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

  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 GifTennis for Two ControllersMagnavox OdysseyGame.comTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:03:05) Unsolved Math Problems(00:54:47) Video Game Controllers(01:46:42) OutroSupport 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 BiographyWiki: Fermat's Last TheoremMacTutor: History of MathematicsSimon Fraser University: A Brief History of MathematicsMedium:The Oldest Unsolved Problem in MathPillars Taylor University: Odd Perfect NumbersRoyal Society: David HilbertSimons Foundation: Hilbert’s ProblemsClay Institute: The Millennium Prize ProblemsNature News: Maths 'Nobel' Prize Declined By Russian recluseAnatoly Vershik: Thoughts on the Clay Millennium PrizesBBC In Our Time: The Poincare ConjectureMedium: 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” - SlashgearBad Game Hall of Fame“Place to pee: new Belgian urinal-based video game” - Ars Technica“Sega Begins Sales of Urine-Powered 'Toylet' Videogame” - WiredPerifit Care, Original Kegel Exerciser

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

  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 ComputersThe First Integrated CircuitAnother early Integrated Circuit PrototypePeople Etching a Circuit MaskTED How are Microchips Made VideoEtching from the Great Moon HoaxTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:02:23) The Chemistry of Computers(01:04:27) The Great Moon Hoax of 1835(01:49:15) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!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 SemiconductorsEuro Physics News 100 Years of Semiconductor ScienceRoyal Society of Chemistry on SiliconPBS History of TransistorsPBS Invention of the Integrated CircuitIEEE Historhy of the Integrated CircuitMoore's Original Paper: Cramming more Components onto Integrated CircuitsUPenn: Is Moore's Law Really Dead?MIT: The Death of Moore's Law---Wiki: Lunar Pareidolia Book- The Moon in the Greek and Roman ImaginationWiki- Anaxagoras Futurism: Franz von Paula Gruithuisen's Venus Science FictionSmithsonian Blog- The Great Moon HoaxLibrary of Congress: Blogs Paper- The "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835Linda Hall Library: Richard Adams LockeBritannica: The Great Moon Hoax of 1835Library of Congress: Blogs : Belief, Legend, and the Great Moon HoaxLibrary of Congress: The Sun (New York) 1833-1916Internet Archive: Great Moon Hoax PapersEdgar Allen Poe Society: Richard Adams Locke

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

  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) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!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.

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• 90: Octopuses & The Paralympics

  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 DiagramSnail Nervous System DiagramOctopus Maze ImageVideo of Octopus Opening a JarVideo of Octopus CamouflageParalympics AdTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:02:56) Octopuses(00:55:08) The Paralympics(01:41:44) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!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 PaperLive Science: Octopi are Not AliensSciAm: Are Octopuses Smart?Octopus NeuroecologyHow Octopuses Control their BodyDiscover Mag: Octopus IntelligenceThe Amazing Octopus Maze StudyOPB: Octopus IntelligenceConvergent Evolution of BrainsExperimental Evidence for Spatial Learning in OctopusesSciAm: The Mind of an OctopusOctopus Problem SolvingPlay in OctopusesOctopus City StudyBBC: Octopus CityNeural Control of Cephalopod CamouflageOctopus Camouflag StudyOctopus Aging and Evolution Paper---Sage: Deaf History of SportOlympedia: George EyserWiki: George EyserOlympics: Oliver Halassy Paralympic.org: History International Wheelchair & Amputee Sports Federation: Paralympic Games 1960 - 1992Paralympic.org: Paralympic GamesBBC: Stoke Mandeville GamesParalympic.org: Who We AreParalympic.org: Paris 2024 SportsWashington Post: Wheelchair Rugby Top End Sports: Discountinued Paralympic SportsSBS News: Sports that Don't Have an Olympic EquivalentOlmypics: BocciaParalympic.org: ClassificationBBC Inside Science: ClassificationBAA.org: Parathletics DivisionsBBC: Tully Kearney Paralympics GB: ClassificationBBC: Spain ID Basketball and ID in ParalympicsThe Conversation: When Paralympic Atheletes Fake the Extent of their DisabilityVice: Spain ID Basketball (translanted)The Conversation: Why somne Disabled People are Critical of the Paralympics Dis(Empowering) Paralymoics Histories by Danielle PeersGuardian: Channel 4 Superhuman AdGuardian: Channel 4 New AdBlog: Paralympics, Good or Bad for Disabled People

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• 89: Understanding Blood & Peculiar Percussion

  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 QuijadaSon Jarocho Quijada VideoThe ClapperThe Clapper in PerformanceTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:01:35) Understanding Blood(00:49:38) Peculiar Percussion(01:24:41) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!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: BloodJ Thromb Haemost: Discovery of the Cardiovascular SystemContagion - CURIOSity Digital Collections: Humoral TheoryMedicineNet: Is Bloodletting Still Used Today?Fresh Water Habitats Press Release: Medicinal Leech BreedingThe New Yorker: The History of BloodNCBI Book: The ABO Blood groupsAnnals of Clinical and Laboratory Science: The Discovery of Blood CellsRed Cross Blood Services: History Of Blood Transfusions 1628 To NowNCBI Bookshelf: Blood and the Cells it ContainsThe Conversation: Essays on blood: why do we actually have it?Blood at 70: its roots in the history of hematology and its birthPMC: A Brief History of Human Blood GroupsJapan Experience: Blood Types in JapanThe Conversation: More Blood Types than you ThinkCBS News: New Blood TypeThe Conversation: Gwada-negative---Kabeleh Bah Playing the QuijadaSalsa Blanca on the QuijadaJohn Jeremiah Sullivan on the QuijadaSon Jarocho Quijada VideoHistory of the VibraslapBoston Symphony Orchestra on Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 2Britannica on Slapstick's EtymologyThe AMNH's Slap StickThe Cymbal Test VideoNPR on Zildjian's HistoryNYT on Zildjian's History

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