing over artists, it’s still art in spite of being a piece of cardboard.

Sources:
2010 Paper: Explaining evolution of plant communication by airborne signals
New York Times: The Social Life of Forests
Book: The Secret Life Of Plants
National Geographic: Plants can talk. Yes, really. Here’s how.
2025 Pape: Shrub anti-herbivore defenses exhibit non-linear and varied responses to increased herbivore density
1990 Paper: Acacia Tree Kills Antelope
Book: Ethylene in Plant Biology
BBC News: Plants send SOS signal to insects
TED ED: Can Plants Talk to Each Other?
2015 Paper: Inter-plant communication through mycorrhizal networks mediates complex adaptive behaviour in plant communities
1997 Paper: Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field
2008 Paper: Hydraulic redistribution of water from Pinus ponderosa trees to seedlings: evidence for an ectomycorrhizal pathway
Scientific America: Do Trees Really Support Each Other through a Network of Fungi?
2023 Paper: Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests
2024 Paper: Mother trees, Altruistic Fungi, and the Perils of Plant Personification
Facts or Fairy Tales? Peter Wohlleben and the Hidden Life of Trees
Video: Project gives 200-year-old Dublin tree ‘a voice’
[Scientific America: The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading](The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading | Scientific American)
Article: The World’s First Talking Tree Helps Young People Reconnect with Nature
Smithsonian: Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
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Cornell University on History of Trade Cards
History of Chromolithography
American Antiquarian Society on Trade Cards
PBS on Trade Cards
Baseball Card Photography History
Doug McWilliams via Baseball Hall of Fame
Doug McWilliams Interview with SABR
Doug McWilliams NYTimes Interview
Richard Garfield on Magic's Creation
Yuka Morii's Pokemon Card Art
Magic Artist Julie Baroh's Interview
Magic Artist Donato Giancola's Points Against Artist Policies
Magic Artist Melissa Benson's Artist Advice

84: Tree Talk & Trading Card Art

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